The point was that the whole entire government was petrified of communism, probably because of the outlandish behavior and statements from men like Cohn and McCarthy and others. It showed it did not take any proof to adjudge someone to be a communist.

The point of the Clooney movie wasn’t to show the victims of McCarthy. But it did show two victims-Murrow and Hollenbeck.

I encourage you to study history, there are hundreds of victims, directly and indirectly victims because of McCarthy. If you tell me that you cannot find one, I will get back on her and provide names and proof of these victims.

Clooney—who directed and helped write the movie—doesn’t show a single person who was done in by the senator’s supposedly reckless charges. Not one!

Indeed, the Clooney film—but just barely—acknowledges this far from insignificant fact, yet it suggests that the “ambience” of McCarthy’s Red hunting was somehow responsible. Clooney, it seems, couldn’t discover a single bona fide McCarthy victim, so the closest he gets to it is a “victim” McCarthy had nothing to do with!

http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=9669

Most of my heroes are dead. Sen. Joe McCarthy was one of them. there have probably been more leftist lies about this great patriot than any other American figure in our history.

I did radio and TV talk shows for several years and have had some 20 years experience as a geo-political analyst. My associates and contacts ranged from Defected KGB to CIA station chiefs to some of our top decorated vets – and beyond.

According to my former wife – there are more Marxists( sympathizers etc) in America today than there are in her native Russia. But then I have known that for decades.

One of the bits of fun I had on the air was to start a ‘caller dialogue’ by stating that I wanted to talk about the ” late great Senator Joseph McCarthy”

The ‘lights on the board would light up all the way across! Then the fun started. Some leftist dirt bag would predictably call in and was fuming about how I could say that. ( I’m a former Spec Ops commander from the 60s and these types of anti-American scum killed a lot of my comrades so I enjoyed this small ‘payback’)

I would start the trap by saying in an innocent disappointed tone; ” well I take it that you don’t approve of the late great Sen. McCarthy?” Then he would predictably rant and rave about ‘red baiting’ ( a fishing term?) or “witch hunts’ – ( my God – do you children still believe in make believe witches?).

Now I put out the bait. ” Well , so what is it that you dislike about the great Sen. McCarthy?” ANS. ” He ruined the lives of lots of innocent people!”

Now I set the hook. ” well – can you name one/” ans. “ONE!! – hell – there were lots of them!” ” OK – I see what you mean. Tell you what I’ll do – I’ll give you a crisp $ 100 bill for EVERY name you can provide me with”. Ans.” One! – heck- there are lots of them!”.

“OK – I’ll make it easy on you – just give me one name – BUT it has to be an American that has NEVER been a stinking Communist or has NEVER EVER associated himself with these scum that want to destroy us – by their OWN word. Now when I say RUINED – that does NOT mean someone got their feelings hurt. It means this – and listen carefully.

“It means that the person that was accused of this horrible treason – AND SIR: THAT IS THE MOST DESPICKABLE KIND OF TREASON – BY DEFINITION – THAT AN AMERICAN CAN COMMIT AGAINST HIS COUNTRY – that person has had his career – and life ruined by charges that had no basis in TRUTH at all. Supply me with a name – AND EMPIRICAL or documented evidence as to his or her innocence. Got your money right here ready for you to donate to your favorite America hating cause – OK?”

The guy usually goes on ranting and raving and maybe even comes up with one of those bogus names who had records that made Benedict Arnold look like Paul Revere! If he did that – I would promptly come back with time dates and statements by credible agencies of their UNQUESTIONABLE guilt. Having done this stuff professionally for so long – it was like the proverbial shooting fish in the barrel.

I would tell him – sorry – no cigar and ask for another choice. By now he had completely lost it and was incoherently swearing and railing against the fact that I had just made a fool out of him. Then I would ‘twist the knife” and tell him that he was welcome to call back any time and would not be cut off and try again. Of course it never happened.

In fact – I made it a point to taunt these perfidious reprobates by offering the same prize every time I was on the show. In the remaining YEARS that I was on WFLA in Tampa with my host Tedd Webb – nobody ever claimed the reward.

