Word: paars
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...Jack Paar said that it was the honorable thing for the U.S. to do. Republican Senator Barry Goldwater said that it was blackmail. Democratic Elder Stateswoman Eleanor Roosevelt saw it as an opportunity for U.S. humanitarianism to assert itself. Columnist Robert Ruark denounced it as an obscene, criminal proposition. Wherever the average American turned last week-to his television set, his newspaper, his favorite bartender or to his wife-he could get an argument. The subject of controversy: Fidel Castro's idea of accepting U.S. tractors in exchange for prisoners taken in the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion...
Arizona's Republican Senator Barry Goldwater seemed to be everywhere at once last week. He showed up on Jack Paar's late-night talkathon to denounce the tractor trade with Fidel Castro. He gave the commencement address at New York's Long Island University, at the same time picking up his fourth honorary doctorate in ten days (the others were from Arizona State University, Hamilton College, Brigham Young University). He debated on television with New York's liberal Republican Senator Jacob Javits, was a great hit at a glittery Washington debut party for the daughter...
...Paar show that Goldwater was at his most forthright. He opposed the tractor deal on both political and practical grounds. Said he: "Allowing a group of citizens, no matter how well-intentioned they may be, to conduct our foreign affairs once could lead to a repetition of it at any time a foreign Communist leader saw fit to take prisoners and then offered to release them, say for 500 electric shavers or a solid-gold Cadillac or 200 tractors...
Goldwater added that the U.S. should think about ways of freeing U.S. citizens jailed in Red China. Paar worriedly asked: "What could we have done outside of atomic war? It would have been war, wouldn't it?" Said Goldwater quietly: "Well, what if it would? Can American people live in the kind of peace we would have if Communism were dominant in this world? Life wouldn't be worth living." The audience burst into applause...
...there were still many who supported the plan on humanitarian grounds. The committee reported a sudden surge of 10,000 letters (and presumed donations) after an emotional appeal by TV's Jack Paar, who was a onetime ardent admirer of Castro's. Fund-raising drives were under way in eleven Latin American countries, and the New York Times's Tad Szulc reported an "ever-so-rare spectacle of Latin American public opinion being aroused against Premier Fidel Castro and in favor of the United States...