Bryce Zabel's FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH

McCain's Brows Are More Than Furrowed

At Least He's Ready For His Close-Up

There's been a lot of talk about how eyebrows were raised over Sarah Palin being plucked from obscurity to serve as VP on the Republican ticket.  Now it appears that her running mate (remember him?  the McCain guy?) is having to play catch-up to compete.  In the issues of Time and Newsweek that just came out (September 8 cover date), there's a fine full-page picture of the Senator inside Newsweek and his mug gets the full cover treatment on Time.  Here they are: take a good look before we continue...

As a producer out here in Hollywood, I've studied my share of head shots while considering actors for parts.  While I was looking at McCain to see if he seemed up for the role, it hit me.  The man had all the grey hairs plucked out of his eyebrows. 

Now we always knew that McCain was a gutsy warrior but we never would have thought to apply the adjective plucky but there it is.  Somehow, John McCain got his picture taken for Newsweek and then must have gone off to Time to be photographed for the cover shot.  Along the way, somebody got rid of all those pesky white hairs because they are gone, baby, gone.  Because of our commitment to investigative journalism here at For What It's Worth, we have gone the extra mile.  Take a look yourself and you tell me if we have a Brow-gate on our hands or not?

Above: Newsweek | Below: Time

Look, I'm all for sartorial striving and all, but there is a little irony here.  Isn't John McCain the guy who "approved" the ads that tried to make Barack Obama seem like a lightweight by branding him with the "celebrity" brush and running pictures of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton next to his?  Then this same candidate runs out and plucks his brows for his big Time cover?

Did one of his consultants tell him that the grey in his eyebrows made him look, well, a little old?  Especially compared to his much younger new running mate?  Did the famously irritable McCain fuss and fume before agreeing?  Did the Secret Service have to inspect the tweezers first?  We just ask the questions, you decide.

Here's the biggest question.  If Barack Obama had done the exact same thing before his recent cover shoot, would any of the Republican speakers last night have missed the opportunity to use that against him in dismissive and contemptuous sound-bites?

Yeah.  Probably not.

Oh, well.  It's just another trivial issue that probably won't even make it past a news cycle.

Hair today, gone tomorrow...

Sex, Lie & Politics: Thomas v. Hill Redux

Just this month, the autobiography of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, My Grandfather's Son, was published and set off a new round of "He Said, She Said" in the media. In the book, Thomas gives his side of the nomination hearings of 1991 which, of course, led to a rebuttal by Anita Hill in the Op-Ed page of the New York Times ("The Smear This Time") and on and on.

Discriminating readers and historians have ample evidence on both sides of the story to decide who they want to believe. In that respect, nothing at all has changed in the 16 years since October of 1991 when America had a normally not-so-compelling Supreme Court nomination hearing process hijacked into something that felt like it came out of the tabloids.

If you think the current nomination and confirmation process surrounding Supreme Court nominees was rough during the last few years, just remember that it's almost impossible for it to get as awful as the Clarence Thomas hearings. We will probably never see anything quite like this again.

Although it's more on the level of the O.J. Verdict and not JFK's murder or 9/11, for those who lived through it, the Thomas Hearings still have a "where were you?" quality to them. Where were you when Anita Hill went before the Senate Judiciary Committee and publicly claimed that Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas had compared the length of his penis to an actor in a pornographic film by the name of Long Dong Silver? I was in a hotel room in Hawaii -- there to research an NBC pilot I was writing -- and even though I was surrounded by paradise I spent two days glued to a TV set.

Time devoted a great deal of space to this controversy in its October 21, 1991 issue, starting with an opening essay titled, "An Ugly Circus" and moving into the main article, "She Said, He Said."

It was clear that the differences in the Hill and Thomas versions on what transpired a decade ago were not a simple matter of differing sensibilities -- oversqueamishness on her part vs. bad taste on his. If Hill's description of Thomas' words and actions was truthful, then the Supreme Court nominee was guilty of sexual harassment in the past and perjury in the present. If Hill's account was a flight of fantasy, then she was delusional and a candidate for medical attention.

