 Buddies The star of Wednesday's hearing was, of course, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Inner Baltimore. I have been calling him "The Prophet" since I observed him during some steroid hearings, oh, back a few years. He was always righteous with smarmy ballplayers and he remains righteous with smarmy politicians trying to smear an already-smarmy enforcer. In his emotional wrap-up speech, The Prophet addressed our better selves. May people listen to him. Michael Cohen managed more dignity than most members of the Republican minority, admitting his crimes and often displaying a lawyer's wits we did not know he possessed. Most of the Republicans, most notably Jim Jordan, were a collection of Paulie Walnuts of "Sopranos" fame -- that is, menacing without even a hint of some attractive or interesting trait. I did love Rep. Clay Higgins of southern Louisiana, thick and balding, addressing Cohen as "Good Sir" in his lush accent. Higgins was formerly a member of the Military Police and also an officer in Louisiana; he seemed a character made for a series of Cajun noir novels, followed by gritty films. If Clay Higgins did not exist, a writer would lust to invent him. The real object of the hearing was 12 time zones away, not far enough. Fortunately, most Democrats on the committee, however wordy, wasting chunks of their five minutes with stream of consciousness, gave Cohen a forum for his damning details about Trump. Thank you "Good Sir." (This is what I wrote earlier about Robert Kraft of the Super Bowl champs, another Trumpite in the News:) Robert Kraft wanted to see me at halftime of a Patriots playoff game. It was important enough that he enrolled an NFL official to escort me from the press box to his luxury box, halfway around a stadium bulging with tanked-up fans. I was taken through a crowded reception, full of hoi-polloi millionaires and power brokers, where I was introduced to Myra Kraft, his wife, philanthropist and social conscience. She would pass in the summer of 2011; people in Boston speak glowingly of her. I was taken to an inner-inner sanctum, where Kraft wanted me to see the Super Bowl trophy as well as three special guests. “These are my best friends,” Kraft told me. “I think you know them.” I knew one of them. “My Queens home boy,” I said, nodding to a guy who had grown up a very crucial half mile from me, whom I knew from the old United States Football League. Donald Trump nodded, vaguely. He is not good at normal interpersonal relations, but I already knew that. Small talk, politeness, makes him fidget. So we sort of acknowledged each other. (I knew he was a germaphobe so we did not shake hands.) Another “best friend” was Alan Dershowitz who, as I recall, shook my hand politely. The third “best friend” was a network biggie (no, you have not seen his name in sordid headlines lately) who kind of glowered at me and grunted and stayed away. Kraft ushered me over to the Super Bowl trophy and we had our photo taken. The New York Times was clearly important to him, yet another trophy, yet another accomplishment. I can’t remember what year it was, whether we knew that Kraft had taken off his Super Bowl ring to show to a former KGB thug named Vladimir Putin, who walked away with it. I was thinking about Kraft’s inner sanctum this week as he got in a bit of trouble for having his chauffeur take him to a low-scale mall in Florida. Right now he is charged with two felonies for patronizing the sexual favors available from Chinese immigrants/captives in a nail salon. This follows hearings about the gratuitous plea bargain for a sordid Florida guy named Jeffrey Epstein, who apparently preferred very young women. His name has been linked to Alan Dershowitz, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. Epstein’s light treatment was facilitated by R. Alexander Acosta, now Trump’s secretary of labor. Quite a crowd. The current thinking is that Bob Kraft will get off with a fine and community service. (Sorry. I don’t have time to type any more right now. Got to watch the Cohen hearing and see what else Our Leader has been up to.) 
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 Williams, Martin, Abraham, Irwin as "Lucky" In the fall of 1988, our son and I went to Lincoln Center to see a revival of "Waiting for Godot." Robin Williams and Steve Martin were quite fine in the two lead roles, and F. Murray Abraham was properly domineering as Pozzo, leading his abject slave, Lucky, played by the master kinetic actor, Bill Irwin. I was thinking of that master-slave relationship Friday night when The New York Times broke the story that the FBI had begun an investigation in early 2017 of the apparent master-slave relationship between Putin and Trump. www.nytimes.com/2019/01/11/us/politics/fbi-trump-russia-inquiry.html In the real-life version, Lucky snarls and yaps at just about everybody else, but when Pozzo fixes his Lubyanka-basement glare at him, Lucky rolls on the floor and whimpers. How did poor Lucky come to be led around on a leash? Beckett does not say. I am hoping this will soon be explained to us by Robert S. Mueller, III.  Lucky, left. Pozzo, right.  Robert-of-the-Purple-Heart Watches Over Us In the final hours of an ugly year, I stuck with the tried and true.
