A Muggy Day

While other New Yorkers were spending their sunny Memorial Day Saturday on beaches, admiring others’ tans and working patiently on theirs, I spent mine in Manhattan’s 20th Precinct with my daughter Lauren, looking at mug shots.

Nineteen hours earlier… how do I express this gently?... my DAUGHTER was MUGGED! In broad Daylight-Saving-Time daylight! For an iPod and an iPhone! Hence, iBrood and iBristle.

You tell yourself it could happen anywhere. But it didn’t happen anywhere, it happened in our “backyard.” In our beloved city. Within the confines of our Upper West Side 70s oasis. Out of the blue!, an unsettling interloper on our Isle of Contentment. A menacing anomaly to old-city blocks teeming with good and multi-cultural plenty.

Lauren had just emerged from a subway station on Central Park West, a half block from her apartment, had just put her phone in the same hand as her iPod when a man walking toward her seized both. As she instinctively clung to them, he spun her around and to the ground, and ran off, iLoot in hand. She rose, looked at a finger that was pointing in a direction perpendicular to where it belonged and, presumably in shock, pulled it into place and, shocking as it sounds if you know her, started running after the hood, screaming “Stop him!” Three young men in front of her gamely gave chase, but lost sight of him. The moment Lauren stopped, she felt the pain, excruciating, not only in her finger, but in her shoulder. An NYPD squad car came to her aid in moments, and its officers called an ambulance.

It all happened not only in sprinting distance from Lauren’s apartment, but also came within a block of her sister Haley’s and family, and two blocks from ours—The Fox Compound, as I’ve described the wheel of our family’s proximity. Our hospital of choice is all of a mile away.

Being transported by ambulance on the streets of Manhattan is by no means a pain-free experience; automobile shocks weren’t built to absorb NYC potholes. (These are the kinds of things you start to take perverse pride in after you’ve been here for awhile.) Lauren winced and groaned and more than once pronounced her shoulder broken—but, to be honest, when you’ve raised a drama queen, you tend to process everything to scale.

Yes, Lauren is an actress, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who knows her world that the boyishly-wise doctor administering to her at the hospital and the dashing NYPD detective who entered the room to begin investigating the case were straight out of central casting. Even their names, Walker and Brennan, seemed chosen by the studios.

X-rays revealed two fractures, her clavicle and her ring finger. The initial good news was that both fractures could heal by themselves. Further scrutiny revealed otherwise; Lauren would need two operations. At that point, the good news was that the operations could be done at the same time. The bad news was that the next day ushered in the holiday weekend, so she couldn’t be operated on until the next week. Worse news followed—her writing hand—her Facebook and texting hand!—would have to be in a cast.

You tell yourself bones heal. She didn’t hit her head, didn’t mar that beautiful face, and, watching her take everything in stride, it didn’t alter her beautiful outlook on life. Lips not moving, you tell yourself you should be livid, outraged! You know your lines, father, play your role! But all you feel and all you are is relieved.

In the late 50s and early 60s, a popular TV show set and shot on the streets of New York always ended with a narrator saying, “There are eight million stories in the Naked City. This has been one of them.” This has been one of them, that’s all. It could happen anywhere.

A Wonderful Town (#3)

Mitzi Gaynor with Robert R. Blume, Executive Producer of the Drama Desk Awards.
Walt Whitman heard America singing. I listen chiefly for New York.

Nary a note was sung at the 55th Drama Desk Awards show this past Sunday evening. But everyone heard New York singing—in the emotional and raucous acceptance speeches, in the grace of triumph and the grit of dedication, in the shared reality of dreams.

“It’s a party among themselves,” says super-genial Awards producer Robert R. Blume. “My goal is to create an environment that allows them to celebrate each other.”

What else could induce Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas, Liev Schreiber and Alfred Molina and Matthew Modine, Angela Lansbury and Mitzi Gaynor and Patti LuPone and Scarlett Johansson and Anne Hathaway, Edward Albee and John Kander and Twyla Tharp, to give up an infrequent night off to enter the portals and file through the corridors of a New York City public school—all right, it’s the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and Art—even better, it’s in the “Performing Arts Concert Hall at Lincoln Center”—to give or get an award too fragile and light to stop a door? Everything in “The City of Music and Art” flourishes on a different scale, not always larger and grander, just dependably wonderfultown-indigenous. The Drama Desk is distinctly New York.

What I like most about the Drama Desk nominations is that they’re all-inclusive—they encompass Broadway, off-Broadway and off-off Broadway—and they’re apolitical. I tell nominees how flattered they should be: they’ve been singled out solely for merit. What playwright could imagine that?

Whitman heard and in turn sang the praises of mechanics and carpenters. These theater-community evenings, intimate amid throngs, belong to the mechanics of language and the carpenters of song. “Each singing what belongs to him or her…” as Walt and I observed, 143 years apart, “Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.”

Talking “their strong melodious songs,” that is. Arias for unaccompanied orators. Weaving tales or chattering, gesticulating and jesting. In addition to “God Bless America,” Irving Berlin should have written, “The Muses Bless New York.” Obviously, they did.

The muse of the night turned out unexpectedly to be a glamorous Hollywood guest who, after a 60-year career starring in film, television, nightclubs and concerts, made her New York debut only a week ago. (Who says this isn’t a tough town?) That’s how long it took Mitzi Gaynor to “make it anywhere” but “New York, New York.” Well, hello Mitzi.

