Myths: Their sleazy stock in trade the left’s lies that never die

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Written By Phil Brennan

The other day a slobbering bunch of Hollywood crybabies were whining about the anger their anti-American tirades have provoked among the American people, warning that this reaction could result in a  blacklist where  they could find themselves cast into the outer darkness, jobless and deprived of their right to express their creativity as actors, actresses, producers. directors, and writers.

This, they said, could revive the terrible McCarthyite blacklist that left many of Hollywood’s celebrities unable to find work and subjected to scorn because of a blacklist allegedly the work of evil old Joe McCarthy.

This is hogwash, and one of the myths spun endlessly by the left. And I’m sick to death of hearing them repeated over and over again, often by people who ought to know better. I’ve written about some of the more egregious myths, lies and distortion that liberals keep dragging out  of their arsenal of slime, but the lies just keep coming so here, once again, is another attempt to set the record straight.

The Hollywood Blacklist Myth

Over and over again we  hear much about the plight of the so-called victims of McCarthyism — an alleged army of people unfairly targeted by the Wisconsin Senator. Gallons of tears are shed over Hollywood actors, writers and others working in films. The so-called blacklist that allegedly kept innocent people from working in Hollywood (despite the fact that their left-wing friends continued to use many of these identified members of the Soviet led American communist party — lately revealed as totally an instrument of the Soviet Union — while concealing their assistance).

There are a couple of things wrong with this blacklist myth. First, these people were not what they are called today — victims of McCarthyism. Joe had nothing to do with the Hollywood hearings which cited the communist membership of those accused — they were solely the work of the House Un-American Activities Committee, and took place long before Joe took center stage. And, by the way, the so-called victims were members of the Soviet-dominated U.S. Communist party and as a result, under Soviet discipline – in other words, working for  America’s sworn enemies. There’s a word for that – it’s called treason.

There was a real blacklist, however, one that punished its victims as the mythical victims of the hyped-up Hollywood blacklist claimed they were being punished. It was composed of anti-communists — famous and not so famous actors and directors who could not find work because of their anti-communist activities. People like Adolph Menjou, Ward Bond, Bruce Cabot — all members of John Wayne’s anti-communist Motion Picture Alliance. Wayne courageously stood up for these people — and you can see most of them in reruns of countless Wayne films. He used them over and over, keeping them working when nobody else would hire them. They were the real victims of the real blacklist, spurned by the studios and treated as pariahs by the Hollywood elite.

The McCarthyism Myth

Let’s start with the phrase McCarthyism — a slander the left simply loves to hang around the necks of anybody who happens to disagree with them and tries to counter their deadly influence over American life. Do any of those who throw the word around have the faintest idea of where that word was coined? Are they aware that it was hatched in the bowels of number 3, Dzherzinsky Square — headquarters of the KGB in Moscow? Or that it was first used in the columns of the communist newspaper, the Daily Worker before the left wing media and their liberal allies eagerly picked it up for use against anti-communists, thereby doing exactly what the Soviets expected these classic useful idiots and closet Soviet sympathizers to do?

And it continues to this day – the term is used to brand any cause or group the left considers inimical to their paganistic socialist dogma as being something dark and sinister and un-American.

The viciousness directed at conservatives and anti-communists by the left during the ’40s and ’50s is displayed today against pro-lifers, religious conservatives, Bush supporters, and all others opposed to the socialist agenda that liberals seek to impose on America. And the socialism that they espouse is every bit as coercive as the Soviet communist system with which they could find no wrong in the days of Joe McCarthy. Communism, after all, was described simply as “socialism in a hurry.” In other words, communists kill or cow all the supporters of liberty in a reign of terror before socialists take over and herd the mindless, dumbed-down sheep left into the Marxist pen.

The heirs of the people who could tolerate Stalin’s murderous regime which slew people by the tens of millions are the people who find it easy to tolerate the horror of partial birth abortion — and the sale of the body parts of the tiny victims of this holocaust. And they employ the same smear tactics and lies against pro-lifers that their forerunners used against McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover and their fellow anti-communists.

