We were watching MSNBC Friday evening, when they segued into quickie telephone tributes for George H.W. Bush, followed by Lester Holt narrating the prepared tribute.
One of the film clips was of a little boy in a back-yard rundown, lovingly getting tagged out by the right, gloved hand of an elder, presumably the Bushes we now know as 43 and 41. It was so sweet, people playing the American game with great big smiles and sweeping tags. Mister, I’m a baseball man--Ry Cooder. My conduit to President Bush, the baseball man, came via Curt Smith, a speechwriter during the Reagan-Bush years, who in 1989 invited a gaggle of sportswriters and broadcasters to the White House for a baseball schmooze-fest. I wrote about the President’s glove in his desk drawer. https://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/03/sports/sports-of-the-times-.251-hitter-talking-baseball.html When I heard about President Bush’s passing, I immediately thought of Curt Smith, and his admiration for his former boss. It is well known that President George H.W. Walker was a crier. Wept easily. Smith once told how he was assigned to write a speech for the visit to Pearl Harbor on the 50th anniversary of the attack that kicked off the Pacific war on Dec. 7, 1941. On Saturday I asked Curt for his recollections of No. 41 – and the speech. This is what Curt Smith wrote back: Bush truly loved the game: played, coached it in Texas, mentored players, captained his team at Yale. He made the first two College World Series in 1947-48. He accepted Babe Ruth’s copy of the Babe’s memoir in 1948 as Yale’s captain as Ruth was dying of cancer. He coached all four of his sons in Little League. He took Queen Elizabeth to a baseball game, staged a great event at the White House to honor Williams and DiMaggio on the 50th anniversary of their magical 1941, invited Musial and Yastrzemski to the White House as he prepared to go to Poland to, among other things, christen Little League Baseball there, on and on and on. He and I talked baseball, he had my Voices of The Game at Camp David. Our first meeting he told me, “I’d rather quote Yogi Berra than Thomas Jefferson,” and meant it. He knew more Berraisms than I did! Pearl Harbor evolved from the fact that I generally did “values, inspiration, patriotic” speeches for Bush. I had always read a lot about World War II and was very conversant with Bush’s role in the War. I knew of his great modesty. As I kid he hit a couple homers once. His mother Dorothy eyed him and, referencing the grand Protestant hymn, said, “Now, George, none of this ‘How Great Thou Art’ business.” Bush was naturally self-effacing and deferential, two of the reasons he drew people toward him. He hated to use the word I in speeches. Try writing speeches that way! In any event, our speech staff was constantly frustrated at how the country didn’t know the Bush we did—because of Bush’s dignity, innate reserve, feeling that the President should set an example. (What a concept!) I wanted the country to see the man that we did. In talking with the President, I tried to subtly make this point. Bush, on the other hand, had been 17 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, a Sunday. He had friends who had died. He had gone next day, a Monday, and tried to enlist. The draft board said, in essence. “Sonny, you’re too young. Come back when you’re 18.” He did, enlisting the day he turned 18. Bush, at heart a very sentimental, emotional man—a softie, as he and we knew: again, a reason so many of us loved him — was concerned he would not get through the speech. “I don’t want to break down,” he said. I didn’t tell him I wanted him to break down: that would have been unseemly. I did say that “This will be a chance for you to talk about an event that will show the Nation the kind of person you are.” As things turned out, he didn’t break down, but did choke up; his voice faltered; he was clearly moved. In retrospect, Bush, who almost to the end was unsure whether he could give the speech, was very glad that he did. And in the next 25 years, as a former President, the country came to see almost precisely Bush as we had—sentimental, giving, kind, funny, patriotic—one terrific person. (With great thanks to Curt Smith) Curt did not include this Pearl Harbor story in his terrific recent book, “The Presidents and the Pastime: The History of Baseball & the White House,” published by the University of Nebraska Press. Bush, a .251 hitter at Yale, was surely the best player and biggest fan of all presidents who have tossed out ceremonial baseballs on opening day. They were baseball people, the Bushes, part of the carriage trade that made the New York Giants the elite team of the big city. George Herbert Walker, Jr., uncle of the future No. 41, owned a piece of the Mets, starting in 1962 – a clubby gent who, as I recall, was fine with sportswriters calling him “Herbie.” They were easy to be around, the Bushes. I was lucky enough to meet No. 41 twice, both in baseball settings. I wrote about my second meeting when Barbara Bush passed last May: https://www.georgevecsey.com/home/a-quick-chat-with-barbara-and-george-bush However, I did not get as close to No. 41 as my boyhood pal, Angus Phillips, did for the Washington Post. Invited to a dawn fishing trip on the Potomac, Angus reported to the White House a few minutes early and somehow was ushered into the living quarters where he discovered the leader of the free world padding around a hallway, clearly just out of bed. Angus’s classic tale of the visit…and the fishing….is included here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/daily/dec99/25/phil25.htm George H.W. Bush was the last World War Two veteran to serve as president. He kept his old George McQuinn mitt in his desk drawer in the White House. Whatever else he was, he was a softie. And a baseball man. * * * The New York Times also prepared a magnificent spread on No. 41: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/30/us/politics/george-hw-bush-dies.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/01/obituaries/george-bushs-life-in-13-objects.html The following is a contemporary version of the classic warning of the Holocaust, by the Rev. Martin Niemoeller. This was written by my friend, Arthur Dobrin, the Leader Emeritus, Ethical Humanist Society of Long Island, and professor emeritus, Hofstra University.)
First they mocked the handicapped and then they boasted about assaulting women. And I did nothing. Then they called black people stupid and Muslims terrorists. And I did nothing. Then they called Mexicans rapists and the press the enemy of the people. And I did nothing. Then they called political opponents traitors and those who body-slam critics “my kind of people.” And I did nothing. Then they posted pictures of dollar bills over Stars of David and said transgendered people couldn’t serve in the military any longer. And I did nothing. Then two African Americans were shot dead in a supermarket, pipe bombs were sent to critics of the administration and eleven Jews were murdered in a synagogue. And now the president laments the hate in the country and then tweets about baseball. * * * (The incident in the video has played out dozens of times, and the message continues: take matters into your own hands. Trump’s behavior, as he foists himself upon a grieving Pittsburgh, reminds me of George Orwell’s immortal warning in the novel, “1984:” If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever. Trump’s impact on the U.S.A. and the world is more and more apparent. Nearly half this country voted for this man. At the same time, the pastor’s daughter, Angela Kasner Merkel, has announced she will leave the chancellor’s post of Germany in 2021. She witnessed two totalitarian regimes – Nazi and Communist – and became a beacon of humanity in a world growing darker by the day. My thanks to Arthur Dobrin. The Kavanaugh hearings have reminded me of two milestones in my own life.
