History – U.S. – 20th Century – Page 16 – education and deconstruction.com

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.

A Good Fight – BONUS POST

The Bonus Book of the Week is “A Good Fight” by Sarah Brady With Merrill McLoughlin, published in 2002. This is the autobiography of a secondary victim of firearms-violence turned gun-control activist in the United States.

Sarah’s husband, Jim, had just begun to serve as press secretary for President Ronald Reagan. In March 1981, Jim was caught in the crossfire– shot in the head– in the assassination attempt on Reagan. Jim required extensive medical care, having sustained brain damage that resulted in paralysis of his legs and other ongoing quality-of-life complications.

What sparked an interest in gun-control advocacy in Sarah Brady, a lifelong Republican, was an incident during the summer of 1985 involving the cavalier attitude of adults in her husband’s hometown (Centralia, IL) about firearms. People had guns casually lying around, giving children easy (accidental, but deadly) access. Of course, adults, too, who get a gun can kill someone. It is harder if they don’t have a gun.

Reagan’s would-be assassin might have been denied access to his .22 caliber weapon if the-then gun laws had required a background check on him. When he bought it in a pawn shop in Dallas, he gave a fake address and showed an outdated Texas driver’s license.

The 1968 Gun Control Act was rendered useless when gun makers found a loophole in it. Importing of “Saturday night specials” was banned, but importing of their parts wasn’t. So the guns were assembled upon arrival at the factory and sold in this country.

Sarah initially volunteered to help a nonprofit group called Handgun Control, which pushed for ILLEGAL-gun-control legislation. In 1986, it put forth the Brady Bill, which would close the loopholes in the existing laws and require background checks on gun buyers. It did not try to ban anyone from buying or possessing firearms altogether. State laws diverged significantly in working on gun control legislation, due to pressures imposed by the National Rifle Association (NRA) and other groups.

Sarah explicitly wrote that she wasn’t pushing to eliminate the Second Amendment in the U.S. Bill of Rights. She began speech-making at universities, city clubs and civic organizations.

In 1988, Handgun Control successfully lobbied to ban (non-metal) handguns able to fool metal detectors at airports. The group received invaluable assistance from Senator Nancy Kassebaum, Republican from Kansas. Sarah mentioned various other politicians, helpful and obstructionist. The vast majority showed her minimum courtesy by returning her telephone calls. Not then-Congressman Dick Cheney from Wyoming. Never.

George H.W. Bush claimed that he “so admired” the work Handgun Control was doing. However, a major campaign donor of his, the NRA, prevented him from acting on that sentiment to support the Brady Bill in any way, shape or form in 1989, when it still had yet to pass Congress.

Sarah delivered a speech at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Childish, vicious hecklers with poor impulse control shouted her down, screaming “Liar, liar!!!” Law enforcement officers did nothing to eject them, but had semi-automatic weapons at the ready– in case they got violent. And people wonder why there are so many shooting sprees in the United States.

One small way that shooting sprees could possibly be reduced would be to regulate hate speech and threats on social media. If, pursuant to a legal definition of “hate speech” and “threats” the perpetrators of hate speech and threats could be not only banned, but deemed to be breaking the law (if they mention weaponry in their messages)– then law enforcement would have probable cause to obtain a warrant to search their homes and workplaces for weaponry that is unlicensed or was obtained through dishonest means. Thus, if executed carefully, such a chain of events wouldn’t be a Fourth Amendment violation. It is unclear at this time whether this would be a Federal or State matter.

Read the book to learn why 1994 was a banner year for ILLEGAL-gun-control advocates, about disputes on concealed weapons, about a 1997 ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court, why a background check on American gun buyers in almost half of the states is not really thorough, and much more about Sarah.

Herbert Hoover/Hubert Humphrey

The Books of the Week are “Herbert Hoover, A Life” by Glen Jeansonne with David Luhrssen, published in 2016 and “Hubert Humphrey, A Biography” by Carl Solberg, published in 1984. Both of these slightly sloppily edited, structurally flawed– redundant– volumes described charismatic, liberal twentieth-century politicians. The Republican and Democratic leaders respectively were blamed for major adverse historical events over which they had largely no control.

