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The Tar HeelThursday, June 8, 1989t9 Opinion Remember Pepper and his liberal Claude Pepper is dead. The 88-year-old Florida congress man known best as a stalwart sup porter of the elderly died May 30 after a losing battle with stomach cancer. His death called forth bipar tisan praise and somber eulogies on Capitol Hill, as the passing of a true statesman always does. Pepper's body lay in state in the Capitol rotunda. Outgoing House Speaker Jim Wright took time out from his last, belea guered days to speak at a service for Pepper. President Bush joined in the praise, calling Pepper "a gentleman, a noble human being." These somber scenes are appro priate to the memory of such a man. Still, in a broader sense, they do the man and his legacy a disservice. Along with the scenes of bipartisan sorrow, most news commentators offered today's politically illiterate audience only the information that Pepper was a champion of the poor and a fighter for the rights of the elderly, as in deed he was. But Claude Pepper was also much more. He was, first and foremost, a Democrat, a liberal unashamed to carry that label in a day when demagoguery and selfish ness have made it anathema. On the day of Pepper's death, all the net works showed basically the same set of clips to encapsulate Pepper's ca reer. Keep in mind that one clip which popped up again and again was of Pepper dishing out the fiery Demo cratic oratory at a Mondale rally in 1984. Then already well into his 80s, China offers sobering thoughts 00 Saturday morning I woke up early as usual, about the crack of noon. Don Mattingly was having batting practice in my head and the thing that had crawled inside my mouth and died was not decomposing nearly as fast as I would have liked. Basi cally, I felt like a piece of American cheese that had been left on the counter for three weeks. In situations like this there's only one sure cure: a bottle of Yoo-hoo and Bugs Bunny. Few people know this, but these two ingredients, com bined, can make a hangover-decrepit 21 -year-old into a hangover-decrepit six-year-old. You still feel like dirt, but at least you don't have to worry about your auto insurance or the exam you skipped Friday. I turned on the television, and then had to whack at it to get the color right, and then had to mess with the antenna so Bugs didn't look like he'd just been given a perm, and then had to sweep fourteen back issues of Cos mopolitan (damn former occupants must have had a ten-year subscrip tion) off the couch so I could sit down. I let my eyes adjust took a big swig of Yoo-hoo and waited to laugh at whatever cartoon I had seen 14,000 times before (they get funnier every time. But I'll talk about that in a later column.) But Bugs wasn't on. Neither was Daffy or Tweety or Sylvester or Pepe or Foghorn or Porky or that little kangaroo that everybody thinks is a mouse. None of ihem. I checked the Kyle Hudson Staff Columnist Pepper radiated the energy of a man half his age in denouncing the poli cies of another elderly politician. So, honest bipartisan sorrow aside, the most important epitaph for Pep per is one of fierce partisanship, an enduring faith in liberal principles. Pepper's political biography is, in more ways than one, a metaphor for liberalism in this century; it offers a portrait of the Democratic past and sound first principles for the future. Preserving the lessons of Claude Pepper's life for those generations just now coming of age, those Pep per never touched during his life, is the greatest legacy any statesman could desire. Pepper first went to Washington in 1936 as a U.S. Senator. He tried for a Senate seat in 1934 but came up short In 1936 he was appointed by the governor of Florida to fill a va cancy created by the death of Sena tor Duncan Thomas. In 1938, Pep per's battle to secure a senate seat in his own right became a litmus test for national approval of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal policies, spe cifically for Roosevelt's wages and hours bill. That year had been a year of setbacks for the New Dealers, who decided to take the risk of announc John Bland Less Filling clock. 11:34. Bugs Bunny comes on, Saturday mornings from 1 1 to noon. Everything seemed right. It wasn't Instead of seeing Bugs I was seeing a map of downtown Bei jing, and instead of hearing the back ground music of Winston Sharpies or Carl S tailings, I was hearing the distant sound of gunfire. Now, normally in this situation I would have reacted the same as any other red-blooded American. I would have called the President and ordered him to put Bugs Bunny back on. This was different Here I was, disheveled, dirty and hungover, liv ing in the freest nation on earth, Yoo hoo dripping off my chin, not a prob lem in the world outside the Yoo hoo dripping off my chin, seeing young men and women, the same age ' as me, fighting against impossible odds for ideals in which they believed. What could I say? Having never been placed in such a situation, I could never imagine what it would be like to one day have to fervently back up my beliefs. Against an army like that I tried to imagine if suddenly all the Boston Red Sox fans in the coun try took over (horrifying prospect, huh?). Took over everything, the government, the armed forces, local Sav-A-Ceritcrs, banks Las Vegas.