Remembering Morton Downey, Jr, the father of trash TV

Morton Downey, Jr

The year is 1988.  Probably.  I’m getting older and the past is getting a little hazier. 

All I know is I joined a bunch of excited friends and piled into a car and headed off to New Jersey.  Were we going to a rock concert at the old Brendan Byrne Arena?  A football game at Giants Stadium?

Nope.  We were going to lovely Secaucus to see a taping of The Morton Downey Jr. TV show.  Which was always more wild and loud than any rock concert or football game.

It’s easy to forget what a rock star Morton Downey Jr. was, if only briefly.  We look at trash TV like Springer or Maury, or theatrical political commentators like Glenn Back, and assume this has always been with us.

Nope.  Morton Downey Jr. deserves the credit – or blame.

A new movie is currently opening up across the country entitled Evocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie.  The documentary explores Downey’s coming of age – his father was one of the most famous Irish tenors of his generation – and culminates with the short-lived, hugely-influential syndicated TV talk show that bore his name.

Evocateur offers an opportunity to look back at Downey’s complicated life and legacy.  He had a distinctly Irish struggle with his father, and worked for Irish American political legend Bobby Kennedy.  Downey even tapped into the Reagan-era right-wing populism that was appealing to many working- and middle-class Irish Americans.

Yeah, there’s all of that.  But mainly there’s that talk show.  That unforgettable talk show.
He was born Sean Morton Downey Jr. in New York City in 1932.  His father was a tremendously popular singer in the 1930s and 1940s, often referred to as “The Irish Nightingale.” 

Downey Sr. also appeared on television and in movies.  As a songwriter, one of his many hits was “That’s How I Spell Ireland.”

So, Morton Downey Jr. knew a thing or two about show business.  He himself had an accomplished musical career.  For decades, Downey was a radio and music industry performer, writing songs as well as singing them in a number of genres.

Then there was politics. The Downey family had a home in Hyannis, right next to the estate owned by Joseph P. Kennedy.  In fact, though he became a right-wing icon who despised “pabulum-puking liberals,” Downey Jr. worked on the 1968 Senate campaign of famously liberal Bobby Kennedy.

Downey even wrote a book of poetry entitled Quiet Thoughts Make the Loudest Noise to deal with the grief of Kennedy’s assassination (which, incidentally, occurred on June 6, 1968, 45 years ago last week).

But all was not well in the Downey clan.  Irish fathers and sons have famously difficult relationships and the Downeys were no exception. 

Morton Downey Jr. spent years trying to outdo his accomplished father, who died in 1985.  Around this time, having worked as a musician, radio DJ and political operative, Downey was working at a California radio station when he was fired for using allegedly racist language. (Rush Limbaugh replaced him.)

Downey, in his fifties, decided to head off to New Jersey to do a new kind of TV talk show.
These days we expect to see fights and chair-throwing on daytime TV.  But when The Morton Downey Jr. Show hit the airwaves it was unlike anything anyone had ever seen. 

The late 1980s were a politically tense time and Downey dove in.  Always puffing on a cigarette, Downey won all the arguments because he shouted the loudest.  It was vile, offensive, ignorant -- and you could not stop watching!

Though raised a rich kid, Downey liked to come off as the defender of the blue collar common man sick and tired of egghead know-it-all elites. 

Anyone can be a demagogue.  For a year or two, Morton Downey Jr. was the best demagogue in America.

His fall was as swift and spectacular as his rise.  He claimed to have been assaulted by Nazi skinheads at a San Francisco airport in April 1989.  It seemed a ploy for attention. 

Producers of his show feared a backlash from critics and advertisers and the show was cancelled.  Downey went bankrupt in 1990 and died of lung cancer in 2001.

But every time you turn on the TV, Morton Downey Jr. is still with us.  For better or worse.

(Contact Sidewalks at tdeignan.blogspot.com)

Father Andrew Greeley’s powerful faith - remembering the larger than life Chicago priest

The late Father Andrew Greeley

The only thing harder than imagining a world without Father Andrew Greeley is traveling back in time - say, to around 1954 - and imagining a character such as Andrew Greeley.

That was the year Greeley became a priest.  Last week, just one year short of his 60th anniversary in the priesthood, Greeley died at the age of 85.

