Latest / Stuff You Should Know / SYSK Selects: How McCarthyism Works
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: M Hi. There, it's Josh and for the s Y
- 0:04Speaker 1: s K Selects this week, I've chosen how McCarthyism works. Unfortunately,
- 0:08Speaker 1: it seems like it's always a pertinent time to cover
- 0:11Speaker 1: McCarthy ism. There's always some jerk who's persecuting other people.
- 0:15Speaker 1: And I hope it opened some eyes might not otherwise
- 0:19Speaker 1: have been open. Uh. To our friends in the gay community.
- 0:23Speaker 1: Are apologies for using the word homosexual without making air quotes. Uh.
- 0:27Speaker 1: This was five or so years ago, and I like
- 0:30Speaker 1: to think we've evolved somewhat since then. But still sorry
- 0:33Speaker 1: about that. Uh. And just as a final note, you
- 0:36Speaker 1: should probably disregard the rules to the contest that's now
- 0:39Speaker 1: defunct that's come up at the end of the episode.
- 0:42Speaker 1: Contest has come and gone and it was fun. So
- 0:46Speaker 1: enjoy this Stuff you Should Know Selects. Welcome to Stuff
- 0:56Speaker 1: you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. The
- 1:05Speaker 1: dream Police, they get me out of my bed in
- 1:10Speaker 1: my head right, the dream Police, I live inside of
- 1:15Speaker 1: my head. Okay, Well come to me in my bed. Okay,
- 1:19Speaker 1: thank you. I'm so glad you're here. Mr fourty year
- 1:21Speaker 1: old guy. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
- 1:25Speaker 1: and that is Chuck Bryant. Is that how we're starting? Yeah?
- 1:28Speaker 1: All right, and uh, since we started, since we started
- 1:32Speaker 1: off with Dream Police, you know that this is stuff
- 1:35Speaker 1: you should know. And you actually now know more about
- 1:38Speaker 1: the Dream Police than you did before. I'll wager. Yeah,
- 1:41Speaker 1: that's one of my Halloween costume goals one day is
- 1:44Speaker 1: to dress up as a dream Policeman. How would you
- 1:47Speaker 1: do that? Just mimic what they did on the cover.
- 1:50Speaker 1: They were like these white police uniforms and it was
- 1:54Speaker 1: all white. Huh, it's cool. Okay. I saw a tour
- 1:58Speaker 1: T shirt and an original tour T shirt? Who is that?
- 2:01Speaker 1: Cheap trick? Oh? Is it? Yeah? No, I didn't know that.
- 2:03Speaker 1: That was my very first concert. Nice? Was it the
- 2:06Speaker 1: Dream Police Tour? I'm not that old. Okay, that's the
- 2:09Speaker 1: one on one tour. So I'm Josh. That's Chuck Charles
- 2:14Speaker 1: w Chuck Bryant. And this is the weirdest intro we've
- 2:16Speaker 1: ever done, hands down. But um, we're here, we've started,
- 2:21Speaker 1: Uh STU. Words can only afford so much tape, so
- 2:24Speaker 1: we can't go back and record over the nope. Um,
- 2:27Speaker 1: so we're just gonna plug ahead, all right, are you ready?
- 2:29Speaker 1: I'm ready, Chuck, Josh, we talked about cheap trick. But
- 2:34Speaker 1: have you ever heard of another band called the Dixie Chicks. Indeed, yeah,
- 2:43Speaker 1: so you may remember that back in two thousand three,
- 2:45Speaker 1: and I believe March or two three, apparently like ten
- 2:48Speaker 1: days before the US invaded a Rock But when everybody
- 2:52Speaker 1: knew that the US was about to invade a rock,
- 2:55Speaker 1: the Dixie Chicks had a concert in London and Um
- 2:59Speaker 1: on stage Age Uh, the lead singer whose name escapes
- 3:02Speaker 1: me at the moment, okay, Natalie Um, she Uh basically
- 3:09Speaker 1: came out and said that they opposed the war, Um,
- 3:12Speaker 1: and that they they opposed the violence. And then here
- 3:15Speaker 1: was the kicker that they're a shamed that the President
- 3:18Speaker 1: of the United States is from Texas. Dixie Chicks are
- 3:20Speaker 1: also from Texas, but they were saying they're a shamed
- 3:23Speaker 1: of the president right that this is in London, and
- 3:26Speaker 1: they still did not have an easy time of it.
- 3:30Speaker 1: Immediately the international press jumped on it made its way
- 3:33Speaker 1: back to the United States, and it was war on
- 3:37Speaker 1: the Dixie Chicks and their lack of patriotism and their disloyalty.
- 3:42Speaker 1: People held demonstrations where they burned their CDs, and T
- 3:46Speaker 1: shirts and stuff. Um, and uh, ultimately there was a
- 3:51Speaker 1: radio group called Clearwater I believe that refused to give
- 3:54Speaker 1: them any radio play, and uh, it was pretty rough
- 3:58Speaker 1: going for him. They couldn't get any work or anything
- 4:00Speaker 1: like that for several years. And I was looking for,
- 4:03Speaker 1: um something to intro this episode of McCarthyism with. There
- 4:08Speaker 1: you go, that is new McCarthyism. Yeah, they were blacklisted. Yeah,
- 4:13Speaker 1: they couldn't get work because they expressed an unpopular, unpatriotic
- 4:17Speaker 1: sentiment and basically everybody turned on him McCarthy ism almost hysterically.
- 4:23Speaker 1: One could say they were turned on very good. But
- 4:27Speaker 1: they're back, baby, The Dixie Chicks are back and better
- 4:30Speaker 1: than ever. Are they? I don't know. Didn't they do
- 4:34Speaker 1: like a whole lot of like USO touring and stuff
- 4:36Speaker 1: to like kind of shake it off? I don't know.
- 4:39Speaker 1: I think they did. Hooked up with Toby Keith. Yeah,
- 4:44Speaker 1: that'll do it. That jingoism rubs off on you like
- 4:47Speaker 1: stank getting near that guy, and you just like start
- 4:50Speaker 1: to turn red, white and blue. Uh, McCarthyism, Is that
- 4:54Speaker 1: where we are? Yeah? I think I got us there.
