McCarthy: A brash bully demanded attention
It was six decades ago … but in some ways, it seems like now.
There was name-calling, finger-pointing, fact-checking, a televised congressional hearing. There was talk of State Department evil. This was the Sen. Joseph McCarthy era; a PBS documentary takes a fresh look … and dispels some assumptions.
The wrong notion, historian David Oshinsky told the Television Critics Association in July, is that McCarthy was a “slightly moronic, animalistic person. (Instead,) this was one very shrewd politician.
”That comes across in the film. McCarthy is described as affable, talkative, easy to like. “In some ways, he was quite a charming guy,” says Leon Kamin, one of the people McCarthy attacked. Read more…