NYT: Two Authors Ask About (writer of) 'Ask Not' (speech)

[DeepModem Mom]

Two Authors Ask About 'Ask Not'
By EDWARD WYATT
Published: May 10, 2005


In an age when even a walk across the White House lawn can feel scripted, it is hard to imagine making a fuss over whether a speechwriter helped a president-elect compose his inaugural address. But when the president in question is John F. Kennedy, such questions never cease.

Recently two scholars examined the evidence around the authorship of Kennedy's 1961 inaugural address - poring over documents, interviewing still-living advisers - and came to opposite conclusions.

In "Ask Not: The Inauguration of John F. Kennedy and the Speech That Changed America," Thurston Clarke wrote last year that "important and heretofore overlooked documentary evidence" proves that Kennedy was "the author of the most immortal and poetic passages of his inaugural address," including the famous line that gives the book its title, "Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country."

But in "Sounding the Trumpet: The Making of John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address" (Ivan R. Dee), to be published in July, Richard J. Tofel, a lawyer and a former assistant publisher of The Wall Street Journal, concludes that "if we must identify" one man as the author of the speech, "that man must surely be not John Kennedy but Theodore Sorensen."

The question of whose hand held sway over the Kennedy inaugural address was an issue even before it was delivered, at least for Kennedy. Stung by accusations that a ghost writer was the real author of "Profiles in Courage," which won Kennedy the Pulitzer Prize in 1957, the president-elect went to great lengths to showcase his own involvement in the speech that has since become his most remembered....


(NOTE: The article states at the end that there is no dispute about the provenance of the speech's most famous words -- the headmaster at the Choate School "regularly reminded his charges that what mattered most was 'not what Choate does for you, but what you can do for Choate.'")


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/10/books/10kenn.html

[OldLeftieLawyer]

1. I always just assumed

that Sorenson wrote that speech. JFK's "Profiles In Courage" was written by just about everyone but JFK.

Ted Sorenson's an incredibly gifted and brilliant man. And, what's really creepy is that he still looks almost exactly as he did in 1961.

http://tinyurl.com/anoxn

[whatelseisnew]

2. Just from the excerpt above I'll have to disagree

one man citing new evidence vs a Whore Street Journal publisher

The NYT neo-con agenda has been pretty clear now for many years.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

3. Instead of leaping to a conclusion,

I recommend you read some of Sorenson's work through the years.

The NY Times wasn't always the rightwing rag that it is now.

[whatelseisnew]

4. At least I was up front about my leap

I did not even pretend to have read this one article.

Actually I was hoping to kick it up and get some other comments

with a few links thrown in the mix.

Plus I like to dis the WSJ and NYT.

Lets keep this going, I know there are many here who would

have an opinion on this.

cheers!

[medeak]

5. Clarke's article

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/a/2004/10/24/RVGKL99JM61.DTL

[daleo]

6. Bush's most famous line (that he came up with himself):

"Want some wood?".

[DeepModem Mom]

7. LOL!!!