By MARSHA MERCER
President Huckabee.
Hold that thought when you see reporters all aflutter about the power of Iowa as Republicans gather in schools and firehouses Tuesday night to back their favorite presidential candidates.
Four years ago, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee was the toast of Iowa Republicans – before he became just plain toast. John McCain limped to fourth place in the Hawkeye State.
It’s worth remembering that often when it comes to choosing presidential nominees, as Iowa goes, so goes Iowa.
In contested Democratic and Republican caucuses since the 1970s, Iowans have picked the eventual party nominees roughly half the time. In 2008, Barack Obama launched his flight to the White House by beating Hillary Clinton and John Edwards in Iowa.
The 2012 GOP contest already has gyrated more than a hoola hoop on a 8-year-old, and polls currently have Mitt Romney and Ron Paul battling for first place.
Mike Huckabee predicts a Ron Paul win – if the weather is foul. Paul’s supporters are “fanatical,” Huckabee says, and won’t let snow and ice derail their crusade.
Alas for Paul, the forecast favors fair-weather fans of Romney. Tuesday in Des Moines will be sunny with a high of 36 degrees, according to weather.com.
A line from Winston Churchill in 1942 seems appropriate as we say goodbye to 2011 and welcome the new political year: “Now is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
January marks the end of the 2012 presidential pregame show. For the last year, the focus has been on the collective “them” – politicians, pundits, pollsters and money men. The New Year is about “us” -- the voters.
“This election is really about you,” Rick Perry told young people in Muscatine, Iowa, the other day. “It’s not about me.” Now he tells us – after spending $2.86 million on TV ads in Iowa in December.
A so-called Super PAC that supports Romney poured only slightly less into ads in Iowa during the month, $2.85 million.
A week after Iowa, on Jan. 10, New Hampshire will vote in its first-in-the-nation primary. People in New Hampshire sometimes say that Iowa picks corn and New Hampshire picks presidents.
From 1952 to 1992, no candidate won the White House without first winning the New Hampshire primary. In ’92, Clinton declared himself the “Comeback Kid” after losing to Paul Tsongas and went on to the win the nomination and the presidency. In 2008, Hillary Clinton came back from her Iowa loss to win New Hampshire, but it wasn’t enough.
Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts with a home in New Hampshire, is leading in Granite State polls. The question is how big a win he gets.
Should we care? Iowa and New Hampshire are hardly microcosms of the United States. Iowa skews older, and Iowa and New Hampshire are whiter than the country as a whole. New Hampshire is also richer and better educated than the United States.
Still, every four years the two states successfully battle to keep their roles as first deciders. They argue that their voters are more engaged and more knowledgeable about the candidates. Besides, someone has to start culling the field.
If Iowa and New Hampshire leave doubts, South Carolina and Florida follow with primaries on Jan. 21 and 31, respectively. Nevada’s caucuses are Feb. 4. And, on March 6, Super Tuesday, 10 states will hold contests, including Virginia, which has a primary. On March 13, Alabama and Mississippi weigh in with primaries.
And, in case you were worried, the candidates are slated to keep debating. Six GOP candidate debates are scheduled in January.
Some analysts predict the process for Republicans to pick their presidential nominee will be long and drawn out. Others say it will be quick work. And then comes the general election campaign.
If we learned anything in 2011, it’s that we don’t know – until the voters have their say.
Happy New Year.
30
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
On politics, religion and the Jefferson Bible -- Dec. 21, 2011 column
By MARSHA MERCER
Earlier this year, when presidential candidates claimed that God had “called” them to run for the White House, some people were offended. I couldn’t help thinking that God has a sense of humor.
But I wondered how people would react if the president – any president -- were sitting up nights in the White House, cutting out parts of the Bible he or she didn’t like. Many would find such handiwork a sacrilege and an outrage. I’d figure Thomas Jefferson had reached out for a chat.
Barack Obama is not busily reconstructing the New Testament, as far as we know. But in the White House in 1804 Jefferson started editing the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John with a pen knife or similar sharp instrument and carefully began pasting passages of Christ’s teachings by topic on paper.
Decades later, when he was 77 and living at Monticello, Jefferson produced an edited text of the Gospels. He created an 86-page volume of the life of Christ, parables and teachings by cutting and pasting passages from the New Testament in Greek, Latin, French and English. Jefferson left out the miracles and supernatural events, including the annunciation, angels, virgin birth and the Resurrection.
He titled his version “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth,” had it bound in red leather and read it regularly.
The first volume Jefferson made has been lost, but the Smithsonian Institution bought the Jefferson Bible in 1895. It deteriorated over years, but after a year of restoration is on display at the National Museum of American History.
Like most people, I’d heard about the Jefferson Bible, but seeing the book that Jefferson himself made scrapbook style was a highlight of my museum experiences this year.
The exhibit, open through May 28, does what a visit to a museum should: It makes you think.
In our age, a presidential candidate’s ability to speak a foreign language is fodder for ridicule -- check out YouTube. Our politicians too often feel obliged to wear their faith on their sleeve.
Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain both claimed that God called them to run for president. Anita Perry, wife of Rick, said God spoke to her about a presidential bid, but her husband needed to see a “burning bush,” a reference to God’s first appearance to Moses.
Mitt Romney tells stories about his year spreading Mormonism in France. Newt Gingrich talks about converting to Catholicism after marrying his third wife, Callista, a Catholic. Gingrich admits to past extramarital affairs but says he has repented to God.
Gingrich even sent a letter to the head of a major evangelical group in Iowa recently, pledging “to uphold the institution of marriage through personal fidelity to my spouse and respect for the marital bonds of others.”
