Anniversary mania

For the first time, I won't say in living memory but as long as I can remember, the front page of the New York Times I'm looking at has not a single story with a Washington dateline.

Wait – I'm sorry, there is a small one tucked away in the bottom corner. It's about the arrest of an art historian. Not, as you might jump to conclude, on a charge of being a Soviet secret agent, but on a charge of stealing precious documents that have been missing from the Library of Congress. But this exception only emphasises the point that there are no front-page political stories from Washington because the politicians aren't there. They're scattered throughout the 50 states, back home; it used to said nursing the grassroots, or mending their political fences. And some Democrats are sweating through many states in the guise of future presidents.

The president himself has decided to take a 23-day holiday, not, you may be sure, from the presidency. His ranch up high in the mountains there behind Santa Barbara is an isolated spot but it's wired for instant communication with, for instance, Mr Gorbachev and special, private, or what are called secure telephones, can be used to talk to American envoys everywhere from London to Managua and so calibrated that, ironically, Mr Gorbachev can't tap them.

And that anonymous man who carries the little box which carries the code of the day for alerting the strategic air command in case the Russians decide to shoot a missile across the Baring Strait, that man is there, never more than 30 seconds away from the president's side. For obvious reasons of what is called national security, there has never been a piece written about him.

He must have the loneliest job in the world, never able to go for a swim unless the president is having a swim. Never able to see a movie that the president isn't seeing. A stand-in for the night shift. Imagine him now sitting on a log, ten feet from Mr Reagan, just waiting and watching. It's the closest, the most unreported friendship in the world. When the president is not on the phone, which must be for about three-quarters of the day, and sometimes a quarter of the night, he's out riding or wood-chopping. But these days on the orders of his doctors, in a big, floppy hat. They don't want any more chipping away at the skin cancers on his face.

This is the new 1987 picture of the president in what used to be called the dog days. It used to be, long before August, once the dreadful heat came blasting in on Washington – which Jefferson called that Indian swamp in the wilderness – it used to be that the city was dead for months on end. That was before the United States was a world power and before the invention of air-conditioning.

But now, as then, the newspapermen – and they were always men, then – the ones who stayed there because they lived there, spent August fishing around for what they called dog day stories, once known as colour or human interest. That was when newspapers were the only medium, but television, I'm sorry to say in all countries so far as I know, does not take the summer off. It's still going 24 hours a day in many cities and more small towns on scores of cable channels as well as the networks.

Well, they have to show something. So the search for colour, or dog day, stories is more hectic than ever and this year it's noticeable how thankfully television, especially, has discovered a rich mine of feature stories in anniversaries. So far, the news of the summer, as one of our droller commentators, Russell Baker, has remarked, the news is that one, Marilyn Monroe has been dead 25 years, two, Elvis Presley has been dead ten years and three, the Titanic has been dead for 75 years.

They have each provided lush stories and the film archivists have been ransacking their shelves to make up short items for the evening news on the exact anniversary dates of death and hour-long documentaries on the life of the said Monroe, Presley and Titanic. I, myself, have always had a strong or morbid affection for the Titanic, partly because I had an aunt who went down on it, partly because one of my favourite films is the splendid English semi-fiction, semi-documentary 'A Night to Remember', based on the book by Walter Lord, a small, modest man from Maryland, a Titanic nut, who wrote his book early enough to interview all the living survivors and who once spent an evening with me bending my ear about the Titanic.

On a nice, lazy evening this summer, I took down this film and put it on the VCR and realised suddenly it was in the wrong container, so what I saw, and you can imagine my astonishment, was not the sweeping, majestic lines of the Titanic as she went down the ways, but the sweeping, majestic lines of the fairways of the Augusta National Golf Club.

I'd picked up by mistake a cassette of the 1980 Masters Championship. Not to worry. After all, it's pretty close to the seventh anniversary of the Spaniard, Severiano Ballesteros, winning the event for the first time and on a lean day, there might be a dog day story in it. So I let it roll.

