Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
I'm searching in vain online for anyone noting -- let alone being dumbfounded at -- the irony of Eartha "Santa Baby" Kitt snuggling up with President Bush to sing Christmas carols at the recent lighting of the National Christmas Tree.
Although I was just a tyke when it happened, I have heard a number of times over the years about Kitt's confrontation with Lady Bird Johnson during a January 1968 women's luncheon at the White House. This is from a Time magazine report describing the incident:
"A South Carolina cotton picker as a child, Harlem slum dweller as a teenager, Singer Kitt listened with growing impatience to the women's persnickety reports about the causes of crime in the streets. Finally she spoke up -- with passion, if not with convincing logic.
" 'I think we may have missed the main point,' volunteered Singer Kitt, 39. 'The young people are angry, and their parents are angry, because they are being so highly taxed and there's a war on -- and Americans don't know why.' Staring at Mrs. Johnson, she snapped: 'You are a mother too, although you had daughters and not sons. I am a mother, and I know the feeling of having a baby come out of my gut. I have a baby and then you send him* off to war. No wonder the kids rebel and take pot -- and in case you don't understand the lingo, that's marijuana.' "
Okay, so it's not the world's most eloquent or reasoned antiwar statement (as Time couldn't resist noting), but it was quite bold and brave -- even shocking -- for its time and setting. It also ruined Kitt's career in the United States for years, and she went to live and work in Europe.
I don't presume to know her current political views and can only imagine the pain of having been professionally blacklisted as she was. My point is simply that I found it disappointing and more than a little icky to see her cozying up to W. as thousands of American and Iraqi men and women continue to be killed under Bush's watch for no good purpose.
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*As the Time article points out in its own footnote, Kitt is the mother of a girl, not a boy.
Although I was just a tyke when it happened, I have heard a number of times over the years about Kitt's confrontation with Lady Bird Johnson during a January 1968 women's luncheon at the White House. This is from a Time magazine report describing the incident:
"A South Carolina cotton picker as a child, Harlem slum dweller as a teenager, Singer Kitt listened with growing impatience to the women's persnickety reports about the causes of crime in the streets. Finally she spoke up -- with passion, if not with convincing logic.
" 'I think we may have missed the main point,' volunteered Singer Kitt, 39. 'The young people are angry, and their parents are angry, because they are being so highly taxed and there's a war on -- and Americans don't know why.' Staring at Mrs. Johnson, she snapped: 'You are a mother too, although you had daughters and not sons. I am a mother, and I know the feeling of having a baby come out of my gut. I have a baby and then you send him* off to war. No wonder the kids rebel and take pot -- and in case you don't understand the lingo, that's marijuana.' "
Okay, so it's not the world's most eloquent or reasoned antiwar statement (as Time couldn't resist noting), but it was quite bold and brave -- even shocking -- for its time and setting. It also ruined Kitt's career in the United States for years, and she went to live and work in Europe.
I don't presume to know her current political views and can only imagine the pain of having been professionally blacklisted as she was. My point is simply that I found it disappointing and more than a little icky to see her cozying up to W. as thousands of American and Iraqi men and women continue to be killed under Bush's watch for no good purpose.
__________
*As the Time article points out in its own footnote, Kitt is the mother of a girl, not a boy.
posted by Billy at 11:55 PM
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