William Sloane Coffin on the Dem Candidates...

[chiburb]

realFedUp posted excerpts from a New Yorker piece on this cultural/liberal/religious icon in the Civil Rights forum a week ago. I just got around to reading the print version this morning, and suspect that very few of us read or heard of this part of the interview. (A DU search shows only RFU's post.)

For those that don't know Coffin, he is the former chaplain of Yale (during the sixties), jailed as a Freedom Rider in Montgomery, and tried for conspiracy to resist the Vietnam draft. His humanitarian creds are impeccable...

Snip:

As a self-described “yellow-dog Democrat,” Coffin offered his opinions on the Presidential campaign. Wesley Clark, he said, “might be a highly intelligent General Haig, or he might be a good leader of the party. I don’t know.” John Kerry, meanwhile, “has a face that looks as though it could be moved right up on Mt. Rushmore without going through the White House.” He smiled mischievously. “Joe Lieberman heard that I’m not supposed to last very long, so he called me. In his pious tone, Joe started to say how much I had meant to him. I cut him off. ‘Joe, I would give my right arm to have the influence on you now that I had then. You’re an orthodox Jew and a conservative Democrat. It’d be better if you were the other way around—a conservative Jew and an orthodox Democrat!” Coffin is a Howard Dean man.

Link:http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?031201ta_talk_mcgrath

Link to original post: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=113&topic_id=4196

[joeybee12]

1. Love his comment about Holy Joe--right on the nose

And what a name--William Sloane Coffin--preppy to the nth degree!!!!!!

[chiburb]

2. On his voice:

Norman Mailer once described Coffin’s voice as equal parts union organizer and Ivy League crew coach.

[OKNancy]

3. Coffin is Skull and Bones

That's right. Kind of blows the S&B argument all to hell doesn't it?

[chiburb]

4. Do you think that's why the Dean supporters...

Aren't crowing over this endorsement? Coffin's blessing seems (to me) a bigger deal than Paul Simon's. If anything, you'd think he'd be part of the "Kerry Conspiracy"...

(And I write this as a big fan (and constituent) of Simon's.)

(And now that we "own" Elad, can't he invent a spellchecker?)

[OKNancy]

5. I admire Coffin tremendously

That is one reason why I think the S&B stuff is bunk.
He can endorse whomever he wants....just as long as he doesn't say anything nasty about my guy, it's all okay.

[chiburb]

6. Kick for those that just woke up...n/t

.

[realFedUp]

7. I'll kick again

Love to see a Bill Moyers interview with Coffin soon.