Edward R. Murrow...1951

[Guest guest]

The 1951 Introduction to 'This I Believe'

by Edward R. Murrow

 

 

 

Courtesy of the Estate of Edward R. Murrow

Radio pioneer Edward R. Murrow.

 

 

Originally broadcast in 1951.

 

This I Believe. By that name, we present the personal philosophies of

thoughtful men and women in all walks of life. In this brief space, a

banker or a butcher, a painter or a social worker, people of all

kinds who need have nothing more in common than integrity, a real

honesty, will write about the rules they live by, the things they

have found to be the basic values in their lives.

 

We hardly need to be reminded that we are living in an age of

confusion—a lot of us have traded in our beliefs for bitterness and

cynicism or for a heavy package of despair, or even a quivering

portion of hysteria. Opinions can be picked up cheap in the market

place while such commodities as courage and fortitude and faith are

in alarmingly short supply.

 

Around us all, now high like a distant thunderhead, now close upon us

with the wet choking intimacy of a London fog, there is an enveloping

cloud of fear. There is a physical fear, the kind that drives some of

us to flee our homes and burrow into the ground in the bottom of a

Montana valley like prairie dogs, to try to escape, if only for a

little while, the sound and the fury of the A-bombs or the hell-

bombs, or whatever may be coming.

 

There is a mental fear, which provokes others of us to see the images

of witches in a neighbor's yard and stampedes us to burn down this

house. And there is a creeping fear of doubt, doubt of what we have

been taught, of the validity of so many things we had long since

taken for granted to be durable and unchanging. It has become more

difficult than ever to distinguish black from white, good from evil,

right from wrong.

 

What truths can a human being afford to furnish the cluttered nervous

room of his mind with, when he has no real idea how long a lease he

has on the future? It is to try to meet the challenge of such

questions that we have prepared these pieces. It has been a difficult

task and a delicate one. Except for those who think in terms of pious

platitudes or dogma or narrow prejudice (and those thoughts we aren't

interested in), people don't speak their beliefs easily, or publicly.

 

In a way, our project has been an invasion of privacy, like demanding

that a man let a stranger read his mail. General Lucius Clay remarked

that it would hardly be less embarrassing for an individual to be

forced to disrobe in public than to unveil his private philosophy.

Mrs. Roosevelt hesitated a long time. " What can I possibly say that

will be of any value to anybody else? " she asked us. And a railway

executive in Philadelphia argued at first that he might as well try

to engrave the Lord's Prayer on the head of a pin as to attempt to

discuss anything thoughtfully in the space of five minutes. Yet these

people and many more have all made distinctive contributions of their

beliefs to the series.

 

You will hear from that inspiring woman, Helen Keller, who despite

her blindness, has lived a far richer life than most of us; from

author Pearl Buck; sculptor William Zorach: businessmen and labor

leaders, teachers and students.

 

Perhaps we should warn you that there is one thing you won't read,

and that is a pat answer for the problems of life. We don't pretend

to make this a spiritual or psychological patent-medicine chest where

one can come and get a pill of wisdom, to be swallowed like an

aspirin, to banish the headaches of our times.

 

This reporter's beliefs are in a state of flux. It would be easier to

enumerate the items I do not believe in, than the other way around.

And yet in talking to people, in listening to them, I have come to

realize that I don't have a monopoly on the world's problems. Others

have their share, often far bigger than mine. This has helped me to

see my own in truer perspective: and in learning how others have

faced their problems--this has given me fresh ideas about how to

tackle mine.

end

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In these times of interest, I would recommend to anyone here to view

George Clooney's movie, " Good Night and Good Luck " . A film on Murry's

first and final salvos at Senator Joe McCarthy. It is of no surprise

to me, that having been nominated for several Academy awards, Mr.

Cooney's ouevre won none. He of course left the Oscars with a best

actor's award for Syriana which was a " politically correct " look at

the geopolitics of our day in the MidEast and International oil

relations (sordid or not), and would cause neither Hollywood nor

Washington to have nagging fears of people perhaps giving quality

thought to what's going down.. But there is something dark and

disturbing in the Murrow flick. That something of course has all to

do with domestic spying, governmental paranoia and Truthspeak as

Orwell called the revisionist bluster of Big Brother. A review of

what's happening in our world is of some import for everyone

everywhere, but nowhere more important than right here in the

American Dream, America being all of North America not just the USA.

It was of interest to see the host of the show getting laughs at many

seemingly controversial issues, even a slight aside on Sceintology

(without apology to Tom Cruise and Co....[applauds from here],) the

usual drivel on the cowboy president's nonintelligence and

stupidities, but when a fleeting mention of gathering folks from the

audience to pull down the huge Oscar statue so that Freedom and

Democracy might spread and prevail in Tinseltown (an hardly

unnoticable comparison with Baghdad 2003), not a titter was heard.

It's frightenung to see this type of fear manifested in the media be

that Hollywood or CNN. But Woe Unto Us who do not pay heed to this

creeping insidiousness. What the generation of the 40s and 50s went

through on this front of fear should never be allowed to happen again.

But something is Blowin in the Wind. And that should be what's

feared...not the Administrators of our life and times. The Clooney

movie ends in victory. Let's give hope to these days of our lives now

being unfolded.

bob