Video rising -- The Gestalt of the blacklist -- Controversial personalities -- Hypersensitivity: the codes of television censorship -- Forums of the air -- Roman circuses and Spanish inquisitions -- Country and God -- Edward R. Murrow slays the dragon of Joseph McCarthy -- The Army-McCarthy hearings (April 22-June 17, 1954) -- Pixies: homosexuality, anticommunism, and television -- The end of the blacklist -- Exhuming McCarthyism: the paranoid style in American television
Summary
Though conventional wisdom claims that television is a co-conspirator in the repressions of Cold War America, Doherty argues that during the Cold War, through television, America actually became a more tolerant place. He examines television programming and contemporary commentary of the late 1940s to the mid-1950s -- everything from See It Now to I Love Lucy, from Red Channels to the writings of Walter Winchell and Hedda Hopper. By rerunning the programs, freezing the frames, and reading between the lines, Doherty paints a picture of Cold War America that belies many bl
