Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches Politics Quotes

The men Roy lists as his father figures definitely show where his political allegiances lie. Roy is a Conservative with a capital C. One of the main threads tying together all three of the father figures he mentions is that they were intensely anti-communist. Walter Winchell was a columnist, radio, and TV personality who constantly spoke out against communism. J. Edgar Hoover was the first and longtime director of the FBI (some think he also may have been gay), whom the real Roy Cohn assisted in hunting down communists. And there's the biggest communist hater of them all – Joe McCarthy. For more on him, click here.

Martin, Roy, and their allies push and pull behind the scenes in hopes of engineering a conservative Supreme Court. This push was really going on in the 1980s and was in some ways successful: today's Supreme Court is viewed by many as being pretty darn conservative. However, some central issues of the right, like making abortion illegal, have not happened.

Martin hopes that by appointing Republican judges, the conservatives can get their way on certain key issues. In the 1980s, Republicans were against affirmative action, which can be defined as "steps taken to increase the representation of women and minorities in areas of employment, education, and business from which they have been historically excluded" (source). Affirmative action remains a pretty hot political issue. Where do you stand? Is affirmative action a positive step toward righting the wrongs of history? Or is it inherently racist and sexist? What do you think?