Martha Plimpton took the stage all aquiver, explaining, “Mitzi Gaynor said she liked my shoes!” She was followed by Mitzi herself, who was greeted by a wonderfultown standing ovation. Not long after Mitzi had departed, Matthew Modine approached the mike to announce, “Mitzi Gaynor said she liked my underwear.” He was followed by Ana Gasteyer who, patting her thighs, said, “Mitzi Gaynor said she liked my Spanx.” Minutes later, Jim Brochu, accepting his award for “Outstanding Solo Performance” for “Zero Hour,” brought the house down with, “Mitzi Gaynor told me to go fuck myself.”

It only remained for Brooke Shields, at the podium for the evening’s final presentations, to share, “I can’t even repeat what Mitzi Gaynor said to me.”

It surely is a wonderful town, but I don’t think you’ll see the likes of an evening like this at the Tonys. Unless Mitzi Gaynor wants the last word.

Gutting the Vote

Political analysts can natter and squawk all they want about what’s going on in the minds of voters in America today, but their sights are fastened on too lofty a source. The naked truth is that the American voter doesn’t use his or her mind when it comes to candidates or issues—the choice comes from the gut.

It’s enough to make Plato or Dante dyspeptic. The gut is the new brain. Talk radio is its digestive tract, cable TV its enzyme. Guess what that makes the gullible voter?

Campaign managers and talk show hosts know. They bank on the gut being unable to digest more than one issue at a time—such time ranging from the length of a succulent sentence to the length of a bacchanalian campaign. They bank on scaring you, then comforting and possibly even inspiriting you. The heart is offal before the unlikelihood of anyone even noticing it's missing. They get you in the gut. If it gets you to the polls and delivers your vote to them, amen.

The table was set earlier today with unappetizing candidates in Pennsylvania, Arkansas and Kentucky primaries. Insiders and outsiders accusing each other of being, of all things—one issue at a time, please!—insiders and outsiders. If you look to see who wants to “throw the bums out,” you’ll see it’s more bums. Two tough birds, incumbent U.S. Senators Arlen Specter (the artist formerly known as a Republican) of Pennsylvania and Arkansas’ Blanche Lincoln are seeing their gooses half-cooked and trying desperately to roll over onto a better side.

Voting from the gut is so precarious that half of America went to the polls in this decade to elect a reformed drinker President of the United States—twice—because he was someone they wanted to have a beer with. (Just one?) As the Commander in Chief of Gut Choices would have it, his gut was the decider. It’s enough to render St. Augustine… or Will Rogers… colicky.

Gut positions? After U.S. Senator George LeMieux publicly broke ranks with his friend of fifteen years, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, the man who chose him for the Senate seat, LeMieux couldn’t wait to refuse to support Crist’s own non-partisan candidacy for the U.S. Senate, calling his decision "a gut check.” LeMieux’s gut-wrenching should not be confused with intestinal fortitude.

Our newest U.S. Senator, Scott Brown, counseled college graduates “…if your gut tells you otherwise, then go with your gut." I wonder if his inspiration was a man who previously held Massachusetts’ Senate seat, gutsy John Quincy Adams, or the crease in the former male model’s gut from the centerfold of Cosmopolitan magazine.

I don’t gut-begrudge anybody per se who gets free gut-counseling, be it gut-checking or gut-listening. It’s certainly not gut-envy. But it’s a bellyful.

Can you imagine the fallout from a raw body politic fused to Rush Limbaugh’s paunch while he shoots from the gut? Or is that hitting below the belt? How about the bellyaching of Glenn I-Will-Say-Anything-For-A-Fast-Buck Beck? Get you right in the you-know-where? Calling them as I see them, The Duodenum Twins are the pap, gurgle and plop of the air, and if ever they tune in to their own reckless gut-slinging, they’ll probably drown in their own tripe-talk.

The only good advice my gut ever gave me was to let me know it was time to stop eating. I have no appetite for being led by the nose, ear or any other organ that comes to mind, my mind, although I like to believe I don’t lack the guts for it. It’s enough to give me reflux.

Estranged Bedfellows

A man buys a truckload of sardines from one man and sells them to another for a nice profit. The new buyer sells them to yet another man, who in turn sells them to another buyer. The truck sits in front of the newest buyer’s house for several days, in full sight through his picture window, until his mouth begins to water for sardines. He goes out to the truck, unlocks the truck’s rear doors, swings one open and is blown back by a hot wave of rotten fish stench. He charges into the house, calls the man he bought the truckload from and starts screaming through the phone how he’s been cheated… the sardines stink to holy hell, they’re rotten and inedible! The previous owner calmly explains to him, “Those aren’t eating sardines, you schmuck, those are buying and selling sardines.”

In the frenzy of excess speculation, greed and irresponsibility that infested our economy all too recently, yesterday’s derivatives became today’s buying-and-selling sardines. No matter who opened the package then, they stunk.

We’re left with the big guys blaming the other big guys for not examining the “truckload” closely enough to get a whiff of the rot within—or, to put into plain language what the big guys converse in with numbers, for not being distrustful enough.

A brief recap (in plain language): AIG was the primary insurer of Goldman Sachs’ derivatives, thereby enabling the ratings agencies to give their triple AAA blessing to Goldman Sachs’ “sardines.” Goldman Sachs repaid them by playing both ends against the middle: selling the derivatives and selling AIG short in the event AIG couldn’t fulfill its insurance commitments, ultimately making a fortune; and by demanding additional collateral from AIG, which hastened its downfall, and by subsequently receiving 100 cents on the dollar when the government bailed out AIG. Do you believe this—there’s nothing wrong with any of it?! Unless you believe in ethics. Disclosure. Fair play.

