Archive - November 4, 2011

Page 2: These were momentous times, Pope John died and the only clergyman with the guts to stare a television camera in the face was the old croaker himself, Cardinal Cushing, who eulogized from the heart. Gordon Cooper was lofted into orbit, as I watched with my heart thumping against my ribs, but the public taste for that kind of thing had become so staled that nobody else give a flicker of a damn. The Governor of Alabama stood like a minstrel dandy in the schoolhouse door, while Katzenbach, with immeasurable dignity, supplicated before him. Kennedy took Europe by storm and I felt a twinge of egret that I wasn’t still in Paris to witness it. In Berlin he delivered his most rousing speech, declaring with hoarse passion, “Lass sie nach Berlin kommen!” – and in turning away as the newsreels clearly showed, slipped himself a small smile for the . . .