There is a good program on CBC in the afternoon called "Rewind," when they play their tapes of old programs. I found today's program very interesting. It was about the Teamsters and the Longshoremen, and was first aired in 1959. First they interviewed Jimmy Hoffa. He did the politician thing--he hemed and hawed and havered. No one had ever really proven the Longshoremen were dominated by the communists, and anyway, they were now allies of the Teamsters (Dog help 'em). Asked about corruption in the teamsters, he temporized about, essentially, bad apples in any group, Asked about being booted out of the AFL-CIO, he got on his high horse, saying essentially that the membership had elected him, and the Teamsters don't take their orders from the AFL-CIO leadership, who weren't elected by them anyway.
Then they interviewed Robert Kennedy, who was then a member of the Senate Racketeering Committee. Kennedy came across as a politician, too, but of a very different kind. He had facts and figures at his finger tips. He pointed out that the AFL-CIO had booted out the Longshoremen because their own investigations had found them to be dominated by communists. He then spoke at length about corruption in the Teamsters, saying outright that the leadership of the Teamsters had one goal and one goal only, to benefit Jimmy Hoffa and his cronies.
It was a great program. Who here remembers those ancient times?
The little dogs and i went out and shovelled the snow off the walks (Miss Rita's too) and cleaned the snow off the car. I just let Mr. Bailey out the back door, and, naturally, it's snowing again.
you got the snowburst we got about 20 minutes earlier - we watched it move across the city
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Joe Nation
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Thu 19 Jan, 2012 03:12 pm
@Ceili,
Communists? Nah
Just Americans who mostly wanted labor rights in this nation to be settled law.
Hoffa was a thug and a disgrace to the union movement.
The first time I heard RFK speak I thought here's a guy who knows what he's talking about because he's studied up on the subject. (That was during the Cuban Missile Crisis.)
Joe(damn Sirhan Sirhan)Nation
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Setanta
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Thu 19 Jan, 2012 03:14 pm
@Ceili,
Keep in mind that this was the late 1950s . . . no so long after HUAC, where that little **** Nixon (as Truman used to call him) made his political future . HUAC was the House Unamerican Activities Committee. This was also not long after the days of Tailgunner Joe McCarthy, who lead a Senate committee investigating "communists" in government, until one day, an elderly man with spine and some decency called him out in front of the television cameras.
There may actually have been some communist infiltration of organized labor in the 1930s. It wasn't the bad name in North America then that Bolshevism was in Europe, and in fact, my aunt who went to university in the 1930s told me it was very much the rage for young men and women to become socialists or communists. She said most university-educated people in her generation were shittin' bricks when Nixon and McCarthy came along. I can't personally speak to the issue of communists in the Longshoremen, but i believe Kennedy is correct in saying that that was the reason given by the AFL-CIO leadership for booting them out.
His name was Joseph Welch. http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6444
If you read the transcript of that day's testimony it's clear that McCarthy will attempt to smear everyone and everybody who he thinks may be in any opposition to his campaign against supposed Reds in the US Government.
It was an American pogrom.
Finally he attacks this young man, who was working for Welch for a time, for belonging to a group of students who certainly had liberal or even leftist views but who weren't communists in any sense of the word except to McCarthy.
Welch essentially says to him while the cameras roll "Enough already. Leave the kid alone"
McCarthy rolled on.
He had his truth and he was going to pursue it.
Joe(He reminds me a lot of Eric Cantor)Nation
God! I remember those days. The 1950s were a nightmare decade, an absolute nightmare. The fact that my parents, themselves refugees from the Communist take-overof Eastern Europe following WW II thought this McCarthy guy was doing a fine job, made it so much worse for a very young person capable of thinking for himself.
It wasn't Welch, but who was the Congressman who finally said to "Tail-Gunner Joe" Mcacrthy, right on live TV during the Army-McCarthy hearings, "Sir have you no decency left? Have you no shame?" ??
I remember those days. I thought Robert was much better presidential timber than John, and still do. It was my opinion then as now that the unions need to be kept clean, but that they ought to exist for the working people, to the extent they want them.
I keep hoping we will live down the Joe Mc Carthy/HUAC stain on our country, but I suspect there are no bleaches strong enough for that job.
I thought the world of John…but Bobby was a Superman impervious to Kryptonite in my mind.
Unfortunately, he was not impervious to some scumbag’s bullet.
It still amazes me that so many Americans feel as negatively toward unions as they do!
Anyway, as regards Hoffa…I really cannot go on record other than to say, “We in New Jersey have custody of the body…and he ain’t going nowhere!”
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Lustig Andrei
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Thu 19 Jan, 2012 05:04 pm
@Joe Nation,
Thanks for that, Joe. Although it sent absolute chills of terror down my spine watching that clip. Talk abbout deja vu!!
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Frank Apisa
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Thu 19 Jan, 2012 06:49 pm
@Joe Nation,
I agree with Lustig, Joe...chills down my spine. What a piece of scum was Joe Mc Carthy.
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Setanta
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Fri 20 Jan, 2012 04:03 am
@Joe Nation,
Thanks, Boss, i had forgotten his name. Truly a man of courage who would not abandon his convictions in the face of reckless power.
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Setanta
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Fri 20 Jan, 2012 04:07 am
The Army-McCarthy hearings and Edward R. Murrow's courageous public stand against him brought McCarthy down. There were still some people in this country who were decent and courageous.
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Setanta
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Fri 20 Jan, 2012 04:09 am
Eward R. Murrow's program on Tailgunner Joe:
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jcboy
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Thu 27 Sep, 2012 03:40 pm
@Setanta,
New article on Jimmy Hoffa, will they ever find him?
Possible burial site for ex-union boss Hoffa attracting visitors to suburban Detroit driveway
ROSEVILLE, Mich. — Giants Stadium. A Florida swamp. Underneath a backyard pool in Michigan.
There are innumerable theories about where former Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa was buried years ago, but his remains have never turned up.
The latest tip has taken investigators to a concrete driveway behind a neat brick ranch-style home about four miles north of Detroit, where a man told police he thought he saw Hoffa buried about 35 years ago.
Soil samples will be taken Friday and sent to a forensic anthropologist at Michigan State University to test for human decomposition. Results are not expected before next week.
News of the search has brought attention to the mostly working- and middle-class suburb from both the curious and naysayers. Slowly moving vehicles have clogged the residential street as camera-wielding neighbors snapped photos for keepsakes.
“I believe it’s him. My sister said it is, and she’s a psychic,” said Mike Smith after ambling up to the home Thursday and shying a bit from the yellow police tape stretched across the driveway.
Hoffa was last seen July 30, 1975, outside a restaurant in Oakland County, more than 30 miles to the west. The mystery behind his disappearance has sparked numerous theories and rumors: that his remains were ground up and tossed into a Florida swamp, entombed beneath Giants Stadium in New Jersey or obliterated in a mob-owned fat-rendering plant.
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