Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: How McCarthyism Works

Episode Date: August 12, 2017

In this week's SYSK Select episode, if you're accusing someone of disloyalty or subversion without decent evidence, then you may be guilty of McCarthyism. In this episode, Josh and Chuck explore the origin of the term, starting with the infamous Communist-hunting Senator Joseph McCarthy. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hi there, it's Josh. And for the SYS case selects this week, I've chosen how McCarthyism works. Unfortunately, it seems like it's always a pertinent time to cover McCarthyism.

There's always some jerk who's persecuting other people. And I hope it opens some eyes. Might not otherwise have been open to our friends in the gay community. Our apologies for using the word homosexual without making air quotes. This was five or so years ago. And I like to think we've evolved somewhat since then,

but still, sorry about that. And just as a final note, you should probably disregard the rules to the contest that's now defunct. That's come up at the end of the episode. Contest is coming gone and it was fun. So enjoy the Stuff You Should Know Select. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com.

The dream police, they get me out of my bed. They're all in my head. In my head, right? The dream police, they live inside of my head. Welcome to me in my bed. Okay, thank you. I'm so glad you're here, Mr. 40-year-old guy. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.

I'm Josh, and that is Chuck Bryant. Is that how we're starting? Yeah, all right. And since we started off with dream police, you know that this is Stuff You Should Know. And you actually now know more about the dream police than you did before, Isle Wager. Yeah, that's one of my Halloween costume goals one day,

is to dress up as a dream policeman. How would you do that? Just mimic what they did on the cover. They were like these white police uniforms, and it was all white. Huh, it's cool. Okay, I saw a tour t-shirt, an original tour t-shirt. Who is that?

Cheap trick. Oh, is it? Yeah, no, I didn't know that. That was my very first concert. Nice. Was it the dream police tour? No, no, I'm not that old. Okay.

It's the one-on-one tour. So I'm Josh. That's Chuck, Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and this is the weirdest intro we've ever done. Yeah. Hands down. But we're here. We've started.

How stuff works can only afford so much tape, so we can't go back and record over this. Nope. So we're just gonna plug it in. All right, you ready? I'm ready. Chuck. Josh.

We talked about Cheap Trick, but have you ever heard of another band called the Dixie Chicks? Indeed. You have? Uh-huh. Sure. So you may remember that back in 2003, and I believe March of 2003, apparently like 10 days

before the U.S. invaded Iraq. But when everybody knew that the U.S. was about to invade Iraq, the Dixie Chicks had a concert in London. And on stage, the lead singer, whose name escapes me at the moment. Natalie, I believe. Okay, Natalie.

She basically came out and said that they opposed the war and that they opposed the violence. And here's the kicker, that they're ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas. Dixie Chicks are also from Texas. Right. But they were saying they're ashamed of the president. Right?

Yeah, I remember that. This is in London, and they still did not have an easy time of it. Immediately, the international press jumped on it, and made its way back to the United States. And it was war on the Dixie Chicks and their lack of patriotism and their disloyalty. People held demonstrations where they burned

their CDs and t-shirts and stuff. And ultimately, there was a radio group called Clearwater, I believe, that refused to give them any radio play. And it was pretty rough going for them. They couldn't get any work or anything like that for several years. And I was looking for something to intro this episode on McCarthyism with.

There you go. That is new McCarthyism. Yeah, they were blacklisted. Yeah, they couldn't get work because they expressed an unpopular, unpatriotic sentiment. Yeah. And basically, everybody turned on them. McCarthyism.

Almost hysterically, one could say, they were turned on. Yeah, very good. But they're back, baby. The Dixie Chicks are back and better than ever. Are they? I don't know. Didn't they do a whole lot of USO touring and stuff to shake it off?

I don't know. I think they did. Hooked up with Toby Keith. Yeah. That'll do it. This jingoism rubs off on you, like, stank. Did she get near that guy? And you just start to turn red, white, and blue.

McCarthyism, is that where we are? Yeah, I think I got us there. So where do we start with this, man, communism? Well, let's define McCarthyism. I mean, that's a pretty good modern touchstone. But there's an actual definition of it. What does Webster say? Well, what is the American Heritage Dictionary?