Thus far (in plain language): Thanks to government funds fulfilling AIG’s commitment, the bottom line is AIG saved Goldman Sachs’ ass. And thanks to the staggering cost to the government, AIG became, overnight, the newest company everybody loved to hate.

Business is business (in plain language): AIG planned to retain Goldman Sachs to advise the company regarding its restructuring. But the government stepped in again, this time to make Goldman Sachs the newest company everybody loves to hate.

Of what interest is it to this site? Two days after our Pickle Award Poll asked: Which Partnership Was Most Clearly Not Made in Heaven?, AIG broke off its almost-on-again relationship with Goldman Sachs to run to the open arms of two waiting suitors, Citigroup Inc and Bank of America Corp. Frailty, thy name is Finance! At the altar stood the intended, Goldman Sachs, solemnly swearing to take this fallen wastrel AIG for counseling or worse—but at the prospect of getting back into bed with an entity presently in more disrepute than itself, AIG grew cold-hearted and hot-footed it to the competition.

In plain language, payback is a bitch.

It Might As Well Be Summer

The drums came out last Thursday. Bold and insouciant, announcing the beginning of summer in New York City. The bongo drums, the congo drums.

The call to bare arms. To buy short. To sandal up.

According to my datebook, summer doesn’t officially begin until June 21st. But what do the planners of monthly planners know about having summer fever when it isn’t even summer?

Time to go almost native in the city. To straighten your brow and wrinkle your cottons.

“June 21st” means kids have to start cutting school early to head for Central Park or presumably any park for the drums. The pervasive and prosaic drums.

Summer begins, it says (in significant italics) in the otherwise-empty square for June 21 in my month-at-a glance planner. The day after Father’s Day. As if there’s a connection. Do you see one?

The oldest in the family asks four questions: Why isn’t this day different from all other days? Don’t the drummers have fathers? Don’t they want to spend part of the day together? Were they born and raised in the park?

May or June, rain or shine, through September or October, the bongo drums, the congo drums, play on. Pronounced and percussive.

A moment of nostalgia heralding another year in New York dissolves, almost cinematically, into memory… of a book-lined study overlooking Central Park. And trying to write against the background of drums. Unremitting and intrusive bongo, congo drums.

Saturday afternoons my telephone would inevitably ring and I’d answer with reasonable certainty it was Isaac Asimov calling. Isaac and his wife Janet lived three blocks south and a half-block off the Park, on the top floor of their building. “Are you hearing what I’m hearing?” he would ask? I would acknowledge I was. The pounding, unbearable drums. “Don’t they ever stop?” he would ask. I always had the correct answer. “Janet’s writing a letter to the mayor’s office,” came next.

I have always wondered how many New York City mayors received how many letters from Janet Jeppson Asimov. Neither Janet nor Isaac ever referred to a response from the mayor’s office. Saturdays, which should have been writers’ sabbaths for the three of us, were days of predestined torment.

I mentioned this year’s outbreak of drums to someone who told me he found them “liberating.” I told him the one thing I will never miss about living on Central Park is the drums, not the f#!*ing bongo drums, not the f#!*ing congo drums. I think I made my point.

Saying It Now

I remember being young enough to say, “I don’t know anyone around my age who has died.” That was a long time ago. Sadly, bad news not only travels fast, it starts biting at your tail.

These days I read the obituary page braced for news of yet another person it’s too late to call. More than remind me, death notices reprimand me never to put off ‘til tomorrow someone who might not have a tomorrow. Whatever under the sun you should say to anyone, say now.

The recent death of an old acquaintance and the sudden, distressing news of a medical threat to a dear friend prompt me to recall…

My first job in New York was as the resident lyricist for a music publishing company. My two bosses professed knowing nothing about Broadway but “really liked” a score I had written, music and lyrics, for an original musical. They gave me the green light to do what needed doing to present it to agents and producers; they would foot the bills. The first thing I needed to do was find someone who knew what I didn’t. That’s how I met John Wallowitch.

John, a superb pianist on his way to becoming a noted songwriter, knew to hire, first off, a vibrant actress/singer with sultry good looks to present the songs with him. My two mavens took charge. They arranged the material, painstakingly rehearsed it and, to my wide-eyed admiration, created a polished performance that illuminated conference rooms at William Morris, MGM, the Shubert Building and more.

It wasn’t long before I elected to free-lance, which meant taking leave of my “underwriters” and consequently, my stellar “cast.” Over the years, John and I occasionally would run into each other for five minutes at a time. In later years, we would find ourselves seated at the same table for mutual friends’ cabaret shows, but with scant opportunity to chat at length. One of those friends informed me that John was ill, and on another day, how ill he was, and cautioned me that if I wanted to see him, I’d better not wait too long. This being New York, I might have put off what I had been putting off far too long for only the weakest of reasons—we’re always so busy. But if we live and learn, then I have, and I didn’t wait.

I invited John to lunch at "Alice's Tea Cup," which I knew he loved. To the one nearest him, but on that day, the weather was blisteringly hot and his voice was thin, and when I offered to bring “Alice’s” to him, he thanked me by saying, “Oh, would you?”

We sat in his living room and in his garden, nibbled scones in his kitchen, and talked and talked. We exchanged confidences about ourselves and our careers that we’d never broached; disclosed our personal disappointments and divulged what we perceived as each other’s triumphs. We talked songs, but John never went to his piano. We were interrupted only when it became time for him to take his medications. He never acknowledged how ill he was and never complained.

