Today in history: That pesky Electoral College

If you've been taking in the occasional current discussion about the merits of the Electoral College as a way of choosing presidents, you might be wondering if it's always looked like such a stroke of constitutional genius in the right-wing press. 

Short answer: No. Here, the New York Daily News's Inquiring Fotographer puts the reader-submitted question to half a dozen people (two elected officials, the DMV commissioner, and three Real People, assuming you count "newspaper reporter" as a Real Person), and they're unanimous: Get rid of it. The governor (shown) thinks the popular vote "would be more truly representative of the people's will"; a senator thinks that modern communication has erased sectional differences and the Electoral College "has lost its usefulness"; a homemaker thinks the Electoral College is "silly."

And the reporter? (The story doesn't say whose, but bear in mind that this is Joseph Medill Patterson's News we're talking about here.) Well, somebody has to point out that "the country just discarded its most important tradition in re-electing Roosevelt. Why not abolish the Electoral College?"

On spiking the football

EXCLUSIVE: U.S. Special Operations forces on the ground in Iraq were following a convoy carrying Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani when it was struck by an American drone last week, killing Soleimani and nine others, Fox News has learned.

The soldiers following Soleimani's convoy as it left Baghdad International Airport were about a half-mile behind when it was hit by a missile fired from a Reaper drone. They were on the scene within a minute or two and performed a so-called "bomb damage assessment," taking pictures of the scene and confirming that the drone had picked out the right car -- and that Soleimani was no more.

Fox News has obtained photos of the aftermath of the Jan. 3 drone strike from a U.S. government source. Some of the images -- which Fox News will not show -- include graphic, close-up views of Soleimani's body, which is grossly disfigured and missing limbs. Another photo shows Soleimani's body burning next to the car in which he was riding.

You can click through to the ones Fox does show if you'd like. But return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, when the official approach to killing an International Terrorist was ... how's that again, Fair 'n' Balanced Network?

President Obama has made a "categorical" decision not to release any photos of Usama bin Laden's  body, according to the White House, citing concern that doing so could inflame sentiment against Americans. 

... The president first revealed his decision during an interview with CBS News' "60 Minutes." Reading an excerpt from the interview, Carney said the president cautioned that such images could be used to incite violence or as a propaganda tool.

"We don't trot out this stuff as trophies. ... We don't need to spike the football," Obama said, according to Carney.

There is, of course, precedent for not prancing around with images of enemy war dead. One, it's tended to go badly since roughly the Iliad or so. Two, more or less what Clement Attlee said in 1946, when asked in Parliament about whether he favored releasing photos of the Nazis executed at Nuremberg: No, but thanks for asking. Indeed, the Allied Control Commission refused to release the Nuremberg photos in London, citing British public opinion. (They were released to the press of other Allied nations in Berlin; the World's Greatest Newspaper ran them as a backpage spread.) Here's some of what FM 6-27, "The commander's handbook on the law of land warfare," has to say on the topic:

But the football-spiking thing was not the sort of idea that Fox would just let go of, especially when those hard-hitting Internet ads started to show up in Obama's reelection year:

JOHN ROBERTS, ANCHOR: We're back with our panel. We want to talk campaign 2012. In this web video that is creating an awful lot of buzz, it's from Veterans for a Strong America accusing President Obama of spiking the football over Usama bin Laden. Let's take a look.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I can report I directed Leon Panetta...I was briefed...I met repeatedly...I determined at my direction. I called President Zardari...I as commander in chief.

And, lest you need reminding about what an intellectual sleaze Charles Krauthammer was:

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: This is a very strong ad. And unlike the one against John Kerry, it's not about one story or what happened against another story. This ad simply shows the words Obama has used himself. So the facts are not in dispute. And it hits at several levels. It isn't just that Obama has managed to turn a positive, something he did well, into a negative by attacking, using it as a partisan weapon which diminishes him also but diminishes the solemnity of the event that was national event and he appropriated it for himself. It's the narcissism. And that is the deeper issue here, how they quote Obama again and again using the first person pronoun in his announcement of the event. It's all about me, "I commander in chief", "I ordered", "I did this." What about the guys out there who did it and who risked their lives?

