Show notes
“Now you know why they call me Dirty Harry, every dirty job that comes along.”Just as audiences didn’t know how much they needed Dirty Harry until he showed up on a movie screen in 1971, residents of Los Angeles had no idea how much they needed Spencer Pratt until they saw him face off against two of the leading candidates for Mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass and Nithya Raman.Bass and Raman couldn’t even answer simple questions, like whether illegal immigrants should be able to vote or whether there should be homeless encampments outside elementary schools. And every time the camera cut to Pratt, his reaction was always the same: “ You have got to be kidding me.”He spoke truths no one in the Democratic Party ever could or would because they don’t have to. They are never asked hard questions they don’t already have answers to, and they are never challenged as directly as they were by Spencer Pratt.They’re also protected by the legacy media, by Hollywood, by late-night comedy. As long as they properly virtue signal and obey the rules of Woketopia, no one ever holds them accountable for the problems in a city overrun by crime, drugs, and homelessness. Until now.Pratt wiped up the floor with Bass and Raman, so much so that they have now dropped out of a debate by the League of Women Voters that would have been held on May 13th. Now, it’s been canceled because someone, somewhere, told them they'd do better if they employed the Biden basement strategy: stay out of sight and let the system win the election. The Democrats and Hollywood have the same problem. They can’t tell the truth. Just as in 1971, when Dirty Harry sliced through the pretense like a hot knife through ice cream, so too has Spencer Pratt gotten our attention with his innovative campaign and simple, common-sense messaging, in an entertaining, imaginative way. True, AI might be the beginning of the end, but the way Pratt uses it has expanded the possibilities. With the help of Charles Curran, whose studio is responsible for many of these, we can now see how useful AI can be for creating an effective, viral campaign ad without the heavy lift of an entire production company and millions of dollars in campaign funds. This is AI at a grassroots level, but in its own way, it’s also artful commentary, the kind we never see aimed at the Left.AI, now in Pratt's hands, poses an unpredictable threat to the opposition, who will figure it out soon enough. It is also a threat to Hollywood for the same reasons. It doesn’t have to be politically correct or rely on partisan celebrities to approve of the messaging. AI also cuts through the noise, like Dirty Harry, like Spencer Pratt, because it represents freedom at a time of extremely oppressive micro-managing over all culture, and film especially.Dirty Harry was politically incorrect, but it told the truth at a time when most people were too afraid to talk about the soft-on-crime policies in the wake of the counterculture revolution. Too many rapes and serial killers on the rise, too many hippies, the Zodiac killer, the Manson murders - crime was everywhere, yet the culture of the time wasn’t exactly tuned in. If critics in the 1970s thought Dirty Harry was fascist, as Pauline Kael did, ordinary Americans - Nixon’s Silent Majority - felt seen.And now, residents of Los Angeles, many of them too poor to afford homes in the gated communities of the rich and famous who fund Mayor Karen Bass, might feel seen in the passionate messaging of Spencer Pratt. His voice is urgent in a time of complacency. He sees the problems the Left ignores. He speaks the truth when everyone else parrots the comforting lies. Los Angeles has been neglected for far too long, with the wildfires that burned down Pratt’s home becoming the tipping point. It was time for someone to rise up and say enough is enough. They don’t know how to deal with a shooting star like Pratt. When the Democrats try to dismiss him as a fame-hungry reality star, he hits them with something moving and undeniable. It’s true that Pratt was the enfant terrible of a mid-aughts reality show called The Hills. Not exactly the kind of leader people who shop at Erewon after doing hot yoga on La Brea have in mind for a leader. But his sincerity shines through. This is personal, and we can feel it. He says Bass has the unions and the money, but he has the moms. He has Democrats and Conservatives backing him. They call him MAGA, but he really isn’t. He is the first politician who is genuinely attempting to run a non-partisan campaign and actually reach across the aisle, which is exactly the hero America needs right now, not just in LA, but everywhere. It’s hard not to be won over by Spencer Pratt because he is so sincere. All of that manic bluster from the old days of The Hills has clearly been transformed by the trauma of his house burning down in a fire that the city should have been more prepared for, to put it mildly. He is campaigning like he means it, projecting the kind of urgency many Los Angeles residents feel every day as they watch their government do nothing to change things. Why has no one ever even bothered asking these questions? Because they are too afraid. The problems in LA have been ignored for far too long. The street takeovers that terrorize the working-class parts of the city.Random attacks of violence:Crime and drugs in parks that should be safe for families. And of course, the 70,000+ homeless population, only a small percentage of which choose to be sheltered. Whether you pay money or give food or try to help the people on the street, it almost always comes back to the same hard truth: they are mostly wild things of the street who do not want to follow the rules of shelters, either because they don’t allow pets or they don’t allow drugs and alcohol, or they can’t be inside anywhere without burning the place down. And there are so many rich people in LA willing to give them money. Why would they give it up? And this you are not even allowed to think or say, lest you be condemned as heartless.There are decent people in LA, people I know, who have spent their lives devoted to trying to help. They want the story to be that many of them can’t afford to live in a country run by billionaires. But the truth is harder to face. The truth is that many of them should not be on the streets because they’re a harm to themselves or to others. The truth is that many of them are extremely mentally ill or lifelong drug addicts.It’s so bad now that reports have emerged that addicts are testing dogs to see if the drugs are safe. The dogs are chained. The dogs are fighting. The dogs are starving. For every dog that’s well taken care of, there are far more that are being horrifically abused, and Spencer Pratt cares enough to talk about it. A Tale of Two CitiesLos Angeles is two cities. In one, the wealthy make movies and drive through their protected, gated parking lots, then retreat to their homes in gated communities in the hills. Sunset Boulevard is a showcase for that mask of extreme wealth, like Malibu, Beverly Hills, and the Platinum Triangle.Spencer Pratt’s home was in the wealthy enclave of the Pacific Palisades, which burned to rubble during the wildfires. By all rights, he should be protecting the wealthy, who were his neighbors. He’s a guy who went to Crossroads, after all, the school where celebrities send their kids. That isn’t what he’s doing. He’s speaking now for the everyday resident of the city, whether rich or poor. He wants to clean up the streets. He wants to fix what’s broken. He wants the streets, parks, and schools to be safe for kids and families, and he wants to save the dogs. Do we hear any of the Democrats talking about this?In 2009, a 17-year-old named Lily Burk drove to downtown LA to run an errand for her mother and to practice her driving. She attended one of those expensive private schools in North Hollywood and had a promising future. She was abducted by a registered sex offender with a rap sheet who’d left a treatment facility that day. He demanded that she get him money from the ATM, but she only had a credit card. He smashed her face against the dashboard and slit her throat. Half an hour later, he was drinking beer and smoking crack on Skid Row before the police even found Burk’s body.I remember that story. I remember how awkward it was to talk about because the perp was black and Burk was white. But for me, it was a wakeup call, and I instilled in my daughter the message: do not be a guilty liberal. Protect yourself. Be afraid, no matter what. But it was a secret that passed between us, one we could never say out loud. That is what it is like to live as a progressive in LA. The problem of crime and homelessness in LA is like the problem of illegal immigration. No one talks about those who are murdered, but that is the baseline of what American citizens deserve. These are crimes that could have been prevented if only we could tell the truth and our politicians had listened. Dirty Harry was a hit. Audiences were hungry for his brand of justice, where the bad guys get what’s coming to them because Harry Callahan cuts through the bureaucracy and enacts his own brand of justice. America, then as now, was shifting away from the wild days of the hippie revolution and toward a more secure, safer America by 1980, with Ronald Reagan. Dirty Harry was only the beginning. Spencer Pratt might not win. LA is as blue as it gets. I don’t live there anymore. I wish I did, just so I could vote for him. But in a way, it doesn’t really change what his presence in politics has meant to so many of us - especially those of us in California who know the game and have gotten so sick of playing it. We need more heroes who can speak the truth. Spencer Pratt has arrived just in time. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe