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To: Miss Marple
I forgot to tell you about something that involves both Wodehouse AND politics. About two years ago, Andrew Ferguson, a senior editor of The Weekly Standard, wrote an article about Wodehouse. It was a delightful article and in it he claims that Wodehouse is the favorite writer of writers and writes with great affection for Plum.

About that time our newsgroup started getting political (this was right around election time, possibly during the recount) and a few people were bashing Bush pretty badly. It's the one time that our newsgroup was not a complete delight to be a part of and fortunately it only lasted a few weeks.

When I read Andrew Ferguson's article on Wodehouse, I wrote to him and told him about our newsgroup and some of the things that people were saying. Among other things, someone was trying to make comparisons between political figures and Wodehouse characters and Bush was getting compared to the worst or dumbest. (Not long before that, Margaret Carlson, I think, compared Bush to Bertie Wooster, but for very uncomplimentary reasons.) I wanted Andrew Ferguson's opinion about Plum's politics because I thought these people were way off base if they thought that Wodehouse would have gone for their politics. He wrote a really nice e-mail back with an explanation of what Wodehouse's politics were in his opinion. He agreed with me that Wodehouse was basically apolitical, but said that he considered him to be a "cottage conservative."

Now that I've read a couple of Wodehouse biographies, I think he probably was tempted by Socialism in his younger days, though perhaps not seriously. By the end of his life I'm sure he was solidly conservative and even used Jeeves to express a pretty strong opinion against the Labor government in one of the Jeeves novels.

Ever given any thought to Wodehouse's politics?

162 posted on 08/09/2002 3:51:40 PM PDT by Mr. Mulliner
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To: Singapore_Yank
Anyone who could write so affectionately of the British upper classes could not possibly be a leftist. Not only that, but he was a CHEERFUL person, who loved creature comforts and was unapologetic about cigars, martinis, and nice dinners. I cannot imagine him hanging around with the Grinches of the left.
163 posted on 08/09/2002 3:56:03 PM PDT by Miss Marple
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