Wolves in sheep's clothing...

In anticipation of the remake thriller of the "Manchurian Candidate", I rented the original version released in 1962 with Frank Sinatra, Angela Lansbury. and so forth. I'd not seen it before, so rather than just watch it as entertainment, I turned on my political filters. The main reason I did that was because Sinatra had kept it locked away for such a long period of time, apparently because of the strong political statements it made and perhaps because of the proximity, time-wise, to the Kennedy assassination.

Without going too much into the plot, it portrayed the hysteria associated with the then prevailing "red scare". What really stood out was one of the opening lines by Lansbury complaining about who her son was going to work for..."That Republican...That communist!", liberally paraphrased. This was a crafted facade to mask that she was a very active communist party member. Another oddity in the film was one of her political enemies had sued her for defamation of character and had contributed all the proceeds to the ACLU, an organization that supposedly had strong ties to the party in the '30's. The other scene that was an epiphany of sorts was when one of the actor's meal was being liberally coated with "Heinz" ketchup. Anyway, given the two conflicting events above, the movie had a little less credibility in terms of an implied agenda.

What sunk in, however, was the opening line of Angela Lansbury and her portrayal of Republicans being communists. We have many groups on the radical left that are wolves in sheep's clothing. They have been using our legal system and mainstream media to spout the conservative attack on human rights and freedom of speech as a diversion to actually suppress both by their actions and long-term agenda. Don't let your guard down!