Leftists don’t care about whom their ideas hurt.
This often plays out in Hollywood, arguably the most influential hotbed of liberal politics.
One industry conservative just detailed how left-wing politics completely changed the face of one hit television show.
Progressivism Ruins Storytelling
Liberals fancy themselves as progressive and compassionate. While compassion is a good thing, it can become destructive when it goes too far.
This phenomenon routinely unfolds in Hollywood.
To counteract racism, sexism, and other isms that have played into stereotypical characters, Hollywood sometimes goes too far the other way and creates perfect characters.
A striking recent example of this was in the new “Star Wars” films. The protagonist Rey is a woman with absolutely zero flaws. Not only is she adept at everything, she’s better than the male counterparts who have expertise in that particular area.
Rey knows how to fly the Millennium Falcon better than Han Solo and Chewbacca, she’s a better lightsaber fighter than Kylo Ren (who’s trained under a Jedi knight and Sith lord for years), and she has better force capabilities than Luke Skywalker.
Rey’s perfection is an example of bad storytelling that turned off audiences.
Liberal Backlash Costs Minorities Work
Conservative actor and comedian Jimmie Walker, best known for playing JJ on the ‘70s sitcom “Good Times,” recently appeared on The Andrew Klavan Show and talked about how race politics hurt black performers.
Walker said “Good Times” received a ton of backlash, which essentially ended portrayals of poor black families on television.
While leftists might believe that’s noble, it’s creatively limiting, and could exclude people from well-written projects and meaty roles.
Walker recounted such a story on Klavan’s show.
Walker talked about a hot comedy pilot script that was developed at Fox in the ‘80s when they were first getting into script television.
The script was about a black family that was a foil to The Cosby Show because some felt the show was too schmaltzy.
The executives at the time loved the script, but chose not to do it because of the backlash of portraying a down-and-out black family.
Another regime swept into Fox, loved the script, but rejected it for the same reason.
Finally, a third regime eventually took over Fox and took a different approach to the project. Walker paraphrased an internal discussion between executives that took place:
“They read [the script] and loved it.
‘This is the best thing we ever saw.’
‘We can’t do it because black people will complain.’
‘Let’s do it as white people.’
‘That’s a great idea.’
They did it. ‘Married With Children.’”
Leftist Policies Always Have Unintended Consequences
“Married With Children” was obviously a massive hit that ran for 11 seasons, and made stars of Ed O’Neill, Katey Sagal, and Christina Applegate. That could’ve been a huge opportunity for black actors, but leftists and their progressive politics robbed them.
Often times the best roles and scripts deal with terribly flawed people. Audiences get bored with characters who are perfect in every way and always do the right thing.
Stereotypes and clichéd writing are death traps. But ram-rodding a political agenda into a script is equally destructive.
The “Married With Children” story highlights the main problem with leftists. They never think about the unintended consequences of their actions.