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From: lazarus@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Andrew J &)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: making things up
Message-ID: <15875@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Wed, 1-Oct-86 00:14:44 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.15875
Posted: Wed Oct  1 00:14:44 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 2-Oct-86 20:02:56 EDT
References: <8579@duke.duke.UUCP> <1047@frog.UUCP> <15757@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <1056@frog.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: lazarus@brahms.UUCP (Andrew J Lazarus)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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In article <1056@frog.UUCP> tdh@frog.UUCP writes:
>>> Not that McCarthy deserves defending, but no one he accused of being a
>>> Communist wasn't.
>
>> Actually, no one Joe McCarthy accused ever *was* a Communist!
>
>Extreme hyperbole at best.
>
>> People whom McCarthy did accuse - let's see.  Owen Lattimore
>> (never shown to be a communist), J. Robert Oppenheimer (ditto),
>> China experts JS Sargent et al (not a one ever shown to be
>> a Communist, at least one reinstated in the 60s), Dean
>> Acheson (res ipsa loquitur), etc.
>
>I can't comment at the moment except on Oppenheimer.  He was fingered
>*not* by McCarthy but by the AEC and the FBI, back when McCarthy was
>still a Marine, for not reporting a contact with a Soviet agent.  I
>was told by a man who claimed he had a chance to look at the Top
>Secret evidence on Oppenheimer that (trusting to his memory)
>
>- Oppenheimer's brother was a known card-carrier.

This is so, but SO WHAT.
Do we convict people on the basis of their brothers' beliefs.

>- The evidence on Oppenheimer was conclusive.
Really?  Not according to "Security on Trial", by Philip Stern and
Harold Greene.  Mr. Greene was one of the government officials
in charge of preparing the evidence against Oppenheimer.
>
>>  Of the 89 Communists in the
>> State Dept. which McCarthy claimed to know about (famous
>> Wheeling W.VA. speech), he never named one outside the Congress,
>> where (by law) he was immune from Libel and Slander actions.
>
>As I said, I don't consider McCarthy to have been worth defending.
>Like most successful politicians, the man was clearly a demagogue.
>And there are few people who doubt that his waving of lists was
>anything more than hand-waving.  But all of that is irrelevant to
>the question of whether or not he accused anyone falsely of being
>a communist.
>
>As long as he slandered them by accusing them falsely of being
>communist.  We're starting out even, for the moment.  Agreed?  I'll
>have some more names in a few days.
>
I see I am not the only person on the net reading this defense
of McCarthy with disbelief.  So -- help me out -- cite references
for some more inaccurate McCarthy accusations!  And thanx to those
who already have.

(More examples next week -- I try to study sometimes.)

andy