Bowser, the Sha-Na-Na guy, was actually a performer at Woodstock. His greaser-persona, an intentionally ironic throwback even forty years ago, made it seem an unlikely venue for him. But perhaps it is less unlikely that the now-superannuated Bowser is on TV hawking a multiple CD collection of the great, great 1950s songs through a mysterious company that also rents out the Time Life name and logo for the purposes of bestowing legitimacy on a decidedly shifty operation.
I pride myself on making certain to avoid scams and have done so all of my adult life. I will say now (whether you choose to believe me or not) that I always thought Dubai and its silly tall building and its pathetic palm-shaped island would be headed for the scrap-heap even before they'd be finished. When I was a teenager I knew a particular kid, known to me as a teller of Burj-Dubai-worthy tall-tales, who told all my friends he was suffering from a soon-to-be-fatal case of Hodgkins disease (or the like). All my friends believed him, went over his house, gave him presents, wept. I told them he was full of baloney. They called me inhumane and an intolerable cynic. Then the kid didn't die. He'd never been sick. However my nickname became "the cynic" and not in a bad way.
There have been lapses. Still in shock over that date which shall not be mentioned, I fell for a Republican's insistence that we must invade Babylon though I had long taught myself never to trust a single word spoken through Republican lips. And look what happened.
The second time was when I believed in Bowser. I had some prompting from a family member: "You love all that fifties stuff, you should get this". The hits did sound good. And Bowser made several promises to which I shall not hold him personally responsible.
Suffice it to say the on-line purchasing process was damnably deceptive, and that it somehow jumped to a "you have just purchased" page without my clicking "purchase", and that it added several way-overpriced, unwanted items to my tab, and that the order could not be canceled until after it shipped (!), and my only option would be to return everything after I'd received it based on the promise of a "full money back guarantee". Fortunately I had made the purchase using American Express and they are pretty good about defending against this kind of chicanery.
The moral of the story is that one should a)never listen to a Republican and b)never fall victim to what is an obvious scam even if it seems in every way appealing and as if it cannot possibly really be of any harm.
Finally, let it be known that the old brand of "Time Life" now survives not as the proud emblem of the world's most recognizable publishing empire but as a front for cheap shills trying play on the pipe of historical significance. Don't fall for it.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Bring Back Elliot Spitzer
The timing was immaculate. His unsavory deeds were not.
And in spite of the former New York Governor's erstwhile tramping around the Mayflower in just his socks ordering call girls to do it as dirty as can be, I believe we want him back--as Governor of New York State--on his political and prosecutorial merits.
He's already appearing on legitimate talk shows and they are not talking with him about condoms. For instance, on last night's TRMS (The Rachel Maddow Show), hosted brightly but haltingly by the irrepressible Howard Dean, Spitzer was a guest and held forth on "The Trouble with Wall Street". In a cogent, cutting manner (as is typical for him), he rather eviscerated the current pay structure and mindset of Wall Street. Specifically, he said "compensation has to come down" and "these executives are fiduciaries that work for the investors; they are supposed to safeguard the shareholders' money--instead they simply took the shareholders' money for themselves while making catastrophic decisions".
Here we have an ex-Governor of the Wall Street State honing in on the Wall Street pirates like a torpedo plane dropping a steel fish into the water a quarter mile away and in the direction of the Bismarck. He clearly has it in for these guys and he should--as any American patriot ought to.
But for him it may be even more than that. I mentioned the timing above. In hindsight it now seems very possible if not likely that the sudden revelation of his sordid trysting (that came only months before the historic collapse of the Wall Street bubble which has resulted in the worst economic era in any of our lifetimes unless we are at least octogenarians), may have been engineered by his foes down on the Street. They knew he was a pit bull, they knew he didn't care for their chicanery, they probably knew he was going to be investigating, they probably suspected or knew he was going to come down on them like a bunker-busting bomb. And so they struck first. They pretty much cut his political legs off with some seriously scandalous news, and so he toppled and fell. Now somewhat rehabilitated, Spitzer is back on his feet and may be looking for a little bit of payback.
His resignation was a win for Wall Street and the right-wing in so many ways, but I will mention just two. Spitzer, a sitting governor deeply opposed to the treachery entrenched in the financial markets of his own state, was forced to resign in disgrace. His replacement, an unsteady buffoon, is about as much a threat to Wall Street as a Vermont Teddy Bear is to a run of salmon.
