Monday, April 4, 2011

A BAD CASE OF THE "WHAT IFs"

We've all done it. Everyone has played "Kreskin" with our lives or historical events. Or, wondered, as Yogi Berra might put it, "What would have happened if what happened didn't happen?"

One-time speech writer and long-time Journalist Jeff Greenfield has put himself in front of a crystal ball and tried to determine the "what ifs" from our political landscape, and how our destinies would have been affected, in his new book, "Then Everything Changed." It's interesting fiction, and disturbing in some ways. Greenfield takes three events from the last 50 years and fleshes out what he imagines would have been the result: If what happened...hadn't happened. Without spoiling the plots, I'll just go over the events.

Greenfield reveals that a second-thought by a twisted mind really did prevent John F. Kennedy from behind blown up by a suicide bomber, as he left for church in Palm Beach, Florida, December 11, 1960. The would-be bomber didn't want to harm Jackie, who'd accompanied the then-President-Elect to the front door of their winter home, holding the new-born JFK, Jr.. Few were aware of this event, including historian Robert Dallek, who published a definitive JFK biography in 2003. Greenfield uses his immense political knowledge to fictionalize what might have been, had the bomber gone through with his plot, annihilated JFK, and left the country without a President-elect.

The second event under the microscope is the assassination of Robert Kennedy. What if RFK's brother-in-law, Stephen Smith, had been walking in front of Bobby, as he usually did, when the victorious candidate entered the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel, June 4, 1968? What if he'd prevented Sirhan Bashera Sirhan from hitting his target?

The third destiny-altering speculation considers the 1976 debate between Democrat Jimmy carter, and Republican President Gerald Ford. What if Ford had recanted or clarified his off-handed comment that there "...would be no Soviet domination of Poland and Czechoslovakia under a Ford Administration." In truth, the comment put his campaign in damage-control mode, and stopped Ford's climb in the polls--just long enough for Carter to eventually eek out an electoral win. What if?

Greenfield's tome is fictional food for thought. Entertaining, sometimes outlandish, and in the case of what would have taken place had there not been a JFK administration, depressing. But, as with his political reporting for ABC, CNN and CBS over 40 years, his book is well considered, and excellently put to paper. It gave me an idea of my own, as all my reading material does: What would have happened had comedy, drama, and variety on radio survived the onslaught of television? What if there had not been the need to employ announcers to spin records? Had there been no such profession as the Disc Jockey? This one gives me pause. But if Jeff Greenfield can wonder aloud how a President Lyndon Johnson would have handled the Cuban missile crisis, surely I can conjecture a world without disc jockeys (the way my career has gone these last three years, the world's damned near been without THIS one!).

First of all, the birth of Rock and Roll would have been protracted. The crossover of R&B would have taken a great deal more time without a medium through which the music could be heard regularly. The social ramifications of this are almost too ponderous to explore in one sitting. What can be determined is...what would have become of the Disc Jockey?

That's easy. The talented, the greats, the legends, would still have been enormous successes in broadcasting. The age of comedy, drama and variety on radio was a tremendous playground for dialecticians and enunciators. By the early 1950's when the era was on the wane, Jack Webb was striving for more "natural" actors. Radio would have continued to create work for performers of all kinds who actually had the goods.

Now--what of the cavalcade of dumbshits, babblers, con artists and sex predators who helped heap shovelful after shovelful of dirt on disc jockeying, through their idiocy and marginal talent? The recipients of nepotism, cronyism, payola, plugola and practitioners of ethics that make Bernie Madoff look like Mohandas Ghandi? What of them? These are the folk who made it possible for consultants and programmers to comb through data, and rationalize that radio is better as background, etc. These are individuals who got wealthy by accident of fate. What would these people have done with themselves if they'd needed another venue for their deft application of office politics?

Hmmm. I can imagine a cluster of big-voiced buffoons auditioning to be Ronald McDonald in some local community. Or as clowns at children's parties (God help the kids!). Bellowing imbeciles warbling "Itsy-Bitsy Spider," to frightened boys and girls, who would, in turn, beg their moms and dads to whisk them from the presence of this narcissistic specter!

I can imagine a plethora of used car salesmen, telemarketers, and loud-mouths engaging in fisticuffs over infomercial hosting jobs. Alas, there would be precious few Doctors, engineers or rocket scientists with deep voices. In some cases, the number of interior decorators would overwhelm the market! And, sadly, welfare rolls would have increased incrementally...had there never been a need for disc jockeys.

As for me? It's hard to think I could have had even less success doing something else. I would never had heard The Real Don Steele when I was an adult (hearing him when I was a kid doesn't count). I wouldn't have veered from sports to music presentation, and maybe would have been spared the occasional sociopath or megalomaniac as a direct supervisor. Who knows? I would have tried to write. We can never have any idea.

In the end, though, what we have is a talent like Jeff Greenfield to come up with a fascinating premise for a novel, and entertain us by musing, "What if?"