Dan Riley's Blog, page 14

Washington v. Trump, Tale of the Tape

At 16 years old, George Washington, who would grow up to be the first president of the United States, had written out 110  Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation . Historians believe that this was a penmanship exercise and that Washington was merely transcribing rules laid out by French Jesuits in 1595. Nonetheless they show a young mind somewhat occupied by thoughts on how to best get along in the world with others rather than how to scam and bully them. Although many of the rules deal with table manners and antiquated manners in general, many more of them address fundamental human interactions and ordinary expressions of common decency and respect. This week The Nob takes the measure of how far we've advanced (or not) as a nation by comparing the practices of our first president at age 16 with the behaviors of the current one at 72. Herewith, The Rules of Civility, Washington v. Trump, Tale of the Tape:
1. Every action done in company ought to be with some sign of respect to those that are present. 
7. Put not off your cloths in the presence of others, nor go out your chamber half dressed. 



16. Do not puff up the cheeks, loll not out the tongue, rub the hands, or beard, thrust out the lips, or bite them or keep the lips too open or too close. 








19. Let your countenance be pleasant but in serious matters somewhat grave.
20. The gestures of the body must be suited to the discourse you are upon.







21. Reproach none for the infirmities of nature, nor delight to put them that have in mind thereof.  22. Show not yourself glad at the misfortune of another though he [she] were your enemy. "Lock her up! Lock her up!"
23. When you see a crime punished, you may be inwardly pleased; but always show pity to the suffering offender.  29. When you meet with one of greater quality than yourself, stop, and retire especially if it be at a door or any straight place to give way for him [or her] to pass. 36. Artificers & persons of low degree ought not to use many ceremonies to lords or others of high degree but respect and highly honor them, and those of high degree ought to treat them with affability & courtesy, without arrogance.
39. In writing or speaking, give to every person his due title according to his degree & the custom of the place. Little MarcoCrooked HillaryLyin' TedLow Energy JebLittle Rocket ManPocahontas40. Strive not with your superiors in argument, but always submit your judgment to others with modesty. 

Asked on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” who he talks with consistently about foreign policy, Trump responded, “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things."

42. Let thy ceremonies in courtesy be proper to the dignity of his place with whom thou converses for it is absurd to act the same with a clown and a prince. 

43. Do not express joy before one sick or in pain for that contrary passion will aggravate his misery. 
44. When a man does all he can though it succeeds not well blame not him that did it. 
















47. Mock not nor jest at any thing of importance, break no jest that are sharp biting and if you deliver any thing witty and pleasant abstain from laughing thereat yourself.

48. Wherein you reprove another be unblameable yourself; for example is more prevalent than precepts.  49. Use no reproachful language against any one neither curse nor revile. 

Donald Trump kicked off his presidential bid more than a year ago with harsh words for Mexico. “They are not our friend, believe me,” he said, before disparaging Mexican immigrants: “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

50. Be not hasty to believe flying reports to the disparagement of any. 52. In your apparel be modest and endeavor to accommodate nature, rather than to procure admiration keep to the fashion of your equals such as are civil and orderly with respect to times and places.







56. Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for 'is better to be alone than in bad company. 









60. Be not immodest in urging your friends to discover a secret.  61.Utter not base and frivolous things amongst grave and learned men nor very difficult questions or subjects among the ignorant or things hard to be believed, stuff not your discourse with sentences amongst your betters nor equals.

TREASONWhether or not Trump was being "sarcastic" when he said that Obama and Clinton are the "founders" of ISIS, it was a serious charge. If they were to have any involvement in the creation of a global terrorist organization plotting America's destruction, that could be construed as a treasonous offense. Even if you take Trump at his word on that statement, he has also implied several times that "something is going on" with the president and terrorist groups. Trump has also accused the president of illegally arming ISIS terrorists and Clinton of "running guns" from Libya to Turkey without authorization while she was serving as secretary of state, both of which would be impeachable offenses if they had any factual backing.

63. A man ought not to value himself of his achievements, or rare qualities of wit; much less of his riches, virtue or kindred. 







67.Detract not from others, neither be excessive in commanding. 




68. Go not thither, where you know not, whether you shall be welcome or not. Give not advice without being asked & when desired do it briefly. 





73. Think before you speak pronounce not imperfectly nor bring out your words too hastily but orderly & distinctly. 
















82. Undertake not what you cannot perform but be careful to keep your promise.
87. Let thy carriage be such as becomes a man grave settled and attentive to that, which is spoken. Contradict not at every turn what others say. 








88. Be not tedious in discourse, make not many digressions, nor repeat often the same manner of discourse. 









91. Make no show of taking great delight in your victuals, feed not with greediness; cut your bread with a knife, lean not on the table, neither find fault with what you eat.  109. Let your recreations be manful not sinful.
110. Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience. 

#Adjectives

“…that is such bullshit I can hardly stand it."                                                        --U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono (D) HAAs Lou Grant once famously said about Mary Richards, I like Senator Hirona’s spunk. What she was responding to was the grand mal fit of the Republican majority in dealing with the sexual assault charges against Trump Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. And her forthright, colorful and…let’s cut to the chase here…politically incorrect language was a welcome change from the usual discharge of equivocating, parsing, and death by a thousand qualifiers that usually comes out of the mouths of Democratic Party leaders. I am convinced that the Dems need more of such plain kitchen table talk to both win back the Congress and undo the enormous damage that’s been done since government control passed to Republicans. Having said that, I’m far less enamored of this other saucy statement Hirona made that lifted her national profile far above what’s normal for a politician from Hawaii. In its coverage of her statement, TV station khon2 in her home state cut immediately to a political expert—a man--who praises her stroke of genius in coming up with “Shut up and Step up”, a T-shirt phrase as he proclaims that is “capturing the mood” and “everyone is picking it up.” Except that he’s on TV talking about it rather than shutting up as Mazie demanded. That kind of undercuts the substantive value of what she said and casts it in the sound and fury signifying nothing phrasemaking category of Laura Ingraham’s “Shut up and sing” and “Shut up and dribble”.  Nonetheless, how about the substance of Mazie’s clarion call…All men should shut up? Really? The Kavanaugh debate is the most intense and immediate manifestation of the the #MeToo movement, which has been gathering measurable momentum over the past few years. But how is that movement for building a broad, multi-gender consensus around a firm, unassailable, codified belief that non-consensual sexual aggression is wrong if half the population is told to shut up? Does Mazie really believe that the male victims of Jerry Sandusky at Penn State should have just shut up? The male victims of Kevin Spacey should have just shut up? The thousands of male victims of the Catholic Church should just shut up? Does she believe that Ronan Farrow who has been one of the most dogged and successful reporters in the country in exposing predatory sexual behavior should just shut up? Of course she doesn’t, and if she’d given her words just a second thought she most likely would’ve amended them…not, we pray, to the extent that John Kerry, say, tortures every 250-word paragraph that comes out of his mouth, but amended enough to inspire without insult. Our rich, pliable English language offers plenty of tools for turning phrases that not only make for T-shirt-worthy catchphrases but can engage support for causes rather than repel it. High up in the order of those tools are what we all learned in junior high English class as adjectives, qualifiers and quantifiers. Would Hirona’s statement have been weakened if she had used an quantifying adjective like some or many or most men should shut up? Perhaps...if weakened means accuracy over outrage. But the world of adjectives is wide and deep. She could’ve said, “Insensitive men should shut up.” “Neanderthal men should shut up.” “Cold-blooded men should shut up.” There’s a thesaurus full of words available that would’ve made her statement less insulting to half her constituency, and actually given her statement greater impact.  This is by no means a molehill I'm insisting on making into a mountain. The NotAllMen hashtag is in widespread use on the Internet and generously employed to mock and/or intimidate any male who makes the fairly obvious point that every man is not a misogynistic sexual predator. The cheering that greeted Hirona’s remark that men should just shut up clearly was an endorsement of both the style and substance of what she said. (And the “Step up” line that followed the “shut up” line doesn’t mitigate against the damage done. Her shut up line was too emotionally loud to allow the step up line to be heard…and even if it wasn’t, how can one shut up and step up at the same time?)   As “feel good” as it may have been in the moment she uttered it, it is unlikely that Mazie’s moment had any effect on the Kavanaugh debate other than to harden the gender divide around it. Nor is it likely to have any practical or political future use in galvanizing more men to “stand up” for fairness, justice and equality in matters of sexual assault and exploitation. From firsthand experience, I can easily anticipate a negative reaction to this post from women…excuse me: some women…that there’s nothing so patronizing and insulting as a male critiquing what a woman says…especially an accomplished woman like Mazie Hirona. Sensitive as I am to that reaction, allow me to bring an innocent bystander to my argument. In Slate Lili Loofbourow has been writing extensively and intelligently on the Kavanaugh matter without falling into the all men trap (or smear, depending on your viewpoint). Below I excerpt a few paragraphs from her Men Are More Afraid than Ever* and highlight in red her judicious and effective use of adjectives and other qualifiers in describing the men she’s writing about:

It is a remarkable fact of American life that hordes of men are now defending sexual assault. It’s not immediately clear why. It seems like the very definition of an unforced error. But a substantial group, many of them in politics, has taken to the internet to argue that a 17-year-old football player should get to do as he likes to a 15-year-old girl—say, for example, trap her in a bedroom, violently attempt to remove her clothes, and cover her mouth to muffle her screams—without consequences to his life or reputation. 

Almost as if they’d planned it, a clutch of disgraced men who were finally exposed for years of ongoing alleged abuse has been creeping back toward their long-lamented spotlight. There are quite a few. These reputationally injured parties range from Jian Ghomeshi and John Hockenberry to Louis C.K. to Bryan Singer. What they share—besides a history of inflicting their sexual attentions on the less powerful because they felt like it—is an itch to be famous once again.** They want their timeouts to be over. 

A certain kind of man not getting exactly what he wants, precisely when he wants it, will truly believe he’s suffering more than a woman in pain who has never been told that what she wants might matter. 

It’s useful to have naked misogyny out in the open. It is now clear, and no exaggeration at all, that a significant percentage of men—most of them Republicans—believe that a guy’s right to a few minutes of “action” justifies causing people who happen to be women physical pain, lifelong trauma, or any combination of the two. 

None of that may have merit for emblazoning on a T-shirt, but all of it has merit as powerful argument open to engaging--rather than alienating or dismissing—all genders.

   * I give Loofbourow a pass on the general smear of all men in the headline to her piece: "Men Are More Afraid than Ever" because she probably didn't write the headline and headlines operate under slightly different rules than articles primarily aimed at grabbing hearts and clicks rather than minds.

** Note she does not go for the cheap and counterproductive line that what they share is maleness. 

A Walk in the Woods

Parco Naturale del Conero in the Le Marche region of Italy is--like the region itself--a treasure hidden from the eyes of most casual travelers to Italy. It consists of breathtaking coastal views; geological and wildlife wonders; typically Italian hill towns; vineyards, olive groves, fields of lavender and an abundance of the strawberries from which it gets its name. Humans have occupied the area for more than 100,000 years, and from antiquity to the present day have created a network of beguiling trails. To celebrate our recent 50th wedding anniversary, Lorna and I embarked on a hike of those trails, and we found at the end that it provided a remarkable metaphor for our marriage. Since we are often asked how you manage to sustain a marriage for 50 years, I thought it might provide helpful advice if I broke down the metaphor in this blog. So, as the Italians say, allora:It began with our own eagerness and the enthusiasm of the young guide at the tourist information center, who outlined the many possible paths for us to take and the highlights of each. He told us that to do it all would take about 4 hours. Gauging our age, hunger level, and hiking gear, we opted for a route of about an hour. So first lesson of the metaphor: have  realistic expectations  of the journey ahead. Then we drove our car up the winding road to the parking lot at the trailhead, which as with most driving experiences in Italy came with a degree of peril. We parked and immediately saw the sign for Belvedere, the first destination the tour guide had suggested to us, and headed off in that direction. We got about a hundred yards when we remembered we’d forgotten the iPhone for picture-taking back at the car, so we turned around and headed back for the lot. As we got there, we noticed another sign for Belvedere going in the another direction. Upon closer examination we saw that it was Belvedere Nord (north), which according to the map was what we wanted, not Belvedere Sud (south), which is where we were headed had we not come back for the iPhone. So the second lesson of the metaphor: it helps to have dumb luck.The first leg of our climb was uphill, which taxed our energy and hunger level early. But we reminded one another that the trip back would be downhill and thus easier and faster. So the next lesson of the metaphor: always remember to keep  the long view .By the time we reached the first crossroads…one way for Belvedere Nord and the other for what the guide had told us would be a shortcut back, we had to stop and have a long discussion about what to do next. Just to reach that point had used up more of our allotted one hour hiking time than expected, and we hadn’t even had a glimpse of a view yet. Lorna was reluctant to push on, especially since the trail ahead to Belvedere looked dark and deep; I thought we should give ourselves a little more time to find the views we’d come looking for. So we agreed to push on to Belvedere for another 15 minutes. Lesson?  Compromise . Duh.The view in the picture at the top of the blog is what we found when we reached Belvedere Nord. So not only is there a reward in compromise, but there are rewards in  going the extra mile ,  pushing beyond one’s comfort zone  and  keeping eyes on the prize …clichés each and every one, but each worthy of being embroidered into a sampler for any newlyweds’ kitchen.  Empowered by having led us there, I then argued that we should head further up the trail to Pian Grande, which according to the guide, offered similar views. Lorna looked around the corner to where the trail would take us and thought it not worth the effort. I prevailed, but she was right. The trek higher up the trail did not yield a better view than the one we had already seen and only served to lead us further away from our route home. Metaphor Lesson #6— don’t get greedy  (and this one applies to married or single life).Our target for the hike back was Grotte Romane. Although we had now stretched the timeline beyond our desired hour, Grotte Romane was supposed to be on the route home, so it seemed a simple matter of stopping to look along the way. However, when we came to the signpost for it, we found actual access required a somewhat treacherous hike down a steep, poorly maintained trail. Following the principle of “we’ve come this far”, we headed down the path, grabbing on to tree branches and each other’s hands to stabilize ourselves. When we reached a small clearing, we saw that there was another stage to descend to reach the grotto. At that point, we decided to do what good ballplayers do…and what we’ve adopted as one of the mottoes of our marriage: stay within ourselves . We opted to forgo the grotto and head back. If that seems to contradict Lesson #5 about going the extra mile, but reinforce Lesson #6 about not getting greedy, well, yeah. It’s complicated. If being married for 50 years was straight forward, everyone could do it.We were now well into a second hour of hiking and decided to make a beeline for the parking lot. The trail that would get us there we were told would be Raggetti, so as soon as we saw the sign for it we took it without thinking that it cut two ways. The way we took led us to an open, rolling field that offered inland views of Le Marche as spectacular as the Adriatic Sea views of Belvedere. Although we had been enticed by the tour guide’s description of it originally, we had dismissed it for adding more time than we could afford to our hike. Yet there you have it, as soon as you think you’ve given it all you have, you find you have a little bit more to give and a prize you think that may have been out of reach is suddenly, unexpectedly in hand. So the last Lesson:  expect the unexpected…and accept the unexpected . 
More than two hours later we had pretty much replicated the blueprint for being married for 50 years…oh, yeah, plus the patience, mutual respect and humor that marked our every step along way.  

Takes on a Plane

Generally I avoid in-flight movies unless I don’t care about the film.  But we just completed a flight home from Italy and because it was our 50thwedding anniversary we treated ourselves to business class…which means we had a monitor about the size of something you could hang in a sports bar. So I indulged in two films I really did care about seeing on a screen somewhat larger than a book cover—Felt, the Man Who Brought Down The White House and Chappaquiddick. Since they were historical political dramas, they seemed to be nice and easy re-introductions to the American political scene, which I had blissfully avoided for almost two weeks. Nonetheless I was immediately struck by the relevance and resonance of both films to the current scene. The Felt film is about Mark Felt, better known as "Deep Throat", a longtime top dog in the FBI who became the stealth source for reporters, especially Woodward and Bernstein, in breaking the Watergate story. And let’s be clear, without Felt’s guidance Woodward and Bernstein rather than going down as legends of journalism go down as two overeager, in-over-their-heads reporters who end up pissing off a lot of people, including their bosses at The Washington Post. Whereas All the President’s Men, the superb 1970’s film on our previous Constitutional crisis, rightly focuses on the nitty-gritty journalistic work necessary to expose Richard Nixon’s full scale chicanery, the Felt film (based on Felt’s own book) brings an overdo balancing of the scales. As I say, the timing is exquisite because Felt’s story is so redolent of what the current cast of FBI agents in the Trump-Russia probe have gone through. James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok have all had their personalities, partisanship, and professionalism challenged as they worked on this high-profile, high-risk, and highly complicated case. In Felt’s case, it all came down on one guy. Like Comey, he was accused of having an inflated sense of self-esteem. Like McCabe whose wife ran for office as Democrat and donated to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, Felt’s integrity was questioned because he was a registered Democrat (as if FBI agents are not allowed the political freedom they’re sworn to protect). And like Strzok, whose text-documented affair with a lawyer for the Justice Department compromised him and ultimately cost him his job, Felt’s personal life intruded on his professional conduct. Felt’s daughter had run off with some unknown far-left group at a time when unknown far-left groups were engaging in violent terrorist activities throughout the country. That only added emotional fuel to Felt’s overweening sense that father knows best…whether it was he as father of a family or J. Edgar Hoover as father of the FBI. As a consequence, Felt issued orders for illegal wire taps and warrantless searches of the homes of domestic radicals for which he was later tried, convicted and ultimately pardoned by Ronald Reagan. So much in the dark were they about Felt’s “Deep Throat” identity and so in awe were they of his lawlessness in going after radicals that Nixon as well as others from his administration appeared as defense witnesses at Felt’s trial in 1980, six years after Felt’s skullduggery had brought them all down.The Chappaquiddick film dramatizes the details of the tragedy of Mary Jo Kopechne, a young, idealistic campaign worker for Bobby Kennedy, who had the great misfortune after Bobby’s death to attend a party for her and her co-workers only to end up drowned after a drunken Ted Kennedy drove his over-bloated car off a very small bridge on a very small island off Martha’s Vineyard. My view of the Chappaquiddick affair was shaped by two things. One was my job at the time as a police reporter for a Connecticut daily paper where I covered more than a few cases that compared in rough outline to Ted Kennedy’s—someone with no priors is involved in an accident which involves an uncertain degree of negligence and the sentence that is handed down comes no where close to the justice a lost life would seem to demand. I suspect cases like Chappaquiddick--again in rough outline--happen in America every weekend, and without involvement of the country’s most famous family and a stake in the American presidency, they pass largely unnoticed. So I never had any practical quarrel with Ted Kennedy’s relatively light sentence. The other thing that influenced me was Robert Sherrill’s book, The Last Kennedy. Sherrill was a sharp, quite leftist writer who drew a devastating portrait of Kennedy’s craven, conniving, possibly criminal and certainly cowardly behavior on the night of the accident. From The New York Time’s review of The Last Kennedy:

Sherrill is more interested in the sequel to Chappaquiddick than in the events of the night of July 18, 1969, themselves. His objective, he says, is not to analyze the evidence in such a way as “to convict Kennedy of anything in particular, but rather to present a case study of how a famous politician-‐by delays, by obfuscation, by propaganda, by all sorts of tricks and wiles‐-can kill somebody under mysterious circumstances and still regularly receive more than 40 percent of the support in Presidential preference polls. That's about as close to a miracle as we are likely to come in these pagan days.”

No need to spell out for the savvy readers who regularly flock to The Nob the parallels in that paragraph to the current situation…all the way down to that baffling 40 percent support for really bad behavior. And so it was on the basis of Sherrill’s book that I was quite convinced that Ted Kennedy was unfit for the Presidency. And as much as I believed that Jimmy Carter was a near failure as a president, I was not at all enthusiastic when Ted “answered the call” to challenge him for the Democratic nomination in 1980. Still, my humanism got the best of me, and I found myself moved by “the dream shall never die” speech Ted delivered at the convention that re-nominated Carter. And although his delivery itself was electrifying, it showed again how much of the Kennedy magic relied on getting Ted Sorenson to write your speeches for you. In any event, over the next 30 plus years I resigned myself to the fact that I was going to be sharing a big piece of the political foxhole I was in with a guy who was—to put it kindly—a flawed human being. During that time Kennedy delivered more often that not, policy-wise. As Donald Rumsfeld aptly put it, you fight with the army you’ve got. Which brings up another instance of Chappaquidick’s relevance to our current situation—our army of the resistance has been sorely depleted as key members are drummed out of the corps for a variety of infractions: Hillary for losing; Comey for moral vanity; McCabe for not having a deep enough throat; Strzok for carelessly mixing business with pleasure...and Al Franken for being in the wrong place in the wrong century. It is another sad commentary on our truly bizarre times that Ted Kennedy could go on national TV back then, make a mea culpa about a dead girl in his car, and ask his electorate to determine if he should stay or go…and yet Al Franken was rushed out the door without ceremony for pretending to “feel up” a girl in a comedy sketch.   Here’s another quote from that New York Times review of The Last Kennedy:  

Sherrill's book is slim; it is cynical; it is open to the accusation of spinning out the Chappaquiddick material at the expense of other relevant aspects of the Senator's character. Yet it is a small, sardonic masterpiece. It is full of anger and compassion: anger that certain things happen in the world, compassion even for those through whom they come. Sherrill faces the worst possibilities about human behavior and specifically the behavior of Edward Kennedy. Yet he finds much to admire in the way Kennedy has reconstructed his life and taken more courageous stances since the disaster. 

Much more than Democrat or liberal, I consider myself a humanist, which means that ultimately I must accept a range of human behaviors as inevitable and tolerable lest I become a man on an island overrun with my own purity. I abhor the modern trend for dismissing people out of hand for the places they come from, the jobs they hold, their religious or political affiliations, their past mistakes or miscalculations, their gender or color of their skin, their tardiness or slow-wittedness in “getting it”. As long as they eventually get it of course. As long as they get that we’re all in this together…that we have certain norms to follow in order to survive as a society…that the untethered, indulged id is the mortal enemy of human community…that flaws are what make us human and bond us together, and denial of our own flaws or unforgiveness of the flaws in others is what makes us alien and a danger to all that exists.  

