unclesmedley

equinoctial salutations

2009-03-23T14:00:00.005-04:00

in just-

 in Just-
 spring       when the world is mud-
 luscious the little
 lame balloonman

 whistles    far    and wee

 and eddieandbill come
 running from marbles and
 piracies and it's
 spring

 when the world is puddle-wonderful

 the queer
 old balloonman whistles
 far       and       wee
 and bettyandisbel come dancing

  from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

 it's
 spring
 and
      the

              goat-footed

 balloonMan       whistles
 far
 and
 wee

     e.e. cummings

Apropos of nothing

2009-01-25T02:34:00.002-05:00

I do love this song.

Capraesque

2009-01-20T21:43:00.003-05:00

R.I.P.

2009-01-16T12:44:00.004-05:00

Andrew Wyeth has died.

"The Master Bedroom" has hung over our bed for many years, and he was one of my favorite American painters.

Rectal Emission

2009-01-07T13:30:00.007-05:00

"When he is inaugurated in two and a half weeks and the lame don't walk and the blind don't see, there's going to be some gravely disappointed Starbucks baristas out there."

- Tucker Carlson, former Conservative wunderkind and future housemate on Surreal Life, weighs in on the incoming administration's prospects.

He may have lost that insipid bow-tie, but he's still an asshole.

To Happier Times...

2009-01-01T17:50:00.001-05:00

2009 - Finally

2008-12-31T22:34:00.001-05:00

There’s an old story about a conversation between Miles Davis and John Coltrane. ‘Trane was having troubles with his band, because they were annoyed by his tendency to monopolize sets with his trademark, meandering solos, leaving little or no time for his them to do their thing. The arrangement would call for each of them to play maybe sixteen bars, and then pass it off to the next man.

“I can’t explain it,” he said. “I just sorta get lost out there. I start ridin’ the groove and I just keeps going and I don’t know how to stop.”

Miles smiled, crushed out a cigarette and replied in that raspy old voice of his.

“You take the horn outcha mouth.”

So… For those of you embarking on a resolution for the New Year, mark well the wisdom of the jazz man. Remember, sometimes a bad habit can be resolved by simply takin’ the horn outcha mouth.

Anyhoo... Happy New Year All!

Thwack!

2008-12-30T13:56:00.002-05:00

Zbigniew Brzezinski, (about whom comedian Alan King once remarked, "That's not a name--it's an eye chart!) has long impressed me as one of the most intelligent public figures in America. Joe Scarborough, for whom it seems safe to assume the term "ass hat" was originally coined, strikes me as being, shall we say, significantly less bright.

Clearly, neither man is lacking in confidence, but when such egos clash, it is prudent to wager on the smart feller. To wit:

A Holiday Moment

2008-12-23T12:54:00.000-05:00

A soldier returns from 14 months in Iraq. Welcome home...

From the Bin...

2008-12-23T12:38:00.001-05:00

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

A Holiday Classic

2008-12-20T14:28:00.003-05:00

"...the darkness sets in. George’s brother, Harry, almost drowns; Mr. Gower, a pharmacist, nearly poisons a sick child; and then George, a head taller than everyone else, becomes the pathetic older sibling creepily hanging around Harry’s high school graduation party. That night George humiliates his future wife, Mary, by forcing her to hide behind a bush naked, and the evening ends with his father’s sudden death..."

Happy Holidays!

Lest ye forget the rest of the story...

SEASONS GREETINGS!

2008-12-15T14:39:00.002-05:00

Prop 8 Redux

2008-12-10T14:58:00.002-05:00

To me, the Gay Marriage issue is as relevant as regulations for left-handed fishing licenses; I'm right handed and I don't fish. I did however, spend almost 20 years in San Francisco, during which time I was able to discard my standard northeastern homophobia, conclude that I am an unadulterated heterosexual, and cultivate numerous close friendships and business relationships with LGBT folks of every stripe.

Accordingly, as a general rule, I am quite supportive of LGBT initiatives, but I am often loath to endorse the tactics employed in the service of these eminently reasonable objectives. The impracticality and the obnoxiousness of the in-your-face, "we're here, we're queer--get used to it" mentality always struck me as a profoundly counterproductive means by which to persuade folks who are "on the fence" to the other side of the fence.

But to address this issue is a dicey matter, like opposing Zionism or criticizing black people, or feminism, or religious dogma. These proprietary issues don't loan themselves to open discussion--especially with folks outside the community.

Well then... Today, I happened across a certified Gay and a certified Lesbian interpretation of my opinion. So if you don't like my attitude, take it up with Camile Paglia, who says:

"After California voters adopted Proposition 8 ... gay activists have launched a program of open confrontation with and intimidation of religious believers, mainly Mormons. I thought we'd gotten over the adolescent tantrum phase of gay activism ... Want to cause a nice long backlash to gay rights? That's the way to do it."

and Mark Simpson, who concurs:

"Perhaps the lesson of Proposition 8 is not that most straight people think gay people should sit at the back of the bus, but that if you take on religion and tradition on its hallowed turf - and that is what marriage effectively is - you’re highly likely to lose. Even in liberal California."

from the bin... (Holiday Season Edition)

2008-12-10T14:13:00.001-05:00

Shocked! Shocked I say!!!

2008-12-10T13:07:00.004-05:00

Politicos from Washington to Chicago are unanimously channeling Conrad Rains these days, in the wake of the Rod Blogojevich scandal. The good news is, this little imbroglio seems to mesh with the rise of Obama as it pertains to the fall of the House of Jackson.

From ABC NEWS:

Sources Say Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. Is 'Senate Candidate No. 5'

Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill., is the anonymous "Senate Candidate No. 5" whose emissaries reportedly offered Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich up to $1 million to name him to the U.S. Senate. According to the FBI affidavit in the case, Blagojevich “stated he might be able to cut a deal with Senate Candidate 5 that provided Rod Blagojevich” with something “tangible up front.”

Jackson was contacted Tuesday by federal prosecutors “to come in and share with them … insights and thoughts about the selection process.”

Jackson said, “I am not a target of this investigation” and has agreed to talk with federal investigators after he consulted with a lawyer.

The son of the famed civil rights leader denied that anyone had been authorized to make payments or promises to the governor on his behalf, averring the notion is “an impossibility to an absolute certainty.”

Read the whole story here.

The Political Class

2008-12-09T15:34:00.003-05:00

Those of us who cut our teeth on Watergate, and can still remember Mayor Daly's Chicago machine, and are familiar with the smoke-filled legends of Joe Kennedy, have observed in the 21st Century a spectacular renaissance in the realm of good old-fashioned, off-the-charts-ballsy acts of rank political corruption ranging from the appallingly successful to the extravagantly catastrophic to the just-plain-pathetic.

It began, of course, with the Great Presidential Election Heist of 2000 and cascaded through eight years of antic misbehavior. Other highlights include The post-Katrina FEMA debacle, the Abu Ghraib Scandal, a host of lurid sexual imbroglios (apotheosized by Idaho Senator Larry Craigs "wide stance" misadventure in a Minneapolic airport, and Elliot Spitzer's stunningly hypocritical dalliance with a top-shelf hooker.)

