Daily News Gems is my personal blog in which I comment, every now and again, on topics of particular interest to me, namely, newspaper history, baseball, American politics, and a selection of other burning issues of the day. -- Bill Lucey
People walk near a destroyed tank and damaged buildings in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine
Photo Credit: Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters
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Floral tributes to the late Queen Elizabeth II are seen in Green Park in London on Sept. 10, 2022, two days after she died at the age of 96.
Photo Credit: AFP
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Lionel Messi holds up the World Cup trophy after Argentina defeated France in the tournament final on Sunday, December 18th
Photo Credit: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post/Getty Images
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Thankfully, 2022 is almost in the books.
It was a harsh year for the U.S. economy: inflation reached a 40-year high, gas prices shot up to over $5 a gallon in mid-June; similarly, other countries around the globe endured some of their highest inflation rates in years.
The war in Ukraine (the largest armed conflict in Europe since World War II), sparked a worldwide energy crisis, this along with strict Covid policies in China, heightened fears of a global recession.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine additionally triggered the displacement of 15.7 million Ukrainians, including 7.7 million refugees.
To combat the financial headwinds, the world's central banks, for the first time in years, raised interest rates.
The political divisiveness and hostility in the country became all the more pronounced in June when the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the landmark Roe v. Wade (1973), asserting that the constitutional right to abortion, in place for nearly 50 years, is now prohibited.
After 70 years on the throne, Queen Elizabeth II, 96, died at Balmoral Castle on September 8. She was the world’s second longest ever reigning monarch. The queen was succeeded by her son, Charles, who assumed the title: King Charles III.
Still tainted by the sign stealing scandal in 2017, the Houston Astros redeemed themselves, at least to some, by winning the World Series, beating the Philadelphia Phillies in six games.
With 25 years as a big-league manager, Astros manager Dusty Baker finally won his first World Series, becoming the seventh person in Major League history to win a World Series championship as both a player (1981 with the L.A. Dodgers) and as manager.
Many argue Argentina’s electrifying win over France in the World Cup final in Doha, Qatar, was the greatest match in its 92-year history, as the second largest country in South America (after Brazil) claimed its third World Cup by beating France on penalty kicks, 4-2, an extraordinary match, that was heightened by Lionel Messi of France scoring twice, catapulting him to rock-star status.
Business magnate and investor, Elon Musk, who bought Twitter for a staggering $44 billion in October, turned the social media tech giant on its head when the new CEO laid off about half of its 7,500 staff and reinstated the Twitter account of Donald Trump who was previously banned by Twitter for “inciting violence.”
In 2022, according to the United Nations, the world population increased to over eight billion; an increase of one billion in global population since 2010 and two billion since 1998. The world reached its first landmark of one billion people in 1803.
To get an idea of some other big stories of the year, I checked in with editors at other news sites to see which stories received the most page views on their home pages.
Another widely read feature at CNN, centered on Matthew Chance putting on gear in front of a live audience to report the latest drama taking place in Ukraine.
Here’s the complete list of top stories of the year from the Times, which includes actor Will Smith slapping comedian Chris Rock at the Academy Awards ceremony.
Most popular column of Camilla Tominey from The Telegraph (UK)
Lost in the sheer madness during the 94th Academy Awards on March 27, was an epic milestone in motion picture history.
The Godfather, the 1972 American crime film directed by Francis Ford Coppola celebrated its 50-year anniversary.
Sean "Diddy" Combs introduced Francis Ford Coppola, Robert De Niro, and Al Pacino in a tribute to the Godfather Trilogy that was (in my opinion) much too brief for such a brilliant masterpiece.
During the 1973 Academy Awards, The Godfather was nominated for 10 awards, coming away with three, including Best Picture and Best Actor (Marlon Brando).
Prior to the tribute, chaos and confusion took place at the Dolby Theatre, right in the heart of Hollywood, when actor Will Smith (who would later that night win an Oscar) approached comedian Chris Rock on stage and delivered a hard slap to his face for his insensitive joke about his wife's bald head. Smith's wife, Jada Pinkett Smith (unbeknownst to Chris Rock) suffers from alopecia, a medical term for hair loss.
Whatever took place after the Will Smith slap, to many it’s just a hazy memory. The slap heard round the world took center stage and devoured the news cycle for days after the awards ceremony. It certainly overshadowed the milestone of the Godfather hitting its 50-year mark.
Despite The Godfather being released 50 years ago, so many of its memorable lines and scenes of the film are still very much with us and pop up in our everyday language. The Internet Movie Database, (IMDb) for example, lists more than three hundred films and television shows that have referenced “The Godfather.”
Imagine, 132 million people had seen the Godfather by January, 1975. The movie earned more than $250 million worldwide, a figure that continues to grow.
There’s a famous story that former New York Governor Mario Cuomo refused to see “The Godfather” for its depiction of Italian-American stereotypes which he found repulsive. Finally, Cuomo broke down and saw it and he considered it a masterpiece.
Singer Vic Damone had initially been cast in The Godfather for the role of Johnny Fontane, but reportedly bowed out. “As an American of Italian descent,” Damone said, “I could not in good conscience continue in that role.” The role of Johnny Fontane was filled by singer Al Martino.
Brendan Hennessey, Associate Professor of Italian in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Binghamton University, says Cuomo’s initial rejection of the film “was probably typical of Italian Americans of a certain age, definitely in New York state. That generation was still very close to the anti-Italian discrimination of their parents and grandparents who worked hard to distance themselves from stereotypes of Italian criminality and racial inferiority that were very common in the early 20th century through the end of WWII.” “More recent controversies,” Hennessey explained, “over serious representations like 'The Sopranos' or silly ones like 'Jersey Shore' and the non-controversy over renaming Columbus Day are all remnants of that era of assimilation.” Hennessey contends that the current generation of Italian-Americans are not as outraged by these stereotypes as much as their parents and grandparents were.
Marlon Brando and Francis Ford Coppola discuss a ‘Godfather’ scene on location in Little Italy.
Photo Credit: Anthony Pescatore/NY Daily News via Getty Images
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So, exactly why is The Godfather considered such a cinematic masterpiece to this very day?
Former New York Times op-ed columnist and currently writer-at-large for New York Magazine, Frank Rich, tells me “as King Lear exemplifies, classic drama so often involves a family battling over love and power. In The Godfather, Coppola wedded those basics to memorable, original characters, an epic shadow history of America, bravura filmmaking, and pitch-perfect casting that called on the talents of several generations of great American actors, among them stars in-the-making like Pacino.”
John Mosier, Professor of English (Emeritus) at Loyola University, New Orleans, thinks that The Godfather was a compelling Italian immigrant saga; one that chronicles the importance of family and loyalty when all other traditional levers of power in America fails them.
Additionally, “it told a story about two aspects of American life,” Mosier says, “that everyone knew existed, but had never been talked about: Sicilian culture here and criminal activity. So, it used a typical story device—young idealistic man who’s drawn into a life of violence. It did so in a way that was neither moralistic nor tragic—the ending was a very fine touch. He should have stopped, basically.”
For serious film buffs, I compiled a selection of facts about The Godfather, along with a collection of original film reviews from 1972.
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Robert Duvall holds cue cards for Marlon Brando to read
Source: Paramount Studios
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The Godfather: Facts, Feats, and Historic Firsts
Mario Puzo was born in 1920 in Hell’s Kitchen (West Side of Midtown Manhattan), the son of Italian born parents.
His first two novels, “Dark Arena” and “Fortunate Pilgrim” though critically acclaimed, earned him only $6,500. At age 45, he owed $20,000 in gambling debts, so he wrote a ten-page book outline-entitled Mafia, hoping for more commercial appeal. The Godfather was a pulp novel about sex, violence and crime. Eight publishers turned him down.
The Godfather book was a rousing success, spending 67 weeks on the New York Times' Best Sellers List
On March 5, 1967, Paramount bought the rights to Mario Puzo’s book, “Mafia,” later renamed “The Godfather.”
In 1969, according to Robert Evans (head of production at Paramount), "there wasn’t a single Italian director with any credibility to be found.”
12 directors turned down the opportunity to direct The Godfather.
September 27, 1970: Francis Ford Coppola was officially announced as The Godfather director with an anticipated release at Christmas, 1971.
The final draft of the screenplay ran 158 pages and was dated March 29, 1971.
Coppola reportedly made The Godfather because he was Italian and desperate for work. He was offered and accepted $125,000 and 6% of the profits.
Hollywood heavyweights, Anthony Quinn, George C. Scott, Laurence Olivier, and Ernest Borgnine were rumored to be vying for the part of Don Corleone.
Anne Bancroft was briefly considered for the part of Carmella “Mama’’ Corleone.
Al Pacino failed his screen test, he forgot his lines.
Ryan O’Neal, Dustin Hoffman, Warren Beatty, Robert Redford, Jack Nicholson, Frank Langella, Martin Sheen, and David Carrradine, were all considered for the role of Michael Corleone before settling on Al Pacino. For a short time, James Caan was the frontrunner to play Michael Corleone.
Casting for The Godfather formally began in New York at THE GODFATHER Production Offices on the 28th floor #1 Gulf and Western Plaza on November 20, 1970.
Pacino was 31 years old when he finally secured the role of Michael Corleone.
At 5:30 a.m. on March 23, 1971, filming for The Godfather began.
The Godfather was shot in 120 New York area locations over 67 days.
Gianni Russo (who played Carlo Rizzi in the Godfather) claims that he worked in organized crime early in his life, serving as an errand boy and mob associate for Frank Costello.
Marlon Brando was 47 years old when he was cast in the Godfather. He was viewed in the industry as washed up. Prior to The Godfather, Marlon Brando was in a series of flops and was considered box office poison.
