Hooray for Hollywood...Not Really

Here's an interesting little tidbit I gleaned off the Brady Center site, from a heartland newspaper:

It’s been just two months since Paul Helmke left Fort Wayne to lead a national gun-control organization, and already he’s gone Hollywood.

But hobnobbing with Dustin Hoffman, William Shatner and other Tinseltown stars is just another day at the office when you’re a Midwestern Republican trying to convince mostly liberal donors of your good intentions.

Now here's what interesting...as soon as Helmke signs on to run the Brady Confederacy of Dunces, the first thing he does is run off to Hollywood!

Now, here's a quiz...why do you think that Brady found it important enough to send their top shill on a tour of Hollywood studios? Don't worry, it's a multiple choice test!

1) There's gobs and gobs of Hollywood bucks to be picked up!
2) Hollywood has an amazing ability to help shape the social landscape through movies and television.
3) You get lots of great PR pal'ing around with the stars, even decrepit old stars who did their best work in the 1970s.
4) You look like you're part of the "mainstream" as opposed to a coalition of effete Northeastern urban socialists sucking the teet of a corrupt Jabba the Hutt like George Soros!
5) All of the above!

That's right, the correct answer is Number 5! Here's what is really interesting...all of the above points would apply to the firearms industry if we bothered to try and reach out to Hollywood. We could get the bucks, the PR, help reshape the social landscape (or at the very least blunt the antigunners' efforts to shape it their way) and help move ourselves back into the mainstream.

That's why the industry puts so much money in their Hollywood initiative...no wait! There is no Hollywood initiative from the firearms industry! In fact, we don't even answer the phone when Hollywood calls!

Is that because everyone in Hollywood hates us? No...we have a solid core of actors and film and television professionals who support our side of the argument, and a larger group of up and comers would would come over to our side if we reached out. But we now offer Hollywood exactly nothing...Bad Michael!...that's not true either...when a Number 1 rated television series came to one of our largest organizations and asked for a poster to put in their Number 1 rated show, well hell, we gave it to them! Just like that! Put it in the mail and sent it to them! Man, we are the masters of our fate; we are the captains of our volleyball team!!! [social reference for quote...Mad Magazine, circa late 1960s]

Do you suppose that Brady would have mailed the poster to them, or do you suppose that Brady might have sent Shill #1 in person, with poster, flowers and a split of Cristal Champagne?

As you know, my team ran a successful Hollywood operation for the industry that was canceled because it cost too much.

We needed that money to promote hunting, because as we all know, the Founders insisted the Second Amendment be included in our Bill of Rights to promote duck hunting, a primary activity when not shooting the British or various and sundry indigenous peoples.

I did get that right, didn't I?

PS: Above cartoon, "What if Ducks Hunted Men?", is from here...