One milestone came in my last few years of full-court basketball, in my late 30s, with players ranging from recent high-school varsity players to elders in their 40s. From fall to winter to spring, every Monday in the late ‘70s, the players in “adult rec” changed in one wing of the locker room while the boys on the varsity changed in the other wing. Over a row of lockers, I could hear the current jocks talking about life and times, but mostly girls – that is, who did what, and how often, and with whom. It was graphic and it was personal. This was before social media. Whether it was true or not, it was out there. This did not sound like my high school jock experience in the 1954 and 1955 soccer seasons. I am told that teen-age sex had been discovered back then, but boys did not talk about it in open locker rooms. I went home and told our two daughters, both coming along in the schools, “Boys will talk.” And some girls would be treated as prey. My second milestone came up the other day when the nominee for the Supreme Court – the Supreme Freaking Court – was recalling his idyllic days as student-athlete in a prep school (a Jesuit school, at that.) He seemed to retain the impression that some girls were from their crowd while others were outside their “social circle.” (The Jesuit magazine, America, has withdrawn its support for Kavanaugh's candidacy.) What happened to the dignified lady who testified is now up to the FBI. What a wonderful idea -- calling in professionals instead of relying on dotty senators. The hearing reminded me of my week in a rehab center early in 1981, when I was 41. I was working on a book with Bob Welch, the young pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers, who had gone into rehab after blanking out in alleys and hotel corridors on the road. Bob was now sober – had pitched well for the Dodgers in 1980 – and I wanted to know what rehab had been like for him. The center – The Meadows, in Wickenburg, Ariz., said I could attend for a week, but I would have to participate in group sessions, not merely observe. One of the first things I noticed at The Meadows was that some people started off accepting that they were powerless. They were sad, and tried to deal with the feelings that made them drink or take drugs or abuse sex. But others were adamant that they had no problem. Why were people saying these things about them? Why were they making up stuff? And most of all – with volume rising and face distended and arms flailing – why the f--- didn’t people believe them? Why was everybody against them? Bluster seemed to be their stock in trade. Ward off the accusations with a swat at the air, a sneer, a bellow. I learned a lot at The Meadows. The sessions shook off a few memories of shame when I drank too much, smarted off too much. I learned I did not have to drink when I didn’t feel like it, which is now almost all the time. I had a great teacher. My friend Bob Welch stayed sober (as far as I know), day by day, for the rest of his too-short life. He knew himself. He knew the nature of the beast. One time he and my teen-age son Dave and I were in a restaurant in Montreal, and Bob was doing the play-by-play of the dining room. “Look at that guy,” Bob would say. “He wants to pour for everybody. That’s so he can drink more. Watch.” Sure enough, the stranger would cajole his companions to top off their glasses, so he could refill his. I learned from dear friends like Bob Welch and my recent pal (he knows who he is) who fight off the beast, day by day, and acknowledge it, and share the struggle. The book, "Five O'Clock Comes Early." is still out there. C.C. Sabathia of the Yankees relied on it when he checked into rehab. I thought about Bob the other day when I was watching a candidate for the Supreme Court who, when confronted with touching testimony (if murky external details), resorted to baiting senators: What do you drink, Senator? Did you ever black out, Senator? Maybe that is the combative reaction of a former high-school jock who (as he reminded us a time or two) lifted weights and played hoops back then, all summer long. Doesn't seem very judicial to me. Channeling my late friend Bob Welch, I reacted to the visceral bluster on the screen. “Whoa,” I said. “Whoa.” As of Monday morning, the Brett Kavanaugh hearing is still on for Thursday.
I find myself viscerally repulsed by the prospect of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford being verbally pawed over by part of the Senate committee. I recently watched a documentary of the Anita Hill questioning in 1991. Clarence Thomas was right, it was a high-tech lynching, only it was Anita Hill who was assaulted by (white) (male) senators. With deadpan zest, they made her enunciate every vulgar detail about her encounters with Thomas – her straight-laced, old-fashioned religious decency being poked and prodded. There in the clips is Joe Biden, good old Uncle Joe, (white) (male) (Democrat), blandly patronizing Anita Hill, oozing neutrality, handing off the ball to the big boys. (So much for Uncle Joe in 2020. Toastville.) I get the willies when I see two senators, blasts from the past, still doing their thing – Chuck Grassley from Iowa and Orrin Hatch from the great state of Ephedra. (Look it up.) Other senators are waiting to take their shot – Lindsey Graham, all the helium out of his psychic balloon since the death of John McCain, now just another (white) (male) Republican. Graham’s mind is already made up. He said so this past weekend. Then there is Mitch McConnell, probably the most outwardly vicious powerful senator I can remember, maybe going back to Joe McCarthy, supporting a cause I bet he doesn’t believe in, for the good of his party. They are all waiting to have a go at Dr. Blasey, knowing their window is closing to get Kavanaugh voted onto the Supreme Court to appease their base. Dr. Blasey’s allegation is tricky enough; we have all read and heard about the complications of memory, women recalling ugly things that happened, or that they now think happened. We also know many ugly things have happened. (See: Cosby, Bill.) Kavanaugh deserves a fair hearing, the presumption of innocence. What he also deserves is a detailed investigation by the FBI, now badly maligned by President Trump, who has his own legal troubles, shall we say. The New Yorker has published another article alleging harassment; a woman named Deborah Ramirez is claiming an ugly episode involving Brett Kavanaugh when they were both undergraduates at Yale. (The Times says it could not corroborate her claims in recent days, to the satisfaction of its own judgment.) In the New Yorker’s layered article, another woman is alleging misconduct by a young, entitled prep-school frat boy named Brett Kavanaugh with a reputation for drunkenness, at that time. None of this is easy. Reputations – lives – families – careers – are at stake. Twenty-seven years have gone by since Grassley and Hatch ran up the score against Anita Hill in the service of their party. Twenty-seven years. Where did the time go? I already had the creeps. They are getting worse. Barack Obama Gave a Speech on Television.
I had tears in my eyes. I was sad for what we have surely lost – an intelligent, verbal president who speaks of values. When the former president mentioned Michelle Obama and their daughters, I felt empty, as if thinking of good neighbors who have moved away. He delivered a civics lesson at the University of Illinois, urging young people to vote -- clearly political but so rational and timely that it rose above partisanship, to become a warning: Where have we gone? What have we done to ourselves? He cited the white-power people who stomped in psychic jackboots through Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, in plain daylight, not even bothering with hoods. He evoked the man who is still president as of this writing, who claimed there were good people on both sides. Barack Obama asked, plaintively: “How hard can that be? Saying that Nazis are bad?” My wife said that should be a bumper sticker. A president who can write and read and speak his native language. Imagine. On Friday in Illinois, he was at his best in the national and global bear pit -- Laurence Olivier performing Shakespeare’s speech for Mark Antony in “Julius Caesar:” “So are they all, all honorable men.” The previous president spoke against stereotyping people, saying he knew plenty of whites who care about blacks being treated unfairly, saying he knew plenty of black people who care deeply about rural whites. Then he added: “I know there are evangelicals who are deeply committed to doing something about climate change. I’ve seen them do the work. I know there are conservatives who think there’s nothing compassionate about separating immigrant children from their mothers. I know there are Republicans who believe government should only perform a few minimal functions but that one of those functions should be making sure nearly 3,000 Americans don’t die in a hurricane and its aftermath.” Like Shakespeare, he was making a bigger point: there is a malaise loose in the land. At one point he said Donald Trump is “a symptom” and not “the cause.” In other words, Trump is an illness that has been coming on for years. I nodded grimly, in my den, thinking of the McConnells and Ryans, who have sat by maliciously, allowing a Shakespearean character, the worst of the buffoons, the worst of the tyrants, to tear things apart. Was I imagining, the other day, that these politicians were squirming in their seats in the cathedral, along with their fidgety wives, listening to the orations for John McCain, wondering if anybody would ever confuse them with patriots? On Friday, Barack Obama gave