Hello ducklings. The list of book reports I’d like to be writing now is long: The two Everest books, plus the US & genocide book and Matt Yglesias’ book… but lately I’ve been feeling more like reading than writing about reading. I’m enjoying the hell out of Nixonland, and can’t wait to get out of work so I can go home and read it.
But right now I’m stuck at work, so I’ll share a little snippet with you:
Amid it all, George Wallace preached defiance to the same symptoms as Nixon, with precisely the opposite remedy. Nixon appealed for quiet. Wallace said, “We need some meanness...”
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Even some Wallace aides were frightened. “Now let’s get serious a minute,” the president of a Polish-American club told Wallace’s right-hand man, Tom Turnipseed, arranging a rally outside Webster, Massachusetts. “When George Wallace is elected president, he’s going to round up all the niggers and shoot them, isn’t he?” When the aide replied, laughing, “We’re just worried about some agitators. We’re not going to shoot anybody,” his host responded, with dead seriousness, “Well, I don’t know whether I’m for him or not.”
Seems like there’s a lot of nervous laughter in this book, as politicians and their associates ponder the forces they’re trying to harness and ride to power…
More news later. I hope to get through a lot of pages this weekend!
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