The Humphrey book’s last chapter summarized all of its previous contents. This chapter would be a good reading assignment for a college class, as it provided a substantive overview of the man’s political career.

Sadly, Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression are inseparable whenever either is mentioned, due to vicious scapegoating. Yet, “Hoover fed an estimated 83 million people and was doubtless responsible for saving more lives than any individual in history.” Additionally, “Hoover took responsibility for errors and shunned credit helping to develop ties of trust in both directions.”

Born in 1874 in Iowa, Hoover grew up in a Quaker family in an agricultural community. He enjoyed outdoor farm chores better than school. His father died of typhus when he was six; his mother, of pneumonia when he was nine. In his teens, he moved to the Oregon home of his uncle, a medical doctor.

Hoover was in the first graduating class of Stanford University. Eventually, he successively managed large mining operations in various nations, that provided raw materials for weaponry. Thus, his vast wealth continued to snowball at an even faster pace with the start of WWI.

Ironically, Hoover was a humanitarian. In the nineteen-teens, he got permission from warring nations to deliver food to Germany-occupied Belgium to ward off famine there; northern France, too. Germany conceded because it feared that if Belgium starved, the United States might enter the war. Further, Hoover made sure that he, as the leader of the privately funded group that transported the food, refrained from engaging in war profiteering. The group boasted only one percent fixed costs, and when it was dissolved, donated its $35 million surplus to colleges in Belgium, as well as to a Belgian-American exchange program. To top it off, Hoover collected no salary.

Hoover was able to make Americans feel proud that they helped the Allies win the war by not wasting food in their own country. They internalized Hoover’s message via radio, newsreels, feature films and celebrity appearances from May 1917 through April 1919. Then in 1921, he began a food program for the Soviets. According to the author, “After the Great Engineer morphed into perhaps the greatest secretary of commerce in history, he was noted for his kind treatment of everyone who worked for him, as was the case when he became president.”

Hoover was a conservative capitalist– advocating a low income tax to aid business activities but high estate taxes to prevent perpetuities. Tax cuts, plus new technologies in the utilities, entertainment and automotive industries fueled tremendous economic growth between 1922 and 1928. Hoover convinced president Calvin Coolidge to let him meddle in all government affairs, in addition to his own domain– domestic and international commerce.

When Coolidge declined to run for reelection in the summer of 1927, Hoover let his friends speak for him in public about how great a president he himself would be. Those friends included all manner of journalists, authors, college communities, senators, business leaders, etc. Upon his election, he collected no government pay and he paid all his own expenses, including those covering White House entertainment.

Hoover filed more antitrust lawsuits than under any president before him. However, “By 1929, some of the nation’s most eminent businessmen– including Joseph P. Kennedy, Bernard Baruch, and Herbert Hoover– began to quietly divest themselves of stocks.”

In 1928, the world was heading for economic disaster for several reasons. American bankers lent money to European governments at usurious interest rates because they could, and Central and Eastern European governments sold bonds at interest rates they couldn’t possibly afford to make good on, because they needed to– debt from WWI was sky-high for a lot of countries.

The war had produced widespread destruction and serious shortages of resources of all kinds. American citizens were going crazy engaging in short-term trading rather than long-term investing in the stock market. There were massive political upheavals in Russia, Asia, Europe and Latin America. A government cannot create wealth, it can only redistribute it.

When the Depression hit, Hoover attempted to help Americans, even at political cost to himself. He argued that local and state governments rather than the federal government, should provide financial aid to their people because they knew their local residents’ needs better than the latter.

Read the book to learn the outcomes of Hoover’s arms-control summits; how he dealt with WWI veterans who demanded that their bonuses be paid early; why he was against the New Deal; the idealistic goal of Stanford’s Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, which he founded; and much more.

Born in May 1911 in a small town in Minnesota, Hubert Humphrey graduated first of sixteen students from his high school class. Due to his family’s dire financial situation, he was forced to become a druggist in his family’s store for several years. He then was able to get married and attend the University of Minnesota. In order to afford school, he did all different low-level odd jobs while he took one and a half times the course load of normal students. He wanted to go to graduate school but his first child put the kibosh on that.

