Cartoon du Jour

Jeff Danziger/New York Times News Syndicate

Why Third World Is New First World

COUGH, COUGH.

Why Men Are A Bunch Of Lazy F*cks

The reason there aren't male birth control pills, let alone other forms of male contraception other than condoms is pretty simple: Pharmaceutical companies don't think guys will use them.

Further food for thought here.

Photograph from iStockphoto SP

She Wrote The Soundtrack Of My Youth

Like Dan Leo, I was affected in a way by Ellie Greenwich's death this week that I didn't feel with other singer-songwriters who have died recently, most conspicuously Michael Jackson.

It wasn't hard to figure out why: Greenwich wrote much of the soundtrack of my youth.

Besides penning gorgeous songs with simple but deep sentiments and unforgettable melodies, she had some terrific collaborators and interpreters. And so we're going to be featuring lyrics from the Greenwich songbook in coming weeks.

After all, it's my blog and I'll cry if I want to.

'And Always Be Right By His Side'

AND THEN HE KISSED ME
By Phil Spector, Ellie Greenwich & Jeff Barry

Well, he walked up to me and he asked me if I wanted to dance.
He looked kinda nice and so I said I might take a chance.
When he danced he held me tight
and when he walked me home that night
all the stars were shining bright
and then he kissed me.
Each time I saw him I couldn't wait to see him again.
I wanted to let him know that he was more than a friend.
I didn't know just what to do
so I whispered I love you
and he said that he loved me too
and then he kissed me.
He kissed me in a way that I've never been kissed before,
he kissed me in a way that I wanna be kissed forever more.
I knew that he was mine so I gave him all the love that I had
and one day he took me home to meet his mom and his dad.
Then he asked me to be his bride
and always be right by his side.
I felt so happy I almost cried
and then he kissed me.
Then he asked me to be his bride
and always be right by his side.
I felt so happy I almost cried
and then he kissed me.
And then he kissed me.
And then he kissed me.

Monitor-Merrimack Showdown Settled Nothing, But Changed Navies Forever

THE BATTLE OF HAMPTON ROADS:

(From left) USS Minnesota, USS Monitor and CSS Merrimack

The American Civil War is not remembered for its naval engagements, and indeed there were very few of importance. The conspicuous exception was the Battle of Hampton Roads, which is better known as the clash between the revolutionary ironclads USS Monitor and CSS Merrimack.

By the time the smoke had cleared on those fateful days in March 1862, the face of naval warfare had been changed forever, drawing to an abrupt close the era of the wooden-hulled ship as the great naval powers, of which the U.S. was not one, hastened to produce sleek iron-hulled ships with mounted heavy guns.

* * * * *

On April 19, 1861, in one of Abraham Lincoln's first acts as president, he proclaimed a blockade of all ports of the seceded Southern states to cut them off from the international trade they needed to survive.

Although Captain Charles McCauley had orders from Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles to remove all Union ships from the Norfolk Navy Yard to Northern ports, he initially refused to act and then scuttled nine ships and burned parts of the yard. However, the screw frigate Merrimack burned only to the waterline, her engines remaining more or less intact.

The destruction of the yard was mostly ineffective and the Confederacy gained the South's largest shipyard and control of the forts and batteries at the junction of the Elizabeth and James rivers.

* * * * *

Among the earliest enthusiasts of armored warships was Confederate Secretary of the Navy Stephen R. Mallory, who understood that the South could never match the highly industrialized North in numbers of ships, but could try to build better ones.

But there was no factory in the South that could quickly build the engines for ironclads, so it was suggested that engines from the Merrimack be salvaged for a revolutionary new ship that was christened the CSS Virginia and launched in February 1862. (Union sources continued to call the Virginia the Merrimack, and the name has pretty stuck.)

The Union, meanwhile, was slower on the uptake.

