Joseph McCarthy

Joseph McCarthy
McCarthy in 1954
United States Senator
from Wisconsin
In office
January 3, 1947 – May 2, 1957
Preceded byRobert M. La Follette Jr.
Succeeded byWilliam Proxmire
Chair of the Senate Government Operations Committee
In office
January 3, 1953 – January 3, 1955
Preceded byJohn L. McClellan
Succeeded byJohn L. McClellan
Judge of the Wisconsin Circuit Court
for the 10th Circuit
In office
January 1, 1940 – January 3, 1947
Preceded byEdgar Werner
Succeeded byMichael Eberlein
Personal details
Born
Joseph Raymond McCarthy

(1908-11-14)November 14, 1908
Grand Chute, Wisconsin, U.S.
DiedMay 2, 1957(1957-05-02) (aged 48)
Bethesda, Maryland, U.S.
Resting placeSaint Mary's Cemetery
Political party
Spouse
Jean Kerr
(m. 1953)
Children1 (adopted)
EducationMarquette University (LLB)
Signature
Military service
AllegianceUnited States
Branch/serviceUnited States Marine Corps
Years of service1942–1945 (Marine Corps)
1946–1957 (Reserve)
RankLieutenant Colonel
Battles/warsWorld War II
AwardsDistinguished Flying Cross
Air Medal (5)

Joseph Raymond McCarthy (November 14, 1908 – May 2, 1957) was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death at age 48 in 1957. Beginning in 1950, McCarthy became the most visible public face of a period in the United States in which Cold War tensions fueled fears of widespread communist subversion.[1] He alleged that numerous communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers had infiltrated the United States federal government, universities, film industry,[2][3] and elsewhere. Ultimately, he was censured for refusing to cooperate with, and abusing members of, the committee established to investigate whether or not he should be censured. The term "McCarthyism", coined in 1950 in reference to McCarthy's practices, was soon applied to similar anti-communist activities. Today, the term is used more broadly to mean demagogic, reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations, as well as public attacks on the character or patriotism of political opponents.[4][5]

Born in Grand Chute, Wisconsin, McCarthy commissioned into the Marine Corps in 1942, where he served as an intelligence briefing officer for a dive bomber squadron. Following the end of World War II, he attained the rank of major. He volunteered to fly twelve combat missions as a gunner-observer. These missions were generally safe, and after one where he was allowed to shoot as much ammunition as he wanted to, mainly at coconut trees, he acquired the nickname "Tail-Gunner Joe". Some of his claims of heroism were later shown to be exaggerated or falsified, leading many of his critics to use "Tail-Gunner Joe" as a term of mockery which also alluded to his alleged homosexuality.[6][7][8]

A Democrat until 1944, McCarthy successfully ran for the U.S. Senate in 1946 as a Republican, narrowly defeating incumbent Robert M. La Follette Jr. in the Wisconsin Republican primary, then Democratic challenger Howard McMurray by a 61% - 37% margin. After three largely undistinguished years in the Senate, McCarthy rose suddenly to national fame in February 1950, when he asserted in a speech that he had a list of "members of the Communist Party and members of a spy ring" who were employed in the State Department.[9] In succeeding years after his 1950 speech, McCarthy made additional accusations of Communist infiltration into the State Department, the administration of President Harry S. Truman, the Voice of America, and the U.S. Army. He also used various charges of communism, communist sympathies, disloyalty, or sex crimes to attack a number of politicians and other individuals inside and outside of government.[10] This included a concurrent "Lavender Scare" against suspected homosexuals; as homosexuality was prohibited by law at the time, it was also perceived to increase a person's risk for blackmail.[11]

With the highly publicized Army–McCarthy hearings of 1954, and following the suicide of Wyoming Senator Lester C. Hunt that same year,[12] McCarthy's support and popularity faded. He never caught a single spy. On December 2, 1954, the Senate voted to censure Senator McCarthy by a vote of 67–22, making him one of the few senators ever to be disciplined in this fashion. He continued to speak against communism and socialism until his death at the age of 48 at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, on May 2, 1957. His death certificate listed the cause of death as "Hepatitis, acute, cause unknown".[13] Doctors had not previously reported him to be in critical condition.[14] Some biographers say this was caused or exacerbated by alcoholism.[15]

  1. ^ For a history of this period, see, for example:
    Caute, David (1978). The Great Fear: The Anti-Communist Purge Under Truman and Eisenhower. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-22682-7.; Fried, Richard M. (1990). Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective |. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-504361-8.
    Schrecker, Ellen (1998). Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown. ISBN 0-316-77470-7.
  2. ^ Youngblood, Denise J.; Shaw, Tony (2014). Cinematic Cold War: The American Struggle for Hearts and Minds. United States of America: University Press of Kansas. ISBN 978-0700620203.
  3. ^ Feuerherd, Peter (December 2, 2017). "How Hollywood Thrived Through the Red Scare". JSTOR Daily. Archived from the original on August 2, 2020. Retrieved July 29, 2020.
  4. ^ Publishers, HarperCollins. "The American Heritage Dictionary entry: McCarthyism". www.ahdictionary.com. Retrieved December 23, 2023.
  5. ^ Onion, Rebecca, We're Never Going to Get Our “Have You No Sense of Decency, Sir?” Moment Archived August 1, 2018, at the Wayback Machine, Slate, July 26, 2018
  6. ^ Garraty, John (1989). 1,001 Things Everyone Should Know About American History. New York: Doubleday. p. 24
  7. ^ O'Brien, Steven (1991). Santa Barbara, ABC-CLIO, p. 265
  8. ^ "Connecticut Cartoonists #5: The Philosopher of Okefenokee Swamp". The Comics Journal. June 22, 2016. Archived from the original on June 23, 2016. Retrieved June 23, 2016.
  9. ^ "Communists in Government Service, McCarthy Says". United States Senate History Website. Archived from the original on July 8, 2023. Retrieved July 8, 2023.
  10. ^ McDaniel, Rodger E. (2013). Dying for Joe McCarthy's Sins: The Suicide of Wyoming Senator Lester Hunt. Cody, WY: WordsWorth Press. ISBN 978-0983027591.
  11. ^ Simpson, Alan K.; McDaniel, Rodger (2013). "Prologue". Dying for Joe McCarthy's Sins: The Suicide of Wyoming Senator Lester Hunt. WordsWorth Press. p. x. ISBN 978-0983027591.
  12. ^ McDaniel, Rodger. Dying for Joe McCarthy's Sins
  13. ^ "McCarthy's death certificate". Archived from the original on December 7, 2022. Retrieved August 19, 2017.
  14. ^ Ted Lewis (May 3, 1957). "Joseph McCarthy, the controversial senator, dies at 48 in 1957". New York Daily News. Archived from the original on February 24, 2017. Retrieved August 19, 2017. Reprinted May 1, 2016
  15. ^ See, for example: Oshinsky, David M. (2005) [1983]. A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy. New York: Free Press. pp. 503–504. ISBN 0-19-515424-X.; Reeves, Thomas C. (1982). The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy: A Biography. New York: Stein and Day. pp. 669–671. ISBN 1-56833-101-0.; Herman, Arthur (2000). Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America's Most Hated Senator. New York: Free Press. pp. 302–303. ISBN 0-684-83625-4.