about two-thirds of the way through James J. Lorence's The Suppression of The Salt of the Earth: How Hollywood, Big Labor, and Politicians Blacklisted a Movie in Cold War America (New Mexico, 1999). Let's see, I did a post about that movie just over two years ago. Lorence's book gives a brief account of the production of the The Salt of the Earth, giving me a greater appreciation for the way it involved local, Mexican-American miners and their families in the development of the script and in the filming. Most of the cast were nonprofessionals, and did surprisingly well.

The book goes on to tell of the organized program to block the film's production and distribution. It's chilling, and it reminded me of this post I did at theend of last year, on the misinformation of the American public. Criticizing a blogger who lamented the rise of the Internet and people's reliance on less "objective" outlets than the standard corporate media, I pointed out that Americans have always gone to alternatives:

I'm not sure where my peers and their parents went for their misinformation in the 60s, but there was the Reader's Digest, a reliable fount of right-wing propaganda with an enormous circulation, and there were plenty of right-wing radio commentators even before the Fairness Doctrine was abolished. It was as if there was a sewer in which their blatantly racist, hysterically anti-communist material marinated until it was ready to dump into receptive ears.

As I read The Suppression of The Salt of the Earth I realized that