Scroll down to read this post.

 

Readers!

 

The time has come for my annual short Thanksgiving/Christmas fund drive for Behind The Black. I must do this every year in order to make sure I have earned enough money to pay my bills.

 

For this two-week campaign, I am offering a special deal to encourage donations. Donations of $200 will get a free autographed copy of the new paperback edition of Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, while donations of $250 will get a free autographed copy of the new hardback edition. If you desire a copy, make sure you provide me your address with your donation.

 

As I noted in July, the support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.

 

In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.

 

Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.

 

Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:

 

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

 

2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
 

3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:

 

4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
 
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652

 

You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.


Today’s blacklisted American: A movie about the dark side of Planned Parenthood

Today's modern witch hunt
Burning witches: What Hollywood now routinely tries
to do to conservatives.

Blacklists are back and Hollywood’s got ’em: When long time Hollywood filmmakers Cary Solomon and Chuck Konzelman decided to make the film Unplanned, telling the story of a woman who went from being Planned Parenthood clinic director supporting abortion to an avid advocate for the unborn, they did so under assumed names, and discovered themselves fighting an aggressive effort both in Hollywood and in social media to suppress the film once released.

Multiple cable networks, such as Lifetime, Hallmark Channel, HGTV, USA Network, Food Network, The Travel Channel, refused to carry commercials promoting the film. Multiple theater owners received death threats and harassment prior to screenings, with a few cancelling the screenings out of fear for themselves and their families.

And then there was the usual Twitter censorship.

Twitter destroyed the movie’s promotional account on the Friday night of the opening weekend, Konzelman said. Film marketing involves building the intensity for the night of the opening weekend, Konzelman explained. On that night Twitter cut off the account feed completely so when it was partially restored the next morning only a hundredth of the followers was shown.

“We had, you know, 200,000-plus followers, we went to under 2,000, and the star of our movie, Ashley Bratcher, and the subject of our movie, Abby Johnson, were both unable to follow their own movie [on Twitter],” Konzelman continued.

Twitter, as it always does, claimed their actions were “a mistake”, but isn’t strange that almost all these so-called mistakes always happen against conservative outlets and always at the worst possible time. How accidental!

This hostility however did not begin with the film’s release. Because of their fear of sabotage and violence, the filmmakers had to make the film outside California and do it with high security and secrecy.

They had a legitimate concern that some people could interfere with their work and try to damage their premises and equipment so they had a special team of operatives to protect their work, Solomon said.

The project was carried out under an assumed name and “people only knew that it was a faith and values friendly project but they didn’t know what it was,” Konzelman said, adding that people in town were praying for them.

This kind of intolerance in Hollywood however is not the exception that proves the rule, but it is the rule. According to the interview of these filmmakers at the link above (merely repeating what many other conservatives in Hollywood have been saying for years), the monolithic leftist culture of Hollywood works not only to blacklist any conservative artists, it successfully stifles the creative spirit of anyone who remains, no matter what their politics.

“Any creative spirit you have is crushed by Hollywood because they take the attitude that if you don’t think like [them], if you’re not an automaton, if you’re not a machine that thinks the way [they] want morally, spiritually, or in any other way, [they] don’t need you [and] will destroy you or crush you. So you’re fighting, you’re constantly swimming upstream,” Solomon said.

“Your heart gets rended when you can’t create if you’re a creative person; you need to create. A painter needs to paint but you can’t paint what you don’t believe,” he added.

In addition, “there’s a tremendous darkness in Hollywood that people don’t know,” Solomon said. “If the people actually knew what was going on behind the scenes in Hollywood … they would burn down the studios.”

When I was in the movie business my experience was much the same, though twenty years ago there were no death threats or violence, only strong hostility and a sense if I didn’t shut up I would be blackballed. Rather than shut up, I became a science journalist and eventually created this website so that no one could silence me.

To their credit Solomon and Konzelman instead went underground to make the films they wanted to make, and have refused to let Hollywood’s intolerance stifle them. We need more people like them, because the only way we can end this intolerance is to overwhelm it with dissenting opinions and actions that are loud and ceaseless.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

12 comments

  • Col Beausabre

    Look at the number of reboots Hollywood keeps churning out. All to the self-congratulatory refrain of “We are SOOOOOOO creative. !.” I use Bender’s comment “Kiss my shiny metal you know what !” What wasn’t said in the original that needs to be said now. I also firmly believe that a TV series reflects its time and place and torn from that is either laughable, incomprehensible or laughably incomprehensible. We now return you to regularly scheduled Hollywood drivel

  • Max

    Planned Parenthood can’t afford bad publicity right now, their staffers just took over the White House. A real head shaker…
    https://www.liveaction.org/news/biden-aministration-fills-vacancies-abortion-industry-employees/
    Bill gates will make over 18 billion with his MRNA vaccine. That buys a lot of influence. His father was Planned Parenthood’s lawyer, and partner of the Bill Gates foundation. He’s very proud of his boy, that he will finish what Bill Gates Senior started… Dark times.

