Category: history

Nude photos and manufactured scandals

As many readers will know, former FLOTUS Melania Trump—a former model— previously appeared in a handful of “artistic” nude photos. (What we called “Maxim style nudity” back in the 1990s.)

That was decades ago, and has long been public knowledge. This being an election year, however, the old photos have recently become an issue for some members of the nattering class. The former First Lady has therefore felt a need to put out a short video statement on her X account, as follows:

“Why do I stand proudly behind my nude modeling pictures? The more pressing question is why has the media chosen to scrutinize my celebration of the human form in a fashion photo shoot.”

The “scandal” over Mrs. Trump’s nude photos has been manufactured for partisan political purposes, of course. That ship has long since sailed. Any sense of propriety we may once have had went out the window in the 1990s, with lurid accounts of Bill Clinton’s “bent” tallywacker and Monica Lewinsky’s stained blue dress.

That said, propriety existed as recently as the 1980s. But a disproportionate degree of ire often came down on women who had posed for nude photographs.

I recall Vanessa Williams being pressured into giving up her 1984 Miss America crown when some nude photos of her surfaced and were printed in Penthouse magazine.

There are no nude photos of me circulating anywhere. No one in their right mind ever has—or ever would—pay good money to see me au naturel.

But that is true for the vast majority of men. And even when there is a market for nude male images, it’s a niche market. In the 1970s, an entrepreneur launched Playgirl magazine with the objective of creating a Playboy for heterosexual women. What he discovered was that only gay men were interested in looking at photos of naked men. Oops!

Even heterosexual women much prefer images of women, whether clothed or unclothed. Most women—in my experience— are far more interested in observing other women than ogling men for purely aesthetic reasons.

Back to Melania Trump, and other women who posed nude in the past. I can’t say that I approve, but I understand. And as a man, it’s not entirely fair for me to judge. Because—once again—no one would ever pay a wooden nickel for such photos of me, so I’m not subject to the same temptations.

Nude photos, moreover, never hurt anyone. The objections of finger-wagging killjoys notwithstanding.

-ET

The perils of foreign civil war

Matt Gallagher is a veteran of the US-led occupation of Iraq in the 00s, and an  advocate of US involvement in the present conflict in Ukraine. In a Politico piece entitled, “The Forever Wars Were a Mistake. Supporting Ukraine Is Not”, Gallagher attempts to separate his views from those of fellow Iraq war veteran JD Vance.

As most readers will know, Vance is opposed to further US involvement in the Ukraine war. Vance is also the Republican nominee for vice president.

Gallagher does not present his essay as a work of political advocacy, but the odds are high that he plans to vote for Harris-Walz in November. Harris, Walz, and the rest of the Democratic Party want to continue the US war funding, as well as US involvement in the war.

Gallagher makes a handful of arguments. (I encourage you to read his piece in full.) But the thrust of his case comes down to this paragraph:

“We [Gallagher and his fellow Iraq war veterans] served in Iraq under false pretenses, in a country that largely saw us not as saviors but as invaders. That is not the situation in Ukraine. I know from personal experience on the ground there as a volunteer trainer and journalist, and from multiple interviews with locals and international legionnaires who fight on the front lines. The Ukrainian people desperately want and need our help.”

It’s undoubtedly true that many of the residents of western Ukraine want our continued involvement. And certainly the government in Kyiv is of that opinion. If the NATO powers were to openly declare war on Russia tomorrow, President Zelensky would cheer our “courage” and “commitment to democracy”, even as the ICBMs flew between the USA and Russia.

But here’s where Eastern Europe gets tricky, as Eastern Europe has always been tricky. Gallagher also writes:

“Unlike the Iraq War, their fight is unambiguous: A foreign adversary has invaded the borders of a would-be U.S. ally in an effort to eliminate its sovereign existence. Americans who support Ukraine are not looking for weapons of mass destruction, or imposing our will on a country that does not want us…”

The fight is not unambiguous. The people of Donbas and Crimea (the regions currently annexed/contested by Russia) do not unanimously want us. Those areas are historically Russian, and were Russian throughout much of the history of the Soviet Union.

