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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Lots of old news, interesting bits about movies, June 20, 2006
This review is from: Hollywood Nation: Left Coast Lies, Old Media Spin, and the New Media Revolution (Hardcover)
Hollywood Nation : Left Coast Lies, Old Media Spin, and the New Media Revolution by James Hirsen is a bit dishonest in its title. While Hirsen does cover some interesting aspects of how Hollywood's politics is affecting what we see and hear in the media, it doesn't cover all of the aspects I was hoping for. Hirsen trots out the same old liberals names everyone knows: Sarandon, Robbins, Streisand, etc, but doesn't really bring anything new to the table. Yes, we know that the mainstream media is remarkably left of center, but that's nothing that Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, and many others have written about already. The most interesting chapters were those that discussed the hidden messages of movies like Kingdom of Heaven and Million Dollar Baby. I would have enjoyed reading an entire book about more of that along with information about the TV shows that are beamed into our homes claiming to represent middle-class America. One chapter Hirsen could have done without is the long love letter to Mel Gibson about The Passion of the Christ. I was moved by the film, and I deeply respect Gibson for making it, but Hirsen's devotion to him makes the book lose some credibility. Hirsen also interviews several celebrities for the book like Bill O'Reilly and Dayna Devon. The interviews make for interesting reading, but sometimes it feels like Hirsen was throwing Nerf balls instead of hardballs at them. This book is not a must read, but it could have been.
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13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
More on the New Media, September 29, 2005
This review is from: Hollywood Nation: Left Coast Lies, Old Media Spin, and the New Media Revolution (Hardcover)
No sooner do I finish James Hirsen's "Tales From the Left Coast" than I discover he's just released another tome dealing with the machinations of Hollywood and the Old Media systems. Obviously, when the term "Old Media" rears its ugly head, the reader automatically knows he or she is in for yet another treatment of the rise of Internet blogging and the FOX News Channel. It seems like dozens of books concerning this topic come out every month. So many books have examined this phenomenon--the slow slide into irrelevancy of the traditional media outlets like The New York Times and the Big Three television networks--that one wonders what is left to say about it. The problem with the emergence of the New Media, as it is so imaginatively called, is that it's...well...new. We're not exactly sure what's going to happen ten years down the road. Personally, although I find myself getting more and more of my news from Internet sources, I don't really want the print media to disappear. What I and many others do want, which Hirsen seems to embrace as well if "Hollywood Nation" is any indication, is as many points of view as possible regarding events around the world.
At the same time I want to see infotainment--that obnoxious fusion of mindless entertainment recounted with a "hard" news edge--kicked to the gutter. This brand of media benefits no one except those personalities who make millions of dollars a year spewing this junk. We're all dumber and less effective citizens because of people like Katie Couric, Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer, and those news shows that cover Hollywood celebrities. Far too many of our fellow featherless bipeds are relying exclusively on these people and programs to learn about what goes on in the world. And that's the main focus of "Hollywood Nation." Hirsen examines how Hollywood, and by extension those who run Tinseltown, has been blurring the lines between news and entertainment for years. Needless to say, such a process causes more harm than good. For one thing the Hollywood viewpoint is hopelessly left-wing. The media masters embrace and propagate ideologies that are totally incompatible with reality. We can no longer afford to subscribe to them in an age when our very survival is at stake in the war against Islamic terrorism. Nonetheless, the message continues to wash over the country every day through the plague of infotainment.
Hirsen's book seeks to understand the underpinnings of infotainment and the fight against it through interviews with various media personalities. Interviews with Laurie Dhue and Bill O'Reilly of FOX News, comedian Dennis Miller, Catherine Crier of Court TV fame, former Reagan speechwriter and editorialist for the Wall Street Journal Peggy Noonan, and others seek to clarify the difference between the Old and New Media as well as discover the challenges faced by those on the front lines of the infotainment battlefield. Missing, perhaps not surprisingly, from the book are Katie Couric, Oprah Winfrey, Dr. Phil, Jon Stewart, and the other ijits who bear far more responsibility for perpetuating the infotainment universe than Laurie Dhue and Peggy Noonan. The abovementioned individuals, while not impervious to the celebrity that comes with being a famous journalist, do attempt to maintain some sense of perspective. Most don't. They have entourages, multi-million dollar homes in the Hamptons, and hobnob with Tinseltown stars. In other words, they're so comfy in the confines of the system that they've no inclination to rock the boat. Just go along with what your left-wing friends say and cash your paycheck. That this in no way resembles real journalism hardly needs elaboration.
