Politics & Law
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When the commission finds that a pig has entered the parlor, the exercise of its regulatory power does not depend on proof that the pig is obscene.
John Paul Stevens (b. 1920)
Associate Justice (1975), US Supreme Court, writing for the Majority Opinion in a 5–4 ruling that allowed the Federal Communications Commission to prohibit the broadcasting of words that are offensive but fall short of the Court’s definition of obscenity, July 3, 1978.
Learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.
Edmund Burke (1729–1797)
Irish–born British political writer, philosopher, and statesman. Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790).
The witness in the following exchange, Abbie Hoffman, was arrested as a result of his involvement in organizing the “Festival of Life” — a Yippie demonstration held concurrently with the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The Yippies nominated a pig — “Pigasus” — for president and urged demonstrators to fight the police or committed acts of civil disobedience.
MR. WEINGLASS (Defense Lawyer): Now, drawing your attention to the first week of December 1967, did you have occasion to meet with Jerry Rubin and the others?
THE WITNESS (Abbie Hoffman): Yes.
MR. WEINGLASS (Defense Lawyer): Will you relate to the Court and jury what the conversation was?
THE WITNESS (Abbie Hoffman): Yes. We talked about the possibility of having demonstrations at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, Illinois, that was going to be occurring that August.
I am not sure that we knew at that point that it was in Chicago. Wherever it was, we were planning on going. Jerry said that because of our action at the Stock Exchange in throwing out the money, that within a few weeks the Wall Street brokers there had totally enclosed the whole stock exchange in bulletproof, shatterproof glass, that cost something like $20,000 because they were afraid we’d come back and throw money out again.
He said that for hundreds of years political cartoonists had always pictured corrupt politicians in the guise of a pig, and he said that it would be great theater if we ran a pig for President, and we all took that on as like a great idea and that…s more or less… that was the founding.
Testimony of Abbie Hoffman
The Chicago Seven Trial Transcripts from (Sept. 24, 1969 – Feb. 8, 1970).
Why, this fellow don’t know any more about politics than a pig knows about Sunday.
Harry S. Truman (1884–1972)
Kansas farmer and 33rd U.S. President (1945–1953), commenting on 1952 presidential candidate Dwight D Eisenhower. Quoted inMemoirs of Richard Nixon by Richard Nixon (1978).
Suppose they all had different forms of government and even where it was a democratic form it was class government. That would be Europe… And periodically there boils up among these people some Pied Piper with silver tongue, calling some new Utopia… With a vicious rhythm these malign forces seem to drive nations like the Gadarene swine over the precipice of war.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. (1917–2007)
U.S. historian, writer and an adviser to President John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. “The New Isolationism” printed in “The Atlantic Monthly”, May 1952.
[during the McCarthy era] no one could say when or whether the terror would end… She refused to become one of those who went crawling to the Committee, or to the studios, to wear the guise of a penitent and seek redemption and good fortune by being traitorous. Her attitude toward the House Committee was that of a noblewoman observing, with an understanding disdain the vulgarity of a swineherd.
John Keats (b. 1920)
You Might As Well Live: The Life and Times of Dorothy Parker (1970).
