One of the weirdest things about writing about mainstream film and television is constantly glimpsing the gap between the values in the work that many (though emphatically not all) writers and directors produce, and the values that they themselves hold. I was particularly struck by this reading today that Chuck Lorre held back vanity cards–the logos shown at the end of television episodes that Lorre often uses as editorial space–that directly commented on the presidential election from this week’s episode of Two and a Half Men. Instead, he told viewers to look for the card on the internet, where this statement appeared:

What does it say about us when we are simultaneously pro-life and pro AK-47′s? What does it say about us when God’s will would allow a rapist to ask for shared custody and child support payments? What does it say about us when a black guy’s in charge and we say things like “it’s time to take America back”? What does it say about us when we think the institution of marriage is threatened by gay people who love each other, but not by idiotic game shows like “The Bachelor”? What does it say about us when we export democracy with Hellfire missiles, then restrict the right to vote here? What does it say about us when we build nuclear submarines to defend against exploding vests? What does it say about us when we think a guy who doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke, keeps his money offshore, stubs his toe and says “H-E-double hockey sticks” and wears magical underwear can feel our pain? What does it say about us when we demand less government and more FEMA? What does it say about us when we completely forgot the colossal shit storm we were in four years ago? The answer, my friends, is not blowing in the wind. The answer is, “We are fucking crazy.”

Now, I’m not into Mormon-bashing, which is an unfortunate thing a lot of liberals have fallen into during this election cycle. But it’s kind of fascinating to see Lorre go straight for the nuances of, say, the rape and abortion debate. This is a guy who could make literally any television show he wanted, and any network would want to buy it. I kind of want to know what his dream show that reflects his values looks like. Because Depressed Womanizing Ashton Kutcher kind of seems like a comedown.

I recognize that Adam Carolla’s entire schtick is to be awful and pretend he’s achieved some sort of profound insight, but I think his latest ugly comments about women in the writers’ room are worth highlighting, if only as an illustration of what men can get away with essentially without consequence in Hollywood. He told the New York Post:

They make you hire a certain number of chicks, and they’re always the least funny on the writing staff. The reason why you know more funny dudes than funny chicks is that dudes are funnier than chicks. If my daughter has a mediocre sense of humor, I’m just gonna tell her, “Be a staff writer for a sitcom. Because they’ll have to hire you, they can’t really fire you, and you don’t have to produce that much. It’ll be awesome.”…I don’t care. When you’re picking a basketball team, you’ll take the brother over the guy with the yarmulke. Why? Because you’re playing the odds. When it comes to comedy, of course there’s Sarah Silverman, Tina Fey, Kathy Griffin — super-funny chicks. But if you’re playing the odds? No. If Joy Behar or Sherri Shepherd was a dude, they’d be off TV. They’re not funny enough for dudes. What if Roseanne Barr was a dude? Think we’d know who she was? Honestly.

I cannot even imagine what would happen if a prominent female comedy writer was this openly dismissive of network brass, much less a request by network brass that you behave like every other employer in America is expected to behave, or add a little perspective to your team. Actually, I have a pretty good idea: she’d be branded a bitch, impossible in a way that Dan Harmon, recently defenestrated from Community, can’t even begin to contemplate. You can see that in Jessica Borsiczky being careful to say that even though she’s known women who were retaliated against for taking maternity leave, things are much better in television today. You can see it in Amy Sherman-Palladino trying as hard as she can not to be seen criticizing another female showrunner even as a (female) interviewer goads her as hard as possible into a catfight narrative.

And yet Adam Carolla, a comic so pathetic he thinks it’s clever to suggest nerds are undatable, to say that men are somehow neutered by the rise of feminism, that it’s uproarious to suggest the acronym LGBT be replaced with YUCK, is somehow, by virtue of these clear demonstrations of wit and the fact that he’s a dude with a frattish fanbase, free to behave like this. It’s not like the pretense that Hollywood is a meritocracy is anything but torn to shreds, but really, Carolla is one of the most humiliating illustrations of its utter, miserable failure.

Three weeks ago, The L.A. Complex debuted on the CW to the lowest ratings for a broadcast drama, ever. It’s too bad, because this spiky little Canadian show about a group of actors, comics, producers and dancers who live in the same run-down Los Angeles apartment complex is great fun, an improvement both on standard aspiring-starlet stories like Smash, and on theoretically sophisticated takes on modern romance.

