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Virtue Bombs: How Hollywood Got Woke and Lost Its Soul
Inside Hollywood's Descent into Dreary, Dull Leftist Groupthink
Hollywood’s Dream Factory is now a nightmare of woke restrictions, Identity Politics run amok, and freedom-snuffing rules and regulations. The Oscars are unwatchable, as are many films and television shows thanks to the woke revolution. Virtue Bombs breaks down where Hollywood went so wrong, illustrates the slow-motion disaster infiltrating the industry, and offers a glimmer of hope for a woke-free tomorrow. Award-winning film critic Christian Toto has all the receipts, showcasing Hollywood’s virtue-signaling follies and how it could get much, much worse before it gets better.
Hollywood’s Dream Factory is now a nightmare of woke restrictions, Identity Politics run amok, and freedom-snuffing rules and regulations. The Oscars are unwatchable, as are many films and television shows thanks to the woke revolution. Virtue Bombs breaks down where Hollywood went so wrong, illustrates the slow-motion disaster infiltrating the industry, and offers a glimmer of hope for a woke-free tomorrow. Award-winning film critic Christian Toto has all the receipts, showcasing Hollywood’s virtue-signaling follies and how it could get much, much worse before it gets better.
240 pages, Paperback
Published January 18, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
January 23, 2022
...but the good news is Hollywood is cutting its own throat.
Virtue Bombs by Christian Toto
Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...
The author, Christian Toto, operates the "Toto in Hollywood" website. Toto in Hollywood ("TIH") is the go-to source for news and insights into the flaming trainwreck that is popular culture. Toto is on the conservative side of the spectrum and so is uniquely free to point out that the emperor is naked in movie reviews and opinion pieces into the mass implosion of movie, television, comedy, etc.
If you've been reading TIH, a lot of this is going to be familiar. Nonetheless, get the book. The book provides a handy, condensed version of the last decade of TIH. Also, given "dense-packing" of Woke idiocy, it is so easy to forget the idiocy of last year, much less the early foreshadowing of the dysfunctional state of our current situation in 2022 that we experienced back in the heady days of 2012.
Toto surveys virtually every bit of woke dysfunction up to last month from every angle. He has a chapter on the effort to cancel Gina Carrano, for example. He covers the cowardly implosion of stand-up comedy. He explains why television shows and movies are no longer entertaining. He looks at the Grammies and rap music.
I found his chapter on stand-up comedy particularly insightful. I recently discovered Lilly Singh via a Matt Walsh segment where he watches woke female comics and dares them to make him laugh. Singh was one of them and she was awful. I then discovered a Youtube post by three hip Gen Z dudes - who had no axe to grind - and they had the same experience. Singh has her own show, but her "comedy" involves handing out Woke bromides and then bravely facing the applause of trained seals.
What the heck?
Citing Comedian Steve McGrew, Toto explains:
“I’ve seen several comics change their act to become more woke; they think it will make them more valuable and more wanted or in demand by the powers that be in Hollywood.” Even black comics who rarely told race-related jokes are suddenly talking about racism and skin color, he says. “Nothing will get you a Netflix special quicker than being a woke urban comic.”
Toto, Christian. Virtue Bombs: How Hollywood Got Woke and Lost Its Soul (p. 220). Bombardier Books. Kindle Edition.
For his part, Steve McGrew was blacklisted:
"Comedian Steve McGrew knows all about woke culture. The openly conservative comic was being punished early and often by Facebook before it was cool (and darn near ubiquitous for people on the Right). He lost an annual gig in Las Vegas after club owner Brad Garrett (yes, that Brad Garrett of Everybody Loves Raymond fame) learned McGrew supported Trump, and he found a new level of disdain in comedy circles for joining “The Deplorables” comedy tour.
Toto, Christian. Virtue Bombs: How Hollywood Got Woke and Lost Its Soul (p. 219). Bombardier Books. Kindle Edition.
So, time to look up McGrew and avoid anything with Garrett.
