2018 Life Logs, Day 18—Powerful Movies
Date: Thursday, January 18, 2018
Weather: Sunny Day; High 36, Low 22 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Studio, Falmouth, MA
Wow! While in Nashville, I went to see The Darkest Hour. What a powerful film. But today I went to see The Post and found it equally powerful. If you are not familiar with this movie, it is about the role of the Washington Post in publishing The Pentagon Papers in 1971. The New York Times first attempted to publish but were stopped when a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order. The Times complied, but then the Washington Post stepped in and was able to get the job done. Nixon tried once more to stop this, but the Supreme Court of the United states upheld the right of the newspapers. Washington Post owner and publisher, Katharine “Kay” Graham, is played by Meryl Streep, and Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee is played by Tom Hanks, both giving strong performances. If you haven’t seen the film, you might not want to read the final paragraph of this blog. After you go to the movie, which you should, you can come back and read the next paragraph. After the movie, I went out to dinner with the Women in Newcomers group and that summarizes my day. Now back to The Post.
At the end of the film, Ben Bradlee quotes part of the opinion of Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black on this case and I think that in these times those words were the truly award-winning part of this film, “In the First Amendment the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government’s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.”
