Jewish Community Relations Council, Boston, Massachusetts

              My Son, the S.O.B.
We live, God help us, in a world of well-meaning
women—or so, at any rate, it would seem—or is
It that it is the well-meaning ones who make all the
noise? NaUirally, it is good that women should cate,
but would it not be better if they would consider as
well as care?
That is what is wrong with the League of
Women Voters—that, though it has the most honorable of intentions, it is too impatient and impulsive. If only it would be still a second, if only it
would give a little thought to the eventual outcome
of its actions.
If only the League of Women Voters would stop
I
to consider that if it had behaved with more in
telligence than braver)-, we might never have had
to pat up with Foster Furcolo, that old Blue who
believes not only in "For God, for country, and for.
Yale," but in "for Foster Furcolo" as well.
And not only that, but we might also have
never had to squirm at the sound of that man's
lather's being quoted as having once observed, "I
couldn't even trust that s.o.b. son of mine."
Nor does it matter whether he did say it or
not, for the point is that things have come to such
an unpleasant pass that someone should have had
occasion, either false or authentic, to say that he said
it What kind of talk is that—my son the s.o.b., indeed!
• •       •
AND YET IT NEED NEVER have been. If
only the League of Women Voters had exerted its
Influence a little more intelligently in that time when
Mr. Furcolo was begging for our ballots! But, even
so, you would think that it would learn, would you
not?
You would think that out of error would come an
enlightenment with which to endow the electorate.
But the ignorance of those women—or, rather, of the
women who lay down the law to the League—is apparently impervious. Theirs is the arrogance of ignorance. And that they mean well is not enough,
tor, as James Russell Lowell remarked:
"There's nothing we read in torture's
inventions
Like a well-meaning dunce with the best
of intentions."
For has it not been said that the road to hell is
mtved with good intentions?
• •       •
BUT IT DOES SEEM that we must suffer be-
cause some women have such unhappy home lives
that they must rush out of the house and harangue
us as to our civic duties. Nor is it as if they knew
%at they were talking about, either. But women
can be wondrous—and the worst of them were born,
•it would seem, to be meddlesome midwives to our
t
mere are, wr example, uiuoe wuy uw» s.sa^a..
-rod not for sweet ctarity, but for their own vast
vanity. And then^thene.oik those who ..re s^tuiM*
in their choir loO^U the mezzo sopranos .who succumb when tbe dSvl^is devious enough to preach
that "Nearer my &MWo\me\OMm^
putting an end to innocence.
All those women—I'm sore that they must mean
well—they and the leaders of the League of Women
Voters. But if only they were not so uninformed.
For If they were, then there might have been more
license in Lexington last Thursday night.
* •       •
THAT WAS WHEN the Lexington League of
Women Voters held its "All-Lexington Candidates
Night," a forum at which the electorate was urged
to question the candidates whose names will appear
on the ballot at tomorrow's election.
To have candidates confronted with pertinent
probing—nothing could be more educational than
that, nothing more splendidly civic, except—except
that what was deemed pertinent was determined,
not by the questioner, but by the League of Women
Voters. And that, as things turned out, was a suppression of speech.
Thus, when Sir. and Mrs. Fred Youngren submitted the question, "Are you a member of the John
Bjrch LSociety?" to all five candidates for the two
pusslllons on the school committee, they were ignored—as, for that matter, was Mrs. Theodore Mair-
son, who wished to ask much lhe same question of
Mrs. Charles Ward, one of the five.
The League of Women Voters—and not, apparently, the Lexington League of Women Voters, but
the national leaders—deemed such interrogation impertinent, thereby leaving much of Lexington in ignorance.
* •       •
IT SEEMS, I SUPPOSE, such a little thing—a
little thing in the little town of Lexington. Massachusetts. And perhaps it is at that—but, if so, then so,
too, was what happened in that town 187 years ago
this 19th of April, when 366 were killed or wounded
in a cause that some might think trifling.
* •       •
Still, there are those who fee! otherwise—those who denounce
their being denied the right to ask candidates certain questions.
But the leaders of the League of Women Voters are not among
them.
It is those women's quaint notion that membership in the
John Birch Society has no bearing at all on one's qualifications
to serve on a*TcTR>ol committee. But, naturally, they are naive
and uninformed and perhaps even dangerous. For if they are to
dictate, then they should know whereof they speak. To affirm
that about membership in the Birch Society is simply stupid—
and. what's more, the John Birch Society thinks so, too. and, in
its Bulletin of September, 1960 it said as much.
"JOIN YOUR LOCAL PTA at the beginning of this school
year" counselled the Bulletin, "get your conservative friends to
do likewise, and go to work to take it over.  You will run into
real battles, against determined leftists who have had everything
their way. But it is time we went on the offensive to make such
groups the instruments of conservative purpose, with tbe same-
vigor and determination that the 'liberals' haw.used the op- '
posite aims. When you and your friends get your local PTA group |
straightened out, move up the ladder as soon as you can to
exert a wider influence. And don't let the duty tactics of the opposition get you down. Some of them are playing for
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