Deep into the afternoon, he reminisced about how excited he and his friend, the lady singer, had been about the auditions they did for me. “Excited?” I questioned. “Why were you excited?” He explained, “You were taking us in to meet and perform for all these important theater people we had never met and didn’t know how to.” All these many years, I had believed I’d put myself in the hands of two pros who knew the ropes and were showing them to me, and suddenly I was discovering they had been the green ones who considered themselves so lucky. “Yes,” John said, “We were so grateful to you!”

With the long, late-light summer day drawing darker, and John visibly tiring, I prepared to leave. He said he’d loved the day and thanked me. I said it wasn’t necessary, I’d loved the day as well. He asked if he could give me anything. “Not a thing, John,” I said, “nothing I could possibly think of.” He said, “Wait, I’ve got just the thing.” He went into a cabinet and withdrew a songbook, Songs From Manhattan/John Wallowitch. “That I’ll take,” I said, “and with the greatest pleasure, John.” He inscribed it: “After all these years—an afternoon of glory.”

Weeks later, I learned of John’s death from his New York Times obituary.

I saw our sultry actress/singer over the years as well, much more occasionally, usually backstage, always limited to warm greetings, a hug and kisses. I saw the announcement of her death on-line several weeks ago. She was Dixie Carter.

In A One-Eyed World

Note: Due to technical problems of a browser’s making, many readers were unable to access the two related entries that preceded this one. The situation remedied, the following entry is intentionally briefer in hope you will read “Peace For Peace” and “Bad Timing,” preferably first.


If you know your Shakespeare, you’ll recognize this quote from Julius Caesar: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in our settlements. Any adherent of Taoism knows, A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single settlement. The answer, Bob Dylan fans affirm, is blowin’ in the West Bank.

I confess I almost missed it. Right there under my nose “forever” and I almost missed it. The key to all the world’s problems is the settlements! By settlements, I mean the only definition of the word in the world’s vocabulary, Israeli settlements.

Wars, famines, natural disasters, economic crisis, suicide bombings and mass murders, epidemic outbreaks and infectious diseases—all and more routinely threaten every corridor and distant corner of the earth, but the eye of the one-eyed world only brings settlements into focus.

What did we do prior to the establishment of the State of Israel? Who were the bogeymen and where on earth were they settled? What yarns did the old folks hand down to the children from cave to desert sands to rolling seas, from open fire to open porch?

Today’s tellers of tales are TV’s talking heads, parrot heads as I’ve come to think of them. They are paid—highly—to spin pap and propaganda rather than deliver news. And they know, left and right alike, no one likes settlements. It’s the dirty word they can punctuate their drivel with as much as they like without running afoul of sponsors or the FCC (in that order). You can read it on their stress-furrowed brows before they even open their mouths. Mute your TV and read it clearly on their lips: set-tle-ments. Getting rid of them would be the Second Coming. But of what?

If the Israelis flat-out stopped building settlements forever, would it bring peace on earth? Peace in the Middle East? Peace between Palestinians and Israelis?

Ask Israel’s leaders what they want and when they answer shalom, i.e., peace, they mean security. The two words are synonymous to them. Ask the Palestinians what they want until you’re blue in the face and you can’t get an answer. Peace must roll off the lips as easily in Arabic as it does in English or Hebrew, but who has heard it? Palestinian Arabs certainly know how to say jihad, intifada and shaheed distinctly, and how to indicate unequivocally what they mean by them. Know what’s Arabic for “peace”? As I thought.

With the usual arrogance of the western world, we in the United States insist on asking and expecting other peoples to think the way we do. While I’m not in favor of Israel creating more settlements, I am in favor of letting those chosen to govern do what they sincerely believe is best for the security of their people. They know now, as never before, Israel can’t rely on the United States for its survival.

Brilliant Israeli pianist/writer/government spokesman David Bar-Ilan chose his own words for peace quite some time ago: “Semantics don’t matter. If Palestinian sovereignty is limited enough so that we feel safe, call it fried chicken.”

Bad Timing

I’m collecting overstatements.

“Israel is rapidly destroying any chance of there being anything to talk about.”

“It was an act of hostility, antagonism, and diplomatic terrorism against its single most valuable ally.”

“The Israelis really blundered this time. The whole world is against them.”

Not so fast. When, since statehood, has “the whole world” been anything but against “them,” the U.S. on most occasions the exception? The lesson was learned in Israel early: “To be or not to be is not a question of compromise. Either you be or you don't be,” according to Golda Meir.

All right then, the announcement by Israel’s Ministry of the Interior of its intention to build new settlements in East Jerusalem, coming as it did while Vice-President Biden was in Israel to herald another go at peace via “proximity peace talks,” was bad timing. That’s all it was. It shouldn’t have surprised anyone, certainly not anyone who listens to Israel. Building Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem became policy immediately following the 1967 War, a war, not so incidentally, lustily launched and resoundingly lost by Israel’s four surrounding Arab neighbor-states while “the whole Arab nation” egged them on from the sidelines. Anyone listening to Israel, including the Palestinians, recognizes its commitment to the policy and grasps the significance of the facts on the ground: the land, the neighborhoods, will remain Israel’s.

Even the timing shouldn’t be so surprising—the Israelis have made such pronouncements in the face of power often. They can’t be accused of being coy or conducting a whisper campaign; to the contrary, they want to be sure everyone knows their intentions. Say what others will—they're not guilty of tact.

The response from the media is auto-overstatement.

