Bryce Zabel's FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH

Smalls Steps & Giant Leaps: Moonwalk Memories

Bryce Zabel is the editor of "For What It's Worth" and "Movie Smackdown," a Hollywood writer-producer, former chairman of the TV Academy and ex-frycook.

Although nothing can probably touch the media frenzy over the death of Michael Jackson this year, we are still about to experience the mass coverage of the 40th anniversary of the original moonwalkers. Back on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin kicked up their own moon dust when they became the first human beings ever to walk (or bounce) on the Earth's Moon. The world is probably evenly divided now between those who were alive when the Eagle landed in the Sea of Tranquility and those who weren't. I was. It was unforgettable, but not necessarily for the reasons you might think. As with 9/11, JFK's assassination, and the deaths of John Lennon and now Jackson, our memories of these super-events are colored by where we were when they happened, what was going on in our own lives, and how we felt about the actual events. 

Where were you?

For me, July 20 remains an important day -- not solely for the awe and accomplishment of the technological and spiritual acheivement of the moon landing -- but equally for the extreme personal impact it had on my young life. 

Let's roll the time machine back four decades. It was 40-years-ago that Neil Armstrong made that little jump off the ladder from the lunar lander: "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."  The ghostly TV transmission had people glued to their sets around the world, blowing past barriers of nationalism and politics. And, up in the Pacific Northwest, it was also exactly 40-years-ago that I was fired from my first job. I have since been fired again, laid off, cancelled, and otherwise unemployed in a variety of ways, shapes and sizes and, as someone with great depth of experience in this area, I can tell you that Cat Stevens was correct when he wrote that oft-recorded song, "The First Cut Is the Deepest."

If you remember The Wonder Years (that great TV series set in the 1960s starring Fred Savage), it'll help you appreciate the tone of what will follow. If you're too young to recall the 60s (when the series was set) or the 80s (when the series was filmed), then you'll have to settle for this shorthand. The series told the story of Kevin, a kid growing up during the time of Vietnam, hippies, civil rights and moon walks, all told with a gentle sense of humor. So, in this story, I'm Kevin. And Kevin's dad (Dan Lauria) had a gruff son-of-a-bitch exterior, always was pissed off, and never connected with his kids. Like my dad, Harvey, who was a high school teacher in Hillsboro, Oregon at the time. It had something to do with his being a part of the "Greatest Generation," having lived through the Great Depression and World War II. Like a lot of guys who had that experience, he was changed by it. It seems so much more understandable to me now than it did when I was a kid.

Anyway, back then, I was the youngest fry-cook in all of Washington County, having scammed my way into a job at the Arctic Circle Drive-In before I was strictly employment legal, I think, based on the fact that my older brother Alan had paved the way. It was a sweet deal -- I was making a full $1.35 an hour, up from my starting wage of $1.10 a year before. Do the math, that added up to a whole $10.80 a day and, if overtime was involved, man, that was serious bread. Of course, those burgers only cost nineteen cents, a quarter for a cheeseburger.

The boss was a tough immigrant -- a Basque from Spain -- named Mariano Bilbao and he was living (or working) the American dream.  Work, work, work and, if you did that, life would be easier for your kids.  His kid was just a baby, and Mariano was in full pay-the-dues mode to get ahead in time for his kid to have the good life he dreamed of.

When the schedule for the week of July 20 got posted, I got a sinking feeling because I had the night shift and, if all went according to plan, Neil Armstrong was going to be moon-walking while I was slinging burgers.  At the time, I was very into the whole moon landing, even more (if possible) than the rest of the country.  I'd actually tried to mimick a Gemini capsule with a refrigerator box a few years earlier in our basement until my mom made me come up and eat dinner. Plus, Harvey, being an American history teacher, made sure we all knew that history didn't come in any bigger size than this.

So I asked Mariano if I could trade shifts with someone.   No.  Maybe we could have a TV in the kitchen so we could watch with every other person within ten miles of a TV?  No.  A radio then, just to listen to hear in real time how it went?  No.

