Though it now appears the Rev. Terry Jones will not be burning Korans on 9-11 this year, it seems certain some other loony will. So there's that, at least.
The sad part of the story is the utterly predictable reaction from President Obama, Petreus, Gates, and all the others who are more caring and understanding and nuanced than the rest of us slobs. It will only endanger our troops, we are told. It will serve as the best recruiting tool al-Qaeda ever had. I wonder if anyone ever advised Roosevelt not to annoy the Nazis, or kill them, since that would only help them recruit more Nazis. What was FDR thinking, I wonder, when he challenged Americans to carry our values across the sea and crush the fascists? What was Churchill thinking when he did the same for the British? Didn't they realize it would only make them hate us more?
This is the Danish cartoon fiasco all over again. Six months after the satirical Muhammed cartoons were published, a group of jihadi-minded imams spread out across the Middle East and told the faithful to be outraged. They even added a couple of especially vicious cartoons that weren't in the original collection, just to gin up the crowd. And they succeeded. Riots ensued. Innocents were killed. And unfortunately, the West cowered in fear. Western governments (including ours) made conciliatory statements about how offensive it all was. At the moment that every newspaper in Europe, the US and Canada should have published all the cartoons on their front pages, none did. Later, the Yale University Press published a dusty, academic analysis of the phenomenon, but WOULD NOT PUBLISH THE CARTOONS THEMSELVES IN THE BOOK. It would have been too insensitive or something.
And yet, though Western governments and journalists gave in to the rage of the offended, did the rage subside? Of course not. Instead, the Western reaction was universally viewed as a sign of weakness, which it was. Those who wish to spread Sharia law across the world, with its stonings and honor killings and amputations, were only encouraged. It confirmed their charge that we in the West don't really believe in anything. And now the retreat from our most basic freedoms has become a reflex. One goofball in Florida announces he going to burn a Koran on 9-11, reports of Middle Eastern rage appear on the cable stations, and the President of the United States mobilizes his entire PR apparatus to silence Rev. Jones and protect the delicate sensitivities of the Muslim world.
(Meanwhile, in a story you may have missed, the US Army in Afghanistan has burned thousands of Bibles sent there for missionary work. Might offend the locals, you see.)
This was a teaching moment that has now been completely lost, and it has been lost because our president does not share, or even understand, certain basic American values. A president who did understand them would have issued the following statement:
“News has now spread around the world that a silly man in Florida is going to burn a Koran on the ninth anniversary of the horrific terrorist attack on September 11, 2001 In some nations, there have already been riots over this incident, and more are threatened. There appears to be a sense in some places that the United States government should stop this man, or that I should stop him, or somebody should. Thus, I am speaking today to explain the official US government position, and my personal position, on this matter.
“Neither I nor the government has any power to prevent him from burning a Koran, and I personally have no desire to. The Reverend Jones, by destroying Islam's holy book, is expressing his opinion that the Koran, and the entire religion of Islam, is the work of Satan. In America, every person has a right to express his opinion, and no one can legally stop him. We are a free country, and this is one of our most cherished freedoms. Personally, I believe that every person in every country should enjoy this freedom.
“Under our law, it does not matter that many people will be offended by Rev. Jones's action, or even enraged by it. In fact, our Supreme Court has declared on many occasions that offensive or hateful speech is more deserving of legal protection than speech that offends no one because offensive speech is where our principles are tested. We believe that if offensive speech can be suppressed, then no speech is safe.
“We have one man in Florida who plans to express his hatred of Islam. Other Americans have burned Bibles or desecrated other items revered by Christians because they hate Christianity. Still others have burned the American flag, either because they hate America or because they hate some policy America is pursuing. Some people hate me. They say terrible things about me, call me names, burn my image, or paint a Hitler mustache on my picture. I don't enjoy it when hateful speech is directed at me, but I would never try to stop it. The right to speak, to express one's opinion, is granted to every person by God, and no government anywhere should have the power to take it away.”
And the result would be? Well, there would probably be riots in Karachi, but there have already been riots in Karachi, and no Korans have been burned yet. But if an American president were to explain our values forthrightly, and without apology, it would be harder for the jihadis to build a mob the next time someone mocks Muhammed or burns a Koran or accidentally renders an insult to the faithful. There is a lesson to be taught in these situations, a lesson in the inalienable rights of man, and it is deplorable that Western leaders, Obama included, have forgotten how to articulate it.
By recognizing the outrage and the violence as legitimate, Western leaders also ignore the hundreds of millions of Muslims in the world who would like to live in free societies where individuals are permitted to speak their minds. We tend to forget that the radicals and jihadis are a small minority of Muslims worldwide, but it's easy to do that when the radicals and jihadis are the only ones we ever see on CNN, and the only ones Western leaders seem to care about. How many times have we all wondered: “Where are the 'moderate Muslims'? Why don't they stand up against the fundamentalists and the murderers in their midst?” The answer is fear. They see no one in the West who cares about their desire for freedom, so they are on their own in a dangerous world. A consistent voice in the West for basic principles of human rights would go a long way toward delegitimizing the radicals and emboldening the freedom-fighters. Whatever your theory on the fall of the Soviet Union, it's hard to deny that the moral condemnation of communism by John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan had something to do with it. The war against the jihadis is also an ideological battle, but our leaders are unwilling, or unable, to defend our values.
Put more simply, there is no other option. A nation cannot have free speech if it attempts to appease or sympathize with a violent and intolerant rabble, or impose a legal standard of civility on expression. This concept is so central to First Amendment jurisprudence that it has a name: “The Heckler's Veto.”
In the case of Terminiello v. Chicago, in 1949, a lecturer was arrested for a breach of the peace when an angry crowd gathered outside the auditorium where he was speaking. The trial judge told the jury that under a Chicago ordinance, it could convict the speaker if he had engaged in speech that “stirs the public to anger, invites dispute, brings about a condition of unrest or creates a disturbance….” On review, the US Supreme Court reversed the conviction and ruled the ordinance unconstitutional. Speech is protected, the Court wrote, BECAUSE “it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger.”
The Court explained that though there may be reasons to limit speech in some circumstances, the offensive or hateful character of the speech itself can never be used to justify censorship. To limit offensive speech because it offends is to give the heckler a veto over speech that annoys him. In fact, it encourages the heckler to become violent and breach the peace, because then the speaker will be punished. The rule of Terminiello is that we punish the violent heckler, but never the speaker.
Once you start punishing speech because it offends, eventually you grant control of all discourse to the most sensitive, irrational and violent elements in society. Opening this door leads swiftly to repression. Though you begin by punishing nazis and racists, you move swiftly to jailing artists like Andres Serrano (“Piss Christ”) and newspaper editors who publish Muhammed cartoons. Ultimately, you lock up the guy who says, “Ya know, women can do a lot of things, but I still think the best firefighters are men.”
The Reverend Terry Jones and his imitators are no more than pimples on the body politic, and it is pathetic that our president would use this incident to express his sympathies with the manufactured rage-a-paloosa shows now playing across the Middle East. By declaring that the rage is legitimate, of course, he also elevates Jones to a position of significance that the good reverend does not deserve. The only sensible, and morally responsible, stance for an American president is to politely lampoon Rev. Jones as a uniquely American sort of moron and diplomatically mock the rioters for taking him seriously. It's appalling that President Obama would not recognize this as an opportunity to explain to the world what America is all about, and how most of us really feel about the made-for-TV outrage. “In God We Trust” may be the official motto of the USA, but “F*** 'Em If They Can't Take A Joke” is surely the unofficial one.
Copyright2010MichaelKubacki
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Saturday, August 28, 2010
5. VON CLAUSEWITZ DOES RETAIL, and A LOVE SONG FOR GEORGETTE
Recently, a new executive showed up at my Argus. He first descended on me in the hallway as I was heading to lunch. He came at me in a sort of rush, introduced himself, vigorously pumped my hand, asked me where I worked and what my duties are, and then patted my shoulder and assured me we would be seeing a lot of each other. A couple days later, he sought me out in the market, where I was working, and asked me how I thought the market was looking after such a busy weekend and what I was planning to do next. He then complimented me enthusiastically on the appearance of the milk I had just put into the refrigerated cases.
Two days after that, he took his first shift as Executive In Charge, which means he was top dog in the store for an eight-hour stretch. As such, he led the “Morning Huddle,” a brief confab that occurs every day. Announcements are made, certain people are singled out for praise, new policies are explained, etc.
As the group assembled, Chuck worked his way around, chatting with this person and that, then when it was time to begin, he stepped into the center of the group and boomed, “Good morning, everyone!”
“Good morning, Chuck,” a few of us mumbled. It was 8:00 in the morning.
He paused. He looked around. He appeared disappointed. “OK,” he said, “let's try it again. GOOD MORNING, EVERYONE!!!”
At Argus, I have learned to be wary about individuals like this.
Every organization has to evaluate the people who work for that organization, and based upon the internal beliefs or culture of the group, each of them does it differently. Certain characteristics are rewarded at one company but are less important at others.
At Argus, for example, energy and enthusiasm are given considerable weight in personnel and promotion decisions. Now, no one would argue that energy and enthusiasm are bad qualities, but any character trait can be given more weight than it deserves, with the result that other desirable traits will be undervalued or even overlooked. Everyone at Argus has met co-workers and managers and executives who are extremely outgoing and energetic, but who are otherwise incompetent. That is because, in a place that overvalues enthusiasm, it is possible to rise in the ranks if you are extremely enthusiastic but have nothing else going for you.
I don't know whether Chuck is a dope. Only time will answer that question. But the new HR boss certainly is. Sal is cut from the same cloth as Chuck. He's always in motion, he's always asking how you are doing, he's young, he's full of beans, he's attractive and articulate. And he's useless. He doesn't know how to do any of the things he's supposed to do and he seems unable to focus his thoughts long enough to learn how. Sal has never fixed any of the problems I have brought to his attention. My annual raise, for example, was effective on April 24. Four months later, it has yet to show up in a paycheck. Sal assures me he will fix it, and I'll get back pay and everything will be beautiful....
As a result, if I can avoid Sal, I do so. I use his assistants, Hannah and Mia. They never slap your back or pretend to care how you feel. They never dart, ferretlike, around the store telling people what a wonderful job they are doing. Their oratorical skills are weak. However, if you give them an HR-related problem to solve, they will focus their attention on it until it is solved. This never takes very long because they are completely conversant in every piece of HR software and they know who to contact at the main office if they need authorization they do not possess.
Hannah and Mia represent a corollary to the rule that one should avoid those whose primary characteristics are overvalued by the organization. Since Hannah and Mia possess none of the verve and pizazz that Argus values, these are the people you go to when you need to get something done since it is a safe bet they know how to do their jobs. Otherwise, they would not survive. They will never be rewarded by the organization at a level commensurate with their skills, but other employees quickly learn how valuable they are.
When the overvaluing of a characteristic reaches a certain threshold, it is dangerous to the organization since the process becomes entrenched in the culture. As the upper ranks grow increasingly populated with a particular type of person, these folks will have both the power and the inclination to promote others like themselves, thus perpetuating the cultural imbalance.
Disaster often ensues because no one in a position of power can see how one-dimensional the leadership has become. In a boardroom full of back-slappers and cheerleaders, for example, no one will ever wonder whether there might be too many back-slappers and cheerleaders around. Those who have been rewarded for their behavior and personality and skills are always going to think their behavior and personality and skills are what gets people to the top. That which is rewarded gets repeated.
Gene Mauch managed to eke out a major league baseball career for himself as a good-field/no-hit kind of utility player who bunted well, didn't strike out much and could hit-and-run. He became a major-league manager in the early 1960s around the time the strike zone expanded and offense dropped like a stone across baseball. It was a one-run era, where the smallball skills Mauch had relied upon as a player became the only ones available.
For a brief period, his teams won more games than they had any right to, and Mauch was regarded as a genius. That era quickly ended in the late 1960s when the strike zone shrank, batting averages went up and homers again started flying out of ballparks.
What did Mauch do? He continued to sacrifice bunt in the first inning, and play for one run, That which gets rewarded gets repeated, even after the rewards stop coming. He was a one-trick pony who could not adjust and never made it to the World Series, though he managed for 24 years. Earl Weaver, whose managerial philosophy was “defense, pitching and three-run homers” came to regard Mauch as something of an idiot. “Gene never figured out that baseball is the only game where you can score more than once on the same play,” Weaver once said.
For another example, one need look no further than the “smartest guys in the room” phenomenon. At this point, we are all familiar with the nightmares that result when you turn things over to the smart guys. Steeped in theory, void of experience, buoyed with the hubris that only comes from the possession of advanced degrees, utterly lacking in the understanding there are risks no one can anticipate, the smartest guys in the room never see they are walking over a cliff because, according to their calculations, there is no cliff. Whether it's Enron, or Fannie and Freddie, or Obama's economic czars, the smart guys can never turn back from the abyss because, well, they're really smart, you see. They're smarter than the rest of us. It can never occur to them that smart isn't everything because smart is what got them where they are.
* * * * * * *
At this point, you may be asking yourself, as Tina Turner once famously did, “What's von Clausewitz got to do, got to do with it?” Well, the answer is that I got a bit sidetracked here. Von Clausewitz had a lot to say about people like Chuck and Sal, and I originally intended to tell their story through that distant lens, but then my theory grew a bit and I had to include Gene Mauch and the “smartest guys in the room” and all the other stuff.
But Carl von Clausewitz, the 19th Century Prussian general, is what got me thinking about Chuck and Sal in the first place.
In “On War,” his major treatise, von Clausewitz goes off on a bit of a tangent at one point into a discussion of different personality types among military officers, and expresses his firmly-held views on which ones to promote and which ones to get rid of. Stupid and lazy officers, for example, though they need strict supervision and clear direction, can nevertheless be of use to a commander who understands their limitations. Intelligent, energetic officers were not his favorite either, though they too could get a job done for a general who was able to stifle any urge they might have to freelance.
Old Carl, however, spared no vitriol in his dissertation on the Chucks and Sals of the officer corps. The stupid, energetic officer, von Clausewitz informs us, is worse than useless. He is a danger to everyone around him. He makes bad decisions, he doesn't know what to do, he never understands the strategy, yet he can't sit still. Not only does he exhaust his troops needlessly, he will march them to their deaths in foolish assaults where he has little hope of winning. Soldiers assigned to an energetic but stupid officer quickly grow to hate him. Sometimes they kill him. It was these passages from von Clausewitz that popped into my head on the morning Chuck demanded we all shout “GOOD MORNING, CHUCK!” with the same demonic cheerfulness he himself had just exhibited. Since I am not a 19th Century German soldier and Chuck is not my commanding officer, he is not actually a threat to my life, and I don't have to frag him. I'm grateful for that, but the chance I will ever develop a fondness for Chuck is exceedingly small.
All of which brings us, finally, to von Clausewitz's ideal officer, a man who is intelligent but fundamentally lazy. Such a man, we are told, will quickly grasp the strategic goals of an operation and is capable of devising the tactics to achieve them. More importantly, since he has little interest in sheer activity for its own sake and no desire to exert himself unnecessarily, he will usually discover the quickest, most cost-effective and risk-averse method of accomplishing his assignments. The intelligent but lazy officer does not lack honor or courage, von Clausewitz assures us. He simply prefers to get the job done in the most efficient way possible so he can then put his feet up, open a bottle and get back to his card game.
Von Clausewitz's praise for the intelligent but lazy officer is also a description of my favorite person at Argus.
She might be forty years old, or she might be fifty, and she is what is called, in some neighborhoods, “a big girl.” She is always trying to lose weight and always trying to stop smoking. She is friendly and chatty, but somewhat shy. I have seen her in meetings with her superiors, where she goes in with much to say but gets tongue-tied and never says it. She was not a cheerleader and she was probably not the most popular girl in her high school, maybe because she read too many books. Her father has Alzheimer’s and she has to care for him because she's the responsible one among her brothers and sisters. Occasionally, she will have to take a day off because of this, and she will seem subdued or depressed for a while.
Her name is Georgette. She is my manager, and she runs the Market area at Argus. She has bosses of her own, of course, including the nameless and faceless people at headquarters who issue directives to all of us, but she is the day-to-day manager who runs the crew, makes sure there is yogurt on the shelves, and solves the problems that arise.
There are always problems. Someone calls in sick. The electronic scale for weighing and marking meat shuts down. Twenty gallons of milk topple off a pallet and explode. The bananas don't arrive. A pallet of Lean Cuisines is sitting on the floor of the backroom because there's more frozen food than the freezer can hold. A thousand dozen eggs has been delivered by mistake.
I have seen dozens of managers and executives at Argus deal with these and similar issues, and their behavior never varies. They will walk into a “situation” and start issuing orders to the assembled grunts who are attempting to deal with the problem. They will do this even if they know nothing about how that particular area of the store works. They will do it whether or not the problem is already being corrected in a reasonable and effective manner.
Georgette, by contrast, will arrive at the scene of the crime and do nothing, or appear to do nothing. She will look around, observe what everyone is doing, and assess the situation while appearing to be doing something else. She may engage somebody in trivial banter: “Hey, Manny, did you go to that party on Friday? Was Connie there?”
If she determines the issue is being resolved, she simply leaves, as quietly and calmly as she arrived. If she senses we are spinning our wheels, she will gently sort us out. “Do me a favor, Jerry,” she will say, “Take that flatbed with the juice out on the floor. And Lindsey, you should take your break now so when you get back, Jesus can go to lunch.” Only then does she wander off, often to the Starbucks in the front of the store, where she will gossip with a girlfriend.
Invariably, the clouds part and everything falls into place.
In management terms, Georgette is a minimalist. She expects her crew will get the job done, though if her help is needed, she will provide it. When mistakes are made, she will see them, and you can expect to hear from her about them (a process she calls “coaching”), but she will never upbraid you in public and you will never make that mistake again.
