Who2 Editorial Blog
Notes and Commentary from the Editors
Thursday, August 27, 2009
LBJ Talks to Ted
From the Houston Chronicle: A page with links to audio of President Lyndon B. Johnson calling Ted Kennedy on the occasion of his brother John's death in 1963, and again on the occasion of his brother Bobby's death in 1968.The audio comes from the archives at the University of Virginia. Direct links are here (John) and here (Bobby).
On this date in 1908 Lyndon Johnson was born.
Labels: John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Robert F. Kennedy
Posted by Mr. Hehn at 11:10 AM 
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Teddy, JFK, and 122 Bowdoin Street
Those who know Boston may be interested in the route that Ted Kennedy's body will take today.Near the State House the Senator will visit an odd address:
Continuing to Bowdoin Street, Senator Kennedy will pass 122 Bowdoin, where he opened his first office as an Assistant District Attorney and President Kennedy lived while running for Congress in 1946.122 Bowdoin was a local station stop on John Kennedy's political railway. He did more than just live there in 1946; he kept the place for years as a combination office and crash pad for whenever he was in Boston.
It was near the Boston political action, with a coffee shop downstairs where State House types would go to gossip and cut deals. When JFK voted on election day in 1960, 122 Bowdoin was the legal address he gave.
I once read in one of the JFK biographies -- it wasn't A Thousand Days but might have been Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye -- that JFK kept the apartment while he was president, and that after JFK was killed in 1963, the Kennedy family still kept renting the apartment, year after year. The implication was that the family kept it into the 1970s and beyond.
In 1985 I visited Boston and made a special trip to find 122 Bowdoin and see if JFK's name was still on the register. The address isn't hard to find -- it truly is just steps from the State House:
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It was a nondescript building. It looked like a hundred other apartment doorways downtown, with a narrow entrance into a small vestibule with a buzzer system, then a locked door leading to a lobby stairway.
Alas, the directory showed no listing for John F. Kennedy.
But a second look showed a name that was close: J. Kennett. A subtle shorthand for privacy, I wondered? After all, if you pronounce both of the last two letters you get "Kennet-tee."
Still, just coincidence, I figured. I assumed the family had given up the apartment years ago.
Now I'm not so sure.
Check the JFK Library's useful list of JFK's addresses over the years. Only two of them list dates with an open-ended hyphen: Hyannis Port ("1929-") and 122 Bowdoin Street, Apt. 36 ("1947-").
We know the Kennedys still own the first address, the compound at Hyannis Port; Teddy just passed away there, in fact. Does that mean they also...?
These days you can rent your own apartment at 122 Bowdoin: $900 for a studio, $1850 for a two-bedroom. Pretty fair prices for Boston.
But can you rent apartment 36?
Well, whatever the truth about 122 Bowdoin, I find it touching that Sen. Kennedy will cruise by today.
As an aside, the JFK Library also lists "The President's Books at 122 Bowdoin Street." Among the 150 or so titles:
Pennsylvania 1651-1756
The Man versus The State
Lolita
The Cabinet of Irish Literature, Volume I-IV
Rasputin--Neither Devil Nor Saint
Off My Sea Chest
Things Catholics are Asked About
Labels: John F. Kennedy, Ted Kennedy
Posted by Mr. Holznagel at 5:27 AM Share on Facebook 0 comments
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Robert McNamara, Peacemaker?
Mr. McNamara saw his central role as preventing nuclear war. During his tenure as secretary of defense, there were conflicts that could have escalated into nuclear war -- the confrontation over Berlin, the Cuban missile crisis. All of this must be seen against the backdrop of the prevailing ideas of the time, the domino theory and the cold war.Filmmaker Errol Morris muses on the career of Robert McNamara.
Mr. McNamara became defense secretary in 1961. The Joint Chiefs were hawks. This is clear in reading the transcripts of the Cuban missile crisis; the generals speak to John F. Kennedy with derision, contempt and anger. When Mr. McNamara took office he discovered secret Pentagon plans for a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the Soviet Union.
He worried that the Joint Chiefs wanted nuclear war, and he was determined not to allow that to happen. From '63 to about '67, we had first-strike capacity and nuclear superiority against the Soviet Union. (In the words of George C. Scott in "Dr. Strangelove," I'm not saying we wouldn't have got our "hair mussed." But we would have destroyed them.) After Kennedy’s death, he served that central role of keeping the Joint Chiefs in check. If true, he becomes not the villain of American history, but something quite different.
Morris's movie about McNamara, The Fog of War, is terrific -- highly recommended.