I suppose it's time to see how a Real President comports himself. Here, he's discussing the imminent threat thing with Laura Ingraham on Fox:

Ingraham: Don't the American people have the right to know what specifically was targeted without revealing methods and sources?

Trump: Well, I don't think so, but we will tell you that probably it was going to be the embassy in Baghdad. You saw that happening. You saw with all of the men, very few women, circling it and circling it very strongly and very viciously, knocking out windows and trying to get and they were close to getting in, and I called out the military. They said we'll have it there tomorrow. I said, nope, you'll have it there today. We're not going to have another Benghazi on our hands. And we did a really amazing job. I get no credit for it, but we never get credit for anything, and that's OK. In the meantime, we have the greatest economy we've ever had, a lot of other things.

... Ingraham: Did they have large scale attacks planned for other embassies? And if those were planned, why can't we reveal that to the American people. Wouldn't that help your case?

Trump: I can reveal that I believe it would have been four embassies. And I think that probably Baghdad already started. They were really amazed that we came in with that kind of a force. We came in with very powerful force and drove them out. That ended almost immediately. But Baghdad certainly would've been the lead. But I think it would've been four embassies that had been military bases -- could've been a lot of other things too, but it was imminent. And then all of a sudden he was gone.

... Ingraham: Are you worried that the Democrats can't be trusted with classified information? Because that's kind of what it sounded like when Pence gave that interview and talked about sources and methods the other day.

Trump: I am worried about it, certainly. I am worried about it. Can you imagine? Here we are, split-second timing, executed -- like nobody's seen in many, many years -- on Soleimani? Can you imagine they want us to call out and speak to crooked corrupt politician Adam Schiff? Oh, Adam, we have somebody that we've been trying to get for a long time. We have a shot at him right now. Could we meet so that we can get your approval, Adam Schiff? And he'd say, well, let's do it in a couple of days. Oh, OK, let's wait a couple -- it doesn't work that way, number one. Number two, they leak. Anything we give will be leaked immediately. You'll see breaking news, we're about to attack in 25 minutes or do something. And by the way, I'm not somebody that wants to attack. I probably could've attacked 5 times, 10 times having to do with Iran. I've been very guarded because I don't want to do that. But we may have to do something. We have to be in a position where we can do it even from the negotiating standpoint. But hopefully it won't be necessary.

This one, though, may take the self-aggrandizement prize: 

Trump: And from our standpoint, let somebody else pay for it. Why are we always paying? We pay for everything. One thing, I moved my troops out of Syria -- on the border between Turkey and Syria. That turned out to be such a successful move, Laura. Look what happened. Now they protect their own -- they've been fighting over that border for 1,000 years. Why should we do it? And then they say he left troops in Syria. You know what I did? I left troops to take the oil. I took the oil. The only troops I have are taking the oil. They're protecting the oil. I took over ...
Even Laura Ingraham has had enough at this point:

Ingraham: They're protecting the facility.

Trump: I don't know. Maybe we should take it, but we have the oil. Right now, the United States has the oil. So they say he left troops in Syria. No. I got rid of all of them other than we're protecting the oil. We have the oil.

It'll be interesting to see how the rest of the media follow up.

Are we leading with the earthquake?

Flash back with us now to -- could it be 35 years ago today? The New York Times is running an eight-part series on The New Governors, and today's installment (Jan. 6, 1985) lights upon North Carolina. Hence the obligatory contrast graf, nestled amid the decline in tobacco and textiles and the boom in high technology.

