More on Hollywood and "Red Stars"

Cathy Siepp writes about communists in Hollywood and Ronald and Allis Radosh's new book, Red Star over Hollywood: The Film Colony's Long Romance With the Left.

An aside: Warren Beatty may be the typical limousine liberal, but I give him credit for one thing -- he stood up and applauded when little old Elia Kazan (who directed some of the greatest films ever made in Hollywood) walked out on stage to receive his Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. Amy Madigan, Ed Harris, and Nick Nolte -- who among the lot of them have about half as much talent as Elia Kazan on a really bad day -- sat on their hands and pouted at the camera. To paraphrase a comment I made in the early days of this blog, I am utterly sick of this "let's play dissident" mentality. Have these decrepit adolescents ever stopped to consider even the simplest hypothetical: what would have become of their art (and I use the term very loosely) if they had lived in Stalinist Russia? Of course, the answer is NOT that they would have become REAL dissidents, risking their lives for the sake of truth and their art -- no, that kind of courageous dissent is practiced only by artists who actually have something profound to say. The Madigans, Noltes, and Harris's of the world think in fashionable slogans, and were they living under Stalin's regime, or modern-day Cuba for that matter, they would be creating fawning, sycophantic dramatic portraits of Uncle Joe or el Jeffe to a chorus of "Dude, that is, like, so brilliant!" from their friends.

Another aside: The inimitable James Lileks on communism and anti-communism:

I’ve noted this odd phenomenon for years; you can be indifferent to Communism, you can be an actual Communist, and no one will really care, but opposition to Communism will really make some people suspicious.

It’s not that they support Communism - oh, heavens, no - but they’re suspicious of anyone who seemed particularly interested in confronting the Red Menace. Communism is like, well, chiropractic medicine. They might not believe in it, but they have a friend who did, and all in all what’s the harm, and besides, the doctors want to suppress it, and the doctors are a special-interest group interested in their own turf, so what are they trying to hide? I mean I knew this doctor who complained all the time about malpractice insurance costs, and you should have seen his house. Like he was hurting.That’s how the argument goes.

The argument is never about Communism, it’s about the reasons one might have for opposing it. The Fang’d and Hateful Shade of Reagan hangs over the conversation - in fact, now that I think of it, this is the adjunct to Godwin’s Law. Just as the invocation of Hitler in a usenet flamewar means the conversation has come to an end, the invocation of Reagan in defense of one’s anti-communism means you’ve just lost the case, because you’ve revealed yourself as an idiot from a strange alternate universe where Reagan is not a punchline.

Remember: some on the left in the 80s were seized with the Spirit of Nixon, and wanted nothing more than détente and rapprochement; they wanted endless negotiations that would codify the precise number, size, and destructive potential of the missiles aimed at our cities. If we all agreed to have 27,293 missiles apiece, and we swapped ballet companies once a year, everything would be fine. For us, anyway. For those living on the other side of the wall, well, they had our warmest personal regards and best wishes. We had our system; they had theirs.

Which is like saying we fed our dogs, and they beat them and put them in kennels, but since we both have dogs we must celebrate our common bond.