Jesse Jackson: The Great Man's Practice
Grenier, Richard
The vast width of the Atlantic Ocean did not prevent this aristocracy from serving as a pattern also for the American patrician class of the "Bourgeois Interlude" that Lukacs also finds...
...And in case you have never heard the word "Hymie," I discovered a distinguished colleague at the Council on Foreign Relations who had never heard the word "Canuck" (an expression close to home in my case), and this after Muskie's famous, or infamous, alleged "Canuck letter" in another New Hampshire primary only a few years back...
...For there are revivalist preachers and revivalist preachers...
...They were in fact delivered face to face to Milton Coleman of the Post on January 25 in a cafeteria at Washington's National Airport...
...Others feel more at home describing hell's fire, and the abyss opening at your feet, and evoking the prospect of you as the central barbecue in the flames of damnation...
...Internal rhymes provoke in him heady surges of power...
...Yet there may be a peculiar temptation to the historian's vanity implicit in this technique--the temptation to confuse the superiority of historical hindsight with moral superiority...
...It was virtually a double cross...
...He has claimed, with a sense of the theatrical unequaled by anyone in politics today, that Martin Luther King, Jr., died cradled in his arms in Memphis, Tennessee...
...The conscience also cries out that the rich ought to be taxed more, that minds are better weapons than missiles, that we should have constructive conversations with the Soviet THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1984 21...
...Choose...
...They had never been said...
...Great things seem to happen on the road to Damascus...
...Choose...
...No one would be interested, you see...
...This is an answer with little ambiguity...
...SOMEBODY...
...Is this "the most gifted orator in American politics...
...Choose...
...But no...
...country started out as a "military dictatorship" (you get this sort of thing in the quiet part of Jackson's speeches...
...This is not normal in a politician in a democratic society...
...Saul o f Tarsus," cries Rev...
...Having been accused of calling Jews "Hymies" and New York "Hymietown," Jackson denied using those epithets...
...Jesus...
...Jackson made remarks indicating he thought the Jordan River was the boundary between Israel and Lebanon, which makes you wonder just what Jackson was achieving out there kissing Arafat, other than perhaps creating the atmosphere for the Arab League's contribution of $100,000 to the PUSH Foundation in Chicago (making up 80 percent of its resources), and another $100,000 to PUSH Excel (with the origin of another $350,000 of Excel's funding still unaccounted for), both of which are admittedly dwarfed by the $4.5 million PUSH has received from the federal government ($2 million of which is unaccounted for...
...In other words, he lied again...
...Johnson knew and expressed very well, while Adam Smith did n o t , " Lukacs tells us...
...I n addition to his oratorical style, I am thrilled by Jesse Jackson's panache...
...President, John F. Kennedy, not only said Ich bin ein Berliner, he proclaimed the Soviet Union had left its mark in history forever in blood in the streets o f Budapest (the kind of sentiment you don't get from many prominent Democrats these days...
...Robert Goodmap, of the U.S...
...Jesse never fails to leave you riveted...
...After all, in American politics one does not refer to "Hymies" with impunity, j But recent events can be understood better in terms of the rise of Gary Hart than the fall of Jesse Jackson...
...thunders Jackson...
...But it is touching to think of Jackson turning to Rather for guidance, and I hope he will always feel free to turn to me as well...
...Listen, we're wide open to suggestions...
...Contrary to a great deal of bad scholarship, it is quite possible, in retrospect, to articulate for those two thinkers the metaphysical prin= ciples to which they faithfully adhered, principles that describe a realm of concrete spiritual reality though it can be described only in abstract terms...
...Form a coalition...
...Truth, Sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull...
...The good-natured advocates of such an argument lack, alas, the requisite acuity...
...To the contrary...
...We apparently slacked off into a few years of disguised civilian leadership after George Washington, but in 1829 there we were back again with another general, Andrew Jackson, the swashbuckling victor of New Orleans, and presumably more years of "military dictatorship...
...It goes on to reassure us, because Communism turns out to be just another value system which our ethnocentrism prevents us from appreciating...
