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The modern Hollywood "blacklist"

This from Dan Gifford:

We are accustomed to hearing about the 1950s official Hollywood blackballing of writers and others with suspected communist or even leftist leanings by "conservative" studio heads. But did an unofficial liberal Hollywood political blacklist replace it? Yes, it did. And award winning science fiction writer Neil Schulman is an example of a talented man whose career was essentially ruined by being placed on it. The "LA Law" writers were in love with him until he wrote a Los Angeles Times article about the way the media ignores incidents where armed citizens stop crimes in progress. There was a local example he used to make his point.

That contradicted the liberal politics of Law's writers. They dropped him and, according to what I heard, put his name on the whisper blackball grapevine. I first heard about the incident from a fellow ACLU board member who was an "LA Law" writer at the time. Neil wrote one of the more poignant "Twilight Zone" episodes and he is an example of the very liberal McCarthyesque bias that we are so accustomed to hearing does not exist.

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