My conversation with Bill Brown ended on a strange note. Id brought up Anne Coulters new book, Treason, and asked Bill whether or not hed heard that a good portion of the book had been dedicated to the purpose of defending the grandstanding Communist witch hunts of Senator Eugene McCarthy. I said that I found it disturbing to think that there was a movement afoot to rewrite history, even concerning those things, like the wrongness of McCarthyism, that seemed to have, until now, been accepted universally as truth. Bill mentioned that he had heard that and that he wasnt surprised. He then went on to reference Orwells 1984, and reminded me that the protagonists job in that book had been to destroy historical documents that would have been seen as unfavorable to Big Brother. (That gave me a chill and made me want to read the book again.)
I would never have guessed a few years ago that any conservative pundit would dream to go so far as to defend McCarthy. Thats how far this whole debate has shifted to the right. Were no longer even debating in the present. Were now going back and redrawing the lines between good and evil. Were calling up down and down up. We are, in the words of Jim Garrison (as written by Oliver Stone), Through the looking glass.
But all is not lost. Even the folks at the Wall Street Journal apparently feel as though shes gone too far.
Oh, and if all thats not enough, I also understand that she defends the internment of the Japanese Americans during World War II. (I know a lot of this is just her trying to be controversial, generate buzz, and sell books, but I also know that this would not have flown in pre-9/11 America.)