There was Duke Cunningham's actual menu of misdeeds and the fees attendant thereupon, and William Jefferson's freezer full of cash and Ted Steven's Extreme Home Makeover in the Yukon. The list goes on, but I dare say the high- (or low-) watermark for mindless hutzpah was acheived today in Illinois, the American Capitol of Sketchy Civic Behavior where Governor Rod Blagojevich, who... well... you be the judge...

Lincoln may be rolling in his grave, but somewhere, Nixon is having a nice little chuckle.

Six Weeks To Go

2008-12-09T15:27:00.001-05:00

"I'm just a simple president."
- George W. Bush, 12.8.08

heh-heh-heh...

2008-12-05T00:22:00.002-05:00

Please God, let Helen Thomas live long enough to receive the respect that a dogged member of the press deserves from the White House, one last time...

Double-Oh Grommit

2008-12-03T13:33:00.001-05:00

from the bin...

2008-12-02T12:21:00.000-05:00

2008-11-28T14:44:00.002-05:00

Another Choice Nugget from the Non Sequitur Bin

2008-11-27T20:18:00.002-05:00

As an '80s DJ, I always found Rick Astley to be the embodiment of what was so terribly wrong with MTV--an archetypal, second wave, cheese-monger, the likes of which were responsible for the demise of not only the "radio star" but the great American garage band as well.

That said, his tongue-in-cheeky re-emergence into a new generation of pop culture is subversively cool, strangely admirable, and kinda meta--in an enchantingly incomplete sort of way.

He also gets full credit for co-opting Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends into his gig.

2008-11-26T23:47:00.004-05:00

The year that is drawing towards its close has been filled with the blessings ... which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible ...

In the midst of a war … which has sometimes seemed to … invite and to provoke … aggression … the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years, with large increase of freedom.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged … by the whole American people.

I do therefore invite my fellow citizens … to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November, as a day of Thanksgiving ... And I recommend to them that … they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience … heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it … to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony [and] tranquility...

Abraham Lincoln, October 3, 1863

Happy Thanksgiving everybody. Keep a good thought, and hang in there.

And on a lighter note...

2008-11-25T12:03:00.002-05:00

I've always regarded Chico as the unfairly underappreciated Marx Brother.

In addition to his mesmerizing chops at the keyboard, he was also a notoriously naughty monkey. One of my favorite bits of apocrypha surrounding his legendary carnal exploits (which has been tidied up almost beyond recognition at Wikipedia, tsk, tsk...) involves the similarly underrated Tallulah Bankhead, the famed fallen débutante of the deep south.

Chico was a guest at a dinner party to which Ms. Bankhead had been invited. Wary of his proclivities, the host admonished him to be respectful and polite to the sophisticated lady. Chico agreed, and when he was introduced, he gallantly took her hand, gently kissed it and said:

"I'da very much like to f*** you tonight."

"And so you shall, you wonderful, old-fashioned boy," came the reply. "And so you shall."

“an ethical quagmire of the bottomless pit variety”

2008-11-25T11:43:00.002-05:00

In an effort to reduce the $5 billion punitive damage sanction against them, Exxon funded several studies that criticized such damages in principle. When the case finally went to the Supreme Court, Justice Souter "declined to rely" on the studies because they were underwritten by Exxon. Souter's disdain has evidently created a new area of law in which to specialize: the dubious relationship between money and research.

It's an interesting conundrum, if you're into that sort of thing. Read on...

A Choice Nugget from the Non Sequitur Bin

2008-11-24T12:59:00.002-05:00

Bits and pieces from a 1940's telecom documentary with Tiny Tim singing Led Zepplin as a music bed. Enjoy...

On Shitburgers and Good Intentions...

2008-11-24T01:56:00.004-05:00

I always make it a point not to present myself as an expert in parenting, but as I continue through the process (which I did not undertake until I was 41) a core belief becomes more and more an article of faith:

Chief among a parent's responsibilities is that by which the child is duly acquainted with disappointment.

In a refreshingly straightforward meditation in The New Yorker, Joan Acocella notes:

"...the steamy devotion shown by later generations of parents ... has produced snotty little brats filled with anger at such abstract enemies as 'The System,' and intellectual lightweights, certain that their every thought is of great consequence, because their parents told them so..." Read on, if you dare.

For your listening pleasure...

2008-11-23T10:33:00.000-05:00

"I'll be in charge of the turkey...!"

2008-11-20T22:39:00.002-05:00

Not since I quit smoking have I experienced such difficulty giving up an unsavory habit.

Sarah Palin ought to be yesterday's news. But no. She has evidently undertaken an enterprise which aims to render both Monty Python and The Onion obsolete, in terms of arch irony and patent absurdity. And I just can't look away.

Mark Twain once said that the only difference between fiction and non-fiction is "fiction has to be plausible."

If one were to propose a skit in which Sarah engages in 3 minutes of folksy Thanksgiving chit-chat in front of an automated Turkey guillotine, you'd have no takers.

Yet, behold!

Ein Kleine Rollschuhmusik

2008-11-20T21:03:00.001-05:00

unclesmedley, deconstructed

2008-11-20T13:58:00.005-05:00

A website that purports to analyze blogs, says that I am "the logical and analytical type, [who] is not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people [that] need some time to understand what [I am] talking about."

I construe this reputed tendency for exasperation vis a vis obtuse assimilative propensities as a manifestly intrinsic excretion of a congenital predisposition toward sesquipedalian articulation, and nothing more

A bit of fermented curd...just because

2008-11-20T01:02:00.000-05:00

And she was...

2008-11-17T13:18:00.005-05:00

“But not for me personally were those cheers for.” --Sarah Palin

"How can I miss you if you won't go away?"
--Dan Hicks

"puttin' food on people's plates"

2008-11-14T12:07:00.011-05:00

From the AP:

“…the family of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is demanding a share of the proceeds from the sudden wave of T-shirts, posters and other merchandise depicting the civil rights leader alongside Barack Obama. Isaac Newton Farris Jr., King's nephew and head of the King Center in Atlanta (pictured, left) says:

“Some of this is probably putting food on people's plates … we cannot allow our brand to be abused … If you make a dollar, we should make a dime. That's not happening now.

Read on...

Apropos of absolutely nothing...

2008-11-13T11:12:00.000-05:00

How I miss this man...

2008-11-11T01:14:00.003-05:00

The greatest of his kind. A once in a lifetime mind.

Oh, yeah... Dat's how we do...

2008-11-09T22:52:00.000-05:00

Get the latest news satire and funny videos at 236.com.

Further Perspective

2008-11-07T15:53:00.003-05:00

An old friend came up in conversation today, which provoked the memory of an old song that seems fresher today than it has in decades. God bless America, and God bless YouTube...

Dignity

2008-11-07T13:49:00.003-05:00

For more than three decades Eugene Allen worked in the White House, a black man unknown to the headlines. During some of those years, harsh segregation laws lay upon the land. He trekked home every night, his wife, Helene, keeping him out of her kitchen. At the White House, he worked closer to the dirty dishes than to the large desk in the Oval Office. Helene didn't care; she just beamed with pride.

Perhaps I'm being unrealistic, but I am already weary of all the focus on the racial aspect of Obama's election. The meme about the first black president may be accurate, but it is false--and it is counterproductive. The emphasis should not be applied to his race; it should be applied to the fact that he prevailed, in large part, because he specifically minimized his race and focused instead on his nationality.
That said, I heartily recommend this exceptionally poignant piece.
Quiet dignity never goes out of style.

