re Re: NP? somebody has to say it

[Doug Millison]

jbor:
>As far as Pynchon goes, it's pretty clear to me that the doesn't buy into
>the partisan politics game in the slightest.

That may be true, although I'm at a loss to understand how might know this
with any certainty.  It's certainly true that Pynchon has made a special
effort to skewer a series of Republican Presidents -- Nixon, Reagan, Bush
-- in his fiction, quite savagely, in fact.

His consistent anti-fascist politics and outrage at the very many forms of
corporate exploitation and ruination of ecological systems -- just to name
a couple of political viewpoints he upholds throughout his oeuvre -- would
appear to cut across mainstream (US Democratic/Republican) party lines, but
certainly political parties do exist that could accomodate them.

jbor:
>Regardless of who it is, the President of the U.S. - the power and authority
>of the office, at the very least - deserves respect.

How much "respect" does Pynchon show the future Pres. Geo. Washington in
M&D?  That novel comes down pretty hard on the Founding Fathers in general
(Franklin gets the treatment, too)...and it works overtime to distinguish
class differences in Colonial America that the "revolution" (absent from
the novel) will do nothing to erase but instead serve only to exacerbate.