Von Hoffman
Angela Davis has been off touring
^ Russia, collecting heroine medals and
^ telling her adoring audiences that without
the weight of Soviet public opinion she
would never have beaten her murder
kidnapping conspiracy rap Judging from
the reports, she's not whipping up popular
support for her erstwhile co-defendant,
Ruchell McGee.
Lacking a sexy Afro and the other ap
purtenances of glamor, McGee remains
the neglected loner he was on August 7,
1970, when Jonathan Jackson tried to
liberate him and two other black convicts
from a Marin County (Calif.) courtroom.
Jackson, the judge and two of the cons lost
their lives.
Yet. McGee the survivor, the quietly
ferocious man is more compelling and
interesting than the radical super star. It
is he, not she, who poses the hard questions
of our system of justice.
William F. Buckley Jr. and Nicholas Von Hoffman
don't agree. You don't have to ask what they don't agree
about—they just don't agree. That's good. The only
common ground they seem to have is that both appear in
the Emerald.
Bill Buckley represents the right—to say the least.
He uses big words and long sentences but when he says
something you know just where he stands on that par
ticular issue.
Nicholas Von Hoffman is the resident left-winger at
the Washington Post. He has a rare talent for cutting
through to the truth of the situation even though some
people would like to keep the truth clouded.
Both Buckley and Von Hoffman provide articulate
opinions on the issues we all face today. You may not
like either or both of them but they will set you to
thinking.
Read Buckley and Von Hoffman in the Emerald.
*
Buckley
MIAMI BEACH — Ronald Reagan
delivered what was in effect the keynote
address at the Republican convention It
had everything. It ranked with the great
performances of Walter Judd in and
Clare Boothe Luce in 1948 It did cause
listeners here and again to wince: and that
is an interesting psychological datum.
An influential supporter of George
McGovern, who greatly admired the
professional performance, commented
wryly that a few more such speeches were
exactly what McGovern now needs. He
had in mind the toughness of Mr Reagan’s
criticism What Reagan said, in effect,
was that McGovern is an addlepated in
competent who emits little moonbeams
that cause some of the children and the zoo
sections of the academy to howl, but there
is meanwhile a world to run and what it
comes down to is that it is an act of great
impudence for George McGovern so to
distract the republic.
All-sided commentary