Sorry about the lack of posting...
....but the fool who writes my material went on strike.
A settlement should be reached by Monday.
Actor Robin Williams, left, marches in the picket line at the Time Warner Center in N.Y. during the fourth day of a strike by television and film writers. Tina Fineberg - AP
Comedian Jay Leno greets striking writers with encouragement and donuts outside the NBC Studios in Burbank, California. Members of the Writers Guild of America went on strike Nov. 5, seeking a larger share of DVD profits and revenue from new media distribution. Los Angeles Times, Al Seib.
That last 'toon is my favorite. I'm so sick of the liberal programming and all the anti-Iraq war and anti-American movies that they keep churning out.
The Writer's Strike affected me on Friday, when I had trouble meeting my appointment in Century City. The police were preparing to block off Avenue of the Stars for a big rally at 20th Century Fox. All the police had their vehicles parked on the side-street that my client lives on.
I also pass by the Culver Studios on my way to my work place. Picketeers are also prancing about out there, asking me to honk.
I should put a sign on the roof of my car as I drive by, saying "write some goddamn pro-conservative/pro-American movies for a change!"
A settlement should be reached by Monday.
Actor Robin Williams, left, marches in the picket line at the Time Warner Center in N.Y. during the fourth day of a strike by television and film writers. Tina Fineberg - APComedian Jay Leno greets striking writers with encouragement and donuts outside the NBC Studios in Burbank, California. Members of the Writers Guild of America went on strike Nov. 5, seeking a larger share of DVD profits and revenue from new media distribution. Los Angeles Times, Al Seib.
That last 'toon is my favorite. I'm so sick of the liberal programming and all the anti-Iraq war and anti-American movies that they keep churning out.The Writer's Strike affected me on Friday, when I had trouble meeting my appointment in Century City. The police were preparing to block off Avenue of the Stars for a big rally at 20th Century Fox. All the police had their vehicles parked on the side-street that my client lives on.
I also pass by the Culver Studios on my way to my work place. Picketeers are also prancing about out there, asking me to honk.
I should put a sign on the roof of my car as I drive by, saying "write some goddamn pro-conservative/pro-American movies for a change!"
Labels: Hollywood Liberals, Los Angeles, Personal, political cartoons, Unions, Writer's Guild Strike
posted by The WordSmith from Nantucket at 11/10/2007 09:47:00 PM
15 Comments:
Traffic being blocked off is the only way it would affect me, Wordsmith. I don't watch anything but the news, Hallmark, and the History channel anyway. We are like one of the cartoons you posted here - we only watch movies and most of them are old.
I like the idea of the sign on top of your car. If I did that none of them would see it. Go for it! :)
AMEN TO YOUR LAST SENTANCE!!!!!
BTW , if they are on strike and are not writing then who in the heck is writing their signs !?!?!?!
In my humble opinion if there are no writers for the Hollywood produced shows then there are less smears and ridicule about the values of regular Americans. Let them go pick lettuce and put an illegal out of of a job.
I'm all for your sign, Word! At least the current movies out aren't doing so well, according to the reviews.
Gee, does this mean BSG season 4's start date will be pushed back AGAIN?
Will anyone care???
Word:
Fifty plus years ago liberals in Hollywood had their careers destroyed because of McCarthy and his conservative allies. Only with the partial opening up of the American mind in the 60s were people critical of their government's activities allowed to speak out without fear of losing their livelihood or worse. Many conservative or moderate films are produced by Hollywood annually. I suspect you're resentful that any liberal-leaning films are allowed to be made. Remember, both liberals and conservatives are American. I'm American and a liberal and I'm proud to be both. I'm anti-racism and anti-corporations and anti-imperialism. None of those beliefs make me anything but an American.
"I should put a sign on the roof of my car as I drive by, saying "write some goddamn pro-conservative/pro-American movies for a change!"
That would get them blacklisted, Smithy.
Rockybutte has learned his revisionist history well.
McCarthy was a hero. He outed over 100 card carrying Communists in the State department alone, not to mention all the card carrying Communists in Hollywood.
I just read a piece on Wikipedia ( a liberally slanted website) today about the film, "The Caine Mutiny" The director of that film was blacklisted. Why? Because he was a member of the Communist party. Not a suspected member. A real actual member. He served time in prison.
