A Holy Mess

The Roman Catholic Church, in this post-Easter season, ledby a
    new and promising pope, should declare a world-wide Year of
    Mourning for all children abused by priests and others. 

    During this time, it would be wise to remove all those guilty of   such crimes, release their names, and place all relevant Church sanctions against them while providing secular law enforcement with information helpful to prosecution for civil crimes. This will allow, following a year of Confessional services, a fresh and important start for  Catholicism and for religion in general throughout the world.

 This is a time when one may make the mistake of a fatal pause so as not to offend friends, acquaintances and society at large, or risk a reputation for tolerance and even-handedness when dealing with the faults of others.
    Especially is this so in the matter of religion where, in the Western world, Christians have so often turned into lions and devoured their enemies and competitors, both real and perceived.
    To be sure, the sins of recent decades that have been documented within the Roman Church have been pervasive throughout Protestantism and its many sects. Any religious movement, mainstream or minimal, has been guilty of like moral and social transgressions.
    The Catholic Church claims 1.1 billion adherents world-wide. In the U.S., there are far more within its communion than the top ten Protestant denominations combined. It is also hard for Protestants and other sects to admit that the Roman institution is the pace-setter in so many religious endeavors, both for good and for ill.
    The child of one Catholic parent, I have no brief against Catholicism or its followers. When I entered the Protestant ministry my father assumed I would wish or insist that he follow me into my denomination as a matter of familial and emotional support. I knew that he remained Catholic more than anything, regardless of his estrangement from it since the Mexican Revolution of the early 20th century when the Church there sided with the government and the wealthy landowners against the oppressed and poverty-stricken laborers.
    Indeed, he came to this country to start over following that conflict and was loathe thereafter to enter the doors of a cathedral. At the time of my ministerial decision, he softened considerably, leading to his suggestion that he follow me in my religious direction. In a moment of mutual reflection, I was sure that in his own heart his place was in the Church of his youth and family and, if so, I would accompany him to meet the local priest and begin his restoration to that faith. He did return to its fold and at his death was buried following the appropriate Mass in his name.
    I say this to defend myself against accusations, sure to come, that I have animus toward a faith that is not my own. I have deep appreciation for the rituals and practices of Catholicism; Protestantism is a faith largely of words–hence the centrality of pulpits in its chancels. Catholicism touches the emotional and unspoken in human experience via the sacraments and the Mass itself.
    But the Church and its considerable weight is in all our faces regardless of religious preference; it fills news reports at any given time; and lesser congregations in smaller communities know all too well how that weight affects their lives and social standing.
    In my own religious studies, I have followed the Catholic Church’s history and stayed current with its affairs since the early 1960s. I remember well another pope of great promise, Angelo Guiseppe Roncalli, who became Pope John XXIII–the one who “opened the windows of the Church and let in the fresh air.” He convened the Vatican Council that made people of all faiths hope again that its vast institution would begin leading the world of faith to be what it was called to be.
    I followed also the career of Joseph Ratzinger who in time became Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith–the direct descendant of the infamous Roman Inquisition of the mid-second millenium. I followed as well his efforts to dismantle the legacy of John XXIII with stunning effectiveness until recent times when one could hardly recognize it except for overt symbolisms such as priests facing congregations during masses. It is painful to say so, but by the time he became Pope Benedict XVI, he was effectively the Dick Cheney of the Church–the one behind the scenes who wielded far more influence that was deserved, in the interests of the institution.
    Before his accession to the papacy, Ratzinger also singularly held all the information regarding the disgraceful actions of abusive priests and higher-ups, which gave him additional power that calls to mind the FBI’s infamous J. Edgar Hoover and his hold on countless persons in crucial positions.
    Make no mistake, Benedict was the choice of Pope John Paul II, his predecessor. Both knew the devastating effects of the child abuse scandal, what they had failed to do to correct it, and how it could bring down the entire Roman hierarchy. It has been Benedict who has tried to hasten the elevation of John Paul II to sainthood to pre-empt the stain on his reputation. But the tentacles of the scandal could only embrace Benedict as well, even more so.
    And this is the back-story to Benedict’s resignation: there was no way he could shake the looming cloud except to step down and pray that his own successor might protect his memory as well. It is not altogether clear that this will come about during the papacy of Francis, who seems to have his own mind regarding the role and direction of the Church.
    Francis has begun well, with an abundance of symbolic moves and postures that indicate a change in direction. But popes, like U.S. presidents, have not as much power as we may think or wish. Francis will have to move quickly to mount a trend that can withstand the forces that will assail him within the Vatican and from among the backward and conservative Cardinals, the preponderance of whom were appointed by the prior two popes.
    John XXIII made the ingenious move of calling the famous Council of the 1960s and setting its agenda. Indeed, once in motion, it was temporarily unstoppable and cut a wide swath that would have been even wider and deeper save for the death of that pontiff. That is when Ratzinger and his retrogressive cohorts moved to reverse the gains so dearly made.
    One can only imagine how far that perverse influence may have gone beyond even our times, had not fate, or God(?), intervened with the child abuse scandal that would not die.
    If Francis can mount a new revolution and live long enough to see it through, we and the world could see the rebirth of the Roman Church as a leading edge of a Christianity whose work in the world may be far from done.
    Any moves to flush out and rid the Church of the disobedient priests must include investigation and revelation of the sins of both John Paul II and Benedict XVI–as well as Cardinal Bernard Law, who was by no means “banished” to Rome as many think, but as a means of escape from his considerable sins and legal liability in the American scandal, and from whence he lives in wealth and splendor as priest of a major “Chapel” in the shadow of the Vatican.
    Until such impediments are removed from the face and soul of the Catholic Church, redemption cannot come. And God knows, they, and we all, need it, so that if religion is to mean anything again it will begin with that oldest and (formerly) grandest of Christian expressions.
    Otherwise, this will be a Holy Mess without end. And who wants that?    