If a novelist had invented a character such as Greeley it would seem downright preposterous.

Greeley was born into a large Irish American family living outside of Chicago in 1928, just in time for the Great Depression. He went on to become a priest.  No big stretch there so far.

Greeley, however, would go on to become a writer and respected sociologist who made some bold claims about the nature of American Catholics and their church.

Oh, and he also wrote detective and romance novels.  Many with steamy sex scenes.  (The National Catholic Register once proclaimed that Greeley had "the dirtiest mind ever ordained.”  Which, by the way, turns out to be sadly untrue.  But that’s a separate story.)

When Greeley wasn’t spinning sex yarns, he was scolding church officials in language both colorful and blunt.

"Honesty compels me to say that I believe the present leadership in the church to be morally, intellectually and religiously bankrupt,” Greeley said. 

And this was not in 2013, with all of the tarnish taken off of the church in the wake of the sex scandals.  This was in the mid-1970s, after Greeley completed a study of the American priesthood and reported that there was a high level of discontent among priests.

The bishops who commissioned the study did not seem interested in such findings.  So Greeley unloaded with both barrels.

One of Greeley’s obvious strengths was that he understood the church, its leaders and even its members were more than capable of absorbing such criticism.  Greeley had faith that the word of Christ would endure, even if certain members of the church acted terribly. 

Pointing that out, Greeley knew, would strengthen rather than weaken the church.


True, Greeley said things that some of the most ardent anti-Catholics might have muttered.  But Greeley knew as well as anyone the ferocity of opposition Catholics faced in the 19th and 20th centuries.  One of his earlier books, 1972’s The Most Distressful Nation: The Taming of the American Irish, outlined the hard path to assimilation.

Greeley himself believed anti-Catholicism played a role when the University of Chicago denied him tenure, even though he’d already published over 10 books.

Of course, those who suggested that Greeley’s combative style might have played a role in his tenure denial were not necessarily wrong. 

What can’t be denied is that Greeley changed what we think about Irish Americans, American Catholics and -- perhaps most importantly -- priests.

Greeley’s book Irish Americans: The Rise to Money and Power upended many stereotypes established by America’s WASP elite regarding Irish Catholics.  Greeley’s argued that the Irish, thanks in large part to their connections to the Catholic Church, had become America’s most prosperous and educated ethnic group.

Numerous books and articles by Greeley -- way back in the 1960s and 1970s -- outlined what he saw as the widening gulf between Catholic Church officials and the people standing and kneeling in the pews.

Perhaps Greeley was most prescient on the sex abuse scandals.

As Peter Steinfels wrote in The New York Times, “Father Greeley had been an early and vehement advocate for victims of abusive priests at least since 1989, when he began writing articles in Chicago newspapers demanding that the church take action against pedophile priests.”

He was also an early donor to Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP).

In the end, whether the topic was sex or saints, Greeley was a storyteller. And he liked to point out that Jesus had so many followers because he, too, was a compelling storyteller.

“I suppose I have an Irish weakness for words gone wild,” Greeley once said.

The American Catholic Church has lost an iconoclast and a prophet.

Ireland’s rotten Apple scheme - two-bit operation need to pay their dues to maintain “civilized society”

Apple CEO Tim Cook testifies at a Senate hearing last week about
the company’s Irish subsidiary

Why does paying taxes make so many people angry?

Trust me, I don’t have much money. And whatever I do have left after feeding, clothing and housing my four children, I do like to spend as I see fit.

But it’s kind of stupid to lament paying taxes while also expecting things like police and fire protection, functioning roads and schools, and -- God forbid -- assistance for people who are down on their luck. 

Which includes people who were great at their jobs yet were still laid off, as well as families who can’t afford to send their children to college.

So when I read last week that the cool dudes who run Apple had relocated portions of their operations to Ireland to save billions in taxes, I was thinking that Apple can make all the flashy iPads and iPods they want.  But the devices are useless if America’s roads and bridges are in such poor shape that truck drivers can’t deliver them to homes or stores. 

As The New York Times noted last week, by officially locating certain business operations “in places like Ireland, Apple was able to, in effect, make them stateless -- exempt from taxes, record-keeping laws and the need for the subsidiaries to even file tax returns anywhere in the world.”

