A Hall Full of Losers
P, S.
We met by chance on the subway platform. My friend was on her way to the Cherry Lane "Theatre of the Absurd": Ionesco's "The Killer," if I recall. Would I go along? I declined with thanks;...
...He pointedly reminded it, referring to American Nazi pickets outside the hall, of his benighted state of "half Jewishness...
...But Goldwater must have sensed that this hall full of losers could elect no one, that its adulation and applause are kisses of death...
...Before this, the tone of the meeting could best be described as querulous, whining, self-pitying...
...I had sent for a ticket three weeks in advance, without result...
...finally, I had been instructed over the phone to report to a mysterious booth in a remote part of the hall...
...I was on the way to my own "Theater of the Absurd": The Young Americans for Freedom rally in Madison Square Garden...
...Calling upon the "Christian West," Bozell raised the biggest storm of the evening with a set of proposals we transcribed literally: "To the Joint Chiefs of Staff: Prepare for an immediate landing in Havana...
...Repeal the Income Tax...
...The opening YAF ritual, a reading of the so-called Sharon, Conn...
...I wandered about before the meeting...
...These empty phrases offered no clues to my search for understanding...
...statement of principles, reminded one of Fourth of July piety, but without the egalitarian spirit of the Declaration of Independence...
...They took on the stance of a small, isolated and persecuted sect cut off from American political life and hounded by shadowy enemies: "liberals," "bureaucrats and beatniks," the New York Post, the Washington Post and particularly the New York Times...
...Once the meeting got underway, my sense of it was that the later the hour, the sillier it became...
...But mostly family groups from the suburbs of Long Island and New Jersey...
...Etc., etc...
...Why were they here...
...We met by chance on the subway platform...
...A series of phone calls still gave no result...
...when it [government] takes from one man to bestow on another, it diminishes the incentive of the first, the integrity of the second, and the moral autonomy of both...
...My friend was on her way to the Cherry Lane "Theatre of the Absurd": Ionesco's "The Killer," if I recall...
...Before moving into a dull speech about "conservative values," Goldwater doused his audience with the coldest of showers...
...Its theme: World Liberation from Communism...
...The speakers were college kids of the YAF's National Council, each making a grand entry by introducing and presenting an award to one of the pillars of conservatism...
...perhaps Moise Tshombe's presence, announced but not delivered might have attracted a few...
...First and most striking, not a single Negro...
...Second, a petty sprinkling of those we usually think of as New Yorkers: city folk, Village types, workers, Jews, etc...
...A series of young men, exhibiting various degrees of college oratorical skills, presented awards to molding isolationists and other figures of the political past...
...the "jock strap" crowd from the High School Phys...
...To the Commander in Berlin: Tear down the Wall...
...It was past eleven when Barry Goldwater began to speak...
...Nor did the slogans...
...Would I go along...
...Herbert Hoover ("positive conservatism...
...To the Chief of the CIA: You are to encourage liberation movements in every nation of the world under Communist domination including the Soviet Union itself...
...Up Victory, Down Coexistence...
...There I found my ticket in an envelope, labeled "Mr...
...S. P...
...the audience had waited many hours to hear him...
...Dissent...
...Whatever historic continuity there is in this "movement" dates back to negative middle-class feelings about F. D. R. and the New Deal, seen as the source of all that has been wrong in America for a quarter of a century...
...Senator Thurmond ("like Calhoun")—your reporter heroically refused to stand for "Dixie...
...a large collection (in groups) of biddies with permanently angry faces...
...departments, Madison Square gambling and wrestling touts, the Y's, etc...
...The melodramatic oratorical effort of this young theologian was—astonishingly enough—followed by a few choruses of the Yale football song, "Boola Boola," played by a hired band...
...To our chief of mission in the Congo: change sides...
...Altogether, a motley crew that never jelled or adhered during the 4½-hour evening...
...John Dos Passos ("back to free enterprise...
...Ludwig von Mises ("pillar of free enterprise...
...It reached its peak in the only direct programmatic speech of the evening offered by a stern-faced young conservative, Brent Bozell, a friend of William F. Buckley, Jr., who had flown to the meeting from his "hideout" in Franco's Spain...
...John Wayne ("tall in the saddle of morality...
...One was struck by the mordant attudinizing of these people...
...To the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission: Schedule testing of every nuclear weapon that could conceivably be of service to the military purposes of the West...
...Given the state of affairs we have described, this was the wisest move he could have made...
...For there was no Minnesota Fats to redeem this conclave of sore losers...
...enclaves of cleancut "American" college boys with their college banners...
...House Resolution 444 which "demands a policy of victory in the Cold War," also received its reward...
...Liberate the Liberals...
...The banners failed to provide an answer...
Vol. 9 • April 1962 • No. 2
