"Dalton Trumbo and American Evil"

I'm a bit of a documentary junkie, so I hope I get to see this one...Andrew O'Hehir over at Salon.com has a sort-of review of "Trumbo," an upcoming documentary about screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, one of the infamous "Hollywood Ten."

It's always interesting to me to see Hollywood treatments of the McCarthy era, when a number of actors, filmmakers and writers were "blacklisted" because of actual or alleged relationships to the Communist Party. It's kind of like when Germany makes a Holocaust film. There's always an undercurrent of self-flagellation with a side of self-pity and a self-righteous cherry on top. "We did horrible things," they seem to say. "In fact, we knew they were horrible at the time but we were powerless to stop the horribleness. So you can't really hold it against us. Actually, now that we think of it, we're pretty damned heroic."

I don't think that admitted Communist filmmakers who lost their careers were heroes. I don't think the other filmmakers who in many cases sold them out to save their own skins were pure evil. I don't think it's fair for anyone who didn't live through this to pass judgment on anyone who did. (Except for McCarthy himself. I don't need to walk in his shoes to know he was a f*cker.)

I do think this period in history is not something Americans should sweep under the rug, as we tend to do with anything unpleasant that doesn't fit in with our rosy national narrative. When people can be jailed simply for holding a belief, and their friends and neighbors do nothing to prevent it - that's not something we should ever forget.

By the way...So, did you know that Robert Oppenheimer, the leader of the Manhattan Project, had ties to the Communist Party USA? The mistress he had for years was a longtime party member, as were many friends and colleagues. It was pretty hard in the 1930s to be an intellectual or academic and not have at least some connection to the party. And the Feds were perfectly aware of this, too. So, the guy who's in charge of building the atomic bomb can be a Communist sympathizer, and that's okay. But 10 or 15 years later, that guy who wrote "Gun Crazy" is a mortal threat to America's way of life??? Right. I say again, Joe McCarthy was a f*cker, and if there's any justice in this world, he and J. Edgar Hoover are lacing up their corsets on the same circle of Hell. Here's hoping they leave room for Dick Cheney.