Slight challenge here, though, calling to mind the copy desk's weary question to the writer who has failed to take advantage of the the atlas or the road maps (before there was Google, children, desks had resources like this lying around): Are we leading with the earthquake? Spivey's Corner, to the surprise of no one who's ever heard of it, is nowhere near the mountains:

Down at the NYTRNG property in Wilmington (on the coast at the bottom, south and a hair east of Spivey's Corner), it seemed like a good idea to alert the Times, or at least its wire service, which had moved the story ahead of publication, to the general flatness of the terrain where the Hollerin' Contest* is held, so we did -- leaving out the part about the earthquake, because that would have been counterproductive.

The Times's response: "Well, they let mountain people in it, don't they?" Got us there. And so the paragraph stayed.

The world was young, the mountains green; think back to the days when editors at small papers had enough time on their hands to bother Great Big Papers about stories they weren't even going to run, and next thing, you'll be wistful for the days when newspapers actually edited their own copy.

* G-drop is official style. Not my idea.

None dare call it a party

So if you'd been hearing today that no American has been convicted of treason since the 1940s, you might have found yourself what "aid and comfort" looked like in the good old days. Well, apparently sort of like giving a party for an escaped Luftwaffe aviator who had made his way south from captivity near Toronto convinced he could expect a kind reception in Motown. The clever paint job -- "German" in "German restaurant" was painted over sometime after Pearl Harbor, per the cutline -- apparently didn't throw the law off track.

Below is the front after FDR commuted restaurateur Max Stephan's death sentence. The secondary stories are almost as interesting as the leads: above, a Mystery Death as Fr. Coughlin's weekly fishwrap was being investigated; below, a follow on the 1943 Detroit riots.

Hold that thought, you guys

Well, that didn't age so gracefully.

It's July 1941, and the World's Greatest Newspaper is scoffing in a frontpage editorial at the mere prospect of an attack on this continent. Col. McCormick and his cartoonists have been busily going after the liberal plot to merge the United States with Great Britain. So far, so good when it comes to Mussolini taking on South Carolina or Franco setting out to burn the topless towers of Manhattan, but: "Is the badly shaken Japan about to assault Hawaii or even the Philippines?"

Hold that thought.

'To the brink of war'

If you're one of those Hannity viewers who were disappointed beyond measure that you missed an ad for a documentary about the great German-American Bund rally of February 1939, relax. Here's what it looked like the following day at the World's Greatest Newspaper.

No, of course the headline doesn't want you to fight Nazis (be serious; it's the Trib in 1939). It's a classic flying verb or "implied subject" headline -- somebody fought some Nazis, but we can't tell you who and still make the hed big enough to carry the page, so calm down.* But with midtown New York "thrown into a turmoil," it still seems to have been a rather big deal, even half a continent away. A recounting of that event is what Fox News deemed "not appropriate for our air," according to the Hollywood Reporter.**

You can see how the page overall would create a bit of cognitive dissonance for the committed Fox viewer. There's a Carey Orr cartoon bashing the New Deal, but the "attacks on foreign governments" are actually "driving away our customers." There's a mayoral hopeful warning that a vote for Democrats in the mayoral primary "is a vote in support of the war-bent national Democratic administration." But the really confusing part has to be that attack on rampant executive powers in the first column:

The house*** today heard demands that President Roosevelt be stripped of the extraordinary powers granted him in "emergency" legislation during the six years of his administration.

The President was charged with dragging this nation to the brink of war because of his use of some of those powers to take sides in European and Asiatic conflicts. A special Republican committee, recently appointed to study the extraordinary powers of Mr. Roosevelt, led the attack with a request for liquidation of the Export-Import Bank as soon as is consistent with its present commitments. A bitter fight ensued when the house banking and currency committee sought approval of a resolution to continue the existence of the bank until June 30, 1941. The bank expires by law next June 30. 

Rep. Ham Fish has heard that the Ex-Im Bank "recently sent 23 million dollars to China," and he is none too pleased:

... The first purchase made by the Chinese government was 1,000 war trucks, he said. This constituted a direct violation of the neutrality policy of the United States, he charged, and put this country in the position of affronting the Japanese invaders of China.

