How Female Oriented Is Network TV?

Just how female oriented is network TV? Very. Almost all shows are oriented towards women, and almost none are oriented towards men. Don't believe me? Look below.


Recently, Ed Bernero sat down for an interview with Deadline Hollywood Daily, and was quite candid about how the business runs. Go ahead, read the whole thing, you won't find a more thoughtful and candid assessment of TV as a business and as as creative process. But Bernero had some strong things to say about TV's gender problem:

DH: When you look at the CBS lineup, I guess it’s the network that seems to have a lock on crime with the multiple CSI’s and Criminal Minds – but it’s controlled by two women, Nina Tassler and Nancy Tellem. And my understanding is that they are looking for more shows that have more female appeal. I just wondered what the deal is.

EB: That’s a point I’ve thought about a lot in developing over the last few years. Let’s see if I can say this without ending my development career. It’s very female, development. Development staffs are almost all female. It’s not that easy to get a male skewed show through development.

DH: Interesting.

EB: Most of the network television audience now is primarily women, but I think that’s because the shows are developed to appeal to women. I don’t know that there are too many shows that appeal to guys anymore. I’m not sure why that is, but I think that it may have something to do with the fact that most development staffs are women. I know it’s the case at CBS. I know it’s the case at ABC. Not that these are not brilliant women, but there’s a completely different sensibility in men and women, in what men watch and what women watch. Part of the erosion of network television is that men watch sports – there’s not that much on for them. There are not shows that have male themes. That’s all I want to say about that.

DH: And yet at CBS, besides the crime shows even the popular comedies are male-oriented, Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory.

EB: But Two and a Half Men is not male-oriented, it’s made to appeal to women. Charlie Sheen is playing a bad boy who can be changed…

DH: It’s got a lot of jokes that my husband likes.

EB: But it’s safe.

DH: What is male oriented?

EB: For example, almost all dramas are families, they are work families – ER is a good example, Criminal Minds is a good example. We have a character who is the mother, a character who is the father, a brother and a sister, we have the younger brother that everybody protects, we have the cute cousin…it’s very much a family, and I think that very much appeals to women.
You don’t see loners anymore, you don’t see a Mannix or a Rockford Files or something where it’s a tough guy standing against the world. It doesn’t appeal to women. Guys like a guy who stands up for right, and the Hawaii Five-0 that we were going to write, the issue was sort of like living up to your father, being a cop in a world where your father was a great cop, that’s really a male theme. Women don’t really compete with their mothers; men compete with their fathers. I know I had gotten into many conversations where people didn’t understand why it was important that the character be in competition with his father…men compete with their fathers.

DH: Men compete with everybody. Everything’s a competition.
EB: Right. Two and a Half Men is an example. Those two don’t really compete with each other. It’s not really two brothers living with each other, because two brothers living together don’t get along that well.

DH: Aren’t they like The Odd Couple?

EB: But The Odd Couple is different, because in the 1970s, the "Odd Couple" didn’t like each other. They competed with each other in ways that these two don’t. Because at the base of it all, they [Two and Half Men’s characters] really love each other.

DH: More like My Two Dads.

EB: It’s a subtle thing, but it’s very female-centered. Now, I don’t mean to say that I don’t love doing shows that women like – women like Criminal Minds, and women weren’t supposed to like this show. Our core audience is 35-40 year old women, who I think are an amazing audience. It didn’t surprise me at all, when you put on the show where those women are the primary targets of these monsters, and you put on a show where our team saves women from them every week, I don’t know how this couldn’t appeal to them.

DH: And women are very interested in character, as opposed to what you’re saying -- that sometimes men just like a straight-on hero who does it right.

EB: Yes, I think it’s extremely difficult to get a male themed show on television.

DH: The people who are running the networks are men, but the so-called creative executives, that whole level is mostly female.

EB: If you say this, make sure that you say that I’m not necessarily saying that’s bad…

DH: Just that it’s true.

EB: The TV audience is primarily female, so it’s not a bad thing…

DH: But if you have something that works on that male level, it’s hard to get it through.

EB: What gets made that’s considered for men – it’s really just T&A stuff. It’s not stuff than any guy I know really wants to watch, you know, the stuff with jiggling boobs and all that. Something with real sort of male themes and male strength and things I want to watch in a drama….

DH: The things men want to be respected for…

EB: Yeah, sort of the things that appeal to us, the things we compete for. Macho in a different sense, the kind of things that we think makes us a man. It doesn’t really exist right now. I really don’t want it to seem that I think it’s a problem that women are in development, I don’t think it’s as problem at all, I just think it’s an interesting time that we’re in. And maybe long overdue – maybe television for a long time was made for men and it’s long overdue.

DH: I’m hearing the hero thing, how important that is to men, it’s not just about being understood in a touchy-feely way.

EB: No, not at all, it’s more about being misunderstood, but doing right anyway -- it’s Rockford and Mannix and all that kind of thing. Those kinds of icons don’t exist anymore. But I also love Glee. I watch it with my wife; I loved Desperate Housewives in the first couple of years. It’s not bad, it’s just something that I notice.

Bernero confirms the obvious, women dominate network TV's development process, even if network chiefs are male. This domination of the development process prevents most male-oriented shows from being put forward as pilots which are then picked up. Women want different things than men do, in dramas. Absent completely are the loners who do the right thing because it must be done, and instead are the constant families making TV a dull, bland mono-culture. This is why there is no Rockford Files, no Mannix, no Maverick, with competition and toughness. Indeed the TV audience is profoundly female, and it may be why the excellent "Life" failed to find an audience, featuring a tough hero, in competition with his father, who tried to do the right thing, even though or especially because it was difficult. Not even a strong female character could compensate for the lack of the female-friendly TV family, a staple among the prime-time crime time shows like CSI'en, or "the Mentalist" or the other procedurals.

In an April post, TV By The Numbers ran an analysis of the male-female skewness of the broadcast networks, as reported by Nielsen, for Sunday-Thursday (no Fri-Sat shows). The results are at the link, and the table below:

1.00 = equal ratings for men and women 18-49

Below 1.0 = more men

Above 1.0 = more women



Show	Women/Men 18-49
Simpsons	0.67
Family Guy	0.68
Cleveland Show	0.71
Chuck	0.83
Fringe	0.95
24	0.97
V	1.00
Dateline NBC	1.00
Til Death	1.00
Rules Of Engagement	1.04
Minute to Win It	1.06
Office	1.06
60 Minutes	1.07
Trauma	1.13
Two And A Half Men	1.19
Big Bang Theory	1.19
NCIS	1.19
Community	1.20
How I Met Your Mother	1.21
Accidentally On Purpose	1.21
Celebrity Apprentice	1.22
NCIS:LA	1.25
Lost	1.25
Supernatural	1.27
30 Rock	1.27
Modern Family	1.28
CSI: Miami	1.29
House	1.31
The Middle	1.31
Bones	1.33
Old Christine	1.38
Survivor: Heroes v. Villians	1.40
Mentalist	1.46
FlashForward	1.46
CSI	1.55
CSI:NY	1.55
Criminal Minds	1.57
Extreme Makeover Home Edition	1.62
American Idol - Tues	1.64
Marriage Ref	1.64
The Good Wife	1.65
American Idol - Wed	1.67
Law & Order	1.73
Glee	1.76
Law & Order:SVU	1.84
Cougar Town	1.89
90210	2.00
Parenthood	2.00
Castle	2.00
The Vampire Diaries	2.00
Mercy	2.00
The Biggest Loser	2.06
Desperate Housewives	2.19
DWTS Tues	2.36
Brothers & Sisters	2.43
One Tree Hill	2.50
DWTS Mon	2.64
Private Practice	2.71
Gossip Girl	2.83
Fly Girls	3.00
High Society	3.00
Grey's Anatomy	3.18
America's Next Top Model	3.50

From the post itself:

Note: The list contains the ratio of the ratings for women 18-49 to men 18-49 for the airing of each show in the past week with several caveats: (1) I took the ratings for both repeats and original episodes. Maybe repeats have a different gender skew than originals for the same show, but going back over more than one week was too much work. (2) We only see gender information for shows broadcast on Sunday-Thursday, so no Friday or Saturday shows in the list. (3) This is a ratio of the gender ratings, not the number of men and women viewers. There are slightly more women 18-49 than men 18-49 in the TV population, but the difference is so small I didn’t bother going through an extra step.

