Word: genes
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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COMPARED to this summer's gala bash at Fenway Park, the McCarthy rally at the Garden last Friday was pretty tame stuff. Naturally there were plenty of good reasons for all the elbow room and the lack of ecstasy over the predictable sloganeering. Gene has been swamped at Chicago, Nixon, the sabre-rattling cop, was heading into the homestretch with a big lead, the Vietnam war seemed ready to take an astonishingly civilized turn, and the Garden in the fall isn't Fenway in midsummer...
Untimely circumstances aside, there was another good reason for the mildness of the affair. A primary issue Kennedy, McCarthy, and McGovern had raised--whether sane, attractive men would run the federal show--had been settled for the time being. Fifteen minutes of Gene was no longer Heaven--especially since it followed interminable harangues by the likes of Richard Goodwin, Shirley MacLaine, and Michael Schwartz. Paul O'Dwyer's charming brogue and John Gilligan's verbal restraint were a bit more encouraging, though the feeling lurked that both were probable losers come November...
...Anyway, Gene McCarthy, when he finally came to the podium, made up for the rest of the rally. His trips to the Riviera and the World Series seemed to have done great things for him. His face was finally ruddy, his hair had a luminous silver finish, and his tailor had equipped him with an almost psychedelic baby blue shirt. Finally, the Democrats had a match for Ronald Reagan--as if it matters...
...more sparing of other Democrats. He writes of Senator George McGovern: "A Christian sweetness came off him like a psychic aroma-he was a fine and pleasant candidate but for that sweetness. It was excessive. Not artificial, but excessive, as the smell of honeysuckle can be excessive." He describes Gene McCarthy's followers: "Their common denominator seemed to be in some blank area of the soul, a species of disinfected idealism which gave one the impression among them of living in a lobotomized ward of Upper Utopia...
...have the vitality needed to act. But they will not have the strength for effective action unless they are united. They must learn the lesson that their elders did not learn. They must realize that a Columbia student clubbed is a Harvard student downed; that a Clean-for-Gene girl maced is a Cliffie gassed; and that a Mexisan student shot is a student dead everywhere tomorrow--unless all student voices are heard in solidarity against such acts of repression and horror. It is not enough today to have the SDS demonstrate in front of the Mexican consulate. Every campus...