Now, this isn’t anything new.  Corporations have always been very good at finding tax havens around the globe.  This used to be a not-very-respectable but ultimately acceptable practice within the confines of modern capitalism.

With globalization, this even became respectable.  Sure, American workers got screwed, but they would benefit in the long run (so the theory went) because once the poor in other countries got jobs with corporations like Apple, they would become middle-class consumers and inevitably contribute to the American economy with their newfound purchasing power.

Of course, this theory rarely takes into account things like, say, the Bangladeshi garment factory collapse earlier this month which left nearly 1,200 people dead. 

Even if the building did not collapse, it would probably be tough to convince those workers they were participating in some wonderful experiment in which the rising global economic tide would eventually lift all boats.

Basically, the garment worker who lost his job in America as well as the poor Bangladeshi get screwed.  And we know who makes out in the end.

Apple knows this better than anyone.  They have improved working conditions in their Chinese factories so much that they now provide free suicide nets so that their workers can toil for another day. And another day.  And another day.

Anyway, obviously using Ireland to avoid billions in taxes is not as bad as these horrors. It’s certainly not illegal, as everyone from senators Carl Levin (Democrat) and John McCain (Republican) to Irish Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore pointed out.

No, it’s not illegal.  Hooray for that.  But it really is sleazy. 

And is it even good business? 

Yes, the stockholders are happy and flush with cash.  But Apple has become such a beloved “brand” because they seemed to avoid such tacky business practices.

Americans, meanwhile, should be getting more and more angry at corporations that have no use for American workers, but desperately want them to keep buying their crap.

 It’s getting so bad that the recent book The Betrayal of the American Dream by Donald Barlett and James Steele argued for good old fashioned protectionism -- heavily taxing goods made abroad -- and I was thinking they may be right.

And is any of this even good for Ireland? As Bloomberg columnist Megan Green noted, “Ireland should use the Apple drama as an opportunity to consider whether the benefits of an attractive tax regime are worth the costs,” especially since “most of their profits flow back to shareholders outside the country.”

Taxes, Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “are what we pay for civilized society.”  And for roads, cops, schools and buildings that don’t collapse. 

For all of their high-minded blather about technology and the world, Apple’s Irish tax scheme makes them look like just another two-bit operation.

It almost makes it difficult to type out this column on my MacBook Pro laptop.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tdeignan.blogspot.com)

Sleazy secrets and the American Dream of Dublin born spy Kevin Richard Halligen

Kevin Richard Halligen

The dapper British spy living a life of luxury in the Washington, D.C. area had a secret.

That’s no surprise.  Such a worldly fellow would surely have built up a few secrets while trotting the globe. 

His name was Kevin Richard Halligen and, among other projects, he was offered $500,000 to help the family of Madeleine McCann, the English girl who went missing in Portugal a few years back.

Halligen “stayed in a Willard Hotel suite for months at a time and drank the days away at pricey Georgetown restaurants,” a 2011 Washington Post article noted. “He traveled everywhere in a chauffeur-driven Lincoln Town Car.”

Ah, but there was still that secret.  Kevin Richard Halligen, the fellow with (as the Post put it) “amazing ease and a perfect British accent” was actually born in Dublin in 1961. 

For all of the lies Halligen told – including to his own wife as well as to the distraught McCann family – if anyone had simply looked at his passport they’d have seen he was a Dubliner.

It turns out Halligen had actually never really served as a spy and had very few contacts in the global intelligence community.  But there was one thing he was very good at --spending other people’s money.

Last week, it all finally caught up with Halligen.  In a Washington, D.C. courtroom, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly asked Halligen if it was his intent, all along, to defraud his victims.
Halligen said, “It was.”

Halligen pled guilty to conning one London-based business out of over $2 million, though the actual amount of money he swindled over the years is much higher.  Halligen is expected to be sentenced on June 27.

Halligen turned out to be a striver who concealed key facts about his past – in fact, invented a new persona for himself – so that he could live a lavish lifestyle, even if that lifestyle was funded through devious means.  In the end, it all came crashing down.

If that sounds familiar, you may have seen the same story unfold this past week in a movie theater. That pretty much sums up the life of Jay Gatsby, the doomed main character in the new 3D movie of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s American literary classic.

At least Gatsby did it for love.  Halligen, on the other hand, seems to have had no such emotions. 
How else do you explain taking nearly $500,000 from the McCann family?  Halligen was supposed to use his vast international contacts to help track down the little girl.  He never got around to it.

