Tom Cruise

Moses has been on a bit of a jag about Tom Cruise as of late, having come to his defense as far as his behavior and his acting. I happen to think Tom Cruise is a pretty good actor in certain parts. I thought he was great in Vanilla Sky, pretty good in Collateral, good in Minority Report, and perfectly cast in Rain Man. Sure he's done some cheesy stuff earlier in his career, such as Days of Thunder (essentially Top Gun, but with stock cars instead of F-14s) and Cocktail, but they were moderately entertaining fare, and more than worth watching on a Sunday afternoon whilst nursing a hangover. And he takes chances, such as in Eyes Wide Shut (which was amusing in a kind of surreal way) and The Last Samurai (which to my mind was Dances With Wolves, with the samurai standing in for the Lakota as the ancient culture crushed by the forces of modernity, vis-a-vis the evil white man). As far as Tom Cruise's recent behavior, Moses thought that Cruise was perfectly within the bounds of normal behavior on Oprah (I thought he acted like a nut) but embarrassing on The Today Show with Matt Lauer. I actually think Tom Cruise was right to stand up to Matt Lauer and his politically correct, bland as oatmeal opinions. Far from even talking about Scientology on Lauer's show, Cruise brought to the fore something that should be discussed: namely that Americans are getting to the point of being over-medicated. Maybe picking on Brooke Shields wasn't the right thing to do, if only because it made Cruise seem like a bully and a cad. But Cruise was right about Ritalin, and drugging hyperactive children. Which child isn't hyperactive!?! I think Cruise was right, and he got buried under the avalanche of bad press because he dared to question the prevailing orthodoxy regarding medication. This columnist put things in perspective regarding Cruise on Lauer's show.

Lauer thought that Cruise was being judgmental, and that he should keep his opinions to himself. He also thought Cruise should stipulate that – while the actor didn't approve of taking antidepressants – those for whom the drugs had worked should be free to take them.
Why should Cruise keep his opinions to himself? Shields didn't keep her bout with mental illness to herself. She advertised it to sell books. Cruise is entitled to his opinion, just like anyone else.

You can read the rest here.

They Want You To Forget

There is no doubt in my mind that the events of October of 1917 could be the most disasterous, tragic, and far reaching in history, and we're still deeply affected by them to this day. Historians have put the number that perished under the godless weights of communism as somewhere slighty south of one hundred million. ONE HUNDRED MILLION executed, starved to death, or worked to death via forced labor. And unlike the Nazis after WWII, there has yet to be a full accounting of the crimes of communists in the former Soviet Union or the former Eastern Bloc. Gerhardt Shroeder's Socialist Democratic Party, along with the Green Party, rule Germany at the moment. That they are allowing a memorial dedicated to those who perished attempting to gain freedom by crossing through the Berlin Wall to be razed is execrable, but hardly surprising. After all, Shroeder put a dyed-in-the-wool former (or maybe not former) communist/terrorist in the person of Joschka Fischer in charge of his foreign policy. You can read all about the destruction of Checkpoint Charlie here. And you can read all about Joschka Fischer's violent, communist past here.

Christian Gueffroy was the last person murdered attempting to escape East Berlin. He was killed in February, 1989. The meme echoed by many anti-Reaganites these days is that the wall was going to come down anyway, and Reagan's arms build-up and rhetoric did nothing to shorten it. Christian Gueffroy never got the memo. He was 21, born the same year as I was. The wall came down in November of 1989.

1,065 people died over three decades attempting to gain their freedom. The socialist German government, infiltrated as it is by former communists, doesn't even want you to remember there was a wall in the first place, much less that these people, like Christian Gueffroy, died trying to breach it.

Oh...and one more thing. Destruction of Checkpoint Charlie and the Berlin Wall memorial commences on July 4th. Coincidence?

Use Your Illusion

Came across this website dedicated to optical illusions. Worth checking out. On a different note, I dropped my cellphone into a puddle yesterday, and it is still acting odd. Examples of its slight malfunction include making phone calls by itself and dialing the number 4 several times...again, by itself. Water, like everything else in this world, has both a beneficiary and destructive characteristic to it. Yesterday, I was reminded of the latter, as well as my penchant (inherited no doubt from my father) for smashing elbows into walls by accident (also happened yesterday) and other assorted acts of involuntary self-destruction, albeit minor. (Thankfully.)

A Brief History Of French Military Ineptitude

"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without an accordion. All you do is leave behind a lot of noisy baggage."

OR

"What else can one say about a nation who's two most successful military leaders were a Corsican midget and 16-year-old girl in the throes of teenage dementia?"

Here's a blow by blow account of French military idiocy, ineptitude, and cowardice. Read up, cheese eating surrender monkeys!

Burning Ol' Glory

Mark Steyn is one of the most clever op-ed people in the business. In his latest column, he takes on the flag burning amendment that is currently up for approval on Capitol Hill.

An excerpt:

Banning flag desecration flatters the desecrators and suggests that the flag of this great republic is a wee delicate bloom that has to be protected. It's not. It gets burned because it's strong. I'm a Canadian and one day, during the Kosovo war, I switched on the TV and there were some fellows jumping up and down in Belgrade burning the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack. Big deal, seen it a million times. But then to my astonishment, some of those excitable Serbs produced a Maple Leaf from somewhere and started torching that. Don't ask me why -- we had a small contribution to the Kosovo bombing campaign but evidently it was enough to arouse the ire of Slobo's boys. I've never been so proud to be Canadian in years. I turned the sound up to see if they were yelling ''Death to the Little Satan!'' But you can't have everything.

That's the point: A flag has to be worth torching. When a flag gets burned, that's not a sign of its weakness but of its strength. If you can't stand the heat of your burning flag, get out of the superpower business. It's the left that believes the state can regulate everyone into thought-compliance. The right should understand that the battle of ideas is won out in the open.

This Guy Is An Idiot

I used to think Coldplay weren't terrible musically, which mean that I found something tuneful about them here and there. But their lead singer, Mr. Gweneth Paltrow, has killed whatever mild affection I had for their music. Dumb ass.


"I was wondering whether certain people's policies would change if they heard certain songs...Would it really be possible to start Nazi Germany if you'd just been listening to Bob Marley's Exodus back-to-back for the past three weeks and getting stoned? Would the idea of the Holocaust seem so appealing? I know this sounds really trite..."

--Chris Martin of Coldplay

Triumph!

Very funny video of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog interviewing Michael Jackson supporters. I can understand why Eminem wanted to kill him at one point.

Live Aid

Reading about the upcoming Live 8 concerts, which are set to coincide with the G8 conference in Great Britain, made me think back twenty years to Live Aid. It was a pretty amazing day, from what I remember, having watched a good chunk of it after coming home from working at Dunkin Donuts (and smelling like shortening, confectionary sugar, and honey glaze), as some of the performances were electrifying. I specifically remember U2, youthful and earnest, moving me through the television set. I remember Madonna was just awful. Led Zeppelin were even more awful, as I expected more of them. And above all of them, Queen simply lit up entire event; it was at that moment that I realized that if there was ever a guy that was a born star, Freddie Mercury was that guy. To this day, I've never seen anybody work a crowd better than Freddie Mercury, and Queen, while embodying all that was and is cliche within rock and roll (fist pumping the air, imploring the crowd to clap along, mucho power chords, and pompously triumphant lyrics) managed to employ all these cliches in a way that was truly inspirational and not the least bit cringe-worthy to even the most discerning of music listeners (which I was, even at the age of 16). I was never, and continue not to be, a huge Queen fan, although I like them very much, but they stole the day, and even U2's inspired performance didn't compare. But enough of music.

While watching Live Aid that long ago Saturday, I felt like I was watching something historic, something epic. Youthful naivete prevented me from understanding at the time that it was all for naught. It certainly was inspirational to see such an array of acts get together for such a noteworthy cause, namely the famine in Ethiopia. Rock and roll can change the world, right!?! And Live Aid did raise a boatload of cash from around the world, around $100 million. But in the end, it did nothing to stop the famine in Ethiopia. If anything, it elongated the misery.

You see, the famine in Ethiopia wasn't a famine. It wasn't on par with, say, the American Dust Bowl of the 1930's, where a confluence of economic and natural distasters destroyed or severely damaged the agricultural sector of a society. It was a famine similar to the one the Ukrainians in the 1930's endured, as in there being plenty of food, but the people, for political reasons only a psychotic gangster like Joe Stalin could understand, weren't allowed access to it and were starved to death. That was the famine that was going on in 1980's Ethiopia. And who was at the center of this forced starvation? A communist thug by the name of Mengistu. And where did over 90% of the 100 million that was raised by Live Aid go to? The Mengistu government, the very same government that was starving its people to death for political reasons. Live Aid didn't help the very people it sought to relieve one bit. It actively hurt and killed more of them. This fellow blogger put it best:

More aid was never the solution to the problems of the developing world. But it was always an easy way out, because all you had to do was to send (in most cases) somebody else's money without worrying too much about the consequences. The act of charity was an end in itself. But poverty is not a problem, it's a symptom of a problem, that being lack of democracy, freedom, transparency and sensible economic policies - and more money, like giving dope to an addict, only serves to be exacerbates these conditions.