Smash‘s biggest problem all season has been that the competition between Ivy and Karen hasn’t felt realistically heated. With Ivy’s experience and her resemblance to Marilyn, it seems obvious that she’d be cast in the lead and Karen was the understudy. The show’s had to spend a lot of time giving Karen chances to sing and showing audiences reacting to her like she’s the Best Thing Ever and giving Ivy the silliest drug problem on television since Saved By The Bell to gin up any sort of drama.

The L.A. Complex, on the other hand, has conflicts that are actually rooted in Hollywood double standards. Abby Vargas, a young aspiring actress who’s been living in her car and making a lot of other bad life decisions, ends up competing with Raquel Westbrook, an older actress on the downswing played with a beautiful bitterness by Jewel Staite. When Abby beats out Raquel for a part, it turns out to be not much of a prize at all: her big break turns out to be playing a dead hooker on a crime show where her lines and her pay cut get cut correspondingly. The fights are so big because the stakes are so small, as when Nick Wagner, an aspiring stand-up comic whose material is flopping finally gets applause by viciously insulting a more successful female comic with whom he had an embarrassing one-night stand.

The relationships have the same kind of heft that Smash, which has recycled through tired affairs, starlets sleeping with directors, and the standard idiot pop-culture move of someone proposing after cheating, lacks. Sure, when Abby sleeps with Connor, the most successful actor of the bunch who’s beginning to shoot his new pilot, we’re not surprised when she catches him sleeping with someone else. But L.A. Complex, rather than making the arc solely about her naivete and vulnerability, has focused on Connor’s self-hatred and destructive tendencies. Other than Rescue Me, there’s not another show that’s dared to depict a male character self-harming, a practice typically reserved in pop culture to signify female teenaged angst (Jess’s cutting joke on the season finale of New Girl was an uncomfortably off moment, I thought).

The show’s subverted our expectations in other ways, too. When Alicia, a talented young dancer, clicks with a former child star who covers for her at her job at a strip club so she can make auditions, we expect to see them date. In a subsequent episode, he sets up for what seems like it might be an entirely-too-soon proposal. Instead, he asks her to make a sex tape with him to jump-start both their careers. And once they’re shooting, he’s shy, and awkward, obsessed with lighting and unable to actually get started. It’s Alicia who takes the lead in a moment that’s neither do-me feminism nor slut shaming: this is the best of the bad options, and she’s making the most of it.

And perhaps the best part of L.A. Complex has been that it’s put a gay couple with actual sexual chemistry on television. Brian Stelter wrote at the New York Times yesterday that pop culture appears to have accepted gay couples completely. But the truth is that’s more narrow that it seems: television loves married, settled gay couples, but it doesn’t actually treat gay people like straight people, giving them heated romances, sex scenes, and love interests with whom they have actual sexual chemistry. On Modern Family, established couple Mitch and Cam have essentially no physical sparks whatsoever—the show even had an episode that attempted to explain that the couple isn’t fond of public displays of affection as a way to explain away their lack of heat. I love Happy Endings, which gave schlumphy Max a hot love interest in the form of James Wolk, but the show still stopped far short of their bedroom door. Even Game of Thrones, which gave its gay king and loyal knight and lover hot makeouts wouldn’t go where it’s gone with almost everyone else on the show, and let them have on-screen sex.

But on The L.A. Complex, gay men get treated like everyone else. When Tariq Muhammad, an up-and-coming hip-hop producer gets assigned to work with superstar rapper Kaldrick King, the older man spends a day testing Tariq as they meander through Los Angeles. And at the end of that day, Kaldrick makes a veiled invitation to Tariq. The staredown between them before they kiss and fall into bed is one of the more sexually charged moments to appear on television this season. As commercial as it is, that moment does something that almost no pop culture does: treats gay people as if watching them fall in love and have sex is as interesting and as natural as seeing them as sexless, domesticated marrieds.

As I wrote last week in considering Gary Oldman, I consider the idea that people should be marginalized in Hollywood simply because they are conservative, or denied work because of their political views, to be unfortunate and stupid. That said, I have no real problem marginalizing ideas that are profoundly uninformed or deeply uncivil. And when folks are ugly and uncivil in the course of expressing their conservatism or liberalism, I think they’re roundly off-base if they interprent the ensuing criticism as directed at their politics rather than their tone.

