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Why Hollywood Has a Democrat Bias

Copyright 2000 by United Press International.

LOS ANGELES (UPI) - Why is cellulite slightly less fashionable than the GOP in Hollywood?

According to preliminary Federal Election Commission records, past Academy Award winners gave about 40 times more campaign contributions last year to Democrats and Greens than to Republicans.

One answer is that the demographics of Hollywood resemble those of certain segments of the electorate that voted heavily for Al Gore.

First, leftists would have you believe that the rich vote Republican. Yet, despite President-elect Bush's tax-cut plan, his margin over Al Gore among the 15 percent of voters making more than $100,000 a year was only 54 percent to 43 percent, according to the Voter News Service exit poll.

Guilty White Liberals

Even more strikingly, among the elite 4 percent of the electorate who described their social status as "upper class," Gore won resoundingly, 56 percent to 39 percent. It appears that among a large segment of the truly rich, voting Democrat has become an affordable luxury, a fashion statement.

Second, single people were far more likely to vote for Al Gore than married people were. And Hollywood is the spiritual home of the single at heart.

While movie stars enjoy getting married, few seem interested in being married. Despite delighting in staging opulent nuptials in front of 700 or so of their closest friends, that business about "forsaking all others, so long as ye both shall live" seldom seems to sink in.

Pundits spilled endless pixels over the "gender gap" in voting. Yet, far more important in 2000 was the "marriage gap." Nationwide, married people favored Bush by 54 percent to 44 percent, according to the Los Angeles Times exit poll. Single people, in sharp contrast, voted for Al Gore by 58 percent to 37 percent. This marriage mismatch of more than 30 percentage points was significantly wider than the celebrated gender gap of 23 percentage points.

Many movie stars, of course, have ample time to publicly demonstrate their boundless compassion for derelicts, for animals, even for trees because they have turned over the upbringing of their children to trained professionals.

The marriage gap is particularly enormous among women: 36 points. Single women voted 66 percent to 30 percent for Gore, while married women evenly split their votes 49 percent to 49 percent.

Similarly, there is a gap between working women, who favored Gore by 19 points, and stay-at-home women, who backed Bush by 20 points.

Apparently, women who need a husband to help support their children tend to be more conservative than women who don't have children, or who can afford to raise their kids on their own, either because the government provides a welfare check or they make the big bucks themselves.

The large number of unmarried Hollywood leading ladies, such as Jodie Foster and Jessica Lange, who blithely choose to take on the normally arduous role of single mother reflects how out of touch they are with the economic realities facing their female fans.

Third, Jews voted for Al Gore and Joe Lieberman by 80 percent to 17 percent. Although it's considered highly insensitive to mention this, by all objective measures Jews fill a large fraction of the behind-the-screen positions in Hollywood.

The movie industry is probably less Jewish today than in its glory days, which were described in historian Neal Gabler's aptly titled "An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood." Still, famed sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset wrote that Jews comprise "59 percent of the directors, writers, and producers of the 50 top-grossing motion pictures from 1965 to 1982." (Both scholars are Jewish.)

Fourth, among the 4 percent of the electorate declaring themselves homosexual in response to exit pollsters's questions, Gore triumphed 70 percent to 25 percent.

Most major movie stars, however, tend to be lustily heterosexual. A study of obituaries during the worst of the AIDS epidemic indicated that there are probably more male homosexual movie stars than in the general public, but fewer than in other branches of entertainment, except for rock, rap, and team sports.

For example, AIDS killed fewer film stars than stage actors.

On the other hand, male homosexuals are common in so many of the crucial supporting jobs in Hollywood, such as makeup artists, hair stylists, costume and set designers, choreographers, dancers, musical composers and assistants. This leaves the big names far more sympathetic than most Americans are to homosexuals.

Which explains why Hollywood's heroes were so long obsessed with wearing scarlet AIDS ribbons on Hollywood's endless awards shows.

-- Anonymous, January 03, 2001

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In a related story --

over 50% of people polled comprised a majority.

-- Anonymous, January 07, 2001