M Hi. There, it's Josh and for the s Y s K Selects this week, I've chosen how McCarthyism works. Unfortunately, it seems like it's always a pertinent time to cover McCarthy ism. There's always some jerk who's persecuting other people. And I hope it opened some eyes might not otherwise have been open. Uh. To our friends in the gay community. Are apologies for using the word homosexual without making air quotes. Uh. This was five or so years ago, and I like to think we've evolved somewhat since then. But still sorry about that. Uh. 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 has come and gone and it was fun. So enjoy this Stuff you Should Know Selects. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. The dream Police, they get me out of my bed in my head right, the dream Police, I live inside of my head. Okay, Well come to me in my bed. Okay, thank you. I'm so glad you're here. Mr fourty 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 uh, since we started, 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. I'll 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 and 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? I'm not that old. Okay, that'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, hands down. But um, we're here, we've started, Uh STU. Words can only afford so much tape, so we can't go back and record over the nope. Um, so we're just gonna plug ahead, all right, are 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, yeah, so you may remember that back in two thousand three, and I believe March or two three, apparently like ten days before the US invaded a Rock But when everybody knew that the US was about to invade a rock, the Dixie Chicks had a concert in London and Um on stage Age Uh, the lead singer whose name escapes me at the moment, okay, Natalie Um, she Uh basically came out and said that they opposed the war, Um, and that they they opposed the violence. And then here was the kicker that they're a shamed that the President of the United States is from Texas. Dixie Chicks are also from Texas, but they were saying they're a shamed of the president right that this is in London, and they still did not have an easy time of it. Immediately the international press jumped on it 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. Um, and uh, ultimately there was a radio group called Clearwater I believe that refused to give them any radio play, and uh, it was pretty rough going for him. They couldn't get any work or anything like that for several years. And I was looking for, um something to intro this episode of 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 and basically everybody turned on him McCarthy ism almost hysterically. One could say they were turned on 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 like a whole lot of like USO touring and stuff to like kind of shake it off? I don't know. I think they did. Hooked up with Toby Keith. Yeah, that'll do it. That jingoism rubs off on you like stank getting near that guy, and you just like start to turn red, white and blue. Uh, McCarthyism, Is that where we are? Yeah? I think I got us there. So where do we start with this man communism? I well, let's define McCarthy ism. I mean, that's a pretty good, uh modern touchstone, but there's an actual definition of it. What does Webster say? Well, what is the American Heritage Dictionary? Hey man, Webster is British. You turned to the American Heritage Dictionary to look at McCarthy ism. 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 rail roading. And this was all because of Jenny McCarthy, right, yeah, Cormac McCarthy, sure, okay, 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 eight If I'm not mistaken, that is right. He's a Scannie. He went to Marquette Golden Eagles, Go Golden Eagles really, Yeah, you know they're from basketball. No, I looked it up. Okay, let's gonna say it's pretty impressive. I do know them for basketball though. Uh. He became an attorney in ninety five during the Great Depression, and became the youngest circuit court judge in Wisconsin history in nineteen thirty nine at thirty one. Very young. Yeah, that is young for a judge even then, even when old timey times, that's right. Uh. Joined the Marines in World War Two, but because of a hazing uh incident or accident, had a broken foot, so he was I guess discharged years. But impressively, he made it to captain in those two years. So he's a Marine captain. And he rode that for all it was worth, as far as using it to get elected to a senate, right he he. In nineteen forty four he ran for Senate in Wisconsin and lost, but that's where he cultivated his image of tail gunner Joe that was his name. Yeah, uh and he uh he 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 the nineteen forty six and became a junior senator and was sort of floundering as a senator as far as making a name for himself until he latched onto the idea of, um, let's get some attention here and start calling out people and in power as is secret communists. Yeah, so he had like this two pronged attack. Chucky. It wasn't just like calling out these secret communists, it was simultaneously calling out the soft liberal establishment that was apparently fine with letting communists game position of powers within the U. S. Government, which was not true or was it? It's not well In in nineteen fifty in West Virginia, he gave a speech um on Lincoln's birthday, and he had this list of like two hundred and eight names of people who worked for the State Department that he said, we're like communists, drug addicts, sexual deviance which was a k a for being gay, um, 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 are these 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 Communis out of government, okay? And Um 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 in 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 were on this list. Uh initially was like he said two oh five, but then when he submitted the speech formally to Truman the next day or I think two days later, it was fifty seven names. And so it's kind of gone back and forth over the years on whether it was two or five or fifty seven. So I think it was. I think the original list that he got his hands on and was unedited was two oh five, but possibly there's just fifty seven communists on the list and the rest were drug addicts or alcoholics or whatever. The irony is, Chuck that Um 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. Uh, 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 a rumor back in the fifties, but not only is there conjecture of he was gay, but that his top aide, Roy Kane, and Roy Khne's top aide, David Shine, we're gay as well. Well, I don't think I think Cone was. Was he definitely gay? Yeah? Okay, I mean he died of AIDS in the eighties, not that that means you're gay, but I think he was known to be gay, and that one was of course, uh what's his name to uh j Edgar? Well, yeah, so it was weird a weird time. Yeah, there's a lot of homosexuals persecuting other homosexuals. Yeah, public office for that allegedly. Well I'm curious then, I mean it was McCarthy just gay by association because Roy Khne 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 yeah, he got married in nine nifty two, right after the first public accusation that he was gay was published in a column. 