Talk:Joseph McCarthy

Category:Racism in the United States
I believe it should be removed. Not much information in the article backs the notion that McCarthy was some awful racist. Furthermore, examine this roll call. McCarthy voted for cloture on a Fair Employment Practices Committee bill to help put an end to racial discrimination. Total random nerd (talk) 01:30, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

Alleged homosexuality
The portion of the article discussing allegations of homosexuality is currently quite poor and is missing enormous amounts of context. It's mostly reporting unsubstantiated rumors spread by two of McCarthy's political opponents, and rumors that happened to be particularly damaging at that time. Hoover's FBI had vague reports of homosexuality on many figures, since it was a powerful political attack back then, and it doesn't count for much either. We'll never know the truth, but we should be *highly* suspect of the claims presented, and the article should reflect that.

The article needs to at least acknowledge the conflicted motives of Pearson and Greenspun, and Pearson's penchant for rumor-mongering. It should also mention how politically convenient accusations of homosexuality against McCarthy were in the context of the McCarthy-Cohn-Schine dynamic, particularly given the clear evidence of Cohn's homosexuality. The article, "The Smearing of Joe McCarthy: The Lavender Scare, Gossip, and Cold War Politics", would be a good source to discuss these political implications.

As it stands, the article gives the impression that it's extremely likely McCarthy was a closeted homosexual, when the opposite is probably the best conclusion given the available evidence. 68.181.17.68 (talk) 07:34, 16 August 2022 (UTC)


 * On the morning of May 5, 1994, the New York Post ran a column by Cindy Adams "Savvy Chris Spills the Beans on Roy Cohn." In her characteristically breezy manner, Adams wrote about Seymour’s book project (Chris Seymour was Cohn's long-time secretary), listing the secrets she would expose. (“How a porno flick was filmed in the office and business was conducted while someone was being whipped”; “How Sen. Joe McCarthy hid the fact that he was gay. . . .”)
 * https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/eavesdropping-on-roy-cohn-and-donald-trump — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alvaria (talk • contribs) 08:49, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

Military Service; Quality of sources
Even among the greater part of sources cited, many of the claims given as concrete here are only suggested by the author at most, rather than being the words of the relevant person mentioned, or some other particular report. An example is the allegation that Maj. Glen A. Todd, McCarthy's commanding officer (Not mentioned by name here), "revealed" that McCarthy had forged a letter of commendation from him. In reality, this can be traced back to Thomas C. Reeves' "The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy: A Biography" (1982). Here, the writer cites a letter from Todd sent personally to him in 1977, although not given at length, in which he supposedly denied having written or signed the letter, and otherwise remarked that Admiral Nimitz would have signed many such documents without a personal investigation of their adequacy. Regarding the signature, there are conflicting reports in sources cited here - the text of the letter (Including in Reeves, 1982) appears to be derived from newspaper articles on McCarthy. Some of the sources cited here make no mention of a signature from anyone other than Admiral Nimitz, and moreover some remove Maj. Todd from relation to it entirely, instead replacing him with Maj. Everett E. Munn. Reeves claims this to be a mistake of yet another newspaper article which eventually became common.

Returning to Reeves on the matter of McCarthy's leg injury from during the course of the war, as he is again among the most commonly cited in books which do give references (See "The Rise and Fall of Senator Joe McCarthy", 2009, cited here), these also appear to be mainly sourced from newspaper articles within his book; Although, regarding an initial fracture, Reeves does cite a personal letter to himself from the doctor supposed to have put a cast on his leg, George B. Barnes. It is unclear if the further remark claimed to be from McCarthy and placed before the relevant footnoting are also supposed to have been from this doctor.

The claim about McCarthy shooting "mainly at coconut trees", displayed twice in this article, appears mainly to be sourced from a number of sardonic comments made by McCarthy himself to the press, alongside, perhaps, interviews with Ken Smedley and W.H. Montfort, presented as former squadron members alongside McCarthy, cited by Reeves (Who presumably conducted them) in relation to stories of his being awarded a mock plaque "For destroying more coconut trees than anyone else in the South Pacific". The claim that this itself is the beginning of the name "Tail Gunner Joe" does not appear to have a direct source.

Regarding his having claimed to have flown 32 "aerial missions", better sourcing is needed generally. For the Distinguished Flying Cross, the medal awarded to him which is under scrutiny, 25 combat flights were what were needed. To To give the beginning of an investigation, Reeves also claimed that Maj. Todd, in an interview, said to have only certified 11 such flights, and that Smedley, Montfort, Munn, Wander (Another squadron member), and Todd all strongly denied the possibility of 32 combat flights during his time.

To finish, much of the sourcing in this section is considerably dubious and unduly second-hand. Other citations bring the seriousness of the section into question even more directly. The very page cited here in "Tapestry: The History and Consequences of America's Complex Culture" (2014) alleges that McCarthy lied about serving combat missions, or any missions whatsoever, as a gunner aboard a Marine Corps plane (The book claims he lied about serving on a B-17; Barring a source saying otherwise, this seems its own confusion, as he demonstrably served on a dive bomber);  That he falsely obtained a Purple Heart through his claims about a war injury;  And that he had "shamelessly campaigned on the premise that the Holocaust was a lie" in order to win over "German Catholic" voters in his region, having even done so successfully. The first two of these are demonstrably false, again, while the the third is so utterly bewildering and absent from any other mention of this notorious political figure I have seen that I must wonder what level of invention has been stooped to in its writing. This appears also to be the source where the supposed safety of all of McCarthy's actual combat missions is drawn from.