Bill O'Reilly pointed out three and a half years ago that the money raised by the 9/11 celebrity telethon featuring the likes of Julia Roberts and George Clooney wasn't getting to the people it was supposed to get to (namely victims' families of 9/11). Night after night, he grilled high ranking members of the United Way, March of Dimes, the American Red Cross, etc. to find out where the money was, when it was going, where it was going, and when the families would get it. Six months after the telethon, the money had still not been distributed. Needless to say, the Hollywood establishment went ballistic that O'Reilly questioned their humanitarianism. It wasn't their humanitarianism that O'Reilly was questioning; it was their commitment to see the their humanitarian effort through. Of course, once they put in their face time, looking earnest and sympatico, they showed no concern for where the money they helped raise went. But O'Reilly was right, and they were wrong. If Bob Geldof, the organizer of Live Aid had refused to hand over any money to the Mengistu government until it was ensured that the aid would get to the starving Ethiopian horde, it might've made a difference. But then, why would Mengistu feed his people with Live Aid money when he was actively trying to starve them to death in the first place? No one affiliated with Live Aid ever commented on that, to my knowledge. If they did, they would've prima facie rendered the whole enterprise a quixotic display of do-goodism, which in the end, it was. I commend Geldof and all the participants for their earnestness, but I condemn them for their ignorance of the true reasons behind this forced starvation, as they could've told us about it, instead of depicting it as a natural disaster. It's not like these people, many of whom participated in the Nelson Mandela concert, were averse to criticizing a repressive government. It's merely that criticizing a repressive, communist, indigenous African government led by a black thug just didn't seem like much of a juicy target. If there was ever a leader that has the capability of murdering by the thousands with nary a voice of dissent from the so-call activists, it's a black one. Mengistu was a case in point, the same as Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe is presently. I guess they only see evil through their right eye, but not their left.

That Scientology Weirdo

Here's the video from Tom Cruise's weirdly over-the-top antics on Oprah Winfrey's show a few weeks back.

Beware. It is cringe-inducing.

Proverb

"If you see a Bulgarian on the street, beat him. He will know why."

--Old Russian Proverb

(What it means, I have no idea...)

VDH

"If Japan was once experiencing bouts of anti-Americanism when its neighbor China was sleeping, then Europe was relatively friendly to us when we kept 300 Soviet divisions from its borders. The moral? Trashing the United States can be a fun sport for some when one nearby communist enemy disappears, but not so for others when another is ascendant and close by."

--From the always-brilliant Victor Davis Hanson (read the whole article here).

I'm Sure Mrs. King Was Simply Flattered

"I'm in love with my wife," he said. "You know when you're in love. It's like seeing pornography. You know it when you see it."

--Larry King, CNN's "Larry King Live"

Well, At Least We Know Where Bill Gates' Head is At

The new Microsoft Explorer being exported to China has built in detectors which will stop the offending internet user from getting hits on words like "freedom", "democracy", etc. How magnanimous of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. There's a line from the movie Wall Street where Hal Holbrook's character takes Charlie Sheen's character aside and says, "One thing about money, Bud, it makes you do things...you don't want to do." One wonders whether Microsoft thought this through, or whether they didn't care. I'm with the latter theory. You can read about Microsoft's sordid deal with the devil here.

The irony of it all is that here's Bill Gates, at the vanguard of capitalism and a beneficiary of the fruits of this great democracy, prostituting the ideals of this nation for a buck. Awful. Just awful.

And In "The Road To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions" Department....

I like Bono. I think he's a great rock star, and I think he has made some great, groundbreaking music with U2. His humanitarian efforts, particularly in regards to Africa's AIDS crisis, are laudable. He also has been harping on the issue of debt relief for African nations, armed with the theory that if only African nations could get a break, they could right themselves. In perfect world, maybe. But we don't live in a perfect world, or an uncorrupted one. In this corrupted world that we do live in, none is more corrupt and filled with kleptocracies than Africa. None.


The whole movement to save Africa gained tremendous steam in the 80's. It was the cause du jour. I even remember wearing a "Free South Africa" t-shirt in my college (quasi-lefty) days. Filled within our minds were visions of terrible European imperialists tearing through Africa, disemboweling its resources for their gain, brutally suppressing the indigenous populations, and then, starting at the end of the Second World War, withdrawing from Africa, leaving nary an institutional structure in place for which the indigenous population could effectively run a society. What a sad tale. And we all felt awful guilt over it. But this boilerplate observation about what happened to Africa in the last two centuries is devoid of a few very important details, namely what the First World has really been doing to help Africa since the end of the Second World War, and why it is coming to naught.

On David Frum's blog, he posted a letter from a citizen of Zimbabwe. It's worth reposting here, as it pretty much demolishes the theory that debt relief will put Africa on the right track. (Emboldened type mine):

This past week and the weeks ahead are likely to be dominated by discussionon the future of Africa and the role that aid, debt relief and trade reform can play in alleviating the devastating poverty in much of Africa. But I am afraid that this debate will miss the main obstacle to growth and development in Africa, which is weak and corrupt leadership.

In 1983 I traveled to Ghana to collect a debt. That alone caused much amusement in Ghana itself - they thought it was a joke that I would travel up over half the continent to try and collect a debt that could never be paid. The reason - Ghana had imploded, the International Airport had small trees growing in the runway and the hotel I stayed in had no water or electricity. Passengers getting off the aircraft with me looked like refugees carrying water and other "essentials". The famous local university looked as if it had been bombed, buildings vandalized and roofs stolen.

What had happened - nothing much. Aid had poured in; they had a wonderful start at independence with good foreign exchange reserves, a well-educatedadministration and rich resources. They had not fought a war for liberation;there were no internal conflicts, only rotten, corrupt, self-serving leadership. Ghana was a failed State - it scared me and I wondered, could this happen at home in Zimbabwe?

It could and it has. Zimbabwe was given every chance to succeed - open access to global markets on a preferential basis, massive foreign aid fromall quarters, technical assistance in whatever field was requested. We started out with an educated elite - many of whom had lived abroad for anumber of years. We had a diverse economy based on mining, agriculture,industry and commerce. We were virtually debt free. The world was at our feet but we blew it.

Today Zimbabwe is a basket case - we cannot feed our people, we have destroyed over half the formal sector jobs in the economy, our industry is in tatters, all other sectors of the economy either shrinking or stagnant.Our social services are a mess and life expectancy has halved. We are poorer than we were 30 years ago and there is no sign of an end to the decline and all pervading despair.

No amount of aid or debt relief or trade concessions are going to help this country get out of the hole it is in - only a radical change of direction and leadership will do that and I am afraid that this same analysis applies to many countries on the continent.

People talk of a 'Marshal Plan' for Africa, failing to recognize that countries like Zimbabwe have been the recipients of more aid per capita than was applied to Europe in 1945. People talk about debt relief - we are not servicing our debt at all at present, the US$7 billion in debt that we owe is virtually free money anyway. It's not even trade - African countries have had access to European markets on an extremely preferential basis for 25 years and yet only a tiny minority have taken up the opportunities
available.

Our collapse is self-inflicted, its home grown, and until this sort of nonsense is addressed by the global and the African community, there is no hope for countries like Zimbabwe, the Congo, Sudan, Somalia and so on. We are our own worst enemies and we must fix what is wrong here at home in Africa, before we can make effective use of the generosity of the developed world and the new global village that offers such marvelous opportunities and freedom.

The question is how to effect such changes without running the risk of being accused of neo-colonialism? How to ensure that when leadership fails acountry, the people can change them without violence and mayhem? We have tried here in Zimbabwe for the past 5 years - we have insisted on noviolence, no guns, we have worked to secure a democratic, legal transfer of power to new, popular leadership and we have not succeeded - why? It has been simply because African leaders pay lip service to the fundamentals ofthe rule of law and democracy.

When it comes to the wholesale theft of national resources and the subversion of the rule of law and democracy, our leaders are in a league all by themselves. We have become adept at manipulating the media and foreign governments and the multinational agencies such as the World Bank and the UN. To this long list we perhaps should now add the G8 leadership and Bob Geldof. We allow African leaders to strut across the platforms of the worldstage as if they were acting in the real interests of their people and not acting simply as self-serving tyrants.

Quite frankly until African leaders themselves put their own houses in order there should be no talk of assistance of any kind. It is ridiculous that Ethiopia with its rich agricultural resources has been supported by massive food aid for over 20 years. Just take a look at Nigeria - one of the oil giants of the world yet threatened with instability and rising poverty that belies its wealth and status.

Development and poverty alleviation take discipline, honesty, openness and democracy in national political life. It takes hard work and commitment and the strict observance of the rule of law and the guarantee of investor rights and business contracts. If African leaders applied these principles to their own and their public lives they would bring prosperity and freedom to their countries.

So what's to do? Simple. Tie all foreign aid and debt relief to democratic reforms, and respoect for the rules of law and business, as well as human rights. To do anything other than that is throwing bad money after good. To do anything other than that is not only counterproductive, it is downright inhumane. I hope and pray that Bono understands this.

Eric Alterman Responds (Finally...)

Correspondence Corner:

Name: C.J.
Hometown: NY, NY

Eric,

You've have stated many, many times that William Safire lied when he said that the meeting between Mohammad Atta and Iraqi intelligence took place. I'm assuming that you're basing this conclusion on the unnamed sources within the CIA (and other government agencies) that claimed that no meeting ever took place. However, you have repeatedly failed to address the contention, by the Czech government itself, that this meeting DID take place on April 8, 2001. Both Hynek Kmonicek (part of the Czech diplomatic delegation to the UN) and Stanislav Gross (Undersec. of Interior for the Czech government) have both gone on record as saying that BIS (Czech intel. agency) observed a meeting between Atta and Iraqi diplomat al-Ani, and have never backed off their statements. Vaclav Havel never backed off this contention either, and the Iraqi diplomat in question was ejected from Czech Republic for "activities incompatible with diplomatic duties." It stands to reason that these are things you should clarify on your blog in regards to Safire, because it is rather odd that the Czech government hasn't backed off their story, yet you charge that Safire has lied repeatedly in regards to it. Hopefully you can address this discrepancy and eliminate any confusion regarding this story once and for all.