- 4:57Speaker 1: So where do we start with this man communism? I well,
- 5:00Speaker 1: let's define McCarthy ism. I mean, that's a pretty good,
- 5:03Speaker 1: uh modern touchstone, but there's an actual definition of it.
- 5:07Speaker 1: What does Webster say? Well, what is the American Heritage Dictionary?
- 5:10Speaker 1: Hey man, Webster is British. You turned to the American
- 5:14Speaker 1: Heritage Dictionary to look at McCarthy ism. That's right. The
- 5:17Speaker 1: political practice of publicizing accusations of disloyalty or subversion with
- 5:22Speaker 1: insufficient regard to evidence. So that's kind of the key there. Yeah,
- 5:25Speaker 1: it's basically saying, like, I publicly accuse you of being
- 5:28Speaker 1: disloyal to this country and not caring about mom and
- 5:31Speaker 1: apple pie and baseball, and I'm going to tell everybody
- 5:35Speaker 1: about it, and I do, even though I don't really
- 5:37Speaker 1: have any real evidence. It's just suspicion. It's rail roading.
- 5:40Speaker 1: And this was all because of Jenny McCarthy, right, yeah,
- 5:43Speaker 1: Cormac McCarthy, sure, okay, no, of course, Joseph McCarthy. Yeah,
- 5:50Speaker 1: that was his name, and he was a senator. Should
- 5:52Speaker 1: we give a little background on this guy? Yeah, born
- 5:54Speaker 1: in eight If I'm not mistaken, that is right. He's
- 5:58Speaker 1: a Scannie. He went to Marquette Golden Eagles, Go Golden
- 6:01Speaker 1: Eagles really, Yeah, you know they're from basketball. No, I
- 6:06Speaker 1: looked it up. Okay, let's gonna say it's pretty impressive.
- 6:09Speaker 1: I do know them for basketball though. Uh. He became
- 6:11Speaker 1: an attorney in ninety five during the Great Depression, and
- 6:14Speaker 1: became the youngest circuit court judge in Wisconsin history in
- 6:19Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine at thirty one. Very young. Yeah, that
- 6:23Speaker 1: is young for a judge even then, even when old
- 6:26Speaker 1: timey times, that's right. Uh. Joined the Marines in World
- 6:28Speaker 1: War Two, but because of a hazing uh incident or accident,
- 6:33Speaker 1: had a broken foot, so he was I guess discharged years.
- 6:38Speaker 1: But impressively, he made it to captain in those two years.
- 6:41Speaker 1: So he's a Marine captain. And he rode that for
- 6:43Speaker 1: all it was worth, as far as using it to
- 6:45Speaker 1: get elected to a senate, right he he. In nineteen
- 6:49Speaker 1: forty four he ran for Senate in Wisconsin and lost,
- 6:54Speaker 1: but that's where he cultivated his image of tail gunner
- 6:58Speaker 1: Joe that was his name. Yeah, uh and he uh
- 7:02Speaker 1: he he just kind of, like you said, wrote that
- 7:04Speaker 1: military service for all it was worth. Yes, But he
- 7:07Speaker 1: did win a couple of years later in the nineteen
- 7:09Speaker 1: forty six and became a junior senator and was sort
- 7:14Speaker 1: of floundering as a senator as far as making a
- 7:17Speaker 1: name for himself until he latched onto the idea of, um,
- 7:24Speaker 1: let's get some attention here and start calling out people
- 7:27Speaker 1: and in power as is secret communists. Yeah, so he
- 7:31Speaker 1: had like this two pronged attack. Chucky. It wasn't just
- 7:33Speaker 1: like calling out these secret communists, it was simultaneously calling
- 7:37Speaker 1: out the soft liberal establishment that was apparently fine with
- 7:42Speaker 1: letting communists game position of powers within the U. S. Government,
- 7:46Speaker 1: which was not true or was it? It's not well
- 7:50Speaker 1: In in nineteen fifty in West Virginia, he gave a
- 7:53Speaker 1: speech um on Lincoln's birthday, and he had this list
- 7:57Speaker 1: of like two hundred and eight names of people who
- 8:00Speaker 1: worked for the State Department that he said, we're like communists,
- 8:05Speaker 1: drug addicts, sexual deviance which was a k a for
- 8:08Speaker 1: being gay, um, and said that these people need to
- 8:12Speaker 1: be rooted out. And the list was accurate. It had
- 8:15Speaker 1: been published a few years before by the State Department.
- 8:18Speaker 1: But he was using it as an example of not
- 8:21Speaker 1: only are these is this real? Are these people really
- 8:24Speaker 1: in government power? But the State Department itself published this
- 8:27Speaker 1: list and these people still work there. So what's going on.
- 8:29Speaker 1: Let's go get the Communis out of government, okay? And
- 8:32Speaker 1: Um almost immediately this fervor, this anti communist fervor that
- 8:37Speaker 1: had just been kind of slumbering and was there and
- 8:40Speaker 1: taking shape. It was plenty there. People didn't like the
- 8:43Speaker 1: Communists in the US before McCarthy, but McCarthy came in
- 8:47Speaker 1: added a level of jingoism to it that just completely
- 8:53Speaker 1: created this anti communist hysteria in America. Yeah, there's a
- 8:57Speaker 1: little bit of I don't know about controversy, but back
- 9:00Speaker 1: and forth about how many people were on this list.
- 9:04Speaker 1: Uh initially was like he said two oh five, but
- 9:07Speaker 1: then when he submitted the speech formally to Truman the
- 9:10Speaker 1: next day or I think two days later, it was
- 9:12Speaker 1: fifty seven names. And so it's kind of gone back
- 9:15Speaker 1: and forth over the years on whether it was two
- 9:16Speaker 1: or five or fifty seven. So I think it was.
- 9:18Speaker 1: I think the original list that he got his hands
- 9:21Speaker 1: on and was unedited was two oh five, but possibly
- 9:23Speaker 1: there's just fifty seven communists on the list and the
- 9:26Speaker 1: rest were drug addicts or alcoholics or whatever. The irony is,
- 9:30Speaker 1: Chuck that Um had he been screened by that State
- 9:36Speaker 1: Department test. He probably would have been on the list
- 9:38Speaker 1: himself because he was a pronounced alcoholic. Joe McCarthy was.
- 9:43Speaker 1: And did you know this, he was apparently gay. Uh,
- 9:47Speaker 1: I've heard that, but there's been no proof of that. No,
- 9:52Speaker 1: it is conjecture, but there's conjecture that not only was
- 9:55Speaker 1: he gay, and there was a rumor back in the fifties,
- 9:58Speaker 1: but not only is there conjecture of he was gay,
- 10:00Speaker 1: but that his top aide, Roy Kane, and Roy Khne's
- 10:04Speaker 1: top aide, David Shine, we're gay as well. Well, I
- 10:08Speaker 1: don't think I think Cone was. Was he definitely gay? Yeah? Okay,
- 10:12Speaker 1: I mean he died of AIDS in the eighties, not
- 10:15Speaker 1: that that means you're gay, but I think he was
- 10:18Speaker 1: known to be gay, and that one was of course,
- 10:21Speaker 1: uh what's his name to uh j Edgar? Well, yeah,
- 10:25Speaker 1: so it was weird a weird time. Yeah, there's a
- 10:28Speaker 1: lot of homosexuals persecuting other homosexuals. Yeah, public office for
- 10:33Speaker 1: that allegedly. Well I'm curious then, I mean it was
- 10:37Speaker 1: McCarthy just gay by association because Roy Khne was. I
- 10:41Speaker 1: don't know, I think it was just never proven, Like
- 10:44Speaker 1: he dated two of the Kennedy Girls and was married
- 10:48Speaker 1: later on. Well he got yeah, he got married in
- 10:51Speaker 1: nine nifty two, right after the first public accusation that
- 10:55Speaker 1: he was gay was published in a column. So he
- 10:58Speaker 1: turned around and married a secretary and then they adopted
- 11:00Speaker 1: a five week old. That's kind of the formula, isn't it.
- 11:03Speaker 1: I guess so like, oh no, I'm in love with
- 11:05Speaker 1: my secretary. Look watch this. So whether he was or
- 11:11Speaker 1: whether he wasn't, it's kind of irrelevant. But it's fun
- 11:14Speaker 1: to talk about um or is it irrelevant? Well, no,
- 11:18Speaker 1: it's not, of course not. Okay, all right, Well let's
- 11:48Speaker 1: let's get back to it. So he uh, he starts
- 11:52Speaker 1: waiving this list. The list is out there. He's got
- 11:55Speaker 1: proof that the government's turning its back on known communists
- 11:59Speaker 1: who work in its own ranks, and um America starts
- 12:04Speaker 1: just going crazy. Well yeah, and it's it's important to
- 12:06Speaker 1: know what's going on here at the time. This is
- 12:08Speaker 1: the second Red Scare. The first one was during World
- 12:11Speaker 1: War One and after, and it was pretty brutal, like
- 12:15Speaker 1: jailing people, deporting people with not much evidence. This was
- 12:20Speaker 1: the second one, and at the time, a couple of
- 12:23Speaker 1: things had it happened that proceeded a speech. UM, China
- 12:28Speaker 1: had just been taken over a couple of months earlier
- 12:30Speaker 1: by communists chairman, very big deal. Uh. The Soviet had
- 12:34Speaker 1: just exploded their first atomic bomb thanks to the Rosenberg's
- 12:38Speaker 1: very well we'll get to that too, uh. And uh,
- 12:42Speaker 1: leaders of the Communist Party of the United States, which
- 12:45Speaker 1: I think they maxed out at about seventy five thousand
- 12:48Speaker 1: members at a certain point, which a lot of people
- 12:51Speaker 1: uh Uh, they had been convicted of conspiring to overthrow
- 12:56Speaker 1: the government, So people were ready for the speech, which
- 13:00Speaker 1: it was like just the icing on the cake for
- 13:02Speaker 1: this fervor. Right. And I think something that's often overlooked
- 13:05Speaker 1: because all of the blame for this hysteria, if you
- 13:09Speaker 1: can call it that, even these days, um is late
- 13:11Speaker 1: at the feet of Joe McCarthy. But he was definitely
- 13:14Speaker 1: building upon, like you say, something that was already there,
- 13:17Speaker 1: Like there was the Sedition Act, that's Bionage Act, the
- 13:20Speaker 1: Alien Registration Act. All these were acts that were passed
- 13:23Speaker 1: by the U. S Government in response to fear of communists,
- 13:26Speaker 1: and he figured out how to use them to his
- 13:28Speaker 1: advantage to root communists out of the country. Basically and
- 13:32Speaker 1: to make a name for himself. Well, that was part
- 13:34Speaker 1: of it, might have been a big part of it.
- 13:36Speaker 1: His big problem was, though, was that, um, it's not
- 13:39Speaker 1: illegal to be a communist in the United States. Sure
- 13:42Speaker 1: it is. It's not though, it is illegal thanks to
- 13:45Speaker 1: the Alien Registration Act to even a bet to basically
- 13:49Speaker 1: sit by and let somebody try to overthrow the government.
- 13:52Speaker 1: And that's what they used to arrest the leaders of
- 13:55Speaker 1: the Communist Party of the United States. Subversion. Yeah, that's
- 13:59Speaker 1: what he was trying to get everybody on. So basically
- 14:01Speaker 1: he would bring you in front of his Congressional committee
- 14:06Speaker 1: and just give you the business, basically say admitted. Yeah.
- 14:09Speaker 1: And the other thing too, though, is like he was
- 14:12Speaker 1: immediately almost attacked by both political parties for this speech.
- 14:18Speaker 1: He wasn't. It wasn't like people the president was rallying
- 14:21Speaker 1: around McCarthy. He didn't get along with Truman or Eisenhower. No,
- 14:25Speaker 1: Truman was one of his great detractors. Eisenhower was a
- 14:27Speaker 1: supporter at first, but as we'll see, changed changed sides.
- 14:33Speaker 1: But yeah, he he found Truman to be a little
- 14:36Speaker 1: too soft on communists, even though Truman was the one
- 14:38Speaker 1: who made sure the Alien Registration Act got passed. It's
- 14:42Speaker 1: a weird time. Yeah, it really was. So should we
- 14:45Speaker 1: talk about the Rosenberg since you've lobbed that out there?
