JFK & Civil Rights

Obama gave a shout-out this morning during his education speech to John F. Kennedy for his civil rights work. It struck Ezra as "a little weird to start crediting Kennedy with civil rights. Good speech, but the guy who "handled" that was undoubtedly Johnson." I agree.

I've been reading Taylor Branch's excellent book Pillar of Fire, a history of the civil rights movement, and have been disappointed in JFK's lack of serious commitment to that struggle. Johnson seems to always get shafted, even though the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts were both passed during his administration.

I twittered, "JFK had something to do with Civil Rights? That's news," in response to Obama's speech.

I was quickly sent a rather condescending reply from a reader:

Here's your newsflash, kid: June 6, 1963, Washington, DC. In a nationally televised address, President John F. Kennedy today urged the nation to take action toward guaranteeing equal treatment of every American regardless of race. Kennedy soon proposed legislation to Congress to outlaw public school segregation and discrimination in voting rights, public accommodations, federally assisted programs, and more. Following his assassination several months later, Kennedy's proposal was realized in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed segregation in businesses such as theaters, restaurants, and hotels and banned discriminatory practices in employment and ended segregation in public places such as swimming pools, libraries, and public schools.

Another reader came to my defense:

Candidate JFK promised to end discrimination in federal housing "with the stroke of a pen" when he became President and then nothing came of it for 3 years. The address that your reader is talking about, which was on June 11, was only given after George Wallace stole the spotlight by standing in the doorway of U of Alabama. JFK, in terms of legislation or executive action, did no more for civil rights than Eisenhower and did less than FDR, Truman, LBJ and Nixon.

Now, with all that said, he inspired a generation to get involved with the struggle and African Americans identified with him, so you can't judge on legislative achievement alone. And, who knows what would have happened had he not been assassinated? But, the sad fact is that the 1964 and 1965 acts as we know them would have never NEVER been passed if he had lived. LBJ's ties with the Southern Democrats in Senate and the cloak of JFK's legacy got those 2 acts passed.

I'd have to agree with the second reader- JFK, although inspirational, wasn't an entirely dedicated champion of civil rights.

It seems that many older people, who were young during JFK's era, have a tendency to mythologize JFK's policies. The same people tend to do the same with Bill Clinton, a lackluster President. We should always respect the history and look beyond the mythology.

President's Day

Lincoln is my favorite U.S. President. I'm a total cliche.

Last year when I read that Obama's favorite book was Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals, I read it right away. I was the only person reading it on last summer's Rosie Family Cruise. It's a terrific book, detailing Lincoln's life and focusing on his experiences with his cabinet.

The book inspired me so much on the whole Team of Rivals idea, that I argued on Queerty that Obama should choose Clinton as his VP. Thankfully he didn't listen to me, because I'm quite a fan of Joe Biden.

I'm excited for The History Channel's Stealing Lincolns Body, tonight at 9PM EST.

Today is George Washington's Birthday. I've read David McCullough's 1776, but not a full biography on Washington - so I just ordered His Excellency by Joseph Ellis. Until that comes in, watch this three minute YouTube Video on Washington that truly made me LOL.

Singularity University

Both Google and NASA are financially backing Ray Kurzweil's new Singularity University. The nine-week program focuses on topics out of Kurzweil's best-selling books The Singularity is Near & The Age of Spiritual Machines.

The main premise of the Singularity is that the continuing rapid advance of computer technology will lead to a merger of human and computer intelligence. If this is accurate, then computer speeds will have to continue to double every year to eighteen months. Which, is at least true up to 2012, as IBM has recently announced a supercomputer 19 times faster than any previous model.

There are critics who think Kurzweil is overly optimistic, but Ian Douglas backed up Google's decision in a piece for the Telegraph yesterday:

Not so fast. The Age of Spiritual Machines, published in 1999, put some dates next to the predictions so we have something we can test. By 2009, said Kurzweil, computers will connect wirelessly (WiFi), rotational storage will be replace by electronic storage (flash memory rather than hard discs), computers that cost $1,000 would be capable of one trillion calculations per second (achieved in 2008 by an ATI Radeon graphics processor), high resolution displays range in size from a few centimetres across to the size of a book (have you looked at your mobile phone screen lately?), routine business transactions will be done between people and computers (this has been the case for some years), computers would be capable of language translation (translate.google.com is not perfect but it's a useful tool, and Altavista were doing this for years before Google muscled in) and bioengineered treatments for cancer and heart disease will be arriving.

Unless we see a real slowdown in development, I'm siding with Kurzweil and the good folks at Google.