A Wall Street Journal expose on Tinsel Town doesn’t mince words.

“L.A.’s Entertainment Economy Is Looking Like a Disaster Movie,” reads the title. The news only gets more depressing from there.

The entertainment industry is in a downward spiral that began when the dual strikes by actors and writers ended in 2023. Work is evaporating, businesses are closing, longtime residents are leaving, and the heart of L.A.’s creative middle class is hanging on by a thread.

Consider a second, sobering expose tied to La La Land. Compact Magazine’s recent feature by Jacob Savage, dubbed “The Lost Generation,” explores how the Left’s DEI obsession prevented many talented straight white males from entering the entertainment industry.

In the fall of 2014, the Oscars nominated only white people for acting awards, and #OscarsSoWhite was born. The New York Times ran story after story. The Academy promised reform, as did the studios—and they delivered. In 2015, Matt was looking for a follow-up job as a staff writer or story editor. “I couldn’t crack anything,” he recalled. “It was like, almost immediate… There was a real disillusionment because I thought it was just kind of me for a while.”

It wasn’t. Hollywood was in the midst of a revolution. As #OscarsSoWhite bled into #MeToo, the mandates only intensified.

Turns out the discriminatory tales told by comedian Tyler Fischer, author James Patterson and others were the tip of the un-American iceberg.

And just like that, Peak TV came to a close. Coincidence? Either way, Hollywood progressives have gotten what they demanded time and again:

• DEI policies
• Democratic leaders
• Soft-on-crime legislation
• Open borders

Closer to L.A., Democratic leaders fiddled while the Palisades fires burned earlier this year. Mayor Karen Bass was literally in a foreign country when the blaze began.

The disaster’s one-year anniversary approaches, and the rebuilding renaissance promised by Bass and co. hasn’t come close to happening.

Podcaster and lifelong California resident Adam Carolla has been chronicling the bureaucratic mess locals have faced since the fires ravaged so many homes and lives.

Did Hollywood turn on Mayor Bass, making her a late-night TV punchline? No.

The industry has done all it can to downplay the serial disasters tied to Gov. Gavin Newsom. The California Democrat also gets the kid glove treatment from late-night TV, “Saturday Night Live” and other comic institutions.

Fire management neglect? What fire management neglect? Will the industry torch Newsom and co. following a devastating L.A. Times report suggesting shenanigans are under way to cover up incompetence?

Doubtful.

The same Newsom has lorded over California while the state bled film and TV productions. Director John Stalberg, Jr. shared some of the reasons why he left L.A. to shoot his City of Angels-set sequel, “Muzzle: City of Wolves” with The Hollywood in Toto podcast.

Newsom has boosted film-related tax benefits of late, but it may be too late.

What’s worse? L.A. under Newsom’s watch has seen homelessless and crime spike in recent years while residents fled the state.

Have Hollywood liberals woken up at long last? Will they switch parties in coming elections, or at the very least, seek out less radical progressives to throw their weight behind?

It doesn’t appear to be the case. In fact, the industry looks ready to support Newsom’s run for the White House in 2028.

Former Obama US Ambassador to Spain and HBO executive James Costos said Newsom had “strong enthusiasm” from Los Angeles donors.

“Big checks are being written,” he told Deadline. “It was a slow build early on as we recovered from the loss [last] November, but there has been momentum building, No Kings events, legal wins, the [Jimmy] Kimmel effect, resistance growing and it’s turning into clear ways to fight back against the administration’s overreach and organize to win in 2026 and 2028.”

Meanwhile, Hollywood progressives have done everything possible to tear down an unexpected ally. President Donald Trump has used his gravitas to support homegrown filmmaking, but he faces nonstop assaults from Hollywood and adjacent artists.

• Cinematic hit pieces like “The Apprentice” and the upcoming “The Social Reckoning“
• Daily late-night monologues
• “Saturday Night Live”
• Award acceptance speeches
• Kennedy Center-themed protests

Some threats to Hollywood have nothing to do with the industry, its ideological purity tests or key players. The rise of Artificial Intelligence could severely disrupt key cogs of the movie making machine, notably FX work, voice overs and animation.

It’s impossible not to feel sad for those who will be by those changes. The WSJ investigation suggests the worst may be yet to come.

Plus, the rise of cheaper YouTube competitors, advanced video games and social media platforms are  changing the way consumers spend their leisure time.

None of that can be blamed on Hollywood or the industry’s hard-Left messaging.

Still, the industry’s groupthink demanded Democratic leadership and policies while punishing those who dare to disagree. Well, they got them, good and hard, and this is one Hollywood story that won’t have a happy ending.

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… is from page 228 of Thomas Sowell’s Compassion Versus Guilt, a 1987 collection of some of his popular essays; specifically, it’s from Sowell’s December 10th, 1985, column titled “By the Numbers”:

When intellectuals discover that the world does not behave according to their theories, the conclusion they invariably draw is that the world must be changed. It must be awfully hard to change theories.

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… is from page 22 of Thomas Sowell’s Compassion Versus Guilt, a 1987 collection of some of his popular essays; specifically, it’s from Sowell’s March 1st, 1985, column titled “The Wonderful World of ‘Solutions’”:

Trade-offs are not good enough for the morally anointed. There must be solutions.

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Here’s a slightly modified version of a letter that I sent eleven days ago to the Washington Post – a letter not published there.

Editor:

Nearly all that you write about the effect of U.S. tariffs on China is correct and crucial (“Are U.S. tariffs on China working? Look at the evidence.” December 15). But you err when you describe China’s trade surplus as “evidence of its industrial overcapacity.” China might well have industrial overcapacity, but a country’s trade surplus isn’t necessarily evidence of such. A trade surplus could instead reflect the relative attractiveness to a country’s citizens of investing abroad rather than in their own country. The resulting net outflow of capital (which is the mirror image of a trade surplus) reflects, not necessarily industrial overcapacity but, rather, much better investment opportunities abroad.

It’s worth noting that if China does indeed have industrial overcapacity, that’s a problem for China but a boon to the rest of the world. We get a greater abundance of goods for our consumption and inputs for use in our own production facilities – all subsidized by the Chinese people.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030

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… is from page 401 of The Thomas Sowell Reader (2011):

Egalitarians create the most dangerous inequality of all – inequality of power. Allowing politicians to determine what all other human beings will be allowed to earn is one of the most reckless gambles imaginable.

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