Eugene McCarthy dies

This is being reported on Fox now. He was a fascinating character.

"They're somewhat like the lowest of plant and animal life. Even at their highest point in vitality there is not much life in them; on the other hand, they don't die."

I was a supporter of his in '68 when the Democratic Party was too chickenshit to nominate him. I voted Peace & Freedom in my very first presidential election instead of for Humpty-Dumpty and the Chicago cops.

"Be of good hope in the face of death. Believe in this one truth for certain, that no evil can befall a good man either in life or death, and that his fate is not a matter of indifference to the Gods." - Socrates

he dies and the current gang lives.

Msongs
www.msongs.com/political-shirts.htm

My first campaign, when I was in high school. Got to gather my thoughts before commenting further. A great man who stood up to an unjust war.

We need more like him.

What an outstanding gentleman.

:cry:
:patriot:

He had principles and convictions.

Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it's important.
Eugene McCarthy

Two icons have died today.

During the Vietnam War he was one of the most vociferous critics of LBJ's conduct of the war. He almost beat Johnson in the NH primary in 1968, causing LBJ to decide not to run again. However, I wonder if he would have won against Nixon had he been the nominee. The anti-war voters may have lined up with him more enthusiastically than they did with Humphrey, although the "law & order" bloc that voted for Nixon and Wallace may have been bigger had he been the candidate. Anyway, this is based on my own perception, and I don't know much about that election, so it would be nice to hear from some old timers on the board :)

Richard Pryor too.

This is, I say, the time for all good men not to go to the aid of their party, but to come to the aid of their country.
Eugene J. McCarthy

RIP

RIP Eugene indeed.

what a lovely, wonderful man.

O8)

:cry:

He was a great man,too.

:-(

Guaranteed.

I love him

The most intellegent president I could have, would have ever voted for :cry:





Eugene McCarthy Gets 40% of Vote - In the New Hampshire primary, peace candidate Eugene McCarthy garners 40% of the vote compared to 50% for the President - a tally considered to be a major upset for the administration.




1968
SANE endorses Senator Eugene McCarthy for President. President Johnson announces he "would not seek, nor accept the nomination of (his) party for another term."






You are so much closer to God now please tell The Almighty America needs him more than ever, now it's not our brothers and sisters who are dying it's our children in another senseless rich man's war


http://www.danspapers.com/paper/an_12.html
August 24, 1967

Balloons.

Dozens of balloons, pink and yellow, held by laughing children.

The balloons bob up and down, in time to the folk music, occasionally out of time as a shaggy dog tries to bite them down.

It is a day of hotdogs and bandstands, of parking on the Village Green under the NO PARKING signs, and of sitting on the grass listening to political speakers compare the campaign platforms of Richard Nixon to the Montauk fog, which rolls around gently and aimlessly, soaking out the bunting, the public address system and the three or four hundred people who are out to witness McCARTHY DAY AT MONTAUK.

Eugene McCarthy.

The man who stood alone and challenged the mountain. And brought it down. But how?

“It is imperative,” he once said, “that a nation of our stature continually re-evaluate its motivations.”

Indeed. Music to the ears of the intelligensia, the eggheads of America, but gobbledygook to Mr. Average American. On the day that the McCarthy rally was being held on the Village Green in downtown Montauk, axehandle wielding Lester Maddox composed a speech declaring his candidacy.

“I am proud to be an American. Aren’t you?” he wrote. “I love my country and its flag and I regard defending them as a privilege as well as a duty. Don’t you?”

Ah, but only if Eugene could speak the King’s English so that the peasants could understand it. But the man, unique and uncompromising as he is, will not. He remains true to himself and stands on the issue.

And the issue brings many strangers into his camp.

John Lester. Lantern jawed, conservative, local businessman, but this year for McCarthy.

“We do not belong in Vietnam,” he speaks from the podium, “and this man McCarthy has got up and said so.”

Well, in a great many words.

Tom Paxton, the well-known folksinger, gets up and sings “I Read It In the Daily News,” and three other political songs.

Edward Albee, the playwright, speaks softly and gently to the crowd.

Tamara Geva, the ballerina, recites one of McCarthy’s poems and she watches three teenagers sitting on the grass, astonishingly recite the poem along with her, by heart.

About midway through the afternoon, as Montauk’s Reverend Howard Friend is delivering a speech, a long distance call comes in from New York City, and is amplified over the loud speaker system. It is from Paul O’Dwyer, an avid McCarthy supporter who badly defeated Humphrey supporter Eugene Nickerson in a State primary. Well, it is not exactly from O’Dwyer, who wants to send his greetings but it is from his secretary, who is arranging the call, but is unaware that she is loud and clear throughout the town of Montauk.