All this likely would seem strange to Jefferson, who held his faith close. Lambasted as a “howling atheist” during the brutal presidential campaign of 1800, Jefferson later described himself in a letter as “a real Christian – that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus Christ.”
Scholars say Jefferson, like George Washington, was a deist who believed that a supreme being created the world and then stepped back. Jefferson called the Bible “the best book in the world” but believed its zealous authors had embellished the story of Jesus Christ.
Jefferson described his Bible project in a letter to John Adams as “abstracting what is really his from the rubbish in which it is buried, easily distinguished by its luster from the dross of his biographers, and as separate from that as the diamond from the dung hill.”
The Smithsonian has published a facsimile edition of the Jefferson Bible, and versions are available from other publishers. The Jefferson Bible is available online at the Monticello site.
Jefferson’s views on religion were complex and he was reluctant to express them, says Smithsonian Secretary G. Wayne Clough in Smithsonian magazine. Clough quotes Jefferson: “I not only write nothing on religion,” he told a friend, “but rarely permit myself to speak on it.”
Smart man, that Jefferson.
© 2011 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
30
Earlier this year, when presidential candidates claimed that God had “called” them to run for the White House, some people were offended. I couldn’t help thinking that God has a sense of humor.
But I wondered how people would react if the president – any president -- were sitting up nights in the White House, cutting out parts of the Bible he or she didn’t like. Many would find such handiwork a sacrilege and an outrage. I’d figure Thomas Jefferson had reached out for a chat.
Barack Obama is not busily reconstructing the New Testament, as far as we know. But in the White House in 1804 Jefferson started editing the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John with a pen knife or similar sharp instrument and carefully began pasting passages of Christ’s teachings by topic on paper.
Decades later, when he was 77 and living at Monticello, Jefferson produced an edited text of the Gospels. He created an 86-page volume of the life of Christ, parables and teachings by cutting and pasting passages from the New Testament in Greek, Latin, French and English. Jefferson left out the miracles and supernatural events, including the annunciation, angels, virgin birth and the Resurrection.
He titled his version “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth,” had it bound in red leather and read it regularly.
The first volume Jefferson made has been lost, but the Smithsonian Institution bought the Jefferson Bible in 1895. It deteriorated over years, but after a year of restoration is on display at the National Museum of American History.
Like most people, I’d heard about the Jefferson Bible, but seeing the book that Jefferson himself made scrapbook style was a highlight of my museum experiences this year.
The exhibit, open through May 28, does what a visit to a museum should: It makes you think.
In our age, a presidential candidate’s ability to speak a foreign language is fodder for ridicule -- check out YouTube. Our politicians too often feel obliged to wear their faith on their sleeve.
Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain both claimed that God called them to run for president. Anita Perry, wife of Rick, said God spoke to her about a presidential bid, but her husband needed to see a “burning bush,” a reference to God’s first appearance to Moses.
Mitt Romney tells stories about his year spreading Mormonism in France. Newt Gingrich talks about converting to Catholicism after marrying his third wife, Callista, a Catholic. Gingrich admits to past extramarital affairs but says he has repented to God.
Gingrich even sent a letter to the head of a major evangelical group in Iowa recently, pledging “to uphold the institution of marriage through personal fidelity to my spouse and respect for the marital bonds of others.”
All this likely would seem strange to Jefferson, who held his faith close. Lambasted as a “howling atheist” during the brutal presidential campaign of 1800, Jefferson later described himself in a letter as “a real Christian – that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus Christ.”
Scholars say Jefferson, like George Washington, was a deist who believed that a supreme being created the world and then stepped back. Jefferson called the Bible “the best book in the world” but believed its zealous authors had embellished the story of Jesus Christ.
Jefferson described his Bible project in a letter to John Adams as “abstracting what is really his from the rubbish in which it is buried, easily distinguished by its luster from the dross of his biographers, and as separate from that as the diamond from the dung hill.”
The Smithsonian has published a facsimile edition of the Jefferson Bible, and versions are available from other publishers. The Jefferson Bible is available online at the Monticello site.
Jefferson’s views on religion were complex and he was reluctant to express them, says Smithsonian Secretary G. Wayne Clough in Smithsonian magazine. Clough quotes Jefferson: “I not only write nothing on religion,” he told a friend, “but rarely permit myself to speak on it.”
Smart man, that Jefferson.
© 2011 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
30
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Assuming the worst? It's not necessary -- Dec. 15, 2011 column
By MARSHA MERCER
In a holiday mood, my friend Veronica called her brother who lives in another state. After they chatted a few minutes, he said he was “waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
He assumed she had bad news, even though Veronica makes a point of calling occasionally just to catch up.
“My own brother thought I had an ulterior motive for the call,” she exclaimed, adding, “Everybody assumes the worst.”
That got me thinking. Assuming the worst has become Americans’ default mode. Polls show we’re in the dumps about the country’s direction, the economy, the Congress, the greedy 1 percent – you name it.
Dwelling on negative thoughts has become a national pastime. News has always been about conflict, of course, but the relentlessness of the 24-7 news cycle accentuates the gloom. It’s always a good career move for politicians and talk show hosts to whip up the fear factor.
Good news exists, but we hardly recognize it. So, let’s reconsider three news stories from the past week.
First, the long war in Iraq finally ended – and our troops will be home with their families for Christmas and Hanukkah.
Second, the waves of people sneaking across the border from Mexico have slowed to a trickle.
And, third, a Democratic senator and a Republican House member actually have been working together on a plan to revamp Medicare.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying any of these stories is an unalloyed tiding of great joy, but each does provide a glimmer of hope as 2011 staggers to a close.
