The Slackers Guide to U.S. History Part 15

Although Kennedy enjoyed successes politically with cleaning up the growing problem of organized crime in America, and s.e.xually with his conquests of Marilyn Monroe and Judith Campbell Exner, there were some hiccups during his presidency. Kennedy okayed the Bay of Pigs disaster and had difficulty pa.s.sing social reform. In spite of his uneven first-term results, he was beginning to look toward securing re-election when he traveled to Texas in November 1963.

The Dallas Disaster.

Maybe if Kennedy had been less focused on changing Was.h.i.+ngton's nickname to the "unbuckled beltway," he would have realized that sitting in the back of a convertible with the top down waving to a crowd of strangers is never a good idea for anyone who has made an enemy or two over the years. It takes only one bad day for a psychotic, socially disturbed malcontent to bring a gun to work.

As the presidential motorcade made its way through Dallas, cheering crowds lined the streets. When the president's car pulled in front of the Texas School Book Depository, three shots were fired, and chaos erupted. The first shot was wide right, the second nonfatal shot was buried deep in the spleen of the Texas governor, and the third was a fatal headshot to President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. With the president dead, police arrested Lee Harvey Os-wald, the aforementioned psychotic, socially disturbed malcontent.

Who Is Responsible?

Many Americans never wanted to believe that Oswald acted on his own. As a result, dozens of theories concerning who was responsible for JFK's murder have been offered up. The Russians did it. The Mafia did it. The vice president was power hungry. Who would shoot the man whose secret service detail gave the code name The Golden p.e.n.i.s?

Speculation ran on endlessly like a Kenyan. It was three shooters; it was a shooter on the overpa.s.s. It was a shooter on the gra.s.sy knoll. n.o.body knows for sure. But most evidence leads us to believe it was Lee Harvey Oswald. Unfortunately, we never got to hear from Oswald. AS HE WAS BEING TRANSFERRED BETWEEN PRISONS, STRIP-CLUB OWNER JACK RUBY SHOT OSWALD TO DEATH ON LIVE TV, WHICH IS A GOOD LESSON FOR ANYONE THINKING ABOUT ESTABLIs.h.i.+NG CREDIT AT A STRIP CLUB. Ruby was later arrested, tried, and sent to prison; he died from cancer in 1967.

For many Americans, the Kennedy a.s.sa.s.sination is the crown jewel of unsolved mysteries. To date there have been over 2,000 books written on the Kennedy a.s.sa.s.sination, and not one of them unequivocally holds the nuts to the question, who shot President Kennedy?

Obviously, other presidents before and after JFK have indulged in extramarital affairs; however, this is an appropriate place to pause and reflect on the all-time greatest White House mistresses, because no one did it better than John Fitzgerald Kennedy. The following rankings are based on the mistresses' looks, stature in the community, and length of s.e.xual service to the president. There is no weight given to their skills between the sheets, as most often the presidents themselves have yet to comment on the individual performances of their mistresses.

Top Ten All-Time White House Mistresses.

Marilyn Monroe: She's in a league of her own. An object of men's fantasies around the world in her prime. Even JFK's wife gave him props on this.

Sally Hemings: Sally was Thomas Jefferson's slave with whom he had children. He loved to tell her, "I own you!" because legally, he really did.

Blaze Starr: JFK scores again. She was a stripper, and frequently referred to her bedroom as the "Oral Office."

Mary Gibbons: George Was.h.i.+ngton got the presidential ball rolling with this spicy little number. It is a little-known fact that when George was talking about cutting down the cherry tree, he was actually referring to taking Mary's virginity.

Judith Exner Campbell: JFK makes his third appearance on our list. Campbell was known to be a mistress of the Chicago mobster Sam Giancana. Really JFK? We're disappointed. Sloppy seconds? C'mon! You bagged Monroe! Dust yourself off and get back out there.

Crown Princess Marta: Franklin Delano Roosevelt makes our list. She was the crown princess from Norway. And more importantly, she was hot.

Nan Britton: Warren Harding shows up in the #7 spot. One of the favorites on the list, Harding was president during the Roaring Twenties and bagged Britton, thirty years his junior. Harding is often described as a "compulsive adulterer."

Monica Lewinsky: Our most recent addition to the list is known for seedy encounters with President Clinton. Literally helped redefine the word s.e.x. Now making a living off her s.e.xual exploits.