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. Look watch this. So whether he was or whether he wasn't, it's kind of irrelevant. But it's fun to talk about um or is it irrelevant? Well, no, it's not, of course not. Okay, all right, Well let's let's get back to it. So he uh, 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 um America starts just going crazy. Well yeah, and it's 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 One 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 had it happened that proceeded a speech. UM, China had just been taken over a couple of months earlier by communists chairman, very big deal. Uh. The Soviet had just exploded their first atomic bomb thanks to the Rosenberg's very well we'll get to that too, uh. And uh, leaders of the Communist Party of the United States, which I think they maxed out at about seventy five thousand members at a certain point, which a lot of people uh Uh, they had been convicted of conspiring to overthrow the government, So people were ready for the speech, which 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, um is late 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, that's Bionage 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 it, might have been a big part of it. His big problem was, though, was that, um, 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 a bet 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 admitted. Yeah. And the other thing too, though, is like he was immediately almost attacked by both political parties for this speech. He wasn't. 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. Eisenhower was a supporter at first, but as we'll see, changed changed sides. But yeah, he 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's 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 now? No, I think Civil War had plenty of people executed. First, they hung people left and right. Uh, and they were were in fact communists. There were known communists and played the Fifth which a lot of people did, which ended up biting them all in their collective took uses because that was tantamount to a lot of people. Is a guilty plea right? And of course the Fifth Amendment gives you the right to not testify on your own behalf um, to incriminate yourself, Yeah, to protect against self incrimination. The problem is is, I think even today a lot of people say, well, what what do you have to incriminate yourself about? If you don't want to say anything, doesn't I mean you have something to hide, You're guilty. And that was huge, huge during the McCarthy trials that if you played the Fifth you're basically saying, like, I'm not admitting to being guilty, and everybody said it's guilty. That's true. But however, the Rosenberg's um it has been found through the the Venona transcripts and those where they they were secret Russian taped recordings that were decoded in the forties but held onto until what the two thousands when they were released it made public. So now that the Venona transcripts are out, we know that Ethel McCarty, I'm sorry, Ethel Rosenberg was at the most and an accessory to this and not you know, a blatant seller of of American secrets her husband was guilty of 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, 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 ad justice. 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, which live which led to like one of the tensest periods in world history. So I mean, yeah, they 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 forties. The problem was McCarthy apparently didn't have clearance enough to get his hands on these things. So this is all the evidence he ever needed, but he could never produce it. So what he did instead was used 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 hour? Have you ever been? I don't even have 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. That's how I thought you're gonna open the show. By the way, no, I was going to talk about the dream Police how did you not see that kind of Uh, he did all this, it should be known from the seat as the chairman of the Senate Committee on Government Operations, which um increases level of power. But I think initially he was given that position to sort of say, here, just go playing 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 who Act. No, and let's talk about who Act. The House and American Activities Committee, Yes, first established in seven 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. And it was a house and he was a senator. Yeah, so that's why a lot of people, I think I still think that he was the chairman of who Act, but that's not the game. Well he how did he use it? Then? I think they worked in concert. That's the best I could figure out. And I was looking at that, I was like, well, why is it always talking about who because they were involved in the blacklist of Hollywood. 