The K.F. Stone Weekly

Sarah Palin: Another One Bites the Dust

   Ninety-nine years ago this month a young sports writer named Franklin P. Adams published an eight-line poem in the New York Evening Mail whose refrain is still recognizable even if its author and content are not:

                       These are the saddest of possible words: 

                      "Tinker to Evers to Chance."

                       Trio of bear cubs, and fleeter than birds,

                       Tinker and Evers and Chance.

                       Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon* bubble

                      Making a Giant hit into a double -

                      Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble:

                     "Tinker to Evers to Chance."

(* A long medieval banner or flag.) 

    "Tinker to Evers to Chance" is of course just one of many trios that fall trippingly off the tongue.  Consider too: 

• Wynken, Blynken & Nod.
• Shadrach, Mesach & Abednego.
• Crosby, Stills & Nash.
• Harvard, Princeton & Yale.

   With all the above trios, there is an obvious linkage:

• "Tinker, Evers & Chance" were three infielders with the Chicago Cubs.
• "Shadrach, Mesach & Abednego" were three who survived the fiery furnace.
• "Wynken, Blynken & Nod" were three fishermen sailing and fishing in the stars.
• "Crosby, Still & Nash" are three superb rock musicians.
• "Harvard, Princeton & Yale" are America's three oldest Ivy League colleges.   

There are now a couple of new trios to add to the litany:

• Gingrich, Vitter & Craig
• Ensign, Sanford & Palin  

    For those who have been out of town, the first trio is made up of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, current Louisiana Senator David Vitter, and former Idaho Senator Larry Craig.  The second triad consists of current Nevada Senator John Ensign, current South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford and the "As of today and supposed to become former" Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.   

As with the above referenced trios, "Gingrich, Vitter & Craig" and "Ensign, Sanford & Palin" also possess obvious linkage.  To wit:

• Both trios are made up of self righteously confidant conservative politicians whose public posture turned out to be dangerously divergent from their private practice.
• In both cases (with the possible exception of former Senator Craig) the trios are made up of individuals who had until recently been referenced as potential 2012 Republican presidential contenders.  Today, they are in that collective category called "Rotza ruck!"

 In the main, conservative commentators, faced with the necessity having to write or say something -- anything -- about the moral/ethical lapses of a Gingrich, Vitter, Craig, Ensign or Sanford or the sheer 1984-ish absurdity of a Sarah Palin [Orwell: "War is Peace."  Palin: "Resignation is advancement."] have, without batting an eyelash proclaimed, "Well, the liberals are far, far worse!"  Within the past few weeks, they have seen most of their presidential hopes go up in smoke or, in the case of Governor Palin, simply bite the dust:

   Instead of announcing that Sarah Palin is resigning her office in midterm, Fox Noise ran a crawler proclaiming, "Palin will not seek a second term."  Rather than attempt to decipher or explain what she said at her press conference or in her interview with Andrea Mitchell, most conservative commentators have gone on the offensive -- attacking "lefties" for making Palin's life so impossible that resignation became a necessity.  One commentator, Milwaukee's Mark Belling went so far as to blame Palin's downfall on . . . are you ready for this? . . . the SDS!  No really!  While filling in for Limbaugh this past Tuesday, Belling ranted on and on about how those who ". . .admire and support Castro; Che Gueverra, whose t-shirts they still wear; Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua; Robert Mugabe in Africa -- African self determination; Idi Amin in Africa; Ho Chi Minh; Mao -- remember how they were running around in the '60s with the Little Red Book?"  Egad!  These are the folks who forced Pain to resign?

   When Nevada Senator John Ensign announces that his parents have given his ex-mistress and her husband nearly $100,000 based on "humanitarian concern for two friends," the conservative press applauds their generosity.  There is nary a peep about the fact that Ensign, a prominent member of the Christian men's organization "Promise Keepers," has publicly admitted that he has had a long-term relationship with another man's wife.  [It should be noted that one of "Promise Keepers" core beliefs is, "A Promise Keeper is committed to honoring Jesus Christ through worship, prayer and obedience to God's word in the power of the Holy Spirit."] 

   That when Governor Mark Sanford publicly admits that he lied to his wife, his cabinet and the people of South Carolina, and disappeared for five days so that he could travel to Buenos Aires and have a rendezvous with his Argentine "soul mate," all Rush Limbaugh can say is, "I guess we have learned something.  Republicans like sex too," and then lament that Sanford "could have been another Kennedy . . . without the Mafia connections."  So far as El Rushbo was concerned, if anyone were to be surprised by what Sanford was admitting to, it was likely the fault of the Democrats.  "How's that?" you ask.  Well, try and follow Limbaugh's logic: "Up until now (whether or not "Republicans like sex"] has been debatable.  Republicans are these church going, moralistic no-fun-in-life kind of people according to the libs.  Mark Sanford  developed . . . an email frienship, started innocently, the girl from Ipanema.  He went down to Argentina to see the girl from Ipanema." (sic -- emphasis added]. 

   [If I weren't concerned about being labeled a "G.D.G.E." -- a 'G.D. Geographic Elitist,' I would hasten to inform Rush that Ipanema is in Brazil and that Brazil is definitely not in Argentina. But I am concerned, so won't mention it.]

  With the recent demise of such front-line players as Ensign, Sanford & Palin -- and understanding that Gingrich, Vitter and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal bit the dust quite a while ago -- who's left on the GOP bench?  Mike Huckabee?  Mitt Romney?  Michael Steele?  How about a tickwt of Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter?

   When will the conservative entertainers ever figure out that just because we Americans are for the most part a good understanding and forgiving folk does not mean that we are all fools.  There is a big difference between being a truly repentant sinner -- otherwise known as a human being -- and a hypocritical blowhard. A vast majority of Americans understand that difference.  Too bad so few of them are on radio or television.

   Who will be the next one to bite the dust?

©2009 Kurt F. Stone

You Don't Have To Be A Star . . . But

  

     Finally, after more than six months, Minnesota has two United States Senators.

   Finally, after more than half a year, the United States Senate has its full compliment of members.

    Finally, Alan Stuart "Al" Franken* can add "United States Senator" to an already impressive resume.

    And yet, to listen or watch various conservative entertainers, pundits and assorted troglodytes, one might think that the "Greatest Deliberative Body in the World" is about to be invaded by a debauched, foul-mouthed, plague-ridden scandal-mongering deviant.  

   And no, they are not referring to Senators Larry Craig, John Ensign or David Vitter.  They are referring to Senator Franken who, unlike the aforementioned "gentlemen" has been married to the same woman for 32 years without a hint of scandal. To be certain there are all sorts of rumors about Senator Franken's past actions, addictions and activities, but most all of them were started by Franken himself -- that's just part of the job of a self-denigrating satirist.

  The one charge his detractors have endlessly tossed about on television, radio and the Internet is that Franken lacks gravitas -- that indefinable something which separates the professionals from the poseurs.

  "Al Franken," they monotonously posit, "is nothing more than a third-rate, potty-mouthed comedian from Saturday Night Live . . . and we all know what that means . . . And if it weren't for being an incredibly minor celebrity, who in the world would have ever heard of him?" 

   By this, they are of course inferring that:

1. Anyone associated with Saturday Night Live is nothing more than a clown or comedian.
2. Being a clown, comedian, or mere celebrity is no qualification for political office.
3. Al Franken is all three, and is therefore clearly out of his element.
4. Franken will be an embarrassment. 
   

   Hold on there for just a second.  Al Franken is a lot more than some "third-rate comedian":

• He is a graduate of Harvard College.
• He is a best-selling author with six books to his credit.
• He is an actor who has either starred or been featured in a dozen-and-a-half films.
• He is a gifted political satirist and pundit who until just before launching his senate campaign, had a much admired radio talk show on the Air America network. 
• He is a patriot who has, over the past decade, conducted overseas tours entertaining American troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as "handshake tours" to military hospitals all over the world.
• And yes, he is a celebrity . . .

     So let's ask the question: Does being a celebrity disqualify one from office?  According to the likes of Hannaty, Limbaugh, O'Reilly et al it certainly does . . . at least when it comes to Al Franken. 

   (In support of full disclosure, it must be noted that in many of his satiric books -- most notably Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations and Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, he gleefully skewers the aforementioned with a pen that could only have been dipped in Jonathan Swift's inkwell.)

   All those who continually classify Senator-elect Franken as "nothing more than a celebrity" suffer from a curious inconsistency.  "Who," we may well ask, "Who is the one elected official they revere more than any other; the one who more than any other successfully led the country along the path of peace, prosperity and honor?"

   Why the greatest of all celebrities who ever got elected to office -- Ronald Reagan, that's who!  Could it be then that what these guys are really, truly disparaging are celebrities who happen to be liberal Democrats?

    Hmmmmm. . . .
  

   Now, the mere fact that one has achieved a certain level of celebrity should by no means be a disqualifier for leadership.  Then too, achieving a certain level of celebrity by no means makes one qualified to be a representative, senator, governor or president . . . but it sure can help one get elected.  For in hard-ball campaigning, the first and highest hurdle to clear is getting your name out there; making yourself known.  Unless one is already famous -- or in some cases infamous -- this can cost an arm and a leg and a pancreas gland.  For  those whose names, faces and basic accomplishments are already known -- i.e. those who have already achieved a level of celebrity -- that hurdle is measured in millimeters, not miles. 

   Neither Ronald Reagan nor Al Franken, of course, are the first celebrities to succeed in getting themselves elected.  That honor likely goes to a late 19th century Shakespearean actor named Julius Kahn who the good people of San Francisco elected to Congress in 1898.  Kahn (1861-1924) would be reelected 11 times and serve three terms as Chair of the House Committee on Military Affairs.  

   Since then nearly two-dozen men and women have used their celebrity status in order to get elected to office.  Among them are:

• Helen Gahagan-Douglas: Broadway Actress and wife of actor Melvin Douglas, she served two terms in the House from California, and lost a senate election to Richard Nixon, who called her "The Pink Lady."  In turn, Rep. Gahagan-Douglas was the first to call the future president "Tricky Dicky."  She was a liberal Democrat.
  
• George Murphy: One of Shirley Temple's costars who served a single six-year term in the Senate from California. Murphy was a conservative Republican. Topical songwriter Tom Lehrer wrote a piece about him -- "Now we have a senator who can really sing and dance!"
• Sonny Bono: A conservative Republican Congressman from Palm Springs, California, he took quite a while to figure out that being a celebrity and being a member of Congress were two very different things.
• Fred Grandy: "Gopher" on The Love Boat, Grandy, a graduate of Harvard, served four terms in the House from Iowa.  He was a moderate Republican.
• Fred Thompson: Originally an attorney with the Watergate Committee, Thompson went on to a movie career -- frequently portraying the president -- and did several seasons as D.A. Arthur Branch on Law and Order. Thompson served two six-year terms in the senate from Tennessee, and tried to capture the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 . . .
• Bill Bradley: NBA star with the New York Knicks.  Bradley, who was also an Olympian, a graduate of Princeton and a Rhodes Scholar, was a liberal Democrat who served three terms in the senate from New Jersey.  Vied for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2000 . . .
• Jesse "The Body" Ventura:  Professional wrestler and actor who became a one-term Governor of Minnesota.  Ironically, Ventura acted in the 1987 film Predator with future California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and future Kentucky Gubernatorial candidate Sonny Landham.
• Jim Bunning: Hall of Fame pitcher (224-184, 3.27 era, 2,855 strikeouts), now in his third term as senator from Kentucky; a conservative Republican.
  
• Wilmer "Vinegar Bend" Mizell: Spent nine seasons pitching for Cardinals, Pirates and Mets; served three terms in Congress from a North Carolina district; a conservative Republican.
• Jim Ryun: For many years, the World record-holder in the mile (3:51:1); served five terms in the House from Kansas' Second District; conservative Republican.
• Heath Schuler: A first-round pick of the Washington Redskins in 2001, Schuler was a so-so quarterback for five NFL seasons.  Now in his second term as Representative form North Carolina's 11th District.  Moderate-to-conservative Democrat.
• Steve Largent: Hall of Fame wide receiver for Seattle Seahawks; served 4 terms in the House from Oklahoma's First District; conservative Republican.
• J.C. Watts: Two-time Orange Bowl MVP (1980, 81) and Canadian Football League Quarterback; served four terms in the House from Oklahoma's Fourth District; a conservative Republican.
• George W. Bush: Son of President George H.W. Bush; grandson of Senator Prescott Bush; managing partner of Texas Rangers baseball team.  Conservative Republican.

   To the best of my knowledge, I don't recall Hannaty, Limbaugh, O'Reilly or the rest ever question the qualifications of folks like J.C. Watts, Steve Largent, Jim Ryun, Jim Bunning or any other conservative Republican celebrity.  I do know that they have disparaged the likes of Chicago-area Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr. (whom they claim would never have been elected if his father wasn't famous); Rhode Island Representative Patrick Kennedy (his father is Senator Ted); and now, of course, Al Franken.  Perhaps their problem isn't so much with their celebrity or "stardom" but with their politics. 

   I predict that Al Franken will become a pretty good senator.  Having read all of his books I can tell you that not only is he both witty and bright; he is also very well versed on a lot of issues.  He also cares passionately about making this a better world, much in the mold of his political mentor, the late Senator Paul David Wellstone. I predict that as the years go by, Franken's career as a writer/comedian/satirist/radio talk show host will fade from memory . . . except when the boys and girls Fox remind us. . .

©2009 Kurt F. Stone

*  Al Franken's election to the U.S. Senate marks an interesting bit of American history. Minnesota is now the only state in American history to have elected 4 Jewish senators.  Moreover, Al Franken is the fourth Jewish person in a row to occupy this senate seat.  He takes over the seat that had previously been held for one term by Republican Norm Coleman; Coleman took over the seat held for two terms by the late Democrat Paul David Wellstone; Wellstone had defeated Republican Rudy Boschwitz, who himself had served two terms.  In other words, this marks the sixth term in a row that this seat has been held by a Jew.  Really quite remarkable when you consider how few Jewish people live in Minnesota. Hey wait a second . . . come to think of it, my maternal grandma, Grandma Ann, was born in St. Paul way back in 1896 . . .

  

The Thriller's Gone

  

   Back in late 1968, early 1969, I wrote a really bad futuristic  short story -- blessedly long since forgotten -- entitled Hello Goodbye.  Taking place in London in the year 2033, the story was in the form of a long newspaper article reporting on the funeral of Lord Paul McCartney, the last surviving member of the Beatles, who had passed away at age 91.  The scene was a cold, darkly-cloudy-drizzly late November morning at London's Bunhill  Fields Cemetery, the final resting place of such immortals as Daniel Defoe, Thomas Hardy, John Bunyan, William Blake and now, Lord McCartney. Peopling the   story were hundreds -- perhaps thousands -- of extremely elderly men and women.  Most were decked out in ancient, ill-fitting Levis, moldy navy pea coats, bandannas and beads.  Nearly all were leaning on canes, tearfully daubing their eyes with large red railroad handkerchiefs. Under the canopy at the front of the crowd, a foursome of aged gray-haired musicians was playing a trio of Beatle classics: I Will from "The White Album," There's a Place, from "Please Please Me;" and Hello Goodbye from "Magical Mystery Tour."  Between these pieces, the minister, an elderly Church of England Deacon (who strangely looked an awful lot like an octogenarian Mick Jagger) attempted to deliver the eulogy.  Being nearly as disconsolate as the throngs he was addressing, his voice could barely be heard anywhere but under the canopy.  Other speakers included the 86-year old Peter Noone ("Herman's Hermits"), Marianne Faithful (age 87) and the "Who's" Roger Daltry (age 89).          

   As I recall, the three spoke of Lord Paul's lyric brilliance, his long-lasting partnership with the late John Lennon (who had passed away seven years earlier at age 85) and of the tremendous impact he had made on an entire generation in terms of fad, fashion and passion.  

