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The Woke War in Hollywood, With Christian Toto

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The hiatus in Hollywood brought on by the current writers strike seemed a good occasion to check in with Christian Toto, proprietor of the indispensable HollywoodInToto website, as well as a podcast, and a terrific recent book, Virtue Bombs: How Hollywood Got Woke and Lost Its Soul.

Our conversation ranges widely from the problems of streaming services, the leftward lurch that has nearly killed off late night talk shows, why Top Gun: Maverick was snubbed at the Oscars, and above all whether a backlash against wokery in Hollywood is approaching critical mass. There are some signs that it is. Stay tuned, but listen here and bookmark Christian's site and podcast.

This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5816484/advertisement

Host:
Steve Hayward
Guest:
Christian Toto

Discussion (4)

  • Al Sparks@AlSparks

    Great show. I always enjoy Christian Toto, and regularly listen to his podcast. Maybe he should pay more attention to the audio. In this particular case, once I turned up the audio I was able to hear fine, but when the podcast cut to commercial, I got blasted. Please pay more attention to your audio.

    But since Steve actually reads these posts (I'm greatful for that) I thought I'd mention a problem accessing the powerlineblog site.

    I have an Android tablet (Samsung) and I use the Google Chrome browser. Lately, when attempting to access the powerlineblog site, I end up on a page where I'm informed that it's checking to see if the connection is secure. It does that over and over again, and sometimes I eventually get to the site, and sometimes, like now, it will take hours.

    I am a powerlineblog VIP, so I'm paying for premium access.

  • Steven Hayward@StevenHayward
    ReplyingtoAl Sparks

    Al Sparks (View Comment):

    Great show. I always enjoy Christian Toto, and regularly listen to his podcast. Maybe he should pay more attention to the audio. In this particular case, once I turned up the audio I was able to hear fine, but when the podcast cut to commercial, I got blasted. Please pay more attention to your audio.

    But since Steve actually reads these posts (I’m greatful for that) I thought I’d mention a problem accessing the powerlineblog site.

    I have an Android tablet (Samsung) and I use the Google Chrome browser. Lately, when attempting to access the powerlineblog site, I end up on a page where I’m informed that it’s checking to see if the connection is secure. It does that over and over again, and sometimes I eventually get to the site, and sometimes, like now, it will take hours.

    I am a powerlineblog VIP, so I’m paying for premium access.

    That Cloudfare screen is an unfortunate necessity at the moment as we're getting hit with 10x the number of spam attacks than a year ago. Even our ad-free VIP portal doesn't get around that problem.

    We're working on a complete site overhaul to fix a number of problems (our old email distribution function was discontinued by Google, among other things), but it is a slow (and very expensive!) process. So it's going to take a while yet.

    The sound issues with this episode are my fault. I'm actually the engineer for our podcasts, and I've been trying to equalize the volume on content and ads, but did something backwards with this one.

  • Al Sparks@AlSparks
    ReplyingtoSteven Hayward

    Steven Hayward (View Comment):

    That Cloudfare screen is an unfortunate necessity at the moment as we’re getting hit with 10x the number of spam attacks than a year ago. Even our ad-free VIP portal doesn’t get around that problem.

    I was not able to access your site with my tablet. I haven't yet tried my Windows laptop yet, but is much less convenient to use during a longer weekend.

    A few minutes ago, I tried switching browsers, using Samsung's Internet browser, and I got on your main page. When I attempted to access an article, I got the same problem.

    I literally have not been able to access your site for the last day. Before this, the Cloudflare screen was only an annoyance, where maybe I'd get in after two or three minutes. Now it's the equivalent of a denial of service attack.

    I simply can't get in.

    Going to powerlineblog has been a daily ritual for me for years. I miss it.

  • Steven Hayward@StevenHayward
    ReplyingtoAl Sparks

    Steven Hayward (View Comment):

    That Cloudfare screen is an unfortunate necessity at the moment as we’re getting hit with 10x the number of spam attacks than a year ago. Even our ad-free VIP portal doesn’t get around that problem.

    Al Sparks (View Comment):

    I was not able to access your site with my tablet. I haven’t yet tried my Windows laptop yet, but is much less convenient to use during a longer weekend.

    A few minutes ago, I tried switching browsers, using Samsung’s Internet browser, and I got on your main page. When I attempted to access an article, I got the same problem.

    I literally have not been able to access your site for the last day. Before this, the Cloudflare screen was only an annoyance, where maybe I’d get in after two or three minutes. Now it’s the equivalent of a denial of service attack.

    I simply can’t get in.

    Going to powerlineblog has been a daily ritual for me for years. I miss it.

    Other people using tablets have reported this problem recently and we don't know what is causing it yet. I think you can still access it fairly quickly on a laptop or desktop computer.