History – U.S. – 20th Century – Page 15 – education and deconstruction.com

The Place to Be – BONUS POST

The Bonus Book of the Week is “The Place to Be– Washington, CBS, and the Glory Days of Television News” by Roger Mudd, published in 2008. The author was a TV journalist. The “glory days of television news” of fifty years ago was comprised of the same kind of sleaze that is current politicians’ public and personal behavior (i.e., the Democrat or Republican-funded publicity stunt of the week– they take turns, especially during election season).

Born in 1928 in Washington, D.C., Mudd began his career in 1953. At CBS, in July 1961, he got his first opportunity to report news on camera. Later, he was assigned to cover Capitol Hill, an inferior territory compared to the White House. In autumn, 1963, the duration of a television news show increased from fifteen to thirty minutes. That was a big deal. Thereafter, more people chose to get their main source of news from TV rather than newspapers and radio.

Because public viewing of the 1952 House Un-American Activities Committee hearings proved to be an embarrassment to the U.S. government, House Speaker Sam Rayburn banned the presence of TV cameras from House Committee sessions until 1970, and live coverage, until 1979; in the Senate, until 1986.

In December 1970, Mudd unwisely delivered a speech at Washington and Lee University, stating his opinion that radio and TV news were information sources inferior to print; the former appealed to the audience’s emotions in short sound bites; the latter, to intellect and in depth.

CBS didn’t take kindly to Mudd’s truthful assessment. Of course, his career suffered after that. He was passed over to fill in for Walter Cronkite during the summer, and later, to become the one anchorman on the evening news. Vice President Spiro Agnew at the time had been on the rampage, attacking the media for attacking the government.

Read the book to learn of additional similarities between TV “news” of Mudd’s generation, and now.

The Deeds of My Fathers

The Book of the Week is “The Deeds of My Fathers” by Paul David Pope, published in 2010. In this tome, the author discussed the lives of his father and grandfather. Annoyingly, lines of dialogue were always accompanied by the word, “said.”

In spring 1906, at fifteen years old, the author’s great grandfather, Generoso Papa, traveled from his birthplace in Italy to New York City. His brother-in-law was already living in America. Papa got a job doing hard, manual labor in the construction trades. His dogged diligence and playing well with vendors, contractors, engineers, building inspectors and city managers led to success. Too, contacts with the Mafia helped maximize profits and crush the competition. By the mid-1920’s, he owned one of the largest construction-industry suppliers in the city. However, workaholic that he was, he never saw his wife and two sons. In January 1927, he had a third son– the author’s father.

In 1928, the author’s grandfather purchased Il Progresso, the largest Italian newspaper in the city. In it, he praised Mussolini, raised money for him, and printed Fascist propaganda. In the ensuing years, he became friends with politicians, including New York City mayors Jimmy Walker and Fiorello LaGuardia, and presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. Roy Cohn helped him purchase a radio station.

In the early 1950’s, the author’s father, who called himself Gene Pope, had a falling out with his mother and older brothers. He was crowded out of the family businesses. In 1952, he struck out on his own and acquired what became the National Enquirer with seed money from a Mafia don. He changed its editorial bent. It became like today’s media. Tabloidy.

This was Pope’s philosophy on his publication’s contents: “Crime was the most important ingredient, followed by scandals, disasters and personalities; the more famous people were, the more they were laid low and humiliated.” Sounds like the 2018 midterm-elections attack-ads in America (!) It seems the candidates want more hate.

Some candidates claim not to know about the attack ads against their opponents. However, a man is known by the company he keeps, and the candidates keep company with the producers of the ads. It would be different if the ads were 100% true.

And now, a parody, sung to the tune of “The Beat Goes On” (apologies to Cher, and the estate of Sonny Bono):

The hate goes on, the hate goes on
Ads keep pounding a message to the brain
La de da de de, la de da de da

Woo-oo-dstock was once the rage, uh huh
History has turned the page, uh huh
Facebook, the current thing, uh huh

Twitter is our newborn king, uh huh
And the hate goes on, the hate goes on
Ads keep pounding a message to the brain
La de da de de, la de da de da

The Internet’s the new frontier, uh huh
Little minds still inspire fear, uh huh
And leading men still keep assigning blame
Technology lets them stay in the game

And the hate goes on, the hate goes on
Ads keep pounding a message to the brain
La de da de de, la de da de da
Voters sit in Starbucks and complain
Politicians scheming just to gain

Negativity flying faster all the time
NRA still cries, we have to arm ourselves against crime!

And the hate goes on, the hate goes on.
Ads keep pounding a message to the brain.
La de da de de, la de da de da.

