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.

"You're Going... I'm Staying"

The old man, an improbable El Al Airlines luggage security screener, was the first ever to ask me if I’d left my bags unattended at any time. I hesitated. I’d been in Istanbul getting a difficult story; I’d barely seen my hotel room or my luggage. He gently said, “You’re going… I’m staying.”

Only days earlier, in New York, the harrowing film account of an American interned and abused in a Turkish jail, “Midnight Express,” put the fear of God into me; with the taking of 52 American hostages, the Iranian Revolution put radical Islamic fundamentalism before the world’s eyes; and the Turkish military had already put itself in control of Turkey’s government. I’d been aggressive in getting my story, an ethnically sensitive one. Indicating the authentic “Midnight Express” prison to me, a poker-faced state functionary told me I’d asked too many questions and it was time for me to leave.

The old man waited for an answer. Mine was,“Check ‘em.”

El Al has set airline industry standards for security procedures. Every passenger is interviewed individually prior to boarding and can be questioned by as many as three different screeners, all of whom are extensively trained and skilled. They look and listen for evasive answers, withheld information, and anxiety or nervousness. Yes, they have profiling. Yes, they do have armed, plain-clothes sky marshals in passenger seats on every flight. And yes, I’m only scratching the surface of the precautions they take and omitting the technology they employ. El Al was the first airline to resume international flights out of New York after 9/11.

Prior to 9/11, I mischievously used to test the airlines’ security—not a game I would play today. In Moscow, I lifted a bulky suitcase around Domodedovo Airport’s X-ray scanner instead of passing the bag through it. A week later in Uzbekistan, pushing my luck, I hoisted the same suitcase around the scanner again at Tashkent International Airport. No one said a word in either instance and suitcase in hand, I boarded.

In Germany, I fought against passing a film (in a canister) through the metal detector or scanner, and won. Gracious in defeat, Lufthansa officials gave me a seat for it! I put up the same fight in Tel Aviv and was on the ropes when a wise official intervened and suggested I open the can and unspool the reel sufficiently for him to see that it was… film.

Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) blames President Obama for lacking focus on terrorism and for failing to appoint a head of the Transportation Security Administration. He’s the same Jim DeMint who was at the forefront of blocking a vote on the President’s nominee for the position, Erroll Southers! The logic apparently is: in times of terrorist threat, no head of the TSA is better than a President’s choice. In all fairness to Senator Jim, he suspects Southers would allow TSA employees to unionize. Jim Demented.

Wish Jim had been present at Los Angeles International Airport when I observed an Arabic-looking man in a nice suit and tie hand a package around the metal detector to a swarthy, poorly-dressed man who speeded out of sight. When I reported what I’d seen to TWA personnel at the boarding gate, they were at a loss for what to do. I had to insist on seeing a security guard, who also didn’t have a clue. I practically forced him to “do something.” We boarded and walked through the plane for my flight twice as I looked left and right, in vain, for my suspect. I was content he was not on my flight, but the security guard was too content—for me—that the man was not on somebody else’s. Fortunately, I didn’t read bad news about it.

Another time at the L.A. airport, a former Israeli intelligence agent carrying my suitcase walked with me past the scanner and through the gate without being asked to show the flight ticket he didn’t have… to the entrance ramp to my plane, set the case down and said, “You see, that’s how bad security is in this country.”

So, Senator, pay attention. While you fret over unionization, security in this country is so bad that a machine dispensing airline tickets is asking purchasers the same sensitive questions on a screen that trained security agents ask passengers in order to observe their reactions and determine possible threats! So naturally we have to ask: can a machine tell if a suspect is perspiring… his eyes shifting… her words faltering? Your words are nonsense, Senator, and like the airport machine, self-serving.

The Sound of It

Many years ago, I was in the control room of a small recording studio supervising the making of a “demo” record for a song I had written. Seated next to me was a close friend, an arranger who had told the handful of musicians what he wanted them to play rather than given them anything to read. That’s how we did things in those days. (And we thought we were sophisticated!)

In the middle of one take (a play-through of the song), a cumbersome set of metal earphones, “pots,” slipped from a violinist’s head, striking the edge of his violin before hitting the ground. Musicians routinely brought second rate instruments to sessions, so I was stunned by his reaction, which was panic. He raised his violin and started anxiously examining it from every possible angle.

“Why is he so upset?” I asked my friend. “Because it’s a Guarnerius,” he answered. “What the hell is he doing bringing a Guarnerius (a rare, precious instrument) to a recording session?” I asked. My friend answered, “He likes the sound of it.”

Months ago, in anticipation of moving from our apartment, I prepared to dispense with my large collection of LPs. To my surprise, my daughter Lauren expressed interest and began making selections for herself, first for the artwork, then for the sound. “They have more ‘pop,’” I believe she contended. In order to listen to them at her apartment, she had to buy a 33⅓ rpm record player. Now she’s buying more LPs. I held one up and asked why. Her answer was she likes the sound of it.

