Career Biography – education and deconstruction.com

Trotsky in New York 1917

[Please note: The word “Featured” on the left side above was NOT inserted by this blogger, but apparently was inserted by WordPress, and it cannot be removed. NO post in this blog is sponsored.]

The Book of the Week is “Trotsky in New York 1917, A Radical on the Eve of Revolution” by Kenneth D. Ackerman, published in 2016. This volume had a misleading title, in that it described not only Trotsky’s activities, but those of his contemporaries and their times. There were backstories and flashbacks– insulting the intelligence of a reader who desired to read the book from cover to cover, rather than use it as a reference book. It repeated itself as history does; “When war [WWI] hysteria hit, people began to look for scapegoats, traitors, and spies. And the first accused of disloyalty were always the same: immigrants and socialists.”

Anyway, in January 1917, the man latterly known as Leon Trotsky, his second wife and their two sons arrived in New York City by boat. He and his wife confidently lied to immigration officials who had visited them personally in their cabin. They were able to bypass the Ellis Island third-degree inquisition because they were first-class passengers. The Spanish government paid the extra cost of upgrading them from second class because it was so eager to exile them.

Trotsky worked in the East Village office of Novy Mir (“New World”), a Russian socialist newspaper with a circulation of eight thousand. He had numerous intellectual and political friends in high places. Trotsky was a spellbinding speaker and prolific writer on socialist ideology. He doubted the elitist president Woodrow Wilson could help make peace in Europe because America was capitalist and ruled by its moneyed class. That class wanted to maintain the status quo of the gravy train of great profits derived from weapons contractors. Trotsky thought similiarly of the American Socialist Party leader– Morris Hillquit, who, as a lawyer, charged big bucks to represent labor and radical political activists and wasn’t opposed to using violence to get candidates elected.

In March 1917, after the tsar in Russia was deposed, Trotsky was on the move again, as he was a member of the Russian revolutionary organization. He and his family acquired proper identity papers and booked passage on a boat back to Russia. However, he was detained in a prison west of Halifax by Canadian authorities (ultimately ruled by Britain) for fear his native Russia would ally with Germany to defeat the French and British. He prepared several telegrams to inform various parties of what was happening with him; one of which was actually sent. This spawned letters, demonstrations, telegrams and newspaper articles in America, Canada, Britain and Russia that put pressure on officials to allow him to return to Russia.

By late 1917, Trotsky and the gang were well on their way to forming a dictatorship in Russia– breaking their previous campaign promises. Via violence, they eliminated free speech and all political activity except their own. Trotsky made the excuse that such measures were necessary to head off a French-Revolution-style peasant-uprising. However, in order to stay in power as the top leader, Vladimir Lenin scaled back the brutality by instituting the New Economic Policy. Because the common people were starving, he actually allowed them to engage in capitalist initiatives in agriculture. Of course there was corruption. Hilarity did NOT ensue.

As is well known, hilarity is associated with the American sitcom, a bygone era. Trotsky’s scene was more like a modern-day reality show– whose viewers vicariously release their rage along with the overpaid noisemakers on the idiot box. Here are the sentiments of some other Americans.

TRIPE

sung to the tune of “Escape” with apologies to Rupert Holmes and whomever else the rights may concern.

I’m tired of the president.
He’s been in office too long.
He’s a worn out recording of a boatload of wrongs.
So while he’s hiding and golfing, he’s trying to clear his head.
And his personal consultants, keep the media fed.

I don’t like this queen’s drama.
He’s GOT mush for brains.
All the negative emotions, and the race to defame.
I don’t like his fluff night AFTER night, the views, and the hype.
It’s not fluff I voted for.
I TUNE out the tripe.

I don’t think about the president.
He’s always so mean.
He and his media slaves,
require a staged and scripted routine.
It should be in all the papers– his mind is going bad.
GOP doesn’t want to SHOW it. GOP is power-mad.

I don’t like this queen’s drama.
He’s GOT mush for brains.
I don’t like the xenophobia, the greed campaign.
I hope Vance steps up soon,
and cuts through all this red tape, via the 25th Amendment,
and changes the leadership landscape.

The prez can’t TALK off the cuff.
He’s in an embarrassing place.
It’s another Reagan instance.
Billionaire boys set the pace.

Vance MUST be less shady.
He’s a Millennial coup.
You can laugh for a moment.
But he’s dangerous, too.

I don’t like this queen’s drama.
He’s GOT mush for brains.
I’m into sane healthcare, NOT the greed campaign.
I don’t like his fluff night AFTER night, the views, and the hype.
It’s not fluff I voted for.
I TUNE out the tripe.