Perspective

2008-11-07T09:31:00.001-05:00

Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are

Sir Charles

2008-10-28T14:48:00.025-04:00

Years ago, I saw Ray Charles perform with the San Francisco Symphony. As he sang Your Cheatin' Heart, mine soared as my mind wandered. I thought of Hank Williams, the much-beloved troubadour and son of Alabama, who wrote the song.

I mused as to how he or the myriad sons and daughters of the old south who idolized him during his lifetime (1923-53) might regard such a thing as a blind, black man singing one of ol' Hanks songs with a symphony orchestra in San Francisco.

I reckoned some might interpret it as a sign of the end times. Others might don robes and light crosses. Still others might be as third-world refugees from a natural disaster, bewildered by the annihilation of their world.

I lived down south years ago, and after a significant period of adjustment, I came to the realization that there is much there to emulate, envy and admire in the Land of the Old Confederacy. But issues linger, and there are a few areas where…

I’m sorry, but I must admit that it warms my heart and excites my soul to see an ignorant redneck baffled by the progress of humanity.

So, you can imagine my delight at the absolutely delicious prospect of prospect of Charles Barkley running for Governor of Alabama.

Imagine... Charles Barkley sitting behind George Wallace's old desk. This isn't forty acres and a mule, this is flying pigs, snowballs in hell. Mark Twain once said that the onlkly difference between fiction and non-fiction is that fiction has to be plausible. This is Big Jim goin' to da Gubnah's mansion--and somewhere Mister Twain is having a good chuckle.

I am further enlivened by recent evidence supporting the possibility that such a thing might actually happen: Jesse Ventura, Arnold Schwarzenneger, Al Franken... Barack Hussein Obama.

Throughout his career, Barkley argued that athletes ought not be considered role models. "A million guys in jail can dunk a basketball,” noted the inimitable Round Mound of Rebound. “Should they be role models?"

In 1993, he wrote the tag line for Nike’s "I am not a role model" ad campaign., and stirred further controversy in averring, “the media demands that athletes be role models because there's some jealousy involved. It's as if they say, ‘this is a young black kid playing a game for a living and making all this money, so we're going to make it tough on him.’

“What they're really doing is telling kids to look up to someone they can't become," he wrote. "Not many people can be like we are. Kids can't be like Michael Jordan.”

This stand prompted former Vice President Dan Quayle to praise Barkley's oft-ignored call for parents and teachers to quit looking to him to "raise your kids" and instead be role models themselves, as a "family-values message."

On the heels of this modest controversy, I found my self walking one night through San Francisco’s notorious Tenderloin district, a veritable Mecca for hookers, pimps, junkies, drifters, gangsters, parolees, lost souls and various and sundry down-and-outers from all over the world. To extend the metaphor, the Kaaba of this tawdry precinct is a once-renowned porno multiplex and fetish bazaar called The Mitchell Brothers’ O’Farrell Theater.

Venerated by some as the birthplace of modern pornography and extolled in apocrypha as the most licentious establishment of its kind outside Amsterdam, Mitchell Brothers’ (as it is locally known) had been a bug-light for the lurid since the 1969 when stag-film impresarios Jim and Artie established their strip club/porn theater/film studio at the bustling corner of O’Farrell and Geary Streets at the bottom of Nob Hill.

Unlike most of the rundown, boarded-up and forbidding haunts that inform the sketchy atmosphere of the neighborhood, The Mitchell Brothers’ was lit up like a Broadway theater, with a Vegas-like marquee and a retinue of presentably imposing doormen arrayed like palace guards behind velvet ropes out front. A favored resort for bachelor parties and the like, taxis and limousines lined-up in front of this curious landmark discharging and retrieving the convivial and depraved from all walks of life.

Playboy Magazine bestowed its imprimatur upon the enterprise, prompting fringe celebrities, fashionable poseurs and well-heeled degenerates to mingle in the vicinity; a predictable coterie of scandalized citizens and aggrieved clergy loudly bemoaned this affront to humanity (thereby amplifying the PR blizzard) and, viola, it was a singular, only-in-San Francisco scene, one of the preeminent wonders of the off-brand world, and a tourist destination rivaling the Golden Gate Bridge and Fisherman’s Wharf.

So, there I was, ambling past the Mitchell Brothers on a random Thursday night, making my way back home from my bartending gig, taking in the local color, minding my own business. The Mitch was its usual self, kinda pathetic once you get used to it: Conventioneers steeped in bourbon, stumbling in and out of cabs; homeless vagrants and horrific prostitutes bumming change, offering discounts and evading exasperated bouncers; and, of course, the VIP crowd: preening and strolling to the head of the line.

That’s where I saw him, Charles Barkley—a study in conspicuity bathed in neon and resplendent in a luxuriously roomy, ocher suit, lingering unselfconsciously under the marquee. As with all basketball players, he is much larger in person than one might imagine. The likes of Shaquile O’Neal and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar skew the perspective and make big guys look normal-sized and normal guys look small. Charles is a large man.

He stood with his back to the street, graciously chatting and with the hoi polloi. From such an angle, the bald head was the primary identifier. But still, it seemed so improbable that a guy of his stature would be seen so publicly, mingling with the riff-raff at the Mitchell Brothers’ on a random Thursday night. So, I decided to verify. I sidled through the crowd to get a better look. It was closing time, so the crush was on between the doors and the curb. Before I knew it, I was almost in the man’s pocket—much closer than I'd intended. I didn’t want to seem nosy or judgmental.

My proximity startled him. He shot me a sideways glance and accurately sized up the situation. He took my measure with just a soupçon of condescension, and looked me dead in the eye.

“Told ya, I was'n no fuckin’ role model,” he said. Then he went back his autographing with the wry smile of a man wondering why folks still don’t believe him.

For those who fret over the dearth of political action after this years election: take heart--we've still got Sir Charles for Governor of Alabama. This oughta be great.

October Surprise

2008-10-14T22:30:00.001-04:00

Angry Old Coot

2008-10-09T15:13:00.002-04:00

Attention: McCainites

2008-10-09T11:05:00.002-04:00

JUMP BACK! BOCCE MIO!

2008-10-04T23:22:00.002-04:00

“Azza badanda! Quazu beedie hep du toll y’all… HIAEHa…!”

“Quanzo bennepitoulo, beastie capalbo… Basta!”

Not since a long-ago encounter with swordfish, garlic, raspberry and fennel, have I been so delighted with a more unlikely amalgam.

Bon appa-freakin’ teet—on the one now!

Oh, say can you see...?

2008-10-04T13:10:00.002-04:00

A glorious day at Candlestick Point... The club’s new owner pulled out all the stops. Tony Bennett sang, “I Left My Heart.” The new left fielder received his ‘92 MVP from his godfather, Willie Mays. The kids father, Bobby the batting coach, looked on. The kid hit a dinger in the first inning—a frozen rope into the right field seats.

But, before that game, three local guys, who’d been knocking around since the hippie days, performed the national anthem and blew everybody away.

The lead singer, a guy named Jerry, died a little over two years later. The kid named Barry would go on to unprecedented glory and controversy. The team would leave the Point for a new stadium downtown. Everything changes.

But the memories linger, and that day—was a beautiful day in the cool, gray City of Love.

Wink Wink...

2008-10-03T20:14:00.001-04:00

The Gist of Biden v. Palin

2008-10-03T15:10:00.003-04:00

2008-10-03T13:56:00.000-04:00

Shit Sandwich

2008-10-01T15:40:00.013-04:00

Every great cause begins as a movement

becomes a business, and eventually

degenerates into a racket.

—Pat Buchanan

As a fairly reliable rule, there are two segments of society whose invocation by politicians and power brokers signals impendent bamboozlement: The first is “our children,” and the second is “the taxpayers.” Corollary indicators include references to “our way of life,” and “our economy” and, of course, the indispensable, “national security.”

Accordingly, it is not especially difficult to construe the response to the recent economic turmoil as a cynical, typical, self-serving ploy on the part of the usual suspects from Wall Street, Washington and the mainstream media, none of which have done much to engender credibility in recent years, and most of whom are the most acutely vulnerable to the consequences of the “incompetence, negligence, outright fraud, and [other] liberties some have taken in abusing our capital markets” as referenced in the Scott “the Motley Fool” Schedler’s recent entreaty to the hoi polloi.

“Some,” indeed.

Consider the rogues gallery of characters advocating for this proposal du jour. With the notable exception of Ben Bernake, they typically embody conflicts of interest; incompetence in crisis management and a marked proclivity toward the nefarious. The Secretary of the Treasury is essentially on sabbatical from Goldman-Sachs.

Indeed, the entire financial community is similarly compromised because a) they bear considerable responsibility for the mess and, b) the best remedy may well involve significant personal injury to these masters and patrons of the afflicted capital markets. As their personal and professional bottom lines are manifestly in play, these persons can only be expected to craft their professional advice accordingly.

Congressional membership is utterly reliant on big money that is spent, for the most part, on electronic media. So the cable news outlets are doubly inclined to milk this disaster like an abducted child in a terrorist hurricane, and Congress is even more constrained than usual in resolving this crisis.

The Administration has proven preternaturally inept at any useful activity other than electioneering and obstructing justice, and their DNA is riddled with direct connections to flagrantly bad actors like Enron, Halliburton, Kellogg, Brown & Root, et al. So, they lack the competence, the conscience and the inclination to truly do the right thing. And the candidates to succeed George, Dick & Co. are bound for the nonce by a manifest system of priorities that places winning the election above all other considerations.

So, where does this leave the (cue music) hard-working American taxpayers, whose children and way of life and national security and retirement accounts are being subjected to a possible reenactment of The Great Depression?

Clearly, a massive infusion of cash in the capital markets would occasion a salutary effect somewhere in the food chain—but where? And, how? Evidence suggests that control over a significant portion of this cash and credit will accrue to key players in the aforementioned capital markets—presumably, because their good judgment qualifies them above everyone else to make the necessary decisions to right our economic ship.

These are the people who instituted, acceded to or failed to observe the policies that have brought these markets to their knees. They are also the folks who can actually make money off this crisis, so long as their gambling stake comes out of public funds. This sounds like reloading a busted gambler on the basis of collateral amounting to a newly-hatched/can't-miss plan to break the bank at blackjack.

A bailout plan using public monies is a bad idea. The notion was laughed out of the room in its initial incarnation, and is on its third makeover in a week. Talk about lipstick on a pig. Before any money goes anywhere, some fundamental changes in the culture of the capital markets need to be implemented.

It seems clear that the current mess would never have occurred, but for some ill-conceived and overripe federal policies like those embodied by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (aka the Madam and the Pimp of the American Dream), whose wink & nod relationship with the federal government e're bespoke an implicit understanding that the latter would cover the debts of the former—no matter what.

Predictably, this arrangement quickly turned Fannie and Freddie into a pair of degenerate gamblers, who went extra crazy during the tech boom of the nineties, when busboys and receptionists became overnight (albeit, short-lived) millionaires, and then again in the Golden Age of Terrorism, at the beginning of this century, when stimulating the economy was a sine qua non in the burgeoning War Against Evil. Freddie and Fannie had found a new drug: the subprime mortgage—an arrangement in which lenders were encouraged to cultivate long-term relationships with folks who, traditionally, couldn’t qualify for a $500 Capital One credit card.

With the Washingtonian Wink & Nod duly renewed, and seemingly everyone involved duly indemnified, a housing bubble was born with the promise of everlasting life. Alas, to everything there is a time and purpose, and about six years into the Bush Administration, the bubble went pop and the government said, Wink? Whaddaya mean, wink? And, Nod? What nod?

All the burn victims on Wall Street can attest to this. The government was the enabler and the bankers should have known better. So more governmental activity, conducted privately by the banking community, hardly makes sense at this stage of the game—especially with these two outfits using taxpayer dollars to fix their own, private wagons.

The correct solution, as any economics professor or recently unhoused homeowner can tell you, is for the afflicted lenders to declare bankruptcy. Sure, this means that the shareholders take it in the shorts. But, like the old saying goes: Ya pays you’re your money and ya takes your chances. Somebody should’ve thought of this when Joe Lunchbucket and Suzy Twopencil were being put out into the street. This was the mercy of their experience.

But, in an even colder vein, bankruptcy—much like a home foreclosure—doesn’t mean the company or the house disappears; It just means that they’re occupied by somebody else—presumably somebody who has a better handle on how to run the business or keep up with the mortgage payments.

Bailing out these businesses with Joe & Suzy’s tax dollars isn’t just a moral hazard—it’s an affront to the intelligence and trust and decency of those hard working American taxpayers and their beautiful children and their treasured way of life. In other words: it’s freaking bullshit. Just because some folks have always been wealthy doesn’t mean they get to stay that way forever, no matter what. Shit happens. Here we are.

And yes, the bankruptcy option is likely to hurt all over. But remember, we are a government of, by and for the people. As such, we’re all complicit in this mess—some more than others. But, still: it’s medicine time—time for America to reclaim its national character. And as for “the children”: we’ve already piled enough shit on their plates. This is a here-and-now, grown-up problem.

Besides, the current credit crunch is probably a function of smart bankers keeping their powder dry in anticipation of a bailout. Why sell at 20% what the government will buy for 60? It’s a new racket waiting to be exploited.

Furthermore, back when the tech bubble burst, none other than Warren Buffett himself wryly quipped that the wealth that accrued to the aforementioned busboys and receptionists had been essentially returned to where it belonged. Since then, a pretty small slice of society has held onto a pretty big slice of the pie. Perhaps it’s time to start spreading that money around again.

In the meantime, all this economic WMD-who-cried-wolf talk is just what it was on the way to Baghdad—a deliberate lie, used in the service of bamboozling the little guy into trusting the big shot by threatening his family and scaring him half to death.

This is a nation of entrepreneurs. We’re Capitalists, remember? Over the last thirty years or so, we’ve lost sight of that fact. We’ve become a nation of black marketeers and serfs, of the well-to-do and the ain’t-never-gonna.

If the banking industry can’t figure out the right way to handle money, somebody else will. They always do. These so-called toxic assets are not all lethal. There’s money to be made in sorting out this mess. It’s just going to take some actual work.

Sure, in the bailout, the taxpayers stand to recoup a significant portion of the $700 billion—but the object of investment is never just getting your money back. Paying the guys who lost our money to recover it is ridiculous. Spotting them the money to do so is just plain ludicrous.