Eric replies:

Dear C.J.,

Look, Safire’s “lie” was in calling the meeting an “undisputed fact.” Clearly it was at best, a extremely disputed fact. But of course it was never a fact at all, merely an unsupported allegation by a single Czech intelligence agent with a long history of alcohol abuse. (Not unlike, I might add, the single sonarman who mistakenly believed that an attack took place in the Gulf of Tonkin on August 4, 1964.) Alas, the information you offer -assuming it is accurate and regarding Havel, I don’t think it is— is well out of date. U.S. forces captured the head of Iraqi secret service who explained that no meeting took place. The 9/11 Commission concluded that no reputable evidence for a meeting could be found. Were it not for the fact that it is impossible to prove a negative, we could say with certainty that no such meeting took place. Or put it this way: there is as much hard evidence that the head of Iraqi secret service met with Atta in Prague to plan 9/11 as there is that Dick Cheney did.

My Response:

Vaclav Havel is on record as stating that he backs BIS contention that the meeting took place. The New York Times erroneously said that Havel quietly retracted the story, but Havel went, once again, on record as saying that he never "quietly walked it back" in private conversations with President Bush. Ergo, he's standing by his original assessment. As for Eric's contention that a Czech intel officer "with a long history of alcohol abuse" was the one who observed this alleged meeting, I've not come across one story that backs up this assessment. To my knowledge, it wasn't just one BIS agent, and if it was, why would they employ one in such a sensitive manner? Additionally, since agents are supposed to have anonymous identities, how would Eric know if this guy was a drunk or not? Have a name and a source, Eric? I know not what he's talking about on this one. His dismissal of Havel's observation as "out of date" is a cop out. Edward Jay Epstein has done some groundbreaking work on this story, largely ignored outside of the blogosphere.

However, I do agree with Eric on his first point, namely that Safire shouldn't be pedalling something as murky as the Atta-al Ani meeting as fact. Clearly, it is an opaque story and probably always will be. At least he gave this concession, "Were it not for the fact that it is impossible to prove a negative, we could say with certainty that no such meeting took place." Or we could say that it isn't beyond the realm of possibilities that it did take place. Given Saddam's history of animosity towards the US, the fact that a prior Iraqi diplomat was thrown out of Czech Republic for allegedly recruiting European muslims for jihad operations, that the bomb-maker of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 sought and was granted asylum in Iraq, that Saddam gave refuge and support to two of the most lethal terrorists in the world throughout the 80's and early 90's (Abu Abbas and Abu Nidal), or that Saddam was writing checks for $25,000 to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, that the fuselage of a 707 jet was found at what was purported to be a terrorist training facility at Salman Pak (18 miles south of Baghdad) and was used for training hijacking techniques, combined with Saddam's obvious sociopathic, murderous tendencies that he demostrated over the course of three plus decades, it is certainly not beyond the realm of possibilities that this Atta/al-Ani meeting could've taken place, nor that Saddam could've been, at least in part, responsible for the 9/11 attacks. To outright dismiss it as beyond any reasonable probability speaks more of Eric's (and a large chunk of the anti-war movements) refusal to even entertain the possibility more than it eliminates the possibility itself. Consider that to this day, despite overwhelming evidence in the form of decoded Soviet intercepts that came public via the Venona Files, Eric Alterman still says that he's "agnostic" on whether Alger Hiss was a Soviet spy. I respect the man's intellect, but I think sometimes his ideological bent gets in the way of his cognition.

Mike Tyson

Well, that's the end folks. Mike Tyson has officially entered the town of Palookaville. And what an ignominious end. And it started out so promising.

The 1980's were an interesting time, particularly for sports. Magic Johnson and Larry Bird were ripping up the NBA in ways not seen since, and you felt that even though statistically these guys were not the greatest ever, they certainly could be considered the greatest salesmen the game had ever had. To my mind, I don't think the Lakers-Celtics rivalry of the 80's has ever been equaled in terms of entertainment value. Wayne Gretzky came into the NHL via the WHA, and put up numbers that were so far ahead of anything anyone had ever seen before that it defied imagination. (Whereas the top scorers throughout the 70's would top out around 100-105 points a season, Gretzky was topping out at 200.) His Edmonton Oilers went on to win four Stanley Cups in six seasons, and though they can't be statistically considered the greatest team ever (that honor has to go to the New York Islanders 1980-83 run, folks), they certainly could be considered the most talented. Consider: Gretzky and Jari Kurri on line one, Mark Messier and Glen Anderson on forward line two, Paul Coffee Kevin Lowe on defense, Grant Fuhr in goal....take half those players away, and you still have a contender. Dwight Gooden was the hottest rookie pitcher I think I'd ever seen, and Darryl Strawberry was a Hall Of Famer with nothing but the years ahead of him to prove it. What an exciting time for professional sports. And then you had Tyson....

The boxing world had been in the care of boring boxers with no personalities. Gone were the days of Ali, Frazier, Norton, and Foreman. In were the days of the bland (though great) Larry Holmes. Gerry Cooney turned out to be a bust. As far as the heavyweight division was concerned, no better word could describe it than...boring. So when Mike Tyson came barrelling in, black boxing trunks, blank scowl on his face, with nothing but his fists to do the talking (he was barred by his manager Cus D'amato from talking to the press), it was electrifying. I became aware of Mike Tyson my freshman year of college, as there was a kid down the hall who put up a black and white photo of Tyson on his dorm room door. That summer in between my freshman and sophmore year, I had a high-school friend, famous for his numerous parties, who hosted a get-together (complete with 15-ft. sub and keg) and got a Tyson fight on Pay-Per-View. It wasn't much of a fight. I believe it might've been Marvis Frazier (clearly not in the same league as his dad fighter-wise) or maybe it was Michael Spinks that Tyson was fighting. It mattered not. It lasted about a round or two, and Tyson just leveled his opposition. It was a truly intimidating yet intoxicating thing to watch. It was at that point that I realized that this guy could be the most dominant heavyweight fighter ever. It was a very plausible conclusion, and everyone I knew that followed boxing peripherally or otherwise felt the same as I did. My friend subsequently hosted a few more of these parties, but after about two or three more, he stopped. It didn't seem worth it to get a keg, a long sub, and pay for a fight that was only going to end within two or three rounds...and often less than that.

Flash forward to my senior year at college. I'd stopped watching Tyson fights because they were a foregone conclusion. I was in a college bar called the Woodshed when I got word that Tyson had been knocked out in a fight in Tokyo versus some no-name called Buster Douglas. "Whaaah!?!" I thought. Couldn't be. But it was. Tyson was no longer invincible. Some tomato can knocked him out. And it's not like Buster Douglas was an up-and-coming fighter. He was a journeyman, a nobody. But it was a portent of things to come. Then Tyson became unravelled. There were lame-ass opponents he could still crush (Bruce Selden and Peter McNeally come to mind), but when Tyson came face to face with real boxers, real professionals, he wilted. Evander Holyfield destroyed him in the first fight, and would've in the second had Tyson not been gripped by a cannibalistic urge. Lenox Lewis absolutely pulverized Tyson. And then, it dawned on me: It wasn't that Tyson was so great to begin with; it was more that he came up at a time when the competition was weak, and he subsequently ducked difficult fights throughout his career. Wallace Matthews once did a comparison of Holyfield opponents versus Tyson opponents. Without a doubt, Holyfield fought much more difficult fights against much better opponents. Tyson was carried. Holyfield wouldn't even entertain the thought of fighting a guy like Peter McNeally. For Tyson, guys like Marvis Frazier, Peter McNeally, and Bruce Selden were meal-tickets. They were mice thrown into a snake tank. Tyson never had to contend with a mongoose, and when he did, the mongooses (Lewis, Holyfield) took him down without much of a fight. It was reminiscent of the Seinfeld episode where Kramer becomes the champion of his karate dojo because he fought 10-year-olds. Of course Tyson was dominant, given those odds.

And so, the only debate regarding Mike Tyson that could be made at this point is whether he was a casualty of poor choices and bad living like Dwight Gooden and/or Darryl Strawberry, or whether he really was the dominant boxer we all thought he was at the beginning. I'm starting to think this guy was a mirage. Last night might've proven it.

Catcalls

Walking through the streets of New York this week, I've become reaquainted with the catcalling phenomenon. Men, usually of the blue-collar variety (but not always), make lewd comments or sounds as attractive women walk by...this is what I'm talking about. I've always found this practice distasteful and crass. About a decade ago I made the mistake of walking down the street with a business colleague who would make ugly, sexist comments to women as they walked by or ahead of us. Attempts to get him to shut up proved fruitless. Fortunately, he was the one and only person (that I can recall) I'd ever been associated with who did this in my presence. But I still find it embarrassing even when I don't know the offending catcaller. But the question that I've always asked, that has never been sufficiently answered, is whether this approach has ever, ever worked. I mean, do these guys ever actually succeed in getting a woman's number with this approach, much less wind up hooking up with them?

Did Kerry Pull A Fast One?

Politics aside, I never really thought much of John Kerry as a candidate. He's lurch-like, stiff, has an air of haughtiness and superiority to him, and frankly, he seems like a dick. Conversely, whatever one may think of Bill Clinton politically, he has become the standard by which all presidential contenders are measured by. He's intelligent, photogenic, glib, and personable. GW Bush has a kind of halting, goofy charm about him that appeals to some people. (Not me, mind. I voted for him because I'm a Republican, not because of his personality.) But Kerry came off terribly. That said, much has been made about the release of Kerry's naval records, particularly in regards to his grades at Yale, which were slightly worse than Bush's (if you can believe it). There is some tasty irony in the whole affair, particularly since Kerry used his superior intellect as a selling point. The problem with that selling point is that it was bogus. The Northeastern intellectual turned out to be no more intellectual than the frat-boy C-student we currently have in the White House. Boo hoo.

More than that, it is looking like the much talked about records that Kerry finally requested the Navy release are really just copies of what was already out there. It is looking like Kerry pulled a fast one on the press and made it look like he released his full naval records, when in fact he still has yet to. For one, the full military records are not held by the Navy, but rather by National Personnel Record Center.

Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs has already found a discrepancy confirmed by the Department of the Navy of "at least a hundred pages" missing from those already disclosed by Kerry.


Far from exonerating Kerry from some of the charges made by the SWIFTees, the release of these documents (to the Boston Globe, but not to the general press) has only further ramped up the contentions made by the SWIFTees that Kerry was not what he said he was in Vietnam: a war hero. He might well be, but Kerry's ongoing refusal to release ALL of his military records to the general press still does not give the answers to the questions that many have asked regarding his time in Vietnam (or Cambodia, as Kerry has claimed), much less whether he was honorably or dishonorably discharged.

More than anything, it seems as though Kerry attempted to hoodwink the press by sending his SF-80 to the Navy instead of NPRC. It is the equivalent of calling someone at home when you know they're at work, or vice-versa, so that you can say that you called, even though you had no interest in talking. Also, this quote is telling:

"There is nothing magic about signing a SF 180," said former Naval Judge Advocate General Mark Sullivan. "It is sort of like your checkbook. You can fill out a check for one dollar or a million. It is the same check form."

Why is Kerry persisting in stonewalling? Enquiring minds want to know.

Boy, When She Gets Wind Of This, Bill....

If I were Bill Clinton right now, I'd be trembling every time my phone rang, because God knows, if this is true and Hillary gets wind of it....:


In their release (PDF) announcing Evan Bayh’s visit this Friday, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin includes the following passage on Bayh:
“A testament to Senator Bayh’s commitment to working for all Americans, President Bill Clinton commented, ‘I hope and expect some day I'll be voting for Evan Bayh for President of the United States.’”

Ripples Of Battle

The following are the estimated casualties sustained on D-Day, June 6, 1944. The names Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword were code names for the landing beaches:



U.S. AIRBORNE
2,499
U.S. / UTAH
197
U.S. / OMAHA
2,000
U.K. / GOLD
413
CAN. / JUNO
1,204
U.K. / SWORD
630
U.K. AIRBORNE
1,500
CONSERVATIVE ESTIMATE
8,443
REASONABLE GUESS
9,000 total (of which 3,000 may have been fatalities)

W. Mark Felt/Deep Throat

I'm not a huge Ann Coulter fan. She can be funny, but usually she comes off extremely mean-spirited, and in the end, I'm not sure she's advancing the cause of the Right very much. Much in the same way that Howard Dean elicits laughs from extremely partisan audiences by feigning a coke-snorting Rush Limbaugh (which is weird, as Limbaugh as addicted to oxycontin, not cocaine), Coulter says and writes similar low-blow stuff about liberals. Like a meal at McDonalds, it can be gratifying at the moment that you're eating it, but makes you feel regretful and slightly sick thereafter. That said, she's made some interesting and insightful observations regarding W. Mark Felt in this week's column. To wit:

-That without Mark Felt leaking pertinent info to Woodward and consequently bringing down Nixon, we would've never had a president like Jimmy Carter enter into the White House. Ford was seen as an extension of the Nixon Administration, and Carter's election was a whipsaw reaction to the Watergate scandal. Where the irony of this comes into play is that Carter's Justice Department turned around and prosecuted Mark Felt for authorizing the FBI to break into the houses of members of the violently radical Weather Underground terrorist organization. Who happens to testify in his defense? None other than Richard M. Nixon. Felt is convicted; he gets a full pardon from Ronald Reagan.

-I found this one to be rather amusing; I'll post it in Ann's own words:

Also ironic is that Felt's free-love, flower-girl daughter was estranged from her father for decades on account of her rejection of conventional bourgeois institutions like marriage. Now she is broke — because of her rejection of conventional bourgeois institutions like marriage. (Too bad she didn't follow Pop's advice to "follow the money.")


There's obviously more to this than these two blurbs, but sans the cheap shots, there's some substance to her observations regarding this W. Mark Felt/Deep Throat story. You can read it here, if you want the full article.

Jimmy Carter...Will Never Get It

Jimmy Carter, a man who never hesitated in kissing the ass of every communist despot from Bucharest to Havana, thinks the U.S. should shut down Gitmo. According to Carter, this would show that the U.S. adheres to human rights. This from a guy who spoke of Nicolae Ceaucescu thus: "Our goals are the same. ... We believe in enhancing human rights. We believe that we should enhance, as independent nations, the freedom of our own people."

At this point I'm fairly certain that all the hubbub about Gitmo is nothing more than disinformation from the far-left (who else?) and the Islamists themselves, both of whom are not above lying for the sake of undermining this current war against Islamo-terrorism. Much as the Left claims they're just as "for the troops" as the Right, it does strike one as curious how vehemently they go after "the troops" who guard these "people" at Gitmo. That there have been isolated abuses I do not doubt. (Charles Krauthammer noted the other day that the US Navy, which has authority over Gitmo vis-a-vis the Marines, reported some 24,000 complaints from inmates, only six of which had any validity.) That it is widespread and is a matter of national policy to abuse and torture, I catogorically dispute and dismiss. One must remember that lying about torture and mistreatment is part of the Al Qaeda playbook...literally. Given the choice between the words of our own troops and their commanders versus the ACLU and/or Al Qaeda inmates, I'll take the latter over the former every time, particularly since the ACLU is an organization dedicated, as their founder Roger Baldwin once said,"[To] socialism, disarmament, and ultimately for abolishing the State itself as an instrument of violence and compulsion. I seek the social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class, and sole control of those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal." In other words: we're dedicated to undermining and ultimately destroying the United States of America. Incidentally, that quote was from 1988....one year before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The bogus abuses at Gitmo and the fuss that it has raised is nothing more than another club with which to beat this president, his administration, and the war effort. It is nothing more. Even the head of Amnesty International, who's recent report hyperbolically called Gitmo "the gulag of our time" (?!?) admitted that he couldn't say that these abuses were going on "for sure". (Translation: we made it all up.) The Marines are the most highly trained and disciplined fighting force in all the United States Armed Services. It benefits them not, nor the government that they serve, to perpetrate the kinds of abuses for which they have been accused thus far. That Jimmy Carter has said that Gitmo should be shut down is more the reason to keep it open and functioning. After all, if Jimmy Carter thought that Josip Tito, Nicolae Ceacescu, Erich Honecker, and Fidel Castro were at the vanguard of the international human rights movement, how the hell would he know humanity from brutality?

SCOTUS Rules On Weed

I've only peripherally followed the story line about SCOTUS voting 6-3 to uphold the current laws regarding marijuana use, even for medicinal purposes. I haven't gotten a breakdown of who fell where on the voting roll; I can well imagine where, say, Ruth Bader Ginsburg (by far the worst SCOTUS judge sitting on the bench) voted, but that's about it. But for what it's worth, I'll throw in my two cents on this issue.

In the same manner that no one, be they Republican or Democrat, has the balls to rattle their sabre about the porous southern border of the US for fear of alienating latino voters, the same holds true for the medicinal marijuana issue. Rare is the politician, be they in the House or the Senate, that has the cojones to actually push for legislation making medicinal marijuana legal with a prescription. Having witnessed first hand the hallucinatory effects of prescribed pain-killers, could marijuana stimulate any more illusory experiences than what is already out there legally? The answer is clearly no, but again, no politician wants to be the one to stand up on the floor of the House and Senate and say that this is wrong and it should change. The reasons are obvious, but it does highlight the fact that our elected representatives suffer from a deficiency in principles. Sure, they stand for something. But that something is remaining in office. In the end, they all look to the courts to make rulings on uncomfortable and controversial issues; that way, they never have to worry about taking unpopular stands. For some time now I've strongly objected to this whole "living document" philosophy of constitutional adjudication. The most salient reason is because it is anti-democratic and carries with it an element of judicial fascism. But more than that, what I object to is that it does the dirty work for elected officials that have neither the guts nor the principles to push for changes in laws, even when they're outdated and, in the case of medicinal marijuana, unfair.

SCOTUS voted correctly on this issue, not because they're right, but because it is the law. It is up to the legislative branch of the US government to change this law. I'll not be holding my breath waiting for the "parliament of whores" (as PJ O'Rourke put it) to deconstruct this statute. After all, no one would want to be accused of being a pot-head hippy-dippy stoner in the next election cycle. Not even Barbara Boxer.

Gen. Eisenhower's D-Day Message

Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force!


You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have
striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The
hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you.
In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on
other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war
machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of
Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.
Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well
equipped and battle hardened. He will fight savagely.

But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of
1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats,
in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their
strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home
Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions
of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men.
The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to
Victory!

I have full confidence in your courage and devotion to duty and skill in
battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory!

Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great
and noble undertaking.
SIGNED: Dwight D. Eisenhower

Beck on SNL

I liked Odelay and I found "Loser" to be mildly entertaining. But let's face facts, folks. This guy isn't very talented, and he makes unserious music. He's not a very good guitar player, songwriter, or singer. What's the big deal about this guy? Because he's slightly weird and unkempt? After watching his performance on Saturday Night Live tonight, it is fairly obvious that there's nothing compelling about this guy at all.

Deep Throat

This is one of those issues that a few people have asked me about. However, I have very little to offer to what has already been said. I think at this point anyone who's anyone has contributed their two cents to the debate over whether he's a hero or a rat. I think there are fair points to be made on both sides of this debate, but what's done is done. I did want to comment about those pics from the 50's of Felt...you know, the one's where he's posing. They're kind of arty in a kind of pulp fiction way, aren't they? The hat tipped to the side just so, the left hand held diagonally, suspended at chest level, as if to say, "By the power vested in me by the United States government, I order you to surrender and put your hands up in an orderly manner!" The right hand holding a six shooter from the hip. The (somewhat) thin tie. Very Elliot Ness, no?