Welles did not get around to asking Congress for permission to use armored ships until August 1861, which resulted in the establishment of a so-called Ironclad Board that considered 17 different designs and chose three. The first to be completed was the USS Monitor, designed and built by Swedish engineer and inventor John Ericsson at his shipyard on the East River in Brooklyn.

Whereas the Merrimack was of a more conventional design and had an array of 10 guns of varying calibers and a ram fitted to her prow, it was large, unwieldy and slow.

The smaller and faster Monitor incorporated only two large-caliber guns mounted on a cylindrical turret covered with iron that rotated on a central spindle driven by a steam engine. There was, however, a major design flaw: The guns could not fire directly forward because of a small pilot house in front of the turret.

In an extraordinary feat of shipbuilding, the Monitor was actually completed a few days before the Merrimack, although the Confederate ship was activated first.

* * * * *

The Battle of Hampton Roads commenced on the morning of March 8 when the Merrimack steamed into the roads under the command of Flag Officer Franklin Buchanan and headed directly for the Union squadron. It opened fire on the Cumberland, which along with the Congress returned fire, but the rounds bounced off the Merrimack's iron plates.

The Merrimack then rammed and sunk the Cumberland, but not before nearly sinking herself when her ram got stuck in the enemy ship's hull. The ram broke off and Buchanan then turned his sights on the Congress, which was then grounded in shallow waters on orders of its captain and surrendered.

The Merrimack was not unscathed. Shots from Union ships had riddled her smokestack, further reducing her already low speed. Two of her guns were disabled and several armor plates had been loosened.

The Monitor, which had been rushed to Hampton Roads to try to protect the Union fleet, appeared the next day. At the helm was Lieutenant Catesby ap Roger Jones, who was tasked with protecting the grounded Minnesota. Buchanan had been wounded, and Lieutenant John L. Worden commanded the Merrimack as she again steamed into the roads and headed toward the Minnesota.

Worden at first ignored the Confederate ironclad, but realized that he had to fight her and positioned the Monitor between the Merrimack and Minnesota.

Over the next several hours, the ships essentially fought to a draw. The armor of both proved to be adequate and the battle ended only when a chance shell from the Merrimack hit the Monitor's pilot house, temporarily blinding Worden. In the ensuing confusion, Jones thought the Monitor was withdrawing. With the Minnesota out of reach because of the rising tide, the Merrimack withdrew.

Both sides claimed victory, but it was the Merrimack that finally was to be vanquished.

The Monitor remained on station, while the Confederate ironclad spent a month in drydock being repaired before it ventured out again. Over several weeks of posturing, the ships unsuccessfully tried to goad each other into attacking and the Confederacy decided to move the Merrimack up the James to the vicinity of Richmond after it was determined that Norfolk was of little strategic value because the blockade had held.

Without first consulting his superiors, Confederate Major General Benjamin Huger abandoned Norfolk on May 9, leaving the Merrimack stranded because her draft was too great to permit her to pass up the river. Rather than allow her to be captured or sunk by the Union, the ship was destroyed.

The Monitor also did not survive the war. While being towed to North Carolina on Christmas Day 1862 to take part in the blockade at Beautfort, she took on water in heavy seas and had to be abandoned.

* * * * *

While the showdown had settled nothing, the Monitor became the prototype for similar ships in several navies.

Lincoln ordered many more built, including smaller river monitors that played key roles in future battles on the Mississippi and James. Britain, France and Russia embarked on crash programs in what came to be known as "Monitor-mania," and the revolving turret design was to inspire future warships, including the modern battleship.

IMAGES (From top): Welles; Mallory; Merrimack; Monitor; Map of events at Hampton Roads; Merrimack rams Cumberland, Monitor and Merrimack fight to draw.

'Especially In Need Of Divine Help'

MAJOR GENERAL GEORGE B. McCLELLAN

31st of 45 excerpts from Lincoln by David Herbert Donald:

By the summer of 1862, Lincoln felt especially in need of divine help. Everything, it seemed, was going wrong, and his hope for bringing a speedy end to the war was dashed. . . .

