During the Red Scare of the 1950s, Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy, a virulent nationalist crusader, hauled dozens of alleged “Communist sympathizers” before a Senate panel. Earlier, the House Un-American Activities Committee ( led by a young Dick Nixon) had conducted a "witch hunt" against artists and entertainers in the same vein, resulting in a trail of fear, prison sentences, and ruined careers for hundreds.
One favorite charge back then was "premature anti-fascism" many of whom had found common cause in fighting Hitler a tad too early. That charge, in particular, worked well for Joe and Dick. For when they pursued Jewish folks, it was easy to forget that there was a small event called the Holocaust going down for years before the US entered World War II.
I never met Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, but he was a family friend before I was born. My family was from Syracuse, but my uncle married a Wisconsin girl. In the faded pictures one sees the demon incarnate. In those days before Jack Kennedy was elected, Irish Americans were more of a cohesive immigrant community. Politicians worked as "retail politicians." The pictures and images of the man in archival footage simply do not agree. In later years, I learned the implications of what our "family friend" had done.
Joe McCarthy died a broken man and censured legislator, with early death from drinking as divine retribution for his tactics. I adopted the Democratic Party-driven initially by my sense of being an Irish Catholic and familial pride. My ancestors were part of building the party in upstate New York, for Governor Al Smith. I never could understand why in a backdrop of professed liberals, and houses full of shrines to the Blessed Virgin and JFK, the pride in knowing Joseph McCarthy was as apparent as those who had met "Honey Fitz", Joe and Rose, or Jack, Bobby, or their relations.
One day it was explained beautifully. "He was "one of us'" when there was an "us" before we were assimilated." It's amazing how many things have changed since 1960, for our small part of America's melting pot culture. The evil stench left by the author of the "politics of personal destruction" seems to reside in our DNA, in politics, in business, and in modern life. It resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue today.
President Trump and Joe McCarthy are very different historical figures but there are some things in common. There is the fact that Trump was mentored by Roy Cohn, who just happened to have been McCarthy's, right-hand man. As CNN's Jake Tapper has said, “They say, ‘history doesn’t repeat itself but it rhymes.’ And when you read about that era, Joe McCarthy was doing indecent things and lying for years and years with Republicans and Democrats not saying anything.”
Jack Kennedy managed to be absent from the Senate when the McCarthy censure vote came down in 1957. For not only was Joe a friend of the family, but he also gave Bobby a job as the Democratic counsel to his famed investigative committee. Though it certainly was not the most popular thing to do after McCarthy fell from grace, Bobby Kennedy was nothing if not loyal. He actually attended Joe's funeral. There was also a political calculus in all this. Until the day he died, Joe McCarthy had a huge base amongst the Irish Catholics of Boston. Joe's opting not to campaign for Henry Cabot Lodge in the 1952 Massachusetts Senate election, essentially handed the election to John F. Kennedy.
Only a few individuals spoke out against the Wisconsin senator. One was Sen. Margaret Chase Smith whose "Declaration of Conscience" came years before the famed intervention of Edward R. Murrow on his CBS program "See it Now." Her words are ring so similar to the words of outgoing senators Bob Corker and Jeff Flake.
"....Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism:
The right to criticize:
The right to hold unpopular beliefs;
The right to protest;
The right of independent thought:
The exercise of these rights should not cost one single American citizen his reputation or his right to a livelihood nor should he be in danger of losing his reputation or livelihood merely because he happens to know someone who holds unpopular beliefs. Who of us doesn’t? Otherwise, none of us could call our souls our own. Otherwise thought control would have set in."
When history looks back at our time, as history looks back at that time, those not standing up against Trump will be viewed with contempt by history. People are going to look back at this time and say What were you doing with all this indecency, all these games, and all these lies? What did do you when perhaps freedom itself is at another place of danger? Truth is not a fungible thing. There aren’t two sides when it comes to the truth. There’s one side: the truth.
THE WAY WE WERE,,,,, AND SOMETIMES ARE
In a post some time ago we discussed the excellent book Dallas 1963. its authors remind us of so many behaviors from that era that have made a resurgence. Today's images of ISIS may have replaced the villains of the Cold War era, but there is the same atmosphere of a moral right to exclude those who seem different, or who we simply do not like.
Even Lucille Ball was dragged before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. Linked here is the Wikipedia article about those times, and the list of the names is breathtaking. If you parse this list, there are few you remembered as later generations did Jane Fonda The creative toll the Hollywood witch hunt took was massive, the toll including many premature deaths and suicides.
There have been great pieces written on the era, such as Lillian Hellman's Scoundrel Time, David Halberstam's book the Fifties, and Haynes Johnson's. The Age of Anxiety: McCarthyism to Terrorism, One film set in the time, was "the Way We Were", An integral part of the original plot was the ideological differences between liberal Katie and the apolitical Hubbell.
