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Speaking Out

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The Book of the Week is “Speaking Out, Inside the Reagan White House” by Larry Speakes with Robert Pack, published in 1988.

Born in September 1939, the author grew up in a small town in Mississippi. He suffered from impostor syndrome when he began working in the Reagan White House as deputy press secretary in early 1981. However, he gained confidence as he witnessed the gaffes committed by self-important alpha-males amid their power struggles in his rarefied workplace. There were the usual inter-agency rivalry and scapegoating when things went wrong. “State blamed the White House, the White House blamed Defense, and the CIA blamed everybody.”

As is well known, in March 1981, Reagan was shot in the chest, but survived. Immediately after the president had become incapacitated, Alexander Haig, then-secretary of state, made a major misstatement to the press, saying HE was in charge of the administration, and could act on the president’s behalf. Haig was a publicity hound, stopping for a photo opportunity whenever he could.

Speakes, pursuant to the U.S. Constitution, clarified the succession of power of the president: vice president; speaker of the House; and then president pro tempore of the senate; after that, secretary of state.

Pat Buchanan was another troublesome coworker. In March 1986, he wrote an inflammatory Op-Ed piece–unvetted by Speakes’ department– that was published in the Washington Post. That piece said if Congressional Democrats voted against the bill giving financial aid to the Contras, they were as evil as the Commies supporting Daniel Ortega, leader of Nicaragua. Additionally, Buchanan praised Oliver North after the Iran Contra scandal broke.

Reagan finally made a speech equivalent to Nixon’s “Checkers speech” when his people were forced to admit that Israel helped the United States sell weapons to Iran; a secret operation orchestrated primarily by Oliver North, John Poindexter and Robert McFarlane. The president declined to pardon them, because pardoning them would indicate they had committed a crime! He maintained they were innocent.

Another interesting factoid: During president Reagan’s eight years, approximately seventeen hundred people were provided with press passes to report on the administration.

Read the book to learn of Speakes’ experiences managing the optics of the administration, given the tenor of the times and the difficult personalities involved.

Chasing Hope

The Book of the Week is “Chasing Hope, A Reporter’s Life” by Nicholas Kristof (not to be confused with Bill Kristol!), published in 2024.

In 1959 the author was born in a lower middle-class rural area in Oregon, where boys saw violence as an admirable trait to be used to used to achieve frontier justice. Although his neighborhood was rife with alcoholism, drug addiction, domestic violence and crime, Kristof grew up in a stable, intellectual, loving home environment. That could be why, as a teenager, he chose to become a journalist who revealed the world’s ugliness– to try to reduce it.

Kristof witnessed martial law in Poland and China, and the nature of the heroin trade in Pakistan and Afghanistan. While in Congo (formerly Zaire) he heard firsthand about the atrocities and genocide in Rwanda. He wrote stories on the dictatorships and crushing oppression in North Korea, Venezuela, Turkmenistan and many other places.

After a few decades of reporting on human rights abuses, he took a break to run for office. Professionals told him to change his language, so that “gun control” became “gun safety” and “inequality” became “opportunity.” To be fair, he admitted that Portland had serious problems that were caused by Democrats because it was mostly Democrats who governed it.

But the bottom line for him was, “What matters is improving opportunities and quality of life, and that’s achieved not by waving fists and shouting slogans but by a painstaking process of following evidence, building coalitions and solving problems.”

Read the book to learn much more about Kristof’s life and global times.

Unleashed

The Book of the Week is “Unleashed” by Boris Johnson, published in 2024. This large volume was a bragfest, but it also explained the author’s opinions and his government’s policies for laypeople.

Johnson was born in 1964. “Disaster” was his favorite word. As London’s mayor starting in May 2008, he began implementing some of the same crime-fighting and environmental initiatives taken by former New York City mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg.

Beginning in June 2016, after 52% of the UK’s 17.4 million population voted in favor of Brexit, heated discussions were had by everyone, including Lord Chief Justice, Master of the Rolls, and President of the Queen’s Bench Division. In 2019, Johnson was elected UK prime minister, and he became the nation’s biggest Brexit booster. The nation’s moneyed classes, and those who were pro-immigrant, wanted to remain in the EU.

