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Albert E. Burke: Difference between revisions
→JFK Assassination
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It was November 4, 1960, Republican Tag Day in Dallas, and the downtown lunch crowd was being canvassed by three hundred women in red-white-and-blue outfits. ... | It was November 4, 1960, Republican Tag Day in Dallas, and the downtown lunch crowd was being canvassed by three hundred women in red-white-and-blue outfits. ... | ||
Several Tag Girls spotted the Johnsons arriving and rushed over to surround the car. As Lady Bird was stepping out of the Lincoln one of the pickets impulsively snatched her gloves from her hands and <mark>threw them into the gutter. '''Lady Bird went white'''. It was still a time when '''incivility''' was rare in politics, when public figures felt safe in crowds</mark>. No one, perhaps not even the Tag Girls themselves, was prepared to understand the ferocity of the anger in those otherwise happy and well-cared-for women. | Several Tag Girls spotted the Johnsons arriving and rushed over to surround the car. As Lady Bird was stepping out of the Lincoln one of the pickets impulsively snatched her gloves from her hands and <mark>threw them into the gutter. '''Lady Bird went white'''. It was still a time when '''incivility''' was rare in politics, when public figures felt safe in crowds</mark>. No one, perhaps not even the Tag Girls themselves, was prepared to understand the ferocity of the anger in those otherwise happy and well-cared-for women. | ||
Johnson rushed Lady Bird into the lobby of the Baker, which was packed with jeering Tag Girls. ... | |||
Johnson was to speak at a luncheon across the street at the Adolphus Hotel. ... | |||
As the Johnsons made their way through the Baker Lobby the crowd closed ranks behind them, becoming bolder, but it was nothing compared with the mob that waited in the street and, beyond that, the packed crowd of Tag Girls in the lobby of the Adolphus. ... | |||
The demonstration in Commerce Street waited with catcalls and accusations. ... | |||
What was more surprising was that the sign carriers and catcallers were for the most part well-groomed women from some of the finest homes in the city, and yet as soon as the Johnsons waded into Commerce Street the women in red, white, and blue began to <mark>curse</mark> them and to <mark>spit</mark>. (Later, some members of the “<mark>Mink Coat Mob</mark>,” as they came to be known, claimed that they were not spitting, exactly—they were frothing.) | What was more surprising was that the sign carriers and catcallers were for the most part well-groomed women from some of the finest homes in the city, and yet as soon as the Johnsons waded into Commerce Street the women in red, white, and blue began to <mark>curse</mark> them and to <mark>spit</mark>. (Later, some members of the “<mark>Mink Coat Mob</mark>,” as they came to be known, claimed that they were not spitting, exactly—they were frothing.) | ||
Why? What accounted for the <mark>hostility</mark> (or to use her word, indignation) of the <mark>fashionable and affluent</mark> Dallas woman? In part she was simply a prisoner of her age: a women of <mark>unfocused ambition, intensely competitive</mark> but unemployed (the working wife was still a signal of economic desperation), <mark>lonely at home</mark> and given to <mark>causes</mark>. She may have been financially secure, but she was deeply troubled by some <mark>unnamed fear that her castle was built of sand and the coming tide would wash away her American dreams [fairy tale]</mark>. She named the tide International Communism, or '''<mark>Creeping Socialism</mark>'''. When Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev boasted to the West, “We will bury you,” the conservative Dallas woman believed him. Earlier that autumn Khrushchev had come to the United Nations and pounded on the table with his shoe—a gesture of such swaggering boorishness that it justified every qualm the Dallas woman felt about Russia, the United Nations, and American foreign policy. She worried about the missile gap and the spread of communism to Cuba. Moreover, people in her own country were talking enthusiastically about social change—Kennedy was already speaking of the “the revolutionary sixties”—and the Dallas woman knew those changes would come at her expense. She worried about the erosion of liberty caused by recent Supreme Court decisions (often delivered by <mark>Chief Justice Earl Warren</mark>, who was the <mark>creeping socialist personified</mark>). The court was <mark>taking rights away from the Dallas woman and awarding them to pornographers, criminals, atheists, communists, and Negroes</mark>. The Dallas woman felt herself to be under attack at home and abroad. ... | Why? What accounted for the <mark>hostility</mark> (or to use her word, indignation) of the <mark>fashionable and affluent</mark> Dallas woman? In part she was simply a prisoner of her age: a women of <mark>unfocused ambition, intensely competitive</mark> but unemployed (the working wife was still a signal of economic desperation), <mark>lonely at home</mark> and given to <mark>causes</mark>. She may have been financially secure, but she was deeply troubled by some <mark>unnamed fear that her castle was built of sand and the coming tide would wash away her American dreams [fairy tale]</mark>. She named the tide International Communism, or '''<mark>Creeping Socialism</mark>'''. When Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev boasted to the West, “We will bury you,” the conservative Dallas woman believed him. Earlier that autumn Khrushchev had come to the United Nations and pounded on the table with his shoe—a gesture of such swaggering boorishness that it justified every qualm the Dallas woman felt about Russia, the United Nations, and American foreign policy. She worried about the missile gap and the spread of communism to Cuba. Moreover, people in her own country were talking enthusiastically about social change—Kennedy was already speaking of the “the revolutionary sixties”—and the Dallas woman knew those changes would come at her expense. She worried about the erosion of liberty caused by recent Supreme Court decisions (often delivered by <mark>Chief Justice Earl Warren</mark>, who was the <mark>creeping socialist personified</mark>). The court was <mark>taking rights away from the Dallas woman and awarding them to pornographers, criminals, atheists, communists, and Negroes</mark>. The Dallas woman felt herself to be under attack at home and abroad. ... | ||
Although Nixon carried Dallas County by a landslide, Texas went for the Kennedy-Johnson. ...It was the <mark>closest presidential election in the nation’s history, and it was decided that day in the lobby of the Adolphus Hotel. People said afterward that they were not voting for Kennedy so much as they were voting against Dallas.</mark> | Although Nixon carried Dallas County by a landslide, Texas went for the Kennedy-Johnson. ...It was the <mark>closest presidential election in the nation’s history, and it was decided that day in the lobby of the Adolphus Hotel [where the Johnsons being accosted by the rich Republican Tag gals received television coverage]. People said afterward that they were not voting for Kennedy so much as they were voting against Dallas.</mark> | ||
Against us. For the first time people in the city learned about guilt by association. Until then Dallas had had very little national identity, but we found ourselves now with a new municipal image: a <mark>city of the angry nouveau riche, smug, doctrinaire, belligerent, a city with a taste for political violence</mark>. Many Dallasites were shocked to see our city represented that way, but it had <mark>little effect on the way we thought of ourselves</mark>. ... | Against us. For the first time people in the city learned about guilt by association. Until then Dallas had had very little national identity, but we found ourselves now with a new municipal image: a <mark>city of the angry nouveau riche, smug, doctrinaire, belligerent, a city with a taste for political violence</mark>. Many Dallasites were shocked to see our city represented that way, but it had <mark>little effect on the way we thought of ourselves</mark>. ... | ||
There was, in fact, a <mark>chip of defiance on the city’s shoulder, encouraged by the ''Dallas Morning News''</mark>. The ''News'' is the oldest business institution in the state, having been founded in 1842 when Texas was still a republic and Dallas little more than a heady presumption. Under George B. Dealey the ''News'' had been a <mark>progressive newspaper, leading the scourge that drove the Ku Klux Klan out of Texas</mark>. The name “Dealey” would become famous because of the queer, fan-shaped park known as Dealey Plaza, directly across the street from the Texas School Book Depository, where a bronze statue of G.B. Dealey stares at the now magnificent skyline of downtown Dallas. Many citizens believe it is perfectly appropriate that Dealey’s name should be irrevocably tied to the assassination, even though it is his son they blame. ... | There was, in fact, a <mark>chip of defiance on the city’s shoulder, encouraged by the ''Dallas Morning News''</mark>. The ''News'' is the oldest business institution in the state, having been founded in 1842 when Texas was still a republic and Dallas little more than a heady presumption. Under George B. Dealey the ''News'' had been a <mark>progressive newspaper, leading the scourge that drove the Ku Klux Klan out of Texas</mark>. The name “Dealey” would become famous because of the queer, fan-shaped park known as Dealey Plaza, directly across the street from the Texas School Book Depository, where a bronze statue of G.B. Dealey stares at the now magnificent skyline of downtown Dallas. Many citizens believe it is perfectly appropriate that Dealey’s name should be irrevocably tied to the assassination, even though it is his son they blame. ... | ||