The situation in Ukraine is complicated by the chaotic nature of the Soviet breakup in 1991, in the wake of the abortive coup of that year. Imagine, for a moment, if the United States split into a dozen different countries over the course of a few months. Imagine parts of Texas arbitrarily becoming parts of a new nation based on allegiance to the state government in California. Imagine New Yorkers suddenly being told that their abortion laws will henceforth be decided by the the state legislature in deep-red Alabama.

That’s what the breakup of the USSR was like.

Contrary to what we’re being told now, the George H.W. Bush administration (the ideological heir to Ronald Reagan) did not look upon the abrupt Soviet disintegration of 1991 with unalloyed glee. Both President Bush and Secretary of State James Baker were alarmed at the xenophobia of hardcore nationalists in Ukraine and the Baltic nations (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania). Bush and Baker saw trouble ahead. And 30 years later, sure enough, that trouble has arrived in spades.

Since 1991, the West has made an already bad situation worse by inviting states formerly linked to Russia to join NATO, an anti-Russian alliance. (Couldn’t we have just left well enough alone?)

We also encouraged a coup d’état in 2014 that overthrew a duly elected, (but Russian-leaning) government for an ultra-nationalist Ukrainian government that favored increased ties with the West. We did this for our interests, not theirs.

And now we’ve placed ourselves in the middle of a convoluted conflict that involves a Russian nationalist government in Moscow, a Ukrainian nationalist government in Kyiv, and separatist factions in areas that were once Russian, but which arbitrarily became Ukraine 30 years ago.

These are the messy historical facts that Matt Gallagher (and those of a similar opinion in the West) do not take into account. The war in Eastern Europe is ultimately a civil war, set up by the ad hoc, unplanned breakup of the Soviet Union a generation ago.

Unless the West is prepared to send troops into the disputed lands of eastern and southern Ukraine (and that would mean World War III), Ukraine is going to be forced to make territorial concessions. Nothing new there: European wars have ended with territorial concessions since the fall of the Roman Empire.

The West should be involved: not as arms merchants, but as peacemakers. JD Vance is correct, and Matt Gallagher, despite his good intentions, is wrong.

-ET

Presidential debates gone by

I haven’t yet decided if I’ll watch tonight’s presidential debate in full. I won’t be ignoring the outcome, of course. But must I sit through the entire thing?

21st-century American politics has become too distasteful to even contemplate, much less watch on TV. If the stakes weren’t so high, I would prefer to turn the whole thing off, like some low-budget Netflix series. 

I much prefer the more dignified presidential debates of my youth, and the more dignified candidates on both sides.

One of my favorites is this gem below, from 40 years ago, in which President Ronald Reagan addressed the dreaded “age question” with humor and aplomb.

No, Donald Trump is no Reagan. But then, Kamala Harris is no Walter Mondale. And that’s setting the bar pretty low, for this year’s Democratic nominee. 

-ET

**Save on Amazon: Reagan: His Life and Legend, by Max Boot

Native American history and the immigration debate

In regard to the immigration debate, I’ve seen a lot of memes like the one above on social media of late.

The argument always goes something like this: “White people” should stop complaining about chaos at the US southern border, because “white people” are among the most flagrant border jumpers, from a historical perspective. 

There is an element of truth in these memes. The [mostly white] Europeans who settled what is now the United States didn’t ask permission from the indigenous inhabitants. They simply moved in and took what they wanted, for the most part.

There were Donald Trumps among the Native Americans, men who saw what was coming. But the Native Americans were unable to prevent the onslaught.

I might point out that the Native American tribes also failed to defend their borders from Mexico. This is an often overlooked aspect of history. (The Apache leader Cochise regarded Mexico, not the United States, as his most bitter enemy.)