Her methods (or perhaps it is merely her personality) engender tremendous loyalty among the crew in the Market. The process is not describable in rational terms. None of us has any warmth or loyalty to the entity that is “Argus,” for example, and it would be absurd if we did. Everyone who works in the Market, however, has complete faith in Georgette and her judgment, and even a sort of childish desire to please her. Morale gets a boost when we see her drinking a latte and laughing with her buddy Mandy, or sneaking a smoke outside the employee entrance. There is no greater compliment to those of us on her crew than the sight of her paying no attention to us.
And what a motley crew it is. This is another important point. She doesn't get to choose her squad; they are handed to her by the HR people. There are 20ish single mothers, high-school dropouts, refugees from dysfunctional families in Scranton, women who have taken out restraining orders and are always looking over their shoulders, National Guard kids waiting for their deployment orders, would-be rap producers, supercool Hispanic guys whose every movement is a hosanna to grace and testosterone, and evangelical Christians. Then there's me, an aging and overeducated misfit. Georgette has to fire people occasionally, of course, and she is even capable of drilling somebody a new one. When this happens, though, she views it as a personal failure. There is a part of her that believes she can turn anyone into an effective member of her team, and for the most part, she does.
Those of us in the Market are all carbon-based life forms---beyond that, we have nothing in common. But the one thing everyone agrees on is that Georgette is the best manager any of us have ever had.
* * * * * * *
POSTSCRIPT: The discussion in the backroom can be fascinating. Recently, I walked in on a colloquy on whether true love is possible in the modern world. Opinions differed. Then Jerry spoke up. Jerry works in the backroom and appears to be insane. Occasionally, he will get into a screaming fight with somebody over nothing, and he will carry the rage around with him for days. “What do you do,” he asked, “when you are going with a girl for ten years and you go to the same church, and she has a good job, and you think she loves you, and then you marry her and she immediately quits her job and starts smoking crack in your house all day? When that happens to you, THEN you can tell me about love.” No one had much to say on the topic after that.
Copyright2010Michael Kubacki
Two days after that, he took his first shift as Executive In Charge, which means he was top dog in the store for an eight-hour stretch. As such, he led the “Morning Huddle,” a brief confab that occurs every day. Announcements are made, certain people are singled out for praise, new policies are explained, etc.
As the group assembled, Chuck worked his way around, chatting with this person and that, then when it was time to begin, he stepped into the center of the group and boomed, “Good morning, everyone!”
“Good morning, Chuck,” a few of us mumbled. It was 8:00 in the morning.
He paused. He looked around. He appeared disappointed. “OK,” he said, “let's try it again. GOOD MORNING, EVERYONE!!!”
At Argus, I have learned to be wary about individuals like this.
Every organization has to evaluate the people who work for that organization, and based upon the internal beliefs or culture of the group, each of them does it differently. Certain characteristics are rewarded at one company but are less important at others.
At Argus, for example, energy and enthusiasm are given considerable weight in personnel and promotion decisions. Now, no one would argue that energy and enthusiasm are bad qualities, but any character trait can be given more weight than it deserves, with the result that other desirable traits will be undervalued or even overlooked. Everyone at Argus has met co-workers and managers and executives who are extremely outgoing and energetic, but who are otherwise incompetent. That is because, in a place that overvalues enthusiasm, it is possible to rise in the ranks if you are extremely enthusiastic but have nothing else going for you.
I don't know whether Chuck is a dope. Only time will answer that question. But the new HR boss certainly is. Sal is cut from the same cloth as Chuck. He's always in motion, he's always asking how you are doing, he's young, he's full of beans, he's attractive and articulate. And he's useless. He doesn't know how to do any of the things he's supposed to do and he seems unable to focus his thoughts long enough to learn how. Sal has never fixed any of the problems I have brought to his attention. My annual raise, for example, was effective on April 24. Four months later, it has yet to show up in a paycheck. Sal assures me he will fix it, and I'll get back pay and everything will be beautiful....
As a result, if I can avoid Sal, I do so. I use his assistants, Hannah and Mia. They never slap your back or pretend to care how you feel. They never dart, ferretlike, around the store telling people what a wonderful job they are doing. Their oratorical skills are weak. However, if you give them an HR-related problem to solve, they will focus their attention on it until it is solved. This never takes very long because they are completely conversant in every piece of HR software and they know who to contact at the main office if they need authorization they do not possess.
Hannah and Mia represent a corollary to the rule that one should avoid those whose primary characteristics are overvalued by the organization. Since Hannah and Mia possess none of the verve and pizazz that Argus values, these are the people you go to when you need to get something done since it is a safe bet they know how to do their jobs. Otherwise, they would not survive. They will never be rewarded by the organization at a level commensurate with their skills, but other employees quickly learn how valuable they are.
When the overvaluing of a characteristic reaches a certain threshold, it is dangerous to the organization since the process becomes entrenched in the culture. As the upper ranks grow increasingly populated with a particular type of person, these folks will have both the power and the inclination to promote others like themselves, thus perpetuating the cultural imbalance.
Disaster often ensues because no one in a position of power can see how one-dimensional the leadership has become. In a boardroom full of back-slappers and cheerleaders, for example, no one will ever wonder whether there might be too many back-slappers and cheerleaders around. Those who have been rewarded for their behavior and personality and skills are always going to think their behavior and personality and skills are what gets people to the top. That which is rewarded gets repeated.
Gene Mauch managed to eke out a major league baseball career for himself as a good-field/no-hit kind of utility player who bunted well, didn't strike out much and could hit-and-run. He became a major-league manager in the early 1960s around the time the strike zone expanded and offense dropped like a stone across baseball. It was a one-run era, where the smallball skills Mauch had relied upon as a player became the only ones available.
For a brief period, his teams won more games than they had any right to, and Mauch was regarded as a genius. That era quickly ended in the late 1960s when the strike zone shrank, batting averages went up and homers again started flying out of ballparks.
What did Mauch do? He continued to sacrifice bunt in the first inning, and play for one run, That which gets rewarded gets repeated, even after the rewards stop coming. He was a one-trick pony who could not adjust and never made it to the World Series, though he managed for 24 years. Earl Weaver, whose managerial philosophy was “defense, pitching and three-run homers” came to regard Mauch as something of an idiot. “Gene never figured out that baseball is the only game where you can score more than once on the same play,” Weaver once said.
For another example, one need look no further than the “smartest guys in the room” phenomenon. At this point, we are all familiar with the nightmares that result when you turn things over to the smart guys. Steeped in theory, void of experience, buoyed with the hubris that only comes from the possession of advanced degrees, utterly lacking in the understanding there are risks no one can anticipate, the smartest guys in the room never see they are walking over a cliff because, according to their calculations, there is no cliff. Whether it's Enron, or Fannie and Freddie, or Obama's economic czars, the smart guys can never turn back from the abyss because, well, they're really smart, you see. They're smarter than the rest of us. It can never occur to them that smart isn't everything because smart is what got them where they are.
* * * * * * *
At this point, you may be asking yourself, as Tina Turner once famously did, “What's von Clausewitz got to do, got to do with it?” Well, the answer is that I got a bit sidetracked here. Von Clausewitz had a lot to say about people like Chuck and Sal, and I originally intended to tell their story through that distant lens, but then my theory grew a bit and I had to include Gene Mauch and the “smartest guys in the room” and all the other stuff.
But Carl von Clausewitz, the 19th Century Prussian general, is what got me thinking about Chuck and Sal in the first place.
In “On War,” his major treatise, von Clausewitz goes off on a bit of a tangent at one point into a discussion of different personality types among military officers, and expresses his firmly-held views on which ones to promote and which ones to get rid of. Stupid and lazy officers, for example, though they need strict supervision and clear direction, can nevertheless be of use to a commander who understands their limitations. Intelligent, energetic officers were not his favorite either, though they too could get a job done for a general who was able to stifle any urge they might have to freelance.
Old Carl, however, spared no vitriol in his dissertation on the Chucks and Sals of the officer corps. The stupid, energetic officer, von Clausewitz informs us, is worse than useless. He is a danger to everyone around him. He makes bad decisions, he doesn't know what to do, he never understands the strategy, yet he can't sit still. Not only does he exhaust his troops needlessly, he will march them to their deaths in foolish assaults where he has little hope of winning. Soldiers assigned to an energetic but stupid officer quickly grow to hate him. Sometimes they kill him. It was these passages from von Clausewitz that popped into my head on the morning Chuck demanded we all shout “GOOD MORNING, CHUCK!” with the same demonic cheerfulness he himself had just exhibited. Since I am not a 19th Century German soldier and Chuck is not my commanding officer, he is not actually a threat to my life, and I don't have to frag him. I'm grateful for that, but the chance I will ever develop a fondness for Chuck is exceedingly small.
All of which brings us, finally, to von Clausewitz's ideal officer, a man who is intelligent but fundamentally lazy. Such a man, we are told, will quickly grasp the strategic goals of an operation and is capable of devising the tactics to achieve them. More importantly, since he has little interest in sheer activity for its own sake and no desire to exert himself unnecessarily, he will usually discover the quickest, most cost-effective and risk-averse method of accomplishing his assignments. The intelligent but lazy officer does not lack honor or courage, von Clausewitz assures us. He simply prefers to get the job done in the most efficient way possible so he can then put his feet up, open a bottle and get back to his card game.
Von Clausewitz's praise for the intelligent but lazy officer is also a description of my favorite person at Argus.
She might be forty years old, or she might be fifty, and she is what is called, in some neighborhoods, “a big girl.” She is always trying to lose weight and always trying to stop smoking. She is friendly and chatty, but somewhat shy. I have seen her in meetings with her superiors, where she goes in with much to say but gets tongue-tied and never says it. She was not a cheerleader and she was probably not the most popular girl in her high school, maybe because she read too many books. Her father has Alzheimer’s and she has to care for him because she's the responsible one among her brothers and sisters. Occasionally, she will have to take a day off because of this, and she will seem subdued or depressed for a while.
Her name is Georgette. She is my manager, and she runs the Market area at Argus. She has bosses of her own, of course, including the nameless and faceless people at headquarters who issue directives to all of us, but she is the day-to-day manager who runs the crew, makes sure there is yogurt on the shelves, and solves the problems that arise.
There are always problems. Someone calls in sick. The electronic scale for weighing and marking meat shuts down. Twenty gallons of milk topple off a pallet and explode. The bananas don't arrive. A pallet of Lean Cuisines is sitting on the floor of the backroom because there's more frozen food than the freezer can hold. A thousand dozen eggs has been delivered by mistake.
I have seen dozens of managers and executives at Argus deal with these and similar issues, and their behavior never varies. They will walk into a “situation” and start issuing orders to the assembled grunts who are attempting to deal with the problem. They will do this even if they know nothing about how that particular area of the store works. They will do it whether or not the problem is already being corrected in a reasonable and effective manner.
Georgette, by contrast, will arrive at the scene of the crime and do nothing, or appear to do nothing. She will look around, observe what everyone is doing, and assess the situation while appearing to be doing something else. She may engage somebody in trivial banter: “Hey, Manny, did you go to that party on Friday? Was Connie there?”
If she determines the issue is being resolved, she simply leaves, as quietly and calmly as she arrived. If she senses we are spinning our wheels, she will gently sort us out. “Do me a favor, Jerry,” she will say, “Take that flatbed with the juice out on the floor. And Lindsey, you should take your break now so when you get back, Jesus can go to lunch.” Only then does she wander off, often to the Starbucks in the front of the store, where she will gossip with a girlfriend.
Invariably, the clouds part and everything falls into place.
In management terms, Georgette is a minimalist. She expects her crew will get the job done, though if her help is needed, she will provide it. When mistakes are made, she will see them, and you can expect to hear from her about them (a process she calls “coaching”), but she will never upbraid you in public and you will never make that mistake again.
Her methods (or perhaps it is merely her personality) engender tremendous loyalty among the crew in the Market. The process is not describable in rational terms. None of us has any warmth or loyalty to the entity that is “Argus,” for example, and it would be absurd if we did. Everyone who works in the Market, however, has complete faith in Georgette and her judgment, and even a sort of childish desire to please her. Morale gets a boost when we see her drinking a latte and laughing with her buddy Mandy, or sneaking a smoke outside the employee entrance. There is no greater compliment to those of us on her crew than the sight of her paying no attention to us.
And what a motley crew it is. This is another important point. She doesn't get to choose her squad; they are handed to her by the HR people. There are 20ish single mothers, high-school dropouts, refugees from dysfunctional families in Scranton, women who have taken out restraining orders and are always looking over their shoulders, National Guard kids waiting for their deployment orders, would-be rap producers, supercool Hispanic guys whose every movement is a hosanna to grace and testosterone, and evangelical Christians. Then there's me, an aging and overeducated misfit. Georgette has to fire people occasionally, of course, and she is even capable of drilling somebody a new one. When this happens, though, she views it as a personal failure. There is a part of her that believes she can turn anyone into an effective member of her team, and for the most part, she does.
Those of us in the Market are all carbon-based life forms---beyond that, we have nothing in common. But the one thing everyone agrees on is that Georgette is the best manager any of us have ever had.
* * * * * * *
POSTSCRIPT: The discussion in the backroom can be fascinating. Recently, I walked in on a colloquy on whether true love is possible in the modern world. Opinions differed. Then Jerry spoke up. Jerry works in the backroom and appears to be insane. Occasionally, he will get into a screaming fight with somebody over nothing, and he will carry the rage around with him for days. “What do you do,” he asked, “when you are going with a girl for ten years and you go to the same church, and she has a good job, and you think she loves you, and then you marry her and she immediately quits her job and starts smoking crack in your house all day? When that happens to you, THEN you can tell me about love.” No one had much to say on the topic after that.
Copyright2010Michael Kubacki
Friday, June 18, 2010
MY DAMAGE CLAIM TO BP
(Note: ESIS, Inc. is the company BP has designated to receive damage claims related to the Deepwater Horizon Spill in the Gulf of Mexico.)
ESIS, Inc.
1 Beaver Valley Road
Wilmington, DE 19803
Dear Sir or Madam:
As a BP shareholder, I submit this claim for myself and on behalf of all others similarly situated. Those responsible for my damages include BP itself as well as Mr. Svanberg, Mr. Hayward and all directors and officers, personally.
The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (33 USC 2701 et seq.) provides a cap of liability for damages (apart from remediation) caused by an oil spill such as the current disaster at the Deepwater Horizon site. This limit is $75 million. My claim, on behalf of myself and BP shareholders, is for every dollar BP pays out for damages in excess of the statutory limit.
The answer to the question of “who pays” for a tort or injury often results from a complex mix of conflicting policy considerations. In this case, that complicated policy decision on “who pays” was made twenty years ago by the US Congress, and the officers and directors of BP have no authority to second-guess that determination or decide unilaterally what BP “should” pay. That question is settled. I am astonished that the stewards of BP’s assets would raid the treasury in pursuit of some inchoate (and unlikely) PR benefits, or perhaps to insulate themselves personally against potential criminal charges relating to BP’s actions in the Gulf. This money is not yours to spend. It belongs to the shareholders.
I demand that BP immediately cease paying damage claims in excess of its legal liability. I further demand that BP withdraw from its pledge to fund any impromptu, extra-legal escrow fund with $20 billion or any other sum.
While I look forward to a prompt response to this letter, and I remain hopeful that the officers and directors of BP will swiftly come to their senses, I reserve my rights to pursue claims with the SEC, the US Department of Justice, and any other appropriate authority.
Very Truly Yours,
Michael Kubacki, Esq.
Copyright2010MichaelKubacki
ESIS, Inc.
1 Beaver Valley Road
Wilmington, DE 19803
Dear Sir or Madam:
As a BP shareholder, I submit this claim for myself and on behalf of all others similarly situated. Those responsible for my damages include BP itself as well as Mr. Svanberg, Mr. Hayward and all directors and officers, personally.
The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (33 USC 2701 et seq.) provides a cap of liability for damages (apart from remediation) caused by an oil spill such as the current disaster at the Deepwater Horizon site. This limit is $75 million. My claim, on behalf of myself and BP shareholders, is for every dollar BP pays out for damages in excess of the statutory limit.
The answer to the question of “who pays” for a tort or injury often results from a complex mix of conflicting policy considerations. In this case, that complicated policy decision on “who pays” was made twenty years ago by the US Congress, and the officers and directors of BP have no authority to second-guess that determination or decide unilaterally what BP “should” pay. That question is settled. I am astonished that the stewards of BP’s assets would raid the treasury in pursuit of some inchoate (and unlikely) PR benefits, or perhaps to insulate themselves personally against potential criminal charges relating to BP’s actions in the Gulf. This money is not yours to spend. It belongs to the shareholders.
I demand that BP immediately cease paying damage claims in excess of its legal liability. I further demand that BP withdraw from its pledge to fund any impromptu, extra-legal escrow fund with $20 billion or any other sum.
While I look forward to a prompt response to this letter, and I remain hopeful that the officers and directors of BP will swiftly come to their senses, I reserve my rights to pursue claims with the SEC, the US Department of Justice, and any other appropriate authority.
Very Truly Yours,
Michael Kubacki, Esq.
Copyright2010MichaelKubacki
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
MY DAY AT BELMONT PARK
For my birthday in March, I received a certificate from my son for an all-expense-paid trip, for two, to Belmont Park for the 2010 Belmont Stakes. So it was that I found myself in a car on the morning of June 5, hurtling up the NJ Turnpike and across the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, deep into the guts of Long Island. With Tex at the wheel and his friend Sam (my date) riding shotgun, I passed a pleasant couple of hours sipping coffee and studying the Racing Form, teasing out nuggets of data that would lead me to the winners that afternoon.
We had no tickets, we weren’t quite sure how to get there, and we didn’t know what awaited us. Mobs of unwashed New Yorkers jostling us, picking our pockets, and blocking our view of the horses? A 72-hour traffic snarl at the Goethals Bridge? Parking nightmares? Rude policemen with Brooklyn accents so thick we couldn’t understand their instructions, resulting in our being pummeled insensate with nightsticks? A jihadist takeover of Staten Island? There were a lot of things that might go wrong. But nothing did.
