Andrew Breitbart: 

Peter Bart, the powerful 76-year-old editor-in-chief of Variety, the industry’s daily bible, and co-host of AMC’s “Shootout,” didn’t challenge Mr. Voight on the facts, but classlessly recounted in his slightly trafficked blog a private conversation that allegedly occurred nearly 40 years ago:

“As a young production executive at the studio, I was trying to push ‘Love Story’ forward and joined colleagues in trying to interest Voight in the part. However, the more we prodded, the more reluctant he became. He finally blurted: ‘The character in this movie is a Harvard student. He’s bright. He reads books. I could never be believable as that smart young guy.’

Mr. Bart - desperately attempting to be as cruel as possible - wrote, “Reading Voight’s op-ed piece these many years later, I realize how right he was.”

His message to Mr. Voight: You’re dead. Hollywood never forgets.

Nor does Google: Seven years ago, Mr. Bart was suspended for 21 days and underwent diversity training for making racist, sexist and homophobic comments.

“I was quoted making several statements to a Los Angeles Magazine reporter that do not reflect my personal beliefs and values or the way that I run the newsroom. Nevertheless, I am deeply sorry and regret that they offended anyone. It will not happen again,” Mr. Bart said in a written statement.

He returned to work Sept. 10, 2001, a reason many forget this insider dish.

A funny thing happened on the way to the forming of a media consensus. The new media - quick to spot a partisan-based old media railroading - struck back and defended Mr. Voight.

Dominant center-right blogs like Instapundit, Slate’s Kaus Files (fine, Mickey, “neo-liberal”) and Powerline, removed from the corrupting junkets, premieres and swag-heavy lifestyle of Hollywood journalists, pointed to Mr. Wells and Mr. Bart’s “Deliverance”-inspired journalistic behavior.

Mr. Wells - whose unsolicited anti-GOP mass e-mailings have reached my inbox in previous election cycles - responded by doubling down:

“It’s been said in this town many times that the right has a debt to pay for the blacklisting of lefties in the ’50s, and that in all fairness it’s probably going to take a long time to make amends. The fact is that the philosophical grandfathers and great-grandfathers of today’s right-wingers ruined the lives of many Hollywood screenwriters in the ’50s, and so their descendants now have to suffer and make up for that,” Mr. Wells wrote in his Hollywood-Elsewhere blog.

Jeffrey, are you aware that Bobby Kennedy was McCarthy’s right-hand guy? Or that many Democrats and Republicans were concerned about the verifiable infiltration of Soviet spies into our government and cultural organs? Or that, as Mr. Voight points out, commies were actually mass murderers greatly deserving of our vigilance?

And while I’m at it, will my great-grandchildren point to this incident in 50 years when they attempt to thwart the livelihoods of your progeny? In your mind, do two wrongs make a right?

Those who argue that Mr. Wells’ point of view is not representative of a larger mind-set among the Hollywood elite should think back to 2005, when Barbra Streisand publicly canceled her subscription to the Los Angeles Times for the crime of hiring a conservative to pen editorials a few times a week. That writer, Jonah Goldberg, went on to write the book “Liberal Fascism,” which hit No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list. Perhaps the title resonated with the masses.