I don’t like this queen’s drama.
He’s GOT mush for brains…

==================

Anyway, read the book to learn much more about Trotsky’s life and political career.

Merkel’s Law

The Book of the Week is “Merkel’s Law, Widsom From the Woman Who Led the Free World” by Melissa Eddy, published in 2024.

This short, sloppily edited, chronologically disorganized, redundant volume described the highlights of the decades-long (beginning at the dawn of the 1990’s) political career of Angela Merkel in Germany.

As much as the capitalist Americans scream “socialist!” at many aspects of the culture of Europeans, the latter are superior in gender equality! In approximately the last fifty years, several females have served as world leaders; Angela Merkel, Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir among them. But the United States has yet to elect a female president.

Interestingly, East Germany had a bigger selection of daycare centers than did West Germany at the time of this book’s writing. This meant a larger percentage of eastern German women (on whom the burden still largely falls to raise children and do housework) than otherwise, could have a career if they chose. It is still a myth that women can have it all, even in industrialized countries.

Additionally, the media pestered Merkel about various issues they wouldn’t dare have raised if she had been a male. They criticized her fashion choices. They treated her public appearances as a beauty contest. But Merkel did have a unique perspective, having grown up in East Germany under the yoke of Communism. She witnessed poor talent deployment under the crushingly oppressive system. Everyone was guaranteed a job, but there was wasted talent galore.

One behavior Merkel exhibited, for which a few male politicians have become known, was delaying making decisions until the last possible moment. There might have been various time-sensitive factors at work when she finally announced she was going to run for a fourth term as chancellor of Germany, that would begin in 2017. One factor included waiting to see whether American voters elected Donald Trump for president in 2016. Another was the possible influence outgoing American president Barack Obama had on her to run again.

On the other hand, making people wait is a control-issue. There is power in keeping information to oneself. The media has to monitor when an announcement is going to be made, and keeping viewers in suspense generates ratings.

Two major crises Merkel faced during her chancellorship, for which her reactions were lambasted– consisted of the overwhelming number of Syrian refugees coming into Germany beginning in the 2010’s, and the oversight of energy sources for Germany. Regarding the latter, Merkel chose to purchase more natural gas and stopped the use of nuclear energy after Japan became a cancer cluster from radiation. Japan suffered a meltdown of its nuclear plants from an earthquake and tsunami in spring 2011.

Many Germans thought Merkel sold her soul to the Russians on the energy front. However, all world leaders must make wrenching decisions for their nations in connection with goods and services (especially energy!), environmental friendliness (or not), economics, and diplomatic relations, because all kinds of issues are all interrelated and cannot be divorced from one another.

Nevertheless, the decisions of elected public servants tend to be selfish, as they always have their eye on reelection or their legacy. In a democratic country, the one exception is when a dictatorial leader’s decisions are all selfish– if they are in their last term due to term limits and they don’t care about their legacy.

Read the book to learn about Merkel’s career trials and tribulations, her strengths and weaknesses, and her legacy.

Kissinger

The Book of the Week is “Kissinger, A Biography” by Walter Isaacson, published in 2005.

Kissinger was born in May 1923 in an eastern suburb of Nuremberg. His ancestors came from Bavaria. When he was in his teens, his family arrived in America. Toward the end of WWII, Kissinger served in the U.S. Army Counter-Intelligence division, engaging in diplomacy to de-Nazify a whole region of suburbs in Germany.

In 1951, Kissinger recruited tens of foreign-nationals and licensed-professionals for the Harvard International Seminar– a summer multi-disciplinary program featuring lectures and field trips that was later revealed to be a front for the CIA. Kissinger amassed a vast social network from the program. He had superior social-climbing skills, appealing to his betters (who were just as egotistical as he was) with flattery, but fiercely competing with colleagues of status equal to his own.

Kissinger always argued that injustice and order (a benign dictator) was preferable to justice and disorder (a revolutionary environment or anarchy) in a nation. He felt the purpose of a summit wasn’t to get a monstrously brutal leader to change his ways, but rather, to: reassure allies, get on the good side of neutral nations and show the world one’s own civility. Yet he was always listening to all sides in a debate in order to get them to agree with him.

Kissinger achieved full tenure at Harvard University in 1962. Less than a decade later, he served as a very close aide to president Richard Nixon. Just as parties are thrown to annoy those who aren’t invited, at the dawn of the 1970’s, the Nixon White House consisted of socially manipulative cliques who kept one another out of the loop of their own furtive meetings, memos and covert operations. The Nixon camp loved secrecy and tried to stop information from leaking to the press with their “plumbers.”

