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Paranoia Strikes Deep

Paranoid conspiracy theories long have been a staple of America’s reactionary right.  In the ‘30s, for example, Father Coughlin claimed at rallies and in radio broadcasts that FDR was a communist and – even worse – that he secretly was a Jew (God forbid!) whose real name was “Rosenfeld.”  In the early ‘50s, Joe McCarthy asserted that communists had infiltrated our Army and State Department.  By the late ‘50s, the John Birch Society insisted that fluoridation of our water supply was a communist plot. It also described President Eisenhower as a "conscious, dedicated agent of the Communist Conspiracy.”

This rich, patriotic conservative tradition continues today, with wild allegations that President Obama wasn’t born in the United States and that he’s secretly a Muslim (God forbid!).

But there’s a fundamental difference between the previous paranoia and the current craziness:  In the past, responsible, mainstream conservatives stood up to the nuts.  Father Coughlin and Senator McCarthy eventually were discredited and disgraced.  And William Buckley – the father of the modern American conservative movement – excommunicated the Birchers.

In sharp contrast, no one on the right seems to be challenging today’s lunatics.  To the contrary, at best, they’re remaining silent, thus acquiescing in (and tacitly encouraging) the lunacy.  At worst, they’re enthusiastically embracing the psychopaths.  The John Birch Society even has been brought back into the conservative fold; it had an active, high-profile presence at this month’s annual CPAC convention.

The latest bit of silliness involves the new logo for a U.S. missile defense agency.  Right-wing hysterics are complaining that the emblem looks suspiciously like the logo for Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign because it’s circular and is red, white and blue. But what really bothers them is that the logo has markings that look like an Islamic crescent and star.  Hmmm.  Obama obviously has turned over America’s missile defense systems to Muslim terrorists!

Predictably, the story was all over Fox News.  Less predictably, it was also covered by mainstream news outlets, including CNN.  But the investigative journalists simply took the paranoiacs’ ravings at face value; none bothered to ask the missile agency itself about its new logo.  Had they done so, they would have learned that the logo was re-designed in 2007 – by the Bush Administration.  The impetus for the new design was cost; the three-color emblem is cheaper to manufacture than its five-color predecessor.

I suspect that neither John Boehmer, Eric Cantor, John McCain nor any other Republican “leader” will step up to set the record straight on the logo controversy.  So it’s up to the Democrats to present the facts.  Not that doing so will help much.  After all, you can’t reason with crazy people.  Chances are the psychos will respond like this:  “It’s worse than we thought.  At least as early as 2007, Obama and his Muslim allies apparently had infiltrated the Bush Administration and brainwashed the President!”

This would be funny if it weren’t so sad.           

You Don’t Need a Weatherman. . .

First they applauded the news that the IOC hadn’t awarded the Olympics to Chicago.  Then they gloated upon hearing that a terrorist with a bomb had managed to board a plane bound for Detroit.  They’ve hijacked our federal government, holding its legislative process hostage.  And, now, they’re celebrating some of the worst winter weather we’ve had in years.

Who are these people?  Muslim extremists out to destroy our way of life?  Nope!  They’re allegedly patriotic Americans.  Many of them are even sitting members of Congress.  That’s right. . .  They’re Republicans! Men and women who have eschewed substantive policy in favor of politically partisan expediency.  Which means just one thing:  They feel compelled to criticize and oppose everything that the Obama Administration says and does, regardless of how ridiculous their opposition and criticism may seem.

But they’ve reached a Monty Python-esque level of absurdity with their contention that blizzards in February belie the existence of a world climate-change crisis and, therefore, refute the need for any legislation addressing the issue. 

I’m not a scientist (I don’t even try to play one on the Internet).  But there certainly seems to be empirical evidence to support the fact that the Arctic glaciers are melting and that the oceans are warming and rising.  And it makes sense to me that these changes could wreak havoc on the earth’s weather patterns, causing increasingly severe conditions.   Like hotter summers with bigger hurricanes.  And colder winters with bigger snowstorms.

In other words, the Great Blizzard of 2010 doesn’t disprove the climate change crisis; rather, it confirms that the crisis is real.  Hardly a reason for the Party of No to rejoice.

What’s more, the Obama Administration’s proposed energy policy is advisable even if the naysayers are right about climate change.  The policy would make us less reliant on Persian Gulf oil, with obvious foreign policy benefits.  And investing in the development of alternative energy solutions will stimulate America’s economy, create jobs and make us better equipped to compete in the global economy of the 21st Century.

So, we have a clear choice:  We can enact bold, far-reaching, innovative climate and energy legislation.  Or we can let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.  Sounds like a no-brainer to me.  Kind of like the thinking behind the Republican strategy these days.

Finally Showing Their True Colors

Defenders of the nascent tea-party movement have portrayed its members as genuinely patriotic Americans whose primary concern is what they perceive as government’s increasingly intrusive interference with their every-day lives.  And the party’s poster children certainly seem relatively harmless enough – like the wacky men decked out in Revolutionary War attire and the sweet ladies with the funny hats and dangling tea-bag earrings.

But the group’s first national convention being held this weekend in Nashville is painting a much darker picture of the movement.  And we need to look no further than the speech that former Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo delivered there yesterday.

Tancredo argued that because “we do not have a civics literacy test before people can vote. . .  People who could not even spell the word ‘vote’ or say it in English put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House. . . Barack Hussein Obama.”  His message couldn’t have been clearer:  People who aren’t really Americans elected a foreigner to be our President who’s destroying our American way of life; we need to take our country back from them.  And the crowd loved it.  Because it’s their raison d’etre.

That’s right.  The real impetus for the tea-party movement isn’t a belief in conservative or libertarian political philosophy. Instead the party is predicated on good old-fashioned xenophobia and racial hatred.  The only things missing from the room during Tancredo’s speech – besides factual accuracy and human decency – were a confederate flag, a burning cross and some white hoods.

Tancredo’s speech is wrong on many levels.  For one thing, I worked for the Obama campaign as a deputy field organizer in Allentown, Pennsylvania.  And every one of the hundreds of supporters I met could spell and say ‘vote’ in English.  They each could pass a “civics literacy test,” too; frankly, I’m not sure that Tancredo could say the same about all the folks who applauded his speech.

Equally important, President Obama’s done nothing to suggest that he’s a “committed socialist ideologue.”  FDR probably pursued a more “socialistic” agenda during his first-term as president.  And the people re-elected him three times.  Of course, there’s one big difference between FDR and Obama as far as the tea-partiers go:  FDR was a white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant from an old-line American family; Obama is a brown guy with a foreign-sounding name.

Tancredo aside (please!), the tea-party movement itself has some fundamental philosophical problems.  Its purported commitment to the libertarian tenet of less government interference in individuals’ lives is belied by its support for legislation that would interfere in individuals’ lives – like banning abortions and prohibiting gay marriage.  And its opposition to “politics as usual” is inconsistent with its love affair with Sarah Palin.  Because, despite all her anti-privilege, anti-government  waste rhetoric, it’s appearing more and more as if Palin ran Alaska like some old-school Tammany-Hall boss on crystal meth.  Records released just yesterday suggest – among other things – that, as governor, she covered up the cost of installing a tanning bed in the Governor’s mansion and looked for state-business justifications for using the state’s jet to transport her family.

Of course, these philosophical contradictions and inconsistencies shouldn’t be surprising now that we know that the whole “smaller government” thing is just a pretext for the tea-party movement’s real purpose – attacking the president over everything because his name is Barack Hussein Obama and he’s brown.

Look, it’s easy for me to criticize the tea-party movement.  After all, I’m a liberal Democrat.  But coming out against the tea-party’s message of racial hatred and fear really shouldn’t be a partisan political issue.  So I’m calling on Republicans and conservatives to disavow the tea-party, too.  It’s time for everyone to show their true colors.  Which, I’m hoping, will turn out to be red, white and blue.        

Another “Scopes” Trial?

ABC News reported recently that a Michigan-based defense contractor with a half-billion dollar contract to furnish scopes for rifles that our military uses to train Iraqi and Afghani troops in the Middle East imprints each of its scopes with a citation to a Bible passage.

Yes, you heard me right.  Rifle sights used at Middle Eastern training sites contain biblical cites!

As usual, Rachel Maddow’s commentary on the story was right on target.  For one thing, she pointed out, the biblical imprints run afoul of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to our Constitution.  After all, putting religious slogans on our military’s weapons violates the good old separation-of-church-and-state doctrine every bit as much as teaching creationism in our public schools.

Moreover, Maddow reasoned, using such weapons to train Muslim soldiers is, shall we say, pretty short-sighted given America’s stated policy of convincing the Muslim world that we are not fighting a holy war against them.  All a terrorist needs to do is circulate a few of these rifles around and . . . Voila! . . . a whole new generation of Islamic extremists will  be born.  Score another bulls-eye for Rachel!

When the company was first confronted about its scopes, it took a pretty myopic view, saying that it had no intention of stopping its practice.  But, apparently under pressure from senior U.S. military officials, the company has now agreed to stop imprinting the cites into the sights.  It will even be sending out tools to enable the existing cites to be removed from the sights right on-site.  I just hope it doesn’t charge the government extra for this “scope change” (that’s a little inside government contracts claims litigation humor).

I wish I could say that’s the end of the story, but it’s not.  Because our friends at Fox News couldn’t help but weigh in on the story.  One Fox commentator took aim at the issue by opining that the biblical cites were okay because the terrorists always chant “Allah be Praised” as they engage in their acts of destruction.  In fact, the commentator actually said, “They started it!”  Yeesh!  That argument doesn’t even hold water in a schoolyard fight between two seven year-olds, let alone on the world stage.  Come to think of it, it’s about as silly as arguing that “Intelligent Design” is something different from creationism.

When it comes to the scopes (and, I suspect, to Scopes), Fox’s hindsight isn’t exactly 20/20.        

Cheney of Fools

The Party of No has been treating the aborted “Underwear Bombing” more like a welcome Christmas present than an attempted terrorist act.  Republicans aren’t condemning the act or announcing support for the Administration’s investigation of it or response to it.  Instead, they’re using the incident for political gain; some Republicans even have cited it in fund-raising letters that blame the Obama Administration for being weak on terrorism.

Given their giddy reaction to the incident, one has to wonder whether some Republicans secretly wish that the bomber had succeeded in blowing up the plane and killing 300 innocent people.  Imagine how much political hay (and campaign contributions) they could have made from that!   

And who’s been leading the charge?  One of the principal architects of the most flawed, unsuccessful foreign policy initiative in American history – former Vice President Dick Cheney.

To their credit, Democratic spokespersons have not responded to the Cheney-led attacks.  Hopefully, that’s because the Obama Administration is taking the high road; it recognizes that the life and death elements of our national-security policy should not be trivialized by political finger-pointing. But since I’m neither an elected official nor an Administration spokesman, there’s nothing to stop me from responding to Cheney and his foolish minions.  So, here it goes:

Shame on them!  Their criticism of The Obama Administration in the aftermath of the attempted Underwear Bombing is inappropriate, cynical, unfounded and grossly hypocritical.  Just look at some of the absurd things they’ve been saying.

They’ve complained that Obama waited until three days after the incident before commenting on it.  But President Bush waited six days before commenting on the 2001 attempted shoe-bombing incident.

They’ve complained that the Obama Administration plans to prosecute and incarcerate the Underwear Bomber in U.S. courts in accordance with U.S. criminal laws rather than in a military tribunal.  But that’s precisely what the Bush Administration did with the Shoe Bomber and numerous other terrorists.

They’ve questioned how someone on the terrorist watch list could have been allowed into the country.  But they ignore the following key facts:  It was the Bush Administration that issued him a visa; it was the Bush Administration that created a watch list with 500,000 names – so large and unwieldy that it’s virtually worthless (you don’t find a needle in a haystack by making a bigger haystack); and it was the Bush Administration that “reformed” the nation’s various intelligence agencies so poorly that they still don’t effectively communicate or share information with one another.

They’ve continued to question the proposed closing of Gitmo.  But it was the Bush Administration that released from Gitmo the prisoners who became the masterminds of the most recent plot.

They’ve criticized the Obama Administration for not stopping the spread of terror cells to places like Yemen.  But it was the Bush Administration that enabled the expansion of Al-Queda to such countries (and by allowing it to flourish again in Afghanistan) by diverting American resources to the war in Iraq.

Some of them even have been saying that no terrorist attack ever took place during the Bush Administration.  Apparently, 9/11 only matters to Republicans when they can use it as part of a fear-mongering campaign.

Speaking of 9/11, in its aftermath Democrats stood behind the Bush Administration.  They supported the Patriot Act (which many of them later admitted to stupidly not having read).  They even voted in favor of the Iraq invasion.

I’m not suggesting that Republicans have no right to disagree on the merits with the Obama Administration’s policies.  But, having been personally responsible for the mess we’re now in, Dick Cheney should keep his mouth shut.  At the very least, he shouldn’t be attacking President Obama for the mistakes, failures and shortcomings of his own administration.  His insistence on continuing to do so is foolish.     

Who is a Jew?

It was 1988 when Tom Hanks hosted the game show parody 'Jew, Not a Jew' on Saturday Night Live. The skit lampooned the number-one pastime of modern American Jewry:  Obsessively speculating about, researching, confirming and documenting public figures – especially those in the entertainment and sports industries – who are fellow members of The Tribe.  Hilarious!

In the real world, though, deciding who is a Jew is no laughing matter.  To the contrary, it’s been the source of much serious debate and controversy for centuries, sometimes with significant individual and societal consequences. Too often, it’s been a matter of life or death itself (take the Holocaust – Please!).

The classic test seems so simple – You’re Jewish if your mother is Jewish.  Makes sense, doesn’t it?  After all, in ancient times, before DNA testing was possible, you could never be 100% certain who one’s real father was. But you could always identify one’s mother; she was the lady who gave birth to one.

Thus, for example, Jesus was Jewish because Mary was Jewish.  It didn’t matter that the identity of His father might have been open to speculation. (Although Joseph was Jewish and so was God, since it was the Jews who invented Him in the first place).

Unfortunately, the matrilineal test is far from perfect because religion in general – and Jewishness in particular – is ultimately more of a philosophical choice than an accident of biology.  There are also all those complications of modern life, like adoption, step-families, surrogacy and embryo implantation. And then there’s the problem of conversion.

Oy. . . So many different Jewish sects! The Ashkenazim alone have Chasids, Ultra-Orthodox, Orthodox, Modern Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Reform, Secular Humanist, Messianic (Jews for Jesus) and, quite possibly, Universalist Unitarian.  And many of them have their own unique procedures for admitting converts. 

So it was inevitable that the age-old question of who is a Jew would become the subject of another great American pastime – litigation.  Except the lawsuit wasn’t commenced here.  It was commenced in merry olde England. Go figure!

As reported in The New York Times, the case concerned the efforts of a 12-year-old boy to be admitted to J.F.S., one of Britain’s best-performing Jewish secondary schools. Though the boy is an observant Jew whose father is Jewish and whose mother is a Jewish convert, the school rejected him.  Its rationale was that the boy was not a Jew because his mother wasn’t a Jew; and his mother wasn’t a Jew because she had converted to Judaism in a progressive, not Orthodox, synagogue.

England’s Supreme Court found the school’s action to be illegal. In his majority opinion for a sharply-divided court, Lord Phillips, president of the court, wrote, “One thing is clear about the matrilineal test; it is a test of ethnic origin.” And, under the law, “by definition, discrimination that is based upon that test is discrimination on racial grounds.”

So, now that the matrilineal test for Jewishness has been thrown out, what standard should we use?  J.F.S. has already changed its admissions policies.  Applicants now must prove their Jewishness according to a “religious practice test” in which they’re awarded points for things like going to synagogue and doing charitable work. But one parent wants to defer to a higher authority.  “God can work it out,” the parent said. “He’s a big boy; he’s been around for a long time. He can decide who’s Jewish and who isn’t.”

I don’t like either of these tests.  I mean, I know that we’re the Chosen People and our admissions policy should be selective.  But, last time I checked, the Jews made up only 0.2% of the world’s population. We’re becoming an endangered species.  So maybe our definition of Jewishness needs to be expanded.

How about this:  A Jew is anyone who wants to be one and: (1) understands and appreciates sarcasm; (2) spends the Christmas holiday going to the movies and eating Chinese food; (3) can properly pronounce the Hebrew/Yiddish “ch” without actually spitting up phlegm; and (4) obsessively speculates about, researches, confirms and documents public figures – especially those in the entertainment and sports industries – who are Jewish.

How Do I Persecute thee?  Let me Count the Ways

Jeez!  The radical right sure seems angry at the Obama Administration.  I mean, regardless of the policy being examined – the stimulus package, health-care reform, climate-change legislation, which turkey to “pardon” for Thanksgiving – the conservative fringe always has the same response:  “Fascist!”  (Or some clever totalitarianistic permutation thereof, like “Nazi,” “Communist” or “Stalinist”).  Chances are you’ve seen tapes of those tea-party rallies, with protestors proudly carrying signs depicting our president as Hitler, complete with the obligatory swastikas and –occasionally – even concentration-camp photos.

Well, they’re certainly entitled to their opinion.  After all, we’re in America, where dissent is patriotic and its  expression is free.  But that begs the question – four questions, to be precise:  Are they right?  Is the Obama Administration in any way fascistic?  Is the determination of totalitarianism an inherently subjective judgment that’s in the eye of the beholder?  Or is there an objective test to measure fascism?

Luckily for us, the answer to that last question is “Yes,” and that makes the answer to each of the first three questions “No.”   Let me explain.    

Dr. Lawrence Britt, a political scientist, has carefully examined the regimes of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Suharto and several Latin American dictators.  Based on this analysis, he published an article in 2003 identifying the 14 signs of fascism.  With apologies to Robert Browning (and no, all you gun nuts, he’s not the guy who invented the Browning Rifle), here they are:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism.
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights.
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a unifying cause.
4. Supremacy of the military.
5. Rampant Sexism.
6. Controlled Mass Media.
7. Obsession with National Security.
8. Religion and Government are intertwined.
9. Corporate Power is protected.
10. Labor Power is suppressed.
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts.
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment.
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption.
14. Fraudulent Elections.

Sounds pretty comprehensive to me!

Now, in the spirit of full disclosure, Dr. Britt – like me – apparently is a secular humanist (a/k/a a “Godless, bleeding-heart, tree-hugging leftist” to some of our more conservative friends).  And to be fair, a few of his 14 signs may be just a tad subjective.  Still, I defy even the most caffeinated tea-bagger to find more than a couple of these signs that they could seriously argue apply to the Obama Administration.  In sharp contrast, I counted at least ten that pervaded George W.’s presidency.

So, come on, all you conservatives out there:  Remove the mustache from Obama’s photo and, if you disagree with his policies, do so on their merits. It also might be helpful if you came up with your own alternatives to address the problems we face, keeping in mind that “No” is not a substantive policy.

Shhh!. . .You’ll Frighten the Children

In the past few weeks, I’ve heard critics of climate-change activism call environmentalists Nazis, fascists, communists, Stalinists, socialists, even anti-Semites.  But Anne Applebaum takes the cake.  Her December 15 article in the Washington Post ("Anti-climate change, anti-human") actually accuses the environmental movement of needlessly scaring children.  Her proof?   One nine year-old she knows apparently has decided that doing his homework is a futile exercise because, by the time he's grown, everyone will have drowned due to melting ice caps.

Well, I know some nine year-olds, too.  They do their homework every day.  They also play sports, take dance lessons and generally enjoy life.  And they're enthusiastically looking forward to growing up and contributing to society.  They're happy and excited because the adults in their lives care so much about them that they're actively committed to making the world a better, safer place for future generations.  .A world where we won't have to worry about being drowned by melting ice caps.

Let’s face it.  The world is – and always has been – a scary place for kids.  I was nine during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  For years after, I worried so obsessively about a possible nuclear holocaust that I had trouble sleeping at night.  After all, neighbors were building fallout shelters in their basements; we even participated in “take cover” drills in school, as if kneeling under our desks somehow would keep us safe in an H-Bomb attack. 

But I didn’t stop doing my homework, watching my favorite TV shows or enjoying sports and music.  Eventually, I studied history, politics and law so I could better understand – and try to make sense of – this crazy world. 

Ultimately, of course – thanks to people committed to making the world a better, safer place for future generations – the Berlin Wall came down and the Cold War ended.  And the threat of a nuclear showdown between America and the Soviet Union – which had dominated our society for a generation – vanished.   Only to be replaced by other threats, risks and challenges.  Such is life.  

Speaking of threats, the same people criticizing environmentalists for needlessly scaring our children are themselves warning that terrorists will attack New York again because the Obama Administration has decided to bring KSM to justice here.   Hmmm.  I guess fear-mongering is in the eye of the beholder.     

Anyway, kudos to Ms. Applebaum's nine year-old for coming up with a unique excuse for avoiding his homework.  But let's not turn typical childhood procrastination into an indictment of the environmentalist movement.  If anything, it's the naysayers – those who either deny climate change altogether or claim there is nothing we can or should do about it – who are creating a generation of nihilists.

Attention Must be Paid

Poor Willie Loman must be rolling over in his fictional grave.  Because Arthur Miller’s iconic salesman just realized that he was born too soon.

Willie, you see, believed that one’s success in business was mostly a function of one’s popularity and likeability, and that both he and his son, Biff, epitomized those traits.  Yet he was such an abject failure that he committed suicide so his family could collect on a $20.000 insurance policy. 

Perhaps Willie Loman miscalculated his own popularity.  And, just maybe, he didn’t grasp what it really took to succeed in business in post-World War II America.  But America’s changed in the 60 years since Willy Loman’s tragic death.  The Willie Lomans of the world now have a veritable bevy of ways to get the attention that they believe equates to success.

For starters, the 21st –Century version of Willie of course would have his own email address, blog, website and twitter account.  He’d also have his own pages on Facebook and all the other on-line social and business networking communities.   But so would Willie’s competition, so he’d need to come up with more creative methods of distinguishing himself through shameless self-promotion.  No problem!

For example, he could send up a trial balloon and then, as it aimlessly floated in the sky, falsely claim that his son, Biff, was trapped inside.  That would be good for some free publicity.  Or Willie and his wife, Linda, could crash a state dinner at the White House and then circulate photos of themselves with the President and other dignitaries.   Not that anything like that could really happen (our Secret Service is way too good to permit such a breach of security).  But imagine the media frenzy if it did? 

In a pinch, multiple births would also be a marketable concept for the Lomans.  How about “Willie and Kate plus Eight”?  Or “Octo-Willie”?  There’s no bigger attention-getter than reality television.  In fact, it’s unreal.  Forget about 15 minutes of fame.  That was so Seventies.   Nowadays we’re all looking for at least one, 13-episode season of fame.

So, is all this attention for attention’s sake a good thing?  Not as far as I’m concerned.  Then, again, I’m no Willie Loman.

You Gotta Have Friends?

I have around 30 Facebook “friends.”  For any of you still unfamiliar with the wildly popular social-networking Internet site, that may sound like a lot.  But it’s not.  In fact, it’s an embarrassingly miniscule number.  Most people I know have hundreds of Facebook friends.  Some have thousands.

