“This is terrible! I was raised to hate communists. I remember in the early ‘50s when McCarthy came to St. Olaf to speak in the town square. I was never so moved by a public speaker. Although some people thought he was a puppet for the right wing. No, wait...that was Charlie McCarthy.”
— Rose Nylund, The Golden Girls (episode: “Sisters and Other Strangers”)
In this particular episode, Stan’s cousin Magda (played by Marian Mercer) had come to visit Miami from Czechoslovakia, which in the year this episode originally aired had recently changed from a Communist state to a democratic one (although it would peacefully separate into the Czech Republic 🇨🇿 and Slovakia 🇸🇰 three years later). Her constant raving about the joys of communism drive Dorothy and Sophia nuts, and eventually Rose is affected, too, resulting in the above quote. But she comically mixes up some anticommunist rhetoric with some comedy gold to give us today’s featured joke. There is also a plot line where Blanche’s sister Charmaine reveals she’s published a novel...and Blanche thinks her sister based the main character off of her!
So...what’s the story behind the joke? The setup has us thinking that Rose is at first talking about Joseph McCarthy. Joseph McCarthy was best known as a politician, specifically a United States Senator representing Wisconsin. Although he was a Democrat for most of his life, he was elected to the Senate as a Republican in 1946 and began his tenure in 1947. The first three years of his Senate career were unremarkable. In February 1950, however, he shot into the national political spotlight when during a speech he gave in West Virginia, he claimed to have a list of either 205 or 57 (the exact number is disputed and no audio from the speech survives) individuals working for the State Department who were members of the United States Communist Party and referred to them as “Enemies Within”. But he had no such list. But he had attained enough political clout to order investigations into potential Communists in the United States, alleging that there were communists who had infiltrated not just the U.S. Government, but also American universities as well as the film industry. McCarthy is often lumped together with the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which began focusing its investigations on communists (when it had previously also investigated people connected to the Nazis during World War II) the same year McCarthy joined the Senate, but he never served on that committee (being that it was a House committee and McCarthy was a Senator). He also never served on the Subversive Activities Control Board (SACB), but the board was inspired by McCarthy’s fervent calls to investigate any and every person possibly associated with the Communists. These investigations led to many people, especially those in the entertainment industry, to be blacklisted for alleged connections to the Communist Party and ended up ruining a lot of reputations. Journalist Edward R. Murrow became a prominent critic of McCarthyism and devoted episodes of his series See It Now to the hearings. At the end of one episode which profiled McCarthy and the impacts of McCarthyism, Murrow said the following, which is attributed to helping to turn public opinion against McCarthy:
“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men.”
The negative receptions came to a head when McCarthy started accusing members of the United States Army of being communists, which led to a series of Senate hearings on the matter. During one of these hearings, Joseph Welch, who was serving as Army Counsel during the hearings was told by McCarthy to look into Fred Fisher, a lawyer in Welch’s own firm, who had been a member of the National Lawyers Guild, a group that Attorney General Herbert Brownell, Jr. had accused of being the “legal bulwark of the Communist Party”. Welch had confirmed that Fisher was indeed a member of the NLG and had sent him back to his firm in Boston and replaced him with another lawyer. McCarthy continued his attacks on Fisher, and at this point, Welch stopped McCarthy cold and said the following, which ended up summing up the attitude of McCarthyism:
“Senator, may we not drop this? We know he belonged to the Lawyer's Guild ... 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?”
After a last parting shot at McCarthy, Welch excluded himself from the remainder of the hearings. Later that year, on December 22, 1954, the Senate voted 67-22 to censure (formally reprimand) him, which while he was not expelled from the Senate, essentially stripped him of his committee assignments and eradicated his influence in the Senate. He remained in office until his death from hepatitis (believed to be exasperated by his alcoholism) on May 2, 1957. He was succeeded by Democrat William Proxmire, who would go on to become the longest-serving U.S. Senator from Wisconsin (he was in the Senate for about 32 years). McCarthy’s seat is currently held by Democrat Tammy Baldwin, who is notable for being the first openly LGBT Senator (Baldwin is openly lesbian), as well as the first woman to represent Wisconsin in Congress.
Now, as for Charlie McCarthy, he was a puppet character portrayed by actor and ventriloquist Edgar Bergen, who was also the father of actress Candice Bergen (best known for playing the title character of Murphy Brown). Charlie McCarthy was portrayed as a young dandy, wearing a top hat, tails, and a monocle. The height of the character’s popularity was in the 1950s, but Bergen performed with the character all the way up until a few weeks before Bergen’s September 1978 death.
(Now do you get the whole “puppet for the right wing” punchline in the joke?)
A big thank you goes out to @peanutbutterqueen who gave me the heads-up on this particular joke!
This was “Snowlessknitter Explains the Golden Girls Joke” and thank you for coming to my TED Talk! 😂
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2019 Producers Guild Awards Nominations
MOTION PICTURES NOMINATIONS
Outstanding Producer for Theatrical Motion Pictures (The Darryl F. Zanuck Award)
“Black Panther”, Kevin Feige
“BlacKkKlansman”, Sean McKittrick, Jason Blum, Raymond Mansfield, Jordan Peele, Spike Lee
“Bohemian Rhapsody”, Graham King
“Crazy Rich Asians”, Nina Jacobson & Brad Simspon, John Penotti
“The Favourite”, Ceci Dempsey, Ed Guiney, Lee Magiday, Yorgos Lanthimos
“Green Book”, Jim Burke, Charles B. Wessler, Brian Currie, Peter Farrelly, Nick Vallelonga
“A Quiet Place”, Michael Bay, Andrew Form, Brad Fuller
“Roma”, Gabriela Rodríguez, Alfonso Cuarón
“A Star Is Born”, Bill Gerber, Bradley Cooper, Lynette Howell Taylor
“Vice”, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Kevin Messick, Adam McKay
Outstanding Producer for Animated Theatrical Motion Pictures
“Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch”, Chris Meledandri, Janet Healy
“Incredibles 2″, John Walker, Nicole Grindle
“Isle of Dogs”
“Ralph Breaks the Internet”, Clark Spencer
“Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”, Avi Arad, Phil Lord & Christopher Miller, Amy Pascal, Christina Steinberg
Outstanding Producer of Documentary Motion Pictures
“The Dawn Wall”, Josh Lowell, Peter Mortimer, Philipp Manderla
“Free Solo”, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin, Evan Hayes, Shannon Dill
“Hal”, Christine Beebe, Jonathan Lynch, Brian Morrow
“Into the Okavango”, Neil Gelinas
“RBG”, Betsy West, Julie Cohen
“Three Identical Strangers”, Becky Read, Grace Hughes-Hallett
“Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”, Morgan Neville, Nicholas Ma, Caryn Capotosto
Outstanding Producer of Streamed or Televised Motion Pictures
“Fahrenheit 451”, Sarah Green, Ramin Bahrani, Michael B. Jordan, Alan Gasmer, Peter Jeysen, David Coatsworth
“King Lear”
“My Dinner with Hervé”
“Paterno”, Barry Levinson, Jason Sosnoff, Tom Fontana, Edward R. Pressman, Rick Nicita, Lindsay Sloane, Amy Herman
“Sense8: Together Until the End”
TELEVISION NOMINATIONS
Outstanding Producer of Episodic Television - Drama (The Norman Felton Award)
“The Americans” (Season 6), Joe Weisberg, Joel Fields, Chris Long, Graham Yost, Justin Falvey, Darryl Frank, Stephen Schiff, Mary Rae Thewlis, Tracey Scott Wilson, Peter Ackerman, Joshua Brand
“Better Call Saul” (Season 4), Peter Gould, Vince Gilligan, Mark Johnson, Melissa Bernstein, Thomas Schnauz, Gennifer Hutchison, Nina Jack, Diane Mercer, Gordon Smith, Alison Tatlock, Ann Cherkis, Bob Odenkirk, Robin Sweet
“The Handmaid’s Tale” (Season 2), Bruce Miller, Warren Littlefield, Elisabeth Moss, Daniel Wilson, Fran Sears, Mike Barker, Sheila Hockin, Eric Tuchman, Kira Snyder, Yahlin Chang, Frank Siracusa, John Weber, Joseph Boccia, Dorothy Fortenberry, Margaret Atwood, Ron Milbauer