Andrew Klavan writes the introduction, which includes this observation that I've been making for a few years:
"I didn’t care. American kids were having their legs blown off by squirrely dirtbags far from home. I wasn’t going to curse them out in L.A. meetings so I could get work in Hollywood. I can’t prove it, but I know it’s so. I was blacklisted—and by the same perfidious toads who’d just spent fifty years whining about the last blacklist.
Toto, Christian. Virtue Bombs: How Hollywood Got Woke and Lost Its Soul (pp. 8-9). Bombardier Books. Kindle Edition.
How many times have we been told that the fight against Communists - and there were Communists and they actually supported a totalitarian, genocidal foreign power thanks to, inter alia, the Venona Intercepts - was a cruel, malicious, ignorant fight against a non-entity?
But as soon as these "perfidious toads" got power, they implemented their own blacklist.
Just like they did in the 1930s.
Just like we knew they always would, even when they were described as "liberals in a hurry."
I like the equation of the Woke with a cult. Communism was a cult. Wokeness has all the indicia of a religious cult:
"She promoted woke jokes, knowing how influential comedy can be in changing hearts if not minds. Yet something began to bug her about the woke movement, which she now compares to a cult. She started to question elements of its belief system, a true no-no in any good cult. She also started educating herself about other philosophical movements, including the bootstrap ethos shared by Canadian professor Jordan Peterson. Slowly she realized the folly of her belief system, and she eventually left the comedy world.
Toto, Christian. Virtue Bombs: How Hollywood Got Woke and Lost Its Soul (pp. 232-233). Bombardier Books. Kindle Edition.
There is a lot here. There is a lot to be concerned about. Toto signs off with despair and hope:
"The cultural forces lined up against free expression, creativity, and all-American values look intimidating, if not downright invincible. The Left conquered Hollywood, and now they’re trying to silence their ideological foes. How many times did progressives attempt to remove Rush Limbaugh off the airwaves, much as they’re attempting to do with Fox News superstar Tucker Carlson? The biggest names in the culture bow to the mob, with few exceptions. No matter how much wealth, fame, or, yes, privilege a superstar has, it’s often not enough to sufficiently stiffen their spine. The woke mob counts the media, academia, Hollywood, and Corporate U.S.A. as its foot soldiers (not counting the actual foot soldiers known as Antifa). Any one of those institutions alone would be formidable. Added together? They’re nearly unstoppable. I say “nearly” because the American DNA still matters, still rejects the speech-snuffing measures those institutions embrace. That spirit offers the last best hope that the woke war can be won, both in Hollywood and the culture at large.
Toto, Christian. Virtue Bombs: How Hollywood Got Woke and Lost Its Soul (p. 227). Bombardier Books. Kindle Edition.
What is to be done? Well, support the good guys. Buy their products. Talk them up. Spread their message. Support them out loud while you can.
Sort of like a Top 500 Amazon reviewer giving a helpful, laudatory review.
Fight the war where you can.
Virtue Bombs by Christian Toto
Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...
The author, Christian Toto, operates the "Toto in Hollywood" website. Toto in Hollywood ("TIH") is the go-to source for news and insights into the flaming trainwreck that is popular culture. Toto is on the conservative side of the spectrum and so is uniquely free to point out that the emperor is naked in movie reviews and opinion pieces into the mass implosion of movie, television, comedy, etc.
If you've been reading TIH, a lot of this is going to be familiar. Nonetheless, get the book. The book provides a handy, condensed version of the last decade of TIH. Also, given "dense-packing" of Woke idiocy, it is so easy to forget the idiocy of last year, much less the early foreshadowing of the dysfunctional state of our current situation in 2022 that we experienced back in the heady days of 2012.
Toto surveys virtually every bit of woke dysfunction up to last month from every angle. He has a chapter on the effort to cancel Gina Carrano, for example. He covers the cowardly implosion of stand-up comedy. He explains why television shows and movies are no longer entertaining. He looks at the Grammies and rap music.
I found his chapter on stand-up comedy particularly insightful. I recently discovered Lilly Singh via a Matt Walsh segment where he watches woke female comics and dares them to make him laugh. Singh was one of them and she was awful. I then discovered a Youtube post by three hip Gen Z dudes - who had no axe to grind - and they had the same experience. Singh has her own show, but her "comedy" involves handing out Woke bromides and then bravely facing the applause of trained seals.
