I kind of did that. I came out, and I got a deal on cable to make what turned out to be the conservative equivalent—in quality of writing and insight—of HBO’s feminist show Girls. Of course, I made sure we had better nudity. Conservative women are always hotter.
Remember that the value of a pop culture presence is not only (or even mostly) based on the content itself, but what I think of as the normalization factor. The increased conservative presence made conservatives familiar and unthreatening. We stopped being pictured as uterus-obsessed Bible thumpers, and the loss of that caricature was a big blow to our opponents.
Popular culture made constitutional conservatives, if not cool, at least not the face of evil. Conservative normalization was huge.
* * *
Drew Johnson (TV Producer)
I met up with veteran situation comedy producer Drew Jordan at the Manhattan Beach Studios soundstage, where he is overseeing production on a new comedy series. The man who helped lead the rise of young, conservative—or at least libertarian—artists is now an elder statesman. He stands back, keeping a close eye on the director and stepping in to add his advice when things get difficult. He is now clearly part of the Hollywood establishment, and it is hard to imagine just how much of a departure his first hit show, Legal Aid, represented when it premiered in 2019.
Legal Aid was a show about some attractive young lawyers just out of law school working at a legal aid clinic. Now you’d expect it to be some sort of liberal fantasy about earnest kids helping poor, oppressed victims fight the system. At least that’s what we told the network it would be, but instead we took it in a much funnier direction, and one I happened to agree with.
The hero, Baxter, has no patience for losers and in the first scene on the first show this client is whining about how his landlord was evicting him and blah blah blah, and Baxter listens and nods and finally says “Well, here’s my legal opinion. Maybe you ought to get your lazy ass a job and pay your rent.” And the studio audience loved it.
They’d never heard that before. See, we didn’t make Baxter a jerk—we made him a stand-in for every American who had ever worked hard but watched other people game the system and never get held to account. The network panicked, and the critics were furious, but the ratings went through the roof.
Legal Aid helped mainstream conservative characters who weren’t caricatures or villains, and the culture responded. Conservatives stopped being thought of as outside the mainstream because they now were mainstream. A show called Will & Grace did that to mainstream gays in the 1990s by showing regular gay folks as normal and nonthreatening. We did that with conservatives. And we stopped making every liberal do-gooder a hero and started showing them as they usually are—bossy, snobby, and under the mistaken impression that they know best how everyone else should live their lives.
* * *
Dan Stringer (Billionaire CEO/Activist)
We noticed that there were a ton of really smart, talented people out there trying to use the web to make an impact using the visual arts. And they never had any money, yet they were having an impact.
I set up an organization that would provide microgrants—sometimes a grand or so—or would provide help on web technology to set up sites and stuff. They made films, web series, and all sorts of things. Today, some of them have careers in the industry after getting a start with a microgrant from us.
One bunch of my guys did a web video campaign combined with street art for marijuana decriminalization designed to undercut the liberals with, well, the dope-smoking demographic. This burnout who called himself Puff was the star—he’d say something like, “Getting arrested harshes my buzz, dude!”
It was funny and got a lot of attention, and then when it was revealed it was a bunch of constitutional conservatives behind it, suddenly we started getting taken seriously about our support for a liberty agenda.
This was a huge opportunity for these conservative entrepreneurs—that’s what I saw them as: entrepreneurs! Some succeeded, and some failed, but we had a huge return on investment!
Oh, the liberals were furious that I was supporting conservative visual artists, which merely encouraged me! See, politics was only a part. Aiming money at culture was key.
* * *
Brad Fields (Insurance Salesman)
I don’t want to ban any entertainment—I like a good action scene, and I’m not too old to appreciate a shower scene either. But I don’t want to pay to watch something where I’m called “a hater” or “an idiot” or any of those other things they portrayed conservatives as in the past. I just stopped spending my money on liberal crap. When stuff that treated us with respect came out, I started to go out again and I’d see that.
I guess Hollywood finally noticed when we conservatives started to hit it in the wallet.
* * *
Tony “Gator” McCoy (Chief Advisor to President Carrie Marlowe)
The president recognized that Hollywood was a threat, so she sent me out to California as the designated “bad cop” to confront the power players. They just didn’t get it—they didn’t know any of us constitutional conservatives and apparently bought their own propaganda that we were a bunch of inbred, slack-jawed, barely literate racists.
I listened to this one little twerp lecture me for about five minutes on what the Marlowe administration needed to do vis-à-vis their industry, like we owed them anything at all after they savaged her during the campaign. He shut his sushi hole, smirked, and then I asked, “Why again should we do jack shit for you?” They were stunned.
I went on. “You give the other guys money, your shows portray us as assholes and dumbshits, and now you talk to me like I’m one of your latte-fetching flunkies. Listen up. You don’t have friend one who can do shit for you inside the Beltway anymore. My guys don’t owe you squat—in fact, screwing you is gonna make their voters cheer. So, tell me again why I don’t make kicking you in your nutsacks my hobby for the next eight years?”