Results in Entanglements
"This is only one instance of the manner in which the administration, through the special powers delegated to the President by a jittery congress, is involving the United States in foreign entanglements," Fish said.


Good thing Congress was exercising its authority over spending, right? Especially given that our relationship with the Japanese invaders is a good one and nobody's tougher on China than we are.

Anyway, aren't you sorry you missed the ad?

* Hint: It's the "50,000 foes of Bund held back by police" in the deck. It takes some work to figure out the Trib's style on cutoff rules under a streamer.
** Some newspapers were a little overenthusiastic. Here's the Washington Post ,Feb. 11: 

Some viewers of Fox News Channel’s “Hannity” on Monday night will get a jolting image: scenes from a rally of American Nazis in New York.

The images are meant not as promotion but as a warning: They will come as part of a 30-second spot for “A Night at the Garden,” a new Oscar-nominated documentary short about the rally of the German Bund at New York’s Madison Square Garden in 1939. It was directed by the liberal-minded filmmaker Marshall Curry.
*** Lowercase "house" was Trib style.

Everything old is new again

Fans of the America First movement -- the original or its 21st-century incarnation -- might get a kick out of this, from the World's Greatest Newspaper, July 1944.

I'm especially fond of "Little Tom Thumb Dewey," but there's also a certain amount of prescience in "Four years from now the Dewey-Willkie international clique will be dead ducks and a great America First party will name and elect a President. Then we will have freedom in America."

And this just in ...

Nothing like spending a day in somebody else's archive, is there? Here's the (then-Manchester) Guardian, live from New York -- well, Lake Success -- in December 1946:

For six hours yesterday nobody had a good word to say for Franco and nobody could agree what to do about him. In one of the most confused and disheartening debates in the history of the United Nations, the Political and Security Committee yesterday managed to agree on nothing more practical than the hope of the delegate from Salvador -- that someday Franco may die in office.

Note the byline: Alistair Cooke, 30 years ahead of his time.

Today in journalism history

Just to help put matters into perspective, here's how the Nation's Newspaper of Record covered political violence in the Fractious Near East on this day in 1947.
 
It's worth noting, among other things, how little is new in the world: the terrorists employ up-to-date communication technology ("a typewritten communique ... saying 'We did it'") and describe their motive: on the eve of "conferences on the future of Palestine," they promise to "'destroy these evil intentions' of Britain toward Palestine."

And this, toward the end of the dispatch:

At the Rafia detention camp twenty of about 800 Jewish detainees were told they had been sentenced administratively to another year of detention. None has been brought to trial. Twenty-nine others were released yesterday.

Is there a particular reason occupying powers think they're going to win hearts and minds by telling prisoners, in effect, that we tossed a coin and you're sticking around another year?

If this really was 1947, I'd read about the presidential address in the World's Greatest Newspaper. At least we still have the Fair 'n' Balanced Network to keep fear at the proper boil.

Today in journalism history

The Ten Magic Phrases of Journalism -- "limped into port," "flatly denied," "gutted by fire" and the like -- may have been first collated by Michael O'Donoghue, but they weren't pulled out of thin air. On this day in 1966, Phrase 10 appeared in Time magazine:

Roving bands of Negro youths roamed through the Negro section of Dayton—looting, stoning buses and breaking store windows—after a Negro man was fatally wounded by shotgun blasts fired from a passing car containing three white men.

The past isn't history, it isn't even past: Did you know that "preferred usage for those of the Negro race" appeared under "black" in the AP Stylebook as recently as 2002?

Just for the fun of it, here's the cover of the issue in question. Plus ça change.

Today in distractions

Never let it be said that nobody at Fox ever (ahem) reads the comments. Here's the original lede:

A team spearheaded by the deep-sea explorer who found the Titanic has been searching a little-known ship graveyard located in the Gulf of Mexico that includes the only known Nazi U-boat to have sunk during WWII and a few of its targets, MyFoxTampaBay.com reported.