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, because the blacklist of Hollywood happened three years before he even gave his speech in West Virginia. How was that when it started? Yeah? Um, well WHO ACT, the House and American Activities Committee I was started in the seven by UM. Like I said, they investigated the right and the left, but they never investigated the clan because apparently the three guys who were in power of the WHO ACT, we're all clan sympathizers, if not members. So the clan never got investigated, but everybody else did, including the communists. And it was already UM sniffed out as uh so really um, insincere political tool, that's how it was being used. And uh 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 um and and you never have to you never have to explain your vote because all you can do you can oppose anything. You can oppose labor unions, 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, and well, the labor unions was a big part of the first Red Scare was the rise of the labor unions and all these strikes going on. And people are like the labor parties, they're they're communists, right exactly, But that's how it happens. Like basically they say the Labor Party communism, same thing. The American public doesn't put too installed into it, buys it. And now still to this day people people compare the two. It's sad, it's left an indelible mark. You could say it has um 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. Uh except that in seven the Supreme Court ruled that constitutional rights of witnesses were guaranteed during a congressional investigation, even though it's not court. So they got along in the books thankfully thanks to him. Yeah, um 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 here staying conjecture that was right. There's 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. It had worked before too, when Hollywood was blacklisted. UM, there was Do you want to talk about Hollywood? Yeah, let's let's do it. This is the most interesting part to me as a movie guy. UM. 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? Um? No? I mean like three 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 found a list of people, but I don't know if there was an official list passed around. There probably was. So basically there was. Um there was a pamphlet called Red Channels and it was put together by um, some FBI guys and a producer in Hollywood, a right leaning producer, and it was a blacklist. It was basically the blacklist, UM, 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 appear before the House on 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, great actor and twelve 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 Check 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 US. I believe. Yeah, chaplain went overseas to get work too. Um. Elijah Elliot Kazan very famously named names. Director Legendary Director on the Waterfront named eight names of people that, uh, we're already known to be communists. So that was his reasoning, was I gotta save my career I'm not willing to go down for this. They already know these people, so I'm just gonna name those eight. And he was did you watch the Officers in two thousand two when he got his honorary award. It was divisive, to say the least. They brought him out there. I think um Scorcese and de Niro brought him out and um they showed reaction shot to the crowd, some people standing and cheering, and then like Ed Harris and Amy Madigan like sitting there scowling, and like Nick Nulty sitting on his hands. Yeah, you don't want to take off. She's mean. But so yeah, that was really divisive. Um before the Blacklist though, or I don't know if it was before the Blacklist, but the Hollywood Ten we're very famous because they were ten screenwriters. I think one was a I think nine of the ten were screenwriters. One was a director. But they always picked on the writers, it seems like. But they were questioned by McCarthy and said, we're not cooperating. We're gonna claim our First Amendment right to free speech. And eight were sentenced to a year in prison, to who received six month sentences and out of the black list, and that was the Waldorf Statement, very famously was issued. Um, the head of the m p a A met with basically the member of every major Hollywood studio behind closed doors, developed their blacklist, released the Waldorf statement because it was at Waldorf Historia and said, uh, these people aren't gonna work again, and hear their names, and I think only at the end, out of the three hundred and something, only about ten percent 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 and Batman. Yeah remember the point um so zero Mustel he was on there. He was creating the Producers pizza here he was folk singer. Uh 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 anyway 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 ten years before or maybe even we're communists. Probably 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 bows any kind of um communist ideas as a moral crime, just like um you know, recently, Congress tried to go after um MPR for having liberal bias. They were going to cut off its funding. It's very randy in 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 or at least supporting it well, because yeah, they were supposedly making movies that subversively, you know, supported communism. But 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, like people who aren't trying to overthrow the government. They just think communism is a better idea, and that's when that's it'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 Guilty by Suspicion as one DeNiro 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 nineteen fifty three wrote a play that was a very thinly veiled attack on McCarthy is m by way of the Uh. The portal was the the witch Hunts, the Salem witch Trials switch. It's basically like, here's what's going on now, Goodie McCarthy right, Surprisingly didn't just outright say it. Um. Also he went after Um books too. He apparently had people scan the libraries for books that contain anti American sentiments. They identified thirty thousand titles and purged libraries of these books. What a jerk, so Um said, you said it, so chuck this guy. At one point in for it his peak, there was a poll taken that found it was a gallop pole. So you know that's quality. Uh. Fifty percent of the American people had a favorable opinion of McCarthy, Like I don't think Ronald Reagan even ever had. Yeah, and everybody loved Uncle Ronnie. Well, that was in January, that same pole taken in June. I saw that number of fall tot for very good reason. What happened, What happened. What happened was he made the well, he didn't make the mistake. Uh President Eisenhower. For the very first time in broadcast history, he said, let's broadcast these hearings and this at this time, it wasn't the Hollywood Blacklist hearings. That was the 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. It was called the Army McCarthy hearings, broadcast in nineteen fifty four on live television, and after some one of a mundane start to the hearings, he started accusing very heavily decorated and respected Army officers of not being fit to wear the uniform. He told Brigadier General Ralph Wicker, he compared him mentally to a five year old, said he was a disgrace to the uniform. And then everyone