It’s hard to recapture those heady days. That’s the then-head of the ADL standing on the opposite side of MLK from RFK in June 1963.
I listened with interest to a piece on NPR today, from which I derived three things:
First, there was the main topic — the efforts by the current head of the Anti-Defamation League to recreate the heady days of the 60s and reach out to help social-justice causes beyond those that directly affect Jews. It seems he’s having trouble with that because so many activists on the left, such as those with Black Lives Matter, have a problem the ADL’s support of Israel.
Second, I learned a word for a phenomenon I’ve been puzzled by for years. The word is “intersectionality,” and it’s that thing whereby advocates for this or that cause — say, folks in the the transgender demographic — make like the issues they face are just the same as those faced by another group, such as African-Americans. I say I’ve been puzzled, but I suppose the purpose is obvious enough, there being strength in numbers, not to mention the greater acceptance that might rub off from another group.
Thirdly and finally, I heard the most jargon-y sentence I’m likely to hear today, complete with the obligatory use of “impact” as a verb, which is what made me perk up and listen to the rest of it with growing mystification tinged with awe:
“I’m invested in bringing the voice of people most impacted into a space where [other] people may not be hearing that truth and really challenging them on their privilege and access…”
“invested in…” “the voice of people…” “impacted…” “into a space…” “may not be hearing that truth…” “challenging them on their privilege…”
And I’m guessing that “access” in this context is also some sort of political cliché that I’m just not hip to.
I don’t know about you, but I was impressed. It’s like somebody bet this guy he couldn’t go a day expressing himself in nothing but clichés, buzzwords, slogans and catchphrases, and he was well on his way to winning the wager.
Phred
I’m reminded, as I so often am at such moments, of a Doonesbury strip from about 1973. Phred, the Viet Cong befriended by B.D., has gone into retirement, but is called back up for further service. He’s picked up to be taken back to war by a man driving an oxcart. Phred asks the man what’s new. The man replies with a flood of Leninist clichés about how the vanguard of the proletariat is resisting the imperialist running dogs, yadda-yadda.
Thought balloon from Phred in the back of the cart: “I forgot we talked like that!”
I think I’ve got that strip in a book at home. I’ll try to dig it up.
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I know what you were thinking when you saw that picture from 1962: “Who’s that one cool guy with the bow tie?”
I wish I knew! Maybe someone will recognize him and fill us in.
What’s extra cool is that he’s wearing a skinny bow tie, thereby perfectly complementing the others in their official, Kennedy-era ties…
Mike Flack offered an answer to the puzzle:
But I don’t think so. Too much hair, and it’s too wavy. He’s also bigger, burlier than Schlesinger. But good guess! Thanks for playing, Mike!
For comparison, this is Schlesinger.
But as you can see, he, too, could rock a bow tie!
Just think how cool (as I define cool), how self-assured, a man had to be to sport a bow tie in the ’60s!
Yeah, I know — a lot of those old guys were confused and thought it was still the ’50s, what with the Beatles not having arrived yet.
But it was still WAY countercountercultural…
I did a little Google research on the photo, from the Kennedy archives. I think the bow-tie gentleman was a George K. Hunten, founder of the Catholic Interracial Council. That just reinforces the remarkable cross-religious “intersectionality” (if you will) of that moment from the 1960s. And with a couple more Google clicks, I found out what a remarkable life he led, spanning his advocacy for the League of Nations in the post-WWI era to decades spent working to advance civil rights for African-Americans, from the 1930s onward.
sorry, misspelled his last name…it was Hunton not Hunten.
Sounds like a very cool guy, in addition to being a spiffy dresser.
Thanks for having the patience to hunt that down! I made stab at it, but didn’t find anything quickly, so…
“I’m invested in bringing the voice of people most impacted into a space where [other] people may not be hearing that truth and really challenging them on their privilege and access…”
What would you say it is you do here?
There is certainly no end to the literary fancy of some journalists these days. Take Larry Elliot, economics editor for the UK’s Guardian, for example. Elliot characterized the EU not as the U.S. without the electric chair, but as the USSR without the gulag. Hmm
Well, we journos can be pretty fancy when we get warmed up.
But let me emphasize that what I quoted above was decidedly nonjournalistic lingo….
Actually, it is anti-journalism lingo.
Yes, it is.
Rather than being designed to communicate clearly to as wide an audience as possible (the journalistic way), jargon like that is used as a sort of password and countersign for people to signal to each other among the cognoscenti that THEY are among the ideologically correct Elect…
There’s an interesting thing going on here with this “intersectionality.”
You’d think Black Lives Matter, given the urgency with which it describes its cause, would have its hands too full to worry about getting indignant over the continued existence of Israel.
But we seem to be seeing a return of a phenomenon we saw during the Cold War — leftists, particularly radical ones, getting together to work against their “imperialist” oppressors. German terrorists forming common cause with Palestinians, sometimes making connections with elements of the IRA, attending symposia with the angrier American antiwar protesters, and so forth.
Back then, they had the Soviet Union to help sponsor such connections. Now, it’s more spontaneous.
And to me, bizarre. The very idea of someone who’s concerned about police brutality against young black men in the U.S. developing a sense of solidarity with Palestinians and their grievances toward Israel… it makes no sense.
But the language helps. When your hyperbole and self-dramatization goes far enough — such as that found in this passage:
… you start to feel like you’re engaged in something with the stakes of an intifada…