But now the world has changed again. The wizards of Wall Street look more like Sauron than Gandalf. Spitzer looks more like a steely-eyed (if perhaps kinky) Aragorn than the way he looked when he resigned (which was like Gollum). Americans, still gasping for air in the oily choke-hold of a class of cynical banker-thieves, cannot at this moment be overly concerned with the bedroom antics of anyone equipped to break that choke-hold. This is especially so if the potential rescuer is of the political caliber of an Elliot Spitzer. We need a defender who knows the ropes and who knows what it feels like to trade grapeshot with the enemy.
We need Elliot Spitzer again. I nominate him for another term as Governor of the State of New York.
And in spite of the former New York Governor's erstwhile tramping around the Mayflower in just his socks ordering call girls to do it as dirty as can be, I believe we want him back--as Governor of New York State--on his political and prosecutorial merits.
He's already appearing on legitimate talk shows and they are not talking with him about condoms. For instance, on last night's TRMS (The Rachel Maddow Show), hosted brightly but haltingly by the irrepressible Howard Dean, Spitzer was a guest and held forth on "The Trouble with Wall Street". In a cogent, cutting manner (as is typical for him), he rather eviscerated the current pay structure and mindset of Wall Street. Specifically, he said "compensation has to come down" and "these executives are fiduciaries that work for the investors; they are supposed to safeguard the shareholders' money--instead they simply took the shareholders' money for themselves while making catastrophic decisions".
Here we have an ex-Governor of the Wall Street State honing in on the Wall Street pirates like a torpedo plane dropping a steel fish into the water a quarter mile away and in the direction of the Bismarck. He clearly has it in for these guys and he should--as any American patriot ought to.
But for him it may be even more than that. I mentioned the timing above. In hindsight it now seems very possible if not likely that the sudden revelation of his sordid trysting (that came only months before the historic collapse of the Wall Street bubble which has resulted in the worst economic era in any of our lifetimes unless we are at least octogenarians), may have been engineered by his foes down on the Street. They knew he was a pit bull, they knew he didn't care for their chicanery, they probably knew he was going to be investigating, they probably suspected or knew he was going to come down on them like a bunker-busting bomb. And so they struck first. They pretty much cut his political legs off with some seriously scandalous news, and so he toppled and fell. Now somewhat rehabilitated, Spitzer is back on his feet and may be looking for a little bit of payback.
His resignation was a win for Wall Street and the right-wing in so many ways, but I will mention just two. Spitzer, a sitting governor deeply opposed to the treachery entrenched in the financial markets of his own state, was forced to resign in disgrace. His replacement, an unsteady buffoon, is about as much a threat to Wall Street as a Vermont Teddy Bear is to a run of salmon.
But now the world has changed again. The wizards of Wall Street look more like Sauron than Gandalf. Spitzer looks more like a steely-eyed (if perhaps kinky) Aragorn than the way he looked when he resigned (which was like Gollum). Americans, still gasping for air in the oily choke-hold of a class of cynical banker-thieves, cannot at this moment be overly concerned with the bedroom antics of anyone equipped to break that choke-hold. This is especially so if the potential rescuer is of the political caliber of an Elliot Spitzer. We need a defender who knows the ropes and who knows what it feels like to trade grapeshot with the enemy.
We need Elliot Spitzer again. I nominate him for another term as Governor of the State of New York.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Of Driving and the Original Wilderness
I am a train lover. I am an airline-intense-disliker (especially of the constitution-violating security measures they employ). I am an avid city-walker and an enthusiastic, if occasional country-hiker.
Perhaps it is a surprise to hear that a person (me) living in a place where one needs no car loves--truly loves--driving. Perhaps it is because that person doesn't ever really need to drive? And never has commuted by car in his life (except for a grim and thankfully brief period in his teens, intra-suburb,"carpooling" in the back seat of an AMC Gremlin, an experience so dispiriting it may have been life-changing)?
But I do love driving. And I can think of no more act quite as assuredly enthralling as pressing down on the gas, rounding a curve, coming upon a new vista, passing some relative slowpoke perhaps, and feeling quite in control and on top of the world. I like to think of myself as a "good driver". I don't do stunts. I don't speed. I use my mirrors. I am respectful of other cars, inanimate objects, the odd small animal and especially pedestrians. I am probably a regular goody-two-shoes of a driver. But none of that innate caution detracts from the feeling of power and ascendancy that comes from moving at speed through a gorgeous landscape--protected from the elements, The Basement Tapes playing off the iPod--I become misty at the thought.
