Your slip is showing

September 15, 2008

Suzanna Andrews
Vanity Fair

RE: Arthur Miller’s “courageous refusal in 1956” – “It ain’t necessarily so”, or so said Sportin’ Life.

Ms. Andrews,

In the current issue of Vanity Fair you speak of Arthur Miller’s 1956 “courageous refusal to Name Names before the House un-American Activities Committee”.

When he “courageously refused” to do so what happened to him?

Was he tried a la Bukharin in 1938? You may recall that Bukharin was found guilty and, in typical KGB protocol, was shot in the face on the way back to his cell. His family was billed for the cost of the execution.

Was he defenestrated – and if that isn’t one of my favorite words it’s close, glossololia being the other one – a la Jan Masaryk in 1948?

Was he Gulaged a la Alexander Solzhenitsyn for saying that the Big Boss Man had a moustache?

1956 was the year that the Soviet Union invaded Hungary wasn’t it? As I recall the only domestic use for the United States Army in the ‘50s was the occupation of Little Rock, Arkansas. Republican Eisenhower said that if Democrat Faubus would not enforce a Federal court order the United States Army would. I was a teenager at the time but I don’t recall the Army invading Greenwich Village to root out the malcontents, however irksome they may have been. Do you?

It seems that the only honorable thing Miller did with regard to his son was that he did not call out for “more stone” as an alternative therapy.