And the hate goes on, yes, the hate goes on.
And the hate goes on, and the hate goes on.
The hate goes on, and the hate goes on.

It would be refreshing to see a candidate condemn the attack ads against his opponent, instead of tacitly applauding them, or repeating their contents loudly and often… And instead– actually concentrate on the issues– how he or she is going to be a PUBLIC SERVANT.

In future elections, it would be even nicer to see a political-contribution boycott of the hate-mongers. However, it would take more than one influential, courageous donor to stand up and refuse to be a party to purchasing airtime for the purpose of spreading ugly lies.

But it is the candidates who must ultimately decide to take the high road and grow up. Voters might react favorably to the first side to do so. Even so, this would be an extremely difficult feat. “Everybody does it” is the excuse everybody uses to justify their unethical behavior. Everyone is drowning each other out with a blizzard of defamation. So multiple groups on one side would have to agree to run a wrap-around campaign to promise to spread messages based on substance, and follow through.

That said, unfortunately, honesty isn’t always a guarantee of competence for an elected official. President Jimmy Carter wasn’t widely reputed to be a liar. Yet, most Americans agree, he was a terrible president. Assessing a candidate, and predicting election results are like gambling– difficult to gauge– because human behavior is unpredictable in the short term.

Anyhow, in 1957, the National Enquirer‘s stories sought to satisfy readers’ morbid curiosity by detailing gruesome occurrences in the city. The publication that was initially drowning in a sea of red ink, turned profitable after years and years. By the mid-1960’s, readers were enthralled by poignant, inspirational stories about underdogs who triumphed, medical matters, celebrity gossip and aliens.

In the early 1970’s, Gene moved his publication’s printing presses from New Jersey to Florida. “He worried about his health, claiming air pollution was killing him, even as he continued to smoke four packs a day.”

Gene spared no expenses in getting a story– bribing anyone and everyone associated with stories to get exclusive, salacious information, and sending his reporters on-location– around the corner or around the world. In this way, the Enquirer acquired a reputation as a tabloid that appealed to the lowest common denominator. The highbrow New York Times didn’t pay interviewees, but instead appealed to their egos, generating favorable publicity for them if they talked.

The author wrote that his father developed psychological problems in his later years, and ruled his empire by fear. He had dirt on various people and let them know it, so that way, he could cash in on a favor from them in the future if he so desired. The son lamented, “No doubt I was spoiled by material things, but not by love.” Read the book to learn the details.

Grand Delusions – BONUS POST

The Bonus Book of the Week is “Grand Delusions, The Cosmic Career of John DeLorean” by Hillel Levin, published in 1983. This volume described the adventures of a car company engineer and entrepreneur, not to mention swindler.

The book’s first chapter was a summary of his entire career, suspense be damned. The section on his makeover and marriages was disorganized and redundant. One more criticism– the author interviewed only the book’s subject twice, and listed no notes, references or bibliography.

Anyhow, born in January 1925 in Detroit, DeLorean was the oldest of five sons. His father was an alcoholic Romanian; his mother, an Austrian. He kept busy while attending Lawrence Tech in Michigan. He wrote for the school newspaper and was on the student council. He joined a fraternity, danced in night clubs and drove a fast car.

DeLorean held a series of jobs including salesman, trainee in a special program at Chrysler, engineer at Packard, head engineer and then general manager of General Motors’ Pontiac division, and by the late 1960’s, general manager of its Chevrolet division.

After departing from his full-time job under murky circumstances, DeLorean and his sidekick Roy Nesseth posed as entrepreneurs who executed crooked business deals. Victims included an auto-parts patent holder, a farmer/rancher, and a financially struggling Cadillac dealership, among others. By the mid-1970’s, the pair had a bunch of business failures and lawsuits against them.

Journalists were suckered into writing about DeLorean’s past glory as a brilliant engineer. He “… must have learned that if he didn’t say too much, the reporter wouldn’t bother to check any further… They were still looking for dirt on General Motors, and the ex-executive was more than willing to give it to them… The maverick auto engineer was too compelling a character to be deflated with investigative journalism.” DeLorean fooled people just like Bernie Madoff did, although not on as grand a scale.

When he started his own car company, DeLorean let his attorney create a complicated network of sister companies to deliberately obfuscate financial and legal matters. It took the entire second half of the Seventies.

A boatload of fundraising was required to pay lavish executives’ salaries, design their offices, choose a manufacturing site, build the factory, sign up the car dealers, etc. The author erroneously used the term “comptroller” instead of “controller” when discussing the pesky bean-counter who complained about the arrogant, greedy DeLorean’s huge monetary outlays on all things for himself. “As Dewey [DeLorean’s first controller] predicted, the improprieties grew exponentially with the influx of money from the British government.”

