Posted 11:07 AM by Scoobie Davis

Book Review of Hollywood Hypocrites by Jason Mattera
Jason Mattera, who lied in his ambush interviews of Al Franken and others, just came out with the book Hollywood Hypocrites. Here's my Amazon.com review (with Links). The wing-nuts are savaging it. Give it a thumbs up on Amazon if you like it:

Flawed in Many Ways

In order to understand this book, it is necessary to give a little background on its author Jason Mattera. Mattera started his career with a deer-in-the-headlights appearance on Chris Matthews' show Hardball (the YouTube video of the side-splitting encounter titled "Matthews Grills Chickenhawk" is priceless). Mattera became a radio talk show host in the mold of Rush Limbaugh (not surprisingly, in Hollywood Hypocrites, Mattera uses the ungrammatical and Limbaughesque reference to the "Democrat [sic] Party").

Mattera's first book, Obama Zombies, is based on the patronizing premise that young adults overwhelmingly voted for Obama because they are clueless and out of touch. As luck would have it, about the same time that the book was released, Human Events--the magazine Mattera edits--offered subscribers a free copy of a repugnant neo-Confederate book The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Civil War. The book's cover has a flattering illustration of war criminal and Ku Klux Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest (not surprisingly, the book completely whitewashed Forrest's massacre of captured Union troops at Fort Pillow). Talk about being clueless and out of touch!

In Mattera's latest book, he takes on the alleged hypocrisy of Hollywood--at least that is what the title promises. However, Mattera's targets include non-Hollywood filmmakers such as Michael Moore and Al Gore. Aside from that, there are two major problems with Hollywood Hypocrites. First, Mattera's standard of morality is so high that no political opponent could do anything without being accused of hypocrisy. So what if non-Hollywood environmentalist Al Gore flew on a private jet? Hasn't Mattera ever heard of carbon offsets?

More important, Mattera is oblivious to the fact that an accusation of hypocrisy entails that the targets of the accusation possess a moral worldview. That is not a problem for much of the American Right since many hold an Ayn Randian worldview that professes that self-absorption and superciliousness toward the less fortunate are virtues. Hence, the only way that a Rand acolyte such as Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) could be accused of hypocrisy would be if he surreptitiously helped the poor and afflicted!

Perhaps this is too harsh. Mattera has expressed a moral worldview. In fact, as a spokesman for the conservative Young America's Foundation, Mattera first appeared on Hardball and fervently argued about the morality of the Iraq War. Matthews then rightfully called out Mattera for supporting other young Americans being placed in harm's way but not exposing himself to the same dangers. Now that's hypocrisy!