Our Western calendar declared a Year One with Christ’s birth. Seven centuries later, Muslims began their calendar with the Hijra, as the early Faithful trekked toward Medina. Thus this year is both 2009 and 1430. Ten-plus centuries further and our Founders’ successors, the Framers of the Constitution, submitted it to the Continental Congress for distribution to the states’ ratifying conventions, noting that year of 1787 was “of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth” year – in the final sentence of the original Constitution’s final article. Thus another ‘year’ designation, for American fans of the Constitution’s seminal meaning, is 238.

We abandoned that practice as a nation, though some democrats’ adoration of FDR may lead them to declare this as Year 76 in their ‘calendar’ – or for JFK’s honorific, it should become Year 48. But there’s Obama The One [OTO] in whose honor this twelve-month sojourn might be Year One! Just like the commies declared the year of the Russian Revolution to be their Year One.

For conservatism, there might soon be a second Year One, as a new generation is forming beneath the political landscape ground’s surface. Our first is either with Goldwater’s symbolic loss in ’64, or Reagan’s Revolution [RRevolution?] leading him to office in ’81.  Twenty-nine years later, the shake out and shake down and shaking all around in the GOP will leave us new faces and new voices, to promote and broadcast and brand and elucidate very classic, very established but not ‘old’ ideas, that still sustain us who are hard-core conservatives.

As we plan and plot and scheme and organize to challenge OTO’s legions of smug, certain, slimy acolytes, consider that we might be a bit more aware of how to behave a bit better. It would begin by noting that LEADERSHIP IS TEACHERSHIP and with that is an old rule of education: REPETITION IS THE SOUL OF PEDAGOGY.

A third rule: GOOD IDEAS NEED VIRAL TRANSMISSION, like the flu, put into the flue of the furnace/fireplace of political discourse. This last season saw many catchy and ‘sticky’ pithy quotes, but issued usually only once, by its originator, with nary a notice by others of our ilk. It’s as if the motto was: Ain’t gonna use if it ain’t my clever saying!

The list is long of ‘one time pad’ utterances by many clever conservatives, like it was a special ‘code’ that could be used only by its originator, and not another conservative using his or her airtime or op-ed space to repeat it to a different audience, at a different time, on a different channel, in a different publication. It contrasts with the 2000 campaign ‘unity’ of the left, including their media mavens, who damned near wore a rut into the body politic with the query, “Does Bush have sufficient gravitas to be president?”

Not said once, or even twice; not by one uttering mouthpiece, but by dozens, over a full week-plus. Thus, it penetrated the minds and thoughts of the general public. It crept into ‘straight’ news stories as well – albeit, because it fit their agenda, of course. The voter couldn’t find a tunnel deep enough to escape that mantra.

This concern comes from reading Stu Stevens’ book, “The Big Enchilada” where in he notes agreement with a fellow on the Bush campaign in 2000:
“We shared a mutual dislike for the way politics had evolved – the pretensions, the bitterness, the people who wanted to be something more than do something.”

Need we think of our latest selfish, mendacious, narcissistic ‘brother’ from Pennsylvania? This behavior trait is not limited to Specter. Many media conservatives just plain would not repeat – in ‘gravitas’ like insistence and persistence – a good line created by another conservative. Total narcissism run amok.

As we prepare to be serious in the coming Year One of Modern Conservatism, it is useful to ‘reverse-share’ all good ideas – that is, the originator doesn’t share it, but all the rest of us pick it up and run with it, in every venue, every day, for at least a week.  Like the move “Pass It Forward” – all good deeds, and good phrases, deserve passing along. This fits with another Stevens observation:

“And though campaigns are a billion-dollar-plus industry, they are probably, as a group, some of the most mismanaged, inefficient businesses in the world.”

As noted often by many advertising gurus in the commercial-business world, at least 70% of political advertising is wasted [maybe 90%]; but as a famous ad client said in the ‘50s, we can’t tell which fraction is the wasted part.  In ‘earned media’ where there’s no bill submitted to the candidate or party, we should be aggressively certain, at every opportunity, that any good statement, phrase, concept or joke gets DISTRIBUTED OVER AND OVER AND OVER!

Learning theory insists that learning begins after one’s heard the thought, word, number or concept at least THREE TIMES, and for some folks it’s even more frequent, for it to soak in.  And for the classroom that number is conservative – where the ‘students’ are not confined to the class and the teacher’s demand for attention, such in TV lounges of home or office, you have to hammer it home even more often. Thus the reason no ad – political or commercial – runs just once, or even three or four times.

Percolating and gestating below the surface of our political landscape is the New Modern Conservative Generation. The most visible, effective and personable of them are Ari Fleischer and Dana Perino. Others are emerging, from a bright 13 year old lionized at CPAC, to a 27 year old Congressman who knows well what Plays In Peoria.  And a Modern Hollywood Conservative whose challenge is like Stevens’ line about “going into a lion’s den wearing porkchop panties.”  Their emergence is more important than the rise of talk radio and Fox News Channel. For they are prepared to enter into the arena, ready to get bloodied and battered.

And their young minds hold ideas which are OUR ideas – not ‘new’ but due to be re-freshed, re-branded, re-stated, re-framed. For a good ideas must be made palatable, and understandable, especially Conservatism. For Conservatism Isn’t For Wimps. It’s tougher to sell than “let me give you something for free” – educating the public that there ain’t no free lunch is a far tougher chore.

But vital as OTO makes this his Year One of a New BO-tox order, as Barack Obama’s toxic asses threaten all that Reagan tried to build. The economy, the military [including his enchanting SEAL budget], cultural issues, the Court, et al – are coming under this FDR-Fourth Wave attack. [First, FDR; second, JFK/LBJ; third, Clinton; now OTO makes it fourth time around the socialist May Day maypole.]

This weekend’s death of Jack Kemp is another emblem of losses from conservatism’s older ranks, after last year’s Milton Friedman, Wm. F. Buckley and Tony Snow. Tony was on the cusp, straddling the older conservative voices and his proteges who are now coming aboard, such as Perino. By time the New Year arrives, the little shoots now gaining strength under the surface will be sprouting in the sunlight. This cadre of Modern Conservative voices and faces will take up the relay baton, from Disraeli to Madison to Lincoln to Hayek to Goldwater and Friedman, to Reagan, and now to show – one more time, sadly – that LIBERALISM AIN’T WHAT AMERICA IS ABOUT.

But the public must be reminded – EDUCATED – and done so OFTEN and repeatedly. We cannot afford to let a clever bon mot enter the political consciousness of the public only one time, in one place, by one voice, to a single small audience. Conservatives must practice that ‘gravitas’ strategery of the dems in ’00, and REPEAT and re-shape and re-state our basic corps ideas.  For we are the corps of conservatism, but conservatism is a tough sell – it is the protein of politics, compared to the carbs of liberals. Harder to digest, but burns longer and brighter in the body politic’s metabolism.

Conservatism is the natural ‘default’ view of Americans – proven time after time, in poll after poll, survey after survey. But they need to be reminded, often and with competence, and of course with repetition. And, again, with competence: we need leaders who are more concerned for the cause than with their own egos. A tough sell, for politics is filled with folks who want to be something, rather than do something, to effectively achieve a substantive national goal.

If you hear a great line, joke, anecdote, illustration by a conservative and hear it only once, from its originator, then you are seeing the petty, jealous conservative voices that are so-so-tired. When you hear a second, then a third, then a fourth, then ten and then twenty repetitions of the same notable, quote-worthy concept or phrase, then you know we are growing up.

And didn’t Goldwater tell us, in his Year One, to grow up

copyright 2009 Steve Finefrock

Finefrock is founder of Hollywood Forum, a speaker-bureau and panel-discussion vehicle to “Bring the Potomac to the Palisades” on issues that overlap politics and culture with the Hollywood film-TV influence on such national concerns. His scripts have addressed politics [including a TV series pilot/bible package about state political combat, called "A State of the Union"], hazardous materials [from twelve years in emergency management, including six years managing FEMA's Superfund curriculum for hazmat], terrorism, equestrian reincarnation, serial murderer killing journalists in the nation’s capitol, and fantasy about time-wasters. Finefrock is proprietor of PhoneBooth: The Smallest Space in Hollywood…

As TOTUS stepped to the podium for his 100-day press conference – a “Hallmark Moment” according to his staff and acolytes in the media – another hallmark of liberal thought aired on TCM, as we became acquainted with Robert Stroud’s humanity. Credits to “The Birdman of Alcatraz” opened with caring hands caressing ailing birds, tiny lives brought to health by Stroud’s compassionate concern.

Quite a choice thus offered – which event was fuller of hyper-BS?  The man dubbed by bloggers as TelePrompTer of the United States [TOTUS] or the birdman killer whose life was given the gentle treatment by Hollywood?

Robert Stroud was a ruthless, psychopathic killer whose work with avian cures for ailing birds made him a worldwide phenomenon, as he did his work in prison, serving a commuted death sentence. At film’s end, he is met on the San Francisco docks by a reporter, to be transferred from Alcatraz in his elderly years to a minimum-security facility. His Buddha-like inner calm is reflected by Burt Lancaster’s cover-up of the real Stroud, noting he’ll enjoy to be in a cell without a lock, and walk a half mile without turning a corner.

The adoring reporter, whose book became the movie [produced by Lancaster], laments that he’s meeting Stroud for the first time on a transfer action, rather than being released to his freedom. Film ending is the reporter voiceover that the poor ole man is 72, now in his 53rd year of imprisonment, refused annually to receive parole.

So sad. Too bad.

In this film the villain is the warden at Stroud’s first federal prison. We are taken on a long road of conversion to become Stroud’s supporters – long before that Hollywood talent found its zenith in “The Godfather” – and cry at his pending death in prison, as a ‘harmless’ old man who did so much good for birds.

