Alfred Gingold and Helen Rogan
LBJ and Dubya: Finding Repose in the Same Inferno
By Alfred Gingold
Posted Thursday, Aug. 30, 2001, at 5:18 PM ETH.W. didn't sail, as I recall; he streaked around in one of those loud, gas-guzzling "cigarette boats" that help you save time when you're trying to relax. He also fished, flung horseshoes, golfed, and jogged. There are rumors he juggled and rode a unicycle. And crocheted. The key to presidential vacationing modes is not class but personality. There are the hyperactives--TR, JFK, Bush, and Clinton. (I know, not sporty, but he always read about a million books and pressed the flesh, and you knew his idea of unwinding had nothing to do with stopping to smell the roses.) Then there are the mellow cats: Ike golfing (in the days before golf was a sport), Jimmy Carter sipping iced tea and mending his cardies, Reagan loping around on horseback, clearing brush with rather more credibility than the current cowboy in chief. W. tends toward the mellow side, though there's a little bit of that busy-Bushes-are-happy-Bushes visible, too.
You know, he isn't the first president to find repose in an infernally sweltering hellhole that even the locals, we are given to understand from a recent Times piece, avoid in summer if they can. As I recall, LBJ liked to put his boots up and pull the beagles' ears in a similar setting. Why do you suppose that two such completely different types were/are both most at ease in a Beckettian landscape? It is a puzzlement.
LBJ and Dubya: Finding Repose in the Same Inferno
By Alfred Gingold
Posted Thursday, Aug. 30, 2001, at 5:18 PM ETAlfred Gingold has written eight books (including three with Helen Rogan) and for numerous magazines and Web sites. Helen Rogan, his wife, is the executive editor of My Generation, the AARP's magazine for baby boomers, and has written books and magazine articles. Reader Comments From The Fray:
[Notes from the Fray Editor: Reparations and museums were the hot topics here. There was news from Tony Adragna that there is an African-American museum in DC. Elusive Fray poster Amyntas started a splendid discussion on reparations and taxcuts here, featuring posts titled "A nonsensical argument" and "Typical disingenuous twaddle." A high moral tone, and criticism of young women, were the common themes in two posts: a most unusual view on the Chandra Levy affair, here, and one on Tea Leoni here.]
The ambiguity of the reparations debate is what I like most about that entire issue. Whether reparations ever get paid or not (I suspect that they won't), to the extent that national attention gets focused on this issue, we'll be talking about basic moral issues.
Any serious discussion of this issue will involve questions of duty and obligation, culpability, history, values, rights and wrongs. In short, it will be (finally!) a public debate worthy of a democratic nation. Whatever conclusions we reach, either individually or as a nation, it seems likely that we will be better for having thought about these matters in depth
--Thrasymachus
(To reply, click here.)
The CD-ROM thing is scary. How's Bloomberg going to top it? Will he try to make his hologram appear in all our living rooms?
--Claude Scales
(To reply, click here.)
(8/28)
Didn't it ever bother anybody else that the Weathermen took their name from a line in "Subterranean Homesick Blues" that implied that a weatherman is superfluous under the circumstances? Is this part and parcel of the Marxist-v.-Leninist- historical-determinist conundrum? (i.e., that if historical/economic forces are pushing toward an inevitable result, why do they need me to help them along? As it is sometimes put, if Marx didn't exist, it would be unnecessary to invent him.) That felt good--somebody call me a jackal, it really brings me back...
--Ex-Fed
(To reply, click here.)
I happened to walk by the site of the Village explosion the morning of the event. The exposed apartments, with their wall clocks and tables precariously clinging to the ordinary around the gaping proof of anti-civic rage; the apartments seemed like a stage set for some kind of apocalyptic Beckett drama. The scene was mute, webbed with the yellow crime scene tapes of the municipal police. A mix of fear and curiosity animated the passers-by. I stood and stared, hearing the news in bits and pieces. Suddenly I noticed a sign, hand lettered, pinned to the police sawhorse. I looked closer and saw a few others, same hand, same posting method. In repeated, and therefore intentional orthography, the phrase "nothning is free" was scrawled in black marker on typing paper.
The phrase burned itself into my subconscious. I have never seen it since, nor heard it mentioned in the context of the Weathermen or other underground groups.
Nothning is free. Even if it has escaped justice. Especially if it has escaped justice.
--Zeitguy
(To reply, click here.)
(8/31)
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Reader Comments From The Fray:
[Notes from the Fray Editor: Reparations and museums were the hot topics here. There was news from Tony Adragna that there is an African-American museum in DC. Elusive Fray poster Amyntas started a splendid discussion on reparations and taxcuts here, featuring posts titled "A nonsensical argument" and "Typical disingenuous twaddle." A high moral tone, and criticism of young women, were the common themes in two posts: a most unusual view on the Chandra Levy affair, here, and one on Tea Leoni here.]
The ambiguity of the reparations debate is what I like most about that entire issue. Whether reparations ever get paid or not (I suspect that they won't), to the extent that national attention gets focused on this issue, we'll be talking about basic moral issues.
Any serious discussion of this issue will involve questions of duty and obligation, culpability, history, values, rights and wrongs. In short, it will be (finally!) a public debate worthy of a democratic nation. Whatever conclusions we reach, either individually or as a nation, it seems likely that we will be better for having thought about these matters in depth
--Thrasymachus
(To reply, click here.)
The CD-ROM thing is scary. How's Bloomberg going to top it? Will he try to make his hologram appear in all our living rooms?
--Claude Scales
(To reply, click here.)
(8/28)
Didn't it ever bother anybody else that the Weathermen took their name from a line in "Subterranean Homesick Blues" that implied that a weatherman is superfluous under the circumstances? Is this part and parcel of the Marxist-v.-Leninist- historical-determinist conundrum? (i.e., that if historical/economic forces are pushing toward an inevitable result, why do they need me to help them along? As it is sometimes put, if Marx didn't exist, it would be unnecessary to invent him.) That felt good--somebody call me a jackal, it really brings me back...
--Ex-Fed
(To reply, click here.)
I happened to walk by the site of the Village explosion the morning of the event. The exposed apartments, with their wall clocks and tables precariously clinging to the ordinary around the gaping proof of anti-civic rage; the apartments seemed like a stage set for some kind of apocalyptic Beckett drama. The scene was mute, webbed with the yellow crime scene tapes of the municipal police. A mix of fear and curiosity animated the passers-by. I stood and stared, hearing the news in bits and pieces. Suddenly I noticed a sign, hand lettered, pinned to the police sawhorse. I looked closer and saw a few others, same hand, same posting method. In repeated, and therefore intentional orthography, the phrase "nothning is free" was scrawled in black marker on typing paper.
The phrase burned itself into my subconscious. I have never seen it since, nor heard it mentioned in the context of the Weathermen or other underground groups.
Nothning is free. Even if it has escaped justice. Especially if it has escaped justice.
--Zeitguy
(To reply, click here.)
(8/31)