Screw His Money, Appreciate Ben Stein's Thoughts

From Cold Fury, an interesting Op-ed by Ben Stein about discrimination in Hollywood:

A few minutes later, I was grabbing a shopping cart at How's Market in the Trancas section of Malibu when a sweet faced middle aged woman approached me carefully. Then she saw a young couple nearby and turned away. Moments later, she ran into me at the egg cooler, looked around to make sure there was no one looking or listening and said. "I love what you say about politics on TV. You're so brave. I'm on your side. There are some of us here but we keep our mouths shut."

"You don't need to," I said. "The election's over. We won."

"Yes, but it's not over out here. Can you believe they just had Michael Moore at the new Malibu bookstore and they've never invited you and how long have you been out here?"

"Twenty-four years off and on," I said.

"Well, anyway, when I see you and I smile at you, you'll know what it's all about. Go Bush," she whispered and headed for the fresh fish.

Earlier in the day when I had been doing some looping at a studio on Radford Drive in Studio City for a movie in which I have a part ("Son of the Mask" if you must know ), a man on a forklift came by and winked at me. "Keep giving 'em hell," he said softly. "There are more of us here than you think. Bush rules."

This is the way it is here. We meet in smoky places. We give the high sign, we nod knowingly. We are like members of the Maquis in Occupied France. Or early Christians emerging from the catacombs in Caligula's Rome. We are the GOP in Hollywood, and on the West Side of L.A. The culture here is so dominantly left-wing, PC, vegan, hate-America that many of us feel we have to behave as if we were underground.

At a self-help meeting where men and women confess to drug use, betrayals, thefts, homicides with cars, at a break, a woman stealthily came up to me last Saturday and motioned me into a corner outside the room in Malibu. "I want to tell you there are some of us who agree with you. We have to keep it quiet because we want to get our kids into the right schools, but we're there. We're there. And there are more of us every day." Then she scuttled off into the night. Slamming crack can be spoken of with a smile, but not voting GOP. That could be dangerous.

But it's changing.

It should change. You can always tell a weak and worthless ideology by the vehemence of those who seek to shield it from discussion and debate. Modern liberalism is just plain pathetic. Let 'em have their little tantrums, Ben, neither you nor we need them. The failure of their entire worldview is their reward.

Or in the words of a sad little jackass named Markos Zuniga, "screw them."