DeLorean was the type of man who fancied himself as having some of the traits of James Bond. A man such as this, with a big ego, marries a model or actress at least a decade younger than himself. Like DeLorean, other James-Bond wannabes have assumed prominent leadership roles, and become international celebrities. The list includes but is far from limited to: Charlie Chaplin, Cornelius Vanderbilt IV, John F. Kennedy, Nelson Mandela, Elon Musk and of course, Ian Fleming.

Read the book to learn the details of the combination of honest ineptitude and premeditated, nervy criminality in which DeLorean and his accomplices engaged in the context of how not to become an automaker.

Madam Speaker

The Book of the Week is “Madam Speaker, Nancy Pelosi’s Life, Times, and Rise to Power” by Marc Sandalow, published in 2008. This was a biography of a workaholic liberal Democrat who achieved a few “female firsts” in politics. It was anti-Pelosi in subtle ways.

Sloppy editing in this book created confusion with regard to Pelosi’s age in three different places:

“…she first won election to Congress in June 1987… the then 53-year old Congresswoman…”

“On March 26, 1940… Nancy Patricia D’Alessandro weighed in at eight and a half pounds.”

“On December 30, 1956… His seventeen year old daughter joined him…”

In addition, the cover photo– of Pelosi hugging a young child (as a prop) in what appeared to be a campaign– was demeaning. The author would never have dared to use such a photo of a male politician doing that. Family is still thought of as an issue for females.

Not that Pelosi didn’t brag about her family in every campaign, but the presence of the child in the photo implied that she couldn’t have achieved what she did without a family (Book cover photos always show a male politician alone).

Perhaps it was part of Pelosi’s appeal, but family should have been irrelevant to her qualifications for holding the offices she held. No male politicians make having a family a major reason for voting for them.

Sadly, due to human nature, the following arguments:

persuasive mudslinging (“Vote for me because my opponent is a Nazi.”)
fiercely loyal party affiliation (“Vote for me because I’m a member of your party– I know you believe every word you hear from our party-funded information sources and that’s all you hear, thank you!”)
ridiculous promises (“Vote for me because I’ll make you rich quick.”)
phony outrage (“Vote for me because- how dare they accuse us?! They started it!”)
creating a common enemy (“Vote for me because, just like you– I hate the media.”) and
appeals to tribal unity (“Vote for me because I’m the same ethnicity / religion / skin color / gender / sexual orientation you are, and my opponent is NOT.”)

more often win elections than a candidate’s ability to act in constituents’ best interests.

Anyway, Pelosi was the youngest of seven children. Her father was a Baltimore politician. Like him, she was a natural. In 1969, she moved with her husband to San Francisco, where, while raising her growing family, started volunteering for various Democratic organizations. Thanks to her father, she already had friends in high places, but she made many more with her driven work ethic and patronage power.

Pelosi served on San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors (city council). In 1987, she ran against a gay candidate for Congress. Her pet issues were increasing funding to fight AIDS, preserving the Presidio (a military base) and Chinese human rights.

In 1989, in a legislative proposal, Pelosi favored pressuring China to curb its human rights abuses through otherwise threatening to raise tariffs on Chinese imports to the US. The Congresswoman visited China in September 1991.

According to the author, “Pelosi said prisoners had told her that the conditions in Chinese jails had miraculously improved each year when Congress debated Most Favored Nation status.” It was unclear whether the author’s “miraculously” was meant sarcastically to indicate that China was putting on a show for the United States, and Pelosi was just another naive, bleeding-heart liberal. President Bill Clinton initially agreed with Pelosi and said he would enact the law imposing financial punishment, but then betrayed her in May 1993.

The argument against erecting trade barriers as a punishment for bad behavior is this: Unfortunately, dictators, like leopards, do not usually change their spots. The Chinese leaders would continue to oppress their people, regardless of how much deprivation the goods producers and exporters would suffer due to sanctions. Besides, the leaders would blame the United States for their hardships. Moreover, there would be adverse global economic consequences.

Pelosi was reelected House Whip in late 2001. From the get-go, she opposed the war in Iraq. She presciently “… warned that a war in Iraq would diminish the nation’s standing, and cost hundreds of billions of dollars.” She was right on both counts.

The latter count was a rerun of Vietnam: Several times, the president forced Congress to approve additional megabucks to fund the war. Forced, because members were made phobic about putting the lives of American servicepeople at risk due to lack of money for inadequate safety equipment. But due to waste, incompetence and war profiteering, the US military in Iraq didn’t have what they needed, anyway.