Hey, man, Webster was British. You turned to the American Heritage Dictionary to look up McCarthyism. That's right. The political practice of publicizing accusations of disloyalty or subversion with insufficient regard to evidence. So that's kind of the key there.

Yeah, it's basically saying, like, I publicly accuse you of being disloyal to this country and not caring about mom and apple pie and baseball. And I'm going to tell everybody about it. And I do, even though I don't really have any real evidence. It's just suspicion. It's railroading. And this was all because of Ginny McCarthy, right?

Yeah. Cormac McCarthy? Sure. OK. No, of course. Joseph McCarthy. Yeah. That was his name, and he was a senator.

Should we give a little background on this guy? Yeah, born in 1908, if I'm not mistaken. That is right. He's a Scotty. He went to Marquette. Golden Eagles go Golden Eagles. Really? Yeah. You know them from basketball?

No, I looked it up. Oh, OK. That's what you say. It's pretty impressive. I do know them from basketball, though. He became an attorney in 1935 during the Great Depression and became the youngest circuit court judge in Wisconsin history in 1939.

At the age of 31. Very young. Yeah, it is young for a judge. Even then, even on old timey times. That's right. Join the Marines in World War II, but because of a hazing incident or accident, had a broken foot, so he was, I guess, discharged.

Yeah, after two years. But impressively, he made it to captain in those two years. So he's a Marine captain. And he wrote that for all it was worth as far as using it to get elected to a Senate. Right. In 1944, he ran for Senate in Wisconsin and lost. But that's where he cultivated his image of tail gunner Joe.

That was his name. And he just kind of, like you said, wrote that military service for all it was worth. Yes, but he did win a couple of years later in 1946 and became a junior senator and was sort of floundering as a senator as far as making a name for himself until he latched on to the idea of, let's get some attention here and start calling out people

in power as secret communists. Yeah. So he had this two-pronged attack, Chuck. It wasn't just calling out these secret communists. It was simultaneously calling out the soft liberal establishment that was apparently fine with letting communists gain position of powers within the US government.

Which was not true. Or was it? It was not. Well, in 1950, in West Virginia, he gave a speech on Lincoln's birthday. And he had this list of like 208 names of people who worked for the State Department that he said were communists, drug addicts, sexual deviance,

which was a.k.a. for being gay. And said that these people need to be rooted out. And the list was accurate. It had been published a few years before by the State Department. But he was using it as an example of not only is this real, are these people really in government power, but the State Department itself published this list.

And these people still work there. So what's going on? Let's go get the communists out of government, OK? And almost immediately, this fervor, this anti-communist fervor that had just been kind of slumbering and was there and taking shape. It was plenty there. People didn't like the communists in the US before McCarthy.

But McCarthy came and added a level of jingoism to it that just completely created this anti-communist hysteria in America. Yeah, there's a little bit of I don't know about controversy, but back and forth about how many people are on this list. Initially, he said 205, but then when he submitted the speech formally to Truman the next day, or I think two days later, it was 57 names.

And so it's kind of gone back and forth over the years on whether it was 205 or 57. So I think the original list that he got his hands on and was unedited was 205, but possibly there was just 57 communists on the list. And the rest were drug addicts or alcoholics or whatever. The irony is, Chuck, that had he been screened by that State Department test, he probably

would have been on the list himself. Because he was a pronounced alcoholic, Joe McCarthy was. And did you know this? He was apparently gay. I've heard that, but there's been no proof of that. No, it is conjecture. But there's conjecture that not only was he gay, and there was rumor back in the 50s.

But not only is there conjecture that he was gay, but that his top aide Roy Cohn and Roy Cohn's top aide David Shine were gay as well. Well, I don't think I think Cohn was. Was he definitely gay? Yeah, OK. I mean, he died of AIDS in the 80s. Not that that means you're gay.

