brainrow

The New York Times reviews George Clooney’s new film, Good Night, and Good Luck:

Burnishing the legend of Edward R. Murrow, the CBS newsman who in the 1940’s and 50’s established a standard of journalistic integrity his profession has scrambled to live up to ever since, “Good Night, and Good Luck” is a passionate, thoughtful essay on power, truth-telling and responsibility. It opens the New York Film Festival tonight and will be released nationally on Oct. 7. The title evokes Murrow’s trademark sign-off, and I can best sum up my own response by recalling the name of his flagship program: See it now.

And be prepared to pay attention. “Good Night, and Good Luck” is not the kind of historical picture that dumbs down its material, or walks you carefully through events that may be unfamiliar. Instead, it unfolds, cinema-verite style, in the fast, sometimes frantic present tense, following Murrow and his colleagues as they deal with the petty annoyances and larger anxieties of news gathering at a moment of political turmoil. The story flashes back from a famous, cautionary speech that Murrow gave at an industry convention in 1958 to one of the most notable episodes in his career — his war of words and images with Senator Joseph R. McCarthy.

You can’t say the Bush Administration isn’t providing bold leadership. When a federal prosecutor started poking around in Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s business, The Bush Justice Department sprung into action and demoted him:

The Justice Department’s inspector general and the F.B.I. are looking into the demotion of a veteran federal prosecutor whose reassignment nearly three years ago shut down a criminal investigation of the Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, current and former department officials report.

They said investigators had questioned whether the demotion of the prosecutor, Frederick A. Black, in November 2002 was related to his alert to Justice Department officials days earlier that he was investigating Mr. Abramoff. The lobbyist is a major Republican Party fund-raiser and a close friend of several Congressional leaders.

Colleagues said the demotion of Mr. Black, the acting United States attorney in Guam, and a subsequent order barring him from pursuing public corruption cases brought an end to his inquiry into Mr. Abramoff’s lobbying work for some Guam judges.

Public corruption is business as usual in the Bush Administration.