{"product_id":"cold-war-cool-medium-television-mccarthyism-and-american-culture-film-and-culture-9780231129534","title":"Cold War  Cool Medium: Television  McCarthyism  and American Culture (Film and Culture)","description":"\u003cp\u003eConventional wisdom holds that television was a co-conspirator in the repressions of Cold War America  that it was a facilitator to the blacklist and handmaiden to McCarthyism. But Thomas Doherty argues that  through the influence of television  America actually became a more open and tolerant place. Although many books have been written about this period  Cold War  Cool Medium is the only one to examine it through the lens of television programming.  To the unjaded viewership of Cold War America  the television set was not a harbinger of intellectual degradation and moral decay  but a thrilling new household appliance capable of bringing the wonders of the world directly into the home. The \"cool medium\" permeated the lives of every American  quickly becoming one of the most powerful cultural forces of the twentieth century. While television has frequently been blamed for spurring the rise of Senator Joseph McCarthy  it was also the national stage upon which America witnessedand ultimately welcomedhis downfall. In this provocative and nuanced cultural history  Doherty chronicles some of the most fascinating and ideologically charged episodes in television history: the warm-hearted Jewish sitcom The Goldbergs; the subversive threat from I Love Lucy; the sermons of Fulton J. Sheen on Life Is Worth Living; the anticommunist series I Led 3 Lives; the legendary jousts between Edward R. Murrow and Joseph McCarthy on See It Now; and the hypnotic  188-hour political spectacle that was the Army-McCarthy hearings.  By rerunning the programs  freezing the frames  and reading between the lines  Cold War  Cool Medium paints a picture of Cold War America that belies many black-and-white clichs. Doherty not only details how the blacklist operated within the television industry but also how the shows themselves struggled to defy it  arguing that television was preprogrammed to reinforce the very freedoms that McCarthyism attempted to curtail.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45647616606261,"sku":"ByrdShop_023112953X","price":27.6,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780231129534.jpg?v=1781695999","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/cold-war-cool-medium-television-mccarthyism-and-american-culture-film-and-culture-9780231129534","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}