   And of how an era had definitely come to an end. . .

  

   I had not thought about this long-forgotten "literary" travesty for nearly a quarter of a century . . . until yesterday when word came over the Internet that Michael Jackson, the "King of Pop," had died at the unbelievably young age of 50.  For with his all too real passing -- much like the fictional demise of "Lord" McCartney -- an era has definitely come to an end.  And just as Paul McCartney and the Beatles exercised tremendous influence over the tastes, ideas and passions of a generation, so too did Michael.  In fact, the two both overlapped and intertwined in several eerie ways.  First, up until the time of his death, Michael Jackson owned the rights to much of the Beatle musical catalog.  Second, he and Sir Paul [to give him his real title] did collaborate on at least two pieces --- Say, Say, Say and Ebony and Ivory.  And third, it is likely that Jacko, who in one of his last incarnations took to wearing colorfully embellished satin jackets festooned with gold braiding and brass buttons, took the idea from Sir Paul and the Fab Four -- just look at what the boys are wearing on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. McCartney was knighted by the Queen of England; Michael -- the "King of Pop" -- was enthroned by the public.

    Whether or not one was a fan of Jackson's music, there is no denying that he is was and always shall be an electrifying performer.  The moon-walking Jackson was probably the most imaginative and influential dancer since Fred Astaire first took the stage in the early 1920s. With the 1983 release of his zombie-themed album "Thriller," he all but single-handedly invented the music video and quickly made it an art form. In terms of his artistic longevity and the ability to reinvent both his style and onstage persona, Jackson was sui generis; a performer without peer.

    However, beyond Michael Jackson the performer -- the singer/lyricist/dancer/actor/"King of Pop"/"Gloved One" -- there is, of course, Michael Jackson, the human train wreck.  For more than a generation, both public and press alike have been mesmerized by the ever-changing, eccentric-to-the-point-of-absurdity, "Wacko Jacko."  Whether it be his ever-evolving facial features and pigmentation, his retrogression from adorable, immensely talented 8-year old to preposterous middle-aged quasi-hermaphrodite, or the many peaks and valleys of his personal, financial and sexual life, we haven't been able to take our eyes off him for a long, long time.  To my way of thinking, this says far more about ourselves and the times we inhabit than about Michael Jackson.  Having grown up in and around the world of celebrity -- indeed, the Jackson Family compound was just up the hill from my parents' home -- I know how difficult it is to remain sane when the spotlight is always on; how much more difficult -- and terrifying -- when that spotlight dims or is extinguished.

   Although the cult of personality and celebrity likely goes back to the time of the Greeks, it took the 20th century to make of it an immensely successful cottage industry.  The lionization  and adulation afforded the likes of a Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Rudolph Valentino or Charles Chaplin [who absolutely fascinated Jackson] in the 'teens and 'twenties; a Clark Gable, Cary Grant or Russ Columbo in the 'thirties; or a Frank Sinatra in the 'forties, is but a brief candle flicker compared to the perpetual blaze  surrounding a James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley or Michael Jackson.  One huge difference is that in days of yore, what we "knew" about our idols was precisely what their publicists wanted us to know: that they were good, high-minded folks who loved their mothers, were passionate about puppies, and were almost too good to be true.  Over the past generation or generation-and-a-half, we have become addicted to "knowing" (or having exposed for our own enjoyment and entertainment) every blemish, foible, phobia or prosecutable offense of those in the public eye.  The media's glare is, of course, far far more intense today than yesterday.  And we, the public are far far more addicted and insatiable today than yesterday.  The sad fact is that today, we "know" far far more about folks in the public glare than we do about the people who live next door. 

   Although I have long recognized Michael Jackson's immense talent, I can't say that I was much of a fan after the breakup of the Jackson Five.  My tastes in rock or popular music have always been more attuned to Crosby, Still, Nash and Young, the Byrds or the Beatles; I am the sort who will pick "Tommy" over "Thriller" eight days a week. And yet, I daresay that like most, I have paid more than my fair share of attention to Michael Jackson's train wreck of a life. It has been buoyant.  It has been sad. It has been maddening.  It has also been a thriller.

   Like Paul McCartney and the Beatles, he has exercised tremendous influence over an entire generation of newer musical artists like Justin Timberlake and the "Backstreet Boys."  Like the real Sir Paul, his work has been "covered" by a diverse group of artists such as "Soundgarden's" Chris Cornell, "Fall Out Boy", and James Chance and the "Contortions." 

   But just as with the fictional "Lord Paul" from Hello Goodbye, the "Thriller's" gone.

  May he rest in peace.  

©2009 Kurt F. Stone

Anyone Surprised?

 

    At about 3:30 this morning Eastern Daylight Time, Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameni addressed a crowd at Tehran University.  In his televised speech -- which took place during Friday prayers -- Khameni praised President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's election as a "definite victory," and sloughed off any and all charges of vote-rigging.  While he called on those who don't believe the results to use "proper legal avenues," such as requesting the recounting of ballots in their presence, he did not issue a call for a new vote.
 
   Anyone surprised?

   Khameni roundly criticized the street protests and proclaimed that "those who cause violence during demonstrations will be held accountable."  Speaking of Ahmadinejad's 11-million vote victory over his primary rival, Mir Hossein Moussavi, the Supreme Leader lectured, "Eleven million votes difference?  Sometimes there's a margin of 100,000 or 200,000, or 1 million maximum.  Then one can doubt maybe there has been some rigging or manipulation or irregularities . . . . But there's a difference of 11 million votes.  How can vote rigging happen?"

   "How can vote rigging happen?"  Let us not insult anyone's intelligence by presuming to answer the question.  Unbelievably, what Khameni posits -- and expects people to swallow -- is that the larger the criminal haul, the less likely a felony has taken place!  In its own way, it's reminiscent of the old Tammany tyrant George Washington "Boss" Plunkett, who famously proclaimed that "In politics, there are two kinds of graft: honest graft and dishonest graft." 

   Ignoring for the nonce the hundreds of thousands of protesters taking to the streets of Tehran in support of Moussavi, the Supreme Leader proclaimed the election, "A great show in which people indicated their responsibility towards the destiny of the country . . . . It depicted very well people's solidarity with their establishment."

   Oh really?  What about the hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of folks downtown, all dressed in black and green?  With precisely which "establishment" were they expressing "solidarity?" 

   It should be noted that one of the unsung heroes of what is quickly becoming known as the "Twitter Revolution" is a State Department official named Jared Cohen. Cohen, who at 27 is the youngest member of the State Department's policy planning staff, convinced the heads of Twitter to delay a scheduled maintenance of its global network (which would have cut off service) while Iranians were using the service to swap information and inform the outside world about the mushrooming protests around Tehran.  As a result of Cohen's urging, Twitter remained operative, and outsiders could read such tweets as:

• " . . . don't listen to what iran govt says u can or can't do!  You can report the pics/vids coming from Twitter!" and
  
• "We need ppl around world helping to raise the issues put pressure on Iranian gvmt."
  

    After warning all those protesters that they continue gathering at their own peril, Kahmeni then criticized the international media for having the "temerity" to report  that the election pitted "people who support the government against those who oppose it." He then proclaimed that all four presidential candidates -- Achmadinejad, Moussavi, Mohsen Rezaie and Mehdi Karrubi -- all support the Islamic revolution.  Predictably, he also took a swipe at the United States, Great Britain and Israel, labeling them "Zionist ill-wishers."

   Anyone surprised?

   There is no telling where all this will lead.  Some in the West see the massive protests as the opening salvo in what may be the downfall of the Islamic Republic.  Then too, there are others who warn -- and fear -- that the millions who support reform will wind up being bowled over; an Iranian Tienanmen Square. 

   And then there is the American reaction.  President Obama has been, shall we say, intentionally "measured" in his reaction and response.  Predictably, suspects both usual and surprising have attacked the president for not being far more forceful, far more vocal, in his support for democracy and freedom in Iran.  What they are saying is that the president should be exercising far more belligerency -- something like "Ayatollah Kahmeni, tear down this revolution!" -- and far less diplomacy.  The president's initial response was the soul of diplomacy.  First, he said that he was "deeply troubled by the violence," and then went on to say that since no international observers were allowed to monitor the fairness of the election,

    "I can't state definitely one way or another what happened with respect to the election.  But what I can say is that there appears to be a sense on the part of the people who were so helpful and so engaged and so committed to democracy who now feel betrayed.  And I think it's important that, moving forward, whatever investigations take place are done in a way that is not resulting in bloodshed and is not resulting in people being stifled in expressing their views."

   Anyone surprised? And here I don't mean to ask if anyone's surprised that the president is being attacked by Republicans for being "squishy soft" and "not standing up for freedom and democracy like President Reagan."  Rather, I am asking if anyone's surprised at how many people seem to be misunderstanding precisely what the president's game plan is vis-à-vis Iran.

   Many of the president's most starry-eyed partisans have suggested that the current ferment in Iran is due -- at least in part -- to his appeals to Iranians and Muslims.  According to Washington Post columnist Robert Kagan, the president "Never meant to spark political upheaval in Iran, much less encourage the Iranian people to take to the streets."  Rather, Kagan opines, the president's diplomatic strategy calls for dealing directly with the Iranian government -- especially over the issue of nuclear weapons -- regardless of who that government may be.

   I for one do not agree with Kagan.  I believe the president's response to the unfolding events in Iran has been measured for a different reason: that he doesn't want to make this a clash between America and the Imams.  He has correctly concluded that if any reform or "liberalization" is to take place, it must be as a result of the clash of ideas -- between the Iranian people themselves.

   As I write this, word has gone out that the House of Representatives has just  voted overwhelmingly (405-1) to condemn Kahmeni's crackdown on demonstrators and the government's interference with Internet and cell phone communication.  (Libertarian Ron Paul cast the lone dissenting vote.) In the eyes of  House Republicans -- who initiated the measure -- its passage is meant to serve as a not-so-veiled criticism of President Obama.  To House Democrats, it is one of those measures for which one votes "Yay" while firmly holding one's nose.  According to House Foreign Affairs Committee chair Howard Berman, "It is not up to us to decide who should run Iran, much less determine the real winner of the June 12 election."  Up to this point, Berman is solidly echoing President Obama.  What comes next is, as they say, "the rub": "But we must reaffirm our strong belief that the Iranian people have a fundamental right to express their views about the future of their country freely and without intimidation."

   Whether Iranian protests lead to greater reform or repression remains to be seen. But regardless of what happens in the short-run, the genie is out of the bottle.  And once out, genies, like spilled water, are next to impossible to put back.

   Anyone surprised?

 

©2009 Kurt F. Stone

Sam Goldwyn Was Right

   Back in mid-1920s, film producer Sam Goldwin [Schmuel Gelbfisz] tried to interest his fellow moguls in an "investment with a purpose."  It was Goldwin's idea that he and his colleagues [Goldwyn would have undoubtedly been more comfortable calling them his lahntsleit] should purchase some  distant, sparsely inhabited desert island.  According to Goldwyn, they would then divide the purchase price -- whatever it might be -- equally amongst the natives of said island, in exchange for the right to make the islanders the "bad guys" or "villains" of all their future movies!  Not surprisingly perhaps, Goldwyn's fellow moguls turned him down flat; to them it was utter meshugas -- insanity.  What's worse, from that point on, they considered Goldwyn himself meshugeh ahf toit -- crazy as a loon.  But as g'mahtert -- as farfetched -- as Goldwyn's scheme was, it did address a serious problem: society's need to blame the blameless, to make targets of the innocent. 

    Goldwyn simply couldn't live with the filmic stereotypes of his day; most if not all movie "heavies" were portrayed as Gypsies, pawnbrokers as Jews, drunkards as Irish, and drug addicts as Chinese.  Although he may not have had the ability to put it all in words, he obviously understood the great power film had to shape both thinking and prejudice.  By suggesting that he and the rest of the moguls purchase that as yet unidentified island, Goldwyn may have been amusing, but in his own way, was being deadly serious.  He was highly sensitive to the fact that he and virtually every other major producer was a Jewish immigrant from Eastern Europe.  He was terribly concerned lest the Jewish community in general and the "motion picture minyan" in particular, become targets of blame during times of frustration, crisis and confusion. 

    Nonetheless, despite his perceptive intentions, Goldwyn's fellow moguls -- Mayer, Zukor, Fox, Selznick, Thalberg, Cohen, Loew, Warner and Lasky -- considered him ah leytz un ah pyeahtz -- both a buffoon and a clown. 

   Despite having less than a grade-school education and frequently coming off like a baggy-pants comedian, Samuel Goldwyn possessed an innately sophisticated understanding of the link between tough, uncertain, changing times and racism, bias and prejudice. He also grasped what tremendous power the "flickers" had to influence taste, style and people's "understanding" of the world around them. To his way of thinking, it was better to "blame it all on the folks of Tristan de Cunha" [who were going to be well paid for being the targets of blame] than to place real people in real harm.

   Sam Goldwyn was right.  In tough, rapidly-changing, challenging times (such as ours), some people seek to affix blame and then do something about it. They are the ones who see change as inherently evil; as the desired, self-conscious product of malevolent, internationally-connected conspirators. Sam Goldwyn took his role as a shaper of public opinion very seriously; he sought to exercise both restraint and even-handedness.  Despite the fact that the term "mass media" did not yet exist, he -- along with his lahnsleit -- had just of much of an impact on society as the modern shapers of opinion, people like Limbaugh, Hannaty, Savage, O'Reilly, Gingrich, Beck and Buchanan.

   Because of the fact that they always need to blame someone, to inflame the already confused and whip up the fires of frustration, people like James von Brunn seek to "cleanse" the world of those they see as "pernicious vermin."  Now, I am not blaming the "Fox Phalanx" for von Brunn's atrocity; they are not the proximate cause of him taking a rifle into the Holocaust Museum and killing guard Stephen Tyrone Johns.  They are obviously not responsible for the many decades this man spent as an obviously deranged, vicious, anti Semitic, Holocaust-denying bigot who firmly believed that Jews exercised malevolent control over virtually every aspect of American society, culture and economy.

   But while they were not the cause of this 88-year old psychotic mess doing what he did -- or of Dr. George Tiller being shot point-blank in the head by "anti-abortion activist" Scott Roeder -- they nonetheless do bear responsibility for their words.  As much as a Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly may take valuable air time to deplore Dr. Tiller's murder, they are the ones who spent months -- if not years -- referring to him as "Tiller the Baby Killer."  O'Reilly once told his rapt viewers that Tiller "destroys fetuses for just about any reason right up the birth date for $5,000."  No, O'Reilly never told anyone to kill Dr. Tiller, but what did he expect his viewers and listeners to think?  That O'Reilly was being hyperbolic?  That he was merely exercising his First Amendment right to speak and was really nothing more than an entertainer?  I wonder.  Certainly those with microphones have advertisers.  And where there are advertisers, there are demographic charts.  And where there are demographic charts, there's a finely-honed understanding of precisely the sort of person who is watching or listening . . .

   Then too there is Rush Limbaugh, who has repeatedly:

• Accused President Obama of being "more dangerous than Al Qaeda"
• Proclaimed that "He (Obama) has one thing in common with God -- he does not have a birth certificate"
• Announced that "Socialism is the Obama vision for America"
• Said repeatedly that he hopes the president fails
• Has termed the president's recent trip to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Germany "The International Apology Tour" in which he "proclaimed that America is a Muslim nation," and flat-out said that "The president equated the Holocaust with what Israel is doing to the Palestinians." 

   As Samuel Goldwyn or your Tante Ruchel would have said: NARISHKHEYT!!

   What are we to understand Limbaugh's (or O'Reilly's, Beck's, Shnitt's or Savage's) motivation to be? If its higher ratings, then shame on them; they have placed their own narcissism far above the safety and security of the President of the United States and millions of utterly innocent, blameless people.  If they truly believe what they are saying about Obama, abortionists, and all those folks they tar with the brush of "liberal" or "progressive"  then what in the Hell do they expect their acolytes to do?  Just sit back and continue being angry and frustrated?  Doesn't Rush, like the rest of his conservative talk show brethren, bear some responsibility for the effect their words have?  

