Tom Wicker (1926-2011)

"The casual gait, the easygoing manner, the down-home drawl set a tone for audiences, but masked a fiery temperament, a ferocious work ethic, a tigerish competitiveness and a stubborn idealism, qualities that made him a perceptive observer of the American scene for more than a half century."

-- from Robert McFadden's NYT obituary

by Ken

I had the end in sight for a piece on Black Friday as the embodiment of the true national spirit when I stumbled across this evening's news of the death of longtime liberal New York Times columnist Tom Wicker. This one, I have to say, has hit me hard, so Black Friday will have to wait till Sorrowful Saturday.

So far I've only had a chance to look at the Times's own obit, which is chockful of information but doesn't seem to me to capture much of the spirit of the fellow -- and I'm speaking as someone who of course never met him but was nevertheless regularly inspired by his engagement and spirit. The sentence I've pulled out of the Times obit above comes closest.

Otherwise, here's the part of McFadden's obit that seems to me most significant:

In contrast to the conservative pontificating of Mr. Krock and the genteel journalism of Mr. Reston, Mr. Wicker brought a hard-hitting Southern liberal/civil libertarian’s perspective to his column, "In the Nation," which appeared on the editorial page and then on the Op-Ed Page two or three times a week from 1966 until his retirement in 1991. It was also syndicated to scores of newspapers.

Riding waves of change as the effects of the divisive war in Vietnam and America’s civil rights struggle swept the country, Mr. Wicker applauded President Lyndon B. Johnson and Congress for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but took the president to task for deepening the American involvement in Southeast Asia.

He denounced President Richard M. Nixon for covertly bombing Cambodia, and in the Watergate scandal accused him of creating the "beginnings of a police state." Nixon put Mr. Wicker on his "enemies list," but resigned in disgrace over the Watergate cover-up. Vice President Spiro T. Agnew upbraided Mr. Wicker for "irresponsibility and thoughtlessness," but he, too, resigned after pleading no contest to evading taxes on bribes he had taken while he was governor of Maryland.

The Wicker judgments fell like a hard rain upon all the presidents: Gerald R. Ford, for continuing the war in Vietnam; Jimmy Carter, for "temporizing" in the face of soaring inflation and the Iranian hostage crisis; Ronald Reagan, for dozing through the Iran-Contra scandal, and the elder George Bush, for letting the Persian Gulf war outweigh educational and health care needs at home. Mr. Wicker’s targets also included members of Congress, government secrecy, big business, corrupt labor leaders, racial bigots, prison conditions, television and the news media.

In the 1970s, Mr. Wicker, whose status as a columnist put him outside the customary journalistic restrictions on advocacy, became a fixture on current-events television shows and addressed gatherings on college campuses and in other forums. Speaking at a 1971 "teach-in" at Harvard, he urged students to "engage in civil disobedience" in protesting the war in Vietnam. "We got one president out," he told the cheering crowd, "and perhaps we can do it again."

Mr. Wicker had many detractors. He was attacked by conservatives and liberals, by politicians high and low, by business interests, labor leaders and others, and for a time his activism -- crossing the line from observer to participant in news events -- put him in disfavor with many mainstream journalists. But his speeches and columns continued unabated.

#