Folklore: Sen. Joe McCarthy

Subject: Folklore: Sen. Joe McCarthy
From: GUEST,Nancy-Jean
Date: 03 Aug 05 - 12:03 PM

Heroes and villains often go from the front page to becoming the subjects for ballads or folksongs.

From 1950-1954 the Junior Senator from Wisconsin carried out well-publicized "witch hunts" for communist sympathizers in the government. He was finally condemned by the Senate. He was a character and a bad guy...........

Walt Kelly, the Pogo cartoonist, created Senator Simple J. Malarky a character mirroring McCarthy.

My question: did Joe McCarthy ever show up in a folksong?

Nancy-Jean

Subject: RE: Folklore: Sen. Joe McCarthy
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Aug 05 - 02:35 PM

Subject: RE: Folklore: Sen. Joe McCarthy
From: PoppaGator
Date: 03 Aug 05 - 02:41 PM

I dunno about Mr Joe himself, but I'm pretty sure I remember a "topical" or "protest" song from the 60s folk scene about (and, I think, entitled) the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Sen. Joe McCarthy
From: Le Scaramouche
Date: 03 Aug 05 - 03:21 PM

Doesn't he get a mention in the CMT's John Birch Society?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Sen. Joe McCarthy
From: Peace
Date: 03 Aug 05 - 03:58 PM

Nope.

by Michael Brown

Oh, we're meetin' at the courthouse at eight o'clock tonight
You just walk in the door and take the first turn to the right
Be careful when you get there, we hate to be bereft
But we're taking down the names of everybody turning left
Oh, we're the John Birch Society, the John Birch Society
Here to save our country from a communistic plot
Join the John Birch Society, help us fill the ranks
To get this movement started we need lots of tools and cranks
Now there's no one that we're certain the Kremlin doesn't touch
We think that Westbrook Pegler doth protest a bit too much
We only hail the hero from whom we got our name
We're not sure what he did but he's our hero just the same
Oh, we're the John Birch Society, the John Birch Society
Socialism is the ism dismalest of all
Join the John Birch Society, there's so much to do
Have you heard they're serving vodka at the WCTU?
Well you've heard about the agents that we've already named
Well MPA has agents that are flauntedly unashamed
We're after Rosie Clooney, we've gotten Pinkie Lee
And the day we get Red Skelton won't that be a victory
Oh we're the John Birch Society, the John Birch Society
Norman Vincent Peale may think he's kidding us along
But the John Birch Society knows he spilled the beans
He keeps on preaching brotherhood, but we know what he means
We'll teach you how to spot 'em in the cities or the sticks
For even Jasper Junction is just full of Bolsheviks
The CIA's subversive and so's the FCC
There's no one left but thee and we, and we're not sure of thee
Oh, we're the John Birch Society, the John Birch Society
Here to save our country from a communistic plot
Join the John Birch Society holding off the Reds
We'll use our hand and hearts and if we must we'll use our heads
Do you want Justice Warren for your Commissar?
Do you want Mrs. Krushchev in there with the DAR?
You cannot trust your neighbor or even next of kin
If mommie is a commie then you gotta turn her in
Oh, we're the John Birch Society, the John Birch Society
Fighting for the right to fight the right fight for the Right
Join the John Birch Society as we're marching on
And we'll all be glad to see you when we're meeting in the John
The John, the John Birch So- ci- i- teee.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Sen. Joe McCarthy
From: sapper82
Date: 03 Aug 05 - 04:17 PM

Ironic really. Abhorrent, arbitory and unfair though McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee may have been, Soviet documents show that there was a Moscow controlled Communist underground in the US.
Prior to the Barborossa invasion of the USSR they did a lot to disrupt Lend Lease assistance to the UK.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Sen. Joe McCarthy
From: Deckman
Date: 03 Aug 05 - 04:51 PM

Sapper82 ... Can you please give some documentation of this so that I may research it? Thanks, Bob(deckman)Nelson ... in Everett, Washington state, USA

Subject: RE: Folklore: Sen. Joe McCarthy
From: Deckman
Date: 03 Aug 05 - 05:40 PM

My dim memory tells me that there were at least three songs that came during the fifties that had him in them, by name! Bob)deckman)Nelson ... still in Everett ... my house is yellow ... third house from the corner ... I'll have the coffee pot on!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Sen. Joe McCarthy
From: Peace
Date: 03 Aug 05 - 05:41 PM

I too have heard that Russia ran some ops in the US. Likely true. I'll dig for documentation, too.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Sen. Joe McCarthy
From: PoppaGator
Date: 03 Aug 05 - 06:30 PM

I don't doubt that the USSR had actual spy operations going on in the US and around the world throughout the Cold War era, just as the US did in Russia and just about everywhere else. Duh!!

That does NOT mean that every accusation leveled by an ambitious politician was justified, any more than every such accusation was necessarily false.

If right-wingers like McCarthy, Nixon, et al, hadn't taken the cynical opportunity to smear their political opponents with transparently fabricated accustations of treason, the general public might well have taken the search for real Russian agents much more seriously than they did. The way things actually happened, when McCarthy was rightly discredited, all anti-Communist efforts and indeed all aspects of counterintelligence were collectively tarred wit the same brush in the eyes of many educated Americans.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Sen. Joe McCarthy
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 03 Aug 05 - 06:56 PM

PoppaGator

You may well find history repeating itself ...