English: Pope Benedict XVI (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

LET’S SEE: THIS MONTH IS…

    …Black History Month or, what white folks call, “February.”
    Few persons use this time to find out things they don’t know. What was Jim Crow? Who was Frederick Douglass? How on earth did this country, “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” come so soon to tolerate slavery? Does anybody read a book anymore?
    Some people still think blacks should stop whining and thinking they see racism everywhere; after all, wasn’t there an Emancipation Proclamation, and a war to defend it? And just to re-make the point, didn’t we have a Civil Rights movement a hundred years later? What escapes them is why, indeed, we had to re-make the point a century after.
    My previous blog post was on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (“Long Live The King), regarding my experiences, with three young black men, all members of the NAACP, on our way to Atlanta for the King funeral in 1968, with harrowing excursions into Baltimore and a dead-of-night Virginia countryside.
    Let me that on our return to Pennsylvania, people found our reports hard to believe: they believed first, and only, the media and even then harbored suspicions.
    Of course Southerners like me knew and understood because we were, and are, used to racism as a thing writ large, having seen beatings or knew even of lynchings, right up to mid-20th century America.
    Northerners seemed not acquainted with racism up close. They were still surprised, when King marched in Chicago, that all those adorable fonzies turned out to pelt him with rocks, bricks and bottles. But that’s why King went there–otherwise Chicagoans would have denied their racism.
    Such has been my experience since migrating north many years ago. People knew of early segregation in Boston and the whole ugly integration-and-busing controversy, but few knew the face of racism up front and personal.
    As a young clergyman in Missouri, and not far from my own hometown, my very suggestion of a pulpit exchange with a black minister for a single Sunday–after the church board had approved it–occasioned my being met on the street and in public buildings with a hail of fists and spittle, including by members of my congregation.
    A clergyman newly arrived was always met with instant respect, and could risk that only by gross betrayal. Preaching racial equality was such a betrayal and you had to see to believe the change in faces that go from friendly to the hardest cast of expression imaginable.
    Local threats to burn the church finally induced the elders to revoke my invitation to the black minister. I suggested that if it burned we would wear such disgrace like a badge of honor, for there could be no denial of what our town was really like. To no avail: hearts went out to the lovable old building, though a visit several years later found it filled with junk and replaced by a new, flat, tasteless place of worship in another part of town.
    This is not to say that all the town was racist, but better people allowed it to happen–viz, the truism that evil triumphs when good people do nothing.
    Racism is a deep and insidious sickness of the human heart and soul. When I heard, after the church bombing in Birmingham in the 60s, some northerners say that the perpetrators must have regretted that children were victims, I could but marvel. That kind of racist absolutely doesn’t care. They believe that “little ones turn into big ones” and the age and time of their demise is of little consequence.
    During this month, among my reading is the autobiography of Frederick Douglass. Though brief, it is more than instructive of a way of life that really wasn’t all that long ago. If you read nothing else, read that, and remember.
    I have walked my local Ward with petitions and each time have been surprised how many black persons live nearby. One always spoke with me through a crack in the door, her face not showing. To all of them I said that I was delighted to have them as neighbors and wished I saw them more frequently on our streets and downtown.
    Then I remembered: regardless of all that we think has changed, racism hasn’t gotten up on little hind legs and walked away. We need to assure our African American neighbors that they are at home in our town.
    If they don’t feel that way, whose fault is that? After all, it’s easy for us to forget, but not for them.

Long Live the King

English: Dr. Martin Luther King giving his “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington in Washington, D.C., on 28 August 1963. Español: Dr. Martin Luther King dando su discurso “Yo tengo un sueño” durante la Marcha sobre Washington por el trabajo y la libertad en Washington, D.C., 28 de agosto de 1963. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

    January’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day ushers in February, the newer incarnation of which is Black History Month. Both are times that memories flood my mind.
    During the last year of Martin Luther King’s life, I was vice president and Housing chairman of a Pennsylvania branch of the NAACP. With influence far beyond our few numbers we negotiated many issues with city leaders who assumed we were hordes of angry black people ready to threaten the peace at any provocation.
    What the city fathers didn’t know, or deign to find out, was that whites were among our active members. When asked to serve as president, as a Mexican-American, I felt African Americans should always lead that distinguished movement at all levels.

                                             Baltimore 1968          
    When King, Jr. was assassinated, a delegation of four headed to Atlanta for the memorial–three young black officers and me. We took my car late at night, one of my companions drove while I slept in a back seat till the driver mistakenly drove off the interstate and into Baltimore, which was under strict curfew and resembled a ghost town. As owner of the car I retook the wheel to try and find quick exit from the city, but my first turn took us headlong into a phalanx of Baltimore’s finest, who surrounded us but pulled only me from the auto.
    Blacks were, and are, used to abusive police treatment. Ironically, the police didn’t know what to do with me. We learned later that many areas were under orders to avoid mistreatment of blacks lest it incite more riots. At first I was assumed to be white, another irony that could have been worse for me, but one of the men in blue wasn’t so sure.
    Shoved firmly again the car, I took a barrage of repeated questions while title and registration were checked. All my responses were made quietly and I avoided vociferously demanding “my rights,” to avoid an emotional reaction on the part of law enforcement. I was asked if my surname were African and I repeatedly said I was a person of color, and left them to figure it out from there.
    From the blare of police radio reports, more urgent incidents elsewhere were deemed more threatening than we were. Finally the officer in charge ordered me back in the car and barked rapid-fire directions that none of us could understand or remember; told us to get out of Baltimore and, if found again, we would be subject to arrest.
    The rest was like a movie: finding ourselves quickly lost again, we saw that the broad, empty city avenues had at every few corners a sole armed policeman with a dog. I drove the middle of the streets while the passenger seat occupant asked for the nearest highway exit. Perhaps unthinking, the solitary sentry gave clear directions while we roared off and he yelled orders for us to stop. A couple of quick turns brought us to the interstate exit–but the “up” ramp was blocked. Terrified, we hung onto our seats as I sped up the down ramp.
    But a convoy of National Guardsmen appeared and came right at us on their way into the city. Everything happened so fast: I pulled to one side of the ramp at high speed, right tires off the pavement, and we flew past the sleepy-eyed faces of Guardsmen deployed from home in the mid of night.
    On the interstate again, there were no other cars at the moment, but we were speeding south on north-bound lanes–daring not to go north and have to take an exit again–and had to cross the median before we were caught going the wrong way. In most places, the median was too deep to cross and elsewhere not shallow enough to chance a crossing. But as a few headlights appeared in the distance, we felt little choice: again we held tight and went flying towards the other lanes, wheel treads biting into whatever ground was solid enough to keep our momentum.
    Safely back on our way, no one said a word for several miles, till one of my black colleagues said, “You sure know how to ‘talk soft’ to policemen, don’t you?” and we all burst into loud, nervous laughter.

