The Oceans Divide: A World Of Laughter, A World Of Tears II

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Can someone link the last post from the first timeline? Just that I am too lazy to go back and find it.

Here's the first post, just in case anyone is in the mood for background. Here's the last one.
Welcome back. Oh, and subbed.

WENDELL! So good to see you! DM me and let me know what's happening in your life!

People, this is the man, who, on a long-departed AH forum other than this one, saw a joking caption that I'd posted under a picture of Walt Disney, and suggested that I actually turn it into a timeline. I'd never completed a timeline at that point (and was notorious for leaving them unfinished), but figured it was worth a shot, and we all know how that turned out. So here's someone who deserves a fair share of credit for the original ever coming into form.

Okay, I think it'll be a short one this time, but it's an important update.

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Yeah, I remember the call. Been out all night in Manhattan with some friends, what with the wife deciding that she wanted to spend the weekend with her parents, which was happening more often by then. Woke up to the phone blaring in my ear, and I gotta admit that I answered it with a bit less class than I would've used in my Chief of Staff days: In fact, I figure I pretty much snarled "Cohen residence" through the pounding hangover before hearing "Hold for Governor Rockefeller." Look: I'm not stupid. People have called me crooked, fascist, Nazi (Yeah, the reds call a natural-born Jew like me a Nazi, which just goes to show, right?), an ass-kisser, ruthless, corrupt, and all sorts of things. Hell, some of 'em were accurate, and I'm not gonna apologize for doing whatever I had to do in order to set America right. Anyway, one thing I'm not called is stupid, and I'm not gonna act like you're stupid, so yeah, I figured what this was about. Sure enough, the dickless wonder Governor Nelson Rockefeller came on the line toot-sweet.

"Hello, Roy. I hope that I didn't wake you." Asshole. He knew my routine by then, after months of fucking plotting together on his campaign, while he refused to take any of my advice on how to actually win the fucking Presidency because he didn't have the cojones to be ruthless enough to fucking win. He knew I'd be asleep, and probably hung over. Whatever. Let the schlemiel have his petty fun. Probably thought he was showing who was boss or something. Like he didn't know just who the fuck he was dealing with.

"No, Governor. How can I be of assistance to you?" Asshole.

"You've heard the news about Senator Keating, I'm sure." Well, of course. I had eyes, and I had access to the goddamned news, didn't I?

"Of course I have, sir. It's an enormous tragedy. Senator Keating was an accomplished public servant, and all of New York mourns his loss. No, all of America." I was piling it on a bit thick there. Blame the late night. Still a bit off from those last martinis at Club 21, or wherever we'd ended up.

"Yes, well...it's within my power to appoint a Senator to serve out the remainder of his term. Considering your extensive public service, your brilliant work in the Disney administration, and your strong political credentials within the party...even as a former Democrat," he chuckled. Fuck him for twisting that knife. "I consider it my honor to offer you his seat in the Senate."

Yeah, now that I don't have shit left to care about, you know what? Yes, I wanted the seat. And yes, I goddamned well took that offer. And yes, every bit of it had been arranged ahead of time, which is the only reason that those vicious, bullshit lies that Dodd told in that book didn't torpedo my chances.

What? No. How could I have known? No, look, when I say that it had been...you know what? Of course I didn't know that Javits was going to...yeah? Yeah? Fuck your "Just asking for clarification" bullshit. You're trying to play the man who invented the game?

Get the fuck out of my house, and expect to hear from my attorneys if you even suggest that shit in print. Fuck that: expect to hear from me. I'm a better lawyer than any of 'em.

-Retired Sen. Roy Cohn in the unpublished first draft of World Of Tomorrow: America In The 1960s by Studs Terkel


FORMER WHITE HOUSE STAFFER JAMES DODD DIES FOLLOWING LONG ILLNESS

Former White House Communications Director James Dodd passed away yesterday following a long illness complicated by injuries suffered during the assassination attempt on former President Walter Disney and F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover,

-New York Times, 7/5/61

"Look,[Stennis is] fine on the niggers, or at least that's how our people are going to see it, because they don't get that it doesn't do a damned thing towards solving the problem. But we'll deal with that later. Right now, the real issue is the same one as it's ever been: the Jews. If we're going to set up a real organization, then we're going to have to push that. Look, I get that a bunch of them have tried to assimilate. You may work with them, you may go bowling with them, one or two of you may have even sullied yourselves with them in carnal congress.That ends now. If your foreman won't fire the Jew, then you have to quit, and we'll find you a place in our organization to keep food on the table. You leave that bowling league. And, goddammit, if you happen to sleep with one of them, you either kill them, you kill yourself, or you ally with the enemy."