But don’t cry for me.  Because my paucity of virtual pals is entirely my choice – the logical product of my three simple Rules of Facebook Engagement. 

Rule Number 1 – Never invite anyone to be your friend.  Who needs the stress and suspense of having to wait to see if your invitation is accepted?  Or, even worse, the ignominy of being ignored or rejected?  My self-esteem is fragile enough as it is.  And I already worry every day that any one of my existing contacts might suddenly “unfriend” me (a verb, by the way, that’s just been added to the Oxford English Dictionary).

Rule Number 2 – Never accept an invitation of friendship from someone you don’t really know.  Sure, it may be tempting to agree to become a friend of your co-worker’s cousin’s co-worker, Adolph, just to pad your stats.  But, remember, accepting that invitation also sort of makes you a friend of all of Adolph’s friends.  Because whenever Adolph comments on some random photo that one of his friends has posted on Adolph’s Facebook page, the photo, Adolph’s comment and the responses from Adolph, his friend and their respective friends all show up on your Facebook page.  Despite my own careful vetting process, I seem to spend hours a day looking at photos on my Facebook home page of people I’ve never even heard of.  

And then there are those annoying right-wing rants that Adolph  and his friends are always exchanging on my page, which I’m of course compelled to rebut.  With strangers like these, who needs acquaintances?

Rule Number 3 – There’s really no reason to “friend” anyone with whom you have an actual relationship in the real world.  Because you don’t need Facebook to stay in contact with a true friend or relative.  For example, even though my wife and I are Facebook friends, we never use the site to communicate with each other.  Rather, when we need to get in touch with each other we use email, like any other married couple would do.

By following these rules, I succeed in keeping my Facebook “friends” close, and my real friends closer.

Terror-izing

Tragically, it’s become as American as apple pie.  And prevalent enough to earn its own pop-culture moniker – “Going Postal.” 

I’m talking about the horrific scenario where a troubled, disgruntled current or former employee walks into his workplace and opens fire on his colleagues.  Or where a troubled, disgruntled student walks into his school and guns down his classmates.

It happened again last week. At Fort Hood, Texas.   An obviously troubled, disgruntled Army psychiatrist, apparently distraught after learning that he was to be deployed to Afghanistan, lost it.  He went on a shooting rampage, killing and injuring scores of fellow soldiers.

Unlike in past tragedies, though, some conservative politicians and their media brethren have been quick to label the Fort Hood attack an act of terrorism.  Why?  Because the alleged shooter, Nidal Malik Hasan, is a Muslim.

Maybe they’re right.  After all, news reports indicate, among other things, that Hasan had made some extremist statements; he’d also been in contact with a radical Islamist cleric in Yemen.  But, for purposes of U.S. law, “terrorism” is defined as “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents.”  That’s a tough standard to meet.

Perhaps that’s why, at least so far, Government investigators don’t seem to think that Hasan was acting as a terrorist.  Because they’ve decided to prosecute him via court martial in a military court.   And, if there were evidence of terrorism, they’d almost surely be proceeding against Hasan in U.S. District Court instead.

So, why then have conservatives been so quick to pin the terrorist tag on Hasan?  Politics, of course! For one thing, labeling Hasan a terrorist feeds into conservatives’ world view that all Muslims are inherently dangerous enemies of America who need to be monitored closely.  Moreover, conservatives are anxious to be able to say that an act of terrorism took place on the Obama administration’s watch, which would justify their contention that the president is soft on national security. 

Such premature, fear-mongering rush to judgment for political gain in the face of a national tragedy is unseemly.  But, alas, it’s also become standard operating procedure for the right.  In fact, conservatives are using the same tactic in response to the Justice Department’s decision to prosecute the alleged 9/11 mastermind in federal court in New York.  And then, of course, is their hysteria over health care reform.   Seems like the conservatives’ principal propaganda strategy is to scare us.

FDR famously said that we have nothing to fear but fear itself.  Be afraid, America.  Be very afraid.

The Blame Game

Forget about the weather!  If Mark Twain were around today, he'd wryly note how everyone always talks about personal accountability, but no one ever seems to do anything about it.  And he'd be right.  What's more, the people who talk about it the most are the ones most likely to point their fingers at others as soon as anyone tries to hold them accountable for anything.

Take, for example, my friend "Jim" (not his real name).  He's forever preaching the importance of taking personal responsibility for one's actions.  But he's forever blaming everyone else for his problems; nothing is ever his fault. 

During a recent visit to Jim's office, I noticed a framed sign hanging on the wall.  In bold, upper-case letters, the sign said this: "If you are not made accountable to fix your mistakes, there is no incentive to do it correctly."  I tried to ignore the error. But I just couldn't help myself.

"Um, Jim," I began, pointing to the wall, "your sign is grammatically incorrect."  "What?," Jim asked, though it sounded more like an accusation than a question.  So I explained how, although the article "it" in the sign presumably was intended to relate back to the noun "mistakes,"  "it" was singular while "mistakes" was plural.  Jim's response was instantaneous:  "I didn't write it.  I saw it in a magazine.  My secretary cut it out and enlarged it for me.  The framing store mounted and framed it.  No one noticed there was a mistake.  And, anyway, I think you're wrong about it being wrong."

Yeesh!  In the space of a few a seconds, Jim had exonerated himself from any responsibility for the grammatical error in HISs sign hanging on HISs wall preaching HIS philosophy of personal accountability and, instead, had pointed his finger at the magazine, his secretary, the framing store and even me for the mistake. I was going to point this out to him.  But it was such a minor mistake that I decided to let it go.  "Well, Jim," I said, "you know best.  After all, the buck stops with you." 

Jim puffed out his chest and raised his chin up high.  "Yes it does," he said.  Then he peered out his window and suddenly grimaced at the leaden sky.  "Looks like rain," he sighed, shaking his head.

And so it goes.  

To Have. . .and to Hold

A tenement, of course, is slum housing.  But that wasn't always the case. Derived from the Latin tenere, meaning "to hold" (its Spanish cousin is tener, meaning "to have"), the word "tenement" originally applied to any non-ownership interest in real property, even fancy-schmancy estates.  The occupants of such property were called "tenants" (literally, "holders").  The word didn't take on its modern negative connotation until the nineteenth century, when waves of immigrants flocked to America's cities and took up residence in over-crowded, low-cost apartment buildings.

This is just one of the fascinating factoids I learned during a trip last summer to New York City's Tenement Museum.  Located on Manhattan's Lower East Side (Orchard Street, to be exact), the museum features a guided tour of an actual tenement, along with the histories of the immigrant families who lived there in the early 1900s.

During this era, I learned, the Lower East Side was the most densely-populated place on earth (with the possible exception of Calcutta).  And, incredibly, just about all of America's clothing was manufactured in the tenements that lined its narrow streets.  The cramped quarters were a breeding-ground for disease, which is why tuberculosis was called the "Tailor's Disease."  Some people even blamed Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe for bringing the disease to America and spreading its germs through the clothes they made.

The tenement I saw consisted of three rooms -- a bedroom, kitchen and sitting room -- TOTALING 350 square feet.  The family who lived there circa 1915 included five children.  And the husband ran his small garment-finishing business out of the front room, where four workers toiled daily.  There was no bathroom.  Rather, all residents of the four-story walk- up (12 families) shared a communal out-house in the "backyard."

As I absorbed all this data, my mind couldn't help but wander a few blocks away.  To another tenement, on East Ninth Street and Avenue C, where another immigrant family with five children lived circa 1915.  My father was born in that tenement (who knew from hospitals?), delivered by a non-English speaking midwife (who knew from doctors?) who put both the wrong name and the wrong birthdate on my father's birth certificate.

My father's "home" must have been virtually identical to the tenement on Orchard Street in which I now stood.  He shared the tiny bedroom with his three brothers (two per bed), while his parents and sister slept in the front room.  His father didn't work in the garment industry; he made his living driving a bus and serving as a handy man.  So the Tailor's Disease didn't visit my father's household.  Still, when my father became ill during the great flu epidemic of 1918, his family changed his name so the angel of death wouldn't  be able to find him.

It was hot that day in the tenement on Orchard Street, and the fans the guide handed out to us provided no relief.  As I stood there sweating, I remember my father telling me how he used to walk east on summer days during his childhood, past the horse and buggy stables, to take a refreshing dip in the East River.

The family who lived in the Orchard Street tenement eventually managed to save enough money to move to Brooklyn.  So did my father's.  But, like all families of that era, surviving the slums of the Lower East Side was just the beginning.  Because then came the Great Depression, followed by World War II. 

The museum guide didn't know what happened to the Orchard Street family after they left the tenement.  But I know what happened to mine.  My father became the first one in his family (and the only one of his siblings) to go to college.  He went on to get a master's degree before joining the Army during WW II and winning the Bronze Battle Star for valor during the Battle of the Hurtgen Forest in Belgium.  Then he was transferred to the Philippines where, while preparing for a land invasion of Japan that was averted when we dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he contracted tuberculosis (even though there were no Jewish tailors around).  He was in and out of V.A. hospitals for years.

Eventually, he went to law school at night under the G.I. Bill while working full-time during the day, graduating as valedictorian at age 38.  He learned that he had passed the bar exam the day before his mother died.

I knew all of this before I went to the Tenement Museum.  But standing in that apartment that day gave me a completely different perspective on my family's history.  I kept thinking about it as I drove my air-conditioned car home to my well-appointed, 1,700 square-foot, air-conditioned condo (including two full bathrooms) in a private, gated community that features, among other niceties, a man-made lake, outdoor swimming pool, tennis and basketball courts and clubhouse with a restaurant, ball room, card rooms, spa, salon, gym and indoor swimming pool.

My family, I realized, has come a long way in the past three generations.  And, while I may not own its past, it’s nevertheless a part of me.  Something for me to have. . .and to hold onto.

A Call for Niceness

I'm not surprised that it went largely unnoticed.  After all, America has so many other urgent challenges on its plate these days -- like fixing our economy, reforming our health care system, restoring our credibility in the world court of public opinion and keeping us safe from terrorism without compromising our constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms.  Still, the challenge that President Obama issued during a recent appearance on "60 Minutes" may be just as vital to our society's long-term survival as these hot-button issues. 

In case you missed it, the President called upon us to make civility interesting.  And that's a daunting task.

His point was that -- in this age of computer technology-driven, mass media-generated, 24-hour news cycles -- it's the squeaky wheels that get the oil.  And, let's face it, day-to-day civility isn't particularly squeaky.  Especially in comparison to the ever-escalating nasty confrontations and seedy controversies that pervade our daily lives.

Take the health care-reform "debate" (please!).  There's been precious little coverage of civilized discourse about the substantive issues.  But there's been plenty of coverage of citizens behaving badly at town-hall meetings, demonstrators behaving badly at tea-party protests and a congressman behaving badly during the President's address to a joint session of Congress. Ugh!

Health care reform isn't the only issue being dominated by bad behavior.  What sticks in your minds most about the IOC's recent decision to award the 2016 Summer Olympics to Rio?  That's right!  Americans loudly and publicly "celebrating" their own country's failure to win the bid. And what happened when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to President Obama?  We heard "patriotic" Americans obnoxiously ridiculing their president as if he had just done something terribly wrong.

Unfortunately, this climate of ugliness isn't confined to the political arena.  It dominates the entertainment industry, too.  Or, more accurately, what passes for the entertainment industry these days. I'm talking, of course, about reality television. Most of which involves "celebrities" and plain old folks like you and me acting like jerks in public.  "Jon & Kate Plus 8"? Puh-leeze!

The mass media's mantra used to be that sex sells. But it's beginning to look more and more like incivility sells even better than sex.  And that's scary.

But there's another problem with being nice besides the fact that it's not particularly interesting. People seem to misinterpret civility as weakness.  I see this in my own law practice all the time.  Faced with obnoxious adversaries who equate nasty and rude litigation tactics with effective advocacy, some clients express disappointment when I refuse to respond in kind.  They want me to be just as aggressive (i.e., nasty and rude) as my opponents.  They don't understand that the best way for me to zealously represent their interests in court is by applying the law to the facts of their cases in the most persuasive, compelling way possible.  Incivility is irrelevant -- and, indeed, counterproductive -- to this goal.

So, what's the answer?  Are we doomed to become a nation of mean-spirited pricks?  Not if Shakespeare was right when Antonio proclaimed in "The Tempest" that what's past is prologue (a phrase, by the way, that is carved into the National Archives building in Washington, D.C.). Because there is a historical precedent for national civility defeating national nastiness.  It happened in 1954, during the Army-McCarthy hearings.

Sen. Joseph McCarthy, you see, had been holding America hostage for years with his cruel and reckless crusade against purported communists in government.  His modus operandi was to use conjecture, innuendo and guilt by association to accuse his targets of having communist ties. For example, when Army Special Counsel Joseph Welch demanded that McCarthy produce his list of alleged communists working at the Defense Department, McCarthy predictably tried to turn the tables on Welch. If Welch really were so concerned about individuals aiding the Communist Party, McCarthy said, then Welch should check on a lawyer at Welch's own law firm in Boston who once had belonged to the National Lawyers Guild (which was then being investigated as a possible communist-front organization).   

Welch didn't respond uncivilly to McCarthy's uncivil bully tactics.  But he didn't back down, either.  "Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator," Welch said. "You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"

Welch's rhetorical questions struck the chord of civility in America.  For all intents and purposes, the scourge of McCarthyism was over. 

Could it happen again today? Could civility rise up and vanquish the forces of rudeness?  Now THAT would be interesting!              

It's Not My Cross to Bear

"It's erected as a War Memorial," the man said, clearly annoyed.  "What would you have them erect?. . . Some conglomerate of a cross, a Star of David and, you know, a Muslim half moon and star?"

The man was responding to a complaint about a wooden cross that the Veterans of Foreign Wars built some 75 years ago atop some rocks in the Mojave National Preserve in California.  The complainer was a Jew, and he was trying to explain to the man how non-Christian Americans might feel excluded by having such an overt symbol of Christianity displayed on public land.

"I've been in Jewish cemeteries," the complainer continued, trying to drive home the seemingly obvious point that the cross -- being the veritable trademark of Christianity -- is typically found at Christian grave sites.  "There is never a cross on a tombstone of a Jew."

But the man would have none of it:  "I don't think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead that the [Mojave National Preserve] cross honors are the Christian war dead," he said.  "I think that's an outrageous conclusion."

If this exchange had taken place in some bar, perhaps we could excuse the man's abject insensitivity to the Jewish complainer's concerns.  After all, America -- culturally, socially and demographically -- always has been (and continues to be) a Christian nation.  Hell, Christmas itself -- which, after all, is a Christian religious observance -- is one of our national holidays.  So it's no surprise that an "average" American man in a local bar -- who probably equates American patriotism with the Flag, the Pledge of Allegiance and the Church (as symbolized by The Cross) -- wouldn't be able to grasp a non-Christian American's feeling of alienation over the presence of a cross on public land.

But the exchange didn't take place in a bar. It took place in the United States Supreme Court.  On October 7, 2009.  The complainer was Peter Eliasberg of the ACLU. And who was the man who couldn't grasp that a 5 to 8 foot-high cross at a WWI war memorial on U.S. Government-owned property was a problem? Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.  That's scary.  Because he ought to be held to a higher standard than a guy in a bar.

At the very least, Justice Scalia should be familiar with the plain language of our Constitution.  He should know that the first ten words of the very first amendment to that document couldn't be clearer: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."  Not much wiggle room there!  And what possibly could be more of an "establishment" of Christianity than the U.S. Government featuring the religion's logo on its property?

There's a catch, of course.  Congress decided a while ago to transfer the land on which the cross sits to private ownership. The good news (and I don't mean gospel) is that the lower courts nevertheless found a constitutional violation.  They weren't persuaded that the land transfer avoided the First Amendment problem.  To the contrary, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals viewed the land transfer as an effort to end run the Constitution's absolute ban of government-endorsed religion.

The bad news?  The Obama Administration argued before the Supreme Court that the transfer obviates any constitutional concerns, and several conservative justices seem open to that line of reasoning.  The worst news?  Regardless of the case's outcome, Justice Scalia doesn't get it. 

In the meantime, the cross has been covered with plywood pending a final decision in the case.  Which is fine by me.  Because, as a secular Jewish humanist, crosses freak me out.  And, as a supporter of our Bill of Rights, crosses on government property freak me out even more.   

The Career of Living Dangerously

I'm a dare devil.  A thrill seeker.  A risk taker. An adventurer.  I live on the edge.  I thrive on the adrenaline that comes with danger.

But I don't race fast cars.  Or jump over canyons on motor cycles.  Or run with bulls in the streets of Pamplona.  Or hunt wild animals on safari with a bow and arrow.  That stuff is for rank amateurs.  My derring-do is far more perilous.

I'm a lawyer who doesn't back up his computer data.

I know!  Crazy, right?

Twice in the past five years, my computer has crashed, trapping my client files, email correspondence and financial records inside it.  Each time, I frantically waited for four excruciating weeks to see if forensic information-technology consultants could rescue and restore my precious data.  It was a real rush, man.  Like teetering on a high wire, with no net to catch me.  And, each time, the professionals succeeded in saving my sorry butt.

For those of you keeping score at home:  New computer -- $2,000; Rescue/Restoration of data -- $3,000; Relief upon learning that my legal career wasn't over after all -- Priceless.

Whew. . .That was a close one!  But I think I’ve finally learned my lesson.  I promise to be more careful from now on.  Maybe I’ll take up a safe hobby.  Like sky-diving.  

The Curse of Bill Buckner

[Ed.’s Note: To paraphrase Yogi Berra, it got late early this year for the Mets. So there’s no point in waiting for the official end of the 2009 baseball season for my annual “State of the Mets” message.]

It was the furthest thing from any Mets fan’s mind that Saturday night 23 Octobers ago.  But, as Mookie Wilson’s seemingly harmless dribbler miraculously squirted between Bill Buckner’s legs and rolled down Shea Stadium’s right field line while Ray Knight scored the winning run – capping the Amazin’s improbable game-six comeback win and setting the stage for the franchise’s second World Series championship two nights later – the Gods of Baseball already were convening somewhere up in Valhalla.

Their purpose?  To determine the price the Mets would have to pay for Buckner’s unexpected largesse.  Because there are no free rides in the world of baseball.  And payback is usually a bitch.

For the Mets, that payback began even before the 1987 season started.  That’s when star pitcher Dwight Gooden went into drug rehab.  Doc would never be the same.  And neither would the Mets. 

Oh, sure, they managed to win the NL East again in 1988, but then lost the League Championship Series to a Dodgers team they had dominated during the season when light-hitting catcher Mike Scioscia somehow homered against Gooden in the ninth inning of the pivotal fourth game of the series.  They didn’t return to the playoffs again until 1999, when they lost to the hated Atlanta Braves.  They made it all the way to the World Series in 2000, only to suffer the ignominy of watching the rival Yankees celebrate that storied franchise’s 26th World Series championship on Shea Stadium’s pitching mound.  And they dominated the 2006 season, but were upset by the Cardinals in the League Championship series when another light-hitting catcher hammered a series-winning homer in the ninth inning of the deciding seventh game.

For those of you keeping score at home, that’s four post-season appearances (and just one World Series appearance) in the past 23 years.  Not so good!  

As for the other 19 years. . .Oy!  It was bad enough whenthe team acquired a series of established stars – like Bret Saberhagen, Bobby Bonilla, Vince Coleman, Carlos Baerga, Roberto Alomar and Mo Vaughn – who all failed miserably.  It was worse in 2007 and 2008, when the team collapsed down the stretch and missed the playoffs.  But nothing can compare to this season.

After all, we expected great things from the 2009 Mets.  Sports Illustrated (speaking of curses) even picked them to win the 2009 World Series.  And they’d be playing their home games in their new world-class ballpark, Citi Field.  What could be better?

Once the season started, though, the Mets began to suffer injuries.  Series injuries.  More injuries than you’d expect from a team in an over-50 softball league.  More injuries to more key players than anyone had ever remembered seeing in the history of Major League Baseball.  So many injuries that the Mets’ disabled list began to look like a fantasy baseball league player’s dream roster.  By mid-summer, the team on the field was more like a minor-league squad than a world-series contender.  And the Mets slowly, agonizingly dropped out of contention, rendering September completely irrelevant, even to their most ardent supporters.

So, when will the Gods of Baseball revoke their curse?  No one knows.  The Gods of Baseball  don’t publish minutes of their meetings.  But, if past history holds true, Met maniacs may remain frustrated for years to come.

Take the three most famous curses in baseball history (please):  The Curse of the 1919 Black Sox Scandal kept the Chicago White Sox from winning a World Series for 88 years.  The Curse of the Bambino plagued the Red Sox for 86 years.  The Curse of the Billy Goat has prevented the Chicago Cubs from even making to a World Series since 1945 (the Cubbies haven’t won the Series in more than a century!).

And then there’s the Double Curse of ’54.  You may not have heard of this one because I just made it up.  But think about it:  The 1954 World Series featured a Cleveland Indians team that had gone an incredible 111-43 during the regular season.  The payback for such unprecedented excellence?  The Giants swept the Indians in the Series, and the Indians haven’t won a world championship since.

And the payback for the Giants’ upset victory?  They haven’t won another World Series either.

Compared to these, the Curse of Bill Buckner is just a baby hex.  Which means it could go on for decades.   It already doesn’t bode too well for the immediate future that the Mets’ farm system is depleted and the team’s owners are now reportedly on austerity, having allegedly lost $500 million to Bernie Madoff.

So Mets fans need to take radical action.  We need to appeal directly to the Gods of Baseball.  Tell them, “Baseball Gods, tear down this Curse!”  (I hear the Gods are big fans of Ronald Reagan).  And there’s a perfectly logical rationale for our pleas.

You see, Buckner’s error didn’t give the Mets Game Six.  They’d already succeeded in tying the score.  Even if Buckner had cleanly fielded Wilson’s grounder, Mookie still might have beaten it out for a hit. And even if Buckner had succeeded in recording the third out of the inning, the Mets nevertheless might have won the game anyway.

In other words, Buckner’s muff was never as big a gift to the Mets as everyone’s always made it out to be.  So, Baseball Gods, shouldn’t 23 years of hell on earth be payback enough?

I hope the Gods of Baseball are both compassionate and reasonable.  Otherwise, “Wait ‘til Next Year” might as well be “Wait ’til Next Century.”   

Jack and Jill’s Wardrobe Malfunction

Like most married men, Jack rarely gets to clothe himself.  Because Jill treats her husband like a living, breathing Ken Doll. 

In Jill’s defense, Jack will never appear on the cover of GQ or as a judge on Project Runway.  He’s more like “Beau Jest” than Beau Brummel.  He can “clean up pretty good” when he wants to.  It’s just that he rarely wants to.  Because he typically opts for comfort and ease (i.e., sloppiness) over style and fashion.  And, anyway, Jack’s usually too preoccupied (i.e., lazy) to spend the time needed (i.e., 30 seconds) to put together an outfit that meets Jill’s exacting standards.

A few weeks ago, Jack was about to leave home for an appearance at a friend’s annual golf outing when Jill bade him this all too familiar fond farewell:  “You’re going dressed like THAT?,” she asked, although it sounded much more like a criminal indictment to Jack than a question.  “What’s wrong?,” Jack responded incredulously. 

