No News Like Agnews
Kelley, John L.
The Alternative January, 1971 10 There's No News Like Agnews By Jobn L. Kelley In recent months America's full-time household word, Spiro T. Agnew, has junketed around the electronic village...
...Considering themselves railroaded, many Americans are demanding a change of trains...
...Randolph appreciated a good riposte as much as the next man and he was usually on the attack, as when he referred to Edward Livingston as "a man of splendid abilities but utterly corrupt Like rotten mackerel by moonlight, he shines and stinks...
...Not full of ambush and reward " This would seem to typify the Liberal's outlook If the child cries, feed him If the rioter loots, give him instant credit...
...Who shall ever forget the subtlety in Harry Truman's defense of daughter Margaret's wheeze...
...Conservative: The problem of segregation demands different approaches depending upon local circumstances, historical background and the national interest...
...Liberal: Why don't you feel the same way about segregation...
...Liberal: But you just can't say "communism...
...Liberal: You have no compassion for the downtrodden in America...
...Presently, it would seem, the conservatives have written the script and controlled the casting A quick perusal of the reviews suggest that the conservatives are in for a long run...
...Public hangings...
...Should we today cherish less the great heights of past rhetoric merely because these are unstable times...
...The condition is indeed serious Formerly the Saturday night fracas at the local temple of worship provided the citizenry with a sense of unity and participation in high purpose even if it was only their conviction by some latter-day Jonathan Edwards of sin worthy of hellfire...
...Something akin to seduction, although the end result is bastard politics, the getting there has been all the fun...
...Conservative: We must realize Communism is an absolute evil and the President should make unequivocal, forthright statements of his feelings about it...
...The Kingfish is long in his grave...
...Either by comparison with the standards of contemporary statesmen or historical notables, Mr...
...Conservative: No international peace is worth it if we have communism...
...Having politicized all aspects of life, and urged that all amelioration derive from the national political process, they insist that all rhetoric only engage in a dialogue about mere instrumentalities...
...Do anything necessary to avoid facing the reality that conflict is endemic to the body politic Interpret dissent from Liberalism's credoes as a manifestation of the virulent strain of a diseased tradition which ipso facto represents the worst in man's character In short, respond to all the "needs" of America's "disadvantaged" classes, while ignoring the sensibilities, prejudices and interests of the middle class...
...Either way, the result is a revitalization of an American ritual...
...Liberal: I personally find communism abhorrent, but I think we must recognize we can't do away with it overnight...
...Agnew insists on a real dialectic, the Radical Liberal is incapable of rational response...
...Thomas Jefferson long cherished the letter addressed to him "You red-headed son of a bitch," but not all politicians could view the peccadillos of their fellow men with Jefferson's detachment...
...The American liberal establishment, not understanding the signs of the times, has ranted and raved about a new era of McCarthyism--a charge so mindless that it suggests these liberals are losing their hold on sanity...
...If it comes to shooting we shall shoot to hit No blank cartridges or firing over the heads of anybody...
...Liberal: The problem of segregation calls for direct action even if that threatens the national status quo...
...Liberal: Even if our life as a nation is torn asunder, segregation must go...
...Captain Harry of "Battery D" is reduced in his eighty-seventh year to slighting comments on the memory of his long-time antagonist, General MacArthur And Old Beagle Ears ("wanta see my scar...
...Once he threw a glass of wine in a fellow congressman's face, smashed the bottle over his head and attempted to administer the coup de grace with the bottle's remnants...
...Conservative: The problem of communism demands direct action even if that means threatening the international status quo...
...no longer does the audience stand in awe of his rough and ready posysyllabicism: no longer do the masses salivate at the mention of "trade unionism...
...Griswold patiently awaited his chance...
...Conservative...
...It is here to stay in many parts of the country...
...What has happened...
...Shall we purge from our minds the manifestations of HST's good fellowship...
...Which is not surprising because the Vice President knows that there is "no news Like Agnews " 0 Conservative: But communism demeans hundreds of millions of fellow humans...
...Liberal: We don't care whose toes are trodden upon...
...deposits in the Perdenales Alas, all the liberals have left is the White Tornado, George Corley Wallace, and he is something of a vanishing maverick...
...Conservative: You have no compassion for the enslaved throughout the world...
...But when riot is menaced it is different...
...Lyons, a gentleman of the Irish persuasion, responded by spitting in his face...
...Conservative: The problem of communism must be discussed in those terms...
...In fact it was the liberal-left which sounded more and more apocalyptic as the campaign entered its final weeks...
...Conservative: I think they are two different problems...
...Town hall meetings" Centralization has taken much meaning from them...
...It is here to stay in many parts of the world...
...Lyons grabbed a pair of tongs and the two of them went several rounds much to the bemusement of their colleagues...
