“Reach Out”

August 31, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

From the 1968 campaign, RN makes an appeal for unity in more acrimonious times:

Be Tough, But Be Committed To Peace

August 31, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Israel and Palestinians, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Former U.K. Prime Minister and current Middle East envoy Tony Blair says that Benjamin Netanyahu is just the type of strong leader Israel needs at the current juncture, but would be well served to follow up with an overture for a permanent Middle East peace, just as a certain American President did in East Asia in 1972:

He added that for this reason, it’s important that any peace deal be a final settlement of all the issues. He also said he believed the hard-line nature of the Netanyahu government could be an advantage, but that the prime minister must take the initiative. “The great example is the ‘Nixon goes to China’ one, although it is important that he goes,” he said.

Who You Gonna Believe? Me Or My Book?

August 31, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Bush Administration, War on Terror | 3 Comments 

Charles Barkley famously admitted that he hadn’t read his autobiography.  Now former (and first) Homeland Security czar Tom Ridge presents prospective readers with a new twist to the old punchline of the cheater caught in flagrante delicto: Who are you gonna believe — me or your lying eyes?

USA Today reports Mr. Ridge’s complete fold —which the paper’s headline generously describes as packpedaling— regarding his recent headline-grabbing (and, more to the point, book-launching) “revelation” that Don Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft vigorously urged him to raise the nation’s security threat level shortly before the 2004 election in order to help George W. Bush’s re-election.

His most explosive accusation: that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft pressed him to raise the national threat level after Osama bin Laden released a videotape criticizing President Bush shortly before Election Day 2004. Ridge writes he rejected raising the level because bin Laden had released nearly 20 such tapes since 9/11 and the latest contained nothing suggesting an imminent threat.

Noting that Bush’s approval ratings typically went up when the threat level was raised, Ridge writes that Ashcroft and Rumsfeld pushed to elevate it during a “vigorous” discussion.

“Ashcroft strongly urged an increase in the threat level, and was supported by Rumsfeld,” he writes. “There was absolutely no support for that position within our department. None. I wondered, ‘Is this about security or politics?’ ”

Although he prevailed and the threat level was not elevated, Ridge writes that the episode reinforced his decision to resign. He did so weeks after the election.

Last week, when word got out about Ridge’s accusations, Rumsfeld’s spokesman Keith Urbahn issued a statement calling them “nonsense.”

Now, Ridge says he did not mean to suggest he was pressured to raise the threat level, and he is not accusing anyone of trying to boost Bush in the polls. “I was never pressured,” Ridge said.

Just Like The Wilderness Years?

August 31, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Public Opinion, Richard Nixon, Sarah Palin | 1 Comment 

Sarah Palin plans her first foreign trip to Asia for this September.

(Hat Tip: Tom Van Oosterom)

Missing RN

August 31, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Healthcare, Obama administration, Richard Nixon | 3 Comments 

Here’s the best —you can forget the rest — from Paul Krugman’s column in today’s New York Times:

…it’s now doubtful whether health reform, even if we get it — which is by no means certain — will be anywhere near as good as Nixon’s proposal, even though Democrats control the White House and have a large Congressional majority.

Featured Articles — August 31, 2009

August 31, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | Leave a Comment 

Interesting Takes From Home And Abroad:

An Ivy League Huey Long By George Will, Newsweek
Washington is seriously unserious.

Requiem for the Right By Jon Meacham, Newsweek
The biographer of Whittaker Chambers and William Buckley on a dying movement.

The C.I.A. in Double Jeopardy By Joseph Finder, The New York Times
EARLY in 2002, Eric Holder, then a former deputy attorney general, said on CNN that the detainees being held at Guantánamo Bay were “not, in fact, people entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention,” particularly “given the way in which they have conducted themselves.”

The End of America’s Experiment With Royalty By Michael Barone, DC Examiner
Edward Kennedy was buried Saturday, the last son of Joseph and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, the longest-serving member of the only royal political family our democratic republic has ever produced.

Afghanistan is now Obama’s war By Clive Crook, Financial Times
Except for a pause to honour Senator Edward Kennedy, healthcare reform has dominated US news and comment for weeks. It is seen as the make-or-break challenge for Barack Obama’s administration. Yet soon it may look unimportant in comparison with an issue that the US public has barely seemed to notice: the war in Afghanistan.

San Jose Mercury-News On Nixon, Kennedy And Health Care

August 30, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Healthcare, News media, Nixon in the News, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

Today’s San Jose Mercury-News has an editorial that begins by pointing out some similarities between the national health-care program advocated in the early 1970s by President Nixon, and the one that President Obama is now trying to get through Congress. The editorial then explains:

Nixon’s plan failed because of one powerful opponent: Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. He stood firm in favor of a single-payer system, and the moment was lost[...]

The Kennedy skill at collaboration had yet to evolve in the early 1970s. And given the family history with Nixon, who had run against John F. Kennedy, a Nixon-Kennedy plan for national health care was probably asking too much at the time.

The editorial concludes with some advice for the President:

Obama’s mistake has been allowing opponents to frame the debate and put him on the defensive. The Obama who was a master communicator during the campaign can recapture the lost momentum. He has to hammer home the folly of doing nothing, which is what his opponents want, and convince the American people that only through reform will they be assured of affordable, high quality health care in the future. The current system is not sustainable.

While providing health care to the 20 percent of Americans who now have none is critical, the president needs to aim his arguments toward the 80 percent who have coverage at the moment — at least until they get laid off — and are scared to death that they will have inferior care in the future[...]

The president has the oratory skills to turn this around. He also happens to be right about what’s needed. Richard Nixon, that well known socialist, would agree.