And that’s why I’m posting this article. Not only did nothing go terribly wrong, but there were a number of pleasant surprises during our afternoon at the track. I am recommending it as a day-trip for my friends and acquaintances in the Philly area.
Belmont Stakes Day features an extended racing card, with thirteen races beginning at 11:30 and ending eight hours later. We arrived about noon, easily found the general parking lot ($10 for the Belmont, free other days), took a one-minute ride on a shuttle bus, strolled up to the Grandstand gate, and paid $10 each to get in. (Grandstand admission costs $3 on other days.)
We now had the run of the place. Though we had no assigned seats (these cost extra), there are grassy areas near the paddock and there are plenty of benches on the rail, just a few feet from the track. After reconnoitering a bit, we planted ourselves in the second row of benches at the 1/16th pole (so-called because it is 1/16th of a mile from the finish line). There are better seats at Belmont Park, I suppose, but there aren’t many that were closer to the action. Should we have urgent advice for a jockey as he strained to reach the finish line, we were confident he would hear us.
It was a picnic atmosphere. Many folks had brought lawn chairs, coolers, and blankets to spread over the concrete, and all these little clots of partiers were interspersed throughout the bench area at the rail. There were families with little kids, there were tattooed cowboys, there were pretty girls in sun dresses and large hats, there were fat guys with enormous cigars in their mouths, and there were a number of young men wearing dress shirts and ties.
Seersucker was everywhere. I guess it’s a New York thing. I don’t believe I’ve seen so much seersucker since the summer of 1971, but it must have survived in Gotham, though it has transmogrified into something of a symbolic fabric. I didn’t see anyone in a seersucker suit, for example, but there were plenty of seersucker pants and cut-offs and jackets with the sleeves rolled up. One guy had cut up a seersucker jacket into a sort-of Borat-inspired vest, which he wore with sandals, thigh-high tight shorts and no shirt. Seersucker, in other words, appeared to have many meanings. Some of the locals, I think, wore it to suggest they work on Wall Street, or have a trust fund, or know someone named Vanderbilt. For others, its use was more ironic, or even mocking.
Regardless of their attire, sexual orientation, profession or country of origin, however, people were friendly. It was very much a party. Though it was crowded, and there was plenty of drinking, I saw no fights, or even arguments. Even comments directed at me because of my Phillies cap were good-natured rather than threatening. As I walked through crowds, I heard several folks call out, “Go Flyers!”
(One cautionary note: though we were treated well by everyone, New Yorkers are pushy. The normal rule of racetrack protocol is that if you put your baseball cap, or a page of Racing Form, down on your seat or bench, that seat or bench belongs to you for the rest of the day. No one would dream of usurping your spot, in part because everyone understands that some movement is required at the track, and you can’t be expected to stay in your seat every second. You have to place bets, for example, and buy a hot dog, and look at the horses being saddled in the paddock. I mean, it ain’t the opera. At Belmont, however, we had to defend our bench area repeatedly. Though we had filled it with Racing Forms and hats and duffel bags, one of us had to stay there at all times to maintain order. And even so, people were always trying to shift our stuff and take up residence. At one point, the three of us stood up to cheer as the horses approached the finish line in front of us, and when the race ended ten seconds later, I turned around to find two guys sitting in our seats. “Excuse me, guys,” I said. “We’re sitting here.” They left quietly.)
New York is enormous, chaotic and ungovernable, and it is also a financial center. All these features became apparent after a few minutes on the benches at trackside. Much like the feeling you get in Las Vegas, there was a sense of unrepentant capitalism and hustle, where everything is for sale. I very much like places with that kind of atmosphere. I feel safer in them. They remind me of a simpler time in America before everything was regulated, when it was understood that everybody was just trying to make a few bucks, and nobody thought there was anything wrong with that. New York, America’s ultimate nanny-state gulag, is the last place I expected to find it. I had envisioned a city inhabited solely by people who think they know best about what you should eat and drink and smoke, and how much rent you should pay, and how much money you should make. And obviously there are many such people in New York because there are rules about all those things. My very pleasant surprise, however, was that none of those folks showed up trackside at Belmont Park. Our little pari-mutuel Woodstock seemed to be peopled entirely by refugees from that other world where everyone seems to care more about your health and welfare than you want them to.
Guys were not-so-quietly selling Budweisers from their coolers for $4 (versus the $7 at the concession stands). An elegant Latin gentleman walked through the area with a couple boxes of cigars under his arm, offering them to discerning young gentlemen and ladies for $10 each. Cigars were abundant, in fact, in our impromptu city. Tex had brought some for our smoking pleasure, and when I declined my stogie, he promptly sold it for three times its value to a young man further down the bench. Later, another guy came over and tried to buy a cigar from me. Unwittingly, we had become a smoke shop, but we were sold out. I believe some of the young ladies in attendance were selling something also, though I did not inquire as to precisely what they were offering. Commerce proceeded unabated throughout the afternoon.
As for the racing itself, it was superb. In America, the very best stakes races are called “Graded” races, and they are graded I, II, or III. The Belmont Stakes is a Grade I race, the highest level. In addition to the Belmont, however, there were three other Grade I races that day, as well as two Grade II races. Even the lesser features were high-level allowance races featuring some of the most expensive horseflesh in the country, ridden by the most skilled jockeys in the land. For a serious horse-player, it’s an experience to be cherished. Apart from the annual Breeder’s Cup, where every race is a Grade I event, the card on Belmont Stakes Day is probably the best day of racing in the country each year. Churchill Downs on Derby Day is special, but this had to be better.
We had been cashing small tickets all afternoon, so the Belmont itself was something of a let-down, since none of us had the long-shot winner, Drosselmeyer. (“Drosselmeyer? Drosselmeyer?? DROSSELMEYER???” I muttered for twenty minutes after the race.) At that point, though, nothing could ruin what had been a classic day at the track. We had had so much fun, I was already anticipating some karmic payback in the form of a mammoth traffic tangle in our egress from the Big Apple. I had accepted it in advance, psychologically. But even THAT didn’t happen. We stumbled, somehow, onto a back exit out of the parking lot and merged easily onto the Belt Parkway. Then we sailed, unmolested, all the way home to Philly.
Copyright2010MichaelKubacki
We had no tickets, we weren’t quite sure how to get there, and we didn’t know what awaited us. Mobs of unwashed New Yorkers jostling us, picking our pockets, and blocking our view of the horses? A 72-hour traffic snarl at the Goethals Bridge? Parking nightmares? Rude policemen with Brooklyn accents so thick we couldn’t understand their instructions, resulting in our being pummeled insensate with nightsticks? A jihadist takeover of Staten Island? There were a lot of things that might go wrong. But nothing did.
And that’s why I’m posting this article. Not only did nothing go terribly wrong, but there were a number of pleasant surprises during our afternoon at the track. I am recommending it as a day-trip for my friends and acquaintances in the Philly area.
Belmont Stakes Day features an extended racing card, with thirteen races beginning at 11:30 and ending eight hours later. We arrived about noon, easily found the general parking lot ($10 for the Belmont, free other days), took a one-minute ride on a shuttle bus, strolled up to the Grandstand gate, and paid $10 each to get in. (Grandstand admission costs $3 on other days.)
We now had the run of the place. Though we had no assigned seats (these cost extra), there are grassy areas near the paddock and there are plenty of benches on the rail, just a few feet from the track. After reconnoitering a bit, we planted ourselves in the second row of benches at the 1/16th pole (so-called because it is 1/16th of a mile from the finish line). There are better seats at Belmont Park, I suppose, but there aren’t many that were closer to the action. Should we have urgent advice for a jockey as he strained to reach the finish line, we were confident he would hear us.
It was a picnic atmosphere. Many folks had brought lawn chairs, coolers, and blankets to spread over the concrete, and all these little clots of partiers were interspersed throughout the bench area at the rail. There were families with little kids, there were tattooed cowboys, there were pretty girls in sun dresses and large hats, there were fat guys with enormous cigars in their mouths, and there were a number of young men wearing dress shirts and ties.
Seersucker was everywhere. I guess it’s a New York thing. I don’t believe I’ve seen so much seersucker since the summer of 1971, but it must have survived in Gotham, though it has transmogrified into something of a symbolic fabric. I didn’t see anyone in a seersucker suit, for example, but there were plenty of seersucker pants and cut-offs and jackets with the sleeves rolled up. One guy had cut up a seersucker jacket into a sort-of Borat-inspired vest, which he wore with sandals, thigh-high tight shorts and no shirt. Seersucker, in other words, appeared to have many meanings. Some of the locals, I think, wore it to suggest they work on Wall Street, or have a trust fund, or know someone named Vanderbilt. For others, its use was more ironic, or even mocking.
Regardless of their attire, sexual orientation, profession or country of origin, however, people were friendly. It was very much a party. Though it was crowded, and there was plenty of drinking, I saw no fights, or even arguments. Even comments directed at me because of my Phillies cap were good-natured rather than threatening. As I walked through crowds, I heard several folks call out, “Go Flyers!”
(One cautionary note: though we were treated well by everyone, New Yorkers are pushy. The normal rule of racetrack protocol is that if you put your baseball cap, or a page of Racing Form, down on your seat or bench, that seat or bench belongs to you for the rest of the day. No one would dream of usurping your spot, in part because everyone understands that some movement is required at the track, and you can’t be expected to stay in your seat every second. You have to place bets, for example, and buy a hot dog, and look at the horses being saddled in the paddock. I mean, it ain’t the opera. At Belmont, however, we had to defend our bench area repeatedly. Though we had filled it with Racing Forms and hats and duffel bags, one of us had to stay there at all times to maintain order. And even so, people were always trying to shift our stuff and take up residence. At one point, the three of us stood up to cheer as the horses approached the finish line in front of us, and when the race ended ten seconds later, I turned around to find two guys sitting in our seats. “Excuse me, guys,” I said. “We’re sitting here.” They left quietly.)
New York is enormous, chaotic and ungovernable, and it is also a financial center. All these features became apparent after a few minutes on the benches at trackside. Much like the feeling you get in Las Vegas, there was a sense of unrepentant capitalism and hustle, where everything is for sale. I very much like places with that kind of atmosphere. I feel safer in them. They remind me of a simpler time in America before everything was regulated, when it was understood that everybody was just trying to make a few bucks, and nobody thought there was anything wrong with that. New York, America’s ultimate nanny-state gulag, is the last place I expected to find it. I had envisioned a city inhabited solely by people who think they know best about what you should eat and drink and smoke, and how much rent you should pay, and how much money you should make. And obviously there are many such people in New York because there are rules about all those things. My very pleasant surprise, however, was that none of those folks showed up trackside at Belmont Park. Our little pari-mutuel Woodstock seemed to be peopled entirely by refugees from that other world where everyone seems to care more about your health and welfare than you want them to.
Guys were not-so-quietly selling Budweisers from their coolers for $4 (versus the $7 at the concession stands). An elegant Latin gentleman walked through the area with a couple boxes of cigars under his arm, offering them to discerning young gentlemen and ladies for $10 each. Cigars were abundant, in fact, in our impromptu city. Tex had brought some for our smoking pleasure, and when I declined my stogie, he promptly sold it for three times its value to a young man further down the bench. Later, another guy came over and tried to buy a cigar from me. Unwittingly, we had become a smoke shop, but we were sold out. I believe some of the young ladies in attendance were selling something also, though I did not inquire as to precisely what they were offering. Commerce proceeded unabated throughout the afternoon.
As for the racing itself, it was superb. In America, the very best stakes races are called “Graded” races, and they are graded I, II, or III. The Belmont Stakes is a Grade I race, the highest level. In addition to the Belmont, however, there were three other Grade I races that day, as well as two Grade II races. Even the lesser features were high-level allowance races featuring some of the most expensive horseflesh in the country, ridden by the most skilled jockeys in the land. For a serious horse-player, it’s an experience to be cherished. Apart from the annual Breeder’s Cup, where every race is a Grade I event, the card on Belmont Stakes Day is probably the best day of racing in the country each year. Churchill Downs on Derby Day is special, but this had to be better.
We had been cashing small tickets all afternoon, so the Belmont itself was something of a let-down, since none of us had the long-shot winner, Drosselmeyer. (“Drosselmeyer? Drosselmeyer?? DROSSELMEYER???” I muttered for twenty minutes after the race.) At that point, though, nothing could ruin what had been a classic day at the track. We had had so much fun, I was already anticipating some karmic payback in the form of a mammoth traffic tangle in our egress from the Big Apple. I had accepted it in advance, psychologically. But even THAT didn’t happen. We stumbled, somehow, onto a back exit out of the parking lot and merged easily onto the Belt Parkway. Then we sailed, unmolested, all the way home to Philly.
Copyright2010MichaelKubacki
Monday, May 24, 2010
INCOMPETENCE---THE UPDATE
More than two weeks ago (May 8 or 9), Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal sent a plan to the Obama administration (“for quick approval”) to build up barrier islands along the coastline so that oil from the Gulf spill would be stopped before it reached the mainland. With soil obtained from dredging the Mississippi, the most ecologically-delicate estuaries and beaches could be protected from the worst of the damage. Up until now, the existing barrier islands have caught vast quantities of the crude oil, and there is substantial scientific support for Jindal’s plan, which was estimated to cost about $350 million.
As of today (May 24), the Obama Administration has provided NO response to this request.
Copyright2010MichaelKubacki
As of today (May 24), the Obama Administration has provided NO response to this request.
Copyright2010MichaelKubacki
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
SPECTER
I was born in Philadelphia, and I was raised in Philadelphia, and sometimes I think I’ve just been here too long. You can get cynical.
I remember Paul D’Ortona, for example. He was president of City Council in the 1960’s, and a very popular politician in town. On one occasion, he had to introduce a visiting African statesman to Council, with all appropriate honors. “Ladies and Gentlemen,” he said, “I give you Robert Ngulu, former President of ‘Nigger-ia.’” He didn’t mean to insult the gentleman, of course. It’s just that he wasn’t quite sure how to pronounce the country the gentleman hailed from.
I also remember the bombing of Osage Avenue. Mayor Goode did it. Bombed a city block. We never did figure out exactly why.
I even remember when Ed Rendell became a respectable person. I remember the day. It was February of the year when he was first elected Governor, nine months later. I distinctly remember opening the paper that day and reading about Ed’s “vision” and his “ideas” and how he planned to lead Pennsylvania into a new era. “Ed?” I said. “ED???” The guy who had turned buying votes with taxpayer money into an art form? The guy who had pinched the bottoms of every barmaid in the three zipcodes that are downtown Philadelphia? Ed? I mean, it’s not like these were stories I had heard from his political opponents. I had heard these stories from the barmaids themselves. But now, suddenly, he was not Fast Eddie anymore. He was Ed Rendell, Elder Statesman. Or something.
But that’s Philadelphia. It’s cute, in a way.
But of all the men who have ruled this town, Arlen Specter was the worst. Forget Bork. Forget Anita Hill and magic bullets and Scottish jurisprudence. Forget his (continuing) war against the New England Patriots. Let’s go back to the 1960’s, when District Attorney Arlen Specter prosecuted the owner of a bookstore for selling Tropic of Cancer. Let’s recall those halcyon days when Captain Frank Rizzo was busting gay bars in West Philly and leading the homosexuals off in handcuffs, and D.A. Arlen Specter always happened to be there in order to get his picture in the paper the next morning. Later, "Snarlin' Arlen" was voted “the meanest man in the Senate,” year after year, by Senate staffers.
Thank God this schmuck has finally been defeated.
Copyright2010MichaelKubacki
I remember Paul D’Ortona, for example. He was president of City Council in the 1960’s, and a very popular politician in town. On one occasion, he had to introduce a visiting African statesman to Council, with all appropriate honors. “Ladies and Gentlemen,” he said, “I give you Robert Ngulu, former President of ‘Nigger-ia.’” He didn’t mean to insult the gentleman, of course. It’s just that he wasn’t quite sure how to pronounce the country the gentleman hailed from.
I also remember the bombing of Osage Avenue. Mayor Goode did it. Bombed a city block. We never did figure out exactly why.
I even remember when Ed Rendell became a respectable person. I remember the day. It was February of the year when he was first elected Governor, nine months later. I distinctly remember opening the paper that day and reading about Ed’s “vision” and his “ideas” and how he planned to lead Pennsylvania into a new era. “Ed?” I said. “ED???” The guy who had turned buying votes with taxpayer money into an art form? The guy who had pinched the bottoms of every barmaid in the three zipcodes that are downtown Philadelphia? Ed? I mean, it’s not like these were stories I had heard from his political opponents. I had heard these stories from the barmaids themselves. But now, suddenly, he was not Fast Eddie anymore. He was Ed Rendell, Elder Statesman. Or something.
But that’s Philadelphia. It’s cute, in a way.
But of all the men who have ruled this town, Arlen Specter was the worst. Forget Bork. Forget Anita Hill and magic bullets and Scottish jurisprudence. Forget his (continuing) war against the New England Patriots. Let’s go back to the 1960’s, when District Attorney Arlen Specter prosecuted the owner of a bookstore for selling Tropic of Cancer. Let’s recall those halcyon days when Captain Frank Rizzo was busting gay bars in West Philly and leading the homosexuals off in handcuffs, and D.A. Arlen Specter always happened to be there in order to get his picture in the paper the next morning. Later, "Snarlin' Arlen" was voted “the meanest man in the Senate,” year after year, by Senate staffers.
Thank God this schmuck has finally been defeated.
Copyright2010MichaelKubacki
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
OIL SPILLS AND TERRORISTS
For seven days, Barack Obama knew that an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico was spewing thousands of barrels of oil into the ocean each day, and he also knew this oil was heading for the American Gulf Coast. But apart from trashing Wall Street fat cats and telling jokes about Republicans at a press dinner, he did nothing. For a solid week, as the crude oil continued to gush from the wellhead and drift inexorably towards its appointment with ecological disaster, the federal government did nothing. Since 1994, federal law has required that certain oil clean-up equipment, called fire booms, be in place on the Gulf Coast to protect against such a possibility, but it was not there, and during that last week in April, the federal government did nothing to get useful equipment there.