    Sam Goldwyn must be turning over in his grave.

   I have spent the better part of the past 36 hours monitoring various conservative radio talk-shows in order to hear what they have to say about von Brunn's attack at the Holocaust Museum.  In many cases, the hosts and commentators -- Schnitt, Savage, Van Susteren and Levine most notably -- have gone to great lengths to deathlessly inform their listeners/partisans/true believers that "There are just as many -- if not more -- crazy, violent, murderous whack jobs on the Left as on the Right."  They want their listeners to know that they are not -- God forbid -- singling out conservatives for blame or opprobrium.  And, unbelievably, Rush Limbaugh actually blamed the recent growth in anti-Semitic rhetoric on President Obama, Progressives and -- who else? -- Liberals.  He actually went so far as to characterize James von Brunn as . . . ready for this? . . . A LEFTIST!

   Permit me to quote his narcissistic rotundity at some length [emphasis added]:

   Very predictably, ladies and gentlemen, the media, the American left, is trying to score some political points as a result of this tragedy at the Holocaust Museum . . . and as predictable [sic], they are trying to blame this on me, other conservatives, and right-wingers.  It's the traditional approach taken by the American left.

   The facts of the case, however, are such that if we want to start assigning blame for this beyond this nutcase Jew-hater . . . and notice that very few people actually want to do that.  They want to claim this guy didn't have the ability to act on his own.  He only could act if he was inspired by somebody.

   Well, who did he hate?  He hated both Bushes.  He hated neocons.  He hated John McCain.  He hated Republicans.  He hated Jews, as well.  He believed in an inside job conspiracy of 9-11.  This guy is a leftist if anything. This guy's believes [sic], this guy's hate stems from influence that you find on the left, not on the right.

   Now, this Jew hater who killed yesterday was a nut . . . . It is not helpful when a political party and a president and leaders of Congress engage in a very dangerous political game that creates anxiety, hostility, and down-right hate among citizens.

   The Left runs our government.  It is creating a very dangerous climate, folks, on purpose, for the purpose of distracting us so that they can accomplish their socialist games . . .

   Sorry Rush, but you've got it all wrong. Sorry Greta, you're having perpetual brain cramps; sorry: President Obama is not some alien bent on destroying America; he is not being guided by the "dangerous Communist operative" William Ayres or viewing society through the eyes of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright -- who just the other day told an interviewer that "my son" the president is a captive of all the Jews who surround him.

   Yes, the Constitution does give all of you the freedom and protection to call the president "Nobama" and "Mr. Teleprompter," and to "knowingly" inform your audience of what his "true" motivation is. Yes, you all have the legal right to blame everything from 9/11 to the current state of the economy on "liberals," "leftists," and "socialists."  No one has the right to stop you from calling anybody anything you wish, just so long George Carlin's "seven little words" are not employed.

   But know this:

  Words do carry consequences just as certainly as Constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms require responsibility.  Just because you possess powerful microphones that doesn't make you political scientists . . . just entertainers with big mouths, outsized egos and one hell of a lot of chutzpah. 

   Now there's a truth Sam Goldwyn understood. 

©2009 Kurt F. Stone

 

 

Death, Taxes and . . .?

  

   Ben Franklin is undoubtedly the most oft-quoted of all our Founding Fathers.  Consider if you will, a mere five "Franklinisms" that most literate people know but are likely unaware of their authorship:

• "A place for everything, everything in its place."

•  "God helps those who help themselves."

• "Time is Money, money is time."

• "Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today."

• "There never was a good war, or a bad peace."
  

   My favorite Franklin maxim -- bar none -- happens to be the one for which he is likely best-known:

"Certainty?  In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes."

   Over the course of decades I have added various third "certainties" to  my favorite Franklinism:

• ". . . death, taxes and the swallows returning to Capistrano."
  
• ". . . death, taxes and the L.A. Clippers having a lousy team."
• ". . . death, taxes and Law 'n Order."  
• ". . . death, taxes and the Pres. in trouble with someone."
  

    

This last one -- the president being in trouble with someone -- although not a fact of nature like the swallows, a natural fact like the Clippers or an Arbitron Actuality like Law 'n Order is, nonetheless true and certain.  Consider for just a moment the following:

• When President and Mrs. Obama decided on getting a Portuguese water dog, owners of mixed-breeds and champions of dog pound adoptions criticized their choice. (Bo is hypo-allergenic, the Obama girls hyper.)
  
• When President and Mrs. Obama flew to New York in order to take in a Broadway show, the Fox Phalanx complained bitterly about their extravagance. (They wanted to fly commercial, but the Secret Service nixed it.)
• When it was announced that G.M. had declared bankruptcy, the President was accused of leading the country down the ruinous road to Socialism.  

   Yesterday, the President went to Egypt, gave a major address at Cairo University, and then went out to see the Pyramids of Giza. Today, the president toured Buchenwald with Nobel-laureate Elie Weisel.  Anyone want to guess how many people he's in trouble with?

    In some quarters, President Obama was castigated for speaking of his Muslim heritage and roots before a Muslim audience.  Some self-proclaimed "right-thinking" folks bitterly objected to his quoting the Koran  -- 'Be conscious of God and speak always the truth' -- despite the fact that this passage drew more applause than any in his 55-minute speech.  Those who objected seem to be unaware that in the same speech the president also quoted the Bible, made passing reference to the Talmud, and proudly announced that he is a Christian. 

    When was the last time -- or indeed the first? -- that an American president went before a large Muslim audience in a Muslim country and spoke not only of America's "unbreakable bond" with Israel, but of the Holocaust to boot?  The president told the assembled students and faculty: "Tomorrow, I visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot, and gassed to death by the Third Reich . . . . Six million Jews were killed -- more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today."  Indeed, this took courage. 

   What came next took even more courage: "Denying that fact [i.e. the Holocaust] is baseless, ignorant and hateful.  Threatening Israel with destruction -- or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews -- is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve."

   And yet, that third certainty -- about the president being in trouble with someone -- was clearly on display.  President Obama was roundly pilloried in some quarters for speaking fervently about the rights and aspirations of the Palestinians and the creation of a Palestinian state; as if in thus speaking, he was revealing himself to be an enemy of the Jewish State. 

   In speaking of the aims, rights and aspirations of the Palestinians, President Obama urged them to "abandon violence."  "Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed."  He then spoke of how for centuries, "black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves, and the humiliation of segregation."  He stressed that it was not acts of violence that eventually brought about "full and equal rights," but "a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America's founding."

   Many who listened to the president's speech did not hear these words.  Rather, what they did hear was what he had to say to the Israelis: that the United States "does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements."  The president told the assemblage, "This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace.  It is time for these settlements to stop."  In other words, while many found fault with his speaking positively about Israel; about his stressing that the Holocaust did happen, and that 6,000,000 Jews did die; others criticized him for calling upon the Israelis to halt construction of further settlements.

   Then again, the president scored negatively in other camps for what he did not say; for those issues which he did not address.  He had precious little to say about how he hopes to bring Hamas or the Iranians -- who supply Hamas -- to accept a two-state solution.  He did not talk about how continued American military action in Afghanistan and Pakistan will affect his vision for an eventual peace.  While those on the right were pillorying him for even suggesting that America engage Iran without preconditions, the left was accusing the president of being inconsistent -- of disparaging violence even while sending drones into Pakistan. 

   "Violence is a dead end," the president told them.  "It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus.  That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is not how it is surrendered."

   When read or listened to in its entirety, President Obama's speech is really quite remarkable.  It showed courage and understanding, and was delivered with the eloquence and sensitivity for which he has become known in these parts.  This speech was a way of introducing himself to a part of the world that "knows" America and her leaders more as stereotypes than as creatures of flesh and blood.  And despite being taken to task by the Fox Phalanx for "turning his back on America," the president has done the right thing.

   Face it.  If he is drawing fire from both Israelis and Arabs, from Jews and Muslims, from hyper-conservatives and ultra-liberals, then he certainly must be doing the right thing.

   For the three certainties are "Death, taxes, and . . . ?"

©2009 Kurt F. Stone

The Children's Hour

  

   What's this, yet another article on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor?  Haven't we already read, watched or listened to enough of them in the past seventy-two hours to last a lifetime? 

   You betcha!  And that's why this piece, "The Children's Hour," is not about the Sotomayor nomination.  

  Well, not exactly . . .

  To be perfectly honest, it is about one aspect of the nomination -- the politics of it all . . . 

  Today's New York Times contains an article detailing the slow, deliberate, obsessively thorough process the president and his staff employed in finally settling on Judge Sotomayor. Understandably, this process began back in late 2008, when Mr. Obama's title was still "President Elect." This only makes sense, for Mr. Obama and his advisers knew full well that before too long they would have the duty and honor of nominating someone for the nation's highest court, and they wanted to select the perfect person. Being political pros with a thorough knowledge of political history made the Obama team acutely aware of several facts:

• That the process of confirming a Supreme Court nominee is a high stakes political chess match;
• That other administrations have lost matches by being improperly prepared.
  
• That the other side has been prepping for the match just as long and as hard as you have;
  
• That even when "check mate" is pretty much a given -- as in the case of Judge Sotomayor -- you must nonetheless prepare for the match as if the odds were overwhelmingly against you and,
  
• That the spoils of victory -- the glory of "check mate" -- can be far greater than the seating of a single justice.        
  

   In making their selection -- preparing for the match -- the Obama team had two very unique things going for it:

• A president with a greater knowledge of law -- and specifically Constitutional Law -- than perhaps any president in American history, and
• A Vice President who had voted on the confirmation of every member of the current court.  

 To be sure, the Republicans have also been meeting, planning and strategizing over this upcoming political chess match since late last year.  But interestingly, their goal has not been identifying the perfect strategy by which they could defeat Mr. Obama and whoever his nominee turned out to be.  Rather, it was putting together a game plan that could fatten their coffers, stir up their base, and hopefully put them in better shape for the upcoming 2010 elections. Don't take my word for it.  Even before President Obama announced Judge Sotomayor's nomination, Wendy Long, counsel for the conservative Judicial Confirmation Network characterized the upcoming fight as "a basis for a Republican renaissance. . . . If there is any issue that can get dispirited Republicans ginned up . . . its a Supreme Court fight."  Or, read the words of conservative activist Richard Viguerie, who told the New York Times even before Obama had named his choice that the fight over a Supreme Court nominee, "[is] an immense opportunity to build the conservative movement and identify the troops out there.  It's a massive teaching moment for America.  We've got the packages written.  We're waiting right now to put a name in."

  No matter who President Obama would have nominated for the Supreme Court, the Republicans already had their script,  their strategy -- Viguerie's "package" -- fully prepared:

• To characterize the nominee as a "far left liberal."
• To question the nominee's intellectual heft.
• To accuse the nominee of being "an activist judge."
• To warn that the nominee is one who favors "legislating from the bench."
• To pick out one or two out-of-context statements or legal decisions by to characterize the nominee.      

  This is precisely what the "RNC [Rush-Newt-Cheney] Axis" have done.  Everyone from Sean Hannity and Pat Buchanan to the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Times have characterized Judge Sotomayor as "gruff," "intellectually challenged," the most far-left judge in American history," and "a reverse bigot."  They have characterized her decision in the New Haven case [one out of literally thousands in which she has participated] as an example of "judicial activism," [Note: In that controversial decision, Judge Sotomayor ruled against 18 white firefighters, including one Hispanic, in their lawsuit against New Haven, Conn., after city officials scrapped a promotional test that showed the plaintiffs more eligible for advancement within the fire department. The white firefighters scored much better than their African-American peers on the test.] Say the facts of the case had been different (that the city of New Haven had let the test results stand and plaintiffs had been the African-American firefighters) and Judge Sotomayor had ruled in the city's favor -- Republicans would have then gladly patted her on the back and said that she was merely applying the rule of law and respecting New Haven's sovereignty.  When Republicans agree with a ruling, the judge is a "strict constructionist."  When they disagree, the judge is an "activist."

   Likewise, Judge Sotomayor has been repeatedly taken to task for an October 2001 speech she gave at the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal's 12th annual symposium.  The part of her speech that her detractors have excised and repeated ad nauseum has Judge Sotomayor stating, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." This one sentence -- lifted out of context -- has caused Republican commentators to  refer to her repeatedly as a "bigot" and "reverse racist."  Yesterday Newt Gingrich Twittered:

Imagine a judicial nominee said 'my experience as a white man makes me better than a Latina woman' new racism is no better than old racism.  White man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw.

   The problem with all this is that her detractors have chosen to leave out what Judge Sotomayor said next in that Berkeley speech:

"Each day on the bench I learn something new about the judicial process and about being a professional Latina woman in a world that sometimes looks at me with suspicion. I am reminded each day that I render decisions that affect people concretely and that I owe them constant and complete vigilance in checking my assumptions, presumptions and perspectives and ensuring that to the extent that my limited abilities and capabilities permit me, that I reevaluate them and change as circumstances and cases before me requires. I can and do aspire to be greater than the sum total of my experiences but I accept my limitations."

   When these words are added, it becomes rather clear -- at least to me -- that Judge Sonia Sotomayor is no racist -- reverse or any other kind.

   Interestingly, the vast majority of all the negative comments about Sonia Sotomayor are coming not from members of the United States Congress, but from their sideline, unelected "Marching and Chowder Society" -- from the likes of Rush, Newt, Michael Steele, Ann Coulter, Matt Drudge and the rest. 

   It would appear that Congressional Republicans are exercising a bit of taste, and restraint.  Some of them understand that this is a chess match they are going to lose; that Sonia Sotomayor is going to be seated on the Supreme Court.  Further, some recognize that adopting the RNC Axis' stridency, will neither refill their coffers nor add new members to their party.  They have already lost much of the Hispanic vote -- the fastest-growing segment of the voting public. They don't score well with women, the better-educated, Northeastern urbanites . . . perhaps even Yankee fans for all I know.  To bitterly and publicly oppose Judge Sotomayor's nomination is a horrific strategy in a political chess match that they are already on track to lose.

  Do the Hannaty's Coulters, Buchanans and O'Reillys of this world really, truly believe that Sonia Sotomayor is a dangerous fire-breathing ultra liberal judicial activist?  Does Karl Rove really, truly believe that Judge Sotomeyer is of questionable intellectual ability? [He who attended at least 5 colleges, never got a degree and was responsible for the nomination of that intellectual giant Harriet Miers!]  For that matter, does Rush Limbaugh really, truly believe that President Barack Obama is a "dyed-in-the-wool Marxist Leninist hell bent on turning America into a Socialist-Communist nation?"

   Obviously, the answer to the above is either "Yes" or "No."

   I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say:

   "No, they  really, truly don't believe all the things they say about Judge Sotomayor, President Obama, the Democratic Party and 1,001 other things.  They just say these things because it's great for their ratings, guarantees they will continue making millions upon millions of dollars, and continues to feed their perpetually starving egos."

   What they either don't realize -- or worse, don't care about -- is the extraordinary damage they are doing to our Democracy.  They are treating serious issues as just more fodder for entertainment.

   This week it's Judge Sonia Sotomayor single-handedly destroying the American judicial system.  Last week it was National Health Care as the precursor to a Communist takeover. And next week?  Who knows.

   One thing I do know . . . and this really, truly angers me, is how childishly, how cavalierly, all these so-called "shapers of public opinion" go about frightening the daylights out of a vast swath of the American public.  It's frighteningly reminiscent of Lillian Hellman's "The Children's Hour."

