John Updike “On Not Being a Dove” -How History Repeats itself

Neo Neocon has a wonderful post called Updike and the literary lights on war and peace.We lost Updike last week and it is amazing what is not being talked about him.

I watched the same Charlie Rose Show that is referenced here and I too rolled my eyes when New York Times Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus, the latter casually mentioned, amidst the praise and reminiscence, that “of course, Updike was on the wrong side about the Vietnam War.”

Go see her post its a good read. What is of interest is how history repeats itself. Updike on LBJ said:

The protest, from my perspective, was in large part a snobbish dismissal of Johnson by the Eastern establishment; Cambridge professors and Manhattan lawyers and their guitar-strumming children thought they could run the country and the world better than this lugubrious bohunk from Texas. These privileged members of a privileged nation believed that their pleasant position could be maintained without anything visibly ugly happening in the world.

Now does that sound familiar. It is a shame how LBJ is treated. Conservatives are suppose to hate him because of the excesses of the Great Society and Liberals hate him over Vietnam. LBJ in my view has never got the credit he deserved. It is a shame that it seems to me that the African American population of the USA as well as others seem to forget he did the grunt work on Civil rights and freed us from a horrible evil of racism and state mandated segregation. ONLY LBJ could have done that being a Southerner , a Hawk, and his profound sense of the use of politics . Of course Nixon did the necessary work too that never gets noticed either.

Whatever LBJ sins why is this not noticed? Especially in the Democrat party. The Democrats never give him the praise he deserves. We see maybe why this is so from the above post.

It would be interesting to see what Father Neuhaus if he was still alive would be saying about the passing of Updike. I was never raised around Lutherans like Updike and Neuhaus but one gets a sense that his early religious Faith shaped his world view and writings. Anyway great read .