Could Hollywood Have Prevented Climate Change?
Could Hollywood have prevented climate change? This includes the likes of Jack Nicholson, Harrison Ford, Meryl Streep. This is not at all to imply that they are at fault in anyway in regards to Climate Change. The idea here is that there might have been an effective way to use their star power to sway public opinion on this issue. Al Gore did his best to get US citizens to accept the truth about Climate Change and its dangers. Gore’s movie and book “An Inconvenient Truth” got plenty of attention. However the counter onslaught from the right stopped the general acceptance of Climate Change so nothing was really done. Because the left lost this message war to the right, our planet is in the danger zone.
Democrats in this era have done quite a poor job of getting important messages across to the majority of US citizens. Admittedly, the Dems have two major mountains to climb to win the message war battles. First right wing politicians and their media surrogates ruthlessly and shamelessly play the greed and fear card. Secondly, the mainstream media’s priority is rating first everything else like accurate reporting, a distant second. A key element to that includes their focus on false equivalency stories that paint the Republicans and Democrats as equally bad. Ratings would be bad if the public felt the media was taking sides. As a result, the truth of what is actually bad or good for US citizens gets drowned in very muddy waters. This has led to the ugly and embarrassing state that the mainstream media is in today.
So here is a possible game changing solution to get the majority of citizens to pay serious attention to what they absolutely need to know for their own good and everyone else’s good as well. How about the older progressives of Hollywood who have diminishing acting options because of their age use some of their unwanted free time to be news anchors. Eastern medicine say for every disease there is a cure. Of course these cures may have to be found in some plant hidden away in a tropical jungle and other obscure locations on the planet. Perhaps uniting Hollywood star power and the daily TV news is the hidden cure for what ails our sickly pathetic media.
Given continuing economic struggles, most Americans often feel high levels of stress. This creates a reluctance to engage in depressing complicated political issues which take time energy and emotion that many feel they cannot afford. On the other hand there is also a strong desire to seek relief from this stress. An often used escape from this is movie and TV entertainment. Part of their escape is a fascination with the celebrities of movies and TV. Everyone is drawn to the charisma of large personalities. The Democrats can use this fascination to get their messages heard. So how about creating a nightly news program where the talking heads are a revolving group of these entertainment stars?
It is crucial to frame a political message early in the game. This requires grabbing the public’s attention then make it easy to understand. We are all creatures of habit. If new news gathering habits can be created the Democrats would then have a fighting chance to get their “lets help everyone not just the rich and powerful” messages across to the masses. If you are a consumer of news and your options include getting the news from the networks you typically watch versus getting the same news from one of your favorite celebrities, the odds are good you will give the celebrities a shot. Once they get a pleasant taste of getting the news from well liked charismatic celebrities. If that happens the combining of celebrities and the news will be like striking gold for the Democrats.
Many celebrities seek ways to use their good fortune to make our world better. Perhaps it’s time for them to bring a greater awareness to Americans of important political issues. A big reason the fake news shows like The Daily Show are so popular today are the laughs make the bitter medicine of bummer political issues go down a lot easier.
Similarly, the charisma of celebrities and subsequent fascination and empathy people feel with them could also make the bitter medicine of news with truth go down easier. If this delivery method had been used much earlier perhaps the majority of the electorate would have bought into the extreme dangers of climate change. This could have enabled the government of the second largest polluter in the world to take measures that could have avoided many eco-disasters and all the un-pleasantry that has gone with them.
I suspect more than a few celebrities would have bought into contributing some of their time if they believed their efforts could have avoided the global breakdown of our weather. These days mother nature is all too often an angry woman. Perhaps the good hearted women and men of the entertainment world could have helped avoid inflaming her anger.
The wealthy Democrats who have given up on building an information spreading infrastructure to compete with the right wing noise machine should consider this possibility. George Clooney for example has been particularly good at making political message movies like “Syriana” and the “Ides of March.” However, for him and others, it would a lot less time consuming and risky to be a news anchor for a short time versus the complicated business of creating and selling a movie.
Supposedly, Jack Nicholson has retired from acting because he has problems memorizing lines. However, the odds are good he can still read from a teleprompter while also being his typical charming intense self. Harrison Ford was quoted saying “I still want to be useful.” Hans Solo here is a way.
There are countless talented actresses of all ages who cant find good film good roles, hey gals give this a try. As actors get older there are less roles for them to play. Perhaps a way to get the attention of some of the older viewers that gravitate to Fox News is have some older celebrities giving them very important sides to an issue that Fox News buries or lies about. Most, if not all, right wing propaganda outlets use two levers, greed and fear to manipulate people. This method is particularly effective with the elderly. These media predators take legit fears and turn them into delusional paranoia. The fear of Ebola breaking into an epidemic was a prime example. Preying on the weak and weak minded is for punks and people who want to live buried in the dark side of life. This is contemptible and utterly immoral behavior.
A possible format could be a celebrity duo on for a week or two delivering the nightly news while mixing in a little celebrity chatter to make the bummer news more palatable. Maybe team up a celebrity with a Greg Palast, Michael Tomasky, Arianna Huffington, Joan Walsh, Paul Krugman, Robert Reich, James Risen, and others who have insights we all need to hear about. That might lead to some truly fascinating chatter. Certain news is more important to certain age groups. Maybe use celebrities of similar age to deliver news that is most relevant to the specific celebrities age group. Being in the eye of the public can be the best marketing for an actor. An existing network like Free Speech TV would be a great testing ground for this project. If the project takes off then the famous actors that are not working due to lack of opportunity could find a new revenue source. Depending on how many are interested and how often they would be available, it seems reasonable to have a celebrity or celebrity duo have stints of one or two weeks at a time maybe even a month. Hey Hollywood what do think about this?