The president ordered that a total of seventeen secret FBI wiretaps be placed on the home telephones of high-level employees of his administration for as long as nearly two years for some, beginning in 1969. In 1973, when the media exposed this spying operation, Nixon claimed he alone authorized it. But Kissinger– a drama queen– had incited the emotional environment that led Nixon and his subordinates to commit the crimes they did.

In 1971, Kissinger participated in clandestine meetings with the Chinese government to invite trade with the United States, and change China’s mind on its claim on Taiwan. The U.S. was reducing its military presence in Vietnam, and saw that the Chinese and Soviets weren’t getting along. Thus, extending an olive branch to China was a supposedly geopolitically brilliant move on Nixon’s part.

If America got friendly with the Chinese (contradicting Nixon’s previously vicious anti-Communist stance), and negotiated arms reductions with the Soviets– America would stave off nuclear war with them, further weaken the alliance between China and the U.S.S.R., and get an economic boost.

China’s officials began the talks by requesting that the Americans tell them the issues thought to be deal-breakers. This saved a lot of time, as the Chinese considered Taiwan a minor issue and weren’t going to budge on it. They both secretly used Pakistan as an intermediate messenger. As a result, the Soviets got friendly with India. That turned into a cluster screw-up.

Kissinger could dish it out but he couldn’t take it. He became infuriated when Nixon’s aide, John Ehrlichman told him that a spy ring had been stealing documents from his office and leaking them to the press. Kissinger’s self-delusion was most cringeworthy on Vietnam. He rationalized the war’s aims, attempting to persuade ordinary Americans that the decade-long colossal human waste wasn’t the result of several alpha males’ stubborn insistence on America’s involvement (plus in Cambodia and Laos). In other words, Kissinger couldn’t admit that at least hundreds of thousands of people died for nothing.

One Bertrand Russell quote in connection therewith bears repeating:

“There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes them only because they are comforting. But he dare not face this thought! Moreover, since he is aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not rational, he becomes furious when they are disputed.”

There is nothing new under the sun. The media flip-flopped insofar as their stories on Kissinger brought them ratings and sold newspapers. In mid-October 1972, less than a month before Nixon’s reelection day, the New York Times and Newsweek celebrated Kissinger as he claimed to have achieved agreement on a peace treaty with North Vietnam from his confidential peace talks in Paris. He himself reveled in the glory of saving the world.

In December 1972, the seasoned propagandists turned around and labeled Kissinger a war criminal (which they should have been doing all along!) after he was found to have completely excluded the South Vietnamese leader from the agreement-announcement. Kissinger pretended to be outraged that Nguyen Van Thieu refused to sign the treaty. But the treaty’s wording hadn’t said what Van Thieu had agreed to.

Kissinger used the emotionally-charged, last-minute discord as an excuse to urge Nixon to order the resumption of America’s bombing of the North Vietnam capital Hanoi, and Nixon did. More than a thousand additional U.S. servicemen and civilians lost to history, died needlessly. Not unbelievably, given the fallibility and gullibility of human beings, in autumn 1973, Kissinger and Le Duc Tho were awarded the Nobel Peace prize.

In sum, Henry Kissinger achieved name-recognition in numerous communities of American life, in the following order: academia, presidential politics, foreign affairs, Hollywood, big business, and jet-set society.

As an aside, Donald Trump achieved name-recognition in the following, in the following order: big business (as a matter of inheritance), jet-set society, Hollywood, and then presidential politics. He hasn’t been all that competent in foreign affairs and academia, though.

Additionally, Trump bears many similarities to Nixon. Trump:

has a sidekick in Elon Musk as Nixon had a sidekick in Kissinger.
alternates between deep insecurities and megalomania.
appoints largely white alpha males in the White House (with a few white females thrown in).
was directly or indirectly responsible for sending to jail– almost every legally-troubled individual with whom he associated.
has a major goal of wreaking vengeance on his political enemies, using hush money when necessary.
claims attorney-client relationship and executive-privilege to weasel out of legal trouble.
projects the image of the outsider, and excessively exhibited mean-of-spirit, obnoxious behavior, but adjusted his image to become somewhat like the “new” Nixon in order to make a comeback.

It seems that Trump’s inauguration is going to be like the 1945 Yalta and 2024 Davos conferences. On steroids. Here’s a little song about the situation.