If there is any good news here, at least the McCann family is considering additional charges against Halligen, who is not expected to spend any more time in a U.S. jail since he’s already served a number of years while awaiting trial.  He will be sent back to England next month, where more troubles await him.

“It is understood that Kate and Gerry McCann are now considering suing Halligen for allegedly fleecing their fund.  He could also be arrested if the couple make a formal complaint,” the Mirror newspaper reported this week.

Halligen may represent a sleazy version of the Gatsby-esque American Dream/Nightmare.  But he also represents a sad reality about America and its open borders. 

“That’s what we get for letting all these damn foreigners in,” many say, when yet another crime is committed in the U.S. by those born abroad, whether that crime is financial theft or murder and mayhem at a big city marathon.

As Ayaan Hirsi Ali asked soberly in The Wall Street Journal this week, “It is reasonable to ask yourself: How many more young men like Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are already living a double life in America, ready to take up arms for the cause of political Islam?”

It is reasonable to ask this.  So long as we realize that Irishmen with posh British accents also commit rather disgusting crimes.

And so long as we acknowledge the vast contributions that millions of anonymous, law-abiding immigrants and their children make each day, in their own humble pursuit of the American Dream.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tdeignan.blogspot.com)

'The Great Gatsby' author F Scott Fitzgerald’s death and burial another Catholic lesson

F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Atlantic)

It is true that F. Scott Fitzgerald wasn’t much of a Catholic.

Yes, he had strong Irish roots on both his mother and father’s side.  But while his last name is as Hibernian as it can get, his full name – Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald – also reflects his family’s obsession with its Yankee Protestant roots. 

Francis Scott Key, after all, was the famous author of the American national anthem, “The Star Spangled Banner,” not to mention a distant cousin of Fitzgerald's.

Still, as millions flocked to movie theaters this weekend to see the latest film version of Fitzgerald’s most famous work, The Great Gatsby, there are still lessons to be learned not only from Gatsby’s writing, but his life.  And his death.

This is especially true because those who spent a few hours being transported back to the Jazz Age (in 3D no less!) may have missed the spat that broke out between Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny and Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley. 

As happens almost every year, there is a fight at some Catholic college because a graduation speaker (in this case Kenny at Boston College) has some link to abortion rights.  This time around, Kenny is caught up in the ongoing debate over abortion in Ireland, which a new bill in Ireland would allow in some generally tragic circumstances.

Sadly we have become accustomed to these Catholic fights.  They are always seen as a battle between liberals and conservatives, and – worse – there seems no end in sight.

Which is why the final chapter of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s life is worth revisiting.  Fitzgerald famously said there are no second acts in American life.  The ultimate irony is that Fitzgerald himself had about 15 or 20 second acts during his tragically brief life.

Fitzgerald died at the age of 44 in 1940 while toiling away as a screenwriter in Hollywood.  He had been a notorious alcoholic and suffered a fatal heart attack. 

A few years earlier, Fitzgerald had written in a letter that whenever he died, he hoped to be buried in a Catholic cemetery in Baltimore where other family members rested.

“I belong here [in Maryland], where everything is civilized and gay and rotted and polite,” he wrote in a letter to Laura Guthrie, his secretary. “I wouldn’t mind a bit if in a few years Zelda and I could snuggle up together under a stone in some old graveyard here.”

Ah, Zelda.  Fitzgerald’s infamous flapper wife.  That’s where some of the trouble begins. 

Zelda Sayre, alas, was a Protestant.  And though Gatsby attended Catholic schools as a boy he had lapsed as the years wore on. 

In fact, the Catholic Church thought along the same lines as many readers did when Gatsby first came out.  They were not impressed.  Fitzgerald’s books, with their drinking and debauchery and extramarital affairs, were on a list of works deemed forbidden for good Catholic readers.

Fitzgerald may have wanted to be buried in St. Mary’s Catholic cemetery in Rockville, Baltimore.  But the request was denied.  And so, reminiscent of his famous fictional hero’s own funeral, Fitzgerald’s burial was a poorly attended affair, and he was laid to rest in Rockville Union Cemetery, a Protestant facility.

After dying in a hospital fire a few years later, Zelda was laid to rest in the same cemetery.