A 21 Year Old Man Calculates How Many 12 Year Olds He Can Beat Up At Once

This guy isn't kidding. He's got it down to extrapolations.

Proverb

The axe forgets, but not the tree.

--An African Proverb

What's With The Knife?

Or rather, the lack of one. I'm speaking of Chinese restaurants, even the ones that serve Mexican fast food (like Fresco Tortilla). Now, I'm a big fan of Chinese food. I essentially subsisted on it in my 20's. A place called Hunan Wok/Jimmy's Place on 25th and 3rd got the bulk of my business back then; like most places in New York, it is now long gone. Fresco Tortilla on 35th and 3rd got a large chunk of my business for a while as well. The chicken combination plate was both tasty and reasonably priced. But like all Chinese-run restaurants, a disturbing phenomenon reared its head: the lack of a knife with your meal.

I've queried several people about this knife thing. One friend of mine said that using a knife at the table is considered bad manners by the Chinese. I once cornered a Chinese gal not too long ago and asked her about this; she said that the "bad manners" thing was bogus. She said it just isn't a custom that they have. Well of course it isn't; their custom doesn't include a fork, either. But if you're going to give a fork with every meal, why not a knife? And why a spoon, but no knife?

I don't think this question rises to the level of "if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it make a sound", but it still seems to be a question without a definitive answer.

The mystery continues....

When A Band Saves Your Life (continued)

More than Quadrophenia, Rush's Signals spoke to me in a way that few other albums had. If lyrically Quadrophenia evoked adolescent feelings using Jimmy the Mod in place of Pete himself, then Signals, specifically "Subdivisions", placed no such fictional character as the go-between. "Subdivisions" came out at a time when I was very aware of the music around me, so its "newness" meant that it was mine. It was my story, these were my feelings, even though they were articulated by master lyricist/drummer Neil Peart, not I. Where Quadrophenia fails to connect and "Subdivisions" doesn't is that Quad was written from an inherently English, working-class sensibility. "Subdivisions" was written from the same socio-economic, suburban experience that I had as an American kid stuck in the alienating sprawl of post-war suburbia. (Note: Neil Peart is Canadian; he grew up in the Toronto suburbs. That said, the geographic layout of Toronto isn't terribly different than, say, Long Island.) It was the bourgoise, suburban experience, down to the letter:

Sprawling on the fringes of the city
In geometric order
An insulated border
In between the bright lights
And the far unlit unknown

Couldn't have put it better myself. The song goes on to touch on sentiments every kid feels:

Growing up it all seems so one-sided
Opinions all provided
The future pre-decided
Detached and subdivided
In the mass production zone

Nowhere is the dreamer
Or the misfit so alone

No wonder so many Dungeons and Dragons dorks are into this band. I wasn't one of them (a D&D dork), mind, but we still all flipped out over this song. Again, friends that are my contemporaries, as well as younger friends of mine, have expressed the much needed vote of solidarity that this tune provided them, thus giving them the sustenance to deal with the insecure teen years. I mean, if Peart went through this, and Peart rocks, it'll all wind up okay in the end, right? Guess so....

I leave you with the rest of "Subdivisions" below, and thank God that someone understood when it mattered most:

Subdivisions ---In the high school halls
In the shopping malls
Conform or be cast out
Subdivisions ---In the basement bars
In the backs of cars
Be cool or be cast out

Any escape might help to smooth
The unattractive truth
But the suburbs have no charms to soothe
The restless dreams of youth

Drawn like moths we drift into the city
The timeless old attraction
Cruising for the action
Lit up like a firefly
Just to feel the living night

Some will sell their dreams for small desires
Or lose the race to rats
Get caught in ticking traps
And start to dream of somewhere
To relax their restless flight
Somewhere out of a memory
Of lighted streets on quiet nights...

When A Band Saves Your Life

In March of 2000, I found myself going to Budapest, Hungary (of all places) with my sister and a few of her co-workers from the airline she works for. It was a five day jaunt, so we had to squeeze as much sightseeing in as we could. We consequently took the "red-eye" back from Budapest to JFK on day five. I got into my apartment about 7:00 am, took a shower, suited up, and scampered off to work, with only the minimal sleep I got on the plane the night before to sustain me. It mattered not. After work, for some strange reason, I decided to walk down 7th Avenue. (It was not my normal route home.) There, on the MSG marquee: The Who, tonight, Madison Square Garden. Times were financially lush for me back then, so I went in to the box office in the Garden. "I'll take the best seat in the house!" I declared, full of bravado. "That'll be $185, sir." Hmmm....I settled for the second best seat in the house, for a mere $85. It was a great seat nonetheless. The concert, needless to say, was great. The Who rocked, and it still stands out as one of the best concerts I've ever seen. (I saw them on the '89 "Tommy" tour, but it was more like a big-band revue than The Who themselves.) The memory of that 2000 show has improved over time for me, as it was the swan song of John Entwistle, who was perhaps the greatest rock bassist to ever live. (Never mind "perhaps"....)

But that isn't really the purpose of the post. What was exceptionally poignant about that concert was something that Pete Townshend said prior to doing an acoustic version of "Drowned". He said something to the effect that subsequent to the release of Quadrophenia, many people had come up to him over the years to thank him for, in essence, saving their lives. He mentioned something to the effect that a whole generation of kids in the 60's and early 70's had just "evaporated" (his word). Those were crazy days, no doubt, with pervasive substance abuse. It was inevitable that the "turn on, tune in, and drop out" generation would have a great deal of casualties. But Pete inferred something to the effect that many of them expressed the sentiment that Quadrophenia saved them from the abyss. He seemed very surprised about this, mind. But given the subject matter of Quadrophenia, it makes perfect sense that it would.

For some reason, I have a stronger attachment to the music of my early to mid teens than any music I've subsequently come to like thereafter. I can only attribute this to the fact that one's teen years are the most dramatic, confusing, and emotional times in one's life. Drug experimentation, sexual experimentation (usually with one's self, unfortunately), and identity experimentation come part and parcel with that stage. And it was pretty jarring. Pimples, rejection from females, and competition to get into the "in" crowd all made for a less than fun experience. In essence, the normal suburban teenage story.

When a band that you know and love puts out an album like Quadrophenia, it helps salve the transition from childhood to adulthood. Sure you felt shitty and rejected, but so did Pete! And it was all right there in black and white, the lyrics superimposed over a picture of Jimmy the Mod and his scooter. I've spoken to several Who fans, from my brother to friends of mine that are my junior. They all swear Quadrophenia is the seminal Who album. I never really thought that it was, as great as it was, but I think I understand why so many Who fans have such strong feelings about it. Because to every insecure, suburban kid, Jimmy the Mod was them. Pete Townshend has said in interviews that Jimmy the Mod was modeled after a character called Irish Jack, who was a follower of The Who in the early days. I don't believe him. Pete was Jimmy...and Jimmy was every insecure, teenage kid who ever yearned to be the leader of the "in" crowd (the face), hated being an insignificant follower (ticket), and got thrown away by the girl he was in love with ("the girl I used to love, lives in this yellow house, yesterday she passed me by, she don't wanna know me now!") But Pete made it through, and as a result, let it be known that he suffered as much as every pimply, adolescent dork at the age of fifteen or sixteen. As a result of Quadrophenia, it didn't seem to be so bad after all to be a "ticket". The pimply, adolescent, dork with the big nose went on to conquer the world. And that made it all seem alright.

Howard Dean

By and large I've avoided getting into overtly political topics on this blog. The way I feel about it is that there are more than enough blogs out there covering politics full-time. I could add my two-cents to the discourse, but I'd inevitably be regurgitating that which has already been written about time and again throughout the internet and/or the print press. So I refrain. That said, I'm going to just this once break my personal promise and talk about Howard Dean.

Last week, on Arriana Huffington's laughable Huffington Post, Norman Mailer postulated that the Newsweek's apocryphal Qu'ran flushing story was actually planted by "black ops" people within the Pentagon to discredit the mainstream media. Somehow, I doubt the veracity of the charge. However, if Mailer had speculated that Howard Dean was in fact a double agent for the GOP, he might have a bit more evidence to back it up.

Since assuming the helm of the DNC, Dean has come up with such gems as "...this is a war between good and evil. And we're the good", and that he "hates Republicans and everything they stand for". Now, this is all fair game, this rhetoric. But I have to wonder if it is doing the Democrats any favors. Clearly rhetorical political bomb-throwing is an old and beloved sport in American politics. John Adams once called Alexander Hamilton "the bastard brat of a Scotch peddler" (he was, but it still wasn't a very nice way to phrase it), but to my mind, I would think it would be a lot wiser for a man of Dean's stature to take the high road and let his minions speak in this manner. Dean's problem is simple: he speaks the same way in public as he does in private. For a guy like Michael Moore, it is understandable. Moore isn't running for office, and he gives his minions what they want: red meat. Dean, on the other hand, has a completely different position to fill politically. He's supposed to raise money for the DNC (rumor has it he's doing an abysmal job), expand the political base nationally (kind of hard to see him doing that, considering he's pissing off more people than he's attracting), and he's supposed to eloquently represent the Democratic Party on the talk show and political speech circuit. He's blowing all three, and the Democrats know it. How else can one explain Dean getting smacked down by none other than Rep. Barney Frank, the man who could be the most far-left wing congressman in the House? Frank rightly admonished Dean for saying that Speaker of the House Tom Delay should be arrested and thrown in jail immediately. Delay might or might not be guilty of the ethics violations for which he is being investigated, but as Frank rightly pointed out, he's been convicted of nothing, much less charged. Constrast Dean's statement last year when he was running for president and said in regards to Osama bin Laden, "I have this old fashioned notion that somebody is innocent until proven guilty". Hmmm...trial by jury for Osama, but no due process for Tom Delay.

