A timely and accurate commentary

Rating: 10/10 (11 April 2006)

Many will accuse George Clooney of using this film as a statement of his left wing views. But as a person who lived through the McCarthy era, I found the movie not only to be very faithful to the actual events, but startlingly timely in relation what is happening presently. While the movie is outstanding, it does not really bring out how bad McCarthyism was. It only hints at it and viewers unfamiliar with how radical the anti-communists were between the end of World War II and 1954 will never fully understand or appreciate the story this movie tells.
What happened during the McCarthy period is of particular interest to Hollywood because so many in the film industry suffered as a result of McCarthyism in that for many years they were barred from the industry as a result either of their association with communist movements or because out of principle they refused to rat on their fellow members.
It is not that I was a liberal or even a leftist during this period. I was a staunch anti-communist and a veteran of two combat tours in Korea. However, I was never afflicted with the paranoia that gripped America after WWII. I never saw American communists as a threat and I was well aware that many of those that associated with the communists prior to 1946, particularly during the Great Depression, did so out of a mistaken idealism, and that almost all disassociated themselves with communism after the Iron Curtain fell over Europe when the utter brutality of the Soviet regime and its failures became obvious. Almost all of those tarnished during the McCarthy era were very loyal Americans and it troubled me greatly at the time that the America I was fighting for could be so cruel to them.
This movie is about Edward R. Morrow, who had the guts to stand up against McCarthy, and until recently I have always been a fan of CBS News for showing the way. But in firing Dan Rather CBS yield to the extreme right and it has lost the way. It is no longer the network Morrow made it to be. Fox News and radical right talk show hosts now are the McCarthys of the 21st Century and people like Bill O'Reilly and his ilk are today's McCarthys. If you watch or listen to these McCarthy disciples they follow his precept of constantly attacking the press as "liberal" or "far left" just as McCarthy and his contemporaries attacked any newsman who dared challenge McCarthy. An example was depicted in the movie when CBS news analyst Don Hollenbeck committed suicide because of the attacks on him.