The EU leadership in Brussels controlled many aspects of the economies of member-countries because it set the terms and conditions on trade unions, customs fees, currencies, factories, distribution of goods, national-border policies, etc. Johnson felt the UK was hamstrung by all the petty rules. He claimed that Canada was able to export its goods to EU’s markets absent the regulations to which the UK was subject.

In April 2020, when the prime minister ended up in the intensive care unit with a bad case of COVID, “Outside in the corridors of the hospital, though I never saw them, were representatives of the U.S. pharmaceutical industry, despatched by Donald Trump to revive me with drugs not licensed or approved in the UK.”

The COVID pandemic in 2020 was a game-changer. Johnson contended that because the UK was no longer a member of the EU, certain forward-looking, skilled members of his administration were able to secure a vaccination program that was more widespread and implemented sooner than EU members’ programs. Harm done to the UK’s people and its economy was therefore significantly less than that done to comparable countries.

Nevertheless, the line graph of COVID deaths followed a largely similar pattern for each nation where COVID’s effects on the population was tracked– regardless of the actions leaders took. Sweden’s policies on quarantining were optional, while China’s were draconian, but both of their graphs showed two peaks during which the death toll went up and down during the course of the pandemic.

Another political issue shared by all major governments of the world, is immigration. Johnson heard how Australia supposedly deterred uninvited people fleeing their homelands, from arriving on its shores. Its federal immigration agency transported those people– to have their asylum claims processed to– not the nicest destination, to put it mildly, 4,500 miles to the island of Nauru. Perhaps the U.S. could look into such a policy, given that it too, is overwhelmed with asylum-seekers who have arrived on its soil illegally.

Read the book to learn much more about Johnson’s political life and times.

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.

He’d Love a Trade Fight – BONUS POST

This song is self-explanatory, about you-know-who.

HE’D LOVE A TRADE FIGHT

sung to the tune of “I Love A Rainy Night” with apologies to the Estate of Eddie Rabbitt and whomever else the rights may concern.

Well, he’d love a trade fight.
He’d love a trade fight.
He loves to invite wonder.
Watch the fireworks as the globe swallows his lies.

You know it makes him feel good.

Well, he’d love a trade fight.
He’s showing his might.
He delights in his threats in your face,
tests the power of his words.

In the spotlight HE knows.

The news-cycle, takes all his words away.
His allies aid-and-abet for-gotten days.

‘Cause he’d love a trade fight.
Yeah, he’d love a trade fight.
Well, he’d love a trade fight.
Well, he’d love a trade fight.

ooh, ooh

Well, he’d love a trade fight.
He’d love a trade fight.

He loves to invite wonder.
Watch the fireworks as the globe swallows his lies.

You know it makes him feel good.

Well, he’d love a trade fight.
He’s showing his might.
He delights in his threats in your face,
tests the power of his words.

In the spotlight HE knows.

Puts his name in posterity.
To hell with, historical verity.

‘Cause he’d love a trade fight.
Yeah, he’d love a trade fight.
Well, he’d love a trade fight.
Well, he’d love a trade fight.

ooh, ooh

The news-cycle, takes all his words away.
His allies aid-and-abet for-gotten days.

‘Cause he’d love a trade fight.
Yeah, he’d love a trade fight.
Well, he’d love a trade fight.
He’d love a trade fight.

Well, he’d love a trade fight.
But it might be lies.
He’d love a trade fight.
Well, it MAKES headlines.

Ooh, he’d love a trade fight.
He’s fooling you. Yeah, yeah.
He’d love a trade fight.
Well, he’d love a trade fight.
But it might be lies.
He’d love a trade fight.
Well, it MAKES headlines.

Well, he’d love a trade fight.
Loves himself, too.
Well, he’d love a trade fight…

The Face Laughs – BONUS POST

The Bonus Book of the Week is “The Face Laughs While the Brain Cries, The Education of A Doctor” by Stephen L. Hauser, published in 2023.

Born at the dawn of the 1950’s, the author grew up mostly in Bayside, a section of Queens in New York City. He began conducting medical research in the 1970’s, when knowledge and resources were extremely limited. His first drug-study involved 58 multiple-sclerosis patients selected from two hospitals in Boston. He got to know every patient personally.