In the fifteen months Barack Obama has been president, there have been four attacks by Islamic radicals on American soil: 1) the fatal attack on a military recruiting office in Little Rock, 2) the mass murder committed by Major Hasan, 3) the Christmas Day would-be pantybomber in Detroit, and 4) the car-bomb in Times Square. These are not “terrorists” or “jihadists” or “Islamic extremists,” of course---the Obama Administration won’t use these words. These are just isolated criminal matters. We will grant these loners and malcontents all their Miranda warnings and a nice trial, and then we’ll put them in prison for a while. Nothing to see here. Just move along. Four terror attacks in fifteen months suggests we can expect another nine attacks over the remaining thirty-three months of Obama’s term, unless the pace accelerates.
Our president’s job, in his own words, is to “transform America.” For that task, he undoubtedly has some talent. However, he doesn’t know how to run America. He has never run anything, and he doesn’t know how. The United States government has enormous resources, all of which are at Barack Obama’s disposal, but he doesn’t know how to organize them and bring them to bear upon real problems. This is why he cannot stop terrorists from attacking us. It’s also why he cannot stop a sea of oil from fouling our beaches and estuaries and fisheries even with a week’s head start.
Barack Obama is the reason legislators rarely get elected president. This is what happens when you elect an ideologue as an executive.
Copyright2010MichaelKubacki
In the fifteen months Barack Obama has been president, there have been four attacks by Islamic radicals on American soil: 1) the fatal attack on a military recruiting office in Little Rock, 2) the mass murder committed by Major Hasan, 3) the Christmas Day would-be pantybomber in Detroit, and 4) the car-bomb in Times Square. These are not “terrorists” or “jihadists” or “Islamic extremists,” of course---the Obama Administration won’t use these words. These are just isolated criminal matters. We will grant these loners and malcontents all their Miranda warnings and a nice trial, and then we’ll put them in prison for a while. Nothing to see here. Just move along. Four terror attacks in fifteen months suggests we can expect another nine attacks over the remaining thirty-three months of Obama’s term, unless the pace accelerates.
Our president’s job, in his own words, is to “transform America.” For that task, he undoubtedly has some talent. However, he doesn’t know how to run America. He has never run anything, and he doesn’t know how. The United States government has enormous resources, all of which are at Barack Obama’s disposal, but he doesn’t know how to organize them and bring them to bear upon real problems. This is why he cannot stop terrorists from attacking us. It’s also why he cannot stop a sea of oil from fouling our beaches and estuaries and fisheries even with a week’s head start.
Barack Obama is the reason legislators rarely get elected president. This is what happens when you elect an ideologue as an executive.
Copyright2010MichaelKubacki
Monday, April 12, 2010
TIGER
“Good is better than evil because it’s nicer.”
---Mammy Yokum (in “Li’l Abner”)
Unless there’s a World Series and the Phillies happen to be in it, The Masters is usually my favorite sports event of the year. I look forward to it and I read about it and I watch it on TV. And this year, of course, there was an extra sense of anticipation for the event because it would mark Tiger’s return to golf. I wanted to see how he would act, and how the fans would behave, and how he would play. Well, here’s what I learned.
It’s hard to care much about Tiger anymore.
He’s a truly great golfer, of course. He’s clearly the best of this generation and, to the extent such things can be measured, possibly the greatest of all time. He makes shots that other great players would not even attempt. When he’s on his game (which is often), he dominates his sport. As an athlete, he is unique in many ways.
And yet…. And yet…. Well, so what? He may well be the best golfer of all time, but SO WHAT? Watching him play, and he has played very well indeed, I realized I was rooting against him, and I was annoyed by the incessant focus on him. Every shot by Tiger is televised, for example; this is not true for any other player. Periodically, during the telecast, there is also a segment of all his highlights from the day’s play. In addition, there will be interviews of experts about his play, and the scrutiny he is under, and the fans’ reactions to him, and his interaction with the gallery, and how he has adjusted his play to the new groove pattern on his irons, and anything else they can think of to talk about that has some tangential relation to Tiger Woods.
In many ways, the rehabilitation of Tiger Woods, and the refurbishing of the Tiger Woods industry, is more sickening than the behavior that got him into trouble. At this point, we all know the drill, don’t we? Seclusion for a couple weeks, then a sympathetic interview by a carefully-chosen journalist. A tear is shed, mea culpas are issued, then more seclusion, perhaps in a therapeutic facility of some sort. Another friendly interview. Then, finally, an announcement that the miscreant, though he is still “working on his issues,” is ready to reemerge into a public life. The entire process is now a required course in the Celebrity Handler Program at the University of Texas.
In Tiger’s case, the rehab dance was more elaborate and nauseating than most because---well, he’s Tiger, and there’s more money at stake. The Nike ad produced for Masters Week was the culmination of this initial stage of the rehab campaign, and a copy of it should be enshrined in the Smithsonian as a dreadful artifact of the celebrity-rehab process, circa 2010.
If you haven’t seen it, you need to. It consists of Tiger standing motionless and silent, staring at the screen. He is neither happy nor sad. He is just standing there, a blank. Then we hear the voice of his father, as if the voice is playing in Tiger’s head. Earl Woods wants to know how Tiger feels, and whether he has learned anything. About what, you wonder. About obsessively pursuing strippers and porn stars? About marriage? About what it feels like to take a 9-iron in the medulla oblongata? It makes no sense, and you can be certain that if Earl Woods were alive, this Yoda-like ethereal musing is not what he would be saying to his son.
The first thing that strikes you about this ad is that someone, some individual, had to think of it and believe it was a good idea. Play the dead-daddy card? Brilliant! (Deepak Chopra was probably too busy to do the voice-over and they couldn’t get the rights to Martin Luther King.) Then Tiger had to agree to it, and twenty other lost souls in Tiger’s retinue and in the corporate offices at Nike, had to approve. We know that no one objected, because if even one person had done so, everyone else would have instantly seen the danger and run scurrying back to their offices to issue back-dated memos condemning it and demanding its creator be fired. But that didn’t happen. The ad was produced and broadcast to the world. It appears there is not a single individual in the entire Tiger Woods industry who thinks the way normal people do.
So now Tiger is back and I find myself wishing he weren’t. He’s a great golfer, maybe the greatest, but his return makes me realize that the world doesn’t need more great golfers. What the world really needs is good behavior. And the process that now routinely returns disgraced, immoral, and even criminal individuals to the public stage does nothing to ensure we will see any good behavior in the future. Unless there is a meaningful price to be paid for bad behavior, there will only be more and more of it.
Shame worked. Disgrace worked. Fifty years ago, when a famous person did something very, very wrong, that was the end of his career. There was no clinic to make him better and no talk-show host to share his pain. It was simply understood that certain lines should never be crossed and that, if they were (or at least if you got caught crossing them), the party was over. You would retire to the country to raise root vegetables and go fishing. In twenty years or so, you could write your memoirs, but you would never be allowed back into the inner circle. And it worked. The possibility of disgrace served to restrain people from succumbing to certain temptations. All of us benefit when there is a mechanism (short of criminal statutes) that deters us from giving in to our basest instincts.
Today, that mechanism is gone. Tiger is back. Eliot Spitzer is ready to stage a comeback. Even John Edwards wants to return to politics. Ten years ago, Jesse Jackson set the current land-speed record when, following news of his love-child, he announced he would retire from public life only to appear nine days later at a rally about some presumed incident of racial discrimination.
I want them all to go away. Goodbye Eliot and John and Jesse. We don’t NEED you, you see. There are others out there who can fill your role just as well as you can, and they are better people than you are, so we are going to give those other guys a chance. We can’t trust you anymore. You pretended to be something you weren’t, so now you have to go away. It’s nothing personal, you see. It’s just that if we make YOU go away, future guys in your positions will get the message it doesn’t pay to be a crook, a fraud or a jerk.
If only it worked that way….
The fault lies not with the Celebrity Handler Program or with Nike or even with Tiger, of course. The fault lies with us for our willingness to accept the obvious fraud being perpetrated, and for our failure to demand some standard of personal responsibility and decent behavior from those we have exalted to high positions and given vast quantities of power and wealth. And the truly pernicious element in the abdication of all standards is the cynical, ultra-sophisticated view that standards of any kind are hopelessly corny and passé. How can we judge others, they tell us, when we ourselves are so flawed, and so susceptible to the same temptations? And if these urges are within us all, how can we ever condemn them as “wrong?” How many times have we been told that Tiger just happened to get caught, and that any guy would do the same thing he did?
But Phil Mickleson didn’t. And Jamie Moyer didn’t. And Mike Piazza didn’t. And a million other athletes and politicians and businessmen did NOT lie, or cheat on their wives, or take bribes or defraud people. None of them would claim to be without sin or without temptation, yet somehow they managed to resist the urge to satisfy their narcissistic wants by hurting everyone around them. Somehow, most people remember there is a difference between right and wrong, and that trying to do the right thing is worth the effort, even if we sometimes fail.
To the tragically sophisticated, this is just so much religious blather. It is holier-than-thou judgmentalism that will drag us all back to the Spanish Inquisition. Worst of all, it is what they call “hypocrisy” since all of us, at one time or another, will fail to live up to our highest aspirations.
But, of course, what I am suggesting has nothing to do with religion. There are atheists, for example, who feel the same as I do, who have ethical standards and values they try to uphold, and they don’t do it because of God but because they also want to live in a civilized world. And in that world, the jerks and crooks and liars have to go away. They have to go some place where I don’t have to look at them anymore. These days, there are just too many unrehabilitated rehabilitation projects, like Tiger, wandering around soiling my landscape. There are too many Congressmen whose corruption is well known but who remain in Congress. There are too many steroid-enhanced homerun-hitters still playing baseball. There are too many dog-torturers and hit-and-run drivers and celebrity sex tapes.
It’s not just that I’m sick of them, though I certainly am. It’s more important than that. All of us tend to think the path of humanity is on an irreversibly upward path, that civilization will always advance us toward a kinder, safer, happier, wealthier place. Maybe that’s what we want to think, so we do. Unfortunately, it’s not true. History provides plenty of examples of societies that lost sight of their fundamental values and disappeared almost overnight. In fact, that’s how it usually happens. Great civilizations are not destroyed by outside invaders, but by a rotting away from within.
Copyright2010MichaelKubacki
---Mammy Yokum (in “Li’l Abner”)
Unless there’s a World Series and the Phillies happen to be in it, The Masters is usually my favorite sports event of the year. I look forward to it and I read about it and I watch it on TV. And this year, of course, there was an extra sense of anticipation for the event because it would mark Tiger’s return to golf. I wanted to see how he would act, and how the fans would behave, and how he would play. Well, here’s what I learned.
It’s hard to care much about Tiger anymore.
He’s a truly great golfer, of course. He’s clearly the best of this generation and, to the extent such things can be measured, possibly the greatest of all time. He makes shots that other great players would not even attempt. When he’s on his game (which is often), he dominates his sport. As an athlete, he is unique in many ways.
And yet…. And yet…. Well, so what? He may well be the best golfer of all time, but SO WHAT? Watching him play, and he has played very well indeed, I realized I was rooting against him, and I was annoyed by the incessant focus on him. Every shot by Tiger is televised, for example; this is not true for any other player. Periodically, during the telecast, there is also a segment of all his highlights from the day’s play. In addition, there will be interviews of experts about his play, and the scrutiny he is under, and the fans’ reactions to him, and his interaction with the gallery, and how he has adjusted his play to the new groove pattern on his irons, and anything else they can think of to talk about that has some tangential relation to Tiger Woods.
In many ways, the rehabilitation of Tiger Woods, and the refurbishing of the Tiger Woods industry, is more sickening than the behavior that got him into trouble. At this point, we all know the drill, don’t we? Seclusion for a couple weeks, then a sympathetic interview by a carefully-chosen journalist. A tear is shed, mea culpas are issued, then more seclusion, perhaps in a therapeutic facility of some sort. Another friendly interview. Then, finally, an announcement that the miscreant, though he is still “working on his issues,” is ready to reemerge into a public life. The entire process is now a required course in the Celebrity Handler Program at the University of Texas.
In Tiger’s case, the rehab dance was more elaborate and nauseating than most because---well, he’s Tiger, and there’s more money at stake. The Nike ad produced for Masters Week was the culmination of this initial stage of the rehab campaign, and a copy of it should be enshrined in the Smithsonian as a dreadful artifact of the celebrity-rehab process, circa 2010.
If you haven’t seen it, you need to. It consists of Tiger standing motionless and silent, staring at the screen. He is neither happy nor sad. He is just standing there, a blank. Then we hear the voice of his father, as if the voice is playing in Tiger’s head. Earl Woods wants to know how Tiger feels, and whether he has learned anything. About what, you wonder. About obsessively pursuing strippers and porn stars? About marriage? About what it feels like to take a 9-iron in the medulla oblongata? It makes no sense, and you can be certain that if Earl Woods were alive, this Yoda-like ethereal musing is not what he would be saying to his son.
The first thing that strikes you about this ad is that someone, some individual, had to think of it and believe it was a good idea. Play the dead-daddy card? Brilliant! (Deepak Chopra was probably too busy to do the voice-over and they couldn’t get the rights to Martin Luther King.) Then Tiger had to agree to it, and twenty other lost souls in Tiger’s retinue and in the corporate offices at Nike, had to approve. We know that no one objected, because if even one person had done so, everyone else would have instantly seen the danger and run scurrying back to their offices to issue back-dated memos condemning it and demanding its creator be fired. But that didn’t happen. The ad was produced and broadcast to the world. It appears there is not a single individual in the entire Tiger Woods industry who thinks the way normal people do.
So now Tiger is back and I find myself wishing he weren’t. He’s a great golfer, maybe the greatest, but his return makes me realize that the world doesn’t need more great golfers. What the world really needs is good behavior. And the process that now routinely returns disgraced, immoral, and even criminal individuals to the public stage does nothing to ensure we will see any good behavior in the future. Unless there is a meaningful price to be paid for bad behavior, there will only be more and more of it.
Shame worked. Disgrace worked. Fifty years ago, when a famous person did something very, very wrong, that was the end of his career. There was no clinic to make him better and no talk-show host to share his pain. It was simply understood that certain lines should never be crossed and that, if they were (or at least if you got caught crossing them), the party was over. You would retire to the country to raise root vegetables and go fishing. In twenty years or so, you could write your memoirs, but you would never be allowed back into the inner circle. And it worked. The possibility of disgrace served to restrain people from succumbing to certain temptations. All of us benefit when there is a mechanism (short of criminal statutes) that deters us from giving in to our basest instincts.
Today, that mechanism is gone. Tiger is back. Eliot Spitzer is ready to stage a comeback. Even John Edwards wants to return to politics. Ten years ago, Jesse Jackson set the current land-speed record when, following news of his love-child, he announced he would retire from public life only to appear nine days later at a rally about some presumed incident of racial discrimination.
I want them all to go away. Goodbye Eliot and John and Jesse. We don’t NEED you, you see. There are others out there who can fill your role just as well as you can, and they are better people than you are, so we are going to give those other guys a chance. We can’t trust you anymore. You pretended to be something you weren’t, so now you have to go away. It’s nothing personal, you see. It’s just that if we make YOU go away, future guys in your positions will get the message it doesn’t pay to be a crook, a fraud or a jerk.
If only it worked that way….
The fault lies not with the Celebrity Handler Program or with Nike or even with Tiger, of course. The fault lies with us for our willingness to accept the obvious fraud being perpetrated, and for our failure to demand some standard of personal responsibility and decent behavior from those we have exalted to high positions and given vast quantities of power and wealth. And the truly pernicious element in the abdication of all standards is the cynical, ultra-sophisticated view that standards of any kind are hopelessly corny and passé. How can we judge others, they tell us, when we ourselves are so flawed, and so susceptible to the same temptations? And if these urges are within us all, how can we ever condemn them as “wrong?” How many times have we been told that Tiger just happened to get caught, and that any guy would do the same thing he did?
But Phil Mickleson didn’t. And Jamie Moyer didn’t. And Mike Piazza didn’t. And a million other athletes and politicians and businessmen did NOT lie, or cheat on their wives, or take bribes or defraud people. None of them would claim to be without sin or without temptation, yet somehow they managed to resist the urge to satisfy their narcissistic wants by hurting everyone around them. Somehow, most people remember there is a difference between right and wrong, and that trying to do the right thing is worth the effort, even if we sometimes fail.
To the tragically sophisticated, this is just so much religious blather. It is holier-than-thou judgmentalism that will drag us all back to the Spanish Inquisition. Worst of all, it is what they call “hypocrisy” since all of us, at one time or another, will fail to live up to our highest aspirations.
But, of course, what I am suggesting has nothing to do with religion. There are atheists, for example, who feel the same as I do, who have ethical standards and values they try to uphold, and they don’t do it because of God but because they also want to live in a civilized world. And in that world, the jerks and crooks and liars have to go away. They have to go some place where I don’t have to look at them anymore. These days, there are just too many unrehabilitated rehabilitation projects, like Tiger, wandering around soiling my landscape. There are too many Congressmen whose corruption is well known but who remain in Congress. There are too many steroid-enhanced homerun-hitters still playing baseball. There are too many dog-torturers and hit-and-run drivers and celebrity sex tapes.
It’s not just that I’m sick of them, though I certainly am. It’s more important than that. All of us tend to think the path of humanity is on an irreversibly upward path, that civilization will always advance us toward a kinder, safer, happier, wealthier place. Maybe that’s what we want to think, so we do. Unfortunately, it’s not true. History provides plenty of examples of societies that lost sight of their fundamental values and disappeared almost overnight. In fact, that’s how it usually happens. Great civilizations are not destroyed by outside invaders, but by a rotting away from within.