Our local classical station, WQXR-FM, was playing the top 100, as chosen by listeners. It was reassuring to hear music that stirred people and soothed people in other dark times, with other crackpots and despots flailing around, and the music survived. Then again, we have seen votes go wacko in a democracy. When the Gilbert and Sullivan spectacle, “Pirates of Penzance,” popped up in 10th place, my reaction was, “Wait, WTF, how did that get in there?” The WQXR–FM web site had the same reaction: Was it was the work of Gilbert and Sullivan superfan sleeper agents? Or is everyone just really excited about the end-of-year New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players production of Pirates at the Kaye Playhouse. (It turns out that it very well might be both, as the New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players staged a campaign to launch the opera into the countdown — and it clearly worked. Trolls. Bots. Hacking. Malware. Whatever they are. Sounds like a job for Super-Mueller, but Our Civic Protector is said to be otherwise occupied with his investigation into more serious shenanigans. Other than the jolt of Gilbert and Sullivan coming in 10th in any classical music ranking, it was a joy to hear oldies soothe the dark days and nights as 2018 slunk off into history. Beethoven had four symphonies in the top 10, including his Ninth, with the rousing “Ode to Joy,” now becoming a staple ‘round midnight on Dec. 31. Some of the most familiar music can be considered chestnuts, but I was happy to hear them, knowing that new and adventuresome and inventive music will be presented by John Schaefer on “New Sounds” and by Terrance McKnight on his weeknight show. Plus, as 2018 ebbed, I heard some of my favorites, Dvorak and Copland and Vaughn Williams and Smetana and Bartok and Barber and Ravel and Satie and Lenny Himself, conducting his “West Side Story: Symphonic Dances,” which always makes me feel 16 again, walking the streets of my home town, feeling, “could be, who knows?” In the symphonic version, I could hear the lyrics of Stephen Sondheim: Could it be? Yes, it could Something's coming, something good If I can wait Something's coming, I don't know what it is But it is gonna be great. Happy New Year.  Migrant Worker Center and Day-Care Center, Downwind from Chemicals, Kern County, California It is beginning to dawn on me that President Trump is not merely some bloated orange spectacle from a reality show.
He is consciously presiding over the demolition of health in the country. The New York Times ran one of those special public-interest sections on Thursday, the kind they seem to produce regularly – a Pulitzer-worthy section of the week. This one was on the environment – in many of the corners where I used to work as a news reporter, including the Kanawha River in Almost Heaven, West Virginia. The lead article is by Eric Lipton and John Branch, a great reporter with whom I had the privilege of working for a few years. John is based in his home state of California, and he already won a Pulitzer for his work on the science of a murderous avalanche. Branch is a member of the sports department but they rarely send him out to cover games; he’s part of the direction the Times is going – important journalism being committed on a daily basis. (Yes, I miss baseball box scores and daily Mets coverage, but would choose the vital journalism being produced by the Times these days.) Branch and Lipton write about the farmlands of Kern County, Calif., one of the major agriculture centers in the country. Since Trump was inaugurated in January of 2017, in front of those yooge crowds in Washington, he has facilitated dozens of downgrades of environmental practice. The Times documents them in this section. The presidential approval of pesticides in the vegetable garden of America could be poisoning you, wherever you are, but it is certainly sickening the workers – many of them brown and Spanish-speaking – the braceros, the obreros, who pick your lettuce, when they are not fainting and vomiting from the poisons Trump has let loose. The children's day-care center is downwind from the sprays. The pesticide, named Chlorpyrifos -- why, look here, it’s from our old friend Dow Chemical -- belongs to a class of chemicals developed as a nerve gas made by Nazi Germany, as Nicholas Kristof wrote in a Times column in 2017: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/28/opinion/sunday/chlorpyrifos-dow-environmental-protection-agency.html Kristof added that the nerve gas is “now found in food, air and drinking water. Human and animal studies show that it damages the brain and reduces I.Q.s while causing tremors among children. It has also been linked to lung cancer and Parkinson’s disease in adults.” This poison is now being sprayed all over Kern County, killing insects and sickening humans and also enriching the companies and the politicians that enable this toxic man. Congratulations to the newspaper and web site that grow more serious and more invaluable all the time. Here’s the on-line version of the article by John Branch and Eric Lipton: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/26/us/politics/donald-trump-environmental-regulation.html  Michael Cohen emerged into a phalanx of 20-inch necks and watchful eyes. The NYPD had its best people out in front of the courthouse. My first response was delight that Cohen had to walk the perp walk, the felon walk, in front of the cameras, in front of the world. This is, after all, the same chap who once rang up a reporter working on a story and threatened to do something “f------ disgusting” to him. The same fixer who zestfully helped Trump become Grifter-in-Chief. The threats and payoffs seemed to come naturally to both of them. I noted Cohen’s well-clad family, now shaken by a three-year sentence, and I felt no sympathy. They must have known the line of work he was in. My glee at the downfall of this enabler was tempered a bit on Wednesday by Chuck Rosenberg, a former federal prosecutor, now a valuable contributor on MSNBC. Rosenberg is a knowledgeable and stable presence – speaks softly, rarely even smiles, has no need to be cute, a pitfall