Notice on the cover that Time sub-titled the issue: "America's watershed debate on sexual harassment." That's my main nitpick on this issue. If both parties had agreed on what was said and done but disagreed on whether or not it was sexual harassment, well, then we could have had a watershed debate. This wasn't a debate on the issue of sexual harassment. It was a public spectacle where two incredibly bright, articulate and seemingly honest people told starkly different stories. One of them was a complete liar of epic proportion and the other wasn't. Today, 14 years later, we still do not definitively know the answer.

Cool and unflappable, Hill looked the Senators in the eye and handled every question without hesitation...No less poignant, searing or believable, however, were Thomas' anguished statements and adamant denials.

The hearings gave up lots of memorable moments. One of the "oddest episodes", according to Hill, involved an exchange in Thomas' office when he reached for a can of Coke and asked, "Who has put pubic hair on my Coke?" After Hill's testimony about this and numerous other incidents which included descriptions of Thomas discussing porno with women with large breasts engaged in a variety of sex acts with animals, Thomas came out swinging, calling the hearing "a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks." The article concluded:

...everyone who had witnessed Hill's and Thomas' dramatic testimony knew for certain only what they had known at the start: one was telling the truth, and the other was lying. There was no way to imagine a happy ending to this very sad confrontation. For both Hill and Thomas, it was the hardest ordeal of their lives. But one of them was shouldering the burden unfairly -- and it may never be known which one. While both had been sullied and injured by the proceedings, only one had been dragged through the mud on the strength of a very convincing lie.

So, who was telling the truth? Thomas had more to gain by lying -- a Supreme Court seat. But he also had excellent witnesses from his previous staffs who had worked with both of them saying that such behavior was never seen by them and would have been totally out of character. And it did appear that Hill initially thought her testimony to the FBI would be sufficient to derail his nomination without her having to speak to the committee. No one has definitively answered this question.

What do I think? First and foremost, I think that if Thomas did those things to Anita Hill then he's an asshole of extreme proportions (and I'm not talking about his Long Dong Silver either). And I also think that if it could be proved, even today, then he should be impeached and thrown off the court. But as I've pointed out earlier, this case isn't about sexual harassment, at least not until you can tell who's telling the truth.

I watched all the testimony on TV and whenever either Hill or Thomas was speaking, I believed them and knew the other was lying. It was maddening then, and it's maddening now. They were both brilliant witnesses. If I absolutely had to choose, I would take Thomas' denial to be the truth, but only by a very, very slim margin. Here's why. A tiny voice tells me that -- knowing know how high the stakes are over these nominations and how Democratic activists believe now (and believed then) that a woman's right to choose is literally at stake -- well, that voice tells me that it's possible Anita Hill was recruited to derail Clarence Thomas, things got out of hand, and she was basically told by a lawyer that she could either stick by her story or go to jail for perjury. But I wish I knew with more certainty...

State your own opinion in the comments. Who's the scummy liar and who's the victim? Tell it the way you feel it. And please visit Instant History by clicking on the logo below to go to www.instanthistory.net. Thanks!

O.J. Flashback: His Arrest in Los Angeles in 1994

It's been over thirteen years now since that slow-speed chase in the white Bronco where we all held our breaths wondering if O.J. was going to blow his own brains out on live TV.  I remember watching it in the Calabasas Sagebrush Cantina -- the Bronco was on one screen, and the Lakers play-off was on the other.  Nobody could take their eyes off either.

The racial controversy over O.J. Simpson began, of course, with the murder of a white woman and white man by a black suspect, but it was seen visually the minute the issues of Time and Newsweek first came out.  It triggered a pull-back of a cover, an unprecedented action in the publishing history of news magazines.  Here's what their initial June 27, 1994 issues first looked like:

Here's where it got interesting.  Almost immediately after hitting the stands, Time was accused of racism by minority groups for its photographic alteration of the famous O.J. arrest photo.  The editors defended their choice by saying that they had taken that creative license to show the shadow that had descended on his reputation that week.  Illustrator Matt Mahurin was the one to altern the image, saying later that he "wanted to make it more artful, more compelling."  Enough readers, however, said that they saw the white man stacking the deck by "demonizing" the black man, that Time did something it had never done before and has never done since.  They issued a second cover and pulled the first one.  Essentially this meant that only mail subscribers ever saw the first cover.  Here they are side-by-side for your own inspection.

