My Friend, Gene McCarthy, 1916-2005

Special to FreeRepublic ^ | 11 December, 2005 | John Armor (Congressman Billybob)

[eddie willers]

I am so glad you wrote and posted this.

I did not know this about the man and now a wrong impression has been righted.

[fallujah-nuker]

I've wanted to read a book he wrote in 1992 titled "A Colony of the World: The United States Today: America’s Senior Statesman Warns His Countrymen" Never been able to find it.

[Palladin]

Please accept my condolences upon the loss of your friend.

McCarthy was a unique intellectual of great complexity.

Of course that idiot Eleanor Clift could not do him justice, as her pitiful brain is too small to encompass the man.

[Gay State Conservative]

McCarthy hated President Bush so much he said he couldn't bear to watch his inauguration.

This attitude is eerily,but not surprisingly,reminiscent of what one might hear from the Socialist Workers Party or Radio Pyongyang.

But then,most of what comes out of DNC Headquarters belongs in that same category.

[TFFKAMM]

Amazon's got it.

[LdSentinal]

Your "friend" said American deserved 9/11. He was putrid.

[fallujah-nuker]

Thanks for the link, I just put it in my shopping cart.

[RobbyS]

I don't think he ever "believed" in the omnicompetence of big government. In the early '60s he came to the UT_(Austin) campus and spoke to a small group. I asked him a question about the department of HEW and he made some remark about breaking it up. I was liberal at the time and annoyed, more so by the flippancy of his answer than by what he said. I was thinking of him as a president. I don't think he had the necessary ruthlessness. There was too much of the priest in him. Or something. In 1968 he seemed almost unmanned by the violence swirling around him.

[Congressman Billybob]

Gene also told me, late in his life, "Do not be too discouraged by the inefficiency of government. That is all that stands between us, and them,"

John / Billybob

[RobbyS]

My daughter has worked for the government for three years after working two years for a non-profit. and is astonished by the ineptness of so many people in her office. She has decided to go back to school and get her Ph.D. I think she will come to realize that she doesn't know what inefficiency is.

[RobbyS]

Incompetence and corruption have even been the ultimate check on absolute power.

[backhoe]

John, I greatly appreciate this article, and will pass it along to everyone I know.

Gene McCarthy was willing to stand up for what he believed in- and that is always honorable.

[TaxRelief]

Was he not a pacifist? Did he believe America should fight to defend itself?

[YCTHouston]

Thansk for sharing this. He was above all a man of principle, whose intelligence and wit are sorely lacking in the current scene. Wish I could have seen him at CPAC a few years ago.

My favorite McCarthy quote, if I can ever track it down, is one in which he describes Jimmy Carter as "a third generation Snopes," referring to the character-lacking scalawags of Faulkner's fiction.

[Uncle Fud]

Gene was coauthoring A Political Bestiary with James Kilpatrick, his friend and neighbor in rural Virginia. The late Jeff McNeely did the cartoons for that excellent book.

I would have cheerfully bussed the table just for a chance to listen in on some of the conversation betwen those three.

[abb]

I have a copy of "A Political Bestiary" in my bookcase. It's a hoot. And, of course, MacNelly's art is beyond compare....

[Congressman Billybob]

The Introduction to "A Political Bestiary" tells the true story of how the book came to be. Over several weeks, McCarthy and Kilpatrick got together in each other's kitchens, drank good Bourbon in front of the fire, and talked about what they knew about the flora and fauna in Washington, D.C.

Finally, one evening about 2 a.m. they decided their conversations could be turned into a book, provided it was illustrated with excellent cartoons. They phoned up Jeff McNeely and got him out of bed. After several minutes of persuading him that they were who they said they were, a bargain was struck to do the book.

I know this description in the book is correct, because I was working for Gene when all this transpired. I saw many of the sections in the book in draft form, and can assert that these two gentlemen generally nailed the subjects in the first draft. And McNeely's cartoons were, of course, the icing on the cake.

John / Billybob

[new yorker 77]

The MSM cares nothing about truth or the totality of a man's life and beliefs.

McCarthy will be used by the MSM in his death.

His reality means nothing to them.

Their fantasy reigns supreme.

[woofie]

Thanks for the info

The Classic Liberal is classically dead

[Theodore R.]

What was the cause of McCarthy's divorce from Abigail, or do you know?