Coastal Elites Lives Up To Its Name - And That's Just Part of the Problem With It

 

This is a more personal piece than usual and requires more of an introduction.

I have to be clear I and my family were incredibly fortunate during the height of Covid in 2020. We managed to shelter in place successfully for nearly a year and none of us contracted the virus. We were among the fortunate ones who got the vaccine early when it came out because of our conditions (my parents were both in their late seventies; I suffered from a preexisting condition) No one in our immediate family died from the virus or as far as I know contracted it during the period that there was nothing close to a vaccine available. We were lucky. I personally know many people who weren’t as fortunate.

At a certain point – I forget when – I realized that this was one of those once-in-a-generation events that I was living through. However while it was going on and indeed not long after, I realized three critical things about our society all of which are pertinent to myself and the subject of this article.

The first is the fundamental selfishness of our society as a whole. I don’t just mean the politicization of the virus or the utter failure of what we call a safety net in our society at every level: I mean something more subtle than that. I’m talking about the fact that throughout the first few months of lockdown my mother started audibly mumbling about the Yankees playing. If we ever needed a clear post of American exceptionalism, it’s that: how millions of Americans wanted athletes in every sport to resume playing and risking their own lives because they were bored and wanted amusement. What’s more shocking to me is how many professional athletes were willing to go along with it when there was no vaccine and performed in bubbles. That speaks more to our sense of entitlement than anything that happened during that year in my opinion.

Now I did do everything in my power to distract myself from what was happening by doing what I had always done: I watched a lot of television and tried to focus on what I had done before COVID. That meant I watched a lot of streaming shows, more than usual. I was delighted by Little Fires Everywhere and could not get into The Mandalorian at all. I turned to comedy more than usual, watching both seasons that had dropped of Ramy and Dead To Me, the third season of Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and like many of us, eventually falling in love with Ted Lasso. I focused with intensity on the 2020 Emmys, was outraged when the second season of Big Little Lies was passed over for Succession among the Best Drama nominees (I admit I was wrong there) and that Nicole Kidman was ignored for Zendaya for Euphoria (that I will never forgive). I accepted the delays of so many limited series as a result of wanting programming for the fall of 2020 as a given (I was frankly astonished that so many shows when back to filming as early as that August) but that didn’t stop me from enjoying when they aired The Undoing, The Gooid Lord Bird and the fourth season of Fargo. And I wrote about all of these shows and quite a bit more during that long year.

What my current readers might not know and be shocked by was that was all I was writing about during 2020. In large part that was because when I had started my column back in 2016, and indeed my entire career to that point, I was writing about nothing but television. I had opinions about all of the other things I now write about in my blog then, of course – movies, books, history, criticism – but because my primary focus had always been about television before and the world around it, I had seen no reason to change during 2020. I had many opinions during this period about what was happening in the world but I was also very aware of the toxic nature of the internet. The last thing I wanted to do was to attract the wrong kind of attention and if that meant no one was going to read my column, so be it.

This brings me to the third and most and least surprising thing for my readers. For most of my adult life I was fundamentally progressive. I wasn’t a true believer the way so many of them are – I never agreed with their version of history that came out during that decade and well before that – but I was very accord with their values and what they said they fought for. I’d voted Democrat most of my life (occasionally I voted for Republicans at a state or local level) and as a student of history I was much more inclined to be sympathetic to the left-wing and had little use for the right. Like many people that view calcified with the shock election of Donald Trump in 2016.

Obviously I was emotionally wrecked by that – I’ve written about it at the time in other articles about my experience with election – and it felt like a rejection of progressive values. I had been more aligned with the views of Dennis Kucinich in both his quixotic runs for the Democratic nomination, had voted for Sanders in 2016 (though that was borne out of my dislike of Hilary as much as my accord with his platform) and spent much of the lead-up to 2020 planning to vote for Elizabeth Warren. (I no longer recall if she was still on the ballot by the time of the New York Primary.) But I kept my feelings to myself and I certainly didn’t write about anything related to Trump during that period on my column. I don’t even think I ventured into writing about politics in any form on this site until at least the summer of 2021 and even then it was entirely about TV shows that were political. (I think my first column about it had to do  with Ryan Murphy’s Impeachment and my feelings about both Bill and Hilary Clinton.)

That said I spent a lot of time, particularly in 2020, on a lot of mostly progressive columns on this site and others writing about the failures of America and how Trump was a destructive force. I expressed support for them when I could and I was on their side. It was until the first year of Biden’s administration was over that my feeling about all things progressive began to change. And much of it had to do with the fact that all of these writers didn’t seem any happier now that their boogeyman was gone. If anything they seemed angrier at Biden than they after had at Trump. It was at the time I began hearing the phrase over and over that we all know: “There’s no difference between the two parties.”

