Evaluating Three McCarthys

As far as I can remember, I have never personally known anyone with the name of McCarthy. But I have known about three “men” with that name, and I am posting a brief evaluation of those three here.

Charlie McCarthy was the name of a ventriloquist’s dummy. Beginning back in the 1930s, Edgar Bergen (who was an actor, comedian, and ventriloquist), made Charlie McCarthy a popular and beloved figure in American entertainment from 1937 on for decades. 

I probably heard Bergen and McCarthy on the radio in the late 1940s. During those years my birth family would often sit around the dining table in the evenings listening to radio programs. Surprisingly, Charlie was well known as ventriloquist Bergen’s dummy even though he couldn’t be seen.

Bergen (1903~78) was the father of the well-known actress Candice Bergen (b. 1946). In her early girlhood years, she was irritated whenever she was referred to as Charlie McCarthy’s little sister.*¹

A few years after I first heard of Charlie McCarthy, as a high school student I began to hear some about a Senator named McCarthy.

Joseph McCarthy (1908~57) was a U.S. Senator (R-Wis.), first elected to the Senate in 1946. He was relatively unknown until early in 1950 when he began charging that there was massive Communist infiltration in the U.S. government.

Margaret Chase Smith, Maine’s Republican Senator from 1949 to 1973, was a leader in the opposition to Sen. McCarthy’s spurious charges. Heather Cox Richardson wrote about that on June 1, 2022, noting that “once upon a time, Republican politicians were the champions of reason and compromise.”

In 1954 the Senate finally voted to censure McCarthy, and according to a Senate webpage, “Censured by his Senate colleagues, ostracized by his party, and ignored by the press, McCarthy died three years later, 48 years old and a broken man.”

But McCarthyism—and it is interesting that his name is one of the few names that became an “ism”—has continued to live on, most recently in Trumpism, another instance of a name becoming an ism.

Roy Cohn (1927~86) was Sen. McCarthy’s chief counsel in the 1954 hearings, and then he was Donald Trump’s lawyer and mentor for 13 years in the 1970s and ’80s. A Yale history professor’s opinion piece about the connection of McCarthyism to Trumpism was published on Dec. 4, 2020.

Kevin McCarthy is a current U.S. Representative (R-Calif.) and the top Republican in the House. First elected to Congress in 2006, McCarthy (b. 1965) was elected as GOP majority leader in 2014, the fastest-ever ascent to that pivotal leadership post.

McCarthy is a Southern Baptist, and his pastor in Riverside, Calif., flew to Washington to offer the opening invocation of the House on the day before McCarthy was installed as the majority leader. The next day, McCarthy told a D.C. group of religious conservatives that he was “proud to be a Christian.”*²

During the impeachment investigation in 2019, Cleveland Plain Dealer cartoonist Jeff Darcy referred to Rep. McCarthy as “President Trump’s ventriloquist dummy puppet.” He then added, “Out of respect to legendary ventriloquism puppet Charlie McCarthy, the two are not related.”*³

Soon after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, McCarthy was highly critical of Pres. Trump, rightfully calling it an "unprecedented attack on our nation." He said that Trump's words and actions "helped to encourage the actions of the rioters" and that the President's "betrayal of his office and supporters" was a "dishonor to the country."

However, before the end of that month, McCarthy backtracked his criticism and even went to Mar-a-Lago to visit with Trump. He seems to once again to be “my Kevin,” as Trump has referred to him through the years.

Now Rep. McCarthy is vying to become Speaker of the House when the 118^th Congress convenes on Jan. 3, 2023. Implying McCarthy’s lack of integrity, columnist Dana Millbank wrote on Dec. 2 that McCarthy “sells his soul to extremists in hopes of eking out enough votes to become speaker.”

Clearly, Charlie seems to be the best of the three McCarthys.

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*¹ I first remember Candice Bergen as the leading actress in Sand Pebbles (1966), one of my favorite movies.

*² Even though I was a Southern Baptist for 65 years, I have far more respect for Rep. Jamie Raskin (see my Dec. 10 post) who is a Jew, than for Rep. McCarthy. That is largely because of the latter’s hypocrisy or opportunism—and for his besmirching the good name of Christians.

*³ Here is the link to Darcy’s cartoon and article about Kevin and Charlie.

Note: The fourth paragraph about Rep. McCarthy was generated by ChatGPT, the new AI online program. I just slightly modified what it wrote from my prompt asking for McCarthy's criticism of Pres. Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.