At Industry Event, Andrew Sullivan Suggests Hollywood Stop Calling People "Racists and Bigots"

At an event billed as ‘A Day of Unreasonable Conversation,’ it seemed only fitting that journalist and provocateur Andrew Sullivan provided the audience with its most uncomfortable moment. During a Monday morning panel probing how Hollywood screenwriters and showrunners portray “the other side,” Sullivan criticized “Hollywood” for regularly painting non-coastal elites in unflattering terms, which has only exacerbated America’s cultural divide. 

“These people who are already insecure about losing their job switch on the TV, look at the newspaper and hear that they are being described as bigots, racists,” said Sullivan, who was speaking to a packed audience of industry professionals, including some of the town’s biggest names, at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. 

“And they resent it, and the one thing I would urge you people who do this type of content is try and complete the idea of ‘the other’ being in the room because they can hear what you are saying.” 

Moments later, the author and New York magazine columnist doubled down on his idea, saying: “Don’t tell them everything is good. That you deserve it and that you are all basically slaveholders under their skin blah, blah, blah, which is what Hollywood is saying to them every second of the day.” 

Those comments, which were met with audible gasps, set the stage for an immensely tense 20-minute panel which ended in Sullivan being shouted at by an audience member, prompting the moderator to step in and end the panel.

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