Earlier this week, Tim Lee of Ars Technica published a piece on the broader implications of the anti-SOPA backlash. To the surprise of some observers, it was Republican legislators who defected from SOPA in the largest numbers, in part due to a sophisticated grassroots campaign. Patrick Ruffini and I argue that this isn’t a mere coincidence, but rather a reflection of certain underlying structural dynamics, e.g.:
Salam and Ruffini told Ars on Thursday that the differing reactions to the online protests reflects structural and philosophical differences between the two parties. They said Democrats have deep ties to Hollywood and to labor unions who staff Hollywood productions, which makes it hard for them to buck these interests and vote against PIPA. In contrast, they said, Republicans have few ties to groups that support PIPA, and they have a Tea Party faction that has grown increasingly invested in Internet freedom as it has become more reliant on the web for its own organization.
The IT industry could be a rich source of both votes and campaign cash, but so far neither party has done a good job of championing its interests in Congress. Salam and Ruffini believe that Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial culture is a perfect fit for the GOP’s free-market policy agenda, and they told Ars that the fight over PIPA is a golden opportunity for the GOP to build a lasting political alliance with Silicon Valley.
I should stress that there is a deep cultural divide between Silicon Valley and the Republican base. In part, Ruffini and I are making an argument about the Republican future, i.e., over time, Republicans will become more culturally “in tune” with the technology industry and that at least some slice of the technology industry will grow more skeptical towards the Democrats, particularly if the parties polarize around IP. In my view, it is natural for a pro-market party to oppose copyright extensions and to favor the rollback of software patents, which tend to cause a kind of economic “gridlock” as resources flow to defensive litigation and regulatory arbitrage and away from exploratory innovation. And it is natural for a political coalition that fears disruptive economic change (see the attacks on private equity, etc.) to want to strengthen culturally influential incumbents, like the major motion picture and recording companies. The right hasn’t fully cottoned to the critique of a strong incumbent-protecting IP regime, but the idea seems far more plausible now than it had even a few months ago.
This will be the subject of my next essay for NR, incidentally. The anti-SOPA backlash was, in my view, the most encouraging political development in recent memory, and I aim to explain why.
Hollywood enjoys some kind of perverse tax configuration which allows them to make money even on movies that bomb. Hollywood is populated with people who make their money by pretending to be more important and interesting people than they really are, other people who help the pretenders keep up the act, and still more people who fawn over the pretenders to make them feel important for doing a job that, were it to be removed from society, no one would suffer irreparably with out it, as they would without any firemen or doctors or trash collectors.
There's something tragic about someone who is only made real in the imagination of another person. Hollywood star actors and actresses have become the vapid social intrigue for bored housewives waiting in the dentists office. Unlike Audrey Hepburn who spent her later years working in foreign orphanages, today's Hollywood aged buy themselves African babies as fashion accessories, and get continued Botox injections and plastic surgery until, like John Kerry, they become some kind of freaky caricature of themselves.
Why would the Republicans ever want to be affiliated with this chaff of humanity let alone court their good opinion in anything. For that matter, why would anyone want to have anything to do with the Hollywood elites. If everyone ignored them they would cease to exist.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI can't be the only one out here who cheers every time something bad happens to the Hollywood entertainment industry. They've trashed my values for decades now, inflicted mountains of crap on the American public, and are always ready to open their wallets for politicians and causes I abhore. To hel* with them and sleazy Chris Dodd, too. Cordially, Bill
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