Posted on 05/20/2004 7:16:39 PM PDT by frmrda
The Kerry campaign sure is starting to look like the Gang that Couldn't Shoot Straight. According to the Drudge Report today, John Kerry's campaign has settle on the words "Let America be America Again" as their campaign theme.
There's only one problem. Kerry plagiarized the phrase from a poem written by black writer Langston Hughes. The punchline that follows Kerry's line reads, "America never was America to me."
Even worse for the embattled presidential candidate is the fact that Langston Hughes was a well-known Communist.
Langston Hughes is a man who once added an extra S to USA in a poem. The extra S stood for Soviet. In the same piece, Hughes also wrote, "good-morning, Revolution: You're the very best friend I ever had. We gonna pal around together from now on."
Hughes took to communism in the 1930's when he actually left the United States to live in the Soviet Union.
Developing ...
IIRC, Langston Hughes was also a homosexual.
What is "IIRC"?
If I Recall Correctly...
Dang, I'd have never figured that one out. Thanks.
FMCDH
It's "research".
FMCDH
Langston Hughes was black. That may let Kerry off the hook. And all things considered, he was a pretty good poet.
Kerry can always say that was his wife's slogan....
Hughes wrote a line of poetry "night comingly tenderly, black like me", part of which became the title of one of the best books ever written.
Or his family's. . .
It's not going to work! It ain't working with Communists who are alive and it ain't gonna work with dead Communists who were black and oppressed. And this one was actually an authentic writer unlike the living oppressed black Nobel Prize semi-literate winner we punished the world's readers with! The conservatives had better think of a better strategery. This one ain't working - the despicable Stalinist Paul Robeson, for instance, is for all practical purposes a saint!
Amazing book. A history teacher mentioned it to my 10th grade class in passing. Didn't the author die of skin cancer as a result of his treatments?
Sounds like a campaign theme to me.
Let America Be America Again
Langston Hughes
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!
v I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."
The free?
Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.
O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!
I don't know, but he wore dark glasses when he spoke at my junior high school.
It's believed that the stuff he took to darken his skin killed him. It amazed him that people reacted to him differently, when literally the only difference was skin color. An amazing book - reaches into your chest and squeezes your heart...
Is Kerry putting this to a new rap rendition?
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