Title
The Smearing of Joe McCarthy: The Lavender Scare, Gossip, and Gold War Politics
Additional Affiliations
Associate Professor, Department of History; Associate Professor, Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program
Document Type
Journal Article
Publication Date
2005
Originally Published In
Friedman, A. (2005). The Smearing of Joe McCarthy: The Lavender Scare, Gossip, and Cold War Politics. American Quarterly 57(4), 1105-29.
Abstract
Despite historians' best efforts to disassociate the anticommunist purges of the post-World War II era from one individual's extreme behav-ior, the early cold war years continue to be known as the McCarthy era, and Senator Joseph McCarthy remains a symbol—perhaps the paramount symbol—of irrationality and illegitimacy in American politics. His fall from grace in 1954 likewise denotes the return to moral order and political sanity. McCarthy did not introduce the practices and policies of political repression and sexual oppression that constituted the domestic cold war, and many of those practices and policies outlasted him. Nonetheless, he inhabits our memories as their most visceral representation. The man—his name, his face, as much as his behavior—stands for the era.
Pages
1105-1129
Recommended Citation
Friedman, Andrea, "The Smearing of Joe McCarthy: The Lavender Scare, Gossip, and Gold War Politics" (2005). Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies Research. 34.
https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/wgss/34
Comments
The Johns Hopkins University Press, http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/aq.2006.0005.
Copyright © 2005 The American Studies Association. All rights reserved.