Bit of history: Bill Mandel chewing out HUAC in 1960

[deutsey]

http://www.billmandel.net/h/HUAC.shtml

If you think that I am going to cooperate with this collection of Judases, of men who sit there in violation of the United States Constitution, if you think I will cooperate with you in any way, you are insane! This body is improperly constituted. It is a kangaroo court. It does not have my respect, it has my utmost contempt.

[proud patriot]

1. Hiya deutsey

:loveya:

I hadn't heard of this before , thanks for posting .

[deutsey]

3. Hi!

:hi: This is one of my favorite moments in recent American history.

[wicket]

2. Interesting

I'd never heard about this before- thanks for the link.

[AirAmFan]

4. HUAC was UNBELIEVABLE, and unfortunately it has slipped down the memory

hole.

HUAC was a bit before my time, but I remember many years ago I had a HILARIOUS Folkways label LP of one of HUAC's theater of the absurd highlights, the testimony of renowned German playwright Berthold Brecht. At the end of the record, I remember Brecht compared being interrogated by HUAC to being interrogated by the Nazi SS: "The Nazis never would have let me smoke."

Unfortunately, a Google search just now for this material got only 6 hits. One of the hits is a transcript of the hearing, but, sometime since February 2004, the original webpage apparently was erased. Here is an excerpt from the cache:

"Brecht HUAC Stripling translator Search. This is G o o g l e's cache of http://eee.uci.edu/programs/humcore/HUACBrecht.htm as retrieved on Feb 27, 2004 14:34:34 GMT. G o o g l e's cache is the snapshot that we took of the page as we crawled the web.

October 30, 1947

Bertolt Brecht

MR. BRECHT: My name is Bertolt Brecht. I am living at 34 West Seventy- third Street, New York. I was born in Augsburg, Germany, February 10, 1898.

...

MR. STRIPLING: ... Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party of any country?

MR. BRECHT: Mr. Chairman, I have heard my colleagues when they considered this question not as proper, but I am a guest in this country and do not want to enter into any legal arguments, so I will answer your question fully as well I can. I was not a member, or am not a member, of any Communist Party.

...

MR. STRIPLING: Mr. Brecht, is it true that you have written a number of very revolutionary poems, plays, and other writings?

MR. BRECHT: I have written a number of poems and songs and plays in the fight against Hitler and, of course, they can be considered, therefore, as revolutionary because I, of course, was for the overthrow of that government.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Stripling, we are not interested in any works that he might have written advocating the overthrow of Germany or the government there.

...

MR. BRECHT: Oh, yes. That is not an article, that is a scene out of a play I wrote in, I think, 1937 or 1938 in Denmark. The play is called Private Life of the Master Race, and this scene is one of the scenes out of this play about a Jewish woman in Berlin in the year of '36 or '37. It was, I see, printed in this magazine Ost und West, July 1946.

...

STRIPLING: Mr. Brecht, may I interrupt you? Would you consider the play to be pro-Communist or anti-Communist, or would it take a neutral position regarding Communists?

MR. BRECHT: No, I would say-you see, literature has the right and the duty to give to the public the ideas of the time. Now, in this play-of course, I wrote about twenty plays-but in this play I tried to express the feelings and the ideas of the German workers who then fought against Hit-ler. I also formulated in an artistic-

MR. STRIPLING: Fighting against Hitler, did you say?

MR. BRECHT: Yes.

MR. STRIPLING: Written in 1930?

MR. BRECHT: Yes, yes. Oh, yes, that fight started in 1923. ..."

[Nikki Stone 1]

5. "Oh, yes, that fight started in 1923..."

Seems that Stripling thought the fight against Hitler began much later, maybe after the US entered the war? Stupid ass.

[AirAmFan]

6. One of the things that made the recording so memorable was Stripling's

thick southern accent--like a Dave Chappelle put-on of a Southern white "cracker". Stripling made Strom Thurmond sound like Richard Burton!

It was like Dubya interviewing Stephen Hawking about astrophysics.

[Nikki Stone 1]

7. I got the impression that Stripling wasn't all that bright, but don't

forget that Jimmy Carter had an accent--and the man was a nuclear engineer.

Poor Brecht. To have escaped the Nazis only to be grilled by a two-bit cracker fascist. He must have had a serious case of deja vu. The remark about the cigarette is telling. Not only does our government want to scare the crap out of you, they want to take away any relief you might have in the process.

[AirAmFan]

8. Stripling had one obsession, that's for sure. Jimmy Carter got in trouble

for the oppposite reason: knowing too much about too many things. He got a reputation for micromanagement. Do you remember the side-splittingly-funny Dan Ayckroyd impression of Jimmy Carter? There was one memorable skit where somehow Ayckroyd as Jimmy Carter got into talking a teeneager down from an LSD trip: "You've done some Orange Sunshine.... You are a very safe organism on this planet!"

[deutsey]

9. Didn't he say put on some Grateful Dead?

That was back in that delirious moment after Nixon when many in America thougt, however fleetingly, that we were progressing away from those who brought the Nixon regime.

Little did we realize that they had Reagan right waiting in the wings...

[Nikki Stone 1]

13. Yeah, I saw a replay of that skit recently

I think it was a history of SNL. God it was funny!

[AirAmFan]

19. Further googling found custom CD copies of the audio still for sale,

sans album cover art and liner notes, at a German record company and at the Smithsonian. While the ASCII transcript now exists only in a Google cache, the original audio still can be found for a price.

