Speaking in Code
Scrapbook Speaking in Code The next time somebody suggests that America’s schoolchildren should be reading a daily newspaper to learn about the world—you know, newspapers as an educational...
...Meanwhile, though: Why don’t you leave the poor man alone...
...I am not dismayed by this...
...And he’s very angry about John McCain and Sarah Palin because, as he writes, “the ‘socialist’ label that [McCain and Palin] are trying to attach to Sen...
...It would have been an act of kindness— not to say an understatement—to refer to Paul Robeson as a “socialist...
...That’s when the Republicans used to be the good guys...
...For when called upon to provide examples of African Americans J. Edgar Hoover accused of being socialists, he cites W.E.B...
...According to the Washington Post, Kennedy asked the group of students if they knew what party Abraham Lincoln had belonged to...
...We Fremen had done the impossible, against Sardaukar and imperial shock troops alike...
...Scrapbook Speaking in Code The next time somebody suggests that America’s schoolchildren should be reading a daily newspaper to learn about the world—you know, newspapers as an educational resource, and so on—THE SCRAPBOOK recommends that you tell him about Lewis Diuguid...
...And when Lewis Diuguid writes that the word socialist “set whites apart from those deemed un-American and those who could not be trusted during the communism scare,” he is not only incoherent but astonishingly ill-informed: To accuse someone of being a socialist is to criticize him for his political convictions, not their race...
...I struggle because I’m trying to reconcile this man’s wisdom against his sometimes mystifying decisions...
...Now the gathered tribes of the Democratic Party—hacks, Teamsters, hat ladies, New Mexicans, residents of those states most nearly resembling Canada, Jews of South Florida, dreadlocks, crewcuts, elderlies and goths, a cowboy or two, sons and daughters of interned JapaneseAmericans—had assembled on the plains of Denver to attempt to vanquish old Saruman McCain” (Michael Chabon, “Obama & the Conquest of Denver,” the New York Review of Books, October 9, 2008...
...You’ve Got to Be Kidding Hard-hitting political analysis from the “preeminent intellectual newspaper in English”: “The problem was not Obama...
...No, he didn’t...
...At the end of the first volume, after bitter struggle, Obama had claimed the presumptive nomination...
...Sure it would...
...It was, I considered (perhaps under the influence of the kind smile and exhortatory squeeze on the arm bestowed on me by Jimmy Carter, president of my darkest adolescence, as he passed me in the doorway of a LoDo Mexican restaurant), like the change that might occur between the first and second volumes of some spectacular science fiction fantasy epic...
...In it, Gilbert goes on at length about how she can’t get over the fact —we are not kidding about this— that her dad will vote for John McCain on November 4. Here’s Gilbert: So why can’t I leave it alone...
...Eat, Pray, Whine Elizabeth Gilbert, the bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love, had a memorable essay in Time magazine the other week...
...Good Lord, how much simpler it is to dismiss your political foes when you don’t know them personally...
...The activist son of the late Democratic icon, on the other hand, recently gave a reading of his latest book on Civil War hero and former slave Robert Smalls...
...One of the chaperones was not amused, saying, “I’m tired of people making these blanket generalizations...
...We had brought water to Arrakis...
...Indeed, not only is Lewis Diuguid ignorant...
...the problem was that at the instant when Hillary Clinton at last conceded, the nature of the campaign changed...
...No, they haven’t...
...I’ve become obsessed with my father’s vote, losing sleep over it, worrying about it so much that you’d swear this entire election hinged on one man’s choice...
...How do you know how a child processes that...
...My dad, after all, is not a sucker or a scoundrel or a zealot, but a deeply principled individual...
...I have not yet been asked for my vote by a candidate who represents the entirety of my convictions...
...Spinning Hearts and Minds Say what you will about President Bush reading “The Pet Goat” to a group of youngsters...
...The students, by the way, are in the fourth grade...
...At least he did not take advantage of his captive audience to throw in a reference to annoying liberals like Robert F. Kennedy Jr...
...Knowing my father as I do, I’m forced to acknowledge that his political views come to him from an honest and thoughtful place, as do all of his most cherished beliefs...
...It would certainly make me feel more comfortable if he surrendered...
...He’s a columnist for the Kansas City Star...
...Socialist” was never a code word for “black” in America, since the overwhelming number of socialists in the United States were (and are) white folks...
...and when I voted for Clinton a decade later, it was not without an exertion of casuistry about the distinction between supportable and admirable...
...Dubois—who not only was a self-proclaimed socialist but a member of the Communist party as well!—and Paul Robeson, whom Diuguid describes this way: “A famous singer, actor and political activist who in the 1930s became involved in national and international movements for better labor relations, peace and racial justice...
...They correctly answered Republican...
...Yet he’s gone and raised himself a deeply principled daughter who happens to see the world very differently...
...Politics should not . . .” (Leon Wieseltier, New Republic, November 5...
...Take note, readers of Lewis Diuguid’s Kansas City Star: Paul Robeson (1898-1976) was a famous singer, actor, and political activist who was also a dedicated, lifelong Stalinist who defended every Soviet outrage from mass starvation to the Moscow Trials to the invasion of Finland and the suppression of democratic revolts in East Berlin and Hungary...
...McCain and Palin have simply reached back in history to use an old code word for black,” claims Diuguid...
...J. Edgar Hoover . . . used the term liberally to describe African Americans who spent their lives fighting for equality...
...Sentences We Didn’t Finish ‘In the 1980s I envied my conservative friends who drew the curtain of the voting booth over an epiphany, whereas I groaned beneath my philosophical complexity when I voted for Reagan...
...The best part comes when Gilbert unintentionally likens herself to a guard at a Maoist reeducation camp: “I sometimes long to call my dad and beg him or scold him or force him to accept my worldview...
...defended his remark “since those children struck me as exceptionally bright and capable of making their own political determination” and would not be swayed by the pronouncements of a Kennedy...
...he is dishonest as well...
...And this frightens me...
...At which point the author could not resist to add, “You’re right...
...Barack Obama has actually long and very ugly historical roots...
...Of socialists, J. Edgar Hoover “used the term liberally” to describe American leftists of all races, creeds, sexes, and national origins—especially those, otherwise known as Communists, who exalted the Soviet Union at the expense of their own country...
...But RFK Jr...
...That is a little like saying that Osama bin Laden is a famous writer, broadcaster, and political activist who is involved in national and international movements for self-improvement and religious justice...
Vol. 14 • November 2008 • No. 8