“Israel's Snub of Biden: More Than Just Bad Timing.”

These exact words, and the placement of the colon, resembling nothing so much as a snake’s fangs, with the words to follow hissing, “More Than Jusssst Bad Timing,” constitute at least five headlines. And that’s only in English.

So how do our diplomatic leaders, people of reason, our people of impeccable western manners, react? With snubs. With so’s your mother posturing. With mine’s bigger than yours swagger. Don’t laugh, but it starts coming down to whose snub is bigger. Is it Netanyahu’s or Biden’s? Is it Joe’s buddy, Barry, and their gal Hillary flexing hyperbole? When, oh when, do our government leaders get out of the schoolyard?

I’m on the outside looking in, witnessing the fracas and perplexed by both sides. Through the haze, I can’t help observing that for a president who doesn’t believe in not talking to your enemy to snub a time-tested good friend is bad policy, bad taste and… bad timing.

And since the subject is bad timing, let’s acknowledge, looking back on six decades of Arab-Israeli encounters, that there’s been much less fuss over much worse timing.

Leaving your house and land behind at the instruction of your Arab leadership so you and your family are out of the way while they drive all the Jews into the sea or “wipe Israel off the face of the map” is bad timing.

Premeditatedly attacking an elementary school in Ma’alot in Israel’s Western Galilee and killing 22 students in their early teens is bad timing.

Invading a nation on its people’s holiest day of the year, Yom Kippur—a day, it should not go unnoted, when those people are most likely to be reflecting on and atoning for their sins, customarily in a house of God, is bad timing.

Infiltrating Munich’s Olympic Village by night and under hoods, and using the quadrennial premier sports event as a platform to attack and terrorize, murder or take hostage, a team of young amateur athletes in their prime, is bad timing.

Hijacking an Air France airliner, directing it to Entebbe, Uganda, holding 105 Israeli’s hostage for a week and threatening to kill them unless Palestinian terrorist demands are met is bad timing. (Commander Lieutenant General Jonathan Netanyahu, the 30-year-old older brother of eventual Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was the only Israeli killed in the legendary rescue mission.)

And, possibly trumping all strictly from a political point of view, saying no to getting 96% of your demands when you represent the Palestinian people because you insist on 100%—and more, if you can pass a camel through the eye of a needle—is bad timing, and mind-numbingly self-defeating.

There you have just a few of the low points. Do you hear a rueful murmur from anywhere in “the whole world”? Neither do the Israelis.

Santayana said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Israel’s Jews learned that lesson in history from the Holocaust. It may be the only history lesson they need. Bad timing? Someone (possibly Golda Meir) said: Better a hundred bad editorials than one obituary. Who better than those responsible for the security of the people of Israel to know that?


To be continued...

Peace for Peace

The United States and Israel at odds? Nah, can’t be. Must be for show, a tactical maneuver, a game-changing strategy. Right?

Either that or The President of the United States and his administration are making a bigger blunder than the Prime Minister of Israel and his cabinet.

Facts first. While the United States is promoting “proximity talks,” indirect negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and the government of Israel; while the White House expects Israel, as a unilateral trust-building gesture, to maintain a total freeze on settlement construction in East Jerusalem (with a partial freeze in the West Bank); while Vice-President Biden is visiting Israel: the coalition government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announces eventual plans to build 1,600 new homes in an East Jerusalem settlement, Ramat Shlomo. Biden is offended, says so and returns home. George Mitchell, the U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, cancels his trip and stays home. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, are, if you know your Casablanca, “shocked… shocked.”

And President Obama, emboldened by victory after what still seems like the Thirty Years Health Care War, feeling and showing his oats, starts swaggering in the wrong direction. What is it about prioritizing that eludes him? If he wants to talk tough, he ought to be unleashing his rich rhetoric and efficacious tones on Iran or North Korea or Afghanistan’s Karzai. The Jews in his administration, all of whom must know better, should talk tachlis (“brass tacks”) to him and tell him he won’t beat little Israel into submission. It is written—in stone: David doesn’t yield to Goliath.

Let’s set aside for the moment the biblical claim to the Land of Israel, and consider the land Israel acquired in 1967 from the Six Day War after being invaded by the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon while Egypt’s President Gamal Nasser boasted, “…standing behind us are the armies of Iraq, Algeria, Kuwait, Sudan and the whole Arab nation.” If someone drove a tank into your life with the stated intent of wiping you and your family “off the face of the map,” [President Aref of Iraq], what would you be inclined to give back—as much as one rock hurled at the heads of your children? “To the victor belong the spoils” is not only a U.S. Senator’s coinage, but also exclusively a western concept in the eyes of the eastern world… when the victor is western. Now add to that the biblical claim.

So what do these intransigent Israelis want? Peace. What are they entitled to? Peace, as in freedom from attack. Peace not for land or 250 imprisoned terrorists in exchange for one captured Israeli soldier or his remains. Peace for Peace. This is what both sides, the State of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, should be asking for, demanding, agreeing to exchange and genuinely exchanging. Peace for Peace. Written in stone.

Frankly, I don’t care for Netanyahu—didn’t when I met him shortly after he came to the U.S. to join Israel's diplomatic mission here and found no reason to like him any better when, several years later, he became Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations. Israel’s 9th Prime Minister from 1996 to 1999, he’s not the man I wanted for Prime Minister in 2009. The man I wanted is a woman, Tsipy Livni, despite her questionable claim, “…we need to give up parts of the Land of Israel.” My reservations stated, I give Netanyahu this: he’s as qualified to lead a nation as any other world leader I can think of, and far more qualified than most of them. Resolute under pressure, and eloquent in a recent address, he gets the last word today.

