Sidebars

McIlroy, a Hero for Our Times....by Bob Sanders

 

America's continuing need for sports heroes, whose work ethic and embodiment of virtues is largely missing in far too many of today's athletes, appears to have been realized when Rory McIlroy demolished the field in winning the U.S. Open by eight strokes.

While there are purists who believe golf is better described as a skill rather than a sport, the truth is that today's big three of major professional sports--football, baseball, and basketball--are peopled by spoiled overpaid jocks virtually unaware of the importance of effectively managing their good fortune.  Yes, there are exceptions among them, but the point is not to be ignored.

Even though he is not one of us, we needed Northern Ireland's McIlroy to come along and so did golf.  Fallout from the strange case of Tiger Woods has crippled ratings here and elsewhere; golf on television, without box office allure, is just another game played by the sleep-inducing Davis Love III, Jim Furyk and Justin Leonard, three of many.  America cheered McIlroy in spite of his being the fifth straight foreigner (the last four in their 20s) to win a major tournament.  Only two Americans finished in the top 10.

A case also can be made that we are getting sick, tired, and bored by the continuing arrogance displayed by today's elite athletes.  LaBron James and his megalomania encapsulate the problem and make him the most disliked of today's jerk jocks and not just in Cleveland, his former home while performing for the, admittedly, lack-luster Cavaliers.  Success in any field of endeavor requires some preparation and, alas, James went straight from high school in nearby Akron to the Cavs.  The move to glitzy Miami has done nothing to lessen a passionate self-love that found him in post-series incoherence while interviewed about a six-game fourth quarter total production of 11 points against the Dallas Mavericks.  He dissed the public while "explaining" a performance that came across as though he had been hypnotized into a state of failure. 

Meanwhile, we learn more about performance-enhancing drugs as Barry Bonds, Jose Conseco, Lenny Dykstra and other early users, now retired, occasionally emerge from the shadows of disrepute, acting as supporting cast members while sometimes diverting us from the latest imbecilities of those similarly inclined plus wife beating, robbery, fraud, and other forms of criminality.  It must be tempting for sports editors and members of the blogging community to run crime sheet columns consisting of the day's criminal activities perpetrated by athletes.  Perhaps a Hall of Shame is in order.

McIlroy's record-breaking pereformance gave NBC a rating's peak of 7.4 from 7-7:30 p.m. when he was in the final stages of his first-career major title.  Those ratings averaged 5.1--a 35 percent decrease from the 6.9 achieved last year when Graeme McDowell (also from Northern Ireland) won.  The numbers are deceiving.  Last year's tournament was held on the West Coast (Pebble Beach), a bit of programming serendipity enabling much of the final round to be viewed in prime time.  Last year. Tiger was in contention during the final round.  This year he was out with knee and Achilles' tendon problems.  With McIlroy birdying two of his first four holes, there is no question he played about three hours as a certain winner.  One-sided sporting events are normally anathema to ratings success yet the crowd continued to go crazy over the remarkably calm Irish kid.

How did Northern Ireland's McElroy, just turned 22, hold the attention of America and the world with four nearly flawless rounds of golf at what traditionally has been the sport's most challenging event?  Was it those people at Congressional Country Club who kept yelling "Ror-eee" as the cameras told the exciting story?

A good start would be the Masters tournament two months ago when McIlroy nearly did to Bobby Jones' classic course what he did last weekend to Congressional.  Leading by four strokes after three rounds, the youngster lost seven to par on the first three holes of the backside while shooting an 80, finishing tied with four others for 15th place.  His TV interview showed us the shock of defeat, yet he offered no excuses.  It was, as he suggested after the Open win, "a learning experience."  It sure was.

Critics of Congressional's preparation for the event have suggested the course's lack of deep rough was evidence the PGA, facing a Tiger-less tourament, did not want a typical one or two under par victory.  Condition of the rough plus rain-softened greens enabled 20 professionals to break par.  While sans Woods, many tournament officials, impressed by McIlroy's game, suggested that golf now has anotherTiger.  Pro Miguel Angel Jiminez suggested: "He's going to be the first Rory, not the next Tiger."

