Hollywood loves movies that celebrate itself.
Case in point: “Argo” won the Best Picture Oscar for telling the story of how Hollywood helped the CIA get diplomats out of Tehran during the Iranian hostage crisis. The movie, directed by and starring Ben Affleck, won over “Zero Dark Thirty,” which tells the story of the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden.
Side note: There’s a lesser-known Iranian hostage story that’s much more interesting. Billionaire and 1996 independent candidate for president Ross Perot once orchestrated the largest jail break in history, which freed about 11,000 prisoners from an Iranian jail, in order to rescue two of his employees who were taken hostage during this same period.
“Trumbo,” starring Bryan Cranston, tells the story of a screenwriter who was blacklisted due to his political views during the McCarthy era. The critically acclaimed movie lionized an openly communist screenwriter for standing up for his unpopular beliefs, despite it costing him his livelihood. “The Majestic,” starring Jim Carrey, likewise takes aim at the hysteria of the Red Scare that led to people being blackballed due to their political views.
Hollywood likes to champion the vaunted role of Hollywood in culture and history; it’s too bad many in Hollywood and on the far left didn’t pay attention to the message in those movies. Today, many in Hollywood and people on the far left are openly advocating bringing back blacklists.
Following the 2020 presidential election, “Scrubs” and “Garden State” actor Zach Braff tweeted “Never forget all these enablers,” in apparent reference to those who did not speak out against Trump.
Here’s something people ought to never forget about Zach Braff: the time he got Punk’d and go so angry that he yelled at and even “pummeled” a child, which had to be cut from the show (according to Braff’s own telling of the event).
“Captain America” Chris Evans similarly tweeted the hashtag #RememberWhoSaidNothing.
READ MORE: Who Is Hollywood’s “worst Chris?” Hemsworth, Pratt, Pine, or Evans?
“Hidden Figures” actress Janelle Monae said (in a since-deleted tweet) that Trump supporters should burn. She also expressed that she would never forgive anyone who voted for the president.
A raft of Hollywood actors are parroting calls by prominent Democrats to keep a literal list of anyone who supported Trump, so that they can be blackballed.
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted: “Is anyone archiving these Trump sycophants for when they try to downplay or deny their complicity in the future? I foresee decent probability of many deleted Tweets, writings, photos in the future.”
Pundit Jennifer Rubin said on Twitter that anyone who questions the outcome of the election “should never serve in office, join a corporate board, find a faculty position or be accepted into ‘polite’ society. We have a list.”
You have a list? You know who also kept lists? Stalin. More on that later.
In “Bridge of Spies” Tom Hanks portrays a lawyer who defends a Russian spy during the height of the Cold War. (Mark Rylance won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in the role of the Soviet spy.) Despite public disapproval that resulted in harassment and even violence, the lawyer portrayed by Hanks mounted a vigorous defense, on the principle that our legal system depends on the presumption of innocence and legal representation for everyone, no matter how seemingly undeserving.
In “The Conspirator,” James McAvoy plays a young lawyer and Union Army veteran who must defend one of the people accused of conspiring to kill President Lincoln, even though doing so makes him hated in the eyes of many in the north, which has just won the Civil War.
In real life, in 2020, “The Lincoln Project” doxed attorneys for Trump by publishing their pictures and phone numbers along with the message “Make them famous.” The tweet was later removed for violating Twitter’s terms of service. If any of these people watched “Bridge of Spies” or “The Conspirator”, they missed the point.
About the efforts to blackball members of the political opposition, CNN anchor Jake Tapper wrote on Twitter: “An organized attempt by former Dem officials to blackball from employment anyone who worked for the US government during the Trump administration seems the exact opposite of the calls for unity and healing we’ve heard from President-elect Biden.”
UNDERRATED MOVIE RECOMMENDATION:
“The Death of Stalin” starring Steve Buscemi and Jeffrey Tambor is a dark comedy about the events surrounding the death of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, history’s greatest murder, and the jockeying among his subordinates to become his successor. The movie illustrates the constant fear and very real danger people lived through under the Communist regime, when having your name appear on a list was a death sentence. The movie was criminally overlooked by the Oscars.
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