Why? – simple. The point I was trying to make to the other 99.9% of the listening audience, was that this whole bash McCarty thing was AND IS a big fabricated lie and the caller AND his ilk were NOT the kind of people that you would want your daughter to bring home to meet the parents! The left is very good at this kind of disinformation and since they cannot exist in the light of the truth ( they would be clubbed in the streets) – they MUST pervert the truth with a bigger lie!.

McCarthy was 100% on track. MY country – the one I had risked my life in uniform to protect SPECIFICALLY against our COMMUNIST enemies – was EATEN UP WITH MARXISTS AND THEIR FELLOW TRAVELERS – ALL THE WAY UP TO THE HIGHEST LEVEL OF GOVT!

SO lets get it right class — OK? Murrow was the BAD guy and McCarthy was the good guy. Remember – God does NOT like lies or liars. He said so.

And by the way – you treasonous maggot infested leftist pukes out there. THE OFFER STILL STANDS! The smear is a LIE . The movie is a LIE and the people who perpetrate these lies are liars as well. That includes any of the Hollywood scum who in any way have attempted to continue or have participated in this disgrace. ANY PLACE – ANY TIME comrades

MAKE MY DAY!

McCarthy was right. Sort of. In a bass-ackwards kind of way. I mean, there really were communist agents in the federal government.

On the other hand, “Tail-gunner Joe” was, in fact, a drunk and a buffoon; but one with actual political power. Hell, he even had Eisenhower treed at one point.

On the gripping hand, recall that Hitler was “right” about the communist challenge in Germany at the time, and he was once seen as a buffoon as well.

Food for thought.

I disagree with (one of) Jeff’s premises, in that CBS News really was (at one point) the “Tiffany network,” with 60 Minutes its proud flagship.

What really killed the news -or was at least the final straw- was the commercialization of the news. Not in the sense of pandering to special interests, but in the sense that more readers (hence more income…) became the primary goal, instead of reporting what happened, in context.

I, myself, trust the “overpowering platform” far less than does Mr. Jarvis. In fact, he presents a truly horrific example: Cronkite’s condemnation of the Vietnam war during the Tet Offensive. At that point, Cronkite went from reporter to participant. What’s worse is that he got the story completely wrong. Tet was a terrible disaster for Viet Cong and North Vietnam, and the offensive had strong parallels to the Ardennes Offensive (Battle of the Bulge) of December 1944.

Instead what we got was the birth of “advocate journalism,” wherein the reporter is an actor, not an observer.

Cronkite serves as a good example here. I used to have a tremendous respect for him, considering his WW2 experience. Most folks these days don’t know that “Walter” flew several missions in B-17s over Europe as a reporter in 1944. This was not something designed to reduce your life-insurance premiums… He was a brave man.

But consider his work at the time: did he use his reporting as a way to influence the news? Did he deliver commentary about how well or poorly the administration was doing?

Or did he just report what happened?

That’s the difference between the 1944 “Walter” and the 1968 version. The latter (by this time a talking head) felt no compunctions about telling the viewing public what he thought was going on. What made this so powerful was the degree of trust felt for him across America.

My analysis is that his abuse of this trust was the first slip into the abyss which eventually devoured Dan Rather; someone else who used to be considered a trustworthy reporter, from his time on the original 60 Minutes.

Perhaps it was a combination of commercilization and arrogance which fatally damaged the MSM; the need to put the most sensational story on the air, and the self-assurance that the participants were still journalists, and not erzatz entertainers.

Yeah, no thanks to scumbuckets like McCarthy who would turn us into a looking-glass version of the Soviet Union, where the slightest innuendo could ruin your career and perhaps your life.

And no thanks to those who based on slightest innuendo are trying to ruin the careers of Tom DeLay and Karl Rove. Normal politics in this country is being criminalized.

The cooked up Plame “scandal” in particular should send chills down the spine of every freedom loving citizen. The real story here is that a CIA operative and her proven-liar husband can conduct a free-lance operation to undermine the national policy of our elected President. Plame and Wilson used all the tools of the media to make proven false charges against the administration, and the administration cannot respond to these charges without fear of political persecution.

The end result of the Plame “scandal” will be to entrench the CIA as a shadow government with the KGB like power to make or break national policy and democratically elected administrations with legally protected impugnity. A “looking-glass” Soviet Union indeed. It looks to me that the Soviets are getting the last laugh as the left continues to drive us down the Road to Serfdom.

