* I just finished an absorbing tome, “American Dreamer,” about the life and times of Henry Wallace, the FDR vice president who was dropped from the ticket in 1944 amid big-city-boss/ Southern backlash and “Red Scare” dynamics. Arguably he and America deserved better.
Wallace later ran unsuccessfully as the Progressive Party’s presidential candidate in 1948, but timing–and third party realities–were everything. Wallace actually finished fourth (behind Harry Truman, Tom Dewey and Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond), won no electoral votes and only carried 30 precincts. But seven of those precincts were in the “Tampa area,” where Wallace was “popular with Spanish-speaking cigar crafters.”
* Here’s an ironic quote for the American ages: “I had expected to vote against Senator (John) Kennedy because of his religion.” That was the Rev. Martin Luther King SR. in November of 1960. Here’s the rest of the quote: “Now he can be my president, Catholic or whatever he is.”
What prompted that response was word that presidential candidate John Kennedy had made a couple of calls on behalf of his son, Martin Jr.–to Georgia Democratic Gov. Ernest Vandiver and to Coretta Scott King–after Martin Jr. had been arrested during a sit-in at an Atlanta department store. He had been sentenced to six months’ hard labor at a maximum security state prison. King was released on bail a day later.
Kennedy’s response to the irreverent King Sr. quote: “Well, we all have our fathers, don’t we?”
The account was passed along by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in “A Thousand Days,” published in 1965. It surfaces again in the recently published “Kennedy and King: The President, the Pastor and the Battle Over Civil Rights” by Steven Levingston.
* Author and RollingStone editor Jason Diamond recently did a Florida-travelogue piece for the New York Times. It included a nice shout-out for Ybor City. Cuban sandwiches and cigars were highlighted. The Columbia Restaurant and The Bricks were well noted. From a sidewalk table, Diamond takes in the aromas that underscore “Cigar City.”
“I look around and, for the first time on my trip,” he muses, “feel as if I’m in a place where I could see myself living.”
* Too bad that when it comes to the polarizing issue of health care, the media can’t ignore partisanship in labeling. Exhibit A: It’s the Affordable Care Act or just the (incumbent, 7-year-old) health care law. “Obamacare” is how demonizing GOPsters labeled it right out of the blocks, and the media, especially electronic, dutifully picked it up and turned it into de facto usage. And, yes, there’s also the ACA’s putative alternative, the American Health Care Act–or “Trumpcare.”
“Care,” (and, yes, there was “Romneycare”) has become the new “gate.” It makes for lazy, media shorthand, but more importantly it trivializes a critically important issue and helps it maintain embittering, partisan status. MediaGate?