There are kids with asthma and no insurance right here, right now. Keyenes reminds us that, "in the long run, we'll all be dead." So, for the nonce, what say we all dabble in decency, and let the craven grovel for once.

The reward for the bailout should go directly to the bailor, and the bailee should pay a premium and a penalty and a late fee and a surcharge and a fine and they should not be permitted to pass one nickel of this penance on to the consumer.

They need to eat this shit sandwich.

That Smell

2008-10-01T12:35:00.006-04:00

There is a distinct and familiar whiff of something in the air. Amidst the furor surrounding the financial crisis, an aroma—almost a fume—has presented, redolent with hints of perspiration, desperation, hyperbole and, frankly, rank bullshit. It’s a familiar odor, evocative of days gone by, of yellowcake and anthrax, roiling in a hypothetical mushroom cloud. And it sets the heart aflutter.

Woes betide the affluent class of late. The erstwhile “masters of the universe” (and those who share the conceit of aspiring to such status) are in a dither indeed. They find themselves put-upon and besieged. Their accustomed role of as governors and manipulators of the finances of the plebeian masses (thus, the fees, charges, surcharges, taxes, tolls, non-preferred rates, arbitrary restrictions, onerous regulations and punitive accounting procedures that so disproportionately nettle, bleed and beleaguer the under-classes) has become imperiled.

The foreclosers are facing foreclosure—all because they have fucked up the economy on a Biblical scale. And, as if this indignity weren’t enough, it would seem that they are in need of the great unwashed—the little people—to help preserve the natural order of things.

It is a schadenfreudian predicament indeed.

Nevertheless, the folks who dreamed up Iraq, fucked up Katrina, undermined the Constitution and turned a projected $5.6 trillion surplus into a projected $2.3 trillion deficit—all in just eight short years—had a plan to get us—all of us—out of this mess for a mere seven hundred billion dollars.

One may wonder how such a sum is derived. It’s quite simple, actually. According to the Treasury, the criterion is merely “a really large number” that need not be “based on any particular data point.” The important part is that the money must change hands quickly. There’s no time to think, because excess thinking can lead to fewer car loans and college loans and difficulties for small businesses in meeting payrolls. Time is of the essence. Congress just needs to cut a humongous check—pronto—and messenger it over to Hank “the banking system is safe and sound” Paulson, at the Treasury Department. He’ll take it from there.

And, lest ye worry: Coming up with that kind of scratch on such short notice is no problem. We just float a loan. Everybody understands that the best way to get out of a credit crunch is to borrow more money, and we, the people, can do that because that’s what we do. Problem solved.

Alas, a funny thing happened on the way to the bank. A whole bunch of folks insisted on a little more detail about this deal. Apparently, it occurred to somebody that, even if, as Dick Cheney always says, “deficits don’t matter,” they still have to be paid for eventually. This got people to talking, which totally gummed up the works.

As these folks understood it, the whole point of the exercise was this: The crisis came about after a whole bunch of bills went unpaid. Now this, in and of itself, wasn’t such a big deal at first. A few people got bounced out of their houses, but other than that, the world kept right on spinning. But, pretty soon, enough of these little deadbeats stopped making mortgage payments to cause some actual important bills to go unpaid. The next thing you know, Washington Mutual had to stop whacking people with half-a-dozen overdrafts on automatic debits before crediting their direct deposits, and a panic ensued.

These nervous Nellie’s, with their tedious reservations about the whole, cut-Hank-a-check plan, wanted to know just who was supposed to pay for this ingenious recovery scheme. When it turned out that it was supposed to be them, a lot of them were taken aback—as in, aback to the drawing board.

Stay tuned…

2008-09-26T13:43:00.001-04:00

"...reducing taxes and reining in spending
has got to accompany tax reductions..."
—Sarah Palin

2008-09-26T13:32:00.000-04:00

Sarah Palin: The Early Years

2008-09-26T11:08:00.010-04:00

Yes... I know... I said we should stop picking on the little lady, and that we should focus on more grown-up issues... But, c'mon...! Who knew...?

OK. I'm weak—but, there's weak, and there's weak.

Go Bears!!!

2008-09-25T12:25:00.020-04:00

I know nothing stays the same
But if you're willing to play the game
Its coming around again
- Carly Simon

"There is nothing in life
more disenchanting than attainment"
- Charles Dickens

Fox and friends have begun their inevitable withdrawal from a McCain candidacy that they were never particularly thrilled with in the first place. So, their arrival at an untenable position vis a vis the fumbling curmudgeon is not as sad an occasion for them as it might seem.

Hannity and Limbaugh and Coulter and Malkin and Beck and Dobbs and O'Reilly and the rest of the rabble from the virulent right may oppose Obama. Ideologically speaking, it’s virtually obligatory. But, naysaying (like bartending and undertaking,) is a recession-proof industry and, professionally speaking, an Obama presidency augers happy days for the BloviNation.

As any critic will tell you, it is actually rather difficult to be simultaneously supportive and entertaining. It's boring and predictable. (There are, after all, only so many ways to say wonderful, and fawning is so un-ferocious.) It is, however, not only easy—but thrillingly delightful, to find fault, mock, excoriate, impugn, belittle, etc.

All you need is a thesaurus, an attitude and a willing audience.

As Bill Mahar says, "Politics is show business for ugly people." In this vein, the next few years is starting to look like the rebirth of vaudeville.

For now, the other shoe seems to be dropping. For better or worse, McCain's bid for the White House has gone off the rails, and there doesn't seem to be enough time or talent to fix it.

The good news (comparatively speaking) is that Obama will now likely win. He’s young and smart and utterly unbeholden to the power structure of the last half-century. Indeed, the age of Nixon is finally drawing to a close. For those who wanted change—it’sa comin’.

The bad news is that we are heirs to a paroxystic débâcle—real, wrath-of-God type stuff.

Taking the long view of American history, this appears almost almost preordained. It seems that, about every seventy years or so, the shit hits the fan in America like a baggage handler getting pureed through a jet engine.

The 1780s saw a Revolutionary aftermath. The 1860's saw a Civil War and the first presidential assassination. The 1930s saw Great Depression and the winds of a coming World War. Cyclically speaking, the wheel is coming around again—and Barack Hussein Obama is about to hit an historical jackpot.

For the last eight years, everything has gone exactly wrong, and the resultant troubles are not yet fully ripe. By January, our next president will be as a homeowner who just signed off on a house with bad plumbing, a leaky roof, and a crumbling foundation, in a neighborhood populated by meddlesome, angry neighbors and monitored by sadistic and unrelenting building inspectors.

The WingNutocracy has never trucked in truth. So, even though blame for the majority of our difficulties can rightly be laid at the feet of the outgoing administration, the task of reclamation left for the next administration will be bedeviled by derision and obstruction. Count on it. All this "Country First" hooey means nothing where ratings are involved.

In any event, the navigation of the coming shitstorm shall fall to Obama. With any luck, George W. Bush has been a reincarnated admixture of George III, James Buchanan and Herbert Hoover. This would make Obama a Washington-cum-Lincoln-cum-FDR.

It may be audacious, but we can always hope.

A Pit Bull in Lipstick

2008-09-04T12:01:00.012-04:00

It was contrived. It was derivative. It was hokey. The tone and tenor of the speech was utterly predictable, but the delivery was extremely effective.