What the heck?
Citing Comedian Steve McGrew, Toto explains:
“I’ve seen several comics change their act to become more woke; they think it will make them more valuable and more wanted or in demand by the powers that be in Hollywood.” Even black comics who rarely told race-related jokes are suddenly talking about racism and skin color, he says. “Nothing will get you a Netflix special quicker than being a woke urban comic.”
Toto, Christian. Virtue Bombs: How Hollywood Got Woke and Lost Its Soul (p. 220). Bombardier Books. Kindle Edition.
For his part, Steve McGrew was blacklisted:
"Comedian Steve McGrew knows all about woke culture. The openly conservative comic was being punished early and often by Facebook before it was cool (and darn near ubiquitous for people on the Right). He lost an annual gig in Las Vegas after club owner Brad Garrett (yes, that Brad Garrett of Everybody Loves Raymond fame) learned McGrew supported Trump, and he found a new level of disdain in comedy circles for joining “The Deplorables” comedy tour.
Toto, Christian. Virtue Bombs: How Hollywood Got Woke and Lost Its Soul (p. 219). Bombardier Books. Kindle Edition.
So, time to look up McGrew and avoid anything with Garrett.
Andrew Klavan writes the introduction, which includes this observation that I've been making for a few years:
"I didn’t care. American kids were having their legs blown off by squirrely dirtbags far from home. I wasn’t going to curse them out in L.A. meetings so I could get work in Hollywood. I can’t prove it, but I know it’s so. I was blacklisted—and by the same perfidious toads who’d just spent fifty years whining about the last blacklist.
Toto, Christian. Virtue Bombs: How Hollywood Got Woke and Lost Its Soul (pp. 8-9). Bombardier Books. Kindle Edition.
How many times have we been told that the fight against Communists - and there were Communists and they actually supported a totalitarian, genocidal foreign power thanks to, inter alia, the Venona Intercepts - was a cruel, malicious, ignorant fight against a non-entity?
But as soon as these "perfidious toads" got power, they implemented their own blacklist.
Just like they did in the 1930s.
Just like we knew they always would, even when they were described as "liberals in a hurry."
I like the equation of the Woke with a cult. Communism was a cult. Wokeness has all the indicia of a religious cult:
"She promoted woke jokes, knowing how influential comedy can be in changing hearts if not minds. Yet something began to bug her about the woke movement, which she now compares to a cult. She started to question elements of its belief system, a true no-no in any good cult. She also started educating herself about other philosophical movements, including the bootstrap ethos shared by Canadian professor Jordan Peterson. Slowly she realized the folly of her belief system, and she eventually left the comedy world.
Toto, Christian. Virtue Bombs: How Hollywood Got Woke and Lost Its Soul (pp. 232-233). Bombardier Books. Kindle Edition.
There is a lot here. There is a lot to be concerned about. Toto signs off with despair and hope:
"The cultural forces lined up against free expression, creativity, and all-American values look intimidating, if not downright invincible. The Left conquered Hollywood, and now they’re trying to silence their ideological foes. How many times did progressives attempt to remove Rush Limbaugh off the airwaves, much as they’re attempting to do with Fox News superstar Tucker Carlson? The biggest names in the culture bow to the mob, with few exceptions. No matter how much wealth, fame, or, yes, privilege a superstar has, it’s often not enough to sufficiently stiffen their spine. The woke mob counts the media, academia, Hollywood, and Corporate U.S.A. as its foot soldiers (not counting the actual foot soldiers known as Antifa). Any one of those institutions alone would be formidable. Added together? They’re nearly unstoppable. I say “nearly” because the American DNA still matters, still rejects the speech-snuffing measures those institutions embrace. That spirit offers the last best hope that the woke war can be won, both in Hollywood and the culture at large.
Toto, Christian. Virtue Bombs: How Hollywood Got Woke and Lost Its Soul (p. 227). Bombardier Books. Kindle Edition.
