Suggestion for start of next debate

Sixty years and 4 days ago I watched the first presidential debate between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon. That 15 year old learned much about the differing views of two obviously intelligent and knowledgeable public leaders on domestic and foreign policy. Both conducted themselves with decorum, dignity and mutual respect. It helped fuel my lifelong love of understanding public policy to support progress in our lives.

Last night I reacted in horror seeing how far political discourse has degenerated, almost exclusively due to a boorish incumbent president who interrupted, talked over, denigrated his opponent with unrelenting hostility. He violated the basic rules of debate decency he had agreed to beforehand. He ignored and argued with the moderator who was reduced to begging the president to behave. He never did.

Suggestion for debate two, if there is one. The new moderator should introduce the candidates, then announce that the first ten minutes will consist of watching clips of the first Kennedy-Nixon debate. Then the moderator should address the president thusly. "That is what we expect from you tonight Mr. President. Can you commit to conducting yourself like two predecessors who never forgot how to behave like public leaders on the debate stage?".

Vote for Glen Ellyn cannabis sales

The local bluenoses have their blue noses out of joint over the November 3 ballot referendum to legalize cannabis sales in Glen Ellyn. Their mailing contained 3 reasons that fail to add an iota of basis for declining to sell what is inevitably coming to every community seeking economic viability and simple common sense.

A cannabis store in Glen Ellyn will have zero impact on youth to use cannabis. They either already use illegal cannabis or know of its availability which is ubiquitous among youth.

Claiming that cannabis stores will sink property values and drive away future businesses is laughable. The dozens of communities, rich and poor, already selling it, certainly aren’t buying this preposterous warning.

Glen Ellyn, like every DuPage community, is reeling from lost tax revenue in pandemic. We would be economically negligent to turn away $105, much less $105,000 in additional tax (based on estimated $2 million in annual cannabis sales).

In a few years every community in the US will be selling cannabis. Don't let Glen Ellyn be the caboose on the cannabis gravy train. 

Walt Zlotow 

Glen Ellyn IL 

When Pops told the State Department: “Go to Hell”…and worse

For four decades into his fabulous career, Louis Armstrong played the happy Negro entertainer, never criticizing the White establishment what made him wealthy and world famous. He was loved by White America; called a servile Uncle Tom by many in the Black community. That all changed September 17, 1957 in Grand Forks, ND. Louis was there for a concert at Central High School; ironic as the racist revolt against integrating Little Rock’s Central High School, was rocking the nation 1,100 miles south. An intrepid 21 year old journalist and jazz fan, Larry Lubenow, finagled an interview with Pops before the concert. Warned by his editor to avoid politics, Lubenow couldn’t resist. “What about Little Rock, Mr. Armstrong?” Pops exploded. ”It’s getting almost so bad a colored man hasn’t got any country. The way they are treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell”, indicating he was cancelling his upcoming Goodwill Tour of the Soviet Union. State had been trotting out Pops overseas to whitewash America’s horrid racist governance. ”The people over there ask me what’s wrong with my country. What am I supposed to say?” He was a tad stronger on Ike, calling him “Two faced” and having “no guts”. Stronger still on Arkansas Governor Faubus whom he termed “a no-good motherfucker”.

That night the Grand Forks Herald published Lubenow’s account verbatim (except Faubus was rechristened “an uneducated plowboy”). The much slower social media of 1957 also exploded. Influential Whites called for a boycott of Louis’ concerts. Ford Motor threatened to pull its advertisements from a Bing Crosby special on which he was to appear. Van Cliburn’s manager refused to let him perform a duet with Armstrong on Steve Allen’s variety show. Southern Radio stations tossed all his records. His road manager offered an apology that Louis publicly rebuked the next day, “I said what somebody should have said a long time ago.” Five days later Ike nationalized the Arkansas National Guard enforcing Faubus’ refusal to integrate Central High, and sent in a thousand soldiers from the 101st Airborne to integrate the school.

How influential Armstrong’s comments were on Ike we’ll never know. But his one profanity laced outburst became an important element in the Little Rock Central High story and an oft neglected, but one of the most significant events in the spectacular life of Louis Daniel ‘Pops’ Armstrong.