"Republicans Buy Gym Shoes Too"

Ed Bernero, Hollywood screenwriter and showrunner, discusses (among other things) the decline in TV viewership, and what he sees as one of the causes for it:

I also think one of the things that’s really hurting us is political activism of any stripe. Michael Jordan had it exactly right, he was my idol -- when he was asked about a political question at one point and he said I’m not going to answer it, and they said why not, and he said: Because Republicans buy gym shoes too, right? That doesn’t exist anymore, that kind of smarts.

Any time someone says anything right, left, whatever, I think we lose viewers. And somewhere around the country somebody says, I’m not going to watch what Hollywood does anymore. I wish we would go back to just being entertainers. Anytime we sign a petition that says let’s ignore the fact that Roman Polanski raped a 13-year-old, we lose viewers. And I think that has reached a critical mass. We live in a very polarized country right now. So why would someone like Megan Fox want to diss middle America?

And it’s not just that they’re not going to watch her material, they’re not going to watch mine. There are people in Kansas who are going to say, you know what? Screw Hollywood. Because we are sort of thought of as this monolith, and I wish people would take that into account.

It's akin to the Dixie Chicks controversy of a few years ago. The Chicks basically have a hippy/leftist political outlook, but they worked in a music genre (country music) that caters to mostly conservative fans. The Chicks' singer, Natalie Maines, figured that rather than just sing, which is what sells the records, she'd share her political opinions with everyone, and was shocked, shocked when fans didn't much agree with her. Stones were cast on both sides and the Chicks basically gave the fans the finger, deciding that keeping it real was more important than keeping fans; now they cater to the fanbase of leftists that like country music, a much smaller one (and much less lucrative) than the one that they enjoyed before the controversy.

Entertainers used to try and win the largest audience possible by either ignoring political content entirely, or by being careful to skewer both political parties equally. Think of Bob Hope, or Johnny Carson, or Red Skelton, or Carol Burnett, or anyone from that era; did you know what their politics were? No. They wanted the largest audience possible, since that is how they earned their living. Apparently these days there is so much money in the entertainment industry that you can enjoy a surfeit of it just catering to half of the audience. Hoodah thunkit?

h/t Big Hollywood.