botully

I suggest "Point of Order", a DVD showing the hearings. At the end, when (Army counsel) Joseph Welch defends a young aid from being falsely accused by McCarthy, gives me goosebumps.
Roy Cohn looks embarrassed as the gallery erupts in applause.

Toomtabard

I saw McCarthy's fellow Wisconsian, Orson Welles being interviewed on a 1960's British tv chat show and Welles-who knew a bit about demagoguery-remember e movie, ''Citizen Kane''? said that he always regretted declining to stand for Congress against Joe McCarthy- whom he despised-when, he, Welles, was given the chance run against crummy opportunist, McCarthy.

skizzerflake

A lot of writers and Hollywood people were incriminated unjustly during that period. Those that somehow dodged all the bullets laid as low as they could, hoping it would all go away.

monsieurdl

Burgess Meredith being one... to this day I refuse to watch any John Wayne or Ronald Reagan movies for their hand in this despicable farce.

pikeshot1600

Can we imagine how stupid McCarthy was politically? He constantly raved about "twenty years of treason" when campaigning in 1952. He later amended that to "twenty-one years of treason" to include the beginning of the Eisenhower administration.

Essentially, he called the President of the United States, a hero of WW II, and a fellow Republican, and leader of the party, a traitor.

Then this moron accuses the United States army of being a nest of Communists. As I seem to recall, Eisenhower had something of a career in the army, including five stars on his shoulders.

I don't have a link, but there was a docu-drama about that in which it was suggested that back-channel contact was made (with plausible deniability) between interests in the administration and Edward R. Murrow. Murrow was an unimpeachable journalistic presence whose public criticism of McCarthy was the beginning of his demise.

Mangas Coloradas

McCarthy was a delusional egomaniac of the highest order, comparable in my book to Adolf Hitler. He helped to take America down a path which served no one. IMO.

HistoryFreak1912

He was a hateful, paranoid, SOB who convinced everyone that communist spies were everywhere, he caused mass fear and paranoia. Many, many innocents were likely jailed on the suspicious of being communist spies. Ever read The Crucible? That was actually the writer's critique on McCarthyism. Hell, it was so blatanly obvious that it was a critique on McCarthyism that the author was put on a watch list for suspected communist sympathy!

He's an example of someone who should not have been in a position of power.

PM96

Really? McCarthy thought EVERYONE that he disliked or feared was a "communist spy". Hell, around this time, Charlie Chaplin himself was accused of being a "dirty commie" and was deported from the USA.

Communism isn't a good thing at all, but this idea that the communists could easily conquer America was pure paranoia. McCarthy gets the reputation he deserves.

parallel

While I believe McCarthy was a despicable individual who was willing to plumb the sewers to maintain his political power, it should also be acknowledged that he tapped into a vein that had already been drilled by Martin Dies and others. If the American people hadn't been primed by the Red Scares of the past, he never would have gained traction. It shouldn't be ignored that there is a deep difference between the true threat of Communism and the attempt to peek into every closet to root out anything that isn't "traditionally American." McCarthy and the many lesser knowns were enemies of America because they attacked American liberties and diverted time and energy that should have been more usefully employed.

Lucius

Here's an interesting link about McCarthy -

America ‘was saved by Murrow’? No way « Media Myth Alert

The upshot of it all was that he regarded anyone who didn't want America to enter the Chinese Civil War as being a traitor, or dupe, or whatever.

One can almost see his point. Japan went to war against the US over the question of China, and China was going to be lost to US economic interests under Mao too.

But to actually think that the American people would have countenanced a land war in China indicates a very very serious disconnect with reality.

And he said something bad about George C. Marshall, whose boots he wasn't fit to shine.