In my first post, I also “explained” that Brinkley was a born reporter, more happy to observe than to be observed. Well, perhaps I should have read David Brinkley A Memoir, in which Dave does tell us a little about himself, including the fact that he hated his mother, who “loved babies, small dogs, and her garden and absolutely nothing else.” She oppressed Brinkley’s father, “the kindest man I ever knew,” who died when Brinkley was eight. On the night Brinkley’s father died, his mother went to the old man’s liquor cabinet, took out the bottles and emptied them down the sink. No more drinking in this house!
Brinkley’s Beat is largely but not entirely “Brinkley’s leftovers,” although he does tell some stories twice. But he does improve on his personal relationship with the man he detested most in his years in Washington, Joe McCarthy. Brinkley’s sister worked as McCarthy’s secretary and was devoted to him, which Brinkley mentions in his memoirs but expands upon in the later book: “Through her accounts of him, I learned a little about the other side of McCarthy—sappy, sentimental, warmhearted, and, most of all, perhaps, drunk. That was a good description of several of my sister’s husbands … she liked him most of all because he was nice to her, which her husbands usually weren’t.” Bobby Kennedy, who was surely McCarthy’s hardest working and most sober staffer, later told Brinkley that his sister perjured herself to protect McCarthy, something that, at a distance at least, Brinkley seems to be proud of, and it’s hard to blame him. Poor sis! At least she found a man worth being loyal to—the biggest prick in the United States!
Brinkley’s introduction to the fact that life in the nation’s capital is not always pretty came early, covering FDR’s press conferences in 1943. Brinkley saw that Roosevelt was dying, and lying to himself and the country about it. Brinkley did not care at all for Roosevelt’s aristocratic mien, and his obvious air of condescension towards the common fellows who crowded around his desk. Most of all, he disliked FDR’s endless carping about newspaper publishers and, especially, newspaper columnists.
But it was the McCarthy period that really horrified Brinkley. “Everyone” knew that McCarthy simply made up his endless charges of treason—McCarthy himself seemed to regard it all as a game and couldn’t understand why other people didn’t seem to be having as much fun as he was. Yet no one dared to say so. It shocked Brinkley that important men were quite willing to be complete cowards and to stand by and watch as other men’s careers and lives were destroyed. *
Brinkley has a skeleton of sorts in his closet that he passes over quickly. He tells us that he enlisted in the army in 1940, whether out of southern bravado or other motive he doesn’t say. After about a year, he “explains” that “the Army told me I had a kidney disorder, which I did not have.” Shortly thereafter, he was given a medical discharge.†
How does that work? Did Brinkley’s first sergeant come up to him and say “Hey, Brinkley, you got a kidney disorder. You’re out of here”? One can wonder if Brinkley didn’t decide to convince the army that he had a kidney disorder, that he was meant for better things than trench foot, lice on his testicles, and sucking chest wounds. I guess he was right.
*Brinkley treats the McCarthy era entirely in terms of McCarthy’s personal corruption. He doesn’t note that the McCarthy era coincides almost exactly with the Korean War. Americans hated communists, but didn’t want to fight them in Korea. It was so much easier to fight them here! He also doesn’t note that too many New Dealers, starting with Roosevelt himself, had a sentimental attachment to communists. Yeah, they’re wacky, but at least they care! Their hatred for middle-class materialism was so intense that they couldn’t see the real motivation for revolution—to free oneself, not only from middle-class materialism, but from middle-class morality as well, to be free to lie and kill, and to have one’s revenge on the world.
†Brinkley includes a photo of his old unit with the caption “every man in this picture except me was killed.” Brinkley’s unit, composed of North Carolinians from the Wilmington area, was the unwilling recipient of a load of bombs from U.S. heavy bombers who couldn’t find the German lines during the Battle of the Bulge. U.S. pilots were used to shooting everything that moved and U.S. ground troops quickly developed the habit of shooting at everything that flew.
