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University Daily Kansan Thursday, Dec. 13, 1962
1962: Conflict and Crisis
In 1962, the United States, its feet firmly planted on a military pedestal, thumbed its nose at the expanding threat of international communism.
In South Vietnam, the nose-thumbing was subtle: covert military assistance and training by a staff of "special forces," men trained in the jungle guerrilla warfare that threatens to consume Southeast Asia.
But in the Caribbean, the show of open American force and unveiled threats was invitation to a fiery nuclear war that would have leveled the world and sent those mutations who survived back to living in caves and foraging for food under rocks.
For thousands of pregnant women in Europe and the United States, this threat of nuclear devastation may have proved too fearsome. The Sherri Finkbines and Suzanne Vandeputs of the world, perhaps to ease their fears, took the new tranquilizer, Thalidomide, and discovered they didn't have to wait for radiation to mutate their children.
And it was this threat which made 1962 a year of crisis, a year which caused rapid and calculated decisions behind the Kremlin wall and in the west wing of the White House.
Faced with overwhelming proof of a Russian offensive weapons build-up in Cuba, with growing Republican charges of a "soft" line on communism, and with prospects of serious political losses in the November elections, President John F. Kennedy pushed this nation into open conflict with the Soviet Union.
Operating in what some old-hand reporters called the "best kept secrecy since World War II," the Kennedy administration announced that Cuba had been "quarantined" and would remain so until the Soviets removed the IL-28 bombers and medium-range missiles from the island. The end result of the Cuban crisis cannot be classed as anything but a victory for the United States, and incidentally, a victory for John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
On the other side of the world, at the same time, the advances of communism were heard echoing in the valleys and canyons of the Himalayas.
India's people, nurtured for years on the teachings of Gandhi, hung up the ideological cloak of pacifism and launched a major war effort against the invading Chinese Communists who poured across the McMahon line into Indian territory.
While the Sino-Indian border war was disconcerting to the Indians, it was perhaps most disconcerting to the Chinese, who faced an unwritten and unexpected Marxian contradiction—the shipment of Russian Communist arms to India, its enemy.
With this contradiction, a few more bricks were knocked from the foundation of a united Russian-Chinese front. The Chinese, nonplussed at the apparent Russian cowardice in the Caribbean, coupled with their growing dissatisfaction with Khrushchev's proclamations of peaceful co-existence, began to openly condemn the Soviet "deviation" from Marxist-Leninist dogma.
Although the final chapter of the Russia-China gift was not written in 1962, the Western world voiced a hope that the split between the two Communist giants would destroy their unification.
Repercussions of conflict in Berlin, continued political upheaval in South America, struggle and unrest in Africa, and constant tension in every quarter of the globe, provided 1962 with a portrait of a world fraught with danger and crisis.
The year posed more questions than it answered. Was the Russian retreat from Cuba a sign that peaceful co-existence is, indeed, possible? Did the growing rift between China and Russia offer the possibility that Russia and the West may become allies against a Chinese foe?
The answers to these questions may come today or tomorrow, or in a decade. But it will serve us well to remember the year 1962, the year that offered them up.
—Zeke Wigglesworth and Arthur C. Miller
Kennedy Chosen Man of the Year
By Bob Hoyt
John F. Kennedy, the man behind the New Frontier, was the 1962 Man of the Year.
President Kennedy, stalker of steel giants, tugger of Cuban whiskers and meeter of Russian threats, proved himself to be a national leader with courage and conviction—willing to negotiate with those who oppose him and equally willing to use the power of his office against opposition when he deems the opposition to be a detriment to the best national interests.
Charles de Gaulle, president of France, won second place for his maintenance of political power in the unstable atmosphere of French politics, for his persistent efforts to establish Algerian independence, and for his drive to place France back among the great powers of the world.
NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV, Soviet premier, came in third as a world leader who has pushed his country ahead as far as obvious space achievements are concerned—despite internal troubles with agriculture and dissension between Russian and Chinese interpretations of the Communist line.
Mao Tse-tung, chairman of the Chinese People's Republic, fourth man on the Man of the Year list, was the source of much consternation for both East and West. Determined to hoe his own Communist row, Mao was beset by agricultural troubles and he suffered the indignity of being ignored by most of the West. Yet he continued to build his country into more than a gong of sound and fury, irking the Russians, worrying the Free World, and forcing the Indians out of the neutralist camp.
Pope John XXIII, in fifth place, was recognized for his contributions to harmony between Catholics and Protestants and for his liberal approach to the tenets of the Catholic church.
Fidel Castro, sixth, became a prime example of a revolutionary fanatie, a megalomania cut down from a futile bid for world power and revealed as a garden-variety Communist pawn.
U Thant was another runner-up. The 53-year-old Burmese diplomat will head the United Nations as its Secretary General through the next four years—years which may prove to be the most crucial in world history.
ROSS BARNETT, governor of Mississippi, was on the list as a man who was dragged into the 20th century, protesting all the way, after a vain attempt to perpetuate the myth of state sovereignty—meaning immunity from Supreme Court decisions regarding segregation.
Spaceman John Glenn was recognized for his pioneering three-orbit flight around the earth, as were the twin Russian cosmonauts, Adrian Nikolayev and Pavel Popovich, for their extended space flights.
Dailu Yousun
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Review of 1962
Journalism students in a class on editorial writing and research prepared the articles on these pages. The stories were ranked by the members of the class both for the attention they received in the press and for the long-range impact they may have on society.