for some regulars on the cable. He just knows stuff. And on Wednesday he made me feel (albeit temporarily) a bit guilty at my runaway case of schadenfreude. MSNBC does not seem to have posted Rosenberg’s comment, and I was not taking notes, but the rationality of his impromptu comments stayed with me, after the moment. Rosenberg said, not bragging, that he had loved being a prosecutor, finding the misdeeds, righting the wrongs. In words to this effect, he said he loved presenting evidence, convincing judge and jury, seeking justice. But, he added soberly, the part he enjoyed least was the sentencing. He did not enjoy being in a courtroom and hearing most of the suspects being sentenced to….something. These are real people, Rosenberg said. They have families. They have private lives. They may deserve their sentences, but they are….people. Rosenberg’s decency calmed me down, well, for a few minutes. But as the day went on, and front-page news came of that slimy gossip paper having flipped, with a safe full of salacious clips on Trump, and my ongoing awareness that Trump is tossing very dangerous toys around his playpen, I felt no empathy for Michael Cohen. Let him sell his apartment to pay his fines and legal bills. I don’t buy the line by his lawyers and apologists that he is a changed man. He is a caught man. Sorry. I give thanks to MSNBC for, during this terrible time, having brought in their own phalanx of qualified “contributors” – people who worked in government and the law, people who have expertise, and share it. People I mostly never heard of until Trump strutted into the White House: Rosenberg, Joyce Vance, Barbara McQuade, Paul Butler, Mimi Rocah, Frank Figliuzzi, Maya Wiley, Daniel Goldman, my fellow Jamaica High School grad Jelani Cobb, and many others, plus two grand oldie-but-goodie Watergate lawyers, Nick Akerman and (drum roll, please) my second favorite septuagenarian lady, dressed and coiffed perfectly, a legal guru, smiling like a blonde Buddha from Chicago, Jill Wine-Banks. I learn so much from these contributors. Now I am looking forward to a lot of people named Trump being frog-marched into the pokey for their grifting from here to Riyadh or Moscow and back again. While we’re on the subject, I apologize for my lowball estimate that Trump would self-destruct within 18 months. I was relying on my having known about him from back in Queens, but I vastly overestimated the vestigial patriotism and integrity and common sense of Paul Ryan, Lindsey Graham and that White Citizens Council that stands mutely behind Mitch McConnell. I once spent a day with Sen. Howard Baker on his campaign around Tennessee in 1972. None of these ciphers is Howard Baker, the Republican hero of Watergate. So that’s where we stand. Michael Cohen got three years and had to walk the felon walk. It’s going down.
He looked like a garden gnome with an accent out of "Mayberry RFD," but when the subject veered to immigrants or demonstrators, Jeff Sessions would tighten up.
He wasn’t funny, then. Then he was less of a Mayberry character than the town storekeeper who kept his Kleagle robe on a peg in the back room, more out of “To Kill a Mockingbird” or “In the Heat of the Night.” He had a mission, seemed to me – to restore the good old days of the ‘50s – the 20th Century or maybe even the 19th. Somehow he got in the way of Trump’s Ultimate Solution, and he had to go. Then he got lucky. Compared to Trump, he became Fightin’ Jeff, the People’s Choice, remembering his lawyer past, respecting legal niceties like “recusal.” The version I will miss most was created by the captivating Kate McKinnon on “Saturday Night Live,” who presented Sessions as a cuddly little elf who could fit in small spaces and flash a Howdy Doody smile to the world. Lucky is the public figure mimicked by McKinnon, even with her glint of deviltry behind the entertainment as she portrays Sessions, Rudy Giuliani or the sewer-dwelling leer of Kellyanne Conway. She is a gem. There are plenty of ghouls and monsters left to portray. I will still tailor Saturdays to be in front of the tube at 11:29 PM just in case Kate McKinnon is up first. But I will miss the kewpie-doll grin of Jeff Sessions, so much better on Saturday night than any other time. * * * I am not the only one. The Huffington Post reports on a great national angst: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/kate-mckinnon-saturday-night-live-jeff-sessions-character_us_5be34627e4b0dbe871a63e1c 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. 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 ------------------------------------------------------------  Mexicanos visitan el corazón de Moscú In any World Cup, I would be rooting for nuestros vecinos in the first round. This time around, that means Panama and Costa Rica and Mexico, plus Colombia, which is not in our federation, but surely part of our world. Mexico had a memorable opening match on Sunday, scoring early and holding on for a 1-0 victory over Germany, the defending champions. On the television, I saw a throng of green-shirted fans, from the large comfortable class of that complicated North American nation, rooting for the spirited, well-coached Mexican squad to round out the upset. The knockout rounds will take care of themselves. The old champs are always with us, or usually. I have a strong feeling for the players from the Americas who resemble guys who live and work in my suburb outside New York, whose sons and daughters are going to school with my grandkids – plus, I think about my late doctor, Ken Ewing, former defender and captain of Guatemala back in the day. Mis vecinos. Plus, these are not normal circumstances. Not since I witnessed the President of the United States rubbing his hands with glee at the prospect of building a wall, and holding children hostage to his scheme. Not since I witnessed the garden-gnome of an attorney general quoting the Bible to justify ripping infants away from the breast of their mothers, to teach those people a lesson. I am rooting for my neighbors because I am ashamed of the way the current rulers of my country are using them as instruments of prejudice and retribution. The