Brando was paid $50,000, plus $10,000 a week in expenses during his contractual six weeks of shooting, and a percentage after the picture brought in $10 million.
Coppola was certain he was about to be fired. His insistence over casting Pacino and the rest of his chosen cast member had earned him the hostility of almost all the top executives at Paramount.
New York crime boss, Frank Colombo assembled tens of thousands of protestors to march through the streets of New York, to protest the making of The Godfather and its distorted depiction of Italian-Americans. A benefit concert was organized, headlined by Frank Sinatra, and raised roughly $600,000—which he used, according to Al Ruddy (The Godfather producer), for “the sole express purpose of stopping the filming of The Godfather.”
At the request of the Italian-American Civil Rights League, all references to the Mafia and Cosa Nostra from its screenplay, were eliminated.
In The Godfather, Coppola sought to express how Americans as a whole must rely on their family for what America fails to provide them, and in the case of the movie that family is Don Corleone.
Among the most pressing obstacles facing Coppola was financing: the film’s budget, originally set at $2 million, quickly leaped toward $6 million.
The gruesome scene with the dead horse’s head was a real horse, obtained from a rendering plant in New Jersey, where they located a horse ready for slaughter. The horse’s head was smeared with Karo blood. The horse’s head in blood stemmed from Sicilian folklore: they nailed your favorite dog’s head to your door if you didn’t pay up.
For Marlon Brando, the production crew created “dental plumpers,” flesh-colored blobs of acrylic that fit into the sides of Brando’s mouth and flush up against his teeth. To hold the appliances in place, a metal band attached to the plumpers was wrapped around the base of his teeth, with the ends wrapped around his molars like a piece of bridgework. On each foot, Brando wore a ten-pound weight to slow his movements, and padding was added around his waist for a belly grown fat from sumptuous eating.
The name of Tony Soprano’s strip club in the HBO series, The Sopranos. “ Bada-bing” came from a line in The Godfather spoken by James Caan.
Sonny (James Caan) beating of Carlo Rizzi (Gianni Russo) for harming his sister was filmed on Pleasant Avenue in East Harlem.
The assassination of Sonny was considered a technical masterpiece; 200 bullet holes were drilled into the car and filled with squibs—tiny explosive rounds that could be remotely detonated—and another hundred were attached to the tollbooth.
A suite in the Americana of New York, on Sixth Avenue, served as a substitute for Las Vegas.
Vegas casino chief Moe Greene (Alex Rocco,) the Jewish gangster, was based on the real-life American gangster, Bugsy Siegel.
The Godfather opened nationwide on March 24, 1972.
The Godfather brought in $465,148 in its first week alone from just the five Manhattan theaters, considered (at the time) the largest one-week total ever for a motion picture.
By the following week, the movie had racked up $7,397,164 across 322 theaters in the US and Canada. In less than a month after the opening, The Godfather was grossing $1 million a day, the first film ever to break the magical million-dollar mark.
During the 1973 Academy Awards, The Godfather was nominated for ten awards: Best Picture; Brando as Best Actor; Coppola for Best Director; Coppola and Puzo for Best Adapted Screenplay; Pacino, Caan, Duvall each for Best Supporting Actor; along with nominations for costumes, editing, and sound.
The Godfather met with so much box office success, a sequel was quickly worked out with a release date of April, 1974.
Francis Ford Coppola eventually became a five-time Oscar winner and the recipient of the Academy’s 2010 Irving G. Thalberg Award.
The Johnny Fontane character is thought to be inspired by Frank Sinatra.
Francis Ford Coppola and James Caan were classmates at Hofstra University.
Pacino and Caan signed onto the Godfather for $35,000. Robert Duvall made $36,000 in the Godfather
Italian phrases in The Godfather
Caporegime is a Mafia term for a lieutenant, or second in command.
Strunz is derived from an Italian term, stronzo, the vulgar translation for which is “a piece of shit.”
Lupara is a double-barreled sawed-off shotgun that is often homemade. It’s a traditional Cosa Nostra weapon in Sicily.
Pezzonovante means someone who is powerful, a big shot.
Michael calls Apollonia (the young Sicilian woman) “pazzo,” meaning “crazy”.
Pacino sprained an ankle ligament when he raced out of the Louis Restaurant (after gunning down Mark McCluskey, the corrupt Irish-American police captain and Virgil "The Turk" Sollozzo, the top narcotics man, who became associated with the Tattaglia family) to catch a getaway car in a scene that never made the final cut. Pacino was sidelined for a few days and had to rely on crutches and a cane when shooting resumed along with plenty of painkillers.
Pacino’s grandparents were genuine Sicilians. He was born in East Harlem but moved to the Bronx at a young age.
After Marlon Brando passed away (2004), his own annotated script of “The Godfather” fetched $312,800 at a New York auction, which is believed to be the highest amount paid for a film script.
The baptism scene in The Godfather was filmed at Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Mulberry Street, Manhattan. The exteriors of the baptism scene were filmed at Mount Loretto Church in Staten Island. The church burned down in 1973.
Filming for the shootings during the baptism: (the barbershop, the revolving doors, and the walk up the stairs) was filmed at the St Regis Hotel in Manhattan. Moe Greene’s massage took place in the steam room in the McBurney YMCA, West 23rd Street, Manhattan.
On March 15, 1972, five New York theaters screened the world premiere of The Godfather for the public. That night, the film took in a record $57,000. In the first week, the take was $465,000, also a record.
Paramount pre booked The Godfather in 350 theaters. The film, which costs $6.2 million to make, earned $13.8 million from those bookings alone before the film hit all theaters nationwide.
In 1972, the average ticket price in the United States was around $1.60. With the high demand over The Godfather, Paramount boosted ticket prices to $3.50, then weekend prices went up to $4.00
In the film’s initial release, Paramount made $85.7 million. It was the first movie in motion picture history to gross an average of $1 million a day. It was the highest-grossing film of all time, until Jaws surpassed it in 1975. To date, it has grossed nearly $135 million domestically, and an estimated $250 million worldwide.
NBC paid $10 million to air “The Godfather” over two nights in November of 1974. An estimated 42,400,000 households watched a slightly abridged version of the movie.
Brando worked on the Godfather for six weeks.
The Godfather won three Oscars.
There are 16 hugs, kisses, and squeezes in the Godfather.
132 million people had seen the Godfather by January, 1975.
The Godfather ran for two hours and fifty-six minutes.
Source: “The Annotated Godfather” By Jenny M. Jones; “Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather” by Mark Seal; “The Godfather: A Pictorial History” By Gerald Gardner; “The Godfather Legacy” by Harlan Lebo
Original Movie Reviews of The Godfather (1972)
“Far from surviving …as the Gone with the Wind of gangster movies, my guess is The Godfather will be as quickly forgotten as it deserves to be.”
--William F. Buckley, The New York Post, March 14, 1972
“The Godfather is as good as the novel—and essentially as immoral and therefore in its new incarnation and availability to the illiterate, far more dangerous…The whole function of this film is to show us that Hitler is a grand sort of family man, gentle with children, daring and ruthless with enemies, implacable in the matter of honor and so loyal to the ties of blood that even a brother-in-law, to a sister’s sorrow, must go (juicily garroted) if he happens to have betrayed a son of the house.”
--Judith Crist, New York Magazine, March 20, 1972
The Godfather” rediscovers the marvelous possibilities existing in the straightforward narrative movie that refuses to acknowledge it's about anything more than its plot, and whose characters are revealed entirely in terms of events. The Godfather moves so quickly, in such a tightly organized series of interlocking events, that the film, like its characters (who are not the sort to muse very long about their fates), doesn't have time to be introspective—to betray the excitement of the immediately felt emotion or of an explicit action by somehow commenting on it.
--Vincent Canby, The New York Times, March 12, 1972
“Coppola has found a style and a visual look for all this material so “The Godfather” becomes something of a rarity: a really good movie squeezed from a bestseller. The decision to shoot everything in period decor (the middle and late 1940s) was crucial; if they’d tried to save money as they originally planned, by bringing everything up-to-date, the movie simply wouldn’t have worked. But it’s uncannily successful as a period piece, filled with sleek, bulging limousines and postwar fedoras. “
--Roger Ebert, January 1, 1972, Chicago Sun-Times
“It’s an extraordinary achievement: a new classic in a classic American film genre: a richly ironic example of how crude popular fiction maybe be transformed into great popular art; a fresh source of both legend and optimism, reviving the career of Marlon Brando and probably making the career of Marlon Brando and probably making the careers of young actor Al Pacino, young screenwriter director Francis Ford Coppola, and several others. And last but hardly least, it is a product of almost limitless commercial potential.”
--Gary Arnold, The Washington Post, March 22, 1972
“Director Coppola, whose Hollywood record so far has been undistinguished, tells The Godfather with a kind of brilliant low-keyed virtuosity, with one particularly effective use of symbolism: the underworld dealings are conducted in thickly darkened rooms, usually in murmurous tones, and these scenes are contrasted with the pastoral, open-air semi-freedom of Corleone family life.”
--Kevin Kelly, The Boston Globe, March 23, 1972
“The Godfather is a baptism in blood, a ripping, tearing blockbuster of a movie, as charged with excitement as a hoodlum using a machine gun, as shocking as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre,”
--Joyce Haber, Los Angeles Times, 1972
“This is a curious film. One comes to understand, even to condone, the activities of the Godfather and his clan. And even though it frankly portrays the underworld’s influence in the sacrosanct worlds of Hollywood and Las Vegas, there is the feeling that, with young Michael there, these will be better worlds. Essentially, The Godfather is the projection of a myth, not a fact. But it is myths — not facts — that make a fortune. “
--Arthur Knight, The Hollywood Reporter, March 8, 1972
“It takes a masterful presentation of a gripping story to hold a man in his seat for 2 hours and 55 minutes with a minimum of squirming. This is what The Godfather does.”