After citing solid evidence of a significant Jewish presence in Jerusalem and the Land of Israel 4,000 years ago, he went on to say:

“Ladies and Gentleman, the connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel cannot be denied. The connection between the Jewish people and Jerusalem cannot be denied. The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today. Jerusalem is not a settlement, it’s our capitol.”

To be continued…

SATYR, BUT WISER?

In an earlier entry on this blog, "What, and Get Out of Politics?", I proposed an amendment to the constitution, The Stay Home Amendment. Subtitling it “New Conditions For Congressional Officeholders,” I advocated we elect congressional candidates for terms to be served at home. Instead of sending them to Capitol Hill, we post them to their families—and their own beds.

I see now why I had no support from either side of the aisle, nary a Republican or Democrat. I was threatening to blight the glands that feed their libidos. Noblesse oblige will oblige itself freely, especially when free from obligations like tending the lawn, and children. Heroes at home, paragons of personal sacrifice and role models to the media, when the saints go marchin’ in to distant boudoirs, they’re not likely to stop until they get caught with their pants down.

It doesn’t begin and end inside the Beltway either. I was shortsighted, thinking Washington when I should have been casting my net all the way from the halls of governors’ mansions to the shores of icons’ estates. I’ve seen a video of Tiger’s wife and villa. There’s no place like home.

Reaching back a few years, there’s also no place like religion for infidelity and tears. Witness Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker. There’s also no place like Hollywood, where actors who don’t “do” contrite act sincere, throwing in a few broad grins to convince you that you owe them an apology. Mel Gibson is not an anti-Semite—it was the firewater speaking. Alec Baldwin did not leave his daughter a frighteningly abusive telephone message—he was speaking to her as a father. There’s also no place like the music business, where rich and famous rappers publicly admit they abuse their rich and famous girlfriends because… they love them!

What do they all learn? Not much, it appears. The lesson is ours: power corrupts—those who have it and every one else in reach.

Notice, not a woman to impale on the Pickle poll! I pondered nailing a woman Supreme Court judge in flagrante delicto. The closest I was able to come to catching Sandra Day O’Connor swinging was to discover she and her husband hosted the Bushes at all their Christmas parties, but—to her and his dismay, they couldn’t socialize with them at all after Sandra provided the decisive swing vote in Bush v. Gore that had the effect of determining George W would become president. She owes the country an apology.

In closing: The Pickle Award poll’s parameters don’t encompass pedophilia, a transgression far too heinous to be treated lightly. But when it comes to public apologies, wouldn’t it be nice to see a Pope step up?

- - -

This week’s Pickle Award question comes from Steven Eskow, who cordially agreed to let me rework it. (Either that, or he couldn’t have the small token of our gratitude we don’t have for him yet.)

If health care reform hadn’t worn people to a frazzle, I would have put Steve’s question briefly on the back burner and The Pickle Award reward that hasn’t come into existence yet would have gone to “Elsie,” who I have hopes will reveal herself some time—if for no other reason than to let me know where to send her gift.

The Poll will remain posted in the upper left corner for two weeks.

"A Victory For Common Sense"

The news is health care. We look better to the world than we do to ourselves. America, the beautiful from afar, one nation divisible within. E pluribus unum, in plain English, is not “out of many, one,” but—united we swagger, divided we sprawl. We are noble in spite of half of us.

We join tiny Luxembourg, Cyprus, Iceland, and 33 vastly larger countries in having health care we can believe in. The first to have national health care was Norway in 1912, the most recent, Israel in 1995. It took nearly one hundred years for us to enter the 20th century.

“A victory for common sense,” our president proclaimed, it is the inexorable march of time. The Social Security Act became law in 1935. It survived two challenges to its constitutionality in the Supreme Court. Medicare went into effect in 1965. Seeking to squelch it four years earlier, Ronald Reagan said, “If you don't do this and I don't do it, one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free.” On March 21, 2010, the House of Representatives passed “H.R. 3590 The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” aka “The Health Care Reform Bill” by a vote of 219-212.

What so proudly we hail is merely doing what is right, what is civilized, what is compassionate. It is reform long overdue. It is goodwill, majestic and monumental. And, without doubt, it is historic. Future Pete Seegers and Bruce Springsteens of the world will sing about it. This is what “you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children.”

I’m not celebrating yet. I can’t raise a glass and drink to “Change” while roughly half of Congress and half the country see their glass as half empty—only now, after having drunk so deeply from its bounty for so long. I can’t applaud leveling the playing field while unruly bullies stomp their feet and scream and do everything they can to break up the game unless they can have their way. Can’t cheer until I can sit them down and say, “Calm down… calm down… that’s it… no, now calm down… take a deep breath… shh, calm... that’s it… breathe… breathe… now say you’re sorry for telling people who didn’t do anything to you, “I wish you were dead.”

The shabby slings and arrows of the Right should be history, as in passé. They tried everything: “death panels” and “granny killing,” “socialism” and “Naziism,” in desperation, spit and slurs. When they didn’t work, they couldn’t wait even a day to get even uglier. Now it’s bricks and guns. Worse, death threats to the children of legislators who supported the reform bill!

