It's Their Party

 

How do I love the Republicans?  Let me count the ways.  (This won’t take long.)

A party with a mission, they gathered in Tampa to present their candidate and themselves in the most favorable light possible.  Disciplined and determined, they planned, four years in advance, to show the country here and now they are infinitely more fit to govern than the candidate and the party the people had elected. You have to ask—at least I have to—if a party that plans four years in advance to hold such an all-important presidential-nominating national convention in a hurricane-prone region during hurricane season after its previous national convention was delayed by a hurricane in the same time frame is a party conceivably capable of planning the future of this country.

 

Sparing no expense, the RNC staged and scripted the proceedings ad nauseam, or possibly ad tedium.  They stifled spontaneity, silenced or ignored discordant opinion, and deemed their recent two-term president unmentionable and their last vice-presidential campaign darling persona non grata.  As if by fiat, they ruled out embarrassments.  A locked-down convention, with no surprises.  Until, that is, the gaff-master invited one for his crowning night.  Surprise!

Party luminaries came from all four corners of the nation to talk about themselves.  They made barely standard references to the party’s standard bearer.  The only one talking primarily about Mitt Romney was his wife, Anne.  In case you missed any of the solipsism, i.e. the self as the only reality, Santorum served Santorum, Christie boosted and boasted about Christie, and Newt and Calista, obliviously parodying a 20th century icon, “American Gothic,” babbled in responsive tongues about relatively little.

The star of the evenings was not Paul Ryan, as expected, not Mitt Romney, as longed for, and definitely not the “surprise guest,” as regretted, but a relative unknown, Susana Martinez, the Governor of New Mexico, who scored heavily by telling her unvarnished, and what I dearly want to believe was her true, story.

Which bring us to truth-telling.  Christie, a self-aggrandizing truth-teller, had a lot to say about it, so he certainly wasn’t talking about Governor Romney—or, as we now know, Representative Paul Ryan, who was supposed to be forthright and honest, a veritable paragon of virtue or, at the least, the Gentile equivalent of a mensch.  In only 23 days since becoming the person who could be the next vice president of the United States and only 35 minutes, give or take an untruth, of presenting that paragon to the largest audience he’s faced to date, he has become, unabashedly and unapologetically, MisRepresentative Ryan.

Ryan’s convention speech and subsequent lies have been well-documented by practically everyone on both sides of the political spectrum, so in lieu of repeating the indictments, I quote an admirable, brave truth-teller, Sally Kohn, a Fox News contributor and writer, “…to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to facts, Ryan’s speech was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech.”  I urge you to read her detailed account, which includes the enlightening, “And then there’s what Ryan didn’t talk about.”

On the whole, truth did not fare well at the GOP convention.  Nor was there as much as a visible,  honorable attempt to keep to the facts.  To the contrary, lying was condoned and encouraged.  Sound unfair and outrageous?  According to Mitt Romney’s pollster, Neil Newhouse, “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.”  According to Rudy Giuliani, in his attempt to justify Ryan’s lies, “Well, look, when people give speeches, not every fact is absolutely accurate.”  Apparently neither Newhouse nor Giuliani, believe it or not, a former Associate Attorney General in the United States Department of Justice, knows what “fact” means, or that it’s an antonym of fiction.

Lying is easy and gets easier.  Irresponsible politicians, inspired by “the stupidity of people in large groups,” easily lose sight, so it seems, of honor, principle and truth.  Seduced by the sonorousness of their own voices, they believe in the substance of their lack of substance, wallow in slogans, catch-phrases and rhetoric and think that saying something, anything!, makes it so.  Taking Goebbels’ famous dictum one step further: “Tell a lie often enough and it becomes the truth” for the liar.

Now consider: If lying works so well, their fabrications may be able to stick it to the Democrats and dupe undecided voters today, but given the power tomorrow, what falsehoods would they be telling the country, and to what purpose or profit?

It’s their party.  And they’ll lie if they want to.

Brown v Warren

Boy, did the Republicans show Elizabeth Warren! They denied her the leadership of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in Washington—the bureau she conceived of and created—only to see her starting to run away with their Senate seat in Massachusetts. A UMass Lowell-Boston Herald poll shows her leading Republican Senator Scott Brown by a 7 percent margin, 49 to 42. According to MSNBC show host Lawrence O’Donnell, who knows politics from the inside, “That is an absolutely devastating poll for any incumbent senator. Any sitting senator running for reelection goes into full panic mode as soon as his or her polling number drops below 50 percent. The rule in politics is: an incumbent polling at 42 percent absolutely cannot win reelection…” Did they give it to her!

