Shapiro interviewed more than one hundred of the industry’s biggest players, including Larry Gelbart (M*A*S*H), Fred Silverman (former president of ABC Entertainment, NBC, and vice president of programming at CBS), Marta Kauffman (Friends), David Shore (House), and Mark Burnett (Survivor). Many of these insiders boast that not only is Hollywood biased against conservatives, but that many of the shows being broadcast have secret political messages. With this groundbreaking exposé, readers will never watch television the same way again.
PLUS: Ed West finally explains “medium is the message” thing for the rest of us:
But it’s also the case that television is itself Left-wing. The very medium makes it easier to present liberal messages, which tend to revolve around more obvious and simple cases of right and wrong, and which tend to trigger positive emotional responses in the audience. So, for example, it’s easier to present, whether it’s a kid’s programme with a talking bird or a 30-minute sit-com, the idea that conflict can be resolved peacefully. It’s far harder to present the argument that sometimes it cannot, that not all grievances are legitimate and that just because people hate you, it doesn’t mean you deserved it. (…)
But there may also be a cultural shift which goes beyond the medium; since becoming a father I have noticed – and I’m sure this is not impending lunacy on my part – that children’s books, when they have an underlying message, basically have a left-liberal one, most often about the environment. And yet almost all fairy tales have a deeply conservative message: think about Red Riding Hood, a lesson to pubescent girls that the world is a dangerous place full of dishonest and aggressive men; or the Emperor’s New Clothes, a warning against innovation that explains an aspect of human nature so well that it has become the most overused cliché in political discourse. Meanwhile The Ant and the Grasshopper, like all of Aesop’s Fables, has a very conservative message: save or starve.
It may be that the media has become Left-wing; but perhaps it is just the case that those stories which say something about human nature, which tend to be conservative, last the test of time.