The legend goes that after mixed preview audience reaction, Director Sydney Pollack grabbed a razor and cut the scenes dealing with the true reason for the characters divorcing while they are having a baby. Katie had been informed upon - leaving Hubbell unemployable unless they split. The cut changed the "Way We Were" into a great romantic film. but sent the story downward, Pollack maintained afterward, the change saved the movie. as a commercial enterprise.
The legend goes that after mixed preview audience reaction, Director Sydney Pollack grabbed a razor and cut the scenes dealing with the true reason for the characters divorcing while they are having a baby. Katie had been informed upon - leaving Hubbell unemployable unless they split. The cut changed the "Way We Were" into a great romantic film. but sent the story downward, Pollack maintained afterward, the change saved the movie. as a commercial enterprise.
Being "blackballed" was once common in social circles. Many have been denied a chance to buy a condo, or join a country club or fraternity. Starting in the '50s those times faded (except during "Rush Weeks"). The vast injustice behind apartheid and segregation is apparent, it has takes time to address the smaller scale injustices seen each and every day.
Dissemination of negativity against individuals is made easier by the technology we have at our fingers. Sociologists explain the spectrum of behaviors we encounter in our world, which causes some to lose any relationship to truth. Like "Tail Gunner Joe" they stop at nothing to hurt someone they are jealous of, or even if they are unknown except by rumor.
As a former campaign manager, I relished the times I could go “off the record”.By leveraging the use of deep background, one can shoot your opponent's rotten fish in a barrel. But after reading comments reporters ran without an attempt at confirmation, I stopped confiding to journalists that cared that little about their craft. In a modern campaign, it’s all about raising the other candidates' negatives, whether they deserve it or not. But there should always be some limits and some attempt to discerning the truth.
Whether it’s journalism or business, when anonymous and negative sources are accepted, without confirming information, the door opens for the unethical. If one seeks to find feral behavior amongst humans, read the comments in any loosely moderated forum, where people are not forced to provide a true identity. Just read what happened after the 2015 Miss America contest. Eventually, the unfortunate comments were taken down, but at some great cost to a twentysomething winner.
HOW MC CARTHY ENDED
Joseph Nye Welch (October 22, 1890 – October 6, 1960) was the chief counsel for the Army while it was under investigation for Communist activities by Senator McCarthy's Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, an investigation known as the Army–McCarthy hearings.
His confrontation with McCarthy during the hearings, in which he famously asked McCarthy "At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" is seen as a turning point in the history of McCarthyism.
On June 9, 1954, the 30th day of the Army–McCarthy hearings, Welch challenged Roy Cohn to provide U.S. Attorney General Herbert Brownell Jr. with McCarthy's list of 130 Communists or subversives in defense plants "before the sun goes down". McCarthy stepped in and said that if Welch was so concerned about persons aiding the Communist Party, he should check on a man in his Boston law office named Fred Fisher, who had once belonged to the National Lawyers Guild, which Brownell had called "the legal mouthpiece of the Communist Party".
Welch had privately discussed the matter with Fisher beforehand and agreed Fisher should not participate in the hearings. Welch dismissed Fisher's association with the NLG as a youthful indiscretion and attacked McCarthy for naming the young man before a nationwide television audience without prior warning or previous agreement to do so
"Until this moment, Senator, I think I have never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Fred Fisher is a young man who went to Harvard Law School and came into my firm and is starting what looks to be a brilliant career with us...Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel as to do an injury to that lad.
It is true he is still with Hale and Dorr. It is true that he will continue to be with Hale and Dorr. It is, I regret to say, equally true that I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty I would do so. I like to think I am a gentleman, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me.
When McCarthy tried to renew his attack, Welch interrupted him: "Senator, may we not drop this? We know he belonged to the Lawyers Guild ... Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"
McCarthy tried to ask Welch another question about Fisher, and Welch interrupted: "Mr. McCarthy, I will not discuss this further with you. You have sat within six feet of me and could have asked me about Fred Fisher. You have seen fit to bring it out. And if there is a God in Heaven it will do neither you nor your cause any good. I will not discuss it further. I will not ask Mr. Cohn any more witnesses. You, Mr. Chairman, may if you will call the next witness."
At that, those watching the proceedings broke into applause. That was the beginning of the end.
McCarthy was a demagogue who would lie, slander, and cheat to advance his political career. He used fear and innuendo in his fulsome campaign against innocent Americans whose patriotism was questioned during the Cold War with the Soviets because they were liberal. Like Trump, he was a divisive politician.
Rather than be a leader who can bring the country together, Trump tears it apart. He has divided Americans at a time when the specter of racism requires a president who can unite Americans of all races.
McCarthy’s long reign of terror ended when the U.S. Senate censured him. McCarthy’s undoing came because he lost the support of his fellow Republicans, like Smith. The end of McCarthy's terror came when his accusations of communist infiltration of the U.S. Army backfired. Will Trump's indifference to racism effectively end his presidency? His loose relationship to truth? Time will only tell.
In the meantime, Joe McCarthy’s legacy of hate hangs over Trump’s presidency. Let’s hope that Jeff Flake's speech is the beginning of the end.
