by Judy Jones
The peripatetic Argentine revolutionary who became a model of radical style and, along with Huey Newton, one of the seminal dorm posters of the Sixties. Although he did have a catchy nickname (it translates, roughly, as “Hey, you”) and a way with a beret, the main points to remember are that he was the number two man, chief ideologue, and resident purist of the Cuban revolution, and that he wrote the book on guerrilla warfare. He also showed all the kids back in Great Neck that a nice middle-class boy from Buenos Aires, with a medical degree, no less, could make good defending the downtrodden in the jungles of the Third World. His split with Fidel over the latter’s cop-out to Soviet-style materialism (Che was holding out for the purity of Chinese Marxism) didn’t hurt his reputation, either; nor did going underground for a couple of years, during which, it later turned out, he was in all the right places—North Vietnam, the Congo, various Latin American hot spots. Unfortunately, his revolutionary theories were a little half-baked, and when he tried to implement them down in Bolivia, he ran smack into the Bolivian army—a colonel of which summarily executed him, thereby creating an instant martyr. HUNTER S. THOMPSON (1939-2005)
The one journalist you could trust back when you were a sophomore at the University of Colorado. A sportswriter by training and temperament (he was Raoul Duke in Rolling Stone magazine, although you may know him better as Uncle Duke in Doonesbury), Hunter, as we all called him, became a media star by inventing “gonzo journalism,” a reportorial style that was one step beyond New Journalism and two steps over the edge of the pool. Gonzo journalism revolved around drugs, violence, and the patent impossibility of Hunter’s ever meeting his deadlines, given the condition he was in. It assumed that all global events were engineered to make you laugh, make you famous, or kill you. For the record, Hunter really did fear and loathe Richard Nixon, with whom he shared the rampant paranoia of the day; once he’d finished cataloguing the various controlled substances he’d supposedly ingested to ease the pain of the 1972 presidential campaign, he was a shoo-in as the Walter Cronkite of the Haight-Ashbury set. By the end of the decade, however, the joyride was over. Dr. Gonzo, arriving in Saigon to cover the evacuation, learned that he’d just lost his job as top gonzo journalist and with it his medical insurance. Failing to convince the North Vietnamese that he’d be a major asset to their cause, he filed his expenses and caught the next plane home. It wasn’t long after that that college kids started thinking that maybe there was life outside Hunter’s hotel room; worse, history rounded a bend and they discovered John Belushi. For over a decade it was hard to think about Hunter at all, much less care what he might be freaking out over—or on—this week. But he turned out to be smarter or luckier than his copy had led us to believe; he resurfaced in the early Nineties, along with bell-bottoms and platform shoes, as the subject of three, count ’em, three, biographies, which, he pointed out, was more than Faulkner had had during his lifetime. True, he was often portrayed as a drug-addled shell, cut off from the rest of the world and mired in the past (or, as he once referred to himself, “an elderly dope fiend living out in the wilderness”). And he certainly didn’t appear to be enjoying his golden years; even his voluntary exile in a small Colorado town was disrupted by baby boomers—the very people Hunter referred to as the “Generation of Swine”—who invaded nearby Aspen, building million-dollar homes and complaining bitterly about Dr. Gonzo’s tendency to shoot firearms and set off explosives while under the influence, which he was at least daily. But when Thompson died in 2005, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, an awful lot of people seemed to take the loss personally. Loyal supporters, including many high-profile writers and journalists, mourned the passing of an icon and, with it, a healthy sense of outrage over the hypocrisies of American life. WILHELM REICH (1897-1957)
Brilliant but dumb, if you know what we mean, and certainly, by the end, not playing with a full deck. His early Marxist-Freudian notions made some sense, such as the idea that you can’t revolutionize politics without revolutionizing the people who make them, or that thinking about yourself constantly can make you neurotic. And we’ll lay dollars to doughnuts trauma really does eventually show up as tight muscles and shallow breathing, although, frankly, his emphasis on the regenerative powers of the orgasm seemed a little simple-minded even at the time. But it wasn’t until his discovery of orgone energy—the life force which he found to be bluish green in color—that some of us got up and moved to the other end of the bus. Before you could say “deadly orgone energy,” Reich was babbling about cosmic orgone engineers—“CORE men”— from other planets and comparing himself to such historic martyrs as Jesus, Socrates, Nietzsche, and Woodrow Wilson (that “great, warm person”). He died in a federal penitentiary in 1957, having been hounded for years by the FBI and convicted, finally, of transporting empty orgone boxes across state lines. GEORGE IVANOVITCH GURDJIEFF (1874-1949)