Most of us are very familiar with the story of O.J. Simpson -- the famous athlete a criminal jury said didn't do it only to have a civil jury say he did just over a year later.  Like the Los Angeles riots which preceded the arrest of O.J. by two years, this story said as much about the state of race relations in America as they did about the guilt or innocence of the accused.  Before the racial overtone set in, however, coverage in these initial issues had a lot to do with the actual slow-speed chase.  Here's the way Time started in both versions:

When asked how they could have let one of the most famous double-murder suspects in history slip away under their noses, the angry police commander and the tight-faced lawyer and the whole choir of commentators all said the same thing, without a trace of irony:  "We never thought he would run."

Maybe people condense into their essential selves in crisis, and O.J. was one of the best runners in American football.  Here's how Newsweek began their story:

The end, last week, was off-camera.  After the bloody steps, the heart-rending funerals, the surreal chase through the twilight of Los Angeles, O.J. Simpson surrendered himself into the darkness his life has become.  He was in the back seat of his best friend's Bronco, communing quietly with his cellular phone, his blue steel revolver and a picture of his children.  As the police stood back, the shadows lengthened.

Now, of course, there's a new O.J. criminal saga starting in Las Vegas. If you had any questions about why they denied him bail, this is why. More coverage to come, to be sure...

Conspiracy? JFK's Got Nothin' on Jim Morrison

Oliver Stone has made one movie about a conspiracy, "JFK," that probably isn't true at all, and another supposedly true story, "The Doors," which isn't about a conspiracy but should have been because that, in fact, is what really happened.

Ah, the irony...

Regular readers know I'm something of a conspiracy buff. I once called the Warren Commission Report "the greatest work of fiction that American literature has ever produced." Then I proceded to create a TV series, "Dark Skies," that had, as its basis, that President Kennedy was assassinated because he knew the truth about Roswell and was going to come clean with the American people in his second term (and, no, I never actually believed that -- it was a TV series!). We even did an episode of that series, by the way, where Jim Morrison was a character.

Now we have two news stories that are upending what people believe about JFK's assassination and about Jim Morrison's death.

Former LA prosecutor Vincent Buglioisi has a new book out, "Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy."  It's over 16-hundred pages and I'm not done but it make a very persuasive case that Lee Harvey Oswald was, indeed, a lone nut-case who acted alone. Just like the Warren Commission said.

Then there's Time magazine which has a new article, "How Jim Morrison Died" by Vivienne Walt that says the idea he died in his bathtub in Paris is a complete fabrication. The truth, according to Walt, is that Morrison overdosed in a Paris nightclub and that about five or six people participated in taking his body back to his apartment and putting it in that bathtub and that Paris authorities just looked the other way and never did an autopsy.

Imagine how that would have energized the ending of Oliver Stone's movie. Could have happened, too. Sam Bernett who ran the Paris nightclub was described by Time this way.

Bernett says he once met Oliver Stone's mother, and told her: "Tell your son to call me and I'll tell him how his movie should end." Stone never called.

And, yet, just as I'm accepting these new facts, there's something from each story that keeps me guessing.

First, Bugliosi, also writing in an earlier issue of Time about "What We Can Learn From JFK" had this to say about the subject of the vast conspiracy it would have taken to bring down JFK:

"Three people can keep a secret but only if two of them are dead."

Bugliosi has used this line in the famous mock-trial of Oswald he participated in for the BBC, in his book and in most interviews. It's his standard-issue one-liner and it works because, well, it generally is true.

Now let's go to the article about Jim Morrison's death.

"We carried him in a blanket and got him the hell out of there," recalls Chauvel, who was a friend of Morrison. Explaining the cover-up, Chauvel says: "I guess if you have a nightclub and Jim Morrison dies in your toilet, it is not good p.r. The five or six people who knew, who were there that night, agreed to just forget about it."

So, let's see. These six people kept this secret for 36 years now and it only broke because one of them, who's getting on in years, decided to write a book and the others have confirmed it. And they joined the conspiracy because Morrison's drug dealers didn't want their product tied to the rock star in a nightclub. Bad for business.