But I think he was known to be gay. OK. That one was lost on me. Of course, what's his name too? J. Edgar. Well, yeah. So it was a weird time. Yeah, there's a lot of homosexuals persecuting

other homosexuals using public office for that. Allegedly. Well, I'm curious then. I mean, is McCarthy just gay by association because Roy Cohn was? I don't know. I think it was just never proven. Like, he dated two of the Kennedy girls

and was married later on. Well, he got married. Yeah, he got married in 1952 right after the first public accusation that he was gay was published in a column. That's usually the case. So he turned around and married a secretary, and then they adopted a five-week old.

That's kind of the formula, isn't it? I guess so. Like, oh, no, I'm in love with my secretary. Right. Look, watch this. So whether he was or whether he wasn't, it's kind of irrelevant. But it's fun to talk about. Yeah.

Or is it irrelevant? Well, no, it's not. Of course not. OK, all right. Hey, dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slipdresses and choker necklaces.

We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster?

Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts

flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in, as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast,

Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place,

because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael.

Hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now.

If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Well, let's get back to it. So he starts waiving this list. The list is out there.

He's got proof that the government's turning its back on known communists, who work in its own ranks. And America's going to be on the top of the list. And I'm going to be on the top of the list. I'm going to be on the top of the list. I'm going to be on the top of the list. And America starts just going crazy. Well, yeah.

And it's important to know what's going on here at the time. This is the second red scare. The first one was during World War I and after, and it was pretty brutal, like jailing people, deporting people with not much evidence. This was the second one. And at the time, a couple of things happened that preceded a speech.

China had just been taken over a couple of months earlier by communists. Chairman Mao. Very big deal. The Soviet had just exploded their first atomic bomb. Thanks to the Rosenbergs. We'll get to that, too. And leaders of the Communist Party of the United States,

which I think they maxed out at about 75,000 members at a certain point, which a lot of people. They had been convicted of conspiring to overthrow the government. So people were ready for this speech. It was like just the icing on the cake for this fervor. Right. And I think something that's often overlooked, because all of the blame for this hysteria,

if you can call it that even these days, is laid at the feet of Joe McCarthy. But he was definitely building upon, like you say, something that was already there. Like there was the Sedition Act, the Espionage Act, the Alien Registration Act. All these were acts that were passed by the U.S. government in response to fear of communists.

And he figured out how to use them to his advantage to root communists out of the country, basically. And to make a name for himself. Well, that was part of his will. As a politician, for sure. That might have been a big part of it. His big problem was, though, was that it's not illegal to be a communist in the United States.

Sure it is. It's not, though. It is illegal, thanks to the Alien Registration Act, to even abet to basically sit by and let somebody try to overthrow the government. And that's what they used to arrest the leaders of the Communist Party of the United States. Subversion.

Yeah. That's what he was trying to get everybody on. So basically, he would bring you in front of his congressional committee and just give you the business. Basically say admit it. Yeah, and the other thing, too, though, is, like, he was immediately almost attacked

by both political parties for this speech. It wasn't like people, the president, was rallying around McCarthy. He didn't get along with Truman or Eisenhower. No, Truman was one of his great detractors. Yeah. Eisenhower was his supporter at first, but as we'll see, changed sides.

Ooh. I know. But yeah, he found Truman to be a little too soft on communists, even though Truman was the one who made sure the Alien Registration Act got passed. It was a weird time. Yeah, it really was. So should we talk about the Rosenberg,

since you've lobbed that out there? I have. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg very famously were executed, only Americans ever, to be executed for espionage. In the Cold War. Period, right? No.

No, I think Civil War had plenty of people executed for espionage. They hung people left and right back then. And they were, in fact, communists. They were known communists and pled the Fifth, which a lot of people did, which ended up biting them all in their collective tookises. Yeah.

Because that was tantamount to a lot of people as a guilty plea. Right. And, of course, the Fifth Amendment gives you the right to not testify on your own behalf. To incriminate yourself? Yeah, to protect against self-incrimination. Right.

The problem is, I think, even today, a lot of people say, well, what do you have to incriminate yourself about if you don't want to say anything? Doesn't that mean you have something to hide? You're guilty. Right. And that was huge, huge during the McCarthy Trials.