There are a few surprises. American Idol is not as completely female skewing as you might imagine (likely families watch together, it is relatively innocuous). Castle has the same male-female skew (very girly) as "Vampire Diaries" and "Parenthood" and "Mercy." The various crime time prime-time procedurals are fairly female skewing. Apparently, almost no men at all will watch "America's Next Top Model," the girly-ness outweighing any scantily clad models. Only "the Simpsons" and "Family Guy" are fairly male skewing, with "Chuck" and "the Cleveland Show" having more male viewers percentage wise than "24" and "Fringe" (which barely have more male viewers than female ones). There are only three perfectly balanced shows (as many men as women watching).

But most of the shows, 57 out of 63, are either balanced (only three are) or are female skewing. Only 6 shows are male skewing, and two of those, "24" and "Fringe" are barely male skewing. TV is overwhelmingly skewed towards women, something simply watching the ads will tell anyone.

Broadcast networks are completely dependent on women, and even if they wanted to, lack the development people needed (i.e. straight men) to shepherd anything remotely interesting for men through development and into pilot and then production. If and when, advertisers decide they need to reach men, they will reduce (though of course not eliminate) spending on broadcast TV. This makes the networks, already operating on slim margins, sitting on a time bomb. Just waiting for it to go off.
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Home Ownership: The End of the American Dream

When reading newspapers, magazines, and online stories, it is important to remember that journalists are mostly, lazy hacks who write whatever Journolist or other co-ordinated efforts tell them to write, often pushing the Democratic Party line of the day. Journalists (hacks) basically re-write press releases and issue it as news, sometimes not even re-writing the press release. Often the two (re-issuing press releases, parroting the Democratic Party message of the day) efforts are combined. So when the Financial Times and USA Today both proudly trumpet "the end of Home Ownership" as a goal by people close to the Obama Administration, it is wise to take a look at why this goal is being pushed, and the inevitable consequences. Neither of which, predictably, is good for America. The Death of the American Dream (of home ownership) will have significant and long-lasting costs.


The Financial Times article may be found here. Money quotes include:

“The goals of housing policy should be that people are well housed, not necessarily that they are homeowners,” says Raphael Bostic, a senior official at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Mr Bostic’s views differ from the administrations of Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, which tried to expand ownership. “We want sustainable home ownership, not just home ownership for ownership’s sake,” Mr Bostic says.

Ownership rates have already fallen from their pre-crisis peak and any further decline could be damaging for Democrats as they head into the November midterm elections. Nearly 10 per cent of borrowers are at least 90 days behind on their mortgages in the average Congressional district, more than two-and-a-half times the rate on election day 2008, according to a Deutsche Bank study. Democratic districts tend to have more troubled borrowers than Republican districts, suggesting Democrats might face greater voter anger over housing.

...

Australia, Ireland, Spain and the UK all have higher home ownership rates than America, and although those countries have suffered from the housing bubble’s collapse, none has suffered quite as much as the US. One reason is that American home buyers had greater access to cheap credit, created by a Wall Street securitisation machine that bundled mortgages, many of which were high-risk subprime debt, into bonds and sold them to investors around the world.

...

US policymakers have long upheld the benefits of home ownership, including the creation of safer, more stable communities. Studies have even shown that children of homeowners perform better in school than children of tenants. But now some researchers are starting to rethink those assumptions, arguing that a community of renters can be just as stable, so long as those renters are encouraged to stay in their properties for a long time. New York City, which has a large number of renters and also communities that are civically minded, is a prime example. “The benefits of home ownership are largely a myth,” says Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a left-leaning think-tank.

...


Some government officials have started to play down the benefits of home ownership. Speaking in January at a meeting of the American Economic Association, Karen Pence, the Federal Reserve’s chief researcher for household and real estate, argued that homes were a terrible investment. Emphasising that she was speaking for herself and not on behalf of the Fed, Ms Pence said that unlike stocks and bonds, homes were an indivisible asset. “You can’t just slice off your bathroom and sell it,” she said. And because home prices are closely tied to the job market, what amounts to the largest financial asset for most people would decline in value just when they needed it most.

There is another downside to generous subsidies funnelled to homeowners, namely that the US is potentially investing too little in other important areas such as education, infrastructure and technology. At the height of the housing bubble in 2006, for instance, mortgages accounted for nearly half of all US debt issued that year, about double the historical norm, according to Haver Analytics. “We’ve over-emphasised our investment in housing and neglected to invest in education and infrastructure,” says Bill Gross, who, as the founder of Pimco, is the manager of the largest bond fund in the world. “We need to refocus on the production of ‘things’ rather than the production of financial products and houses.”

Administration officials have hinted that they plan to do just that by scaling back some support for government-backed home loans in a broad overhaul of housing finance.

USA Today's story is here. Notable quotes include:


Federal housing policy offers the wealthiest Americans billions in tax breaks without delivering much bang for the buck in increased homeownership, critics told government policymakers Tuesday.

"We aren't getting our money's worth," Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Analytics, said at a government conference on reforming housing policy.
The government spent $230 billion last year to promote homeownership through tax breaks and spending programs. The biggest chunk — $80 billion — went toward the mortgage interest deduction, according to the Congressional Budget Office.


Michael Stegman, housing policy specialist at the MacArthur Foundation, said the mortgage tax break goes primarily to the wealthiest households. A study this year by the Tax Policy Center of the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute noted that the mortgage deduction was worth just $91 a year to families earning less than $40,000 — and $5,459 a year to those making more than $250,000.
The government, seeking to overhaul the housing market after the collapse of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is unlikely to touch the politically sacrosanct deduction anytime soon.
But analysts suggested that the government's debt — $8.8 trillion and growing — meant that housing subsidies might one day face the knife. "We can't afford it," Zandi said.
The U.S. homeownership rate (66.9%) is about the same as Canada's and is lower than Australia, Ireland, Spain and Britain's even though "these countries provide far less government support for homeownership," Michael Lea of San Diego State University wrote this year.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told the conference "there's no clear consensus yet" on reforming the way mortgages are financed. He promised "fundamental change" in the way Fannie and Freddie do business: They used an implicit government guarantee to borrow cheap money and make big bets in the housing market. When their gamble went bad, taxpayers picked up the tab.

Messages, co-ordinated from government officials and Democratic think tanks, and government dependent ratings agencies (Moody's like the others is dependent on the good-will of the Obama Administration not launch investigations into how they rated junk CDOs that went bust in the 2008 melt-down, and regulations that could put them out of business)?

Message 1: People should not own houses, because every place can be turned into rent-controlled New York City, on the Upper East Side.

Message 2: Mortgage deductions are bad for the budget, and Europe doesn't have them [America must ALWAYS copy Europe in every little detail.]

Message 3: Owning a house is no better and actually "worse" than renting in creating stable and prosperous communities.

Message 4: The financial crash was caused by home owners borrowing too much money, and therefore economic stability requires far less home ownership.

Message 5: Only "rich people" benefit from home mortgage deductions, let's eliminate home ownership as a goal for most Americans.

Message 6: Homes are a terrible investment.

Message 7: We invest too much in housing, and not enough in education and infrastructure (and sub-rosa, welfare spending and Democratic pork).

Taken altogether, the co-ordinated propaganda message dutifully spewed out by the Press means only one thing:

Obama plans to end mortgage deductions. He also plans to end Fannie and Freddie guarantees for home loans (something Barney Frank now backs, a switch from his position just a few months ago).

Why?

