Point of Order

The only week when Trump was getting into his snit-fit was Gold Star widow Myeshia Johnson, some people on social media were posting video clips of lawyer Joseph Welch during the famous climax of the Army-McCarthy Hearings calling out Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) with his "At long last, sir, have you no sense of decency" speech. Welch was special counsel for the Army.  With the hearings broadcast on television during the early days of the medium, the moment was widely viewed and seen as one of the several turning points in helping end the period of McCarthyism.

That clip most-likely exists today for its use in the wonderful documentary, Point of Order, by Emile de Antonio and Daniel Talbot, about those Senate hearings.  So, I thought it would be worthwhile to post the full, riveting film here, which I suspect most people haven't seen.

It was made in 1964, a decade after the hearings themselves.  Several versions of the documentary exist, since it was edited a few times for different purposes, including showing on television, but this is the original.  It runs about 90 minutes.

I am generally loathe to post full movies here, but there are qualifications.  In this case, though a DVD does exist of the film, it's not only incredibly difficult to find, but the prices I've seen for it are in the hundreds of dollars, $264 is one that stands out.  And from that, I suspect that the purchase price is not going to the rights holders, but just some individual trying to sell his used copy.  The original DVD may well be out-of-print at this point, so posting it here is the only way to see the film.

This particular video is captioned for the hard of hearing, and unfortunately there's no way to turn that off, so it might be a bit distracting, but the film is well-worth it.

One final...er, point of order is that when you see McCarthy's venal lawyer, Roy Cohn, sitting on the committee, know that later in his life he was one of Trump's early political mentors.  During his last years when he was dying of AIDS and had other troubles, he reached out for assistance from Trump and was ignored.  He died in 1986 and I believe is currently rotting in hell, awaiting arrival of his prize pupil.
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