Turner Classic Movies has screened this film often since I first saw it on their output, but not once since my initial TCM viewing has Robert Osbourne repeated his coda to the film’s end: Stroud to his last day before a parole board, even as an old man who’d done ‘so much good’ for birds, calculated revenge against those who done him wrong. Osbourne noted that one time that Stroud explicitly told the board how he would seek his enemies and gleefully kill them, once he was free to do so.

Thus the reason Hollywood deleted the reason this poor, kindly, Buddha of a prisoner never would get a parole. Osbourne has not issued that particular ‘correction’ of the film’s ‘history’ in any of the subsequent broadcasts. The reason can be surmised: he violated the Oath of Hollywood, by revealing that a nasty was really nasty, after he’d been lionized by a film by a major director [John Frankenheimer, who later directed “Seven Days in May” with Lancaster again his co-conspirator] and actor.

And its competition that Tuesday night of 100 weenie questions? We see a Perez Hilton imitation from the NY Times ask a softball “enchanting” question, the focus of future commentary beyond measure. Dennis Miller observed that a tougher question was asked by Hilton to a Miss USA pageant nominee than any tossed at Obama The One [OTO], or more suitably, TOTUS the One.

The Metrosexual Journalist, Jeff Zeleny, is the epitome of tough questions to TOTUS? Clearly Zeleny is unlearned about anything other than his choice of metrosexual wardrobe and thinner in his knowledge of world history than the flimsy metal of his wire-rimmed spectacles. Any serious journalist would have challenged TOTUS’ notion that “we don’t torture” because of a mis-used anecdote about Churchill’s prohibition of abuse toward German internees held in wartime England.

But journalists ain’t known for what they actually know – you can put all their knowledge of serious events and issues in a caraway seed and still have sufficient room for a Hollywood agent’s heart. If Churchill’s intelligence chiefs found among those internees someone in Hitler’s high command, in the Wehrmacht, the SS or SA, you can bet he’d have gone very, very hard on that ‘internee’ in British custody. After all, Winnie allowed Coventry to be bombed without warning them he knew it was pending, to protect the “Ultra” secret.

How many Perez Hilton Journalists like Zeleny even know what the Ultra secret was? Or that Churchill said, in time of war the truth is so precious that it must be protected by a bodyguard of lies? Doubtless if TOTUS and his acolytes in Congress were working the political precincts in post-war England, they’d be seeking war-crime trials against Churchill and his high-command. After all, Winnie was defeated even as Berlin’s smoldering rubble was still smoking, thus very vulnerable to his enemies’ taking the government after the peace had been won by his leadership.

Bob Beckel declared, “Elvis is dead, and Beaver has grown up” in a quaint line branding the GOP as stuck in the 50s, which will find much circulation. The lie is that, it is this collection of cronies in TOTUS’ crowd, who are the naïve and ignorant ones. None stood tall and brave against communism, but now brand Sean Hannity a coward regarding waterboarding [Lawrence O’Donnell – transcript on the web, on MSNBC with Keith Olbermann]. These are the folks who declared they were patriots while causing America grief, and now attach patriotism to taxes!

“What has the arrogant, unilateral foreign policy of the last president achieved?” declared Geraldo on Fox that same night! Not a single thought to TOTUS’ arrogance, or Gibbs’ grinning contempt for those who challenge TOTUS policies. When TOTUS’ failure due to his snuggling up to our enemies and so-called allies, whose half-hearted gestures will amount to squat, we shall see what Geraldo has to say about what has been achieved by the multi-lateralist TOTUS.

That is, if Geraldo were an honorable man – but he won’t admit fault, and won’t be one-tenth as hateful a decade from now as he is toward Bush a mere four months after the change of POTUS to TOTUS.

CNN’s grade from their polling was a mere B-minus, with blacks overwhelmingly voting A+, and whites generally casting a solid C. Hmmm, maybe Janeane Garofalo will add to her mouthing ‘racism’ for such a poor grade by whites, but not a word about ‘black pride’ yielding over 70% blacks voting highly toward TOTUS.

That night, Leno asked Chris Matthews to give TOTUS a grade, as his tingly-leg tried to make it a ‘pass-fair’ judgment. “What kind of lame ass school is this?” blurted Leno, shaming the tingly-enchanter into giving an actual grade to his leggy hero. “Nobody wants to go back to Bush” was Matthews’ applause line, his only conclusion – as if even Bush wants us to go back to him.

As Dennis Miller noted, TOTUS can’t have a press conference without an apology. Not about democrats’ insanity and spending mania, but for America, about America, against America – giving our enemies aid and comfort and solace and empowerment: “Even their own president says that nation is abhorrent, so it must be true.”

All in all, it was One Enchanting Evening, as the Perez Hilton press corps became a TOTUS-loving corpse of quiet acceptance of his apologies and long-winded utterances. Ed Koch had a good reply for Bush to borrow: beaten with help of some his supposedly most devoted NYC Jewish supporters, Da Mayor was asked by one of those turncoats, Oh Mr. Mayor, it’s so, so bad now, we’re so sorry we didn’t support you, won’t you please come back and get things back like they were before.

Koch calmly replied, “Madam, the people have spoken, and now the people must be punished.”

Can we take TOTUS’ punishment of the nation’s economy [see the coming stagflation, Geraldo?], downsizing of the military [how enchanted will TOTUS be with SEAL funding, and the other service functions?], zigzagging like he’s Just Another Politician [let the ‘JAP’ jokes thus commence] and the rest which will leave us wishing we had Bush-Cheney back?

Indeed, by this date next year, it’s going to be a VERY INTERESTING SITUATION. A target-rich environment for ridicule and retribution. We only need good leadership – Ari Fleischer and Dana Perino, are you ready? – to exploit these rising weaknesses. We only need the skill to make this target-rich environment into a victory battleground.

It’s the return of the LBJ axis of weasels, as LBJ named his women with the moniker ‘Byrd’ – wife, daughters, others – we will see the cover-up of mistakes and truth by TOTUS akin to that of the Stroud, as TOTUS will become the democrats’ current Byrd Man. As Osbourne never again revealed that Lancaster’s hero was no hero at all, so the media’s Perez Hilton orientation will labor to keep us from seeing that Obama is a Byrdman of the DNC.

Now, though, we have alternate media – and a new generation who grasps those media outlets. It will be a far different world in 2010. We hopefully will get rid of John McCain, and also his silly daughter [Meghan Byrd?] along with other lightweights.

Right now, the lame-ass school of pass-fail is the best we can hope for. Soon, the nation will yearn for the old-fashioned grading system. No, Beckel, Beaver isn’t dead – he just has to learn how better to market his old fashioned rock-and-roll conservatism. As your crowd dithered in fighting communism, and have replicated the dissing in the current fight, you will also find the LBJ Byrd years – when Senator Robert Byrd was a segregationist, now the light of the democrats’ eyes as the champion of porkulus spending – being repeated now will eventually bring down the Byrd Men of D.C.

Beaver or Byrd? Give it twelve months, and the answer will be so, so much clearer.

copyright 2009 Steve Finefrock

Finefrock is founder of Hollywood Forum, a speaker-bureau and panel-discussion vehicle to “Bring the Potomac to the Palisades” on issues that overlap politics and culture with the Hollywood film-TV influence on such national concerns. His scripts have addressed politics [including a TV series pilot/bible package about state political combat, called "A State of the Union"], hazardous materials [from twelve years in emergency management, including six years managing FEMA's Superfund curriculum for hazmat], terrorism, equestrian reincarnation, serial murderer killing journalists in the nation’s capitol, and fantasy about time-wasters. Finefrock is proprietor of PhoneBooth: The Smallest Space in Hollywood…

As Reagan campaigned for re-election, Leon Uris’ novelist pen gave us ‘The Haj” – a gift telling of Arab viciousness against Jews, Israel and their own brethren.  In its ‘Prelude’ set in 1922, we meet Ibrahim accepting his dying father’s symbolic jeweled dagger, a sign he must fight to become muktar: his village’s unchallenged leader. “They know the meaning of the dagger and the courage of the man who can drive it to the hilt,” notes the fading muktar.  As predicted, Ibrahim must challenge clan conspiracy after his father’s death, with a bold display of his courage and determination. Opponents convert to kissing his hand, declaring their loyalty.

“Ibrahim al Soukori was in his mid twenties and Muktar of Tabah, and he knew the power of the dagger in Arab life” concludes the introductory page, a quarter-century ago.  It holds insights useful today, including for Barack Hussein Obama, who seems to understand nothing of the world that faces us.

Uris knew well who is before us.

Ibrahim achieves one Muslim pillar, of a pilgrimage – a hajj – to Mecca, returning to be thus enriched with the honorific title of Haj, including that word above his home’s doorway.  The Haj has many sons, one being young Ishmael, who benefits from his mother’s manipulations – in a searing bit of family drama, she gets revenge for a young second wife displacing her authority, helping Ishmael find instruction to count and read. Thus he can carefully sniff out and document his much older brother’s conspiracy with an uncle to deprive Ibrahim of rents due from local peasants.

Ishmael blackmails his brother with this information, noting his latest tutorial: “So before I was nine I had learned the basic canon of Arab life. It was me against my brother; me and my brother against our father; my family against my cousins and the clan; the clan against the tribe; and the tribe against the word. And all of us against the infidel.” [ital. added]

And that’s us, dear reader – and dear, beloved President.

Older brother Jamil is imprisoned by an evil Farid Zyyad, who has clever ways of torturing his doomed victims. One treatment: “The victim was tied on a table and covered with a wet cloth. He was then pressed by a hot iron from foot to chest. By controlling the temperature of the iron, they could ensure that the resulting burns and infections increased only slightly with each pressing.”

