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The Presidential Election Of 1956
Things were going so smoothly at this point that the voters didn’t really feel like going through a whole new presidential election, so they decided to hold the 1952 election over again, and it came out the same. In a word, everything seemed to be working out very well, and the fifties would probably have been pure perfection except that—it seems like this always happens—all these pesky foreign affairs kept occurring in the form of crises, starting with ...
The Suez Crisis
This crisis involved the Suez Canal, which was built by the French (“Suez!” is the word used to call French pigs.) (Not that they come.) and which is extremely strategic because it is the only navigable water route co
At around this same time a number of other international crises, most of them also fully blown, occurred in Hungary, Poland, Lebanon, and the quiz-show industry. But all of these paled by comparison to ...
The Sputnik Crisis
One day in 1957 everybody in the United States was minding his or her own business when suddenly the Russians launched a grapefruit-size object called Sputnik (literally, “Little Sput”) into an Earth orbit, from which it began transmitting back the following potentially vital intelligence information
(and we quote): “Beep.” This came as a severe shock to Americans, because at that point the best our space scientists had been able to come up with was a walnut-size object that went: “Moo.” And thus began the Space Race which was to have an enormous worldwide impact on Mrs. DeLucia’s fifth-grade class, which was where we were at the time. All of a sudden Mrs. DeLucia was telling us we were going to have to study a LOT more science and math, including such concepts as the “cosine.” As if the whole thing were our fault.
So it was a difficult time, but by 1960 the nation was starting to feel a little better. “Well,” we said brightly in unison, “at least there haven’t been any crises for a while!” Which was of course the signal for the International Crisis Promotion Council to swing into action and produce:
The U-2 Crisis
This crisis occurred when the Russians shot down an American U-2
reco
It was a weather plane. It was a traffic plane. It was swamp gas. The dog ate our homework.
But eventually President Eisenhower, emerging from a high-level nap, was forced to admit that it was in fact a spy plane, at which point the Russians, led by Nikita “The Human Potato” Khrushchev, stomped Out of the Paris summit conference before the appetizers had even arrived, leaving “Ike” with nobody to negotiate with except himself. And although he won several major concessions, the feeling was becoming widespread among the American People that maybe it was time for a change—time to get some “new blood” in the White House and “get the country moving again.” And it just so happened that at that very moment, a new “star” was rising on the public scene—a young man whose boyish good looks, energy, quick wit, and graceful charm would soon capture the hearts of the nation and even the world: Pat Boone. Or maybe that was 1955.
Discussion Questions
1. Do you think we’ve had enough Winston Churchill jokes? Explain.
2. Have you, or has anybody you have ever met, ever found any use for the cosine? We didn’t think so.
Extra Credit
Try to think up a campaign slogan even more inane than “I like Ike.” (Hint: This is not possible.)
Bonus Question
What does one do with extra credit, anyway?
Chapter Nineteen. The Sixties: A Nation Gets High And Has Amazing Insights, Many Of Which Later On Turn Out To Seem Kind Of Stupid
The sixties was a unique era in American history. Mention the sixties to any middle-aged urban professional, and he’ll transform himself into something worse than one of those Depressionites, droning away about his memories until you think up an excuse to leave. Such is the impact that this exciting era still has on the American consciousness. Because it was a time of truth, but also of lies; of love, but also of hate; of peace, but also of war; of Otis Redding, but also of So
How many times can a man be a man Before a man is a man?
Moved by the power of this message, tens of thousands of young people rejected the trappings of a grasping greedy society to live simple, uncluttered lives dedicated to meditation and spirituality and listening to sitar music and ingesting random substances and becoming intensely interested in the ceiling and driving home at one mile per hour. As a result of these experiences, the “Flower Children” of the sixties developed a unique set of values, a strong sense of idealism and social awareness that still exerts a powerful influence over their decisions in such philosophical areas as what radio stations to listen to when driving their Jaguars to their brokerage firms.
The 1960 Presidential Election
In 1960 the Democratic candidate was the rich, witty, graceful, charming, and of course, boyishly handsome Massachusetts senator John Fitzgerald Ke
The turning point was a series of nationally televised debates, in which Ke