Mad Dogs and Congressmen

There is something Orwellian about the situation in Congress. Boehner and his fellow GOP leaders no longer seem able to control their mad dogs, as they chomp at everything in sight. As I noted before, the House Tea Party caucus only numbers 47 persons, yet because of it "ideological purity" has apparently intimidated the GOP. This was their chance to rein in their dogs, but instead the Teabaggers are running wild, pulling the party in all sorts of directions it doesn't want to go.

I'm reminded of "Animal Farm," where the pigs used the dogs to keep all the other farm animals in line. In this case the pigs are the conservative corporate interests which are using the Tea Party to keep the GOP in line. Odd, considering the Tea Party was supposed to be a "grass roots" movement with no leaders and advocated a decentralized government. Hmmm, wasn't that what Communism was originally about?

One can almost imagine Ron Paul as "Snowball," the Trotskyite in the movement, whose books originally inspired the more Libertarian-minded Tea Partiers. But, the movement was very quickly hijacked by the "Birthers," who bombarded the media with their assault on Obama's legitimacy as President. In their addled minds, Obama is Farmer Jones.

The Tea Party took the 2010 midterm Republican turnover in the House as a mandate and have been driving their anti-Obama agenda ever since. Ron Paul didn't stick around, leaving it up to his son (who won a Senate seat from Kentucky) to carry his mantle, while he devotes himself to television with his own channel. However, his message is lost in the din the Tea Party has created in Congress.

2012 didn't prove to be the big year the Tea Party imagined. They failed to take over the GOP, finding themselves with a very objectionable Mitt Romney as nominee, who ultimately lost to Obama. They also lost seats in the House and their only major victory was Ted Cruz winning a virtually uncontested Senate seat from Texas. They had to make due with what they had, and Ted has gladly taken the bone and run with it, mounting an epic faux filibister in the Senate over the spending bill.

Boehner, McConnell and the rest of the GOP hierarchy have scrambled to maintain hold of the party, finding themselves making dreaded concessions to the Farmers (Democrats) while still holding a defiant position to appease the Tea Party. But, more and more, it seems the Tea Party dogs no longer see themselves as part of the GOP, but a third force with a fierce bite, determined to dismantle government, and in particular "Obamacare," anyway they can.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

The Searchers

You are invited to join us in a discussion of The Searchers , a new book on John Ford's boldest Western, which cast John Wayne against type as the vengeful Ethan Edwards who spends eight years tracking down a notorious Comanche warrior, who had killed his cousins and abducted a 9 year old girl. The film has had its fair share of detractors as well as fans over the years, but is consistently ranked in most critics' Top Ten Greatest Films . Glenn Frankel examines the origins of the story as well as the film itself, breaking his book down into four parts. The first two parts deal with Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah, perhaps the most famous of the 19th century abduction stories. The short third part focuses on the author of the novel, Alan Le May, and how he came to write The Searchers. The final part is about Pappy and the Duke and the making of the film. Frankel noted that Le May researched 60+ abduction stories, fusing them together into a nar...

Dispatches from Vilnius

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