Posted on 12/06/2005 1:47:03 PM PST by smoothsailing
December 06, 2005, 3:05 p.m.
Murrow vs. McCarthy
Here is a coincidence of extra-parochial interest.
— Hollywood releases a movie featuring (the late, lamented) Edward R. Murrow and (the late, unlamented) Senator Joe McCarthy. It is called Good Night, and Good Luck, and it portrays a famous broadcast denouncing McCarthy, shown in March 1954, on the eve of the Army-McCarthy hearings.
Murrow concluded his half-hour blast by inviting McCarthy to take the half-hour slot the following week to reply to Murrow's charges.
McCarthy's office advised CBS that the senator had decided to turn his half hour over to William Buckley to reply to Murrow. The film depicts this scene. William Paley, CBS boss, is leaving the office with Fred Friendly, Murrow's producer. "They want to give the time to William Buckley," Paley says. "I'm opposed." Friendly agrees.
— A few weeks have gone by since the film was released. In Stamford, Connecticut, on Saturday, Buckley is seen at a movie house watching Good Night, and Good Luck. "Are you going to comment on it?" a fellow viewer asks at the film's close. Buckley says, "I don't think so. I've written two books about McCarthy."
But the next day there are large headlines in the Stamford Advocate, which is co-sponsoring an evening — this very evening, Tuesday, December 6 — featuring an award to Buckley by the distinguished Ferguson Library of Stamford, the first-ever Ferguson Award. It was 51 years ago that McCarthy named Buckley as best-equipped to answer Murrow, and now — tonight!! — he can do so in the heart of Stamford, Connecticut.
The Ferguson Library is an intensively active culture center presided over by a librarian determined to exhaust every advance in modern technology to elevate the literacy of the community. Ernest DiMattia has of course books and periodicals, but also films and computers and multicolored simultaneous translators — the Ferguson Library is the most concentrated aggregation of cultural hypodermics this side of the next world's fair.
The evening is not designed to elicit my views on Edward R. Murrow's views on Joe McCarthy, but the Stamford Advocate is a newspaper, and perhaps will look me in the face before the evening is over and say: Well. What would you have said, in March 1954, if the cameras had rolled and you were talking back to Edward R. Murrow?
If that happens, I'll probably say what is correct, namely that my own study of McCarthy ended with his activity in September 1953, that his fight with the Army, which was what the fracas was about in 1954 — which got him censured, and which loosed Edward R. Murrow — was something else, that McCarthy had thrown restraint to one side, that he was deep in booze in those days and did some flatly inexcusable things, for instance his attack on General Ralph Zwicker.
But, if pressed, I'd have recalled that the current movie makes a heroine out of Annie Lee Moss, the black code clerk allegedly mistaken by McCarthy for another Annie Lee Moss, who was indeed a member of the Communist Party. Never mind, what mattered in the current production was melodrama, and orderly thought bars chiasmic effects: McCarthy smeared the opposition/The opposition smeared McCarthy.
Murrow accomplished this mostly by camera manipulation. When he died, in 1965, I reflected on the point in National Review. Murrow had uniquely the skill to wrest the highest dramatic content out of any situation. There were the bad boys and the good boys; and he was the good boys' best boy on TV. But more than just that, he did develop a form, he and Fred Friendly, that hadn't been fully developed theretofore. It went like this: PAN ON FULL FACE OF SENATOR MCCARTHY. He is perspiring and weaving a little in front of a microphone, preparing to speak. No music. Total silence. Then the Senator lets out a long burp. SHIFT TO ED MURROW. "Ladies and gentlemen, this evening we'll take a look at Senator McCarthy . . ."
That half-hour on McCarthy was Murrow's most important show. All the obituary writers mentioned it, and the great courage it took to attack Senator McCarthy — which certainly indicated that this is a nation whose people are courageous, since everybody was doing it, or at least everybody who counts. Everybody moral. And Edward R. Murow was the most moral man on television, because he had the guts to show up Senator McCarthy for what he was.
