Kerry's peculiar taste for literature

Allan H. Ryskind thinks that one can gain insight into the mind of John Kerry by learning about the books and movies he enjoys.

Kerry has shown a penchant for quoting radical folk heroes to prove a point, and not just during this campaign. On January 11, 1991, Kerry leaned on another literary icon of the far left--once a full-fledged Communist party member--in opposing the congressional resolution giving George H.W. Bush the authority to remove Saddam Hussein from Kuwait.

At the end of his Senate speech, Kerry said he "would like to share with my colleagues something that Dalton Trumbo wrote in a book called Johnny Got His Gun," a 1939 novel graphically depicting the horrors of war through the protagonist, a completely paralyzed World War I victim.

For reasons only Kerry can explain, the senator deliberately chose the writings of a well-known Hollywood Red to make the case against the Gulf War. A prominent screenwriter, Trumbo was one of the famous Hollywood Ten, those writers, directors, and producers who appeared in 1947 before the House Committee on Un-American Activities and refused to say whether they were, or had ever been, members of the Communist party.