Jill replied with her usual diplomatic aplomb:  “You look like a horse’s ass!”  While Jack usually appreciated such constructive criticism from his wife, he frankly didn’t understand this particular comment.  After all, he was resplendent in khaki shorts, a solid green polo shirt and sneakers. What else would one wear to play golf?  In fact, Jack was absolutely convinced that his fellow golfers all would dress in a similar manner.  

Jill, on the other hand, remained equally convinced that Jack was dressed inappropriately.  Even though she had never so much as set foot on a golf course in her entire life.  “Your friends will all make fun of you,” she warned as Jack left.

When Jack arrived at the golf course’s clubhouse, he uncharacteristically took inventory of his fellow duffers’ attire.  And he was delighted to see that they were all dressed pretty much like him.  If anything, Jack actually was dressed better than most of them.  Feeling vindicated, Jack decided to take a photo of his friends, to show Jill later.  Then he realized that he had no idea how to use his cell phone’s camera  (And he subsequently discovered that his cell phone – which he’s owned for four years – didn’t even have a camera).  He also realized that – when it came to his fashion debates with Jill – discretion was always the better part of valor.  So he decided to drop the issue.

Until the following morning, when Jill and he were getting ready to leave for the hospital to witness the birth of their first grandchild.  “I don’t mean to criticize,” Jill began, “but this is a special day in our lives.  Pictures will be taken.  I can’t let you go dressed like a slob.”  “What’s wrong?” Jack asked incredulously.

For this sultry August day, Jack had chosen olive shorts and a beige-patterned, short-sleeve madras sport shirt.  “Why wear an old shmata [Yiddish for rag] when you have an amoire full of  nice polo shirts?,” Jill asked, although it sounded more like an accusation to Jack than a question.

So Jack removed the apparently offensive sport shirt and donned a red polo.  “Now you look like a frickin’ Christmas tree,” Jill remarked.  So Jack removed the apparently offensive red polo and replaced it with a black one. “You can’t wear that, Jill said.  “It’s all wrinkled.  No wonder,” she added, attacking the shelves of the amoire as if it were the clearance rack at Marshall’s, “this is a complete mess.”

Jack couldn’t take it any more:  “I was the best-dressed golfer there yesterday!,” he screamed.  Jill shook her head in disbelief.  “Just put the madras shirt back on,” she finally said.

All was quiet on the wardrobe front for the next week or so.  Until the couple was about to leave home one morning to attend their new grandson’s bris.  “Aren’t you proud of me?,” Jill asked, though it somehow sounded more like a criticism to Jack than a question.  “Why?,” he responded.  “Well, I didn’t even comment on your outfit,” Jill said.  “Actually,” Jack said, “you just did – what’s wrong with it?”

Jack actually had given some forethought to his ensemble for a change. He was wearing Ralph Lauren khaki pants, a rich blue short-sleeved, silk Calvin Klein dress shirt, cordovan Ecco lace-tied shoes and a matching cordovan belt.

“I just thought you’d be dressed more casually,” Jill explained.  “Maybe loafers and no socks.”  For once, Jack somehow had managed to dress too well for his wife’s tastes. 

And so it goes.  

Like Falsely Shouting “Fire!” in a Crowded Theater

Ninety years ago, Oliver Wendell Holmes used this simile to illustrate the limits on Constitutionally-protected free speech.  But, as Keith Olbermann noted on “Countdown” last week, it also aptly describes the strategy that opponents of health-care reform are using today.  Indeed, much of the “loyal” opposition’s rhetoric is based on scare tactics and the Big Lie.   So it’s no wonder that – armed with misinformation and frightened to death – people showing up at town-hall meetings to debate the issue are angry and frustrated.   

By now you’ve probably heard some of the shouts of “Fire!” Whether or not you fled the theater in panic, let me assuage your fears by dousing those ersatz blazes:  Reform won’t cause a rationing of health care services, break the federal budget, limit veterans’ access to health care, burden small businesses, cut Medicare benefits, force people to change doctors or insurance companies or give the Government control over your bank accounts.

What reform will do is: prohibit insurance companies from refusing you coverage because of your medical history (including pre-existing conditions) or from dropping or reducing coverage if you become seriously ill; impose annual caps on what insurance companies can charge you for out-of-pocket expenses, deductibles and co-pays, and prevent insurers from placing annual or lifetime caps on your benefits; require insurers to fully cover regular checkups  and diagnostic tests that help prevent illness (such as mammograms) ; and extend family coverage benefits to “adult children” through age 26.  Nothing there to make anyone evacuate the theater!

As for the biggest false flame of all, health care reform certainly won’t require, encourage or even suggest euthanasia for anyone.  I know it’s hard to believe but – contrary to the screams of “Fire!” from Sarah Palin (that beacon of credibility and truthfulness) – there will be no Obama death panels deciding who will live and who will die.  Rather, the proposal merely provides that, for seniors who want to consult with their physicians about end-of-life decisions, the law will help cover such voluntary, private consultations.

Ironically, this provision was added to the bill by a Republican.  And groups as diverse as AARP, the AMA and the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization are in favor of it.  So it’s one of the few measures that actually has broad, bi-partisan support.  Which may be why even staunch critics of the reform bill as a whole – like Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski – have told fire screamers like Palin to quit making things up. In other words, stuff a sock in it!

Why do people falsely scream “Fire!” in a crowded theater?  There are two reasons.  For one thing, the strategy works.  Indeed, in the face of the furor over those fictional death panels, the Senate Finance Committee apparently is dropping the end-of-life-consultation provision from the version of the bill it’s now working on because it’s become too controversial. What a shame!  And the Obama Administration is even considering replacing the “public insurance” option with a private cooperative plan. 

Second, fire-screaming enables critics of health care reform to avoid discussing the actual merits of particular provisions of the bill.  Every time I ask an opponent of reform to explain what substantive concerns he has over specific measures in the bill, I get answers like, “It’s socialism!”  Makes me want to spray him with a fire extinguisher.  Or, at the very least, dump a bucket of water over his head.

My favorite criticism of the bill is this:  “Why should hard-working people like me have to pay to provide health care to people who can’t afford it themselves?”  The critic usually says this shortly after frothing at the mouth about how Obama is a closet Muslim who’s unpatriotically destroying our Christian country.  Strange!  Because – while I’m no expert on religious philosophy – I always thought that one of the basic tenets of our Judeo-Christian value system was for the “Haves” to help out the “Have Nots.”  Oh, well.  What do I know?

The bottom line is that it’s going to be hard for the Obama administration to put out the anti-reform conflagrations.  Because, sadly, we didn’t start the fire; resistance to change has been always burning since the world’s been turning. 

Fore!

If you’re a duffer looking to eliminate your slice, please look someplace else.  Because, despite its title, this piece isn’t about golf.  Rather, it concerns two topics that are as inextricably intertwined as Love and Marriage, Peanut Butter and Jelly, or Siegfried and Roy.  I’m talking, of course, about Baseball and Circumcision.

Huh?  Don’t worry.  I didn’t see the connection at first, either.  Until a prophet showed me the way.  His name?  Luis Castillo.

It all started on a recent Saturday morning, when my first-born son – who is getting ready to welcome his own first-born son into the world – telephoned me.  “Remind me again,” he began, “why I should make my son a Mets fan.”

I immediately knew exactly what he was talking about.  Because, the night before, the aforementioned Castillo – the Mets’ second baseman (and a former Gold glove winner, no less) – had inexplicably dropped a routine, two-out pop up in the ninth inning, instantly turning what should have been an inspiring victory over the hated Yankees into one of the most devastating losses in the 47-year history of the franchise (and that’s saying a lot).

I gave my son a philosophically-profound response:  “It’s his destiny.”  I explained.  “It’s who we are as a people.”  This off-handed remark led me on a two-stage journey of self-discovery.

Stage One didn’t last very long.  In fact, it took me just a few seconds to give up trying to figure out whether I should have said “It’s whom we are” instead of  “It’s who we are.”   Stage Two, on the other hand, was a different story altogether.

Speaking of stories, there’s no better novel in the world than the Old Testament (which used to be called the Bible, until some Jews who believed that Jesus was the Messiah decided to write a better-selling novel called the New Testament).  And, like all great fiction, the Bible relies on such literary devices as symbolism, irony, conflict and foreshadowing.

Take, for example, God’s covenant with Abraham (Genesis 17:1-14).  God promised to give Abraham land and to bless and redeem his descendants.  Sounds pretty good for the Jews so far! And, in exchange, what did Abraham have to give God in return?  A sack of gold?  A few goats every now and then?  No.  Abraham had to agree that every Jewish baby boy ever born would be circumcised.  (God sure drives a hard bargain!).  Talk about foreshadowing.  You knew right then and there that things wouldn’t be easy for the Jews.  And, sure enough, the next 5,000 years haven’t exactly gone too smoothly for the Chosen Ones.

Still, though, each generation of Jews dutifully – indeed, joyfully – continues to participate in the ceremony of the bris.  We’re either hopeless optimists, gluttons for punishment or fans of the underdog.

Which brings me, of course, back to the Mets.  Despite nearly a half-century of failure, disappointment and frustration, each generation of Mets fans dutifully brings its offspring into the Amazins’ fold.  We’re either hopeless optimists, gluttons for punishment or fans of the underdog.

In other words, being a Jew is a lot like being a Mets’ fan.  And vice versa.  Which is why baseball and circumcision are interrelated (I foretold you so!).

At some point during my grandson’s upcoming bris (probably at the very moment of the unkindest cut of all), I expect my son to look at me with an expression on his face that asks “Why?”   I might answer with, “Because it’s our destiny.” Or I might just say, “Castillo.”  Either way, my message will be clear:   Whether it’s the foreshadowing ritual of the foreskin or foregoing the Yankees in favor of the Mets, at least we know exactly what we’re getting into.  And forewarned is forearmed.

. . .To the Moon, Alexei!

Contrary to popular belief, The Cold War didn’t end with the fall of the Soviet Union.  Or when that B-movie actor playing the role of his career as U.S. President told Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall.  No, The Cold War ended years earlier when – during the same summer that brought us such iconic events as Woodstock, the Miracle Mets, “Midnight Cowboy” and Chappaquiddick – the astronauts of Apollo 11 walked on the moon.

In retrospect, the significance of the lunar landing is largely one of form over substance.  After all, claiming the coveted piece of extra-terrestrial real estate didn’t give us any tangible tactical or strategic military advantage over the evil empire.  Nor did our exploration of the moon’s surface yield any significant, concrete scientific data to give us a technological  leg up on the red menace.

Rather, in fulfilling President Kennedy’s 1961 promise, the moon shot loudly re-affirmed the superiority of the American way of life – our individual and collective spirit, ingenuity and resourcefulness, fueled by a free and open society blossoming under a democratic form of government – over that of our communist adversary’s.  It was this idea of America – epitomized by our winning the space race after falling behind in the years immediately following Sputnik – that ultimately captured the hearts and minds of those living behind the Iron Curtain.  Which, in turn, led them to re-decorate their own countries with more transparent window treatments.

Stated simply, The Cold War ended because Eastern Europeans – based on cultural watersheds like the Apollo 11 mission – decided once and for all that they wanted to be like us. 

The unique American spirit of freedom and rugged individualism that landed us on the moon two score ago is still alive and well today.  It remains our greatest strength and our most valuable natural resource.  Ironically, it’s also our Achilles heel.  Because it’s the reason that Muslim extremists have declared holy jihad against us; the American way of life is anathema to their way of thinking.  And the reason that such extremists have been able to wreak havoc inside our non-police state.

And all of it – the good, the bad, the ugly – can be traced back to that day 40 years ago when America, like some gigantic Ralph Kramden, said this to the Soviet Union:  “Pow! Zoom!. . .”.              

Requiem for a Weirdo

The national mourning period for Michael Jackson is now well into its second week, with no end in sight, and I have just one, simple question – Why?

I mean, sure, he was an extraordinarily gifted performer with unique, perhaps unprecedented, talent.  And he entertained us for decades.  But he didn’t exactly lead the kind of exemplary personal life that we Americans tend to expect from our heroes.

For example, there was – in no particular order – his alleged drug use, his alleged pedophilia, his alleged multiple plastic surgeries (possibly stemming from a rare psychiatric disease called body dysmorphic disorder) and his pretty obvious general creepiness and weirdness.  Should we be empathetic toward him?  Sure.  Should we forgive his sins and indiscretions?  Okay, I guess. 

But given his utterly bizarre personality and behavior, I can’t imagine even his most ardent fans ever telling their kids to “be just like Michael Jackson when you grow up.”  Yet we’re acting as if he wrote the Constitution, freed the slaves and won World War II single-handedly.  Shameful!

In fact, there’s only one thing worse than the public’s posthumous adulation for Jackson:  The two reverends – Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson – embracing him as an African-American role model and icon.  Are you kidding me?  If there’s one thing that Michael Jackson’s behavior made crystal clear, it’s that he was ashamed of being black.  Every face-altering procedure he allegedly underwent had one goal:  To make Michael look whiter.

It being July 4th, I have a revolutionary idea:  Let’s declare our independence from the out-of-control Michael Jackson love-fest and pay tribute where tribute is due – to the men and women who have fought to make and keep this country, in the words of Lincoln (speaking of someone worthy of our hero-worship), “the last, best hope on earth.”

Thanks for listening.  Now, please pass the hot dogs.

Death, Be Not Numerological!

Predictably, I heard it again this week.  Multiple times, in fact.  That’s right.  In the aftermath of the deaths of Ed McMahon, Farah Fawcett and Michael Jackson, everyone seems to be reciting that time-honored, age-old truism.  Probably the dumbest truism of all.  So dumb, in fact, that it ought to be called a falsism.

You know the one I mean.  As listeners soberly nod in silent agreement, a speaker sighs, shakes her head and quietly but authoritatively explains, “Well, death comes in threes.”

I hate to break the news to everyone, but. . .NO, IT DOESN’T!!!  In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.  Stated bluntly, death comes all the time in all sorts of different quantities. Today’s local newspaper, for example, carried some 22 death notices.  It also had several obituary articles, including one for a 51 year-old mountain-climbing, ultra-marathoning personal trainer who dropped dead from a heart attack while at the gym.

Death certainly didn’t come in threes at Lexington and Concord, Gettysburg or Pearl Harbor, or on D Day or September 11.  (Don’t even think about checking whether the total number of deaths is divisible by three).   And it didn’t come in threes that horrific weekend in November, 1963.  I counted just two deaths then – President Kennedy on Friday and Lee Harvey Oswald on Sunday.

Don’t get me wrong.  You can always make it seem like death comes in threes:  “Great Aunt Sadie, my co-worker’s best friend’s dog and the guy who played Bozo the Clown.”  Just like you can always make it seem like death comes in two, fours, fives, eights and twenty sevens.   And, let’s face it, sometimes – by coincidence and the law of averages – death does come in threes.  Take January 2, 2007 – James Brown, Gerald Ford and Saddam Hussein!  But that same law of averages also gives us death on other days in many other numerical combinations and permutations.  

So where did this ridiculous truism come from?  Well, at least according to my exhaustive Google research, no one seems to know.  How odd!

But here’s one thing I do know:  There’s a New York Lottery TV commercial in which three famous announcers – Ed McMahon, the movie-trailer voiceover guy and the “Let’s Play Jeopardy” guy – are sitting in a coffee shop exchanging their most famous lines when the lottery announcer says “the New York Lottery jackpot is now” whatever millions of dollars, prompting everyone in the coffee shop to race out and buy a lottery ticket.  Since the commercial began to air, the movie-trailer guy and Ed McMahon have died.  If I were the Jeopardy guy, I’d make an emergency appointment to see my doctor.

June 19

One question kept tugging at me as I stood in a Manhattan hospital room, watching (and listening to) my comatose father’s belabored breathing:  “How will I know when he’s in his final death throes?”  Finally, I decided to call my sister in California, just to let her know that the time seemed to be drawing near.

I couldn’t have been gone for more than five minutes.  But as I was about to re-enter my father’s room, his private-duty nurse came out and stopped me in my tracks.  “He’s gone,” she said.  And that was that.  The date?  June 19, 1980.

No one had told my father that he was dying.  But I’m sure he knew.  The last time we’d spoken before he went back into the hospital and lapsed into that coma – on Father’s Day, no less – he seemed to apologetically suggest that he was giving up.  “Son,” he said, “I don’t think I can take much more of this.”

He even expressed his desire to be cremated.  “I don’t want to take up a lot of room,” he explained.  This made perfect sense to me.  After all, my father frequently had expressed his belief that cemeteries and golf courses wasted land that could better be used for subsidized housing for the working poor.

We inurned his ashes in a niche on an outside wall at Pinelawn Cemetery on Long Island.  As luck would have it, I ended up living and working just a few minutes away, making it easy for me to visit the site each year on the anniversary of his death.  Which I’ve now done some 29 times – more years than I’d even been alive on the day he died.

A few years ago, I learned that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were buried in one of the cemeteries adjacent to Pinelawn.  Hardly surprising, since thousands of New York Jewish families own plots there.  Still, it struck me as an intriguing coincidence, given my father’s connection to the Rosenbergs.

In the ‘30s, you see, my father and the Rosenbergs – like many other young, educated,  intellectual New York Jews – believed that Marxism might help end the Great Depression and solve the problems associated with America’s growing social, economic, political and racial divides.  According to unsubstantiated family lore, my parents and the Rosenbergs traveled in the same social circles, and even may have had dinner together. 

But that’s where the similarities ended.  My parents joined the army during WWII to help defeat fascism.  My father won the Bronze Battle Star and, after the war, went to law school on the G.I. bill and spent his career fighting for workers’ rights, civil rights, civil liberties and social justice.  The Rosenbergs, on the other hand – at least according to the jury that convicted them of espionage – spied for the Soviet Union.

During the Rosenbergs’ trial, many radicals became apologists for them, while many Jews (fearing an anti-Semitic backlash) were harshly critical of them.  But my father took neither view.  He simply believed that, even if they were guilty, it was wrong to execute them.  For one thing, in his view capital punishment was both unconstitutional and immoral.  Moreover, to him the Rosenbergs’ execution didn’t serve justice but, rather, reflected the worst elements of McCarthyism, the Red Scare and anti-Semitism. 

I agree with my father.  After all, the Rosenbergs were the first (and, as far as I’ve been able to determine, the only) U.S. civilians ever executed for espionage.

This year, as June 19 approached, I started toying with the idea of stopping by the Rosenbergs’ graves after visiting my father’s niche.  So I did a Google search, just to refresh my recollection about the specific cemetery in which they were interred.  I quickly confirmed their location.  But I also learned something new that threw me for a loop.  I’d always known that the Rosenbergs had been executed in 1953 – the same year I was born.  It turns out, though, that their executions took place when I was 78 days old.  The date?  June 19.

The office staff at Wellwood cemetery wouldn’t tell me where the Rosenbergs’ graves were located.  They’re still concerned about vandalism, 56 years after the executions.  And the Rosenbergs’ own children took the surname of the family that adopted them after their parents’ deaths.

I have no desire to change my surname. To the contrary, I was proud to name my first son after my father.  And he’s now about to have his first son, guaranteeing that – unlike the Rosenbergs – my family name will continue for at least another generation. 

Happy Father’s Day, Dad!  See you next June 19 (when I’ll probably try again to find the Rosenbergs’ graves).

Jack and Jill Spin Their Wheels

Ah, springtime! Blossoms bloomin’. Sparrows singin’.  Baseballers battin.’  But not for Jack and Jill.  No, for our intrepid duo springtime means just one thing:  The Bike.

It all started innocently enough a few years ago.  When, on a lovely spring Saturday, Jill suddenly announced, “I want to buy a bike.”  This took Jack by surprise.  “But we just sold a bike at our garage sale,” he reminded her.  “Remember? The one you insisted on buying at a garage sale a couple of years ago.  You never rode it.  Not even once.” 

“I didn’t like that bike,” Jill explained.  “It was old.  And its tires were always flat.  I want a brand new bike.  Toys-R-Us has them on sale.  Let’s go.”

Jack learned long ago to carefully pick his fights with Jill.  This one wouldn’t be worth it.  So off they went to Toys-R-Us.  Where, after carefully considering 100 or so different models over a period of around four hours, Jill finally settled on a floor sample.  Being a floor sample, it was offered at an especially low price. Which Jill negotiated down even more by pointing out that the kickstand was broken.  Plus, since the bike already had been assembled, Jill realized that she wouldn’t have to pay an additional assembly charge.  In short, The Bike was a steal.

There was just one problem:  Jack now would have to schlep the assembled Bike home in the couple’s car, with Jill yelling helpful instructions like “Don’t rip the car’s leather.”   Thanks to this encouragement, Jack succeeded in getting The Bike from the store to the couple’s garage, suffering only a few bruises and cuts in the process, experiencing merely minor lower back spasms and leaving just a small tear in one of the car’s leather seats.

Once in the garage – which also serves as the couple’s basement, attic and general storage area – The Bike lay unused in the middle of its floor (remember – no kickstand), blocking Jack’s access to anything he might need. Until November.  That’s when Jill asked Jack, “When are you going to clean up the garage so I can get my car in there for the winter?”  It was a rhetorical question.  She was actually telling Jack to clean the garage by yesterday. 

Jack dutifully complied.  But the only way he could succeed in clearing sufficient floor area to accommodate Jill’s car was by putting The Bike in the corner and covering it with a few of Jill’s favorite things.  Like old clothes too frayed to give to charity.  Empty boxes too oddly shaped to discard (they might come in handy some day to ship oddly shaped objects).  And bags and bags of plastic clothes hangers too numerous to fit in the closets.  Jack secretly hoped that, with The Bike hidden from her view under this morass of junk, Jill would forget about it.

No such luck.  “When are you going to get my Bike out so I can ride it?”, Jill asked Jack the following spring.  It was another rhetorical question.  She was actually telling him to get The Bike out yesterday. 

Jack dutifully complied.  There was just one problem:  The tires were flat.  “I can’t ride it like this,” Jill said. “When are you going to put air in the tires?”  “Yesterday,” Jack answered.

As Jack schlepped The Bike to the car – cutting and bruising his arms en route – his wife gave him some advice:  “Don’t rip the car’s leather,” she said. 

Jack drove around for a while, trying to find a gas station with air pumps that worked and were free of charge.  He finally succeeded and triumphantly returned home with The Bike, which now was fully functional.  Jill greeted him warmly: “What took you so long?”, she asked.  “It’s too late now for me to go for a ride today.”   So Jack laid The Bike in the middle of the garage.  Where it stayed unused until November.  When Jill told him to put it away for the winter.

Like the very changing of the seasons themselves, Jack and Jill have now performed their ritual of The Bike biannually for years.  Jack’s torn the leather seats of three different cars, suffered multiple abrasions and contusions, and experienced increasingly severe lower back spasms.  Jill, for her part, has never once gone for a ride on The Bike.

Just last week, she asked Jack when he was going to take The Bike out.  He complied.  The Bike’s tires were flat.  Jill has asked him every day since when he’s going to put air in them (they have a new car that hasn’t had its torn-seat christening yet).  He will, soon.  First, though, Jack’s going to the gym to ride the stationary bike for a while.  Just so he can feel that he’s getting somewhere for a change.