In the spirit of never say die—unless lying or threatening—Republicans cite that 34 Democrats voted against the bill is an argument for their side. I see it differently: that 34 Democrats voted against it shows a party with 34 members who voted their consciences or on principle. Let me spell that for them—principle, not principal. Although not a single Republican broke rank and voted anything but no, it still doesn’t seem to occur to them that while they indiscriminately hurl slurs of Naziism at anyone who opposes them, they are the ones who march in lockstep.

They like those isms. An apparent disciple, vw5Ohguy, twittered:

With passage of the wealth redistribution plan...er, I mean Health care "reform", we just took a giant jack-booted step towards socialism.

This is not what President Obama had in mind when he said, “This is what change looks like.”

Whose Unwarranted Success Irritates You The Most?

And the winner is… the envelope please…

Heidi… MONTAG!

The results of The Pickle Award poll are official. Drastic plastic or not, Heidi more than made the cut. According to exit polls (voters hastily leaving the page?), women in particular relished giving Heidi 33% of the vote. Green with pickle envy?

Michele Bachmann and Dr. Phil ended in a tie for second. A voter, Alex, commented, “This is like Sophie's Choice... who is more worthless, Michelle Bachmann or Heidi Montag?” He didn’t deign to mention Dr. Phil. Dr. Phil has ratings problems; “Other,” an option without a degree, did almost as well.

What becomes a Pickle most? For Heidi, the fickle pickle of fatuity, it’s sheer gall—divided into three parts: ambition, vanity and vacuity. You probably aren’t aware that the music on The Pickle Award video is from Heidi’s new CD. And what is the last thing you’d think she’d call her CD? “Superficial.” That’s the title. Which happens to be the title song as well. Superficial? A portion of the lyric appears below.

You may have participated in the first Pickle Award poll—or you may not have. To its credit, the web host, Blogspot, sees to it that the poll is tamperproof. But, dismayingly, Blogspot’s poll is not glitch-proof. In the poll’s first days, many votes were inadvertently unrecorded. Subsequent investigation disclosed that insidious browsers—lowbrowsers, decidedly—were the villains. To be sure, the discrepancies were neither as critical, nor as nefarious, as the disputed Florida vote count in 2000 and the ensuing Supreme Court Bush v. Gore perfidy that elevated my initial model candidate for the Pickle Award, George W. Bush, to conspicuous presumption. (Acknowledgeably, it may be tantamount to beating a dead horse, but based on his qualifications to hold the highest office in the land, which add up to a “zera” worthy of “dubya,” can you forthrightly think of a jim-dandier Pickle candidate by definition? An “Other” voter, JRDegan, commented, “speaking of unmerited reward… I move that we nickname the Pickle Award the Dubya.” If you’re inclined to disagree, you should reread the Pickle Award description—slowly.) This isn’t a case of sour pickles vis-à-vis the Supreme Court, but since I am the supreme court on this site, I appropriately recused myself from any participation that might influence the outcome. (Clarence and Antonin take note.) I solemnly swear the glitches have been summarily eliminated. We will conduct the second Pickle Award poll in two weeks.

Which brings me to you. A note at the bottom of the entry “Introducing… The Pickle Award," stated: In all future polls, you the reader will pose the questions and the candidates. We will conduct another poll the first week of every month. When we get around to it, we will award a small prize to the person posing the best question for the poll; don’t hold your breath. (All right, it will be retroactive.) The mastermind of the month’s selected Pickle question and candidates will always get credit for his or her ideas, if desired. Submit as many as you like. I want to hear them! Please forward yours to sonofthecucumberking@gmail.com, stating Pickle Award on the subject line.

I can’t fathom what pleasure Heidi is getting from life—from surgery to mockery—but I derived mine from reading, and rereading, the “Comments” citing “Other” deserving Pickle candidates and the astute and amusing arguments for the worthiness of their worthlessness. Among my favorites:

Becca: Nadya Suleman
Kate and Jon Gosselin OR
The cast of The Jersey Shore
(and isn't it sad that I know who these people are?
Jacopo: Submitted for the Academy's consideration: Glenn Beck.

Sugar Magnolia: It depends on which day you ask me. Yesterday, it was Paris Hilton. Today it is Sarah Palin. Tomorrow? Ah… so little time. So many worthless targets...

Anonymous: Dick Cheney...Talk about a pickle...how I would like to see something positive come out of his mouth....anything!!! ( and unfortunately his daughter has been trained to follow his lead)...they both look so unhappy.

Rik Misiura PT: I vote the 536 representatives of the government.

W. finally found popularity with liberals, and Obama was derided for being one.

Conclusively getting down to the bottom line—my favorite antagonist, Elsie: Personally I suggest a 24 hour hi-colonic so the poop comes from the correct end.

Let’s let the winner have the last word(s):

They say I’m superficial
Some call me a bitch
They just mad cause
I’m sexy, famous and I’m rich

And I don't care
That I keep pissin' people off
Ima let 'em talk
I don't give a damn what they say
It isn't fair
That I wear diamonds for breakfast
And I know this isn't helping

It ain’t that easy, it ain’t that easy
It ain’t that easy, but it ain’t so hard

Heidi Montag takes the Pickle!

INTRODUCING...

How often do you look at somebody of note and think: “Lucky! If I were him or her, every morning before my feet even touched the ground I’d roll out of bed onto my knees and thank God for the almighty good fortune bestowed upon me.”

We invite you to use the poll to the left to vote for the person whose success most exceeds your estimate of its merit.

Note: In all future polls, you the reader will pose the questions and the candidates, e.g.: Who has succeeded most beyond his or her limitations? What person or project triumphs because no one has anything against it?