Resigned to missing it all, I accepted my fate, strapped on my apron, and went to work.  Being the boss, even Mariano was at home, of course, watching the moon-walk with his wife.  Back at the grill, I was going insane because there was almost no business because everyone else in town was home watching TV.  About thirty minutes before Armstrong was scheduled to set foot on the lunar surface, I snapped.  I called my dad and told him I wanted to come home to see the moon walk.  Would he come pick me up?

There was a long pause.  I waited on the other end of the phone, knowing that The Lecture was coming. About responsibility, about sticking with your decisions, about not screwing up.  Instead, he said, "You know you'll be fired?" 

I said I knew. I waited again. Surely The Lecture was coming now. Another beat. "I'll be right down."

So my Dad drove down to the Arctic Circle Drive-In on Baseline Street in a moment of high drama in my young life.  We went back home, gathered with the rest of the family around the TV set, held our breath with everyone else and watched Armstrong's ghostly image from the moon.  It was the most exciting TV I had ever seen.  Better than the Beatles on Ed Sullivan kind of TV, if you want to know the truth.  Part of the attraction was the danger.  These guys might die on live TV.  Or they might sink into moon dust and never be heard from again.  You never knew.  

When it was over, dad said we had to go back to the restaurant and I had to face the music.  I had done the crime, now I had to do the time.  As I returned, it was clear that my co-workers had given me up to Mariano, who was there waiting for me and, man, was he pissed.  He was a short guy with a fiery temper and his face was as red as I'd ever seen it.

Mariano fired me that night, as predicted.  My dad told him he was missing a great worker and he was a small-minded man to not understand the importance of what was happening, and how this event had changed the world for everyone.  Even teenage fry-cooks.

All I know is that my dad had never stood up for me quite like that before and never quite like that after.  I remember July 20, 1969 as clearly today for turning in my greasy apron as I do for Armstrong and Aldrin doing the moonwalk.  And I remember July 20 because it was also the day that my dad passed away back in 2001.

So -- that giant leap for mankind -- for me, it isn't about where I was when it happened -- but all about where I wasn't.

For those of you who experienced your own "Moonwalk Memory," please do leave your own personal stories in our comment section. Thanks!

More on DARK SKIES

To fans of the NBC series that aired in 1996-1997, I have some good news and some bad news.

The bad news is that it's been a very, very frustrating year trying to get the DVD (or Blu-ray) release of those 20 hours of TV. As many of you know, SONY was set to release it last year, changed their minds at the last possible moment, told fellow creator Brent Friedman and myself that if we could find a DVD company to release it they would help facilitate it.  Well, we found three.  They liked the idea, the series concept and the fact that plenty of fans still want to see it released.  Each time we got cautiously optimistic.

All of them, when it came time to budget the project, however, backed out when they realized the sheer amount of period music that we had incorporated into the series and factored in the cost of licensing against what they perceived as the upside of sales.  To have so many people saying "We love this project but we're not going to take it on" was heartbreaking and frustrating.

Brent and I aren't ready to say that's the end of it, but it's the end of the beginning.  We're probably more disappointed than any fan out there.  We're very sorry to report this.

The good news is that Frank Garcia and Mark Phillips are out with Science Fiction Television Series, 1990-2004 and it includes an excellent amount of material on DARK SKIES.  Both Brent and I talked to Frank extensively.  This is a highly recommended book for any science fiction fan.  Here's an excerpt:

Dark Skies came to light when two of Hollywood's most experienced producers met for the first time and sat down, ruminating for their next project. The discussion turned to the UFO phenomenon and that's when the electrical charge they generated became a neon sign. "It just came to us — what if we fused the two greatest conspiracies of all time together?" says executive producer and co-creator Bryce Zabel.  "We came up with the Unified Field Theory of conspiracy — who killed JFK and why, and whether Roswell was a real event or not. The essence of the series is that John Kennedy was assassinated because he was going to tell the truth about UFOs in his second term."

"I told Bryce about a very credible Washington insider I knew who had told me there was intelligent, extraterrestrial life here on Earth," says supervising producer and co-creator Brent Friedman. "That sparked some conversations about Roswell and the possibility it really occurred. And if it did, how could events like JFK's assassination, Watergate, Vietnam, etc. — how could those events have any meaning historically unless they were somehow tied to the alien truth."

