"Good Night and Good Luck"

Fit George Clooney's new movie in between the usual Friday errands. Had a lot of extra time, as no Buick repairs were required the week!

The movie about Edward R. Murrow and Joseph McCarthy is a visual delight in black and white. Every frame is a composition for the art teacher to consider. Every fraction of eye movement or puff of smoke is packed with meaning. My only wish is that the movie had spent five more minutes clarifying the roles of the various newsroom characters. The Wershbas are a mystery to me.

• My photographer son and his film buddies need to see the movie because of the impact of black and white.
• My vintage clothes shop son will like the Fifties style.
• My speech and debate son will appreciate the rhetoric and enunciation.
• My eclectic music son will love the Dianne Reeves jazz numbers.
• My Fahrenheit 9/11 son will love the modern media cautionary tale.
• My history major son will know all the background.

Remember those logic puzzles? Mr. Green lives in the tallest house. Mr. Gray's pet is black and white. The rhino eats Rice Krispies for breakfast. So who eats toast and jelly for breakfast on the roof of the blue house? I used to love those problems! They make so much more sense than real life. Plus, I only have three sons.

She's a young thing and cannot leave her mother...

I can't make a cherry pie, and I am much too young to actually remember the McCarthy Era, but I remember "McCarthyism" being as detested as "Tricky Dick" by adults around me. I loved to listen to Murrow and Fred Friendly's three albums of "I Can Hear It Now" on the hi-fi. Murrow's voice was so impressive, and I loved hearing Churchill, Roosevelt, and "Oh, the humanity!," of the Hindenburg disaster.

For all my precociousness, I couldn't quite sort out McCarthy until sometime around 1968. I wasn't as off-base as in my Dead Sea Squirrels confusion, but I did wonder how that puppet could be both funny and evil.

HUAC vs. HVAC. Are Commie Pinkos hiding in your duct work?