N.Georges Blog Entry #7: American Demagogue
For this blog post, I found that I had to watch the documentary four times in order to fully understand what was going on. I elected to watch the documentary film entitled, “See it Now: Edward R. Murrow vs. Joseph McCarthy.” The first time I watch the report on Senator Joseph McCarthy, I continually found myself asking why I would set myself up in such a manner. It was not until after watching the documentary did I really begin to comprehend what was being said during the report.
When the documentary first begins, Edward Murrow starts off basically saying that if Senator McCarthy wants a chance to help explain himself, he would be given the opportunity at the end of the report. When he said that, I was so confused, was this report going to critic Senator McCarthy’s policies? Come to fine out, the report was more of avenue for the public to see Senator McCarthy for who he really was, someone out to gain full control over the government.
At this point, I had to go back to understand the definition of a demagogue. When the word is broken down to its roots, the Greek word demagogue breaks down into two words, demos meaning the people and agogos meaning leader. I then dug a bit deeper and finally understood that a demagogue in the political sense could be anyone that the “people” select. At this point I thought about the 2016 Presidential Election as shook my head.
Now, McCarthy had a strong passion against communism but in being so passionate, were the means of causation to bring forth such an arrogant individual. In the film there Senator McCarthy claimed that only the left wing press criticized him on his wicker case. The ratio between the newspapers that criticized him to the newspapers that supported him was a 3 to 1. One left wing paper said that “Senator McCarthy would better serve his cause if he learned to distinguish the role investigator from the role of avenging angel.” Another Newspaper’s headline read “McCarthyism involves assaults on basic republican concepts.”
The one that really got me thinking was the headline that read “The line must be drawn independent or McCarthy will become government.” That headline really had me thinking about today’s election. For one individual to believe that they have the power to control everything in government is really baffling. When you think about it, yes there is a president who is in charge of the country, but there is also a congress who can either make or break a president’s agenda. For McCarthy to be just a senator and to think that he can control the government is crazy.
To be honest, I do not believe that there were any biases in this film seeing that the words used were from McCarthy’s own mouth. In this case I would not call it being bias but more of allowing more of the truth out so the people, the population, could see him for who he really is.