With the basis of the series firing up their imaginations, Zabel and Friedman went to work. The first task at hand was to shape the "series pitch" proposal into an unconventional form to generate interest, and provoke the network executives receiving it, to immediately pick up the phone and say the words, "We're interested!"

"We started creating an ultra-classified briefing book that was meant for high-level top secret people that basically told them about the UFO cover-up and how it all happened and made the case that, in 1994 and 1995, the government was going to have to come clean and tell people what was going on," explains Zabel. "And the best way to get the public prepared for it was to do a television series about the truth, so that they could see it as fiction at the beginning and later come to understand the truth. So we were already mixing reality and non-reality in a way that I think was pretty fascinating. We did this whole briefing book before we showed it to anybody."

Here's the link to the authors' site where you can read more about the book and even order it.  Or, if you prefer, here's the link to the book on Amazon.

Frank and Mark have worked very hard to sweat the details in this book.  Check it out.  

Meantime, we'll keep thinking about how to get the DVD released.

Obama's Main Competition

In less than a month now, President Barack Obama will stand before a crowd in Washington, D.C. and take the oath of office. We already know that this will be historic simply from the point-of-view of Obama's background and race. The other competition, however, is performance. We know he's a great orator and people will expect a barn-burner of an inspirational speech. He won't have any problem eclipsing others that went before him like George W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon or even Bill Clinton. No, the man Obama has to stand up to by way of historical comparison is President John Kennedy.

48 years ago, the inaugural was similarly a piece of history. Not only was it jeopardized by bad weather, but it brought generational change to the White House. It was at that tiime that newly elected President John Kennedy spoke those words we still remember.

"Ask not what your country can do for you..." We've heard this so many times, we can finish JFK's words in our sleep. That speech, delivered on a brutally cold January day in 1961 where a blizzard threatened to shut down the entire affair, still goes down as the best inauguration speech, probably ever, certainly of the 20th century.

This is actually my favorite newsmagazine cover -- the day that John F. Kennedy assumed the presidency. It's a color photograph that Time's editors had decided two weeks earlier should be taken at the precise moment when he raised his right hand and took the oath as the nation's 35th President. Just possibly this was the last inauguration where Americans were absolutely filled to the brim with the possibilities that life would be getting much, much better.

Mr. Obama Goes to Washington

EDITOR'S NOTE, ELECTION DAY-AFTER 2008.

It feels like a movie, this rise of Barack Obama. 

Besides its compelling lead actor, this blockbuster has had plot twists, villains, conflict, a heroic journey, incredible stakes and a great ending.  These are all, as it is, also elements expected to be in any film or TV pitch I might make out here in Hollywood.  Dramatically speaking, this one has it all.

So far this year, I've voted for him twice, supported his campaign financially, gone to a rally, and even worked on "Ready to Believe," a professionally-produced song that's been well-received everywhere from YouTube to iTunes.  Mostly, though, I've followed the campaign like a member of an audience glued to an on-screen spectacle. 

President-elect Barack Obama's journey has felt like an epic film, but the way it's sucked us into caring about a character in a show where anything can happen, it's really played more like a TV series.  But there hasn't been a reality show created that could match this one.

No matter who you voted for yesterday, a President Barack Obama promises to continue as a compelling chapter in American history. 

I was born on the exact day the Supreme Court issued Brown -vs- the Board of Education.  My father taught American history and was shamed by having to explain our country's shortcomings in civil rights.  As a kid, I actually remember seeing news coverage of people having dogs and water hoses set on them because they wanted basic dignity.  To see this change in my lifetime -- from the awful images from the south to this man of progress chosen to lead us -- is a profound thing. 

There's so much hard work ahead, but right now a black man just proved that anybody CAN grow up to be president.  That's good for our country and it's good for our citizens, especially our kids.  And, coming back from Europe just two days ago, I believe the support Obama receives from world leaders will help with leading on the global financial mess and getting them to kick in more troops in Afghanistan.

You see: the Barack Obama movie not only has done incredible domestic box office, but it's about to play just as successfully in global markets.