- ing the administration's support of Pepper during his primary battle against conservative, anti-New Deal candidates. It was FDR's son Jimmy who made the announcement in Palm Beach. Pepper won easily, taking 58 percent of the vote. Roosevelt and his supporters took heart from this symbolic gesture of faith in the New Deal, and in less than two months the Fair Labor Standards Act was signed into law. Still, the 1938 elections were marked by losses for the New Deal ers. Roosevelt learned the painful lesson that not all of his attempts to influence congressional elections would succeed; indeed, his attempt to purge Congress of the conserva tive Democrats who had banded together with Republicans to frus trate Roosevelt would backfire badly. Pepper's election marked a victory for the thinking of the pro gressive South over unreconstructed Southern conservatism, but it was the exception rather than the rule. But Pepper's win was important. He was, from the very beginning, a symbol, a catalyst for what turned out to be the last major piece of New Deal legisla tion. In the years between 1938 and 1950, Pepper continued to stand out as a strong liberal. After his 1938 victory, he supported Roosevelt's desire to intervene against Hitler in Europe, and Pepper was a participant in the crafting of Roosevelt's lend- Then they gave a directive: become Red Sox fans or die. I'm a loyal Yankees fan. Do I fight, or do I sit back and yell, "Knock that ball outta here, Wade"? It made me wonder what Chapel Hill was like in the late '60s, when students, maybe some of our parents (except mine; they're too old), pro tested the Vietnam War, the Nixon administration and Lawrence Welk. How willing were they to lay down their lives and become martyrs in an idealistic yet ultimately unsuccessful battle? Kent State was as far as our gov ernment went to try and stop what was already a runaway locomotive, and that was four lives too far. The Chinese government has crossed a line from which it can never return in (Uar Br-rl lease program, which granted crucial military aid to a war-weary Britain. He was also one of the few South erners to support anti-lynching laws. But, then as now, strong liberal credentials created fodder for nega tive conservative campaigning. Pep per gained the moniker "Red Pep per" for his politics as much as for his shock of red hair. His record of support for legislation popular in the South, his relatively liberal attitude towards the Soviet Union and his political friendliness with men like Henry Wallace cost him his Senate seat. In what has become a classic in the history of demagoguery, his op ponent, George Smathers, took ad vantage of the Southerners' tenden cies towards big paranoia and a small vocabulary. He called Pepper a "shameless extrovert," accused him of "practicing celibacy before mar riage" and claimed that Pepper's sis ter was a "thespian" in the wicked Big City. To this day, Smathers de- , nies that he actually said these things; regardless, he did use Pepper's lib eral record as a weapon and won by more than 60,000 votes. The politics of resentment and fear, of capitalizing on people's worst in stincts, have always been a favorite tool of conservatives, nowhere more than in the South. Smathers' word salads are not all that far from Jesse Helms' scare tactics, nor, lest we for get, from the sort of mentality that sent a scowling Willie Horton into the eyes of the world. I sat there and stared at the screen. Peter Jennings was alternating be tween correspondents, who told of soldiers marching into crowds with bayonets fixed, private citizens hurl ing rocks at armored personnel carri ers. And the everpresent crackling of automatic weapons. Then it was suddenly over and Bugs was back to shoving a stick of dynamite in Daffy's mouth. The irony of the moment was quite shocking, this collision of two worlds, reality and cartoon, so far removed from each other, and yet bound to gether by sheer absurdity. The real violence in Beijing, where a man could take the life of a fellow countryman and have to live with the blood on his hands; and the cartoon violence Editor Dave Glenn Assistant Editor Sarah Cagle Assistant Editor John Bland Staff Reggie Alston, Randy Basinger, Beth Boorman, Richard Broadwen, George Brooks, Jennifer Brunnemer, Chris Chalfant, Eric Chasse, Joanna Davis, Dawn Delvecchio, Stacia Fairchild, Kelly Ferrell, Jim Greenhill, Jada Harris, Gary Jacobs, Jason James, Susan Jensen, Sheila Johnston, Jim Justice, Gray Kelly, Jeff Kiel, Elizabeth Murray, Mike Partridge, Al Ripley, Donna Sellers, Brian Springer, Barbie Stuckey, John Voncan-non. legacy millions of American homes. Pepper returned to Congress in 1962, this time as a representative from Miami. Already in his 60s, Pepper continued to fight the liberal fight by adopting a new issue, the rights of the elderly. He served as chairman of the House Select Com mittee on Aging, then as chairman of the Rules Committee, where he used the position as a bastion against cuts in Social Security. Up to the end, Pepper remained one of the most lib eral Southerners in Congress, always gaining high approval ratings from organizations like the ACLU and the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA). One notable exception to Pepper's liberal record was his sup port for the Nicaraguan contras, a view not terribly surprising when one considers the large, staunchly anti: communist Cuban-American popu lation in Pepper's district Claude Pepper represented the best of Democratic liberalism, a commit ment to help the helpless and to as sert a positive role for government in a world that for many is, like Hob bes' state of nature, nasty, brutish and short. In this, Pepper was a re sounding success, and his strong lib eral principles should not be forgot ten in the non-partisan sorrow over his passing. Hats off to the shame less extrovert, and may the liberal ism he represented never die. Kyle Hudson is a junior history major from Greenville. apathy of Bugs Bunny, where Daffy would only end up black-faced and mad, with his beak around his neck. This isn't meant to offend, because I'm not trying to make a joke out of what has happened, nor am I trying to trivialize an event to which I can neither relate nor fully understand. It is simply what happened last Satur day afternoon, as I watched, deeply disturbed, the action on TV switch between real and cartoon violence, my own emotions drifting from an ger to pride to wonder to confusion, but all the while thinking about what was going on half a globe away. What were you thinking about it? Or were you thinking about it? John Bland is a senior English major from Charlotte.
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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