Around 2010, the author was a small cog in the wheel of a much, much more extensive multiple-sclerosis-drug study that involved 2,500 patients affiliated with more than 300 hospitals on 5 continents. There were data galore from MRI’s, test results from clinicians and blood and spinal fluid, and integrity- monitoring of the whole extravaganza. Nine million pages of information.

Read the book to learn much, much more about the doctor’s experiences with his medical research and the U.S.’s drug-approval process.

ENDNOTE: The author recounted a few medical cases of people who had lost their minds. They turned out to have brain damage from multiple sclerosis.

Regardless of the cause of the inability of the patients to do their jobs– they couldn’t do their jobs competently. When such workers are responsible for leading a sprawling entity, where people’s lives or livelihoods hang in the balance, there can be extracurricular activity because no one is minding the store.

Two particular cautionary tales in the United States come to mind in connection therewith. It is true, no one person, not even the top leader is entirely to blame when things go wrong, but they get blamed because one thing leads to another, due to their impaired brain function.

Authors of personal accounts have documented how Ronald Reagan had reduced brain function in his second term as U.S. president; among them, George Shultz and Lesley Stahl. Peggy Noonan claimed Reagan had a hearing aid that was only sometimes on, so he was blissfully unaware of a lot of events he should have known about. The head of the CIA, Bill Casey was dying of a brain tumor. One subordinate of his, Oliver North, went rogue– played a large role in secretly selling weapons to the Iranians, with the help of Israel and Saudi Arabia!

The other instance involved Bill Paley, who was head of the international corporation, CBS, into the 1980’s. He would come into board meetings with a walker and two nurses by his side. Due to extensive memory loss, he was clueless as to what was going on. Since he wasn’t truly running the company anymore, a rogue department at CBS, having zero experience, decided to try to make movies. That division generated disastrous losses that resulted in layoffs in unrelated departments, causing trauma for all stakeholders associated with CBS.

In both of the above instances, there would have been a lot less trouble had the leader been removed when his incompetence due to reduced brain function became evident. Hint: the 25th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution can be invoked when a president is deemed sufficiently cognitively impaired to warrant his removal.

tokyo junkie [sic]

The Book of the Week is “tokyo junkie [sic], 60 Years of Bright Lights and Back Alleys… and Baseball” by Robert Whiting, published in 2021.

Whiting was born at the dawn of the 1940’s in northern California. In January 1962, while in the U.S. Air Force, he was assigned to Fuchu Air Base in a Tokyo suburb. He fell in love with Tokyo and the culture of its people, despite its sexism, pervasive sex trade, hatred of foreigners, and government censoring of its media.

Tokyo was undergoing a makeover to prepare for its debut as the venue of the 1964 Olympics. During the Vietnam Era, American college campuses exploded in protest against the war. The Japanese government supported the war. By 1969, Japanese students were protesting, too.

Over the course of decades, the author witnessed how the city changed from a war-ravaged backwater to an economic powerhouse. After WWII, the U.S. maintained a military presence in Japan, and nursed it back to economic health. This process was reflected in Japan’s education system, which mandated rigorous, nerve-racking entrance exams, which had a decidedly capitalist bent.

Another aspect of Japanese culture that showed its emulation of the United States, was the popularity of its professional baseball. However, the Japanese put their own twist on it. They allowed a few Americans to play on their teams, but criticized them for doing too well or too poorly. Too much competition would make the opposing team feel bad, but a player yielding too much to an opposing team, would be told to do better for his own team. Cooperation and sacrificing for one’s own team were key aspects of play.

The author noted one positive behavior pattern the Japanese were taught from birth. That was– maintaining the highest respect for other people’s property, and for public property. Their “lost and found” returned personal items to their owners (even cash, without a penny missing!) as a matter of the right thing to do. Tokyo is one of the cleanest cities in the world because the people feel a collective sense of ownership of their streets, so they don’t “foul their own nest.” Ironically, their politicians are notoriously corrupt.

Read the book to learn much, much more on the author’s take on how Japanese culture changed following major historical events such as Olympics, financial ruin, earthquakes, tsunamis, and globalization.