Then there is the choice of venue. Perhaps a tour through the clamor and waste of, say, southern Nassau County, or to spin oneself endlessly in circles around the magnificent, vast parking lots of the Paramus Mall would not afford the same exaltation. But I do a fair amount of my driving in the storied, gorgeously well-endowed, quasi-rural and sophisticated Hudson Valley--a geography that has certainly got its due historically but remains underreported as one of the world's Great Locations.
The Hudson Valley is America's first "wilderness"--wilderness being a concept that requires a non-wilderness (and in this case that would be the million-footed beast clutching that last Palisade of the valley before its great river washes out past the skyscrapers and into the bay and the bight and ultimately the sea). It was sold to the masses cramped in city-quarters a such, and so many carriages and trains and parkways endeavored to take them there over the course of, say, the time just before the Civil War to the time just after Woodstock, that it became after a time overlooked and came to be seen as "your father's paradise" and therefore kind of dowdy and maybe even creepy. Certainly the dozens of abandoned, wretched-looking tourist shacks that cluster near some of the interior roadways do nothing to dispel the notion it may have been, for a time, pretty much a lowlife destination and kind of creepy.
I'm here to tell you today that it's not anybody's paradise, but that it's got as much charm and intrinsic beauty (and as many great restaurants) as any richly endowed valley in any part of the world. The other day I drove up River Road on the eastern side of the Hudson north of Rhinebeck (a very winning little crossroads town in and of itself) and was astonished at the autumn finery in the trees, the ancient, native architecture of the houses nestled in crooks of the valley, the way the road wound about through woods and over streams, and at last how it ended up in the entirely underrated river town of Hudson, New York, a very small city whose main street happens to be a study in American architecture from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century and is lined with stores and restaurants of a quality and sophistication more to be expected in urban centers like Tribeca and Soho.
There is a long story waiting to be written about how the Hudson Valley now beckons the driver to its winding, shady roads and tempts the driver with succulent feasts at charming restaurants owned by chefs that might as well have made their mark in Manhattan. But that would be a much longer story than this format will tolerate.
Let me just say it again: a) I love driving and b) I especially love driving in the Hudson Valley.
Perhaps it is a surprise to hear that a person (me) living in a place where one needs no car loves--truly loves--driving. Perhaps it is because that person doesn't ever really need to drive? And never has commuted by car in his life (except for a grim and thankfully brief period in his teens, intra-suburb,"carpooling" in the back seat of an AMC Gremlin, an experience so dispiriting it may have been life-changing)?
But I do love driving. And I can think of no more act quite as assuredly enthralling as pressing down on the gas, rounding a curve, coming upon a new vista, passing some relative slowpoke perhaps, and feeling quite in control and on top of the world. I like to think of myself as a "good driver". I don't do stunts. I don't speed. I use my mirrors. I am respectful of other cars, inanimate objects, the odd small animal and especially pedestrians. I am probably a regular goody-two-shoes of a driver. But none of that innate caution detracts from the feeling of power and ascendancy that comes from moving at speed through a gorgeous landscape--protected from the elements, The Basement Tapes playing off the iPod--I become misty at the thought.
Then there is the choice of venue. Perhaps a tour through the clamor and waste of, say, southern Nassau County, or to spin oneself endlessly in circles around the magnificent, vast parking lots of the Paramus Mall would not afford the same exaltation. But I do a fair amount of my driving in the storied, gorgeously well-endowed, quasi-rural and sophisticated Hudson Valley--a geography that has certainly got its due historically but remains underreported as one of the world's Great Locations.
The Hudson Valley is America's first "wilderness"--wilderness being a concept that requires a non-wilderness (and in this case that would be the million-footed beast clutching that last Palisade of the valley before its great river washes out past the skyscrapers and into the bay and the bight and ultimately the sea). It was sold to the masses cramped in city-quarters a such, and so many carriages and trains and parkways endeavored to take them there over the course of, say, the time just before the Civil War to the time just after Woodstock, that it became after a time overlooked and came to be seen as "your father's paradise" and therefore kind of dowdy and maybe even creepy. Certainly the dozens of abandoned, wretched-looking tourist shacks that cluster near some of the interior roadways do nothing to dispel the notion it may have been, for a time, pretty much a lowlife destination and kind of creepy.
