Ted Rall for October 20, 2010

Clark, if you were really sorry, then you would keep such risible notions to yourself.

You cannot stop people from giving money. You can stop corporations & other organizations from funding campaigns. You can tax Big Business & the wealthy at a higher rate, some of which money would go to level the playing field, giving more to candidates who had less.

In addition, you can require ALL political giving & spending to be with ALL names attached, and candidates who don’t reveal all the names could have their commercials temporarily stopped.

Finally, we could re-institute the Fairness Doctrine. Ronald Reagan’s killing of that has led to the severe rightward swerve of the media.

As for Rall’s cartoon: It is specious & shallow. I’m sorry that he can’t come up with more substantial comment.

Maybe if the crappier Indian movies win out, then Hollywood will “get the picture” and make better movies. But I doubt it.

Until then, Bollywood, here we come.

Bolloney.

We socialists wake up every morning dreaming of new ways to make everyone unhappy, including ourselves. Oh, and we want to take away your d@mn guns, too.

Chur., Churchill was a socialist.

Ninety-eight percent of Americans are socialists.

YOU, unless you live in a cabin, completely off the grid, generating your own electricity, providing your own plumbing, and walking everywhere you go, are also a socialist.

Churchill was not a socialist, and the threshold for socialism is not municipal plumbing. Socialism involves government ownership and control of businesses, resources, etc. It is not plumbing, public libraries and firemen. It is more like USSR and the current Chinese government.

fennec, I understand what you mean, I was saying this in the context of government because describing Winston Churchill as socialist is way off. It is of course, like anything else, in shades of grey.

But I don’t agree with you that public utilities count as socialism. Socialists did not invent the idea of government run utilities. It seems that anytime someone likes or dislikes something that would exist in socialism, they give socialism credit/blame for inventing it.

Also the same for “community share resources for the good of the community”; Tribal societies have been doing that looong before socialist theories were put to pen.

“Socialism”, to me, is a word used by people who want centrally planned economies like communism, but didn’t like the way “Communists” were operating.

Heh heh. Rall voices his opinion on Hollowwood and starts an argument on socialism. Love it.

BTW, socialism |ˈsō sh əˌlizəm| noun a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole. • policy or practice based on this theory. • (in Marxist theory) a transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of communism.

It all comes down to the belief in “private property” – that there is any basis in nature for anybody to “own” anything. Happiness (and dare I say it, salvation) consists in letting go of attachments. When you ain’t got nothin’, you got nothin’ to lose.

Hardly anybody understands what socialism is, or can be. It’s very depressing.

I suggest googling Sweden.

I flag stupid spammers who draw teddy bears, does that mean I advocate censorship or animal cruelty? LOL!

lorax: I think it’s actually supposed to be a panda – look at the spammer’s screen name.

It’s gone now, I didn’t read the name. I thought it was supposed to be Winnie the Pooh. :)

lorax: The name was “linlinlin” – almost like Ling Ling.

MrDichotomies: “Heh heh. Rall voices his opinion on Hollowwood and starts an argument on socialism. Love it.”

You’re missing the metaphor entirely. The cartoon is far less about Hollywood than it is about Washington DC.

The comparison is apt. Both towns are devoted to industries where a small number of quality products must compete for public attention with a maelstrom of loud, flashy, big-budget drek, designed by committee to “give the people what they want.” Most often, the big-budget drek wins at the box office. Too often, “making movies people want to see” means making BAD movies. Likewise, for a politician to have both ability and “electability” is almost entriely coincidental. The qualities aren’t exactly mutually exclusive, but the one has very little to do with the other…

Actually, this cartoon seems to suggest that movies ARE marketed the way politicians are. Listening to most politicians (from both parties), it wouldn’t surprise me if 95% of all “public servants” weren’t either retarded or certifiably insane. The problem is that the media (the vast majority of it–including the folks who run Hollywood’s most famous product) is ALSO staffed with idiots and citizens of crazy-town.