78. McCarthyism: The Fall of Joseph McCarthy (Ep 5)

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Hello and welcome to Journey Through Time. I'm David Olishogo.

And I'm Sarah Churchill.

And this is the fifth in our series on the red scare of the 1930s, 40s and 50s.

The infamous House Committee on Un-American Activities

and the extraordinary career of one infamous Senator Joseph McCarthy.

That's right. And today we are going to be telling the story

of the Army McCarthy hearings, which actually bring down Joseph McCarthy.

But before we do that, we want to tell one more story.

We were talking last time about the ways in which some of the greatest writers

in Hollywood and Broadway responded to the red scare.

And they responded with a great deal of moral courage and some outrage.

Now we're in January 1954.

And McCarthy has announced that he's investigating the army.

He's decided that he's going to treat the entire U.S. Army as his next target,

as the place that is harboring subversives.

Because of its refusal to support his and Kohn's demands for special treatment

of Kohn's friend and McCarthy's staffer, David Schein.

I mean, it shows the level of hubris.

They're overconfidence. They're belief that if you can take on Hollywood,

you can take on the U.S. Army.

They are very different propositions.

Yeah, especially in the 1950s, right?

But even today, I mean, the hubris is exactly the word.

This is pride going before the fall.

This is fatal overreach.

They are high on their own supply.

And they think they can accuse the U.S. Army of harboring subversives.

Now, that spring, and again, just to show how all of this is continuing to reach so many people,

that spring, the Atomic Energy Commission,

begins security hearings against Robert Oppenheimer,

Jay Robert Oppenheimer, who's the scientific director of the Manhattan project.

The father of the Nikita boom.

And this is even the Atomic Age's demanding its own loyalty trial.

And we saw with the story of Owen Latimer, the China expert who has driven out

just for knowing about Chiang Kai Shaq, that expertise itself is becoming suspect.

And I thought it was just worth bringing this one in because these security hearings

are the frame for Christopher Nolan's film, Oppenheimer.

So for anybody who's seen that film, this is the moment.

And this is why this is happening.

This is what he was getting hauled in for.

And they denied him as security clearance.

They took it away.

They decided that he was a subversive and a threat.

And then a few months later, in the summer of 1954,

Ilia Kazan, the director who, as we saw last time,

decided to cooperate and to name names.

He releases his own new film.

So we saw, of course, Hainoon and the Crucible and how they were responding.

But Ilia Kazan releases a film called On the Waterfront.

And this is starring Marlon Brando.

He plays an ex-boxer who turns Longshoreman, as we said before,

Dockwerker.

And the film is widely understood as Kazan's public self-defense.

So he took out an ad in the New York Times, as we said,

where he defended his decision in 1952 to name names, to cooperate.

And now he's tripling down.

He's decided he's going to make a whole film that is going to

exculpate himself.

Justify how the decision he made to name names in front of the House Committee

on Un-American Activities.

Yeah.

And as we said, Kazan didn't do himself any favors.

There are a lot of people were disgusted by what he did,

including Marlon Brando, who initially doesn't want to take the role

because of what Kazan did.

And Brando was persuaded a couple of ways, one of which I find extremely amusing.

So they leaned on the fact that Brando owed Kazan.

So it was streetcar name desire that made Brando a breakout star.

And that was Kazan's movie.

Yeah, and the play.

So Kazan had directed him in both the play and the film.

And that had made him a huge star.

There were the financial and dramatic incentives of the film itself.

On the waterfront is an excellent screenplay on its own terms.

It's the politics of it that were problematic.

But the part that I really like and that amuses me is that Brando reportedly,

I haven't been able to completely stand this up,

but it's such a good story that I'm going to say it anyway.

He reportedly accepted the role on condition

that he could leave the studio every day at 4 p.m.

for therapy, because he was fine to get all so difficult

that he would need to leave the production early every day.

So 4 p.m. he can go have therapy to deal with the feelings

that all of this was bringing up.

I just love that.

My favorite detail in the whole saga.

So Brando gets his therapy and agrees to make on the waterfront.

And the film's story comes from a newspaper series,

Pulitzer Prize winning series on waterfront corruption.

Corruption in America's docs.

Yeah, in the unions.

So they are mob controlled,

and they were rigging jobs, and they were extorting dues,

and they were murdering informants.

And the film also resonates with,

we heard about the Coast Guard Security,

the Magnuson Act in 1950,

because that was revoking security clearances

for roughly 3,000 dock workers who were suspected

of subversive union ties based on anonymous tips.

So all of these things keep coming together.

There are all of these kinds of cultural influences

that are coming back together

and shaping these stories that people are telling

about what's happening.

And so in the film,

Marlon Brando's character, called Terry Maloy,

he's an ex-price fighter,

and he's turned dock worker,

and he's kind of an enforcer errand boy for the mob.

Yeah, his boxing career is kind of washed up,

and so he's turned to this as a way of making a living.

Yeah, and his brother works for them,

and so he's kind of a family thing,

and he gets pulled into it.

And he ends up helping out this corrupt dock boss,

and he's keeping the waterfront quiet.

And then he watches what that code of silence costs.

A whistleblower is killed,

and his guilt persuades him to switch sides.

So he stops being muscle for the mob machine,

and he agrees to testify,

to be branded a rat by his brother

and the people that he works with,

rather than keep justifying violence as loyalty.

So the allegory isn't subtle.

It's a story in which naming names is framed

as a redemption narrative,

is framed as doing the right thing.

The informer cast as the courageous citizen,

the whistleblower,

who finally stops collaborating,

rather than the collaborator.

There's a waterfront priest in the film

who even explicitly defend stool pigeons

that are in their phrase, so informants.

Rats, we say.

Yeah, rats.

And they say rats in the film too.

Rats and stool pigeons,

the priest explicitly defends them as patriots,

so invoking real waterfront witnesses

who testified under coercion.

So to some viewers, it did play as righteousness.

It was the right thing to do,

but of course for others,

it was an apologia for complicity and betrayal.

Yeah, and I think that's a film

where the allegory has been forgotten.

Yeah, I think for a lot of people at the house.

It's a great movie.

It is a great movie.

It's just Brando.

Yeah, Brando delivers an absolutely iconic performance.

And it includes his most famous line,

which is I could have been a contender,

so anybody who's ever heard any kind of pop culture

versions of Brando,

for many years,

when I was growing up,

the imitation of Brando was always,

I could have been a contender.

And that's about his boxing career,

right, that if he hadn't thrown in the towel,

that he could have actually been a,

because he throws fights,

which I said that.

So if he hadn't thrown the fights,

that he actually could have been a great boxer,

he could have contended for a championship.

So the film earns 12 Oscar nominations.

It wins eight, including Best Picture,

Best Director, Best Actor for Brando.

But many never forgive the film,

many never forgive Kazan.

Orson Wells says the film is just a celebration

of the informer.

And a lot of people won't have anything to do with it.

But the chose the ways in which people are trying to justify

to live with themselves,

to find a way of making sense of the position

they've been put into.

And I guess it's too easy to look at Kazan

and make the comfortable presumption

that we would behave better.

And you don't know what you do in that situation.

And this is somebody whose life,

whose career,

whose reputation is on the line.

I think he made the wrong choice,

but it's too easy to point fingers

with that being in that position.

I think that's absolutely right.

And it is too easy to take the moral high ground

with all the safety and distance that we have.

Although, as we've been saying throughout the story,

that safety and distance is is receding and narrowing.

And it's becoming clearer how difficult it is

and what the stakes are in such battles.

But yeah, but I find it fascinating too,

just the ways in which there are so many iconic films

that come out of this exact moment

that are fighting the moral battle

across McCarthyism from both sides.

And you could see this kind of debate happening

through these films.

Now, on the waterfront comes out

in the summer of 1954.

Now, what is happening with Roy Cohn

and McCarthy at the same period?

Yeah, so Cohn is continuing to try

to get preferential treatment for David Shine

who's still in the army.

And McCarthy has instigated this investigation

into the Army Signal Corps Laboratory

at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey alleging

that it is harboring a communist spy ring.

So he's found a kind of a part of the army

that you can focus his attacks and his investigations on?

He's claiming that they are harboring this communists.

Many see this, you know, in the moment,

not without reason as retaliatory.

They understand certainly the people who know

about the harassment campaign

see that he's just trying to target the army.

The investigation doesn't, it's a pretty amazing to hear David

that the investigation does not yield any evidence

of subversion, but it does disrupt operations.

The army is getting increasingly pissed off about this.

And then they do have a cold war to fight.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, and the Korean War

and they about to actually go.

And then McCarthy focuses on a new victim.

