European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - January 18, 1987, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Page 10 columns Jim Fain the stars and stripes sunday january 18.1967 Buchanan candidacy might Bury right Wing myth Pat Buchanan who mastered the politics of bluster As speech writer for Spiro Agnew and Richard Nixon is thinking about running far president. Some far right gurus urge him on and there arc democrats who like the crowd watching the nut on the skyscraper ledge Are Yelling  such a race might serve civic uplift. No one captures me mean spirited Dis temper of he hard right better than Buchanan and in would be comforting 10 see How few cart stomach his bile. As while House director of communications Buchanan recently circled the wagons around Ronald Reagan trying to distract the Public with attacks on the press liberals and even republicans who fail his purity test. He played a similar role during watergate and. Having Learned nothing from it tries now to overturn history by leading a Reagan charge so far out even his fellow staffers want no pan of it. Buchanan is a movement conservative from the git go Champion of Botha in South Africa Pinochet in Chile and the Reagan fixation that Only Nicaragua s Contra stand Between us and a soviet invasion of Brownsville Texas. He is a Militarist who defends colonialism thinks tracking Down nazis from the holocaust is a waste of Lime and opposes any posthumous Honor for Martin Luther King or. Like Many of Washington s trendy firebrands Elliott Abrams George Wilf it a Buchanan is of the Vietnam generation segment that never saw combat. He enrolled in Roth Al Georgetown University but was precluded from Active duty by a knee operation. Such armchair warriors can be bold at risking others lives in their Imperial crusades. They have basked in right Wing Chic during the Reagan Era. Washingion is a sycophant City Many of whose inhabitants will Trade god love family or heritage for a toehold in the moment s Bubble of Power and celebrity. Right Wing Money has mushroomed conserva William Buckley live think tanks while Reagan bowled Over Liberal and centrist politicians. Even the Washington Post which Buchanan Calls the attack dog of the american left has found a Good bit to commend in the Reagan regime. N fact the press in general despite Buchanan s Effort o use it As whipping boy has been almost a tool of the administration. The White House shovel brigade has been Able to impart its spin to most events manipulating journalists More extensively i lion any administration in memory. All this applause and glitter have generated monumental hubris in the right Many of Buchanan s clan came to be Lieve pundits and professors who prattle Ghoul a conservative realignment of american politics. It simply Ain t 10. . Politics clings devoutly to the Center shifting just ii notch or two from one election to the next under the influence of events and personalities. Reagan won by a tiny majority of popular vote against a woefully unpopular incumbent in 1980 and by a larger margin in an Issue class Campaign against an inept of Ponce in i9�4. He is an amiable telegenic Man whom people lend to like in Spile of addled misstatements and flagrant in competence. He has been much loved but his most cherished policies Are widely opposed. Buchanan shares his misconception thai courage is measured in decibels but not much else certainly none of his sunny Charm. A Buchanan Campaign might be just the ticket to Bury the myth of right Wing magic. Can my 6vtc. Diin butyl 6j of new tort Tonii do faces save King from being Gauzy legend ? in you want to see an exercise in though i control consider the matter of he Rev. Martin Luther King and his  publicized womanizing. 1 have been writing about or. Ring since 1955 and have not once mentioned the matter of the sen tapes i wrote in favor of a National Holiday in his Honor but too much defined As the recent treatment of them in time Magazine and elsewhere is too much. What is Stii Dalous we Are led to believe is exclusively the tapes existence and the uses to which they were put by the Fri. What we arc not permitted to meditate on is whether the subject matter of those tapes was scandalous. Or. Jack while of time discussing a new Book about or. King by David Garrow of new York City College writes about the danger of King being transformed from a flesh and blood hero to a Gauzy legend the author s punch is quickly telegraphed an ordained minister who is married and faithful to his wife suffers the awful Hazard of becoming a Gauzy  one is Best rescued from such an awful Fate by having numerous sexual affairs in numerous motels including a Liaison of Long standing thai increasingly became the emotional Centrepiece of his life. The reviewer goes on the Book so Chis a revealing new Light on King s human Side regular Philan Dering and on the vicious secret pressures he faced from the Fri. The Complex and convincing portrait. A tribes How the Bureau under j. Edgar Hoover tried o blackmail and intimidate King with tapes of his sexual encounters and How ii attempted to discredit him by spreading reports about his love life after he refused to break off his Friendship with a suspected communist  the Stoky is that or. King was close to a sus peeled communist and president Kennedy Drew him to one Side Al a White House function and warned him that if the civil rights movement got entangled with the communist movement it would suffer. King did not suspend his contacts with the suspect quite the contrary he was introduced to and admitted into his entourage yet another communist suspect. At which Point Robert Kennedy reluctantly we arc not told by the reviewer How Iha reluctance was expressed acceded to Hoover s plea to Bug King s hotel rooms. That. Provided a lode of scandalous data about King s philandering. The Fri wasted no Lime in circulating game samples of the recordings to government officials Friendly journalists and even King s wife in an attempt o persuade King to with draw from an Active role in the  there is a whole lot set up in these sentences that amount to thought control in the grand manner. We need o begin by asking Why were the data scandalous presumably because the american pub Lic does not approve of philandering especially by ministers of the gospel. Sinclair Lewis wrote a novel introducing a name into the permanent literature of hypocrisy Elmer Gan iry. He was the fundamentalist minister who preached during the Day and fornicate during inc night. But we had just been warned against King s being made a Gauzy legend from which he is now rescued by being shown to have been instead a flesh and blood  Wei then does ii follow that we owe a debt to Robert Kennedy and to the Fri for rescuing the Republic from an impression of Martin Luther King not Only As a moralize but also As a moral Man but the reviewer is not done. He concludes that now we know of the Complex Man and his struggles with the Fri and with himself providing us with a deeper appreciation of the larger crusade he waged. The Book does not diminish the heroic nature 01 his struggle but instead makes it More  what exactly is the meaning of that we All know that All men Are sinners we All know that All men Are subject to great temptations bul do we not also know that heroism is in part defined by resistance to temptation last week a two hour drama on i. Edgar Hoover was played on Cable television. In in Harry Truman and Jack and Bobby Kennedy in Sharp contrast to j. Edgar Hoover resisted the temptation to pry into the private lives of their adversaries a Point that run Irather awkwardly into the account of the direct participation of Robert Kennedy in the bugging of the Motel rooms. Still Are we or arc we not saying that that which n scandalous is that which offends the Public ethic and thai even though we know about the prevalence of sin we Honor especially those who struggle successfully not Only 10 preach the commandments of god but to Fol Low them in trl san Kim