fear, distrust and dislike of all foreigners, of immigrants, of all things that are not demonstrably third generation American.” That set the general tone.
In addition, labor did a comic book entitled, “The Robert Alphonso Taft Story.” One and a half million copies were printed. It portrayed Taft as the spoiled child of the rich, a weak, unpopular boy, poor at athletics, who never had to work and ended up serving the rich, particularly a fat, greedy man named J. Phineas Moneybags. It was the crudest kind of propaganda, and characterized the political-economic undercurrents of the time. Even a genuine conservative intellectual was viewed as an evil cartoon figure by the left, while the right saw the New Deal merely as a front for Communism.
Taft was hardly unaware of the pact with the devil he forged when he sided with McCarthy. The liberal columnist Doris Fleeson criticized Taft for that support, and he berated her and other columnists for making too much of McCarthy. She was stunned by his rage: “You smear me and try to destroy me.... There are 96 Senators. Why pick on me?” It was a low moment in an otherwise highly principled career.
Economic conservative he might have been, but he had always been a good man on civil liberties. The Wheeling speech had caught Taft by surprise—McCarthy was not a man to clear his speeches with anyone—and he was not entirely pleased by it. Nevertheless he saw its value: Domestic subversion was a hot issue, and it worked for the Republicans. If McCarthy had found no Communists, he should not despair, Taft advised. He should “keep talking and if one case doesn’t work out, he should proceed with another one,” he added. Despite private doubts, which he expressed to a few close friends and his family, his public support gradually became clear. McCarthy, he said, was like “a fighting marine who risked his life to preserve the liberties of the United States. The greatest Kremlin asset in our history has been the pro-Communist group in the State Department who surrendered to every demand of Russia at Yalta and Potsdam, and promoted at every opportunity the Communist cause in China until today Communism threatens to take over all of Asia.”
As far as such men as Acheson were concerned, he had joined the “primitives.” Acheson later liked to joke about the awkward ballet that Taft would go through in order not to have his photograph taken next to him at Yale Corporation meetings. Old friendswere sure that he was uneasy with his new course, that he took no pleasure in it. But, as Rovere later wrote, Taft confronted McCarthy like an alcoholic fighting the bottle: It was bad but irreversible.
America’s obsession with the Cold War was so great that it finally convinced Mike Hammer to stop chasing the garden variety of gangsters and corrupt pols and concentrate instead on stopping domestic Communist subversion. Hammer was the toughest guy in pulp fiction, the creation of a writer named Mickey Spillane, whose phenomenal success heralded a vast change in the economics of book publishing. Spillane’s virtually instantaneous success at once titillated and terrified the world of genteel hardback-book publishers. When Spillane’s first book, I, the Jury, was accepted at Dutton, the editor warned his superior, “It isn’t in the best of taste but it will sell.” Spillane sold reasonably well in hardcover, 15,000 copies at his best (or, as someone once noted, about 3,000 copies a dead body). His real success came in his paperback sales, which averaged between 2.5 and 3 million on his first six books.
The formula was straight out of pulp fiction from the twenties and thirties: a lot of action and, of course, violence, all the dialogue spoken in tough-guy vernacular, and a lot of tantalizing sexual innuendo. Hammer was a straight, honest private eye who had soured on a real world of corrupt cops, cruddy DAs, and judges who had sold out. He was the avenger, the man who took justice
In addition, labor did a comic book entitled, “The Robert Alphonso Taft Story.” One and a half million copies were printed. It portrayed Taft as the spoiled child of the rich, a weak, unpopular boy, poor at athletics, who never had to work and ended up serving the rich, particularly a fat, greedy man named J. Phineas Moneybags. It was the crudest kind of propaganda, and characterized the political-economic undercurrents of the time. Even a genuine conservative intellectual was viewed as an evil cartoon figure by the left, while the right saw the New Deal merely as a front for Communism.
Taft was hardly unaware of the pact with the devil he forged when he sided with McCarthy. The liberal columnist Doris Fleeson criticized Taft for that support, and he berated her and other columnists for making too much of McCarthy. She was stunned by his rage: “You smear me and try to destroy me.... There are 96 Senators. Why pick on me?” It was a low moment in an otherwise highly principled career.
Economic conservative he might have been, but he had always been a good man on civil liberties. The Wheeling speech had caught Taft by surprise—McCarthy was not a man to clear his speeches with anyone—and he was not entirely pleased by it. Nevertheless he saw its value: Domestic subversion was a hot issue, and it worked for the Republicans. If McCarthy had found no Communists, he should not despair, Taft advised. He should “keep talking and if one case doesn’t work out, he should proceed with another one,” he added. Despite private doubts, which he expressed to a few close friends and his family, his public support gradually became clear. McCarthy, he said, was like “a fighting marine who risked his life to preserve the liberties of the United States. The greatest Kremlin asset in our history has been the pro-Communist group in the State Department who surrendered to every demand of Russia at Yalta and Potsdam, and promoted at every opportunity the Communist cause in China until today Communism threatens to take over all of Asia.”
As far as such men as Acheson were concerned, he had joined the “primitives.” Acheson later liked to joke about the awkward ballet that Taft would go through in order not to have his photograph taken next to him at Yale Corporation meetings. Old friendswere sure that he was uneasy with his new course, that he took no pleasure in it. But, as Rovere later wrote, Taft confronted McCarthy like an alcoholic fighting the bottle: It was bad but irreversible.
America’s obsession with the Cold War was so great that it finally convinced Mike Hammer to stop chasing the garden variety of gangsters and corrupt pols and concentrate instead on stopping domestic Communist subversion. Hammer was the toughest guy in pulp fiction, the creation of a writer named Mickey Spillane, whose phenomenal success heralded a vast change in the economics of book publishing. Spillane’s virtually instantaneous success at once titillated and terrified the world of genteel hardback-book publishers. When Spillane’s first book, I, the Jury, was accepted at Dutton, the editor warned his superior, “It isn’t in the best of taste but it will sell.” Spillane sold reasonably well in hardcover, 15,000 copies at his best (or, as someone once noted, about 3,000 copies a dead body). His real success came in his paperback sales, which averaged between 2.5 and 3 million on his first six books.
The formula was straight out of pulp fiction from the twenties and thirties: a lot of action and, of course, violence, all the dialogue spoken in tough-guy vernacular, and a lot of tantalizing sexual innuendo. Hammer was a straight, honest private eye who had soured on a real world of corrupt cops, cruddy DAs, and judges who had sold out. He was the avenger, the man who took justice
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