notice to the young people of many shades and facial characteristics in his audience: you are the largest population bulge in this country, but in 2016, only one in five of you voted. “One in five,” the playwright emoted, enunciating his own words. “Not two in five or three. One in five. Is it any wonder this Congress doesn’t reflect your values and your priorities? Are you surprised by that? This whole project of self-government only works if everybody’s doing their part.” The television showed the college students nodding, or averting their eyes. Will they remember this warning at mid-term elections in early November? So many distractions these days. So easy to get lost, twiddling thumbs in the social media. Shakespeare was borrowing stories from earlier centuries but Barack Obama has been active in public life. On Friday he returned to the stage to deliver artful words, dramatically delivered, surely from the heart. How many reminders, how many chances, do we get? *** The transcript of Barack Obama’s speech (really worth reading): https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/9/7/17832024/obama-speech-trump-illinois-transcript Anthony Scaramucci went to the same school as my kids. He was known for his doting family, a block or two from the Main Street School. They made sure he was well-fed and well-dressed and prepared for the day in class. Their love and attention gave him a disciplined start that led him to a great education and business success. I don’t know when the Scaramuccis and Defeos came to the United States, and from what part of Italy. Not important. But I do know the prejudice and social barriers that Italians faced – pretty much the same faced by people from Ireland. (I can say that; along with my beloved American passport, I carry an Irish passport, courtesy of my maternal grandmother.) I have run into Scaramucci a time or two since he made a success of himself – well-spoken, polite, adult. I cannot process that with the profane, preening Trumpite I saw in his raucous 10-day cup of coffee in the White House. Maybe I am hallucinating, but something in Anthony Scaramucci’s upbringing just may have clicked in over the weekend, when he strongly criticized the current policy of President Trump to separate Latino children from the adults who have run into migration laws. Yes, yes, I know, the main issue began as stopping illegal migration, a valid goal, but now the world has seen and heard children, ripped from their protectors, crying in cages. And the world has seen the President of the United States as a movie villain, straight out of James Bond. I watched Trump on Monday, cruelly maintaining that this hurts him as much as it hurts those illegal kids, and I thought to myself, "This guy is enjoying himself immensely." (Somebody I know thinks it is Trump's obsession to destroy anything connected to Barack Obama.) "It's an atrocious policy," Scaramucci told Alisyn Camerota on CNN. "It's inhumane. It's offensive to the average American." Apparently still lusting to get back into the White House, Scaramucci blamed Trump “advisors” for steering him wrong about putting crying children into makeshift holding facilities. Was Scaramucci being political, trying to give Trump an out by blaming those silly little advisors to whom he listens so regularly? Or was he feeling some twinge of vestigial compassion, so out of fashion in this regime, when scoundrels like Jeff Sessions and Sarah Huckabee Sanders quote the Bible to justify separating adults and children? "The immediate, remedial need is to change this right now," Scaramucci said. People on Twitter and elsewhere have savaged Scaramucci for getting into this dialogue. Others have praised him. I cannot read into his heart. I don’t know how often he gets back to Port Washington, where a lot of his family still lives. (See Laura Vecsey’s chat with Anthony’s mother and uncle in our town.) I bet Scaramucci gets back often enough to see the number of Central American people who work and pray and socialize and play – and send their children to the wonderful public schools, the same way Scaramucci’s family did with him. Three of my grand-children have been going to the local high school in recent years. I see some of their classmates – kids with jobs in their mid teens, excellent use of English, some of them heading for college, just like previous waves of newcomers. Only Anthony Scaramucci knows why he chose to urge the president to change the “policy.” (As did all five living First Ladies.) I hope he might see it as living up to the way he was raised, by his family and by the community. -------------------------------------------------- Want to cite the Prophet Isaiah and others about this hostage-taking by Trump? Here is a message from the Rev. Dr. Susan Henry-Crowe, general secretary of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church: https://www.umcjustice.org/news-and-stories/a-shocking-violation-of-the-spirit-of-the-gospel-697 ------------------------------------------------------------ Ever since that White House Correspondents dinner Saturday night, I have not trusted my negative reactions.
I wanted to make sure I did not have a male-double-standard reaction to a female comedian who talked dirty about the disturbed man in the White House. She, after all, did not say anything that my wife and I have not shouted at the tube in the last two years. But there is a huge difference between insults hurled in a darkened tv den….or incessant breaking-news yammering on cable news….or kvetching on my own little therapy web site…or even actual news reported by my friend Michael S. Schmidt and other stars at the New York Times and Washington Post….and a raunchy televised monologue in a huge room filled with DC types. So despite judgments by my wife….and Masha Gessen in The New Yorker….that the speech was righteous and prophetic, I am reminded why the Times, my former employer, does not participate in the annual dinner. The Times also does not let its staff vote for awards – sports, entertainment, anything – because, as I understand it, the Times’ job is to report news rather than make news with a quirky vote for the Baseball Hall of Fame or something else trivial. The Times has been way ahead of the curve on ducking the dinner, which may have been a grand old Washington custom when (male) swamp-dwellers smoked cigars and chuckled at musty jokes about Franklin Pierce’s golf game, or whatever. I know scholarships and awards are involved, but the dinner (without the pulchritude of the Oscar show) was mean. Then again, I didn’t think Steven Colbert’s 2006 riff on President George W. Bush was funny. (I don’t think Colbert is funny, or Bill Maher, and I thought Louis C.K. was rancid when I caught him on tv once or twice. I love Letterman and Chris Rock and Wanda Sykes and Tina Fey but there are too many comedians. I know this sounds stuffy.) The point is, there is a disturbed man in the White House, courtesy of angry people with racial bias and rich guys and evangelicals and frauds like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell. This is serious business. Hiring a comedian for shock value does not help. You should hear the stuff my wife and I shout at Sarah Huckabee Sanders in our den, as she pours self-righteous contempt on journalism, and facts, and reality. She was sent by the chicken-heart President to take the insults Saturday, and she reacted with stoic dignity, for once. If you ask me, we need to listen to dead-serious people like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, neither of whom has ever been described as a comedian. The country needs Robert Mueller to do his job, and federal prosecutors, and lawyers, and journalists, and refreshing younger candidates, and journalists. The dinner needs to evolve if not expire. No more comedians. No more yuks. This is serious business. The correspondents should say: We are better than that. Financial Wiz.
Great White Hope of Middle America. Muscles. Character. Paul Ryan came into our lives as the new wave. He knew how to make money for rich people, which as you know is good for all the rest of us. Then he would go off to the gym to work out. When he wasn’t lifting weights, Ryan did a little fund-raising through his Prosperity Action group, whose biggest contributors were – why, look here – Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah Mercer, who are connected with the now-notorious Cambridge Analytica group. (Perhaps you have heard of it.) When he is not spending quality time with his family next year, Ryan could still be handling political money – unless the Mercers are suddenly getting out of the politics game. Either way, Ryan will slink out of daily view as a poseur who could never, ever, stand up to the disturbed man in the White House or the White Citizens Council standing mutely behind Mitch McConnell. Ryan's announcement Wednesday makes at least 43 House Republicans who don’t want to face the voters in November – they’re not that stupid -- and senators who range from mossbunkers like Orrin Hatch, the senator from Big Pharma, to pretenders like Bob Corker, to flashes like Jeff Flake, who sometimes almost sounded like he had a clue. You know how this began, don’t you? It began with Donald Trump (we in New York knew all about that guy) who made up stuff about Barack Obama, playing into the schemes of a patriot like McConnell who announced – announced – that his main job was to undermine the new president. It was about race, kids. McConnell and John Boehner couldn’t stand the idea of a black man who was smarter and more graceful than they were. It’s been a project ever since – 1861 types, trying to get back to the good old days. Paul