   For those who don't remember, Hellman's play is set in an all-girls boarding school run by two women, Karen Wright and Martha Dobie. Mary Tilford, an angry, spiteful student, runs away from the school, and to avoid being sent back, tells her grandmother that the two headmistresses are having a lesbian affair.  The accusation -- which suits Mary's diabolic purposes even though she is constantly aware of the fact that it's a lie -- destroys the women's careers, relationships and lives.  To my way of thinking, there are a lot of folks out there who are auditioning for the part of Mary Tilford -- spreading horrendous untruths because it suits their diabolic purposes.

   The politics behind a Supreme Court nomination should be more like a championship chess match than a lamentably long-forgotten -- though eminently relevant -- Broadway Play.

   So why does the current match feel more like Lillian Hellman than Gary Kasparov?

©2009 Kurt F. Stone

  

Which Came First?

  
   It's simply amazing how many gifted writers and thinkers have given serious quality time pondering that greatest of all causality dilemmas, namely "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" 

• Aristotle was greatly puzzled by the idea that there could be a first chicken or a first egg, and concluded that both must have always existed.
• Plato got around having to answer the question as asked by declaring that "Everything before it appeared on earth had its first being in spirit."
• Stephen Hawking, argued that the egg likely came before the chicken, but that the real importance of the question has greatly faded since Darwin's "On the Origin of the Species," and his accompanying Theory of Evolution.

      Before getting on to my answer, permit me to pose a similar dilemma of causation:

    Which came first . . . the Jew or the anti-Semite?

   Believe it or not, over the course of decades, I have given a lot of thought to this question, and have somewhat cheekily concluded the following: That if God, in his or her infinite wisdom had not created the Jew as an eternal witness to all of human history, the anti-Semite, in his or her infinite wickedness would have done so just in order to possess an eternal target for baseless, ignominious blame. 

   Well, I did say my conclusion was a might cheeky, didn't I?  

   One might think that after the Holocaust, humanity would have smothered anti-Semitism; that that particular strain of malevolent psychosis would have been extirpated.  But no, it did not. And while I am not one of those who see an anti-Semite lurking behind every rock or shadow, it nonetheless staggers me to realize how many people do continue to fear, loath or hate the sons and daughters of Israel.  And what is even more staggering is the realization that some of the worst fear and loathing exists in countries and among people who have virtually no daily contact with individual Jews, let alone the Jewish community. Many around the globe have convinced themselves that its not Jews they revile; its the Zionists. 

   There are, of course, tens of millions -- if not hundreds -- who have their doubts about whether the Holocaust truly occurred or was just some sort of Zionist invention. There are also untold millions who possess an unvoiced "knowledge" that all Jews know and communicate with one other; that there is truth in the conspiracy "revealed" in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. And many more believe that we Jews think ourselves to be superior to other peoples; that this is why we call ourselves "The Chosen People."

   Yes, yes, I can hear you at this juncture blurting out "But we don't call ourselves The Chosen People, its God who does."  Of course; you're absolutely correct.  But remember: I'm not reporting on what we say or believe. Rather, I am recounting the idiotic prevarication of our detractors. One question that is rarely asked -- by Jews or Gentiles -- is: "Chosen for what?"  If one were to pose that question to an anti-Semite he or she would likely respond "Chosen to rule the world," or some such nonsense. I think the real answer to the question "Chosen for what?" is simply, "Chosen to exist.  Chosen to be a witness to history in all of its pain and glory."  I firmly believe that at the end of time -- whenever, however or even if that will come about -- at least one Jewish person will remain.  And in that "still small voice" of which the Prophet Elijah spoke, that one Jew will say something like, "You see, all we were trying to tell you was to be nice to one another . . . to feed the hungry, cloth the naked and take care of the stranger, the widow and the orphan.  To make peace where there was strife and to bring light where there was darkness.  But for whatever reason, you just didn't listen . . ." This is not the scenario of a people who are in any manner superior.  What it is is the destiny of a people who have witnessed that which is best and worst in human history.  

   Believe it or not, Jews told jokes during the Holocaust.  There is even a collection of jokes and stories told in the Ghettos and camps.  In one of the most famous, two men meet on the street in Berlin during the dark, dark days of the Depression.  One man asks the other:

   "Why are things so terrible?  Who's to blame?"  The other man responds,

   

  "The answer to your question is simple; there are two groups to blame."

  

   "And who might they be?" the first man asks, all ears.

  

  "Why the Jews and the bicycle riders," he said.

 

    "What in the hell do the bicycle riders have to do with all our problems?" the second man asked.

 

   "Beats me," the first man said, "What do the Jews have to do with all our problems?"

 

   As with most "black humor," this little story carries an underlying truth that is both painful and cogent.  To wit, that for anti-Semites, the Jew is a "straw man," or a "scapegoat" -- a convenient bit of misdirection that keeps peoples' eyes and minds diverted from the true sources of human misery. 

 

   Misdirection, however, can go both ways.  For just as some point an accusing finger at "the pernicious, conspiratorial, venal" Jew in order to have an object of blame, fear and hostility, so too are there those who point accusing fingers at others and call them anti-Semites. Of late, there are a bunch of emails going around the Internet "proving" that President Obama and his administration hate Jews and are intent upon destroying Israel; that the president is a Muslim, that Secretary of State Clinton is an ardent anti-Semite, and that Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is a self-hating Jew.  The purpose of these emails, so far as I can fathom, is to convince as many Jews as possible that the only hope for Israel is supporting the Republican Party -- the only party that truly loves, understands and supports the Jewish State.  

 

   Yes, misdirection can indeed go both directions.

 

   I don't have a snappy answer to the question "Which came first, the Jew or the anti-Semite?"  All I know is that for as long as the Sons and Daughters of Israel have walked this earth, there have been those who have feared and dispised us. Why, I really don't know.

 

   However, when it comes to the chicken and the egg, I think I do:

 

   Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

 

   Neither one.  What really came first was . . . the question!  

 

©2009 Kurt F. Stone

 

Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

    

     Back in the day when I was majoring in Philosophy, I took a whole bunch of courses in Logic -- Aristotelian, Set and Symbolic.  It pains me to admit how little I recall of those subjects, up to and including the names of the professors who taught them.  Well, they did begin, as I recall, at 8:00 a.m., a perfectly indecent hour for anyone attempting to grasp such concepts like "premise," "deduction," and "conclusion." Honest confessions aside, one thing I do recall is how depressing it was to realize that much of what passed for public discourse or argumentation was inherently illogical; or, as they say in the philosophy biz, "fallacious." 

   If I recall correctly, the fallacy behind most political caterwauling was best summed up by the phrase "Post hoc ergo propter hoc," which is Latin for "after this, therefore because (on account) of this."  Or, to put it a bit less literally: "Since that event followed this one, that event must have been caused by this one."

   Got that?
 
   NO?  Well, perhaps an example would help clarify things a bit.  The example I have in mind has been all over the news these past several days, angering, confusing and numbing just about anyone with a bit of gray matter.  For it is the "He said, she said," "When did she know it and what did she know?" sideshow surrounding the use of torture -- "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" -- during the last administration.  The Republican argument, if I follow it correctly goes something like this:

• The Bush Administration did not engage in torture, only E.I.T.
• If the administration would have engaged in E.I.T., it would have been legal, according to the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel.
• As per our instructions, leaders in the House and Senate -- including then-Intelligence Committee chair Nancy Pelosi -- were fully briefed by the CIA about our use of E.I.T., including waterboarding, which when suiting our purposes, we will continue denying we ever engaged in.
  
• Oh yes, our use of E.I.T. -- including waterboarding -- is what has kept America free of terrorist attacks since 9/11.
• For purposes of damaging the Democrats in general and Speaker Pelosi in particular, we will now stipulate that we did indeed use E.I.T.
  
• Since Nancy Pelosi was briefed by the C.I.A. as early as September 2002 about the use of E.I.T., we will further stipulate that for purposes of culpability, she is as guilty -- if not more so -- than anyone. Therefore, either:

1. The Bush Administration did not torture anyone, or
2. The Bush Administration did use E.I.T., which was all perfectly legal, or
3. The Bush Administration's use of E.I.T. is truly what has kept us from being attacked, or
4. Speaker Pelosi is far, far more culpable than anyone else, because she knew all about it and did not blow the whistle.
5. Not only is she an accessory after the fact; she is a pernicious liar.

     Got all that?  

    It is at this point that the Aristotelian term "Post hoc ergo propter hoc" comes back into play.  For what Republicans like Dick Cheney, Carl Rove and John Boehner are arguing is totally fallacious; that since Nancy Pelosi's briefing came after [post hoc] we had begun torturing terrorists like Abu Zubaydah and Kalid Sheikh Mohammed, it turns out [ergo propter hoc] that not only is she an accomplice; she is the cause of our resorting to such extra-legal activities!

   Yes, I know, it doesn't make an ounce of sense.  But wait . . . there's more!

   The former Vice President has called upon the CIA to release classified documents that he claims will prove "beyond a shadow of a doubt" that the agency's harsh interrogation methods were largely responsible for thwarting further terrorist plots.  On May 14, the CIA released a letter citing pending legal action as the sole reason for keeping the documents under seal.  

   On that same day -- May 14 -- Speaker Pelosi held a press conference at which she bluntly accused the CIA of misleading her and several other lawmakers about its use of waterboarding. For the record, CIA spokesman George Little said "It is not the policy of this agency to mislead the Congress of the United States."  Nonetheless, he refused to answer directly when asked whether the Speaker's accusations were accurate. "We were told that waterboarding was not being used," the Speaker said.  "That's the only mention that they were not using it.  And now we know that earlier they were."

   Shortly after Pelosi's press conference, House Minority Leader John Boehner held one of his own.  When a reporter asked about the Speaker's demand that the CIA release "all details on what members were briefed," and then said that "the CIA deliberately misled her time and time again," Boehner responded, "I think the problem is that the Speaker has had too many stories on this issue . . . . I think she's posed more questions than she's provided answers . . ."  In other words, Boehner is calling the Speaker a liar.  Additionally, Boehner chided the Speaker and other Democrats for not "blowing the whistle" on the Bush Administration for its use of E.I.T. In other words, if they knew about the waterboarding and didn't raise a stink, then they are to blame . . . not the Bush Administration.

   Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

   As dizzying and maddening as all this is, it totally misses the point -- which may, when all is said and done -- be precisely the point.  For in going back and forth as to "When did she know it and what did she know," Republicans and their allies in the media have managed to deflect attention away from the real issue: the morality and legality of the United States engaging in acts of torture.

   Lost in all this fallacious argumentation and finger pointing are two pretty well-grounded -- and under-reported -- facts:

• That a letter from CIA Director Leon Panetta which was attached to the agency documents discussing the September 4, 2002 Congressional briefing [the one that the Speaker disputes] suggests that the information in the documents may not be "an accurate summary of what actually happened."  In his cover letter to current House Intelligence Committee Chair Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) and Ranking Member Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) -- which has generally been overlooked by the media -- Panetta wrote that the information in the attached intelligence documents "is drawn from the past files of the CIA and represents MFRs ["Memorandums for the Record"] completed at the time and notes that summarized the best recollections of individuals involved . . . . You and the committee will have to determine whether this information is an accurate summary of what actually happened."
•  That in testimony before a Senate subcommittee investigating Bush Administration interrogation techniques, former FBI agent Ali Soufan told Congress that he witnessed CIA interrogation methods on terror suspects that were, in his words, "borderline torture," and called the methods "ineffective," "unreliable," and "harmful."  Further, Soufan stated that "the informed interrogation approach outlined in the Army Field Manual "is the most effective, reliable, and speedy approach we have for interrogating terrorists;  it is legal and has worked time and again.  It was a mistake to abandon it in favor of harsh interrogation methods that are harmful, shameful, slower, unreliable, ineffective and play directly into the enemy's handbook." To a great extent, this refutation of torture went unreported.

    Instead what has captured the attention of both the media and the public is this "he said, she said" nonsense that keeps the debate far away from where it should be. 

   To wit, is torture illegal and immoral?
  
   To give any other answer than "Yes, torture is both illegal and immoral," is to engage in fallacious reasoning.
   
  

   ©2009 Kurt F. Stone

Henry Waxman: The Moustache of Justice

On November 19, 1945 -- barely 6 months after the death of FDR, President Harry S. Truman gave a major address to both houses of Congress.  Unbelievably, his subject matter was neither war nor peace, economy nor education; it was the urgent need for a . . . NATIONAL HEALTH CARE PROGRAM!  Yes, you read that correctly: a NATIONAL HEALTH CARE PROGRAM!  And this was 1945 . . . nearly 65 years ago. 

   In his speech, the president argued that the federal government should play a major role in health care, saying "The health of American children, like their education, should be recognized as a definite public responsibility."  After addressing five areas of concern -- including the lack of doctors, dentists and hospitals in rural and otherwise depressed areas of America -- Truman got to the controversial meat and potatoes of his talk: NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE.  The plan that Truman outlined that day long ago called for a NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE fund, to be run by the federal government.  This fund would be open to all Americans, but would remain optional. 

 Truman's health care proposals came to Congress in the form of a Social Security expansion bill, co-sponsored by Democratic senators Robert Wagner (NY) and James Murray (MT), and Representative John Dingell (MI).  For this reason, it was known popularly as the "W-M-D Bill."  (In light of the fact that today, "WMD" refers to  "Weapons of Mass Destruction," the acronym is more than a bit haunting.) Predictably, the AMA characterized the bill as "socialized medicine," and as a forshpize (Yiddish for "appetizer") to the rhetoric and inanity of McCarthyism, called Truman White House staffers "followers of the Moscow party line."  Eventually -- and despite his prescience -- Truman was forced to abandon the W-M-D bill. 

   Harry Truman was certainly not the last president or national political figure to seriously ponder or propose a system of NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE.  In the 1960s JKF and LBJ got America part of the way there with the enactment of Medicare and Medicaid -- two programs, which despite being disparaged in some circles as "socialized medicine," have both weathered the test of time.  In the 1990s then-First Lady Hillary Clinton came up with an ambitious NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE proposal which, due to a series of clumsy, ham-handed political maneuvers, died  not with a bang, but rather a whimper. 

   Now, after many years of relative silence, a NATIONAL HEALTH CARE proposal has made its way back to center stage.  But this time it feels different; this time it has a couple of added ingredients:

• A widely supportive American public, a growing percentage of which, can no longer afford health insurance.
• A highly popular, politically deft president who is willing to spend a good portion of his "personality capital" on behalf of something he believes in his heart of hearts is "a right, not a luxury." 
• A business community that is not quite as vociferous or venomous in its opposition as in times past.
• A loud-mouthed opposition that is finding fewer and fewer takers for its dire warnings of "socialized medicine" and other slippery-slope prognostications; and last but certainly not least,
• Representative Henry Waxman.

   How's that?  Henry Waxman?  Why Henry Waxman?

   Henry Waxman has been involved in health issues ever since 1969 -- the year he was appointed to the California State Assembly Health Committee.  A member of Congress for 35 years, Henry is, to my way of thinking as a Congressional historian, one of the five most important and significant people ever to serve in that body -- and that's out of more than 11,000.  It is also likely that Henry Waxman has been responsible for more successful health care legislation than anyone in American history. He has been the sponsor of such measures as:

• The Ryan White CARE Act.
• The Breast and Cervical Cancer Mortality and Prevention Act.
• The Safe Medical Devices Act.
• The Orphan Drug Act.

   Over the years, Representative Waxman has successfully led the fight for improved prenatal and infant care for low-income families, and for more services in the community for people needing long-term care.  He has been an advocate for prescription drug coverage in Medicare for people with high drug expenses, and has long pushed for a system of NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE. And now, as chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Waxman may finally see his dream come true.