I might also note that Native American tribes constantly stole land from each other. The Comanches, for their part, sometimes engaged in what we now call “ethnic cleansing”. They practically wiped out several tribes, including the Tonkawa.

But I won’t go there. 

The bigger—and more presently relevant—issue is this: The history of Native Americans forms an argument for the most paranoid, most Trumpian absolutism where border security is concerned. Native American history is an object lesson on what happens when national boundaries are not respected, and border security is not enforced. 

What happens is: you lose your country. Just ask the Lakota, or the Navajo, or the Tonkawa who were wiped out by the Comanches. Ask the Shawnee, who used to live here in Southern Ohio. There aren’t many of them around anymore.

I understand the argument Lakota Man is trying to make. But he actually ends up making quite the opposite one. 

-ET

Dick Cheney and the warmongers’ last gasp

Former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney has declared that he will vote for Kamala Harris in November. His daughter, a former Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives, made a similar announcement last week.

When making his decision known, Dick Cheney stated that former President Trump “can never be trusted with power again”.

I can understand why the media is reporting Dick Cheney’s public disavowal of Trump, but there is really no earth-shattering news here. There has long been bad blood between Dick Cheney and Trump.

Dick Cheney represents the discredited neocon wing of the Republican Party. Cheney was part of the administration that plunged the United States into the invasion of Iraq in 2003. This was a chimerical, nation-building project that cost thousands of American lives, untold numbers of Iraqi lives, and more than $3 trillion from the US taxpayers.

The neocon wing is the wing of the GOP that “can never be trusted with power again”. I will admit that I voted for the Bush-Cheney ticket in the 2000 election. If I had known then what I know now, I would have crossed party lines and voted for Gore-Lieberman.

The neocon wing of the Republican Party, which seeks to involve the United States in endless foreign wars, is far from dead.

Today it is represented by Lindsey Graham, one of the architects of the failed Western policy in Ukraine. And remember Nikki Haley? During this year’s Republican primaries, the mainstream media was pushing her because she is not-Trump. But Nikki Haley is a neocon, too. Nikki Haley never saw a foreign war, or a potential foreign war, that she didn’t like.

Twenty years ago, the neocons were happy to sacrifice Iraqi and American lives for the dream of turning Muslim Iraq into a Middle Eastern version of Sweden. Today, neocons are happy to fight until the last living Ukrainian, given that war’s long-shot chance of destabilizing Russia.

The situation is even more dangerous today. In 2003, many Democrats were skeptical of the Bush-Cheney adventure in Iraq. Today, however, the Democrats have a paranoid obsession with “Russia”. Under Biden and a Democrat-led Congress, the Democrats have sunk more than $200 billion into the Ukraine war. They have outdone the Republican neocons as warmongers. Between these two factions, we really do have a motley band of dangerous fools at the helm.

Both Donald Trump and J.D. Vance favor an end to the war in Ukraine, and an end to America’s expensive, dangerous involvement in it. Whatever legitimate criticisms there are of Trump and Vance (and yes, there are many), they are correct on this policy, at least.

If former President Trump loses in November, this will almost certainly be his last time atop the GOP presidential ticket. But the Republican Party is never going back to its warmongering neocon wing. If that happens, I’ll be voting Libertarian.

-ET

Armchair warriors for Ukraine

In the USA and Europe at the moment, there is no shortage of chickenhawks, eager to escalate our near war with Russia into an actual, direct conflict.

Consider, for example, this recent piece in The Hill, written by contributor Joseph Bosco:

“Biden must abandon his ‘half-assed’ Ukraine policy, before it’s too late”

“Too late”…or what? What is the bottom line here? That Ukraine and Russia become the same country again?

That is what they were for 200 years, from the 1790s until 1991. While that may not be an ideal outcome, it doesn’t represent an existential threat for the West. It certainly didn’t before, from the time of Catherine the Great until the end of the Soviet Union.