I started thinking about what I like the sound of. At an impasse as I sat in silence, it struck me how much I enjoyed sitting in silence. I’ve heard some of the most beautiful strings in some of the greatest concert halls in the world. Practically swooned to Pavarotti and Ella, Chet Baker a cappella. Pounding waves and heavy breathing come to mind. The sweet cadences of Robert Frost. The sublime music of “Obama is the winner!” I still have the first cry of a baby and the angelic laughter of two little girls in my ears. But I covet silence.

Our new apartment is on a courtyard. I haven’t heard a car alarm in the five weeks we’ve been here. Like the sound of that? I feel like the dog in the old RCA logo, sitting in front of the gramophone’s horn listening for his master’s voice. I sit in front of an arched window, writing as other windows go dark. I listen for silence.

In truth, I have sounds I irresistibly cotton to—rough voices that for my ears are like the grain of sand in the oyster that produces the pearl. The extravagant seductions of Leonard Cohen and Satchmo. The melodic assault of Kurt Weill. The growling intellect of Barney Frank. The appreciative roar of Yankee fans.

An actor calls his agent’s office. The agent’s assistant says, “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but your agent is dead.” The actor asks again to speak to his agent. The assistant says, “Look, I know it’s a shock, but your agent is dead.” Once again, the actor asks for his agent. The exasperated assistant says, “Will you it through your head? Your agent is dead!” The actor says, “I know. I just like the sound of it.”

Watching What's Wrong

Jimmy Fallon said it well: “Instead of showing President Obama’s health care speech… Fox aired… “So You Think You Can Dance.” I guess they wanted to give viewers a choice between hearing what’s wrong with our country and watching what’s wrong with our country.”

If you’ve been watching, Joe Wilson’s contemptuous interjection during President Obama’s address to congress is “what’s wrong with our country.” Kanye West’s rude insertion of himself at the MTV Video Music Awards is what’s wrong with our society. Jane Fonda is what’s wrong with mixing the water of celebrity with the oiliness of politics.

I’ve already dealt with Joe Wilson, but inadvertently neglected to include that he’s amply and ably demonstrated he’s a racist. I’m going to deal with Kanye West summarily: in my eyes, he’s a reverse racist, calling the kettle whitey, so to speak—and a blatant sexist, whose seizing of the microphone from a stunned 19-year-old Taylor Swift was crassly intimidating and cowardly.

Which brings me to Jane Fonda. Who just won’t go away. So what’s wrong with her (this time)? Choosing her customary motley company, she joined forces with Wallace Shawn, Danny Glover and David Byrne to protest the selection of Tel Aviv as this year’s spotlight selection for the Toronto International Film Festival’s annual “City to City” theme.

It’s really not much of a spotlight. According to journalist Stephanie Guttmann, “A look at the festival’s home page includes no mention of Israel at all.” But that wouldn’t stop Calamity Jane. You haven’t arrived in American politics until you’ve been boycotted by Jane Fonda.

Seldom is an acronym a synonym for the string of words it represents. But thanks to a handful of uninformed actors and disgruntled walk-ons, the acronym for the Toronto International Film Festival, TIFF, couldn’t be more appropriate, because they stirred up a lulu of a tiff with this one.

Actors should stay out of politics. That should have included Ronald Reagan, but just because it’s too late to stop him doesn’t mean the folly should continue. Alexander Pope said, “A little learning is a dangerous thing.” Some people should stick to learning their lines. I haven’t read Fonda’s biography, and won’t—I’m hereby boycotting it!— but her life isn’t exactly private, and I know of nothing in it that qualifies her for anything but acting (limited), exercise (passé) and outspokenness (unenlightened).

The subject is watching. I watched Jane in Israel in 1982. She and her husband at the time, Tom Hayden, were ostensibly there to observe “conditions.” But she mostly didn’t get off the bus. Tom did—to speak with the press, with Israeli soldiers, and one on one with me—and came off as a really nice guy. I didn’t learn until much later that he was running for the California Assembly and, here’s that uncomfortable mixture of show business and politics again, he was “back-dooring” it in Israel to get the heavy California Jewish vote. That November, he won the general election.

Rush Hour

Dear Rush,

I have to take issue with you. But I want to let you have your say before I have mine.

“Well, it’s right out of Adolf Hitler’s playbook. Now, what are the similarities between the Democrat Party today and the Nazi Party in Germany? Well, the Nazis were against big business. They hated big business and of course we all know that they were opposed to Jewish capitalism. They were insanely, irrationally against pollution. They were for two years mandatory voluntary service to Germany. They had a whole bunch of make-work projects to keep people working, one of which was the Autobahn. They were against cruelty and vivisection of animals, but in the radical sense of devaluing human life, they banned smoking. They were totally against that. They were for abortion and euthanasia of the undesirables, as we all know, and they were for cradle-to-grave nationalized healthcare.”

“The Obama health care logo is damn close to a Nazi swastika logo. There are far more similarities between Nancy Pelosi and Adolf Hitler than between these people showing up at town halls to protest a Hitler-like policy that’s being heralded by a Hitler-like logo. Oh, another similarity. Obama is asking citizens to rat each other out like Hitler did!”

Now that you’ve had your say, Rush, I’ll have mine:

The best thing one could say about the Nazi Party is that they were thugs. What’s the best thing to say about you? You… well...

