The Daily Blank

My brother Scott meets Jack Nicholson

2011-12-11T14:00:00.002-05:00

My younger brother Scott died suddenly and unexpectedly this past July. I had three brothers until Scott died and although we all lived long distances from one-another, and we all rarely got together at one time, I thought of us as a unit.

In my mind “one of four brothers” was one of my defining characteristics, along with “handsome, charming and brave.” (I just threw that in because I know Scott would have liked that joke.)

I only saw him a few times a year but it’s still hard to believe I won’t see him again.

Scott was a very interesting and idiosyncratic person. I almost certainly would have written something about him by now, but he was one of the most intensely private people I’ve ever known. He left very explicit instructions regarding the manner in which his passing was to be noted and they can best be described as “minimally.” I don’t think he would have appreciated an essay from me.

However, about six or eight months before he died he sent me a written version of the story of his encounter fifteen years earlier, with Jack Nicholson.

Among Scott’s idiosyncrasies was that he was openly and admittedly star-struck. He’d met dozens – possibly hundreds – of famous people in his life, but none had the back-story or the legs of his Nicholson adventure.

We’re all familiar with the idea of getting our “fifteen minutes of fame” but most of us don’t really get anything like fame. Well, Scott got his. I’m still asked to tell the story several times a year, and rarely does a year go by that I don’t see a reference in the national to the event that led to Scott meeting Nicholson.

And as private as he was, Scott would happily recount the events to anyone who asked. Some of you may have heard the story from me (and even him) but here it is in its full glory, in Scott’s own words. It’s a little long but worth it I believe.

* * *

Los Angeles, February 8, 1994.

At about noon on February 8, 1994 I was driving to a Disney office in Studio City for an appointment with a committee to present an incentive program for ride sharing and car pooling.

About two blocks west of Bob Hope’s house I was stopped at a traffic light. A black Mercedes Benz SL pulled up beside me in the right turn lane. I looked at the car and thought it looked like the Bat Mobile since the windows were tinted black, the chrome was blacked out. I thought it looked very cool.

When the light turned green tried to pull in front of me, instead of turning right. I didn’t let it in front of me. On the other side of the intersection were parked cars, so the driver had to wait until he could get in behind me.

On the other side of the intersection he started tailgating me, and zigzagging back and forth behind my car. I got the impression that he was pissed and wanted to get around me. Oncoming cars prevented him from passing my car. A little further along I had the option of going right, which would allow the driver to pass. However, if he followed me I would have been in front of Bob Hope’s estate which was a walled property for blocks. If the driver had a gun or did something crazy I thought, no one would be around to help.

At the next traffic light which was red in my direction I stopped behind several cars. A passenger got out of the SL (I was not aware anyone but the driver was in the car due to the blackened windows.) The passenger positioned himself at ten o’clock in front of my car with his arms folded. (Although it was long before the show “The Soprano’s”, he could have been type cast for the show.) I was later told he owned a restaurant in Hells Kitchen in NYC.

I could hear the driver yelling as he approached my driver’s side window: ”You Motherfucker, I’ll show you who will cut who off”. (This is a major problem because I DID NOT cut him off; I just didn’t allow him to cut me off.)

The next thing I heard was a “thud, thud” on the roof of my car. (He hit the roof leaving two dents in the steel with something in his hand.) I looked at the man, and thought he would then try to hit my driver’s side window. “No” was the next thought “not at that angle”.

Then I recognized him as the actor Jack Nicholson. I thought, “He’s crazy; someone’s going to recognize him.” There were so many cars around us. Right after that thought he took what turned out to be a golf club and hit my windshield with full force at my eye level. My windshield shattered inside my car and all over me. (I did have sunglasses on at the time which protected me from getting glass in my eyes.)

After he smashed the windshield he calmly walked back to his car, put the golf club into the trunk of his car and drove off.

I followed his car, and reached into my briefcase to get a pen & paper to write down his license plate number. I double and triple checked the plate number.

At the next block I turned right and pulled over to get out and get the glass out of my hair, seat, and cuffs of my suit. When I stopped, two separate cars pulled up to me. Both drivers said that they had seen what had happened if I needed a witness. One gave me his business card, (I believe he was a stock broker). The other driver had written his name and number on a piece of paper.

I asked them if they recognized the guy. Both said yes, and one volunteered, “That was Jack Nicholson! I work on movie sets. He’s an asshole.” I said “thank you” to both and they drove off.

I continued on to Disney, with my head and neck extended to the right so I could see to drive since the driver’s side of my windshield was shattered.

My appointment at Disney was a monthly board meeting. I was to arrive around 12:30, and let the receptionist know that I was there to meet with the committee. They would finish whatever topic they were discussing and I would be brought in once they were ready. In other words I might have to wait a few minutes. (Since it had taken nearly 6 months to get the appointment I was Ok with the arrangement.)

While I waited, I asked the receptionist if I could use the phone in the lobby to make a call. (This was before I carried a cell phone on me everywhere I went. I thought it quaint that there would be a phone in the lobby -- very Hollywood.)

I called John Pike the person whose house I had just left before heading out for my appointment. John’s family is a very old old California family on both his mother’s and father’s side. He knew lots of people, including the Hope’s, where they lived.

I said “John, you are not going to believe what just happened to me”. “Call me the Minute you get out of the meeting”, he told me.

A few minutes later I was escorted into a board meeting to make my presentation on an incentive program to inspire Disney employees to get them to “ride share and car pool.” They had a big budget.

Still shaken I made an effort to overcome my mental state by telling the group, “If I seem a little nervous or if you see glass falling out of my hair, it’s NOT that I’ve never given this presentation, it’s just that I was attacked in my car on the way over to the meeting.”

That was just enough for me to settle myself and was ready to move forward. HOWEVER, it shocked everyone enough that they had questions about what had happened. I didn’t want to get side tracked with the whole story, so I simple said I recognized the guy and that I would deal with it later.
Someone asked, “Was it a friend of yours?”

“No, it was a celebrity.” I immediately realized that that was a mistake. And of course they would NOT let me proceed until I told them who it was, which got lots of reaction.

I made the presentation, which went well. However, they insisted that I see the nurse on staff before I left. Another rather quaint notion I thought of having a full time nurse on staff.

When I got ready to leave I called my friend John. He had made several calls to many well know high profile attorneys. He told me to go to the local police station and fill out a police report.

When I got in line an officer, who never looked up at me barked out, “Wadda you want”.

“Well someone smashed my windshield with a tire iron,” I told him. (Since I could see only part of what he was holding, that’s what I thought it was at first.)

“HOW TALL WAS HE?” the officer barked.

“I’m not sure, but I know who it was”.

“HOW TALL?”

“I don’t know, maybe 5-10.”

“HOW OLD,” was the next demand.

“I don’t know but I know who it was.”

“HOW OLD?”

“I guess 60?”

“WHAT WAS HE WEARING?”

Then I got a little confused as how to answer, “Sort of a golfing outfit with knickers, and triangle colored knee socks, and tassel’s, BIG tassel’s on his shoes. But I’ve got his licensee plate number, “AND I KNOW WHO IT WAS”.

“OK, WHO WAS IT?” all the while his head still buried in his computer screen.

I said, “Jack Nicholson.”

For the first time he looked up and asked in the friendliest most surprised voice,”the actor?”

“Here’s his plate number”. He walked to another computer with the plate number and walked back a bit shocked, (Now my new best friend) and said that “it” was in fact registered to a John Nicholson at an address on Wilshire Blvd. He said that it was a surprise since most famous actors register their cars in a manager’s name or company.

Later I found out that Nicholson had a close relationship with the Los Angeles police department.

After leaving the police station I went back to my friend John’s penthouse which was buzzing. He had talked to several attorneys. Some of whom where working on some famous news cases of the time such as the first Michael Jackson case of playing with young boys.

I spoke to one of them on the phone. (I don’t remember his name.) He suggested that I get a lawyer, although he couldn’t take my case because he was busy working on the Jackson case.

Somehow I ended up talking to Charles Ruben, a west L.A. attorney. He sounded good on the phone and I made an appointment to meet with him the following day.

My head spinning from all the events I was not as sharp as I needed to be when we met. He was great at spinning what he could do for me. Later I suspected that was his best quality.

He gave me the impression that he had handled a similar type case against another celebrity and had gotten the client $500,000. Later I found out, he had worked in the office of the case and had nothing really to do with “it”. Makes me wonder if the person even got the half million he claimed.

A few days later I got a call at my office from a Detective from the station where I had filed the police report. Hopefully he never took up acting because as casual as he tried to sound it wasn’t working. He claimed he had some free time and was just going thru some of the stacks and stacks of reports and came to mine. He just happened on to it.

He asked what had happened, if it was in fact the actor that smashed my windshield. Told him the story and that it was him. The Detective asked if I could come to the station that afternoon with my car so he could take pictures.

That afternoon I met with him (wish I could remember his name). Once I was there he asked if I had been in contact with Mr. Nicholson.

When I told him NO, he said that his “people” had contacted him and wondered how they could get in touch with me. (Hmmmm, really…..was that before or after you called me this morning I wondered.) When I told him I had an attorney he asked me what the case was worth. I repeated what Mr. Ruben had implied to me.

The detective wanted to take pictures of the car, then with me standing by the car. While he’s taking the pictures, he was being charming and funny. THEN, after making a joke about something--he took a picture of me standing by the car LAUGHING. I think that was intentional. That picture ended up on the show HARD COPY. Wonder what they paid him for that picture?

Speaking of pictures, my attorney wanted me to take pictures of my car the day of the incident. Someone I knew at the time took about seven or eight pictures so that I could have them should this go to trail.

Those pictures were also sold to HARD COPY, by my SO called “friend.”

Very quickly my attorney got an offer from Nicholson’s attorney Charlie English. (I liked Charlie.) The amount was for $X, NOT $500,000 that the Biography Channel claims I got every time they run a Bio on Nicholson. (I have sent them an email, asking that they correct the misinformation.) The $50,000 was before the Mr. Rubin took his percentage, so I got $x- on or about March 2, 1994.

The City Attorney got involved with the case and wanted to press charges against Nicholson. (As of now I don’t remember the timing.) I don’t remember his name but we spoke several times over the phone.

I believe but can not swear to it, but the fact that I was going to or had resolved the matter thru attorneys did not matter to the City Attorney. He was bringing misdemeanor charges against the actor and I would have to come to court.

At some point feeling overwhelmed with the attention from the press calling me from as far away as New Zealand I resisted the whole agreement and wanted it to stop. It felt as though I was being railroaded into a quick settlement; more by my own attorney than anyone else. Had I know better I would have fired him and hired someone else to represent me.

My attorney and I met in Charlie English’s office with the city attorney, to discuss my settlement and how my signed agreement would affect me legally in court. English said if I wanted to tear up the agreement all I had to do was return the payment. I hadn’t spent a cent of the money, but for some dumb reason I didn’t ask if Rubin would therefore have to return his percentage. So I did nothing.

What was also discussed was the fact that I wanted to move from Los Angeles and that I was selling everything before moving. The real concern I had was selling my car. If the paparazzi found out the car was for sale they would be all over me again. English asked, “What if we get Nicholson to buy your car from you?” Perfect. Once the agreement was made, I would drive the car until I was ready to move. When it was time, I contacted another attorney’s office, brought the title, the keys and the car. I received a cashier’s check.

I believe it was at that meeting that the subject of Nicholson’s regret and his desire to apologize to me came up. At first I didn’t want to hear from him, talk to him, nothing. But something just changed and decided it wasn’t worth being upset over.

The day came that I was to go to English’s office at noon, I came into his main office. My attorney was with me. From a back door out walked Nicholson dressed in a dark suit.

He apologized saying that he doesn’t normally do things like that to regular citizens. That the night before he had been up late filming a very emotional scene where he just found out his daughter had been killed by a drunk driver. (The movie was “The Crossing Guard;” his wife was played by Anjelica Huston.)

Ironically when I moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles I lived at Tony Richardson house for about 8 months. He was an Oscar winning director and producer and once the husband of Vanessa Redgrave & father of Natasha Richardson.

The irony is that Tony would have people over for tennis and lunch almost every Saturday and Sunday. Before I moved in, Nicholson & Huston met at one of Tony’s lunches. They then consummated their relationship in the bedroom where I slept.) I was also told that that he had found out that morning that a friend he had known for many years in the film industry had died. (An offer to see the obituary was something I declined.)

Before Jack vanished thru the back door, I asked if it was true that his high school prom date’s last name was also Blank. He seemed stunned by the question, but then said,”Yes, and she was a very nice girl.”

My oldest brother Dennis worked at the time for Fortune magazine. He told me that he got several calls from executives of major corporations asking if it was true that his brother was the one attached by Jack.

The day of or after the apology Dennis asked how it went. “Did he seem sincere?” I told him I thought he was, but if he wasn’t then I had just gotten a private performance by Jack Nicholson. Priceless!

Court day I was to meet Charlie English in the basement of the court building while we waited for Charles Rubin to arrive from another court case. Mr. English and I had a pleasant conversation about nothing in particular that I recall while we waited. Mr. Rubin arrives, am told we will be going to another floor. He also said there may be press there, but that they were not allowed into the court room.

The three of us go up the elevator all dressed in suits. (Charlie English had represented several celebrities so he was well known to the press.) When the elevator door opens, you can see about a dozen reporters sitting all together on the floor. When they see Charlie, they all jump up.
I’m thinking great, just what I DON’T want.

The two attorneys are together talking while they are walking in front of me. The reporters start staring at me with that look of, “Is he the guy?”

Instinctively I acted as if I was lost and looking for where I was heading. Not associated with the two in front of me. I even remember looking at the reporters as if they seemed very odd to me. It threw them off long enough for me to get past Charlie English being interviewed and into the court room.

Inside was filled with people in orange jumpsuits waiting for their day in court. Across the room a camera was being attached to a tripod. I sat in the first row just left of the aisle.

Someone came up to me and started clicking away with a camera about 6 or 7 inches from the right side of my head. I could hear it clicking away over and over and over again. I didn’t move a muscle. I assumed that he was hoping I would give him some expression and make his picture. So much for no reporters allowed in the court room. Finally my attorney had me sit at the table beyond the reach of the photographer.

At some point the city attorney came up to me and introduced him self. He told me he was changing the charge from a misdemeanor to attempted murder. That threw me, but I was told it was because Nicholson had hit the roof above my head and the windshield aiming towards my face. Not being a lawyer, I thought it was an odd time to make that change. No surprise English objected, the judge disapproved, and the city attorney got to look like a hero by “trying” to go after the famous actor.

The settlement came up during the court appearance, which is when we all went in to the judge’s chambers. No one wanted me to mention the amount in court.

The judge asked if I was satisfied. My answer I guess didn’t satisfy him because kept he asking more questions. I told him what was really bothering was the fact that people thought I was getting so much money I could retire. It must have been how I said it, because everyone laughed, even the court reporter. Anyway, the judge asked, “How much?” I looked at my attorney he gave the nod to answer and I did.

After leaving the court room my attorney walked with me on to the elevator. A reporter stuck a microphone on a boom into the elevator preventing the doors from closing. He kept shouting out questions. “No comment. “No comment.”

Then gently I pushed the microphone back and said we need to go. I thought, “Couldn’t my attorney have done that for me?”

I should have mentioned sooner, that my friends all know me by my middle name Scott. But my legal name is Robert Scott Blank. On the police report or any news report I was named as Robert Blank. I told my family what had happened in case they saw something in the news, I told the people at Disney, John Pike and Jeff Angel (the person that took and sold the pictures of my car).

Otherwise my friends didn’t know, and if they saw or heard something in the news about Robert Blank they didn’t make the connection.

That changed the night of the winter Olympics when skater Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan were to skate before an audience of over 120,000,000 viewers.

Earlier in the day I got a call from Harvey Levin who was a reporter with the local CBS news channel at the time. He said he was doing a story about the incident and wanted the “human element.”

I told him he was going to have to do the story without me, (as I told all other reporters) that I wasn’t doing any interviews.

He told me he was very close and read off an address. I sort of laughed I thought just to myself. He picked up on it and asked, “What’s so funny?”

I told him, “You are very close to my mailbox.”

He just called back to the office, got the receptionist and asked her for the address.

About an hour later the receptionist “buzzed me” and told me someone was in the front office looking for me.

I got to her desk and there was Levin and a cameraman. The camera light was off, but it was pointed towards me. I asked them to leave that they were disrupting the office. To get them out of the office I agreed to say “no comment” in the hallway of the building on camera.

Once outside my “no comment” was unusable the way I (hmmm) messed it up. (How could a salesman mess up a line like, “No comment.”?)

That night before the two skaters went on the ice there was a fifteen minute news break on the local channel. Most of the time was devoted to “the case of the dueling Mercedes” as Levin put it.

“Behind me here”…..he went on telling a story of what occurred. (Not sure if he had the facts correct.) Then he showed my car which was in the parking garage of my office that day. Then he showed me walking in the hallway of the office building where I worked.

THEN, my phone went CRAZY. I got calls from people I hadn’t heard from in years. Call waiting just added to the number of calls.

After that night I would be having coffee, or dinner, or even in my car at a traffic light and people would recognize me. Whispering and pointing became common. I hated that more than anything else. It still amazes me that having my face on TV for such a short period of time that anyone would recognize me.

I was already over the floods, the fires, the earthquakes and the riots of Los Angeles. My new fifteen minutes of fame was what it took to get me to leave California.

When I moved from Los Angeles to Florida it was the weekend O.J. didn’t kill his wife. If I had just waited another week I would have been old news.

It was my belief that was going to be the end of the story, but it hasn’t.

Any time Nicholson would be in the news for his bad behavior the entertainment news shows would bring up the story and show the pictures.

