I found this on a friend-of-a-friend's blog. Comedian Orson Bean talks about being blacklisted.
But the piece doesn't go where you think it's going. It starts talking about being branded for associating with communists, and ends up being branded for associating with conservatives.
He makes a damn good point about the bowdlerization of democracy in California:
What’s going on in the streets these days is nothing less than a war on democracy itself. Both sides fought hard to win that vote. The anti Prop .8 side out-spent the other side and mustered every celebrity they could find to make their case. They fought long and hard… and they lost. And now they riot and attack and sling mud and black-list to protest the outcome of an honest election, the results of which they call “the tyranny of the majority”. What?!
Ever since the passing of Prop 8, I've listened quietly to my more liberal friends discuss their opinions and agendas. What I haven't heard anyone say (before now), is that California held a big damn election, and the mediagenic side lost.
Yet somehow, in this democracy we enjoy, this majority's voice is not considered acceptable. The kind of people who suffered under blacklisting in the front half of the 20th century, appear to have no qualms with now turning that wicked laser on their opponents.
Just because a lot of people believe something doesn't make it right. (This is so obvious that I'm only saying it to head off foolish arguments.) But when a lot of people believe something, you'd damn well better pay attention, and respect it.
It's easy and fun to mock the conservative, traditional chunk of the American electorate. But it's also cruel and stupid. In the state where most of the liberal, progressive legislation in the U.S. is born, people voted decisively for Prop 8. You don't have to like it. But you'd best treat it like it matters -- like those voters matter.
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