(1960 ended up like just about every other year before and since: Crisis)
It's getting about that time of year when the long glances back start. For C&L and just about every other blog it will be a look at 2009; what went on, what didn't go on, what crisis did we land in or avert. How did life as we know it change this particular year.
Since Newstalgia is mostly knee-deep in the past,I thought I would kick off the roundup of year-enders with a look at 1960 and how the world changed during that particular 12 months, and how a lot of it has remained the same.
1960 saw the election of a new President and the Cold War entering new and uncharted territory. It saw Africa emerging as a continent of newly independent nations, the Middle East contemplating Israel as a nuclear neighbor. Latin America was deemed the next hot spot in East-West relationships and Germany struggling with its divided status.
On December 28, 1960 CBS News ran a one-hour round table discussion between Edward R. Murrow, Howard K. Smith, David Schoenbrun, Daniel Schorr and other notable CBS News reporters, weighing the issues that made 1960 a memorable year.
Howard K. Smith: “Well, I think our change is about as drastic a change as you can have under constitutional government. I’ve emphasized the fact that the Presidents and their intents differ drastically. But the men around them differ too. The emphasis in the previous administration was on businessmen. At present I think scholars probably have a plurality. It’s said that if all the appointees made by Kennedy so far were to walk down the hall together there would be a deafening jangle of Phi Beta Kappa keys. And there are three Rhodes Scholars among them. Many of them are famed for some very useful and active ideas, but the main thing that induces me to believe this will be an active administration is the fact there has seldom been, since the Civil War, such an accumulation of crises and merely problems as there is now and we have to act or there will be disaster.”
Always the threat of disaster and some crisis. No matter when.
1960 or 2009 - it doesn't really change.
. . .and neither does the cost of keeping blogs together.