Now, these guys were all used to hardball, but I was playing dodgeball, and when I play dodgeball I throw wrenches instead of balls.
“I just talked to the Speaker. Guess what we decided to bring up next session? Copyright reform. Yeah, you know how you get rights to your little cartoon characters and songs and videos for umpteen years now? We’re thinking 10 years is plenty. How do you like that? Because we’re just getting started.”
They were silent—not a freaking peep. They figured out there was a new sheriff in town.
“Okay,” I said, “Now that we understand each other, I think we’re ready to discuss our future working relationship. And I have a feeling this is going to be the start of a beautiful friendship.”
* * *
Chis-El (Rapper)
The old-school rapper runs his music and lifestyle empire from a Florida high-rise. The walls in his office are lined with gold records and photos, as well as two portraits: Booker T. Washington and Ronald Reagan.
Seated behind an enormous oak desk, he wears a blazing white suit and dark black glasses. However, his manner is friendly and open—he has just returned from a visit to a youth home his charitable foundation runs in downtown Miami.
The hip-hop impresario was first noted for his infectious 2016 hip-hop smash “Cuz I Split Tha Rock” and a string of other huge hits. Today, he is a full-blown entrepreneur, with clothing lines and other ventures besides a music label that boasts a formidable lineup of talent. He offered a visiting reporter one of his Chis-El Mac cigars, grown and rolled at his plantation in Cuba—Chis-El was among the first businessmen to flood back in after President Marlowe ordered the 2026 surgical invasion that liberated the imprisoned isle from the tyranny of the doddering relics of the Castro regime.
I saw firsthand how welfare poisoned my community. When you make the government the man of the family, you don’t leave room for the real man. I take nothing away from the ladies who struggled to raise kids alone, but I was lucky. I had a family with a father. I have a family now, and
I am there with them.
I always saw myself as conservative. Most black folk supported the Democrats and things were always getting worse—that made no sense to me. So when I hit it big I was asked on a television interview if I’d be campaigning for Hillary Clinton and I just said, “Hell no. I’m a Republican because I don’t believe in welfare. I believe a man supports himself and his own.”
A lot of people started talking smack about me but I went right back at them. I don’t have to explain myself to fools, but I wanted to make sure my fans understood. And when I asked why it made sense for me to work my ass off so some lazy punk can sit on his ass all day collecting a check, a lot of folks understood.
My biggest selling jam was “Get Your Ass a Job.” I told it straight up—if you aren’t supporting yourself, you’re a punk-ass bitch.
That song blew up. I heard that back in the day, when he was Senator Patel, he had it as his ringtone. People were saying it in the street—it was a catchphrase. I turned on a TV show once and one of the characters said it to some bum. I couldn’t take the Katy Perry cover version, though.
I started producing and a lot of folks who thought like I did would expect me to back them, but if they sounded like shit I threw them out. You need to show some talent—it’s not enough to agree with me. I wouldn’t call a lot of rappers conservative even now, but there are more diverse views. Conservatives upped their game and the good ones made records.
* * *
Sammy Honda (Hollywood Producer)
“Hey, babe, we’ll do lunch!” producer Sammy Honda says as he pats a noted situation comedy star on the shoulder while moving through the chic West Hollywood restaurant to his reserved table. “That lady is super beautiful, super talented. Love her work. Love it! I mean, she’s a damn commie, but you know, it’s a free country. You want to be liberal? Hey, you can even be liberal in Hollywood. This is an open-minded community!”
Honda, the producer of such conservative favorite shows as Deadbeats! and Normal Family, remembers when talking about Hollywood as tolerant of liberals would have gotten him a recommendation that he replace his current psychiatrist. “When I got here in 2010, I said nothing about my politics. Nothing! You couldn’t unless you were some sort of leftist, because it seemed everyone was leftist and you’d never work again. But it only seemed that way. This town, then and now, runs on money. If you made money, you generally worked even if your politics would have made Genghis Khan need a hug.”
We are seated, and without bothering to consult the menu Honda orders an off-the-menu lettuce salad with chicken, quinoa, cashews, and tomatoes, then double-checks that the tomatoes are organic. “My life coach is very strict about my diet. The tomatoes have to be organic or my chakra gets unbalanced or something. Where were we? Oh, right . . .”
Anyway, there were always a fair number of conservative folks in town, most off screen. Crews were often largely conservative. A lot of business folk and producers too. Some stars were too. Adam Baldwin was very open about his views, and he worked all the time. So was Nick Searcy, who left television to found the Nick Searcy School of Acting and coached I don’t know how many Oscar winners—though anyone who comes out of his school is a total prima donna for some reason. Anyway, we always had a few conservatives around.
