Plain Speaking
Brudnoy, David
Dr. George Washington Plunkitt, our prize-winning political analyst, is celebrating the publication of his new book, which is now available at avant-garde bookstores throughout New Jersey. Dr....
...Bernstein: Though it may be an indication of an incipient disengagement from serious American politics, I must admit that I have yet to meet any members of the Symbionese Liberation Army...
...11, Box 360, Bloomington, Indiana 47401, Continental U.S.A...
...Yet Truman was by no means faultless...
...Can you help me get one or two good-looking specimens of the SLA to my party, and do you know what noble cause they are furthering...
...I liked him," the otheraTise shrewd Tr~=c.qan asseged: And ,.m...
...What really troubles me is the moral climate of our country...
...I suggest you hold a symbolic cocktail party at a local insane asylum and invite Bella Abzug to represent the SLA...
...it have anything to do with the Potawatomi women...
...I do know several members of the Knights of Malta, and after the war I knew a retired member of the Foreign I_~gion who ran a beauty parlor in New York's famed Artichoke Area...
...GWP Dear Dr...
...So it is that Lenny and I have committed ourselves to undertake such a gesture...
...And Truman's intervention in Korea, now an ingredient in the New Left condemnation, likewise seems to leveler heads a reasoned response, and a just one...
...Cordially, Felicia Bernstein Dear Mrs...
...Plunkitt: As you are probably aware the government has hounded and persecuted me for my political beliefs...
...Regardless of our fate, we intend to make bold to invite the Symbionese Liberation Army to a cocktail party...
...Many Americans are not only losing their faith in government, but they are losing their faith in genera ! . What will happen to America if the majority of Americans lose faith...
...Sincerely yours, Clifford Irving Dear Mr...
...Tell them how often you have been interviewed on National Public Radio, and mention your theory that no one should be imprisoned for a crime unless the victim actually loses his life or is seriously injured...
...Plunkitt expects to earn ten million dollars from sales of his new book, he has agreed to continue to advise public figures through, this column...
...I can understand your distress concerning the possibility that the American people are losing their faith...
...Unfortunately I am not yet acquainted with any actual members of the SLA and I do not know what it is the SLA is in favor of...
...We know now that Tnmmn was quite right to press for aid to Greece and Turkey, the Marshall Plan, Point Four, and NATO...
...And of Stalin...
...What are needed are courageous, selfless, and audacious gestures forwarding the just goals of the oppressed and of criminals in general...
...Dear Dr...
...If the American people continue to lose their faith in government I suspect there will be a lot more freedom in the land, and if they lose their faith in general I suspect they will be a lot richer, though probably not so contented...
...We shall invite all the right people and we shall take a collection for the furtherance of whatever it is that the SLA wants...
...Although Dr...
...Nor does it seem that I will be meeting any, for I fear once these folks surface they will be locked in the slammer...
...Irving: I am honored to have received a communiqu4 from such an illustrious name in the world of letters...
...Address all correspondence to The Bootblack Stand, c/o The Establishment, R.R...
...But he knew his Nixon, and knew him well: "a shifty-eyed, gr~ddarrm 24 Yhe Ai~:,r~c~i+~ ~ June--Sep~,rnb:2~ 1974...
...We hate America's crass materialism and we will go to any length to fix America's attention on the plight of the proletariat and the oppressed...
...As things stand today I probably could not even get published in the New York Review of Books, even with a hyphenated name...
...GWP F,,,or Plain Speaking HARRY TRUMAN has ascended steadily in the estimate of historians, moving from the presidential ash can into which historians had cast him to the Top Ten, even outstripping Ike, "the fella that succeeded me," as" he almost invariably referred to General Eisenhower, whom he cordially loathed, and whose (alleged) war-time peccadillos figure in this book...
...But I can live with my sadness, after all, think of the hardships endured by m i s t s like Oscar Wilde and Lenny Bruce...
...Without their simple faith you would have no means of livelihood...
...Such advanced ideas are always sure-fire with the Review people...
...Miller's superb new biography is far more than just a compendium of such ]uicy An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman by Merle Miller Pumam $8.95 gossip, the latter of no more---nor tess-importance than the behind-scenes gales of J. Edgar Hoover or Martin Luther King or the Kennedy brothers that surface from time to time in pop literature and only decades later make their way into ~scholarly" histories...
...Merle Miller writes that Truman said he had destroyed a correspondence between Generals Eisenhower and Marshall, the latter having informed Ike that Ike's intention to divorce Mamie was unthinkable and would force the Azzny Chief of Staff, Marshall, to ruin Eisenhower...
...I have been jailed and exposed to such unfortunate publicity that even my artistic integrity is being called into question...
...Plunkitt: My husband, I_~nard, and I have been at the vanguard of the people's struggle, throughout this wretched period of war, strife, and conspicuous consumption...
...Not only would progressive intellectuals like yourself lose their markets, but think of the hard times awaiting thousands of politicians, millions of bureaucrats, and the frauds of Nat|onal Public Radio...
...But I cannot say that I know any of the SLA worthies...
...This is true not because of his domestic policy, but because of his foreign policy...
...Like his biographer, Trmnan was to the end unwilling to say an unchm~table word ai~)ut A!~er Hiss...
...At present, Tnmlan has su~rc, d the downgrading cf "re~dsiotfist" hist.:;rians, who see him as a trigger-happy coid warrior, simultanem~ with the re~mwc<i appreciation of old liberals and even conservatives...
...It is the only way my husband and I have left to speak out on their behalf...
...During all that pother over the Howard Hughes book I was quite taken by your grace and high purpose, and though I cannot say that I admired your ends I always admired your means...
...Plunkitt's book is about the importance of altruism in politics and it is titled What's in It for Me...
...Also is the SLA a tax-exempt army...
...Surely the New York Review of Books will publish you...
Vol. 7 • June 1974 • No. 9