Now Playing Black Panther, Chpt 2

Chapter Two Down South American Way
While the second wave of viewers was making its way out of the Strand Theater in Enfield, Connecticut, dazed and dazzled by what it had just seen on the local movie screen, another movie was making its way from Washington, DC, to a secret South American destination. It was an 8 mm color film on a single reel with no soundtrack and a mere 7-minute running time. This unprepossessing film was in an envelope marked Top Secret and was in possession of Richard M. Nixon, Vice President of the United States. It rested in Nixon’s attaché case tucked beneath his seat for an overnight flight to Argentina. The intrigue associated with a “Top Secret” label did nothing to assuage Nixon’s disgruntlement with his current mission, which he viewed as being nothing more than a messenger boy. It was especially galling coming as it did after he had just completed 6 weeks as virtual President in the wake of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s heart attack. For that brief period Nixon believed he commanded the power and respect he deserved, but the world would never allow him. When he awoke each of those mornings, he had to step in front of a mirror and practice concern for Ike’s health before facing anyone else. In his heart of dark hearts, nothing would’ve delighted him more than to learn that he had the job full time. But each day doctors dashed his hopes with increasingly upbeat reports on Ike’s recovery. When the recovery was full, he dared muttered to Good Wife Pat…and only to Pat, “I knew it was too good to last.”  When Ike and CIA chief Allen Dulles called him into the Oval Office to inform him of his mission to Argentina, he knew the dream was over. He was officially back to being #2. Burdened as always by his ski-jump nose, his five ‘o clock shadow, and suspiciously dark wavy hair, he boarded a government craft with his dog-eared copy of Machiavelli’s The Prince and dog-eared mate, loyal Pat. Normally Pat would not accompany him on a Top Secret mission, but Dulles had suggested that she make this trip in case it was exposed. Then they could use her to disguise the trip as a well-earned vacation for the Nixons after their stint as the nation’s First Family. Nixon had no argument with the potential deception involved, but Dulles’s condescension in dictating to him, the Vice President, irked him to no end. As Pat sat next to him reading an unpublished manuscript, he reread his underlined passages from The Prince:Therefore, a prince…if he is wise ought not to fear the reputation of being mean, for in time he will come to be more considered than if liberal (XVI).For this reason I consider that a prince ought to reckon conspiracies of little account when his people hold him in esteem; but when it is hostile to him, and bears hatred towards him, he ought to fear everything and everybody (XIX).…when you see the servant thinking more of his own interests than of yours, and seeking inwardly his own profit in everything, such a man will never make a good servant, nor will you ever be able to trust him (XXII).He understood the first two instinctively, and was well prepared to advance himself as a prince by being mean and untrusting, but the third bit of advice disturbed him so much as to cause him to close his book, place it on his lap and ponder. It was easy enough for him to look with suspicion on those who were his servants, but he didn’t like the idea of Eisenhower looking down on him as a servant…and harder still for him to hide pursuit of his own interests. If he aspired to being a prince…and he most definitely did…he would have to be a good servant, which was beneath him. He so disliked that paradox that he turned his attention grudgingly to Pat. “What are you reading there?”“Oh, this?” she said holding forth the unbound manuscript pages. “It’s a book Anne Lindbergh is writing. It’s called Gift from the Sea. She gave it to Mamie to read and Mamie asked me for my opinion.”“Typical Eisenhower. Because Mamie doesn’t want to take a chance on not liking it and insulting the Lindberghs. So she’s going to leave it to you to do her dirty work for her.”Pat’s eyes fell upon one of Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s observations: “When you love someone, you do not love them all the time.” She sighed. “Boy, that Lindbergh,” Nixon said, intruding on her reflection, “Crossing the Jews. First rule of American politics: Don’t cross the kikes. He could’ve been president, but now they’d never let him.”    Maj. Schreffler, Nixon’s military attaché, approached Pat and Dick bearing two peasant outfits. “Sir, Mr. Dulles says that you should both change into these clothes before we head in country.”Nixon pulled the woman’s floral-embroidered dress off the clothes hanger and dropped it on Pat; then he assessed the wide-collared work shirt and worn  trousers meant for him. “This is revolting,” he declared. “Undignified. We’re not putting these rags on.”“Orders, sir,” Schreffler replied.“Orders? I don’t take orders from Dulles.”“From the President, sir.”Nixon pondered for an awkward moment. Machiavelli’s words replayed in his mind:…when you see the servant thinking more of his own interests than of yours, and seeking inwardly his own profit in everything, such a man will never make a good servant, nor will you ever be able to trust him. He snapped the pants and shirt from Schreffler and turned to Pat, “Put on the goddamned dress.” The Nixons’ humiliation was compounded when they deplaned at a remote landing strip in Buenos Aires where Schreffler, now similarly dressed in peasant garb, issued straw hats, a garden hoe for Pat and a shovel for Dick and led them on to the back of an old, beat-up pick-up truck. “Dulles is going to hear about this,” Nixon vowed, as the truck putt-putt-putted to a start and jolted off on what would be a long, bumpy ride.When they reached their destination, a modest house in Olivos, they were greeted by The Doctor. He was dressed in coat, vest and tie, making the Nixons feel even more uncomfortable in their agrarian get-ups, and led them inside his house. Schreffler served as translator between the Nixons and their host’s native German, though no translation was necessary to communicate his kindly, fatherly demeanor. He addressed them as “Meine lieben Kinder”. After a few minutes of stilted cordialities, the three men left Pat to sit alone at a kitchen table with a glass of water and plate of olives while they retired to The Doctor’s study. In the study The Doctor loaded up the 8 mm film Nixon had brought with him, and which Schreffler had hidden in a small burlap sack for the journey from the airstrip. With the study darkened, the Siemens H8 projected the film onto a sheet draped over The Doctor’s bookcase. The film had been made by a government agent working undercover as a nanny for a wealthy New York family, and then submitted as part of a report for agency analysis. It consisted entirely of the quite obnoxious shenanigans of a chubby towheaded boy of about 8-years old. Evidently unbeknownst to him he had been variously caught on camera pushing friends off bikes; making little girls cry; peeing into the dog’s dish; dropping maggots into his mother’s farina and mothballs into his father’s bourbon and tainted bourbon into his baby brother’s Bosco; smearing feces on doorknobs; laughing at people getting hurt; crying when he didn’t get his way; hiding when he was scared; puffing himself up like a howler monkey for no reason at all; and standing for long periods of time in front of a full length mirror angrily staring at his tiny penis.When the film was over, The Doctor clapped his hands together and proclaimed, “Wunderbar!”Nixon wanted to make sure he understood and asked, “You mean it’s all going according to plan?”The Doctor didn’t even wait for Schreffler’s translation, “Jawohl…jawhol. Das ist gute. Wenig herr Drumpf. Heil…heil.”  And that was it. They had come all that way and been made to dress in humiliating fashion for that little show of approval from The Doctor. The Nixons were silent about the visit in the truck all the way back to the plane. They changed into their own clothes and took their seats for the flight home. When Pat picked up her copy of the manuscript for Gift from the Sea, he turned to her and finally spoke, “Don’t let the Jews in the press know you’re reading that. They’re not dragging me down with fucking Lindbergh.” Then as the plane took off for Washington, he opened up his copy of The Prince again and returned to mapping his future. 

