Born in the U.S.A. was the number one album on the Billboard chart on July 16, 1984, when Mario Cuomo gave the keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco titled A Tale of Two Cities. Cuomo, then governor of New York, scrutinized Reagans favorite metaphor. A shining city is perhaps all the president sees from the portico of the White House and the veranda of his ranch, where everyone seems to be doing well, Cuomo supposed. But theres another city, theres another part to the shining city. He spoke directly to Reagan: Maybe, maybe, Mr. President, if you visited some more places; maybe if you went to Appalachia, where some people still live in sheds; maybe if you went to Lackawanna, where thousands of unemployed steelworkers wonder why we subsidized foreign steel. Maybe—Maybe, Mr. President if you stopped in at a shelter in Chicago and spoke to the homeless there; maybe, Mr. President if you asked a woman who had been denied the help she needed to feed her children because you said you need the money for a tax break for a millionaire or for a missile we couldnt afford to use. Cuomo, obviously, sings the blues. He points out that the country is in the worst recession since 1932, and that the two-hundred-billion-dollar budget deficit is the largest in the history of the universe. He blurts, We give money to Latin American governments that murder nuns, and then we lie about it. He channels Winthrop and defines a proper government as the sharing of benefits and burdens for the good of all, feeling one anothers pain, sharing one anothers blessings. (excerpt) —Sarah Vowell in The Wordy Shipmates Channeling John Winthrop Day of Note: Mario Cuomo died yesterday. Watch the speech: bit.ly/MarioCuomo_TwoCities
Posted on: Fri, 02 Jan 2015 22:27:10 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015