Nixonland. Part 19

"By late afternoon when this film was made, over ten thousand demonstrators were gathered in Grant Park.... The demonstrators resisted when police attempted to arrest a young man who tried to rip down an American flag.

"Police fired tear-gas canisters, demonstrators threw them back at police, and it was clear that Chicago's first real battle of the day was joined.... Chanting 'Kill the Pigs,' they began bombarding the police with cans, bottles, boards, firecrackers, tomatoes, and just about anything else they could find.

"Demonstration leaders, hoping to save all the energy for later tonight, used bullhorns to try to restore order."

Screams, then upward of one hundred cops, a sea of blue (if you have a color TV) shirts and blue riot helmets arrayed in a wedge like a giant bowling-pin setup, carrying their clubs across their chests, Plexiglas shields down, barreling into the crowd and beating anyone they can reach, kids tripping over the band sh.e.l.l's park benches in chaotic retreat, the closing image a man and woman desperately clutching each other.

"This night is far from over; demonstrators say they will still march, and if police try to stop them, they will sit down in the Chicago streets. This is Douglas Kiker."

The transition that follows immediately upon those words: men in suits with pursed lips and rage in their eyes pushing, shoving, swinging fists on the convention floor, Edwin Newman of NBC barking into a microphone but no sound issuing forth, at the borderlands between the New York and the Alabama delegations.

"Your microphone is broken, Ed!...

"There's a huge amount of pushing-watch it, you're going to knock that over!-the man being pushed is a delegate, how this started, we don't know."

A guttural screech in a full-on New York City accent: "Check with our state chairman! He's an elected delegate! What are you trying to spring on us!" "Check with our state chairman! He's an elected delegate! What are you trying to spring on us!"

"No one's springing-"

"You are! Check with the-where are the rules that say we must show 'em every minute? Who the h.e.l.l are you to-the rules! The rules!"

John Chancellor fights through with a working microphone: "Are you the delegate they're trying to throw out?"

"Yes, I am."

("Check the rules of the Democratic Party!") "Why is that?"

"Because I objected to their behavior."

Chancellor explains that the raid began with shouts of "Secret Service! Push! Push!" although the people doing the pushing appeared only to be ushers, "and n.o.body is showing the usual insignia of the Secret Service."

("They keep coming all day checking our credentials! And it's time they stop! There's nothing in the rules of the Democratic Party that says they have a right to check us every ten minutes! It's been like this every day!") Chancellor confirms that the man they're trying to kick out, Alex Rosenberg, is indeed an elected delegate, who got sick of showing his credentials. A man fights his way to Chancellor's microphone, smirking, and drawls, "Just another peaceful demonstration by New York trying to demonstrate in Alabama!"

Chancellor comments, "The issue of law and order seems to be taking place in a rather active dispute on the floor of this convention," and the Alabaman now grins like the cat who ate the canary. Chancellor pa.s.ses off to Sander Vanocur interviewing Colonel John Glenn of Ohio, then they cut back to Chancellor, looking startled: "The Chicago police are now in the aisle with billy clubs, clearing people out!...They're dragging people right out of the aisle. One, two, three, four, five, six-some of them wearing the blue helmets."

Photographers hoist their cameras above their heads and into the scrum: click, click, click. click, click, click.

"This is the first time in my memory of going to political conventions that the police have come in, on the floor, armed as they were, and taking out people who were disputing the checking of credentials."

"First time in the United States, John."

As Chancellor describes "some very large men who came along with security badges," a camera cuts to Chicago's implacable Buddha boss, and then the screen fills with a dozen blue helmets as an out-of-breath young man spins himself out of the scrum, looking as if he's just seen a ghost. "I started getting shoved up against a wall, the crush just started, I got carried along by the wave...and finally the 'Secret Service' men just picked me up picked me up and carried me out." and carried me out."

He is a reporter for United Press International, and his hair is long.

