April 6, 2006
Re: Of Sickles, McKinney, and Gordon Posted by John Steele Gordon at 12:15 PM EST Well at least Mr. Zeitz and I agree on a few things: Dan Sickles and Cynthia McKinney are (or were, in the case of Gen. Sickles) loathsome human beings.
I have always meant to go visit Sickles’s leg in its pickle jar in the museum. He was, at least, a fascinating character no novelist would try to create (except, perhaps George McDonald Fraser, whose Harry Flashman -- http://www.briansiano.com/flashman/ -- comes pretty close at times). Not many people commit murder in broad daylight and get away with it, lose a leg in battle through disobeying orders and win the Medal of Honor for it, get kicked out of a government job for peculation, and work mightily to have the Gettysburg battlefield made a national monument. But Sickles did all that and much more besides. I would recommend Thomas Keneally’s American Scoundrel.
As for Cynthia McKinney, she’s an embarrassment to Georgia and just about everything else. But she has a serious opponent in the Democratic primary this August, so hopefully the voters will throw her out again, as they did in 2002. As for Neal Boortz, I’m afraid I’ve never heard of him. I would rather go to the dentist during a Novocain strike than listen to political talk radio of whatever stripe. The passage quoted by Mr. Zeitz is exactly why.
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