--Emerson Batdorff, The Plain Dealer, March 23, 1972
The screenplay writer of the Academy Award winning film “Gosford Park” and creator, writer, and executive producer of the Award-Winning PBS series “Downton Abbey” recently premiered (January 24th) on HBO with his latest period piece: “The Gilded Age,” a miniseries set in New York in 1882. The drama depicts the old money established families (like the Astor’s) having to contend with the bluster of families with new money (nouveau riche) invading New York, such as the Vanderbilt’s, Carnegies, Rockefeller’s and other major titans of 19th century industry.
Fans of Fellowes will most likely be welcoming with open arms the lavish dresses, extravagant hats, and enormous mansions that became so emblematic of the Gilded Age on his new HBO creation. It will remind them so much of the magnificence of Downton Abbey which ran on PBS from 2010-2015.
The Gilded Age in the United States spanned from 1870 through 1900, roughly speaking.
Whether the “The Gilded Age’’ matches the cult following popularity of “Downton Abbey” remains to be seen. Prior to its debut on HBO, reviewers took a rather dim view of Fellowes new drama.
Inkoo Kang, television critic of the Washington Post wrote: if “The Gilded Age isn’t a serious show, it’s not a reliably entertaining one, either. Sure, the sets and costumes and gewgaws are fun to look at. But it’s also dispiriting to watch so many talented stars get so little meat to chew on. “
Mike Hale, television critic for The New York Times wasn’t too enthusiastic about the show either. “In general,” Hale wrote, “the conservatism and provincialism of the old guard is so overdrawn, and presented with such little context, that the society women seem like they’re from outer space, and the actresses playing them can’t do much to make them human.”
At this early juncture, some historians were hoping for a little more to chew on from Mr. Fellowes latest offering.
Daniel Czitrom, Professor of History at Mount Holyoke College (South Hadley, Massachusetts) and author of "New York Exposed: The Gilded Age Police Scandal that Launched the Progressive Era" says, “with all the money spent on sets, costumes, furniture, hair styling, etc., too bad there wasn't any left for the script, which is full of cliched, boring dialogue, and conveys little dramatic tension.”
Czitrom additionally wondered whether “it would be asking too much to portray people who work for a living (the vast majority) who are not house servants, such as the immigrant neighborhoods full of creative energy and family life in the tenements?” “What about,” Czitrom thundered, “the real class struggle, visible everywhere on 1880s New York City streetcar lines, the docks, tenement cigar factories, and many other such examples.”
Personally, after watching only two episodes of “The Gilded Age," I’ll reserve judgement whether it’s a smashing success or a major flop so early into the miniseries. “The Gilded Age” includes nine episodes with each episode released on Monday’s.
What viewers might find interesting, and even helpful, is “The Official Gilded Age Podcast” hosted by Alicia Malone (host on Turner Classic Movies) and Tom Meyers (host of the Bowery Boys podcast) who dissect each episode and provide some historical context to what viewers just saw. I found the first two episodes of the podcasts extremely informative and entertaining.
In episode one of the podcast, “The Gilded Age’’ creator Julian Fellowes discusses the hills and valleys he went through in getting his latest drama on to HBO. And Tony Award winning actress, Christine Baranski, who plays Agnes Van Rhijn, the embodiment of the old New York socialite, discusses how she prepared for the role.
In the second episode of the podcast, Morgan Spector who plays George Russell, a ruthless robber baron of the new money in New York, gives voice to the research he undertook to better understand a 19th industrialist. Spector is joined by Location Manager at HBO, Lauri Pitkus, who discusses all the different locations the show had to travel to in order to find the right mansion, since most of the Gilded Age mansions in New York City no longer exist.
Since it took Julian Fellowes nearly ten years to get the “Gilded Age” made, it would be a shame if his efforts didn’t match the high expectations. The Gilded Age, after all, was an incredibly momentous period in American history.
To many, the Gilded Age conjures up images of robber barons, corrupt politicians, and unscrupulous business practices with limited interference from the federal government.
That much is certainly true.
The term “robber baron” dates back to the Middle Ages, and was used to describe individuals who employed unscrupulous business methods to eliminate competition in order to develop a monopoly in their industry. Most of these industrial titans of the Gilded Age demonstrated little compassion for workers.
David S. Tanenhaus, Professor of History and Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said “The Gilded Age is a fascinating period in American History, which historians have described as the Great Barbeque during which the few feasted while the many were roasted.” According to Tanenhaus, 35,000 workers died in factories and mines every year from 1880 to 1900, the total deaths (700,000) are equivalent to the number of Americans who died in the Civil War. “During the Gilded Age,” Tanenhaus further explained, “the United States had the highest rate of industrial accidents and deaths in the world.”
While the movers and shakers of industry accumulated mass fortunes, 40% of industrial workers during this time earned measly incomes, well below the poverty line.
“Protectors of our Industries” was created by Bernhard Gillam and published in 1883 by Keppler and Schwarzmann in The Puck, a satirical magazine.
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Who coined the term Gilded Age?
The Gilded Age was widely popularized with the publication of Mark Twain’s 1873 novel: “The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today” written along with his friend, Charles Dudley Warner, in which they lampoon the personal greed and political corruption of the era. As Twain saw it, the age wasn’t a golden age, rather, it was a gilded age. To gild is to cover something of lesser value, giving it an attractive but deceptive look.
Carrie Coon and Morgan Spector star as wealthy social climbers in “The Gilded Age,” a new series created by Julian Fellowes on HBO.
Photo Credit: Alison Cohen Rosa/HBO
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One feature of accumulating great wealth during this era, was the way in which the industrial titans flaunted their prestige and power by living in magnificent brownstones and palatial mansions (influenced by Europeans and Persians) with huge billiard rooms and libraries, European antiques and stunning art collections and riding in gold-trimmed carriages, while average workers (including a gush of immigrants lured to America by the high demand for jobs) lived in filthy, wretched conditions, squeezed like sardines in tenements, without much living space or sometimes not even running water.
In one scene from HBO’s “Gilded Age,’’ someone mentions to social climber Bertha Russell (played splendidly by Carrie Coon) at a dinner party that she hears that she has a French cook. “Doesn’t everyone”? Russell quipped.
Jacob Riis, a social reformer and muckraker, once estimated in 1890 that about 330,000 persons were living in one square mile on the lower East Side of New York City.
As bad as it was for many economically deprived workers and new immigrants to the city, the Gilded Age transformed American society in many positive ways that is often overlooked.
The steel industry expanding from 77,000 tons in 1870 to nearly 11.4 million tons by 1900 is often cited by historians as one of the chief reasons for the Industrial Revolution of the Gilded Age. Imagine, between 1870 and 1890 both money and real wages increased by more than ten percent.
The infrastructure of the big city also changed drastically during this time, especially with the invention of electricity, which brought light to homes and streets and added to the luster of nightlife. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876; this was followed by typewriters, adding machines, and cash registers, which served as a boon to the advancement of a burgeoning, industrial society. Houses were better built, sanitation improved as did the quality of food.
The Brooklyn Bridge opened in 1883, which linked the five boroughs together, and helped make New York the biggest city in America and the second largest city in the world.
Mark Summers, Professor of History at the University of Kentucky, thinks that “in so many ways, the Gilded Age was a hard, unjust time.” “But another part of me thinks,” Summers continued “what must it have been like to be the first generation to walk the streets under electric lights? Or be able to call across town on the telephone? Or to eat green peas and pineapple in the wintertime, with the coming of canned goods? Or drink pasteurized milk? Or, in the 1890s, to see the first few movies on a screen? To be able to go from New York to Chicago in barely a day, from New York to California in less than a week when your grandparents took five or six months to make the same trip? To read a newspaper not just stuffed with political speeches, but sports news and human-interest features, and the very first comic strips? To be able to type a letter, rather than have to write one? “
Thinking along the same lines as Mark Summers, Caroline E. Janney, Professor of History at the University of Virginia, summed up the developments of the era by observing, the Gilded Age was “an urban transformation - skyscrapers and streetcars, but also a period marked by recurring strife around issues of race, class, gender, ethnicity, religion. It was time that saw the rise of college and spectator sports from boxing to football. Finally, it was likewise a period when the US’s material progress led it toward empire building (Spanish-American War, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, etc.).”
Though the nouveau riche were known for their extravagant lifestyle and wasting money on frivolous and gaudy artifacts, many of the super-rich, especially the wives of industrial titans, used their money to help the less fortunate. Some of the rich, for example, created homes for destitute immigrants. Others helped advance temperance societies, so convinced were they that alcohol was the root of all evil especially among the poorer inhabitants of society. And still others sponsored the right to vote through women’s suffrage campaigns.
The monopolies, social inequality, obscene corruption, and lack of government interference that industrialists treasured so much when their wealth grew by leaps and bounds, came crashing down in the Panic of 1893. The Philadelphia and Reading Railroad (both overextended) failed, which sparked an economic depression, lasting four years. The result was the stock market plunged, millions were suddenly unemployed and homeless. In some states, unemployment shot up to 50%
This ushered in a Progressive era, which put in motion federal controls, the curbing of corporate greed and most importantly--eliminating industrial giants from making vast amounts of money at the expense of the working poor.
Some of the reforms implemented, included: trust busting, labor reform, women’s suffrage, the formation of trade unions, tax reform, election reform, fair labor standards, and food and medicine regulations, among others.
Another critical slice of the Progressive era was the revolutionary reporting journalists and muckrakers championed in uncovering abuse and greed from the filthy rich. In 1890, reporter and photographer, Jacob Riis, exposed the horrors of the tenements in his ground-breaking book, “How the Other Half Lives.” McClure Magazine journalist Lincoln Steffens (in 1902) exposed the corruption between city officials and crooked businessmen. Journalist, Ida Tarbell, investigated the scheming machinations of oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, which brought Rockefeller’s monopoly (of the Standard Oil Company) to a screeching halt.
