Bill Whittle, who edits Sunday Morning Shootout, a movie industry talks show on AMC, has a fascinating, wide ranging post on his site Eject! Eject! Eject!, which hits many of my political—entertainment industry buttons. The man knows whereof he speaks, and has a lot of worthwhile thoughts.

There are only eight conservative actors in the history of Hollywood, and five of them have been elected to high office. (The sixth was elected president of the National Rifle Association, the seventh was elected Mayor of Carmel, California on a pro—business platform, and John Wayne had the class to never run for — or from — anything.) If, as my precisely scientific calculations show, liberal actors outnumber conservative ones by a ratio of 37,454.7 to 1, then where, indeed, are the elected liberal actors? Michael's plea does make a species of sense for a change. Why are there no liberal actors elected to high public office?

I have a theory as to why the liberals have no 'Arnold.' Our Arnold — you know, the Arnold — is pro—business, pro—self—reliance and unabashedly, gloriously patriotic. This is a man who fessed up on national television to being smitten with Richard Nixon because he sounded anti—Communist. Arnold has seen real communists, as opposed to say, leading liberal Presidential wish fetish Warren Beatty, who has played one on the Silver Screen. Somehow, we poor, dim Americans — remember, Michael Moore loves to tell overseas audiences that the stupidest Canadian / Briton / German / Frenchman / Burkino Fasoan is smarter than the brightest American — we poor, simple—minded, drooling morons somehow think that Arnold's vision of an America opposed to real Communists is somehow a more compelling story than that of millionaire pampered playboy Warren Beatty's misty—eyed view of them as a nation of daring, romantically doomed poet—philosophers in Reds. Or Blues, I suppose we should say, now that some kid in the 2000 CBS election results graphics department decided to reverse the natural order of things and call the most conservative parts of the country red states.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Bill Whittle is the author of an intriguing volume, Silent America.

Hat tip: LGF

Thomas Lifson   1 07 05