Modern McCarthyism

Bryan and I recently read the article "Critics Cost Muslim Educator Her Dream School" (New York Times) and were both taken aback by the obvious unfairness of the whole issue. But what really caught my attention was the clear similarities I could see with McCarthyism as portrayed in March's movie of the month, Good Night and Good Luck.

I highly recommend that you read the full article (though it is long), but I'll try to summarize the parts that seem very reminiscent of McCarthy to me.

The focus of the article is a well-respected Muslim educator, Debbie Almontaser, who tried to create a multi-ethnic school that would teach Arabic alongside English. This woman was known for making an effort to reach out to other ethnicities and religions. Though the woman was Muslim, the school did not teach the Islamic religion any more than the NY state curriculum required. And her effort to create a school that taught another language alongside English was not unusual--there were already 67 schools nearby that did a similar thing with languages like Russian, Spanish, and Chinese.

But the simple fact that she was Muslim doomed this plan. Her opposition first started in the form of an op-ed article written by Daniel Pipes. Mr Pipes admitted that he knew little about the school at the time, but had nonetheless stated in the article that the Arabic language is directly associated with Islamic beliefs, and therefore the school would be used to indoctrinate students (calling the school a "madrassa"). This article galvanized others who were nervous about the possibilities of an "Arabic" school. And thus started the "Stop the Madrassa Coalition."

Here are a few excerpts from the article about Mr Pipes:

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, critics of radical Islam focused largely on terrorism, scrutinizing Muslim-American charities or asserting links between Muslim organizations and violent groups like Hamas. But as the authorities have stepped up the war on terror, those critics have shifted their gaze to a new frontier, what they describe as law-abiding Muslim-Americans who are imposing their religious values in the public domain.

Do we not all try to impose some of our values on the public domain? After all, aren't all of our laws more or less a common acceptance of a certain value (say, robbery and murder are bad)?

Mr. Pipes and others reel off a list of examples: Muslim cabdrivers in Minneapolis who have refused to take passengers carrying liquor; municipal pools and a gym at Harvard that have adopted female-only hours to accommodate Muslim women; candidates for office who are suspected of supporting political Islam; and banks that are offering financial products compliant with sharia, the Islamic code of law.

The danger, Mr. Pipes says, is that the United States stands to become another England or France, a place where Muslims are balkanized and ultimately threaten to impose sharia.

“It is hard to see how violence, how terrorism will lead to the implementation of sharia,” Mr. Pipes said. “It is much easier to see how, working through the system — the school system, the media, the religious organizations, the government, businesses and the like — you can promote radical Islam.”

Mr. Pipes refers to this new enemy as the “lawful Islamists.”

They are carrying out a “soft jihad,” said Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, a trustee of the City University of New York and a vocal opponent of the Khalil Gibran school.

And, continuing on with Mr Pipes,

Mr. Pipes is perhaps best known for Campus Watch, a national initiative he created to scrutinize Middle Eastern programs at colleges and universities. The drive has accused professors of, among other things, being soft on militant Islam and sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. It has stirred widespread controversy and, in some cases, may have undermined professors’ bids for tenure.

I found this very interesting and decided to include it because Bryan received his undergraduate degree in Near Eastern Studies--studying both the Arabic language as well as some of the political issues in the Middle East. The part I found the most sad was the "sympathetic to the Palestinian cause." Bryan's studies did in fact make him more sympathetic to the cause--not condoning the violence whatsoever, but realizing that the fault really did lay on both sides. Both sides have had to deal with terror and have been victimized. Bryan's classes informed and tried to help him understand. But would Mr Pipes have considered those classes offensive?

Mr. Pipes ... noted in an interview that monitors of radical Islam have increasingly trained their sights on nonviolent Muslim-Americans.

“They don’t throw bombs, but they create political cover for ideological support of this jihadi movement,” he said.

Mr. Pipes places Muslims in three categories, he said: those who are violent, those who are moderate and those in the middle. It is this middle group, he argued, that now poses the greatest threat to American values.

“Are these people who are not using violence but who are not fully enthusiastic about this country and its mores, its culture — are they on our side or are they on the other side?” he asked.

This is the particular part that caught my eye, especially the last quote. Frankly, I'm not fully "enthusiastic" about the current American culture--there are a lot of problems, first on my mind being pornography and general permissiveness. Does that mean that I am a threat? That I am trying to "take down America" and should be stopped?

