Posted 11:32 AM by Scoobie Davis

Hooray for Hollywood!!!

I love Hollywood and not just for the parties I crash. Sure, there are stupid things that are done and said by Hollywood people, but let’s look at how people in Hollywood have stepped up to the plate because Democrats in Congress and the mainstream media have been AWOL. Last night, Michael Moore told a primetime broadcast audience that Bush stole the election: "We like nonfiction and we live in fictitious times. We live in a time where we have fictitious election results that elect a fictitious president." Blogger Oliver Willis complained about this part of the speech but I argue that it was the best thing about Moore's speech.

Other stars deserve our applause. I love it that Julia Roberts said that George W. Bush was not her president. Alec Baldwin was on Politically Incorrect and mopped the floor with New York Times reporter and Bush kiss-ass Frank Bruni. I was taken aback when Baldwin cited the stellar work of journalist Greg Palast to illustrate how Bush is an illegitimate usurper. I’m waiting in vain for a member of Congress to follow suit.

Most important, the 1990’s was, to paraphrase Auden, a low dishonest decade on the right. First, you had Scaife and the people like Joseph Farah and Christopher Ruddy who fed off of his paranoia (and his money). Then there were people like Ailes and Limbaugh who spread Scaife’s paranoid worldview but who didn’t need Scaife’s money (the people at Hooked On Phonics paid big ad money to Limbaugh to promote their program to Limbaugh’s listeners; no big surprise there). With few exceptions, members of the media and Democrats in Congress did nothing (in fact, Ted Koppel provided cover for one of Limbaugh’s most pernicious lies). It took a damn comedy writer, Al Franken, to do the media’s job of exposing this demagogue. That’s what I love about Hollywood.