Saw Clooney's new movie today, and I left the theatre in a really sad mood. Oh, not because of the movie PER SE, it was a very intense, fairly fast-moving story about how Edward R. Murrow took on Joe "Commies under my BED!" McCarthy during the "Red Scare" of the 50's. Technically, it was well done, even down to the electronic filtering to give a hint of "film scratches" and its artistic use of black and white photography. The only 2 questions I had from a historic POV were concerning the use of Series "500" telephones (sure, they were introduced in '49, but would Bill Paley have dumped his perfectly good "300"'s just to have "the latest"? I used to work for WECO) and.... How did people back then keep those cigarettes lit when they were in the shower, and how did they keep from setting the bed on fire while they were fucking? And did they put them down long enough to SLEEP? I mean, EVERYBODY smokes! CONSTANTLY! The movie should have been done in Sepia because of all the smoke... No wonder Cancer got Murrow.... Anyway, that's not what had me bumming. what had me bumming was how Murrow was portrayed as a Newsman FIRST, and a TV "personality" somewhere further down the line. I can't imagine anyone besides Keith Olbermann fighting his boss like that (and that may just be his "schtick", like Jim Carville sleeping with Mary Matalin). Not Leslie Blitzer, and sure as hell not the hairdos on "Headline Nooz" or the jiggle-jugs on FAUX und Freunden. Uncle Walter's retired, Dan Rather "got borked" by Karl Rove, (at least he didn't wind up DEAD, like Jim Hatfield!) and the rest of "The Fourth Estate" has become a Fifth Column, carrying water for the GOP like Mickey Mouse's magical bucket-brigading brooms in "Fantasia". "Good Night, and Good Luck" is an excelelnt film, and I reccommend it hightly, go see it, if only to see what TV news USED to be like before the pretty people started worrying about their precious fucking "Access"....

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