Because the Obama Administration is running out of money for its ambitious program of "transfer the wealth." The primary objective of Barack Obama and the people around him is to transfer money from ordinary (mostly White) Americans to the pockets of intermediaries like Rev. Wright, Louis Farrakhan, ACORN, Jessie Jackson, Bill Ayers, Civil Rights attorneys, Shirley Sherrod, and the like on behalf of Black and Hispanic residents and citizens.

Looking ahead to the fall mid-term elections, a Republican House (likely) and fewer Democratic Senators (likely) will mean that Obama's ambitious program to transfer that wealth will be constrained in the areas of "cap and tax" and "green" idiocy, and even using the EPA to do so by executive order can be problematic, given the House's ability to probe all sorts of financial dealings and sweetheart deals that are likely to be given out to favored Democratic constituencies. The Value Added Tax, a favorite of Obama's (because it hits Whites with middle class consumption patterns hardest, and is what Europe does), seems dead on arrival.

In addition, Fannie and Freddie are falling apart. There are trillions "off the books" in liabilities, there is essentially no private market for mortgages any more, even those with good credit histories, well established, with solid earnings records and little risk. Given the uncertain condition of the world economy, and the US failure to provide any employment gains against what Vice President Joe Biden calls the permanent loss of more than 8 million jobs, this is understandable.

But there is another reason behind the "Death of the American Dream" to turn Americans into a nation of renters. It is simple racial animus, on the part of Obama, and his Chicago cronies (like Valerie Jarrett) who are Black, and class animus against ordinary middle class White Americans, by the rich, White elites that form the backbone of Obama's supporters and administration.

Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy was supposed to have said, upon learning to her horror that the cars in the private chapel on her estate belonged to the servants, "What's the point of being rich if ordinary people can have nice things too?"

This is the primary motivating factor behind the instinctive push for ending home ownership for most Americans, and turning them into a nation of transient renters.

It is true, that as Steve Sailer, and others have noted, expanding home ownership to those with no chance of paying back the mortgages, was insane and spread the defaults globally. Offering a strawberry picker who made $14,000 a year a $670,000 mortgage, as "The Big Short" author Michael Lewis ("Moneyball," "Liars Poker") notes, was bound to go bad. Massive reforms on how CDOs (collateralized debt obligations) were rated, sold, and "cloned" were, and are needed. That mortgages were securitized and sold to investors wanting streams of cash, was not in itself a bad thing. That the mortgages were mostly junk, bound to fail, and sold as investment (near riskless) grade is something straightforward to address. Much of the blame falls on lazy, and greedy investors who failed to do their due diligence.

Moreover, the decline in home ownership rates (as the Financial Times chart makes clear) is due to not the absence of easy credit, but the decline in real wages. As noted by Citizen.org, US wages have stagnated since the 1970's, largely as the result of foreign wage competition. "In 1973, the average hourly wage for American workers, in today's dollars, was $17.26 while in 2007 it was up less than 1 percent to $1742. Over the same period, US workers average productivity nearly doubled." In the 1980's, the competition from first Mexico, then China, drove down wages of blue collar workers. In the 1990's and onwards, competition from outsourcing drove down the wages of white collar workers, along with job losses as manufacturing moved to China or Vietnam. That Boeing has an assembly plant in Vietnam for the wings of the new Dreamliner, is indicative how far manufacturers will chase cheap labor, and as noted in the Financial Times:


Mr Johansson, the head of the European Roundtable of Industrialists (ERT) and also chief executive of truckmaker Volvo, told the Financial Times that public debate was focusing on the wrong issue.

"We have much too much discussion about labour costs. What we really need to be concerned about is that we have the right skills and education."
...
He added: "We have too few young people all in all, and too few young people going into engineering. We are beginning to see real competition coming from India and China in, for example, highly-qualified engineers."

The view of the ERT is highly significant because it is made up of business leaders in charge of companies with revenues of €1,600bn ($1,980bn) and 6.5m employees.

He railed against the idea that Europe can live off knowledge only and keep research and development while letting manufacturing drift to lower-cost countries.
"There needs to be a political debate: how can we compete?
"It is a false model that we can live off knowledge and have manufacturing elsewhere. Over time manufacturing and R&D go hand in hand."

America, even more than Europe, has not been able to keep income rising. Cheap credit, and falling prices for electronic goods, primarily computers, and new gadgets like IPods, IPads, IPhones, and the like provided the illusion of growing income, which was based on credit and fairly cheap imported Chinese goods, also including textiles and shoes, and the like. Dub it the "Wal-Mart model of prosperity." Which was illusory.

For big ticket items, like homes and cars, America remained mired in low or static income growth, as energy costs rose and desirable places to live increased in value (due to mass immigration of poor, Mexicans, making previously nice, pleasant, middle class places into barrios ridden with crime).

America has a housing problem. But it is really just an extension of low wage growth, and mass immigration. Middle class Americans traditionally own homes in their later middle ages as a retirement place. They aim to have no more mortgage payments, and own their homes free and clear, so they can adjust to much lower retirement (and fixed) incomes when they do retire. Thus the pattern of Americans is to move around, chasing jobs, until the final job near retirement allows a free-and-clear title to a middle class home, in a neighborhood unlikely to change anytime soon (for the worse). Young people will take a risk on gentrification, older folks closer to retirement seek to cash out equity when they move to their final home, and pay off their mortgage.

Obama does have levers available to him, either through lame-duck legislation, after the November elections, but before a new Congress is seated, or through regulation. He can if he wishes end mortgage deductions, to raise more money that can be distributed to his supporters. ACORN, Jessie Jackson, Louis Farrakhan (and the Nation of Islam), perhaps the Annenberg Challenge and Bill Ayers, or the Gates Foundation, with Ayer's brother. [The Gates Foundation, by the way, explicitly excludes White children from scholarships, only non-Whites need apply.] He can instruct Tim Geithner, Treasury Secretary, to have Fannie and Freddie stop purchasing home mortgages, or slow that down, creating far fewer home purchases, and using the money for say, ACORN initiatives or salaries for local government employees through Federal Block Grants.

These are all very attractive prospects to Obama, and the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy folks in the Media, Think-Tanks, Democratic politics, and the like.

It will however, come with a cost. Rentals are places that impose significant downward pressures on White middle class families. Pet ownership is forbidden in most of them. Rentals are in areas with bad schools, mostly non-White majority. The surest way, as Steve Sailer noted, to turn White kids into non-White hating adults, is to have them beaten up every day by non-Whites. Which is guaranteed in non-White majority school districts. White middle class people, accustomed to owning their own homes, will suddenly and irrevocably be placed in fairly squalid rentals, with much lower living standards (no more backyard barbecues, no more dogs or cats as pets, no more small garden, no more sunning themselves in the backyard in private, no more living in relative privacy). The neighborhood is likely to be considerably downscale, transient, and fairly non-White. [Few places in America resemble NYC's Upper East Side.]

This as America is filled with empty spaces, simply begging for spread-out houses, particularly away from the water-constrained coasts, and Chicago/NYC style water constrained metropolises. There is no particular reason for say, the Dallas-Fort Worth area not to build out, other than keeping Whites cheek and jowl with non-Whites.

And this is a dangerous and irrevocable step. As Whites lose guilt over segregation and slavery, a development already well underway, they are likely to resent terribly being pushed into non-White majority areas with the "crime tax" imposed upon them, and demand vigorous, non-PC, and non "disparate impact" or "racial profiling" concerned policing. In other words, move the White majority into rental housing in non-White areas, and they will reliably demand that police crack down hard, without any concern over racial profiling, on non-Whites.

America's social peace has been bought by private home ownership, by Whites realistically fearing non-White crime and retaliation (for past wrongs), living in safe, removed, mostly White suburbs. Move Whites out of safe, removed, White-majority suburbs, in large numbers, and they will fight. If not to return to the suburbs, to move non-Whites out of the rental areas.

