Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Sacco and Vanzetti Were Guilty

Or so Upton Sinclair wrote in a letter. But that didn't stop him from writing Boston, a novelization of the affair that promoted their innocence. But wait, there is more:
Ideale Gambera, whose father was a Boston anarchist in the 1920s, said he could empathize with Sinclair's angst about revealing his doubts.

Gambera, 80, said there was a strict code of silence to protect the group and hide the nature of their activities. He said his father, Giovanni Gambera, a member of the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee, told him before he died in 1982 that Sacco was one of the killers.

"They all lied," said Gambera, a retired English professor living in San Rafael. "They did it for the cause."

The hypocrisy of the Left seems endless. What good is served by lying? How can spreading untruth and damaging myths bring about a better world? The engineer in me rebels at the very thought. No good can come from ignoring what is real, only trouble and failed systems.

6 comments:

Doug said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Doug said...

Another Classic Case:

Wretchard points to a piece by Douglas McCollam at the Columbia Journalism Review.
McCollam comprehensively reviews the question of whether Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize should have been revoked.
---
Typical Durantyism:
"no actual starvation or deaths from starvation, but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition."
While conditions were bad, Duranty went on to write, there was no famine.
---
IOW
The lazy Kulak did not die of starvation, he died from lack of oxygen when he stopped breathing.
This process was accelerated by malnutrition.
---
Arthur Sulzberger Jr. wrote that the Times had often acknowledged Duranty's slovenly work, but argued that the "board might set a bad precedent by revoking the award." Sulzberger wrote that the Times would respect whatever decision the board made, but cautioned that revoking the award was somewhat akin to the Stalinist urge "to airbrush purged figures out of official records and histories."

Obviously Paunch Sulzberger Jr. has the same way with words as Duranty, and would not want anyone to reflect critically on his freedom to continue in this style.
...many of his present day reporters are doing a bang up job of it.

chuck said...

doug,

"no actual starvation or deaths from starvation, but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition."

In the final analysis, we all die of heart failure. What else is there to diagnose?

Barry Dauphin said...

I saw Munich over the holidays. Apropos this article, everything old is new again.

Doug said...

Heywood Broun
Broun campaigned for the release of Tom Mooney and the Scottsboro Nine. However, his main preoccupation was with what he believed was the injustice of the conviction of Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco. When the editor of the New York World refused to print his articles on the case, he resigned with the comment "that I am too ill-disciplined, too indiscreet to fit pleasantly into the World's philosophy." In 1930 Broun ran unsuccessfully for Congress as a socialist. Three years later Broun was expelled from the Socialist Party after appearing with members of the Communist Party at a rally demanding the release of Tom Mooney and the Scottsboro Nine. Broun helped establish the American Newspaper Guild in 1933 and was elected its first president. As well as writing for several newspapers Broun was a regular contributor to the journals, The Nation and The New Republic.

Anonymous said...

Right and wrong, truth or lies, are irrelevant for the left. There is only the usefulness of any given story in making progress toward the desired end. They may cover it in public with talk of a "Higher Truth", but not among themselves. For them, the end truly justifies the means.