Ann states that the corpus of writing about McCarthy is almost completely fact-free--that it is all either written by McCarthy's enemies or sourced only to things that were written by his enemies. I was a child/young teenager in the "McCarthy era." I don't claim to have been fully up to speed; I was just becoming aware of politics. But here is what has the ring of truth to me: the idea that there was ever a time in my late childhood when non-soviet-agent liberals were actually cowering in fear and silence is absurd. Look at the Hollywood types who lashed out at the congressional committees investigating Communist influence! They got sympathetic coverage in spades!
The way to penetrate the veil of lies is, IMHO, to ask each media company then extant if they were cowed by McCarthy. Each individual one of them would proudly claim, and be well able to prove, that they "courageously" stood in opposition to McCarthy. And yet the claim is that there was a "McCarthy rein of terror" turning the nation's liberals into a quaking persecuted minority. A cursory glance at the statistics for Democrat and Republican registered voters would prove that to be ridiculous. As would the relative strength of the parties in Congress--approximate parity, leading after 1954 to a run of 40 years of Democrat domination of the House of Represenatives.
Ann quotes somebody, and I can't find the quote, to the effect that
Someone cries out in a loud voice, "I am being cowed by McCarthy!" And the hue and cry of papers and broadcasters across the land rises up, "He is being cowed!"
It simply makes no sense. As Ann put it, the worst that happened to you, if your parents were traitors, was about what happens to a College Republican at a liberal arts college today.