The United States of America, for a few years anyway, has a brand to equal Coke and McDonald's on the world stage.  The President of the United States of America, Barack Obama.

In the fall of 2007, before the first primaries, I first wrote about Barack Obama on the FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH blog.  I just re-read it today and thought it was worth the re-post.  Here it is then, as it was:

The world has probably not been holding its collective breath waiting to find out who the FWIW blog will throw its weight behind in the presidential campaign. We have yet to serve our billionth daily reader, Tim Russert stubbornly refuses to quote us on "Meet the Press," and the campaigns have apparently missed the opportunity to bookmark us on their browsers. Even so, I've been watching the presidential campaign from the sidelines long-enough, and it seems like the right time to get in the game.

I just logged on to the official campaign website and gave a donation to Barack Obama. There are some good candidates I can support if Obama does not get the Democratic nomination but he's my first choice by a mile.

I just can't get behind a George H.W. Bush - Bill Clinton - George W. Bush - Hillary Clinton narrative for America. We try to raise kids to believe that anyone can grow up to be president, and that sends the message that the truth is something else. I just don't buy the "experience" argument anyway. I'm looking for good judgment, character and the ability to make effective decisions by listening to people with different viewpoints and then doing what you think is best, often before all the facts can be known. I'm looking for someone who can then explain those decisions to us in a way that increases our solidarity as a country and not put more distance between us.

President Barack Obama will send a message to the world that America is a new, more hopeful place. It will send a message to Americans that the racial divisions which have plagued our country can begin to truly heal. Hopefully, by being on the ticket, even the election can be about something besides red state-blue state distrust and acrimony. We need a clean break from the past.

The election of Obama, however, won't simply be a message. He's a bright thinker and he brings people together. We've been looking for someone to embody the spirit of John Kennedy for as long as I've been an adult. That's Barack Obama. There is no other candidate in this race for whom that comparison is even possible.

Like John Kennedy having to deal with issues like missiles in Cuba, history won't let Obama simply be the man who opposed the use of force in Iraq but will throw other challenges at him. He will have his own thorny issues to deal with, notably Islamic extremism directed at the U.S., but there will probably be a few we don't even see coming now. From what I can see, he'll be a cool head in the White House and I trust him to make the call for me.

I hope his journey across America during this campaign will allow him to transcend the boxes people want to put him in, and allow him to grow into a leader who will represent all of us.

Anyway, we all know this campaign can't be about who's got the best collection of issue statements and legislative agendas and plans. For me, it's about - "Who do you trust?"

I trust Barack Obama and, for what it's worth, I'd ask you to consider doing the same. Thanks.

FINAL NOTE:  "Ready to Believe" is the title of the rock-anthem I co-wrote the lyrics to that was recorded by LA alt.rocker Cherish Alexander and released a few days before the California primary (while I was on strike for the WGA, no less).  This song has been well-received everywhere from YouTube where it's had over 100,000 plays to iTunes where you can get a quality MP3 of it.  But, because you read to the end of this, you can also get a free copy by clicking here.

READY TO BELIEVE: Free MP3 of Obama Fight Song!

Last January, while we were still on strike as members of the Writers Guild of America, my wife Jackie and I sat down in a Los Angeles coffee shop with our good friend, musician Cherish Alexander.

Before the coffee was cold, we decided, improbably given the time frame -- as a couple of striking screenwriters and a singer-composer -- to write, produce and distribute the song you'll soon hear.  It happened over a five day period and we released it immediately before the California primary.

So far, "Ready to Believe" has cumulatively had its video versions viewed close to 100,000 times on YouTube.  Plus, it's available on iTunes.  You, however, don't have to buy it in the closing days of the 2008 campaign.  We want you to download it for free and to send it to your friends.

It was written to stand-up for Barack to the Clinton campaign's charges claiming he wasn't ready for the presidency.  We find that the need for this song is as solidly right-on today as it was last February (only Clinton is on the team now and the argument's being made by John McCain).  It needed rebuttal then, and it needs rebuttal now. 

Please give it a listen.  Click the link below to just hear it.  Otherwise,right-click to actually... we'll say it again... download "Ready to Believe" for free.  Again, you have our express permission to download it and to give it away. 