Editor’s Note: Jill has asked that I remind readers of two things: (1) she is a purely fictional character and (2)the facts have been embellished and exaggerated to enhance their comedic value.   

Putting the “Diss” in Disability Insurance

As everyone knows, our health-care insurance system is seriously sick.  And it looks like, with the ongoing economic crisis, the patient’s taking a turn for the worse.  Because our nation’s financial woes give those bean-counting petty bureaucrats who run the system even more incentive to cover their asses with red tape.  Often with downright  Kafka-esque consequences.

Take, for example, my wife’s recent efforts to navigate through her employer’s short-term disability rules and regulations during a post-surgical leave of absence.  It seemed so simple:  All she had to do was have her surgeon provide information to her short-term disability insurer (to which she paid premiums) explaining that – since she would be unable to walk for six weeks – she couldn’t work for six weeks.  Then the insurer, in turn, would confirm to her employer that my wife was, indeed, disabled.  What could be easier?

Well, about half-way through her six-week leave, my wife received an ominous letter from her employer.  The insurer had approved her leave for only three weeks.  If she didn’t return to work then, she’d be deemed AWOL, and would be subject to discipline, including termination.  There was just one little flaw in the insurer’s ruling:  Since she still couldn’t walk, how could my wife possibly work?

So my wife asked her doctor to explain her situation to the disability insurer in greater detail.  No problem!  Except that – as she later learned from her doctor – the insurer was less than sympathetic:  “She can’t walk? So what?  She has a sedentary job!  She can’t drive because she’s taking prescription painkillers?  Big deal!  Tell her to take a cab.  Or public transportation.”  And so on.

The insurance situation was still unresolved when her doctor finally gave her clearance to return to work (six weeks after surgery – exactly when the doctor had initially said she’d be able to walk).  Nevertheless, with her release in hand, my wife dutifully went to her office, only to be turned away.  The doctor’s release, you see, contained two “restrictions” – my wife wasn’t permitted to stand for long periods and was required to wear sneakers.  Neither impacted on my wife’s job performance; she spends her work day sitting at a desk in a back-office facility where she has no face-to-face contact with customers.  But her employer nevertheless concluded that, because of these restrictions, she was disabled.

Let’s recap for those of you keeping score at home:  The powers that be decided that my wife wasn’t disabled when she was on medication and couldn’t walk, but that she was disabled when she walked into her office several weeks later ready, willing and able to perform her job.  Sure, that makes sense.

Eventually, after much buck-passing and finger-pointing among the various “deciders,” everything was resolved (at least as far as we can tell).  But my wife ended up spending more time trying to fix the mess than recuperating from her surgery.  By the time she returned to work, she needed a vacation.

More evidence, in case we needed any, that fixing our health-care insurance system won’t be easy.           

All You Need is Love

When I was in my late teens, my grandfather suffered a stroke that left him both demented and aphasic, forcing my mother to put him in a nursing home.  I was away at college at the time.  But whenever I came home, my mother took me  to visit him.  After all, Poppy and I always had been close.  He’d even been my regular baby sitter when I was a kid.

My visits to the nursing home invariably included the following exchange: “Do you know who this is, Pop?”, my mother asked as she pointed at me.  Poppy studied me intently, gazing into my impassive countenance while he scrunched up his own wrinkled face as if he were trying to decipher some complex code.  After what seemed like hours, the old man gave up trying to solve the puzzle.  “I don’t know who he is,” he finally said with a dismissive wave of his hand, belying what had to be deep-seated feelings of frustration, consternation and resignation.  “All I know is that I love him.”

Every time this ritual repeated itself, my reaction was this:  How sadly sweet (or, maybe, I thought it was sweetly sad; I don’t recall which).  And that was that.

Now, though, blessed with the perspective of a half-century’s life experiences, I have a different view of my grandfather’s proclamation:  How profound of him! Because he was actually solving one of life’s great mysteries – What is this thing called “love”?

Love is so mysterious because society – in its obsessive need to define, label and compartmentalize everything – developed a convoluted maze of Draconian rules governing the emotion (the “Book of Love”).  The rules are way too complicated to be repeated in detail here.  But I’ve boiled them down to their basic essence:  (1) You can have romantic feelings for your life-partner who, ideally, should be a person of the opposite sex in generally the same age group as you and  (2) You can have strong feelings of kinship for anyone who is related to you by blood or marriage. 

Now I’m no sociologist/psychologist (although I often play one in my essays).  But, in my humble opinion, the problem with the Book of Love is that it completely ignores the myriad other human relationships where strong, positive emotions may develop.  What’s worse, it impliedly suggests that it’s wrong just to have strong positive feelings in these other human relationships. So we’re taught at an early age to repress such feelings.  And we’re so good at repressing our feelings that we end up losing touch with them altogether.   Which leads to depression, anger, hatred, self-loathing, divorce, alcoholism, suicide, even war.

Okay, so maybe I’m exaggerating a little bit.  But you get the point.  We’d be a lot happier – and the world would be a better place – if we simply gave ourselves and each other the permission to love “outside the box.”  Or, as John Lennon once put it:

It matters not
Who you love
Where you love
Why you love
When you love
Or how you love
It matters only that you love.

Which is pretty much what my grandfather was saying in the nursing home all those years ago.  I guess Poppy wasn’t demented after all!

Pandemically Incorrect

I’m all for political correctness.  I mean, if short people now want to be described as height-impaired (“vertically challenged” is so last year), that’s fine by me! But society has a way of ruining perfectly good concepts by taking them to their absurdist extremes.  Like, for example Marxism.  Or, for that matter, laissez-faire capitalism.

And that’s exactly what’s happened with political correctness.  As evidenced, most recently, by the Swine Flu. 

In case you missed it, we’re not supposed to call the Swine Flu the Swine Flu any more.  Because that name unfairly besmirches the noble reputation of America’s pork industry (the other white meat).   We’re now expected to call it the H1N1 Virus.  Kind of sterile sounding, if you ask me.  Not very flu-ish at all.  In fact, I can no longer take the disease seriously.  

Scary diseases ought to have scary names.  Or, at least, catchy ones.  How else are we to know that they’re dangerous?

Just imagine if political correctness had been around in the good old days.  There wouldn’t have been a Bubonic Plague.  The groin lobby (“bubonic” comes from the Greek word for groin) instead would have demanded that the disease be called something like “the plague that attacks our lymph systems.”  No sex appeal at all.

The “Black Death” would have been verboten, too. Why defame a perfectly respectable color?  Oh, sure, It could have been called simply “The Death.”  But then how would we have distinguished the fatal microbe from any of the zillion other things that might have killed us back then.

And I’m sure livestock-rights activists would have objected to monikers like “Cow Pox” and “Chicken Pox.”  A pox on both their houses!

As for geographical diseases, forget about it.  No more West Nile Virus, German Measles, Hong Kong Flu, Lyme Disease or Coxsackie Virus.  Legionnaire’s Disease?  No way!

I could ham it up a little more, but you get the picture.  And, anyway, I don’t want to boar you.   The bottom line is this:  Calling the Swine Flu the H1N1 Virus is like putting lipstick on a pig.

Volunteers of America

I’m not talking about the old Jefferson Airplane song.  Nor do I mean the Salvation Army spinoff organization.  What I’m referring to is President Obama’s call for all Americans to engage in community service.

I’m proud to say that I’m way ahead of the presidential curve on this one; I’ve been performing community service for years.  But I’m ashamed to say that my volunteerism hasn’t always been motivated by the most noble of purposes.

Don’t get me wrong.  Of course I volunteer because it’s the right thing to do.  In fact, I was brought up to believe that it’s more important in life to do good than to do well.  To value principles and interests over principal and interest.  As Abe Lincoln said when he was asked about his religion, “When I do good, I feel good.  When I do bad, I feel bad.”  Me, too!

But I have an ulterior, selfish motive for my actions as well.

Like many people, you see, I crave being loved, respected and appreciated by my fellow human beings.  And I’ve come to realize that nothing evokes such feelings of admiration in others more than my donating my professional services.  Simply stated, everyone loves a volunteer.

“You’re doing this for nothing?”, people ask incredulously when they hear that my involvement in a particular task, organization or cause is pro bono publico. “How absolutely wonderful of you!”  From that moment on, I can do no wrong.  I can arrive late.  Leave early.  Even screw something up (although I never do).  I’m revered just for showing up. 

This is a refreshing change from my life as a paid professional. Where, despite my never arriving late, leaving early or screwing up, it is not uncommon for clients to express unhappiness and dissatisfaction with me:  “Why is this taking case dragging on?  You’re not doing enough to move it along.”  Or, “Why is this case costing me so much? Stop doing so much to move it along.”

Which brings me to a basic rule of human behavior:  We all tend to gravitate toward things that make us happy and to avoid things that make us unhappy. 

And this explains why one of my “work weeks” last month consisted of the following: attending a monthly meeting of the board of directors of a non-profit organization on which I serve; attending a meeting of the executive committee of a non-profit organization on which I serve; judging the submissions made to an annual high school essay contest sponsored by a non-profit organization on which I serve; as a courtesy to a client, giving a free legal consultation to a potential client with a possible sexual harassment claim against her employer; judging an annual high school mock trial tournament (which I’ve done each of the past fifteen years); in my capacity as a court-appointed mediator, successfully settling a complex federal case; attending a monthly meeting of the legal committee of a non-profit organization on which I serve.

The good news is that I was busy all week.  The bad news?  Not a minute of billable time.  And probably not the greatest long-term business plan.  After all, why would anyone buy the cow when they can get its milk for free?  Or, as a sitting judge once said to me when he learned I was handling a lawsuit pro bono:  “If you devalue your own services too much or too often, you’ll have trouble finding clients willing to pay you for them.”

He may be right.  But for one week at least, I did good.  And everyone loved me.       

The Google Gulag

Recently, in preparation for an initial meeting with a prospective new client, I did something that I’d never done before:  I Googled his name.  Not for any nefarious purpose.  I just figured it might expedite our consultation if I had some background information about him before the fact.

Since he had a pretty uncommon name, I found him almost instantly, and it took me less than five minutes to learn my potential client’s entire life story – where he grew up, his educational background, his work history, his friends and family, seminars at which he spoke, even a recent photo.  Wow!

This got me wondering: Exactly how easy is it to find information about people on the Internet?  So, as an experiment, I let my mind wander and – as names of people from my past randomly popped into my head – I Googled them.

The results were startling.  I discovered, for example, that one of the people had contributed $500.00 to the Republic National Committee a decade ago.  Another had sponsored the adoption of a cat from a rescue agency in 2002.  A third had lost his securities license for improper conduct.  And so on and so on.

Thanks to the Internet, our lives are fast becoming open books.  And we have no one but ourselves to blame for this insidious, inexorable assault on our privacy.  After all, driven by our desire to be social-network butterflies, we’re compulsively eager, active participants in the public dissemination of our personal information. 

It’s time to face(book) the facts: MySpace is impinging on our space.  LinkedIn is shackling us. We’re getting tangled up in the very World Wide Web that we weaved ourselves.  In other words, the information technology that was supposed to liberate us – featuring powerful, super-fast search engines and massive computer databases – is, instead, imprisoning us.   

What’s the answer? Well, I have a few ideas.  But I can’t go into them right now.  Because I need to add some new details to my Facebook profile.  And check to see whether I’ve made any new “friends” today. 

“DUMBO”—Dumb?

Back in the old days, when neighborhoods were neighborhoods, you didn’t need to be a genius to understand the three rules of real estate.  They were simple: (1) Location; (2) Location; and (3) Location.

Just take Manhattan (The Bronx and Staten Island, too).  People lived in communities like Harlem, Morningside Heights, the Upper West Side, the Upper East Side (Yorkville), Murray Hill, Gramercy Park, Chelsea, Greenwich Village, Little Italy, Chinatown and the Lower East Side.  The rest of the island was pretty much reserved for commerce.  How nice, neat and tidy!

Until someone decided to take a bunch of rundown lofts and warehouses, turn them into apartments, boutiques and art galleries, and give the area a hip name.  Just like that, SoHo (south of Houston Street) was born.  And everything we thought we knew about real estate went down the drain.  Because location has given way to slick marketing and funky names.  Yet another instance of form over substance in our society.

Before too long, we had such “communities” as TriBeCa (the triangle below Canal Street).  And Alphabet City. Which, I’m pretty sure, is the same thing as the Lower East Side, except with Yuppies replacing the immigrants and bars and restaurants replacing the pushcarts.

It was only a matter of time before the acronymization of neighborhoods crossed the East River and into the outer boroughs of New York.  Which explains why, on a recent Saturday, my wife, daughter and I found ourselves exploring DUMBO. 

No, not the animated Disney movie about a flying elephant.  What I'm talking about is more like a white elephant.  It’s a trendy new Brooklyn neighborhood.  In other words, it’s a dilapidated old Brooklyn neighborhood (Fulton Landing, to be precise) that’s been given a catchy new name – an acronym for "Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass – so it can be gentrified.  If you haven’t been there yet, don’t worry.  Because you’re not missing much.

The area consists of just a few blocks of abandoned, old warehouses and industrial buildings (what a surprise!) that have been converted into over-priced boutiques, over-priced restaurants and over-priced apartments.  It’s unique charm?  The deafening roar every few minutes as a B, D, N or Q train rumbles across the century-old bridge.  How delightful!

Kind of reminded me of my childhood in Far Rockaway, when a jet would fly directly over my house 300 times a day en route to or from Kennedy Airport.   

Come to think of it, The Rockaways are in dire need of a makeover.  In fact, they have been for the past 35 years or so.  Hmmm.  How about Bali (Bayswater adjacent to Long Island)?  Penjambay (Peninsula in Jamaica Bay)?  Fabela (Far Rockaway beneath Lawrence)?  Rockawerock (Rockaway west of East Rockaway)?   Wawabe (Wavecrest west of Atlantic Beach).  The possibilities are endless. And clever marketing may even make people forget that the peninsula is just a nine-hour subway ride from mid-town Manhattan.

I think I might be on to something here.  Maybe we should just forget location.  Because, when it comes to real estate, funky names could be a concept whose time has come!   

Recruiting Violations

Have you noticed how few Jews there are in the world?  Less than one percent of the population.  In contrast, there are a lot of Christians out there.  And even more Muslims.

Why is this?  Well, it’s not because of the three great religions’ doctrinal differences.  Because, stripped of their silly rituals and mumbo jumbo, they pretty much believe in all the same general stuff.  In fact, Christianity and Islam both came from Judaism.  Jesus, of course, was Jewish.  And Abraham (patriarch of the Jews), begat Ishmael (patriarch of the Arabs), whose descendant was the Prophet Mohammed. See? We’re all just one, big happy family!

So the stark difference in the numbers must be caused by something else.  And I’ve figured out what it is:  Each religion uses its own, very different, recruiting policies.

The Jews are highly selective.  They’re like the Ivy League of religions.  As a general rule, you don’t choose them; they choose you.  Or, more accurately, God chooses you to be one of them.  After all, they’re His/Her/Its Chosen People.

There are a couple of exceptions to the Jews’ non-recruiting policy.  For one thing, Jews are perfectly delighted when a Gentile who marries a Jew decides to convert.  And some Orthodox Jewish sects – like the Lubavitchers – actively try to recruit other Jews.  Kind of like Yale trying to steal students from Harvard.

Given their lack of systemized recruiting over the past two millennia, it’s no wonder there are so few Jews.  Especially when you consider how the Nazis systematically exterminated most of them during the Holocaust.   

In theory, Christians aren’t supposed to be that big on active recruiting, either.  Jesus tells them to love non-believers because Christians are going to heaven and Jesus wants the non-believers to join them there.  Through this unconditional love, non-believers often decide to become Christians themselves. 

The problem is that this theory hasn’t always translated into practice very well.  Through the ages, some Christians have interpreted “unconditional love” just a tad broadly to include such practices as raping, pillaging, burning at the stake, torturing and expelling.  Like during the Crusades, the conquests of South America and Africa, and the Inquisition.  Not very Christian-like.  But a very effective recruiting policy.  Which helps explain the large numbers of Christians in the world today.

To its credit, Christianity seems to have self-regulated its recruiting practices, which is a good thing.

I have to admit that I don’t know much about the Koran.  But I suspect that Islam’s recruiting policy is, at least in theory, probably a lot like Christianity’s.  Like the Christians, though, Muslims have sometimes bent the rules.  Consider the Moors’ march west through Africa.  And the Ottomans’ expansion into Europe.

Unlike Christianity, though, Islam hasn’t done such a good job recently at self-regulation.  Some current Imams and Muslim clerics have declared jihad (holy war) against infidels, guaranteeing a place in heaven to any Muslim who kills one.  And who is an “infidel”?  Any non-Muslim. 

So the Muslim message to the non-Muslim world is this:  Join or die.  Can’t really argue much with it as a recruiting strategy.  Similar to how inner-city American street gangs recruit their members.  No wonder Islam has so many followers.  And, apparently, is the fastest-growing religion in the world today.

But, if you ask me, Islam is engaged in a great big recruiting violation.  It should be sanctioned by the governing body responsible for regulating religious recruiting.  Maybe put on probation for a few years and banned from appearing in any bowl games.    

So who is this governing body?  The NCAA?  No, of course not.  It’s a group appointed by God.  Consisting of three of His/Her/Its most trusted advisors – Abraham, Jesus and Mohammed.  Okay, Gentlemen, do your thing.  And please hurry, before it’s too late.

Wanna Vet?

President Obama’s had a tough few first weeks in the White House, what with all those high-level appointees of his having to bow out for various transgressions.  But his problems pale in comparison to those of a fellow world leader.  I’m talking about Pope Benedict XVI.

In case you somehow missed it, on January XXI the Prussian Pontiff revoked a MCMLXXXVIII ex-communication of one Richard Williamson, a former Bishop who’d been consecrated without papal consent by the founder of the ultra-conservative “Pope Benedict X Society.”  I’m not sure what the official term for His Holiness’s act of revocation was – Re-communication? Un-excommunication? Ex-excommunication?  Just plain communication?  Whatever, it seems to be somewhat akin to a presidential pardon.

There was just one little problem with the Pope’s act of magnanimous forgiveness:  It turns out that the aforementioned ex-excommunicatee is one of those nuts who claims that the Holocaust didn’t happen.  This isn’t just a huge personal embarrassment for the Pope who, after all, himself heils from the land of swastikas and has been extremely vocal about healing the relationship between Catholics and Jews.  It’s also a public relations nightmare for the Roman Catholic Church, which has been trying for a generation to atone for the fact that – at least until the Nazis came along and moved in on its action – it had been the number one institutional purveyor of anti-Semitism in the history of the world.

The Church’s official explanation for the gaffe was that the Pope personally didn’t know about this moron’s beliefs when he un-excommunicated him.  Sounds like papal bull to me. I mean how could the Holy See not see this coming?  Well, just like with the Obama White House, there appears to be a problem with the Vatican’s vetting process.

For the record, the verb “to vet” actually comes from “veterinarian.”  Back when we were an agrarian society that bought and sold livestock, buyers would have vets examine chickens, cattle, horses, etc. before finalizing their deals to make sure the animals were what the sellers advertised them to be so that the buyers weren’t getting tainted goods.  Hence, “vetting.” (Of course, this wasn’t done when an animal was given as a present; it’s not proper etiquette to “look a gift horse in the mouth.”)

Anyway, over time the word “vetting” came to describe any careful examination to ensure quality and genuineness, even when no livestock or animal doctors were involved.

So neither President Obama nor Pope Benedict had to hire Dr. Doolittle to vet their people.  In fact, in today’s high-tech, instant-information age, the Church probably didn’t have to do much of anything to learn about Williamson.  It just needed to surf the Internet for a couple of minutes.  Which is exactly what I did to discover the origin of “vetting.”

The Vatican could have started simply by Googling “Richard Williamson.”  That would have led it to his Facebook and/or MySpace pages, articles he wrote, videos of speeches he made (on YouTube), maybe even the website address for the Society of St. Pius X, which opposes the liberalizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council, including its outreach to Jews.  Just a few mouse clicks and keystrokes and they would have learned that – as later reported in newspapers around the world – Williamson had been seen on Swedish television just a few days before his un-excommunication saying that historical evidence "is hugely against 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed" during World War II.  He added that only 200,000 to 300,000 Jews were killed during World War II, and none was gassed.

The young, computer-savvy cleric who discovered this information then could have made his career simply by saying, “Oh-oh, fellas, we have a Holocaust denier on our hands; Better tell the Big Guy before he re-communicates him.” 

But nobody bothered to do any of that.  So now the Church has a big fat mea culpa on its hands.  One that it hasn’t handled too well so far, by the way.  It’s merely told the newly re-communicated Williamson to recant his views or he won’t be given full priestly privileges. Williamson’s answer?  He’s pretty much thumbed his Nazi-sympathizing, anti-Semitic nose at the Pope.  Oh, sure, he apologized to the Pope for stirring up controversy.  But he’s refused to repudiate his earlier comments.

Oy, vey.

To solve its problem, the Church needs to take a page from Cool-Hand Luke.  Because what we have here is a failure to re-excommunicate.

As for the Obama Administration, it had a tougher job than the Vatican.  Searching the Internet probably wouldn’t have uncovered the appointees’ various tax and nanny problems.  That’s not the type of thing people “tweet” about Twitter or put in their Internet profiles.  So the President gets a pass for now.  But he’d better start vetting better.  And soon. 

Trouble at the Sausage Factory

Congress thinks of itself as the greatest deliberative body in the world.  And it’s probably right.  After all, America’s representative democracy is the worst form of government ever tried, except for all the others.

Still, our legislative process has been described as sausage making.  And that’s an apt metaphor for Congress’s efforts so far to pass the urgently-needed, mis-named stimulus package.  (Which, really, ought to be looked at as a spending and jobs bill.) 

So let’s go into the kitchen and see what our government’s been cooking up.

President Obama could have started by stuffing a big, juicy, flavorful sausage down our throats.  After all, he’d just won the election and had extremely high approval ratings.  Hot dog! But he was worried that such a sausage wouldn’t be kosher.  Because he’d be violating his promise of bipartisanship.  So he backed off and proposed a watered-down version of his package in the House to satisfy the bland palates of the Republican opposition.  In other words:  Chicken sausage.

But this still didn’t make those finicky Republicans happy.  “Too much pork,” they complained.    Meanwhile, some Democrats’ stomachs were grumbling.  They hungered for real change they could sink their teeth into.  “Where’s the beef?,” they asked.  And the sausage that wound up being sent to the Senate satisfied no one.  It was half-baked (or half-grilled, as the case may be).

The Senate certainly hasn’t spiced it up. To the contrary, it removed even more of the meat, replacing it with filler and by-products. Still not enough hunks of infrastructure.  And still too many cuts of taxes.

By the time the Senate approves its version and the bill goes through the joint-committee process, gets passed by Congress and is presented to the President for signature, who knows if the bird will even fly.  That’s right. We could end up with a great big turkey sausage.

I don’t know about you, but the whole process is giving me a tummy ache.  And I’m starting to feel queasy, and maybe a tad nauseous.  If Upton Sinclair were around to write a muckraking expose, it could force the FDA to shut down the sausage factory altogether.  It’s almost enough to turn me into a vegetarian.  Yuck!

