I have friends who are reading a just-published book about the execution of Ethel Rosenberg for espionage in 1953. On the left, every issue from which more mileage can be driven remains alive forever and is stoked to the fullest extent thereafter. Of course, there is no doubt whatsoever that her husband, Julius, had passed on information on the building of the atomic bomb to the Soviets at a time when the Soviet Union was imposing communist regimes on each of the nations it had overrun at the end of World War II, and that she had assisted in the espionage. This is from Wikipedia which like most other sources of “information” on the net is heavily weighted to the left.
For decades, the Rosenbergs’ sons (Michael and Robert Meeropol) and many other defenders maintained that Julius and Ethel were innocent of spying on their country and were victims of Cold War paranoia. After the fall of the Soviet Union, much information concerning them was declassified, including a trove of decoded Soviet cables (code-name: Venona), which detailed Julius’s role as a courier and recruiter for the Soviets. Ethel’s role was as an accessory who helped recruit her brother David into the spy ring and did clerical tasks such as typing up documents that Julius then passed to the Soviets.
Guilty, guilty, guilty.
So why bring this up? Because of this movie review which I saw in The Age today: Being the Ricardos is near flawless – and Nicole Kidman is magnificent. “Being the Ricardos” is a new film starring Nicole Kidman about Lucille Ball and her husband, Desi Arnaz. And this is the first line of the review:
The idea that Lucille Ball was suspected of being a communist tells us more about America in 1952 than it does about Ball, which is of course why Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing) made this movie.
So in 2021 they made a movie about someone who had been suspected of being a communist almost seventy years ago. And why did they suspect her? Because she had registered as a member of the communist party for the American election of 1936. Here are the facts, but from a different source.
In 1952, HUAC accused Ball of being a Communist. Ball had registered to vote as a Communist in 1936. But Ball explained to the committee that she only did so to placate her dying grandfather, who was fond of Eugene Debs, a labor organizer and Socialist Party candidate for president. The committee subsequently dropped the charges.
Imagine suspecting that someone who had registered to vote for the communist party of being a communist. Did not seem to stop her from achieving lasting success and enduring fame.
The Age article goes on with the usual ignorant discussion which never seems to vary.
This is Sorkin’s handbook for writers interested in comedy or drama. That’s as much its purpose as the politics of McCarthyism….
This movie shines with a beautiful silver light; the kind of movie brilliance we haven’t seen since that other HUAC-kicking masterpiece, Good Night, and Good Luck, in which politics, history and culture entwined.
Senator McCarthy was in the Senate. HUAC stood for the House Un-American Activities Committee. McCarthy was a Republican Senator. HUAC was a committee in the House of Representatives dominated by Democrats. Virtually everything of significance McCarthy ever said has since been demonstrated to have been true. That HUAC was filled with Democrats has been written out of the script in the same way that Lucille Ball actually having voted for the Communist Party in 1936 is passed by.
If you would like to read the absolutely best book available on all this, I cannot recommend more highly Diana West’s astonishingly fascinating and comprehensive American Betrayal.
Meanwhile, inconvenient FACTS, such as that Jussie Smollett faked his supposed attack by Trump supporters has virtually entirely disappeared from the news. We truly do live in an Orwellian world.
My favourite sort of communist
Definitely NSFW
Correct me where I’m wrong, registering as a (say) communist voter mean only that you’re able to vote in that party’s primaries? & in a general election there is no compulsion to vote for or preference a candidate of that party?
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were Soviet spies and all round traitors.
Interestingly, Ethel’s brother David Greenglass was also involved in the espionage ring and he eventually testified against his sister, he served a sentence of about a decade and he was then released into the community under a new name with his family. Greenglass died less than a decade ago. If I recall correctly, Ethel was also offered a plea bargain if she would testify against her husband. She refused. The tragedy is that Ethel deliberately chose political ideology and death over her sons. She chose communist martyrdom to being a mother. After the execution, the two little Rosenberg boys were put in a Jewish home for orphans and then they were lucky to be adopted by the very wealthy (0f course) communist composer Abel Meeropol and his wife and grew up in NY City’s leafy and very privileged upper west side.
You shouldn’t hang a woman for following what her husband is doing.
They aren’t rational creatures.
If she had married Hitler she would have worn lederhosen and other such crimes.
A life sentence for the bing would have been sufficient and nullified most of the ewwww factor around the administration of justice in this case
Bint
Luceee! Choo got some ‘splainin’ to dooo!
Steve, keeping track of the political left’s latest tactics and strategy is the only possible reason for reading The Age.
Nothing appears in The Age without a political purpose. It’s not a newspaper.
Great. Hollyweirdos placing themselves (again) at the centre of their mythical struggle against Kapitalism and Amerikkka.
Boring, boring, boring.
And Jussie Smollett is a victim of racism.
Suspected is hardly the word. She was so brazen about it.
Hello? Red hair? Her on screen persona was a red menace.
He TV show was a giant F’ You to America!
Nothing appears in The Age without a political purpose.
And, more contemptible, nothing FAILS to appear in The Age without political purpose.
Consider the Age snapper pepper-spritzed by Andrews’ blue filth after being trapped in that Hawthorn cutting with Saturday afternoon protesters. The editrix, Margo’s half-sister, writes a ‘please explain’ note to the chief commissioner, and after that we hear nothing more about it.
A proper editor at a paper that was anything more than a joke would have blazoned ‘J’ Accuse’ across the front page and embarked on a crusade against the brutality that was VicPol’s stock in trade for almost two years. But that would have reflected badly on Andrews, so allowed to pass with barely a publicly ruffled feather.
An editor who declines to stand up for staffers doesn’t deserve the title, just as The Age doesn’t deserve to be considered a newspaper.
Even today the myth is almost universally accepted (even by conservatives) that Senator Joseph McCarthy was a member of HUAC, outing innocent actors, writers, directors, etc. as supposed communists in Hollywood.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact McCarthy was not in HUAC, but was part of a senatorial investigation into the communist infiltration of the State Department (nothing to do with actors and artistic types), which was absolutely riddled with communists, as the Venona papers proved decades later. McCarthy, as it turned out was right more often than he was wrong.
Interestingly, one of McCarthy’s aides for a time was Robert Kennedy, and he was friends with his brother John, even then a Democrat.
I suspect my partner may be a communist. She spends my money like water.
Miss Anthropist,
She’s not a Coalition M.P. is she?
Lu7cy’s agent was Gummo Marx, he placed her in Ab Day at The Races [1936].
The FBI always nkept an eye on her, Hoover knew her Preg]naqncy Test Result before she did.
On the Open Thread, I notice the gang that spammed Old Catallaxy to death are back.
One bloke has logged 595 comments in the last 29 hours.
But the head of the CIA, John Brennan, admitted voter of communist Gus Hall is somehow okay.
He and the other filth, Clapper, are great mates with Downer.
Even came out to visit him at some sham SA conference.
Fark off the lot of them and their ‘black hands’.
But then there is Senator Richard Blumenthal(D-Conn.)
Sen. Richard Blumenthal Helps Conn. Communist Party Celebrate 102nd Anniversary of CPUSA
https://amgreatness.com/2021/12/13/sen-richard-blumenthal-helps-conn-communist-party-celebrate-102nd-anniversary-of-cpusa/