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*THE BATTLE of Little Bighorn is also known as "Custer's last stand". On 25 June 1876, a regiment of the US seventh cavalry led by Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer (1839-1876) was destroyed by a strong force of Sioux and Northern Cheyenne warriors, led by Big Chief Sitting Bull. Custer's regiment formed the advance guard of a force under General Alfred Howe Terry. After Custer's scouts located the Sioux massing on the Little Bighorn River on what is now Montana, USA, Custer disregarded orders to rejoin Terry and prepared to attack at once. It's safe to conclude that he was a vain and impulsive glory-seeker out to make his name by defeating a large force of Indians in a famous engagement. He succeeded in becoming famous at least. Unaware that he was greatly outnumbered, Custer formed his troops into a frontal-assault force and two flanking columns. The Sioux separated the centre column from the flanking divisions, then surrounded and killed Custer and all his 264 troopers. Because he went down fighting bravely, Custer is hailed as a great American hero. In military manuals, his tactics on that day have become a classic lesson in how NOT to do it.
In the 2004 movie, "The Last Samurai", Tom Cruise is portrayed as a former member of the 7th cavalry. As a hired mercenary, he journeys to Japan in 1877 to train Japanese troops in modern warfare, and eventually (and somewhat painfully) learns the ways of honour and tradition of the Samurai warriors that capture him. (Shades of Kevin Costner in "Dances with Wolves"). Cruise joins the proud and fierce Samurai and fights for them in a brave but losing battle against the Emperor's troops plus American military advisors now armed with howitzers and repeating rifles. Amazingly, he somehow survives a hail of Gattling gun bullets which kill all his comrades. I thought all Custer's men were killed alongside him at Bighorn also. How Cruise survived that engagement is never explained. But then, Tom Cruise never dies in his films, doe he? Hopelessly miscast is Billy Connolly as an Irish sergeant. The 'Big Yin' as an Irishman? Yes, it's almost as bad as the odd occasions when Bob Hoskins plays an American. Remember Dick Van Dyke as a cheery 'cockney' in 'Mary Poppins'? Same thing.
*THE GIFTED American author Joe McGinniss strips bare the myth of the Kennedy dynasty in 'The Last Brother', a searing biography of Edward Kennedy. Skillfully crafted by Ambassador Joe Kennedy (senior), who amassed his illegal fortune during the Prohibition years, the fable of the Kennedy family was a wonderful fairy tale. Like the famous English public school motto, the wealthy and photogenic Kennedys epitomised "effortless superiority". And when Jack (John Fitzgerald) Kennedy was elected President in November 1960, he launched an age of the "New Camelot" when it seemed that everything was achievable by this golden family from Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.
The truth behind the myth is less palatable. Joe Kennedy (Junior) died needlessly in August 1944 trying to bomb V-1 launching sites in France. Jack emerged from the PT-109 incident in 1943 as a hero, when the facts suggest otherwise. He was at the helm of his motor-torpedo boat off the Solomon Islands in the Pacific when a Japanese destroyer rammed his craft.
"During all of world War 11", writes McGinniss, "Jack Kennedy's was the only PT boat sunk as the result of being rammed by an enemy ship." An armed speedboat with three powerful engines could only be hit by a much slower vessel if the PT crew was asleep at the switch. Two of JFK's 13-man crew died instantly, and the others survived by clinging to wreckage.
Eventually, towing a wounded crewmember behind him, Jack led the others on a four-mile swim to the safety of a small island, from which they were rescued three days later. With his money and contacts in the American press, Joe Kennedy senior seized the moment, and saw to it that Jack, instead of facing court martial, was written up as a brave war hero. He alone realised that the future political capital would be priceless. And thus it was that John Fitzgerald Kennedy, commander of PT-109, went into American legend even before his political career began.
