Monday, January 2, 2017

reasons, and anti-reasons...



Crossed paths with a peer watching television on their phone, recently.  They turned the thing off, and I said, Go on and watch, I won't talk over it, I'll be quiet.  I was told, in reply, "No, you cannot see this.  This isn't for you."


(Hey, I am real old!  I remember -- well, I remember a lotta stuff, and I am far-and-away "over-21.")


What do you mean, I can't watch that?  I can watch that -- And I am older than the person watching the show, right?!  Who is to say who can censor for whom?  It continued to be insisted firmly to me that I wouldn't like this rude program, and it was not going to be shown to me.


Harrummph.
It is enough to "grouchilate" a person.

It made me think of a sequence that's told in the various Kennedy biographies -- when First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy visited India








(and Pakistan) in March of 1962, U.S. Ambassador to India, John Kenneth Galbraith was said to have sent a telegram to the president mentioning that on the itinerary for Mrs. Kennedy was a visit to a museum that featured traditional erotic art;


the ambassador thought maybe the First Lady should be advised to skip that stop....


President Kennedy telegraphed back, "Why?  Don't you think she's old enough?"







----------------





In telling this anecdote to the audience of the racy telephone show -- found myself getting into a verbal "tangle," trying to say that the reason Mrs. Kennedy was sent to accomplish diplomatic ends was because she was not a diplomat. ... 


(Eerhh - uh - right...)  Government - politics - appearances - blah - blah - yadda...(Trying to do good by stealth...)




Galbraith (author of The Great Crash, 1929; The Affluent Society; The Good Society; and other titles) is the tall guy on our right, in this picture. 





Nehru is to Mrs. Kennedy's right. 


-30-

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