Good Night And Good Riddance
I just finished watching George Clooney's "Good Night and Good Luck". I refrained from catching it in the theaters, so admittedly, most people have either seen it or not by this point. As I've noted many times in the past, though, I like history and I really hate distortions or twistings of history.
The story in Good Night and Good Luck for those who completely ignored its release is one of the CBS news crew operating around Edward R. Murrow on the "See it Now" show in the early 50's and Murrow's assault on Senator Joe McCarthy. It covers events from the perspective of Murrow, the legendary Fred Friendly and various members of the staff and management. One of the movie's selling points was that Clooney used only archival footage of Joe McCarthy, obstensibly so that he could not be seen as distorting the facts. I also remember seeing interviews with Clooney where he boasted that all facts in the movie had been "double and triple checked" because he knew right-wingers would attack him and his movie and he wanted to leave them no legitimate ground to stand on.
The movie falls into the category of "factually accurate" but historically inaccurate. More to the point, the movie definitely tells the story of Murrow vs. McCarthy from its own point of view. This is more ironic in that the character of Murrow in the movie argues that such things cannot be taken from a balanced perspective, but that one side inevitably will have more weight and merit. It's quite clear from Clooney's rendition that he believed Murrow's argument had more merit.
But what did the movie actually show? What did it correct? Clooney noted again in interviews that he was trying to prevent revisionist historians from diminishing the "terror" of the day, all of course caused by McCarthy. Most probably, he was referring to Ann Coulter in her book, Treason and one or two others who have tried to vindicate McCarthy in light of recent historical archive releases like the Venona Cables or the full transcripts of the closed-session Senate hearings. This much could be said. This movie completely ignores that either one of those revelations would have made any difference in the actual historical account.
Instead, we are treated to the white-washed version that the winners in that part of history, the Left, wrote into the textbooks. The story focuses on small portions of the bigger story of the era, like an Air Force Reserve Lieutenant drummed out because he had relatives with likely ties to the communists. Although that was an Air Force issue, this is shown as the catalyst for why Murrow went after McCarthy. It had nothing to do with McCarthy, but that usually doesn't bother proponents of Murrow's like Clooney. It shows the "terror" of the era as if all evil flows from one Senator from the MidWest.
There were attempts to discredit McCarthy with his statement regarding the ACLU as a listed entity that supported communism. Murrow correctly pointed out that at that particular time the ACLU was not listed, but it had been in the 30's (and just as easily could be today). It's founders were lovers of all things Marxist and a significant portion of the organization was dedicated to communist causes before a "purge" of its leadership before 1940. This is one of those factual but missing the bigger picture moments.
A lot of focus is also given to the story of Annie Lee Moss, the figure the Left has enshrined as the straw that broke McCarthy's back. This almost comic figure played the media and several Democrats on the Senate committee who were more than willing to believe her "play dumb" defense if it meant they might score a hit against McCarthy. First there was the "you've got the wrong guy" defense and the "I don't know nothin' bout birthin' no Marxist revolutions" twist as well. We see those hinted at very thoroughly in "Good Night" without the benefit of the revelation that she was snowing the Committee. Moss was a communist and had obtained a position in code transmitting in the Pentagon under dubious circumstances.
But the question no one seems to want to ask, and certainly this movie is no exception, is were there really communist infiltrators in the federal government and were they out to do the U.S. harm? The answer is a resounding yes to both, which we now know thanks to the fall of the Soviet Union. We know from Soviet defectors, Venona, the declassified hearings and even the KGB's own opened records that the U.S.S.R. had massively infiltrated the federal government, with at least the benign acceptance or neglect of FDR, Truman and possibly Eisenhower. We also know that their intentions in doing so were to undermine the one obstacle to Stalin's plans of world domination, the United States. They did so masterfully for years. Eastern Europe, China, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Angola, the list goes on and on.
