Three Cheers for Kazan!

Let's get something very clear. If I suspect you of being a Communist, and there ever is a government agency that is doing its job and keeping track of Communists, then I will supply your name to said agency. Don't go whining "betrayal!" I think that the hype over the supposed victims of the Red Scare is outlandish. What, some writer who thought Stalin was swell had to use a nome de plume to collect a princely sum for writing a screenplay? My eyes are supposed to get moist over that? Or someone was asked to come into an office to answer a few questions? That is persecution?

Uh-oh, I am going to hear from my father about that last one. You see, he was indeed asked to come into an office to answer a few questions, and, guess what? He was indeed a pinko. If I had been in charge of the army, I'd probably have thrown him in the brig in that era. He was at an army base that had a notorious and well-publicized problem of Communist infiltration, and he had been spending a lot of time with known subversives.

The amazing thing is that now he is no longer a pinko. I am not saying that the investigation made him see the light, but perhaps it began to nourish the seeds of doubt. However, in spite of the absolute and unqualified gratitude that he should show towards HUAC, he still has these funny ideas that it was somehow wrong.

If you ever meet him you should make him tell you the story, because it is priceless: the army handled the investigation with all of the ham-fisted antics in the book (e.g. on the way to the interrogation they passed through a room of brass who immediately stopped talking). Stuff that inspires me greatly as I plan my dictatorship in my demented little mind. Of course my models are more Latin, but there is something charming about American military brusqueness.

But anyway, that is his story, and if you meet him have him tell it to you, since it is interesting. When he is done you can ask him what sort of beliefs his friends had and what sort of ideas were being bandied about in the publication whose list was subpeonaed. I know these leftist friends and they are charming people, once you get beyond the admiration for Stalin, and I have been on mailing lists that probably should have been brought to the FBI's attention, so I am not advocating torture for people who flirt with goofy ideas. Just a few questions in a quiet office now and then. Just to make them think and to discourage them from acting rashly.

The main point of this is that I was doing my required reading of the entertainment press. Obviously a label that puts stuff out like this is not going to be regularly featured in Entertainment Weekly or Us Weekly, but these publications do hire real writers who occasionally sneak a good record review in, and it is important for me to know something of what is going on in the general music world.

Now I have learned from reading this crap that "courage" is a euphemism for giving absolute assent to anything Brbra Streisand says, especially in matters of sexual perversion or stating the bleeding obvious and linking it to the patently false: AIDS causes suffering, therefore homosex should be celebrated. Are these people serious?

Speaking of serious, I have had more and more trouble discerning serious garbage from the parodies. Is Jewel intentionally funny? How about Fischerspooner? Has anyone heard of Fischerspooner? It must be a joke, no? I have also learned that Cher is looking more and more like a charicature of a warped Barbie doll by the minute. But the catalogue of what I have learned from fluff journalism is not really what I want to get into right now, rather my hero, the brilliant director and front line liuetenant in the war against Communist infiltration in Hollywood, Elias Kazan.

There was a surprisingly balanced little bit about Kazan. Usually he is portrayed as the bad guy who sold his friends up the river just because they cared about society. You know, Robeson suffered so that Kazan didn’t have to.

I say "hogwash!" These Hollywood Communists were vehement, nasty Stalinists, many taking direction from Moscow, looking to push Communist ideology into the films. The emphasis has shifted, but it is still the same thing. Now it is the free-love side of things that gets pushed, and since the major corporations are more than happy to make a buck off of it, the Dempublican government will do nothing about it. But whether it is free sodomy or Commie chains, does anyone doubt that the left has been using Hollywood to further its agenda for the last 50 years?

Do these people extolling the virtues of the hammy actor and cornball singer Robeson not care about how bad Stalin was or do they not know? This should clear up any questions.

As far as I am concerned one of the only figures in Hollywood to show true courage (and not in the modern "oh, George Michael showed a lot of courage last night when he said that AIDS was bad and he should be allowed to marry Elton" sense of the word) was Elias Kazan. He knew that there were active Communists planning to use Hollywood to promote their agenda, and he did the right thing.

These liberals would be better off shedding tears for Itzhak Pfeffer, the poet who was betrayed to death by Paul Robeson (you can read Robeson’s boy’s whitewash here), rather than for some folk-revivalist who had to play to audiences of thousands rather than tens of thousands because he thought Stalin was just OK.

Kazan did his duty to humanity and to our culture. Would that Hollywood had a hundred Elias Kazans! He was a fine director, too.

Posted by erik at September 9, 2003 4:00 PM | TrackBack