By the way, do you know what those vegetarian frankfurters are called?  “Not dogs”!   Double yuck!

I guess we’ll be stuck with whatever sausage ultimately comes out of the federal government’s grinder.  I just hope it has enough nutrients in it to keep us away from bread lines and soup kitchens.

. . .And WE Were There

I guess it’s human nature for us to want to be part of history.  It makes us feel important.  Gives us some gravitas.  And, in some small way, a sense of immortality.

Take, for example, famous sporting events.  So many people have claimed over the years to have been at the Polo Grounds to witness Bobby Thompson’s “shot heard ‘round the world” homerun in 1951 that the old ballpark would have had to have accommodated several hundred thousand spectators.  Similar claims have been made about key moments at Yankee Stadium, Madison Square Garden, etc.  No harm done, really.  Just innocent little lies that make the liars temporarily feel better about their boring lives.

But our desire to participate in history recently took a truly bizarre turn, courtesy of the most famous pyramid builder since the ancient pharaohs.  That’s right.  I’m talking about Bernie Madoff.

Bernie’s pyramid was more expensive than any the Egyptians built.  And it didn’t last nearly as long as theirs.  But he had one thing in common with the pharaohs.  Like them, he used Jews to build his pyramid.  And that’s where the story gets interesting.

Since word first broke about Madoff’s crumbling pyramid, just about every fellow Jew I speak to claims either to have “lost everything” with Bernie or to know someone who did.  Based on my unofficial calculations from these daily tales of woe, Madoff squandered  a whole lot more than the reported $50 billion.  At least a few trillion dollars.  And maybe as much as, I dunno, infinity bucks.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not making light of the Madoff fiasco.  I’m just suggesting that there are lots of folks out there falsely claiming to be victims.  Or, at the very least, exaggerating their losses.  And, moreover, boasting about the whole thing.

Incredibly, they actually seem proud of it.  Like it’s some kind of badge of honor.  And the more money they claim to have lost, the more they seem to gloat:  “You lost a million?  What a shame!  My brother-in-law lost five million and may have to sell one of his homes in the Hamptons.  Poor guy.”

Some of this probably can be attributed to one-upmanship.  And some to the braggadocio of the nouveau riche: “Look at me. I’m wealthy enough to have lost millions with Bernie.”  But I’m convinced that some of it is just our natural desire to be part of history.

What convinces me?  Well, I’m not the type of person to have invested with Madoff, even if I had the money to do so.  But I still found the need to get into the act somehow.  So I’ve bragged to anyone who listens to me that Bernie Madoff and his wife are both graduates of my high school.  Yes, indeed.  I was there!  

Tickets to Heaven

Back in the bad old days, when the Roman Catholic Church controlled what Roman Catholics considered to be the “civilized” world, wealthy sinners actually could purchase absolution.  Imagine that!  Through a system called “Papal Indulgences,” the sinner merely needed to make the requisite payment to the Church and – Voila! – Eternal Forgiveness.  No muss/no fuss. How civilized!

Except that some folks took exception to the practice.  And they began to protest against it.  In fact, the protestors (which History called “protestants”) waged a revolution (which History called a “reformation”).  And a whole new religion was born (or, more accurately, 3,000 slightly different denominations of Protestantism were born).  And Papal Indulgences became a mere footnote to History.

Or did they?  Because here it is, half a millennium later, and they’re still around.  Well, sort of.  Let me explain.

In 2009, wealthy sinners concerned over the size of their carbon footprints can acquire ecological absolution through their purchases of “carbon credits.” No environmental muss or fuss.  How civilized!

In fairness, I’m not sure exactly how carbon credits work.  Maybe the sinners’ payments go toward the research and development of alternative energies, which would make the concept more palatable than those erstwhile papal indulgence payments, which mostly went into the already over-flowing coffers of the Church. 

Still, the idea of carbon credits rubs me the wrong way.  It lets the wealthy off the global-warming guilt-trip hook way too easily. If the rich sinners really want to assuage their guilt, they should drive Priuses (Prii?).  Or live in smaller homes that operate entirely on solar energy.  Or do what rock icon Neil Young recently did:  Retrofit a 1959 Lincoln Marquis – the mother of all gas guzzlers – so that it could get 100 mpg.

And, anyway, at least in the immediate future, carbon credits won’t help prevent the direst consequences of our addiction to oil: Whenever we drive our cars or fly our planes, we put money into the hands of the Arab oil merchants, who –as Tom Friedman points out in his latest book, Hot, Flat and Crowded – use it  to fund "schools" that  turn  innocent Palestinian children into Jew-hating Jihadists.

Despite my concerns, I don’t see any anti-carbon credit reformation anywhere on the horizon.  To the contrary, the carbon-credit idea is becoming more and more popular. Starting this spring, in fact, an experimental program will make San Francisco International the first airport in the nation - possibly the world - to offer fliers the opportunity to purchase carbon offsets. 

According to an article last month in the San Francisco Chronicle, a San Francisco firm that sells renewable-energy and carbon-reduction investments is teaming up with the airport and the city on a project to install kiosks where the offsets could be purchased.  The general idea, officials said, is that a traveler would approach a kiosk resembling the self-service check-in stations used by airlines, then punch in his or her destination. The computer would calculate the carbon footprint and the cost of an investment to offset the damage. The traveler could then swipe a credit card to help save the planet. Travelers would receive a printed receipt listing the projects benefiting from their environmental largesse. How civilized!

In other words, the more things change, the more they stay the same.  Rich sinners will always be trying to buy themselves tickets to heaven.  At least that’s what they think they’re buying.   

Only 180 Shopping Days Left Until Christmas. . .2007!

In December, 2008—during the very same week in which the Pope gave a special shout-out to former-heretic Galileo (sort of like a presidential pardon) – modern scientists studying the astronomical phenomena reported by several alleged eye witnesses to Jesus’s birth announced two extraordinary findings.  Although both have enormous significance in today’s world, society apparently has decided to ignore them. 

The astronomers’ first finding was that Jesus was born in June, not December. So much for dreaming of a white Christmas.  Unless, of course, “white” refers to the sand at area beaches.  The only things we should be roasting on an open fire are marshmallows over our barbecue pits.  The weather outside is frightful?  Late afternoon thunderstorms!

So the holiday shopping season should officially begin on Memorial Day.  Post-Christmas sales should end on July 4.  Santa should travel the world on water skis pulled by nine dolphins (including everyone’s favorite, “Flipper, the Aqua-Nosed Dolphin”).  Santa’s progress should be tracked by nuclear submarines rather than by Norad.  Instead of “Ho, Ho, Ho”, he’d chant “Hot, Hot, Hot.” And he’d enter the homes of Christian children via their central air conditioning ductwork systems.

The number one flip-flop stuffer (because stockings are way too heavy for June)?  Sun screen, of course. Pina coladas instead of egg nog.  Long Island iced tea instead of hot toddies.

Carolers will have to learn some new songs.  Like “June is Busting out all Over”, “Hot Town, Summer in the City,”  “Summertime” (so that George Gershwin will replace Irving Berlin as Jewish composer of the best Christmas song), and “See You in September.”   The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree will be a mighty oak.

Of course, we could continue to celebrate a holiday in December in honor of the winter solstice.  In other words, the same festival that pagans celebrated for centuries, until the Roman Catholic Church turned the celebration into a birthday party for Jesus.  We could even continue to call the winter holiday “Christmas” so as not to confuse folks.  To differentiate it from Jesus’s real birthday, though, we’d have to post these messages on billboards everywhere each December:  “Remove Christ from Christmas.”  And “Remember, Christmas is NOT Christ’s Birthday.”

Okay, I can see that there’s some resistance to these changes among you Christians out there.  But consider this:  Jesus’s June birthday celebration wouldn’t interfere with any other major religious or secular observance.  So you could say “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays” without being politically incorrect or worrying about that stupid, annoying First Amendment (separation of Church and State?  Bah, humbug!).  At least until those stupid, annoying American Jews find some obscure June holiday that’s been in existence forever and decide to make it a major celebratory event of their own.  Like Shavuot (which commemorates God giving the Ten Commandments to Moses around 5,000 years B.C.).  Oy!

Speaking of which, how did people living in 5,000 B.C. know they were living in 5,000 B.C. if no one knew if/when Jesus would be born?  That’s a rhetorical question.  But it’s also a nice segue into my intrepid astronomers’ second finding:  Jesus was actually born in 2 B.C. (using the Gregorian Calendar, which was adopted in 1582).  And this actually may be even more significant than the whole Christmas in June nonsense.  Not just because it explains why our computers didn’t crash on what we thought was the dawn of Y2K.  But because it changes the names of some famous songs, books and movies.

Would you even bother to read George Orwell’s 1982? Listen to Beethoven’s 1810 Overture? Dance to We’re Gonna Party Like it’s 1997? Or go see 1999 – A Space Odyssey?  I didn’t think so.

Almost as important, the finding also requires us to change the date of every historical event.  For example, the Battle of Hastings – 1064; the Magna Carta – 1213;  the Gregorian Calendar – 1580; U.S. Independence – 1774;  the War of 1810;   the Berlin Olympics of 1934; Roe v. Wade – 1971.  God giving the Ten Commandments to Moses – around 4,898 B.C.

And December 7, 1939 would be “a date which will live in infamy.”

But wait a second (and, by the way, the world’s official timekeepers are doing just that when they stop the world’s official clock for a second before the end of the year formerly known as 2008 because the year’s exactly one second too short). We can’t just turn back the clock two years on everything.  Because that would also change the day of the week on which each event occurred.  And some events were planned for particular days.  For example, the Japanese wanted to attack Pearl Harbor on a Sunday.  Which, in 1939, would have been December 10 (because 1940 – er, I mean, 1938 – had been a leap year).  So December 10, 1939 is really the “date which will live in infamy.”

I’m sorry.  That just doesn’t seem an infamous enough date to me.  I guess we’re really not ready for such a sea change.  No wonder we’ve decided to ignore these astronomers.  Probably the same reason they snubbed Galileo back in the day.

Oh, well.  Merry Winter Solstice Festival. And have a happy and healthy 2007.

What’s in a Name?

Recently, during one of my many, daily conversations about nothing, I made this observation:  “Nobody names their baby Adolf anymore (or Adolph, for that matter).”  I meant it as a joke.  But someone responded that the name is actually banned in France.  Someone else said the name’s also verboten in Germany.  To which I had an ambivalent, decidedly non-joking reaction.

On the one hand, I was relieved and comforted to hear what I considered to be a “Never Again” policy about the Holocaust.  On the other hand, the policy offended my civil-libertarian sensibilities.  After all, should a government really be permitted to tell us what we can name our own offspring?

Then, again (back to my first hand), there ought to be some reasonable regulation of names.  Otherwise, what would stop parents from saddling their bouncing baby with a moniker representing anything from a bodily function (Fart Farnsworth) to a racial epithet (N***er Woods) to an outright curse word (Motherf***er Goldstein)?

My ruminations (and hand-switching) abruptly ended when I suddenly came up with an obvious answer to this rhetorical question:  Common sense prevents parents from giving socially inappropriate names to their progeny.   Of course!  No need for my crisis of conscience.  The issue was purely hypothetical.

Until the Campbells came along.

In case you somehow missed it, the Campbells are the couple from western New Jersey who walked into a local Shop Rite supermarket with a seemingly routine request:   They wanted to buy a cake inscribed with their son’s name to celebrate the boy’s third birthday.  But the store refused.  Why?  Well the toddler (who, by the way, is cute as a button) happens to be named Adolf Hitler Campbell.  So much for common sense!

And so much for my question about governmental baby-name regulation. Because the clerks at the local bureau of vital statistics had presumably let this abomination slip by.  They also approved the birth certificate for little Adolf’s younger sister, who’s named Aryan Nation.  And for his baby brother, who’s named something like Heinrich Hinler (I guess mom and dad didn’t know that the Fuhrer’s aide was “Himmler”). 

The parents’ explanation for these names was just a tad muddled.  Dad insisted that he wasn’t a white supremacist; there even had been multi-racial kids in attendance at Adolf’s birthday party.  The Campbells simply have a preference for unusual, distinctive names.  Hmmm. I guess that swastika on dad’s forearm was an accident – the tattoo artist’s hand must have slipped while trying to etch the peace sign.

In any case, the couple tried to turn Shop Rite’s refusal to write “Adolf Hitler” on the birthday cake into a civil rights/civil liberties issue (even having the audacity to invoke Barack Obama’s election as a reason for greater baby-naming tolerance).  But it’s not.  For one thing, people named Adolf Hitler don’t constitute a recognized protected class of citizens under our civil rights law.  And a super market isn’t a government entity whose refusal to print something on a cake might violate the First Amendment’s right of free speech.

So, were the Campbells out of luck?  Nope!  They were saved by that bastion of free expression – Wal-Mart!  That’s right.  The same company that banned Dixie Chick CDs from its shelves because of the group’s political statements had no problem writing “Happy Birthday Adolf Hitler” on a cake.  And they probably did it at a fraction of Shop Rite’s price, thanks to predatory business practices that have enabled the chain to corner the market on cake mix. 

Wal-Mart’s intervention made it a happy ending for the Kooky Kampbell Klan.  But, like the Nazis after their invasion of France, they might have won the battle only to eventually lose the war.  After all, what’s going to happen when Adolf starts school?  Applies for a driver’s license?  Goes to college?  Runs for political office? 

I feel bad for the kid.  He looks so happy, peaceful and angelic.  Like a toddler version of Jesus.  He  has no clue what he's in for.  Speaking of which, nobody – except Latinos – names their baby Jesus.  Is there some unwritten rule about that?  If I walked into a Shop Rite and asked them to write “Happy Birthday Jesus Christ” on a cake, would they refuse?  Even on Christmas?  That really would be the icing on the cake! 

917 Hamilton

Who was I kidding?  Despite my pronouncements to the contrary – which I compulsively recited to anyone at Camp Obama who’d listen – my reluctance to commit to a month-long stint as an out-of-state campaign volunteer had nothing to do with concerns over taking a leave of absence from my law practice.  Or, for that matter, with missing a chunk of the Giants’ football season.  Or even with abandoning my beloved dog (not to mention my wife of 31 years).  No, there was just one obstacle in my way:  The New York Mets.

As a season-ticket holder, I didn’t want to miss any of the team’s playoff games, especially since I’d already shelled out $2,600 for the tickets.  Sure, I probably could sell them for a nice profit.  But that wasn’t the point.  After infamously choking down the stretch in 2007, the team and I were out for redemption.  And – I’m embarrassed to admit now – that seemed more important to me in late September than electing Barack Obama president.

So, as I left the Teamsters’ Union Hall on Manhattan’s West 14th Street on Sunday, September 21 – having completed my two-day Camp Obama training course and having received my “degree” as a Deputy Field Organizer – I figured I’d never get to use my newly-learned skills.  After all, with just a week remaining in the baseball season, the Mets seemed safely in possession of a playoff berth.  And they couldn’t possibly collapse two years in a row.  Right?

Wrong! Incredibly, just a week later, my team’s season again ended unceremoniously (although, bizarrely, there was a post-game ceremony marking the impending demise of Shea Stadium).  And after a brief mourning period, I became metaphysically philosophical:  I took the Mets’ failure as a sign from above.  One door had closed to me so another could open.  Someone, somewhere, wanted me to volunteer  for  the Obama campaign. 

Actually, the “someone” pulling the strings was hardly a mystery to me.  As always, it was my dead father, who’d spent his life as a community organizer and civil rights activist.  I suddenly realized that it was my manifest destiny to work in the Obama grass-roots campaign.  So I sent an email to the Camp Obama folks (I would have called, but I’m phone-a-phobic) and received my assignment, which was to begin on Sunday, October 4, and continue through Election Day.

The door that opened for me turned out to be the front door of 917 Hamilton Street, the campaign’s drab and dingy storefront office in Center City Allentown, Pennsylvania.  As Billy Joel informed us some years ago, Allentown is an economically depressed – and, therefore, emotionally depressing – area.  And, as I drove to the office that first day, Hamilton Street struck me as the epitome of that dual depression.  A place where, at first glance, the pawn shops appeared to out-number retail stores and restaurants.

In theory, my job as Deputy Field Organizer (or DFO in the jargon of campaign-speak) was to help the two paid staffers in charge of the office (FOs) run the place.  In practice, though, no one’s title mattered.  Everyone working in the office pretty much did everything.  In fact, every long-term volunteer was called a DFO.  By the end of the campaign, there were so many of us deputies that we probably could have captured Jessie James.

“Everyone,” by the way, described an olio so deliciously diverse that it made Moynihan’s melting pot seem like a glass of homogenized, pasteurized milk.  There were Men and Women.  Teens and Senior Citizens.  Whites, African-Americans, Latinos and Asians.  Heterosexuals and Homosexuals.  Jews and  Gentiles.  Street People and Professionals.  Locals and Out-of-Staters.  All working side by side.

The work itself wasn’t exactly rocket science (although several volunteers had engineering or physics degrees from such institutions as MIT, Stanford  and Cornell) or brain surgery (although one volunteer leaving for college next year plans on becoming a neurosurgeon).  To the contrary, the work was exhaustingly repetitive and tedious.  Based on computer-generated lists of targeted voters, we made thousands of phone calls and knocked on thousands of doors trying to persuade people to support Obama.  When we finished our lists, we entered the information we’d obtained into a database, waited for revised lists of targeted voters and went through the process all over again.

Based on other computer-generated lists, we made thousands of phone calls to potential local and out-of-state volunteers, trying to get them to commit to work at the office for particular shifts.  When we finished our lists, we entered the information we’d obtained into a database, waited for revised lists of potential volunteers and – you guessed it – went through the process all over again.

We performed these tasks ad nauseam, which is legal Latin for “until you’re so sick you want to barf.”  To my knowledge, though, no one actually threw up.  At least not in the office.  Because the bathrooms were way too dirty for any sane person to use, even though (or, more likely, because) one of the regular volunteer tasks was to clean them (and the rest of the office) from time to time.

During the week, we trained our new local volunteers on how to do this same boring work.  On weekends, we trained our out-of-state volunteers (which the campaign called “Day-Trippers” and “Weekend Warriors” because clever titles make boring work sound interesting and romantic) to do door-to-door canvassing.  I did so many trainings that I began to sound like a broken record (for those of you born after 1980, a “record” was something we used in the old days to listen to music).

To vary the drudgery, each Friday we prepared canvassing packets for the invading hordes of those Day-Trippers and Weekend Warriors.  This required an assembly line of volunteers that likely would make Henry Ford (who, as an alleged anti-Semite and Nazi sympathizer, probably wouldn’t be an Obama supporter) roll over in his grave.   And it constituted a veritable decathlon of mindless, clerical tasks – printing, photocopying, sorting, collating, stapling, paper-clipping, assembling, labeling, envelope-stuffing, clip-boarding and the ever-popular redoing (when something had to be added to or removed from the packets, a task that invariably arose only after we’d competed them).

What’s that you say?  This wasn’t a decathlon because I listed 11 tasks?  Okay, then, It was an eleventhlon.  So shoot me.

Speaking of shootings, there was a gun death one Friday night in the parking lot where all the volunteers parked our cars, a couple of blocks away from the office.  The area was in lock down until the police finished their investigation.  So we were stuck in the office even after all our assembly-line packets had passed their final inspections.  I’m guessing the shooter wasn’t a sportsman using a hunting rifle that he was legally carrying pursuant to his Second Amendment right to bear arms.

Casey Stengel once said something like this about the baseball games his fledgling, inept 1962 Mets played:  “They may be bad, but at least they’re long.”  In that spirit, I’m pleased to report that we spent 12-14 hours a day, seven days a week, performing the work I just summarized.

And we often had to improvise, either because we ran out of supplies or because we lacked sufficient cell phones, computers, printers and photocopiers.   What more could we have expected?  After all, $500 million in campaign funds can only go so far.

Then there was the food.  Thanks to generous donations from local volunteers, we had practically an infinite supply of donuts and pizza.  Just about every day.  For 30 days.  Much to my surprise, I didn’t feel like I was in heaven.

Don’t get me wrong.  Donuts and pizza are my two favorite food groups.  But the donuts were mostly from a local bakery and, while quite delicious, they were just a tad sweeter than the omnipresent Dunkin Donuts variety.  Indeed, they appeared to be comprised of fried sugar, filled with liquid sugar and topped with glazed or frosted sugar. 

As for the pizza, the best we had could be described as almost as good as average New York pizza.  As the urban legend goes, neither New York pizza nor New York bagels can be replicated elsewhere because of their secret ingredient – New York City tap water.

On Saturday, November 1, we moved our operation to a new location – the basement warehouse of a semi-abandoned industrial building – for the culmination of the campaign:  Our “Get Out The Vote” effort.  Did this improve things?  Nope!  The warehouse was dark, dank and chilly.  Even more donuts and pizza were served.  And we continued to do the exact same thing we’d been doing for weeks – assembling canvassing packets and training and processing volunteers for door-to-door canvassing and phone-banking.  They knocked on more than 10,000 doors that Saturday alone.  The next day, they distributed door-hangers (placards summarizing key information about Election Day) to 20,000 homes.  We kept assembling, canvassing, phone-calling and stuffing our faces with unhealthy food right up until 8:00 p.m. on Election Night.  That’s when MSNBC – which we were watching in our warehouse bunker on streaming video from a laptop computer – declared Obama the victor in Pennsylvania.     

So let’s recap (for those of you keeping score at home):  My month as an Obama volunteer consisted of long days of boring work and bad, unhealthy food in dingy offices in a depressed, depressing, dangerous city.  In other words, it was the best experience of my life!  I wouldn’t trade it even for a Mets World Championship.

How can this be?  One word:  Camaraderie.  After the Pennsylvania results were announced, we all went to a local brew house to watch the national returns.  And when Obama was declared President at 11:00 p.m., we erupted – unbridled joy, pride, relief and a sense of accomplishment.  Surprisingly, my eyes teared up.  Because I was thinking of what this would have meant to my father?  A little.  Mostly, though, because I felt like I was part of that delicious, diverse olio of people I mentioned earlier.  And, although we exchanged contact information and promised to stay in touch as we congratulated each other with hugs and high fives, I realized that this had been a once-in-a-lifetime experience; we’d never manage to replicate this recipe again.

Whatever.  We’d succeeded in electing Obama President.  And, no matter what happens in the future, we’ll always have 917 Hamilton.  

Death, by Baseball

(Redux)

The good thing about believing in reincarnation is that it’s helped me come to grips with my own mortality.  I’m not as scared as I used to be about dying because I know I’ll be back here again soon.

Of course, you can’t be re-born over and over again unless you also keep re-dying over and over again.  Which is the bad thing about believing in reincarnation.  After all, who wants to keep dying?  Not me!  Frankly, dying once would be more than enough.  But, I guess, multiple deaths inevitably come with the territory for those of us who believe that we have all been here before.

Just as each of our past lives – while sharing common themes – is different from one another, each of our deaths is also different.  In the Middle Ages, for example, the King executed me despite my being a popular, champion jouster just because he caught me checking out the Queen during one of my victory trots.  Later, in the early 1800s, I drowned off a pirate ship near Amelia Island, Florida.  Although it’s not clear whether I was a pirate, a prisoner or a rescuer.