One Saturday morning I was outside a café having coffee reading the paper in Tampa. I was still new in town so I didn’t know very many people. That morning several people walked out the door, looked at me and said, “Hi!” with a very surprised looks on their faces. I thought it was odd, especially since it happened several times. About an hour later, someone I did know yelled across a parking lot, “Hey Blank! I just saw you on “Current Affair” last night.”

That was more amusing than anything else. I have to admit that telling the story to a few people at dinner was always a nice conversation starter. The irritating and infuriating things came later.

One thing I created myself to some degree. I got sober in October of 1992 thru Alcoholics Anonymous, over a year before this incident. Part of AA is “the 12 steps;” step 9 is “making direct amends.”

After I moved to Florida a sponsor I was working with asked me what my part was in this incident. I said that if I wasn’t so self-righteous I could have just let Nicholson get in front of me even though he was making an illegal move. (Can you hear the self righteous?) My sponsor said, “Write him a letter and make an amends for your part.”

So I wrote the letter, read it to my sponsor. All was good, so I mailed the letter. (I had Jack’s address from the paperwork selling my car.)

In the January 2004, Fiftieth Anniversary issue of Playboy, Nicholson was interviewed.

First he said he felt justified. Then he said, “And after all, he was trying to run me over”.

REALLY, are you fucking kidding me? Run you over?

“I never knew what ticked the guy off, but I can tell you this: Within the past year I got a letter of apology form him. And I accept his apology.”

After reading that I felt I had been attacked again.

IT WAS NOT AN APOLOGY, it was an AMENDS. If anyone is not clear of the difference, look up the two words in the dictionary.

I did call my former attorney Charles Ruben regarding the interview. Mentioning Nicholson’s violation of our signed agreement, Ruben said that since I sent him the letter it was OK for Nicholson to discuss it. Again, he made no legal sense. In a fax I sent to Ruben I quoted section 4.1 of the agreement:”…and Blank & Nicholson shall engage in no further discussion unless compelled to do so in a judicial proceeding”. So much for contracts and agreements.

The Biography channel’s piece on Nicholson as I mentioned before, states that I had received $500,000. Which as I said before was exaggerated, and Nicholson as far as I know has never tried to correct any misinformation. Of course why would he? It makes him look like he’s the taken advantage of famous actor. Poor guy, don’t you feel sorry for him?

I could go on, but I won’t. I just wanted to write my side of the story. Maybe one day it will be read and reported on.

Liberals tell me how…?

2011-07-07T13:13:00.002-04:00

I ask all my liberal friends: please tell me how Geoff Colvin is wrong in his recent Fortune column?

Just because the Republican Party has devolved into a pack of Druids in bad suits doesn’t mean they can’t have a good idea now and then. And in fairness, Rep. Paul Ryan seems less Druid-like than most of them. Nor is he playing Chicken Little when he warns us that the budgetary sky is falling on top of us at this very minute, and the principal cause is Medicare.

It cost over half a trillion dollars last year and it is rising fast. “Well, the wars cost even more than that!” you reply? “So what!” says I. End them too; the hole we need to fill is big enough for both plus agriculture subsidies and one or two other big programs. (I nominate HUD, but that’s another post.)

Besides, money isn’t the only problem with the current system; it may not even be the biggest problem. Conservatives are right when they say little good comes from the government making health care decisions. That doesn’t mean they have no role to play, but when grandma is 92 and could use a new knee, or even worse, a couple of months in intensive care before finally kicking off, it is grandma and the family that should decide if the expense is really worth it – not the fact that, “Oh, what the hell, Medicare will cover it.” And grandma and the family should have some skin in the game.

Having some skin in the game would surely cut down on waste, fraud and unnecessary procedures. It might even put an end to ads for the Scooter Store (see 6/4/10 post), which is justification enough for me.

Colvin is correct in saying that “the people aren’t dummies,” at least most of the time but especially when it comes to spending their money. If you are worried that some people won’t do well at making health care decisions you would be right, but you could always join the ranks of the many that will step up and provide intelligent counseling to consumers who want it. In any event, it will cause less pain and suffering than the collapse of the entire system. Just remember, the U.S. has greater debt per capita than Greece; this isn’t a small problem we are facing.

So, how is Colvin wrong?

A question for Senator McCain

2011-06-22T21:13:00.003-04:00

If the United States removes its troops from foreign countries but continues to be an active diplomatic voice and the largest source of both government and non-government aid, plus a major cultural and media influence around the world, how is it possible to call that isolationism?

The media conspiracy

2011-03-21T19:05:00.000-04:00

I have a number of relatives who are Glenn Beck and Fox News fans. They regularly send me emails in which the underlying theme is that the “Lame Street” or “drive-by” media is the enabler of a liberal conspiracy to ruin America. One such email today, in combination with a sore back that kept me from going to the Y, prompted me to try to explain why this is a canard. I hate to waste nearly 600 words so I thought I’d post my response.

“I spent 30 years working for Time Warner, one of the largest media and entertainment companies in the world. It doesn’t make me the ultimate authority, but I think I have some insights worth considering if you believe the New York Times leads a conspiracy to drag the country into European socialism. I can’t prove you wrong but maybe you’ll at least consider how inherently illogical such a construct is.

I’ll begin by admitting that by-and-large, media people – writers, editors, producers, etc., are more liberal in their political views than the average American. But 50% of all people are more liberal than the average American, so that in itself doesn’t mean all that much. Look to the person on your left and then on your right. One of those people is probably more liberal – or more conservative than you.

But these folks are not defined solely by their political views. They are in the main regular working folks. For every Brian Williams pulling down $10 mil a year there are hundreds of people tolling in good but not great jobs, struggling hard to find a way to find profits in an industry whose customers expect everything for free these days. It’s these people who write the words that Brian Williams speaks each night on the news.

They have mortgages to pay, children to educate, car payments and all the other pressures of modern life just as you do, and just as those with more conservatives views have. They are not exempt from tax hikes, diminished public services, union excesses or financial disasters. They are no less oppressed by political correctness or the excesses that are a part of many well-meaning government/social engineering programs. There is no special category for them; they toil daily in an industry with steadily shrinking employment.

The business they are in is the business of building an audience. There are only two ways to bring revenue into a media company. Either the consumer pays to see/hear it, or advertisers pay them a sliding fee based on the number of people consuming what they produce.

Regardless of any one person’s political point-of-view, that person puts his job in jeopardy if he gives his political views a higher priority than building a larger audience. He risks failure if he aims his story at only those who will agree with his pov; he leaves money on the table if he alienates those he knows do not share his opinions. Despites these facts, it still happens sometimes, but if it happens too often his competitors will notice and will swoop in like the Barbarian hoards and take what has been left up for grabs. It is a blood-thirsty business – the media.

Finally, when you think of Time and Newsweek, think Coke and Pepsi. NBC and CBS? GM and Ford. The New York Times and Washington Post? They are IBM and Apple. It’s impossible to prove a negative, but these companies do not get together and agree to push a set of ideas and ignore another set of ideas. Did we not have electric vehicles for decades because GM and Ford met secretly to agree not to make them? There are naive people who believe this is the case, but logic and facts suggest the reason was that the public did not want them enough to buy them – until they did, and now everyone is making them.

It is no different with the media. The media produces what it believes will sell to an audience that has highly diverse political views. The rewards accrue to those who do that job the best. There are no rewards for political dogma disconnected from the moods of the broadly defined public.”

Going underground

2011-03-04T12:24:00.004-05:00

This is going to be my last post for a while. I’m leaving Florida in 52 days and am starting to feel a little overwhelmed by my to-do list. Keep in mind that after 16 months in retirement I find it very difficult to commit more than a few hours per day to any task not directly related to nurturing my own comfort or amusement, but that’s how it is and there isn’t much I can do about it.

There is a lot to do, however, in preparation for my move to Ohio where I plan to begin a second career as an unpaid social provocateur. I’m not ready to talk about those plans yet, but they require complex planning and preparation. In addition, I continue to work on writing a book about something. Exactly what the something is keeps shifting on me. I’m certainly no threat to Stephen King in the category of “prolific authors.” After almost a year of pecking away I’ve written about 25,000 words, which is probably about 80 or so pages; I’ve a long way to go.

I really enjoy writing the Daily Blank. Of course has never been close to a daily, but I liked the name the moment McRik proposed it over a martini at Alfredo’s one cold winter evening after work (or was it over a shot and beer at Jimmy’s Corner?). And I enjoy reading your comments and getting a little conversation going even more. The last thing I want is for writing the blog to become a chore or an obligation rather than the fun it’s been the last three + years. I hope to be back this summer once the move is complete.

So while I'm going underground, I'll still be moving. And remember, the longest road out is the shortest road home.

The U.N. strikes again

2011-02-24T18:50:00.003-05:00

I just heard that the U.N. may consider removing Libya from their Human Rights Council, possibly as early as next week. You can always count on the U.N. to take swift and effective action when the lives of people are at stake. The bad news is that Yemen is in line to take Libya's place.

On the road to visit Bam-Bam

2011-02-21T18:00:00.002-05:00

A Florida road trip is just not a proper road trip. A proper road trip should take place as much as possible on state or county routes or other two-lane highways. Florida is the ultimate Interstate Highway state. They are everywhere and often it is all but impossible to get from A to B without spending at least part of the trip on I-something.

Going anywhere in south Florida for me demands a run through Orlando that is a one-hour, bumper-to-bumper, 70-mile-per-hour NASCAR simulation on a good day; on a bad day it is a 90 minute slog behind an endless string of minivans and SUVs, filled with kids, driven by Midwesterners and Canadians, each one searching for Disney World, Universal Studios or Bibleland (official name: Holy Land Experience). However, they all intuitively know the one unbreakable Florida traffic law: slower moving traffic keeps to the left.

If you do find a back road worth driving you will find the parts of Florida Tosh.0 describes as “flat, hot and dumb,” not that you can see anything because you will now be behind either an RV, an SUV pulling a boat or jet-ski, a landscaping crew in a king cab pulling a trailer loaded with eight lawnmowers, a full sized pesticide van, an F-150 4x4 jacked up at least 24 inches, or a Ram Heavy-duty with four tires on the rear axle. If you pass it, another will be right there in front of you. If you are the first car stopped at a light, three of them will turn from the cross street into your intended path as you wait helplessly for the green.

Thank God for the blues. I had a couple of Roadhouse episodes on the iPod and heard some good new (to me) stuff including Doug MacLeod and Chainsaw Dupont.

I went down to Ft. Myers to see my former Fortune colleague Bruce McNaughton, now 77 and retired; that’s him above. He may be the most memorable character I’ve ever known and no one I know was ever better able to force a major corporation to shape itself around his idea of how to do his job. I learned a lot from him over the years and I wanted to ask him a few questions for a writing project I’m working on. That’s going to take some time to complete, but you might enjoy a short anecdote that sheds a good deal of light on the essence of the man.

It was 1980 and I had just joined the ad sales staff at Fortune. I was 31 which was then pretty young for the job. One quiet afternoon Bruce’s 300-pound, bald countenance suddenly filled my office doorway.

“What are you doing right now kid?” he bellowed, which was his soft voice.

“Nothing special. Why?”

“Come with me. I want to show you how to treat a customer.”

I grabbed my suit coat and followed him down the hall, down the elevator and through the lobby of the Time-Life Building. We crossed 6^th Avenue past Radio City. Bruce, often referred to as BAM (an acronym for his full name: Bruce Angus McNaughton) carried a gift-wrapped box which I was sure held a bottle of Glenfiddich single malt Whisky.

“Where are we going?”

“BBDO” he shouted over his shoulder as I struggled to keep up. At Fifth Avenue he turned north in front of Sak’s.

“I thought we were going to BBDO” I asked. ”Why are we going uptown?”

“I need to pick up the rest of the parade.”

At 54^th Street there was a busker dressed in full Scottish garb – kilt, sporran, tam – the works -- playing the bagpipes, a tip box at his feet. Bruce handed him a twenty and commanded him to follow us as we turned towards Madison and continued our journey to BBDO.

We entered their building and in those pre-9/11 days there were no ID checks or other formalities. We got in an elevator and Bruce punched 18. At 16 the last people in the car who were not part of our little parade got out. As soon as the doors closed Bruce shouted, “Hit it!”

I simply lack the words to describe what it feels like to be in an enclosed elevator car inches from a bagpiper in full throttle. I’ll just say it’s nothing I recommend unless you’re the sort of person who sits in the first row of the Daytona 500 without ear protection and enjoys it.

The doors opened on the executive floor of BBDO and the world stood still. The receptionist rose half way up and froze in her place. We marched out of the car and past her without a pause; Bruce in the lead followed by the piper and then me. I felt like the guy the Second City cast had pulled out of the audience to be a part of some unfathomable improvisation. I nodded sheepishly to the receptionist who looked right through me.

We entered the office space and time stopped. The pipe’s volume ended all phone calls and conversations instantly. It was as if someone had pushed the ignition button on an F-16 inside the building. Heads popped up from cubes. Closed office doors opened and open doors filled with gob-smacked faces.

We turned down one corridor and then another until we reached a corner office where the object of our visit stood slack-jawed in awe of the approaching chaos. I’ve long since forgotten who he was; he could not have been too important or Bruce would have worn his full Scottish kit as well. This fellow was important, but ranked only a bottle of Glenfiddich and a serenade. When I visited Bruce last week he confirmed that he made this sort of musical presentation a number of times and he did not recall this particular event.

But I can guarantee you that the recipient never forgot it, or the man who brought the magic to his door.

Mini road trip

2011-02-14T20:04:00.004-05:00

I'm heading down to the Gulf Coast tomorrow for a few day to visit relatives and to interview Bruce Angus McNaughton for my book project. Those of you who know Bam-Bam should feel free to suggest questions for the interview, although I'll be lucky to get a question in edge-wise.

FYI, it is forecast to be 78 - 80 and sunny in Ft. Myers and Naples this week.

Also, I'm still laughing over a line from Gail Collins last week where she compared the Republican budget cuts proposal to a someone who is 50 lbs over weight deciding to cut down on their intake of kale.

The Doonesbury version

2011-02-13T11:06:00.003-05:00

Doonesbury offers its version of the February 8th Daily Blank post in its February 13th strip. I think you'll find it here, but it maybe only today; strating tomorrow you'll probably have to look in the Doonesbury archives.

Blues, pelicans and Super Bowl ads

2011-02-10T12:17:00.003-05:00

I was driving to the beach yesterday and about to reach my favorite spot when a song came on the radio that stopped me in my tracks. It had a jungle beat and a powerful, yet sweet, female vocal lamenting that she was “drowning in her own tears.” I was completely captivated. I parked but left the radio on until she’d finished telling her story. The DJ identified her as Robin Rogers – a name I knew.

Last fall both my regular blues podcasts (Roadhouse and Murphy’s Saloon -- see links to right) told how the recently discovered Rogers had just been diagnosed with liver cancer, that her husband and musical partner Tony Rogers had quit playing to take care of her full time and that she had no medical insurance. I sent a check – not enough to get into heaven – but I wanted to be a part of the blues community that was being asked to help out. She died in December just after learning that her last release, “Back in the Fire” had been nominated for a Blues Music Award. The whole album is great but you can try “Ocean of Tears,” the song that snagged me, for only 99 cents. Robin had a hard life, found success late, and then died at 55, but she left something beautiful behind.

Then I watched the pelicans feed for an hour or so. They found a mother-load of fish about 50 yards off shore which attracted more than 100 of the big birds, which look to me like a Disney version of a pterodactyl. The squadron of birds circled a school yard of fish covering about a half an acre, at an altitude of maybe 30 feet. It looked like flying a merry-go-round with every bird tethered to a central axes; but one-by-one the birds paused for a portion of a second, tucked their articulated wings into their bodies, pointed their prehistoric heads and beaks towards the water and dove straight down into the teaming buffet. Bird after bird – 5 or 6 in a matter of 2 or 3 seconds; then a pause for a few seconds and then 3-4 more. Tschoooo. Tschoooo. Tschooo. Then back up into the elevated raceway to spot another fish. There are worse ways to waste an afternoon.

So the Super Bowl was OK -- a pretty good game. The commercials were, as always in my view, overrated. I did like the VW/Darth Vader ad, which was a top pick for lots of people. The Chevy-Camaro-turns-into-a-robot ad was great and the Chevy Cruze/Facebook app ad was very sweet. I loathed the #3 best recall ad for Doritos – “Man licks cheese crumbs.” Haven’t we seen this ad like 5000 times with some other embarrassingly dweeby white dude doing something disgusting and demeaning that shows how much he worships the product? Enough. It had a great recall score but so what? I love the Windell Middlebrooks ads for Miller Beer, but no matter how many times I watch him take the Highlife away from some low-life, it won’t be enough to get me to drink one of their 12 once urine samples in a beer bottle.

******

I’ve been very curious to know how the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in Cairo knew the logistics of their protests in advance and how those plans were made. The media has mostly credited Facebook and Twitter, which is like given credit to the telephone for the planning of D-Day, but there is an excellent article in the Times today that provides a deeper look into the planning.

Patriot Act and the NRA

2011-02-08T21:40:00.002-05:00

The Patriot Act was passed with the overwhelming support of both parties in the wake of the 9-11 attacks. The act allows the government new and unprecedented permission to snoop into private financial records, authorizes warrantless searches in some cases and expanded wiretapping of telephone call and interception of Internet communications without warrants. It also permits unlimited detention of immigrants. Whether you agree with the law or not, you’d have to agree that these are quite significant infringements of Constitutional rights established in the Bill of Rights, which have protected Americans for more than 200 years.

These unprecedented infringements were enacted by Congress a result of 3000 tragic deaths perpetrated on a single perfect fall morning in 2001.

Last year 30,000 Americans were killed by guns. Ten times as many as were killed on 9-11. Another 60,000 were wounded; many disabled or scared either physically or emotionally for life.

And yet there isn’t a single Congressperson that I’m aware of with the nerve to propose that people don’t need to be able to own 33 bullet magazines – let alone to suggest that any interpretation of the Second Amendment is possible other than the one that says unlimited procession of any kind gun is every American’s absolute right. It seems for some, the Constitution is a convenience at times and a nuisance at others.

