Cakes and Ale

May 29, 2019 – Reposting this essay on President Kennedy’s 102nd birthday.

November 22, 2018 – Today is Thanksgiving and also the 55^th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. As Billy Joel put it, “JFK, blown away, what else do I have to say?”

After more than half century, the ironies we feel at our Thanksgiving tables have nothing to do with JFK. This year other things mitigate the blessings we count. In 1963, we knew the occupant in the Oval Office had stirred the idealism of a generation by favoring Civil Rights, planning fair housing and fair employment opportunities for struggling working people, seeking an end to the arms race, calling for humane immigration laws, and sparking the greatest technological advances in history by setting a goal to land a human being on the moon. All that made it possible, even in the gloom a week after his death, to celebrate a day of thanks.

Today our thanks are mitigated by another dweller in the Oval Office, a chief executive whose racism and xenophobia are palpable, who doesn’t believe in science or global warming, who believes tax cuts should benefit the rich and not the poor, who believes teachers and pastors should be armed with guns, and who has slammed the door on millions of would-be immigrants to the United States.

In many respects, it’s harder to be thankful today than it was November 28, 1963, a time of deep national mourning.

Those of us of a certain age remember John F. Kennedy with unfeigned fondness. As one whose memories of November 22, 1963 will always be painful, I rarely see a picture of JFK without thinking how much better it was when we admired and trusted the Oval Office occupant and when most people respected the President regardless of party.

I would hate to think those days are gone forever and in my more rational moments I sense the current circus in Washington will be gone in an election or two.

But also – in my more rational moments – I am beginning to sense that my scorn for Trump is making it hard to be objective in my idealistic affection for Kennedy.

One thing Jack and the Donald had in common: they were both rich men’s sons with a strong sense of sexual entitlement and misogyny on steroids. I’d like to think JFK was too much of a gentleman to grab genitalia without warning, but Stormy Daniels’ description of Trump’s assault reminded me of White House intern Mimi Alford’s description of how she lost her virginity to JFK in the White House residence: “The next thing I knew he was standing in front of me, his face inches away,” she writes. “He placed both hands on my shoulders and guided me toward the edge of the bed.”

Another thing JFK and DJT have in common is the ability to get away with it. Most reporters and all Secret Service agents knew Kennedy was having trysts with different women on the average of once a week, but no one thought it was appropriate to invade the president’s privacy. When a reporter asked White House Press Secretary Pierre Salinger about Kennedy’s affairs, Salinger said, “Listen, he’s the president of the United States. He has to work 16, 17, 18 hours a day. He’s got to handle foreign policy. He’s got to handle domestic policy. If he’s got time for mistresses after that, what the hell difference does it make?” The reporter laughed and nothing was ever written.

That was a time when the press and most Americans believed the private life of the president was no one else’s business. But even before the #MeToo movement cast light on the widespread abuse of women by powerful men, politicians knew they were under greater scrutiny. A Republican House of Representatives impeached President Bill Clinton over his 1990s affair with Monica Lewinsky, and earlier this year Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) said “looking back on it, Clinton should have resigned.”

Trump’s misogyny, on the other hand, has taken place under the full glare of the klieg lights and scores of women have come forward to accuse him of abusive behavior. Still, his popularity polls, which hover at just over 30 percent, are unaffected and Trump’s base remains strongly supportive of him. But I have serious doubts whether history will be as kind to Trump as it has been to JFK.

Looking back on the 55 years since he has been gone, I confess I still think JFK was a great and effective president and I still miss him greatly. There was so much that he did right, and millions of Baby Boomers were inspired by his example to lead constructive lives that made the world better.

But there was so much about John F. Kennedy that we did not know when he was alive, principally, that he was a powerful man who took advantage of scores of powerless women.

How much difference would it have made if we had known?

That’s a contextual question that is difficult to answer in 2018. It’s a little like condemning Washington because he owned slaves in the 18^th century, or scorning Lincoln because he was a racist in the 19^th century. In the 1960s, Kennedy’s sexual conduct was placed in the category of “what the hell difference does it make?” and in 2018 the same behavior is clearly monstrous.

But that is the point. The behavior is clearly monstrous.

And the current occupant of the Oval Office – and his minions – would do well to remember that.

I served on the communications staff of American Baptist Churches in the USA for two decades. Most of that time I was editor of The American Baptist Magazine, a position I assumed as a callow youth. I was a naïve 28 when Editor Norman R. De Puy passed the mantle along to me, and a jaded 45 when I resigned in 1991 to return to newspaper writing.

When I joined the American Baptist staff in 1971, the denomination looked back on a proud history of prophetic advocacy in civil rights, peace, eco-justice, and gender equality. I was extremely proud to work for Martin Luther King’s home denomination. But as Dr. Frank Sharp, director of American Baptist News Service pointed out, the zest for justice was greatest among the staff of the national offices in Valley Forge, Pa., and dwindled precipitously the further one strayed into the Baptist hinterland.

As editor, I knew I was communicating to a highly diverse audience. I tried to write balanced editorials about theological and political issues of interest to American Baptists and generally elicited a balance of approving and disapproving editorial mail. Perhaps the most vicious spate of mail I received followed an article on the National Council of Churches new inclusive language lectionary. Baptists, who generally don’t use a lectionary, thought we were referring to a radical bible that would force them to read “Our Mother who art in heaven …” My mail ran from polite dismissiveness to threats of violence and I thank God there was no Twitter back then.