Download_Ready_to_Believe_Song.mp3

Some have asked for a PDF of the actual lyrics.  Here you are:

Download_Ready_to_Believe_Lyrics.pdf

Here's the You Tube version:

Please also visit the web-page of singer-composer Cherish Alexander (http://www.cherishalexander.com/ready_to_believe/) where all the goodies are also available.  She and fellow producer Damian Valentine did an awesome job with this project as you can hear for yourself.

We know the hour is late but if you support Barack Obama, we'd urge you to join us and expose as many people as you can to this song.  Especially Obama volunteers.  We've received a good deal of email from campaign workers who thought it was like an anthemic "fight song" for the cause.  That's certainly what we intended it to be.

Remember to vote.  Even if the polls say he's ahead, you have to vote.  Take nothing for granted. 

Still fired up and ready-to-go for Obama!

Cherish Alexander, Jackie Zabel, Bryce Zabel

The 1968 Politics of Hope: Bobby Kennedy

Sadly, the news of Senator Ted Kennedy's brain tumor reminds of us all the tragedy visited upon the four Kennedy brothers (Joe, John, Bobby, Teddy).  Now we're also coming up on the anniversary of that time nearly forty years ago when hope (of the kind Barack Obama seems to represent for a lot of people) was crushed by another assassin's bullet. This picture you see is done by pop artist Roy Lichtenstein and originally debuted as the cover of Time magazine the week before Robert Kennedy's untimely death during another hard fought, unpredictable Democratic primary season, 1968 style.

Bobby Kennedy was a pop star as Lichtenstein portrayed him,  but he was more complicated than that, too. As Time noted in that last article before his death -- "The Politics of Restoration" --

"They pronounce his boyish name with fear and derision or else with adoration and awe. To many enemies, he is more his father's son than his brother's brother."

During his lifetime, Robert Kennedy was widely seen as his brother's hatchet man, and the word "ruthless" followed him everywhere. By 1968, when he died, though, he had grown. Pat Moynihan said of him, "Much has been given him and taken from him in life, and somehow he has been enlarged by both experiences."

Although Bobby (RFK) has won the California primary on the day of his death, he had also just concluded a slugfest with Senator Eugene McCarthy for the Democratic presidential nomination where the result had hardly been pre-ordained. Kennedy had had to fight McCarthy across the entire nation. When Kennedy triumphantly claimed victory here in Los Angeles at the Ambassador Hotel, he had settled the issue of who would be the anti-war candidate at the upcoming Democratic convention. Then he was murdered. He was 42 years old, even younger than his brother when he was murdered five years earlier.

I've always loved this Newsweek cover about RFK's death ("Once Again...Once Again," June 17, 1968). The photo, taken by Phil MacMullan, captures not only Bobby Kennedy's more soulful, empathetic side but also how the ghost of his brother and that previous assassination hung over him. If you CLICK on this cover, you can see it in even better detail.

Back then, I was living in Oregon where only the week before Kennedy had lost the Oregon primary to McCarthy. It was the first election any Kennedy had lost since their family got into politics. Kennedy desperately needed a win in California to get the momentum needed to take out Vice-President Hubert Humphrey at the Chicago convention that summer. Our family supported McCarthy, but we liked Kennedy a great deal, too. It was a tough choice. I remember seeing him speak in the auditorium at Hillsboro High School right before the election. He was three hours late but we waited because he was a rock star quality politician.

Anyway, Oregon is in the same time zone as California, so it was just after midnight when my dad came and woke me up. "Kennedy's been shot in California," he said. We went downstairs and watched the TV for news and kept up the vigil until he succumbed to his wounds the next day.

Time's New Man-of-the-Year: Still JFK After All These Years

Last month, President John F. Kennedy would have turned 90 years old, had he lived. Even so, JFK is enjoying a banner year of publicity, especially for a dead man.

This week, it's Time magazine joining the fray, giving Kennedy the cover ("What We Can Learn from JFK") and a whopping 18 full pages of print and photo space. He gets a mostly adoring view from the writers who call him "A Warrior for Peace" and an "Icon of American Elegance."

