21st Century Schizoid Town

I had planned to post a link to this item by Mark Hemingway in the Corner…

Here’s a handy map Prop 8 opponents have put together showing you where donors to prop 8 live. You have to love the “Jump to San Francisco, Salt Lake City , or Orange County” feature. If someone put together a map showing where all the gay people in the neighborhood live that would properly be called an implicit threat, but this is altogether different, right?

….But this article titled “The Revival Of The Blacklist” at The American Vision puts a number of related pieces together, along with a note of another fear of cold war tactics in a hot election battle far from Los Angeles:

The Franken-Coleman election in Minnesota is testimony to the fact that conservatives fear liberal blacklisting. A lot of liberal money came in to support of Franken by noted liberals like Tom Hanks, Robin Williams, George Clooney, Michael J. Fox, Ted Danson, David Letterman, Mike Myers, Dan Aykroyd, and Steve Martin. Because the FCC data base is open to the media, those who donate are available to the Hollywood left. A conservative who donated to Coleman would be “outed” in periodicals like Variety and Politico and might find it difficult getting steady work in the entertainment industry (see interview here).

A similar tactic is being used to punish those who supported Proposition 8. A Los Angeles Times article reports that many “in liberal Hollywood who fought to defeat the initiative banning same-sex marriage and are now reeling with recrimination and dismay. Meanwhile, activists continue to comb donor lists and employ the Internet to expose those who donated money to support the ban. Already out is Scott Eckern, director of the nonprofit California Musical Theatre in Sacramento, who resigned after a flurry of complaints from prominent theater artists, including ‘Hairspray’ composer Marc Shaiman, when word of his contribution to the Yes on [Prop] 8 campaign surfaced.”

A letter writer to the San Francisco Chronicle who supported Prop 8 was intimidated when Internet search engines were used “to find the letter writer’s small business, his Web site (which included the names of his children and dog), his phone number and his clients. And they posted that information in the ‘Comments’ section of SFGate.com–urging, in ugly language, retribution against the author’s business and its identified clients.”

Now, is this to say that conservatives can’t work in Hollywood today? Not at all. Is there a fear factor that keeps conservatives from speaking out? I don’t doubt it. Those who are touted as conservatives usually have no stated public opinion on abortion and homosexuality. Patricia Heaton and Angie Harmon are notable exceptions. Kurt Russell is listed as a conservative, actually, a libertarian, which might explain why he’s living with Goldie Hawn and not married to her, although I must say that he’s stayed with her longer than Brad Pitt did with Jennifer Aniston. Many (most?) are economic conservatives like Kelsey Grammar and Drew Carey. And there are more who are being encouraged to make their conservative beliefs public.

Like so much of liberalism, liberals are hypocritical. They decry the blacklisting of the 1940s and 1950s but don’t seem to mind if the right people are being blacklisted today who defy their pet causes.

Thus rendering the well over 40 year old Annual Blacklist Movie (scroll to about 1:15 into this edition of Silicon Graffiti from July for a montage of clips from numerous examples of this Tinseltown perennial) as even more hypocritical than it already was:

Related thoughts here.