Saturday 12 September 2009

Hollywood Babble On & On #369: All Hitler, All The Time!

Welcome to the show folks...

The internet is all abuzz about Megan Fox pausing a second in vamping for the paparazzi to compare
Transformers Auteur Michael Bay to Adolph Hitler. I guess Megan Fox has never heard of the variations of Godwin's Law and the other belief that the first one to compare another to Hitler automatically disqualifies them from serious debate. But I'm willing to bet dollars to donuts that Megan Fox hasn't heard about photosynthesis, or the truth about Santa Claus either.

Michael Bay's allies from the
Transformers crew posted their own message in defense of their Dark Lord, and calling Megan Fox as "dumb-as-a-rock."

Now that's unfair. Rocks don't constantly say stupid things to the press, in fact, rocks don't say anything at all. It is better to be silent like a rock and thought of as a idiot, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

And she's not the only one who is quick with the Nazi comparisons. Woody Harrelson, actor, marijuana advocate, and the son and defender of a professional hit-man, recently decided that since he did not like the political stance of Fox News, that it's main shareholder Rupert "Binky" Murdoch is the moral equivalent of Goebbels.

Now you have to wonder why people from Hollywood are so quick to compare people they don't like to the perpetrators of one of history's greatest mass murder sprees.

Well there are two answers.

1. "NAZI" "HITLER" & "FASCIST" HAVE BECOME SHORTHAND REGARDLESS OF THEIR REAL MEANING...

To be more specific, short-hand for "I don't like you." I really doubt that Michael Bay ever ordered the murder of one Jew, let alone 6 million, but Megan Fox thought he was a bossy meanie, so that made him "Hitler."

Woody Harrelson doesn't like Fox News, because it criticizes the policies of the President Harrelson most likely voted for. So that must make Rupert Murdoch "Goebbels," completely forgetting that Goebbels worked for the government, and didn't criticize it. However, a quick look at Rupert Murdoch's history shows a slightly different story than the narrative stuck in Woody's mind.

If you look at Murdoch's beginnings in Australia most of the major newspapers leaned towards that country's equivalent of the Tories. That meant that people who voted Labor, were an under-served market. So Murdoch's papers started leaning toward the Labor Party, and those voters bought those papers and got the ball rolling on his empire.

In America, anyone can see that the majority of the media slants toward the Democratic Party and to liberal political causes. Don't deny it, there's an entire industry dedicated to cataloging it, and they can discuss it in more detail than I. Rupert saw a gap, he filled it, creating something that sounds supremely different from the rest of the media, which is why Fox News tends to dominate in the ratings.

But in this age of mangled history and hyperbolic emotions, such facts don't really matter, what matters is that "I don't like you, and since Hitler was bad, you are Hitler."

2. THE PUBLICITY MACHINE AIN'T WHAT IT USED TO BE

Movie stars are the main ingredient in a great big pot of verbal trouble stew. Many are not highly educated, live in a very rarefied world of money where everyone they meet is either in the business, or a wannabe, both wanting something from them, leading to rampant ass kissing, and are constantly praised for their "talent" and "insight" because of their ability to recite words written by others in an at least semi-believable manner.

This tends to create outbreaks of verbal diarrhea, where they endorse dictators, insult the religion of the majority of Americans, talk about details of the sex life that "Letters to Penthouse" would rather not know, or compare their co-workers to mass-murdering totalitarians.

It wasn't always that way. The Hollywood machine had a two pronged defense to prevent such outbreaks, or at least keep them contained. First, they had their publicity department riding herd on their stars, and second they had their advertising dollars to pressure the press to keep their mouths shut.

But things have changed. The publicity departments are no longer interested in good publicity, they simply want publicity, regardless of quality, and lots of it. Nothing garners loads of publicity than a movie star making a stupid public proclamation about the politics and/or religion of a large swath of ticket-buyers to get their pictures on a lot of web-sites, newspapers, and tabloid TV shows. Because a lot of people, mostly women, buy up this infotainment by the truckload, the studios can't bully these outlets, because they're most likely making loads of money off them as well. So the old days of a studio publicity man swooping when they detect their leading star about to have a public brain-fart are over, instead, it's fart away, and in many cases the media deliberately asks them questions to goad them into brain-fart territory.

Of course, they all forget the key point of publicity, putting bums on theater seats. Many times such publicity frenzies outshine the project the star was meant to promote. Megan Fox's comment is getting more attention than her movie Jennifer's Body, and Harrelson seems to have forgotten that he was there to sell Zombieland, not to compare Fox News viewers to Nazi sympathizers. Those Fox News viewers are going to see that quote, then look at the ad for Zombieland, and say: "I was going to see that movie, but I think the star just called me a Nazi, so I won't give him any of my money."

Now what can stop this trend?

Well, I think anyone given a starring role in a movie or television show should have to take a course, called "Knowing When To Shut The Hell Up 101, by Prof. Furious D." My tuition is reasonable, and I'm tough but fair. Okay, I'm brutal, and totally unfair, but if you criticize me, then you sir are worse than Hitler!

1 comment:

  1. Megan Fox, I am getting suck of her and that dumbass Kanye West who thinks he is go great that he interrupted Taylor Swift at the VMAs.

    Reason why he lost is because the public is sick of him and his ego.

    Say what you want about Disney queens like Ashley Tisdale, at least she is a PROFESSIONAL, she shows up to work on time, is a pleasure to work with on set and is not saying dumbass comments to the media on a regular basis.

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