A Brief Book Summary from Books At a Glance
By Benjamin J. Montoya
Editor’s Note:
With this “Bonus” Summary we continue our series on books of cultural interest. We hope you enjoy!
About the Author
Ben Shapiro entered UCLA at the age of sixteen and graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, and graduated Harvard Law School cum laude. At seventeen, Shapiro was hired by Creators Syndicate, becoming the youngest nationally syndicated columnist in the United States. He has appeared on hundreds of television and radio shows and is the author of the national bestsellers Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America’s Youth, Porn Generation: How Social Liberalism Is Corrupting Our Future, and Project President: Bad Hair and Botox on the Road to the White House. Shapiro is married and lives in Los Angeles.
Introduction
This book is both fascinating and alarming. On the one hand, it shows just how much the left has used and is using TV to give people their primetime propaganda. But, on the other hand, it also reveals the importance of being aware of what is going so it can be fixed. Sure, the left has taken over the TV market and has done so powerfully, even getting help from the government. But that is not the end of the story.
As a side note for our readers, this book reveals the importance of watching TV through the careful lens and analysis from a worldview. Although Shapiro is not a Christian, he rightly points to the importance of worldview analysis, albeit without using these terms.
Table of Contents
Prologue How Conservatives Lost the Television War
Introduction The Political Perversion of Television
Chapter 1 The Secret Political History of Television: How Television Became Liberal
Chapter 2 The Clique: How Television Stays Liberal
Chapter 3 A Spoonful of Sugar: How Television Comedy Trashes Conservatism
Chapter 4 Making the Right Cry: How Television Drama Glorifies Liberalism
Chapter 5 “Shut up and Change the Channel”:
How the Left Uses the Market Myth to Silence Its Critics
Chapter 6 The Celluloid Triangle: How Interest Groups, Government, and
Hollywood Conspire to Keep TV Left
Chapter 7 The Government-Hollywood Complex: How Hollywood Became the
Federal Government’s PR Firm
Chapter 8 Robbing the Cradle: How Television Liberals Recruit Kids
Chapter 9 The End of Television? How to Fix TV
Appendix The Best Conservative Shows in Television History
Summary
Prologue: How Conservatives Lost the Television War
Most everyone watches television at some point in their day. We like to do so to unwind. But as we watch television, we might have noticed how shows have changed dramatically over the years. We have gone from seeing what used to be known as traditional families to so-called families with homosexuals. What happened? Did these kinds of changes just happen? Absolutely not.
This book intends to uncover the primetime propaganda of the political left. The changes we have seen on TV shows are intentional from the left. TV ought to be a medium of entertainment only, but the left has capitalized on the power it has in people’s lives. They so control the content, actors, actresses, that unless someone is of their political stripe, they do not make it in Hollywood. In essence, the TV has become their method of nationwide indoctrination.
It is a fact that conservatives lost the television war a long time ago. Why is that? Conservatives made the mistake of addressing only moral issues on TV shows. Although morals matter, addressing morals like this allowed the left to point their fingers back at conservatives who seemed to be making efforts towards censorship. That did not help their cause. The second issue that arose from conservatives trying to address only moral issues is that it made it all too easy for the left to claim that conservatives are “curmudgeons and cranks” who just want to watch old TV shows. These kinds of arguments convince no one.
The author of this book is not anti-TV. He, however, is against using TV for anything other than entertainment.
Introduction: The Political Perversion of Television
The left has politically perverted television. They use it not for entertainment, as most people assume. Instead, the TV has become their medium of choice for teaching people to accept their leftist message. The “boob-toob” has now become a teaching-toob, so to speak.
The left is aware that people are knowledgable of their use of TV. But they respond with arguments like, “We are just giving people what they want.” Really? Is there any data to support that? No, of course not. They are restricting what can even be on the air by controlling the entire process. The left has also responded by saying that, “Conservatives just are not as good.” Again, a response with no weight to it. How can we even know if conservatives are not as good if they are not given a chance?
The efforts that the left has made, and with which they have been successful, are not irreversible. Now that people can publish TV shows in a variety of places, conservatives can publish their shows elsewhere. But the issue remains that the left has so politically perverted TV that it becomes difficult to return.
Chapter 1: The Secret Political History of Television: How Television Became Liberal
There is an old saying that history is written by the victors. While that may be true, the story of how television became liberal is one that liberals do not tell accurately. Why? It does not help their cause to show how they have been unsuccessful before taking over, as they clearly have now. They like to present their history like the Oscars: as a self-congratulatory moment of success. The problem is that is not true.
The origin of TV is the radio. People used to listen to that like they watch TV now. As people transitioned to TV, there were a few major networks: Fox, ABC, CBS, and NBC. Television had meager beginnings. It did not catch a lot of traction at first. One of the older approaches of networks was to offer content to shape audiences rather than have audiences shape the content, like it is today. That did not go so well long-term or short-term. The leadership of the various TV networks used to be more conservative than the writers and actors/actresses. But over time, that has changed considerably.
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