[Resolute Conservative]

McCarthy was right.

[cherry]

my mother always had a sense of things.....she was clearly a Kennedy Catholic...but she said that the McCarthy hearings were absolutely correct....

she also said that when new Russian immigrants came into our town, and there were lots of them, they even told my mother that Russia would some day take us over....true believers even then....

[Pelham]

Ryskind points out that McCarthy played no role in investigating Hollywood:

“Despite a mountain of misinformation that is now considered “history,” McCarthy played no role whatsoever in Hollywood. The House Un-American Activities Committee began its first major investigation of the red influence in Hollywood in 1947, and the vast majority of what the public learned about Hollywood and the Communist influence there stems from that investigation.

“The movie industry, in the wake of the hearings, felt impelled to institute the blacklist to convince the public that Hollywood was not “soft on communism.” The producers laid down the law that the studios would not hire anyone who was a party member and who refused to cooperate with the committee. None of this, however, had anything to do with McCarthy, who was a senator, not a House member, and didn’t even begin his anti-Communist crusade until 1950.”