Skilled at debating and delivering speeches, Humphrey was pressured by friends and colleagues into becoming a politician rather than a teacher. In 1945, he was elected mayor of Minneapolis. Part of his platform from the get-go, and throughout his career was civil rights. Workaholic that he was, when running for the U.S. Senate in 1948, he traveled to all 87 of Minnesota’s counties at least twice– 31,000 miles, making seven hundred speeches. He hardly ever saw his growing family.

Humphrey was pro-union but he was no Communist. At the same time, in 1951 he agreed with Senator William Benton of Minnesota that Joseph McCarthy was using “Hitler’s Big Lie techniques.” In summer 1953, he took a page from Herbert Hoover’s playbook by creating an organization that used surplus crop yields from Minnesota to feed the hungry peoples of foreign nations.

Unfortunately, beginning in early 1966, when he was vice president, Humphrey became President Lyndon Johnson’s slavish mouthpiece on Vietnam. He visited the war zone and got it in his head that China was provoking aggression against the U.S. He had developed the same hubris syndrome as the president.

In late winter 1968, the controlling Johnson (finally, inconsiderately) withdrew from the presidential campaign. It was Humphrey’s turn to run for the head job. He was able to raise funds from wealthy sources who hated Robert Kennedy. But his campaigns had and always would have shoestring budgets. And after Kennedy was shot, Humphrey donors switched their allegiance to Republicans.

The two remaining Democratic candidates, Humphrey and Gene McCarthy, had survivor’s guilt. Psychologically, Johnson was like a father figure to the former, and he couldn’t, and didn’t become his own man until many years later.

One campaign promise Humphrey finally made in late September 1968, was to stop the bombing of Vietnam if the demilitarized zone was restored. The book’s author wrote that the “China Lobby” was again interfering with an American presidential election, as it had in 1948. In the earlier year, the China Lobby consisted of a “shadowy coterie of exiles and lobbyists” who sought to elect a Republican rather than reelect the Democrat Harry Truman because a Republican would be more likely to reverse U.S. policy and help Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek become the clear-cut, recognized leader of China. Well, it didn’t work. But, according to the author, the China Lobby’s activities worked in 1968.

A high-level Nixon campaign staff member named Madame Anna Chan Chennault pulled strings with the president of South Vietnam, Nguyen Van Thieu, convincing him to concoct some last-minute objections to peace negotiations– adding conditions for stopping the bombing– as an excuse for boycotting talks in Paris. Thieu was teasing Humphrey and made him lose to Nixon because Humphrey couldn’t tell American voters that he could stop the bombing. Thieu thought Nixon would give him more of what he wanted. In late October, Johnson– still president at the time– tacitly conspired with Nixon. Johnson wouldn’t allow Humphrey to attend the meeting with Nixon and George Wallace where they talked to Thieu via conference call.

However, a week before election day, Johnson– no skin off his nose– did attend Humphrey’s rally at the Houston Astrodome to say nice things about him. The candidate thought that three things were required for him to get elected: a robust economy, a possibility that the (evil) Nixon could win (which voters would chafe at), and peace in Vietnam. The third thing was obviously lacking.

Humphrey was made aware of the China Lobby situation before election day. But he naively thought that Nixon didn’t know of Madame Chennault’s influence on President Thieu. His magnanimous nature led him to omit mention of the conspiracy against himself in his speeches to voters.

Early on election day, California governor Jesse Unruh lied to voters, telling them that Humphrey would win California. So lots of voters who believed him didn’t bother to vote– they thought Humphrey had won already.

Read the book to learn of many more anecdotes regarding Humphrey’s too-nice nature, and much more about his whole life.

No Is NOT Enough

The Book of the Week is “No is NOT Enough, RESISTING Trump’s Shock Politics AND WINNING THE WORLD WE NEED” By Naomi Klein, published in 2017.

The author explained that a tribal-unity mentality took hold of consumerism starting in the 1980’s. Attaching oneself to a big brand name to feel accepted by a group became the new normal. Donald Trump has latched onto that trend, by generating investments in properties that have borne his brand name in places like New York City, Florida, Dubai, India, Canada, Brazil, and South Korea.

