Potent Potables

 

A. "Heh, heh, heh, heh, heh!"

"Grumble, grumble, grumble, grumble, grumble!"

"Hee, hee, hee, hee, hee!"

"Grouse, grouse, grouse, grouse, grouse!"

"Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!"

"Growl! Growl! Growl! Growl! Growl!"

"Har! Har! Har! Har!"--POW!

Q. What happened when the happy drunk and the mean drunk sat next to each other at the bar?

  

Suspicious Minds

Herbert Mitgang, who died this past November at 93, was an editor, journalist, non-fiction writer, novelist, playwright, and TV documentary producer. He was also a member of the New York State Bar. Man, does a law degree open up doors or what? I mean, it's not like a diploma from The Academy of Radio and Television Broadcasting gets you a seat on the Supreme Court ("Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commision"--right after this quick word from our sponsor!") I want to focus on Mitgang the non-fiction writer and a book he came out with in 1988.

J. Edgar Hoover was head of the FBI from 1924 until his death at 77 in 1972, a period which spanned both Republican and Democratic administrations. Among his self-appointed duties was keeping files on thousands of Americans, some of them prominent members of both Republicans and Democratic administrations. This is one guy who didn't lay awake at night worrying about losing his job. He also kept files on prominent writers, files that Mitgang managed to get a hold of through the Freedom of Information Act. Here's a page from Ernest Hemingway's file:

Well, I should hope that physical and mental illness would be considered a problem. Those of you familiar with Hemingway's prose style can only speculate on what drove him to seek psychiatric care. Was he having nightmares about adverbs? Was he beset by a sudden, inexplicable urge to turn a phrase? We may never know for sure. The FBI sure didn't. They didn't know a lot of things.  I had a remarkably easy time finding out who George Sevier may have been through Google. He was  Hemingway's family doctor back in Idaho. Except his last name was Saviers with an a and a second s. No wonder Hemingway was concerned about registering under an assumed name. He was afraid the G-Men would fuck up the spelling. Notice, too, that the document's lower right hand corner is stamped "crime research." Guess that makes him criminally insane! Whatever he was, Hemingway seemed rather conscious of the FBI. Imagine his conversation with the staff after checking into the Mayo Clinic:

HEMINGWAY: The FBI! They're after me, doc! Everyone says I'm stark raving mad! But I'm not! Why, I've never been that descriptive in my life! It's the feds, doc! You gotta do something, doc! You believe me, don't you, doc?!

ATTENDING PHYSICIAN: Of course I believe you, Mr. Hemingway, I mean, Saviers (nurse, prepare the sedative.) Now, how about signing this copy of For Whom the Bell Tolls? It's for my brother-in-law. He fought in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.

HEMINGWAY: The FBI is following my every move! They're everywhere, I tell you, everywhere!

NURSE: Gosh, I guess what they say is true about there being a thin line between creativity and madness!

FBI AGENT: How do you spell Sevier again?

In case you're wondering about the blacked-out sentences, decades after Hemingway's death, the FBI still felt they had to hide certain things, for fear of giving away Bureau methods and procedures (rumor has it that Special Agent Tolson, undercover as a candy stripe nurse, kept pestering the author about Alice B. Toklas. Meanwhile, another agent had questions for the attending physician concerning his brother-in-law.)

Hemingway eventually did receive electroshock therapy. He was released, and three months later...

You'll note the sub-headline calls it an accident, claiming he was cleaning a shotgun. That was just a cover story. As his wife later admitted, Hemingway committed suicide. Nobody was too surprised. After all, he was so delusional toward the end.

Speaking of delusions...

...here's some more tidbits gleaned from Hoover's files:

Dorothy Parker: Another suicidal writer, though one who ultimately died of natural causes ("Razors pain you/Rivers are damp/Acid stains you/And drugs cause cramp...") Parker thought Spain could do a lot better than Francisco Franco and said so. The FBI disagreed and kept her under surveillance for 25 years. They finally interviewed her in 1951, reporting she was "nervous." Well, duh! If two guys in trench coats and sunglasses showed up at your house, how calmly would you take it? Her file also said she dressed neatly. See? Those Algonquin Round Table types weren't so dissolute after all. Parker's file was said to be 900 pages long, with 100 held back. So what's in that 100? I'm told by a source that I can't reveal that Parker's celebrated quips went right over the agents heads ("whore to culture? Hmm...")