That if you pled the Fifth, you're basically saying, like, I'm not admitting to being guilty. Everybody said, it's guilty. That's true. Yeah. But, however, the Rosenbergs, it has been found through the Venona transcripts. Yeah.

And those were, they were secret Russian taped recordings that were decoded. In the 40s. In the 40s. But held on to until what, the 2000s? 1995 is when they were released and made public. So now that the Venona transcripts are out, we know that Ethel McCartner, I'm sorry, Ethel Rosenberg was

at the most an accessory to this and not, you know, a blatant seller of American secrets. But was her husband guilty? Her husband was guilty of, well, here's what this says. It says they did not give the Soviets the secret of the bomb because they never possessed the secret of the bomb. Okay. And that there was evidence that Julius was passing on

information to the KGB, but it was military industrial rather than atomic. Well, selling out Boeing. So it's not like they were like, yeah, that's great. They were just working with the KGB on other things. But the fact that they were executed is largely looked on now that this has come out as a miscarriage address. Well, plus also if they're blamed, like in this very article,

they're blamed for passing along the information that gave the Russians the bomb. Not so. Which led to like one of the tensest periods in world history. Yeah. So I mean, yeah, I imagine just their reputation, aside from the fact that they were executed, just their reputation being tarnished in that way.

That's kind of a big deal. It was. But you mentioned the Venona cables. They were intercepted and decoded in the 40s. The problem was McCarthy apparently didn't have clearance enough to get his hands on these things. Oh, yeah. So this is all the evidence he ever needed,

but he could never produce it. So what he did instead was use really awful bully tactics to intimidate people into admitting they were communists. And every single interview, every single session was started with the same question as far as I understand, right? Yeah. Are you now or have you ever been? I don't even have it in front of me.

What was it? It is, are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party of the United States? Right. That's how I thought you were going to open the show, by the way. No. I was going to talk about the Dream Police and the DTC shows. How did you not see that coming?

No. He did all this. It should be known from the seat as the chairman of the Senate Committee on Government Operations, which increases level of power. But I think initially he was given that position to sort of say, here, just go play in that sandbox. Yeah. I don't think they realized what power it gave him at the time.

He was very smart. He knew what he was doing. But this was not Huac. No. And let's talk about Huac, the House and American Activities Committee. Yes. First established in 1937. Yeah.

And it was established to investigate things like espionage, subversion, that kind of thing, including stuff by communists. But it also originally investigated subversion by the right and the left. Yeah. The House and he was a senator. Oh, yeah. So that's why a lot of people, I think, still remember, or think that he was the chairman of Huac, but that's not the case.

Well, how did he use it then? I think they worked in concert. Okay. That's the best I could figure out. And I was looking at that. I was like, well, why is it always talking about Huac? Yeah. Because they were involved in the blacklist of Hollywood.

Right. But he was heading up that thing. So. So I guess maybe it was just kind of hand in hand, like you say, working in concert. Yeah. The blacklist of Hollywood happened three years before he even gave a speech in West Virginia. Oh, is that when it started? Yeah.

Well, Huac, the House and American Activities Committee, was started in 1937 by, like I said, they investigated the right and the left, but they never investigated the Klan. Because apparently the three guys who were in power of the Huac were all Klan sympathizers, if not members. Wow. So the Klan never got investigated, but everybody else did, including the communists. And it was already sniffed out as just a really insincere political tool. That's how it was being used.

And there was a guy who was the head of the Progressives, and he basically said, you guys are using this committee as a way to wrap the flag over your grease-stained togas. And you never have to explain your vote. Because all you can do, you can oppose anything. You can oppose labor unions. Right. You can oppose the farmer. You can oppose anything you want, and never have to answer for it, because you just say

that you're fighting the communists. Well, the labor unions was a big part of the first red scare. Yeah. It was the rise of the labor unions and all these strikes going on, and people were like, oh, the labor parties, they're communists. Right, exactly. But that's how it happens. Like, basically they say that labor party, communism, same thing.

The American public doesn't put too much thought into it, buys it, and now, still to this day, people compare the two. Yeah. It's sad. It is. It's left an indelible mark, you could say. It has. And like you said, he was an intimidator, threatened prison, no evidence or very little evidence,

and he would attack people, release names publicly, and ruin people's lives without any recourse, except that in 1957, the Supreme Court ruled that constitutional rights of witnesses were guaranteed during a congressional investigation, even though it's not court. Right. So they got a law in the books, thankfully. Thanks to him. Yeah. Yeah, apparently McCarthy's big problem was he had good information, just no evidence.

Like, he got all of his information from the FBI, from Hoover's FBI, but it was basically just hearsay and conjecture that was right. There was just no evidence to back it up. So, yeah, he just used to try to beat people over the head and intimidate them into agreeing, and it worked a lot of times. Oh, yeah. It had worked before, too, when Hollywood was blacklisted. Do you want to talk about Hollywood?

Yeah, let's do it. This is the most interesting part to me as a movie guy. So, we were talking about how there was this blacklist that was created. There's an official version, as I understand, right? An official blacklist? Is there or was it all unofficial? No. I mean, like, 320 people were on it, but there's some, like, Orson Welles was supposedly on

it, and Charlie Chaplin, but I don't think that was proven. Or maybe I'm wrong. I couldn't find. I really couldn't find a list of people, but I don't know if there was an official list passed around. There probably was. So, basically, there was a pamphlet called Red Channels, and it was put together by some FBI guys and a producer in Hollywood, a right-leaning producer, and it was a blacklist.

It was basically the blacklist, and it was distributed to everybody in the entertainment industry. And, basically, if your name was on there, to get work, you had to go up here before the House Un-American Activities Committee or McCarthy and clear your name, and then you could get work again. Or name names. Name names. And a lot of people did, like Lee J. Cobb, a great actor and 12 angry men.

He named names. He apparently put up a heck of a fight for a while and then finally said, like, my family's starving, and I thought about it. I'm not willing to die for this, so here's some names. And then he named some names, and some of those people would name some more names, and people were naming names. Other people were going to Europe, like Chet Baker. He was on the list because he was gay, as far as I understand.

So, he went to Europe and never came back to the U.S., I believe. Yeah, Chaplin went overseas to get work, too. So, Eliah Kazan, very famously named names, director, legendary director on the waterfront. Named eight names of people that were already known to be communists. So, that was his reasoning was, I got to save my career. I'm not willing to go down for this. They already know these people, so I'm just going to name those eight. Yeah.

And he was, did you watch the Oscars in 2002 when he got his honorary award? It was divisive, to say the least. Really? They brought him out there. I think Scorsese and De Niro brought him out, and they showed reaction shots of the crowd. Some people standing and cheering, and then like Ed Harris and Amy Madigan sitting there scowling, and like Nick Nolte sitting on his hands. Yeah, you don't want to tick off Amy Madigan.

I bet she's mean. Yeah. So, yeah, that was really divisive. Before the blacklist though, or I don't know if it was before the blacklist, but the Hollywood 10 were very famous because they were 10 screenwriters. I think one was a, I think nine of the 10 were screenwriters. One was a director, but they always pick on the writers. It seems like.

Yeah. But they were questioned by McCarthy and said, we're not cooperating. We're going to claim our first amendment right to free speech and eight were sentenced to a year in prison. Two received six month sentences and out of the blacklist. And that was the Waldorf statement very famously was issued. The head of the MPAA met with basically the member of every major Hollywood studio behind closed doors, developed their blacklist, released the Waldorf statement because it was a Waldorf Astoria, and said, these people aren't going to work again and hear their names.

Wow. And I think only at the end out of the 300 and something only about 10% ever like worked again. It's so sad. Burgess Meredith. He was on the list. He worked again. He was great in the Rocky movies. Oh, yeah.

Oh, and Batman. Yeah. Remember the poops? Zero Mostel. He was on there. He was great in the producers. Pete Seger. He was.

Polk singer. Yeah. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slipdresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever.

Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s.

Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm here to help you. Oh God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me.