According to the author, at the book’s writing, sweatshops in China made his and his daughter’s clothing lines. The Trump family sees public office “…as a short-term investment to enormously swell the value of your [sic– Trump’s, not your] commercial brand in the long run… It’s the U.S. government as a for-profit family business.”

Despite Trump’s extensive deregulation of the oil industry, one really fortunate factor– currently slowing the rate of occurrence of environmental and historically redundant catastrophes (that have been decades in the making)– is that low oil prices have deterred oil companies from engaging in super-expensive, super-damaging, super-risky fracking and deep-sea drilling.

The author also discussed the ideology of the extreme Right– neoliberalism– in which the free market should always dominate, “… regulation is always wrong, private is good and public is bad, and taxes that support public services are the worst of all.”

Leaders with sociopathic tendencies are setting bad examples of how to treat people and how to behave. This is disturbing because the fish rots from the head down. The author’s description of the moral characters of many of Trump’s appointees in particular, are reminiscent of the people in the “boardroom scene” of the movie “Dogma” starring Matt Damon and Ben Affleck (Watch the clip on YouTube, of course.)

Every day he has been in office, all Trump has done is attack, lash out, threaten or criticize. He has been a regular Don Rickles, without the comedy. A great New Year’s gift would be a Trump “Hissy-Fit-of-the-Day Calendar.” Here are just a few of the ideals, organizations and people with which or with whom he has expressed his displeasure, verbally and textually: the Constitutional right of due process, NFL players, wildlife, federal unions, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, liberal world order, the Federal Reserve Bank, Iranian leader Hassan Rouhani, Amazon.com, Red Hen, the European Union, GOP Senator Jennifer Hansler, the preexisting-conditions-provision of heath insurance, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Harley Davidson, transgender inmates, Syria, salmon recovery, late-night TV show hosts, Palestinians, counsel Robert Mueller, NATO, Representative Mark Sanford, women’s health care, national monuments, breastfeeding, the global trade system, wind power, Theresa May…

The world is moving closer to another bout of systematic brainwashing, blaming, and genocide of late because market economies are failing to give sufficient dignity to the downtrodden through affordable housing, healthcare and education. Most employers no longer provide affordable health insurance, and retirement plans– as they automatically did decades ago. Education costs have soared. So new graduates start their careers with crushing debt load.

Read the book to learn of the kinds of situations toward which the Trump administration is heading (besides those mentioned in the above paragraph)– needless deaths and preventable damage, like from Hurricane Katrina (and why other similar disasters stemming from disasters are likely to occur again– due to opportunists); why Hillary Clinton lost her bid for president; how certain European countries are taking steps to save the environment; and the scary, depressing consequences of not challenging the status quo, and how to do it.

Front Row At the White House

The Book of the Week is “Front Row At the White House, My Life and Times” by Helen Thomas, published in 1999. The cover of this volume hints at a career memoir, but the contents are mostly about other people and topics– namely, U.S. president-related information meant to entertain as much as inform, targeted at female readers.

Born in 1920, Thomas grew up in Detroit in a family of nine children. After earning a bachelor’s degree in English, she hired on at United Press, a news wire service, assisting with radio broadcasts. When men went off to fight WWII, opportunities became available for women in journalism.

However, in the 1950’s, female journalists were forced to form their own press club; for, until 1971, they were banned from the National Press Club. Thomas was president of the women’s group for the 1959-1960 term. In 1975, she was the first woman to be admitted to the Gridiron Club. It is known mostly for having an annual dinner that roasts elective officeholders.

At the very end of 1960, the author was assigned to cover the White House. She did this for 38 years. It appears that she gathered “soft” news until around the Reagan Era, when her male bosses allowed her to do what the men had been doing. Nevertheless, she built a reputation for herself as a hard-hitting reporter (figuratively).

Initially, Thomas interviewed store owners that sold goods and services to Jackie Kennedy, and wrote about Jackie’s children. Acquiring such information was more difficult than it looked, as Jackie actively hid herself and her children from the media. The tabloid gossip during Lyndon Johnson’s administration included Thomas’ scoop on his daughter’s engagement.