 

Norman Mailer: According to his file, he went on a talk show in 1960 and said there were only two religions left in America: the FBI and medical science. This understandably raised the ire of J. Edgar Hoover. As far as he was concerned, the FBI was the only religion left in America.

Rex Stout: In 1965, Stout came out with a new Nero Wolfe mystery titled the The Doorbell Rang. A wealthy matron (I've never known any that were described as impoverished) buys 10,000 copies of The FBI Nobody Knows by Fred J. Cook (a real book published in 1964) and sends them to influential people, including members of Congress. Now she finds her phones have been tapped, her friends and employees interviewed, and that she's being followed. She wisely skips the Mayo Clinic and instead contacts the corpulent shut-in detective Nero Wolfe, and his assistant Archie Goodwin, who does the actual legwork, and asks them to put a stop to all the harassment, which, being fictional, they're able to do. Unfortunately for Stout, he was as non-fictional as Cook's book, and had to undergo much the same grief as his made-up matron. However, he may have been harassed all the way to the bank as the already-popular writer's new mystery received much attention in the press. A mortified FBI referred all questions about the book to the Crime Records Divisions, before deciding some time later that Stout was "just a bearded beatnik looking for publicity." Crazy, man.

Dashiell Hammett: Widely acknowledged as the creator of the "hardboiled" detective story (as opposed to Agatha Christie, who was more sunny side up.) According to Raymond Chandler, Hammett "took murder out of the vicar's rose garden and gave it back to the people who were really good at it." However, the FBI at the time seemed less interested in murder, whether committed in a vicar's rose garden or elsewhere, than communism. Was Hammett a communist? Hard to say. If you google "Hammett" and "communist" you'll get any number of web sites, operated by both lefties and righties, that matter-of-factly assert that he was indeed a fellow traveler. Yet the FBI (or the Army, who also kept a file on Hammett after he re-joined the service during World War II) couldn't say for sure. The problem has to do with so-called "front" organizations. Hoover believed, or said he believed, that Russian spies were coming to our shores and taking advantage of our First Amendment by setting up groups like the League of American Writers or the Civil Rights Congress that lefty types like Hammett then joined, whether they (or the FBI, for that matter) knew for sure were independent of the Party or not. There's also the question of what exactly makes a communist a communist. Do you actually have to carry a card, or is it simply enough to agree with them? How does one distinguish a communist from a socialist. Or a syndicalist? Or a liberal? It's certainly doable, except the FBI didn't. You can always just restrict your definition of communism to some Russian governmental system where a dictator packs anyone off he doesn't like to a gulag in Siberia, if he doesn't "purge" them first. If the FBI had taken that definition and ran with it, that'd be fine by me. But, no, Hoover cared less about gulags and purges than egalitarianism, which some at the time felt, however naively, communism represented. Especially during the Great Depression, when the Party got what should have been recognized as a rather understandable increase in membership. As did all the front groups. If subversives were exploiting real problems like racism and poverty, what exactly was one supposed to do? Pretend such problems didn't exist, as Hoover would have preferred? Of course, you could have always settled for the Democratic Party (except the FBI kind of kept tabs on them, too.) As for Hammett, he spent a couple months in prison for refusing to tattle on fellow members of one of those front groups, which still didn't quite prove he was a communist. The FBI eventually came to the conclusion that he may have deliberately not joined the Communist Party--in order to do the Communist Party's bidding. In the end, Hammett proved as elusive as a jewel-encrusted bird painted black.

Here's an odd fact not in Mitgang's book that I came across just now. J Edgar Hoover opposed the Communist Control Act of 1954, which outlawed communism in the United States. His reasoning was that it would just drive communists underground. As well as further muddy the definition. Also, by this time, 1,500 of the 5000 member Communist Party USA were FBI informants, thus propping up the organization financially. Hoover didn't want all that money to go to waste. He had accountants to answer to, if no one else. The Act itself was something of a bust. After all, it just didn't ban communists who carried cards saying they were communists, but those who agreed with communists, too, except what constituted agreement was vague, intentionally vague, so as to cast the widest net possible, until law enforcement officers realized that they would have to arrest every person who had ever bitched about the wealthy, which was basically every person who wasn't wealthy themselves. The jails simply weren't big enough. In case you're wondering when this act was repealed or ruled unconstitutional, um, it wasn't. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if you're reading this and you're a communist, you're breaking the law.

The Manhattan headquarters of the outlawed Communist Party USA, just waiting to be raided.

