LET AMERICA BE AMERICA: “Guys, you gotta vet the poets you quote.”
Not if you’re reasonably confident the press won’t call you on ’em..
UPDATE: Reader Jared Walczak emails:
The telling part of this whole episode, in my opinion, is that John Kerry is quite familiar with the Marxist leanings of Mr. Hughes. In fact, a new compilation of Langston Hughes poems will be coming off the presses in a little more than a month and features a preface penned by none other than Senator John Kerry.
Sources:
(And a Google News search turns up many more, although most seem to be based on the same AP report.)
Langston Hughes has been vetted, and Kerry likes what he sees. The rest of us are simply left to wonder what it all means.
Someone should ask him. One might admire his poetry on purely artistic grounds, of course, but using an expressly pro-Stalin poet as the source of a campaign theme seems to go beyond mere artistic admiration. At the very least it demonstrates — yet again — that the Kerry campaign still isn’t ready for primetime.