Copyright2010MichaelKubacki
Monday, March 29, 2010
JOE BIDEN AND THE HORSE HE RODE IN ON
So Joe Biden lands in Israel and he is shocked---SHOCKED---to learn that those crazy Jews are going to put a housing development in East Jerusalem. The area has been full of Jews for centuries, except for a period from 1948 to 1967 when it was controlled by Jordan, and nobody had ever said they were NOT going to build there, but hey, it’s a “settlement,” so Biden gets all huffy and flies away and then Hillary drills Bibi a new one over the phone and the usual outraged people are even more outrageously outraged than before.
My initial reaction to this kerfluffle was that it takes a lot of damn gall for Biden or anybody else to tell Israelis where, in the sovereign state of Israel, Jews can live or where they can build new developments. Whatever alleged interest the US may claim to have in this largely-mythical “peace process,” it can hardly excuse this sort of brow-beating.
What makes it worse is that when the US lodges an objection like this, it is acting merely as a mouthpiece for the Palestinian Authority. And what, exactly, is the nature of their objection? Is it not that these settlements are being built on land that may someday be part of a Palestinian state? They apparently want East Jerusalem to be their future capital. Well, what is it about having Jews on a particular piece of land that makes the land unsuitable for a Palestinian state? If, in some unlikely future, a Palestinian state comes into being, WHY CAN’T THERE BE A FEW JEWS IN IT?
Objections to these settlements by the PA or their surrogates in the Obama administration, or anybody else, are pure anti-Semitism. Who the hell do these people think they are that they can demand a total exclusion of Jews from a nation that doesn’t even exist yet? Israel itself has more than a million Arabs living in it, and they are represented in the Knesset. Canada has Indians. Italy has Belgians and Moroccans and Asians and Turks. America has every race and religion and ethnic group you can name, and many you never heard of. Some tolerance of other people is a minimal requirement for a modern civilized state, so what gives Palestinians the right, among all the nations of the world, to declare (even before their country exists) that it will contain no Jews?
The demand alone means that “Palestine” should NEVER be a state, at least so long as they maintain this attitude. Even apart from the immorality of sanctioning the creation of a nation borne out of such hatred, it’s simply impractical. How could the Israelis possibly consent to a new nation in their midst so utterly racist that Jews cannot reside in it?
Anyway, that was my initial reaction. It’s usually my reaction when I hear some complaint about “settlements”---that it’s absurd to tell a sovereign people where they can build houses in their own damn country. Part of the problem might be the term “settlements,” because it makes them sound like Fort Apache in the Wyoming Territory instead of apartment blocks you might see in the Bronx, but there’s still no excuse for it. It’s fine if Israelis want to argue about this, and they do, but if anybody else does it, I assume it’s because they hate Jews.
Looking beyond the obvious, however, Biden’s reaction seemed so outlandish that I began to look for another reason. Even if the Obama administration really felt the settlement issue was important, it couldn’t very well have believed that these particular settlements mattered at all. They were not in the West Bank, for one thing, and these building plans had been in place for several years. And though Israel had promised not to build in certain areas, this was not one of the areas they had promised not to build in. So what, really, was this all about?
Well, a major purpose of Biden’s visit (the most important purpose, in Israel’s point of view) was to discuss Iran and what the US might be willing to do about it. Israel, for example, wants the US to set up a naval blockade or take other rather serious and provocative steps. Obama’s idea of sanctions, on the other hand, appears to be denying Tehran a major league baseball franchise.
Thus, it was extremely convenient for the Obama administration that this dispute over settlements erupted when it did, and cut Biden’s visit short. Now, instead of dealing with the Iran question, the US can be so diplomatically outraged at Israel that the issue of what to do about Iran gets pushed aside. Biden’s rage, in other words, might have been a way to avoid putting Obama in the embarrassing position of admitting we won’t do anything about Iran.
But now, it would appear, that’s not the explanation either. I’m afraid it’s worse than that. This was never about settlements, or even about Iran.
Netanyahu has agreed to past US demands and the result is now---more demands, this time of the sort that no responsible prime minister of Israel can accept. With his non-negotiable edicts, Obama has put Netanyahu in an impossible situation politically, and has treated him personally with contempt. The message is that Netanyahu will have to accede to a Palestinian state on terms largely dictated by the Palestinian Authority, or to step down and be replaced by a different Israeli government that will do so. Iran is no longer the only threat to the existence of Israel.
And thus, the fangs are bared. Those of us who didn’t vote for Obama knew this was possible. When a man’s spiritual advisor is Jeremiah Wright and his primary advisors on the Middle East are Rashid Khalidi, Samantha Power and Robert Malley, it cannot be a surprise when we learn that the survival of Israel is not his fondest wish. I had hoped this day would not come, and that Obama would never feel powerful enough politically to act upon his beliefs. But now he does.
Copyright2010MichaelKubacki
My initial reaction to this kerfluffle was that it takes a lot of damn gall for Biden or anybody else to tell Israelis where, in the sovereign state of Israel, Jews can live or where they can build new developments. Whatever alleged interest the US may claim to have in this largely-mythical “peace process,” it can hardly excuse this sort of brow-beating.
What makes it worse is that when the US lodges an objection like this, it is acting merely as a mouthpiece for the Palestinian Authority. And what, exactly, is the nature of their objection? Is it not that these settlements are being built on land that may someday be part of a Palestinian state? They apparently want East Jerusalem to be their future capital. Well, what is it about having Jews on a particular piece of land that makes the land unsuitable for a Palestinian state? If, in some unlikely future, a Palestinian state comes into being, WHY CAN’T THERE BE A FEW JEWS IN IT?
Objections to these settlements by the PA or their surrogates in the Obama administration, or anybody else, are pure anti-Semitism. Who the hell do these people think they are that they can demand a total exclusion of Jews from a nation that doesn’t even exist yet? Israel itself has more than a million Arabs living in it, and they are represented in the Knesset. Canada has Indians. Italy has Belgians and Moroccans and Asians and Turks. America has every race and religion and ethnic group you can name, and many you never heard of. Some tolerance of other people is a minimal requirement for a modern civilized state, so what gives Palestinians the right, among all the nations of the world, to declare (even before their country exists) that it will contain no Jews?
The demand alone means that “Palestine” should NEVER be a state, at least so long as they maintain this attitude. Even apart from the immorality of sanctioning the creation of a nation borne out of such hatred, it’s simply impractical. How could the Israelis possibly consent to a new nation in their midst so utterly racist that Jews cannot reside in it?
Anyway, that was my initial reaction. It’s usually my reaction when I hear some complaint about “settlements”---that it’s absurd to tell a sovereign people where they can build houses in their own damn country. Part of the problem might be the term “settlements,” because it makes them sound like Fort Apache in the Wyoming Territory instead of apartment blocks you might see in the Bronx, but there’s still no excuse for it. It’s fine if Israelis want to argue about this, and they do, but if anybody else does it, I assume it’s because they hate Jews.
Looking beyond the obvious, however, Biden’s reaction seemed so outlandish that I began to look for another reason. Even if the Obama administration really felt the settlement issue was important, it couldn’t very well have believed that these particular settlements mattered at all. They were not in the West Bank, for one thing, and these building plans had been in place for several years. And though Israel had promised not to build in certain areas, this was not one of the areas they had promised not to build in. So what, really, was this all about?
Well, a major purpose of Biden’s visit (the most important purpose, in Israel’s point of view) was to discuss Iran and what the US might be willing to do about it. Israel, for example, wants the US to set up a naval blockade or take other rather serious and provocative steps. Obama’s idea of sanctions, on the other hand, appears to be denying Tehran a major league baseball franchise.
Thus, it was extremely convenient for the Obama administration that this dispute over settlements erupted when it did, and cut Biden’s visit short. Now, instead of dealing with the Iran question, the US can be so diplomatically outraged at Israel that the issue of what to do about Iran gets pushed aside. Biden’s rage, in other words, might have been a way to avoid putting Obama in the embarrassing position of admitting we won’t do anything about Iran.
But now, it would appear, that’s not the explanation either. I’m afraid it’s worse than that. This was never about settlements, or even about Iran.
Netanyahu has agreed to past US demands and the result is now---more demands, this time of the sort that no responsible prime minister of Israel can accept. With his non-negotiable edicts, Obama has put Netanyahu in an impossible situation politically, and has treated him personally with contempt. The message is that Netanyahu will have to accede to a Palestinian state on terms largely dictated by the Palestinian Authority, or to step down and be replaced by a different Israeli government that will do so. Iran is no longer the only threat to the existence of Israel.
And thus, the fangs are bared. Those of us who didn’t vote for Obama knew this was possible. When a man’s spiritual advisor is Jeremiah Wright and his primary advisors on the Middle East are Rashid Khalidi, Samantha Power and Robert Malley, it cannot be a surprise when we learn that the survival of Israel is not his fondest wish. I had hoped this day would not come, and that Obama would never feel powerful enough politically to act upon his beliefs. But now he does.
Copyright2010MichaelKubacki
Friday, March 19, 2010
SLAUGHTERHOUSE
Now that public debate has been banished from Congress, and all legislative business is conducted in secret, trying to determine what is happening in Washington is a lot like it used to be trying to figure out who was up and who was down in the Soviet Union. I don’t know any more than you do, or Chris Matthews does, or Rush Limbaugh, or John McCain, for that matter. This has never stopped me from drawing conclusions, however.
First, Pelosi does not have the votes to pass Obamacare. If, for example, she had the votes at 7:33pm on Monday, the vote would have been held at 7:34pm on Monday. That no such vote has been called can mean only one thing.
Second, floating the idea of the “Slaughter Solution,” by which the bill is deemed to have been “passed” without actually voting on it, is a sign the Democratic leadership believes they are unlikely to get the votes needed to pass it. The deem-and-pass option cannot be anything other than a desperation tactic since, even if it succeeds, it will lead to lengthy, bitter litigation and years of political fallout. The Democrats are clearly willing to take a major hit in the mid-term elections over this, but the use of deem-and-pass could turn out to be an issue in the next several elections.
*******
I have an observation on this process.
First, if Obamacare goes down to defeat, there will be one reason: the left’s puzzling obsession with forcing people who disapprove of abortion to pay for abortions.
Public funding for abortion has never been a popular idea with the American people. While polling numbers on abortion issues change (slowly) over the years, the majority view has long been that abortion should be generally available, with some restrictions, but should not be paid for with tax dollars. Public funding of abortions has never had the support of more than 30% of Americans.
Also, since the vast majority of abortions are elective procedures, the issue is actually tangential to healthcare concerns at the heart of Obamacare. Nevertheless, Senate Democrats insisted that this be part of their bill and, once a few legislators were purchased and a few arms twisted, sixty votes were found.
Since both houses of Congress must pass the same bill, the normal procedure would be for the differences between the House bill and the Senate bill to be compromised in committee, and then for both houses to pass the compromise measure. However, with the election of Scott Brown, the Senate cannot pass a second healthcare bill. Thus, the Democrats are stuck with the Senate bill already passed, complete with taxpayer-subsidized abortions. The House must pass that bill, or there will be no Obamacare.
Without the abortion provisions, the bill would be easily passed. Certainly, the Republicans could do nothing about it. The only problem has been that a number of Democrats are reluctant to vote for public funding of abortions.
And really, why shouldn’t they be?
This is one thing about the left I will never understand. Without the abortion feature, there would probably have been some Republicans, in both houses, voting for the damn thing. Pelosi and Reid wouldn’t even have had to break a sweat, and there would have been no need for the Louisiana Purchase or the Cornhusker Kickback or any of the other new forms of corruption that are so novel and clever that they each get cute little names. Obama would have signed the bill months ago.
So why did they do this? Why is it so important to left-wingers that citizens who disapprove of abortion, for reasons of conscience or religious conviction, MUST be forced to pay for them? I invite any of you, dear readers, to tell me. I just don’t get it.
Copyright2010MichaelKubacki
First, Pelosi does not have the votes to pass Obamacare. If, for example, she had the votes at 7:33pm on Monday, the vote would have been held at 7:34pm on Monday. That no such vote has been called can mean only one thing.
Second, floating the idea of the “Slaughter Solution,” by which the bill is deemed to have been “passed” without actually voting on it, is a sign the Democratic leadership believes they are unlikely to get the votes needed to pass it. The deem-and-pass option cannot be anything other than a desperation tactic since, even if it succeeds, it will lead to lengthy, bitter litigation and years of political fallout. The Democrats are clearly willing to take a major hit in the mid-term elections over this, but the use of deem-and-pass could turn out to be an issue in the next several elections.
*******
I have an observation on this process.
First, if Obamacare goes down to defeat, there will be one reason: the left’s puzzling obsession with forcing people who disapprove of abortion to pay for abortions.
Public funding for abortion has never been a popular idea with the American people. While polling numbers on abortion issues change (slowly) over the years, the majority view has long been that abortion should be generally available, with some restrictions, but should not be paid for with tax dollars. Public funding of abortions has never had the support of more than 30% of Americans.
Also, since the vast majority of abortions are elective procedures, the issue is actually tangential to healthcare concerns at the heart of Obamacare. Nevertheless, Senate Democrats insisted that this be part of their bill and, once a few legislators were purchased and a few arms twisted, sixty votes were found.
Since both houses of Congress must pass the same bill, the normal procedure would be for the differences between the House bill and the Senate bill to be compromised in committee, and then for both houses to pass the compromise measure. However, with the election of Scott Brown, the Senate cannot pass a second healthcare bill. Thus, the Democrats are stuck with the Senate bill already passed, complete with taxpayer-subsidized abortions. The House must pass that bill, or there will be no Obamacare.
Without the abortion provisions, the bill would be easily passed. Certainly, the Republicans could do nothing about it. The only problem has been that a number of Democrats are reluctant to vote for public funding of abortions.
And really, why shouldn’t they be?
This is one thing about the left I will never understand. Without the abortion feature, there would probably have been some Republicans, in both houses, voting for the damn thing. Pelosi and Reid wouldn’t even have had to break a sweat, and there would have been no need for the Louisiana Purchase or the Cornhusker Kickback or any of the other new forms of corruption that are so novel and clever that they each get cute little names. Obama would have signed the bill months ago.
So why did they do this? Why is it so important to left-wingers that citizens who disapprove of abortion, for reasons of conscience or religious conviction, MUST be forced to pay for them? I invite any of you, dear readers, to tell me. I just don’t get it.
Copyright2010MichaelKubacki
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
PRESIDENTS DAY
When I was a kid in Philadelphia, we celebrated Lincoln’s Birthday and Washington’s Birthday, and we had pictures of them up on the classroom walls and we heard about the Emancipation Proclamation and the cherry tree and all, and of course, we had two days off from school. It seemed a little odd that you had two days off from school so close together, but I certainly didn’t object. And they were great presidents, so it made sense. Even though kids in the South didn’t have Lincoln’s Birthday off, they got Robert E. Lee’s Birthday (January 19) instead, so that seemed fair too.
Presidents Day is another matter. I mean, it’s just so vague and unfocused. And let’s face it, there are plenty of presidents who don’t deserve to be celebrated. What about Nixon, for example? There are still people around who will defend Nixon, and who like him, but there aren’t a lot of them, and I doubt even they would argue he was the sort of unblemished hero who deserves to have a holiday honoring him. Then there’s Woodrow Wilson, who segregated Washington D.C. and the federal civil service and then, for a sort of encore, instituted a fascist police state in America that we have never seen before or since. And, of course, there was Jimmy Carter, the man who brought us 20% mortgage rates, gave away the Panama Canal, ushered in the theocracy in Iran, almost destroyed the Olympics, and is primarily known today (in his dotage) for his unapologetic anti-Semitism.
There are some genuinely uncelebrate-able men who have been elected President of the United States. You may disagree with me on who they are, but I doubt there is much argument on this basic point. So there’s not much to like about Presidents Day.
But there is one thing. Occasionally, on Presidents Day, a discussion will break out on who our great presidents were, and who was not so hot, and who was a sociopath, and who was underrated, and who should have gone to jail, and so on. And for recent presidents, about whom “history” has not yet spoken, this can be an interesting and spirited discussion.
I had such a discussion this past Presidents Day concerning George W. Bush.
Most lefties, of course, continue to view George Bush as an amalgam incorporating the worst character traits of Forrest Gump and Vlad the Impaler, and the odd psychological phenomenon called Bush Derangement Syndrome survives unabated, at least in the minds of that dwindling number of citizens who still have no reservations whatsoever about Barack Obama and his vision for America. Since Obama himself rarely misses an opportunity to remind us that everything wrong with the world is Bush’s fault, it’s not surprising that his minions feel the same way. This, in a nutshell, was the view of the left-winger I was chatting with. She felt, as many do, that Bush had to be put in a special category of loathsomeness in the pantheon of presidents and that simply calling him “the worst president ever” was, to some extent, gilding the lily.
Stepping back a bit, however, and trying to imagine what Bush will look like in fifty or sixty or a hundred years, I think the first thing you have to do is throw the BDS hatred out the window. The next thing you do is look back into our history and try to find other presidents you can compare him to. The analysis is incomplete, of course, because while we may know what Bush did while in office, we cannot know whether certain seeds he planted will bear fruit.
Think of Thomas Jefferson, for example. When his term ended in 1809, there were plenty of folks around who still thought the Louisiana Purchase was kind of dopey. It was only with the passage of time (and it was quite a bit of time) that the sea-to-shining-sea idea really caught on and became a source of pride and even an important piece of our national identity.
More recently, when Ronald Reagan left office, no one had any clue that his efforts would be instrumental in bringing down the Soviet empire because no one knew the Soviet empire would collapse less than three years later. Those who hated Reagan denied, and still deny, he deserves any credit for winning the Cold War, but as the years go by, it seems pretty clear the Reagan-haters are losing that historical argument. For other reasons as well, Reagan’s stature continues to grow. Emotional reactions that seemed so important at the time tend to fade into the fog of history, and as a result, other events in a presidency will stand out more boldly. Only with the passage of time will the picture come into focus.