There was no dancing in the streets or kissing in Times Square at the end of the war in Iraq – for good reason. Iraq remains a tinderbox of terrorism, and nobody expects honey and harmony to break out anytime soon. Plus, critics complained President Barack Obama was playing politics with the war’s end.
Obama did oppose the war, but he never campaigned against the troops. The victory lap at Fort Bragg by the president and first lady did feel like a re-election rally, but Obama kept to President George W. Bush’s timetable for withdrawal.
Going forward, Obama promises to make sure Americans don’t forget the fallen or the veterans, reminding that more than 1.5 million Americans served in Iraq, more than 30,000 were wounded and 4,500 Americans died. The returning veterans need more than fine rhetoric; they need jobs.
The good news is our troops are out of Iraq, and nobody proclaimed “Mission Accomplished.”
Immigration promises to loom large next year with the Supreme Court’s decision to take up Arizona’s tough immigration law, and campaigning politicians likely hanging onto the myth of surging undocumented workers.
But fewer Mexicans try to enter the country illegally, and more return to Mexico. Among factors at work: The U.S. downturn removes much of the incentive for coming here, and greater job opportunities are emerging in Mexico. Increased border enforcement and new state laws also discourage migrants.
Before states rush to enact more laws, it’s worth considering whether the illegal immigration problem may be solving itself. The trend may have shifted permanently, some researchers say.
“Even if immigration increases some after this recession, it won’t rebound to the levels we saw in the early 2000s,” Dowell Myers, a University of Southern California demographer, told The Wall Street Journal.
On Capitol Hill, Congress still looks like Humpty Dumpty – so broken nobody can put it together again. But against the odds, House Budget chairman Paul Ryan, Republican from Wisconsin, and Sen. Ron Wyden, Democrat from Oregon, got together to jumpstart debate on Medicare.
Their plan seeks compromise between traditional Democratic and Republican ideas. It would provide premium support for private insurance plans that would compete with traditional Medicare starting in 2022. People have plenty of time to digest the ideas; Ryan and Wyden say they won’t introduce legislation until 2013.
Some news reports inevitably saw the plan through a political lens – as bad news for Democrats who might not be able to use Medicare as a campaign issue next year.
Here’s an alternative. We can see the bipartisan plan as a flicker of positive energy in a time when people assume the worst.
© 2011 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
30
In a holiday mood, my friend Veronica called her brother who lives in another state. After they chatted a few minutes, he said he was “waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
He assumed she had bad news, even though Veronica makes a point of calling occasionally just to catch up.
“My own brother thought I had an ulterior motive for the call,” she exclaimed, adding, “Everybody assumes the worst.”
That got me thinking. Assuming the worst has become Americans’ default mode. Polls show we’re in the dumps about the country’s direction, the economy, the Congress, the greedy 1 percent – you name it.
Dwelling on negative thoughts has become a national pastime. News has always been about conflict, of course, but the relentlessness of the 24-7 news cycle accentuates the gloom. It’s always a good career move for politicians and talk show hosts to whip up the fear factor.
Good news exists, but we hardly recognize it. So, let’s reconsider three news stories from the past week.
First, the long war in Iraq finally ended – and our troops will be home with their families for Christmas and Hanukkah.
Second, the waves of people sneaking across the border from Mexico have slowed to a trickle.
And, third, a Democratic senator and a Republican House member actually have been working together on a plan to revamp Medicare.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying any of these stories is an unalloyed tiding of great joy, but each does provide a glimmer of hope as 2011 staggers to a close.
There was no dancing in the streets or kissing in Times Square at the end of the war in Iraq – for good reason. Iraq remains a tinderbox of terrorism, and nobody expects honey and harmony to break out anytime soon. Plus, critics complained President Barack Obama was playing politics with the war’s end.
Obama did oppose the war, but he never campaigned against the troops. The victory lap at Fort Bragg by the president and first lady did feel like a re-election rally, but Obama kept to President George W. Bush’s timetable for withdrawal.
Going forward, Obama promises to make sure Americans don’t forget the fallen or the veterans, reminding that more than 1.5 million Americans served in Iraq, more than 30,000 were wounded and 4,500 Americans died. The returning veterans need more than fine rhetoric; they need jobs.
The good news is our troops are out of Iraq, and nobody proclaimed “Mission Accomplished.”
Immigration promises to loom large next year with the Supreme Court’s decision to take up Arizona’s tough immigration law, and campaigning politicians likely hanging onto the myth of surging undocumented workers.
But fewer Mexicans try to enter the country illegally, and more return to Mexico. Among factors at work: The U.S. downturn removes much of the incentive for coming here, and greater job opportunities are emerging in Mexico. Increased border enforcement and new state laws also discourage migrants.
Before states rush to enact more laws, it’s worth considering whether the illegal immigration problem may be solving itself. The trend may have shifted permanently, some researchers say.
“Even if immigration increases some after this recession, it won’t rebound to the levels we saw in the early 2000s,” Dowell Myers, a University of Southern California demographer, told The Wall Street Journal.
On Capitol Hill, Congress still looks like Humpty Dumpty – so broken nobody can put it together again. But against the odds, House Budget chairman Paul Ryan, Republican from Wisconsin, and Sen. Ron Wyden, Democrat from Oregon, got together to jumpstart debate on Medicare.
Their plan seeks compromise between traditional Democratic and Republican ideas. It would provide premium support for private insurance plans that would compete with traditional Medicare starting in 2022. People have plenty of time to digest the ideas; Ryan and Wyden say they won’t introduce legislation until 2013.