Kay Summersby: Dwight Eisenhower's mistress during his time as a general. Some sources report it as an illicit affair, while others maintain it didn't go beyond kissing. Which one is it? We need to know. If it was only kissing, then she's off the list, and she won't have a second crack at it either. Not because we're b.a.s.t.a.r.ds; she died in 1975.

Kennedy's secretaries: Now that's how you bounce back from sloppy seconds. A good old-fas.h.i.+oned threesome in the White House pool with employees. Man, this guy pulled in some serious tail. You are a role model for all American men, Mr. Kennedy.

1964 THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT.

A call-the-doctor itch for equality.

Equal in War, Equal in Peace.

With the sequel to the Great War over and the Korean conflict fading in the rearview mirror, black American men began to develop a call-the-doctor itch for equality. After Harry S. Truman ordered the integration of the United States military in 1947, black men were given the opportunity to live, work, and die with the more popular and more highly regarded white man.

Witnessing the ease in which a white man could get a table at a restaurant, tickets to a ball game, and purchase a car, men with African heritage took an interest in the benefits of the white man's lifestyle. Using the momentum developed by the Supreme Court ruling of 1954 calling for desegregation of U.S. public schools, black people across the United States took up the tussle for minority equality.

Politely Asking for Equality.

Instead of using the threat of death that gun-in-hand armed Robin Hoods use today to influence convenience store workers to politely and quickly put the day's revenue in a brown bag and graciously give it to them, African Americans in the earlier sixties began a much quieter movement centered on peaceful marches. Tens of thousands and at times hundreds of thousands of black people would congregate in political epicenters to kindly ask for the same opportunities that the American majority were experiencing.

Leading the way was a charismatic brutha named Martin Luther King. King met great resistance for his cause from the Confederate flag - wors.h.i.+pping southern males. It was obvious that King and his movement had a chance to become more than just a nuisance, threatening a real possibility of long lines at newly ordained mixed-race water fountains all around the country. FEARING THIS OUTCOME, DEER-HUNTING, TOBACCO-CHEWING, BUSCH LIGHT - DRINKING REDNECKS PUT FORTH THE THEOLOGICAL PROPOSITION THAT G.o.d NEVER INTENDED TO CREATE ALL MEN EQUALLY.

Progress Has Its Price.

Unfortunately for the white southerners, the attempt to equalize the races had the support of gigolo John, the thirty-fifth president of the United States. Many people hypothesized that JFK truly cared about the equality of African Americans. Others felt that he had yet to score with a woman of color and was simply using his presidential influence to equalize the rights of minorities in order to win the favor of black women. Although anxious to see the pa.s.sage of a Civil Rights Act to boost his luck with black women, JFK never realized his dream, as former New Orleans resident and self-proclaimed Marxist Lee Harvey Oswald shot him dead in Dallas, Texas.

With the president dead, former vice president turned president Lyndon B. Johnson capitalized on the sympathies of legislators in the House and Senate to push through the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as a final tribute to JFK's wishes of equalizing the rights of minority Americans. Subsequently, tables at restaurants and tickets to ball games became increasingly more difficult to get with the added compet.i.tion of hungry African American sports fans across the country.

19251965 MALCOLM X.

One bad-a.s.s non-Caucasian.

Who Was Malcolm X?

Malcolm was one bad-a.s.s non-Caucasian. Born in Omaha, Nebraska, on May 19, 1925, Malcolm was Earl and Louise Little's bundle of joy. Malcolm's father was a Baptist minister who had developed a nons.e.xual crush on Black Nationalist leader Marcus Garvey. The man who caught Earl's platonic eye headed up the Universal Negro Improvement a.s.sociation, a national organization focused on parlaying blacks' favored wartime draft status into an improved draft status for African Americans in the National Basketball a.s.sociation, along with civil rights for those not talented enough to play basketball at the highest level.

Fueling Earl's pa.s.sion for equality was his mistrust of the white man. At the time of Malcolm's birth, three of Earl's brothers had already met an untimely death, including a Southern-style lynching at the suspected hands of the American majority. On a personal level, Earl also experienced a number of death threats that caused Louise and him to relocate the Little family several times.

While Malcolm was still a young child, his father met his own untimely death when he was. .h.i.t by a streetcar named Ivory. Fortunately for the black community, the police reported that when they arrived at the scene Earl was conscious enough to tell them he had clumsily slipped and fell underneath the streetcar's wheel all on his own. He told the police to make sure everyone knew that no white man was involved in his death and that he apologized for any inconvenience his self-inflicted, yet accidental death would cause. Even with Earl's attempt to head off any issues, many people in the black community suspected that a white supremacist group called Black Legion was responsible for his death.

