Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV

Ben Shapiro intelligently demonstrates how liberals took over the television industry but he also shows how conservatives can win it back. There is room for both sides on tv and the best shows entertain not preach. He also gives the reader a look into the history of television, which I found fascinating. Ben is objective about this subject and hopes Hollywood doesn't take his book as a criticism but instead as a guide. Ben calls out both the liberals and conservatives on their approach to tv and hopes this will stir them into considering the audience as a whole instead of catering to a select few. I highly recommend this. It is eye opening!

After reading about a quarter of the book I thought it was OK but fairly trivial. Yes Hollywood is leftist. I already knew that. And althought I watch a lot of television I had never seen most of the TV comedies that are given as examples. For example I've never seen a single episode of Friends, Seinfeld, Will and Grace, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Roseanne, Ellen, The Family Guy, Two and a Half Men, Murphy Brown, The Smothers Brothers, or The Cosby Show - all of which are treated in this book. I had heard of all of these shows but I had never chosen to actually watch one of them. I had however seen Laugh-In, Cheers, and Soap. So maybe I was underimpressed with the book because I hadn't been exposed to as much lefty propaganda as the average bear.But then two nights ago I watched that old Bruce Willis Thriller - "Mercury Rising". This is the movie in which the wonderfully evil Alec Baldwin as an NSA executive has a totally innocent couple killed and orders the similar destruction of their young handicapped son. Baldwin attacks the kid - Willis defends. That's the movie and it's a pretty good movie.But something happened this time I watched it. I watched Baldwin's performance remembering Shapiro's book. Baldwin is anything but a moderate. He is well known as a vicious hate filled leftist. Lately he has been in the news for defending Anthony Wiener and considering a run for Mayor of New York (now that Wiener is no longer the front runner). He had also been caught on tape a few years ago screaming at his daughter on the phone. He is hard left and just as personally obnoxious as Wiener.With that in mind I listened carefully to what he said in character as the villian of the piece. He was playing this impossibly evil beaurocrat as a conservative patriot. Having started reading this book I was sensitized to these issues. Baldwin was a "cartoon conservative". He was very, very good at it. In his best reptillian voice and manner he spouted all these high falluting patriotic clichés while he plotted to murder the innocent.That observation made me ponder Baldwin's career. He had started by playing innocuous pretty boys in film's like "Beetlejuice". But he hit patdirt when he got the short but fabulous part of the sales force motivator in "Glengary, Glenross". Amid a sea of fine actors, Baldwin stole the show with his star turn as the impossibly evil top salesman.David Mamet wrote a cartoon of capitalism - very entertaining but, I worked in direct commision sales - hardly accurate. In Bladwin they had a perfect guy to portray the face of the free market - slick, amoral, handsome, and deeply evil. Baldwin I realized had gone on then to play an evil doctor in "Malice" and an evil radio station manager. In all the films he wears a good suit - probably a Brione. In movieland wearing a suit marks you as the enemy of the good. This is most clear in the Matrix movies. There the guys in the suits are robots - evil robots.So although I never saw an episode of Friends, I absorbed the message of Shapiro's book and it resonated. It kicked off a stream of recollections about characters and plots I had once seen. I read books like this in order to be informed. I want to be influenced too but seldom am. I'm a little to set in my ways to he swayed by just any old book. This book seems to be an exception. I really am thinking about liberal propaganda differently now. I see more of it now. It's like when the scoutmaster shows you a literal snake in the grass. Henceforth you will be able to spot such serpents wherever they lurk.

The Liberal Propaganda of the Left and the Control of Hollywood and Your TV.I have always said that TV and the entertainment industry in general including Hollywood are what I have called “the great Left wing propaganda machine” in which people and events are often portrayed as being the opposite to what they really are. Good and hard working middle class people who live by decent Conservative principles and who prosper as a result of their endeavours through the jealousy of Liberal thought are usually portrayed as being heartless and ruthless ogres who are enemies of society. On the other hand lower and baser types who as a result of leading a footloose and degraded lifestyle occupy the lower levels of society are portrayed as victims and are elevated to near sainthood. In this meticulously detailed and researched book Ben Shapiro calls on his own empirical experience in Hollywood when as a Conservative film script writer he was informed by his agent that, “Your political views will make it impossible for you to get a job in this town”. He was also told that he will be excluded from Hollywood social circles and Hollywood is a very “social” town. He informs us that, “The book makes a case that Hollywood content isn’t merely or accidentally leftist, but is consciously designed by liberal creators and executives to convert Americans to their political cause” and that this was designed to “....set America sliding down the slippery slope away from its Judeo-Christian heritage....”. As far back as 1944 the Conservative film legend Robert Taylor helped to form the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals due to his alarm concerning the Liberal Communist activities of certain actors in the Screen Actor’s Guild and he warned that there were some very “un-American” films being made in Hollywood. He also appeared as a witness before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Walt Disney was a Conservative Republican and was an associate of Joseph McCarthy and worked with J. Edgar Hoover as a secret informant for the FBI against Liberal Communists in Hollywood. Actress Bo Derik has said that, “Actors in Hollywood are ostracised and denied work if they openly support the Republican Party”. Because she is a Conservative and supports the Republican Party she was told in the year 2000 that she will never work again in Hollywood. She also said that Liberals in Hollywood often became violent and nasty when they discover that you are a Conservative. From its very inception Liberal Communism set out to gain total control and ownership of the print and electronic media and entertainment industries in order to constantly saturate our minds and those of our families with a steady and uninterrupted flow of Liberal propaganda and Ben Shapiro tells his readers that, “You’ve been targeted by generations of television creators and programmers for political conversion. You’ll find out that the box in your living room has been invading your mind, subtly shaping your opinions, pushing you to certain sociopolitical conclusions for years”. These select few who run the media get into your living room through your TV for year upon year and they saturate your home and family with Liberal ideas until they become a constant and total part of your very existence and as Ben Shapiro tells us in this excellent book this situation must be improved.Timothy M. Clifton.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. He expertly goes through the history of "the left took over your TV", and leaves the reader with the clear conclusion that TV is "lefty" propaganda. Despite this fact, some of the subjects that the author talks about in this book, seem completely pointless and do not help to build-up the argument he has been constructing throughout the book.

Interesting amusing read, short chapters dived by the TV shows he's speaking about at a given time.Includes and extensive index and undercover interviews with Hollywood producers.If you Disagree with the preise hol your views up to Mr Shapiro's arguments, it will leave you stronger or smarter and wiser.

Ben Shapiro at his brilliant witty best!!

I always enjoy listening to Ben on The Daily Wire and this was a thought provoking thesis about how TV embeds ideologies. I definitely came away more enlightened.

A real eye-opener to the disturbing way the Left operate in the world of television. Compelling read!