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Deep Dark Truthful Mirror

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At my advancing age, I couldn’t stay up late enough to watch Hollywood’s winners grab their Oscars and punctuate their rambling, teary-eyed acceptance speeches by hurling brickbats at President Trump.

The Donald will have to defend himself for perverse statements such as heard on the Access Hollywood tape: “[W]hen you’re a star . . . You can do anything.” Live by the stars, die by the stars.

Still, consider: how much more effective would those Hollywood (snoozed-through) scoldings be had these cultural “icons” voiced similar disfavor against President Bill Clinton’s similar actions.

Regardless of the precise Clintonian “is”-ness of “is,” clearly “hypocrisy” is up in lights in Tinseltown.

Another seeming Hollywood double-standard strolls down the red carpet unimpeded: the gender pay gap. “Compared to men, in most professions, women make 80 cents to the dollar,” actress Natalie Portman said last month. “In Hollywood, we are making 30 cents to the dollar.”

Much ballyhooed and largely erroneous, the national gender wage gap compares the median male income against the median female income out of hundreds of millions of workers, without regard to jobs done, hours worked, or levels of experience. Conversely, leading roles in a movie can more fairly be compared.

The North Korean hack of Sony Pictures revealed numerous cases where female stars were paid far less than their male counterparts. For instance, in the film No Strings Attached, Ashton Kutcher, Portman’s male co-star, received compensation three times greater.

Yesterday, at Townhall, I asked a simple question: Wouldn’t it better serve the interests of fairness and equality were actors to muster whatever truth to be had directly at the Hollywood power structure . . . sitting before them in the ballroom?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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5 replies on “Deep Dark Truthful Mirror”

…. Would it not better serve the interests of fairness and equality were actors to muster whatever truth to be had directly at the Hollywood power structure? Sitting before them in the ballroom …?

No. It would serve Ms Portman – for example – better, were she to have a yarn to Mr Kutcher’s agent.

If Natalie Portman is upset at what she is being paid, she can always go on strike.
Or she can fire her agent.
Pardon me if I’m not impressed. (How much does she pay her maid, I wonder?)

Good points. At this level of pay and with so many variables, I’m not sure where the equal pay law would apply.

Here is an interesting bit about Jennifer Lawrence’s take on it:

“Hollywood’s gender pay gap was highlighted in 2015, when hacked documents from film studio Sony Pictures revealed major pay disparities between top actors.

“They showed that U.S. actress Jennifer Lawrence was paid less than her male co-stars Christian Bale and Bradley Cooper in the 2013 black comedy “American Hustle”.

“Hacked emails showed that Bale and Cooper earned nine percent of the film’s total profits, whilst Lawrence was only paid seven percent.

“Lawrence later said she was “mad at herself” after learning about the pay gap because she had ‘failed as a negotiator'”.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-women-pay-hollywood-idUSKBN14W286

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