In the macro-political realm, there are different levels of rhetoric that one can get away with depending on which position you inhabit. Rep. Bacchus (R-Ala.) can call Bill Maher a "traitor" for inferring that the armed services of this country are inhabited by the dumbest members of our society; his chances of paying for it at the polls are small, and if anything, he might manage to up his positives. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Ca.) can grab a bullhorn and cheer on throngs of rioters/constituents during the Los Angeles riots and she'll never have to worry about losing her seat. Conversely, for a US Senator to say or do such things would probably lead to political destruction. The rhetoric should be cooler, or at least behind closed doors, when you're a national figure. Sen. Harry Reid might whine about Bush's judicial nominees as "radical right wing extremists", but this is pretty tame in comparison. Reid knows there's a line that shouldn't be crossed. As Dean is probably more well known than most of the US Senators in his own party, and particularly since his pronouncements are more widely distributed, he should really put a cap on it. He's doing his party irreparable damage. It would help the Democrats if they could filter him somehow, but I doubt that is do-able.

Somewhere throughout all of this, Karl Rove is smiling.

On Invoking The Founding Fathers

After reading three biographies in the last four months on Washington, Adams, and Hamilton respectively, I've found yet another annoying modern-day phrase that gets bandied about on a regular basis but yet has no real meaning. That phrase is, "The Founding Fathers never intended..." or some such silly boilerplate cant. I've heard it from the Left and from the Right, but mostly from the former. Going forward, if someone uses this phrase in my presence, I shall asking them which specific Founding Father(s) they're referring to, and to reference one or all of them to bolster their point. I don't anticipate I'll get a good response, but it matters not.

The point is this: the Founding Fathers didn't agree on a whole lot. Jefferson was an unapologetic slaveholder, Washington was (in the end) an apologetic slaveholder, Adams was a vehement abolitionist, as was Hamilton. Jefferson and Madison hated the idea of a bicameral legislature and were diametrically opposed to federalism, preferring decentralized government, with state laws overriding federal. Washington, Hamilton, and Adams were rock-ribbed federalists. Jefferson and Madison hated the idea of a central bank, which was Hamilton's pride and joy. Adams and Washington abhored the idea of political parties, whereas Hamilton and particularly Jefferson were shrewd political operators and as partisan in the modern sense of the word as one could be. Jefferson was a dyed-in-the-wool Francophile who loved the idea of the French Revolution, his enthusiasm growing for it with every radical turn. Adams loathed it, and publicly stated that he "knew not what to think of 30 million atheists". And on and on and on....

The Founding Fathers were as nasty, contentious, back-stabbing, duplicitious, disagreeable, and as polemicized as at any time in subsequent American history. That they came to any kind of compromise on anything is a miracle in and of itself, for there were a good many of them that had no interest in even scrapping the Articles of Confederation (Jefferson being one of them) for the Constitution. Pieces of the Constitution have been scrapped, replaced, and rewritten several times. (Legislatively, believe it or not!) The original manner of presidential election gave the first runner-up the Vice Presidency. (Needless to say, that didn't work out too well...) So, the manner in which government is run is constantly tinkered with, formerly unknown procedures are employed in obstructionist manners, and so it goes. So the next time you hear some Capitol Hill hack blather about how a particular method employed by the opposition party is inconsistent with the intentions of the Founding Fathers, just remember: they don't know what the heck they're talking about. The idea that the Founding Fathers were all in harmony, that their views were wholly consistent, and that there might be a political stance out there that is contrary to their vision on a whole is ridiculous. They were barely on the same page, so how can one political viewpoint be consistent with their worldview when the Founding Fathers barely agreed on anything?

Cuba Libre!

Democracy fever is spreading....this time in Cuba. Earlier this week, the House of Representatives passed a resolution expressing solidarity with the nascent democratic movement in Cuba. For the record, the following House Democrats voted against it: Charles Rangel, Dennis Kucinich, Maxine Waters, John Conyers, Barbara Lee, Jim McDermott, Cynthia McKinney, Pete Stark....and thirteen others. Quoth ol' Chollie, "[I voted against it because our government] refuse to give the [Cuban] government the respect that it deserves.”

Let it never be said that these people are advocates of democracy. They're hucksters, frauds, and apologists for murderers. That they're all Democrats shows just how far the once great party has sunk. If there's a despot out there who hates America, he can always count on the support of the aforementioned jack-asses.

Oh....Do Shut Up!

Chris Martin, mopey singer for the mopey band Coldplay, has stated that he's a "slave" to the corporate world, particularly to EMI. This coming from a guy who named his kid "Apple".

Well dude, you know what to do. Give up all your worldly possessions and take a vow of poverty. The rest of us folks, particularly those that are involved in music, would give our eye-teeth to be able to make the kind of living you make. Sure, you have to produce for your record label. Welcome to the real world, dipshit.

Will the sanctimony of these celebrity morons ever cease? Are they so devoid of what goes on "on the ground" that they could honestly, and without any restraint on their hyperbole, make that case that "shareholders are evil" and that they're "corporate slaves"?

I was mildly interested in Coldplay a few years back; they're not terribly innovative, but they have a nominal sense of atmosphere and melody. But that's about where it ends. What they really need is a good drummer; but more than that, they need their idiotic, self-righteous singer to shut the f..ck up and stop embarrassing himself. If being a millionaire rock star and husband to Gwyneth Paltrow renders you a "slave", what does that make the rest of us? Better yet, what does that make Christian and anamist Sudanese, or any other people that are subject to real chattel slavery?

A sense of proportion would do this guy some good. That, and a prescription of what Pete Townshend once said a drugged-up and passed out Keith Moon needed: a custard enema and a punch in the stomach.

The Huffington Post Blows

Much has been made of Arianna Huffington's new website, the Huffington Post. I fail to see why. The writers on there are either a.) celebrities devoid of an original thought who merely regurgitate the same boiler-plate crapola in print that they piously ejaculate on shows like Bill Maher's OR b.) they're opinion editorial writers who already have ample opportunity to voice their opinions in other venues. Either way, it's a bust.

I fail to understand the concept behind this website. Is it to give a voice to the...uh....those that already have a voice? Really....does Norman Mailer really need to have yet another forum to spout his moon-bat theories about how, say, the Pentagon set Michael Isikoff up with a false story about the Qu'ran flushing incident so that they could slam the press yet again? Does Jim Lampley really need a forum to write about how spitting mad he is about the vote to remove filibusters? These people already have a forum. They're on television, in newspapers, and are the subject of glowing profile pieces in many a publication from here to California. The whole point of the internet, the blogosphere if you will, is to give a voice to people such as myself. I'm not a published writer (unless you count writing for my college newspaper), but I'd like to think I can write. If people come across this site and care to contribute some feedback, great. Maybe they'll walk away knowing something they didn't know before. On a macro scale, I can without a doubt say that I never would've come across writers like Glenn Reynolds, Hugh Hewitt, or even the sometimes insightful but normally hysterical Andrew Sullivan. The blogosphere has allowed writers, some of them not professional ones but merely citizen-journalists, to publish, to contribute to the macro-discourse. On occasion, they not only report otherwise unknown news, but actually to become the news. Consider that it was a blogger by the name of "Buckethead" that was the catalyst for taking Dan Rather and CBS News down for their character assassination attempt on President Bush. That's powerful....and the people now have it. (Much to the chagrin of the established media, who hate the blogosphere.)

When a media establishment personality su

A Life Playing Music

I've been pretty fortunate that for the last twenty four years I've been involved with playing music. I can't really imagine what my life would be like if I hadn't picked up a bass when I was 11 years of age. (It wasn't really a bass, mind. It was a piece of shit Japanese guitar that my brother re-strung with Ernie Ball bass strings. But...at least it sounded like a bass!) A fairly large chunk of my circle of friends, now more than ever, are a direct result of my involvement in music. As the trite advertising slogan says, "It's the gift that keeps on giving!" (Ugh....)

I took up bass at the behest of my guitar-playing brother, who said to me at the time, "Take up bass, you'll always have a gig." He was right. My addendum to that is not only that bass players are hard to find, but good bass players are even harder to find. At the time when I took up the instrument, my hometown on Long Island was rife with guitar players. Everyone played guitar. It's not that there wasn't anyone who played bass, it was that for every ten to fifteen guitar players, there was maybe one bass player in the bunch. And it was questionable whether they were good or not. Coming from a pretty musical family with two musically accomplished older siblings, it was a pretty natural progression for me to follow in their footsteps. My mother also played piano, albeit in a halting manner that had more to do with a lack of practice than a lack of talent, and my father was a jazz drummer at one point in his life who still strummed on the guitar and sang from time to time when he came home from a hard day's work in the ad industry. (One of my more distinct childhood memories was listening to him play the harmonica 'round the campfire. A family friend once came camping with us with his son and dog in tow. His poodle Sammy would yelp interminably at the sound of the harmonica. I don't recall it stopping my father from playing.)

And so here it is, two and a half decades later, and I'm still playing bass in clubs, still spending too much money on instruments and gear, still practicing bass (and now, due to unforseen utilitarian circumstances, 12-string guitar and bass pedals), and still meeting people, befriending people, and having more laughs and good discussions with everyone and anyone involved in music in some way. There was a gap between the time I graduated college and started playing in a group again (which spanned about eight or nine years) where I did nothing musically. No gigs at all, no participation in groups, etc. Actually, I did one gig as a favor to someone, but that was it. But I barely picked up any instrument for a long time. Looking back now, it was probably the most unhappy, barren time of my life. Conversely, I've been heavily involved in musical composition, recording, gigging, and just plain playing for the last five years. There have been several highs and lows life-wise in that time period, and I can't imagine how low the lows would've been had it not been for playing music during the low moments, those inevitable ruts that everyone goes through, but very few know how to get out of. A few times I almost "took the left ramp" in adolescence; music brought me back. In the end, what a tremendously fortuitous phenomenon it was and is that I happened to be born into a musical family, managed to become a competent musician, and managed to meet the people that I now know and can call friends as a result of my participation in the "song of life". Even the non-musician friends that I've made are a direct result of some form of mutual musical appreciation. Now what would really be cool is if I could make a buck doing it. (Don't all chuckle at once.)