I'm here to tell you today that it's not anybody's paradise, but that it's got as much charm and intrinsic beauty (and as many great restaurants) as any richly endowed valley in any part of the world. The other day I drove up River Road on the eastern side of the Hudson north of Rhinebeck (a very winning little crossroads town in and of itself) and was astonished at the autumn finery in the trees, the ancient, native architecture of the houses nestled in crooks of the valley, the way the road wound about through woods and over streams, and at last how it ended up in the entirely underrated river town of Hudson, New York, a very small city whose main street happens to be a study in American architecture from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century and is lined with stores and restaurants of a quality and sophistication more to be expected in urban centers like Tribeca and Soho.
There is a long story waiting to be written about how the Hudson Valley now beckons the driver to its winding, shady roads and tempts the driver with succulent feasts at charming restaurants owned by chefs that might as well have made their mark in Manhattan. But that would be a much longer story than this format will tolerate.
Let me just say it again: a) I love driving and b) I especially love driving in the Hudson Valley.
Friday, November 13, 2009
The Real Tragedy of 2012
No, I am not predicting a Palin Presidency in the last year of the Mayan calendar.
Nor am I predicting that the tetrahedral energy fields inside the earth must realign in a couple of years, yanking as it were the tablecloth from underneath every living thing and every building and every mountain on the surface. And I'm not suggesting, either, the way a show called "2012: Shocking Secrets" (Syfy Channel) did, that there just may be an ancient archive beneath a certain random patch of sand in Egypt that would contain an Atlantean-inspired labyrinth structured in a manner to help us understand how to survive cataclysms--if only we could just find any evidence of it!
What I am saying is that if there's ever a time when the cranks and simpletons turn out to be right, and that if it ever comes in the form of any sort of Armageddon that will prevent these paranoid, doom-obsessed oafs from ever having to go to those stupid jobs of theirs ever again, and if these oafs have succeeded in surviving the worldwide catastrophe by hunkering down inside an old missile silo (growing food and raising animals down there), then the tragedy for us all is that the genetic material passed on to the next round of human unfortunates will be of suspect quality indeed.
And perhaps this is why humanity has never progressed all that far in certain respects: because all the smart people are too busy studying the genome or writing great plays or building clever code bases for gaming devices while the very dumbest and most paranoid members of humanity are obsessed with locating bunkers where they might survive when the comet hits. And perhaps this has happened a few times over the course of the last few hundred thousand years (roughly as far back as when the first homos erectus apparently daubed paint on the walls of caves and made nightstands out of bear-skulls).
Perhaps the myths about prior golden ages are true--Atlantis, Mu, Lemuria, Middle Earth, the American 1950s--and what happened was that each was struck down by catastrophe but that all the musicians and teachers were killed in their conservatories while just a few cranks and oafs and ancient-text-thumpers were dumb enough to have spent their lives building underground shelters and also far too dumb to have recognized they ought to have preserved a few books for the edification of the new races of man that would succeed them.
It certainly seems possible today that the half-literate yoyos stockpiling generators, fuel and generic canned goods may, if they are lucky, survive the imminent flipping of the magnetic poles, or the arrival of Planet X (that will tear away large portions of the Earth); but they will have forgotten to preserve Mozart or Lou Reed or Thomas Mann or McSweeney's and certainly not the means to create microchips, and so in a hundred thousand years when the great cities are rebuilt, those future humans will look back and wonder how those dopey men and women of eons past could have gotten along for so very many centuries without having developed any meaningful culture at all.
Isn't that what we wonder today? Do we not try to puzzle out how men and women lived for two hundred and ninety-thousand years before anyone bothered to write anything down, and how culture seemed to arrive already in full flower? Is it possible that, say, a hundred thousand years ago there were some yobs building an underground haven to protect themselves from tetrahedral realignment, and that they alone survived but were kind of like the vapid cranks doing the same thing today and therefore would have been too stupid to have gotten access to and protected the magic crystals that provided free energy to all ancient races?
That prospect is the looming tragedy of 2012. Unless by some cruel twist of fate we get stuck with Sarah Palin as President, in which case all bets will be off.
Nor am I predicting that the tetrahedral energy fields inside the earth must realign in a couple of years, yanking as it were the tablecloth from underneath every living thing and every building and every mountain on the surface. And I'm not suggesting, either, the way a show called "2012: Shocking Secrets" (Syfy Channel) did, that there just may be an ancient archive beneath a certain random patch of sand in Egypt that would contain an Atlantean-inspired labyrinth structured in a manner to help us understand how to survive cataclysms--if only we could just find any evidence of it!
