A new book has hit store shelves titled "Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV" by Ben Shapiro. It purports to uncover the vast liberal plot to brainwash our kids into holding nefarious liberal values.
Paradoxically it's caught on in most of the media, albeit derisively. It's been featured as the "Sesame Street has a liberal bias" Book and while written off as a joke, the scary thing is the book's framing and doctrines have been taken as legitimate. For this reason I believe the book shouldn't just be written off as a joke, it has a serious implications for the view certain people think.
Ben Shapiro lays out the argument that Hollywood is shaped by liberal thinkers who promote a liberal agenda in their media. Focusing on entertainment media, he decodes and demystifies all the apparent secretive bias that's especially directed towards children.
Although not entirely, the vast majority of the book deals with social issues and takes on children's programs like Captain Kangaroo and Mister Rogers' Neighborhood for espousing self-esteem to children, clearly one step away from entitlement and not far off from children wanting to be wards of the state. Other culprits of liberal entertainment are Will and Grace for portraying gays as human beings to mass audience.
Evil Liberal Tolerance
This leads to the main problem of the book and of Conservatism in general, it promotes the idea that concepts such as tolerance and respect are actually festering liberal manifestations. As Shapiro himself has said in an interview with Frontpage Magazine "[he] used certain liberal code words – "social justice," "tolerance," 'diversity'" of course those aren't "code words" they're the lexicon of basic human respect. It's for this reason that former Presbyterian minister and children's host Fred Rogers is described as having a "liberal view of humanity" (pg 321).
In the case of tolerance for race, Shapiro takes a different tone. Specifically, he calls the The Cosby Show "a conservative show" (pg. 130) which holds some merit considering that it didn't portray the economic deprivation of blacks in the 1980s, but it doesn't occur to him there isn't much difference between The Cosby Show and Will and Grace since both portray blacks and gays as decent ordinary people.
The closest Shapiro comes to any kind of economic argument is loosely mentioning gun control in the media, which around the time of Macgyver was favored by a majority of Americans, 78 percent thinking gun laws should be stricter in 1991 for instance. In fact, as time went on, support for gun control deteriorated which undermines the idea that the media played a role in making the American people hate guns.
The Economic Institution of Media
Shapiro does not consider the obvious economic variables of the entertainment media, the media is owned by a small group of corporations who profit by selling advertisers to privileged audiences. It's thus that no matter how liberal an executive is, he can't undermine his own network's interests. It's why sitcoms like Friends don't feature unions and why people like Oprah don't discuss single-payer healthcare or any major media for that matter.
It's also not a conspiracy the way self-esteem as plot to get children hooked on welfare is. Proctor and Gamble, television's biggest advertiser, have openly said they will pull funding from any program that promotes any kind of liberal message:
There will be no material that may give offense either directly or by inference to any commercial organization of any sort. There will be no material on any of our programs which could in any way further the concept of business as cold, ruthless and lacking all sentimental or spiritual motivation....Members of the armed forces must not be cast as villains. If there is any attack on American customs, it must be rebutted completely on the same show.
It's worth mentioning Michael Parenti's book that uncovered this policy, received virtually no media attention.
The scary thing is this narrow attack of what are universal values has an advantage, if conservatives are stuck attacking basic human notions of decency then it will legitimize a kind of barbarism and intolerance, rendering whether or not the media are liberal a moot point.