The lack of military success blocked Lincoln's plan to unite all the moderate elements in the country in a just, harmonious restoration of the Union. If there were any loyal elements in the Confederacy, they gave no evidence of hearing his promises speedily to restore their states to their place in the Union. In the North the growing body of antislavery opinion chafed at the President's slowness to act against slavery and complained that he was under the control of the proslavery border states. At the same time, his plan for gradual, compensated emancipation in the border states went nowhere; representatives of those states could not see why as loyal supporters of the Union they should bear the burden of emancipation, while the peculiar instititution was left intact in the Confederacy. Though Congress gave token support, in the amount of a half a million dollars, for the President's scheme to colonize the freed African-Americans outside the United States, nobody other than Lincoln himself, had much faith in this project. . . .

[O]n the day he got back from visiting [General Scott] at West Point, he ordered the consolidation of all the federal forces in northern Virginia, including Fremont's and Banks's forces as well as McDowell's, into the new Army of Virginia, and he appointed John Pope to command it. In a huff, Fremont declined to serve under Pope, whom he outranked, and went on inactive duty.

Behind Lincoln's decision was his growing belief that McClellan, for all his undoubted gifts as an organizer, would never fight a decisive battle to take Richmond. With painful anxiety, he continued to read the telegraphic dispatches from McClellan's headquarters, with their repeated excuses for not advancing and their constant complaints. The weather, wrote the general, was impossible; rains made mud bogs of the roads and repeatedly washed out all his bridges. Wryly Lincoln observed that the weather did little to restrict the movement of the Confederates, and he judged that McClellan believed, contrary to the Scriptures, that the rain fell more upon the just than the unjust. . . . Over and over, McClellan asked for -- indeed, demanded -- reinforcements and Lincoln patiently explained that all the forces at his disposal were already committed. But occasionally McClellan's demands became too importunate, and the President's temper snapped. He rejected the general's demand for 50,000 additional troops as "simply absurd."

McClellan bitterly protested "that the Gov[ernmen]t has not sustained this Army," and both he and General Randolph B. Marcy, his chief of staff, spoke ominously about the possibility of capitulation. "If I save this Army now," McClellan concluded in a message to Stanton on June 28, "I tell you plainly that I owe no thanks to you or any other persons in Washington -- you have done your best to sacrifice this army." These final sentences were so mutinous that the supervisor of the telegraph deleted them from the copies shown to the President and the Secretary of War, and they were not published until months later.

An Index To Abraham Lincoln Posts

Abraham Lincoln was the greatest American president because none faced such enormous challenges, none grew more in office and none reinvented the United States to the extent that he did. All of that and the fact that 2009 is the bicentenary of his birth is reason enough to publish posts each Sunday on the great man.

Series highlights:

'STAND BY OUR DUTY' (8/23) Lincoln's Cooper Union speech was probably his finest. Yes, greater than the Gettysburg Address. LINK

WAS HE DISHONEST ABE? (8/9) Historian-economist Thomas DiLorenzo says that scholars criticize Lincoln at their own risk, but there is plenty of bad about the man along with the good. LINK

THE TRENT AFFAIR (8/2) In 1861, Lincoln had little to do with foreign affairs. This myopia was to exacerbate a crisis early in his presidency that could have transformed the war into an international conflict. LINK

COMPLEX & IMPERFECT (7/26) Historian Edna Medford argues that we do better for Lincoln and for the nation -- and for understanding of the Civil War -- if we view him in all of his complexity. LINK

THE BOOK THAT CHANGED LINCOLN & AMERICA (7/19) Uncle Tom's Cabin shook the U.S. like an earthquake when it was published in 1852. LINK

SLAVE COLONIES (7/12) Lincoln believed that he found a way to deal with the problems caused by slavery in sending blacks back to Africa to colonize Liberia, but hee was wrong. LINK