The story doesn’t end there, however.  Scott and Zelda’s only child, Frances, petitioned St. Mary’s parish officials. This was a great American author with deep ties to the area.  It took three decades, but finally, in 1975, Scott and Zelda’s remains were moved to St. Mary’s.

“The church believed it important to consider his God-given talents and literary genius,” a St. Mary’s priest told The Washington Post this week.

And maybe there’s a little hope for all of us in this story.  With all the fighting over abortion and birth control and gay rights, it becomes very easy for everyone to forget that forgiveness in a central tenet of the Catholic faith.  God knows if O’Malley or Kenny or the millions of us who fight about the church will ever forgive anyone for anything.

But St. Mary’s parish in Baltimore -- which granted a doomed, brilliant writer his last wish three decades too late -- shows us that at least they might.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tdeignan.blogspot.com)

Anthony Weiner running for New York mayor and the Italian mob and Irish Americans strong ties

Anthony Weiner (Richard Drew/AP)

The recent movie The Irishman told the story of colorful -- some might say deranged -- Irish American gangster Danny Greene, who saw himself as a glorious figure in a long line of Irish rebels.
Greene famously taunted the powerful Italian American mobsters who ran his native Cleveland.

The Irishman in this week’s story, however, seemed very much to enjoy his role within the Genovese crime family hierarchy.

It got him sent to prison.  And, perhaps even worse, it got him linked to Anthony Weiner.

Weiner, the disgraced former member of the House of Representatives who is still apparently mulling a run for New York City mayor, has had to endure a lot of shots from late night comics and many not-so-subtle penis jokes in tabloid headlines.  Weiner, after all, was busted for tweeting photos of his anatomy out into cyberspace.

Did we mention his name is Weiner?

Anyway, the New York Post reported on some non-anatomical news involving Weiner this week.

“Hedge-fund brothers David and Eugene Grin helped Weiner with consulting work after he resigned from Congress following his sexting scandal,” the Post reported.

“The Grins also assisted his mayoral and congressional races, raising nearly $50,000 for Weiner, who is now considering a mayoral run. Through two hedge funds, the Grins control Parabel, a company that claims to harvest an algae-like crop.”

The Post continues, “Weiner touted Parabel as one of his clients in a recent news article outlining his success as a business consultant ... What Weiner failed to mention was that on January 13, Parabel transferred nearly all of its assets to a subsidiary in the Cayman Islands -- on the same day a United Arab Emirates firm pumped $15 million into Parabel, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission document.”

Weiner told the Post he knew nothing about Parabel’s offshore move.

The Brothers Grin “have also been associated with shady characters,” the Post adds.

That’s where Francis O’Donnell comes in.  O’Donnell once received a $6 million loan from the Grin brothers.  O’Donnell ran a limousine manufacturing business called Coach Industries, based in Florida.

But that’s not the only business O’Donnell was part of.  In 2007, O’Donnell, who received an MBA degree from New York’s Columbia University, pleaded guilty to numerous charges, with prosecutors labeling him an associate of the Genovese crime family.

As a 2007 Forbes magazine article about O’Donnell and his mob ties put it, “On January 5 [2007] O'Donnell pleaded guilty to being an associate of the Genovese crime family. The indictment also claimed that an FBI agent posing as a drug dealer was asked to launder proceeds through Coach in exchange for a fee. In addition O'Donnell is accused of luring a victim to his office, where Clement (Clemmie) Santoro allegedly held a gun to his head and demanded a $1.5 million payment.”

A prosecutor in the case against O’Donnell added that he “enjoyed the power that came from his association with organized crime and twice lured individuals to his office who were then assaulted by other defendants,” according to a Sun Sentinel newspaper article. 

The paper added, “During the first alleged assault in June 2003, O'Donnell remained outside the office when the beating took place. In October 2003, O'Donnell witnessed the assault, Kaplan said.”
O'Donnell’s attorney claimed his client tried to stop that attack. In May 2007, O’Donnell was sentenced to eight years in prison.

Either way, in recent years, much has been said about the decline of the Mafia in American life.  But not only does it stubbornly manage to stick around, its ties to Irish America remain strong as well.

