No Luck for McCarthy Image

Poor Joe McCarthy. Can’t even catch a break from the locals.

As the legendary patron saint of broadcast news, Edward R. Murrow, moved into town this weekend to slay the widely despised U.S. senator from Wisconsin in the new movie “Good Night, and Good Luck,” there is hardly a public acknowledgment here that the self-styled warlord of anti-communism, the man whose name became an “ism” was once a popular hometown boy of humble origins.

Today there is scant evidence that Joseph R. McCarthy even lived here. There’s a road outside town named after his family. McCarthy’s heroic-sized bronze bust that for decades was spat upon in the county administration building in Appleton is now safe from such public assaults; it’s in the Outagamie County Historical Museum -- locked in storage. The most public remembrance of McCarthy -- his marble gravestone in St. Mary’s Cemetery, overlooking the Fox River -- is flanked by potted mums and tulips. They are fake.

Now comes the critically acclaimed movie that lionizes Murrow and shows, in black-and-white footage, McCarthy as tragic, self-bullying and thuggish and on the road to being censured by his colleagues in the Senate. If there were ever a time for the locals to rally to his defense, it would be now. But the galloping cavalry is nowhere in sight.

In a nation that forgives vilified presidents, grants childish and churlish celebrities second chances and even romanticizes the exploits of killers such as Billy the Kid, Al Capone and Jesse James, Joseph McCarthy burns in a marketing hell, nearly 50 years after his death.

To say that Appleton, a city of 71,000, has an awkward relationship with its most notorious son is like saying Florida has issues with hurricanes.

“There’s not a lot of lingering romance about blacklisting,” said Lynn Peters, executive director of the Fox Cities Convention and Visitors Bureau, where rows of glossy tourism pamphlets ignore McCarthy. Recognition of McCarthy’s civic contribution is contained in a thin blue folder, kept behind the counter. Inside are about half a dozen yellowing newspaper articles.

“I think it’s fair to say that our board of directors wouldn’t choose to have a Joe McCarthy museum,” Peters said.

The Outagamie Historical Museum presented a two-year retrospective on McCarthy that ended last year. It attracted the historically curious as well as political junkies. But all of that memorabilia is in storage.

“He’s certainly a figure that interests people, but he’s not a community booster,” said Kimberly Louagie, the museum’s curator of exhibits.

A consistent, albeit lonely voice of support for McCarthy comes from the John Birch Society, based in Appleton, which published an attack on “Good Night, and Good Luck” in the latest issue of its magazine, the New American.

“We think he’s the most unfairly maligned public figure in the 20th century,” said William Grigg, a senior editor at the magazine. “He became a hate figure of the establishment ... and the movie is an attempt to reinflate the ogre.”

Grigg, who is 42, conceded that he probably would not live to see the rehabilitation of McCarthy’s image, but he was confident that, over time, McCarthy’s pursuit of communist spies -- if not his tactics -- would be vindicated.

Every May 2, on the anniversary of McCarthy’s death, a dwindling and aging group of supporters gathers at his gravesite to talk and remember and discuss ways to repair the image of their hero.

“This is probably the only town in America where you could find people who had good things to say about Joe McCarthy. To them, McCarthy died on the cross of anti-communism,” said Jerald Podair, a history professor at Lawrence University.

They, however, represent a tiny minority, Podair said.