Politico Ignores How Obama Let Down Hollywood

The reliably left-of-center Politico is so wedded to the Obama narrative – post-racial, healing, cool as ice and astoundingly bright – that it can’t smell a story right under its nose.

Hollywood’s President has been a dud.

The news site’s latest laugh fest portends to tell how President Obama gives Hollywood fits.

No recent president has excited Hollywood quite so much as Obama (“He’s hip, he’s young, he’s not square!” Louis-Dreyfus says). But having President No Drama is hell on Hollywood, giving the creative community little dramatic or comedic material to work with.

There are no new wars, no major scandals, no glaring personal flaws, no marriage on the rocks — just the depressing din of partisan warfare and unsatisfying compromise.

No new wars? What was Libya, a military action meant to last days, not weeks? No major scandals? What about Solyndra and the Fast and Furious debacle? No glaring personal flaws? How ’bout Obama’s raging ego, pettiness, obsession with straw man arguments, willingness to appear on virtually any show at any time and inability to utter a sentence without blaming others for his administration’s stumbles? Partisan warfare? Didn’t Obama campaign on mending the rift between the two major parties?

But the press’ faux Obama defenses are hardly new, even if they’re as artificial as a neon pink Christmas tree with built-in tinsel.

The real story is what Obama has wrought over the last three-plus years. The Politico story captures it, but almost by accident and certainly without acknowledging the obvious. In the realm of dot connecting, it’s like starting at three massive ink blots lined up neatly in a row and thinking they have nothing to do with each other.

Here’s the first dot:

“If there is an ‘Obama culture’ in Washington, it’s believing Washington culture is flawed and not to be taken seriously. It’s the rejection of all these lousy things that are breezily accepted by politicians and pundits just because it’s business as usual,” said ex-Obama speechwriter Jon Lovett, who sold a comedy pilot to NBC — “1600 Penn” — about a first family that is emphatically not based on the Obamas.

Dot two is even more damning:

“It’s an incredibly frustrating time,” [HBO’s “Veep” creator Armando] Ianucci said of American politics. “Politicians now identify what they don’t  want to do. They get elected by going back to the district to tell their constituents what they haven’t accomplished. That to me is what we’re trying to show here, the disconnect between D.C. and the rest of the country.”

The third dot comes courtesy of actress Sigourney Weaver, set to star in a new politically-charged show for the USA Network:

Like many show-business liberals, Weaver supports Obama, and she harbors a sliver of hope that the show, which premieres this summer before the conventions, will provide a little alternative-reality inspiration.

What I think is so valuable for us right now as a country is to perhaps see stories about leadership and about coming through vs. copping out. … It’s very cathartic — [her character Elaine] really gets a lot done, which is more than we can say for Congress….”

Weaver thinks a lot of viewers share her opinion of politicians and said she’d like to see the show last a couple of years to find out how her character evolves. She wants to see Obama get a second term for the same reason. “Hopefully, we’ll see a different leader … in the second term,” she added. “It will be interesting to watch.”

There you have it. The politician who campaigned on “Hope and Change” has made Beltway bitterness even worse without proving himself a leader who can get things done.

Is it any wonder we’re now seeing shows like “Veep,” which looks at modern politics through the most cynical lens available? How about last year’s “The Ides of March,” another fable about politicians who disappoint us to the core?

That’s the real Age of Obama – unfulfilled expectations and more of the same ol’ partisan sniping. Hollywood certainly has noticed, even if its individual members can’t quite come out and say it.

It’s the polar opposite of what Obama promised throughout 2008, and sites like Politico are too busy reading from their dog-eared Obama narrative to bother seeing it.