Breitbart: “Blacklist then and now”
Posted by Dirty Harry on Monday, July 28th, 2008
Orson Bean
Another insightful piece courtesy of Andrew Breitbart in the Washington Times today, this time looking at the New Blacklist:
One eternally optimistic showman who has endured the Red Scare as well as the current Hollywood political disorder (let’s not call it the “b-word” and upset Rosemary Clooney’s nephew) is actor-raconteur - and my father-in-law - Orson Bean, who last week took our entire family to Mexico for his 80th birthday.
Orson was the young, hot comic on “The Ed Sullivan Show” when Mr. Sullivan told him he could no longer perform on the show owing to his 1956 outing in the anti-Commie newsletter, Red Channels. Today, Orson is a conservative Republican and once again on the wrong side of the censors.
Timing is everything.
“Aside from the inconvenience of having a career ruined, being blacklisted in the ’50s was kind of cool,” Orson recalled over watered-down dark rum pina coladas poolside at Club Med.
“You were doing ‘the right thing.’ Hot, left-wing girls admired you. You hadn’t ‘named names.’ The New York Times was on your side. And you knew it would pass. Things always do in America. The glory of this country is that it’s a centrist nation. The pendulum swings just so far to the left, then it swings back to the right. You have to have lived a long life to experience this. It has a calming effect.” …
“When the blacklist hit, I saw actors walk across the street to avoid me. The doorman at 485 Madison Avenue (former CBS headquarters) turned his back as I walked by. But I never felt hated by the ring-wing blacklisters. They just felt we were terribly wrong,” he said.
“These days, the left doesn’t just disagree with right-wingers - they hate them.
I don’t know of a liberal turned conservative — like myself — who doesn’t have a somewhat similar story to tell. When I was a liberal, conservatives were always very patient and tolerant of my roaring ignorance. But that’s just not true the other way around. Not every liberal gets ugly, many don’t, but too many do. Announcing yourself a liberal at a fairly conservative get-together will most likely result in a fascinating conversation. Announcing yourself a conservative at a liberal get-together (especially in Hollywood) … you might as well do the Nazi salute.
It’s simply illogical and ignorant to believe that this mindset won’t translate into employment problems for an open conservative working in an industry built almost entirely on relationships.
Filed in General |
Danielon 28 Jul 2008 at 3:50 pm 1I completely concur with the main point. I do want to quibble with this, however,
“The glory of this country is that it’s a centrist nation. The pendulum swings just so far to the left, then it swings back to the right.” Oh, really?
America is on a continuous drift left-ward and I don’t see anything on the horizon that can change that. I see some folks working to slow it, but who is there on the horizon that will wake folks up and pull that pendulum, not just toward the center, but can actually put it right of center? The great Reagan didn’t do it. Neither did Gingrich. Tom ‘The Hammer’ Delay couldn’t do it. Rush Limbaugh? don’t think so. Joel Surnow? Nope. Country music? ‘Fraid not.
To get the pendulum back to the right one has to fight, politicians - both Democrats and, more often than not, Republicans, News media - print, television and radio (and I mean news not punditry - listen to the news breaks during talk radio shows and you will hear MSM’s left-liberal perspective on events not a “fair and balanced” one), Education - from Kindergarten through Graduate School, and the Entertainment Industrial Complex. Almost every bit of information going into the public’s brain promotes either full blown Liberal Fascism or a mildly center-left agenda.
Thank God for sites like Dirty Harry’s Place. Maybe something very, very small is happening. Some days, however, it strikes me that the folks who don’t swallow the left-liberal lies spoon fed to the public on a daily basis, are simply holding, for a few brief moments, that pendulum that is on a continuous leeward tilt.
Patrickon 28 Jul 2008 at 3:56 pm 2Mr. Harry - take a look at this 4 year old article at Slate if you haven’t seen it before, and for anyone else who thinks Harry is exaggerating. (a reporter’s experiment with wearing a Bush t shirt, and a Kerry t shirt, guess which provokes more hostile reaction)
And is there anywhere to see that interview you (or the interviewer) were soliciting questions for a few days ago?
http://www.slate.com/id/2108561/
Ed Driscoll.comon 28 Jul 2008 at 4:45 pm 3“The Left Looks For Heretics; The Right Looks For Converts”…
Andrew Breitbart’s latest Washington Times column on the new Hollywood Blacklist features several quotes from his father-in-law, the great Orson Bean: “When the blacklist hit, I saw actors walk across the street to avoid me. The doorman at 485 Madiso…
Stephanieon 28 Jul 2008 at 4:52 pm 4Daniel your just the kind of person whose writing is filled with such pessimism makes me want to blow my brains out…….
