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There was an outspoken cultural critic and journalist active in Vienna early in the 20th century named Karl Krause, who William Getzoff of the Chicago Literary Club presented an insightful essay this past Monday. Krause was also known then as a powerful satirist and aphorist.
He could have been writing about President Trump today, when he said:
“The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so that they believe they are as clever as he.”
Ring any bells?
Robert Todd Lincoln was Abraham’s eldest son, and was incredibly successful as a Chicago lawyer and businessman (Chair of Pullman) in his own right. But he stayed away from politics like the plage, as I describe in my essay “Dodging the Shadow of Greatness,” in my new book of essays presented before the Chicago Literary Club, “Apple Pressings,” now available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Booklocker.com.
But Bob Lincoln, as his friends called him, had the heart of a political leader, as evidenced by his speech at the anniversary of the Lincoln/Douglas debate:
He said, “In our country, there are no ruling classes. The right to direct public affairs according to the might and influence and conscience belongs to the humblest as well as the greatest. The elections represent the judgments of individual voters. ..the power of the people.. by their judgments expressed through the ballot box, to shape their own destinies, sometimes makes one tremble.
“But it is in times of danger, critical moments, that brings into action the high national quality of the citizenship of America. The people are always true. They are always right., and I have an abiding faith they will remain so. ”
Let’s hope this carries forward in the coming elections.
Interesting to see some background on top associates of the Trump White House, as reported in Craig Unger’s new book, “House of Trump. House of Putin.”
“By the 80s, attorney Patrick “Paddy” McGahn had become the new boss of Atlantic City, and with his brother state legislator Joseph McGahn, brought legalized gambling and Donald Trump to New Jersey. Trump, it turned out, was lucky to have them on his side.
“One of the first problems Trump encountered was that part of the land he wanted was owned by Salvatore “Salvie” Testa and Frank Narducci, Jr., two mafia hit men who worked for Atlantic City mob boss Nicodemo “Little Nicky” Scarfo and were known as the Young Executioners.
“Some of Trump’s acquaintances who were close to individuals associated with the New Jersey mafia proved to be valuable allies in the future. Dan McGahn, the nephew of both Paddy and Joseph Mcgahn, later became White House counsel to the Trump Administration. In addition, White House counselor Kelly-Anne Conway, who also served as Trump’s campaign manager, is the grand daughter of Jimmy “the Brute” DiNatale, an associate of LIttle Nicky Scarfo.”
The current falderall over laxity in White House security clearances for the President’s son-in-law, private secretary and speech writer make sense, because we can’t have people who are handling some of the most secretive and sensitive information of our nation being subject to blackmail or other pressure because of undisclosed weaknesses in their background or character. That is why our government has security clearances in the first place. And it is also why it is inconceivable that exceptions have been made at the highest level of that government.
I had a personal experience with security clearance when I was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Army just over 50 years ago. I went straight from college graduation into a 10-month Army training program to become an officer, and was immediately assigned to be a staff officer at the headquarters of the Army War College in bucolic Carlisle, Pennsylvania. A couple of months into service there, an Army security agency officer from D.C. showed up to interview me in conjunction with the Secret security clearance required for my posting.
It turned out that the security officer had attended high school with me, though we never had been friends. He had one concern. It turned out he found a record of a prank that my college roommate and I had been involved with several years before. He relished making me explain what was the very silly and unexplainable behavior that got us into trouble.
After the inquisition into a college prank, I got my Secret clearance, and went on as a staff officer at the military’s highest bastion of learning, and also became the public affairs officer for the Army’s nuclear emergency team for the American northeast, and later served as a public affairs officer in Vietnam and was awarded the Army Commendation Medal for similar service in Chicago.
My point is this: the Army took very seriously the investigation related to a low-level security clearance for a new second lieutenant, a half-century ago. And now we have this kurfluffel over repeated lax security investigations at the highest level in the Trump White House. What gives? How are we, the people, supposed to have confidence in our current government leadership, when these high-level people don’t seem to get a fraction of the security oversight given to the lowest level officer in the Army 50 years ago?
I remember when reality TV shows were a novelty — unscripted (we thought) stuff like a peephole into life being lived. Trump’s original “Apprentice” was a fascinating look at rigorous challenges in which bright, determined young people would compete for a wonderful job. But then it turned into “Celebrity Apprentice,” wherein B-class theatrical types would do bad jokes and stumble through silly so-called challenges to win money for their charities. We tuned out, not only those televised insults to our intelligence, but to most reality shows on TV in which the real question was: who is grosser, the second-fiddle participants themselves or the disgusting worms they at.
Unfortunately, the “Celebrity Apprentice” phase of reality TV continues with the Trump administration, with it’s B-class President in the starring role, surrounded by a motley B-class assortment of lingering relatives and political hanger-ons.
But the disturbing, really anguishing dichotomy is that the “reality” on stage is not the inconsequential frivolity of those lousy TV shows, but the all-too-real reality of America on the world’s stage. I want to turn off this show, because it is as repulsive as the “Celebrity Apprentice” was compared to the original “Apprentice.” But I can’t find a channel on TV, except maybe the old comedy and talk shows of the 80-s and 90s, where I can avoid the self-destructive bad humor of the Trump administration, especially the bumbling inarticulateness of our B-class President himself. I can handle the world, but this Presidency is just too much B-class reality.
THOMAS TASCHINGER: Hef was last of Big Three that changed pop culture
Published 6:10 am, Sunday, October 1, 2017
The death of Hugh Hefner last week closed a special chapter in modern American history. He was the final survivor of the trio that changed this country forever after World War II.