It’s so beautiful it positively shines. Let’s follow the bouncing balls. Scott Brown bared himself—again—this time by defying his party’s marching orders and endorsing President Obama's nominee to lead the GOP-dreaded bureau, former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray—who was aggressively going after his state’s banks for foreclosure fraud when he was ousted by a Republican challenger—who was subsequently hired for the consumer protection bureau by Elizabeth Warren, the GOP’s bete noire who’s beating the tail off Brown and on the verge of taking Ted Kennedy’s coveted seat back from the Republicans. Now, Senator Brown, that’s what I call being hoisted on your own petard!

And why would Scott Brown do such a reckless thing? Because it wasn’t reckless, it was cynical. Both he and the GOP knew the party had the votes for a filibuster: they could easily deprive Cordray of the up-and-down vote they routinely rail about being deprived of. It’s conceivable, if not likely, that Brown’s GOP guidance counselor(s) advised him to “defy” the party to impress his constituency. See how well that’s working!

Let’s not lose sight of the fact that Elizabeth Warren hasn’t won yet, not by a long shot! Be warned, Warreniks, the Republicans have her number. You’ve got to hand it to them! They’ve already exposed the college professor who’s never run for public office for being “a Harvard elitist and an outsider,” and what’s more, they’re “stressing that she was born and raised in Oklahoma.”

Where do I start? “Harvard Elitist?” Where’s the problem here? Is it with Harvard, or with being educated or skilled, or, truth be told, with simply not being ignorant? And if ignorance is so glorious, as it seems to have become—particularly to roughly 50% of American voters in presidential election years—aren’t the ignorant the Ignorant Elitists?

“Outsider?” With every Republican presidential candidate turning him or her self inside out to be seen as The Washington Outsider, while in actuality none of them qualify for being anything but insiders—an incumbent congressman and congresswoman, a former congressman who was the 58th Speaker of the House of Representatives, a former senator, a former governor and a present one, and a former ambassador—how can any Republican legitimately brand and denounce Elizabeth Warren for being “an outsider”? Haven’t they heard of the advice for people who live in glass houses? Surely it ought to be part of the platform of the Ignorant Elitists.

Finally… this is not for the faint of heart… let’s not mix words, I’ll just come right out and say it… the audacious Ms. Warren is so outside she was “born and raised in Oklahoma.” “Okla-Okla-Okla-Oklahoma!” “Where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain,” or at least probably did when Warren was born and raised there. Can you get more outside than that? Take note, Massachusetts independents, undecideds and, lest we forget—Republicans. Do they ever have her nailed!

I'm Not Giving Thanks For...

I routinely have a lot to give thanks for on Thanksgiving, and this year is certainly no exception. Last year, Thanksgiving fell on the day after my 35th and last radiation treatment—perfect timing I thought… until I sat at our Thanksgiving Day table unexpectedly unable to eat anything from the beautifully-arrayed plate of food before me. In the months to follow, I felt as if I was the roasted turkey. This year, thanks to family and friends and love, and the loving care of doctors and nurses, I will feast.

Ungracious as it may sound, today I find myself thinking contrarily of what I won’t give thanks for. Many will take that as a definitive sign that I’m feeling better. Wanting to share my skewed perspective with you tells me I am. But before I do, I want to touch on a few of the high points of Thanksgivings past.

For 37 years, we lived in an apartment with a large-as-life, premium view of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Families, the children the guests of honor, crowded at our oversized windows as float after float and balloon after balloon floated by, so close you felt you could almost reach out and touch something or someone in the parade. One year, I did something almost as unlikely as that. The revival of “Brigadoon” was a Broadway hit and its star, Martin Vidnovic, was perched atop one of the floats. I called to Marty, only once, from my window. And through the din, he heard me, looked up and saw me, grinned and waved. “Been too long,” I called, “let’s have lunch.” “Name it,” he said. “Russian Tea Room, next Wednesday. 12:30,” I responded. “We’re on,” he shouted. Neither of us bothered to confirm and both of us showed up as planned.

In April of 1984, I brought a sizeable sampling of Thanksgiving from Manhattan to Tel Aviv via “the balloon man” and four of his towering Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons, leading to one of the most comically bizarre episodes of my life. You can read it on this blog, but then please come back for what “I’m Not Giving Thanks For….”

