THE ASSAULT ON CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS
Déjà Vu? A lesson for Today’s Professionals
A SHADOW OF RED: Communism and the Blacklist in Radio and Television, by David Everitt. Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, 2007. 411 pages. (To order, click here.)
These are, as they say, parlous times for civil rights, regardless of your political preference. Not quite as bad as they were during the McCarthy era, but there are too many parallels for comfort, as may be seen today in your newspapers, your television sets, and the internet. Particularly, fear-mongering as a political device. There is, as you shall see, a relevance to contemporary threats; a lesson to be learned from this remarkable book on the blacklist of writers and performers, and the McCarthy era.
In the interests of full disclosure, let me say that my judgment of this book is neither academic nor dispassionate. I was there. During the blacklist period, in the 1950s, I was a radio writer, and then one of the first television writers. I was an active member of the Radio Writer’s Guild, and a founding member of the Television Writers of America – the first guild for television writers. Both were specific targets of the anti-Communist hysteria. What saved me from being attacked by the professional anti-Communists was that I was never a Communist or a Communist sympathizer. But that’s all another story. I mention it to note my authority in citing the veracity and brilliance of A Shadow of Red, an extraordinary chronicle of the blacklist of the blacklist era of the 1950’s.
I should note also that the reason a publication on marketing for lawyers and accountants is writing about this period -- one of the most horrific in American history – is because so much of what happened then by way of intrusion on the privacy of Americans (then in the name of fighting Communism, now in the name of fighting terrorism, both through deliberate fear-mongering) is with us today. And then, as now, lawyers are our best defense against such flagrant violations of the constitution. Then, as now, one need not have been pro-Communist to have opposed the tactics of the zealots, any more than one has to be pro-terrorist to oppose the zealots who would diminish our civil rights in the name of patriotism. And while it’s true , as the author points out, that there were Communists in this country, and in the broadcast industry, spouting the Communist line, time has shown that there was never a serious danger from either the Stalinist propagandists nor their sympathizers. This nation is built to withstand temporary assaults on our constitution, and specially those cloaked in patriotism and inflamed by fear mongering. It has shown, as well, that America not only resists ideologies of all persuasions, whether of the right or of the left, but long outlasts them. In fact, then as now, the greater danger to civil liberties came from those who attempted to generate fear, and to exploit it to their own ends.
David Everitt is a journalist, and a darned good one, whose dispassionate and objective retelling of the history of the blacklist is both meticulous and fascinating. Dispassionate, but still a beautifully written and moving narrative. The time was the midst of the cold war, in the early 1950s. A publisher issued a booklet called Red Channels, in which he listed the names of 151 broadcast writers suspected of being communist sympathizers. Thus began the era of the blacklist in broadcasting, in which an intimidated broadcast industry fired or refused to hire some of the finest writers and performers in radio and television. As with the McCarthy attacks, the accusations were based on slim evidence, but lives and careers were destroyed, including several suicides. Many of the writers (including many of whom I knew personally) wrote the best known radio dramas and sitcoms of the time, in which there was never any evidence of communist propaganda. Included were the likes of the famous radio comedy, The Great Gildersleeve, and others were pure patriotic American drama. (Was Fibber McGee’s closet filled with Stalinist tracts?) Were any of the writers or performers actually Communists? Possibly. But were they propagandists for Communism? Not that I could see. Was there an infiltration of Communists? Again, possibly. Many just held what might be called liberal ideas, but not particularly Communist propaganda. But then, as the hysteria subsided, American Communism was indeed real, but turned out to be a paper tiger. More damage was done by the zealotry of anti-Communism than by the hollow drum of Communism.
Typical of the damage inflicted by the zealots (sometimes, frankly, for profit), which I saw personally, was a right wing attack on probably innocent writers by people who wanted the jobs of those they attacked. I saw at first hand at least one such event, and there was no evidence that the writer who was ultimately blacklisted was indeed a communist. And the attacker did indeed get his job.
This is a story with a remarkable cast of characters, including an upstate New York grocer who used his purchasing power to bully his suppliers, who were major sponsors of radio and television executives into refusing to hire writers and actors who were accused of being Communists or Communist sympathizers. There were ex-FBI agents and cowardly network and advertising agency executives. There were even a few who genuinely believed in the danger from the left, but were still indiscriminate in accusing writers and performers of dangerous leanings. There were publicity seeking congressman and senators who, like McCarthy, sought to build a career on anti-Communism. All are captured in this fascinating – if frightful – tale.
It took two heroic individuals to break the blacklist. One was the radio performer John Henry Falk, who, when accused of being a Communist, fought back, and sued. In his famous libel trial, Falk, defended by the famous attorney Louis Nizer, prevailed. The trial laid bare the intricate structure of the blacklist movement – a singularly unpretty – and really un-American – sight. The trial was an heroic fight against the blacklisters that led to ending the blacklisting itself. It was a turning point that put the nation back on the course to reason. The second individual was Edward R. Murrow, who bravely took on McCarthy and exposed him for the sham he was. Murrow, while not specifically addressing the blacklist, changed the climate that made blacklisting possible. Essentially, these two individuals were responsible for ultimately breaking the blacklist. Everitt reports both events in great and exciting detail.
The assault on the nation by the blacklist, and it’s defeat by Falk and Murrow, both point to a great strength of our democracy. It’s like a great ship, sailing into the future in both storm and calm. It may be buffeted by the elements, and list dangerously to one side or the other, but such is the strength of our democracy that it always rights itself.
The drama of the story is well and accurately conveyed by Everitt. I was stunned by the precision of the narrative and the even handed accuracy of the details. In an interview with the author, I asked him to asses the sincerity of the anti-Communists. Most of those he discussed I the book were sincere, he said, but there were others who were doing it for a variety of other reasons. I asked him how he knew some of the smallest details of the era – events that presumably only those of us who were there might know. He noted that many of the details came from court transcripts, as well as from interviews of many of those people, on both sides, who were participants or victims. In fact, his footnotes document ever fact in detail, and include the list of people he interviewed.
A remarkable thing about this work, which, says Everitt, took 2 ½ years to research and write, is the high level of both the research and the writing. Painting an accurate picture of a significant period in American history, not sensationalism, is the author’s aim. He succeeds. This book and its subject are a departure from most of what he’s written before, although most of his books and other writing deal with the entertainment industry. He is noncommittal about further writing about the blacklist era, unless, he says, some new findings inspire him to do so. He is, after all, a professional writer, not a crusader. In terms of this book, his professionalism gives more credibility to the subject than might a crusader’s. This is a landmark work.