Hollywood Nation: Left Coast Lies, Old Media Spin, and the New Media Revolution

by James Hirsen

Book Overview

The bestselling author of Tales from the Left Coast takes an inside look at how news has become big entertainment, and entertainment has become big news--and how the blurring line between them gives... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1400081920
• ISBN13: 9781400081929
• Release Date: August 2005
• Publisher: Crown Forum
• Length: 258 Pages
• Weight: 1.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.4" x 9.8"

Customer Reviews

The real Hollywood

This book is the real Hollywood thinks of America. Should read an find out how Hollywood things of our great government.

There's a lot to like about this book but.....

A lot of the material in this book is rehashed. Besides, if you haven't figured out yet that most of these Hollywood "icons" are complete nitwits then don't bother with this book. Just go back to "The Star" or "The National Enquirer".

Know the Enemy

Hollywood is full of sick anti-American bigots. Do not pay to watch traitors such as these idiots.

More on the New Media

No sooner do I finish James Hirsen's "Tales From the Left Coast" than I discover he's just released another tome dealing with the machinations of Hollywood and the Old Media systems. Obviously, when the term "Old Media" rears its ugly head, the reader automatically knows he or she is in for yet another treatment of the rise of Internet blogging and the FOX News Channel. It seems like dozens of books concerning this topic come out every month. So many books have examined this phenomenon--the slow slide into irrelevancy of the traditional media outlets like The New York Times and the Big Three television networks--that one wonders what is left to say about it. The problem with the emergence of the New Media, as it is so imaginatively called, is that it's...well...new. We're not exactly sure what's going to happen ten years down the road. Personally, although I find myself getting more and more of my news from Internet sources, I don't really want the print media to disappear. What I and many others do want, which Hirsen seems to embrace as well if "Hollywood Nation" is any indication, is as many points of view as possible regarding events around the world. At the same time I want to see infotainment--that obnoxious fusion of mindless entertainment recounted with a "hard" news edge--kicked to the gutter. This brand of media benefits no one except those personalities who make millions of dollars a year spewing this junk. We're all dumber and less effective citizens because of people like Katie Couric, Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer, and those news shows that cover Hollywood celebrities. Far too many of our fellow featherless bipeds are relying exclusively on these people and programs to learn about what goes on in the world. And that's the main focus of "Hollywood Nation." Hirsen examines how Hollywood, and by extension those who run Tinseltown, has been blurring the lines between news and entertainment for years. Needless to say, such a process causes more harm than good. For one thing the Hollywood viewpoint is hopelessly left-wing. The media masters embrace and propagate ideologies that are totally incompatible with reality. We can no longer afford to subscribe to them in an age when our very survival is at stake in the war against Islamic terrorism. Nonetheless, the message continues to wash over the country every day through the plague of infotainment. Hirsen's book seeks to understand the underpinnings of infotainment and the fight against it through interviews with various media personalities. Interviews with Laurie Dhue and Bill O'Reilly of FOX News, comedian Dennis Miller, Catherine Crier of Court TV fame, former Reagan speechwriter and editorialist for the Wall Street Journal Peggy Noonan, and others seek to clarify the difference between the Old and New Media as well as discover the challenges faced by those on the front lines of the infotainment battlefield. Missing, perhaps not surprisingly, from the book are Katie Couric, Oprah Winfrey

We've Become a Hollywood Nation!

James Hirsen's latest book is just in time and aptly focused on just how much Hollywood has become the news and how the news has become Hollywoodized. And it couldn't have been released on a more appropriate date, as Americans join together to aid and strengthen the victims of hurricane Katrina and now Rita. And the Hollywood sect of elitists couldn't be sillier and more self-serving in yet another opportunity for them to come to the rescue of all the "little people" - easily making James Hirsen's point FOR him. Oprah, in touch with the regular people? Sean Penn in a rowboat in New Orleans with a cameraman? That Kanye guy blasting Bush for hating blacks. Michael Moore's shenanigans designed only to make him richer. This book illustrates how journalists are rising to the level of superstars and how our stars are journalists and our journalists are stars and the line's getting blurrier every day. James exposes their hidden agendas and how they manipulate public opinion while analyzing all the behind-the-scenes activities we don't hear about. Being so well respected in the field of politics and media, James was able to land some great key interviews with the likes of Bill O'Reilly, Peggy Noonan, Ann Coulter, Joel Siegel, Michael Savage and many others. Hirsen's book is a wonderful expose on new media and its influence on our lives and his articles in NewsMax magazine and NewsMax.com are at the forefront reporting the news that the mainstream media refuses to print.