The article then listed the tactics Mr Pipes used, including misquoting and/or selectively choosing to leave out important parts of quotes to twist the meaning:

He cited an article in which she was quoted as saying about 9/11, “I don’t recognize the people who committed the attacks as either Arabs or Muslims.” (As The Jewish Week later reported, Mr. Pipes left out the second half of the quote: “Those people who did it have stolen my identity as an Arab and have stolen my religion.”)

And then the article continues:

The Stop the Madrassa Coalition focused primarily on Ms. Almontaser as a strategy, said Mr. Pipes, because the group could get little information about the school itself. The coalition quickly publicized several discoveries. Ms. Almontaser had accepted an award from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a national Muslim organization that critics claim has ties to terrorist groups (an assertion the group adamantly denies). In news articles, Ms. Almontaser had been critical of American foreign policy and police tactics in fighting terrorism. She also gave $2,000 to Representative Cynthia A. McKinney of Georgia, whom Mr. Pipes and others have characterized as an Islamist sympathizer. (Ms. McKinney, who is no longer in office and did not respond to requests for an interview, has had a strong following among Arab-Americans in part because of her criticism of the Patriot Act.)

Critics of the Madrassa Coalition say its tactics are typical of campaigns singling out Muslims: They lean heavily on guilt by association. The nuances of the claims against Ms. Almontaser were lost as the controversy lit up the blogosphere, said Chip Berlet, a senior analyst at Political Research Associates, a liberal organization outside Boston that studies the political right. One Web site, MilitantIslamMonitor.org, displayed photographs of Ms. Almontaser wearing her hijab in different styles, suggesting that she had undergone a public relations makeover to “disguise” her “Islamist agenda.” The criticism of Ms. Almontaser and the school spread to newspapers, eliciting negative editorials in The Daily News and The New York Sun.

Reading this, I just kept having flashes back to scenes in Good Night and Good Luckof McCarthy accusing people--including Murrow himself--of being subversive because they were "associated" with a "subversive" group (though it wasn't rare that McCarthy himself had been the only one to label the group as such).

Once again, we have someone playing on other's fear and paranoia to promote their own purposes, someone twisting the truth, misquoting, and basically being given an open field to blast his opponents. Once again, we have someone who apparently isn't interested in researching facts beyond what is convenient and who exploits the ignorance of others. And, once again, we have someone doing a fairly good job of ruining the life of the targeted person, who is (as far as I can tell) completely innocent. I know this man does not currently have the national power that McCarthy did, but he is also not alone in his views and efforts--and, with the overall distrust our country has with Islam in general, I can see these attacks coming more often in the future unless something is done to stop them.

Anyone else find this eerily similar?

Endorsed by the Last Man on Earth

For anyone who's seen "I Am Legend" or its trailer, you may remember a brief shot of Will Smith's character Robert Neville browsing through the titles at his local video store.  He approaches the checkout clerk (a mannequin) with this movie:

"Mornin', Hank.  Midway through the 'G's."

 

Say, what's that movie he's holding?  Let's take a closer look.

 

Why, that's the back cover of . . .

 

It's nice to know that not even a global viral holocaust can destroy good movies.  And that Neville's got great taste in film.  Actually, the title of the movie may be a subtle in-joke referencing his personal situation every night:  "Good night, buddy.  And good luck.  Hope to see you again in the morning."

Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005)

As the film begins, we are introduced to a cavalcade of journalists, network and advertising executives gathered together in a smoky banquet room to honor one of their own - and, in a way, themselves. 

The year is 1958.  Senator Joseph McCarthy has been dead for one year.  His crusade to rid the country of supposed Communist elements is now four years past.  It is a triumph for broadcast journalism, for the Columbia Broadcasting System, and especially for reporter Edward R. Murrow, the banquet's honoree.

But amid all the schmoozing and laughter, the picture-taking and merriment, Murrow is nowhere to be found.

We first see him in silhouette, nervously smoking a cigarette, as he waits backstage for his cue to come to the lectern and deliver the keynote address.  After stepping to the microphone, he proceeds to deliver an unbridled castigation of his audience for the manner in which they are perverting the medium of television by using it to entertain rather than educate and inform.

Those first few minutes tell you everything you need to know about Edward R. Murrow.