Lillian Hellman: the famed playwright (and Dashiel Hammett's longtime girlfriend) once said, "I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions." The FBI would have preferred that she got them off the rack. Jane Fonda once played Hellman in a movie. Hoover was dead by then, but if word of the casting reached the hereafter, I can just hear him shouting "SEE? I TOLD YOU!"

Robert E. Sherwood: The Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright (Abe Lincoln in Illinois) was listed in his file as "prematurely anti-fascist", meaning he spoke out against Adolf Hitler prior to America's entry into World War II. Still, it's good to know there's an expiration date for that kind of thing.

Bill Mauldin: The Pulitzer Prize cartoonist first came to fame during the World War II with his popular "Willie and Joe" cartoons that appeared in the military newspaper Stars and Stripes, about two battle-weary infantrymen who crack wise as bullets whiz about them. After the war, Mauldin turned toward more traditional editorial cartoons, one of which criticized lynchings. I don't know that the FBI ever had a "prematurely pro-civil rights" designation, but Hoover disapproved. What happens in the South, he felt, should stay in the South.

Sinclair Lewis: The Nobel Prize-winning (we're moving up in terms of prizes, huh?) novelist once put out a book titled It Can't Happen Here about a dictator taking over the U.S. Hoover normally wouldn't have had a problem with that, except Lewis made it sound like a bad thing.

Alfred A. Knopf, Sr: The publisher contacted the FBI sometime in the 1930s to see if one of their agents could write a popular book on crime detection methods. Hoover, always looking for ways to publicize his bureau (gossip columnist Walter Winchell was a close friend) eagerly agreed to cooperate. Then he suddenly backed off, and opened a file on Knopf to boot. That Knopf was Dashiell Hammett's publisher may have been part of the problem. That's all right. Sam Spade had his own crime detection methods. 

Truman Capote: 200 pages in his file, many of them blacked out, though the phrase "Truman Capote supports the revolution" stands out. Presumably the revolution in Cuba that brought the Castro boys to power. Why should the ostensibly effete author of Breakfast at Tiffany's care about that? As Mitgang writes, Capote was "more of a social than a political activist." Except that social activism ultimately took the form of salacious gossip. In 1975 and '76 Esquire published four stories by Capote that were actually chapters in an upcoming (and, as far as anyone knows, uncompleted) novel called Answered Prayers, which dished the dirt on his rich and famous friends. Or, rather, fictional characters based on his rich and famous friends. If you weren't invited to the Black-and-White Ball, you probably wouldn't know who the hell he was talking about. However, they knew. When it came to character defamation, Capote made Hoover look like Oprah Winfrey. He said who was sleeping with who, and, in the case of one network executive, who was cleaning up after who. After these stories were published, you can bet the invitations to black tie dinners stopped coming. People have long wondered why Capote turned on his jet set pals. Now that his FBI files reveal him to be a subversive at heart, we may finally have a clue. Could it be that Answered Prayers was in fact an attack on capitalism, Truman Capote's own Communist Manifesto? If so, it's a much more entertaining read than anything Marx and Engels have to offer. Hustlers of the world, unite!

Allen Ginsberg: He saw the best G-men of his generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical trench coated, dragging themselves through the literati streets as dawn looking for the angry gotcha.

So, that's what the FBI was up to back in the day. All the files I mentioned are now declassified (except for the blacked-out parts) and available online. As I said before, some are hundreds of pages long, and, given the agents stilted writing style, not always easy to read. You may prefer Herbert Mitgang's more concise summaries. Except that Dangerous Dossiers came out a quarter of a century ago, and I don't know that it's still in print.

Maybe someone at the the NSA can lend you a copy.

 

 

 

In the Nick of Time

The 4th-century Bishop of Myra, in Lycia, in Asia Minor, would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas!

 

 

People are always trying to figure this guy out.

Graphic Grandeur (In Memoriam Edition)

The November that just passed was not a good one for cartoonists. We've lost two, both of whom worked primarily for DC Comics during the Silver Age (1956-1970), so expect to see a lot of superheroes in this post. Now, I know some of you may not like reading about superheroes. I'm cool with that. You can just look at superheroes instead. After all, it's a visual medium we're talking about here. Anyway, each artist drew in what's called a "house style", as opposed to the kind of signature style you'd expect from a Jack Kirby or Todd McFarlane, and thus they were perhaps more craftsmen than artistes. Very good craftsmen, as you shall see.