watching this on TV, it's 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. Yeah, well they weren't out. The media was also very sympathetic, so they're portraying everything in a real light. So basically Eisenhower was like, I'm gonna give you a little rope and I think you'll go hang yourself with it, and he did, UM, and the American public turned on him like crazy Truman or I'm sorry, not Truman, but Eisenhower. UM also instructed as Vice President Richard Nixon to go speak vaguely but publicly against McCarthy, which he did, which gave the media tested approval to go after McCarthy. Gave who the media, but who did he get to? Nixon? Nixon was Eisenhower's VP, and Nix him out there was like, oh okay, I love the UM and he uh yeah. After that, the floodgates open and all of a sudden, everybody was all against McCarthy because basically Nixon had been like a government against McCarthy too, and the Army started feeding the media. Army intelligence had dirt McCarthy. He used his office or tried to unsuccessfully UM to influence the army to keep from drafting um David Shine, Roy Cohn's lover or aid um. And it 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 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 centure him, right, Yeah, they said, you know what, uh, we don't like you anymore. I think that's the official statement, because we don't like you anymore. Um cruel and reckless. And he was centered by a vote of sixty to twenty two. Originally in nineteen there were forty six charges of abuse of legislative power, but they reduced that to two. Or they only centured him onto because they didn't want to appear like there were big softies on communism. They were trying to strike the right balance of getting him out of there without looking like there you know, commues themselves. Um. So He remained uh in office at least for a little while longer um, but at age forty eight in nineteen fifty seven, he died of acute hepatitis from alcohol abuse. If you're forty eight and you die from alcohol abuse, then you've been drinking since you were one and a half. Yeah, he said. Apparently read some biography a bit that said that he when he was on the wagon, that meant he just drank beer and didn't drink whiskey. 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 Kennedy's, which is weird because Kennedy's were very liberal obviously, but he was Catholic. He identified with the Kennedy's 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 paved for other Catholics. Like my son's Johnny, like my Johnny, 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 Democrats and elections, and he never did that too to John F. Kennedy. So Kennedy kind of laid off when it came time to attack McCarthy. 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 he was quoted at one time saying that Democrats uh had been operating on quote twenty years of treason. He accused them of being treasonist Democrats and Truman um once referred to him as the best asset the Kremlin has and said he was out the set abotage with 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. Joseph McCarthy. The big jerk was he was writing a lot of instances. He was in a way. Um, I have a historian on my on my speed dial named John Earl Haynes. He went over the Venona transcripts and his conclusion was that out of a hundred and fifty nine people identified by McCarthy, 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 he said he has nine people, which included a captain in the navy, Uh, Davy, he was still in the Navy, And imagine he would be for life to two atomic spies, someone who held meetings with Churchill and Roosevelt. Yeah, who 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 c I A, oh yeah, it also says ten senior level officials. Uh. We're also later shown to have had Communist ties. Even though they weren't necessarily 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 gonna catch some some tuna along with the sea spiders. As the old saying goes, Yeah, it's 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's still around. Yeah, she's alive. Okay, well what do you what do you think having 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 Mar's radar. She's on um oh man, Ted Nugent's radar. Really yeah, man, he used to uh he he would guest host for Neil Boort's years back. 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. You got anything else? No, So in this episode, if you come across the stuff, you should know quiz that mentions the McCarthy ism episode. The four bands that made an appearance were Cheap Trick Yep, the Dixie Chicks, Billy Joel, and Ted Nugent. You knew, I don't know. The Billy Joel that was a cheap one. It was good. It was good man. Um. So that's about it for McCarthy ism. It's still alive today. Instead of communists, we know, target Muslims what a lot of people say, um, and the Dixie Chicks Muslims in the Dixie Chicks. Basically anybody who opposes America invading other countries. That's the new McCarthy ism. All right. Um, I could throw an r M reference in there already I already said it. We're not gonna exum him what exuming McCarthy's r M? Oh is it? Well? How did you wait this long to throw that in? I don't know. I just think it would be a little cheerry on top. All right, So the five bands are Cheap Trick, Billy Joel, Dixie Chicks, Uh, Ted Nugent in r E M. But Ted nugent was in r A M so oh Man. Anyway, just go type in McCarthy ism and c C A R T H y I s M into the search part hows to first dot 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 search part how stuff works dot com, which means it's time finally for that's y s K contests rules. That's right, Josh. We are running a contest our our parent company, Discovery Channel is where you can come to Atlanta and come see the studio, have lunch with me and you and 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 December thirty one. Winners are announced the week of one one. 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 an office in studio tour and have lunch with us. Includes hotel, one night, air fare up to five hondy and an Amex gift card for travel incidentals, which is nice, Yeah, Tony doll AMEX gift card for the toothbrush you forgot. You know how much I don't even know. I don't. You're the guy with the list of rules in your hand. And there is also a referr prize. So if your person a you enter the contest, is it refer or refer? Okay? If you're a person a and you refer someone to the contest and they win, then you get the Kindle Fire. So person A has to click share. Person A and b UH have to both enter the contest. In person b wins the grand prize. Person A wins the Kindle Fire. I would rather win Kindle Fire. You win the grand prize. If you can explain what you just read right, and if you want to enter this contest, go to Facebook dot com slash how stuff Works. There's how stuff works dot com. I think it's how stuff works. And go to the how stuff Works fan page, not the stuff you Should Know page. How stuff Works fan page. 