INAUGURATION

sung to the tune of “Revolution” with apologies to the members of The Beatles, and their estates, and whomever else the rights may concern.

Trump’s gonna have an in-au-gu-RA-tion,
well, you know,
in 2017 he insulted the world.

It’s a see-and-be-seen cel-e-BRA-tion,
well, you know,
his frat boys will rule the WO-ORLD.

And if he goes through with DE-portations,
he’d have to kick his own family OUT.

You know he used to be,
all-fight, all-fight, all fight.

He says he’s got resolutions,
well, you know,
it’s called Project 2025.

Billionaires make contributions,
well, you know,
they’re keeping Trump’s image a-LIVE.

Big tech and media have money for people
who SPREAD around hate.
For a grown-up Vance,
we’ll just have to WAIT.

And you know he used to be,
all-fight, all-fight, all-fight.

Trump gets to interpret the Consti-TU-tion,
well, you know,
he owns most of the Supreme-COURT.

It WAS a respected insti-TU-tion,
well, you know,
He’ll pardon THEM as a last resort.

He’s getting friendlier with the world’s tyrants NOW.
Don’t worry,
he’s losing his mind, anyHOW.

And you know he used to be,
all-fight, all fight, all fight,
all-fight, all fight, all fight,
all-fight, all fight, all fight,
all-fight, all FIGHT!

Anyway, read the book to learn much, much more about how Kissinger prolonged his name in history due to his self-absorbed attention whoredom; about how his dishonesty shaped America’s never-ending, extremely complex political, ideological, cultural and economic controversies over its “detente” versus “might-makes right” mentality with regard to the Soviet Union, Soviet Jewry, Israel, global trade, human rights, weapons stocks, neocons (the description of which was murky), the Portugal/Angola mess, etc.

Our Man

The Book of the Week is “Our Man, Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century” by George Packer, published in 2019.

“But he also helped smash up the last pieces of the postwar consensus, bringing viciousness and deception into the heart of government, making trust among people working for the same president impossible.”

Holbrooke, writing of Zbigniew Brzezinski– who sabotaged him during the presidency of Jimmy Carter

Born in April 1941 Holbrooke grew up in Scarsdale, a posh northern suburb of New York City. His high school classmate’s father was Dean Rusk, so he had a leg up in the foreign-policy social set of the United States.

As a junior diplomat, Holbrooke’s first major posting was to Saigon, Vietnam in June 1963. A few seasoned journalists there were reporting the truth, that the U.S. was already losing the war. But America’s governmental and military interagency rivalry (consisting of the usual power-struggling alpha males with hubris syndrome) put the kibosh on informed decision-making throughout the whole nine years of unconscionably wasteful military action.

In late summer 1963, Holbrooke was sent to the southernmost region of North Vietnam to try to capture the hearts and minds of rural villagers. He was kind of a hybrid neoliberal and neocon– providing food and materials to build infrastructure and establish schools, but also training the local militia to fight the Viet Cong (VC). Nevertheless, American soldiers were taught neither the Vietnamese language nor the locals’ culture. They were simply expected to be killing machines.

Holbrooke saw that the American military officers held fast to the mistaken notion that killing all the VC soldiers would rid the world of Communism. Those James-Bond wannabes threw around the term, “counterinsurgency.” But rather than killing no-name soldiers, the VC– supplied with weapons from China– sought to kill key military leaders; fighting smarter, not harder.

Holbrooke witnessed unspeakable horrors in his foreign service experiences. To salve his conscience for America’s shameful actions (and as a public relations move for Carter who would be running for reelection in 1980)– he visited and publicized the plight of refugees at a camp in Thailand. Also, he agreed with vice president Walter Mondale that countries should accept and provide more aid to refugees, at a Geneva conference in July 1979. In connection therewith, Carter signed the Refugee Act of 1980.

After Vietnam, America was once bitten, twice shy when international pressure was brought to bear to take action in the Balkans at the dawn of the 1990’s. There were other reasons, too, why Bill Clinton’s presidential administration dragged its feet on going to peace talks and committing troops to NATO: Bosnia didn’t have fossil fuels of sufficient strategic value to the United States, the genocide was against Muslims, and Clinton knew that a military quagmire would hurt his reelection chances in 1996.

Eventually, Holbrooke, a bigger credit-grabber than anyone else, did take charge of the negotiations. When American military advisors died in the region, talks got serious. He believed the U.S. had to act as the world’s police force.

