Frankbeaton.com

A political post (only 50 years too late!)

Everyone loves that story about the Nixon/Kennedy debate, about how the polls afterward showed that people who watched the debate on TV thought Kennedy won it hands-down, while those who listened on the radio gave it to Nixon. The inference is that Kennedy only won because he was handsome and charming and came off better on television, even though Nixon was really the “smarter man.”

If I may, I’d like to call bullshit on that. After 47 years, I think someone ought to.

It stands to reason that the only people likely to have listened to the debate on radio would have been those who didn’t own a TV. It’s the nature of technology, right? Well, according to the US Census Bureau, by 1960 90% of American households had at least one television set. Who were the other 10%? The “radio people”? Families in rural areas who either couldn’t afford TVs or didn’t care about them. In other words, staunch conservatives who would have sided with Richard Nixon no matter what the hell he said.

So we can just stop with all the cynical, “I guess image is everything” crap. JFK won that shit fair and square.

And then he had sex with Marilyn Monroe.

While Richard Nixon did not.