Film in Context: Point of Order!
The 1954 lawsuit brought against the US Army by Joseph McCarthy marked a turning point in public attitude towards the ‘Red Scare’ Senator. Thomas Doherty tells how television played a crucial role in his demise.
No political figure of the modern world was ever looked at so thoroughly as Joseph McCarthy was between April and June 1954. (Emile de Antonio).
Since his death in 1957, the shadow cast by Joseph R. McCarthy has grown in length and deepened in darkness. According to the National Standards for United States History: Exploring the American Experience, a volume published in 1992 by the National Center of History in the Schools, a dominant part of the American experience revolves around him. McCarthyism warranted nineteen separate references while such lesser lights in American history – Robert E. Lee, Thomas Edison, the Wright Brothers – failed to garner a single notation.
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