And the one available now (which seems to have disappeared from the front page):

A team spearheaded by the deep-sea explorer who found the Titanic has been searching a little-known ship graveyard located in the Gulf of Mexico that includes the only known Nazi U-boat to have sunk in the Gulf of Mexico during WWII and a few of its targets, MyFoxTampaBay.com reported.

Which isn't entirely true. What the local Fox affiliate reported was:

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Today in 1942: Typewriters

Imagine, a technology company faced with a new set of regulations from the gubmint:

Because writing machines are essential to industrialized total war, rationing of typewriters was inevitable. All new and recent model, factory rebuilt, office-size machines had to be conserved for the vital needs of the United Nations' war production.

Underwood Elliott Fisher accordingly applauds the new regulations which went into effect June 1st. It pledges the sincerity and vigilance of its Dominion-wide sales, service and supply organization to the regulations' whole-hearted observance and rigid enforcement.

Today in 1943: Those pesky facts

In case you didn't think history had a habit of repeating itself, have a look at what the Association of Canadian Advertisers was being told, according to the June 6 Globe and Mail:

Mr. Clark* said he was making a "frank confession" on the subject, and declared that from now on the people will have to content themselves with being given less factual data and news about the size or operations of the Canadian fighting forces. This did not mean, he said, that the Government planned to clamp down on information "but it does mean that we have to become more sensibly cautious about the extent and nature of that information."
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Today in journalism: Fighting salmon

If you're wondering whether there's any advertiser in the 1943 Globe and Mail who can't make a claim on the war effort, the answer is "no, probably not":

Too valuable to stay at home, Canadian canned salmon has been selected, among other vital foods, to nourish and sustain the fighting millions of Britain.

... a fact worth remembering in times of peace.

Thanks, guys!

Today in journalism, 1943: Battle stations

Remember, kids, those vital war calls won't go through if you're yapping away on the long-distance lines! Bell of Canada offers these handy tips:

• Place Long Distance calls only when absolutely necessary ... especially to busy war centres.
• Plan your conversation ahead of time -- keep it as brief as you can.
• When possible, give the operator the out-of-town number you are calling.
• Avoid Long Distance talks during the busy hours shown in the diagram.

Why tell people not to use so much of your product? Here's what looks like a house ad from later in the week (from the Canadian Daily Newspapers Association), under the hed "Markets of 1945 are being lost and found--NOW!":

LOST: Valuable markets by manufacturers who saw no reason to advertise in 1942 when they had no difficulty to sell their entire output. Consequently, consumers forgot their brands and ceased to ask for them by name.
FOUND: Valuable markets by manuacturers who realized the necessity to maintain the identity of their name and brands under all conditions and at all times, by the constant use of daily newspaper advertising.

Use those comments, gang, but keep it short.

Today* in 1943: Conchies and flying verbs

One of the fun things about playing around in the archives is trying to figure out what sort of groove the slots are in -- how long it would take to start getting heds through on the first try.

"Conchies" is apparently well enough known** at the mid-1943 Globe and Mail that it doesn't have to appear in the text to be valid for the hed, but it still needs the "so-called" quotes. The flying verbs are a little tricky. There are lots of standard active and passive heds on the page:
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This week in journalism history: Termites!

"Vermin press" is a pretty common term for the pro-Axis (and frequently anti-Semitic) media of the early 1940s, but this* is the first time I've seen "termite sheet" for one of the star players. Nice to know you could have a little fun on the Post rim in 1942.

Things were indeed getting uncomfortable up at 12 Mile and Woodward. Father Coughlin's "Social Justice" was accused of cribbing a little too closely from Goebbels's "Angriff," among other offenses. The editor of "Publicity," based in Wichita, was soon to be indicted for sedition. After representatives of "Social Justice" were called to testify before a special grand jury in Washington, Coughlin basically gave up and suspended publication.