Nick Cardy 1920-2013

Nick Cardy actually started out as a Golden Age (1938-1950) artist, working at Eisner & Iger, a kind of free-lance studio that  provided art and stories for various comic book publishers in the early days of the medium. They're best known for the The Spirit Section, a comic book-like supplement that ran in Sunday newspapers. This supplement concerned itself chiefly with a character called The Spirit, hence the title, but had backup features as well, including one about a crime fighting socialite named Lady Luck. Cardy didn't create the character, but certainly improved it. The thing that stands out most in Cardy's work was his knack for drawing beautiful, sexy women, and he's now seen as a rival of sorts to John Romita Sr., who drew his own memorable females for Marvel Comics in the 1960s. If you're wondering who "Ford Davis" is, that's the house pseudonym, used no matter who was drawing or writing the strip (boy, they had a house-everything back in those days!)

Cardy was drafted during World War Two, where he earned two Purple Hearts for injuries suffered as a tank driver in Europe while with the Third Armoured Division. Before all that, though, and while still serving stateside, he won a competition to draw a logo for the 66th Infantry Division. No word on whether Huey Newton or Bobby Seale also served in this division.

After returning home from the war, Cardy worked in advertising for a while, and then got a job drawing the daily black-and-white Tarzan comic strip for a couple of years in the 1950s, while Burne Hogarth continued with the Sundays. Hogarth was already something of a legend at that point, so for Cardy to have his work appear in conjunction with the more established artist was quite an honor. As far as I know, nobody ever complained about a drop in quality from Monday through Saturday.

Around the same time, Cardy started his long tenure at DC Comics. His first book was Gangbusters, based on a popular radio show. Notice how the program's characters were described as "coast to coast favorites." That everyone in the country could listen to the same show at the same time was still considered quite amazing.

 Tomahawk was a frontier spy during the Revolutionary War, Dan Hunter his juvenile sidekick. Don't worry, Dan. I can't find any record of this marriage lasting beyond this particular issue.

The waterlogged superhero Aquaman was Cardy's best known character.

"Ramona Fradon had been drawing the character but was moving on for some reason. I remember being in [editor] Murray's [Boltinoff] office with Ramona during the transition. ... Anyway, they must have liked my work because when the character got his own series, they made me the artist".

Cardy drew the first 39 issues (1962-1963) and all the covers until 1971.

 I hope Aquaman knows a thing or two about bankruptcy court.

Yessiree, look at Aquastud sow his wild oats (or seaweed.) And to think there's some online speculation he's gay! (Of course, these covers ARE pre-Stonewall.)

Enough of Aquaman already. Wonder Girl (Diana Prince's kid sister) gets a makeover, much to the amazement of Robin and friends.

"Not now, darling. I'm trying to kill someone."

I've already compared Cardy to John Romita Jr. Like his Marvel counterpart, he was in great demand as a romance artist.

If not for the downcast expression, she could pass for Romita's Mary Jane Watson (Spider-Man's girlfriend.)

Is it any wonder "love" means zero in tennis?

Al Plastino 1921-2013

I said before that Nick Cardy drew in DC's house style, but an argument can be made that his work became more individualistic and recognizable (a well as a bit psychedelic) as time went on. Al Plastino, however, was a true chameleon who could disappear in another artist's style to a startling degree. Just you wait and see.

An early stint with a now-forgotten superhero. Actually, there's two 1940s comic book characters with this name, both androids. So whoever came up with the second version probably hoped everyone would forget the first one, which happened to be Plastino's.

Once settled in at DC, Plastino worked with the most famous superhero of them all. Never as the primary artist, though, but as backup to Wayne Boring and, later, Curt Swan, both of whose styles he successfully mimicked.

Primary artist or not, Plastino did get to create supervillian Brainiac, who shrunk and stole the Kryptonian city of Kandor and all its citizens before the planet exploded, actually saving a lot of lives when you think about it, though he never got credit for that.

Back in the day, a superhero was no match for a crooner.

Teen idol.

Superboy travels to the future and gets blackballed. Apparently, superpowers are a dime a dozen in the 30th century. Plastino co-created the Legion with legendary comic book writer Otto Binder. Ironically, Binder got his start writing for Captain Marvel, whom DC sued out of existence. So Binder simply brought his whimsical approach over to the legal victors. 