Read the book to learn how Pelosi earned her party’s respect (hint– she practiced what she preached), and much more about her.

The Rise of A Prairie Statesman

The Book of the Week is “The Rise of A Prairie Statesman: The Life and Times of George McGovern” by Thomas J. Knock, published in 2016. This biography covered the senator’s life only through the 1960’s, and his remaining history would presumably be told in another volume.

McGovern’s uncle, whose name he got– George– was born into a poor family in 1881. That uncle was the youngest of six children of Irish/Scottish extraction. McGovern’s grandmother died when his youngest uncle was less than a year old. McGovern’s grandfather was a miner; his father– the oldest child in his family– Joseph, too, started mining at nine years old.

Joseph became a Methodist minister in South Dakota, a state with an agricultural economy– wheat and corn. Harsh conditions abounded, including blizzards, locusts, grasshoppers, floods, hail, and prairie fires. And dust storms from drought. To add insult to injury, the Great Depression hit. South Dakota got more financial aid than any other state.

Joseph’s first wife died when he was 49. He wed the second in 1918. McGovern was born in Mitchell, a medium-sized town in July 1922, the second oldest of four siblings. It was “Life With Father.” Nevertheless, leisure pursuits included pheasant hunting, picnics, swimming in the creek, (sneaked-into) movies, etc.

The high school personnel cared about their students. The Episcopalian basketball coach would wake up his team on Sunday mornings to take them to religious services, and then to lunch of burgers and rhubarb pie at a cafe. An English teacher told McGovern to join the debate team to get him out of his shell.

McGovern graduated third in his high school class of one hundred forty. He got a scholarship to Dakota Wesleyan University. During the Depression, the school accepted farm animals and crops in lieu of tuition. But there were no dances, fraternities or sororities allowed because it was Methodist.

In February 1943, McGovern was drafted. He became a war hero, flying 35 bombing missions over Germany. The ten-man flight crews wore heated suits, oxygen masks, and wool-lined boots and gloves because at 20,000 feet altitude, the temperature fell to about minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Life-threatening risks included being shot down, a blown plane engine and/or tires, and damage to a plane and its occupants from anti-aircraft flak. Most of these happened to McGovern and his crews but they survived.

McGovern also suffered psychological trauma when, on a mission, his plane accidentally let go its bomb right onto an Austrian farmhouse, just when it was likely the family would be eating their midday meal. He never found out how many people if any, died in that incident, but the entire place was destroyed.

Through the years, McGovern got married, had five children and earned a PhD in history from Northwestern University in Illinois, on the GI Bill. He traveled to various states to research his thesis on the Colorado Coal strike of 1913-1914. “Through his scholarship, McGovern had become a firsthand witness to the exercise of power without accountability, and he soon surmised that people who held such advantages rarely surrendered it voluntarily.”

McGovern became a professor and coached the debate team at Dakota Wesleyan. He supported Henry Wallace in 1948. Even though McGovern was a “local boy who made good” J. Edgar Hoover still compiled an FBI file on him. McGovern gave up a brilliant teaching career to enter politics. He re-grouped the Democratic Party in South Dakota– traditionally a Republican state– after Adlai Stevenson’s loss to Dwight Eisenhower in 1952.

In June 1953, the US had fifteen hundred nuclear weapons; by January 1961, eighteen thousand. The nuclear tests in 1958 alone numbered about 81, most of each of them about fifty times more destructive than the bomb that hit Hiroshima.

McGovern’s speeches and writings recommended that America stop such scary stupidity (and cancer cluster proliferation) that was supposedly taking place in the name of peace. To no avail. His voice of reason, one of the few, was outnumbered. An estimate of the cost of nuclear weapons alone was fifteen billion dollars for 1963 alone; in fiscal 1964, the military budget was actually $54.8 billion. This accounted for more than half of the entire federal budget, and exceeded the cost of all the programs of the New Deal from 1933 to 1940.

In September 1963, more than one hundred nations (except for France and China) including the US, signed a nuclear test ban treaty whose inevitable loophole was the allowance for unlimited underground testing. Sure, the treaty banned testing in the sea and air, but humans, due to their nature, are destroying the earth, anyway.

Sadly, many well-intentioned documents governing test bans, arms reduction, peace, economic arrangements and environmental initiatives among nations have historically turned out to be worthless pieces of paper.