More windy nominating speeches: "At no time has Senator McCarthy recommended unconditional withdrawal from Vietnam. At no time has he recommended any move that would deprive our fighting men of full protection."

NBC cuts to Daley, scratching distractedly, crossing his arms. But every time this show starts getting boring, something more astonishing is thrown up on the screen. You're on your fourth beer by now, wondering what country you're living in, as they cut to taped exterior shots.

It's dark. A cone of TV light emerges, and out of the murk comes an endless rush of blue helmets, darting into a crowd sitting down in an intersection. The back door of a paddy wagon opens, at the moment the first crack crack rings out. It is all flailing nightsticks, a kid pulled by the scruff of the neck. Dark again. A halo of TV lights as he's thrown into the back, then another, then another, each with a superfluous whack of a nightstick. Door closes; wagon drives off; the sound of an explosion; darkness; line after line of cops awaiting their turn; the next wave into the wagon; a chant: rings out. It is all flailing nightsticks, a kid pulled by the scruff of the neck. Dark again. A halo of TV lights as he's thrown into the back, then another, then another, each with a superfluous whack of a nightstick. Door closes; wagon drives off; the sound of an explosion; darkness; line after line of cops awaiting their turn; the next wave into the wagon; a chant: "The whole world is watching! The whole world is watching!"

If it shames the cops, they aren't showing it. TV techs flash lights in their faces, then darkness, then bobbing seas of blue helmets, a camera flash; a kid with a mustache squirms free and a cop follows him off into the inky maw.

"The whole world is watching! The whole world is watching!"

The next wagon drives off, medics in white coats attend to the fallen; SUPPRESSING DISSENT IS FASCISM SUPPRESSING DISSENT IS FASCISM-scrawled on a sc.r.a.p of corrugated cardboard; inky black; camera flashes; screams; more knots of blue helmets pushing into another crowd; a strobe-light effect, a dull hum of screams, it doesn't look like TV. A man wriggles free from his windbreaker. A cop pulls him down with a wrestling move.

"Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!"

The next cop wave arrives in formation. Finally the sonorous voice interrupts, "We're at the Conrad Hilton, where peace demonstrators have blocked the intersection, and now a phalanx of police has come through...right outside the headquarters hotel of the Democratic convention...police swirling all around us."

One more supernova flash of light, and an immediate cut to Julian Bond, seconding the nomination of Eugene McCarthy: "All over the world, 1968 has been a year in which people have been rising up and demanding freedom! From Biafra to Georgia! From Czechoslovakia to Chicago-"

Huge applause.

"...Don't tell me we're going to win that freedom from the leaders of the past, because those leaders don't even understand what we're talking about!" tell me we're going to win that freedom from the leaders of the past, because those leaders don't even understand what we're talking about!"

The biggest cheer of the convention so far.

"He is the only only candidate who can win, because he is the candidate who can win, because he is the only only candidate the American people can believe.... candidate the American people can believe....

"Americans realize there is one one candidate who has never spoken on the side of repression and violence- candidate who has never spoken on the side of repression and violence- "One candidate who has spoken steadily of bringing together black and white people-" candidate who has spoken steadily of bringing together black and white people-"

In the hall, some people are watching tiny portable TVs. And the word from the streets is out, for the next thing he says is "Fellow delegates, the whole country is watching us now. As indeed, the whole world whole world is watching us.... is watching us....

"It is not too late."

"Here is a little more on the action downtown.... The guardsmen have bayonets at the end of their rifles, they're wearing gas masks; part of the central hallway of the Hilton Hotel has been made into a first aid station, sort of a receiving hospital. McCarthy volunteers are now going out in the streets to find injured demonstrators.... There's now a report that some guests in the hotel are getting mixed up in it and are throwing gla.s.ses and other things out of hotel rooms at the police."

"Here's one more, Chet: Mrs. McCarthy, Mrs. Abigail McCarthy, is not here in the convention hall because she is staying in her hotel room under Secret Service guard. They have decided it is not safe for her to leave the hotel because of all this rough stuff outside."

