Lesson #13,412: How Today's Blacklist Works

The Hollywood blacklist of the 1950s was a scurrilous thing but nowhere near as bad as the one conservatives face today. 60 years ago, no one pretended you were nuts or a whiner for claiming you’d been blacklisted. There was an actual list, everyone knew there was a list, and for all its flaws — at least the original blacklisters were upfront about what they were doing.

Today’s blacklist is much more insidious because the left doesn’t have the courage to admit they blacklist — to admit they will refuse to work with or hire people based on their political and religious beliefs. How do you fight something like that?

Case in point:

KLAVAN, Andrew. Crazy Dangerous. 352p. Thomas Nelson. 2012. Tr $14.99. ISBN 978-1-59554-793-4.

Gr 8 Up-Klavan is famously conservative and Christian in outlook. While there is nothing wrong with either of these, in a novel, message can sometimes outweigh plot. That being said, the first 17 pages of Crazy Dangerous are great, especially the Holden Caufield-esque part when the hero gets beaten up but gives as good as he gets against the neighborhood bad boys. Then, the structure of the novel starts to wobble. Sam Hopkins joins the bad-boy club and then abruptly decides to leave it. While he does so for a good reason, his change of heart happens too quickly and his relationship with the head bad boy, Jeff Winger, is insufficiently developed to create the dramatic tension between good and evil so central to the story. Some readers, especially those who don’t require plot pacing and character development, will find this an enjoyable read, but those who need to see characters grow and situations change will be disappointed.-Nina Sachs, Walker Memorial Library, Westbrook, ME

That’s the review for Andrew Klavan’s new young-adult thriller, “Crazy Dangerous,” in the Library Journal, an important publication if you’re an author interested in selling books.

Note what the reviewer, Nina Sachs, does here. She immediately outs Klavan as “famously conservative and Christian,” but for what reason exactly?

She claims this “message” outweighs the plot but never says how or why. I’ve actually read “Crazy Dangerous” and can assure you there’s nothing at all preachy or heavy-handed about the story or the characters. It’s a ridiculous assertion on Ms. Sachs’ part. 

This outing of Klavan is also obnoxious and glaring; the opener of the review! Have you ever read a review that opened with the outing of the creator’s religious and political affiliation? The message to the left-wingers who run libraries is pretty obvious: Avoid.