Nolte: Paramount CEO Pledges to Go down with the Diversity Ship

Paramount CEO Bob Bakish
AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez

At something called Paramount Global’s 5th annual Global Inclusion Week (more on that here), Paramount CEO Bob Bakish pledged to take his company down with the diversity ship.

“I, our senior leadership team, and our board believe that we will be more successful with DE&I at the core of our business,” he said.

“We all come from different places, and understanding people’s perspectives is actually what this week is all about,” he added. “Diversity, equity, and inclusion is fundamental to our business.”

HAHAHAHAHAhahahahaha…. Hey, how are those super-expensive Star Trek spin-offs working out for you?

Instead of calling it DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion), they should be honest and call it DIE.

DEI isn’t about hiring more racial minorities, something no one disagrees with. Certainly not me. I grew up in the glorious eighties when the world’s biggest movie star was black (Eddie Murphy), the two biggest TV stars were black (Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby), our sports heroes were black (Mike Tyson, Bo Jackson), our favorite comedians were black (Murphy again and Richard Pryor), and all of our sisters had posters of Prince and a still-black Michael Jackson on their bedroom walls. Oh, and one of our favorite action heroes was a woman named Sigourney Weaver.

So, no, DEI is not about that.

DEI is all about the propaganda of hectoring, lecturing, shaming, and creating anti-entertainment with divisive, heavy-handed messaging aimed at “correcting the past.”

It’s not racial minorities in starring roles anyone objects to, not in a country that has embraced Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman. No, it’s the in-your-face, spellbreaking virtue-signaling. Honestly, when Paramount has Planet Stacy Abrams emerge in Star Trek Discovery as President of United Earth, that’s your DEI right there — violate the storytelling spell for a virtue-signaling political announcement.

Idiots.

I am curious what Paramount stockholders think about this. The CEO of a multinational company is refusing to correct his suicide run even as his streaming service lost nearly half a billion dollars in a single financial quarter.

Better still, the only thing keeping Paramount+ in the game is Taylor Sheridan and his shows like Yellowstone, Mayor of Kingstown, 1883, 1923, and Tulsa King — none of which engage in the same kind of stupid, intelligence-insulting diversity hiring that turned woke junk like Star Trek Discovery into an affirmative action program instead of a universally beloved hit.

It’s all falling apart, and watching it fall apart is a helluva lot more entertaining than what these racist studios are producing.

I have nearly 4,000 movies and a hundred or so TV shows on DVD and Blu-ray. I don’t need Paramount+. There’s plenty of “new” stuff from the past yet to be discovered.

DIE, Hollywood, DIE.

Or should I say, DEI, Hollywood, DEI.

It’s the same thing.

John Nolte’s debut novel Borrowed Time (Bombardier Books) is available today. You can read an exclusive excerpt here and a review of the novel here.  

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