Reexaming the Life and Legacy of America’s Most Hated Senator
When I walked into the mall in downtown Appleton, Wisconsin, on a late and lazy Sunday morning, I had no address for the place I was going. I didn’t even know the name of the cemetery. The idea for doing this had come to me while my wife and I were flying to Wisconsin to visit my parents. Sitting in Chicago’s O’Hare Airport during those heavy, boring moments before boarding our plane, I had suddenly decided that while I was out here, I should visit Joe McCarthy’s grave.
Since I was writing a book on him, it seemed only fitting to pay a visit. It was also the fortieth anniversary of his death — a lifetime ago in my case. I was barely five months old when McCarthy had been buried on May 7, 1957, in his home town of Appleton. In one sense he has never been laid to rest. Joe McCarthy was and remains the single most despised man in American political memory — far more reviled than Aaron Burr or Richard Nixon or even George Wallace. Yet I knew that some people treat his grave as a kind of shrine. The John Birch Society, the final word in right-wing extremism and anti-Communist paranoia, made its home in Appleton — keeping vigil, as it were, beside the fallen hero’s tomb (although their offices are actually in a strip mall on the other side of town). One biographer, David Oshinsky, had published a picture of McCarthy’s grave strewn with flowers from well-wishers. Thanks to the Oshinsky photo, I had an idea what the headstone looked like. My problem, since I hadn’t brought any of my notes with me, was to find out exactly where it was.
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