Joseph Mccarthy

Re "A Liberal-Hunting Terminator," Commentary, July 10: James Pinkerton does exactly what writer Ann Coulter describes in her book about how the left uses tactical misrepresentation of the facts. After hearing her interviewed on the radio, I rushed to buy her book. All Americans should read the book for themselves, look at her facts and then decide for themselves whether her evidence is credible. Pinkerton would rather we just believe him and his ilk and not bother with at least looking at another opinion.

Ann Coulter is a trailblazer. In the 1990s, she paved the way for a bevy of blond, leggy Torquemadas in miniskirts to earn notoriety on television by denouncing feminists and Bill Clinton. "It's enough" to be impeached, she declared in her 1998 bestseller "High Crimes and Misdemeanors," "for the president to be a pervert." Now that George Bush is president, she's widened her assault on liberalism to include the last 50 years of American history.

His mother doted on him. His older brother bullied him. By 14 he had his own chicken farm, and by the time he was 19, it had failed. It wasn't until age 20 that he started high school; classmates voted him "Most Lovable Man." He was a judge at 30 and a U.S. senator before 40. Although the early life of Joseph McCarthy was a politician's dream, he died in 1957 at age 48, felled by hepatitis and liquor and the certainty of history's harsh judgment.

Americans love closure, but we hate finality. We are constantly reviving the famous dead so that we may tell their stories, and we are constantly treating the living--in the form of celebrities--as if they will never die.

Warren E. Magee, 91, a lawyer whose penchant for defending the rights of pariahs brought him his best-known clients: a Nazi war criminal and Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy (R-Wis.). Magee had practiced for 18 years in Washington, and was known for his defense work for at least one disgraced congressman, when he was asked in 1948 to take part in the Nuremberg war crimes trials. His client was Baron Ernst von Weizsaecker, the former German secretary of state and wartime ambassador to the Vatican.

When Joseph McCarthy arrived in Los Angeles in August 1953 to hold public hearings, he was at the pinnacle of his power. The previous fall, Wisconsin voters had elected him to the U.S. Senate for a second term. His wedding, just a month away, would boast a guest list of 1,000 and include such members of the Washington elite as Vice President Richard Nixon, CIA Director Allen Dulles and Sen. John F. Kennedy.

I found your article very disturbing. While Hollywood is currently courting "politically correct" groups with which I happen to sympathize, this has not always been the case. In the 1950s, Hollywood acceded to the sensibilities of the then-"correct" group--Joseph McCarthy and his Communist witch hunters. Is Hollywood now carrying the banner of truth and justice, or merely seeking to side with the current "in" groups because it sells more tickets? The danger of Hollywood's attempts to be politically correct are obvious: If Hollywood buckled under to McCarthyism, who is to say that the skinheads or the American Nazi Party will not get their day?