Blacklisted, My Ass

By Dustin Rowles | Celebrity | February 12, 2021 |

By Dustin Rowles | Celebrity | February 12, 2021 |

If you haven’t seen it yet, and you enjoy having your blood pressure raised to uncomfortable levels, progressive writer Jonathan Chait wrote a piece over on New York Magazine (retweeted inexplicably by MSNBC’s Chris Hayes) with the headline, “Firing Actors for Being Conservative Is Another Hollywood Blacklist.”

I agree that firing actors for being conservative would be another Hollywood Blacklist. No one should fire someone for being a deficit hawk, or because they support state’s rights, or because they believe in lower taxes, or because they don’t think that healthcare is a right. I don’t agree, but we can’t go firing everyone with whom we disagree politically.

We can, and we should, however, fire people for hate speech. Transphobia and anti-Semitism fall under that category, just as racism and sexism do. And yet Chait, in drawing comparisons between the firing of Gina Carano to McCarthyism, writes:

Technically, the studios had the legal right to refuse to associate themselves with people who had abhorrent beliefs. But a fairer and more liberal society is able to create some space between an individual’s political views and the position of their employer.

So, a fairer more liberal society would better tolerate abhorrent beliefs?

Look: First off, we don’t do “tolerance” anymore. We did tolerance for 60 fucking years. We patted ourselves on the backs for being “tolerant” of Black people and gay people, as though that were something to be commended. That’s not a thing. Being able to “tolerate” a toothache and continue to work until you can get to the dentist is cool. But if you tell me that you “tolerate” Black people or gay people in your home or in the workplace, that just makes you a racist homophobe who has learned to keep his goddamn mouth shut.

Likewise, we should not get a cookie for tolerating bigotry. Tolerating bigotry is how we got here. Why should we allow an avowed anti-Semitic transphobe to work in a space where Jewish people and trans people might also work? How is creating a toxic work environment a “fairer and more liberal society,” Jonathan?

Also, this is not like McCarthyism, Jonathan. No one’s getting fired or canceled for voting for Donald Trump, and no one is being interrogated about their beliefs. They just put that shit out there, and when they get pushback, they double down, and then they triple down, and then they f**king dare you to fire them for expressing “abhorrent” views, and when you do, they act like the victim, and then they go make some money with people who tolerate their goddamn bigotry.

[Gina] Carano will develop, produce, and star in the upcoming film, which [the conservative website] The Daily Wire says it will release exclusively to its members as the company looks to bolster its entertainment division. Details are being kept under wraps but it will be produced as part of Daily Wire’s partnership with Bone Tomahawk producer Dallas Sonnier and his Bonfire Legend banner.

“We could not be more excited to be working with Gina Carano, an incredible talent dumped by Disney and Lucasfilm for offending the authoritarian Hollywood Left. This is what Daily Wire exists to do: provide an alternative not just for consumers, but for creators who refuse to bow to the mob,” said Daily Wire co-founder [Ben] Shapiro.

Blacklisted, my ass.