Ryan was a good front, like a male model who wears a suit well. But his suit was made of tissue paper and it fell apart in the hard rain falling on us now. The tax cuts? The tariffs? The federal budget keeps going up and Paul Ryan is getting out of town. On the same day that Paul Ryan announced he won't run again, the New York Times ran a great piece by Eduardo Porter on the front page of the Business section about a modest steel company that cannot compete with the killer tariffs that the disturbed man willed into being. Jobs, jobs, jobs. (And meantime, we have a disturbed man about to deal with Syria, while pursued by the law for his real “career in the company of developers and celebrities, and also of grifters, cons, sharks, goons and crooks,” as the Times editorial so accurately put it. The one thing to be said about Paul Ryan: he likes his image of a family man, a church-goer. That would account for the occasional flicker of shame on his aging face, the look that says, I could have been better than this. Instead, Paul Ryan, new-age Republican, just quits. The Passover/Easter weekend ended well, or at least entertainingly. I enjoyed the latest version of “Jesus Christ, Superstar,” live on NBC, even with all the commercials. The music took me back nearly five decades and the production was modern and energetic, with great, careful harmonies from the large cast – performing on the move in an armory in Brooklyn. John Legend played the title role, transported at the end into the heavens, or at least the rafters, and to my relief he emerged in one piece for the curtain call. To my hearing in the year 2018, this version emphasized the doubts of Judas Priest – or maybe I was sensitized by Jon Meacham’s thoughtful take on Easter in Sunday’s NYT Book Review. Mainly, this version of “Superstar” was entertainment – and I was entertained. Legend was, in a way, out-rocked by Brandon Victor Dixon (best known for his friendly little salutation to Vice President Pence after a performance of “Hamilton.”) Bouncing his way cynically and energetically through the melee of Jerusalem, Dixon owned the stage. Sara Bareilles as Mary Magdalene? Let me just say that I am a few decades past it for pop music (most of it sounds like calisthenics)-- but that strong, lush voice and gorgeous Levantine nose on Sara Bareilles? Where has she been all my life? Then there was the mincing presence of Alice Cooper, performing the song he was born to sing -- that Vegas-English-music-hall mixture, “King Herod’s Song.” He said he was channeling Elvis; I thought of the late, great Tiny Tim on speed. (I read in the Times that Alice Cooper got religion when he sobered up. So we had a born-againer playing a mad king. That’s show biz.) The performance came after news that, on Easter morning, the great white hope of the Evangelicals could not even fake “the spirit of Holy Week,” as Laura Ingraham said in perhaps her final days as a creature of the cable. (It has come to my attention that Ingraham and Ann Coulter are actually two different people. How long has this been going on?) Last week Ingraham trashed one of the young people who survived automatic weapon fire in Florida and then, watching her sponsors vanish, she cited religious impulses to take it all back, sort of.) From his tropical Berchtesgarten, Trump tweeted out that he was going to enact new horrible penalties on Mexico and Mexicans. When questioned outside the church, Trump brayed affirmations of his intent on a weekend when Jews and Christians were honoring survival, celebrating outsiders, the others, in our world. The Four Questions had been asked at Seders, the extra place set for Elijah; the agony of the “carpenter king” noted in sacred and profane ways in church and on the stage of the armory in Brooklyn. And at my wife’s lovely Easter dinner, somebody at the table recalled a recent holiday when most stores were closed -- but a Latino bodega in our town was selling coffee and pasteles and more. The outsiders are now part of us. God bless them. And the President wants to expel them. That bad actor is still performing a role for which he never rehearsed -- not channeling Elvis or Alice Cooper but something more camp, and at the same time more vile, more ominous. * * * (A friend sent this in the Jesuit magazine, America:) https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2018/04/02/why-jesus-christ-superstar-was-live-tv-its-best (In case you missed Alice Cooper: ) I was going to write about a heinous new development in baseball -- but other events intruded. As the Mueller investigation demands records from the Trump business, and the porno queen heads to court, the President shows signs of unraveling. In his pull-the-wings-off-flies mode, Trump had his garden-gnome Attorney General dismiss an FBI official just before his pension was official. On Friday evening, the retired general Barry McCaffrey issued a statement that Trump is a “serious threat to US national security.” Gen. McCaffrey fought in Vietnam, whatever we think of that war; Trump had spurious bone spurs. McCaffrey was later the so-called drug czar for the federal government, which is how I came to value his knowledge. So instead of writing about baseball, I am placing this note atop my recent posting because the ongoing comments are fascinating – from the Panglossian to the dystopian. I think it is important and life-affirming to be able to spot danger. Gen. McCaffrey has it. The majority members of Congress seem to have lost that ability. Meanwhile, Trump’s Russian pals keep pummeling the soft midsection of the U.S. while the President tweets and fires people long-distance, the coward. (This was my previous posting; comments ongoing.)
I haven’t posted anything in 12 days. Been busy. One thing after another. On Wednesday I stayed with the Mets-Yankees exhibition from Florida, even when people I never heard of were hitting home runs off people who won’t be around on opening day. But it was baseball, and really, in ugly times like this, isn't that what matters? Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling were going on delightful tangents after Darling said Kevin Mitchell had just emailed him. Kevin Mitchell – the guy the front office blamed for leading poor Doc Gooden and poor Daryl Strawberry astray? That guy. Terrible trade, Hernandez said. Ron and Keith meandered into tales of a nasty fight in Pittsburgh, started by my friend Bill Robinson, the first-base coach. The broadcasters recalled how Mitchell was destroying some Pirate, and both teams had to stop their usual jostling and flailing to save a life. The good old days. I loved the filibustering about 1986. The best impression I took from the three hours was the sight of Juan Lagares playing the sun, the wind and the ball with knowledge, grace, speed and touch. “That’s a real center fielder!” I blurted. Curt Flood. Paul Blair. Andruw Jones. Dare I say it, Willie Mays? Baseball. I was happy. * * * I need to write something but I keep getting distracted. I turn on the tube and think I see a traffic cam of an addled old man trying to cross Queens Boulevard -- the 300-foot-wideBoulevard of Death -- in my home borough of Queens. Is he carrying a baby as he lurches across 10 lanes of danger? The wind picks up. His comb-over flies up. Wait, that’s not any addled old man from Queens. What’s he carrying? It’s not a baby. He’s got the whole world in his hands. I watch with morbid fascination as he lumbers into danger. * * * I need to write something but I keep getting distracted. We’ve had two March snowstorms in a week. On Wednesday we lost power for five hours but my wife made instant coffee via the gas stove, and put together a nice supper, and we listened to the news on a battery-operated radio and then we found Victoria de los Angeles and “Songs Of the Auvergne," one of the most beautiful recordings we know. The juice went on in time for us to catch up with latest news about the porno queen and the Leader of the Free World. Gee, we didn’t have scandals like this with George W. Bush or Barack Obama. I watched for hours. * * * I need to write something but I keep reading instead. My old Hofstra friend, basketball star Ted Jackson, recommended I read “Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America,” by Patrick Phillips about rape charges and lynching and the forced exodus of blacks from Forsyth County, Ga., in 1912. As it happens, I have relatives, including some of color, who live just south of that county, now re-integrated in the northward sprawl of Atlanta. The denizens of that county in 1912 sound like the great grand-parents of the “very fine people” who flocked to Charlottesville last summer. It never goes away, does it? * * * I need to write something but I keep following the news. At the White House press briefing Wednesday, Sarah Huckabee Sanders spat out, with her usual contempt, the little nugget that the President had won a very, very big arbitration hearing involving the porno queen and $130,000 the President's lawyer shelled out from the goodness of his heart. Oops, the jackals of the press did not know about that. Thanks to Sanders, now they do. I got the feeling Sanders might be leaving on the midnight train for Arkansas. I envision Sanders trying to hail a ride on Pennsylvania Ave. but a stylish woman with a teen-age boy in tow beats her to the cab. That woman is leaving on the midnight plane for Slovenia. * * * I need to write something, but stuff keeps happening. Alas, Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will not be able to attend the State of the Union speech Tuesday evening because she has a speaking engagement at the Roger Williams University School of Law in Rhode Island.