                            Virginia–and On to Atlanta
    Thereafter the trip included a risky mid-of-night stop at a black farm home in the Virginia countryside, childhood home of one of our quartet, where remaining family had waited up for us, warm food at the ready. They were so proud of their son’s involvement in the King-led struggle for equality, and smiles were all around. I had not known of this planned detour but it began to grow on me that this could become a desperate situation: if anyone–anyone– white had seen us on the way in, things could take a terrible turn, only because I might be mistaken for a white man.
    Anyone who knows of the fate of the three young whites who had been killed and buried in Philadelphia, Mississippi only a year later, can guess why I was unnerved. Soon enough, however, we were on our way again.
    Arrival in Atlanta included our staying in a black hotel, and word spread quickly that there might be a white person among them, leading to concern as to who I was and why I was there. As we settled into our room heads burst in the door demanding reason for my presence. My colleagues had to say repeatedly, “He’s cool, he’s one of us in NAACP.”
    After little sleep we took to Atlanta’s streets, roaming from demonstration to demonstration and speech after fiery speech while high-profile civil rights leaders urged calm amid the tense emotions. I stopped in one of the more well-known black restaurants and saw Jesse Jackson at a table with a colleague; I sat but momentarily to say hello, given that he and I knew each other from the same floor of the same dorm while we were in seminary in Chicago only three years before.
    While there, Jesse was known as a quiet and highly-respected, up-and-coming black leader. He was part of Operation Breadbasket in the city but few knew how close he had become, in short order, to Dr. King. At this moment he was still emotionally shock-worn from being at King’s side when the leader was gunned down in Memphis. The memorial was in Atlanta because it was King’s home and where he had grown up in his dad’s local congregation, the Ebeneezer Baptist Church. And that is where the son would lie in state as lines thronged the streets and sidewalks around the building to view him for the last time.
    As for Jesse, only later would he become the face of the movement, known for sharp and inspirational oratory–and in time a presidential candidate.
    A last memory is of my being the campus of Spelman College, a black women’s institution, because of word that a major demonstration might occur there. Though outdoors and on spacious grounds, we were all packed in like sardines. Physical balance was not an easy thing to keep, and when a cry went up–perhaps only a rumor–that a car had passed carrying Bobby Kennedy, the sea of humanity surged in that direction. Despite all that had happened en route to Atlanta, my most fearful moment came as we all became powerless to the surge.
    I’m certain that all knew, as I did, that to fall was to risk being trampled. Each person pushed against the other, hoping not to lose balance. Some in parts of the crowd did fall and I have no idea what their fate may have been. But the very thought of that moment resurrects the terror of that time.
    People find it hard to believe that our vulnerability throughout the journey, from Baltimore to Atlanta, are matters that I thought absolutely nothing of for many years. But then again, it wasn’t so long ago. Now, on reflection, I keenly realize that it was perilous odyssey.
    At the time, we were just young soldiers in King, Jr.’s army. As we all know, he didn’t live a long time. But long may he live.

Obama Up, Petraeus Down

English: Cropped version of File:Official portrait of Barack Obama.jpg. The image was cropped at a 3:4 portrait ratio, it was slightly sharpened and the contrast and colors were auto-adjusted in photoshop. This crop, in contrast to the original image, centers the image on Obama’s face and also removes the flag that takes away the focus from the portrait subject. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