Read the book to learn: of the highlights of Holbrooke’s career, his trials and tribulations, love life and achievements; and why the position of U.S. ambassador to the United Nations was vacant for a year: possibly showing how unnecessary America’s vote for world peace was even then (hint: the vacancy was a case of political retaliation). SIDENOTE: It’s time for a Reagan-style immigration bill.

A Wild Idea

The Book of the Week is “A Wild Idea” by Jonathan Franklin, published in 2021. This sloppily edited volume told a suspenseful, inspiring story of a man famous for doing the impossible– saving huge swaths of ecosystems in southern regions of Chile and Argentina in the single-digit 2000’s.

Born in 1943, Doug Tompkins spent his childhood in New York City and upstate New York. A social misfit, he dropped out of high school. Nevertheless, he acquired marketable skills in tree-felling and other manual labors, and retailing, enabling him to fund his wilderness adventures. His entreprenurial bent led him to start two clothing companies that prospered.

Tompkins wasn’t some hypocritical environmental philanthropist who claimed to want to save the earth, while: generating excessive pollution with his gas-guzzling vehicles and corporate and private jets, zipping around to his various mansions, and yachting with celebrities.

Tompkins truly, deeply cared about contamination of the world’s food supply, in addition to securing nature preserves in the form of national parks. His goals were to re-balance the proportions of life forms on earth through re-populating those areas with endangered species, and to let people enjoy nature! This, in regions of South America that had yet to be destroyed by humans, only because the terrain was so inhospitable to human habitation. He lived there; off the grid, when he wasn’t on some challenging outdoors-adventure with his buddies somewhere in the world.

Read the book to learn much more about a few episodes of Tompkins’ more extreme adventures, his businesses, the changes he wrought, and how he was changed by his experiences and relationships.

The Rascal King

“He had a stake in leaving basic problems unsolved, the better to manipulate the frustration that meant votes to him.”

-written of James Curley– the Massachusetts politician who labeled the state’s Democratic convention as “crooked” when he wasn’t nominated for governor in June 1934.

The Book of the Week is “The Rascal King, The Life and Times of James Michael Curley (1874-1958), An Epic of Urban Politics and Irish America” by Jack Beatty, published in 1992.

In November 1874, Curley was born into a poverty-stricken family in Boston. He made politics his career. By 1884, organized crime among politicians had become excessive. A good-government group called the Mugwumps sought to return ethical behavior to politics. In Massachusetts they voted for Grover Cleveland rather than James G. Blaine. The former was the presidential candidate with the less dishonest reputation.

Additionally, Massachusetts copied the British in introducing a civil service system by which government workers were hired based on test scores, rather than patronage from politicians. However, the tests were (deliberately given) in the English language– not understood well by immigrants.

In 1902, Curley co-founded a men’s political club with his fellow Irish Catholics that competed with the previous local Party boss’s. They knew all the tricks for winning elections.

One trick consisted of camping out all night at the polling place so that the next day, election day, he and his cronies could get their candidates listed first on the ballot, where immigrant voters would be more likely to check their names. So, third-party candidates would do well to remind all voters repeatedly not to be trigger-happy– to scroll down on the ballot to see the names of candidates for whom they really want to vote.

A reelection trick his administration pulled was to mail cards bearing the alleged signatures of competing candidates of Curley, to voters in a district where numerous voters were to vote against him. Those cards listed the wrong polling location.

In 1914, Curley was elected mayor of Boston. He soon began living high on the hog, despite his low government pay. For instance, his mansion was renovated by sweetheart contractors. He traveled internationally on cruises for long stretches to the West Indies and Europe. In connection therewith, taxpayers paid for his and his family’s luxury transportation.

Curley claimed he was a victim of discrimination against Irish Catholics when his political rivals accused him of corruption. But, unsurprisingly, he was a hypocrite, as he encouraged scapegoating when it was politically expedient for himself.

In the 1930’s, Massachusetts’ Finance Commission investigated Curley for financial crimes. He had become such a powerful Party boss by then, he was able to fire troublesome members of the commission, and replace them with his allies. He did the same with the State Tax Appeal Board.

Curley’s two major accomplishments in his state consisted of creating (patronage) jobs, and beginning construction projects. However, starting with the Great Depression, Massachusetts began losing manufacturing jobs in textiles and shoes.

In June 1947, in one last desperate attempt to beg for the mercy of the court at a sentencing hearing for the criminal case against him, Curley’s lawyers recited a laundry list of medical problems from which Curley suffered. He was a very sick old man at age 72. But he ran for office again and again, anyway.

