From what I see, he meant “the best of all mankind”.
Having only heard the soundbite, I, too, was taken aback by the ‘other things’ wording. It does sound out of place.
But I am more taken aback by his pronunciation of “decade”. I have never heard anyone, before or since, pronounce it with the accent on the second syllable and the ‘k’ sound attached to the second. Is that a regionalism, or is it just Kennedy?
As an aside, there is a freeway sign on I-10 leaving Los Angeles, near Cabazon, that announces the upcoming cities. It says:
I10 Indio
other Desert
Cities
It’s the “other”, in all small letters, that always gets me. It’s like the ‘and the rest’ in the original Gilligan’s Island theme. An afterthought.
Link to stret view:
That’s how I read it and hear it as well, as accomplishments of mankind in general, not just Americans.
I’m sure nitpickers will eventually get around to pointing out that Kennedy himself never climbed Mount Everest, flew solo across the Atlantic, or went to the moon. So where does he get off on saying “we” did those things?
Haters gotta hate.
Eh, I wouldn’t call it too fierce nowadays. Certainly below Oklahoma, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Baylor, Arkansas, and others. Probably about on par with SMU, TCU, and UH. It is more of an academic rivalry than an athletic one these days.
Your main point of course though is correct. The speech was at Rice. Certainly Rice and Texas was a bigger rivalry in the 1950s and 1960s than now.
Not in football or basketball, at any rate. We haven’t beaten UT in football since '94. We hold our own in other sports, but those don’t really matter for national exposure. Being the 3rd or 4th smallest FBS school by enrollment certainly doesn’t help.
I saw an interesting image capture the other day. It was a draft of the moon speech. JFK inserted “Why does Rice play Texas?” by hand to an earlier draft. Definitely knew how to play to the crowd.
Actually, that image kind of conclusively shows it wasn’t a flub. The “other things” part was in there, and the earlier draft was largely identical to what he actually said.
If the war was still going on, how did anyone know it was going to be the largest battle of the war?
No, he said, “I’m here to kick ass and chew bubblegum!”
Actually it was written while he was riding to Gettysburg on the back of an envelope.
As I understand it, what he said was more or less the equivalent of proclaiming himself a “Hamburger” in the town of Hamburg, New York. Everyone in the audience would understand exactly what he was saying.
The account at the Wikipedia link (which I’ve seen repeated in even greater detail elsewhere) didn’t sufficiently promote your understanding and make things perfectly clear?
Is it somehow obscure to you that something can be at once perfectly grammatical and understandable on the one hand, and on the other hand still sound a bit silly and be fodder for jokes?
If I believe in the Tea Party movement, there’s nothing ungrammatical about me describing myself as a “teabagger.” And you’ll be perfectly well aware what I mean by that. Yet do do you deny that other, sillier connotations might nonetheless come to mind that I didn’t intend? That’s why the “Hamburger” analogy is apt, and there’s no need for you to have a broom up your ass about it.
I have no broom up my ass at all. In fact, I would say the one who would choose to use such a phrase just may be projecting a little.
The whole “jelly donut” business was the “fodder” that launched the biggest joke associated with this incident…and that turns out to be manifestly incorrect, as the source I cited (and many others) makes clear.
So we have anecdotal evidence that one person had the thought that Kennedy’s statement might resonate with a second, “mildly amusing” meaning. I would like to see evidence that this phenomenon was widespread among the German people of the day. Because it’s equally plausible that the audience present for Kennedy’s speech, and the larger audience to whom it was reported after the fact, was enough taken with Kennedy’s ringing affirmation that they never gave any other interpretation a thought.
I can only speak for myself in this, but my take is that for many phrases that take something literal and apply it to a symbolic meaning, the symbolic quickly achieves prominence. So while I’m quite aware of where the term “tea bagger” comes from historically…when I hear it today I picture only one thing. Unfortunately for your thesis, there are no other double meanings that “come to mind.”
If someone says “rolling stones,” I don’t picture a bunch of rocks tumbling down a hill. I doubt that you or anyone else above the age of 12 will either.
Whatever.
At least he never claimed to be a Danish.
I’ve always admired Kennedy’s speeches, many of which were so beautifully worded that they were positively lyrical. To me, “…and do the other things…” sounds perfectly harmonious and as already pointed out refers back to the things he had already mentioned. A speech doesn’t have to always use multi-syllabic words to be effective; sometimes a simple turn of phrase like that is just what is needed, and sometimes indeed the power is in the stark simplicity. Just as in “Ich bin ein Berliner!” or “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”
He says “decade” several other times in the speech and each time says it in the normal way. He simply misspoke in that one line.
More modern college football equivalent: Why Does Vanderbilt play Alabama? Probably would have been the choice Kennedy used in the speech then if he gave the speech in Nashville instead of Houston.
(Answer: Because they both play in the SEC. Back in the day Texas and Rice were both in the now-defunct SWC. Rice and Texas are no longer conference foes and only occasionally play since the SWC broke up.)