The modern dark age: Despite a history during the 1950s McCarthy era, when many of its most talented members were blacklisted because of their leftwing political beliefs, Hollywood today celebrates and encourages the blacklisting of conservative talent.

Consider the blacklisting described by comedian Adam Carolla and late night Fox show host Greg Gutfield during one recent podcast:

“Oh, we can’t get the guys who wrote on ‘Conan’ to come into the writers’ room because they’re scared of being blackballed. It drives me insane that they never stop complaining about McCarthyism and they’re more than happy to blackball anybody who crosses the line,” Carolla said.

“They’re the new McCarthy-ites, especially in this woke culture,” Gutfeld said. “I’m counting on this show succeeding without names and creating our own celebrities, which is actually what happens at Fox.”

Both men also described how, even if a writer or performer wanted to work for them, they often backed out because their agent or publicist told them not to, either because of the same fear or because of hostility to their politics.

In addition, Carolla in a different podcast described how this same blacklisting culture is now being used not just against conservatives, but against those who refuse to bow to the absurd COVID edicts.

The story of one actor, Clifton Duncan, is typical.

Duncan refused to get the COVID-19 vaccine, and that meant his career came to a screeching halt. “We can’t submit you for anything,” Duncan recalls his former manager telling him. And he was one of the lucky ones. Other actors who refused to get the “jab” got dropped by their agents immediately.

For Duncan, that process happened gradually, but the results were the same. “I could see the doors closing,” he says, adding he knew his career hit the rocks when he checked his IMDB.com page and saw that his management company had removed its name from his profile.

Duncan however is the rule, not the exception. All across Hollywood, the rule is that you can’t be conservative, and you better not question the Wuhan flu mandates imposed by the left. If you do either, your career will be over, you will be blackballed forever.

The irony of course is astonishing. For more than a half century, Hollywood condemned the idea of blacklisting, and made movie after movie pointing out the evil of McCarthyism in destroying the careers of writers, actors, and directors because they happened to leftists.

Suddenly in 2016, with the election of Donald Trump, that anti-blacklisting mantra vanished, replaced instantly with a industry-wide effort to blackball all conservatives from Hollywood. And this modern blacklisting is far more thorough than the blacklisting in the 1950s. Then, moderates and conservatives quickly rallied to stop McCarthy and the blacklisting culture.

Today, the leftists who control Hollywood have no intention of defending their political opposition. To these modern Hollywood leftists, blacklisting is only wrong if leftists are blacklisted. If it is done to anyone else, “Well, that’s okay, that’s needed and necessary!”

And these leftist control Hollywood at all levels. The only way its monolithic culture can now be beaten is if a new competitive entertainment industry rises from its ashes, willing to provide entertainment of all kinds, not harnessed to the “woke” and leftwing agenda.

When that happens, we might finally see an end to blacklisting in Hollywood. In fact, wouldn’t it be grand if someone decided to make movies telling the stories of Carolla and Gutfield and Duncan, so that the public would know how corrupt Hollywood has become?

And as we all know, what is good for the goose is also good for the gander.