我们对埃里森父子收购华纳兄弟的来龙去脉了解得越多，这件事就越令人沮丧。正如《华尔街日报》的报道所述，在州长加文·纽森的带领下，加州众多民主党要员纷纷出力，为这对父子铺平道路——拉里与大卫·埃里森正是特朗普总统麾下亿万富翁阵营的核心成员，最终得以掌控美国文化与新闻产业的大部分领域。
The more we find out about the Ellisons’ purchase of Warner Bros., the more dispiriting the tale becomes. As a report in The Wall Street Journal makes clear, a sizable chunk of California’s Democratic establishment, led by Gov. Gavin Newsom, greased the skids that enabled the father-son duo of Larry and David Ellison—charter members of President Trump’s billionaire brigade—to gain control of a commanding share of America’s culture and news industries.
据《华尔街日报》报道，此前大卫·埃里森曾对CBS的王牌新闻团队进行改组，使其更符合特朗普的偏好；今年初还专门制作节目向特朗普及其白宫幕僚致敬。正因如此，要获得特朗普政府司法部对此次收购的反垄断许可便轻而易举。真正的阻碍其实在加州：该州的民主党籍司法部长罗布·邦塔提起了理由充分的反垄断诉讼，反对埃里森通过派拉蒙收购华纳兄弟的计划，还拉拢了其他11位同为民主党人的州司法部长共同加入诉讼行列。
As the Journal recounts, clearing the antitrust bar at Trump’s Justice Department was no heavy lift after David had reshaped CBS’s legendary news team more to Trump’s liking and put on a salute to Trump and his White House staff earlier this year. The chief obstacle was in California, where the state’s Democratic attorney general, Rob Bonta, filed a very plausible antitrust case against Ellison’s proposed purchase of Warner Bros. by Paramount, and enlisted 11 other state attorneys general (all Democrats) to join the suit.
与其接受法官安排于明年三月举行的审判，并在交易未能在9月30日前完成的情况下每天支付数百万美元的罚款，埃利森制定了一项策略，试图在政治上孤立邦塔。他威胁要将工作室迁往纳什维尔，这一说法的真实性存疑，但却让好莱坞的工会们切实感到担忧（唯有编剧工会例外，其成员通常都在家中写作）。埃利森多次与纽森会面，并且根据《期刊》的文件记载，他还邀请了一系列前民主党知名人物——前州议会众议院议长法比安·努涅斯、前洛杉矶市长安东尼奥·维拉雷戈萨，以及前资深参议员芭芭拉·布克——在幕后努力推动合并事宜获得支持。
Rather than go to trial, which a judge had scheduled for next March, and pay millions of dollars every day in financial penalties if the deal didn’t close by September 30, Ellison devised a strategy to isolate Bonta politically. His threat to relocate the studios to Nashville was of dubious veracity, but gave Hollywood’s unions palpable pause (save only the Writers Guild, whose members generally write at home). Ellison met several times with Newsom, and, the Journal documents, also enlisted a roster of former Democratic notables—onetime Assembly Speaker Fabien Nunez, onetime Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and onetime and longtime Sen. Barbara Boxer—to work behind the scenes to build support for the merger.
公开场合，纽森和现任洛杉矶市长卡伦·巴斯都呼吁邦塔达成和解。（由于下个月将面临连任的严峻挑战，巴斯显然担心自己会被视为对好莱坞迁往田纳西州一事漠不关心。）令我感到遗憾的是，巴斯和努涅斯二人的政治生涯都是由已故的米格尔·孔特雷拉斯开启的，他领导洛杉矶AFL-CIO的经历将州政治引向了明显更进步的路线；而维拉雷戈萨也曾在关键时期受益于孔特雷拉斯的支持。
Publicly, both Newsom and current L.A. Mayor Karen Bass called on Bonta to reach a settlement. (Facing a serious challenge to her re-election next month, Bass understandably feared appearing to be indifferent to the relocation of Hollywood to Tennessee.) I note with dismay that both Bass and Nunez were launched on their electoral careers by the late Miguel Contreras, whose leadership of the Los Angeles AFL-CIO transformed state politics in a distinctly more progressive direction, and that Villaraigosa also benefited crucially from Contreras’s backing.
