Hedda Hopper
Remember the blacklist of the McCarthy era? You couldn’t get a job in Hollywood if you had a whiff of communism around you.
Let me take you back to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1947 during the committee’s investigation of Communist influences in the motion picture industry. People like James Dalton Trumbo, along with the other members of the Hollywood Ten and hundreds of other industry professionals, were subsequently blacklisted by that industry.
Artists were barred from work on the basis of their membership, alleged membership in, or sympathy with the Communist Party USA, or their refusal to assist investigations into the party’s activities. Even during the period of its strictest enforcement, from the late 1940s through to the late 1950s, the blacklist was rarely made explicit or verifiable, but it directly damaged the careers of scores of individuals working in the film industry.
And the media helped to make their lives miserable. In those days it was Hedda Hopper, with 35 million followers in print and on radio. That was a big following and she was the guru of the time. If she didn’t like you: bye bye.
And she had no love of Communists or Communism.
In competition with older columnist Louella Parsons, celebrity gossip was a must-read. Bob Hope said: “Their columns were the first thing we looked at every morning to see what was going on.” her “columns were the first thing we looked at every morning to see what was going on.”
With one scathing sentence, Hopper gleefully ruined careers and marriages with a clear conscience. She smeared public and private life with politics and celebrity.
Hopper called herself “the bitch of the world”.
It was said she earned $200,000 a year, as well as accepting luxurious gifts from the studios.
The McCarthy years are looked back upon as a dark era in American history. So many lives ruined in a “witch hunt.”
Think of the movies not made, the stories not shared, the voices silenced.
Sound familiar? It should. Same thing is happening, today. Politicians and professors to media; working together to attack people on the right. From MSNBC, CNN, CBC, NBC, CBS, ABC, BBC, The Washington Post, the New York Times, the Toronto Star, The Guardian. The 21st century edition of Hedda Hopper-but far worse in scope because of social media like Facebook and Twitter which promote left wing ideology all over the world.
They have helped to silence people like Jordan Peterson, Tommy Robinson, Lauren Southern, Candace Owens, Diamond and Silk, Ben Shapiro, Milos Yiannopoulos, Jamie Glazov, Robert Spencer and Judge Jeanine. This is modern day black listing-for the crime of being Conservative.
Add “deboosting” to the censoring and more Conservative voices are held back, in the shadows.
Today, if you are not a left-wing liberal you will not get work in Hollywood, again. You can’t be a professor in the Progressive universities. You probably can’t get work in main stream media. You certainly won’t have much of a life on campus.
The silencing of diverse voices reaches such a level that The President of the United States, Donald Trump, signed an executive order protecting speech on campus. Frightening that this is necessary.
Think of the movies not made, the stories not shared, the voices silenced.
From the Ethics of the Fathers: “Rabbi Tarfon used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it.”