[The waiter brings Honda a glass of Chablis. He sips and scowls. “I don’t know how Chablis ever came back, but everyone’s drinking it so I guess it’s good and I just don’t know it. Where was I? Oh yeah . . .”]
During the conservative comeback, the conservatives started consciously coming to Hollywood. They used to largely write it off, but technology changed and the old distribution channels changed so suddenly the liberals at the studios couldn’t gate-keep like they used to.
Wait, I need to take this . . .
[Honda makes no effort to lower his voice as he speaks into his phone about the pioneering conservative comedy series about men under siege by a liberal world that he helped produce. “Cam, my man, here’s my idea. Ready? We reboot Dudes as a movie . . . Listen, three words. Channing. Tatum. Junior. Hello? You still there? Yeah, well you talk to Jim, then my people will talk to yours. Two words. Ka. Ching! Bye now!”]
Where was I?
Oh right, you’d get conservatives and they’d make movies for video on demand on the cheap and no one could stop them. They got experience, and they got good—especially when they stopped trying to make “conservative” product and instead focused on making a quality product with a secondary conservative message.
So, there was real talent there and . . . wait. Is that who I think it is? Wait, I gotta talk to him. Can we reschedule this?
Chapter Fifteen: Victory
“We Changed the Culture”
America is not perfect, but the conservative culture of the ascendant America of 2041 is far superior to the desperate, declining American culture under the progressive rule of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Instead of a presumption that the government will meet its citizen’s needs, the movement has shifted the society back to expecting every American to support himself. Some people choose poorly, but now consequences are seen not as something to be ameliorated through the resources of those who work but, instead, as something people who fail to meet their responsibilities must inevitably experience.
It is not necessarily an America that would thrill conservatives of 2013 in all respects. Monogamous gay couples are accepted as strengthening the family (the reemphasis being on family, as opposed to enabling the extended post-college adolescence phenomenon of the early part of the century, is another huge achievement). Abortion is a peripheral issue, though it bubbles beneath the surface in a country where only a few states allow it and the culture frowns upon it. Marijuana is legal, but still scorned by many.
There is also the challenge of governing for a generation that spent decades fighting and has little practical experience with the norms and customs of the democratic republic that it sought to restore. The “conservative court-packing” maneuver of President Marlowe still rankles many, including some conservatives who saw it as a victory of expedience over principle. That tension remains a challenge for an insurgency-turned-establishment. Someday, the government will no longer be conservative—that is inevitable. The question is whether the insurgency understands and will avoid making the same error the liberals made in running roughshod over the opposition.
But the progress under conservatism is undeniable even in the face of long-term challenges. The federal government is paying off the deficit, shrinking in size and scope, and returning its focus to appropriate areas like national defense. People speak and worship freely. The government no longer acts as the enforcer for big corporations with lobbyists and clout.
Perfect? No, but a hell of a lot better than it was under the progressives.
* * *
Ron Patel (President-Elect)
President Patel rubs his hands together to warm them before taking the final few steps up to the platform where the chief justice waits to administer the oath and where he will give his inaugural address.
I never doubted we’d win, not for a minute. I don’t mean the election. I mean the whole struggle to take the country back from the progressives. We changed the culture.
It was long and hard, and sometimes it got really ugly, but I never doubted how it would end. We had an advantage they didn’t. It was a huge advantage, huge. We were selling freedom. Yeah, we couldn’t lose!
* * *
Tamara Hayes Smith (Professor/Activist)
The professor is working on a book of her own, a book that speculates about the cultural and political landscape in another 30 years. She shows me a synopsis, and to my surprise she predicts at least a brief flirtation with liberalism down the road within the next few election cycles.
While conservatives have succeeded for now, all political and cultural power is fleeting. We need to understand that. Even though we drove the culture right, it can still move left again if we let it.
/> There are no permanent victories. We defeated an ideology that placed elite-controlled collectivism above individuality, but the lure of the left will never die. Conservatives need to renew themselves again and again, because history has taught us that even the most dedicated conservative changes when he holds power for too long. He starts getting comfortable with it. And when that happens, it’ll be time for a new insurgency.
* * *
Drew Johnson (TV Producer)
The soundstage seems almost empty, with technology having drastically reduced the size of production crews. However, there are more productions going on than ever, and they are spread all over the country—California is only slowly recovering from years of high taxes and high regulation that drove much of the media production out of the Golden State.
Drew and I stand off to the side, watching the cast rehearse for the new show that will tape (of course, it’s all digital, but they still use the word “tape”) later that evening.
If you can’t laugh at yourself—the liberals never could—you are asking to be laughed at.
Television is now a generally conservative media, in the sense that the values it generally adopts tend to support family life, self-reliance, and liberty. That pretty much mirrors the culture at large—I’m still not clear whether we drove the culture back toward traditional values or whether the changed culture drove Hollywood back.
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