Poetry is not new to political discourse

People, including members of the media, made fun of our former governor because Rod Blagojevich recited Tennyson the day he was impeached. Politicians and reporters have been reciting poetry to defend their actions for decades. I cite the era of the McCarthy hearings, when the infamous junior senator from Wisconsin quoted Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" during a committee interrogation of a black woman named Annie Lee Moss who McCarthy claimed was a dues-paying communist after she was promoted by her suspect superiors from a Pentagon cafeteria worker job to a position in the Pentagon code room, a very sensitive area that transmitted "Top Secret" messages. She denied paying dues, said she would never give money to the Communist Party, and even denied ever being in the code room. McCarthy never produced evidence - he only accused her.

The famous CBS TV reporter Edward R. Murrow slyly criticized McCarthy with a "Caesar" quote of his own: "The fault dear Brutus is not in our stars, but in ourselves..."

In the end, McCarthy won this battle. Even though there was no proof Moss was a communist, she was fired from her Pentagon position.

Of course, we all know Murrow won the war.

Mark S. Henkes

Des Plaines