October 21, 2016 4:54 PM

Smith: “I Love America” – Steinbeck, Trump and American Cheaters

QR’s Liberal Columnist Glenn W. Smith argues that Trump and his endorsers come right out of the darkest corners of the American imagination.

In John Steinbeck’s The Winter of Our Discontent, the son of the tortured protagonist Ethan Allen Hawley wins a national essay contest for his piece, “I Love America.” Sadly, it turns out the son, Allen, plagiarized the entire paper. The award is withdrawn.

When confronted by his father, Allen has this to say: “The stinking sneak,” he says of the man who brought the bad news. “Who cares? Everybody does it. It’s the way the cooky crumbles…Don’t you read the papers? Everybody right up to the top—just read the papers. You get to feeling holy, just read the papers. I bet you took some in your time, because they all do.”

The son is right about his father. Years before while working as a clerk in a grocery store, father Ethan turned in the owner to federal immigration authorities so he could take over the store. Steinbeck’s novel is a sad, ugly tale set in the era of the television quiz show scandals and the McCarthy witch-hunts.

It all sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Add a dripping dollop of misogyny to “stinking sneak” and it comes out “what a nasty woman.”

The full column by Glenn W. Smith is in the R&D Department.

By Glenn W. Smith