I actually am seeing chinks in the armor of the left now. Obama didn’t get the padding for his “Lead” he thought he would from the obnoxious trip he took. In fact I am thinking the blow back from his “victory lap” will be felt hard by his campaign. And from what I have been seeing in media the German’s left the little Nuremburg Rally there in Berlin with mixed feelings. This is all good. Gas keeps going up and the market keeps fluctuating and he keeps saying no drilling off shore well…….people like their life styles and they like their money. They like to keep it….you know?
Cambiason 28 Jul 2008 at 5:59 pm 5At some point, you just have to trust the American people. They’re a pretty shrewd bunch — for one thing, they don’t bother much with politics until about mid-October in election years, however much the media-political machine tries to keep it going all the time. From time to time, they do screw up, no question about it. But they’re not idiots, and they’re not sheep.
Danielon 28 Jul 2008 at 7:18 pm 6I like to think of myself as realistic rather than pessimistic … but some say tomato some say tomahto.
When I was in San Diego this past weekend, surrounded by guys drooling over a few scantily clad women in superhero costumes, I saw this headline:
“State bans trans fats at eateries: Governor signs law targeting artery clogger”
I know there’s no love for the P-whipped-anator, but this is a guy who ran in the party that is supposed to oppose the Nanny State and its intrusions into our personal lives.
And what about Mr. McCain’s domestic policy plans? I know he’ll get my vote, but I also know I’m voting for a slightly slower slide into Euromerica, than would be ushered by the Messia-bama and his Congressional worshipers.
For me this is all fuel for the liberal fascist New America story running around my head that includes … oh, maybe I should just keep that to myself.
Danielon 28 Jul 2008 at 7:34 pm 7The great thing about conservatives is that even in the face of such overwhelming odds, such as those we face in trying to wake the sheople up to the liberal fascist threat, we are generally a lot more positive than our left-liberal opponents.
You gotta have a sense of humor when listening to left-liberal lunacy, otherwise you might just lose your mind and blow your brains out.
Kensingtonon 28 Jul 2008 at 11:01 pm 8I’m a little confused by this. I’ve heard Orson Bean in recent years and he’s always sounded like a garden variety Moonbat to me, sneering at conservatives and Republicans in hateful terms.
This is not the Orson Bean I thought I knew.
Andrew Breitbarton 29 Jul 2008 at 1:00 am 9I have known Orson for almost 20 years. He has never uttered anything moonbatty in that time. When I first went into his house in Venice, CA (Moonbat Central), he proudly displayed his Rush books. He is a pragmatic conservative Republican who constantly reminds me “perfect is the enemy of better.” So he is for McCain.
Gottafangon 29 Jul 2008 at 5:17 am 10I loved Orson in that movie about the newspaper guy. I didn’t realize he had lost that much weight over the years. . .
Oh, sorry, wrong Orson. . .
Seriously, though, I remember him as one of the regular panelists on To Tell the Truth. He always drew a little doodle on his card with the number of the person he thought was telling the truth. So if the person was a professional bug wrangler, he’d draw little antennae and legs on the number.
And, yeah, he was great in Being John Malkovich.
Dirty Harryon 29 Jul 2008 at 6:35 am 11HARRY HERE — Kensington: I think you have Orson Bean mixed up with someone else.
I met him at a thing a few months ago and you need only talk to the man a few minutes to know that if the “conservative gene” didn’t render moonbattery impossible the “gentleman gene” would.
Mighty Skipon 29 Jul 2008 at 6:54 am 12“perfect is the enemy of better.” I’ll have to tuck that one away for my confrontations with Obama supporters.
Just to add more anecdotal evidence, the main reason I’m conservative, and have moved further right, is that in my University days I found conservatives much more tolerate of my more liberal views than liberals of my conservative ones. Conservatives would often challenge me while liberals just called me ignorant and refused to debate.
Tommy Von 29 Jul 2008 at 7:10 am 13“The greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect one.”
Clausewitz, On War
Kensingtonon 29 Jul 2008 at 8:23 am 14Wow, I’m really flabbergasted by this, but obviously I’ve been entirely wrong about the guy.
Glad to hear it, though; this is one of those time when I’m delighted to be wrong.
PattyAnnon 29 Jul 2008 at 8:34 am 15A friend sent me this link to a video of the old Match Game game show. To my surprise, Orson Bean is one of the celebrities. The first challenge was to use one word to describe Nikita Khrushchev.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iy2a6-g9sZo
Mike18xxon 30 Jul 2008 at 6:12 am 16> At some point, you just have to trust the American
> people. They’re a pretty shrewd bunch
“CHERISHING THE ZOMBIE FALLACY“.
Mike18xxon 30 Jul 2008 at 6:12 am 17(Er, click that darn thing.)
Dirty Harry’s Place… » New Blacklist: A Backpedal? Not really…on 31 Jul 2008 at 12:51 pm 18[…] Breitbart.com payroll. But one day after Andrew Breitbart’s Washington Times piece about the new Hollywood blacklist appears; hard left, Hollywood insider Wells writes this in response to Jon Voight’s […]