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Anatomy of a Smear

Some years ago Mrs. Helen Lane started going to PTA meetings as a regular thing. She also made a point, when she could find the time, of getting to the meetings of various civic groups. She asked questions, and now and then put in a word of her own. It was the sort of “participation in your community’s affairs” that is recommended to all of us, and that tends to be urgent in Arlington, Virginia, where migrant employees of the federal government and traditional citizens of the Old Dominion live on the same street and hold profoundly different ideas about the kind of community Arlington ought to be. Mrs. Lane was informed, articulate, soft-spoken, attractive—the kind of person everyone ordinarily welcomes to the civic swim. In Arlington, however, not everyone did. Mrs. Lane had a point of view; her opinions were unquestionably conservative.

LB

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L. Brent Bozell Jr.

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Anatomy of a Smear

Some years ago Mrs. Helen Lane started going to PTA meetings as a regular thing. She also made a point, when she could find the time, of getting to the meetings of various civic groups. She asked questions, and now and then put in a word of her own. It was the sort of “participation in your community’s affairs” that is recommended to all of us, and that tends to be urgent in Arlington, Virginia, where migrant employees of the federal government and traditional citizens of the Old Dominion live on the same street and hold profoundly different ideas about the kind of community Arlington ought to be. Mrs. Lane was informed, articulate, soft-spoken, attractive—the kind of person everyone ordinarily welcomes to the civic swim. In Arlington, however, not everyone did. Mrs. Lane had a point of view; her opinions were unquestionably conservative.