Thomas wasn’t allowed to cover serious political issues until the 1980’s. Yet, ironically, here in the double-digit 2000’s, “journalism” has come full circle. The media is allowed to cover whatever they want. Yet, increasingly, in recent decades, they have continued to insult viewers’, readers’ and listeners’ intelligence. There used to be people called journalists who reported facts. And they checked them.

Now there are people on TV reading Teleprompters, on the radio reading scripts, and providing screen-based text stating their opinions on: the first lady’s clothing, the president’s diet, and all manner of comments from narcissistic attention whores on Twitter. Other outlets are commenting on the fact that their competitors are covering this stupid trivia. Ad nauseam.

Anyway, the author rambled on about press secretaries of Kennedy onward. She described the renovations done to the White House and Air Force One, and the food served in them. She also provided a detailed account of a Washington, D.C. busybody who got involved with the Watergate scandal.

Martha Mitchell (the wife of President Richard Nixon’s campaign manager and Justice Department head, John Mitchell) complained that Nixon wanted her husband to take the rap for the coverup. She also knew Nixon was evil and said– this was about a year and a half before it actually happened– the president should resign. In August 1974, finally vindicated, she went on the talk-show circuit.

Thomas delved into the personal lives of the first ladies, and how they stood by their men. She showed how President Ronald Reagan’s best friends were plausible denial and willful ignorance.

Read the book to learn much more about trivial White House goings-on from JFK to Bill Clinton, but also– a summary of hard political and historical facts on each president’s administration. Perhaps the latter should have become a separate book– as it could be a valuable resource for a unit on American presidents for a high school social studies class.

Sons of Wichita

The Book of the Week is “Sons of Wichita, How the Koch Brothers Became America’s Most Powerful and Private Dynasty” by Daniel Schulman, published in 2014.

Born in Texas in 1900, Fred Koch was of Dutch ancestry. He pronounced his name “coke” instead of the way the late former mayor of New York City (Ed “cotch”) did. He and his wife Mary bore four sons– Fred Jr., Charles, and David and Bill (fraternal twins), starting in 1933.

Fred was a chemical engineer who moved to Wichita, Kansas and became wealthy in the oil-refining industry. In the early 1930’s, he did business with the U.S.S.R. At the dawn of the 1940’s, he switched to ranching due to legal action over patents that Universal Oil launched against Fred’s company, Winkler-Koch, and also Root Refining. His oil company broke up in 1944.

In 1958, Koch joined the new John Birch Society, a rabidly anti-Communist group who saw Communists everywhere it looked, including those in unions, in charge of government financial programs, and in the United Nations. And the Boy Scouts. It aggressively spread hysteria about these people who were a threat to the American way. Fred had seen the political system in the Soviet Union when he was there, and realized it oppressed people.

Fred, Jr. took after his mother and upon reaching adulthood, moved to New York City and ran with the theater crowd. Charles, his father’s favorite, was groomed to take over the family business, which became Koch Industries. He did so in late 1967, when Fred passed away. The business made acquisitions in the oil industry and its sole goal was growth.

Charles had previously acquired extensive education in chemical and nuclear engineering. In the early 1970’s, he became interested in acquiring knowledge on the political ideology of libertarianism. He became a convert to it in its most extreme form. It espouses the belief that a purely capitalist society is the best economic system. This means total deregulation, no entitlements such as government-administered retirement or medical plans, no unions, no socialism of any kind, no income tax, and a government whose role is only to protect citizens and property from each other and outsiders, and from fraud.

In 1980, David Koch ran for American president on the Libertarian ticket. He knew he couldn’t possibly win but the goal was to plant seeds for future acceptance of his political ideology.

In early 1997, Charles co-founded the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. He and his brother David poured money into front groups that aggressively lobbied to reduce the size of government and expand the public’s freedoms. In 2008, the brothers opposed the taxpayer bailouts of companies bankrupted by the subprime mortgage crisis, and opposed deficit spending. They also denied allying with the Tea Party politicians but were secretly supporting them. About a year later, Charles and his henchmen launched fierce opposition to President Barack Obama’s national health care plan.

