|
Banned
|
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by powerclown
What...you don't like Queen? They're British too, right. It was bad at the end of Carter's presidency too, and look how things improved after 8 years of The Gipper.
|
powerclown, if Ronald Reagan was not a "product" of the activity and intent displayed below, (please tell me the date when the "process", and the "playas"...the wealthy scions of society who controlled the media...."changed", and I will withdraw my comments...) WTF was Reagan, then?
If I, as you do, found my own POV to be so closely in synch with the wealthiest, conservative white men who call the shots in the good ole USA, i wouldn't be posting confirmation of it on an internet discussion forum..... I'd be too concerned about triggering suspicion that I was incapable of thinking anything that was not influenced by huge amounts of investment of those who require many to think the way you do, if they hope to overcome their lack of a natural constituency, each election day.
Quote:
http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2008/feb/27/cover/
The Rise and Fall of the Copley Press
By Matt Potter | Published Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2008
....When author Upton Sinclair ran for governor in the 1934 Democratic primary on a progressive platform he labeled “End Poverty in California,” he took San Diego County by 3000 votes. After the Copley papers repeatedly savaged him during the general election, he lost the county by 10,000 votes. It was just one of many moves Copley made to keep the lid on the city’s radicals and reformers during hard times....
|
Quote:
http://backissues.cjrarchives.org/ye...5/sinclair.asp
...RIGHT BACK WHERE WE STARTED FROM
by Curt Gentry
Gentry is a former journalist and the author of thirteen books, including The Last Days of the Late, Great State of California and J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets.
Upton Sinclair's surprise victory in the California Democratic primary of 1934 frightened the California business establishment -- and the California press lords -- as did nothing before or after. A longtime socialist, Sinclair was the author of dozens of muckraking books, the best known being The Jungle, an expose of the meat-packing industry. But it was one of his numerous pamphlets, I, Governor of California, and How I Ended Poverty, that thrust him into the political spotlight. In the midst of the Depression, his EPIC (End Poverty in California) plan drew a huge grass-roots following. Sinclair advocated having idle factories turned into cooperatives and manned by the unemployed; public ownership of utilities; special taxes on large land holdings; and -- the clincher that brought Standard Oil of California, banks, insurance companies, realtors, and the major movie studios into the fray -- a state income tax on corporations.
The campaign that followed has been described by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., as "the first all-out public relations blitzkrieg in American politics." Realizing that too much depended on the outcome of the election to entrust it to the state's feeble Republican party, business and industry leaders banded together and hired outside help....
....But even more important was the role of the press.
California's most powerful publisher, in terms of circulation, was William Randolph Hearst. Even if they had been able to ignore their philosophical differences, there was no question of Hearst supporting Sinclair, not after the candidate stated that one of the reasons he was running for governor was because he was sick of watching "our richest newspaper publisher keeping his movie mistress in a private city of palaces and cathedrals, furnished with shiploads of junk imported from Europe, and surrounded by vast acres reserved for the use of zebras and giraffes." Yet the Hearst papers were relatively fair to Sinclair, reserving most of their vitriol for the editorial pages.
(One notable exception was an unattributed bums/boxcar photo that appeared in the Los Angeles Examiner. Sharp-eyed movie fans recognized it as a scene from the movie Wild Boys of the Road. The still print had been provided by the MGM publicity department.)
"Fairness" hardly characterized the efforts of Hearst's leading competitors. Kyle Palmer, the political editor of the Los Angeles Times, raised funds and wrote speeches for Governor Merriam while directing the paper's coverage of the campaign. Chester Rowell, editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, drafted Merriam's platform, while Earl "Squire" Behrens, the paper's political editor for four decades, would later admit that he had personally developed and "used as straight news items, anti-Sinclair statements from leading Democrats."
The Los Angeles Times didn't keep its political bias a secret. Every day the paper carried, on its front page, a box of "Sinclairisms." Sinclair on the sanctity of marriage: "I have had such a belief . . . I have it no longer." On religion: "a mighty fortress of graft." On bankers: "legalized counterfeiters." On the American Legion: "riot department of the plutocracy" and conductors of "drunken orgies." Nearly all of the quotes were out of context; some of the most inflammatory were actually dialogue from characters in Sinclair novels. As the candidate himself told a journalist, if he lost it wouldn't mean that socialism had failed, only that he had written too many books.
