The First Kennedy-Nixon Debate: Are We Better Off than 50 Years Ago?
Fifty years ago in Chicago, on Sept. 26, 1960, an enervated and emaciated Richard Nixon spent the day in seclusion in his suite at the Pick-Congress Hotel. The GOP presidential nominee's contact with the outside world was mostly limited to a phone call from his running mate, Henry Cabot Lodge, who warned Nixon to avoid the "assassin image" when he went on national TV at 8:30 that evening.
At the Ambassador East Hotel, a relaxed and sun-tanned John Kennedy prepared for the same TV show by napping on a bed littered with fact-crammed three-by-five note cards. Later, still sprawled in bed, Kennedy batted around possible questions with his aides -- and when he nailed an answer, JFK gleefully tossed the relevant note card to the floor.
That night 70 million Americans -- about the same number as would vote for president six weeks later -- watched as Nixon and Kennedy met on stage at WBBM for the most fateful hour in the history of political television. Their opening debate was long-winded by modern standards with eight minute opening statements plus a panel of four reporters who hurled questions at the two candidates as they stood behind music-stand lecterns to respond. But the questions were not what were remembered -- unless you cared passionately that the two men jousted over the proper formula for farm subsidies.
That first Kennedy-Nixon debate ushered in the Visual Age when how a candidate looked mattered more than what he said. The 1952 and 1956 presidential races had offered a choice between two candidates, Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson, whose balding domes would have (in a later era) made them prime customers for the Hair Club for Men. But rarely, if ever, in modern times have the two parties nominated such capable candidates -- the general who won World War II and then commanded NATO forces in Europe versus the eloquent former diplomat who became the governor of Illinois.
In telegenic terms, the first Great Debate was a rout. Kennedy came across as robust and dynamic, the embodiment of his debate line, "It's time America started moving again." And the sweaty Nixon -- whose light dusting of pancake makeup called "Lazy Shave" failed to hide his 5 o'clock shadow -- brought to mind the old Democratic jibe: "Would you buy a used car from this man?"
Everything went wrong for Nixon. His shirt collar gaped at the neck because of the weight he had lost on the campaign trail, and his light-gray suit (JFK wore dark blue) blended into the painted background that did not offer much contrast on black-and-white television. But the most powerful visual was simply the two candidates standing side-by-side. In his political classic, "The Making of the President, 1960," Theodore White writes, "Until the cameras opened up on the Senator and the Vice-President, Kennedy had been the boy under assault and attack by the Vice-President as immature, young, inexperienced. Now, obviously, in flesh and behavior he was the Vice-President's equal."
While Nixon's image-makers convinced him to wear full theatrical makeup during his next three 1960 debates with Kennedy, these subsequent High Noon face-offs for the presidency underscored the enduring weaknesses of the question-and-short-answers format. A debate organized around reporters (or, in recent years, typical voters) asking questions can easily veer off into trivia or campaign boilerplate.
During the third 1960 debate, a reporter asked Kennedy if he felt obligated to apologize for the profanity of Harry Truman's campaign remark that anyone who votes Republican can (horrors!) "go to hell." That gave JFK the opportunity to show off his dry wit: "I really don't think there's anything that I could say to President Truman that's going to cause him, at the age of 76, to change his particular speaking manner. Perhaps Mrs. Truman can, but I don't think I can." Even more comic in hindsight (especially in light of the expletive-deleted Watergate tapes) was the way that Nixon unctuously responded, "Whoever is president is going to be a man that all the children of America will either look up to -- or will look down to."
The final Kennedy-Nixon showdown featured perhaps the most duplicitous moment in a half century of presidential debates. The United States had just an announced a trade embargo against Fidel Castro's Cuba -- sanctions, which incidentally, are also now in their 50th year. Kennedy, in his opening statement, dismissed such measures as inadequate because "the Communists have been moving with vigor -- Laos, Africa, Cuba -- all around the world."
Asked about Kennedy's comments during the first question of the debate, Nixon responded with a passionate case for non-intervention in Cuba. The vice president prophetically warned that military action against Cuba would provide "an open invitation for Mr. Khrushchev to come in, to come into Latin America, to engage us in what would be a civil war."