And, of course, Upton Sinclair’s highly celebrated 1906 book, “The Jungle” exposed the hideous working conditions of the meatpacking industry.
Like others, I look forward to see what the other seven episodes of the HBO’s the “Gilded Age” has to offer. I roundly applaud Julian Fellowes for tackling such an ambitious project centering on such a significant time in America’s social history, when the obscene social economic gap between the rich and poor grew wider and wider.
President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden face off in Cleveland, Ohio for the first 2020 presidential debate.
Photo Credit: Associated Press
***
If you haven’t heard by now, Republicans have gotten their dander up over how presidential debates are run, railing they’re blatantly unfair, such as their chief argument that most of the panelists are composed of beltway eastern elite liberals out to make the Grand Old Party look foolish in front of a nationwide television audience.
White House correspondent for The New York Times, Maggie Haberman, was the first to report that the Republican National Committee (RNC) recently notified the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) that it plans to require GOP presidential nominees not to attend debates run by the commission going forward.
Haberman did tweet out, however, that “none of this is binding—a nominee can do what they want, and the nominee controls the party. But unlike previous cycles, there is far more energy among GOP base behind it.”
"The RNC will initiate the process of amending the Rules of the Republican Party at our upcoming Winter Meeting to prohibit future Republican nominees from participating in CPD-sponsored debates," Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel wrote in a letter.
The Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) was founded in 1987 under the joint sponsorship of the Democratic and Republican political parties in the United States. It has hosted general-election debates since 1988.
So, what exactly troubles the Republicans about the debates?
Former President Donald Trump has been one of the most vocal ring leaders in charging the debates are biased, anti-Trump, and saturated with liberal leaning panelists.
In 2020, Trump tweeted that the commission is “stacked with Trump Haters & Never Trumpers.”
On another occasion, Trump complained about the selection of moderators of the debate, especially Steve Scully of C-SPAN (no longer with the network), who consulted withformer Trump adviser Anthony Scaramucci on how best to question Trump. What made it worse for Scully was that when the meeting was first reported, he lied about it. He ended up backing out of hosting the debate.
Trump additionally complained that former Fox News anchor Chris Wallace and the NBC News reporter Kristen Welker were biased against him.
Trump and other Republicans pushed to have the debates held earlier in the election cycle, but that request was roundly rejected by the CPD. Also rejected by the commission was having nonvoting representatives of either the RNC or the Democratic National Committee at the commission’s board meetings.
It’s worth noting that Republicans are still fuming that CNN’s debate moderator, Candy Crowley, (no longer with the network), corrected Mitt Romney during his town hall debate with President Obama in 2012. Her interruption of the Republican nominee was taken by many Republicans as displaying flagrant favoritism with the president.
Many contend that the reason Republicans are leery of debates is that we are now living in an age of instant fact-checkers. On a number of occasions, some Republican candidates have made outlandish charges, only to have their statements thrown back at them as ridiculous falsehoods.
Eugene Mazo, a nationally recognized scholar of election law at Seton Hall University doesn’t think there's any bias, but does think the CPD is a problematic organization. “It is privately run, and it has come under criticism in the past of all sorts.”
Norman Ornstein, an emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), thinks two things are going on with the Republican complaints. “The whole idea here is victimhood-- make your base feel like you are being oppressed and discriminated against, and they will turn out in anger” “So the elites running the debate commission,” from the Republicans perspective, “have stacked the deck against us, and we are not going to take it anymore. And second, they don't really want to debate, at least it if is fair in any way.”
Whether the Republican charges of bias has merit or not, I think it’s time for a major change in the selection of debate panelists.
I suggest a panel consisting of people like Bill Gates, Peyton Manning, Keechant Sewell (Chief of Police of NYC) and other prominent newsmakers. There's no reason why they can't meet with fact checkers and researchers, like journalists do, to make sure they're asking the right questions and be prepared for follow up questions. The panelists can flesh out their questions with each other by meeting, via Zoom, for a couple of weeks leading up to the debate.
Why should journalists be removed as debate panelists?
Not through any fault of their own, many times a small cluster of journalists during their long careers have had some working relationship with candidates. Steve Scully, for example, former C-SPAN anchor, was an intern for Joe Biden when he was in the Senate in 1978.
George Stephanopoulos, currently co-anchor on Good Morning America (GMA), was Bill Clinton’s communications director during the 1992 presidential campaign. He was also an active Democratic advisor before landing at ABC.
In 2015, it was reported that the then ABC News chief anchor, made three contributions to the Clinton Foundation, which was seen by many as a conflict of interest with his duties as a journalist. This revelation came before he was scheduled to moderate a debate among Republican presidential contenders in February, 2016. After the admission caused such an uproar, Stephanopoulos withdrew from moderating the debate.
Another compelling argument for removing journalists as debate panelists stems from the notion that most questions asked at these debates are mere “food fight” questions, asked to spark malice among the candidates instead of focusing on policy driven questions, questions that undecided voters hope to help them better understand issues facing them in their own lives. Networks, after all, are in a ratings war; the more questions they ask that will spark conflict, the more viewers they’ll generate. These short combative exchanges by the candidates make nice sound bites for the Twitter pages, but do little to resolve challenging issues facing the country.
A Pew Research survey, for example, reported that in 2016, only 10% of voters said they had conclusively made up their minds “during or just after” the presidential debates.
Many argue that the style of the debates too often resembles a “joint press conference” rather than a serious debate. Critics additionally charge that the panelists take too much time away from the candidates themselves.
Still others contend journalists tend to focus on the negative features of a particular candidate rather than zero in on a fundamental policy issue. Again, focusing on the negative, will most likely generate a ratings bonanza.
In 1992, the commission introduced a town hall format in which candidates are asked questions by undecided voters. Though this was a fine idea to hear the concerns of the average voter, the questions too often are softball questions, which the candidates spin by transitioning to their partisan viewpoint.
Having panelists comprised of prominent members of the country like Bill Gates (with his well-known climate change concerns) or Keechant Sewell (Chief of Police of NYC) asking how candidates hope to deal with police profiling or gun shootings within major cities, would go a long way in addressing some of the major concerns facing the country. The “food fight” questions would significantly be removed from the equation.
The United States has evolved in many ways over the last ten to twenty years.
Abraham Lincoln once said “as our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.”
So too with presidential debates. I think it’s time for journalists to pass the baton and remove themselves from the debate forum.
Rep. Liz Cheney, one of two Republicans on the new select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection.
Photo Credit: CNN
***
“The true democracy, living and growing and inspiring, puts its faith in the people — faith that the people will not simply elect men who will represent their views ably and faithfully, but will also elect men who will exercise their conscientious judgment — faith that the people will not condemn those whose devotion to principle leads them to unpopular courses, but will reward courage, respect honor, and ultimately recognize right.”
--John F. Kennedy
For the last several weeks, we’ve been witnessing a profile in courage—and haven’t paid much attention to it.
And it centers on Wyoming’s lone member of Congress: Liz Cheney.
The daughter of George W. Bush’s vice president, Dick Cheney, was first elected in 2016 on a platform of restoring America’s prestige in foreign affairs, with an aggressive conservative agenda of cutting taxes and regulation, and expanding America’s energy, mining and agriculture industries. Cheney serves on the House Armed Services Committee.
In 1954, John F. Kennedy, the junior senator from Massachusetts, took a leave of absence from the Senate while recovering from back surgery and wrote “Profiles in Courage,” which focuses on eight U.S. Senators who showed enormous courage under pressure from peers, and whose actions, moreover, were at odds with popular opinion.
The one-volume book earned Kennedy a Pulitzer Prize.
The senators under consideration to be profiled by Kennedy met the following criteria.
pressure to be liked
pressure to be re-elected, and
pressure of the constituency and interest groups.
Since 1990, the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation have presented “Profile in Courage” awards to individuals (often elected officials) who exhibited an exemplary act of courage based on the criteria outlined in Kennedy’s prize-winning book.
Past winners have included: John McCain, Gerald Ford, Edward M. Kennedy, Gabby Giffords, Barrack Obama, George H.W. Bush, and Mitt Romney.
Interestingly, as I was browsing through the JFK Library and Museum website a week or so ago, I immediately thought of Congresswoman Cheney when I glanced at the Profile of Courage Awards.
A few days later, I was listening to the Politics War Room podcast and co-host Al Hunt described Liz Cheney’s actions (as co-chair) on the House investigation of the Jan. 6 attack on the nation’s Capitol, as bold and a “profile in courage” in pursuing the truth of what happened on that horrific day despite being banished within the Republican Party and quite possibly seeing her political career burst into flames.
Liz Cheney will be challenged in the Wyoming primary by Harriet Hageman, who unsurprisingly, has been endorsed by Donald Trump. At the beginning of the month, a poll by SoCo Strategies, shows Cheney is running about 18 points behind Hageman.
Because Cheney believes that “each of us swears an oath before God to uphold our Constitution,” she never bought into the “Big Lie” that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump. She was only one of ten Republicans who voted that Donald Trump should be impeached during his second impeachment trial for inciting an insurrection by urging his supporters to march on the Capitol building.
Consenting to Trump’s false assertion that the election was stolen from him quickly became a loyalty test within the Republican Party. Because she voted to impeach Trump, Liz Cheney was removed from her No. 3 post as Chair of the House Republican Conference and replaced with Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, (surprise! surprise!) a loyal supporter of Trump.
But that didn’t silence Liz Cheney, the “Iron Lady’’ of U.S. politics.
In September, she was selected as vice chair of the January 6 Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the nation’s Capitol. She has settled into her new position like a pit bull. Two loyal disciples of Trump, Mark Meadows (Trump’s former Chief of Staff) and Steve Bannon (Trump’s former chief strategist) have been held in criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with its investigation into the Jan. 6 attack.
Not only is Cheney only one of two Republicans on the commission, but she’s distinguished herself for her combative style in questioning witnesses. She’s skilled in interpreting the criminal code for the prosecution of violations. In particular, Cheney has set her sights on 18 U.S. Code § 1512. The language of the statute states that whoever corruptly … “obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.” The statute has represented the backbone of a federal abuse, which Donald Trump may have violated.
What’s particularly fascinating about Cheney’s dogged pursuit of the truth of what happened on January 6 and her daring criticism of Donald Trump (with instigating the riot) is that this isn’t a personal vendetta she has harbored against the former U.S. President.
In fact, before the insurrection, she was a loyal supporter of Donald Trump’s agenda. In 2019, she was reportedly feuding with Rand Paul over who was the “Trumpier.” She voted in line with Trump's position 92.9% of the time, supporting him “more consistently in House votes than even his former chief of staff Mark Meadows."
And it’s not as if Cheney is a moderate, out of sync with the ideals of the rest of the Republican Party. She has a 98% positivity rating from the conservative Heritage Foundation, which rates lawmakers based on their voting records.
What is driving Liz Cheney is not GOP talking points or being tethered to the party mantra: “to get along you have to go along.”
Cheney’s oath of office means more to her than being in with the in-crowd.
She refuses to acquiesce to the “Big Lie” and being relegated to one of Donald Trump’s loyal servants out of fear of being banished. In addition to speaking out in public, Cheney has tweeted the false claim is “poisoning our democratic system.” She additionally warned against falling victim to the “Trump cult of personality.”
Though she is considered a pariah within her own party, she does have a smattering of supporters within the Republican Party. Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, depicted Cheney as an “important leader" with the "courage" to act on her convictions. Likewise, Senator Sue Collins, (R-Maine), has publicly stated that "Liz Cheney is a woman of strength and consciences…she did what she felt was right, and I salute her for that.”
Former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough and co-host of “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, gave her a ringing endorsement, when he said that “she doesn’t back away from unpopular positions.”
The whole point of the writing of Profiles in Courage for John Kennedy was to show his admiration for the courage exhibited by elected officials in “the face of adverse factions like their electorates, popular opinion, and political action committees that pull these elected men in different directions.” “This book,” Kennedy wrote 67 years ago was “a book about that most admirable of human virtues – courage. ‘Grace under pressure,’ Ernest Hemingway defined it.”
Liz Cheney’s political career is most likely over for not bowing to political pressure and joining the other Republican mouseketeers in showering praise on Donald Trump despite his obvious culpability with inciting a riot.
For that Cheney paid a heavy price.
As she stated on January 12, “none of this would have happened without the president. The president could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not. There has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution."
Because of her devotion to the Constitution and the values it embodies, Liz Cheney was willing to exchange her political career for the truth of what happened on January 6 at the Capitol Building, which resulted in the death of five people with scores of injuries, including 138 police officers.
If that’s not a profile in courage; I don’t know what is.
Whoever has the power, please nominate Liz Cheney for a “Profile in Courage” award.
A mob of supporters of then-President Donald Trump climb through a window they broke as they storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
Photo Credit: Leah Millis/Reuters
***
Remarkably, most of us made it through 2021 in one piece with our Republic still intact despite an unprecedented Capitol Hill insurrection, which some equate to 9/11.
On January 6, a mob of protesters leaving a Donald Trump rally, upset from the results of the 2020 presidential election, which resulted in a Joe Biden victory, stormed the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C., the cradle of democracy, and assaulted law enforcement officers, vandalized property and occupied the building for several hours. Five people died, including several being injured before order was restored.
Two days after the insurrection, Twitter suspended Donald Trump’s account in order to prevent any “further incitement of violence. "
Just when we thought we licked Covid-19 after getting our miraculous vaccine shots (the acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus), a Delta variant emerged threatening more lives and leading to more restrictions and safeguarding, including wearing more masks.
Combined with last year’s fatalities, the U.S. is nearing 800,000 deaths from Covid.
“Seventy-five percent of people,” The New York Times recently reported "who have died of the virus in the United States — or about 600,000 of the nearly 800,000 who have perished so far — have been 65 or older. One in 100 older Americans has died from the virus.”
Soon after President Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th U.S. President, he made good on his pledge to completely pull U.S. troops out of Afghanistan after 20 years, a senseless engagement (to many) which cost the U.S. $2 trillion (Afghanistan and Iraq combined), with 2,461 U.S. service members killed, 20,000 injured, and another 3,846 U.S. contractors killed.
Despite the cancelling of the Tokyo Olympics last year due to the global pandemic, the Olympics finally took place in Tokyo (July 23-August 8) with the United States earning the most medals: 39 gold medals, 113 in total, while China finished second with 38 gold medals, 88 altogether.
The most disappointing blemish on the Summer Games was that no international guests (including spectators) were permitted to attend the Games, due to COVID travel restrictions.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, right, prepares to board a helicopter with his daughter Michaela Cuomo after announcing his resignation, Tuesday, Aug. 10, 2021, in New York.
Photo Credit: AP Photo/Seth Wenig
***
Unquestionably, one of the most scandalous stories of the year that splashed across many page one headlines was New York Governor Andrew Cuomo resigning his office (August 10) soon after New York Attorney General Letitia James released a report that found that the New York Governor sexually harassed 11 women, and according to the damning report, created a "hostile work environment.”
Before recessing for the Thanksgiving holiday, President Biden witnessed the successful passage of his ambitious infrastructure bill (“Build Back Better”) in Congress, which he described as a “once-in-generation investment in America.”
After a razor thin vote in the House of Representatives on November 5 (228-206) the infrastructure bill will invest hundreds of dollars to upgrade physical infrastructure, including roads and bridges, railways, airports, and water systems. The plan additionally invests tens of billions of dollars to modernize the U.S. electrical grid, aggressively embrace electric vehicles, and significantly expand broadband internet access.
The great Tom Brady clearly proved he’s the Eveready Battery of professional sports, who at age 43, won his seventh Super Bowl ring, leading the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a convincing 31-9 pounding of the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LV (55) at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa Bay, Florida. It was the first time in Super Bowl history a team has won in its home stadium.
So, those are just a brief assortment of the most dominating stories of the year.
To get an idea what stories interested readers the most in 2021, I checked in with some major news organizations to see what articles drove the most traffic to their home pages.
Here’s the list of news organizations who responded to my email.
Final vote tally for H.R. 3684-Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act
Image Credit: House Television via AP
***
If there is agreement on nothing else in Washington, the one area, you would think, that we can all agree on is how bad (downright deplorable) the crumbling roads and bridges are in the United States.
For evidence, look no further than the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) report card for 2021. It assigned a “C-” grade, up from a “D+” in 2017, the highest grade in twenty years. In addition, the United States faces an “infrastructure investment gap” of nearly $2.6 trillion this decade, which left unaddressed, could cost the United States $10 trillion in lost GDP by 2039.
McKinsey & Company researchers say that $150 billion per year will be required between 2017 and 2030 to modernize the country’s infrastructure needs.
President Joe Biden responded quickly to the alarm bells and developed a $2 trillion “Build Back Better” infrastructure plan, an ambitious plan, which he promoted as a “once-in-a-generation investment in America.”
The second part of Biden’s infrastructure plan (which hasn’t been voted on yet) is a social spending bill that includes hundreds of billions of dollars for child- and elder-care programs, which is considered “human infrastructure.” To fund this plan, Biden has proposed raising taxes on corporations and wealthy Americans.
After heaps of acrimony and uncivilized debate, Congress passed a $1.2 trillion, bipartisan plan, which will invest hundreds of dollars to upgrade physical infrastructure, including roads and bridges, railways, airports, and water systems. The plan additionally invests tens of billions of dollars to modernize the U.S. electrical grid, aggressively embrace electric vehicles, and significantly expand broadband internet access.
With the stroke of a pen, President Biden will sign the bill on Monday.
On the face of it, this should have all the makings of a grand celebration for America’s infrastructure, much like when President Dwight D. Eisenhower on June 30, 1956, signed a record $33 billion road-building program, a bipartisan authorization bill, which was met with little opposition in Congress. Sinclair Weeks, Secretary of Commerce under the Eisenhower administration hailed the bill as the “the greatest public-works program in the history of the world.”
Unlike Ike’s, the harmony in Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill was nowhere to be found. Most Republicans were dead set against it, labeling a socialist bill. Only 13 Republicans broke ranks and voted for it.
The final tally for the bill’s passage in Congress was 228-206.
The infrastructure bill was greeted a little more warmly in the other chamber, when Senate Minority leader, Mitch McConnell, and 19 Senate Republicans voted in favor of the infrastructure bill on August 10th of this year.
It’s practically unfathomable how vicious Republicans opposition to the bill were. FOX News commentator Laura Ingraham tweeted the 13 Republicans who voted for the bill had signed their “political death warrants. “
That was just the beginning.
The GOP House leadership quickly launched a malicious drive to strip committee assignments from the 13 Republican lawmakers who voted for the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., tweeted that those 13 Republicans "handed over their voting cards" to Nancy Pelosi to pass Biden's "Communist takeover of America via so-called infrastructure."
Why aren’t those members demonizing the 13 GOP members of Congress who voted for the bill being challenged by their own constituents and local newspapers for wanting to deny their state of badly needed infrastructure upgrades?
Why on earth would Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), want to oppose a bill that would deprive her own state of $12.5 billion in badly needed funding in Georgia over the next 20 years to maintain drinking water infrastructure. Georgia’s report card from the American Society of Civil Engineers additionally shows that Georgia has 374 bridges and more than 2,260 miles highway in poor condition.
Yet, Marjorie Taylor Greene likens the bill to communism and no one as much as bats an eye in her home state.
Rep. Matt Gaetz, (R-Fla) tweeted that he couldn’t believe Republicans gave the Democrats their socialism bill even though his own state of Florida has 408 bridges and over 3,564 miles of highway in poor condition. From 2010 to 2020, the Sunshine State incurred 22 extreme weather events, which cost up to $100 billion in damages. The recently passed infrastructure bill will infuse $50 billion to help communities, like Florida, recover from disasters.
If I lived in Florida, I would be outraged that Gaetz wouldn’t support such a bill knowing how badly their state was slammed with weather disaster damages.
After reading such spiteful tweets, you became painfully aware how much the GOP has lost its purpose in Washington, abandoned its values and principles, and have forgot why they were elected, which is to improve the lives of their constituents through the enactment of better laws and to act as a strong voice for the crying needs of their communities.
Today, most members of the Republican Party, sadly, are more interested in tweeting the most outrageous comment on social media in order to elicit media attention and create a buzz on social media than they are in improving the lives of the residents they supposedly represent.
Their vicious attacks and vows of revenge against the 13 GOP members who voted their conscious and what was best for their state, was downright appalling. How do they live with themselves in refusing to be part of a bill that will repair the nation’s dilapidated infrastructure?
It really makes little sense to oppose such a bill when you look at the disturbing evidence of the condition of the country’s infrastructure.
Henry Petroski, a historian, in his book, “The Road Taken: The History and Future of America’s Infrastructure” writes that poor infrastructure can impose large costs on the U.S. economy. In addition to catastrophic failures with bridge collapses or dam breaches, poorly maintained roads, trains, and waterways cost billions of dollars in lost economic productivity.
In addition to the gloomy report from the American Society of Civil Engineers, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) finds that nearly one in four bridges are deficient, with 10 % considered as structurally deficient and 14 % functionally obsolete.
Equally alarming, a 2020Federal Communications Commission report finds that approximately 18 million Americans, most living in rural areas, lack access to any broadband network.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that drinking water and irrigation systems need $632 billion in additional investment over the next decade.
And yet the United States hypes itself as one of the wealthiest countries in the world.
Besides the desperate need for drastic improvement of roads and bridges, Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill will serve as a significant boon to the ailing economy in the post-pandemic United States.
By increasing efficiency and reliability and lowering transportation costs, analysts contend that investment in the nation’s infrastructure would improve “long-term U.S. competitiveness, insulate the economy from shocks, and create jobs.”
Imagine, the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers estimates that $1 billion of transportation-infrastructure investment supports as many as 13,000 jobs for a year.
This bill should have been championed by both parties as a great American success story. Instead, some members of the Republican House of Representatives (such as Rep. Fred Upton R-Mich.) are being demonized and receiving death threats because Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) posted many of their phone numbers on her Twitter page. Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois reportedly received a call to slit his wrists and “rot in hell.” Another caller hoped Don Bacon of Nebraska would slip and fall down a staircase.
Because we live in an age when compromise is considered a dirty word and Republicans didn’t want to give Joe Biden legislative win, they were willing to neglect the needs of the nation’s infrastructure and were ok with denying potential jobs for constituents in their own state, all so they could embarrass Joe Biden.
As expected, former president Donald Trump demonized the bill, saying they [13 House members] should be “ashamed of themselves” for “helping the Democrats.”
Trump went mute over what the bill actually does for the country.
What kind of country have we become?
I never read about President Eisenhower being branded a socialist or communist for sponsoring and signing the Federal Highway Act of 1956, which gave birth to America’s interstate highway system. Eisenhower would later say that the Federal Highway Act was his favorite piece of legislation that he worked hard to get passed.
Everyone knows Washington is broken and dysfunctional; but even the Republicans, if they had any brains, would have subscribed to the timeless adage: “choose your fights wisely.”
Even Republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell considered the infrastructure bill a “godsend” for his home state of Kentucky.
Jennifer Gosar, the sister of Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), told CNN’s Pamela Brown that she considers him a “sociopath”
***
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz) tweeted an image of someone killing progressive Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. Soon after, Gosar’s sister appeared on CNN, calling her own brother a “sociopath.”
I’m sure It would come as little surprise to Jennifer Gosar to know that her brother isn’t the only sociopath in Congress.
Clearly, Republicans in the House of Representatives, at least most of them, are now members of the House of Crazies!
British author and journalist, Anne Sebba, who has written biographies on some shadowy British figures, including Jennie Churchill and Wallis Simpson, among others, traveled across the Atlantic to explore one of the most controversial characters of them all in her new book, “Ethel Rosenberg: An American Tragedy."
In one of the most highly debated cases in American history, Ethel, along with her husband, Julius Rosenberg, were tried and convicted of espionage for providing the Soviet Union classified information on the Manhattan Project. The Rosenbergs were executed in 1953.
Ethel Rosenberg was the first woman executed by the United States Government since Mary Surratt, an American boarding house owner, was hanged (July 7, 1865) for her role in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
The Manhattan Project was a code name attached to a top-secret project involving Allied scientists working to develop an atomic bomb. According to recorded testimony, British physicist Klaus Fuchs, working at Los Alamos, met with a Soviet agent (named Raymond) on two different occasions and transferred notes on the working design for the atomic bomb.
Fuchs would eventually be arrested and pressured to name his co-conspirators. He confessed to spying and passing to the Soviets information about the Manhattan Project.
There isn’t much debate surrounding Julius Rosenberg, the husband of Ethel Rosenberg. He was a card-carrying Communist party member since December 12, 1939, approximately six months after marrying Ethel in a small civil ceremony.
Mountains of court testimony, FBI records, and recently declassified cables, show irrefutably that Julius Rosenberg was a prime mover and shaker of a spy ring which involved transferring classified information about the development of the United States first atomic bomb from the Los Alamos Laboratory (New Mexico) to a courier, Harry Gold, who was alleged to have passed it on to the Soviets.
Testimony reveals David Greenglass, the brother of Ethel Rosenberg, passed a "sketch of a high-explosive lens mold" to Gold at Julius Rosenberg’s request; a sketch that was eventually transferred to the Soviets.
Greenglass worked as a machinist-soldier stationed at Los Alamos. He was recruited by Julius Rosenberg to assist in this espionage ring.
So, exactly how did Ethel become linked in this spy ring?
When the FBI questioned Greenglass on June 15, 1950; in addition to naming his wife Ruth and Julius Rosenberg in the spy ring, he told the feds that Ethel Rosenberg, the wife of Julius, was in Julius’s apartment room and typed hand written notes on classified information from him.
In fact, no handwritten or type-written notes were ever found and they were never presented in court, raising credibility problems for the prosecution’s case that Ethel Rosenberg was an accomplice to the spy ring. The charges that Ethel Rosenberg typed the notes, in other words, was unsubstantiated.
In exchange for their testimony, David and Ruth Greenglass were given appreciably lighter sentences.
It wouldn’t be divulged until 2008 that the Greenglass’s (both Ruth and David, active participants in the spying activity) lied in their original testimony about Ethel Rosenberg typing notes that would facilitate the spy ring. They later claim they were coerced by the prosecuting team, led by the ruthless firebrand Roy Cohn, to fabricate their story so they could force Ethel Rosenberg to disclose additional badly needed information about the spy ring.
In order to save his wife from prosecution, David Greenglass told journalist Sam Roberts that he was squeezed by the prosecution to commit perjury. His false testimony additionally saved his wife from prosecution.
David Greenglass was released from prison in 1960 after serving 10 years of his 15-year sentence. His wife, Ruth, was never charged.
***
Groundless accusations against Ethel Rosenberg and the reason she was sentenced to death becomes the central focus of Anne Sebba’s fascinating book.
Most observers who have followed the Rosenberg case reach the overriding conclusion that threatening Ethel with a harsh punishment would make her share more information about the spy ring. She never offered prosecutor’s any more damaging information about the espionage activity because she wasn’t privy to such information. She was merely the wife of a Soviet spy, not a collaborator.
Martin Sobell, an American engineer, convicted of spying for the Soviet Union, told reporters in 2008 that Ethel was guilty only "of being Julius's wife.”
Anne Sebba writes that the true extent of Ethel’s complicity will probably never be clearly known, but points out, “it was not a crime under U.S. Law to approve spousal wrongdoing, either during the war or the time of the trial.”
The fact that Julius Rosenberg didn’t distance Ethel from the real crime capers during the intense questioning, left many historians and journalists scratching their heads why he wouldn’t save his own wife from possible execution.
Not all observers, however, are convinced Ethel Rosenberg wasn’t an active participant in the spy ring.
Mark Kramer, Director of the Cold War Studies Project at Harvard University, told me “the evidence against Ethel Rosenberg at the trial was overwhelming, and Soviet foreign intelligence documents that became available in 2005 provide conclusive evidence that she gave her husband invaluable assistance with his espionage ring.” “She did not deserve to be put to death” Kramer concedes, “but she certainly was guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage and was justifiably convicted, despite the misdeeds of the prosecutors.” Kramer thought a sentence of 15 to 25 years for Ethel Rosenberg would have been more appropriate.
Along with the dubious charges against Ethel Rosenberg, Anne Sebba drives home the critical point that the execution of the Rosenbergs happened during a time of heightened paranoia in the United States about Soviet aggression and Communist intrusion into leading American institutions.
At the time of the Rosenberg case, Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy, the prominent ring leader of the “Second Red Scare,” charged that the State Department employed over 200 Communist agents, triggering fear and suspicion, leading to the blacklisting of a number of individuals who were hauled in front of McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee and accused of unfounded subversion and treason charges.