Golf is (or should be) many things--among them a display of good manners.  While people are known to throw clubs, kick balls into more favorable locations, and fail to repair divots and green marks, the rules of golf don't just govern the game.  They provide a structural climate.  From personal experience as a caddy, I can assure you that watching people close up play the game can tell you a great deal about their character; sometimes, it's more than you want to know.

It always helps to have a sense of humor following an ignoble defeat.  French golfer Jean Van De Veld proved it following his loss of the British Open in 1999 at Carnoustie.  Needing a bogie 6 on the 18th hole to win, he shot 7 in a drama-filled piece of agony that brought reminiscence to every duffer who had suffered similar indignities.  There was a water hazard involved and the removal of footgear as possible help.  Van De Veld's eventual realization of the humor of the moment resulted in his making an infomercial for Never Compromise, the maker of his putter.  In the harshness of a Scottish mid-winter, the loser became a winner by playing the hole of personal embarrassment with a putter for the 6 he had needed.  It took him three tries.

In one sense, golf's intimacy creates relationships, real and perceived, between players and fans.  In contrast, the major sports include a distance barrier that helps prompt the weird arrogance of James and others.  Fans are physically closest to the action during basketball games; security guards are in considerable evidence and for good reason.  Trash talking prevails, and fights break out sometimes involving fans.

There was a time when just about the only celebrity who refused to give autographs was film actor Cary Grant.  Now, a lot of celebrities (athletes in particular) either scribble an unreadable line or sign a teammate's name.  Regardless how one might regard the autograph request, it is here to stay and should be given within reason.  The person requesting it is helping pay the ungodly income of the celebrity.

Golf may be on the edge of a major comeback.  A group of young Turks under30 are threatening to make us forget Phil Mickelson and Tiger.  In addition to McIlroy, they include: Martin Kaymer, Dustin Johnson, Anthony Kim, Charl Schwartzel, Louis Oosthiuizen, Hunter Mahan, and Jason Day.  Then, there's Ryo Ishikawa, 20, and Mateo Manaserro, just 18.  None can match McIlroy's flawless and powerful swing, a new and highly effective putting stroke, and a captivating innocence that translates into major golf stardom.

Jack Nicklaus may have phrased it best when he observed in reference to McIlroy: "He's humble when he needs to be humble and he's confident when he needs to be confident."

Let's hope Tiger Woods can return with his old skills.  Watching Woods and McIlroy battle it out would be a magnificent treat.

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Hugh Hefner's Busy Month....by Bob Sanders

We're barely past the middle of the June and there can be no question that Playboy Enterprises founder Hugh Hefner has already had a busy month.  The London Club has been re-opened in glitzy Mayfair, an announcement has been made that NBC's fall schedule will include something called "The Playboy Club," and Hefner is continuing efforts to buy back his company, having taken it public in 1971.  Then, there's the 33rd Playboy Jazz Fest that kicked off last Thursday (June 9) with Bill Cosby again hosting.

That paragraph would have been constructed differently were it not for Crystal Harris, 25, (Miss December, 2009) who had a "change of heart" involving marriage to Hefner, 85, scheduled for tomorrow (June 18).  The wedding would have been Hefner's third and was scheduled for the Playboy Mansion located in the Holmby Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles.  As "Dandy Don" Meredith used to sing nearing "Monday Night Football sign-offs, "The Party's Over."   

It was Hefner himself who announced his engagement to Harris, a singer of modest accomplishments, who was expected to achieve a career boost in addition to a cover appearance in the July Playboy as "America's Princess, Mrs. Crystal Hefner."  It was too late to stop the presses and the wily Hefner ordered red "Runaway Bride" stickers to be slapped on each copy.

Strange things can happen between printing the magazine and getting it into the hands of readers.  One day I got a call from Associated Press indicating that a truck carrying centerfolds (they are produced separately) had upended in front of an exclusive Catholic girls school and thousands of copies were blowing around the school's grounds.  "Do you know why the truck turned over?" asked the reporter.  I replied: "I believe the truck was top-heavy."  My explanation was published world-wide and I heard from a lot of people.

The now disappointed invitees to the wedding do not include me.  I'd been stiff upper-lipping it placing understood emphasis on not having seen Hef in 40 years.  A former employee of his going back to the second day of January, 1968, I was Press Information Manager for more than three years.  I didn't expect an invitation but neither did Holly Madison, one of many ex-girl friends of recent and precious past vintage beginning with a divorce from second wife, Kimberly Conrad (1989 Playmate of the Year) who lives next door.  Hefner has always been fond of girls next door.

