painted it red, white, and blue andrnealled it Americanism.” Hepburn isrnmurdered at film’s end by a squirrclvrnForward America leader, but in deathrnshe is eulogized by a grateful nation forrnsaving us from a cornfed Hitler. Nornwonder Lucky Lindy wanted to livernamong the Tasaday.rnKeeper of the Flame was a box-officerndisappointment. Director Cukor, arnwholly apolitical man, ealled it “purernhokey-pokey.” Yet it remains a fascinatingrnartifact. As a piece of celluloidrnslander it is unmatched: it makes OrsonrnWelles’ Citizen Kane look like a tributerncommissioned by William RandolphrnHearst. (Hepburn later averred,rnlamely, that Keeper of the Flame hadrnbeen based on Hearst, not Lindbergh.)rnHow could a major studio (MGM)rnmake a film calumniating the toweringrnAmerican hero of its age? The answer,rnof course, is that Lindbergh had justrnbeen reviled as “the Number One Nazirnfellow traveler” by FDR’s tame curmudgeon,rnHarold Ickes. The hit, if notrnauthorized at the top, was inspired bvrnit. Lindbergh’s father was a Minnesotarncongressman whose populist attacks onrnthe merchants of death won him the sobriquetrnof the “Gopher Bolshevik.”rnYoung Charles was his father’s son, andrnhis opinion, shared on so many Oak andrnElm and Maple streets, was simply this:rn”What happens in Europe is of littlernimportance compared with what happensrnin our own land. It is far more importantrnto have farms without mortgages,rnworkmen with their homes, andrnyoung people who can afford families,rnthan it is for us to crusade abroad forrnfreedoms that are tottering in our ownrncountry.” This is hate and perfidy andrntreason?rnI know that I am stepping, none toorndaintily, among the land mines. I readilyrnconcede that anti-Semitism was arnmotive in later unjustified governmentrninvestigations of Hollywood. For example,rntwo of the martyred HollywoodrnTen, American Communist Party membersrnEdward Dmytryk and Adrian Scott,rnwere haled before the silly House Un-rnAmerican Activities Committee largelyrnbecause of their roles directing and producingrnCrossfire (1947), in which a psychopathicrnsoldier (Robert Ryan) beatsrnto death a Jewish man he has picked uprnin a bar. Crossfire is a strange hybrid: arnfast-paced film noir clogged with tediousrnmoralizing by detective RobertrnYoung, who knows best and wants to tellrnus about it. Nevertheless, makingrnpreachy films is not against the law, elsernStanley Kramer and Dicke Attenboroughrnwould be in the hoosegow,rnand, besides, those Communists whornclammed up and refused to betray theirrnfriends deserve a grudging respect.rn(Dmytryk did eventually squeal.) Itrnshould be noted, however, that thernwicked national security state of whichrnthe witch-hunting HIJAC was a minorrnpart was bequeathed to us by the Rooseveltrnand Truman administrations.rnWhat comes around . . .rnHollywood’s evangels of globaloneyrndiscovered that there were limits to theirrnaudience’s credulity. One deservingrnflop was Darryl Zanuck’s lavish Wilsonrn(1944), a stiff and hilarious bio-pic intendedrnto promote Zanuck’s great enthusiasm,rnthe United Nations. Wilson isrna hoot: this is hagiography gone haywire,rnfor Alexander Knox plavs the great manrnas such a prig that even the most fanaticalrnWorld Federalist must cheer as thernpursed schoolmarm sees his League ofrnNations rejected by the benighted multitude.rnThrovyn for a loss bv Wilson’srndisastrous box office—the people ofrnZanuck’s hometown of Wahoo, Nebraska,rnsite of the glitzy premier, werernso indifferent that the miffed magnaternvowed never to return—Zanuck shelvedrnplans to film the egregious Willkie’srnOne World.rnWilson bombed in 1944; so did SenatorrnNye, who lost his reelection bid.rnThe muck had stuck: Nve went to hisrngrave wearing the scarlet-lettered cerementsrnthat shroud so mam of our bestrndissidents. The funny thing was, he liadrnbeen correct: Hollywood was run by European-rnborn moguls; a disproportionaternnumber of its directors were Europeanrnimmigrants; British actors did “swarm”rnall over the place; the monopolistic studiosrndid have a powerful interest in keepingrnopen their lucrative Europearr markets;rnAmerican theaters were floodedrnwith war propaganda. But the excursionrninto nativity checks was a dead end.rnRobert Sherwood had a Yankee Doodlernlineage, as did such sanguinary intellectualrnpartisans as Archibald MacLeishrnand William Allen White. And the manrnin the White I louse was a Dutch patroonrnwho made your average Plainsrnisolationist look like a wetback.rnThe studio chiefs survived the Republic,rnbut only by a few years. I’he mini-rnempires they built are owned todayrnby Japanese and Australians and thernfaceless conglomerates of the NewrnWorld Order. Come the next war, arnNye for the 90’s won’t know where tornbegin.rnBill Kauffman is author of the novelrnEvery Man a King.rnJournalists inrnGovernmentrnby Riiss BraleyrnWho Owns the News?rnYou’re not going to believe this, butrnlast year C-SPAN broadcast a newsrnmedia get-together that did not put everyonernto sleep. As a rule, soul-searchingrnsessions of media stars, or journalisticrnentities, as Wes Pruden of thernWashington Times calls them, end inrnself-cfjngratulatorv hosannas to their integrityrnand their courage in calling it asrnthey (collectively) see it.rnThe forum in Washington sponsoredrnby the Society of Professional Journalistsrnwas different. There was disagreement.rnEven spite and snarling. Syndicatedrncolumnist and former speechwriter forrnPresident Reagan Mona Charen was entirelyrnladylike, but on two occasionsrnDavid Broder looked ready to pop herrnon the nose, if she were a man.rnBroder, perhaps the leading entity atrnthe Washington Post, had proposed thernsubject: “Journalists in Government.”rnIn recent years he has been sounding thernalarm about journalists entering andrnleaving government service in a “revolvingrndoor.” As he put it to the panel: “Myrnoriginal concern was the reputation ofrnjournalism in this country and our abilityrnto maintain the public perception thatrnwe were separate from, and differentrnfundamentally in our function from, therngovernment officials that we cover.”rnThis was not a new kink in journalismrnwhen Broder discovered it. A decadernago I was, like Broder, alarmed at thernrevolving door. It was a sub-theme inrna book I wrote in the early I980’s, eventuallyrnpublished in I984,’Ba(iNews. Atrnthat time interchangeable journalistgovernmentrnofficials infested particularlyrnthe New Yor^ Times, usually servingrnin the State Department, Defensern48/CHRONICLESrnrnrn