An Interview With Margaret Sanger
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Reviews on Wednesday, March 18, 2009 11:00 AM
Got a few minutes?
You simply must go watch young Mike Wallace conduct this 1957 interview with Margaret Sanger, foundress of Planned Parenthood.
It’s not just that it provides a personal glimpse into a woman pro-lifers probably think of as our nemesis.
It’s a window into a different world. Listen to their voices: there’s an entirely different diction. Watch the ads: another aesthetic entirely.
I’m not ordinarily among those who look to the 1950s as a kind of golden age of America (and this interview doesn’t change my mind), but what struck me most was how impossible it would be to conduct such an interview today. The interviewer is well prepared and knows something about his topic. While he asks tough questions, he isn’t simply playing “gotcha,” building up his own bona fides as a correct thinking person. The subject of the interview isn’t simply spinning. Yes, there’s a certain amount of pas de deux, but simultaneously they’re having a conversation about an important topic, not just mutually using each other.
Our level of public discourse has certainly fallen in half a century.
There’s a moment towards the end of the interview in which I think Mrs. Sanger gives the lie to everything she advocates. I’m curious whether it will strike anyone else as it struck me, so I won’t mention it yet but will add it in comments later.
I’ll be very interested in your reactions. Go watch, please, and come back and tell us.
With a polite nod to Mere Comments
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