Maybe Bugliosi's wrong. Maybe even six people can keep a secret, provided nobody thinks there is one in the first place.

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."

Columbine: The Opening Volley Mass Murder in Our Schools

With the eyes of the nation riveted on Virginia Tech now, Columbine is tossed out in the news coverage as a footnote to the latest massacre. People have noted it happened eight years ago this week on April 20. This is a bad time of year for evil: Columbine, Oklamoma City, Waco, Hitler's birthday and now Virginia Tech. Here's what Time looked like in the aftermath of the 1999 Columbine tragedy. The cover article was called, "... In Sorrow and Disbelief."

I think it's a sad cover, seeing the two demented killers featured in full color and  their victims all in smaller photos in black-and-white. There's something about the choice that sits wrong with me, even though I know journalistically that the news value is on trying to understand how violent killers can live among us. Still...

There is a chilling passage in the first few paragraphs of this article. It is simply awful to contemplate:

A girl was asked by the gunman if she believed in God, knowing full well the safe answer. "There is a God," she said quietly, "and you need to follow along God's path." The shooter looked down at her. "There is no God," he said, and he shot her in the head.

That young girl's heroism still makes me cry. Here's something that makes you scared.

Some members of Harris' and Klebold's clique, tagged in derision a few years before as the Trench Coat Mafia, had embraced enough Nazi mythology to spook their classmates. They reportedly wore swastikas on black shirts, spoke German in the halls, re-enacted World War II battles, played the most vicious video games, talked about whom they hated, whom they would like to kill. Harris and Klebold liked to bowl: when Harris made a good shot, he would throw his arm up, "Heil Hitler!"

What lessons can be learned? Well, we can debate gun control again, or argue for better reaction times among school officials. But there is a universal lesson that the close survivors of Columbine and of Virginia Tech can teach us.

Her friends began writing notes to their parents, saying that they loved them, that they thought they were going to die. Everyone was praying. "In a world where there are so many religions," says Lexis, "everyone was praying the same way." One friend made a vow. "If I ever get out, I'm going to be nice to my little brother."

Take a moment after you've read this, think about the people you care about, maybe about how you haven't hugged them or held them or just told them you care. Then do it. Just because.

Otherwise, lessons are probably going to continue to be as hard to come by now as they were then.

The hardest thing about the search for an explanation was the growing fear there might not be one. There would be lots of talk about the venomous culture that these boys soaked in--but many kids drink those waters without turning into mass murderers. There would be talk of deep family dysfunction, something in their past or their present, but nothing in the first days of archaeology turned up anything tidy that explained something so massively wrong. These were parents who came to all the Little League and soccer games. They even came to practices.

My wife is working with a trio of filmmakers on a documentary about the aftermath of Columbine. It's called "13 Families" and deals with those who were left behind and how they have dealt with the death of their loved ones. It does not include the two Columbine shooters in the documentary at all. They have had enough publicity.

Our hearts go out now to the new victims in Virginia.

Iran Decides Not to Party Like It's 1979

Iran has decided to let its most recent hostages go. The 15 British sailors who've been detained in Teheran are going home. Maybe Iran has learned something from its own history. Back in 1979, Iran first took hostages, paraded them on TV, threatened to put them on trial, forced them to confess their crimes and generally behaved badly. Only instead of holding them for a couple of weeks and moving on, back then they held them for exactly 444 days.

Monday, November 19, 1979

The Time magazine above, "Blackmailing the U.S." is the first issue to come out in the immediate aftermath of the Iranian hostage crisis which basically dragged on for 14 months, cost Jimmy Carter his presidency, and gave it to Ronald Reagan. Remember that it ended literally on the day Reagan took office and the Iranians knew either the hostages came home or the missiles started flying. Here's how the article began:

It was an ugly, shocking image of innocence and impotence, of tyranny and terror, of madness and mob rule. Blindfolded and bound, employees of the U.S. embassy in Tehran were paraded last week before vengeful crowds while their youthful captors gloated and jeered.

On that gray Sunday morning when 60 Americans were imprisoned by their Iranian student captors, the world changed. President Carter said at the beginning that "These last two days have been the worst I've had." Well, they didn't get better. Carter was seen as weak already, and this just made things seem even clearer to the public.

