Hollywood tries to speak for us but really, they just don’t get it

Lauren DeBellis Appell

Tourists take pictures of the Hollywood sign from a shopping complex along Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California, August 3, 2017.  Photo: Mike Blake/Reuters

Members of the privileged, elitist culture use fame, fortune and power as a compass to measure their identity and determine their fulfillment and happiness. They’ve become one big walking contradiction in their attempt to inundate the rest of us with their version of normal, which isn’t really normal at all.

This has gone on for so long they can’t even see how morally bankrupt they’ve become.

From Washington to Hollywood, and even bleeding into highbrow Silicon Valley, this oppressive, lost culture has spent far too long trying to enlighten the rest of the country. Now it’s time to enlighten them.

Here are some things they don’t understand about most of us.

Hollywood gets rich off of selling us fairytales and glamour. To most of us, there is nothing glamourous about our spouse cheating on us.

We are content. While we have goals and dreams, which many of us are deeply driven to pursue, our greatest accomplishments and what we outwardly attain are not what bring us contentment.

Our contentment comes from doing what is honorable – pursuing a deeper love in our marriages; raising our kids to be responsible and contributing members of society; volunteering in our communities; investing in our friendships; and building each other up instead of tearing each other down.

Contentment is not something you get by hitting the next goal or milestone or attaining that next big thing. According to a 2017 Gallup Poll, roughly 75 percent of all Americans consider themselves part of a Christian faith. Another 6 percent of the population identifies with a non-Christian faith, including Judaism, Islam and others.

This means that the majority of people in our country believe in a higher power and understand that their lives are about something bigger than themselves.

We all have priorities. One look at our priorities, and we can easily find what’s most important to us.

The things we value most get most of our focus and energy. Where we choose to expend our energy and focus will either lead to contentment or leave us feeling restless and continuing on in pursuit of what will feed our soul and fill that void.

The lost culture equates power, pleasure, money and fame with fulfillment and contentment – but is really pursuing an endless cycle of depravity. Its members deceive themselves into believing the next thing will satisfy them.

It’s no secret many celebrity couples view marriage as expendable. A quick glance at the magazine covers in the supermarket checkout line tells you all you need to know about who is upgrading to a newer model in any given week.

One study showed that famous couples are two times as likely to get a divorce as the rest of us. Part of that reason could be the depravity they’ve bought into.

Several celebrities are on record as either questioning monogamy or saying in no uncertain terms that they don’t believe in it, including Scarlett Johansson, Ethan Hawke, Cameron Diaz, and Emma Thompson. Jada Pinkett Smith went as far as to say: “In our marriage vows, we didn’t say forsaking all others.”

Hollywood gets rich off of selling us fairytales and glamour. To most of us, there is nothing glamourous about our spouse cheating on us.

Their latest “fairytale,” “Fifty Shades Freed” is set to open in theaters just in time for Valentine’s Day. This is the third movie in the “Fifty Shades of Grey” trilogy.

The movies are known for their graphic sex scenes featuring bondage, dominance, sadism, and masochism. Is violence against women really the message Hollywood should be sending right now, even if it is portrayed as consensual?

This is an industry that is drowning in a sea of sex scandals. We just got done watching them wear all black to the Golden Globes to protest the sexual misconduct that many of them ignored for years. Now we’re supposed to pay to watch them portray violence against women as some great love story, because the woman in the movie happens to agree to the violence?

As parents, we’re trying to raise responsible kids, with the end game that one day our independent little free birds will fly the nest and stand on their own two feet. We are counting on the fact that we’re getting just enough of this parenting thing right so they won’t be living in our basements until they’re 35, and that they’ll be ready to walk into adulthood equipped with the tools they need to make good judgment calls.

We don’t want our kids to grow up to be like members of this depraved culture, whether it’s a celebrity in Hollywood who thinks monogamy is childish; a politician in Washington who uses taxpayer money to create a secret fund to cover for colleagues accused of sexual misconduct; or a tech genius in Silicon Valley who is part of a secretive sex and drug culture.

They are a culture unto themselves. They don’t represent most of us or the values we are trying to instill in our kids. We may be entertained and amused by them from time to time, and even a little curious. But we don’t want to be like them and we certainly don’t want our kids to emulate them.

Depravity is an ultimately unfulfilling existence. In the end, it’s investing in our families, our friendships and our faith – rather than just ourselves – that gives us the contentment and peace that we seek more than any amount of fame, fortune or power ever could.

Lauren DeBellis Appell, Fox News, 29-1-2018 

Lauren DeBellis Appell was deputy press secretary for then-Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., in his successful 2000 re-election campaign, as well as assistant communications director for the Senate Republican Policy Committee (2001-2003).