Posted on 02/24/2018 7:18:17 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Over half a century after the "Red Scare," playwright and memoirist Lillian Hellman, whose name is often coupled with her adversary Senator Joe McCarthy, seems to have emerged relatively unscathed in the court of elite progressivist opinion despite the exposure of her manifold fabrications and deceptions. The liar, it appears, is the incarnation of a higher truth. Such is the power of the press and the cultural salience of left-wing attitudes in America.
Hellman, a passionate supporter of the Soviet Union even when Stalin's crimes had been widely publicized, was subpoenaed before the House Un-American Activities Committee by McCarthy [see comments –ed.] and was subsequently lionized by the media, the commentariat, and the entertainment industry from the 1950s to the present for refusing to name names. She was elevated to the plinth of truth and courage while McCarthy was effectively consigned to the Eighth Circle of the Inferno as an evil counselor and a sower of discord.
We can agree that McCarthy cast too wide a net, and many will argue that he was responsible for a climate of national hysteria, but we cannot deny, after the release of the Venona transcripts, that he was mainly right. There was indeed a concerted and largely successful attempt to infiltrate the White House by Soviet agents during the 1940s and 1950s. This was McCarthy's truth.
Hellman, however, was a notorious liar, of whom novelist Mary McCarthy (no relation to Joseph) said, "Every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the.'" Historian Alice Kessler-Harris in her hagiographic 2012 volume A Difficult Woman attempted to justify Hellman as a literary fabulist with a poor memory who believed that truth is larger than fact. Dorothy Gallagher in her 2014 biography Lillian Hellman: An Imperious Life is having none of it,
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
The problem is: Hellman was a fine playwright. Several of her plays are continually reproduced in London where they still appreciate “the well-written” play. And so, while a politician fades in memory, the artist lives on.
McCarthy was, of course, referring to Hellman's preposterous memoirs that are filled with lies. McCarthy was no bargain either.
Hellman was a nasty piece of work who like many self-titled intellectuals of the 1930s fell in love with the Soviets. And never admitted the error of their adoration.
Joe was right!
To the hilt.
I didn’t say he wasn’t.
The late Senator Joe McCarthy is vindicated and validated on a daily basis.
For too many years, his good name has been trashed and sullied by the detestable, odious and plain rotten Commies in our society and it has to be stopped.
I saw “Toys in the Attic” in the fifties————great play.
.
“The problem is: Hellman was a fine playwright.”
And Leni Riefenstahl was a pioneering cinematographer. In other words, “We must separate the artist from their art” as they used to say about Frank Sinatra after one of his violent outbursts.
Sorry, it didn’t work for Not-So-Hotra and it doesn’t work for Hellman. At least Ol’ Blue Eyes didn’t defend the evil Soviet Union.
As lefties like to say, the personal IS the political.
Well, nobody is forcing you to watch The Children’s Hour.
Yeah, she was a good playwright.
McCarthy was ‘mainly’ right? He was absolutely right. The ‘hysteria’ was another leftist creation designed to destroy McCarthy’s credibility.
Our government was fully infested with communists. Tail Gunner Joe had the courage to expose them. For his troubles, he was treated as shabbily as President Trump is today. He died a premature death, having been driven to alcohol abuse.
Libtards love to muddy the waters and mak you believe that Senator McCarthy had something to do with the Hollywood blacklists. Which is nonsensical, since the blacklisting was done by the House.
At least somebody is writing something accurate about the Senator.
All conservatives must read Blacklisted by History, by the late M Stanton Evans for the actual facts about the McCarthy era.
Ugly vindictive Stalinist is what Hellman was. Critical acclaim for her prodigious output in the midst of her many communist outrages shows just how sick our literary & academic elites really are.
The same ones who praised Kim Jong Un’s sister at the Olympics. What is it about `progressives’ and their love of leftwing totalitarian dictators?
Oh, and it would suck to be forced to watch “The Children’s Hour”. Read the synopsis. Ewwwww!!
Er, wasn't Senator McCarthy, as his title implies, a member of the Senate?
Liberals always get that wrong!
Typical example of their high regard for facts! /sarcasm
The synopsis?
Yes, on Wikipedia, followed by the full plot summary.
LOL. Nothing like curiosity.
McCarthy underestimated the extent of Communist infiltration. He was smeared by the pro Communist main stream media. They, people like Mika Brzezinski, believe it is their job to tell us what to think. In the early 40s they convinced Americans that Joseph Stalin, the second greatest mass murderer after Mao, was a great humanitarian. Yes, The ‘hysteria’ was another leftist creation. There is an American professor, Jeffrey Olick, who has written a book about Senator McCarthy’s work on the House Un-American Activities Committee. Is it any wonder why graduates are so uneducated? This was repeated by that great historian Bill O’Reily. Fortunately he was corrected by Ann Coulter. Our modern world is a creation of Communists from the Roosevelt administration. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are the creation of Harry Dexter White, a Soviet agent, in the Treasury. He was also the author of the Morgenthau Plan that nearly caused western Europe to go Communist.
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