- 14:47Speaker 1: I have Julius and Ethel Rosenberg very famously were executed.
- 14:53Speaker 1: Only Americans ever to be executed for espionage in the
- 14:56Speaker 1: Cold War period, right now? No, I think Civil War
- 15:00Speaker 1: had plenty of people executed. First, they hung people left
- 15:03Speaker 1: and right. Uh, and they were were in fact communists.
- 15:08Speaker 1: There were known communists and played the Fifth which a
- 15:11Speaker 1: lot of people did, which ended up biting them all
- 15:13Speaker 1: in their collective took uses because that was tantamount to
- 15:19Speaker 1: a lot of people. Is a guilty plea right? And
- 15:20Speaker 1: of course the Fifth Amendment gives you the right to
- 15:23Speaker 1: not testify on your own behalf um, to incriminate yourself, Yeah,
- 15:28Speaker 1: to protect against self incrimination. The problem is is, I
- 15:32Speaker 1: think even today a lot of people say, well, what
- 15:35Speaker 1: what do you have to incriminate yourself about? If you
- 15:37Speaker 1: don't want to say anything, doesn't I mean you have
- 15:39Speaker 1: something to hide, You're guilty. And that was huge, huge
- 15:42Speaker 1: during the McCarthy trials that if you played the Fifth
- 15:46Speaker 1: you're basically saying, like, I'm not admitting to being guilty,
- 15:49Speaker 1: and everybody said it's guilty. That's true. But however, the
- 15:53Speaker 1: Rosenberg's um it has been found through the the Venona
- 15:57Speaker 1: transcripts and those where they they were secret Russian taped
- 16:03Speaker 1: recordings that were decoded in the forties but held onto
- 16:07Speaker 1: until what the two thousands when they were released it
- 16:11Speaker 1: made public. So now that the Venona transcripts are out,
- 16:14Speaker 1: we know that Ethel McCarty, I'm sorry, Ethel Rosenberg was
- 16:20Speaker 1: at the most and an accessory to this and not
- 16:24Speaker 1: you know, a blatant seller of of American secrets her
- 16:30Speaker 1: husband was guilty of of. Well, here's what this says.
- 16:35Speaker 1: It says they did not give the Soviets the secret
- 16:38Speaker 1: of the bomb because they never possessed the secret of
- 16:40Speaker 1: the bomb, and that there was evidence that Julius was
- 16:45Speaker 1: passing on information to the KGB, but it was military
- 16:48Speaker 1: industrial rather than atomic well selling out Boeing, So it's
- 16:54Speaker 1: not like they were like, yeah, that's great, they were
- 16:56Speaker 1: just working with the KGB on other things. But the
- 16:59Speaker 1: fact that they were executed is largely looked on now
- 17:02Speaker 1: that this has come out as a miscarriage ad justice. Well,
- 17:05Speaker 1: plus also if they're blamed like in this very article.
- 17:08Speaker 1: They're blamed for passing along the information that gave the
- 17:12Speaker 1: Russians the bomb, which live which led to like one
- 17:16Speaker 1: of the tensest periods in world history. So I mean, yeah,
- 17:20Speaker 1: they I imagine just their reputation, aside from the fact
- 17:23Speaker 1: that they were executed, just their reputation being tarnished in
- 17:26Speaker 1: that way. That's kind of a big deal. It was.
- 17:28Speaker 1: But you mentioned the Venona cables. They were intercepted and
- 17:31Speaker 1: decoded in the forties. The problem was McCarthy apparently didn't
- 17:35Speaker 1: have clearance enough to get his hands on these things.
- 17:38Speaker 1: So this is all the evidence he ever needed, but
- 17:41Speaker 1: he could never produce it. So what he did instead
- 17:44Speaker 1: was used really awful bully tactics to intimidate people into
- 17:50Speaker 1: admitting they were communists. And every single interview, every single
- 17:55Speaker 1: session was started with the same question, as far as
- 17:58Speaker 1: I understand, right, yeah, are you hour? Have you ever been?
- 18:01Speaker 1: I don't even have in front of me what was
- 18:03Speaker 1: it it is? Are you now or have you ever
- 18:06Speaker 1: been a member of the Communist Party of the United States.
- 18:09Speaker 1: That's how I thought you're gonna open the show. By
- 18:11Speaker 1: the way, no, I was going to talk about the
- 18:13Speaker 1: dream Police how did you not see that kind of Uh,
- 18:18Speaker 1: he did all this, it should be known from the
- 18:20Speaker 1: seat as the chairman of the Senate Committee on Government Operations,
- 18:24Speaker 1: which um increases level of power. But I think initially
- 18:27Speaker 1: he was given that position to sort of say, here,
- 18:30Speaker 1: just go playing that sandbox. Yeah. I don't think they
- 18:33Speaker 1: realized what power it gave him at the time. He
- 18:36Speaker 1: was very smart. He knew what he was doing. But
- 18:39Speaker 1: this was not who Act. No, and let's talk about
- 18:41Speaker 1: who Act. The House and American Activities Committee, Yes, first
- 18:45Speaker 1: established in seven and it was established to investigate things
- 18:49Speaker 1: like espionage, subversion, that kind of thing, including stuff by communists,
- 18:54Speaker 1: but it also originally investigated subversion by the right and
- 18:59Speaker 1: the left. And it was a house and he was
- 19:01Speaker 1: a senator. Yeah, so that's why a lot of people,
- 19:05Speaker 1: I think I still think that he was the chairman
- 19:08Speaker 1: of who Act, but that's not the game. Well he
- 19:10Speaker 1: how did he use it? Then? I think they worked
- 19:12Speaker 1: in concert. That's the best I could figure out. And
- 19:15Speaker 1: I was looking at that, I was like, well, why
- 19:17Speaker 1: is it always talking about who because they were involved
- 19:19Speaker 1: in the blacklist of Hollywood. But he was heading up
- 19:22Speaker 1: that thing, so so I guess maybe it was just
- 19:24Speaker 1: kind of hand in hand, like you say, working in concert,
- 19:26Speaker 1: because the blacklist of Hollywood happened three years before he
- 19:29Speaker 1: even gave his speech in West Virginia. How was that
- 19:31Speaker 1: when it started? Yeah? Um, well WHO ACT, the House
- 19:34Speaker 1: and American Activities Committee I was started in the seven
- 19:38Speaker 1: by UM. Like I said, they investigated the right and
- 19:41Speaker 1: the left, but they never investigated the clan because apparently
- 19:44Speaker 1: the three guys who were in power of the WHO ACT,
- 19:47Speaker 1: we're all clan sympathizers, if not members. So the clan
- 19:51Speaker 1: never got investigated, but everybody else did, including the communists.