The author remarked that into the twentieth century, local politicians were able to get votes by handing out patronage jobs and financial assistance. But when the federal government began to administer programs to help the disadvantaged and senior citizens– such as Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security– local officeholders lost that power. The Reagan Era’s cuts to federal entitlements saw the local political bosses regain some of their power. That is one reason low-level politicians are fighting so hard against national healthcare!

Read the book to learn much, much more about Curley’s antics and adventures in various capacities during his long, long political career.

ENDNOTE: From the 1920’s into the 1930’s, some Americans suffered through administrations of at least two elected officeholders who became despots of an entire state: Huey Long of Louisiana, and James Curley of Massachusetts. As of 2020, a formerly elected candidate (Donald Trump) is attempting to become an all-powerful leader over the entire country (and the world).

But– unlike past leaders, Trump has yet to be fully punished for his numerous misdeeds, wasn’t shamed into resigning, and will never be shamed into behaving better. Fortunately, the nation’s economy is doing well enough so that he can’t blame a Great Depression on his successor.

The nation may have economically benefited from all this political fighting, as so many Americans in politics, the law courts, the media and the entertainment industry owe their jobs to it! Secondly, Trump began his political career late in life, during which aging is taking its toll on the functioning of his brain. Enough said.

Winchell

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The Book of the Week is “Winchell, Gossip, Power and the Culture of Celebrity” by Neal Gabler, published in 1994. Two cliches that apply to the likes of Walter Winchell’s role in the evolution of the American entertainment industry include: THERE IS NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN, AND DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN.

Born in April 1897 in East Harlem, Winchell got into Vaudeville as an adolescent. In the 1920’s, there were about six major New York City newspapers, and readers had their favorite columnists. In August 1924, Winchell got his own column, specializing in Broadway gossip in the newly launched Evening Graphic.

Winchell’s career took off. By summer 1929, he was writing for the Hearst-owned paper, the Mirror. The following spring, he launched a radio show, and the following summer, he acted in a movie. He associated with Mobsters, advertising their night clubs while he received protection from them.

Winchell vacillated between suffering from imposter syndrome, and behaving like an alpha male with hubris syndrome. He was a dream dispenser for his readers; they aspired to adopt the lifestyle of “Cafe Society.” In the 1930’s, this set consisted of star-struck social climbers, heirs and heiresses who had done nothing to merit their own celebrity.

Winchell acquired significant power to make or break peoples’ fame with his column, by promoting or smearing them. During the Depression, he honed his showmanship and propaganda techniques, becoming a strong political influencer. Beginning in 1933, he flacked for FDR and smeared Hitler. His rhetoric was anti-Communist, anti-Fascist and anti-isolationist.

Lacking significant formal education, Winchell rode a wave of success based on envy, anger and vengeance, into the 1950’s. The author wrote, “The real grievance was the control he exercised over his social and intellectual superiors and what that control portended for the elites.”

Read the book to learn a lot more about Winchell and others that smacks of other public figures whose rises and falls have been largely similar, in the history of this country.

Impresario

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“He was clearly in the early stages of what his colleagues referred to as Alzheimer’s, although it was never diagnosed as such. Whatever it was, it didn’t prevent him from functioning effectively much of the time, yet by this point…”

–Around 1969, Ed Sullivan began having “senior moments.”

The Book of the Week is “Impresario, The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan” by James Maguire, published in 2006.

Born in 1901 in East Harlem, Ed Sullivan grew up in the New York metropolitan area. He had a burning desire to become famous and rich. Therefore, beginning in his teen years, he met as many people as he could, and hung out at all the city’s hippest social clubs (celebrity hangouts) that featured alcohol and performances.

In 1948, he finally got to host his own show on TV, after paying his dues failing at radio shows and succeeding at writing a newspaper gossip column. Even so, he got lots of hate mail. His CBS-TV show, Toast of the Town was partially sponsored by Lincoln Mercury (car) dealers in Southern states. They were livid that he refused to stop shaking hands with and hugging black performers. Sullivan was racially egalitarian, but politically, rabidly anti-Communist.

With the 1955-1956 season, the show was renamed The Ed Sullivan Show— as the host had achieved his goals of wealth and stardom; media ratings, really. He began talks with Warner Bros. to make a movie of his life. In preparing the script for that endeavor, unsurprisingly, the clashing of egos resulted in back-and-forth shenanigans; summarized thusly: “When Jack Warner realized that Sullivan had completely thrown out Wallace’s second version… hearing of Sullivan’s plans for still more rewriting… He cancelled the film.” That was eight months after signing the contract.