Go back and read real history, not the history rewritten by lying Liberals.
Fifty plus years ago liberals in Hollywood had their careers destroyed because of McCarthy and his conservative allies.
Was McCarthy completely wrong about the communist scare? (re: Mark's response).
Many conservative or moderate films are produced by Hollywood annually.
"Many"? Ok, can you please name me some of these films?
I suspect you're resentful that any liberal-leaning films are allowed to be made.
rockybutte, is that honestly the impression you have of me? Perhaps I am to fault for that. Sometimes I may vent, and since my readers are primarily fellow conservatives, I don't moderate my tone, as I might do, in the presence of your average joe.
What I am resentful of, is the overwhelming number of liberal-leaning messages- even creeping into otherwise non-political films.
I can think of a couple of films that are favorable toward the military. It is the exception, and not "the rule".
But name me one pro-war on Islamic terror film that has come out since 9/11. It isn't "The Kingdom".
How many anti-war/anti-Bush regime films are coming out right before the '08 Election? About 8, I believe.
This includes "Rendition", "In the Valley of Elah", "Redacted", and "Lions for Lambs".
Remember, both liberals and conservatives are American. I'm American and a liberal and I'm proud to be both.
rockybutte, I don't consider you any less than a patriotic American. I've appreciated your civility and reason-mindedness, thus far.
Doesn't mean we can't have heated disagreements. I may even embarrass myself with name-calling. But at the end of the day, we are both Americans, looking out for the best interest of our country.
I'm anti-racism and anti-corporations and anti-imperialism. None of those beliefs make me anything but an American.
Define for me "American imperialism".
On corporations, I have some disagreement with you there. I have my own gripes about corporations; but liberals take it to such a degree of imbalance.
rockybutte said... Remember, both liberals and conservatives are American. I'm American and a liberal and I'm proud to be both = incongruent angle
also, rockybutte mistakenly quoted...Fifty plus years ago liberals in Hollywood had their careers destroyed because of McCarthy and his conservative allies.
McCarthy had nothing to do with the film industry. McCarthy held hearing to find communists in the government particularly in the Army. He found some too and he has been proven right after all these years. I wish you guys would learn history and quit repeating the swill wrtten by ill informed Hollywood writers.
I liked the 2nd to last cartoon.
On the topic of McCarthy, there's a new book: Blacklisted by history: The untold story of Senator Joe McCarthy and his fight against America's enemies by M. Stanton Evans.
What was the name of that recent Hollywood movie on McCarthy? The one with the LIBERAL narrative?
Oh, and another anti-war movie: Home of the Brave.
Word:
I'll need to find some time to squeeze in some thoughts about movies, and imperialism.
Mark & JG:
I understand that new books about McCarthy pop up every so often. It's hard to figure out what's right and what's wrong. Some of his original documents are in archives.gov. Worth a look.
McCarthy scared the crap out of a lot of people in the early 50s. He may have not been the helmsman of the "Red Scare", but he was an oarsman with a lot of pull. Before he flamed out in the Army-McCarthy hearings, his pronouncements about commies in the State Dept. and the Army struck fear in the hearts of Americans already shocked by the Soviets' detonation of an atomic bomb, the treachery of the Rosenbergs, the loss of Eastern Europe to the Soviets, and the triumph of Mao, etc. His scare tactics influenced all walks of life, including the entertainment industry (already inflamed by the actions of HUAC). Of course he was not directly responsible for naming the Hollywood 10 et al, but he helped create a paranoid climate of suspicion across the nation.
Actually, he road the coattails of HUAC and a Board created by Truman in the aftermath of WW2 to review the staff transferred into the newly reorganized State Dept. The Board flagged 284 employees as potentially disloyal and dismissed 79. McCarthy subtracted the 79 from 284 and came up with the number 205, which was the number he used at his first speech about disloyal State Dept. employees. There was no prepared text at this speech, just some rudimentary notes. A radio station was there to record the speech, but erased the recording the following day. Some say that he changed the number of disloyal employees to 57 later in the speech. One thing that is for sure is that he used the number 57 in the telegram he sent to Truman, which you can view in archives.gov.
By the way, no one ever saw the names onany list McCarthy was supposedly referring to. And no one at State was ever dismissed because of anything that McCarthy did.
