“Rosanne Roseannadanna’s Broadcast Journalism Test: If you can pass this test then you too could be a broadcast journalist. 1. Take a match and light it. 2. Now, take the end that’s on fire and touch your pinky with it. 3. Say, “Ouch!” How did you say ouch? 1. Were you loud? 2. Did you enunciate? 3. Did you smile? 4. Did you say it with credibility? 5. Could you say it sitting behind a desk? 6. Could you say it with a weatherperson standing behind you? 7. Could you say it at 6:00 and again at 11:00?” From Roseanne Roseannadanna’s “Hey, Get Back to Work!” Book

The great Ted Sorensen (JFK’s speech writer/alter-ego) at JFK Library speaking to a crowd about his new book, said it was no accident that Ted Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama at American University, site of JFK’s famous peace speech. He said neither he nor JFK were ever more themselves than in that moment and speech. He is now partially blind from a stroke and thrilled to have revived hope. He said: “‘I MAY not be able to see you but I have more vision than the president of the United States.” Over 1,000 people gathered to hear JFK’s speechwriter discuss his new book, “Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History.” Those who expected a satisfying draught of the old Kennedy mystique were not disappointed. In the conclusion to his book, Sorensen writes, “Today’s sorry political leadership, so different from JFK’s, spurred me on as I wrote, rekindling my memory and reinvigorating my conscience.” Sorensen draws credit as Kennedy’s soaring wordsmith. But perhaps that vigorous conscience was more to the point than rhetorical flair. Coming of age during the unquestioned World War II, the young Nebraskan took for granted that he would serve in the army, but the war ended when he was 17. The next year, registering for the draft, Sorensen applied for noncombatant service as a conscientious objector. He would serve his country in the military, as a medic perhaps, but, he explained to the draft board, “I could kill no man … I am what is called a pacifist.” Sorensen’s application for conscientious objector status would be used against Kennedy, would feature in Sorensen’s secret FBI file, and, eventually, would destroy his chances of becoming Jimmy Carter’s CIA director in 1976. An underappreciated fact of history is that Kennedy, remembered as the paradigmatic cold warrior, so intimately depended on a man who boldly renounced any glorification of belligerence. No surprise, then, that the most important Kennedy-Sorensen collaboration is equally unappreciated - the resounding declaration of peace that Kennedy delivered as a commencement address at American University 45 years ago next week. After staring into the abyss of nuclear war over Berlin and Cuba, Kennedy chose that June as the “time and place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and truth is too rarely perceived - yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace.” That speech went beyond the reviled Neville Chamberlain (“peace for our time”) by calling for “not merely peace in our time, but peace for all time.” Instead of aiming, with Woodrow Wilson, to “make the world safe for democracy,” the speech proposed to “make the world safe for diversity,” a step back from triumphalist claims made for American democracy during the Cold War. Most momentously, the speech broke with the Cold War judgmentalism that always blamed the attitudes of the other side, proposing instead “that we must examine our own attitudes - as individuals and as a nation - for our attitude is as essential as theirs” in causing conflict. The speech rejected Cold War demonizing, for “no government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue.” Here was an American president proclaiming the need for self-criticism, and affirming the possible goodness of the enemy. In calling for new structures of international law and negotiations toward disarmament, and in declaring a moratorium on atmospheric nuclear testing, the American University speech marked the end of JFK’s rhetoric of toughness. “For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.” The speech was heard loud and clear in the Soviet Union. Little more than a month later, the Partial Test Ban Treaty was agreed to, the beginning of the arms control regime that saved the world - what Kennedy called a shaft of light cutting into the darkness. Ted Sorenson was never more himself than in the work he did for the American University speech. Neither, he believes, was Kennedy. The journey of the war-hero president and the pacifist he trusted was a progression this nation desperately needs to resume. No accident that it was at American University in January that Senator Edward Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama. “A new leader and a new era are on the way,” Sorensen concludes in his book, and I will continue to fight, to write, and to hope.” ———————— I feel just as Ted Sorensen says….I have worked incredibly hard for 7 years at a cost of hundreds of thousand of dollars to me….to fight, and write, and tonight for the first time in those 7 years, I have real hope and feel that my efforts were not in vain. Bless JFK, RFK, Teddy Kennedy, Ted Sorensen and Barack Obama….Those band of brothers…the coruscatingly brilliant and sane. We are breaking out the champagne….this is one of the happiest nights of the last 7 years. JFK—still with a 84% approval rating around the globe—at American University. Senator Obama will be a president like JFK and FDR. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf4eQhrHbKA&feature=related

Mr. Green, seriously, if you are a Democrat and you supported Senator Clinton and all she stood for - considering the platforms of both Clinton and Obama are similar - how can you in good conscience vote Republican? How on earth does that honor what Senator Clinton believes in? Do we not all agree that after this administration, we NEED a Democratic administration? I cannot believe Mrs. Clinton would want you to nor would she encourage you to vote for Senator McCain.