John Nolte (also known by his nom de blog, Dirty Harry), writes that "Hollywood is a town run almost entirely by liberal ideologues. But this is also an industry built on the personal relationship, and here's where things get sticky for the openly conservative":

But this is also an industry built on the personal relationship, and here's where things get sticky for the openly conservative.

Unless it's to inspire their annual cinematic treatise to all things them -- the annual film decrying the 1950s blacklist which forced a few screenwriters to use a pseudonym -- present-day liberal Hollywood doesn't much care for the word "blacklist," especially when it's them being accused of doing the blacklisting. Their defense is to hide behind the literal and claim there is no actual blacklist or organized conspiracy to keep openly conservative filmmakers from getting work.

Fine.

In 2004, before anyone had even seen The Passion of the Christ, before Mel Gibson would drunkenly reveal his darker side, leftists poured out of the entertainment, academic, and religious worlds to unleash an unholy hell on the film and its maker. Too late to stop the film (it had secured distribution), the goal was therefore two-fold: to hurt the movie financially (which obviously failed), but also to launch a pre-emptive strike against any filmmaker thinking about following Gibson's lead and scampering off the liberal Hollywood plantation. The message was clear: Stray and you will be personally destroyed. And it worked. The Passion may be the only film to make over a half-billion dollars and not create a me-too phenomenon. A more tolerant industry, or at least one driven by financial considerations, would've quickly greenlit a serious-minded sequel based on the Acts of the Apostles.

Reasonable people would call this a form of "blacklisting," but liberal Hollywood isn't reasonable and rather than have an honest discussion on the matter they instead wrap us 'round the axle of specificity when it comes to the word "blacklist. " So let's use another word: Passioning.

"Passioning" is what happens when the leftist Hollywood establishment, using whatever power available, demean, dismiss, diminish, and defame those they consider an ideological apostate. In 2004 it was Mel Gibson and The Passion of the Christ; today it's director David Zucker and An American Carol.

It's also worth revisiting the Anchoress' thoughts from late 2005 on the damage to pop culture post-9/11, as well.