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Ralph Peters
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Wars of Blood and Faith
Ralph Peters

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Conservatives Are From Mars, Liberals Are From San Francisco
by Burt Prelutsky
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FROM THE PHONE BOOTH: The Smallest Space in  Hollywood

	FINEFROCK

Lousy Filmmakers?
Roger L. Simon’s Tease on PajamasMedia.com
by Steve Finefrock - Hollywood Forum [scriptwriter] 11/7/07

The troops are stirring.  Some leaders may be emerging. The Heritage Halo could be spreading its light thru the land of liberal opponents.
 
And Roger Simon is writing a book, tentatively entitled “Blacklist” – about his experiences with what I’ve dubbed the Blocklist.  It should be a rousing tome, written as he struggles with duties as CEO of PajamasMedia.com, and writes often for Politico.com, as well as many other pursuits which have always filled his calendar. He gave a sneak-peek at a chapter on PajamasMedia this week, closing with the teaser: Republicans make lousy filmmakers.
 
We must await his elaboration, especially of the ‘exceptions’ to this Simon Rule.  But why wait?  Let me take a stab, and recapitulate some themes of my Heritage Foundation speech in September, which addressed a key issue for conservatives [the true target of the Forum’s movement – republicans lack the passion, and conviction, of ‘conservatives’ in this argument] trying to make inroads in that institution I have dubbed “Hotel Whiskey” on more than a few occasions.

Military professionals are a growing portion of my list of desired company, along with activist Jewish anti-jihadists – some folks think I’m one or both, but I’m all goy-boy, Okie-born with several Jewish frat brothers [a chapter of Dubya’s frat], and two years as CO of the ROTC color guard in my first two struggling collegian years.  Otherwise, it’s mere close acquaintance with such folks, akin to my dozen years rubbing the halo of firefighters and other emergency professionals.
 
Among the terms I accrue in my vocabulary are many Yiddish and military phrases, such as phonetic pronunciation of favored terms, such as “HW” received in an e-mail from a professional military officer [very well-versed in anti-jihad issues] for describing Hollywood.  In radio chatter, all letters are given phonetic clarifications, and “HW” translates into Hotel Whiskey, a mythical structure which encompasses all the liberal zipcodes of the filmmaking world.
 
But: HOTEL WHISKEY IS NOT ALL LIBERAL.

Thus the core ‘revelation’ theme at Heritage Foundation, which has given some revivification to the conservative wave I still hope can arise in Hotel Whiskey.  At least one-quarter and maybe as much as a third of Hotel Whiskey’s rooms are occupied by working professionals and trades specialists who are conservative.  But they are KEEPING THEIR MOUTHS SHUT.
 
That is due to the Block List – Simon alludes to this in his PajamasMedia piece, noting it’s not a formal ‘list’ but a mindset, an assumption which no one dares question.  Thus, they think on the left in this hotel that all the rooms are occupied by themselves.  It is a land akin to “Pleasantville” – all roads lead back to the same comfort-zone of self-equal clones, only lefties instead of TV-land stereotypes of middle-American boredom.
 
The more vital message at Heritage was two-fold: There are professionals and trades specialists who are already skilled and successful in film, and all they need is a combination of Money and a Moses to complete the formula for MAKING OUR OWN MOVIES. Some longterm cash and cojones plus chutzpah are the missing elements.
 
Simon surely knows this, but is teasing us to wait with bated breath and tremulous computer screens for his elaboration.  This is good – a judicious tease always gets the juices flowing.  A bit o’ P.T. Barnum is handy in generating interest among the troops.  And helps with book sales as well – must remember this for my own book-proposal and ultimate publication, “Right Turn on Sunset” for sometime next summer.
 
As the election season approaches, conservatives of many stripes are regaining their mojo – exhaustion and mystification over Dubya’s lesser efforts, and the drubbing of Dubya in the midterms took some steam out of our momentum.  But we’ll soon be back in fine form, and Simon’s political savvy plus experiences with Hotel Whiskey may make him the lead candidate to be our Moses!
 
Or an advisor to the search-committee that finds Moses.  And the other “M” to this trifecta yet to be completed, added to the “Manpower” [gender-neutral] that always exists in the bowels of the beast that is Hotel Whiskey: MONEY.
 
The Heritage presentation was a bit muted on that point, though several prescient ‘reviewers’ told me that was clearly there for anyone who might be a Money-Moses to digest, and perhaps act upon.  Somewhere there’s a Jeff Skoll on the right: someone with the cash and cojones and prescience as well as CEO-skill to make this rightwing 3-M machinery prove Simon to be ultimately wrong.
 
For we’ve not yet had our grab at the brass ring of conservative film – the few attempts have often been too heavy-handed, excessively polemical [Ayn Rand’s rant, “The Fountainhead” is the most awkward example], rather than following the admonition of Frank Capra in “The Men Who Made The Movies”: it must FIRST ENTERTAIN.  Then you add your message.
 
The model is Fox News Channel: There was endless and sometimes creative op-ed complaining for years about media bias against traditional views, and it was all ‘playing defense’ which is not how you score.  Then came Rupert plus Roger Ailes, and voila they found the Manpower to go with the pairing of Money and a Moses.  A decade has proven there’s an audience for news brought to you by fair-and-balanced right-viewing reporters and editors and executives.
 
Ditto for Hotel Whiskey: its many mansions inside its walls are conservative.  They know how to write, produce, edit, act, direct, do sound, design sets and costumes, etc.  But there’s never been a FOCUSED CONSPIRACY to make them into a Fox-News-on-the-Palisades.  We have more than FNC to examine for an example, as outlined in my “Seventh Seal” metaphor – the seventh in the sequence being Hotel Whiskey [as yet unbroken], preceded first by breaking the ‘seal’ the left had on political commentary, with W.F. Buckley’s National Review and then Heritage Foundation, and onward thru GOPAC and talk radio and the blogosphere and to FNC…
 
The remaining seal to be broken?  HOTEL WHISKEY, whose occupants include a contingent of conservative combat recruits.  Needing only leadership [with savvy, cojones and obsession] and Skoll-like cash, to become the Mini-Me of FNC.
 
Ailes did it – took a decade, with the first few years flooding FNC with red ink.  Heritage and Buckley and GOPAC as well – they found plenty of talent, among the ‘lousy’ troops in think-tank and campaign-college realms, plus commentary writers.  All the then-existing talent needed to break the seal the libs had in those realms was the 3M formula.
 
Hopefully Simon knows this, and his tease was just a way to jolt the quiescent movement into reading the next installment in this cinema merite initiative.
 
Hopefully.  
 
Please, Simon, tell us it ain’t so – republicans [ahem, conservatives] do not make lousy filmmakers.  They merely need a 3M inspiration.   Then we can do a look-back docu-drama on our own “Seventh Seal” story, and really piss off the left.  But first, make sure Hillary ain’t president. And fight jihad, which Hillary ain’t ever gonna atempt – unless it’s against conservatives in America..
 
First things first…. But don’t forget the unknown, unheralded occupants of Hotel Whiskey. Their talent is wasted on the wrong projects.  They only need to be led out of Goshen…… ExileStreet

copyright 2007 Steve Finefrock

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