Free Republic

A couple of years ago, I debated a professor from American University named John Doolittle who, prompted by me, admitted that Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, R-Wisconsin (1908-1957), may have exposed some real communists working in the federal government. “But I saw the Edward R. Murrow broadcasts,” Dr. Doolittle added. “He was a bad man.”

     In a talk with the editor of the liberal Texas Monthly magazine who hosts a monthly interview show on Texas PBS stations, former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite uncorked some more liberal opinions. In praising the CBS-boosting, Joseph McCarthy-trashing movie Good Night and Good Luck, Cronkite liked how it reminded Americans that "one nut could endanger the democracy," was "locking up our democracy in a very dangerous way," and persecuting people who were "simply good Americans." When pressed to compare Vietnam and Iraq, Cronkite declared that the comparison was "almost exact."      On Thursday, the Poynter Institute's Romenesko Web site...

The liberal media have been screaming about federal departments or agencies sponsoring or buying news here and abroad. But they were strangely silent when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced on December 13 that the State Department would launch an Edward R. Murrow Journalism Program to influence foreign journalists. It seems that a federal program honoring an icon of the liberal media is considered an acceptable mix of journalism and state. The Rice announcement buys into the myth perpetuated by the George Clooney movie, "Good Night and Good Luck," that Murrow, a CBS journalist who became director of the U.S....

DANNY OCEAN DEFENDS THE RATHER NETWORK By Ann Coulter 33 minutes ago The most cosseted, self-indulgent, worthless people in the universe are worried their suffering has been downgraded. For 50 years Hollywood drama queens have churned out plays, movies, TV shows, books, poems, allegories, museum exhibits, personal testimonials, dioramas, interpretive dances, wood carvings, cave paintings, needlepoint wall hangings and scatological limericks about their victimization at the hands of a brute named Joe McCarthy. Schoolchildren who will learn nothing about George Washington, Thomas Edison or Paul Revere are forced to read chapter and verse about the black night of fascism (BNOF)...

A number of new films want you to stand up for a cause - though not necessarily in the movie theater. Following Michael Moore, who tried to galvanize voters by highlighting President Bush's perceived follies in his blockbuster Fahrenheit 9/11, activism movies have proven their clout at the box office, if not the voting booth. This fall, Hollywood is combining issues movies with campaigns designed to get people active. <snip> •Good Night, and Good Luck, in theaters, is George Clooney's McCarthyism drama about the media's power to expose government abuse of power. It also has a tie-in at participate.net; users...