It was Holly Madison, Hefner's most recent major flame, who cautioned him about Harris calling her "mysterious" and in too big a hurry to get married.  Breathless reports in the celebrity media suggest Harris has been having a dilly of a dalliance with Jordan McGraw, son of silly Dr. Phil.  It may be that Hefner gave second thought to a decision that a prenuptial agreement would not be observed.

Except for dinner fare heavy on fried chicken and Pepsi Cola, Hefner has lived like an Arabian prince in The Mansion (as employees and intimates are inclined to call it) although, technically speaking, the 1920s Gothic-style home is owned by Playboy Enterprises--not Hefner.  He rents the place at a rare good price and pays for non-business expenses.  Having attained geezerhood some years ago, Hefner can look back on many battles that include victory over a stroke (1985) plus an IRS triumph in which the Bunny King proved that expenses incurred during long-running parties, held at his two residences (the one in Chicago from 1959-84), could be written off.

The company pays for house and grounds expenses and the salaries of an 80-employee staff including a kitchen crew in place on a round-the-clock basis.  There's also a gang of 13 who take care of business and personal needs.  During my employment, former Bunny Pat Pappas was a full-time compiler of Hefner scrap books now numbering more than 1,800.

With the wedding off, it is interesting to note that Victor Aubrey Lownes III did show up at the June 4 re-opening of the London Playboy Club.  It was Lownes, a Chicagoan and early-on Hefner pal, who 45 years ago established a key element of what became "Swinging London."  Lownes' leaving of Chicago was a bit hasty; his  relationship with an underage TV star, whose mother was a prominent newspaper columnist, speeded his departure.

Lownes now lives a reclusive life remaining married to Marilyn Cole, Playboy's first full frontal Playmate (January, 1972).  He was a brilliant guy in those days and he achieved even greater glories for the Playboy Empire than what just another club might offer.  Gambling had been legalized in the UK and Lownes wisely added a casino to the club that opened in 1966 at 45 Park Lane.  Fifteen years later, Playboy Enterprises owned five casinos and interest in two others plus more than 70 off-track betting parlors and six bingo parlors.

During the period, Lownes had established himself as a certified bon vivant with a 42-room Georgian Mansion called Stocks, a residence of many uses.  A Catholic girls' school for more than 20 years, the home was used as a training camp where proper Bunny Dips were achieved under the direction of Lownes and others armed with Bunny Manuals.  (For the uninitiated, the Bunny Dip is a graceful cleavage-revealing method of table service).  Much more outgoing than his boss, Lownes gave every indication he was attempting to out Hefner Hefner.

It was during the 70s that Lownes' positioning in Playboy was undergoing more than subtle changes as Playboy Enterprises entered a fallow financial period.  As conjecture became fact, it was evident that UK gaming was keeping the company afloat while Lownes became a British version of Hefner with striking differences;   Hefner wore pajamas as he edited the magazine, while Lownes was photographed going to the hounds wearing full hunting regalia, don't you know?  Some Playboy insiders believe Hefner was jealous of Lownes.

Regardless, things came to a head not over lifestyles but gambling.  The story gets a bit murky and there are, of course, two sides.  Lownes' version is that the British were always uneasy with foreign controlled casinos and that he was falsely accused of "irregularities" by British gaming authorities.  Lownes says he was leading the charge to qualify Playboy for a New Jersey license (there was a temporary one in play) and that Hefner panicked firing Lownes before the latter could testify to authorities.  The Hefner version has Lownes providing gambling markers to Middle Eastern potentates, a very big British violation.  Lownes is quick to point out that Playboy made $31 million in the year ending June 30, 1981 and the firm lost $51 million the following year.  Regardless of which story is true, the British gaming commission threw Playboy out of the UK.

There was another angle to what became enmity between Lownes and Hefner.  Both had dated Cole who continued to pose for Playboy until 1984 and her marriage to Lownes.  Cole is now a journalist who attended friend Roman Polanski's 2005 trial on behalf of Lownes who was ill and unable to support his old pal.  Hefnerand Lownes had at each other in published books.  For some interesting reading, there's Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream by Steven Watts and The Day the Bunny Died by Victor Lownes.