The Paul Bunyan of mystics, Gurdjieff spent twenty years pursuing “truth” through the wilds of Asia and North Africa, crossing the Gobi on stilts, navigating the River Kabul on a raft, clambering blindfolded through vertiginous mountain passes, chatting up dervishes and seers, unearthing a map of “pre-sand” Egypt, digging through ruins, hanging out in a secret monastery, and soaking up ancient wisdom and esoteric knowledge. If you’re wondering what he learned, we suggest you do the same, as Gurdjieff certainly isn’t going to tell you: His summa, All and Everything, is 1,266 pages in search of an editor. You could try wading through the explications of P. D. Ouspensky, the Russian mathematician who was Gurdjieff’s top disciple for a while, remembering, however, that Gurdjieff thought Ouspensky was an ass for trying to explicate him. Never mind. Just ask yourself, “Would I really buy spiritual guidance from a man who once raised cash by dyeing sparrows yellow and selling them as canaries?” If your answer is no, you probably would have missed the point anyway.
Family Feud
The symbology (donkey and elephant, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Strom Thurmond) seems carved in stone and the structure (wards and precincts, national committees and electoral colleges) as intrinsically American as a BLT. Imagine your surprise, then, when we remind you of something you learned for the first time back in fifth grade, namely, that this nation of ours, purple mountain majesties and all, began its life without any political parties whatsoever. George Washington—whose election in 1788 had been unanimous and unopposed, and who at one point found himself being addressed as “Your Highness the President”—was above even thinking in terms of party loyalty. The rest of the Founding Fathers considered “factions,” as they put it, straightening their periwigs, to be unscrupulous gangs hell-bent on picking the public pocket. James Madison, for instance, while an old hand at lining up votes and establishing majorities on specific issues, assumed that those majorities would (and should) fall away once the issue in question had been resolved.
But then there was Alexander Hamilton, who, having managed to dictate foreign policy to Washington and domestic policy to Congress for the better part of two administrations, finally gave Madison and Jefferson no choice but to take action against him. Hamilton was a Northerner, a federalist (as opposed to a state’s rightser), an industrialist, a venture capitalist, and a power broker. Jefferson you know about: Southerner, agrarian, progressive, and all-around Renaissance man. Thus began the power struggle that would result, by 1796, in the formation of two rival parties—Hamilton’s Federalists and Jefferson’s Democratic Republicans, ancestors of our Republicans and Democrats, respectively.
The blow-by-blow (including how Jefferson bested Hamilton and what the difference between Jeffersonian and Jacksonian democracy is) we’ll save for another time. In the meantime, take a look at this chart for the big picture:
Note that for almost two hundred years the same two parties, variously named, have been lined up against each other; third parties—Teddy Roosevelt’s Bull Moose, Robert LaFollette’s Progressive Action, Strom Thurmond’s Dixiecrats, and, more recently, George Wallace’s American Independence�
��while a godsend for political commentators trying to fill column inches, have had little success with the electorate. (By contrast, H. Ross Perot had surprising success in the 1992 presidential election, but don’t get too excited: Perot’s United We Stand America was technically not a political party at all, just a not-for-profit “civic league.”) Nor is this a country where we think much of, or where most of us could define, coalition as a political form.
As to how you can distinguish Republicans from Democrats today, we’ll content ourselves with quoting from a letter from a friend: “Republicans hire exterminators to kill their bugs; Democrats step on them…. Democrats buy most of the books that have been banned somewhere; Republicans form censorship committees and read the books as a group…. Democrats eat the fish they catch; Republicans hang theirs on the wall…. Republicans tend to keep their shades drawn, although there is seldom any reason why they should; Democrats ought to and don’t.”
Back to you, George.