(And from the standpoint of Ukraine, the West’s “fight until the last Ukrainian” strategy has been an unmitigated disaster. We have accomplished nothing but the senseless killing of Ukrainians through the prolongation of an unwinnable war.)

But nuclear war with Russia would be an existential threat, for all of us.

Bosco, like many armchair warriors in the West, wants to empower an unpredictable third-party country (Ukraine) to use US weapons against cities deep within the interior of Russia.

That amounts to a US declaration of war on Russia.

Russia, I will remind the reader, has not attacked us, and does not seek war with us. Russia has a beef with Ukraine over the status of a handful of territories in the former USSR.

When I was a kid, it was all the Soviet Union; and no one lost any sleep over that reality. I’m beginning to think that the world would be better off today if some liberal, federalized form of the Soviet Union had survived, under Mikhail Gorbachev and his ideological heirs.

Does Ukraine need more long-range US weapons and blank checks to use them? Perhaps. But what Kiev needs, most of all, is people willing to fight for the Zelensky government on the front lines.

Ukrainians themselves have shown a decidedly mixed opinion on this matter. There are an estimated 700,000 to 900,000 Ukrainian men of draft age living abroad.

To put that in perspective, around 50,000 American men left the USA in the late 1960s and early 1970s to avoid service in the Vietnam War. This suggests that American men were far more eager to serve in Vietnam in 1968 than Ukrainian men are to serve in Ukraine in 2024.

Charity, as they say, begins at home. So does fighting other people’s wars. If anyone in the West believes that the matter of which flag flies over Crimea and/or Donbas is a question of paramount importance, then he should personally take action.

The Ukrainian government has a long-established framework whereby foreign nationals may fight for Ukraine’s cause. One does not need to have prior military training. One does not need to learn Ukrainian first. The only real requirements are that one be between the ages of 18 and 60 years of age, be in basically good health, and not have a criminal record.

That should cover a lot of the folks in the West who are screaming for an escalation of NATO’s proxy war with Russia in Ukraine. Including the aforementioned contributor for The Hill. Let those who want war with Russia lead us by example.

-ET

Tom Petty, media overload, and a still-relevant song from 1987

In the summer of 1987, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers released the song “Jammin’ Me”, with an accompanying MTV video, embedded below.

The theme of the song is: mass media overload.  Some of the specific references in the song are now dated (El Salvador, Vanessa Redgrave, Joe Piscopo, Eddie Murphy, etc.). But with a few updates, this song would be perfectly relevant in 2024.

It’s worth noting that 1987 was a year before social media, the Internet, and mass-market cell phones. There were no podcasters. Talk radio had yet to take off in a big way.

And even in 1987, it was possible to feel news and media overload.

While 1987 was not without its political controversies, that was a calmer, saner era than the one in which we find ourselves today. There was a general sense that in the halls of power, adults were in charge.

The video therefore focuses on the excesses of 1980s consumer culture, but you can see and hear multiple nods to the political issues of that bygone time, too.

-ET

**Save on Tom Petty music and merchandise on Amazon

Reading about the Iran Hostage Crisis of ’79

The Iran Hostage Crisis of 1979 is one of the first major global events that I remember.

I was 11 years old on November 4, 1979, when Iran’s revolution came to a head, and a mob of student militants overran the US Embassy in Tehran. The student militants took 66 American hostages. 52 of these hostages would remain in Iran until January, 1981.

American hostages in Tehran, Iran in 1979

I followed the 444-day crisis on the news. But being 11 years old, I was sketchy on most of the historical background. 

I’ve read a lot more about the crisis since then. I’m presently finishing up the above book, Guests of the Ayatollah: the First Battle in America’s War with Militant Islam, by Mark Bowden.

Bowden’s book includes not only the overarching historical details, but also many individual stories: of the hostages, and others whose lives were impacted. 