A handshake can be as trustworthy (or not) as a document; it depends on whose hands are doing the shaking. Government officials can accomplish things through fear and force, but they won’t earn respect. Or they can exude charisma and make people feel good, even if they break their campaign promises or act against the nation’s best interests. The images of friendly, jokey leaders are more fondly remembered historically than serious, insecure, mean-spirited ones.

McGovern should have continued his academic career. His idea– that instead of possibly overkilling the world with nuclear arms, the money spent to build them could more wisely be used for providing Americans with better education and health care– was ignored. It sucked for him. And the world.

In 1961, after McGovern lost his senate race, President John F. Kennedy appointed McGovern to lead the Food for Peace Program. According to the author, “Adding in the school lunch program, he had coordinated the feeding of more hungry people than any other individual in American history.” Or was it Herbert Hoover?

Anyway, read the book to learn of other international aid programs orchestrated by McGovern and how the humanitarian goal of the original program was turned on its ear (instead of feeding the starving, it fed people in the war machine) unbeknownst to McGovern; the dirty campaigning in McGovern’s senate elections; and his political views and actions on various issues.

The Rise of Marco Rubio

The Book of the Week is “The Rise of Marco Rubio” by Manuel Roig-Franzia, published in 2012.

This volume’s opening words indicate that Rubio considers himself the focal point of the universe. He is admittedly a Ronald Reagan wannabe. He does have an appeaser personality, and the major essentials of a career politician–unctuous public speaking ability and phony friendships with wealthy donors.

Born in May 1971 in Miami, the third of four siblings, he has Cuban ancestry. In 1979, Rubio’s family moved to Las Vegas for four years. There, they, except for his father, converted to Mormonism. Rubio clearly has ambivalence about his religious bent, as it appears to be both Mormon and Catholic. He is against gambling.

Rubio graduated high school in 1989, having played on the football team. He started attending Tarkio College in Nebraska on a partial football scholarship. He eventually earned a law degree from the University of Miami Law School.

In 1996, Rubio worked for Bob Dole. In 1998, a moderate Republican, he was elected to the West Miami City Commission. Good at collecting valuable contacts, he became chummy with the mayor of his political territory, West Miami, which was like a small town of less than three thousand people.

The author’s language is unclear as to whether Rubio fathered a child before he married his girlfriend he’d had for eight years. But Rubio did assist with gerrymandering in his areas of dominant influence. In 2001 and 2002, he requested lots of pork barrel money, but asked for none the following year. For, then he ran for and got elected as a Representative in Florida.

Rubio copied a plan (but his was less helpful) from the Democrats, to add to the prescription benefits of financially struggling seniors. He created fundraising front groups for conservatives. Unfortunately, they “… were plagued by accounting glitches and perception problems.” They were actually financial patronage vehicles for his family members. In 2004, he unsuccessfully pushed for a state tax subsidy to pay for a new stadium for the Florida Marlins baseball team.

Rubio is a big spender with both taxpayer-, and his personal, moneys. Nevertheless, in 2010, he got himself elected US GOP Senator from Florida. During the campaign, he fancied himself a maverick with Tea Party support but after his victory, he distanced himself from those supporters. He is pro-life, favors reducing the national deficit but contradictorily– cutting taxes and increasing military spending.

In the summer of 2011, a “news” show on the network Univision was sniffing into decades-old trouble involving Rubio’s brother-in-law. Rubio’s brother-in-law was a private citizen, not a public servant, not paid by the taxpayers. Rubio asked the TV sleaze machine whether he could pry into the private life of the station’s news anchor. There was no comment.

Read the book to learn how Rubio was a mythmaker with regard to his family’s heritage, and other information.

The Chief

The Book of the Week is “The Chief, The Life of William Randolph Hearst” by David Nasaw, published in 2000. This tome described not just the life of the media emperor, but the historical backdrop of his generation.

Born in April 1863 in San Francisco, Hearst was a mama’s boy. He grew up in a highly cultured family. However, its fortunes waned, and finally waxed in the 1870’s. The father was in the gold mining business; politics too– he was elected as a Democratic member of the state assembly of California in November 1865.

When Hearst was at Harvard, his mother “…redecorated his rooms [in Matthews Hall] in Harvard crimson, equipped him with a library, hired a maid and valet to look after her boy.” In those days, one student could live in an on-campus suite and have servants. Hearst was an outsider who bought himself a position in society by making the Harvard Lampoon profitable and donating big money to Harvard’s sports teams. But he lacked the manners to get invited to the elitist summer resorts.

In October 1880, Hearst’s father bought San Francisco’s Evening Examiner and turned it into a morning newspaper to win a future election. Father and son helped get Grover Cleveland elected president in November 1884. Two years later, Hearst’s father was elected to the U.S. Senate. Hearst eventually failed out of Harvard.

