The gay Hollywood 10. (notes from a blond).

Used to be when you mentioned the Hollywood 10, nobody thought you were speaking about someone named Stryker or Ryker or Donovan. In recent years, though, the town has gotten stubbornly apolitical. Most everybody is assumed to be a Democrat, the way a waitress in a delicatessen assumes everybody knows what flanken is. Why else would they be here?

Of course, it's not really that simple. There are Republicans in Hollywood. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, and Chuck Norris come to mind. The Rock I'm not sure about.

Much of Hollywood's apolitical posture was calcified back in 1947 by the crushing experiences of the Hollywood 10, a group of intellectually well-endowed filmmakers who refused to name names when they were called to testify as suspected Communists during the McCarthy-era witch-hunts. After the 10 took the Fifth, they were blacklisted in Hollywood, their creative careers instantly over. Many left the country or worked clandestinely under assumed names--names that occasionally won awards for their sequestered owners.

They still make movies about the Hollywood 10 because the fear surrounding their forthright political actions is always in the air. Say the wrong thing, hang out with the wrong crowd, and a lot of people in town will think twice about getting into business with you. Fall down drunk and spend a year at Betty Ford, and you will be embraced upon your return. But express any sort of political opinion of any stripe, and you'd better hope you're so big that they can't ignore you.

If the original Hollywood 10 symbolized political strength, a list for this century would be all about flexibility. Fewer players than ever are willing to make waves--especially the gay ones. Here are 10 types you won't see storming the barricades this year:

1. The gay agent who tells his actor clients who live in heavily gay West Hollywood to always put down their address as Los Angeles.

2. The gay actor playing a gay character on TV who won't discuss his private life because he's afraid he will never get to play anything but a gay character. He will wind up winning an Emmy for playing an autistic idiot savant who stops World War III by breaking the Pakistani code. But still no love interest.

3. The gay producer and his boyfriend who've adopted an adorable Burmese baby who is now being raised for them by their Guatemalan housekeeper.

4. The gay producer with a hot tub full of "nephews." Everyone knows he's gay, but when a gay publication tries to put him on a gay Hollywood power list, he threatens to sue.

5. The gay gossip columnist who has damaging homosexual data on every member of the Screen Actors Guild and intimates it every chance he gets. He insists Charlton Heston is gay but just doesn't remember.

6. The gay casting director who every now and again is forced to air the phrase "light in the loafers" when an actor he knows is gay comes in to audition, for fear the straight bosses might think he cast the guy for the same reason they might cast the waitress they met at Hooters.

7. The gay valet parker who makes sure the tipsy old queen's car won't start so he will be able to make some extra cash off the old girl while they both wait in the dark for the Auto Club.

8. The mildly unattractive straight actor who keeps pestering his agent to get him gay parts because it helps him show his sensitive side and he gets laid like a bandit.

9. The lesbians who form a political action group and then fall to squabbling among themselves, which earns them a big story in the Los Angeles Times and causes deep embarrassment for every out gay person in town.

10. The membership chairman of the Gay Mafia, who claims he still can't find my application.