Instead, it starts off with in inane, one-dimensional, simplistic “McCarthy was right” and what came out of that.

McCarthyISM (his demagoguery and witch hunting) was wrong. But there was a kernel of truth behind McCarthy. There was in fact Communist infiltration in America, including within the government. The “simplistic” argument is not that McCarthy was right. On the contrary, the truly simplistic argument is that just because McCarthyISM was wrong, so too was McCarthy.

The lesson that we fail to learn from McCarthy is if there is a REAL problem, it better get addressed by serious, rational people. If ethical people fail to address a real problem, then demagogues will rise to the occasion. It wasn’t the anti-Communists that gave rise to McCarthy. It was the apologists for Communism on the left who made a serious and rational approach to dealing with Communist infiltration politically impossible.

And so we see history repeating itself today. Apologists for Islamic terrorism on the left with their simplistic, mindless, and, yes, McCarthyistic charges of racism and xenophobia levelled at anybody who dares raise legitmate criticism of Islam and Islamic penetration of American society are laying the groundwork for the next McCarthy.

Just one anecdote, but do you think that maybe the people of Red House, Virginia might one day find themselves receptive to the appeals of a demagogue?

http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2005/10/jamaat-ul-fuqra-in-virginia-part-1.html

P.S. Oliver is an idiot.

We saw the same problem when performers were making anti-war statements and some people stopped buying tickets. They raised a ruckus about “McCarthyism” and censorship. Their charges did not erally stick because it was not the government.

They don’t seem to have the same problem with other modern day demogages, government or not, when they are not attacking media outlets.

After he died, I found the transcript he’d kept of the FBI interview. It was, and is, chilling to read. They didn’t ask him much, really, about what he’d joined or belonged to. Most of the interview was “Do you know person X?” “Have you ever discussed politics with person X?” “What can you tell me about person X?” And person Y, and person Z, and person A…. It seems, reading it, that the operative phrase was “guilt by association”, and yes, instilling fear about using your first amendment rights.

Eventually that fear leads to paranoia, and can lead to a complete breakdown. I saw it in my own family.

So Murrow is a hero to me, no matter his flaws. He stood up for the people with no pulpit, and he stopped the harrassment. I don’t know the historical accuracy of the film, and it doesn’t much matter. What matters is that, eventually, my parents started to breathe easier, and the cloud of suspicion and paranoia dissipated.

And that’s whats important to a five and six year old kid.

McCarthy was a drunken buffoon, who never actually uncovered a single real communist, who accused countless innocent people of treason, and who all in all did more to discredit the noble cause of anti-communism than he did to help it. He was, indeed, the worst of America.

McCarthy seems to have been an opportunistic buffoon who used a serious issue badly. But the *worst* of America? Ahead of *segregationists*? Ahead of the Ku Klux Klan? Ahead of the idiots behind the Oklahoma City bombing? Ted Bundy? Charles Manson?

Sorry, but this is only the “worst” of America to white liberals because it offends more leftist inclinations. White liberal America simply does not harbor the same degree of outrage over modern blacklisting in academia and Hollywood today. The left never complains about blacklisting that targets other groups. In fact, Kerry’s old saw about “outsourcing” work was a blacklisting appeal of sorts, albeit evil fereigners takin’ away ‘murican jobs!

I would also revisit the internment of American Japanese. It’s occurred to me since earlier that there is also the distinction that Hollywood blacklisting was actually the practice of the Hollywood bosses, who were also anti-communist, even if they were hyped up by government inquisitions. Internment, on the other hand, was an atrocity actually officially committed by the government.

Some of you may be (and Jeff certainly is) irritated at the bold “McCarthy was right” statements, but by countering with an extremely hyperbolized history, you risk being no better yourselves.

And back to Stephen’s point… Did McCarthy “discredit the noble cause of anti-communism”? Did he really? If so, why are his modern critics so intent on demonizing him to the point of caricature? Why does communism continue to be discredited in the American political system, despite the existence of communist political parties within failed European socialist-democratic countries? Why is it that leftists always complain on internet forums that failed socialist states don’t count because “they’re not done right”, meaning that more complete totalitarian control is required to pull off a pure and perfect communist state?

