Nobel Peace Prize for Jimmy Carter

(But congratulations anyway.)

didn't he beat stage 3 brain cancer or something like that?

brb searching for the wormhole to the parallel universe where he runs and wins a second term next year

Compared to George Freaking Herbert Walker Bush being the longest-lived president, I'll take Jimmy Earl Malaise Carter every day of the week. But, because there is no Just God behind this kind of stuff, in a couple of decades it could be someone even more hated than Trump is.

Carter is a bad retail politician but he is by no means stupid or unwilling to kill you. I think anger keeps him alive, I mean real biblical anger, which is a rare thing. https://t.co/e8g7b1rmGu

— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) October 1, 2019

I'd say faux Nixon is really overreaching on that one. I'm pretty sure faux Nixon has never spent one minute in the same room as Carter and has no better insight into him than my Aunt Fanny.

if you think Carter didn't have a killer political instinct, research his 1970 campaign for governor

There are five assertions in that tweet. I don't quarrel with that particular one since his public record upholds it. The last two are just Wile E. Coyote running past the edge of the cliff.

new biography out

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/18/jonathan-alter-jimmy-carter-donald-trump-reagan-bush-clinton-obama

Question that has interested me for a long time: when did pop/rock & roll musicians cross over into the world of celebrity and power (you can add money, too, but some had already made that leap before they made the other). Specific oddity that got me interested: none of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, or Bob Dylan were at Truman Capote's famous party in 1966. It's like there's a line there, and by the late '70s that line had been obliterated.

I'd never thought about it, but Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President makes it clear that his presidency was key to that transformation. (Saw it in a theatre tonight; it should play on CNN soon.) Dylan, for one, talks about his first invite to the White House, and how--as Carter quoted his songs back to him--he realized this was the first time his work had crossed that barrier.

I wouldn't say it's a great film, and--understandably--it deifies Carter, but lots of amazing footage (Dizzy Gillespie inviting Carter up to sing "Salt Peanuts") and a good time capsule of those years. Carter's inauguration--the ceremony, then the party later--is especially striking in view of present circumstances.

Nothing to do with Carter, but I think of the shift of rock stars into celebrities being marked or heralded by some of the giant tours a little earlier: Rolling Stones in '72, Dylan/Band and also CSNY in '74. Maybe Alice Cooper fits in there somewhere too. Descriptions you read of these shows often mention movie stars and other personalities hanging around backstage or after the show, which as you say probably wasn't quite the case five or ten years earlier.

There was that strange time in rock between '74 and '77 where a lot of musicians embraced a putative sophistication that looks and feels now like an old issue of Cosmopolitan.

Definitely the '72 Stones tour--was going to mention that. There are shots in Cocksucker Blues of Capote (and maybe Warhol) milling about backstage. In the Carter film, Jerry Brown's campaign--enlisting the Eagles and, of course, Linda Ronstadt--also had a hand in this.

One annoying thing about the Carter film: along with Dicky Betts and Willie Nelson and Niles Rodgers and Trisha Yearwood and lots of people that make sense, there's five minutes of Bono. (Who might make sense too, but it's Bono.)

I'd say the Beatles receiving MBEs in '65 was a step in this process, and then the Stones hanging out with and being shot by royal photographer Cecil Beaton in '67 was another, plus Jagger being good friends (at least) with Princess Margaret from '67 or so.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/howard-kaylan-storms-the-white-house-in-shell-shocked-my-life-with-the-turtles-exclusive-book-excerpt-179284/

Kennedys/Rat Pack is the beginning of this.

Beats Thatcher/Tarby/Cilla Black any day.

I was thinking more specifically of the rock and roll end of it, but for sure, Kennedy/Rat Pack clears the way for that. I'd say the bookends are Warhol and Dylan's orbits intersecting in '66 and Studio 54 a decade-plus later. Rod Stewart's great line from "You Were It Well" in 1972--"Madame Onassis got nothin' on you"--he's still like a kid there with his nose pressed against the window, pining for an invite into that world; five or six years later, he is that world.

(I always want to issue a personal apology when I hijack someone's thread. Sorry, Jimmy Carter--congratulations on your Nobel Peace Prize.)

Entering hospice care apparently.

https://www.cartercenter.org/news/pr/2023/statement-on-president-carters-health.html

Sad news.

The source here is a spook (is that ok to say?) but it was an interesting context on Carter’s continuing historic role after leaving the White House.

Thread on Jimmy Carter and 1994 North Korea nuclear crisis.
In August, 1994, I was one of a small team of intelligence officers asked to brief the former President prior to his mission to Pyongyang. Carter had essentially volunteered for the task…much to Clinton’s consternation.