“Ozark” (Season 2), Jason Bateman, Chris Mundy, Bill Dubuque, Mark Williams, David Manson, Alyson Feltes, Ryan Farley, Patrick Markey, Matthew Spiegel, Erin Mitchell
“This Is Us” (Season 3), Dan Fogelman, Isaac Aptaker, Elizabeth Berger, John Requa, Glenn Ficarra, Ken Olin, Charles Gogolak, Jess Rosenthal, Steve Beers, KJ Steinberg, Kevin Falls, Julia Brownell, Vera Herbert, Bekah Brunstetter, Shukree Hassan Tilghman, Cathy Mickel Gibson, Nick Pavonetti
Outstanding Producer of Episodic Television - Comedy (The Danny Thomas Award)
“Atlanta” (Season 2)
“Barry” (Season 1), Alec Berg, Bill Hader, Aida Rodgers, Emily Heller, Liz Sarnoff
“GLOW” (Season 2), Jenji Kohan, Liz Flahive, Carly Mensch, Tara Herrmann, Mark A. Burley, Nick Jones, Kim Rosenstock, Sascha Rothchild, Leanne Moore
“The Good Place” (Season 3), Michael Schur, David Miner, Morgan Sackett, Drew Goddard, Josh Siegal, Dylan Morgan, Joe Mande, Megan Amram, David Hyman, Jen Statsky
“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” (Season 2), Amy Sherman‐Palladino, Daniel Palladino, Dhana Rivera Gilbert, Sheila Lawrence
Outstanding Producer of Limited Series Television (The David L. Wolper Award)
“The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” (Season 2), Ryan Murphy, Nina Jacobson, Brad Simpson, Alexis Martin Woodall, Tom Rob Smith, Daniel Minahan, Brad Falchuk, Scott Alexander, Larry Karaszewski, Chip Vucelich, Maggie Cohn, Eric Kovtun, Lou Eyrich, Eryn Krueger Mekash
“Escape at Dannemora”, Ben Stiller, Nicholas Weinstock, Michael De Luca, Bryan Zuriff, Brett Johnson, Michael Tolkin, Bill Carraro, Adam Brightman, Lisa M. Rowe
“Maniac”, Patrick Somerville, Cary Joji Fukunaga, Michael Sugar, Doug Wald, Jonah Hill, Emma Stone, Pal Kristiansen, Anne Kolbjørnsen, Espen Huseby, Carol Cuddy, Mauricio Katz, Caroline Williams, Ashley Zalta, Jessica Levin, Jon Mallard
“The Romanoffs”
“Sharp Objects”
Outstanding Producer of Non-Fiction Television
“30 for 30” (Season 9), Connor Schell, John Dahl, Libby Geist, Erin Leyden, Adam Neuhaus, Jenna Anthony, Gentry Kirby, Marquis Daisy, Deirdre Fenton
“Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown” (Season 11, Season 12), Anthony Bourdain, Christopher Collins, Lydia Tenaglia, Sandra Zweig
“Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath” (Season 3)
“Queer Eye” (Season 1, Season 2), David Collins, Michael Williams, Rob Eric, Jennifer Lane, Jordana Hochman, Mark Bracero, Rachelle Mendez
“Wild Wild Country” (Season 1), Mark Duplass, Jay Duplass, Josh Braun, Dan Braun, Juliana Lembi
Outstanding Producer of Live Entertainment & Talk Television
“The Daily Show with Trevor Noah” (Season 24), Trevor Noah, Steve Bodow, Jennifer Flanz, Jill Katz, Justin Melkmann, David Kibuuka, Zhubin Parang, Max Browning, Eric Davies, Pamela DePace, Ramin Hedayati, Elise Terrell, Dave Blog, Adam Chodikoff, Jimmy Donn, Jeff Gussow, Kira Klang Hopf, Allison MacDonald, Ryan Middleton
“Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” (Season 5)
“The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” (Season 4), Stephen Colbert, Chris Licht, Tom Purcell, Jon Stewart, Barry Julien, Denise Rehrig, Tanya Michnevich Bracco, Paul Dinello, Matt Lappin, Opus Moreschi, Emily Gertler, Aaron Cohen, Michael Brumm, Paige Kendig, Jake Plunkett
“Real Time with Bill Maher” (Season 16), Bill Maher, Scott Carter, Sheila Griffiths, Marc Gurvitz, Billy Martin, Dean E. Johnsen, Chris Kelly, Matt Wood
“Saturday Night Live” (Season 44)
More.
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