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M Hi. There, it's Josh and for the s Y s K Selects this week, I've chosen how McCarthyism works. Unfortunately, it seems like it's always a pertinent time to cover McCarthy ism. There's always some jerk who's persecuting other people. And I hope it opened some eyes might not otherwise have been open. Uh. To our friends in the gay community. Are apologies for using the word homosexual without making air quotes. Uh. This was five or so years ago, and I like to think we've evolved somewhat since then. But still sorry about that. Uh. 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 has come and gone and it was fun. So enjoy this Stuff you Should Know Selects. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. The dream Police, they get me out of my bed in my head right, the dream Police, I live inside of my head. Okay, Well come to me in my bed. Okay, thank you. I'm so glad you're here. Mr fourty 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 uh, since we started, 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. I'll 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 and 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? I'm not that old. Okay, that'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, hands down. But um, we're here, we've started, Uh STU. Words can only afford so much tape, so we can't go back and record over the nope. Um, so we're just gonna plug ahead, all right, are 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, yeah, so you may remember that back in two thousand three, and I believe March or two three, apparently like ten days before the US invaded a Rock But when everybody knew that the US was about to invade a rock, the Dixie Chicks had a concert in London and Um on stage Age Uh, the lead singer whose name escapes me at the moment, okay, Natalie Um, she Uh basically came out and said that they opposed the war, Um, and that they they opposed the violence. And then here was the kicker that they're a shamed that the President of the United States is from Texas. Dixie Chicks are also from Texas, but they were saying they're a shamed of the president right that this is in London, and they still did not have an easy time of it. Immediately the international press jumped on it 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. Um, and uh, ultimately there was a radio group called Clearwater I believe that refused to give them any radio play, and uh, it was pretty rough going for him. They couldn't get any work or anything like that for several years. And I was looking for, um something to intro this episode of 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 and basically everybody turned on him McCarthy ism almost hysterically. One could say they were turned on 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 like a whole lot of like USO touring and stuff to like kind of shake it off? I don't know. I think they did. Hooked up with Toby Keith. Yeah, that'll do it. That jingoism rubs off on you like stank getting near that guy, and you just like start to turn red, white and blue. Uh, McCarthyism, Is that where we are? Yeah? I think I got us there. So where do we start with this man communism? I well, let's define McCarthy ism. I mean, that's a pretty good, uh modern touchstone, but there's an actual definition of it. What does Webster say? Well, what is the American Heritage Dictionary? Hey man, Webster is British. You turned to the American Heritage Dictionary to look at McCarthy ism. 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 rail roading. And this was all because of Jenny McCarthy, right, yeah, Cormac McCarthy, sure, okay, 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 eight If I'm not mistaken, that is right. He's a Scannie. He went to Marquette Golden Eagles, Go Golden Eagles really, Yeah, you know they're from basketball. No, I looked it up. Okay, let's gonna say it's pretty impressive. I do know them for basketball though. Uh. He became an attorney in ninety five during the Great Depression, and became the youngest circuit court judge in Wisconsin history in nineteen thirty nine at thirty one. Very young. Yeah, that is young for a judge even then, even when old timey times, that's right. Uh. Joined the Marines in World War Two, but because of a hazing uh incident or accident, had a broken foot, so he was I guess discharged years. But impressively, he made it to captain in those two years. So he's a Marine captain. And he rode that for all it was worth, as far as using it to get elected to a senate, right he he. In nineteen forty four he ran for Senate in Wisconsin and lost, but that's where he cultivated his image of tail gunner Joe that was his name. Yeah, uh and he uh he 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 the nineteen forty six and became a junior senator and was sort of floundering as a senator as far as making a name for himself until he latched onto the idea of, um, let's get some attention here and start calling out people and in power as is secret communists. Yeah, so he had like this two pronged attack. Chucky. It wasn't just like calling out these secret communists, it was simultaneously calling out the soft liberal establishment that was apparently fine with letting communists game position of powers within the U. S. Government, which was not true or was it? It's not well In in nineteen fifty in West Virginia, he gave a speech um on Lincoln's birthday, and he had this list of like two hundred and eight names of people who worked for the State Department that he said, we're like communists, drug addicts, sexual deviance which was a k a for being gay, um, 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 are these 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 Communis out of government, okay? And Um 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 in 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 were on this list. Uh initially was like he said two oh five, but then when he submitted the speech formally to Truman the next day or I think two days later, it was fifty seven