The Investigator

The Investigator (1954) was a radio play written by Reuben Ship and first broadcast by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) on May 30 of that year. The play lampooned the actions of the US House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) and Senator Joseph McCarthy.

The Investigator concerns a United States Senator, who is never explicitly identified as Joseph McCarthy, but who shares McCarthy’s nasally whine and who uses such McCarthy-esque sayings as "Your uncooperative attitude can only cast the gravest doubts on your own loyalty." This senator dies in an airplane crash and finds himself at the gates of Heaven, where a tribunal must decide whether he is worthy of heaven or hell. There, he meets Cotton Mather of the Salem Witch Trials, Tomas de Torquemada of the Spanish Inquisition, and other famous inquisitors from history, who, despite their reputations as shrewd and conniving characters, call themselves "mere untutored novices" compared to the Senator. As it turns out, they’ve been looking for someone to commandeer the tribunal and bring "the latest inquisitorial techniques" to it, and they see that the Senator is the perfect man for the job.

The Senator easily takes control of the committee, and soon realizes that a great many individuals in heaven could potentially be subversives from "down there." He soon calls numerous historical figures to the stand, including Thomas Jefferson, Socrates, John Milton, and Martin Luther. When they testify, they all give oddly relevant quotations of theirs, such as when Voltaire states that "liberty of thought is the life of the soul." Completely disregarding their statements regarding freedom and rights, the Senator sends them all to Hell, claiming that "security is the paramount issue." When trying to call Karl Marx to the stand, the Senator accidentally calls other individuals named "Karl Marx" instead of the Karl Marx; as a result, the Senator orders that all those in Heaven with the name Karl Marx be banished to Hell. The Senator's actions soon create a panic of suspicion in Heaven where everyone is a potential subversive: Beethoven, Bach, and Wagner agree to drop Chopin from their quartet because of suspicion derived from his "Revolutionary Étude." Chopin's replacement, a "non-controversial" cipher named Otto Schmenk, eventually replaces other famous "subversives" in literary and musical pursuits, eventually joining them in banishment as well.

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