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On this day in 1950, the House Un-American Affairs Committee publicly names Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Lena Horne, Pete Seeger, Orson Welles, and Artie Shaw, among others, as “suspected Communist sympathizers.” Michelle Bachmann was born too late.
In memory of that particular Red Scare, here’s Be Bop Deluxe performing “Panic in the World.”
Ed Kilgore is a political columnist for New York Magazine; a longtime contributor to the Washington Monthly; and a former policy adviser to three governors and a U.S. senator from his home state of Georgia.
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