I considered writing about presidential politics, but the way things are going lately, by the time you read this on Wednesday, we may well be on to a whole new storyline I can’t anticipate. So, I’m going to go off topic and reflect on a new paper by two economists about an early example of Cancel Culture, the 1947–1957 Red Scare in the movie industry, “McCarthyism, Media, and Political Repression: Evidence from Hollywood” by Hui Ren and Tan Tanyi Wang. It’s reflective of the rise of intellectual imperialism among economists: Beyond the accused, we find that the anti-communist ...
As I mentioned last week, I took a Substack poll regarding my readers’ preferred topics, and the top vote-getters were “scolding idiot rightists” and “musing about Hollywood.” So how’s ...
I’ve done three straight weeks of politics, so let’s lighten the mood with the Holocaust. Wait, that came out wrong. I mean, let’s lighten the mood with Hollywood. And the Holocaust. Readers ...
The Last Duel, a 2021 film by Sir Ridley Scott with Matt Damon as a mulleted French aristocrat chud battling honorably (if stupidly) a suave Adam Driver in 1386, turned out to be ...
In director Christopher Nolan’s campaign to save moviegoing from technological and social obsolescence, his latest ploy is his most clever yet: to lure grown-ups with ...
One of the most fervently held dogmas of the 1969 wave of feminism was that the only reason boys and girls liked different toys was due to sexist socialization. I was young in the ...
My friends (and one or two foes) have informed me that my past few columns have been downers. “Can’t you do something a little lighter?” they ask. “Also, what’s your ...
]It’s Oscar season! Which of course means only one thing: White people are evil. Of course, to be fair, that also applies to rainy season, holiday season, baseball season, ...
I can vividly recall driving along the coast of Baja California in late 1996 a few days after being diagnosed with cancer, feeling sorry for myself about my impending ...
My Christmas gift to myself this year is a column about zombie movies. I’ve been wanting to do this one since October, when it was announced that Night of the Living Dead is ...
To have been born in the USA in 1946 was to have been dealt aces in the poker game of life. Those born in the first year of the baby boom went through their days finding that ...
Tár is a strong art-house drama for older audiences about a #MeToo scandal in the arts that cleverly buys itself the right to be moderately sympathetic toward its ultimately ...
In the words of John Goodman from Barton Fink, “Jesus, it’s hot.” L.A.’s historic, unprecedented September heat wave is literally murdering me. But you wanna know ...
No doubt it is evidence of my dissociation from much of modern life, but until the recent libel trials I did not really know who Johnny Depp was and had never heard of Amber ...
White male aircraft carrier fighter pilots were the heroes of the 1986 hit movie Top Gun. But today, white men are the designated villains in our culture. Yet the profession of ...
Hollywood’s been Jewish from the get-go, but “racial loyalty” never trumped the bottom line. People who lose money for the bosses get canned, Jew or not. Similarly, ...