(Williams is one of the great early Americans, remembered for “advocating separation of church and state in Colonial America. His views on religious freedom and tolerance, coupled with his disapproval of the practice of confiscating land from Native Americans, earned him the wrath of his church and banishment from the colony,” according to one history site. Make of this what you will.) The justice, age 84, has given clear recent signals that she intends to remain on the highest court for the foreseeable future. https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/01/27/us/politics/ap-us-justice-ginsburg-staying-put.html Good move, Madam Justice. I can’t speak for her – nobody should dare – but speaking strictly for myself, I don’t want to observe that generally affirmative evening soiled this this time around. For the inauguration a year ago, some of us in the family went to an Afghan restaurant on Long Island on the theory that the event would not be on the tube, and we were right. Aushak all around, for starters. As for the State of the Union speech and the bustle surrounding it, I’m going to listen to Terrance McKnight on WQXR-FM instead. Much healthier. (I ducked out on the Grammies after 10 minutes Sunday night; guys in fatigues and boots? Where were Stevie Wonder and Dolly Parton? What ever happened to songs?) Of course, I could be missing a one-time-only event Tuesday night. A year ago, I predicted 18 months from inauguration for this guy; it is still a possibility, given the collusion and money-laundering and racial slurs and general debauchery and ignorance emitting from the White House. But I’ll read about the event in the Times the next morning. What is the over/under (gambling term) for how many times he says “no collusion, no collusion?” Or waves his stubby fingers and says, “Truthfully….” I always enjoy the State of the Union because, even with the loyal opposition sitting on its hands for much of the speech, there is a sense of vestigial dignity to the evening. Plus, I love the way some public officials hang over the railing to shake hands, get an autograph, or offer sage if truncated advice. I always love to spot my fellow Jamaica High School grad (a few decades younger than my crowd), Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, engaging President Obama or President George W. Bush from her adopted state of Texas. I just discovered that Rep. Lee and her companions are known as “aisle hogs” because they line up hours and hours before the big event, to get up close with the President. The latest information is that Rep. Lee is undecided about attending Tuesday night. Old habits die hard. I’m guessing she will be there, perhaps to eyeball this office-temp president. Take a good look. Next year we might have President Pence – I know, I know -- not that he would want to get too close to a female legislator. Anyway, I’ll be listening to classical music Tuesday evening. I think Roger Williams would approve. One of the best things on television in the past decade was The Brain Series by Charlie Rose.
The body of work exists – on line, easily accessible, and etched in the memories of viewers like my wife, who listened and learned. The leader of the discussions was Dr. Eric R. Kandel of Columbia University, whose knowledge and manner commanded the screen. The other guests were also brilliant, and Rose raised his game considerably, moving things along and actually listening to the experts. Now we are left with the image of a powerful man parading around his apartment in an open bathrobe, terrorizing young female colleagues. How do we process this? The series remains. I suspect the science and the humanity will remain pertinent, at least until future discoveries add to the knowledge. Can people live with a focused Charlie Rose moderating a landmark series? Can people live with their vinyl and CDs and downloads of James Levine conducting opera? Everybody has to live with their memories. I won’t miss Matt Lauer because I never, ever, watch morning TV. I don’t know how to gauge the widely variant charges or suspicions about John Hockenberry and Leonard Lopate and Jonathan Schwartz (and Charlie Rose), all of whom have interviewed me respectfully, let me hustle my books. What was it like for the capable women in those studios who made a visit so successful? Harvey Weinstein is easy. He is a monster who produced some great movies but he is a monster just for what he did to that beautiful and spirited and talented Annabella Sciorra, whom I have loved since she sang in "Mister Wonderful." (Go ahead, look at the video, watch her ex eat his heart out.) I want to be on the Weinstein jury. That’s all I’m saying. Then there is Garrison Keillor. There were years when we built our Saturday afternoons and evenings around his radio show – times when my wife and I sat in a parking lot outside a restaurant until he finished his weekly visit to Lake Wobegon (the one about a man driving his young family back to Minnesota for the holidays, the one about the pioneer who dies in the badlands, never getting to see the Pacific.) Keillor never presented himself as anything more than flawed. (His radio alter ego was reminded of this by his own mother, who couldn’t remember his name.) He added his human complexities to his voice, his words, his image. Now he is accused of – he says – sliding his hand into the back of an open blouse. A mistake, he says, which happened while consoling a woman. Keillor says he is not a tactile person, and I believe it. In past decades, I interviewed him maybe half a dozen times on the phone but never quite got to have a conversation even at rehearsals at Town Hall in New York. He nodded in recognition -- and kept moving. A shy guy. Who knows about him? Keillor played himself in a movie about his last radio show, art predicting life. The Robert Altman movie, “A Prairie Home Companion,” has an amazing cast, not the least of whom is Virginia Madsen as a redhead in a white raincoat who, he realizes, just may be an angel of death, with her eye on him. (She died in a car wreck while laughing at his radio joke, she tells him, as he edges away.) The movie (Altman’s last) is classic Altman, in that you have to listen to overlapping conversations – a stretch for younger audiences. One of the subplots involves Meryl Streep as a country singer on the show, who was once Keillor’s girlfriend, and every so often she reminds him of exactly that. He knows she is in pain that he caused. The ringleader figure in the movie is a creep, but a talented, sensitive, guilty creep. How human, art imitating life. Now the question is, what do we do with the education, the art, the culture, from people (men, in this context) who seem to be varying scales of creep? We have a major creep running for the Senate in Alabama. We have a serial creep as President. We have creeps of all major parties. Meantime, I can watch Keillor in that movie over and over again. Some day when I grow up and develop a brain, I plan to watch the Brain Series, but for the moment we are left with the major creep in the bathrobe who caused such pain. (Note: This piece was filed Friday morning, just before John McCain announced he could not support this vicious bill. I have had great respect for McCain since I met him years ago. His action Friday may have doomed the legislation -- for now -- but these people keep coming back for their money.)
Lately, I’ve been seeing the image of the Native American with one tear rolling down his cheek. It was a highly popular commercial, for the ecology, from Earth Day, 1971. The man had paddled down a pristine river and sighted a modern Apocalypse of debris. That’s how I feel these days. It’s not just the natural disasters pounding Texas and Florida and the Caribbean and Mexico, places we know and love. It’s deeper. It’s the vision into the heart of darkness. I have dealt with the election of a cruel, ignorant and disturbed human being, believing he will be out within 18 months. He’s a symptom of something worse. The teardrop in my mind comes when I see stone-hearted members of Congress preparing to vote to take away health care from millions of people who need it the most -- fellow Americans, whatever that means anymore. I see politicians – and by that I mean Republicans – lobbying for votes, to stiff the poor and the sick. They are doing it for their donors, the Koch Brothers and villains like them, who want tax breaks, and do not care how they come, even at the penalty of taking away surgery from the ill and shelter for the aged. These donors would, essentially, kill for money, and so would their lackeys in Congress. Lindsey Graham. For a while, I thought he was showing touches of humanity but now he is front and center for the White Citizens Council, some of them doctors, for goodness’ sakes, who shuffle wordlessly behind Head Kleagle McConnell. They want money so they can keep going. Jimmy Kimmel is wise to this Cassidy guy. I hope Kimmel's rants do some good. Until McCain made his statement Friday, I could not count on three Republicans in the Senate to vote for the poor. Plus, I can think of a Democrat or two who would shaft people in their own states, for money. They do not want to care for their fellow humans. And they have the backing of some large and oily religious lobbies. I can remember when Americans told each other we were the good guys who helped win two World Wars. If you overlooked the Civil War, the war that has never ended, it was a workable image. This current collective meanness has been coming on for a while. It began when the McConnell-Boehner-Ryan coalition sabotaged Barack Obama for the crime of Presiding While Black. It’s about race, a lot of it. I’ve gotten pretty tough in my old age. I ascribe to the Iris Dement song, “No Time to Cry,” about how her father died and she had to keep going. But now I'm walking and I'm talking, Doing what I'm supposed to do. Working overtime to make sure I don't come unglued. I guess I'm older now and I've got no time to cry. Then I remember the Native American, so proud, so stoic, seeing what others are doing to his world. One tear. (Footnote: the man in the commercial, who went by the name of Iron Eyes Cody, was actually of Sicilian ancestry, Espera Oscar de Corti, and grew up in rural Louisiana. He portrayed Native Americans in movies, and married one in real life. He looked the part well enough that I remember his tear, 46 years later.) (This piece was written 12 hours before John McCain cast a deciding vote in defeating the bill that would have taken health care from over 20 million people. I have read Paul Krugman's perceptive column in the NYT, also written earlier Thursday, long before McCain's vote, depicting the senator's erratic stances.