I enjoyed the book. But if you're like me, you've probably stumbled over most of this stuff somewhere else. As I said above, so many books about the New Media's ascendance sit on bookshelves that Hirsen's examination seems superfluous. I did appreciate the chapter describing Mel Gibson's dilemma in making "The Passion of the Christ," and it's informative to once again read the ridiculous, over the top vitriol heaped upon the film by secular, left-wing media personalities. Again, however, readers won't learn anything about Gibson's film here that they haven't stumbled over in other treatments of the New Media. We even get more than a few words about Michael Moore and his propagandistic documentaries, a theme beyond tired by now--at least, until he releases another piece of trash in the near future. Overall, I would say that Hirsen's book would be most relevant to a reader just starting out on an examination of the changing face of the American media. It's general enough in scope to serve as a sort of survey of the landscape. Then move on to "South Park Conservatives" and Bernard Goldberg's books. If you've already read everything on the topic, then just look at Hirsen's book as a refresher.
A couple of quick points in conclusion. One, the interview Hirsen conducted with Dennis Miller astonished me. The comedian made only ONE pop culture reference (to the children's game Chutes and Ladders)! That has to be a record for Miller. Maybe he was having an off day. Two, I appreciated how Hirsen underscored the emergence of conservative filmmakers. This often falls by the wayside during discussions of Hollywood's hegemony. Several festivals have popped up over the last couple of years that only showcase documentaries and films with a conservative bent. Don't expect them to take over Los Angeles in the next couple of years, but it's a start. I've often said what Hollywood needs is some real competition, and maybe the folks at the Liberty Film Festival and the American Film Renaissance can offer this competition. Or maybe not. It will be fun to reread these books in ten or twenty years and see how prescient they were, won't it?
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Even A Rehash Can Shed Some Light, April 8, 2007
This review is from: Hollywood Nation: Left Coast Lies, Old Media Spin, and the New Media Revolution (Hardcover)
Except perhaps for the liberal elitists of Hollywood, no one else doubts that entertainment and the media have shared the same leftist bed for the last three decades. Further, there is little doubt that this union of media and Hollywood combine to spin the news in ways that raise Democratic causes and debase Republican ones. In HOLLYWOOD NATION, James Hirsen takes the reader down a well-trodden path to prove these very points. In his first three chapters, he focuses on the glitzy aspect of the televised news business. He discusses good looking news anchors who present the news in breezy dumbed down ways that Edward R. Murrow would certainly have found repellent. This part of the book is Hirsen's weakest. Beginning in the fourth chapter, however, Hirsen picks up steam by getting down to his real business--that of slamming the entrenched liberal Powers That Be who not only deny that there is no bias from the left but that if any bias does exist, it comes from the right. Hirsen lists a number of books that prove this pervasive left bias. Most of these are well-known: Bernard Goldberg's BIAS, William McGowan's COLORING THE NEWS, and Ann Coulter's SLANDER. Hirsen notes that the left counters with books that purport to prove the opposite. I have read most of these latter texts--Alterman's WHAT LIBERAL MEDIA and Conason's BIG LIES come to mind--and Hirsen rightfully points out that these authors often undercut their own arguments by admitting that most media moguls are indeed liberal, but they are cosmopolitan enough to recognize and to control their biases, a balancing act that they think they maintain but the more conservative and competing writers cannot.
Hirsen makes his most telling points when he reviews the well-documented failure of Air America to encroach on the turf of talk radio. He scores additional points when he recounts the embarassing meltdown of Dan Rather who even today insists that if the documents purporting to prove that George Bush was absent from duty during his Air Force reserve days were forged, then the possibility that they might have been true is just vindication for his claims. I had a problem with Hirsen's inserting interviews with media stars, not all of whom had much to say that was germaine. I also wondered why he spent so much time with Gibson's PASSION OF THE CHRIST. Still, most of Hirsen's thesis held water. The Hollywood elite does exist, it does spin the news, and it chooses to blur the distinction between learning the news and being entertained by it. HOLLYWOOD NATION is a recommended text for those who still think that the major media presents the news in a fair and even-handed manner. It does not and Hirsen tells the hows and whys.
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