As a rule, I don’t write when I have nothing to say. Too much has already been written, and, for that matter, said and sung, and if I don’t have anything new to say, or can’t think of a new way to say what may already have been said, I don’t. Having something new to say calls for passion, or something akin to it, as well as insight.

I haven’t been passionate about anything the past month except two Broadway dramas, the exceptional “Other Desert Cities” and the mercurial “Seminar.” I haven’t been angry about anything (not even anything Republican!), nor offended or indignant. In truth, the GOP has given me great pleasure this month thanks to the presidential candidates debates. I’m giving profuse thanks for them Thursday—and every day from now until election day 2012.

I’m not giving thanks for—or to—the 12 hopeless members of the failed special Congressional committee on deficit reduction. Nor, for that matter, do I have any thanks for anyone in the United States Congress. I think they should all go home for Thanksgiving and stay there.

I have no thanks in me for Texas, all of it, nor Arizona—not for the grief they’ve given us (as in U.S.). Ditto, the calcified and dividedly doctrinal Supreme Court, at least 5/9ths of it. In the larger picture, I’m not giving thanks, this year or any foreseeable year to the U.N. for what it’s become: the United Nations of Hypocrisy.

I’m not giving thanks for a living person anywhere in the world who has, in any way, betrayed the trust of children. Or for those who robotically repeat the euphemisms of journalists, jurists and sermonizers, hollow terms like endangerment, exploitation, trafficking, abuse. A child doesn’t have to be moved from one place to another for the offense to be child trafficking. Leaving a child with no choice is slavery, plain and simple.

I have not a shred of appreciation or compassion for any entity or organization that power has corrupted… or greed has infested and infected. “Corrupted” chiefly includes nightstick and pepper-spray wielding police, but doesn’t exclude unreasonably unruly mobs; autocrats, but also arrogant caucuses and sociopaths. The latter, “greed,” encompasses peddlers of gilt-edged schemes they wouldn’t sell to their mothers—in most cases. And other sociopaths.

I’m withholding thanks to professional sports organizations and outrageously-overpaid athletes until they get their Ps and Qs—profits and salary quotes—in order. Not so long ago, the Minnesota Timberwolves offered and basketball player Latrell Sprewell rejected a $21 million offer to extend his contract for three years as insufficient, because, said Sprewell, "I got a family to feed."

I’m not giving thanks to an Arab Spring that is metamorphosing into a bitter-cold Arab winter, contagious with unrest and pandemic in potential.

No thanks to or for Jon Corzine, Bernard Madoff, Mel Gibson (self-destructing is not enough), Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, talk radio hosts, or anyone named Newt.

Last, but not least: thanks but no thanks to the nation of sheep the U.S. has hastened to become. Either Erasmus, Anouilh or an English proverb (I’m not giving thanks for the lack of reliable attribution.) says, “In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” Beware the Cyclops who emerges to lead the bleating masses.

And this is me not being angry, offended or indignant. Happy Thanksgiving.

The Capitol Hill Compromise

Unless you were born or married on August 2nd, you have nothing to celebrate today. Unless the Tea Party is your idea of a wingding.

This is what the Republican Party has bequeathed to America, what Rush hath wrought, what Murdoch and Fox News have dished out and shoveled out wholesale—the undigested mental droppings of the untried and untrue. The Grand Old Party licked its lips, rubbed its palms together and threw open its doors for the Tea Party—it’s party-time!—and, here’s gratitude for you, they’ve snubbed its leaders, drowned out its conservatives and for all intents and ill purposes, all but high-jacked the GOP, taking the USA along for the ride (down). Whether bedecked as colonial clowns or congressmen and congresswomen, they see themselves as patriots.

I hold the Republican Party responsible for them. Now it, and we, are stuck with them—the bedbugs of politics, an infestation none of us can neatly get rid of.

Everyone in Washington, it’s become conventional to say, is at fault for the mess the country is in—a mess that neither began with the debt ceiling crisis or ended with “the deal.” Very American to distribute the blame, very noble to share it. That’s old boy, locker room, prep school nonsense. I could fault the Democrats for a lot of things that aren’t right, starting with the way the president has governed, or failed to, continuing with his advisers and the party leadership. But it’s the Republicans who kindled, stoked and fanned the debt ceiling fire, who fueled so much of what led up to it with their own prior profligacy, who paved the paths to the hell we just endured with anything but good intentions.