Nightline

The Book of the Week is “Nightline, History in the Making and the Making of Television” by Ted Koppel and Kyle Gibson, published in 1996. The TV show Nightline, and this book were aired and published during the Reagan Era and president Bill Clinton’s first term, prior to the historical revisionism and 20 / 20 hindsight of even more modern times– during which politics is even more sophisticated. And when political awareness is higher than ever, due to social media’s pervasiveness.

In November 1979, Koppel began to host on ABC News at 11:30pm, what he thought was slated to be a temporary show, on the Iran hostage crisis. Thanks to videotape and satellites, he was able to feature a few different people who could talk to one another live, simultaneously, halfway around the world. By March 1980, this format had evolved into a news-analyzing talk-show called Nightline.

One of many moments in which viewers got to see major historical events happening right before their eyes, was the April 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens in the state of Washington. In 1985, Koppel and his crew televised a week of episodes in South Africa on apartheid, in color, and black and white. Actually. Also in 1985, in simulcasting another set of shows in a violence-prone area, they commemorated the 10th anniversary of the U.S. pullout from Vietnam. “Le Du Tho and Henry Kissinger, co-winners of the 1971 Nobel Prize, together again for the first time.” In 1988, they went to Israel to cover the never-ending dispute between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Al Campanis had played baseball with Jackie Robinson in 1946. In April 1987, the former became a victim of cancel culture after he made some unpopular comments on Nightline. “The bigger problem for baseball was that Campanis had inadvertently revealed an ugly truth about racial attitudes in the front office, and firing him wasn’t going to end what was now a national debate.”

Read the book to learn of numerous other episodes of an educational late-night TV show that was obsolesced by the changing times in America.

Bare Knuckles and Back Rooms

[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 “Bare Knuckles and Back Rooms, My Life in American Politics” by Ed Rollins with Tom DeFrank, published in 1996.

Rollins’ parting comment as the book went to press was this:

“Genuine campaign finance reform will only occur through a constitutional amendment eliminating PACs and prohibiting wealthy individuals to spend their own fortunes.”

Born in Boston in 1943, Rollins spent most of his childhood in Vallejo, California. As a young adult, he channeled his anger into amateur boxing. One of his coaches steered him away from going pro.

Rollins thus turned to working in politics. As a child, he had been unduly influenced by the military presence in Vallejo. His pro-war stance caused him to switch from the Democrat to the Republican party. At the last college he attended, Chico State (in California), when the Vietnam War was raging, he actively lobbied to establish a Reserve Officers’ Training Corps branch on campus. Later on in his life, he enjoyed lots of food, drinks and entertainment, compliments of other lobbyists.

In 1981, with Lyn Nofziger as his mentor, Rollins’ job was to get Ronald Reagan’s proposed laws passed and begin the work required to get him reelected president. In February 1981, the author was told to help hush up a sex scandal in connection with one female lobbyist and approximately twenty(!) anxious Republican House representatives. There was videotape evidence.

Rollins and his colleagues helped plant a featured article about Reagan in, and his photo on, the cover of Parade magazine in December 1983. Such propaganda was meant to dispel concerns about Reagan’s age. He was seen exercising and appeared healthy.

Rollins described the dirty-tricks he encountered during his attempt to get Christie Whitman elected against incumbent James Florio, as governor of New Jersey in 1993. In October, Florio’s people had an 18-wheel truck follow Whitman’s bus tour of the state. Pursuant to the Whitman team’s plan, at a toll plaza, a car got in front of the truck and broke down– allowing the bus to lose the spying truck. Rollins claimed that Florio’s side retaliated by pulling the fire alarm at the hotel where Rollins’ team was staying, for two weeks, every night at 4:30am.

On election night about 10pm, when the candidates were neck and neck at the polls– the win/loss margin was fewer than ten thousand votes– Rollins consulted with Whitman’s election law specialist who knew ballot security. They sent in their lawyers and marshals to the precincts in major cities to prevent any foul play.

Read the book to learn much, much more about Rollins’ activities in American politics of the past (pre-Internet), and a fund-raising practice which was arguably a form of voter-suppression, that resulted in a scandal (Hint: It was sparked by Rollins when he accidentally allowed his mouth to speak his subconscious thoughts; perhaps his conscience was bothering him).

Winchell

[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 “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.