His First Appearance On Meet The Press

August 30, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under News media, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

The thirty-nine year old California Senator and Vice Presidential nominee took part in his first of seven “unrehearsed and spontaneous” conferences in September 1952:

Featured Articles — August 30, 2009

August 30, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | Leave a Comment 

Interesting Takes From Home And Abroad:

We Have the Hope. Now Where’s the Audacity? By Peter Dreier and Marshall Ganz, The Washington Post
Kennedy passed the liberal torch to Obama. Let’s run with it.

A Libyan Lesson In Tehran By Jim Hoagland, The Washington Post
Moammar Gaddafi leaned across the couch and surprised me with the question he posed, squinting as he searched my face for reaction: “Why do you drink poison?”

Will the Hard Left Set Our House on Fire? By Cal Thomas, The Washington Times
After pledging during last year’s presidential campaign, and as recently as the spring, not to revisit the past, the Obama administration, in the person of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., has named a special prosecutor to go after CIA interrogators who pried information from terrorist suspects, preventing more deadly assaults on the country.

A Long Shot in California By George Will, The Washington Post
The most ominous domestic event of the 1970s was the collapse of self-government in New York City, which before being put into receivership by the state was liberalism’s laboratory.

Seven Days That Shook Afghanistan By Dexter Filkins, The New York Times
The darker currents that have undercut the American-led war in this country have surfaced often over the past eight years, but rarely have so many come into view all at once.

Japanese Opposition Wins Elections in Landslide By Martin Fackler, The New York Times
In a rare display of democratic muscle in this traditionally apolitical nation, Japan’s voters cast out the Liberal Democratic Party for only the second time in postwar history, handing a landslide victory to the opposition in hard-fought elections on Sunday

Laughing Matters

August 29, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Domestic issues, Humor | 1 Comment 

The senior Senator from Iowa, and the former Chairman and now ranking member of the powerful-bordering-on-omnipotent Senate Finance Committee, explains it all for you.

Memories Of 1969

August 29, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Music, Presidents, Public Opinion, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, Vietnam | Leave a Comment 

The fortieth anniversary of “three days of peace, love and music” on Max Yasgur’s farm in Bethel, New York, continues to be celebrated, most recently in movie theaters this weekend when Taking Woodstock, the new film by Cold Mountain and Incredible Hulk director Ang Lee, opened to somewhat mixed reviews and brought in a disappointing $1.2 million.  The film stars Demetri Martin, a comedian best known for his short-lived series on Comedy Central, and features, in the role of Yasgur, the eminent funnyman Eugene Levy in a rare dramatic role.

Still, the one moment during the past month’s boomlet in counterculture nostalgia that has stuck in my mind came on August 15, during a show billed as “Heroes Of Woodstock” at the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, close by the original festival site.  The performers included several acts from the hippie era that did not actually perform at Woodstock, such as Big Brother And The Holding Company (a band Janis Joplin had left well before she appeared at the festival). But several musicians who were there took the Center’s stage, including Alvin Lee of Ten Years After, Richie Havens, and Country Joe McDonald.  Before reprising his “Feel Like I’m Fixin’ To Die Rag,” so familiar after countless rebroadcasts of the Woodstock documentary, McDonald, who served in the Navy from 1959 to 1962 and has been involved in veteran’s activities in Northern California, paused to read the names of the natives of Sullivan County, New York, where Woodstock took place, who died in Vietnam and have fallen so far in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And speaking of Vietnam reminds me of an event that occurred ten days ago in Columbus, Georgia, but, in the clutter of news in recent days (the health-care debate, President Obama’s trip to Martha’s Vineyard, the release of the two American journalists by North Korea, Ted Kennedy’s death) received comparatively little attention.  A member of that city’s Kiwanis Club invited a veteran of the Vietnam War to appear before the organization, deliver some remarks about his experience, and take a few questions. Usually, this would hardly attract notice outside the local level, for countless veterans have spoken before chapters of fraternal organizations across America through the years.  But when the veteran’s name is William Calley Jr., and he is appearing to speak about the massacre which he supervised in the hamlet of My Lai in what was then South Vietnam in March 1968, that’s another matter entirely.

It was September 5, 1969, that Lt. Calley was charged with the deaths of 104 Vietnamese civilians in the massacre; later estimates gave the death toll as high as 500, but the U.S. Army ultimately concluded that 347 died. Two months later, Seymour Hersh broke the story of the bloodbath, a scoop which made his name as an investigative reporter.  For the next eighteen months, as two dozen other officers and enlisted men were charged but either acquitted or went untried, Calley became the focus of intense debate at dinner tables across the nation.  For many of the young, and a large number who supported the war as well as opposing it, he was unquestionably a war criminal.  But in the rural United States and especially the South, there were those who argued that it should be kept in mind that Calley believed he was acting in accordance with the orders of his superior officers to subdue a base of Viet Cong operations. (An example of such views is Terry Nelson and C Company’s record “The Battle Hymn Of Lieutenant Calley,” which figures prominently in Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.)

Calley was convicted by a military court on March 29, 1971 – the only participant in the My Lai atrocities to be found guilty. Two days later, after Jimmy Carter and George Wallace had spoken on Calley’s behalf, and following a flood of letters and telegrams to the White House, President Nixon ordered the lieutenant’s release pending his appeal.  When the appeal was upheld, Calley served three and a half years under what amounted to house arrest in Fort Benning, Georgia.  Upon his release, he married the daughter of a prominent jeweler in Columbus, obtained a gemologist’s certificate, and went into the business of selling diamonds and other stones, from which he retired a few years ago. Through the decades, he avoided discussing My Lai.

But this month, Calley – now a portly, bald, bearded figure with little resemblance to the youth who was so much a part of the news nearly four decades ago – chose to finally break his silence. He told his audience at the Kiwanis Club: “There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai. I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry.”