...yet because the desire to assimilate succeeded the desire to imitate, Consuelo Vanderbilt was married off to the Duke of Marlborough, and Anna Gould was unhappily though briefly yoked to Count Boni de Castellane...
...Now this allegation drives Coretta Scott King wild with fury and she has said she will "never forgive" Jackson for this outrageous attempt to lay claim to the sacred mantle...
...Goodman and a kiss from yet another Middle Eastern thug...
...Jackson, "was saved through grace, knocked from his horse, traveling to Damascus, Syria...
...From a seat in the can, to the brotherhood of man...
...These Jews had come under "false pretenses," Jackson declared angrily...
...It would be comforting to suppose that Jackson damaged himself irreparably by providing the electorate with incontrovertible evidence of his anti-Semitism as well as his lack of veracity...
...Lukacs shamelessly uses the antiquated charge of "ideologizing" against the conservatives, insisting that politics can proceed without principles, claiming that Johnson and Burke maintained "the commonsense argument against abstract reasoning...
...But there he was, the day after the assassination parading around in a shirt covered with what he claimed was the blood of Martin Luther King, Jr., although for all we know it was chicken blood...
...The Jewish co-chairman, with Jackson, of the Illinois delegation for McGovern in 1972 said that he had heard Jackson refer to him as "the little Jew" too many times for it to be a joke...
...They can point to the con man's stance he assumes once in a while, the variety of positions he has espoused and discarded in the past-sounding alternately like Booker T. Washington and W.E.B...
...They smile, joke, beam confidence in at least their version of the future, obviously want to be liked...
...He had even been told the Hebrew word for "repent" (or so it was translated to me), and he threw that in too...
...In 1899, William Waldorf Astor, who had served in the State Senate of New York, renounced his American citizenship, saying, "America is good enough for any man who has to make a livelihood, though why travelled people of independent means should remain there more than a week is not readily to be comprehended...
...It was one of these "on the one hand/on the other hand" explanations, the crux of which lay in the last, ringing affirmation that, "'I did not want to lie...
...Jackson hardly remains a candidate at all, having become much more than a candidate, having turned into the conscience of the Democratic party--he tells us so himself...
...DOWN WITH DOPE...
...Choose...
...Hart came from nowhere to forge a coalition of realists looking for a more vibrant candidate to go up against Reagan, purists looking for somebody uncontaminated by the interest-group politics of trade unions, leftists looking for somebody more distant from Werner J. Dannhauser is professor o f government at Cornell University...
...First he denied ever having said "Hymie" or "Hymietown...
...America could not provide sufficient scope for the ambitions of its patricians...
...If Jackson had gotten the whole thing to rhyme, of course, he would have known he was home free...
...Lukacs presumes, as a historian, that his possession of hard historical fact renders philosophy irrelevant...
...Oh, what a friend you have in white liberals, Rev...
...But therein lies the wizardry of Jesse Jackson...
...Early one December morning, not far from the birthday of Christ, not far from the birthplace of Christ, another young man was knocked from his plane," And so on to: "The Spirit moved in us...
...policy in 1961, and not that hard-nose Jack Kennedy, Jackson and perhaps a hundred PUSH-type people from Chicago would have been out there with bullhorns crying across the Wall as it started to go up to East German Communist party boss Walter Ulbricht: "Now take it easy, Walt, baby...
...DuBois, for example--and the blatant selfpromotion that attends his every move...
...But even here the incantational, revivalist tone is never far away...
...But the deftest moment of all in the Manchester-synagogue admission scene was Jackson's explanation of why he had stoutly denied for two weeks saying what he was now confessing he had actually said...
...That, however, does not matter all that much to Jackson or the rest of us, simply because Jackson has managed his appeal so ingeniously that he is no longer subject to repudiation at the polls...
...When reminded today of his account of cradling the dying Martin Luther King, Jr...
...At present, of It's an embarrassment to Communism and also causing a severe labor shortage...
...DOWN WITH DOPE!'" "'UP WITH HOPE...
...He sometimes arrives from two to five hours late for scheduled appearances, with no apologies, his aplomb superb...
...It was as if they had been wiped from God's blackboard...
...We're wide open, Walt, baby...
...As a curiosity, at this writing, no fewer than four of the five Democratic candidates have clerical backgrounds...