After eight years of George Bush, a half-year of John McCain and an evening of Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani, it can be fairly said that Sarah Palin did not face a particularly high rhetorical bar. Still, this, the single most improbable running mate—ever—made an astonishing impression in her debut as a national figure.

To be sure, those who did not see this coming are legion, and hands are wringing on both sides of the ideological divide. How will she do in an unscripted environment? What will happen when she debates Biden? Given her gender and her stand on key social issues, what will the PUMAs and Hillaryites do? What is the best way to handle a hockey mom who says the only difference between her ilk and pit bulls is lipstick? (The line of the convention, BTW.)

I was quick to dismiss this missey, with her dorky glasses, her beauty queen/local sports reporter background and her messy personal and professional issues—and I’m still not entirely persuaded that she is the magic bullet that McCain so desperately needs. But she has demonstrated that, so far at least, she’s no liability. She’s crazy fearless and nifty on her pins (with a teleprompter, anyway.) She looks like ballet- and soccer- and hockey- and gymnastic- and Little League- and what-have-you-moms all over America--and these women vote.

What she said about special needs kids was (at least to this father of one) downright disabling. The cocksure attitude was strangely refreshing: This was no Hillary Clinton, and while she’s yet to distinguish herself as a policy wonk in Hillary’s league, she’s tough on taxes and she can sing and dance and laugh and tell jokes. Two words: Bread and circuses. Two more: Be afraid.

Andrew Sullivan fell right into her trap last night, as he breathlessly “live-blogged” the speech. He spotted Cindy McCain holding little Trig, Palin’s four month-old son, and got all pisssy.

“Can we have it one way or the other?” he exhorted. “Either the family is out of bounds or it is in the spotlight. Brandishing a child with Down Syndrome as a campaign statement is daring the press to ask questions about him.”

I like Sullivan. I think he's a bit fixated on some pet issues to the detriment of other, more broad-based concerns. But this little snit was spoken like a deeply confused, gay Republican/conservative Obama-backer who has no kids, and he should have known better.

This attitude is not just boorish and stupid. It is dangerous, if a non-Republican White House is the goal. Sullivan expects the whole world to accept him and his husband as a perfectly normal, natural and righteous folks who just want to get on with their lives without being hassled by opinionated adversaries who don’t know what they’re talking about. Fair enough. But he, and his compatriot sophisticates of the leftern Blogosphere would do well to note that there are a lot more people out there with kids than there are men with husbands.

Up to now, a vast swath of the electorate has been dispirited and disinterested. A perky little pit bull in lipstick may have just revived their interest. It's time to re-engage in the campaign, and stop taking lazy pot-shots at a target that is best left alone.

The Obama Nomination

2008-08-29T14:13:00.004-04:00

Regarding Obama’s speech last night: Going in, I agreed with Peggy Noonan, that the whole scenario (the stadium, the columns, the sheer scale of the event) was fraught with needlessly enormous risk. So many things could have gone wrong and made the night a failure, regardless of the speech.

I agree with Tom Brokaw that the whole convention template is beyond ridiculous (gazillions of dollars spent on yahoos and goobers and dorky looking characters cavorting gracelessly in Styrofoam boaters and childish campaign regalia, while chanting stale responses to lame calls, as the whole world watches). It makes American politics look even stupider and less prepossessing than it is in actuality (which is no small feat) and it evokes Bill Maher’s axiom: Politics is show business for ugly people.

I didn’t like the idea of the Obama campaign showcasing this notion on such an absurdly grand scale. I wanted it to go well. I was predisposed to like it, regardless of the disconnect between conception and execution. But, still… This was reckless.

That said, I am pleased to report that I was pleasantly surprised—thrilled actually. I found the speech to be a tour de force. Oratory as performance art is a lost art these days. Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich possess marvelous vocabularies, and can marshall mountains of information with remarkable ease. But they both do so in a way that reveals their insecurity. Bill is all aw-shucksy. Newt is ever so professorial. Jesse Jackson is a one trick pony—as evidenced by his immortal rendition of Green Eggs and Ham. And everybody else just sucks. Obviously Bush is off-the-charts horrible, but Hillary sounds like her hearing-aid batteries are nearly dead.

Today’s best public speakers are regarded as such because they are the least awful. Obama is a refreshing throwback to Mario Cuomo and Barbara Jordan, Bobby and Jack Kennedy, FDR and Churchill… It’s not so much what he says, but how he says it…Political theater can be marvelously entertaining, and Barack Obama outs on a hell of a show.

Emotionally, the speech was perfect. Not too mawkish, or gushing, or melodramatic—but fascinatingly passionate. He gave the impression that he really, really meant what he said.

Technically, it was breathtakingly thorough. He didn't run through a to-do list, he just made damn sure he left no item out of a stunningly fluid, charmingly conversational presentation.

Rhetorically, it was Lincolnesque, Churchillian, Cuomo-rific, Kennedy-licious…

“It’s time for them to own their failure.”

“…as someone who watched my mother argue with insurance companies while she lay in bed dying of cancer…”

“If John McCain wants to have a debate about who has the temperament and judgment to serve as the next commander-in-chief, that's a debate I'm ready to have.”

“You don't defeat a terrorist network that operates in 80 countries by occupying Iraq.”

“The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and independents, but … they have not served a red America or a blue America; they have served the United States of America.”

“Don't tell me we can't uphold the Second Amendment while keeping AK-47s out of the hands of criminals … surely we can agree that our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters deserve to visit the person they love in a hospital … passions may fly on immigration, but I don't know anyone who benefits when a mother is separated from her infant child…"

“I know there are those who dismiss such beliefs as happy talk. They claim that our insistence on something larger, something firmer, and more honest in our public life is just a Trojan horse for higher taxes and the abandonment of traditional values—and that's to be expected—because, if you don't have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare voters.”

“What does it say about your judgment when you think George Bush has been right more than 90 percent of the time? I don't know about you, but I am not ready to take a 10 percent chance on change.”

“The change we need doesn’t come from Washington. Change comes to Washington.”

I understand that talk is cheap—especially out of the mouths of politicians. When Obama said, “In 10 years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East.” I thought to myself—good luck with that. But at least he gave the impression that he gets it. And that is an impression that I find woefully lacking in Bush, McCain and even Hillary.

Still, the critiques are inevitable. Some are predictable reactions from pre-programmed nay-sayers. Some are pedantic nit-picking. Some are thoughtful objective observations. But the one I have the biggest problem with is this (from the National Review):

What it didn't do was answer the basic question the McCain campaign has worked to plant in voters' minds: what makes this guy think he's qualified and ready to be president?

What I want to know is: Who says John McCain is ready? and, Why?

The "FISA Fold" Canard

2008-06-25T15:22:00.004-04:00

The putative choice between "getting a Democrat elected at the cost of abandoning a clear call for principled leadership now," and "standing up for the rule of law and risking giving McCain a campaign cudgel," might best be served by distillation unto its essence, which is this:

Come November, would you prefer a Democrat or a Republican in the White House?

I am not a partisan, per se, but I believe that it is absolutely crucial—to the exclusion of virtually every other consideration—that a non-Republican be elected president in ‘08.

At present, we can see only the exposed tips in the iceberg field of misdeeds that have defined the Bush Administration. Ominous as they may seem from our current perspective, common sense insists that there is untold enormity yet to be revealed, and we need to know the extent of the damage and the danger.

