Rod Serling Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Robert Lewis Shayon

Critical Essay by Robert Lewis Shayon

The new Rod Serling teleplay, Certain Honorable Men,… presented no acts of physical violence. But an uglier form of violence—the suppression of the truth—haunted its ninety-five minutes of plot dealing with the mask and the reality of Congressional ethics, much as Banquo's ghost cried out in the empty chair at Macbeth's table….

Viewers had no difficulty relating the author's fiction to the real life material of the 1967 Senate censure of Senator Thomas J. Dodd for "conduct which is contrary to accepted morals, derogates from the public trust … and tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute." Some viewers, however, did have difficulty—reconciling Mr. Serling's necessarily selective choice of dramatic essentials, among the complex elements offered by the true case, with the always troubling problem of how gatekeepers in the media use truth for their private, particular purposes.

The Champ Donahue case, as shaped by the author, searched...
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