Was Marilyn Monroe a Communist Sympathizer

[badbabysitter]

Originally Posted by vetteman

Ask me that question under your real username.

he won't fall for that... you'll have him sent to jail for being a communist

[KingOrfeo]

Originally Posted by badbabysitter

Without going into too many details, the best available evidence suggests that McCarthy, in describing how many Communists were known to be in the State Department, used both the number 205 and, at a different point, the number 57.

The 205 number comes from a letter written, in 1946, by then-Secretary of State James Byrnes to a congressman regarding several thousand government employees transferring into the State Department from other wartime agencies. 284 of them had been flagged as potential security risks, and, out of that, 79 had, at that time, been discharged, leaving 205.

The source of the number 57 requires a bit more background. In 1947, the staff of the very right-wing House Appropriations Committee had prepared a collection of dossiers, drawn from security files provided by the Truman administration. This was known as the "Lee list," named after the committee's chief clerk Robert Lee, and it consisted of 108 individuals--past, current, and potential government employees, as of 1947--whom the partisans on the committee and of the administration review board considered to be of mostly questionable "loyalty." The number 57 came from an administration official (John Peurifoy) who had, in 1948, testified to a different committee that, at that time, there were 57 of these 108 individuals employed by the government.

I recall a scene from The Manchurian Candidate: Senator Iselin has been alleging a variable number of Communists in the State Department, and, while having lunch with him, his wife Eleanor (mother of the title character, and the real villain of the story even compared to the Commies) tells him that to be credible, he needs to pick one number and stick with it. At that moment he glances at the bottle of Heinz 57 sauce on the table. In the next scene he addresses the Senate: "I have proof that there are 57 Communists in the State Department . . ."

[KingOrfeo]

Originally Posted by RobDownSouth

You know, we've come to expect a certain level of Schultzian "I know nuthink! NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNuthink!" from you.

Actually, vetteman's problem is rather the reverse of that, it is more in the nature of claiming he does know things he doesn't.

[KingOrfeo]

Originally Posted by vetteman

Bottom line, there were Russian agents and Communists working in the government.

McCarthy never proved that in a single case. Truman had already purged the Communists before McCarthy came along.

Originally Posted by vetteman

The Cold War against International Communism was necessary.

Why? Do you think America or Western Europe would be Communist today if we had left the USSR alone? Bullshit.

Originally Posted by vetteman

More than 30,000 people and 70 Senators attended Mcarthy's funeral.

I'm sure even more attended Lenin's funeral. So what?

[KingOrfeo]

Originally Posted by vetteman

It took the Verona Papers documentation that Alger Hiss was a Russian agent to nail down the cover on that history book forever.

The Hiss affair was before McCarthy. Like I said, it was a non-problem by the time McCarthy got started.

[KingOrfeo]

Originally Posted by vetteman

Ask me that question under your real username.

All usernames are equally real; some are senior.

[Voodoo5150]

Originally Posted by vetteman

Ask me that question under your real username.

Paranoia isn't healthy you know.

This is my real username. Sorry to disappoint you, but you can't use that as an excuse to dodge the question. Particularly since you just acknowledged the question.

Originally Posted by badbabysitter

Nope, he'll just change the suject

I'm still waiting for him to rebuff me on Margaret Sanger from well over a year ago

In that case, he's a troll. And the way to deal with trolls is just ignore them. Nothing angers a troll more than being ignored.

[Morcheeba]

♥ ♥ ♥
O, Time
Be Kind
Help this weary being
To forget what is sad to remember
Lose my loneliness,
Ease my mind,
While you eat my flesh.
♥ ♥ ♥

- Marilyn Monroe

[KingOrfeo]

As often, a very good source here is RationalWiki:

Joseph "Tailgunner Joe" McCarthy (1908-1957) was a member of the U.S. Senate who cashed in on the Second Red Scare by screeching hysterically about "Reds under the bed," thus placing all criticism of communism under a pall of disgrace.

Early biography

McCarthy would always say his allegations "fit a pattern," so it's fair to ask what sort of pattern his biography fit. McCarthy was a circuit (trial) court judge in Wisconsin when World War II broke out. He joined the Marines because he thought this branch of the service would be most helpful to him in a future political career. After the war he returned to sit as a judge and took to wearing his uniform on the bench.

When he ran for the U.S. Senate in 1946, he adopted the slogan "Congress Needs a Tailgunner," falsely claiming to have served in such capacity. (McCarthy had been an intelligence officer who had flown along on some less dangerous missions as an observer and had fired the tail guns of the planes he was in several times.[1]) McCarthy defeated Robert M. LaFollette, Jr., the three-term Senator and son of the progressive icon in the Republican primary and then went on to defeat his Democratic opponent.