...He would not, in short, have gone to Damascus on his behalf...
...Shouldn't Paul at least have been axed out on the basis of seniority...
...Jackson took a trip to Berlin, stared at the Berlin Wall, and declared that it was the result of a failure of communications...
...From, the segregated lunch, to a knockout punch...
...Section A, repeat after me," he says quietly...
...A local station sent a black reporter who with extreme civility asked Jackson, at the airport, if he had anything to add to his New Hampshire apology...
...What happened...
...necessarily agreed with this low placing of the item, with no subhead...
...Somebody...
...We'll start a Gulag...
...The important thing is for us to keep communicating...
...Jackson, basically, glowers...
...It was all a perfectly level-headed ploy on Assad's part to win the support of America's black community in his future dealings with Washington...
...Jackson turned on him with that baleful, death-ray look that is the most unlovable in American politics today and contemptuously said he had nothing to add to the "expression" (he could not bring himself to say "apology") he had already made, the brief, surly comment leading the reporter to conclude that although Jackson was supposed to have apologized he didn't really seem apologetic at all...
...From the KKK, to the Golden Way...
...too, and Jackson has become evasive on the subject...
...Introduced by the Reverend William Sloane Coffin of Riverside Church, and preceded by an official representative of El Salvador's "Democratic Revolutionary Front," he made a hard-line, far-left-wing foreign-policy speech...
...Why to meet an alawite Muslim named Assad, an infidel, whose cohorts massacre Christians daily...
...Axing Paul out...
...His re:ent novel The Marrakesh One-Two will soon be published in paperback by Penguin...
...But even if the Rev...
...Although a lot of people may not have realized it before, this course, "communication" is the big buzzword, and Jackson has been communicating like all get out with Assad and Arafat, and getting praise for it, so his words in Berlin leave us with the feeling that if only Jesse Jackson had been directing U.S...
...Since this does not fit in every detail the view of Old Hickory put forward in Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.'s The Age o f Jackson, one might have expected a historical quibble here and there from Professor Schlesinger...
...in what passed for civilized debate before the largely white League of Women Voters...
...A second group of opponents does not deny that Jackson is authentic but regards him, rather, as authentically corrupt...
...He was talking, in fact, to a black reporter from the Washington Post who mentioned Jesse's use of the word in paragraph 37 of his Jackson story, in the part destined to be buried inside the newspaper...
...I was first really thrilled by Jesse Jackson when he kissed Yassir Arafat...
...Not long ago Jackson was pondering the advisability of going to Nicaragua to join in the celebration of the coming to power ofthe Sandinistas...
...Now, what with being kept waiting for hours, to being booed down by a hostile claque when they are hot on the heels of a story, to facing racist language and even naked threats if (God forbid) they happen to be Jewish, reporters do not normally like this kind of treatment, and many candidates far more ingratiating than Jackson have gotten to be "unpopular" with their press corps...
...7 am!'" "'I AM...
...And then it's "'DOWN WITH DOPE...
...What's more, he counterattacked, he was "shocked" by the avid press interest in what were only (again) "private" conversations...
...Repeat after me: From slave ship to championship...
...SOMEBODY...
...If, as seems most likely despite his "Rainbow" talk, Jackson is building a black-power bloc of a sort seen before in American ethnic politics, it is most disturbing to think that a compelling ingredient of his attractiveness to some blacks might be his hatred of whites...
...The key elements in this camp-meeting, been-to-the-river-andI-been-baptized revivalist preaching are a rhythmic, incantational style on the part of the preacher--repetitious and sometimes the more repetitious the better--and, perhaps above all, an active, "responsorial" role for the listeners, drawing them into the group exaltation, all of them about to be touched by the hand of Jesus...
...The first see him as simply a charlatan...
...Jackson even has one particularly florid supporter by the name of Louis Farrakhan, leader of the nation .'of Islam, who until yesterday was a, black separatist and who once believed that whites were demonic beings bred from germs...
...At whom is he glowering...
...Numerous other people have denied the fact...
...Peter and them got jealous of Paul and tried to ax him out based on longevity...
...From the outhouse to the White House...
