Secondly, instead of competing with Muskie and Humphrey, I was then competing with Nixon, the author of the Southern strategy and the guy who hammered hard against those who were dissenters on the war and hammered on amnesty and busing and those things, so that it was a different type of competition than I had with Muskie and Humphrey in Wisconsin.
I have seen them try to amuse an outsider by telling stories which they consider very funny – but which generate fear and queasiness in a listener whose sense of humor has a different kind of filter.
Some of the outlaws understand this communications gap, but most are puzzled and insulted to hear that “normal people” consider them horrible.
In a world increasingly geared to specialists, technicians and fantastically complicated machinery, the Hell’s Angels are obvious losers and it bugs them. But instead of submitting quietly to their collective fate, they have made it the basis of a full-time social vendetta. They don’t expect to win anything, but on the other hand, they have nothing to lose.
We were past the point of debating the wisdom of this move; it was already done, and our only hope was to get to the other side.
Any lawyer who says there’s no such thing as rape should be hauled out to a public place by three large perverts and buggered at high noon, with all his clients watching.
Many fine books have been written in prison.
But the main reason I’m working for him,” he said, “is that he’s the only guy we have who can beat Nixon.” He stabbed the arm again. “If Nixon wins again, we’re in real trouble.” He picked up his drink, then saw it was empty and put it down again. “That’s the real issue this time,” he said. “Beating Nixon. It’s hard to even guess how much damage those bastards will do if they get in for another four years.”1.
No other speaker at that convention was allowed to ignore the time limit laid out for him in the split-second script, but Goldwater was encouraged to rave and snarl at the cameras until he ran out of things to say. His speech set the tone for the whole convention, and his only real competition was Ronald Reagan. Compared to those two, both Agnew and Nixon sounded like bleeding-heart liberals.
A motorcyclist has to drive as if everybody else on the road is out to kill him.
Because of the headwaiter mentality that prevails among customs officials, no commercial shipper of marijuana or anything else illegal would make the mistake of using Hell’s Angels for runners. It would be like sending a car up to the border with “Opium Express” painted in red letters on both sides.
Listen, madam,” he snapped. “I’m damn near intolerably handsome down here where I am. You’d go crazy if I stood up!
The idea is to show him that you were always in total control of yourself and your vehicle – while he lost control of everything.
Fellow Traveler.
The only glaring weakness in McGovern’s sweep was his failure to break Humphrey’s grip on the black wards in Milwaukee – where The Hube had campaigned avidly, greeting all comers with the Revolutionary Drug Brothers handshake. It was.
I’ve always thought that the blue-collar vote had to be a source of his strength,” said Frank Mankiewicz, McGovern’s main strategist. “It always seemed to me that McGovern – not as the anti-war candidate but as the ‘change’ candidate – would appeal more to Middle America than he would to any other group. They’re the ones with the most to gain from change and they’re the ones who get screwed by the way we do business in this country.
But if McGovern loses in November, control of the Democratic Party will instantly revert to the Ole Boys, and McGovern himself will be labeled “another Goldwater” and stripped of any power in the party.
He showed me a pencil-written analysis of the voting trends. In most black districts, Humphrey was beating McGovern two to one. In the white labor districts, McGovern was easily taking Humphrey. The blacks were clearly the only bloc in the state that had not gone all out for.
Both McGovern and Wallace, he said, draw on the same pool of extremely alienated blue-collar voters, a group that is constantly getting deeper into bitterness, cynicism, and resentment about the current government.
But Muskie was the one who could beat Nixon or unite the party or was the clear leader – or any of those other phrases of antiquity.