    Who’s the real General here? Obama faced daunting enemies: the GOP and its mouthpiece, Fox News. All of Wall Street. The Supreme Court’s Citizens United. Karl Rove and his political angels–Adelson, the Koches and others who threw good money after bad to cook the presidential goose. And a liberal cohort that was shaking in its boots right up to confirmation of the Prez’s victory. But look who’s left standing: Barack himself.
    Petraeus has been a conservative darling, a Bush-man of whom it was hoped might run for the Oval Office in 2016 (some wanted him to throw in his hat this time around, instead of taking the CIA). He was Gen. Clean with nary a tarnish on his chest-medals. Clothed in the armor of righteousness, he inexplicably deigned to drop his pants–a funny place, it turns out, for an Achilles Heel.
    Let’s get real, first, about the election. It was not won on ideas, as so loudly claimed. Readers know I called the race for Obama at the very beginning of the campaign, and picked Romney as the other nominee when the GOP was in love with Cain and the other temporary favorites. They also know I predicted an Obama landslide and, while heckled for that, it came close to being one–and was, in the swing states, while Republicans failed to nab many expected seats (some six others are still too close to call but are led by the Dems). The Senate is even more firmly in Democratic hands.
    Remember that a landslide does not mean a trouncing in number of votes but a coat-tail effect that brings other races into the winner’s orbit regardless of the thinness of their respective margins. And that nearly happened. Why else are we watching a chastened Grand Old Party at war with itself instead of with the President, for once?
    I’ve watched Team Obama closely since ‘08 to see if the coalition put together then was staying intact. It was, hence the smugness of the President’s army on Election Day while Fox’s analysts were turning pale. Do not be deceived: the “ground game,” not rhetoric, won the day. The only issue that people really cared about was the economy, and Romney came close enough without even giving specifics.
     But Obama scooped up a significant share of the “Evangelical” vote, given that many of them are minorities of color with whom Romney & Co preferred not to dirty their hands.
    So there is no time for gloating here. Celebrate, and knock yourself out for a few days; but things can turn around, depending on strategies going forward, and certainly in time for the next mid-term elections.
    And I have a question that the media never asked, let alone answered: why, after so many Romney gaffes early on, did Obama not have a bigger lead over him; and why did one debate shrink the lead to nothing and change the entire dynamic of the campaign? Why, when Barack seemed “listless” in the first debate was he deemed “out of touch” and “unengaged,” followed by a huge bump for the Mittster; but when Romney showed up the same way in debate number three, he was declared to be “properly restrained” and even “presidential” and the polls remained dead even thereafter?
    The Petraeus Affair is a classic example of Aristotle’s definition of tragedy–a man who has everything to be a world-beater but does himself in.
    But this mess is stranger than strange. News stories have asked who will come out of this the worst. Well, not Petraeus: have you noticed that absolutely no one dislikes him? They are sorry he goofed up, but not only will they not say a word against him, some want him back on the job–or one like it–asap.
    Suppose our mortal enemies and their spy systems had spotted his vulnerability first and induced the general to dip his wick with a real femme fatale who could wrangle secrets during pillow talk or by puter-hacking? The truth is, this was a close call and Petraeus has betrayed his country, but never mind. We are lucky, if indeed we are, that worse didn’t happen. On the other hand, hold your breath for what next day’s news might bring.
    Certainly Paula Broadwell will not suffer: her book now is guaranteed to make her rich and famous. Nor will Jill Kelley, the two-million-in-debt “socialite” (a word for party-girl) who clearly loves men in uniform and found a great way to be at their elbows, cleavage and all. Watching her sashay about for the cameras, viewers may be reminded of a character on Desperate Housewives or Jersey-bitches-whatever. She can’t write a book but there’s always a ghost who will do it for a percentage, but my guess is that she’ll go the easy way and take dough from talk shows till even her admirers are sick of her.
    No, it takes someone less attractive, though worth more than the lot of them, to be hurt and that is Holly Petraeus. For all her work on behalf of military families, she is seen as a frumpy housewife whom no one from private to general would try to sack and, if they did, they would have to learn the meaning of the word No.
    What hurts the GOP most in all of this is that, since Petraeus’ connections are military, and international at that, they can’t a chokehold on Obama. It is around his neck that they want to wrap Benghazi, pull it tight, and let him dangle at the end. But as long as Petraeus (and don’t forget Allen) and any other falling shoes are still around and have questions of their own to answer, Obama escapes conservative tentacles.
    So the real General is Obama. I’ve also said before that he’s smarter than all of his enemies and this election cycle and its aftermath show that to be true.
    In a way, it doesn’t get any better than this.

THE MOST SURPRISING CANDIDATE

    Pardon the hiatus, but I suspended further comment because I had said all that was needed in the earlier days of the campaign and up until April. Those who wish to revisit my blog posts in the Politics category will find the following:        
    1. That Mitt Romney would be the Republican nominee, when the anti-Romney cloud first gathered in the GOP and Herman Cain, Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich successively became front-runners in polls of Republican preference. Cain was a bad joke, played not on the nation as on the GOP faithful; and can we imagine what a fine cut of a president Perry would make with his aw-shucks, knee-slapping folks-isms that can only go over in a state like Texas, but not at the expense of, say, foreign heads of state where nuance and real brains are required. And we tired of Newt Gingrich touted as the “intellectual” center of the party.
    2. That Obama was and is smarter than all of them–not to say it is he alone but in tandem with those in his inner circle and other brain-trusts accessible to him at a moment’s notice. I truly believe the GOP leadership sensed that early on and felt that they had to strike quick and hard to cast the president as an idiot. But the prez is far too cool for that and has brilliantly outflanked them.
    3. That an Obama-Romney showdown would and will result in the former’s re-election, though that pairing is infinitely better than any others the Republican base flirted with at the expense of their own time and self-image. As this election plays out, we will see that Barack will survive not only an intransigent Congress and a brutal Tea Party, but the steady drum-beat of a major news organization (Fox News) devoted to nothing short of his political demise. There must be a god somewhere.
    Here’s what I didn’t count on: I predicted that candidate debates in this case would provide a more reasonable forum in which the real differences between modern liberalism and conservatism would be manifest; and that the electorate would clearly see that and reject the latter. But I didn’t guess that, pre-debate, Romney would be such an inept campaigner: everything that is bad about current day Republicanism has surfaced in his preachments and he has become his own worst enemy. Worse, he seems clueless regarding these gaffes and, while seeking to avoid repeats of the exact misakes, is totally unclear on the concepts at stake that should warn him what not to say regarding other issues.
    I also had predicted that Mitt would avoid making McCain’s kind of mistake regarding a running mate. Clearly, he could and would not name someone who might outshine him, but he could have done better than Paul Ryan if he really wanted to take his case to the people with a heavyweight at his back. When he introduced Ryan to the musical strains of what could be called a Wagner-esque rendering of “Twilight of Godzilla,” out skips this shave-tail of a choice. Forget about Ryan being athletic–everyone in your local gym these days is buff enough to look as fit. In a trice, Paul tried to play on his athletic repute by exaggerating his marathon-time. Now, no one forgets their real time on such occasions, just as Barbara Bush deftly refuted Bill Clinton’s supposedly poor memory on how often he met with Monica by saying that no man forgets any and every blow-job he ever got.
    Ryan already is seen less and less on the trail, and that’s not good for Romney since henceforth he gets to make all the mistakes.
    I am on the verge now of predicting an Obama landslide, and let me say this about that before my critics begin to scream again: when I said those many months ago that it would be an Obama-Romney runoff, I got heat from both the political left and right–after which I received apologies from those with the grace to offer them. And I remind readers when Reagan trailed Carter into October of their campaigns and, yep, Reagan won by a landslide.
    “Landslides” are not about one candidate drubbing another in total votes but refers to all those running for office nationwide who benefit from the “coattails” of the head of their ticket–in that case, Reagan. I’m not read to say so yet in this instance but it is conceivable because if Romney continues to fall apart, it will inflame not only Obama’s “base” but all others who have been on the sidelines but will turn out to be on the side of the November’s winner.
    Oh, of course, nothing is sealed in stone. All kinds of things can happen, and do, in elections where so much is at stake. But none is apt to occur in 2012, aside from spotty instances where the Tea Party may luck out with another brat or two.  
    I’m grateful for Romney because with any other candidate from his party, this political season would have been a total joke. He is also killing the Tea Party, having thrown cold water on their string of prior successes; presently, they don’t know whether to crap or go blind, as we say in the Ozarks–having been one-upped by a real populist movement in the Occupy phenomenon and lacking their previous enthusiasm.
    So, for all of Obama’s cool craftiness throughout a bad economy that was none of his doing; high unemployment; and explosive surprises in the Middle East and elsewhere, it is Romney who is the Surprise candidate.
    And if things continue to implode in his camp, we may be looking at landslide. Or something close to it.     
    