“Mr. O’Dwyer has stepped outside for a moment,” she says over the PA system, “I’ll put you on hold.”

Four hundred people are put on hold.

Three tourists, cameras in hand, Hawaiian sport shirts over bathing suits, walk over from the Circle Luncheonette. The Montauk Summer Festival? A Native Rite? They buy homemade cookies at a booth marked GOURMET FOODS.

An old man, a golfer, walks around with a McCARTHY FOR PRESIDENT straw boater on his head. He’s got spiked shoes and gets the once over from a teenager in a wet suit. A surfer. They smile at each other. You’re for McCarthy? I’ll be damned. Who says there’s a generation gap.

Balloons.

Between speeches, a rock band strums out a current peace song, occasionally overloading the system into feedback.

C’mon people now,

C’mon everybody,

Let’s all get together,

Gonna love one another right now.

There’s a “FLEA MARKET” which, to be kind, is really what everybody found up in their attics that they wouldn’t mind putting out for sale. Includes a complete set of SHOW magazine. There’s a booth selling McCARTHY stickers, plastic flower decals for cars and McCarthy LP records for $9 each, cheap. A striking highlight is an exhibit of nine original posters, one of a kinds, all proclaiming McCarthy for President and painted by Juliuan Levi, Ibram Lassaw, Adolph Gottleib, Alfonso Ossorio, Robert Gwathmey, John Little, Balcomb Greene and Esteban Vicente. The exhibit, a statement of the conviction of these nine painters, is for sale as a unit for the first man with three thousand dollars.

Parked across the street in front of White’s Department Store is a grey Chevrolet with the engine running. A sign, US ARMY FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY is painted on both sides in black. Two men in crew cuts sit on the front seat and stare coldly out at the Village Green and the proceedings.

C’mon people now,

C’mon everybody,

Let’s all get together,

Gonna love one another right now,

The flag, swirling around, beads on the Chevrolet, occasionally forming rivulets that trickle their way down the sides, dripping softly into the asphalt pavement.

POST SCRIPT: By nine o’clock that evening, four hours after the McCarthy rally had folded its tent, the fog lifted, and the starry sky formed a brilliant dome over all Montauk. At the tent camp, in Hither Hills, the weekly square dance had begun, a hundred or so dancers, hands joined in a big circle just a barefoot walk from the beach, whooped and hollered their way through the steps. There were three-year-old kids on father’s shoulders, mothers in sweatshirts reading OSWEGO STATE TEACHERS COLLEGE, teenagers with McCarthy buttons. All around there were McCarthy buttons, McCarthy skimmers, McCarthy stickers. And one could look around to see the picnics, the baseball diamond, the beach, the dancers, laughing hand in hand. McCarthy thrives in this Hither Hills world, this world of lanterns and puppy dogs. And one reflects, oh, if only the whole world could be this happy, this beautiful, this wonderful.

“When I get to the White House,” McCarthy once said, “we shall take the iron fence down and have picnics on the lawn.”

Indeed, perhaps if we make it so, it will be so

http://www.mp3.com/peter-paul-&-mary/artists/1761/biography.html

Peter, Paul & Mary was a very funny group as well. For much of the year that followed this commercial comeback, the group was involved in politics, in the form of Senator Eugene McCarthy's anti-war campaign for the White House. They appeared on behalf of McCarthy, and even released a record supporting him. McCarthy's candidacy ultimately failed, in a year that also saw the murders of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, though one personal, positive by-product of the peace campaign was that Peter Yarrow ended up marrying the senator's daughter.

You seem very resourceful ... do you know the old cover of LIFE magazine with McCarthy in a boat, alone, in some rapids? I should have it somewhere in my house .... but have no idea where. It was a beautiful picture, that really showed who he was.

On edit: post #35 has it!

RIP, Gene. I remember you so well. You were a giant ray of hope in a terrible time. :cry: :patriot: :toast:

I liked this man quite a lot!
I have a wonderful memory of shaking his hand once at an anti-Vietnam war rally in DC. He was very personable.
RIP Eugene, you will be missed!