He chooses, this sounds like so petty,

but it actually becomes important for it is petty,

but it's a tiny detail, but it becomes important

for the way the story plays out,

which is that he chooses some poor army dentist

who was promoted, although he didn't sign a lot,

a loyalty oath.

And McCarthy decides he's going to train all of his guns

on this dentist who just failed to sign the loyalty oath.

He says, oh, I found another subversive

and he demands a court martial of the dentist

for not signing a loyalty oath.

And his commander is not having any of it.

Well, it's fairly an overreach.

It's a civilian senator can't tell the army

to apply military law.

Yeah, but he does.

And so the commanding officer exactly says, you know,

screw you.

And he honorably discharges the dentist.

And it actually leads to a line that I'm very fond of.

It was another senator who said later, who said,

you know, McCarthy is charging around and he's beating his chest

and he's making all of these allegations,

he's going to find all of these subversives

who are all trying to destroy America.

And when does it come up with a pinko dentist?

And he was like, that's all he could do,

but it's about, it was some poor pink dentist,

you know, and that that's, it is not, you know,

and pink there, of course, means,

means not even fully read.

Yeah, just communist for Jason.

Yeah, exactly.

The important thing here is it doesn't just piss off the army.

It pisses off Eisenhower.

Because McCarthy interrogates the commander

who is a decorated veteran and tells him he's not fit to be an officer

and to disgrace to the uniform.

And it's a kind of real, he sort of traps him in this hearing.

He asks, should a general be willing to inform

another American soldiers who were this loyal?

And he tries to sort of trap him.

And then it kind of really kind of disgusting exchange this.

And I think this brings up McCarthy's dubious war records.

McCarthy had been in the Second World War

and had repeatedly sort of exaggerated his role

in the Second World War.

He says to a general with the bronze and the silver star,

you are a disgrace to that uniform.

It's not a rage.

It really is.

And as you say, this from a man who massively inflated

his own service record was constantly claiming,

heroic acts of daring do that, you know.

But he's also putting himself on a collision course with Eisenhower,

who is not just president.

He's a very, very popular president in 1954.

And he is the man who led Allied forces in Europe,

in the Second World War.

This is the man behind D-Day.

This is the commander who defeated the Nazis.

He's kind of pro-Army.

Yeah, exactly.

He's a career soldier.

He's in that long American tradition

of a man of generals becoming presidents.

You know, he's going to side with the army.

Yeah, exactly.

The general bit is the giveaway.

Yeah, I see.

Gen. 2000 now.

Eisenhower's kind of pro-Army.

That's going to be my slogan for the McCarthy episodes.

And so Eisenhower's really pissed off.

It alienates obviously, it alienates him.

It alienates military leadership.

And so the army releases a report.

They've been keeping records, as we said,

of the ways in which Kona McCarthy have been pressuring them.

So now they've got the receipts.

Yeah, so they're ready.

So they've been waiting for the moment.

And when they decide that the time is right,

they make public the fact that behind the scenes,

Kona McCarthy have been pressuring them.

And that makes clear to the public the degree to which

the army investigation suddenly looks retaliatory

because they've been trying to get special privileges.

They didn't get it.

And then they go after the army.

And they go after this decorated general.

So public opinion starts to shift.

Yeah, attacking the army is a very different prospect

than attacking Hollywood.

He's taken on a talker that is too big.

Yeah.

And then McCarthy tries to counter charge.

So he says that the army is using David Shine

as a quote unquote hostage to blackmail McCarthy

into stopping his investigations into their cover-ups

of subversive activity.

So getting doubles down.

He says, you are hiding subversives

and you are manipulating David Shine

to try to hide your subversives.

And these are the strategies that have worked for him

up until now.

So you can see why he goes for that card.

It's the only card he's got.

So he just keeps playing it.

So the Senate orders an investigation

into these conflicting charges.

And what happens, which is very important,

is McCarthy's forced to step down as chairman

of his subcommittee while the investigation takes place.

So he loses his platform.

So for those aware of these pervasive rumors

about the sexuality of Roy Cohn, David Shine

and Joseph McCarthy,

the army report about Cohn's extraordinary demands

to keep Shine by his side, seems to confirm those rumors.

And we spoke in the last episode about the poetic justice

of McCarthy getting trapped by his own weaponized

homophobic bullying.

But there's a version of it here too, I think,

where he's being brought down by the confirmation bias

that he launched against so many innocent Americans

because people have heard the rumors of homosexuality.

