Hypocritical Hollywood

Hollywood is coming out in support of the protests against the overwhelming support of Prop 8 here in sunny California. I see it as just another sign of white cluelessness and hypocrisy.

The downside of Obama's win is that white people think racism is "over," that black people have cracked the so-called "glass ceiling."

Because of this line of thinking, Hollywood is saddened that on the day a black man (relatively debatable) became President of the United States, the opposition to gay marriage has "set us back."

Newsflash Ye Olde Hollywood: (White) Gay people are accepted on the silver screen more than people of color. Will & Grace was a super-popular show on one of the Big Five Networks. Brokeback Mountain was a blockbuster and garnered tons of Oscar nominations. Gay characters abound in the ultra-fashionable worlds of Sex and the City. Queer Eye for the Straight Guy became an overnight success and member of American pop culture. Ellen DeGeneres bounced back from her unofficial blacklisting from Hollywood when she came out of the closet, and is pulling down millions upon millions of dollars for her talk show.

We're still in a Hollywood where "black people don't sell well on magazine covers," or black actors struggle to just get a part that has nothing to do with race because casting directors want whites only. Where black actors attending Julliard are told they're wasting their time as a classically-trained actor because there aren't going to be any parts for them. Where It Girl after It Girl is debuted in the pages of Vanity Fair or Vogue or Elle Magazine as the Next Big Thing on Broadway or in Hollywood, and black actors are severely marginalized. Where a show with black characters is deemed a "black show" and shoved to the death night of Friday--or better yet, how fledgling networks build an audience on black TV shows to keep afloat, and once they acquire popular TV shows full of white characters (i.e. WB with Dawson's Creek), they rapidly become yet another station full of white faces--yet, in the 70s, 80s and early 90s, shows like Martin, Living Single, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, 227, The Cosby Show, etc were watched by EVERYONE.

Hollywood was built on the marginalization of people of color, while white gays flourished both behind the scenes and in front of the cameras--AND IT CONTINUES TO THIS DAY.

So I thumb my nose at you (white) Hollywood and your white liberal smugness and hypocrisy.