"Politics in an age of anxiety": Cold war political culture and the crisis in American masculinity, 1949-1960

Journal of American History

Volumn 87, Issue 2, 2000, Pages 515-545

  Cuordileone, K A ^a  

^a JOHN JAY COLLEGE OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0042391613     PISSN: 00218723     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2568762     Document Type: Review

References (151)

1. Daniel Bell, "Interpretations of American Politics," in The Radical Right, ed. Daniel Bell (1955; New York, 1964), 67-70.
2. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Vital Center: Our Purposes and Perils on the Tightrope of American Liberalism (1949; Boston, 1962).
3. For a caustic commentary on Schlesinger's professorial tough talk, see Garry Wills, Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man (New York, 1969), 518-23, esp. 521.
4. For a critique of the symbolist approach of Daniel Bell and others, see Michael Rogin, Ronald Reagan, the Movie and Other Episodes in Political Demonology (Berkeley, 1987), 272-300.
5. Schlesinger, Vital Center, 1-4.
6. On postwar liberalism, see Richard H. Pells, The Liberal Mind in a Conservative Age: American Intellectuals in the 1940s and 1950s (New York, 1985);
7. Alonzo L. Hamby, Beyond the New Deal: Harry S Truman and American Liberalism (New York, 1973);
8. Mary McAullife, Crisis on the Left: Cold War Politics and American Liberals, 1947-1954 (Amherst, 1978);
9. and Steven Gillon, Politics and Vision: The ADA and American Liberalism, 1947-1985 (New York, 1987).
10. Schlesinger, Vital Center, xxiii-xxiv, 144-45, 163.
11. On the semantic confusion of the time, see Wills, Nixon Agonistes, 506-22.
12. Schlesinger, Vital Center, 11-34, esp. 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 21, 24, 26, 28, 30.
13. Schlesinger, Vital Center, Ibid., 35-50, 159-61, esp. 35, 36, 46, 159, 160. Schlesinger's substitution of "radical democrat" for "liberal" speaks to the perceived disreputable connotations of the label "liberal" as well as to Cold War liberals' appropriation of the hard-boiled style of ex-Marxists recruited into the liberal camp in the 1940s and 1950s. On the influence of ex-radicals such as Reinhold Niebuhr on Cold War liberalism,
14. see Christopher Lasch, The New Radicalism in America, 1889-1963: The Intellectual as a Social Type (New York, 1965), 286-349.
15. Schlesinger, Vital Center, 35-50, 159-70, esp. 37, 40, 41, 42, 46, 159, 160, 170.
16. Schlesinger, Vital Center, Ibid., 40, 54, 104.
17. Schlesinger echoes Erich Fromm's argument that underlying the appeal of fascism were psychological strivings for submission and domination akin to sadomasochistic sexual impulses. What Fromm theorized as a psychological predisposition to fascism is here enlisted in the cause of a new liberal machismo. Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom (New York, 1941).
18. Schlesinger, Vital Center, 51-91, esp. 53, 54, 65, 83-85, 88, 126, 151, 245-46.
19. Schlesinger, Vital Center, Ibid., 131-88, esp. 131, 147, 156, 159, 160, 161.
20. For Joseph McCarthy's statements, see Eric F. Goldman, The Crucial Decade - and After: America, 1945-1960 (New York, 1960), 142;
21. Lawrence S. Wittner, Cold War America: From Hiroshima to Watergate (New York, 1974), 95-99;
22. Thomas C. Reeves, The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy: A Biography (New York, 1982), 299;
23. and David Halberstam, The Fifties (New York, 1993), 54.
24. Richard M. Weaver, "The Roots of Liberal Complacency," National Review, June 8, 1957,
25. in Anthology of Conservative Writing in the United States: 1932-1960, ed. A. J. Heinsohn Jr. (Chicago, 1962), 54-58.
26. Louis Bromfield, "The Triumph of the Egghead," Freeman, Dec. 1, 1952, pp. 155-58;
27. E. Merrill Root, "The Quicksands of the Mind," in Anthology of Conservative Writing in the United States, ed. Heinsohn, 283-85.
28. A more extensive treatment of the relationship between sexual anxieties and Cold War political thought and rhetoric will appear in my forthcoming book, K. A. Cuordileone, "Politics in an Age of Anxiety": Manhood and American Political Culture in the Cold War (Routledge).
29. On the sexually laden rhetoric of a Cold War era statesman, see Frank Costigliola, "'Unceasing Pressure for Penetration': Gender, Pathology, and Emotion in George Kennan's Formation of the Cold War," Journal of American History, 83 (March 1997), 1309-39.