* Washington Post, April 17, 1942. INS, the old Hearst agency, merged with United Press in 1958, thus becoming the I in UPI.

Today in journalism history

Wondering what to do with your Friday night in Chicago? Here's the menu at the Chicago Telenews (part of a national chain of newsreel theaters) from Oct. 25, 1946, as it appeared in the World's Greatest Newspaper.

The Nuremberg executions had occurred just over a week earlier (Oct. 16). As far as I know, the only visual record of the actual event was a set of stills by an official photographer, kept under wraps for a few days by the Allied Control Commission and then released -- except in Britain, which thought that sort of a display pretty barbaric -- to the press. (The Trib ran them as a backpage spread.) Here's how the Detroit News saw the matter in 1946:

A Reuters report has Nuernberg swept with rumors that none of the Nazis condemned to death by the war crimes tribunal was hanged Wednesday morning, but that straw dummies were strung up in their places.

Another indestructible myth is born.

... All of this could have been foreseen by anyone familiar with the traditional circumstances in which dozens of such fantasies have become imbedded in popular superstition; and it was, in fact, foreseen by many, speaking for the American press, who argued fruitlessly for the widest possible publicity for the hangings, against exactly the possibility which has now materialized.

 ... The whole episode should have been photographed by the press ... and these photographs should have  been widely circulated. The secrecy which shrouded the occasion was ill-advised from the start; it is conceivable that at some later day it may prove disastrous. And those responsible are in no position now to say they were not warned.

It was in some ways very much like, and in others very much not like, the on-and-off feud over the Bin Laden photos. Kind of interesting to think of all that in an era in which a nine-day delay was as close to "real time" as moving images got. (Well, that and CLOSEUPS OF OCEAN MONSTERS for a chaser.)

Drinking game

Level with us here, Boston readers: Is this a drinking game for you guys? There's a pool on how long it takes Howie Carr to mention Ted Kennedy in any particular column?

Isaac permitting, I’ll be flying to Tampa on Sunday for the Republican convention.

Damn the computer models, Gridley, full speed ahead. I have not yet begun to tweet.

So what if even the Sunshine Skyway Bridge is washed away by Isaac’s flood tides? If Ted Kennedy could swim to safety in the raging waters from his sinking ’67 Oldsmobile Delmont, then I can make it to dry land from my ’12 Camry rental from Avis.

Ah, the days when journalism giants bestrode the earth.

This week in end-zone performance

Spring is here, spring is here, and what better way to welcome another term of journalism history than ... the return of the frontpage political cartoon!

After a fashion, I mean. Photo manipulation is a timid cousin of the real thing, and until people stop using it for symbolic handshakes between city and suburbs or Town and Gown, it's never going to get its own Pulitzer category. But an old-fashioned editorial elbow to the chops -- that just takes you back to the days when press barons stalked the earth.
But could it be only a year ago that the demand from the Murdoch-influenced* press was ... how's that again, Boston Herald? He's supposed to spike the thing?

 Just when the nation seemed to have fallen in love all over again with the gutsy, decisive leader in the Oval Office, the old Barack Obama was back again, refusing to release the photos of a dead Osama bin Laden because they might be inflammatory.



It’s not that we have a pressing need to look at bin Laden’s head blown open as we sip our morning coffee. But why is this president forever second guessing how the rest of the world, particularly the Muslim world, will react? Brave Navy SEALs gave the murdering bastard exactly what he deserved and the rest of the world should know that too. The message clearly ought to be that you mess with the United States, you kill innocent civilians and sooner or later we’ll get you. There is a price to be paid.

Well, yes and no. That's yes, as in everybody's entitled to an opinion, and no, as in "then why do people leave comments like this on news stories?"

OBL cost this country a couple trillion dollars.  It's a major pain to travel.  Some stranger gets to fondle my crotch at TSA checkpoints in the airport. [In] light of all that, I think I should be allowed to see that scumbags brain matter. Release the pictures Mr. President.
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