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Watchmen, written by Alan Moore, is considered the premiere work in the graphic novel genre, so its film release has been highly anticipated since production began in 1989. Overall, the film is very entertaining, and worth shelling out a few extra dollars to see it with the full IMAX effects. Like his other noted film, 300, director Zack Snyder displays his skill in depicting violence, sex and superhero tricks in some of the most visually-appealing ways imaginable. The opening credits are particularly spectacular, making comic book panels come alive, something you might find on one of those newspapers from the Harry Potter films.

Despite the entertainment value, do not see Watchmen if you are looking for some escapism and a happy ending. That being said, it is not very clear what the message is, as one is expected in such a dark and dense work.

Moore has said that Watchmen is meant to be a message of “anti-Reaganism” but one is hard press to see it in the film. This alternative reality is a true bizarro world, set (and written) in 1985. Vietnam is the 51^st state after America’s success in Southeast Asia, thanks primarily to Dr. Manhattan, a nuclear physicist-turned-god/Blue Man Group member. With this great victory, President Richard Nixon is still in office after term limits are repealed. Yet at the start of the film, we see a faux McLaughlin Group segment featuring “Pat Buchanan” and “Eleanor Clift” as they debate why Russia is amassing troops in Afghanistan as the Cold War continues. more

by Brian Domitrovic

Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America’s Enemies by M. Stanton Evans (New York: Crown Forum, 2007)

Washington used to be a nice town, the reminiscence goes. Before our own day, when “the personal is political,” time was when the partisan fighting was fierce at the Capitol, but everyone played by the rules and went out for drinks together after all the wrangling was done. This is one of the most intransigent clichés in American politics.

In February 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin made a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, in which he said he had a list of fifty-seven names of Communists working in the State Department. The next month, a Senate committee chaired by Maryland’s Millard Tydings convened to discuss the McCarthy list. The committee did not devote itself to investigating the accuracy of McCarthy’s list, much less to forming policy about what to do about the situation if it were true. Rather, its effective purpose was to frame McCarthy in a criminal act. more