Something similar has already happened in Britain. As noted by the Daily Mail, the English Defense League has grown from a few members to several thousand members in just a year. Over 10,000 were predicted at the Bradford match (likely to be banned). Yes, of course the EDL is made up of mostly White soccer hooligans. But the issue is simple: who does Britain belong to? Muslim "conquerors" who came to "take over" or the natives (who have nowhere else to go). Of course England's destiny is violent (and quite possibly a Muslim take-over). The EDL members may be yobs, but they are trapped. They don't have the income or education to flee to Switzerland, or the south of France's rural areas, or other places English folks from the Upper classes are escaping to. Thus, a running street fight that never ends.

America is much bigger. It can, probably, absorb (though not without huge costs including social and political) some portion of the illegal aliens and their descendants already present in the US. That of course supposes a vast physical separation by virtue of middle class, safe suburbs providing a safety valve for social discontent as Whites are made a minority in their own nation, for no reason anyone explained. Obama's obvious plan to turn most aspiring home owners into renters is likely to produce the US version of the EDL. With the end of White Guilt, the result is likely to be a simple, and ugly battle over turf "ownership."

The nation is in the best of hands.
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The Best Take on the Future of 3-D Films

'Nuff Said. ...Read more

3 D Won't Save Hollywood from the DVD Collapse

The Financial Times reports that films without a broad audience, but made in 3-D, are flopping. The 3-D craze, indeed, may be killing Hollywood's effort to find a way out of the DVD collapse. Even films like "Eat Pray Love" are getting in on the merchandising business with handbags, t-shirts, necklaces, day beds, wines, and more featured in the movie sold on Home Shopping Network. Considering the fairly anemic gross of the movie's opening weekend box office ($23 million), as an indicator of interest, even the best-selling (9 million copies) Elizabeth Gilbert novel could not turn out the opening weekend box office of $31 million for "Sex and the City 2". Thus the futile search for new technology, and new "deals" to save the business model of Hollywood.


Ed Driscoll notes that the business of Hollywood consists of making "dark and edgy" material that does not appeal to audiences but Hollywood insiders. “Making something commercially successful and appealing to a broad public, like The Incredibles, is less likely to get a Rebecca Romijn look-alike to sleep with you than making dark, hard-hitting, critically acclaimed material like Million Dollar Baby,” the post quotes Michael Medved. That business model was sustainable as long as movies like "Rocky Balboa" brought in lots of revenue through DVD sales. Yesterday, I saw that very same movie on sale in the local supermarket for $6.99. The movie is four years old, being released in 2006. As the LA Times noted last year, DVD sales are collapsing, with films like "Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull" that do well in box office but poorly in exit polls and word-of-mouth, under perform vs. say, "Iron Man" that retain audience affection. Films that pump up box office by mega-marketing don't bring in revenue anymore, with tight wallets and the loss of DVDs as a novelty. "Hancock" also under-performed, in DVD sales, vs. family films like "Madagascar" or "Wall-E."

The LA Times article noted:

Although studios are extremely secretive with DVD numbers, especially the figures involving conversion rates, I was able to study one studio list of the films that performed the worst, in terms of conversion from box office to DVD. It was a long list. Films that fared poorly included a host of year-end releases whose DVDs arrived this spring. They included such box-office hits as "Quantum of Solace," "Yes Man," "Seven Pounds" and "Saw V." The list also included a huge number of adult-oriented awards-season films, from "The Reader" and "Milk" to the Oscar winner itself, "Slumdog Millionaire."

To understand what this all means is to first understand how complicated it is to interpret the numbers from the DVD end of the business. For example, did "Slumdog Millionaire" have a disappointing showing in DVD because everyone who really wanted to see the film had gone to a theater? Or did it perform poorly because Wal-Mart, by far the biggest single outlet for DVD sales, especially with the demise of more upscale retail outlets like Circuit City, is not a hospitable home for an exotic specialty film? Even top-ranking studio executives admit that much of the DVD business is a mystery to them. I was on the phone with one high-level executive who insisted that the DVD business was down only 10% to 12% until he grabbed hold of a new study on his desk, skimmed the cover sheet and said, "Hmmm, I take that back -- this study says it's down 18%."

The problem is that studios have invested years in obfuscating their DVD profits, fearful that A-list actors and filmmakers would get wind of how much money was pouring in and want a bigger piece of the action. By Sunday, everyone knows what movies made in theaters -- it's a carefully monitored cash business. DVD has little of that transparency, especially with some DVDs being rentals, while others are sell-through purchases, making the numbers more difficult to quantify. When studios announce their opening day DVD numbers, they aren't actual sales figures--the numbers represent the amount of DVDs shipped to stores. The DVDs that don't sell get shipped back to the studio. The industry abounds with stories of studios who have warehouses full to the ceiling with DVDs that went unsold and were shipped back, left to rot in storage. 

Secrecy is still the order of the day. DVD numbers are so well hidden that when one studio chief was preparing a budget estimate for a British period project, he asked his home video people how many DVDs Focus Features had actually sold of "Atonement." He still doesn't know -- nobody in home video could come up with a good answer.

No one has any real answers about the DVD downturn either. Obviously the country's economic woes have played a role. The DVD business has long ago lost its novelty, so many consumers don't feel the need to stock up on as many new releases. Many consumers have turned to downloading and rentals, with Netflix in particular enjoying a burst of popularity -- a good thing for filmmakers, but not such a good thing for studios, who make a lower profit margin on rentals than sales. 

More recent news stories have estimated DVD sales slides to more than 25% from the prior year. This is not good news for Hollywood. Which is locked in to its model of making movies for itself, so the forces behind the "dark, edgy" movies can "sleep with a Rebecca Romijn look-alike" by getting accolades from their peers. Think about this: John Lasseter has produced for Pixar, hit after hit after hit, with movies that under perform vs. expectations or other Pixar films, still very profitable. Yet because he resolutely produces family fare, he has less power, prestige, and imitation than say, Quentin Tarantino or Oliver Stone, two writer-directors with not very many hits but a cult reputation for being "dark" and "edgy." Hollywood did not need to copy Lasseter, it had an easy stream of first Video Cassette revenue, and then DVD revenue. Which has now declined inevitably, as bad content, hurting wallets, and the end of DVD novelty brings the great Hollywood cash boom to an end.

Larry Meyers at Big Hollywood believes that the Netflix deal to acquire streaming video rights from Epix, the joint venture between Lionsgate, MGM, and Paramount, is a deal changer. The deal really is not a game-changer. Among other things, MGM is essentially a dead studio, with the value of "dead" studio Miramax's film library set during its recent sale at around $900,000 or so per movie. Lionsgate and Paramount don't release many films any more, not to the extent that say, Warners, or Fox do year in and out. The deal won't really transform Hollywood significantly, contra Meyers.

Because the biggest problem is not HOW people watch movies and television (serial) entertainment, it is WHAT is offered to them.

Consistently, people will pay (but not too much) for good, solid content. As the Financial Times graphic points out, family oriented animated films do well, "edgy" stuff from M. Night Shymalan or exploitation fare ("Step Up 3D") do not do well. Even if they are in 3-D. Which after all dates from the 1950,s and was famously mocked by SCTV decades ago as "Dr Tongue's Three D House of Stewardesses":



As the FT story notes:

Yet, a string of recent 3D films has stumbled at the box office, notably Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore, which flopped, and Step Up 3D, which made less than the first two films in the dance series, both of which were released in 2D.

Hollywood studios like 3D because consumers have so far been willing to pay a premium to see the films. But with 3D tickets costing as much as 50 per cent more than comparable 2D films, analysts have expressed doubts about whether consumer appetite for the format can be sustained – particularly if the films are poor.

“The studios and theatres are overpricing 3D films and there’s too much of it out there,” said Richard Greenfield, an analyst with BTIG Research.

“They are converting all of their movies into 3D without any regard to quality.”

A US ticket for Cats & Dogs, which was panned by critics, cost up to 50 per cent more than Christopher Nolan’s Inception, which was released in 2D recently to great critical acclaim. Yet Cats & Dogs cost less to make than Inception and was only converted into 3D after production had finished.

“Why should releasing a film in 3D and having the audience wear 3D glasses cost more?” asked Mr Greenfield.