American Mischief
THE TWEED RING: The gang of crooked politicians that ran New York City like a private kingdom throughout the mid-1800s. Led by William Marcy “Boss” Tweed and operating through Tammany, New York’s powerful Democratic political machine, these boys were the stuff old gangster movies are made of. Although the “boss” system was widespread in those days and political machines were always, by their very nature, corrupt (essentially, they provided politicians with votes in return for favors), none could match the Tweed Ring for sheer political clout and uninhibited criminality. During its reign, the group bilked the city out of at least $30 million (a conservative estimate); Tweed himself got $40,000 in stock as a bribe for getting the Brooklyn Bridge project approved and a lot more for manipulating the sale of the land that is now Central Park. He also got himself elected to the state senate. The ring was finally broken in the 1870s through the dogged efforts of the New York Times, Harpers Weekly cartoonist Thomas Nast (whose caricatures helped demolish Tweed’s gangster-with-a-heart-of-gold public image), and Samuel Tilden, a Democratic reformer with his eye on the presidency. Tweed died in prison; though his name is now synonymous with political corruption, some commentators point out that without crooks like him, there never would have been enough incentive to get this country built.
CREDIT MOBILIER: One of the worst pre-Enron financial scandals on record, this tacky affair took place during the notoriously incompetent presidency of Ulysses S. Grant and revolved around the building of the Union Pacific Railroad. Its most visible villain was Oakes Ames, a director of the railroad and a member of the House of Representatives. When Congress agreed to pick up the tab for building the Union Pacific, Ames, who knew the job could be done for much less than the amount granted, got together with some other stockholders to form the Crédit Mobilier, a dummy construction corporation. They used the company to divert excess funds into their pockets. By the time the project was completed in 1869, it was heavily in debt and Ames and his friends had skimmed about $23 million in profits. To be on the safe side, Ames passed out Crédit Mobilier stock to some of his favorite congressmen. Then, in one of those priceless moves that make history, he wrote a letter to a friend telling him he’d distributed the stock “where it would do the most good” and listing the names of the lucky recipients. Naturally, the newspapers got hold of the letter, and you can guess the rest. Note, however, that although the list implicated officials as high up as the vice president, none was ever prosecuted. In fact, some historians now wonder what the big fuss was about. After all, they say, what’s a few million dollars in the nation’s history? They got the job done, didn’t they? Yes, but on the other hand, who rides the Union Pacific anymore?
TEAPOT DOME: An oil scandal that took place during the administration of Warren G. Harding, generally acknowledged to have been one of the most worthless presidents ever. Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall persuaded Harding to give him control of the U.S. naval oil reserves at Elk Hill, California, and Teapot Dome, Wyoming. A year later, Fall secretly leased the reserves to the owners of two private oil companies, one in exchange for a personal “loan” of $100,000, the other for $85,000 cash, some shares of stock, and a herd of cattle. It wasn’t long before the secret leaked and everybody was up before a Senate investigating committee. In yet another remarkable verdict, all three men were acquitted, although Fall was later tried on lesser charges and became the first cabinet member ever to go to prison. Meanwhile, the public was outraged that the Senate had prosecuted at all; this was, as you’ll recall, the Roaring Twenties, when everyone was busy doing the Charleston or making shady deals themselves. Even the New York newspapers accused the Senate of character assassination, mudslinging, and generally acting in poor taste.
THE SACCO-VANZETTI CASE: People still seem to take this one personally. Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were Italian immigrants accused of murdering two people during an armed robbery in Massachusetts in 1920. The trial, which took place in the wake of the wave of national hysteria known as the “Red Scare,” was a joke; the public was paranoid about immigrants and the presiding judge made it clear that he knew what to expect from people who talked funny To make matters worse, Sacco and Vanzetti were avowed anarchists who both owned guns. Although there was no hard evidence against them, they were convicted and sentenced to death. The case became an international cause célèbre, and people like Felix Frankfurter, John Dos Passos, and Edna St. Vincent Mil-lay spent years pressing for a retrial. When Sacco and Vanzetti were finally electrocuted in 1927, everyone was convinced that the whole liberal cause had collapsed. In the end, liberalism didn’t die, of course, and Sacco and Vanzetti became martyrs, with poems and plays written about them. Unfortunately, modern ballistics tests conducted in 1961 seemed to prove conclusively that the fatal bullet used in the robbery did indeed come from Sacco’s gun. Never mind, it still looks like Vanzetti might have been innocent.