"We'll be back after this message from Gulf."

("Let's take a trip into the world of Gulf chemicals!...Lids for your coffee, detergents for your dishes, plastic bags of all sorts, toys, luxurious carpeting...tires...fertilizers that help good things grow!") Brinkley, sardonically, before they show the donkey/elephant pin commercial again: "We are told that the Chicago police are under orders that if they come into the hall to arrest delegates or otherwise do their duties, they are not to wear helmets. Presumably because it doesn't look very good."

Huntley, holding a headphone to his ear: "David, I think we can establish this without fear of contradiction: this is surely the first time policemen have ever entered the floor of a convention."

Brinkley, with a weary, slow shake of the head: "In-the-United-States."

Bald-headed Joseph Alioto, mayor of San Francisco, is called to the podium to nominate HHH. The band plays on: "San Francisco, open that Golden Gate..." "San Francisco, open that Golden Gate..." Huntley breaks in: "Well, the news media has taken another casualty. NBC News reporter Don Oliver reports that Mike Wallace of CBS was being detained by the Chicago police in a command post trailer on the second floor of the amphitheater after a disturbance on the floor of the convention. There is a report that Wallace has been struck by a security guard." Huntley breaks in: "Well, the news media has taken another casualty. NBC News reporter Don Oliver reports that Mike Wallace of CBS was being detained by the Chicago police in a command post trailer on the second floor of the amphitheater after a disturbance on the floor of the convention. There is a report that Wallace has been struck by a security guard."

Mayor Alioto intones, "Hubert-Horatio-Humphrey!" Mayor Daley is shown clapping and grinning like a schoolboy.

Alioto: "It isn't enough, I say, to mouth to the youngsters, that you mouth this talk about 'New Politics,' and the inflexible status quo, because here is a man who has done more in the last twenty years than any discernible man to bring America not only to a recognition of what is old and good, but what is new and good as well."

"To John Chancellor on the convention floor."

"The mayor has said he would give a little comment. Can you comment while applauding on the speech?"

The mayor acknowledges the existence of the man dangling a microphone in his general direction by turning and facing the other way.

The roll call of the states for the nomination: Arkansas pa.s.ses, California already yielded, the Ca.n.a.l Zone pa.s.ses, Colorado...

"Mr. Chairman, Colorado rises to a point of information. Is there any rule under which Mayor Daley can be compelled to suspend the police-state terror perpetrated this minute"-a roar of approval rises up-"on kids in front of the Conrad Hilton?"

Gavel gavel gavel.

"h.e.l.lo? h.e.l.lo?" you hear, but not over the convention loudspeakers, for the podium has turned off his microphone.

Just how drunk are you, you wonder, as Senator Ribicoff winds up his windbaggery for Senator McGovern: "He is a man without guile. He is a whole man....

"George McGovern is a man with peace in his soul....

"George McGovern is not satisfied that ten million Americans go hungry every night...."

Cut to a bored Mayor Daley.

"George McGovern blows out of the prairies of South Dakota a new wind": blah blah blah blah blah.

"The youth of America rallied to the standard of men like George McGovern, like they rallied to the standard of John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy": same old, same old.

"And with George McGovern as president of the United States, we wouldn't have to have gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago!"

Quick cut to Daley, then Ribicoff, then Daley, then Ribicoff, a simpering downward turn of his mouth, then Daley, who was no longer bored.

"With George McGovern, we wouldn't have to have a national guard"-And the hall was filled with cheers and boos.

"He looked looked at Mayor Daley!" Huntley says. at Mayor Daley!" Huntley says.

"Would like to know what the mayor is saying," Brinkley responds.

