The Three Stooges: When Slapstick Meets Sentiment

In 1954, the sociologist Fredric Wertham published Seduction of the Innocent, his argument that horror comic books were corrupting America’s youth. Widely read...

Milestones

DIED Miguel de la Madrid, 77, President of Mexico from 1982 to '88, remembered for his muddled response to the devastating 1985 earthquake in Mexico City...

JC Penney and Ellen, Lowe’s and All-American Muslim: A Tale of Two Bigotries

JC Penney did the right thing this week, standing by its celebrity spokeswoman Ellen DeGeneres despite a conservative activist group’s demand that it drop...

Moment of Truth.

John McCain and Barack Obama are about to face a moral choice. It will probably be made in bits and pieces over the next five months, but we can imagine it as a...

Theater: The Crucible

With Ms. Lewinsky on HBO, March is Monica Flashback Month, a good time to remember that McCarthyism may be gone but witch-hunts will always be with us. A good...

Golden Oldies

TITLE: THE FIFTIES AUTHOR: DAVID HALBERSTAM PUBLISHER: VILLARD; 800 PAGES; $27.50 THE BOTTOM LINE: Though he never dives deep, Halberstam offers an engrossing...

AMERICAN NOTES: McCarthy's Ghost

One of the strangest accusations in the Watergate scandal is the charge that the press has been guilty of "McCarthyism." Joe's unhappy ghost was raised...

THE PRESIDENCY: McCarthyism v. Trumanism

With a vehemence which he usually reserves for the political bear pits, Harry Truman last week turned the full weight of the presidency against "McCarthyism."...

National Affairs: McCARTHYISM: MYTH & MENACE

In mid-1953, the coincidence of new administrations in Washington and Moscow creates a host of urgent questions. The Korean truce crisis opens ill-defined...

Books: Complex Justice

INDEPENDENT JOURNEY by James F. Simon Harper & Row; 454 pages; $16.95 Justice William O. Douglas was a vain man; the final evidence was the old liberal's...