Hypocrisy watch

“McCarthyism”—liberalism’s favorite 11-letter swear word, except when liberals offer their own innuendos and create their own blacklists.

Today’s New York Times appreciatively quoted the complaint of Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) about Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas): “In this country we had a terrible experience with innuendo and inference when Joe McCarthy hung out in the United States Senate, and I just think we have to be more careful.”

The Times also promoted the worries of Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who implied Cruz is playing nasty in the debate over secretary of defense nominee Chuck Hagel. But the newspaper of record ignored this past week’s real McCarthyite incident, the attempt to blacklist novelist Orson Scott Card, author of Ender’s Game and many other popular books.

The blogosphere has steamed with the news that DC Comics hired Card to co-author the first two installments in a new series, Adventures of Superman. The problem is that Card, a Mormon, opposes same-sex “marriage” and has had the audacity to say so. Therefore, All Out and other pro-homosexuality groups are demanding that DC fire him.

I don’t know whether Cruz is right concerning Hagel, but it certainly seems important to have a secretary of defense who understands what’s important to defend and is not compromised by his past, so the Times should not be irate about the questions Cruz is raising. It might not be quite as crucial to make sure that no politically incorrect author can write a comic book.

But if some on the left think it is, they should revise their anti-blacklist position and say clearly which blacklists they think are warranted and which are not. They might also wonder if, when complaining about what they see as an innuendo, it’s right to offer their own innuendo: “McCarthyism.”