Posted by
Frigglesnitz on Saturday, April 26, 2008 2:49:37 PM
When I was a young teen and Joe McCarthy was holding forth at Congressional hearings concerning Communists, I was in love.
I was in love with Joe McCarthy. Joe was animated. Joe was at his best at badgering those summoned to answer interrogations.
Joe had the blackest black hair and the most startlingly electric blue eyes I had ever seen in a male human being. As I said, I was in love, totally, and he was reminiscent of a traveling evangelist at tent revivals -- complete with sawdust on the floor. I could practically smell the interior of those chambers from where I lived, Louisiana.
It is fairly well known that women, girls and, in some cases, men, are so caught up in a messenger that the message he brings is almost irrelevant.
However, I was caught up in the messenger and the message. Although I had never really paid any attention to the word "communist" prior to Joe's examinations, whatever he said about them was the absolute truth.
I learned from Joe that being a communist was a very bad thing to be. After I grew older, I did not feel it necessary to delve into the matter of communism. I knew enough, because Joe described its repugnance so perfectly that it was unnecessary to dig any further.
I knew this, however: I was a born-again Christian, and born-again Christians were not communists in my opinion. They are mutually exclusive terms.
This dictum has carried through for all my years since that time. Therefore, when there is an entity who calls me a communist, as "Doc Steech" has done so frequently of late, seemingly with so much pleasure, I do tend to respond with feelings of intense anger. Then I'm transported back all those years to the irrepressible Joe McCarthy and the affection I felt for him in attempting to rid my country of a rancid evil.
Later in my life, I was ambivalent about Joe for all the harm it was perceived that he had done, and I was ashamed of the fact that he had probably unnecessarily ruined the lives of many people.
I never read the Ann Coulter column or columns a few months back about the good that Joe McCarthy had done. I simply was not interested. At that time, my love affair with Joe McCarthy was remembered affectionately, and his message stuck with me. Perhaps now I shall go back and read the Coulter column or columns.
For the record, D.S. and the world at large, I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the communist party. Nor will I ever be.