For some presidents, it doesn’t take very long. If a man leaves no great ideas and institutes no nation-changing programs, there is no real legacy to his presidency. And once the adulation (of some) and the hatred (of others) has melted away, he is revealed as no more than a caretaker.
That was Bill Clinton. The people who hated him don’t hate him as much and the people who adored him don’t adore him as much either. And once you get past the emotions, you realize there wasn’t much else. He produced no grand programs or initiatives, he didn’t win or lose any big wars, and he never even made a memorable speech. He presided over a booming economy that crashed at the end of his term, and he wasn’t really responsible for either the boom or the crash. In 2030, there is nothing that might happen where people will say, “Ah, yes---that was Bill Clinton’s idea. He started the whole thing rolling.” Our view of Clinton today probably won’t change much in fifty or a hundred years.
But George Bush? Well, he is almost impossible to evaluate, and it may be decades before we can rationally assess his place in history. It has only been fourteen months since he left office, of course, but there are presidents whose place in history is settled on the day they climb into the whirlybird and leave town. Clinton was one; Eisenhower was another. Gerry Ford was such a president also. It doesn’t mean they are bad men, or bad presidents. All it means is that they launched no canoes into the stream of world history, so we don’t have to wait around to see where those canoes eventually land.
In arriving at a verdict on George Bush now, in 2010, the best we can do is identify a range of where he might wind up in the history books. So let’s start with the minimum. What, exactly, is the Bush minimum? What, in comparison to other presidents, is the lowest level to which he may be consigned by the judgment of historians a hundred years from now?
This is the easy part. Bush was very much an accidental president. Not only did he take office with fewer popular votes than his Democratic opponent, but the only reason he became president at all was that an electoral nobody named Ralph Nader siphoned enough votes from Bush’s opponent to give Bush a narrow win in Florida and a victory in the Electoral College.
Once he had won, the very last thing he wanted or expected was that he would become a wartime president in a hideous worldwide clash of cultures that may last fifty years. He had wanted to be a “compassionate conservative,” cutting taxes and improving schools and giving free medicine to geezers. Then came 9-11-2001.
The obvious parallel is to another president who was thrust into office unexpectedly and who, five months later, had to decide whether to drop atomic bombs on Japan. Like Bush, Harry Truman had to make some difficult (and often thankless) choices, but he was the president, so he made them. And Truman, like Bush, ended his term with most of the American people glad to see him go. Truman too was a hated man at the end.
Today, Harry Truman doesn’t look nearly as bad or foolish or feckless as he did in 1952, and I expect the same grudging admiration will emerge for Bush as the years go by. At a minimum, Bush will be regarded as Truman is now---as a president who was thrust into a situation he didn’t choose, with decisions to make that would never please everybody, but who managed through the force of his will and his essential values to shepherd the country past the abyss.
But if Harry Truman is the minimum, what is the maximum? For Bush, this is the hard part.
Bush’s legacy will depend largely on what happens in the Middle East over the next twenty or forty years. The region is filled with brutal, misogynist dictatorships, but there are nascent democracy movements in every one of them, and if Iraq can survive as at least a quasi-secular democracy, the pressure will build to end the strongman regimes that dominate the political culture. The rosiest scenario is that the despots will begin to fall like dominoes once the Iranian theocracy crashes, as it certainly will.
The scent of freedom in the Middle East (and I’m not suggesting it is much more than that) would not exist if George Bush had never been president. Among other things, by ousting Saddam and removing the Taliban from power, George Bush did more for the welfare and status of women in the world than any person in history. If democratic movements grow, and succeed in bringing the Middle East into the modern world, there is no question Bush will be given credit for having the vision and the will to set the process in motion.
Of course, it is possible that Obama and future presidents will simply drop the ball and let the region slide back into the Dark Ages. It is also possible that Arab culture is still hundreds of years away from abandoning its chiefdom and tribal systems to become modern nations, and Bush was foolish to think otherwise. If that happens, all of Bush’s efforts there will have been useless.
If, however, the monsters are deposed and democratic institutions like a free press and a rule of law develop, and the veil is cast aside, Bush’s accomplishment will be viewed as even more miraculous and wonderful than Reagan’s. The Soviet Union, after all, shared many of our values. There was at least a basis for communication. For example, they responded to threats because, at some fundamental level, they valued life and wanted to live and prosper. When Reagan called them the Evil Empire, they knew what it meant and they didn’t like it. Bringing down the Soviet Union was easy compared to changing the Middle East.
It’s not impossible. Maybe it’s not likely, but it’s not impossible. And if the transformation of Arab despotism into something like freedom turns out to be Bush’s legacy, then his achievement would be celebrated for centuries. The “upside” for Bush, the potential upside for his ultimate place in history, is that he may be viewed, alongside Abraham Lincoln, as a great liberator.
Copyright2010MichaelKubacki
Presidents Day is another matter. I mean, it’s just so vague and unfocused. And let’s face it, there are plenty of presidents who don’t deserve to be celebrated. What about Nixon, for example? There are still people around who will defend Nixon, and who like him, but there aren’t a lot of them, and I doubt even they would argue he was the sort of unblemished hero who deserves to have a holiday honoring him. Then there’s Woodrow Wilson, who segregated Washington D.C. and the federal civil service and then, for a sort of encore, instituted a fascist police state in America that we have never seen before or since. And, of course, there was Jimmy Carter, the man who brought us 20% mortgage rates, gave away the Panama Canal, ushered in the theocracy in Iran, almost destroyed the Olympics, and is primarily known today (in his dotage) for his unapologetic anti-Semitism.
There are some genuinely uncelebrate-able men who have been elected President of the United States. You may disagree with me on who they are, but I doubt there is much argument on this basic point. So there’s not much to like about Presidents Day.
But there is one thing. Occasionally, on Presidents Day, a discussion will break out on who our great presidents were, and who was not so hot, and who was a sociopath, and who was underrated, and who should have gone to jail, and so on. And for recent presidents, about whom “history” has not yet spoken, this can be an interesting and spirited discussion.
I had such a discussion this past Presidents Day concerning George W. Bush.
Most lefties, of course, continue to view George Bush as an amalgam incorporating the worst character traits of Forrest Gump and Vlad the Impaler, and the odd psychological phenomenon called Bush Derangement Syndrome survives unabated, at least in the minds of that dwindling number of citizens who still have no reservations whatsoever about Barack Obama and his vision for America. Since Obama himself rarely misses an opportunity to remind us that everything wrong with the world is Bush’s fault, it’s not surprising that his minions feel the same way. This, in a nutshell, was the view of the left-winger I was chatting with. She felt, as many do, that Bush had to be put in a special category of loathsomeness in the pantheon of presidents and that simply calling him “the worst president ever” was, to some extent, gilding the lily.
Stepping back a bit, however, and trying to imagine what Bush will look like in fifty or sixty or a hundred years, I think the first thing you have to do is throw the BDS hatred out the window. The next thing you do is look back into our history and try to find other presidents you can compare him to. The analysis is incomplete, of course, because while we may know what Bush did while in office, we cannot know whether certain seeds he planted will bear fruit.
Think of Thomas Jefferson, for example. When his term ended in 1809, there were plenty of folks around who still thought the Louisiana Purchase was kind of dopey. It was only with the passage of time (and it was quite a bit of time) that the sea-to-shining-sea idea really caught on and became a source of pride and even an important piece of our national identity.
More recently, when Ronald Reagan left office, no one had any clue that his efforts would be instrumental in bringing down the Soviet empire because no one knew the Soviet empire would collapse less than three years later. Those who hated Reagan denied, and still deny, he deserves any credit for winning the Cold War, but as the years go by, it seems pretty clear the Reagan-haters are losing that historical argument. For other reasons as well, Reagan’s stature continues to grow. Emotional reactions that seemed so important at the time tend to fade into the fog of history, and as a result, other events in a presidency will stand out more boldly. Only with the passage of time will the picture come into focus.
For some presidents, it doesn’t take very long. If a man leaves no great ideas and institutes no nation-changing programs, there is no real legacy to his presidency. And once the adulation (of some) and the hatred (of others) has melted away, he is revealed as no more than a caretaker.
That was Bill Clinton. The people who hated him don’t hate him as much and the people who adored him don’t adore him as much either. And once you get past the emotions, you realize there wasn’t much else. He produced no grand programs or initiatives, he didn’t win or lose any big wars, and he never even made a memorable speech. He presided over a booming economy that crashed at the end of his term, and he wasn’t really responsible for either the boom or the crash. In 2030, there is nothing that might happen where people will say, “Ah, yes---that was Bill Clinton’s idea. He started the whole thing rolling.” Our view of Clinton today probably won’t change much in fifty or a hundred years.
But George Bush? Well, he is almost impossible to evaluate, and it may be decades before we can rationally assess his place in history. It has only been fourteen months since he left office, of course, but there are presidents whose place in history is settled on the day they climb into the whirlybird and leave town. Clinton was one; Eisenhower was another. Gerry Ford was such a president also. It doesn’t mean they are bad men, or bad presidents. All it means is that they launched no canoes into the stream of world history, so we don’t have to wait around to see where those canoes eventually land.
In arriving at a verdict on George Bush now, in 2010, the best we can do is identify a range of where he might wind up in the history books. So let’s start with the minimum. What, exactly, is the Bush minimum? What, in comparison to other presidents, is the lowest level to which he may be consigned by the judgment of historians a hundred years from now?
This is the easy part. Bush was very much an accidental president. Not only did he take office with fewer popular votes than his Democratic opponent, but the only reason he became president at all was that an electoral nobody named Ralph Nader siphoned enough votes from Bush’s opponent to give Bush a narrow win in Florida and a victory in the Electoral College.
Once he had won, the very last thing he wanted or expected was that he would become a wartime president in a hideous worldwide clash of cultures that may last fifty years. He had wanted to be a “compassionate conservative,” cutting taxes and improving schools and giving free medicine to geezers. Then came 9-11-2001.
The obvious parallel is to another president who was thrust into office unexpectedly and who, five months later, had to decide whether to drop atomic bombs on Japan. Like Bush, Harry Truman had to make some difficult (and often thankless) choices, but he was the president, so he made them. And Truman, like Bush, ended his term with most of the American people glad to see him go. Truman too was a hated man at the end.
Today, Harry Truman doesn’t look nearly as bad or foolish or feckless as he did in 1952, and I expect the same grudging admiration will emerge for Bush as the years go by. At a minimum, Bush will be regarded as Truman is now---as a president who was thrust into a situation he didn’t choose, with decisions to make that would never please everybody, but who managed through the force of his will and his essential values to shepherd the country past the abyss.
But if Harry Truman is the minimum, what is the maximum? For Bush, this is the hard part.
Bush’s legacy will depend largely on what happens in the Middle East over the next twenty or forty years. The region is filled with brutal, misogynist dictatorships, but there are nascent democracy movements in every one of them, and if Iraq can survive as at least a quasi-secular democracy, the pressure will build to end the strongman regimes that dominate the political culture. The rosiest scenario is that the despots will begin to fall like dominoes once the Iranian theocracy crashes, as it certainly will.
The scent of freedom in the Middle East (and I’m not suggesting it is much more than that) would not exist if George Bush had never been president. Among other things, by ousting Saddam and removing the Taliban from power, George Bush did more for the welfare and status of women in the world than any person in history. If democratic movements grow, and succeed in bringing the Middle East into the modern world, there is no question Bush will be given credit for having the vision and the will to set the process in motion.
Of course, it is possible that Obama and future presidents will simply drop the ball and let the region slide back into the Dark Ages. It is also possible that Arab culture is still hundreds of years away from abandoning its chiefdom and tribal systems to become modern nations, and Bush was foolish to think otherwise. If that happens, all of Bush’s efforts there will have been useless.
If, however, the monsters are deposed and democratic institutions like a free press and a rule of law develop, and the veil is cast aside, Bush’s accomplishment will be viewed as even more miraculous and wonderful than Reagan’s. The Soviet Union, after all, shared many of our values. There was at least a basis for communication. For example, they responded to threats because, at some fundamental level, they valued life and wanted to live and prosper. When Reagan called them the Evil Empire, they knew what it meant and they didn’t like it. Bringing down the Soviet Union was easy compared to changing the Middle East.
It’s not impossible. Maybe it’s not likely, but it’s not impossible. And if the transformation of Arab despotism into something like freedom turns out to be Bush’s legacy, then his achievement would be celebrated for centuries. The “upside” for Bush, the potential upside for his ultimate place in history, is that he may be viewed, alongside Abraham Lincoln, as a great liberator.
Copyright2010MichaelKubacki
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
As Democrats in Congress, and the state-run media, continue to howl in outrage over the crimes of Toyota, I find myself wondering about the NEXT big recall.
What if it’s GM? What if GM is the next car company with faulty brakes or stuck accelerators? Don’t we have to wonder whether the car manufacturer that is now run by Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank and Harry Reid will come in for the same sort of media and Congressional scrutiny if their windshields start shattering on rainy days or their gas tanks start exploding?
At this point, the very LAST entity with any moral authority to investigate Toyota is the United States government. Isn’t this like investing Exxon Mobil with police power and asking them to determine whether Chevron is paying all its taxes? Isn’t it a bit like giving Glaxo subpoena power and telling them to check on whether Merck is following FDA regulations? Isn’t it pretty much the same thing as sending Pathmark investigators into Acme stores to look for health code violations?
Copyright2010MichaelKubacki
What if it’s GM? What if GM is the next car company with faulty brakes or stuck accelerators? Don’t we have to wonder whether the car manufacturer that is now run by Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank and Harry Reid will come in for the same sort of media and Congressional scrutiny if their windshields start shattering on rainy days or their gas tanks start exploding?
At this point, the very LAST entity with any moral authority to investigate Toyota is the United States government. Isn’t this like investing Exxon Mobil with police power and asking them to determine whether Chevron is paying all its taxes? Isn’t it a bit like giving Glaxo subpoena power and telling them to check on whether Merck is following FDA regulations? Isn’t it pretty much the same thing as sending Pathmark investigators into Acme stores to look for health code violations?
Copyright2010MichaelKubacki
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
PHILLY POLITICS, AS USUAL
A lengthy article in today’s Philadelphia Daily News described the political battle shaping up over the redistricting of Philly’s city council that will follow the 2010 federal census. For some years, apparently, there has been a movement to carve out a “Latino district” in order to ensure a permanent Hispanic fiefdom in the city.
What follows is the letter I sent to the Daily News.
****************************************
To the editor:
Your article about the prospect of political redistricting in Philly from the coming census was an eye-opener.
It is a measure of how far we have gone down the road of politicizing group identity that no one in Philadelphia politics objects to racial and ethnic gerrymandering on the grounds it is fundamentally anti-democratic and un-American. It is simply an accepted practice. The only battles are among politicians on how best to ghettoize their constituents into convenient demographic enclaves.
The argument, I suppose, is that creating a "Latino district" or an "African-American district" or an "Italian district" somehow empowers these groups. In fact, the opposite is true. It merely relieves entrenched politicians of the need to treat us as individual adults with differing hopes, beliefs and values, regardless of who our ancestors were. Instead, once we are divided into neat little groups, politicians can assure themselves of long careers merely by pandering to the lowest common denominator of racial and ethnic differences. Real political debate on what is best for Philadelphia goes out the window. Instead, politics is a backroom process of dividing up the cookies among "MY Latinos," "MY African-Americans," "MY white river-ward residents," etc.
There is nothing new in politics, and this method of controlling the unruly masses was described in detail by Machiavelli five centuries ago. The division of people into groups allows the prince to rule them by doling out benefits, and withdrawing them, from this group or that. The groups then fight each other for crumbs rather than demand good and fair governance from the ruler.
We are people. We are Americans. We are Philadelphians. We are much more than our skin color or our last name. We are NOT primarily Latinos or Irish or African-American or Italian or Polish, and in 2010, it is insulting that Philadelphia politicians refuse, for their own convenience, to treat us as individuals who must be persuaded to vote for them rather than be manipulated to embrace our basest instincts.
What follows is the letter I sent to the Daily News.
****************************************
To the editor:
Your article about the prospect of political redistricting in Philly from the coming census was an eye-opener.
It is a measure of how far we have gone down the road of politicizing group identity that no one in Philadelphia politics objects to racial and ethnic gerrymandering on the grounds it is fundamentally anti-democratic and un-American. It is simply an accepted practice. The only battles are among politicians on how best to ghettoize their constituents into convenient demographic enclaves.
The argument, I suppose, is that creating a "Latino district" or an "African-American district" or an "Italian district" somehow empowers these groups. In fact, the opposite is true. It merely relieves entrenched politicians of the need to treat us as individual adults with differing hopes, beliefs and values, regardless of who our ancestors were. Instead, once we are divided into neat little groups, politicians can assure themselves of long careers merely by pandering to the lowest common denominator of racial and ethnic differences. Real political debate on what is best for Philadelphia goes out the window. Instead, politics is a backroom process of dividing up the cookies among "MY Latinos," "MY African-Americans," "MY white river-ward residents," etc.
There is nothing new in politics, and this method of controlling the unruly masses was described in detail by Machiavelli five centuries ago. The division of people into groups allows the prince to rule them by doling out benefits, and withdrawing them, from this group or that. The groups then fight each other for crumbs rather than demand good and fair governance from the ruler.
We are people. We are Americans. We are Philadelphians. We are much more than our skin color or our last name. We are NOT primarily Latinos or Irish or African-American or Italian or Polish, and in 2010, it is insulting that Philadelphia politicians refuse, for their own convenience, to treat us as individuals who must be persuaded to vote for them rather than be manipulated to embrace our basest instincts.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
IRAN'S DESCENT INTO HELL
A few recent news items, blog entries and tweets from Iran give a flavor of the meltdown that is now occurring in this once-civilized nation:
***The price of bread has risen six fold as government subsidies were removed.
***The inflation rate is now 20%.
***Labor unrest is growing as workers cannot be paid.
***Last week, a Great-Depression-style bank run occurred, leading to rules limiting the amount that may be withdrawn from a bank account.
