Part I: 1960 “The Manchurian Candidate:”
In the original version of the 1960 film “The Manchurian Candidate,” the narrative is set between 1952 (the last year of the Korean War) and 1956 (a presidential election year) ending at the Presidential Convention at Madison Square Garden. It is a great movie starring Frank Sinatra, Janet Leigh, Angela Lansbury and Lawrence Harvey as the Manchurian Candidate. (Angela Lansbury plays the mother of Lawrence Harvey although they are only 3 years apart in actual life.) Lawrence Harvey’s character becomes a brain-washed assassin after being captured in Korea with his Squad and trained as an ‘unconscious’ political assassin by a Soviet and Chinese Communist group of expert psychological manipulators.
Its popularity was culturally enhanced by having the character of Angela Lansbury’s second husband (the actor James Gregory) portrayed as a Senator Joe McCarthy character – even more hyperbolic than the ‘real’ Senator Joe McCarthy, a Demagogic Buffoon (who drank himself to death in 1958).
There were four political Americans so immensely hated and feared by American Communists that they trained every Liberal to hate them too – my mother being such a life-long convert. J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI director from the 1920s until his death in 1972 less than two weeks before ‘Watergate’ and Richard Nixon who doggedly got Communist traitor (the beloved Patrician) Alger Hiss convicted for perjury were the two most famous. Lawyer Roy Cohn and Senator Joe McCarthy were the other two. I tried to explain all that in a portion of my large essay about “Richard Nixon and the Viet Nam War” on this website on February 11, 2025.
The actor John McGiver plays the Libertarian Senator Thomas Jordan in this film. (Between 1939-40, when Hitler and Stalin teamed up to start WWII in Europe, the ACLU went from welcoming and defending American Communist traitors to secretly spying on them for J. Edgar Hoover’s anti-Communist FBI. Sometime in the 1960s, early in the Viet Nam War, the ACLU returned to its ever-growing Hard-Left roots.
The Senator Tom Jordan character is an arch opponent of the political ambitions of the two putative anti-Communists who are, in actuality, two Communist traitors (Angela Lansbury and James Gregory). The purpose of the ‘brain-washing’ is to create a political assassin to enable these (semi-independent) secret Communists to take over the Presidency.
Most Liberals, like my mother, only really remember the bloviating Joe McCarthy character and barely notice the Korean War and Communist conspiracy part which is the more complete part of the story.
The term ‘McCarthyism’ is supposed to (and usually does) make the eternal Liberal True Believer think accusing someone of being a ‘Communist’ is even more dangerous to American Civil Rights and Civil Liberties than actual Communism was and, in its post-Cold War Hard-Left form today, actually is.
Beginning no later than the astonishing election of Ronald Reagan as President in 1980, the new (but still not recognized as) McCarthyism is the use of the accusation of RACISM.
Anyone on the political Left can accuse someone of Racism without the slightest scintilla of courtroom introducible EVIDENCE and destroy their career. In the original movie of “The Manchurian Candidate,” under pre-Sullivan Rule libel law, the John McGiver character successfully sues the Angela Lansbury character for libel for calling him an (unprovable) Communist. He brags about giving his $60,000-plus settlement to the (then anti-Communist) ACLU.
In the 2001 movie “Ali” staring Will Smith, the actor John Voight does a great job portraying Ali’s close friend and advisor Howard Cosell. In 1983, on a Monday night football broadcast, Howard Cosell described a brilliant run-back by a small 5’6” NFL player with the words “look at that little monkey go.” Being Jewish and my wife being Italian, we both remember many times in family get-togethers when a small child was running around the house and an adult would say “look at that little monkey scoot.”
In 1983, Howard Cosell, a life-long prominent public ANTI-RACIST, was attacked by racial racketeers such as the future murderer O. J. Simpson. Cosell was prominently defended by Jesse Jackson, Mohammed Ali and the putative victim of his (non-existent) racial slur.
Even in the reliable Grokipedia, Howard Cosell (who died years ago) is described as using ‘racially charged’ language. When you are falsely accused of Racism, you will carry that McCarthyism–Racism libel even past the grave.
And so it goes.
Part II: 2004 “The Manchurian Candidate”
In the year after the 2003 disaster-enhancing post-Afghanistan Invasion of Iraq, a newer version of the original Richard Condon novel was made starring Denzel Washington and Merrill Streep as the mother of Liev Schreiber as the new Raymond Shaw Manchurian Candidate.
There are slight changes to the story line, but the creation of an ‘unconscious’ political assassin to facilitate the takeover of the Presidency remains the fundamental story line. In the 2004 version, John Voight plays the Libertarian Senator Tom Jordan who has to be privately murdered in both movies to advance the storyline.
I heartily recommend watching both movies – both for entertainment value and also when fully aware of the truthful history of the 1950s and the post-Reagan era political worlds.
The 2004 version is, to me, a belatedly appreciated brilliant introduction to the thirty-five year plus ever-growing power of the WWSOG-BOG that I have so often written about on this website. If you watch, as I do, you will see a dramatically brilliant Surrealistic Allegory of that WWSOG-BOG that the movie calls “Manchurian Global.”
Part III: The RACISM Accusation Test
- If you are ‘cool’ and ‘with it’ and are even up-to-date on the latest CA commentary about RACISM,
- Howard Cosell was a RACIST,
- Al Sharpton is an ANTI-RACIST.
- If you are a thinking-for-yourself individual able to think outside of Social Group Think,
- Howard Cosell is a famous ANTI-RACIST,
- Al Sharpton is the greatest RACIAL RACKETEER that ever lived.
(Watch out who you say this truth to.)
