Sad news last night on the network news. The Weekly Reader, source of national and world news for countless schoolchildren since its founding in 1928, is ceasing publication.
In 1946, 47 and 48 I learned from the Weekly Reader about DP's (displaced persons) in Europe, conflict between Iraq and Iran, Civil War in China, the occupation of Japan and Germany, and American elections.
Most memorable was Weekly Reader's coverage of the 1948 presidential election. A week before the election, Weekly Reader printed a two-page spread of all the political parties, their nominees, their official symbols, and a brief explanation of party goals. The list included the Democratic Party (symbol: rooster); the State's Rights Party (nominee Strom Thurmond); the Progressive Party (nominee: former Vice President Henry Wallace); Republican Party (Thomas E. Dewey); Socialist Party; American Communist Party; Democrat Farm-Labor Party; Prohibition Party and Vegetarian Party, among others.
My contemporary, Senator John McCain, resurrected the Vegetarian Party for one of his best lines in his stump speech of 2000, when he asserted that he sought support from all political beliefs, including the vegetarian party.
I would bet that, as a fifth grader reading his Weekly Reader, the young John McCain was struck with the apparent absurdity of a political party dedicated to vegetarianism. I certainly was.
But I paid attention to the 1948 election.
Weekly Reader: Requiat in pacem.
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