Today I witnessed a very unusual thing. I went to a screening of George Clooney's new film Good Night and Good Luck at Barton Creek Cinema which is in Barton Creek Mall. It's a mall like any other mall that I recall. The film is about the period of time in Edward R. Murrow's career in which he publicly fought against Joe McCarthy's witch trials. When the film was over the audience applauded.

Now this is not a film festival going audience. It was not a group of Austin Film Society members or other film-savvy indies. This was your average, or maybe your slightly more affluent than average, shopping mall movie going audience. I don't get to the theater that often -- I watch more movies at home these days -- but it has been a long time since I heard an audience clap after a film was over. And this wasn't your typical blockbuster action flick. This was a black & white film about a serious and dry news professional who many consider to be the father of television news journalism. The audience was at the edge of their seat over who would win the battle between red scare witch hunting and informed dissent. Is this a reason for hope or what?

Because the film is more than just an account of Murrow's struggle with CBS and Joe McCarthy. It is a worthy analogy to the current state of affairs in which our country is entangled. Specifically the strategy employed by McCarthy before, and the Bush administration now, of labeling as unpatriotic or treasonous anyone who disagrees with McCarthy or Bush. I wasn't around for the McCarthy hearings and I don't profess to be a historian on the matter. But I'm here now and I think the coming week is going to prove to be historic.

The beauty of our times is that we may be witness to the self-correcting form of government that we'd like to believe we employ. The hard part is that change takes time and we're on a 24-hour news cycle and that pot just keeps taking forever to come to a boil. From this small vantage point it seems that politics is cyclical just like everything else life. We swing to the right, then to the left, and back again. Maybe we're coming around the curve to see certain lines of justice served or maybe DeLay, Rove, Scooter, and Cheney are the liberators of tyranny they profess to be. It's all just perception it seems to me, 'cause those of us who voted for the steadfastness-in-wartime ticket are no less convinced that a blowjob in the white house is worse than lying about the reasons for war.

Bottom line for me is that there is reason for hope. Because there might be some indictments this week and also because the shopping mall audiences are clapping at the right movies.