Now Playing Black Panther, Chpt 1

Exclusive for readers of the Nob--an excerpt from my new upcoming novella, entitled Now Playing Black Panther.
Chapter One Cinema Paranormal
The Strand Theater on Main Street in Enfield, Connecticut, was a quite ordinary brick and mortar, gummy-floored 20thcentury movie house. It was neither ornate nor historic. The fire department was located across the street and a couple hundred steps down to the right on the banks of the town's mill pond. The police station was a few steps to the left, across from the old Congregational Church and the obligatory war memorial. There was nothing really extraordinary about the theater nor its setting, but then there was nothing really extraordinary about Ford’s Theater in Washington, DC, until Abraham Lincoln was shot there and nothing extraordinary about the Biograph Theater in Chicago until the FBI tracked gangster John Dillinger down there and shot him outside. Fate occasionally intervenes and renders the ordinary extraordinary.Shep Farrell was just putting the K in place to finish the word Black on the Strand marquee when his boss, Leo D’Aleo, stepped out and looked up to check his work. “Hey, Shep,” Leo yelled to the young man at the top of the ladder, “You spelled Creature wrong.”Shep leaned back on the ladder as much as he dared to read the signage he’d spent the last hour working on: The Creture from the Black... “I did?” he yelled back down.“Needs an A after the E, Leo yelled back up.“Damn. I’m a terrible speller.”“Don’t curse it, Shep. Just fix it. I’m heading over to the post office to pick up the film now. Then I’ll drive by the house and get Rosemary. You’ll have plenty of time to screen it and then help her get the lobby ready for the first showing.”The first showing of the weekend’s new double feature would start off with  Creature from the Black Lagoon  at 5. Shep was always excited about Friday night openers, which usually brought out a good sprinkling of Enfield’s young people. Although the theater couldn’t get a 3-D copy of Creature, the national publicity surrounding it seemed to Shep to make it a cinch Friday night date ticket, even at 30 cents for those 16 and up.Enfield in 1954 was a monochromatic town. Most of the recent European immigrant families who had settled there--even the Sicilians--muted their native colors to better blend in with the staid descendants of the town’s original colonial settlers. With no color TVs, the only time hue and saturation mattered at all was when one of the new Technicolor films arrived in town. Such a film was  Carmen Jones , which would be second billed on the double feature with Creature from the Black Lagoon. That might normally hype Carmen Jones for a bigger reception, but its Technicolor glory would be overshadowed by its all-black cast. In Enfield at the time there were as many blacks…or coloreds, as they were called…as color TVs. No, the bigger draw for the upcoming weekend would not be the dazzling sights and sounds of the musical Carmen Jones, but the terrifying black and white thrills and chills of Creature from the Black Lagoon.When Leo D’Aleo returned with his cans of film and daughter Rosemary, he was happy to see Creature spelled correctly and happy to see Carmen Jones on the marquee in smaller-sized letters. He and Rosemary entered the Strand to find Shep sweeping the lobby. Rosemary scuttled over to kiss Shep on the cheek, and Leo winced at the thought that he might soon have a son-in-law who could not correctly spell the word creature…and so many other words. Then the three of them gathered over the candy counter as Leo opened the heavy cardboard box that contained a trio of canned reels of the new film. Each can featured a strip of masking tape upon which someone had hand-written the title: Creature from the Black Lagoon. Leo slid the box over to Shep. “There you go. Load it up.”“Roger,” said Shep, the Strand’s projectionist as well as its sign maker, floor sweeper, and usher. “Do you want me to call you when it’s ready for screening? I think it’s going to be cool.”“Got enough scary stuff in my real life. I don’t need to look for it in the movies.” With that, Leo picked up the last of his mail and headed for his tiny office near the ticket booth.“What did he mean by that?” Shep asked Rosemary, watching after her dad with obvious concern.“I don’t know,” she answered, stepping behind the counter and starting to shelve boxes of candy.“Well, I think this one’s going to be a hit. Come up to the projection booth when you get a minute, and we’ll do some smooching and screaming together.” She smiled wanly as Shep put the box of film under his arm and headed upstairs to the projection booth.Shep’s sausage-like fingers were serious obstacles in his training to be a projectionist. The delicate task of sliding the film through the camera’s sockets and then looping it around to the pick-up reel was not meant for someone with blacksmith’s hands. Days of lots of trial and error on the arduous learning curve almost convinced Leo D’Aleo not to hire the then 18-year old Shep. And if Shep couldn’t handle the projectionist’s job, Leo couldn’t afford him to be the theater’s Jack-of-all-trades either. More pressingly, Shep was Rosemary’s boyfriend of two years already, and Leo had promised her he’d hire him full-time after high school graduation. So Shep became the Strand’s projectionist, though he’d never win any ribbons at the job and even though his hands still shook and he broke into a sweat every time he had to thread a film. As excited as he was about Creature from the Black Lagoon, it was no exception. As soon as he unfurled enough film to slide it into the camera sockets, he started sweating.But this time something inexplicably amazing happened.  As soon as he brought the edge of the film close to the sprockets, it threaded itself…like a trained seal looping itself through a pool full of inner tubes…and when it slipped ever so smoothly around the pick-up reel, it came to a stop at exactly the point a professional projectionist would’ve stopped it. Shep had to step back and look on it in total astonishment. Then he gingerly moved his index finger toward the off/on switch and flicked it up allowing just enough playing time to see that it worked right…but not enough time for the color that briefly flashed on the screen to register with him as anything other than a ghostly shadow.In the theater manager’s office, Leo was staring glumly at a piece of mail that had arrived with the Creature from the Black Lagoon when his daughter walked in. “Pop,” she said, “we’re out of Good & Plenty and have less than a box of Juicy Fruit and Milk Duds. What’s happened to the inventory?”  Leo pushed the problem piece of mail toward Rosemary. She picked it up and read it. “Foreclosure notice!” she exclaimed. “But how?”“How, Rosemary? Jack Benny is how. Jimmy Durante. Ed Sullivan. Tonight…Friday night boxing. All on TV. For free. People don’t want to leave their living rooms and pay for entertainment any more. The movie business is dying. We’re dinosaurs. The Strand is a dinosaur.”Rosemary flung her arms back and raced to embrace her father, “Oh, Dad…Dad, this is awful. What are we going to do?”“I’ve been wrestling with this for six months, dear. I’m out of ideas.”“Does Mom know?”“It’s why she asked for extra hours at the hospital even though she hates the night shift.”Just then there was a strange, loud noise and the office shook.“What the hell was that?” asked Leo, jumping out of Rosemary’s arms and his seat.“An earthquake?” guessed Rosemary, reaching for him.“In Connecticut?”Shep burst into the office with a look of perplexed wonder on his face. “Quick. You’ve got to come see this.”Leo and Rosemary hurriedly followed him out the door and into the auditorium. When they all got there, they came to a stop in the aisle at the last row of seats and stared up at the screen. On it, a forbidding-looking, bald-headed, tattooed black woman in shining red leotard and holding a spear smiled wickedly. Then another black woman…young and attractive…approached a huddled group of black women dressed in desert garb and warned them not to tell anyone what they just saw.“All these coloreds,” Leo said. “Is this Carmen Jones?”“I don’t know,” said Shep. “It was labeled Creature from the Black Lagoon, but when I turned it on there was a meteor crashing to earth and then animation of all this fighting going on in Africa and then it cut to some live action involving colored hoods in Oakland, California…in 1992. That’s when I ran to get you.”“Look at all this color and listen to that sound,” said Rosemary in awe as a rocket soared through majestic cliffs and waterfalls.“Look at all these Negroes. It must be Carmen Jones. You must have put the wrong reel on,” said Leo. Then he did a double take at the screen and said, “Wait a damn minute! Did that colored girl just give that colored boy the finger?”“I think she did,” Rosemary confirmed.“Jesus Christ,” said Leo, “The Legion of Decency is going to be all over us if they ever see that. Go shut this goddamned thing off,” he ordered Shep.As Shep ran off to do as he was told, Leo shook his head at the screen, “All these Negroes and no singing. No dancing. Who would want to see such a thing?”No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the movie switched to a heist scene at a British Museum, allowing Leo to briefly get his bearings. “Wait a minute. Now it’s like Asphalt Jungle. In color. With white people.” As the heist scene unfolded, Leo struggled to find comfort in the familiar genre. But before he could, the film switched back to a futuristic landscape as pulsating African music filled the theater and hundreds of dark-skinned people in vividly multicolored dress filled the screen, standing in cascading formation on sheer soaring bluffs and flanked by roaring waterfalls.  “I’ve never seen anything like this,” marveled Rosemary, in wide-eyed wonderment.Shep reappeared and sheepishly confessed, “I can’t get the projection room door open.”Leo looked at him in mounting impatience. “Oh, for the love of…” He trudged off to the projection booth. Shep and Rosemary exchanged worrisome glances, took a passing glance at the elaborate tribal ritual unfolding on the screen, and then marched on off after Leo. At the projection booth, Leo struggled with the doorknob, but couldn’t get the door to budge. “Did you lock it?” he demanded of Shep.“No. It must’ve locked by itself.”Leo shook his head in disbelief, and then dug into his jacket pocket for the theater keys. He quickly identified the projection booth key, jammed it into the keyhole and turned it. Another shove at the door yielded nothing. He turned on Shep. “Help me here, dammit.”Shep joined Leo at the door and together they thrust their shoulders into it. Then again. And again. “Jesus H. Christ,” muttered Leo.“Do you want me to go to the fire department for help?” asked Rosemary.Leo looked at her warily. The idea of opening this predicament up to outsiders was unappealing. Then he stepped away from the door and looked down at his movie screen where two muscular black men were engaged in the most ferocious fight he’d ever seen in a movie as an all too real-looking, thunderous waterfall threatened to engulf them and the entire auditorium. This movie playing in his theater was too enormous and lifelike to be just a movie. Something seemed to be happening that was beyond him, and he really did need help. He turned back to Rosemary and said, “Yes, but only Cap Kelly. I don’t want the entire department in here seeing this.”By the time Rosemary returned with fire Captain Kelly from a few doors down, the this on the screen had become an eruption of car chase noise and violence. Kelly was immediately dumbstruck by what he saw on the screen and joined the others in muted disbelief as screeching, big, black, futuristic vehicles careened over an urban landscape from another world. High-powered guns a-blazing onscreen turned the theater into a war zone. When one of the vehicles did a terrifying flip into the air, the awestruck audience of four ducked as one to the floor. “What the fuck?” yelled Kelly. “What in the God-almighty fuck?”Leo signaled Kelly to follow him, and Rosemary and Shep joined them as all four, careful to keep their heads down, made their way to the projection booth. “What’s going on here?” asked Kelly, once they reached the projection booth door.“No idea,” said Leo.“It’s supposed to be Creature from the Black Lagoon,” said Shep.“We can’t get into the projection booth to turn it off,” added Rosemary.Kelly looked around at all three of them to soak in the mutual disorientation. Then he made a try in vain at the door. “You got the key?”Leo held the key up to him. “Already tried it,” he said.Kelly took the key from him, put it in the door, turned it and tried again in vain to open the door. In exasperation, he turned to Leo and asked, “What do you want me to do? Take an axe to it?”“We’ve got to put a show on for an audience at 5. I’ve got to get control of my theater back,” Leo lamented.Kelly rubbed his hand up and down the door and then looked Leo straight in the eye. “So’s it worth a new door to you?”“Has to be,” Leo replied. “Do what you have to do.”When Kelly returned with his axe, the others were watching intently as another fight over the waterfall between two muscular black men unfolded on the screen. Kelly was instantly intrigued and suggested to Leo that he just let the movie run to the end and see what happens. Rosemary and Shep both endorsed the idea, but Leo was adamant. “The end? How do we know when this movie will end or if it even has one? How do we know where it’s going to go from here? We’re sitting on a time bomb with this thing. I don’t trust it. I don’t like what it’s doing. We have to stop it. Now. Break the damn door down.”With that, Kelly lifted his axe and took a hearty swing at the door. The door rejected the axe, and the shock wave from the hit nearly knocked Kelly to the ground. “Holy shit!” he exclaimed. “It’s not a wooden door?”Shep ran his hand over the door. “It’s wood alright,” he proclaimed, before jumping out of the way of Kelly’s second swing. The door’s resistance bounced the axe out of Kelly’s hands and sent it flying dangerously close to Rosemary’s head.“This fucking movie!” Leo yelled in alarm for his daughter’s life.“I don’t know what the hell you’ve got going here, Leo,” said Kelly, humbled. “But that door’s not coming down with an axe, and it seems that movie’s going to run til it gets to the end. You better make plans accordingly.”“Plans?” said Leo defiantly. “I’ll show you a plan.” He turned to Shep and ordered him to go to the main power panel and turn off the electricity. Then Leo, Rosemary, and Kelly watched as Shep made his way down to a side door to the right of the screen. He disappeared into the darkness there, opened the panel and flipped the switch. The movie kept playing.“Turn it off,” Leo yelled.Shep stepped out of the darkness and yelled back, “It’s off.”“Goddamn it,” Leo exclaimed, still clinging to the belief that his problems were due to Shep’s incompetence. He ran down to the side door himself. He pushed Shep out of the way, opened the panel cover and flipped the switch: On…Off…On…Off. He ducked his head out and looked up at the screen where the movie was still playing. He went back inside and flipped the switch one more time for good measure, but still the movie rolled on. Leo looked up at it with mounting hostility and then stormed up the aisle, passing his daughter and the fire chief. “Someone’s going to hear about this,” he vowed.As Shep joined Rosemary and Kelly, they shared a shrug of bewilderment with one another and then took seats in the auditorium to watch the movie.In his office, Leo put in an angry call to Epstein Brothers, his film suppliers from New York. Izzy Epstein took the call and 30 seconds into Leo’s complaint told him he was drunk. “I’m not drunk. Come on up here and look at this thing you sent me. It’s taken over my movie theater!”“If you’re not drunk, you’re crazy. We sent out 35 copies of Creature from the Black Lagoon this week. You’re the only one to call and complain it’s taken over your theater. You should get your head examined.”Leo slammed the phone down on Izzy’s ear, got up and headed for his car. As he drove 10 minutes up over the state line to Springfield, Massachusetts, Rosemary, Shep, and Cap Kelly let the bizarreness of the circumstance go and settled in to enjoy the latter part of the big, colorful, action-packed movie playing out before their bedazzled eyes. In Springfield, Leo parked outside the Bijou and hurried inside to find Barry Grossman, its manager. An usher directed him into the auditorium where Barry was standing at the back watching the closing minutes of a black and white movie. Without prolog, Leo demanded to know what Barry was watching. “Creature from the Black Lagoon,” replied Barry. “Aren’t you showing it this weekend?“You got it from the Epstein Brothers?”“This morning, like always. Didn’t get yours?”“They sent the wrong movie.”“Too bad. It’s going to be good business.”As Leo’s shoulders slumped and he turned to exit, Barry called after him, “Show the one they sent you. Epstein can’t charge you for it, and the audience won’t care. A movie’s a movie.”Back at the Strand, Leo had to confront just that option. People were already lining up for the 5 o’ clock show. As he entered the theater, he passed Cap Kelly walking out muttering, “Never saw anything like that. Never.”Inside the lobby he was greeted by Rosemary and Shep and asked, “Any change?”“It ended,” Rosemary said.“Thank you, Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” said Leo prayerfully.“And then it started all over again,” Shep added.“Just like that?”“Five minutes later.”“What do you want to do about the line outside, Dad? Those are paying customers.”“But here to pay to see Creature from the Black Lagoon, not a bunch of half naked coloreds flying through space and shooting up white people…and that Negro girl giving the finger. The Church can shut us down for showing that.”“We can’t shut it down,” said Shep. “It’s just going to keep on playing. Who knows how long?”“If you’re not going to let people in to see it,” Rosemary argued, “you may just have to lock the doors until it stops.”Leo looked at her with relief and then dug into his pockets for his keys. “That’s it. We’ll lock the doors and let it play itself out.” He headed for the main entrance, opened the door, and yelled down the ticket line, “Sorry, folks, the distributor sent the wrong movie. No Creature from the Black Lagoon. Sorry…sorry. Another time. We’ll let you know.”As moans and groans rose up from the crowd, Cap Kelly and four of his firemen showed up from behind Leo. “Leo,” Cap Kelly bellowed, “Gotta give the boys a glimpse of this thing. Damnedest movie I’ve ever seen…” With that, half the Enfield fire department marched into the lobby and made its way to the auditorium with Leo, Rosemary, and Shep in quick pursuit.“You can’t,” yelled Leo, “We’re shutting the theater until further notice. No show tonight.” But by the time he got the last words out of his mouth, the firemen were swept up in the strange and remarkable images flickering over the movie screen and were settling into their seats for more.Moreover, out on the street the chief’s declaration about “the damnedest movie” he’d ever seen quickly passed through the crowd and was translated into “the greatest movie” he’d ever seen, and people poured into the theater. Within a few hours the movie that Shep and Rosemary had watched through the end credits would begin capturing the imagination of the entire town of Enfield, Connecticut, and begin spreading panic all the way to the nation’s capitol.Rosemary cast a sympathetic look down on her forlorn father and whispered in his ear, “It’s called  Black Panther .” 

