Isegoria

“We’re basically named after gays in Hollywood and alcoholics nationwide,” Jeremy Boreing, Friends of Abe’s executive director quips:

Within Friends of Abe, there’s a fierce debate over whether a blacklist exists. “Anyone who denies it is intentionally misleading you or clueless,” says actor F. Lee Reynolds. “There is actual blacklisting. It does happen,” says actress Mell Flynn. Neither Reynolds nor Flynn nor anyone else I spoke to could offer proof that conservatives have been deliberately excluded from jobs. Most members say that the bias is more subtle: People hire those they know and like and, typically, those are people who think and act as they do.

Over the next few months, Gary Sinise called Jon Voight, Kelsey Grammer, and Patricia Heaton, and the lunch group multiplied from three people to six, six to twelve, dozens to hundreds, growing until bigger venues were needed.

Whether a blacklist exists will likely never be proven, but the fact that many members are convinced that it does speaks to the psychological need that Friends of Abe has served to fill — and never more so than at the new-member lunches. Every month or so, a few dozen initiates and their sponsors gather in the private room of the Bistro Garden restaurant in Studio City and introduce themselves and say why they want to join. On one occasion, a line producer described being dropped from a project after she expressed pro-life views. On another, a stuntman talked about how his colleagues said American troops are murderers. Grown men and women break down in tears as they reveal what they’ve gone through — and express relief in letting it all out. “It’s people who don’t have a tribe,” says John Sullivan, a documentary producer and director, “and when they find out they have a tribe, they’re so happy.” “You unburden your soul and say, ‘I have this secret that I’m not allowed to share with anybody,’” says the comedian Evan Sayet.

If this description sounds like an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, that’s how Friends of Abe members talk about the lunches. The anonymity, the sponsors, the confiding, the emotional release, the lingo (“Hi, I’m John, and I’m a conservative”) come straight from AA. “They are very similar organizations,” says Rob Long, a former executive producer on Cheers and a columnist for National Review, “because it’s like, ‘Don’t talk about it. We don’t need any scrutiny here. We’re just here for fellowship.’ To this day, Friends of Abe is the only social group in Hollywood outside of AA where the budget classes mingle.”

The AA connection was there from the start, inspiring the group’s name. Tom Dreesen knew that AA members referred to one another as a “friend of Bill W.” — a nod to co-founder Bill Wilson — and that closeted men in Hollywood during the 1940s sought out one another by asking, “Are you a friend of Dorothy?” — a Wizard of Oz reference. “We’ve got to be a friend of somebody,” Dreesen recalls saying to Sinise and Chetwynd. Dreesen and Sinise had grown up in Illinois, so he suggested Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president. “We’ll say, ‘Are you a friend of Abe?’ That way, if the liberals hear it, they’ll think that we’re talking about an agent from William Morris.”

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