What I am saying is that if there's ever a time when the cranks and simpletons turn out to be right, and that if it ever comes in the form of any sort of Armageddon that will prevent these paranoid, doom-obsessed oafs from ever having to go to those stupid jobs of theirs ever again, and if these oafs have succeeded in surviving the worldwide catastrophe by hunkering down inside an old missile silo (growing food and raising animals down there), then the tragedy for us all is that the genetic material passed on to the next round of human unfortunates will be of suspect quality indeed.
And perhaps this is why humanity has never progressed all that far in certain respects: because all the smart people are too busy studying the genome or writing great plays or building clever code bases for gaming devices while the very dumbest and most paranoid members of humanity are obsessed with locating bunkers where they might survive when the comet hits. And perhaps this has happened a few times over the course of the last few hundred thousand years (roughly as far back as when the first homos erectus apparently daubed paint on the walls of caves and made nightstands out of bear-skulls).
Perhaps the myths about prior golden ages are true--Atlantis, Mu, Lemuria, Middle Earth, the American 1950s--and what happened was that each was struck down by catastrophe but that all the musicians and teachers were killed in their conservatories while just a few cranks and oafs and ancient-text-thumpers were dumb enough to have spent their lives building underground shelters and also far too dumb to have recognized they ought to have preserved a few books for the edification of the new races of man that would succeed them.
It certainly seems possible today that the half-literate yoyos stockpiling generators, fuel and generic canned goods may, if they are lucky, survive the imminent flipping of the magnetic poles, or the arrival of Planet X (that will tear away large portions of the Earth); but they will have forgotten to preserve Mozart or Lou Reed or Thomas Mann or McSweeney's and certainly not the means to create microchips, and so in a hundred thousand years when the great cities are rebuilt, those future humans will look back and wonder how those dopey men and women of eons past could have gotten along for so very many centuries without having developed any meaningful culture at all.
Isn't that what we wonder today? Do we not try to puzzle out how men and women lived for two hundred and ninety-thousand years before anyone bothered to write anything down, and how culture seemed to arrive already in full flower? Is it possible that, say, a hundred thousand years ago there were some yobs building an underground haven to protect themselves from tetrahedral realignment, and that they alone survived but were kind of like the vapid cranks doing the same thing today and therefore would have been too stupid to have gotten access to and protected the magic crystals that provided free energy to all ancient races?
That prospect is the looming tragedy of 2012. Unless by some cruel twist of fate we get stuck with Sarah Palin as President, in which case all bets will be off.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Oasis on Forty Seventh Street
I've posted before about how New York, and especially Manhattan, has been stripped nearly bare of its old, quirky shops--the ones that sold fascinating industrial junk on Canal St, for instance, have one and all been replaced by tiny storefronts all selling counterfeit perfume and watches--and how this has made the city, for large stretches, nothing but an open-air mall with the same chain stores and the same merchandise as in the Dubuque Town Centre (if there is one), but no doubt at much higher prices.
There are of course exceptions, though they seem precarious. There is a subterranean purveyor of model trains and plastic kits on Forty Fifth Street and it is indubitably quirky as is its goggled, high-waisted owner who dispenses N and Z-scale wisdom along with intricately detailed versions of 4-88-4s and pint-sized build-it-yourself Mysterions (incidentally, model-building seems a childhood pleasure now much lost to the ravages of video games--I defy you to try and find a model kit at WalMart--but I digress). There is also a stalwart sandwich shop on East Fortieth going by the rather infelicitous name of "Vaco e Pres" and it used to be run by Italians or Albanians and they made some of the tastiest heroes (not subs!) this side of heaven's gate; it is still there and they still make the sandwiches but it is owned by Vietnamese people now and one supposed one has no reason to lament that in and of itself (though I will hazard a guess they have no more idea what the name of the place means than do I).
However, the exception--the Oasis--of which I am posting today is on Forty Seventh Street and it has long been called The Mercantile Library--not to be confused with the much larger, much less elegant Mechanic's Society Library on Forty Fifth, or the Chemist's Club on Forty First which is now the hotel Dylan. The Mercantile Library recently changed its name to the Center for Fiction and I urge you not to become a member.
