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Tim Dillon Channels ‘Virtue Bombs’

The free-thinking podcaster shreds Hollywood groupthink, echoing new tome

My book, “Virtue Bombs: How Hollywood Got Woke and Lost Its Soul,” offers a sober take on the industry in Chapter 1.

Tinsel Town has always been driven by fear, in one shape or another.

Fear of getting older …of losing a gig to the Flavor of the Month … of missing an open table at that trendy L.A. eatery … of losing your creative mojo … of angering the wrong director at the wrong time on the wrong project.

Even the biggest stars in Hollywood worry their next film could be their last. It’s an industry built on fear from the ground up. Always has, always will.

There’s always someone younger, and prettier and more talented lurking over one’s shoulder. The busiest stars are one bust away from having their careers come to a crashing halt.

One A-list demotion means the scripts coming your way suddenly aren’t as fresh, as vital, as those you read just a few weeks ago. What happens after that?

I wrote that to explain why the woke revolution ramped up existing levels of fear … exponentially.

This reporter recalled that part of the book while listening to Tim Dillon’s latest podcast. The comedian, who soared to fame by ignoring conventional narratives, offered a similar spin on today’s Hollywood.

The conversation started with Dillon noting how fellow podcaster Joe Rogan is enduring attacks for sharing select opinions on “The Joe Rogan Experience.”

“He is getting a lot of flak and taking positions that people don’t like,” Dillon said. “But the bigger reason that they hate him, and a lot of them don’t like me [either]… is most of the people in Hollywood live in fear.

Everyone in this town, whether they have $100 million or no money, they live in fear. They live in fear of losing their job, they live in fear of becoming irrelevant, they live in fear of not being able to satiate their bloodthirsty mob on Twitter. That’s why a lot of comedians we know spend most of their time apologizing for past indiscretions.”

He cites Patton Oswalt’s humiliating apology to the mob for daring to snap a photo with comic legend Dave Chappelle, dubbed transphobic in some far-Left circles.

 

 
 
 
 
 
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A post shared by Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt)

“I must continue to educate myself,” Dillon said in a mocking imitation of Oswalt’s mea culpa. “I hold forth these truths to be self evident.”

Some of that fear, he noted, is connected to greed.

“They live in fear because their money gets turned on and off like a faucet,” he added. “And when they turn the money on, things are good. There’s big houses … there’s red carpets and there’s people who care. Profiles in the New York Times.”

“You’re famous, and that’s the elixir, that’s the drug, the fame,” he said. “And you matter largely because an industry of people decided that you should matter.”virtue bombs christian toto

Things, he noted, have changed, thanks to folks like Rogan.

“Over the last few years, the ability of them to do that has waned … a lot of those people who were famous and rich were coasting, and they were told exactly what to say and how to say it. And they didn’t say anything that would ruffle feathers and they stayed in the line, mainstream liberal, after school special … and then retire to their mansions to do blow and have fun.

“Now, you have all these new people on the Internet whose views and ideas are more in line with the American public. One, we HAVE views and ideas. We have thoughts. Those thoughts are actually more mainstream than a lot of these Hollywood actors and comedians who don’t think at all, and have made a career of not really thinking about anything in a way that could upset or hurt their career.”

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“Hollywood right now, and academia, have been captured by radicals, people who hold views vastly different from the majority of the American people,” he continued. “Most people in Hollywood don’t have these views. They just wanna be rich. Then there are a few people that have these views and want these views telegraphed in every piece of art. So if you wanna be in any of these things, you have to either hold these views or quietly abstain from ever challenging them. But that doesn’t work online  .. people want authenticity and they want yo to be real and say the sh** that you feel and think. It’s what Joe Rogan does and what I do …

“But it works. And we make money, and we sell tickets. And the people who are part of that old system that are kind of dying are angry about it. They’re not thrilled with that,” he said.

And, as a result, powerful media forces (think Hollywood and news outlets alike) cheer when Big Tech attempts to wipe out these new voices.

“These people are angry and mad and they’re trying to get the attention of [Big Tech] … ‘shut them down! Shut it off! Shut this off now! We want them to watch things that we make now … we need them to know we’re the only option for entertainment.'”

He then mocked “Doctors” who complain about Rogan spreading “misinformation” via his podcast.

“What Rogan is doing is having conversations with people who have a different view of how COVID should be treated … many of them are advocating early treatment instead of vaccines. Now, you can have that debate, you can have that conversation, you shouldn’t shut it down. You don’t have to be an anti-vax lunatic to entertain a reasonable conversation. Tthe vast majority of people who watch and enjoy Rogan are likely vaccinated. I’m vaccinated….

“Also, at the third booster, when everyone’s sick, it’s also reasonable to have a conversation about, ‘are these things working as well as you wanted them to work.'”

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