Good Night, and Good Luck

I didn’t know anything about Edward R. Murrow’s on air battle with Senator Joe McCarthy until tonight.  I’m still not entirely sure I do know anything, but George Clooney’s film Good Night, and Good Luck was good theatre.  

David Strathairn’s portrayal of Murrow was hard-edged, and seemed resoundingly true.  His Ed Murrow was a man of towering integrity and self-effacing humility.  If I’d known him, I’m almost certain I’d have liked him, and absolutely positive that I’d have been awed by his presence.

The stand-out moment of the film is when, in the seconds before going on air with a piece that pulls apart McCarthy’s own statements, he dryly jokes with CBS’s chief executive that he's about to bring down the network.  Both men know that there is the real possibility that may happen, yet the show airs anyhow.  Murrow’s integrity is so far above reproach that the network stakes its very existence on it.  

When we got home tonight, I thanked my daughter for suggesting that we go see this picture, and I told her that whatever she chooses to do in her life, she should aspire to that kind of integrity.  As a father, it’s my dearest wish that she know the admiration and support of her colleagues in the way that Murrow did.