In summer 1967, the CBS Standards and Practices department was strict about performers’ not saying specific words that smacked of sex or drugs. The band The Doors got away with “Girl, we couldn’t get much higher” in its song “Light My Fire” because the show was live, and the lead singer disobeyed the censors.

Anyway, read the book to learn much more about: how The Ed Sullivan Show was able to stay wildly popular and attain high ratings for decades despite its host’s lack of charisma; (Hint: It changed with the times in featuring guests who entertained audiences of all ages, until advertisers’ demands changed); the people who helped make it so; and the secrets of Sullivan’s success.

The Preacher and the Presidents

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The Book of the Week is “The Preacher and the Presidents, Billy Graham in the White House” by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy, published in 2007.

Billy Graham was one of the most famous Christian preachers in the world from the middle of the twentieth century, into the single-digit 2000’s. He was a religious version of Rush Limbaugh. Although he was raised as a Presbyterian, in 1939 he earned his Baptist-minister certificate from the Florida Bible Institute. By 1949, he had become president of a Bible College, and he had founded a radio station. He spouted propaganda on various political issues through the years, but claimed he was nonpartisan, and claimed he wasn’t aware of the implications of his speechifying.

Graham got friendly with as many powerful, influential people as he possibly could, including American presidents from Truman through Dubya. He rubbed shoulders with publishing magnates Henry Luce and William Randolph Hearst. His philosophy was, believe the Bible or leave the ministry. He was a true, literal believer. Graham told worshipers in Los Angeles that the Soviets were planning to attack the U.S. with nuclear weapons because they were sinners. Yet, he preached love rather than fire and brimstone.

In January 1952, Graham held a religious rally– er, uh, revival in Washington, D.C. He invited president Truman, who didn’t like him because he was a grand-stander. About eleven thousand people attended. “To keep his finances transparent, he [Graham] insisted that crusade accounts be audited and published in the local papers when the crusade was finished.” (Apparently, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker didn’t get that memo with regard to their ministry.)

Graham continued to identify himself as a staunch desegregationist. He delivered sermons to that effect in president Eisenhower’s second term, after racial incidents. A common situation cropped up when Graham courageously took a stand on controversial issues. People on each extreme side of the political spectrum complained he was doing too much for their opponents, or not enough for them.

But Graham was still ever-popular through the 1950’s. In 1957, about two million people attended his 97-day crusade (which was publicized via prayer chains in fifty different countries, leaflets, mailings and bumper stickers) at Madison Square Garden in New York City. He strove for quality over quantity in holding only a few crusades a year, but Martin Luther King, Jr. was constantly on the move for the Civil Rights Movement, spreading himself and his resources too thinly.

Graham prayed at president-elect Nixon’s 1969 inauguration. A few days later, he spoke at the National Prayer breakfast, and presided over a church service at the White House; all these events jammed into a few days to provide efficiency for Secret-Service security. “Whatever else they were, the [religious] services were a great opportunity for arm-twisting, fund-raising, loyalty-testing. [both for Nixon and Graham].”

Also in early 1969, the government was drafting young men working full-time for (college) Campus Crusade for Christ (Graham’s organization) to fight in Vietnam. Graham pulled strings so they would be treated like ordained ministers and evade conscription. However, in late April 1970, Nixon said that it was up to the United States to save the world, be its police officer, lest free nations were threatened with dictatorship and anarchy. Never mind that America had been an aggressor for two decades in so many little global wars, replacing one dictator with another, and had been bombing Cambodia for the year prior(!)

Also in 1970, the president held a July 4th event called Honor America Day in Washington, D.C., to help ordinary Americans calm down. It featured interfaith speakers and celebrity singers, and attendees from all walks of life. Nixon himself, however, didn’t personally attend. He was at his San Clemente property. Later, the media revealed that the event had been a nepotistic donor-fest presented by J.W. Marriott and Nixon’s brother, Donald. Once again, there is nothing new under the sun.

A dress rehearsal for the Patriot Act was proposed in the summer of 1970. It was called the Huston plan. It would have legalized a bonanza of spying in America, like there is currently. Through that plan, Nixon wanted to get rid of influential antiwar troublemakers, but FBI head J. Edgar Hoover opposed it. Even so, as is well known, the Nixon administration committed countless evil acts in order to “… stop leaks, track down traitors, punish enemies, and ensure domestic tranquility.”

