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Cooley, successively (and deliberately) affronts and then wins the audience, sending most of its members out into the night wishing they too were senators.

But does Advise and Consent misrepresent the facts, as the drama critics of the Times and the Post bitterly charged (amid an otherwise unanimous chorus of huzzas) ? Not at all. There have in fact been unrepentant Communists in public office in this country, and honorable men have, in sober truth, been hounded out of public life for saying so. That is the message of Allen Drury (himself a former Times reporter, assigned to the Senate), and that is the message that comes across the footlights at the Cort. If that fact inconveniences Liberals, tant pis. Meanwhile, here is “miching mallecho”—as Hamlet remarked during another guiltstirring play, long ago.

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Cooley, successively (and deliberately) affronts and then wins the audience, sending most of its members out into the night wishing they too were senators.

But does Advise and Consent misrepresent the facts, as the drama critics of the Times and the Post bitterly charged (amid an otherwise unanimous chorus of huzzas) ? Not at all. There have in fact been unrepentant Communists in public office in this country, and honorable men have, in sober truth, been hounded out of public life for saying so. That is the message of Allen Drury (himself a former Times reporter, assigned to the Senate), and that is the message that comes across the footlights at the Cort. If that fact inconveniences Liberals, tant pis. Meanwhile, here is “miching mallecho”—as Hamlet remarked during another guiltstirring play, long ago.