And then they see the army report and then they think,

aha, just as I suspect it all along,

you three are having an affair.

His own tactics are being used against him.

Yeah.

And so by the time of the hearings,

the rumors that McCarthy not only had sex with men in general,

but that he was engaged in an affair specifically

with one or both of the two young men on his staff,

was common knowledge to most of the people in the Senate chamber.

And this, as I've been saying,

becomes very important to the way the story plays out.

Should we pause there?

Because the next hearings are the critical hearings.

And there's also an element of those hearings,

which is new, which is that they are to be televised.

Yeah.

So join us after the break as the fight goes live on TV.

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Welcome back on April 22nd, 1954.

The hearings convene in Washington

and are to be broadcast live on television.

TV had helped make McCarthy when he'd first appeared

with his accusation and his supposed list

of communists within the government.

It was also now to help destroy him.

Yeah.

So by 1954, approximately 55% of American households

owned a television set.

And this is an astronomical climb

from just 9% four years earlier.

This is the decade of TV.

There's kind of songs, like TV is the hit this year.

It's a, it is, there are TV.

The networks are building literally the networks

of their transmitting towers.

It is just the new technology.

It is the new culture.

It's a golden age of television.

Fast amounts of money is coming to television.

And it is in some ways that this trial for Americans

is what the coronation is for Britain.

It is another reason to go out and buy a TV.

Yeah.

And it is.

So this technology is becoming part of people's lives

at this moment when these hearings

are going to be televised.

Yeah.

And it means crucially that these hearings

will reach 20 million viewers nightly.

And that is incredibly consequential

for the way the story plays out.

We spoke earlier about the power of Hollywood,

the number of people who entered the cinema.

TV is now taking that place.

Yeah.

This is just as TV is starting to break in.

And we need to remember that there aren't that many channels.

There aren't that many.

There isn't that much competition for people's attention.

And so if you have a TV, there's one thing

that you're watching in 1954.

And that is the Army McCarthy hearings.

And those hearings will reach 20 million viewers nightly.

Yeah.

McCarthy's fame that he's built up over the previous years.

It's now a draw.

Yeah.

But Americans haven't really seen,

it's been controlled up till now.

They haven't seen his tactics up close and in real time.

Yeah, they're very reports about it in newspapers.

And McCarthy was absolutely skilled at managing that medium.

He was very good at getting headlines.

He was very good at drip feeding information

that he knew journalists would deliver in a certain way.

And the American press were willing to report his accusations,

almost verbatim.

They would write editorials questioning him,

but they would still give him the legitimacy of those reports.

This, the press was a medium he knew how to control

and how to master.

He was much less capable, much less skilled

in this new medium.

That's partly because he didn't look great.

No, that's true.

He was certainly a face for radio, you know?

Well, and yeah, exactly.

And he looks sort of, you know, sometimes he looks sort of sweaty

and he looks sort of unkempt.

And this is at a time when, you know,

when the norm was to be, you know,

for a senator was to be much more polished.

And...

Because TV at this moment is sort of certain politicians

who can't adapt to the TV edge are really, really struggling.

And it's about appearances.

I mean, we're a few years away from the famous Kennedy Nixon debates

where Nixon looks slightly unshaven.

And that plays against him and he looks shiny

because he doesn't understand the makeup and the lights.

And McCarthy had real problems with television.

He was famously shaving twice a day during these hearings

because the stubble would come up by the afternoon.

He didn't have a face or a demeanor for television.

So this power, which just sounded really effortless

when you were really on a page of a newspaper,

when you see it, when you see this man in operation,

it's very different.

Yeah.

And you use the word demeanor there,

which is also really important

because what they see is his aggressive bullying.

They see his constant interruptions, his shouting.

His demeanor is very aggressive and very menacing.

It's very over the top.

Yeah. And it's worth saying.

I mean, these hearings were recorded.

You can see this on YouTube.

Yeah, you can watch it.

And it really is shocking.

The aggression, which doesn't come across

in the same way if you read a newspaper report,

it worked in the newspaper age.

It is much more problematic in the TV age.

Yeah. Well, and I don't know if you,

if you remember this, David,

but there was a film, I don't know what, 10, 15 years ago,

called Good Night and Good Luck,

that George Clooney did with David Strathane playing Murrow.

Edward R. Murrow, the great journalist.

And the Murrow takes on McCarthy.

He's another of the figures we could have brought Murrow

into the story.