It's tricky to write about a moving story. On Thursday, Laura Vecsey wrote a glimpse of the Scaramucci family from our town. Later, Anthony became Trump's Trump via his vile rant to the New Yorker. It's a moving spectacle. I think I know where this is all going -- sooner rather than later, one can only hope. GV.) * * * This is not the role anybody wanted for John McCain – appearing in public with a red raw line above his eye, from the recent incursion toward his brain. I have been writing for over six months that I fully expected Sen. McCain to be a pivotal figure in the inevitable dumpsterization of Donald Trump. I spent a few hours with Sen. McCain in his office for a column during an Olympic hearing in 1999, seeing the cranky side and the generous side. Sen. McCain remains enigmatic – coming back from an awful diagnosis to cast a vote on health care, temporarily siding with the president who once declared him not a hero, and also supporting the amoral Mitch McConnell, to prolong this foolishness. But then John McCain did what I have expected of him on his good-John-McCain days: he plainly called the Republican health-care “plan” meaningless, empty. Now he has viscerally reacted to the pathetic tweeter of the White House by criticizing the call to bar transgender people from the military. This pilot served, was tortured. He knows how things actually work in the service, as opposed to the poseur from military school. The same goes for Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, who lost parts of her legs while serving as a pilot in Iraq. I saw her on TV the other night, talking about the foolish gesture toward transgender military people. She was, as always, so smart, so dignified. So presidential. John McCain did not get to be president. His best moment during the campaign was to take the microphone back from the bigot in red who labelled Barack Obama “an A-rab.” It was hard, recently, to watch John McCain stumble while asking questions in a Senate hearing. Now we know what is happening. But I am counting on him to exercise the just part of him. His pals in the mute White Citizens Council posse that materializes behind McConnell cannot pretend things are just fine, when John McCain is reacting viscerally to the disorder. Unlike Trump, Sen. McCain felt no need to pander to the religious right on the transgender issue. I originally thought it would take 18 rational months to rid the country of the buffoon, but now I think it could happen by Labor Day. This can’t go on. John McCain can help by calling out a disturbed man. He flew many missions, but when he and Lindsay Graham pay that visit to the White House one of these months, it will be John McCain’s greatest mission. I counted on them. Just the thought of them got me through a horrible winter.
Every fan knows what I am saying: the unique place of baseball -- seasonally correct, holding promise of a new spring. My team happens to be the Mets, already sinking toward the lower depths, but fans of other teams will recognize the angst: for this I dreamed all winter? I see Curtis Granderson floundering and I see Asdrubal Cabrera falling apart – two of my favorite players, with intelligence and humor and a fine body of work, who were so fine last season. This is hard to watch. I am allowed to root. One of the liberations of retirement is shucking professional neutrality. I obsessed about the Mets’ pitching staff, all those talented kids, and I saw the Mets beating out the under-achieving Nationals. I needed the Mets to thrive, particularly since that sickening night in November when a candidate we New Yorkers knew as a damaged charlatan was elected, ick, but I cannot say it. I tried to get through the winter with partisan television news -- squirmed through rude interruptions of guests, daydreamed through 20-minute rambles with two minutes of content, rolled my eyes at the harmless repetitions of the word “lies,” as if they did any good. Everybody reacts differently. People I know are developing a cursing syndrome when McConnell and Ryan ooze into view. Tim Egan called Ryan an "Irish undertaker." I think he meant unctuous. With my Irish passport, I laughed out loud. Felt good. For 30 seconds. I tried behavior modification. I cannot listen to my large collection of rock and folk and country and jazz on my iPod. No mood for The Band or Stevie Wonder or Iris Dement or The Dead. Songs of lost love and rolling down the highway don’t do it right now. In mid-winter I listened to chamber music and waited for DeGrom and Céspedes and Familia, when his mini-suspension was over. Here comes the sun. Here comes the sun. Here comes the sun. It’s all right. But now we are a month and a half into this season, and the Mets look done. This is not their year. I know, I know, this is not the loyalty of a true fan, but I covered a zillion games of baseball and I can tell a team that has too many flaws. What’s up with the Alleged Dark Knight? In the same way that I assess my broken ball team, I assess my homeland. I thought the damaged goods would be returned to sender, like some bad Amazon purchase, within 18 months, and it could happen sooner. But the Democrats look like an expansion team – too old, too callow, no core. I scan the prospects among the majority party for enlightened, idealistic action: I see stirrings of conscience in Graham and Collins. I really like John McCain from having interviewed him once; if you spot him approaching 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with a couple of cohorts, let me know. I watched Ben Sasse – a fresh face, a note of hope, like Michael Conforto of the Mets -- during the hearings the other day and thought, this guy could actually have intelligence and courage. But I’ve been wrong before. I thought my ball team would give me spring-to-autumn diversion. Now I peek at them, through spread fingers, like a child, for an inning here or an inning there. (I'm even happy for Yankee fans. First time in my life.) It’s mid-May and I have lost hope for my team. The other night, the conscientious Chris Hayes did a documentary from West Virginia, with the impassioned Sen. Bernie Sanders.
I couldn’t watch. The state already voted for the poseur, Donald Trump, last November by roughly 68 to 26 per cent over Hillary Clinton. It’s all so familiar. Living in Kentucky, I covered Appalachia for the Times from 1970 through 1972 and remained in close touch for many years afterward. I saw bodies fished out of Buffalo Creek after an earthen coal dam gave way. I saw the crusading Doc Rasmussen going to hearings with an autopsy slide demonstrating Black Lung. I covered a few coal-mine disasters and the Harlan strike of 1974, so grippingly captured by Barbara Kopple. So long ago. So courant. The only thing that has changed is that we know more. Technology has gotten better – and worse. Coal companies can push more detritus downhill into the streams and gardens of their own people and scientists can measure the damage to air and water and lungs more carefully. When I covered West Virginia, Rep. Ken Hechler was the Bernie of his day, speaking out against corruption and pollution. (Hechler passed recently at 102.) A miner named Arnold Ray Miller tromped around to speak against corruption in his union – and was elected president in 1972. There was often hope of change, of throwing out the rascals and the big-city corporations, but decades have gone by, and good people still want to work, and young people have no hope and are resorting to killer opioids pushed on them by the same kind of doctors who said coal dust was good for the common cold. Every reliable study says there is no future, no justification, for digging and burning coal, yet frauds like Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Big Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who calls himself a Democrat, bow down to their masters from Big Coal. It is pathetic. The decency and the religion and the patriotism of people from West-by-God-Virginia make them susceptible to all kinds of drugs – crooked politicians, phony prophets of economic success. Hillary Clinton, in her own artless way, told people that coal mines would be shut down. So they voted against her. Of course, Sanders had won the Democratic primary in West Virginia, proving that people of that state are terribly bifurcated, at their own expense. One of the first things Trump did to Appalachia was to remove barriers to dumping waste into the valleys where people