Editorial / Jimmy in a Mudslide
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
"Editorial / Jimmy in a Mudslide"
...Was he a segregationist or an integrationist...
...Was he to the right or to the left...
...But somehow not Tom Wicker...
...There will be innuendos too dreadful and lascivious for a sinner like myself even to imagine...
...An increate committee of unknown patriots materialized to denounce the liberal, Mr...
...But that of course is just the way the rat pack likes it --somewhat resembling an UnderTHE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1980 5...
...Already he had laid bare his heart in sanctimonious melodrama that ten years later would make him leader of the free world and an inspiration to YMCA directors everywhere...
...Beverly Sills, James Reston, Mike Wallace, William Styron, John Updike, and other lovelies too numerous to mention...
...Ellis Arnall, and to thump for Carter...
...Hoke O'Kelley, a perennial candidate of somewhat derisible reputation...
...acted in mediocre movies and carried a gun...
...Soon Jimmy released the hottest stuff of all: Arnall was "corrupt and immoral...
...Unfortunately for our President, Norton published it just last month...
...Arnall, the aforementioned liberal, was then in the lead...
...Already he had attempted to chloroform liberals, conservatives, and moderates, presenting himself as ideologically ubiquitous...
...My plan of course was to beat the spike by telling all to Messrs...
...Tom Bethell is The American Spectator's Washington editor...
...Carter was but fifth in a field of seven...
...To his rear could be seen only a Mr...
...Buchwald would hardly build a house on Martha's Vineyard if he was going to be here all on his lonesome...
...I predict that Campaign '80 will be far dirtier than Campaign '66 Let it, too, have a happy ending...
...Garland Byrd and a Mr...
...The committee was named "Concerned Friends of Sen...
...Adapted from RET's Monday column in the Washington Post...
...Oh yes, Anthony Lewis...
...Already there had been a mysterious outbreak of those amazing campaign phenomena, known to us nowadays as "dirty tricks...
...In short, too much Ecology and not enough Energy...
...Then, too, he will charge that Reagan is strictly nineteenth century, hence not sophisticated enough to deal with the collapse of Iran, the invasion of Afghanistan, tumult in Central America, Soviet proxies in Africa, and the hostages--that last unpleasantness being Carter's greatest triumph...
...But today the summer population swells to about 70,000, mainly because, in the words of Art Buchwald, the Vineyard "is the 'in' island at the present...
...What lurid and ghastly themes of personal abuse will our great President delight us with in Campaign '80...
...Our story, of course, has a happy ending...
...But everyone keeps mentioning it, so I thought I'd pass it on...
...The address is now 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue...
...I was stationed 20 feet out to sea at the time, listening to some hair-raising conversation between liberal journalists (who come here en masse on vacation these days) and their guttural-voiced, behind-the-iron curtain sources...
...E D I T O R I A L QQ00O0QQg~o6Q0o00g0~0Q0O0Q600Q0o0Q00Q0OQ0O0o000o0Q0000QO6QOqOQ9QOQQQ00m000QQOOQ~0Q0QQ0QoOO0Q0#9QmQ00q0Q00000QO6Q06OQ~0QQI i~O~O0Q0gQQ00Q0OQm0OIgIgQI0QO~QOQQQ JIMMY IN A MUDSLIDE by R. Emmett TyrreU, Jr...
...What else could a man of Carter's high moral character do...
...From the moment he began his personal attacks in 1966, he moved up steadily through the pack...
...Candidate Carter immediately commenced to describe him as one who had practiced "gross favoritism...
...and hails from Hollywood, California, where carnality is the norm and divorce is rampant...
...Homicide was plainly malum prohibitum even at election time...
...Yet despite all these brilliant devices, Jimmy Carter had thus far won the hearts of a mere 4.2 percent of Georgia's voters, a percentage strikingly similar to the state's percentage of problem drinkers...
...The lesson was not lost on him...
...Those of us who have been going there over the years never planned it that way As a matter of fact, many people fell in love with the island because it wasn't "in...
...What strategies were left him...