The only problem for 1960 voters watching the debate was that everything Nixon said was diametrically opposite to what he actually believed. Nixon had been a staunch advocate inside the Eisenhower administration for an invasion to topple Castro and had been briefed by the CIA about its work with Cuban exiles to launch what ultimately would become the Bay of Pigs debacle. Worried that any hawkish comment during the debate would alert Castro to the invasion threat (which, in truth, the Cuban dictator already knew about), Nixon's immediate instinct was to (surprise!) lie.
The golden anniversary of the first Kennedy-Nixon confrontation will inevitably prompt the Sunday shows to run highlight reels of nostalgic footage from presidential debates. There will inevitably be a self-congratulatory air to the entire ritual. But have debates really elevated presidential campaigns to a higher intellectual plane than was possible back in primitive times when candidates gave serious speeches sitting behind a desk on radio and early television?
Presidential debates are undeniably fun, even if I find it hard to remember anything other than the over-hyped Joe the Plumber from the three times that Barack Obama squared off against John McCain. But by placing such a battle-for-the-Oval Office premium on clever one-liners and quick-react short answers with the time clock running, presidential debates are often closer in spirit to reality TV than to Lincoln and Douglas. So as much as it sounds like heresy -- and, readers, you are free to shout, "There you go again" -- I sometimes wonder if American politics might not been better off today if Kennedy and Nixon had somehow missed their rendezvous with history at WBBM 50 years ago.
Blitz 70th anniversary: Night of fire that heralded a new kind of war | World news | The Guardian
London Blitz: 7 September 1940 was the first day of the German bombardment of London that lasted 76 consecutive nights.St Paul's cathedral in London during the blitz in World War II. Credit: Popperfoto
It was late in the afternoon of an early September Saturday 70 years ago when the German bombers came, flying low, in formation, up the Thames, their engines roaring as they headed for London to start eight months of bombing the capital.
"It was the most amazing, impressive, riveting sight," wrote Colin Perry, a lad cycling that afternoon on Chipstead Hill, Surrey, in a memoir years later. "Directly above me were literally hundreds of planes … the sky was full of them. Bombers hemmed in with fighters, like bees around their queen, like destroyers round the battleship, so came Jerry."
Mavis Fabling, now 80, remembers that afternoon of 7 September 1940 just as clearly. She said: "I can still remember it very vividly. We lived in Abbey Wood, three miles from Woolwich Arsenal. My mother was baking in the kitchen, I was playing outside and my father was digging in the garden. Suddenly he rushed inside. He'd seen the planes overhead. 'Quick, quick, quick, get into the air raid shelter.' We ran down into the shelter in our garden.
"There were awfully frightening sounds, of bombs dropping and then there was one ghastly, thunderous sound. It was a direct hit on our neighbour's shelter. They were all killed, the whole family, except the father who was out. My mother had taken his wife shopping the day before to buy clothes at the Co-op. I can remember looking out of the window at the coffins being brought out and my mother very distressed.
Revealed: colourful life of a Navy surgeon in the 1800s - This Britain, UK - The Independent
On 17 April 1813, John McLean, a sailor on board the Royal Navy flag ship died after spending ten days drinking gin and rum. The alcohol-fuelled death, drove a despairing William Warner, the ship’s surgeon, to observe in his notes: “Drunkenness nowadays in the Navy kills more men than the sword.”
The extent to which Britannia ruled the waves with warships crewed by sozzled seamen, along with accounts of the extraordinary range of ailments treated by naval medical officers as Britain set about building its empire, are revealed today in an archive of handwritten doctors’ journals which has lain largely unread for decades.
From treating a 12-year-old girl who vomited an 87-inch worm to one surgeon’s meticulous examination of the Royal Navy’s first hermaphrodite sailor, the cataloguing by the National Archives of more than 1,000 treatment diaries kept by ship’s surgeons reveals a new and often grisly side to the nature of life at sea between 1793 and 1880.
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A two-year project funded by the Wellcome Trust at a cost of about £100,000 has produced the first detailed account of the contents of the documents, including the names of the patients and their complaints. Hitherto, the papers had been difficult to examine, not least because the handwriting of doctors in the 18th and 19th centuries was no less impenetrable than that of their modern successors.