Studious X.

With Malcolm's father suffering the same fate as three of his brothers and his mother earning residency at a mental hospital, Malcolm spent the next several years being pa.s.sed around like a joint at a high school party as he went from foster home to foster home. Despite his difficult upbringing, he excelled academically and finished at the top of his cla.s.s in junior high. Benefiting from a chance career counseling session with one of his favorite teachers, he was famously told by his "white is better" educator that his goal of becoming a lawyer was "no realistic goal for a n.i.g.g.e.r."

Malcolm quickly embraced the wise advice he received and lost interest in school. With the inconvenience of school out of his life, Malcolm began an apprentices.h.i.+p in narcotics, gambling, and prost.i.tution. Unfortunately for Malcolm, before he could complete his studies he was convicted of burglary charges in Boston and sentenced to ten years in prison.

While incarcerated, Malcolm read like a man with nothing to do. During his imprisonment, his brother Reginald would visit and discuss his conversion to the Muslim religion. Malcolm quickly became drawn to the teachings of the Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad. Elijah M. had very little love for those who were not black and advocated that black people should have their own nation uninhabited by white people and polar bears. Paroled in 1952, Malcolm dropped his surname, Little, in favor of X in an effort to represent his lost tribal name as well as to intimidate white people. With an intimidating name and black power on his mind Malcolm prepared to fight the civil rights fight.

X Marks the Spot for Controversy.

Malcolm's charisma and message drew frustrated African Americans to him as his reputation grew across the country as a radical civil rights leader. His outspoken nature and strong words led to government surveillance. On April 3, 1964, Malcolm gave his most famous speech, "The Ballot or the Bullet" in a church in Cleveland, Ohio. The speech centered on Malcolm X imploring African Americans to exercise their right to vote and to realize that those whom they had voted for in the past had not taken care of them.

The "Bullet" part of the speech was a message to blacks that if they were not given the equality they deserved, they should take up arms and fight for the rights promised to them as Americans. Malcolm X's support of violence turned full circle when he fell victim to sixteen bullets during a meeting of the Organization of Afro-American Unity. Three members of the Nation of Islam were later convicted of his murder.

19591975 THE VIETNAM WAR.

Ideal for those interested in fighting in the most h.e.l.lish possible places.

Soldier On.

Nothing rips this country apart at the seams more dramatically than an unpopular war. The idea of sending young Americans abroad to fight the fight for a country whose citizens are so geographically challenged that even the brightest of the bright couldn't find the United States on a well-labeled wall map is reason enough to p.i.s.s a lot of people off. The tiny Asian country of Vietnam was one of these countries that proved to be so geographically deficient about the United States that it quickly divided our country into pro, no-pro war corners.

As for the U.S. citizens fortunate enough to enjoy a government sponsored adventure vacation to the jungles of Vietnam, their knowledge of their travel destination was limited to the handful of times they had dined on the country's cuisine.

Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner.

As the war in Vietnam escalated, the Bureau of Travel and Military Affairs began to fall behind on its supply of travelers willing to make the trek to the small, impoverished country. To rectify the situation, the B.T.M.A. set up a national lottery beginning in December 1969 for giving away thousands upon thousands of vacation packages to the Asian hotspot. Unfortunately for women and the elderly, the rules of the lottery prohibited them from winning. In fact, preferential treatment was given to males aged eighteen to twenty-six.

With ticket sales sluggish but the commitment still needing to be honored, scores of young men began to receive notification in the mail of their winning lottery number, even though they couldn't recall purchasing a ticket. In addition, the trip winners received new t.i.tles like "private" and "soldier."

Meet Charlie.

The U.S. soldiers, who were fortunate enough to have the government make third-cla.s.s travel arrangements for them, enjoyed jungles that provided malaria, dysentery, 120-degree temperatures, 95 percent humidity, and obnoxiously inconvenient elephant gra.s.s. These conditions proved to be ideal for those interested in fighting in the most h.e.l.lish possible places.

The U.S. troops were thrown into a situation where they were facing an enemy who had been waging war for many years, with a willingness to continue for years to come. The North Vietnamese guerilla-style war seemed endless because, in fact, it was. With a per-capita income of less than a dollar a day, there wasn't much for the Vietnamese to look forward to once the war concluded.

Was It 1975 or 2008?