Alice Echols

• Culture January 1, 1
• Culture January 1, 1

  It’s been fewer than forty years since Bella Abzug was first elected to Congress on the Democratic ticket, and yet her tradition of firebrand politics is virtually absent from today’s party. The current firebrands are Republicans, who operate using the very politics of fear that Abzug so resolutely challenged during her lifetime. She was indeed fearless, taking on the anticommunists of huac, Richard Nixon (she was the first to call for his impeachment), and Jimmy Carter, who appointed her only to sack her as head of the National Commission on the Observance of International Women’s Year. Readers of this fine