Word: backgrounder
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Dates: during 1960-1960
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...kind of meticulous preparation that should fascinate political science classes for years to come. A screening committee of veteran Kennedy staffers, headed by Brother-in-Law Sargent Shriver and Larry O'Brien, began combing banks, foundations, campuses and corporations for the names of likely candidates and assembling background data. In some cases, very little research was needed (e.g., Arkansas Senator Bill Fulbright, who was already well known to Kennedy). In others (e.g., Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara, whom Kennedy had never met), a complete dossier was ordered. As new possibilities surfaced, the FBI, as always, provided full security checks...
...objections were serious but not fatal, and withheld Bobby's appointment till the last moment, while the public was told of other choices. Another trial balloon, Bill Fulbright as Secretary of State, was quickly shot down by Negro groups and Northern liberals who feared his tepid segregationist background. Negro Congressman William Dawson, 74, suggested as a possible Postmaster General, was never seriously considered as a candidate despite Dawson's announced refusal of the job and Kennedy's public regrets. But as a trial balloon, his consideration presumably won a smidgen of gratitude from some Negroes...
...curtain rose on a heath full of shaggy, diabolical hags hurling harsh-mouthed imprecations into the night. Their wild language was a witches' brew of medieval Bavarian dialect, laced with great lumps of Latin and Greek; in the background, no fewer than 20 different percussion instruments fired the cauldron with a tingling, thwunking cacophony. Anyone wandering into Stuttgart's Opera House last week would have quickly recognized, in both words and music, the style of Germany's most highly regarded living composer, Carl (Carmina Burana) Orff, 65. Less obviously, the dark, demonic and shatteringly effective scene...
CLEA, by Lawrence Durrell. Last of a quartet of novels in which Durrell, one of the few real English stylists alive, examines the shifting nature of truth against the sultry background of old Alexandria and through the devious natures of the kind of odd cast of characters that only Durrell can assemble...
...classical symphony in middle life," says he, "and I decided I wanted to draw like the old masters. Not because I thought it would do me good, but just because I wanted to." His figures now became bold and clear, though they seemed to swim out of a background of murky mystery. In 1953 he did a painting of Washington Crossing the Delaware-"the corniest patriotic idea I could find." He left his officers and men only partly finished, scattered them across the canvas almost arbitrarily. (The painting was one of the casualties of the 1958 fire at the Museum...