During the q-and-a period afterward, he reiterated what he had stated after he was charged – that he acted as he had because he thought the orders he had received from Capt. Ernest Medina, which specified that My Lai’s habitations were to be destroyed and its livestock killed, implicitly included the killing of any persons found there. (Medina was also charged, but, after being defended by the famed attorney F. Lee Bailey, was found not guilty.)  One wonders if the Kiwanis appearance was an isolated one or if Calley has anything more to say about the event to which his name is forever linked.

TNN Weekly Weekend Reward

August 29, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Weekly Weekend Reward | Leave a Comment 

This week’s Reward is melancholy but glorious —because it celebrates some of the songs of Ellie Greenwich who died on Wednesday.

HANKY PANKY

This was a Number One hit in 1963 for Tommy James and the Shondells.  It’s essentially a nonsense song, involving repeated assertions that his baby does the hanky panky.  One is reminded of the elder Holmes’ apostrophe to a katydid: “Thou say’st an undisputed thing, in such a solemn way.”

DA DOO RUN RUN

This was a hit in the summer of 1963 hit for the Crystals, anchored by LaLa Brooks.  The meaningless words “Da Doo Run Run” were intended to be rehearsal filler that would be replaced by lyrics before the song was recorded.   Co-writer and producer Phil Spector —creating what he called “little symphonies for the kids”— slathered on the strings.   And although he didn’t throw in the kitchen sink he did include sleigh bells.

THEN HE KISSED ME

Another Barry-Greenwich-Spector hit for the Crystals in 1963.

CHAPEL OF LOVE

This Barry-Greenwich-Spector song by the Dixie Cups spent three weeks as Number One in 1964.

RIVER DEEP – MOUNTAIN HIGH

Although this 1966 single was less than successful in the US (it was a hit in the UK), producer and co-writer Phil Spector considered this his best Wall of Sound work. He banned Ike Turner from the recording sessions — and then proceeded to treat Tina almost as badly as Ike did, demanding take after take.  She recalled: “I must have sung that 500,000 times. I was drenched with sweat. I had to take my shirt off and stand there in my bra to sing.”

This raw video of a live Ike and Tina Turner Revue performance includes the Ikettes – Rose Smith, Ann Thomas, and, in the middle, the phenomenal Pat Arnold (of whom more anon).

CHRISTMAS (BABY PLEASE COME HOME)

This may be my favorite Greenwich song of all. Not least because it is sung by Darlene Love. It was written for Phil Spector’s 1963 Ur Xmas album A Christmas Gift to You. Leon Russell can be heard on the piano. During my time at Late Night with David Letterman, on each year’s Christmas show, Darlene Love joined Paul Shaffer and the World’s Most Dangerous Band to sing “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).”

TAKE ME HOME TONIGHT

Although Ellie Greenwich’s most important writing was done in the 1960s, she continued to write songs — and hits.  In 1986 she was part of the team that produced this hit for former NYPD officer Eddie Money.

In the official video, Ronnie Spector proved that twenty years later she could still steal a scene even in silhouette.

And on Late Night with David Letterman, she showed she could steal a scene even with her back turned.

Featured Articles — August 29, 2009

August 29, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | Leave a Comment 

Interesting Takes From Home And Abroad:

In Kennedy, the Last Roar of the New Deal Liberal By Sam Tannenhaus, The New York Times
“AN important chapter in our history has come to an end,” Barack Obama said in his first public remarks on the death of Senator Edward M. Kennedy. “Our country has lost a great leader, who picked up the torch of his fallen brothers and became the greatest United States senator of our time.”

Germany Recalls Myth That Created the Nation By David Crossland, Der Spiegel
In September 9 AD, Germanic tribesmen slaughtered three Roman legions in a battle that marked the “big bang” of the German nation and created its first hero — Hermann. The country is marking the 2,000th anniversary with restraint because the myth of Hermann remains tainted by the militant nationalism that would later be associated with Hitler.

Alliance In Peril? By Gordon G. Chang, Forbes
A new Japanese government could strain ties with America.

Elections and a mission By Marco Vicenzino, The Washington Times
Reactions to Afghanistan’s presidential election have ranged from insurgent assertions of failure to claims of “success” by some international officials.

What’s Wrong With ‘Hillary: The Movie’? By Hans A. von Spakovsky, Wall Street Journal
Pornographers have more freedom today than those who want to engage in political speech.

Nixon, Kennedy, and Cancer

August 28, 2009 by Jack Pitney | Filed Under Healthcare, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

From reading press accounts of Senator Kennedy’s legislative career, one might think that RN’s 1971 launch of the War on Cancer was simply a response to Kennedy’s initiatives.  Indeed, their political rivalry did play a role.  In politics, as in the marketplace, competition can produce socially beneficial results.  In this case, the product was an increase in cancer research.   If people are alive today because Nixon and Kennedy tried to one-up each other … well, that’s cool.

But it is a mistake to reduce the War on Cancer just to Nixon’s desire to co-opt a political opponent.  Nixon was already acting on cancer before 1971, the year Kennedy assumed the chair of the Senate’s health subcommittee.  In his budget message of February 2, 1970, RN recommended “substantial increases in research on cancer, heart disease, serious childhood illnesses, and dental health–where current findings promise significant advances in the future.”  The increase was not just talk.  The fiscal 1971 appropriation for the National Cancer Institute — passed in 1970 — was 22 percent higher than the figure for the previous year.