Joe senior also arranged for Jack to "write" a best selling book before his first presidential race. Senator JFK was duly awarded a Pulitzer Prize for "Profiles in Courage" (1956), a work actually ghost written by researcher Jules Davids and then polished by Ted Sorensen, later an excellent speechwriter for the Kennedy election campaign and administration of 1961-63. Jack merely read the proof pages prior to publication in order to familiarise himself with "his" work.
McGinniss reveals that the only genuine marriage among the family at that time was between Bobby and Ethel. Joe Senior, JFK and Teddy were all locked into loveless charades, which were all about political expediency. Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy was little more than a beautiful trophy wife for a politician on the fast track to the presidency. And even though he was a sick man most of his life, Jack's promiscuity was legendary. On the day after his inauguration in January 1961, he celebrated by having sex with three women, none of them his wife. "He was known as 'Jack The Zipper'", says British politician Tony Benn. "His exploits make Bill Clinton look like a fumbling schoolboy".
Teddy's political career was forever stalled in July 1969 when he drunkenly drove his car off Chappaquiddick Bridge on Martha's Vineyard and left a Kennedy aide, Mary Jo Kopechne, to drown inside the vehicle. They had been in a thinly disguised orgy in a cottage on the island. Family lawyers saw to it that Ms Kopechne was buried without an autopsy and bought the silence of her parents with cash. Just as when Teddy was expelled from Harvard in 1951 for cheating in his Spanish examination, dad had stepped in and 'fixed' the career flaw by putting Teddy into short-term military service.
McGinniss also offers a plausible motive for the two Kennedy assassinations. They were Mafia hits, he claims. Joe Kennedy (senior) had used his mob connections from the 1920-30's to forge a Faustian pact: Mafia help in securing vital votes in Chicago and New York during the 1960 presidential race in return for a promise that JFK would authorise an invasion of Cuba. The gangsters wanted to reclaim their casinos in Havana that Fidel Castro had seized in 1959. Cuba under General Fulgencio Batista had been a gold mine for the Cosa Nostra during the 1940-50's; bringing in billions of dollars, and American gangsters were virtually bankrolling Batista's corrupt regime. Kennedy duly won the 1960 election from Richard Nixon, but both he and Bobby, awarded the post of attorney general, reneged on the deal. (Joe senior suffered a bad stroke in 1961, and no longer had much influence over his sons). JFK pulled the rug out from under Cuban exiles who made a disastrous attack on the island in April 1961, known as the "Bay of Pigs" invasion. At the last minute, he withdrew vital air cover for the CIA-led operation. Bobby appalled Joe senior by waging a ruthless war on organised crime and the Mob-controlled Teamsters' Union led by Jimmy Hoffa. He harassed Hoffa mercilessly, and formed a mutual hatred with J Edgar Hoover (1895-1972) a despotic director of the FBI for 48 years. Hoover also had information on the Kennedys that enabled him to blackmail them.
(Hoover's extensive files included explosive evidence that the president shared a mistress named Judith Campbell with Chicago mobster Sam Giancana). Crime bosses were enraged that the Kennedy clan had not kept its' promise, and so both brothers were, in due time, "taken care of'". Jack was killed in Dallas in November 1963 and Bobby was gunned down in Los Angeles in June 1968 just after he had won the California Democratic primary for the upcoming election, which was won in a landslide by Nixon. During his tenure as attorney general, Bobby particularly had earned the bitter hatred of many Mafia bosses, including Carlos Marcello, who was named in a 1979 House Select Committee's report as being involved in a conspiracy to assassinate JFK in Dallas.
To his credit, Edward (Teddy) Moore Kennedy was the first of the clan to really champion civil rights, and in spite of his youthful indiscretions, has courageously stuck to his democratic ideals throughout a long career in American politics. Now 72 years old, he is a respected senior member of the Senate.
Perhaps most shabby of all is the revelation that Joe senior had his eldest daughter, Rosemary, lobotomised and hidden away in a care home when he realised that she was incurably retarded. The first "royal family" in American history could not tolerate a mental case, perhaps because Joe had openly admired Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime during his tenure as American ambassador in Britain during the 1930-40's. To Joe Kennedy senior, patriarch and skilled mythmaker, a Kennedy could not be anything but perfect. ('The Last Brother', by Joe McGinniss, Pocket Star Books, 1993).
