For four-plus decades, Hollywood has cranked out films and TV shows decrying the victims of the McCarthy-era Hollywood blacklist: writers and actors believed to be Communists at one time or another who were refused work by a fearful film industry.

Each of those productions bears the stench of moral vanity, suggesting that the enlightened entertainment industry of today could never behave so badly. Who, moi?

Andrew Breitbart writes:

“There is no such thing as a blacklist anymore,” George Clooney declared in 2005 while promoting his black-and-white hagiography of Edward R. Murrow, “Good Night, And Good Luck.”

…”For anybody who would blacklist you,” party spokesman Clooney said, elaborating on Hollywood’s clean bill of health, “there are 50 people that would hire you now.”

Even while Mr. Clooney contradicts his bold statement that there is no blacklist in Hollywood (apparently because only a small minority practices it), he basically gets it right.

For ignoring the crimes of brutal dictators while ripping our democratically elected president during a time of war, Mr. Clooney probably wouldn’t be hired by one Hollywood producer - and I think I know him. And he wouldn’t hire Vanessa Redgrave, Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Woody Harrelson, Jessica Lange, John Cusack or Danny Glover, either. Bias happens.

The problem occurs when the 50-to-1 ratio is flipped and Mr. Clooney and his allegedly egalitarian allies are doing most of the hiring. Remember his pal Julia Roberts’ slurs against Republicans? “Repugnant” Reaganites and “reptilian” Bushies planning to work on the “Ocean’s 14″ set have mastered a code of conduct: silence.

Whoops. Jon Voight broke the silence with an oped in the Washington Times and dared criticize Barack Obama. Now he’s on a list.

Jeffrey Wells writes:

My honest deep-down reaction is that I now have a reason to feel negatively about the guy. I’m not saying Voight is on the HE shit list (although the idea certainly feels good — just as it felt good to imagine the same thing last spring about Tina Fey when she became a rabid Hillary person on SNL), and I certainly don’t think a symbolic condemnation along these lines would matter much to anyone. Nonetheless, it’s going to be hard henceforth not to think of Voight as some kind of diseased wingnut.

I’ll always admire and respect Voight’s better performances (Luke in Coming Home, Reynolds in Enemy of the State, Ed in Deliverance, Howard Cosell in Ali, Manny in Runaway Train, FDR in Pearl Harbor, Jack in Desert Bloom, Paul Serone in Anaconda). And he’s obviously entitled to say and write whatever he wants. But it’s only natural that industry-based Obama supporters will henceforth regard him askance. Honestly? If I were a producer and I had to make a casting decision about hiring Voight or some older actor who hadn’t pissed me off with an idiotic Washington Times op-ed piece, I might very well say to myself, “Voight? Let him eat cake.”