House UnAmerican Activities Committee An oldie but Goodie
From out of the past comes an old one, but good one: the HUAC. For 30 years, Congress held hearings on potential communist infiltration into American life: Hollywood, literature, movies, government, business, politics, almost everywhere.
Understand, we have been treated in the last 30 years to Hollywood versions of the HUAC hearings from a far left-leaning versions. BAD HUAC terrible HUAC, awful, right wing, nasty, intrusive HUAC. What we get from Hollywood via their films is crap, filter it through your B.S. detector.
The HUAC we have come to know and love, according to Hollywood has been filled with southern biggots, with drawls, ignoramouses, cigar chomping low far headed idiots who the normal viewer wouldn't allow one to park your bicycle, let alone babysit your children. At least, that's how it hit me.
My God, the pic about the Hollywood ten with Robert DeNiro as one of the blacklisted heros, I wanted to storm Congress myownself. After all, BOBBY DENIRO??
Well, Joe McCarthy was an ass, we all agree on that and Roy Cohn, his erstwhile assistant was not what I would call a capable PR guy for the HUAC effort. Two steps forward for the communist manhunt, with those two guys, it was twenty steps back.
Howsomever, the IDEA was a good one.
One has to understand, Communism at the time was frightening. The mid-50's contained frightening images from Korea of the Communists stacking bodies from captured villages of innocents five to ten deep - women and children, in rows thirty feet long. The US Army showed those films in movie theatres to kids like me right before Saturday features in movie houses every weekends for the length of the Korean War.
I knew exactly what was going on over there and the body counts. Movietone News preceeded my favorite westerns every weekend. The "chicken" crowed at the audience before we got the rows of the dead, every weekend. I was eleven. The communists did it, and they didn't care about men, old and young, children as young as 5 and mothers with babes stacked high in the arms.
That was communism to us in the fifties.
HUAC was digging out Americans in our own society who were sympathetic to that cause, working within our fabric to inculcate those values here.
I recently finished 1,000 pages of ALL the HUAC hearing testimonies. I read ALL of it. I know all the names of people called, all the House members asking questions and all those called.
After reading ALL of it, my conclusions are that 95% of the House members were polite, well controlled, and respectful. So were the people called before them. Most admitted they were communists at one point in their lives but were no longer. Almost all were respectful of the committee. Only two that I recall were rude, impolite and refuse to answer, citing the Fifth Amendment: Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda's ex husband,(gee, what a surprise) and Rene Davis, both part of the Chicago Seven.
Both went out of their way to be blatantly obnoxious, citing the fifth, acting rude, refusing to answer the questions, and in my mind, by NOT answering, they answered.
A danger to our country is a danger to our country. In my opinion, and as Hayden and Davis once said, Freedom of Speech is just that, so here's mine.
Why voters in our country elect people like this disturbs me. Why people continue to smoke knowing that it will kill them, also disturbs me. Why people hunt alligators knowing full well they may turn on them and bite their heads off baffles me beyond all rationality.
Such is vox populi. We get the government we deserve.
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Understand, we have been treated in the last 30 years to Hollywood versions of the HUAC hearings from a far left-leaning versions. BAD HUAC terrible HUAC, awful, right wing, nasty, intrusive HUAC. What we get from Hollywood via their films is crap, filter it through your B.S. detector.
The HUAC we have come to know and love, according to Hollywood has been filled with southern biggots, with drawls, ignoramouses, cigar chomping low far headed idiots who the normal viewer wouldn't allow one to park your bicycle, let alone babysit your children. At least, that's how it hit me.
My God, the pic about the Hollywood ten with Robert DeNiro as one of the blacklisted heros, I wanted to storm Congress myownself. After all, BOBBY DENIRO??
Well, Joe McCarthy was an ass, we all agree on that and Roy Cohn, his erstwhile assistant was not what I would call a capable PR guy for the HUAC effort. Two steps forward for the communist manhunt, with those two guys, it was twenty steps back.
Howsomever, the IDEA was a good one.
One has to understand, Communism at the time was frightening. The mid-50's contained frightening images from Korea of the Communists stacking bodies from captured villages of innocents five to ten deep - women and children, in rows thirty feet long. The US Army showed those films in movie theatres to kids like me right before Saturday features in movie houses every weekends for the length of the Korean War.
I knew exactly what was going on over there and the body counts. Movietone News preceeded my favorite westerns every weekend. The "chicken" crowed at the audience before we got the rows of the dead, every weekend. I was eleven. The communists did it, and they didn't care about men, old and young, children as young as 5 and mothers with babes stacked high in the arms.
That was communism to us in the fifties.
HUAC was digging out Americans in our own society who were sympathetic to that cause, working within our fabric to inculcate those values here.
I recently finished 1,000 pages of ALL the HUAC hearing testimonies. I read ALL of it. I know all the names of people called, all the House members asking questions and all those called.
After reading ALL of it, my conclusions are that 95% of the House members were polite, well controlled, and respectful. So were the people called before them. Most admitted they were communists at one point in their lives but were no longer. Almost all were respectful of the committee. Only two that I recall were rude, impolite and refuse to answer, citing the Fifth Amendment: Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda's ex husband,(gee, what a surprise) and Rene Davis, both part of the Chicago Seven.
Both went out of their way to be blatantly obnoxious, citing the fifth, acting rude, refusing to answer the questions, and in my mind, by NOT answering, they answered.
A danger to our country is a danger to our country. In my opinion, and as Hayden and Davis once said, Freedom of Speech is just that, so here's mine.
Why voters in our country elect people like this disturbs me. Why people continue to smoke knowing that it will kill them, also disturbs me. Why people hunt alligators knowing full well they may turn on them and bite their heads off baffles me beyond all rationality.
Such is vox populi. We get the government we deserve.
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