Credibility

“Your words carry a lot of weight

They create the atmosphere

You are the prophet of your life

Your future can depend on what you say.”

         Poet Hollis Donald

President Herbert Hoover (above) lost his credibility after repeatedly saying during the Great Depression that prosperity was “just around the corner.”In 1960 the nation was shocked upon discovering that Dwight D. Eisenhower lied about the real mission of the U-2 American spy plane shot down over Soviet territory.  Lyndon Baines Johnson’s propensity to tell falsehoods created a “credibility gap” that proved disastrous during the Vietnam War. Nixon’s Watergate lies about cost him the presidency. Ronald Reagan avoided calumny when the Iran-Contra scandal broke by pleading memory loss that sympathizers countenanced as early signs of senility. George Bush’s bogus statements about Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction have stained America’s Middle East policy to this day.  Trump began his foray into politics by making the false claim that Barack Obama was not an American citizen.  If Hitler invented the “Big Lie,” Trump tells so many whoppers in a single day that he long ago used up any ounce of credibility.  

In the course of a single campaign rant, Trump claimed that Mideast terrorists had infiltrated that ranks of Honduran refugees seeking asylum in America, promised a pie-in-the-sky middle-class tax cut, warned that Republicans, not Democrats, would protect those with pre-existing medical conditions from losing health insurance, and claimed the impending arms deal with Saudi Arabia will create a half-million new jobs.  Now, in the wake of pipe bombs having been mailed to Obama, Clinton, CNN and other critics, he blames the “fake” news media for spreading division and hate.  Historian Robert Dallek pointed out the perils of such demagoguery, especially should the President need to unite the country in a time of crisis: “Once the public loses confidence in a president's leadership, once they don't trust him anymore, once his credibility is sharply diminished, how does he get it back?”  

Dean Bottorff's daughter Ann calls this photo "Breaking Dad"

Dean Bottorff responded:

   The world needs a new word for this. May I suggest “fire-hosing,”the act of spreading so many lies so fast that each individual lie, like a drop of water, is lost in the deluge. At this, Trump, like the NAZI propagandists of the 1930s, and a host of others since, is a master. The effectiveness of “fire-hosing”is well documented. I was in Germany 20 years after the end of WWII and there were still those there who continued to believe in Hitler and the Nazi cause. The US Army did a study in 1948 in which it was discovered that fully 30 percent of the German population still had various degrees of high regard for Hitler and the Nazis even as their country lay in ruins, a huge percentage of their youth had been killed, and the horrors of the Holocaust had been exposed. What this portends for Trump supporters is frightening. Thank you, Jim, we need your historical perspective on this. 

Commenting on Trump’s recent “60 Minutes” appearance, Ray Smock wrote:

  I almost fell out of my chair when the president expressed his view on global warming that he was suspicious of the political agenda of scientists predicting dire consequences. But the part that almost threw me to the floor was Trump's admission that, sure, the world's climate was changing but that it would change back! I never heard anyone say this before. When will it change back? How many thousands of years do we need to wait for the climate to improve? Trump was worried that any attempt to save the Earth's temperature from rising would cost people jobs and money. How about loss of humans as a species? No need to worry about jobs when humans are extinct.

Joe Van Dyk, Gary’s Director of Planning and Redevelopment, sought my input on producing a historical overview for the city’s upcoming comprehensive plan.  I referred him to the “Gary: A Political History”  chapter introductions and suggested that he could divide the essay into chapters covering 1906-1929 (rapid growth during an age on industrialization), 1929-1945 (when Gary was dependent on the federal government for survival during the Great Depression and for the boom of the World War II years), 1945-1970 (when white movement to the suburbs accelerated), 1970-2000 (years of depopulation and state and federal neglect during an age of deindustrialization), and twenty-first century strategies for revitalizing Gary’s downtown, lakefront, University Park area, and other neighborhoods. Van Dyk first visited the Archives while working on a Master’s thesis at UIC.  He’s been involved in plans to convert the City Methodist Church ruins to an urban garden.

Surveyor Loren Stackhouse arrived at the Archives while Steve McShane was at a meeting and inquired whether we had maps of an area adjacent to Gary within the present boundaries of Lake Station and New Chicago. It is the site of an unpaved extension of Indiana Ave. The property is adjacent to where Marianne Brush lives and evidently belongs to River Forest High School. I doubt we have the relevant maps but promised to ask Steve about the matter and suggested he visit the Lake County Surveyor’s office. If George Van Til were still in charge, I’m certain he could help.

