A friend reminded me that I had not paid tribute to Studs Terkel who passed away, Friday. A terrible oversight it was, too, because I have always admired him especially his willingness to champion the lesser known or third party candidates in the cause of doing what is right!
“Innocently–or was I damnably perverse even then?–I piped, ‘Fightin’ Bob La Follette,'” Terkel recalled eight decades later, mentioning the name of the progressive senator from Wisconsin who earned his support that year. “She was startled, poor dear. Why have I always upset such gentle hearts? Why couldn’t I have been my cute little button self and said the right thing: ‘Keep Cool with Coolidge.'”
Studs could be cute, and damnably perverse.
But the Pultizer Prize-winning author, pioneering radio personality, battler against Joe McCarthy and McCarthyism, raconteur, rabble-rouser and grand old man of the American left, who died Friday at age 96, never pulled his punches when it came to politics.
(hat tip/Jim Lommasson)
