Milo Radulovich LIVE in person!

Tomorrow, Saturday, October 8th, Milo Radulovich will appear in person for all four evening screenings of the film Good Night, and Good Luck at the Embarcadero Cinema in San Francisco (7:10, 8:00, 9:30, 10:15 p.m.)

Blunt question: who is Milo Radulovich and why should you care?

Milo Radulovich joined the Army Air Corps near the end of World War II and served for eight years as a meteorologist (weather forecaster). When he was discharged, he was required to stay on in the Reserves. However, a year later, an Army tribunal found that he was a "security risk" because his father and sister had alleged ties to Communist groups. (Radulovich had high security clearance because weather forecasts were crucial in scheduling Air Corps missions.) No direct allegation was made against Milo Radulovich himself; he was smeared by innuendoes about his family members. Furthermore, the Army tribunal that ruled in his case kept all of its supposed evidence sealed. Neither Radulovich nor his lawyers were permitted to see it.

It was pioneering television journalist Edward R. Murrow, though, who brought the story to national attention in October 1953. He read about it in the Detroit News, and devoted a half-hour broadcast of his CBS See It Now program to the story of the unamerican mistreatment of Milo Radulovich by the American government. Although the Radulovich broadcast did not specifically mention Senator Joseph R. McCarthy (R–WI), it set the stage for a direct exposé of McCarthy on See It Now the following spring. It was that program that began McCarthy's irreversible slide from power.

Make no mistake: Senator McCarthy was a greater threat to American liberty and security than the Russkies and the Chinese combined. He was a greater threat than Osama bin Laden or Abu Musad al-Zarqawi or Timothy McVeigh. Edward R. Murrow has a high school named after him in Brooklyn, New York; if you ever see a McCarthy High School, you can bet it's not named for the Senator from Wisconsin.

Good Night, and Good Luck is now playing in Boston, New York, Washington, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. It opens in additional cities each of the next three weekends. Go see this film.