Posted 7:21 PM by Gene

If people read my blog posts like this would nip themselves in the bud. The problem isn't that there are all these wonderful speakers in the wings who get passed over for show-biz types at overrated big-ticket affairs like inaugurals. The problem is the wonderful speakers don't exist. I'd wager half the signatories in Arts and Sciences for Roosevelt could have made a decent speech because they knew whererof they spoke. We had an intellectual class in 1944. What do we have now? And where will all these wonderful speakers come from if there's no school for them to learn to think and to write and to speak? Tony's two cents are as much self-delusion as a reflection on the pretty pickle our public life is in -- and however sexy he is The One won't change it.

P. S. I learn now the correct name was the Independent Voters' Committee of the Arts and Sciences for Roosevelt. So much for trusting historian-felons.