In his mid-twenties, Hearst got an opportunity to attempt a financial turnaround of the Examiner. He took various creative steps to achieve this goal. The Examiner‘s editorial bent was pro-labor, anti-capital and anti-railroad.

In the 1890’s, the culture of journalism was a mixture of “fact-based reporting, opinion and literature.” Readers liked emotionally-moving stories. They could tolerate a lot of fiction in their news. And they must’ve, when Hearst published made-up war stories to help Cuba gain its independence from Spain in 1898. However, toward the mid-twentieth century, journalism strove to be more objective.

In 1893 at the time Hearst bought the New York Morning Journal, there were eight established morning newspapers in New York. The Journal‘s editorial bent was pro-labor, pro-immigrant and anti-Republican. But it did have anti-African-American cartoons and jokes. According to Hearst, New Yorkers were overpaying for their gas, power, coal, ice, milk and even water due to monopolies (in those days called “trusts”).

In 1900 and 1901, the Hearst papers constantly criticized and even mentioned killing president McKinley. When the president was shot by a madman in September 1901, Hearst was accused of hiring the hitman. In 1902, Hearst was elected to Congress as a Democrat from New York, eleventh district. When he ran for a third term, he gave every man, woman and child in his district a free trip to Coney Island, including most of the Luna Park shows (thousands of tickets). Then he changed his mind and ran for mayor instead in 1905 in an attempt to “drain the swamp.” He wed in 1903, at forty years old. In May 1905, he bought Cosmopolitan magazine, kicking off his entry into the magazine business.

Hearst lived high on the hog and spared no expense when it came to gathering stories for his growing media empire. He paid his employees well, sent droves of them to cover stories which appeared in his newspapers that had more pages and special features than the competition’s. His business was losing more money than ever.

In the early 1920’s, “After 2 decades of debate and agitation, the rise and fall of Populist, Progressive and Socialist parties…” and lots of labor unrest, there was general consensus between government and American business “… that the role of government was not to supersede or control the corporation, but to legalize and legitimize it by regulating its excesses.”

Public relations at the turn of the twentieth century consisted of billboards and posters, newsreels and serial films, stunts, service features and contests. Radio was the next big thing in the 1920’s.

After recording political history for decades, Hearst concluded that “…politicians were, with few exceptions, mendacious, corrupt, and incompetent. The country needed a leader who was not tainted by the political process and was not dependent on the largess of machine politicians or big businessmen.”

On one trip on Hearst’s yacht, with a group of Hollywood celebrities, a movie director was celebrating his 43rd birthday. The director had a major heart attack and later died. All sorts of wild stories abounded in the newspapers that Hearst had killed him. A 2001 FICTIONAL movie called “The Cat’s Meow” was made of one wild-story version. No evidence of any crime has ever surfaced, except Hearst’s violating Prohibition– a crime whose exposure he wanted to avoid. That was the reason he didn’t want the media anywhere near the heart attack victim.

In late 1927, for nearly a month, Hearst had published front page articles based entirely on fictitious sources. He had libeled several nations, dozens of foreign statesmen, at least two prominent American journalists, Oswald Garrison Villard and Ernest Gruening, and four U.S. senators. Yet he wasn’t taken to task on any of that. There’s nothing new under the sun.

Read the book to learn the details of Hearst’s friendly relationships with William Jennings Bryan, Marion Davies, Mussolini, Hitler, Churchill and others; his wire service; his reporting on Tammany Hall; San Simeon and how his other estates with mansions came to be; his art collection; the size to which his media empire grew; his rabid anti-Communist activities; and how he worked his way out of financial ruin. Most of the aforementioned involved disgusting excesses.

The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt – BONUS POST

The Bonus Book of the Week is “The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt” published in installments from 1937 through 1961.

Born in October 1884, Eleanor grew up in a wealthy family with a few younger siblings. Her mother died of diphtheria when she was eight. Her father thereafter practiced spousification briefly, then left the household, and died the following year. One of her grandfathers was the Theodore Roosevelt.

Eleanor’s grandmother, aunts and uncle assumed responsibility for raising her. They convinced her that charitable activities were a virtue, and they did a lot of that.

Eleanor’s immediate family alternately resided in New York and France. When in New York, they lived with the household help in a mansion in the Madison Square neighborhood. But spent summers at an estate called Tivoli in upstate New York; Hyde Park, to be specific. On rare occasions, she was permitted to visit the family of her grandfather Theodore in Oyster Bay, Long Island. That’s where she met her distant cousin and later husband, Franklin.

