YOUR LATEST SLICE OF NUTCAKE. Kerry likes the poet Langston Hughes -- his "Let America Be America" slogan comes from a Hughes poem, and he contributed prefatory comments to a Hughes collection. Since Hughes was a Communist for a while, this shows, by somebody's idea of close reading, that the Democratic candidate presumptive's campaign theme is "Anger, Bitterness, Cynicism, and Communism." Mike Poterma at The Corner decrees that "Just a couple more steps in this direction, and they will find themselves on the wrong side of a Goldwater/McGovern-level blowout." Patriots everywhere concur.

But before they go after Kerry, they'd better get on the hotline to one of their own. The Crazy Jesus Lady recently wrote an encomium to Lorraine Hansbury's "A Raisin in the Sun." "I love this play," Peggy Noonan gushed. "I've seen it several times..." Hansbury, of course, named her play after a line from a poem by Langston Hughes, so Hansbury, by the prevailing logic, is just as bad as John Kerry.

You all better be careful. A lot of your favorite writers might be just as bad. That goes for Euripides and Kit Marlowe, too.