Made in the USA

We are creating our own terrorists. Our natural resources have become homegrown assassins, grass roots mass murderers, and rank and file executioners. We have neither to import nor export our national product, we simply nurture and fester it. Indigenous Rage.

In Austin, Texas, a 53-year-old computer software engineer flies his small aircraft into an I.R.S. office, killing an innocent man as well as himself, injuring and traumatizing others and destroying federal property, because he’s angry—really angry!—with the U.S. tax system. According to reports, he was also really angry about bank bailouts, big government, Catholics and unions. Prior to removing his hateful self from the earth he scorched, he burned his house down, rendering homeless a wife and daughter, whom, based on the evidence, ashes, must also have made him really angry.

In Wichita, Kansas, a 51-year-old airport shuttle driver, a born-again Christian, shoots a 67-year-old doctor who is serving as a church usher because he performs abortions—not just any abortions, but third-semester! abortions. So much for the Sixth Commandment. At his trial, the “Army of God” soldier testified to planning the murder for 17 years, weighing pious deeds like opening fire on the doctor from his rooftop or chopping the doctor's hands off with a sword—the latter measure abandoned with unusual logic from a lunatic: because the maimed victim would still be capable of teaching others how to perform abortions. In the eyes of some abortion opponents, that “soldier” has risen to cult-hero heights.

And lest we forget, U.S. Army veteran Timothy McVeigh, recipient of the Bronze Star, had a grudge against U.S. domestic and foreign policy. He took it out on 168 strangers.

In each case, defense lawyers explained that their clients had grown frustrated.

When we were children in school, we learned about kamikaze pilots with incredulity. Now we find: kamikazis are us. At home we were taught to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Now, we have fellow citizens all too happy to kill to save life! We are a nation of sheep being led to slaughter OTHERS. What does it say about religion and politics in America—and Americans?

We are a nation of sheep being systematically shorn of our pride, our dignity, our civility. We are angry and hostile because we are prodded and pulled by forces we were brought up to believe in with blind faith and deeply want to trust. Clerics who do not practice or even mean what they preach. Politicians who divide and conquer the worst in us. Elected officials—elected to lead—who have so little respect for their followers they debase and demean them by assuming they have no intelligence at all and will believe anything they say, which they do!

Let’s not delude ourselves any more, that is, any more than we have—it isn’t going to get better until it gets worse, so much worse that political, clergical, business and civic leaders, talking heads and hate mongers, are forced to stop inciting the worst in human nature or face being devoured by it.

Who But David Brown?

My perception of David Brown was his reality—he knew everybody. He knew people no one living is supposed to know.

When I mentioned using Irving Berlin songs for a musical about him, David said, “Ray, I speak to Irving on the phone every day. He won’t go for it.” When I mentioned I was writing a script about ballplayer-genius-spy Moe Berg, David said, “When Ernie Lehman [Oscar-nominated screenwriter] and I were cub reporters, we interviewed Moe at the Red Sox training camp in Sarasota.” And he unearthed a faded newspaper clipping from the ‘30s for me.

I’ve been introduced to some illustrious people by other illustrious people, but who but David Brown would take me by the arm and walk me across a ballroom to introduce me to Steven Spielberg? And introduce me in a way that Spielberg would remember me the next time our paths crossed? And take as much pleasure as I to learn that Spielberg knew and praised my two chief documentaries.

David was, in a word, gracious. When he heard I’d written my first screenplay, he called to ask, “Why haven’t I seen it, Ray?” When I answered, slightly embarrassed and on the defensive, “David, it’s not for you,” he said, “Ray, we’re friends. Let me be the judge of that.” He called within days of receiving it to agree with me—it wasn’t for him—but to say, “I want to see everything you write.” That’s a friend.

The one script of mine he became excited about was the one about Moe Berg. He suggested producing it with me and was briefly my partner, twice. As flickonomics would have it, he begged off—graciously—explaining he was just too overextended to do justice to “this very special” project.

In 1988, I produced an evening honoring David—and pounced on the occasion to lure a hard-to-get Shirley MacLaine onto the program. Capitalizing on her notoriety for her faith in past lives, her opening line was, “I’ve been in love with David Brown for two thousand years.” David called me the next morning to say, “Ray, you’re a great producer,” a great (disproportionate) compliment coming from a great producer when he could have stopped at thank you. Gracious.

And of course David would be one to call to make me feel like I was already a winner when one of those aforementioned documentaries was nominated for an Oscar.

I think of David every time I think of his witty opinion from his book, “Brown’s Guide To Growing Gray,” to wit, no one was ever offended by being over-tipped. And think of him every time I pass what passes today for the Russian Tea Room and wish we’d had a few more lunches together at the old Tea Room. Another former RTR habitué, agent Jeannine Edmunds, likened David to Fred Allen, “wise about the business,” adding choice words for him like “informed” and “attentive.” David was as good a listener as he was a conversationalist. His New York Times obituary referred to him as “courtly” and “urbane,” while London’s Guardian captured his charm in one succinct sentence: “Indeed, Brown was exceptional in his modesty and self-effacing geniality, traits rare in Tinseltown.” All in all, David was as kindly as he was courtly. And always, infallibly, a consummate gentleman.

The last time I saw him, he thanked me when I told him how good it was to see him, and then turned the conversation to me.

When David reached his ultimate destination, I’ll bet he was on a first-name basis with his greeter—and asked what he or she’d been up to lately.

Eminent Producer and social lion David Brown died on February 1st of this year. For his detailed achievements, please see imdb.com.