I wish I weren’t always so inclined to be rough on Republicans, but damn, they are so rough on the rest of us! I’m tired of them, tired of their shenanigans, their conniving, their hypocrisy. Unfounded?

Republicans keep talking about the legacy they don’t want to leave their children. But, despite being a party that doggedly opposes change, “the legacy” is never the same.

The legacy they say they don’t want to leave “our children” (No Republican answer is complete without citing “our children.”) is, interchangeably, national debt, a welfare state, legal abortion, big government, gay marriage, et al. It’s also insistently de facto free immigration, de facto amnesty for immigrants, de facto but no statutory immigration law, “immigration” ad nauseum. In plain fact, they don’t want to leave their children with untidy immigrants.

It follows that the Party of No has effortlessly become the Party of Don’t, as well. But it’s high time to ask: what is its Do? "Cut spending" seems to be the only answer it has.

The ubiquitous they say no one won the debt ceiling battle. That’s more conventional nonsense. The Tea Party won. Its unconscionably reckless members got what they wanted. But, get this, they’re complaining that it wasn’t enough! By giving in to them, both parties, Democrats and Republicans, have encouraged them. This ground gain isn’t an end for them, it’s just the beginning. Bedbugs don’t just run rampant, they suck blood.

In the scheme of things, it was the Democrats who capitulated because they were more reasonable. If you’re a Member of Congress and you can’t be a statesperson or a leader, you can still, at the least, be more reasonable. There is nothing wrong with being reasonable. Republicans should try it.

What, and Get Out of Politics?

It’s one of those story-jokes like “The Aristocrats”—everyone tells it differently. This isn’t film and I’m not Bob Saget, so here’s my “nice” version:

An old vaudevillian is passing through a circus grounds when he spots another vaudevillian he knows from days of yore. “Sam!” he says, “What are you doing here?” “I work here,” says Sam. “Here, in the circus? You became a… clown, Sam?” “No,” says Sam, “I take care of the animals.” “You, Sam? You were up there with the best!” Seeing the crestfallen look on the man’s face, Sam quickly tells him, “It’s OK, my friend, really! Come, I’ll show you. I have to give the elephant an enema.” Taking the man with him, Sam grabs a tall ladder and props it up against the elephant’s rear. He grabs a fire hose, turns it on full blast, mounts the ladder, and shoves 12 inches of the hose into the elephant. The elephant gradually becomes so engorged with water he explodes, throwing Sam from the ladder in a wave of excrement. As Sam lies sprawled on the ground in a pool of dung, his heartbroken crony pleads, “Sam, you don’t have to do this! You can quit!” Sam says, “What and get out of show business?

It’s a punch line with a moral. Vaudeville is long dead, but electing to swim in shit is not. Witness anyone in politics. If, to quote a master shit-detector, Yip Harburg, “It’s a Barnum and Bailey world,” Washington is its big top—and Congress is the center ring.

Infantile men and women of all ages run off to join the circus. As a rule, they leave family responsibilities behind to assume public responsibility irresponsibly. They call themselves Senators and Representatives. By electing them, we enable them.

I’m proposing “New Conditions For Congressional Officeholders.” Let’s give it a catch phrase for the C-SPAN debates and the ad hoc press conferences on the steps: The Stay Home Amendment. I hereby propose: we elect congressional candidates for terms at home. Instead of sending them to Capitol Hill, we post them to their homes and their families—and their own beds. Instead of living in caucus, committee or sin, they can learn, first hand every day, what the rest of us unavoidably know: drugs, unwanted pregnancies, hunger, broken wills and shattered dreams, essential needs and unpredictable ill health, lurk or fester in everyone’s backyard.

Now, Congressman, let’s debate “public option,” “freedom of choice,” “right to serve”; “bail-out,” “paygo,” and the ringer of ringers, “socialism.” On the cesspool side of mini-mindedness, let’s see if we can skirt the corrosive detritus of the Birthers and Tea Baggers. Welcome home.