From http://www.folkways.si.edu/search/AlbumDetails.aspx?ID=1045 :

"Bertolt Brecht before the Committee on Un-American Activities: An Historical Encounter, Presented by Eric Bentley

Bertolt Brecht

Folkways Records - FW05531

*Please note that custom CDs are not accompanied by the originial album cover as we are unable to reproduce them at this time.

Tracks Artist/Performer

101 October 30th 1947 pt. 1: The Actual Recording with Added Commentary by Eric Bentley

201 October 30th 1947 pt. 2: The Actual Recording with Added Commentary by Eric Bentley"

See also http://www.jump-up.de/pages/?c=track&p=3576 .

[deutsey]

10. I'm gonna kick for Bill

We gotta remember our heroes, people.

[AirAmFan]

14. deutsey, I don't remember ever hearing Mandel on radio. How long was he

on the air? When was he fired?

Most of my life so far, I've never lived where Pacifica Radio was on the air.

[deutsey]

15. My understanding...

Mandel was on KPFA during the '60s-'80s. Then, during "the troubles" at Pacifica in the late '90s, he was canned when those who wanted to turn Pacifica into an "NPR lite" took over briefly.

Pacifica has been restored for the most part and Mandel, from what I understand, recently was voted back onto KPFA as a host.

[DistressedAmerican]

11. Alright! Ball Kicker!

[deutsey]

12. Derive inspiration from Galloway today and Mandel from yesterday

kick

[Beam Me Up]

16. Footage of this is in the documentary "Berkeley in the Sixties"

which I highly recommend to everyone, especially younger folk. It shows what happened at UC Berkeley during the Free Speech Movement and how that movement then began to confront the Vienam war. Lots of good historical footage, including of then Governor Reagan railing about the imorality of light shows and rock bands on campus.

[Irish-Socialist]

17. HUAC History

Just on the issue of the 'fight against fascism' and when it started.

During the heyday of the HUAC, they were threatening to drag Charlie Chaplin (another fiery leftwing brit, possibly the most popular man in the world) over the McCarthy coals. Among the charges levelled against him was, I shit you not, "Premature anti-fascism"! Cos those damn Commies were wrong to oppose fascism during the 1930s!

Anyway, Chaplin threatened that if he was arraigned, he would appear dressed as The Tramp. HAUC backed down. I do think its one of the tradegies of history that this event never took place.

[AirAmFan]

18. Thanks for the info, and welcome to DU!

What can you tell us about how the Galloway hearing is being received where you are? I've only seen snippets of Galloway's performance on Lou Dobbs (CNN's daily business show), while I understand one of the BBC channels is now a continuous loop replaying Norm Coleman's ill-advised Senate hearing on Galloway.

[Irish-Socialist]

20. subject

Couldn't tell you really (how its playing out here in Ireland). We only have four tv stations, 3 of them are State tv (well, state funded, not like some stalinist state tv - and one is in Irish which I can't speak, and teh other two basically repeat the same news) and one is owned by an English company (Granada). Up in Northern Ireland they get these channels, and the four British ones (BBC, ITV/UTV/Granada and Channel 4)

There were a few spots, bout 3 to 5 mins, on the main news programs last night, thats it really. Positive coverage on the whole I'd say.

As for the papers, I wasn't in a shop today so I can't say. At a guess I'd say it was in every one on about page 10 (thats the thing about online news, you don't know what page the story was on).

Here's some of the print coverage anyway

Galloway and the PR war on terror Daily Ireland (leftist)

Galloway fights corner on accuser's home patch Belfast Telegraph (centre right)

Galloway attacks senate over oil claims Irish Examiner (centrist)

Machine-gun George goes shooting up the Capitol Irish Independent (centre right)

Scathing Galloway denies role in Iraq oil scam Irish Times (allegedly liberal - gotta pay for access too)

Galloway attacks Senate Committee RTE (state broadcaster)

UTV don't have a story on it and it seems the Irish News, a 'centrist nationalist' paper from Northern Ireland ignored the story, and you gotta pay for their site anyway, and its a crappy paper.

Also, thanks for the welcome. I'm an intermittent browser here, but I had to register in order to clarify some issues re: George Galloway in this thread.

I probably won't post again until something else riles me :P


I do get BBC on free to air satellite TV though, and I can tell you the 'channel' you are talking about that had continuous replays was really not a channel per se, it was part of the BBC Interactive digital service, and the channel was like a substation of BBC News 24 (like 'press the red button now to see this speech' type thing - but I don't have digital, its too expensive).

[AirAmFan]

21. I love it:'Gorgeous George'(Daily Ireland) vs 'Machine-gun Geo(Irish Independent)!

Thanks for the window into UK media political coverage.

Norm Coleman has to be really stupid to invite into the US spotlight someone who'd embarrassed Blair so badly he had to be thrown out of the Labour Party, and then handily defeated Blair's candidate for his seat in Parliament. Coleman must have told Galloway on the overseas call, "Yes, I DO want some of this!"

[Irish-Socialist]

22. Ireland NOT the UK!

Just to clarify, the Republic of Ireland (where I live) is not part of the United Kingdom. Northern Ireland (which is about 1/5 of the island of Ireland) is.

I was really only talking about news coverage on the island, and mainly in the republic.

In the UK, Galloway was front page news on nearly all papers except the scummy tabloid rags (Star, Sun, Mail - were Kylie's cancer was the lead), and he was on virtually every TV news report I saw that night - and the coverage was generally positive, but several made swipes at him (while still being forced to admit he kicked arse).

[AirAmFan]

23. Oops! I apologize for my ignorance. No offense was intended.

[Irish-Socialist]

24. None taken