Doris Day, Estee Lauder, Arnold Palmer Among Medal of Freedom

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush has selected a dozen people, including an actress, a golf champion and a former senator, to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the White House announced Friday. Two of the recipients will be honored posthumously, while the others are invited to receive the nation's highest civilian honor at a White House ceremony with Bush next Wednesday.

The Medal of Freedom, established by President Truman in 1945 to recognize civilians for their World War II service, was reinstated by President Kennedy in 1963 to honor distinguished service in a range of fields, including arts, sports, business and science.

-Robert L. Bartley, conservative journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winner who was editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal for three decades. He died in December at age 66.

-Edward W. Brooke, first black elected to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction. A Republican who represented Massachusetts from 1967 to 1979, he was also a state attorney general.

-Doris Day, singer and icon on the American movie screen in the '50s and '60s whose many film credits include "Calamity Jane" and "Pillow Talk."

-Vartan Gregorian, scholar and historian who headed the New York Public Library in the 1980s. A former president of Brown University, he is currently president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

-Gilbert M. Grosvenor, chairman of the National Geographic Society who for decades has promoted exploration, research and geography education.

-Gordon B. Hinckley, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who has served in church leadership since the 1930s.

-Pope John Paul II, presented with the medal during Bush's June 4 Vatican visit. Bush called the pontiff "a devoted servant of God."

-Estee Lauder, cosmetics pioneer who became a household name in the 1950s on the way to building a Fortune 500 company. She died in April at age 97.

-Arnold Palmer, winner of 92 golf championships, including four Masters, two British Opens and the U.S. Open. He played his 50th and final Masters this year at age 74.

-Arnall Patz, a world-renowned ophthalmologist and researcher of eye disease whose breakthrough work has helped prevent blindness.

-Norman Podhoretz, neoconservative author and longtime editor of Commentary, the American Jewish Committee magazine.

-Walter B. Wriston, former chairman and chief executive of Citibank and chairman of President Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board.

Here'a a description from the time of what Hillary! did. Imagine how she would react if some college student ever had the impunity to insult her the way she insulted Brooke:

Hillary Rodham, a graduate of Maine South, recently made the front page of the Chicago newspapers when she became deeply involved in her commencement exercises at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. Hillary, who is an honor student and also president of the Wellesley student government, was a scheduled speaker at the ceremony. It was the first time in the history of the school that a student had been allowed to speak at graduation exercises.

Senator Edward W. Brooke, a Republican senator from Massachusetts, was speaking to the 6,000 attending the ceremony. According to Hillary, "He wasn't talking about any of the things Wellesley's graduating class had been thinking about for four years."

When it came Hillary's turn to address the group, she engaged the senator in an impromptu debate. "Senator Brooke's speech is similar to a lot of rhetoric we've been hearing for years," Hillary charged. "We have seen very little action coming out of rhetoric, and the entire tone of Senator Brooke's speech is one that we find to be very discouraging."

Hillary continued, "For too long, those who lead us have viewed politics as the art of the possible. The challenge that faces them and us now, is to practice politics as the art of making possible what appears to be impossible."

Her speech was soon finished, and Hillary's days at Wellesley ended with her statement. "Be realistic. Demand the impossible." She was greeted with a standing ovation by both students and faculty at the conclusion of her speech. Applause lasted more than seven minutes.

"Remarks of Hillary D. Rodham, President of the Wellesley College Government Association and member of the Class of 1969, on the occasion of Wellesley's 91st Commencement, May 31, 1969:"

"I am very glad that Miss Adams made it clear that what I am speaking for today is all of us -- the 400 of us -- and I find myself in a familiar position, that of reacting, something that our generation has been doing for quite a while now. We're not in the positions yet of leadership and power, but we do have that indispensable task of criticizing and constructive protest and I find myself reacting just briefly to some of the things that Senator Brooke said. This has to be brief because I do have a little speech to give. Part of the problem with empathy with professed goals is that empathy doesn't do us anything. We've had lots of empathy; we've had lots of sympathy, but we feel that for too long our leaders have used politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible, possible. What does it mean to hear that 13.3% of the people in this country are below the poverty line? That's a percentage. We're not interested in social reconstruction; it's human reconstruction. How can we talk about percentages and trends? The complexities are not lost in our analyses, but perhaps they're just put into what we consider a more human and eventually a more progressive perspective. The question about possible and impossible was one that we brought with us to Wellesley four years ago. We arrived not yet knowing what was not possible. Consequently, we expected a lot. Our attitudes are easily understood having grown up, having come to consciousness in the first five years of this decade -- years dominated by men with dreams, men in the civil rights movement, the Peace Corps, the space program -- so we arrived at Wellesley and we found, as all of us have found, that there was a gap between expectation and realities. But it wasn't a discouraging gap and it didn't turn us into cynical, bitter old women at the age of 18. It just inspired us to do something about that gap. What we did is often difficult for some people to understand. They ask us quite often: "Why, if you're dissatisfied, do you stay in a place?" Well, if you didn't care a lot about it you wouldn't stay. It's almost as though my mother used to say, "I'll always love you but there are times when I certainly won't like you." Our love for this place, this particular place, Wellesley College, coupled with our freedom from the burden of an inauthentic reality allowed us to question basic assumptions underlying our education. Before the days of the media orchestrated demonstrations, we had our own gathering over in Founder's parking lot. We protested against the rigid academic distribution requirement. We worked for a pass-fail system. We worked for a say in some of the process of academic decision making. And luckily we were in a place where, when we questioned the meaning of a liberal arts education there were people with enough imagination to respond to that questioning. So we have made progress. We have achieved some of the things that initially saw as lacking in that gap between expectation and reality. Our concerns were not, of course, solely academic as all of us know. We worried about inside Wellesley questions of admissions, the kind of people that should be coming to Wellesley, the process for getting them here. We questioned about what responsibility we should have both for our lives as individuals and for our lives as members of a collective group."

Good Lord, this woman liked to hear herself talk!

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