Kirchick, Welles, Chambers & Cohn

(Sounds like a law firm, doesn't it?! :-)

Ten of us gathered online last Wednesday to kick off our ongoing discussion of James Kirchick's Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. To follow up on our consideration of his first two sections, on FDR and Truman, I'd like to share some additional reading:

First of all, David Mendler was kind enough to forward this link to an October 2022 interview with the author, conducted at the D.C. Library, about Secret City.

Second, during the chat Mike Mazza shared a fascinating article about a key State Department official during the Roosevelt administration: "The Trouble with Sumner Welles: Sexuality, Race and the Limits of Mythmaking in Queer History" (July 2022 Journal of American Studies).

Roy Cohn doesn't come up until the Eisenhower era (which we'll get to in December), but let me go ahead and share this April 2018 New York Magazine commentary about the infamous fixer by Frank Rich: "The Original Roy Cohn."

Finally: Those of you who took part in our Zoom discussion may recall my expressing discomfort with the way the book deals with Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss in the chapter devoted to their clash. (Short version: I believe Kirchick is much harder on the latter than the former, because it fits his political bias.) And that reminds me that back in January, I indulged my blogmaster prerogative to take him to task for something else he's written: 

"Later this year, we'll discuss James Kirchick's Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. On Dec. 26, Kirchick published an op-ed in the Washington Post that was ostensibly about an eight-second video showing two men (one a U.S. Senate staffer who was immediately fired) having anal sex in a Hart Building hearing room. But that tawdry story was just a convenient hook to market his book. That's his right, of course, but I found his article's thesis less than persuasive: 

"Aside from a handful of far-right outlets, Washington's chattering class has shrugged its shoulders at the scandal's gay aspect, and one gathers that the city would be just as titillated if the copulating couple were straight. Fortunately, the denizens of Gay Washington no longer live in secret, and our exhibitionist former Senate staffer is being judged not from whom he loved, but for how he behaved." Seriously?" 

At the risk of doubling down, I feel compelled to say that I find Kirchick's latest op-ed, in the New York Times, even more troubling. Because the topic he addresses, "How Lying Became Disinformation," doesn't have any LGBTQ connection (other than the author being a gay man himself), I'm not going to go into further detail here. But I encourage you to read it for yourselves if you're curious.

That said, I gladly join the consensus of my colleagues that Secret City is an excellent history, and Kirchick deserves the critical acclaim he has been receiving for it. And I'm glad we will be discussing it throughout next year. Join us!