Given that insight into our readership, I probably should have avoided introducing editorial cartoons into the magazine. And I’m sure that if I hadn’t been editor, the cartoons would never have appeared, because any other editor would have seen I was no Walt Kelly or Herblock. But I told myself cartoons could appeal to a wider demographic of readers and I forged ahead. In the end, nothing we could do seemed to make a difference and The American Baptist magazine went the way of all print media in 1991.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the budget watchers decided it would be too expensive to continue to use glossy paper to publish The American Baptist so we switched to crude newsprint. The magazine was never the same after that. This weekend I began pulling some old scrapbooks off my shelves and realized the worst: the magazine is continuing to crumble. I spent several hours scanning the contributions that mean most to me – namely, the cartoons.

Now that they are digitally available, I’m going to attempt to blog them into iCloud eternity.

I submit them for your approval, hoping for your indulgence. And praying that for American Baptists of a certain age, these pen-and-ink scrawling’s may bring back memories of a halcyon age of denominational life.

Martin Luther King Jr. and his father, the redoubtable Martin Luther King, Sr., were American Baptist ministers. Most Baptists celebrated when President Ronald Reagan finally signed legislation to make King’s birthday a national holiday,

Other current issues I decided to draw rather than write about.

October 30, 2018 – President Trump has ordered 5,200 troops to our Southern border to confront an unarmed, under-fed caravan of desperate persons forced to flee brutal persecution.

The caravan is composed mostly of children, women, and men who would never think of leaving their homelands if they thought they could be safe there.

Yet President Trump is exploiting the spineless xenophobes in his base by telling them that poor people fleeing bloody oppression will be a mortal danger to us all. His actual presence in the Oval Office proves a lot of people vote out of fear, and a week before the Mid-Term elections he is oozing himself into people’s anxieties like a gelatinous Blob [yes, invoke the 1958 cinema classic]. Today he went on the attack against natural born U.S. citizens whose parents were foreigners, claiming he could revoke their citizenship with a stroke of his pen. He cannot, of course, but he thinks his fearful followers don’t know that.

I would be ashamed if I were among those who think suffering refugees should be blocked from our borders by 5,200 U.S. troops – a number, HuffPo points out, that exceeds the troops we have in Iraq or Syria.

I would be ashamed because it reminds me of the paranoia that refused entrée to our shores to thousands of Jews fleeing Nazi Germany and sent them back to face certain death.

I would be ashamed because it reminds me of the fear that led Franklin Roosevelt to round up thousands of U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry and corral them in detention camps.

Both of these unconscionable events were ordered by a liberal Democratic president. This week a self-made meme on Facebook this week sought to expose liberal hypocrisy.

I think that is supposed to be cuttingly amusing, but in fact over the decades hundreds of thousands of Americans have welcomed refugees and immigrants into their homes and churches, and many more are still keeping their doors open.

When my friend and colleague Matthew Giuffrida, American Baptist director of refugee resettlement, died in 2003, he had overseen the resettlement of 90,000 refugees, most of them as desperate as the caravan that is approaching our southern border now.

The first onslaught of refugees came after millions of refugees displaced by World War II needed homes. The American Baptist resettlement program, working with Church World Service and the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, worked assiduously to meet the need.

In August 1972, Dictator Idi Amin ordered the immediate expulsion of 80,000 persons of South Asian ancestry from Uganda. Giuffrida, along with Church World Service and other religious groups, called congregations to action. I was a member of Royersford, Pa., Baptist Church at the time, and we were just one of the thousands congregations from all denominations who opened our doors, found homes for the Ugandan refugees, and helped them find employment.

Matthew Giuffrida would not have been afraid of the caravan of refugees approaching our border. In 1980, thousands of Cubans expelled by Fidel Castro in the exodus called the Mariel Boat lift arrived in Miami. Giuffrida immediately responded to their needs by calling on churches to sponsor as many people as possible and find housing and jobs for them. When it was revealed that a small percentage of Marielitos were gay, Giuffrida was immediately attacked by American Baptist homophobes who demanded his immediate resignation. But Dr. William K. Cober, director of American Baptist National Ministries (now Home Mission Societies) came to the defense of Giuffrida and the LGBTQ Cubano refugees. Matthew continued his work until 2003, when the refugee resettlement was complicated by the so-called war on terror.

“Following September 11, 2001, certain persons already in this country, and those seeking to enter, have been subjected to harsh and more restrictive government measures,” said Ken George, who coordinated the refugee resettlement program after Giuffrida retired. “However, American Baptists have a long and honorable tradition of welcoming the stranger and ministering to the newcomer, even during times when these activities run contrary to public opinion and policy.”

This “long and honorable tradition” continues to be maintained by the Roman Catholic Church and virtually all of the mainline denominations in the United States.

These are the people who live by the Judeo-Christian tenet of doing until others as we would have done to us.

And I know that people who follow this rule of gold will not be deceived by the political dissemblers and merchants of fear who sent an army to our southern border to ward off a caravan of poor people who only seek safety and peace.