  • Edward

    Robert wrote: “Twitter, as it always does, claimed their actions were “a mistake”, but isn’t strange that almost all these so-called mistakes always happen against conservative outlets and always at the worst possible time.

    How accident prone these antisocial-media publishers are. In the real world, they would be subject to lawsuits for such clumsy negligence, but they have immunity and thus are allowed to be biased with impunity.

  • Mitch S.

    “there’s a tremendous darkness in Hollywood that people don’t know,”

    Not sure that people don’t know, it’s not a secret that Hollywood knew what Weinstein and others were doing when they were doing it.
    And it’s very public how Hollywood fauns over Roman Polanski – years after he was convicted of luring, drugging and brutally raping a 13 year old girl.

    https://nypost.com/2017/10/05/why-does-hollywood-keep-defending-roman-polanski/

    Heck, even left-wing Snopes can’t deny it:
    https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/meryl-streep-applaud-roman-polanski/

  • wayne

    Charlie Chaplin
    “Modern Times” (1936)
    Protest Scene
    https://youtu.be/iucB3X-P2C8
    1:35

  • Cotour

    The weapons that must be used in this political warfare?

    Lawyers, money and irrefutable overt evidence of wrong doing and un and anti American actions related to free speech, and the stones and the stones to prosecute those who need to be dialed back and dialed down, because our politicians can not and will not do what must be done.

    https://www.newsweek.com/project-veritas-founder-james-okeefe-says-hell-sue-twitter-accusing-him-having-fake-accounts-1584037

    “I am suing Twitter for defamation because they said I… ‘operated fake accounts,'” O’Keefe said in a statement. “This is false, this is defamatory, and they will pay. Section 230 may have protected them before, but it will not protect them from me. The complaint will be filed Monday.”

  • Col Beausabre

    “Lawyers, money”

    Ya forgot the guns

    “Lawyers, Guns and Money” – The Late, Great Warren Zevon (OW-HOOOOOOO !)

  • Cotour

    I leave that for others to speak of, IMO the lawyers and the money will win what needs to be won.

    Its like saying: “The pen is mightier than the sword”.

    In the end the pen owns and controls the threat of the sword.

  • Cotour

    Here is just one more traitor, a traitor to his faith, treason of the highest order:

    “Pope Francis recently held mass at a nearby church of the Holy Spirit in Sassia in the center of Rome.

    During his homily, Red Francis told his flock that “sharing ownership is not communism but is pure Christianity.”

    Owned outright by the Communist Chinese.

  • Chris

    Cotour. – I have not attended a Catholic mass for several years. I was/am afraid that I would stand up and scream truth during the Homily. Often times these Homilies are messages from the US Council of Catholic Bishops. These USCC readings are often strong socialist=communist messages. God have mercy on their souls.

    Please Lord send us another John Paul II who can cleanse the Roman Catholic Church both in the US and the world.

  • Speaking as a pro-lifer, I’ve been more impressed by the propensity of the “mainstream” media to ignore abortion. The best-known example of a pro-abortion movie (“The Cider-House Rules”) was over two decades ago. In the same time, they took gay marriage from a fringe idea to near-complete acceptance and they’re doing the same thing for trans-sexuality.

    Maybe the lesson is that, when conservatives have a real reason to stick around, they won’t run away and that, in turn, discourages the crybullies.

  • Greg the Geologist

    Chris, you’re certainly right if you attend Masses in aging, liberal-leaning parishes. There are still plenty of those. But I know many priests and a few bishops who will not “drink the [Leftist] Kool-Aid”, and who see clearly where we are. Not easy times. It’s worth noting that in a recent article in a Catholic journal, an informal survey of bishops found zero, yes, 0, seminarians were inspired by Pope Francis to study for the priesthood. Rather, traditional-minded priests (and that’s many younger priests) get the impression that Francis is continually ‘poking them in the eye’. It will take time, but the Leftists in high places may find themselves increasingly ignored, and younger Catholic priests and laity will ‘vote with their feet’ for a more traditional and traditionally anticommunist vision of the Church.

Readers: the rules for commenting!

 

No registration is required. I welcome all opinions, even those that strongly criticize my commentary.

 

However, name-calling and obscenities will not be tolerated. First time offenders who are new to the site will be warned. Second time offenders or first time offenders who have been here awhile will be suspended for a week. After that, I will ban you. Period.

 

Note also that first time commenters as well as any comment with more than one link will be placed in moderation for my approval. Be patient, I will get to it.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *