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October 26, 2007
Totally unrelated blog-a-thon: The Armageddon cooler that is the G+T
As suggested by The Reeler, an entry about something in mind that has peripheral, if any relationship to the movies, this lovely anecdote from Friday's Wall Street Journal about JFK, the Bay of Pigs, and a sparkling refreshment: "On a warm day in December 1961, John F. Kennedy drank Gin and Tonics in Bermuda while working out the details of the end of the world. The president was meeting with British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, discussing how to combat the growing Soviet nuclear threat. Each had his own team of 
Strangeloves, and all were gathered for drinks before lunch. Among them was Macmillan's chief science adviser, Sir William Penney, the physicist who had built England's first nuke. Asked how many bombs Russia would need to destroy the U.K., Penney said, "It would take five or six, but to be on the safe side, let us say seven or eight, and" -- just at that moment a steward passed by -- "I'll have another gin and tonic if you would be so kind." This statement, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote in "A Thousand Days," "uttered in one rush of breath, summed up for the Prime Minister and the President the absurdity of mankind setting about to destroy itself." For the rest of the summit, Kennedy and Macmillan used "I'll have another gin and tonic, if you would be so kind" as an all-purpose punch line."
Posted by Ray Pride at October 26, 2007 04:52 PM
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