For more persistent young rebels, Zyyad invokes his favorite technique: “They were simply wrapped each in heavy blanket, tied up, and laid out in the midday sun. When one passed out from heat prostration, he would be revived long enough to gain sufficient strength to be wrapped up once more.” Jamil got all this and more, losing all his teeth before the final insult, before return of his corpse to his troublesome father, Haj Ibrahim.

“Jamil was placed into a large burlap bag, six cats were thrown in with him, and the bag was sewn shut. When Farid Zyyad beat on the bag with a stick, the cats went berserk. He beat and beat until Jamil’s screams were no longer heard. The cats had eventually clawed through to the bone. Face, eyes, sexual parts had been ripped away. All that was left was a blood-soaked mass of flesh so torn it was unrecognizable.”

Thus the Haj finds his troublesome, nasty son is now a martyr, through the manipulations of Zyyad. Returning from a conference convened supposedly to achieve some peace with Israel, Haj Ibrahim is spent, for all his ‘brothers’ were merely spinning tales, wasting time, making the United Nations and nations of civility believe there was hope for Israel. Not to be. And an ally at the conference, Charles Maan, a Christian Arab targeted by Zyyad, is kidnapped, his body found near Ramallah [the HQ in later years of the PLO, sited inside the ‘Arab triangle’ north of Jerusalem].

“The assassins had shoved a three-inch pipe far up his rectum, placed several small diseased rats into the pipe, and forced them up into Maan’s intestines. His legs were tightly bound so the rats could not be disgorged.”  This comes near the novel’s end, banishing hope for peace and tranquility among a society with centuries of brutality as their everyday serving.

And you’ll note that none of these techniques will ever be portrayed on Western television, or the front pages of the NY Times, or Washington Post, or LA Times. Such brutality is somewhat nastier than waterboarding!

Imagine a clever TV ad, perhaps a video for viral distribution on the web, showing two newscasts: one on the left of how vile and brutal are we Americans, with waterboarding and making prisoners stack up naked, and standing hooded with arms outstretched. As these pictures flash by, the other frame on the right is – BLANK. For the news media blacks out the portrayal of the True Torture of our enemies.

In the quarter-century since Uris’ insights, we’ve engaged an enemy and the left thinks it is us. They believe we are the enemy of humanity. Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, Robert Gibbs, Eugene Robinson, Maureen Dowd, Christopher Durang, Joan Walsh, Jon Stewart, Lawrence O’Donnell and all the other Usual Suspects believe we are the evil ones.  Their standard denotes ignorance of a great one-liner by the King of One-liners, Henny Youngman:

Someone asked me, How’s your wife? I replied, COMPARED TO WHAT!

How’s your torture, America? Compared to Zyyad!  A fictional character, but emblematic of that which is standard fare in the fair of evil that confronts us. Rats up your ass? Yeah, how about that Rachel! Acid in the eyes, Chris?

One true-crime technique used by Saddam Hussein was to torture suspected traitors’ children, with the kids’ suffering out of sight in another cell, but within hearing of the parents, subjected to their beloved offsprings’ screams and sobbing. Soon, the parents broke and gave up whatever secrets sought by Hussein ibn Zyyad.  [For the legions of unlearned about this subject, who nevertheless have greatly expanded emotional opinions, the word ‘ibn’ means “son of” in Arabic. See, you learned something, Olbermann – or, did you really?]

“The Haj” clearly has never been read by Obama, or Hillary, or Billy, or the rest of the Robert Gibbs’ clan of ignoramuses pretending to be adults. As they hold America up to a standard of perfection-only, before we can be judged as ‘good’ they forget the Henny Youngman Rule: COMPARED TO WHAT?

When the media can portray their ‘torture’ as readily, regularly and eagerly on screen – often, daily, in saturation – in on-screen representations to America, with the same saturation as given the naked prisoners, hooded ‘victim’ standing with arms outstretched, and waterboarding, THEN we will see America learn what is before us.

Once, it was asserted that journalists printed ‘all the news that’s fit to print’ – but it prints only the news that fits their agenda. Showing how the Henny Youngman Rule works in the Real World of Hussein ibn Zyyad would rob the media of its mission to make America behave according to the wimpish believes of their Anointed One.

For the first picture to put on ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, PBS, and CNN screens’ right-side portrayal of torture would be the readily-available beheading of Richard Jewell. But, nope, won’t see it – even replaying the collapsing of the Twin Towers is verboten at these sources of ‘information’ that is fit, or not fit, to print or broadcast. Americans jumping to their death? Molten aluminum slurping out of the upper floors like shiny water? Too ghastly – but we can show waterboarding day in and day out.

Some journalist may ask Gibbs if anyone on El Presidente’s staff has read “The Haj” in its entirety. It is an insightful, if fictional, account of this world – which comports with the dozens of other non-fiction books and articles I’ve examined the past four years. Indeed, it’s likely my humble grasp of Islam’s beliefs and aspirations exceed those of most presidential staffers. How many, including Gibbs, know which Rightly-guided Caliph conquered Jerusalem? Which Caliph fled Mecca alongside the Prophet, the two hiding in a cave for three days until proceeding to Medina? Why did the Prophet flee in the middle of the night? Which Caliph was father to the famed ‘child bride’ and what role did she play in the Sunni-Shia split?

The ignorance of the left on these subjects is enormous, even ginormous, a googol of stupidity. [a googol is the numeral ‘1’ followed by one hundred zeros.] For those not inclined to venture deeply into the realms that I’ve explored, reading “The Haj” is a good primer. The excerpts above are but a taste of the history, and hysterics, which preceded the May 3rd announcement in 1948 of Israel’s independence. Its 566 pages are good for your soul, and good for understanding exactly why Barack Hussein Obama is an idiot.

And what fight lies ahead.  Find a copy – library, or used-books via Amazon, etc. – and start reading “The Haj” as your commitment, perhaps opening it on Israel’s birthday, to that first page, the Prelude. And if your well-heeled enough, and feeling brash, buy a second copy, and send it to the White House, 1600 Penn Ave, Washington, D.C.

For there often is more truth in fiction than in the truth – especially from this White House. Which should be beet-red, from blushing for its embarrassing shame of lying and cheating, stealing the truth, apologizing to such vile creatures as symbolized by so many, many Hussein bin Zyadds throughout the world.

Barack is more irritated by waterboarding under controlled conditions – as is John McCain – than rats up the ass, and cats in a bag, and ironing boarding a victim.

If asked, my suspicion is that a reincarnated Henny Youngman would prefer waterboarding to the ironing board.  Find who our enemies are, what true ‘torture’ is by making your gifting this coming birthday of Israel the novel, “The Haj” – maybe send a copy to John McCain and Rachel Maddow. They need to meet people who know how to drive a dagger to the hilt. Without mercy. And are clever enough to use cats, rats and perhaps even bats on their chosen enemies. Which are often their own kith and kin – never mind Jews and Americans.

And fear not the waterboarding which so animates their self-righteous outrage. For you must remember, Rachel and Keith and Chris: WE ARE THE INFIDEL.

Which will it be, Cats or Rats?

copyright 2009 Steve Finefrock

Finefrock is founder of Hollywood Forum, a speaker-bureau and panel-discussion vehicle to “Bring the Potomac to the Palisades” on issues that overlap politics and culture with the Hollywood film-TV influence on such national concerns. His scripts have addressed politics [including a TV series pilot/bible package about state political combat, called "A State of the Union"], hazardous materials [from twelve years in emergency management, including six years managing FEMA's Superfund curriculum for hazmat], terrorism, equestrian reincarnation, serial murderer killing journalists in the nation’s capitol, and fantasy about time-wasters. Finefrock is proprietor of PhoneBooth: The Smallest Space in Hollywood…

Six weeks after one SEAL mission that commandeered a cargo ship just off Iranian waters, “on a Saturday afternoon, the second SEAL in charge of the group that had boarded the vessel sat and nursed his beer in a nondescript bar in San Diego. The platoon commander finished mowing his lawn. Later, he played soccer with his kids and cooked dinner on the barbecue for his wife. The platoon chief worked in his garage on his 1972 Vega. The petty officers studied for college degrees, practiced with their bands, worked out, or went surfing. If you saw any of them that night or the next morning, you wouldn’t know who they were or what they had done.”

Thus the preface in “Leadership Lessons of the Navy SEALS” by Jeff Cannon and LCDR Jon Cannon – one a writer and advertising vet, the other a vet of commando command. And thus, good translation of combat lessons into the business world. Lessons which Obama the One – OTO – likely has never allowed to pollute his Harvard mind. Much as Clinton didn’t want a uniform of ROTC to contaminate his intellectual skin – thus his manipulation of the college ROTC detachment’s commander.

Thanks to OTO’s loving legions, we see a spate of adoring treatments in the media of SEAL, Navy and general military subjects. Tears welled up watching Katy Couric’s CBS accolade, as with other pieces we’d rarely see so quickly produced and unquestioningly presented were this latest rescue part of Dubya’s menu.  The question being asked – How did OTO do? – is the wrong one, for the answer is simply and predictably, Sure Enuf He Done Good!

The Question To Ask: What kind of Navy, or SEAL capacity, or Air Force, or Army, or Marine capability will exist after four [or eight] years of OTO’s suzerainty? The military bequesthed by Dubya made that irrelevant question easy to answer with manic media mantras.  The military that would have been bequeathed by President Kerry or President Gore is scary to contemplate.

Questions for OTO to consider arise in this leadership manual’s headings, the lessons organized under chapters such as “Setting Goals” which include these specifics:  “Choose a Path or Take Your Chances” and “Get Specific When You Define a Problem” as well as “Define Mission Success” plus a particularly OTO-specific challenge, “Don’t Wait for the No-Risk Solution.”

