Limbaugh Discovers that Hollywood Shutting Out the Right is Just Another One of His Lies

(Another Lord of Loud Exposé)

For years one of the myths perpetrated by the Lords of Loud of the Right is that if you have conservative values or skew right, you have no chance in Hollywood.

This past week in a forum sponsored by the Heritage Foundation, perhaps the Rightest of the Right think tanks, with Clarence Thomas and Rush Limbaugh in attendance, executive producers of one of today's most successful shows, "24"'s Joel Surnow and Bob Cochran, were asked by Limbaugh if they were snubbed by Hollywood liberals for producing a "pro-America" show. The answer was "no," and Surnow, who has shown up at his share of conservative events, acknowledged the show's audience includes those of all political persuasions, including Barbara Streisand and Donald Rumsfeld.

Limbaugh immediately called for all talk show hosts and conservative pundits to discontinue throwing around fraudulent suggestions that without leaning left you're deadwood in Hollywood.
(Quickie Test: Guess which previous sentence was untrue.)

I have never bought into the Right's "Republican equals Hollywood shut-out" claims anymore than I believe seventeen-year-old mustard gas is why we went into Iraq. Now, if Rush, Sean and Bill O would have slammed Hollywood for bias against the over-forty writer or any film script that had my name on it, then I might be tuned into Fox News more often for my information.

The main speaker at the Heritage Foundation forum was Homeland Security Secretary, Michael Chertoff. He spoke of the differences between Fox's "24" and the actual counter-terrorism work.

In "24" President Charles Logan (Gregory Itzin), approved supplying a Russian madman with poisonous WMD. In real life, it was President Reagan who authorized Rumsfeld to shake hands with and supply an Iraqi madman with WMD.

In "24" Logan had his predecessor killed. In real politics, you don't want to make a martyr out of someone your supporters can continue to pummel with much more venom if alive. It's very tacky to demean the dead.

In "24" the President was not really in charge as much as some dark, maniacal figure who fed him diabolical instructions from some hidden bunker. That's the only similarity.

Chertoff made sure not to mention that extra-super-duper agent Jack Bauer might have handled Katrina better than he or Michael Brown did. Especially when there's a good chance, Kiefer Sutherland himself could have done a better job. But it would seem that Chertoff, President Bush or, for that matter, anyone who may want to create something special, might want to take a tip from some of the show's writers.

When I interviewed the "24" producers for the WGA's "Written By" magazine, I was told that when stuck, their creative tactic was to ask, "what could never happen," and that's exactly what would happen.* It's not a guarantee that everything would work out better that way, but other than being Simon Cowell, "staying the course" hasn't worked all that well lately.

*It tended ruin my appreciation of the show. Not that I figured out events ahead of time. In fact, I was wrong most of the time but I would keep stopping TIVO to tell my wife my latest inept calculation. She just loved that.

Steve Young is an award-winning TV writer and author of "Great Failures of the Extremely Successful" (Tallfellow Press) and the forthcoming "15 Minutes" (7/06 - Harper Collins) www.greatfailure.com