   

TITANIC ILLUSIONS

    This is April 14, the day in 1912 that the world’s biggest metaphor hit an iceberg.  On board, John Jacob Astor, the fourth by that name in the family dynasty, was heard to say: “I rang for ice, but this is ridiculous.”
    The Boston Red Sox had just built a new ballpark that would last to the present day, but the sea-borne tragedy muted the glee of Opening Day.
    Every year, there’s always someone who declares April 15, now our tax deadline, as the fateful time and indeed that is when the unsinkable actually sank, into the deep, dark sea. But it hit ice not long before midnight of the fourteenth then took some three hours to disappear.
    For a hundred years, the Titanic’s crew, design and the first passing ship that failed to assist, have been blamed for the tragedy and have lived in disgraced memory. Newer research shows otherwise: historically high tides had broken off monumental bergs and lifted them to where they otherwise wouldn’t have been, and viewes both of the ice and the imperiled liner were distorted. Emergency flares from the doomed vessel appear shorter and were interpreted as less than indicative of danger.
    All in all, a perfect storm and even more a parable of human presumptiveness–belief that every stride in science and technology is the ultimate symbol that it, and we, are indestructible: another step in our wising up as a species.
     Imagine: all those people on the voyage of their lives, living a history that they would also die in. No doubt they would rather have lived to pay their taxes–the month of March that year marked the first levy on income, the one that ended the big party in Newport, Rhode Island and wherever the poor smothered rich gathered for seemingly endless fun and games.
    Suddenly a devastating jolt, a rude awakening that occasioned immediate decisions (women and children only in the boats), hastily kissing dear ones goodbye, while a fateful hymn played in the ballroom. And then oblivion.
    Turns out many of the early lifeboats moved away from the ship with far less than full occupancy. Those who fell, or dived, into the drink were dead in fifteen minutes from hypothermia.
    It’s a sobering remembrance and memorial, that at the height of life’s next party, a berg of sorts may be ahead, a reminder that we walk a narrow tightwire in life–or a narrow railing of a sinking ship that, for all its hype, cannot save us.

Of Game-Change, Cinderella, and the Supremes

    The HBO documentary, “Game Change,” regarding the weird inclusion of Sarah Palin into the GOP presidential campaign of 2008, is as the title suggests, about the attempt of the McCain team to rearrange the dynamics of a failing election enterprise.
    McCain, his wife and the Palin family all said they would not watch the program, and that’s the most unbelievable aspect of all the hoopla surrounding the film. Of course they watched, even if they had to hide in order to avoid detection. Sarah’s sucker-eyes for media attention (also revealed in the doc) surely were all over it with rapt fascination.
    In doing so, she must have been surprised and mystified that, rather than a hatchet-job, everything in the narration was recognizable and portrayed fairly, whether or not she liked what she saw. Her family certainly was treated with sympathy, from her relation to all of them to the poignant little prayer session with her daughter just before the debate with Joe Biden.
    McCain too was shown as a sensitive guy who, despite his growing reservations about her choice for the ticket, gave her every break he could in his mind and behavior, and refused to blame her for one of the greatest

Lost Causes

since the Civil War.
    The real problem is that those most responsible, and thus guiltiest, for that train wreck are those who were judged by critics and the viewing public as wise counselors to John and Sarah and somehow victims of the charade. Oh, no: they dreamed up that “game-change” and virtually foisted it on the aspirant from Arizona. Their attempts to put a good face on Sarah’s rogue-ish comportment were the best they could do with hindsight, regardless that film fans all love Woody Harrelson and the gravitas he brought to this role.
    Much as I dislike Palin, the mistake was not hers. She was thrown as a brand into the burning, and in no way could have master-minded her way into a role that others deserved vastly more: Kay Bailey Hutchinson didn’t hear of the choice till the day all the world was notified, and must have wondered that if the Party needed a woman with McCain, what the hell was she–chopped liver?.
    I wonder how many viewers did not secretly have sympathy for Palin in that regard, imagining as we often do with story-principals, how we would fare in such a situation where we were called on to perform that for which we were unsuited. Palin was not only a Cinderella but one whose religious beliefs came into play, and it’s best to read the book itself, which came out in 2010.
    Palin’s faith includes the nutty little notion that God was laying his hands on her life as one chosen to rescue this nation from all those anecdotal sins drummed into loyal viewers of Fox News. Like their program fare, her mind is anything but “fair and balanced,” and the team’s worry that she was falling off the rails was well-placed. She can function well enough in a corner of the universe, like Wasilla, but she was woefully out of place on the grand stage where we choose the leader of the free world.
    But everything going on in the U.S. these days, given the bizarre leanings of too many citizens, including those who supposedly hold college degrees, is driven by attempts on the part of desperate masterminds and their minions to “change the game,” and to besmirch truth, decency, and ethics by the most egregious means, in the process.
    One need only look to the present Supreme Court and its “deliberations,” if so they may be called, into the health care plan approved by Congress. It is blatantly political, and the esteemed Supremes–after their Bush-Gore outrage and the more recent nonsense that made “individuals” of corporations–are up to more mischief, this time over the well-being of Americans most at risk by our health system.    
    Only Justice Kennedy stands in the way of this, and he can be like a drunk on a barstool: you never know which way he’s going to fall. If the law is nullified, the conservatives on the Court once again will have handed the GOP an election-season tool against Obama.
    How in the world the prez stands up to the forces arrayed against him, I don’t know. From the nut-case pretenders who lined up to savage him in the guise of “debates”; to being saddled with all the blame stored up by his predecessor; to a major news network whose support of the GOP is not even thinly-veiled, he has somehow survived and, for now, is ahead of Romney in the polls.
    And it’s only the beginning of April–meaning seven more months of opportunity for liars, nay-sayers, twits, ninnies, ne-er-do-wells and sonsofbitches to seize on any and every happenstance to mess with the minds of an unthinking public. Call them puppet-masters and puppets.
    By all standards, one would think the devil would win this presidential campaign, yet more and more of the populace are seeing through things and coming to their senses.
    And that’s gotta be hard on Sarah’s theology. What stands to happen is that all these pranks get their comeuppance in November, knocking wind out of the Tea Party sails and at least restoring a losing GOP as a more sensible arm of American politics. 

