Why the hate?

  Based on the advance news clippings, Dallas was a very bad place for John F. Kennedy to visit that day. Based on crowds that were beyond adoring, the clippings were wrong and the moment was very right.

   Then, gunshots. Mortal wounds.

   Dallas survived, but its convalescence would be excruciating. Few were willing to give it a fair hearing, charged as it was as being Lee Harvey Oswald's accomplice.

   After all, there were those news clippings.

   Those clippings, including a hate-filled advertisement in The Dallas Morning News, remained long after Air Force One carried the body away.

    Today the question I ask is one that escaped Americans at the time, and still does: Why the hate?

    The full-page ad in question, paid for by a group headed by Dallas oil heir Nelson Bunker Hunt, made a slew of conspiratorial claims addressed to Kennedy, principally that he was a pawn of communists.

   "Why have you ordered or permitted your brother Bobby, the Attorney General, to go soft on Communists, fellow-travelers, and ultra-leftists?" it spewed.

   For the visit, the John Birch Society distributed pamphlets picturing JFK above the words, "Wanted for Treason."

  Among the charges: that Kennedy "consistently appointed anti-Christian officials to federal office," and that he was complicit of "support and encouragement to Communist-inspired racial riots." (Most Americans now refer to the latter as the civil rights movement.)

   Long a Bircher hotbed, Dallas indeed had an extreme case of extremes. A throng accosted Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson outside the Adolphus Hotel in 1960, screaming and spitting at them for his having joined JFK's ticket. A crowd treated U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson similarly shortly before Kennedy's arrival in 1963 — one woman clocking Stevenson over the head with her sign.

   This is not an attempt to psychoanalyze Dallas all over again, something that was never necessary. What occurs to me, 50 years this month after the horror, is this question:          

   Why such hate anywhere? And directed at any such man?

   John Kennedy as a conduit of communism. Wow. Promoting "Communist-inspired racial riots." Really.

    By any political yard stick, Kennedy was a pragmatist. On social justice of all stripes, he was decidedly incremental. His boldest domestic move wasn't about elevating people of color but sending Americans up in space suits.

    The ideological viciousness which littered Dallas' streets, ignored by most, makes one wonder about conditions today.

   Historian Darwin Payne, a Dallas newspaperman when JFK was shot, said this in a recent Dallas Morning News retrospective about Nov. 22, 1963:        

   "When I hear some people express hatred for (President) Obama, it feels the same."

   I don't want to assume it to be so, but how does it feel to you?

   For five years, the frothy right has been like a pock-marked 45 rpm recording. "Socialist." "Communist." It has tried to convince Americans that President Obama ("Hussein" is his middle name!) is not one of us.

   When Ted Cruz's father told a crowd that the president should "go back to Kenya," the senator said it was just a joke. To that claim, we award one yuck.

   "Obama's no Christian," goes the warped and crackling appeal. He's a madrassa baby, Baby.

   It's been tried before, folks. One of the claims in the anti-Kennedy John Birch Society pamphlets in Dallas was that he had been married once before — and not just to anyone, to a German.

   Well, Brother John B.: That fellow traveler, John Kennedy, was one of us.

I know, as you pointed out repeatedly, he was a Catholic. When JFK was seeking the presidential nomination, Hunt's father H.L. — paid to reprint a sermon by W.A. Criswell of First Baptist Church of Dallas warning that under a Kennedy presidency the pope would dictate U.S. policy. Oh, yeah.

   And you know? Americans just wouldn't listen.

   History tells us that they were either much smarter, or much weaker, than the professionally irate among them.

   Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

Ah, that plastic outrage

   "Glitches" is miserably inadequate to describe the online fiasco that has crippled the rollout of the Affordable Care Act. An outrage is what it is.

    However, outrage from you, Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Pa.?

    You, Congressman Murphy, hammering administration officials last week in Capitol hearings? "We were promised a website where people could easily compare health insurance," you berated. "Five hundred million dollars later the American people have been dumped with the ultimate 'cash for clunkers.'"

   Citizens: Don't you just love it when people who oppose something — say, government — with every fiber in their being suddenly develop empathy for the thing they wish to destroy?

    Don't you appreciate it when people who stalled, and sued, and obstructed, and conspired against the Affordable Care Act long after it had become law, would have done all that and at this moment ask, "Hey, what happened?"

    Thanks for caring about Americans trying to obtain health insurance, Rep. Murphy. Some of us actually care about insuring all of us. You and your tea party friends, on the other hand, shut down the U.S. government to prevent any such eventuality.

     Five hundred million dollars, you say? That's real money. But you don't mention the $24 billion that your heroic government shutdown cost the taxpayers.

    The website about which you, Congressman, suddenly are gripped with concern is being made functional, meaning that the $500 million in question ultimately will have been spent on something. That is wholly unlike the $24 billion you and our tea party brethren exhausted on, well, nothing.

     Voters, did you notice the indignation from these very individuals when their own budgetary hysterics caused national parks and veterans memorials to be closed? Suddenly, these politicians were all about federal spending. Government is good, and all that. Give our constituents their White House tours.

