Good Night and Good Luck
By Tom Elliott
Posted On August 21, 2006
Mercifully brief at ninety-three minutes, the 2005 film Good Night, and Good Luck is offered by Netflix with a sleeve synopsis that could’ve been written by confirmed Communist spy, Alger Hiss, who was convicted of perjury for lying about that minor detail in his resume. NETFLIX tells us that Edward R. Murrow and his CBS staff, supervised by Fred Friendly, “are determined to examine the lies and fear tactics perpetrated by [Senator Joseph] McCarthy during his communist witch hunts.” Lies? Fear tactics? Witch hunts? Please see below.
Starring George Clooney, also its co-writer and director, with David Strathairn and Robert Downey, Good Night was nominated for an Academy Award. For some queer reason, so too was Brokeback Mountain, because it “broke new ground”. In any event, both lost out to Crash, an act of sanity on the part of the Academy in a very politically correct year.
This is not to say Good Night is not a good film. I’d give it two and a half stars. Ok, maybe three, but barely, like a B- for its adaptation of fact into fiction. And, with Clooney-–who amazingly admitted at the Oscars that Hollywood was out of touch with America--directing and starring, we could hardly expect a fair and balanced account of poor Joe McCarthy. But at least get facts straight. Clooney (and Netflix) insist on using the misnomer of "House Un-American Activities Committee" (HUAC) rather than House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), a minor flub, true, but one that just happens to suggest the committee itself was Un-American.
McCarthy may have been over the top with some of his rhetoric but, in his defense, by then he was being pilloried in the media and he was being driven to his grave by the very same people he had outed, Communists and fellow travelers who had infiltrated American government, society, and Hollywood. He was even lampooned via the character of the witless “Simple J. Malarkey” in the comic strip Pogo (1953). But the Left was beating a long-dead senator when The Manchurian Candidate (1962) portrayed him as Senator Iselin, who determined the number of government spies was fifty-seven, based on a Heinz ketchup bottle.
By 2005, the truth--ignored by Good Night, and Good Luck-- was out and, sorry Pogo and sorry Hollywood, and sorry Mr. Clooney, methinks thou did protest too much. The Venona Papers program, thanks to Democratic Senator Pat Moynihan, was de-classified in 1995. A four-decades long, top secret cryptanalysis of Soviet espionage efforts in the United States and Britain, the Venona Papers cited some three-hundred Soviet spies-–by name--who had indeed wormed their way into American government, society, and entertainment. These included the executed Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, David Greenglass, and Alger Hiss, advisor to FDR at Yalta and one architect of the United Nations. They had all denied their guilt, of course. Then the revisionists stepped in, (as they have with the Rosenbergs). Largely funded by, of all people, The Alger Hiss Research and Publication Project of the Nation Institute, Hiss was “exonerated” and all but canonized post-mortem. I think even Judas denied his guilt at one point but, to date, no one has stepped up to allege he too was framed. Give it time.
Mr. Clooney makes no reference to any of the above, except for a passing comment on Alger Hiss. I wonder why? Granted, the events of Good Night took place fifty years before the release of the Venona files, but didn’t George get that 1995 Venona newsflash? Maybe not. It certainly didn’t get much press, for some reason. And, when you’re filming propaganda, this polemic against Senator McCarthy, when truth gets in the way of an Academy Award, hey, truth just gets in the way! One has to wonder though if four decades from now we’ll find out George Clooney and company were also liars.
Ooops, I forgot. Good Night and Good Luck failed to win an Oscar! Well, maybe when Clooney gets around to a movie about how Ronald Reagan tore down that wall, and did it without a nuclear cataclysm as Hollywood had predicted, he’ll score big time!
And... maybe not.
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