Subject: RE: Folklore: Sen. Joe McCarthy
From: Deckman
Date: 03 Aug 05 - 07:28 PM

Poppagator ... you are excatly correct! Bob

Subject: RE: Folklore: Sen. Joe McCarthy
From: Peace
Date: 03 Aug 05 - 07:32 PM

Joe McCarthy was puke personified. No arguement from me on that.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Sen. Joe McCarthy
From: Abby Sale
Date: 03 Aug 05 - 07:34 PM

Consulting the Happy file for May 18, May 26 & June 7, I file "The Refugee." This is a well-established folk song by any (except one person's) definition and by Gene Raskin, (who also wrote: 'Those Were The Days,' & 'Kretchma.') There are many variations but the last verse commonly:

        Well, the Reds kicked me out, yes out in the cold,
        All I had left was some rubies and gold.
        They gave me the gate, the gate without pity,
        Now I take mine revenge on McCarthy's committee.

(I learned it from Banjo Bob Baldwin {DownEast Bob} c.1959)

On McCarthy's death, this changed to "on the UnAmerican Committee" McCarthy sat (as a guest) in the "Army-McCarthy" hearings, not HUAC - he was a senator, HUAC was a House committee, 1st on TV= 4/22/1954. It is also said that the song predates McCarthy and was originally "on Dies' committee." Greenhaus claims he learned it in the 40s when HUAC was chaired by Martin Dies.)

(Option: (spoken): Ah yes. I was penniless. But the Czar! Ah! He was...Nicholas.

There is at least one other McCarthy song I can't place at the moment.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Sen. Joe McCarthy
From: Peace
Date: 03 Aug 05 - 09:20 PM

Peter Seeger testified in front of the House of Un-American Activities Committee on 15th August, 1955 but was unwilling to name other members of the various left-wing groups that he had belonged to over the years.

I feel that in my whole life I have never done anything of any conspiratorial nature and I resent very much and very deeply the implication of being called before this Committee that in some way because my opinions may be different from yours, that I am any less of an American than anyone else.

I am saying voluntarily that I have sung for almost every religious group in the country, from Jewish and Catholic, and Presbyterian and Holy Rollers and Revival Churches. I love my country very dearly, and I greatly resent the implication that some of the places that I have sung and some of the people that I have known, and some of my opinions, whether they are religious or philosophical, make me less of an American.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Sen. Joe McCarthy
From: mack/misophist
Date: 04 Aug 05 - 12:43 AM

The song PopaGator mentioned is The House Unamerican Activities Committee Blues Dream by Richard Farina.Tailgunner Joe is not mentioned in it.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Sen. Joe McCarthy
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 04 Aug 05 - 01:01 AM

His colleague, Sen. Thomas Dodd of Connecticut, former chair of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (father of the incumbent Chris Dodd), did make it into a song, by Phil Ochs:

Well, I'm just a typical American boy
From a typical American town
I believe in God and Senator Dodd
And keeping old Castro down.

Dodd was a rabid anti-Communist, but also a major supporter of civil rights legislation. And I believe he first made a name for himself as a zealous prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials. So much for simplification.

Maybe Joe was lucky that his name was hard to rhyme...

Aloha,
Mark

Subject: RE: Folklore: Sen. Joe McCarthy
From: Kaleea
Date: 04 Aug 05 - 01:09 AM

As a teen, I recall the john belch society (I didn't use naughty words then) in a booth each year at the Tulsa State Fair.         
Scary Monster!!!!!
   
   As a church Musician, I have also participated in & provided Music for most every flavor (denomination) of church you can think of, & some you've probably never heard of. As a Musician who believes in Ecumenical groups standing together in the cause of Peace, I sung/played in serviced which many would classify under religion as "other."   
OH, I dunno. Something about that Bill of Rights that says not only do I have Freedom of Religion, but so does everyone else around these parts. Too bad more folks don't think of it that way.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Sen. Joe McCarthy
From: robomatic
Date: 04 Aug 05 - 01:42 AM

It's a very tough subject, because human nature has a lot of dark places and there were those especially between the Wars who felt they had to choose up sides, Fascist or Communist.

I believe there were plenty of Communists infiltrating the US. I believe for the most part they were successful. Helping them along were people like Joe McCarthy and the John Birchers who used the most superficial approach to patriotism possible, piss on the guy next to you to make yourself look better. Not for nothing did President Truman label ol' Joe McCarthy "the Kremlin's greatest ally". By stirring up hysteria, these mindless jerks antagonized thinking people, humiliated caring people, and diverted attention from real problems and real opportunities facing the free world.

Meanwhile the deification of Lenin and Stalin within the USSR and the incredible blindness, gullibility, whatever it was that made people in free countries give it an ounce of credibility because words just fail me (in fact a book about Communism was titled: "The God That Failed.") made Communism a genuine threat to mankind which ended and ruined the lives of millions.

People everywhere are persecuted for being independent. what makes the USA different is that you can be independent, and still have a chance.

oh...er,,, we're above the line here, um, sorry, a song, I need a song, ahem ahem... lessseeee.......of course, this one is perfect, it's

Subject: RE: Folklore: Sen. Joe McCarthy
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 04 Aug 05 - 05:51 AM

We apologize for this break in transmission... Nothing to do with the censors, you know, just technical difficulties... :-)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Sen. Joe McCarthy
From: GUEST,Joe_F
Date: 04 Aug 05 - 10:10 AM

Mark: I believe that at the time the song was written, Thomas Dodd had most recently been in the news for being censured by the Senate for embezzling campaign funds (a practice that I gather has not ended). That would have given the mention a mildly sarcastic ring.

--- Joe Fineman    [e-mail]

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