On 03/02/2017 02:36 PM, ZZyXX wrote:
Good Night and Good Luck: There was fear in the room when they took on
another demagogue.


The story of Ed Murrow taking on Senator Joseph McCarthy has been well
chronicled in books, movies, and documentaries. But, as a young man, I
heard the story from one who was there. I heard it from the man who
reviewed and edited Ed Murrows copy €” including those famous closing
lines €” moments before the historic CBS Broadcast of March 9, 1954.

It was Ed Bliss who recounted the story of that broadcast to a group of
university students on a Wednesday afternoon more than 45 years ago.
Bliss had been Ed Murrows editor and writer at CBS. While Murrow wrote
most of his own copy, Ed would write some and would also write the late
breaking news items and bulletins when Murrow was on the air. This was
not an easy story for Ed to tell.

The thing I remember most was Ed talking about the fear. He said you
could feel the fear in the room from the time Murrow decided to devote
an entire half-hour broadcast to McCarthy to the moment they began the
broadcast. Ed said Murrow gathered his troops in his office, closed the
door, and told them his intention, and then told them they must be
prepared for personal attacks by McCarthy. He went around the room and
asked each one if there was anything in their past €” or in their
familys past €” that could be used to attack them. The shows producer,
Fred Friendly, for example, offered up that he had changed his name from
Ferdinand Friendly Wackenheimer when he broke into the radio business in
Providence, Rhode Island in the 1930s. Other staffers spoke of their
youthful political leanings, and political meetings they may have
attended twenty years earlier. It was that kind of session, with a
shared fear as members of the team expected to be attacked, vilified,
and slandered by McCarthy and his henchmen.

Ed then showed us how Murrow used McCarthys own words €” including film
footage €” to unmask the demagogue. He explained that many of the
techniques used in the 1954 broadcast were now familiar to everyone, but
were relatively new at that time. He added that everyone held their
breath during the show, fearing technical glitches. There were none. All
the snippets of film rolled on cue.

And then, Ed Bliss passed around to us a remarkable piece of
broadcasting history. It was an original carbon copy of the final lines
of the script. He had saved it from that night, kept it in a manila
folder, and it was still as crisp as it was when it came off Ed Murrows
typewriter on March 9, 1954.

The words thundered off the page, and they still do. They resonate, and
it is impossible to read them without seeing the similarities between
1954 and 2017. Simply remove the words €œof Communism€� from the first
sentence, and replace McCarthys name and title with that of Trump
throughout the copy, and Edward R. Murrow speaks to America today €” and
speaks for all time...

His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind, as
between the internal and the external threats of Communism. 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.

This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthys methods to keep
silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our
history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no
way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a
nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. 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.

The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and
dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our
enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didnt create this
situation of fear; he merely exploited it €“ and rather successfully.
Cassius was right. €œThe fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in
ourselves.€�

Good night and good luck.

Murrow and his troops summoned up the courage to take on a demagogue.
But, even more than that, they took on the climate of fear, suspicion,
and intolerance that was oxygen to McCarthyism. Read these lines once
again, and take them to your heart€¦

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.
Ed Murrows broadcast that night changed Americas perception of
McCarthy and led to the downfall of the Junior Senator from Wisconsin.
It was the high point of the career of the patron saint of my chosen
field of endeavor.

Ed Bliss stayed on at CBS after Murrow left to join the U-S Information
Agency, and Ed became Walter Cronkites senior editor. He edited the
collected scripts of Murrow for several books, and he co-authored
Bliss/Patterson €œWriting News for Broadcast,€� which has been €” for forty
years €” the textbook for broadcast journalism students. After retiring
from CBS, he taught broadcast journalism at American University for more
than a decade, passing the torch to a new generation. He died in 2002 at
the age of 90.

Ed Murrow and Ed Bliss are gone now, but the fear and suspicion and
unreason of the early 1950s have returned, and, with them, the threat
to our democracy. And so I reach out to those two men in spirit and
memory, and the words of Edward R. Murrow, spoken March 9, 1954, help
banish our fears and fill us with an unshakable resolve:

We will not walk in fear, one of another.
We are one nation, indivisible. We were then. And we are now. And we
will always be.

Good night and good luck.





The press is still doing it's job , just when I thought they had all
turned to fluff:


From Fox news (but same story on all news sources)


Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Thursday he will recuse himself from
any investigations related to the 2016 presidential campaign, which
would include any Russian interference.

Speaking at a hastily-called press conference at the Justice Department,
Sessions said he had met with department ethics officials soon after
being sworn in last month to evaluate the rules and cases in which he
might have a conflict.

€œThey said that since I had involvement with the campaign, I should not
be involved in any campaign investigation,€� Sessions said. He added that
he concurred with their assessment, and would thus recuse himself from
any existing or future investigation involving Trumps campaign.

The announcement comes a day after The Washington Post revealed that
Sessions twice met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and did not
disclose that fact to Congress during his confirmation hearing.