Posted 6:09 PM by Gene

A P-Ulitzer winning ad-blurbist trips, stumbles and falls over the truth:

In December 1948, the renowned broadcaster Edward R. Murrow went on the air to denounce the Red-hunters of the U.S. government who had hounded his friend and mentor Laurence Duggan, a former State Department employee, to suicide.

One can almost imagine the drama: The distinguished newsman, once the voice of blitzed London, hair slicked back, a nub of cigarette in his hand radiating vapors, face as rigid as an Old Testament elder, using that deep voice and crooning rhetoric to lambaste the puny minds of the House Un-American Activities Committee that had so besmirched Larry's good name that the man had leapt in despair from a 16th-floor window.

But you won't find it in "Good Night, and Good Luck," George Clooney's mounting of the dramatic confrontation between the estimable Murrow and the abrasive junior senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy.

One can readily see why. Duggan, as it turned out, was a Soviet spy, code-named "19," then "Frank" and finally "Prince."

He was, moreover, one of many Soviet spies embedded in the U.S. government at the time.

And:

Murrow -- he must have had a sense of humor somewhere, huh? -- seems more like John Brown than anyone else, a moral reformer who is never less than 100 percent buttoned down. He looks like the kind of guy who never goes to the bathroom. There's something actually rather dislikable and creepy about someone who takes himself this seriously, and Clooney never lets us see another Ed Murrow. Did the guy drink, joke, pinch bottoms, get angry, root for a ball team, love his kids, read the funnies? You won't find out here.

AND:

We see the reluctant Murrow interviewing Liberace on his other network show, the showbiz-themed "Person to Person," and he asks him if there's a Mrs. Liberace in the near future. Oh, no, replies the sequined pianist, I haven't met the right gal yet. Strathairn, off the television camera, gives a little pained look, as if he realizes that while he crusades for the truth on "See It Now," here on "Person to Person" he's just another liar and fraud, playing a hoax on the public.

And, in the end, a BITTER IRONY:

The movie might have been much more interesting if Clooney had made "Good Night, and Good Luck" -- the title is Murrow's famous sign-off, which probably isn't so famous anymore -- more like "Person to Person" and less like "See It N ow." [SIC]

This ad-blurbist indicts his FELLOW TRUTH TELLERS more than he knows.

We once revered Ed Murrow, and then we too found out about Person to Person, and his brief thought of running for the Senate, and his mistresses (like Marlene and Tallulah and Slick's favorite grandam Mrs. Harriman -- well, he was EXTREMELY handsome); what's more he inspired whole generations of mini-Murrows who inherited his pomposity but not the saving grace of his humility -- HHHHWWWALTER CRRRRONKITE, LORD KOPPEL OF ESPNCORP, THE EDWARD R. MURROW OF COMEDY. People are less likely to revere whatever's left of his memory when it's misused for two-left-footed propaganda.