...After all, don't we all "let our guard down" sometimes...
...Things could change, of course, but Jackson's popularity has waned since he came back from Damascus with Lt...
...Which is to say, we obtained our independence from Great Britain and elected as our first president George Washington, a general-who from this fact Jackson seems to infer led a government resembling in nature that of General Pinochet in Chile...
...So far, the voters have not been all that kind to Jesse Jackson...
...SOMEBODY...
...But to strike awe into the hearts of listeners, a candidate for the presidency must be impressively versed in recent world events as well...
...But for all you good folks out there who never hear words like "Hymie," or "Canuck," or "Mick," I will explain that they fall into the category of words about which it has been said folklorically, "Smile when you say that, Mister...
...Just in case this did not sound menacing enough, he added, "We are not making idle threats...
...Jackson cannot, or will not, in any case, depart from the peculiar style of public speaking he acquired in the pulpit...
...Jackson thinks the Jordan River is somewhere in Bulgaria, and has received a Caliph's ransom from the Arab League, what is truly remarkable about him--for I can no longer conceal from the reader a highly interesting fact which I have discovered after only the most painstaking research--is that Rev...
...It is hard to imagine Assad being exactly bowled over...
...Then he said he could not remember using them...
...Imagine then the amazement of the world when on February 26, in a synagogue in Manchester, New Hampshire, he admitted he had said the terrible words and that it had been "wrong...
...Jackson intones, more loudly, "'Somebody!'" Section A gathers steam, "'Somebody!'" For Section B, the volume is doubled...
...For a man who favors cutting the military budget by as much as 40 percent, and has the warmest regard for all Third World "liberation" movements, the trip clearly had its pros...
...Watch Jackson whenever he debates the other Democratic candidates...
...Jackson is black...
...UP WITH HOPE...
...Much of the time, the conscienceas-Jackson employs a rather predictable rhetoric that has become rather soothing in its familiarity, as when it assures us that poverty causes Communism and forces us to counter the crude evidence of our senses, which suggests that Communism causes poverty...
...Jackson's most dazzling feat of international communicating, of course, came in the Middle East when he communicated Lt...
...We will pay any 18 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1984 price, bear any b u r d e n . . . "), or whether it falls into another category whose roots are in religious revivalism, which as it happens peaked in the leading white Protestant U.S...
...But Paul interpreted Jesus better than Peter did...
...As the theorist of "historical consciousness," Lukacs employs a peculiar historiographic technique which involves contrasting what people thought was happening in a given time and place with what we now know was actually happening...
...Now it takes a mind of consummate subtlety to grasp how a man who says something, then for two weeks denies having said it, is not lying...
...We took the wings of morning...
...One can only guess at the reaction of Ben Bradlee in 1960 if by some chance Richard Nixon had called John Kennedy a "Mick...
...People voting with their feet...
...Now looked at it in the cool light that breaks at dawn from the east over Damascus it is of a spec_9 tacular obviousness that if Lt...
...Of course, at the time of his first meeting with Arafat, Rev...
...Does he even know what longevity means...
...And then the perennial wind-up: "'OUR TIME HAS COME?'" Amen and Hallelujah at the First Church of Christ, Leftist...
...Outgrowing Democracy abounds with much of the same rhetorical triviality, adding up to a profound lack of seriousness in the author...
...Also Jackson's use of "Hymietown" for New York...
...was that Jesse could go on for hours and hours like this, in a manner appropriate to what Newsweek has called "the most gifted orator in American politics...
...Nor is he much given to smiling...
...Now, as it happens, I think black people are every bit as good as people of any other color...
...nuclear missiles in Europe or his support for the establishment of nuclear-free zones (both Soviet policies, incidentally), they are often booed roundly by Jackson supporters present...
...Hart hurt every other candidate, taking votes from one and all--mostly white votes, to be sure--and he has turned Jackson into the black candidate of mostly black voters...
...It was Farrakhan who recently in Chicago, addressing those of his listeners who had the misfortune to be Jewish, declared that an attack on Jackson was an attack on all blacks, and that, " I f you harm this brother, I warn you in the _9 name of Allah, this will be the last one you do harm...
