Read Online Warm and Witty Side of Attila the Hun by Jeffrey Sackett - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jeffrey Sackett
Tags: Humor
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reading), so it was with interest that he learned that Khrushchev, like himself, had some childhood experience in rural life dealing pigs. Khrushchev grew up on a farm in the village of Kalinovka , in the indeterminate border between Russia and Ukraine, and had been a pig herder in his childhood. Nixon's father had been a grocer in Whittier, California, and as part of the meat market side of the grocery, had raised some pigs to which young Richard had tended.
Vice-President Nixon and Communist Party Secretary Khrushchev met in the American exhibit at a trade fair in Moscow and got into a vigorous debate while standing in a facsimile of an American kitchen. (Hence the nickname, "The kitchen debate.") At one point during the encounter, Khrushchev shouted at Nixon that his opinions were "bullshit." To which Nixon replied, "Yeah? Well, your opinions are pigshit . And you and I both know that nothing smells worse than pigshit !"
Khrushchev stared at Nixon in astonishment for a moment, and then burst into uproarious laughter.
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During the 1960 presidential campaign, VP Nixon spoke proudly about he held his own in the kitchen debate. His opponent, Senator John F. Kennedy, observed that good many married men could say the same thing.
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A more characteristic anecdote about VP Nixon highlights his fervid imagination and paranoid streak. In 1957, President Eisenhower met with Khrushchev (and British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan) in Geneva , Switzerland . The summit conference went very well and seemed to presage a thaw in the Cold War; but Nixon, ever alert to the insidious machinations of the hostile press (which to his mind was the only kind of press there was), was taking no chances with negative publicity. Nixon was worried that any improvement in relations between the US and the USSR could be compared with the attempt to solve the Sudeten Crisis in Munich in 1938, where British Prime Minster Neville Chamberlain gave in to the demands of Adolf Hitler.
Like many Englishmen, Chamberlain always carried an umbrella, and the umbrella had become a popular symbol of the "appeasement" policy that many said led the way to the Second World War. Therefore, to forestall any invidious comparison between Ike and Chamberlain, Nixon saw to it that when Eisenhower returned to the US and made his scheduled statement on the tarmac at the airport, there would not be an umbrella anywhere in sight.
Of course, predictably, it was pouring rain when Eisenhower disembarked.
A photograph taken at the time shows a drenched President Eisenhower attempting to read a statement from a soaked, sodden, disintegrating piece of paper, with an equally drenched Vice-President Nixon standing beside him, looking angrily around with thinly disguised suspicion.
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Nixon lost the presidential election of 1960 by one tenth of one percent of the popular vote, but he accepted his defeat by John Kennedy with equanimity. He appeared on the Tonight Show, then hosted by Jack Paar , soon after Kennedy's inauguration, and Paar asked him what he thought of Kennedy's inaugural address.
"Well," Nixon, replied, "he said some things that day that I wish I had said."
"Such as ... ?" Paar prompted.
"Such as," Nixon said, "I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States ..."
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Spiro Agnew, Nixon's first VP, was a man prone to ethnic epithets. On one occasion on Air Force 2 (as it is popularly if unofficially known), returning home from Asia with the press onboard, Agnew saw a Japanese-American journalist taking a nap, and he asked loudly, "What wrong with the fat Jap?"
He then apologized, and the journalist of course accepted the apology. But the fact that anger and hurt feelings remained was evidenced by the fact that as Air Force 2 approached Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the journalist shouted, "Bombs away!"
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Vice-presidents have often been treated disrespectfully by presidents. The two figures are rarely
Vice-President Nixon and Communist Party Secretary Khrushchev met in the American exhibit at a trade fair in Moscow and got into a vigorous debate while standing in a facsimile of an American kitchen. (Hence the nickname, "The kitchen debate.") At one point during the encounter, Khrushchev shouted at Nixon that his opinions were "bullshit." To which Nixon replied, "Yeah? Well, your opinions are pigshit . And you and I both know that nothing smells worse than pigshit !"
Khrushchev stared at Nixon in astonishment for a moment, and then burst into uproarious laughter.
Â
During the 1960 presidential campaign, VP Nixon spoke proudly about he held his own in the kitchen debate. His opponent, Senator John F. Kennedy, observed that good many married men could say the same thing.
Â
A more characteristic anecdote about VP Nixon highlights his fervid imagination and paranoid streak. In 1957, President Eisenhower met with Khrushchev (and British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan) in Geneva , Switzerland . The summit conference went very well and seemed to presage a thaw in the Cold War; but Nixon, ever alert to the insidious machinations of the hostile press (which to his mind was the only kind of press there was), was taking no chances with negative publicity. Nixon was worried that any improvement in relations between the US and the USSR could be compared with the attempt to solve the Sudeten Crisis in Munich in 1938, where British Prime Minster Neville Chamberlain gave in to the demands of Adolf Hitler.
Like many Englishmen, Chamberlain always carried an umbrella, and the umbrella had become a popular symbol of the "appeasement" policy that many said led the way to the Second World War. Therefore, to forestall any invidious comparison between Ike and Chamberlain, Nixon saw to it that when Eisenhower returned to the US and made his scheduled statement on the tarmac at the airport, there would not be an umbrella anywhere in sight.
Of course, predictably, it was pouring rain when Eisenhower disembarked.
A photograph taken at the time shows a drenched President Eisenhower attempting to read a statement from a soaked, sodden, disintegrating piece of paper, with an equally drenched Vice-President Nixon standing beside him, looking angrily around with thinly disguised suspicion.
Â
Nixon lost the presidential election of 1960 by one tenth of one percent of the popular vote, but he accepted his defeat by John Kennedy with equanimity. He appeared on the Tonight Show, then hosted by Jack Paar , soon after Kennedy's inauguration, and Paar asked him what he thought of Kennedy's inaugural address.
"Well," Nixon, replied, "he said some things that day that I wish I had said."
"Such as ... ?" Paar prompted.
"Such as," Nixon said, "I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States ..."
Â
Spiro Agnew, Nixon's first VP, was a man prone to ethnic epithets. On one occasion on Air Force 2 (as it is popularly if unofficially known), returning home from Asia with the press onboard, Agnew saw a Japanese-American journalist taking a nap, and he asked loudly, "What wrong with the fat Jap?"
He then apologized, and the journalist of course accepted the apology. But the fact that anger and hurt feelings remained was evidenced by the fact that as Air Force 2 approached Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the journalist shouted, "Bombs away!"
Â
Vice-presidents have often been treated disrespectfully by presidents. The two figures are rarely
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