Mike and Robbie are with me; we’re marching now. I’ve swigged their elation: the vigor of it. Looking back, you have to be impressed. The column is four blocks long, ten or twelve shoulders wide; a gross tapeworm pinched into segments by Madison and Park and Lex. torchlight march, their advance billing said. Well, not torches, 5 & 10 candles; and mostly out. The June breeze, an acolyte, has snuffed them out again and again. Distance—just about one mile from Carnegie Hall to FBI HQ—will gradually float the strong, the fast up front. Mike Meeropol (né Rosenberg) is on top of that problem. Leadership: these are his people; he has inherited them. Mike orders a take-five: our camp followers, old and middle-aged, straggle up. He orders a song to keep the impatient, younger vanguard on their edge. Ecstatic, his head back, Mike sings, brays; unmusical but hyper and in charge, charged. Star quality, that’s what he has.
Morton Sobell: wake him up at midnight, he’ll fawn all over you. There’s a cringe, a fetch-and-carry built into his marching. At street corners he’ll ask Mike, “What do we do now?” His smile is supine, nervous; a Rosenberg flunky to the second generation. No one could make a cause célèbre or even a cause anonyme out of Morton Sobell. But Mike and Robbie—just kids orphaned by J. Edgar Hoover—they, I predict, are new phenoms of the Left. Mike is engaging, attractive: pesky front teeth knock smiles out. Even with long gold-red hair, with a mustache, he seems clean-cut. Robbie is darker and heavier; much less spontaneous. Yet on stage, they are both passionate, awfully glib: junior demagogues. They will be used, used, until they are worn quite through. A set of dangerous utensils. And I like them both.
Comments