Across McCarthy’s Grave

There was no roof from which to jump and so there were no editorials bewailing an innocent man’s annihilation by the hound-dogs of malice. There was only a young man of forty eight, a young mountain of a man, but fatigued to the bone, fatigued and harassed and greatly astonished. It seems that Joe McCarthy never fully understood what had happened to him. When a stupid virus struck, a tired young body gave up. At the wake, Mr. Acheson said “de mortuis nil nisi bonum,” which is a certified gentleman’s and Harvard overseer’s way of saying that the deceased was a son of a bitch.

But the deceased was a good man, and I have come here to bear this witness. I knew him, not too well, but well enough to testify. And about the hound-dogs that kept snapping at him until he fell prostrate, I know everything there is to know. So here I am to deposit testimony, for a certain tomorrow of trial, on an epoch of insane guile, an epoch in which Joe McCarthy was tarred and feathered by genteel Ivy Leaguers, by gracious ladies of Women Voters Clubs and by noble princes of the press.

WS

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William S. Schlamm

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There was no roof from which to jump and so there were no editorials bewailing an innocent man’s annihilation by the hound-dogs of malice. There was only a young man of forty eight, a young mountain of a man, but fatigued to the bone, fatigued and harassed and greatly astonished. It seems that Joe McCarthy never fully understood what had happened to him. When a stupid virus struck, a tired young body gave up. At the wake, Mr. Acheson said “de mortuis nil nisi bonum,” which is a certified gentleman’s and Harvard overseer’s way of saying that the deceased was a son of a bitch.

But the deceased was a good man, and I have come here to bear this witness. I knew him, not too well, but well enough to testify. And about the hound-dogs that kept snapping at him until he fell prostrate, I know everything there is to know. So here I am to deposit testimony, for a certain tomorrow of trial, on an epoch of insane guile, an epoch in which Joe McCarthy was tarred and feathered by genteel Ivy Leaguers, by gracious ladies of Women Voters Clubs and by noble princes of the press.