Good shit, man.

Classic Porno-Boy Quote

Me: Dude...you really shouldn't party so much. It's not good for you.

Porno: Yeah...but there's really nothing else to do in New York....

100 Greatest Americans In History?

The following is a list of the Discovery Channel's "100 Greatest Americans In History":

The Top 100 Nominees Abraham Lincoln Albert Einstein Alexander Graham Bell Alexander Hamilton Amelia Earhart Andrew Carnegie Arnold Schwarzenegger Audie Murphy Babe Ruth Barack Obama Barbara Bush Benjamin Franklin Bill Clinton Bill Cosby (William Henry Cosby, Jr.) Bill Gates Billy Graham Bob Hope Brett Favre Carl Sagan Cesar Chavez Charles Lindbergh Christopher Reeve Chuck Yeager Clint Eastwood Colin Powell Condoleezza Rice Donald Trump Dwight D. Eisenhower Eleanor Roosevelt (Anna Eleanor Roosevelt) Ellen DeGeneres Elvis Presley Frank Sinatra Franklin D. Roosevelt Frederick Douglass George H. W. Bush George W. Bush George Lucas George Patton George Washington George Washington Carver Harriet Ross Tubman Harry Truman Helen Keller Henry Ford Hillary Rodham Clinton Howard Hughes Hugh Hefner Jackie Robinson (Jack Roosevelt Robinson) Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Jesse Owens Jimmy Carter Jimmy Stewart John Edwards John Glenn John F. Kennedy John Wayne Johnny Carson (John William Carson) Jonas Edward Salk Joseph Smith Jr. Katharine Hepburn Lance Armstrong Laura Bush Lucille Ball Lyndon B. Johnson Madonna (Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone) Malcolm X (Malcolm Little) Marilyn Monroe Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) Martha Stewart Martin Luther King Jr. Maya Angelou Mel Gibson Michael Jackson Michael Jordan Michael Moore Muhammad Ali (Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr.) Neil Alden Armstrong Nikola Tesla Oprah Winfrey Pat Tillman Dr. Phil McGraw Ray Charles Richard Nixon Robert Kennedy Ronald Reagan Rosa Parks Rudolph W. Giuliani Rush Limbaugh Sam Walton Steve Jobs Steven Spielberg Susan B. Anthony Theodore Roosevelt Thomas Edison Thomas Jefferson Tiger Woods Tom Cruise Tom Hanks Walt Disney Wrights Brothers (Orville & Wilbur Wright)

I'm really nonplussed by some of the nominees. Barack Obama? I can see if he were the first black senator in American history, but he's not. He's the fifth; the first was Hiram Revels in 1870, from Mississippi. So how could a newly elected senator, who happens to be black, wind up on the list of "100 Greatest Americans"? I'm at a loss. And not to pick on Democrats too much, but why John Edwards? What has been his single, defining "Great American" moment? And Dr. Phil? Anyway, here's my list of those (in my opinion) who have zero reasons to be on the list of "100 Great Americans":

Barack Obama-Already discussed.
Barbara Bush-For what?
Brett Favre-Was he any better than Staubach or Bradshaw?
Madonna-For turning a whole generation on girls in the 80's into sluts? (Well, maybe she does deserve it then.)
Dr. Phil-I'm at a loss...
Laura Bush-Nice lady, but again...for what?
Tom Cruise-Movie star, yes. But no Oscars to speak of, so I'm still trying to figure out what makes him a "Great American". I think he's an underrated actor and he takes chances, but....that hardly makes him a "Great American".
John Edwards-Jeez, I might've even been able to let John Kerry pass through without questioning, but John Edwards? Other than having nice hair and a boyish face, I still can't figure out what makes him qualified. If being good looking and insipid were a criteria, I can think of many others that have had more impact....like, say, Fabio.

Consider, I didn't even zero in on that master of agit-prop, Michael Moore. He's far from a "Great American", as his every fiber is devoted to undermining the United States, but I have to give it to him in this regard: he's the most successful documentarian/propogandist in history. And though Bill Clinton showed himself to be more style than substance (and thus accomplished virtually nothing legislatively during his eight years in office), I'm willing to grant him "Great American" status, if only because he came from humble beginnings and was a tremendous over-achiever. I'm even willing to grant Hillary her due, as she was/is the first First Lady every to ascend to the Senate, and potentially (God help us) to the Presidency. I'm still on the fence as far as Nixon is concerned; was opening up China a good thing? His management of the economy was awful and was about as socialistic as one can get this side of FDR. But he was a president and, like Clinton, came from humble beginnings, so I'll let him pass.

Here are a few of my "Great Americans", more qualified than the names I culled from the list:

U.S. Grant-The only Union general that ever assumed command of the Army of the Potomac who was both aggressive and competent. Terrible president, but great general. His terms of surrender to Robert E. Lee at Appomatox Court House were so generous and fair that they averted what could've been a long, protracted guerrilla war that would've cost hundreds of thousands of more lives.

Harry Truman-Ended the war with Japan, the GI Bill, the GI Loan, the Fair Deal, the Truman Doctrine of containment, just for starters.

Paul Volcker/Alan Greenspan-Volcker shifted Federal Reserve policy in regards to inflation from control of money supply to use of interest rates, and subsequently choked off double digit inflation (11% at its peak). Inflation hasn't been a problem since (knock wood), and the republic, which was dangerously close to economic ruin, was saved. Greenspan employed interest rates as an inflation fighter as well, and managed the economy so well that the years from '94-'00 saw unprecedented economic growth. He also saved the markets both after the '87 crash and 9/11 with timely Fed actions.

Orson Welles-In one fell swoop, single-handedly re-invented American cinema with "Citizen Kane". From camera angles to plot-lines to methods of acting, Welles upped the ante. Filmmaking was never the same.

J.P. Morgan-Essentially WAS the Federal Reserve before there even was a Federal Reserve. Saved the American economic system in 1907 during the Knickerbocker Trust collapse. Rallied every financial titan in America to back the banks and the markets with their capital, and did what even the United States Treasury was unable to do: bail out the system. A giant of industry and finance. Without him, the US might not have made it.

Compare these figures with the ones I culled from the list, and you tell me who belongs and who doesn't.

Buchanan, Bush, and Yalta

I don't subscribe to the paleo-conservative ideology of Pat Buchanan, but it is awfully hard to claim that the man doesn't have an impeccable sense of history. He is provocative and insightful, and in his latest column on the Yalta Agreement and its impact on history, he had this to say:

If the West went to war to stop Hitler from dominating Eastern and Central Europe, and Eastern and Central Europe ended up under a tyranny even more odious, as Bush implies, did Western Civilization win the war?

In 1938, Churchill wanted Britain to fight for Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain refused. In 1939, Churchill wanted Britain to fight for Poland. Chamberlain agreed. At the end of the war Churchill wanted and got, Czechoslovakia and Poland were in Stalin's empire.

How, then, can men proclaim Churchill "Man of the Century"?

I'm a big Churchill fan, so I can answer this question very simply: by the end of WWII, Great Britain was virtually bankrupt, and was in no condition to bargain or barter. Additionally, only a quarter of the land forces in Western Europe were British or Canadian; the Americans made up the bulk of the fighting force. Clearly then, the sell-out (and ultimate responsibility) of Eastern and Central Europe rests squarely on Roosevelt's shoulders. (And I'm a Roosevelt fan as well.) Such is what happens when the forces of freedom do not stand up to tyranny. Roosevelt had the strong hand against Stalin, but due to misinformation, or more aptly termed disinformation (conveyed to him in no small manner by convicted Soviet spy and Undersecretary of State Alger Hiss), Roosevent gave Stalin free reign in Central and Eastern Europe, naively believing that Stalin would allow democratic elections in those eleven republics. It wasn't until 1989 that the Berlin Wall, and subsequently the entire bloc, crumbled....hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of deaths later. But Buchanan raises an interesting point. Why would Great Britain and France go to war on behalf of Poland in 1939, only to turn around a scant six years later and hand it over to an even more lethal viper in the person of Stalin? Buchanan is right to ask this question, and if this was the goal all along, why bother fighting the war to begin with?

The Yalta Agreement has been revisited recently as a result of President Bush's apology to the formerly Eastern Bloc states whilst in Riga, Latvia. Roosevelt defenders (read: lefties) like Joe Conason have gone nuts over Bush's apology and claim that the President was out of line. I fail to see how. This is what the President Vike-Freiberga of Latvia had to say:

On May the 8th, Latvia will join Europe in celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany. However, unlike the case in Western Europe, the fall of the hated Nazi German empire did not result in my country's liberation. Instead, the three Baltic countries of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania were subject to another brutal occupation by another foreign, totalitarian empire, that of the Soviet Union.

This is what Bush said a few days after in Riga:

As we mark a victory of six days ago -- six decades ago, we are mindful of a paradox. For much of Germany, defeat led to freedom. For much of Eastern and Central Europe, victory brought the iron rule of another empire. V-E Day marked the end of fascism, but it did not end oppression. The agreement at Yalta followed in the unjust tradition of Munich and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Once again, when powerful governments negotiated, the freedom of small nations was somehow expendable. Yet this attempt to sacrifice freedom for the sake of stability left a continent divided and unstable. The captivity of millions in Central and Eastern Europe will be remembered as one of the greatest wrongs of history.

Tough stuff, but if Bush was wrong, how does one jive his wrong-headedness with the comments made made by the Latvian president?

