Golden Age Satire

My dad and I just listened to a recording on cassette of a radio drama. The play was The Investigator, and it aired on May 30th, 1954, at the height of the McCarthy hearings. It is absolutely brilliant political commentary, and it is fortunately online. It half-exists in bits and pieces: .ram files which don't work are here, a partial clip is available here, and a New York Times review behind some gate here. Frustrating, certainly, and I'll do my best to update with a complete version recorded from the tape later.

Still, the whole thing is interesting, especially in the style of McCarthy's attacks on his opposition and his absolute denial of the significance of anything except that which is explicitly said. It is the art of the political hack job being exposed, and while it's nice to think we've moved past that, the horror is that now this is news technique and not satire.