The Power and the Glitter
Brownstein, Ronald
THE POWER AND THE GLITTER: THE HOLLYWOOD-WASHINGTON CONNECTION Ronald Brownstein/Pantheon/437 pp. $24.95 Fred Barnes BBefore the 1988 presidential cam- wood, particularly the younger actors ...
...As an adviser to Hart's two presidential campaigns, Beatty never exploited Hart to gain publicity for himself...
...Brownstein looks askance at the "deification" of the Hollywood Ten in the 1960s "as well-meaning progressives hounded for their prescience by the forces of ignorance, reaction, and hysteria...
...similar screening session had been or- How many had been to Nicaragua...
...Beatty and Reagan got along well...
...livo or three hands went up...
...24.95 Fred Barnes BBefore the 1988 presidential cam- wood, particularly the younger actors paign hit full stride, TV producer and actresses, but he never lets that bias Norman Lear invited each of the Demo- his analysis or color his reporting...
...lost on her...
...Even if he managed to win Hart over on some point, Beatty would allow campaign aides to reopen the issue with him...
...stream are often skewed," Brownstein Lear and his pals operated on the writes...
...assault of the wealthy on the middle Brownstein, a political reporter for class under the Reagan administration...
...Only slightly less surprising is that actor Warren Beatty, the buddy of Gary Hart, comes off as the most likable and levelheaded and least egomaniacal of the politically active stars...
...Once, Democratic Representative assumption that they were the rightful Lee Hamilton of Indiana, the former keepers of the liberal flame, while the chairman of the House Intelligence leading Democrats were political wea- Committee, addressed some sixty-five sels, compromisers, sellouts, or worse...
...He cratic candidates to his house in ritzy skewers everyone...
...He characterizes this revisionism as "simplistic and overstated," since "the Party members' careers also offered nothing if not testimony to the intellectual danger of reflexive procommunism...
...One is his treatment of Communists in Hollywood, including the Hollywood Ten...
...His book be an assemblage of enormously con-is extraordinarily well reported, and tent middle class families looking for overflows with riveting anecdotes...
...Biden was hectored over his op- "drawn entirely from personal experposition to school busing for desegre- ience...
...He pressed his views on Hart, but was gracious when they were rejected...
...He doesn't pretend to be something other than what he is...
...Through the 1940s, the Communist party had as much influence on Hollywood's internal political life as it did on any community in the country...
...The Dies approach was scattershot, "and the prevalence of Communists in the thriving Popular Front groups guaranteed him more than an occasional hit...
...He If this was high-handed and elitist, Lear took questions for half an hour, then didn't notice...
...The candidates, especially Sen- eluded that her portrayal of Michael J. ator Joe Biden of Delaware, hated the Fox's daffy sister in that series was grilling...
...When also fair-minded...
...gation...
...I'm not holding my breath, but it's a precedent that conservatives might some day seize upon...
...38 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1991 rownstein surprised me on two BD counts...
...That's not the way to win the White House...
...Brownstein partially defends the 1938 investigation of Hollywood by the House Un-American Activities Committee, headed by Martin Dies...
...When his movie Reds was released, Beatty accepted an invitation to screen it for Ronald Reagan at the White House...
...In The Power and the Glit- paused for a question of his own...
...I suspect he has some Perkins gave the same crazed speech the sympathy with the liberal set in Holly- next day to college students in San Diego, someone yelled back, "But Fred Barnes is a senior editor of the New you're rich...
...If they could convince him he was wrong, he would call Hart and say so," notes Brownstein...
...The Hollywood-Washington Con- many of the group had ever been to Innection, Ron Brownstein notes, "If a diana...
...Communists "dominated liberal politics in Hollywood from the 1930s through the 1950s," he declares flatly...
...Hollywood are not like you and me...
...I always felt that he said what he meant and he had convictions . . . and he was not a pretentious man...
...Hollywood liberals at a fancy home...
...Bruce Babbitt was hounded Not just Bateman, but most folks in about South Africa, a peripheral issue...
...Nor is Lear's effort to sneak environmental propaganda into scripts of TV sitcoms (you know, havethe Simpson recycle their trash and boycott Styrofoam) without risk for liberals...
...Hollywood lives so didates were afraid not to come, Hol- differently from ordinary Americans lywood being a rich vein of liberal that its perceptions of the political mainmoney...
...sanctimonious to understand how riHollywood's new attitude toward diculous their political posturing apWashington and politics is reflected pears to the average person...
...Despite the unpleasantness, the can- They're isolated...
...Rather than other, protecting themselves from the listen to visitors from Washington, Hol- assembled public with the impenetralywood liberals want to lecture them...
...He does not mince words...
...The "wealthy and isolated elite" uses its influence to push the party "toward the most militant liberal positions on social and foreign policy issues...
...Re- not be unusual at events where the spect for officials in Washington, even young stars were the advertised draw reliable liberals like Senator Edward to find them mingling solely with each Kennedy, has disappeared...
...I always liked him," Beatty told Brownstein...
...he wanted to be a strategist...
...Now, the stars figure it is they who Perkins, who starred in the movie Big, are bestowing seriousness on the candi- "hectored a blue-collar, largely His-dates, or at least on those few (Dukakis, panic audience in Stockton about the Jackson, Hart) who measure up...
...No doubt the irony was Republic...
...How ter...
...ble aura of superiority that people in Stars used to be flattered to appear on the movie industry seem to perfect as the same stage with presidential candi- soon as they acquire an agent," Brown-dates...
...Lear's sessions would probably have Stars are often too self-absorbed and condemned them as a plutocratic plot...
...No major liberal activities took place in Hollywood until the dawn of the Cold War, except for a brief period between 1939 and 1941, without Communists playing an active, and in many instances essential, role...
...It would perfectly in the Brentwood dinners...
...Inganized by conservative corporate lead- stantly," says Brownstein, "he faced a ers, many of the same people attending forest of upraised palms...
...the Los Angeles Times, deftly captures It was like watching a Beverly Hills stag-this world-upside-down quality in his ing of Waiting for Lefty: here was a engrossing chronicle of the stormy, group of rich young people trying to in-sometimes silly relationship between cite into class warfare what appeared to Washington and Hollywood...
...It will take an earthquake for the day to come when conservatives run Hollywood, but stranger things have happened...
...Best of all in this book, Brownstein recognizes the danger, particularly for the Democratic party, in Hollywood's liberal activism...
...After watching JusBrentwood for strenuous auditions, tine Bateman, a star of the TV show over dinner, before a group of power- "Family Ties," stump for the Demoful figures from the entertainment in- cratic ticket in 1988, Brownstein condustry...
...Using the "public airwaves to proselytize for a private political agenda creates a precedent...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1991 39...
...It's a mild Sunday morning outing...
...It meant they were taken serious- stein writes...
...In 1988, actress Elizabeth ly...
Vol. 24 • April 1991 • No. 4