  Ironically, the man Waxman replaced as chair of the committee --  the legendary John Dingell, Jr., -- is the son of the representative who sponsored President Truman's original HEALTHCARE PROPOSAL back in 1945. (The Dingells, pere et fils, have represented Michigan's 15th District since 1933. John Jr., first elected to replace his deceased father in 1955, has now served in Congress longer than anyone in American history.)  Unlike John Dingell, Jr., whom President Bush once called the "biggest pain in the ass" on Capitol Hill, Henry Waxman is well-liked, well-respected, and well-known not only for his tough, principled stands, but for his relentless investigations.  Turn on the TV news almost any night, and there will be Henry Waxman, investigating everything from the use of steroids in Major League Baseball, electrical problems in Iraq, governmental secrecy, and U.S. trade agreements, to military contracts, Medicare fraud and "shortcomings in the third-party food safety audits performed on behalf of the Peanut Corporation of America." If there is one common thread in the myriad issues that capture Representative Waxman's attention, it is justice.  As a short, myopic, unprepossessing man who grew up over his parents' grocery store in a Jewish section of Los Angeles and now -- ironically -- represents some of the richest, most glamorous folks in the world (his district includes Beverly Hills), Henry Waxman has always been on the side of the little person.  To some, he is a self-serving political pariah; for many, he is both a revelation and a legend.  Even Waxman's moustache has a nickname: the "Moustache of Justice."    

   To be certain, there are those who proclaim Waxman to be nothing more than a diabolic, demagogic Democrat -- a man who can barely contain his enthusiasm for having the government "take over" everything from the day-to-day operation of G.M. to health care.  According to these finger-pointers, if Waxman and "his kind" have their way, then health care will become "substandard, subordinate, and apportioned . . . just like Canada and Britain," and "it will be up to some petty bureaucrat whether or not you can see a specialist." Funny, they never say anything about the insurance company wage-slaves who do the same thing -- for the sake of corporate profit.

   The lack of affordable health care has gone beyond the crisis stage in America.  Nearly 50 million of us go without; even a basic HMO-insurance plan now costs more per month than the mortgage on a quarter-million dollar home.  And for many within this group, the only place they can go when they become ill or fall victim to an accident is to the emergency room at the local hospital -- where medical care is not always the best, generally it is the most costly and is always covered by the entire community. Then again, how about all those "preexisting conditions" that health insurers won't cover?  Isn't it wonderful to learn that although they absolutely will not cover you for the high-blood pressure, bad back or digestive tract problems you've had [and could be in remission], they will gladly pay all the costs for anyone contracting Chistosomiasis, Dengue Fever or the Yaws?

   For too many years, our leaders, our legislators, were scared away from promoting -- let alone enacting -- meaningful NATIONAL HEALTH CARE legislation by that great phalanx of lobbyists and interest groups that could make or break them.  And, for far too many of the uninsured, they were told in so many words that NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE was something straight out of the Marx and Engels rule book. Or, if not "socialistic," then a luxury that  one could either work hard enough to afford -- like a Cadillac -- or else admit that the lack of was their own damn fault.   Well, times and understandings have changed.

   Thanks to people like Barack Obama and Henry Waxman, word is fast getting around that NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE is a right, not a luxury.  Thanks to a new generation of activists, NATIONAL HEALTH COVERAGE is going to be enacted.  Thanks to "we the people," the dream of Harry Truman is going to become a reality.  And who knows; perhaps Representative George Miller (CA) and Senator Chris Dodd (CT) will join Henry and make up the new "W-M-D Bill."

   My money is on Henry, so please, let us all pray for the health and the success of the Moustache of Justice.

©2009 Kurt F. Stone

Please note that I am now on both Twitter and Facebook.  Hope to see you there as well!  Twitter entries are on the right-hand margin . . .

Was Thomas Wolfe Wrong?

 

   Back in 1940, Harper Brothers published Thomas Wolfe's You Can't Go Home Again.  Published posthumously, You Can't Go Home Again tells the story of George Webber, a young author who writes a novel about his family and home town -- Libya Hill. His book becomes a rousing success everywhere . . . except in Libya Hill.  When George, now a world-famous novelist, returns home, he is unnerved by the force of the outrage and hatred which greets him. The "good folks" of Libya Hill are furious by how many of their "secrets" he has exposed in his novel. Far from being proud of their native son, his former neighbors and school chums begin sending him death threats; George has no choice but to flee.  He then begins a monumental search for his own identity; a search that will ultimately take him to New York, Paris and Berlin.  Despite the high regard he and his novel are held in throughout the literate world, poor George Webber learns a hard and difficult truth: that indeed, Thomas Wolfe was right: You Can't Go Home Again. 

   Or was he?  Oh sure, if we're taking his words literally -- in the sense of Heraclitus' old saw You can't throw the same stick into the same river twice -- then Wolfe was undoubtedly right. Heraclitean flux aside, is it possible that Wolfe was in error?  That there are cases in which one CAN go home again?  

   Fast forward nearly seventy years.  It's no longer about George Webber; now, it's about Arlen Specter.  And, it's no longer about a fictional novelist returning home to Libya Hill; now it's about a flesh-and-blood senator returning "home" to the Democratic Party.  As many people know, the Kansas-born Arlen Specter started out life as a Philadelphia Democrat.  Heck, 45 years ago LBJ appointed him to a high- level position on the Warren Commission, where the then 33-year old attorney became chief architect of what became known as the "single bullet theory."  And most people know that when he wanted to run for Philadelphia D.A. in 1964, he switched to the Republicans.  His reason for the change can be summed up in six simple words: He couldn't win as a Democrat.  [It should be noted that as D.A. he gave his first job to a young Penn law graduate from New York named Ed Rendell, who today is the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania.]

   Just about every political junkie knows that in his career, Arlen Specter has lost about as many elections as he has won. He lost his position as D.A. in 1973, and was beaten in Republican primaries for senator in 1976 and governor in 1978.  In 1980, running once again for the United States Senate, he squeaked by in the Republican primary and then, riding Ronald Reagan's coattails, edged out former Pittsburgh Mayor Pete Flaherty 50%-48% to join "the most exclusive club in the world."  He has been a Republican member of that club ever since . . . until 72 hours ago.  With less than 2 years to go until his next reelection bid, and realizing that he likely would lose in the Republican primary to conservative former House member Pat Toomey [whom he had defeated by an anemic 51%-49% in the 2004 Republican senate primary], Specter decided that his only chance to remain in the Senate was to return "home" to the Democratic fold.

   Throughout his now 29-year senate career, Specter's spot on the political spectrum has been variously defined as "moderate," "independent," "liberal," and "mostly unpredictable."  One of the senate's brightest members, Specter has earned the grudging respect -- if not any honest degree of affection -- of his colleagues.  Truth to tell, Specter has been neither liberal nor moderate, conservative nor, strictly speaking, independent.  And despite the fact that his former colleagues now claim he was always a R.I.N.O. -- "Republican In Name Only" -- it's never been clear what he was -- or will be now that he's a Democrat.  Possibly a D.I.N.O. -- Democrat In Name Only?

    Those who cheer that Specter's defection -- added to Al Franken's eventual arrival -- will give the Democrats a filibuster-proof super majority, might want to stow the pompoms and megaphones.  For although Specter is pro-choice, has no problems with providing federal dollars for stem-cell research and voted against invoking cloture on 163/SJRes 1, a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman, he is no wide-eyed Kennedy-style liberal. Over the past 5 years, the liberal League of Conservation Voters has given him an average rating of only 25 [out of 100], the A.C.L.U. a 40, the pro-business Chamber of Commerce a 90, and the conservative Family Research Council a respectable 60.  He is a decided pro-military hawk who voted in favor of providing detainee rights, and a social moderate who also voted in favor of Justices Antonin Scalia, Sam Alieto and John Roberts. [In matter of fact, Specter gave his solemn word to George W. Bush that if the president would support him for Chair of Senate Judiciary, he would in turn give his support to anyone Bush might nominate for the court. 

   As soon as Specter announced his change of party, the White House announced that President Obama would campaign for him in 2010.  Governor Rendell, Majority Leader Reid and senate powerhouse Chuck Schumer have all likewise come on board.  Prior to Specter's defection, it looked like his Democratic opponent would be 7th District Rep. Joe Sestak, a retired two-star admiral and the highest-ranking former military officer ever elected to Congress.  Whether or not Sestak drops out of the primary race is anyone's guess.  What is not in question is the strategy the Republicans will employ in 2010 against Arlen Specter: they will target Democratic districts with campaign spots FOR Arlen Specter delivered in 2004 by none other than George W. Bush!  In political circles, this is known as "taking revenge."

   Despite all their efforts to put a "we-really-could-give-a-hoot-'n-a-holler" spin on Specter's party switch, the GOP is reeling, wondering "what else could go wrong?"  And while it is true that Senator Specter wasn't the most loyal of Republicans, his departure is but one more proof that the "Big Tent" is nothing more than a hollow rhetorical device.  The GOP is obviously floundering, rudderless and in a tailspin to mix several metaphors.  Their base is as small and unenthusiastic as at any time in the past 75 years.  As proof, one need only look at the most recent national polling figures: less than 25% of the American voting public now considers itself Republican.

    But this does not mean that the rest of America is necessarily in love with -- or identifies itself as -- Democratic.  Specter's transfer -- all positive spin to the contrary -- is not proof that all of America is "coming home" to the party of Kennedy, Johnson, Carter and Clinton.  For indeed, it is neither the same party nor the same "home."  

   Perhaps Thomas Wolfe was right; you can't go home again.

  Make no mistake about it; Arlen Specter has done what is best for Arlen Specter.  I for one cannot and will not hold that against him; after all, winning is the first rule in both baseball and politics.  And yet, something very very good may come out of it.  I liken Specter's "coming home" to a baseball team's late season acquisition of some gnarled old pro whom they figure might help get them to the World Series.  If he does, they look like geniuses; if not, oh well, you picked him up for a song and won't be resigning him anyway.  In this case, the "team" is the United States Senate; the "late season pickup" is Arlen Specter; the "World Series" is National Healthcare -- something which the senator sees as a right, not a luxury. If Specter's presence on the Democratic side of the aisle can indeed put quality healthcare within the reach of all Americans, then taking possession of the rest of his political baggage will be worth it.

    And if this works, then in a strange sense, Arlen Specter will wind up proving that Thomas Wolfe was wrong; you CAN go home again.  Except in this case, the "home" to which he will be returning is not the Libya Hill of George Webber. . . 

    It is the political party of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman.

   © 2009 Kurt F. Stone

    

Don't Let the Light Go Out

  

   Writing a piece about torture with its attendant cast of thousands is as imponderable a task as writing an article about a Wimbledon match while it is still being played.  In the case of the tennis match, no sooner would one begin describing a 125-mile-an-hour service before a forehand volley, backhand return, lob, and overhand smash might occur.  Obviously, its one heck of a lot smarter to wait until the match has concluded before writing the story. In the case of the former -- torture -- about the time one finishes a paragraph or two, a new revelation, charge or declassified document becomes available, thus making what has just been written obsolete. 
  

   In the current unfolding story about torture -- which involves the Obama White House, the CIA, DOJ, OLC, DOD, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney," Scooter" Libby, Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, Condoleezza Rice, John Yoo, Jay Bybee, et al -- one obviously cannot -- and must not -- wait until the story has concluded before committing it to print. It is far too critical and deserving of far more light than almost any other issue before the American public.  For the use of unlawful, immoral and inhuman forms of torture -- regardless of what "they" are doing and regardless of whether it is euphemistically referred to as "rendition" or "enhanced forms of interrogation" -- raises questions that are at the very heart of what defines the United States of America.

   Over the past week or more, we have begun asking a lot of questions, such as:

• "Who was responsible for Okaying the torture?" 
• "What if any acts of terror were averted as a result of the torture?"
  
• "When did the U.S. first begin using torture?"
  
• "Where were these interrogations carried out?"
  
• "Why did President Obama first state that no one will be prosecuted?    

    

   Despite the fact that we still have more questions than answers, it is becoming clearer with each passing day that the Bush Administration used the horror of 9/11 for their own purposes.  That day of unbelievable tragedy and pain became their rationale for legitimizing torture -- a kind of "any-port-in-a-storm" approach to national defense.  Before too long, the administration proclaimed that they had uncovered "evidence" of a link between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein and of the existence of WMD's in "al-Qaeda-backed" Iraq.  All of this, of course, provided the rationale for beginning that preemptive war -- a war which is now the longest in our history.

   Before the end of the Bush Administration, there was already evidence both the United States military and the C.I.A. were engaging in what at best were "questionable" -- at worst "illegal" -- forms of "enhanced interrogation."  During the 2008 presidential campaign Barack Obama attacked the Bush Administration for such acts, and proclaimed that once in office he would move swiftly to root them out.  Millions of voters were attracted to the Illinois senator because -- among other things -- he had an obvious moral center. 
  

   The disclosures occasioned by all the recently declassified documents have given birth to a myriad of debates.  As of this writing, it is unclear precisely what role or roles will be played by the House and Senate.  Which committee or committees will start issuing subpoenas?  On the House side, will it fall to Ike Skelton's Armed Services, Jane Harman's subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorism risk Assessment or John Conyers' Judiciary to hold hearings?  Over in the Senate, will Carl Levin (Armed Services), Dianne Feinstein (Selected Committee on Intelligence), Joe Lieberman (Homeland Security) or Patrick Leahy (Judiciary) choose to pick up the gavel?  And once the subpoenas begin flying, who will seek immunity and who will simply refuse to testify, thus bringing about both a legal challenge and a constitutional showdown? 

   Indeed, will the White House seek to outflank Congress by appointing its own "Blue Ribbon Commission on Torture?"  Or, will Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi (both of whom appear to have had knowledge of what the Bush Administration was up to) name their own "Joint Special Investigation Committee?"  The possibilities are endless.

   President Obama's initial response to torture was crystal clear:

   The United States does not and will not engage in torture; the United States does not and will not violate international law.

   Period.

   But then came that gnawing, vexatious inconsistency:

   Neither those who carried out these illegal acts nor those who formulated the legal justification for them will be liable to future prosecution!  In the case of who actually performed the illegal acts, they were "only following orders" [This is hauntingly like the Nuremberg Defense, Befehl ist Befehl.]  In the case of those who dreamed up the legal justification for said acts -- members of the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice -- all the president would say is that "we seek to look not backwards but forwards."

   This was indeed a shocking conclusion, coming as it did from a president who spent the past 16 years as a professor of constitutional law at the University of Chicago. Well, within the past 48 hours, the president did "clarify" his thinking, and state that the matter of future prosecution belongs not to the White House, but to the Department of Justice. Without question, this is the right way to go.

   To most thoughtful people, the issue of torture (and our response to it) is one of both legal and moral import.  For generations, we have been a nation of laws and not one of men and women.  For generations, we have been a beacon of light in a world that often languishes in darkness.  Our devotion, our commitment to what is lawful and humane has given both hope and direction to people living on seven continents.  But now it has been revealed that for a time, the United States of America has been operating not in the light but rather the shadows; that we have justified the use of illegal torture techniques by convincing ourselves that in order to assure security, we must become as diabolical as our enemies.

   Regrettably, there are those who persist in seeing torture as a primarily political issue.  Cheney, Gingrich and Rove -- among others -- say that those who are against "enhanced rendition" are weak, short-sighted cowards bent on giving aide and comfort to our enemies.  Talk shows and so-called "news" programs are rife with "experts" who proclaim that not only does torture work; it has kept us safe. I have been told to my face that "If water-boarding, sleep-deprivation or tearing out their fingernails saves even one American life, it is worth it."  I listened in on Rush Limbaugh the other day.  In the middle of a rant about "weak-kneed, lily-livered liberals," there was a slapping sound, followed by the "Mouth That Roared" sarcastically proclaiming, "I just slapped myself in the face.  Oh my, I've just been tortured!"

     I do hope that both those who did the actual torturing and those who created the legal justification for those acts will be prosecuted.  I don't care how high up the political food chain it goes . . . even if in the end it includes Democrats as well as Republicans. 