Another Binder/Plastino creation. I wonder what the citizens of Metropolis thought when they first saw her fly over their fair city?

"Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird...it's a plane...it's Superma--hmm, he looks like he lost some weight, and is that a skirt he's wearing?"

Remember what I said at the beginning of this post about Jack Kirby having a signature style? In the early 1970s, DC managed to lure him over from Marvel, hoping he'd perk things up some, but when they took one look at penciller Kirby's version of Superman... 

...they had inker Plastino redraw his head in a non-signature style as possible.

Probably the most noteworthy bit of art ever to come from Plastino's pen. Originally done in cooperation with the Kennedy White House, it was withheld, redrawn some, and then released after JFK's death. In this story, the President instructs Superman to get those missiles out of Cuba...no, no, actually, the  Man of Steel takes part in a physical fitness campaign. Not his physical fitness, of course--who needs exercise when your powers are fueled by a yellow sun?--but the nation's. This story has been the subject of a recent controversy, one having nothing to do with single bullets or grassy knolls. For years it was assumed the original art had been donated to the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library in Boston. Instead, it turned up a couple of months ago at some auction house in, of all places, Dallas. Right before he died, Plastino was taking legal action to get it back, claiming "creators rights". I would normally applaud such an action, and I rather not have this art sold to the highest  bidder, but it should be noted that Plastino himself once almost got in the way of another creator's rights, and wait until you see who! 

The above, as you might expect, was drawn by Charles M. Schulz. What you might NOT expect is the Al Plastino-drawn Peanuts strips below, which were never published, and remained unseen until the Internet came along. What accounts for their existence? Stories vary. One is that in the early 1980s, after Schulz had suffered a heart attack, his syndicate United Features (now United Media) asked Plastino to draw up a bunch of strips, just in case the recovery wasn't speedy enough. Another, more diabolical explanation is that these strips are from about five years earlier, when an uncharacteristically obstinate and demanding Schulz was renegotiating his contract with the strip's legal owners, United Features, who were now actually considering replacing the cartoonist. The two sides eventually came to an agreement, and seeing as Schulz died a millionaire many times over, I'd say the terms were probably in his favor.

I've gone outside my allotted space because I want you to get a good look at this. See what I mean by true chameleon? Plastino's got Schulz's line work and lettering down pat. Charlie Brown and Lucy look pretty good, too. What gives the charade away (other than Plastino's own signature) is Snoopy. His head is much too big. That might be an apt description of his personality, but it's not the way Schulz drew it. Actually, Snoopy on a whole is a little outsized. He's supposed to be a beagle, not a St. Bernard!

I don't know if Plastino or someone else wrote these strips, but they lack Schulz's nuanced approach. I guess the middle one is the funniest (or least unfunny) of the three, but it's more something you'd expect more from Ernie Bushmiller than Charles Schulz.

And speaking of Ernie Bushmiller...

Plastino worked on Nancy, too, and this time got the heads just right.

  

In Memoriam: Nelson Mandela 1918-2013

Political activist. African National Congress leader. World-Famous Political Prisoner. President of South Africa.

I had the honor to meet Nelson Mandela, and I heard him explain his forgiveness of his captors of 27 years by saying hatred and bitterness is destructive--the power is in love and forgiveness.

--Dick Gephardt, former U.S. congressman. 

Humanity has lost a tireless fighter for peace, freedom, and equality.

-- Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto

One individual can begin a movement that turns the tide of history. Martin Luther King in the civil rights movement, Mohandas [Mahatma] Gandhi in India, Nelson Mandela in South Africa are examples of people standing up with courage and non-violence to bring about needed changes.

--Jack Canfield, best-selling author of Chicken Soup for the Soul.

In the next couple days, you're likely to see a lot of quotes about the late South African freedom fighter with words such as "peace"  and "nonviolence" in them. Nelson Mandela, however, was no Gandhi, at least not in the years leading up to his arrest and decades-long imprisonment. At the time he was a co-founder and leading light of a faction within the African National Congress called Umkhonto we Sizwe ("Spear of the Nation") or MK for short, which was dedicated to the violent overthrow of South Africa's white apartheid government.