***The cost of electricity is about to quadruple.
Meanwhile, as the regime continues the rape, torture and murder of dissidents, it has reiterated last year’s fatwa banning all satellite dishes. In addition, one-fourth of the police have been fired and replaced with men from rural areas. It is believed these new police will be less reluctant to shoot at protesters in the streets.
While the fall of this hideous theocracy appears imminent, it may yet be able to hang on for months or even years, and as long as it does, it constitutes a continuing danger not only to its own citizens but also to the larger world.
The silence and inaction of the United States government is inexcusable. There are any number of things the Obama administration might do to hasten the end of the regime and foreshorten the ongoing bloodbath, but the very least of these is for Obama himself to publicly denounce the current government as thugs and murderers with no legitimate right to govern. As we learned in the early 1990’s, the unambiguous moral condemnation of Soviet communism, by John Paul II, Maggie Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, was an important element in the fall of the Soviet Union. This is one kind of war where words matter. To protesters longing for freedom, the knowledge there are decent people in the world who support them provides hope, and a sense of inevitability to their struggle. To the thugs and their police, the condemnation is a message that the world is watching and their crimes will no longer be overlooked.
Obama must speak out because taking the side of the Iranian people is the only moral thing to do. But there’s another reason as well---the theocracy WILL fall. Whether it happens tomorrow or next month or next year, the mullahs cannot survive for long. And no one can say what will emerge from the chaos. It is in our national interest to be on the side of the freedom-fighters now, because they will ultimately be the winners in this battle.
Copyright2010MichaelKubacki
***The price of bread has risen six fold as government subsidies were removed.
***The inflation rate is now 20%.
***Labor unrest is growing as workers cannot be paid.
***Last week, a Great-Depression-style bank run occurred, leading to rules limiting the amount that may be withdrawn from a bank account.
***The cost of electricity is about to quadruple.
Meanwhile, as the regime continues the rape, torture and murder of dissidents, it has reiterated last year’s fatwa banning all satellite dishes. In addition, one-fourth of the police have been fired and replaced with men from rural areas. It is believed these new police will be less reluctant to shoot at protesters in the streets.
While the fall of this hideous theocracy appears imminent, it may yet be able to hang on for months or even years, and as long as it does, it constitutes a continuing danger not only to its own citizens but also to the larger world.
The silence and inaction of the United States government is inexcusable. There are any number of things the Obama administration might do to hasten the end of the regime and foreshorten the ongoing bloodbath, but the very least of these is for Obama himself to publicly denounce the current government as thugs and murderers with no legitimate right to govern. As we learned in the early 1990’s, the unambiguous moral condemnation of Soviet communism, by John Paul II, Maggie Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, was an important element in the fall of the Soviet Union. This is one kind of war where words matter. To protesters longing for freedom, the knowledge there are decent people in the world who support them provides hope, and a sense of inevitability to their struggle. To the thugs and their police, the condemnation is a message that the world is watching and their crimes will no longer be overlooked.
Obama must speak out because taking the side of the Iranian people is the only moral thing to do. But there’s another reason as well---the theocracy WILL fall. Whether it happens tomorrow or next month or next year, the mullahs cannot survive for long. And no one can say what will emerge from the chaos. It is in our national interest to be on the side of the freedom-fighters now, because they will ultimately be the winners in this battle.
Copyright2010MichaelKubacki
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
WATERLOO
Scott Brown stressed two issues in his campaign, and they struck a chord with Massachusetts voters. First, of course, was his pledge to vote against Obamacare. The other issue, however, which got little attention in the national media, was his plain-spoken, unambiguous criticism of Obama’s conduct of the war. Brown opposes the closing of Guantanamo, opposes treating terrorists like criminals, and favors “enhanced interrogation techniques” including waterboarding.
The embrace of Scott Brown by the voters, and the rejection of Obama’s policies in one of our bluest states, gives hope to those of us who had begun to fear that nothing could stop this icy, arrogant president from dragging us into one catastrophe after another. When the news came that Brown had won, I thought of Winston Churchill’s words. “Americans will always do the right thing,” he said, “after they’ve exhausted all the alternatives.”
Copyright2010MichaelKubacki
The embrace of Scott Brown by the voters, and the rejection of Obama’s policies in one of our bluest states, gives hope to those of us who had begun to fear that nothing could stop this icy, arrogant president from dragging us into one catastrophe after another. When the news came that Brown had won, I thought of Winston Churchill’s words. “Americans will always do the right thing,” he said, “after they’ve exhausted all the alternatives.”
Copyright2010MichaelKubacki
Monday, January 18, 2010
HAITI RELIEF
Both France and Venezuela have charged the U.S. is “occupying” Haiti. Aid organizations from around the world are complaining that U.S. Marines have commandeered all the landing sites and won’t let them land. Looting is widespread in Port-au-Prince and anarchy reigns throughout the country.
There’s only one possible explanation for all these problems. Barack Obama hates black people.
Copyright2010MichaelKubacki
There’s only one possible explanation for all these problems. Barack Obama hates black people.
Copyright2010MichaelKubacki
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
AVATAR
If you’re looking for a comprehensive movie review, you won’t find it here. Avatar is not really the sort of movie for which a “movie review” is appropriate.
For one thing, you’ve seen it before. It was called Dances With Wolves or a dozen other things that used the same formulaic plot. An outcast from the dominant culture (almost always the evil white guys with big guns) goes to live with beautiful, pure, primitive, native people, becomes one of them, and then leads them in battle against his own (evil white guy) people. The movie has been made so often, the plot has a nickname: it’s called the White Messiah story.
Obviously, this is a heart-warming theme for the politically-correct lefties who make all the movies in Hollywood. As a bonus, you will get plenty of unsubtle dialogue that is somehow startlingly relevant to the actions and beliefs of the recent Bush/Cheney administration even though Avatar takes place on another planet in the 22nd Century. (Actually, the left-wing political cracks are so absurd and out of place that I wondered whether they were actually written by a conservative script-doctor who was trying to spoof what liberals would do with a movie like this.)
Yet, though the story and the dialogue and various bits of business along the way are profoundly silly, the very first words I said to the wife and child upon emerging from the theater were these: “Well, I certainly feel I got my $14 worth.”
And that, in a nutshell, is my review. Go. You won’t regret it. Fourteen smackers is cheap for the 3-D extravaganza awaiting you. The foliage alone on the planet Pandora is worth the trip to the theater, even in sub-freezing weather. (NOTE: there are movie palaces that lack the 3-D projection system to show Avatar, but they are showing it anyway. Shun them.)
But none of that is what I really wanted to talk about. I want to talk about the villain.
It’s a corporation, of course. The villain these days is always a corporation. In Avatar, it doesn’t even have a name. It’s simply known as “The Company,” which makes me suspect it’s actually the Vermont Teddy Bear Company. Whatever it is, it’s very evil. It’s major-league evil. It’s much more evil than the pharmaceutical company in “The Constant Gardener” that hired mercenaries and killers and started wars and intentionally gave lethal drugs to innocent Africans. It’s even eviler than Dynacorp, the evil corporation in the Terminator movies. The Company in Avatar is so evil that movie patrons (not just me) find themselves snickering at how utterly, unrepentantly, hideously evil it is.
It’s a problem for Hollywood. When the peanut gallery can’t take the villain seriously anymore, they need a new villain. But apparently, they can’t think of one.
It used to be that anybody could be a movie villain. Then Italians started complaining about being villains so, taking the path of least resistance, Hollywood decided Italians wouldn’t be used as villains anymore. Then black people complained, so they stopped being used as villains too. Then it was crazy people. Then it was homosexuals, and Hispanics, and Muslims. For a while, the only villains you saw were semi-unidentifiable, crypto-Eastern-European, post-Soviet gangster punks, but Vladimir Putin must have complained because you don’t see them anymore either. Eventually, the deep thinkers in Hollywood decided that it was just too dangerous for the bottom line to cast any sort of identifiable person as a villain, so the villainous corporation was born.
For a while, it was a novelty. It was entertaining. But when, in movie after movie, the evil corporation is always the villain, it becomes necessary to ratchet up the malevolence. If your villain is an evil corporation, you need it to be even more evil than the previous blockbuster’s evil corporation. And then the next guy’s movie has to feature a corporation even more monstrous than yours. And then you get The Company in Avatar, and the audience starts chuckling.
We all want to suspend our disbelief so we can enjoy the show, but there comes a time when you just can’t swallow it any longer. I mean, even if you think that corporations are bad and wrong and amoral and yes, EVIL, we all know that these undesirable qualities tend to manifest themselves in activities like stealing a competitor’s technology, or trying to monopolize a market, or maybe even bribing a public official. These things happen. On the other hand, murder, nuclear conflagration, genocide and world domination tend not to be featured in the mission statement, even at Halliburton.
Hollywood thus finds itself in a bind. They have no bad guys left except for the one remaining entity their politically-correct shibboleths allow them to defame, and they have made it into a laughingstock. They need a new idea for a villain, and there are millions of dollars waiting for the genius who comes up with it.
I suggest blondes.
Copyright2010MichaelKubacki
For one thing, you’ve seen it before. It was called Dances With Wolves or a dozen other things that used the same formulaic plot. An outcast from the dominant culture (almost always the evil white guys with big guns) goes to live with beautiful, pure, primitive, native people, becomes one of them, and then leads them in battle against his own (evil white guy) people. The movie has been made so often, the plot has a nickname: it’s called the White Messiah story.
Obviously, this is a heart-warming theme for the politically-correct lefties who make all the movies in Hollywood. As a bonus, you will get plenty of unsubtle dialogue that is somehow startlingly relevant to the actions and beliefs of the recent Bush/Cheney administration even though Avatar takes place on another planet in the 22nd Century. (Actually, the left-wing political cracks are so absurd and out of place that I wondered whether they were actually written by a conservative script-doctor who was trying to spoof what liberals would do with a movie like this.)
Yet, though the story and the dialogue and various bits of business along the way are profoundly silly, the very first words I said to the wife and child upon emerging from the theater were these: “Well, I certainly feel I got my $14 worth.”
And that, in a nutshell, is my review. Go. You won’t regret it. Fourteen smackers is cheap for the 3-D extravaganza awaiting you. The foliage alone on the planet Pandora is worth the trip to the theater, even in sub-freezing weather. (NOTE: there are movie palaces that lack the 3-D projection system to show Avatar, but they are showing it anyway. Shun them.)
But none of that is what I really wanted to talk about. I want to talk about the villain.
It’s a corporation, of course. The villain these days is always a corporation. In Avatar, it doesn’t even have a name. It’s simply known as “The Company,” which makes me suspect it’s actually the Vermont Teddy Bear Company. Whatever it is, it’s very evil. It’s major-league evil. It’s much more evil than the pharmaceutical company in “The Constant Gardener” that hired mercenaries and killers and started wars and intentionally gave lethal drugs to innocent Africans. It’s even eviler than Dynacorp, the evil corporation in the Terminator movies. The Company in Avatar is so evil that movie patrons (not just me) find themselves snickering at how utterly, unrepentantly, hideously evil it is.
It’s a problem for Hollywood. When the peanut gallery can’t take the villain seriously anymore, they need a new villain. But apparently, they can’t think of one.
It used to be that anybody could be a movie villain. Then Italians started complaining about being villains so, taking the path of least resistance, Hollywood decided Italians wouldn’t be used as villains anymore. Then black people complained, so they stopped being used as villains too. Then it was crazy people. Then it was homosexuals, and Hispanics, and Muslims. For a while, the only villains you saw were semi-unidentifiable, crypto-Eastern-European, post-Soviet gangster punks, but Vladimir Putin must have complained because you don’t see them anymore either. Eventually, the deep thinkers in Hollywood decided that it was just too dangerous for the bottom line to cast any sort of identifiable person as a villain, so the villainous corporation was born.
For a while, it was a novelty. It was entertaining. But when, in movie after movie, the evil corporation is always the villain, it becomes necessary to ratchet up the malevolence. If your villain is an evil corporation, you need it to be even more evil than the previous blockbuster’s evil corporation. And then the next guy’s movie has to feature a corporation even more monstrous than yours. And then you get The Company in Avatar, and the audience starts chuckling.
We all want to suspend our disbelief so we can enjoy the show, but there comes a time when you just can’t swallow it any longer. I mean, even if you think that corporations are bad and wrong and amoral and yes, EVIL, we all know that these undesirable qualities tend to manifest themselves in activities like stealing a competitor’s technology, or trying to monopolize a market, or maybe even bribing a public official. These things happen. On the other hand, murder, nuclear conflagration, genocide and world domination tend not to be featured in the mission statement, even at Halliburton.
Hollywood thus finds itself in a bind. They have no bad guys left except for the one remaining entity their politically-correct shibboleths allow them to defame, and they have made it into a laughingstock. They need a new idea for a villain, and there are millions of dollars waiting for the genius who comes up with it.
I suggest blondes.
Copyright2010MichaelKubacki
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
THE PANTY BOMBER
There’s not much I can say about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab that hasn’t been said already. He paid for his ticket in cash, he had no luggage on a transatlantic flight, he was a 23-year-old Muslim who had recently spent a lot of time in Yemen, and his daddy (a prominent banker and diplomat in both London and Nigeria) had warned the State Department that his kid had become a dangerous radical. Yet somehow he was allowed to fly from Lagos to Amsterdam to Detroit without anyone questioning his bona fides.
And you can’t take a tube of toothpaste in your carry-on.
In response to this incident, no one can go to the potty or read a book during the last hour of international flights into America. In addition, Joan Rivers got kicked off a flight from Costa Rica to Newark as a security risk and Michael Yon (America’s most respected war correspondent), got led off in handcuffs today at the Seattle airport.
I wrote about airport security four years ago, when it was a joke. (See here.) And now it’s worse. After billions spent on the TSA, do any of us have any confidence in these people? I mean, if the joint efforts of the TSA, Homeland Security and the State Department couldn’t stop Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a guy who practically had “TERRORIST” tattooed on his forehead, what’s the point of spending more billions on the TSA and making plane travel even more annoying for the rest of us? Why bother?
The only people you can count on, as Flight #253 proved yet again, are your fellow passengers. So why not empower them? I reiterate my suggestion from four years ago, originally voiced by Archie Bunker himself. People with concealed carry permits, cops, security guards---anyone who is normally permitted to possess a handgun---should be encouraged to take it on the plane. The pilot would be informed, he would have a look at you, and if he didn’t like what he saw, your piece would ride with him. But every flight would have armed citizens on it, and that would be the end of the problem.
Copyright2010MichaelKubacki
And you can’t take a tube of toothpaste in your carry-on.
In response to this incident, no one can go to the potty or read a book during the last hour of international flights into America. In addition, Joan Rivers got kicked off a flight from Costa Rica to Newark as a security risk and Michael Yon (America’s most respected war correspondent), got led off in handcuffs today at the Seattle airport.
I wrote about airport security four years ago, when it was a joke. (See here.) And now it’s worse. After billions spent on the TSA, do any of us have any confidence in these people? I mean, if the joint efforts of the TSA, Homeland Security and the State Department couldn’t stop Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a guy who practically had “TERRORIST” tattooed on his forehead, what’s the point of spending more billions on the TSA and making plane travel even more annoying for the rest of us? Why bother?
The only people you can count on, as Flight #253 proved yet again, are your fellow passengers. So why not empower them? I reiterate my suggestion from four years ago, originally voiced by Archie Bunker himself. People with concealed carry permits, cops, security guards---anyone who is normally permitted to possess a handgun---should be encouraged to take it on the plane. The pilot would be informed, he would have a look at you, and if he didn’t like what he saw, your piece would ride with him. But every flight would have armed citizens on it, and that would be the end of the problem.
Copyright2010MichaelKubacki
Monday, January 4, 2010
PUTTING A HAPPY FACE ON SLAVERY
I finally crossed paths with Michael Coard, a prominent Philadelphia lawyer and black activist. I listened to him for years on WHAT (which doesn't exist anymore), where he dispensed legal advice to all comers on a wide array of legal topics. For a lawyer, this is a sort of circus trick. It is not at all an easy thing to do, and there was never a time in my legal career when I could have done it. Yet he was able to impart something useful to every caller, and all of it was delivered in an utterly humorless and pedantic monotone that was so humorless and so pedantic and so monotonic that I couldn't help but be entertained by him.
Mr. Coard was one stop on a walking tour in the Independence Hall area of various sites relating to George Washington. His venue was the archeological lab that had been overwhelmed with artifacts from the excavations for the Constitution Center. In particular, he was interested in the slave quarters at the "First White House," where Washington had lived during his two terms as president.
And that, among all the history to be found in old Philadelphia, was the only thing that interested him. He made this point crystal clear to us several times in several different ways. As a child, he said, he had been brought to the area on school trips and had witnessed the excitement of his white classmates as they learned about the heroes of the American Revolution, but it had meant nothing to him. Paine, Jefferson, Franklin, Washington---all of it was irrelevant to black people, he told us. He is the kind of speaker who will pick out a word and repeat it a number of times to ram it home for the listener. "Irrelevant" was the word he chose for us day-trippers. It was irrelevant to him as a child and it was irrelevant to him as an adult.
We got fifteen minutes of the humorless and pedantic monotone I had come to love on the radio, but it wasn't quite so entertaining this time, partly because there wasn't any history in it, and that's what we were there for. Instead, it was the tale of Mr. Coard organizing his Avenging The Ancestors Coalition and confronting the Park Service, and the negotiations over what would be done with the slave quarters at the house where Washington lived. And this was all that mattered to Mr. Coard, even now. Not even his close acquaintanceship with the historic buildings and monuments and historians and guides over the past few years, had changed his view that the birth of the nation, the drafting of the Declaration and the Constitution---all of it was "irrelevant" because it had been done by people whose skin color was different from his own. The people who swept Washington's floor and cooked his food were the only ones who mattered to him, because they were black slaves.