    This should be not a political issue.  It is definitely no laughing matter.  It is terribly serious and rests at the very heart of what has long made America a light unto the nations.

    Don't let the light go out. . .

©2009 Kurt F. Stone

A Letter to Norm Coleman

   Dear Senator Coleman:

   It's been less than 48 hours since a special three-judge panel issued a unanimous, unambiguous decision that the "overwhelming weight of evidence" proves that the race between you and Al Franken for the U.S. Senate was conducted "fairly, impartially, and accurately."  Moreover, they concluded that Franken's 312-vote margin means that he is "entitled to receive the certificate of election."

   In other words Senator it's time for you to look reality squarely in the punim and be a gentleman; time for you to step aside, admit defeat, congratulate Al Franken on his hard-fought victory, and permit him to take the oath of office.  And then you can go about the task of looking for a high-paying, high-profile job . . . perhaps replacing Michael Steele at the RNC?  

   In order for this to finally happen of course, your buddy and fellow Republican, Governor Tim Pawlenty will also have to face facts; for he's the fellow who by law must sign the certificate of election.  But alas, like you, Governor Pawlenty isn't ready to give up the ghost.  Like you, the governor doesn't seem to be worried or even concerned about the fact that Minnesotans have been minus a United States senator for 3 1/2 months.  And now, Texas Senator John Cornyn, the head of the Republican Senate Campaign Committee has joined this orgy of stupidity in announcing that he is prepared to take the battle into Federal Court. 

   You don't seem too worried.  And neither does Governor Pawlenty.

   Ah, but he may start worrying pretty soon. For as you will recall Senator, Governor Pawlenty is up for reelection next year and is considering a presidential run in 2012.  Every extra day he delays signing that certificate makes him look less like a leader, and more like a partisan hack.  And while that may well score him points with hardcore Republicans, it is damaging him with everyone else.  OK Senator, Governor Pawlenty's political future isn't necessarily your concern.  But isn't what's best and most fair for the good folks of Minnesota? 

   There was a time not so long ago when that was the tune you were whistling.  Many of us remember that on election night -- when you appeared to be the winner by an eyelash -- you majestically warned that a recount would be extremely costly and expressed deep, honest concern about Minnesotans being denied full Senate representation.  At that point you sounded more like a statesman than a politician.  But now that the margin of victory -- slim though it may be --belongs to Al Franken, you are whistling a tune that sounds like it was composed by the Prendergast Ring.  Now its "Damn the cost . . . mitigate, litigate, abrogate!" 

   There was a time long ago when you would have picked up a bullhorn and raged against what you are currently doing.  Once upon a time in the late '60s and early '70s, you stood foursquarely on the side of "the people."  Back when you were student body president at Hofstra, you protested the war in Vietnam, took over the administration building, railed against the inherent unfairness of "the system," and vowed to knock the "entrenched elites" down a peg or two.  Heck, you were even a roadie with "Ten Years After" and spent your 20th birthday with them up at Woodstock. [You know something Senator? We were born just four days apart.  And while you were celebrating your 20th up in Bethel at Woodstock, I was observing mine at Tanglewood attending the Berkshire Festival.  As much as I may have enjoyed "I'm Going Home," or "Suite Judy Blue Eyes," I really preferred Beethoven's Ninth.]  Yours has been a most circuitous route, filled with plenty of formers: Former student radical; Former liberal Democrat, and now, Former United States Senator.

   Senator, you and your attorneys claim that the sole motivation in drawing the election out is "to ensure no Minnesota voter gets left behind."  It sounds noble Senator, but instead, what you and your people are really doing is leaving the entire state of Minnesota behind. 

   Senator, you have been quoted as saying that during this long ordeal, "I have had more dinners at home with my wife than I ever have before," and that now you put on t'fillin ever morning and say the traditional morning prayers in order to ". . . bind myself to God every morning because its in his hands."  I know that since you stopped receiving your Senate salary, you have been working part time for the Republican Jewish Coalition. These are all things for which you should be grateful; to a certain extent, you are on a path taking you back to your roots.  Hopefully you will continue on that path back to the old-time student activist who would have been aghast at the former Senator's obdurateness.  If I were you Senator, I would let Governor Pawlenty, Senator Cornyn and the rest of your friends in the Republican Party know that you want them to cease and desist; that the time has come to act like a mentsch and gracefully bow out.  You know Senator, ever since 1978, your about-to-become former Senate seat has been occupied by mentschen -- by good, warm-hearted people: first Rudy Boschewitz, next the late Paul Wellstone, and then you.  Never before in American history has one Jewish senator been replaced by another and then yet another.  Once you finally do the right thing and give up the ghost, your seat will go to Al Franken, a fourth lahntsman and a Harvard grad to boot. And who would have ever thought that it would happen in Minnesota of all places?  Ah, there's the beauty of America for you! 

   Senator, do the right thing. Bind that t'fillin strap just a bit tighter.  Let it remind you that you are indeed made of bigger stuff. 

   The people of Minnesota will thank you.

   The people of the United States will thank you.

   History will thank you.

   Be good to yourself,

  Kurt F. Stone

 

   PS: I must admit to having a personal reason (beyond what is written above) for hoping you will bring an end to this nonsense: Without closure, I cannot finish my biographic piece on either you or Al Franken for the next edition of The Congressional Minyan: The Jews of Capitol Hill, to be published by Rowman & Littlefield. 

 (Now how's that for a shameless plug . . . ? 

 ©2009 Kurt F. Stone      

  

     

The Clean Deal

  

   Once upon a time long ago, a wealthy land baron summoned three overseers to meet with him in his study.  Eyes twinkling with caprice, the baron issued a challenge:

   Gentlemen: I am going to pose three questions . . . questions whose answers, quite frankly, I do not know.  Whichever of you gives what I consider the best answers will be permitted a share in the profits of this estate for the rest of his life.  What do you say? 

   Two of the men quickly agreed, figuring they had everything to gain -- and nothing to lose -- by playing along with their master's game.  The third man, a rather simple soul, wasn't quite so sure, but not wishing to seem less of a person than his fellows, also agreed.

   The baron congratulated the three for taking him up on his challenge.  Then, holding up a finger, the baron said:

   I'm glad you have all agreed.  And by the way, I forgot to mention one tiny detail: the two, whose answers are in my estimation, not best, will forthwith be banished from this estate.

   The three were no longer quite so enthusiastic.  Then the baron continued.

   Here are the three questions:

           What is the fastest thing in the world?

            What is the biggest thing in the world?

            What is the best thing in the world?

   Two of the men -- he who had charge of the estate's forests and he who oversaw its fisheries -- looked knowingly at each another and nodded silently.  Then, the overseer of forests asked their master:

  Would you permit the two of us to go in on one set of answers?  Could we then both reap the reward?

  The baron thought for a moment, then agreed.  He then asked them for their answers.

   The fastest thing in the world is my lord's Arabian stallion.  The biggest thing in the world is my lord's heart.  And without question, the best thing in the world is being permitted to work for my lord . . .

  The baron, being a man highly addicted to flattery nodded and smiled broadly.

   You have provided three marvelous answers. It will indeed be next to impossible to improve upon them.  I could easily proclaim the two of you the winners right now, but in all fairness, we must permit the stable-master to give us his answers.  What say you?

   The simple man, sweating profusely, stammered . . .

   I . . . I . . . really don't know what the fastest thing in the world is . . . unless . . . unless it's an idea.  And as for the biggest thing in the world, could it possibly be the world itself?  And as for the . . .

  But the baron stopped him before he could give the third answer.  Jumping up from his throne-like chair, he grasped the stable-master in a bear hug and said,

   Even before you give voice to the third answer, I declare you to be the winner.  For indeed, what in the world could be larger than the world itself . . .?

   At this point, let us leave the story for a few moments and consider the implications of the stable-master's answer. . .

   Imagine if instead of asking what the "biggest thing in the world" might be, the question were "What is the most important issue in the world?" There is certainly no end of possible answers:

• War and Peace.
• Hunger
• Nuclear Disarmament.
• The Global Economy.
• Terrorism.
• Gender Equality.
• Saving Rain Forests.

   And on and on.  If we take a tip from the stable-master's response that "The biggest thing in the world is the world itself," then perhaps the most important issue in the world is the planet itself.  In other words: global warming.  For let's face facts; without a healthy sustainable planet -- a planet over which we were granted both dominion and stewardship -- nothing else matters.  Over the past generation or so, scientists from around the globe have been amassing a welter of data on what's been going on with Mother Earth -- from the warming of its seas and the growth of greenhouse gasses to the disappearance of essential rain forests and the extinction of plants and animals. 

   On February 2, 2007, a United Nations scientific panel studying climate change declared that the evidence of a global warming trend was "unequivocal" and that human activity had "very likely" been the driving force in that change over the past half century.  The group's previous report -- issued six years earlier -- had found that humanity had "likely" played a role.  The addition of that single word "VERY" did more than reflect mounting scientific evidence that the release of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases has played a central role in raising the average temperature of the earth by more than 1 degree Fahrenheit since 1900.  It also added new momentum to a debate that is far, far less centered on whether or not we humans are largely responsible for this incredibly dangerous trend, to one far, far more centered on what we can do about it.

   There are studies without number that prove the dire fact of global warming.  There are innumerable papers on what we can do to reverse the process before it is too late.  There are international organizations making prize money available for those who come up with innovations in energy usage.  There are already plans for the so-called "Clean Deal" -- an international program that will link the creation of renewable sources of energy with smart economics.  Windmills, solar panels, electric-powered vehicles, new methods of construction -- all these require new industrial concerns that will employ millions of people who will eventually be earning well by doing good. 

   And yet, there are voices out there -- loud, disparaging, well-funded megawatt voices -- continually proclaiming that the entire issue of global warming is a liberal hoax.  One can hear these voices daily on the Fox News Network, or through a new website called ClimateDepot.com.  Created by Marc Moreno, former spokesman for Oklahoma Senator (and global warming naysayer) James M. Imhofe, "ClimateDepot.com" will be -- in Moreno's words -- a "one-stop shop" for anyone following climate change.  For years Moreno, a ceaseless purveyor of the dissenting view that climate change is a hoax, was best known for compiling reports naming hundreds of "scientists" whose work, he says, undermines the consensus on global warming. In many cases, those he listed as scientists possessed virtually no scientific credentials.  

   "ClimateDepot.com" is mostly underwritten by the "Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow," a Washington-based nonprofit that advocates free-market solutions to environmental issues.  It in turn is funded by Richard Mellon Scaife, a longtime financier of conservative causes best known for his efforts to  have President Bill Clinton impeached. 

   So how could all of these "scientists" and "weather forecasters" possibly proclaim that far from going though a warming trend, the earth is actually cooling down?  What is on their political plate?  God only knows. And speaking of God, Chris Allen, weather director of WBKO in Kentucky is one of those loudly proclaiming global warming to be a hoax.  On his web site, Mr. Allen has written that his major objection to the idea of human-influenced climate change is that "it completely takes God out of the picture."  One presumes that Mr. Allen is also a fan of Intelligent Design.

   Regardless of what Moreno, Scaife, Allen or their "scientific" minions say, global warming is both critical and very real.  It far outweighs every other issue under the sun, for as the stable-master told the baron, "The biggest thing on earth is the earth."

   By the way, when the baron finally got around to asking the stable-master that third question -- namely, "What's the best thing in the world" -- the gentleman looked him in the eye, smiled, and said:

   The best thing in the world is a good night's sleep.

   I agree.  And of course, part of getting a good night's sleep is being reasonably free of worry.  Once the voices and energies of all those working to create a Clean Deal begin realizing success, we will all get that good night's sleep.

   Truly, the best thing in the world is intimately tied in to the biggest thing in the world . . .

©2009 Kurt F. Stone

       

  

  

 

  

Of Spaghetti Trees and Ann Coulter

  

   Omnipresent though it may be, no one really knows the precise origin of April Fool's Day.  It is, to say the least, obscure. 

   One creaky old theory holds that "April Fool's" was first celebrated  in 1582, the  year the Julian Calendar was replaced by the Gregorian (1582).  The day of merriment was supposedly meant to poke fun  at any and all who began their planting season the first of April instead of the first of May, as had been the custom for the preceding 15 centuries. 

   I don't know.  Sounds pretty lame to me.

  Then there are those who are convinced that "April Fools" referred to all those Frenchmen who continued observing New Years on the first day of April, rather than the first of January, as ordained by King Charles IX back in 1564.

  Maybe . . .

  One of my favorite theories -- though of course 100% unprovable -- comes from an April 1789 newspaper article from some long-forgotten British journalist, in which he claimed that "April Fools" went back all the way to the time of Noah!  "The day had its origin," he claimed, "in God's sending the raven off too early, before the flood waters had had a chance to recede."  According to this theory, God had commanded the raven's "early journey" on the first day of the Hebrew month of Nisan -- roughly April -- thereby making an "April Fool" out of old man Noah.

  Wheee!

   Most everyone has a favorite "April Fool's Day" joke or prank.  Two of my favorites are the following:

•    A couple of years ago, Burger King ran an ad in USA Today saying that as of that day (April 1) they were going to be stocking and selling "Whoppers for left-handed people."  Talk about "Have It Your Way!"  Not only did customers order the "new" burgers; some specifically requested the "old" right-handed kind.
  

•    Back in 1985, George Plimpton wrote an article in Sports Illustrated about a New York Mets' prospect named Sidd Finch, who could throw 168 MPH with pinpoint accuracy.  This phenom, known as "Barefoot" Sidd[hartha] Finch, had learned to pitch in a Buddhist monastery. The article's sub-title, gave away Plimpton's gag: "He's a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse.  Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style."  [H-A-P-P-Y  A-P-R-I-L  F-O-O-L-S]

• The one I remember best from my childhood involves the fabled "Spaghetti Tree."  Back on April 1, 1957, the television program Panorama ran a famous hoax showing the Swiss harvesting spaghetti from trees!  On the program it was claimed that the dread "spaghetti weevil" had finally been eradicated.  I remember asking my dad if we could plant our very own spaghetti tree. I thought that would be just about the best thing in the world.  Imagine that!  Spaghetti any time you wanted it just by going out into the backyard and plucking it from a tree!  (Yes, I know it sounds completely dense, but I was only 8 years old at the time, and so perhaps I can be forgiven for not picking up on Panorama's April Fool's prank.)

  
   But what about Ann Coulter?  She's 47, and an Ivy League graduate with a law degree from Michigan.  How could she be so incredibly, stupidly gullible as to fall for an obvious April Fool's joke; and then, not realizing that it is an April Fool's riff, get indignant, shirty and spouting off like Mt. Vesuvius?

   Here's the April Fool's Day gag that got her so incredibly exorcised:

    Whaaa?  How's that Ann Coulter?

   Yes indeed, this is the one.  You see, Ms. Coulter read -- or had brought to her attention -- a piece in the April 1 edition of Car and Driver that claimed that President Obama had ordered General Motors and Chrysler to cease their participation in NASCAR because it was an "unnecessary expenditure."  Get it?  "If the Feds are going to be putting so many billions into keeping GM and Chrysler afloat, they may as well tell what they can and cannot do.  Right?"

   Wrong!  It's an April Fool's Day joke. . . to everyone but Ms. Coulter.  

 In a USA Today article, Larry Marshak noted that Car and Driver later pulled the fake story (which estimated savings of $250 million between the two auto manufacturers  by not participating), and apologized for "going too far."  Marshak quoted Car and Driver officials saying that their magazine "has a proud tradition of irreverent editorials, and we amplify that each year with our April's Fool Day joke." 

    For her part Ms. Coulter took the article not as an April Fool's joke, but as a deadly serious fact to which she felt compelled to angrily respond:

  "If Obama can tell GM and Chrysler that their participation in NASCAR is an 'unnecessary expenditure,' isn't having public schools force students to follow Muslim rituals, recite Islamic prayers and plan 'jihads' also an 'unnecessary expenditure?"