What is to be done? Well, support the good guys. Buy their products. Talk them up. Spread their message. Support them out loud while you can.
Sort of like a Top 500 Amazon reviewer giving a helpful, laudatory review.
Fight the war where you can.
May 30, 2022
I read the book and it is outstanding and the opening by Andrew Klavan is fantastic too.
This book is in need of some better editing and a few cycles through the spellcheck and grammar check.
I highly recommend this book.
This book is in need of some better editing and a few cycles through the spellcheck and grammar check.
I highly recommend this book.
August 2, 2022
A deep dive into cancel culture and the fine line today’s comedians and scriptwriters now need to walk when creating material. Social media has created mob-rule: power enough to not only complain about an insensitive, satiric, or unkind joke, but to take away a comedian’s entire livelihood. Is this a good or bad thing? Remains to be seen.
While kindness and sensitivity is always a good choice and prejudice always wrong, the satire and blunt social commentary that comes from comedy and parody has its place and its value, and helps us challenge others’ viewpoints. Society will need to ultimately reckon with the long term affects that this form of censorship can cause.
While kindness and sensitivity is always a good choice and prejudice always wrong, the satire and blunt social commentary that comes from comedy and parody has its place and its value, and helps us challenge others’ viewpoints. Society will need to ultimately reckon with the long term affects that this form of censorship can cause.
March 26, 2022
As a lifelong fan of movies, having spent countless hours in the cinema or watching discs at home, it's been utterly heart breaking to see the rapid decline of Hollywood as it forgoes storytelling to instead focus on whatever "woke" message a small mob of addle brained SJW blue ticks are fixated on at the moment. The majority of these projects have ended in abject failure - dismal box office returns and mainstream audience rejection - but the morons in Hollywood continue to churn them out while the adult pretenders take to their virtual soapboxes to lecture all of us. It's turned me away from an artform that I once loved and now I actively cheer for Hollywood's demise.
So it was great to read author and journalist Christian Toto's book Virtue Bombs: How Hollywood Got Woke and Lost Its Soul. It's a great read and chronicles perfectly Hollywood's journey into this absurd period of time. At times it's an extremely depressing read and you can tell that Christian, like many of us, is a huge film fan that's watching the artform he loves be destroyed by small-minded activists masquerading as creatives. But it also offers hope that there's people out there who are looking to not just challenge this idiotic cultural shift but get rid of it all together.
So it was great to read author and journalist Christian Toto's book Virtue Bombs: How Hollywood Got Woke and Lost Its Soul. It's a great read and chronicles perfectly Hollywood's journey into this absurd period of time. At times it's an extremely depressing read and you can tell that Christian, like many of us, is a huge film fan that's watching the artform he loves be destroyed by small-minded activists masquerading as creatives. But it also offers hope that there's people out there who are looking to not just challenge this idiotic cultural shift but get rid of it all together.
November 7, 2022
It was so much fun to read this book because Toto did not mince words and called out all kinds of practices in Hollywood that are appalling and inappropriate. His synopsis is essentially that Hollywood is slitting its own throat and he can't wait to see it collapse. I'm not sure Hollywood is going anywhere, but it was refreshing to see the self-censorship and identity politics blatantly exposed for what they are.
October 13, 2022
While I love most of the people covered and interviewed in this book, I can't give it more than three stars. Based on the title, I was expecting something more in-depth and historical about where it all started. This is a good summary of some recent key events for the layman but there's little new here for anyone already familiar with the culture wars.
February 1, 2022
Toto is one of the best voices out there in pop culture. This book feels like it should be essential reading for anyone who thinks modern wokeness and art can peacefully coexist.
February 19, 2022
Fantastic book. I think more and more people are beginning to push back against the fake virtue signaling of the ‘entertainment’ industry.
December 31, 2022
Hollywood has long been a joke. So it's fun (yet maddening) to read Toto's inside take on thier "wokeness"
May 11, 2023
Clear-eyed and descriptive, this is a very entertaining though sadly real account of woke ideology invading the entertainment industry. I was riveted from start to finish.
August 11, 2024
Quick easy read that helps understand the media & entertainment landscape.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews