To the editors:
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Then–just as I have in this essay–Joravsky gets to the second half of the story, buried on page 27, and turns the tables maybe 90 degrees. He finally gets to the meat of the matter, which is that Eisendrath’s is a too-soon campaign founded on a solid barrage of political muckraking and ass-kissing. He further shows–again a bit late–that Yates is really one of the good guys and has repeatedly proven his part as an honest and reliable congressman over a 40-year period. It’s no accident he has been re-elected so many times, we finally learn.
There is no question that this article was strongly slanted in Eisendrath’s favor. Having, oh, just a tiny bit of experience with print media, I would say that Joravsky’s article would have been rendered more vertical had he and the editors split it in half and run it as two opposing “legs” on the front page.
True, I haven’t heard much from Mr. Yates in my lifetime. But, then, I’ve never heard anything bad about him either. He is one of the few truly honest politicians I know. His political ideologies, whether he knows it or not, seem to stem from the ancient Chinese Taoist principle of “good” government: The less we do (under pressure and in haste), the more we get done (peacefully and methodically), and the happier we all are. In a Western context, Sidney Yates embodies this principle with a flair that few others could emulate.
