Politics – Miscellaneous – Page 30 – education and deconstruction.com

Iphigene

The Book of the Week is “Iphigene, Memoirs of Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger of The New York Times Family” by Susan W. Dryfoos, published in 1979. This is the life and times of a New York Times heiress, as told to Dryfoos– her granddaughter.

Iphigene was an only child in a wealthy family. Her father was a highly successful newspaper publisher, having turned around The Times upon his purchase of it in 1896. “While the other New York papers fought a ruthless and unscrupulous battle for circulation by means of outrageous headlines and sensational stories, The Times sought to expand readership with sober and comprehensive reporting.”

In 1898, The Times faced stiff competition from the tabloids that sent their reporters on location to the Spanish-American war front. Iphigene’s father, Adolph Simon Ochs, dropped the price of his paper from 3 cents to 1 cent instead of making up inflammatory war stories.

The paper maintained its integrity and avoided conflicts of interest under Ochs . For instance, he claimed to refuse to accept gifts from, or print laudatory stories, about advertisers.

Iphigene was born in September 1892. Suffering from then-undiagnosed dyslexia, she was beset with poor grades although her schooling was the best that money could buy. Nevertheless, Iphigene studied for Barnard College’s entrance exams. At that time, the school had a two-year program for students whose academic abilities were less than stellar, but were eager to learn. She wrote, “I found the atmosphere of the school congenial, the students friendly and the teachers excellent…” Iphigene passed additional exams in order to upgrade to the four-year program, enabling her to graduate in 1914 with a degree in economics.

The Times went beyond the call in covering WW I. Its daily circulation between 1914 and 1919 rose to 170,000. Iphigene wed a man who eventually proved himself equal to the task of publishing The Times as competently as her father did. In 1944, he had the company purchase the New York radio station WQXR.

Read the book to learn much more information on what Iphigene did for various communities in New York City in various areas including parks and education; her global travels during which she met various politicians and dignitaries, and her impressions of them.

Stalin’s Daughter

The Book of the Week is “Stalin’s Daughter” by Rosemary Sullivan, published in 2015. This biography tells of the life and times of someone who could not escape her father’s shadow. As is pretty well known, Joseph Stalin, of Soviet Georgian origin, was a twentieth-century world leader who committed untold atrocities for decades, during which his country ended up on the winning side of WWII.

Born in February 1926, Stalin’s daughter was given the first name Svetlana, but her last name kept changing later in life, pursuant to her marriages and desire for anonymity. In order to run his brutal dictatorship of her birth country, The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, her father formed a cult– an atmosphere of fear and loathing with himself an object of worship. Soviet citizens who had seen peoples and cultures other than their own developed a split personality because in their hearts, they knew they were living a lie. “Many Red Party members were seen at their dacha but mysteriously disappeared through the 1930’s.”

There was a 23-year age difference between Svetlana’s mother and father. The older one, her father, was 48 when she was born. She, although receiving what was thought to be the best of everything while growing up, was sheltered from many truths, such as the real cause of the death of her mother when she was six. As was common in wealthy families of that era, she got a nanny, governess, and tutors until she started attending school. She was taught German and Russian at an early age.

In the autumn of 1937, Svetlana was assigned a bodyguard, who stuck to her like glue. Her whole life was seen by that bodyguard, and she was forced to terminate relationships with friends whose parents had shown any signs of political leanings adverse to Stalin.

In the late 1930’s, Stalin “purged” his own in-laws– employees of the State Bank. When Svetlana was seventeen and a half years old, she was tested on assembling a rifle as part of the final exam her first year of college. When her son was four years old, he met with his grandfather Stalin for the first time. As an adult, her father had always provided her with luxurious housing– a four-room apartment with a private kitchen, unlike most folks who shared their kitchens and bathrooms and had one-room apartments with plywood separations.

In March 1953, ironically due to a murderous policy perpetrated by Stalin himself– the “Doctor’s Plot”– Stalin failed to receive possible life-saving medical treatment for his arteriosclerosis and later, stroke. Svetlana’s father might have died, but his ghost lived on to sully her reputation for the rest of her life. No matter that she constantly changed her geographic location, her Soviet mentality was evident. Regarding her friendships, she expected 100% loyalty and reciprocity. She adopted a “go big or go home” attitude in hiring former professional mentors and coaches to help her younger daughter learn piano, drawing, swimming and horseback riding. They attended many social events at which her fourteen-year old daughter was a party to numerous customary drinking-toasts, and was a marriage prospect in Tbilisi.

