Hewitt is a little, no a lot, short on his American history re “McCarthyism” and “Hollywood Reds” in this piece.
First of all, McCarthy, who was a nasty, ambitious piece of work, had his information researched and documented before anyone appeared before him.
Read the masterful book by my late friend and journalism mentor M. Stanton Evans, “Blacklisted By History: The Untold Story of Sen. Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America’s Enemies”,(Three Rivers Press, 2007) about what the McCarthy investigations were really about.
I watched and at one time assisted Stan in understanding some government documents he had found because they were confusing to those who didn’t know how they were put together. (I had been working with those kinds of documents for years as part of my professional research on government operations).
Stan was a very good journalist so that is why I recommend his book.
As for Hollywood’s Communist writers, see my former editor, Alan Ryskind’s very interesting book, “Hollywood Traitors”, about 2014. It is the story of his late father (Morrie Ryskind, famed screenwriter - Marx Brothers, etc), and his leading efforts to drive out the Communist Party attempted takeover of the Screen Writers Guild and impart the “Party Line, pro-Stalin propaganda” in their scripts.
Ronald Reagan led the fight, along with John Wayne and other patriots, to stop the CPUSA from trying to take over the Screen ACTORS Guild, and were condemned unjustly by the Liberal Left for doing so. In the end, Reagan and his band of patriots were proven right, even if only by the admission of the “Hollywood Commissar” John Howard Lawson (CPUSA and Soviet agent), that Reagan and company were right in their assessment of the Communist/Soviet threat.[Also see the numerous House Committee on Un-American Activities Committee hearings and reports on communist penetration of Hollywood and “The Entertainment Industry” (the latter targeting New York).
IF Hugh Hewitt reads these two books, I am sure that he will do a reassessment of his statements in this column and come out with a much more realistic appraisal of McCarthy, Hollywood writers, etc for the periods under consideration.
After all, history is always amendable for revisions and updating due to new materials/information, except for the Reds who never want to correct their Stalinist/Ho Chi Minh/Maoist propaganda tomes.
I read "Blacklisted by History" a couple of years ago. Basically, all the guys who were accused of being communists by McCarthy defended themselves by saying "it's not true". That was it. The Tydings committee thanked them for their testimony. I have another book by Evans on the communists in FDR's administration (Stalin's Secret Agents), which I have yet to read.
About 10 or more years ago, I read an interesting book on Hollywood called "The Hollywood Party", which gave a good rundown of commie infestation of Hollywood. One thing I always find amusing is that whenever someone does a documentary about a blacklisted Hollywood writer, director or actor (Dalton Trumbo,Edward Dmytryk, et al), they always refer to the person as having been "accused of being a communist sympathizer". They never mention that the person in question was a card-carrying party member.