Reason Writers Around Town: Michael C. Moynihan on the Rosenbergs in The Wall Street Journal

Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Senior Editor Michael C. Moynihan reviews Final Verdict: What Really Happened in the Rosenberg Case by Walter Schneir, a longtime champion of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Confronting the available archival evidence, Schneir at long last acknowledges Julius Rosenberg's guilt but downplays the significance of his offense.

Read it here.

Comments

[Cartman]

Oh, and I suppose next he'll tell us the Joos DIDN'T kill Jesus?

Screw you guys...I'm goin' home...

[rac]

They did. As well as innumerable other Jews that broke the laws of their badass Old Testament god. Big deal. Anyone who gives a shit about the Rosenbergs is pathetic.

[Jeffersonian]

I think the Romans had a hand in it, too.

[CrackertyAssCracker]

How many times do we have to cover this? They paid the Italians to whack him.

[BradK]

That's all well and good for that capitalist rag, the WSJ, but you'd never see such objective analysis in a "real" paper like the NYT. The truth isn't always Fit to Print.

[Old Mexican]

Confronting the available archival evidence, Schneir at long last acknowledges Julius Rosenberg's guilt but downplays the significance of his offense[...]

Just like Walter Duranty!

[wayne]

I hate comics with big noses, if they were really funny they wouldn't need props.

[Jeffersonian]

Miriam Schneir writes that the Rosenbergs' orphaned son Michael works as director of the Rosenberg Fund for Children, an organization assisting those whose parents "suffered some form of injury as a consequence of activities in progressive causes." Among those causes, apparently, is performing espionage on behalf of a communist government.

Wait...progressive == communist? From a "progressive," no less? Far be it from me to take issue...

[Mad Max]

In context, it seems that, to Michael Rosenberg at least, communist is a subset of progressive.

[Mad Max]

Anyway, the USSR was an ally of the USA during WWII, and the USA was totally bogarting its atomic weapons information, man. Stalin was mad that Uncle Sam wouldn't share his stash of intelligence. Stalin was like, "dude, we're *allies!* I need to have me some of that atomic info." So he hired some progressive-minded Americans to pry that info out of the closed-mouthed and closed-minded U.S. government.

It's all about *sharing,* man!

[Mad Max]

Anyway, the USSR was an ally of the USA during WWII, and the USA was totally bogarting its atomic weapons information, man. Stalin was mad that Uncle Sam wouldn't share his stash of intelligence. Stalin was like, "dude, we're *allies!* I need to have me some of that atomic info." So he hired some progressive-minded Americans to pry that info out of the closed-mouthed and closed-minded U.S. government.

It's all about *sharing,* man!

[Laoshi]

I always thought the Rosenbergs were included in the same defense as Sacco and Vanzetti, innocent by reason of being radical leftists.