Because we never fully acknowledged that pivotal part of our history, that the U.S.S.R., even when obstensibly our ally in WWII, was dedicated towards removing the U.S. as a threat and to exporting communist revolutions all over the globe, communism-lite in the form of little socialist governments is spreading in South America. Europe is crippled with its own creeping nanny-state socialism, the United States flirts with it, through our universities and government as if professors, Supreme Court Justices, Congressmen and the President seem somehow to magically know just how much socialism will work without wrecking the country, and the Middle East still writhes in an odd concoction of relic fascism and communist influence mixed with a resurgent fundamentalism.
That's stepping out on a huge limb, but bear with me on this one. America has a lot of skeletons in the proverbial closet. History is rife with missteps, failures and missed chances that might have changed the state of our nation and our world. What if the Battle of Trenton failed? What if Lincoln has let the southern states peaceably secede? What if the U.S. hadn't entered the First World War? What if Stalin was treated the same as Hitler by FDR and subsequently our history books? By coddling him and his failed experiment, by sticking our head in the sand when we should have been looking under the bed, did we prolong needless suffering in the world? Maybe, maybe not.
Just as Clooney wants to fight the "revisionists" in this case, though, I want to fight back. Sometimes history needs to be questioned. Sometimes the questions remain there for us to answer them. Nothing is written in stone, especially not history. Finding the truth is what the study of that noble idea is all about and if new facts are found along the way, they should be explored and not shunned. Clooney does the country a disservice with this movie, treating it as the true history of a noble crusade when it really was a puff piece of people patting themselves on the back for contributing to the downfall of someone, regardless of his methods, trying to save the country from its own folly. Self-prescribed victims who turned on the alleged victimizers and then wrote the history as if the Red Scare was no different than the Stalinist purges of the kulaks now get a boost from a man who apparently just read his own one side to the story and assumed it was the correct one. That doesn't do anyone any favors, not even him.
In short, if you want to see possibly how Murrow and his ilk felt at the time, assuming they were all as noble and innocent as the movie makes out, Good Night and Good Luck is a nice piece of the past, albeit from a very limited viewpoint. You might enjoy it more than you would if you take it as it was intended, an attempt to use the Left's "golden moment" to cast further aspursions on the modern right.
I just finished watching George Clooney's "Good Night and Good Luck". I refrained from catching it in the theaters, so admittedly, most people have either seen it or not by this point. As I've noted many times in the past, though, I like history and I really hate distortions or twistings of history.
The story in Good Night and Good Luck for those who completely ignored its release is one of the CBS news crew operating around Edward R. Murrow on the "See it Now" show in the early 50's and Murrow's assault on Senator Joe McCarthy. It covers events from the perspective of Murrow, the legendary Fred Friendly and various members of the staff and management. One of the movie's selling points was that Clooney used only archival footage of Joe McCarthy, obstensibly so that he could not be seen as distorting the facts. I also remember seeing interviews with Clooney where he boasted that all facts in the movie had been "double and triple checked" because he knew right-wingers would attack him and his movie and he wanted to leave them no legitimate ground to stand on.
The movie falls into the category of "factually accurate" but historically inaccurate. More to the point, the movie definitely tells the story of Murrow vs. McCarthy from its own point of view. This is more ironic in that the character of Murrow in the movie argues that such things cannot be taken from a balanced perspective, but that one side inevitably will have more weight and merit. It's quite clear from Clooney's rendition that he believed Murrow's argument had more merit.
But what did the movie actually show? What did it correct? Clooney noted again in interviews that he was trying to prevent revisionist historians from diminishing the "terror" of the day, all of course caused by McCarthy. Most probably, he was referring to Ann Coulter in her book, Treason and one or two others who have tried to vindicate McCarthy in light of recent historical archive releases like the Venona Cables or the full transcripts of the closed-session Senate hearings. This much could be said. This movie completely ignores that either one of those revelations would have made any difference in the actual historical account.
Instead, we are treated to the white-washed version that the winners in that part of history, the Left, wrote into the textbooks. The story focuses on small portions of the bigger story of the era, like an Air Force Reserve Lieutenant drummed out because he had relatives with likely ties to the communists. Although that was an Air Force issue, this is shown as the catalyst for why Murrow went after McCarthy. It had nothing to do with McCarthy, but that usually doesn't bother proponents of Murrow's like Clooney. It shows the "terror" of the era as if all evil flows from one Senator from the MidWest.