Wheeling speech

McCarthy first came to wider public attention after he gave a speech to the Republican Women's club of Wheeling, West Virginia, on February 9, 1950. The topic of his speech was Communism. He was opposed to it. McCarthy started off his speech by contrasting the Communist Soviet Union with the "Christian West." It was the kind of speech that the junior Senator from Wisconsin was expected to give to a Republican women's club.

But there was bad news. America was losing:

How could this happen? McCarthy had the answer:

Who were these "enemies from within?"

Then McCarthy got specific:

Subsequent events

McCarthy repeated his accusations several times, garnering considerable public attention, but the number of names on the list kept changing. He claimed at various times that there were 87, 51, or 10 Communists in the State Department,[2] but never actually proved that a single case.[3][2]

His excesses later caught up with him in 1954 and he was given a smack on the head (censure by the Senate); the John Birch Society refused to admit that he had been wrong about any of it and subsequently began claiming that President Dwight Eisenhower was a communist agent who had been elected for the sole purpose of discrediting McCarthy. This was one of the factors that prompted saner conservatives, such as William F. Buckley (who had earlier written a defense of McCarthy, McCarthy and His Enemies: The Record and Its Meaning) and Russell Kirk, to distance themselves from the society.[4]

McCarthy died in 1957 from hepatitis, probably exacerbated by his alcohol addiction.

Venona project and attempted rehabilitation of reputation

In 1943, the governments of the US and UK collaborated on a project decrypting Soviet diplomatic cables known as Venona. In 1995, the documents were made publicly available.[5] The decrypted cables provided a smoking gun for instances of Soviet espionage, such as in the case of the "atomic spies" Ethel and Julius Rosenberg.[6][7] They also provided further evidence for the guilt of Alger Hiss, an official in the US State Department involved in the establishment of the United Nations.[8] However, McCarthy had nothing to do with either of these cases. Alger Hiss was called before, and perjured himself in front of, the House Committee on Un-American Activities, where his chief tormentor was Richard Nixon. The Rosenbergs were brought before a grand jury by the U.S. Justice Department, a part of the Truman Administration, which McCarthy was accusing of being soft on Communism. The extent of Soviet espionage and infiltration is still a matter of debate.[9]

While the cases of figures such as the Rosenbergs and Hiss were once causes célèbres on the left and right (for differing reasons, of course), they are now largely used by those of a more wingnut bent in service of attempting to rehabilitate McCarthy's reputation. Glenn Beck[10] and Ann Coulter,[11] for example, have defended McCarthy as an all-American hero.

While the Venona papers have demonstrated that Soviet espionage did indeed occur, the more obvious conclusion to be drawn from this is that, by crying wolf so many times, McCarthy's demagoguery was a hindrance to rooting out Soviet spies. Other than Mary Jane Keeney[12] none of McCarthy's unhinged accusations were substantiated.[3]

McCarthy's epitaph was perhaps pronounced at the infamous Army-McCarthy hearings by Special Counsel for the Army Joseph N. Welch who asked of him, "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?"[13]

[Exquisition]

Originally Posted by vetteman

You are sadly misinformed badbaby, it's hard to roll back 50 years of leftist propaganda, but try to dig a bit deeper. I lived through the era and frankly do not remember any "darkestt blights" on our history other then our own Democrats actively defending an implacable enemy who had murdered millions and enslaved hundreds of millions more. That was the blight on America's history. It took the Verona Papers documentation that Alger Hiss was a Russian agent to nail down the cover on that history book forever.

So your 100,00 dead servicemen you served alongside fighting the 'red peril' - brought about in no small measure by the hysteria and paranoia fruit loops like Macarthy propogated wasn't bad enough for you champ?

[KingOrfeo]

Originally Posted by vetteman

You are sadly misinformed badbaby, it's hard to roll back 50 years of leftist propaganda, but try to dig a bit deeper. I lived through the era and frankly do not remember any "darkestt blights" on our history other then our own Democrats actively defending . . .

No, vette, unless the Alzheimer's is scrambling your memories, you do not remember the Democrats actively defending the Commies. The Truman Admin started the whole Cold-War thing and fought the Korean War over it, the motherfucking scumbag HUAC was always bipartisan, and remember who got us into 'Nam? Partly Eisenhower, but mostly JFK and much-more-mostly LBJ.

