Regarding media outlets, some may be owned by conservatives but they are populated by executives and editors and reporters who are liberal to their very bones. I would imagine anyone wanting to start a network peopled by well-schooled and competent editorial and reporting staff would have its hands full trying to come up with enough conservatives to fill the necessary jobs.
But mainly, the CEOs and stockholders are interested primarily in earning a profit and competing successfully against their rivals, and as long as they are so engaged the political leaning of their companies is probably not of that great an importance.
Regarding Hollywood, several factors come to mind: One, Hollywood is an artistic entity, and for a variety of reasons artists are almost always in conflict with the establishment, i.e., conservatives.
Further, many of the more successful members of Hollywood are excruciatingly wealthy and insulated from the day-to-day struggles of middle-class life. They have more money than they’ll ever spend and they know they’re taken care of, so its easy to look around at homeless people and those on welfare, and at the things and programs they would like to see take place, and decide that the solution is to raise taxes and throw money at the problem. They see nice middle-class homes with two and three cars in the drive, and decide that those people can well afford to give up some of their income to fund their pet causes.
What they don’t see is how hard those middle-class people have to work to earn the lifestyle they’ve managed to acheive. Unlike many Hollywood zillionaires, these people worked hard all through high school and college to get degrees so they could find good jobs. They put in long hours, suffer many indignities at the hands of their superiors, and come home to houses and families that require planning and saving to ensure their future.
Both spouses work in many of these families and they are working as hard and fast as they can to acheive what they have, and they don’t feel they are being selfish in wanting to keep at least half of what they earn – which is what they’re lucky to be left with after state, federal, medicare and medicaid, and social security deductions are taken.
Yet time after time, these spoiled, insulated, ultra-rich Hollywood millionaires – who work two and three months at a time and live lives most corporate CEOs would envy, haughtily declare that we (the middle-class) are “doing enough” to combat the injusitices that exist in society, and demand that more taxes are the answer. Warren Beatty was saying this very thing just a couple of days ago: “I’ve been rich and famous for forty-six years and I don’t care if they raise my taxes!”
Well, duh? If I was worth 300 million dollars (or whatever it is) and my home was paid for and I had no worries about my children’s health care and college education, and I had more money than I’d ever spend anyway, I wouldn’t care if my taxes were raised either.
There is also a strong sense of moral superiority among the Hollywood crowd that makes them think they are above everyone else and therefore they know better than everyone else what should be done, when in actuality they are so far removed from the type of existence most people live that they actually know very little.
(I would expound further, and I’m sure there will be rebuttals to what I’ve said, but hopefully this will explain at least to a certain degree why the dichotomy you see exists.)
