For those of you who weren't around 45 years ago, here's an expose on Mitch McConnell's campaign manager's latest silly pronouncement.
We cats well remember the 1968 Democratic convention. We were only kittens — but how can you live outside of Chicago and not have escaped the beatings that Richard J. Daley's police inflicted on antiwar demonstrators (not to mention the "Clean for Gene" McCarthy kids who were, literally, innocent bystanders)?
Democrats convening to choose their nominee that year, after a tumultuous spring of assassinations and anti-Vietnam rallies, were trying to ignore what was going on outside the hall. Until Senator Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut, nominating George McGovern in the wake of Bobby Kennedy's murder, said this: "With George McGovern, you wouldn't have Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago."
Well, suffice it to say, Mayor Daley went wild. And the Democratic Party proceeded to implode for the next 25 years.
So, here's what we cats say. If Abe Ribicoff had the guts to tell Democrats that they were totally effed up, Republicans have no right to use Ribicoff's language to cast blame for a manufactured "bugging" incident today. It's pathetic.
Sorry, GOP. But as much as Watergate belongs to you, "Gestapo tactics" belong to us. You cannot appropriate it — because unlike you, we're honest enough to admit when we've made mistakes. We cats HISS.
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