The Problem We All Live With

Bob Herbert usually bores the hell out of me, even though I generally agree with what he has to say. There’s a certain kind of writing about social injustice that makes social injustice seem like the most soporific subject in the world (see also: anything I write about social injustice). Today, however, his lifeless prose actually works to the benefit of his subject, which is the absolutely appalling behavior of the Republican party and its varied constituents. I’m not sure why this should be controversial, and I’m not sure when we decided that rather than castigating these poisonous actions we would just throw up our hands and say, “Well, you’re not going to win any converts by pointing it out,” but the very idea that half a century after he was nearly beaten to death for suggesting that every American deserved the same rights regardless of race John Lewis is still subject to what Herbert acknowledges as “epithets that The Times will not allow me to repeat here” is absolutely infuriating. But read the column; he expresses it a lot more clearly than I do.