>>Kennedy was a media created president, maybe the first one
Doubt that. I spent a year, morning till night, reading NY newspapers from 1775 to 1830. They were dense with detailed articles but the candidates were totally familiar to the average citizen.
Where we watch TV to remember the year, they read the New Year’s Carrier Addresses.
1823, Henry Livingston, Poughkeepsie Journal
...
The Atlantic recrossed, I enraptur’d again
Salute these blest shores and my own native plain;
Hail land of my birth! Here Religion and Science,
And each moral feeling, are in closest alliance,
Where Liberty’s banner floats cheeringly high
And accents of happiness rise to the sky;
Hail land of my birth! May thy glories endure
Till the last consummation and time be no more.
In session at Washington, Congress is sitting
In sage consultation on the just and the fitting,
‘Twixt the plough and the keel the true balance to hold,
The mystic arcana of finance to unfold,
Draw banks from their mist to the glare of noon day
And tear from finesse all its cobweb away;
Draw the dagger of death on the buccaneer crew
Whose crimes fill with horror the old world and the new,
To the gibbet and sword throw the ruffian a prey,
And commerce glide on in her old smiling way.
Enlightened sages go on as begun
And millions will hail your return with “Well done”
America happy in Freedom and Peace
Sees her frontiers advancing, Her millions encrease;
Religion delighted sees temples arise
Where prayer and praises ascend to the skies;
The arts and the sciences march hand in hand
And rustic improvements embellish the land;
Cots, hamlets and cities, arising around,
And smiling Contentment is ev’ry where found.
Our canvass too, whitens each river and sea,
For our commerce is open, unshackled and free,
The wants of all nations we wish to supply,
And meet their reciprocal feelings with joy.
O’er our national barques see the spangled flag flying
Our anchor of hope on occasions most trying;
In peace unobtrusive, but in war’s fearful rage,
Hurling ruin and death on the foes they engage.
Our favorite hero, our ALLEN has bled,
When in combat unequal he fearlessly led,
In a frail open pinnance, his slender array
To seize on the pirate or fall in the fray,
He sunk - But his name will be dear to us ever,
Can his country forget to deplore him? Oh never;
May a similar flame in our heroes still burn,
When they crowd to his statue and weep o’er his urn.
>>Kennedy was a media created president, maybe the first one
Doubt that. I spent a year, morning till night, reading NY newspapers from 1775 to 1830. They were dense with detailed articles but the candidates were totally familiar to the average citizen.
Yes, of course. But the media then was partisan, and everyone knew which media outlets were with which party.
By saying Kennedy was a media created president, maybe the first one, I was trying to make the point that a ideologically united media created a president that the media wanted, and got him elected, vs what an informed population might have elected.
The media pretty much loathed Nixon, and loved Kennedy.
Did you see anything like that from 1775 to 1830, where the vast majority of the media favored on candidate over the other? We did not even have parties, as such, much before 1800, as I recall.