- 19:54Speaker 1: And it was already UM sniffed out as uh so
- 20:00Speaker 1: really um, insincere political tool, that's how it was being used.
- 20:06Speaker 1: And uh there was a guy who was the head
- 20:08Speaker 1: of the Progressives and he basically said, you guys are
- 20:12Speaker 1: using this committee as a way to wrap the flag
- 20:16Speaker 1: over your grease stained togas um and and you never
- 20:20Speaker 1: have to you never have to explain your vote because
- 20:23Speaker 1: all you can do you can oppose anything. You can
- 20:25Speaker 1: oppose labor unions, you can oppose the farmer, you can
- 20:28Speaker 1: oppose anything you want and never have to answer for
- 20:30Speaker 1: it because you just say that you're fighting the communists,
- 20:32Speaker 1: and well, the labor unions was a big part of
- 20:34Speaker 1: the first Red Scare was the rise of the labor
- 20:37Speaker 1: unions and all these strikes going on. And people are
- 20:39Speaker 1: like the labor parties, they're they're communists, right exactly, But
- 20:42Speaker 1: that's how it happens. Like basically they say the Labor
- 20:45Speaker 1: Party communism, same thing. The American public doesn't put too
- 20:49Speaker 1: installed into it, buys it. And now still to this
- 20:51Speaker 1: day people people compare the two. It's sad, it's left
- 20:58Speaker 1: an indelible mark. You could say it has um And
- 21:01Speaker 1: like you said, he was an intimidator, threatened prison, no
- 21:05Speaker 1: evidence or very little evidence, and he would attack people,
- 21:09Speaker 1: release names publicly, and ruin people's lives without any recourse.
- 21:15Speaker 1: Uh except that in seven the Supreme Court ruled that
- 21:20Speaker 1: constitutional rights of witnesses were guaranteed during a congressional investigation,
- 21:25Speaker 1: even though it's not court. So they got along in
- 21:28Speaker 1: the books thankfully thanks to him. Yeah, um yeah. Apparently
- 21:32Speaker 1: McCarthy's big problem was he had good information, just no evidence.
- 21:35Speaker 1: Like he got all of his information from the FBI,
- 21:38Speaker 1: from Hoover's FBI, but it was basically just here staying
- 21:42Speaker 1: conjecture that was right. There's just no evidence to back
- 21:46Speaker 1: it up. So yeah, he just used to try to
- 21:48Speaker 1: beat people over the head and intimidate them into agreeing,
- 21:51Speaker 1: and it worked a lot of times. It had worked
- 21:54Speaker 1: before too, when Hollywood was blacklisted. UM, there was Do
- 21:57Speaker 1: you want to talk about Hollywood? Yeah, let's let's do it.
- 22:00Speaker 1: This is the most interesting part to me as a
- 22:02Speaker 1: movie guy. UM. So we were talking about how there
- 22:07Speaker 1: was this blacklist that was created. There's an official version,
- 22:11Speaker 1: as I understand, right, an official blacklist? Is there? Or
- 22:14Speaker 1: was it all unofficial? Um? No? I mean like three
- 22:19Speaker 1: people were on it, but there's some like Orson Welles
- 22:23Speaker 1: was supposedly on it and Charlie Chaplin, but I don't
- 22:25Speaker 1: think that was proven or maybe I'm wrong. I couldn't
- 22:28Speaker 1: find found a list of people, but I don't know
- 22:31Speaker 1: if there was an official list passed around. There probably was.
- 22:34Speaker 1: So basically there was. Um there was a pamphlet called
- 22:37Speaker 1: Red Channels and it was put together by um, some
- 22:40Speaker 1: FBI guys and a producer in Hollywood, a right leaning producer,
- 22:43Speaker 1: and it was a blacklist. It was basically the blacklist, UM,
- 22:48Speaker 1: and it was distributed to everybody in the entertainment industry,
- 22:51Speaker 1: and basically, if your name was on there, to get work,
- 22:54Speaker 1: you had to go appear before the House on American
- 22:57Speaker 1: Activities Committee or McCarthy and clear your name and then
- 23:02Speaker 1: you could get work again. Or name names. Name names,
- 23:05Speaker 1: and a lot of people did, like Lee J. Cobb,
- 23:07Speaker 1: great actor and twelve Angry Men. He named names. He
- 23:10Speaker 1: apparently put up a heck of a fight for a
- 23:12Speaker 1: while and then finally said, like, my family's starving, and
- 23:15Speaker 1: I thought about it. I'm not willing to die for this,
- 23:17Speaker 1: so here's some names. And then he named some names,
- 23:20Speaker 1: and some of those people would name some more names,
- 23:21Speaker 1: and people were naming names. Other people were going to Europe,
- 23:24Speaker 1: like Check Baker. He was on the list because he
- 23:27Speaker 1: was gay, as far as I understand, so he went
- 23:29Speaker 1: to Europe and never came back to the US. I believe. Yeah,
- 23:32Speaker 1: chaplain went overseas to get work too. Um. Elijah Elliot
- 23:37Speaker 1: Kazan very famously named names. Director Legendary Director on the
- 23:41Speaker 1: Waterfront named eight names of people that, uh, we're already
- 23:48Speaker 1: known to be communists. So that was his reasoning, was
- 23:52Speaker 1: I gotta save my career I'm not willing to go
- 23:54Speaker 1: down for this. They already know these people, so I'm
- 23:56Speaker 1: just gonna name those eight. And he was did you
- 24:00Speaker 1: watch the Officers in two thousand two when he got
- 24:01Speaker 1: his honorary award. It was divisive, to say the least.
