Still uniquely nasty

Back in June, I shared the Yahoo! documentary, “Uniquely Nasty: The U.S. Government's War on Gays”. I found it sobering, not the least because of how utterly vile, and more disgusting than disgusting, certain Republican politicians were in the 1950s. Well, there’s more.

US Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), the first lesbian ever elected to the US House of Representatives, then the first openly LGBT person elected to the US Senate, has formally asked the FBI to investigate the role certain Republican US Senators played in causing the suicide of US Senator Lester Hunt (D-WY) on June 19, 1954 (his story was Chapter 2 in the documentary). Hunt was being blackmailed by two US Senators, possibly at the direction of a guy who was among the most evil person to ever serve in the US Senate, Joe McCarthy (who was such a revolting piece of excrement that I refuse to put the title “US Senator” in front of his name—ever—because doing so would demean and diminish the title for even the worst US Senators). At the very least, the evidence suggests that McCarthy knew what was going on, but common sense suggests he directed and/or encouraged the extortion.

Michael Isikoff, who reported the documentary, recently summed up the evidence that’s been piling up to prove the involvement of the two Republican Senators, and the growing calls for an official investigation, like Senator Baldwin's.

Senator Baldwin is the junior US Senator from Wisconsin, which, of course, is the seat that McCarthy polluted until his chronic alcoholism killed him in 1957. That adds a level of delicious irony to the story.

Of course, nothing can ever fix the damage done, since all the criminal US Senators are now dead. But maybe the record can at least be made clear for all to see, so we’ll all know how some politicians will stop at nothing to destroy political opponents and get what they want. That behaviour is still there, of course, but maybe—maybe—if we know and understand how truly evil politicians can be, we might be a bit more careful in selecting them.

That would a good thing that could come out of this sorry saga. But, I’m certainly not holding my breath.