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November 29, 2007
Paragraph of the Day: "It's 5:05am And My Body Clock Is Off" Edition
Back in the late 1950s, 60% of the second-graders in a study by political scientist Fred Greenstein said that President Eisenhower was “the best person in the world” — even better, apparently, than Mom or Dad or that other venerated figure of the period, the police officer. That a U.S. president should occupy such a high place in the American pantheon, at least among impressionable young children, should have occasioned no great surprise in light of a Gallup Poll finding from the preceding decade: In that survey, 28% of those polled called Franklin Delano Roosevelt “the greatest person, living or dead, in world history.” Finishing second, with 15%, was Jesus.
November 29, 2007 | Permalink
Comments
Oh, if only we could return to the days when we united in bipartisan support of infallible, benevolent leaders. How we have fallen from those heady times in which children venerated politicians over their parents and parents venerated their wise Leaders as deities. If only we could again get behind the idea that Il Duce is always right.
Creepy.
Posted by: K. Larson | Nov 30, 2007 12:17:44 AM
In early December 1990, I was right where you are now--same city, same time, same bat channel. Totally unable to sleep, despite a nice Thai dinner and several glasses of wine and that nice feeling when one is lovely and warm while it's snowing outside.
It seems like yesterday and I don't mind saying: it totally unnerves me that you were, well, younger than my littlest one. Ye gods, I am oooooooold. And I still can't sleep!
Stay warm, my friend. KO is on the teevee, busy ripping Milton Friedman a new one at the moment. And Rudy G. may well slither out from underneath this latest. In other words, plus ça change...
Posted by: litbrit | Nov 30, 2007 12:41:21 AM
I'm at work and just got some pager spam telling me that Bond used V1agra to pleasure his girls.
Maybe that will help get you to sleep.
Posted by: Stephen | Nov 30, 2007 12:57:31 AM
While Ezra is getting a taste of European social democracy he should think about how we can pry the Democratic Party from what Dean Baker calls "loser liberalism" and turn it into an authentic social democratic political outfit - a party that exists to scare the rich. The absence of a democratic socialist tradition in the United States has everything to do with why the U.S. is nearly alone among advanced industrialized nations to not having universal healthcare. European socialists are pretty tame these days...but that's OK, it's what parliamentary politics will do to ya.
Posted by: Adrian | Nov 30, 2007 1:40:12 AM
Thank God we've moved on.
Posted by: Anthony Damiani | Nov 30, 2007 2:53:30 AM
Can't sleep? Read what Krugman wrote today.
Posted by: Petey | Nov 30, 2007 8:39:52 AM
When I was a kid, Captain Kangaroo broadcast a still photo of Eisenhower every morning, accompanied by a big brassy rendition of "Hail to the Chief." It was pretty stirring, more so than anything Bozo the Clown did. (Of course to me it was all fluff to sit through before the cartoons came on.) After 1960 it was JFK in the picture, so it wasn't partisanship, it was respect for the office.
I understand nowadays the figure our kids most revere is one of several turtles named after Renaissance painters, and Bob Keeshan is spinning in his grave.
Posted by: Michael Bloom | Nov 30, 2007 9:47:58 AM
I understand nowadays the figure our kids most revere is one of several turtles named after Renaissance painters
Sir? I think you left your Members Only jacket on the chair.
Posted by: Senescent | Nov 30, 2007 3:15:05 PM
"I understand nowadays the figure our kids most revere is one of several turtles named after Renaissance painters, and Bob Keeshan is spinning in his grave.
Posted by: Michael Bloom | Nov 30, 2007 9:47:58 AM"
Is it 1989 already?
But really, "respect for the office" is stupid. Respect is earned by being a good president, not by being president. When you can lose a major American city to a hurricane and two wars, you don't deserve respect just because of the office.
Posted by: Reality Man | Nov 30, 2007 10:21:53 PM
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