If you were fortunate to see President Obama’s commanding appearance last Friday before “The GOP House Issues Conference,” variously referred to as a Republican retreat, a House caucus, or from my impression, a staged reading of scripted talking points by 10 toadying Republicans, you saw how the president, hungry for dialogue, patiently forbore bore after bore. It was reminiscent of a carny side show as the champ took on all challengers, all of whom entered the ring swinging unskillfully, hoping to land a lucky punch. Flailing and failing, the hapless pols needed someone to stop the bleeding. Roger Ailes to the rescue! (What’s a side show without a fat man?) While every other major network naturally continued to carry “The GOP House Issues Conference” to its conclusion, Ailes, the Fox News’ boss, decided to ring the bell and throw in the towel 20 minutes before the contest was over. And then “began attacking the president for ‘lecturing’ to the lawmakers,” according to Politico! So much for Fox’s “fair and balanced” news.

Now here’s Ray Fox’s fair and balanced news:

Ailes had this to say about his decision: “I’m not in politics, I’m in ratings.” And this non-sequitur when asked why Fox (TV) cut away so early: “Because we’re the most trusted name in news.” Arrogant and unbalanced newsman.

Obama had this to say to the conference: “I don't think they [the American people] want more partisanship. I don't think they want more obstruction. They didn't send us to Washington to fight each other in some sort of political steel-cage match to see who comes out alive.”

Who would you rather listen to? Just like back-room politics, what started here with an old joke ends with anything but a laughing matter.

A Brief Labor Day Brief

How did the GOP ever agree to a Labor Day?

In 1894, when Labor Day became a national holiday, the President of the United States, Grover Cleveland, was the only Democrat to hold the highest office in the land (twice) between the years of 1860 to 1912, a half-century of Republican Party political domination.

Legislation making Labor Day a national holiday was rushed through the 53rd U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Cleveland (before Congress went on a “labor day” recess).

The inspiration and incentive for the creation of the national holiday was a labor strike, the 1893 Pullman Strike triggered by the railroad car company’s laying off of hundreds of employees—as it happens, a result of a dire economic downturn in the country.

Rioting, plundering and setting fire to railroad cars by unemployed union workers was matched by rioting, plundering and setting fire by mobs of non-union workers.

Seeking to quell the destruction and calm the fury, the leaders of the Central Labor Union of New York City proposed a labor’s day and saluted it with a parade and picnic. That they probably “borrowed” the idea from Canada might disturb today’s xenophobes, but no three-day-weekender from the Hamptons to Hawaii would object.

In addition to being a Federal holiday, a District of Columbia and U.S. Territories holiday, Labor Day is a State Holiday in all the 50 U.S. States. Can you imagine all 50 states agreeing on anything?

And that’s the end of my labor today.

Changing the Subject

Almost 100 years ago, the president of Harvard University, Abbott Lawrence Lowell, resolved to establish a quota on Jews accepted to the university because, said the cloistered bigot, “Jews cheat.” When one of the most distinguished judges of the day, Learned Hand, a Harvard alumnus, pointed out to Lowell that Protestants also cheat, Lowell retorted, "You're changing the subject! We're talking about Jews."

As conveyed with exasperation in my previous entry on this blog, President Obama was expressly addressing national health care for a national audience tuned in to hear what he had to say about national health care when a journalist who either needed attention, or didn’t truly know why she was at the press conference and wasn’t paying attention, changed the subject. With one question, she accomplished what the GOP and its cadres of cranks have spent millions of dollars, calories and their diminishing reserves of human resources trying to do.

The average American has the attention span of an inch worm. And the cranial capacity of one. That makes people who should be listening to discussion instead of sound bites putty in the hands of those who would manipulate them, i.e., anyone who has an agenda, i.e., politicians, propagandists, talk show hosts, hate mongers and so on down the low road.

Interrupting is no longer impolite, it’s the rhythm and tenor of our lives. Chris Matthews asks a question but starts speaking before his guest can answer because what he has to say is more important—to him. A New York dinner party is a game of conversational counterpoint only seasoned pros can play. If you don’t instinctively know when to cut in—and by “when” I mean on the precise opportune breath—you’re sidelined.

Changing the subject is the new dialogue. I speak while your mind wanders and you speak while I wonder if you’ve heard anything I said. If I ask you, you’re apt not to answer because you’re thinking of what you want to say next.

Background music, loud and incessant, is the social essential. Without it, what is there to say? With it, does it matter?

Changing the subject is tactful when someone’s getting to you, deft when someone’s boring you, and legitimate when you want to make your point or pitch before the lunch you’re buying the person you’re finessing, by changing the subject, is over.

Finally, changing the subject comes a lot more naturally to all those you have to cope with than changing their minds does….

Which, not to change the subject, brings us back to where we started. We should be talking about national health care. And should be listening.