Under “Organization – Create Structure or Fight Alone” comes these lessons: “Even a Circus Has a Ringmaster” plus “There Is No Team Unless Everyone Knows the Team Colors” and “If a Meeting Is Going Nowhere, Kill It.”  Now, OTO, what are your team colors? Who’s the ringmaster? Shall our European ‘brothers’ in the brotherhood of nations allow a ringmaster?

“Leadership – The Hardest Easy Thing” yields: “Forget the Village Concept – One Person Has to Be in Charge” as well as “Make a Goddam Decision” and “Get Comfortable with Chaos”! OTO loves these guides for his dominance of the DNC, the press corps, and his opponents in the GOP, For Europe? Hmmmm, maybe not so enthusiastic.  Then there’s “Tell Them When the Ship Is Sinking”! [Sooner than we’d thought]

“The Thundering Herd” includes: “Own Everything You Do” and “It’s Okay; You’re Supposed to Fight with Your Boss” – maybe SEAL commanders can get OTO to understand that particular wisdom in some future controversy, like when he cuts budgets for carrier fleets and SEAL teams. Oh, wait, only military leaders can challenge each other – OTO may never be challenged.

“Building a Thundering Herd” brings “Retain Your Best People or You’ll Pay through the Nose” and “Identify Your Lead Dogs, Feed Them Well, and Build a Pack around Them” and its follow-up doppelganger, “If You Can’t Give Them Fresh Meat, Give Them Reminders of What Fresh Meat Tastes Like” – lessons for nascent GOPsters, by the way! Add “If Sharks Stop Swimming Forward, They Stop Being Sharks” – the reason SEALS and other professionals [in every field] are constantly training when they have no mission on the operations board.

Ditto for our conservative movement – our Thundering Herd is a bit directionless right now. That will change – as we watch OTO learn what Real Men Do.  The title of that book’s preface: THE QUIET PROFESSIONALS! And it adds the precision of SEAL missions – just like action-movie fans.  Sally Merlin, my screenwriting teacher in Silver Spring, prepped for a class on hard-action films by visiting a video rental store, querying the males renting action films, as to why they were so attracted to kung-fu and similar genres. She cheerily announced her ‘discovery’ to the class of all men – no chicks came to this class, so much for crossover! – with resounding enthusiasm, that the reason was the PRECISION of  the hero’s actions.

Every male just shrugged: Yeah, of course, so what! ‘Twas not news to us.

And so the SEAL mission: just enough violence, the precise amount of explosive; “If they destroy anything but their target, everyone else knows and comes running. And then their mission is compromised” according to that preface.  It adds: “SEALs are the descendants of the underwater demolitions experts and Navy raiders who crept ashore to sever telephone cables and train lines in World War II, or swam into the shallows off Normandy and Okinawa to clear out mines and antilanding craft traps.”

Known as UDT for underwater demolition team – or just ‘the teams’ then and since – the UDT-1 was readied for assignment to assist the British in India, my father’s childhood home-base [giving him dual citizenship]. He was held back from UDT-1 deployment due to hospitalization, and by time UDT-2 was trained and ready for him to join, he’d signed up for naval carrier pilot training, and thereafter shot down Japs over the Pacific. And getting my dad to talk about his adventures in the teams or flying off the USS Boxer is like pulling teeth out of a tiger’s growling mouth. Such heroes just-don’t-talk-about-it.  Unlike politicians, and actors!

They just mow their lawn, fix the Vega, quaff a brewski.  The kind of men OTO knew not in his pre-Oval days, as a community organizer, or Harvard perfessor. His is the party filled with supporters who are the folks that have laughed at such men, ridiculed them in comedy routines, and lampooned them behind their backs. Clinton avoided even ROTC cadets, but at least engaged that college detachment commander – OTO has not even that ‘experience’ before becoming Commander in Chief.

At present, he’s gotten lucky – to quote the late Jerry Nachmann: “That’s One in a Row”! Maybe he’ll get a second military success, thanks to the “leftover” results of Dubya – where’s the OTO ranting that shifts this responsibility to the president who preceded him?

Those who’ve done this kind of work recognize each other instinctively – one ex-navy chief who’s now a producer-writer-director with two decades’ credits in Tinseltown, notes that he “can smell it” on someone who’s performed such classified assignments.  He has that olfactory capacity, having once acquired the scent from his own Cold War adventures along the fringes of the Iron Curtain.

Obama ain’t got the smell, nor the nose-buds for sensing the scent. In that San Diego bar or backyard barbecue, he’d have not a clue what they do, among those around him. Or even at a Rose Garden barbecue.

This is the man controlling the football in the Oval Office – who will complete his very first four-year job tour in his entire lifetime, if he makes it to the next inaugural. That little fact was noted during campaign time by Tony Blankley – whose ‘allies’ in The Cause did not pick up that notable notation and spread it around. Let’s note it widely now, in op-eds and on-camera commentary. OBAMA ain’t never gone four years in a single job, before moving on to the next one.

Yep, he resigned his U.S. Senate seat well before the four-year mark. He’s got no stomach for any job but commander in chief of Navy SEALs – a man with no sense o’ smell, and no smell on him. He’s earned well the awarding of Nachmann’s One-in-a-Row trophyt.

Doesn’t it make you feel all warm and tingly?

copyright 2009 Steve Finefrock

Finefrock is founder of Hollywood Forum, a speaker-bureau and panel-discussion vehicle to “Bring the Potomac to the Palisades” on issues that overlap politics and culture with the Hollywood film-TV influence on such national concerns. His scripts have addressed politics [including a TV series pilot/bible package about state political combat, called "A State of the Union"], hazardous materials [from twelve years in emergency management, including six years managing FEMA's Superfund curriculum for hazmat], terrorism, equestrian reincarnation, serial murderer killing journalists in the nation’s capitol, and fantasy about time-wasters. Finefrock is proprietor of PhoneBooth: The Smallest Space in Hollywood…

The first of the pod-people to emerge in the latest science-fiction thriller presenting itself in the capital city is Helen Thomas, the aged and addled onetime dean of reporters to the White House. While her ‘podcast’ is unlike earlier output – when she amazed all conservatives for her outlandish challenges to Bush – it is reassuring to the very conservatives who once blanched when she stood to be recognized.

This fictional Helen Thomas has asked the new El Presidente the most outrageous questions, now causing many journalists to boo her in unison – something they never did for her bizarre Bush bashing – due to such irritating challenges as the following unbelievable, unreal utterances:

“Mr. Presidente, are you keeping an enemies list? Confidential comments reported indicate there’s more Nixon and less Lincoln in your inner councils than you suggested in your campaign. Is this the new order you promised?”

“Mr. Obama, isn’t it presumptive to allow acolytes to brand your wife as Jackie O, version 2-point-oh? That’s reaching rather high now, isn’t it, to pretend you, or your wife, or your children, are remotely comparable to the Kennedy family?”

“Sir, aren’t you spending enormous sums on polling, even before the ninety day mark of your supposedly “new” type of leadership? Leadership, not polling, was your promise, and we see huge funds expended which might better go to helping the homeless or recovering veterans?”

“Will Afghanistan be your Stupidstan?”

“Just how can your defenders have attacked the Bush White House for irresponsible spending, and you trump that same debt by several times? Isn’t that hypocritical? Aren’t you just another politician, like so many others, as Carter promised he’d never lie, yet he did – and Bush-41 said read my lips, but he gave us new taxes?”

You can hear the hoots, eh? Journalists aghast at this poddish Helen being so brash to Obama The One – OTO – in a manner she aimed at Bush . Some guess she will soon be shunned by fellow reporters. All journalists of all stripes – save for the Washington Times and the Examiner – feel shame at her misbegotten misbehavior. The lack of respect for the Presidency is causing discomfort, even nausea, among those who merely looked the other way when pre-pod Helen Thomas eviscerated Tony Snow and Dana Perino.

Among pod-journalist Helen Thomas’ other breaches of journalistic courtesy to a presidential setting:

“As you apologize for America being brazen and brash, when will you apologize for the DNC characters like James Carville saying such outrageous insults? And apologize for politics-as-usual, the Old Politics, of scheming to trash Rush Limbaugh with secret conversations? Where’s the transparency? Where’s the new way of doing things?”

“As to transparency, why didn’t you give Americans a week to read the online version of the bailout bill? You bashed Congress for such rush to judgment, to get elected. And also, why did you bash Senator McCain for saying the economy’s fundamentals were strong, then said so yourself only recently? How did the fundamentals get so much stronger once you won the election?”

You can imagine the other insults which pod-Helen might utter, if this tale were true. And how outraged the journalists around her would suddenly become in contrast to their silence and non-judgmentalness during Bush days.

Of course, we have our “Helen” in many voices. Talk-radio, et al, puts some uncomfortable questions into the national debate about OTO the Pope. It would be fun if some potion could be put into Helen Thomas’ drinking water, to make her into a Rush-pod-Helen, and see how quickly the press corps would become belatedly embarrassed, and openly so, for her bizarre insulting remarks.

Next time Maddow and Olberman and Matthews and Carville and Begala whine about some outrageous talk-radio commentary, just let your mind imagine Helen Thomas, pre-pod era, asking similar questions to Snow or Perino.  Her voice, like the Wicked Witch of the East, would be so branded if she were in pod-journalist mode. Maybe a voice-converter needs to be attached to the audio circuit of Rush and Sean and Glenn and Laura, et al – a ‘Star Trek’ universal translator, to convert their voices to the Wicked Pod Journalist.