In mid-October, 1971, Charlotte, NC enjoyed a holiday named “Billy Graham Day” with a parade and school and government closures. Nixon and Graham rode together in the motorcade. The Secret Service barred anyone who appeared to be a demonstrator, from entering the Coliseum — the venue of a political rally– er, uh, a speaking event. In early 1972, the White House perceived that Jews dominated the American media, so they attacked certain of its members.

As is well known, in the past century, separation of Church and State has waxed and waned in this country. But the main reason for the separation is that civil law must trump religious law, as this nation’s diverse people have diverse religious beliefs. Graham always used the technique of “whataboutism” whenever people pointed out Nixon’s high crimes and misdemeanors, using the cliched excuse: He who is without sin, cast the first stone.

In the mid-1980’s, for the 1988 presidential race for George H.W. Bush, an evangelical political-consultant prepared a 57-page briefing book for wooing devout Christian voters– identifying their demographics, denominations, leadership and beliefs; providing a glossary (with such entries as, “born again”) and recounting how Reagan had wooed them.

Read the book to learn numerous other factoids on Graham’s life, career and political impact.

Tiger In the Court

[Please note: The word “Featured” on the left side above was NOT inserted by this blogger, but apparently was inserted by WordPress, and it cannot be removed. NO post in this blog is sponsored.]

The Book of the Week is “Tiger In the Court, Herbert J. Stern…” by Paul Hoffman, published in 1973.

Stern was born in November 1936 in “Alphabet City” very far east of Manhattan’s Union Square. He earned a law degree. He learned he’d passed the bar exam for New York State when results were revealed in the New York Times, while he was stationed at Fort Dix in New Jersey. After that, the U.S. Army assigned him to drive a truck.

While Stern was building his legal career, race riots erupted in Newark in July 1967. The usual response of public officials, when prompted to do something about violence in their city, is to assemble a task force or commission to study the matter and to make recommendations. New Jersey’s governor did just that. The commission concluded that Newark’s government was corrupt. Investigations of the offices of the police director and mayor ensued.

In connection therewith, Stern became a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s office in New Jersey for three and a half years, beginning in September 1969. During his reign– his caseload included 79 (!) federal, state and local officials who were accused of crimes.

A major case concerned members of the Mafia, whose phones were illegally wiretapped by the FBI. Stern had nothing to do with that action. He felt there were wiser uses of investigators’ resources. It violated the suspects’ privacy, and should have been taken only against foreign agents, or in the case of illegal gambling, because the phone was a key tool in gambling in that era.

At any rate, from the recorded New Jersey Mob’s phone conversations (dubbed the “DeCarlo tapes”) between September 1964 and July 1965, investigators learned all about the suspects’ hierarchy. A federal jury was empaneled in January 1970 to try those accused of the now-cliched crimes of corruption.

Unsurprisingly, hundreds of thousands of dollars changed hands among the Mob, the entire administration of the city of Newark, its mayor, city council, in-house attorneys, infrastructure contractors and construction suppliers– in the form of racketeering, kickbacks, bribery, extortion, etc., etc., etc. The judge put the tapes’ 1,200-page transcript into the public domain, by filing it with the court clerk. Local New Jersey newspapers and the New York Times were then able to publish excerpts.

As is well known, the Pentagon Papers were published in dribs and drabs starting in June 1971, but the top-secret information in that case ignited a firestorm because it was associated with an unspeakably ugly war and unspeakably ugly actions taken by a series of American presidents.

Anyway, the media reported that Newark’s organized crime community was on the hook for running a gambling ring, and tax evasion. Stern also prosecuted a bunch of suspects in Jersey City.

Stern believed street crime was less harmful to society than white collar crime. The former consists of robberies, burglaries or drug deals, and might traumatize a few random victims– those caught in crossfire, or a bank’s employees. White collar crime is victimless– but a public servant is stealing from everyone in the community; the resulting misallocation of public funds cheats ordinary citizens out of government services, and the victims usually pay more in taxes, for the sins of the criminals.

In October 1971, Stern read in the Newark Star Ledger that in the wintertime, nineteen communities’ water-treatment plants were pumping leftover toxic-sludge into the Atlantic Ocean less than a thousand feet from the Jersey Shore; during the summer, unknowing people swam at the beaches there. Stern, as one of them, took legal action to stop that practice. Lo and behold, on Memorial Day weekend of 1972, Stern read in the Newark Star Ledger that “… a barge loaded with more than one million tons of raw sewage was being towed north from Virginia to be dumped off the Jersey Shore.” Welcome to America.

Read the book to learn: a wealth of additional details about Stern’s cases, peripheral issues he encountered, and how successful he was at his job.