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.
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.
Sure enough, he caught the senator’s attention. McCarthy’s bedside arsenal included a baseball bat and a sledgehammer, both marked with “Drew Pearson.” His violent fantasy was realized in December 1950, when the adversaries met at a Sulgrave Club dinner dance in Washington. The senator “pinned my hands down, swung me around, and proceeded to kick me in the groin with his knee,” the columnist recalled. Days later, McCarthy went after Pearson again with a verbal assault delivered on the Senate floor. While “it appears that Pearson never actually signed up as a member of the Communist Party and never paid dues … that has not in any way affected his value to the party,” the senator said. McCarthy then urged the public to boycott Pearson’s radio sponsor, the Adam Hats Corp., which quickly pulled its funding. While Pearson found other underwriters, none were as long-term or generous as the hatmaker. The columnist tried to strike back in kind, filing a $5.1 million suit alleging that he’d suffered a huge financial blow and endured major pain and suffering from the Sulgrave Club attack, and that McCarthy and his cronies were to blame. There was no chance to resolve those claims in court because Pearson withdrew his suit three years later without explanation.