We should tell the story of Murrow.

He's an amazing person.

Yeah, he's an amazing figure.

But anyway, what they did was they have,

they used real footage from McCarthy.

So they spliced in actual footage of McCarthy.

And there were audience feedback.

So they got what do you call it?

Like Vox Pop, audience coming out of the preview

of the film.

And they said young people said that they thought

it was a great film, but the actor playing McCarthy

was too over the top.

This is a true story.

I remember it when it happened.

Because I was reviewing the film.

Really?

Yeah.

And it absolutely did.

And they reported it.

So the producer, I think Clooney talked about it.

The producers talked about the fact that people were watching

it and going, well, it's all really good, but that McCarthy guy,

he's not very believable.

Yeah, no one behaves like that.

No one behaves like that, right?

So that's how over the top he was.

And of course, in the 50s, nobody had ever seen anything like that.

And that had been part of his power.

I mean, I say this as someone who's British America

is a very polite society.

And his aggression had given him

a sort of a certain power in those hearings

that was kind of mediated when it was reported to the public

through a newspaper.

Yeah.

We used to be a very polite society, David.

I would say that our politics has markedly declined

in recent years.

But the public doesn't just see that he's a bully

and he's aggressive.

They also see the effects of his drinking.

Yeah.

We mentioned before that he's a very serious alcoholic.

And people comment at the time that his performance

often noticeably deteriorated in the afternoon after lunch.

Yeah.

But also his bullying and his hectoring

contrasted really sharply with the courtly manners

of his opponent, who was the special counsel

brought in by the army, a man named Joseph Welch.

Now his colleagues later said that Joseph Welch's

very beautiful manners throughout the Army McCarthy hearings

were, in fact, carefully calibrated.

So he knew what he was doing.

He knew exactly what he was doing.

And he wanted to contrast his civility

with the aggression of McCarthy,

knowing that McCarthy wouldn't be able to control himself.

And he wouldn't see the trap coming.

And he wouldn't see the trap.

So he wants to make McCarthy look worse, even worse,

by comparison.

And for everybody to see this restrained polite,

gentlemanly behavior against all of this shouting

and theatrics and carnival-esque of McCarthy.

And this is the point in the story

where the rumors that we've been discussing

about the sexuality of McCarthy,

Kohn, and Shine start to change what happens.

Because at one point in the hearings,

McCarthy's team introduces a photograph into evidence.

And it shows private Shine, David Shine,

and an army secretary standing alone together.

And basically what it's supposed to prove

is that they were friendly and that, therefore,

there wasn't any coercion taking place,

which was part of what the story was about,

about whether Shine was being coerced or not.

And so they're supposed to be showing

that coercion wasn't taking place.

But then Welsh stands up and says the shows

that the photo was cropped.

Again, it's another faked photo.

And that it was, that it removed

to other people, including a colonel.

And basically the point is it completely changes the context

and so the argument that they're trying to make falls apart.

So then Welsh is cross-examining one of McCarthy's staffers

about how this doctored photo came about.

So why am I looking at a cropped doctored photo?

So where did this come from?

And the staffers trying to play dumb.

And so he says he doesn't know where

the doctored version came from.

Oh, and so Welsh sets a trap.

And he says to the staffer, so if you don't

where it came from, did you think this came from a pixie?

Now, people are already chuckling at this point.

Some of them can start to see what he's doing.

And then the staffer walks right into the trap

and he asks Welsh what he means by pixie

and Welsh replies, it's a close relative of a fairy,

which is of course a derogatory term for homosexual.

And at that moment, the hearing room erupts in laughter

because everyone understood they all had heard the rumors.

So everyone understood that Welsh was outing

the subtext of the whole hearing,

which was that cone's obsession with shine was sexual

and was driving the whole thing.

Now, obviously, as we've been saying,

this is extremely homophobic, this is gaybaiting.

But Welsh was also rattling McCarthy and cone.

And of course, he was also insinuating

that what goes around comes around

and that McCarthy is being hoist by his own petard

of rumored innuendo.

Yeah, he'd been using accusations of homosexuality

to destroy people's lives, to wreck their careers

and now that same weapon is used against him and Roy Cohn.

Yeah, so obviously now that one of us

is condoning using that kind of gaybaiting,

but I have to say that my sympathy for McCarthy

and Roy Cohn is limited at best.

Now, it wasn't just the doctorate photo.

