Andrew Breitbart: Hollywood as Babylon



(Babylon in 1932)

It seems that even Andrew Breitbart's death has now become controversial - with some folks questioning whether the media description of "a natural death" at age 43 is somewhat oxymoronic...

That being said, anyone who was bent upon calling Hollywood “Babylon” is bound to elicit a certain amount of controversy.  In Breitbart’s (and coauthor Mark Ebner’s) book Hollywood, Interrupted: Insanity Chic in Babylon – The Case Against Celebrity, celebrities are not only ridiculed for their sexual, political, parental, marital, and legal proclivities, but also for their faith-related ones.

When asked during a 2005 interview with the National Review Online about Hollywood’s preoccupation with Kaballah and Scientology, Breitbart had this to say:  I didn’t grow up in a particularly religious house [although Wikipedia reports that Breitbart’s “adoptive mother had converted to Judaism when marrying his adoptive father,” and that Breitbart himself was “raised Jewish”], or neighborhood, so I understand skeptics of organized religion.  But the same people who mock the story of Jesus, the ones that speak incredulously of the "Virgin Birth” or bemoan the Gospels, are the first people to line up outside L. Ron Hubbard’s pulp-science-fiction temple or to buy Madonna-endorsed Kaballah-water

and her voodoo bracelets…

Although only asked about Kaballah and Scientology, Breitbart’s diatribe against the perceived vagaries of

many a Hollywood faith journey was just beginning to gather steam (dirt?).  He therefore continued on with

these insights (incites?):  …Twenty years ago it was Shirley MacLaine and her myriad lives, all of which

were strangely historical leading roles.  Astrology will always be a given here.  Hollywood will always

be a reliable place to study comically trendy belief systems…

Always?  That’s a long time.

Wikipedia reports that present-day Babylon (sometimes translated as “Gateway of the God”) is just “a mound, or tell, of broken mud-brick buildings and debris…”

Resources

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/03/andrew-breitbart-dead-natural-causes-.html

http://old.nationalreview.com/interrogatory/qa200501141052.asp

http://www.independent.ie/unsorted/features/thrills-spills-perverts-n-pills-catching-hollywood-in-the-act-170853.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Breitbart

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon

 Copyright March 2, 2012 by Linda Van Slyke   All Rights Reserved