A TRUE GENIUS (6/28) Historian Shelby Foote says that there has never been a president who functioned like Lincoln did, and despite having no executive experience, he was a miracle at it. LINK

INSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE (6/21) Historian Harold Holzer leads an intimate walk-through of the very different presidential mansion of Lincoln's time. LINK

EVEN LINCOLN NEEDED A GOOD EDITOR (6/14) Guest blogger Michael Reynolds imagines how the Gettysburg Address might have turned out had the president had a good editor. LINK

MOST HANDS-ON COMMANDER IN CHIEF (6/7) The outcome of the Civil War in all likelihood would have been different had Lincoln not cajoled, taken over for and in some cases dismissed the generals who lacked his vision and courage. LINK

A SKIMPIER RESUME WOULD BE HARD TO FIND (5/31) David Herbert Donald, the recently deceased Lincoln biographer, writes that an inexperienced chief executive can cause the country immense heartbreak, but that with time and good common sense can grow into greatness. LINK

NOW ALIEN TO THE REPUBLICAN PARTY (5/11) Pete Abel writes in a two-part guest blog that while there are a few common traits between Lincoln and today's GOP, the differences are far more substantial. PART 1, PART 2

THE ASSASSINATION (4/22, 4/29, 5/4) It is rather amazing that so little is known about basic aspects of the assassination of John F. Kennedy while there is virtually no aspect of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln a century earlier that remains a mystery. PART 1, PART 2, PART 3

THE STRANGE BUT TRUE STORY OF THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS (4/5) It took fewer than three minutes to deliver the famous speech, but it was an afterthought on the day it was given and remained so into the next century. LINK

HOW VALID THE COMPARISONS? (3/29) With the nomination and election of Barack Obama, the comparisons to Abraham Lincoln have come fast, thick and furious. But do they hold up? LINK

A PATENTLY CLEVER PRESIDENT (3/22) That Lincoln was the only president to get a U.S. patent is not surprising when you consider that he was an inveterate tinkerer and had a lifelong fascination with mechanical things. LINK

A PRESIDENTIAL SCHOLAR ON LINCOLN (3/15) A wide-ranging interview with James Hilty on Lincoln's greatness, frailties and innate conservatism. LINK

A BUMPY RIDE TO HIS REWARD (3/8) There was a controversy over a photograph taken of Lincoln's open coffin, an attempt to steal his corpse and his body was exhumed an extraordinary 17 times. LINK

WAS THE GREAT EMANCIPATOR GAY? (3/1) No revisionist history of a famous person would be complete without a book on whether they were gay, or if they were gay whether they were bisexual, or if they . . . LINK

PRESIDENTIAL POWER GRABS (2/22) The infringements by Lincoln on civil liberties arguably were greater than during any period in American history, including the last eight years. LINK

EARLY ASSASSINATION PLOT (2/15) A March 1861 assassination plot was never carried out, but Lincoln's response to it sullied a carefully cultivated image of dignified courage. LINK

OH HE OF LITTLE FAITH (2/8) Beyond Lincoln's opposition to slavery there was no aspect of him more controversial than his spiritual bona fides. LINK

THE BOHEMIAN BRIGADE COMES THROUGH (2/1) Modern journalism can trace its roots to the Civil War, which because of the telegraph and steam locomotive was the first instant-news war, something of which Lincoln was very much aware. LINK

LINCOLN ON BLACKS & SLAVERY (1/25) His metamorphosis from a frontiersman who always opposed slavery but like most white Americans felt that blacks were unequal into the Great Emancipator was as complex as the man himself. LINK

LINCOLN'S CAUTION (1/18) Guest blogger Robert Stein writes that Barack Obama can learn much from the 16th president, who perhaps even more than wisdom and moral strength needed a highly developed political sense of the possible. LINK

THE FIRST TECHNOLOGY PRESIDENT (1/11) Arriving in Washington at the dawn of the age of the telegraph, Lincoln embraced this new technology of instantaneous communication with a passion and used it not just to communicate with his generals in the field during the Civil War, but to bend them to his will. LINK

LINCOLN LINCOLN BO BINCOLN (1/4) A substantial Lincoln mythology had taken hold in the American imagination even before his assassination in 1865. This canon of broad brush strokes and tall tales gave Lincoln his historic due but overlooked or willfully ignored the myriad complexities of our greatest president. LINK

Bush Still A Chickenhawk, Always Will Be

There is a new chapter -- or should I say a new footnote -- in the annals of Republican chickenhawkery.

