Roger Simon on The Goat, Hollywood & Trump With Cindy Grosz

It’s not often that I get to share my passions in a conversation with someone who shares many of them. So, it was a real treat to meet Roger Simon, Academy Award nominated writer and winner of many awards and honors, plus his being a proud Jew and Republican was the icing on the cake!

Roger L. Simon’s latest project is THE GOAT, his first standalone novel in years. If you love sports, if you love life, if you’d like a second life, this book – funny, touching and sometimes scary, already talked about as the greatest novel about tennis ever written – is a page-turning, can’t-put-down must. It has received great reviews, even from those who oppose him politically:

“The writing, as always in Moses Wine books, is sharp, amusing, and sophisticated.”
New York Times Book Review

“Simon’s new novel about Moses Wine tops his prize-winning The Big Fix and The Straight Man.”
Publisher’s Weekly

“Roger Simon writes with humor and real energy. Nobody around is better at caricature.”
San Jose Mercury News

… he can be genuinely funny and, at times, even sensitive and touching.”
Washington Post Book World

“Simon is a brilliant, classy writer…”
Cosmopolitan

In the novel we learn about what happened to Dan Gelber – the divorced screenwriter who journeyed to Nepal in his seventies only to plunge to his death off of Mt. Everest? And just who is Jay Reynolds – the mysterious twenty-year-old tennis prodigy who appears out of nowhere to battle Rafael Nadal at the French Open and Roger Federer at Wimbledon and become the new hope of American tennis, possibly “the greatest of all time.”

We also spent a great deal of time discussing his other writings, his political writings as co-founder if PJ Media, where he still writes and is CEO Emeritus. He and I agree, President Trump is the greatest president for Israel and the Jewish people.

We also agree more people than you realize support the president and his policies. People are afraid to speak up for Republicans, especially in Hollywood. Simon feels that it’s not the actors fault for fearing to support President Trump publicly, but those who fund the projects that will donate and vote for him. If those financing the projects who support Republicans and Conservatives, and there are many, but they don’t make headlines discussing their personal qviews, would fund projects with more Trump followers, California and New York would be in much better shape.

Impeachment Is No Good

Here is Simon’s take on the headlines today.

Impeach! Impeach, they say! If only he were Buckingham, they would take off his head as well. Trump has become the Democrats’ version of Richard III, if he wasn’t already. (Okay, he was.)

They even moved to open an impeachment “inquiry” (whatever that means – a little bit chicken, if you ask me – they’ve been doing it for the last three years anyway) after Trump announced he was making his phone call with Ukrainian president Zelensky public Wednesday in unredacted form. And now he’s announcing the whistleblower’s complaint, whatever hand it is–second, third, who knows?–, will be released later in the week. Talk about wreckless jumping of the gun on the Democrats’ parts. This reeks of outright panic.

So what’s really going on here? Why have the Democrats, to put it bluntly, gone berserk? Why are they risking a backlash of cosmic proportions (other than appeasing their psychotically-inflamed base, of course)?

One, distraction. Democrats live in absolute fear of the coming revelations about the Russia Probe, from Inspector General Horowitz but even more from the DOJ’s John Durham who can actually put people in jail. The Dems know – if they have a brain (and a few do) – these revelations are likely to point up the line at the leaders of the Democratic Party all the way to President Obama. They were all involved to one degree or another with illegally spying on or undermining Trump and his administration and supporters before and after the election. The extent of this we are only beginning to understand.

To put it mildly, it’s not good. Whether you call this treason is up to you, but you can be sure Middle America (i. e. those elusive independent voters) will not appreciate it.

Simon has written articles for the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New York Post, City Journal and Real Clear Politics, among others, and appeared on talk radio and cable TV as a commentator.

Roger L. Simon is the author of thirteen books, eleven fiction and two non-fiction. These include the eight Moses Wine detective novels that have been nominated for multiple awards and translated in over a dozen languages. The first in the series, THE BIG FIX, was made into a film starring Richard Dreyfuss for which Simon wrote the script. His other screen credits include BUSTIN’ LOOSE with Richard Pryor, SCENES FROM A MALL with Bette Midler and Woody Allen and A BETTER LIFE.

We reminisced about old time Jewish Hollywood. I had to ask him about his close friend, Paul Mazursky, who was a Democrat, and Ron Silver, one of the staunchest Conservatives with political clout in Hollywood. Simon said losing Mazursky was like losing a family member and that one of Hollywood’s greatest tragedies was Silver dying so young. I couldn’t agree more. I admired them both. I highly recommend seeing Enemies, A Love Story, if you haven’t or if you want to enjoy Jewish Hollywood at its best. The movie is based on the novel by Isaac Bashevis Singer, and we both agreed that it could never be produced today based on box office demands and political correctness. So sad.

BOOK: www.amazon.com/Goat-Roger-L-Simon/dp/0578513978/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1567654281&sr=1-1

A longtime resident of Los Angeles, he now lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his wife Sheryl Longin. He is a 4.0 tennis player – but only on that rare good day. He continues to work, and promised to include me in his next project, which I am holding him to …. so stay tuned!

Cindy Grosz is a Jewish activist who promotes projects, products and awareness to everything Israel and of international Jewish concern. She represents celebrity spokespeople who speak up for and about Israel. She is also a contributor and Co-host on The Jersey Joe Show 710AM WOR, Sunday nights at 7 EST, or available anytime, anywhere through iHeart Radio.
Cindyscorners@gmail.com
@cindy_grosz