THE PUMPKIN PAPERS: A misnomer, referring to the Alger Hiss case. It is essentially another story of Red-baiting and questionable goings-on in the courtroom, but nobody feels all that bad about this one; they just love to argue about it. In 1948 Alger Hiss, a former high official in the State Department, was accused by Whittaker Chambers, a senior editor at Time magazine and a former spy, of helping him deliver secret information to the Russians. Nobody believed Chambers until Richard Nixon, then an ambitious young lawyer out to make a name for himself, took on his case. Soon afterward, Chambers suddenly produced five rolls of incriminating microfilm (not “papers” at all) that he claimed to have hidden inside a pumpkin on his Maryland farm. These, along with an old typewriter supposedly belonging to Hiss, were the famous props on which the case against him rested. Nixon pushed hard, and the government bent the law in order to try Hiss after the statute of limitations on the alleged crime had run out. He was convicted and served almost four years in jail; Nixon’s fortunes were—or seemed to be—made. The case just won’t die, however; new evidence and new theories keep popping up like ghosts in an Edgar Allan Poe story. The most recent appeared in October 1992, when a Russian general named Volkogonov, chairman of Russia’s military-intelligence archives, declared that in examining the newly opened KGB files, he’d found nothing to incriminate Hiss. He concluded that the charges against Hiss were “completely groundless.” Hiss fans celebrated, and the news media headlined the story for days. Then Volkogonov recanted, saying, well, he hadn’t actually gone through all the files himself, it was more like he’d chatted with a couple of former KGB agents for a few minutes. Hiss foes celebrated, while at least one pro-Hiss political commentator suggested that Nixon may have had a word with Russian president Boris Yeltsin, who happened to be Volkogonov’s boss. The upshot: To this day, nobody quite believes that Hiss was entirely innocent; on the other hand, they’re sure Nixon wasn’t.
Famous Last Words
Why worth knowing? Because in a country with a two-hundred-year-old constitution that was never very nuts-and-bolts in the first place, executive and legislative p
owers that cancel each other out, and a couple hundred million people all talking at once, it can be mighty tricky to tell our rights from our wrongs, much less make either stand up in court. In the end, none of us can be sure of what’s a freedom and what’s a felony until nine cantankerous justices have smoothed their robes, scratched their heads, and made up their minds. And lately, given how rarely the justices are able to agree on anything, even that doesn’t seem to help.
The Supreme Court in 1921. That’s Justice Brandeis in the back row, far left; Oliver Wendell Holmes is seated second from right. MARBURY v. MADISON (1803)
You may know this one only by name, given the catchy alliteration and the fact that we’ve all had a lot on our minds since 1803. Nevertheless, this was the single most important decision ever handed down by the Court because it established the right of judicial review, without which there wouldn’t be any Supreme Court decisions worth knowing by name.
The plot gets complicated, but it’s worth the effort. John Marbury had been appointed a district-court judge by outgoing president John Adams. In the hubbub of changing administrations, however, the commission—the actual piece of paper—never got delivered. When the new secretary of state, James Madison, refused to honor the appointment, Marbury appealed to the Supreme Court to issue a writ of mandamus, which would force the new administration to give him his commission. Now forget Marbury, Madison, and the meaning of the word “mandamus” for the moment; what was really going on was a power struggle between John Marshall, newly appointed chief justice of the Court and an unshakable Federalist, and Thomas Jefferson, newly elected president of the United States and our most determined anti-Federalist. Marbury’s had been only one of innumerable last-minute judgeships handed out by the lame-duck Federalists in an effort to “pack the courts” before the anti-Federalists, who had just won the elections by a landslide, swept them into permanent oblivion. Understandably, the anti-Federalists were furious at what they considered a dirty trick. To make matters even worse, Marshall himself was one of these so called midnight judges, appointed just before Jefferson’s inauguration; and, as it happened, it was Marshall’s brother who had neglected to deliver Marbury’s commission in the first place.