squads from Mexico and Central America and the Caribbean do not normally need extra motivation against the U.S. They come to every match with jaws out, eyes glaring, as if they were making up for the cruelty of the major fruit companies, or the invasions in the Mexican-American war, or Landon Donovan urinating on a bush during a practice session. Mexico keeps qualifying for the World Cup – FIFA has a generous quota for qualifiers from the region – but does not fare well in the knockout rounds. The Yanks humbled El Tri, dos a cero, in the round of 16 in 2002 and Mexico has never quite regained its swagger in that rivalry. For this World Cup, the U.S. has backslid right out of the field. Panama will play Belgium (my long-range hope to win it all) on Monday -- a tug of rival loyalties. On Sunday Costa Rica lost to Serbia, and later Mexico held steady against a Germany team that seemed to regard the match as a tuneup. What a sight in the end: the mobile keeper, Manuel Neuer, roaming upfield to join the desperate scrum for one extra head or foot on a stray ball, which never happened. The success by El Tri in far-off Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow will not affect the hardened heart of the cruel pharaoh. Little brown children remain separated from their parents. Not that it helps, but until further notice I am rooting for mis vecinos to keep going. * * * (Enjoy the great Andres Cantor calling the goal by Hirving Lozano. Watch how Lozano evades Mesut Ozil at the end of a stunning counter-attack. Golllllllll!)  Nasty Boy Tosses Sand in Kindergarten. The delegates of FIFA have voted, early Wednesday, to award the 2026 World Cup to a combine of the U.S.A. and its dear, highly-respected neighbors, Canada and Mexico. The United group defeated Morocco, 134-65, thereby rendering moot the concerns that delegates would be swayed by disdain for Goliath and its current president, or respect for the African bidder, or the grand old FIFA tradition of packets of (American) dollars. There was a last-minute appeal by dignified Moroccan supporters, speaking up for the vast love of soccer in Africa, the supply of African footballers being recruited by the fast leagues of Europe, the worthiness of the Moroccan bid, and the fact of Africa as the birthplace of civilization. But the three North American nations won. I must note that I heard about the possibility of a tripartite World Cup many years ago from Sunil Gulati, the former president of the U.S. federation. Gulati deserves some of the credit for this success, which took place with a new American president spewing contempt for its closest neighbors. This is what I wrote before Wednesday's vote in Moscow: * * * Any vote in the soccer federation known as FIFA is always suspect, given the history of blatant bribery that let to Russia being host to the looming World Cup and that soccer power of Qatar being the host in 2022. Qatar! The new leadership of FIFA keeps insisting it has cleaned up the influence-peddling scandal that extended to American officials including the late Chuck Blazer in his lair in the Trump Tower, and who knows who else. FIFA is continuing its money-grubbing tradition by expanding future World Cups to 48 teams (perhaps the U.S. will then be able to qualify) and by considering lucrative club tournament Cups that would put the well-paid players on a faster, longer hamster wheel of games and travel, injury and early disintegration. The FIFA home office has released a technical survey showing that the North American group – henceforth known as The Three Amigos – is vastly superior to the Moroccan bid in little details like stadiums, infrastructure, soccer expertise, money-making potential. But, as in the United States these days, facts and studies and information are not always considered. First, do not emphasize the grand old FIFA tradition of envelopes stuffed with dollars going to delegates in return for their votes. Second, by exquisite coincidence, the vote takes place at the same time the U.S. has gone rogue, electing a disturbed person as president. While the leader of the fact-free world is blustering in Singapore, the delegates to the FIFA will gather in Moscow on Wednesday, June 13, to choose the 2026 host. Sports federations have voted on the U.S. in the recent past. The International Olympic Committee voted for the Olympic host, and to some degree New York (2008) and Chicago (2012) were judged in the wake of President George W. Bush’s blundering into the invasion of Iraq in 2003, thereby throwing the world into chaos. The I.O.C. delegates – generally of a far higher caliber than the avaricious voters from tiny countries in FIFA – saw the smoke emitting from the Middle East and witnessed the dead and the migrants and voted for London and Rio – reasonable votes, producing memorable Olympics, no quarrel there. But the U.S. never had a chance, given its image as a Goliath-gone-mad. Now the FIFA delegates – a far more rank kettle of fish -- used to selling their votes -- get a chance to judge kick the most powerful member of the soccer troika. Tethered to an ignorant bully are Mexico – vilified by the U.S. president for its migrants who help make the U.S. work – and Canada – charged with burning the White House in 1812, its leader described as “weak.” Forget the lopsided technical evaluation. Overlook the grand FIFA institution of bribes. Morocco’s best chance for staging the 2026 World Cup would seem to be that its chief executive is not named Donald J. Trump. * * * NB: The NYT reports that President Trump has sent three letters to Gianni Infantino of FIFA assuring that the restrictions for visiting the U.S. would not be enforced on well-heeled tourists to a potential 2026 World Cup. See article: www.nytimes.com/2018/06/12/sports/trump-letters-world-cup.html 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: )  The General gets it 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.  These mugs don't get it (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.  Back when they were still seen in the same photo The terrible plight of Paul Manafort and Rick Gates reminds me of the best newspaper crime story I ever read.