The McCarthy was Wrong About Communist Subversion Myth

Joe McCarthy, like all of us, was a flawed human being. On many occasions Joe’s background as a combative Irish ex-Marine rose up and led him to act more as a street fighter than a cool and collected lawman dealing with a sinister conspiracy protected by some of the nation’s elite. But the thrust of his campaign against Soviet stooges among us was right on target most of the time.

I refuse to simply close the books on the so-called McCarthy era because the excesses of the far-left against anti-communists were forerunners of the excesses of the liberals of the present day. They smeared their foes, lied about them, and created a whole slew of myths that remain current to this day. And they continue to use the same tactic; take for example the disgraceful behavior of the liberal Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearings or Senate Democrats who stymied the Thompson Committee investigation into Chinese espionage and their illegal campaign contributions to the Democrats and Clinton/Gore. Or their current attempt to prevent Senate confirmation of Miguel Estrada by conducting a filibuster which is nothing less that an assault on the Constitution of the United States.

Then there’s the matter of the source of many of Joe’s accusations — accusations being proved  by release of the so-called Venona Intercepts — of Soviet cable traffic whose code was broken back in the mid-forties and remained top secret until recently. These intercepted cables proved that there were over 350 Americans spying for the Soviets, and enabled investigators to identify about half of them. Joe McCarthy had access to the information contained in the top secret Venona intercepts — access given him by J. Edgar Hoover and others concerned with the extent of Soviet espionage and penetration — but he could not defend himself against charges of recklessly accusing people of being Soviet agents by revealing the source of his information without alerting the Soviets that some of their most important secrets were known to U.S. intelligence.

One of the more revealing admissions recently made by the left was Carl Bernstein’s quote from his father, who, with Carl’s mother, was a top Communist Party member. Here’s what Bernstein recalls when  his 1989 book “Loyalties: A Son’s Memoir” was published.  Bernstein’s father warned him:   “You’re going to prove [Sen. Joseph] McCarthy was right, because all he was saying is that the system was loaded with Communists. And he was right … I’m worried about the kind of book you’re going to write and about cleaning up McCarthy. The problem is that everybody said he was a liar; you’re saying he was right … I agree that the Party was a force in the country.”

The Hoover-Was-A-Sexual-Deviant Myth

The smear tactics used by the Soviets to discredit J. Edgar Hoover by falsely charging that he was a cross-dressing sexual deviant are taken as fact by the media and many Americans despite the fact that it has been revealed that the charges — utterly unproven and absurd — were widely disseminated by, among others, the KGB’s disinformation shop.

Does anybody really believe that the most famous cop in America — a man almost paranoid about maintaining his privacy, as well as being a target for every Red and crook and KGB plant in the nation, could show up at parties dressed as a woman and not have the fact explode in headlines within hours? C’mon, give me a break!

The facts in this case are well-known, but ignored by those who never forgave Hoover for his effective war against communist subversion in the U.S. In his book, “The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI”  Ronald Kessler effectively demolishes this filthy slander in which liberals love to wallow.

Here are the facts, as Kessler recounts them:

The myth has its roots in British author Anthony Summers’ 1993, book “Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover.” Summers’ source for the story was one Susan L. Rosenstiel, a former wife of Lewis S. Rosenstiel, chairman of Schenley Industries Inc.

Summers claimed that Hoover did not pursue organized crime because the Mafia had blackmail material on him. In support of that, Summers quoted  Mrs. Rosenstiel, a former wife of Lewis S. Rosenstiel, chairman of Schenley Industries Inc., as saying that in 1958, she was at a party at the Plaza Hotel where Hoover engaged in cross-dressing in front of her then-husband and Roy Cohn, former counsel to Senator Joe McCarthy.

“He [Hoover] was wearing a fluffy black dress, very fluffy, with flounces and lace stockings and high heels, and a black curly wig,” Summers quoted Susan as saying. “He had makeup on and false eyelashes.”