I found this article from 2003:

http://search.netscape.com/ns/boomframe.jsp?query=gene+mccarthy+bush&page=1&offset=0&result_url=redir%3Fsrc%3Dwebsearch%26requestId%3D3a8fd1af90fabb75%26clickedItemRank%3D3%26userQuery%3Dgene%2Bmccarthy%2Bbush%26clickedItemURN%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.commondreams.org%252Fviews03%252F0311-05.htm%26invocationType%3D-%26fromPage%3DNSCPResultsT%26amp%3BampTest%3D1&remove_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fviews03%2F0311-05.htm

Gene was 87 at the time of this interview.

His Country Needs Him

Thirty-five years ago tomorrow, on March 12 1968, a date described by the journalist Tom Wicker as an Agincourt in American politics, the earth shook. The Vietnam war did not cease at once: the final act was another seven years away. But from that moment the Americans' passage deeper and deeper into that particular bog ceased, and they began to turn round. From that day on, the US stopped thinking about winning, and started thinking about how the hell to get out.

March 12 was the date of the New Hampshire primary, and the improbable figure was Eugene McCarthy, the senator from Minnesota: little known, donnish, a writer and poet, decidedly different from the average politician. McCarthy took 42% of the Democratic vote, only just behind President Lyndon Johnson. A few days earlier it had been assumed he might get 10% or so.

It seems faintly absurd to ask McCarthy what he thinks about Iraq. Always a little fey and detached, he can hardly help finding present events ridiculous. "The Vietnam thing lasted 20 years before it became a real war. This just sort of developed from young Bush's plans. My feeling is it won't last long. It's a bit like one of those Roman wars where a general got an army together and went to Africa."

I said I assumed he was against it. "I've been pretty negative about everything in government for 15 or 20 years," he replied. "I've been putting together an article on de Tocqueville, who said pretty much what Eisenhower said about the military-industrial complex. If the army gets so large that no one knows what to do with it, you get a sort of parallel state." McCarthy finds it hard to summon more than genial contempt for the present regime. He is especially appalled by Bush's constant invocation of religion, "but you forgive him because you don't think he understands it, anyway".


RIP.

He was always on target.

He was my guy in 1968; I've always wondered what would have happened if he'd gotten the nomination. RIP, Gene McCarthy.

on the cover of a magazine, I think LIFE, alone in a raft going into some rapids. I always liked the picture of him.

07-Jun-1968

That is it! Man, it has been a lot of years since I saw it. I thought he was in faster moving water. Thank you for posting that!

http://www.thecie.org/gene/index.asp?s=POEMS

Poems by Eugene McCarthy


MY LAI CONVERSATION
How old are you, small Vietnamese boy?
Six fingers. Six years.
Why did you carry water to the wounded soldier, now dead?
Your father.
Your father was enemy of free world.
You also now are enemy of free world.
Who told you to carry water to your father?
Your mother!
Your mother is also enemy of free world.
You go into ditch with your mother.
American politician has said,
"It is better to kill you as a boy in the elephant grass of Vietnam
Than to have to kill you as a man in the rye grass in the USA."
You understand.
It is easier to die
Where you know the names of the birds, the trees, and the grass
Than in a stranger country.
You will be number 128 in the body count for today.
High body count will make the Commander-in-Chief of free world much encouraged.
Good-bye, small six-year-old Vietnamese boy, enemy of free world.


VIETNAM MESSAGE
We will take our corrugated steel
out of the land of thatched huts.


We will take our tanks
out of the land of the water buffalo.


We will take our napalm and flame throwers
out of the land that scarcely knows the use of matches.


We will take our helicopters
out of the land of colored birds and butterflies.


We will give back your villages and fields
your small and willing women.


We will leave you your small joys
and smaller troubles.


We will trust you to your gods,
some blind, some many-handed

..more poems..

for that.

Here's somthing for you :hi:


http://www.blackrebelmotorcycleclub.com/index2.htm

I'm intrigued, very well done.

:hi:

I had heard he was a poet, but had never read any of his work. These are sad and beautififul.

Reading the first, 2 lines sounds mock similar RW radio's current claim -

"It is better to kill you as a boy in the elephant grass of Vietnam
Than to have to kill you as a man in the rye grass in the USA."

Can you imagine what the current press would do to a Senator writing this?

He was a great American.

on moderate Republicans
...is someone who, if you were drowning 20 ft from shore would throw you a ten foot rope and say he had met you half way

kind of an anachronism now but would fit some moderate Democrats

I worked for him in '72 in his campaign. I was only 14, but I knew quality when I saw it.

RIP Mr. McCarthy. You will not be forgotten.

:cry:

O8) Vaya Con Dios, Gene.