The relationship between Washington and Hollywood resembles the Three Stooges. What keeps Our Side (the comic team) together? The answer: Their Side. As long as they have an external enemy, the members of the team get along great. But as soon as Their Side disappears, they begin slapping each other around again.

During World War I, Washington enlisted Charlie Chaplin and other stars as cheerleaders for the war effort, and he and others willingly obliged, helping the government raise millions in Liberty Bonds. Thirty years later, the same government barred Chaplin from reentering the country he had lived in for four decades.

In the late '30s, a Senate committee investigated the pro-war propaganda contained in Hollywood's anti-Nazi films and warned the industry to cease fomenting war against Germany. While the committee was in recess, the events of Dec. 7, 1941, caused an abrupt about-face, and Washington was soon begging Hollywood to produce exactly the kind of pro-war propaganda it had recently condemned.

When the British debacle at Dunkirk early in the war left many Americans wondering whether the English were worthy allies, Washington encouraged MGM to make "Mrs. Miniver." Later in the war, when the government suggested Hollywood should do something on behalf of our noble Russian allies, Warner Brothers produced "Mission to Moscow." A few years later, the film was cited by the House Un-American Activities Committee as an example of communist propaganda, and both the House and Senate conducted a series of hearings in Hollywood from 1947 to 1954 that led to the blacklisting of 275 people.

When Sen. Robert Dole ran for president in 1996, he received substantial press coverage for his attacks on Hollywood; when Sen. Joseph Lieberman ran for vice president in 2000, he received substantial coverage for similar attacks.

But that was then.

Now, there is a new Their Side. Former teammates in Washington and Hollywood, who had been estranged since at least the war in Vietnam, have now met and decided that they need to forget their squabbles and bring the old team back together again.

In October, the Department of Defense gathered together a number of Hollywood writers and directors and asked them to match their fertile imaginations against the equally fertile imaginations of terrorists. Concoct a scenario, they were told, that would be so outrageous it would result in a scene as graphic and gripping as the made-for-television spectacular of Sept. 11, 2001.

Recently, the White House sent one of its key political strategists to Hollywood to meet with a group of studio owners and executives. For a change, they were told, ask not what Washington can do for your studio or network; ask what your studio or network can do for Washington.

Once again, Washington has ceased treating Hollywood as a scapegoat and now wants it to be its shill. If history is any guide, the industry will be only too glad to do its patriotic duty. And if history continues to be a guide, we can predict that once Their Side no longer threatens Our Side, the old team will go back to sticking their fingers into each other's eyes.