Virtue Bombs: How Hollywood Got Woke and Lost Its Soul

...but the good news is Hollywood is cutting its own throat.

Virtue Bombs by Christian Toto

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The author, Christian Toto, operates the “Toto in Hollywood” website. Toto in Hollywood (“TIH”) is the go-to source for news and insights into the flaming trainwreck that is popular culture. Toto is on the conservative side of the spectrum and so is uniquely free to point out that the emperor is naked in movie reviews and opinion pieces into the mass implosion of movie, television, comedy, etc.

If you've been reading TIH, a lot of this is going to be familiar. Nonetheless, get the book. The book provides a handy, condensed version of the last decade of TIH. Also, given “dense-packing” of Woke idiocy, it is so easy to forget the idiocy of last year, much less the early foreshadowing of the dysfunctional state of our current situation in 2022 that we experienced back in the heady days of 2012.

Toto surveys virtually every bit of woke dysfunction up to last month from every angle. He has a chapter on the effort to cancel Gina Carrano, for example. He covers the cowardly implosion of stand-up comedy. He explains why television shows and movies are no longer entertaining. He looks at the Grammies and rap music.

I found his chapter on stand-up comedy particularly insightful. I recently discovered Lilly Singh via a Matt Walsh segment where he watches woke female comics and dares them to make him laugh. Singh was one of them and she was awful. I then discovered a Youtube post by three hip Gen Z dudes - who had no axe to grind - and they had the same experience. Singh has her own show, but her “comedy” involves handing out Woke bromides and then bravely facing the applause of trained seals.

What the heck?

Citing Comedian Steve McGrew, Toto explains:

“I've seen several comics change their act to become more woke; they think it will make them more valuable and more wanted or in demand by the powers that be in Hollywood.” Even black comics who rarely told race-related jokes are suddenly talking about racism and skin color, he says. “Nothing will get you a Netflix special quicker than being a woke urban comic.”

Toto, Christian. Virtue Bombs: How Hollywood Got Woke and Lost Its Soul (p. 220). Bombardier Books. Kindle Edition.

For his part, Steve McGrew was blacklisted:

“Comedian Steve McGrew knows all about woke culture. The openly conservative comic was being punished early and often by Facebook before it was cool (and darn near ubiquitous for people on the Right). He lost an annual gig in Las Vegas after club owner Brad Garrett (yes, that Brad Garrett of Everybody Loves Raymond fame) learned McGrew supported Trump, and he found a new level of disdain in comedy circles for joining “The Deplorables” comedy tour.

Toto, Christian. Virtue Bombs: How Hollywood Got Woke and Lost Its Soul (p. 219). Bombardier Books. Kindle Edition.

So, time to look up McGrew and avoid anything with Garrett.

Andrew Klavan writes the introduction, which includes this observation that I've been making for a few years:

“I didn't care. American kids were having their legs blown off by squirrely dirtbags far from home. I wasn't going to curse them out in L.A. meetings so I could get work in Hollywood. I can't prove it, but I know it's so. I was blacklisted—and by the same perfidious toads who'd just spent fifty years whining about the last blacklist.

Toto, Christian. Virtue Bombs: How Hollywood Got Woke and Lost Its Soul (pp. 8-9). Bombardier Books. Kindle Edition.

How many times have we been told that the fight against Communists - and there were Communists and they actually supported a totalitarian, genocidal foreign power thanks to, inter alia, the Venona Intercepts - was a cruel, malicious, ignorant fight against a non-entity?

But as soon as these “perfidious toads” got power, they implemented their own blacklist.

Just like they did in the 1930s.

Just like we knew they always would, even when they were described as “liberals in a hurry.”

I like the equation of the Woke with a cult. Communism was a cult. Wokeness has all the indicia of a religious cult:

“She promoted woke jokes, knowing how influential comedy can be in changing hearts if not minds. Yet something began to bug her about the woke movement, which she now compares to a cult. She started to question elements of its belief system, a true no-no in any good cult. She also started educating herself about other philosophical movements, including the bootstrap ethos shared by Canadian professor Jordan Peterson. Slowly she realized the folly of her belief system, and she eventually left the comedy world.

Toto, Christian. Virtue Bombs: How Hollywood Got Woke and Lost Its Soul (pp. 232-233). Bombardier Books. Kindle Edition.

There is a lot here. There is a lot to be concerned about. Toto signs off with despair and hope:

“The cultural forces lined up against free expression, creativity, and all-American values look intimidating, if not downright invincible. The Left conquered Hollywood, and now they're trying to silence their ideological foes. How many times did progressives attempt to remove Rush Limbaugh off the airwaves, much as they're attempting to do with Fox News superstar Tucker Carlson? The biggest names in the culture bow to the mob, with few exceptions. No matter how much wealth, fame, or, yes, privilege a superstar has, it's often not enough to sufficiently stiffen their spine. The woke mob counts the media, academia, Hollywood, and Corporate U.S.A. as its foot soldiers (not counting the actual foot soldiers known as Antifa). Any one of those institutions alone would be formidable. Added together? They're nearly unstoppable. I say “nearly” because the American DNA still matters, still rejects the speech-snuffing measures those institutions embrace. That spirit offers the last best hope that the woke war can be won, both in Hollywood and the culture at large.

Toto, Christian. Virtue Bombs: How Hollywood Got Woke and Lost Its Soul (p. 227). Bombardier Books. Kindle Edition.

What is to be done? Well, support the good guys. Buy their products. Talk them up. Spread their message. Support them out loud while you can.

Sort of like a Top 500 Amazon reviewer giving a helpful, laudatory review.

Fight the war where you can.