- 24:05Speaker 1: They brought him out there. I think um Scorcese and
- 24:08Speaker 1: de Niro brought him out and um they showed reaction
- 24:12Speaker 1: shot to the crowd, some people standing and cheering, and
- 24:15Speaker 1: then like Ed Harris and Amy Madigan like sitting there scowling,
- 24:19Speaker 1: and like Nick Nulty sitting on his hands. Yeah, you
- 24:22Speaker 1: don't want to take off. She's mean. But so yeah,
- 24:26Speaker 1: that was really divisive. Um before the Blacklist though, or
- 24:30Speaker 1: I don't know if it was before the Blacklist, but
- 24:32Speaker 1: the Hollywood Ten we're very famous because they were ten screenwriters.
- 24:37Speaker 1: I think one was a I think nine of the
- 24:40Speaker 1: ten were screenwriters. One was a director. But they always
- 24:43Speaker 1: picked on the writers, it seems like. But they were
- 24:47Speaker 1: questioned by McCarthy and said, we're not cooperating. We're gonna
- 24:50Speaker 1: claim our First Amendment right to free speech. And eight
- 24:53Speaker 1: were sentenced to a year in prison, to who received
- 24:56Speaker 1: six month sentences and out of the black list, and
- 25:00Speaker 1: that was the Waldorf Statement, very famously was issued. Um,
- 25:06Speaker 1: the head of the m p a A met with
- 25:09Speaker 1: basically the member of every major Hollywood studio behind closed doors,
- 25:13Speaker 1: developed their blacklist, released the Waldorf statement because it was
- 25:16Speaker 1: at Waldorf Historia and said, uh, these people aren't gonna
- 25:20Speaker 1: work again, and hear their names, and I think only
- 25:25Speaker 1: at the end, out of the three hundred and something,
- 25:27Speaker 1: only about ten percent ever like worked again. It's so sad,
- 25:31Speaker 1: Burgess Meredith, he was on the list. He worked again.
- 25:34Speaker 1: He was great in the Rocky movies. Oh and Batman.
- 25:38Speaker 1: Yeah remember the point um so zero Mustel he was
- 25:41Speaker 1: on there. He was creating the Producers pizza here he
- 25:45Speaker 1: was folk singer. Uh so. Um. There were like real
- 26:20Speaker 1: repercussions of this, not just you know, basically a single
- 26:24Speaker 1: senator deciding that he was going to interpret the Constitution
- 26:27Speaker 1: anyway liked um, not just whipping up this fear among
- 26:32Speaker 1: the average American person. Um, but there were people whose
- 26:36Speaker 1: careers were ruined, whose lives were ruined, who who just
- 26:39Speaker 1: lost their livelihoods because they went to a Communist meeting
- 26:42Speaker 1: or something ten years before or maybe even we're communists.
- 26:47Speaker 1: Probably The big problem with this is um McCarthy took
- 26:52Speaker 1: a really iron rand esque approach to this, where he
- 26:56Speaker 1: kind of interpreted allowing Hollywood to bows any kind of
- 27:01Speaker 1: um communist ideas as a moral crime, just like um
- 27:05Speaker 1: you know, recently, Congress tried to go after um MPR
- 27:09Speaker 1: for having liberal bias. They were going to cut off
- 27:12Speaker 1: its funding. It's very randy in where it's a moral
- 27:15Speaker 1: crime to support something that's trying to destroy you, and
- 27:18Speaker 1: McCarthy definitely had that that viewpoint, and I think that's
- 27:22Speaker 1: why he was going after Hollywood himself or at least
- 27:26Speaker 1: supporting it well, because yeah, they were supposedly making movies
- 27:29Speaker 1: that subversively, you know, supported communism. But the problem is
- 27:34Speaker 1: is that's going after the intellectuals. He's not going after
- 27:37Speaker 1: the spies any longer. He's going after communist thinkers, like
- 27:40Speaker 1: people who aren't trying to overthrow the government. They just
- 27:43Speaker 1: think communism is a better idea, and that's when that's
- 27:47Speaker 1: it's going after spies. I don't think anybody really has
- 27:50Speaker 1: a problem with that, but he went well beyond that.
- 27:53Speaker 1: So that, combined with his tactics, have basically smeared his
- 27:56Speaker 1: name through the mud. For the rest of history. It's true. Uh,
- 27:59Speaker 1: if you're interested in some good movies on on the
- 28:03Speaker 1: Blacklist era Guilty by Suspicion as one DeNiro really good movie,
- 28:08Speaker 1: and good Night and good Luck of course, which was awesome,
- 28:12Speaker 1: or just read The Crucible that was great. Arthur Miller
- 28:15Speaker 1: famously in nineteen fifty three wrote a play that was
- 28:18Speaker 1: a very thinly veiled attack on McCarthy is m by
- 28:22Speaker 1: way of the Uh. The portal was the the witch Hunts,
- 28:26Speaker 1: the Salem witch Trials switch. It's basically like, here's what's
- 28:29Speaker 1: going on now, Goodie McCarthy right, Surprisingly didn't just outright
- 28:34Speaker 1: say it. Um. Also he went after Um books too.
- 28:41Speaker 1: He apparently had people scan the libraries for books that
- 28:46Speaker 1: contain anti American sentiments. They identified thirty thousand titles and
- 28:50Speaker 1: purged libraries of these books. What a jerk, so Um said,
- 28:56Speaker 1: you said it, so chuck this guy. At one point
- 28:59Speaker 1: in for it his peak, there was a poll taken
- 29:02Speaker 1: that found it was a gallop pole. So you know
- 29:04Speaker 1: that's quality. Uh. Fifty percent of the American people had
- 29:10Speaker 1: a favorable opinion of McCarthy, Like I don't think Ronald
- 29:14Speaker 1: Reagan even ever had. Yeah, and everybody loved Uncle Ronnie. Well,
- 29:20Speaker 1: that was in January, that same pole taken in June.
- 29:24Speaker 1: I saw that number of fall tot for very good reason.
