Ron Brown’s election as chairman of Democratic National Committee means, say Evans & Novak, that the Democratic Party is refusing to “woo the departed white male voter at the risk of offending minorities.” They point out that no white male even contested chairmanship of two of the three major caucuses and that Bella Abzug is expected to chair the third one. . . . Certain longtime Jewish supporters of the Democratic Party privately are voicing concern that Brown may appoint associates tainted with anti-Semitism to positions of influence on the committee. . . . Liberal columnist Mary McGrory doesn’t like what’s going on at the DNC either. McGrory feels that Jesse Jackson’s continued ascendency in Democratic Party ranks poses a problem for the party. “Jackson will take Administration perks and plaudits while cracking the whip over his fellow Democrats. It’s a dismal prospect, but they know it is too much to hope that he will become a Republican.” . . . Washington Post columnist David Broder finds the caving-in by Democratically controlled House and Senate “to the moralistic blackmail of National Nag Ralph Nader” on the pay-raise issue a sign of disarray in the party and points out that it was enjoyed by “Republican National Chairman Lee Atwater and his former campaign boss Edward Rollins, who is soon to take over running the previously ineffectual Republican Congressional Committee.” Rollins has signed up former Jack Kemp press spokesman John Buckley. . . . For what it’s worth in the very earliest political sounding for 1992, an ABC News/ Washington Post poll finds Edward Kennedy leading the Democratic field with 26 per cent of the vote among Democrats, followed by Mario Cuomo with 19 per cent, and Jesse Jackson and Michael Dukakis tied at 15 per cent. For the record, Kennedy has been the early-bird favorite since time immemorial.
Who did 60 Minutes hire as consultant for its January 1 creampuff celebration of Fidel Castro’s thirty years in power? Castro apologist and senior fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, Saul Landau. Why did CBS do that, Accuracy in Media’s Reed Irvine asked 60 Minutes producer Don Hewitt? Because, said Hewitt, that was the only way they could get their camera crews into Cuba. Did 60 Minutes make this clear on the show? Silly question. . . . U.S. News says that Mikhail Gorbachev had planned, on his aborted visit to Havana last fall, to announce a cessation of arms aid to Nicaragua and to suggest a UN peacekeeping force to prevent the slipping of arms from Nicaragua to El Salvador guerrillas. . . . Relations between Gorbachev and Castro are at low ebb. Cuban sources report that video of a Castro diatribe against Gorbachev’s policies is circulating in Havana. According to this story, Castro called in top aides in November—before the scheduled Gorbachev visit—and declared that Cuba was “the last bastion of true Marxism,” and that Moscow News, in the era of glasnost, is more counter-revolutionary than Radio Marti. . . . Back home in Russia, a poll of Muscovites indicates 61 per cent think Gorbachev will succeed in his plans for political and economic reform (15 per cent think he will fail). Interestingly, older people were more optimistic that Gorbachev would succeed than younger people. Poll also showed 74 per cent of those questioned no longer fear attack by the United States. . . . Ominous note for glasnost. A recent speech by former KGB boss Viktor Chebrikov attacking “antisocialist elements” was followed a day later by criticism in Socialist Industry of four leading dissidents, all of them former political prisoners: Lev Timofeyev, editor of Referendum-, Sergei Grigoryants, editor of Glasnost’, Valerei Senderov; and exiled Armenian activist Paruir Airikyan. All were accused of being “antistate and antisocialist.” . . . Thirty-four years later, a Soviet journal, Foreign Literature, will bring out Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita.
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