It showed the little red ‘X’, but if you right-clicked it gave a URL for the graphic in ‘properties’ that I tried to visit, but got an error msg instead.

However, I typed variations of it until I wound up in a right-wing blog that TB has linked to before, I don’t remember much about it, but I recall it has a pirate skull and crossbones logo, and the graph was there. And yes, it is quite partisan.

Incidentally, while snooping around, I found the exact same graph in several other places on the net, including some movie industry trade sites. Apparently, Hollywood is well aware of this problem too, and concerned about it. But the money men have their own ideas.

1) Hollywood studio executives allegedly are notorious Liberals. Without actually saying so, he can put this all on them.

2)The audience is the rabble, the takers, the 47%.

I could tell it was political before I even saw his graphic, which was blocked, just by its tone and the way the last line was carefully positioned for maximum rhetorical effect. And you should take some time perusing the website where he picked it up. Let’s just say its pretty partisan.

Having said that, although I don’t share Tom’s assessment of the causes, I don’t disagree with Tom’s observations about the movie biz at all. It’s spot on. Studio execs are money-grubbing creeps regardless of their politics, and the bulk of movie audiences are rabble, regardless of theirs. It’s why no self-respecting citizen goes to the theater any more.

Self-made rugged individualists are proud of their accomplishments, and point to their resourcefulness and independence to explain them and to characterize those who they feel lack those sterling qualities as obviously substandard human beings. Their admiration of individual initiative is itself admirable, but their difficulty in recognizing the role of cooperation and community reveals a lack of empathy and an unwillingness to accept social responsibility. We all enjoy succeeding in crises where neither help nor hindrance from others plays a role, it demonstrates to us our value as human beings. But we are, after all, apes, social animals.

OTOH, they are just as liable to ascribe their failures and shortcomings to the faults or avarice of others, to assign blame to people, institutions and ideas that are always lurking in the background ready to plunder their loot, place obstacles in their path and steal what they have rightfully earned.

As I mentioned earlier, this is a very human attitude, and one not restricted to Libertarians, but in their case it so contradicts their professed ideals of self-reliance and independence that the contradiction only stands out the more.

Its a combination of narcissism and paranoia.

A so-called Libertarian supporting a war to take away another countries resources is a contradiction, and yet there they are. And a Libertarian supporting a dictatorship seems to be another contradiction, yet there they are.

Libertarians (so-called) seem to have no insight into their own contradictions and no empathy for anyone else or their rights.

I admire parts of what they can believe, truly do, and have read a book, “How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World” which is superb. In practice, however, it seems Libertarians are the essence of greed and selfishness.