It’s these fuzzy, partial memories of past lives (and deaths) that explain the phenomenon known as déjà vu. They also account for phobias.  For example, despite being a competent swimmer, I’ve panicked several times during my current life while I was in the ocean.  And I’m not a big fan of horses.

All of which naturally brings me to the 2008 New York Mets.  As I sat at Shea Stadium awaiting the first pitch of last Sunday’s game, a feeling of déjà vu-style dread enveloped me.  Just like last year, the Mets were playing the Marlins.  Just like last year, they had won the day before thanks to a great effort by their starting pitcher.  Just like last year, the Mets’ starting pitcher Sunday was a talented lefty whose future with the team was uncertain because he was scheduled to become a free agent at season’s end.  And, just like last year, they were still in the playoff race because their chief rival surprisingly had lost on Saturday, leaving the two clubs in a flat-footed tie.  A Mets win therefore would guarantee, at the very least, a “play-in” game on Monday.  Just like last year.

These eerie parallels were not good.  Because we all know what happened in 2007:  Tom Glavine lasted a measly one-third of an inning, the Marlins scored seven runs in that initial frame and the season, for all intents and purposes, was over.  It was so painful that I even wrote an essay about it at the time, entitled “Death, by Baseball.”

So, when Oliver Perez set down the Marlins in order in the top of the first inning, I breathed a sigh of relief.  Apparently, so did some 55,000 other fans.  Because one could feel a palpable release of tension throughout the old ballpark as we all reached the same happy conclusion: This game would end differently from last year’s debacle.

Indeed, Perez pitched five scoreless innings.  Of course, so did the Marlin hurler.  Then Florida scored a pair in the top of the sixth.  But the Mets tied it on Carlos Beltran’s two-run homer in the bottom of the inning.  So it was all even as we went to the seventh. 

That’s when it happened.  Endy Chavez made a circus catch in left field to end the top of the seventh and prevent the Marlins from taking the lead.  And even though the game was still tied, I again felt that sense of déjà vu dread.  Because I was sure I had seen something like this before.  And it hadn’t turned out so well.

Sure enough, in the top of the eighth a much-maligned Met reliever gave up a solo homer to an unlikely batter.  This death, I realized, wouldn’t be like the last game of 2007 at all.  Instead, it would be more like the last game of 2006, when the Mets fell at home to the Cardinals in Game Seven of the NLCS. 

Just as I thought.  Naturally, as with all re-deaths, this death turned out a little differently.  The unlikely, tie-breaking Cardinal homer had occurred in the ninth, not the eighth.  The Marlins hit a second homerun against a different reliever in the eighth to take a two-run lead.  The Mets had the winning run at the plate in the bottom of the eighth this time (not the ninth).  And Carlos Delgado ripped one to the warning track in left to end that threat (which probably was better – but might have been worse – than watching Carlos Beltran look at strike three back in ’06).

The bottom line, though, is that the Mets died yet again, for the 45th time in their 47-year history.  And they will be reincarnated for a 46th  time next April. To make things a little different, they’ll have a new home by then. So, the next time we watch them die, at least we won’t be able to say, “We have all been here before.”         

They Are What They Are

Question:  So, were the 2008 Mets an underachieving team or an overachieving team?  Answer:  Yes!  In fact, they were underachieving overachievers.  And vice versa.  Huh?  Well, let me explain.

At the beginning of the season, the Mets appeared – at least on paper – to be a championship-caliber team.  So, by failing to make the playoffs, they obviously underachieved.  Except they suffered all those key injuries.  Seven, to be exact.  Including to three of their eight starting position players (leftfielder, Moises Alou; rightfielder, Ryan Church; and second baseman, Luis Castillo), to three of their five starting pitchers (Pedro Martinez, Orlando Hernandez and John Maine), and to their closer (Billy Wagner).  So, by managing to come within one game of making the playoffs despite missing all these guys, they clearly overachieved.

But wait. Notwithstanding these and other injuries, the Mets had a 3 and 1/2-game division lead on the Phillies (four in the all-important loss column) on September 10 and a 1 and 1/2-game wild-card lead on the Brewers (two in the all-important loss column) on September 22.  And still blew it.  So, they must have underachieved.

Except they didn’t have a single reliable bullpen pitcher at all during September.  By somehow managing to stay alive until the last day of the season under such dire circumstances, they had to have overachieved.

On the other hand, the Mets’ core of four – Reyes, Wright, Beltran and Delgado – each wound up having solid statistical seasons.  In fact, all but Beltran were touted at one point or another as a potential league MVP.  Johan Santana lived up to his hype as an ace.  Mike Pelfrey had his breakout season as a starting pitcher.  And the team got other surprising contributions from unlikely sources – like Fernando Tatis, Nick Evans, Damion Easley and Daniel Murphy.  Yet they still fell short.  In other words, they were underachievers.

Bill Parcells has always said this about his football teams: “We are what our record says we are.”  The 2008 Mets finished with 89-72 record, just bad enough not to qualify for Major League Baseball’s post-season for the second consecutive year.  Which makes them both overachieving underachievers and underachieving overachievers.  Or, in short, a team where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.  And vice versa.        

It’s Because He’s Black, Stupid!

Political pundits are having trouble reconciling the seemingly oxymoronic information coming out of this 2008 presidential election campaign.  On the one hand, they see this: (1) an unpopular, two-term incumbent Republican president; (2) an unpopular foreign war; (3) a broken economy; (4) a Republican candidate who’s generally supported the unpopular administration; and (4) a charismatic, inspirational “rock star” of a Democratic contender.  This should mean a Democratic landslide on November 4.  Heck, even a vanilla, pedestrian, run-of-the-mill challenger like Mike Dukakis, Walter Mondale or John Kerry could win this contest easily. Come to think of it, George McGovern probably would prevail.

On the other hand, though, polling data suggests that the election is boiling down to one, big cliché.  As in “neck and neck,” “too close to call,” and “down to the wire.”

How can this be? What’s the disconnect?

Well, there is no disconnect.  To the contrary, there’s a perfectly logical explanation for the closeness of the presidential race.  And the explanation can be summarized with the word I just used to finish the previous sentence. (I’ll wait while you look back).  That’s right, the problem is that Barack Obama is a black man (or an African-American or person of color, depending on the description currently in vogue in the lexicon of political correctness).  And, let’s face it, there are plenty of white Americans who won’t vote for him just because of his color.

They generally won’t tell the pollsters that, of course.  Instead, they’ll say that Obama’s too inexperienced.  Or that he won’t be tough enough on our foreign enemies.  Or that he’ll raise everyone’s taxes and increase the size of government.  But these aren’t real reasons. They’re mere pretexts.  Lame excuses.  There’s only one real reason – Obama is black.

Don’t believe me? Then check out a front-page article in the September 19 edition of The Jewish Week.  According to the story, there is a growing perception within Jewish communities everywhere – like in Colorado, Florida and California – that Jews are reluctant to vote for Obama because he’s black.  Especially among older Jews, there’s a sense that Obama is somehow connected to a segment of the African-American community that is anti-Semitic and anti-Israel; they look at Obama and see Louis Farrakhan.

Still, polls show that Obama actually may do better come November with Jewish voters than with other segments of the population.  Like, for example, Democrats. Democrats?  Yes, Democrats!   A recent AP-Yahoo News poll found that one-third of white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks — many calling them "lazy," "violent" and responsible for their own troubles.  Whoa! With friends like that, who needs enemies?

Please don’t get me wrong.  I’m not faulting the pundits for failing to recognize the 800-lb.gorilla in the room.  Nor am I criticizing the Obama campaign for refusing to confront the problem head-on.  To the contrary, it’s kind of refreshing that both the media and the candidate are so sanguine and idealistic about race.  They see things as they should be and ask, “Why not?”  I hope they’re right to ignore the issue.  Maybe the electorate will, too.  If they judge Obama by the content of his character rather than the color of his skin, Obama should win in a landslide.

But the cynic in me worries that the average American voter isn’t as color-blind as the media or the candidate.  And that, in the privacy of the voting booth, he’ll vote his prejudice rather than his conscience.  If so, then Obama actually could lose.

My concern really hit home last week.  At, of all places, Manhattan’s Second Avenue Deli, where I was eating a corned beef sandwich.  A fellow patron (and a complete stranger), noticing my “Obama ‘08” button, engaged me in a little good-natured teasing over the campaign controversy du jour – Obama’s “lipstick on a pig remark” and the Republicans’ mock-horror reaction to it.  He concluded with this line:  “I guess you just have to call a spade a spade.”  Then he laughed diabolically, saying that he’d been waiting all day to make the comment.

Oy!  

Back to the Future!

To me, William F. Buckley was the exemplar of modern America’s conservative movement – urbane, intellectual, sophisticated, elitist, cosmopolitan.  His unique brand of conservatism dominated the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies, paving the way for such current-day pundits as George Will, David Brooks, Charles Krauthammer, David Frum and Ross Douthat.

But it’s beginning to look more and more like Buckley’s brand of conservatism may have been a historical aberration.   The norm – conservatism of the masses (as practiced by guys named Norm) – is a horse of a completely different color.  More of a populist movement in the spirit of William Jennings Bryan, an anti-intellectual, xenophobic doctrine in the tradition of the “Know Nothing Party,” an insular, parochial philosophy reminiscent of the isolationists.

I know this because of a recent event that unified and energized America’s grass-roots conservatives like nothing I’ve ever seen before:  McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate.  And Ms. Palin, my friends, is no Bill Buckley.

David Brooks acknowledged as much in his column in the September 15 New York Times.  In fact, he identified Palin as the product of a populist conservative movement that favors practical knowledge over book knowledge, simplicity over sophistication and instinct over deliberation.

What’s wrong with that?  Well, a whole bunch of things come to my mind.  But, as a lifelong liberal, I’m not exactly an impartial observer.  So let’s instead listen again to our Mr. Brooks.  Governance, his column said, is hard.  It requires acquired skills like prudence. Which comes through experience. Which comes through “personal involvement in or the study of history.”

That’s why the Buckley-ites stood for classical education, hard-earned knowledge and the wisdom that is acquired “through immersion in the best that has been thought and said.”  In other words, the very background that Barack Obama has.  And the type of background that Sarah Palin and her supporters seem so proud of not having.

It’s no wonder, then, that David Brooks – like fellow conservatives George Will, Charles Krauthammer, David Frum and Ross Douthat – has now criticized the Palin choice. He even made a chilling comparison to President Bush – like Dubya, he noted, Palin “seems to compensate for her lack of experience with brashness and excessive decisiveness.”

Despite Brooks’s concern – or, more likely, precisely because of it – all the hard-core, anti-intellectual, parochial, isolationist, xenophobic, know-nothing conservatives are in love with Sarah Palin.  They’re happily taking a long step back to the 19th century.  Which, being conservatives, they naturally see as progress.  In the meantime, though, poor William F. Buckley must be rolling over in his grave. 

Adding Insult to Injury

Despite the carefully-choreographed unity fest that was last week’s Democratic National Convention, many Hillary Clinton supporters – those now-famous 18-million glass-ceiling shatterers – were still licking their wounds Friday, wondering what to do next.  Should they throw their support behind the Obama/Biden ticket?  Vote for McCain?  Sit on the sidelines? 

The answer came quickly.  From an unexpected source – the McCain campaign. Courtesy of its surprise announcement that Sarah Palin, the little-known Governor of Alaska, would be McCain’s running mate.  McCain’s rationale for the choice was this: Palin is a young, dynamic, maverick reformer and Washington outsider who epitomizes the core philosophy of the conservative wing of the Republican Party.  Fair enough.

But there must have been any number of men available who met all these criteria and also have more executive and foreign policy experience than Ms. Palin.  So there had to have been a subliminal subtext to the Palin choice.  One that turned out to be about as subtle as a punch in the face: “Hey, Hillary fans.  Upset that the Democrats didn’t choose her to be their candidate for president?  Angry that Obama didn’t even pick her as his running mate? Then vote for us.  We’re the real party of change.  After all, we even have a woman running for vice-president!”

Pretty compelling.  Except for this:  Other than their female body parts, Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton have absolutely nothing whatsoever in common.  Indeed, philosophically, the two women couldn’t be more different.  Hillary supports a woman’s right to choose, while Sarah is against that right.  Hillary supports gay marriage, while Sarah is against it.  Sarah supports the teaching of creationism in public schools, while Hillary opposes such an idea.  Sarah wants to drill for oil in Alaska, while Hillary doesn’t.  Sarah supported Pat Buchanan for President in 2000 (I guess W wasn’t conservative enough for her), while Hillary supported Al Gore.  Hillary opposes the continued war in Iraq, while Sarah. . . .

Wait a second.  Do we even know Sarah’s position on the Iraq War?  According to Internet research, she told the Alaska Business Monthly in early 2007 that she hadn’t even thought about the upcoming surge. "I've been so focused on state government, I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq," she said.  And seven months into the surge, Sarah still didn’t seem to have an opinion of the war. "I'm not here to judge the idea of withdrawing, or the timeline," she said in a teleconference interview with reporters during a July 2007 visit with Alaska National Guard troops stationed in Kuwait. "I'm not going to judge even the surge. I'm here to find out what Alaskans need of me as their governor."  Hmmm.

Come to think of it, we don’t really know what Sarah thinks about much of anything (although I swear I heard her say "nucular" the other day).  She’s only been on the national stage for about a minute.  In sharp contrast, we know everything about Hillary.  Including where she stands on every issue.  For better or worse, she’s been on the national stage for nearly two decades.

The differences between Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin are so stark that the mere suggestion that Hillary supporters should now vote for McCain because of her presence on the ticket is laughable.  Which is what makes McCain’s choice of Palin so insulting and offensive to those 18 million Hillary supporters.   And why the choice therefore virtually compels them to support Obama/Biden.

Funny how John McCain’s choice of a running mate may actually do more than the Democratic Convention itself to finally unite the Democrats behind Obama.     

Different Wavelengths

I guess I’m “old school” when it comes to baseball.  A purist who firmly believes that the game’s the thing.  In other words, I go to a game for one reason – to watch the game.  Which, these days, apparently puts me in the minority of fans.

In fact, ball parks aren’t even ball parks any more.  They’re now “entertainment venues.”  Places that feature food, drink, music, games and prizes.  Places where – every so often – a ballgame actually breaks out.

So I’ve had to make some adjustments during my visits to Shea Stadium this season.  I’ve learned to tolerate the “Pepsi Party Patrol,” which shoots souvenir t-shirts into the crowd.  I’ve come to accept the sundry trivia games and other giveaways involving various “lucky fans.”  I even grin and bear it when it’s time for the insipid “smile cam,” the absurdity of which is surpassed only by the dreaded “kiss-cam.”

I rationalize these indignities by reminding myself that they all occur between innings.  And, therefore, they don’t directly interfere with my enjoyment of the game.  I can still check the positioning of the fielders, keep track of the pitch count, follow each batter’s stats, note the speed of each pitch and even “scoreboard watch” the other relevant games of the day.   

But there’s one ballpark ritual that I simply cannot abide.  One that the so-called fans actually inflict on themselves. 

Take the other night (please).  The Mets had squandered yet another early lead, and were now tied with the moribund Braves as Atlanta batted in the top of the ninth inning.  Suddenly, with two outs and the go-ahead run on first base, a huge roar rose from the crowd.  Were they rooting hard for the crucial last out?  Nope.  They were “doing the wave.”   And, consequently, not even paying attention when a passed ball on a swinging strike moved the lead run into scoring position.  Or when Met Manager Jerry Manuel came out to argue that the ball actually had been fouled off.  Or when Manuel came out a second time because the scoreboard incorrectly recorded the count as 3-1 instead of 2-2.  Or when (as I let out a sigh of relief) the relief pitcher finally succeeded in retiring the batter and preserving the tie.  Whew!

To everyone’s delight, the Mets pushed across the winning run in the bottom of the ninth.  All’s well that ends well.  But this begs the point:  In the crucial top of the ninth, with the game in the balance, no one except me even seemed to be paying attention.  Which was pretty disturbing to this fan.

Like I said, I guess I’m old school when it comes to baseball.

Tele-Procrastination

Thanks to the miracle of micro-technology, more and more of us can enjoy the luxury and convenience of working from home these days, at least some of the time.  It’s a simple case of “Have Laptop, Will Travel.”  Even though my own office (LIE Exit 49) is just a ten-minute drive from my home (LIE Exit 48), I now find myself working pretty regularly from my living room couch.  So regularly, in fact, that I’m thinking of closing my office altogether.

After all, I reason, why waste money on office rent?  Especially since I can get more done at home, where I’m not constantly being interrupted by such annoying distractions as phone calls, faxes, mail and express package deliveries.  Not to mention the incessant visits from my officemate’s clients.

Just the other morning, for example, I was in my office, trying in vain to do some routine paper-less paper work (including a little book-less bookkeeping) amid what felt like a three-ring circus.  So I decided to go home.  Where, I figured, I’d be able to easily finish my boring but necessary clerical work in just a couple of hours.

A short time later, there I was:  Nestled comfortably in my couch, with my dog snuggled up against me.  It was 11:30; I’d be finished by lunchtime.  I opened my laptop and got ready to work.  But wait.  There was an email from my officemate.  Better open it. It might be important.

Well, it turned out that he was just giving me a link to one of those clever political blogs which, he claimed, featured a particularly amusing article.  What the heck?  Might as well check it out. It would only take a minute.

As usual, my officemate was right.  The article was hilarious.  Not only that, but the site had a bunch of other funny pieces, too.  And links to other similarly clever blog sites that I couldn’t help but visit.

After reading 10 or 20 articles on three or seven sites, I closed my internet browser and got ready to work.  But wait.  There was an email from one of my “adult children” (how’s that for an oxymoron?).  Better open it.  It might be important.

Turns out he was only forwarding me a link to a YouTube segment featuring the late George Carlin being interviewed by Ralph Kiner during a rain delay in some random 1980s Mets game.  Pretty entertaining .  As were the 12 other George Carlin clips I ended up watching.   And there were many more.  But I had work to do.  So, exercising a little unusually impressive self-discipline and restraint, I again closed my internet browser and went to open my accounting software program.

That’s when I saw the email from my neighbor.  Better open it.  It might be important. Nope.  He was merely sending me one of those on-line intelligence tests.  I love those tests!  And they only take a few minutes.

After finishing the test, I emailed it to everyone I know, along with my impressive score. Okay, time to work.  I could still be done before dinner.

By the way, have I mentioned how comfy my couch is?  Whatever!  The bottom line is that, when I woke from my nap, it was 6:00 p.m.  The dog needed to be walked and fed, the Mets game was starting soon and – having missed both lunch and dinner – I was starving. I’d do the paperless paperwork tomorrow.  From a location with fewer annoying distractions than my living room couch.

Maybe I should keep my office after all.   

It Don’t Mean a Thing if it Ain’t Got that Swing

Ready for a pop quiz?  Okay, then:  Who’s the most powerful person in America? 

No, it’s not President Bush or Vice President Cheney.  Nor, for that matter, is it Obama or McCain.  And it’s not a mass-media mogul like Oprah, a sports star like Tiger Woods or a billionaire industrialist like Bill Gates.

Don’t spend too much time thinking about it.  Because chances are that you don’t know what the most powerful person in America looks like.  And you might not even recognize the person’s name.  Give up?  It’s . . . ta-da. . . Anthony Kennedy.  See? I told you you might not even recognize his name!

For the record, Kennedy’s been a United States Supreme Justice since Ronald Reagan appointed him to the post some 20 years ago. And, even though he’s just an Associate Justice, he’s more powerful than any of his eight robed colleagues (including Chief Justice Roberts.  Why?  Because they’re so highly polarized that they cancel each other out.  Four of them, in fact, sit on the left pole (Ginsburg, Stevens, Breyer and Souter), while the other four sit on the right pole (Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito).  Kennedy sits somewhere in the middle.  Which makes him the all-important swing judge.

That doesn’t necessarily mean he plays clarinet is the court’s jazz band (although – who knows? – maybe he does; after all, the High Court’s doings are cloaked in secrecy).  But it does mean that Kennedy’s is the vote that decides most of the controversial, hotly-contested constitutional issues of our time.

Take, for example, the three most highly-publicized decisions of the court’s just-concluded term: (1) The court ruled that capital punishment in rape cases was unconstitutional (a victory for liberals); (2) The court ruled that the Second Amendment created an individual right to bear arms (a victory for conservatives); and (3) The court ruled that Guantanamo detainees were entitled to the writ of habeas corpus (a victory for liberals).  The court decided each of these cases by a 5-4 vote.  And, in each case, the deciding vote was cast by . . . . . . you guessed it:  Anthony Kennedy.  A man who marches to the beat of his own drum:  Left, right, left, right, left.   

If you think these three decisions were mere anomalies, then think again.  In fact, think all the way back to 2000, when the Supreme Court decided the presidential election in the Bush v. Gore case.  That court was also polarized, with the aforementioned four liberals on the left and O'Connor, Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas on the right. That case was also decided by a 5-4 margin.  And, once again, it was Anthony Kennedy who broke the impasse.  And who single-handedly made George W. Bush president.  How’s that for power!

If only we could figure out how he decides whether to go left or right in a particular case.  Maybe he simply flips a coin.  Whatever.  There are two things we know for sure:  Ronald Reagan must roll over in his grave every time Kennedy sides with the liberals. And, regardless of how Kennedy votes, I bet that – somewhere up in heaven – Benny Goodman is smiling.

Ready, Aim, Fire

It’s a time-honored, universally-recognized rule of statutory interpretation:  In determining the meaning of a provision, a court must give effect to every clause.  The rule makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?  After all, the drafters of the law being construed obviously had reasons for every word they chose; so it just wouldn’t be right for a court simply to ignore some of them.  No wonder it’s a universally recognized rule!

At least it was universally recognized until last week.  That’s when five guys decided to ignore the rule.  Which, normally, wouldn’t have been such a big deal.  Except that the five guys happened to be U.S. Supreme Court justices.  And, by choosing to ignore the rule, they were able to render a landmark decision, holding for the first time that the Second Amendment to our Constitution confers on individuals the right to own guns.

For the record, the Second Amendment, in its entirety, reads as follows:  “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”  That’s right.  It’s just 27 words.  And the first 12 of them plainly explain why the drafters felt it was important for people to be allowed to have guns.  It was because “a well regulated Militia” was “necessary to the security of a free State,” and the only way to arm the militia was for each member to bring his own musket.

Compare this to the First Amendment, which goes like this:  “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”  No explanatory, prefatory language here.  Why not?  Because, unlike the right bear arms, the founders intended freedom of religion, speech, the press, assembly and petition to be absolute, individual rights.

In its decision last week, though, the Supreme Court majority – the Gang of Four (Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito), plus occasional Gang member Kennedy – acted as if those 12 explanatory words at the beginning of the Second Amendment weren’t even there.  Instead, they relied exclusively on the last 15 words of the provision, treating it like the First Amendment.  Despite the obvious language differences in the two amendments.

So much for the doctrines of strict construction and original intent that the conservatives are always preaching about.  What a joke.  Just shoot me!          

Bye, George

To many Americans, George Carlin’s stand-up routine about the “seven words you can’t say on television” is his singular legacy.  And, in a way, that’s a shame. 