There were attempts to discredit McCarthy with his statement regarding the ACLU as a listed entity that supported communism. Murrow correctly pointed out that at that particular time the ACLU was not listed, but it had been in the 30's (and just as easily could be today). It's founders were lovers of all things Marxist and a significant portion of the organization was dedicated to communist causes before a "purge" of its leadership before 1940. This is one of those factual but missing the bigger picture moments.
A lot of focus is also given to the story of Annie Lee Moss, the figure the Left has enshrined as the straw that broke McCarthy's back. This almost comic figure played the media and several Democrats on the Senate committee who were more than willing to believe her "play dumb" defense if it meant they might score a hit against McCarthy. First there was the "you've got the wrong guy" defense and the "I don't know nothin' bout birthin' no Marxist revolutions" twist as well. We see those hinted at very thoroughly in "Good Night" without the benefit of the revelation that she was snowing the Committee. Moss was a communist and had obtained a position in code transmitting in the Pentagon under dubious circumstances.
But the question no one seems to want to ask, and certainly this movie is no exception, is were there really communist infiltrators in the federal government and were they out to do the U.S. harm? The answer is a resounding yes to both, which we now know thanks to the fall of the Soviet Union. We know from Soviet defectors, Venona, the declassified hearings and even the KGB's own opened records that the U.S.S.R. had massively infiltrated the federal government, with at least the benign acceptance or neglect of FDR, Truman and possibly Eisenhower. We also know that their intentions in doing so were to undermine the one obstacle to Stalin's plans of world domination, the United States. They did so masterfully for years. Eastern Europe, China, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Angola, the list goes on and on.
Because we never fully acknowledged that pivotal part of our history, that the U.S.S.R., even when obstensibly our ally in WWII, was dedicated towards removing the U.S. as a threat and to exporting communist revolutions all over the globe, communism-lite in the form of little socialist governments is spreading in South America. Europe is crippled with its own creeping nanny-state socialism, the United States flirts with it, through our universities and government as if professors, Supreme Court Justices, Congressmen and the President seem somehow to magically know just how much socialism will work without wrecking the country, and the Middle East still writhes in an odd concoction of relic fascism and communist influence mixed with a resurgent fundamentalism.
That's stepping out on a huge limb, but bear with me on this one. America has a lot of skeletons in the proverbial closet. History is rife with missteps, failures and missed chances that might have changed the state of our nation and our world. What if the Battle of Trenton failed? What if Lincoln has let the southern states peaceably secede? What if the U.S. hadn't entered the First World War? What if Stalin was treated the same as Hitler by FDR and subsequently our history books? By coddling him and his failed experiment, by sticking our head in the sand when we should have been looking under the bed, did we prolong needless suffering in the world? Maybe, maybe not.
Just as Clooney wants to fight the "revisionists" in this case, though, I want to fight back. Sometimes history needs to be questioned. Sometimes the questions remain there for us to answer them. Nothing is written in stone, especially not history. Finding the truth is what the study of that noble idea is all about and if new facts are found along the way, they should be explored and not shunned. Clooney does the country a disservice with this movie, treating it as the true history of a noble crusade when it really was a puff piece of people patting themselves on the back for contributing to the downfall of someone, regardless of his methods, trying to save the country from its own folly. Self-prescribed victims who turned on the alleged victimizers and then wrote the history as if the Red Scare was no different than the Stalinist purges of the kulaks now get a boost from a man who apparently just read his own one side to the story and assumed it was the correct one. That doesn't do anyone any favors, not even him.
In short, if you want to see possibly how Murrow and his ilk felt at the time, assuming they were all as noble and innocent as the movie makes out, Good Night and Good Luck is a nice piece of the past, albeit from a very limited viewpoint. You might enjoy it more than you would if you take it as it was intended, an attempt to use the Left's "golden moment" to cast further aspursions on the modern right.
posted by Rob Beck | 8:20 PM
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