The journals show how many medical officers embraced the spirit of scientific discovery of their age, cataloguing wildlife and drawing native tribesmen when not going about their official duties treating disease and illness with an arsenal of often antediluvian medications that relied heavily on alcohol (the favoured cure for a tarantula bite was to pour rum on the wound) and heavy metals (the sailor poisoned by a “mangereen apple” in Barbados was made to swallow a purgative made from mercury).
Some of the journals were painstakingly illustrated by medical officers who drew coloured pictures of some of the more exotic conditions they encountered along with images of the microbes they found under their microscopes and maps of the far-flung places they visited.
Bruno Pappalardo, naval records specialist at the National Archives in Kew, west London, said: “These were learned, educated men with a scientific background who were going around the world with a determination to record the things they saw, the patients they treated and be interested in the world around them. It may have been an at time harsh environment but their compassion shines through – they did their utmost to care for people. As such, their journals are probably the most significant collection of records for the study of health and medicine at sea for the 19th century.”
The files, which also include the records of ship’s surgeons on board vessels transporting convicts to Australia, provide a candid glimpse of the perilous nature of maritime life.
Daniel McNamara, the medical officer on board a convict ship in 1821, relates how a mutiny was averted only after a majority of the prisoners refused to take part in the insurrection planned by their guards. Elsewhere, there are accounts of an attack by a walrus on a hunting boat and how three sailors were killed by a lightning strike which “issued a most sulphureous [sic] stench accompanied with three sharp cracks”.
But the ocean-bound doctors frequently returned to the subject of the perils of drink on board vessels, lamenting the inebriated state of many of their patients. Thomas Simpson, sailing on board HMS Arethusa in 1805, highlighted the case of John Downie, a 26-year-old Royal Marine of “ghastly wretched appearance” who performed animal impressions in return for grog or rum from his shipmates.
Mr Simpson wrote: “He can imitate with the greatest possible exactness the howling of a pack of hounds, the crowing of a cock, the bellowing of a bull, cow or calf and a number of other animals. On account of these curious qualifications he is often solicited by his shipmates to give a specimen of talents and a glass of grog is of course his reward. I presume he has been drunk in consequence of something of this kind and has affected sickness to avoid punishment. He says his head aches.”
The files bear testimony to the inventiveness of naval surgeons when faced with seemingly irretrievable situations. When a sailor fell overboard from the HMS Princess Royal in 1802 and spent nine minutes under the water, the vessel’s surgeon decided to attempt to revive the apparently lifeless corpse by blowing tobacco smoke into the lung of the stricken seaman. After ten minutes of administering the ad hoc treatment, the patient coughed, sighed and was soon well enough to walk around the sick bay.
Other treatments proved less productive. In another case, a surgeon submitted another patient to a brandy enema before injecting him with strychnine, which was used at the time in small doses as a stimulant. Sadly neither had a noticeable effect and the patient was declared dead.
Researchers believe the new detailed catalogue of the medical journals, which provides the names of hundreds of convicts treated by doctors as well as the conditions and diseases that were treated, will prove valuable to family history researchers as well as medical historians.
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Tony Curtis: a life in pictures | Film | guardian.co.uk
Tony Curtis: a life in pictures
Tony Curtis, six-times married actor and artist, has died aged 85. We look back over his life. CLICK LINK FOR PHOTOS.
Long-lost footage of Apollo 11 moon landing to be screened - Telegraph
Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin E."Buzz" Aldrin erecting the US flag on the moon Photo: NASA
The video runs for a few minutes and is considered to be some of the best footage of the historic 1969 moonwalk, but the film was lost in archives for many years and was badly damaged when found, said John Sarkissian.
It depicts the first few minutes of Armstrong’s descent which was recorded in Australia as Nasa was still scrambling for a signal, showing a far clearer image than was initially screened worldwide.
Top 50 scariest horror movies of all time - Halloween movies
A family moves into a perfectly nice house in Amityville, N.Y. Then things begin to happen: black goo comes out of the toilet, flies appear (does this have anything to do with the toilet?), a voice tells a priest to "get out," and something with glowing red eyes peers through the windows at night. Sure it was an "Exorcist" rip-off, but it was "based on a true story!" That's got to count for something.
(VIDEO) Zegota Saved 50000 Jews From Holocaust | Israel Muse Portal
On August 22, 1939, a week before his attack on Poland, Hitler exhorted his nation: "Kill without pity or mercy all men, women and children of Polish descent or language. Only in this way can we obtain the living space we need." As many as 200,000 Polish children, deemed to have "Germanic" (Aryan) features, were forcibly taken to Germany to be raised as Germans, and had their birth records falsified. Very few of these children were reunited with their families after the war.
