If Republicans want to win this campaign, they don’t need to attack Kerry (although his handlers call anything said about him an attack)- all the GOP needs to do is inform. Say, or example, just letting the American people know where Kerry’s campaign slogan came from:
Kerry wrote the preface to a new collection of Hughes’s poems that will be published by Vintage this month, just in time for the Democratic National Convention. The paperback edition will feature nine Hughes poems “about freedom, brotherhood and the American dream.”
In May, Kerry invoked the first two lines of Hughes
Terry
Given Hughes iconic status among many fellow gay intellectuals, I wonder if this is some sort of indirect attempt by Kerry to show sympathy/empathy to gays, in part to counter his earlier remarks seeming to oppose gay marriage.
Lex
Nah, I’m thinkin’ John got it right, that this is the flip side of the ’84 Reagan campaign’s attempt to appropriate Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” without actually, you know, reading the lyrics.
Dean
Oliver’s argument founders on the reality that America has honored many who have been, er, less than enamored w/ her.
We have honored Langston Hughes, we have honored Paul Robeson, frex. At times we’ve honored Eugene Debs (who, ironically, would probably be pretty horrified not only at America in general today, but the Dems nominating a billionaire as its standard bearer). We’ve also named warships, highways, and (state) holidays after Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.
It is, in some ways, a tribute to our resilience as a nation that we can still pick up that which is best, even from those who wish us less than the best.
But it does us little good to fail to recognize that some of those out there that we’ve honored ultimately did not share the same views and vision as the rest of us.
DANEgerus
Quoting Engels should get the attention of the media… quoting poets that revere Marx as a campaign slogan in an American election should also…
Unless… [gasp]… the NewsMedia is biased?
RoguePlanet
I merely pointed out that the poem Kerry was using has been seized upon by Socialist groups for use as agitprop.
I missed where you pointed that out.
Dorian
Brilliant, by quoting Langston Hughes Kerry gets the black vote, the communist vote, the black communist vote, and the poet vote. In short, Kerry wins the election.
Angelike
John — did you actually just compare socialists with neo-nazis?
HH
It’s getting pretty tiresome for Oliver to constantly rerun his David Brock talking points… Yoo-hoo… Time to update them! Kerry has given Hughes the full-on embrace saying he is a major inspiration to his presidential campaign. And the stuff about the post office honoring him is a red herring.
Now once and for all is the entire mention of Langston Hughes by the “Bushies” which is seen somehow as comparable to making Hughes the friggin’ mascot of the Kerry campaign: “We can all enjoy the works of writers like Paul Laurence Dunbar, James Weldon Johnson, Zora Neale Hurston, and Langston Hughes.” This was for African American History… this is nothing more than an acknowledgement that Hughes is a successful African American writer.
Dean
HH:
Don’t be a fool. The GOP mentioning an ad that compares Bush to Hitler means the GOP is comparing Bush to Hitler.
The GOP mentioning an author means that they are endorsing an author.
Get yer talking points straight!
ape
oh no! commies! reds under the bed! if ‘letting the american people know’ where this came from will ‘win this campaign’, then the american people are the most extraordinary bunch of lunatics.
what an astonishingly facile smear. i guess it’s more evidence for Coulter & the creationists that everyone hates america. but they know who to vote for.
Russell Wardlow
Thanks, Ape. That’s very helpful.
Idiot.
Josh Martin
I didn’t hear Cole do it, but I’ll compare Communists to Nazis thusly – Communists are worse.
bg
Ah, who gives a shit? Kerry wants to use it, let him use it. I happen to like it.
When you start dividing up poets, movies and superbowl quarterbacks by political ideology, it’s time to stop enjoying poetry, movies and football.
Terry
Irrespective of his Stalinist sympathies, he did have a way with unusual verse and rhymes, i.e.:
“Motto”
I stay cool, and dig all jive,
That’s the way I stay alive.
My motto, as I live and learn, is
Dig and be dug, in return.
Ricky
OJ was a great football player.
OJ is a murderer.
I guess Oliver thinks I’m trying to have it both ways.
bg
I’m pretty sure, whether you’re sympathetic to the argument or not, that Oliver’s saying: Hey, Laura Bush likes Hughes too! I never heard you guys complaing about him then! You’re just giving Kerry a hard time about it because he’s a Dem. or something like that.
triticale
I’d like to point out, following a tangent begun above, that some of the honor given Robert E. Lee is for his accomplishments serving with the U.S. Army. He served both gallantly and brilliantly in the Mexican War. St. Louis and the entire Mississippi River valley still benefit from his management of the engineering work there, and the Army Corps of Engineers still credits him for this.
Dean
Triticale:
Yes, and by the same lights, Langston Hughes wrote some very nice poems and Paul Robeson gave some awesome performances. It’s one thing to say, “Nice job,” and something else entirely to say, FROM THE SAME POEM, I wanna be like you.
I’ve not been aboard the Lee, but I have to wonder: Did the portrait aboard ship of the man show him in his younger days, ya think? Or his older (Confederate) days?
Andrew J. Lazarus
Let America be America was one of Jackie Kennedy Onassis’s favorite poems. Democratic treachery goes way ack. (sneer)