FROM “TRUTH” TO “TRUMBO

[Geee]

Powerline:

Hollywood provides a steady left-wing pressure on our politics, our culture, and our collective memory. This year the Rathergate film Truth gave an almost unbelievable example, turning the perpetrators of the greatest journalistic scandal of our times into heroes. John and I tried to set the record straight in the Weekly Standard article “Rather shameful” and the Star Tribune column “Lies upon lies.”

 

As the institutional voice of the left, the New York Times celebrated Truth at a TimesTalks event featuring Robert Redford, Cate Blanchett, Dan Rather, and Mary Mapes — the full catastrophe, as Zorba the Greek would put it. I wrote about that in the City Journal column “Truth and the New York Times.” Swift, thou shouldst be living at this hour!

 

Now comes the new film Trumbo, telling the story of the Hollywood blacklist in the official version that is a falsehood and a mind-numbing cliché. Dalton Trumbo was a talented screenwriter and Stalinist member of the Communist Party who concealed his Communism under the facade of civil liberties when called to testify before HUAC in 1947. In asserting the First Amendment to maintain his silence, Trumbo was following the party line to the letter.

 

When Ron Radosh first learned that the movie was to be made, he told the true story in the November 2013 NR article “Will the new Trumbo movie rehash old myths?” Having just seen the film, Ron returns to answer the question in the affirmative in the PJ Media column “Red star falling: The Trumbo train wreck.”