The Unconscious
Message Sent By the Left
Commentary by Greg Lewis / TheRant.US
December 8, 2004
Among the things that were brought to light during the
recent Presidential campaign was what I would term the "unconscious
message" that the Democrats sent to Americans. This unconscious message
was a function of, primarily, two things: The impact of standard-bearers
— including Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon, and Whoopi Goldberg,
among many others — who, because of their high profile, came to
represent what the Democrat Party stood for to many Americans; and some
of the tactics which the Democrats allowed to be employed in the name
of electing their candidate. Indeed, while many high-profile Democratic
spokespeople might have gotten the Democratic "message" out,
they also sent subliminal messages which arguably negated the conscious
messages they intended to convey.
Most Americans are now able to separate the public personae
of actors, musicians, comedians, filmmakers, and other artists, from the
"real" people who project those personae in their artistic work.
Susan Sarandon is a perfect example. La Sarandon is a consummate actor.
She frequently brings a wonderful depth of emotional, even spiritual,
understanding to the characters she portrays on screen. She's appeared
in some 60 films, and many of her performances are seriously memorable.
No one is arguing that Sarandon can't act, nor that the American public
is not willing to buy tickets to her films. Even such blatantly political
films (examples on request) as she has largely chosen to appear in recently
are often worth the price of admission, for the performances if not for
the underlying message.
Where I think both artists such as Ms. Sarandon and the
Democrats who seem to welcome her as a spokesperson for their party's
positions and candidates make their mistake is in not understanding that
Americans have become increasingly canny in their ability to separate
performance from reality. It's when you get Susan Sarandon on a stage
hawking the liberal message and pimping a Democratic candidate and, in
general, just being a leftist honk on pretty much any issue you care to
name that you run into problems.
Not without good reason have Americans come to associate
Hollywood with the kind of behavior and values that simply run counter
to those that they themselves hold and want to inculcate in their children.
Hollywood stands for "sex and drugs and rock and roll" (to quote
lyrics from a song by Ian Drury and the Blockheads — to comment
on the group's choice of names is hardly necessary), and, whether or not
it's accurate, many Americans tend to discount what comes out of celebrities'
mouths in real life precisely for this reason, even as they will accept
them on the silver screen or in other venues simply because they are,
in many cases, just really good at what they do and they have an appeal
that is undeniable.
And clearly the Democrats began to realize, as the campaign
wore on, that being associated with a painfully unpresentable and obviously
unhinged dweeb such as Michael Moore was not doing their cause any good
whatsoever. Even if you want to talk about "preaching to the converted,"
the audience with whom Moore's message resonated (the $100 million gross
of "Fahrenheit 9/11" notwithstanding) very likely was not made
up largely of responsible voters. And the influence on the election's
outcome of the people to whom the film's message was anathema had to be,
in my opinion, far greater than that on those who found in Moore's message
a rallying cry.
Even the shenanigans of such an august and revered figure
as Dan Rather had to send the subliminal message that Democrat partisans
(and Rather was, if nothing else, outed as a shameless Dem honk in this
campaign) would not hesitate to resort to blatant lies, including presenting
forged documents to support their attacks on George W. Bush, in order
to further their cause. While there may have been some staunch lefties
who believed, as Rather claimed was appropriate, that the "truth"
of the story transcended the fact that the evidence for it was trumped
up, far more Americans got the message that the Democrats and their staunch
supporters would stop at nothing in their attempts to regain their rapidly
diminishing political and cultural influence.
And so there's a kind of poetic justice achieved in the
outcome of this year's Presidential election. The Democrats, bringing
to bear all the heavy hitters of the entertainment world they could muster
for Kerry's cause, at the same time unconsciously made it clear to an
increasingly knowledgeable American public — a public that has had
it up to here with people who trample on the flag and the values it represents
— that they were decidedly not of the right political and moral
persuasion to represent the hearts and souls and minds of the people they
sought to govern.
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