60 years after the fact, the controversial Yalta Agreement has been re-opened for examination. Putin isn't happy, nor are American liberals. But the fact that Roosevelt agreed to let Stalin take over all of Central and Eastern Europe, not to mention the Japanese Sakhalin Islands, with nary a complaint or an objection, has to counted against the man historically. Subjecting tens of millions of people to Stalinist tyranny after liberating them (in part) from Hitlerite tyranny cannot be considered a positive part of the Roosevelt legacy.

An Observation...

"There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle."

--Albert Einstein

VE Day

Today marks the 60th anniversary of the end of hostilities in Europe during the Second World War. It bears remembrance, both in the interest of seeing how far we've come, and how far we have to go.

Why History Matters

Reverence for those who came before us ensures humility about our own limitations. It restores confidence that far worse crises than our own -- slavery, the great flu epidemic, or World War II -- were endured with far less resources.

By pondering those now dead, we create a certain pact: We, too, will do our part for another generation not yet born to enjoy the same privilege of America, which at such great cost was given to us by others whom we have now all but forgotten.

--Victor Davis Hanson

Read the entire article here.

666....No Longer The Number Of The Beast

So says this article from the London Independent. The implications of this discovery are far and wide, not the least of which start with Damien: The Omen, Iron Maiden's classic "666...The Number of the Beast", thousands upon thousands of people who have "666" tattooed to their bodies, and who knows who else.

Then again, maybe pop culture will just override this new discovery and continue to refer to 666 as The Number of the Beast, even when it really isn't anymore. The best analogy I can draw is Bunker Hill in Boston. It's actually Breed's Hill, but no one really cared enough to correct the factually inaccurate name for the hill in which the eponymous battle was fought on.

Grand Rapids, Michigan, carries the area code 616, the newly discovered "real" number of the beast. No word yet on how these good people feel about it.

Irritating "In" Phrase: Chilling Effect

"Chilling Effect" is one of the more widely used phrases these days, mostly utilized by the Left. Everything is "chilling". The latest event that had a "chilling effect" was two weeks ago when 10,000 felons-at-large were rounded up. So "chilling" was this event that members of the Left caterwauled every chance they got about how "chilling" it was. Ugh.

Let me emphatically state. This phrase is irritating, boilerplate, and overused. It's a failure of hyperbole on a massive scale. It scares no one, save the people who have screamed about "chilling effects" for the last five years. One wonders, given all these "chilling effects" their effects on freedom of speech, how these people are able to scream about "chilling effects" after all these years, time and again? At what point will these people cease being "chilled" and actually go into a state of hypothermia?

Not anytime soon, I would imagine. They're too damn overheated to begin with.

Founding Fathers

I've been on a bit of a tear the last six to eight months when it comes to books. Thus far, I've managed to read biographies of Mozart, George Washington, John Adams, and a book by Rush drummer Neil Peart. I'm currently reading Richard Brookhiser's tome on Alexander Hamilton, which clocks in at a paltry 217 pages. (Chances are I'll be reading the Thurow biography on Hamilton after I'm done with the Brookhiser one. That one clocks in at a more respectable 600 plus pages.) I'm also almost done with How To Think Like Da Vinci, a kind of self-help book that has some useful stuff on how to stretch one's mind and what-not. (I typically like to read something light after finishing something heavy, which thus explains the Peart and Da Vinci books being sandwiched in with the textually heavier aforementioned bios.) So the last six or so months have seen some intellectual growth, and it has been fun.

Anyway, back to the Founding Fathers. I've keyed in on a couple of key concepts regarding the Founding Fathers that I hadn't known previously. Among them are:

-Thomas Jefferson was a duplicitious, two-faced jerk-off. Despite his obvious brilliance (as demonstrated within the text of the Declaration of Independence), Jefferson was prone to flights of weirdness. (Example: Whilst writing the Declaration of Independence, he tried to insert a passage that blamed the immoral concept of slavery on George III. John Adams, his good friend at that time, thought Jefferson slightly barmy.) He also ghostwrote editorials in the Philadelphia Aurora (a prominent newspaper of the time) that viciously attacked Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and of all people, George Washington. Jefferson so alienated Washington by accusing Washington of being a senile stooge and doltish victim of Hamiltonian machinations that Washington, who once considered him a surrogate son, cut off all relations with him. Jefferson also secretly employed newsmen James Callendar and Benjamin Franklin Bache, and fed them rumors and innuendos to damage his political opponents. This ugly behavior of Jefferson's is a running theme through both the Adams and Washington biographies. I anticipate that the theme will continue through the Hamilton biography as well, as of all the political enemies Jefferson ever had or made, Hamilton was by far the man most hated by Jefferson. (And vice versa.)

-It was John Adams, more than any other Founding Father, that managed to keep the Continental Army afloat through his diplomacy, which resulted in much needed financial loans, specifically from the Dutch. (Who'd have thought?)

-John Adams, a man of high education but not substantial wealth, died with assets totalling $100,000. (Adams never employed slaves to till the land of his farm, preferring to use hired hands as well as employing himself in the endeavor.) This is quite a substantial sum to have in the early 1800's. Conversely Jefferson, who employed slaves (and unlike Washington, never had the historical foresight to set them free on his death), died with debts exceeding $100,000. Adams lived in typical New England yankee fashion: mindful of his money and simple in his tastes. Jefferson lived like a European dandy: overly expensive wines, overly large residence, addicted to material finery. But in the end, the irony of it all was that the man who employed slave labor died in substantial debt, and the man who was fundamentally opposed to it and never employed slave labor died with a substantial estate. And we all know the historical judgement of those who engaged in the slave labor trade.

-On the subject of slavery: There's been a campaign of sorts the last few years to depict the slavery issue as one of secondary importance from the time of independence through the Civil War. Primary source material on the issue points out that this charge is a lie. It is fairly obvious that those who seek to depict the United States as a "wicked" nation have sought to paint all of its leaders as callous, racist, and either unaware or apathetic about the plight of African slaves within the United States. This concept couldn't be further from the truth. In both the Washington and Adams biographies, slavery is a running theme throughout, and primary source material shines light on how both Washington, Adams, and Hamilton felt about this immoral horror. Given that the United States was a much more Christian nation then than it is now, there was an audibly loud revulsion throughout the land concerning the institution of slavery, not only because its existence was in direct conflict with the underlying principles of the Revolution ("We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, et al."), but more because it was considered a grave and horrible sin. Even Jefferson, an owner of more than 200 slaves, wrote to Adams that "[slavery] was an immoral, depraved necessity". Adams would call slavery a "foul contagion in the human character", and that "negro slavery is an evil of colossal magnitude". Enough said.

Anyway, those are the key themes I've come across in these bios about the Founding Fathers. When I'm done with Hamilton, I might have to hold my nose and read one on Jefferson. In the interest of fairness, I probably should find out his side of the story, no?

It's All How You Finish The Game

The ignominious exit of Dan Rather a couple of months ago got me thinking. By all accounts Rather was an intrepid newsman and certainly one of the best in the history of television news. But here he is now, the object of derision. Granted, Rather had it coming. When you attempt to depose a president with damning evidence, you better make damn sure that evidence is airtight, iron-clad, and waterproof. As we now know, it was none of the above. If anything, that evidence was embarrassingly flimsy, and made Rather look like a buffoon. And so, in one fell swoop, Dan Rather's reputation, built over forty plus years, was destroyed. And it wasn't unwarranted. But again, what happens in the previous eight innings is secondary to what happens in the ninth. And in the ninth inning of his professional career, Rather screwed the pooch. Oh well.

Throughout life one goes through times of triumph and times of defeat. The famous among us have that win/loss record magnified in a very public way. Frank Sinatra, having enjoyed tremendous success during WWII, spent the post war-years on his gluteus maximus. He didn't start making it again until the mid-50's, and had to beg for his role as Maggio in "From Here To Eternity". (Contrary to legend, this drama was not accurately portrayed in "The Godfather", and Frank's real story, unlike Johnny Fontaine's, did not involve a decapitated horse.) Had Frank "checked out" at that point (he allegedly attempted suicide when Ava Gardiner ran off with another man on him), he would've been another sad footnote in history. But Frank went on to much bigger fame and fortune in the next few decades, and finished his life and career on a high note. Joe Torre is another example. With a managerial record of less than .500 prior to joining the Yankees, Torre is now considered one of the finest managers the Yankees have ever had. It is not an outrageous comparison to compare Torre to Joe McCarthy, Miller Huggins, or even Casey Stengal. But what if Torre never got hired by the Yankees for the '96 season? He would've gone down as one of the more unsuccessful managers in major league history. Again, it's all how you wind up at the end.

Probably the all-time comeback story has got to be Winston Churchill. In the 1930's, Churchill was so far out of favor that even though he was one of the most prominent politicians of his day and his party had the majority in the House of Commons, Churchill couldn't even score a low-level cabinet post. Prior to his exile, he caused a deep recession within the British economy as Chancellor of the Exchequer by insisting that the pound sterling be backed by the gold standard, violently suppressed coal miner's strike in Wales as Home Secretary, and was blamed for the disasterous Dardanelles offensive at Gallipoli during the First World War. Throughout the 30's, Churchill repeatedly warned of German re-armament and the war-like posture of Nazi Germany. It was not until he was proven correct that he was brought back into power, first as First Sea Lord, and then when Chamberlain resigned, as Prime Minister. By the time he assumed the Prime Ministership, he was already well into his 70's.


And so it goes. No matter how much good you might've done in your lifetime, no matter how much money or fame was attained, if it all comes crashing down, that's how you'll be remembered. However, if one still has the opportunity to pick up the pieces and make a successful recovery, that's how one is remembered. Dan Rather has run out of opportunities to redeem himself. Joe Torre got an opportunity to redeem himself, and made himself greater than anyone could've imagined. In the end, it's all what you do in the ninth inning.