...Gary Hart graduated from a Church of the Nazarene bible college then moved on to Yale Divinity School, destined for the ministry (before changing his name from Hartpence and entering Yale Law School...
...However, Jackson has at times displayed enough truculence and defiance, even when such displays could only harm him, to suggest that some genuine principles lurk beneath the fluff that emanates from him...
...They fail to distinguish between having a conscience and being one...
...We'll cut our standard of living in half so they won't want to come anymore...
...Lally Weymouth has called this an unusually "progressive" group of advisors with views "far from the mainstream positions espoused by most American politicians...
...The idea of Jackson as conscience goes down hard with two kinds of his opponents...
...What else could Jackson have had to offer in this ice-cold piece of international "negotiation...
...This time, with the television cameras rolling, while not changing any of his positions on the Middle East but in an obvioti6 attempt to achieve maximum solemnity, he announced that he did "repent" of saying the two awful words...
...Then he said he didn't remember...
...Then he admitted using them but claimed he had been quoted out of context, without ever explaining the context...
...The vast width of the Atlantic Ocean did not prevent this aristocracy from serving as a pattern also for the American patrician class of the "Bourgeois Interlude" that Lukacs also finds charming: Consider that what Tom Wolfe calls our "colonial complex" was then at its height...
...Give peace a chance...
...Goodman had not been black Jackson would have cared about as much what happened to him as he cared what happened to an empty can of 7-up...
...Until "Hymietown," that is...
...He should be given the benefit of the doubt...
...In secular terms, Jackson's whole demeanor, expressions, and body carriage give him the appearance of having more than his share of hate, and, although he might have a special little cold spot in his heart for Jews, it is hard to shut out the feeling that a great deal of this hatred is leveled at the white race in 20 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1984 general...
...Well, you can understand it if Jesse Jackson feels he has a friend in Jesus...
...He makes wildly ignorant statements in his speeches, such as the claim that there will be a cost overrun of $750 billion in the defense budget over the next fiv6 years--an allegation so extreme that it could only have proceeded from divine revelation...
...His usage of the derogatory words was "innocent" and "unintended," he asserted firmly...
...But from what I read in the prestige press there's still lots and lots of anti-black racism out there in America, and so what ,thrills me to the bole, if not quite to the marrow of the bone, is when Jackson cries out, You should put hope in your brains instead o f dope in your veins...
...UP WITH HOPE!'" This is the kind of behavior studied in MacKay's Madness o f Crowds, and can be witnessed in documentaries on the Nuremberg Congresses, but for the purposes of piety I must call it oratory...
...Peter was with Jesus physically," Jackson the preacher proclaims...
...He revels in his disdain of the "Hollywood act o r " President: But does he attribute to Reagan a corrupt or simply frivolous character because the man was once an actor, or is the politician's cinematic past only a symbol of something...
...But that is not the whole truth...
...This appeared to be the opinion of Jackson's advisors, too, a sterling group including long-time associate of the U.S...
...the Cold War than any disciple of Hubert Humphrey could ever be, and aesthetes looking for looks...
...Paul...
...I mean, the two were obviously meant for each other...
...But what is more curious is that he feels he has a friend in Dan Rather...
...And what was so wonderful Richard Grenier is a member o f the Council o f Foreign Relations...
...So he picked up the telephone and called Dan Rather, at home, for advice...
...Don't do anything rash...
...If one were to begin to inquire into the conscience of conscience, one would also have to wonder about the conscience of the conscience's conscience...
...In 1917 he became the first Viscount Astor...
...But a Post editor (white...
...Because whereas if I were to apply the conventional principles of English prosody I would have to call this illiterate doggerel, which is what it is, the fact that it has been recited again and again by Jesse Jackson allows me to declare it magnificent oratory, thereby proving to the whole world that I am not a racist...
...UP WITH HOPE...
...Which shouldn't have surprised Jackson one THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1984 19 bit, since he has known all along, I'm sure, that the Hymies were out to get him...
...To go where...
...Let us, then, attempt to summarize' the dictates of conscience that use Jesse Jackson as the earthly vehicle for their divine message...
...Iam...
...Goodman if he had not been black...