George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck. (subsequently referred to as GNAGL) is a remarkably restrained telling of the Murrow versus McCarthy incident that played out in the living rooms of America during March-April 1954.  At barely 90 minutes in length, there's little time given to establish the cast of characters (Murrow, McCarthy, newsman Don Hollenbeck, producer Fred Friendly, CBS executive Bill Paley, et al.) or go in-depth into the origins and events of McCarthyism.  As a result, some viewers may feel a little lost.  But although Clooney works hard to get the period details right, his objective isn't biographical.  This is a movie first and foremost about ideas.

While campaigning to get the story of Milo Radulovich on the air, Murrow remarks in the film, "I simply cannot accept that there are, on every story, two equal and logical sides to an argument."  Murrow was a man of conscience who felt a moral duty to editorialize his news reports for the audience.  This led to his 30-minute See It Now special report criticizing McCarthy, which aired on March 9, 1954 (only a few minutes of which are depicted in GNAGL).

These days, reporters who editorialize the news are harshly criticized for doing so.  In fact, there is a strong movement in newspapers and broadcast news today to erect a "brick wall" between the editorial section and the rest of the day's reporting.  If McCarthy were alive today, most (if not all) broadcast journalists would elect to cover him by bringing him onto a show like "Meet the Press," together with analysts from both ends of the political spectrum, to question/harangue/defend him.

So, was Murrow's approach justified?  As Paley says toward the end of the film (and I'm paraphrasing here), it was just a matter of time before McCarthy imploded, and the press would be there to record it.  Couldn't Murrow have simply kept his opinions to himself, bided his time, then unloaded on McCarthy a few months later, after the infamous Army hearings?  To put it another way, when do the demands of journalism require a reporter to lay down his or her sense of objectivity and take a stand for what's "right"?  Or is there such a thing as "objective journalism"?  Discuss.

The movie gets so many things right: filming in black-and-white; the use of jazz music interspersed throughout the film to establish tone; the lack of fancy camera moves, quick cuts, or other distracting gimmicks to pull the audience out of the story.  Clooney was criticized by a few for his workman-like approach to the material, but I think his sparing style was the right choice.

I'd like to comment more particularly on two great elements of the film.  First, the decision to use actual archival footage of McCarthy rather than hire an actor to portray him.  The role of McCarthy would be an open invitation for an actor to really ham it up (think of Jack Nicholson's character in A Few Good Men, and imagine how he would deliver McCarthy's lines).  Instead, Clooney allows the viewer to see this flamboyant individual as the rest of the nation saw him in 1954, an intriguing combination of blustery indignation and self-aggrandizement that is at once both funny and frightening to behold.  For young people like myself who were not of his generation, it's amazing to comprehend that a man such as he (together with Roy Cohn) held this nation in terror's grip in the 1950s.

Second, David Strathairn's performance as Murrow is pitch perfect.  Strathairn has always been a solid character actor, and as Murrow he never once chews the scenery or mugs for the camera.  He plays Murrow as a man filled with fiery emotion but with the good sense to keep his composure.  Note the look of disgust on his face after he concludes his canned "Person to Person" segment with Liberace.  Or the way he allows Murrow's incisive invective to speak for itself:

We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable and complacent. We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.

The Academy Award for Best Actor in 2006 went to Philip Seymour Hoffman for his portrayal of Truman Capote (another reporter who became an active part of his own story, interestingly), but Strathairn was completely deserving of the nomination.

GNAGL is a tribute to Murrow's actions and ideas, but it is hardly a hagiography of the man.  Toward the end of the film Paley notes that McCarthy said Alger Hiss was convicted of treason, and that Murrow did not correct him on-air (it was actually perjury), perhaps so as not to be seen supporting a known Communist.  He has a good point.  Murrow was a man of ideals, but he also knew when to play his conscience card.  That scene in particular casts a slight shadow on Murrow's journalistic righteousness, but makes him more relatable as a human being.

Finally, one cannot escape the film's tie-in with today's political climate.  Clooney is a fairly outspoken critic of President Bush and the war in Iraq, after all.  I have not yet listened to his commentary on the GNAGL DVD, but I give him great credit for not making any overt connections in his film.  Murrow's words in the film are entirely his own, nor is there any prologue or epilogue text drawing parallels to the present day.  Like Arthur Miller, whose play The Crucible stands alone without the connections to McCarthyism, GNAGL is an excellent chronicle of courage in the face of fear without allusions to our time.  At the same time, making those connections provides great fodder for a lively discussion.  :)