Clooney certainly didn’t make a film about how McCarthy screwed up the noble cause of “going after commies”. He produced the standard fare: OMFG there’s never been a darker time in history than McCarthyism, not even the Spanish Inquisition!!!

Jeff especially should be sensitive to this if he wants the real story to be carried on, and for the right lessons to be learned. The overblown story presented by Clooney and the left is simply not credible to succeeding generations.

I’ve watched quite a few press conferences and don’t routinely hear the kind of stupidity you seem to find. Sure, there are dumb questions now and again, but no big deal. Sometimes when you’re a reporter you have to ask dumb questions just to get people on the record.

As for the arrogance issue, I don’t see how anybody who writes daily for the public — whether blogger or journalist — can get by without a certain amount of arrogance. Whenever I start feeling humble, I have to step away from the keyboard. Arrogance keeps me typing.

“Before the era of Vietnam and Watergate, the media’s neglect of “kernels of truth” in favor of salaciousness and rumor-mongering was somehow more tolerable because it was at least not obscured by a veneer of sanctimoniousness. Journalists have always been an arrogant breed. Bert Andrews of The New York Herald-Tribune, who worked with me on the Alger Hiss case, once told me that the problem with some of his colleagues who covered the State Department was that “instead of writing about the Secretary of State, they write as if they were the Secretary of State.”

A bygone era’s ink-stained wretches, as depicted in the classic film The Front Page – amiable, scandal-mongering slobs sitting around the courthouse pressroom playing cards and waiting for the next hanging – have become our era’s self-certified saviors of the republic. A productive evening spent peering through a politician’s bedroom window can be the key to a prestigious editorship and even someday a shot at the Chair in the Media and Public Responsibility at any number of universities.

The result of the media’s appointing themselves as a de facto branch of government, a sort of non-taxpayer-supported team of surrogate special prosecutors, is that they have become even more immune to criticism than ever before, even less willing to admit their errors and excesses. And that will inevitably hurt a profession whose only restraint is what it manages to impose upon itself.

The media would not have physicians certify themselves, politicians investigate themselves, or even auto mechannics license themselves, but we are taught to expect that editors, reporters, and broadcasters have a unique capacity to ensure that they themselves act responsibly. The fact that they err just as often as other human beings but atone almost never cannot be good for their professional souls; and it has been demonstratably bad for their public standing.”

John: I’m reminded of a quasi job interview I once had with the late Jerry Nachman, who was then head of WNBC and, when he died (or when he turned ill), was head of MSNBC. Jerry was a, big man. No, he was fat. That matters because Jerry talked about the power of being on TV, especially local TV, and said: Look at me. And I have a hot wife. How? Local TV.

Really, Jeff, some of this may have gone off in dubious directions, but I have a hard time seeing why you even made the post if you object to any talk about Murrow’s own subject.

That was already developing in the Murrow era, but in no way was it as bad as it would be when transmission capablities became much better by the end of the 1960s and consultants and others found the style of broadcast personality who played best with the Nielsen families. It is possible that the rise of the Internet will serve as a check on the worst forms of style-above-substance, so that reporters will not only have to look good, but also get their stories right or risk being fact-checked to death by 1,000 websites, or we could end up in the future with the people with the best blow-dried hair becomming the most popular video bloggers.

I don’t buy that, David. A daily newspaper has the same short deadline as an evening news hour for verifying facts.

If you want to examine the sorry state of journalism today watch a Presidential news conference with the journalist herd in their most rabid mode of gotcha grandslaming interspersed with some of the most stupid questions imaginable. Stupid questions because a grasp of economics, history, science by far too many journalists is missing.

In fact, re-evaluate assembled journalists firing off questions at any event ranging from the DC sniper killing spree, the Iraq war military briefings, the NO hurricane, a local bank robbery. It’s breathtaking to watch their incoherence, biases and shear stupidity on display. So many of them are annoying idiots.

Maybe those assertions are backed by lots of solid reporting and maybe not. The listener has no way of knowing. Public trust of media has been in decline ever since.

Yes, I know, that’s a simplistic explanation. But trust me; I’ve got sources.