   Coulter's -- and other conservative's -- outrage was so palpable and heated, that the folks at Car and Driver felt compelled to run a second version of the article which in large caps informed readers "THIS IS A JOKE.  LIGHTEN UP PEOPLE":

 

  

   Ms. Coulter entitled her April 1 column responding to the Car and Driver ad, "Why is Rick Wagoner Fired and Nancy Pelosi Still Working?" (Note: Rick Wagoner is the GM CEO who was told to step down, which got a lot of press.  What didn't get much press is the fact that he walked away with a $20.2 million retirement package.) In her column, "Coultergeist" started swinging for the fences, bashing all those who, in her estimation, should have been fired instead of Mr. Wagoner: "Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and everybody at the Department of Education."  She questioned why "all the former Weathermen like Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn and Mark Rudd" weren't fired by their universities. (Rudd by the way, who came to prominence during the Columbia University anti-war riots more than 40 years ago, used to teach mathematics at Central New Mexico Community College. Bernadine Dohrn has been teaching law at Northwestern for the past 18 years.  Bill Ayers is Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois.) Ms. Coulter then took off after Princeton University Bioethics Professor Peter Singer, whom she claims "believes sex with animals is acceptable and has no objections to necrophilia -- provided the dead gave consent when still alive."

   And this is even before Ms. Coulter got into her jag about public schools "forc[ing] students to follow Muslim rituals . . . etc."  When I first read this, I said to myself :

   "Ah, this article has got to be her idea of an April Fool's Day joke!  She couldn't mean what she writes.  No one could be that . . . well, that 'ya know . . . full of it!"  

   But I'm afraid I gave Ms. Coulter too much credit.  From the nearly 1,400 comments her readers appended to the article, they all found what she had to say -- or write -- educative, enlightening and enthralling. 

   In other words, this wasn't any April Fool's Day column.  She really didn't get the Car and Driver joke.  She really does have such inane, hostile notions.

   Between you and me, I've had it.  No more thoughts about Ann Coulter.

   I'm going out back and water the old spaghetti tree. . .

   

©2009 Kurt F. Stone

 

An Infinitesimally Tiny Breath of Fresh Air?

    We begin this week with a solemn oath: this will not be another article about those asinine A.I.G. bonuses.  For when you get down to it, what is left to say or write that has yet to be said or written? 

   Nada

   Gar nichts

   rcs oua

   ничто

  

    zéró

  

    Gornisht

   OK, you get the point.

   So just what is this piece about?

   Well, how's about Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran and -- just possibly -- a teeny, tiny breath of fresh air?

    "How in the name of all that's logical is this even remotely possible"? I can hear you asking.  Your misgivings are completely understandable.  For after all, Pakistan is a political powder keg sitting astride a nuclear arsenal; Afghanistan, that "graveyard of empire," is like something out of Pirandello -- "35 Tribes in Search of an Authority"; and Iran . . . well, what can be said about that charter member of the "Axis of Evil" that is even remotely optimistic?

   Looking around the regional chessboard, we find the following moves being made:

• In Pakistan, American missile-equipped Predator aircraft have been drone-dropping tons of ordinance on the suspected hiding places of top al-Qaeda leaders.  And although it appears that these missile strikes are beginning to take a serious toll on Osama bin Laden's closest allies, the Pakistani government is expressing grave concerns about its territorial sovereignty. The U.S., you see, is no longer asking, informing -- even telling -- Pakistani officials about these attacks before they are launched.  This has the effect of further weakening an already pathetic Asif Ali Zadari. Could Pakistan be headed for yet another military takeover? 
• With regards to Afghanistan, just today, President Obama announced that we will  be sending in an additional 17,000 American troops.  And, for added measure, we will be committing an added 4,000 personnel whose job it will be to train Afghan security forces.  Although the president has yet to set specific benchmarks for Afghanistan -- or Pakistan for that matter -- he is insisting that the two fractured countries "find ways to work together and transform their societies."  Good luck!  Afghanistan has a 2000-plus year history of tribal rivalry that has bedeviled folks from Alexander the Great to Alexander Haig.  Expecting a democracy to arise in poppy-infested, poly-cultural Afghanistan, is one of history's most sleep-depriving dreams.  
• And then there is the Islamic Republic of Iran. . . 

   A week ago, President Obama released a special video message for all those celebrating Noruz, which marks the arrival of Spring and the beginning of the New Year for millions in Iran and around the world.  After wishing the Iranian people a happy New Year and reminding them of his administration's continuing commitment to "a future of honest and respectful diplomacy," he addressed the nation's leaders directly:

   "You too have a choice.  The United States wants the Islamic Republic of Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations.  You have that right -- but it comes with real responsibilities, and that place cannot be reached through terror or arms, but rather through peaceful actions that demonstrate the true greatness of the Iranian people and civilization . . ."

  In his response to what was without question a proffered olive branch, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said, "They chant the slogan of change, but no change is seen in practice . . . . He [Obama] insulted the Islamic Republic of Iran from the first day.  If you are right that change has come, where is that change?  Make it clear for us what has changed?"  Khamenei also "joked" that he hoped that the translation of his remarks from Farsi into English would not be given over to "Zionist translators."

   So where oh where is this "infinitesimally tiny breath of fresh air?"

   Right in front of our face, that's where.

   It turns out that yesterday, the Islamic Republic of Iran announced that it will "join the United States in dispatching official delegations" to two international conferences on Afghanistan.  For its part, the Obama administration has "welcomed Teheran's intended participation" at one in the Netherlands, and likely a second in Moscow, which is opening in just a few hours from now.

   Amazing!  Iran and the United States potentially on the same side of an issue?  

   What gives?

   What "gives" can be summed up in one word: drugs.  

   Simply stated, the Islamic Republic of Iran has a terrible -- and growing -- drug problem; a problem it shares in common with the United States.  

   A week ago, Irani drug enforcement officials seized 4.5 tons of opium, hashish and other drugs from nine alleged smugglers in two cities near Teheran.  Two days later, police in eastern Iran (near the Afghanistan border) stopped a pickup truck packed with a quarter ton of opium hidden under the vehicle's floorboards.  Moreover, in the past two years, the drug war in Iran has cost the government in excess of $600 million, with approximately 3,700 security officials killed and 11,000 maimed in more than 12,000 clashes between traffickers and narcs -- this according to a United Nations report.  Additionally, in the single year between 2006 and 2007, drug seizures jumped 35% for heroin, 37% for opium and 52% for hashish.  Total drug seizures for 2007 alone were in excess of 618 tons.  Drug addiction has quickly become Iran's number one public health problem.  Of late, in an attempt to hamstring the smugglers, Iran has been digging canals, raising earthen berms and laying barbed wire.  But still the drugs flow in "sometimes strapped to camels crossing the desert, sometimes protected by well-armed gangsters equipped with satellite technology . . ."

   In this, Iran and the United States have overlapping interests.  It is part of the United States' program to get Afghani farmers to stop growing poppies -- the sale of which funds the Taliban -- and start growing edibles.  If the United States succeeds in its goal, Iran benefits.  If Iran realizes a dramatic lessening in the amount of drugs smuggled across its eastern border, the United States gains. 

   How to do this?  By creating a more stable Afghanistan.  That's how.

   "Iran and the United States have a fundamental point of interest in the region vis-a-vis Afghanistan," said Sadegh Zibakalam, a professor of political science at Teheran University.  "Both want to see a moderate, Democratic, stable Afghanistan because if there is chaos in Afghanistan, it means opium in Iran and Afghan refugees in Iran."

   Towards the end of stabilizing Afghanistan, diplomats from Iran and the United States are going to be meeting with one another at a conference on that very subject to be held in the Hague next week.  Up until now, the Iranis have steadfastly stayed away from international diplomatic conferences that involved the U.S.  Moreover, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization conference on Afghanistan, which opens today in Moscow, will be attended by the Irani Deputy Foreign Minister, and the American Deputy Assistant Secretary of State.  And while these two events may not represent a hurricane of change, they are that infinitesimally tiny breath of fresh air that can give one hope.

   It is true that many Iranis are "wary of giving America a possible public-relations victory without getting anything in return," as reported in today's Los Angeles Times. A recent editorial in the conservative Sisat Rooz newspaper complained that "Whenever they need us, they use our influence; but as they reach their objectives, they treat us as a major threat in the region."

   Nothing new here.  What is new -- and hopeful -- however, is that some Iranian hard-liners have begun to welcome the idea of cooperating with the U.S. and NATO in "helping to secure Afghanistan, calling it a victory for Iranian steadfastness."  One Irani legislator, Hamid Reza Haji-Babai, went so far as to say that "The more the Islamic Republic of Iran interacts in the regional and international arenas the better.  Easing tensions between Iran and the U.S., he said, "can be achieved within these interactions and participation in conferences."

   This news -- coming from a region that has for so long been rife with fetid stagnation -- could indeed be that infinitesimally tiny breath of fresh area we have been craving. . .

©2009 Kurt F. Stone

    

    

Nothing New Under the Sun

  

Back in 1873, the great Mark Twain teamed up with the lamentably long-forgotten Charles Dudley Warner on a marvelous satiric novel they called The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today.   The novel, which basically deals with the efforts of a poor Tennessee family named Hawkins to get rich through the sale of 75,000 acres of unimproved land, satirizes greed and political corruption in post-Civil War America. Peopled with avaricious Washington lobbyists, the rapacious rich and even a woman who aspires to become a doctor, The Gilded Age is both insightful and delightfully tart-tongued.  And, with only a handful of minor changes, it could easily be a satire on our current addiction to hyper-wealth and celebrity.  I've got to believe that if Twain and Warner were writing their novel today, they would have Silas "Si" Hawkins -- the fellow with the 75,000 acres -- peddling "credit- default swaps", "collateralized debt obligations" or "derivatives" instead undeveloped land.  And who knows?  Maybe Phillip Sterling -- the novel's upper-crust land speculator -- would be into "hedge funds."

   The Twain-Warner collaboration not only sold a lot of books; The Gilded Age became the name for an era which lasted from roughly 1880 to 1893.  Historically, this "Gilded Age" was characterized by extreme wealth polarization, a shrinking Middle Class, the construction of all those so-called "cottages" along Newport's Bellevue Avenue and the coming to prominence of such legendary names as Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Fisk, Gould, and Rockefeller. This "Gilded Age" is best personified in that great world-class trencherman, "Diamond Jim" Brady.    

   Greed is greed, Avarice is avarice. Undue influence is undue influence.  Indeed, as Koheleth noted so many eons ago, "There is nothing new under the sun." No matter whether it be in the middle of America's first "Gilded Age," or today -- when we are (hopefully) nearing the tail end of our second -- the sense of entitlement claimed by the few at the expense of the many remains unchanged.  Unchanging too has been the "gildsters'" ability to both manipulate and maneuver the levers of government for their own personal benefit.  

   Without question, America's second "Gilded Age" began precisely 100 years after the first -- in 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan.  For in slashing the marginal tax rate for the nation's top earners from 70% to 28% and then putting the word "deregulation" on everyone's lips, the "Great Communicator" green-lighted that concatenation of financial tricks, products and processes that would make multi-billionaires of the few, and debt-ridden fools of us all.  Over the course of nearly 30 years, America would go from being the world's greatest creditor nation to becoming by far its greatest debtor.  Reagan and his team did everything in their power to enrich their allies, but in the process put America in grave risk that a bunch of barely-friendly nations could easily determine our financial fate.  Moreover-- and here we must all share tons of blame -- we went from being a country of savers to one in which living beyond one's means was the norm.  Remember when common wisdom held that with the exception of a house or perhaps an automobile, you paid cash? 

    One of the biggest and most obvious differences between the first and second "Gilded Age" deals with how -- and from where -- all the great wealth was made.  In the first, it came almost exclusively from things manufactured right here in the good old U.S. of A.  Whether it was in Carnegie's steel mills, Pullman's railroad yards or Rockefeller's oil fields, we mined, made and manufactured right here at home.  Today, of course, most everything we purchase -- even if it is carrying the name of an American conglomerate -- was mined, made or manufactured in China, Bangladesh, Thailand, or someplace whose capital most of us cannot name.  Why is this?  Because one of the results of all this deregulation is that it is far, far cheaper -- and thus far, far more profitable -- to manufacture abroad than to remain here at home.  For in China, Bangladesh and Namibia one can get by paying a dollar or two a day, and does not have to worry about unions, pensions or the like.  That's good for American manufacturers; that's horrible for American workers.  Indeed, over the past generation, our chief exports have been jobs and plants . . . the manufacturing sort.

     The first Gilded Age came to a crashing end with the Panic of 1893 -- a deep depression that lasted for more than four years.  Finally, with the election of 1896, a major political realignment was set in motion; it would eventually lead to the Progressive Era -- a time of reform, muckraking and a shifting of priorities.  It was the era of the Clayton Antitrust Act, the direct election of senators, Teddy Roosevelt, Upton Sinclair, Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffans and Robert M. La Follette, Sr.  These were the people -- and this was the energy -- that led directly to the New Deal, the next truly great realignment in our political history.

   It may well be that the election of Barack Obama and a strongly Democratic Congress spells the end of America's second "Gilded Age."  The challenges we face -- economically, politically, even spiritually -- are not all that dissimilar from those facing America 100 years ago.  Like that earlier America, we have seen a vast middle class sacrificed for the sake of an avaricious elite.  Just as in 19th century America, those who raise their voices in protest have been quickly labeled -- then as "anarchists" and "socialists," today as "Marxists" and "liberals."  Back then much of the fight was carried by on a generation of writers and activists using a new medium: the mass-circulation magazine.  Today of course, it's the Internet and Blogosphere. 

   If indeed Koheleth was right that there is "nothing new under the sun," perhaps then this second "Gilded Age" is going to wind down and, like its namesake, take its place on the pages of a thousand musty history books.  However, in order for this to occur, it will take a willingness to pull together, to relearn the use of the first person plural -- "we" -- to once again dare to dream, to create and to get our hands dirty, and to learn the lesson of patience. 

    Social, political and economic problems do not arise overnight; neither does their amelioration.  We have finally broken the mold which shaped so much of the past generation.  Now it is time to work, to struggle and to strive.  There are going to be plenty of roadblocks along the way; plenty of pointing fingers and shaking fists; more than enough blame and recrimination for a thousand scandals.  But know this:

   Together we can like an earlier generation, turn a "Gilded Age" into one that is truly golden.

     ©2009 Kurt F. Stone         

    

The Cosmic 'Oy Vey'

  From almost the first moment it was known that President Barack Obama -- per the recommendation of National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair -- was going to name Ambassador Charles W. "Chas" Freeman, Jr. to head his National  Intelligence Council, that appointment began its clockwise swirl  around the political toilet bowl.  Less than forty-eight hours ago Freeman, in withdrawing his name from consideration for the post -- which requires no approval -- let fly a stream of invective against the folks he believed were responsible for operating the plunger: the so-called "Israel Lobby."  In the email announcing his withdrawal, Freeman decried the "barrage of libelous distortions of my record [that] would not cease upon my entry into office."  Freeman further stated that, "The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to a factor in American understanding of trends and events in the Middle East."

   Oy Vey!

   The "flushing" of Chas. Freeman raises several obvious questions:

• Who precisely is Chas. Freeman?
• What sorts of accusatory red flags were being raised by what sorts of folks?
• Were those accusations merited?
• In the long run, what does it all mean?

     First things first: Chas Freeman [1943- ], a graduate of Yale and Harvard Law, is a career diplomat who served as President Nixon's principal interpreter during his 1972 visit to China, and later (1989-1992) as U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Among his many postings and positions, he also served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs in the Clinton Administration.  In 1997, he succeeded Senator George McGovern as President of the Middle East Policy Council, a group which "strives to ensure that a full range of U.S. interests and views are considered by policy makers." The Council, it should be noted, receives more than 10% of its funding from the Saudi Arabian Government.   