-George Lincoln Rockwell, quoted in Tomorrow The World: An Unauthorized Biography
 
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FORMER WHITE HOUSE STAFFER JAMES DODD DIES FOLLOWING LONG ILLNESS

Former White House Communications Director James Dodd passed away yesterday following a long illness complicated by injuries suffered during the assassination attempt on former President Walter Disney and F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover,
:cryingface: Dammit, not Jimmy! He was my favorite voice in the original AWOLAWOT, a voice of reason shining through the clouds of Cohn and Rockwell. Still, great update! After rereading the original, I became convinced that Cohn’s end of the “deal with the devil” was an appointment to the Senate, and I’m glad to see my guess was validated! :)
 
:cryingface: Dammit, not Jimmy! He was my favorite voice in the original AWOLAWOT, a voice of reason shining through the clouds of Cohn and Rockwell. Still, great update! After rereading the original, I became convinced that Cohn’s end of the “deal with the devil” was an appointment to the Senate, and I’m glad to see my guess was validated! :)

I'm frankly impressed that someone would remember that detail from nearly 10 years ago. Well-done.

Also, a nod to James "Jimmie" Dodd: I absolutely loved writing him, as he was very much the voice of (relative, and allowing for the times) sanity in the narrative at various important points. He was enormous fun to write, and I'll give him this: He was the most personally traumatizing "kill your darlings" that I've ever put to the written word.
 
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Another great update as always @statichaos. I'm wondering though, since the beatniks and their 1930s/early 1940s born generation is becoming the generation of counter-culture and rebellion, how will generational classification be altered? Especially now that the Boomers appear to be somewhere between members of the boy scouts and members of the Hitler Youth.
 
In America, at least. One of the interesting consequences of this timeline is that the generational experience of the American boomers will be deeply removed from the rest of the Western world.
 
The word started at the top, and trickled down into the usual places: wiseguy bars, the backroom betting parlors and floating craps games, the diners and mom-and-pop restaurants in Little Italy. It reached the ears of made men and common thugs, of hangers-on and professional assassins. An unusually loquacious Gambino family boss Carlo Gambino related it to a few associates at the time, and one who wishes to remain anonymous related it to this author decades later.

"This thing of ours, I gotta admit, I can see how it causes agita when you're just trying to put food on the table for your family, and you can't turn around without a G-Man climbing up your ass. But I got a guarantee. Things between the families are friendly right now, so we don't have to worry about some asshole out from Chicago clipping one of us to make a name. We got the New York cops, we got the judges, we got the aldermen, the family's got 'em all in our pocket. Figure the only thing we gotta worry about is the feds, right, because there's always a rat looking to play both sides, and even though Hoover's distracted nowadays, we still got enough law and order types in Congress flapping their lips about us for the feds to try to make an example here and there. But like I said, the Five Families, nobody's saying anything about who or what, but we can get Hoover to back off. All we gotta do is agree to a couple of points. Now, these points, I already agreed to 'em, so this ain't so much a suggestion or a conversation as it is me saying how it is, capisce? Right. First, the junk, I find anyone selling this to white kids, they're gonna have a real hard conversation with me, a couple of my guys, a crowbar, and a blowtorch before they end up going for a one-way swim in the Hudson. Having said that, go apeshit in the colored communities. We even got an arrangement for transportation of our stuff to the southern jungle bunny hutches they been building down in Georgia and shit, all split up nice between the families. And, no, you don't need to know more about that unless I tell you later, right? All we gotta do is pour smack into those places, and keep pouring it in until we've squeezed every last dime. No interference, guaranteed. I got the guys picked out who are gonna handle the distribution down there. Okay. Next thing is, there's always a price for that kinda thing, so here's what we get to do to keep out of the federal pen:

"We're goin' after the jigaboos. Not the regular ones out there in Harlem playing dominoes and drinking hooch and breeding like roaches and shit, but the other ones, the ones causing trouble in this nation that's providing us, the children of immigrants, with so many opportunities. Any member of Malcolm X's group of terrorists, any of those loudmouthed niggers who follow that Cleaver guy, there's a $1000 bounty for them. Goes up to ten times that much if you take out the top people. So you let your crews know that, and you can figure out what kind of split you want to make with them. I'm already taking my share off the top, so you can even tell 'em they don't have to kick it back. Oh, and keep innocents out of it. Don't want any of our numbers players or junkies out of the game as long as they have money to spend.

"Now, this falls apart for whatever reason, it's not like we lost much by trying, but the guy we were talking to, we know him, and he's a friend. I don't trust the fucker, but I trust him to know a good thing when he sees one.

"Okay, boys, get the fuck out of here. I want to see some dead darkies on the front page next week, you get me? Fuckin' dead. And send a message."

-More Blood Than Honor: The American Mafia's War Against Black Leaders In The 60s, by Jerry Ludin, Random House Publishing, 1989


WAR IN OUR STREETS: SUSPECTED AFRICAN BROTHERHOOD MEETING ATTACKED BY ARMED GUNMEN: 8 Dead, 14 Injured In Attack By Unknown Assailants

-New York Daily News, 8/24/61


Of course the newspapers lied. Or perhaps the police simply lied to the newspapers. It makes little difference either way. Many people saw the men who entered the storefront office in which some of our brothers and sisters were innocently holding a strategy meeting. There were three of them, all holding those horrible weapons you usually only see in gangster movies, All three were recognized by those in the neighborhood as low-ranking criminals, all three were making their bones, as the Italians say, by running numbers in Harlem for their vicious, bloody-handed employers. All three names were given to the New York Police Department by an elderly lady, one Marsha Helms, who had lived on that street her entire life. After a few days, Miz Helms simply disappeared. Others were so desperate as to go to the FBI to seek justice for our people. They were patronized, condescended to, subjected to comments that ranged from mere insinuation to outright accusation: From where do you know these men? Are you, personally, involved in criminal activities? Are you a member of the African Brotherhood? What activities was this cell engaged in that would possibly cause a rivalry with another Negro criminal organization?

