[Taft in '52]

I'm so sick of finding out that someone whom I used to like has such idiotic views.

This has been going on for a long time. You may recall that Aaron Copeland, arguably America's greatest composer, was a Stalinist, as was one of our greatest baritone vocalists, Paul Robeson, and in an op-ed piece back in the 1980's, the famous composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein called for the total abolition of America's armed forces (for more about Bernstein's flirting with radicals, read Tom Wolfe's Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing The Flakcatchers (1970).

What's wrong with the arts community?

[Borges]

Was Copland a 1930s variety Stalinist who renounced that stuff later on or one to the end of his life? Bernstein was interesting in that his one film score was...'On the Waterfront' a conservative film if there ever was one.