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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).