McCarthy is introducing all kinds of fake evidence.

He also produces a document that he claims

is a confidential letter from Jagger Hoover warning

the army of subversives.

And then the attorney general reveals

that Hoover never wrote such a letter.

The document is faked, it's another fake.

So people are starting to see very clearly and very quickly

how concocted the whole thing is.

How it's all fabricated.

So the fiat has begun to lose its appeal.

Yeah, they're starting to see them pulling the strings

and paying no attention to the man behind the curtain

and then they can see him.

Yeah, it's a Wizard of Oz moment.

And then in May, Eisenhower, who is set as pissed off,

invokes executive privilege.

And basically what this means is that he shuts down

a lot of the executive branch employees from testifying.

And the effect is that McCarthy can't access

a lot of the witnesses that he wants to call the informants.

So Eisenhower shuts down an important part

of what would have been McCarthy's theater.

Which is good to see, but given Eisenhower's status,

given his popularity, given his ratings,

he could have shut down McCarthy much, much earlier.

And I think Eisenhower doesn't come out of this brilliantly.

And now there does the rest of the Senate.

They all could have done a lot more.

They are all failing to hold him to account

to an extraordinary degree and allowed

an enormous amount of damage to be done

to great many people, just to continue McCarthy's showboating.

So now the other key thing that we need to understand

is that before the, I know this is a little bit convoluted,

but it's really important to understand how it all plays out

and how it unfolds, is that before the hearings began,

McCarthy and Welsh had, by some accounts,

come to an agreement about one point.

So as we mentioned before, Roy Cohn was fully draft eligible.

One would think he should have been drafted.

And yet he had somehow avoided service

in the middle of the Korean War,

even as he was fighting to keep shine

out of the war as well.

And the story was that McCarthy and Welsh had agreed

that Welsh wouldn't bring up the fact that Cohn hadn't served.

If McCarthy didn't mention that there was a young lawyer

in Welsh's firm who had a long time previously

and briefly been a member of a guild

that arguably had communist associations.

And kind of vaguely.

Very vaguely.

There were some communist members, but there was a liberal organization.

Yeah, exactly.

So they have this pact that they'll cancel each other out.

And I won't do it if you don't do it.

And you have to understand this

to see how it all comes crashing down,

which happens on June 9th, 1954.

I mean, this is the really dramatic moment of this story.

Yeah.

So there's a session about this list of subversives,

which Cohn and McCarthy have claimed that they have,

but they've produced no evidence of it.

So they keep it.

And again, it's the same thing that McCarthy did

from the very beginning, just waving,

listing out about a list of subversives.

And yet they don't bring it to evidence.

So Welsh is saying, well, where's your list?

You keep saying you've got this list?

Give me the list.

So Welsh is sarcastically daring Cohn

to produce this alleged list of 130 army subversives

so that the army is, you know,

these communists that the army is supposed to be harboring.

And he says, you know, do it before the sun goes down,

putting them on the defensive,

because they keep saying they've got it.

He's like, just bring me your damn list.

And at that point, because Welsh is kind of taunting Cohn

and pressuring him, McCarthy gets visibly angry.

And he interrupts Welsh.

And he brings up the young lawyer.

His name was Fisher, out of the blue.

And he says, live on national television

that Welsh has a communist in his law firm.

So he's changing the subject like very, very obviously,

very crudely.

And he just starts going on the attack.

And he says, well, you've got a communist in your law firm.

And I think everybody would like to know that

and the American people need to know

that you're harboring a communist.

It is a moment of loss of control.

It is.

Yeah, it's pure bully reflex.

You can see him lashing out.

He just wants to wound Welsh.

But instead of getting angry, Welsh responds

in this very carefully sorrowful way.

It's really true.

And again, you can watch it on YouTube.

The tone to me is so clearly telegraphing.

I see this in more sorrow than anger.

He takes that high ground.

And he goes, until this moment, Senator,

I think I never really gauged your cruelty

or your recklessness.

Amazing line.

It is an amazing line.

But he says he says he doesn't say it in anger.

He says it very slowly, very calmly.

And like, he's so sad that it's come out this way.

Now, McCarthy wasn't just cruel.

As I think we have established, he's

also pretty stupid, really, in important ways.

And he kept going.

You can watch him again.

He keeps trying to badge her well.

She can't see that he's losing ground.

He can't read the room.

And then Welsh delivers the killer blow.

And it's a line that cuts McCarthy off at the knees.