I See Crazy People

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    I saw crazy people throughout the GOP candidate debates.

    Each time, all present had a case of the crazies except for some debate moderators, like Wolf Blitzer, who was universally lauded for his handling of time, issues and the gaggle or show-offs who mugged for attention. Fox News didn’t come close to that level of expertise: Brett Baier barely could manage the Gang of Seven and Megyn Kelly was way in over her head. Chris Wallace may fancy himself a top-drawer TV journalist but is a far cry from his old man.

    And don’t forget the crowds–the zanies who applauded everything, even contradictory statements from the platform. Whatever happened to conviction among the Republican base? They were ready to settle for anyone who might beat Obama, however ignorant of issues or bizarre in behavior: all they had to do was declare themselves Republican, whatever that means anymore.

    If ever a so-called prospect wasted the nation’s time, it was Herman Cain, a total nutwing that the conservative base decided, however briefly (and only because Cain blew himself up in such spectacular fashion), that ol’ Herm was a serious alternative; this is a mystery known only to God and my guess is the Big Guy himself was stumped over that one.

    Rick Perry strutted in amid the pack and stuck out his chest as if he were in the Swimsuit portion of a Miss America contest. We knew right away that there’s a guy who, when God offered him brains, thought he heard, “trains,” and declined the offer. Perry never grew up, mentally or sexually, and the only state that could elect such a governor is Texas. The little nickname he earned early in life that’s supposed to mean “adjusting” one’s blue jeans, really refers to the habit, in stupid boyhood days, of grabbing one’s own crotch as if to declare to all the girls–and male competitors–that he thought his was the biggest and all other comers were to stay away. So, clearly, in his formative years, the three most important things to Rick were girls, sex–and, uh, he can’t remember the other one.

    Newt Gingrich’s fantasy is to deem himself an “intellectual,” a designation that the Fox News brain trust repeated in hopes of scaring off Romney. Maybe Newt dreamed of being the Michelin Man and is sore that he’s now mistaken for the Pillsbury Dough Boy. The litmus test is to watch him and ask if you want talking at you everyday for four to eight years on the evening news. Add dear Callista, his darling third wife (who knows?–maybe there’s more) to the equation and the answer goes from “No” to A Thousand Times No.

    The criticism that Obama is a “lecturer” and too “professorial” as a communicator is to ignore Newt’s prowess in that regard. When asked why he worked for Fannie Mae for big bucks, Newt reckoned that we were all dumb and would believe that his role was solely that of an “historian” for those crooks. I’d like to see his thesis on that study project.

    Rick Santorum hung around long enough in the debates to repeat himself ad infinitum, ad nauseum while reminding us of all the children he has sired. Debate audiences dozed off when his turn came but his “surge” in Iowa is now proof of George Burns’ dictum that if you live long enough you’re bound to make a comeback. I for one don’t trust a man with a name like his who didn’t change it long ago; John Stewart of the Daily Show reminds us often to Google the word, santorum, and thereafter try not, as Pogo said, to larf.

But the Santorum Surge brings pause as to why Michele Bachmann can’t get one: she’s been as consistently on message; was born in Iowa and serves a neighboring state (Minnesota). Is it because her eyes are too far apart and you can’t tell if she’s looking at us or the moon? Of course, her attack gun is never aimed at Romney because she wants to be his running mate, but he’s too smart for that.

    You have to love Ron Paul, who flutters onstage like the fairy godfather in a grade school play. Suit jacket askew, he begins each response as if formulating a thoughtful notion, then bursts into a breathless paean of idiocy, bringing wild applause from a crowd that is not quite sure what he said or what it would mean if this little crank was in the White House. Ron lives in a Bizarro world where every good idea is trumped by its antithesis. He and Kim Jong Il would’ve gotten along well together, trying to top the other’s crackpot notions of foreign policy in a world that requires top-notch diplomacy.

    We know the GOP currently harbors the shallow end of the conservative gene pool when a guy like Jon Huntsman couldn’t win a vote if he were a Baptist instead of a Mormon. He’s thoughtful and sensible, though not the brightest bulb in the ceiling–but neither was Gerald Ford and, hey, he got to be prez.

    This leaves the Mittster, the Flip-Flop champion of all time but, after all, you have to be a mental contortionist to survive among Crazy People. Long ago I predicted that he and Obama would end up vying for the Presidency (see my Ichabod post: “Why It’ll be Obama and Romney”) and was pilloried by conservative friends who are now begging my forgiveness. I mercifully sentence them to combing Mitt’s hair and shining Barack’s shoes (get it?).

    A quick survey of the GOP’s wannabes is to realize that, were Obama to have any of their failings, he would be deemed totally unqualified for office: too many wives or girlfriends; no idea where Becki-Becki-Stan-Stan is or how to pronounce it; or given to petulance or anger. It’s amazing how Obama keeps his cool amid clowns, each of whom is less than half the man he is. There is an adage that we know how late in the day it has become when pygmies cast such long shadows.