Some news reports inevitably saw the plan through a political lens – as bad news for Democrats who might not be able to use Medicare as a campaign issue next year.
Here’s an alternative. We can see the bipartisan plan as a flicker of positive energy in a time when people assume the worst.
© 2011 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
30
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Wealth, status help presidents live longer than most Americans -- Dec. 8, 2011 column
By MARSHA MERCER
Like time-lapse photography, the president – whether it’s Barack Obama, George W. Bush or Bill Clinton – ages right before our eyes.
We look at pictures in the news and see the president grow jowly, worn and gray or white-haired in four short years. If we’re charitable, we may feel sorry for someone with so much on his shoulders and for the toll we imagine the nation’s highest office takes on his health
A new study suggests we should save our sympathy for people who deserve it.
Some doctors say a president ages two years for every year in the White House, but if that were the case, presidents would die sooner than other Americans. And they don’t.
Presidents actually live longer than most people, says S. Jay Olshansky, an epidemiologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago, whose report on the aging of presidents appeared this week in The Journal of the American Medical Association.
The haves – people who are wealthy, have better educations and better healthcare -- tend to live longer than the have-nots.
Presidents clearly benefit from their wealth and status, says Olshansky, who has studied how education affects longevity. He found that men with 16 or more years of education have a life expectancy seven to nine years longer than those with less education.
He became curious about presidential aging last summer when Obama celebrated his 50th birthday in Chicago. News reports gleefully noted how much grayer Obama’s hair and deeper his facial lines had become and quoted physicians who cited the two-years-for-one statistic.
There’s no blood test to measure how fast someone is aging, Olshansky explained in a university podcast, so he compared how long presidents would be expected to live after their age at inauguration with other people’s life spans. He subtracted eight or 16 years from expected life spans, depending on whether the president served one or two terms.
He excluded the four assassinated presidents and studied the longevity of the 34 presidents who died of natural causes as well as the life expectancy of the former presidents and Obama. He found 23 of the 34 lived longer and, in many cases, much longer, than would be normally expected.
The average age at inauguration was 55, and the mean age at death was 73. Had the presidents aged twice as fast while in office, they would have died several years earlier.
The first eight presidents lived to be an average of nearly 80 years old at a time when a man’s life expectancy was well under 40. John Adams was nearly 91 when he died.
Herbert Hoover was 90, and Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford both died at 93. Olshansky also looked at current former presidents and found they too are outliving their expectancy. Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush are both 87.
Obama’s life expectancy is 79 years, Olshansky says, but Obama’s wealth, education and access to quality healthcare likely will extend his life.
Lyndon Johnson was an exception to the trend to presidential longevity. He was 64 when he died of an apparent heart attack, about 19 years earlier than his projected life expectancy.
Dr. Michael Roizen, author of the New York Times bestseller “RealAge: Are You As Young As You Can Be?” promotes the idea that the president ages two years for every year in office. Roizen, chief of the Wellness Institute at Cleveland Clinic, contends that people have a calendar age and a “real age” that reflects diet, exercise, stress management and other lifestyle habits.
Olshansky’s study doesn’t disprove the “real age” idea, Roizen says. It proves only that “to run for president you tend to be incredibly healthy,” he told the Associated Press.
So does the presidency accelerate skin aging and hair graying? Olshansky says he doesn’t know.
“I do know that if you take any 50- or 40-year-old man and follow him for four or eight years, chances are they’ll lose their hair and what’s left will turn gray.”
But, of course, Olshansky says, nobody dies of wrinkles or gray hair.
© 2011 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
Like time-lapse photography, the president – whether it’s Barack Obama, George W. Bush or Bill Clinton – ages right before our eyes.
We look at pictures in the news and see the president grow jowly, worn and gray or white-haired in four short years. If we’re charitable, we may feel sorry for someone with so much on his shoulders and for the toll we imagine the nation’s highest office takes on his health
A new study suggests we should save our sympathy for people who deserve it.
Some doctors say a president ages two years for every year in the White House, but if that were the case, presidents would die sooner than other Americans. And they don’t.
Presidents actually live longer than most people, says S. Jay Olshansky, an epidemiologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago, whose report on the aging of presidents appeared this week in The Journal of the American Medical Association.
The haves – people who are wealthy, have better educations and better healthcare -- tend to live longer than the have-nots.
Presidents clearly benefit from their wealth and status, says Olshansky, who has studied how education affects longevity. He found that men with 16 or more years of education have a life expectancy seven to nine years longer than those with less education.
He became curious about presidential aging last summer when Obama celebrated his 50th birthday in Chicago. News reports gleefully noted how much grayer Obama’s hair and deeper his facial lines had become and quoted physicians who cited the two-years-for-one statistic.
There’s no blood test to measure how fast someone is aging, Olshansky explained in a university podcast, so he compared how long presidents would be expected to live after their age at inauguration with other people’s life spans. He subtracted eight or 16 years from expected life spans, depending on whether the president served one or two terms.
He excluded the four assassinated presidents and studied the longevity of the 34 presidents who died of natural causes as well as the life expectancy of the former presidents and Obama. He found 23 of the 34 lived longer and, in many cases, much longer, than would be normally expected.
The average age at inauguration was 55, and the mean age at death was 73. Had the presidents aged twice as fast while in office, they would have died several years earlier.
The first eight presidents lived to be an average of nearly 80 years old at a time when a man’s life expectancy was well under 40. John Adams was nearly 91 when he died.
Herbert Hoover was 90, and Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford both died at 93. Olshansky also looked at current former presidents and found they too are outliving their expectancy. Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush are both 87.
