The Conservative Cave
Interests => Hobbies => The Book Club => Topic started by: franksolich on February 12, 2011, 05:36:04 PM
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Note: this more appropriately belongs in the "Books" forum here on conservativecave, and I'll move it there in a couple of days--but for now, since it's a topic sure to pique the interest of lurking primitives, I'll keep it here. Carry on. franksolich
This afternoon I attended a big book sale put on by a local small-town library.
I dunno what the rule is in other places, but here in Nebraska, libraries are supposed to cull through, and discard 3% of their entire collection (minus the local and regional stuff), so as to get rid of the dead wood and make room for new books.
The books were going for twenty-five cents apiece; there were thousands of them.
I could not help but notice there were an awful lot of books about the Kennedys.
Stacks of books about the Kennedys; all the individuals, all the generations.
Then it struck me.
Anyone growing up during the 1960s and 1970s was surfeited with reading matter about the Kennedys; and given their popularity among the great unwashed brainwashed, the Kennedys were the "royal family" of America.
I recall as a little lad, as a teenager, as a young adult, it seemed the Kennedys would never go away.
That they were constantly re-elected with little or no problem, despite their personal and political corruption, said much about the cult-of-the-personality voters in blue states.
Nebraska of course is a red state with no particular fondness for Jack the Father, Bobby the Christ, and Vast Teddy the Holy Ghost, but it's in the nature of Nebraskans to be even-handed, and so all libraries, in both the cities and small places, have plenty of reading matter for minority Dems, liberals, and primitives.
In fact, more books about the Kennedys than any other American political family.
I inquired why so many Kennedy books, and was told these were no longer of any special interest, as shown by the circulation figures; some of these books had not been checked out since 1978 or 1981 or something. And even the recent ones, from the 1990s and the beginning of this century, had been checked out only once or twice.
Whoa. And I thought the Kennedys would never lose elections, would never go away.
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And a great rejoicing was heard throughout the land.
OTOH, I read somewhere that one of the Kennedy's was thinking of running again for Dead Ted's seat.
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At Mass tonight the Priest was talking about RFK during his Homily.
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Nice to hear, sir.
On the other hand, not all library collections or archivists are so even handed as yours: I picked up my copy of The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith earlier this year from the discard pile. No cost to me, whatsoever, and yet it is probably one of the best - and oldest - treatises on the free market in existence. Apparently that kind of valuable information isn't as "popular" as it once was.
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Nice to hear, sir.
On the other hand, not all library collections or archivists are so even handed as yours: I picked up my copy of The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith earlier this year from the discard pile. No cost to me, whatsoever, and yet it is probably one of the best - and oldest - treatises on the free market in existence. Apparently that kind of valuable information isn't as "popular" as it once was.
Interestingly I had a similar experience. About six years ago I picked up Winston Churchill's History of the English Speaking Peoples (three volume set, second edition), in precisely the same way.
doc
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Well, I was told that if a classic appears in a discard or sale pile, it's usually because the library acquired a newer copy.....or as often happens here, someone during the year donated copies from his own collection, in which the copies were in better condition.
I dunno about other areas of the country, but here, people are always donating old books to libraries.....the romance novels are a pain in the rear, and usually get tossed right away.
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Whoa. And I thought the Kennedys would never lose elections, would never go away.
And the only member of that enormous family who may, only "may", have had a shred of decency was Joe, Jr., killed during WWII. Joe, Jr., may well have been as bad as the rest of that contemptible family, but he never had a chance to demostrate it, and his death was certainly honorable.
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And the only member of that enormous family who may, only "may", have had a shred of decency was Joe, Jr., killed during WWII. Joe, Jr., may well have been as bad as the rest of that contemptible family, but he never had a chance to demostrate it, and his death was certainly honorable.
This was during your time too, sir.
When growing up, didn't you ever think the Kennedys were never going to go away?
Didn't you suffer from Kennedy Fatigue, the way they were always hyped in the media and culture?
This "royal family" was like a barnacle, permanently attached to the side of a boat.
I really thought they would never go away.
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This was during your time too, sir.
When growing up, didn't you ever think the Kennedys were never going to go away?
Didn't you suffer from Kennedy Fatigue, the way they were always hyped in the media and culture?
This "royal family" was like a barnacle, permanently attached to the side of a boat.
I really thought they would never go away.
Hell....I STILL feel that way......and as prolific as they are, I'm not convinced they won't stage a comeback.
doc
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Hell....I STILL feel that way......and as prolific as they are, I'm not convinced they won't stage a comeback.
doc
Funny how cockroaches will do that, eh?
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Hell....I STILL feel that way......and as prolific as they are, I'm not convinced they won't stage a comeback.
I dunno; I hope not.
There's inspiration provided by the Roosevelt family, in which the sons tried to be big in politics, and flopped.
The only one who didn't go into some sort of politics became a Republican, and a wealthy stockbroker.
In American history, it seems one generation is enough, after which it peters out, the descendants occupying good positions, but nothing near what their direct predecessors had had--Robert Lincoln (secretary of state), the younger James Garfield, the younger Calvin Coolidge, the sons of the first Roosevelt, &c., &c., &c., after which they're heard of no more.
Three generations of Kennedys was rather too much. I'm glad they're riding off into the sunset.
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My guess would be that since the most famous was JFK the vast amount of writing surrounds him.
This poses a problem for the modern day democrat party that would not allow him to be heard from.
Not drawing a direct comparison but much as primitives try to invoke Jesus as a socialist crusader all the while blaspheming the Bible they mention JFK as their own but can`t stand to read the history of what he actually stood for.
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This was during your time too, sir.
When growing up, didn't you ever think the Kennedys were never going to go away?
Didn't you suffer from Kennedy Fatigue, the way they were always hyped in the media and culture?
This "royal family" was like a barnacle, permanently attached to the side of a boat.
I really thought they would never go away.
Of course it seemed that way, but at the time, in the 60s, things were so different. Radio as a news medium had been destroyed by TV, but there were only three TV networks, and they carried only 15 minutes of news per day, plus the local station had 15 minutes at 11pm. We had the local newspaper, which was rabidly democrat, and weekly newsmagazines, but that was it. So what we knew came solely from strongly pro-democrat sources, and they made the Kennedy family into nearly holy figures. That began to change only when JFK's snotty little brother declared war on the south. I don't remember JFK ever being hated, but Bobby sure was.
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JFK would be considered a staunch republican today. The regressives have a new myth to formulate, Barak Heussein 'Gipper' Obama.