(Later an expert lip-reader suggested an answer: "f.u.c.k you, you Jew son of a b.i.t.c.h, you lousy motherf.u.c.ker, go home.") "How hard it is to accept the truth," says the senator, as one of the anchormen intones solemnly. "The aisles of the convention are crowded, and we don't quite know with whom. We do know that wherever our reporters go on the floor, they are followed by unidentified, faceless men, trying to listen to everything they say."

Hubert Humphrey wins the Democratic nomination. But is he leading a party, or a civil war?

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

Winning.

AFTER C CHICAGO, H HUMPHREY CAME OUT OF THE GATE WITH A DOUBLE-DIGIT deficit. He leapfrogged the country, East Coast to West then back again in a week, less popular after each stop. When he was met by the chants of angry antiwar activists ("We felt if we could elect Nixon, we'd get to the revolution that much sooner," one recalled), law-and-order devotees were confirmed in their presumption that wherever Democrats went, screaming chaos followed; doves were reminded that Humphrey was pro-war. He was hurt just as badly by those he deficit. He leapfrogged the country, East Coast to West then back again in a week, less popular after each stop. When he was met by the chants of angry antiwar activists ("We felt if we could elect Nixon, we'd get to the revolution that much sooner," one recalled), law-and-order devotees were confirmed in their presumption that wherever Democrats went, screaming chaos followed; doves were reminded that Humphrey was pro-war. He was hurt just as badly by those he wasn't wasn't met by at each stop. John Connally snubbed him in Texas. Jesse Unruh and Sam Yorty did so in California. met by at each stop. John Connally snubbed him in Texas. Jesse Unruh and Sam Yorty did so in California.

To college students in Philadelphia, he said, "I would think that, negotiations or no negotiations, we could start to remove some of the American forces in early 1969 or late 1968." The next day, LBJ made an unannounced appearance at the American Legion convention in New Orleans to undercut Humphrey: "No man can predict when that day would come." He still had Hubert's p.e.c.k.e.r in his pocket. The great exuberant Humphrey started looking, of all people, like Barry Goldwater-an unpopular nominee of a divided party, putting his foot in his mouth day after day. Newsweek Newsweek ran an electoral-vote projection headlined "Will HHH Come in Third?" ran an electoral-vote projection headlined "Will HHH Come in Third?"

Some New Politics supporters were considering voting for the ticket of the Berkeley-based Peace and Freedom Party, which had nominated Eldridge Cleaver, especially after a crowning insult: the Chicago police's predawn raid after the convention's close on McCarthy headquarters on the fifteenth floor of the Hilton. The cops said people on the fifteenth floor had been throwing things at them. So they roused people out of bed and beat them. (One campaign bureaucrat had a nightstick broken in two over his head.) Humphrey aides nine floors up heard the screams. But Humphrey's only public comment on the convention-week violence was, "We ought to quit pretending that Mayor Daley did something wrong." Reasoned his chief political deputy, "Nothing would bring the real peaceniks back to our side unless Hubert urinated on a portrait of Lyndon Johnson in Times Square before television-and then they'd say to him, 'Why didn't you do it before?'"

As for Nixon, rarely had a presidential candidate campaigned more conservatively to keep a lead. "I am not going to barricade myself into a television studio and make this an antiseptic campaign," he promised the press corps. That was only literally true. He wasn't going to barricade himself into a television studio and make this an antiseptic campaign. He had much more innovative methods on tap to make it an antiseptic campaign. He began his general election campaign with an announcement that he was observing a moratorium on discussing the Chicago convention-and also on Vietnam while sensitive negotiations were ongoing in Paris. It was part of a strategy unprecedented in modern times. Never before had a candidate devoted so much to saying so little to so many.

Bob Haldeman had it game-planned perfectly. Nixon most often held but one rally a day. The news cameras shot on celluloid. The precious cans then had to be shipped to New York for developing. So Nixon's events were near airports-timed exquisitely for insertion into the evening's newscasts. Eager to be fair, the networks would always show one clip of the Democrat and one clip of the Republican. Nixon's staff always helpfully pointed producers to the most important sound bite. Humphrey, on the other hand, had upward of a dozen events a day. The producers had plenty of chances to locate some newsworthy Humphrey gaffe, some incoherent vagueness on Vietnam, a shot of some hippie calling Humphrey a "murderer."

The rest of the time, Nixon rested, met with backers, pored over a briefing book kept updated nonstop by an army of twentysomething research a.s.sistants tasked with thinking up the nastiest questions possible. With Prussian efficiency, aides handed out position papers according to a.m. and p.m. newspaper deadlines. Even the elephant at the rallies was carefully prepped-with an enema, to foreclose any embarra.s.sing accidents.

Nixon couldn't give the press no contact, because that would then become the story. So he gave what the press corps called "three-b.u.mp interviews": two minutes in the candidate's cabin just before the flight attendant sent everyone back to his seat for landing. Reporters didn't seem to mind. Maurice Stans was raising $24 million for Nixon. That bought a lot of bottomless c.o.c.ktails and delicious food; a British reporter described the press plane as in an "astounded torpor." Humphrey's biggest financial backer, on the other hand, was the Minnesota-based frozen-food magnate Jeno Paulucci. Apparently his firm had an overstock of c.o.c.ktail weenies-which were served, in lieu of c.o.c.ktails, morning, noon, and night.

Nixon's notices were glowing. Newsweek Newsweek led its first week's dispatch, "He moved easily among the cheering mult.i.tudes, a poised and confident figure, his smile radiant, his p.r.o.nouncements calm and reasoned." It also noted the surging numbers of young people at every stop, "screaming, squealing, and jumping up and down-yes, jumping up and down-wherever he appeared." (So this is what it felt like to be a Kennedy.) The "kids" were supposed to be hippies. So every time kids showed up for Nixon, the press ran with the story: man bites dog. led its first week's dispatch, "He moved easily among the cheering mult.i.tudes, a poised and confident figure, his smile radiant, his p.r.o.nouncements calm and reasoned." It also noted the surging numbers of young people at every stop, "screaming, squealing, and jumping up and down-yes, jumping up and down-wherever he appeared." (So this is what it felt like to be a Kennedy.) The "kids" were supposed to be hippies. So every time kids showed up for Nixon, the press ran with the story: man bites dog.

Another arm of the juggernaut was the televised panel shows, of which New Hampshire's had merely been a primitive foretaste. Roger Ailes called it the "arena concept," after a quote from Theodore Roosevelt that Ailes had on a plaque on his office wall: "The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood," not "the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better"-the press, in other words, who watched the show on TV monitors, as Nixon declaimed from a customized, round, blue-carpeted platform, the panel of ordinary citizens sitting around him in a semicircle, before bleachers packed with two hundred loyalists as spectators. The emcee was Bud Wilkinson, the legendary University of Oklahoma football coach and ABC color commentator.

The press secretary, Herb Klein, former editor of the San Diego Union, San Diego Union, warned that the newsmen might mutiny. Frank Shakespeare said that was a risk they'd have to take; if you let them in, they'd only talk about the cameras, the lights, the warm-up man issuing the audience's instructions. ("Now, when Mr. Nixon comes in, I want you to tear the place apart. Sound like ten thousand people. I'm sure, of course, that you'll also want to stand up at that point. So what do you say we try it now?") The press should see "no more, no less, than what they would see from any living room in Illinois," Shakespeare told Klein. The audience was part of the set-"an applause machine," and for "a couple of reaction shots." warned that the newsmen might mutiny. Frank Shakespeare said that was a risk they'd have to take; if you let them in, they'd only talk about the cameras, the lights, the warm-up man issuing the audience's instructions. ("Now, when Mr. Nixon comes in, I want you to tear the place apart. Sound like ten thousand people. I'm sure, of course, that you'll also want to stand up at that point. So what do you say we try it now?") The press should see "no more, no less, than what they would see from any living room in Illinois," Shakespeare told Klein. The audience was part of the set-"an applause machine," and for "a couple of reaction shots."