Definitely worth a read if this is a subject that interests you!

-ET

**View Guests of the Ayatollah: the First Battle in America’s War with Militant Islam, by Mark Bowden on Amazon***

Memorial Day 2024

Hello, Dear Reader. I hope you have a safe and happy Memorial Day, and remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice in the service of the USA.

For traditional holidays like this one, you can’t beat Norman Rockwell. The artist painted the above work, Homecoming Marine, in 1945. 

If you look closely, you’ll see that the painting conveys a significant amount of backstory. The young marine, and his relationship to the setting, are evident in the painting. The painting also gives us a rough idea of where he served. (Hint: not Europe.)

The obvious youth of the marine in the painting reminds me that at 55, I am now decades older than most of those who served in World War II and all subsequent wars.

I am also humbled. I have never served in the military. But I send out my appreciation and respect to those who have, and do.

-ET

 

 

Reading notes: ‘Gulag: a History’ by Anne Applebaum

I’m a child of the Cold War. I was twenty-one when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. I well remember the Soviet Union as a topic on the evening news. I grew up with a dark fascination with the USSR. I am always interested in acquiring new books and other materials about it.

I was therefore eager to listen to Anne Applebaum’s book: Gulag: A History. Although she’s recently taken to opining about current events on Twitter, Applebaum is the author of a handful of books on Soviet history.

Gulag, as the title suggests, is focused on the Soviet work/concentration camp system, which often housed political prisoners.

Gulag is a thoroughly researched book. Applebaum draws not only on Soviet-era documents, but also on extensive interviews she conducted with camp survivors.

The book has no ideological ax to grind. Applebaum doesn’t soft-pedal the human cost of the Soviet gulag system. Nor does she endlessly bludgeon the reader with authorial intrusions of shock and disapproval. Applebaum assumes that the reader can make her own moral judgments.

While there are passages about the leadership of the USSR and Kremin-level politics, the emphasis of the book is on the prisoners’ experience. Gulag gives the reader a sense of what it was like to have been an inmate in a Soviet prison camp, as much as any book could.

The only downside to this approach is that the many, many firsthand stories sometimes overload the reader with repetitive details.

I’m listening to the audio version of this book, but the printed version is 736 pages. My guess is that 436 pages could have accomplished the same ends in a more succinct manner.

But no book, either fiction or nonfiction, is perfect. Gulag: A History is a worthwhile read for anyone with a serious interest in Soviet history.

-ET

**View GULAG: A HISTORY on Amazon** 

The Beatles in Hamburg, and ‘The Cairo Deception’

As many of you will know, I recently wrapped up The Cairo Deception, my 5-book World War II series.

One of the final chapters of the book depicts the Beatles performing in Hamburg, West Germany in December 1962. (I won’t go into more story detail than that, so as to avoid spoilers.)

This is actually true. When I discovered this lesser known piece of rock music history, I just couldn’t resist putting it in the book, as an Easter egg for Beatles fans.

The Beatles both resided and performed in Hamburg from August 1960 to December 1962. The Beatles’ Hamburg residence took place shortly before they became a global phenomenon. The band also performed at a music venue in Hamburg called The Star-Club, as described in Postwar: Book 5 of The Cairo Deception. 

The Beatles of the Hamburg period involved a slightly different lineup of the band: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Stuart Sutcliffe and Pete Best. After the group returned to England at the end of 1962, Sutcliffe and Best left the band, and Ringo Starr was hired on as the new drummer.

Click here to view THE CAIRO DECEPTION series on Amazon

9/11+22

Twenty-two years have passed now, since the concerted terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

As I’ve remarked in recent years on this date, I’m acutely aware that for the younger generation of adults, 9/11 is not memory, but history.

My grandparents and Pearl Harbor

While the date retains its significance for those of us who are old enough to remember it, I’m realistic about such matters. And hey, I was young once, too.