“For one brief moment in time,” Sebba wrote, “hysteria overtook common sense and, in order to appear strong in the face of credible Communist threat, the American government allowed this profoundly moral woman to be executed, and in the most brutally incompetent manner.” “It is hard to imagine,” Sebba went on to write, “any other country, in Western Europe of the wider free world, where this terrible fate would have been inflicted on Ethel.”
The death penalty unquestionably met with the approval of a number of Americans at the time. As many as 68% respondents in a 1953 survey, supported the death penalty.
The death penalty might have been ok with a majority of the American public, but there was pent-up outrage, internationally, for the death sentence of Ethel Rosenberg, which Anne Sebba underscores.
At the time of the trial, for example, The New York Times printed a letter from German born physicist, Albert Einstein, who wrote: “My conscience compels me to urge you (President Eisenhower) to commute the death sentence of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.”
The Vatican newspaper (L’Osservatore Romano) published a passionate plea from the pope not to execute the Rosenbergs. Before he left office, President Truman received as many as three million letters and telegrams asking the Rosenbergs not be put to death.
Further, U.S. Ambassador to France, C. Douglas Dillon, predicted (probably correctly) that the Rosenberg executions would be viewed, many years later, as a knee jerk reaction to McCarthyism. The majority in France, in fact, opposed the executions which they viewed as “unjustifiable punishment.”
For decades after the trial, the Rosenberg’s sons Robert and Michael Meeropol believed both their parents weren’t spies and fought vigorously to clear their names.
All that changed in 2008, when 91-year-old Martin Sobell admitted for the first time that he was a Soviet spy in a New York Times article. He additionally implicated Julius Rosenberg in the spy ring. According to the New York Times, “coupled with some of that grand jury testimony, Mr. Sobell’s admission bolsters what has become a widely held view among scholars: that Mr. Rosenberg was, indeed, guilty of spying, but that his wife was at most a bit player in the conspiracy and may have been framed by complicit prosecutors.”
After such a sobering revelation, the Rosenberg sons finally gave up the fight and acknowledged their father, Julius Rosenberg, was indeed a Soviet spy.
Both sons, however, continue to fight for the exoneration of their mother, Ethel Rosenberg. In 2016, they made an impassioned plea to President Barack Obama to clear her name without success.
Now that there’s a new president, I asked Michael Meeropol whether he and his brother would make a plea to President Joe Biden to decide for himself whether their mother was a spy?
Mr. Meeropol responded to my email only to say, “my brother and I are considering the possibilities, but we have not made any decisions yet.”
Thanks to Anne Sebba’s compelling narrative, readers are given an opportunity to decide for themselves whether prisoner number “10510” (from the Sing Sing prison overlooking the east bank of the Hudson River) really deserved to be executed shortly after 8 p.m. on June 19, 1953, along with her husband, Julius.
It’s actually a splendidly written, meticulously researched, and upbeat social history about the expansion of Black American baseball players into Major League Baseball.
Heaps of attention has historically been paid to Jackie Robinson in becoming the first African-American baseball player in Major League Baseball with the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, while Larry Doby, a 23-year-old outfielder for the Newark Eagles, (the first American League African-American player to smash the color barrier 11 weeks later), often receives little attention or becomes a mere footnote by baseball historians.
Epplin, a New York City writer, centers this American social saga on four individuals: two Black, and two white, all of whom changed the face of baseball forever. Biographical sketches presented of Larry Doby, Satchel Paige, Bill Veeck, and Bob Feller become, knowingly or not, the unsung heroes of the integration of baseball.
Had it not been for Doby and Satchel Paige breaking the color line, many argue, the Indians might not have won the 1948 World Series.
Luckily for baseball, the integration of Jackie Robinson, Larry Doby, Satchel Paige, and others, wouldn’t have been possible without two color-blind owners: Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers and of course, Veeck of the Cleveland Indians, who bought the Indians in June, 1946.
The progressive thinking Rickey reportedly said: “the greatest untapped reservoir of raw material in the history of the game is the Black race.” “The Negro,” Ricky observed, “will make us winners for years to come.”
Bill Veeck, meanwhile, not only wasn’t afraid of welcoming Black players into the big leagues, he enthusiastically widened his net with the hiring of Black security guards, vendors, janitors, groundskeepers, ushers and musicians, along with offering a front office job to Olympic gold medalist, Harrison Dillard.
Despite the overabundance of promising talent in the Negro Leagues, it would take years before the rest of baseball would sign Black players, including the New York Yankees who didn’t sign a Black player until 1955, the Detroit Tigers not until 1958, and the Boston Red Sox were the last to the party, by not signing a Black player until 1959, more than ten years after the game was officially integrated.
Alabama born, Satchel Paige, 42-years-old, came on board in July, 1948 during the Indians stretch run of the pennant race. Epplin underscores how Satch during his first month with the Indians, only surrendered seven runs over 38 and a third innings, while generating rock star status. His first three starts in MLB, attracted more than 200,000 fans, inspiring sports columnist for the Cleveland News, Ed McAuley, to write that Paige was “the greatest drawing card in the history of baseball”
Overall, Paige pitched 21 games in the 1948 regular season, including seven starts with two complete game shutouts. His ERA that year was an impressive 2.48.
Larry Doby became the first Black player to belt a home run in a World Series in Game 4 of the Boston Braves and Indians Series. The Indians disposed of the Boston Braves in six games. Doby additionally led the Indians with a .318 batting average in the 1948 Series.
Not many people associate Iowa native Bob Feller with progressive thinking in race relations, especially in 1948. Rapid Robert, in fact, told reporters during his barnstorming tours that he didn’t think many Black players had the right stuff to make it in MLB, including Jackie Robinson.
Cleveland owner Bill Veeck witnesses the signing of ace pitcher Bob Feller to a contract for the 1948 season. Despite the high hopes for the staff ace, the right-hander won 19 games and led the AL for the seventh and last time, while the velocity on his blazing fastball began to wane.
Photo Credit: The Rucker Archive
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But if not for Feller’s widely reported barnstorming tours in the offseason, many in America wouldn’t be aware of the explosive talent of many Black players.
During the barnstorming tours, Joe DiMaggio, the “Yankee Clipper,” would say that Paige was the “best and fastest pitcher he ever faced.” Of course, many mainstream newspapers never published DiMaggio’s comments for fear it would imply Black players were better than whites.
For three consecutive barnstorming tours, Satchel Paige and Bob Feller met head-to-head.
Because of Feller’s major contribution with showcasing marquee Black ball players of the era through different sections of the country, Negro League players invited him to their Negro Baseball League Reunion in Kentucky.
Most fascinating about Epplin’s book of the 1948 World Series is that many of the progressive elements of the 1948 Cleveland Indians was mirroring many events and individuals outside of the diamond during the same year.
In 1948, for example, Atlanta, Georgia hired its first Black police officers at a time when a quarter of the Atlanta police department were reportedly members of the Ku Klux Klan. But much like Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby, Black Atlanta police officers in 1948 had to tolerate racial taunts and abuse, they couldn’t lose their temper, they couldn’t ride police squad cars, and they couldn’t arrest white suspects. They had to call for assistance.
Additionally, in 1948, Alice Coachman Davis won the high jump at the Olympics in London, England, becoming the first Black woman to win an Olympic Gold medal.
In 1948, Johnny Ritchey became the first African-American baseball player to play in the Pacific League as a member of the San Diego Padres.
Most importantly, President Harry Truman issued Executive Order 9981, which directed the armed forces to provide “equality of treatment and opportunity for all personnel without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin.”
Epplin chronicles how Larry Doby had to endure the humiliation of segregation in the military while serving his country. Robert H. Meyer, Professor Emeritus at Moravian College, observed that “Black vets, having just fought against Hitler and vicious bigotry, returned to the country to find themselves treated with a similar bigotry.”
Victoria W. Wolcott, Professor of History at the University of Buffalo, tells me, “1948 was an important milestone in the civil rights movement. It was a period of what historians refer to as “racial liberalism” following World War II.” “Because of migration,” Wolcott said, “during the war years large numbers of African Americans migrated to northern cities, where they could vote. The NAACP also grew significantly during the 1940s and even had some successful voter registration drives in southern cities like Atlanta—as well as legal victories that lead up to Brown v. Board of Education.
In his State of the Union address in 1948, President Truman made a major push for civil rights. Such progressive thinking lost him support in different sections of the country, but as it turned out, it was the Black vote he received which decisively helped him win the 1948 presidential election over Republican governor of New York, Thomas E. Dewey.
Gregg Ivers, Professor of Government in the School of Public Affairs at American University, depicts the 1940s as a “period underappreciated by the general public and even by educators, journalists, and others, who believe that the civil rights movement began with Brown and Rosa Parks.” “Nothing just happens,” Ivers stressed.
Ivers additionally pointed out that 1948 was the last year of the Negro Leagues, which opened up a fresh pool of Black players who were no longer bound to their teams and their domineering owners. Willie Mays played his last game in the Negro Leagues in 1948 as a member of the Birmingham Black Barons.
Progress with civil rights, however, ran into a major roadblock in the 1950s.
Jim Ralph, Professor of American History and Culture at Middlebury College, said so much of the progress with race relations in the mid and late 1940s, came to a screeching halt with the emergence of the Cold War and McCarthyism, which narrowed the activist tendencies of the country. “Left-leaning CIO unions,” Ralph observed, “which had often been pioneers in fighting against racist practices, were on the defensive. A powerful voice for civil and workers’ rights like Paul Robeson found himself under attack for his sympathetic disposition toward the Soviet Union. “
As fascinating as Epplin’s book about the four central pillars in the integration of baseball is, the book, from this observer, is more a valentine to the City of Cleveland in 1948 during a time when industry was thriving, the city was prospering economically; a time when downtown Cleveland was bustling with restaurants, bars, and entertainment venues, and when civic pride was at an all-time high. It was the last time the Cleveland Indians were world champs, the toast of the town.