George McGovern Speaks At The Nixon Library

August 28, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Democratic Party, Nixon Administration figures, Nixon Foundation, Nixon Library, Nixon Library events, Presidential libraries, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, Yorba Linda | 5 Comments 

On Wednesday night, a crowd of over 700 gathered in Yorba Linda to see former Senator George McGovern talk about his new book, a short biography of Abraham Lincoln. The event, co-sponsored by the Richard Nixon Library and Museum and the Richard Nixon Foundation (and held in the Library’s replica of the White House’s East Room) would have been remarkable enough for the appearance of President Nixon’s Democratic opponent in the 1972 election – but, in a surprise appearance, the Senator was introduced by none other than 83-year-old Gore Vidal, almost the last major American writer of the “Greatest Generation” still living, who has written about RN on many occasions (including the 1972 play An Evening With Richard Nixon). Both men received standing ovations.

Though Vidal has sometimes expressed a degree of admiration for the thirty-seventh President’s resilience and achievements in the field of foreign affairs, in recent years his remarks about Nixon have been much more negative, and he seems to blame RN for instigating the careers of former Vice President Cheney and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, both of whom worked in the Nixon Administration and have been the targets of Vidal’s angriest barbs in articles and interviews since 2000. The late Senator Edward Kennedy has also been the object of Vidal’s bile from time to time, unsurprisingly given the writer’s mercurial relationship with the Kennedy clan, and his preference for Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s brand of populist radicalism. But in his introduction in Yorba Linda, Vidal spoke instead of Lincoln, the subject of one of his best-known and most acclaimed novels.

Sen. McGovern then took the podium and discussed his biography. He stressed that Lincoln’s greatest achievement was preserving the Union, and spoke at length about the difficulties the sixteenth President had to overcome – his limited formal education, and his struggle with depression (which McGovern knows from experience, as he movingly describes in Terry, his book about his late daughter’s tragic battle with alcoholism and bipolar illness).

Though Ted Kennedy went unmentioned in the main part of McGovern’s talk, one of the questions asked after it referred to him, and the reply was:

“Ted was a great senator,” McGovern said. “He hardly missed a day [of work] . . . I admired him and, on a personal basis, if any senator suffered a loss like a child or a spouse, he was the first person who called. When our daughter Terry died, he came to see Eleanor and me. He was there at 9 a.m. the next morning with his wife. He was a person who respected tragedy because of his family. He was very thoughtful. I thought a lot of him.”

McGovern also spoke at Chapman University earlier in the day.

DSPQ

August 28, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Congress, Democratic Party, Double Standard Paranoia Quotient | Leave a Comment 

In the past I have cast a lenient —almost affectionate— eye on Chairman Charles Rangel.

The natty gravel-voiced Purple Heart winning long-time Congressman has represented his constituency diligently and mastered both the arcanae of tax codes and the even more arcane ways of surviving and thriving on Capitol Hill.

And Chairman Rangel, in addition to his almost unlimited charm and all but unlimited power, is a Democrat.  Which means that he has been able to run the Kennedy-Clinton-Dodd-Conrad-etc.-etc. play book that has worked before and will work again: If you ignore something long enough, no matter how devastating or demeaning or downright horrific it may be, it will either go away or people will forget about it, or both.

So, for going on a year now, Chairman Rangel has blithely sailed above such pesky pinpricks as the  media’s isolated and timidly expressed outrage, or his many colleagues’ calls for him to resign or at least step down as the head of his Committee, much less an Ethics Committee investigation.

But, holy Toledo, surely at some point enough has to become enough.

My bad: New information reveals that House tax czar Chairman Charles Rangel forgot to mention, among many other things,  this $1 million home on any of his disclosure forms.

Today’s New York Post reports what may be (or, see above, may not be) the coup de grace for a long and not totally undistinguished career:

Rep. Charles Rangel failed to report as much as $1.3 million in outside income — including up to $1 million for a Harlem building sale — on financial-disclosure forms he filed between 2002 and 2006, according to newly amended records.

The documents also show the embattled chairman of the Ways and Means Committee — who is being probed by the House Ethics Committee — failed to reveal a staggering $3 million in various business transactions over the same period.

This week, Rangel filed drastically revised financial-disclosure forms reflecting new, higher amounts of outside income and numerous additional business deals that had not been reported when the reports were originally filed.

In 2004, for instance, Rangel reported earning between $4,000 and $10,000 in outside earnings on top of his $158,100 congressional salary.

But the amended filings show that after the sale of a property on West 132nd Street, his outside income that year was somewhere between $118,000 and $1.04 million.

The forms filed by House members provide for a range of value on such transactions, so the precise number isn’t publicly known.

Rangel also lowballed his income by as much as $70,000 in 2002, $46,000 in 2003 and $117,000 in 2006, records show.

Only in 2005 did Rangel reveal his total outside income.

Members of Congress are required to disclose all their assets and outside income in an effort to expose possible undue influences.

Rangel’s office insists the Harlem Democrat did not conceal any outside income from the IRS and is paid up on his taxes.

The Post revealed yesterday that Rangel is in arrears on New Jersey property taxes — for property that for more than 15 years he failed to disclose to Congress and the public.

Another area of wide discrepancy in his financial-disclosure forms is where he’s required to list financial transactions.

Every year between 2002 and 2007, Rangel failed to include all his deals for the year, according to records.

On his 2002 and 2003 financial-disclosure statements, Rangel did not include any transactions whatsoever, according to papers on file with the House clerk.

But the amended records filed this month show as much as $310,000 in business deals in 2002 and up to $80,000 in transactions in 2003.

In 2004, Rangel left off his disclosure form as much as $430,000 in stock transactions, amended records show. One of those deals he did include as a transaction on his original disclosure was the sale of the brownstone on West 132nd Street.

But in the same report, Rangel failed to include proceeds from that sale as outside income. That has been revised in the amended report.

Despite the reported sale, city records still show Rangel is the owner of that property.

