Santorum’s Sloppy Slogan
Former PA Senator and possible presidential contender Rick Santorum was questioned recently about his campaign slogan: “Fighting to Make America America Again.” Some say the slogan – which appears throughout Santorum’s website – “borrows” heavily from a very surprising source.
ThinkProgress, a watchdog website, first compared the slogan with a poem by Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes last week – specifically “Let America Be America Again.” In the poem, Hughes – who was a vocal activist for gay and civil rights in the 20th century – wrote, “O, let America be America again -/The land that never has been yet -/And yet must be – the land where every man is free.”
The poem supports unions and the fight of marginalized people for the same rights given to the majority. Hughes has also written many poems that chronicle the gay experience.
The website caught up with Santorum last week and asked him about the similarity between his slogan and the famous poem, to which the former Senator denied knowing its origin, explaining, “The folks who worked on that slogan for me didn’t inform me that that’s where it came from, if, in fact, it came from that.”
ThinkProgress posted a video about the exchange.
While we find the similarity amusing (this guy can’t escape the gay connection, can he?), we doubt that Santorum’s staff was actually inspired by the Hughes poem, especially if you consider the former Senator’s statements about homosexuality over the years. What do you think? Is this just a case of mistaken identity or is the comparison valid?
