Hollywood Hypocrites

Hollywood Hypocrites

I've long noted that much of the screeching about helping the poor by raising taxes on the middle class comes from people who are obscenely rich Democrats. This column by Hollywood screenwriter (and recovering liberal) Burt Prelutsky gives a precious example:

One thing that became glaringly apparent is that for all the populist claptrap these folks spout, when the caste system was banished from India, it simply packed its bags and moved to Hollywood. There are people in the business who seem to devote more time to spouting left-wing inanities than they do to their acting and singing careers, and, almost without exception, they treat their underlings like indentured serfs.

One of the most successful, most liberal, TV writer-producers was earning upwards of $40 million-a-year. A while back, he advertised that he needed a personal assistant. In Hollywood parlance, a p.a. is responsible for doing every menial chore you can imagine, including driving the kids to soccer practice, making dinner reservations, picking up the dry cleaning, keeping the fleet of family cars gassed up, making airport runs to pick up and deliver, and may or may not include sexual favors. When you make $40,000,000-a-year, it works out to about $110,000-a-day, every day, including Saturdays and Sundays. So, what, you wonder, was the salary being offered for what are typically 12-14 hour days? A whopping $500-a-week, or roughly what the employer made every seven minutes, even when he was asleep!

And, yet, this blood-sucker doesn’t see the slightest contradiction in his insisting that the minimum wage be raised. And neither, I can readily assure you, do any of his well-heeled, left-wing, associates.

That is the thing that is so maddening about these Hollywood characters. It isn’t that they’re greedier or cheaper than other people, it’s that they are totally oblivious to the abyss that exists between what they say and what they do.

The reason it’s so hard to satirize this crowd is because satire calls for exaggerating human flaws and foibles. But how can you possibly do that when the reality is already so ludicrous?