JFK Library online

The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library has announced the release of thousands of on-line documents from the JFK archives. This could be a valuable resource for teachers, students, researchers, and citizens.

I have spent many hours in research at the Library and have often wished I could share access to the original documents with my students.

Check out the digital archive.



photo: from the JFK Library web site

Ted Sorensen on the Kennedy-Nixon Debates

If you have an interest in presidential rhetoric, don't miss Ted Sorensen, "When Kennedy Met Nixon: The Real Story," New York Times, 26 September 2010.

Ted Sorensen on Writing for John F. Kennedy

Saving the Newspaper

The debate on saving the newspaper continues to flourish, even as newspapers continue to shut down or shrink their newsrooms. An interesting new entry appears in The Nation this week -- John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney, "The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers." From the story:

Blame has been laid first and foremost on the Internet, for luring away advertisers and readers, and on the economic meltdown, which has demolished revenues and hammered debt-laden media firms. But for all the ink spilled addressing the dire circumstance of the ink-stained wretch, the understanding of what we can do about the crisis has been woefully inadequate. Unless we rethink alternatives and reforms, the media will continue to flail until journalism is all but extinguished. . . .

What to do about newspapers? Let's give all Americans an annual tax credit for the first $200 they spend on daily newspapers. The newspapers would have to publish at least five times per week and maintain a substantial "news hole," say at least twenty-four broad pages each day, with less than 50 percent advertising. In effect, this means the government will pay for every citizen who so desires to get a free daily newspaper subscription, but the taxpayer gets to pick the newspaper--this is an indirect subsidy, because the government does not control who gets the money. This will buy time for our old media newsrooms--and for us citizens--to develop a plan to establish journalism in the digital era. We could see this evolving into a system to provide tax credits for online subscriptions as well.

John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney, "The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers," The Nation, 6 April 2009.

To keep up with this story, have a look especially at The Columbia Journalism Review and the large set of reports and working papers from the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

22 November 1963

Today is the 45th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas -- 22 November 1963.

From the President's diary, online at JFK Library.

See exhibit at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. See also John F. Kennedy, "Remarks Intended for Delivery to the Texas Democratic State Committee at the Municipal Auditorium in Austin," 22 November 1963, at the American Presidency Project.

History seemed to go crazily off track on that sad day 45 years ago.

Photo credit: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston, Massachusetts. Public domain.

Have You No Sense of Decency?

The Palin - McCain attacks that have stimulated such frantic rage at their rallies in the past two weeks have been compared to the tactics of Joe McCarthy, and we have been reminded by some commentators of the moment in the Army-McCarthy hearings when Joseph Welch issued his famous rebuke.

The exchange is in text and audio at AmericanRhetoric.com, which also shows these images, among others, from that moment.

Bob Shrum has compared the McCain-Palin rhetoric with the handbill of John F. Kennedy circulated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, the day he was shot and killed by an assassin.


In today's Times a useful analysis by Frank Rich of the McCain-Palin rhetoric, with further links to recent incidents at their rallies. Rich writes, "The McCain campaign has crossed the line between tough negative campaigning and inciting vigilantism, and each day the mob howls louder."

Frank Rich, "The Terrorist Barack Hussein Obama," New York Times, 12 October 2008.

Rich's column is accompanied by this image by Barry Blitt, which captures some of the many layers of association, menace, and triumphalism of the campaign --

Barry Blitt - New York Times - 12 October 2008

.