She went on to assert that Hoover later engaged in sex with young boys, adding that her former husband followed suit.

A year later, she said she saw Hoover at New York’s Plaza, hotel, this time wearing a red dress. Around his neck was a black feather boa. He was holding a Bible, and he asked one of the blond boys to read a passage as another boy played with him.

The jacket of the book says  “Mafia bosses obtained information about Hoover’s sex life and used it for decades to keep the FBI at bay. Without this, the Mafia as we know it might never have gained its hold on America.”

To begin with, Susan, Summers, the primary source for the cross-dressing story,   was not exactly a credible witness. In fact, she served time at Riker’s Island for perjuring herself in a 1971 case.

And she had it in for Hoover who she believed  had somehow worked against her during her divorce proceedings, and had long tried to interest anyone who would listen that Hoover was a cross-dresser. She had even taken her allegations to Robert M. Morgenthau, the U.S. Attorney in New York, who himself had no use for Hoover.

“She used to call me after 5:30 p.m. when my secretary had left, so I wound up having to listen to her,” Morgenthau told Kessler, adding that he found her claims baseless. But he did  share her allegations with William Hundley, who had a Justice Department attorney look into them.

“Susie Rosenstiel had a total ax to grind,” Hundley told Kessler. “Somebody who worked for me talked to her. It was made up out of whole cloth. She hated Hoover for some alleged wrong he had done. Plus the story was beyond belief. I told Summers this. Then he goes ahead and uses it.”

As others have written, Hoover, allegedly silenced by the Mafia because they had the goods on him, went ahead and relentlessly pursued the mob, starting with top mobster Meyer Lanski.

Writes Kessler: “In an Esquire piece, Peter Maas, a world class journalist who died in 2001, pointed out that Summers’s rendition of events has a fatal flaw: After the alleged incident at the Plaza, Hoover assigned agents to investigate Lansky, who supposedly had the goods on him. When the Miami Field Office complained that the investigation of Lansky was not producing enough information to justify the manpower, Hoover wrote back, “Lansky has been designated for ‘crash’ investigation. The importance of this case cannot be overemphasized . . . The bureau expects this investigation to be vigorous and detailed.”

“Still presumably cowering because Lansky had incriminating photos of him, Hoover followed up with an order to install bugs in Lansky’s apartment. Having been ordered by Robert Kennedy to attack the Mafia as the FBI had attacked Communism, Hoover wrote in the January 1962 FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, “The battle is joined. We have taken up the gauntlet flung down by organized crime. Let us unite in a devastating assault to annihilate this mortal enemy.” Yet even before Kennedy took over, Hoover, stung by the disclosure of the 1957 Appalachin meeting, had been pursuing the mob aggressively”

Hoover was more familiar to Americans than most presidents. The director of the FBI simply could not have engaged in such activity at the Plaza, with a number of witnesses present, without having it leak out. To believe otherwise is the kind of self-delusion to which liberals cling with the unshakable faith of blithering idiots.

Tragically the utterly false Hoover cross-dressing myth is now widely believed, even to the extent on providing grist for the late night TV comedian’s mill. A nation that should be expressing its gratitude to Hoover’s memory for his long and dedicated service to his country  instead treats him as an object of slander and derision.

These and the other liberal lies sicken me, and they should sicken all decent Americans. But that won’t stop the left from spreading them far and wide. That’s their sleazy stock in trade

1 thought on “Myths: Their sleazy stock in trade the left’s lies that never die”

  1. Nobody’s going to read this, but it makes my blood boil when people argue that the blacklist specifically targeted Jews(I’m Jewish) . The were so many Jews who were not blacklisted, and so many Gentiles who were(Anne Revere, anybody?)that it’s ridiculous to say that Jews were singled out. As a people, we want a better world so we let ourselves get suckered into cults that promise that, and that’s why you see Jews on the blacklist. The existence of front groups was a major factor, and it’s ignored by historians.

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