The original movie Good Night and Good Luck was made in 2005.
Then in 2025, a Broadway play of the same name opened. Later in 2025, a film of the stage production was released. On a plane trip his past weekend, I saw that rendition, "Good Night and Good Luck: Live From Broadway."
It's available on Netflix and some other streaming platforms. Given today's political environment, it's a really good use of two hours.
George Clooney plays Edward R. Murrow, who was the 1950s version of Walter Cronkite -- the most trusted news anchor in the country. Back when such guys actually earned trust.
The movie and play center on the end of the McCarthy era of seeing Communists in every corner and shadow.
It's a play so it has to compress the time frame a bit from McCarthy's height of power to his downfall. But the climax is McCarthy's famous de-pantsing by one Joseph Welch, an attorney representing the subject of one of McCarthy's numerous investigations / persecutions.
That ends with Welch asking McCarthy the famous question, "Have you no sense of decency?" McCarthy, clearly rattled, fumbles for an answer, mumbles something, and calls for an adjournment.
The parallels with Trump's posturing and weaponizing of governmental authority for political and personal gain are striking.
My main takeaway, though, was the way that same thought process is also being used by the Democrats. It'll be interesting to see whether they really are the better alternative they claim to be, or just the same thought processes coming from a different direction.
Virginia is the current poster child. Spanberger runs for governor as a moderate because she knows she can't get elected on the platform by which she truly intends to govern. Then, prohibited by Virginia law from succeeding herself, she completes the bait-and-switch, steering full engines left. Then rubs it in, essentially saying, "Yeah, I did it. So? Whatcha gonna do?" and thumbs her nose.
Then the real overreach with a state split essentially down the middle being gerrymandered into a 10-1 Democratic stronghold in the USHOR. The Virginia Supreme Court overturned the result because it didn't comply with Virginia's own legally-required process to draw Congressional lines. The Virginia Dems didn't deny that. They just decried the court ruling.
About that time, and in an unrelated case, SCOTUS says states can draw Congressional lines any way they want, so long as they don't use race to do it. Which is exactly what Alabama was forced to do when it submitted plans for a single majority-black district, but was told that wasn't enough -- there had to be two.
Then, in a jaw-droppingly hypocritical mental two-step, Democratic leadership is decrying the disenfranchisement of black voters. It is beyond me how they can do that with a straight face when barely two weeks prior, they attempted to disenfranchise a hair under half of Virginia voters. If not for the Virginia Supreme Court, they would have succeeded.
Apparently, if you disenfranchise a minority group, you're a racist bigot neanderthal and beneath contempt. But if you disenfranchise half a state's voters, many of which are white, well, "Nyanh, nyanh. Them's the breaks. Whatcha gonna do, loser?"
Now, James Carville is saying that the country will never go for packing SCOTUS, so the Democrats shouldn't say that's what they're going to do. They should take a note from Spanberger's bait-and-switch and just do it.
Other even less subtle suggestions from leftist legal scholars include instituting a mandatory retirement age at SCOV of 54. A strange age until you realize that every member of SCOV who voted against the gerrymander is over 54.
Trump is being Trump. The Democrats are responding essentially in kind, but are now floating ideas that they know the populace won't support, but would entrench their power by legislating from the bench.
We already know Trump isn't doing the Republicans any favors. They're losing all sorts of elections that they should win. I predict that if the Democrats actually do what Carville and others suggest, it will end similarly badly for them, too.
Which, as I have said several times before, is a real shame. Because if they would act like the adults in the room, they could take power the right way, and hold it for longer. But they're acting like schoolyard bullies on the legislative side and intend to destroy the Constitutional check that is supposed to be the Judicia by any means necessary. I have a feeling the populace outside of the Northeast, the West Coast and a few big blue cities won't like that.
So I come back around to Joseph Welch's question: Does anyone have any sense of decency?
Then in 2025, a Broadway play of the same name opened. Later in 2025, a film of the stage production was released. On a plane trip his past weekend, I saw that rendition, "Good Night and Good Luck: Live From Broadway."
It's available on Netflix and some other streaming platforms. Given today's political environment, it's a really good use of two hours.
George Clooney plays Edward R. Murrow, who was the 1950s version of Walter Cronkite -- the most trusted news anchor in the country. Back when such guys actually earned trust.
The movie and play center on the end of the McCarthy era of seeing Communists in every corner and shadow.
It's a play so it has to compress the time frame a bit from McCarthy's height of power to his downfall. But the climax is McCarthy's famous de-pantsing by one Joseph Welch, an attorney representing the subject of one of McCarthy's numerous investigations / persecutions.
That ends with Welch asking McCarthy the famous question, "Have you no sense of decency?" McCarthy, clearly rattled, fumbles for an answer, mumbles something, and calls for an adjournment.
The parallels with Trump's posturing and weaponizing of governmental authority for political and personal gain are striking.
My main takeaway, though, was the way that same thought process is also being used by the Democrats. It'll be interesting to see whether they really are the better alternative they claim to be, or just the same thought processes coming from a different direction.
Virginia is the current poster child. Spanberger runs for governor as a moderate because she knows she can't get elected on the platform by which she truly intends to govern. Then, prohibited by Virginia law from succeeding herself, she completes the bait-and-switch, steering full engines left. Then rubs it in, essentially saying, "Yeah, I did it. So? Whatcha gonna do?" and thumbs her nose.
Then the real overreach with a state split essentially down the middle being gerrymandered into a 10-1 Democratic stronghold in the USHOR. The Virginia Supreme Court overturned the result because it didn't comply with Virginia's own legally-required process to draw Congressional lines. The Virginia Dems didn't deny that. They just decried the court ruling.
About that time, and in an unrelated case, SCOTUS says states can draw Congressional lines any way they want, so long as they don't use race to do it. Which is exactly what Alabama was forced to do when it submitted plans for a single majority-black district, but was told that wasn't enough -- there had to be two.
Then, in a jaw-droppingly hypocritical mental two-step, Democratic leadership is decrying the disenfranchisement of black voters. It is beyond me how they can do that with a straight face when barely two weeks prior, they attempted to disenfranchise a hair under half of Virginia voters. If not for the Virginia Supreme Court, they would have succeeded.
Apparently, if you disenfranchise a minority group, you're a racist bigot neanderthal and beneath contempt. But if you disenfranchise half a state's voters, many of which are white, well, "Nyanh, nyanh. Them's the breaks. Whatcha gonna do, loser?"
Now, James Carville is saying that the country will never go for packing SCOTUS, so the Democrats shouldn't say that's what they're going to do. They should take a note from Spanberger's bait-and-switch and just do it.
Other even less subtle suggestions from leftist legal scholars include instituting a mandatory retirement age at SCOV of 54. A strange age until you realize that every member of SCOV who voted against the gerrymander is over 54.
Trump is being Trump. The Democrats are responding essentially in kind, but are now floating ideas that they know the populace won't support, but would entrench their power by legislating from the bench.
We already know Trump isn't doing the Republicans any favors. They're losing all sorts of elections that they should win. I predict that if the Democrats actually do what Carville and others suggest, it will end similarly badly for them, too.
Which, as I have said several times before, is a real shame. Because if they would act like the adults in the room, they could take power the right way, and hold it for longer. But they're acting like schoolyard bullies on the legislative side and intend to destroy the Constitutional check that is supposed to be the Judicia by any means necessary. I have a feeling the populace outside of the Northeast, the West Coast and a few big blue cities won't like that.
So I come back around to Joseph Welch's question: Does anyone have any sense of decency?