Obama’s life expectancy is 79 years, Olshansky says, but Obama’s wealth, education and access to quality healthcare likely will extend his life.
Lyndon Johnson was an exception to the trend to presidential longevity. He was 64 when he died of an apparent heart attack, about 19 years earlier than his projected life expectancy.
Dr. Michael Roizen, author of the New York Times bestseller “RealAge: Are You As Young As You Can Be?” promotes the idea that the president ages two years for every year in office. Roizen, chief of the Wellness Institute at Cleveland Clinic, contends that people have a calendar age and a “real age” that reflects diet, exercise, stress management and other lifestyle habits.
Olshansky’s study doesn’t disprove the “real age” idea, Roizen says. It proves only that “to run for president you tend to be incredibly healthy,” he told the Associated Press.
So does the presidency accelerate skin aging and hair graying? Olshansky says he doesn’t know.
“I do know that if you take any 50- or 40-year-old man and follow him for four or eight years, chances are they’ll lose their hair and what’s left will turn gray.”
But, of course, Olshansky says, nobody dies of wrinkles or gray hair.
© 2011 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Pearl Harbor witnesses bring us into history circle -- Nov. 30, 2011 column
By MARSHA MERCER
On the 70th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, eye witnesses once again will tell their personal stories of Dec. 7, 1941.
Survivors will share first-hand accounts in Hawaii, the U.S. Navy Memorial in Washington, the National World War II Museum in New Orleans and in countless cities and towns across the country.
Our time in the circle of living history is short, and the rest of us should treasure this moment. All too soon, the memories of the brave men and women who served in World War II will be available only on video, audio recording and written word.
Chapters of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association are wrapping up their final meetings. Founded in 1958, the national organization will return its charter to Congress and close down at the end of the month because of declining membership.
“We’ve run a course and I think we’ve had a good course to run,” Bob Kerr, a director of the survivors group, told NPR.
We’re losing about 740 World War II veterans every day, and the Veterans Administration estimates that by Veterans Day 2036, not one World War II veteran will remain. The question arises how -- and whether – Americans will Remember Pearl Harbor and World War II after the survivors and we who heard them tell their stories are gone.
It may seem preposterous to think that Americans might forget Pearl Harbor, where 2,400 Americans died in the surprise attack that blasted the nation into World War II. Or that we might slide away from World War II, Everybody’s War, where 291,000 died in combat and 114,000 died outside combat theaters. Tom Brokaw has immortalized “The Greatest Generation” for all time, right?
And yet, do we “Remember the Maine”? Do we “Remember the Lusitania”? Cataclysmic events in their day, they no longer strike a chord with most Americans.
The Battleship USS Maine blew up Feb. 15, 1898 in Havana harbor, killing 260 American sailors. The cause of the explosion was unknown, but the masters of yellow journalism blamed Spain, and soon the country was fighting the Spanish-American War.
The cruise ship Lusitania was torpedoed by a German U-boat off the coast of England May 7, 1915 and sank in 18 horrifying minutes, killing 1,200 men, women and children. among them 123 Americans. American public opinion turned against Germany, and the United States entered World War I two years later.
America’s last surviving veteran of the War to End All Wars died earlier this year. Frank Buckles was 110.
When most members of Congress were veterans of World War II, we could count on them to remember – even though we didn’t need them to do so. Today, only one in five members of Congress has even served in the military.
The two House members who co-sponsored the resolution for this year’s National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, are both World War II vets -- Rep. Ralph M. Hall, R-Tex., 88, and Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., 85.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared Dec. 7, 1941, “a date which would live in infamy,” but global politics quickly intervened.
Just 10 years after the attack, Pearl Harbor was downplayed in the news media, says historian Jon Wiener at the University of California, Irvine.
“In fact, on Dec. 7, 1951, Pearl Harbor wasn’t remembered, at least not prominently in the major newspapers and magazines,” Wiener wrote in The Los Angeles Times. The 10th anniversary received little commemoration for very practical reasons.
“In 1951, the U.S. was fighting a new war on the Korean peninsula, and had just signed a security treaty with Japan, which made it a crucial ally and staging base for the Korean War. Remembering Pearl Harbor could interfere with the nation’s new mission,” Wiener wrote.
Searching newspaper archives, Wiener found a 10th anniversary editorial in The Washington Post that encouraged Americans to look ahead, not back, to foster harmonious Japanese-American relations in light of the Communist threat in Asia.
It's astonishing, knowing how much newspapers like anniversary stories, but neither the New York Times not Los Angeles Times mentioned Pearl Harbor the front page on Dec. 7, 1951.
A column in L.A. Times began, “This is the day on which innumerable Americans…will be tempted to go about boring other Americans to death with their reminiscences of where they were and exactly how they heard the news” of Pearl Harbor.
That’s harsh. Fortunately, our attitudes have mellowed, and there’s still time to listen to history’s witnesses share their memories of 70 years ago.
© 2011 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
On the 70th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, eye witnesses once again will tell their personal stories of Dec. 7, 1941.
Survivors will share first-hand accounts in Hawaii, the U.S. Navy Memorial in Washington, the National World War II Museum in New Orleans and in countless cities and towns across the country.
Our time in the circle of living history is short, and the rest of us should treasure this moment. All too soon, the memories of the brave men and women who served in World War II will be available only on video, audio recording and written word.
Chapters of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association are wrapping up their final meetings. Founded in 1958, the national organization will return its charter to Congress and close down at the end of the month because of declining membership.
“We’ve run a course and I think we’ve had a good course to run,” Bob Kerr, a director of the survivors group, told NPR.
