Gossip men : J. Edgar Hoover, Joe McCarthy, Roy Cohn, and the politics of insinuation
Title:
Gossip men : J. Edgar Hoover, Joe McCarthy, Roy Cohn, and the politics of insinuation
Author:
Elias, Christopher M., author.
ISBN:
9780226624822
Personal Author:
Physical Description:
303 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Contents:
Introduction -- The topography of modernity -- The professional bureaucrat in the public eye -- Populist masculinity in the American heartland -- The power broker as a young man -- Scandal as a political art -- Under the Klieg lights -- Epilogue : the long life of surveillance state masculinity.
Abstract:
"The legacies of Joseph McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover, Roy Cohn seem like they might be with us forever. Yet Christopher Elias finds in them startling new connections between gender, sexuality, and national security in 20th-century US politics--a paradigm he christens "security state masculinity." Elias integrates biographies of the trio with a history of gossip magazines and their tactics--such as insinuation, guilt by association, hyperbole, and alarmism, not to mention cynicism, slang, and photographic manipulation--which all three used to consolidate their power. The story of security state masculinity reached its climax in the Army-McCarthy hearings, which were rife with insinuations and coded threats. Using gossip as a lens, Elias shifts our understanding of the development of American political culture"-- Provided by publisher.
