Capp's Cuts

(2 of 2)

Despite the laughter, there is an undercurrent of bitter anger in Capp's commentaries about today's privileged students. It is the anger of a ghetto boy who struggled from desperate poverty to extraordinary success and is sure that others can do the same if they only try. On welfare, he expresses a Neanderthal notion: "Anyone who can get to the welfare office can get to work."

Once idolized by the academic liberals in Cambridge, where he lives, Capp has been dropped from their invitation lists for his iconoclastic views. He accepts this fate with equanimity. John Kenneth Galbraith asked him why he had deserted liberalism. "I didn't desert it," Capp snapped. "You and Arthur Schlesinger kidnaped it."