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-
No comments:
Post a Comment