...Later on Lyons joined with Griswold to oppose John Randolph on the settlement of the Yazoo claims...
...Yes, tragically today a liberal political rally no longer smacks of effusive confidence, but rather smells of a death watch...
...Much annoyed by a Randolph charge, Lyons, once again in the presence of his colleagues, rose to the occasion, thanking his creator that he himself had the face of a man and not that of an ape or monkey...
...What of his 1952 campaign warning that if Eisenhower were elected, 25,000,000 men would go jobless...
...No longer may the community come together to pass their collective judgement of "Amen, brother...
...Charmed by the Vice-President's exhortations, some critics have observed that the V.P.'s rhetoric egged on the malcontents of Middle America to violent acts (such as their noted propensity for laying violent hands on Republican voting levers to cast them downward...
...You tend to simplify a complex problem...
...volving a certain amount of over-blown rhetoric delivered with gusto Politics has always manifested something of the character of an old time melodrama, with stereotyped characters which the audience could hiss or applaud according to their likes...
...Liberal: You are too rigid fighting communism...
...Liberal: But segregation demeans hundreds of thousands of fellow Americans...
...Liberal: You want to solve the problem of communism by force...
...Agnew's rhetoric must be adjudged compassionate...
...Communism is after all, not a domestic problem...
...The events of the last thirty years have stripped the Liberal of any viable intellectual defense (at least by pragmatic standards), he is left with no clothes and now hopes to divert attention from his natural condition by charging Spiro with "low blows " Mr Agnew has refused to accept this definition of his campaign and for good reason: he is carrying on in the grand tradition of American political rhetoric If rhetorical flourish has been on the decline in recent years, that should be cause for lament not for relief...
...All that remains is the political rally and it has been fast fading under the deadening influence of liberalism's...
...Liberal: If only you wouldn't see the problem of communism in terms of good guys and bad guys...
...Like all stage performers...
...Who could ever forget T.R.'s contribution to labor arbitration...
...Agnew offered telling confirmation of the poor lad's point in his witheringly violent reply: "That just isn't so...
...Yet recently some occupants of the sleeping compartments have been buffeted by troublesome disturbances...
...Let's put transportation and production back to work, hang a few traitors and make our own country safe for democracy...
...Segregation must go...
...Conservative...
...When confronted by the acrid estimate of a critical Washington reviewer, Captain Harry of "Battery D" deftly handled the situation, threatening the upstart critic with the impending necessity for "a supporter...
...The mob takes its own chance...
...Would Liberals for the sake of domestic tranquillity have us forego future gems of political sagacity...
...If the political rally dies out due to lack of fodder, what communal rite short of war will remain...
...The sublimity of this pronouncement was exceeded only by T.R.'s major observation on the values of behavorial acculturation...
...Liberal: No domestic peace is worth if it we have segregation...
...Yet Randolph was more adept at giving than receiving...
...I don't go so far as to think that the only Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn't inquire too closely into the case of the enth The most vicious cowboy has more pprincipal than the average Indian...
...All of which is preface to the conclusion that far from intensifying polarization, Agnew's speechifying is increasing social cohesion by bringing groups together• some to say "Amen, brother," others to conclude "Lord Help Him, Brother...
...We shall guard as zealously the rights of the striker as those of the employer...
...Conservative: Why don't you'feel the same way about communism...
...Liberal: I think they are two entirely different problems...
...From where will the body politic receive its biannual dosage of laughing gas in the future...
...economic royalists" and "red-baiters...
...From the populist antics of Huey Long to the bourbon politics of Norman Mailer, the Democrats have provided us with a marvelous sideshow which has made these two-year exercises in political indigestion go down easier, even if the end result was acute gastric distress...
...But you can't kill an idea with coercion...
...With Agnew as their most visible target, they bludgeon him only, to their abject astonishment, to see him rise even higher in popularity...
...Liberal: The problem of communism demands different approaches depending upon local circumstances, historical background and the national interest...
...Liberal: We must recognize segregation as an absolute evil and the President should make unequivocal, forthright statements of his feelings about it...
...The residual WASP need not be dealt with in this fashion since they do not react as a group " So they may have thought as late as 1968, but more recent events including Wallace's showing in 1968, and the books of Kevin Phillips and Richard Scammon and Ben Wattenberg have clearly indicated that the Liberal-dominated consensus has collapsed--and they know it Confused, uncertain of their future in either party, the Radical Liberals are grabbing at any stick that protrudes from the crushing waters carrying them to their downfall...
...Conservative: We don't care whose toes are trodden upon...
...Conservative: I personally find segregation abhorrent, but I think we must recognize we can't do away with it overnight...
...All of which prompts the observation that we should take violence out of the streets and return it to its natural habitat--politics For the past forty years most Americans have willingly entrained for the heavenly city of the twentieth century philosophes...