The Lion And The Bear

August 28, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under Book Review, Cold War, History, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | 1 Comment 

When then President Bill Clinton spoke at former President Richard Nixon’s funeral, he suggested that the “day of judging President Nixon on anything less than his entire life and career come to a close.” The speaker had no clue at the time how much he would need that kind of big-picture graciousness later on, but these sentiments are common on such occasions.

Having been a member of the clergy for 32 years, it has been my duty to officiate memorial services, comforting mourners while doing my best to eulogize the deceased. The word eulogy is rooted in scripture, most often translated as some form of “bless,” it literally means “to speak well of.” It is actually not intrinsically a word for funerals, but that’s where the concept shows up for the most part in our culture.

Apparently the idea is that to eulogize someone before death is, well, premature.

Of course, it is easier to eulogize some people more than others – always the minister’s dilemma. What do you say when there is a shortage of good anecdotal material? Vernon Johns, the legendary, eloquent, and controversial forerunner to Martin Luther King, Jr. in the pastorate of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, reputedly once made quick work of a funeral sermon for a particularly notorious man. Against the grain and at the risk of offending the sensibilities of his very proper audience, he uttered a few sentences about the dead man’s notable wickedness and then ended with an abrupt: “Now, carry out the body!”

But usually it’s nice stuff that is said. Much of it is true and most of it is presented with a positive spin. It is, of course, this way with the various tributes, remembrances, and yes – eulogies – about Edward M. “Ted” Kennedy, who died the other day after a valiant battle with brain cancer.

Mr. Clinton’s fantasy about no bigger-picture judgment notwithstanding, it is simply not realistic, nor is it very honest to ignore the “warts-and-all” aspects of someone’s life en route to putting it all into perspective. His executive order delivered to a crowd of mourners in Yorba Linda, California on April 27, 1994, was not obeyed. In fact, it was almost instantly dismissed, largely because Nixon wasn’t one of “them” – the liberal media elite.

Of course, if someone is a liberal lion and has made a career of championing the “right” (the term used in the sense of “liberally enlightened,” not as a directional cue) causes, it is generally more acceptable to give the person a pass on other embarrassing stuff. Therefore, the scandalous death of a young woman is not a crime, it’s a tragedy that means – in the ultimate example of missing the point – an anointed man won’t ever be president. Yet, even in that “tragedy” there are seeds of hope, because the man gets to become the greatest senator since, like, Cicero.

I have tried very hard to find the basis for authentic eulogy in the current hagiographic moment, but in the final analysis (a pet Kennedy phrase – Jack, Bobby, and Teddy all used it), I find myself frustrated. You see, I really think there are some good things that can be said – and were I speaking at the service, I would emphasize those.

Mr. Kennedy was a surrogate father, and effectively so, to the children of his fallen brothers. I find that endearing and worthy of commendation. He also seemed to mellow in later years, following his marriage to Vickie Reggie in 1992. She may have tamed, or at least tempered the lion. And he once helped conservative columnist Mona Charen parallel park her minivan on a busy Washington, D.C. street.

But again, in the final analysis (it really is a very good phrase) it is hard, in fact virtually impossible, to ignore the enormous body of evidence that so obviously speaks to the fact that Ted Kennedy was a deeply flawed man, who could here-and-there do some good things.

Most of his flaws are being noised about right now, but one that seems to regularly escape public view has to do with the Lion of the Senate’s machinations at a particularly crucial moment during the Cold War.

The year is 1983, and it is beginning to appear that Ronald Reagan will be virtually unbeatable for reelection the next year. One of the Gipper’s passions is to end the Cold War – and he is a strong advocate of peace through strength. Reagan is playing hardball with his Soviet counterpart, former KGB (once KGB, always KGB) chief, now premier, Yuri Andropov over the potential deployment of Pershing II missiles in Western Europe.

Years later, a letter from that time (May 1983) held in KGB files surfaced, one that reflects very badly on the man being remembered right now. It was written to Andropov by KGB head, Viktor Chebrikov and labeled “Special Importance.” The subject head read: “Regarding Senator Kennedy’s request to the General Secretary of the Communist Party Y.V. Andropov.” Apparently, long-time Kennedy friend, former U. S. Senator (D-CA), John Tunney – the son of Dempsey-beating heavyweight boxing champion, Gene Tunney – had recently visited Moscow and acted as Ted’s emissary.

The would-be Lion was reaching out to the big-bad Bear.

The letter is interesting to say the least – and also a window into the political soul of Mr. Kennedy, who is now being remembered for his propensity for bi-partisanship (?). The senator from Massachusetts was clearly interested in undermining Mr. Reagan politically, and flying close to the flame of actual treason. Among the things the letter said were:

Kennedy believes that, given the current state of affairs, and in the interest of peace, it would be prudent and timely to undertake the following steps to counter the militaristic politics of Reagan and his campaign to psychologically burden the American people. In this regard, he offers the following proposals to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Y.V. Andropov.

1. Kennedy asks Y.V. Andropov to consider inviting the senator to Moscow for a personal meeting in July of this year. The main purpose of the meeting, according to the senator, would be to arm Soviet officials with explanations regarding problems of nuclear disarmament so they may be better prepared and more convincing during appearances in the USA. He would also like to inform you that he has planned a trip through Western Europe, where he anticipates meeting England’s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and French President Mitterand in which he will exchange similar ideas regarding the same issues.

If his proposals would be accepted in principle, Kennedy would send his representative to Moscow to resolve questions regarding organizing such a visit.

Wait, there’s more:

2. Kennedy believes that in order to influence Americans it would be important to organize in August-September of this year, televised interviews with Y.V. Andropov in the USA. A direct appeal by the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to the American people will, without a doubt, attract a great deal of attention and interest in the country. The senator is convinced this would receive the maximum resonance in so far as television is the most effective method of mass media and information.