If you're not familiar with apartheid, it was a system in which the black majority (as well as others termed "coloureds") was kept separated from the white minority, usually in the more arid and economically underdeveloped parts of the country called "homelands", where they received inferior government services, such as schooling. Blacks were only allowed to enter the pleasantly tropical white areas if they had menial jobs to perform. In a way it was just the usual contrast between the haves and have-nots that you find in most countries, including the U.S., but with one importance difference. This contrast had the force of law behind it. Pulling oneself up by the bootstrap, winning the lottery, or being named in a rich uncle's will were simply not options for the have-nots. The only upward mobility was if the well that you drew your untreated water from happened to be on top of a hill. 

As I said, Nelson Mandela and his MK cohorts hoped to change all that with armed force. Unfortunately, the white government had bigger, more powerful guns. So the freedom fighters resorted to asymmetrical warfare. They blew a lot of things up, scaring the hell out of white people. In due time, this did lead to acts of terrorism in which civilians were killed, but Mandela himself was arrested before any blood could be found on his hands. Would they have remained blood-free had he not been caught? We'll never know for sure, but his life sentence did deter him from doing anything that might have compromised his future reputation as a nonviolent peacemaker.

Nelson Mandela didn't create and wasn't even the most important person in the anti-apartheid movement before he went to prison in 1964, but he had been a rising star. Now the government wanted to extinguish that star, hoping people would forget about him. That didn't happen. The memory of him grew, and, as he was locked up for 27 years, his place of residence is what he became best known for. Blacks, and maybe even some whites, wondered about him. Had he been beaten? Literally beaten? Was he beaten? Figuratively beaten? Did he know what was going on outside? Did he care what was going on outside? Was he even still alive? They would say if he died, wouldn't they? It was years before any of those questions were answered. A mystique grew up around him. His forced retreat from public life had now ironically put him more in the public eye than ever. He became a legendary, almost mythic figure, and a living symbol of the anti-apartheid movement, which he had not been before his sentencing.

As a living symbol, he did have some competition from time to time. There was Steve Biko, who coined the term "Black is Beautiful". In 1977, he was interrogated to death by the Port Elizabeth police, and became a martyr for the cause. Admirable perhaps, but it also meant he wasn't coming back. Mandela always could. Later there was Desmond Tutu, who won a Nobel. Finally, there was the wife he left behind, Winnie Mandela, who became even more militant as time went on (she once advocated "necklacing", the practice of sticking an inner tube filled with gasoline around an enemy's shoulders and arms, and then striking it with a match; it gave a whole new meaning, if not a NASCAR trophy, to the term "burnin' rubber.")

Still it all came back to Nelson Mandela, who had yet to come back. And it wasn't just South Africans who were kept waiting. You may have thought it was too glib of me when I called Mandela a world-famous political prisoner at the top of this post, but that's exactly what he became. How far did his fame spread? All the way to what at the time was the very heart of American popular culture: The Cosby Show. Cliff and Claire's daughter gave birth to boy and girl twins named Nelson and Winnie. During sweeps yet!

Back in South Africa, the effects of apartheid and  the efforts to quell the uprisings against it had contaminated the entire country. Postpone a civil liberty here, abridge a freedom there, censure this, ban that, and, before you knew it, even WHITE PEOPLE were living under martial law. International banks stopped lending money to South Africa, and country after country drew up sanctions against it. One western nation did remain on good terms almost to the very end. I'll give you a hint. The country has in a harbor this giant statue of a woman holding a torch, kind of like what you see at the beginning of a Three Stooges short.

The new president of South Africa, F. W. de Klerk, normally a very conservative fellow, saw the situation as untenable, and decided to release Mandela, in the hope that it would calm things down. He also hoped it would demythologize the now 70-year old prisoner, that he would be somewhat diminished once people got a good look at him.

Nelson Mandela walked out of prison on February 11, 1990. He was much thinner, much more frail, then the burly former boxer who went in 27 years earlier. Prison had been hard on him. There had indeed been beatings in the early years, and several illnesses since then, including a recent bout of tuberculous. In other ways, he wasn't diminished at all. His serene manner and beatific smile (both of which belied an intelligent, calculating mind) in time would enhance his mythology, and electrify a world then in the earliest stages of the 24-hour news cycle. Mandel visited America, and, like any celebrity, did the talk show circuit. He left Ted Koeppel speechless. He spoke before both houses of Congress, flanked  by Speaker of the House Tom Foley, and Senator pro tempore (and former Klansman) Robert Bryd. He was invited to the Bush White House, which now supported the elimination of apartheid. Back home in South Africa he went from being a symbolic to an actual head of the African National Congress. It was around this time I first read comparisons--made by people who lived outside of South Africa but were mesmerized by the man's charisma--of Mandela to Gandhi, who preached nonviolence.

