As is usually the case with over the top, lunatic fringe, right wing politicians, Senator Ron Johnson isn’t seeing the right message. He gets all excited and spews a bunch of nonsense making it sound like Hollywood has some unfair advantage against big business. While he fails to realize that Hollywood IS big business, he is missing a much more significant point.

I’m not aware of anyone that thinks all businesses are evil. But I AM aware of many businesses that ARE evil. Oil companies are notorious. They put together bogus safety and recovery plans, tell us they should be allowed to drill for oil and lay pipelines anywhere they want because there won’t be spills. And in that “super rare” case where there is a spill, they’ll clean it up quickly. But time after time, we see that there ARE spills and that those spills are much harder to clean up than the oil company predicted. The spills are often because managers take risks they shouldn’t, ignore safety rules they shouldn’t, and ignore maintenance requirements on equipment. Why do they do these things? Out of greed. They are trying to make more money. Because it is never enough!

There is nothing wrong with profit. There is nothing wrong with business. But there is something wrong with businesses never having enough profit. There is something wrong with businesses that are willing to sacrifice the environment for the sake of making a few extra bucks. There is something wrong with businesses that are willing to endanger workers or the public for the sake of making a few extra bucks.

There is also something wrong with a country where those same businesses now largely make the laws. They own the elected officials because of our corrupt campaign finance laws. When they don’t outright write the legislation, they have a heavy hand into what goes into the legislation. THAT is evil!

So what is the message in these movies? There are usually several messages. Greed is bad. Morals are important (not the religious kind!). Fight back against something that is wrong.

It’s really pretty simple and should be universally accepted as a good thing. Unless, of course, you are a politician in the mold of Gordon Gekko and believe that “greed is good!”

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/ron-johnson-lego-movie-propaganda