Then It Got Real \u2013 Part 2<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Trump World” is approaching 500 Essays since February of 2017. I’m sure it’s clear where I stand now, but I wanted to let you see the “development of a political mind.” Here’s Part Two.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I was nine in 1965 when we moved from Cincinnati to Dayton, Ohio. Dad was the new General Manager of WLW-D TV (now WDTN) Channel 2.\u00a0\u00a0It was one of the two stations in Dayton, WHIO Channel 7 was the other.\u00a0\u00a0My school buddy Marc\u2019s Dad was the manager there, so we compared notes.\u00a0\u00a0One of the advantages of being the \u201cmanager\u2019s kid\u201d was we got us into exciting things, like when President Lyndon Johnson came and spoke at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds.\u00a0\u00a0It was 1966, and\u00a0\u00a0Vietnam was just becoming an issue.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our seats in the stands were pretty good, but Johnson was still a far away figure with a Southern accent. I was shocked to see young protestors in black turtleneck shirts from Antioch College in nearby Yellow Springs, standing below the podium and chanting against the War as he spoke. They were quite \u201ctame\u201d but today\u2019s standards, but at the time I was amazed that someone would dare to interrupt the President. <\/p>\n\n\n\n My sisters and I were exposed to a lot of politics in those years. Dad started a news\/talk show at the station, with Phil Donahue as the host. Phil brought the eras most controversial people to Dayton, and often they ended up at our house the night before the show. Most memorably was Tommy Smothers of the Smothers Brothers comedy duo. I was thirteen, on the last year of being the \u201chouse bartender\u201d (Dad must have thought I would start sampling the stuff as I got older) and Tommy came in late one night before the Donahue <\/em>show. Mom woke me up, and said to get the bar ready.<\/p>\n\n\n\n MY biggest impression of Tommy, was that he was an older guy who told dirty jokes to kids.\u00a0\u00a0The most memorable part of the evening was has girlfriend; she wore a dress that was slashed to her navel.\u00a0\u00a0Dad\u2019s sales manager, Chuck McFadden and I marveled at how the sides managed to stay up covering, well, most of what needed to be covered.\u00a0\u00a0Sticky pads I guessed.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tommy and his brother Dick were soon cancelled from their successful TV show on CBS. They had great ratings, but the network thought they were too controversial. Their casual comedy songs were often critical of the War, and their guests invariably had an undercurrent of anti-war conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another Kennedy, Senator Robert Kennedy, entered the Presidential race. He wasn\u2019t the first candidate opposed to the Vietnam War; but he was my candidate. He favored Civil Rights and Martin Luther King, Workers Rights and Cesar Chavez, and wanted to make the United States a fairer and better place. And he was Bobby Kennedy, inheritor of the mantle of his brother\u2019s leadership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That spring, my radio alarm clock was set for 7 am to get me up for school.\u00a0\u00a0The bus came at 7:45 a couple blocks away, but if I cut through the neighbor\u2019s yard and jumped over the wall, it only took a minute.\u00a0\u00a0I always woke up to the latest news headlines.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n On April 5th, the alarm clock clicked, and the announcer read that Martin Luther King had been assassinated in Memphis the evening before.\u00a0\u00a0Riots broke out in Dayton; we watched buildings burn on Dad\u2019s station.\u00a0\u00a0Mayor Hall \u201cread the riot act\u201d and the National Guard moved in to protect the streets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two months later, the alarm clicked again, and I found that my hero, Bobby Kennedy, running for President and against the Vietnam War, was dead.\u00a0\u00a0He was shot and killed by an assassin after winning the California primary; his candidacy gained momentum and might well have won the convention.\u00a0\u00a0But he was gone; a long funeral train procession, a heartfelt speech by Ted Kennedy, a final burial next to his brother in Arlington.\u00a0\u00a0His, and for a while my, dream of changing the world was ended.\u00a0Bobby said; \u201c\u2026some men see things as they are and ask why, I see things that never were and ask, why not.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0I was asking why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But my ultimate political \u201cmoment\u201d of that year started out with a mistake. My bike had a flat tire, and Dad helped me fix it. One of us (I blamed him) didn\u2019t manage to tighten the front fork bolts, and when I hit a bump in the neighbor\u2019s driveway, the front wheel flew off. I flipped over the handlebars, and when I finally landed, my right wrist had an odd bump. I quickly diagnosed it as a broken arm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That wrecked my chance to be a \u201cswim star\u201d in the next day\u2019s championships, and the doctor ordered me to lay low with my cast elevated for the next week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was August of 1968, and as I sat on the couch in the family room with my cast perched on a green beer box I painted for summer camp, I watched in \u201cliving color\u201d the Democratic convention in Chicago.\u00a0\u00a0It was the riot convention:\u00a0\u00a0the party leaders, \u201cJohnson Democrats\u201d supported the war and Vice President Hubert Humphrey.\u00a0\u00a0The anti-war Democrats, led by Gene McCarthy and George McGovern as a replacement for Bobby, protested on the floor of the convention.\u00a0 Students marched in the streets. \u00a0Mayor Dick Daley of Chicago was firmly in the Johnson camp, and wasn\u2019t going to let protests mar his convention.\u00a0\u00a0He sent the police to clear the streets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Protestors were tear gassed and beaten. Reporters were chased into their hotels, and pummeled with nightsticks in the hall. It was all on TV. I listened to the politicians on the stage say that the violence was necessary for \u201claw and order,\u201d and I heard the opposition rail against the unprovoked attacks. \u201cThe whole world is watching\u201d the protestors chanted, and later, \u201cthe whole world f**king\u201d as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That experience put me firmly in the anti-war camp.\u00a0\u00a0Despite the fact that I was a Democrat and we got to meet Humphrey, the Democratic nominee, at the Dayton airport, I was never a big fan.\u00a0\u00a0It wasn’t until years later in college, that I had the chance to study the liberalism that Humphrey espoused, and changed my mind about him.\u00a0\u00a0In 1968 he was in an impossible position though, the Vice President, unable to \u201cbuck\u201d his President Johnson’s war, and prevented from reaching out to the anti-war vote.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n The election was close enough it took until Wednesday to decide who won. They announced Nixon\u2019s victory over the PA at Van Buren Junior High School in Kettering, Ohio. The school burst out in cheers and applause, and I put my head down on the desk. How could we live with four years of Richard Nixon?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"