Is the NRA any better than Hosni Mubarak? Is their tyranny any less lethal? Do they corrupt the political process any less? Do we lack the courage of the Egyptian people?

The People’s Republic of Football

2011-02-04T17:45:00.005-05:00

This Sunday the whole country will come to a standstill while two great athletic powers face off in a game of unparalleled importance; yes, I’m talking about the Ohio State v. Minnesota basketball game, as the 23-0 Buckeyes take on the 18^th ranked Golden Gophers for Big Ten supremacy. Oh yeah, there is a football game later on Sunday. I’m going with the Stillers, primarily because they just seem to know how to win the big one. I expect a close game and a decent amount of scoring. Let’s say 27-24.

Speaking of football, Chilly Joe sent me a link to one of Bill Maher’s rants that was good for a laugh. His premise is that the NFL is the most competitive and popular professional sport because the owners have embraced socialism as their business model from day one. You may not like Maher – I often wish I could reach out and smack him one myself – but read the piece and see if he isn’t right. You can find it here.

You remember Chatty Cathy? Well the latest talking toy has just hit the shops. It is a talking Muslim doll complete with burka. Nobody knows what she says because no one has the balls to pull the cord. I’m not going to credit the person who sent that one to me as they lack 24/7 personal protection.

You know what is really annoying and ubiquitous watching the network coverage from Egypt and the winter storms bombarding the U.S.? It’s the way TV anchors thank every field correspondent at the end of their reports, like they were volunteers working in leper colonies. Is it that they feel guilty sitting in a warm studio getting paid millions for reading the news, or just another example of how in America everyone expects a trophy in recognition of each bowel movement? Every time I go to McDonalds I expect the counterperson to turn and thank the grill cook for preparing my Big Mac.

The d’blank Doctrine

2011-02-01T20:00:00.001-05:00

The events in Egypt have been both riveting and frustrating. The speed with which a motivated group of people have been able to move to the brink of remaking an entire society has been stunning and inspiring. However it’s been painful to hear the street voice of Cairo tie the dictator Mubarak to the United States. We are supposed to be the beacon of liberty that lights the world.

Egypt was an opportunity to be a role model for 80 million people in the most powerful Middle Eastern Islamic country, but it is not to be the case. “Made in USA” stamped on the tear gas canisters trumps anything President Obama or Secretary of State Clinton can possibly do or say at this point.

Had I been President we would be operating under The d’blank Doctrine, which says that the United States will never align itself with a despotic government and will always take the side of the forces working for freedom and democracy.

Is that Pollyannaish? I don’t think so. What has our support for anti-democratic regimes ever done for us? We’re still at odds with Iran more than 30 years after the Shah’s brutal dictatorship collapsed. I just returned from Chile where the U.S. is not hated, but people have not forgotten our role in the overthrow of Allende. Kuwait dragged us into one war. Saudi Arabia breeds terrorists. Cuba nearly precipitated a nuclear war out of frustration with Yankee-supported dictators. Has our support for the wrong guy in any of these countries made us safer?

The benefits far outweigh the risks. Democracy and freedom are the central promises of the American brand. America is aspirational. We need to be on the right side in situations like Egypt’s. That knowledge alone gives confidence and motivation.

There is a clear global trend towards democracy. More than 85 authoritarian governments have fallen in the past few decades. The United States should stand with the people seeking freedom in foreign lands, not just because it is right, but because they will stand with us once they achieve the freedom the crave.

Technology blues

2011-01-28T14:11:00.002-05:00

I try to upgrade my computer and related technology occasionally; never sooner than until I’m at least two operating systems behind but never longer than the time period between Democratic administrations.

I just updated last week – got a new Dell notebook with a beautiful 17” HD display, a Bluetooth mouse and plenty of memory. I have much less enthusiasm for everything else about this upgrade.

Much of my frustration is with Microsoft, which insists on changing everything about the user’s experience on every bit of their software as often as possible. My beef is mainly with Windows and Word. The easier it was to find and use some feature in the previous versions, the more likely they are to have changed or moved it in the new version. There is a huge learning curve every time you update which is a real disincentive to do so.

I knew this was coming so I paid and extra $100 for the Dell “Premiere” support package, but no documentation of that came with the computer; it took over an hour to figure out how to access it. Whenever I called (and I tried from three different phones) I got a crystal clear greeting and phone menu, then some whirls, clicks and whistles as the call was switched to and answered in Bangalore. At this point the quality of the connection degraded by about 60% and became very poor.

When I finally got a person on the line it got worse. Let me digress first and say that I barely speak one language well, and I have great admiration for anyone who masters more than one. But mastering a language and speaking clearly aren’t the same things, and between the bad connection and the Indian accents I wasn’t getting anywhere transferring my iTunes library from one PC to the other. I guess it was a blessing in disguise because I eventually gave up and figured it out myself, so now I have a few more tech chops than I had before.

And I swore I was going to finally get a handle on backing up data with this machine, so I bought Dell’s online back-up service, but again they sent no documentation. After another hour or so I got that working and up pops a little box telling me it will take 12 hours to back everything up and the PC and internet have to be on the whole time. OK, but unfortunately after about 10 hours the internet farted, interrupting the back-up and forcing me to start over. Second time worked like a charm until 11 hours and 30 minutes when another box informed me I had too much data for the plan I bought and that I should “click here to upgrade and start over.” I declined. I’m going back to random backing up by hand; if I lose something because I didn't back it up, it must not have been that important.

I looked for a way to get refunds for the two services I’m not using, but Dell makes it very hard to find that information. I lobbed a couple emails into two different places that looked like they might be the right spots; one elicited an auto reply telling me to take a deep breath as we “look forward to serving you as soon as possible. As of now we are experiencing unexpected high email volume due to festive season, this may delay the response to your request for assistance.” The other one got no reply.

I’m keeping this machine and software until another Bush takes office, but next time I’m not buying during "festive season."

My State of the Union Dilemma

2011-01-25T13:13:00.003-05:00

I got a totally unnecessary text from Buzzard this morning reminding me that the speech and the Ohio State-Purdue basketball game both start at 9:00 p.m. eastern tonight. While I responded that “this is why God invented the DVR” I’m not sure yet which one will get the delayed viewing.

On the one hand Buzz went to Purdue and I Ohio State, which presents a unique trash-texting opportunity. The Buckeyes are 20-0 and ranked #1, but Purdue is also highly ranked and 17-3. A game like this would normally have my full focus for the evening.

But the Obama University-Southwest GOP State game is looking pretty interesting too. OU is definitely on a mini-winning streak at the moment, with the latest polls putting him at a 55% approval rating – his highest in months. Expect more easy-listening rhetoric.

And then we have the post-speech SWGOPS rebuttal in which Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) will call Obama a socialist and promise to balance the budget without mentioning that he will also eliminate Social Security, Medicare, Pell Grants, the Post Office and the FDA along the way.

We also have the unusual seating arrangements to look forward to, wherein the two teams have decided to have their respective pep squads sitting intermingled like some kind of bi-partisan daisy chain; although I gather Mitch McConnell has decided to scowl his way through the President’s speech apart from any opposing team fans and will instead sit next to and hold hands with Supreme Court Justice Thomas whose wife is out of town stalking Anita Hill.

I think it’s unlikely this new interparty sociability will lead to any sustained political cooperation but I am hoping it cuts down on the standing ovations which are more numerous every year. At Ohio State games we do the standing “O-H-I-O!” cheer but only during time outs; Congress leaps to its feet in response to every innocuous of comment creating time outs which will be especially annoying tonight when each standing O delays the start of the game another 90 seconds.

Washington is second only to Hollywood in gratuitous self-congratulations; they need Ricky Gervais to MC the SOTU speech or at least a Big Ten ref to call a few “delay of game” technicals.

Playoff picks and potpourri

2011-01-22T18:57:00.003-05:00

Wow. Is it Saturday night already? I lose track sometimes. Well, it’s time to get tomorrow’s picks on the record. I’m feeling a lot of pressure sitting here 4-0 after last week.

I just love the idea of the Packers and Bears facing off to get into the Super Bowl on a torn up field in sub-freezing temperatures on a Sunday afternoon in late January; especially since I’ll be watching it from my couch in Florida. I’m going with the Bears at home in a very close and low-scoring game.

There is no way the Jets can beat the Stillers twice in Pittsburgh in the same year. There’s no way Troy Palamaulou allows that to happen. And yet, I’m going with the J-E-T-S, JETS, JETS, JETS all the way this year. However I do hope Braylon knocks himself out on a failed, post-game back flip.

* * *

I’m very curious to know the story behind Keith Olbermann’s sudden and mysterious departure from MSNBC. I’ve never liked him even a little, but I hope there isn’t some unseemly scandal behind it. He was the only talking head the liberals had on TV with any real following.

* * *

Ben Stiller has more Twitter followers than Sarah Palin.

* * *

It was kind of a lost week for me so you may well have read both David Brooks and Paul Krugman in the Times last Friday the 21^st. Each addressed the apparently uncrossable divide separating the political left and right in the country today. Krugman’s “A Tale of Two Moralities” explained the gap from a structural standpoint while Brooks’ “Tree of Failure” looked at from the perspective of the current social atmosphere. Both are interesting in their own right but together they are fascinating.

d'Blank goes 4-0!

2011-01-16T19:50:00.004-05:00

I hope you all went to Vegas on my picks this weekend. I'm selling next week's selections for $20. (Oh yeah, Fenway was also 4-0 but I picked first.)

NFL playoff picks

2011-01-14T11:52:00.005-05:00

Time again for the annual Daily Blank NFL playoff picks. I strongly urge you to liquidate all your assets, fly to Vegas, and put it all on my picks this year. Don’t let the following facts deter you in the slightest.

I have watched exactly two NFL games from start to finish this year. The first was the Browns-Jets game which I had to watch with no sound in some dumpy sports bar in Florida.
The second was the Browns-Dolphins game live in Miami. You will note that neither the Browns nor the Dolphins will be competing in the playoffs this year.
During several years of participation in my office fantasy football league I was routinely beaten by at least half of the women and both gay guys.

So, that said, I predict the following with complete confidence:

Ravens @ Steelers. I won’t be watching this one. For me it’s like watching the Taliban v. the Nazis knowing not only that one team will win but that it is also unlikely that a Tsunami will hit the stadium during the game wiping out both teams and their revolting fans. Ray Lewis is the devil. Stillers by 3.
Packers @ Falcons. Don’t hate either team. Used to be mildly anti-Packers due to their having too much success, but I’m over that now and like their small town roots and old school unis. Packers by 3.
Seahawks @ Bears. I saw much of their improbable win over NO, but can’t believe the ‘Hawks are for real. We’re looking at a high of 22° in Shacaga Sunday. I say the dome-boys fold. Bears by 10.
Jets @ Pats. Hate Bellychuck. Hate Braylon. Brady played for Michigan. Santonio and Mangold were both Buckeyes. My upset special: Jets by 1.

A recipe for domestic tranquility

2011-01-12T11:54:00.003-05:00

Are you tired of the same old cold leftovers served up by the prevailing political ruling class? Here is a fun and easy way to combine the things that are already in the fridge to make a tasty new dish for national consumption. This stuff is just going stale anyway; we might as well use it up.

Take the following steps:

Fill our prisons with as many drug users and low-level dealers as possible, diverting as many legal resources as possible from pursuing, prosecuting and imprisoning the most dangerous criminals.
Refuse to fill as many judgeships as possible in order to checkmate your political foes and keep them from rewarding their own political sympathizers.
Empty the mental institutions and make it as hard as possible to hold someone for mental evaluation in the name of patients' rights. (This step has the added advantage of freeing-up funds to build more prisons to hold all the dangerous marijuana growers.)
Make it as easy as possible for anyone to own a gun. Refuse to put any reasonable restrictions on gun ownership and make the few conditions you do have ineffective. Let anyone who wants one have a Glock and 33 load clips. Hell, let’s give ‘em bazookas.
The above step will create a healthy firearms industry; export as much as possible of the excess production to Mexico, helping to destabilize our closest neighbor.
Add a massive portion of common theft by the most privileged, best educated members of society and do not punish them in any way for their destruction of trillions of dollars of Americans’ savings. In fact, reward them with a $700 billion tax cut.
Add a pinch of liberal demogodery and a pound and a half of Fox News.
Now put it all in a hot oven set to 10% unemployment (with another 10-15% underemployed).
Borrow as much money as you possibly can to make as much of this soup as you can. Give no thought what-so-ever to whether you'll ever be able to repay the money.

This should produce a really tasty treat that all members of your family will enjoy for years to come.

A few thoughts on Tucson

2011-01-10T19:09:00.003-05:00

After learning more about the gun laws in Arizona, or the lack there of, I don’t think I will even visit the state and I would advise those I care about to steer clear as well.

I was expecting a non-apology apology from Sarah Palin for the crosshair imagery she used in her ads “targeting” Rep. Gifford’s district, but even that was too much to expect. Her response was that she never intended the image to represent a gun sight, and that it was just the normal thing you would see on a map. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a map with anything resembling crosshairs on it.

Several members of Congress are now talking about introducing legislation that would forbid carrying guns near members of Congress. So in addition to having health care that none of the rest of us has, Congress would then have protection from guns none unavailable to the rest of us. Of course the NRA will never allow such legislation to pass so it’s a moot point.

Just because the Republicans hate it…

2011-01-07T12:19:00.003-05:00

One of the best parts about being in Chile for 16 days was the complete absence of American political news. I didn’t read a newspaper once and the only TV I watched was a five-hour CSI marathon with my kids over a couple of bottles of wine on a slow night in Cachagua. It was like being in an isolation chamber. It was heavenly. We pay too much attention to the clowns in Washington; it only encourages them.

Reality returned quickly once we landed in Florida to hear that the Republicans were about to take over the House and their first order of business was going to be to repeal the latest health care legislation. I was initially worried but then they decided to read the U.S. Constitution out loud on the House floor first. This hipped me to the fact that a simple House majority wasn’t enough to repeal an already enacted law. Man, thank goodness that the rest of us are now in on the secrets that lie within the Constitution; it wasn’t good having only the Tea-baggers as the only Americans who understand the fundamentals of our democracy. Thankfully we all know now.

So then repealing health care legislation in the House sounded like a pretty unproductive exercise until I read David Brooks' piece in the Times this morning, and now I’m not so sure. While I pretty much hate the Republican party even more than the Democratic party, one has to be careful not to fall into the trap of thinking they are wrong 100% of the time. Just because the Republicans hate something doesn’t make it a good thing.

I had a great deal of ambivalence from the beginning. Any bill that starts with major concessions to Big Pharma and the insurance industry can’t be all good. Then throw in the Nebraska compromise and a few other bribes paid to various Senators to get them to vote “yea,” roll the whole thing up in a bill the size of Twain’s autobiography, pass it in the middle of the night before anyone has really read it, and just how good can it be?

Well, lots of people say “better than no bill” but what if it ends up costing the country hundreds of billions of dollars instead of saving similar amounts as promised? I say that is worse than nothing. Not only can’t we afford it, but it will poison the well for all future “progressive“ legislation of any kind because it will forever stand as a shining example of the Democrats’ unwillingness to consider the practicality and functionality of any legislation at the expense of liberal dogma. I highly recommend the Brooks piece if you haven't already read.

Chillin’ in Chile

2011-01-04T13:14:00.004-05:00

Happy New Year everyone. I’ve just spent two-and-a-half weeks in Chile with my family and if I had the descriptive powers of a travel writer I’d make this a long love letter to that country. I don’t have those skills but I’d like to give you a few reasons to put Chile on your list of places to visit someday.

To give you a little perspective, the population is about 17 million, a little smaller than Florida’s, and it is a little bigger than Texas in size; a good deal of the land mass takes the form of the Andes Mountains that run the length of the country along the eastern border and the Pacific Ocean borders on the west. On average Chile is only 110 miles wide.

The population of the capital city of Santiago is nearly 7 million but it feels much smaller and less dense than New York which has 8 million people. In fact Atlanta feels bigger to me. I mean this in a good way. The city has an open airy feel to it. There are historic areas with 18^th and 19^th Century European influences, but Chile grew tremendously in the late 20^th Century and much of it has a very modern appearance with very hip architecture and lots of small, attractive parks and wide streets. Traffic is bad, but no worse than most big cities, and they have a modern, clean and efficient subway system that we used quite a bit. The bus system is also said to be good but I didn’t try them. Taxis are plentiful and cheap.

Santiago has lots of modern hotels and interesting restaurants and both are comparable to the cost of visiting a large American city. They are said to have an honest and professional police force, although I had no experience in that area either. The population is almost entirely European, native people, or a racial mix of the two; we saw almost no people of obvious Asian or African descent.

Santiago sits right at the base of the Andes. It was the beginning of their summer when we arrived and, like many basin cities, Santiago is occasionally plagued with smog issues. But we had a nice clear week there. Every day was sunny, about 75-80 degrees with zero humidity. Absolutely lovely.

Our son Joe is spending his junior year at the University of Chile and has been there since last July, so we had a fluent Spanish-speaking guide. A few words of Spanish go a long way there and it is pretty easy to find English speakers if you need one. That said it was great having someone with local knowledge to show us around.

Our daughter Charlotte joined us a few days into the trip and after a couple more days in Santiago we made our way to the coast, stopping along the way at one of several notable wine-producing areas within the country. It’s only an hour-and-a-half car ride from Santiago to the Pacific, but we took a looping route that took us through Viña del Mar on our way to the village of Cachagua.

Our old friend from New York, Jon May, who has lived in Chile for more than 20 years, told us that Viña was the Jersey Shore and Cachagua the Hamptons of Chile; the analogy was pretty good. Viña was a large beach town with tons of hotels, restaurants, bars, shops and a casino. It was also very crowded and hectic. Absolutely worth a visit, but at least three of the four of us were glad to have picked the more sedate Cachagua with its miles of uncrowded beaches broken up by stretches of rocky coast.

The beaches were fantastic but better suited to the sea lions and penguins that populate the area. While the air temp was near 80 the water was below 60 and the only people in it were surfers in wet suits.

These beaches were for lying or walking upon. They alternated with very old stone paths through the rocky stretches so that it was possible to walk for miles though a string of similar small villages along the coast. The stone paths were typically at the bottom of tall cliffs upon which sat large, old homes belonging to the Chilean elite. We saw a couple of helicopters sitting on their beachside pads.

The sandy beach areas were also dominated by beautiful homes, more often of the Chilean modern style, which I like very much. The analogy to the Hamptons is good to a point, but I don’t think I saw a home over 10,000 square feet. While that is certainly a very big home, there were no mini-Hyatt-Hotel-personal-dwellings on these beaches, and I estimate that more than 90% of the homes were less than 3000 square feet. My point is that the area scored pretty low on the mine-is-bigger-than-yours scale. This extended to automobiles; we saw far more Subarus than Mercedes.

We had a really nice, spacious, modern apartment walking distance to the beach, but facing west over the countryside. Rooster crowed at dawn. No alarm needed.

Dogs are everywhere in Chile. The authorities pick them up, vaccinate and spay and then release them. Everyone feeds them. In Santiago they stand patiently at street corners and cross with the pedestrians when the light turns in their favor. My son told me one walked him home one night after he’d had a few beers, warding away a couple of other strays he didn’t like the looks of. When Joe got to his place the dog walked him to his door and then left.

In Cachagua they’d lead us done the stone paths or accompany us to the market. Between walks they laid in the dirt streets in a sunny patch; cars and pedestrians worked around them. They didn’t beg and they mostly appeared to be well fed and clean. They were charming.

We ate very well. Chile is not noted for its restaurants, but there are some good ones and the local fruits and vegetables are excellent. Avocados (called paltas there) are served with everything and were delicious. My new favorite food may be something called “pastel de choclo” which is a kind of chicken and onion soup served in a heavy croc over which is layered something like corn pudding. It is baked until the top has a golden crust. Fantastic.

The local chorizos are very good, although they like to serve them “Italian style” with avocado, tomatoes and mayo, so-called because it resembles the red, green and white of the Italian flag. We had a nice kitchen and a grill in Cachagua, and Joe likes to cook. I preferred the chorizos with his homemade salsa served on a particular type of Chilean bread called marraquitas. I’d go to the paneria every morning for a supply hot from the oven; after ten it was gone replaced by another type we liked less.

On a one day visit to Valparaiso we stumbled across an empanada shop that served nothing but five kinds of empanadas, three kinds of soda, and tea, the traditional accompanying beverage with Chile’s version of the hamburger. They were fresh from the oven and delicious, and we had the satisfaction of being the only non-Chileans in the joint, which is always a fun feeling – like we were in the know.

We had several spectacular seafood meals near Cachagua. One at Punta del Mar in Maitencillo, and two at Chiringuito in Zapallar. The food was similar at both; traditional Chilean treatments of basic shellfish and fish taken from the ocean that morning. It was fresh, simple and tasty beyond my limited vocabulary’s ability to do the food justice. They were both very nice places but Chiringuito was truly special. It sits on the beach in Zapallar, which is a small horseshoe shaped cove – partially sand and partially rocky. We sat in carved wooden chairs outside under a perfect blue sky while pelicans dove for their own lunch as we ate ours. Multi-colored fishing boats bobbed in the gentle waves. I’ve never eaten in a more perfect setting.

As anyone who has been in a wine shop in the past few decades knows, Chile makes some very fine wines and we sampled many of them. They were terrific and cheap. Finally, on the food front, if you go to Santiago, be sure to eat at my friend Jon May’s place, the Tortilla Factory, one of Chile’s few Mexican restaurants. It’s better than any Mexican restaurant I’ve eaten in in New York and they serve the world’s best smoothies. It’s in Las Condes, one of the nicest parts of the city.

I didn’t think this post would be so long, but I wanted to do justice to a lovely country we enjoyed so much. I haven’t even mentioned how friendly the people were, and after all, that’s what really makes any place special. I’ve left out too much. For anyone who is interested you can see photos from the trip on my Facebook page.

Was it perfect? Well, the only downside of a visit to Chile that I can think of is that it is a long way there and relatively expensive to get to. It was ten hours of flying from Orlando plus a three-hour layover in the Panama City airport, not something I can recommend as a good time unless you enjoy unlimited “duty-free” shopping at prices about 20% higher than those at your local mall.

But that was a small price to pay for a wonderful travel experience, and there is so much more to see. We didn’t even get up into the real Andes, or to the southern end of Chile which has some of the most spectacular land in the world, often called “the Yosemite of Chile.” Northern Chile has one of the largest deserts on earth. Maybe next time.

Adios.

Vamos a Chile

2010-12-13T12:35:00.003-05:00

Merry Christmas everyone. This will be my last post for a while as we are leaving tomorrow for the final road trip of 2010; 2-1/2 weeks in Chile including a week in Santiago with the rest of the time at the Pacific Ocean village of Cachagua. As I’m sure this highly sophisticated crowd knows it is summer down there now. My son is attending the University of Chile this year and my daughter is flying down too, so we will have a family Christmas at the beach.

Here is a list of my 2010 road trips in chronological order: Yonkers, New York to Arlington, Virginia. Arlington to Charlotte and Wilmington, NC and on to DeLand, Florida, my winter base. DeLand to Tampa. DeLand to Memphis and Clarksdale, Mississippi. DeLand to Myrtle Beach and Charleston, SC. DeLand to Yonkers for a month with a visit in Winston-Salem, NC along the way. Yonkers to Boston for daughter’s graduation. Numerous trips to NYC. Yonkers to Westhampton, MA, my summer base. Day trips to Pittsfield, MA (Melville’s home), Hartford (Twain’s home) and Boston. Westhampton to the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. Westhampton to Erie, PA, Warren, Ohio and Detroit. Westhampton to Erie, Warren, Greenville, PA and Geneva-on-the-Lake, Ohio. Back to DeLand via Arlington. DeLand to San Francisco, Yosemite National Park, Sonoma and Napa Valleys. DeLand to Miami. And now to Chile. That was fun but I plan to dial it back a little in ’11.

Happy New Year!

What if?

2010-12-09T19:46:00.002-05:00

What if in 2012 people look back at nearly four years of the Obama administration and think:

“Well, he didn’t get everything I’d hoped for but he got health care for 30 million people, he got unemployment benefits extended for the jobless, a substantial tax cut for middle class Americans and financial reform. He gave up huge tax cuts for wealthy people and the health care and financial reform bills weren’t perfect, but I blame the Republicans for that. And I blame the Republicans for road-blocking an agreement with Russia on nuclear arms and a bunch of other things too.”

What if all the TARP money is repaid with interest and GM is profitable and adding to their workforce? What if unemployment drops to under 7% and seems likely to continue a steady if slow recovery?

What if he and his team regain their communications mojo and tell their story with simplicity and passion?

What if people stop thinking Obama is afraid to fight for what is right, and begin to see him as the one sane person in national politics; the one person willing to step away from the partisan bickering that has accomplished nothing? What if people start accepting that politics is the art of the possible?

I don’t know if I even think this way and there are a lot of “ifs” in the above. I’m just wondering.

Daddy O, Cuban coffee and da Browns

2010-12-07T17:21:00.005-05:00

I just returned from my penultimate road trip of 2010. Mrs. d’blank and I went down to Miami to watch the Browns play the Dolphins. I suspect that the Mrs. only came out of pity at my inability to find a friend or family member to attend with me. Despite the way they call themselves “life-long fans” none could find a way to spend a couple days in Miami (where it was 78 and sunny), and a few hours sitting on the fifty yard line courtesy of she-who-will-not-be-named, (so that she isn’t bombarded by other freeloaders) who works-for-the-Dolphin’s-owner. Anyway, my spouse attended her first (and probably last) NFL game out of pity, or maybe she was worried one of those South Beach hotties would get a hold of me if I went alone. (You may laugh here.)

We went straight to Calle Ocho when we got to town and walked around on a beautiful day, watching the old men play dominoes, window shopping the latest Little Havana fashions, and strolling through the Bay of Pigs Park where there were definite signs of recent Santeria activities. We finished up with a strong Cuban coffee and a roll at a small bakery – both delicious and a dollar for both.

We checked into the Daddy O Hotel near Surfside early Saturday evening and went looking for a Cuban restaurant. Found a great one, Sazon, at 73^rd and Collins; an old place that looked like the third generation might be running it. I’d say it was last redecorated sometime between 1956-76; hard to tell.

They served a good drink (hard to find in Florida) and flavorful traditional Cuban meals at a reasonable price. Your parents probably ate there when they visited Miami, but we liked it so much we went back for breakfast the next morning. The crowd had changed from Saturday night’s couples to whole families at push-together tables. Why do huevos revueltos taste so much better than scrambled eggs?

One last cup of Cuban coffee to go and we walked a block to the ocean and took a pre-game walk along Miami Beach in glorious sunshine and a soft ocean breeze.

We entered the stadium and went straight to the lower level where our field passes allowed us on the sidelines up close and personal with the players. That was after getting our photo taken with four Miami cheerleaders and a dufus dressed like a Dolphin. The cheerleaders were very pretty young ladies in very skimpy outfits; they also processed a pneumatic quality that made constant eye contact imperative.

On the sidelines we met a bunch of kids in Team Elam tee shirts, at the game courtesy of Browns d-back Abam Elam (above), a Kent State grad and native of South Florida. I know this is a cliché, but we always hear about the Shaun Rogers of the world. The Browns’ 350-lb defensive tackle was nearby trying to get his pants buckled with the assistance of an equipment man. Last April he was arrested trying to board a flight in Cleveland with a loaded gun in his carry-on. I never heard of Elam before, but there were at least 50 kids at the game Sunday getting the VIP treatment thanks to his generosity.

Then it was up to the Club level, 50-yard line seats bathed in the South Florida sun. When I was a kid I’d be watching late season Miami games on TV. The wind would be blowing snow or sleet that rattled the windows while the people on TV were wearing shades and shorts. It seemed impossibly exotic and I always wondered what it would be like. Now I know. It’s very good.

Neither the Browns or Dolphins are playoff bound and the game reflected that fact. I thought the Browns defense played well but the Dolphins offense may just have been inept. The same may be said of the Dolphins defense and the Browns offense. There was very little offense in the game. Miami was clearly ready for Peyton Hillis, the Browns new great white hope at running back; the holes were not there and he only managed 57 yards rushing. The Browns punter was their MVP in my view.

We did see a 60 yard Miami field goal to end the first half -- unusual if not exactly thrilling, but in general both teams seems to being playing not to lose. Miami finally did when the Browns got their third interception of the day deep in Miami territory with less than a minute to play. They kicked a field goal as time expired and won 13-10. It was not the best NFL game I've ever seen but it was an outstanding day and an excellent road trip. The blues discovery of the trip was The Reverend Raymond and the Chain Smoking Alter Boys. Check ‘em out.

I’ll post some photos on Facebook.

RIP Don Merideth

2010-12-06T18:03:00.003-05:00

I've never liked the Cowboys but I always liked Dandy Don. "Turn out the lights, the party's over."

Me and LeBron

2010-12-03T09:55:00.003-05:00

It was a chilly 52 this morning here in central Florida so I'm following LeBron to Miami, if only for a few days. Just in case you have nothing else to occupy you, here are a couple links sent to me this morning:

From Deuce Bruce, today's Paul Krugman column which highlights the evidence of President Obama's dwindling backbone. Isn't it a little early for osteoporosis? Why haven't more people compared him to Adlai
Stevenson, Illinois' last presidential pretender?

From Buzzard, Michael Rosenberg on SI.com. Don't let the title fool you; the article isn't really about LeBron, it's about the soul of Cleveland.

From me: David Brooks, to remind us that if just a little collective sanity emerged there is hope.

Sports Thursday. The return of LeBron

2010-12-02T15:00:00.002-05:00

I had an email from Buzzard at the crack of dawn this morning bemoaning the hypocrisy of the NCAA letting Cam Newton off so easy. I’m not bothered so much by that. The big hypocrisy is the way the NCAA, the Division I schools and the bowls siphon off all the dough while the players get pay equal to below minimum wage, based on the free education they get in return. I’m not sure whether there should be quotation marks around the word “free” or “education” in the previous sentence. If I were King of All Sports the college players would be paid – above the table.

On a similar note, I loved what Hines Ward said about the NFL yesterday – and I don’t usually go out of my way to praise wearers of the black and gold. He lambasted the NFL for claiming that they are fining players for hitting too hard as a means of protecting them, while at the same time pushing the players’ union to accept an expansion of the schedule to 18 games next year.

Now I’m sure Hines’ words were motivated in part by how hard the Steelers have been hit with these fines, but it’s hard to argue with him. The NFL has been stiffing former players for years over health care benefits and fought reforms tooth and nail until the science related to head trauma became overwhelming. I’ll never forget the high school practice in 1965 when Charles White hit me with a forearm to the helmet that made me see stars. I can’t imagine what an accumulation of blows like that might do to someone. I may even have a little lasting trauma myself. Why, I’ll never forget the high school practice in 1965 when Charles White hit me with a forearm to the helmet that made me see stars. I can’t imagine what an accumulation of blows like that might do to someone. I may even have a little lasting trauma myself.

But the big sports news today is that it’s 29 degrees with snow showers in Cleveland this afternoon – although the wind makes it feel like it’s 19. Meanwhile, it’s 73 and sunny in Miami. I don’t know what my fellow Cavs fans have in store for LeBron’s return this evening but it better be good if it’s going to overcome the 44 degree swing between his former and current homes. Personally, I think the Heat’s record is justice enough. I swore off the NBA immediately after LBJ announced he was “taking his talent to Miami,” but I have to peak in this evening.

Finally, I’m heading to Miami myself for the weekend. I’ve got Browns v. Dolphins tickets on the 50 yard line and pre-game field passes so I can get right down there and feel completely inadequate.

Imagine Baltimore

2010-11-29T19:24:00.004-05:00

Imagine the Baltimore metropolitan area including the suburbs and Towson. The population of the MSA is right around 2.5 million, which was the approximate population of the original 13 colonies at the time of the Revolution.

Living in the colonies at that time were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison (left). I haven't actually been in Baltimore for a while, but I did watch quite a bit of The Wire, and I don't recall a similar sprinkling of genius; but maybe you have to be there to fully appreciate the talent level of that fine city.

If you extrapolated those seven men into the current U.S. population of over 300 million you'd expect to find about 840 people in today's United States with similar talents and vision; nearly 17 per state. But that's an average. Utah might only have 7-8 while California could have 85-90.

I suppose I should draw some conclusion from these statistics but that would just insult the audience.

Sarah says...

2010-11-29T09:26:00.002-05:00

"This is stemming from, I think, a greater problem when we're all sitting around asking 'Oh no, what are we gonna do,' and we're not having a lot of faith that the White House is gonna come out with a strong enough policy to sanction what it is that North Korea's gonna do."
— Sarah Palin

My wish for you...

2010-11-24T11:38:00.001-05:00

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

The Tea Party is...

2010-11-19T12:19:00.004-05:00

I usually avoid just throwing red meat to the beasts who visit these pages, but sometimes it's just too hard to resist. One of my favorite journalists, Matt Taibbi's latest piece in Rolling Stone is a complete deconstruction of the Tea Party. I love Taibbi (who coined the term "Vampire Squid" to describe Goldman Sachs) because he speaks so plainly. Here's a quote from the article:

"Vast forests have already been sacrificed to the public debate about the Tea Party: what it is, what it means, where it's going. But after lengthy study of the phenomenon, I've concluded that the whole miserable narrative boils down to one stark fact: They're full of shit. All of them."

Enjoy.

It’s on

2010-11-17T21:30:00.003-05:00

In case you were wondering when the GOP was going to start making good on Mitch McConnell’s promise to do everything possible to sabotage the Obama administration I think the answer is, “they have.”

Senator Jon Kyl, the GOP leader on negotiations with the White House over the START treaty has backed out of his deal to approve the treaty signed by the President and Medvedev. He declined to be interviewed when asked by the Times, he offers only a one paragraph explanation on his web site that says nothing, and the only thing I’ve read or heard all day as a rationale says they want more money than the extra $4 billion they squeezed out of Obama already.

So apparently stopping nuclear war is not as important as a Republican victory in ’12, and we’ll now have an even bigger budget hole to plug. I can hardly wait to see what’s next.

*******

Tom Freidman had an interesting piece today about Anderson Cooper challenging Michele Bachmann’s assertion on his show that the President’s trip to China was costing $200 million a day. I wish he’s taken her on on the air, but at least it got challenged the next day.

*******

There were five more U.S. KIA soldiers listed in the paper today. The oldest was 28. There were two 20-year-olds. But at least we got a full and spirited debate from our political leaders this election cycle.

Deficit Rubik’s Cube

2010-11-14T20:57:00.003-05:00

The New York Times created something very interesting that they call the “deficit puzzle.” It contains two large boxes segmented into smaller boxes, each of which represents one billion dollars (or 1/418^th) of the projected FY20015 total Federal budget deficit, or 1/1355^th of the projected 2030 deficit.

Below the boxes is a list of 40 different actions that could be taken to either cut expenses or raise revenues along with their estimated financial impact; for example, cutting all farm subsidies would reduce costs by an estimated $14B while returning the estate (death) tax to Clinton-era levels would raise an additional $50B in 2015. By making a check-mark next to the programs you would cut, or the taxes you would raise, the deficit boxes are filled in and you can see what it will actually take to eliminate the deficit.

