Why are artists so liberal?

Beyond a doubt, most of the actors in Hollywood lean liberal. In fact, I suspect that most artists, anywhere, lean to the left. Since "Hollywood" the industry is composed of film, television, and music, the business of Hollywood is maintaining a flow between artists and marketplace. So, more than probably any other industry or town, it is concerned with the artistic temperament. New York has fabulous theater, publishing, and a healthy television industry, but is primarily the economic center of America.

Even though actors are merely a fraction of the production crew of any film or television show, many of the people behind the scenes: craft services, writers, directors, prop and costuming...are also artistic types. Above them you get MBA types (producers, execs, etc.) and above those you have the people running the multi-national conglomerates buying up everything in sight. I'd say the actors lean way left, and the business types calling the shots lean right.

Personally, I think that the hunger for cash on the part of the congloms overrides everything. But the actors are the only people most folks know. They're the ones who go on the talk shows and so forth, and they certainly drive public opinion of what "Hollywood" is like. The question of why so few Right-leaning actors/directors are willing to put up their own money to produce a pro-Iraq movie (actors DO use their own money. Mighty rarely, but remember "Passion of the Christ"? Mel Gibson made about half a billion dollars on that one.) I know of no profitable film that Hollywood hasn't tried to duplicate. Nature of the beast.

People who think that such a film would be profitable but are not interested in betting their own money on it...well, that's interesting. Don't know quite what to say about that. Clint Eastwood can make any damned movie he wants. I doubt VERY seriously that he worries that "people won't want to work with him anymore." Maybe they don't think there is profit in it, and aren't willing to take the loss? Clustered production deals would raise the money--but then if the film bombed, you've lost clout and gained nothing.

I'm really not sure what's going on there...

But the question is: why do artists lean left? I think that you have to start with basic definitions of "Right" and "Left." Needless to say, if you let either side define the other, the results wouldn't be pretty. As I probably lean Left at this point in my life, I can't claim to be above this. But I'll try, by defining "Conservative" as looking backwards to the strength of proven past performance, and "Liberal" as looking forward to the possibility of a shining future.

Unfortunately, we have to live in the Present, not the past or future, so anyone who is too attached to either is, from my point of view, missing the point. If we accept this definition (and hopefully, it is equally supportive and denigrating of either side) then artists would seem to be those who are trying to take current reality apart to create something new. Actors, writers, directors, etc.--they thrive on the image that has not been seen before, the new combination of emotions, and so forth. Quite commonly, executives complain that the artists are naive children, while the artists complain that the executives are brainless Nazis. Sound familiar?

The only problem, as far as I'm concerned, is between the people on either end who don't get the joke, and think that their end is superior. Each then accuses the other of the exact same crap that THEIR side does when upset. A perfect example: take a look at the Primaries. Clinton's supporters were no more "Conservative" than Obamas, but as they began to get desperate, their attacks sounded just like the Republicans. The PUMA sites are just pitiful, venom and yearning mingled into a truly toxic brew. I wish them healing. I mean, these women are suggesting that Obama is flying home to Florida to POISON his grandmother, because she can verify that he wasn't born in the U.S.

Good Lord.

Each side accuses the other of stealing elections, of playing dirty, of harboring bigots, of being disloyal to the American dream, of not caring about the poor, and so forth. Each side produces its statistics and experts to try to "prove" these charges.

Could you have an artist class that was MORE conservative than the general population? Possibly, if, for instance, there was a major artistic movement that proclaimed that some period in the past produced the superior art, so that everything was measured by what has come before. I'm sure it's happened in the past, and will again.

And will we ever have a time when the blue-collar workers, executives and CEOs are, on average MORE liberal than the average American? I really don't know. It would take a better political theorist than I am to figure out how that might fit together.

What I do know is that, should Obama win, he's really got his job cut out from him in terms of bringing the country together. I'm pulling for him. I grasp the tight-rope he's had to walk his whole life, and that if he didn't learn to care for both sides, he would be torn apart emotionally. He may be uniquely suited to bring America back together after seasons of damn-near civil war.

Or not. We'll see.