The worst thing that has happened to Hollywood in the past ten years is that it became afraid. It became afraid of a fanatical mob that mobilized on social media and was fueled by social justice, or by the desire for totalitarian control. It became afraid of actors who might accuse someone of something. It became afraid of activists who might call it out for something. The end result was total capitulation.
Whole generations have now come of age believing that storytelling has to bend toward social justice. Identity is treated as enough to fill out a story, because they are not telling the story of a person but of a whole group. What does that say about society? How does it “fix” society?
Nothing has been worse for films, storytelling, late-night comedy, or television. They win awards. They get good reviews because everyone loves Big Brother. But it has nearly collapsed a once-thriving industry. I always knew the only way out of this mess was courage, and that was in short supply.
Until David Ellison got involved. You really need fuck-you money at a time like this, and he has it. Like Elon Musk buying Twitter and turning it into X, culture had to be ripped from the hands of the 1984-like totalitarian cult Hollywood has become. That does not mean Ellison is MAGA, or that CBS News will become a Trump propaganda device. Wake up.
By the time this happened, most of the media landscape was in the hands of, and under the influence of, the Democratic Party — specifically the leadership that grew up around Barack Obama and came to touch nearly all of American society, from politics to culture to education. If you were online during this period, you remember it, especially if you remember what things were like before.
To Democrats, CBS and Paramount are now fascists. Dumping Stephen Colbert, settling the lawsuit over 60 Minutes, and hiring Bari Weiss are all framed as ways to please Donald Trump and give him more favorable coverage. That has always been part of the mass delusion: they could not stand losing even a tiny bit of power.
There was never a time in my lifetime when late-night comedy was nearly 100 percent in the pocket of one political party. Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, and John Oliver — not to mention SNL and now South Park — are all on one side politically, and that side also happens to be oppressive and totalitarian in its demands. Well, what is even the point? It’s pure propaganda.
South Park used an entire season to prove to its audience that its $1.5 billion deal wasn’t meant to please Trump. Then, as they cashed their fat checks, they won Emmys on top of that. All the Democrats want is ideological compliance. Be like us, think like us, speak like us, vote like us, and you will do fine. Anyone who doesn’t go along is severely punished.
Being a free thinker right now is dangerous. You can be punished, like Ed Sheeran or Pink, for non-compliance. That can be incredibly scary — though it isn’t death. At least not unless you are Charlie Kirk.
Nothing has hurt Hollywood more. I don’t know if David Ellison did this to help move a counterculture revolution along. I hope so. I hope some of the films he’s committed to making are actually good. That was always the problem. When Hollywood served its audiences, people showed up. When it began to serve itself, people got bored.
We lived through something similar in the 1950s, after World War II, when America was becoming stable. It turned into a utopia of the nuclear family, ordinary life, heavily censored art, and sword-and-sandal epics. There was also a hunt to root out Communists and non-conformists that included the Hollywood blacklist. We had subversive art that challenged the system because the artists leaned left, and back then the utopia was conservative.
As you can see, the whole thing has flipped. Now the utopia is on the left, as are the strident rules everyone must follow. The “Communists” are Trump supporters, and that is the only real blacklist we have — despite the whining of people like Mark Ruffalo, who is on the side that still has all of the power, at least culturally.
By the 1960s and 1970s, the counterculture revolution produced some of the greatest films, music, books, and journalism you’d ever seen. That’s what we need now. We need freedom back. Writers need to be able to produce their scripts even if they’re white men. We need artists brave enough to tell the stories Hollywood won’t tell because those stories hurt the Democrats.
The worst thing for Hollywood, and for the media that covers it, is that they do not tell the truth anymore. They are ruled by hysteria. I know firsthand what it feels like to be accused and condemned by them. It’s terrifying.
Bari Weiss was never a Trump supporter, and 60 Minutes hasn’t changed all that much in its coverage. It still looks like what it used to, despite all the hysteria pushed through the media. If she were a Trump supporter, I would understand the reaction. She isn’t. She was just one of the few willing to stand up to the mob when a Twitter swarm came for her in 2020 because she dared to show the view of much of the public: that the military should be brought in if the protests could not be controlled.
