"Tar Baby" was the name given by the State Department to Nixon's policy of strengthening contacts with Pretoria. The allusion was to the famous Uncle Remus story in which Brer Fox tries to capture Brer Rabbit by making a tar baby. Brer Rabbit hits the tar baby with his hands, feet, and head and becomes totally stuck to it. The policy option, described as a partial relaxation of penalties against the white supremacist governments and derived from NSSM: 39, was based on the judgement that white supremacy was enduring and that Washington should accommodate itself to that reality. If Washington was to be an influence for enlightened change, so the President's reasoning went, it must do so by offering the "carrot" and eschewing the "stick". This policy would have to be pursued ad infinitum to get it to work.
Famous quotes containing the words tar, baby and/or option:
“The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast. Its fit hour of activity is night. Its actions are insane like its whole constitution. It persecutes a principle; it would whip a right; it would tar and feather justice, by inflicting fire and outrage upon the houses and persons of those who have these. It resembles the prank of boys, who run with fire-engines to put out the ruddy aurora streaming to the stars.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Nothing ever prepares a couple for having a baby, especially the first one. And even baby number two or three, the surprises and challenges, the cosmic curve balls, keep on coming. We can’t believe how much children change everything—the time we rise and the time we go to bed; the way we fight and the way we get along. Even when, and if, we make love.”
—Susan Lapinski (20th century)
“You don’t merely give over your creativity to making a film—you give over your life! In theatre, by contrast, you live these two rather strange lives simultaneously; you have no option but to confront the mould on last night’s washing-up.”
—Daniel Day Lewis (b. 1957)