WARNING: You may find this exercise very depressing. What it illustrates more than anything is the enormity of the task, and you don’t have to be a deep political thinker to recognize that we are light years away from having a government with the courage to even publicly discuss what needs to be done, let alone the foresight to begin making the changes that will be necessary to keep the United States from becoming Greece.

If the political discourse now is reminiscent of the years leading up to the Civil War just imagine what’s coming.

An accompanying article by David Leonhardt can be found here.

Today at the Y

2010-11-12T22:46:00.003-05:00

I was grinding away on the elliptical this afternoon, listening to the Moth podcast on my i-pod, staring through the floor-to-ceiling window in an anaerobic stupor, out across the vacant field behind the Y. Blue-gray clouds hung over the flat central Florida plain. Beyond the field lay the municipal airport and the sky-diving school. First one, then two, then a swarm of brightly colored parachutes emerged silently from the low ceiling, midway between the top of my view and the horizon.

They fell in swelling uncountable clusters, each chute dressed in its own multi-hued pattern – as if a circus troop were invading the Dutch low country in ’44. Masses of vertical squiggles twisted and swayed from their horizontal vessels of air, as they descended soundlessly from the billowy vapor – an HD video of sperm invading a viscous cloud of salmon eggs ran in reverse just for my amusement.

An hour well-spent

2010-11-10T21:50:00.002-05:00

I love podcasts. Without them I would weight about 305 because the only way I can spend an hour on a treadmill, elliptical or recombinant bike is to have my i-pod feeding me something either enlightening or entertaining. One of my staples is This American Life produced by Chicago Public Media. You may know the show – it’s pretty popular. Each week they take a single topic and explore it in some depth. The subjects are usually political or cultural, but sometimes go into other quirky areas.

Lasts week’s program, “This Party Sucks” was political -- not a commentary on Friday night’s wine and cheese offering. There were two segments. The first focused on a small group of Tea Party activists in Petoskey, Michigan and their internal battles over both strategy and philosophy. Most coverage I’ve seen on the tea-baggers, whether it was positive or negative was very one-dimensional. TAL did a great job of humanizing real people who are doing something about their political frustrations. My politics are a long way from theirs but I couldn’t help admiring their passion and willingness to do something.

In the second segment, a writer with the unlikely name Jack Hitt, found himself unbearably frustrated with the way the Obama political team went from being world-class communicators during the Presidential campaign, to completely inept communicators once they took office, so he went to Washington to try to find out why all they are so intent on “lame-assery” as a strategy. I’ve had similar frustrations, voiced on the DB a number of times, and his insights were both funny and frightening. It’s worth listening to just to hear how Paul Begala thought the Dems should have responded to Palin’s “death panel” shtick.

You can listen to the show online here; you don’t need to download anything, and if you only want to listen to the second segment (which is only 16 minutes long) it starts at the 39 minute mark.

Dem massacre, Olbermann, debt, Notre Dame, Browns

2010-11-07T17:01:00.005-05:00

Mitch McConnell said today on Face the Nation that President Obama thinks the Democrats lost in the midterms because he undersold his achievements, but in reality Americans just didn’t like what he was selling. I thought that was just GOP bombast until I got to the "Week in Review" section of the Times. Look at these charts. The Dems lost ground in virtually every single demographic this election, including African-Americans. This was a bigger massacre than I realized.

Naturally, the Democratic response will be to re-elect Nancy Pelosi Minority Leader, which should really turn things around because we know how popular she is all across the country.

* * *

I never imagined I’d be defending Keith Olbermann over anything, but this flap over his political donations is ridiculous. First of all, don’t his rights as an American citizen to participate in democracy trump the rules of a corporation, or the arbitrary and unwritten rules of “journalistic impartiality?” And secondly, aren’t his highly-opinionated, one-sided, on-air musings a more powerful expression of his partisanship than his $7000 contributions to a few local races? I say yes to both.

* * *

It’s interesting how little complaining there has been from either Republicans or Tea Baggers over the Feds decision to print an extra $600 billion in cash the day after the elections. This money takes the form of new T-Bills and is a net addition to the deficit. Maybe since it can’t be pinned on Obama it isn’t worth the effort?

* * *

I’ve never been a Notre Dame fan and won’t be one in the future, but the institution earned a lot of respect from me when it stepped up and took full responsibility for the death of a student who was killed last week when the 50’ platform from which he was taping football practice blew over in a 50 mph wind – legal liability be damned. It doesn’t happen often in this modern American “it’s somebody else’s fault” society.

* * *

Browns 34 - Patriots 14. Nuf said.

Why I like Bill Moyers

2010-11-05T13:41:00.003-04:00

Remarks by Bill Moyers at the 40th Anniversary of Common Cause

By Bill Moyers
October 12, 2010

Washington, DC October 6, 2010—Thank you for inviting me to join in this 40th anniversary of Common Cause. Your founder, John Gardner, profoundly influenced my life and I welcome this opportunity to share some memories of him. When we met in 1965 John Gardner was already very wise and I was still very young. I never grew younger but he kept growing wiser. The chief of the New York Times bureau in Washington, Scotty Reston, drawing (I later learned) on Emerson, told me, “Take John as your mentor and you’ll see how to live the greatest number of good hours.”

He was right.

As we worked together—John as Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare and I as a White House Assistant—I came to know well the man who built meaning into his life because he saw no other way to achieve it. Meaning doesn’t come in the genes, he said—you compose it out of your own past, out of your own affections, out of the experience of human beings as it is passed on to you, out of the things you believe in, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there, he said: You are the only person who can put them together in the unique pattern that will be your life.

One of my White House colleagues said of him, “He thinks like a saint.” “No,” Lyndon Johnson said, “he thinks like a good Republican. They’re harder to find than saints. But one is all you need.” John was the one.

And he and Lyndon Johnson were the right two at the right time. Johnson: the intense, impetuous, impatient Democrat. Gardner: the reflective, righteous and resolute Republican. Both were radical middle of the roaders, who believed in widening the road into a broad highway so more people could travel it. When John joined the cabinet in 1965, he told us: “What we have before us are some breathtaking opportunities, disguised as insoluble problems.” He knew the score, and wasn’t intimidated by it. He wouldn’t be intimidated today in the midst of the largest special-interest-funded congressional campaign in our history. He would be outraged at all the dirty money pouring secretly into the political system, turning it into a sewer. And he would be engaged in trying to clean it up.

It was occasionally said that he was a romantic. After all, he had dropped out of Stanford intending to become a novelist, until he tried writing one. He got his PhD in psychology instead. He also enlisted in the Marine Corps during World War II, and Marines are seldom duped by illusions. His parents had separated before his birth and he never forgot the brokenness of things. He knew how broken the world is, but he believed in trying to mend it. He wasn’t naïve about this. At his most eloquent, when he talked about the ‘rebirth of a nation’, he admitted that the notion might seem “wonderfully optimistic” but he quickly assured his audience that a successful rebirth of our country would involve severe labor pains. "We may howl with pain,” he said, "before we do what needs to be done.”

He also told us, “Don’t pray for the day when we finally solve our problems. Pray for freedom to continue working on the problems that the future will never cease to throw at us.”

I learned from him that the best way to live in the world is to imagine a more confident future and to get up every morning to do what you can to help bring it about. “Don’t let the vast superstructure of civilization mislead you,” he said, “Everything comes back to the talent and energy and sense of purpose of human beings.”

One memorable summer evening we sat on the south lawn of the White House—just six of us: LBJ and Lady Bird, John and Aida Gardner, Judith and me, both of us barely thirty. I just listened—to the astute and wily politician who understood politics and to the agile and wise intellectual who understood policy. Both wanted the widest possible participation of the largest number of citizens in the affairs and fruits of democracy. However they arrived at it—and it must have had something to do with the rigors of their youth—they shared a philosophy that whatever things are good for some human beings are really good for all human beings—that the happy or good life is essentially the same for all: a satisfaction of the same needs inherent in human nature. In practice this meant acting on the conviction that what the richest parents in the country want for their children—the goods essential for life, liberty, and happiness—is what the poorest parents want for their children.

Looking back, I realize that in spirit they were social democrats, although no one used the term then. I am more convinced of this after reading the book Ill Fares the Land that the historian Tony Judt published before his untimely death this past August. Judt described a time when "the public" was no fiction and the word wasn’t even a term of opprobrium. Public schools, public libraries, public parks, public highways, public goods and services were the means of creating a fair society for people who weren’t rich. At its heart was an ethical compact without which society is a war of all against all and the free market for wolves becomes a slaughter for the lambs.

Guess where the historian Judt located the closest America came to that notion of social democracy? In Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. Much of what was best in the legislation and social policy of the 20th century, he said, was social democracy in all but name.

We’ll never know what might have blossomed from that era if the relationship between these two men had not been orphaned by war. LBJ appointed John to head H.E.W. on the very next day after announcing that he was sending ground troops to Vietnam. In the Rose Garden the president said to his new cabinet member, “Whatever happens in Vietnam, we’ll not fail to pursue the Great Society.” But two years later John went to the LBJ ranch in Texas to plead for larger appropriations for his programs. The president turned him down and instead cut even more from the budget as it was. Gardener responded with a muted anguish that pained the president. As they were about to get out of the car, LBJ put his arm around him and said, “Don’t worry, John. We’re going to end this damned war and then you’ll have all the money you want for education and health and everything else.”

It was not to be. In an emotional private meeting one year later, Gardner told the president he was resigning: “In an election year you deserve the total support of every cabinet member and a cabinet member who doesn’t think you should run shouldn’t be in the cabinet.” Face to face, he said: “I believe you can no longer pull the country together.”

That’s the kind of man he was. He gave up his position but not his principles. He left the government but not the fight. And he founded Common Cause because he didn't want to sit on the sidelines."Everybody’s organized but the people," he said. "Now it’s the citizen’s turn.”

Forty years later, here we are—that charge to us a presence in this room.

What might he think of the country today? I believe he would agree with Tony Judt: Ill Fares the Land. "The symptoms of collective impoverishment are all about us," Judt wrote. Bankrupt cities. Broken highways. Collapsing bridges. Failed Schools. In a succinct and compelling review of Judt's work in the current issue of Harper’s magazine, Terry Eagleton—a professor at Notre Dame and the National University of Ireland—concludes that "much of what seems natural to us—privatization, inequalities, an obsession with wealth"—has emerged from the last three decades, and that public squalor is once again "the other face of private affluence."

The social-democratic climate that Judt thought so promising was remarkable, he said, for three features: how unprecedented it was, how quickly it came to seem plain common sense, and how abruptly it vanished from sight around 1980. The Vietnam War was over but its repercussions played out in politics. The conservative movement once embodied in Barry Goldwater found its new hero in Ronald Reagan and launched a campaign to bring back radical laissez-faire, when there was no social contract and all but the privileged and powerful were left to forage on their own. Well-organized forces backed by wealthy right-wingers rushed in to bring it about. Inspired by the fabulist Ayn Rand, infatuated with “Austrian” economics, spouting bumper sticker quotes lifted from Milton Friedman, propelled by cascades of cash from corporate chieftains like Coors and Koch and ‘Neutron’ Jack Welch, and fortified by the pious prescriptions of fundamentalist political preachers, the right marched on Washington, and succeeded brilliantly. Freedom in America would come to mean the freedom of the rich to buy the government they wanted and to write the rules to their advantage, even if it meant leaving millions of Americans behind. Advocates of “limited government” in rhetoric only, they were never really opposed to government, only to one that wouldn’t tolerate their social Darwinism.

See for yourself. Read the literature. Start with A Time for Truth, the call to arms by Richard Nixon’s treasury secretary, William Simon, the Wall Street wheeler-dealer. He argued that “funds generated by business” would have to “rush by multimillions” into right-wing causes in order to uproot the institutions and the “heretical” morality of the New Deal. He called for an “alliance” between right-wing ideologues and “men of action in the capitalist world” to mount a “veritable crusade” against everything brought forth by the long struggle for a progressive America. It would mean, as Business Week noted at the time,“that some people will obviously have to do with less…It will be a bitter pill for many Americans to swallow the idea of doing with less so that big business can have more.” But so be it.

A “bitter pill” was the least of it. This was class war ordered from the top down. Instead of creating a level playing field, government would become the agent of the powerful and privileged. Public institutions, laws and regulation, as well as the ideas, norms, and beliefs which aimed to protect the common good and helped to create America’s iconic middle class, would now be greatly weakened and increasingly vulnerable to attack. The Nobel Laureate economist Robert Solow succinctly summed up the movement's agenda: "The redistribution of wealth in favor of the wealthy and of power in favor of the powerful.”

But this was not what America was meant to be. America was not intended to be a country where the winner takes all. Our system of checks and balances—read The Federalist Papers—was meant to keep an equilibrium in how power works and for whom. The aristocrat De Tocqueville came here from France in the 1830s and marveled at the egalitarian spirit he found in the new country. As the economist Jeffrey Madrick reminds us, equitable access to public resources was the lifeblood of democracy. Americans made primary schooling free to all because, as Isabel Sawhill and Sara McLanahn write in The Future of Children, the American ideal of a classless society was "one in which all children have a roughly equal chance of success regardless of the economic status of the family into which they were born." Debtors, especially the relative poor, were protected by state law against rich creditors. Government encouraged Americans to own their own piece of land, and even supported squatters’ rights. By the time I was a teenager, equal access to opportunity began to materialize for millions and upward mobility after World War II, aided and abetted by such government programs as the GI Bill, created the world’s largest and most envied middle class. Incomes of the bottom 80% grew faster than the incomes of the top 1%, and those at the bottom grew most rapidly of all. This, at a time when the super-rich were taxed at a rate of 91%. America was indeed becoming a shared project. Only four decades ago Robert Lampman, a key architect of anti-poverty programs, could argue that "the recent history of Western nations reveals an increasingly widespread adoption of the idea that substantial equality of social and economic conditions among individuals is a good thing."

Then the financial class revolted. No one's been more candid about it than the multi-billionaire investor Warren Buffett: "There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning."

John Gardner saw it coming. He foresaw what would happen to America's egalitarian spirit if the excesses of money in politics were not curbed.

He would nod knowingly but sadly today at the report that “thirty zip-codes in America have become fabulously wealthy while whole urban and rural communities are languishing in unemployment, crumbling infrastructure, growing insecurity and fear.”

He would wince at reading The Economist, on the eve of President George W. Bush’s second inauguration—well before the great collapse four years later—warning that the United States “risks calcifying into a European-style, class-based society.”

He would be appalled by the political power exerted by a handful of financial titans not only to avoid the penalties that the ‘free market’ would have inflicted on them for their role in helping to wreck the economy, but to emerge, with taxpayer bailouts, to reap huge profits while 29 million unemployed and underemployed people struggle to make ends meet.

He would be sympathetic to the everyday people who turn out for Tea Party rallies to protest our failing institutions. Our institutions, after all, are failing, and why not oppose government if our political class has been bought off by the rich? I'll wager, however, that he would regard the movement itself as a Trojan horse for its secret bankrollers.

And he would be shocked by the activist reactionary majority on the Supreme Court that has opened the floodgates for oligarchs and plutocrats to secretly buy our elections and consolidate their hold on the corporate state. One of the greatest of our Supreme Court justices, Louis Brandeis, warned that "you can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, or democracy, but you cannot have both." The pro-corporate Roberts majority looked at both options and declared, ‘OK. We’ll take the former.”

The founder of Common Cause was a prophet in seeing money as the dagger directed at the heart of democracy. Like his fellow Republican Teddy Roosevelt, he opposed the ‘naked robbery’ of the public’s trust. A century ago, in one of the most powerful speeches in American political history, Roosevelt said: “It is not a partisan issue; it is more than a political issue; it is a great moral issue. If we condone political theft, if we do not resent the kinds of wrong and injustice that injuriously affect the whole nation, not merely our democratic form of government but our civilization itself cannot endure.”

Democracy in America has been a series of narrow escapes, and we may be running out of luck. The most widely shared assumption of our journey as Americans has been the idea of progress, the belief that the present is ‘better’ than the past and things will keep getting better in the future. No matter what befalls us—we keep telling ourselves—‘the system works.’

All bets are now off. The great American experiment in creating a different future together has come down to the worship of individual cunning in the pursuit of wealth and power, with both political parties cravenly subservient to Big Money. The result is an economy that no longer serves ordinary men and woman and their families. This, I believe, accounts for so much of the profound sense of betrayal in the country, for the despair about the future. As Gabriel says in James Weldon Johnson's epic Green Pastures: “Everything that’s tied down is coming loose.” America as a shared project is shattered, leaving us increasingly isolated in our separate realities.

John Gardner would understand this dark reading of our gross national psychology. The workings of the human psyche were his field of study. But the Marine Corps, remember, was his finishing school, andSemper Fidelis his personal code. So I will close with his own words, as relevant today as ever:

We are treading the edge of a precipice here....There is a disconnection between the people and their leaders. Citizens do not trust their government. And a variety of polls indicate that this mistrust extends to corporations and the media. People do not feel they have must control of their lives, and the sense of impotence grows like a great life-endangering tumor. Civilizations die of disenchantment. If enough people doubt their society, the whole venture falls apart. We must never let anger, fashionable cynicism, or political partisanship blur our vision of this point.

We must not despair of the Republic.

There, fellow celebrants, is the call. The only way to defeat organized money is with organized people. Now it's your turn.

Déjà vu all over again

2010-11-03T15:58:00.003-04:00

Several regular readers chided me today for not having posted anything regarding the election. I owe it to all of you to give you a place to vent, rant or whine as you see fit. I, however, have little to say.

It seems to me that not much changed. Once gain we’ve swapped one batch of fools for another in this perpetual overtime game between the party-that-is-against-spending-any-money-on-anything-except-themselves versus the party-that-is-incapable-of-doing-anything-right.