He flagged the names of 34 people as a result of the Army-McCarthy Hearings, and 26 were cleared by the Loyalty Committee. The convictions of the remaining 8 were later overturned in court.
Although he died of liver disease in 1957 his legacy has endured, even today, especially among conservatives who consider as disloyal and anti-American, those who find fault with the politicians running the government.
Speaking of movies, Tail Gunner Joe (starring Peter Boyle) was a fairly crummy movie, but it shows McCarthy in a way not shown by the MSM during his life.
Interesting stuff. I have to do more research on McCarthy, and yes, it's hard to know what's real and what's spin.
Frustrating, really. Not sure what to believe, at times.
Some of his original documents are in archives.gov. Worth a look.
Not sure how reliable this review of the book I mentioned is (the sidebar links support for Alan Keyes and a lot of very far to the right sites), but this is interesting if true:
The missing files on Communists in government
If you're younger than 50 or 60, your opinion of McCarthy is probably unfavorable. That negative caricature was likely presented to you in the classroom (K-12 and in higher academia), in the media, the history books, the documentaries, entertainment, news outlets — every form of opinion-molding that you have encountered. Those outlets have a history of leaning sharply left. If you're above that age, you might have been influenced by Edward R. Murrow's distorted attack on the senator (see this column "Murrow, McCarthy, and enduring myths — Part 1," Nov. 6, 2005, and Part 2, Nov. 13, 2005), or by Army counsel Joseph Welch's theatrics at the Army-McCarthy hearings.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
there is yet another significant reason why the world has a distorted vision of Senator McCarthy — missing files from the National Archives and other libraries of record, including newspaper files. If we are missing some key pieces of the puzzle to history, conventional wisdoms can (and often do) collide with facts.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here's what's missing
One of the mysteriously "disappearing" documents was issued in the summer of 1946 by State Department official Samuel Klaus. He fingered Soviet agents and alleged Communist Party members — one of them Alger Hiss — in the Department. He also cited "suspects" and "sympathizers."
Four years later, after Senator McCarthy had launched his campaign to expose the failure to oust Communists from State, he learned of the Klaus memo, and brought pressure to have it turned over to Senator Millard Tydings, the Maryland Democrat who was conducting hearings to examine McCarthy's charges. Tydings received a copy. Thereafter it simply disappeared. There is in the Archives a cover letter of transmittal, but the memo itself is gone. Some cover-up artist pulled a Sandy Berger years before Sandy's time.
More than 40 years later
When Evans looked for the memo in the files of Samuel Klaus, it was likewise missing. And here's the real scary part: The Archives contained a notice that the file was withdrawn in March of 1993–43 years later.
That was in Evans's book. In my two-hour interview with the author, he revealed he had learned since the book went to print that important files on the "McCarthy era" had been lifted as late as the year 2000–50 years later.
Much of the missing material had to do with the Tydings subcommittee which had been named by the Senate's Democrat leadership — ostensibly to investigate McCarthy's allegations of Communists in the State Department — but in reality to do a whitewash of the charges and instead discredit McCarthy
Who in the year 2000 would be nosing around and risking jail time to steal (or "remove") the memo even then — after much of the world had forgotten about what was headline news way back in the 1950s? Here's a clip of the recorded interview:
Evans: It has everything to do with the issue. There are documents that are missing — some of which I've found in other [unofficial] places.
Me: You mean you stumbled upon them? You mean they are out of the place where they should've been?
Evans: They're not in the Archives, but they're in other places. These McCarthy names that are in [the book's] Appendix should be in the Archives. There's a letter and a list submitted to Millard Tydings by Joe McCarthy on March 18, 1950.... It's part of an official proceeding in the U.S. Senate, and it should be in the Archives, but it isn't.
Then where did Evans find it?
Whoever tried to blackout history did not reckon with Evans' ability to secure a copy of key materials from the late Ralph de Toledano, a conservative journalist who turned over to the author files that Toledano (in the fifties a Newsweek correspondent) had held since 1954. Evans "found a lot of the stuff that's missing," but not all of it.
And that's not the half of it
Also mysteriously missing are two dozen other documents "from the State Department related to security matters," the author reports. The long laundry list of stolen Archive files includes "the names of eighty loyalty/security suspects at State and elsewhere," and a letter from the head of the CIA concerning one of the eighty on that list; another listing of 12 other suspects for inquiry; and papers from McCarthy's own investigating subcommittee which he chaired 1953-1955.