Visiting grief upon the telecoms presents a schadenfreudian delight of the highest order. It is, nevertheless, rather beside the point. As a practical matter, the telecoms had no choice but to comply. They were up against the Borg. The government’s manifest lack of scruple and eager willingness to retaliate (as demonstrated in so many other instances) clearly indicated that resistance was futile.

The administration was going to do what it was going to do, with or without voluntary corporate cooperation. So, the villain in this story is not AT&T. Furthermore, watching AT&T eventually fend off a punitive damage claim (at the expense of the American consumer) promises scant satisfaction.

Besides, all indications suggest that the sheer volume of data harvested in this domestic spy program was so astronomically large as to preclude any practicable application. The process of filtration and retrieval necessary to make any sense of the information accumulated by this cheeky FISA dodge would be akin a demonstrative proof of the Infinite Monkey Theorem. The whole enterprise was more stupid than dangerous, and there seems little chance or it being repeated anytime soon.

So, the smart move for the nonce is to keep the prosecutorial powder dry. Don’t waste it on the telecoms. Save it for Halliburton, Kellogg, Brown and Root, Big Oil and Big Pharma—and the war crimes tribunal.

What we need is not a ritual penalization of the phone company. We need a bipartisan Council of the Elders investigation like the Nuremburg Trials or the Church Committee hearings—an open and sincere coming together of responsible grown-ups, for the purposes of assessing the damage done by the band of neocon delinquents that has occupied the White House for the past eight years, and exacting appropriate penance upon them for all the world to see.

Barack Obama is a non-Republican, unencumbered by Clintonian baggage and as yet unhobbled by recent history. For better or worse, he is a man of the future, with an appetite for the historical and an affinity for stagecraft. This renders him able to appreciate the ambitious theatricality of, say, putting Dick Cheney in the witness box, in a way John McCain simply cannot.

Whether Obama will or won't undertake such an enterprise remains to be seen, but there should be no doubt that such a spectacle will never, ever happen if McCain wins in November.

In the meantime, an encouraging pattern is developing: Gitmo inmates have constitutional rights after all. Habeas corpus is back, and the Geneva Conventions ain’t quite as quaint as they used to be. The Republican brand has been reduced to a herpes chancre, and the GOP is as Margaret Hamilton, finally bedoused by Judy Garland.

The legal victories can be traced to the quality of lawyering currently available to the DOJ. BushCo made such a fetish of litmus-testing would-be US attorneys for so long, that they have amassed a uniformly conservative-Republican, mawkishly ovine legal workforce, consisting primarily of mediocre litigators and inept administrators, whose substandard collective brainpower is irrevocably on the wane.

This is no time for hasty ideological grandstanding. The malefactors who have brought this country to such a low and shameful state will be ripe for the picking soon enough. There is too much at stake and we’re too close to resolution. The time for Obama to stand for what is right is when he has the authority to enforce such principles. Not before.

On Hillary

2007-11-13T00:35:00.000-05:00

While I’ve yet to exclude the possibility of voting for her, I must confess that I’ve never much cared for Hillary. In fact, I do not like her at all. I think she is a dreadful candidate whose only distinctive attribute is her spouse, who happens to be the single most accomplished politician of our generation, which is a non-transferable attribute that, sadly, falls not under the rubric of marital property.

The good news for Hillary is that the mere length and nature of her association with Bill has accrued to her, unique and invaluable experiences and insights that her opponents simply lack. This advantage is augmented by an intellectual résumé beyond reproach, and a high profile, highly successful and relevant political career of her own.

Hillary's got game.

She is exceedingly well-informed, adroit and savvy, both as a legislator and as a politician, and her espoused positions on a wide range of issues—particularly her advocacy for kids, education, and health-care—all seem imbued with a reassuring sense of sincerity that seems utterly lacking in her personality.

Herein lies the rub.

America could do considerably worse sending than the junior Senator from New York to the White House. Indeed, she is eminently qualified to be president. But the problems she presents are exceedingly bothersome.

First of all, there is the undeniable fact that a wide swath of the American electorate regard Hillary with unalloyed detestation—not unlike the sentiment that many of us have cultivated for George W. Bush. Moreover, between Bill & Hillary, George & Dick and the general state of planetary unrest over the last seven years, America is emotionally exhausted.

As such, there is something to be said for removing the Fuck You element from our national discourse. This cannot happen with Hillary in the White House, and as Bill’s role in the Hillary administration expands--as surely it will--the partisan strife will only worsen.

Secondly, some of the disdain for her is not without warrant. She brings to the race a thinly veiled sense of entitlement that is seriously unbecoming. She often projects an innate petulance that rings more truly than her efforts to seem affable, which can seem downright insulting in their falseness.

This defect may be purely a matter of telegeniety. Apocryphal tales of her warmth and charm in person infest the blogosphere. But the anecdotes to the contrary are undeniably persuasive. Either way, when a candidacy can be construed as per Leon Wieseltier of The New Republic…

“…like some hellish housewife who has seen something that she really, really wants and won’t stop nagging you about it until finally you say, fine, take it, be the damn president, just leave me alone…”

…it is not a good thing—regardless of her surname.

Thirdly, I understand that many women are enamored of the concept of a female president, in and of itself. Speaking as a man who is philosophically supportive of women’s rights, I find this obnoxious. As I understand it, a central tenet of true feminism proscribes bias on the basis of gender as anathema.

Yet, as this first, plausible, female candidate for president emerges, self-identified feminists from across the land respond giddily with proprietary references to Hillary’s vagina...

If I may... Eww.

This is as juvenile and irrelevant as was the scuttlebutt surrounding her husband’s penis back in the nineties. Nobody talks about Andrea Merkel’s genitalia—and I thank them for it.

When Hillary made her “Boy’s Club” speech at Wellesley a couple of weeks back, the entire scene was redolent with the tedious aroma of All-Women’s dogma—the tortured rationale that justifies foisting females onto the Citadel or VMI, but defends the single-sex tradition at Wellesley or Mills as if it were Masada.

Edwards and Obama are as pro-woman as Hillary. A 2005 study at Yale found male politicians with daughters to be more likely to focus on “women’s issues” than female candidates. It’s not hard to imagine Hillary pulling the proverbial ladder up behind her—especially if the price is right. This is a woman who plays for keeps--for better or worse.

So, to paraphrase Tallyrand, voting for Hillary because she’s a girl isn’t just a gross hypocrisy—it is likely a blunder. It certainly arouses contrarian sentiments--and haven't we had enough of that?

Finally, leaving the sadly, but most assuredly, critical politics of personality aside for the nonce, I like many of the things Hillary says--but I am leery of many things she does. She has the liberal gospel down cold, but she spreads it through the auspices of corporate interests that I would love to see frozen out of politics for a while.

We have been justifiably preoccupied since 9/11 with more pressing issues, but this does not mean that America’s campaign finance metastasis is in remission. Indeed, presidential politics has become little more than an auction, rigged by special interests (I.e., corporate media), to which Hillary is eminently beholden.

The undisputed Queen of the Fund Raisers doesn’t raise her money a dollar at a time over the Internet. She is by no means quaint, and I'm not sure how that matters, but it makes me uneasy.

So, as I say: We can do much worse, and I can certainly imagine voting for her, despite my misgivings. I’m not sure there is a preferable alternative. But if she does win, I’ll be pleasantly surprised if she doesn’t disappoint…

…and, isn’t that a shame.