The only interesting thing I read or heard about the election was Maureen Dowd’s column in the Times this morning. Buckle your seat belts – it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

A reason to vote and I told you so

2010-10-22T15:34:00.006-04:00

With the election so close and my travel plans for next week tying me up, I devoted some time to the elections this week, mostly looking for a reason to even bother. Well, I found one. Florida has two amendments to the State Constitution on the ballot that will theoretically outlaw gerrymandering. As I wrote in a post earlier this year, gerrymandering is one of the principle reasons Congress is so ineffectual. It is inherently anti-democratic, and it produces safe seats that can be more easily held by one extreme or another, which then leads to further political polarization. I’ll show up to vote for them with enthusiasm.

As long as I’m being self-referential today, I posted a letter I’d sent to David Axelrod back in February 2009 in which I urged him to be more proactive in the administration’s defense of the stimulus bill. He never answered. But I see Austan Goolsbee (above), now the Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, just put out a short video in defense of their success on the jobs front. It is short, clear and understandable. If this were the 50^th video in a White House Economics-Made-Easy Series they’d be looking a lot better in the midterm elections than they are, but it’s a little late now.

President Obama should also have adopted my stimulus plan, but that’s another post.

For those of you who are interested, I've posted my Life 3.0 plan on the What's Next web site. Wish me luck.

Mrs. d’blank and I are heading to California for a week, so I’ll be off the air for a while.

These are my choices

2010-10-19T21:30:00.003-04:00

The five candidates running for governor and U.S. Senate are listed below, along with a little blurb on what I know about them. I feel confident that I am better informed than the average person; still I must admit that most of what I know comes from the ads they run, which are mostly about their opponent, or on the pretty superficial news coverage that tends to focus on either the horse race or personalities.

For U.S. Senate:

Charlie Crist is the current Republican Governor of Florida. As such he was a favorite of independents, but his moderate views led him to believe he could not win the Republican primary so he is running as an independent. He may be gay. Since his main opponent is very conservative he has become much more conservative in his views the past few months and is a world class flip-flopper. His main challenge comes from…

Marco Rubio, the Republican nominee and darling of the Tea Baggers. He is a financial deadbeat and has probably illegally used campaign funds for personal use. He is young and charismatic and of Cuban decent. Sarah Palin likes him and he is a dangerous, right-wing nut job. He is leading in the polls. There is a third candidate…

Kendrick Meeks is a black guy and the Democratic nominee. He is currently running a poor third in the polls. A lot of people seem to want him to quit so Crist has a better chance. I don’t know much about him since he has no money for ads, the other two don’t bother to pick on him and the press ignores him.

If any of them has a position on the Middle Eastern wars I haven’t heard it.

For the Governor’s job we have:

Alex Swift is the Democratic nominee. Her husband ran against Jeb Bush for Governor and lost in 2002. She was the CFO of Florida and lost billions during the ’08 financial meltdown. She’s a former Bank of America CEO fir Florida. She is a descendant of the Siamese twins Chang and Eng She has a really annoying accent.

Rick Scott is the Republican nominee for Governor. He owned a bunch of donut shops and was then the CEO of a heath care company that the Feds fined $1.7 billion for some kind of fraud – I’m not sure why but it was after he made millions. He lived in public housing when he was a kid. His mother loves him and he will cut taxes.

My Congressman is a guy named John Mica. He is a Republican and has had the office since 1992. He won with 62% of the vote in ’08. He’s running against a woman named Heather Beaven (above) who has never run for office before. I had to go online to learn even this. I’ve never seen an ad or read a word about either of them. Maybe there’s Tea Bagger running too but I haven’t heard.

So anyway, you can see why I’m so enthusiastic about this election. Heather is kind of cute. I'll probably vote for her.

19-0

2010-10-17T11:59:00.003-04:00

That was the score of the response to the October 5 post asking which option you prefer between supporting the current national parties and a new independent party. The total number of unduplicated votes for the Indy party on both the Daily Blank and Facebook was 19. No one voted for the Redemlicrats; a few people voted for “none of the above” which is how I plan to vote next month.

What does this tell us? I think it tells us we are in the last decade of the dominance of the two big parties. Things are broken. They are fixing nothing. There are more registered Independents than R’s or D’s according to a recent Pew survey. The Tea Party is rising and this relatively liberal audience is just as fed up.

Bring it on I say. Then maybe we’ll address the real problems. We now spend far more time discussing “don’t ask/don’t tell” than we do with the wars themselves. I don’t mean to minimize the importance of that issue, but each day the New York Times lists the names, ranks, ages and home towns of soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. There were seven yesterday. The oldest was 22; there were two 19-year-olds.

We all know they died for access to oil, and yet Congress has no energy to address energy. Did you read Tom Friedman’s recent column on Congress’ unwillingness to commit one billion dollars over five years to speed development of cutting edge energy research? That’s $200 million dollars per year. What does that buy? I believe that pays for 200 foot soldiers in Afghanistan for one year. At the current pace we will have another few hundred dead teenagers in that perpetual Western death-trap of a country over the next year.

But I’m sure the Democrats and Republican have a secret plan to make this all make sense, right?

The Three Stooges of the Senate

2010-10-12T10:32:00.004-04:00

If you want to understand why our political system is so completely impotent when it comes to solving the major problems of the day, I strongly recommend and article from last week’s New Yorker, "As the World Burns" by Ryan Lizza. It is a non-partisan, clinical, dissection of the inner workings of the Senate as it contemplated energy policy legislation this past year. It looks in particular at the unlikely team of John Kerry, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham as they attempted, in classic Three Stooges style, to draft bipartisan legislation.

I was moved to read it by a recent Tom Friedman piece, "An X-Ray of Dysfunction," which is the Cliff Notes version, but you must read the New Yorker article to get the full sense of how inept and morally corrupt the legislative process has become in the hands of the Republicratic party – or Demoplican if you prefer.

RIP Solomon Burke

2010-10-11T09:28:00.003-04:00

Less well known, but just as talented as any of the super soul and R&B stars of the '60's, Burke's 2002 comeback album "Don't Give Up on Me" featured songs written for him by Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson and Tom Waits. Here's a link to a YouTube video of Burke singing "None of Us are Free" from that disk, backed up by the Blind Boys of Alabama. It's a treat. Solomon will be missed.

Joke of the weekend

2010-10-09T17:15:00.003-04:00

A guy enters the “10 items or fewer” line at a supermarket in Cambridge, Mass. with an overflowing basket containing many more than ten items. As he begins unloading his cart, the comely young cashier says to the man, “Why, you must attend either Harvard or MIT.”

The man puffs up at this and replies, “Why yes I do, but how ever did you know?”

“Well, there’s a sign right in front of you that says ‘Ten items or fewer’ so either you attend MIT and can’t read, or Harvard and can’t count.”

[The above courtesy of “Car Talk” this morning. BTW, where did Larry Summers go to school?]

Good news, according to a Pizza Hut commercial playing today on ESPN, they have revamped and “simplified” their menu so that it has no more “confusing combinations or math.” Finally, someone is doing something to help people too stupid to read a Pizza Hut menu.

Great moments in the green movement: Earlier this week, Frito-Lay, the manufacturers of Sun Chips, announced that they will cease selling the snack in the world’s first compostable bag. The reason? Consumers complained in large numbers that the packaging was “too loud,” thus proving once again, that no personal inconvenience is too small to be rejected by consumers in their mindless pursuit of whatever the hell they want. Resistance took the form of at least six different Facebook groups protesting the annoyingly loud bags.

How I danced before my knees got old.

So if you could choose…

2010-10-05T22:16:00.005-04:00

If you could choose to invest your time, voice, money, interest – whatever -- into one of the following political options, which would you choose?

Option 1 and 1a would be to support either the Democratic or Republican parties as they are today. That is: large, old, highly established organizations, with complicated hierarchical structures, increasingly dominated by the extreme end of one side of the political spectrum. Each is in the debt of numerous very large special interest groups, upon which they depends for billions of dollars in order to feed their machines. The two parties have alternated control of the country for 150 years.

They traded power 3-4 times just since WWII, a period of time in which the country peaked probably 35 years ago. In the subsequent years they have involved the country in 4-5 wars (depending on what you count), and the national debt has soared to alarming levels, all as they have changed the rules to make it easier for them to retain power. As the country’s problems multiplied, they have been frozen in inaction for 40 years arguing and fighting over largely tangential issues in an increasing partisan fashion. Meanwhile it’s been 37 years since the first oil boycott and there is still no national policy to decrease dependence on imported oil.

Option 2 is to throw your support to a new, third political party. Let’s call it the Independent party. (Roughly as many people in the U.S. today call themselves Independents as self-identify as either Republicans or Democrats.) The Indies would stand for moderate policies close to what used to be thought of as those of liberal Republicans or conservative Democrats, before those terms became oxymorons.

The leadership for the Indies would come from a loose association of very high profile, wealthy individuals, who, while they might also be politicians, are better known for their accomplishments in the private sector.

The Indies will show themselves to be pragmatic politically, and unafraid to bring difficult issues the country faces to the forefront of the debate, while offering realistic, achievable, measurable ideas for solving problems.

Some of these very public people might not be in your Top Ten, but even if you dislike them it is quite possible you dislike them for non-political reason. For example, you might not have a problem with his record as a mayor but dislike Michael Bloomberg for his billionaire’s aloofness.

So those are your choices. I’m sure everyone reading this can think of a couple of things that make this a Hobson’s Choice (Thomas Hobson, above), given the number of unknowns and the hypothetical nature of Option 2. But the big picture is correct, isn’t it?

It’s not really a very difficult choice once you see that Options 1 and 1a are not really two separate choices. They represent just one choice because the two parties have conspired to create a political monopoly, and they have absolutely no reason to change anything. There have no competition today.

You can have chocolate or vanilla, but if you want Chunky Money, or even good old-fashioned strawberry, you are shit-out-of-luck mates.

So which would you choose?

A cause for optimism?

2010-10-03T23:06:00.003-04:00

It is funny how life sometimes intersects with itself at the strangest times. I was watching “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” this evening (sans commercials on Turner Classic Movies), not really paying much attention. In fact, only inertia kept me from finding the remote and turning to something else. The movie’s message that the common man, and common sense, can sometimes win the day over entrenched special interests and the political machine just rings so hopelessly naive in these days of hyper-partisan do-nothingism.

The scene when Mr. Smith begins his marathon speech did get a chuckle from me, as it was so unusual in its day (1939) that all the reporters jumped from their seats and ran to the phone banks screaming, “Filibuster!” it wouldn’t earn a tweet from a junior Senator today when it takes 60 votes to decide what to order for lunch.

So, a quick chuckle then back to this morning’s newspaper. I turned the page and started reading Tom Friedman’s column, “Third Party Rising,” and my spirits began to rise as well. Friedman claims that “at least two serious groups, one on the East Coast and one on the West Coast,” made up of what he calls “the radical center,” are developing political parties to compete with the bankrupt, Republican and Democratic parties.

I’m sure some of you are already rolling your eyes, but he’s not talking about Ross Perot or John Anderson waging a lone Quixotic crusade. He’s talking about a real party and he seems to link these efforts (although he isn’t this specific) with wealthy technocrats and entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley and elsewhere.

This would be a party of serious people, who not only believe in free enterprise, but have lived that life and understand that real problems are never solved unless we first speak them out loud and keep all options for solving them on the table.

Their commitment would be back by serious money; rich people with a real interest in finding solutions, so that their efforts can continue to keep them rich, and too much money to make them vulnerable to the pernicious, single-minded self-serving special interest groups.

I’ve been thinking for years that the only way out of our mess is to somehow take the money out of the election system, but I think I’ve been wrong. We need t fight fire with flame-throwers!

Imagine the combined fortunes of Michael Bloomberg, Meg Whitman, Jon Corzine, and Carly Fiorina, joining with Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Larry Ellison and the Google/Facebook geeks to back rational, problem-solving candidates from the “radical center” who actually speak the truth to the electorate without looking over their fund-raising shoulders.

Are they going to sweep the nation in 2012? Probably not, but if an honest conversation broke out we’d have a minor miracle right there. I hope you’ll read the article if you haven’t already; the description of the established parties by a Stanford political scientist is worth the effort alone.

Pledge to America

2010-09-30T14:11:00.004-04:00

I was listening to a bunch of Republican policy wonks on NPR the other day, mostly discussing the upcoming elections and the Republican party's new "Pledge to America." One of them, a policy guy from one of the Washington conservative think tanks said, "No one can read the Pledge to America and still say that the Republican party has no ideas!"

So I decided to read it. All I can say is that, "I think I'll scratch my ass now" is also an idea, and it offers just about as much insight into how the GOP plans to balance the budget as their pledge does.

You can read it here, but a better use of your time would be to read Tom Friedman's column from this past Tuesday, which talks about the kind of leadership this county really needs, but will probably never get. (I'm starting to feel about the nation's future they way I feel about pro football; i.e., like a Brown's fan. We haven't won anything since '64 -- so long it's hard to remember what victory feels like.)

My mom and Phyllis Diller

2010-09-28T16:56:00.004-04:00

While it’s lost a lot of its power over time, when my mother was a younger woman she had a laugh that could wake the dead. On the rare occasions our family would eat dinner in a restaurant, I’d sit there wondering when the blast would come, because I knew it was coming, and when it did, any semblance of anonymity would be gone. All other conversation in the restaurant would stop, and all heads would turn to our table in wonderment.

Despite its explosive impact, people never seemed to be annoyed by it; perhaps because it was so obviously joyous and spontaneous that all you could do was laugh along or stop and stare for a moment in wonderment. It was so distinctive that sometimes a friend would stop by our table to say, “Oh we were way over on the other side of the room, but I heard you laugh and I turned to Bob and said, Mickey is here – that laugh can’t be anyone else’s.”

I was never embarrassed by it. It was a force of nature at which I stood in awe and wonder. It was like being near Old Faithful or Krakatoa.

* * * * * *

One day in 1961, my parents took my three brothers and me for a Sunday drive from our home in Northeastern Ohio to the magic city of Pittsburgh. We got to Cleveland at least once a year, but the 80 mile drive made Pittsburgh a much less frequent and more exotic destination. Its steel mills were beginning their last full decade of smoke-belching dominance, new glass and aluminum skyscrapers were already anchoring the Golden Triangle downtown, and the city had recently opened a modern new airport filled with retail and entertainment attractions, a noteworthy Alexander Calder mobile, and a spectacular observation deck where we could watch jet airliners, still a novelty, come and go. This was our exciting destination that day.

As we walked through the wide concourse dressed in our Sunday best, my brothers and I probably looked less like brothers with a strong familial resemblance than we did four crescent wrenches pulled from a set. I, being the oldest was the ¾”; my youngest brother was the 7/16”. We were missing the 9/16” which I will explain in a moment.

I don’t have strong memories of the look of the place except that it had a very Jetsons-like feel to it -- although it would still be a year or two before that show, which defined the early part of the ‘60’s for us kids, made its debut. Being small-town boys we were appropriately awed.

My parents, who rarely went to bed until they had watched at least some of the Tonight Show were excited to see a billboard promoting Phyllis Diller, one of Johnny’s favorite guests, who was appearing in the nightclub at the airport. We were all chatting about Phyllis, and teasing our mother that she was a woman with a laugh that could rival her own, when we turned a corner and nearly ran her over. Phyllis Diller that is.

In my memory she looked exactly as she did on television, wearing an upside-down, martini-glass shaped dress of a multicolored, dizzying pattern, her hair, the color of new piano keys, pointing in every direction at once, and of course, a long ebony and rhinestone cigarette holder firmly clenched between her teeth – a benevolent Cruella deVil. It’s probably not an accurate memory but I enjoy it and have no desire for greater truthiness in this case.

“MY! What a good-looking bunch of boys you have here!” Phyllis shrieked as she squeezed my little brother’s cheeks together the way you might fold a peanut butter sandwich in half. “How old are they?”

“12, 10, 6 and 4,” my mother replied.

“What happened 8 years ago?” Phyllis asked.

Mom didn’t hesitate: “That’s when we got television.”

The simultaneous, stereophonic, explosion of laughter from Phyllis and Mickey brought all pedestrian traffic to a halt. Heads turned and jaws dropped as mom and Phyllis vented their mutual mirth.

Phyllis was both charmed, and charming. We stood and talked to her for several minutes before she had to ran off, her back now to us we heard her mutter to herself, “Television. HA!”

Groundhog Day and the Doobie Brothers

2010-09-23T21:51:00.003-04:00

I spent most of the last four months without cable TV or internet, and no regular newspaper. I’d like to tell you it made life perfect, but in truth, I missed all of them and was looking forward to returning to Florida to get a media fix.

Now that I’ve had it for the last ten days I wish I was Punxsutawney Phil and could crawl back into my burrow for another six weeks. Nothing has changed. I had forgotten how bombastic and pointless our national political dialog has become. We are a nation of Nero’s, fiddling away as the country burns down around us.

There is only one reason to have a government, and that is to solve problems. Does anyone think that is what our political class is doing for us – solving problems? I honestly don’t think I know a single person – either on the left or the right - who feels that way. Everyone is frustrated.

I have more sympathy for the Tea Party-types than any other segment of the chattering classes. At least they seem sincere in their belief that the government has to be smaller. And does anyone actually believe we’d be worse off without Departments of Education, or Energy? Can you name one thing they’ve done for us? You have to at least give them credit for making Mitch McConnell’s life miserable.

As for the Republicans, well they are what they are. At least they are transparently in the pocket of big money and the closest they come to making a secret of it is to say it is because the economic benefits will trickle down to working class people. It’s a lie, but it is consistently told.

The Democrats are the worst because they so often disappoint. Like their hero Bill Clinton, they fall so far short of their potential it breaks your heart. You know the biggest political lie of the last couple of elections? It was “you should vote Democratic because Republicans don’t believe that government can do any good, and so they govern poorly. Democrats believe in good government and govern well.” Now there is some world class bullshit, as George Carlin might have said.

