Debra J. Saunders
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
The Hollywood blacklist, according to Wikipedia, is the
term for "the mid-20th-century practice of denying employment to
screenwriters, actors, directors, musicians, and other U.S. entertainment
professionals because of their suspected political beliefs or
associations." The blacklist spirit is alive and living in San Francisco,
but here and now the enemies of free thought have a new question: Are you now
or have you ever been a member of the Republican Party?
Last week, actress Maria Conchita Alonso resigned her
role in a Mission District Spanish-language production of "The Vagina
Monologues," after pro-illegal immigration activists threatened a boycott.
They protested because Alonso, best-known for her debut
film, "Moscow on the Hudson," had appeared in a video supporting the
gubernatorial candidacy of GOP Assemblyman Tim Donnelly -- aka, to La Opinion,
"un ultra conservador republicano." Donnelly is a former member of
the Minutemen, a group that is pro-border enforcement, and he opposes California's
DREAM Act, which, to Telemundo, makes him anti-immigrant.
"We really cannot have her in the show,
unfortunately," producer Eliana Lopez told KPIX-TV. And: "Of course
she has the right to say whatever she wants. But we're in the middle of the
Mission. Doing what she is doing is against what we believe."
Allow me to state the obvious. Just as Alonso has a First
Amendment right to her opinions, critics had a right to call for a boycott.
Producers of the play would have had the right to fire her if they so chose.
Would-be patrons have a right not to buy tickets.
But in a tolerant society that values open debate,
critics don't go after someone's acting career because they want to muzzle her
point of view. It is, after all, fair play for partisans to vote against
Donnelly because they disagree with him. It's fair play to give money to his
opponents. It is fair play not to pay to hear Alonso or Donnelly lecture on
politics.
These boycott threats, however, had nothing to do with
honest debate. They were an attempt to marginalize an actress because of her
conservative political views and impede her ability to make a living outside
politics. Just like the blacklist.
It's also guilt by association. Alonso, a Cuban-born,
Venezuelan-raised naturalized U.S. citizen, says she supports Donnelly because
of his small-government views on the economy and energy. She told La Opinion
that she supports deporting illegal immigrants with criminal records but
supports a path to legalization for some immigrants who have been in the
country illegally but have no criminal records.
Thus, pro-illegal immigration groups are going after
Alonso, a legal immigrant who is sympathetic with some of their goals, because
she supports a white guy who is a gung-ho opponent of illegal immigration.
Make no mistake about it; activists who are pro-illegal
immigration and Spanish-language media are particularly committed to
marginalizing Alonso precisely because she is a Latina. They have a stake in
portraying the Latino vote as monolithic. Nuance is not welcome in this
controversy, as the war against Alonso signals that good Latinos must not
distinguish between legal and illegal immigration. The strategy works. A 2010
Pew poll found that 31 percent of Latinos viewed illegal immigration as a
negative; by 2013, that viewpoint had shrunk to 21 percent.
Perhaps if Alonso renounces Donnelly, activists will
welcome the actress to the San Francisco stage, where she can engage in
oh-so-tolerant progressives' favorite form of political discourse -- the
monologue, of course.
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