January, 1973, I had just moved to Metro news at the Times. The editors sent me out to deepest Brooklyn, where jewels had been stolen from the altar of an ornate church. I wrote a wordy lead about the caretaker of the church muttering “Che coraggio” – what gall, in Italian. And I did quote a store owner in the neighborhood, noting the influential persons who supported the church, as saying: “No fence is going to touch this stuff.” But the reporter from the Daily News wrote a classic. I cannot locate the exact words by Frank Faso that day, but his story began something like this: “Some nervy crooks stole the crown jewels from the altar of St. Rosalia Regina Pacis in Brooklyn the other day. “If they are lucky, the police will catch them.” Oh, yeah. How New York. How tabloid. How wonderful. (This was when two great tabloids, New York Newsday and the Daily News, were covering the city with zeal and skill.) I was chastened and respectful. The jewels were recovered 24 hours later. * * * This tale of criminality reminds me of our current administration, in that Manafort and Gates, now making front-page headlines for their stunning variety of indictments, seem to have owed a good deal of money to some other rather unpleasant people – Russians, Russians with a memory, Russians with poisoned umbrellas and lethal cups of tea. Paul Manafort. Is there anything on public record of him ever being or doing anything respectable, before he became an American shill for thuggish Ukrainians and Russians? What did he ever do to put him in the middle of a presidential campaign in a country whose income taxes he had apparently ducked? Who is this guy? He seems to have had money problems, with bad people looking for him, to try to recover millions and millions of dollars. And Gates was a hapless Robin to Manafort’s compulsive Batman. In this, they resemble a couple of pigeons with a gambling jones who bet too much on the third race at Aqueduct or 23 on the roulette table. Suckers. Suckers on the lam. They tried to get it back by aligning themselves with two real-estate hustlers from Noo Yawk and Noo Joisey. If this were a never-released season of “The Sopranos,” we would have new characters, Paulie Peanuts and Rusty Gates, trying to make it all right for themselves by serving in the family of Donnie Combs and his son-in-law Squeaky. But remember in “The Sopranos” -- I have not watched any series since -- how there were always investigators listening on tapped wires, or cooped in a windowless van, or waiting to scoop up a member of the clan for a friendly chat? Paulie Peanuts and Rusty Gates seem to have fallen into the right hands. Now they just have to watch out for lethal umbrellas or laced tea in their next abodes. But wait, there seem to be a few more episodes in the series: What about the money-laundering and real-estate nightmares of Donnie Combs and his son-in-law Squeaky? These guys seem to have Russian troubles and Chinese troubles, respectively. To paraphrase the great Frank Faso of the old New York Daily News: If they are lucky, Robert S. Mueller will get them.  Dr. Eric R. Kandel and Charlie Rose, Brain Series (photo, not video) 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.  Streep and Keillor in the movie, "A Prairie Home Companion" (Above: the good old days for the Trump-Flynn axis.) He continued to make a fool of himself in public this week with crude comments in front of hallowed veterans and ignorant tweets using fraudulent posts, disturbing our closest allies. More and more people are speculating that President Trump is showing signs of dementia or some kind of breakdown. Now his legal problems are at his front door, with the news that Michael Flynn has pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. and is likely to sing about the few people who were above him in that sordid chain of command. Meantime, the Republicans are following their eight-year vilification of Barack Obama by ignoring disturbing behavior by their guy. Trump is their meal ticket to taking money away from most of America (including the deluded folks who voted for him) and, patriots that they are, they are going to ride him as long as he is in office. Remember: I speculated he would be gone within 18 months. I could write a post about North Korea -- or the football Giants humiliating Eli Manning and not living up to Mara family loyalties – or how bright the moon is in very late autumn. But what else is there but the menace in this "administration?" (This is what I wrote earlier in the week:) He debases the nation every time he opens his mouth. On Monday there was a ceremony honoring three surviving members of the Navajo Code Talkers from World War Two. The President of the United States used the occasion to take another jab at Sen. Elizabeth Warren, once again referring to her as "Pocahantas." (He is currently trying to destroy the consumer protection agency she helped create.) His disturbed behavior drags us all down. Even while the leader of the Navajo group was giving a stirring history of the unit -- which saved lives during the Pacific campaign -- he fidgeted on the sideline, his facial tics reminding us that he is always nervous when the talk is not about him. What a contrast between loyal Americans who sacrificed for all of us -- The Greatest Generation -- and a schemer who wants to make this a better world for the Mnuchins and Wilburs and Ivankas -- The Gunnysack Generation.  