Larry Tye > Quotes

“the cartoonist Jules Feiffer, who saw Bobby Kennedy’s constellation of contradictions not as old versus new but as good versus bad. He called his schizophrenic senator the “Bobby twins,” explaining that “the Good Bobby is a courageous reformer. The Bad Bobby makes deals. The Good Bobby sent federal troops down south to enforce civil rights. The Bad Bobby appointed racist judges down South to enforce civil rights. The Good Bobby is a fervent civil libertarian. The Bad Bobby is a fervent wire tapper. The Good Bobby is ill at ease with liberals. The Bad Bobby is ill at ease with grownups.”
― Larry Tye, Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon

“Even more basic to McCarthy’s success, the president never challenged the senator’s meat-and-potatoes premises: that merely believing in communism was dangerous, and that Soviet subversion threatened the stability and safety of America.”
― Larry Tye, Demagogue: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy

“It’s good to get away from Washington and back here in the United States.”
― Larry Tye, Demagogue: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy

“If lots more of us loved each other, we’d solve lots more problems. And then this world would be a gasser.”
― Larry Tye, The Jazzmen: How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie Transformed America

“Toronto”
― Larry Tye, Superman: The High-Flying History of America's Most Enduring Hero

“The Negro,” Duke explained, “is not merely a singing and dancing wizard but a loyal American in spite of his social position. I want to tell America how the Negro feels about it.” And he did, as did his friends Armstrong and Basie.”
― Larry Tye, The Jazzmen: How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie Transformed America

“The first speech, at the all-white but liberal University of Cape Town, remains one of Bobby’s most memorable, beginning with one of his favorite devices of leading listeners in one direction and then taking them somewhere else entirely. “I came here,” he said, “because of my deep interest [in] and affection for a land settled by the Dutch in the mid-seventeenth century, then taken over by the British, and at last independent; a land in which the native inhabitants were at first subdued, but relations with whom remain a problem to this day; a land which defined itself on a hostile frontier…a land which once imported slaves, and now must struggle to wipe out the last traces of that former bondage. I refer, of course, to the United States of America.” His audience understood instinctively their speaker’s point: that he had not come as a pious missionary but as someone struggling with his own country’s racial shame.”
― Larry Tye, Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon

“In McCarthy’s case, the correspondents’ reasons for their choice were given with considerable vigor. Some of them: ‘His record is reason enough to consider him the most ignorant and vicious member of the Senate.’ ‘As a Senator his disregard for personal rights and freedoms make him an extremely dangerous man.’ ‘A shrewd and dangerous exploiter of uninformed prejudice.’ ‘A demagogue who has introduced McCarthyism (the technique of the Big Lie) to split the country.’” Joe”
― Larry Tye, Demagogue: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy

“Finally, there was the matter of ensuring that the march would be preserved for posterity: “We should have a photographer to take pictures for use later in the roto sections, to guard against the possibility that the news photographers do not get good pictures for this purpose.”16”
― Larry Tye, The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations

“Race, for once, fell away as America listened rapt.”
― Larry Tye, The Jazzmen: How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie Transformed America

“The sound of their evolving jazz dialect formed a cultural fulcrum that no outraged protester or government-issued desegregation order could begin to achieve.”
― Larry Tye, The Jazzmen: How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie Transformed America

“Dr. King’s fitting description of the good life, ‘a creative synthesis of opposites.’ ”
― Larry Tye, Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon

“She probably called to see if you’re still alive,” Hoffa deadpanned. In a voice meant for everyone to hear, Kennedy said, “I’m still alive, dear. If you hear a big explosion, I probably won’t be.”
― Larry Tye, Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon

“Do we have the manhood in the Senate to stand up to a challenge of that kind?” The”
― Larry Tye, Demagogue: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy

“musical stage for more than half of that century, forging melodic models that hadn’t existed and elevating jazz into a pulsating force for spontaneity and freedom.”
― Larry Tye, The Jazzmen: How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie Transformed America

“It was deeply ironic that when McCarthy’s self-serving campaign against the Red Menace was at its height, Soviet penetration of the American government was at its lowest ebb for almost thirty years.”
― Larry Tye, Demagogue: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy

“cautious, but it made Bobby more fatalistic. “Living every day is like Russian roulette,” he said. “There’s no way of protecting a country-stumping candidate. No way at all. You’ve just got to give yourself to the people and to trust them, and from then on it’s just that good old bitch, luck. Anyway, you have to have luck on your side to be elected President of the United States. Either it is with you or it isn’t. I am pretty sure there’ll be an attempt on my life sooner or later. Not so much for political reasons. I don’t believe that. Plain nuttiness, that’s all. There’s plenty of that around.” If he were elected, he added, he surely wouldn’t ride in the kind of bubble-topped, bulletproof limousine that LBJ used: “We can’t have that kind of country, where the President is afraid to go among the people.”
― Larry Tye, Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon

“A person, Bobby would tell his oldest daughter Kathleen, could be judged by the enemies he made.”
― Larry Tye, Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon

“in an era of mass communication, modesty is a private virtue and a public fault.”
― Larry Tye, The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations

“use humor to disarm those who think they hate you, then dazzle them with your talent.”
― Larry Tye, Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend