Contemporary progressivism is an upper-middle-class movement

The Subsidy Show

by Dennis Saffran

Colbert, Fallon and the crony capitalism of the creative class

Modern “progressives” are not, as some economic conservatives would say, socialists. In fact, today’s so-called progressives are not even particularly progressive, at least in the usual sense of seeking to redistribute wealth from rich to poor. As Fred Siegel has noted, contemporary progressivism is an upper-middle-class movement that caters to the social libertarianism of coastal elites, while paying lip service to left-wing economic concerns. Even when modern progressives do support economic development, they often do so in ways that stand traditional progressivism on its head—redistributing wealth upward to favored industries.

It would be hard to find a better example of this than Governor Andrew Cuomo’s announcement last month that New York State will lavish $16 million in giveaways on CBS to keep The Late Show in Manhattan when urbane hipster Stephen Colbert succeeds David Letterman as host next year. The CBS handout follows an even sweeter deal for NBC, which received over $20 million in tax credits and other funding to bring The Tonight Show back to New York from Los Angeles when Jimmy Fallon took over from Jay Leno as host earlier this year. The Tonight Showdidn’t actually qualify for the state’s $420 million-a-year film and television production tax-credit program, which excludes talk shows. But Cuomo asked the state legislature to carve out an exception for “a talk or variety program that filmed at least five seasons outside the state prior to its first relocated season in New York” and is “filmed before a studio audience of two hundred or more.” E.J. McMahon of the Empire Center for Public Policy branded the provision “Jimmy’s Law.”

The Colbert subsidy faced an even bigger stumbling block. Even as revised for The Tonight Show, the state’s film and television tax credits still only applied to new productions, or productions newly relocated to New York. But David Letterman’s Late Show is already filmed in Gotham. Instead of going back to the legislature for a “Stephen’s Law,” Cuomo decided to funnel $11 million in tax credits to CBS through another of the state’s corporate welfare spigots, the Excelsior Jobs Program. As a bonus, The Late Show will get a grant of $5 million to renovate the Ed Sullivan Theater.

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