30. On the fear of an affluent, soft America in the 1950s, see Barbara Ehrenreich, Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class (New York, 1989), 29-34. The relevance of the national security issue is discussed below.
31. For the 1958 article, see Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Politics of Hope (Cambridge, Mass., 1962), 237-46.
32. For Look's 1958 series, see Look, The Decline of the American Male (New York, 1958).
33. For a biting commentary on the male conformity crisis, see Barbara Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment (New York, 1983), 14-51.
34. For expressions of concern about the state of the male self in the 1940s and 1950s, see William H. Whyte Jr., The Organization Man (New York, 1956);
35. David Riesman with Nathan Glazer and Reuel Denney, The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character (New Haven, 1950);
36. Robert Lindner, Must You Conform? (New York, 1956);
37. Philip Wylie, Generation of Vipers (New York, 1942);
38. Philip Wylie, "The Abdicating Male and How the Gray Flannel Mind Exploits Him through His Women," Playboy, 3 (Nov. 1956), 23-24, 50, 79;
39. and Edward Strecker, Their Mothers' Sons: The Psychiatrist Examines an American Problem (Philadelphia, 1946).
40. Ehrenreich, Hearts of Men, 34.
41. Schlesinger, Politics of Hope, 237-46.
42. Schlesinger, Politics of Hope, Ibid., 241-44.
43. Schlesinger, Vital Center, 1, 53, 58, 171.
44. On American masculinity, see E. Anthony Rotundo, American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era (New York, 1993);
45. Michael Kimmel, Manhood in America: A Cultural History (New York, 1996);
46. Elizabeth Pleck and Joseph Pleck, eds., The American Man (Englewood Cliffs, 1980);
47. Peter Filene, Him/Her/Self: Sex Roles in Modern America (Baltimore, 1975);
48. and Joe L. Dubbert, A Man's Place: Masculinity in Transition (Englewood Cliffs, 1979).
49. See Arnaldo Testi, "The Gender of Reform Politics: Theodore Roosevelt and the Culture of Masculinity" Journal of American History, 81 (March 1995), 1509-33.
50. Robert L. Griswold, Fatherhood in America: A History (New York, 1993), esp. 94-118.
51. On postwar preoccupation with male physical fitness, see Jesse Berrett, "Feeding the Organization Man: Diet and Masculinity in Postwar America," Journal of Social History, 30 (Summer 1997), 805-25.
52. Henry James, The Bostonians (1886; New York, 1984), 327.
53. Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York, 1988).
54. Abram Kardiner, Sex and Morality (Indianapolis, 1954), 233.
55. For revisionist historians' challenges to the assumption that the domestic ideal was pervasive in the postwar United States, see Joanne Meyerowitz, ed., Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945-1960 (Philadelphia 1994);
56. Joanne Meyerowitz, "Beyond the Feminine Mystique: A Reassessment of Postwar Mass Culture, 1946-1958," Journal of American History, 79 (March 1993), 1455-82;
57. Daniel Horowitz, Betty Friedan and the Making of the Feminine Mystique: The American Left, the Cold War, and Modern Feminism (Amherst, 1998);
58. and Eva Moskowitz, "'It's Good to Blow Your Top': Women's Magazines and a Discourse of Discontent, 1945-1965," Journal of Women's History, 8 (Fall 1996), 66-98.
59. On the militarization of the United States, see Michael S. Sherry, In the Shadow of War: The United States since the 1930s (New Haven, 1995).
60. For criticism of excessive mothering, see Strecker, Their Mothers' Sons, 219;
61. and David M. Levy, Maternal Overprotection (New York, 1943).
62. On the nexus between professional psychology and Cold War political culture, see Ellen Herman, The Romance of American Psychology: Political Culture in the Age of Experts (Berkeley, 1995).
63. See James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-74 (New York, 1996);
64. William Chafe, The Unfinished Journey: America since World War II (New York, 1986);
65. and Godfrey Hodgson, America in Our Time (New York, 1976).
66. Schlesinger, Politics of Hope, 238, 244, 252-53.
67. On fears of sexual chaos at various points in United States history, see John D'Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (New York, 1988).
68. On the use of sexually charged rhetoric as a partisan political weapon in the Gilded Age, see Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1962; New York, 1966), 184-90.
69. Alfred Kinsey et al., Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (Philadelphia, 1948), 610-66.
70. For speculations that male homosexuality was on the rise, see Max Lerner, America as a Civilization (New York, 1957), 683;
71. Kardiner, Sex and Morality, 160-64;
72. Wylie, Generation of Vipers, 68;
73. Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (1963; New York, 1984), 274-76;
74. and Nathan Glazer and David Riesman, "Intellectuals and the Discontented Classes," in Radical Right, ed. Bell, 119.
75. John D'Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940-1970 (Chicago, 1983), 23-39;
76. D'Emilio and Freedman, Intimate Matters, 288-91;
77. Allan Berube, Coming Out under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War Two (New York, 1990).
78. For an autobiographical perspective on the period, see Martin Duberman, Cures: A Gay Man's Odyssey (New York, 1991).
79. Lindner, Must You Conform?, 31-76, esp. 43, 64;
80. Rebel without a Cause, dir. Nicholas Ray (Warner Bros., 1955);
81. Tea and Sympathy, dir. Vincente Minnelli (MGM, 1956).
82. The title of the film Rebel without a Cause comes from Robert Lindner, Rebel without a Cause: The Story of a Criminal Psychopath (New York, 1944).
83. Yet the film's content corresponds more with themes in Lindner's later Must You Conform? For a more generous reading of Tea and Sympathy, see George Chauncey's essay in Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies, ed. Mark C. Carnes (New York, 1996), 258-61.
84. Kardiner, Sex and Morality, 160-92, esp. 160, 164, 190;
85. Lionel Ovesey, "The Homosexual Conflict: An Adaptational Analysis," Psychiatry, 17 (Aug. 1954), 243-50, esp. 247;
86. Hendrik M. Ruitenbeek, ed., The Problem of Homosexuality in Modern Society (New York, 1963).
87. For commentary on this discourse, see D'Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities, 140-45.
88. J. Robert Moskin, "Why Do Women Dominate Him?," in Look, Decline of the American Male, 3-24, esp. 12, 22.
89. On the cultural currents from Playboy magazine to humanistic psychology that encouraged a male flight from commitment, see Ehrenreich, Hearts of Men.
90. On postwar sexual anxieties and the fear of homosexuality, see George Chauncey Jr., "The Postwar Sex Crime Panic," in True Stories from the American Past, ed. William Graebner (New York, 1993), 160-78;
91. and Estelle B. Freedman, "'Uncontrolled Desires': The Response to the Sexual Psychopath, 1920-1960," Journal of American History, 74 (June 1987), 83-106.
92. On the purge of the State Department and the partisan political reaction, see D'Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities, 40-53, esp. 41.
93. On the "homosexual menace," see John D'Emilio, Making Trouble: Essays on Gay History, Politics, and the University (New York, 1992), 57-73.
94. For Kenneth Wherry's statements, see Max Lerner, The Unfinished Country: A Book of American Symbols (New York, 1959), 313-16, esp. 313;
95. and Nicholas Von Hoffman, Citizen Cohn: The Life and Times of Roy Cohn (1988; New York, 1992), 130.
96. U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Departments, Employment of Homosexuals and Other Sex Perverts in Government, 81 Cong., 2 sess., Nov. 27, 1950, pp. 3-11, esp. 4.
97. Reeves, Life and Times of Joe McCarthy, 240-57, esp. 240.
98. On Republican reactions, see D'Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities, 41.
99. For the statements by New York Daily News and Billy Graham, see Stephen J. Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War (Baltimore, 1991), 44-45.
100. Most accounts of the Hiss-Chambers case mention the sexuality issue and its relevance to the case. See Allen Weinstein, Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case (New York, 1978), 383-84.
101. For an autobiographical account, see Whittaker Chambers, Witness (New York, 1952).
102. On the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Alger Hiss's stepson, see Curt Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets (New York, 1991), 363.
103. Joseph McCarthy, McCarthyism: The Fight for America (New York, 1952), 14-15, 23-24.
104. On the Sumner Welles episode, see Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover, 307-10.
105. Schlesinger, Vital Center, 166-67;
106. Lee Mortimer and Jack Lait, Washington Confidential (New York, 1951), 9-11, 90-97.
107. Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover, 436;
108. David M. Oshinsky, A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy (New York, 1983), 287-93.
109. On the Los Angeles Minor article and FBI surveillance of the Mattachine Society, see D'Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities, 76, 124.
110. On J. Edgar Hoover and the Mattachine Society, see Anthony Summers, Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover (London, 1993), 84, 93.
