Uncle Rocky

As I recall, there were articles about Gerald Ford about his lack of ever voting in the affirmative for anything and was seen as a naysayer representative. His interview next to a what looked like a Ming vase turned into a table lamp is etched in my head, as was the sudden PR for the Secret Service that seemed to accompany it, from D.C.

With just two women on the "Watergate" hearings (break-in of Democrat offices in a complex I heard later the Lewinsky's lived in next door to the Doles) Elizabeth Holtzman and Hillary Clinton, his administration did set the "ground game" to use a sports metaphor, and the perceived "defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment" though "The ERA has been ratified by 35 of the necessary 38 states. When three more states vote yes, the ERA might become the 28th Amendment." It might have been a "palace coup" to play devils advocate, for how else would the former Governor of New York, Nelson Rockefeller, get into the Executive office?

Source: Huffington Post Joshua Bearman 12.31.2006 And Another Thing About Gerald Ford

Further: As an anthro major at Stony Brook University in New York I had a class with David Hicks who had just returned from Timor and had a social anthropology text published "Tetum Ghosts and Kin" which is also horridly prophetic. A fairly large undergraduate audience enjoyed the story of Mani-hat and the people there just before the invasion and subsequent war in the former Portuguese colony, perhaps over underwater oil resources, as it is thought, Vietnam. Dam_ the torpedoes theory. One historical archaeologist wonders if the horse stirrup and saddle developed in Timor, an old one-toe variety for climbing very steep grades in use. As part of the monsoonal driven trans-Indian Ocean Arab trade, from East Africa to Indonesia (the worlds largest nation of Islam) very early on, it helps explains how giraffes, perhaps, arrived in Beijing for the Emperor. Well, that said, I recall, the Ford Motor company conglomerate had a satellite contract with the Indonesians and it was to be the first time many of the thousands of islands and their peoples would be in touch without delay. Maybe we also, just leaving Vietnam, should have used it to negotiate, however, I'm not sure the "free enterprise" system would have allowed it withdrawn as a bargaining chip.