Curse of the limo liberals

This may be a divided country, but at least there's one thing about the 2004 presidential election that nearly everybody can agree on: Hollywood took it on the chin. It's no surprise to hear a scold like Michael Medved say that Democrats will never compete in Red State America until they "escape their identification as the party of Beverly Hills dilettantes and self-righteous celebrities." But standing shoulder to shoulder with Medved was former Clinton White House chief of staff Leon Panetta, who told the Washington Post that "the party of FDR has become the party of Michael Moore and 'Fahrenheit 9/11' and it does not help us in big parts of the country."

Even Bush critic Marc Cooper marveled in the left-leaning LA Weekly: "When you ask yourself who are the great Democratic mass icons of our times ... damned if we don't come up with literal clowns like Al Franken and Michael Moore. Doesn't this say something rather startling about the state of the Democrats?"

It makes you wonder: Has Hollywood become a millstone around the Democratic party's neck, only making it easier for conservatives to stereotype Democratic candidates as the latte-sipping stooges of the showbiz elite? After all, this was an election in which George Bush never failed to tell audiences that John Kerry believed "the heart and soul of America was in Hollywood," not Toledo or Tampa or wherever the president was speaking that day.

"The Democrats really paid a price for their association with strident Hollywood activists and their palpable contempt for regular people," says Mike Murphy, the Republican political consultant who ran John McCain's 2000 presidential bid and now works with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. "When the Republicans talk about limousine-liberal elitism, it's code for Michael Moore, who really turned people off with his stridency when he inserted himself into the middle of the campaign. He deserves the Lee Atwater medal for service rendered to the Republican Party."

To be fair, there were a few artists who displayed a touch of class, most notably the Bruce Springsteen-led coalition of rock stars who did Kerry concerts around the country, all without engaging in incendiary political rhetoric. If only their movie star brethren could've shown such discretion, perhaps Bush advisor Karl Rove wouldn't have had such an easy time turning Kerry's showbiz support into yet another Republican cultural wedge issue. Instead, Jennifer Aniston called Bush an idiot, along with an expletive we can't print here, while Cher dubbed the president "stupid and lazy."