Brayings from the Left
Jackasses, Assorted
Brayinds from tlie Lert "Whom the gods destroy they first make mad." -Euripedes THE NATION Straightfaced description of the young political geniuses who make bombs and assure George Wallace his...
...CHET HUNTLEY From one who has read all the Great Books, written many many profound treatises, even dabbled at Haiku, comes the sad assessment-Americans elected a President who is simply BLAH...
...Lucid psychoanalytic enquiry by the insomniacs of the New Republic: Who is Richard Nixon...
...the fact that he is President frightens me...
...Monstrous state of affairs dutifully reported by the heroic New Republic: The most depressing thing in Washington right now is a hole in the ground...
...An alarming example of repression and a surprising manifestation of anti-youth fervor from the super patriots of The New York Review of Books: A good American properly does not wear a flag, does not become a flag, does not tie one flag to another like a rag around his arm, does not substitute it for a crucifix or a mezuzah, does not rev it up with shiny little rhinestones...
...It is an enormous excavation, three stories deep, a whole city block square, right on Pennsylvania Avenue...
...Cuba aspires to become a "revolutionary democracy," with full and direct participation of the masses, I said, but how can there by any true democracy in a society whose press does not even furnish the people the essential information needed to reach decisions on matters of vital concern to themselves...
...Maybe he always will...
...Quit being students...
...Astrology as practiced at The New Republic: Richard Nixon is going down in history all right, but not soon enough...
...I've traveled with him in his private plane...
...Become criminals...
...Its readers might never again experience the adventure of reading Irving Howe in ninth century Uralic: We learn with regret of the sudden death of Isaac Langnas, for many years the chief translator for Dissent...
...In fact, the Cuban press is so mediocre that even Fidel can't stand it...
...At Dissent-America's leading foreign language journal a dark hour has arrived...
...Not education, not health, not welfare: the FBI...
...THE NEW REPUBLIC Proof that-through the infamous Order of the Eagles-IT HAS HAPPENED HERE: Here is Jerris Leonard assistant attorney general in charge of the Civil Rights Division...
...Never, I said, is there published the faintest criticism, constructive, or otherwise, of government programs, and rarely is there printed any other viewpoint than the official line on any subject...
...That he had no emotional committment to the civil rights cause is indicated by his retaining membership in the all white Order of the Eagles...
...We keep wondering, we can't help it...The old anti-Communist Nixon nags at us, fretfully, in the watches of the night...
...It was, I asserted, dull, sycophantic, and seemingly much more concerned with disseminating the official government viewpoint than with informing the Cuban public about the realities of their own society and the events and trends at work in the outside world...
...A building will rise there...This entire building will be taken over by the FBI...
...These may well involve both coercion and violence...
...I've seen him under many conditions...
...The shallowness of the man overwhelms me...
...Euripedes THE NATION Straightfaced description of the young political geniuses who make bombs and assure George Wallace his constituency by a fairy tale reporter at The Nation (subscription price $10 yearly): Radical activists tend to have sophisticated notions of political theory, strategy and tactics...
...We have to disrupt every institution and break every law...
...We are going to bring it down...
...Oh that I might never travel in his private plane...
...Their outrage has been disciplined into organizational activity...
...DISSENT One of Dissent's penthouse revolutionaries offers, from his armchair battleground, a little institutionalized hog slobber: ...I think, that narrow definitions of civil disobedience rule out certain sorts of unconventional yet non-revolutionary politics which should not be regarded as attacks on civil order...
...I've been with Nixon socially...
...A sartorial notice from the trendy New York Review of Books: The cops had to extract permission to wear little American flag pins on their uniforms, but now all sorts of serious, grim, suspicious citizens wear them...
...THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS A rare revelation of utter stupidity regarding the tyranny which governs Fidel's island paradise as reported in the wonderful world of The New York Review of Books: One evening in Havana about three years ago I had dinner with Carlos Franqui, probably the leading Cuban journalist, to whom I was complaining rather vehemently about the low quality of the Cuban press...
...He was kind to me...I just kept filling his glass with Scotch and we talked about breeding Herefords.i" THE NEW YORK TIMES' The fiendish Nixon is found out by the sleuths at The New York Times: The President of the United States, in a maudlin personalization and simplification of complex political issues, makes war a test of his own and the nation's manhood...By this action President Nixon has calculatedly chosen to widen the division among the American people, to inflame instead of heal.can people, to inflame instead of heal...
...JERRY RUBIN One of the Academy's most sought after public speakers makes this cheerful prediction: The American school system will be ended in two years...
...they are typically too "rational" to become "adventurists...
...Do you people want a diploma or to take this school over and use it for your own purposes?...It's quiet here now, but things are going to start again...
...That very same luminary reports on one of those esoteric tete-a-tetes in which he so delights: "I think I liked LBJ best...
Vol. 4 • December 1970 • No. 2