   Reportedly a brash, irascible fellow, Freeman is no stranger to controversy. At various times he has chided Beijing for "not crushing the Tiananmen Square democracy protests sooner," and referred to the Saudi King as "Abdullah the Great."  And, at one time he served on the advisory board of a state-owned Chinese oil company.  But its for his comments about Israel, the so-called "Israel Lobby" and the Middle East that Freeman has become most infamous.  It is also likely that these latter comments and positions were most directly -- though not totally -- responsible for his not becoming the fellow charged with overseeing the National Intelligence Estimates. 

   Freeman lumped Israel's supporters on Capitol Hill, A.I.P.A.C.  [America Israel Public Affairs Committee] and various other pro-Israel groups into a lobby whose aim " . . . is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointments of people who dispute the wisdom of its views."  One result of this, he claimed, is "the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any options for U.S. policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics."

   Further, in a 2005 speech Freeman gave before the Washington-based National Council on U.S.-Arab relations, he referred to Israel's "high-handed and self-defeating policies" stemming from "the occupation and settlement of Arab lands," which he termed "inherently violent."

   Freeman's claim that its impossible to discuss "any options" that may be "opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics," flies in the face of political reality.  Over the past several years, the U.S. has both supported and promoted a Palestinian election that "the ruling faction in Israeli politics" obviously opposed; the U.S. refused Israel weapons they may well have used for a preemptive attack on Iran's nuclear facilities; and, the U.S. adopted a policy of direct talks with a regime that denies that the Holocaust ever occurred and promises that one day it will wipe Israel off the face of the earth.  And our new president -- whose Chief of Staff is the son of an Israeli-born former member of the Irgun -- had his first televised interview on al jezeera TV.  This is walking in lockstep with "the ruling faction in Israeli politics?"

   Earth to Mr. Freeman: what in the world are you talking about? 

   Talk about a cosmic 'Oy Vey'! [Note: the term 'cosmic oy vey' is defined by its creator, journalist Aaron David Miller, as "The tendency of many American Jews to worry about everything, without a capacity to identify what is important and what isn't. . ."]

   Interestingly, most of the major Jewish, pro-Israel interest groups, stayed publicly mum about l'affaire Freeman. AIPAC spokesman Josh Block said that his organization "took no position on this matter, and did not lobby the Hill on it." True, Senators Schumer and Lieberman did put in their very public two cents, as well as Republican Representatives Peter Peter Hoekstra (MI) and Mark Steven Kirk (IL) and even Minority Leader John Boehner (OH) who sent a letter of inquiry about Freeman to Inspector General Edward Maguire on March 3rd.  The Weekly Standard's Martin Kramer detailed what he called "Freeman's analytical incompetence," quoting the ambassador as saying, "I'm a very practical man, and my concern is simply this: that there are movements, like Hamas, like Hezbollah, that in recent decades have not done anything against the United States or Americans, even though the United States supports their enemy, Israel."  Kramer also noted that Ambassador Freeman strenuously objected to the U.S. designation of the two aforementioned groups as terrorist organizations, lest "this invite them to extend their operations in the United States or against Americans abroad."    

   Oy Vey!

  Although one can well argue that the Obama Administration needs a couple of in-house contrarians to keep things honest and intellectually stimulating, one wonders about the wisdom of having that contrarian being a "bought man."  Chas. Freeman's ties to both the Saudi Royal Family and Chinese state-run banking interests make his ability to objectively vet intelligence suspect at best, dubious at worst.  And, as much as President Obama may relish the lively give-and-take of debate, intelligence briefings are not the best place for that kind of badinage. As Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post and Neiman Watch noted in a recent article, "Chas. Freeman is a One-Man Destroyer of Groupthink."

   After reading and listening to the cantankerous broadside Freeman issued in announcing "his change of plans," the Obama White House should breath a sigh of relief. Ambassador Freeman was simply not the man for them.

   Or for us.

©2009 Kurt F. Stone

  

What Would General Bovay Say?

  

   History records that on March 20, 1854, a handful of disaffected Whigs, Free Soilers and Democrats assembled in a small frame schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin. Alvan Bovay, the town's only lawyer [and a future Civil War General], was the fellow who had invited them to attend.  The thing that brought them together was their mutual loathing for the newly-enacted "Kansas-Nebraska Act."

   Authored by Illinois Senator Steven A. Douglas, the law granted settlers in the newly-created territories of Kansas and Nebraska the right to determine for themselves whether or not to allow slavery.  Douglas hoped the bill's passage would help ease tensions between North and South, because in his eyes, the act would permit the South to expand slavery to the new territories, while the North still had the right to abolish slavery in their own states.   He was wrong.  Dead wrong.  Opponents -- like the folks up in Ripon -- denounced the law as a terrible, cowardly concession to the South's "Peculiar Institution."

   By the time Bovay's little group departed from the schoolhouse, they had given birth to a new force that would soon sweep the North: the Republican Party. Within less than four months, the party would hold its first official meeting in Jackson, Michigan; within another two years, they would elect Edwin Denison Morse their party's first -- and still longest serving -- national chair.  Precisely why the assembled Republicans chose Morse, a future New York Governor and United States Senator, and not the party's idealistic founder Alvan Bovay, is unknown.  What is known is that in 1874, Bovay -- convinced that "The mission of the Republican Party has ended with the overthrow of slavery and the reconstruction of the old slave states on a free basis . . . " -- he left and joined the fledgling Prohibition Party.

   Bovay's GOP, a party born in idealism and annealed in the fires of adversity used to stand for far more than tax cuts, deregulation and the further enriching of the "haves" and "have-mores."  Bovay's G.O.P., which would become the party of such political titans as Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Fiorello LaGuardia and Jacob Javits -- is a far, far cry from our modern-day version -- that of Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Michael Steele, Michelle Bachmann, and Bobby Jindal.

   Or Rush Limbaugh.

   You've got to wonder what Alvan Bovay would think or say about the current shape, direction and leadership of the party he birthed. Would he want to admit membership in a party so weak-willed, so misguided that it is seemingly taking its marching orders from a radio talk-show host?  How might he react to the ceaseless drumbeat of invective; to the mindless catcalls of "Socialist" and "Left-Wing Communist?"  I've got to believe he would be somewhere between dumbfounded and apoplectic. 

   And spinning in his grave.

   The current contretemps with Rush Limbaugh and Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele is but the latest indicator of how far Bovay's party has strayed from it original idealistic path.  Where once the party had positive goals and aspirations -- progress, equity, and equality -- today its raison d'être appears to be nothing more than opposition and the demand for blind loyalty. 

   If Alvan Bovay were still among the living, he would likely at this point ask a handful of questions:

• "Loyalty to what?" 
  
• "Loyalty to whom?" 
  
• "Precisely what is it that you believe?" 
  
• "Who leads you in those beliefs?"
  
• "What is it that shapes, defines and motivates you to action?"  

  To listen to Limbaugh -- or indeed, any of the other so-called "leaders" of the G.O.P. -- that which defines and motivates them is far more often negative than affirmative; far more contrarian than positivist. To today's GOP, the LIBERAL opposition [whom they persist in referring to as the "Democrat," rather than "Democratic" Party] is not merely a bloc that can espouse different ideas, opinions or proposals -- all of which are worthy of debate; no, the opposition is evil incarnate -- an organized conspiracy of LIBERAL sociopaths whose LIBERAL raison d'être is the very destruction of America.

   To listen to the speakers who addressed last week's CPAC [Conservative Political Action Conference] gathering, one might reasonably believe that Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Reid, Chairman Frank and White House Chief of Staff Emanuel [to name but a few] get up each morning and partake in a conference call with none other than Satan himself.  At the conference, speaker after speaker consistently demeaned, degraded and derogated LIBERALS. As such, these Republicans showed neither what they were for nor where they stood, but rather what -- or who -- they were against, and what -- or who -- was responsible for virtually all our present problems and ills.  And believe me, it wasn't them . . .

  Shortly after Chairman Steele referred to Limbaugh as an "entertainer," whose show is both "incendiary" and "ugly," a firestorm of controversy erupted; so much so that Steele had to back down and "make nice" with the "$400 Million Man."  In his retraction, Steele referred to Limbaugh as a "national conservative leader," and declared that, "There was no attempt on my part to diminish (Limbaugh's) voice or his leadership."  It makes you question what the definition of "conservative" is, and precisely who's in charge of the party.

   It was not a pleasant sight to behold.

   Adding his gleefully cheerful two-cents, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs expressed his "surprise at the speed in which Mr. Steele, the head of the RNC, apologized to the leader of the Republican Party."  Gibbs then suggested that the media ask other Republicans whether they agreed with Limbaugh's hope -- expressed on both his radio show and before CPAC -- that President Obama fails.  

   Score one for the White House. 

   By the way: for those who feel the need to apologize to Rush Limbaugh for something -- for anything -- there's an  I'm Sorry Rush  website which has been established for this very purpose.  Click and enjoy!

   And while we're on the subject of apologies, it might not be a bad idea for Michael Steele, Rush Limbaugh and the party one of them leads to issue a blanket apology to Alvan Bovay.  Just as a suggestion, it might go something like this:

   "General Bovay: We sincerely apologize to you and the gentlemen who originally formed the Republican Party.  We apologize for having strayed so far from the ideals with which you created this party -- progress, equity and equality.  We apologize for having allowed our political vision to become so myopic and bedimmed as to be virtually incapable of seeing anyone other than ourselves. . . ." 

   And while you're at it General, would you please be so kind as to express our apologies to Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Fiorello LaGuardia and Jacob Javits as well?  

   What do you say General Bovay?

©2009 Kurt F. Stone

    

  

"That and a Buck Fifty . . ."

   

   Most intelligent people understand that time, tide and taxes make for great change; not only in the relative price of say, goods and services, but in the value of idiomatic expressions as well. 

   How's that?

  Well, take the old saw "A penny saved is a penny earned." hIt as lost most if not all of its bite -- especially at a time when the Treasury Department has announced that the next generation of pennies will actually cost more than a cent per coin to produce!  Then too, where at one time a "penny for one's thoughts" was both fitting and proper, today one would likely need to take out a loan in order to find out whas was on another person's mind.

   Or, consider the old expression "That and a nickel will get you a cup of coffee."  Who amongst us can remember how long ago it was that a cuppa' Joe cost five cents?  Today, the idiom would be more like "That and a buck fifty will get you a cup of decaf," and even that's probably on the cheap side. 

   However, the intent or meaning of this rather tongue-in-cheek expression -- regardless of price -- is both clear and consistent: that actions speak far louder than words. 

   But what about when words are the action?  What of their relative worth?

   In the world of philosophy, words which are in and of themselves actions are called "performative utterances."  Obvious examples would be such statements as:

• "You are hereby sentenced to death."
• "I now pronounce you husband and wife."
• "This meeting is now adjourned," and
• "This court is now in session." 

   When British philosopher J.L. Austin first described the concept in his book How to Do Things With Words [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962] he included two additional "performative utterances":

• "I apologize," and
• "I forgive you"

   In other words, according to Austin, in order for a person to apologize, all they had to do was utter precisely two words . . . "I apologize."  Likewise, all that it took for that apology to be accepted were the words "I forgive you," or "I accept your apology."

   It is at this point that Professor Austin and I must go down diverging paths; for one's apology to be both true and acceptable, it must consist of far, far more than mere words.  It must include honesty, contrition, the realization of just how much pain their words or deeds have caused, and an understanding that fundamental change is required.  Otherwise, they are falling into the trap best described by yet another philosopher of language -- the late aphorist Mason Cooley, who once wrote,

                                     I regret.

                                     I apologize.

                                     I blame myself.

                                    I continue as before.

   In the past several days we have seen a couple of stunning examples of "apologies" which not only fall far short of being "performative utterances," but will require far more than a buck fifty for that cup of coffee.  And even then, I fear that it will be a deeply bitter brew . . .

   The first such "apology" comes from British "Bishop" Richard Williamson, the Catholic prelate who not so long ago told a Swedish television interviewer that "historical evidence indicates that there were no Nazi gas chambers," and that a "maximum of 300,000 people died in concentration camps in the Holocaust." The "Bishop," who just the other day was kicked out of Argentina and sent packing back to his native England was seeking to have his excommunication ban lifted by Pope Benedict. Hoping to get back in the good graces of the Holy Father [who denied knowing anything about Williamson's weltanschauung], the renegade priest issued an "apology" which in part stated:

    If I had known beforehand the full harm and hurt to which they [i.e. his words] would give rise, especially to the church, but also to the survivors and relatives of victims of injustice under the Third Reich, I would not have said them. . . . To all souls that took honest scandal from what I said, before God, I apologize."

    One will note that nowhere does Williamson say he is either contrite or apologetic for holding such ghastly, hateful, ahistorical beliefs; only that he is sorry for having been caught.  Nowhere has he come to grips with the fact that his beliefs fly in the face of the most thoroughly-documented act of inhumanity in the history of humankind.  Nowhere does he state that he now understands that indeed there was a Holocaust, and that indeed millions upon millions of Jews died horrible deaths in Nazi crematoria. His words offer not a scintilla of hope that he is a changed man.

   To forgive him would have about as much reality as his apology.  That and a buck fifty might purchase a cup of coffee . . . a very bitter cup of coffee.

   Then there is the case of multimedia baron Rupert Murdoch, whose New York Post recently ran a cartoon showing a dead monkey with bullet holes in its chest and two cops, one with a smoking gun.  The caption reads, "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill."  The cartoon was meant to connect two events -- the fatal police shooting of a violent "celebrity" chimp that seriously mauled a woman, and the recent passage of the federal stimulus package, which Murdoch sees as being horribly flawed. Almost immediately, a hue and cry went out demanding both an apology and retraction from Post publisher Murdoch and cartoonist Sean Delonas for running what many, many people saw as being a racist jibe at the expense of President Barack Obama.  The Post's initial response was "no apology is due." Murdoch claimed that the cartoon was only meant to "mock a badly written piece of legislation." 

   Finally, after one week and tens of thousands of expressions of outrage and disgust, Murdoch issued an apologia . . . sort of:

   "Last week, we made a mistake.  We ran a cartoon which offended many people.  Today I want to personally apologize.  It was not meant to be racist, but unfortunately it was interpreted by many as such. . . .Today I want to personally apologize to any reader who felt offended, and even insulted.  I can assure you -- without a doubt -- that the only intent of the cartoon was to mock a badly written piece of legislation."

   Again, an apology that is far, far less than an act of self-understanding or contrition.  No one at the Post has been terminated as a result of running this deeply offensive, overtly racist cartoon.  As in the case of Williamson, Murdoch only "apologized" for the negative reactions his readers may have had -- not that which caused their horror and anger in the first place.

   Seems like not a day goes by without some celebrity uttering words of apology in the press.  Whether it be third baseman Alex Rodriguez for using steroids, swimming champ Michael Phelps for toking on a bong, Michael Vick for dog fighting, or Mel Gibson for being a blatant anti-Semite,  everyone is sorry for something.  In the case of athletes or celebrities sometimes the public will accept their apologies and see them as being true, heartfelt and hopefully transformative.  In other cases, no words, no act will do; the individual is consigned to the ash heap of public scorn and derision.  Sometimes it just doesn't make sense.  The same person who can forgive, forget and cheer on a Ray Lewis -- who at one time was indicted for murder and then given a year's probation in exchange for testimony -- will never forgive a Bill Clinton or Gary Condit for their sexual indiscretions.  Yes, to forgive is divine, but only if and when the apology involves contrition, self-awareness and transformation.

   The "apologies" of Richard Williamson and Rupert Murdoch are far, far less than convincing or satisfying.  Their words contain none of the contrition or self-awareness than can lead to transformation.  Not even a buck fifty will buy them that proverbial cuppa' coffee.

   For them, a better adage comes to mind:

                           "Put your money where your mouth is."

©2009 Kurt F. Stone