Hypocrisy

For a couple years now, business organizations and industry lobbyists have been waging war on Southern California. OK, by itself, that could mean almost anything about any industry, but I am talking about the film industry. Arizona has been billing itself as the solution to the film industry's woes, offering lower production costs and a significant variety of locations. What's been happpening west of the state line? The Governator, among others, has been trying to find methods for keeping the film industry right where it is already.

Enter a 40% approval rating, a slate of unpopular ballot initiative, four of which were put there at the governor's behest and paid for with California taxpayer dollars, and suddenly Arizona's exceedingly popular Sentaor John McCain is riding the bus (literally) with Arnold in a last-ditch effort to get something, anything, passed next Tuesday. As things stand, Proposition 74 looks like the only one with any hope. Mind you, "any hope" here refers to fewer than 50% of voters opposed, though it still lacks 50% support.

Let's now look at this from the outside: An increasingly unpopular governor is failing to defend Southern California's film industry from Arizona's raiders while he faces a humiliating, possibly critically debilitating defeat at the polls in two days. Arizona's senior senator, who has higher approval than disapproval numbers, gets called in to back the man trying to stop his state's efforts to steal the film industry from Hollywood back lots. Maybe it's just Republican comraderie, but I shudder to think of the backroom deals that may have been made in order to secure McCain's cooperation. Then again, I don't really care where films are shot.