live. And Big Joe shook Trump’s hand after his first speech to Congress. My wife and daughter Laura (who used to cover rascals in Pennsylvania) told me the MSNBC program was terrific. Now it seems people in McDowell County are speaking up for health care and even Big Joe Manchin is getting the message that you can sell out your own state just so long. God bless Bernie Sanders and Chris Hayes and West Virginia, but I just couldn’t watch. (start at 3:30 for deep expression of concern over diet) I did not watch the spectacle on Thursday because it makes me uncomfortable to see somebody behave like that in public. It’s a behavioral problem the Trump family really should have dealt with when young Donald was acting out while at the Kew-Forest School and was exiled to military school. Now it might be too late. But not too late for Republicans to open their eyes and realize what they have wrought. Two months ago I wrote that I was putting my hopes on Sen. John McCain to mobilize his colleagues, as the patriotic act of a military hero. The other day, the great Tim Weiner put his hopes on Sen. McCain as well as James Comey, the head of the F.B.I. Comey. The name is familiar. I also gave Trump 18 months in office before he got bored, or was forced out. The way it looks now, he will lose the Republicans in Congress, one by one. One can only imagine what the rational ones are saying in the corridors right now. Eventually, even moral ciphers like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan will catch up. Then there's this: last weekend on the resurgent Saturday Night Live, Michael Che alluded to Trump’s junk-food jones: “I’m starting to feel bad for Donald Trump . . . I hope he quits. Donald, is this really how you want to spend the last two years of your life?” I did catch a few clips from Trump’s performance on Thursday. The man looks terrible – new lines on his face, new jowls, new twitches. He seemed to be sucking wind between his one-liners. Dude, when you see McCain and Graham and a few others at the door for a little chat, they will be doing you a yooge favor. (I can write this, since I carry an Irish passport, courtesy of my grandmother, along with my beloved American passport) Stephen K. Bannon runs our country, pushing the buttons of the distracted oaf who is technically the president. Trump shows what is under his personal rock when he refers to Jon Stewart as “Jonathan Leibowitz” (the comedian’s original name) after a TV gig. Guess Trump forgets he was passing as Swedish as long as he could, neglecting his family origins as Drumpf. Behind him is Bannon, pulling the strings, telling him how to keep Muslims out of the country. I looked it up. http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/Bannon Bannon means “white” or “fair” – in the complexion sense, you may be sure. As an Irish passport holder, I can say, some of Trump’s closest advisors are named Flynn and Kelly and Bannon. It was not that long ago that “real” Americans considered people from Ireland the unwashed, the others, the threat. The Flynns and Kellys and Bannons were not considered good enough to haul trash or dig graves for “real” Americans, who had, of course, killed and dislodged as many original Americans as they could. There is reasonable debate about how many Irish ever encountered signs that said NINA -- No Irish Need Apply. Butongoing research proves it was there, in some windows, some newspapers, many hearts. The Irish persevered, and a descendent of Fitzgeralds and Kennedys became president. Now another president talks about a “ban” of Muslims, a registry of Muslims. He backtracks, but we know. In a dangerous world, the U.S. was already vetting people from dicey parts of the world. But with his tiny attention span, the new president tries to stop legal residents of the U.S. from coming home. Doctors. Scholars. Husbands. Wives. He is unashamed. He knows no history. Knows only fragments of things that flutter in front of his eyes. Knows only what Bannon tells him. It’s easy to spot the sneer on Bannon’s face. We want this guy advising our shallow president? (I can write this, since I carry an Irish passport, courtesy of my grandmother, along with my beloved American passport) Stephen K. Bannon runs our country, pushing the buttons of the distracted oaf who is technically the president. Trump shows what is under his personal rock when he refers to Jon Stewart as “Jonathan Leibowitz” (the comedian’s original name) after a TV gig. Guess Trump forgets he was passing as Swedish as long as he could, neglecting his family origins as Drumpf. Behind him is Bannon, pulling the strings, telling him how to keep Muslims out of the country. I looked it up. http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/Bannon Bannon means “white” or “fair” – in the complexion sense, you may be sure. As an Irish passport holder, I can say, some of Trump’s closest advisors are named Flynn and Kelly and Bannon. It was not that long ago that “real” Americans considered people from Ireland the unwashed, the others, the threat. The Flynns and Kellys and Bannons were not considered good enough to haul trash or dig graves for “real” Americans, who had, of course, killed and dislodged as many original Americans as they could. There is reasonable debate about how many Irish ever encountered signs that said NINA -- No Irish Need Apply. But ongoing research proves it was there, in some windows, some newspapers, many hearts. The Irish persevered, and a descendent of Fitzgeralds and Kennedys became president. Now another president talks about a “ban” of Muslims, a registry of Muslims. He backtracks, but we know. In a dangerous world, the U.S. was already vetting people from dicey parts of the world. But with his tiny attention span, the new president tries to stop legal residents of the U.S. from coming home. Doctors. Scholars. Husbands. Wives. He is unashamed. He knows no history. Knows only fragments of things that flutter in front of his eyes. Knows only what Bannon tells him. It’s easy to spot the sneer on Bannon’s face. We want this guy advising our shallow president? As rain began to fall Friday in DC, we went out to lunch on Long Island -- a modest Afghan restaurant, on the theory that the place would not exactly be humming with inauguration buffs.
We had appetizers laced with yogurt and garlic, curry, rice, salad and nice crisp bread – the kind of cuisine new people bring to this country. Across from us, three young women in head scarves were talking excitedly, giggling occasionally. They seemed much like our own grand-daughter, sitting across from us in the booth – bright, hopeful, their lives ahead of them. America. Somebody in our family had turned down the chance to watch the Inauguration from a privileged site -- couldn’t pretend to be enthusiastic. However, on Saturday we did have loved ones in Washington and New York, mingling with the hundreds of thousands. From afar, it looked like good fun. No fire hoses, no dogs, not yet. The new President, who makes up everything, later said the press invented the figures for the two events. Yet I kept getting photos on my iPhone. Guess those multitudes were photo-shopped – with banners appropriate to this day. My email included a blessing from the Rev. Dr. Susan Henry-Crowe, the General Secretary of the United Methodist Church, for the departing President and his family, and the incoming President and his family. Her blessing included: “For the good of the earth and all of creation, which God has given us, and for the wisdom and will to conserve it, let us pray to the Lord. Lord, have mercy.” Another email was from an old friend, Roy Lloyd, one of the thoughtful religion commentators on WINS 1010 AM in New York. Roy described the pink caps worn by many marchers, adding: “The participants demonstrated something said by Helen Keller: ‘One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.’” Speaking of prayers: On the same gorgeous Saturday back home, I went for a fast walk on the high-school track, listening to the Grateful Dead on my headset. As I circled the soft red track, I blurted out the punch line in “Touch of Grey.” “We will get by” – emphasis on the “will.” In repetition, it becomes a prayer, just like the haunting punch line in George Harrison’s “Here Comes the Sun” – “It’s all right.” After this epic day all over the world, we can repeat this mantra in days to come: It's all right. We will get by. I respect John Lewis for staying away.