We’re losing about 740 World War II veterans every day, and the Veterans Administration estimates that by Veterans Day 2036, not one World War II veteran will remain. The question arises how -- and whether – Americans will Remember Pearl Harbor and World War II after the survivors and we who heard them tell their stories are gone.
It may seem preposterous to think that Americans might forget Pearl Harbor, where 2,400 Americans died in the surprise attack that blasted the nation into World War II. Or that we might slide away from World War II, Everybody’s War, where 291,000 died in combat and 114,000 died outside combat theaters. Tom Brokaw has immortalized “The Greatest Generation” for all time, right?
And yet, do we “Remember the Maine”? Do we “Remember the Lusitania”? Cataclysmic events in their day, they no longer strike a chord with most Americans.
The Battleship USS Maine blew up Feb. 15, 1898 in Havana harbor, killing 260 American sailors. The cause of the explosion was unknown, but the masters of yellow journalism blamed Spain, and soon the country was fighting the Spanish-American War.
The cruise ship Lusitania was torpedoed by a German U-boat off the coast of England May 7, 1915 and sank in 18 horrifying minutes, killing 1,200 men, women and children. among them 123 Americans. American public opinion turned against Germany, and the United States entered World War I two years later.
America’s last surviving veteran of the War to End All Wars died earlier this year. Frank Buckles was 110.
When most members of Congress were veterans of World War II, we could count on them to remember – even though we didn’t need them to do so. Today, only one in five members of Congress has even served in the military.
The two House members who co-sponsored the resolution for this year’s National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, are both World War II vets -- Rep. Ralph M. Hall, R-Tex., 88, and Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., 85.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared Dec. 7, 1941, “a date which would live in infamy,” but global politics quickly intervened.
Just 10 years after the attack, Pearl Harbor was downplayed in the news media, says historian Jon Wiener at the University of California, Irvine.
“In fact, on Dec. 7, 1951, Pearl Harbor wasn’t remembered, at least not prominently in the major newspapers and magazines,” Wiener wrote in The Los Angeles Times. The 10th anniversary received little commemoration for very practical reasons.
“In 1951, the U.S. was fighting a new war on the Korean peninsula, and had just signed a security treaty with Japan, which made it a crucial ally and staging base for the Korean War. Remembering Pearl Harbor could interfere with the nation’s new mission,” Wiener wrote.
Searching newspaper archives, Wiener found a 10th anniversary editorial in The Washington Post that encouraged Americans to look ahead, not back, to foster harmonious Japanese-American relations in light of the Communist threat in Asia.
It's astonishing, knowing how much newspapers like anniversary stories, but neither the New York Times not Los Angeles Times mentioned Pearl Harbor the front page on Dec. 7, 1951.
A column in L.A. Times began, “This is the day on which innumerable Americans…will be tempted to go about boring other Americans to death with their reminiscences of where they were and exactly how they heard the news” of Pearl Harbor.
That’s harsh. Fortunately, our attitudes have mellowed, and there’s still time to listen to history’s witnesses share their memories of 70 years ago.
© 2011 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Trendy and valued? Look up the library -- Nov. 22, 2011 column
By MARSHA MERCER
As eBooks nudge aside traditional volumes, brick-and-mortar bookstores vanish and Google makes memory obsolete, libraries are suddenly trendy.
In midtown Manhattan, a luxury boutique hotel called The Library Hotel has 10 floors, each dedicated to a different category of the Dewey Decimal System. The New York Times reports that “libraries are the new lobbies” in fashionable hotels around the world, and hoteliers believe that “books are the social lubricant of the future,” whatever that means.
The Occupy Wall Street encampments have set up libraries. The one in New York’s Zuccotti Park had accumulated more than 5,000 donated books before police removed it.
Ball State University has put up a database of the borrowing records of every Muncie, Indiana, library patron between 1891 and 1902 called What Middletown Read.
And in 2011 city and town libraries across America are busier than ever. People rely on libraries for Internet access, and reference librarians help researchers find accurate information amid the online dreck.
And here’s something that comes as a surprise in our supposedly tax-loathing culture: Voters are willing to pay for libraries.
On Nov. 8, voters in Pittsburgh, a city that has been ranked America’s “most livable,” approved 2 to 1 a referendum to raise the real estate tax rate. The beneficiary was the public library.
Cash-strapped Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh had said it would have to close five branches, lay off staff and cut service hours nearly 30 percent. The people said no, raise our taxes instead.
The vote was all the more remarkable because the city has long been in financial turmoil, its budget subject to state oversight through three mayors and eight years.
Politicians in Washington who believe voters would rather pepper spray themselves than pay higher taxes might learn from Pittsburgh – and from California, Colorado and Ohio.
California and Colorado defeated ballot measures last year that would have severely hurt libraries, Library Journal reported. And in Ohio, 80 percent of local library issues in 2010 were successful. The Ohio Library Council said the local library levies replaced state money lost to budget cuts.
In Pittsburgh, voters agreed to a .25-mill increase in the property tax. It’s not a huge investment for an individual taxpayer. The owner of a house valued at $100,000 will pay $25 more annually, $1,105 in taxes compared with $1,080. All told, though, the increase will produce $3.2 million a year for the library.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s editorial page crystallized the issue this way: “The Post-Gazette is adamantly opposed to raising the city’s property tax rate, particularly at a time when it is trying to attract new residents, improve its attractiveness as a place for doing business and maintain the quality of life in its neighborhoods.”
But, said the paper, the referendum was “specifically about quality of life.”
That bears repeating: “specifically about the quality of life.” Improving the quality of life should animate every discussion we have about taxing and spending, deficits and budget cuts.
