Posted on 11/18/2013 9:13:31 AM PST by Nextrush
The test pattern was usually preceded by The Star Spangled Banner.
We had a black-and-white Packard Bell that blew tubes bi-monthly. It had a clunky remote control connected by a clunky cable to the tuner. We have come a long way electronically. Politically, we have come a long way too, down hill.
Not a hero, but any way you slice it, JFK has to be preferred to the disaster who is the Obamanation.
“The hundreds yea thousands of channels or video options we can see today were but a dream.”
and there’s still nothing on.
Video of all three networks’ coverage is here:
http://dvp-video-audio-archive.blogspot.com/2012/03/index.html
Judge for yourself.
And, no, this isn’t my blog.
I don’t have a blog.
President Kennedy could hardly be mistaken for Hubert Humphrey concerning civil rights. Soft on communism? Kennedy was considered a redhot cold warrior. Maybe the Texans really didn’t dislike him so.
Newton Minow is still around, and he and his kids have ties to Obama. He may be one of the last of those characters who seemed to hover around the White House decade after decade whenever a Democrat was there.
I’m telling you what I observed as someone who actually lived during the time in North Central Louisiana, and kept up with the news.
I was ten in 1950 and thirteen in 1963, but I read newspapers, news magazines, and watched network and local news.
Had he lived, the five states that went for Goldwater over LBJ would have gone for Goldwater over JFK, and quite a few more, Texas included. After all, that was Kennedy’s purpose in going to Texas in November of 1963 - it was a CAMPAIGN trip.
That’s my opinion, and I’m sticking to it.
Indeed, Minnow is still around. A Central Planner from the old school.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_N._Minow
Chiefly because they saw him as soft on communism. Some thought he was a socialist, bent on taking the US down the "Fabian Freeway," but it was mostly that he was seen as weak and squishy and easy to push around in foreign affairs. Also, there was intense regional hostility. Kennedy was an Easterner with all those Harvard advisers, rather than a Western cowboy or man of the people.
It's hard to recover exactly what people did and didn't think then. The temptation is to translate it into terms that have currency now --"elitist," "wimp," etc. -- but that may not have been in the air then. But here's a sample:
In October, 1961, Ted Dealey, right wing publisher of the Dallas Morning News, angrily insulted President John F. Kennedy, whom he considered soft on Communism. "We can annihilate Russia and should make that clear to the Soviet government. The general opinion of the grass-roots thinking in this country is that you and your administration are weak sisters. We need a man on horseback to lead this nation, and many people in Texas and the Southwest think that you are riding Caroline's tricycle."
Dealey, whose father the famous plaza had been named after, actually had earned a philosophy degree from Harvard 50 years before and had been a crusader against the Klan in the 1920s.
There was definitely something regional and something age-related going on. The Catholic-Protestant thing may have been in the background. I'm not sure race or civil rights was a factor in Dallas (as it most likely was in other parts of the state and the country), except in so far as people like Dealey saw that as part of the whole Communist thing and Kennedy as weak in that area as well.
The Civil Rights issue was definitely a factor in the Deep South States. LBJ was only able to pass the Civil Rights Act because of the martyrdom of JFK.
It never would have passed had JFK remained President.
Again, IMO.
Funny how the memories of youth work. The other day talked to a guy who was 8 and remembered missing “Gilligan’s Island” because of the assasination coverage ... told him I don’t think that was on yet (1964). Then, your post about “I Dream of Jeannie”, which began 2 years later in 1965.
- zig
Well, running for statewide office as a Republican was a fool’s errand. Federal was a different story as there were breakthroughs, as Republican John Tower won LBJ’s Senate seat in 1961 over Tory Democrat Dollar Bill Blakley and GOPer Bruce Alger had been the Dallas County Congressman since 1955 (but lost a decade later in the wake of the assassination when he was explicitly targeted for defeat and blamed for “fomenting right-wing hate” against JFK there).
And you pay someone a lot of money to get all that nothing.....
Yes, that's it!
bump
tis a sad addiction, yes. Actually I do pony up a small extra to get a limited array of channels but I hooked up mainly to get hi speed internet
As recently as Jan. 2, 2000, that had always been the case wherever I lived (I was 38 at the time). The only exceptions being in my dormitory (and later my off-campus residence) when I was in college. On the aforementioned date, we activated our DirecTV (a Christmas gift to my mom and stepdad from from his offspring and I).
ff
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