LATENT INTENDED CONSEQUENCES
The recently released George Clooney film, "Good Night, and Good Luck," is significant not so much for its good acting, directing, editing and historical accuracy, but for the ignoring of sovereign reality. The story is aboutthe heroic stand Edward R. Murrow and CBS news took to challenge the abuse of power of U.S. Senator Joseph R.McCarthy's hunt for communist in America (circa 1954).
Murrow, one of the early TV news anchors, hosted a half hour program where he reported the news of the day. But, healso slanted his reporting with editorial commentary - at least where it related to actions of the Senator's committee. Though Murrow was told by the head of CBS, "we report the news, not make it," his assault on McCarthy,nonetheless, was condoned at the highest levels. And, even though President Eisenhower was shown delivering apatriotic speach at the end of the movie, the cold fact remains that he and his administration were silent duringMcCarthy's reign. As a result of Murrow's stand, others in the news media jumped on his bandwagon and the Junior Senator from Wisconsin was eventually silenced. Is this is an example of two wrongs making a right?
Though today's news anchors are not as blatant as Murrow was they are out of the same mold, especially CBS and ABC. These networks have mastered imparting a subtle spin on subjects they wish to twist. I have some expertise in firearms and thus can easily pick out the negative slant these networks put on that subject every time they address it. This leads me to wonder what other "news" are they tainting? (at least, going in, we know CCN is as liberal as Fox is conservative).
A few questions come to mind: What if there had never been a Joseph McCarthy? Sans his witch hunt, what impact would unchecked proliferation of communist influence on our government, news and film making entities had on America? Would we have won the Cold War? If not for McCarthy, would the Communist Party be a powerful political force and would they be a major factor, if not in control of America today? I'm not condoning or condemning McCarthy's tactics, because on very rare and momentous occasions the ends sometimes might justify the means.
Some say that President George W. Bush abused his powers by ignoring, spinning and twisting certain facts to justify attacking and occupying Iraq. Maybe. But, the Congress went along with him and none have called for his impeachment or championed an official reversal of policy. Perhaps they believe GWB's simple statement, "We can fight them here, or we can fight them on their shores." It's clear, so far, that we have duped the Islamic fundamentalist into expending all of their resources to engage our trained and equipped troops into fighting over there rather than over here.
Today's questions: Would we be fighting an Islamic fundamentalist insurgency on this continent had GWB not attacked Iraq? Was there a conspiracy - a case of sovereign reality - by the FBI, CIA, military intelligence, Congress and the President to ignore and cover up the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Surely, without the WMD ploy the American people, not to mention world opinion, would never have stood for invading a country that was not a real and direct threat to us. Especially if the sole purpose of engaging the enemy any place other than our shores was at the cost of thousands of innocent Iraqis. We will never know if McCarthy's vendetta kept America free of Communist control, just like we may never know if Bush's snookering the enemy saved more American lives than it cost . . . or if FDR knew of Pearl Harbor in advance.
© 2005 Chuck Klein (Posted 27 October 2005)