Lovely Photo by Stephen W. Oachs (This posting has been revised since the presidential swerve late Friday evening, via Twitter.) https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/17/us/politics/trump-elephant-trophy-ban.html?_r= Ted Turner used to make this impassioned plea for an endangered species -- indeed, for an endangered planet -- during his noble effort, The Goodwill Games in Moscow, 1986. Remember 1986? Remember Goodwill? Remember Gorbachev? For that matter, remember Ted Turner? I dubbed him a “holy fool” because of his Dostoyevskian zeal. John Feinstein, covering those games in Moscow, heard Turner’s stump speech so often that he could sense the punch line coming. “But what about the elephants?” John would squawk. Those were the good old days, when we produced holy fools, not flat-out fools. Now Turner's cause is sabotaged daily by Donald Trump, whose only concern is setting up his own spawn and the Mnuchins and Wilburs of the world for more riches. Trump is all for porous pipelines and spewing coal stacks (and tax revisions) as long as they make somebody richer. For a moment this week he also tried to set up his own killer sons and their type to get richer from slaughtering “trophy” animals in Zimbabwe and importing their parts. In mid-week Trump announced his intention to make it legally possible to import -- to display -- to brag about -- these tails and tusks and Lord knows what else, cut from the dead bodies of these most civilized mammals. The total of worldwide elephants has dropped 30 percent from 2007 to 20014. I read that in the Times. People with the savage name of Trump have contributed to that. Are proud of that. What an ugly family. For some reason, Trump changed his mind in one of his late-night Twitter eruptions Friday, saying he was delaying any action on the (Obama-era) policy to ban importing elephant "trophies." The article in Saturday's paper: _r=www.nytimes.com/2017/11/17/us/politics/trump-elephant-trophy-ban.html?_r= I have felt more personal about elephants since visiting South Africa for the World Cup in 2010. Our guide Witold took four journalists on a day trip out of Johannesburg for the only exposure to nature we would have during a hectic month. Witold was trying to find lions and other Bold Letter animals during our quickie run into the wild. He parked on a dirt road and looked around. Then he saw a family of elephants to our left, moving toward us. We were on their crossroad. He backed up 10 feet, and the family of elders and infants walked slowly in front of us, their heads turned to the right to keep an eye on us, as well they might. (“We’re not Trumps!” I could have said, “We’re not that sort!”) Their right eyes were patient and wise as they walked with dignity. I fell in love with elephants at that moment, the kind of easy emotion for a day-tripper on a day off from football. I wish I had taken photos, but I was mesmerized. That was my lifetime African experience. Big deal. But it stayed with me, to the point that I feel familial rage toward a plunderer who enables murderers from his own sordid brood. Have a tusk, Donald. Have a tail, Eric. Go shoot something, brave guys. “But what about the elephants?” Where is Ted Turner when we really need him?  A Trump with Knife and Elephant Tail  Why is Michael Flynn running? Just click on the link below for a glimpse into the very near future, courtesy of an imaginative videographer. https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/924111999306313729/pu/vid/1280x720/rzsxXzUZlwXav1RJ.mp4 Remember “Peter Pan?” – how Captain Hook was pursued by a crocodile, with a taste for pirate meat? The crocodile had swallowed an alarm clock that emitted a familiar “tick-tock” – which gave Captain Hook a severe case of agità. The man with orange hair can surely hear “tick-tock” every time another piece of evidence surfaces. After that sickening evening in early November of 2016, I have been saying it would take 18 months before this man would self-destruct. He can’t last. It takes time for the vestiges of justice of act, but the pieces are coming together. Now the NYT is reporting that sly old Wilbur Ross has a few dollars invested in Russian interests. Or, as Trump would ask, what Russians? Also, it is reported that special counsel Robert Mueller has enough evidence to indict former Trump hatchet man Michael Flynn. In the background, you can hear the warbling of birds singing for their freedom. If the office temp in the White House acts against Mueller, even the Republicans will be forced to respond. It takes time. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. In the meantime, please enjoy the video above, sent by a friend. Instead of the crocodile, it stars the FBI. (Just click the link. Well worth it.) https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/924111999306313729/pu/vid/1280x720/rzsxXzUZlwXav1RJ.mp4 The faces will be familiar.  Some of them, you don't see much anymore.  We stopped for gas on Interstate 80 in Pennsylvania and spotted a food truck. Or rather, we spotted the sign. I was instantly sorry we had just eaten a great lunch and dessert after I gave a talk for adults and met with students at the bustling journalism center at vibrant Susquehanna University, in the pleasant river town of Selinsgrove, Pa. After lunch in such good company, no way we could even sample a tamale. But I pointed at the sign alongside Zapata’s Food Truck at Exit 256 and told the guys outside: "Próxima vez." Next time.   The Former TrumpHaus: Like Freaking Tara As we write post-mortems of this failed presidency, may I ask a favor of everybody, including media people I admire?
