WE VOTED FOR HOLLYWOOD BEFORE WE VOTED AGAINST IT

The more I look at the facts about the 2008 presidential race, the more convinced I become that Fred Thompson has the best shot at the GOP nomination. I'll save that discussion for a later post (this is what savvy marketers would call a "teaser" and those of us with no marketability call a "handjob") but the swelling Thompson love-fest brings to light just one more example of conservative hypocrisy.

Boy, how the right loves to slam Hollywood – the godless heathens and greedy big-city types (read: Jews) who purvey all manner of Anti-Family sex, gore, and violence in pursuit of the almighty dollar. They mortgage our national soul to make a cheap buck appealing to our basest instincts (note: The GOP would never stoop to appeal to a base instinct like fear). This is true of everyone in Hollywood…unless and until someone from Hollywood opens his or her mouth to let loose torrents of right-wing bullshit.

For a party that gets so much mileage out of bashing Barbara Streisand, the Baldwins, and Martin Sheen, the GOP practically shatters its lower mandible and kneecaps in its haste to fellate its photogenic Tinseltown saviors. Whether we're talking about John Wayne's "man's man" eugenics, Ronald Reagan's enthusiasm for reading well anything that was put in front of him, Charlton Heston's shotgun-waving rants, Kirk Cameron's picking-peanuts-out-of-shit insane version of Christianity, or Amend for Arnold Because We So Love How He Calls Liberals Pussies, the right is one enormous hypocrite when it comes to Hollywood. Hollywood is awful – except for Chuck Norris, Charles Barkley, Bruce Willis, or whoever else is "brave" enough to buck their liberal environment and carry water for the PNAC.

Enter Fred Thompson. It's so shameful and disgusting how the left caters to the Hollywood crowd and cashes in on Speilberg-hosted fund raisers. The GOP will stick to good ol' down-home Americana as its base of support – represented, of course, by a Hollywood actor. But he's an anomaly. So was Reagan. So is Arnold. So was Steve Largent. And Jim Bunning. And JC Watts. And Tom Osborne. And Jack Kemp. And Clint Eastwood. And Fred Grandy. And every other celebrity welcomed as a candidate by GOP.

Whether the media and the GOP base are lauding Thompson's "photogenic" qualities (a welcome by-product of his screen time, they say), his odor, or his glamourous lifestyle (read: his wife is half his age and looks like a Botox billboard), average man Fred sure is getting a warm reception. I understand, of course, that this is largely a result of how horrid the GOP field is at the moment. Nevertheless I am pulling up a chair and getting some popcorn. Time to sit back, relax, and see how the right manages to use its tired but reliable Hollywood-bashing-to-please-Dobson shtick while handing its nomination to the star of a dozen really violent films.

And, as usual, I'd like to thank our friends in the mainstream media for unquestioningly and uncritically buying every last drop of the Thompson Is So Magnetic spin. They do America proud by repeating, unfiltered, everything that paid publicists say about a person or issue.