Nation: EVERETT DIRKSEN: AMERICAN ORIGINAL

HE had the rheumy eyes of a bloodhound, the jowls of a St. Bernard and a baldachin of white hair like that of an extraordinarily unkempt poodle. His face, reporters joked, looked as if it had been slept in. When he spoke, there issued forth a sesquipedalian vocabulary, diapasonal sounds like a Hammond organ in dense fog. His performances had a consciously archaic quality about them. He satirized fustian while indulging in it. His senatorial solemnity was a species of burlesque. He belonged in a Chautauqua rather than a McLuhan age, although he...

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