Claiborne Pell, Democratic senator from Rhode Island from 1961 to 1997, died Thursday at age 90. The obituaries duly note that he is responsible for Pell Grants, for co-sponsoring legislation creating the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities, for his ardent opposition to the Vietnam War and consistent support for labor and environmental concerns, and, generally, for championing liberal causes in the US Senate for 36 years. Sometimes called Wellborn Pell on account of his rich father, the deferential Pell was a formidable vote-getter in blue-collar Rhode Island: in six senate campaigns, he received an average of 64% of the vote.
Many of the obituaries mention Pell's "quirkines," often in connection with his wardrobe of ill-fitting tweed suits, which he sometimes wore while jogging. He also had a keen interest in paranormal phenomena and, according to Martin Gardner, who devotes a chapter to Pell in Did Adam and Eve Have Navels? Debunking Pseudoscience, was unrivaled among Washington politicians "in combinging ignorance of science with extreme gullibility toward the performances of psychics." Pell was a great fan of the discredited mentalist Uri Geller (see the nearly iconic video from The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson below), served on the advisory board of the International Association of Near Death Studies, promoted government research on paranormal phenomena, and for years employed on his Senate staff the crackpot Cecil B. Scott Jones, who is best known for his work on UFOs entitled Phoenix in the Labyrinth.
There is a tradition of slanting the truth about the recently deceased that perhaps explains the recurrences of "quirky" and "eccentric" in obituaries of Pell. Regarding the paranormal, he was a dope. Regarding his jogging attire, he was a quirky eccentric. In nearly every other regard, he was a mensch, and his passing may remind us of the way good and bad qualities mix in us all. At Salon, the comment section appended to his obituary is filled with thank-yous from recipients of Pell Grants who say they owe their college educations to him.
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