Prior to that conflict, this nation had millions of people who lived on farms, rarely traveled far from home and lived basic lives.
After the war, we emerged as a modern, industrialized giant that became the greatest superpower since the Roman Empire.
While all that was happening, Hef and two other men helped change our pop culture from what we were to what we are.
One of them was Ray Kroc, the only one on this list whose name is not instantly recognizable to many. He deserves better, since he changed the way we eat.
In 1954, after he lost his job as a milk shake mixer salesman, he joined a small California hamburger chain called McDonald’s. That company had purchased eight of his mixers for one of its restaurants, and he was impressed by its cleanliness and organization.
He thought the same concept could be expanded, changing roadside dining from spotty quality to something you could rely on. It wouldn’t be great food, but it would be good food. And fast.
Kroc’s vision changed eating, and eating out, in America. McDonald’s was followed by other chain restaurants, and almost overnight it was possible to get cheap, decent chow on the run. It blended well with our fast-paced, postwar outlook, especially because it was also inextricably linked with interstate highways.
They could be credited to the second member of this trio, Dwight David Eisenhower. It was said that he was impressed by the autobahn Adolph Hitler had constructed in Germany prior to starting World War II. Ironically, that of course is the same conflict that Ike ended in Europe.
Congress authorized construction of the system in 1956, also known as the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. The initial goal was to allow troops and trucks to move about quickly in time of war, just as in Germany. Civilian traffic, however, quickly overwhelmed it.
Getting from Point A to Point B became a lot easier. Going from one city to another no longer required the planning of a railway trip. You just got in your car and went. The postwar economy was booming, and almost everyone could afford the latest creation from Detroit.
And thanks to Ray Kroc and his copycats, you could easily grab a meal on the way.
Hugh Hefner grew up in the midst of these vast societal changes. He was also a World War II veteran, writing briefly for an Army newspaper. He is one of the last prominent members of that conflict to fade away.
In 1953, however, he was angry. Esquire magazine, where he worked as a copy editor, had denied him a $5 weekly raise. He quit in frustration and thought he’d try to publish his own magazine.
Whatever you think of Playboy, it changed Americans’ attitude toward sex. It was no longer reserved for married people, and vaguely distasteful. It was pleasurable, and singles could partake. In turn, people who had a new outlook on something so fundamental were open to other questions about what it means to be human.
Sure, eventually someone else would have caused these tectonic shifts in American life. But someone else didn’t. Kroc, Ike and Hef did. Now they are all gone.
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Thomas Taschinger, TTaschigner@BeaumontEnterprise.com, is the editorial page editor of The Beaumont Enterprise. Follow him on Twitter at @PoliticalTom
Trump last night said we would no longer be nation-building but killing terrorists in Afghanistan going forward. Oddly, several years ago I heard from a general departing to lead Americans in Afghanistan that we were failures at nation-building there, but good at killing.
Sorry folks. America has been trying to nation-build in Afghanistan for 16 years, and in Iraq (how did that go?) and in Vietnam before that (we know how that ended.) It has been about nation-building all along, and that has failed time after time. Despite what Trump said last night, it is still about nation-building in Afghanistan and Pakistan today.
Are we good at killing? Yes. Are we wasting another generation of young American troops in another fruitless war? Yes. Are we protecting the American way of life in the process? No. Are we wasting more billions, even trillions, that could be used to rebuild our own nation? Yes.
Are we learning anything? Yes. Are we doing anything useful with that learning? Absolutely not. Thanks Trump. The one time where one of your bad ideas — getting out of Afghanistan — might have been positive, you failed us again last night.
We visited Budapest several years ago, where the Hungarians took down the major statuary of the communist era and assembled it in a well-designed park outside the city in 1993. Marx, Lenin, Engels and the gang are gathered outside the city limits, where tourists and locals can find them, if they wish, but are not confronted with these symbols of a dark age, unless they wish to seek them out.
What America ought to do with the Confederate monuments being taken down is perhaps something like Memento Park in Budapest.
A journalist friend: Everyone has biases, but reporters and editors are supposed to check that at the door when they do their jobs. As a journalist, I am embarrassed by the actions, statements, editorializing etc. Of the mainstream news media. There has been a complete double standard of coverage on this president vs. The last one. The last one could do no wrong in the media’s eyes and the current one can do nothing right. That is a problem.
Comment from another friend:. Chuck needs more friends like you
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Charles Ebeling (Journalist above) is a friend, but we disagree. My long career in PR taught me that every media person has a personal bias. Some overcome that, and some don’t, and some use it as a moral compass for their journalism. Most are a bit of all three, to varying extents. I happen to agree with the weight of the current mainstream media regarding Trump, not because of their bias, but because of my own.
Chuck Todd of MSNBC closed his Sunday feature news program this morning by thanking the audience for watching his “show.” This grates me no end. To me, he is degrading an important news program by referring to it as a simple entertainment — a “show!”
Semantics matter, even in this world of reality TV and Trumpness.
A program implies, to me at least, something of importance. A show is just that, some Barnum & Bailey entertainment.
So, let’s call a spade a spade, and let’s call news by the name “programs,” and comedies, etc. “shows.” Such respect of semantics might help us begin to define the difference between the two terms in our contemporary lives, where, thanks to the one who calls himself “the President who is making America great again,” a meaningful “program” has often been denigrated to a mere “show.”
Apple Pressings 