*IN THE heyday of sailing ships, all war vessels and many freighters carried iron cannons. These guns fired round iron balls, which could punch right through the hull of any wooden ship. It was necessary to keep a good supply of balls near every cannon, but seamen had to find a way to prevent them from rolling about the decks. The best storage method devised was a square pyramid with one ball on top, resting on four, resting on nine, which rested on sixteen. Thus, a supply of 30 cannon balls could be stacked in a small area next to each cannon. There was only one problem: how to prevent the bottom layer from sliding or rolling from under the others. The ingenious solution was called a "monkey" - a metal plate with 16 round indentations. But, if the plate was made of iron, the iron balls would quickly rust to it. The solution to the rusting problem was to make "brass monkeys". Few landlubbers realise that brass contracts much more and much faster than iron when chilled. Consequently, when the temperature dropped too far, the brass indentations would shrink so much that the iron cannon balls would slide right off the monkey. Conversely, iron monkeys with iron cannon balls rusted to them were useless if the vessel came under fire. Thus we have the famous phrase, "Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey". And all this time you thought that was an improper expression, didn't you?
*THE 2004 movie, "Torque" is only for mentally retarded motorcycle freaks. There is much creaking leather and macho posturing, plus some impossible motorcycle stunts wrapped in a wafer thin plot. The film stars rapper Ice Cube as a strutting egocentric biker from Inglewood, California. Seems to me that he would have been more palatable slowly dissolving in a glass of Johnnie Walker with soda.
*ACCORDING TO the Guinness Book of Records, the world record for most press-ups in one year is held by Paddy Doyle of Birmingham at 1,500,230 press-ups between 21 October 1988 and 21 October 1989. To beat the previous world record of 1,250,850, Mr Doyle had to average 4,000 press-ups every night for one year! Do any of you local fitness freaks feel like challenging that?
*WHY ARE rap music lyrics so boring? Because there are only so many words that you can rhyme with "bitch", honey child!
*FOR A realistic view of the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, I recommend "Thirteen Days", available on CVD and DVD. Directed by Roger Donaldson and starring Kevin Costner as Kevin O'Donnell (special assistance to the president) it is a vivid and gripping portrayal of the tense game of bluff, bluster and political Russian roulette played out between President Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev. Steven Culp plays attorney general Robert Kennedy, but the major performance is from Bruce Greenwood as JFK. In an eerie work of near genius, Greenwood's looks, voice and mannerisms are totally believable as the charismatic American president himself. Watch it if you ever get a chance.
*TV QUOTE: "Isn't it amazing? A 40-year-old man dates a girl of twenty, and he's a 'dirty old man'; but when a 40-year-old woman dates a young man of twenty, she's just 'Getting her groove back'". (Ted Danson as 'Doctor Becker').
*THE AGEING process: First, you forget names. Then you forget faces. Then you forget to do your flies up. Then you forget to undo them. I'm afraid that it is true - the young grow old. And the old grow cold.
*QUOTES: "What is the point of tip-toeing through life, simply in order to make it safely to death?" (Movie star and hell-raiser Oliver Reed, 1938-1999).
*DURING THE summer of 1966 the number one hit song 'The sun ain't gonna shine anymore' (Gaudio/Crewe) by the Walker Brothers was being played everywhere in London. Fronting a Baroque, haunting wall of sound was the soaring angst-ridden baritone voice of Noel Scott Engel, better known as 'Scott Walker'. The song was playing on the jukebox at 'The Blind Beggar' in Bethnal Green, East London when Ronnie Kray strolled into the public house, drew a Mauser pistol and shot gangland rival George Cornell between the eyes. "The sun wasn't gonna shine for him anymore", said Ronnie laconically as he recalled the murder years later.

davidcox@loxinfo.co.th

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