As someone who had lived during the four years prior, I was astonished how anyone could rationally think that. I didn’t realize – but now know all too well – that this has been the default of the left for their entire existence. Around this time my comments on these columns which had been mostly supporting began to change. I became challenging initially, asking what they expected from Biden and what they wanted from it. I got no answers. Eventually my comments became more hostile as they refused to engage any debate. And after awhile I began to realize something that was only apparent now that their boogeyman was gone (at least temporarily)

 There was a part of the progressive mindset that was happy Donald Trump had come to power. It gave them permission to throw off even the shell of politeness towards their enemies and treat anyone who offered a differing view with contempt and disdain. And in a sense all three of these elements came together in one of the few original programs that came out in 2020.

During the summer of 2020 when we were starving for entertainment, most of our original programing came through zoom reunions. I remember ones for 30 Rock, Parks and Rec, Father of the Bride, Red Nose Day…anything to get us through it. One of the few original works was an HBO TV movie that debuted in September of 2020. It involved five monologues all written by Paul Rudnick and directed by Jay Roach, who had previously directed the brilliant HBO TV movies Game Change and Recount for HBO.  According to imdb.com it is about: ‘five characters make confessions under quarantine that touch on their lives during the 2020 pandemic and living in a world of deeply divided politics.”

In truth it is a polemic written by a man of privilege delivered by five performers who use the label that the right has bestowed upon them for decades as a badge of honor to  as an attempt to express their Trump derangement syndrome. It’s called a satire but all the characters play it straight and the subjects of ridicule are never seen but talked down to off screen. There’s not a single laugh in at all, except the cruel ones of a bunch of privileged people who have decided who is to blame for their lot in life and have decided to use this forum to rant at a man and a movement that loathe with every fiber of their being. (To be fair, there’s one character who doesn’t. But I’ll get to that.)

I was dying for original entertainment when this came out in September of 2020, so it says something that even in the individual segments and even with so many actors I loved I saw this experience for what it was: self-indulgent propaganda that didn’t bother to hide its politics or play into every cliché that the right says the title characters are. Indeed one of the characters actually uses the title  phrase with no irony or self-awareness.

I’ve rewatched it occasionally when it shows up on HBO, never really liking it. But since I have little doubt it’s going to become popular on MAX again very soon I think you need to know about it because I have no doubt that everyone behind it is still convinced that they were providing a relief during this period. Instead what they were doing was venting their outrage disguised as entertainment in the way that I’ve seen so many leftists do in similar fashion over the last four years and no doubt decades before.

Bette Midler plays Miriam, a Jewish widow who is being held in lockup after getting into an argument with a Trump supporter. This is considered the highpoint of the movie, in fact it’s the least subtle monologue of the group and arguably the worst. Because Miriam makes it clear from the start that she was perfectly fine all her life and after Trump won, she became angrier. Her entire speech is that of entitlement: she says she never had a problem with all those people from ‘Ohio and Wyoming who fly in on trips to New York. I’d show them where to go to the theater.” She never tells  us if she bothered to go to any of these red states; I think its implied. She makes it clear she’s spent the last four years telling people to f- themselves, ranting about what a shitty person Trump and Melania are that Ivanka isn’t a real Jew, and of course completely defending Hilary. The most she’ll say is: “Maybe she wasn’t perfect,” which is the understatement of the century. In her mind, she deserves to be angry because ‘they’ betrayed her. We all know who ‘they’ are and so does the audience. That’s the point.

The next piece is by Dan Levy. Levy is the only male performer in the cast, and it’s telling he’s gay. Mark is a gay actor who is talking about the horrible nature of homophobia on the internet and how important it is for him to play one of the few openly gay superheroes. Levy’s monologue is the only one that doesn’t deal with Trumpism directly but it shows a similar detachment from reality that is front-and-center with the left: the idea of having a gay superhero appearing on big screens near you is something that represents a great leap forward for the underprivileged. I find it hard to believe that Wonder Woman and Black Panther did anything to help lift people up the way that Susan B. Anthony and Rosa Parks tried to but given the way Levy talks, he thinks it does.