— Frank Jannuzi ☮️ (@FrankJannuzi) February 19, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/us/politics/jimmy-carter-october-surprise-iran-hostages.html

happy 99th

Rosalynn Carter dead.

RIP

He made it to 100! I just hope Nov 5 doesn't spoil the party

TIL John Adams held the record for longest lived president for 201 years, but now he's only #5.

Happy birthday Jimmy! Will forever tell the story of my 8yo neighbour who wrote to him in 1976 with advice for dealing with bullies, and wound up getting an invite to Carter’s inauguration as a thank-you.

(LOL, of course there’s a longer version of this story up top)

That's a lovely story, did it aggravate the bullying though?

I say that cause of the time a girl from my school appeared on on Blue Peter, and the following day was bullied so mercilessly that she'd broken down by lunchtime and had to go home, and they called a special assembly to say what horrible shits we were*

Kids eh

* I wasn't personally involved, but probably shared to some extent the feeling that anyone who'd been on telly was probably well up themselves and could do with being taken down a peg

10 years younger and he could have been a credible candidate for President again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mje6haiutXk

Everyone was thrilled for this nice neighbour kid because his parents were hippies with not much money, and a local company stumped up the cash for the family’s flights and accommodation in DC.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PsiLI36GE0

Political charisma, in action, is spooky. Especially when someone is really good at it. I’ve only seen Bill Clinton in an audience, but everyone says how he can speak to a crowd one-on-one personally. It’s a weird power to experience in person. I was touring the Capitol in 1986 and just wandering around in the crowd and suddenly I heard the Kennedy Voice - I turned to look and HFS it was Ted - still kinda young looking and a potential presidential contender. Somehow earning a celebrity level similar to a pop star but without the pop culture. I was seven years old the one time I met Nixon but I remember those awkward few seconds more than I remember third grade.

In the mid-90s I worked on the west side of Los Angeles and I often had lunch at the Apple Pan on Pico. Across the street was the Westside Pavilion’s Barnes & Noble - the one with the giant panoramic windows facing the street. One summer day I was walking down Pico from where I parked the car - through the windows I could see a huge crowd inside B&N and a solitary figure at a desk right at the corner of the store. I walked to the corner window, put my hands up, peeked in, and former President Jimmy Carter turned around, faced me, and turned on That Smile to full wattage. I can still picture it now writing this. Even in person and through a window that charisma is even more full-on than how someone like Paul Conrad or Jack Davis could capture it.

Lieutenant James Earl Carter, USN was a direct hire of Admiral Rickover and certainly a follower of Rickover’s doctrine regarding the use of atomic power and atomic weaponry. When Carter became president, one of his early missions was getting the Joint Chiefs, NORAD, and SAC, together and gaming out simulated nuclear exchanges. Getting the rust out of the system and arguably getting the US closer to actually acting on its change in nuclear policy to “launch on warning.” A year or so later, the Carter Doctrine over the Middle East was declared.

That’s all I got. Perhaps the rabbits were right all along.

Great post, ET.

The father of someone from college was given an ambassadorship by Bill Clinton and my friend went to the dinner. He said that he’d never seen anything like the way every woman there just went 🫠 when he worked the room.

My best friend met him twice when she worked for NSF; the second time, he remembered her name and the first meeting, which impressed her. Apparently that is unusual but BC is said to have a photographic memory.

Dunno about that, he seemed a little hazy on some of the specifics regarding Monica Lewinsky!

Hahahaha he probably had to use his photographic memory to keep track of all the lies!

the only even semi-big name politician i've ever met was Nithya Raman, who struck me as just really thoughtful and serious and intelligent and almost unassuming, but with a clear "it" factor.

I met Arlen Spector, who didn't strike like that.

strike me

I met the late great Senator Paul Simon (he of the bow-tie and abortive ‘88 primary run). He was friends with my mom’s parents. He was a nice man but did not have “it”.

My boss, an unsentimental man, has never stopped talking about how much Sen. Simon impressed him when they met 35 years ago or something.

I voted for Paul Simon! My first primary vote after turning 18
Doesn't seem like my vote helped that muchy

I briefly met Gov. Jim 'Guy' Tucker at the Little Rock governor's mansion - he directly followed Clinton after he went to Washington

He was very affable and gave us directions to K-Mart... but he was corrupt and a drunk, pretty typical Southern Dem Governor back then

Well, damn

RIP

Most conservative Dem president since Grover Cleveland?

RIP