Lynne Simpson

Much has been made this year of dog whistles in politics, so I recently did some research on how the term originated and what it means. According to Wikipedia, it was coined in Australia in the 90s to describe the Howard government’s technique of using coded words to secretly convey messages of support to racists, while avoiding overtly bigoted language.

Imagine I’m giving a speech to a group of potential supporters with varying political beliefs. Let’s say I am secretly a Nazi party member and can’t openly espouse any of their beliefs because 99% of the people in the room would leave, throw rotten tomatoes, etc. How can I silently signal my REAL supporters that I’m one of them?

Maybe I incorporate the following fairly harmless-sounding quote into my speech:

It may be that today gold has become the exclusive ruler of life, but the time will come when man will again bow down to a higher god.

If nobody bothered to Google this quote, they’d never know it was a dog whistle. But any Nazis in the audience would recognize it from Mein Kampf.

So, what are we to make of an internationally televised speech, written by a professional writer, that contains the following quotation?

We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty, sincerity, and dignity.

Gosh, sounds all folksy and friendly, doesn’t it? If it had come from Robert Frost or James Thurber, sure, but the quote’s author, Westbrook Pegler, was known for his racism, anti-Semitism, and opposition to all things reasonable and progressive. He once openly expressed a wish for FDR to be assassinated, and in 1965, he wrote that, with regard to Robert Kennedy, “Some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow flies.”

In his later career, Pegler wrote screeds for the John Birch Society, but he eventually lost his job there because he was too extreme even for THEM.

I’m not sure Sarah Palin had any idea whom she was quoting. Maybe she just read whatever showed up on the teleprompter. But given so many other less toxic sources for quotes about small towns, why choose Pegler?

As a writer, I’m a big fan of just saying what the hell you mean and OWNING it. Hiding behind coded words is a coward’s trick.

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