Hollywood movies are suffused with an elitist, coastal liberalism that’s out of touch with the concerns of ordinary people. That, at any rate, is what we’ve been told for decades by conservative culture warriors.

The truth is more complicated. Hollywood has never been a cultural or political monolith, and the accuracy of the elitism accusation has waxed and waned over the years.

But one thing that hit me when I rewatched the classic 1954 movie Salt of the Earth amid the ongoing writers’ strike is that, to whatever extent the charge is true, conservatives themselves deserve part of the blame. They were the biggest supporters of the movie studios’ mid-century purge of “subversives” and anyone else with too much integrity to “name names” to the government.