Awww... Hollywood still (hearts) Obama

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After much angst and hand-wringing with respect to Hollywood's supposed flagging support for the President, we can call off the suicide watch - Hollywood's got Barack's back!

Despite complaints about his failure to support Hollywood's position on online piracy, President Obama does not appear to have lost his fundraising base in the entertainment community.

As Obama arrives in Los Angeles on Wednesday, local campaign fundraisers said there has been no drop-off in Hollywood donations to his reelection bid since the D.C. demise of long-sought anti-piracy legislation. Hollywood's chief lobbyist Chris Dodd suggested last month that Obama and his fellow Democrats could pay a price for not representing the industry's interests in Washington.

But there was no evidence of that in the run-up to Wednesday's fundraising events. A dinner and a reception at the Holmby Hills home of "The Bold and the Beautiful" producer Bradley Bell and his wife, Colleen, co-hosted by actor Will Ferrell and his wife, Viveca, sold out faster than any fundraiser in the last several years, according to Ken Solomon, co-chairman of Obama's Southern California fundraising committee.

You can read more about the 1 percenters support of the President at the link but there were a couple of quotes that stood out to us.

First this:

The robust turnout underscores the ties that bind many in the entertainment industry to the Democratic president on topics such as abortion rights and the environment. Because much of Hollywood political giving is ideological, campaign donations are not usually tied to short-term legislative items, fundraisers said.

"Hollywood money for the most part is actually quite pure," said veteran Los Angeles Democratic fundraiser John Emerson, the other co-chairman of Obama's Southern California finance team. "It's given by people who really believe in the issues. They're not writing the checks because they're after some regulatory change."

Then this:

Producer and former MCA Inc. President Sidney Sheinberg said Newt Gingrich once asked him why Democrats got so much Hollywood support and the Republicans did not: "I told him the reason is that most people in Hollywood vote their conscience, not their pocket book."

Allow us to translate: Hollywood 1-percenters can afford to be liberal, the rest of us can't.


Things like CARB, high-speed choo-choos and the budgetary 3 card monty as currently practiced in Sacramento are probably big hits with these folks as they won't feel the consequences of their job-killing results. There is, quite simply, no skin in the game for these people.

It's the same sort of mentality shared by Warren Buffet and his hyprocritical "Patriotic Millionaires" clowns who allegedly want their income taxes raised (for what exact purpose, we are not quite sure). What's a few more dollars out of their paycheck? It's of no real consequence other than some perverse self-serving smug satisfaction that they believe they are actually doing something to boost the economy or cure the scourge of income inequality.

Indeed, the rich aren't at all like the rest of us. They can afford the negative impact of horrible legislation and executive fiat while everyone else suffers.

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