State Representative Mara Candelaria Reardon was featured in two front-page Post-Trib stories, appearing at IUN at a “Woman and Power” seminar with Gary mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson and one of four women to have accused Indiana Attorney-General Curtis Hill of touching her inappropriately.  A Munster H.S., IUN, and John Marshall Law School grad of Puerto Rican ancestry born in East Chicago, Reardon is married and the mother of two.  Reardon’s father is  Isabelino “Cande” Candelaria, Indiana’s first Puerto Rican city council member, her mother, Victoria Soto Candelaria, was the first Latina president of the Indiana Federation of Teachers.

 cast of "The Signal"

Henry Farag called, still intent on staging “The Signal: A Doo Wop Musical” at IUN’s new auditorium.  He wrote Chancellor Lowe a proposal about the matter and is meeting with a theater representative.  The university was cautious about booking such shows during its first year but approved performances of “The Wiz” during Black History Month.  Henry has a very deserving proposal, and suggested he talk with James Wallace, IUN’s Director of Diversity, Equity, and Multicultural Affairs, who helped fund “The Wiz” appearances last february. Henry and many Farag family members are IU grads. “The Signal” has won acclaim from critics and audiences in Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan.  I predict one day it will play on Broadway.

In the 1964 “Class Notes” section of the Bucknell alumni magazine, scribe Beth Wehrle Smith wrote about a Phi Psi reunion at Rehoboth Beach in Delaware attended by my old roommate Rich Baker, Ron Baroody, Dan Harris, and Carl Rogge.  She described them as “in their 70s, most a bit paunchy, hair challenged, and somewhat senile.”  While I can’t speak for the others, “Bakes” is neither paunchy nor senile. We talk frequently, and, in fact, I phoned to tease him about Wehrle’s blurb. He mentioned that one Rehoboth Beach attendee was a former pledge blackballed from becoming a brother but continues to consider himself a Psi Phi.  Fraternities were an elitist vestige from the past with few redeeming virtues aside from its parties.  I convinced a mutual college friend, John Sandburg, to pledge Sigma Phi Epsilon his sophomore year, but a few fraternity brothers made him do such humiliating tasks that he quit in disgust.

 Frederick Douglass and, below, John Brown

November’s book club selection, Keith Anderson’s biography of John Brown, received good reviews. When teaching in Saudi Arabia, I had the class read two essays on the fiery abolitionist, one proclaiming him to be a freedom fighter, the other claiming he was a deranged fanatic.  Most students were down on Brown for countenancing violence. I didn’t disagree with them.  During my final class, a student claimed that if it hadn’t been for Watergate, Nixon would have gone down as a great president. I replied, thinking of the millions who died needlessly in Vietnam during his watch, that, compared to John Brown, Nixon was a mass murderer.  That caused quite a ruckus.  In “Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom,” historian David W. Blight, whom I heard speak at an Indiana Association of Historians conference, concludes that the former slave and outspoken abolitionist admired Brown’s courage but was repelled by his incapability to think through his actions.  Therefore, he opposed the suicidal Harper’s Ferry raid, realizing that it was doomed to failure and meant death to anyone, slave or free man, who participated.

South Shore Arts director John Cain offered me two free tickets to his twenty-fifth annual Holiday reading, purportedly his last, performing his favorite story, Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory.”  I recently completed an essay for a catalogue for a gallery exhibit about “Gary Haunts.”  I am working on a “Dance Party: 1960” talk for next season’s Art in Focus series at the Munster center. A similar one last year was a success, and this time I plan to take local high school dancers (perhaps from Munster) to provide additional entertainment and persuade audience members to get out of their seats.  Two particularly soulful ballads from 1960, my senior year in high school, are “A Thousand Stars” by Kathy Young and the Innocents and “Angel Baby” (“oh, pretty baby, won’t you hold me in your arms?”)by Rosie and the Originals (when you are near me my heart skips a beat”).  They don’t write love songs like that anymore.  Kathy Young was just 15 in 1960 when she ended “A Thousand Stars” with the words, “I’m yours.”I saw her perform at the Star Plaza in Merrillville a half-century later as part of Henry Farag’s “Ultimate Doo Wop Show.”  Born in 1946 of Mexican ancestry, Rosalie “Rosie” Mendez Hamlin, who died last year, was even younger than Kathy Young and also appeared in “Oldies” shows well into the twenty-first century.`

With the payola scandal, Elvis getting drafted, Jerry Lee Lewis being blacklisted for marrying his 23-year-old cousin, Little Richard becoming a preacher, Dick Clark promoting teen idols whose hits were a lame parody of rock and roll, and Buddy Holly dying in a plane crash along with Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper, some were predicting the death of rock and roll. Instead, rhythm and blues veterans such as Lloyd Price and Hand Ballard stepped to the fore  and new artists filled the void, such as Vee-Jay Records Dee Clark and Gene Chandler. And one of Hank Ballard’s songs, “The Twist,” recorded by Chubby Checker, would inspire a dance craze that inspired a new generation of teenagers.

The Electrical Engineers remained in first place in Mel Guth’s Seniors League by taking two games and series from Hot Shots.  Our anchor, Frank Shufran rolled a 206 in the only close game after Joe Piunti, Melvin Nelson, and I all marked. One woman asked if I were married, perhaps hoping to set me up with a girlfriend. For the second week in a row I forgot my change purse (for paying dimes for made splits and doubles and quarters for every tenth strike).  Last week I plumb forgot it; this time I had it minutes before leaving for the university and must have put it down when I grabbed my keys.  Now, if I do it again next week, I’ll start worrying.