During his 2012 reelection campaign, Obama viewed the Koch brothers as a bigger threat than his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney. Obama copied the Kochs’ above actions (forming propagandizing front groups) to counteract the libertarians. Successfully.

As a result of their political mentality, Charles and David could have cared less about the environmental destruction and wrongful deaths their company caused due to poorly maintained oil and gas pipelines. Perhaps to salve his conscience, David made huge donations to cultural institutions, especially in New York City. The liberals (hypocritically) gratefully accepted the money, notwithstanding David’s political activities that led to rack and ruin. He also heavily funded medical research on prostate cancer, presumably to enhance the chances of his own physical survival.

Read the book to learn of the lawsuits that started in 1982 that Bill launched against Charles on various causes of action; the details of the Koch Industries’ legal troubles; the brothers’ sibling rivalry; the corporate culture of market-based management that Charles instituted in the family business; and what the siblings did for fun and profit; etc., etc., etc.

Frank

The Book of the Week is “Frank, A Life in Politics From the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage” by Barney Frank, published in 2015.

Born in 1940, Frank grew up in New Jersey. By the early 1970’s, he found himself becoming a career politician. Along the way, he earned a law degree and realized that he possessed the kinds of skills required for leadership in government.

Frank learned many lessons, including that “…[Republican president Richard] Nixon proposed policy changes in health care and welfare that Congressional Democrats rejected as too conservative, only to settle for less years later.” In other words, a partial victory that arises through compromise and playing well with others is better than no victory at all via an attempt to pass comprehensive legislation.

Frank considered himself a civil libertarian in that he favored pornography and prostitution in limited circumstances, and legalizing marijuana and abortion. Yet, he also argued for gun control, strong environmental laws, unions, gay rights and racial integration.

In previous decades, the Republicans were better than Democrats at pressuring their Congresspeople to adopt their political agenda. They continue to accomplish this with front groups which appear to be grass-roots movements secretly funded by special-interest, big-money campaign donors.

Those groups of “concerned voters” flood the media and Internet with misleading, emotionally charged stories and ads– persuasive messages which have been screamed louder and longer than the Democrats’. These smear campaigns have used angry, mean, petty people to target political enemies such as Frank.

The Democratic voters (people who are actual members of grass-roots movements) have historically attended rallies, marches and protests. Usually, to no avail. But the Democrats have caught up and learned to use those sleazy (yet successful) tactics, and have been just as retaliatory of late.

Politics (on BOTH sides) has become one big, abusive hierarchy of vengeful cliques with a few troublemakers– the leaders– acting like teenagers, or sometimes even kindergarteners; this, characterized by social manipulation, bullying, poor impulse control, shameless hypocrisy and narcissistic attention whoredom.

The media are their accomplices, egging them on, and behaving just as immaturely. Some media outlets would have their audiences believe there are an alarming number of morons and nutcases everywhere spreading stupidity. Yes, and it takes one to know one. Lots of pots calling kettles black out there. More airtime than ever is wasted on cutting people down and blaming them for the collapse of modern civilization.

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. All parties have to relearn that two wrongs don’t make a right, and an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

In 1989, Frank fought fire with fire when childish Republicans put out a vicious rumor that he was gay. The point was– this is what angry, mean, petty people do to take a swipe at an easy target, sow dissent– regardless of whether it was true or not. He told the press that he would reveal the names of all Republicans who were closeted gays if they ever tried that again. They apologized, because, fortunately, Frank had sufficient power to strike back at them.

In the early 1990’s, Frank pushed for equal rights for gays in the military in a proposal. President Bill Clinton modified it in a way that created a double standard, and it was named “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT). Under DADT, if gay servicemen were caught off-duty engaging in any activity indicating their sexual orientation– from electronic communications to sodomy to same-sex dating to simply entering a gay bar– they would be in trouble. When DADT took effect, members of the LGBT community were spied on and punished.

Read the book to learn how the (preventable) 2008 subprime mortgage crisis was spawned by specific people in power such as John Hawke, Sue Kelly, Alan Greenspan, Tom DeLay, Newt Gingrich, the House GOP leadership, and most of the GOP– in an excellent, concise, specific explanation for laypeople; and other difficulties Frank faced in doing his job.