The First "Attack Ads" On the Screen--Plus a Classic Book

The first e-book and a new print edition of my award-winning book "The Campaign of the Century" have just appeared in December 2011. You can find ithem easily at Amazon. Winner of the Goldsmith Book Prize, it tells the story of the incredible 1934 race for governor of California by muckraking Socialist author Upton Sinclair--and how it took the invention of modern media politics to defeat him and his mass movement after he swept the Democratic primary. The campaign also marked Hollywood's first all-out entry into politics, including the first use of the screen to defeat a candidate--via faked newsreels (which I discovered 20 years ago) produced by MGM's legendary producer Irving Thalberg. "Nothing is unfair in politics," he explained later. Studio bosses, led by Louis B. Mayer, threatened to move to Florida if Sinclair was elected. Most of them also docked all of their actors and workers a day's pay for contributions. Everyone from Katharine Hepburn and James Cagney to Will Rogers and Charlie Chaplin got swept up in it. The outrages of the right directly inspired the birth of the modern liberal-dominated Hollywood we know today. The book, winner of the Goldsmith Book Prize, also details the amazing EPIC (End Poverty in California) movement and the creation of all of the modern campaign aspects and dirty tricks--including hiring outside "spin doctors" to manage campaigns--that put the original "Mad Men" in charge.

You can order the e-book (for all phones, iPad, Kindle, more) or print edition at Amazon. Contact me at: epic1934@aol.com Credit for this video: Lyn Goldfarb and Blackside.

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  News & Politics

[David Treadmill]

and how about an audiobook version?

[masonroese8]

AWESOME



[MiserableOldFart]

The GOP was scum then and scum now.

[outinsider]

The actors may be liberal, but the producers are not.