Dignity (on Joseph Welch)
Today’s the day.
I don’t know what the future holds (which is one of the most honest statement you will read this week, by the way).
I do know that in whatever faculty I have a future, whether or no I have children, I will venture out on this day, find and bribe children with dimes or candy, or whatever children will be trading in the future (probably holographic pogs [but what am I saying? They told me in kindergarten that we'd be using solar power by the time I was twenty! They'll just be regular pogs]).
Anyway, I will gather a crowd, and spin them a narrative, in rap hexameters, about “Rage, misguided, that sank great Senators to sycophants…,” and of the man who heaved and threw up dignity onto the floor of peoples’ living rooms.
Many people had already uncovered and ridiculed the danger of Sen. Joe McCarthy’s witch-hunt before, but no one had done it in (as dos Passos would’ve said, if he hadn’t lost his marbles by this time) “the speech of the people.”
Joseph Welch made the phrase “attorney for the accused” sound noble. For whatever comes in this slugfest of a fall we face, I offer the record of the court:
[Having blocked and denigrated McCarthy's stabs at the vague accusation of "Communists in the Army Department," McCarthy then brought up the fact that Fred Fisher, an aide to Welch, belonged to a "left-leaning" lawyer's guild. Empahses are mine.]
Welch:
Senator, you won’t need anything in the record when I finish telling you this. Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.
Fred Fisher is a young man who went to the Harvard Law School and came into my firm and is starting what looks to be a brilliant career with us. When I decided to work for this Committee, I asked Jim St.Clair, who sits on my right, to be my first assistant. I said to Jim, “Pick somebody in the firm to work under you that you would like.” He chose Fred Fisher, and they came down on an afternoon plane.
That night, when we had taken a little stab at trying to see what the case was about, Fred Fisher and Jim St. Clair and I went to dinner together. I then said to these two young men, “Boys, I don’t know anything about you, except I’ve always liked you, but if there’s anything funny in the life of either one of you that would hurt anybody in this case, you speak up quick.”
And Fred Fisher said, “Mr. Welch, when I was in the law school, and for a period of months after, I belonged to the Lawyers’ Guild,” as you have suggested, Senator.
He went on to say, “I am Secretary of the Young Republican’s League in Newton with the son of [the] Massachusetts governor, and I have the respect and admiration of my community, and I’m sure I have the respect and admiration of the twenty-five lawyers or so in Hale & Dorr.”
And I said, “Fred I just don’t think I’m going to ask you to work on the case. If I do, one of these days that will come out, and go over national television and it will just hurt like the dickens.” And so, Senator, I asked him to go back to Boston.
Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel as to do an injury to that lad…
It is, I regret to say, equally true that I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty, I would do so.
I like to think I’m a gentle man, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me.
McCarthy:
Mr. Chairman, may I say that Mr. Welch talks about this being cruel and reckless. He was just baiting. He has been baiting Mr. Cohn here for hours, requesting that Mr. Cohn before sundown get out of any department of the government anyone who is serving the Communist cause.
Now, I just give this man’s record and I want to say, Mr. Welch, that it had been labeled long before he became a member, as early as 1944–
Welch:
Senator, may we not drop this? We know he belonged to the Lawyers’ Guild. And Mr. Cohn nods his head at me. I did you, I think, no personal injury, Mr. Cohn?
Cohn:
No, sir.
Welch:
I meant to do you no personal injury, and if I did, I beg your pardon. Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You’ve done enough.
Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?
McCarthy:
I know this hurts you, Mr. Welch.
Welch:
I’ll say it hurts.
McCarthy:
Mr. Chairman, as point of personal privilege, I’d like to finish this.
Welch:
Senator, I think it hurts you, too, sir.
McCarthy:
I’d like to finish this. I know Mr. Cohn would rather not have me go into this, I intend to, however, and Mr. Welch talks about any sense of decency….
I have heard you and everyone else talk so much about laying the truth upon the table. But when I heard–the completely phony–Mr. Welch, I’ve been listening now for a long time, saying, now before sundown you must get these people out of government.
So I just want you to have it very clear, very clear that you were not so serious about that when you tried to recommend this man for this Committee.
Welch:
Mr. McCarthy, I will not discuss this further with you. You have sat within six feet of me and could ask, could have asked me about Fred Fisher. You have seen fit to bring it out, and, if there is a God in heaven, it will do neither you nor your cause any good. I will not discuss it further. I will not ask, Mr. Chairman, for any more witnesses.
You, Mr. Chairman, may, if you will, call the next witness. [Applause from committee room].
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