Yep, we know that Michael. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

So, um, there were like real repercussions of this, not just, you know, basically a single senator deciding that he was going to interpret the Constitution any way he liked. Um, not just whipping up this fear among the average American person. Um, but there were people whose careers were ruined, whose lives were ruined, who, who just lost their livelihoods because they went to a communist meeting or something 10 years before, or maybe even were communists. Right. The big problem with this is, um, McCarthy took a really iron-rand-esque approach to this where he kind of interpreted allowing Hollywood to espouse any kind of communist ideas as a moral crime. Just like, um, you know, recently Congress tried to go after, um, NPR for having liberal bias. They were going to cut off its funding.

Right. It's very Randian where it's a moral crime to support something that's trying to destroy you. And McCarthy definitely had that, that viewpoint. And I think that's why he was going after Hollywood himself. Sure. Or at least supporting it. Well, because yeah, they were supposedly making movies that, uh, subversively, you know, supported communism. The problem is, is that's going after the intellectuals.

He's not going after the spies any longer. He's going after communist thinkers. Yeah. If they weren't trying to overthrow the government, they just think communism's a better idea. Yeah. And that's when, that's, going after spies, I don't think anybody really has a problem with that, but he went well beyond that. So that combined with his tactics have basically smeared his name through the mud for the rest of history. It's true.

Uh, if you're interested in some good movies on, on the Blacklist era, uh, Guilty by Suspicion is one. You know, really good movie and Good Night and Good Luck, of course, which was awesome. Or just Read the Crucible. That was great. Arthur Miller famously in 1953 wrote a play that, uh, was a very thinly veiled attack on McCarthyism by way of the, uh, the portal was the, uh, the witch hunt, the Salem Witch Trial switch. Yeah. It's basically like, here's what's going on now. Yeah.

Goody McCarthy. Right. I'm surprised he didn't just outright say it. Um, also, he went after, um, books too. He apparently had people, uh, scan the libraries for books that contain anti-American sentiments. They identified 30,000 titles in purged libraries of these books. What a jerk. So, um, you said it.

So Chuck, this guy at one point in 1954 at his peak, there was a poll taken that found, uh, it was a Gallup poll. So you know that's quality. Yeah. Uh, 50% of the American people had a favorable opinion of McCarthy. Like, I don't think Ronald Reagan even ever had 50%. Yeah. And everybody loved Uncle Ronnie. Well, that was in January.

That same poll taken in June saw that number fall to 34% for very good reason. What happened? What happened? What happened was he made them as well, he didn't make the mistake, uh, President Eisenhower for the very first time in broadcast history said, let's broadcast these hearings. And this, this time it wasn't the Hollywood blacklist hearings. It was the, uh, his war on the army. Yeah. Which is a bad move to do when your president is a decorated general from the last war, like five years before.

Yeah. The Army McCarthy hearings broadcast in 1954 on live television. And, um, after some, what, of a mundane start to the hearings, he started, uh, accusing very heavily decorated and respected army officers. Yeah. Of, uh, not being fit to wear the uniform. Uh, he told Brigadier General Ralph, uh, Zwicker, he compared him mentally to a five year old. Said he was a disgrace to the uniform. And then everyone watching this on TV was like, wait a minute.

Wait, this is what he's been doing? This guy is a total jerk. Yeah. Because before they were, um, there were transcripts and there were minutes, but they were classified, I think. Yeah. Well, no, they weren't out. The media was also very sympathetic, so they were portraying everything in a real light. So basically Eisenhower was like, I'm going to give you a little rope and I think you'll go hang yourself with it.

And he did. Yep. Um, and the American public turned on him like crazy. Uh, Truman, er, I'm sorry, not Truman, but Eisenhower, um, also instructed his vice president, Richard Nixon, to go speak vaguely but publicly against McCarthy, which he did, which gave the media tacit approval to go after McCarthy. He gave who? The media. No, but who did he get to talk to? Oh, Nixon.

Oh, okay. Nixon was Eisenhower's VP. Oh, right. And Nixon out there was like, oh, okay, I love this. Right. And he, uh, yeah, after that, the, the floodgates opened and all of a sudden everybody was all against McCarthy. Yeah. Because basically Nixon had been like a government against McCarthy too.

