Christopher M. Elias

For the most part, once you get past a somewhat draggy opening section dealing with the rise of the concept of "national security masculinity," Elias does deliver on the promise of the title and examines how Hoover, McCarthy & Cohn were skilled media manipulators who used the tabloid media to pursue their personal agendas. The big innovator was undoubtedly Hoover, as the "G-Man," the federal law enforcement agent as paladin, was largely his creation. It should be noted that this book is covering Hoover at his zenith of influence and public popularity, before the damage wrought by the social conflicts of the 1960s in the United States eroded his image.

As compared to Hoover, McCarthy & Cohn were certainly following in the FBI leader's footsteps. But they picked up Hoover's tools, and sought Hoover's blessing, as they carved their own way through the American political scene. Having read this book, McCarthy comes off as a genuine self-made man, and one can understand how he basically out-worked the competition on the way to a place in the U.S. Senate, thus rising to his own level of incompetence. McCarthy was a natural-born anti-communist combatant, but the panic after the Soviet detonation of their first atomic device threw the man a life-line, at least until McCarthy could not transcend his own self-destructive tendencies. One can almost feel a certain amount of pity for the man.

This is compared to Roy Cohn, who was the epitome of the self-infatuated social climber, with the brassy ego to match, and whose self-indulgence contributed to McCarthy's downfall. Cohn would be important in any study of the politics of McCarthyism, if only for having rail-roaded Julius & Ethel Rosenberg to a death sentence for their involvement in atomic espionage, but Cohn remained a "player" after his political zenith, and became something of a mentor to a certain Donald J. Trump, which is the point this book ends on.

Again, as mentioned, a big part of this study is the rise of tabloid journalism in the United States, and its symbiotic relationship with the performance of masculinity. Considering the current state of American journalism, and the ongoing American fight over the public performance of gender and sexuality, this is well worth pushing through the rather dry opening segment.… (más)