Then see if the lefty commentariat are offended. Put our questions into her voice, and bring the pod-Helen to life.

copyright 2009 Steve Finefrock

Finefrock is founder of Hollywood Forum, a speaker-bureau and panel-discussion vehicle to “Bring the Potomac to the Palisades” on issues that overlap politics and culture with the Hollywood film-TV influence on such national concerns. His scripts have addressed politics [including a TV series pilot/bible package about state political combat, called "A State of the Union"], hazardous materials [from twelve years in emergency management, including six years managing FEMA's Superfund curriculum for hazmat], terrorism, equestrian reincarnation, serial murderer killing journalists in the nation’s capitol, and fantasy about time-wasters. Finefrock is proprietor of PhoneBooth: The Smallest Space in Hollywood…

If you overhear this conversation – “Those hateful superpatriots, they are so jingoistic about the flag and the salute and the pledge and all that stuff” – the odds are, You’re hearing standard fare from the loose lips of liberals.

If you hear this conversation – “America is a force for peace and decency in the world” – the odds are, You’re hearing genuine voice of conservatives.

If you see flags and bunting in red-white-blue on a stage, odds are, It’s a republican event – or, if a democrat event, odds are the r-w-b was put there as a strategic decision to win over the middle-American vote. Odds are that on a republican stage, it’s just the way things are done for and by any ordinary, i.e. loyal American.

The word patriotic? Odds are, It’s used by conservatives with tears in their eyes; for liberals, it’s a concept of loyalty not to nation, but to party and beliefs in free-lunch legislation. Odds are, The words “traitor” and “disloyal” and “treasonous” are used by conservatives regarding their nation, and odds are also that those words are used by liberals towards ‘disloyal’ red-dogs such as Zell Miller [last decade] and Joe Lieberman [currently, and for a while yet to be] and targets of upcoming targeted TV ads.

Odds are that ‘patriotic’ is used toward faithfulness in nation and creed; odds are also that ‘patriotic’ is for dems’ belief in taxes, regulation, litigation and aggravation. To support our troops is favored by both sides: odds are, by conservatives it’s because they believe in our troops inherent mission and intrinsic decency. Odds are, by liberals that expression is to garner favor among the ‘swing voter’ who abandons the left at the ballot box in every election where the perception was otherwise.

Odds are, When a conservative votes for taxes or regulations, it’s a vote cast with a heavy heart and sad face, borne of desperation. Such as when liberals lured Bush-41 into the Andrews AFB ‘summit’ tax hike, after he’d campaigned to ‘read my lips, no new taxes’ – followed by Carville and Begala characterizing him as untrustworthy because he’d not kept a promise. Odds are, When a Begala-Carville team get into office, raising taxes will be undertaken with gleeful face and a happy heart.

Odds are, When liberals spread freely the free-lunch that comes from taxes, it’s done with joyous satisfaction, whereas the conservative does it because of the temptation of garnering votes. Odds are, a conservative agreeing to taxes and regulations is a failure of belief, tantamount to committing a sin; a liberal so acting is fulfilling a catechism of belief and advocacy.

Odds are, laughter at patriotism and religion comes from the mouths of liberals, who embrace Michael Moore and Al Franken and George Clooney. Odds are, rage at such insults is the expression of conservatives. Odds are, flag pins and draped flags on home walls and fluttering from front-yard flagpoles are the homes of conservatives. Odds are, liberals will scoff at such pretentious displays, while also insisting their yellow-ribbon and other ribbon displays of dedication to tribal causes must be respected as genuine concern.

Odds are, terms like “bible thumper” and “Jesus freak” and “red-neck” and “jingoist” and “super-patriot” as well as “breeder” are uttered freely and without hesitation by liberals.  Odds are, possession of guns by someone who publicly disdains the Second Amendment is the hypocrisy – ah, the ‘h’ word used – typical of liberals.

Odds are, “investment” by a liberal is a disguise of tax-hikes and spending hikes as far as the eye can see. Odds are, a conservative sees an investment as yielding improved efficiency and greater wealth for a society, or corporation, or small business. Odds are, tax cuts are disdained by liberals, who feel all taxes are a ‘right’ of the government; odds are, tax cuts are enthusiastically embraced by conservatives’ belief that the money belongs to the person who earned it in the first place.

 Odds are, when the media is tolerant of ‘nuance’ in policy expression and implementation, it’s a nuanced utterance of a liberal. Odds are, when Timmy Geithner proclaims there should be no reward for failure, he doesn’t mean the Great Society and its progeny.

Odds are, reassurances that the economy’s fundamentals are solid will be treated with great respect if it comes from Obama’s team; from McCain? You make the call.

Odds are, tears shed at the American flag passing are conservative tears; laughter among the same crowd will be from liberal mouths. Tears shed for an emotive moment of a child is one arena shared by red and blue shirts.

Not much is shared, in the political arena, between the red shirts and the blue shirts. Some similar rhetoric, and the bunting of course – but again, odds are the liberal bunting and rhetoric is cross-dressing. The most important weapon in our arsenal as conservatives is a PGM [precision guided munitions] designed to destroy the wardrobe department of the liberal pretension of love of country.  First it was JFK who strategized to get to ‘the right of Nixon’ on defense, then Carter likewise pretended to care for traditional values, next Clinton, and most recently Obama.

Odds are, if they are stripped of their cloak of Americanism, they LOSE. Odds are, the GOP and conservatives are realizing that today, finally, belatedly. And the New Modern Conservative Movement is coming into its own, bearing the torch of a new generation, tested by prosperity, challenged by hostility to classic values, and ready to take the leadership.

Odds are, those new leaders will include Dana Perino, Ari Fleischer, Aaron Schock working with intellectual heft of Jonah Goldberg and John Podhoretz. Other lights are brightening. Including one Hollywood conservative readying for a David-Goliath fight of notable proportions.

The Odds Are: 2010 is going to be a very interesting year. That PGM factory is gearing up, if a bit behind the curve, and new leaders with new variations on an old, reliable theme – conservatism – will re-energize our base, then educate the swing voters, to see thru the cross-dressing of Ali Obama’s Forty Thieves.

Leadership is teachership – some interesting pedagogues are emerging. Repetition is the soul of pedagogy, we must remember – and keep re-igniting the fires, for the odds are, if we don’t, then WHO WILL?

The French? Al Gore? The United Nations? Rahm Emmanuel? Hillary? Oprah? Clooney? Michael Moore? Whoopi? Barbra? Maddow? Oberman? Matthews? Moyers? ABC? CBS? NBC? MSNBC? PBS? NPR?

Remember, and don’t forget, what the ODDS ARE….. they are the U.S. of A., at risk as any Vegas bet on long odds. Those Odds Are U.S.A.

copyright 2009 Steve Finefrock

Finefrock is founder of Hollywood Forum, a speaker-bureau and panel-discussion vehicle to “Bring the Potomac to the Palisades” on issues that overlap politics and culture with the Hollywood film-TV influence on such national concerns. His scripts have addressed politics [including a TV series pilot/bible package about state political combat, called "A State of the Union"], hazardous materials [from twelve years in emergency management, including six years managing FEMA's Superfund curriculum for hazmat], terrorism, equestrian reincarnation, serial murderer killing journalists in the nation’s capitol, and fantasy about time-wasters. Finefrock is proprietor of PhoneBooth: The Smallest Space in Hollywood…

Charlton Heston must be weeping in his grave, as he spins in rage, and disappointment. That is, if certain representations made to me by his onetime publicist are true. A sad announcement is the capstone of that lingering denouement of a ‘relationship’ with a colorful HWD player.

It began with Dennis Prager interviewing an author of a summer 2001 Psychology Today article on the ‘frustration’ of being surrounded by endless, tempting beauty! Imagine having so much eye-candy serving one’s I-candy ego, that you just can’t settle on which woman to seek and acquire! The article was based on serious research by esteemed psychology professors, and ‘authored’ by a man whose HWD life epitomized that research.

A query letter led to a phone call from the publicist and soon I became acquainted with Michael Levine, a onetime facilitator of fame to Charlton Heston, whom he often told me had been both a client and a continuing friend. Heston was a periodic ‘attaboy’ communicator with my nascent effort to find a Moses for a Movement of HWD conservatives. I never met him, or talked with him, but received a few handwritten notes of encouragement, one noting his distraction with NRA responsibilities, thus he could not take an active role in my dream of coalescing conservative creatives.

Who can argue with that distraction! Not long after 9-11, two late-night phone calls rousted me at home on consecutive nights, one from longtime rightwinger Jay Bernstein, the Manager to the Stars in the 70s, whose career was on the wane well before that week. The ‘doppelganger’ phone call was eerily like that from Jay: lamenting the insanity of HWD, even as the smoke was clearing, that insisted the Bush team were vile and America was grossly flawed.

Both chats were lengthy, and mostly one-sided: I should have sent a therapy bill for listening to each caller ranting about the lefty hate by HWD for America, despite the obvious nationwide change in the zeitgeist. Both observed that it was wee little me who was the only person each could entrust with these feelings. Jay’s career was essentially kaput, but he hoped for a future turnaround. The doppelganger was Levine, whose PR career was still blossoming as a colorful, creative HWD publicist – who’d once been a protégé of Bernstein.

Each found only one person in thick rolodex pages who would listen and agree to a conservative view of national security realizations not grasped by the rest of the entertainment world each served. And which could hurt them if such views were known. At the time, I rented a single furnished room with three-quarter bath on the fringe of Koreatown: it was wee little me which the once-powerful and currently powerful figure sought in late-night phone chats, to unload such anxieties, and disdain the town where they sought fame and fortune.

Some years passed, Heston’s public persona retreated shortly after Michael Moore made mincemeat out of Levine’s ‘friend’ in a documentary that achieved new lows in Moore’s boorish film methods. Levine showed moxie for certain defense issues, as a partial conservative, touting his friendship with Heston and his admiration for Reagan. Not much more could be expected for my ‘movement’ to collect conservatives into a ‘club’ in HWD, for Levine had to traipse among the leftish crowd that was his bread and butter.

