There are all kinds of “little” issues that have no direct effect on the election, but are interesting footnotes in this most exciting time in American politics.
Karen Stabiner presented one of these footnotes on The Huffpo yesterday. I certainly learned a few new things from this blog and decided to post the relevant paragraphs:
Israel Baline is known to most of us as Irving Berlin, and he wrote “God Bless America” in 1918. He wrote it after he got to New York from Russia; his family fled the pogroms in 1893 and came to the land of the free, the home of the brave. He was so happy with his new home that he wrote his anthem, which always struck me as a nice addition to the patriotic repertoire – no bombs bursting in air, just mountains and prairies and oceans white with foam. And no stratospheric high notes that always make the listener nervous – will he make it? will her voice crack? – and make singing along almost impossible. This was people’s patriotism, easy to memorize, easy to sing. It’s a unifying song.
Which brings us to Berlin’s contemporary, Westbrook Pegler, the anonymous guy Sarah Palin quoted so approvingly in her acceptance speech, because he once wrote a column about the good people we grow in small towns. He was a famous conservative newspaper columnist (think Rush Limbaugh in t
he newsprint age), who wrote lots of other things, too, things so offensive that I cannot bring myself to type them out on this keyboard, including evil caricatures of the Israel Balines of this country. He didn’t much care for Jews, but they were in good company: He didn’t much care for Democrats, either, and he publicly hoped for the assassination of Robert Kennedy. One can only wonder – if Pegler were alive today, would he join in when we sing “God Bless America” in a ballpark, or would he mutter nasty asides about the religious beliefs of its esteemed composer?
We have a vice-presidential candidate who quoted an anti-Semite in her nomination acceptance speech. Question #5: Was she aware, in which case we can all stay up nights worrying about the scope of her personal intolerance? Or was she oblivious, in which case, there are all sorts of other reasons not to get a good night’s sleep.
Mike Scully, of Bush speech-writing fame helped craft Palin’s speech. The “lipstick on a bulldog” comment was likely the only original Palin thought. Still, it raises an eyebrow. Accordint to Wikipedia:
Following the Palin acceptance speech New York Times columnist Frank Rich elucidated the political significance of quoting Pegler. Mr. Rich noted that “Pegler was a rabid Joe McCarthyite who loathed F.D.R. and Ike and tirelessly advanced the theory that American Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe (“geese”, he called them) were all likely Communists.”[7] He pointed out that Palin’s use of a quote from “once powerful right-wing Hearst columnist Westbrook Pegler” was intended to send a subtle but unmistakable signal to far right wing supporters.
How wonderful. The Republican ticket is offering more of the Bush administration peppered with racism. How many times are Republican voters going to say, “Well…That’s not good and I don’t agree with that, but I’m still voting for McCain.”?? This is one of those moments where common sense is knocking and ain’t nobody home…
right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration.
POLITICAL BLIP 