Interesting how they viscerally attack McCarthyism and “blacklisting” while defending the blacklisting that goes on today. Heston once remarked there are more conservatives in the closet in Hollywood than gays.

By the way UI’s, be careful when you invoke Nazis. Your friend, Joe Stalin, was allied with Hitler the leader of the National SOCIALIST Party. It was Mussolini that was the fascist.

1.The Venona Secrets, Exposing Soviet Espionage and America’s Traitors by Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel.

2.Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America’s Enemies by M. Stanton Evans

3.Comrade J: The Untold Secrets of Russia’s Master Spy in America After the End of the Cold War by Pete Earley

Very minor quibble: Pocket Full of Miracles (1961). I didn’t know about good old Hemo, though.

Mr. Prelutsky, you have remarkable patience.

Rants and posts on current practices in Hollywood are some tasty red meat, but I really enjoy reading the town’s history for context. The industry was transformed into what it is today. It happened at the same time similar changes were happening in other media, in our religious institutions and in our schools. I hope somewhere in this story, maybe in dozens of somewheres, we will see just how this Gramscian infection took over. Once we know how we became sick the cure will seem much closer.

Regards, Burt

It never ceases to amaze me how your truly logical words can bring out such vitriol from the left.
There are only so many writers who have this rare gift to truly cheese off the left, You, Ann Coulter, Jonah Goldberg, and a handful of others.
So far BH has snagged 2 of the 3 mentioned.

I may start reading your stuff here instead of townhall since we seem to have fewer trolls and astroturfers here so far. )

Not “Jack Prelutsky”. But, Stephen Rittenberg, MD

“Tinseltown pinheads” become/remain pinheads into adulthood because, in my view, they have been comforted by the intellectual cowardice popularized by the self-satisfied childhood indoctrinations of their wordsmith mentors.

Sadly, as Jack Prelutsky notes: “Rational discussion doesn’t always work because [their] fear is great, terror has worked on many, and amongst the wordsmith elite, cowardice is the usual response.”

http://tinyurl.com/22jjsl

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ROBEROO’s right about “Red Star Over Hollywood”. When read in conjunction with Victor Navasky’s “Naming Names”, and Marc Eliot’s “Reagan: The Hollywood Years” one will acquire a comprehensive overview of an all too often mischaracterized/vilified era.

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Best of luck on the class action suit!

A.S.

Regards, Burt Prelutsky

Next, I wish to respond to Harley. I have no idea where you got the notion that conservatives are opposed to litigation or class action lawsuits. When they’re frivolous, we’re against them. When they set out to punish wrongdoing, why would we object? What’s the alternative? Machine guns?

You suggest that I and other older writers who were frozen out because of ageism should just write, write, write. You seem to assume we didn’t. But if you are as savvy as you claim to be, you would know that without agents to submit one’s scripts, they have no chance of reaching the right people. And if you were paying even the slightest attention, you would have noticed that agencies, along with studios and networks, are the defendants in the case.

To suggest that because writers are in their 50s or 60s or older, they can no longer write, suggests that you have confused scriptwriting with playing shortstop for the New York Yankees or are simply an arrogant lout.

Furthermore, I suspect that if the group that had been discriminated against consisted of blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, Native Americans or homosexuals, instead of merely being gray-haired or no-haired, you would be entirely sympathetic to our plight.

Sincerely, Burt Prelutsky