...I f Reagan sneezes or orders a roll of Turns in public, our virtuous President will immediately make available Bethesda Naval Hospital...
...At any rate, Jimmy now had four years to perfect his style...
...Jimmy lost...
...And someone called John Belushi (if you know who he is, I don't) bought Robert McNamara's house...
...I promise never to betray your confidence in me...
...The humorist continues: Local residents question whether Buchwald ever tended a lobster pot, or so much as clammed, o n the island...
...Certainly he will charge that this guy Reagan is less than a 4 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1980 genius, hence not smart enough m maintain double digit inflation plus 7.8 p e r c e n t unemployment...
...Farmland has reverted to forest...
...Lester Maddox, a repulsive racist, won, and I cannot stifle the thought that had Jimmy not bashed and battered the liberal frontrunner, Ellis Arnall, Georgia and America might have been spared the poisoned antics of Maddox...
...Jimmy flayed him for being divisive and extreme, a sc, rt of Deep South Bolshevik...
...Moreover, Jimmy had spent three shafts from his magical quiver and to no effect...
...Gerald Rafshoon, and it was learned that the most refulgent grin ever to come out of Southwest Georgia had, at that point, hoodwinked a mere 4.2 percent of the electorate, Mr...
...By late August, our future president was shouting that "the people are embarrassed and nauseated over the frivolity and clownishness" of his opponents...
...Subsidiary members include Walter Cronkite (who was recently turned away curtly by a local head waiter for being seven minutes late for his reservation--a true story, everyone swears...
...C A P I T O L I D E A S . . • . . . . . . . - . . . . ; . . . . . . ` . . . . . . . . . . . ` . . . . . . . ` ` . . . . . . . . . • . . . . . . . . . . ` ` . . . . . . . ` . . . . . . . • . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ` . . . . . . ` . . . . . . . LETTER FROM MARTHA'S VINEYARD b y Tom B e t h e l l C } n the third day I was stung by a jellyfish named Bitsie or Muffle, trailing an Anderson sticker from a tentacle...
...Richard B. Russell and Sen...
...Betty Glad has chronicled Carter's entire public life in Jimmy Carter: In Search o f the Great White House...
...The year-round population of this 100-square mile island off Cape Cod is only 9000 or so--much smaller, I believe, than in its glory days of whaling in the first half of the nineteenth century...
...If I ever let you down in my action," he declared to 15.teen-age supporters on July 14, 1966, "I want you to let me know about it and I ' l l correct it...
...Midway through Jimmy Carter's 1966 race for the Georgia governorship, the polls were consulted by a Mr...
...Then Jimmy laid into him for being hopelessly obsolete, a sort of Deep South Coolidge...
...Herman Talmadge," those being the state's most illustrious pols from the old order...
...But apart from.that he hasn't quite got the socio-dynamics right...
...De Borchgrave and Moss, but Muffle spotted me at my listening post and came smartly to the rescue...
...I'm not sure whether that is a significant development or not...
...his 1970 campaign would be even dirtier...
...has the support ot the oil tycoons plus the Ku Klux Klan...
...We sailed, fished, clammed, and tended our lobster pots oblivious to the goings-on in such Gucci-ridden places as Southampton, East Hampton, Newport, Bar Harbor and Malibu...
...Bribery, intimidation, and ballot-fraud would get him into hot water with churchgoers...
...All that remained was vilification, innuendo, dissimulation, and hyperbole in every direction --in other words, a traditional good government campaign...
...The point is that the fashionable folk are quite happy to up and abandon Gucci-ridden East Hampton provided there's a whole rat pack of them ready to migrate at approximately the same time...
...Our President will remind us that Reagan is old and no jogger...
...The consensus seems to be that the rat pack as presently constituted is led by Lillian Hellman, the wellknown Stalinist writer...
...The island--somewhat larger than you might i m a g i n e - - s t r i k e s me as being overgrown with scrub, fir trees, small oaks, and masses of prickly vegetation of every description...
...I believe I'm a more complicated person than that," he sniffed...
...In one day, and before the sun set, he berated five of his opponents...
Vol. 13 • October 1980 • No. 10
