"No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices"

UNIVERSAL REMOTE / MANIFESTO

On September 23, George Clooney's second film as director will open the New York Film Festival. Good Night, and Good Luck is the story of legendary CBS broadcaster Edward R. Murrow and his public confrontation with Joseph McCarthy. It stars David Strathairn as Murrow, with Clooney, Robert Downey, Jr., Frank Langella, Jeff Daniels and Patricia Clarkson in supporting roles. It was even shot in black and white, amazing for a movie produced in this day and age. To quote the NYFF program:

With its expressive, fluid black-and-white cinematography, this film expertly captures the climate of fear and the downbeat, gray flannel contradictions of the era, while its theme of the news media's responsibility to speak truth to power could not be more pertinent today. We are brought deep inside the operation of a television network, as a tense political thriller about courage and patriotism unfolds: cat and mouse keep exchanging roles, and there are no absolute winners.

Edward R. Murrow was the most popular newsman of his day. He is beloved for being the first major public figure to stand up to McCarthy and his Red-baiting scare tactics. Up until that time, people in government and the press were afraid to say anything against McCarthy for fear of being smeared and ostracized. That all changed on March 9, 1954, when Murrow used his television show See It Now to expose McCarthy and his witch-hunt tactics by editing the Senator's own words together to revealed his hatred, fear-mongering and hypocracy. He and his producer Fred Friendly strung together clip after clip of McCarthy making false and outrageous accusations against anyone that stood between him and his goals. He famously accused the Democratic party of "twenty years of treason." Murrow let McCarthy hang himself with his own words. After that, dissent emerged and McCarthy was eventually censured by the Senate for his Red Scare exploits.

George Clooney, of course, is one of America's most famous liberal celebrities and to the annoyance of Conservatives everywhere, he doesn't keep his opinions to himself. Apparently, Murrow was a hero in the Clooney household. I always worry about filmmakers who make movies about people they hold too close to their hearts. There is the tendency for sentimentality that often ruins the film. I have a good feeling about Clooney, though. With his abundant producing credits and partnership with Steven Soderbergh, I feel confident he will avoid this trap with Good Night.

The film is sure to become something of a conversation starter among cable pundits with its recreation of the McCarthy Era, especially with so many parallels to our own time. And one of the most vocal critics of the film will surely be Ann Coulter. Starting with her book Treason, Coulter has been working very hard to restore the reputation of Joseph McCarthy in service to her argument that liberals (since Roosevelt) have been most responsible for undermining the foundation of American morality and politics. She calls McCarthism a "myth," and "the greatest Orwellian fraud of our times."

Anthony Fuentez, a Ph.D. candidate in American History at the University of Pennsylvania has written an extensive article countering Coulter's pro-McCarthy arguments. He quotes her most outrageous claim:

...here is the twist to Coulter's reappraisal of McCarthy: he never practiced McCarthyism. In other words, even if there were some individuals who uttered the kind of slander that came to be known as McCarthyism, McCarthy himself never engaged in it because he rarely directly called anyone a "Communist" and when he did, well, they actually were Communists. In short, Coulter argues that "[e]verything you think you know about McCarthy is a hegemonic lie."

Of course, this is preposterous. Coulter has gone on many television programs, most notably The O'Reilly Factor on July 22, 2003, and challenged the loofa-loving host to name a single person McCarthy falsely accused. Naturally when he couldn't specifically name anyone from 50 years ago that was slandered by the Senator, she used that as proof that the anti-McCarthy movement was a creation of the treasonous Left. Fuentez spends most of his article debunking Coulter's argument with a specificity that she will never find from the less informed pundits of cable news. I won't recount all the details here, but suffice it to say, its a slam dunk case.

Films that recreate history are very valuable in educating current audiences of the mistakes of the past. I know it's corny, but it is amazing how often history repeats itself. So when Good Night, and Good Luck is released in October, be prepared for a whitewash of history by Conservatives defending McCarthy's record. If I learned anything from the out-of-left-field bashing of Deep Throat, the Right loves to use the distance of history (and most people's ignorance of it) to completely remake historical persons and events as they see fit. They did it with Nixon, they did it with Reagan and now they're going to try and do it with McCarthy. But at least now you're prepared to dismiss any hogwash immediately without having to google the truth.