Time joins a veritable publishing bonanza trading on the fascination with JFK-ness. There's Vincent Bugliosi's Reclaiming History which argues the most sensational assassination story you can imagine: namely that Oswald, in fact, acted alone. This book is being made into an HBO mini-series by Tom Hanks & Co. Before Bugliosi, it was Salon's editor David Talbot's Brothers which argued that Bobby Kennedy intended to win the presidency first and then investigate for a conspiracy which he believed in. And, before that, it was E. Howard Hunt who, basically on his death-bed, claimed in American Spy that it was Lyndon Johnson who conspired to see Kennedy shot.

Maybe that's what makes Time so unique with its latest issue. The assassination only gets two pages. One is devoted to Bugliosi's Oswald-acted-alone case and the other to Talbot's Bobby-suspected-conspiracy case. Everything else dissects what made JFK such a great president.

In fact, he was. His speeches were perfect pitch in confronting the Soviet menace and the Cold War, telling the enemy that we would "bear any burden" to oppose tyranny but also extending the olive branch of peace if they wished to be our partners. He was inspirational in other areas from race relations to volunteerism. He literally was of the new generation. He gave Americans hope and he gave people from around the world reason to like Americans.

Amazingly, one of the associated Time articles called "The Swingingest President Ever" is not about the hundreds, if not thousands, of women besides Jackie Kennedy that JFK bedded. It is about his golf game. The closest the writers come to analyzing his personal fall from grace is this single passage from the cover story's introduction:

"In more recent years, he has suffered from a revisionist backlash, portrayed in books and the media as a decadent prince who put the nation at risk with is reckless personal behavior. Journalist Christopher Hitchens has gone so far as to dismiss him as a "vulgar hoodlum." While Kennedy's private life would certainly not pass today's public scrutiny, this pathological interpretation misses the essential story of his presidency."

At the risk of sounding like I'm full of "revisionist backlash," I'm not certain I fully agree.

First, however, as I've said many, many times, I loved JFK and his death made a mark on me like everyone else of my generation. Second, I'm a life-long Democrat.

Still, I'm not inclined to accept Time's analysis that all would have been wonderful if only he'd lived. He lived a life of lies from his medical condition to his now-legendary affairs. He tried to kill foreign leaders. He had friends in the mob who did him favors. And, at the time of his assassination, he was not as universally liked as he was when he became a martyr.

Co-author Harry Turtledove and I have worked through the "if Kennedy lived" scenario and come up with a fairly controversial new conclusion. If JFK survived Dallas, we believe the resulting investigation would have exposed in a very short period of time all the unsavory things that have instead taken over four decades to come out. The backwash would have crippled his presidency and his reputation would be quite different today. It's an alt-history book which we invite you to check out by clicking on the image below.

Charles Whitman: America's First College Mass Murderer

Although the outrage and sorrow over Virginia Tech feels brand-new, this current tragedy isn't the first time some mentally-disturbed student grabbed a gun and started a shooting rampage on a college campus. That distinction goes back to 1966 and University of Texas at Austin architecture student Charles Whitman.

Seung-hui Cho's rampage at Virginia Tech last Monday killed 32 teachers and students and wounded more than two dozen others. Based on what we now know, it was long premeditated. Planning also went into the act of rage on that hot August day when Whitman went to three different stores to buy his guns and ammo, then went back to the University of Texas campus where he ascended to the observation deck of the limestone tower that soars 307 feet above the grounds. Here is how Time magazine described it in their August 12, 1966 issue in a cover article, "Madman in the Tower."

"Methodically, he began shooting everyone in sight. Ranging around the tower's walk at will, he sent his bullets burning and rasping through the flesh and bone of those on the campus below, then of those who walked or stood or rode as far as three blocks away. Somewhat like the travelers in Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey, who were drawn by an inexorable fate to their crucial place in time and space, his victims fell as they went about their various tasks and pleasures. By lingering perhaps a moment too long in a classroom or leaving a moment too soon for lunch, they had unwittingly placed themselves within Whitman's lethal reach. Before he was himself perforated by police bullets, Charles Whitman killed 13 people and wounded 31—a staggering total of 44 casualties. As a prelude to his senseless rampage, it was later discovered, he had also slain his wife and mother, bringing the total dead to 15."

