A Hall Full of Losers

We met by chance on the subway platform. My friend was on her way to the Cherry Lane “Theatre of the Absurd”: Ionesco’s “The Killer,” if I recall. Would I go along? I declined with thanks; I was on the way to my own “Theater of the Absurd”: The Young Americans for Freedom rally in Madison Square Garden. Its theme: World Liberation from Communism.

I had sent for a ticket three weeks in advance, without result. A series of phone calls still gave no result; finally, I had been instructed over the phone to report to a mysterious booth in a remote part of the hall. There I found my ticket in an envelope, labeled “Mr. Dissent”!

I wandered about before the meeting. First and most striking, not a single Negro; perhaps Moise Tshombe’s presence, announced but not delivered might have attracted a few. Second, a petty sprinkling of those we usually think of as New Yorkers: city folk, Village types, workers, Jews, etc. But...