Posted on 09/22/2001 7:41:30 AM PDT by Stallone
Damn straight.
The pertinent facts in the case are these: the media jackal-pack were in full-cry against McCarthy, his chief investigator was a homosexual, the Washington crowd were scared to death of him, and the senator, who was not all that photogenic, had a personality about as smooth as sandpaper. As if that were not enough, he was brash enough to take on the Eisenhower administration in the immediate wake of a landslide election victory, having already alienated the Democrats to the limit of possibility. McCarthy had a death-wish -- it's as simple as that. His reason for taking on the Washington establishment was the same as that of his pal Joe Kennedy. It was only incidentally about communists and had everything to do with the WASP mentality that prevailed in those days: no Irish need apply.
Then as now, the mainstream press functioned as puppets of the power-elite -- that is why they went after McCarthy with such feline ferocity. Of course there was also their ideological commitment to the milque-toast left in vogue at the time, but they were able to keep that in check so long as it seemed that McCarthy had the upper hand. One of the most telling slips by the establishment press of that era is an article that appeared in Time magazine which conceded that, for all his crudity and ill- mannered lack of decorum, the senator had some solid achievements to his credit. On the following week the Army-McCarthy imbroglio erupted, which was to doom McCarthy's political career. What a faux pas. How could Time be guilty of such a faulty sense of timing?
DeLay and Smith are making a big mistake -- they are out of step with the Washington crowd and that is not permitted in this land of the free. If I seem to digress it is because one cannot understand the present political dynamic, particularly as it involves the mainstream press, without knowing something of the McCarthy era. It was a defining moment in our history that signaled the emergence of the anti-anti-communist left from the closet to dominate the front page of the elite newspapers, as well as their editorials, and commandeer the burgeoning new medium of television. Then, as now, the conservatives were relegated to radio -- voices such as Fulton Lewis, Jr., were heard for a few minutes in the evening. Walter Winchell, a gossip columnist who had been lavish and tireless in his praise of Franklin D. Roosevelt, had become a national institution with his Sunday night radio broadcasts. Oddly, Winchell defended McCarthy to the bitter end. It was he who coined the term "presstitute."
For all his character flaws, self-destructive impulses and weakness for alcohol, McCarthy performed a lasting service for the country. No, it wasn't exposing communist influence in the government, which even then had become screamingly obvious to anyone with so much as half a brain. The all-consuming self- hatred of our degenerate ruling class, with which they are inculcated during the course of their expensive and exclusive ivy league educations and which they so lavishly project upon the rest of us, became all too apparent during the Vietnam War and their subsequent flirtation with communist governments in Central America. Their present crush on Castro is merely an extension of this dementia. By depth-bombing the Washington establishment McCarthy forced this cabal to the surface, defining it forever in the minds of conservatives, even if most of this went over the heads of the general public.
It hardly matters that McCarthy was hunted down and destroyed by the Washington jackal-pack. He had already marked himself for destruction and died a few years later from cirrhoses of the liver, a quixotic and tragi-comic figure. Curiously, McCarthy's real crusade -- the one against the WASPs -- triumphed a few years later with the accession to power of John F. Kennedy, the son of the senator's old buddy, and nobody seemed to notice; or at least they didn't let on. Stranger still was JFK's embrace of the anti-communist cause that was supposedly anathema to so many of his liberal admirers. Granted, he was even more inept at it than McCarthy had been -- it was Kennedy who gave us the Bay of Pigs, after all (without the air cover). JFK's Keepers of the Flame have labored mightily to shift the blame for that one to the previous administration, but come on -- he WAS the president. He could have just said no. Kennedy's problem was that he woefully lacked experience and depended too much on his advisers, and they, in turn, were reluctant to go against what they perceived to be his intent. After the debacle he settled down with grim determination to have Castro assassinated -- by the Mafia yet. Although full details of the denouement are not yet known to the public, and probably never will be, it would appear that the Mafia bumped off Kennedy instead. He, or rather his younger brother, the attorney general, represented a greater threat to them than did Castro.
