As longtime readers know, I sometimes tease Ann Arbor, Mich., my “dear old lefty hometown” (as I call it). In today’s Impromptus, I say that President Obama is pure Ann Arbor. Never has he been more Ann Arbor than at that recent prayer breakfast.
I remember it so well, from my growing up. There was a fear that America would be too big for its britches. There was a fear that someone might think America, or the West, something special. If you raised concerns about human-rights abuses behind the Iron Curtain, someone would say, “Oh, yeah? What right do we have to talk? What about slavery, huh?”
Anyway, I don’t mean to rehash this here on the Corner. I want to publish a letter — from a reader who grew up in Ann Arbor, and is now a refugee, so to speak.
While I try to forget all the nonsense, three experiences are stamped on my memory. First, there was the homily delivered one Sunday morning in 1971 at St. Mary’s Catholic Church downtown. This was the campus Catholic center. The topic was the absolute evil of the atomic bombing of Japan. I was 16 years old and had the good sense to be revolted by the homily. Did this guy ever consider the evil of, say, having to invade Japan and fight house to house for a couple of years?
People like this are not capable of making difficult life-or-death choices and should not be responsible for the security and fate of a great nation. Sadly, one of them currently is.
Second, I remember seeing a giant spray-painted graffito — six-foot-high letters — downtown in 1971 (same year as the homily). It said F*** Nixon. And it stayed there for a long time. They hated him for Vietnam. The attitude was, “Let’s just let the North Vietnamese overrun the South and kill everyone who didn’t help them.” Ann Arbor, a place of moral genius.
Third, there was the married couple who taught part of the humanities course at Pioneer High in my senior year. They were dyed-in-the-wool Maoist radicals. They did their best to brainwash their students. They made us read such classics as Steal This Book, by Abbie Hoffman, and DO IT!, by Jerry Rubin. The essence of all this was that the United States wasn’t worth a damn. It was nothing more than the sum of atrocities.
The core of Ann Arbor culture was deeply disturbing. And you are right to point out that Obama swam in this kind of cesspool.
On to something nicer: This correspondent happens to be a professional musician — a brass player — and he responded to something I wrote in this review of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra: “Yes, their brass section is indeed becoming more elegant, moving much more in the direction of the Berlin sound. The Chicago sound from the ’70s was more like musical body building. An impressive distortion.”
One last word (for now): Much as I tease it, and sometimes sputter against it, or condemn it, or use it as a foil (definitely), Ann Arbor is a lovely place, full of lovely people, and I’m glad I grew up in it.