Left Out?
-
Fred Thompson, Neocon
Conservatives & The American Right
David Corn: He has a strong claim on the neoconservative heart, and if he ends up in the White House, the moribund neocons will rise again.
-
George Tenet's Evasions
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
David Corn: His new memoir proves how hard it is to tell the truth about oneself but how easy it is to blame others.
-
Trying to Stay Out of Iran
David Corn: Does Congress have the strength to prevent Bush from going to war with Iran?
Actor Kurt Russell, a registered Libertarian often misidentified as a conservative or a Republican, says that a few times he has been told that someone in the industry did not want to work with him because of his presumed politics. "I was surprised it would make any difference," he comments. "But I don't pay much attention to it. The bottom line here is the color green. And, in the end, they will find a way to shut their ears or eyes to make money in this town, and I'm very much for that." Edgar Scherick, a veteran miniseries producer and a Wednesday Morning Club steering committee member, recalls that in his decades-long career, he has seen "one or two occasions when a writer was deemed too conservative to get a job, but they got it because I stood up and said, it's ridiculous." And Chetwynd, who frets about liberal groupthink in Hollywood, acknowledges that his own career has not been hindered by anticonservative bias: "My political views are tolerated because I'm a good salesman and I do my job well."
Although Horowitz insists political discrimination is rampant and ideological intolerance rules, he maintains that his Hollywood campaign strives for no more than "to restore dialogue in the entertainment community. We've established a civil place." He wants to be a "bridge-builder" who engineers "honest debate."
This is the kinder, gentler David Horowitz, an author and jouster otherwise known as a fierce ideological warrior. Last year, after Steve Wasserman, editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review, sliced in half a brief commentary Horowitz had written on The Communist Manifesto for a forum in the review, Horowitz sent a scorching letter to the publisher asserting that "Wasserman has an agenda in defending Marx." (Months earlier, Horowitz had praised Wasserman as a "fair-minded" fellow who had "improved" the book section.) At a recent talk at Harvard, Horowitz declared, "Inside every Leftist lurks a totalitarian" (not much bridge-building there). He assailed author/academic Cornel West as "an empty intellectual suit, he's not that smart, and he got his place because of the scramble for black faces in the university." Horowitz recently bought an ad in The New Republic that announced he intends to out The Left. The ad claims The Left is absent from "the radar screen of American politics." Thus, under the headline "Who is Left?" he produced a j'accuse list pronouncing Hillary Rodham Clinton, Marion Wright Eddman [sic; he meant Edelman], Sydney [sic] Blumenthal andwhat a shock!Senators Paul Wellstone and Ted Kennedy as national figures of The Left. He "exposed" the causes of The Left: prison reform, affirmative action, a living wage. He also ID'd Senator Robert Torricelli, a devoted anti-Castroite, as a leftist. "We think," the ad shouted, "it is time to identify the political left."
Is such simplistic pink-sheeting the work of a man who yearns merely for civil and honest exchange? "I have various incarnations," Horowitz explains. "On campuses, I'm confrontational. In Hollywood, I'm not confrontational at all. I defend this town. Oliver Stone has been to my events. I have participated in Alec Baldwin's events."
- « Previous
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- Next »
- Get The Nation at home (and online!) for 68 cents a week!
- If you like this article, consider making a donation to The Nation.
- Reprint this article. Click here for rights and information.

Buzzflash
del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook
Mixx it!
Reddit

RSS