Originally Posted by vetteman

It took the Verona Papers . . .

Venona, dumbass.

According to the Moynihan Commission on Government Secrecy, the complicity of both Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White is conclusively proven by Venona,[31][32] stating "The complicity of Alger Hiss of the State Department seems settled. As does that of Harry Dexter White of the Treasury Department." In his 1998 book, Senator Moynihan expresses certainty about Hiss's identification by Venona as a Soviet spy, writing "Hiss was indeed a Soviet agent and appears to have been regarded by Moscow as its most important."[33] However, several current authors, researchers, and archivists consider the Venona evidence on Hiss to be inconclusive[34] or incorrect.[35]

[Byron In Exile]

Originally Posted by KingOrfeo

No, vette, unless the Alzheimer's is scrambling your memories, you do not remember the Democrats actively defending the Commies. The Truman Admin started the whole Cold-War thing and fought the Korean War over it, the motherfucking scumbag HUAC was always bipartisan, and remember who got us into 'Nam? Partly Eisenhower, but mostly JFK and much-more-mostly LBJ.

Venona, dumbass.

You know, it's always bad strategy to assume that you're right?

[Byron In Exile]

Originally Posted by Byron In Exile

You know, it's always bad strategy to assume that you're right?

That question was to Vetteman.

[Comshaw]

http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/whi/...rd.asp?id=8005

So tailgunner Joe was the Al Gore of '44? That is rich! Ain't it funny that what goes around comes around?



Comshaw

[Comshaw]

Originally Posted by Voodoo5150

Paranoia isn't healthy you know.

This is my real username. Sorry to disappoint you, but you can't use that as an excuse to dodge the question. Particularly since you just acknowledged the question.



In that case, he's a troll. And the way to deal with trolls is just ignore them. Nothing angers a troll more than being ignored.

My granddad was an Okie farmer/moonshiner who migrated up here to the northwest. He always told me:

"Boy, never argue with a stump. All you gunna do is frustrate yourself and the damn stump ain't gunna pay no never mind."

My advice is save your breath for the times you'll actually be heard.


Comshaw

[Squibbs]

At Harold Edward's Elementary you pay respect to Our God, Our Flag, Our Military.
In grade 3 I had a written composition about the global threat of communism.
And I was the luckiest 8-year old McCarthyist of 1979:
I spent spring break on the flight line of a base in the Carolinas-
the U.S. version of my dad had signed us in.
And 12 years later, the Gatling I'd touched that was strapped to the nose of a U.S A-10,
separated flesh from bone and honed its skills on "lesser humans".
And thus confirmed the suspicions earned in the 7 years preceding about the lies
I was told and if the truth be known,
I'm probably better off believing
(well, they said I'm better off believing... somehow better off believing).
But how could they do this to me?
Born head first and brought up ankle deep.
And maybe you're a lot like me- identified for 14 years without a choice.
Terrified the morning you woke up and realized that if and when you jump ship,
you either swim for shore or drown. Don't let the fuckers drag you down.

[Squibbs]

At some turning point in history, some fuckface recognized that knowledge tends to democratize cultures and societies so the only thing to do was monopolize and confine it to priests, clerics and elites (the rest resigned to serve), 'cause if the rabble heard the truth they'd organize against the power, privilege and wealth hoarded by the few- for no one else. And did it occur to you that it's almost exactly the same today? And so if our schools won't teach us, we'll have to teach ourselves to analyze and understand the systems of thought-control.

And share it with each other, never sayed by brass rings or the threat of penalty. I'll promise you- you promise me- not to sell each other out to murderers, to thieves... who've manufactured our delusion that you and me participate meaningfully in the process of running our own lives. Yeah, you can vote however the fuck you want, but power still calls all the shots. And believe it or not, even if (real) democracy broke loose, power could/would just "make the economy scream" until we vote responsibly.

[Squibbs]

Lick my bag...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH16PE-_Dlw

[KingOrfeo]

Originally Posted by Comshaw

My granddad was an Okie farmer/moonshiner who migrated up here to the northwest. He always told me:

"Boy, never argue with a stump. All you gunna do is frustrate yourself and the damn stump ain't gunna pay no never mind."

My advice is save your breath for the times you'll actually be heard.


Comshaw

I've heard roughly the same thought expressed as: "Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig."

[Comshaw]

Originally Posted by KingOrfeo

I've heard roughly the same thought expressed as: "Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig."

Ain't it somethin' how such universal truths come packaged in so many different ways?


Comshaw