    FDR “invited the hatred” of his enemies, and how cathartic that must have been to an era trapped in its own political logjam. We also know that Obama can never do that: to be an angry black man would unleash the worst in his peculiar opposition which, regardless of denials, is in good measure racist.

    So I’ll say it again, but in short form: when Romney’s the nominee and free of having to placate the vacuous Republican “base,” he and Obama will engage in publicly enlightening debates that will remind us of the real and legitimate difference between liberalism and conservatism in modern times. Then we’ll  know we have a real choice and the voters will decide.

    But neither will be shooting from the hip, comparing himself to Winston Churchill (like Newt), defending oneself against charges of womanizing (like Cain), or grabbing his crotch (a la Perry). The real loser will be Fox News, at a loss for what to do with a GOP candidate that doesn’t pander incessantly to the lowest common denominator.

    Obama will win the election, but we’ll have a real Republican Party again and Tea will go out of fashion as a hat accessory and return as an alternative to $5 coffee at Starbucks.   

    And I’ll stop seeing Crazy People.

America the Moderate Again, At Last

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    In recent weeks I have cautiously observed a  morphing towards change-for-the-better that trumps my prior heightened sense of alarm at the political direction of this country. And of late I have heard this echoed by other observers of the national scene. Let me explain.
    Not to say that there won’t be disappointments and temporary setbacks between now and 2015 when we are looking beyond an Obama presidency and considering who will carry on. But I do feel the Tea Party has turned the corner toward its own death, along with extreme Republicans and their right wing fellow-travelers. They will always be around but much less as the brats who disrupt the entire classroom.
    America always has countenanced, for a time, all expressions, however nutty, and proposals however extreme (both of the Left and the Right), but at last is always seeking moderation. This is one of those times. The populace begins at last to sense that extremism is deadly to its future and well-being, and is finally sizing up the list of pretended saviors in a more realistic light.
    The age that is about to come to an end began years ago with a damaging assault on both the body social and politic, launched during the “Reagan Revolution.” People more extreme than Reagan ever was, used him to advance a cause that was beyond the pale of traditional conservatism. Unlike Eisenhower, who saw danger in, e.g., the Military-Industrial Complex, Reagan misjudged the extremist wing of conservatism and used its tide to carry his own agenda–which was much less ambitious than theirs has since been.
    The architect of the “Politics of Personal Destruction” was Lee Atwater who, before his untimely death, came to regret what he had wrought, politically, in America. Regardless of his second thoughts, it poisoned the political well in America thereafter, leading to right-wing extremism of the most vitriolic sort, from the launch of Fox News to what we now know as the Tea Party.
    We should be cautious as to the mythical dimensions of this. Whether this is divine justice is limited to the realm of speculation. We must also consider that the deity that is preached in the most righteous sense is one of mercy and forgiveness– meaning that those deserving of judgment would probably be given an overabundance of the above. But our civilization does rest on a “natural” justice, one given by laws, morals and ethics which humankind has imposed on itself and that exacts a more perfect impartiality, or what is known as “a fair field and no favor.”
     Everywhere it turns at present, extreme conservatism is confronted by its own undoing. The most caustic critics even of global warming are changing their tune and defecting to the side of facts: before, they were against the evidence because right wingers opposed it. Now, to save their reputations as scientists, if such they are, they announce with great fanfare that truth lies elsewhere.
    There have been recent elections involving political Recalls that are giving extremists representatives in Congress pause to think of their own fates in future elections. A newer attempt to squash bargaining rights of unions took a tumble in a state where a popular GOP governor had denied them with a great flourish of his pen. He found that you can’t fool all the people all of the time. And the nutty attempt to declare “personhood” as at the time of conception, as a thinly veiled attempt at outlawing abortion, in as conservative a state as Mississippi, fell on its nose as well.
    And none can overlook the political demise of state senator Russell Pearce of Arizona, author of the anti-immigration bill there. That recent election washed him from office at what he thought was the height of his power. I personally sat in sessions of that legislature and over years saw him stand to say the most godawful things about migrants that shouldn’t be said about any human being. I save my most fond good riddance to him and his ilk, wherever their ultimate fate.
    The latest sign of weakening in right wing ranks was the the Occupy movement. At first, led by Fox News, the demonstrations were used as pinatas on evening news, but that was before they noticed that it was rife not only with young people, but with hard hats, jobless veterans and the unemployed in general. At which point the “fair and balanced” so-called “journalists” at Fox switched their concerns to Solyndra and to calls for the resignation of Attorney General Eric Holder, a ploy that gets as much traction as a treadless tire in mud.
    The saddest moment in this Twilight of the False Gods has been the Republican presidential campaign debates. The flirtation with anyone who will spout radical notions, however lacking in substance, is symptomatic of an extremist base that is fatuous to the max. Had Obama made any single one of the misstatements, misrepresentations and outright gaffes we have heard from them, he would have been declared unfit for office and impeachment proceedings would have long been underway.
    For Michele Bachmann to have even the gall to think of herself as presidential shows that bad taste is foremost within the GOP. For Rick Perry to think the country, with all its problems, was ready for a hick with cracker-barrel witticisms, would slap their thighs and knees on their way to polling stations to vote for the likes of him, was another sign of political dementia.
    This is not to forget Herman Cain, intended to be the foil to charges that the GOP is racist–no mind that he lacks political experience and even less judgment. It is impossible to imagine debates in 2012 between him and Obama, but too many Republicans harbor dreams that would make Freud have to revise his theories. Cain’s blow-up in the face of journalists’ questions regarding Libya shows his complete ineptitude for anything more than, well, leading a pizza company. We were generous to a fault to have entertained his lack of political experience and, of late, the growing revelations of years of womanizing; now we know for sure that such was a waste of our time whilst he used it all to self-aggrandize in our presence.
    Perhaps the worst in political judgment is the notion of Pudge Gingrich as the “intellectual” force in modern conservatism, the “idea” man who is now being reconsidered to lead next year’s charge against the president. How soon they forget all his past foibles and foolishness, inconsistencies and crackpot notions, all of which would be revisited by the Democractic machine once the campaign was underway. And this is not counting what would be his future blunders of mind and indiscreet opinion. Certainly he would rely heavily on his penchant for hyperbole–words like “astounding,” “incredible,” etc., to convince voters that he would end an era of darkness and introduce one of beatific light.
    We are so used to the worst of thought and behavior as the “new normal” that we can actually believe that the current aggregate of GOP nincompoops are credible candidates to be the face of our country.
    Whoever wishes to review my post of months ago, “Why It Will Be Obama and Romney in 2012,” in the Political category on this blog, will find my reasons, stated prior to most other pundits, why it can and must be the Mittster to carry the Republican banner.
    I have observed him for a long time and am convinced that he is Moderate to a keen degree, which is precisely what the Tea Party & Co. dislike about him. I am also convinced that, when one looks beyond the little bit of red-meat rhetoric he is obliged to throw to the goofy crowd at the current debates, it is clear that he wants to save the GOP from itself.
    Debates between him and Obama could be among the most enlightening of modern political history. They would be absent, for the most part, of one-liners intended only to get crowd reaction, and devoid of evasion. There would be a real airing of substantive issues, to the benefit of all.
    Fox, of course, will not know what to do with Romney under such circumstances. That mis-named “news” corporation gets no oxygen from rationality and reasonableness, and will be sucking for air throughout the campaign. They will do their best, of course, to turn any good point made by Mitt into an outlandish, extremist point of view.
    It won’t work. Romney can’t win because the self-righteous religionists in the American South and elsewhere won’t vote in sufficient number for him; and from the Tea Party right on down to the right wing gutter there will be, at last, great disinterest in the outcome. Whatever else is going on at any time in America will be the salve of their injuries that have been brought on by themselves.  

