Thursday, February 09, 2006

Good Night, and Good Luck


I just returned from seeing Good Night, and Good Luck and I urge you and everyone you know to see this film. It was astonishing to watch a film about the evils of McCarthyism and see how similar it is to the reactionary politics of today's presidency. Not only is this a beautiful black and white film with superb acting, it's an important film. The entire transcript from Edward Murrow's attack on McCarthy can be viewed here.

"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men -- not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.....We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I just watched this movie 1 hour ago.

I didn't really get what the fuss was all about. I agree that the acting was good, but the whole McCarthy thing just didn't seem like that big a deal. It felt a bit like I was watching a lecture on patriotism. The everyone smoking thing was pretty interesting/funny. Overall, it was a little boring.

I came here from metafilter to look at the fishy picture but then I saw you had a post about good night and good luck so I couldn't resist posting.