Sunday, January 09, 2011

Dallas was a mecca for hatred in 1963.....

Andrew Sullivan of the Daily Dish is usually on the money. He ended his reflections on yesterday's events in Arizona with this quote from William Manchester's 'Death of a President' - the first paragraph is thus:

"In that third year of the Kennedy Presidency a kind of fever lay over Dallas County. Mad things happened. Huge billboards screamed “Impeach Earl Warren.” Jewish stores were smeared with crude swastikas. Fanatical young matrons swayed in public to the chant, “Stevenson’s going to die–his heart will stop, stop, stop and he will burn, burn burn!” Radical Right polemics were distributed in public schools; Kennedy’s name was booed in classrooms; junior executives were required to attend radical seminars. Dallas had become the mecca for medicine-show evangelists of the National Indignation Convention, the Christian Crusaders, the Minutemen, the John Birch and Patrick Henry societies . . ."

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