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Sat 10 Dec, 2005 03:49 pm
At least CBS reports this (during halftime of a college hoops game, oddly enough). Those who remember him either admired him or hated him, I'm guessing. Count me in the first camp--he was the kind of politician that motivated kids to get off their butts and get active...
Sad news indeed. Another of the old guard has died and I don't see any of his caliber out there in Democrat land.
He was one of a kind. I don't see anybody taking his place.
In an interview a month before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, McCarthy compared the Bush administration with the characters in the William Golding novel "Lord of the Flies," in which a group of boys stranded on an island turn to savagery.
"The bullies are running it," McCarthy said. "Bush is bullying everything."
McCarthy was an advocate for a third-party movement, arguing there was no real difference between Republicans and Democrats.
I'd forgotten that Edgar. Lord of the Flies is a perfect description of those arrogant man-boys who know no boundaries.
Never was a "Clean Gene" fan ... but I acknowledge he was true to his principles and a good man. The world is diminished by his loss.
Sad, really, that a stand-up comic's death on the same day gets the media attention. McCarthy deserved better than to have finished an also-died.
I worked for his presidential campaign in Boston. I was quite young and McCarthy seemed like a breath of fresh air. R.I.P.
Apparently, I attend to political figures only where they are marked by either great genius (Pierre Trudeau) or great threat to liberty (Nixon, Bush). So I missed much of Eugene, I'm afraid. My familiarity now is mainly via Hunter Thompson's letters and in those, McCarthy looks very good.
I leaned toward Bobby Kennedy for president, but also admired and respected McCarthy. It was not until after he demonstrated LBJ's weakness that Kennedy made very much noise.
Ahhh, my first and last car bumper sticker was a McCarthy one.
I mourn both McCarthy and Prior.
I'm still mourning the loss of Lenny Bruce.
Isn't suicide easy in the night
Tie the knot tight
I recall where I was when I heard that LBJ had withdrawn from the race in 1968: at a film on campus. Someone interrupted the movie to tell us the news; we suspected it was a joke--it was hard to believe that LBJ would give up.
And that was almost entirely due to McCarthy. Amazing.
Can't say where I was when LBJ threw in the towel. I was mostly unavoidably drunk during those years. As the saying goes, if you remember the '60s -- you weren't there.
Some give McCarthy credit for helping shorten the war, Actually, what he did was end LBJ's presidency. LBJ left office with the bombing paused in what seemed an expectation that the next president would negotiate troop withdrawal. But, Nixon revved it up again and dragged it on a good deal longer, ignoring LBJ and McCarthy and their friends.
In all fairness, though, edgar, it was actually Nixon (and Kissinger, of course) who finally did end the war. I hated Tricky Dick while he was in office. But as I look back on his presidency now, he accomplished some pretty good things. Too bad he was also a felon.
He ended it only after needlessly expanding and prolonging it and realizing he could not win. I give him credit for nothing good.
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