Read the book to get what is probably a more comprehensive picture of the life of Stalin’s daughter in one volume, than any other.

Francis Bacon

The Book of the Week is “Francis Bacon, The Temper of A Man” by Catherine Drinker Bowen, published in 1963. This biography describes the life and times of an English aristocrat born in 1561.

When Bacon was in his late teens, his father died. His older brother got the lion’s share of the estate. Bacon was an arrogant debtor, always blaming others for his debt. Nevertheless, he continued to maintain the standard of living to which he was accustomed, thanks in part to his uncle– who was immensely wealthy with a global network of contacts and a collection of mansions with hundreds of rooms.

England in the 1570’s was a nation of four million fronted by Queen Elizabeth. It was still seen as a primitive backwater, “…her native tongue rude, her food and wines execrable… No less than eight hundred men, women and children were hanged each year… maybe for picking a pocket or stealing a sheep.” Deaths from disease were rampant.

The church elders at Trinity College, Cambridge– where Bacon started his higher education at thirteen years of age (not uncommon for his generation)– thought more truth could be found in faith than in knowledge. Bacon, an extremely intellectually curious lad, a budding grand thinker and passionate, prolific writer, disagreed. “Beyond the first row of the House of Commons were men unlike Bacon, nonintellectuals who knew more of hounds, horses and crops than of Latin and philosophy.”

During Queen Elizabeth’s reign, the custom was to arrange a marriage between next door neighbors so as to enlarge the families’ estates and wealth. Bacon finally wed in 1606 to a fourteen year old girl. He was 45.

In 1620, Bacon published a fictional story whose plot mentioned many of the advances in humanity he anticipated, such as the existence of institutions of higher learning that would perform empirical research in the “hard” sicences. It was written in Latin so that all of Europe could read it.

Read the book to learn about the ups and downs of Bacon’s legal career, and how he became one of the first victims of the beginning of reform for England’s political system in the 1620’s.

Mr. Smith Goes to Prison

The Book of the Week is “Mr. Smith Goes to Prison” by Jeff Smith, published in 2015. This is the personal account of a white, middle-class politician from Missouri who commits a minor white-collar crime, but due to a vengeful, powerful political opponent, gets jail time at a facility housing some violent criminals.

The author writes about how greed and power hunger in the U.S. prison system are perpetuating the poverty cycle. Two issues in particular, among others– jailing fathers delinquent with their child support payments, and the burgeoning of solitary confinement cells–involve a colossal waste of taxpayer money, take a devastating psychological toll on the direct victims and their families, and have a negative ripple effect on society as a whole.

Punishing struggling family men in a way that worsens their problems, does not make sense. For example, if they are released from work through no fault of their own and can’t send money to their families– jailing them only hinders their finding work again in the future, and the effects of this and the toll on their families makes recidivism more likely. Taxpayers assume the financial burden of supporting them and their families.

One hand has washed the other among the courts, politicians, prison personnel and contractors with the significant increase in solitary confinement cells in prisons in recent decades. The argument used was that they cost less because fewer employees were required to guard the prisoners. However, this was a lie. The financial costs to society as a whole have multiplied with the trauma that has been thrust upon isolated prisoners. Their recidivism rate has skyrocketed. This has had adverse consequences not only for their families but for taxpayers, who are paying for the resulting repeated corrections proceedings and possibly avoidable incarceration. Prison personnel and contractors have taken full advantage of the bonanza. Some of the former become drunk on power, and treat the prisoners cruelly because they can, thus increasing the likelihood of recidivism and their own job security.

Authorities have been slow to act on prison reform because the prison industry is so lucrative for them. Read the book to learn of Smith’s experience with, and proposed solutions to the above problems, which he says would save everyone lots of money and benefit society in incalculable ways.

First Cameraman

The Book of the Week is “First Cameraman” by Arun Chaudhary, published in 2012. This volume describes the job done by the author– the first-ever videographer of the President of the United States (POTUS).

