Wash Times: ‘Blacklist then and now’

by Andrew Breitbart

This week’s Washinton Times column:

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.”

Unfortunately, this time around the New York Times and the left-wing girls play an integral role in keeping the pendulum right where it is – and that is far to the left. But hope springs eternal.

“For anybody who would blacklist you,” party spokesman Clooney said, elaborating on Hollywood’s clean bill of health, “there are 50 people that would hire you now.”

The rest is here.


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Posted Jul 28th 2008 at 12:38 pm in Uncategorized | 360 Comments