It was coming to the end and Ballesteros, who was obviously going to win, was standing somewhere along the 18th fairway checking with his caddy the distance to the green and fingering an iron club. A commentator's microphone was close enough to the ropes to pick up his question to the caddy. He hesitated between two clubs and said, 'What happens now?' Within a split second, I was looking at a man unfolding a scroll and saying to a bearded sailor, 'Captain, she's about to sink'. The abrupt switch from colour to black and white was enough of a shock but to have the question of Ballesteros answered by the architect of the Titanic was a trauma that took me a little time to recover from.

What had happened was, I guess, that I was, as usual, back from Augusta on the Sunday, the final day of the tournament and recording it and must have seen in a desperate moment that I didn't have a blank tape on hand. So I grabbed one from the shelf and slotted it into the machine. At the end of the tournament, I now suppose there must have been a commercial break and I pressed the pause button and then mis-pressed the button that returns you to what you're recording.

Of course, to my chagrin, I'd wiped the entire last hour of 'A Night to Remember'. But I keep that tape as an IQ shocker for my grandchildren. What is the connection, I ask, between a famous Spanish sportsman and the Titanic? The answer is instantaneous.

I mentioned earlier that the highways and byways and the grassroots are being tramped or trampled down these days by a small swarm of Democrats who are out for the 1988 presidency. There are, to date, seven of them and since none of them has emerged as a charismatic giant, they've been cursed with the label the Seven Dwarfs, and I don't think they'd have been called that if this year didn't mark the 50th anniversary of Walt Disney's 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs' – a film which, re-released in the theatres, has racked up more millions in box-office returns than Mr Disney ever dreamed of in his lifetime.

Of course the newspapers can't leave these celebrations entirely to television. They have the empty political columns to fill so there've been long stories on everything from the making of Snow White down to the making of Mr Disney. And the re-showing itself has produced gurgles and gushings of delight across the country, except from a lady in Morristown, New Jersey, who wrote a huffy letter to the Times on Wednesday in response to a tender, happy leader the paper had printed a few days earlier.

'Your editorial,' the lady began, 'could have been written only by someone who has forgotten or ignored major changes as a result of the women's movement.' She then revealed what I really doubt was a universal reaction among little girls seeing Snow White in 1937, the distaste (her word) she felt when, as a toddler, she was taken to it. 'My memories,' she wrote, 'are tarnished by the distaste I felt for a cartoon character who was cheerful about housekeeping for seven men and lived for the day when her prince would come.'

The lady does admit that she, like every other small girl, was looking for someone to love. 'But,' she adds, 'I also found it appealing to go back to school and find a rewarding career.' The distaste she says she felt in 1937 has been, however, moderated by the knowledge that today, when I get home, I expect my prince to do half the housework.

I wish I knew a certain divorcee on Long Island and could procure for your enlightenment her response to the revival of Snow White. I bet it would be a humdinger. Her name is, or was, Cooperman and some years ago, after her divorce, she went to court to have her name legally changed. Cooperman reminded her too painfully of the man in her life. She wanted to be called Cooperperson. I kid you not. The judge threw out her claim as ridiculous. Pretty soon, he said, we'll be singing, Woodsperson, spare that tree.

However, she didn't stop there. She took it up to a higher court and this time the judge allowed the change. 'How about your son?' he asked, 'Do you wish him also to be called Cooperperson?' 'No', the lady generously conceded, 'I wish him to stay Cooperman. It will help him to preserve his male identity.'

You must forgive me if I end by citing the greatest single coup by a newspaper that I know of in the observance of an anniversary.

It was in the spring of 1948. The Russians had just imposed their blockade of the allied sectors of Berlin. Quite a story! I wrote a long article from Washington for the leader page. My editor sent me a cable of apology. They'd had to kill my dispatch. Why?

When I got the paper, I knew. They had a long, reverent leader-page piece celebrating the eleven hundredth anniversary of the birth of Alfred the Great. The Guardian, I dare to say, was the only paper in Britain that, on that day, was on the ball.

This transcript was typed from a recording of the original BBC broadcast (© BBC) and not copied from an original script. Because of the risk of mishearing, the BBC cannot vouch for its complete accuracy.

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