Saturday, July 18, 2020

Larry Tye's "Demagogue," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Demagogue: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy by Larry Tye.

The entry begins:
Tough-guy Emanuel Goldenberg is the Red-baiting Senator Joe McCarthy. Or at least he could and should have been, were he still alive and still using his screen name of Edward G. (for Goldenberg) Robinson.

It’s partly that Robinson looks the role of the sinister McCarthy, from his easily-acquired five o’clock shadow to his receding hairline, expanding waistline, and general burliness. He also could be at least as snarling and bullying as McCarthy, traits Joe displayed to the world during the legendary Army-McCarthy hearings and that Eddie did when he played Rico Bandello in Little Caesar and Johnny Rocco in Key Largo. More to the point, Robinson had lived through the Red Scare that Joe McCarthy came to embody. He had experienced first-hand the anti-Semitism McCarthy was accused of, which is why the Goldenbergs fled Bucharest when Manny, as he was known then, was 10. He attended City College of New York, which McCarthy disparaged as a training ground for Reds and pinkos. He knew what it was like to be singled out by the FBI as a Communist and to be called to testify before the McCarthy-like House Un-American Activities Committee. And he’d learned on the streets of New York’s Lower East Side how to fight back....[read on]
Visit Larry Tye's website.

The Page 99 Test: Demagogue.

My Book, The Movie: Demagogue.

--Marshal Zeringue