IMPUDENT SNOBS: Agnew vs. the Intellectual Establishment

Columnistic writing, agreeably styled and ephemerally polemical, by a National Review writer and author of The Kumquat Statement (1970). At discursive length Coyne rehashes misquotes attributed to Agnew which exaggerate his positions, and then offers equivalent exaggerations in praise of Agnew. Coyne piously denies that conservatives still support the Indochina war and dutifully buckshots ""the radicalization of the Times,"" ""the radicalization of the campus,"" etc. etc. What social forces influence these phenomena you never learn. He makes noises about liberals' contempt for the American workingman; but this exertion toward Agnew-type populism is negated by the fact that he exhibits little concern about real wages, declining social services, mortgage and housing costs, or the other gut issues under the white and blue collar. The book would be slender except for the inclusion of many Agnew speeches in print small enough to daunt all but the most zealous. We would gladly praise with sufficient faintness to liberally damn, but the book wasn't up to our nose-tilted snuff.