Ailes made sure Nixon didn't sweat under the hot lights by arranging for the studio air-conditioning to be pumped at full blast hours before the show. The makeup man was from the Tonight Tonight show. In Chicago the original set sported turquoise curtains. "Nixon wouldn't look right unless he was carrying a pocketbook," Ailes grumbled, ordering the curtains replaced with wood panels with "clean, solid, masculine lines." show. In Chicago the original set sported turquoise curtains. "Nixon wouldn't look right unless he was carrying a pocketbook," Ailes grumbled, ordering the curtains replaced with wood panels with "clean, solid, masculine lines."

The first thing the television audience saw was a canned shot of the candidate waving his arms in his patented double-V in a motorcade through local streets, the kind that customarily ended in a live rally-"a quick parading of the candidate in the flesh so that the guy they've gotten intimately acquainted with on the screen takes on a living presence," in the words of a young aide named William Gavin, a former high school English teacher who'd been recruited to the team after he wrote an unsolicited memo on how to repackage Nixon for TV. This way, viewers could enjoy the frisson of seeing a celebrity in familiar surroundings. It was especially effective in Chicago-the same streets slicked with blood at the Democratic convention, redeemed by adoring, well-starched Republican crowds. in a motorcade through local streets, the kind that customarily ended in a live rally-"a quick parading of the candidate in the flesh so that the guy they've gotten intimately acquainted with on the screen takes on a living presence," in the words of a young aide named William Gavin, a former high school English teacher who'd been recruited to the team after he wrote an unsolicited memo on how to repackage Nixon for TV. This way, viewers could enjoy the frisson of seeing a celebrity in familiar surroundings. It was especially effective in Chicago-the same streets slicked with blood at the Democratic convention, redeemed by adoring, well-starched Republican crowds.

The shows aired regionally; thus Nixon could tailor his message to suit local tastes. In Charlotte, North Carolina, a fast-growing New South metropolis where the NAACP had recently filed a school desegregation lawsuit, he boldly, boldly affirmed the Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Brown v. Board of Education. Then he added, undercutting that message, "To use the power of the federal treasury to withhold funds in order to carry it out-then I think we are going too far.... In my view that activity should be very scrupulously examined, and in many cases, I think should be rescinded." Then he added, undercutting that message, "To use the power of the federal treasury to withhold funds in order to carry it out-then I think we are going too far.... In my view that activity should be very scrupulously examined, and in many cases, I think should be rescinded."

The panel questioners were unrehea.r.s.ed. But they were also an effect of stagecraft. They were like those heterogeneous World War IIpicture platoons: here a Jewish physician; there the president of an immigrant advocacy group; an outnumbered newsman or two to show the man in the arena wasn't ducking them; a suburban housewife; a businessman. In Philadelphia they hit a snag when the Jewish physician turned out to be a psychiatrist. "You should have heard Len on the phone when I told him I had one on the panel," one staffer related. "If I've ever heard a guy's voice turn white, that was it." (Garment had remembered his evening with Nixon in Elmer Bobst's Florida pool house: "anything except see a shrink.") Ailes. .h.i.t upon an idea for a subst.i.tute: "A good, mean, Wallaceite cabdriver. Wouldn't that be great? Some guy to sit there and say, 'Awright, Mac, what about these n.i.g.g.e.rs?'" Nixon then could abhor the uncivility of the words, while endorsing a "moderate" version of the opinion. Ailes walked up and down a nearby taxi stand until he found a cabbie who fit the bill.

Sometimes the questions could get tough. More often they were low-hanging fruit. Asking a hard question-let alone following it up-is a skill, one ordinary citizens could not expect to have mastered. They were also easily intimidated by the pro-Nixon audience. One problem the producers found was that sometimes the audience cheered too too much. much.

A black panelist took his turn (the panels always featured one; the audience, just enough blacks so the press couldn't use the dreaded phrase all-white all-white). He asked, "What does law and order mean to you?"