My grandparents often spoke of Pearl Harbor as if December 7, 1941 were yesterday. For me, though, Pearl Harbor was a historical event that took place 27 years before I was born. It simply didn’t carry the same weight for me.

It’s therefore okay if you’re in the under-thirty crowd, and find that talk of 9/11 doesn’t pack the same emotional wallop for you that it does for many older adults. I’m not here to lecture you on that.

The past makes the present

You should, however, learn about 9/11, just as I learned about Pearl Harbor and World War II. I learned about Pearl Harbor and World War II not because those events were immediately relevant to me, but because understanding those events helped me to better understand the world in which I was growing up, in the 1970s and 1980s. World War II, after all, shaped the “postwar” world. Hence the name.

And the same applies to you, coming of age in the post-9/11 world. You need to know about 9/11 not just for commemoration and respect, but also for understanding the somewhat messed-up country in which you are coming of age.

(And just for the record: I don’t envy you on that one.)

9/11 and the beginning of the culture wars

9/11 began a chain reaction that transformed the United States from a relatively optimistic and united country in the 1980s and 1990s, to a far more cynical, distrustful place riven by partisan divisions.

Here’s a very short explanation: In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Americans were initially united. Our nation had just been attacked, after all, and the 9/11 terrorists attacked all of us. The September 11th bombers didn’t care if you were a Democrat or a Republican. If you were an American (or, indeed, anyone who didn’t subscribe to their particular interpretation of Islam), they were willing to take your life in order to make a point.

After the attacks, though, we couldn’t agree on what should be done in response.

Should the US return to its mostly Western, mostly Christian roots, in a defensive posture? Or should it more assertively embrace multiculturalism and diversity?

Should we ban the Quran? Or teach it in schools (so that Americans will better understand Islam)?

Should we withdraw from the Middle East? Or remove bellicose dictators from countries like Iraq by force?

Questions like this are at the heart of what we now call the “culture wars”. Although we don’t argue very much about Islam nowadays, we are preoccupied with a similar raft of questions. For example:

Should we focus on what unites us as Americans? Or should we dwell on racial injustices of the past?

Should we accept the “heteronormativity” of human societies within a context of tolerance for all? Or should we take extraordinary steps to promote alternative interpretations of sexuality and gender?

Believe it or not, such questions were less prominent in 1993 or 1983. While these matters may have occupied the occasional university classroom debate, the vast majority of Americans would have looked at you cross-eyed if you’d posed such questions.

9/11 focused a quarter of the population on both real and imagined grievances (the “woke”), and a quarter of the population on both real and imagined external threats (the MAGA crowd).

The rest of us remained in the middle. But guess what? 9/11 also turned the term “centrist”—once something that most people aspired to be—into a pejorative. And now we have a culture in which almost anything can become a source of controversy or outrage. No one is listening to the centrists anymore.

9/11 weaved suspicion and fear into the fabric of daily life. I remember taking commercial flights in the 1990s with nothing more than a boarding pass and a quick show of my passport. No one was going to body-search you before you boarded a plane.

Until 9/11, that was.

America was not an “innocent” country before 9/11/2001. (Our innocence had ended in the 1960s.) But it was a country that was much more at ease with itself, and with its fellow citizens.

Everything changed on 9/11/2001, and mostly not for the better. That’s why you need to learn about 9/11, even if you are too young to actually remember it.

-ET

JFK, Marlene Dietrich, and the problem of the aging Lothario

Eleanor Herman’s Sex with Presidents: The Ins and Outs of Love and Lust in the White House, is well worth reading both for its historical content, as well as its human interest angle.

In this book, you’ll learn about the honey trap in which Alexander Hamilton was ensnared in 1797. Women and sex, it turns out, were among Hamilton’s principal weaknesses.

There are the requisite chapters about Warren G. Harding and the Nan Britton affair. Also Eisenhower’s unconsummated sexual liaisons with his wartime driver, Kay Summersby. (Apparently, Ike was impotent by the time he became involved with the much younger, statuesque Summersby.)

