This journalist was the real hero behind Joe McCarthy's takedown

Drew Pearson rebuked Sen. Joseph McCarthy early and often. History gives him little credit for it.

The mythology of Sen. Joseph McCarthy — in fresh focus as the Broadway version of George Clooney’s “Good Night, and Good Luck” smashes box-office records — gets it right that a legendary American journalist played a vital role in toppling the red-baiting Republican in the 1950s. But it casts the wrong journalist.

It wasn’t, as most accounts suggest, crusading radio and TV personality Edward R. Murrow, although Murrow did broadcast two bare-knuckle takedowns of McCarthy. Rather, it was radio and newspaper commentator Drew Pearson, who went after “Low Blow Joe” six years before Murrow, stayed on the story longer and uniquely ignited the senator’s wrath.

As early as 1947, Pearson was banishing the then-unknown freshman lawmaker to a class of what he called Senate dunce caps, with a grade of “E.” McCarthy “came to the Senate with more publicity build-up than any colleague,” Pearson wrote, “but fizzled faster.” And what Pearson wrote mattered, with his eight weekly “Washington Merry-Go-Round” columns printed coast-to-coast in newspapers with circulations totaling nearly 40 million. His “Drew Pearson Comments” program attracted another 20 million listeners every Sunday night in radio’s heyday. Pearson had household heft that no other newshound could boast. From the late 1940s through the mid-1950s, his coverage routinely fixated on the Wisconsin senator.

McCarthy’s anti-communist crusade prompted Pearson to write 58 scalding columns in a months-long spree. “This writer, who has covered the State Department for about twenty years, has been considered the career boys’ severest critic. However, knowing something about State Department personnel, it is my opinion that Senator McCarthy is way off base,” a February 1950 column said. “The alleged Communists which he claims are sheltered in the State Department just aren’t.” He then rebuked McCarthy’s “witch hunt,” reporting that “Republicans consider this a calamity.” Pearson was unrelenting, revisiting McCarthy’s pre-Senate tax troubles, short-order divorces and near-disbarment.

https://wapo.st/3T5c6Zy

I used to read Drew Pearson's (and his collaborator Jack Anderson's) columns daily back in the day. There are some WaPo columnists today that excoriate Trump regularly, but I think they don't have the same influence as late night comedians -- Kimmel and Colbert certainly don't hide their disdain for this administration.

Lawrence O'Donnell may be the closest example we have of someone in the mould of Drew Pearson.