Back in January an Irish American with ties to the infamous Westies gang was hit with numerous charges, including ties to Gambino crime family associates.  Anthony “Tony O” O’Donnell, also with Gambino ties, faced new charges earlier this year as well. A few years back, Gambino associate Joseph O’Kane was killed in prison. 

On a brighter note, Long Island-born Michael Finnerty convinced a judge he’d changed since his days as an enforcer for John “Junior” Gotti and managed to avoid prison.

Now he’s just got to make sure he steers clear of Anthony Weiner.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tdeignan.blogspot.com)

Victor Navasky lauds Thomas Nast - American cartoonist known for his racist Irish ape-like drawings

Thomas Nast's racist cartoon depicting the Irish as ape-like

For decades, Victor Navasky has been at the forefront of political journalism.  For nearly 20 years he was the editor, and later publisher, of the proudly left-wing 'The Nation' magazine.  He also won a National Book Award in 1982 for chronicling the American national nightmare of McCarthyism and its aftermath in his book 'Naming Names.'

In other words, this is a guy who has loudly and proudly defended the strong against the weak.

Magazines such as 'The Nation' exist -- as they would be more than happy to point out -- to expose hatred, bigotry and exploitation in its many shapes and forms.

So it’s curious that Navasky, in his latest book, spends quite a bit of time lauding a famous artist whose anti-Irish and anti-Catholic bigotry was quite clear.
 Navasky’s latest book is entitled 'The Art of Controversy: Political Cartoons and Their Enduring Power,' published by the prestigious Alfred A. Knopf publishing company.

Navasky devotes a section of the book to Thomas Nast, arguably the most influential cartoonist of the 19th century.

As Navasky points out, while drawing for Harper’s in the 1860s and 1870s, Nast was savage in his depiction of New York’s Tammany Hall political machine.  William Marcy “Boss” Tweed was a particularly favored target of Nast’s.  Nast is widely credited with helping to topple Tammany Hall and getting Tweed sent off to prison.

Nast -- who Navasky righty calls “the father of American political cartooning” -- is also credited with creating our current image of Santa Claus as well as the Republican and Democratic party mascots (the elephants and donkey respectively).

Navasky even reprints one of Nast’s more famous creations, from 1871, entitled “Who Stole the People’s Money?”  In it, various members of the Democratic machine point to the person next to them, until it is clear everyone is able to pass the blame on to the person next to them, ultimately leaving no one responsible for Tammany’s many, well-documented crimes.

Funny thing about “Who Stole the People’s Money?”  Whereas most of Tammany Hall types at least look like human beings, two clearly look like apes.

That is because they are clearly Irish immigrants.

Indeed, the only thing more clear than Tammany’s flexible definition of legality was Nast’s abundant disdain for the Irish and for Catholics.  In cartoon after cartoon, for decades, Nast depicted the Irish as apish thugs addicted to violence, alcohol and crime.  He depicted Catholics as a predatory clan out to snatch babies from the arms of saintly Protestant mothers. 

In one particularly unforgettable image (Nast was nothing if not wildly imaginative) he turned bishop’s hats into the jaws of hungry alligators, looking to devour Protestant children.

There is no mention of this at all in Navasky’s book.  For a writer who chronicles controversies over potentially racist, sexist and anti-Semitic images, it would seem important to at least mention Nast’s hateful depictions of Irish Catholics.

A century and a half before Muslims revolted against supposedly hateful images of the Prophet Muhammad, police had to stand guard outside of Nast’s home because Irish Americans were so fed up with his bigoted drawings.

Navasky does chronicle the controversial British cartoonist Raymond Jackson, better known as “Jak.”

In 1982, after IRA bombs killed eight people in London, The Evening Standard ran a Jak drawing featuring “The Irish,” as “The Ultimate in Psychopathic Horror.”

Critics noted the cartoon “does not take into account Irish political complexities” and “homogenizes the Irish as a race of psychopathic monsters,” to which Navasky offers the curious response: “But isn’t that what cartoons, by definition, do and don’t do?”

Actually, no.  Not necessarily. 

Either way Navasky -- like many folks whose lives have supposedly been dedicated to comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable -- tends to be a bit selective when it comes to the folks to which he chooses to give comfort.

If people want to attack nativism and bigotry today, they must also understand the many shapes and forms these sins have taken in the past.


(Contact “Sidewalks” at tdeignan.blogspot.com)