...

Proponents of 3D insist that it can be a powerful tool when used correctly. “It’s a tool for filmmakers and a premium entertainment experience for moviegoers,” says Rick Heineman, vice-president of marketing at RealD, which makes 3D projection systems for cinemas.

But other analysts say Hollywood is playing a risky game by betting on unwavering consumer enthusiasm for 3D – and for higher prices.

“The studios are guilty of short-term thinking,” says Brandon Gray, president of Box Office Mojo, which tracks film box-office performance. “They all jumped on the 3D bandwagon but they’re avoiding the real issue, which is their bankruptcy regarding storytelling.” [Emphasis added]

Patrick Goldstein at the LAT seems to think that Hollywood can stave off irrelevance by offering the theater equivalent of box seats and corporate luxury boxes found in Baseball and Football stadiums. Or that the real threat to Hollywood is people watching on IPads or phones, instead of DVD players connected to TVs or in theaters.

Hollywood has the ability to get paid, if it makes broadly accessible movies and TV series that people will pay to see, in one form or another. Jimmy Iovine believes bad Ipod earbuds and mp3 mixes are destroying the music business. Instead of, bad music that no one cares about to begin with. If you've heard one Lady Gaga techno mix, you've heard them all. Regardless if the sound is in full, CD quality mastering, or even analog recording, with great speakers or headphones.


“The people we work with spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year getting the sound exactly right.” But then, says Iovine, his emotions rising, much of what has been so carefully captured in the studio recording process has to be “dumbed down” or compressed by 20-25 per cent to be copied on to a CD, before being further compressed into an MP3 file format for playing on a computer or mobile phone with a sound processor likely to have cost just 50 cents. Sound quality is lost at every step of the process. “That’s like taking the Beatles master [recording] and playing it through a portable television,” he says with revulsion. Ramping up the similes, he points out that 80 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds listen to music at home through computers whose speakers, typically, “make the helicopters in Apocalypse Now sound like mosquitoes”.

Bad sound, he warns, is destroying the music business.

Yet the Beatles made most of their sales, back in the era of cheap, tinny transistor radios broadcasting over mono (not stereo) AM radio. The richness and warmth of their music came out loud and clear, as did Elvis Presley's, or Buddy Holly's, or Frank Sinatra's, or Duke Ellington's and Louis Armstrong's music decades before them. Good music


Beats’ founders have ambitions far beyond headphones. “This is only the beginning of something huge,” Dr Dre claims. Iovine concurs: “Beats is a headphone now but it’s [also] an idea to fix the ecosystem of music.” Together, they intend to develop music’s answer to the Blu-ray disc or 3D movie, a premium technology that helps a business hurt by illegal downloading.

For most people, high fidelity in music went out with the hi-fi, sacrificed for the portability of the Walkman, Apple’s desirable iPods and the tinny MP3 format used by countless peer-to-peer websites, mobile phones and also-ran digital music players.

The music business did not suffer when people purchased mostly 45 rpm singles, cheap and ubiquitous, in the Presley-Beatles era. Musicians and labels still made money in the Cassette era, and then the CD era, as consumers left the "warm sound" of LPs for more portable and durable formats. Having music with you, was more important than great sound that was not portable.

The music business only came a cropper when bad content drove out good. Copying and making "mix tapes" was pretty rampant, and impacted sales. But enough good music remained even through the 1980's to make copying by cassette tape (and later CD recorders) a minor matter. It was only when U2 became the next generation of the Rolling Stones, a "legacy" super-group instead of an up and coming band, and Britney Spears, or Justin Timberlake, or utterly interchangeable rap stars became the dominant musical choices, that the music industry revenues fell apart.

The same thing is happening in the movie industry. As the music labels could not and would not find young musical talent with widespread appeal, instead choosing to create manufactured talent like Justin Bieber with appeal to pre-teen girls and their mothers, or variations of rap, so too the movie and TV industry wants the same thing: to appear "hard" or "edgy" or "hip" and create formulaic junk that few outside a group of "one quadrant" (say young women) want to see.

3 D movies won't save Hollywood any more than Dr. Tongue could. Deals for streaming won't save Hollywood, or doom it either. The key is always, content. If Hollywood makes movies that most people like, the studios will make money from them streaming them to phones, or IPads, or Netbooks, or whatever, as folks take entertainment on the go. If they don't, they won't. Simple as that.
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Twin Tragedies: Masculine Heroism and Feminine Partying

Two tragedies, separated by a couple of months, both featuring young people in the LA area, highlight the extreme differences in masculine (and feminine) behavior by people who are not that dissimilar in race/ethnicity, but miles apart in how they behave. Incidentally, it highlights the benefits society reaps and the costs it incurs when masculine behavior is erased and passive, feminine playfulness replaced in young men. In the Mojave Desert, when disaster struck, people reacted instantly to help as best as they could. In the LA Coliseum, total chaos reigned.

[BIG FAT WARNING. Electric Daisy Carnival pictures below the Jump are NSFW. Some not in a "good way" either. Read on at your own risk. Did I mention, NSFW?]


First, the recent Lucerne Valley tragedy, where the California 200, staged in the Mojave Desert, ended in disaster with at least 8 people dead, more seriously hurt, as a truck careened off the course and hit spectators, many only feet away from the racing trucks. While full coverage can be found here, what is most notable is the instinctive, and instant heroism of a young man who deserves remembrance, Andrew Therrien, only 22, who saved the lives of two children:

Derek Cox, a friend of victim Andrew Therrien, told KABC-TV in Los Angeles that Therrien, 22, pushed children out of the way as the truck barreled toward them. He was killed in the accident.

"I owe my son's life, as well as many others. They were inches away from him and he saved their lives," Cox said of the Riverside resident. "He's a hero in my book."

March said he and other fans lifted the truck, which came to rest with its oversized wheels pointing toward the sky, and found four people lying unconscious underneath.

It took rescue vehicles and helicopters more than half an hour to reach the remote location, accessible only by a rutted dirt road. Spectators said off-duty police and firefighters in the crowd joined paramedics hired by the race organizer to help the injured and place blankets over the dead.

Six people died at the scene and two others died after being taken to a hospital, authorities said. Most of the 12 injured people were airlifted to hospitals.

It is not shocking at all, that a young racing fan when faced with oncoming disaster, chose instinctively to save his own and a friend's little child. That the race was dangerous, and that conditions for years have been terrible, with spectators poorly policed, and not removed from danger, in spread-out courses with few security barriers or personnel, is of course obvious and likely to be remedied (by the sport being banned in California and on federal land).

But people did not act passively. At the link are pictures of people in the crowd lifting the truck off the injured and dead. Off-duty police and firefighters were there to enjoy the race and joined in. Children (unwisely it turns out) were present. It was an entirely different atmosphere than the other recent LA area tragedy: the Electric Daisy Carnival.

In the Electric Daisy Carnival, a 15 year old girl died from an Ecstasy overdose in the two-day rave event, held in the LA Memorial Coliseum.

Here is an example of the Electric Daisy Carnival:



Here is an example of the 2009 (not the tragedy) California 200:



Here are some of the Electric Daisy Carnival attendees, courtesy of the LA Weekly, go there and see the entire slide show (60 pictures in all):



























The crowd in the California 500 is only about six or seven years older, for the most part, but the atmosphere is far different. While tattoos and flatbiller type hats and attire might include Tapout or marijuana leaves (a favorite of ravers, those living in the 909, reacted with courage and initiative when it counted most.