Now, we all know that slavery existed before 1776 and for the first eighty-five years of this country's existence. Fine. But what do we really need to know about Washington's cook in order to understand the inspiring and dangerous path of the founding fathers in building this country and creating the free society we have today? What possible significance does this have? There was probably a very nice German woman who made Beethoven an omelet every morning and sewed buttons on his shirts, but who cares? Does Michael Coard? And what about the guy who cut Einstein's grass?
All of us have met a Michael Coard, or someone like him, and I expect most people feel sorry for guys like this. I know I do. After all, not every little black boy on a school trip to Independence Hall feels the way he did. Most, I'm sure, get the same whiff of the heroism and love of freedom that I did when I went there as a kid. The message is an easy one for a kid to understand, isn't it? This is your country and this is how it started, in idealism and bravery and selfless devotion to a dream of human rights that no country had ever dreamed before.
So why did little Michael Coard find all this "irrelevant"? Well, somebody had to teach him to think that, didn't they? A parent? An uncle? Somebody had to sit him down when he was four or five or six and say, "Listen, Michael. You're black. You're screwed. They're all against you out there. They hate you. White people hate you because you're black, and they always will. You're a stranger here, in a land run by white people, and you're different, and they will NEVER let you succeed."
And look at the result. Michael Coard grew up in America, went to good schools, became a successful lawyer at an important Philly law firm, hosts a radio show, and is welcomed at the table when the movers and shakers in this town get together. Among the planet's inhabitants, he is firmly situated in the top 1% of humans in terms of wealth, power, and education. Yet his skin color remains the only prism through which he can view the world. Despite the evidence all around him, despite the evidence of his own life, he is convinced there is something grievously wrong with the fundamental structure of American society. And there is nothing that could happen at this point to change his perspective.
In the recent presidential campaign, commenting on her husband's success, Michelle Obama said, "For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country." Mrs. Obama is 45 years old, which means her adult life began around 1982, and there was nothing for her to be proud of for those 26 years between 1982 and 2008. Nothing, until a black man (her husband), ran for president.
Well, let's see. American entrepreneurs built an unimagined new world of information, computing and technology. No, nothing to be proud of there. Life-saving drugs and medical procedures developed in American labs? Guess not. Well, how about the fall of the Soviet Union, the most vicious and efficient killing machine in the history of civilization? We had something to do with that, didn't we? Still, I guess it's nothing you can really be proud of. Billions to fight disease in Africa? Rescuing the world's victims from earthquakes and tsunamis? Welcoming refugees from around the world? Freeing 100 million people from the sadistic rule of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein? Oops, sorry---I guess that's something we're really not proud of.
Which explains why this Princeton- and Harvard-educated lawyer, who has had a succession of high-profile legal jobs and whose husband was about to be elected president, believed there is something grievously wrong with the fundamental structure of American society.
I believe it was 1989 when Ricky Henderson reported to Spring training with the Yankees, where he was scheduled to play the season for $2 million. He was not happy about it. It was the last year of a multi-year contract he had signed with New York, and with baseball money exploding over the previous few years, he felt he was "underpaid" because lesser lights would be getting more money than he was, at least for the 1989 season. But he had signed his contract when $2 million had sounded like a lot of money, and he was stuck with it. And he was pissed. And he let everybody know it.
Now, there are always plenty of people who will tell you athletes are paid too much money. "Millions to play a kids' game!" they cry. We could use all that money to cure cancer or rebuild the levees in New Orleans or fight cyber-bullying, or something.
I'm not those people. I'm more of a free market guy. In fact, I think the people who say that sort of thing are communists, whether they know it or not. So I don't begrudge athletes for making $2 million or $20 million or $200 million. On the other hand, if you are making $2 million to play baseball for the New York Yankees, there is a simple rule I apply to your behavior: DON'T BITCH ABOUT IT!
Which pretty much summarizes my feelings about both Michael Coard and Michelle Obama. God bless them, I say, for their elite educational opportunities and what they have made of them. They worked for their wealth and power and celebrity, and I want them to enjoy it. It's good for everybody in America that such success is possible; let's never forget there are people in other parts of the world who are screwed from the get-go no matter what they do. Eat at the best restaurants, guys. Vacation in the Caribbean. And don't skimp on the grooming products. Just don't bitch about it.
Please note---I'm not asking anyone to put a flag pin on his lapel. I'm not suggesting Michael Coard should attend 4th of July celebrations and put his hand on his heart when they play the Star-Spangled Banner. All I am saying is that if you are Michael Coard or Michelle Obama (or any number of other people), and you cannot see that the lofty perch you enjoy in life is at least partly attributable to the circumstances of your birth and the values of the nation you live in, there is a fundamental flaw in your character. If, in a public forum, you are unable to refrain from expressing contempt for the American experiment, then you need to step back and think about your life for a minute or two. Admittedly, there was a form of child abuse at work here, by the elders who told little Michael and little Michelle their lives were hopeless, but that cannot absolve them of all responsibility for their attitudes. People recover from child abuse, and whether they can or not, they should try. Others certainly have been exposed to the same mantra of victimhood and have managed to reject it.
Slavery was not the major focus of our history walk, but it was a focus. It came up several times, and always with the semi-apologetic undergirding that seems to represent the politically-correct default position for white folks on the issue of slavery. The founding fathers were all profoundly evil, of course, and they're probably burning in hell, and we are all tainted with their immutable sins, but.... And then the guide will mention, in a hushed tone, that Washington freed his slaves upon his death, or that Robert Morris only traded slaves for a short time, or that some laws made freeing slaves a criminal offense. Not that anything can excuse the perfidy of our forebears, of course, but we're historians here, you see, so we're allowed to provide a thing us historians call "context," so long as we only whisper it. Because if we say it any louder, you see, it might hurt the feelings of the "victims."
I can't think of any other area where this judge-the-past-by-the-present standard of historical thinking is applied. Typically, when we view the progress of civilization, we see just that: progress. Let’s take a simple example. According to Black's Law Dictionary, the punishment for poison-murder in 13th-Century England was boiling. Couldn't have been that pleasant for the poor bastards, but we don't do that anymore, and I say good for us. I'm happy about it. Let’s slap a happy face on the way we deal with murderers who poison their victims. We’ve come a long way from boiling. Now we put them in prison and give them cable TV. Good for us!
I feel the same way about the oppression of women. Let the little darlings vote, I say, and drink in bars and own property and have jobs and drive cars. What the hell? It's progress! Let's slap a happy face on the whole "women as chattel" thing. We don't do that anymore. We don't kill defective infants either! More progress. More happy faces! We all feel good that civilization (at least Western civilization) has moved on from practices that today seem barbaric. None of us rend our garments and howl with grief over the brutish world inhabited by our ancestors because we don’t live in that world. We don’t work sixteen hours a day just to get enough food to make it to the next day. Instead, we work four hours a day, often on the internet, then go to the gym, then wash down our linguini and fava beans with a nice chianti. The knowledge that our past was so ugly is a source of happiness. Isn't it wonderful we don't live like that?
Well, I want to put a happy face on slavery too. Why not? After all, America did not invent slavery, which has existed in every culture, among every race and every ethnic group, since the beginning of time. What America invented, along with other Western liberal democracies, was the idea that slavery should be abolished. Good for us. Boiling murderers? A thing of the past. Oppression of women? Oh, that is so early 20th Century. And slavery? Well, it's over, you see. It still exists in plenty of nasty hellholes around the world, but we've moved on. We put a happy face on it 150 years ago.
This is the approach we take regarding every other artifact of the muck we crawled out of, so why not be proud of the history of slavery in America as well? After all, the only purpose of the apologetic political correctness around the issue is to placate the Michael Coards of the world, AND THEY CANNOT BE PLACATED. Mr. Coard et al. don't care about slavery anyway, only about their personal, imagined, seven-generations-removed victimization by it. If they had any real interest in slavery itself, there are tens of millions of slaves, in a hundred countries THAT ARE NOT AMERICA, who might benefit from their concern. But today’s slaves don't seem to interest folks like Mr. Coard or Mrs. Obama. Nor does it interest the Congressional Black Caucus, for that matter, or President Obama. For the left, real slavery is purely a t-shirt/bumper-sticker/website cause, like the Free Tibet movement.
Copyright2010MichaelKubacki
Mr. Coard was one stop on a walking tour in the Independence Hall area of various sites relating to George Washington. His venue was the archeological lab that had been overwhelmed with artifacts from the excavations for the Constitution Center. In particular, he was interested in the slave quarters at the "First White House," where Washington had lived during his two terms as president.
And that, among all the history to be found in old Philadelphia, was the only thing that interested him. He made this point crystal clear to us several times in several different ways. As a child, he said, he had been brought to the area on school trips and had witnessed the excitement of his white classmates as they learned about the heroes of the American Revolution, but it had meant nothing to him. Paine, Jefferson, Franklin, Washington---all of it was irrelevant to black people, he told us. He is the kind of speaker who will pick out a word and repeat it a number of times to ram it home for the listener. "Irrelevant" was the word he chose for us day-trippers. It was irrelevant to him as a child and it was irrelevant to him as an adult.
We got fifteen minutes of the humorless and pedantic monotone I had come to love on the radio, but it wasn't quite so entertaining this time, partly because there wasn't any history in it, and that's what we were there for. Instead, it was the tale of Mr. Coard organizing his Avenging The Ancestors Coalition and confronting the Park Service, and the negotiations over what would be done with the slave quarters at the house where Washington lived. And this was all that mattered to Mr. Coard, even now. Not even his close acquaintanceship with the historic buildings and monuments and historians and guides over the past few years, had changed his view that the birth of the nation, the drafting of the Declaration and the Constitution---all of it was "irrelevant" because it had been done by people whose skin color was different from his own. The people who swept Washington's floor and cooked his food were the only ones who mattered to him, because they were black slaves.
Now, we all know that slavery existed before 1776 and for the first eighty-five years of this country's existence. Fine. But what do we really need to know about Washington's cook in order to understand the inspiring and dangerous path of the founding fathers in building this country and creating the free society we have today? What possible significance does this have? There was probably a very nice German woman who made Beethoven an omelet every morning and sewed buttons on his shirts, but who cares? Does Michael Coard? And what about the guy who cut Einstein's grass?
All of us have met a Michael Coard, or someone like him, and I expect most people feel sorry for guys like this. I know I do. After all, not every little black boy on a school trip to Independence Hall feels the way he did. Most, I'm sure, get the same whiff of the heroism and love of freedom that I did when I went there as a kid. The message is an easy one for a kid to understand, isn't it? This is your country and this is how it started, in idealism and bravery and selfless devotion to a dream of human rights that no country had ever dreamed before.
So why did little Michael Coard find all this "irrelevant"? Well, somebody had to teach him to think that, didn't they? A parent? An uncle? Somebody had to sit him down when he was four or five or six and say, "Listen, Michael. You're black. You're screwed. They're all against you out there. They hate you. White people hate you because you're black, and they always will. You're a stranger here, in a land run by white people, and you're different, and they will NEVER let you succeed."
And look at the result. Michael Coard grew up in America, went to good schools, became a successful lawyer at an important Philly law firm, hosts a radio show, and is welcomed at the table when the movers and shakers in this town get together. Among the planet's inhabitants, he is firmly situated in the top 1% of humans in terms of wealth, power, and education. Yet his skin color remains the only prism through which he can view the world. Despite the evidence all around him, despite the evidence of his own life, he is convinced there is something grievously wrong with the fundamental structure of American society. And there is nothing that could happen at this point to change his perspective.
In the recent presidential campaign, commenting on her husband's success, Michelle Obama said, "For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country." Mrs. Obama is 45 years old, which means her adult life began around 1982, and there was nothing for her to be proud of for those 26 years between 1982 and 2008. Nothing, until a black man (her husband), ran for president.
Well, let's see. American entrepreneurs built an unimagined new world of information, computing and technology. No, nothing to be proud of there. Life-saving drugs and medical procedures developed in American labs? Guess not. Well, how about the fall of the Soviet Union, the most vicious and efficient killing machine in the history of civilization? We had something to do with that, didn't we? Still, I guess it's nothing you can really be proud of. Billions to fight disease in Africa? Rescuing the world's victims from earthquakes and tsunamis? Welcoming refugees from around the world? Freeing 100 million people from the sadistic rule of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein? Oops, sorry---I guess that's something we're really not proud of.
Which explains why this Princeton- and Harvard-educated lawyer, who has had a succession of high-profile legal jobs and whose husband was about to be elected president, believed there is something grievously wrong with the fundamental structure of American society.
I believe it was 1989 when Ricky Henderson reported to Spring training with the Yankees, where he was scheduled to play the season for $2 million. He was not happy about it. It was the last year of a multi-year contract he had signed with New York, and with baseball money exploding over the previous few years, he felt he was "underpaid" because lesser lights would be getting more money than he was, at least for the 1989 season. But he had signed his contract when $2 million had sounded like a lot of money, and he was stuck with it. And he was pissed. And he let everybody know it.
Now, there are always plenty of people who will tell you athletes are paid too much money. "Millions to play a kids' game!" they cry. We could use all that money to cure cancer or rebuild the levees in New Orleans or fight cyber-bullying, or something.
I'm not those people. I'm more of a free market guy. In fact, I think the people who say that sort of thing are communists, whether they know it or not. So I don't begrudge athletes for making $2 million or $20 million or $200 million. On the other hand, if you are making $2 million to play baseball for the New York Yankees, there is a simple rule I apply to your behavior: DON'T BITCH ABOUT IT!
Which pretty much summarizes my feelings about both Michael Coard and Michelle Obama. God bless them, I say, for their elite educational opportunities and what they have made of them. They worked for their wealth and power and celebrity, and I want them to enjoy it. It's good for everybody in America that such success is possible; let's never forget there are people in other parts of the world who are screwed from the get-go no matter what they do. Eat at the best restaurants, guys. Vacation in the Caribbean. And don't skimp on the grooming products. Just don't bitch about it.
Please note---I'm not asking anyone to put a flag pin on his lapel. I'm not suggesting Michael Coard should attend 4th of July celebrations and put his hand on his heart when they play the Star-Spangled Banner. All I am saying is that if you are Michael Coard or Michelle Obama (or any number of other people), and you cannot see that the lofty perch you enjoy in life is at least partly attributable to the circumstances of your birth and the values of the nation you live in, there is a fundamental flaw in your character. If, in a public forum, you are unable to refrain from expressing contempt for the American experiment, then you need to step back and think about your life for a minute or two. Admittedly, there was a form of child abuse at work here, by the elders who told little Michael and little Michelle their lives were hopeless, but that cannot absolve them of all responsibility for their attitudes. People recover from child abuse, and whether they can or not, they should try. Others certainly have been exposed to the same mantra of victimhood and have managed to reject it.
Slavery was not the major focus of our history walk, but it was a focus. It came up several times, and always with the semi-apologetic undergirding that seems to represent the politically-correct default position for white folks on the issue of slavery. The founding fathers were all profoundly evil, of course, and they're probably burning in hell, and we are all tainted with their immutable sins, but.... And then the guide will mention, in a hushed tone, that Washington freed his slaves upon his death, or that Robert Morris only traded slaves for a short time, or that some laws made freeing slaves a criminal offense. Not that anything can excuse the perfidy of our forebears, of course, but we're historians here, you see, so we're allowed to provide a thing us historians call "context," so long as we only whisper it. Because if we say it any louder, you see, it might hurt the feelings of the "victims."
I can't think of any other area where this judge-the-past-by-the-present standard of historical thinking is applied. Typically, when we view the progress of civilization, we see just that: progress. Let’s take a simple example. According to Black's Law Dictionary, the punishment for poison-murder in 13th-Century England was boiling. Couldn't have been that pleasant for the poor bastards, but we don't do that anymore, and I say good for us. I'm happy about it. Let’s slap a happy face on the way we deal with murderers who poison their victims. We’ve come a long way from boiling. Now we put them in prison and give them cable TV. Good for us!
I feel the same way about the oppression of women. Let the little darlings vote, I say, and drink in bars and own property and have jobs and drive cars. What the hell? It's progress! Let's slap a happy face on the whole "women as chattel" thing. We don't do that anymore. We don't kill defective infants either! More progress. More happy faces! We all feel good that civilization (at least Western civilization) has moved on from practices that today seem barbaric. None of us rend our garments and howl with grief over the brutish world inhabited by our ancestors because we don’t live in that world. We don’t work sixteen hours a day just to get enough food to make it to the next day. Instead, we work four hours a day, often on the internet, then go to the gym, then wash down our linguini and fava beans with a nice chianti. The knowledge that our past was so ugly is a source of happiness. Isn't it wonderful we don't live like that?
Well, I want to put a happy face on slavery too. Why not? After all, America did not invent slavery, which has existed in every culture, among every race and every ethnic group, since the beginning of time. What America invented, along with other Western liberal democracies, was the idea that slavery should be abolished. Good for us. Boiling murderers? A thing of the past. Oppression of women? Oh, that is so early 20th Century. And slavery? Well, it's over, you see. It still exists in plenty of nasty hellholes around the world, but we've moved on. We put a happy face on it 150 years ago.
This is the approach we take regarding every other artifact of the muck we crawled out of, so why not be proud of the history of slavery in America as well? After all, the only purpose of the apologetic political correctness around the issue is to placate the Michael Coards of the world, AND THEY CANNOT BE PLACATED. Mr. Coard et al. don't care about slavery anyway, only about their personal, imagined, seven-generations-removed victimization by it. If they had any real interest in slavery itself, there are tens of millions of slaves, in a hundred countries THAT ARE NOT AMERICA, who might benefit from their concern. But today’s slaves don't seem to interest folks like Mr. Coard or Mrs. Obama. Nor does it interest the Congressional Black Caucus, for that matter, or President Obama. For the left, real slavery is purely a t-shirt/bumper-sticker/website cause, like the Free Tibet movement.
Copyright2010MichaelKubacki
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