I respect the people – including some close to me – who are going to Washington on Saturday to protest. I’m hunkering. I can’t watch the transfer of responsibility, of power, from the President to a reality-show host. For all that, the dominant feeling I expect on Friday is relief. This essay is being written on the national holiday for Martin Luther King, who went to Memphis in 1968 to back up striking sanitation workers. It is written in honor of John Lewis, who went to Selma in 1965 to protest American segregation, and who, thank goodness, survived the beating and is still with us, calling the new President illegitimate. How many people have been holding our breath since the election of 2008 – hearing in our hearts the lyrics by Dion DiMucci: “Seems the good they die young.” Instead, came a more subtle version – what Justice Clarence Thomas might call “a high-tech lynching” -- conducted by Mitch McConnell, missing only the hood over his face, and Boehner and Cantor and Ryan, who could not coexist with a black President. They screwed up the country, leaving a Rube Goldberg health-care bill that could have been so much better, and stalling on infrastructure and education. High-tech resistance. For eight years, President Obama has conducted business with intelligence and dignity; he will walk away observing the rituals of democracy. The main thing is, he and Mrs. Obama will walk away. I look forward to their books; I look forward to very rare glimmers of their children, leading semi-normal lives. The country will now have to respond to the demonstrated rapacity of the new people. This new person has nominated people who cut deals with dicey nations to make money for themselves and shareholders, who demonstrate contempt for the majority as well as for government. The current polls suggest that many people who voted for the man are now having misgivings. Did you see Charles Blow’s list of polls showing the people’s dis-satisfaction with the transition? That’s right, the people out there who thought this guy was a fine religious gentleman and an American patriot and a savvy executive are now having misgivings. (Mike Pence, the token of the religious right, looks stricken -- the only man on his island.) John Lewis is staying away. As always, John Lewis is way ahead on moral stances. What plans do you have for Friday? A private investigator I know (perhaps connected to the MI6?) has found current Ladbrokes odds of 11-10 that the impending President will not last four years. Here’s the article:
https://www.inverse.com/article/26292-donald-trump-impeachment-odds Perhaps this is mere wishful thinking from people with a few bob to wager. You could ask, what do the Brits know? They voted for Brexit, against their own self-interest. Still, maybe they are on to something. Are American voters figuring out what they have done? The most recent Quinnipiac poll shows abysmal ratings for any incoming President. Here in P.T. Barnum’s America, some voters who hallucinated a fine religious gentleman or a successful businessman are having misgivings. Here are the numbers: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/poll-trump-presidential-transition-approval-233412 I recently wrote that something would get the new guy within 18 months – his tiny attention span, blatant conflicts and legalities, or being 70 and overweight. (Have you seen the latest photos of that neck?) A sex tape would be fine, too. Right now, a lot of people are preparing to demonstrate and lobby. At the same time, a friend in the Bay Area says she’s been crying since the election. I know somebody who has come down with a cursing affliction. Myself, I am hunkering down with a hard-covered book and classical music. Our emotions seem as roiled in a different way as those of McConnell and Boehner and Cantor and Ryan were when an African-American was elected president. Everybody has their own private angst. One of my favorite readers said he would cover my bet about 18 months. Put up or shut up, he said. I don’t bet. But I do root against four years of this guy: When Melania Trump “borrowed” chunks of Michelle Obama’s words last summer, she was found out in the flick of an iPhone.
She didn’t seem to know the difference. Public figures are often caught using stuff from other people. Remember Joe Biden "borrowing" some material back in law school? And Tony Blair apparently re-channeling stuff from the movie “The Queen,” about him and Queen Elizabeth? The Web makes that harder and harder. Now it turns out that Monica Crowley, a former Murdochite on-air personality, scheduled to explain the complexities of national security for the Trumpites -- has used as many as 50 segments for a book under her name. In this day and age, wouldn’t you think she would know caution, if not shame? I say this, because just about everything is out there on the Web, easily checked. Research no longer is limited to dusty books or files from the back corners of a library. I know this, because in preparation for a talk I was thumbing through the 522 pages of “Look Homeward, Angel,” by my favorite author, Thomas Wolfe. I wanted to refresh my impressions of a few sweet passages but after an hour of enjoyable searching, I came up empty. Go to the laptop, dude. ---I knew there was a passage about a scholarly nun, examining a book at the bedside of a sleeping girl in a boarding school. I typed in “nun” and “book” and “sleep.” Found it. Still sweet and respectful. ---I knew Wolfe’s father liked to tell about being a 13-year-old, sassing Confederate soldiers in his village near Gettysburg. The Web reminded me that this epic section had been exorcised by Maxwell Perkins, Wolfe’s renowned editor, only to be revived decades later in an expanded version called “O, Lost.” I’ve requested it from our wonderful town library. ---I knew Wolfe often wrote about the lavish meals his father craved in his wife’s parsimonious boarding house in Asheville, N.C. – loving references to butter slathered on fat lima beans. I typed in a few words. Bingo. One would think that somebody writing today – even a Foxite news person – would have a little fear about lifting bunches of stuff from other sources. But anything flies these days. Just ask Kellyanne Conway, designated explainer and lookalike of the aforementioned Monica Crowley. Conway. says stuff with a straight face. I certainly would not expect Trump to understand these subtleties. * * * Meantime, has anybody else noticed that Crowley and Conway appear to have been separated at birth? And the seething Gen. Mike Flynn, who used to spew patently untrue “Flynn Facts” to subordinates, resembles the paranoid Col. Bat Guano, who shoots his way into the office in “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” – now coming true, in a universe near you. 3-1? He’ll get bored.
I’m bored of him already – his infantile speech, his lack of curiosity, his practiced reality-show squint, imitating an adult with normal thinking patterns. Imagine how bored he will be, after people explain stuff to him. “Sir, this is the rule.” “Mr. President, yes, the Senate can actually do that.” “Yes, those lawyers do have a legal right to question you about your holdings.” This is a guy who stood in front of adoring multitudes out there and pounded one fist into his palm and said he’d like to punch somebody right in the face. Not that easy, in reality. In a brilliant column, David Brooks described the man’s statements as “usually just a symbolic assault in some dominance-submission male rivalry game.” How did he get this way? “Now vee may perhaps to begin. Yes?” – Philip Roth, “Portnoy’s Complaint.” I say it was some father issue. Or something at boarding school. This is a troubled human being. But a strange minority coalition saw the candidate in its own personal fun-house mirror and put its money and fears and superstitions and prejudices on this lumbering figure. Diamond Jim. Most likely, soon he will say, “Who needs this?” :Eighteen months,.I keep telling my friends The real question is, how does it end? It could be impeachment -- the old John McCain making one more mission for his country. But boredom, confinement, anxiety, fear, could lead to resignation: I’m outta here. Then there is the Big Mac Theory. 6-1? I’m not a betting man. Won’t even place a two-dollar bet in the pressbox at the Derby. Long story. But I’m curious about the odds of him lasting in office. Last November, I found some odds on-line from the British bookies (some people will bet on anything.) The odds were 3-1 or 6-1 that the new guy would not last four years. Might have been wishful thinking. However, my cursory glimpse at the current web discloses no new odds. Why is that? Better to wager on soccer – when will Chelsea lose? Important stuff like that. I’m in denial, or withdrawal. I can’t take cable news anymore. I put on the stereo and listen to the great Terrance McKnight on WQXR-FM. I’m reading Dickens’ “A Child’s History of England,” refreshing my views of Richard III and Henry VIII and Oliver Cromwell. (Dickens called him “A most intolerable ruffian, a disgrace to human nature, and a blot of blood and grease upon the History of England") Fair and balanced. You’ve heard of “Waiting for Godot?” I’m waiting for Céspedes. Meantime, the best people I know are talking about not taking this foolishness lying down. My wife is reading the Times, learning stuff on the tube. Making a plan. Fight back. Right on. I read the great piece by Jelani Cobb in the current New Yorker: “The Return of Civil Disobedience.” I remember how good people forced Johnson to slink away from a run in 1968. Nixon finally got found out in 1974. 10-1 I give this guy eighteen months. Then we get a nice, normal guy like Pence. Oy. He’s already been a hero three times, by my count.
*- When he refused to take a pass from Hanoi because his father was an admiral. *-When my wife sat next to one of John McCain’s buddies on a flight out east, and the man told her how they ferried supplies to post-war Vietnam. I met McCain years later and asked why he ran a pipeline to people who tortured him. Eloquent shrug, with those ruined arms, told me: it’s the right thing to do. *- When the lady in red started with the Trumpian b.s. about Barack Obama being a Muslim, and John McCain said, “No, ma’am,” and took away the mike. Now I’m asking John McCain to be a hero a fourth time. Sometime in late January, the new President is going to legally and officially and publically expose himself as maliciously unqualified. He cannot help himself. I’m counting on John McCain, the man who is not a hero to Donald Trump because he got captured, to mix his miserable SOB persona with his idealistic free-thinker persona (that he exercises way too rarely) and become the congressional leader of the what-were-we-thinking movement. The movement needs a leader, a role model. Republicans are contaminated from eight years of sabotaging a black President (oh and also the country.) The Democrats are a disaster after rigging the delegate count against Bernie Sanders. The country needs somebody in Congress to stand up at the first blunder and say, “Enough.” My candidate is the guy who impulsively snatched back the microphone from the bigot-lady. Haven’t seen him much in eight years. But I know he’s in there. Right now, that’s all I’ve got. |
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