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Cold War, cool medium : television, McCarthyism, and American culture / Thomas Doherty.

By: Material type: TextTextSeries: Film and culturePublication details: New York : Columbia University Press, 2003.Description: ix, 305 p. : ill. ; 24 cmISBN:
  • 0231129521 (acid-free paper)
  • 9780231129527 (acid-free paper)
  • 023112953X (pbk. : acid-free paper)
  • 9780231129534 (pbk. : acid-free paper)
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 791.45
LOC classification:
  • PN 1992.6 D655c 2003
Contents:
1. Video rising -- A television genealogy -- Red and other menaces -- McCarthy : man, ism, and television -- 2. The Gestalt of the blacklist -- The blacklist backstory -- Pressure groups and pressure points -- Institutional practices -- 3. Controversial personalities -- The Goldbergs : the case of Philip Loeb -- I Love Lucy : the redhead and the blacklist -- 4. Hypersensitivity : the codes of television censorship -- Faye Emerson's breasts, among other controversies -- Amos 'n' Andy : Blacks in your living room -- 5. Forums of the air -- Egghead Sundays -- Direct address -- The Ike-onoscope -- 6. Roman circuses and Spanish inquisitions -- "Kefauver fever" : the Kefauver crime committee -- Hearings of 1951 HUAC-TV -- Wringing the neck of Reed Harris : the McCarthy committee's Voice of America hearings (1953) -- 7. Country and God -- I led 3 lives : "watch yourself, Philbrick!" -- Religious broadcasting -- Life is worth living : starring Bishop Fulton J. Sheen -- 8. Edward R. Murrow slays the dragon of Joseph McCarthy -- TV's number one glamour boy -- Murrow versus McCarthy -- The "good Tuesday" homily -- To be person-to-personed -- "A humble, poverty stricken Negress" : Annie Lee Moss before the McCarthy Committee -- McCarthy gets equal time -- 9. The Army-McCarthy hearings (April 22-June 17, 1954) -- Backstory and dramatis personae -- Gavel-to-gavel coverage -- Climax : "hove you left no sense of decency?" -- Denouement : reviews and postmortems -- 10. Pixies : homosexuality, anticommunism, and television -- Red fades to pink -- Airing the Cohn-Schine affair -- 11. The end of the blacklist -- The defenders : the blacklist on trial -- Point of order! : the Army-McCarthy hearings, the movie -- 12. Exhuming McCarthyism : the paranoid style in American television.
Review: "Conventional wisdom holds that television was a coconspirator in the repressions of Cold War America, that it was a facilitator to the blacklist and handmaiden to McCarthyism. But Thomas Doherty argues that, through the influence of television, America actually became a more open and tolerant place. Although many books have been written about this period, Cold War, Cool Medium is the only one to examine it through the lens of television programming."--Jacket.
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Holdings
Item type Current library Home library Collection Shelving location Call number Vol info Copy number Status Date due Barcode
Libro Libro Biblioteca Juan Bosch Biblioteca Juan Bosch Humanidades Humanidades (4to. Piso) PN 1992.6 D655c 2003 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) 1 1 Available 00000055920

Includes bibliographical references and index

1. Video rising -- A television genealogy -- Red and other menaces -- McCarthy : man, ism, and television -- 2. The Gestalt of the blacklist -- The blacklist backstory -- Pressure groups and pressure points -- Institutional practices -- 3. Controversial personalities -- The Goldbergs : the case of Philip Loeb -- I Love Lucy : the redhead and the blacklist -- 4. Hypersensitivity : the codes of television censorship -- Faye Emerson's breasts, among other controversies -- Amos 'n' Andy : Blacks in your living room -- 5. Forums of the air -- Egghead Sundays -- Direct address -- The Ike-onoscope -- 6. Roman circuses and Spanish inquisitions -- "Kefauver fever" : the Kefauver crime committee -- Hearings of 1951 HUAC-TV -- Wringing the neck of Reed Harris : the McCarthy committee's Voice of America hearings (1953) -- 7. Country and God -- I led 3 lives : "watch yourself, Philbrick!" -- Religious broadcasting -- Life is worth living : starring Bishop Fulton J. Sheen -- 8. Edward R. Murrow slays the dragon of Joseph McCarthy -- TV's number one glamour boy -- Murrow versus McCarthy -- The "good Tuesday" homily -- To be person-to-personed -- "A humble, poverty stricken Negress" : Annie Lee Moss before the McCarthy Committee -- McCarthy gets equal time -- 9. The Army-McCarthy hearings (April 22-June 17, 1954) -- Backstory and dramatis personae -- Gavel-to-gavel coverage -- Climax : "hove you left no sense of decency?" -- Denouement : reviews and postmortems -- 10. Pixies : homosexuality, anticommunism, and television -- Red fades to pink -- Airing the Cohn-Schine affair -- 11. The end of the blacklist -- The defenders : the blacklist on trial -- Point of order! : the Army-McCarthy hearings, the movie -- 12. Exhuming McCarthyism : the paranoid style in American television.

"Conventional wisdom holds that television was a coconspirator in the repressions of Cold War America, that it was a facilitator to the blacklist and handmaiden to McCarthyism. But Thomas Doherty argues that, through the influence of television, America actually became a more open and tolerant place. Although many books have been written about this period, Cold War, Cool Medium is the only one to examine it through the lens of television programming."--Jacket.

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