As frustration about the plight of the hostages increased, there was a sense that the Administration should do something —anything—to free them. The White House, for sound tactical and strategic reasons, rejected the military options. There were demands for the mass deportation of the 50,000 Iranian students in the U.S.—or at least those who had taken advantage of their visas to picket and demonstrate against the U.S. That was also rejected, since it would blatantly violate U.S. immigration laws. Instead, as it has had to do in a number of other recent crises, the Administration decided on restraint.

Around the U.S. though, there was the beginning of push-back. Iranian students were here in the U.S. in large numbers as the article indicated above, and they were largely out protesting against our country for letting the hated Shah of Iran in for medical treatment.

In New York City, at the close of an Iranian student demonstration, a Columbia University undergraduate shouted: "We're gonna ship you back, and you aren't gonna like it! No more booze. No more Big Macs. No more rock music. No more television. No more sex. You're gonna get on that plane at Kennedy, and when you get off in Tehran, you're gonna be back in the 13th century. How you gonna like that?" The Iranians, who stared back glumly, did not respond.

This situation was a key illustration of how the terrorism game was set up to work. One of the Iranian hostage-taking "students" was quoted in Time saying: "If the Marines don't shoot, we take over. If they do, we have our martyr. Either way, we win." Then there was the White House aide who talked like a Pentagon war gamer: "It's a classic case of gaming versus an irrational opponent. As the irrationality approaches 100%, your ability to game nears zero."

Not that I think the current leader of Iran is any more rational than Khomeini or the students were, the optimism that was felt three decades ago actually was warranted this time. Here's how it played in 1979.

Still, by week's end the Administration was feeling a bit more hopeful about the situation. Having avoided any sort of response that might have worked to the disadvantage of the hostages, the U.S. was increasingly counting on growing pressure from the international community and from Iran's own middle class to exert some influence on the religious leaders and the students. One goal of the American diplomatic strategy was to isolate Iran and make it appear as an irrational outlaw in world opinion.

I'm not sure if the Iranian hostage crisis quite rises to the "Where Were You?" level of 9/11, JFK or Challenger, but I have vivid memories. I was the weekend anchor at KVOA-TV in Tucson, Arizona and I remember reading the first wire copy, and then doing the update on the news. I worked the late shift in those days, and I also remember coming back and watching that new ABC late-night show, "America Held Hostage" with some guy named Ted Koppel who had even bigger hair than I did back then.

Yes, the times they were really changing. Time really nailed it with the very last two sentences of their article, capturing the wave of the future. Worth reading again.

However the embassy affair ends, it is a sharp reminder of the degree to which the traditional rules of international conduct can no longer be taken for granted. The world is changing; the unpredictable is becoming the commonplace.

Anyway, that's how they reported it some 28 years ago during the grand-daddy of all hostage crises.

Guilty: Scorn O.J.

As somebody who makes his living in TV, I'm a strong a proponent about letting the market decide when it comes to what people can watch or not. But I have to tell you that I'm happy about Rupert Murdoch's decision to scuttle the O.J. Simpson book and TV specials, "If I Did It, Here's How It Happened."

Just because the First Amendment exists, it doesn't mean that people have a right to be protected from the forces of the marketplace. Anybody has a right to print that ridiculous O.J. book or to interview him about how he "might" have killed his wife and Ron Goldman. Sure. But audiences, readers and citizens have a right to criticize those who would stoop to putting this trash before the public. So, the market rules, and O.J. gets the plug pulled by Rupert. I have no doubt someone else may step forward now to pay for this and that's too bad, but for me this is still a positive outcome.

Thankfully, this episode puts to rest any lingering doubts (were there really ANY?) about O.J.'s guilt or innocence. You may want to read Salon's article by Deborah J. Dickerson, "Memo to O.J. - Kill Yourself."

We all know the simple truth now. O.J. Simpson murdered his wife, Nicole Brown-Simpson, and Ron Goldman. Period. End of story. He's a killer.

I'm sorry that a well-liked African-American turned out to be a maniac like this, but it doesn't make it less true. It's not about race, it probably never was. It's just a tragedy, an injustice, the trial was a farce and what's come after has been rotten. This latest ploy was just disgusting. Come on...