Nothing comes to mind.

Wait! Thought of something!

The Nazis were almost as good as you at propaganda. But you’re an outright liar! You lie and you swear to it. You make it up and shovel it right onto the air. From your lips, “grass roots movement” becomes horse manure.

The Nazis weren’t against big business any more than big business was against the Nazis. Unless you consider Krupp a family store, ask someone on your staff who reads to look up who supplied the gas canisters for “Hitler’s playbook.” (Not the kind of cute little canisters you use for your home barbeque grill.)

The Nazis, you say, “were insanely, irrationally against pollution.” That sounds pretty serious to me. By the way, are you getting professional help?

“They [your Nazis] were against cruelty and vivisection of animals, but in the radical sense of devaluing human life, they banned smoking.” What in the world of rational people does this mean? Are you getting professional help?

“…and they were for cradle-to-grave nationalized healthcare.” Wow! Guess you’ve got me there. Are you getting professional help—or doesn’t your health care insurance cover it?

As far as your mad contention that “The Obama health care logo is damn close to a Nazi swastika logo” and even madder perception that there are “similarities between Nancy Pelosi and Adolf Hitler” and, alarmingly maddest of all, “Obama is asking citizens to rat each other out like Hitler did!” — Is your brain as drug-besotted as your bladder?

Time to level with you, Rush. Nothing compares to Hitler, not even a megalomaniac like you. Well, maybe Pol Pot. But try as you will keep trying, you’re not in their league. I’ll say this for you: you’ve got Goebbels beat.

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.

But For The Last Question

We are a trivial country with a trivial media. We stand at the threshold of confirming the best of what we believe “the land of the free and the home of the brave” stands for, and we are riddled with ADD. With a national health care program clearly in our sights at long last, our eyes dart instead to the sideshows on the sidelines—the C Street hotbeds, the “wise Latina” brouhaha, the blathering Birthers.

So we have the plight of Barack Obama’s press conference expressly “about the progress we're making on health insurance reform and where it fits into our broader economic strategy” upstaged by a reporter from the Chicago Sun-Times, Lynn Sweet, who posed the last question to the President—about health insurance reform, of course: “Recently, Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested at his home in Cambridge. What does that incident say to you and what does it say about race relations in America?” Obviously, Lynn’s attention must have been riveted by the president’s remarks up to that point.

It didn’t take sophistication or savvy for anyone to realize what the story would be. No matter how the President answered, race was the issue and “that incident” trumped the president’s concern for “the 47 million Americans who don't have any health insurance at all” and the “14,000 Americans [who] will continue to lose their health insurance every single day.” It dwarfed “the woman in Colorado who paid $700 a month to her insurance company only to find out that they wouldn't pay a dime for her cancer treatment” and “the middle-class college graduate from Maryland whose health insurance expired when he changed jobs and woke up from the emergency surgery that he required with $10,000 worth of debt.”

Not to take anything away from “Skip” Gates, a distinguished scholar who happens to be among my intellectual heroes, nor from the appalling appearance of possible racial profiling in the Cambridge police’s handling, or mishandling, of the iconic Harvard professor, but regrettably, as the highly-charged situation became the distraction not only of the day, but easily of many a day to follow, the consummately important issue of our time, health care reform, faded from sight for a time, essentially unnoticed.

I’ve yet to see the Cambridge affair dubbed WaterGates, but don’t hold your breath. I saw a clip of Rush Limbaugh fuming, “The president’s reaction was not presidential… we got the militant black reaction.” I watched Chris Matthews, who opens his hour on MSNBC declaring, “Let’s play Hardball!” but often as not doesn’t even lob softballs to guests like those on Thursday night’s show. Before him sat the newly- and likely briefly-famous Lynn Sweet, but instead of using the opportunity to ask her why she veered from the press conference’s vital subject matter and changed the subject—particularly after she had said she found it “remarkable… that Obama decided to engage in the question in a very animated way…”, he concluded his non-inquiry of her by telling her, “Good question last night! Talk about makin’ noise in this country!” Guess he wants her back on the show.

Midway through the hour, Matthews introduced G. Gordon Liddy, a leader of the Birthers, those tiresomely-dogged agitators who refuse to accept evidence that Barack Obama is a U.S. citizen because they refuse to accept that a man with black skin and an African name is the legitimate President of the United States. (Matthews might have asked why the American people didn’t ask George W. Bush, or Teddy Roosevelt for that matter, to prove their citizenship, but he didn’t.) Quite a show, right? Liddy said that Obama’s “Certificate of Live Birth,” issued in Hawaii and certified by the state’s Republican governor and everyone else but the right wing-dings, wouldn’t qualify him for an American passport. (Note to Chris: why didn’t you ask Liddy to explain how Obama traveled all over the world long before and ever since he entered political life?) So we were treated to the spectacle of a convicted felon accusing the President of the United States of being an illegal alien.

Just hours ago on “Hardball,” radio talk show host Michael Smerconish said that after twelve hours on the air over the past two days, the Gates/police/Obama issue “is the only thing the American people want to talk about.” As for health care? God Bless America.