And it really is a line that's come to define McCarthyism

and the Army McCarthy hearings.

He says, as McCarthy is still trying

to say that Fisher is a communist.

Welsh says, let us not assassinate this lad

further, Senator.

You've done enough.

Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?

Have you left no sense of decency?

It's not my Shakespearean line.

It's kind of elegant structure.

Have you left no sense of decency?

It is, and again, you can watch it.

It is beautifully delivered.

Yeah, it is.

And again, very quietly and calmly.

Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?

Nothing partly because it's so calmly delivered.

McCarthy still doesn't get it.

He doesn't understand.

The killer blow has been dealt.

And he doesn't actually understand that he is wounded.

Yeah, you're right.

I never kind of thought of that.

But it is.

It's like those where, you know, you've been shot

and he's staggering, but he doesn't realize he's about to die.

Yeah, but yeah, but it's there.

And but the room realizes.

And so the room erupts in applause.

Millions of people watching television

see basically him collapse before their eyes.

And you can see him.

You can lip read and see him mutter to cone.

What did I do?

Because he doesn't even, he still can't take,

that's why I say he's stupid.

Like you can't even take in what's happened.

It comes closest of any sort of debate I've seen

just a knockout.

It is, it is like the rumble in the jungle.

He's staggering, but it's a fallen.

Yeah, it's, it's like a boxer who's losing consciousness

but doesn't quite know the fight is over.

Yeah, that's exactly what it looks like.

And that's basically the end of it.

He has, it is the killer blow.

The hearing.

And live on TV.

And live on TV.

So the hearing concludes soon afterwards as 36 days.

And one senator tells McCarthy as it ends,

the American people have had a look at you for six weeks.

You're not fooling anyone.

I mean, TV has killed him.

He couldn't master the new medium.

He was a great wizard at controlling the print medium.

And he didn't understand that his inability

to adapt to the television age was a fatal weakness.

Six weeks is all it took.

Yeah, he also only had one really one weapon.

He only had one tool in his arsenal, right?

Which is, which is false accusation.

And finger pointing.

And yeah.

And once that's taken away from him,

he kind of has, he's floundering, you know,

from from that point.

Yeah, it's a one trick, it's a one trick show.

Yeah.

I get somebody smart enough in there.

And Welsh take, you know, just undercuts him

and undercuts him in.

And the, yeah, as they say, you know,

the Welsh's own colleagues later said,

oh, in fact, there was one who said that as he walked out

after saying, have you no sense of decency

that he winked at one of his colleagues

and said, how did I do?

So he knew it was very calculated.

He was exactly what he was doing.

So in August, the subcommittee releases its report,

they clear McCarthy of direct misconduct,

which is, you know, generous.

But they blame Cone for unduly persistent aggression.

But the key point is that McCarthy's approval ratings plummet.

The trick doesn't work anymore.

People have seen it.

And they've seen it for what it is.

They've seen the ugliness.

They've seen the bullying.

They've seen the baiting.

I mean, some of it, it is a testimony

to, you know, annihilate decency in human beings

who watched this, who were repelled by it.

Yeah.

And that the line worked to say,

have you no sense of decency that the decency mattered?

That, yeah.

And that, and that a call to decency,

just ground everything to a halt.

You know, slam the brakes on.

We'll come back to.

Yeah.

So we think we can try that again.

Exactly what it calls for decency.

We'll be the answer to the political questions

that we face today.

So basically now McCarthy is on a downward spiral.

So the Senate introduces a resolution

to censure him.

They hold hearings.

They bar television cameras to maintain

senatorial dignity, although some might think

that ship had sailed by that point.

He abuses the committee, of course.

But on December 2, 1954, the Senate votes overwhelmingly

to censure him for acting contrary to senatorial traditions.

And by January 1955, the political tide has turned.

So the Republicans are back out of the Senate,

Democrats regain control.

And McCarthy is pushed out as chairman of his subcommittee.

And over the next two years, he's effectively ostracized.

And also his health, his drinking is catching up on him.

Yeah.

So he starts falling apart.

He's increasingly ignored by the press,

Eisenhower jokes that McCarthyism has become McCarthy wasm.

And he starts to fall apart.

But this is really important.

The machinery, as we've been saying, the machinery predates

him, and it also postates him.

So it doesn't vanish with him.

And Huak keeps rolling on in the house.

So in 1956, Arthur Miller is subpoenaed.

