Charlie Rose: Video: George Clooney in 2005 on Goodnight and Good Luck

This post was originally posted at The New Democrat on WordPress

This is one reason why I’m definitely a big fan of George Clooney, besides his great sense of humor and charm, but his intelligence and knowledge about the issues that he likes to film about. Ed Murrow and the Ed Murrow-Joe McCarthy battle in the 1950s over communism and fascism. Who knows Ed Murrow so well and this story so well and you see that in this interview and in the movie. And you also see how much he respected Ed Murrow and how big of a thug and fascist that Senator Joe McCarthy was in the 1950s. Even if Ann Coulter is never smart enough to see that.

Ed Murrow knew how dangerous Senator McCarthy was in the 1950s and represented everything that America is supposed to be against and something I believe a large majority if not most Americans are against, which is fascism. And this blog covers fascism from both the Far-Right and Far-Left because it hates fascism. People telling others what it means to be an American and a moral person. Or how we should talk about certain groups of people and who we should communicate with each other.

Ed Murrow and his See it Now team knew exactly what they were up against and that the person that they were up against. And the fact that Senator McCarthy was a member of Congress and could use his power as a Senator to try to punish CBS News and the broader CBS network with their licensing and fines and everything else. And CBS News of course knew this as well which is why they weren’t fully behind Murrow and Fred Friendly. But it believed it was a fight worth taking on for the future of speech and other freedoms that Americans tend to take for granted. And they were very skillful how they took on McCarthy.