This seems to be a lesson that Patricia Heaton, who currently stars in The Middle and is famous for her role on Everybody Loves Raymond, learned last week. It’s no secret that she’s conservative, but when she jumped on the bandwagon and commenced attacking Sandra Fluke on her Twitter feed, things got out of hand. “Hey G-Gal! Change major to Health Sciences, then look at pix of people w/syphilis, gonorrhea, herpes, and chlamydia! Instant birth control!” she wrote. “Hey G-Town: stop buying toothpaste, soap and shampoo! You’ll save money, and no one will want to sleep with you!” Things went on this vein for some time, with Heaton also retweeting other nasty things people were saying about Fluke. The conversation, such as it was, revealed both that Heaton had no idea whatsoever what was at stake in the contraception coverage debate, and that she has a real nasty streak.

Heaton appears to have recognized, at minimum, that her tweets weren’t exactly helpful to her public profile—she’s deleted her Twitter feed. She might consider taking a lesson from her progressive counterpart on a show about a working-class family. Raising Hope star Martha Plimpton’s Twitter feed is funny, and fact-oriented, and she’s serious enough about her work on contraception and women’s health to write pieces on the subject in Slate. It’s possible to have strong opinions—in Hollywood as in everywhere else—without being downright horrible to other people.

There’s been a lot of talk about Chris Heath’s long profile of Gary Oldman that came out in the most recent issue of GQ. Even more than the story itself, the buzz has been over a preface to the piece that explains why it was held from its original planned release date of 2009. It turns out the piece got pulled in a fairly routine process, and then Heath had trouble updating it because Oldman’s manager, who is himself fairly conservative, became convinced that the piece would paint Oldman as holding political views that would make it harder for him to work in Hollywood. As it turns out, the piece has absolutely no details about Oldman’s political views, and it doesn’t actually evaluate one of the claims that Heath makes: “The suggestion that [Oldman's political views or the perception of them as extremely right-wing] cost him an Oscar nomination for The Contender seems plausible.”

Heath describes a call Oldman received from Dustin Hoffman after The Contender came out where Hoffman told him:

“I was at a card game the other night, and there was this big Hollywood exec’ “—Hoffman named him to Oldman, though Oldman does not do so to me—” ‘and he was saying that Gary Oldman is extreme right wing, and he’s a fascist.’ ” Hoffman told Oldman that his response was “Gary Oldman’s a fascist and extreme right? I can’t imagine that that is true,” but nonetheless, the conversation had clearly prompted this phone call. [Hoffman, contacted in 2012, recalled telephoning Oldman and commending his performance in The Contender, but stated that he did not remember the rest of this conversation.] “And he said,” Oldman continues, ” ‘Just be careful, because I said some stuff years ago…I said it to someone who was very powerful who made sure that I didn’t work for a long, long time.’ He was being quite cryptic. And then he reminded me that there was a gap—I think it was a gap between Tootsie and the next thing he did. He said, ‘Just a word to the wise, you’ve got to be very careful; there’s this thing out there that you’re this… I don’t know what you’ve been saying, but you’ve got to be very careful.’ All very strange.”

Tracing the path of rumors, particularly old ones, is difficult. And it would be pretty hard to get people to say on the record that they declined to hire Dustin Hoffman or Gary Oldman, two of the most talented actors of their generations, because they’re not orthodox liberals. But even if Heath reported out that speculation and got a bunch of denials or anxious reactions, that seems like it would have been worth reporting as well.

No one piece is going to resolve the tendentious relationship between conservatives and Hollywood, of course. But it would be really useful to get above the level of insinuation and speculation, even on a case-by-case basis. If people shunned Oldman or prevented him from being recognized for performing his job in an exemplary fashion because of his views of American politics (as a British citizen he can’t vote and he hasn’t given money to any campaign since 1990, so those views aren’t even having an impact), which have no bearing on his ability to do his work, that’s something that should be revealed because it’s ridiculous and has denied us more of Gary Oldman’s greatness. And if the impression that Oldman was denied work or recognition because of his politics is mistaken, it’s worthwhile to debunk that, too.