The years after 1948 in Cleveland, would usher in crushing heartbreak and disappointment.
As Epplin points out, “the year after Veeck departed, attendance dipped to below two million. Six seasons later, the Indians drew fewer than a million fans, second worst in the American League.”
Satchel Paige, moreover, would never taste another World Series appearance again. Ol’ Satchwas elected to the Hall of Fame in 1971 as the first electee of the Committee on Negro Baseball Leagues. He passed away on June 8, 1982.
Despite being the first African-American player in the American League, Larry Doby’s number wasn’t retired by the Indians until 1994, four years before he was elected to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. Many argue that Doby, for one reason or another, never lived up to his full potential.
Bob Feller would appear in only one All-Star game after 1948; 1951 would be the last year the Indians one-time staff ace would win more than twenty games (the same year he threw his third and final no-hitter) and would start in only 15 games in his final two seasons with the Tribe before retiring in 1956 with 266 wins, ranking him 28th in history. Feller never won a World Series game.
Due to an impending divorce and wanting to set up his children with a trust fund, Veeck sold the Indians after the 1949 season. He would later emerge as owner of the St Louis Browns and the Chicago White Sox.
John A. Kirk, Professor of History at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, summed up the year 1948 best, when he told me: “1948 was certainly a year of hope, in terms of the direction of race relations, and of liberal and progressive movements more generally.”
Kingsbury considers Op-Ed, outdated and “clubby newspaper jargon,” now that a great many readers have migrated to the web and no longer feast their eyes on the editorial page. Readers are now greeted with a battalion of opinion columns, mountains of columnists, who appear to have hijacked the Times’ home page. Op-Ed means opposite the editorial page, and not as many readers think, opposing viewpoints (of the Editorial Page) or even, opinion and editorial.
The New York Times “Op-Ed” page was officially launched on September 21, 1970 . Guest columnists included: political scientist and National Security Advisor to President Johnson, W.W. Rostow, novelist Han Suyin, and mystery novelist and journalist, Gerald W. Johnson.
Soon after the New York Times rolled out their Op-Ed pages, other newspapers across the country fell in line with their own pages and guest columnists.
But not all newspapers followed the same format. In the 1970’s, the Chicago Tribune’s Op-Ed page showcased more liberal opinions to counter the Tribune’s “staunchly conservative views.” In the early 1980s, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, at least for a short time, dressed their op-ed page with more local writers, rather than syndicated writers. Former Plain Dealer editorial director, Mary Anne Sharkey, said the Plain Dealer set up a "Board of Contributors." “We actively recruited different voices from the community to contribute op-eds or essays,” Sharkey explained, “most were good writers and did not require a lot of editing.” The Board didn’t allow politicians to become board members, “but we did have representatives of the arts, business, clergy, activists, and a mix of women and minorities. I added a few more women because I felt the board was not diverse enough” Sharkey said.
Similar to The Plain Dealer, the Los Angeles Times op-ed actively promoted more local opinions.
Editor Herbert Bayard Swope created the Op-Ed page in 1921 for The New York World
Photo Credit: Ray and Judith Spinzia Collection
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The first Op-Ed page was actually hatched 100 years ago, not from the New York Times, but from the New York World, whose editor, Herbert Bayard Swope, in 1921, came up with the idea of having a full page of columnists offering opinions on news topics. The page was called Op-Ed. Unlike today’s Op-Ed pages, however, the New York World didn’t publish unsolicited manuscripts; rather, they relied on in-house staffers from a mighty group of writers, which included: Heywood Broun, Alexander Woollcott, Deems Taylor, Harry Hansen, and Franklin P. Adams.
Why did the New York Times decide to launch an Op-Ed page?
Editorial Page Editor John B. Oakes pushed for an Op-Ed page for The New York Times since the early 1960s
Photo Credit: Wikipedia
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According to a number of news accounts, the idea of featuring a page of columnists opposite the editorial page, came from editorial page editor, John B. Oakes, (aka “Johnny”) himself who in the early 1960s, received a long opinion piece from a Suez Canal Company representative about the Egyptian government’s seizure of the canal. There was no space for this piece in the Times, so Oakes began his campaign for an Op-Ed page. His pitch fell on deaf ears from publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger who wanted the page opposite the editorial page reserved for the obituary page, which was bringing in lucrative income.
The idea for an Op-Ed page was kicked around for a few more years without anything being resolved.
A major breakthrough came in 1966, when the New York Herald Tribune folded. The Tribune featured guest columnists from time to time and its editorials tended to have a conservative viewpoint, in contrast to the Times signature liberalism. This opened up an opportunity for Oakes to press again for an Op-Ed page, featuring conservative viewpoints. In addition to Oakes lobbying the publisher, assistant managing editor Harrison Salisbury was a strong advocate of the Times “providing a platform for responsible conservative opinion.”
After some administrative haggling, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, the Times publisher, gave the green light in 1970 to introduce an Op-Ed page, moving the obituary page to another section of the paper. Harrison Salisbury was the first opinion page editor under the direction of John B. Oakes, the editorial page director. The Times paid its contributors $125, which is about $700 in today’s dollars.
The Op-Ed page, as it turned out, was a smash success. In its first six months, the page reportedly produced a net profit of $112,000 (on $264,000) in revenue. The Times receives approximately 1200 op-ed submissions each week.
At first, the Times wanted to feature offbeat or whimsical essays from its contributors; so that readers would be given a break from the political and international news driving the day. It didn’t take long, however, before the Times Op-Ed, touched on many of the most explosive issues of the 1970s, including Vietnam, Watergate, Civil Rights, and the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), among other issues.
Despite the sound diversity of opinions from a wide range of celebrities, politicians, scholars, and columnists, the last 50 years wasn’t without its share of controversy.
One of the most controversial op-eds was written by Times reporter Sydney Schanberg, (a Pulitzer winner in 1976 for his coverage of the Communist takeover in Cambodia). In 1985, he fell out of favor with the Times editors for writing about the proposed underground highway, known as the Westway Project, in which he attacked "New York newspapers" (meaning, The Times) for failing to adequately report on the billions worth of overruns the project was costing.
On April 21, 1991, New York Times op-ed columnist, Anna Quindlen, put her job on the line when she criticized her own paper for their coverage of Patricia Bowman , the woman who who accused William Kennedy Smith of rape. The Times profile on Bowman implied her poor driving record and sexual history, which was described as a "wild streak," cast a shadow over the validity of her charge. Quindlen accused her editors of sexism and of falling below their normal high standards when they identified her simply because of the high visibility of the Kennedy name; and because another media competitor, NBC, already revealed her identity. Quindlen never mentions Bowman's name. Susan E. Tifft and Alex S. Jones in "The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind The New York Times," report that after Quindlen’s column was published, the Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr came by her desk (so everyone could hear), put his arm around her and complimented Quindlen on her column.
The reliability of Judith Miller’s sources during the Iraq war, prompted, op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd to blast her co-worker. Dowd’s column began, "I've always liked Judy Miller." Dowd questioned Miller’s credibility as a journalist by acting as a pawn for the Bush administration's "Weapons of Mass Destruction" propaganda. She ended her column by suggesting the Times' integrity as an institution would be seriously comprised if Judy "Run Amok," should ever step foot in the Times newsroom again.
The beginning of the end for the Times Op-Ed pages may have been the publication of Senator Tom Cotton’s inflammatory essay, 'Send in the Troops', in which the Arkansas Republican pushed for federal troops to respond if there was violent rioting in major U.S. cities. Despite the publisher of the Times, AG Sulzberger, approving the essay, Twitter exploded over the Times publishing such a reckless column. The storm of controversy forced Editorial Page Director James Bennett to resign after receiving so much backlash on Twitter as well as from Times employees.
A month later, Bari Weiss, the paper’s op-ed page editor, posted her resignation letter online in which she accused her colleagues of “constant bullying by those who disagree with my views.” She additionally described the Times as a 'hostile work environment' and criticized the Times management for allowing her coworkers to “publicly smear” her on Twitter
So, as the Times opinion page enters a new era, many wonder whether the “Guest Essays” will vary much from the Op-Ed page of the last 50 years?
Kingsbury indicated in her column that the Times would continue to “seek out opposing views for its guest essays,” but she did underscore that “we have our thumb on our scale in the name of progress, fairness, and shared humanity.”
Censorship: February 17, 1989: “India Bans a Book” By Salman Rushdie who discusses the Indian Finance ministry banning his novel “The Satanic Verses” under the Customs Act. Rushdie had been in hiding since Iran threatened his life, claiming “The Satanic Verses’’ blasphemed Mohammed.
American Culture: January 16, 1974 “Downhill All the Way” by E.B. White, essayist and poet on his whimsical recommendations for 1974.
Vietnam: May 17, 1975: “The Demise of South Vietnam’’ by William C. Westmoreland, a retired general who headed the United States forces in Vietnam.
Kent State Shootings: May 4, 1972: “Kent State: May 4, 1970’’ by Arthur S. Krause who had a daughter killed at Kent State.
Watergate: January 11, 1974: “A Soliloquy” by Clare Boothe Luce, playwright and journalist on whether to impeach Nixon.
Civil Rights: January 16, 1989: “King’s Heritage’’ (race relations in America) by author Taylor Branch
AIDS: November 27, 1985: “Get Moving on AIDS” by Robert E. Pollack, dean of Columbia College of Columbia University, advocating an effective vaccine against HTLV III, the virus that causes AIDS.
Media Corporate Culture: March 10, 1987: “From Murrow to Mediocrity” by Dan Rather on over 200 employees losing their jobs so that executives can earn more profit.
