Conservative creatives are a minority but there are some. The inquiring mind also wonders how many closet Conservatives are in the arts. After all, it is only the strongest and/or most foolhardy that do not go-along to get-along.

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Conservative creative artists actually exist

Wednesday, 3 January 2001 13:41 (ET)

By STEVE SAILER, UPI National Correspondent

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 3, (UPI) -- We've become so accustomed to great creative artists professing left-of-center politics that it can be a shock to list how many important 20th century artists have considered themselves conservatives.

In the movie industry, some of the greatest actors and directors have been political conservatives.

Jimmy Stewart, for example, whom the public recently voted its second favorite movie star of the 20th century (after John Wayne), was a staunch Republican.

Stewart was a man of the highest patriotism. During WWII, he enlisted as a private and worked his way up to become a colonel, leading a squadron of B-24's over Germany. After the war, Stewart stayed in the Air Force Reserve and rose to the rank of General. He was one of the few rich men to lose a son in Vietnam.

Jack Warner famously remarked, upon hearing that Ronald Reagan was thinking of running for president, "No. That can't be right. Ronald Reagan for best friend. Jimmy Stewart for president."

The man who directed Stewart in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," the great Frank Capra, was another intense Republican. Although his movies are widely viewed as representing the very spirit of the New Deal, the nicest thing Capra could bring himself to say about President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was that upon meeting him, FDR "almost converted me into becoming a Democrat."

Capra uncharitably attributed his close call to the fact that "the overpowering presence of the President of the United States could turn strong men weak, and weak men imbecilic."

The apparent Rooseveltian liberalism of "Mr. Smith" reflected a compromise between the conservative Capra and his screenwriter Sidney Buchman, who was a member of the Communist Party. In comparison to modern Hollywood's narrow Clintonite orthodoxy, the film business in the '30s benefited from greater political diversity.

In 20th Century literature, the number of political conservatives is surprisingly large.

For example, among literary men, the refined Russian aristocrat Vladimir Nabokov, author of "Lolita" and the bumptious beatnik Jack Kerouac, author of "On the Road," would seem to have had little in common. Yet, they both found conservative William F. Buckley's National Review magazine to be their favorite journal of opinion.

Among American-born Nobel Laureates, the poet T. S. Eliot ("The Waste Land") was an outspoken cultural and political conservative. Eliot's love of the organically unified society of medieval Europe occasionally lead him into overt anti-Semitism. His unpleasant minor poem "Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar" is the best (or worst) example of this.

Novelist and Nobel Prize-winner William Faulkner ("Intruder in the Dust") wrote sympathetically about the plight of Southern blacks. Still, he opposed the federal government forcing integration upon his native Mississippi.

Nobel Laureate Saul Bellow is an enthusiastic fellow traveler of the neo-conservative movement. His latest novel "Ravelstein" is a sympathetic version of the life (and AIDS-caused death) of his friend, conservative philosopher Allan Bloom, author of the best-selling "The Closing of the American Mind."

Latin American intellectuals are almost always leftists. Yet, Argentina's most celebrated man of letters, the strange and memorable short-story writer Jorge Luis Borges ("Labyrinths"), despised the Left. He even publicly supported Argentina's military dictatorship during its notorious "dirty war" of the late '70s against leftist revolutionaries.

Peru's greatest novelist, Maria Vargas Llosa ("Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter"), nearly beat Alberto Fujimori in the race for president in 1990, running on a free market platform.

Anti-Communism was never terribly fashionable among Western writers. The only top English-language creative writer who repeatedly returned to anti-communist themes during the crucial two decades before the fall of the Berlin Wall was playwright Tom Stoppard. This Czechoslovak-born Englishman's anti-Soviet plays include "Travesties," "Every Good Boy Deserves Favor," "Professional Foul," "Cahoot's MacBeth," and "Squaring the Circle."

Not surprisingly, however, the great authors of Eastern Europe, such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ("The Gulag Archipelago") and Milan Kundera ("The Unbearable Lightness of Being"), hated communism, with good reason.

Conservatives have become major satirists. The most prominent were probably America's Tom Wolfe ("Bonfire of the Vanities") and England's Evelyn Waugh ("Scoop").

Waugh, who wrote extensively about black-run Ethiopia in the 1930s, may have been the first to expose the gap between the progressive pretensions and the cynical reality of what later came to be known as the Third World. The right-of-center novelist John Updike (an outspoken supporter of the Vietnam War) brilliantly updated Waugh's "Black Mischief" in "The Coup."

This is the 1978 tale of an Islamic Marxist African dictator whose utopian plans are laid low by human nature.

Similarly, the Trinidad-born V.S. Naipaul offered an Indian merchant's perspective on the corruption and chaos of post-colonial Congo in "A Bend in the River."

Of course, you may never have noticed these gentlemen's politics -- in a literary world dominated by the center and left, conservatives tend to be discreet.

-- Copyright 2000 by United Press International. All rights reserved. --

-- (larsguy@yahoo.com), January 03, 2001

Answers

Well that post turned out to be creative html. I have no idea how I did that.

Thinking of a few others that qualify--

Ben Stein--humorist and screen plays

Jackie Mason--not so funny comedian

P J O'Rourke--humorist author and editor of National Lampoon in its most creative years (the 70s)

Jeff MacNelly--political cartoonist, humor cartoonist. Recently deceased.

Dave Barry--humorist

Tom Clancy--author

Ted Nugent--rock musician

Arnold Schwartzenegger--actor

Clint Eastwood--actor

Bruce Willis--actor

Tom Selleck--actor

Bo Derek--actress

Stallone(?)--actor(?)

I also thought the TV show Home Improvements emphasized Conservative themes (strong marriage, family setting). I have no idea what the politics are of the writers and actors.

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), January 03, 2001.

On the other hand, a couple of the better examples of leftist creative expressions include "The Rosie O'Donnell Show" and "Married with Children".

-- Barbra Streisand (rfp@mail.com), January 03, 2001.

Lars, I believe Tim Allen (the star of Home Improvement) leans extremely to the left.

-- Dr. Pibb (dr_pibb@zdnetonebox.com), January 03, 2001.

Don't forget the great actor Ronald Reagan!

Okay, all kidding aside, all this list proves is that actors, musicians, writers, and others have political leanings. This isn't exactly a news flash.

-- Tarzan the Ape Man (tarzan@swingingthroughthejunglewithouta.net), January 03, 2001.

Dr Pibb, that doesn't surprise me but I liked that show because it was funny, because I had a crush on wifey (can't remember her name) and because it was a 90s version of Ozzie and Harriet. If Tim Allen had strong politics, he didn't bring them on screen. BTW, have you noticed that he is now marketing his own line of power tools?

Tarzan, I am interested to identify artistes who are out-of-the-closet conservatives precisely because that is so unusual. Of course I forgot to mention Moses Heston, who is nearly as big a bloviator as Alec Baldwin.

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), January 03, 2001.

Can an aviator be a bloviator? Just wondering.

-- (nemesis@awol.com), January 04, 2001.

Tammy Faye gives me a major woody. I miss her so.

-- (nemesis@awol.com), January 04, 2001.

Mel Gibson

-- (Paracelsus@Pb.Au), January 06, 2001.