Chapter 2 of Now Playing Black Panther, "Down South American Way", will be posted in next week's Nobby Works.

Sweet Dreams Are Made of This

At just about this exact time of year in 2011, we were preparing for a trip to Italy, and my Red Sox were sitting on top of a very comfortable lead in the race for the American League pennant. When we returned home two weeks later, the lead had vanished, and the Sox were gagging on chicken wings on their way to an ignominious collapse. Not to alarm my fellow BoSox fans, but we’re getting ready to travel to Italy again, and the Sox lead is looking uncomfortably fat.Uneasy as I may be about leaving them behind on their own, I must repeat that one of the things I truly love about travel abroad is the opportunity it affords to shut out all the American things that occupy one's mind on a daily basis. This year in particular, I’m not only looking forward to being blithely unaware for a few weeks of the Sox progression toward the post season, but more keenly getting a respite from watching the Mueller pot that never seemed to boil.    Until yesterday, of course…when finally we got to see some tiny bubbles boil ever so gently up from the bottom…like an upside down snow globe. Manafort and Cohen, the Con Man-in-Chief’s former campaign manager and personal lawyer, found guilty and pled guilty respectively in one glorious afternoon for Lady Justice, who’s got a legit claim to #MeToo.  There are still a few days left before we board our plane for Italy, and maybe Robert Mueller will give Lorna and me what we most want for a 50thanniversary present: a Trump indictment (or at least a red-hot, stinging report that spares no details.)If it doesn’t happen before we leave, I’ll be content to enjoy the news blackout. Italy, sadly, has nativistic, xenophobic troubles of its own, but this is where not really knowing the language helps. Not that I take that bizarre but typical American pride in only being able to speak English. I have been trying…as always. Leading up to this trip, for instance, I’ve immersed myself in Italian cinema…Cinema Paradiso, Il Postino , all of Fellini…most recently Bertolucci’s 1900. I learned that Bertolucci was unhappy with the title that was imposed on him. He called his film Novecento (Twentieth Century) because it was about the century. But marketing concerns that it would not translate well forced the change to 1900, which is totally misleading since the film doesn’t take place in 1900 and its story doesn’t even begin until 1908.But I digress. Donald Sutherland is the villain of Novecento, a black-shirted Fascist who manipulates a widow out of her home, rapes and murders a young boy, and ties a kitten to a wall and kills it by ramming it with his head. Sutherland’s character, none too subtly named Attila, is about as close to a big screen manifestation of Donald Trump as we’re likely to have for some time. And in his character’s demise, as depicted in the scene below, I can only imagine how happy I would be to return home after our sojourn and turn on MSNBC to see Trump’s demise playing out similarly on a continuous loop.  While on vacation, The Nob will continue to publish, featuring excerpts from my new upcoming novella Now Playing Black Panther. Arrivederci. 

To the Barricades

I’m pushing the dateline for this week’s blog post way up because we have an emergency situation on our hands. If Republicans, cable news associate producers, and (ahem) certain progressive Democrats have their way, the 2018 mid-term elections will become a referendum on Nancy Pelosi rather than Donald Trump. I can see it coming because the playbook is familiar. Ever since Newt Gingrich led the GOP to Crazy Town by ousting former moderate leader Bob Michel, radical Republicans have adopted a chop-off-the-head strategy for advancing their wicked agenda. They once tried to build an entire national Congressional campaign around a caricature of Democratic leader Tip O’Neill’s bulbous red nose. They achieved their first and most stunning success by taking down O’Neill’s successor Jim Wright over a vanity book scam, that Gingrich himself would brazenly repeat once he became Speaker of the House. They turned the most vanilla Democratic leader of his time, Tom Foley, into an archvillain. So, although there’s an obvious layer of misogyny in their ongoing attacks on Nancy Pelosi, she would be getting nearly as bad treatment if she were a male simply by virtue of being a Democrat.  This is the dark core of this game. They turn whoever is the leader of the Democrats into the personification of all the evils they ascribe to Democrats:Tax and spendWeak on defenseNanny stateAffirmative actionCoddling criminalsOpen immigrationGun controlEthnic and racial diversity
The alleged toxicity of Nancy Pelosi (above reproach ethically, btw) simply has to do with the fact that her name is shorthand for conjuring up all that Republicans fear and loath about Democrats. As would be true of any new Democratic leader, be it Seth Moulton or Tim Ryan or any other imagined white knight.The challenge for Dems between now and Election Day is to recognize and counter this strategy. And the first counter move to this tried and true Republican strategy is for Democratic candidates for Congress not to play into it…as reportedly more than 50 of them already have. (And you can just bet that many of these 51 calling for “new blood” would turn the party over to a 77-year old non-party member quicker than you can cover your pancakes with Vermont maple syrup.) If you are a Democrat running for Congress and are asked if you would support Pelosi for Speaker if Dems retake the House and you can’t come up with a better answer than no, you really don’t have any business in professional politics, let alone Democratic party politics. But know this: you are all definitely going to be asked this (0ver and over again) because cable news has seized upon this issue as the cheapest way to balance their negative Trump coverage. The Nob hereby presents a variety of alternative answers to help you the next time some cable news anchor tries to make you squirm in your seat with the Nancy question:Answer #1--Since Republicans with solid majorities failed to repeal healthcare more than 60 times, and Nancy Pelosi had one shot to pass it with a fragile majority and succeeded, why wouldn’t I support her if she wants to lead again?Answer #2—This election is a referendum on Donald Trump’s corrupt, divisive, embarrassing leadership. Not on Nancy Pelosi. Nice try.Answer #3—When I get to Congress, I’ll be giving Leader Pelosi the fair hearing her long and distinguished career richly deserves., Until then, we all have a job to do in saving the country. The intramurals can wait. You, as a candidate, are free to come up with other ways to use this question to advance your party rather than derail it for the sake of your intellectual vanity. Just…please, Jesus…stop playing the fool. Democrats…especially those of the progressive strain…love to see themselves as profiles in courage. In their fantasy world, taking a knife to the back of their party’s leader is seen as an act of boldness. Outside of their fantasy world, of course, it is seen for just what it is: opportunism, cravenness, and witlessness. When people outside of professional politics look at such behavior they don’t say, “Ah, there goes someone of integrity and principle worthy of my vote."  They say, “There goes someone with no loyalty to their party and no confidence in its leadership and if they don’t have that, why should I?”These 50 candidates who have already gone on record and demonstrated that they are weak-minded and disinclined to circle the wagons for the greater good, signal a rocky road for the savvy, egoless leadership of Nancy Pelosi. But she’s overcome worse…and with the right help, she’ll do so again: His rival it seems, had broken his dreamsBy stealing the girl of his fancy
Her name was Magill, and she called herself LilBut everyone knew her as NancyNow she and her man, who called himself DanWere in the next room at the hoe downRocky burst in, and grinning a grinHe said, "Danny boy, this is a showdown"But Daniel was hot, he drew first and shotAnd Rocky collapsed in the corner

The King and I

LeBron James really likes to bike.
This is odd. LeBron James will have spent his long, distinguished NBA career playing for three teams, all of which I hold in a range of affections from indifference to hate. Odder still, he’s about to begin the latest and probably last stage with the team I hate the most at a time when my admiration for him as an individual is at its highest. So high in fact that I’m beginning here my second blog post dedicated to him, which has never happened in Nob history with an athlete with no ties to my sweet New England.
With LeBron so much in the news the past week for what we call off-the-court issues, it probably comes as a further surprise that this post was neither inspired by his magnanimous opening of a school for disadvantaged kids nor his being the object of yet another Trumpian Twitter fart. What really got my attention was an interview with him in The Wall Street Journal where he was expansive about his love for bicycling. It was this passage right here that bonded me to this guy who’s unlike me in so many substantial ways: 

“Me and my friends, when we got on our bikes, we would just ride. Sometimes we would even get lost, because we’d be gone for so long. But there was a sense of joy and comfort. There was nothing that really could stop us. We felt like we were on top of the world. It was a way of life. If you had a bike, it was a way to kind of let go and be free.”