The main purpose of gathering footage of the president at work is to record history (and show it off in his presidential library). During his laborious, stressful, four-plus years in Washington D.C., Chaudhary created, produced and posted a weekly, show called “West Wing Week” for the world to see on YouTube. It summed up the POTUS’ activities of the previous week.

The author emphasized that he was not a journalist, but a supplementary source of information on American politics starting in 2007 with Barack Obama’s campaign and presidency. “Once upon a time, the government counted on the press… But these days, technical innovations have greatly reduced the government’s reliance on them.” Clearly, visual communication is replacing print, and the introduction of mobile devices has allowed more and more people to use it, not necessarily wisely. The author related that there were still some scenes he was told not to include in his videos, as they were un-presidential. However, the president’s taking of “selfies” has shown how relaxed political mores have become.

Read the book to find out more about the trials, tribulations and triumphs of Chaudhary’s position.

The Crusader

The Book of the Week is “The Crusader, The Life and Tumultuous Times of Pat Buchanan” by Timothy Stanley, published in 2012.

Born in 1938, Buchanan, a journalist, commentator, conservative-Republican political aide and presidential candidate with sometimes unexpectedly radical, contrarian views, was the third oldest in an eight-child family of Irish descent. They lived in the Catholic Georgetown section of Washington, D.C.

In the 1950’s, the American economy was so good that a man could support a ten-person household, and afford to hire a maid. Buchanan and his brothers would crash keg parties. “The Buchanan boys respected the cops who busted up their parties and chased them into the trees, and the next morning the gang lined up outside the confessional to lay it all before God.” Joe McCarthy was Buchanan’s hero.

Buchanan attended Columbia University School of Journalism in the late 1960’s when there was cultural snobbery– the school didn’t deign to teach TV journalism. He thought the civil rights movement was a Commie front. In 1972, he was horrified when Nixon had the U.S. reopen diplomatic relations with China to contain Soviet expansion, and signed an agreement with Mao Tse Tung saying China included the territory of Taiwan.

There is nothing new under the sun. In the presidential campaign of 1972, “The [media] made a genuine attempt in open democracy look like a freak show.” By the late 1970’s, Buchanan co-hosted political talk radio and TV shows. He specialized in ad-libs and putdowns — the kind where he loudly and obnoxiously interrupted callers and guests if he didn’t like what they were saying, or if he was losing an argument.

In early 1990, Buchanan was a panelist at a forum of The National Interest magazine, which consisted of neoconservatives– people who felt that all countries of the world should adopt the American way– politically, economically, culturally and socially, etc. Buchanan disagreed with doing this, opining that democracy was right for the United States, but not for all nations of the world.

Buchanan wanted to help form a political group to protest the First Gulf War. It was theorized that three different groups conspired to push for war in the Middle East: the military industrial complex, neoconservatives, and the religious right.

When Buchanan ran for president in 1996, he had changed his stand on certain issues. “Buchanan once saw public enemy number one as the socialists in Washington. Now, it was the corporations on Wall Street.” He asserted that America faced moral, social, economic and spiritual problems, and not only an income tax issue, as 1996 presidential candidate Steve Forbes contended. In Louisiana, Buchanan assumed an anti-vice stance, denouncing gambling, prostitution, drugs and the corruption they caused. He also wanted to blur the lines of separation of Church and State, and was pro-NRA. He was accused of palling around with racists. His communications method to achieve maximum voter reach was doing interviews on radio shows. Candidate Bob Dole went to shopping malls.

In late 1999, Buchanan switched to the Reform Party and traded fighting words with Donald Trump. The former appealed to the far left and the far right who agreed on “… war, trade, the slow decline of American capitalism into a kind of Walmart communism– materialist, greedy, heartless.” The Reform party attracted voters who were neo-hippies, people who believed in meditation, aliens and religious fundamentalism (took the Christian Bible literally) and gun enthusiasts. Buchanan “shot himself in the foot” by choosing a black female running mate.

In 2003, Buchanan opposed the war against Iraq and said the 9/11 attack on America was due to the nation’s meddling in the Middle East.

Read the book to learn more details of Buchanan’s decades-long political consulting, publishing and commentating activities, and their historical backdrop.

