WASHINGTON – ‘Tis the time of award-giving in the great Republic.
Soon the Pulitzer Prizes will be awarded, always at the risk of
raising to eminence a plagiarist or literary fabricator. The
Oscars have already been awarded, in their case at the risk of
raising to eminence an arrant fool or likely felon. Now it again
falls to me to announce the recommendation of the highly
secretive J. Gordon Coogler Award for the Worst Book of the Year.
This year the Coogler Committee has recommended True
Compass, the autobiography of Edward M. Kennedy, which is
for me problematic. Senator Kennedy passed away on August 25,
2009.
I always enjoy indulging in a bit of raillery at the
expense of the year’s Coogler Laureate (you will forgive me). In
the case of the recently deceased, raillery would not be in good
taste. One does not make fun of the dead. In the case of Senator
Kennedy I am, at least, assured that one of the long-standing
traditions of the J. Gordon Coogler Award will remain intact. As
in years gone by, this year’s Coogler Laureate will not make an
appearance at the award ceremony. Actually, I considered asking
the Coogler Committee to recommend another author so that I might
have a few laughs at our Laureate’s expense. However, after
reading True Compass I decided that it deserved
recognition, though not on the usual grounds. Neither philistine
nor stupid, True Compass is actually a charmingly
written book, which is in keeping with the Kennedy family’s
tradition of employing fine ghostwriters. JFK did it with
Profiles in Courage and come to think of it won a
Pulitzer for Ted Sorensen’s work.
At any rate this book is, indeed, charming and conveys the
sense that “Teddy,” as he is called, lived a hearty and happy
life. Moreover, he expresses a semblance of regret for the misery
he caused some who crossed his path. What I have decided earns
him his Coogler is that this book showcases at least two of the
evils haunting American politics today: the poisonous
partisanship that marks the Supreme Court nomination process, and
the commonplace acceptance of arrant lies about conservatives,
particularly about Ronald Reagan.
For instance, Kennedy passes on the lie that Reagan and
presumably all conservatives are racial bigots because of what
Kennedy calls “his [Reagan’s] complacency and even insensitivity
regarding civil rights.” The evidence marshaled is Kennedy’s
misleading claim that Reagan “opposed the principles of the
Voting Rights Act….” There were actually two civil rights acts
at the time, one in 1964 and the one Kennedy refers to of 1965.
There were perfectly legitimate constitutional grounds for
opposing them, and another very practical and even prudent reason
cited by both liberal and conservative believers in integration
and civil rights, namely, the looming use of quotas and
affirmative action.
Both became divisive issues, damaging race relations almost
immediately after passage of the 1965 act. No less a liberal than
Senator Hubert Humphrey saw it all coming during the debate on
the 1964 act, when he expressed his opposition to quotas
explaining, “Do you want a society that is nothing but an endless
power struggle among organized groups? Do you want a society
where there is no place for the individual? I don’t.”
Predictably, the rancor has gone on for decades, delaying the
arrival of Rev. Martin Luther King’s colorblind society. In fact,
for over four decades Liberals have treated this policy
disagreement as a manifestation of racial bigotry among
conservatives. In so doing they have kept racial enmity alive
and, as Kennedy manifests in his book, exploited it.
Actually the liberals’ contempt for conservatives is more
intense today than during the debates over the civil rights acts.
Kennedy goes so far as to accuse Reagan of beginning his 1980
presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, because, in
Kennedy’s eyes, it was “the site of one of the most heinous
racial crimes of the twentieth century….” In 1964 three civil
rights workers were murdered there, one of the many barbarities
committed against such brave activists throughout the long
struggle for civil rights. No historian has found any evidence
that Reagan campaigned there out of racially invidious motives,
and one, Steven Hayward, has discovered that Reagan was furious
upon discovering the town’s dark past. To allege that Reagan
would exploit murder is shameless but an indication of liberal
contempt for conservatives.
Equally shameless and contemptuous was Kennedy’s treatment
of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork in a speech that Kennedy
proudly quotes, despite the obvious fact that it marks the
beginning of the savagery we now see at Senate Supreme Court
hearings, particularly when a conservative is being grilled.
“Robert Bork’s America,” our Coogler Laureate intoned beginning a
perfect concatenation of lies, “is a land in which women would be
forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated
lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in
midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about
evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of
government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on
the fingers of millions of citizens….” Enough!
Return to his line about evolution. From the evidence of
Senator Kennedy’s book it appears that he experienced no
evolution whatsoever throughout his entire public life. In fact,
it appears that emotionally he experienced no evolution from the
era of the cave man.