Sinclair lacked the support of a single daily newspaper. Nor did he obtain much help from the many small but influential weeklies, some 700 in all, since Clem Whitaker, himself a former journalist, had established a "cozy relationship" with their publishers. According to Mitchell: "Besides his Campaigns, Inc. operation, Clem ran an advertising company in Sacramento and he had discovered that one operation benefited the other: it was amazing how much free coverage for his candidate he could secure simply by placing a few dollars' worth of advertising in each of the weeklies. . . . In a depression every few dollars mattered." Lest there be any doubt of his purpose, he insisted on paying for the ads in advance.
Late in the campaign, The New York Times sent Turner Catledge out to report on the strange goings-on in California. Scanning the Los Angeles Times, he saw stories on Governor Merriam's every appearance, but no mention of EPIC rallies or speaking engagements by candidate Sinclair. At dinner that night he queried the paper's political editor, Kyle Palmer. "Turner, forget it," Palmer replied. "We don't go in for that kind of crap that you have back in New York -- of being obliged to print both sides. We're going to beat this son-of-a-bitch Sinclair any way we can. We're going to kill him."
Beat him they did, though only by 200,000 votes, Merriam receiving 1.1 million, Sinclair 900,000. But kill him they didn't, although the EPIC movement itself, divided by factionalism and ironically even some Red-baiting, was assimilated into the newly resurgent Democratic party. Earlier, Sinclair had told one EPIC crowd that if they elected Merriam they would still have poverty and "I'll again be a writer. I won't need to think about what Pasadena thinks of me. I can go back to that blessed state of not being recognized on the streets." His first effort, of course, was a pamphlet entitled I, Candidate for Governor of California, and How I Got Licked. Returning to fiction, he wrote the highly popular Lanny Budd novels, one of which won him a 1943 Pulitzer Prize; remarried at eighty-three; and died, in 1968, an ninety. No one has ever been able to determine exactly how many books and pamphlets he published.
It would be an exaggeration to say that the campaign of 1934 was the last hurrah for the California press lords, the beginning of the end of their dominance of the electoral process. (Kyle Palmer, Earl "Squire" Behrens, and their successors would play kingmakers for another two decades, giving us, among others, Richard Milhous Nixon.) But the seeds were planted -- professional full-service campaign management, attack ads, the creative use of film, radio, and direct mail -- that would, as author Mitchell notes, forever change the way candidates ran for office.....
|
Quote:
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA01/Whi.../sinclair.html
THE MOVIES AND POLITICAL PROPAGANDA
from The Movies On Trial
Upton Sinclair
........That I know what I am talking about was proved when I happened to write on a subject that did not involve the profit system. Several concerns were bidding for "The Wet Parade" before the book was out. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer paid twenty thousand dollars for it, and they spent half a million and made an excellent picture, following my story closely.
Now I loomed on the horizon, no longer a mere writer, but proposing to apply my rejected scenarios! While I was in New York some reporter asked: "What are you going to do with all the unemployed motion picture actors?" I answered: "Why should not the State of California rent one of the idle studios and let the unemployed actors make a few pictures of their own?" That word was flashed to Hollywood, and the war was on.
Louis B. Mayer, president of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, was vacationing in Europe when he got this dreadful news, and he dropped everything and came home to take charge of the campaign to "stop Sinclair." You see, he is chairman of the State Committee of the Republican party, so he had a double responsibility. I have met "Louie Bee," as he is called, now and then. I once took Bertrand Russell to lunch with him by invitation and learned that a great film magnate doesn't have time to talk with a mere philosopher, but politely appoints a substitute to see that he is properly fed and escorted round the lot.
Also Mr. Hearst was summoned from his vacation. Mr. Hearst belongs to the movie section. Hearst had been staying at Bad Nauheim. He was hobnobbing with Hanfstaengel, Nazi agent to the United States. You see, Hearst wants to know how the Reds are to be put down in America; so "Huffy," as they call him, flew with Hearst to interview Hitler.
As soon as Hearst learned of my nomination, he gave out an interview comparing me with the Pied Piper of Hamlin; and then he came back to New York and gave another interview, and from there to California, where he called me "an unbalanced and unscrupulous political speculator." His newspapers began a campaign of editorials and cartoons denouncing me as a Communist. I didn't see any denouncing me as a free-lover, and a menace to the purity and sanctity of the American home.
The first threat of the movie magnates was to move to Florida. Warner Brothers said they would go - and proceeded to start the construction of two or three new sound stages in Hollywood. Joseph Schenck of United Artists travelled to Florida to inspect locations, and the Florida legislature announced its intention to exempt motion picture studios from all taxes, and a mob of new "come-ons" rushed to buy lots.