I could have said that very thing myself. My bike was my ticket to the open road long before I ever got my driver’s license. I would strap my Channel Master on to the front handlebars and pedal over town...as far as the distant home of Patty Rodowik clear across town. Like LeBron, my bike provided me with an exhilarating sense of freedom.
Coincidently my love affair with bike riding has recently been rekindled thanks to our discovery of electric bikes. Inveterate global cyclist and friend Peter Hörwing had been urging e-bikes on us for years, but it was pure happenstance that finally got us onboard. After breezing up Mt Soledad, the highest point in San Diego, on our first e-bike excursion, we were sold. The bike rental company suggested we wait for better prices in December, which we were inclined to do until one day we found Costco selling e-bikes and we didn’t have to wait for a better price. Owning e-bikes has now opened up a whole world of bike riding to us unimaginable before...and we suddenly realize we live in a vast network of great bike paths. Our closest and favorite runs about 9 miles in one direction from Vista to the the beach in Oceanside, so 18 miles round trip. It took a while to work up to it even with the added power, but now I do it most every day.
It has not been without some scares and adjustments. On one of my first test rides around the immediate neighborhood, I hit 37 mph on the speedometer. 


Taking it down the driveway for a little spin...
When I was a kid I would have gone way out of my way to find a hill that would let me go that fast. Now, it’s just the opposite. So I don’t ride much in our very hilly neighborhood anymore. But even the fairly level path that’s now my go-to destinations is not without its challenges. A few days ago a bee got trapped under my shirt and stung me. While still riding, I reached my hand under to pull out the stinger and got it stuck in my finger. The very next day I decided that not only would I pedal to the ocean but I’d lock my bike up, spread a towel out, and take my bee bite into the salt water for grandma’s cure for everything. Unfortunately the backpack I had planned to take with me proved too hot and heavy, so I improvised with an old, light nylon Celebrity Cruise bag...tied like my old Channel Master to my handlebars. As I approached the one significant slope on this ride, however, I could not see light between the shadow of the bag and my front tire. About 50 feet before making that swift descent I decided to stop and take closer look. It seems the bag was so old, it was shredding as I rode and so loosened that it was just about to get pulled in and jammed up between my front wheel and front frame. There’s a very good chance that had I not stopped, I would not be writing this blog post or any other for a good long while, if ever. In my golden years, I suddenly find myself living on the edge. We went on African safari once with a guide known for his recklessness. His motto, he told us, was if you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much room. So here I am, I guess, doing my part.
Before leaving this, I must return to LeBron and briefly address some of the non-bike riding news he made this week. In promoting his newly opened school he answered the question of what he would say to Donald Trump if he was sitting across from him. James said he would never sit down with Trump, which provoked Trump's Twitter attack on James as a dummy. I’m with the King here too. One of the great things about living in California--other than that those taxes some love to complain about go to pay for things like bike paths and beautiful beaches--is that you don't have to worry about Trump visiting and befouling the air. So, no, I wouldn't sit down with him either...though the idea of it stirred recollection of old Nixon henchman G. Gordon Liddy who once openly expounded on how he would kill a highly guarded target. He said he would arm himself with a finely sharpened #2 pencil and as soon as he got close enough jab it into the target’s temple or eyeball. It's a pretty safe bet that Trump supporters given a choice between walking down a darkened street with either founder of schools LeBron James coming toward them or aspiring presidential assassin G. Gordon Liddy coming toward them, would choose Liddy. That’s just how they see the world.
Happy bicycling, everyone. 

Book 'em, Dan-O

Friend Andy Kirkaldy induced me to participate in one of the more benign Facebook activities last week. It had nothing to do with undermining a national election. All you had to do was post the covers of seven books you loved…no explanation necessary. Again, in the reflective stage of my life I ended up putting more thought into it than was required. It started when I acknowledged the worn and weathered look of the books I had chosen. These were not rescue books from some yard sale…these were original purchases. I’d owned all of them for nearly 40 years or more. And they didn’t get worn out just sitting on a dusty bookshelf; they were worn out because of my constant re-reading and referencing of them. I loved the books to begin with--otherwise why would I have chosen them—but this trivial little process made me love them even more.The process also made me realize that I will never have such books in my possession again. I have become an inveterate consumer of audio books. Listening to books while walking, driving, riding my bike has become such an attractive convenience I can’t imagine going back to a day where I have to sit stationary to enjoy a book. I’ve had friends tell me that they could never go audio because they love the feel of holding a book in their hands and turning pages of paper. I get that. It’s kind of what held me back from going from writing with a quill in my hand to using a typewriter (D’oh!).My embrace of audio books has not come without a price however. For most of my sentient life, I’d been a willfully slow reader…of fiction at least. Without ever being instructed to do so by any reading or writing teacher, I intuitively wanted to tune into the writer’s voice…to hear the sentences unfold in my head just as they did in the author’s head. Speed-reading doesn’t allow for that, so I was always content to read at whatever pace the author set.  The problem with audio books is that you have to listen at the pace the reader reads at. Not only that, but the reader can seriously impose tone, characterization, and nuance on a book that the author may not have intended and that you may have not inferred on your own. Some recent works of audio fiction I listened to provide perfect illustration of what I’m talking about. The first was a rather nicely done mystery, Before the Fall by Noah Hawley. The book reader, Robert Petkoff, may have been too good for my own good. One of the characters was clearly based on rightwing blowhard Bill O’Reilly, and Petkoff, a master at creating voices, nailed O’Reilly perfectly. The problem is, I despise that nabob of narcissism. For years I’ve turned O'Reilly off whenever he appears on TV, so having him streaming directly into my brain via earbud was painful, and I would’ve much preferred to filter that character through my own imagining.Speaking of “newsmen” intruding on the world of fiction, Jake Tapper’s voice narrating his book Hellfire Club was nowhere near as excuciating as that O’Reilly voice. But there’s a real problem when you apply a voice so closely associated with delivering the news to telling a made-up story. It was only a mildly interesting story to begin with, but the intonation of a CNN anchor seriously undercut whatever pulpy charm it may have had.  Then there was The Tuscan Child by Rhys Bowen, easily the most disappointing audio experience I’ve had. The format of the book is a daughter’s story alternating by chapters with her father’s story. They assigned two readers for the task…a female and a male, which may have seemed logical but there were male characters and female characters in each chapter, so the readers had to change genders anyway. No gain there…in fact a big loss. She was awful with male voices and he was almost as bad with female voices…and they were both dreadful with Italian accents. It became unlistenable and I just stopped. My fear is that this may be a trend in audio books and publishers will feel they have to mount these things like a mini stage production. It has served to make me more discriminating in choosing audio books now…not just judging by the cover or the story, but by the audio presentation as well.At the far opposite extreme, I’m currently listening to Something in the Water by Catherine Steadman, who’s actually an actress (Downton Abbey) turned novelist.  That being so, I’m hearing this book exactly the way she intended…and it’s exquisite. The story itself is somewhat derivative of that potboiler from 20 years back, A Simple Plan, which was made into a terrific Bill Paxton movie. But her take on the dynamics of a marriage is razor-sharp and her application of those dynamics for churning an international thriller is outstanding. Something in the Water is so good that I’m experiencing that most glorious sense of angst that comes when you're seeing a loved book coming to an end. Also, sad to note, no matter how much I love this one…or Gentleman from Moscow or Moral Tribes or other audio favorites of mine, their covers will never be able to show my love and affection for them the way these books have…