At fifteen years of age, Eleanor was sent to an all-female boarding school. She eventually became a starter on the field hockey team. She studied French, German, Latin, Italian, history and music. Upon graduation, young ladies of her generation (debutantes) “came out” — searched for a husband, but were chaperoned everywhere they went.

On Saint Patrick’s Day in 1905, Eleanor married Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR). They eventually had six children. When he was appointed Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Navy, she became his social secretary. As did many other women, she knitted for her country during WWI. She also entertained foreign dignitaries, worked for the Red Cross canteen, and visited the war wounded at the naval hospital.

Through all of her social and political activities, Eleanor met hundreds of people who were instrumental in furthering her husband’s political career. He was elected governor of New York State in 1928. When he became president, no Secret Service agents protected her because she wanted privacy. Thus, they trained her to use a revolver, which she kept on her person at all times.

After her husband passed away, Eleanor began participating in meetings to form the United Nations. She was reading briefing papers containing information on international affairs marked, Top Secret “… but it appeared in the newspapers even before it reached us.”

Read the book to learn of the myriad other ways Eleanor filled in every second of her days– including her travels for purposes of speech-making and diplomatic visits to meet with foreign government officials (especially royal family members); being a daily columnist– and her opinions of America vis a vis other countries. Shamefully, she failed to achieve world peace.

RFK

The Book of the Week is “RFK, A Candid Biography of Robert F. Kennedy” by C. David Heymann, published in 1998. The author threw in as well, plenty of the Kennedy family’s history (some might say tabloid gossip) only indirectly related to Robert.

Born in 1925, Robert F. Kennedy (Bobby) was one of nine children of the wealthy and powerful Rose and Joseph P. Kennedy. Taken as a whole, his life was a study in contradictions. Regardless, he exhibited the stereotyped Kennedy family traits, such as the arrogance of a spoiled rich kid, recklessness and idealism.

He spent his childhood in the Boston area, New York City, London and other places, frequently switching schools. Nonetheless, he alternately attended Harvard and underwent training in the Navy beginning in the mid-1940’s. But the war ended, so he moved to Boston to help his older brother John run for Congress.

Sadly, Bobby’s poor academic performance got him rejected from Harvard Law school, his hegemonic daddy’s appeal to do the Kennedy family’s will notwithstanding. He ended up graduating from the law school of the University of Virginia.

Bobby wed Ethel in 1950. Two years later, he began to develop his “joined at the hip” relationship with John when John ran for the U.S. Senate and they lived in Massachusetts. Female campaign workers distributed 900,000 leaflets in buses, taxicabs, mailboxes and door-to-door, in that race. They also called all voters twice. Later that same year, Bobby hired on with Senator Joseph McCarthy’s committee that practiced Communist witch-hunts, even though he hated Roy Cohn. The summer of 1953 saw him resign, but a couple of years later, return to investigate unethical behavior committed by business and government officials borne of conflicts of interest.

Ironically, Bobby tagged along with narcotics cops on the beat in New York City when they engaged in numerous, brutal, illegal search-and-seizure raids on African Americans and people of Spanish-speaking origin, and allegedly participated in a few raids himself. He furthered his political education with his presence on presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson’s whistle-stop rail tour in 1956. But he soon became disgusted with the candidate’s vacillating and poor skills set. Bobby worked long hours; he spent the little leisure time he had with his children and their pets-a veritable zoo– at their chaotic mansion in McLean, VA.

The author described in detail, John’s run for president and Bobby’s actions as John’s attorney general. J. Edgar Hoover, FBI chief, led his own little fiefdom that had been zealously chasing after Communists (tracked via spying and dossiers galore). Hoover and Bobby (the new sheriff in town), disliked each other.

Unlike Hoover, Bobby fostered unusual collective effort among the FBI, IRS and the narcotics bureau to catch offenders in the Mob. Unsurprisingly, the Kennedys’ connections with the Mob and their rampant philandering with female celebrities and prostitutes (wherever they traveled in the world –– a well-kept secret by the Secret Service) invited extortion of John and Bobby by Hoover. Another thorny issue Bobby had to deal with was civil rights. He dealt with it hypocritically.

Bobby investigated corruption in the Teamsters for years, putting the screws on the union’s leader, Jimmy Hoffa. He told his underlings to use illegal surveillance techniques– conduct that was unbecoming of an attorney general: tapping of Hoffa’s rotary-dial phones, chamfering of Hoffa’s mail, ransacking Hoffa’s home and office without a warrant, and ordering the IRS to audit Hoffa’s tax returns.