London is abuzz over the re-opening of the club Lownes founded, and it isn't all positive.  About 100 feminists, Bunny ears and all, carried signs suggesting "Eff off Hef," a demonstration in sharp contrast to what Lownes pulled off just before he was fired by Hefner in 1981.  Having been informed about poor business at Playboy Clubs, Lownes glanced out of what then was a Playboy Building window and observed a group of businessmen, then quickly rounded up Bunnies, put them in uniform and armed them with signs protesting the company's firm rule about dating key holders.  It would be nice to report than Lownes had turned the proverbial lemon into lemonade while attracting a lot of press attention but the world was changing and demise of the clubs was around the corner.  It was Lownes who in in 1959 had given Hefner the club idea fashioning it after Chicago's Gaslight Club.  A re-establishment of Playboy Clubs began in 2006 with the opening of a franchise in Las Vegas.

Press reaction to the new London Playboy Club was mixed with the London Times archly reporting: "Beatrice Potter with her original cottontails is more fun."  Employees include 80 Bunnies chosen from among 3,000 applicants.  Their ages range from 19 to 40.

Memberships are not cheap with a lifetime key costing 15,000 pounds.  Annual fees of 1,200 pounds do not include a joining price of 1,000 pounds.  So far, Playboy claims 850 members, 350 of them women.

I'm happy to have read that Lownes and Cole attended the London Club opening at which Hefner and his then bride-to-be also were present.  Apparently, some sort of hatchet burying took place.  An elapse of 30 years, the former employee's enormous contributions to Playboy's corporate well-being, and Hefner's deeply romantic side probably put the checkmark beside Lownes' name.  Maybe, it was Cole's presence.

Certainly keeping Hefner hopping these days is a recent success in beating back a bid by Penthouse which attempted to wrest control of the publicly-held Playboy Enterprises.  Penthouse, held by the oh, so comfy-named FriendlyFinder Enterprises, had offered $6.15 a share but Hefner's board turned down the bid for a firm troubled by poor advertising sales and an internet offering easily accessed pornography.  Hefner currently owns 70% of Class A voting stock and 28% of non-voting Class B shares.

When I worked for Hefner, I was always surprised that writers who interviewed him rarely if ever asked him a question concerning what seemed to me one of the most logical: How significant was the Marilyn Monroe picture in the first issue of Playboy in terms of the publication's eventual success?  That December, 1953 issue sold around 52,000 copies and enabled the editor/publisher to achieve credit with the publication's printers.  The question is now being asked following Hefner's having chosen his final resting place: a crypt next to Marilyn Monroe's in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles.  Perhaps, that choice reveals her significance to him.

Knowing little about crypt creeping by the interred and Las Vegas odds against such an occurrence, I would still be inclined to put a wager on my old employer to, somehow, find a way to wriggle over to Marilyn.

A final thought.  Keep an eye on Holly Madison in the Hefner Marital Sweepstakes.

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The Man Who Speaks Fluent Cole Porter....by Bob Sanders

 

Almost everything about Teddy Trad is common place.  That would include his appearance, personality, and general approach to living a life.  His reading habits, while superior to Sarah Palin's, have been described as dreary and even include occasional skimming of People magazine during pauses at Safeway checkouts.  He is, however, exceptional in one category of human endeavor.

The one exception to his ordinariness continues to be the cornerstone of his success, evidence arrived at by an inner circle of experts who study verbal communications.  Indeed, it was the International Society of Verbal Intercourse (ISVI), after much analysis, that determined Trad, who continues to walk among us today, is the most successful man ever in terms of seducing women.  Although such studies are relatively new, there is irrefutable proof that such successful chasers as Casanova, Lord Byron, and Errol Flynn pale by considerable comparison to the highly extraordinary achievements of Teddy Trad.  Even the remarkable Wilt Chamberlain, who claimed to have slept with 20,000 women, has been proved a relative sexual midget.  The secret to Trad's success: he spoke Cole Porter to such a degree that fluency eventually became his to a spectacular degree.

