Chuck Woolery to the blacks, gays: Stop complaining. I don't whine about all the discrimination against me.
Wesley McGee
gone to in my time here in Washington DC, I will so miss not going to
it while here. I will just have to manage to deal with not going while
I'm hundreds of miles away.
Anyway, Chuck Woolery has an important message to the blacks and the
gays which he relayed to Michele Bachmann at CPAC, the obvious
spokesperson and venue of choice to get the message out:
"Majority rules. We were born with natural rights. We don't need civil
rights. [African-Americans] don't need civil rights. They don't need
them. They have inalienable rights granted by God in the Constitution.
I mean, I'm discriminated against all the time. I don't care. It
doesn't bother me. [I'm discriminated against] because I'm old. I'm
too old to get a job as a game show host. They say, well, the guy's 71
and in five years he'll be 76. And I’m a one per center, and I'm
absolutely discriminated against as a one per center."
http://j.mp/xSd9hF -- Woolery and Bachmann at CPAC
I would like to point out here that Chuck Woolery last regular game
show hosting gig -- Lingo on GSN -- ran from 2003-2007. He was 62 when
it started, and 66 when it ended. It was a part of a string of game
show hosting gigs he had starting when was about 57. Most Americans
would not have as easy a time getting a job at age 57 even if they
began in the same industry. However, he works in the entertainment
industry, which is even harder for old people to get a job. A woman is
suing the Internet Movie Database because she suspects that agents
won't hire her because she is 40. This is not a terrible suspicion, as
we all know actresses whose careers stalled as they could no longer
play the cute 20 or 30-something. I think I can argue that Chuck
Woolery actually discriminated *less* than other white people, or even
other white men.
And this isn't even pointing out the absurdity of equating "not being
offered to host 'Match Game 3000'" to "not being allowed to marry" or
"being pulled over by police for driving in a rich neighborhood".
This outburst of Woolery reminded me of an article written two years
ago at The Daily Beast, which wondered why game-show hosts were
conservative. I saw it then, but I declined to post it here, because I
don't think it tried hard enough to answer the question it posed, or
even if the premise of the question was accurate. One immediate
thought I had when I reread the piece was "was it really unusual that
this set of people was politically conservative?" Except for Drew
Carey, they were all older and richer white people, a group that by
and large are conservative. (Drew Carey, a rich younger white person
is Libertarian). Also, by and large, they entered the industry
differently than actors do, so I don't think it is right to expect
their beliefs to match that of actors in Hollywood. And somewhat
related to the first point, the article focused on old-style game show
hosts. There was no mention of hosts of the 2000s. Survivor at its
essence is a game show. Where's Jeff Probst? (And of course, he hosted
Rock and Roll Jeopardy). How about Phil Keoghan of The Amazing Race?
Reege hosted a damn popular game show a while back? (The article was
written in 2010, so we can't count Steve Harvey.)
http://j.mp/wTl9Yk -- The Daily Beast: Why Game Show Hosts Vote Republican.
--
Wesley McGee
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Dave Sikula
Christians, they're the most discriminated-against people in the
country.
Alex Trebek doesn't strike me as particularly conservative, nor did
Bob Barker, so maybe they were working from a small and select sample.
--Dave Sikula
Tom Wolper
>
> Anyway, Chuck Woolery has an important message to the blacks and the
> gays which he relayed to Michele Bachmann at CPAC, the obvious
> spokesperson and venue of choice to get the message out:
>
> "Majority rules. We were born with natural rights. We don't need civil
> rights. [African-Americans] don't need civil rights. They don't need
> them. They have inalienable rights granted by God in the Constitution.
In political philosophy there's a concept called the tyranny of the
majority. I believe it comes from John Stuart Mill. It states that in
a democracy, while the majority rules, the system has to protect the
rights of the minority. Otherwise it will cease to be a democracy.
> This outburst of Woolery reminded me of an article written two years
> ago at The Daily Beast, which wondered why game-show hosts were
> conservative.
I have not read the Daily Beast article. In his book Next Man Up about
the NFL, John Feinstein wrote that most NFL players vote Republican.
That's more surprising than game show hosts as a fair number of
players come from disadvantaged backgrounds. What the two groups have
in common is that they make a lot of money and are probably most
concerned about paying as little tax as possible.
Mark Jeffries
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PGage
In political philosophy there's a concept called the tyranny of the
majority. I believe it comes from John Stuart Mill. It states that in
a democracy, while the majority rules, the system has to protect the
rights of the minority. Otherwise it will cease to be a democracy.
I have not read the Daily Beast article. In his book Next Man Up about
> This outburst of Woolery reminded me of an article written two years
> ago at The Daily Beast, which wondered why game-show hosts were
> conservative.
the NFL, John Feinstein wrote that most NFL players vote Republican.
That's more surprising than game show hosts as a fair number of
players come from disadvantaged backgrounds. What the two groups have
in common is that they make a lot of money and are probably most
concerned about paying as little tax as possible.