Don’t get me wrong.  The “seven dirty words” shtick is a great comedic piece. But putting it on a pedestal tends to foster the perception of many Americans that Carlin was “that comic who used all those curse words.”  And that perception – while true – diminishes George’s genius.

Because, first and foremost, Carlin was a social critic who used his unique brand of observational humor to shine the bright light of counter-cultural examination on just about every American institution – politics, religion, mass media, sports, ad infinitum. And, in each instance, his principal tool for dissecting his subject was the English language.

Sure, profanity often dominated his routines.  But so what? To Carlin, they were just words.  Which was the whole point of his “seven dirty words” routine. As a bonus, the seven words – and an infinite number of creative variations thereof – sometimes happen to describe thoughts and feelings more precisely than their non-profane cousins.

Whatever.  The point is that the “seven dirty words” routine might not even be Carlin’s best work.  Consider these classics, none of which required “curse words” to be hilarious:  A place for my stuff; Baseball vs. football; Contradictions in terms (like military intelligence, jumbo shrimp and forward lateral); American militarism (we’ve always killed brown people, except during WWII when we came after the Nazis only because they were trying to get in on our action); Ecology (God created Man because He didn’t know how to make plastic); Airplanes (“Let Evel Knievel get on the plane; I’m getting in the plane”.  I can go on and on and on.

By the way, while the “seven dirty words” routine led to a lawsuit, the result of the litigation didn’t further the cause of free speech.  To the contrary, the U.S. Supreme Court, in its infinite wisdom, ruled that the FCC had the authority to regulate the language spoken on the airwaves.  And Carlin wasn’t even a party to the suit. It was WBLI – the Long Island radio station that the FCC fined for broadcasting the piece – that unsuccessfully challenged the FCC’s action.

So, despite what people might think, I doubt that George Carlin arrived in heaven swearing like a sailor.  It’s much more likely that he approached the cop guarding the pearly gates and said this:  “You’re a public servant.  So bring me a drink of water.”        

Listless

The dictionary definition of “listless” is “lacking in desire or spirit.”  It’s origin?  How people might feel in a world without lists.  I say this because I’m convinced that modern society couldn’t survive without lists; they dominate virtually every aspect of our day-to-day lives, from cradle to grave.  And, to demonstrate my point, here are my top eleven examples (see what I mean?):

(If you’re like me, you’ll want to have some background music playing in your head while you read this list.  Maybe something classically deep and important, like – I dunno – “Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2.”)

              1.Birth – As soon as we’re born, medical personnel welcome us into the world by calculating our Apgar scores; they go through a list of specific tests and observations to measure our physical condition and mental alertness.

              2.School – Homework is nothing more than a checklist of the school work we’re expected to do at home.  I used to take great pride in crossing each homework assignment off my list as I completed it.  In fact, my only reason for doing homework in the first place was so I could obliterate the tasks from the list as I finished them.

              3.Summer Camp – How would we ever have known what we needed to bring to camp without the ubiquitous “camp list”?

              4.College – Whatever you majored in – History, Business, Biochemistry, Basket-Weaving – your degree was based on completing a list of required courses.

              5.Romance – “How do I love thee?,” Robert Browning rhetorically asked Elizabeth Barrett, “Let me count the ways.”

              6.Marriage – The one relationship where “honey do” is a list, not a melon.

              7.Dining out – The menu, of course.

              8.Television – In the beginning, there was Lawrence Welk – “A one and a two and a three.”  Then, the Count of Sesame Street – “1, 2, 3; 1, 2, 3.” Nowadays, we have all those insipid “specials” on E, MTV and VH-1.  Like “The 20 Most Drug-Addicted Child Stars of the ‘80s,”  “The 50 Ugliest Disco Outfits of the ‘70s” and “The 100 Dumbest Lists Ever.”   

              9.Self-Improvement Books – Just about every best-selling self-help book is organized around a list.  Like “List-Writing for Dummies.”  I’m joking, of course.  But there really is a book entitled – ta-da – “The Book of Lists.”

              10.The Golden Years – The “Bucket List.”

              11.Death – The newspaper’s obituary page, which you share with the day’s other dead people.

So, folks, there you have it.  Lists are everywhere.  And, without them, life would be listless.  At the very least, we’d all be listing around aimlessly. 

(“Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2” provided courtesy of its composer, Franz Liszt.)

 It’s All My Fault

(An Open Letter to Willie Randolph)

I’m so sorry the Mets fired you, Willie.  Because – while you certainly weren’t a great manager – you weren’t the one responsible for the Mets’ chronic malaise.  Neither were your coaches.  Or, for that matter, Omar Minaya or the Wilpons.

While I’m on the subject, you shouldn’t blame Carlos Delgado (for his age), Moises Alou (for his injuries), Carlos Beltran (for his apparent diffidence), Jose Reyes (for his maddening inconsistency), the starting pitchers (for not surviving deep enough into games) or the relief pitchers (for too often throwing gasoline on the fire).  And definitely not the fans or media (for their negativity).

The fact is that – after much soul-searching – I’m compelled to make this startling public confession:  The Mets’ utterly inadequate on-field performance over the past year is entirely my fault.  Let me explain.

It all started innocently enough in late May, 2007.  I was in my law office, minding my own business, when I received a phone call from one of the Mets’ sales representatives.  He wanted to know whether I was interested in purchasing season tickets for the balance of the 2007 campaign.  Such ticket ownership, he explained, would give me the right of first refusal to purchase seats for the playoffs.  Also, if I renewed the seats in 2008 (the last season at Shea Stadium), I’d be entitled to buy season tickets for 2009 – the inaugural season at the much ballyhooed new home for the team, Citi Field.  

It was an intriguing idea for this life-long Mets fan.  So, because I can never make a major decision without obsessively agonizing over it for a while, I promised the salesman that I’d think about it and get back to him.  When I say something like that, it usually means that I’m making a decision by not making a decision.  But I surprised myself this time.  Because, a few days later, on June 1, 2007, I actually made good for a change on my promise and called back the rep.   And, just, like that, I was a Mets season ticketholder.  

At the time, the Mets – who had come thisclose to reaching the World Series in 2006 – were off to a promising start in 2007.  They already had a healthy lead in the NL East, and their appearance in the postseason was a foregone conclusion.  The only drama seemed to be what player changes – if any – they might make to ensure the ultimate success.  I  couldn’t wait to watch my team win the world championship, up close and personal.

Well, as they say, “the best laid plans of Mets and men. . . .” Because, since that fateful day last year, the team’s record (through June 15, 2008) has been 87-91 – more than a full season of mediocrity.  And this “streak” includes the Mets’ infamous late season collapse of ‘07, when they somehow managed to squander a seemingly safe seven-game division lead with just 17 games left – an unprecedented collapse.

I was dutifully there for the last game of the season, when 300-game winner and future hall-of-famer Tom Glavine inexplicably managed to record just one measly out against a Florida Marlins squad that had absolutely nothing to play for, leaving the crowd in a state of shock.

This was when it first occurred to me that I might be responsible for the state of the team.  I immediately dismissed it as crazy thinking.  But when it came time for me to renew my tickets a few months later, I nevertheless decided to change the location of my seats.  You know, just to be safe.

It didn’t work.  I was there on Opening Day, when the Mets lost in to their hated rivals, the Phillies.  I was there for Johan Santana’s first home start, when the crowd booed their newest savior off the mound after a less than stellar performance.  And so on, and so on.  Ad nauseum. Three times already this season, the Mets have lost home games that they’d led at one point by at least four runs.  That’s never happened before in the team’s 47-year history.  Not even in 1962, when Casey Stengel’s expansion “Amazin’”Mets set an all-time Major League record for futility by winning just 40 games the whole season!

When the murmering about your job security started a few weeks ago, I did what I could to help.  I stopped going to games.  And I began listing my seats for sale on StubHub.com, on a game-by-game basis.  But, alas, I guess it was a classic case of too little, too late.  At least in terms of saving your job.

So, Willie, I apologize. I’m embarrassed and ashamed by my behavior.  I should have done something sooner instead of letting you twist in the wind.

Needless to say, I won’t be renewing my tickets next year. . . . On second thought, though, it’s really not too late for the Mets to get hot, go on a streak and make the playoffs this season.  And it sure would be nice to be a season ticket-holder for the 2009 campaign at that spanking new ballpark. Hmmm.

Okay, so let me apologize in advance to the Wilpons, Omar Minaya, Jerry Manuel, the coaches, players and Mets fans everywhere for whatever unspeakable horrors may be lurking in the shadows ahead.  Because anything that goes wrong will be all my fault.   

Lost in Translation

Many Americans hate the French.  And the feeling seems to be mutual.  But it wasn’t always this way.  To the contrary, our peoples once were practically joined at the hip because they shared a rich, common tradition – the love of freedom.

For example, Jeffersonian Democracy – as embodied in our own Declaration of Independence – drew heavily upon the enlightened ideas and ideals of French political philosophers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau.  The French, in turn,  used the American Revolution as inspiration for their own 1789 uprising.  The two revolutions even spawned similar sound bites:  “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” and “Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite.”

Alas, the French Revolution didn’t go quite as smoothly as its American counterpart.  First, there was that annoying little guillotine problem.  Then, there was that annoying little general who made himself emperor (and created one helluva pastry).

Eventually, though, the French finally figured out the whole democratic republic thing.  Or did they?

Which brings me, naturally, to Bridget Bardot.  Because, in case you missed the recent newspaper articles, a French court just fined the erstwhile, iconic sex symbol (who now is 73, by the way) for violating France’s anti-bias laws.  Her transgression?  She made the following public statement:  “I am fed up with being under the thumb of this population [Muslim immigrants] which is destroying us, destroying our country and imposing its acts.”  

Strong words. What possibly could have motivated Bardot to say such a thing?  Fear of extreme Muslim terrorism?  Nope! Concern over the anti-Israel policies of Muslim countries?  Hardly!  The reason for her politically incorrect tirade was this:  Bardot’s a zealous an animal rights activist, and she was objecting to a public Muslim ritual that involved the sacrificial slaughter of goats. 

Of course, it doesn’t matter why she said what she said.  Regardless of her motives, her words should be protected from Government regulation by the linchpin of any free society – the right to freedom of speech.  Based on the applicable French statute, though, it looks like the First Amendment to our Constitution may not have made it across the Atlantic to France.  Or maybe our sacred Bill of Rights is what Napoleon kept hidden under his jacket all those years.  Sacre bleu!

Whatever.  The bottom line is that, here in America, we can say politically incorrect things without being fined by our Government.  Take Don Imus, for example.  He wasn’t fined for his tasteless remark about African-American women athletes.  He merely lost his job and his career.  Hmmm.  Maybe we’re more like the French than we’d care to acknowledge. Mon Dieu!

Boom!

No, I’m not talking about Tom Brokaw’s bestseller on the Baby Boom Generation.  I’m simply describing that deafening roar you heard Saturday, when Hillary Clinton once and for all ended whatever suspense still remained in the Democratic presidential nominating process by suspending her campaign and unequivocally endorsing Barack Obama.

What caused such a din?  The simultaneous sighs and groans of an entire demographic group – white, middle-class American women, age 45 and older.  In other words, Hillary’s core supporters.

You can’t blame them for being upset.  After all, it was this generation of women who led the feminist movement in the ‘60s and ‘70s.  It was this generation of women who most directly reaped the social and economic benefits of the movement in the ‘80s and ‘90s. And it was this generation of women who believed to a man (sorry, but for some reason “to a woman” just doesn’t sound right to me) that it was their manifest destiny for one of their own – Hillary Clinton – to be elected president of the United States in 2008. 

Then, suddenly, a black man – with a foreign sounding name, no less – came out of nowhere to steal both their thunder and the Democratic nomination to which Hillary was rightfully entitled.  What nerve!

No wonder that some of those in attendance for Hillary’s non-concession/ concession speech actually booed their heroine when she urged them to throw their support behind Obama. Their ugly mood was summed up by a woman who – when asked if she’ll vote for Obama – replied, “Not after what he did to Hillary.”  Hell hath no fury. . . .

So, it looks like Obama, for having the audacity to beat Hillary fair and square, may now have to do some fence-mending with women voters. Like, I dunno, maybe choosing a woman to be his running mate.  Claire McCaskill, perhaps.  As long as it’s not Hillary herself.

But middle-aged women aren’t the only demographic group who are angry with Obama.  Jews are unhappy with him, too.  Their purported reason?  He’s not a strong enough supporter of Israel.  That’s a serious charge.  It’s also untrue.  At least according to one of the leading pro-Israel lobbying groups in Washington – AIPAC.  It recently announced that McCain, Clinton and Obama are all “strong friend[s] of AIPAC and dedicated proponent[s] of the special relationship between the United States and Israel.”  Case closed.

What’s really eating at Jewish voters is this:  They believe to a mensch that a Jew should ascend to the White House before an African American does.  How else does one explain the pride Jews felt when Joe Lieberman ran as Al Gore’s vice presidential candidate in 2000, even though Lieberman’s own political views arguably varied significantly from those of many American Jews?  Even now, some traditionally Democratic Jews claim they’ll vote for McCain if he chooses Lieberman as his running mate.  “Oy, vey,” they sighed in unison Saturday, adding to the boom.

I guess Obama has more fence-mending to do.  Maybe his veep should be a Jewish woman, like Diane Feinstein.

That won’t help Obama with Latino voters, though, who – you guessed it – are also unhappy with him.  The conventional wisdom is that Latinos are loyal to the Clintons, who have strongly supported Latino issues over the years.  But their real issue is that, al hombre, they feel a Latino should become president before a black man does.  “Ay carramba,” they said Saturday, further increasing the boom’s decibel level. 

Oh-oh!  Does anyone know a Jewish, Latino woman in politics whom Obama can name as his vice presidential candidate?  Ideally, she should come from a key swing state, like Pennsylvania or Florida.  If such a person exists, she would be quite an asset to Obama’s campaign.  And the Dems could really lower the boom on McCain.       

Time, and Time Again

I’ve never been a fan of horse-racing.  For one thing, I don’t believe in “gaming” (the politically correct euphemism for gambling, betting and wagering, all of which the state has outlawed except when the state itself is in on the action; it’s good to be the state!).  And, anyway, I worry about the health of the poor horses.

Still, on a sultry June Saturday in 1971, hobbling around on a recently fractured ankle, there I was – along with a college buddy and 100,000 or so other folks – at Belmont Park to watch the Belmont Stakes (the third jewel of horse-racing’s Triple Crown). Why? Because a South American colt named Canonero II had unexpectedly won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness (the first two jewels of this metaphoric headpiece).  And It had been eons since any horse had captured the Triple Crown – 25 years to be exact (Citation accomplished the feat way back in 1948).  So I had a rare opportunity to witness sports history first-hand.

Alas, it was not to be.  Canonero II finished out of the money that day, to the utter disappointment of everyone in attendance.  Except, of course, those who’d bet on Pass Catcher, the 25-1 shot who won the race.  Oh, well. C’est la vie!

I’ve been reminiscing about that day lately because of all the hoopla over the upcoming Belmont Stakes, when Big Brown makes a bid for the Triple Crown.   But I won’t be there this time.  Frankly, I don’t understand what all the fuss is about.  After all, it’s only been a short while since a horse last won the Triple Crown – 30 years to be exact (Affirmed accomplished the feat in 1978).

Huh?  How is it possible for 25 years to be a long time in 1971, while 30 years is a short time in 2008?  Have our units of time devalued over the years, like the dollar?  Of course not.  An hour is an hour is an hour.  So, then, what’s the answer?

Well, you don’t need to be an Einstein to figure it out.  It’s simple:  Time is relative.  The older you are, the faster time seems to go by.  A year seems like a long time when you’re five because it represents 20% of your life.  At age 50, though, that same year seems like a short time because it’s a mere 2% of your life.

Speaking of relatives, my father was 55 that June day in 1971.  Which seemed old to me then (I was 18 at the time).  I’m 55 now.  Which seems pretty young.  See how it works?

And, while I’m on the subject, I have a son who’s named for my father.  My son’s 28.  When I was his age, I’d already sired (sorry, but the essay is about horses, sort of) two kids.  And I felt really old (in fact, I’d never been older).  But my son seems way too young to me to be a father himself (although he, too, has never been older). The theory of time relativity strikes again!

The good news is this:  We can all look forward to the day when 90 seems young to us.  Because that would mean that we made it there.  Woo-hoo!

Of course, you may not agree with my theory at all.  Oh, well, that’s what makes horse-racing.  

Time Machines

New York’s 1964 World’s Fair came at just the right time in my life.  I was 11 – old enough to understand  the exposition and young enough not to be jaded by it. 

And what an exposition it was!  The “world of the future” pavilions – like G.E.’s, G.M.’s and the phone company’s (that’s right, boys and girls, there used to be only one phone company) – were truly fascinating.  Because they previewed so many space-age gismos that promised to save me lots of time when I grew up, which would definitely make my adulthood easier.  Life was going to be great!

I can’t say for sure whether any of these product prototypes ever actually made it to market, because the sheer magnitude of the technology so overwhelmed at the time that I can specifically remember just one of them – a videophone, which actually enabled you to see the person you were talking to on the phone.  Wow! As someone who hated making telephone calls, I really loved that idea.

Anyway, as if to confirm the World Fair’s promise, time-saving, push-button innovations suddenly began cropping up everywhere during the mid-sixties.  For example, you could change channels on the TV without getting up from the couch.  You could open your garage door without getting out of your car.  You could open your car windows without cranking the handles.  You could even water your lawn without schlepping sprinklers and garden hoses all over the place. 

Looking back, of course, devices like these – which merely saved us just a few seconds of time and effort – now seem trite.  Especially when compared to the incredible progress we’ve made in other areas.  Like written communication.

If you needed to compose and send a business letter in 1964, you’d first have to type it on a typewriter.  If you wanted to keep a copy of your records, you’d place a piece of carbon paper between two pieces of stationery as you typed. And, if you decided to add, delete or move text – or if you made a mistake – you’d have to rip out the stationery and start all over from scratch.

After spending an hour composing your two-paragraph letter, you’d put an envelope in the typewriter, type the address, affix the requisite postage stamp (which probably cost just a few pennies) and mail it to the recipient.   Upon receipt, he’d go through the same laborious process to compose and send his response.   Total time elapsed from when you began writing your letter and when you received his response?  Around a week or so, give or take a couple of days.

Now, of course, you simply pull out your cell phone (probably while driving) and text message your correspondent who, on receipt, immediately texts you back.  Total time elapsed? Around a minute or so, give or take a couple of seconds.  That’s an amazing difference!

Why, then, did I feel so unimpressed when – during a trip to Disney’s Epcot last month – I visited the “Home of the Future Exhibit” (sponsored by Siemens)?  After all, it featured some really cool stuff.  Like a hand-held remote that controls just about everything in the house, from the entertainment system (a single machine that contains separate TV, movies, photos and video, music, emails and internet preferences for each family member and also can be controlled by voice commands), to the heat and air-conditioning, lights, oven, alarm system and front door locks. 

None of this impressed me because I’ve become jaded.  And I’m jaded for two reasons.  For one thing, as a cynical adult I realized that this Disney “attraction” was really nothing more than an elaborate infomercial promoting the products featured in the “Home of the Future.”  And, indeed, at the end of the presentation, the perky hostess handed each of us a card with the contact information – mailing address, toll-free phone number and email address – for the maker of each product, all of which, she told us, are actually available for purchase and installation right now. At outrageous prices, no doubt.

But the second reason for my lack of enthusiasm was even more cynical:  I’ve come to realize that all these time-saving devices don’t really save us any time at all  To the contrary, they make us busier.  Everyone I know, in fact, complains about being busier and more stressed than ever.

How can that be?  Well, you know how we’re taught never to put off until tomorrow what we can do today?  Modern technology, having enabled us to accomplish things instantaneously, now allows us to do practically everything today.  What’s worse, there’s a sense of urgency about everything:  Since your friend’s email can be answered instantly, it must be answered instantly!  So we end up doing today what we used to do next week.  After all, why put it off?

We’re all so intent on getting ahead that we’re constantly behind.  And we’ll never be able to catch up.  Because technology will just keep coming up with things enabling us to get farther ahead (and, therefore, further behind).

Here’s how someone recently described this human dilemma: "Even when I have nothing to do, I have no time to do anything!"  How true.  And how sad for all of us.  Makes me want to climb into a time machine and travel back to the inefficient old days of 1964. When we had to roll up our car windows manually.  And when the TV remote control clicker was the greatest invention since sliced bread.  

Like Two Appeasements in a Pod

President Bush’s recent speech to Israel’s Parliament, during which he impliedly equated Barack Obama’s stated willingness to meet with the leaders of nations like Iran to Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler in 1938, caused a firestorm of controversy.  Most of the debate focused on the meaning of appeasement, whether the definition applied to Obama’s proposed policy, whether Bush was referring to Obama and whether it was appropriate in the first place for a sitting but outgoing U.S. president to even make such a political statement at all, let alone in an address to a foreign governmental body.

But no one addressed the utter disingenuousness and sheer hypocrisy of Bush’s remarks, given his own administration’s approach to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.  Which is odd. Because – just like each of its predecessor administrations over the past 30 years – the linchpin of  Bush’s Middle East policy is this:  Israel should give up land in exchange for its adversaries’ promises of peace.  And that, of course, is a prototypical example of appeasement. 

In fact, it’s identical to what Chamberlain did in 1938, when he ceded the Sudatenland region of Czechoslovakia to the Nazis in exchange for Hitler’s promise to leave everyone alone.  “Peace in our time,” Chamberlain triumphantly proclaimed.

Apparently, “our time” must have meant eleven months to Chamberlain. Because that’s exactly how long his negotiated peace lasted before Germany invaded Poland, officially starting WW II.  And the rest is history.

In other words, Chamberlain’s appeasement policy was an abject failure.  And, at least so far, Bush’s appeasement policy has been a failure, too.

Take, for example, the Gaza Strip. A couple of years ago, under pressure from the United States, Israel withdrew from the area, which it had occupied since 1967’s Six-Day War.  The withdrawal featured some ugly confrontations between the Israeli military and Jewish settlers, who were reluctant to leave the region. 

Ultimately, of course, Israel’s military prevailed.  In Gaza today there is no Israeli military occupation and no Israeli civilian settlements.  In fact, not a single Jew remains in the Gaza Strip. So, has Israel’s withdrawal from the area succeeded in furthering the Middle East peace process? Every bit as much as Chamberlain’s 1938 Munich Agreement succeeded in preventing WW II. 

In fact, the grateful, peace-loving Palestinian government in Gaza has unleashed unremitting rocket fire across the border to Israel, killing and maiming Israeli civilians. Why? Because it continues to refuse to recognize the very existence of a Jewish state.

Despite the debacle in Gaza – and notwithstanding the war in Iraq, which has endangered Israel by strengthening its foe, Iran – hard-line conservatives in Israel (as well as their right-wing supporters in the U.S.) hailed Bush’s Knesset speech.  At the same time, they question Obama’s commitment to Israel because he’s willing to speak to Iran.  I just don’t get it!  