And the army started feeding the media. Army intelligence had dirt on McCarthy. He used his office or tried to unsuccessfully, um, to influence the, the army to keep from drafting, um, David Shine, Roy Cone's lover or aid. Um, and he didn't work. And then once he was drafted, they, he used, he tried to use his influence again to get the army to take it easy on the guy so that he wouldn't go into battle. Um, so they released that to the media. So this guy who's like, you know, smearing decorated army generals. Yeah.

On TV. Right. Has, has tried to use his power to keep somebody else from having to serve. That didn't play very well either. So basically they censure him, right? Yeah. They said, you know what, uh, we don't like you anymore. I think that's the official statement.

Yeah. Because we don't like you anymore, um, cruel and reckless and he was censured by a vote of 65 to 22. Uh, originally in 1954, there were 46 charges of abuse of, uh, legislative power, but they reduced that to two or they only centered them on two because they didn't want to appear like they were big softies on communism. Right. They were trying to strike the right balance of getting him out of there without looking like they're, you know, commies. Right. Themselves. Yeah.

So he, he remained, uh, in office at least for a little while longer. Um, but, uh, age 48 in 1957, he died of acute hepatitis from alcohol abuse. If you're 48 and you die from alcohol abuse, then- He'd been drinking since you were one and a half. Yeah. He said, apparently, uh, read some biography a bit that said that he, uh, when he was on the wagon, that meant he just drank beer. Crazy. And didn't drink whiskey.

Wow. So when he quit drinking, that meant he only drank beer. He was like Dennis Hopper and Hoosiers, except in the Senate. Very powerful. Wait. So he was like Ted Kennedy. Well, he was actually a friend of the Kennedys, which is weird because Kennedys were very liberal, obviously, but he was Catholic. He identified with the Kennedys because they were Catholic.

Joseph Kennedy was big anti-communist and he thought, hey, if I can help this guy get into office, then that will be a good road page. A good road paved for other Catholics like my sons. Like my Johnny. Like my Johnny. My Teddy and my Bobby. My Bobby. And like I said earlier, he dated two of the daughters supposedly and, um, well, not supposedly he did. I just don't know what went on on those dates.

And, um, uh, John Kennedy was very quiet about this whole thing. He never came out and attacked him because, uh, McCarthy was very, uh, had a lot of sway in campaigning against, uh, Democrats in elections. And he never did that to, to John F. Kennedy. So Kennedy kind of laid off when it came time to attack McCarthy. Gotcha. And I think Bobby Kennedy actually worked with him. Well, that was another abuse. Like basically he used this whole hysteria and the power given to him by, by targeting New Deal Democrats and basically helping further Republican policies

rather than going after the communists. Yeah. He was quoted one time saying that Democrats, uh, had been operating on quote, 20 years of treason. So like he accused them of being treasonous Democrats. Right. And, uh, Truman, um, once referred to him as the best asset the Kremlin has and said he was out to sabotage the foreign policy of the United States. So, man, they were not, they did, he did not get along with anyone. So Chuck outside of his group, of course, here's the kicker as shamed and publicly humiliated and just kicked to the curb at Joseph McCarthy.

The big jerk was he was right in a lot of instances. He was in a way. Um, I have a historian on my, on my speed dial named John Earl Haynes. Oh yeah, John. He went over the Venona transcripts and his conclusion was that out of 159 people identified by McCarthy, uh, nine of them were aiding Soviet espionage efforts. And he said a majority of those could legitimately have been considered risks, but a substantial minority could not. So you see as nine people, which included a captain in the Navy, uh, Davey, he was still in the Navy. And imagine he would be for life to talk to atomic spies, someone who held meetings with Churchill and Roosevelt.

Yeah. Who is that? I don't know. I couldn't find out. I'm very curious. Um, and somebody who held the top office in today's equivalent of the CIA. Oh yeah. It also says 10 senior level officials, uh, were also later shown to have had communist ties, even though they weren't necessarily, uh, a security risk.

Right. So there were a, um, you can also make the case that if you cast a wide enough net, you're going to catch some, some tuna along with the sea spiders as the old saying goes. Yeah. It's still divided. Like some people and culture loves the guy now and said, you know, history has shown that he was right about it all. Is she still around? Yeah. She's alive.