If the proposal is recognized as worthy, then Kennedy and his friends will bring about suitable steps to have representatives of the largest television companies in the USA contact Y.V. Andropov for an invitation to Moscow for the interviews. Specifically, the president of the board of directors of ABC, Elton Raul and television columnists Walter Cronkite or Barbara Walters could visit Moscow. The senator underlined the importance that this initiative should be seen as coming from the American side.

This entire episode is described in detail by historian Paul Kengor in his book, “The Crusader: Ronald Reagan And The Fall Of Communism.”

Had this all come to light back then, would Ted Kennedy have been able to survive politically? No one, of course, knows the answer to that question, but it is possible that the brightness might have faded from Camelot’s apparently endless “brief and shining moment.”

Now, here we are more than a quarter of a century later, with the Cold War a fading memory – a conflict won by our side largely through the work of Mr. Reagan and in spite of Mr. Kennedy – reviewing a life writ large. With all the eulogies – all the attempts, rightly so, to “speak well of” someone in the tender moments following his passing – let us resolve “in the final analysis” not to give him a complete pass on the things he did that fell short. Some of those things really mattered.

Leonard Bernstein’s 1972 Counter-Inaugural

August 28, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Leonard Bernstein, Music, Richard Nixon, Vietnam | Leave a Comment 

I recently posted a piece about Alex Ross’ three New Yorker articles based on the material released as a result of his Freedom of Information Act requests regarding the government’s interest in Leonard Bernstein.  The bulk loyalty investigations were earlier —beginning with Truman in ‘49 and continuing through LBJ in ‘68— but the polymath composer-conductor-writer-lecturer-activist also made some brief and belated appearances on the Nixon tapes in the fall of 1971.

In that post I unaccountably failed to include one of my favorite passages from H. R. Haldeman’s Diaries — for 9 September 1971 — in which they discussed the previous night’s premiere of Mass.  It provides one of the Diaries‘ few glimpses of RN’s mordant sense of humor:

I was fascinated this morning to get a report on the Kennedy Center opening of the Mass last night.  I described the program, and Bernstein’s performance, and after asking a few questions and making a few comments, he paused a minute, this was over the phone, and then said, “I just want to ask you one favor.  If I’m assassinated, I want you to have them play “Dante’s Inferno” and have Lawrence Welk produce it,” which was really pretty funny.

RN: “I just want to ask you one favor.  If I’m assassinated, I want you to have them play ‘Dante’s Inferno’ and have Lawrence Welk produce it.”  Despite his frustration over the several brouhahas surrounding the Kennedy Center’s various openings, the President retained his sense of humor.  Liszt’s A Symphony to Dante’s Divine Commedia was first performed in 1857; it’s two movements reflect the the first two parts of its inspiration: Inferno and Purgatorio.  This YouTube video of the “Inferno” is not attributed, but it’s a safe assumption that the orchestra isn’t Lawrence Welk’s.

The program for the NSO’s opening concert at the Kennedy Center’s Concert Hall on 9 September, attended by RN, was completely Lisztless.  It began with Beethoven’s Consecration of the House Overture, and included Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3 in G (K.216) with Isaac Stern as soloist, Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, and William Schuman’s A Free Song: Secular Cantata No. 2, a stirring choral work, composed in 1942, on two poems by Walt Whitman.

What RN heard on 9 September 1971: the opening piece on the NSO’s opening program at the opening of the Kennedy Center’s Concert Hall was Beethoven’s Consecration of the House Overture. It was written in 1822 for the opening of a new theater in Vienna.  In this spirited performance, the Hungarian Philharmonic Orchestra is conducted by  Zoltán Kocsis

RN had earlier told Haldeman that he would have preferred Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, or something by Lizst.  The reviews of the opening concert —mine among them— commented on the oddly eclectic program.  In a conversation a few days later with movie star Ginger Rogers, RN had a smart —and undoubtedly correct— explanation:

They picked numbers that were more for the acoustics —this is the symphony opening — rather than for the music.  But it’s famous for this.  I must say it doeesn’t send me. I’m not completely square on that sort of thing.  I like a bit of jazz from time to time.  But when I hear a symphony, I want it to be a great symphony.  I mean I don’t see why they can’t play Beethoven, or, you know, Tchaikovsky, or Lizst or so on or so on. But these days the modern conductors, they have to go off on some Bernstein thing…

Antal Dorati, conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra, chose a Lizstless program that showcased the new Kennedy Center Concert Hall’s acoustics, but failed to “send”  the POTUS in the audience.

A few days after the  ”Mass Appeal” post appeared, I received an interesting (and much appreciated)  email from a reader —David Taylor— who has given me permission to quote it here:

Although my day job is now lawyering for the CFTC, in those days I was a graduate student in conducting at the University of Maryland and assistant conductor of the University of Maryland Chorus.  Your post brought to my mind an experience I had involving President Nixon, Leonard Bernstein, and the Nixon inauguration in 1973, that I thought you might find of interest.

In 1973 and throughout most of the 1970s, the University of Maryland Chorus performed several times each year with the National Symphony under its great music director Antal Dorati.  In January of that year, the Chorus sang four performances with the NSO of Beethoven’s great Missa Solemnis (an amazing musical experience I will never forget).  Given the times, those performances intersected with both President Nixon, the Vietnam War, and Leonard Bernstein.

As luck would have it, our Beethoven performances were slated for the week of the inauguration.  It had been a tradition for decades that during the week of each Presidential inauguration the NSO played (outside its normal subscription season) what was labeled the Inaugural Concert, as part of the festivities of inauguration week.  The performance was usually attended by the President-elect, and after the building of the Kennedy Center it always took place there.  Normally, this would have had nothing to do with the Beethoven concerts.  However, it turned out that President Nixon had been a life-long fan of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and for what was going to be his final inauguration he expressed a wish to have the Philadelphia play the Inaugural Concert, which they did.  The NSO leadership was very gracious about this change, and responded by dedicating the week’s regular NSO subscription concerts to the inauguration of the President.