Those urban hipsters at the Electric Daisy carnival? Mostly carrying Elmo backpacks. [Yes, I understand the pacifiers are for protecting the teeth from grinding during an all-night dose of Ecstasy, the Elmo backpacks and stuffed animals allow petting of objects for obsessive Ecstasy takers, and the rather gay attire of the guys is there to be, well gay. All that being said, I'd rather be a Bro. For all their faults, Bros still look and act like men. The ravers, not so much.]
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The Ground Zero Victory Mosque: the Mau-Mau Consequences

Now that Obama has strongly backed the Ground Zero Victory Mosque, celebrating 9/11 and the Muslim victory over America, it is fair to ask, what will be the consequences? The consequences are easy to foresee, though few wish to speak of them. The Mosque will be built. It will be the focal point for Jihadist, Islamist preachers to celebrate victory and dominance, and 9/11 explicitly. Infiltrators will find a way to smuggle cameras in and post video of Muslims dancing and celebrating 9/11 and the hijackers, praising bin Laden and AQ. Muslims will use the Ground Zero Victory Mosque as a base to march and intimidate 9/11 mourners with the passive police approval of the Bloomberg Administration (and that of Obama's Administration). Any protest against the Mosque will be met with protective investigations and arrests by the City of New York and the Feds. Meanwhile the provocative weakness of allowing the Ground Zero Victory Mosque will be so tempting that large amounts of domestic jihad against non-Muslims among Muslims residing in America, and mass casualty plots from abroad against Americans, many of them successful, will produce a massive death toll. In New York and elsewhere in America.

Until anger among the non-Muslim population is so high, that an American Mau-Mau movement will spring up. It did not have to be this way. But it is now inevitable. As sadly destined as the trenches of the Somme were in 1912. The smell was not yet manifest, but those who could see, saw it coming. Even if years later the Kaiser lamented, "this is not what I wanted!"


There is, globally in the West, and America is no exception, a bizarre, three-sided struggle. On the one hand is the elite, the rulers of the West, who hate and despise their own people. In part because their advantages are hereditary, and they aim to keep them that way by keeping their own native peoples down and repressed, or replaced by alien peoples. Hence support for mass immigration into the US by Mexicans, for votes and population replacement, and mass immigration into Europe, for votes and population replacement, as the link from Andrew Breitbart's Big Peace story on the Africanization of France demonstrates.

A rising, competitive, native White population in Europe, or America, produces strong competitive threats to current elites in the West. The Simpsons could be just as funny if their writers came from say, University of Idaho, or Cal State Long Beach, as Harvard. They'd certainly be cheaper. Hiring on merit of course would reduce the patronage power of head writers and producers from Harvard, and move that power to folks who would resemble Spielberg who started at Cal State Long Beach. Hence the need to suppress them (and also the fear associated with them) by mass immigration that can "drown" the competitive threats demographically.

Culturally, the elites wish to distinguish themselves as much as possible from ordinary people. Hence granite counter top kitchens, or a hip and trendy coffee place not named Starbucks, or hipster affectations. There is of course, a gender component:



The infamous Staples "Dell Ink" commercial (idiot White guy replaced by hunky, smart-together Black guy) comes to mind, but any number of commercials follow this rule, or movies for that matter. In "Salt," the Angelina Jolie thriller, the bad guy is the smooth and handsome White guy, and the good guy is the Black CIA agent. The CIA is apparently filled with Black and Hispanic agents and computer experts (in reality the CIA is among the Whitest of the National Security agencies, and filled with desk-bound analysts whose idea of excitement is a new restaurant in Georgetown). Computer experts are found in the NSA, or the DIA.

While part of this dynamic is accounted for by the dominance of gays and women of color in Advertising Agencies that dream up these spots, and terminal PC in Hollywood, success in the business/corporate world depends mostly on go-along, hard work, punishing hours, and not making waves. In a word, "boring" compared to the dreams of masculine dominance pushed by Hollywood and desired by most women. If the idea that the ordinary White guy was so boring (and lame) that it was repellent to most women consumers (the targets of most advertising), no matter how much that message resonated among Ad Agencies (or Hollywood screenwriters and executive suites), most of it would be dialed down. As Judd Apatow explained to LAT movie critic Carina Chocano, White guys get all the jokes and laughs in movies, because they are the only ones writers can make fun of in any significant way. Screenwriters and executives don't welcome the inevitable protests and demands by advocacy groups. Western women, freed from massive insecurity that characterized women's lives even fifty years ago, now wish for excitement among men and find most Western White men who by nature of advancement, must be boring, well ... boring.

So Western elites, with some assistance from Western Women, desiring excitement and followers of fashion and "correct" elite opinion (just watch any episode of the View or peruse a gossip magazine in the Supermarket checkout counter), have allied themselves with Islamists and Muslims (and in America, La Raza reconquista folks). This state of affairs has lasted from essentially, the mid 1980's (the 1986 Immigration and Reform and Control Act) until the present day. PC rules, "Big Man" exceptions (neither Mel Gibson nor Oliver Stone lack for defenders, and Charlie Sheen got a raise in his sit-com), de-masculinized ordinary men, hyper-masculinized Big Men, and the imposition of "tolerance" to the point of decadence and weakness, have characterized American (and Western) political and cultural life up until now.

Which the Ground Zero Victory Mosque has brought to a head.

But just like any bubble or ponzi scheme, the alliance with Islamists and Jihadists, and the La Raza folks, by the Western Elites, is not sustainable. Eventually things fall apart, because of money.

Ordinary people, and the state the depends on them, are running out of money. Joe Biden claims that 8 million jobs lost will never come back, in the "new normal." Toleration of drib-drab jihadism and terrorism in phony credit-fueled boom-times, with shiny new cars, electronic toys, and so on was one thing. Prospective decades of massive (real terms, around 22%) unemployment and declining or stagnant wages, coupled with massive vulnerability to commodity (oil, food, water) shocks created by natural disaster or deliberately by regulations, make ordinary Americans boiling with anger.

Politicians can be voted out of office, by massive voter tides of angry ordinary people, but judges, lawyers, law school deans, law schools, Hollywood, the news media, and the like cannot. Particularly given the natural tendency of defeated elected officials to huddle with those still in office and form a lobbying-NGO-governmental barrier to produce more of the same. More PC, more "tolerance" (weakness and decadence) and more invitations to Jihadists and Islamists to provoke and attack ordinary Americans.

No doubt most on the Left, and amongst the elite, would welcome another attack (as long as they are not victims) as a "teachable moment" to humble ordinary Americans and make them surrender more to Islam and Jihad. This was the effect in Britain to the 7/7, and 7/14 and 7/21 suicide bomber attacks. Islam is now a special, protected religion with unique privileges and rights not available to ordinary Britons, who must show deference at all times to Muslims and Islam.

America is not Britain, however. Among other things it is far, far bigger, subject to the tyranny of distance.

Much like returning African soldiers to Kenya, who had fought for Britain against the Wehrmacht or Imperial Japanese Army, saw both British weakness (against Germany and Japan) first-hand, and betrayal of the promises they found implicit, i.e. fight for Britain and get Kenyan independence, ordinary Americans will likely soon see the mighty humbled, if the projected wave of Democratic defeats happens. And implicit with the defeat will be the betrayal of the promise Obama and Dems gave in the fall of 2008, to restore the economy and put Americans back to work at good paying jobs. Instead we have the "new normal" of permanent unemployment of 22%, or more, and a constant:

I think it was a ballsy, unpolitician-like thing to do. He could have folded before all your BS birther-secret-muslim crap and took the cowards way out, but nooo…. He waggled his junk right in your faces and said “Teabag this!” Awesome.

The anger of ordinary Americans stems from a sense of betrayal (by the media, by the Democratic Party, by Obama personally), along with economic desperation and a sense of weakness, egged on by needless provocations by the Professional Left.

Meanwhile, Islamists and Jihadists confuse Western elite decadence and "tolerance" for that of the people, and keep escalating their "war aims" to include Sharia and domination in Western lands. With a man born a Muslim and of obvious Muslim sympathies (who may or may not be an observant Muslim but is definitely culturally Muslim) in the White House, jihadists and Islamists see this as their time for decisive blows to get guaranteed concessions, arguing that "fighting spirit" can trump the larger non-Muslim population in the West, as it had in places like Spain, Southern Italy, Sicily, Egypt, North Africa, and the former Byzantine Empire.