Notable among the Levines of the PR world is their reluctance to reveal current clients: their charges want the world to believe all that media fascination with their lives and careers Just Happens! In fact, rarely does any such ‘branding’ Just Happen – it’s the erstwhile effort of many methods, relentlessly sought by a professional PR champion to achieve public-appearance bookings and put together successful media events, for author or actor or other would-be public person.

Thus, Levine never told of any current clients, save for Dick Morris – one sleazy character who’s on the PNG list of all conservative consultants of any merit. PNG is ‘persona non grata’ - a list common to the guard kiosks of all the HWD studios, informing security staffs of which disdained or disgraced persons may not be allowed on the lot under any circumstance. So, knowing a Levine client of current paying status was not to be sought, save for the questionable Morris.

A sidebar: a brief e-mail communication was achieved by me with Morris some years ago, comprising six or so exchanges, one noting to him his PNG status with his onetime fellows on the right. He replied that he hoped to one day earn re-entry into that club. WRONGO, was my retort, and it still stands. Thus, the one current public client of Levine’s to my knowledge.

Until this week.

The shock of the month was reading Levine’s bragging announcement that his firm has signed its newest client: MICHAEL MOORE. A noteworthy preface is that Levine has often said to me that he’s eternally irritated by folks who don’t show gratitude and loyalty. Apparently the theme doesn’t apply to a dead victim of Alzheimer’s, whose character was assaulted by Moore’s ‘interview’ of Heston shortly before the actor’s retreat from public view.

A public announcement, of signing a new, current client of reprehensible irresponsibility – Michael Moore! The shock and awesome disappointment generated scathing e-mail and phone alerts to the conservatives in my own rolodex who’d often wondered why I was an advocate of Levine – oh, he’s OK, I often insisted.

WRONGO!

One common acquaintance with Levine [introduced by me four years ago] replied to my APB, that I just don’t understand the full story and should learn all the ‘facts’ before going on a tirade; and another tells me that Moore is providing “Levine a bailout” – without any specifics.

Who knows. Levine hasn’t communicated with me in over eighteen months, apparently figuring I’m ‘dead’ in professional terms. That mistake has been made by others, including some erstwhile ‘fellows’ on the right with egos almost as gargantuan as Levine’s. Someday I will relish giving my own Mark Twain refrain on that issue – but I digress.

Recently, one of those assuming that this particular ‘Twain’ is dead published another writer’s article on John Wayne’s life’s work, ending with his last character’s motto:

I won’t be wronged. I won’t be insulted. I won’t be laid a-hand on. I don’t do these things to other people, and I require the same from them.

Of course, Wayne’s John Book brandished a sidearm and quick Winchester to back up his thematic statement, and died heroically at the end of that last masterpiece. But the theme struck a resonant chord when I first heard it, and forever since, as it serves as the best statement of the Good American, the Decent Human, that ever was said. Better than the Golden Rule: for it asserts that one is entitled to require the same of others as one practices it himself.

The Social Contract – stated many times in history by clever philosophers and leaders. Often touted, rarely applied. Many utter such thoughts, but few abide by them. Many display in their actions the philosophy of Oscar Wilde, who said he believed in duty, responsibility and loyalty – FOR THE OTHER PERSON!

Clearly there is a PNG list in several desk drawers, with my name upon them; Levine has often urged courage and speaking truth-to-power, and such words must have put me on his PNG listing, especially after a personal e-mail on the Moore matter, followed a phone call to his assistant to assure it had been noted. Ditto with others, who claim they believe such a motto, so long as it is not a truth which discomforts the Levine & Co. cabal. As John Book was ambushed by a petty bartender at the coda of “The Shootist” so might be a personal fate for little ole me, once in Koreatown, listening to Levine’s lamentations and Bernstein’s bellowing.

And now in Okie-Stan, watching the Movement take root, finding its Moses, as Heston’s mind faded and his body failed and now his good ‘friend’ has taken an embrace of Michael Moore as his newest professional best-friend.

The person most the Moses of the now burgeoning movement has arisen, and his assistant once e-mailed me, Why can’t everyone just get along? Hmmm, maybe Book had it right, as did Moses, and everyone in between who tried to make something happen. Quoting Barry Fitzgerald in another Wayne classic, “The Quiet Man” – “It’s positively Homeric.”

Or Hestonic…..

Looks like Michael Moore won this round. My question is, how many bagsful of thirty pieces of silver are being proffered as Levine’s bailout? Can Levine bring himself to visit Heston’s grave? How does his ‘longtime friend’ Dennis Prager view this association with Heston’s basher?

Ironically, on Heston’s death, CNN’s production assistant for Campbell Brown attempted to book me to speak at their studio, regarding the HWD conservative movement’s loss at Heston’s passing. Unable to appear, I promptly suggested a substitute representative of Heston’s role as a HWD conservative: Michael Levine. The timing failed, so they booked some lesser figure. But my First Thought was for someone I believed to be faithful to the Heston friendship.

Which brings another conservative adage, from our godmother, Clare Booth Luce:

NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED.

copyright 2009 Steve Finefrock

Finefrock is founder of Hollywood Forum, a speaker-bureau and panel-discussion vehicle to “Bring the Potomac to the Palisades” on issues that overlap politics and culture with the Hollywood film-TV influence on such national concerns. His scripts have addressed politics [including a TV series pilot/bible package about state political combat, called "A State of the Union"], hazardous materials [from twelve years in emergency management, including six years managing FEMA's Superfund curriculum for hazmat], terrorism, equestrian reincarnation, serial murderer killing journalists in the nation’s capitol, and fantasy about time-wasters. Finefrock is proprietor of PhoneBooth: The Smallest Space in Hollywood…

Not everyone knew Ron Silver was sick. The death catches one by surprise, but not the accolades. From silly to sentimental, they range from Ben Stiller’s shallow memory of underage alcohol offering by Ron, to Lionel Chetwynd’s memorable phrase, noting that Silver was one of the few on the left who realized “the horrors of World War II were again alive and well in other garments.”

Add Roger ‘L’ Simon’s note that courage was Silver’s most important product, that Silver Lining the rare quality that makes the world of modernity possible. At least one quality of many, but a vital, nay catalytical ingredient.

Silver saw those garments as facades, Potemkin pretensions, wrapping evil in normalcy. Most of his Hollywood peers were, and are, blind to a fault. His essay fifteen months ago on “Fear” gives a clever treatment to what is serious fear, and what is irrational. Michael Barone’s accolade noted: “And I felt instinctively that he understood things—understood politics and, more important, understood public policy and the importance of standing up for civilization…”

Silver’s 2007 essay ended with these notable words:

Be reasonably afraid. Be very reasonably afraid. And act accordingly.

He may have ‘gotten’ the meaning in the classic Western on these moralities, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence” and the meaning when Dirty Harry noted to a prissy political police commander, “Your gun’s out of its holster, Briggs – First time?” in another classic hated by Liberals, “Magnum Force.” Steven Bochco once insisted that “everything on TV is a cop show” and indeed that theme does often erupt in the most unusual places.

Silver was Dirty Harry on the podium at the 2004 GOP convention, and hated since as much as Eastwood was in the 70s for his trilogy about law and order versus burrocratic boneheads. The eye-opener of 9-11 made a lot of Briggs into Callahans. At least on national security. For many ‘9-11 democrats’ did not give up their socialist dreams and taxspendtaxspend prattle. Including Silver.

But ya take what ya can get, then work from there. They get their gun out for the first time regarding 9-11, then maybe they will see that other prattle is also degeneracy. Would Silver’s Lining have come to understand these other conservative truths?

Only the Shadow knows. But we do know this – most of HWD can no more ‘get’ it about Briggs v. Callahan than can Ben Stiller write something more fitting that being aided and abetted by Silver, to get illegal liquor. Most of HWD is still undeveloped, eternal adolescents [‘not quite adults’ according to producer Jane Hall], willing to yield no more than a thanks for liquor offerings to a teenager. Could Stiller not grasp anything more valuable in Silver’s lining of his life, than some purloined vodka?

The Ben Stiller Kumbaya Kaucus can see no evil in the new garments. Evil in Dick Cheney? Oh, ya betcha, feller!  Evil in Michael Steele? Yep, fer shure!

Silver was a thin lining to a hopelessly hapless HWD. His passing is a loss, but one-thousandth the loss of three-legged conservatives this past twelve months, such as Milton Friedman, Tony Snow, Paul Harvey – and John Gordon, Otto Felix and Steve Leake. The last three: friends of my own loss, maybe not as close to me as Silver was to Chetwynd, et al, but loyal, three-legged conservatives eagerly awaiting the growth of the conservative ‘movement’ in HWD, but not here to see it blossoming in leaps and bounds. Two succumbed to cancer, a third to a yet-to-know reason for his sudden, startling early loss.

Upon my mother’s guest bath wall was always a poster, saying “Make new friends, keep the old; one is silver, the other is gold.” Ron Silver was late to the party, appreciated indeed for finally and belatedly seeing the ‘light’ of the costume department dressing evil in pleasing cloth. Friedman, Snow, Harvey, Gordon, Felix and Leake were along for the ride long before the twin towers went into smoky ruin.

Let us welcome all the Silver recruits, no matter their motivation. In a ‘big tent’ all should have a seat. But the front-row seats are for the three-legged, ‘golden’ conservatives who were with the cause from many years hence, before the towers smoked and Brooklyn coughed on its showering shrapnel.

Who have known all along that evil was alive and well in other garments – some of them tailored and fitted and kept in atmospheric closets by the Hollywood elite.  Silver-come-lately is welcome; the gold is for the old friends. Let us make new friends, and keep the old, and know where we find the gold.  As the Nike ad once oft-declared, to proud citation by Rush, You don’t win silver, you lose gold.

