Worst American Birthdays

(This is going to be somewhat of a Loomisian gesture, but as part of my weird obsession with the worst that history has to offer, I’m going to start an occasional series recognizing the worst Americans, living and dead, on their dates of birth.)

On 20 February 1927, humanity was punished with the birth of Roy Cohn — a helpless, squealing neonate who would grow up to be a lawyer and one of the most loathsome public figures of the second half of the 20th century. As a 24-year-old prosecutor, Cohn secured the convictions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, alleged Soviet spies who would later die for their crimes in the electric chair. Cohn was so proud of the Rosenberg case that he bragged throughout his life that because of his friendship with Irving Kaufman, he had been able to persuade the judge to pass a sentence of death. Springing from one disgusting spectacle to another, Cohn next served as chief counsel in the Senate “internal security” hearings led by Joesph McCarthy. There, Cohn hounded accused communists and took special delight in exposing the closeted lives of young gay men whose names were brought before the committee. When one of the committee’s playthings comitted suicide, Cohn reportedly celebrated with a bottle of champagne. He always maintained that Tailgunner Joe was the “greatest man I ever worked for.”

Quite justifiably, Cohn hated himself, though never for the right reasons. He might have found fault with his ruthless, unethical career — regretting, for example, his long record of witness tampering. He might have had second thoughts about ruining the career of Sen. Thomas Eagleton, who briefly stood as the Democratic Vice Presidential nominee in 1972 until Cohn exposed his medical history of depression, for which Eagleton had once received electroshock therapy. He might have been haunted by the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg, as Tony Kushner imagined he might be in Angels in America. Instead, Roy Cohn secretly loathed his homosexuality and took great (though unsuccessful) pains to disguise his gay identity from the rest of the world. A ferocious opponent of equal rights, he once argued that only heterosexuals should be permitted to teach in public schools.

Roy Cohn died of AIDS in 1986 — weeks after being disbarred but years after he should have been — insisting to the bitter end that he was suffering from mere liver cancer. Pathetic to the last, Cohn went to his grave in a necktie emblazoned with the name of Ronald Reagan, whom he adored. Although Ronald and Nancy Reagan sent private letters to Cohn throughout his two year battle with the disease, they were conspicuously absent from his funeral.