With their man in the Oval Office and an unbeatable majority in both houses they had two once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to show us what good government looks like. The first was the stimulus bill, which could have put hundreds of thousands of people to work rebuilding America’s crumbling infrastructure, but instead, became a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to stick American taxpayers with the bill for every two-bit Congressman’s pet porker project, Harry Reid’s monorail from LA to Las Vegas, for example.

A now, with our bridges still falling down, and millions of people in need of jobs, there is zero chance of another stimulus bill because no one – Republican, Tea Bagger or Democrat – believes Congress would spend the money wisely. What is their latest approval rating – like 16%?

The Dem’s second great opportunity to show what great government could look like came with health care reform. After wasting months trying to look like they were good guys, willing to compromise with the GOP (which I doubt they really were, but it’s moot now), they ended up cramming a bill down the Republican’s throats anyway. But instead of a well considered, rational plan that any American could understand, we got yet another 1000-page plus monstrosity of a bill that most of them never read and none of them understood, pushed through at the last minute. And now they’re crying in their Chardonnay that the plan is being misrepresented by their opponents. Boo-hoo. You should have done it right. Then the voters would have understood. Instead you’ve got to send President Obama out again on one of those inane “backyard real-folks” tours selling health care reform months after the fact. Jesus – what losers.

And then there’s the Faux Financial Reform Act, the legion of Goldman advisors surrounding the President, and his misguided Afghanistan plan. If this is good government we might as well elect Sarah now and get it over with.

We don’t even talk about the really important issues in the public debate. (When was the last time you heard a serious discussion of the defense budget?) In fact it’s not a debate; it’s just one interest group shouting at another. This is good for cable TV and the internet; it provides very cheap programming and builds audiences, because we don’t really want to listen to ideas that conflict with our own version of reality. There’s no other way to explain Fox News, MSNBC or about a hundred thousand political web sites and blogs. As the Doobie Brothers told us many years ago:

“But what a fool believes…he sees
No wise man has the power to reason away
What seems…to be
Is always better than nothing”

We don’t discuss issues we wrap lies in a thin veneer of half truths; we don’t solve problems we build Potemkin solutions that are politically mollifying but substantively meaningless. What’s it going to take to change things? The financial crash didn’t do it. Two failed wars didn’t do it. Katrina didn’t do it. How bad do the schools have to become? How much more dependent on imported oil do we have to be?

Just talking about it, knowing nothing will be done is degrading in its own way. I long to do something real and tangible, no matter how small or insignificant it may appear. I’m going back into my burrow.

I'm back

2010-09-21T14:37:00.002-04:00

Well, I’m back in Florida and more or less settled in. I’m working on a political post, but in the meantime, I thought I’d share a recent road trip story, which I found rather heartening. I drove more than 7000 miles between May 15 and September 15, all without incident until my right rear tire blew out when I was about 200 miles from my Florida base last Sunday. I was on a two lane country road. There was no real shoulder, so I pulled into the grass and called for assistance. It was late afternoon, 94 degrees and humid, with threatening thunderheads on the horizon. There wasn’t a building in site – hadn’t been for miles. I leaned against the completely packed truck of my car and waited for the service truck, hoping he would arrived before the rain. If not I’d be forced to take refuge in the Dutch oven that my car was quickly becoming.

In the 45 minutes I waited, four vehicles stopped to ask me if I needed help, and a Hollywood casting director couldn’t have picked a more interesting mix of people. The first car, a late model, upscale SUV held a 60-ish couple who looked like they were on their way to a church social. They couldn’t have been nicer and promised to stop on their way back in about an hour to see how it was going.

Next, a 10 year-old F-150 pickup driven by a young Hispanic man who spoke broken English, stopped. He offered to change the tire for me. Third came a minivan so bland it could have been any age or make, occupied by a couple who were closer to 80 than 70. The wife was driving and she actually made a U-turn to see if I needed anything.

Finally, an 80’s era Firebird (or was it a Trans Am?) pulled up, driven by young white man wearing a backwards ball cap over a Florida mullet, a sleeveless tee-shirt and grimy blue jeans. If you’d seen him I suspect the label that would have come to mind would have been either “red neck” or “white trash.” I confess, with some shame, those were my first thoughts. But he made sure a truck was coming and then pointed out a path that leading through the woods to his house where he told me I was welcome to wait for the truck if it started raining.

Sometimes the world seems like a cold place, but there are a great number of good people among us.

Detroit

2010-07-30T11:50:00.003-04:00

I just drove out to Detroit from the east coast with my daughter, who started working for General Motors this week after graduating from Harvard Business School. (I try not to brag too much but I hope you’ll permit me that one mention.) I grew up in the Midwest and have been to Detroit many times over the years, mostly to visit the car companies or the Auto Show.

I like the town – always have. I like their sports teams, I like that there is a Coney Island hot dog joint on practically every block, I like that you can go under a tunnel into Canada and see the Windsor Ballet, a staple of Detroit media T&E for decades. I love Motown. I love how it’s a Spartie town – not a Michigan town.

But I saw it with new eyes this trip. You think about things differently when you are dropping your kid off to live in a new place. It was neither worse nor better than I remembered it, but I saw things I never saw, or never really noticed before, and they are things I think every American would benefit from seeing.

I am moved to write about this but I was only there for 24 hours (although little of that time was spent sleeping.) And I don’t have any illusions that I can offer a Brooksian insight that finds the nexus of the cultural, historical, economic and political stuff of the place and make you say “Wow!”

What I did see was how easy it is for the collapse of one industry to bring down an entire community in barely half a human lifetime; a community that was, as recently as 1970, the fifth largest in the U.S. I saw what faded prosperity looks like in the residential neighborhoods just off Woodward Avenue that are filled with spectacular mansions, alternating with boarded-up hulks.

There was so much prosperity in Detroit at one time, and like in Rome or Egypt, the signs of it are still there in the old churches, mostly abandoned and succumbing to gravity, or in other old buildings that were once grand and important, but are now forced to suffer the indignity of housing bail bondsmen, dollar stores, and under-funded municipal agencies.

Everyone should see Detroit because we take our prosperity for granted, or we assume if things don’t go so well there will be a gradual, gentile decline that we won’t even notice in our day-to-day lives. But that isn’t what happened to Detroit, and you need to see it to understand.

In the end though, it wasn’t as bleak as you might imagine. Rebirth fights through the cracks in the cement of decay everywhere you look. Many old buildings have been saved and retain their grandeur. Bold new projects dot the city. The Detroit suburbs are still as nice as any in the country, and regular people can afford to live in them.

Detroit will survive – smaller, but smarter and scrappier than before. The hubris that came with being the Kings of the automotive world is long gone, replaced with the certainty that nothing will be given to them. They will have to make it happen, and I believe they will. You should see it; both for the warning and for the hope it offers.

Buggin’

2010-07-24T10:48:00.002-04:00

There was a stiff breeze blowing as I stepped out of the cottage Sunday afternoon on my way to the beer cooler. I’d gone barely a few steps when something small and hard slammed into the side of my head. Not the side exactly. My ear actually. And not the top of my ear, or my ear lobe, or on one of the hard ridges that lie between them either. In what must have been a navigational million to one shot, this something plunged deep into my inner ear.

My amygdala took over and twisted my head up and to the left -- my eyes turned skyward as my fingers clawed into my ear. Something seemed to fall from the far edge of my peripheral vision but I couldn’t be sure what it was. I stood and wondered: What had hit me and where was it now?

I lay down on the couch and kept very still trying to recreate from memory what had just happened. I was alone. Only the laughter of little children splashing in the nearby lake disturbed the quietude. Then I heard something: a soft rustling sound at first, it amplified steadily to a scratchy clawing until it sounded like the movie soundtrack to a cheesy horror flick -- and it was inside my head.

And then it moved. I jumped off the couch and begin pounding the left side of my head in the foolish hope it would pop the tormentor out of my right ear. It stopped moving. I lay back down, outwardly calm but inside my head Lil Ed and the Blues Imperials played “Compact Man,” raw and hyped-up, manufacturing adrenalin and preparing me to jump again. I remembered the “Twilight Zone” episode in which the earwig crawls into a man’s ear and eats it way to his brain. At least my new friend was still a couple inches from gray matter and trying to exit, not enter.

What could I do? Who could help? It was a Sunday. I was alone, and in the back woods ten miles from a small town hospital. The emergency room seemed like the only option, but I knew I’d be in line behind ten guys who’d cut off limbs with chain saws or OD’d on homemade meth. I opted for self treatment.

The next six hours were characterized by periods of relative calm alternating with full out panicked frenzies every time my new friend begin to back his way out of my ear canal. I don’t know how to describe the emotions triggered by knowing something is trying to crawl out of your body, but I can tell you that it concentrated my mind wonderfully, and brought to full bloom what little “man-as-tool-maker” DNA I possess.

The cottage is filled with the remnants of 50 years worth of kitchen and household implements and I adapted a number of them into the cause of locating and extracting the varmint. Many of these tools were sharper than my elbow and would not have received approval for my uses from even the Bush era FDA. You don’t want to know more I promise you. I also flushed my ear with some peroxide solution which I believe eventually drown the visitor. Finally, the beast stopped moving.

Several more hours passed in which I employed more tools and flushes, and finally around eight that evening the bugger emerged, dead but intact, stuck to the end of a Q-Tip that he matched in size. He was perfectly preserved in a waxy glaze that accentuated his prehistoric black and iridescent green exoskeleton. His big, dead, bug eyes focused everywhere and nowhere at once.

I don’t go in for blood sports, but no fisherman ever felt more pride in his catch than I in mine; no hunter every bagged a more satisfying buck. My prize was too small to stuff but I’m keeping him in a plastic sandwich bag -- forever -- unless the dreams don’t stop soon.

Summer vacation

2010-06-20T22:15:00.001-04:00

The Daily Blank is taking a breather for the rest of the summer. Those of you who know my work status are probably already asking yourself, “What the hell does he need a break from?”

Fair question. The problem is that I’m on the home stretch of the big move and the next couple of weeks are going to be very busy. The magnitude of the task is making it hard for me to concentrate on anything else. Actually, at this stage, I’m having a hard time finding a little piece of tabletop and a chair that isn’t piled high with boxes. Please note that I’m not bitching – just busy.

Once the move is over I’ll be spending the rest of the summer deep in the Pioneer Valley of western Massachusetts at Pine Island Lake. Not only is there no Wi-Fi there, a usable cell signal is dependent on the relative humidity and the intensity of the Aurora Borealis. I think the best thing is to just power it down for a couple of months.

There may be a couple of special posts over the summer which I’ll announce on Facebook and via email to those on the mailing list.

It should be an interesting time next fall when we return just as we gear up for the midterm elections. At this point I’m not sure who is ahead; is it big oil or Wall Street? There is still time for big pharma to step up and take the flag – you can never count them out. Have a happy summer.

d’blank

Misc.

2010-06-11T11:32:00.004-04:00

Can’t anybody do anything right in this country anymore? Over 200 bodies improperly buried in Arlington National Cemetery for God's sake? Ridiculous.

It’s nice to see the cat get its tail twisted now and then; or in this case – the Vampire Squid. Goldman Sach’s stock is in the tank and the government seems to actually be putting some pressure on them after losing patience with their stalling and stonewalling tactics, like sending the equivalent of several billion pages of documents in response to a recent subpoena.

The chairman of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Committee, Phil Angelides, even refused to meet privately with Goldman CVS (Chief Vampire Squid) Lloyd Blankfein. Maybe their money ain’t good in Washington anymore?

On the other hand, probably it is. Goldman and other banks have already gutted financial regulation reform to a large degree. Joe Nocera, hardly a Trotskyite, lays it out in a recent Times column. This bill is going to be so weak as to be meaningless. They aren’t going to do anything meaningful about derivatives trading, and on the consumer protection front they’ve already given up on a proposed rule that would have required anyone selling exotic mortgages to compare whatever they are selling to a (formerly) standard thirty-year fixed mortgage. I guess we can all see how inflammatory and anti-bank that would have been.

I’m glad to see that wiser heads at General Motors quickly backed off the “don’t call me Chevy” memo. Maybe they are learning a few things at the New GM.

I guess we now know why Peter Carroll took a powder from USC when he did. The NCAA continues to run hard for the title of "worst regulatory organization in America." It is a very competitive race what with the work being done at the Minerals Management Service, the SEC and the FDA. I’d like to see a playoff among that group. On the other hand – maybe not.

As Buzzard said to me this morning regarding the NCAA, “I hope they are happy -- by removing 30 scholarships worth $150,000 each, mostly poor inner kids are being deprived of an education in favor of some rich Hollywood mogul who can easily afford to send his child to USC film school.” Meanwhile Carroll and Reggie Bush, the real culprits in this affair, continue making their millions in the NFL with no repercussions.

Hamburger Lit update: I’ve been sampling some of the recommendations from the comments to the May 8^th DB post. I read “An Unlikely Spy” by Daniel Silva and “Careless in Red” by Elizabeth George (who was born in Warren, Ohio). I can recommend both. Thanks to Brooke and Fenway.

Blues: I’m lovin’ the new Mannish Boys (above) album “Shake for Me.” They play bad-ass bar-band blues with a distinctly Bo Diddley-ish 1-3-2 beat. In fact they cover “Mona.” Their cover of Eric Clapton’s “Reconsider Baby” is terrific too.

Speaking of music, the Prowlers will be at the Ace of Clubs this Saturday night. That’s on Great Jones Street in da village, New York City. First set at nine. I’ll be there.

Coach Lou and I continue our bi-polar blog on “What’s Next.” We’re like the most popular content on the site. Can you believe it? Come check us out.

I’m still packing and discarding every day. It’s amazing what you can accumulate over 30+ years. It is not a fast process. Everything requires an evaluation and when you get to old photos it’s hard not to stop and day dream about the circumstances of their origins. Next up I have to decide what to do with all my old vinyl. There must be a couple hundred old albums I haven’t played in over 25 years (and am not likely to in the future), but it’s hard to toss them. Any takers? They are mostly mid-60’s to mid-70’s classic rock and R&B, but there are some stinkers in the mix too. Buzzard advises me to check the inside of all the double albums for aged and forgotten contraband before passing them on, which sounds like a good idea.

Adios muchachos.

Fatmobile

2010-06-04T10:29:00.002-04:00

The most irritating commercials on TV are for the Scooter Store. They aren’t irritating in the manner of a “clapper” ad, or the really graphic anti-diarrhea spots. These are irritating because they encourage people on the periphery of need to use Medicare funds for these dubious devices.

The people in the ads are always really cute granny types who obviously need help getting to church or out to help at the Girl Scout bake sale. But who actually uses these machines? You urbanites may not see many of them, but I’ve spent the last few months visiting my local Wal-Mart on at least a weekly basis. Here is the “truth-in-advertising” version* of the testimonials that promote the Scooter Store:

“Hi! How do you like my new scooter from the Scooter Store? It didn’t cost me a nickel. The friendly people at the Scooter Store showed me how to scam Medicare (and you – the taxpayer) and my insurance company (and you – the premium payer) into paying for the whole thing!

After spending a lifetime eating whatever I wanted, never exercising, and watching my weight sore to 400 lbs, I found walking to the fridge a real chore. The folks at the Scooter Store felt my pain and assured me that never walking anywhere was my right as an American! So call today and let the knowledgeable, friendly staff at the Scooter Store show you how to get your friends and neighbors to pay for a new scooter so your fat ass will never have to walk anywhere again. Don’t delay. Call today.”

* My apologies in advance to anyone who actually needs one of these rolling fat-boy carts.

Topic #2: I always take my ear buds to the gym to plug into the sound system while I’m on the elliptical. One bud is marked with an L (left) and the other with an R (right). Yesterday, for at least the twentieth straight time, when I looked down I found that I had R in my left hand and L in my right. I say “at least” because it had probably happened another 10-20 times before I started counting. This seems like a near mathematical impossibility to me. One of you must have the math skills to calculate the odds. I am perplexed.

So I guess you can tell I’m reaching for topics. Forgive me but I am hugely distracted as we are in the process of sorting through 30 years of life’s accumulations, and packing them up in preparation of moving out of our house at the end of the month – our fourth major move in 3-1/2 years. This is leaving me little time for the deep thought and rigorous research that normally goes into these posts.

The real cause of the Gulf disaster

2010-05-28T14:34:00.003-04:00

Regular readers know of my bromance with David Brooks; his column today is a good example of why I admire his thinking so much. In Drilling for Certainty, Brooks, himself, drills deeper and thinks more broadly, in search of the causes of the BP oil disaster in the Gulf. He equates this ecological catastrophe with the financial catastrophe we experienced with the sub-prime mortgage meltdown. “These systems, which allow us to live as well as we do, are too complex for any single person to understand. Yet every day, individuals are asked to monitor the health of these networks, weigh the risks of a system failure and take appropriate measures to reduce those risks.”

He goes on to identify six principal reasons for why this often goes so horribly wrong, including the false sense of security that naturally comes with these complex systems, sighting the fact that more people are killed in crosswalks than while jay-walking, since we assume the crosswalk will protect us. It’s a great article. You should read it, although I think it is secondary to the force that precipitated the spill.

For whatever reason, Mr. Brooks has antipathy for populism. I think he thinks it’s counterproductive and anti intellectual, so he doesn’t ever want to pin the blame on the elites who run these shows. But what-the-hell, it really feels good, so let me tell you why I think the Gulf is now awash in sludge and will be for decades.

The overwhelming, undisputed, number one trend in business over the last 30 years (or more) has been the push to cut corners, save a buck, and never worry about tomorrow because that is somebody else’s problem. That’s why BP chose to use a cheaper well casing, and to remove the drilling fluid at the earliest possible time. That’s why there was no plan or equipment in place to do anything about the problem once the well blew. And once all the facts are in I’m sure there will be some similarly motivated action that lead to an impotent “blow-out preventer.” Anything to save a buck, including the sacrificing of the lives of the men who worked on the Deepwater Horizon.