Building the Mosque at Ground Zero, on the grounds of a building damaged beyond repair by the falling debris of the World Trade Center, is nothing less than a deliberate provocation by Muslims world-wide and in America (no American Muslims have protested against it), designed to show dominance and American submission. It is the guaranteed flashpoint for the new Mau Mau.

Jihadists will not be able to resist the desire to "waggle their junk in your faces" and shout their pleasure at 9/11, and the "total victory" of Sharia replacing the Constitution and indeed, the American Way of Life. With a Muslim President (culturally at the least) in the White House, and a green light to engage in provocation, celebrations of the "9/11 Martyrs" and "victory over America" are bound to happen. As well as conspiracies hatched from that place, immune to eavesdropping and surveillance by a Federal and Local government on the side of Islamists.

Inevitably, small concealed video cameras will catch the worst of it, including likely open calls to Jihad and killing, and the applause of the Muslim audience. Infiltrators are almost certainly preparing, with careful back stories, and their own efforts that would have required news organizations or police forces now available to ordinary people who are pissed off.

Youtube and other venues will feature inflammatory videos calling for death to America, and submission to Sharia, and praise of bin Laden as the future ruler of America, along with Obama as his willing partner. At a certain point "waving his junk in your faces" becomes the starting point for a fight. Elite weakness provokes Jihadist attacks and thus populist anger and open revolt.

The old Mau-Mau, in which Obama's grandfather took part, stood in part for a Swahili Acronym meaning "Let the European go back to Europe, Let the Kikuyu get Independence". While European settlers were certainly targets, the main targets of the Mau-Mau were those collaborating with British rule, many being killed by herding into huts that were then set on fire. Atrocities such as this:

Perhaps the most famous Mau Mau victim was Michael Ruck, aged six, who was killed along with his parents. Newspapers in Kenya and abroad published graphic murder details and postmortem photos, including images of young Michael with bloodied teddy bears and trains strewn on his bedroom floor.

were widely publicized, though by all accounts the White victims were about 40 or so, while the Kikuyu victims were about 20,000 or more, and the horrors they underwent practically unspeakable. [It has been suggested that Obama's grandfather was an unwilling collaborator, one who broke under torture, given his relatively light sentence and less brutal physical treatment than others. Less brutal in that he was not castrated, or had a bullet through his head, or impaled, all actions done by British Imperial powers "unofficially" to the Mau-Mau.]

Obama's grandfather, who was initially sceptical of the revolt, noting accurately that "the African cannot build his own bicycle" was later enthusiastic, believing that the superior numbers and will would break the British effort to retain colonial control (which it did).

The elites in the West have police, military, cultural, and economic power — but not the confidence of the people. The Islamists and Jihadists are hated and loathed by ordinary Americans, and the Ground Zero Victory Mosque is a permanent provocation to all Americans. The elites, instead of surrendering gracefully and garnering what concessions they can to a populist revolt, are likely to cling to power by judicial and executive fiat, fairly repressive measures that are characterized by "Revolutionary Suicide" that deprive American Federal (and State) governments of legitimacy and standing, and will reflexively side with what amounts to "Imperial Colonial Troops" from another part of the world imposed upon the native populace. Writ smaller, this is the situation all across the West as well. It characterizes France, Spain, Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, and Denmark as well as the rest of Scandinavia.

The likelihood is a long, slow slide into violence. Because all possibilities for real social and political and economic change will blocked by the elites, with the threat of Islamist/Jihadist violence used to justify "colonial stasis."

Kenyan Kikuyus were not "unique." They behaved like most colonized peoples, fed up with a colonizer they viewed as both weak and illegitimate. There were serious barriers to any possibility of success, early, and so extreme violence against innocents to make statements that Kenya belonged to the Kikuyu and not Europeans or allies, to instill terror and fear, were the tools the Mau-Mau employed.

The dynamics are clear. Elites plan to rule, to "wave their junk in your faces" and say "teabag this!" no matter what. Islamists and Jihadists plan to rule as well, using "fighting spirit" and terror as their own tools for domination and what they see as God-willed submission by America, given not just weakness but provocative weakness by elites. Eventually, ordinary Americans will turn to these tools as well, using them first against elites who remain allied to the Jihadists, as the Mau-Mau did to colonial collaborators and sympathizers, and then against the hated Jihadists. And the struggle is likely to be long, bloody, and marked by hardening "war aims" the way WWI turned most of Western Europe into a charnel house with both Allies and Axis rapidly escalating War Aims and demands.

The people are likely to demand an internment, and expulsion, of all Muslims from America. It may not happen a year from now, or even ten years from now, but if this struggle of low-level, constant violence amidst poverty and economic recession drags on from decade to decade, it will happen. The Jihadists are likely to demand total and complete submission to Islam and the imposition of an Islamic state along the lines of Taliban run Afghanistan as the price for peace. The elites are likely to desire nothing less than massive replacement of the existing White majority by Mexicans and others, with mass immigration to "drown" the opposition to their rule. Which in turn is likely to be resisted by Mau-Mau means, as a constant, dreadful level of violence and reprisal and ethnic cleansing characterizes America (and the West).

All sides are relatively evenly balanced. The people have demography (for now) but little power and less organization, the Tea Party, tools like Facebook, blogs, the internet, or parties like Gert Wilder's notwithstanding. In their struggle, they are likely to find their own Mau-Mau, from people not even yet engaged in the struggle, and like the Mau-Mau, be mostly disorganized, mostly the victims not the perpetrators, and yet capable of astonishingly cruel acts of terror against those they view as oppressors.

The elites have political, social, economic, and cultural power, but all are eroding amidst a rapid shift from bubble-boom to permanent economic decline and a "Rendezvous with Scarcity" (ala Ed Driscoll) that limits their power. Few patronage opportunities on a wide scale (ala FDR) abound, with limited money, non-Whites being first come and first served (Affirmative Action preferences), and erosion of female preferences for elite rule (with vast economic uncertainty making boring Beta males a better bet than exciting Alphas, and critically the policies that favor the one group over the other). Most importantly, nearly all institutions including Congress, the Presidency (and this particular President), the Media, the judiciary, the law itself, have lost confidence and legitimacy. Only the US military retains support and confidence, and outside the General staff is profoundly hostile to Obama and Dems.

Moreover, the elites by their nature cannot help "waggling their junk in your faces and saying teabag this!" It is second nature. Making any successful appeal to the widespread populace doomed.

The Muslim jihadists and Islamists have at their disposal, vast amounts of Gulf and Pakistani and Iranian oil money. A vast and seething population of men afflicted by polygamy (pricing most of them out of the "proper marriage market" with "proper Muslim women") gives a near limitless number of lean and hungry men willing to use violence to become Big Men or find 72 virgins in the afterlife. The vast Muslim population outside the US, and the tiny one within it, senses decadent weakness among the elites, and a green light for any atrocity that might produce an abject surrender. Contact with the US military has led to a winnowing out of ineffective jihadis and a wealth of experience among survivors, along with a sense of innovation in mass-killing that produces a feeling of terror and helplessness among victims and triumph and victory among perpetrators.

Like WWI, the fight can go on for a long time. False "victories" such as the failed Ludendorff Offensive, bogging down in defensive trenches far to the rear, are likely to characterize the struggle. The Reconquista of Spain took nearly 700 years, and the Muslim conquest of Byzantium took nearly 1,000. Victory is likely to go to those with more resources, or those with most effective resources (the side who uses it most effectively and wisely). In this, the very bigness of America, its wide open spaces, its large population, its relative freedom from widespread welfare states, may prove the decisive factor.

The borders may simply be declared "open" and anyone who crosses them declared a "citizen" instantly able to vote, demand Affirmative Action privileges, and welfare. But the "bigness" of America lends itself to extra-legal action as Prohibition provoked, along the lines of massive individual illegal behavior. Not perhaps drinking in speakeasy joints, but refusing to hire, rent to, serve, or otherwise accommodate the wave of immigrants from collapsing Mexico, itself falling to narco-trafficantes and terminal corruption. Other means could include States openly defying the Federal Government with their own "border patrol" in all but name, with various state offenses shifting around in response to Federal challenges and refusal to allow "instant citizens, just add water" to vote or receive any government resources. For every Federal/Elite action, or Jihadist atrocity, there is a populist response, soon itself counter-attacked, but likely to "flow" into the next battle. The race card itself being null and void, and the legitimacy and power of the Civil Rights movement at an end.

