the Realpolitiker's very favorite Tracht
UPDATE: For concerned citizens of the world who might find the information useful, I've learned that Kissinger is expected to speak at the Parade Gala Benefit Banquet scheduled for 7 o'clock tonight, Friday, at the New York Hilton & Towers, 1335 Sixth Avenue, between 53rd and 54th Streets.
Would somebody please tell the folks behind New York's German American Steuben Parade that having Henry Kissinger as a grand marshal is not cool at all. The kind of war crimes for which this man is wanted by governments in a number countries all over the world may be very American these days, but that doesn't mean any ethnic group should be proud to be associated with their author, even if it has a tenuous relationship with the land of his birth.
I'm an American of unmixed German ancestry going back generations, I've studied U.S. and German history, and I've studied and lived here and in Deutschland, so I might be given some leave to say that I suspect the folks living in what the chairman of Saturday's event calls the "alte Heimat" would not be so thick as some of their cousins over here seem to be. German Germans also generally know their history pretty well - for significant historical and moral reasons.
The big event is scheduled for this Saturday. I have to be in Greenpoint that afternoon, or I'd be there physically to remind him that not all of us have forgotten what he's done. The parade starts at noon, and runs uptown on Fifth Avenue, starting at 63 Street and ending at 86 Street. I'm not sure how these thing work, that is, I don't know where a so-called Grand Marshal might best be spotted, but there is a reviewing stand somewhere along the route of the march.
Tchuss!
[David Levine image from The Corsair]
I walked south from 79th Street on the east side of Fifth Avenue before the parade began and met it as it came north. From what I can figure out, Henry K was in the parade for only five blocks, from 63rd St (where the parade began) to the reviewing stand at 68th St. Despite the "closer" images afforded by television, I am such a New Yorker that I try to see famous people at parades, etc. However, I did not see him. Years ago, one used to be able to pass the reviewing stand by walking along the east side of the street opposite the stand. Not so today. At 70th Street I was routed to Madison Avenue to get south. Now that I am typing, I recall one election year that politicians (who wanted to be seen and applauded) came up Fifth Avenue to 79th Street, then jumped into waiting limos. The fall parades offer a great time for politicking.