...Jesse's version of U.S...
...From a horn of tin, to the remission of sin...
...I am thrilled, by the same token, with Jackson's understanding of history, necessary for a great statesman...
...I have no idea what advice Rather gave him, if any (Jackson did not go...
...The conscience exists to scrutinize others, not itself...
...Communist party Jack O'Dell (sent into the wilderness by Martin Luther King, Jr., as a liability), James Zogby, head of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (despite its name, a PLO lobbying group), Robert Borosage, director of the far-left Institute for Policy Studies, Barry Commoner, Randall Forsberg, and Ramsey Clark...
...In other words, he lied once more...
...That vanity is much more complicated than greed is something that Dr...
...Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young--who admittedly was supporting Walter Mondale--said that Jackson's use of "Hymie" and "Hymietown" had lowered the "whole moral tone" of the primary campaign...
...DOWN WITH DOPE...
...Yes, Johnson did insist that vanity is a pervasive force in human behavior...
...history, moreover, the Civil War, in passing, had nothing whatever to do with slavery or abolitionism but was fought entirely out of "greed...
...Section A repeats, "'I am...
...Longevity...
...And it is equally obvious that Assad--having massacred 25,000 of his own people at Hama and not widely known as a world-class humanitarian--would not have released Lt...
...But there was still something wrong about the performance, and that was the look of sullen resentfulness that Jackson doesn't seem to be able to get rid of on these occasions...
...in his arms, and of the fact that other black leaders have called him a shameless liar, Jackson again soars to the pulpit...
...Then he said it had been "overheard" by a reporter, apparently implying that the reporter had been eavesdropping, an unethical practice, almost as bad as bugging, which Jackson seemed to think in some magical way was almost the equivalent of his never having said the words at all...
...Not that I am a member o f Transvestite Pride or Transsexual Power or any of the other groups Uaat you might logically expect to find rejoicing at men embracing other men at great occasions of state, but there was something about the symbolism o f it all, race meets race, faith meets faith, the centuries-old hatred between Christendom and Islam over at last lips across the sea...
...Jackson had been similarly adroit in an earlier meeting in Vermont, with eight Jewish leaders, apparently concerned with such recent events as Jackson's clear-cut statement on ABC's "Face the Nation" that he would not support Mondale (or presumably now Hart) for the presidency unless the candidate pledged recognition of the PLO...
...Now "Hymie" is a word that, it turns out, Jesse Jackson has been using for months, and on the campaign trail...
...Jesse Jackson is obviously in the latter category...
...Not that Jesse Jackson cannot work up audiences, especially black audiences, into a kind of collective hysteria, chanting and swaying, and crying out...
...Some are rather cheerful coves, sunnily promising you the Lord's blessing and love and the friendship of Jesus...
...At least one black journalist, who prefers to remain unidentified, reported the fact last fall to his editors, who decided it wasn't newsworthy...
...But there is so much else to admire in Jesse _9 panache...
...When, shortly after his Manchester synagogue "apology," Jackson arrived in New York it was big news, the local TV news programs airing advance promos: "Jesse Jackson Arriving in the City He Called Hymietown...
...In case you are not familiar with Rev...
...But it was at this point that Jackson's superb mastery of style came into play, his sensitive, nuanced, skillful handling of the media being one of the virtuoso turns of our time...
...and in trying to account for the historian's lapses we might in milder fashion apply the Great Moralist's words for some great offenders against decency: " T r u t h will not afford sufficient food for their vanity, so they have betaken themselves to O-ror...
...But from 10ng-experience at watching interesting details buried in paragraph 37 inside a newspaper disappear into a curious limbo almost as if they had never been written, I was not surprised when neither "Hymie" nor "Hymietown" was picked by the networks or other great organs of the press...
...I therefore give full credit to the Washington Post for seizing itself, rereading what it had written in its own pages, and on February 18 running a lead editorial calling use of such words by Jackson "degrading and disgusting...
...At any rate, one does not dispose of the merits of beliefs to which a pretender pretends by showing them to be a pretense...
...In other words, he lied...
...He cried to the other Democratic candidates We want parity, not charity...
...I know it doesn't rhyme, but try singing it out at the next camp meeting anyway...