Issa Rae plays Callie, a black daughter of a billionaire who went to school with Ivanka. This is the story that has the most direct link with Trump but it also shows the level of superiority that many progressives have towards Trump. It is in this monologue that Rae mentions that what Trump really wants it what he can never have: “the approval of the coastal elites” of which Callie proudly represents. The fact that her family has no doubt been part of the SuperPACs that give money to Democrats and have no doubt enjoyed the tax breaks of countless Republican administration is not something that Rae feels she has to tell us. Her monologue is all about the delusions of Ivanka who she feels superior to, even though they went to the same boarding school and Ivanka works in the White House. In her minds Callie is on the right side of history because Ivanka doesn’t ‘share her values’ The fact that they are meeting at a charity function for worthy cause is another thing that doesn’t seem obvious.

Sarah Paulson then comes next as Clarissa,  a meditation counselor in Vermont who tells how she has become estranged from her family because they are Trump supporters. Her monologue is the most contemptuous of Trump voters as well as the most entitled: in her mind, it’s perfectly fine to cut yourself off from your family because they don’t share your values. She ends her monologue by telling her about her experience with her father who has never talked for long and who tells her that he hates Trump because of how he treated John McCain. In her mind that means more to her than any declaration of her father’s love – and that’s kind of insulting.

The final monologue is the only one not given by an elite and it is the most rewarding. Kaitlyn Dever plays a nurse who works at a hospital in the midst of Covid. Sharynn is the only one we relate to because she’s on the frontlines in a way these other people aren’t close to and the stories she tells of having to deal with all of the deaths and the nurses getting sick and the refrigerated trucks having to take the bodies away will never lose its power. It also connects to one of the earlier stories – and there’s the weakness in it.

Sharynn’s monologue is about Miriam, Bette Midler’s character. Sharynn, I should mention is from Wyoming and Miriam, from what she tells us, is completely herself. The first thing she asks is if Sharynn’s a Republican and Sharynn tells her she thinks she’s an independent. Miriam’s reaction is hysterical but it also speaks to her own privilege. Later on, Miriam is hospitalized and she’s watching Fox News and its clearly hurting her. Sharynn tries to take her remote and she says: “It’s only my rage that’s keeping me alive.” Sharynn is hanging on to Miriam’s survival as the only thing that’s keeping her going and that’s noble but there’s also the completely unsubtle way that this girl from Wyoming completely changes her view of the world because of her encounter with a coastal elite. It speaks to the idea that is at the core of progressive thinking: if someone in a red state spent time in ‘real America’ naturally they’d renounce their values and become full-throated leftists. And it makes you think that everything Sharynn has gone through – and by extension the entire nation – is worth it if red America realizes that the elites have been right all along.

I’ve rarely seen something that is  pure propaganda for the left disguised as entertainment: by contrast Michael Moore’s films are artistic masterpieces of nuance by comparison. And the fact that this film was made in any form speaks volumes to the level of narcissism at every step of the project. Roach, Rudnick and the five actors they hired decided that in the midst of a plague that was killing millions worldwide and causing a crisis at every level in America the best thing they could do was engage in five – five! – separate speeches where everybody gets to rant into a camera about how Trump and the Republicans are destroying America and the world and release it on cable two months before the election.

 And I know why they did it: they were speaking from the same indulgent place of entitlement so much of America felt. Their livelihood had been obstructed, like the rest of America. Unlike most of them, they had millions of dollars in savings and could afford to watch all of this from their ivory towers. But they were bored. Oh sure they were angry at Trump but they’d been pissed at him for decades. They just had free time in a way they hadn’t before and they wanted to work.

So they engaged in a pure vanity project with a title so obvious to their own lot in life that they couldn’t even pretend it was to be taken satirically. And they took what was one of the worst crises in the history of America and made it all about them. I’d be willing to think that might be the point but the final monologue leaves me no doubt that they were blind to what they were writing and saying.

This movie is not one you should see. I don’t recommend it and if you come across it by accident channel chasing immediately change to something else. But it is important, now more than ever. It stands as perhaps the clearest example of how a certain section of America feels about another section and doesn’t see how much it makes them like the people they look down on. It’s a project of entitlement and privilege and vanity that so many ‘good people’ think America as a whole should be. That message was essentially the closing argument for the Democrats during the fall campaign even though it hadn’t worked in 2016 and barely worked in 2020. And it is an argument I have little doubt that certain members of their circle – many of whom are the coastal elites like the ones in this film – is the only one that matters.

I suspect that Rudnick, Roach, his cast and so many other people in Hollywood looked at the result’s of this year’s election and asked: “How this could happen?” To all of them, as well as the many leftists in this society, this ‘work’ (I won’t deign to call it a movie) is exhibits A through E. What’s frightening is that I’m pretty sure they’d see this same film and relate to all the stories in it and never realize the greater fallacy in the narrative.