However, Mandela never publicly repudiated the use of violence, though he did say it should be purely defensive. A reasonable enough stance, perhaps, but it knocks him out of Gandhi's league. An aggravating factor in all this was a rival group that had cropped up called the Inkatha Freedom Party. Though, or perhaps because, both groups wanted the same thing, they sometimes spent more time inflicting harm to each other than their white opposition. Those were bloody days indeed.

Fortunately, such days passed. Even if he refused to come right out and say it, by most accounts Mandela genuinely wanted South Africa's political transformation to be a peaceful one. Such nonviolent forms of opposition as nationwide strikes--turns out there were quite a lot of menial jobs that needed to be performed--soon got de Klerk and Mandela sitting opposite each other at the negotiation table, earning both men the Nobel Peace Prize. All-race elections were held, and Mandela became South Africa's first black president.

If Mandela was no Gandhi, as President he was no Robespierre, either. Wishing to avoid a post-apartheid Reign of Terror, he established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which investigated abuses by both the former white government AND the ANC, relying on individual amnesties in order to do so. One of the persons who didn't fare all that well was Winnie Mandela, accused, and later convicted (with a suspended sentence) of orchestrating the death of a township youth she suspected of being an informer. Nelson and Winnie eventually divorced (shhh--don't tell the Huxtables.)

Though some have suspected, and others have downright accused, Nelson Mandela of being a Bolshevik at heart, there was no confiscation of property. While he did introduce some modest forms of progressive taxation, the rich remained rich, and they repaid that favor by not taking their capital out of the country.

Mandela was president for a single four-year term. While he couldn't solve a lot of the country's many problems, such as crime or AIDS,  neither did he run it into the ground. Though plenty of whites fled the country following the end of apartheid, it seems many more have decided to stick it out (statistics vary.) Or, if you will, look at that OTHER African country that used to have apartheid, Zimbabwe, formally called Rhodesia. There but for the grace of Mandela could've gone South Africa.

By putting Nelson Mandela in prison, where he had time to think, reflect, and, I suspect, strategize, the white apartheid government inadvertently turned him into Mahatma Gandhi, or as close to Gandhi as he would ever likely get, thus dooming their whole immoral system.

Some beating they gave him, huh?

     

  

 

Random Thoughts About a Random Act of Violence

(Originally posted on February 4, 2009. I've added a few things--KJ)

Sometimes I wake up in the morning and think Oswald acted alone.

Other times I wake up and think that it was either the CIA, the FBI, the Mafia, the military-industrial complex, or some combination thereof.

Then there are the times I wake up in the morning and wonder:

Why the hell am I thinking about the Kennedy assassination? Don't I got enough problems in my life?

The President and the First Lady arrive in "Big D".

Here's a birds-eye view of Dealey Plaza. Maybe someone should have shown this picture to Kennedy before he decided to drive right through it with the top down. He would have taken one look and thought: Snipers Alley.

The Texas School Book Depository Building, where the Dallas police, the FBI, and a committee headed by a Supreme Court Justice best known for taking prayer out of school (which I don't have a problem with; remembering all the words to the Pledge of Allegiance was difficult enough) claim the one and only shooter shot from. A couple of thoughts. Were all the school books in Texas really warehoused in that one building? Doesn't look big enough to me. And what's with the Hertz sign? Is it on the building, or is it poking up behind it? I can imagine immediately after the shots were fired, a bystander pointing up to the building, and another bystander saying, "This is no time to be thinking of renting a car!"

 The building these days houses county administrated offices. The sixth floor (where Oswald allegedly fired from) is now a museum. The whole structure has been designated a Recorded Texas Designated Landmark.

More landmarks to come, designated or otherwise.

They've put an X on the exact spot Kennedy's limo was when it was hit. As you can see, it's now a tourist attraction. Just don't have your picture taken during rush hour, or you'll end up at Parkland Hospital.

Lee Harvey Oswald, the man thought by the Dallas police, the FBI, and the committee which had as one of its members a future president best known for pardoning the one that came right before him (thus ending "our long national nightmare"--ya think sitting on this committee he'd have some idea what a national nightmare is actually like) as the one and only gunman. Kind of a blurry picture, huh? If I wasn't for the rifle, I'd say he was posing for his driver's license (then again, this is Texas.)