~US~

On Red Sox and Life Passages

2007-10-29T17:52:00.002-04:00

I used to proudly bemoan the fact that the last time the Red Sox won a World Series, my grandfather, who was born in the 19^th Century, was not yet twenty. Then, in 2004, my daughter’s birth and the glorious death of the Bambino’s Curse were as parentheses enclosing the most cathartic week of my life.

The night the Sox finished the Cardinals, I went down to Shanghai Kelly’s to join my fellow long-sufferers in their revelry. San Francisco was thick with expatriated New Englanders in those days, and the Bosox bandwagon was a natural attraction in the cool gray city of Superbowls. So, Kelly’s was in a state of glorious pandemonium. Airhorns and cowbells drowned out the jukebox, and misty-eyes lined the bar, soaking it all in, thinking of Carlton Fisk and Bucky Dent and Bill Buckner, and assorted other ghosts from back in the day—both on and off the field.

Brian, a registered “Mass-hole” from Boston was working the bar like a medic in a field hospital. I gave him a wave and snapped him a salute. He pointed back and smiled. I held two fingers above the din and, in due time, he brought me my Bushmills and my Guinness, and we shook hands like comrades reunited years after a great war.

“These are on me,” he said. “The beer’s for the Sox, and the shot’s for your little girl.”

The thought of that moment still makes me faklempt.

She was born during the sixth game of the American League’s Championship Series which, was nominally the precursor to the World Series, but as any devotee will tell you, (with all due respect to the National League champs that year,) it was the cardinal event of that fateful season.

The sweeping of St; Louis in the Series was like the US Hockey team beating Finland for the Gold Medal in Lake Placid—the real “miracle on ice” already happened when the US beat the Russians. Similarly, after the Red Sox came back from an 0-3 deficit to beat the dreaded Yankees in the ALCS, the Series felt like a formality with an inevitable outcome.

The sixth game was the “Bloody Sock” game, from which everybody remembers Curt Schilling, the way many people remember the ski-jumper from the Wide-World of Sports. My image from that game is a less iconic, but infinitely more dramatic.

Bronson Arroyo relieved Schilling in the 7^thinning, inheriting a 4-2 lead, with Derek Jeter on first and Alex Rodriguez at the plate. A-Rod, promptly and weakly, grounded to Arroyo, who fielded the ball neatly and moved to the first-base line to intercept A-Rod and apply a routine tag. Shockingly, Rodriguez swatted the ball from Arroyo’s glove and proceeded to second while Jeter scored from first.

It was the cosmic, predestinate, post-season disaster that seasoned Red Sox fans had come to dread, like hapless in a brutal demonstration of Einstein’s definition of insanity. It was a marvel to behold over the years, the sheer variety of novel ways that the Sox contrived to consistently evade the ultimate victory.

Terry Francona came out of the Boston dugout like a banshee. Joe Torre emerged like a man anticipating injustice. Neck veins bulged. Spittle flew in the night sky. The umpires convened and, at length, Rodriguez was called out for interference, and Jeter was returned to first, nullifying the run and eliciting more veins and spittle.

I was the only person in the room who seemed to appreciate the profound implications of the moment: The planets were coming into alignment. The Earth was experiencing a magnetic polar shift. The Coriolis Effect was about to be reversed. The Curse of the Bambino was cleaving. Apollo 13 was emerging from the far side of the moon.

And yet, the obstetrician seemed deliberately obtuse toward my enthusiasm; the nurse verged on insolence. Frankly, even my wife’s behavior was marked by a sense of willful obliviousness.

In any event, Yankee Stadium went positively batshit. It was slipping away, and the smell of fear wafted all the way from the Bronx to our little delivery room in San Francisco. All sorts of crap—baseballs, bottles, whatever—cascaded down on the field like shit from a monkey cage. NYPD took to the field on horses and in riot gear. It looked like the ’68 Chicago convention and had the feel of the Beer Hall Putsch.

My little girl was born in the midst of this craziness. By the time she was cleaned up and handed to me, some Yankee struck out in the bottom of the 9^th, sending the series to a decisive seventh game. And the rest, as they say…

Heady stuff.

Anyway, this time around, the World Championship was won in much less distracting circumstances. My six year-old boy and I sat up past midnight and watched the Red Sox handle their business with little ado. I was struck by how an event that seemed downright miraculous three years ago seemed almost banal in reprise. But then I considered that the boy was not a part of the catharsis of ’04. This was his entrée into Red Sox nation—an amazingly different experience that diverges wildly from family tradition.

The thought of family tradition, of fathers and sons and baseball and the panoply of wisdom and emotion it can bring, reminded me of another, fond baseball memory…

For years, I’ve credited Gates Brown with a home run that seemed, at the time, to threaten the Citgo sign beyond the Green Monster at Fenway Park. As it turns out, it was not Gates Brown, but Willie Horton, who hit that shot. I looked it up on the Internet after I put the boy to bed.

Fortunately, in much the same way that I’ll never forget Bronson Arroyo, I’ll always remember Bob Montgomery from that game. He hit a twelfth-inning grand slam off Ron Perranoski to win the game, 12-11. It was a Monday, August 9^th, 1971, to be precise. It was the first game I ever saw in person. I went with my little brother and my Dad.

As it happens, Montgomery hit only 23 home runs in his entire career, and only one grand slam—at Fenway, that day. His only other noteworthy accomplishment is as the answer to the trivia question: Who preceded Carlton Fisk as the catcher for the Red Sox? Mediocrity on this scale tends to streamline research.

Yaz and Reggie Smith and Boomer Scott played that day, that much I remembered without looking it up. But I had no idea about the other luminaries in that game—like Jim Lonborg, who started, and Sparky Lyle, who got the win. Al Kaline, Norm Cash, Bill Freehan and Jim Northrup played for Detroit that day. Dean Chance came out of the bullpen. Luis Aparicio, Rico Petrocelli, Billy Conigliaro and Bill Lee played for the Sox.

Sport is a childish pastime that fixates on artifice and inanity—just try to explain what a “balk” is to a six year-old. But it serves the same purpose as religion in many respects—usually without the noxious side effects. It signifies honor and tradition, history and possibility, discipline and whimsy, faith, hope and charity, strength of mind, body and character, competition and accomplishment.

I believe it is incumbent upon parents to acquaint their children with disappointment, to teach the children to manage their fears, and to cultivate their dreams. The Red Sox nation is like a laboratory for this science.

It has been said that the irrational glorification of the athlete presaged the fall of the Greek and Roman empires, and that contemporary sport, with its proclivity toward boorishness, ignorance, corruptitude and greed, sends a clear signal to contemporary culture that the Greeks and Romans clearly ignored. So, perhaps my superstitious and sentimental Red Sox avocation, and my desire to impart such foolishness unto my children, does not represent the height of rationality.

But, my grandfather told me stories about seeing Babe Ruth and Cy Young; my father told me stories about Ted Williams; I’ve told my boy about Yaz and Fisk and Buckner, and I can only hope that, one day, he’ll tell his kids and grandkids about Manny and Big Papi and Mike Lowell and the great Red Sox of the mid-21^st Century, and my daughter will tell the tale of A-Rod and Arroyo on the night she was born. And, these stories will impart tales of their generations, and be repeated like innocuous Bible verses.