Then all will begin to be, if not well, at least better in America. Ugly town hall meetings will fade at best into memory, and Lee Atwater will turn over in his grave.
    And the worm, too, will have turned, so to speak. And we now know for certain who the worms are.

Of Race, Rebels and Reprisal

    Three recent movies. And it is not my custom generally to say run, don’t walk, to see modern flicks. If you are as selective as I am regarding cinema and of what among it is a waste of time, you too are amazed at the way people enter theaters with such expectation and, sadly, tend to forgive the disappointment of a dud, of which there seem to be a frightful number these days. I do not disparage however mere entertainment value as a relief and distraction from the vicissitudes of life.
    People tend also to overrate movies: when The Exorcist opened to raves, critic Stanley Kaufmann noted that all it takes to scare people is to jump out of a closet at them, so why be surprised when millions of dollars are spent on creating horrific effects? But there is value in movies that effectively portray a moral.
    If you didn’t see “The Help,” please do. Some people are tired of attention to racism, most likely because they’re not victims of it and do not realize that if all of us did something about it, it would be a thing of the past and indeed unworthy of mention. But we don’t, so there it is, still hanging around while we wonder why.
    I expected it to be overdone and preachy, but it’s actually an understatement of the problem but ends with perhaps too much hope. For someone born and bred in the American South, I am wary of such conclusions, because I never saw similar instances evolve toward such glowing promise.
    “Hilly,” the antagonist and trend-setter for a clutch of privileged, bossy young women, doesn’t think she is a racist, and hence is a prototype of average America, regardless of gender. The first omen is her warning to the protagonist, a writer, to cease and desist her probes there are people in town who can inflict great harm on such snoops. She says so, ostensibly, in the best interests of the journalist when she is actually expressing her own protection of the way things were at last mid-century.
    Regrettably, many people who lived those days in that region may marvel that such things went on, including its violence because at the time they simply weren’t paying attention. For them, the show can be a giant leap forward while, unsurprisingly, blacks will wonder what else is new.
    The movie, “The Debt,” on the other hand, is a story of importance regarding the unrequited injustice of the Holocaust, of which there were many parts, and about which people also wish Jews would shut up, with the same results as the denial of racism.
    Herein, a “debt” is owed to Israel and to Jews everywhere in the pursuit of a Josef Mengele-type perpetrator of the worst of antisemitic evils (Photo: door to the surgical ward at Auschwitz). But another debt arises having to do with what is owed to truth as it, in turn, dogs those who are committed to bring the perp to justice.
    There is violence but it is hardly the tip of the iceberg of what was launched by Nazis on hapless citizens that included, yes, socialists, communists, Romanys and homosexuals; but toward the Jews it was genocidal. The mental, physical and psychic strength of the antagonist as an aging man is symbolic of his being driven by a hate that passes all understanding on the part of those who would suppress or obliterate all intended victims forementioned.
    “The Rise of the Planet of the Apes” has so much symbolism and borrowings from other stories as to be blatantly obvious, most overtly with hints and reminders of King Kong, e.g., though the airplane and the Empire State building are replaced by a helicopter and the Golden Gate Bridge. And yes there is mayhem, including that of exploding cars, manned mostly by police.
    What is compelling amid its incredulousness is that we are forced to see society through eyes that we deem inhuman or subhuman, but who themselves are victims, not of Nazis and racists, but of all of us who are complicit in what happens to fellow creatures in the interest of improving our own lives and safety.
    It is also a reminder of how revolutions begin, most of which, like the “rise” of the apes, seem implausibe in their early stages. We are obliged also to remember that Freud did not just say that humanity is a “herd animal,” but one with a leader, which is crucial to all social change.
    The last of these films is the lesser of the three, but with worth of its own. I wish also that “The Help” and “The Debt” were shown in educational settings, especially for the young, as to what holds society together, or drives it apart.
    Why don’t we mainstream anti-racism training in our public schools? I don’t know. And when things go bad, as in these economic times, clearly the pain is directed toward minorities, with the same vengeance as the doctor of death in “The Debt.”
    When we don’t pay the piper early on, we surely pay later, if not forever.