I was reading through The Hollywood Reporter’s Women in Entertainment issue, and was struck by how many of the women on the list suggested dealing with sexism — mostly by working through it:

Anne Sweeney
Disney Media Networks Co-Chairman and Disney/ABC Television Group President
Must-Have Qualities of a Power Leader: I think the must have power qualities for a female or male power leader are really the ability to focus, to work hard, to be extremely goal oriented, and to not let the noise and the nonsense interfere with your mission — what you really feel you want to do with your career and your life…

Nancy Grace
HLN Host and Former DWTS Contestant…
Advice: I think the most important thing I took from my mother is her work ethic, which is basically, there may be others who are more powerful, more cunning and more beautiful than you, but you can out work them. You can work harder. Believe in yourself and outwork everybody else and you’ll make it…

Bethenny Frankel
Reality Star, Author and Mogul
Must-Have Qualities: Don’t ever assume anyone is smarter than you. Men, sometimes, in particular. Be able to understand the power of women and that the unimaginable is possible. I built my entire business from not underestimating women and realizing that women make the decisions in the household and have the buying power and not underestimating women and not dumbing it down…

Kathy Griffin
Comedian, Reality Star
Must-Have Qualities: I think you should be fearless, you should be outspoken and you should, stay focused and do your job. Because it’s easy to get bogged down in the fact that men still make 70 cents on the dollar etc. and I’m in a very male driven field obviously but I think when you just sort of stay in your lane, do your job, that’s really how you get beyond that and have fun.

I don’t think this is wrong, exactly. If we got paralyzed by the persistence of sexism in society, we wouldn’t do anything to eradicate it, or indeed, anything at all. And I think some of these responses make clear the effort it takes not to get dragged down or distracted by the knowledge that you might be earning less than your male equivalents, to not let your self-esteem get damaged by the occasional assumption that you’re riding your sex appeal to success. It takes energy to pretend that things are normal when they aren’t, or that they don’t get to you when they do. But ultimately, the success of individual women isn’t actually going to diminish the prevalence of those assumptions or close the pay gap.

I’d be curious to know how much these women benefited from female mentors who both pushed back on those assumptions and closed those gaps, and made it easier for women to succeed generally and specifically. And I’d be curious to know if changing the culture of Hollywood as well as driving the creation of successful content is part of what The Hollywood Reporter considers in making this list. Hit shows and big trends will come and go, and the fortunes of networks and studios rise and fall. Permanently bending the curve on how women are treated on screen and behind it in Hollywood would be a lasting accomplishment.

Adam Carolla, master of subtlety and complexity, is sort of on to something in complaining about celebrities who make an enormous amount of money even while claiming solidarity with the poor, but as usual, misses the point:

“These bigger name guys, they go out and do corporate gigs, they do casinos and theaters, they make 200 grand a pop,” says Carolla, whose own ideology defies simple labels. “Then, they come back to their pulpit and talk about Joe Sixpack and how times are tight.”

“They never talk about the money they make… and you pretend you’re one of them? Bullshit,” he says.
Carolla isn’t shy about telling tales of woe from first class flights or how he feels uncomfortable around his nanny. Nor does he mind being in a cutthroat entertainment business, one that cast him aside in 2009 for failing to live up to Howard Stern’s ratings legacy on the FM dial.

It’s not actually more attractive to complain about your first world problems than it is to reach for solidarity, however clumsily, with people who have fewer resources than you do. But that doesn’t mean it’s not useful for rich people who want to support everyone else to recognize that they aren’t coming from the same place as someone who, say, is losing their home, or experiencing a prolonged period of joblessness. Kathy Bates’ desire to see Obama go after the “rat bastards” on Wall Street does not actually spring from an identical place as someone who is crushed under the weight of student loans, or whose mortgage was part of a complex financial transaction.

And that’s actually a good thing. It’s critically important to illustrate that there are large constituencies for issues like financial system reform, or for student loan forgiveness. And it’s important to draw connections between issues that people will argue are separate to avoid regulation. Bernie Madoff’s fraud was different from the rise of mortgage-backed securities, in terms of both how they were carried out and legal culpability, but they’re both part of a culture that valued profits over accountability. It would be useful to have wealthy victims of Madoff’s fraud, like Larry King and Kevin Bacon, come out in favor of much higher regulatory standards for the financial industry as a whole. You don’t actually have to establish credibility as a member of the working class to be a useful ally to the working class. But it is useful to know which one you are before you start acting as an advocate.