Graduated five years ago from Hawaii's Motsumoto College of Shave Ice where he majored in Tee Shirts and Souvenirs, young Trad early on did the obligatory on Oahu's North Shore by selling Motsumoto's iced cookies to surfers.  His next stop was in Alaska where he unsuccessfully proselytized Motsumoto's shave ice products in Fairbanks.

It was while based in Fairbanks that Trad made a startling discovery that would be of life-changing significance.  An early user of Twitter in his business and social dealings, the young man soon learned that a great many women, largely derivatives of Valley Girls, had turned to Twitter as a means of communication.  Demonized as a stereotype in the 80s and 90s, the Valley Girls had acquired a kind of hushed dormancy only to be revived by Twitter.  Suddenly, a decidedly muted version of "ValSpeak" was in vogue with such words as "like," "totally," and "seriously" replaced by BTW ("by the way"), GTG ("got to go"), and STFU ("shut the fuck up").  Trad had achieved discovery rapture.  It was the re-emergence of the Valley Girl--that materialistic, self-centered, hedonistic, and often sexually promiscuous woman whose delights he quickly envisioned, then realized.  It was Trad's conclusion that women in general, already severly diminished by rap lyrics, were being further victimized by the ground rule constraints and wretched social manners of Twitter.

Trad's success, as measured by ISVI, started with the 140 character Twitter limitation that galvanized the creation of Technical Twitter abbreviations that in turn have been making a shambles of English.  For example, MT is defined by some as a modified tweet, a message that is a paraphrase of a tweet originally written by someone else.  Yes, but determining ownership in this age of phony reality and theft of intellectual property is the all-consuming question.  Then, of course, some twits don't play by the rules and use MT as meaning empty as in an empty gas tank, certainly today's really real reality.  Trad was quick to realize that feminine users of Twitter (and many men, for that matter) are losing their appreciation of deeply moving words.

This lessening of language and Trad's certainty that a chill was being put on relationships between men and women, prompted him to Google the lyrics of songwriters of the 30s, 40s, and 50s.  After examining the artistry of such lyricists as Ira Gershwin, Johnny Mercer and Cole Porter, he determined that Porter had just what he was looking for: wit, charm, cleverness beyond compare, and the naughty ability to play with words that could be taken more than one way.  Convinced that women deserved Cole Porter's enchantment rather than the clumsy foolishness of idiot rappers whose lyrics defy understanding, he took his idea on the road during vacation time to a convention of the American Academy of Dermatology held in New York.  It was there he met Evelyn Epidermis of AAD.

Trad had spotted Epideremis earlier that day at the Melanoma Monday session and was delighted when he bumped into her at one of the bars in the hotel where they were both staying.  After some rather concentrated talk about the evils of tanning salons, Trad tried out a little Cole Porter on the quite sensuous woman.  "I hope you don't mind my blatant confession," he ad-libbed, but I've got you under my skin, deep in the heart of me.  It's so deep in my heart that you're really a part of me.  I've got you under my skin.

Trad was impressed by his success, far beyond anything he might have wished for and realized he was on to something.  Good old Cole Porter and his lyrics offered an exciting contrast to contemporary crap.  Way to go.

Trad decided timing was everything and his next use of the scintillatingly effective words of Peru, Indiana's very own was at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.  His target was a blonde bombshell with equipment sufficient to quality as one of Hugh Hefner's Playmates.  His partly-ad-libbed confession about disdain for booze caught her immediate attention at a nearby Baskin Robbins.  After some abbreviated initial verbal parries displaying Trad's knowledge of Twitter with a little Facebook thrown in for good measure, he dazzled Carol Curvaceous with: "Not only do I get no kick from Champagne, I have to confess that mere alcohol doesn't thrill me at all.  So tell me, why should it be true that I get a kick out of you."  In terms of scoring, he had hit an Alex Rodriguez-sized bases-loaded home run into Yankee Stadium's upper deck.

