Tolerance is a wonderful virtue, but its quality depends on what is tolerated and what is not. Thieves tolerate theft, yet no one praises their tolerance.
Hollywood praises itself for its tolerance, yet there are many things it cannot tolerate: people who honestly believe in God, others who vote for the Republican party, to name two.
It poisons itself with a college-campus like intellectual conformity. Every once in a while, a mind breaks free from the herd.
Robert Avrech is both a screenwriter and an observant Orthodox Jew. In most lines of work, he would not be forced to choose. Yet, he confesses, for years he had to swallow his words with producers and executives. He would be out of work if he came out of the closet.
For a considerable period of time, I kept my level of Jewish observance a secret. I did not wear my yarmulke to Hollywood meetings. I understood, on the deepest level, that wearing your religion on your sleeve would be professional suicide. I understood that though Hollywood professed to be “open and tolerant,” when it came to religion – any religion, except for something harmless and fashionable like new-age Buddhism – Hollywood was as open as, well, the KKK.
In truth, most Hollywood people have been perfectly respectful of my Orthodoxy. In fact, several have gone out of their way to accommodate the shooting schedules of the films I’ve been involved with. Usually, these have been the Gentiles. The Jews are another story entirely.
This brings me to my second secret life.
I’m a Republican. A heretofore secret Hollywood Republican. I know men and women who are heavy drug addicts and they have no problem finding employment in Hollywood. I know men and women who are gambling addicts and they work pretty regularly. There’s even a director who was arrested for child molestation and yet was hired by Disney – yes, Disney – to helm a picture, and people defended this decision by saying even child molesters have a right to work. I would bet my bottom dollar that all these people are on the correct side of the political spectrum. They are liberal democrats.
There was a time when liberals opposed provincial bigotry and blacklists, when freedom of conscience meant something. They challenged the Southern (Democrat) racists in the 1960s. Yet they look at demands of conformity or punishment differently when they are not the ones in the dock, but the ones who decide if punishment for ideas is warranted.
Fairness is a better virtue than tolerance. Maybe Hollywood should try that.
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