Of course, the anti-war movement, further fueled by the developing Watergate affair, wanted to protest the Nixon inauguration.  One musical consequence of this, as you may remember, was the hasty arranging of a sort of “Anti-Inaugural Concert” consisting of a performance of Franz Joseph Haydn’s Mass in Time of War at the National Cathedral by a large chorus (I believe it was either the Cathedral Choral Society, the Choral Arts Society of Washington, or parts of both) and a pick-up orchestra, conducted by none other than that famous musical leftist, Leonard Bernstein.  I was not present, since we were singing Beethoven at Kennedy Center, but was told by people who did attend that the Bernstein performance drew a huge attendance, including 2000+ inside the Cathedral and thousands more listening on loudspeakers outside.

There were also nearly consequences for our Beethoven performances.  A signficant number of the approximately 140 members of the University of Maryland Chorus shared the sentiments of the anti-war, anti-Nixon protesters and were upset that the NSO had dedicated the Beethoven concerts to the President’s inauguration.  Quite a few of them initially refused to go onstage to sing something dedicated to President Nixon.  Paul Traver, the conductor of the U. of Md. Chorus (and my major teacher) and I had to do a considerable amount of fast talking to convince them that they owed it to the Chorus, to Maestro Dorati, and to Beethoven to sing as scheduled.  In the end that view prevailed, and the Missa Solemnis—one of humanity’s greatest choral treasures, and a work that dwarfs Bernstein’s Mass into utter insignificance—went forward magnificently and without incident.  But it was a close-run thing.

I remember Bernstein’s anti-Inaugural —the “Concert for Peace”— very well.  It was performed on 19 January —the night before RN’s second inaugural— and it was,  to put it mildly, given saturation cover by the local media.  It drew an overflow crowd to the National Cathedral  — which it would have done even if it hadn’t been free.  In addition to Haydn’s Mass in Time of War, the program included Bernstein’s  song  ”Take Care of This House” — based on a letter from Abigail Adams— and concluded with Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture.

The 1973 Inaugural Committee was chaired by J. Williard Marriott.  Several concerts were planned — including an Inaugural Concert (with, as Mr. Taylor mentions, RN’s favorite Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy, and Van Cliburn as soloist), and an American music concert led by Sammy Davis, Jr.  There was also, for the first time, a youth concert, produced by Mike Curb and starring pop singer Tommy Roe,  for the many young campaign workers who came to Washington to celebrate.  As vice chairman Mark Evans said, “President Nixon is pretty dedicated to these youngsters who confounded the experts.”  Along with Evans’ statement, The New York Times reported an announcement from “leaders of the militant Students for a Democratic Society” that a demonstration march on the Capitol would be staged to coincide with the President’s inauguration.

Ormandy’s Inaugural Concert program, chosen by RN, included the 1812 Overture Greig’s  Piano Concerto in A Minor with Van Cliburn as soloist.  In RN’s diary, dictated the next night (Inaugural night), he noted:

When Mike Curb stepped up at the end of the performance and said that the President had done more to bring peace in the world than anybody else, I thought we would get a few boos.  Interestingly enough, he got a pretty good cheer for it, which alloyed one of the fears I had as we went to the inaugurals, having read earlier that eleven of Eugene Ormandy’s orchestra members requested the right not to come, and he had put his foot down and told them to come.  When Steve Bull informed him that I would not be coming down to the platform because it simply couldn’t be worked out from a logic standpoint, Ormandy said that he would have liked to have me come to the stage and stand there beside him “just to show those left-wing sons of bitches.”  What a man he is.

“What a man he is”:  Eugene Ormandy, of the Philadelphia Orchestra. In January 1970, RN went to Philadelphia to present him with the Medal of Freedorm.  RN said:  ”Usually the awards are made in the White House. I found, however, when I suggested that Mr. Orrnandy might come to the White House for the award, he said: ‘Only if I can bring the 105 people in my orchestra–all 105.’  Now, we would have been delighted to have the 105 in the orchestra there but we could not have had any guests. And so since the orchestra could not come to Washington, I thought that the President ought to come to Philadelphia and come to the orchestra.”   Later in 1973 he became the first western conductor in many years —and  the first American conductor ever— to bring his orchestra to the People’s Republic of China.

After the Concert, at 1:04 AM, RN called his aide Charles Colson to indulge in a post mortem of their respective evenings (Colson had attended the American Music concert featuring Bob Hope and Roger Williams):

President Nixon: Hello.
Charles Colson: Yes, sir, Mr. President.
President Nixon: Well how’d you like the evening?
Colson: Well I enjoyed it. We had–
President Nixon: Which one did you go to?
Colson: We were at the American music concert and–
President Nixon: You didn’t do the symphony?
Colson: I did not do the symphony. No, sir. …..
President Nixon: That was really–the American was great but the symphony just–they had some magnificent things there that just, you know, patriotic and the rest. The 1812 Tchaikovsky Overture and other things that I’d asked [Philadelphia Symphony Music Director Eugene] Ormandy to do and a [Edvard] Grieg [concerto] that [pianist] Van Cliburn did. Being somewhat a student of music, I played Grieg when I was a sophomore in high school.
Colson: Did you really?
President Nixon: Yeah, well, I was quite advanced in music at an earlier age. But anyway it was fantastic…..
President Nixon: ….. And God, Ormandy was fantastic. ,,,,, And so much better than ‘69 and ‘52 and ‘56, when we just went over to Constitution Hall and heard the Washington Symphony go through a rather routine–I mean, they aren’t that bad and with Dorati they’re better than ordinary, but who the hell is equal to Ormandy? Do you know anybody?
Colson: No. No one.
President Nixon: Nobody could’ve played, well, you weren’t there.
Colson: No.
President Nixon: Cliburn did the Grieg routine, and some of Grieg is bad, but this is the best. And he played for a half hour and, by God, you’d never know that the symphony was there. They were so good, the way he fitted in, the sound of Ormandy. Goddamn, it was great.
Colson: I didn’t realize –
President Nixon: And everybody got–he got a standing ovation. They finished with the 1812 Overture, you know,
Colson: I love that.
President Nixon: –with the Los Angeles chorus of 200 and the Valley Forge military band and it brought the audience to its feet. It was fantastic.