Needless to say, the chapter on John F. Kennedy is among the most lurid. There are the expected entries about Marilyn Monroe, and the two White House secretaries nicknamed Fiddle and Faddle. But there are also some surprises.

According to this book, JFK was into partner-swapping mini-orgies involving other men, too (Note: not with any male-male contact, though). And of course, threesomes with two women. (What man isn’t, after all?)

While most of JFK’s conquests were on the younger side, not all of them were. When German actress Marlene Dietrich visited the White House shortly before JFK’s death, Kennedy decided that he had to have her, too.

Dietrich, born in 1901, was sixteen years older than Kennedy. She was then already in her sixties. Dietrich quickly decided, though, that she would not turn down a chance to romp with America’s youthful, charismatic commander-in-chief.

But there was one caveat: “I was an old woman by then,” she later recounted, “and damn if I was going to be on top.”

Dietrich also reported that the encounter did not last long. JFK was fast out of the gate. That assessment conformed to other reports about our 35th president.

Marlene Dietrich
JFK

Speaking of age: JFK died at 46, when he was still in his prime. He is frozen in amber as a youngish, good-looking man.

For as long as he lived, JFK was largely attractive to women. But even during his lifetime, he showed signs of what would now be called predatory behavior. He often manipulated women into sex, and occasionally plied them with alcohol and drugs.

And speaking of age again: Some of his partners were far too young for a grown man in a position of power, even by the standards of that era.

What if JFK had not been martyred at the age of 46? What if he had served out a presumable second term and died of old age? A normal lifespan would have placed Kennedy’s death sometime in the 1990s or the early years of the twentieth century. (He would have turned 100 in 2017.)

We can assume that at a certain point—probably not far into the 1970s— the women would no longer have been quite so willing, and JFK would have met with more resistance. For JFK, sex was more than a mere biological drive. He was clearly compulsive about his conquests, and regarded sex as an extension of his power.

It is therefore not difficult to imagine JFK, had he lived, being embroiled in a sordid late-life sexual harassment scandal, not unlike those that befell both Trump and Biden. (Joe Biden was accused of sexual harassment, too, both by Senate staffer Tara Reade, and seven other women. But the mainstream media chose not to dwell on these accusations. Make of that what you will.)

Like many Americans who are too young to remember JFK in office (he died five years before I was born), I grew up thinking of Kennedy as a mythic figure. I attended Catholic schools, and a portrait of JFK hung in at least two of my K-12 classrooms, right beside portraits of the Pope and several of the saints.

But keep in mind: had he not been martyred in 1963, JFK would have been just another former president in his golden years.

I might also note that Donald Trump had no shortage of willing female partners in his 30s and 40s. In those days, Trump was not a controversial septuagenarian politician, but a glamorous tabloid billionaire. Many women wanted to be with him.

Time and age are the enemies of sex appeal. The difference between a celebrated ladies’ man and a reviled lecher is often a matter of a few years and a few wrong presumptions. Just ask Donald Trump.

-ET

**View SEX WITH PRESIDENTS on Amazon**

The Bengals’ defeat, and those curious expressions of fan loyalty

As some of you may know, the Cincinnati Bengals lost the AFC championship game to the Kansas City Chiefs last night.

This morning, my personal Facebook feed, heavy with Cincinnati residents, was filled with professions of fan loyalty, like the one above: “Still my Bengals.”

Others were professing their “fan loyalty” in more abstract terms. Some declared that they would stick with the Bengals no matter what.

And here is one of the places where I can’t connect with the rabid spectator sports fan: this concept of team loyalty.

If you find spectator sports enthralling, that’s one thing. The fact that I don’t find them particularly entertaining is a mere matter of preference.

Similarly, we all enjoy different television shows and movies, different kinds of music. I don’t happen to be a fan of country music. This doesn’t leave me shaking my head at the preferences of country music fans.