Of course, this talk of moving was the veriest bunk. It would cost a billion dollars to move, and the British would grab the business meanwhile. Where would they get their mountains, and their eucalyptus trees, which represent the foliage of North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia? Above all, what would they do about the mosquitoes? I have lived in Florida, and I said to my audiences: "Right in the middle of a scene, one would bite the lady star on the nose and cost them fifty thousand dollars."
But that didn't keep them from building up the terror. Orders for an assessment came; and in Hollywood an assessment means that the check is written for you, and you sign it. In this case it was for one day's pay of everybody in all the studios - except the big "execs." The total amount raised was close to half a million. There was a little rebellion, but I didn't hear about it in any paper in California. I had to go to the London News-Chronicle to learn that Jean Harlow and James Cagney were among the Protestants. From the same paper I learn that Katharine Hepburn was threatened with dismissal if she supported Upton Sinclair.
I am happy to say that a few Hollywood writers showed political independence. Frank Scully got up a committee in my support, and it was joined by Dorothy Parker, Morris Ryskind, Gene Fowler, Lewis Browne and Jim Tully.
Also they started in making newsreels. Will Hays sent a representative to attend to this. They invented a character called the "Inquiring Reporter." He was supposed to be travelling around California, interviewing people on the campaign. They were supposed to be real people, but of course they were actors. On November 4, the New York Times published a two-column story from their Hollywood press correspondent, from which I quote:
FILMS AND POLITICS
HOLLYWOOD MASSES THE FULL POWER OF HER RESOURCES
To FIGHT SINCLAIR
The City of Los Angeles has turned into a huge movie set where many newsreel pictures are made every day, depicting the feelings of the people against Mr. Sinclair. Equipment from one of the major studios, as well as some of its second-rate players, may be seen at various street intersections or out in the residential neighborhood, "shooting" the melodrama and unconscious comedy of the campaign. Their product can be seen in leading motionpicture houses in practically every city of the State.
In one of the "melodramas" recently filmed and shown here in Los Angeles, an interviewer approaches a demure old lady, sitting on her front porch and rocking away in her rocking chair.
"For whom are you voting, Mother?" asks the interviewer.
"I am voting for Governor Merriam," the old lady answers in a faltering voice.
"Why, Mother?"
"Because I want to have my little home. It is all I have left in the world."
In another recent newsreel there is shown a shaggy man with bristling Russian whiskers and a menacing look in his eye.
"For whom are you voting?" asked the interviewer.
"Vy, I am foting for Seenclair."
"Why are you voting for Mr. Sinclair?"
"Vell, his system vorked vell in Russia, vy can't it vork here?"
All these releases are presented as "newsreels."
Another "newsreel" has been made of Oscar Rankin, a colored prizefighter and preacher who is quite a favorite with his race in Los Angeles county. Asked why he was voting for Governor Merriam, he answered that he liked to preach and play the piano and he wants to keep a church to preach in and a piano to play.
Merriam supporters always are depicted as the more worthwhile element of the community, as popular favorites or as substantial business men. Sinclair supporters are invariably pictured as the riff-raff. Low paid "bit" players are said to take the leading roles in most of these "newsreels," particularly where dialogue is required. People conversant with movie personnel claim to have recognized in them certain aspirants to stardom.
At another studio an official called in his scenario writers to give them a bit of advice on how to vote. "After all," he is reputed to have told his writers, "what does Sinclair know about anything? He's just a writer."
Hitherto the movies have maintained that they could not do any kind of "educational" work; their audiences demanded entertainment, and they could have nothing to do with "propaganda." But now, you see, that pretense has been cast aside. They have made propaganda, and they have won a great victory with it, and are tremendously swelled up about it. You may be sure that never again will there be an election in California in which the great "Louie Bee" will not make his power felt; and just as you saw the story of "Thunder Over California" being imported from Minnesota, so will you see the "Inquiring Reporter" arriving in Minnesota, Mississippi, Washington, or wherever big business desires to ridicule the efforts of the disinherited to help themselves at the ballot-box.
Listen to the lords of the screen world vaunting themselves: The front page of the Hollywood Reporter eleven days prior to the election.
This campaign against Upton Sinclair has been and is dynamite.
When the picture business gets aroused, it becomes AROUSED, and, boy, how they can go to it. It is the most effective piece of political humdingery that has ever been effected, and this is said in full recognition of the antics of that master-machine that used to be Tammany. Politicians in every part of this land (and they are all vitally interested in the California election are standing by in amazement as a result of the bombast that has been set off under the rocking chair of Mr. Sinclair.....
|
|