O.J., you murderer, if you won't take Salon's advice, just go freaking-away. Okay? We're done here.

*******

CLICK HERE for the "Instant History" post about O.J.'s arrest.

CLICK HERE for the "Instant History" post about O.J.'s trial verdict.

The Day Reagan Almost Died

25 years ago today, President Ronald Reagan -- in office just over two months -- was shot outside the Washington Hilton by John Hinckley.

Here's how Time began its first article of six, "A Sense of Where We Are" by Roger Rosenblatt. They described their extensive coverage as "reflections on a week of anxiety, sadness and outrage."

It took a week to get the picture. First came the gasps and "not agains"; then the nation assumed its old too familiar position before the tube, reluctant pros in this business by now, ready to take in the slow-motion replays, the testimony of experts, the edgy reporters, a bloody head, a shot-up limousine, another blank-faced gunman.

There was a jumble to sort out. The President was O.K. But then he wasn't. They took him to the White House. No, to a hospital. Was it serious? Not very. Yes, very. Maybe ... And so on through the long Monday afternoon, the emotions buffeted by every bulletin—sinking at the report of White House Press Secretary James Brady's death; rising warily when the report is denied; a freeze at news that the President is undergoing surgery; a thaw when someone repeats a Reagan joke. Who was that fool who asked if the operation was going to be filmed?

More questions still—the public's tensions not at all alleviated by the figure of Alexander Haig claiming "I am in control here," in a voice full of jelly.

Put your politics aside -- whether you were one of the Democrats who thought of Reagan as evil and stupid (he turned out to be neither, in my opinion) or one of the Republicans who thought he was their Franklin Roosevelt. Imagine how close our democracy came to losing another president to gunfire. At that time, it had only been 17-years since President Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas.

I remember that, in my own life, I was just starting a job as an investigative reporter at the PBS affiliate in Los Angeles, KCET. My fellow journalists were a pretty hard core liberal bunch and I remember wondering why none of them seemed moved by this at all. It was like their attitude was, "Well, he's an arch conservative, he deserves whatever happens to him." They hated President Reagan with the same passion that a lot of people on the left now reserve for President Bush. That's so not how I see it. When somebody shoots at the elected President, they're taking a shot at our democracy.

In any case, the nation got through it quickly and moved on. Reagan joked with the doctors, showed wonderful spirit and won a lot of friends. When his wife, Nancy, showed up at the hospital, he quipped, "Honey, I forgot to duck." (He took the line from Jack Dempsey, but it will always be remembered as his.) Time noted some examples of the Reagan humor which I reprint here because they show clearly why people liked the guy.

> To surgeons, as he entered the operating room: "Please tell me you're Republicans."

> In a written note, upon coming out of anesthesia in the recovery room (paraphrasing Comedian W.C. Fields): "All in all, I'd rather be in Philadelphia."

> In another note, recalling a Winston Churchill observation: "There's no more exhilarating feeling than being shot at without result."

> In a third note: "Send me to L.A., where I can see the air I'm breathing."

> In yet another note written while surrounded by medical staff: "If I had this much attention in Hollywood, I'd have stayed there."

> Complimented by a doctor for being a good patient: "I have to be. My father-in-law is a doctor."

> To an attentive nurse: "Does Nancy know about us?"

> To a nurse who told him to "keep up the good work" of his recovery: "You mean this may happen several more times?"

> To Daughter Maureen: The attempted assassination "ruined one of my best suits."

> Greeting White House aides the morning after surgery: "Hi, fellas. I knew it would be too much to hope that we could skip a staff meeting."

> When told by Aide Lyn Nofziger that the Government was running normally: "What makes you think I'd be happy about that?"

But we know now that he almost died. That would have put President George Herbert Walker Bush in office eight years earlier. Assuming he would only have made one term as he did in our timeline, then it's possible that in 1984 Walter Mondale would have defeated him. Whether or not that happened, 1988 would not have been the first term of a Bush dynasty. Someone else would have taken office. Clinton wasn't quite ready. Bob Dole? Joe Biden? The mind boggles...

To read more of these historical posts, based on coverage from Time or Newsweek, please CLICK HERE to visit the Instant History blog.