NEW NORMALS: 30,000 people at 3 in the morning!

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2024

Then, as now, new normals: Way back in 1960, at the dawn of a new political era, it was apparently part of an array of new normals.

Theodore White wrote the book about that year's storied presidential campaign. At one point, he described the sudden arrival of "the jumpers." 

To this day, White's book carries a famous title: The Making of the President 1960. At one point, White says that the jumpers arrived on the scene after that campaign's famous first TV debate:

WHITE (page 331): One remembers, of course, the jumpers. The jumpers made their appearance shortly after the first TV debate when from a politician Kennedy had become, in the mind of the bobby-sox platoons, a “thing” combining, as one Southern Senator said, “The best qualities of Elvis Presley and Franklin D. Roosevelt.” The jumpers were, in the beginning, teen-age girls who would bounce, jounce and jump as the cavalcade passed, squealing, “I seen him, I seen him.” Gradually over the days their jumping seemed to grow more rhythmic, giving a jack-inthe-box effect of ups and downs in a thoroughly sexy oscillation. Then, as the press began to comment on the phenomenon, thus stimulating more artistic jumping, the middle-aged ladies began to jump up and down too, until, in the press bus following the candidate, one would note only the oddities: the lady, say, in her bathrobe, jumping back and forth; the heavily pregnant mother, jumping; the mother with a child in her arms, jumping; the row of nuns, all jiggling under their black robes, almost (but not quite) daring to jump; and the double-jumpers—teenagers who, as the cavalcade passed, would turn to face each other and, in ecstasy, place hands on each others’ shoulders and jump up and down together as a partnership. The most endearing jumping I saw on the long campaign occurred in Florida—in Miami. One of the schools had trooped its children out onto the lawn to see the Presidential cavalcade go by, as was the custom in most communities for both candidates. By some misjudgment of logistics, the school authorities had put the older children—the seventh- and eighth-graders—in the front row while the tiny kindergartners and first-graders were drawn up several paces behind the big ones on the grass. The big girls jumped, of course, as was to be expected. But one could see behind them two files of little ones in their gay-colored jumpers and smocks, jumping up and down in their ranks as if they were colored balls being bounced by an unseen hand. The little ones could see nothing at all over the shoulders of the seventh- and eighth-graders, but they were jumping nonetheless.

Two decades earlier, bobby-soxers had reportedly squealed for Frank Sinatra too. But as part of a presidential campaign, we're willing to guess that the jumpers were part of a new normal.

Were the jumpers a figment of White's imagination? Apparently not. The oral history of the campaign includes recollections of this conduct by other people who, like White, were actually physically present. It was a bit like the Beatles before the Beatles, observers have sometimes said.

Arguably, the jumpers were part of an emerging new normal. Elvis had already hit. The Beatles would soon arrive.

In White's view, this was the first election of the emerging TV era.  For the record, Candidate Kennedy was a bit of a dreamboat in the eyes of many observers. That would include our own (Boston-born) mother and older sister, assuming that memory serves.

For the record, it was a much different country then. The country had a much smaller population, and the population was much less racially and ethnically diverse. Meanwhile, our own emerging political era has been defined by the so-called "democratization of media"—by the emergence of technologies which forcing us to adopt a modernized version of Huey Long's famous bromide:

Every crackpot a king.

Every crackpot a king! This may end up as the new normal of this dangerous time.

The TV era has come and gone. The current election campaign is playing out in the era of the Internet and social media—and in the age of cable TV, with its round-the-clock imitations of TV "news."

The current election campaign is playing out in a much larger nation, but also in the era of the unfettered fruitcake. Still and all, the enthusiasm was apparently great on the final weekend of 1960, when Candidate Kennedy returned to his native New England for his last two days of campaigning.

Realities were quite different then! The Democratic candidate, John F. Kennedy, swept to victory through much of the solid South, winning North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas. 

(Neither candidate won Alabama or Mississippi that year. Those states were won that year by a straight segregationist ticket.)

Candidate Kennedy reached the White House thanks to the pre-civil rights South! At the same time, the Republican candidate, Richard M. Nixon, won all three Pacific coast states—Washington, Oregon and California—and he took three of the six states in Kennedy's native region.

Candidate Kennedy spent the last two days campaigning right there in New England. The nation was much smaller then, but the enthusiasm in lower New England was apparently quite high. White describes what happened when Kennedy arrived at the airport in Bridgeport, Connecticut shortly after midnight on that last Saturday night:

WHITE (page 339): From the airport to Waterbury, where Kennedy was to rest that night, is only twenty-seven miles; yet it was to take two hours to drive that twenty-seven miles. Every child, every man, every woman, every grandmother and grandfather on whom [Governor] Bailey and his organization had a string of loyalty, was there in the damp to greet the returning hero. Up the Naugatuck Valley’s old Route 8 they went—through Shelton, Derby, Ansonia, Seymour, Beacon Falls, Naugatuck, Union City, through all the craftsmens’ villages of this seed bed of American technology. There at every crossroads, at midnight and at one and at two in the morning, they were waiting with torchlights and red flares to cheer and yell “We love you, Jack.” Outside every fire station on the route, the Bailey men had lined the fire engines, their red beacons and red winkers flashing and revolving in salute in the night...

He arrived at the Roger Smith Hotel in Waterbury, Connecticut, at three o’clock in the morning, and 30,000 people waited on the old New England green before the hotel to yell for him. He was tired; it was three o’clock in the morning; but they wanted him. So he climbed out on the balcony of the hotel, with the spotlights illuminating him from below, and from high on the balcony he spoke over the crowded green...

It was a much smaller nation then. But according to White, 30,000 people were standing there at 3 in the morning, wanting to hear Jack speak.

After three hours of sleep, the campaigning began again, in what was plainly a different political nation. Judging from appearances, the candidate felt that he even had to battle for victory in the states of lower New England—in Connecticut and Rhode Island, and in Massachusetts as well:

WHITE (footnote, page 341): All the last Sunday and Monday of the Kennedy campaign were spent in New England except for four hours touching down at rallies in Long Island and the northern New Jersey slums. The schedule, to be precise, read over the forty-eight hour period: Waterbury, Wallingford, New Haven, Bridgeport, Suffolk County, Teaneck, Jersey City, Newark, Lewiston (Maine), Providence (Rhode Island), Springfield (Massachusetts), Hartford (Connecticut), Burlington (Vermont), Manchester (New Hampshire), and Boston (Massachusetts).

Even in New Haven and Hartford, Providence and Springfield, Mass.! So it went as an array of new normals were taking shape at the start of a new political era.

That was the first election of the TV era. Ours is the era which bears this challenging banner:

Every crackpot an influencer. 

We're going to learn, in the next few days, if that earlier era has fully reached its end. We're going to learn if a whole new set of normals now obtains.

Concerning one point, there can be little doubt. The inane behavior of the New York Times has been part of the current new normal. 

On the front page of this morning's print editions, this "News Analysis" by Peter Baker appears above the fold. With the sirens of its fire trucks screaming, the Times has arrived at the scene of the fire comically, clownishly late:

NEWS ANALYSIS 
Trump’s Wild Claims, Conspiracies and Falsehoods Redefine Presidential Bounds

It took just two minutes for former President Donald J. Trump to utter his first lie of the evening, claiming once again that the 2020 election had been stolen.

By four minutes into the televised interview on Thursday night, he was claiming that this time around “we’re leading by a lot” in the polls, setting up another false claim of a stolen election should he lose on Tuesday.

By five minutes into the program, he had turned to assailing his successor’s record in office and was claiming that in the last few years the country had experienced “the worst inflation we’ve ever had.”

None of that was true. And that was just the first 300 seconds. For the rest of the evening, Mr. Trump spouted one statement after another that was fanciful, misleading, distorted or wildly false. He rewrote history. He claimed accomplishments that he did not accomplish. He cited statistics at odds with the record. He described things that did not happen and denied things that did.

[...]

Truth is not always an abundant resource in the White House under any president, but never has the Oval Office been occupied by someone so detached from verifiable facts...

Never has the Oval Office been occupied by someone so detached from verifiable facts? 

It isn't Baker's fault, but the New York Times has arrived on the scene comically, clownishly late. It has finally arrived at the scene of the blaze with this "News Analysis" concerning one part of what may turn out to be our flailing nation's new normal. 

Later, the tragicomedy continues as Baker offers this:

“No one in American politics has ever lied on this scale,” said Bill Adair, a Duke University professor and author of “Beyond the Big Lie,” published this fall. “His impact is not just in the volume and repetition of lies that he tells but also in the way that he has affected the culture of the Republican Party. He has made it more acceptable to lie, and that’s clear when you listen to debate on the House floor and you hear his lies get repeated, or you watch Fox and you hear his lies get repeated."

Let us start by noting that neither Baker nor Adair knows if this candidate's endless wild misstatements actually qualify as "lies," or if they might the product of a wildly distorted discernment—a distorted discernment of a type the Times (and the rest of the upper-end press) has steadfastly refused to contemplate or discuss.

No one knows of those endless wild misstatements are actually "lies"—and no one has been willing to interview the kinds of (carefully selected) medical specialists who might be able to offer an informed judgment about this important possibility. To that we'll add an additional point, one we've repeatedly noted:

You watch Fox and you hear his [misstatements] get repeated? 

We the people do in fact hear those wild misstatements repeated, on an hourly basis, all over the Fox News Channel. Along with the rest of its journalistic avoidance, the Times has agreed that this basic fact of modern life—this basic "new normal"—must never be reported, analyzed or discussed. 

Within the realm of the New York Times, no one should ever say the names of the Fox News Channel stars! Also, no one should ever report the things they've repeatedly said and done.

The Times has agreed to disappear the existence of that new normal. For better or worse, it has also agreed to bury the sweeping possibility concerning the possible medical / psychiatric disorder which may have produced the endless wild misstatements it describes today as "lies."

Last night, on CNN, Lulu Garcia-Navarro finally said it. "It's not normal," she said, speaking of the peculiar behavior of this particular candidate on this campaign's final weekend.

We'll try to link you to tape of that exchange. At Raw Story, Kathleen Culliton describes that discussion here.

The cyberattack on the Internet Archive may mean that we won't be able to show you what Garcia-Navarro said. Sadly, that successful cyberattack may turn itself out to be one of our "new normals."

As a nation, we seem to be encountering quite a few potential "new normals" as we await the outcome of tomorrow's vote. That said, it's all over now but the waiting! 

Tomorrow, we'll offer a few more notes about the respective arrays of new normals—the new normals of 1960 as opposed to the potential new normals now.

A new political era arrived on the scene in 1960. Let's borrow today from Yeats as we contemplate our own new normals. We'll let sacred Yeats frame our basic question:

To what extent is a rough beast, its hour perhaps come round at last, slouching towards our own Bethlehem, hoping to be born?

This afternoon: Semafor squeals—tattles, blows the whistle