Doctors Lead In TV Ratings
By Janice Pauls
"This is the age of anxiety. It is the age of neurosis, and people need help. Who can help people? The doctor. A doctor has something to say to people, something they want to hear."
Sam Jaffe, an actor who played the mentor on one of 1962's highest rating television shows, refers here to the production of "Ben Casey," a show which helped to set the American TV stage on the road to medical entertainment last year.
BOTH "BEN CASEY" on ABC and its top rival. Dr. Kildare on NBC, proved to be "just what the sponsors ordered to relieve the mild gastric upset brought on by overindulgence in TVs more familiar fantasies."
While these two shows were climbing up the rating charts, NBC assisted the trend by selling "Medic" reruns to 12 stations. This show, which failed in 1956 after two years on the network, was almost straight documentary. Last year the producers tried the medical angle again with more story content and a few continuing characters. The producer of "Dr. Kildare" also attempted a psychiatric series, "The Eleventh Hour."
Next to the popularity of the "Ben Carey" show, opinion nods indicated a general acceptance of Howard K. Smith, the outspoken correspondent signed by CBS. Since Smith was allowed complete freedom on the air and was not subject to censorship he rarely said anything which pleased the public. He seemed to thrive on controversy, and he got plenty of it when he sponsored "The Political Obituary of Richard M. Nixon," featuring Alger Hiss.
WALTER CRONKITE, who won recognition for his news coverage of the John Glenn flight, moved up in the journalistic field last year by receiving the appointment to become managing editor of the network's news-staff in place of Douglas Edwards. His introduction of John Glenn brought a scramble by
CBS itself stepped up its news reports to 28 in 1962, twice as many as last year.
(Continued on page 4)
Caroline, Liz, Dick Amuse Americans
By Jerry Musil
Caroline Kennedy and Macaroni, air-filled coiffures, coloring books and windur dolls, and the Liz and Dick love affair highlighted 1962 as a year when Americans read about people and spent their money on the new and dizzy.
Caroline giggled and a front page story was created; Jackie took Caroline horse-back riding on the White House grounds and another front page story became a necessity for all papers; Caroline played in the surf of an Italian beach and telephoto pictures received high priority for front page space.
"I AM AN executive, color my underwear gray flannel," said a BVD-clad gentleman in the Executive's Coloring Book. "This is my eagle. I have cut off my eagle's left wing. Now it is an all-American eagle. Of course, it flies in circles." This was the caption under the drawing of the one-winged eagle in the John Birch Society Coloring Book.
The coloring books ranged throughout the American political and business scene with a book for Congressmen, United Nations personalities, and JFK. Books describing windup dolls and their antics accompanied the coloring books into the bookstores so that Americans could laugh at themselves and their leaders.
A long-playing album which features a young man who entitles the infections of the proponent of the "New Froneceeyah" attained national popularity with surprising "vigah."
The women again received the award for the dizziest "invention" when they started "rattling" their hair and when they developed the inflated hair style aptly called the "bouffant" style.
They kept their skirts above the knees but switched to kilts of Scottish fame. And after much crying about their cramped and pinched toes in pointed-toe shoes, the fashion world heeded their cries and brought out the square-toe shoes.
AND WOMEN fell victim to the manly charms of Vince Edwards (Dr. Ben Casey) and began buying "Ben Casey" blouses, styled after a surgeon's jacket.
Americans were both shocked and thrilled by the romantic interlude of Liz and Dick in Rome during the filming of the "Cleopatra" extravaganza.
They eagerly read each new account of a midnight tryst and the early morning departure of Dick from Liz's villa, usually with shoes in hand. They dreamed of a romantic misadventure of their own, at the same time condemning the errant Miss Taylor for her lack of discretion.
Musical diversities entered the picture with the rise of folk; singing and the development of bassa nova jazz. The twist continued to reign supreme — it even found its way to the White House parties — along with the mash potato, the Uptown and the UT.
CAMFUS PRANKS generally continued in the same vein, but there were a few additions. At KU, a college prankster stole the 100-year-old bronze toad from the art museum grounds. Another funster painted "You are now leaving the American sector" on the traffic control stations at the entrances to the campus.
On a nationwide scale, college students busied themselves with elephant races and pushing hospital beds for ever-increasing distances. One group from UCLA pushed a bowling ball to Stanford. The suicide of Marilyn Monroe produced a rush to re-issue some of her sexiest films in an effort to squeeze even more profits from her films because of the tragic event.
Instead of a cranberry scare in 1962, Americans had to face the baby-deforming drug thalidomide. It resulted in a skepticism over mass production drugs, and Congress parsed a long-overdue law strengthening federal supervision. Pregnant women worried. Some sought legalized abortions while others decided to live with their deformed child and to make the most of a tragic situation.
During the Cuban crisis, some people staged "end-of-the-world parties." This gave them a chance to have two "blasts" left in their lives.
PROGRESS COULD be seen on the television screen, however, in the transition from the 19th century western — both adult and children — to the shining, sterile operating rooms of Fen Casey and Dr. Kildare.
Sam Benedict and The Defenders competed with Perry Macon for the "Most Cases Won Without a Loss" award. Westerns were still around, but they lost much of their popularity.
War was glamorized by two competing TV shows where heroes received only flesh wounds, medals and the love of beautiful partisan-unit heroines. Family situation comedies — from an American-British exchange to a strictly male household aboard an old houseboat — abounded on all three networks.