Another Canceled Comedian. Another Merger Behind Closed Doors

And no one is connecting the dots.

Pexels | Photo by cottonbro studio

Say the word “McCarthyism” and you probably think Red Scare, Cold War spies, FBI files thicker than Tolstoy, and J. Edgar Hoover sniffing typewriter ribbons for Marxist residue.

But everyone forgets how McCarthyism really began — Hollywood.

Before the blacklists and the Senate hearings, it was Hollywood that handed Joe McCarthy his first match. Hoover’s FBI kept sprawling files on actors, writers, and directors, which he then shared with studio executives and House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) investigators.

Hoover understood what every authoritarian knows: control the medium, control the message. So he tracked who the actors met, what meetings they attended, and even their bedroom habits. Hoover hounded actor Charlie Chaplin so obsessively that one might have thought Chaplin’s love life was a national security threat.

Meanwhile, behind closed doors, producers and studio heads — sometimes after a friendly chat with the FBI — maintained secret lists of “unhireables.” Careers ended the moment someone refused to “name names” or even hesitated under questioning. A whisper from Hoover’s agents could keep an actor or screenwriter out of work for years. Studio bosses got so…