Have you no shame?

Today in History

22 April 1954 - The Senate Army-McCarthy hearings begin. They Broadcast "gavel to gavel" on the ABC and DuMont networks from 22 April to 17 June 1954, the Army-McCarthy hearings were the first nationally televised congressional inquiry and a landmark in the emergent nexus between television and American politics.

The Army-McCarthy hearings convened to investigate a convoluted series of charges leveled by the junior Republican Senator from Wisconsin, Joseph R. McCarthy, at the U.S. Army and vice versa.

Way back in the 1950's, Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy had his own little version of the Spanish Inquisition, an hysterical attempt to root out the communism that he thought he saw climbing the walls all around him. No one was safe from his probing, beady little eyes. Government workers, college professors, playwrights and Hollywood screenwriters, actors, artists, musicians, fags, Jews and anyone with a goatee was suspect. . . . Many people's careers were destroyed by just knowing the wrong person.

The most intensive focus of the Red Hunters was on Hollywood, perceived as the shaper of public thought. Many writers and performers moved to Mexico or Europe to avoid being put in prison. There was great pressure to avoid controversial subject matter in films or on TV, and the result was the Ozzie and Harriet myth, Doris Day and Annette Funicello, Beach Blanket Bingo: silly, vapid entertainment.

Many refused to take the pledge on principle; after all, it is a free country. People like Dalton Trumbo, Ruth Gordon, Zero Mostel, Dashiell Hammett, Lillian Hellman, Jose Ferrer and Orson Welles were blacklisted.

McCarthy did not create the communist fear, but he exploited it shamelessly for political ends, accusing the Democrats in general with baseless, sweeping, shotgun allegations. He was a master of the soundbite, and played the press like a harp.

The reign of stupidity called McCarthyism was big news for most of the 50's, and shaped future national mood swings. It brought 'denial' to new heights, and showed once again how easily fascism can take root.

His efforts helped the Republicans win in the Congress and Senate, and also helped to put Republican Dwight Eisenhower in the White House. But instead of quitting while he was ahead, McCarthy kept up his attacks, accusing respected Government officials and Army personnel of being Communist sympathizers. No McCarthy charge against a government official was ever proven.

The new media of television captured McCarthy's final moments, where in dazzling black and white he showed the world what an anal-retentive idiot he really was.

At the end, during hearings when he took on the US Army, the Army's well respected attorney Joseph Welch asked him "Have you no shame?", and said that McCarthy was a lout deserving no further attention, again on the shimmering eye of television. The tide of public opinion turned against him, after seeing him in all his revolting, alcoholic glory. He died shortly after that, like a poisonous mushroom spreading his spores and then shriveling into nothing.

From Seeds of Repression; Harry S. Truman and the Origins of McCarthyism- by Athan Theoharis, Quadrangle Books, Chicago, 1971; McCarthy and McCarthyism in Wisconsin, Michael O'Brien, University of Missouri Press, Columbia and London, 1980; Blacklist: Hollywood on Trial, AMC, broadcast Feb 28, 1996

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