...Mondale and McGovern are preachers' sons...
...For a while after that, it looked as though Jackson might actually win some primaries and caucuses, especially in the South--he told us so himself...
...Navy away from President Hafez al-Assad of Syria...
...By the time we get to Section C it is an adrenalin epidemic...
...one might well ask...
...Then he went back to denying it...
...But Jackson is the only ordained, practicing minister of the gospel, and also the only one with that baleful, angry, unforgiving look that makes you feel he would watch you roast in hell with pleasure...
...N e v e r t h e l e s s Lukacs does believe that it is the hereditary right of certain Easterners with three names and a Roman numeral thereafter to conduct our foreign policy...
...Jesse Jackson stands exposed as unscrupulousness incarnate...
...So Rev...
...But, as I say, one man's charlatanism is another man's panache...
...But Jackson wasn't smiling...
...Jackson, scared tO death of being called racist...
...Now at about the time of the building of the Wall the incumbent Democratic U.S...
...Asked why he had stated that he had no recollection, he said he did not want to lie...
...Give hope to our chillun...
...He resents the rise of ambitious wogs in this field, complaining in p a r t i c u l a r o f the dependence of Republican Presidents upon "the global advice of the globular Kissinger"--an insult as entertaining and instructive as d'Annunzio's to Wilson: the old man whose mouth is full of false promises and false teeth...
...They were supposed to endorse him, but they had not...
...Moreover, Lukacs uses large words for small matters, characterizing the shortening of the modern American's attention span as a decrease in "private integrity," and calling the "cult of publicity" a source of "intellectual corruption.'" I would reserve the phrase "intellectual corruption" for the activity of the Soviet Union's Western apologists, and no doubt the wishful thinking of Kennanism is somewhat touched by this corruption...
...But even they--unless they were overridden by Jackson's old PUSH colleagues from Chicago-seemed to find the New Hampshire synagogue apology somehow not convincing enough...
...From disgrace to Amazing Grace...
...So back Jackson went to still another Jewish congregation in New England...
...Consider the recent uproar...
...You're suffering from a mass exodus of refugees to the West...
...The style had a certain football-rally effectiveness even in the cold, white bleakness of New Hampshire-although admittedly applied to teenagers in a high-school gymnasium...
...From Peter the Hermit, to a frog named Kermit...
...But perhaps it also had its cons...
...Anger, you see, being a well-known emollient...
...But when Jackson took the podium immediately~ after Farrakhan (presumably as leader of the Rainbow Coalition of Christians, Muslims, and demonic germs), he said nothing to attenuate, let alone disown, this threatening language...
...We'll abolish freedom of speech...
...Thou shalt not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold...
...On the same "Face the Nation" program, when asked if he had used the words "Hymie" or "Hymietown," with the whole country listening, Jackson declared emphatically, " I t simply is not true...
...Yet the chilly opportunism on both sides has not stopped Jackson from invoking the Goodman episode with religious reverence in his speechsermons ever since...
...One must complain as well of the pretense of historical fact ("A History of the United States in the Twentieth Century") and also of the pretense of common sense uncomplicated by philosophy...
...They ask how so unconscionable a human being can serve as a conscience...
...Politics must eschew all the perilous subtleties of infinite regress...
...churches some 150 years ago in the Great Revival...
...After all, who cares what Jesse Jackson calls Jews...
...I am pleased to report that the conduct of the black reporters covering the Jackson campaign has been, as far as I have been able to discover, impeccable...
...The question is whether this is what is normally called oratory ("Give me liberty or give me death...
...The heavens might burst, and the lightning dance in the sky, but he strode calmly through it all in a dry blue blazer and grey flannels...
...When reporters at press conferences ask "difficult" questions, such as elaboration of his opposition to the deployment of U.S...
...Jackson divides the young people into three groups...
...But admire also the adroitness with which Jackson handled this admission...
...Addressing an adult white audience, Jackson adjusts his style, of course, and can also be effective, particularly if the listeners are radical enough...
...Peter and them...
...And yet rain never seemed to fall on Jesse Jackson...
Vol. 17 • May 1984 • No. 5