Please, in trying to explain the roots of this dangerously flawed man, stop referring to him as being from an “outer borough.” Also, please, stop the automatic segue into Archie Bunker and the grand old TV show, “All In The Family,” as if everybody in the borough of Queens sat around on a front step in a sleeveless undershirt and reminisced about the good old days of Herbert Hoover (or George Wallace, or Jefferson Davis, or Adolf Hitler.) As it happens, I grew up half a mile from the Trumps, although blessedly unaware of them for a long time. Friends of mine knew Fred Trump, his older brother, at PS 131, and said he was a lovely guy, but with learning disabilities. I met him a few times in the late ‘70s, and totally agree. That neighborhood is not exactly Bunkeresque. It is Jamaica Estates, an enclave of large homes, many of them on glacial hills just north of Hillside Avenue. When I was a kid, my parents would pack all five kids in the family sedan and drive around Jamaica Estates looking at the lavish Christmas decorations. My parents were Newspaper Guild activists, real lefties from the ‘30s. After the War, they helped form a discussion group, expressly 50 per cent black, 50 per cent white – idealistic bootstrappers from Queens, who talked about books and politics and life, sometimes in our living room. My parents loved Eleanor and Franklin, and praised Paul Robeson and Marian Anderson and Jackie Robinson. In later years, my parents voted at the same polling station as that lovely couple that had moved into Holliswood, Mario and Matilda Cuomo. Not exactly Archie Bunker country. I just looked it up: In milestone elections, Queens voted decisively for John F. Kennedy in 1960, Hubert Humphrey in 1968, Jimmy Carter in 1980, Bill Clinton in 1992, Al Gore in 2000, Barack Obama in 2008 – and Hillary Clinton in 2016. That’s right. The people who, theoretically knew their home boy best voted for Clinton, 75.4% to 21.8%. Queens has been consistent politically, even with all the changes. In the early 50’s, Jewish families were moving out from Brooklyn and the Bronx -- my new friends, settling into Tudor homes, reminisced about stickball games and six-story apartments in their old neighborhoods. There were few, or no, traces of Muslim or African-American or Asian families, part of the picture today. It was an enclave, but the nasty middle Trump brother missed it -- sent to private school in Kew Gardens (until he was caught packing a knife, and was shipped to boarding school, where goodness knows what transpired.) Most kids in Jamaica Estates went to Jamaica High – for me, a one-mile walk, via Henley Road, near the future TrumpHaus. Jamaica High was a bastion of academics but a mixed bag for equality. My friend Al Gibson recalls having to badger the “counselor” so he could take academic classes. (PS: He has advanced college degrees and a good career.) The nasty Trump boy missed this part of growing up: side-by-side with blacks. I served detentions with a black guy (college-bound) after we both thought it was fun to pester a young sub teacher. I shoved back at a black guy who constantly backed into me at the “good” basket in gym class. I also tried to guard Teddy Jackson, with that great first step, later a star at Hofstra – and still my lunch pal. Our yearbook advisor, Irma Rhodes (who rescued me in English class), held soirées for her staff at her home a few blocks from TrumpHaus; afterward I took the Q-17 bus with a young African-American woman, an art editor on the yearbook. All of this was superficial, of course, but part of the de-mythicizing of race. But the most integrated part of Jamaica was the choir/chorus of Jean Gollobin (one of the great leaders I have ever encountered in any discipline) who always had mature helpers like Carole Gardner, also a class officer. Five guys (P.A.L. basketball players from the 103rd Precinct) formed that early doo-wop group, The Cleftones, and would harmonize out in the hall, as if singing under the proverbial streetlamp. One of my classmates, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, has been a major force in the feminist movement; another, Sid Davidoff, has been a stalwart of Democratic politics; a third, Herb London, has been a conservative candidate. We all gained from the crowded halls and classrooms of a thriving public school. (The city gave up on Jamaica High a few years ago. Some of us keep thinking it will come back.) Life in the Jamaica area was and remains complex. The middle son of a builder was soon conniving with his father to exclude minorities from their buildings. He’d be doing it today, if he could get away with it. But please don’t tag all of us from Jamaica with the Bunker label.  White House Nursery
