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05 Oct 2007 07:21 am

Santorum Goes To Hollywood?

Uh-oh. Well, at least we got a great Larison blog-post out of it:

This strikes me as a really bad idea, and this isn’t just because I have been such a harsh critic of Santorum on foreign policy. I don’t object to the suggestion that more conservatives should make documentaries. Conservatives definitely should make more documentaries, but they should do so because they actually want to be filmmakers and want to tell stories.  They should do this because they have a talent for doing it, which ensures that they will be doing the work that best expresses their particular gifts.  Conservatives should not make documentaries just because that’s what leftists do and we need to counter their propaganda arm with one of our own. As much as it may stun certain folks to read this, left-wing politics prevails among actors and artists for the same reason that it prevails among most journalists: it is a kind of politics that initially fits very well with the kind of work that these people do, and these professions attract people who already tend to share these beliefs.

He also gets why the idea of a career in acting was a non-starter for me. All those dumb-ass, mindless, sanctimonious lefties can turn you into Mickey Kaus or Dennis Miller if you're not careful:

I suspect conservatives don’t get into a lot of acting or art or journalism today because they know a few things about all of them: they know that these areas are all full of people who are not like them temperamentally or culturally, there are some strong entrenched forces opposing the sorts of work they would like to do (consider how difficult it was for Robert Duvall to get The Apostle made) and this sort of work strikes them as unattractive because they deem it less practical or less meaningful.

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