Chickenhawks, if you don't know, are public figures who endlessly question people's patriotism but in the contemporary application of its use avoided the Vietnam War themselves. While chickenhawks aren't confined to the GOP, it's hard to find a Democrat who is one while the number of prominent Republicans are legion: They include Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, Tom DeLay, Rush Limbaugh and Ted Nugent.

Then there is George W. Bush.

The accepted wisdom, which briefly threatened to be an issue in the 2004 Bush-John Kerry tilt before the hapless Democratic challenger was swift boated over actually having served in Vietnam, has been that George H.W. Bush, the influential father, pulled strings to get the underachieving son a slot in the Texas Air National Guard, which was a sure-fire way to avoid being drafted and sent to Vietnam.

As it was, young George's service as a fighter pilot was desulatory. It coincided with a period in his life when he was partying hard, which probably included the use of Colombian Marching Powder in addition to alcohol and marijuana.

So the claim of Bernard Goldberg, a sycophantic Bush water carrier, that he has found proof that the future president actually volunteered to go to Vietnam, did so multiple times and was turned down multiple times, bears close scrutiny. And fails miserably.

This is for three reasons:

First, it's not true.

Second, if it were true, Bush's surrogates would have been all over Kerry like a cheap suit when his own surrogates were making the chickenhawk claim.

Third and most importantly, if young Bush really wanted to defend his country, he could have enlisted in the regular Air Force.

Nice try, Bernie, but no cigar.

Cartoon du Jour

Ted Rall/Universal Press Syndicate

Ted Kennedy's Likely Placeholder?

HOLY SHIT!

'The Smell Of Death Was Overpowering'

I have been critical of The New York Times a lot, but this magazine piece appearing tomorrow on the tough choices faced by a New Orleans hospital when it became marooned by Hurricane Katrina is first-rate journalism: In depth, informative, balanced, provocative . . . and heartbreaking.

Photo by Paolo Pellegrin/Magnum, for The New York Times

Glenn Beck As Unemployed Pariah?

THIS COULD GET INTERESTING.
Obviously Photoshopped image from Dummidumbit

Dominick Dunne (1925-2009)

MORE HERE.

Fruits & Nuts In The Garden State

Libyan embassy has owned this Englewood mansion since 1982

If you've ever been to Englewood, then the kerfuffle between residents of the New York City suburb on the New Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge and Libyan strongman Moammar Khadafy is somewhat comic.

Somewhat.

This is because Englewood, while looking like a typical Garden State suburb, albeit with a really big bridge on its eastern edge, has long been a bastion of inclusiveness with a racially, ethnically and politically diverse population.

That has not prevent Englewooders (Englewoodians?) from pitching a bitch over Khadafy's (Gaddafi's?) announced plans to pitch his air-conditioned Bedouin tent (left) on the lawn of a mansion the North African state owns while he makes a horse's ass of himself at the U.N. General Assembly meeting next month in the Big Apple. A request to camp out in Central Park apparently was rejected.

The comic aspect of the standoff quickly fades when you consider that the Tyrant of Tripoli is a virulent anti-Semite and Englewood has a sizable Jewish population.

Meanwhile, the dictator gave Abdelbaset al-Megrahi (below, right), the sole Libyan imprisoned for the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing over Lockerbie a hero's welcome last week after his release from a Scottish prison because the poor baby is terminally ill. Some 33 of the 259 people who perished aboard Flight 103 were from New Jersey.