names. And so it's kind of gone back and forth over the years on whether it was two or five or fifty seven. So I think it was. I think the original list that he got his hands on and was unedited was two oh five, but possibly there's just fifty seven communists on the list and the rest were drug addicts or alcoholics or whatever. The irony is, Chuck that Um 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. Uh, 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 a rumor back in the fifties, but not only is there conjecture of he was gay, but that his top aide, Roy Kane, and Roy Khne's top aide, David Shine, we're gay as well. Well, I don't think I think Cone was. Was he definitely gay? Yeah? Okay, I mean he died of AIDS in the eighties, not that that means you're gay, but I think he was known to be gay, and that one was of course, uh what's his name to uh j Edgar? Well, yeah, so it was weird a weird time. Yeah, there's a lot of homosexuals persecuting other homosexuals. Yeah, public office for that allegedly. Well I'm curious then, I mean it was McCarthy just gay by association because Roy Khne 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 yeah, he got married in nine nifty two, right after the first public accusation that he was gay was published in a column. 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. Look watch this. So whether he was or whether he wasn't, it's kind of irrelevant. But it's fun to talk about um or is it irrelevant? Well, no, it's not, of course not. Okay, all right, Well let's let's get back to it. So he uh, 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 um America starts just going crazy. Well yeah, and it's 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 One 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 had it happened that proceeded a speech. UM, China had just been taken over a couple of months earlier by communists chairman, very big deal. Uh. The Soviet had just exploded their first atomic bomb thanks to the Rosenberg's very well we'll get to that too, uh. And uh, leaders of the Communist Party of the United States, which I think they maxed out at about seventy five thousand members at a certain point, which a lot of people uh Uh, they had been convicted of conspiring to overthrow the government, So people were ready for the speech, which 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, um is late 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, that's Bionage 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 it, might have been a big part of it. His big problem was, though, was that, um, 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 a bet 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 admitted. Yeah. And the other thing too, though, is like he was immediately almost attacked by both political parties for this speech. He wasn't. 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. Eisenhower was a supporter at first, but as we'll see, changed changed sides. But yeah, he 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's 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 now? No, I think Civil War had plenty of people executed. First, they hung people left and right. Uh, and they were were in fact communists. There were known communists and played the Fifth which a lot of people did, which ended up biting them all in their collective took uses because that was tantamount to a lot of people. Is a guilty plea right? And of course the Fifth Amendment gives you the right to not testify on your own behalf um, to incriminate yourself, Yeah, to protect against self incrimination. The problem is is, I think even today a lot of people say, well, what what do you have to incriminate yourself about? If you don't want to say anything, doesn't I mean you have something to hide, You're guilty. And that was huge, huge during the McCarthy trials that if you played the Fifth you're basically saying, like, I'm not admitting to being guilty, and everybody said it's guilty. That's true. But however, the Rosenberg's um it has been found through the the Venona transcripts and those where they they were secret Russian taped recordings that were decoded in the forties but held onto until what the two thousands when they were released it made public. So now that the Venona transcripts are out, we know that Ethel McCarty, I'm sorry, Ethel Rosenberg was at the most and an accessory to this and not you know, a blatant seller of of American secrets her husband was guilty of 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, 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 ad justice. 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, which live which led to like one of the tensest periods in world history. So I mean, yeah, they 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 forties. The problem was McCarthy apparently didn't have clearance enough to get his hands on these things. So this is all the evidence he ever needed, but he could never produce it. So what he did instead was used 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 hour? Have you ever been? I don't even have 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. That's how I thought you're gonna open the show. By the way, no, I was going to talk about the dream Police how did you not see that kind of Uh, he did all this, it should be known from the seat as the chairman of the Senate Committee on Government Operations, which um increases level of power. But I think initially he was given that position to sort of say, here, just go playing 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 who Act. No, and let's talk about who Act. The House and American Activities Committee, Yes, first established in seven 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. And it was a house and he was a senator. Yeah, so that's why a lot of people, I think I still think that he was the chairman of who Act, but that's not the game. Well he how did he use it? Then? I think they worked in concert. That's the best I could figure out. And I was looking at that, I was like, well, why is it always talking about who because they were involved in the blacklist of Hollywood. 