Let us round up all the gold nuggets and dust and a few mother lodes, collect them into a Movement, and welcome the silver adherents whenever we find them. But the Important Mission is to UNIFY OURSELVES. Then, make our own culture, our way, with our talent. Is there another Silver in the closet? Might he agree to join a true three-legged conservative film or TV project?

The proof of the pudding is in the tasting – any ‘silver’ ally will become golden should he/she push the three-legged conservative HWD movement into cohesive adherence to a committed mission to MAKE OUR OWN CULTURE.

Make new friends – indeed.
Keep the old – FER DAMNED SURE.

And remember, which is gold, and which is silver. You can damned sure bet the freakin’ liberals believe that way… and act that way. Let us learn from them, as Patton declared: “Rommel, you magnificent bastard, I READ YOUR BOOK.” Their book of rules gives no quarter. Nor should we. A Movement is well approaching a thousand eager participants, still a bit in the closet, but no longer needing doubt. Some are mere one-legged ‘Silver’ members, to be welcomed in the tent.

The question remains: Who sits on the front row in that tent?

copyright 2009 Steve Finefrock

Finefrock is founder of Hollywood Forum, a speaker-bureau and panel-discussion vehicle to “Bring the Potomac to the Palisades” on issues that overlap politics and culture with the Hollywood film-TV influence on such national concerns. His scripts have addressed politics [including a TV series pilot/bible package about state political combat, called "A State of the Union"], hazardous materials [from twelve years in emergency management, including six years managing FEMA's Superfund curriculum for hazmat], terrorism, equestrian reincarnation, serial murderer killing journalists in the nation’s capitol, and fantasy about time-wasters. Finefrock is proprietor of PhoneBooth: The Smallest Space in Hollywood…

“Garbo laughs” was the tagline for “Ninotchka” during WW2, a comedy with a theme lampooning the commie capitol of Russia. And, soon that nation would be our ally, to defeat fascism. Intervening years have shown a remarkable lack of similar confrontation of the threats that befall us. This is as it was for Hollywood, and the liberals generally, from “Ninotchka” to present day. The twilight struggle against communism was hindered by sunshine patriots and summer soldiers of the left, many scoffing at “Ninotchka” and its themes.

Some can see, some cannot, others will not – thus the old saw, None Are So Blind As Those Who Will Not See. And so today, there are floods of Ninotchkas, yet to arrive at beaming Paris, the City of Lights and have their eyes opened to the truth. In this glorious film, a Russian agent meets errant errand boys at the train station, noting how the latest news has been: “The last mass trials were a success: there will be fewer, but better Russians.”

Directed by Ernest Lubitsch, and co-written by a later famed director, Billy Wilder, it showed the truth seen by those recent immigrants who had seen totalitarian thought, and could laugh at it. Unlike commie-hugger Charles Chaplin – who lampooned only Hitler – Lubitschians saw the evil on the left, and laughed it into submission. They saw clearly the Ninotchka nostrums as insight. Soon, the film’s heroine meets Leon, a discounted count serving a Russian refugee; Leon charms Ninotchka, after corrupting the threesome she’s come to discipline. On meeting that trio, Leon cheerfully observes, “A Russian! I love Russians! Comrade, I’ve been fascinated by your five-year plan for the last fifteen years.”

Today’s Ninotchka is by the legion, as the threat has changed, but the silliness of the left has not. Some see, and some do not – and some lampoon those who do see. Such as Sarah Palin’s answer about Russia, as an Alaskan. You remember her symbolic statement: I can see Russia from my house.

Unfortunately, some women’s thoughts go the ‘female’ way, bypassing the intermediate logical steps to the conclusion which seems obvious to the speaker, but not to the listener. Had only Sarah added, “I lived, with Alaskans generally for three generations, beneath those B-52 bombers laden with megatonnage of nuclear death. Their target, Russia, was just across the water. We, I, all of us could see Russia from our front porch, or at least the clouds over Russia’s Siberian weather. Yes, I can see Russia from my house. I know Russia. I know evil when I see, for I saw it then. How about you, Mr. Reporter? Do you know evil when it’s your neighbor?”

Of course, in this soundbite world, much of that glorious utterance would be edited, and the “from my house” fragment would still have been the news. Palin is our darling, for most conservatives understood implicitly what her quick quip meant. She should have done a “Leno”: explain your context before delivering the punchline. She will learn much better in the coming years.

After Ninotchka returns to Russia, Leon enters a visa office, overhearing a Russian official responding to a phone query: “Hello! Comrade Kasabian? No, I am sorry. He hasn’t been with us for six months. He was called back to Russia and was investigated. You can get further details from his widow.”

Did liberals ‘get’ that line, then or now? Were there filmmakers of today’s younger generation who came from new realms of evil, we might see a Ninotchka with a different ethnic or ideological or religious spin. For the Lubitsch and Wilder generation knew, they saw, the evil they lampooned. They could see Russia from their front porch, side window, back door.

As Sarah Palin sees, understands, grasps. When she learns the ‘set up’ to such clever punchlines, the rhetoric will improve. She’ll have to absorb advice from Joseph Pulitzer:

“Put it to them briefly, so they will read it; clearly, so they will appreciate it; picturesquely, so they will remember it; and, above all, accurately, so they will be guided by its light.”

Her cheer and joy and energy will lighten the world when Sarah takes the podium at CPAC this week. She is the New Ninotchka, who lamented on finding love with Leon: “I’m so happy, I’m so happy! Nobody can be so happy without being punished.” Unlike the greenie scolds in the Gore dungeon, Sarah ‘gets’ it and knows that we need not build a nation with commissars who consume fuel in private jets, while admonishing everyone else to fly coach, or take the bus.

As one Latinate scholar has offered, as one slogan for our Sarah: “Saram nostram nolite tangere!!! ” Which means simply: Lay off our Sarah. Not that she needs a bodyguard of eyes and ears protecting her from journalistic excess. She has lived her own Chronicles of Sarah, akin to “Terminator” heroine Sarah Conner. Our Sarah knows what Conner had to learn the hard, arduous way: there is evil, and some see, others don’t, and far too many will not see.

Sarah Conner didn’t see anything from her silly-girl porch, until the protector taught her battle hardness. Our Sarah knows the terminator forces will not relent, will not stop, will not slow down, until we are all dead. She can see Ninotchka from her house, her home, her mind, her moral sense of ancient verities.

Our Sarah knows Ninotchka, Ninotchka was her neighbor, and she sees what Ninotchka eventually opened her eyes to see. Barack Obama, you’re no Ninotchka. Not now, not ever. Sarah saw more from her porch on a single day’s errands than the DNC will see in a generation. She has Ninotchka eyes. Obama’s crowd are more akin to the commissar played by Bela Lugosi near the film’s end, who sends her on another mission, this time – unknown to him – it is her escape back to Leon.

Remember Lugosi? Known for playing vampires: those critters who can’t generate their own blood sustenance, so have to suck it out of others to keep themselves functioning. Much like socialism, communism, liberalism. That is what Sarah could see from her porch in Wasilla, Alaska. She could imagine those B-52 contrails overhead in the blue sky heading across the straits, into Russia, and returning contrails of Russian attack planes and missiles. She lived next door to Ninotchka her whole life.

And where did Obama live? In the corrupt bosom of Cook County, the land of vampires who rig elections, jokingly admonishing citizens to “Vote Early, and Vote Often” without a single blush at the meaning of that slogan.

That is what Sarah can see from that CPAC podium this week. She sees Russia, and militant Islam, and the other dangers, which today would be played in a modern film by current Legosi actors. As Obama does not, and indeed will not see.

copyright 2009 Steve Finefrock

Finefrock is founder of Hollywood Forum, a speaker-bureau and panel-discussion vehicle to “Bring the Potomac to the Palisades” on issues that overlap politics and culture with the Hollywood film-TV influence on such national concerns. His scripts have addressed politics [including a TV series pilot/bible package about state political combat, called "A State of the Union"], hazardous materials [from twelve years in emergency management, including six years managing FEMA's Superfund curriculum for hazmat], terrorism, equestrian reincarnation, serial murderer killing journalists in the nation’s capitol, and fantasy about time-wasters. Finefrock is proprietor of PhoneBooth: The Smallest Space in Hollywood…

For the growing Hollywood Conservative movement, it’s useful to know how some of the ‘seeds’ of its genesis became planted. Lynne Cheney wrote a seething 1993 National Review essay about “Dave” being a betrayal of her expectations of Hollywood’s contractual terms with her. At that time, my response was limited in its reach, before the web made it a more friendly distribution model. Lynne’s complaint?

The film was based on her brief best-seller, “The Body Politic” for which Hollywood had bought the movie rights, leading her to believe it would reflect her novel’s original political/cultural point-of-view when it hit the big screen.

WRONGO!

As is Hollywood’s style, regardless of political POV, the plot was ratcheted up from her VP lookalike protagonist [a conservative community organizer] to become the main man in the Oval Office. And of course, they FLIPPED the hero-villain balance. This was her volatile complaint in NR: Hollywood re-made her story into their propaganda. Doubling the insult, they did so with excellent implementation of all the craft of the art of cinematic storytelling. The Flip was an effective flip-off to her story’s original design, and her values.

Kevin Kline’s character, Dave Kovic, was originally a conservative hero, and his replacement for a vile liberal president was supposed to convey a POV from the right. My response to Lynne’s surprise and indignation, to a tiny audience, was:

WHAT DID YOU EXPECT, LYNNE?
IT’S THEIR SANDBOX.
IF WE WANT A SANDBOX, WE MUST BUILD OUR OWN.