Okay. What do you think happened to her? I just thought she fell off the radar. Oh, I don't know. Okay. She's not on my radar, but I'm sure she's on somebody's radar. She's on Bill Maher's radar. She's on, um, oh man, Ted Nugent's radar.

Really? Yeah, man. He used to, uh, he would guest host for Neil Bort's years back. Uh-huh. And I heard her on his show once and, um, he's like, I'm, look, I'm just a guitar player and she stopped him. She's like, I love it when you say that. It was like, really? Wow.

Like I was like, if I were Ted Nugent's wife, I'd be mad right now. That's a little creepy. Yeah. So you got anything else? No. So in this episode, if you come across stuff you should know quiz that mentions the McCarthyism episode, the four bands that made an appearance were Cheap Trick, The Dixie Chicks, Billy Joel, and Ted Nugent. Wow.

Who knew? Uh, I don't know. The Billy Joel, that was a cheap one. It was good. I'll take it though. It was good, man. Um, so that's about it for McCarthyism. It's still alive today.

Uh, instead of communists, we know, uh, target Muslims. Sure. Uh, what a lot of people say. Um, and the Dixie Chicks. Muslims and the Dixie Chicks. Basically anybody who opposes America invading other countries, that's the new McCarthyism. All right. Um, I could throw an R.E.M. reference in there.

I already, I already said it. We're not going to exhume him. What? Exhuming McCarthy. It's an R.E.M. song. Oh, is it? Yeah. Well, how did you wait this long to throw that in?

I don't know. I just figured it'd be a little cherry on top. So the five bands are Cheap Trick, Billy Joel, Dixie Chicks, uh, Ted Nugent, and R.E.M. But Ted Nugent was in R.E.M., so. Oh man. Uh, anyway, just go type in McCarthyism, N-C-C-A-R-T-H-Y-I-S-M into the searchbar at HowStuffWorks.com and that will bring up new stuff that we didn't even touch on. Um, including factual errors about such groups as the Rosenberg family.

Uh, and I said searchbar at HowStuffWorks.com, which means it's time, finally, for... S-Y-S-K Contest Rules. That's right, Josh. We are running a contest. Our parent company Discovery Channel is where you can come to Atlanta and come see the studio, have lunch with me and you and Jerry, and, uh, hang out a little bit. Yeah. And if you're interested in such a thing, I don't know why anyone would be, you can enter this contest.

It runs through, uh, December 31st. Winners are announced the week of 1-1, 2012. Yeah. Right at the New Year, you get a little gift. That's a big gift. Grand prize, trip for one to Atlanta to go on, uh, on an office and studio tour and have lunch with us. Includes hotel for one night, airfare up to five Hyundai, and an AMEX gift card for travel incidentals. Which is nice.

Yeah. $20 AMEX gift card for the toothbrush you forgot. You know how much I don't even know. No, I don't. You're the guy with the list of rules in your hand. And there is also a referrer prize, so if you're person A, you enter the contest. Wait, is it refer or referer? Okay.

If you're person A and you refer someone to the contest and they win, then you get a Kindle Fire. So, uh, person A has to click share. Person A and B, uh, have to both enter the contest. This is so complicated. And person B wins the grand prize. Person A wins the Kindle Fire. I would rather win a Kindle Fire. You win the grand prize if you can explain what you just read.

Right. If you want to enter this contest, go to facebook.com.com. I think it's HowStuffWorks. And go to the HowStuffWorks fan page. Not the Stuff You Should Know page. HowStuffWorks fan page. You got to like it. Yep.

And then enter it. It's right there on the page there. The front page. So you have to live in America. Yeah. And you have to be at least a semi-computer literate to get to this Facebook page and like it. Yeah. Other than that, it's wide open. It's your big chance, probably once in a lifetime chance

to know what Jerry smells like. Here's a spoiler. She smells very pleasantly. She does. Um, so if you want to do that, go do that. Uh, and if you want to get in touch with us via Twitter. We want them to call you on Twitter. Via Twitter?

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