Many people will willingly pay higher taxes if they support where the money is going. The “if” is important. Nobody has patience with wasteful spending, and altruism is wearing thin. People have to believe tax dollars support programs that benefit them and their community.
For those who think libraries are relics of the past, the American Library Association has some stats: There are more public libraries than McDonald’s in the United States, 59 percent of Americans have library cards, and more than 65 percent of libraries offer services for job seekers.
In a 2009 survey for the library association, 96 percent of people said they believe libraries help give everyone a chance to succeed because libraries offer free access to materials and resources.
Tough economic times lead to tough choices. Nearly three-fourths of libraries that responded to a Library Journal survey last year said their budgets had been cut.
In his later years, the 19th century industrialist Andrew Carnegie donated more than $40 million and paid for the construction of nearly 1,700 libraries in the United States, including the one voters in Pittsburgh saved.
Libraries aren’t just trendy. They speak volumes about the quality of life.
©2011 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
30
As eBooks nudge aside traditional volumes, brick-and-mortar bookstores vanish and Google makes memory obsolete, libraries are suddenly trendy.
In midtown Manhattan, a luxury boutique hotel called The Library Hotel has 10 floors, each dedicated to a different category of the Dewey Decimal System. The New York Times reports that “libraries are the new lobbies” in fashionable hotels around the world, and hoteliers believe that “books are the social lubricant of the future,” whatever that means.
The Occupy Wall Street encampments have set up libraries. The one in New York’s Zuccotti Park had accumulated more than 5,000 donated books before police removed it.
Ball State University has put up a database of the borrowing records of every Muncie, Indiana, library patron between 1891 and 1902 called What Middletown Read.
And in 2011 city and town libraries across America are busier than ever. People rely on libraries for Internet access, and reference librarians help researchers find accurate information amid the online dreck.
And here’s something that comes as a surprise in our supposedly tax-loathing culture: Voters are willing to pay for libraries.
On Nov. 8, voters in Pittsburgh, a city that has been ranked America’s “most livable,” approved 2 to 1 a referendum to raise the real estate tax rate. The beneficiary was the public library.
Cash-strapped Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh had said it would have to close five branches, lay off staff and cut service hours nearly 30 percent. The people said no, raise our taxes instead.
The vote was all the more remarkable because the city has long been in financial turmoil, its budget subject to state oversight through three mayors and eight years.
Politicians in Washington who believe voters would rather pepper spray themselves than pay higher taxes might learn from Pittsburgh – and from California, Colorado and Ohio.
California and Colorado defeated ballot measures last year that would have severely hurt libraries, Library Journal reported. And in Ohio, 80 percent of local library issues in 2010 were successful. The Ohio Library Council said the local library levies replaced state money lost to budget cuts.
In Pittsburgh, voters agreed to a .25-mill increase in the property tax. It’s not a huge investment for an individual taxpayer. The owner of a house valued at $100,000 will pay $25 more annually, $1,105 in taxes compared with $1,080. All told, though, the increase will produce $3.2 million a year for the library.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s editorial page crystallized the issue this way: “The Post-Gazette is adamantly opposed to raising the city’s property tax rate, particularly at a time when it is trying to attract new residents, improve its attractiveness as a place for doing business and maintain the quality of life in its neighborhoods.”
But, said the paper, the referendum was “specifically about quality of life.”
That bears repeating: “specifically about the quality of life.” Improving the quality of life should animate every discussion we have about taxing and spending, deficits and budget cuts.
Many people will willingly pay higher taxes if they support where the money is going. The “if” is important. Nobody has patience with wasteful spending, and altruism is wearing thin. People have to believe tax dollars support programs that benefit them and their community.
For those who think libraries are relics of the past, the American Library Association has some stats: There are more public libraries than McDonald’s in the United States, 59 percent of Americans have library cards, and more than 65 percent of libraries offer services for job seekers.
In a 2009 survey for the library association, 96 percent of people said they believe libraries help give everyone a chance to succeed because libraries offer free access to materials and resources.
Tough economic times lead to tough choices. Nearly three-fourths of libraries that responded to a Library Journal survey last year said their budgets had been cut.
In his later years, the 19th century industrialist Andrew Carnegie donated more than $40 million and paid for the construction of nearly 1,700 libraries in the United States, including the one voters in Pittsburgh saved.
Libraries aren’t just trendy. They speak volumes about the quality of life.
©2011 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
30
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Splendid 'Splendor" exhibit tells White House stories -- Nov. 17, 2011 column
By MARSHA MERCER
An angry email flew around last year, charging that President Barack Obama had changed the red, white and blue color scheme in the Oval Office to one of Middle Eastern décor.
It was totally false – the Oval Office hasn’t had anything approaching a red, white and blue color scheme since Bill Clinton, and there’s nothing Middle Eastern about Obama’s office. The bogus email was a reminder that presidents come and go, but controversies over White House décor, along with squabbles over spending, are forever.
Ever since President James Monroe sent his agents to Paris in 1817 to buy furnishings for the rebuilt White House -- the British burned it during the War of 1812 -- presidents and first ladies have taken heat for their decorating choices.
Monroe wanted mahogany chairs for the Oval Room, now the Blue Room, but his agents said mahogany was out of fashion in France and bought instead a 53-piece suite of gold-gilded beechwood furniture.
The agents snapped up ornate silver soup tureens, gold vermeil flatware and an elaborate gilded bronze and mirrored centerpiece called a plateau with classical female figures that hold candles as well as urns and baskets for flowers and fruit. With all seven sections in place on the banquet table, the plateau stretched 14 ½ feet. Just another night at home, sweet, home.
