PC Dead White Guy
by: Malcolm A. Kline, September 04, 2007
>>"Believe it or not, there is at least one deceased Caucasian man of
letters still revered in academia. Playwright Arthur Miller, whose dramas
attacked both capitalism and the American way of life even while he
personally benefited from both.
Thus, it is with a heavy heart that media figures re****t on the son with
Downs Syndrome whom their sensitive hero institutionalized but never
publicly acknowledged. "What makes the revelation of Daniel so upsetting
is how it juxtaposes Miller's private decision with his public image, as
one of the greatest American playwrights and the man who refused to name
names before the House Committee on Un-American Activities and eloquently
and loudly opposed the Vietnam War," Jason Zinoman wrote in The New York
Times on August 30. "For many of those who came of age in the middle of
the last century a saintly glow hovers around Miller, whose plays have
often examined questions of guilt and morality through the prism of
family."
"He was a hero of the left and a champion of the downtrodden." In the
Ivory Tower, he still is. "How do we know what we would have done"�
Morris Dickstein, who teaches English at the City University of New York
Graduate Center asks. �The birth of a child with Down syndrome can be a
tremendous trauma, to say nothing of a strain on a marriage.� In an
e-mail message this week that Zinoman quoted, Professor Dickstein argued
that "the truth is that very few great artists were admirable people."
"At heart they're killers who'll do anything to get the work done."
Perhaps that is a good description of Professor Dickstein's favorite
writers.
Would it work as well for Flannery O'Connor?"<<
Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.
((Of course "White" was something Miller was not quite. Still, who needs a
tard in the house?
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