January 19, 2017
Hollywood Blvd, Los Angeles
Source: Bigstock
Hollywood simply cannot conceal its massive butthurt over Donald Trump winning the election. With awards season in full swing, expect a slew of Meryl Streep moments from now through the Oscars. Showbiz types are a uniquely repulsive species, and I say that having mixed with them for the better part of my life. Hollywood is filled with attention-starved egotists who take any success, large or small, as confirmation of what they already knew, which is that they”re better than you. The Trump butthurt comes not so much from politics, although politics certainly plays a role, but from the knowledge that people like you did not follow orders from your superiors. You were told to vote Hillary, just as you were told to vote Obama in 2008. But this time you didn”t listen. Every star-studded instructional video, every rock star or comedian who interrupted a show to lecture people on the proper way to vote, was ignored, unheeded, and ultimately rejected.
Can”t you bastards see what you”ve done? You”ve hurt the feelings of those noble souls who seek nothing more in life than to entertain us as they push for progressive tax increases and free health care even though they belong to a union in which dues don”t increase for high earners and medical benefits are a privilege withheld from low earners. These are America’s finest, and you”ve made them feel impotent and unloved. As they cry themselves to sleep on pillows filled with money and oxycodone, just know, Trump voters, that the next OD is on you.
Okay, I”ll admit it: Celebrities are easy targets, and I”m far from the first guy to point out their flaws. But because I actually know a few of these repulsive Hollywood types personally, perhaps I can expand a bit on why these precious flowers are so up in arms over Trump’s victory.
I”ll begin with a brief anecdote from my past.
Cathy Ladman is your standard-issue unexceptional New Yawk Jewish comedienne. She’s been around for a long time, and she’s done a lot of stuff, but you”ve probably never heard of her unless you follow stand-up on a regular basis. These days, like every other uninspired comedian in the U.S., she’s on the warpath against Trump and the racist anti-Semite Nazis who voted for him. Back in 1998, a mutual friend dragged me to Ladman’s one-woman show at a theater in L.A.’s pricey Miracle Mile district. I dreaded going, because I detest stand-up comedy, but I”d been invited, so, proper gent that I am, I went. The entire show was one gigantic kvetchfest. “Oy vey, woe is me. My life is such dreck.” But by the way her self-indulgent, unending monologue was structured, it was clear that she was building to something. She was working her way backward in time, toward the moment in her youth”that one horrific, traumatic moment”that scarred her mentally and emotionally for life. Sitting there in the dark, I couldn”t help but wonder what the big reveal would be. A rape? A parent’s gruesome death? A childhood brush with brain cancer? What turned Cathy Ladman into such a dysfunctional basket case?
In the final segment of the show, the cause was divulged. Her voice trembling, Ladman bared her soul. When she was 13 years old, she was watching the Academy Awards with her mom. When Barbra Streisand took the stage to sing “Don”t Rain on My Parade,” the young Ladman looked up at her mom and said, “I can do that,” and her mom replied, “Oh, no, she’s very special.”
Ladman never recovered.
Yes, the big “reveal” was a single inartful, offhanded comment by her mom; a suggestion that lil” Cathy wasn”t as special as certain other performers (here’s another big reveal”Mom was right). That alone destroyed her life. The audience members gasped as she reached her denouement. They reacted as though she”d confessed to having been molested by Klaus Barbie. Amazingly, as recently as 2014, Ladman was still bitching to fellow nebbishes about that “tragic” moment.
So here’s my point: To a lot of these showbiz types, Trump getting elected is (as the kids like to say these days) “lituh-ruh-lee” the worst thing that’s ever happened to them. If they”re acting as though they were butt-raped by everyone who voted for Trump, rest assured”that’s exactly how they feel. They see themselves as the victims of a personal wrong done to them by the great unwashed”the hicks, the hillbillies, the impoverished goyim they so love to caricature on screen. The people in “the business” with whom I grew up were of the generation that was too young for Vietnam and too old for Iraq (not that they would have served anyway). To them, Trump is their “nam. I”m astounded at the way my Hollywood friends have managed to personalize the “tragedy” of Trump’s victory. Maybe “astounded” is the wrong word; disgusted is more appropriate. Because, for better or worse, the Hollywood folks I grew up with are raising children now, and those kids are proving to be the best props imaginable in the real-life protest play my friends are staging.
A theatrical producer I”ve known since second grade posted on Facebook last month that she thinks Trump is going to Holocaust all the Jews (my friend is Jewish herself):
Has anyone flat out asked Trump if he can guarantee we will not have another WWII-like event? No Holocaust. No Internment Camps. Has he said to our country – that will not happen?
Days later, she followed it up with this:
The fact my daughter panics when she sees me post political stories and express my opinion and makes statements like, “Mom, please stop. I don”t want people who work for Trump to find out and come take you away!” makes it VERY clear something is not right!!
A well-regarded actress commented on the post, “He’s scaring the kids! Disgusting.” And a New York fashion designer added, “My daughter asked me if Trump could have me killed because I protested.”