Missing "McCarthy-era" records not confined to the Archives
McCarthy's first speech on the Communist issue was delivered in Wheeling, West Virginia, on February 9, 1950. There was a lot of controversy about what the previously little-known Wisconsin senator did and did not say in that speech. So Evans spent some time in Wheeling in an attempt to peruse records of the Wheeling Intelligencer, now stored at the local public library there.
Surely that file would preserve for posterity news of the events that took place during this history-making event in Wheeling, would it not?
Wrong. All editions going back to the 19th Century were microfilmed and in their places — except for two months in well over a century's worth of cataloguing — January and February, 1950. Those two months included what are probably the period where Wheeling, W. Va., made the biggest national news in its history, and they just happen to be the two months where the local newspaper's back issues are missing. What was reported in that daily newspaper that would inspire someone to wipe out the record as if it never happened?
So what about the Library of Congress?
Evans then figured not to worry. He would simply go to the Library of Congress which keeps records of newspapers and other publications from around the country. The library had issues of the Wheeling Intelligencer, but none prior to August, 1952.
A pattern
It seems that wherever Senator McCarthy sniffed around for subversives and those who covered for them, files would turn up missing. In the Blacklisted by History's chapter "File it and forget it," we learn that McCarthy came up with depositions from four past and present employees of State, saying, "We were instructed to remove all derogatory material from the personnel files and we were instructed to dispose of this material." As one of them put it, "All of the clerks on the project were to pull out of the files all materials considered derogatory, either morally or politically. The [data] I pulled out of the files pertained to either the morals of the person or in some way reflected on his or her loyalty."
The Tydings committee: a fraud and a hoax
In the chapter aptly titled "A Fraud and a Hoax," M. Stanton Evans tells of a "melee" on the floor of the Senate that resulted in a shouting and shoving match that apparently barely avoided an outright fist fight.
Again, the Tydings committee — formally charged with investigating McCarthy's charges of the State Department cover-up — in reality, was charged by the Senate's then-Democrat majority with putting the lid on the whole thing.
When the committee issued its final report, one of the Republican members, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, noted that 35 pages of stenographic record in the final hearing were missing. Not included (surprise!) were Senator Lodge's comments toward the end of the hearings that many significant topics had not been covered or had been swept under the rug in Tydings' "probe." The New England Republican outlined a series of questions that had not been answered.
When Lodge indignantly took his complaint to the Senate floor, all hell broke loose.
Exhibiting as much anger as his Boston blue-blood upbringing would allow, Senator Lodge charged the disappearance "obviously wasn't accidental" and that "[s]omebody had surgically removed" the 35 pages because the last pages in the transcript, including the part about adjournment, were tacked on to give the false impression of a complete record.
Tydings' committee counsel Edward Morgan (whom Evans describes in my interview as "sinister") included in the committee's cover-up report an anti-McCarthy comment which Emmanuel Larsen — one of the accused in the Amerasia case — attributed to Senator Kenneth Wherry (R-Neb.)
Wherry exploded, denied making the comment, and confronted Morgan (who was on the Senate floor as an aide to Senator Tydings) and castigated Morgan for inserting the purported quote without bothering to check it out with the Nebraska senator. A shoving match ultimately ensued and at one point Wherry took a swing at Morgan. That half of the story is recorded by "historians [such as Oshinsky and Reeves]" who did not bother to report the other half — i.e., the provocation.
McCarthy's first witness
In early 1953, after McCarthy assumed the chairmanship of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, he had for the first time an opportunity to conduct his own hearings and call the witnesses. First up to testify on State Department files was Helen Balog, supervisor of the department's Foreign Service file room. She told the panel that personnel file safeguards were extremely lax, with "three or four hundred people" having access to the records.
Mrs. Balog noted that one employee spent an inordinate amount of time in the file room working on the folders, namely John Stewart Service. That was a bombshell considering that Service was one of the accused in the Amerasia case involving a pro-Communist magazine touting the cause of the Communists in Asia who ultimately overthrew the pro-Western government in China and rule there to this day. Service was also named a year earlier by a Democrat-controlled subcommittee (chaired by Nevada's Pat McCarran) for his role in policies that aided the revolution in China.
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