Mayor Michael Wildes says that Englewood "is a community that will never forget acts of terrorism." He will lead a protest rally outside the Libyan property on Sunday.

The house next door is Rabbi Smuley Boteach's, who makes it clear that "We don't want a terrorist funder and lover in our midst.''

Indeed.

Cartoon du Jour

Pat Oliphant/Universal Press Syndicate

Nothing To See Here, Move On

THEN AGAIN.

Levittown vs. The Left Bank

A compelling argument here for why Europe is a better place for most people to visit but America is a better place for most people to live.

Hat tip to Atrios

Eleanor 'Ellie' Greenwich (1940-2009)

MORE HERE.

'And It Gets Stronger In Every Way'

RIVER DEEP, MOUNTAIN HIGH
By Phil Spector, Jeff Barry & Ellie Greenwich

When I was a little girl I had a rag doll
The only doll I've ever owned
Now I love you just the way I loved that rag doll
But only now my love has grown
And it gets stronger in every way
And it gets deeper let me say
And it gets higher day by day

Do I love you my oh my
River deep, mountain high
If I lost you would I cry
Oh how I love you baby, baby, baby, baby

When you were a young boy did you have a puppy
That always followed you around
Well I'm gonna be as faithful as that puppy
No I'll never let you down
Cause it goes on and on like a river flows
And it gets bigger baby and heaven knows
And it gets sweeter baby as it grows

Do I love you my oh my
River deep, mountain high
If I lost you would I cry
Oh how I love you baby, baby, baby, baby

I love you baby like a flower loves the spring
And I love you baby like a robin loves to sing
And I love you baby like a schoolboy loves his bag
And I love you baby river deep mountain high

Beautiful Photograph du Jour

Rosenhöhe 8
By Astrid Korntheuer

Ted Kennedy's Miracle Worker

If you, like me, realized how little you knew about Ted Kennedy's second wife when he left this mortal coil on Tuesday night but were aware of the miracles that Victoria Anne Reggie Kennedy worked on his life, you're pretty much out of luck beyond brief accounts of how they fell in love and wed in 1992.

But buried deep in a multi-part Boston Globe profile of the Lion of the Senate by Joseph P. Kahn published earlier this year were some meaty details.

Some excerpts:

By the late 1960s, Kennedy's reputation for heavy drinking and womanizing was well established. He provided plenty more to gossip about as he moved into middle age, not always gracefully, during his second bachelorhood in the 1980s and 90s.

It was not just his yo-yoing weight and blotchy complexion that raised questions about how he lived his life. Kennedy possessed movie-star wealth and celebrity. A bachelor since his divorce in 1982, he was also a man of his generation, embracing the swinging Playboy ethos of the 1960s as ardently as he did the New Frontier spirit.

Since Chappaquiddick, Kennedy had been largely able to keep his public and private lives separate. More and more, though, his worst excesses were spilling into public view.

* * * * *

The year of 1991 transformed Kennedy's life, thanks in part to a June party celebrating Edmund and Doris Reggie's 40th wedding anniversary.

The Reggies were old, cherished friends who had supported Kennedy during bad times and good. A retired Louisiana judge and banker, Edmund had Kennedy ties dating to 1956, when he had marshaled Louisiana Democrats to support Jack's vice-presidential bid. . . .

If the bond between the two families was built on politics, though, it had grown over the years into something deeper. The Reggies were Lebanese-Americans with Deep South roots. The Kennedys were Irish-Catholic Northeasterners. Their superficial differences notwithstanding, the Reggies and their six children had more than a little Kennedy in them.

The party took place at the Washington home of Vicki Reggie, 37, the couple's second-oldest child. Two decades younger than Kennedy, she came from a different generation, a different place in life. Although she had interned one summer in Kennedy's Washington office, the two barely knew each other, having shared only a brief conversation and photo-op.