Did the Washington jackal-pack really live through such extraordinarily interesting times without understanding any of it? This seems inconceivable, yet if they really do understand why do they behave so strangely? The answer has to be found in their psychology. These people have courage only in numbers. There isn't a real individual in a carload of such creatures. They were born to lick boots, even if they came along just a bit late to get in on the real action. What excellent Nazis they would have made -- what splendid little agitprop phonies, singing praise to Father Stalin, one of the most prolific mass murderers of all time, while stealthily nudging reports of his atrocities under the carpet. Lest you think that I exaggerate, a New York Times correspondent, Walter Duranty, actually performed the latter function for kindly, twinkly-eyed, old "Uncle Joe." I quote the French journalist Jean-Francois Revel from his book "The Flight From Truth":
"During a tour of the Ukraine in 1933 Duranty could joyfully inform his transatlantic readers that he had seen enough to be able to assert categorically that all rumors about a famine in that region were ridiculous. Four years later, during the Moscow trials, the famous correspondent informed his readers no less categorically that it was unthinkable that Stalin, Voroshilov, and the Military Tribunal had been able to condemn their friends to death without crushing proof of their guilt."
What was Duranty's reward for licking Stalin's boots? He won the Pulitzer Prize, of course. It is still prominently displayed in a place of honor at the New York Times. Although they have since acknowledged that the reports by this Gulag-denier were a pack of lies, the brahmins at the Times have not had the decency to scrape the plaque proclaiming Duranty's excellence as a reporter off their wall.
Other horrible examples could be mentioned. When the mass- murdering Marxist monster Pol Pot drove the population of Phnom Penh out of the Cambodian capital in a death march, the pro- communist apologist and syndicated columnist Anthony Lewis leaped to his defense, decrying the bourgeois sensibilities of his critics. After all, how is one to make an omelette without cracking a few eggs? Later, when it became clear that Pol Pot's Cambodian communist regime had butchered anywhere from 1-to-3 million of his countrymen, Lewis lapsed into an awkward silence. Not that his colleagues ever faulted him for defending the butcher responsible. His motivation had been politically correct, after all, and that's what really counts. Why pshaw, people die every day -- what's the big deal?
Revel offers many other examples of the duplicity of Western journalists in misrepresenting the truth about communism. For instance, the April 1975 New York Times article by Sydney Schanberg, titled "Indochina without Americans: For Most, a Better Life." He notes that Schanberg detected this marked upturn in the living standard within the Cambodia of Pol Pot, as well as in Vietnam. Or take the piece that James Brooke wrote for the Jan. 3, 1985 New York Times, "Angolan Writers Bloom in Independent Climate." Revel tells us that he "searched in vain for documentary evidence of this flourishing renaissance of letters, which took place, according to Brooke, under the aegis of a new, unexpected form of Platonic academy -- the Politburo of Luanda." He did happen to notice, however, the presence of "50,000 Cuban soldiers, 2,000 Soviet "advisers" and 1,000 North Koreans."
Come to think of it, a correspondent for the New York Times, Herbert L. Mathews, told us back in 1957 that Fidel Castro was on the side of liberty, democracy, social justice and all that's good. He was, in fact, an "anti-communist," Mathews solemnly avowed, committed to the restoration of the Cuban constitution. We had to find out for ourselves, the hard way, that Castro is a communist, a despot, an enemy of the United States and that, at the time he came to power, Castro could not wait to ally himself with the Soviet Union.
Why do they do it? Revel speculates:
"Though not a communist, Duranty probably felt it would be better for the Soviet Union to have a good reputation in the West. From that moment on he treated information not as an end governed by a criterion of accuracy, but simply as a means of obtaining a desired effect."
Could that be it? His guess is as good as mine, though...
more to follow---link too!
The Elian affair has truly given us a glimpse into the abyss of tyranny. The message that comes through loud and clear is that the system isn't working. The question that remains to be answered is whether we still possess the intelligence and fortitude necessary to fix it.
Edward Zehr can be reached at ezehr@capaccess.org
Published in the May. 22, 2000 issue of The Washington Weekly
Copyright 2000 The Washington Weekly.
How about when those being "regulated" are US Government employees, most of whom had clearances for confidential/secret information and who's allegiance to a foreign power posed a threat to this nation.
Give me one example of someone "regulated" by Sen McCarthy who was not a government employee as described above.
The people McCarthy went after were not Hollywierd jerks --- they were government employees who were loyal not to this country, but to Joseph Stalin, the greatest mass murderer in history.
Because sakic is a long standing liberal FR poster; he thrives on this stuff.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.