From Exile to Washington

The Book of the Week is “From Exile to Washington” by W. Michael Blumenthal, published in 2013. This tome describes the historical times of the author, with some autobiographical bragging thrown in.

Blumenthal, born in 1926 in Germany, happened to have a Jewish last name when Hitler came to power. He endured the hardships of living in Shanghai as a refugee when his family fled Germany on the eve of WWII. After the war, as a Displaced Person, he waited years for permission to live in the United States. When the Jews in Shanghai learned of the atrocities that had been committed against their fellow religionists, they considered the terms “Germany” and “Germans” anathema. No one wanted to go back to Europe. The most sought after destinations were Palestine, America, Australia or South America.

The author became Americanized but his life experiences gave him a unique perspective on his homeland and China that not many people had. In 1960, he, like many other Americans, was inspired by President Kennedy’s language of idealism and sacrifice to volunteer to help his country through government service.

Read the book to learn about the lofty corporate and government positions held by the author, and the historical backdrop of his life.

The Black Nile

The Book of the Week is “The Black Nile” by Dan Morrison, published in 2010. The American author traveled along the Nile River for more than sixth months, “roughing it” just for fun. He spent time in Sudan, South Sudan, Egypt and Uganda.

Morrison spoke with people of all walks of life, including government officials. He visited farms, oilfields and night clubs. He was forced to deal with numerous delays of vehicles on water and land while traveling to his next destination. He wrote briefly of the recent history of tribal infighting, and the cultural, political and economic background of the region.

The economies of some villages, fueled by black markets, with high-priced accommodations, like Juba in Sudan, were frequented by aid workers and diplomats. In South Sudan alone, there are more than ninety different tribes and factions. The author visited just prior to the partitioning of Sudan. Most of the oil was in the south. The militias and corrupt local officials were forcing villagers to evacuate their land for the purpose of oil exploration. The oil companies used private security services and hired northerners. China, Malaysia and India were the major investors in the oil.

“Northern Sudan was almost entirely untouched by the civil war and, despite the combined effects of mismanagement and international sanctions, its main roads were paved, electricity reached the major towns and there was always a hotel to be found.”

The author summed up various American viewpoints, including: a) “No one in the United States cared about a months-old spell of terror and death in South Sudan. They barely cared about Darfur, and Darfur was the rage.” and b) Americans’ impression of the Middle East is one of veiled women and angry men.

Read the book to learn more about the author’s adventures.

Stringer – BONUS POST

This blogger read “Stringer” by Anjan Sundaram, published in 2014. The author studied mathematics at university but entered the field of journalism instead. He went to the Congo with the hope of getting paid for reporting news. Someone helped him become a freelance writer for the Associated Press.

However, this book is unclear about when any of his experiences occurred, as no dates– not even approximate ones– are provided. Not even during his description of Kabila’s historic election “victory” over Bemba. This appears to be a case of laziness and cheapness on the part of the author and his publisher. If dates were provided, then this book would need to have notes, references and possibly an index– entailing additional work, time and expense. Also, by omitting a timeline and confining the writing to the author’s personal experience, this work appears less credible and less literate than otherwise. Journalists are supposed to be recorders of history. History is all about when events occurred– so that there is context. This blogger has observed the lack of dates in other recent books written by foreign correspondents, too. It is a disturbing trend that bespeaks of the decrease in quality of personal accounts of “Darwin Award” candidates in war-torn countries.

Anyway, Sundaram stayed in Victoire, a section of Kinshasa with a reputation for “…gangs and disorder, and expatriate and embassy workers were banned even from visits.” As he was a stringer, he was paying his own expenses to collect news stories of the civil war. Competition in the region for getting stories published was fierce, as the AP bureau in Dakar covered 22 countries. “There was constant news of rape, child soldiers and violence.”

Congo was influenced by missionaries. When a child was misbehaving, and the family suffered a misfortune, it was thought that the devil was influencing the child, so a pastor would compel the child to confess.

“Congo’s minuscule 25 miles of coast was rich with oil.” Sundaram met an Indian whose land was allegedly seized illegally by the Congolese government and the Americans, because some natural resource was found in it. Sundaram avoided covering the story, as the situation was sure to be rife with corruption. The business community was comprised of Indians, Lebanese, Israelis, Belgians and politicians. These foreigners shamelessly engaged in conspicuous consumption; hence the common Congolese people rioted in wealthy neighborhoods.