Nixon responded, "To me law and order must be combined with justice. Now that's what I want for America. I want the kind of law and order that deserves respect."

The panel's one journalist would ask the solitary tough question. That had another fortunate effect: it let Nixon look like a put-upon martyr, the reporter like an arrogant pedant: "You say that the Rutgers professor 'called for' the victory of the Vietcong, but as I recall he didn't say that at all. This is what I mean about your being able, on this kind of show, to slide off the questions. Now the facts were-"

"Oh, I know the facts, Mr. McKinney. I know the facts."

"The facts were that the professor did not 'call for' the victory-"

"No, what he said, Mr. McKinney, and I believe I am quoting him exactly, exactly, was that he would 'welcome the impending victory of the Vietcong.'" was that he would 'welcome the impending victory of the Vietcong.'"

"Which is not the same thing."

"Well, Mr. McKinney, you can make that distinction if you wish, but what I'll do is turn it over to the television audience right now and let them decide for themselves about the semantics. About the difference between 'calling for' and 'welcoming' a victory of the Vietcong."

The producers were delighted: their man had been tested and pa.s.sed, stern but cool. It fit the story they were telling: that Nixon had come through every sort of hardship and emerged only stronger and smarter. The makeup: carefully applied. The face: intense, stern, engaged-tough but compa.s.sionate. Teeth white. Hands relaxed-or relaxed enough. His dark eyes not too sunken, his deepening jowls not too saggy-for the lighting was perfect. The execution was the opposite of 1960 in every way. Nothing was being left to chance: this was the power of TV.

Once, McLuhanite thinking was invoked to support the proposition that only a glamorous new face could lead the Republican Party. The Nixon team deployed McLuhan to sell Nixon-to break the back of the public's conviction, as Roger Ailes put it, that "he's a bore, a pain in the a.s.s." Ailes circulated excerpts from Understanding Media: Understanding Media: the one where Professor McLuhan praised both Perry Como and Fidel Castro for demonstrating the power of the one where Professor McLuhan praised both Perry Como and Fidel Castro for demonstrating the power of coolness coolness on TV (Castro "manages to blend political guidance and education with propaganda so skillfully that it is often difficult to tell where one begins and the other ends"); how Kennedy won the debates because "he is visually a less well-defined image"; how Nixon finally got it right in 1963 by self-effacingly showing off his modest skills on the piano on the on TV (Castro "manages to blend political guidance and education with propaganda so skillfully that it is often difficult to tell where one begins and the other ends"); how Kennedy won the debates because "he is visually a less well-defined image"; how Nixon finally got it right in 1963 by self-effacingly showing off his modest skills on the piano on the Jack Paar Show Jack Paar Show ("A few timely touches like this would have quite altered the result of the Kennedy-Nixon campaign"). ("A few timely touches like this would have quite altered the result of the Kennedy-Nixon campaign").

They had, in fact, a Paar-like moment planned for the 1968 campaign.

Television was America's most hidebound medium, the three commercial networks cowed into lowest-common-denominator uniformity by corporations obsessed with controlling the image of their national brands. There really were only two exceptions, both midseason replacements-which meant that they were accidents. The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour on CBS was intended as a generic variety show, until the younger Smothers brother, Tommy, began injecting New Leftish touches into the skits, to the great consternation of network executives. on CBS was intended as a generic variety show, until the younger Smothers brother, Tommy, began injecting New Leftish touches into the skits, to the great consternation of network executives. Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (think (think sit-in, teach-in, be-in sit-in, teach-in, be-in) was a deliberate attempt to harness insurgent new cultural energies for the mainstream. It featured a giant, hairy, falsetto-voiced folksinger named Tiny Tim, a deadpan comic n.a.z.i, a nubile go-go dancer with psychedelic slogans painted on her torso, and more s.e.xual innuendo than you could shake a stick at.