Enormously buoyed by his success, the intense follower of Cole Porter soon found himself in New Orleans and an intime celebration of Marie Laveau, otherwise known as the Voodoo Queen whose adventures in the paranormal world, originating in Africa, were later modified in Haiti to include a belief in zombies and the spirit world.  Demons and ghosts were an integral part of the supernatural package with elements of Roman Catholicism worked in to make it more acceptable to local authorities.  Aware that the Voodoo Queen practiced Black Magic, Trad thought seriously of utilizing Mercer's lyrics when he was introduced to a highly attractive direct descendant of Laveau.  Following a few moments of highly effective shilly-shally, he opined in timely fashion with: You do something to me.  You do that voodoo that you do so well.  Cole Porter worked, again.

It was about this time that "Buzz" Hummer, Trad's grandfather who had played kazoo in a number of orchestras including that of Guy Lombardo, passed on to the great juke box in the sky leaving Trad an impressive collection of Cole Porter records including those of Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra and Artie Shaw.  Along with his many mediocrities, Trad is not much of a singer but had the good sense to study Sinatra's phrasing, a skill of prime importance in "selling" Porter's lyrics.  During journeys to foreign lands, Trad found geographical correctness of infinite help as in the lyrics of "You're the Top" whose references to Rome, Paris, Pisa, and Egypt provided topical inspiration.  Feeling a bit audacious, he substituted Minnie for Mickey while pursuing Gladys Glam at Disneyland (You're a melody from a symphony by Strauss, You're a Bendel bonnet, a Shakespeare sonnet, You're Minnie Mouse) and later learned her mother had been an original Valley Girl from Tarzana.

"All of You" became standard fare for the loquacious lothario and soon women were standing in line to hear such persuasion as: I love the looks of you, the lure of you, the sweet of you, the pure of you, the eyes, the arms, and the mouth of you, the east, west, north and the south of you.  At words poetic, he was hardly pathetic.

A fascinating aspect of Trad's conceit was the total inability of his conquests to recognize the name Cole Porter.  Interestingly enough, there were many who identified him as "some kind of beer probably brewed in a Pennsylvania mining town."  One even wondered if the Coal Porter Brewery made a Porter light?  Trad replied that he wouldn't be surprised and that a Porter lightness would be quite apropos.

Of marked success was Trad's chase of winsome Wanda Windblown, one of the great beauties of Chicago.  Windy City-born, Wanda was won over by Trad's pursuit of her at the Lincoln Park Zoo when, at the entrance to the simian shelter, he observed: The chimpanzees in the zoo do it, some courageous kangaroos do it, let's fall in love.  They did and a stone marker celebrates the occasion.

Even Cape Canaveral came into play when Trad trod on a lift-off platform while falsely proclaiming that as an astronaut it was just one of those things.  It was just one of those nights, just one of those fabulous flights.  A trip to the moon on gossamer wings, just one of those things.  Some found it somewhat off-putting when the pursued, Alice Borealis of nearby Frost Proof, initiated a series of mystifyingly abbreviated questions about gossamer wings and whether their airy quality might put a damper on trips to the moon.  As members of the International Society of Social Intercourse later determined, the Borealis questions represented the initial use of what was first called NuValSpeak, then TwitSpeak.  It was truly a momentous day as that devastating term, "dumbing down," gave way to "twitting down."

While social networks use by Palin and Lady GaGa suggest suggests the potential of it, U.S. Representative Anthony D. Weiner's recent WeinerGate travails warn us of its perils.  There's even a message being offered by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg who has twitted us that he is on the prowl for animals to eat.  Zuckerberg, quite obviously, is telling us to hide our goats.

With all this twittering of twits creating a new and much lesser English language, it was of all-consuming interest the other day to learn that the more senior of us inclined to Twitter have come up with solemn abbreviations of vital everyday use.  Among them are HGBM ("Had good bowel movement"), IMHO ("Is my hearing-aid on?"), and BTW ("Bring the wheelchair").

Just to get in the swing of things, I've come up with WOOTP ("We're out of toilet paper").

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Then Everything Changed (a review)....by Bob Sanders

 

In today's curious world where the search for truth is often damnably difficult to pursue if find, I recently set about chasing just who qualifies as a journalist.

Starting at a logical first step in acquiring historical insight, I consulted my somewhat battered Webster's New World Dictionary whose 1994 copyright assured me that it would contain neither new words inspired by Twitter short speak nor the inadvertent creative efforts of Sarah Palin.

My Webster's suggests a journalist is a person whose occupation is journalism; reporter, news editor. Etc. 2 a person who keeps a journal or diary.