Much has been made about the how the system failed to find and deal with Cho before he boiled over. Whitman also had been in the psychiatric system.

"His parents' separation troubled Charlie deeply, and last March 29, he finally went to Dr. Maurice Heatly, the University of Texas' staff psychiatrist. In a two-hour interview, he told Heatly that, like his father, he had beaten his wife a few times. He was making "intense efforts" to control his temper, he said, but he was worried that he might explode. In notes jotted down at the time, Heatly described Whitman as a "massive, muscular youth" who "seemed to be oozing with hostility." Heatly took down only one direct quote of Whitman's—that he was "thinking about going up on the tower with a deer rifle and start shooting people." That did not particularly upset Heatly; it was, he said, "a common experience for students who came to the clinic to think of the tower as the site for some desperate action."* Nonetheless, Heatly urged Whitman to return the next week to talk some more. Charlie Whitman never went back. Instead, some time in the next few months, he decided to act."

And act he did. The evening before his trip to the tower, Whitman sat at a battered portable in his modest brick cottage. Kathy, his wife of four years (they had no children), was at work. This is what his note said:

"I don't quite understand what is compelling me to type this note. I've been having fears and violent impulses. I've had some tremendous headaches. I am prepared to die. After my death, I wish an autopsy on me to be performed to see if there's any mental disorders. I intend to kill my wife after I pick her up from work. I don't want her to have to face the embarrassment that my actions will surely cause her...Life is not worth living."

After writing that note, he drove to his mother's house  and stabbed Margaret Whitman in the chest and shot her in the back of the head, somehow also breaking several bones in her left hand with such force that the band of her diamond engagement ring was driven into her finger and the stone broken loose. This time he wrote a hand-printed note addressed to "To Whom It May Concern."

"I have just killed my mother. If there's a heaven, she is going there. If there is not a heaven, she is out of her pain and misery. I love my mother with all my heart."

Whitman gave less attention than Cho to his post-death PR campaign, though, and more to his actual violent siege in the tower. He stuffed the following Into a green duffel bag and a green foot locker: Spam, Planters peanuts, fruit cocktail, sandwiches and boxes of raisins, jerricans containing water and gasoline, rope, binoculars, canteens, transistor radio, toilet paper, and, in a bizarre allegiance to the cult of cleanliness, a plastic bottle of Mennen spray deodorant. He also stowed away a private armory that seemed sufficient to hold off an army: machete, Bowie knife, hatchet, a 6-mm. Remington bolt-action rifle with a 4-power Leupold telescopic sight (with which, experts say, a halfway decent shot can consistently hit a 6½-in. circle from 300 yds.), a 35-mm. Remington rifle, a 9-mm. Luger pistol, a Galesi-Brescia pistol and a .357 Smith & Wesson Magnum revolver. At home, he left three more rifles, two derringers.

"Then, deciding that he needed even more firepower, he went to Sears, Roebuck and bought a 12-gauge shotgun on credit, sawed off both barrel and stock. He visited Davis Hardware to buy a .30-cal. carbine. And at Chuck's Gun Shop, he bought some 30-shot magazines for the new carbine. All told, he had perhaps 700 rounds."

Whitman opened fire at 11:48 am and had four minutes to pick off his targets before police were notified. Soon more than 100 officers would converge on the scene. But he had the higher ground and his shots continued to be deadly. In contrast, the officers were trying to hit a hidden target and their shots were ineffectual. A sharpshooter was put in a light plane but was driven off by the sniper's fire. Eventually, four men (three cops and a civilian) made their way by subterranean passage to the tower. None had ever fired a shot in the line of duty or combat. Here's how they took him down.

"The four rode to the 27th floor, headed single file up the last three flights, carefully removed a barricade of furniture that Whitman had set at the top of the stairs. While cops on the ground intensified their fire to divert Whitman's attention, Martinez slowly pushed away the dolly propped against the door leading to the walkway around the tower, crawled out onto its south side and began moving stealthily to the east. Crum followed through the door and turned toward the west. Hearing footsteps, Crum fired into the southwest corner to keep Whitman from bursting around the corner and shooting him. Martinez, meanwhile, rounded one corner, then, more slowly, turned onto the north side of the walkway.