...Liberal: Communism must be fought, certainly, but with reason and by taking into consideration all the subtleties and differences within the communist system Conservative: Segregation must be fought, certainly, but with reason and by taking into consideration all the subtleties and differences within the segregated systems...
...They have forgotten that the people have always enjoyed a good scrap--a good show, in Dialogue Liberal: The trouble with you on the right is that you see communism as a completely evil thing that has to be fought your way and no other way...
...Unfortunately, with church attendance declining, few arenas remain for an oral affirmation of the community's commonality...
...As Seymour Martin Lipset noted in 1968, "political parties and communications media feel that it is more important to appear to discriminate in favor of the minorities than against them...
...One sagacious Delphine (a doctoral student in Things Bucolic at the University of Washington, I believe) recently asserted on a talk show in Mr...
...But you can't kill an idea with coercion Conservative: You want to solve the problem of segregation by force...
...Surely the political pantheon of prolixity is not completely vacated Are there no bilious Solons left to delight the imagination of the homobucolic...
...Old Man Liberal has begun to lose his The Alternative January, 1971 11 touch...
...Assuming that the final stage of social perfection was near at hand and to be mounted via liberal dogma, they must -adjudge as a blackhearted reactionary he who challenges the wisdom of the prophets...
...Liberal v. Conservative By Jobn Ave...
...Even if our terrestrial life is torn asunder, communism must go...
...Perhaps, you may argue, I am giving the Democrats too much credit for inspired political commentary Surely, you insist, the other side of the aisle, while admittedly not as charmingly dulcet, possesses a noted gallery...
...In the past any candidate who couldn't whip up a threehour fluff on the purple mountain's majesty wasn't worthy of election to America's most exclusive club, let alone to municipal dog catcher...
...identity crisis...
...It means so many different things...
...Liberals have responded that theirs is the only route...
...Segregation is, after all, not an international problem...
...two weeks leter he attacked Lyons with a heavy stick as the Speaker was about to call the House into order...
...No, there are too few of them to go around...
...The Alternative January, 1971 10 There's No News Like Agnews By Jobn L. Kelley In recent months America's full-time household word, Spiro T. Agnew, has junketed around the electronic village pronouncing the collective judgement of guilty upon the Radical Liberals: the "pusillanimous pussyfooters," the "nattering nabobs of negativism" and the "hopeless hysterical hypochondriacs of history " From the ranks of his opponents came unmistakable laments of Dorian Gray's anguish...
...It means so many different things Conservative: But you just can't say "segregation...
...Of course this attitude is hardly surprising For the past forty years the Democrats have had a near-monopoly on that superb stageperformer: the posturing politico...
...Rising to all of his bestial splendor and ferocity, Mr...
...any other direction leads back to the chaos of unregulated freedom In short, Spiro's adversaries are intolerant of dissent which questions the eternal "verities " About these premises no conflict is permissible, for truly they are sacred and smelleth of antiquity Norman Mailer has offered some trenchant observations on this current demand to deny the intrinsic nature of conflict in life: "The impulse of the twentieth century seems to be a desire to make society run on rails Anything may be tolerated, even Communism, provided that the dialectic is squeezed out of our nature there is something in the center of our nature itself which resists any social directive that life be not complex, not perverse, not contradictory, not explosive, not full of ambush and reward...
...But alas, Liberalism, rapidly approaching senility, forgets its garrulous past and demands a one-to-one correlation between rhetoric and reality when bespoken by conservatives, while anything will pass as eternal veracity when presented by a liberal woofer...
...No longer is the mind faster than the mouth...
...In 1798 the Federalist, Griswold, suggested on the floor that the Jeffersonian Republican, Lyons, had been cashiered in the army and compelled to carry a wooden sword...
...Abruptly awakened and provoked to observe the passing scenery, many have concluded that the exteriors don't seem to correspond to the environs of the liberals' heavenly city...
...What oral exercise remains for this symbolic reaffirmation of the bond between the individual and his society...
...Conservative: The trouble with you on the left is that you see segregation as a completely evil thing that has to be fought your way and no other way You tend to simplify a complex problem...
...Right you are...
...Agnew's presence that the VP was the greatest purveyor of violence in all America...
...You are too rigid fighting segregation...
...Order will be kept at whatever cost...
...Conservative: If only you wouldn't see the problem of segregation in terms of good guys and bad guys...
...When Mr...
...But the body politic cries out for relief ; will no one answer its lamentations...
...Rarely has he been required to defend his position, as the lumpenproletareat, until recently has been uncommonly dazzled by his intellectual slight-of-hand...
...Liberal: The problem of segregation must be discussed in those terms...
...Where are the contemporary liberal fun-makers...
...Communism must go...
...Remember Truman's proposed speech to handle the rail union strike...
Vol. 4 • January 1971 • No. 3