Sundaram was present when the Congolese people were led to believe there might occur a historic political change in their nation, as they could vote for a presidential candidate. “From across the country came stories of villagers who had walked for days, supplies on their heads, families in tow, to reach a polling station… turnout was higher than 80 percent in many districts worst hit by the war.” However, as usual, their corrupt government took advantage of their lack of education and naivete.

Read the book to learn how Congo has historically been manipulated by foreign powers. But don’t expect to learn when.

Man of the World

The Book of the Week is “Man of the World” by Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr., published in 1959. This autobiography discussed the life of a member of one of Newport, Virginia’s prominent, wealthier families.

Vanderbilt had a childhood typical for economic royalists of his generation– he was raised by governesses, lived in an opulent Fifth Avenue mansion (in New York), and in Europe during certain months of the year. His father, an engineer, had an army career. For his fifteenth birthday, Vanderbilt received a 29-foot sailboat which he took around New England.

Since he was in Germany and England so much, Vanderbilt learned about the coming of the Great War (WW I) before most Americans did. After doing his war service, having been exposed to poison gas in Ypres, he wasn’t quite the same youngster “… who had rushed off to save bleeding Belgium and make the world safe for democracy.”

Against his parents’ wishes, Vanderbilt entered the field of journalism, reporting for the New York Times on California labor troubles in the early 1920’s. Back then, there were more Japanese farmers than white farmers. Heirs of super-rich families in the mid 1920’s felt a sense of entitlement about their inheritance, but also filial piety– most obeyed their parents in making major life choices, such as careers. Vanderbilt’s father thought “A newspaperman was a low creature dedicated to invasion of privacy, digging away at scandals like a dirty dog.” The buyers of most newspapers at that time were the unwashed masses, and therefore unworthy of his father’s esteem.

After encountering financial problems running his own newspapers, and family inheritance problems, Vanderbilt appealed to his celebrity friends in Hollywood for cash. “I took the actual bills to the bank in a taxi and dumped them on the desk of the vice president.”

The author interviewed Hitler a few times in the 1930’s, and in 1936, with a crew, shot film footage secretly in Germany. The film was shown at the Mayfair Theatre in New York. Hundreds of residents of Manhattan’s Yorkville section (German at the time), protested, necessitating police reserves to keep the peace. “These were the years during which … swastikas were scrawled on subway walls in the East Eighties.”

Vanderbilt claimed that when he visited with Hitler, he conveyed personal messages from President Franklin Roosevelt (FDR), asking Hitler to stay peaceful. Yes, dear reader, Vanderbilt almost saved the world. According to Vanderbilt, FDR was supposed to have a meeting in 1939 (that never took place) with Hitler, Stalin and Churchill that might have avoided the war altogether.

Businessmen were at once anti-war and anti-FDR. The president proposed imposing a trade embargo on Germany. However, this would provoke hostility from the German people, as their standard of living would fall even further. Wealthy businessmen had no idea of the deprivations the Germans had suffered.

Vanderbilt was a foreign correspondent for Liberty Magazine, and an international spy for FDR. He was supplied with a short-wave radio set and a Zenith TV engraved, “Made expressly for and stolen from Neil Vanderbilt.” In August 1939, in Poland, he found Heinrich Himmler in his hotel room when he returned one evening. Nevertheless, he refrained from using his gas gun– a pen-shaped weapon containing a gas cylinder.

After the war, FDR’s son Jimmy Roosevelt ran for California governor. “He spoke sensibly on world affairs and important state issues, but lacked the funds to pay for the sort of publicity the other side was given for free.” Sadly, advertising agencies and their clients prompted censoring of free and open discourse of editors and publishers on TV, in newspapers and magazines. As usual, people were controlled by money. The author observed that this was more commonly the case in America than in Europe.

Amusing Side Note: The author’s father had enemies, so during distasteful episodes prior to his death, his father hired different attorneys through the years to update his will and add codicils.

Read the book for additional intrigue (“Although a shipload of Jewish refugees might seem an unlikely place to look for Nazis, actually it was a fine place for them to hide.”), and once again, see that there is nothing new under the sun.