Topic: NewsBusters
Feel the bitterness in Tim Graham's Dec. 13 NewsBusters post:
George Clooney just can't get over the glory days when CBS was a powerful disseminator of left-wing propaganda. First, he fictionalized the glories of stone-faced anchorman Edward R. Murrow fighting the red-baiters. Next up is glorifying the Smothers Brothers and their CBS comedy hour and how they "spoke truth to power" with communist musicians like Pete Seeger singing "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" against the Vietnam War.
Unlike Graham, we have actually read the David Bianculli book upon which Clooney will base his movie.The Smothers Brothers were actually pioneering the use of political satire on network TV (and, this being the late 1960s, network TV was pretty much all the TV there was). And CBS, far from being "a powerful disseminator of left-wing propaganda," did everything it could to water down or scuttle the show's political statements and ultimately canceled the show because of it.
Amazing that Graham is actually paid to spew such ignorant hatred, but there you go. This stuff happened 40 years ago, Tim! It's time to move on!
