The anniversary of two notorious warnings about threats to the traditional American way of life happen to fall on February 9th.
On February 9, 1950, U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin) gave a rousing speech to the Ohio Country Women’s Republican Club of Wheeling, West Virginia.
In it, McCarthy famously claimed:
“I have here in my hand a list of 205 that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist party, and who nevertheless are still working and shaping the policy in the State Department.”
This quote was essentially the public launch of the anti-Communist witch hunt that would soon be called “McCarthyism.”
That term was coined in a March 29, 1950 political cartoon by the great political cartoonist Herbert Block, who signed his cartoons as “HERBLOCK.”
Exactly forty-nine years after Joe McCarthy made his announcement about the Communist threat, another warning about a different threat to American purity made national news.
In an Associated Press report published on February 9, 1999, AP journalist David Reed revealed that televangelist Rev. Jerry Falwell had claimed that the children’s TV show Teletubbies was trying to turn kids gay.
Reed’s article explained:
The Rev. Jerry Falwell is trying to out Tinky Winky, suggesting that the purple, purse-toting character on television’s popular “Teletubbies” children’s show is gay.The February edition of the National Liberty Journal, edited and published by Falwell, contains an article warning parents that the rotund Teletubby with the triangular antenna may be a gay role model.
To support its claim, the publication says Tinky Winky has the voice of a boy but carries a purse. “He is purple – the gay-pride color; and his antenna is shaped like a triangle – the gay-pride symbol.”
Falwell contends the “subtle depictions”' are intentional and issued a statement Tuesday that said, “As a Christian I feel that role modeling the gay lifestyle is damaging to the moral lives of children.”
Of course, the fact that these famous/infamous warnings by McCarthy and Falwell both happen to be associated with the date February 9th is just a coincidence — OR IS IT!?!