Here's an even blurrier picture of Oswald from his days in the Marine Corp. That's him in the back, possibly in the kitchen, as he was on mess duty that day. That big dude sitting at the table is none other than screen legend John Wayne. He was filming The Barbarian and the Geisha in Japan and decided to make a quick visit to the Philippines, where Oswald was stationed. I know it's weird seeing the two of them in the same picture, but they had something in common. Like Wayne, Oswald was a main character in a violent Western, though his was for real, and for keeps.  

Of course, not everyone agrees that Oswald acted alone. Some feel that he either had an accomplice, or was completely innocent. They also think that some of the shots, maybe all of them, came not from the School Book Depository Building, but from an area across the street known as the "grassy knoll". A policeman is seen running in that direction, proof positive to some of a conspiracy. Too bad that cop, and several others who checked the knoll out, came up empty-handed. 

These days, the Grassy Knoll is NOT a Recorded Texas Designated Landmark. Nor is it a museum. However, there seems to be a concerted effort under way to change that.

Why exactly is it called a Grassy Knoll, anyway? Sure, there's grass, but what about all those big ass trees? Why not call it the Shady Knoll?

Texas Governor John Connally almost literally had a front row seat to history. He probably wished he hadn't. 

Abraham Zapruder. I always thought that name sounded like something out of a 1930s Universal horror film. Instead, he shot his own 1960s Dallas horror film, albeit unintentionally. I also find it amazing that of the 500 or so cameras--both still and moving--directed at the President's motorcade that day, he and only he recorded the actual murder. As valuble as this was to history, it proved to be a bit of a pain in the ass to the Warren Commission. It all should have been so simple. Oswald fired three shots. Three bullets went whizzing through the air. Kennedy gets hit first, then John Connally, and, finally, Kennedy again. 1-2-3. Like I said, simple. Until you view the Zapruder film. Here's the problem: the rifle left behind at the Book Depository Building (talk about leaving incriminating evidence) required 2.3 seconds between shots, about 1.3 seconds too many, and about 18 frames of film too few. Thus, the Single-Bullet Theory was born. What went through JFK ended up in Connally. It's also called by skeptics the Magic Bullet theory, due to the zigzagging trajectory the bullet would have traveled. Don't look to me for answers. I don't even understand the trajectory of Windex spray when it gets toward the bottom of the bottle. As for the shot that tore off part of Kennedy's head, everyone agrees that was a whole 'nother bullet. They just disagree whether it was the second shot, the third shot, the fourth shot, the fifth shot, the sixth shot, the seventh shot...

Outside Parkland Hospital. 

Officer J. D. Tippit, the other man shot and killed by Oswald that day. Unless you believe it's a conspiracy. In which case, I must ask: What in the world did the CIA, the FBI, the Mafia, the military-industrial complex, or some combination thereof have against Tippit? Did he once give J. Edgar Hoover a ticket for loitering?

Tippit's family. Though he may seem to be just an unlucky footnote to the day's events, he did have his own life, his own concerns

That's Lady Bird Johnson peeking out from behind the raised hand. See her?

Strip club owner Jack Ruby, with one of his employees.

A seemingly balder Jack Ruby (it's just the light, folks) wanders around a busy Dallas police station the night of the assassination. Ruby cultivated friendship with cops, so nobody was surprised to see him there.

Two days later, they were very surprised to see him there. Ruby reportedly felt sorry for Kennedy's widow.

Sometimes widows beget widows. 

Johnny, we hardly knew ye, either. 

Had John Fitzgerald Kennedy lived, he would have been 96 today. Really, though, he probably wouldn't be alive today under any circumstance. He was a sickly child, suffered crippling back pain due to an injury suffered during World War II, and had Addison's disease, all of which was carefully hidden from the cameras, ensuring a now eternal image of youth and vigor.

I was born in the final month of 1961. Though the assassination occurred during my lifetime, I was hardly aware of it at the time. I doubt if I was aware of The Flintstones at the time. Yet it was talked about quite a bit when I was growing up, both by people on TV, and by ordinary folks, my parents or whoever. So much so, I sometimes forget I have no direct memory of the event. I've always been fascinated by it. Hence, this post.

What about all the people born since 1963? There's a lot of them, and some could even be called middle-aged. They have no direct memory of the assassination, either. What was a shocking and tragic day for one generation, is merely a bit of history to another. Yet it all evens out in the end.

Some of those born after 1963 had a shocking and tragic day all their own.