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FROM THE PHONE BOOTH: The Smallest Space in  Hollywood

	FINEFROCK

We’ve Heard This Before:
Barack O’Wallace For President
by Steve Finefrock - Hollywood Forum [scriptwriter] 3/4/08

We’ve heard it before, at least twice, once in my lifetime, another just before it commenced.  Will third time be the charm for the left?  Let us jump back to the initial overt, almost-successful expression of stupid rhetoric and ideology.  Most interesting to study, it is Truman’s oddity of a presidency, eventually pulling his head out of his ivory tower of democrat perspective – two years too late to stop much of Stalin’s stalinism, but worthy nonetheless.  Into his pathway was Henry Wallace’s challenge to Truman’s renomination and re-election.
 
Wallace had risen as the left’s icon, becoming FDR’s Secretary of Agriculture, then the third-term VP, next dumped for Truman as VP, at the concerned urging of DNC officials in a notable and rare patriotic act: they feared FDR’s imminent death would put Wallace into the Oval Office, the closest we’d ever have to a commie in power.  It was a true act of nation over party, national security over political advantage and party unity. Truman as president made Wallace his Secretary of Commerce, but the lefty couldn’t hold his tongue, in the midst of Stalin’s growing stalinism in Europe. As Truman was getting tough against encroaching Stalin initiatives – rather belatedly – Wallace was in a lather, speaking at Madison Square Garden: “The tougher we get with Russia, the tougher they will get with us.”

The public’s hostile fallout from that early expression of Blame-America-Firstism led Wallace to resign, and actively criticize anti-Stalin policies of Truman. For protecting Greece and Turkey, Wallace observed: “The world is hungry and insecure, and the people of all lands demand change. American loans for military purposes won’t stop them… America will become the most hated nation in the world.”  Hostility to Truman led him to join forces with Eugene Dennis, general secretary of the U.S. Communist Party, saying “I’m not afraid of communism” and launched a challenge to Truman’s election.
 
Amidst this, Strom Thurmond, a democrat and rabid racist, bolted from the party also, whose movement was condemned by Truman as “crackpots” as well as were Wallace’s supporters as “part of the contemptible communist minority.” Labor leader Walter Reuther noted: “Communists perform the most complete valet service in the world. They write your speeches, they do your thinking for you…that’s the trouble with Henry Wallace.”  Adding to Wallace’s allure to many on the left was his evangelical utterance, “communists are the closest things to early Christian martyrs” and called for withdrawal from Berlin [redeployment, anyone?] and accepted the commie party endorsement.
 
Wallace argued, then, as many did in the 60s, that American imperialism was the cause of the Cold War. He generated an entire intellectual elite who blamed America when Stalin, and then Khrushchev, and then Brezhnev oppressed their own citizens, built the Berlin Wall, put tanks into Prague and the endless litany which illustrated a truth to all but the left: communists are not to be trusted.
 
Truman won easy return to the Oval Office, having savaged both Thurmond’s “Dixicrat” party [note it was not the Dixie-publican party] and Wallace’s commie-supported candidacy. Wallace faded into history, his stupidities to be revived by Sixties radicals, after which era has calmed considerably. Until now. Until Code Pink.  Until Michael Moore’s mendacity.  And Barack Obama’s latest line:
 
There was no such thing as Al Quaeda in Iraq, until George Bush and John McCain decided to invade Iraq.
 
Add his wife’s assertion that she’s only recently become ‘really proud’ of America, and obviously because her hubbie may be the new Oval Occupant, and it’s apparent that Henry Wallace lives.  His supporters are well and prospering. And the defenders return to attack those who find Barack’s sentiments eerily scary.  There being no Truman to solidly label a fellow democrat for out-of-bounds attitude, Barack’s bashing of McCain, and Bush, and conservatives, goes unchallenged.


Voters under 40 will not find these words to be an echo of a repetitive pattern of leftist ‘idealism’ both then and now.  Their perfessors ain’t teachin’ ‘em the stuff of that era, since most were and are sympathetic to all things left, and hostile to any hint of “giving aid and comfort” to a conservative viewpoint of history.  Those over 40 are worn and weary from being unsuccessful at pointing out these erroneous views, and flinch at the first criticism for being “old-fashioned Redbaiters” and also, in modern update of the left j’accuse, for being anti-Muslim.
 
But, the Ides of March are about to march into the picture, and the tides will begin to shift, for the basic American Character still can be roused to resent the resurgence of Hate America First, and its toxic cousin, Blame America First.  Henry Wallace began it, the Sixties wackos nurtured it and their surviving numbers still nurse the resentment that they did not persuade the rest of America to buy it, and Barack has traipsed into Wallace-land with nary a serious doubt by the MSM.  
 
What is different now? New Media. The Internet. Talk Radio. Text Messaging.
 
Thereby opportunities abound to put Wallace’s weary mantel around Barack’s bony neck. Not that many will know, or care, about Wallace. It’s not required; the nation’s lingering desire to be thought of as Decent, Moral and Principled will trump Barack’s “positive” bashing of the nation. Blaming America, and Bush, and McCain, for evil dudes in Iraq, or Iran, or the Gaza Strip, is just more Wallace-ism.  Maybe alternate media can effectively demonstrate to the voting public that Barack has his head deep inside his ivory tower. Once first built by Wallace.
 
We’ve been here before, heard it many times, and it didn’t work the first two times.  Shall it be third time’s the charm? Can Barack get away with what failed for Wallace, and the Sixties nut-jobs?
 
We have only HOPE! ExileStreet

copyright 2008 Steve Finefrock

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