Here is an excerpt from a sub-section of DIA actually titled "Tyranny of the Majority" (http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/1_ch15.htm)
********************
"A majority taken collectively is only an individual, whose
opinions, and frequently whose interests, are opposed to those of
another individual, who is styled a minority. If it be admitted
that a man possessing absolute power may misuse that power by
wronging his adversaries, why should not a majority be liable to
the same reproach? Men do not change their characters by uniting
with one another; nor does their patience in the presence of
obstacles increase with their strength.3 For my own part, I cannot
believe it; the power to do everything, which I should refuse
to one of my equals, I will never grant to any number of them. (SNIP)
Unlimited power is in itself a bad and dangerous thing.
Human beings are not competent to exercise it with discretion.
God alone can be omnipotent, because his wisdom and his justice
are always equal to his power. There is no power on earth so
worthy of honor in itself or clothed with rights so sacred that I
would admit its uncontrolled and all-predominant authority. When
I see that the right and the means of absolute command are
conferred on any power whatever, be it called a people or a king,
an aristocracy or a democracy, a monarchy or a republic, I say
there is the germ of tyranny, and I seek to live elsewhere, under
other laws."
*********************
Here is a quote from Mill's On Liberty on the same subject:
********************
Like
other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still
vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the
public authorities...Protection, therefore, against the tyranny
of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the
tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of
society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas
and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to
fetter the development and, if possible, prevent the formation of any
individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to
fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the
legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual
independence; and to find that limit, and maintain it against
encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs
as protection against political despotism." p. 7; see: http://www.serendipity.li/jsmill/jsmill.htm
******************
de Tocqueville was worried that America did not have sufficient safeguards against the tyranny of the majority, apparently foreseeing the likes of Chuck Woolery way back in 1835. The Civil War, and the amendments to the Constitution that followed its bloody resolution, pretty much addressed most of this concern, though from time to time knuckleheads like Chuck and Newt seem to forget about it. And lest anyone thing this is some kind of liberal rethink of history, conservative fetish object, was against it too (from the Ayn Rand Center: "The tyranny of the majority, as the Founders understood, is just as evil as the tyranny of an absolute monarch."
http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=12777&news_iv_ctrl=1021).
Woolery's rantings are just more CPAC Porn and can be safely ignored.
PGage
I have not read the Daily Beast article. In his book Next Man Up about
the NFL, John Feinstein wrote that most NFL players vote Republican.
That's more surprising than game show hosts as a fair number of
players come from disadvantaged backgrounds. What the two groups have
in common is that they make a lot of money and are probably most
concerned about paying as little tax as possible.
I agree about the main explanation for any higher than expected frequency of conservatives among game show hosts as being explained primarily by their salaries. Athletes and entertainers, even (maybe especially) those from lower SES families, tend to be economic conservatives, as for most of them their wealth is almost entirely in the form of wages, which is taxed at the highest rate (unlike Mitt Romney). They often do not have the family habits, connections or knowledge base to restructure their wealth in ways that protect it from taxation, as truly wealthy people and corporations, do.
Also, while high wage earners coming from low SES families are in actuality low frequency, and almost random, occurrences, from the POV of the high wage earner, it seems, since they succeeded through (what they perceive to be) talent and hard work, other poor people could too if they were only talented and hard working enough, so they should shut up and stop complaining. Very much like the guy who wins a coin flipping contest that started with 10,000 people and ends with him having flipped heads 13 times in a row. He becomes convinced he is just a particularly gifted and dedicated coin flipper, and the losers who attribute his victory to luck are just jealous and lazy.
David Bruggeman
From: Dave Sikula <dsi...@yahoo.com>
Subject: [TV orNotTV] Re: Chuck Woolery to the blacks, gays: Stop complaining. I don't whine about all the discrimination against me.
PGage
Ben Stein probably skews things a bit. Pat Sajak is conservative, no idea about Gene Rayburn, Bill Ludden (though I could guess), or Wink Martindale.
"Rayburn was unabashedly liberal in his politics. So much that, on one occasion on Match Game (CBS), the name of William F. Buckley, Jr. (a famous conservative) was brought up. Rayburn said that Buckley was "...always wrong!""
See, for example: http://www.matchgameomeedy.i8.com/catalog.html
Bob in Jersey
PGage, to David Bruggeman:
> > about Gene Rayburn, Bill Ludden (though I could guess), or Wink Martindale.
>
> I have come across a couple of google-based references like this (may all
> ultimately trace back to the same source, but the wiki's don't seem to have
> it):
>
> "Rayburn was unabashedly liberal in his politics. So much that, on one
> occasion on Match Game (CBS), the name of William F. Buckley,
> "...always wrong!""
>
> See, for example: http://www.matchgameomeedy.i8.com/catalog.html
idea on Allen Ludden, at least before he married Betty White, or on
all those cats from Canada.
--
BOB