That's McNamara below right, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, with the president and Gen. Maxwell Taylor, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
(Photo credit: Cecil Stoughton, from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.)Labels: Errol Morris, Gen. Maxwell Taylor, John F. Kennedy, Robert McNamara
Posted by Mr. Holznagel at 1:58 PM Share on Facebook 0 comments
Monday, March 16, 2009
Don't Call Him "John-John"
John F. Kennedy, Jr. was never called "John-John" by his family.At least, not according to JFK aide and speechwriter Ted Sorensen. In his 2008 book Counselor, Sorensen recalls sending a draft of his 1965 memoir Kennedy to Jacqueline Kennedy for her review.
At one point Sorensen had referred to "John-John, as his father called him." That led to this note from Mrs. Kennedy:
His father never called him John-John -- only John. That nickname now plagues the little boy -- who may be stuck with it all his life. I know your book deals with more important things -- but it would be great if you could put this nickname to bed.Mrs. Kennedy was right about the nickname sticking with her son all his life. But this is the first time we'd heard it was a mistake to start with.
I don't know where it started, as both of us hated nicknames -- our own -- Jack and Jackie we thought a most unfortunate combination -- and we always called our children by their first names.
I can only think it started when I was hugging John as a baby and saying nice things to him -- like John, John -- and some newspaper woman -- it may have been dear old Laura Berquist -- picked it up -- John gets angry now when strangers call him John-John -- because he thinks it is babyish -- He has many fights in the park about it. You could help him if you said his father never called him that...
Labels: Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, John F. Kennedy, John F. Kennedy Jr., Ted Sorensen
Posted by Mr. Holznagel at 7:06 PM Share on Facebook 0 comments
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Today in Nixonology
In our new profile of Illinois senator Roland W. Burris we include a link to photos of a his mausoleum -- no, he's not dead -- in Chicago's Oak Woods Ceremony. The sizable monument to Burris lists the senator's many accomplishments under the heading "Trail Blazer."It shouldn't be surprising -- blowing your own horn is what you do in politics. It reminded us of the epitaph on Richard Nixon's grave. The former president's tombstone says "The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker." The line comes from his first inaugural speech in 1969, and at the time he was casting it as pitch for America to answer the call to "lead the world at last out of the valley of turmoil." Oops!
North Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos -- and American hippies -- probably didn't think of Nixon as a peacemaker. Then again, the word comes already loaded with irony, at least in the U.S., where it can also be used to describe things that do the opposite of peaceful: a gun (a Colt revolver from the 19th century), a Cold War missile (a land-based intercontinental ballistic missile from the 1980s) and a long-range bomber (the Convair B-36 from the 1950s). So maybe Nixon meant that kind of peacemaker -- the biggest boom in the room that keeps the troublemakers in their seats.
Thinking about Nixon persuaded us to haul out the May 1974 publication of The White House Transcripts, the text of what the Nixon White House turned over to the House of Representatives committee that was investigating the Watergate break-in. The book begins with an introduction by R. W. Apple, Jr. of The New York Times:
"On February 25, 1974, the House Judiciary Committee formally asked the White House to produce recordings of forty-two conversations between President Richard Milhouse Nixon and members of his administration."
Lo, and behold! It was 35 years ago today that Nixon turned over the tapes. As it turns out they were incomplete and heavily edited -- the White House tried to soften the blow of dirty words by replacing them with the now-famous phrase "expletive deleted." But it gave the public a chance to see what Nixon was like behind closed doors, and it wasn't very pretty. He comes across as a petty and vindictive loner.
We then took a glance at The Haldeman Diaries by Nixon Chief of Staff H.R. "Bob" Haldeman to see if there was any special entry on this day. Nope. It was a Sunday. There is, however, an entry for 28 February 1973, in which Haldeman mentions that Nixon had just finished reading a book called Kennedy's 13 Mistakes. Haldeman comments that Nixon: "... made the point that [John F.] Kennedy blew practically everything and still got credit for it." Later in the same entry, after relating Nixon's comments on Democrats and "the poison in the upper classes," Haldeman concludes the day's entry with:
"I think he felt better as a result of the meeting, he did drag it on for quite a while -- this whole area of discussion and his soliloquies are his favorite subjects -- before he took off for the barbershop and the governors' dinner tonight."
Labels: H.R. Haldeman, John F. Kennedy, R.W. Apple, Richard Nixon, Watergate
Posted by Mr. Hehn at 12:04 AM Share on Facebook 0 comments
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Obama's New Limo is an Armored "Cocoon"
Made by Cadillac."One news agency, noting its 8-inch-thick doors, says the limo can withstand a 'direct hit from an asteroid.' But GM spokeswoman Joanne K. Krell laughed off the comments. 'And it will fix you a latte if you ask,' she jokes."A $25 billion latte, if you include the cost of the GM buyout.
Meanwhile, a historical side note:
"In 1965, Lyndon Johnson was the first president to ride in a bulletproof limo in an inaugural parade, less than two years after his predecessor, John F. Kennedy, was shot and killed while riding in an open car."
Labels: Barack Obama, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson
Posted by Mr. Holznagel at 11:53 AM Share on Facebook 0 comments