     One who pays attention to today's discourse grows accustomed to this kind of plastic outrage. Generally it's summoned by those who really couldn't be bothered by the actual concerns they will cite when their opposition research latches onto something:

    — When President Obama promoted long-lasting, energy-saving compact fluorescent light bulbs, suddenly conservatives were all about protecting the environment, pointing out the mercury contained in those bulbs. It's fascinating, because when the subject is mercury settling into our soil and water from coal-fired power plants, these same people suddenly turn indignation-impaired.

     — Wind power, promoted by this president, is one reason this nation actually showed marked reductions in carbon pollution over the last two years. But wind power is dangerous, say the 24/7 Obama critics. What about the birds? You know, birds killed by the giant wind turbines? These concerns often come from people who've fought the Endangered Species Act and who want to neuter the Environmental Protection Agency. For many of them, development always trumps nature. So when it comes to avian interests, these conservatives are birds of a feather —  partners in eco-hypocrisy.

    — Republicans in key red states seek to take away women's reproductive rights with promiscuous measures like scientifically dubious "informed consent" requirements and prohibitive restrictions on clinics that provide abortion. On what grounds? Well, on the grounds of "protecting women's health," of course.

       Ah, but the clinics they have targeted dedicate every effort to women's health.  Abortion rights themselves prevent the desperate measures that women took back in the dark days when they were deprived of a safe and legal option.

      Saying anti-abortion measures are about "women's health" is like saying that beer is consumed for its nutritive qualities. Beer has nutritive qualities. It also makes a person challenge a mail box to a duel.

    Meanwhile, back to Rep. Murphy, he of the polystyrene outrage. Back in 2006 the Bush administration's new Medicare Part D website had major problems. Murphy was downright forgiving about that: "Any time something is new, there is going to be some glitches," he said.

     President Obama knows this and appreciates the congressman's support.

     Longtime Texas newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.     

America speaks (again): Get on with it

It had every ingredient of Election Day — the crispness of autumn, the electricity of pronouncements, the winners, the losers. 

It was as if Americans had voted. In fact, they had. And for the second time in two years, Republicans finally conceded defeat. They would cede to the popular will and, in this case, let our government govern.

So lopsided was the result this time that not even Karl Rove could say it wasn't so.

And, let's face it. If the 2012 presidential election was far less close than GOP strategists thought, this one, the public's pronouncement on the shutdown, was a true rout.

Poll after poll found most Americans angry at the tea party obstructionists. "A pox on both houses"? The House could only wish.

This quest to disrupt government for show was received much like a sporting crowd greets a streaker.

In pro sports, when a grandstander strips naked to get some air time, the cameras point elsewhere. It's too bad CSPAN's one camera has had to indulge Ted Cruz in his exhibitions.

Once again this time, anti-government types didn't get the answer they wanted — the one posed by Sen. Phil Gramm about government during the last shutdown: "Do you miss it?"

Yes, Americans did — missed the paychecks, missed the services, missed the parks and attractions.

More importantly, the shutdown gave them time to think about how much they miss government that actually functions. They realized how tired they are that governing has become a zero-sum morality play by those more interested in emoting for the camera than doing what the founders established three branches of government to do.

Oh, and Sen. Cruz, as you gun for the GOP nomination, you may be interested that one Democrat is gunning for you.

There could be no mistaking what Hillary Clinton meant when, in endorsing Terry McAuliffe in the race for Virginia governor the other day, she blasted politicians who choose "scorched earth over common ground." She was calling out Cruz. Indeed, she was inviting the hard right to put him forth as the GOP's choice. Go ahead. Make her day.

She pointed out that McAuliffe wasn't so dogmatic that he hadn't supported some of Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell's policies. I invite anyone to supply one policy, one thing whatsoever that President Obama has proposed that the tea party has ever supported. One. Thing.

Americans see this, and they are not pleased. Favorability ratings for the political brand Cruz seeks to put before voters in 2014 have dipped into the low 30s; yes, below freezing.

So, once again, make the Dems' day, GOP, and saddle up with The Streaker.

The shutdown crew bet everything on perceived public antipathy toward the Affordable Care Act. Without question, the public has questions and concerns. But what it has said, first in 2012, and now in 2013, is, "Get on with it."

Get on with health reform. Get on with whatever government can do to keep a precious recovery going. Get on with reining in the deficit.

Contrary to the right's boombox rhetoric, Obama has made budget concessions. He will again. So doing, he will infuriate members of his own party, as he has before.

Get on with it, or get out of the way.

Republicans like John McCain, Bob Dole and Alan Simpson have watched in horror as pouting, petulant, tantrum-throwers in their party have held their breaths until the nation turned blue.

Get on with immigration reform. Get on with entitlement reform. Get on with real-world education policies not pinned to dubious testing, false comparisons and meaningless slogans.

Ask the people what they want. They want all that. How many times must they say it?

Longtime Texas newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.