The lonely demurral came from the television critic for The New Yorker. He made the point that there wasn't anybody in the world you couldn't demolish by doing to him what Murrow did to McCarthy. If there were five million feet of film on St. Francis of Assisi, you could probably find a shot of him running away naked from his father's house (he did), and Ed Murrow could prove he was an exhibitionist and a poseur (he affected to talk to the birds!).
I don't know what I'd have said on CBS, if cleared by management to come on. At this remove, one has only passing thoughts.
http://www.nationalreview.com/buckley/wfb200512061505.asp
It was never in thousands of theaters.
In that light, the documentary is considered a success. The guy who played Murrow is being considered for Best Actor and I have read where it is also being considered by some for Best Picture (that will never happen.)
Yes, I went to see it and while I did not agree with it, was nonetheless, enthralled with the portrayal of the 50s. Excellent stuff. No cussing. No gross out scenes....just good movie making. I'll take that any day.
It will no doubt lose to Bareback Mountain.
Unfortunately for Clooney, he'll be competing against Brokeback Mountain, which the Hollywood left will be going out of its way to prop up. Joaquin Phoenix will be the Best Actor frontrunner as he is the latest "biopic of a beloved tortured celebrity guy". No word yet on any last minute entries featuring the mentally handicapped, though.
"Annie Lee Moss, the black code clerk"
Moss was a member of the Communist party at least at one time. Moss acted dumb and was described as seemingly "illiterate." She wasn't, and was a code clerk for the army. She was a great actress playing off white bias about the abilities of black people. I haven't seen the movie but wouldn't be surprised if Clooney doesn't portray her in a fashion appealing to the interplay of liberal guilt and condescension.
A good movie would portray her away from the hearings, laughing at how she pulled a quick one on whitey. Give credit where credit is due.
It is not a documentary. It is not intended to be a documentary. It might have that "feel" but they are actors. It is even less of a documentary than what Michael Moore does.
You mean like "Fahrenheit 911?"
'It will no doubt lose to Bareback Mountain.'
Or, cLooney's other anti-american movie 'Syriana'.
Roger Ebert explained that was a brilliant technique because it indicated to the viewers that the producers could not find an evil enough person to portray McCarthy. Only evil could portray evil. I kid you not.
An interesting thing (at least to me) is that I saw it with my Dad who was a young adult at the time and who is very conservative still thinks McCarthy is bad and evil. When I tried to convince him that McCarthy had been proven correct, he thought I had too much giblet gravy at Thanksgiving. He said, "Everyone knows he was bad." The mainstream media will never admit the truth.
"I think conservatism and the country would have been much better off if he'd never existed."
But SOMEONE would have existed and THEY would have been attacked. The "cross to bear" was constructed by the left for the enemies of the left.
Remove the leftist BS from the McCarthy story and there is no "witch hunt".
His mission, coupled with the relentless beating and slander he was being subjected to by the media, drove him to drink.
LOL...though drinking them under the table might not have been a bad idea...:)
"But SOMEONE would have existed and THEY would have been attacked. The "cross to bear" was constructed by the left for the enemies of the left."
"...he'll probably get an oscar."
Typical Hollywood. The movies that nobody likes get the awards, while those we do like get short shrift. They should take oscar voting away from the hollywood types and turn it over to the public. Let us go online or call an 800 # to register our votes.
If they did that, I might start watching the Oscars again. I haven't been able to stomach them in years. Besides, they now have so many different awards ceremonies with which to congratulate themselves, it's all moot anyhwow. If you don't win an Oscar, you are pretty much garanteed to win one of the many "runner-up" awards.
Their attack put an end to the exposure of prominent Communists.
Best defense is a good offense.
Stalin must have been proud of his useful idiots.
They always want some whipping boy to hound out of office. Whether it is Richard Nixon over Alger Hiss, Newt Gingrich over the Contract With America, George HW Bush over Ronald Reagan ("end 12 years of Reagan-Bush), Rove, DeLay, Frist, Libby, Cheney, Bush....
They can't win at the polls so their accomplish it by smear.
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