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, because the blacklist of Hollywood happened three years before he even gave his speech in West Virginia. How was that when it started? Yeah? Um, well WHO ACT, the House and American Activities Committee I was started in the seven by UM. Like I said, they investigated the right and the left, but they never investigated the clan because apparently the three guys who were in power of the WHO ACT, we're all clan sympathizers, if not members. So the clan never got investigated, but everybody else did, including the communists. And it was already UM sniffed out as uh so really um, insincere political tool, that's how it was being used. And uh 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 um and and you never have to you never have to explain your vote because all you can do you can oppose anything. You can oppose labor unions, 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, and well, the labor unions was a big part of the first Red Scare was the rise of the labor unions and all these strikes going on. And people are like the labor parties, they're they're communists, right exactly, But that's how it happens. Like basically they say the Labor Party communism, same thing. The American public doesn't put too installed into it, buys it. And now still to this day people people compare the two. It's sad, it's left an indelible mark. You could say it has um 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. Uh except that in seven the Supreme Court ruled that constitutional rights of witnesses were guaranteed during a congressional investigation, even though it's not court. So they got along in the books thankfully thanks to him. Yeah, um 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 here staying conjecture that was right. There's 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. It had worked before too, when Hollywood was blacklisted. UM, there was Do you want to talk about Hollywood? Yeah, let's let's do it. This is the most interesting part to me as a movie guy. UM. 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? Um? No? I mean like three 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 found a list of people, but I don't know if there was an official list passed around. There probably was. So basically there was. Um there was a pamphlet called Red Channels and it was put together by um, some FBI guys and a producer in Hollywood, a right leaning producer, and it was a blacklist. It was basically the blacklist, UM, 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 appear before the House on 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, great actor and twelve 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 Check 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 US. I believe. Yeah, chaplain went overseas to get work too. Um. Elijah Elliot Kazan very famously named names. Director Legendary Director on the Waterfront named eight names of people that, uh, we're already known to be communists. So that was his reasoning, was I gotta save my career I'm not willing to go down for this. They already know these people, so I'm just gonna name those eight. And he was did you watch the Officers in two thousand two when he got his honorary award. It was divisive, to say the least. They brought him out there. I think um Scorcese and de Niro brought him out and um they showed reaction shot to the crowd, some people standing and cheering, and then like Ed Harris and Amy Madigan like sitting there scowling, and like Nick Nulty sitting on his hands. Yeah, you don't want to take off. She's mean. But so yeah, that was really divisive. Um before the Blacklist though, or I don't know if it was before the Blacklist, but the Hollywood Ten we're very famous because they were ten screenwriters. I think one was a I think nine of the ten were screenwriters. One was a director. But they always picked on the writers, it seems like. But they were questioned by McCarthy and said, we're not cooperating. We're gonna claim our First Amendment right to free speech. And eight were sentenced to a year in prison, to who received six month sentences and out of the black list, and that was the Waldorf Statement, very famously was issued. Um, the head of the m p a A met with basically the member of every major Hollywood studio behind closed doors, developed their blacklist, released the Waldorf statement because it was at Waldorf Historia and said, uh, these people aren't gonna work again, and hear their names, and I think only at the end, out of the three hundred and something, only about ten percent 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 and Batman. Yeah remember the point um so zero Mustel he was on there. He was creating the Producers pizza here he was folk singer. Uh 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 anyway 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 ten years before or maybe even we're communists. Probably 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 bows any kind of um communist ideas as a moral crime, just like um you know, recently, Congress tried to go after um MPR for having liberal bias. They were going to cut off its funding. It's very randy in 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 or at least supporting it well, because yeah, they were supposedly making movies that subversively, you know, supported communism. But 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, like people who aren't trying to overthrow the government. They just think communism is a better idea, and that's when that's it'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 Guilty by Suspicion as one DeNiro 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 nineteen fifty three wrote a play that was a very thinly veiled attack on McCarthy is m by way of the Uh. The portal was the the witch Hunts, the Salem witch Trials switch. It's basically like, here's what's going on now, Goodie McCarthy right, Surprisingly didn't just outright say it. Um. Also he went after Um books too. He apparently had people scan the libraries for books that contain anti American sentiments. They identified thirty thousand titles and purged libraries of these books. What a jerk, so Um said, you said it, so chuck this guy. At one point in for it his peak, there was a poll taken that found it was a gallop pole. So you know that's quality. Uh. Fifty percent of the American people had a favorable opinion of McCarthy, Like I don't think Ronald Reagan even ever had. Yeah, and everybody loved Uncle Ronnie. Well, that was in January, that same pole taken in June. I saw that number of fall tot for very good reason. What happened, What happened. What happened was he made the well, he didn't make the mistake. Uh President Eisenhower. For the very first time in broadcast history, he said, let's broadcast these hearings and this at this time, it wasn't the Hollywood