Trumbaloney

The new documentary on Stalinist screenwriter Dalton Trumbo attempts to make a joke out of communism (laugh line Trumbo used to use: “There are only 80,000 Communists in the whole country! The Elks are more dangerous than the Communists!”) and includes a scene from Trumbo’s movie version of his novel “Johnny Got His Gun” that informs us democracy is all about young men killing each other. More Trumbo mumbo jumbo in my posting over at Commentary Magazine.com. The essential book on this matter, by the way, is Ronald Radosh and Allis Radosh book’s “ Red Star Over Hollywood ,” which is devastating to the ignorance defense (long deployed by Hollywood itself) that its many Communists were too stupid to know what was going on in Stalinland, even as they were writing impassioned pieces for “The Daily Worker” and writing films such as (Trumbo’s) “Tender Comrade.”