Kerry's Little Red Bookshelf
RYSKIND, ALLAN H.
Kerry's Little Red Bookshelf What his literary icons have in common. BY ALLAN H. RYSKIND JOHN KERRY has written the introduction to L^t America Be America Again, a new but very slim selection of...
...In the preface, Kerry insists he was "drawn to incorporate the words" of the title—taken from a poem Hughes wrote in the 1930s— into his presidential run because America is "always in the process of becoming...
...Here's another...
...Only then did Trumbo become convinced that Hitler should be resisted...
...and John McClel-lan (D.-Ark...
...At the end of his Senate speech, Kerry said he "would like to share with my colleagues something that Dalton Trumbo wrote in a book called Johnny Got His Gun," a 1939 novel graphically depicting the horrors of war through the protagonist, a completely paralyzed World War I victim...
...Long after serving time in jail in the early 1950s for refusing to respond to the question, Trumbo would admit that he had joined the party in 1943, informing his biographer Bruce Cook that his views were such that he "might as well have been a Communist ten years earlier...
...Good Morning, Revolution" hails the "Socialist Soviet Republic" and ends with these stirring words: "Let's Go, Revolution...
...Hughes's poem describes America as a place where the "mighty crush the weak" and "millions," yes millions, are "shot down when we strike...
...On January 11, 1991, Kerry leaned on another literary icon of the far left—once a full-fledged Communist party member—in opposing the congressional resolution giving George H.W...
...For reasons only Kerry can explain, the senator deliberately chose the writings of a well-known Hollywood Red to make the case against the Gulf War...
...During the campaign, Kerry has also been frequently heard strumming on his guitar Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land," which, in its original version in 1940, concluded by chiding America for letting people go hungry...
...Trumbo acknowledged that he "reaffiliated" with the party in 1954, apparently having enjoyed the experience so much the first time around...
...Kerry's choice of campaign poet laureate is curious...
...Bush the authority to remove Saddam Hussein from Kuwait...
...Kerry has shown a penchant for quoting radical folk heroes to prove a point, and not just during this campaign...
...Virtually all his adult life, as Ed Cray notes in his favorable biography, Guthrie was a "fellow traveler" who followed the party line quite scrupulously...
...Still, it's disconcerting, to say the least, in a potential commander in chief...
...Please, Noah begged, "do not incorporate the phrase, 'Let America Be America Again' into your acceptance speech this Thursday...
...He attacked FDR for aiding England during the Hitler-Stalin pact, then switched as soon as Hitler invaded the Soviet Union...
...in 1953 that he was no longer enthralled by Moscow, but he always remained a man of the left...
...U.S.A.," published in the April 2, 1934, Daily Worker, the official organ of the Communist party...
...Fellow radical and friend Pete Seeger insisted that Woody and he "read the Daily Worker and took it as our main guideline in what our politics should be...
...to make it Soviet...
...The Daily Worker, the CP's flagship publication, began serializing Trumbo's novel in March 1940 when Hitler was just beginning the process of swallowing Western Europe...
...Kerry, a Yale graduate who views himself as especially literate, should know the history of Johnny, but most readers may not...
...Hughes's and Guthrie's musings were integral to Kerry's pre-Demo-cratic convention campaign, but Kerry omitted mention of them or their writings in his acceptance speech...
...He informed senators Joe McCarthy (R.-Wis...
...BY ALLAN H. RYSKIND JOHN KERRY has written the introduction to L^t America Be America Again, a new but very slim selection of verse by the famous black poet Langston Hughes...
...Like all true Stalinists, however, he would change his tune after Germany invaded his beloved Soviet Union in June 1941...
...By nicer place, he meant a Communist place...
...The first two lines give us more than a hint of his leanings: "Put one more S in the U.S.A...
...Among my personal favorites along these lines: "One More 'S' in the Allan H. Ryskind is editor-at-large of Human Events and has written extensively on communism in Hollywood...
...In the 1930s and 40s, Hughes was, by his own admission, deeply pro-Soviet...
...That's one way of looking at it...
...Cray says Woody "followed the party line even to the extent of endorsing Communist North Korea's invasion of autocratic South Korea...
...John Kerry's choice to feature Trumbo in a key speech—like his taste for literary and artistic fellow travelers generally—may not be curious, given the senator's longstanding pattern of enthusiasm for leftist revolutionary types, from Daniel Ortega to Jean-Bertrand Aristide...
...The New York Times is onto this...
...To make Hitler's task easier, Stalin, a chum of the Nazi leader since the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939, directed each Communist party in the West to launch a unilateral disarmament campaign in the country it inhabited...
...The Washington Post can't be far behind...
...Saluting Moscow, the American CP battled desperately to stop the United States from rearming and/or assisting any nation or group resisting Hitler's conquering armies...
...Timothy Noah complained in a July 26 posting that Kerry, by constantly quoting Hughes, was unfortunately "sanitiz[ing] a Stalinist...
...America is also full of "rape and rot of graft and stealth, and lies...
...He visited Moscow in the 30s, lived there for a time, and loved it...
...Kerry has a special affinity for left-wing literary icons, with Hughes the most conspicuous...
...He wrote for the People's World and the Daily Worker, both Communist party publications...
...A prominent screenwriter, Trumbo was one of the famous Hollywood Ten, those writers, directors, and producers who appeared in 1947 before the House Committee on Un-American Activities and refused to say whether they were, or had ever been, members of the Communist party...
...After bashing America silly, the poet says he will still strive to make this nation a nicer place...
...Trumbo would suggest in another novel during the pact period that FDR was committing "treason" and even "black treason" for sending planes and guns to help England...
...Hughes paid homage to the Soviet Union, Stalin, and Lenin during World War II and even afterwards...
...In "Goodbye Christ," he yearns for Christ to move on and make way for a "real guy named Marx Communist Lenin Peasant Stalin Worker ME—I said ME...
...Trumbo's near pacifist message in Johnny fit neatly into Stalin's strategy...
...A convincing reason: the heartfelt warning to Kerry by his well-wishers at Slate, the online liberal publication...
Vol. 9 • September 2004 • No. 48