“Something of Splendor: Decorative Arts from the White House,” an exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery steps from the White House, displays two sections of the plateau and other jaw-dropping items seldom seen outside the White House. The exhibit runs through May 6.
On display are 95 pieces of ceramics, furniture, glass, china and textiles chosen for the stories they tell about the White House as a home for families, a venue designed to impress visitors and the office of the nation’s chief executive.
After Monroe’s high style and budget-busting overseas spending spree brought boatloads of criticism, artist Samuel Morse, who later invented the telegraph and Morse code, defended Monroe. Morse wrote in 1819 that “something of splendor is certainly proper…for the credit of the nation.”
Congress though passed a buy-American law in 1826, requiring that furniture bought for the White House be made in America.
A few decades later, first lady Mary Todd Lincoln stirred up a hornet’s nest when she spent money on furnishings for the White House during the Civil War.
“Something of Splendor” was organized as a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the White House Historical Association. First lady Jacqueline Kennedy, who made restoration of the White House her project, formed the association to publish a White House guidebook. She also pressed Congress to pass a law making donations permanent White House property and created the curator’s office.
The exhibit uses a winning technique of pairing a chair, table or accessory with a picture or photo mural showing the item in use in a bygone era at the White House. Seeing the objects in context helps make them come alive.
A photo of Teddy Roosevelt’s elegant silver breakfast tray in 1903, decked out with a linen cloth, silver teapot and cut-glass jar, is next to the actual teapot and jar.
The breakfast tray picture provides “a rare glimpse into the more intimate side of living in the White House,” says the exhibit catalogue, which quotes a letter TR wrote his son Kermit on Nov. 1, 1905, about his morning routine:
“Of course I am up to my ears in work. The mornings are lovely now, crisp and fresh; after breakfast Mother and I walk around the grounds accompanied by Skip and Slipper, her bell tinkling loudly.” Skip was TR’s favorite dog and Slipper one of the family’s cats.
As for Obama, he did make some changes in the Oval Office. Every president does. He got new striped wallpaper from New York and a rug from Michigan. Fabric for new couches was woven in Pennsylvania and has red, white and blue threads.
Donations – not taxpayers -- paid for the new décor, the White House said.
© 2011 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
30
An angry email flew around last year, charging that President Barack Obama had changed the red, white and blue color scheme in the Oval Office to one of Middle Eastern décor.
It was totally false – the Oval Office hasn’t had anything approaching a red, white and blue color scheme since Bill Clinton, and there’s nothing Middle Eastern about Obama’s office. The bogus email was a reminder that presidents come and go, but controversies over White House décor, along with squabbles over spending, are forever.
Ever since President James Monroe sent his agents to Paris in 1817 to buy furnishings for the rebuilt White House -- the British burned it during the War of 1812 -- presidents and first ladies have taken heat for their decorating choices.
Monroe wanted mahogany chairs for the Oval Room, now the Blue Room, but his agents said mahogany was out of fashion in France and bought instead a 53-piece suite of gold-gilded beechwood furniture.
The agents snapped up ornate silver soup tureens, gold vermeil flatware and an elaborate gilded bronze and mirrored centerpiece called a plateau with classical female figures that hold candles as well as urns and baskets for flowers and fruit. With all seven sections in place on the banquet table, the plateau stretched 14 ½ feet. Just another night at home, sweet, home.
“Something of Splendor: Decorative Arts from the White House,” an exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery steps from the White House, displays two sections of the plateau and other jaw-dropping items seldom seen outside the White House. The exhibit runs through May 6.
On display are 95 pieces of ceramics, furniture, glass, china and textiles chosen for the stories they tell about the White House as a home for families, a venue designed to impress visitors and the office of the nation’s chief executive.
After Monroe’s high style and budget-busting overseas spending spree brought boatloads of criticism, artist Samuel Morse, who later invented the telegraph and Morse code, defended Monroe. Morse wrote in 1819 that “something of splendor is certainly proper…for the credit of the nation.”
Congress though passed a buy-American law in 1826, requiring that furniture bought for the White House be made in America.
A few decades later, first lady Mary Todd Lincoln stirred up a hornet’s nest when she spent money on furnishings for the White House during the Civil War.
“Something of Splendor” was organized as a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the White House Historical Association. First lady Jacqueline Kennedy, who made restoration of the White House her project, formed the association to publish a White House guidebook. She also pressed Congress to pass a law making donations permanent White House property and created the curator’s office.
The exhibit uses a winning technique of pairing a chair, table or accessory with a picture or photo mural showing the item in use in a bygone era at the White House. Seeing the objects in context helps make them come alive.
A photo of Teddy Roosevelt’s elegant silver breakfast tray in 1903, decked out with a linen cloth, silver teapot and cut-glass jar, is next to the actual teapot and jar.
The breakfast tray picture provides “a rare glimpse into the more intimate side of living in the White House,” says the exhibit catalogue, which quotes a letter TR wrote his son Kermit on Nov. 1, 1905, about his morning routine:
“Of course I am up to my ears in work. The mornings are lovely now, crisp and fresh; after breakfast Mother and I walk around the grounds accompanied by Skip and Slipper, her bell tinkling loudly.” Skip was TR’s favorite dog and Slipper one of the family’s cats.
As for Obama, he did make some changes in the Oval Office. Every president does. He got new striped wallpaper from New York and a rug from Michigan. Fabric for new couches was woven in Pennsylvania and has red, white and blue threads.
Donations – not taxpayers -- paid for the new décor, the White House said.
© 2011 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
30
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