I hope I had already been clarifying, there are a number of allegations currently put forth as truth in this article, which are either entirely spurious, such as what has just been mentioned, and the claim that Maj. Glen A. Todd "revealed" a forgery (To name two), or are entirely unfit for this section of an encyclopedic article (Other claims about the safety of real combat missions, forgery stated as a fact without actual citations, "coconut trees").

I have not yet searched for the original newspaper articles, many of them from more local Wisconsin publications, from which so many allegations find their most original source to the utmost degree of thoroughness. For a complete rewriting and expunging of falsehood in this section, which is what is needed, I recommend the tracking down of these, if I do not rewrite the section and expunge its trash first. Zusty001 (talk) 15:13, 28 December 2022 (UTC)


 * Every one of your assertions are asinine and incorrect. The ramblings of a left wing idiot. 64.179.175.53 (talk) 22:45, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
 * You must have failed to read, or otherwise to understand, much of what I wrote, considering how much of it has to do with questioning claims found in certain cited works of McCarthy lying, fabricating things, using false or undesirable apparatuses for political gain, and so on. Zusty001 (talk) 02:11, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Inconsistency regarding rank attained after World War II
This comment is based upon the [currently] Latest revision as of 05:04, 10 February 2023 of the article.

The second sentence of the paragraph starting with "Born in Grand Chute, Wisconsin", (which is the third paragraph in the "lede" part of the above mentioned version or "revision" of the article) still says:"Following the end of World War II, he attained the rank of major."However, this seems to be contradicted by a sentence (later in the article) (in the third paragraph of the "Military service" sub-section of the "Career" section) that says:"McCarthy remained in the Marine Corps Reserve after the war, attaining the rank of lieutenant colonel."

Also, "note" that the "Military service" section of the Infobox at the top of the article contains an entry that agrees with the sentence that says "lieutenant colonel".

Shouldn't the sentence that says << "Following the end of World War II, he attained the rank of major" >> be changed? It seems to be wrong.

OR ... would that sentence be correct, if it were to specify that it is focusing [only] on his time in the Marine Corps, as opposed to the Marine Corps Reserve? --Mike Schwartz (talk) 06:40, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

McCarthy was never actually censured, he was condemned — a difference that matters
83rd Congress Senate Resolution 301: "Resolved, That the Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. McCarthy, failed to cooperate with the Subcommittee on Privileges and Elections of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration in clearing up matters referred to that subcommittee which concerned his conduct as a Senator and affected the honor of the Senate and, instead, repeatedly abused the subcommittee and its members who were trying to carry out assigned duties, thereby obstructing the constitutional processes of the Senate, and that this conduct of the Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. McCarthy, is contrary to senatorial traditions and is hereby condemned."

The only place in the resolution where censure is mentioned is in the introduction of the chairman of the committee to investigate McCarthy: "...chairman of the Select Committee to Study Censure Charges (Mr. Watkins)..."

This indicates, as Tye points out in Demagogue that the Senators were too chicken sh*t to actually use the word censure and the Senate parliamentarian ruled that it was not officially a censure. The senators responsible ducked their duty and the historical record should reflect that.

From Tye, Demagogue, first full paragraph of Chapter 9:


 * From the beginning, critics had zeroed in on his reckless methods more than his Red-purging aims. The public felt the same way, heartily embracing the senator’s mission but recoiling at his meanness. So it was fitting that, the very day the Subcommittee on Investigations issued its verdicts on his ham-handed war with the Army, the full Senate launched hearings to formally censure its Wisconsin colleague for his incivility. A punishment that extreme had been meted out just five times in the chamber’s 165 years, and it amounted to a political death sentence. Given how fellow senators had enabled him over the years, it was no surprise that they focused not on whether Joe was right about his conspiracy of traitors but on how contemptuous he was of them and their sacred US Senate. “You’re the kid who came to the party and pee’d in the lemonade,” a Senate friend told him. Even as they finally reined him in, fellow lawmakers were reluctant to utter the unspeakable word “censure,” although that’s what their rebuke was in practice and how history would record it. Instead, they labeled it a “condemnation.”*

And that footnote:


 * * Senator Welker, a McCarthy friend, observed that “condemn” was an even stronger word than “censure,” saying, “You don’t censure a man to death, you condemn him to death.” Leviero, “Final Vote Condemns M’Carthy, 67–22,” New York Times.

Which indicates that there's an NYT article discussing condemnation by Welker. Vargob (talk) 18:00, 6 March 2024 (UTC)


 * https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/1202.html Vargob (talk) 18:03, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Tye on the actual ruling:
 * It was only when Senator McCarthy had personally offended enough of his colleagues—and when the public, as it always does eventually, had moved on to new crusades and crusaders—that his Senate enablers cried, “Enough!” Its resolution hadn’t used the word “censure,” so the parliamentarian ruled that it couldn’t officially be called that. Senator Herbert Lehman of New York, Joe’s most idealistic and consistent critic, noted a more fatal flaw in the version that passed without the original long list of McCarthy excesses. “We have condemned the individual,” Lehman said, “but we have not yet repudiated the ‘ism.’”
 * Vargob (talk) 18:08, 6 March 2024 (UTC)