Unfortunately, Bobby couldn’t do the same against another enemy– Fidel Castro. “The Kennedy administration’s campaign to overthrow the premier of Cuba– a policy founded on grandiose delusions and foolish rage– was an abject failure.”

In 1964, Bobby was elected a U.S. Senator from New York State via carpetbagging. Since he had his eye on the presidency, he examined global issues. He visited many poor areas in various nations to study their governments’ policies on poverty.

In June 1968, as is well known, while running for president, Bobby was shot. Strangely, no details were provided as to how Bobby’s assassin knew that Bobby was pro-Israel. The reader is left wondering what Bobby’s views were on Middle Eastern policy. There were, however, numerous details on Bobby’s competitors’ activities, primary results of various states, and several of his countless sexual dalliances (of which his wife was painfully aware).

Read the book to learn much more about Bobby’s life, times, and large family– especially the salacious details.

Endnote: Incidentally (and sadly), the culture of both major political parties in America has changed little in terms of surveillance and adolescent-boy spy games since the McCarthy era and RFK’s “Spy Vs. Spy” Mad Magazine-type (but in real life!) vengeful political nonsense. Not to mention the fact that the Democrats have yet to catch up to the Republicans in witch-hunt expertise.

The Education of A Woman

The Book of the Week is “The Education of A Woman, The Life of Gloria Steinem” by Carolyn G. Heilbrun, published in 1995.

Born in March 1934, Gloria Steinem was raised in an unconventional household. Her formal education was spotty due to the seasonal livelihood of her parents. They ran a summer resort at Clark Lake, Ohio, and traveled by recreational vehicle to warm climates, such as California or Florida, in the winters. Care of her mentally ill mother was left to her, as her sister Suzanne was nine years older than she was.

Her father was a carefree spendthrift, an obese, bibliophilic dreamer; her mother, a nervous Nellie. However, the former took her seriously and conversed with her as he did an adult. When she was eleven, her parents divorced. She lived with her mother in East Toledo, Ohio. In poverty.

Steinem rebelled against the statistically likely role of her gender in her generation: get married, raise children, do housework and serve her husband. Fortunately, her family was sufficiently interested in her higher education to provide for her Smith College tuition by selling a house. Steinem majored in government.

When Steinem finally began the life she wanted to live, it was like her father’s. No nine-to-five job (which meant intermittent income) and tax evasion. Steinem assisted Clay Felker with the founding of New York magazine. But she was best known for co-founding and being the mouthpiece for Ms. magazine starting at the tail end of 1971.

Other career highlights included assisting with the candidacies of Norman Mailer and Jimmy Breslin for New York City mayor and New York city council president, respectively. Theirs was sort of a joint venture. Together, they proposed that the metropolitan area and adjacent regions become the 51st state of America. They also floated the idea of banning cars– to be replaced by a public monorail that would grace the perimeter of Manhattan while small crosstown buses shuttled the remaining city occupants to and fro.

Unsurprisingly, Mailer hired Steinem because he wanted to have sex with her. Anyway, the media harped on all the dalliances with the many men Steinem had during her career. In this way and many others, the media were actually a hindrance to the feminist movement. For another, they had many a field day with the cat fights of the females in the movement.

As a successful public figure, Steinem inevitably generated jealousy. She insightfully wrote, “Just as men victimize the weak member of their group, women victimize the strong one.” Also, “The greater part of sexual harassment in the workplace occurs between powerful men and less powerful women.” Not only males, but certain females, such as Betty Friedan and Elizabeth Forsling Harris gave Steinem trouble through the years.

Harris had “borderline personality disorder”– she was a narcissistic attention whore with anger management issues, who made unreasonable demands. She created a hostile work environment at Ms. magazine. Sadly, Steinem was too nice when it came to such people. She was non-confrontational and tolerated Harris’ behavior for too long.

Steinem crisscrossed the country giving speeches on feminism. Her anger about the treatment of women emerged in her commencement speech to the Smith College Class of 1971.

In late 1977, Steinem began a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson Center, using her time to plan a feminism book. The feminist cause helped the civil rights cause and vice versa. The book was sorely needed by America; for, all but one of the Center’s executives were white men, all the secretaries were white women, all the cleaning personnel who operated machines (like floor waxers) were black men, and all other cleaners were black women.

The author put her two cents in: “The environment must become a paramount consideration on a planet hideously misused by male ambitions of domination, exploitation, and arrogance.”

Read the book to learn why the feminist community and Ms. were always embattled financially and ideologically, and much more about Steinem’s awakening in her later years.