ST. PETERSBURG AND THE DEVIL

Now there isn't any doubt about it that Councillor Mickey Sullivan has a wonderful nose for publicity. Any dime-size ward politician who can get into the New York Times and on top of that wangle his way into its hallowed editorial columns has proved his ability to everyone's satisfaction. Obviously the man gets a great boot out of reading a blaring headline about himself--and as a general rule, most people wouldn't deny him his fun. He makes almost as good reading as the latest love cult investigation in Swampscott.

As long as it's the seat of his pants which is the butt of his publicity pranks, Mickey can have a good laugh and other people can laugh with him and everything is fine. But when he starts poking fun at the legislative process and at the principles of law themselves, the laugh turns to a whinny. When Mickey introduced his latest resolution about the deletion of Lenin and Leningrad from the Cambridge scene, and then proceeded to secure its unanimous passage by the Cambridge City Council, he destroyed all the faith anyone could have had in his sincerity or in his intelligence. One or the other--there's no further choice.

The city of Houston has a law forbidding the raising of pigeons in order to insure that householders' wells will not be contaminated by droppings. Cambridge isn't the only town with ridiculous, unenforceable laws. But that isn't much of an excuse for deliberately writing such laws into the books. To do so means to mock the whole system of rule by law. Perhaps Mickey knew that his little brain-child was a bastard, that it would be duly declared unconstitutional after blocking up the proceedings of the courts for several months, that it could never be enforced. As a matter of fact, he didn't even provide for its enforcement in his law. Maybe he even realized that most people would laugh at the Cambridge City Council and that Dahl would draw a cartoon about it. But Mickey wanted to get into the papers.

On the other hand, maybe Mickey was honestly trying to provide some barn-door proof of the far-and-wide presence of Communism, so that the common man could see and beware accordingly. It is well known around Kerry Corner that the guiding drive in his life--next to his pride in his dozen-odd strapping children and in his prosperous trucking business--is a very real and sincere, if slightly confused, hatred of Communism. The resolution is certainly couched in no niggardly terms, and Mickey very probably meant it when he said, "WHEREAS: Communism is the world's greatest curse today; and WHEREAS . . . Communism is corrupting the morals of our young people; and WHEREAS We all know that the Communists are trying hard to spread their evil and false propaganda through our schools and through our school text books (see Liberty Magazine December 30, 1939)." Probably he meant it. But even if all this is true, there are better ways of telling it to the people. It wasn't necessary to toss a wrench into the machinery of law-giving and justice-giving.

There isn't a great, deal that can be said for the twelve other solous who gave their considered approval and dragged after Mickey like the tail after a kite. One can laugh at Mickey because he has his points, but in the face of the rest one can only wilt and wonder. Professor Chafee over at the Law School summed up the whole case when he stated: "This is the best argument offered thus far for Plan E."