Tuesday, February 13, 2007
You Just Can't Make This Stuff Up
I've been writing about Senator Joe McCarthy recently here and here. In the longer one I wrote this:
The first stumbling is that there seems to be an intractable conflation, in most people's minds, of McCarthy's efforts in the Senate with the House Un-American Activities Committee ("HUAC" for short). Many people (and not just on the left) will readily admit that McCarthy's 'irresponsible' allegations ruined lives. When asked who? Those people blink, check the interior memory logs and either have nothing or offer something lame, like the Hollywood 10 (HUAC).
In the comments, lefty (but not completely looney) 'peter b' berated me for not supporting with details or links nearly every word I wrote (as if these blogs were law review articles). I asked him in return to name someone ruined by Joe McCarthy and he names Walter Bernstein, "one of many."
Peter b, and all who read this, McCarthy was a Senator. He was on committees in the Senate. The House Un-American Activities Committee took its members from the House, not the Senate. Senator Joseph McCarthy never served on the House Un-American Activities Committee. So if someone in Hollywood was blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee (like Walter Bernstein), Senator McCarthy didn't do it.
Peter b, you've just done what I said people often do and for which you demanded names and dates. Look in a mirror, pete.
I'll ask again, based on the consensus, but false, history that Senator McCarthy ruined lives, name one person Senator Joseph McCarthy ruined the life of. Just one will do.
P.S. I liked Bernstein's screenplay for The Train very much. Good movie.
The first stumbling is that there seems to be an intractable conflation, in most people's minds, of McCarthy's efforts in the Senate with the House Un-American Activities Committee ("HUAC" for short). Many people (and not just on the left) will readily admit that McCarthy's 'irresponsible' allegations ruined lives. When asked who? Those people blink, check the interior memory logs and either have nothing or offer something lame, like the Hollywood 10 (HUAC).
In the comments, lefty (but not completely looney) 'peter b' berated me for not supporting with details or links nearly every word I wrote (as if these blogs were law review articles). I asked him in return to name someone ruined by Joe McCarthy and he names Walter Bernstein, "one of many."
Peter b, and all who read this, McCarthy was a Senator. He was on committees in the Senate. The House Un-American Activities Committee took its members from the House, not the Senate. Senator Joseph McCarthy never served on the House Un-American Activities Committee. So if someone in Hollywood was blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee (like Walter Bernstein), Senator McCarthy didn't do it.
Peter b, you've just done what I said people often do and for which you demanded names and dates. Look in a mirror, pete.
I'll ask again, based on the consensus, but false, history that Senator McCarthy ruined lives, name one person Senator Joseph McCarthy ruined the life of. Just one will do.
P.S. I liked Bernstein's screenplay for The Train very much. Good movie.
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 7:45 PM 
Comments:
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I know McCarthy was a senator, he's one of only three senators to ever be condemned by a vote of that body, a vote that 50% of the senate Republicans joined in. Indeed at one point, the Senate press corps voted McCarthy "the worst U.S. senator" currently in office. So unlike Ted Kennedy, Tailgunner Joe was not only a drunk, he was a condemned drunk.
Your distinction between those who's lives were ruined by HUAC as opposed to McCarthy is meaningless and a matter of semantics.
"McCarthyism" describes the anti-Communist suspicion that lasted through the late 1950s. The term derives from McCarthy. Under McCarthy's leadership and as a result of the false fears created by those like him, many thousands of Americans were accused of being Communists or communist sympathizers or "security risks".
and became the subject of aggressive investigations and questioning before government or private-industry agencies. The primary targets were government employees, entertainers, educators , union activists and liberals. Suspicions were often given credence despite weak evidence, and the level of threat posed by a person's beliefs was often greatly exaggerated. Many people suffered loss of employment, destruction of their careers, and even imprisonment. Most of these punishments came about through trial verdicts that would later be overturned, laws that would later be declared unconstitutional, and illegal dismissals.
Whether innocent people's lives were directly ruined by MCCarthy himself, or those who followed his "beliefs" is totally irrelevant, and a total red herring in arguing whether MCCarthy was justified in his actions, or, was in a fact a grave threat to our way of life.
Be that as it may, a little resear shows that several individuals who's lives were negatively effected as a result of direct false accusations by McCarthy himself were:
Dorothy Kenyon
Owen Lattimore
John S. Service
The real danger with McCarthyism is that people like McCarthy, Ann Coulter, and Roy Cohn would punish not just communists, but anyone who is different than they are. For example, Roger himself states that Mcarthy and his ilk were justified in accusing and ruining the lives of, among others, "one who sympathizes with the goals of the Communist Party aka international socialists" and
"one who should not receive a clearance for classified information due to unreliability".
Again I suspect Roger would include anyone who did not vote for George W Bush in those categories. Indeed he has already directly called people like Paul Campos, Roger Baldwin, and me "communists". (As I've said before Roger, I could never be a communist. Like the guy said :
"Communists may have come up with Karl Marx and they may have come up with Trotsky, but they'll never come up with Chuck Berry.")
Your distinction between those who's lives were ruined by HUAC as opposed to McCarthy is meaningless and a matter of semantics.
"McCarthyism" describes the anti-Communist suspicion that lasted through the late 1950s. The term derives from McCarthy. Under McCarthy's leadership and as a result of the false fears created by those like him, many thousands of Americans were accused of being Communists or communist sympathizers or "security risks".
and became the subject of aggressive investigations and questioning before government or private-industry agencies. The primary targets were government employees, entertainers, educators , union activists and liberals. Suspicions were often given credence despite weak evidence, and the level of threat posed by a person's beliefs was often greatly exaggerated. Many people suffered loss of employment, destruction of their careers, and even imprisonment. Most of these punishments came about through trial verdicts that would later be overturned, laws that would later be declared unconstitutional, and illegal dismissals.
Whether innocent people's lives were directly ruined by MCCarthy himself, or those who followed his "beliefs" is totally irrelevant, and a total red herring in arguing whether MCCarthy was justified in his actions, or, was in a fact a grave threat to our way of life.
Be that as it may, a little resear shows that several individuals who's lives were negatively effected as a result of direct false accusations by McCarthy himself were:
Dorothy Kenyon
Owen Lattimore
John S. Service
The real danger with McCarthyism is that people like McCarthy, Ann Coulter, and Roy Cohn would punish not just communists, but anyone who is different than they are. For example, Roger himself states that Mcarthy and his ilk were justified in accusing and ruining the lives of, among others, "one who sympathizes with the goals of the Communist Party aka international socialists" and
"one who should not receive a clearance for classified information due to unreliability".
Again I suspect Roger would include anyone who did not vote for George W Bush in those categories. Indeed he has already directly called people like Paul Campos, Roger Baldwin, and me "communists". (As I've said before Roger, I could never be a communist. Like the guy said :
"Communists may have come up with Karl Marx and they may have come up with Trotsky, but they'll never come up with Chuck Berry.")
# posted by 
: 10:25 PM
: 10:25 PM
Peter, I'm gald you did some homework and came up with three names. I'll write about them.
Good luck with your choices. Your ever changing restatement of what you said I said is a pathetic way to argue. I don't change what you say to refute it. I just refute, again and again, what you actually say. You should try to argue that way.
Good luck with your choices. Your ever changing restatement of what you said I said is a pathetic way to argue. I don't change what you say to refute it. I just refute, again and again, what you actually say. You should try to argue that way.
Keep up those ad hominem attacks Roger. You're in a small minority on Iraq, on global warming, on Tail gunner Joe, and on the competence of George Bush.
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# posted by : 11:04 AM
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