Old Faces of 1976

Sometimes when I'm busy, which seems like always, I think of the next thing I want to do, & summarize it in my head as one word, or a phrase, to keep my focus.

Sometimes instead of the next one thing,
it's the next two,
or three...

Thought, a little bit ago, "Must blog, and first make coffee."  So began thinking,
"Coffee, blog."
coffee-blog
coffee blog
coffeeblog
and started thinking that would make a good title for something, or name of a business...CoffeeBlog.

Would we sell coffee and type a blog?
Or vice versa?
Drink coffee, while reading blogs?

coffeeBlog

= = = = = = = = =  2013.  Do not necessarily feel "equal" to that.
This is a New Year's Resolution-free zone...!

(This year, resolve to -- gain weight, make less money, and learn to smoke cigarettes....The "Anti-Resolutions" - !)

Yesterday, was considering book by Richard Reeves, Old Faces of 1976, wherein are discussed politicians of the day -- and most of the names of these "pols" were familiar to me.  I was a high-schooler, in that era, no smarter or deeply knowledgeable than any other normal teen, and I asked myself yesterday, How is it that I remember -- not all, but most of these names?  I wasn't that "into" politics -- news and updates just meandered about the edges of my existence, because I had more important things in my head, like pep bus to next ball game, school newspaper, Sat. night social etiquette, etc. 

Then realized, while looking at a news site on internet, what the difference was.  On yesterday's site, where I was seeking something of a current-events-informative nature, found self confronted by the behind-end of someone's skirt.  And it became clear.  In 1976 and the years leading up to it, "news" did not include the beyond-silly gossip they pour on us today, and also did not include someone's backside (clothed, at least, thank you), presented and marketed as a "news" story.

News was actual info, & even a typical "lightweight"-teen could learn names like Nelson Rockefeller, Teddy Kennedy, George Wallace, Hubert Humphrey, Ronald Reagan, Ed Muskie, Scoop Jackson, Gerald Ford, Jerry Brown, Frank Church, Sargent Shriver, Mo Udall, Shirley Chisholm ("unbought and unbossed"), Abe Beame, Hugh Carey, etc.  We could learn them unconsciously, through "osmosis," because Serious, Relevant Information

flowed
unimpeded, and

there weren't rear ends in the way (in the news) ...although there may have been those who would contend there was similarity of some of these strivers to rear ends -- but -- no, however -- I digress....

==============
------------ [excerpts]

^^  He might even end up as the candidate of...anti-war Democrats who were cursing him only a few years ago....

^^  "We don't know whether to applaud Jackson's consistency or condemn his stubbornness."

^^  "They must have talked good sense around his kitchen table" is (Ted) Kennedy's highest compliment about another political man....

^^  "I love the Russian people, but..." is a standard [Scoop] Jackson beginning -- then he retraces Russian imperialism to Potsdam, to Catherine the Great, and back through history....In 1970, he warned that the Russians were secretly arming the Arabs and a Middle East war was coming.

"Our government took the Russians at face value in the Mideast in 1970," he told the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Philadelphia.  "I don't want that to happen again...The last SALT agreement was a disaster for us.  There is no détente -- it's a direct subsidy from us to them so they can bully people around all over the world . . . We need a rascal-proof agreement because we're dealing with rascals."

^^  [epilogue]  I don't think American politicians, most of whom are professional candidates -- running for office is what they do for a living, not representing or governing -- understand their people anymore.  Usually, I don't think they even see them....What they do see is an endless chain of hands to be shaken, backs to be slapped, questions to be talked about, answers to be avoided.  If there is one thing the professional candidate knows, it's that answers, real answers, may make some people mad -- and America's perpetual runners are in the business of avoiding getting anyone upset.

Of course, what happened in recent years is that almost everyone is vaguely upset.  Apathy has become the 1970s catchword for non-participation in the political process, but, as far as I can tell, many of the non-participating, non-voting Americans are not apathetic at all.  They are hostile.  They feel they are being had, that national politics is a put-on.----------------- [end excerpts]

["We're as mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore!" was the rallying cry of  a TV anchorman in the 70s movie, Network....]

"The more things change, the more they remain the same."
-- Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr 

  ...and since the guy's name is Jean-Baptiste, if Hubert Humphrey were here, he'd be telling the French guy, "Yes, I too am a Baptiste!"...

-----------------------------
{excerpts quoted from Old Faces of 1976,
by Richard Reeves.  Copyright, 1976,
Harper & Row}

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