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Trump: We regret to inform you that your son Donald has once again violated the basic norms of behavior for our nursery. As you know, we have spoken to you about this before. When Donald was admitted, school psychologists expressed grave concern about what they felt was sociopathic behavior. You will recall, a minority of staff members persuaded the majority to accept Donald. In recent days, his conduct has been unacceptable. On an outing to a Boy Scout rally, he delivered a soliloquy on subjects having nothing to do with scouting. We have heard from the Scouts that his comments were not appreciated. Then, on a visit to a police ceremony on Long Island, he urged them to commit violence to people under their control. Many people in law enforcement were insulted by this talk from a child, and have told us so. In short, we can’t take him anywhere. Donald also makes threats about staff members, including the very experts hired to scrutinize him and help him. Our staff psychologist has identified his behavioral type as “The Little Dictator” – and tells us this condition begins in the home and, unless modified, can lead to real danger in the outside world. To make things worse, Donald seems drawn to other badly-behaved children, especially a new boy whom I will identify only as “Mooch.” They goad each other into crude language and blatant threats to more pacific students in our school. As we made clear when you beseeched us to accept him, we reserve the right to expel a child who disrupts the entire school. We feel his behavior predicts future danger for himself, unless you get him help. As of this letter, Donald is on final probation. One more outburst and we will have to expel him, for the good of our nursery and as a warning to society. With our sincere best wishes, Pars Magna, Superintendent  (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.  Both? At Once? 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.  Sometimes I think Jimmy invented Trump, poseur from an outer borough Before I tell my Jimmy Breslin-Casey Stengel story, let's talk about bad timing for obituaries. (For example: Aldous Huxley and C.S. Lewis both died on Nov. 22, 1963.) Likewise, it is not a good career move to compete with Jimmy Breslin, “the outer-borough boulevardier of bilious persuasion,” as Dan Barry calls him. Chuck Berry died the same weekend as Breslin; the Times rolled out the big guns for his strut and the clanging of his guitar, outside the schoolhouse, urging boys and girls to come out and play. John Herbers was also honored with a Times obituary on Monday. He was 93, one of the great reporters of the civil-rights era, a gentleman all the way who politely treated me like an equal when I joined the national reporting staff. He had been in bad places – Emmett Till’s murder – and never lost the unassuming air of a small-town southerner. Bob McFadden and the Times did right by John Herbers: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/18/business/media/john-herbers-dead-times-correspondent.html Okay. Here’s my story about Jimmy Breslin, my fellow Queens boy. Elderly editors still marvel at his imagination in the wonderful interviews he turned in for $10 fees on long-forgotten sports magazines. In 1962 the New York newspapers acknowledged the Mets' raffish ineptitude early on. By late July Sports Illustrated dispatched Jimmy for his take on the worst team in the history of baseball. Breslin arrived in St. Louis the weekend of Casey Stengel’s 72nd birthday, and watched them bumble away games. One evening the club held a party for Casey in the rooftop room of the Chase-Park Plaza. Casey greeted the headwaiter, who had once tossed batting practice for visiting teams in the old Sportsmans Park. Casey imitated his motion, remembered his nickname. I was fascinated by Casey and never left his side all evening. Breslin was also there, observing. If anybody was taking notes, I do not remember. A year later, a Breslin book came out, entitled "Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?" a plea ostensibly uttered by Casey during his long monologue that evening in St. Louis. Not long afterward, Breslin called me for a phone number or something and at the end I said, "Jimmy, just curious, I was at that party for Casey, never left his side, and I don't remember him ever saying, 'Can't anybody here play this game?'" Long pause. "What are you, the F.B.I?" Breslin asked, his Queens accent turning “the” into “duh.” Years later, Breslin conceded he just might have exercised some creative license. Casey never complained about being misquoted. He would have said it if he had thought of it. That was the thing about Jimmy Breslin. He got the inner truths. He had an insight into people’s hearts, almost like a mystic or a psychic. Given his imperfections and his imaginations, he was a universal voice. He was also a very local voice. As the world becomes homogenized, we lose the local voices, the salt and the spices that make life exciting. (Fortunately for readers everywhere, Corey Kilgannon is covering Queens for the Times.) Chuck Berry caught the feel of Route 66 (“Well it winds from Chicago to L.A./More than 2000 miles all the way/Get your kicks on Route 66.” Makes you want to rev up the engine. John Herbers reported from the Deep South, which he loved and sometimes lamented. Jimmy Breslin understood Queens…and the world. He has not been well for years. I would have loved to read him on the scam artist from our home borough. * * * MUST READ: Dan Barry's personal tribute to Breslin on the NYT site: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/20/insider/dan-barry-way-back-with-jimmy-breslin.html?smid=fb-share Our friend Ina sent this video from a live French broadcast. World was never the same.
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 With Dalai Lama, 1979
Loyal Reader Hansen Alexander has filed an interview with, of all people, me. It's on his blog. (Just past photo of rat!) My thanks for his interest. GV notesfromnewratcity.wordpress.com/blog/ MODERN LOVE:
David Vecsey's sweet tale of distant love before the Web, now NYT Podcast, narrated by Griffin Dunne. Please see: https://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/fashion/before-the-web-hearts-grew-silent.html?referer= |
