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Charles Lindbergh
Winchell was a real-life Jewish ex-vaudevillian, popular radio host, and gossip columnist who rose to prominence in the 1920s and ‘30s through his work at the New York Daily Mirror. Winchell’s outspokenness and irreverence made him a controversial figure in real life—yet in the world of The Plot Against America, Winchell’s staunch refusal to accept Lindbergh’s isolationist, “America First,” anti-Semitic stance makes him into an important touchstone for the Jewish community. Winchell uses his broadcast to warn his mostly Jewish listeners about the encroachment of fascism into daily life—eventually, he is fired for, according to his superiors, yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater. In other words, Winchell’s Gentile bosses don’t believe the terrible things he predicts for Jewish people in America will come to pass. Winchell decides to run for president, but as he sets off on a speaking tour of America, his rallies become epicenters of anti-Semitic violence. Eventually, Winchell is assassinated at a rally in Louisville, sparking a night of terrible riots and violence against Jews across the nation. In real life, Winchell was just as outspoken against Nazism and fascism as he is in the novel, and he attacked the isolationist, pro-German Lindbergh, who was a powerful public figure (though not the president in real life), just as hard. By the end of the war, however, Winchell’s politics took a rightward turn and he faded into relative obscurity by the mid-1950s. In the world of the novel, Winchell’s voice is not an alarmist presence—rather, his Jewish listeners (families like the Roths) are comforted by the knowledge that someone else shares their concerns and sees the nightmarish changes happening in the daily lives of American Jews.
Walter Winchell Quotes in The Plot Against America
The The Plot Against America quotes below are all either spoken by Walter Winchell or refer to Walter Winchell. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 6
Quotes
“I lived in Kentucky! Kentucky is one of the forty-eight states! Human beings live there like they do everywhere else! It is not a concentration camp! This guy makes millions selling his shitty hand lotion—and you people believe him!”
“I already told you about the dirty words, and now I’m telling you about this ‘you people’ business. ‘You people’ one more time, son, and I am going to ask you to leave the house.”
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Chapter 7
Quotes
Of course, that no Jew could ever be elected to the presidency—least of all a Jew with a mouth as unstoppable as Winchell’s—even a kid as young as I was already accepted, as if the proscription were laid out in so many words in the U.S. Constitution. Yet not even that ironclad certainty could stop the adults from abandoning common sense and, for a night or two, imagining themselves and their children as native-born citizens of Paradise.
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Get the entire The Plot Against America LitChart as a printable PDF.
Walter Winchell Quotes in The Plot Against America
The The Plot Against America quotes below are all either spoken by Walter Winchell or refer to Walter Winchell. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 6
Quotes
“I lived in Kentucky! Kentucky is one of the forty-eight states! Human beings live there like they do everywhere else! It is not a concentration camp! This guy makes millions selling his shitty hand lotion—and you people believe him!”
“I already told you about the dirty words, and now I’m telling you about this ‘you people’ business. ‘You people’ one more time, son, and I am going to ask you to leave the house.”
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7
Quotes
Of course, that no Jew could ever be elected to the presidency—least of all a Jew with a mouth as unstoppable as Winchell’s—even a kid as young as I was already accepted, as if the proscription were laid out in so many words in the U.S. Constitution. Yet not even that ironclad certainty could stop the adults from abandoning common sense and, for a night or two, imagining themselves and their children as native-born citizens of Paradise.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