Reports of its Death Have Been

Greatly Exaggerated

Several decades ago, sociologists and language experts declared Yiddish – the colorful olio of bastardized German, Russian and Hebrew that Ashkenazi Jews spoke for centuries in diasporic Central and Eastern Europe – to be dead.  After all, they reasoned, only around 250,000 people in the world speak Yiddish today.  And half of those live in New York.  In contrast, 11 million Jews spoke the language less than a century ago.

According to these fancy-shmancy mavens, the purported cause of death was a combination of two factors – the holocaust (which, as everyone in the world knows except that nut who runs Iran, exterminated virtually all European Jewry) and assimilation (which encouraged Jewish immigrants to abandon Yiddish in favor of English when they arrived in America during the first half of the 20th century and, after World War II, compelled survivors settling in Israel to learn modern Hebrew).

Well, I’m here to make a major announcement:  The linguistic medical examiners were dead wrong.  Alevai (may it come to pass)!  Yiddish is alive and well, kin ein hora (no evil eye).  Unlike Jacques Brel, it may not be living in Paris.  But the language is happily residing right here in the good old U.S. of A.  And two vital signs show that it’s hale and hardy.

For one thing, American Jews of my generation – the grandchildren and, in some cases, great-grandchildren of Yiddish-speaking immigrants – are starting to show renewed interest in the language, even though it may not have been spoken much (except for a word or phrase every so often) in our own homes when we growing up.  Why?  I’m not sure.  But I have a theory.  It’s a corollary to George Carlin’s hypothesis that people become more religious as they grow older because they’re cramming for their final exam.

If George is right, then it also makes sense that us JABBS (Jewish-American Baby-Boomers) – increasingly aware of our own mortality – would want to latch on to something tangible.  Something that links us to our past and that we can pass on to future generations.   In other words, something that gives us a sense of immortality or, at the very least, a meaningful role in the eternal circle of life.  For many of us, Yiddish fits that bill.  After all, it was the very life-blood of our people for generations.

Whatever the reason, the point is that we’re suddenly fascinated by a language that we often found embarrassing when we were kids.  And this fascination is turning into a cottage industry.  There are Yiddish-English dictionaries available.  You can still get Leo Roston’s “The Joys of Yiddish,” which was the bible for Yiddish-philes of my parents’ generation.  And our generation even has its own version of Roston – Michael Wex.  He’s written two must-read books about Yiddish:  “Born to Kvetch” (which was terrific) and “Just Say Nu” (which I must read one of these days).

Wait.  There’s more:  Adult education programs in Jewish communities now actually offer courses in Yiddish.  The one given in my town last “semester” sold out before I could sign up for it. Wow!  And oy vey!

It’s too early to tell whether my corollary to Carlin’s Theory of Religious Cramming is valid.  If I’m right, though, then each succeeding generation of American Jews may turn to Yiddish when they reach that “certain age,” ensuring its continued vitality.  L’Chaim (to life)!

But Yiddish can’t live by Jews alone.  To truly thrive, it should also play a role in the Gentile world.  Which brings me to my second vital sign:    Gentiles continue to incorporate Yiddish into day-to-day American English.

I’m not talking about words like bupkes (nothing), yenta (busybody), mensch (honorable person) or schmutz (dirt).  Those became part of the American lexicon years ago, after being introduced to Gentiles by the Jews who controlled all mass media.  Like Milton Berle.  No, I’m referring to more obscure words that Gentiles have begun using in discussions with other Gentiles.

A few weeks ago, for example, I was watching “Hardball,” one of MSNBC’s 39 nightly shows on politics and current events.  The host, Chris Matthews (who, by the way, doesn’t exactly have the map of the Lower East Side etched into his face, if you get my drift), was discussing some arcane political issue with a panel of three Gentile pundits.  All of a sudden, Mathews used the word “tchotchkes” (trinkets). He pronounced it perfectly, and it was clear from the reactions of his panel that all three talking heads knew exactly what he was talking about.

In other words, it’s not your bubbe’s (grandma’s) Yiddish anymore. It’s now Yiddish of the Gentiles, by the Gentiles and for the Gentiles.  And such a language shall not perish from the earth.

So just ignore the chazerei (nonsense) from those linguistic grim reapers, old friend.  Zai gezunt (stay well). And gesundheit (good health).

Ruckmaking? Rakemucking?

The word “Muckraker” sounds kind of yucky.  But when it was created, it wasn’t meant to be a derogatory or disparaging label.  To the contrary, President Teddy Roosevelt coined the term in a 1906 speech to describe a group of American writers (like newspaper reporters, novelists and critics) who, from the late 1800s through the early 1900s, helped to effect significant social reform by investigating and exposing living and working conditions in such places as slums, prisons, factories, mental hospitals, sweatshops, mines and food processing plants.  Roosevelt likened these social reformers to the Man with the Muckrake, a character in John Bunyon’s 1678 classic, Pilgrim’s Progress.

These muckrakers were the engine that powered Amercia’s Progressive Era.  They served the public interest by exposing improprieties and abuse both in private enterprise and in government.  So they were generally associated with liberal causes. Some critics even accused the muckrakers of being socialists or communists!

A century later, muckrakers still roam the earth.  But their preferred medium these days is the visual recording – i.e. the documentary.  And they still espouse liberal causes.  Take, for example, Michael Moore’s exposes on just about everything.  And Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.

I wonder, though, what would happen if a conservative ever made a documentary unearthing a social issue.  Would he be considered a muckraker, too?

Which brings me to Ben Stein.  Yes, that Ben Stein.  The Right’s Renaissance man – lawyer, economist, presidential speechwriter and loveable star of TV and the big screen.  Because – in the grand, sarcastic tradition of Michael Moore himself – Stein just released his own documentary.  It’s called “Expelled:  No Intelligence  Allowed.” And it’s about that age-old debate between the Theory of Evolution and the Theory of Creationism – uh, oops, sorry, I mean “Intelligent  Design”  (the Creationists don’t want us to call Creationism Creationism anymore because it sounds too Creationist).

So, is Stein’s film in the liberal, muckraking tradition?  Hardly.  Not that I’ve actually seen it (and neither has anyone else, judging by the general lack of buzz).  But according to the press releases and newspaper articles, Stein’s thesis is that Darwinism has a monopoly in U.S. classrooms – to the exclusion of Creationism (oops, there I go again) – even though Darwinism actually has no firmer scientific or logical support than Creationism (sorry, but old habits die hard).  In other words, Ben seems to be pursuing a right-wing agenda. 

Does this preclude him from being dubbed a muckraker?  Maybe not.  Because the newspaper articles about his film mention that, as Stein tilled the fertile earth of Darwinism, he uncovered a couple of fascinating points.  The first is that some scientists and academics have been fired from their jobs merely for trying to express their Creationist (I give up) viewpoints.  Hmmm.  Sounds like a freedom of speech issue. Which is a favorite topic for liberals and other civil libertarians.

The second interesting nugget in Stein’s documentary is his argument that Darwinist doctrine was one of the driving forces behind Nazism. And nothing excites liberals (or civil libertarians) more than the specter of fascism.

Well, then, it looks like – despite its conservative message – Stein’s film may merit the muckraking mantle.  In other words, everything’s topsy-turvy.  Which means that Stein is the right-wing Michael Moore.  And that I’ll have to see Stein’s movie.  But not until it comes out on DVD.         

The Other Refugees

You gotta hand it to the Palestinians.  They’ve done a masterful job of highlighting the plight of their refugees.   So masterful that, in the court of world public opinion, many folks now see the age-old Middle East crisis this way – the Palestinians are the innocent victims and Israel is the bad guy.

But the Palestinians didn’t create this spin on their own.  They had a lot of help.  From a surprising source – Israel itself!

Yes, you heard me right.  Israel has helped shape its own negative reputation in the eyes of the world in two ways.

First, its treatment of Palestinian refugees has been horrific.  I realize that Israel’s policies are driven by its need for self-preservation rather than by public relations concerns, and it must be ever-vigilant to protect itself and its people from the terrorist attacks of its neighbors.  Still, as a liberal American concerned with human rights here and abroad, watching news video of Israeli tanks rolling through Arab towns and Israeli bombs striking Arab villages makes me cringe.  And I’m a Jew who supports Israel!  So just imagine how non-Jews around the world must feel when they see these images.

Israel simply has to come up with a better, more humane way to deal with Palestinian refugees.  That’s easy for me to say, of course.  Unfortunately, I can’t think of a better way.  And the sad reality may be that there isn’t one, at least not in the current climate of fear and terrorism.  So maybe it’s unfair for me to blame Israel for its conduct.

Which brings me to the second way in which Israel has helped the Palestinian propaganda machine.  Because this one IS easy to fix.  Israel has failed to highlight the plight of its own 850,000 refugees. What am I talking about, you ask?  That’s precisely my point.  Israel has some 850,000 Jewish refugees who were forced to flee en masse from 10 Arab lands – where they had lived for 2,500 years (or more than a millennium before Islam even existed) – around the time Israel was founded.  These folks left behind their financial resources, their homes and their heritage sites in the face of state-sponsored persecution and pogroms.  And the Arab states have never compensated them for their losses or even acknowledged their existence.

I don’t know about you, but I shamefully have to confess that I wasn’t even aware of the existence of these refugees until a few weeks ago.  And I became aware of them only because the U.S. House of Representatives passed a non-binding resolution recognizing their rights.

The resolution probably was more political than humanitarian in nature.  Still, it may help level the playing field in future Mideast peace negotiations by publicizing the fact that the refugee issue is a two-way street – any Israeli concessions regarding Palestinian refugees should be counter-balanced by Palestinian concessions for the 850,000 Jewish refugees.  Seems reasonable to me.

Why, then, isn’t Israel pressing this point?  Beats me.  Maybe it’s concerned that suddenly raising the issue of Jewish refugees at this stage would throw a monkey wrench into the ongoing peace process.  Given all the monkey wrenches that the Palestinians always seem to be tossing around, though, Israel shouldn’t be reluctant to talk about Jewish refugees, especially since doing so might help sway the all important court of world public opinion back toward Israel’s side.

In the meantime, it’s important to recognize that those 850,000 “Arab Jews” aren’t the only Jewish refugees.  To the contrary, all Jews are refugees.  Our people were expelled from Israel two millennia ago.  They traveled west through North Africa to Southern Europe where, as part of the Spanish Inquisition, they were expelled again.  So they then traveled to Central and Eastern Europe, where they were persecuted for centuries, until Hitler came up with his final solution – expulsion by extermination.

Some people tend to forget that Israel’s very creation in 1948 represented the civilized world’s guilt-ridden response to the holocaust.  With today being Holocaust Remembrance Day, it’s particularly important to remember – and to remind the world – that Israel is a nation of Jewish refugees.  And that it’s historically, factually and morally wrong to view the Palestinians as the only Mideast refugees worthy of the world’s empathy and support.

Never forget.        

 Losers Rejoice!

Here’s some great news for all you die-hard, long-suffering fans of professional sports teams like the New York Mets (two World Series championships in their 47-year history), New York Knicks (two NBA titles in their 60-year history), New York Jets (I Super Bowl crown, earned XL years ago) and New York Rangers (one sip from the Stanley Cup since 1940). 

Not to mention fans of all the NFL teams that have never won a Super Bowl – the Cardinals, Saints, Falcons and Seahawks, to name just a few.  Or fans of such perennial Major League Baseball also-rans as the Indians (last championship in 1948), Giants (last championship in 1954, when they beat the Indians), Texas Rangers (no championships since joining the American League in 1961 as the expansion Washington Senators) and Houston Astros (no championships since joining the National League in 1962 as the Colt-45s).

And the news is particularly wonderful for fans of those lovable grand-daddies of all losers – the Chicago Cubs.  They haven’t won a World Series since 1908.  That’s not a typo, folks.  The Cubbies have gone an entire century without celebrating a world championship.

So, what’s the great news?  Well, it turns out that fans of losing teams are smarter than those of winning teams!  Okay, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration.  But rooting for a loser makes a person more thoughtful.  Fans of losing teams turn out to be better decision-makers than their front-running counterparts, who tend to engage in less reflective thinking.  Take that, Yankee fans!

I’m not making this up.  It comes courtesy of my conservative alter-ego, none other than George Will himself. If you think I’m kidding, then check out Will’s article in the April 7, 2008 issue of Newsweek, entitled “Your Brain on Cubs.”  Will is a lifelong Cub fan, which may help explain his great intelligence (even though he and I disagree on many issues). 

And Will didn’t make up this theory, either.  His article relied on Your Brain on Cubs: Inside the Heads of Players and Fans, a new book of essays by doctors and others knowledgeable about neuroscience.  That’s right.  The idea that fans of losing teams are intellectually superior to those of winning teams is an empirically proven scientific fact.

Rooting for losers, you see, requires fans to constantly think about their affiliations.  This forces them to consistently activate and exercise the frontal lobes of their brains, which are responsible for such processes as planning, reasoning and experiencing subtle variations of feelings. 

In sharp contrast, dopamine is pumped into the brain when a fan’s team wins regularly, giving the experience of intense pleasure.  And, thereby, presumably reducing reflective thinking and dulling the ability to plan and reason effectively.  Which probably explains why most Yankee fans are complete morons.

But wait.  There’s more:  Will reports that, according to one of the book’s essays written by Tom Valeo and Lindsay Beyerstein, the human brain is constantly straining to produce explanations for things, “and it will make up stories to cope with phenomena it cannot otherwise account for.”    Will mentions religion as one example of something we made up to cope with the unexplainable.   Does this mean he’s an atheist?  I’ll have to leave that for another time and essay.  For now, let’s just stick to sports.

Which brings me to Will’s second example of Valeo and Beyerstein’s hypothesis – baseball’s many superstitions.  Take Julio Gotay, a journeyman infielder for several teams in the ‘60s (and the uncle of current journeyman infielder, Ruben Gotay), who played with a lucky cheese sandwich in his back pocket. 

According to the scientists, such superstitions give people a sense of control in uncertain situations.  So fans think that the way they root somehow actually causes their teams’ failures and successes.  Which explains why, in the aftermath of the Mets’ historic late season collapse last year, I blamed myself for having purchased season tickets in the middle of the 2007 campaign.  To avoid a similar fate in 2008, I naturally changed the location of my seats.

The new season’s still young.  But, so far, the Mets are playing no better now than they played at the end of 2007.  And they’re a disappointing 1 and 3 in the four games I’ve attended.  So I may need to change my seats again.

But I’ll do so secure in the knowledge of one thing:  Although I may not be as intelligent as the average Cub fan (who must be an absolute genius after 100 years of losing), at least I’m smarter than those idiot Yankee fans.    

Let Our Peoples Go (Forth Together)!

Passover is the one Jewish holiday that Gentiles should understand.  For one thing, they’ve seen the movie, The Ten Commandments.  How could anyone avoid it?  The epic saga about Moses leading the Jews from slavery to freedom is shown on TV religiously every year. Then again, it’s incongruously aired on Easter instead of Passover.  So maybe the Gentiles don’t really get it after all.

On the other hand, they’ve also read about Passover in a book.  The book, of course, is the Torah, also called the Five Books of Moses (even though Moses is featured in only one of them) or the Scriptures, or the Bible or, simply, the Testament.  But don’t tell the Gentiles that.  They think the book is called the Old Testament.  That’s because they couldn’t leave well enough alone.  They had to write their own supposedly new and improved Bible (Scriptures 8.0) to supplement the original.  And they called their book the New Testament.  Whatever.  Jews should be happy that the Christians didn’t eliminate the Torah from their religion altogether.

Anyway, there’s one group of Gentiles who’ve traditionally identified extremely closely with the Passover story – African-Americans. Because slave-owners – while often refusing to give their “property” proper shoes or clothing, and typically declining to teach them how to read or write – beneficently made sure that their slaves became good Christians.  After all, the Constitution itself acknowledged that a slave was 3/5 of a person, so it was possible that he might have a soul (or, at least 60% of a soul) that needed to be saved.  Besides, slave-owners were way ahead of their time.  Because they figured out around 150 or so years before Karl Marx came along that religion was the opiate of the people; slave-owners could keep their slaves from revolting by tranquilizing them with Christianity.

For their part, slaves found their own unique way to express their new religion – creating and singing what became known as Negro spirituals.  These songs served a number of purposes among slaves.  They forged a sense of community.  They constituted a form of protest.  They provided a language of coded communication (“Follow the Drinking Gourd,” for example, explained how a slave – with the help of the Underground Railroad – could escape to the North).  And they served as a source of comfort, motivation and inspiration.

Spirituals celebrating the Jews’ deliverance from slavery in Egypt dominated this last category.  Like “Oh, Mary, Don’t You Weep,” which contains this line: “Oh, Mary, don’t you weep, don’t you mourn. Pharaoh’s army got drownded.”  And this line:  “If I could, I surely would stand on the spot where Moses stood.”

Some Jews may be shocked to hear this, but perhaps the most famous Negro Passover spiritual is “Let My People Go,” which is sometimes called “Go Down, Moses.”  Why is this shocking?  Because many Jews think – as I once did – that it’s actually a Jewish song.  Some modern versions of the Haggadah – the written “telling” of the Exodus that Jews read aloud at their Passover seders (the ritualistic meals held the first two nights of Passover) – even include the song.  So it wasn’t surprising when some friends and I once sang it at a Temple talent show in the mid-‘60s (although, come to think of it, we also sang Petula Clark’s “Downtown”).

But I assure you that the song’s really a Negro spiritual.  And, if you don’t believe me, then check out this verse, which I doubt you’ll find in any version of the Haggadah:

“Oh, let us all from bondage flee,
Let My people go!
And let us all in Christ be free,
Let My people go!”

Case closed.

There I go digressing again.  Sorry.  Now, where was I?  Oh, yeah.  African-Americans closely identifying with the Passover story.  Which explains why perhaps the most famous version of “Let My People Go” was performed by none other than the great singer, actor, all-American college football player, first black graduate of Columbia Law School and social/civil-rights activist himself – Paul Robeson.

Speaking of social activists, a century after the end of slavery, droves of American Jews worked side-by-side with their African-American brothers and sisters in the Civil Rights Movement.  Jewish lawyers (many of whom were members of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and other activist organizations) won landmark court decisions expanding the rights of African-Americans and represented blacks (including Paul Robeson) who were being persecuted for asserting their rights.  And Jewish college students (members of SNCC, CORE and other organizations) traveled south to participate in “Freedom Rider” protests against segregation and “Freedom Summer” initiatives to register black voters.

Two of the three civil rights workers killed in Mississippi during the summer of 1964 – Andrew Goodman and Mickey Schwerner – were Jews (the third, James Chaney, was black).

In that summer of 1964 (and, again, in the summer of ’65), I attended an integrated, left-leaning sleepaway camp in the Berkshires.  All the campers and staff were either Jewish or black.  Based on my pre-adolescent recollections, one of the campers was both Jewish and black – Paul Robeson’s grandson!

The bottom line is that Jews and blacks were natural allies who shared a common history of persecution, a common ideal of justice and even a common theme song – “Let My People Go.”  And this commonality all stemmed from the story of Passover.

But things suddenly changed with the advent of the Black Power Movement in the late ‘60s.  Motivated by the understandable desire to take control of their own destiny, African-American activists shunned white supporters in general.  And Jewish supporters in particular.  I’ll never forget a New Year’s Eve party that my parents hosted in 1968.  One of the guests – an old friend who’d just been named the Chairman of Harvard’s newly-created Black Studies Department (and whose own wife was a Jew) – explained that Jews were no longer welcomed in the Civil Rights Movement.  The other guests, who had devoted much of their adult lives to the fight for racial equality (including my father, who – among his many other pro bono activities – had served as president of the local NAACP chapter) were justifiably crestfallen.

Not that the Black Power Movement’s antipathy to Jews was entirely without basis.  Jews made up a significant percentage of the slumlords, employers and shopkeepers in places like New York’s Harlem, and many blacks saw them as the modern, urban equivalents of slave-owners.  And, despite their own history of persecution, many Jews were every bit as bigoted against blacks as their non-Jewish white counterparts.  Jews even had their own racial slur to describe blacks – a Yiddish word they conspiratorially used in conversations among themselves.  Shameful!

Still, by turning their backs on all Jews, blacks were guilty of the very form of prejudicial stereotyping that whites were practicing against blacks.  Also shameful!  And things would only get worse in the next few decades, when even mainstream black leaders made anti-Semitic remarks.  Even Martin Luther King’s protégé, Jesse Jackson, once referred to New York as “Hymietown.” 

It’s no wonder, then, that many Jews are somewhat suspicious of Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy.  Keep in mind, though, that he’s been saying the right things about issues of importance to the Jewish community, like Israel.  And I’ve even heard him acknowledge the historical bond between our two peoples and make reference to the sacrifices of Goodman and Schwerner.  As far as I’m concerned, Obama’s trying to bridge the gap between blacks and Jews that’s grown over the past generation.

Of course, Obama hasn’t yet won the Democratic nomination.  If he does, though, my fervent Passover wish is that Jews – instead of flocking to McCain or sitting out the general election – meet Obama half-way by supporting his candidacy.  If that happens, then – to paraphrase the traditional Passover salutation, it will be “Next year in Washington, D.C!”  

De-Fense! De-Fense!

It’s become one of the most recognized “cheers” in sports.  Chanted by the home crowd at a football or basketball game, it exhorts the team to stop its opponent from scoring.  Sports historians believe that the chant originated in the late 1950s, when supporters of the New York Football Giants were the first fans to recognize how important defense was to a team’s success.

By the ‘60s and ‘70s, great football defensive units had become glamorized – even romanticized – by the likes of the Rams’ “Fearsome Foursome,” the Vikings’ “Purple People-Eaters” and the Steelers’ “Steel Curtain.”  And in Manhattan’s Madison Square Garden, fans of the NBA’s New York Knicks now were shouting “De-Fense,” too, inspired by the team’s ability to shut down its opponents.

All this adulation should come as no surprise.  As one old cliché puts it:  “Defense wins championships.”  And, as another goes, “You can’t lose if you stop the other guys from scoring.”

Sports, of course, are metaphors for life.  It stands to reason, then, that folks in other lines of work – like, say, politics – would also recognize and appreciate the value of good defense.  But based on the comments of the political pundits following the Democrats’ April 16 presidential debate, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Because they all said the same exact thing:  “It was a bad night for Obama; he was on the defensive all evening.”

This reasoning is completely flawed.  Of course Obama was on the defensive during the debate.  He’s the front-runner; the party’s presumptive candidate. He was supposed to get the tough questions. And he did, assuming you think that questions about such weighty substantive issues as Rev. Wright, American flag pins, the Ayres connection and Bitter-gate were “tough.”

But being asked these questions didn’t inherently make it a “bad” night for Obama.  The inquiry should have been how he defended those questions.  And the fact is that his defense was fine.  After all, it’s not like he evaded the questions. Or gave pre-programmed, non-responsive answers.  Or whined that the questions were unfair and that the press was ganging up on him (which Hillary did in an earlier debate).

Rather, Obama patiently answered each question. On Bitter-gate, he noted that Hillary herself drew charges of elitism back in ’92, when she said she wasn’t going to sit home as First Lady and bake cookies.  That answer was like sacking a quarterback!   And, on Ayres, he pointed out that Bill Clinton had pardoned two Weathermen who – unlike Ayres – had been convicted of felonies.  That answer was like forcing a turnover in basketball!