- 29:27Speaker 1: What happened, What happened. What happened was he made the well,
- 29:31Speaker 1: he didn't make the mistake. Uh President Eisenhower. For the
- 29:36Speaker 1: very first time in broadcast history, he said, let's broadcast
- 29:39Speaker 1: these hearings and this at this time, it wasn't the
- 29:42Speaker 1: Hollywood Blacklist hearings. That was the his war on the Army. Yeah,
- 29:48Speaker 1: which is a bad move to do when your president
- 29:50Speaker 1: is a decorated general from the last war, like five
- 29:52Speaker 1: years before. Yeah. It was called the Army McCarthy hearings,
- 29:55Speaker 1: broadcast in nineteen fifty four on live television, and after
- 30:01Speaker 1: some one of a mundane start to the hearings, he
- 30:03Speaker 1: started accusing very heavily decorated and respected Army officers of
- 30:12Speaker 1: not being fit to wear the uniform. He told Brigadier
- 30:16Speaker 1: General Ralph Wicker, he compared him mentally to a five
- 30:20Speaker 1: year old, said he was a disgrace to the uniform.
- 30:23Speaker 1: And then everyone watching this on TV, it's like, wait
- 30:26Speaker 1: a minute, wait, this is what he's been doing. This
- 30:28Speaker 1: guy is a total jerk. Yeah, because before they were UM,
- 30:32Speaker 1: there were transcripts and there were minutes, but they were classified. Yeah,
- 30:36Speaker 1: well they weren't out. The media was also very sympathetic,
- 30:39Speaker 1: so they're portraying everything in a real light. So basically
- 30:41Speaker 1: Eisenhower was like, I'm gonna give you a little rope
- 30:44Speaker 1: and I think you'll go hang yourself with it, and
- 30:46Speaker 1: he did, UM, and the American public turned on him
- 30:49Speaker 1: like crazy Truman or I'm sorry, not Truman, but Eisenhower.
- 30:53Speaker 1: UM also instructed as Vice President Richard Nixon to go
- 30:58Speaker 1: speak vaguely but publicly against McCarthy, which he did, which
- 31:03Speaker 1: gave the media tested approval to go after McCarthy. Gave
- 31:06Speaker 1: who the media, but who did he get to? Nixon?
- 31:10Speaker 1: Nixon was Eisenhower's VP, and Nix him out there was like,
- 31:13Speaker 1: oh okay, I love the UM and he uh yeah.
- 31:18Speaker 1: After that, the floodgates open and all of a sudden,
- 31:21Speaker 1: everybody was all against McCarthy because basically Nixon had been
- 31:25Speaker 1: like a government against McCarthy too, and the Army started
- 31:29Speaker 1: feeding the media. Army intelligence had dirt McCarthy. He used
- 31:33Speaker 1: his office or tried to unsuccessfully UM to influence the
- 31:39Speaker 1: army to keep from drafting um David Shine, Roy Cohn's
- 31:44Speaker 1: lover or aid um. And it didn't work. And then
- 31:48Speaker 1: once he was drafted, they he used he tried to
- 31:51Speaker 1: use his influence again to get the army to take
- 31:54Speaker 1: it easy on the guy so that he wouldn't go
- 31:55Speaker 1: into battle. Um. So they released that to the media.
- 31:58Speaker 1: So this guy who's like, you know, smearing decorated army
- 32:04Speaker 1: generals on TV right, has has tried to use his
- 32:07Speaker 1: power to keep somebody else from having to serve. That
- 32:10Speaker 1: didn't play very well either. So basically they centure him, right, Yeah,
- 32:15Speaker 1: they said, you know what, uh, we don't like you anymore.
- 32:19Speaker 1: I think that's the official statement, because we don't like
- 32:22Speaker 1: you anymore. Um cruel and reckless. And he was centered
- 32:26Speaker 1: by a vote of sixty to twenty two. Originally in
- 32:29Speaker 1: nineteen there were forty six charges of abuse of legislative power,
- 32:34Speaker 1: but they reduced that to two. Or they only centured
- 32:38Speaker 1: him onto because they didn't want to appear like there
- 32:40Speaker 1: were big softies on communism. They were trying to strike
- 32:43Speaker 1: the right balance of getting him out of there without
- 32:45Speaker 1: looking like there you know, commues themselves. Um. So He
- 32:51Speaker 1: remained uh in office at least for a little while
- 32:54Speaker 1: longer um, but at age forty eight in nineteen fifty seven,
- 32:59Speaker 1: he died of acute hepatitis from alcohol abuse. If you're
- 33:02Speaker 1: forty eight and you die from alcohol abuse, then you've
- 33:04Speaker 1: been drinking since you were one and a half. Yeah,
- 33:06Speaker 1: he said. Apparently read some biography a bit that said
- 33:10Speaker 1: that he when he was on the wagon, that meant
- 33:13Speaker 1: he just drank beer and didn't drink whiskey. So when
- 33:17Speaker 1: he quit drinking, that meant he only drank beer. He
- 33:19Speaker 1: was like Dennis Hopper and Hoosiers, except in the Senate.
- 33:23Speaker 1: Very powerful. Wait, so he was like Ted Kennedy. Well,
- 33:28Speaker 1: he was actually a friend of the Kennedy's, which is
- 33:29Speaker 1: weird because Kennedy's were very liberal obviously, but he was Catholic.
- 33:36Speaker 1: He identified with the Kennedy's because they were Catholic. Joseph
- 33:39Speaker 1: Kennedy was big anti communist, and he thought, Hey, if
- 33:44Speaker 1: I can help this guy get into office, then that
- 33:48Speaker 1: will be a good road paved for other Catholics. Like
- 33:51Speaker 1: my son's Johnny, like my Johnny, my Bobby, and like
- 33:56Speaker 1: I said earlier, he dated two of the daughters supposedly
- 33:58Speaker 1: and um, well not supposedly he did. I just don't
- 34:01Speaker 1: know what went on on those dates. And um uh
- 34:06Speaker 1: John Kennedy was very quiet about this whole thing. He
- 34:10Speaker 1: never came out and attacked him because Uh McCarthy was
- 34:14Speaker 1: very uh had a lot of sway in campaigning against
- 34:18Speaker 1: Democrats and elections, and he never did that too to
- 34:22Speaker 1: John F. Kennedy. So Kennedy kind of laid off when
- 34:25Speaker 1: it came time to attack McCarthy. And I think Bobby
- 34:27Speaker 1: Kennedy actually worked with him. Well, that was another abuse,
- 34:30Speaker 1: Like basically he used this whole hysteria and the power
- 34:32Speaker 1: given to him by by targeting New Deal Democrats and
- 34:37Speaker 1: basically helping further Republican policies rather than going after the communists. Yeah.
