Culture catcher: 5

Andrew Breitbart and Mark Ebner – Hollywood, Interrupted: Insanity Chic in Babylon – The Case Against Celebrity (Wiley, 2004):

“The degradation of society by the cult of celebrity may be the one subject on which both liberals and conservatives can agree.”

“The truth is the show [‘Sex and the City’] is in large part penned by liberated gay male writers who are putting their sexual politics into the mouths of babes – an X-rated version of what the Look Who’s Talking movies did by putting adult voices in the mouths of children. Will our families, let alone the sexes, ever recover from the horror?”

“It may sound harsh, like no-smoking laws at bars, or requiring catalytic converters to cut down on vehicle emissions, or China’s one child policy, but in time people will realize it is for the greater good: Celebrities should not be allowed to have children. Period.”

“Dragged out for photo ops, expected to keep their mouths shut and look pretty, these star spawn endure the horrendous indignity of listening to their parents on talk shows talking about how ‘fabulous it is being a parent,’ and how much they ‘love’ their children while the objects in question – and they are treated as such – sit at home with the hired help.” 

“Tom Clancy’s The Sum of All Fears, which featured Islamic extremists in the novel, ended up with European neo-Nazi terrorists once it hit the big screen. The Council on American-Islamic Relations successfully lobbied Paramount Pictures to change the villains to another group for the film adaptation, and in the end much-feared neo-Nazis drop the bomb instead. We wouldn’t want to create an unrealistic portrayal of Islamic extremists acting as agents of terror, now would we? Notice how the film’s producer, Paramount Studios, shows no concern for portraying whites as villains.”