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Marvin L. Kalb

Auteur van Kissinger

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Marvin Kalb has enjoyed an illustrious forty-year career as a journalist and professor. His numerous awards and honors include two Peabody Prizes, six Overseas Press Club awards, and the Edward R. Murrow Award. He is currently the executive director of the Washington office of Harvard's Shorenstein toon meer Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy. He lives with his wife in Chevy Chase, Maryland toon minder

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Een dag uit het leven van Ivan Denisovitsj (1962) — Introductie, sommige edities12,872 exemplaren

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A trip down memory lane for those of us who have served in Moscow. UpDK, Intourist, MFA -- these are all acronyms that are met with dread and humor by Americans who have served in the Soviet capital. Marvin Kalb writes with honesty and self-deprecating wit. He tells the fascinating story of his first years as a CBS reporter, ending up with the assignment of his dreams (or nightmares, if one considers Madame Borisovna and the cramped rooms at the Metropol). His administrative travails aside, I'm a bit jealous that he was able to have so much personal contact with the Soviet leadership, and was in on so many big stories (the blown Paris Summit, U-2, Khrushchev's eroding position, the Sino-Soviet split, etc.). By the time I got there in the late 1970s, it was the Brezhnev era, and Soviet leaders did not deign to meet with foreigners unless it was absolutely necessary.

I'm now looking forward to reading Kalb's earlier books (Eastern Exposure, The Year I was Peter the Great). What a fascinating career.
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JamesSchumaker | Jul 10, 2021 |
Marvin Kalb had his phone lines tapped by the Nixon White House. Several years later he was intrigued by a story in The New York Times that reported the contents of a memo written by Richard Nixon castigating the Bush administration for failing to provide a higher level of support for Russian democratic endeavors. And this in the middle of the 1992 campaign.

His search to discover the reason Nixon should pick this particular time to release the document is revealed in The Nixon Memo. His research revealed much about the symbiotic relationship the press has with politicians and how politicians manipulate the media for their own purposes — in this case, the continued rehabilitation of a disgraced former president. Reporters need news and conflict to survive. Nixon, a man who had resurrected himself more times than Rasputin, had become an expert in using this basic truth to his benefit. He had always hated the press, blaming them for his defeats, but the press could provide his path back to eminence.

Nixon began planning his rehabilitation shortly after leaving office. Within six years, after traveling to Europe and China, and writing several books, he was back, successfully advising the new Republican president, Ronald Reagan. John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy, reported that Nixon was, in fact, the guiding hand of Reagan’s foreign policy. Nixon was concerned with more than just his personal rehabilitation. He was genuinely dismayed by the Bush administration’s lackadaisical attitude toward events in Russia. Bush, flush from his Persian Gulf victory, and aware of Buchanan’s anti-internationalist challenge on the right, was reluctant to take on any foreign policy initiative that might possibly backfire and ruin his chances for a second term. Nixon was aghast. He had never thought much of Bush’s foreign policy ability, and he resolved to steer the administration to support Yeltsin, whom he saw as the only alternative to a new Russian authoritarianism. Economic news from the former Soviet capital was dismal, echoing the period in Germany before WW II when Hitler discovered it was so easy to seize power.

The result was Nixon’s now famous memo that was to redefine the foreign policy debate in the middle of an election year. Its theme was “Who lost Russia?” Nixon knew he was throwing a live hand grenade at the White House. The memo would surely leak — indeed he did everything possible to make sure it leaked — and explode on the front pages and on the evening news. That was his intention.

At a conference organized by Nixon and his staff, Nixon continued his peroration though without overt condemnation of Bush. Despite the enormous reaction to the memo and his conference speech, the substance of it was not terribly radical or new. Yet his presentation, done without TelePrompTer or notes, had such an appearance of genuineness, that a public grown weary of immediate clarifications by staff following a Reagan speech and by Bush’s hunched myopic attention to TelePrompTers, were taken in by what appeared to be a total command performance, even as they were being unwittingly manipulated.

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ecw0647 | Sep 30, 2013 |
Kissinger ist wahrlich ein diplomatischer Riese. Von seinem Schlag bräuchten wir heute ein paar...
Besonders seine Geheimdiplomatie mit China begeistert.
 
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likos77 | Jun 23, 2011 |
This was a different take on the Clinton/Lewinsky story. The author was evaluating press reactions to the story, and found the press guilty of creating scandal and hyping it beyond its value. Overall, a worthwhile read to get a sense of how insider's feel about a media frnezy of this type.
 
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Devil_llama | May 2, 2011 |

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Werken
13
Ook door
1
Leden
465
Populariteit
#52,883
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4.0
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5
ISBNs
39
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4
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2

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