Score One for the Thought Police

Once upon a time, back in the 1950s, a number of prominent members of the entertainment industry believed that Communism was the ticket to an idyllic future. One U.S. Senator by the name of Joe McCarthy went out of his way to make life miserable for these entertainment folks, among others. His thuggish tactics resulted in his censure, which was spearheaded by a scrappy conservative senator from my home state of Utah by the name of Wallace F. Bennett.

McCarthy, however, was fairly late to the party. Prospective Communists were being interrogated by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) long before Tailgunner Joe arrived on the scene. HUAC hauled Hollywood's finest before congressional committees and demanded that they reveal their private associations and name names of other subversives. It got so bad that Communists, or even those suspected of being Communists, were barred from working in Hollywood by wary producers who feared looking unpatriotic. 

Put simply, they were blacklisted. They were denied the opportunity to work in their chosen profession because of their private, personal beliefs. 

At the time, most Americans found Communism to be abhorrent, and it's not hard to see why. Communism, as an ideal, is still appealing to a number of good people. In practice, however, it was and is the instrument of mass murder far greater than anything Adolf Hitler was able to accomplish. Rough estimates place the total number of people murdered by the former Soviet Union at anywhere from 28 million to 126 million. Those who believed, and still believe, in Communism often have the best of intentions, but it's difficult to argue with such grisly results.

Yet Hollywood, as it recalls excesses of the McCarthy era, pays scant attention to Communism's real-world death toll when dramatizing the "long, dark night of McCarthyism." Movies by the score have been produced that lament the horrors of the Blacklist, and most of these movies lose a lot of money, because not many people care about this issue as passionately as the entertainment industry does. This past summer, they even inserted a pointless subplot to the latest Indiana Jones movie that had Harrison Ford suffering at the hands of fearmongering McCarthyite hysterics. That was just to remind the blockbuster movie crowd that ignored George Clooney's ponderous stinker Good Night and Good Luck of Hollywood's First Commandment:

MCCARTHYISM IS BAD. 

If Hollywood stands for anything, it's that freedom of thought is inviolate, and the Blacklist is the most horrific, shameful episode in America's 20th Century history. 

Fade out, fade in. 

Scott Eckern, the Artistic Director of California Musical Theatre, where he has worked since 1984, "resigned" yesterday. Big-time theatre heavyweights like Marc Shaiman, who co-wrote the musical Hairspray to advance the cause of tolerance and love, called for Eckern's professional head on a stick and swore that California Musical Theatre would "never again host one of his shows as long as Mr. Eckern was in charge." Jeff Whitty, who wrote the lyrics to the politically correct puppet show "Avenue Q," castigated Eckern severly on his website, and, while he fell short of calling for Eckern's dismissal, admitted that he yearned to see Eckern punished. Prominent writers and performers joined in the chorus, which led to Eckern stepping down from his post, his career over, his future uncertain. 

What was Eckern's crime? He donated $1,000 to the "Yes on Proposition 8" campaign. 

The hypocrisy here is breathtaking. Simply breathtaking. Those who know Mr. Eckern refer to him as a "gentle soul." There is no evidence of anything in Eckern's professional conduct that has demonstrated hostility toward people of any stripe. But his ideological opponents are ascribing his support for traditional marriage to the basest of motives, and they are insisting that he be held accountable for the worst behavioral excesses of anyone opposed to redefining marriage. That's akin to saying blacklisted screenwriter Douglas Trumbo was responsible for the Gulag. 

Hey, theatre guys  - this is McCarthyism. Eckern's being punished not for his professional actions, but his private beliefs. And you, the tolerant, loving, kindhearted ones - you're the ones who are pushing it. You're the ones who refuse to see any goodness in someone's motives, because you don't like the real-world results. You're the Tailgunner Joes of the 21st Century, and McCarthyism the Sequel is every bit as ugly as it was the first time around. 

Only odds are that George Clooney isn't ever going to make a movie out of this.