But sadly, the lights are going out all across the West. It is unlikely we will see them lit again in our lifetimes, save a Mau-Mau type firing of huts filled with people, or the equivalent by the "colonial authorities." It is certain that the America that results from this struggle will be radically different, as Germany and England and France were, from the one that went before it.

A long struggle will make the Federal (and State and Local) governments irrelevant and indeed, hostile to the needs and wants of ordinary Americans, and considered that way for generations to come. American and Western peoples will inevitably organize themselves along ethnic/racial lines, as multiculturalism falls apart in real world challenges of providing security and prosperity, and the ethno-state proves itself once again. Either America will be Hispanicized, and turned into a variant of Northern Mexico, or the great masses of Mexicans will be expelled inevitably along with Muslims. The reality of limited jobs, and other resources, guarantee the sort of action seen when an Indian tribe gains a casino — they kick out as many tribal members as they can to maximize wealth.

An America, or the West, not drowned in immigration, is likely to be a fairly brutal, discriminatory, ethno-state, without the slightest bit of guilt, oriented around mercantilism, protectionism, somewhere between Japan, China, and Russia today, though with far weaker leaders and far more power pushed downwards. That is the power of conflict, to reshape a people in ways that would have been unthinkable before. The reverse, of course, will be the replication of Brazil or Mexico or Cuba onto the West, with a Big Man rule, and some type of Sharia and Muslim rule to produce a "peace" (of the sort found in Egypt).

At any rate, the 1986-Present consensus of PC and Multiculturalism is coming to an end. The growing power of the Muslim world, the weakness and decadence of the elite, the frustration of the people, and the equalizing role of technology among those less powerful (the people, with the internet and cheap video cameras, Muslims with nukes) to the old elite-led nation state, is likely to produce profound changes.

It did not have to be this way, but the self-serving emotional power of "waggling his junk in your faces" proved too much.
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The Ground Zero Victory Mosque: Obama's Extended Middle Finger to America

With Obama strongly backing the Ground Zero Victory Mosque celebrating 9/11, he has raised a middle finger to America. This is not surprising, Obama was born, and raised a Muslim, to a Muslim father, grandfather, and step-father. He's celebrated one of his half-brothers conversions to Islam in his book, "Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance." Obama has systematically refused to celebrate birthdays (Muslims avoid it because that custom is viewed as Christian), delayed for years in getting his kids a dog (Muslims dislike dogs), recited the call to prayer in Arabic from memory to a NYT reporter, and as Doug Ross reports, Obama wanted to eliminate the White House creche display during Christmas over "separation of church and state" but backs the Ground Zero Victory Mosque.

The decision to do so, is in the words of one Ed Driscoll commenter (perhaps or perhaps not, impersonating the professional Left):

I think it was a ballsy, unpolitician-like thing to do. He could have folded before all your BS birther-secret-muslim crap and took the cowards way out, but nooo…. He waggled his junk right in your faces and said “Teabag this!” Awesome.

A decision opposed by super majorities of the US, around 70%.The question is not "is Obama a Muslim sympathizer?" because the answer is of course, yes. Obama even wrote in his second book, "The Audacity of Hope" (taken from a Rev. Wright sermon) that he would side with Muslims over America. The issue instead is why Obama chose to extend his middle finger to America, shortly before mid-term elections. The answer could be that Obama is approaching the Jonestown moment, one filled with "Revolutionary Suicide."


A revolutionary suicide, moreover, approved of heartily by Obama's core supporters. The danger of course, is that revolutionary suicide can take with it, the rest of America.

Part and parcel of Obama's political career is the studied insult that has no real pay-off other than energizing his supporters and making himself look like a "Big Man." This is common among tribal peoples, counting coup and offering meaningless insults, described by those who knew the Plains Indians, the Sioux, the Comanche, the Kiowa, and also the Apache in the Southwest. Stone age peoples in the Amazon, and Borneo also engage in this behavior. It is not limited to those groups either. Gunfights over "dissing" are common in the Ghetto, and the barrio, and Italian and French politics are filled with "Big Man" insults where one leader gratuitously insults a rival or political grouping. Obama's surreptitiously extended middle finger to Hillary and McCain during debates, his "brushing off" gestures taken from rap videos, his insults to no good reason or outcome of British leaders (for apparently, imprisoning his Mau-Mau terrorist grandfather) are by now common.

Gratuitous insults to Middle Class White America saying "teabag this!" are common among Black leaders whose Black voters find it amusing and emotionally rousing. Trinity United, Obama's church for twenty years, explicitly rejected (and still does) "Middle Classness" which Michelle Obama in her many speeches also rejects. Both Obama and his spouse have spoken many times of their horror of polite, middle class society going to anonymous and boring jobs, saying they themselves were "better" than that and destined for a "nobler purpose." The constant insults, the "police acted stupidly" (regarding the Skippy Gates Affair), the insulting of the British and Israeli Prime Ministers (the latter brought into the White House via the back door next to the garbage, and photographed there by arrangement from the White House), all fit into the pattern of "sticking it to the man." No matter that the President of the United States, is by definition, the man.

The Professional Left, the reporters, editors, announcers, newscasters, educators, university professors, lawyers, judges, Hollywood executives, actors and actresses, Hollywood producers, and so on find this amusing and compelling. They hate ordinary people too, along with their values. So they find the insults and particularly, backing the Ground Zero Victory Mosque, an exciting insult to the America they loathe.

But from a professional political standpoint, its disaster. This extended middle finger tells vulnerable, swing Democrats that the party and leader is about to go harder Left than it has before, and with a Republican House at least blocking economic changes to solidify Government control over the total economy, Obama and Democrats will fight to remake America culturally. By pushing surrender to Islam, Sharia, and terminal political correctness so that America is merely a nation without borders, values, a unique people, or anything else but a global stop on the globalized mish-mash of anti-Western struggles.

This in a time of deep, and seemingly permanent recession,with a double-dip perhaps just weeks away if not here already.

Absent are Clintonian "I Feel Your Pain" episodes of lip-biting, and "end of Welfare as we know it" or picking fights with Sistah Souljah, aimed at reassuring nervous middle class White voters that the Democratic Party is comprised of ... middle class White leaders. Now every Democrat will have to answer if he or she supports the Ground Zero Victory Mosque, or agrees with Republicans against the President that it should be moved elsewhere.

It seems the "real Obama" with the requirements to keep his massive, super-majority (over 60 votes in the Senate, a massive House majority) now slipping away, is emerging. One defiantly determined to give America, which he hates, a permanent middle finger. So he can feel better about himself, and perhaps engage in "Revolutionary Suicide." By taking America down with him.

Lame duck sessions to push radical agendas, including cap and tax, reparations for slavery, national gay marriage, gun confiscation, some form of "Sharia Light" and formal rule by Executive Decree are all but guaranteed. Including perhaps the ability to suspend elections and rule by Executive Order should the President deem it a "national emergency" (when the police "act stupidly" again, or something).

Obama had a perfect chance to provide his own Sistah Souljah moment, in the Ramadan Dinner, to blast Muslims as lacking patriotism, devotion to America, or sensibility to victims of 9/11, and demand the Mosque be moved. Given that non-Muslim American voters who are deeply suspicious and angry with Muslims outnumber Muslims by about 100 to 1. Instead, Obama reflexively sided with Muslims against Americans (just as he predicted in his book), for deep political cost with no gain. Counting Coup without any pay-off from increased adoration by his followers. They already consider him "kind of like God" (according to Chris Matthews), so there was no benefit for telling Americans "teabag this!" and "waggling his junk in their faces."

Revolutionary Suicide is coming. Be prepared.

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