She was chased out by bullies online and in the newsroom, much to the shame of the New York Times. She went to Substack, built The Free Press, and it became the most successful publication on the site. That is why she is at 60 Minutes. She’s smart and she’s brave. These kinds of people are in short supply, and we need an army of them.
I’m not impressed that South Park spent a whole season pandering to the mob. I’m not impressed that Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, and John Oliver push propaganda for the Democrats night after night. What is the value in that?
This merger can’t possibly make things worse in Hollywood than they already are. They really need to clean house. Fire everyone and rehire people who want to serve the people of this country — not the aristocrats, not the activists.
Watching those who object to this merger — the guilds, the writers, the influencers, some journalists — is a grim reminder of what became of Hollywood’s empire after fifteen years of Democratic Party cultural rule. They believe that if they throw a massive tantrum, the studios will cave, and often they do. That’s why we’re in this mess, where Hollywood is making movies no one wants to watch.
The people used to matter because they had to. Box office mattered. Ratings mattered. Now, serving at the pleasure of one political movement seems to be how success is measured, especially at the Oscars and the Emmys.
But the Paramount/Warner Bros. merger kicks the doors down and gives us a little of what Hollywood used to be. It is breaking up a monopoly of taste and ideology, not consolidating one. It’s a threat to the keepers of culture, for sure. They fear losing their propaganda network: CBS and CNN.
Look at the ratings for CNN. They’ve been steadily dropping. Why would everyone care so much about losing it? Because it isn’t about ratings. It’s about propaganda.
This was August:
Yes, I understand that inside the doomsday cult they think Trump is “taking everything.” The truth is that they remain a 24/7 attack machine against Trump and his supporters, and have been for ten years. Nothing has changed. What we’ve seen is a war against the utopia they built, and against the man who tried to bust it up and allow the other half of the country some representation.
But wouldn’t it be nice if the people still mattered? If ratings mattered?
The Oscars were better in the days when the people mattered. So were the Emmys. What a shame to see the Emmys lock out popular shows to punish Paramount — like Landman and The Madison — and then expect anyone to care enough to watch. That would be our permanent future were it not for people like Ellison and Musk, who have enough money to help dismantle the ideological monopoly that has overtaken nearly all of culture.
It hasn’t been easy for me to watch what’s happened not just to Hollywood but to all of American culture since 2008. I was on the left and a true believer for most of it. I ran screaming from the room right around 2020, maybe a little before, when I felt the oppressive boot of fascism, totalitarianism, whatever you want to call it. It was here, and the mandate was “conform or else.”
But I was being attacked and swarmed by the left long before my politics changed. I was punished for thinking differently, for challenging the status quo, for speaking my mind. I’ll never forget defending Ansel Elgort on Twitter back in 2020.
It was so bad that a group podcast we were going to do with the Oscar bloggers couldn’t happen. Nearly all of them backed out. I’ll never forget my friend David Poland for being among the few who had the courage to refuse. But we never did the podcast.
I understand that being a target is not for everyone. It’s so much easier to get along to go along. Being a conformist means success, friendship, acceptance. Being a non-conformist right now means being on the outside: hated, attacked.
As I tweeted to a friend with that clip from Lionel Shriver: you aren’t rewarded for being on the outside. People see you as crazy. But when the hysteria dies down, those who had the courage to stand up to the mob are often rewarded.
This clip reminds me of you. You don’t have the conformist gene. Watch the whole thing, especially at the 2-minute mark. https://t.co/Kz0RKIcVkB pic.twitter.com/77wBOuO3Ap
— Sasha Stone (@realsashastone) September 20, 2026
Gavin Newsom played a large part in pushing the deal through because he knew that Paramount leaving Los Angeles would be catastrophic. He at least has one foot in the sane world. But it may cost him in 2028, unless the Democrats can find their way back to sanity. I think someone had to save Hollywood from the iceberg.
No matter what people like Mark Ruffalo say, this is good for Hollywood. It couldn’t possibly get any worse than it is right now. We need a shake-up. We need the market back. We need heroes back.
