By: KatherineS,
on 10/16/2015
I approach myth from the standpoint of theories of myth, or generalizations about the origin, the function, and the subject matter of myth. There are hundreds of theories. They hail from anthropology, sociology, psychology, politics, literature, philosophy, and religious studies.
The post In defense of myth appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Ayana Young,
on 9/26/2015
On the evening of September 26, 1960, in Chicago, Illinois, a presidential debate occurred that changed the nature of national politics. Sixty-five years ago debates and campaign speeches for national audiences were relatively rare. In fact, this was the first live televised presidential debate in U.S. history. The two presidential aspirants were both youthful but […]
The post Substance, style, and myth in the Kennedy-Nixon debates appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Lauren,
on 1/20/2011
It’s inauguration day here in the US, and also the 50th anniversary of JFK’s famous inaugural address. (“Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”) So today, the American National Biography is proud to spotlight the life of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
Kennedy, John Fitzgerald (29 May 1917-22 Nov. 1963), thirty-fifth president of the United States, was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, the son of Joseph P. Kennedy, a millionaire businessman and public official, and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, daughter of Boston mayor John F. Fitzgerald. John Kennedy’s education stressed preparation for advancement of a Catholic in an Anglo-Saxon, generally anti-Catholic society. He entered Harvard College in 1936. Kennedy, known to his friends and family as Jack, was an indifferent student at first but became more interested in his studies following a European summer vacation after his freshman year. A longer stay in Europe in 1939 led to his senior honors paper, “Appeasement in Munich,” which was published the following year as Why England Slept. Kennedy graduated from Harvard cum laude in 1940.
Kennedy enlisted in the U.S. Navy in September 1941. In 1943 a PT boat under his command in the South Pacific was sunk during a night attack by a Japanese destroyer. Kennedy and ten other survivors spent three days afloat in the ocean, during which Kennedy towed a wounded sailor for miles, gripping his life jacket in his teeth while swimming.
After his brother Joseph was killed in the war, Kennedy took on the responsibility of pursuing his family’s political ambitions. In 1946 he won a hard-fought Democratic primary election in the Eleventh Congressional District of Massachusetts, a Democratic stronghold. He was easily elected in November and reelected in 1948 and 1950.
Kennedy’s congressional record was undistinguished. He suffered from an assortment of physical difficulties, the most severe of which was diagnosed in 1947 as Addison’s disease, an illness caused by an adrenal gland malfunction that weakens the body’s immune system. His illnesses were partly responsible for his inattention to legislative duties, but his belief that public awareness of his condition would damage his prospects led him to conceal them. Congressional colleagues saw Kennedy’s casual style as that of a playboy, the frivolous son of a rich man.
Kennedy’s major legislative distinction was as a staunch supporter of federally funded housing, an issue of concern to the many war veterans in his urban district. He voted against the Taft-Hartley Labor Relations Act of 1947, which was bitterly opposed by organized labor. In 1952 Kennedy ran for the Senate and, in a classic contest of Irish-Catholic against Yankee, defeated incumbent Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. The next year he married Jacqueline Bouvier ( 0 Comments on Ask not what your country can do for you… as of 1/1/1900
One of Japana’s major book publishers, Futabasha Publishing, claims that a first print run of 10,000 copies of “Occupation, Thief; Annual income, Y30 million” has almost run out in the 10 days since publication.
Hajime Karasuyama – the pen name of the career burglar – claims to have developed the uncanny ability to guess just where the occupant of any home will have stashed the cash and valuables and provides tips on how to gain access to a locked property and then get away again without leaving any signs.
Karasuyama says he earns around $470,000 a year from burglary. The Japanese police are investigating.
However, in the meantime, Karasuyama who has a forensic history as a Japanese thief, and who describes himself as a gentleman cat burglar, has taken the book publishers by storm by become a best-selling author after writing a book giving tips on how to carry out burglaries.
“Once we get inside a house, us thieves have an instinct for knowing where the money is squirrelled away,” Karasuyama told the Shukan Taishu magazine in an interview about his book — which carries the warning “Please do not attempt to copy me” as its subtitle.
Karasuyama provides details on how to pick any lock and silently use a glass cutter on a window. In this exclusive book publisher edition, he reveals that placing a jeweller’s magnifying eyepiece against a door peephole reverses the view and enables him to look inside the house, while he recommends a hybrid car for going on “jobs” because they are very quiet.
The publisher dismissed suggestions putting out what amounts to a manual of how to become a burglar is irresponsible. “This book is not targeted at people who might want to be a burglar but more at homeowners who want to know how they can better protect their home,” Kenichi Nakazawa, the book’s editor, said.
Ted Sorensen, who died a week ago, was the strategist and political speech writer behind John F. Kennedy in his successful campaign for the American presidency in 1960 — a triumph that owed much to Sorensen’s book publisher talents as a phrasemaker, and one that set the standard for modern oratory.
Sorensen’s 14-minute inaugural address for Kennedy famously called for self-sacrifice and civic engagement — “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” — and promised to spare no cost in defending American interests worldwide.
Among Kennedy’s inner circle working in the West Wing of the White House, Sorensen (as special counsel) was the youngest, but he ranked just below the president’s brother Bobby. Such was the closeness of Sorensen’s collaboration with JFK on some of his most memorable speeches that no one was quite certain who wrote what.
The glamorous, wealthy politician from Massachusetts and his diffident aide from the Midwest made an odd but compatible pair. In 1960 Time magazine described Sorensen as “a sober, deadly earnest, self-effacing man with a blue steel brain.” But, as Sorensen himself noted, both he and Kennedy had a wry sense of humour, a dislike of hypocrisy, a love of books and a high-minded regard for public life.
In October 1962, Sorensen applied himself to the growing crisis in Cuba, as the United States and the Soviet Union stood on the brink of nuclear war over Soviet missiles sited there.
Kennedy ordered Sorensen and Bobby Kennedy, the administration’s attorney general, to draft a letter to the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, who had sent a series of conflicting messages, first conciliatory, then belligerent.
Their carefully worded response — which ignored Khrushchev’s harsher statements and offered a concession involving American weapons in Turkey — was critical in persuading the Soviets to withdraw their missiles from Cuba, averting war between the superpowers. Sorensen considered this his greatest achievement.
Although acclaimed as “the poet of Camelot” (as the Kennedy administration was known), Sorensen never claimed exclusive authorship of these rolling cadences, describing speechwriting within Kennedy’s White House as highly collaborative — with JFK a constant source of suggestions of his own.
Theodore Chaikin Sorensen was born into what he called a Danish-Russian-Jewish Unitarian family on May 8, 1928 in Lincoln, Nebraska, where his father was a progressive Republican state attorney general. After graduating from Lincoln High School in 1945, he studied law at the University of Nebraska.
In 1952, when he was 24, he joined Kennedy’s staff. The newly elected senator for Massachusetts reportedly gave Sorensen two short interviews a day or two apart before hiring him. The pair hit it off immediately.
In January 1960, Kennedy announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination and, with Sorensen, went on to wage one of the most successful political campaigns in American history.
Sorensen thrived on pressure and, as Kennedy was delivering one speech, he would often be found writing the next. As “chief of staff for ideas,” Sorensen became one of the most prominent and influential figures in the political landscape during JFK’s brief presidency.
After Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, Sorensen worked as an international lawyer, and numbered the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat among his clients. He remained involved in book publishing, politics, joining Bobby Kennedy’s presidential campaign in 1968 and running unsuccessfully for the
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By: shelf-employed,
on 9/29/2010
