I'm home with a cold today, so I'll have lots of time to catch up on blogging. The Sox were off last night, so we watched a movie. Later in the season, when there's a night off, I make sure we get out of the house. But with only three games played, I'm not going stir-crazy yet.
We saw "Good Night, And Good Luck.", George Clooney's movie about McCarthyism, and how CBS Newsmen Edward R. Murrow and Fred Friendly stood up to the little scummy demagogue who was terrorizing the US. It's filmed in a velvety black-and-white that gives it a very authentic feel, and allows the actual footage of the McCarthy hearings to blend in. (Because wasn't the world black-and-white in those days?)
Two people who were part of the Murrow news team, Joe Wershba and Shirley Wershba, played by Robert Downey, Jr. and Patricia Clarkson, were consultants on the film.
The cast is excellent. If you're a John Sayles fan, as I am, you're very familiar with the great acting of David Strathairn. This is a real tour de force for him. (I used to know Strathairn from theatre days. If you're wondering, his usually-mispronounced last name is said "stra-THA-rin", the "a" in THA sounding like "that".) Clooney is terrific, as is Patricia Clarkson.
The McCarthy era is a very shameful time in US history. Often compared to a witch hunt (at least once in literature), it ruined careers, wrecked families, and ended lives. The parallels to our present time are inescapable; you just substitute "terrorism" for "Communism". But even without the parallel, it's a story that needs to be told.
A factoid I picked up from last night's movie is that the oft-quoted line from McCarthy's downfall, surely one of history's great political rejoinders, is usually quoted incorrectly. What Army attorney Joseph Welch actually said was: "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"
This line has enjoyed new fame from its appearance in "Angels In America," which, if you haven't seen, you must.
Famous speeches are often edited ever-so-slightly to sound better in retelling. Lou Gehrig's famous farewell speech was not quite as perfect as the version people know from "Pride of the Yankees", although the movie script's editing is barely perceptible. Martin Luther King, Jr. improved on Theodore Parker's famous quotation when he said, "Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice." (I love that line. If only I believed in a moral universe...)
"Good Night, and Good Luck." is part of the Participate.Net website, as was the last movie I blogged about, "North Country". I was also very happy to see "Murderball" on the site! Participate.net links movies with activism. What a fantastic idea.
12 comments:
One of the most fun, but most overlooked, public condemnations of McCarthy was that of Walt Kelly in his Pogo comic strips. Kelly was very sharp at lampooning McCarthy (in the form of the bobcat "Simple J. Malarkey") and the other nuts of the day, at both extremes (the John Birchers became the "Jack Acid Society", Krushchev and Castro were represented by two figures known only as "Pig" and "Goat", etc). Fantagraphics Books put out several excellent Pogo collections, but I don't know of any complete sets available. I have a few original books from the 50s (they belonged to my mother), but they're in bad shape anymore.
Pogo, of course, was the source of the immortal line, "We have met the enemey, and he is us" -- part of an environmentalist storyline of Kelly's.
There are Canadian footnotes to that era--a famous cartoon depicts the HUAC denouncing Ottawa'a peace tower, and of course the almost fogotten story of Egerton Herbert Norman.
Strange how distant--inconcievable--the cold war seems now. And some want to drag us back to 1957--pleasantville, duck and cover, and all.
Strange how distant--inconcievable--the cold war seems now.
So true. It's hard to believe it ever happened. Yet there it is. And there it could easily be again.
Thanks for that link. I would never have heard of him.
Strange how distant--inconcievable--the cold war seems now. And some want to drag us back to 1957--pleasantville, duck and cover, and all.
Meanwhile, these days, we have people like Ann Coulter telling us how McCarthy was a misunderstood patriot who was hounded by evil liberals.
Oh my lord. Can even Ann Coulter be that stupid?
Don't answer that. It's too easy.
I've actually run into McCarthy defenders quite often, lately. Mostly in blogs (especially comment trails) and on forum sites like Fark.com.
The McCarthy apologists usually take the following positions:
- He was against communists, so he was a patriot, and how can such a patriot be a bad guy?
- Many of the people who were called to testify to the HUAC were later found out to be communists.
- Alger Hiss.
You can point out all you like that the ends don't justify the means, even for communist-hunting; that being communist was not and is not a crime; and that McCarthy did not actually identify Hiss as a spy, or indeed any of the people he dragged through the mud, so his program was useless at best (given that it's okay, of course, to slander and abuse people if they might be commies).
It used to be a common joke among my friends to call someone a communist. It was funny to us because it sounded all dramatic, while it made no sense whatsoever in the context of the post-Cold War world.
Now it's not funny any more. The idea that Communism is the most awful thing ever to happen to humanity is quite prevalent today (I threw an issue of the Atlantic across the room a couple of years ago after reading two consecutive essays on the theme).
How religious fundamentalism and massive government authoritarianism get a free pass, but Marxism is still something to feel good about criticising, is mystifying to me.
M@, that is so disturbing. But I suppose unsurprising.
Allan and I know Alger Hiss's son Tony - he is the brother-in-law of a close friend. Being familiar with the ambiguities of the case - and the case is all ambiguity - it's amazing to me that people see Hiss as proof of anything about McCarthy.
Coulter, from Treason (2003):
***
The myth of "McCarthyism" is the greatest Orwellian fraud of our times. Liberals are fanatical liars, then as now. The portrayal of Sen. Joe McCarthy as a wild-eyed demagogue destroying innocent lives is sheer liberal hobgoblinism. Liberals weren't hiding under the bed during the McCarthy era. They were systematically undermining the nation's ability to defend itself, while waging a bellicose campaign of lies to blacken McCarthy's name. Liberals denounced McCarthy because they were afraid of getting caught, so they fought back like animals to hide their own collaboration with a regime as evil as the Nazis. ...
***
If you like, there is more here ... then I suggest you take a bath.
No, no, I most certainly do not like... but I did read the rest of the article there.
It's especially funny when she calls Clinton "a draft-dodging, pot-smoking flim-flam artist" -- as though the current draft-dodging, coke-snorting, alcoholic failure is somehow better.
I'm sure your friend Tony must have some amazing stories to tell. But even if there was no ambiguity in the Alger Hiss story --even if every single charge levelled against him were true -- the fact is that his prosecution had nothing to do with McCarthy.
Funny, isn't it, how Coulter drops ridiculous constructions like "oleaginous", but doesn't seem to know the meaning of the word "specious".
Coulter. Geez. These quotes make me say crazy shit like Heaven Help Us and I Hate Everyone.
She uses the word Orwellian as she re-writes history. I must run away before my head explodes.
Oops, too late.
She uses the word Orwellian as she re-writes history. I must run away before my head explodes.
The best recent use of "Orwellian" was on a Daily Show interview with a guy who does language spinning for Bush. Samantha Bee said, "I'll say some words, and you tell me how you'd have the White House present them: Alaskan Drilling?"
He responded, "Wise Energy Policy"
"Clear-cutting?"
"Effective Use of Resources"
"Orwellian?"
"..."
[End of Interview]
Brilliant. Ah, the little oasis called The Daily Show.
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