- 34:42Speaker 1: He he was quoted at one time saying that Democrats
- 34:45Speaker 1: uh had been operating on quote twenty years of treason.
- 34:50Speaker 1: He accused them of being treasonist Democrats and Truman um
- 34:55Speaker 1: once referred to him as the best asset the Kremlin
- 34:57Speaker 1: has and said he was out the set abotage with
- 35:00Speaker 1: the foreign policy of the United States. So man, they
- 35:03Speaker 1: were not. They did. He did not get along with anyone,
- 35:06Speaker 1: so chuck outside of his group. Of course, here's the kicker,
- 35:12Speaker 1: as shamed and publicly humiliated and just kicked to the curb.
- 35:17Speaker 1: Joseph McCarthy. The big jerk was he was writing a
- 35:22Speaker 1: lot of instances. He was in a way. Um, I
- 35:27Speaker 1: have a historian on my on my speed dial named
- 35:31Speaker 1: John Earl Haynes. He went over the Venona transcripts and
- 35:37Speaker 1: his conclusion was that out of a hundred and fifty
- 35:39Speaker 1: nine people identified by McCarthy, nine of them were aiding
- 35:45Speaker 1: Soviet espionage efforts. And he said a majority of those
- 35:50Speaker 1: could legitimately have been considered risks, but a substantial minority
- 35:54Speaker 1: could not. So he said he has nine people, which
- 35:57Speaker 1: included a captain in the navy, Uh, Davy, he was
- 36:02Speaker 1: still in the Navy, And imagine he would be for
- 36:05Speaker 1: life to two atomic spies, someone who held meetings with
- 36:11Speaker 1: Churchill and Roosevelt. Yeah, who who is that? I don't know.
- 36:14Speaker 1: I couldn't find out. I'm very curious. Um, and somebody
- 36:18Speaker 1: who held the top office in today's equivalent of the
- 36:20Speaker 1: c I A, oh yeah, it also says ten senior
- 36:26Speaker 1: level officials. Uh. We're also later shown to have had
- 36:29Speaker 1: Communist ties. Even though they weren't necessarily a security risk, right,
- 36:35Speaker 1: so there were a Um, you can also make the
- 36:38Speaker 1: case that if you cast a wide enough net, you're
- 36:41Speaker 1: gonna catch some some tuna along with the sea spiders.
- 36:44Speaker 1: As the old saying goes, Yeah, it's it's still divided
- 36:47Speaker 1: like some people and culture loves the guy now and said,
- 36:51Speaker 1: you know, history has shown that he was right about it.
- 36:53Speaker 1: All is. She's still around. Yeah, she's alive. Okay, well
- 36:56Speaker 1: what do you what do you think having to her?
- 36:58Speaker 1: I just thought she fell off the radar. Oh, I
- 37:00Speaker 1: don't know. Okay, she's not on my radar, but I'm
- 37:03Speaker 1: sure she's on somebody's radar. She's on Bill Mar's radar.
- 37:05Speaker 1: She's on um oh man, Ted Nugent's radar. Really yeah, man,
- 37:12Speaker 1: he used to uh he he would guest host for
- 37:15Speaker 1: Neil Boort's years back. And I heard her on his
- 37:19Speaker 1: show once and um, He's like, I'm look, I'm just
- 37:22Speaker 1: a guitar player. And she stopped him. She's like, I
- 37:25Speaker 1: love it when you say that. It was like really wow.
- 37:29Speaker 1: Like I was like, if I were Ted Nugent's wife,
- 37:31Speaker 1: I'd be mad. Right now. That's a little creepy. You
- 37:34Speaker 1: got anything else? No, So in this episode, if you
- 37:39Speaker 1: come across the stuff, you should know quiz that mentions
- 37:41Speaker 1: the McCarthy ism episode. The four bands that made an
- 37:45Speaker 1: appearance were Cheap Trick Yep, the Dixie Chicks, Billy Joel,
- 37:51Speaker 1: and Ted Nugent. You knew, I don't know. The Billy
- 37:56Speaker 1: Joel that was a cheap one. It was good. It
- 37:59Speaker 1: was good man. Um. So that's about it for McCarthy ism.
- 38:02Speaker 1: It's still alive today. Instead of communists, we know, target
- 38:06Speaker 1: Muslims what a lot of people say, um, and the
- 38:11Speaker 1: Dixie Chicks Muslims in the Dixie Chicks. Basically anybody who
- 38:14Speaker 1: opposes America invading other countries. That's the new McCarthy ism.
- 38:20Speaker 1: All right. Um, I could throw an r M reference
- 38:23Speaker 1: in there already I already said it. We're not gonna
- 38:26Speaker 1: exum him what exuming McCarthy's r M? Oh is it? Well?
- 38:31Speaker 1: How did you wait this long to throw that in?
- 38:33Speaker 1: I don't know. I just think it would be a
- 38:35Speaker 1: little cheerry on top. All right, So the five bands
- 38:37Speaker 1: are Cheap Trick, Billy Joel, Dixie Chicks, Uh, Ted Nugent
- 38:42Speaker 1: in r E M. But Ted nugent was in r
- 38:44Speaker 1: A M so oh Man. Anyway, just go type in
- 38:48Speaker 1: McCarthy ism and c C A R T H y
- 38:51Speaker 1: I s M into the search part hows to first
- 38:54Speaker 1: dot com and that will bring up new stuff that
- 38:56Speaker 1: we didn't even touch on, um, including factual errors about
- 39:00Speaker 1: such groups as the Rosenberg family. Uh and I said
- 39:05Speaker 1: search part how stuff works dot com, which means it's
- 39:07Speaker 1: time finally for that's y s K contests rules. That's right, Josh.
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