111. J. Edgar Hoover, Masters of Deceit (New York, 1958), 102-5.
112. John Kosa, Two Generations of Soviet Man (Chapel Hill, 1962), 155;
113. Schlesinger, Vital Center, 127, 163.
114. Glazer and Riesman, "Intellectuals and the Discontented Classes," 119;
115. Rogin, Ronald Reagan, the Movie, esp. 236-300.
116. Metaphors of gender, sexuality, and disease permeated national security discourse during the Cold War and rigid gender roles and restrictive policies toward sexual "deviants" in government were understood as crucial to tranquillity and national security, according to Geoffrey S. Smith, "National Security and Personal Isolation: Sex, Gender, and Disease in the Cold-War United States," International History Review, 14 (May 1992), 307-37.
117. An analysis of Cold War - era scandal magazines suggests parallels between portrayals of Communists and homosexuals: Barbara Epstein, "Anti-Communism, Homophobia, and the Construction of Masculinity in the Postwar U.S.," Critical Sociology, 20 (no. 3, 1994), 21-44.
118. For the statements by the Indiana Catholic archdiocesean newspaper and Billy Graham, see Whitfield, Culture of the Cold War, 80, 186.
119. Norman Mailer, The Presidential Papers of Norman Mailer (1960; New York, 1964), 40.
120. Bell, "Interpretations of American Politics," 64.
121. Hofstadter observed long ago that the radical right was engaged in a revolt against modernity emanating from America's heartland and fueled by grievances and anxieties associated with modernization and social change. Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, 40-44.
122. For Everett Dirksen's statement, see Whitfield, Culture of the Cold War, 44.
123. For the remarks in the New York Daily News, see Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, 227.
124. For those of Richard M. Nixon and McCarthy, see Wittner, Cold War America, 108;
125. Oshinsky, Conspiracy So Immense, 242;
126. and Marquis Childs, Witness to Power (New York, 1975), 66-69.
127. On Adlai Stevenson's speech, see Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, 224.
128. On the contrast between the two candidates, see Goldman, Crucial Decade - and After, 220-34.
129. On the "ugly whispering campaign" against Adlai Stevenson, see Childs, Witness to Power, 66-69.
130. On Stevenson and the FBI, see Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover, 402-3;
131. and Summers, Official and Confidential, 181-82.
132. Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, 227.
133. Walter Winchell's remark left sponsors uneasy and cost Winchell his first television show, see Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover, 445.
134. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., "The Highbrow in American Politics," Partisan Review, 20 (March-April 1953), 162-65,
135. is reprinted in Schlesinger, Politics of Hope, 219-29, esp. 224, 226.
136. New York Post, Sept. 4, 1951, p. 3.
137. On Drew Pearson, the Las Vegas Sun story, and McCarthy's meeting with the Anti-Defamation League, see Oshinsky, Conspiracy So Immense, 310-11;
138. Richard H. Rovere, Senator Joe McCarthy (New York, 1959), 68-69;
139. and Von Hoffman, Citizen Cohn, 184-86.
140. On Joseph Alsop's column, see Von Hoffman, Citizen Cohn, 225.
141. On Ralph Flanders's speech and the "pixie" dialogue, see Oshinsky, Conspiracy So Immense, 427, 451.
142. Schlesinger, Politics of Hope, 246.
143. For the contrast between the old guard and the new and the crafting of John F. Kennedy's image as "strong, supple," see Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Kennedy or Nixon: Does It Make Any Difference? (New York, 1960), 24.
144. Mailer, Presidential Papers of Norman Mailer, 25-61, 305.
145. David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (1969; New York, 1972), 34.
146. On the Kennedy administration's cultivation of a cool, manly realism and toughness, see Garry Wills, The Kennedy Imprisonment: A Meditation on Power (1981; New York, 1983), esp. 240-49;
147. and Bruce Miroff, Pragmatic Illusions: The Presidential Politics of John F. Kennedy (New York, 1976), esp. 11-22.
148. Schlesinger noted the tendency of key players to strike "virile poses" in the Bay of Pigs decision-making process; see Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (Boston, 1965), 256.
149. On the cult of toughness in the Kennedy-Johnson years, see also Halberstam, Best and the Brightest;
150. and Richard J. Barnet, The Roots of War: The Men and the Institutions behind U.S. Foreign Policy (1971; New York, 1976), esp. 109-11.
151. For a more recent analysis, see Robert D. Dean, "Masculinity as Ideology: John E Kennedy and the Domestic Politics of Foreign Policy," Diplomatic History, 22 (Winter 1998), 29-62.