George Clooney was on Jay Leno last night talking about his new movie Good Night and Good Luck. It's about Edward R. Murrow and the period in the early 1950s when he confronted Senator Joseph McCarthy. Clooney directed the film and has a supporting role in it, but it was clear that the message was about Murrow and the importance of journalism and not about George Clooney, superstar. I used to teach American History and I always made a point of spending time on McCarthy and what he and his supporters did to America. That climate of fear was so all powerful that it took the US Army to bring him down - but the Army never would have been able to do it without the bravery of the men at CBS news. Clearly Clooney has a message about America today in his movie, but he is telling it through the lense of history - through the way it truly was fifty years ago. So his movie seems to be a warning and a lesson about how careful you need to be about allowing fear to control government.

And after Clooney, I started reading about Ward Just.

I am deep into Donna Seaman's great collection of writer interviews these days and pretty much loving every minute of it. Writers on the Air is based on the radio show Donna does in Chicago and is one of those witty and fascinating collections that all readers will enjoy. I'm hoping to review the book in the next month or so but right now I'm just immersing myself in it, and finding myself adding books to my list for next year (both Wintering and Red Azalea for sure). I was blown away by her interview with Ward Just though, someone that I somehow have never heard of. I don't even know where to begin with his books as so many appeal to me, but it is A Dangerous Friend that has really stood out in light of current events. The novel is about the "covert nation building endeavors by civilians" in the days before the Vietnam War. Just said he wrote it because "The civilians played a huge part out there, there was a huge AID team and a vast CIA operation. ..You know they are distributing bulgur wheat and rice, and they are trying to build schools, and they are sending medical teams. All the time, nobody is speaking the language, and they are looking at the Vietnamese, who are looking back at them saying, 'Why exactly are you here?"

Sound like Iraq or Afghanistan maybe?

Just was a reporter in Vietnam for 18 months so he knows what he was writing about and would like to see a similar book done about Iraq. In his interview he says that one of the things about being a journalist over there was that you could look all around, visit the Vietnamese Army, the American Army, the AID people, the gov't people, the CIA - all of it. "With Iraq," he says, "you're embedded. In Iraq it would be very difficult if not impossible to pursue the matter the way we pursued it in Vietnam."

And I thought it was so great that we had embedded journalists in Iraq, that we were getting the real story. But Just is right, we are only getting one story and although it is true, it is only one truth. We need to know the whole truth, we need to know all the sides, and no, I'm not saying let me feel sorry for a terrorist, I'm saying let me know what the person on the street or the Iraqi soldier or the NGO's think. What the hell do they think? I don't know. And you don't know either. And we won't know, if we don't insist on people finding out.

We need journalists to ask the questions that Americans want answered. We need them to take lessons from Murrow.

And then there is Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu. I thought it was pretty cool that she was all pit bull on the feds about getting their butts in gear in New Orleans and helping out and all that. I was impressed that she wasn't intimidated. But in Newsweek this week she says a very scary thing: "What I'm going to talk about with my colleagues is, what is the role of the federal government in managing them" - reporters who, she notes approvingingly, have been given only restricted access in covering the war in Iraq. "Should the media be restricted" at home too? she asks, "And if so, how?"

Should the media be restricted at home? Does she forget that it was the media who were aware of the nightmare at the Convention Center? Who reported on the people stranded at the I10 overpass? Who were screaming that people needed water - NOW! Does she think they told too much -revealed too much?

I'm going to see George Clooney's movie. I'm going to add Ward Just to my list for next year. And I'm going to make a note when it comes to politics, Mary Landrieu, it turns out, is not our friend.

You may have heard about St Andrews Episcopal School turning down a 3 million dollar donation because it came with censorship strings attached. Well, now there is an effort to have YA authors donate signed books to the library to show their support. If you can, jump on this very cool bandwagon.