More than 500 towns and villages were burned, over 16 thousand persons, mostly Polish Christians, were killed in 714 mass executions of which 60% were carried out by the Wehrmacht (German army) and 40% by the SS and Gestapo. In Bydgoszcz the first victims were boy scouts from 12 to 16 years old, shot in the marketplace. All this happened in the first eight weeks of the war. See Richard C. Lucas, The Forgotten Holocaust; The Poles under German Occupation. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky.
According to the AB German Plan, Poles were to become a people without education, slaves for the German overlords. Secondary schools were closed; studying, keeping radios, or arms of any kind, or practicing any kind of trade were prohibited under the threat of death.
Out of its pre-war population of 36 million, Poland lost 22%, a higher percentage than any other country in Europe. The heaviest losses were sustained by educated classes, youth and democratic forces that could have challenged totalitarianism.
Not one to shy away from the camera, Marilyn Monroe takes some of her own photos
Not one to shy away from the camera, Marilyn Monroe takes some of her own photos. Click link for unseen photos
gulfnews : Dubai's history through the lens
An Emirati falconer stands proud with his bird. Falconry has long been associated with the UAE's rich heritage. A dedicated falconry centre was opened in Nad Al Sheba in 2006.
Image Credit: Yoshio Kawashima/courtesy Motivate Publishing
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Dubai: For some reason, Yoshio Kawashima didn't hand over the photographic negatives of his 1962 press trip to Dubai to his Japanese newspaper Sankei Shimbun as is usually the norm.
If he had, they would have been destroyed after five years of storage. For some reason, Kawashima felt they were valuable even all those years ago and decided to hold on to them.
As Dubai grew into a modern city, Kawashima and his colleague Hiroshi Kato heard about the emirate from time to time and often reminisced about their trip. Finally, the photographer, now 80, dug out the photographs and decided to show them to the world.
Almost 50 years after they were shot, the fascinating black and white photographs of Dubai's heritage have been permanently preserved in a picture book, launched recently by Motivate Publishing.
Eddie Fisher, famed 50's pop singer, father of Carrie Fisher, dies at 85
His fame was enhanced by his 1955 marriage to movie darling Debbie Reynolds - they were touted as "America's favorite couple" - and the birth of two children.
Their daughter Carrie Fisher became a film star herself in the first three "Star Wars" films as Princess Leia, and later as a best-selling author of "Postcards From the Edge" and other books.
Carrie Fisher spent most of 2008 on the road with her autobiographical show "Wishful Drinking." In an interview with The Associated Press, she told of singing with her father on stage in San Jose. Eddie Fisher was by then in a wheelchair and living in San Francisco.
When Eddie Fisher's best friend, producer Mike Todd, was killed in a 1958 plane crash, Fisher comforted the widow, Elizabeth Taylor. Amid sensationalist headlines, Fisher divorced Reynolds and married Taylor in 1959.
The Fisher-Taylor marriage lasted only five years. She fell in love with co-star Richard Burton during the Rome filming of "Cleopatra," divorced Fisher and married Burton in one of the great entertainment world scandals of the 20th century.
Fisher's career never recovered from the notoriety. He married actress Connie Stevens, and they had two daughters. Another divorce followed. He married twice more.
Edwin Jack Fisher was born Aug. 10, 1928, in Philadelphia, one of seven children of a Jewish grocer. At 15 he was singing on Philadelphia radio.
After moving to New York, Fisher was adopted as a protege by comedian Eddie Cantor, who helped the young singer become a star in radio, television and records.
Fisher's romantic messages resonated with young girls in the pre-Elvis period. Publicist-manager Milton Blackstone helped the publicity by hiring girls to scream and swoon at Fisher's appearances.
After getting out of the Army in 1953 following a two-year hitch, hit records, his own TV show and the headlined marriage to Reynolds made Fisher a top star. The couple costarred in a 1956 romantic comedy, "Bundle of Joy," that capitalized on their own parenthood.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2010/09/23/2010-09-23_eddie_fisher_famed_50s_...#ixzz10ReQrChm