Fifty feet away from him, in the northwest corner, crouched Whitman, his eyes riveted on the corner that Crum was about to turn. Martinez poured six pistol shots into Whitman's left side, arms and legs. McCoy moved up, blasted Whitman with a shotgun. Martinez, noting that the sniper's gun "was still flopping," grabbed the shotgun and, blasted Whitman again. As an autopsy showed, the shotgun pellets did it: one pierced Whitman's heart, another his brain. Crum grabbed a green towel from Whitman's foot locker, waved it above the railing to signal ceasefire. At 1:24 p.m., 96 murderous minutes after his first fusillade from the tower, Charlie Whitman was dead."

In the aftermath, an autopsy showed that Whitman had a pecan-size brain tumor, or astrocytoma, in the hypothalamus region. The pathologist, however, did not believe it could have been the cause of the headaches or the "psychic behavior." They also found a number of Dexedrine tablets in Whitman's possession—stimulants known as "goofballs" —but physicians were not able to detect signs that he had taken any before he died.

Here is a link to the entire Time article, "Madman in the Tower."

Articles of Impeachment: If Nixon and Clinton, Why Not Bush and JFK?

After Senator Chuck Hagel let loose the "I" word on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, people are buzzing about the possible impeachment of that other George, George Bush. After Andrew Johnson actually got himself impeached back in 1868, it took another century before Richard Nixon resigned to avoid the same fate in 1974. These days it seems we look at it as just another political weapon to use against a vulnerable incumbent -- going after Clinton in 1998 and Bush in 2007.

As you know as a reader of FWIW, Harry Turtledove and I are working on a novel that says impeachment would have been used in 1965-1966 against John F. Kennedy if he'd survived the assassination attempt in Dallas. Our alternative-history book, Winter of Our Discontent: The Impeachment and Trial of John F. Kennedy, has its own site dedicated to stating the case.

There's no question impeachment would have been a very steep hill to climb in the case of John Kennedy. He was still quite popular and he had a large Democratic majority in both houses of Congress. But coming up with possible "Articles of Impeachment" wouldn't have been that difficult. We know, because we've actually done it.

In both the Nixon and Clinton cases, the "Articles of Impeachment" were drawn up in a way where there is a lot of overlap and similarity in form. Like filling in a contract template, we've used those examples to write the "Articles of Impeachment" for John Fitzgerald Kennedy. We plan to modify and finalize them as the novel is completed, but you're welcome to read our working draft by clicking on the link below and downloading the PDF.

ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT, JFK.pdf 

CLICK BANNER to visit this site

Because many people still think of impeachment as the end result and not part of the process, a basic fact set is probably in order whether you're talking about Bush in today's reality or JFK in our alt-reality.

Impeachment is the expressed power of the legislature which allows for formal charges to be brought against a high official of government for conduct committed in office. The actual trial on those charges, and subsequent removal of an official on conviction on those charges, is separate from the act of impeachment itself.

When it comes to removing a president, the House of Representatives acts as a grand jury bringing an indictment and the Senate acts as the court conducting the trial itself. The Senators themselves vote as a jury would on guilt or innocence. Therefore, Richard Nixon, who resigned before a final vote in the House of Representatives, was not actually impeached, although he was the first president to resign. Bill Clinton, on the other hand, was most definitely impeached, but he was not convicted and thus not removed from office.

The people who want to impeach Bush now, or the people who seek the impeachment of JFK in our novel, all had to start with the U.S. Constitution. Article II, Section 4 states:

“The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."

Interestingly enough, a minority view on this comes from the man who most directly benefited from the near-impeachment of Nixon. Four years before he became president, back In 1970, then-Representative Gerald R. Ford defined the criteria for impeachment as he saw it then:

"An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history." 

Could Bush be impeached now? No doubt. Could JFK have been? Of course. Bottom line: it's politics.

Winter of Our Discontent: The Impeachment and Trial of John F. Kennedy
Written by Harry Turtledove & Bryce Zabel