Seeking something a bit more modern, I checked in with my computer's handy dandy TheFreeDictionary and, not surprisingly, found a broader interpretation in which journalists who broadcast on radio or television are taken into the journalistic fold.  Thesaurus, offering a list of various types of journalists, came up with a truly faded phrase: sob sister.  I could have sworn that one went out with Rosalind Russell and His Girl Friday.

What I'm getting at is that journalists, once an easily-defined species, are all over the place these days.  As amateur and professional photo journalists, they have taken us amazingly close to tornadoes, inside mass murder in Tucson, and, by way of cell phone photography, uprisings in the Middle East.  Twitter has played a key role in the development of the uprisings.  We may be approaching a time when journalists-to-be won't need a large leg up by getting a degree at a prestigious school of journalism.

That's not to suggest that rabble-rousers like Rush Limbaugh and Ed Schultz are journalists although their followers disagree.  Bloggers are of a quality to be considered on an individual basis.

One of this country's very best journalists is Jeff Greenfield whose most recent book, Then Everything Changed, prompts further questions.  Fortunately, the category Alternate History is enabling to writers who want to play the game of What If?  It is challenging territory.  As historian Doris Kearns Goodwin suggests on the book's cover flap, "Historians have long been tantalized by the what-ifs of history--imagining where we might be if certain events had unfolded in a different way.  In the hands of this tremendously gifted storyteller, Then Everything Changed will captivate the reader every step along the way."

Greenfield's story, of three novella-length pieces about modern Presidencies, come together as highly plausible.  In 1960, just before John Kennedy was sworn in, a suicide bomber (Richard Pavlick) failed to detonate his charge at the President-elect's home in Palm Beach when wife Jacqueline and daughter Caroline appeared at the front door.

Greenfield posits the question: what if he had carried out his mission thus forcing Lyndon Johnson into making decisions about the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis.  The other what ifs include the failure of Sirhan Sirhan to murder Bobby Kennedy (he is saved by brother-in-law Steve Smith who suffers a shoulder wound) and a campaign surge by Gerald Ford that beats Jimmy Carter in 1976 enabling Ford to handle the Iran hostage crisis and other matters.  Greenfield is, perhaps, at his best with understandable insight into John Kennedy's younger brother, warts and all, whose conflicts with J. Edgar Hoover and Johnson are legendary.  Greenfield, in addition to his impressive reportorial work (CBS, ABC, CNN, Time magazine, New York Times) was a speechwriter for Kennedy.  There can be no doubt that Greenfield thoroughly enjoyed writing Then Everything Changed.  Political news junkies will delight in this one.

Greennfield has a lot of fun with General Curtis LeMay making reference to him as having inspired the Gen. Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott) character in Dr.  Strangelove while Nixon is a paranoid presence whose hatred of the Kennedys knows no bounds.  All the major political players of their times are here including: John Lindsey, George Wallace, Ted ("Spiro") Agnew, Chicago's Mayor Richard Daley, Hubert Humphrey, Dean Acheson, Eugene McCarthy, and Clark Clifford.  The latter, a trusted and discreet advisor to Presidents, had soldiered on for Johnson largely because of contempt for Nixon.  He eventually comes to the conclusion that Johnson is so perturbed by Bobby Kennedy that he wants Nixon to beat him in the alternate history run for the White House

I'll not reveal more since, in a very real sense, Then Everything Changed, is a kind of whodunit perhaps best described as a what's-going-to-happen-next?  A nice surprise at the end is an Afterward in which Greenfield explains how reality shaped his speculation with plausibility his goal.  "Many of the words, thoughts, and deeds described here are taken from the real-life record.  Many of the words spoken by the principles were actually spoken by them, in different settings, of course.  The political terrain on which these stories played tracks as closely as possible to reality; and where I have turned an 'almost happened' event into reality, I've tried to shape an altered political atmosphere based on history."

Greenfield's book is compelling largely because he has achieved plausibility.  Among other things, one wonders how many of us have even heard of the Kennedy Palm Beach would-be bomber?  As the author explains, historian Richard Dallek, who wrote a JFK book titled An Unfinished Life, had no knowledge of the event until a newspaper reporter called him about it in 2003.

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