Bits'n'Bites

I saw George Clooney's Good Night and Good Luck last evening. I think it's an important movie, though it has a few little irksome qualities from time to time.

It's about Edward R. Murrow and Joe McCarthy's witchhunt on "UnAmerican Activities" back in the '50s. Murrow, for those not in the know, was a great pioneering newsman, an icon among American anchors. The good ones of recent past, like Cronkite and Brokaw and their ilk, were hugely influenced by Murrow. He was articulate, strong, principled, objective, but also passionately opinionated when he needed to be.

McCarthy, for those who don't know, was a fear-mongering senator from Wisconsin who sought to amplify the apprehensions expressed by average Americans towards the Communism that took the world by storm in those years. McCarthy's senate hearings used primarily innuendo and hearsay to damn and discredit people with little or no cause to do so. Once the hearings had deemed you a pinko Commie, you were blacklisted and shunned by people at large -- not necessarily because they believed it (most didn't), but because they didn't want to be painted by the same brush. Again, fear.

The cast is great. The acting, top notch. The editing is interesting. The film is black-and-white and looks great. There are these strange musical interludes with this jazzy black singer in a sound booth, though, that throw the whole deal off a bit since it detracts from the content rather than adds to it. It's also strangely short, considering the vast amount of material to work with, coming in at a little less than 90 minutes. It's dominated by authentic newsreel footage, most featuring McCarthy himself, which lend.

My great complaint about the film is that I wanted more. I wanted to see more of what went down with McCarthy after the fact, I wanted more of Murrow the man, and I just wanted more feel for the world of that day and age. Too few people in my generation and the one on our heels know about Murrow or the times he lived in. Too many of us have no knowledge of the destructive nature of that blacklisting era.

HOWEVER... it's an important movie. I suspect it's Clooney's statement about the media today. As Murrow said, not every story can be handled objectively. Sometimes, the right thing to do is to argue a point of view. This is something today's media seems to have largely forgotten. They failed to ask the right questions when the prospect of war in Iraq arose. They succumbed to a fear of being portrayed as unAmerican for questioning the government's motives, something the media around Murrow also was afflicted by in the times of the Commie Inquisitions.

Sometimes, though, someone has to have the balls and call it like they see it. For a time, that man was Murrow. This movie may have some flaws, but it's essentially a great film, and offers an important statement on our times. That statement is that fear is not a way to govern, hearsay and innuendo cannot be used as a placebo for the truth, and rhetoric can destroy the fabric of democracy if the people aren't voting with a firm grasp on reality.

Journalists can change the world. For too many reasons to list, though, they largely no longer choose to. The fault, however, lies with us, the public.

Clooney may strike most as a pretty boy who likes to play more than work, but I think he's offered us a glimpse at a time that mirrors all too well the world before us today.

As a people, we must demand better from our journalists. We must ask the difficult questions. They give us, unfortunately, exactly what we ask for: Paris Hilton, Martha Stewart, and all that irrelevant fluff. News has become entertainment, instead of a vehicle through which great change can be achieved.

Today's media gave us a war we have no business fighting. They gave us 2,000 dead soldiers on a platter when they failed to question the source of the "evidence" on Saddam, when they failed to question why we were invading a nation that had no direct involvement with those planes that struck at America's heart on that fateful September day four years ago.

Whatever the drawbacks, it's high time the parallels between the blacklisting of the '50s was pointed out for all to see.

The positive point I'd like to make is that a few years after the senate hearings ended, a new breed of journalists had been born. They saw that Murrow put himself on the line, exposed himself to persecution and propaganda to fight the good fight, and it influenced a few decades of real journalism. It gave way to people like Cronkite, who returned from Vietnam only to tell us we were fighting a bad war badly.

In that brief time of good journalism, they helped transformed the public mindset, it made people ask "why?"

One can only hope those days might return again.

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Like many chicks (and even guys), I have always spent a lot on "quality" skincare products. I have a nice complexion, but my skin's sensitive and dries out easily, and I sometimes get redness on my cheeks as a result.

Recently, though, I stopped swallowing the bullshit. I was shopping and I thought about getting some baby shampoo, since it's a great way to get all the chemicals out of your hair from time to time, when I noticed Aveeno's Oatmeal Baby & Skin Shampoo -- $6.99.

Since then, I've been using it to wash my face every day, and I've had less acne, less redness, and fewer blackheads, plus, my face is as soft as a baby's ass.

How do we let these cosmetics bastards sucker us into $40 face cleaners? This stuff rocks. I'm never going back. If it's good enough for a baby's ass, it's good enough for my face. ;)