Divorced in 1990, Vicki Reggie was no fixture on the Beltway social circuit. Juggling single motherhood and a demanding career precluded having much of a dating life. She had also been named a partner at her firm, combining what colleagues say was an ability to master complex financial transactions with a high degree of emotional intelligence.

* * * * *

Kennedy quickly realized many of the qualities that made her an outstanding lawyer -- sharp elbows combined with an even sharper wit -- when he rang the doorbell for the anniversary party. "What's the matter," she said, smiling at the senator, "you couldn't get a date?" He followed her into the kitchen while she made dinner and asked her out a few days later. More social than romantic at first, their meetings gradually deepened into a mutual affection that took both of them by surprise.

What made Vicki different from the scores of other "dates" Kennedy had pursued? She was youthful and attractive: 5-feet-8 with hazel eyes and a sophisticated air. Intelligent, politically savvy, a lover of opera and pro football, an accomplished cook. More significantly, perhaps, she was raising two children, aged 5 and 8, who were central to her life. For all his middle-aged roistering, Kennedy loved children and never seemed happier than when surrounded by them.

"His life was going in a very different direction when they met, then it all came together afterward," says Heather Campion, a longtime Kennedy friend. "Vicki made Ted Kennedy much more accessible to us than he'd been before. None of us had ever seen or known him that way, as a family man, a romantic man."

Unlike Joan and other wives of Kennedy men, Vicki shared his political interests, enabling her to serve as partner -- and troubleshooter -- in all aspects of his life

After they had been dating for a few weeks, the senator was stuck on Capitol Hill and could not make it to her house for dinner, where he would often help with the children's homework and read them bedtime stories. At that moment, she later said, "I started to realize more and more that this man was very important in my life."

* * * * *

After they had married, Vicki was asked whether Kennedy's reputation for womanizing had given her pause.

"I know him," she said. "I know the tremendous respect he has for me, and for his daughters, and for his mother. I think that says it all."

Edmund and Doris Reggie were on Nantucket that December when the senator sailed over to ask their permission for him to marry their daughter. They happily said yes. In January, the senator formally proposed at a performance of "La Boheme," Vicki's favorite opera. They married in a civil ceremony that July at Kennedy's house in Virginia. The news stunned many who had taken Kennedy at his word that he would never marry again, raising suspicions that he was only doing so for political reasons.

"Let me put it this way," says Edmund Reggie. "We all know people who fall in love, marry, and a few years later become two different people. After 16 years of marriage, Ted and Vicki are closer and more romantic than they were after five years. It's impressive."

Cartoons du Jour

Pat Oliphant and Jeff Danziger/N.Y. Times News Syndicate

'My Little Lady, That Everyone Knows'

In a CBS documentary aired last night, Ted Kennedy reminisced about his mother, Rose, playing "Sweet Rosie O'Grady" on the piano before family dinners and sang a few bars himself.

SWEET ROSIE O'GRADY
By Maude Nugent

Within a charming cottage near the place that saw my birth
There dwells the sweetest little flower that ever grew on earth
This flower is known as Rosie, 'tis her lovely christian name
But had she any other name, I'd love her just the same
Sweet Rosie O'Grady, my beautiful Rose

She's my little lady, that everyone knows
And when we are married, how happy we'll be
I love sweet Rosie O'Grady and Rosie O'Grady loves me
I never shall forget the day she promised to be mine
As we sat telling love tales with a happiness divine
Upon her finger then I placed a small engagement ring
While in the trees the little birds this love song seemed to sing
Sweet Rosie O'Grady, my beautiful Rose

She's my little lady, that everyone knows
And when we are married, how happy we'll be
I love sweet Rosie O'Grady and Rosie O'Grady loves me

Is Gwyneth Doing A Yoko?

JUST ASKING.

As If He Already Doesn't Go Fast Enough

Usain Bolt meets Ferrari California.

Beautiful Photograph du Jour

FOLLOW THROUGH
By Marco Mladovin