Mr. Taylor tied things up with the ending of his email:

It has nothing to do with this story, but it always felt to me like a sort of post-script to it that in 1977, as a member of the Choir of Men and Boys of Washington Cathedral, I got to sing performances by the NSO and the Cathedral Choir at Kennedy Center of Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms—a much better piece of music than his Mass, in my view—conducted by the composer.

Leonard Bernstein conducts the second of his three Chichester Psalms.  The choral piece —for boy treble and small orchestra— was commissioned in 1965 and premiered that year in New York and in Chichester Cathedral.  The Hebrew text for the plaintive second movement juxtaposes the gentle Psalm of David — “The Lord is my shepherd”— with the more anguished “Why do the nations rage?”.   In 1977 the Choir of Men and Boys of Washington National Cathedral, of which David Taylor was a member, performed the Chichester Psalms at the Kennedy Center, conducted by the composer.  This recording, also conducted by Bernstein, features the New York Philharmonic with the Camerata Singers and John Bogart.

Featured Articles — August 28, 2009

August 28, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | Leave a Comment 

Interesting Takes From Home And Abroad:

The ‘Rough Men’ at the CIA By Pat Buchanan, Pittsburgh Tribune Review
“Men sleep peacefully in their beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”

The Reagans and the Kennedys By Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal
It was the summer of 1985, a year after the second Reagan landslide, and there was a particular speech coming up that was important to the president and first lady. It was a fund-raiser for the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, which at the time was relatively new and the only presidential library that didn’t have an endowment.

The Fall Guy By Kimberley Strassel, The Wall Street Journal
CIA Director Leon Panetta getting sacked by his own team.

Can Dems Rescue ObamaCare? By Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post
Obamacare Version 1.0 is dead. The 1,000-page monstrosity that emerged in various editions from Congress was done in by widespread national revulsion not just at its expense and intrusiveness but at the mendacity with which it is being sold.

Running to stand still? The peace test for Netanyahu By Phillip Stephens, Financial Times
Benjamin Netanyahu has what kindly observers might describe as a credibility problem. Travelling in Europe this week, the Israeli prime minister said he was straining every sinew to restart peace talks with the Palestinians. His interlocutors were unconvinced.

Iran’s Fear of a ‘Velvet Revolution’ By Robert Mackey, The New York Times
This week, at start of the fourth mass trial of opposition supporters in Tehran, an Iranian prosecutor read another indictment accusing leading reformist politicians and an Iranian-American scholar named Kian Tajbakhsh of plotting to overthrow Iran’s government.

Ellie Greenwich    1940-2009

August 27, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under In Memoriam, Music, U.S. History | 2 Comments 

Ellie Greenwich, who was a melodic force behind some of the greatest music —not to mention some of the biggest hits— of the 1960s, died last night in New York.  She was 68.  Her catalog of several hundred songs runs from A (“And Then He Kissed Me”) to only one short of Z (“You Time’s Gonna Come”).  She was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1991; there is a comprehensive biography on the Hall’s website.

One of her best known songs was 1963’s “Be My Baby,” co-written with her then-husband Jeff Barry and Phil Spector (who also produced it) for the Ronettes. Brian Wilson called “Be My Baby,” which is Number 114 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, “the greatest pop record ever made.”

Working with various collaborators, including Barry and Spector, Ms. Greenwich made a distinctive mark on, and made a major contribution to,  pop history.  As The New York Times‘ obituary notes:

In 1964 alone, according to “Always Magic in the Air,” a 2005 book by Ken Emerson about the pop music of the time, 17 singles by Ms. Greenwich and Mr. Barry landed on the pop charts, including “Chapel of Love,” a No. 1 hit for the Dixie Cups, and “Do Wah Diddy Diddy,” which became a No. 1 hit for the British band Manfred Mann.

Among their other compositions, many of which have been covered by myriad artists, Ms. Greenwich and Mr. Barry also wrote “Be My Baby,” “Baby I Love You” and “River Deep, Mountain High” (all with Mr. Spector). They were also singers, recording their own songs (and others) as a duo called the Raindrops.

Perhaps their most famous song was “Leader of the Pack,” which Ms. Greenwich and Mr. Barry wrote with George Morton, a producer who was known as Shadow Morton. Telling a soap-operaish tale of a girl who was in love with a biker but forbidden by her parents to see him, it ends with the biker’s death as, after their breakup, he speeds away from her and crashes. Woven into the melodramatic music are sound effects, spoken words and a plaintive cry of anguish — “I met him at the candy store” — the overall result being what Mr. Barry called “a movie for the ear.”

It was a No. 1 hit for the Shangri-Las in 1964, and became emblematic enough to be lampooned almost immediately by a band calling itself “The Detergents,” who recorded a song called “Leader of the Laundromat.”

You can listen to an audio sampler of Ellie Greenwich’s rich catalog at the end of Rolling Stone’s obituary.

“The Leader of the Pack,” written with Jeff Barry and producer George “Shadow” Morton, was a Number One hit in 1964  for the Shangri-Las.  It became so iconic that it inspired several parodies.

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