That refrain, nay mantra, has been pounded off my keyboard and amidst frenetic recruiting for a decade-plus, to every conservative I could find, in HWD and along the Potomac, including some long-known Big Dawgs on the right who practice professionally in the political precincts. The Hollywood Conservative Forum managed to briefly tease the motto, Bringing The Potomac To The Palisades.

Now, BigHollywood is bringing multiple voices together, including Michael McGruther’s question, where’s the money from our friends in the power centers of conservative politics? Why can’t we make movies with our money, employing our ideas, for our audience?

McGruther reveals that he’s worked with a liberal writer thru the past election cycle, converting that artiste’s words into cinematic cash via his own creative capacities, and now finds he’s unappreciated upon being ‘outed’ as a conservative. Hmmmm, think maybe he might have been better guided by finding a contemporary Lynne Cheney property instead?

Along this tortuous pathway, my surprising discoveries included that 1) there are more conservatives in H’W’D [Variety’s frequent abbreviation] than I’d ever imagined, and 2) they need only find each other to then organize into making a contemporary Lynne Cheney property into a rightwing “Dave” that would suit her POV and the audience thirst for quenching entertainment. Then I found 3) even conservative creatives are remarkably clueless as to politics, business reality, and the dark-arts of getting-things-done.

Add #4: as many scoundrels and numbskulls travel unmolested among us as do among ‘them’ in this game, with as much mendacity, narcissism and ineptness as one might only hope would be unique to the typical leftwing artistes in HWD. One dream was dashed during a dash for political relevance for HWD conservatives, in 2003-05, as oodles of carefully gathered and nurtured political capital were invested in persuading the Potomac pros to take the Palisades seriously.

But, conservative coneheads in HWD reduced that hard-earned, precious political 401k account into a 101k, or less, and thereafter the recapitalization began, with a solo attempt which legitimized the HWD conservatives with the Potomac pros: a 2007 speech to the Heritage Foundation showed some insiders, both live and on Memorex [C-SPAN], that there are folks in HWD with conservative values and competence at the craftwork required to make ideas into satisfying entertainment.

My theme to Heritage Foundation patrons was:

HWD conservatives [HWC] need only a Moses and money [as quoted in The Nation magazine’s website that very day; oh, yes, they were monitoring their enemy, via HF’s life-video feed on its website], for the battalions of skilled, eager soldiers are already present in the bowels of the beast, working and earning and honing their craft. The fuel is there, but a spark of leadership and the oxygen of funding will complete that fire-triangle of conservative entertainment.

During my Captain Dreyfus reenactment in the summer of ’04, I’d lost my dream of a certain republican organization in Hollywood displaying political gravitas and moxie, working toward earning the right for a Christmas banquet and dance of luminaries, thus entitled to invite as our speaker and ‘prom queen’ the aforementioned Lynne Cheney. The dreamy goal was to gather a crowd of erstwhile, competent, committed conservative agents, producers, writers, directors, DPs, ADs, et al. And demonstrate that her “Dave” lament would never happen again to her intellectual property successors. No more ‘flipping’ of conservative intellectual material.

Alas, Hollywood Conservatives are not yet deserving of any Lynne Cheney as their prom queen. They keep pissing away political capital offered them, both by this belabored Captain Dreyfus and later would-be political players. Not that no one in HWD possesses sufficient gravitas to play the game. But far too many conservatives are as inane about learning that syllabus of gravitas as any we see in the person of George Clooney or Rosie O’Donnell. Not quite as crazy, but every bit as clueless.

McGruther notes “how the liberal grass roots movement has been well watered and cared for by rich caretakers who use their money, power and influence to invest in a future they desire, not one that’s best for all people. The media and entertainment world quietly vets and weeds out young conservatives so that we can’t disrupt the slow browbeating of the pop-culture addicted public with entertainment of substance that may awaken their better senses.”

Not all the weeding of conservatives, at least in HWD, is achieved by spades and herbicides wielded by lefties. McGruther also laments, “Truth is, we conservatives have no real backing other than core beliefs we know to be universally true. Where’s our David Geffen?”

The core question is, Where’s HWD conservative seriousness? Are HWD conservatives to be trusted with $50 million, or $150 million, or a half-billion of some dedicated conservative cabal’s hard-earned capital? Your every action, or inaction, or misbegotten errors, comprise a continuous audition to any prospective ‘Geffen’ of the right.

Then McGruther jumps to the chase, one raised by wee little moi for a dozen years: “I’m calling on wealthy conservatives everywhere to please step forward and donate to the grass roots of the Republican Party. Fund our version of websites like Media Matters and MoveOn.org. Let’s get a conservative movie fund going…”

Again, as in all HWD processes, one who seeks to play with the Big Dawg needs to impress the Big Dawg that the wee little dawg ain’t going to piss away the Big Dawg’s capital – be it political, intellectual, artistic or fiscal. Just as with earning any greenlight, your prior box office indicates your likely future performance.

The ignored truth, a genuine inconvenient truth to those who inflicted the French Army General Staff practices on a conservative Captain Dreyfus, is that already six Big Dawgs on the Potomac were watching the “movement” during an opportune period of late ’03 thru the election of ’04. The HWConservatives pissed it away. They displayed gargantuan pettiness, astronomical minimalism in gravitas, and brutal insensitivity to the Rules of the Game. Their patron saints are Henry VIII and Robespierre.

Soon, a Hollywood Conservative may arise in the political firmament, and that leader may be the focus of HWC enthusiasm. Will this come about? Might there be a “300” of committed combatants? Maybe. BigHollywood recently expressed some ambitious demands upon the Potomac conservative professionals – not all that bright a slam-down, but indicative of moxie and ambition, in a coda ‘yes we can’ proclamation. And every “300” contains the makings of Ephialites: the ambitious, narcissistic hunchback who betrayed the 300, since he was denied what his own selfish pride demanded. Self over group, ego over Cause.

The question to ponder, as such an opportunity may come about, is simply: WILL HWC BE AS STUPID AS BEFORE? Does HWC understand the first rule of politics, the Latinate quid pro quo – and its more modern derivative, Dance With Them That Brung Ya To The Dance? Plainly some of the Soros klan, the focus of McGruther’s piece, seem to grasp these classic rules [as featured in Chris Matthews’ instructive political guidebook “Hardball”].

So far the answer is, No Way, No How. In the coming political cycle, the stakes are bigger than helping reelect Dubya. It’s crucial to stop the Socialist Juggernaut, and even in California there is a role for conservatives, including those in HWD. But dissing Lynne Cheney’s cousins in the political professional ranks ain’t no way to persuade her to attach her gravitas by accepting the crown of prom queen. Ya want Lynne as prom queen? Then start acting like you got your ducks in a row.

More Leonidas, less Ephialites. Or to apply a remarkable political movie’s apt metaphor, aka “Charlie Wilson’s War” [funded by a Soros peer, Jeff Skoll]: More Gust, less wind.

Starting with not insulting the professional political ducks already in a row, who would eagerly help HWC, but are hesitant to throw good capital after wasted capital. If you aspire to swim among professional political capitalists, act like one. So far, HWC has been a toxic asset, or a playpen reeking with too many toxic asses. And the ass is supposed to be the symbol of the democrats.

If a leader rises, who shall support him or her? A Hollywood Conservative who plays the rules written along the Potomac will need Palisades conservatives who know those rules, and honor them relentlessly. And reliably. Maybe the stakes are higher this time, and there will be less Captain Dreyfus and more Winston Churchill.

But you do remember the ‘gratitude’ the Brits displayed, once Winnie saved their tiny little island from Nazi invasion? They turned him out of office even as the ashes were still smoking in defeated Berlin. As our godmother, Clare Booth Luce famously uttered, as her mantra: No good deed goes unpunished.

That kind of HWC mental state will leave McGruther writing the same column, with the same question, and the same endless frustration, for year after year after year – until he tires of promoting liberals’ property and converting them into piles o’ cash. Will HWC learn how to herd ducks? Play by the rules of ducking? If so, the pros on the Potomac will reconsider directing their examining gaze toward the Palisades.

Want Lynne? Better get busy – at this slow, but accelerating, rate of earning your spurs, making your bones, proving your mettle, Lynne will be a dottering octogenarian before that invitation is deserving of acceptance. Here’s a step toward gravitas, starting with McGruther: Sign up intellectual property with a conservative spin that deserves your talent and contacts. Spend some of your OWN political and professional capital to advance the cause.

Curse the cold, weary political darkness in a liberal HWD? Sure, that’s okay – some Yiddish wag claimed that mankind developed the capacity for speech in order to express a deep inner need to complain. Most political ‘discourse’ [and dramatic dialogue] is endless kvetching. But we need to move more toward the model of Fox News Channel – decades of kvetching about media bias didn’t change the reality, until money, moxie and Moses recruited the pre-existing journalistic talent that already leaned right.

So, complain as you feel required – and light a candle.

Stop The Flip.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step, of not spending your professional capital to help lefties convert their talent into cash. Want those mysterious conservative bigwigs to invest in HWC? Start by investing your own risk-capital, in your own kind, for your own property. Put your own skin in the game before yearning for others’ hard-earned greenbacks.

Then, just maybe Lynne will listen. And I hear she’s a great dancer. But don’t wait until she needs a hip replacement.

copyright 2009 Steve Finefrock

Finefrock is founder of Hollywood Forum, a speaker-bureau and panel-discussion vehicle to “Bring the Potomac to the Palisades” on issues that overlap politics and culture with the Hollywood film-TV influence on such national concerns. His scripts have addressed politics [including a TV series pilot/bible package about state political combat, called "A State of the Union"], hazardous materials [from twelve years in emergency management, including six years managing FEMA's Superfund curriculum for hazmat], terrorism, equestrian reincarnation, serial murderer killing journalists in the nation’s capitol, and fantasy about time-wasters. Finefrock is proprietor of PhoneBooth: The Smallest Space in Hollywood…