As long as I’m doing my William Jennings Bryan impression, let’s also ponder who profits? Over these same thirty years while productivity soared, wages stagnated and middle class jobs disappeared at an alarming rate, the only things that are up are CEO pay, the percentage of wealth controlled by the top one tenth of one percent of the population, and the number of “free-market capitalists” who suck subsidies and favors from the government to the detriment of the public well being. Keep an eye out for Goldman Sachs, the great vampire squid. I’m sure they have their blood funnel stuck in there someplace.

Road notes

2010-05-24T18:17:00.002-04:00

It took me seven days to drive from Central Florida to New York last week, and it’s a good thing because I needed a whole week to mentally prepare myself for the final leg of the journey – the Cross Bronx Expressway – America’s worst road and anything but an expressway.

I played a few rounds of golf in South Carolina, and visited a couple of friends in North Carolina along the way. I made at least 50% of the trip on non-interstate highways, which added a little time but still made the trip go faster. This included most of the 105 mile stretch of the Skyline Highway through Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. I think it looks like the photo above, but when I got on at the southern entry point it was drizzling and I couldn’t see much out in the distance. There are only a few exit points along the way. I skipped the first one and shortly thereafter the drizzle turned to a steady, hard rain, accompanied by a dense fog that made even the 35 mile per hour speed limit impossible to reach. But I saw a lot of pretty trees and stopped at a couple of lodges operated by the National Park Service, which look to be worth a visit some other time. You can still actually see some local character in America if you get off the I-roads.

Road music was, as usual, heavily focused on the blues. I listened to several recent Roadhouse podcasts for the second and third time, as well as “Soul Monster” by Rod Piazza. The blues comes in so many styles I’m sometimes not sure how to characterize a group. Rob in a harp player in the Chicago style, but also plays a little jump blues and does a great cover of the old Sunny and the Sunglow’s song, “Talk to Me.”And I’ve probably heard half of the new album by the Mannish Boys and have to get the whole thing. They really rock. Woody recently gave me a couple CDs by Guitar Gabriel, a real-deal old-time Delta bluesman who was once a patient of his, but who has since gone to his reward. (I’m certain these last two facts are not related in any way.) He is well worth a listen.

Tom and Ray Magliozzi are surely the funniest guys on the radio. I download “Car Talk” episodes and listen to them on my i-pod while driving. You don’t have to be a car nut to love Tom and Ray; you just have to enjoy laughing. They crack each other up with cornball jokes and old stories about the cars they owned, their families, crooked mechanics and anything else that pops into their heads. Both are MIT-trained engineers and have run an auto repair business in Cambridge, Mass for many years.

If you’ve never heard them try the April 17, 2010 episode in which we hear a very funny story about how Ray was sick and got left behind when the crew went to South Beach for a little R&R this winter. Then a wealthy grandma calls in to complain that her grandson doesn’t want to drive the Mini Cooper she offered to buy him because it is a “chick car,” which leads to an interesting sociological debate. Finally, a nebbishy Washington bureaucrat suffering from DMLC (delayed mid-life crises) calls in with a question about preserving the top on his Miata convertible. This leads to the funniest bit of all when Tommy tells him about his 1974 Chevy Caprice Classic convertible, and weaves a philosophy of life into his insistence on putting the top down in May and never raising it again until October – rain or shine. It was raining as I listened to it, but it didn’t stop me from laughing.

Cleveland, Wall Street and an endoscopy

2010-05-15T21:14:00.002-04:00

As the poet once wrote:

Cleveland city of light city of magic
Cleveland city of light you're calling me

Someday the world may agree, but not this week.

I read “The Big Short” by Michael Lewis this week and can recommend it without reservation, but with two warnings. The first is that it is fairly technical. When you finish you will have a much better understanding of the difference between CDO’s and CDS’s, and you’ll learn the importance of tranches and how Goldman Sachs and other thieving Wall Street bastards used them to obfuscate their schemes to defraud their customers and dupe the ratings agencies.

Lewis worked as a bond trader at the old Solomon Brothers twenty years ago and wrote his first best seller, “Liar’s Poker” based on his experience there. In the opening pages of “The Big Short” he talked about how the wretched excesses of the early ‘80’s on Wall Street shocked him, and how sure he was that they were ripe for a fall. He admits to finding that notion quaint today in light of what was to come.

This leads me to the second warning. This book is likely to make you angry, depressed, or both. (I finished it the same day as game five of the Cavs-Celtics series, so imagine how I felt!) Lewis tells the story of the sub-prime mortgage melt down through the words of a half dozen professional investors who saw it all coming, told anyone who would listen for several years, withstood the ridicule and scorn their opinions brought down on them, and ultimately, made hundreds of millions of dollars by betting on their beliefs.

Lewis puts to final rest the fantasy espoused by Wall Street CEO’s and government officials that the meltdown was an event of such unforeseeable randomness that no one could possibly be blamed for not having seen it coming. It also removes any doubts about the rapacious disregard Wall Street had (and has to this day) for its customers, its shareholders, and for the good of the country. And it kills the myth of the “Wall Street genius.” They might be able to kick your ass on an SAT test, but only a collection of stupendously dumb shits could have produced the end result brought about by Goldman and their imitators. Hundreds belong in jail. I hope they go and I hope they get remedial math classes while they are there.

Lewis is a wonderful writer and makes the story feel like you are reading it in real time.

I’m going back on the road for a while; I’m driving north for the summer, stopping for three rounds of golf in South Carolina, dinner in Charlotte, baseball and an endoscopy in Winston-Salem (don’t ask), and a couple of other fun things before I get to New York just in time to clean up and head out again for my daughter’s graduation in Boston. I may be out of touch for a while, but feel free to talk amongst yourselves.

"This is ridiculous"

2010-05-10T20:45:00.002-04:00

At various times during the 2008 Presidential campaign, in moments of frustration, Barack Obama would tell David Axelrod that someday he would write a book about the election and the title would be “This is Ridiculous.” This is according to “Game Change,” by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann. Many of you probably read it already, this due to my inadvertently putting myself on the wait list at the library for the large print version, which in Florida can add substantially to the wait time.

But I had to read it. I started The Daily Blank in January 2008, not to be specifically about the election, but inevitably, we spent a lot of time on the topic and I followed it more closely than any before it. We all were very invested in the process that year, and this book does a wonderful job of recapping the major events and giving them a perspective that was impossible to have as the events were taking place.

The book is remarkable in several ways. It is eminently readable, and manages to infuse drama into a narrative in which the reader knows the outcome. Some of its most sensational revelations have been well reported since it was published in January of this year, but they are all the more sensational when read in the context of the story arc. Some of the event and conversations the authors reveal are stunning; so much so one has to wonder about the accuracy, but I’m aware of no challenges to anything reported in the book, and after four months without a law suit or a major hissy fit I think we can assume they got it right.

However, as enjoyable as it was to read on one level, I ultimately found the book depressing. It not only confirms, but amplifies, the impression I have of Presidential politics as being more theater than substance.

Obama, Clinton and McCain were stars. Like Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts, or Jack Nicholson. They hired professional political consultants who acted as their producers, script writers, marketers, and road managers. They cast various lesser politicians in supporting roles based more on their images rather than their abilities. They wrote different scripts for different audiences. They counter-program the way executives at NBC do against CBS. The press did its part by reviewing the shows they produced 24/7; building audiences without offering much insight into the show’s meanings or purpose.

If more than ten pages of the book were devoted to issues of political substance, I’d be surprised, but then, why should they have done so? That would have been beside the point. It would have seemed ridiculous.

Hamburger lit

2010-05-08T16:23:00.003-04:00

I enjoy steak as much as anyone, but if no one is looking, I’ll take a good hamburger over a great steak 10 times out of 10. It’s a part of being the relentlessly low brow dude that I am. My taste in literature is similar. I have a deal with myself; every other book I read is for fun, alternating with more elevated selections. Since I decide what qualifies as “elevated” a neutral referee might score it 60-40 for the fun books.

Fun books can take many forms but I love the mystery/thriller genre above all – this is my literary hamburger. I don’t really know how to review books, but below is a list of some of my current favorites. Feel free to offer your own selections:

1. Lee Child, the Reacher books. Child was an English television writer before moving to New York. He’s about to publish his 14^th Jack Reacher book. Reacher is a former Army Major who served as an investigator for 15 years before retiring early from the peacetime Army. Now he wanders the country wearing the clothes on his back, a toothbrush in his pocket. He has an ATM card, but no credit cards, no cell phone, no car, no other possessions of any kind. When his clothes get dirty he buys a new set and throws the old ones away. He’s kind of a modern day Kung Fu. Reacher is 6’6,” weighs 250 and has little sympathy for people who need a beating. He may also be the most logical thinker ever in print. Child’s plots are inventive and complex. He publishes a new hardback every year and last year’s comes out in paperback around the same time. I just finished it: Gone Tomorrow. It did not disappoint.

2. Michael Connelly, a former newspaper crime reporter, is unusual in that he has two lead characters. Mickey Haller is a lawyer in LA. He doesn’t like working in an office so he has 2-3 identical Lincoln Town cars outfitted as mobile offices. Harry Bosch is an LA police detective who Connelly intentionally paints as beige as possible, and yet he fascinates. The Brass Verdict features both Haller and Bosch and is a top pick.

3. Stieg Larsson was a Swedish journalist. He delivered three full books to his publisher, the only books he ever wrote, and then dropped dead of a heart attack at 50 before any of them saw print. The first two, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire were both international best sellers. The third book is due out soon. He offers an unusual protagonist in Lisbeth Salander, a 5-foot-nothing, 95 pound, anti-social, computer-hacker, tattooed and pierced-up waif who may, or may not also be a sociopath. International settings and innovative plots make these books a lot of fun.

4. Randy Wayne White I know little about, except that he was a full time fishing guide before becoming a writer. He has no web site. His character is Doc Ford, a marine biologist who lives in his combination house and lab on an island in Florida where he collects marine specimens for clients. (Does this sound at all familiar to you Steinbeck fans?) Doc has a scientist’s mind and a mysterious history that seems to have involved hurting people (Navy Seal maybe?). The setting are unusual, which leads to interesting plots. Captiva is a good place to start.

I plan to read more from George Pelecanos, author of The Night Gardener. He is a very tough and gritty writer; this is inner city crime as I suspect it really is and not for sensitive types. Pelecanos has been a contributing writer for the HBO series, The Wire.

I loved P. D. James’ Devices and Desires, the only one of her 20 books I’ve read. Ms. James is an Englishwoman of a certain age, but she doesn’t shy away from the rough side of life; these aren’t mysteries for girlies. That said, she might reasonably be called “the thinking man’s thrillerist.” (I think I just made that word up.) There is a literary quality to her work you don’t often find amidst the guns and the bodies. I’ll be reading more from James too.

Finally, if you’ve never read Robert Ludlum, you can’t go wrong with the Bourne books. Now I’m talking about the books Ludlum wrote before he died in 2001. His publisher keeps putting out books under his name but I don’t read them.

My life as a Fed

2010-05-04T17:18:00.003-04:00

I got my first “professional” job in 1972 when I went to work as an investigator for the Federal Trade Commission in Washington. There were so many whacky things about the gestalt of me being any kind of Federal employee it would be a struggle to tell the story completely, but it’s important to me because it was there that I first became interested in writing well, so that’s the part of the story I will tell.

There were twelve of us doing research and field interviews for the lawyers who ran the investigations. We were enforcing regulations that were mission-critical to keeping the American economy humming along; for example, The Wool Products Labeling Act and the Fair Credit Reporting Act. As interesting as those statutes are, I’ll be focusing on one of our tangential activities: answering the mail.

The office received about 20 non-specific letters per day. By non-specific, I mean they weren’t addressed to any particular person, nor were they related to a particular open investigation. So every twelfth day each of us would get that day’s mail and the assignment to respond to it.

About half the letters could have been answered with a simple form letter that explained to the consumer that the FTC is only permitted by law to investigate a fairly narrow range of transgressions, and that said transgression had to involve interstate commerce in order for us to have jurisdiction. But, this being the new, friendly FTC we weren’t allowed to use form letters. Instead, we struggled each day to find new and friendly ways to say the same things, over and over again, in our responses.

For example, if the consumer wrote to her Congressman complaining that there were only 11 donuts in the bag of a dozen that she bought at Kroger’s that morning, the letter would work its way to us, and we could not just pass the buck with the old “no interstate commerce” line. We’d also throw in a little sympathy and suggest that she contact her local Better Business Bureau, helpfully enclosing the address and copying her Congressman, of course.

The directive that each letter should appear to be unique and personal produced a wide range of interpretations, and here’s where it got interesting. This being the Federal government they weren’t going to let a bunch of GS-9’s send letters to voters without scrutiny. This was well before the word processor found its way into office life, let alone email. This is how the process worked.

When my turn came up I took the day’s mail to my office and wrote out responses to each in longhand. This took 2-3 days. I then took them to the typing pool. A day later they emerged in a batch (Each day’s mail had to stay together until they were all ready to be mailed – like a litter of puppies all weaned together.) Inevitably a typist would have misinterpreted something I wrote and I’d have to make a few corrections, which would have to go back to the pool for retyping. With luck, I was done with this first draft by day four.

At this point the batch went to my boss, Irv. There are two things you need to know about Irv. The first is that he was not a lawyer – he came up through the civil service ranks, and it took him about twenty years to get to where he was managing our group. As a non-lawyer he had absolutely no status with the lawyers, who were the Princes of the agency and who ran the cases. Therefore, they never clued Irv in on anything going on with the cases and treated us like their direct reports, leaving Irv bureaucratically emasculated and isolated.

The second thing to know about Irv is that he looked exactly like Sammy Davis Junior, both in face and in stature. This would be a significant personal burden anytime, but had a special weight to it in 1972, the year Sammy gave Richard Nixon “the hug.” Irv needed a way to allow the master-of-the-universe portion of his personality to see the light of day, and torturing the mail-answerers was the only option open to him.

Irv also had plenty of time on his hands, so those letters came back to us very quickly, and when they arrived each looked like a New York subway map; a maze of multicolored lines, arrows and notations. On a good first pass I might get 1-2 of the simplest letters through unscathed. I was solidly in the middle of a very narrow range of similar results with my peers. Irv simply lived to correct us.

I would then make the corrections and send the letters back to the typing pool, because Irv wouldn’t read them unless they were neatly typed. A day later Irv dictated that perhaps ten of the letters undergo a second round of changes. Then back to the typing pool. Then back to Irv for more changes. Sometimes he’d change “white to black” on the first round and then “black to white” on the third round. Only we noticed as Irv had a dozen of these correspondence circle-jerks going at once with me and my colleagues.

This volley of revisions went on for the next several days. By the end of the second week after their arrival at the FTC, a 20-letter batch would have gone through 40-50 revisions, and been professionally typed the same number of times just to get past Irv. Then the lawyers got them.

The Assistant Regional Director, who was a lawyer making a pretty good buck, got first crack at them. His first order of business was to remove whatever friendly, colloquial language remained after Irv had worked his magic. The friendly stuff was the language we had been urged to use to show the consumer how much their government loved them, and it was replaced with some impenetrable legalese intended to either impress or confuse the recipient (or her Congressman). About a quarter of each batch received revision orders at this level, which prompted another trip to the pool. (Most of the women in the typing pool – and they were all women -- could have answered these letters in their sleep after a few months given how many times they’d read the same drivel.)

Then came the final stop the Regional Director’s desk, another lawyer and the top dog in our world, but we think he only read the letters that had cc’s to someone really important because he made very few changes. Once they came back from the pool the final time, out they went – just as the next batch came in. None of us was ever without of a batch of letters in some state of processing.

Maybe the reason the boss man made few changes was because he hated hearing us all bitch so much about the letter answering process. So to show how progressive he was, he brought in a writing expert to teach us all how to write clear, legally correct letters. And we got to take two days away from the office to learn from a master.

The guy was really good. On the first morning he told us the story of the admirer of Michelangelo’s David who asked the artist how he turns rough stone into something so beautiful. Michelangelo was said to have replied: "I just carve away anything that isn't David.”

“Writing is no different,” he told us, “You must remove that which isn’t necessary to tell your story. Anything additional detracts from what is important.”

We each brought in samples of letters we’d written and he took us through them sentence-by-sentence, stripping away the unnecessary verbiage and substituting clear, direct language for the flowery obtuseness of government-speak.

We were enthusiastic, but equally sure that letters written in this new, direct and intelligible style would suffer a near 100% rejection rate from Irv and his masters. We were so adamant on this point that the instructor apparently told the regional director of our skepticism at the end of the day, so first thing the next morning our capo showed up in the classroom and gruffly admonished us for our cynicism and assured us he would not have spent good money to bring in a writing coach if he wanted us to keep writing the same old way.

It was at this point that one of the bolder among us gave him a handful of our rewritten, new and improved letters. His face became a scene from a silent movie. His eyes bulged and then popped. His hair stood on end. Smoke came out of his ears. A steam whistle blew. “Jesus Christ! You can’t say this!” he screamed. He turned on the instructor and boomed, “What the hell are you teaching these people?!”

It was at approximately this point in my life that I realized I was not cut out for public service, and that I wanted to write like that always.

How much does a song weigh?

2010-04-27T17:27:00.004-04:00

Last night I burned eight music CDs. Each pair of two was wrapped in an identical piece of cardboard and placed inside one of four identical envelops. I used the same Sharpie to address each. This morning I took them to the post office to be mailed. The clerk weighed each envelope separately while calculating the correct postage. Two envelopes weighed about 20% less than the other two. Do you think it was because they had fewer songs burned onto the CDs?

I’ll leave you to ponder this and other mysteries for the next week, as I am heading out to Myrtle Beach in the morning for five days of golf, poker, cocktails and stories with some pals from my college daze. I also have the new Jack Reacher paperback with me in case I finally get tired of hearing the same stories we tell every year. Fortunately the stories are different every year due to diminished memories and shifting agendas. (Or is it agendi?)