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当然，好莱坞右翼制片公司巨头早已不是什么新鲜事。在赫伯特·胡佛总统任期内，路易斯·B·迈耶实际上还是共和党全国委员会的财务主席，而他的制片公司正是1934年那些虚假新闻片的编剧和拍摄方。这些新闻片里，演员们扮演布尔什维克的流浪汉和暴徒，扬言如果民主党候选人、社会主义作家厄普顿·辛克莱赢得当年的州长选举，他们就会蜂拥占领整个州。
Right-wing studio moguls are nothing new in Hollywood, of course. During Herbert Hoover’s presidency, Louis B. Mayer was actually the finance chairman of the Republican National Committee, and it was his studio that scripted and filmed the phony newsreels in 1934 that featured actors playing Bolshevik tramps and thugs who vowed to swarm the state if Democratic nominee and socialist writer Upton Sinclair won that year’s gubernatorial election. (Hoover, of course, was a model small-d democrat compared to Trump.)
（当然，与特朗普相比，胡佛还算是个标准意义上的小写“d”民主派。）如今埃利森面临的问题，是如何真正经营这家公司。他给高管们发放了巨额奖金（自己就拿了1.5亿美元），同时解雇了那对搭档——正是他们在2025年让华纳兄弟迎来了好莱坞历史上财务和口碑都极为成功的一年。合并后的公司如今被称为“天空舞”，其债务接近800亿美元，这种状况根本不可能支撑每年制作30部电影。
The problem for Ellison now is running the actual business. He’s given executives enormous bonuses (taking $150 million for himself) while firing the duo that gave Warner Bros. one of the most successful financial and critical years in Hollywood history in 2025. Skydance, as the combined company is now known, has nearly $80 billion in debt, a situation incompatible with making 30 movies a year.
公司股票已暴跌，债券也被列为垃圾级。其主要现金来源来自迅速衰退的广播和有线电视业务，而它希望合并的流媒体服务——HBO Max和Paramount+——却拥有数百万的重复付费用户，导致即使不提价也出现了净亏损，还惹怒了顾客。前景一片黯淡，而这对于如今依赖天空舞繁荣发展的好莱坞来说，可不是什么好兆头。
Its stock has plummeted and its bonds are in junk status. Its main source of cash comes from the rapidly declining broadcast and cable TV business, and the streaming services it wants to combine—HBO Max and Paramount+—have millions of dualrs, leading to a net loss even without raising prices and angering customers. The future looks bleak, which is bad for a Hollywood now dependent on Skydance thriving.
与此同时，在孤立本塔的过程中，以及他在11月加州选票上针对亿万富翁财富税提案的“温和派”反对运动中事实上发挥的领导作用，纽森实际上已经放弃了在2028年总统初选中争取进步派支持的任何可能性。如果仅与那些可能同样参选2028年总统选举的州长们相比——比如伊利诺伊州的JB·普里茨克、肯塔基州的安迪·贝希尔、马里兰州的韦斯·摩尔、宾夕法尼亚州的乔什·沙皮罗，以及天知道还有谁——纽森将不得不解释一大堆问题。
Meanwhile, in his work to isolate Bonta, as well as his de facto leadership of the “moderate” opposition to the billionaire wealth tax measure on November’s California ballot, Newsom has effectively forfeited any claim to progressive support in 2028’s presidential primaries. Compared just to his fellow governors who may also run in ’28—Illinois’s JB Pritzker, Kentucky’s Andy Beshear, Maryland’s Wes Moore, Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, and Lord knows who else—Newsom will have a lot of ’splainin’ to do.