Justice is relationship with Marilyn Monroe

becomes public.

So they're about to marry.

And Huak offers to drop the hearing altogether

if Marilyn Monroe will agree to a campaign photo

with the chairman.

She refuses and basically tells them to go to hell.

And she later said she always hated Nixon

for his role in Huak.

And it was actually one of the reasons she supported JFK.

She was actually much more political than people

think she was.

And she despised.

Well, I should say people know that.

They should read your rather wonderful book on Marilyn Monroe.

Thank you.

That was my first book.

And it will also, to anybody who does read it,

it will make clear that I have slightly conflicted feelings

about Arthur Miller as well.

But I admire his place.

I wouldn't want to marry him.

But I mean, I'm sure he'd return the favor.

I'm no Marilyn Monroe.

Who is that?

Exactly.

Anyway, she refuses to go along with this sorted.

And basically, they're trying to hijack her fame.

And of course, also, it makes clear how much the hearings

really were just about showboating for political benefit.

And if they could get a photo op with the most fans,

you can still build a career.

Yeah, exactly.

And fundamentally, instantior the prosecutions

were that they'll make it all go away for a photo op.

Miller testifies with Monroe beside him.

She refuses to, of course, Hollywood

tries to pressure her to back off.

She refuses and stands by him.

And he's convicted of contempt in May 1957.

But the conviction is overturned a year later.

And a lot of people think that it was Monroe's public loyalty

and standing by him at the height of her fame.

That kept him out of prison.

And then around the same time, Hugh Ack also

calls someone we mentioned earlier, Paul Robeson.

The great Paul Robeson.

An amazing man.

And there's no other adjective.

It's the great Paul Robeson.

He's, of course, a black singer and activist, actor, football

player, every man could do everything.

No, intellectual and physical giants.

He's a remarkable figure, an incredible talent.

One of the most amazing voices of the 20th century.

And a politically active figure about race, about class,

about civil rights and labor rights his whole life.

Yeah.

And another person you can find on YouTube for people

who don't know Paul Robeson, go watch him sing

Old Man River.

Do yourself a favor.

Yeah.

Because it is extraordinary.

I just sometimes just play that over and over and over again.

It is incredible.

And what happened was because he was also an outspoken activist

for civil rights and for his supportive communism.

For the reasons we said earlier in the ways in which it was

in America, very interconnected with African American

justice, racial justice in civil rights.

And his passport had been revoked in 1950

for this outspoken support of labor and civil rights.

And so they hollum in ostensibly to review the passport,

but again, for another show trial.

And they press him on his Communist Party membership,

asking if he is a member of the Communist Party.

And he just pushes back the whole time.

He's completely defiant.

And he says, do you want to come to the ballot box with me

when I vote and take out my ballot and look?

And then one of them says something

to the effect that he should just go live in Russia

if he loves it so much.

And then he has this extraordinary moment

where he tells them that his father was enslaved,

that his people built America.

And no, and I quote, fascist-minded people

are going to drive him out of America.

Yeah, you can see where Wilson was.

It was a hero to millions of people around the world.

He was extremely loved in Britain.

He'd been particularly in Wales, where he'd made one

of his films among the mining communities.

An extraordinary film as well.

He was remarkable and beloved figure.

Yeah.

Now, as we said, meanwhile, as this is happening,

Hugh Ackis is trundling forward,

but Joseph McCarthy is very much on the skids

after his public humiliation.

And yes, as you mentioned, his heavy drinking

is now out of control and taking its toll.

There are some reports that were indications

of morphine addiction as well.

And on May 2, 1957, Joseph McCarthy

dies of acute hepatitis at the age of 48,

just as Arthur Miller is being convicted

for contempt of Congress.

So Hugh Ackis continuing, McCarthy has died.

And we said at the beginning of our story

that McCarthy was a symptom of McCarthyism.

And we often end our stories, I would say, more often than not,

with a reflection on how it brings us up to today

and where we see its consequences

and aftermath in the world around us.

And we can normally do that in a sort of five minute

summary at the end of the story.

Yeah, but the story of McCarthyism demands

a different kind of ending, doesn't it?

Because as we have suggested throughout,

it isn't just that we see parallels with McCarthyism today.

It's that this story is literally not over.

And so next time, we need to finish the story

of McCarthyism by bringing us up to date

and explaining how McCarthyism created the world of Donald Trump.

Thank you for listening.

Join us next time.