Hollywood Ten

National Review Online, August 8, 2000

Is there no end to the empathy? It's a long, hard GOP convention for the hard-hearted among us, a grim procession of blind mountaineers, teachers, "the children," breast-cancer advocates, diabetic beauty queens, and deaf ones too. Tonight, though, twenty minutes or so after the showing of a "compassion video," the podium will brighten up. As the Republican's convention website boasts, a "film icon" is coming to town. Hepburn? Bacall? Well, no. It's Bo Derek, actually, more of a poster than an icon, perhaps, but a welcome visitor nonetheless. And who'd have thought it? Bo Derek, a cheerleader for George W. Yes, that's right, THE Bo Derek. You know, cornrows, the 10 girl, sex goddess of the later disco era, the seductress clad in a wet swimsuit, and, often, gloriously, much much less.

It turns out that she's on the right, an unlikely star for an all too strait-laced party. She's a Republican and has been for years. Back in 1996, she was quoted as saying that her heroes included General Schwarzkopf and Presidents Reagan and Bush. As for Bob Dole, well, "the man was an absolute superman. His energy wiped me out." And that was before the Viagra.

Bo's no Barbra Streisand, though. Sure, she'll speak at the convention for a minute or two, but for the most part she's happy to play the supporting role. She isn't a Hollywood wonk, with a program for every problem, hectoring and haranguing the peons as to how they should live their lives. As she has explained to Fox News's Bill O'Reilly, "movie stars…live in a bubble…and for me to give my opinions and maybe influence anybody is absurd."

Her Republicanism seems practical, unideological. As a younger woman she saw herself as a Democrat. She thought the Democrats were "nicer people" who cared about people more. Then filming abroad opened her eyes: "You can't help but compare America to other countries the more you travel, and that's when I just realized in looking [at] different issues that I was a Republican." The free market, she realized, works. Welfare is fine "when people really need help, but as a lifestyle, I don't think it's good for the people receiving it…It discourages dignity and incentives."

She is no social conservative. It would be better to see her as a R-rated Christine Todd Whitman. A (generously illustrated) profile in the current issue of Cigar Aficionado describes her as pro-gay rights, pro-choice and, on occasion, anti-clothes. "We're born nude and it just seems like the most natural thing." There's a brief nod in the direction of some feminist piety (something about women voting the same way), but I suspect that Bo is never going to be one of the sisters. She had an unforgivably happy marriage to a much older guy, she took off her clothes in a lot of movies and, let's face it, she just looks too good.

However, her opinions don't make her look good in notoriously liberal Hollywood. It is even hinted that Bo's politics may have held back her career. Well, maybe, but when that career includes Bolero, Tarzan the Ape Man, and Ghosts Can't Do It, there may be another explanation. Nevertheless, when she describes the reaction to her views, her story rings very true. "It's really tough to have a nice, open conversation," she told O'Reilly. Apparently, her entertainment-industry pals "get really angry…and they treat me as though I'm some hateful monster."

Yes, I bet they do. They are liberals, supporters of that other cigar aficionado, the one in the White House. And, as we all know, the Left doesn't have much time, or respect, for anyone who dares to disagree with them. As Bo's clearly discovered, Democrats are not "nicer people." She's brave to speak her mind, but she's going to be lonely. Conservatives in the movie business are few and far between, and they are likely to stay that way. There's Moses, of course, our own Charlton Heston, and some of the more secular action heroes, Willis, Norris, Schwarzenegger, but these guys do have a touch of the last stand about them. TV isn't much better, although it was good to see Rick Schroder, NYPD Blue's Lieutenant Sorenson, at the convention on Tuesday night. He was smart, compelling, and — unlike most of Republican showbiz — under 40. Otherwise, the Right is only left with a presence in country music (and I'm not so sure about that k. d. lang) and wrestling, of course: the Rock, the thinking man's Jesse Ventura, is in the GOP line-up.

Sadly, this isn't going to be enough, and even more sadly, this matters. In our tranquil, ill-educated times, showbiz sets not only the cultural, but the political agenda. The drip, drip, drip of a predominantly liberal message in the movies, TV, and the other entertainment media is bound to wear through to the ballot box. We saw this in Britain, where a hostile cultural scene proved to be the harbinger of the crushing Conservative defeat in the 1997 election. Writing in the London Sunday Times the following year, the newspaper's then-resident leftist, the writer Robert Harris, noted — with, probably, some satisfaction — that he couldn't think of one single "important" British writer or, for that matter, a film director, theater director, composer ("apart from Lord Lloyd Webber"), actor, or painter who was a Conservative.

As Mr. Harris went on to point out, "the entertainment and fashion industries are now two of the biggest economic sectors in the world. Never have we lived in a time more conscious of style, and never in democratic history has it been less stylish to be on the right."

Now, he was writing in a British context, but, like it or not, it's not too difficult to see the same process gathering pace over here. It's not going to be easy to reverse. On this battlefield, the Right are simply too few. Sure, Republicans have got the Rock, but the Democrats have the (Sharon) Stone. Bo Derek may turn some heads, but she's not enough to turn the tide. Suggesting a solution to this problem is beyond the scope of this article, but to those who say that this all doesn't matter, that substance will prevail over style, I have only three words to offer: William Jefferson Clinton.