Blacklist hearings. That was the 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. It was called the Army McCarthy hearings, broadcast in nineteen fifty four on live television, and after some one of a mundane start to the hearings, he started accusing very heavily decorated and respected Army officers of not being fit to wear the uniform. He told Brigadier General Ralph Wicker, he compared him mentally to a five year old, said he was a disgrace to the uniform. And then everyone watching this on TV, it's 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. Yeah, well they weren't out. The media was also very sympathetic, so they're portraying everything in a real light. So basically Eisenhower was like, I'm gonna give you a little rope and I think you'll go hang yourself with it, and he did, UM, and the American public turned on him like crazy Truman or I'm sorry, not Truman, but Eisenhower. UM also instructed as Vice President Richard Nixon to go speak vaguely but publicly against McCarthy, which he did, which gave the media tested approval to go after McCarthy. Gave who the media, but who did he get to? Nixon? Nixon was Eisenhower's VP, and Nix him out there was like, oh okay, I love the UM and he uh yeah. After that, the floodgates open and all of a sudden, everybody was all against McCarthy because basically Nixon had been like a government against McCarthy too, and the Army started feeding the media. Army intelligence had dirt McCarthy. He used his office or tried to unsuccessfully UM to influence the army to keep from drafting um David Shine, Roy Cohn's lover or aid um. And it 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 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 centure him, right, Yeah, they said, you know what, uh, we don't like you anymore. I think that's the official statement, because we don't like you anymore. Um cruel and reckless. And he was centered by a vote of sixty to twenty two. Originally in nineteen there were forty six charges of abuse of legislative power, but they reduced that to two. Or they only centured him onto because they didn't want to appear like there were big softies on communism. They were trying to strike the right balance of getting him out of there without looking like there you know, commues themselves. Um. So He remained uh in office at least for a little while longer um, but at age forty eight in nineteen fifty seven, he died of acute hepatitis from alcohol abuse. If you're forty eight and you die from alcohol abuse, then you've been drinking since you were one and a half. Yeah, he said. Apparently read some biography a bit that said that he when he was on the wagon, that meant he just drank beer and didn't drink whiskey. 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 Kennedy's, which is weird because Kennedy's were very liberal obviously, but he was Catholic. He identified with the Kennedy's 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 paved for other Catholics. Like my son's Johnny, like my Johnny, 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 Democrats and elections, and he never did that too to John F. Kennedy. So Kennedy kind of laid off when it came time to attack McCarthy. 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 he was quoted at one time saying that Democrats uh had been operating on quote twenty years of treason. He accused them of being treasonist Democrats and Truman um once referred to him as the best asset the Kremlin has and said he was out the set abotage with 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. Joseph McCarthy. The big jerk was he was writing a lot of instances. He was in a way. Um, I have a historian on my on my speed dial named John Earl Haynes. He went over the Venona transcripts and his conclusion was that out of a hundred and fifty nine people identified by McCarthy, 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 he said he has nine people, which included a captain in the navy, Uh, Davy, he was still in the Navy, And imagine he would be for life to two atomic spies, someone who held meetings with Churchill and Roosevelt. Yeah, who 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 c I A, oh yeah, it also says ten senior level officials. Uh. We're also later shown to have had Communist ties. Even though they weren't necessarily 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 gonna catch some some tuna along with the sea spiders. As the old saying goes, Yeah, it's 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's still around. Yeah, she's alive. Okay, well what do you what do you think having 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 Mar's radar. She's on um oh man, Ted Nugent's radar. Really yeah, man, he used to uh he he would guest host for Neil Boort's years back. 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. You got anything else? No, So in this episode, if you come across the stuff, you should know quiz that mentions the McCarthy ism episode. The four bands that made an appearance were Cheap Trick Yep, the Dixie Chicks, Billy Joel, and Ted Nugent. You knew, I don't know. The Billy Joel that was a cheap one. It was good. It was good man. Um. So that's about it for McCarthy ism. It's still alive today. Instead of communists, we know, target Muslims what a lot of people say, um, and the Dixie Chicks Muslims in the Dixie Chicks. Basically anybody who opposes America invading other countries. That's the new McCarthy ism. All right. Um, I could throw an r M reference in there already I already said it. We're not gonna exum him what exuming McCarthy's r M? Oh is it? Well? How did you wait this long to throw that in? I don't know. I just think it would be a little cheerry on top. All right, So the five bands are Cheap Trick, Billy Joel, Dixie Chicks, Uh, Ted Nugent in r E M. But Ted nugent was in r A M so oh Man. Anyway, just go type in McCarthy ism and c C A R T H y I s M into the search part hows to first dot 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 search part how stuff works dot com, which means it's time finally for that's y s K contests rules. That's right, Josh. We are running a contest our our parent company, Discovery Channel is where you can come to Atlanta and come see the studio, have lunch with me and you and 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 December thirty one. Winners are announced the week of one one. 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 an office in studio tour and have lunch with us. 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