But then, most country music fans aren’t making public declarations of fan loyalty when their favorite artist fails to win a CMA award. Only spectator sports fans do things like that.

A professional sports team—the Cincinnati Bengals, the Kansas City Chiefs, whatever—is a corporation that sells an entertainment product. No different from Sony Pictures or Netflix. Fans of entertainment companies are more accurately called consumers.

If you enjoy an entertainment company’s product, so be it. But it’s important to remember where you stand, in the big scheme of things, before getting too invested in this fan loyalty concept.

Take Joe Burrow, the Cincinnati Bengals’ 26-year-old quarterback. Joe Burrow has a 4-year contract worth over $36 million. And—of course—a beautiful girlfriend with a widely subscribed Instagram account. Rich young celebrity athletes with beautiful girlfriends are nothing new, of course.

More power to Joe Burrow. I’m sure he’s talented and that he’s worked hard. But it’s somewhat self-deluding—if not foolish—to think that this man needs your expressions of loyalty after he loses a game.

And he certainly isn’t reading your Facebook feed.

But of course, these public expressions of fan loyalty aren’t really about the team. Otherwise, they would be sent to the team, instead of directed toward one’s friends, acquaintances, and neighbors. (Consider the sports team flags on your neighbor’s pickup truck. Who are those intended for?)

These expressions of fan loyalty seem to be more about the need for group affiliation, than any genuine devotion to unknowing, millionaire celebrity athletes. And this need (among some people, at least) goes all the way back to the Byzantine Empire. In Byzantine times, different factions of chariot racing fans actually evolved into the equivalent of paramilitary organizations. All based around spectator sports.

While I can somewhat understand this impulse—especially in light of its historical roots—I just don’t get it, at a visceral level. Why? What’s the point?

But hey, that’s just me.

If you’re an ardent Bengals fan, my condolences on last nights defeat. But Joe Burrow, I’m quite sure, will be just fine without my sympathy, let alone my expressions of fan loyalty.

-ET

Challenger disaster +37 years

I was a senior in high school on January 28, 1986. The explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger occurred that day at 11:39 a.m., EST.

The explosion took place just 73 seconds into the shuttle’s flight, and killed all seven crew members. Among the dead was Christa McAuliffe, a Massachusetts teacher who had been a guest astronaut.

That year I had a part-time job in my school’s cafeteria. I was operating a soda machine in the lunch line when the students began filing in, talking about what had happened. This was one of those national tragedies that was announced in classrooms, rather like the assassination of JFK, when my parents were in high school.

The Reagan Administration had been hoping to revive interest in the U.S. space program, as well as to inject some life into math and science education. (Even then, there were concerns that American students were falling behind their global counterparts in math and science.) The presence of teacher Christa McAuliffe on the mission was a key part of that effort. McAuliffe’s inclusion would have been a good idea, perhaps, if not for what happened.

I’m not going to exaggerate, and say that the Challenger disaster depressed me for a month, or anything like that. I was sorry for the loss of life, of course. But in 1986 I was a self-absorbed teenager, and this was a faraway event.

The disaster did have a sobering effect on me, though. At my present age (I’ll let you do the math), I am acutely aware that life is fragile, and that bad things happen to good people. I wasn’t as aware of this in 1986.

The Challenger crash dominated the news for weeks afterward. A case can be made that Christa McAullife received a lion’s share of the media attention. This was probably inevitable, given that she was a civilian volunteer and a teacher. McAuliffe was about the same age as my mother, I remember noting.

The investigations and Congressional hearings surrounding the disaster lasted for several years. In 2004, President George W. Bush conferred posthumous Congressional Space Medals of Honor on all the Challenger crew members. 

On the night of the disaster, President Reagan delivered this televised speech to the country. One of his more moving oratory moments, in my opinion.

A sad moment for the country, and one that I still remember, almost four decades later.

-ET