Tail-Gunner Joe

"Enemy sighted, enemy met, I'm addressing the realpolitik,
Look who bought the myth, by jingo, buy America”

    R.E.M., “Exhuming McCarthy (Meet me at the book burning)”

Joe McCarthy

Senator Joseph R. McCarthy (1908-1957), Republican demagogue from Wisconsin, first ran for statewide political office falsely claiming to be a war hero when in fact he never saw combat as a tail-gunner during World War II.  Fearing he’d lose a bid for re-election, he seized on the country’s fears of communism in Cold War America and claimed without a shred of proof that subversives were working in President Harry S Truman’s State Department.  Between 1950 and 1954 McCarthy terrorized opponents with smear tactics until he over-stepped by taking on the army.  This earned the wrath of fellow Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had parleyed his military generalship into becoming Truman’s successor in the White House.  The turning point took place during the so-called Army-McCarthy Senate subcommittee hearings when, as quoted in the R.E.M. song, attorney Joseph Welch stood up to the bully and asked, “Have you no sense of decency, sir; at long last, have you left no sense of decency?  Shortly thereafter, the Senate censured McCarthy, effectively ended his Reign of Terror.  He died within three years of acute alcoholism.

my mentor, William H. Harbaugh

By the time I knew much about McCarthy, in a Bucknell college History course taught by William H. Harbaugh (the man most responsible for my becoming a historian), “Tail-Gunner Joe” was dead but “McCarthyism” had become a synonym for Red-baiting, accusing political enemies of being “soft on communism.” Former Vice President Richard M. Nixon, whose political career was thought to be at an end when he lost the 1962 California gubernatorial race, had built his career by Red-baiting opponents.  Even though the Cold war ended 30 years ago, the tactic still rears its ugly head when all else fails. In fact, McCarthy’s chief counsel, Roy Cohn, introduced Trump to politics and “hardball” tactics the New York City tycoon would emulate.

 

I watched “Bully. Coward. Victim,” a documentary on attorney Roy Cohn, McCarthy's sidekick responsible for framing Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, executed for being Russian spies who helped the Soviets acquire the knowledge to develop an atomic bomb. At the time Julius supposedly carried out this crime, the U.S. and the USSR are WW II allies.  What information he passed on to our future Cold War adversary was relatively unimportant.  Ethel played no role in the alleged espionage and convicting her was a ploy to convince Julius to confess and name names.  He refused, and in 1953 they died in the electric chair.  A shameful chapter in American history, brought on by paranoia exploited by politicians. On Jeopardy (a repeat, no social distancing) the Rosenbergs were an answer in the category “Traitors,” along with Brutus and Benedict Arnold. 

 

Not only did McCarthy go after alleged communists, he also claimed that homosexuals were a security risk, susceptible to being blackmailed by our Soviet adversaries.  The resultant “Lavender Scare” ruined lives even though until recently it received less attention than the Red Scare.  Ironically, McCarthy’s Chief Counsel Roy Cohn was a closeted homosexual who later would die of AIDS.  In fact, what did in McCarthy stemmed from Cohn’s close relationship with G. David Schine, a wealthy Harvard grad who was heir to a hotel chain fortune and had written an anti-communist tract.  After naming Schine his chief consultant, the two went on a European junket, touring USIA libraries with the aim of censuring leftist books. After Schine was drafted, Cohn hectored army officials demanding that the enlisted man be given special treatment so he could have time to continue working with Cohn.  When army brass balked, Cohn accused them of being pro-communist.  Following McCarthy’s downfall, Schine refused to talk about the episode.  He subsequently married a former Miss Universe, fathered six children, had a successful career in the entertainment industry, and died in a plane crash in 1996 at age 69.


The Red Scare and Lavender Scare also affected African Americans, as civil rights leaders were often deemed to be subversives and gay writers declared to be degenerates. These included such black pioneers as actor Paul Robeson, novelist Richard Wright, sociologist W.E.B. DuBois, and essayist James Baldwin.  FBI director hounded Martin Luther King for his supposed communist ties and immoral lifestyle and resorted to equally heinous actions against Black Power activists.  Harassment of black public officials was in full swing under presidents Nixon and Reagan and continues today. No wonder many African Americans chose to keep a low profile, be as invisible as possible or, in the words of poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, “wear the mask.”  Historian Ray Boomhower posted Dunbar’s poem on the occasion of what would have been his 148^th birthday:

        We wear the mask that grins and lies,

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,- -

This debt we pay to human guile;

With torn and bleeding hearts we smile

mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be otherwise,

In counting all our tears and sighs?

Nay, let them only see thus, while

We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries

To thee from tortured souls arise.

We sing, but oh the clay is vile

Beneath our feet, and long the mile;

But let the world dream otherwise,

We wear the mask!”