That was the deepest of the cuts, that they wouldn't even believe the evidence of our own eyes, that some of the best minds and most beautiful souls to be found in our community had been slaughtered by white people wearing suits, and not black gang members looking for a cut of non-existent criminal enterprises. To twist the knife, while they never stated it outright to us, there was a palpable sense that we had somehow brought this slaughter upon ourselves, that we deserved this atrocity visited upon us. Eldridge was beside himself with grief and rage; and even my most tender words of comfort were unable to pierce his heart. Worse, he had recently been taking greater and greater amounts of stimulants in order to stay awake and further the revolution, and I fear that this had made him paranoid, irritable, difficult to communicate with on his best days. This attack only worsened his craving for amphetamines, and he now openly turned to cocaine, consuming amounts of the drug that would have killed a man with lesser tolerance or physical fortitude. This was, naturally, a cause for enormous concern among those in our inner circle as he became ever more erratic, and we found ourselves with few options to protect ourselves from violence without and uncertainty within.

-African Queen: A Revolutionary Memoir, by former African Brotherhood member Anna Mae Corning, 1980


DIRECTOR'S EYES ONLY: The following is an excerpt from an intercepted telephone conversation between the wanted terrorist Malcolm X, who is currently believed to be residing in Mexico City, and a follower believed to be Louis Farrakhan, a trusted aide and rising star within the terrorist group "Nation Of Islam."

X: The horrors visited upon our brothers and sisters in New York. Diabolical. Are we certain that it was the blue-eyed devils who were involved, and that Eldridge didn't run afoul of a local gang? His addiction to the white man's poisons has reached even my ears, and we've both seen the violence that arises from that trash being peddled in our communities.

F: Minister, we are as certain as it is possible to be. We have spoken to witnesses sympathetic to our goals, and they confirm that this was the result of the Italian criminal organization.

X: Perhaps he was associated with them somehow? With my own past, I will not judge a man for having served time in prison even if he was guilty of the offense, but as we both know, it can be challenging to avoid going back to one's old ways if one does not bow the knee to Allah.

F: As you stated, Minister, he was involved in drugs, but our sources on the inside of the organization insist that he was simply an addict, and that his purchases were solely from local sources. Besides, as you know, this is not how the Italians resolve a financial debt. No, Minister, this was something else. This tragedy was designed to send a message.

X: And that message was not to, not to the Brotherhood...

F: No.

X: This was a message to any son or daughter of Africa who has chosen to rise in defense of the oppressed and enslaved, regardless of their motivations. Not an attack on Eldridge, but rather on our people as a whole.

F: Minister, that is my belief.

X: I have no idea what could have inspired them to such an outrage. Do we have the names of those responsible?

F: We do, Minister. From what I could gather, these were three low-level hoods, likely trying to make a name for themselves. John Gotti, who has largely served as a numbers runner and loan shark, seems to have taken the leadership on this.

X: I see. Well, they have indeed sent us a clear message, though I remain puzzled as to their motivations, and I will pray for guidance in this matter. For now, however, as they have gone to such great lengths to send a message, then I believe that the only polite thing to do is to send them one in kind. Do you understand my meaning?

F: I do, Minister.

X: Then I will leave the details in your capable hands. As-salamu alaykum

F: Wa-Alaikum-Salaam
 
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WENDELL! So good to see you! DM me and let me know what's happening in your life!

People, this is the man, who, on a long-departed AH forum other than this one, saw a joking caption that I'd posted under a picture of Walt Disney, and suggested that I actually turn it into a timeline. I'd never completed a timeline at that point (and was notorious for leaving them unfinished), but figured it was worth a shot, and we all know how that turned out. So here's someone who deserves a fair share of credit for the original ever coming into form.

Okay, I think it'll be a short one this time, but it's an important update.

There really aren't a whole lot of us left from those days are there?

Good to see you taking another swing at the sequel to one of AH's all-time classics.
 
What? No. How could I have known? No, look, when I say that it had been...you know what? Of course I didn't know that Javits was going to...yeah? Yeah? Fuck your "Just asking for clarification" bullshit. You're trying to play the man who invented the game?
I'm guessing Cohn gets some karma for his actions?

(Or possibly an excuse to rid of him because of his ties to the current administration)
 
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I've already commented my appreciation on my own TL, but I just wanted to add my voice to the chorus of praise towards this sequel to perhaps my favourite ATL that I have read so far.
I'm ready to enjoy the ride again!
 
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