“A Heartbreaking Lesson of Politics,” by Sharon Gelman (Fiction ’16)

“A Heartbreaking Lesson of Politics,” by Sharon Gelman, was recently featured in Scoundrel Time. Read an excerpt below:

A Heartbreaking Lesson of Politics
“I first parted ways with my parents politically during a presidential primary race. I was eight.

The Republican candidate was Richard Milhous Nixon. My parents were staunch, active, pragmatic Democrats, and they were backing Lyndon Johnson in the Democratic primary. Once he withdrew from the race, they supported Hubert Humphrey.

But I fell in love with Eugene McCarthy. He was the anti-war candidate who spoke about peace like a poet, because, in fact, he was a senator as well as a poet. His campaign bumper stickers were shaped like flowers: white daisies with his name in white in the flower’s blue center, to be precise. I put a McCarthy flower sticker on the paisley cover of my three-ring binder and proudly carried it to school, talking him up to anyone and everyone who would listen. I loved him and believed in him with my whole tender young heart…”

Read the rest of this piece here: https://scoundreltime.com/a-heartbreaking-lesson-of-politics/