By John Fund
Sunday, December 15, 2019
‘Politics is downstream from culture” is an aphorism the
late conservative iconoclast Andrew Breitbart was famous for coining, He
believed that in the end the people who win elections are the ones telling the
best stories and controlling the narrative on any issue. In 2016, Donald Trump
won in part because “Make America Great Again” encapsulated a better story than
Hillary Clinton’s tepid “Stronger Together.”
But popular culture — whether it be books, TV, film,
music, or video games — remain dominated by the Left. Sandwiched between much
of our entertainment are messages that perpetuate liberal themes: The military
is bloodthirsty, radical Muslims must be handled with kid gloves, trial lawyers
and climate-change activists are crusading heroes, and, above all, corporations
are evil. When they are not being greedy or trying to dominate the world, they
are responsible for polluting the planet.
Narratives like the ones above don’t get turned into
stories by accident. The Tides Foundation, which featured Barack Obama on its
board before he became president, has spent nearly a billion dollars in the
past 20 years serving as a cutout for liberal donors who don’t want to be
identified with a particular cause. One of the most touted projects it has
steered donors to is Participant Media, an activist entertainment company that
produces “movies with a message.” Among the films Participant has championed
are George Clooney’s CIA conspiracy thrillers, Al Gore’s climate-change
documentaries, and a docudrama celebrating Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s legal career.
Another genre beloved by Participant filmmakers is the
“corporate polluter” drama. Dark Waters, a film in which a crusading
trial lawyer is pitted against the DuPont chemical company, is being released
nationwide this month. Picking up where Erin Brockovich left off, the
film asserts that DuPont ignored the dangers posed by a group of chemicals,
PFAS, that were used in nonstick cookware and firefighting. Trial lawyers sued
DuPont in 2001 alleging that 80,000 people in Ohio and West Virginia had been
exposed to PFAS in their drinking water. The case dragged on for years until
DuPont and Chemours Company, which spun off from DuPont, settled some 3,500
injury lawsuits for a total of $671 million.
No one doubts that there was real liability in the case,
but Dark Waters is a conspiracy horror movie that ignores facts to shake
up its audience. A clear giveaway is that the movie begins with the disclaimer
“inspired by true events” rather than the more commonly used “based on a true
story.”
The film ignores recent studies that have found no causal
link between PFAS chemicals and infections or dental cavities. Also ignored
that the Centers for Disease Control report that the blood levels of PFAS
compounds in people have dropped dramatically since the 20-year-old events
depicted in the story.
But the film has served as a springboard for calls to
environmental activism. The House Oversight Committee conducted a hearing on
PFAS issues last month. Dark Waters’ leading star, Mark Ruffalo, was the
main witness.
Ruffalo, best known to filmgoers for playing the
Incredible Hulk, is an outspoken political extremist. This month he sent out a
tweet calling for “an economic revolution” because, in his view, “capitalism is
failing us, killing us, and robbing from our children’s future.” He’s even
criticized liberal TV host Ellen DeGeneres for socializing with George W. Bush,
because the former president hasn’t been “brought to justice for the crimes of
the Iraq War.”
The real agenda behind Dark Waters is to try to
vilify chemical companies and characterize them as the next “Big Tobacco.” They
can then be made a juicy target for both trial lawyers and government
regulators. In a CNN interview last month, Ruffalo directly linked the issues
around PFAS to alleged attempts by government to hide science surrounding
fossil fuels, “not to mention Exxon and climate change.” But just last week a
New York judge found Exxon not guilty of misleading shareholders on climate
change, blowing up Ruffalo’s straw man. The Exxon case shows that the agenda of
the left-wing groups behind Dark Waters is a moving target, one always
guided by the trial lawyer’s laser-like focus on the deepest pocketbook.
The Left has long understood the role that popular
culture can play in shaping politics. Conservatives have largely ignored the
radicalization of Hollywood in this struggle. It’s time that many people who
give money to conservative candidates recognize the need also to finance media
projects that promote their values. One example is a proposed big-budget
biographical film about Ronald Reagan, starring Dennis Quaid. Its producers are
still searching for final financing before they begin production.
If conservatives wind up losing elections and thereby
ceding public policy to the Left, they will have only themselves to blame for
ignoring the war over popular culture that has been steering younger voters to
think in more-radical terms.
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