American politician Joseph McCarthy (1908 – 1957), Republican senator from Wisconsin, testifies against the U.S. Army during the Army-McCarthy hearings, Washington, D.C., June 9, 1954. McCarthy stands before a map which charts Communist activity in the United States. (Photo by Getty Images)
As we introduced ourselves on a wobbly scaffold twenty feet above a line of church pews, my new painting partner Tim asked what I thought of Joe McCarthy.
The Joe McCarthy of McCarthyism – the senator famous for accusing people of Communist, anti-American activity?
Right, he replied – “Tailgunner Joe,” the hero of my coworker’s Wisconsin boyhood. Remember, he added, everyone McCarthy went after either resigned or got arrested.
As we stood eye to eye with the angels painted on the St. Francis Catholic Church ceiling, I considered how safe I felt knowing this guy would be handing me heavy buckets of paint as we balanced on wooden planks. I also considered our job was to refresh the frescos beloved by generations of parishioners, and they expected our full attention to detail. I decided we could share paint brushes if not politics that fall in 1987.
Tim and I got along well in the St. Francis rafters. Despite our mutual conclusion that the other’s attitudes might lead to the dis-uniting of our nation, Tim knew lots of tricks for fast and efficient painting and was happy to share. He liked my work ethic and willingness to learn. Together we tore down and re-raised our scaffolds up and down the church aisles, trusting each other to make the corners square and the bolts tight.
Because our larger crew couldn’t agree on country or rock ‘n roll, we tuned our radio to KUFM – the local public radio station. It had an eclectic bunch of DJs whose programming varied so widely every few hours that everyone heard something they liked at least once a day. That is, until Sept. 15, when Judge Robert Bork began his Senate hearing for appointment as Supreme Court associate justice.
KUFM was the National Public Radio affiliate, and NPR opted to go live gavel-to-gavel on the Bork hearing. Then-Sen. Joe Biden led the Judiciary Committee, and was making his first run for the presidency. Bork, a federal appeals court judge, had also helped develop much of the “originalist” legal theory now favored by the Supreme Court’s conservative majority. The Judiciary Committee included such other solons as Strom Thurmond, Ted Kennedy and Alan Simpson, interrogated during every break by NPR’s Nina Totenberg and Cokie Roberts.
We got a master class in American civics for the next week. Bork was the last Supreme Court nominee to give candid, detailed insights to his judicial philosophy. The Senate voted against his confirmation 58-42. Nomination hearings have never been as educational, or interesting since.
I gave up church painting for a career in journalism. But I took many lessons from that time on the scaffolds.
The biggest was there’s no way to beat your co-worker in a team painting job. Nobody needed to be Fidel Castro, spending all his career in fighting fatigues to make sure his opponents were considered “counter-revolutionaries” – a term as oxymoronic as “jumbo shrimp” when the revolution becomes the institution.
Tim was better at mixing and cleaning paints and brushes. I was better at fine-detail stencil tasks. The parishioners got their church back, on time and refreshed. We never reached agreement on judicial activism, but we both came away with a much better understanding of it thanks to Biden and Bork.
High above the pews, it would have been easy to intimidate or threaten each other to shut down debate. But that wouldn’t have changed anyone’s opinion about Joe McCarthy, or how they voted. It simply would have resulted in a sloppy paint job, and neither of us would get hired back.