From AlterNet
By Molly Ivins

Watching the new film “Good Night and Good Luck” about Edward R. Murrow reminded me of John Henry Faulk and his own heroic struggle against McCarthyism. Well, okay, Johnny did actually wage a gallant and valiant fight, but since it was John Henry, it was also weird and funny and full of improbable characters — what is it about Texans that we can’t even be heroic without being comical?

In 1955, Johnny Faulk was a successful popular entertainer with a network radio program featuring his impersonations of the down-home Texas characters he invented (actually, a horrifying number of them were based on real people — in fact, he was related to several of the prototypes). He appeared on television quiz panels and hosted CBS’s morning program, being funny and folksy with pipe in hand.

In the insanity of the times, blacklisting had become an institutionalized protection racket. An outfit of professional commie-hunters called AWARE, Inc., run by a guy named Vincent Hartnett, was kept on retainer by the networks, major ad agencies, and big sponsors to vet performers for commie sympathies. The more “commies” they found doing anything from soap operas to soup commercials, the more money they made. This gave them quite a financial incentive to find “communist sympathizers.” Should a network or agency refuse to play along, Hartnett’s friend Laurence Johnson, a grocery magnate from upstate New York, would pull the sponsor’s products from his grocery shelves until they caved in. The American Legion would chip in with a boycott of the product, accusing Proctor and Gamble or whoever of being part of the plot to undermine America.

Faulk and several other brave entertainers and journalists ran for union office on an anti-blacklisting platform and were elected overwhelmingly in September 1955. A month later Johnny was cited in AWARE’s bulletin “Red Channels” on seven counts that were either completely false or distorted crap. Johnson came to New York and went up and down Madison Avenue pressuring Johnny’s sponsors to drop his show. Some did and CBS eventually fired him even though his ratings were excellent.

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