ALEX COHEN, host:
Okay. So when you tire of Googling the presidential candidates, try typing in these two words: Hollywood values. The first thing that will come up - today, at least - is this headline: Hollywood values out of touch, poll says.
Here with his thoughts on Tinseltown values, our Hollywood humorist Brian Unger with today's Unger Report.
BRIAN UNGER: The following message is brought to you by Hollywood values, proud maker of immoral products and content and worldwide distributor of cultural pollutants since 1910.
For almost a century, you've depended on Hollywood values to corrupt the minds of innocent people with toxic images, negative, unredeemable characters, and hopeless stories through the magic of TV and cinema. And while entertaining you from the silent era to the golden age to the modern blockbuster, Hollywood values have enjoyed a supremely profitable relationship with its costumers. You paid - Hollywood poisoned.
But in these challenging political and economic times, it has become increasingly difficult for Hollywood values to compete with reality. So it is with great sadness and regret that Hollywood values will close its doors effective immediately and cease to exist. Like a dog that won't hunt anymore, Hollywood values just can't keep up with all the naturally occurring forces of destruction, especially those with formidable Washington values. They've got Tinseltown licked.
For example…
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UNGER: Hollywood values produced a cute love story about a couple of cowboys who fell in love herding sheep. Then Washington topped Hollywood with a story about a senator who fell in love in an airport bathroom. Hollywood values has produced so many pictures about the futility of unending war, we've lost count. But the war Washington has produced, well, who can compete with Iraq? It is -as Horace crooned to Baby Doe - the real thing.
Through the years, Hollywood values have exported the best violence in the world - all kinds of ways to chop people up and send them home early to meet their maker. But this whole torture mishegaas coming out of Washington, that's got Hollywood beat, too.
These days, the Beltway has more real agents of sleaze than showbiz has really sleazy agents. Washington, D.C. outspends, out-pollutes even out-lies Hollywood. In fact, the government of the United States is rated NC-17. Violence, mismanagement, crime and sexual scandal - once the sole problems of Hollywood values - well, this is no longer the case. So, in Hollywood, the hardest thing is knowing when to quit.
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UNGER: But no goodbyes. As Johnny Carson said, go get some more cheese dip. We'll back in a moment. Yours truly, Hollywood values.
And that is today's Unger Report. I'm Brian Unger. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.