The reason I ask you not to join is because then you will help make the place more crowded and less an oasis. For right now it is, for those who can afford the rather reasonable yearly fee, a well-stocked three-floor library (with a great many older books not to be encountered at the NYPL branches) and a place where you can actually sit in a well-appointed room with books and plaster busts and leather chairs and rugs and hardwood floors and all the latest periodicals (on paper!), and read. You can stay as long as you like. They do not have wireless (though the writer's desks on a separate floor do and they cost a certain amount per month to rent). They do have a very good water fountain and they do have very nice bathrooms if I may say so. And like I said, you can sit in the well-appointed, clubby-feeling reading room as long as you like (reading books!); or you an sit at a table and read books or the papers and write or take notes; or you can, if you have a Blackberry, spend your time writing and answering emails though this would seem to defeat the purpose of going there.
For myself, I almost cannot believe the place exists. It is quiet, it is literary, it is not expensive for what it offers, and it is in the midst of a city so unkind to places like it that I fear (unless it is endowed with a fund of which I am unaware)it may one day close its doors and re-open as a Mongolian barbecue.
For now, I am enjoying the respite. I sometimes bring my own books to read there, just because it is such a relaxing, beautiful little place--clean, well-lighted, quiet. Sane, in a word--a quality much lacking in our culture of general cruelty and indifference. Did I mention the bathrooms were very clean?
There are of course exceptions, though they seem precarious. There is a subterranean purveyor of model trains and plastic kits on Forty Fifth Street and it is indubitably quirky as is its goggled, high-waisted owner who dispenses N and Z-scale wisdom along with intricately detailed versions of 4-88-4s and pint-sized build-it-yourself Mysterions (incidentally, model-building seems a childhood pleasure now much lost to the ravages of video games--I defy you to try and find a model kit at WalMart--but I digress). There is also a stalwart sandwich shop on East Fortieth going by the rather infelicitous name of "Vaco e Pres" and it used to be run by Italians or Albanians and they made some of the tastiest heroes (not subs!) this side of heaven's gate; it is still there and they still make the sandwiches but it is owned by Vietnamese people now and one supposed one has no reason to lament that in and of itself (though I will hazard a guess they have no more idea what the name of the place means than do I).
However, the exception--the Oasis--of which I am posting today is on Forty Seventh Street and it has long been called The Mercantile Library--not to be confused with the much larger, much less elegant Mechanic's Society Library on Forty Fifth, or the Chemist's Club on Forty First which is now the hotel Dylan. The Mercantile Library recently changed its name to the Center for Fiction and I urge you not to become a member.
The reason I ask you not to join is because then you will help make the place more crowded and less an oasis. For right now it is, for those who can afford the rather reasonable yearly fee, a well-stocked three-floor library (with a great many older books not to be encountered at the NYPL branches) and a place where you can actually sit in a well-appointed room with books and plaster busts and leather chairs and rugs and hardwood floors and all the latest periodicals (on paper!), and read. You can stay as long as you like. They do not have wireless (though the writer's desks on a separate floor do and they cost a certain amount per month to rent). They do have a very good water fountain and they do have very nice bathrooms if I may say so. And like I said, you can sit in the well-appointed, clubby-feeling reading room as long as you like (reading books!); or you an sit at a table and read books or the papers and write or take notes; or you can, if you have a Blackberry, spend your time writing and answering emails though this would seem to defeat the purpose of going there.
For myself, I almost cannot believe the place exists. It is quiet, it is literary, it is not expensive for what it offers, and it is in the midst of a city so unkind to places like it that I fear (unless it is endowed with a fund of which I am unaware)it may one day close its doors and re-open as a Mongolian barbecue.
For now, I am enjoying the respite. I sometimes bring my own books to read there, just because it is such a relaxing, beautiful little place--clean, well-lighted, quiet. Sane, in a word--a quality much lacking in our culture of general cruelty and indifference. Did I mention the bathrooms were very clean?
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
I was a Deluded Liberal
The tiny elections held last night loom large in the reconstruction of the Republican party even as the tiniest election of them all, in upstate New York, threaten to keep it confused and hobbled by divisive internal attacks from Valkyries like Sarah Palin. She and Dick Armey and the Teabagger Militia rolled in behind an ultra-conservative against a moderate Republican and thereby handed the long-red district to the blues.
But for Democrats, last night was, I believe, a watershed of a different type. For me, anyway, it proved that Obama has waited too long to put his positive stamp on the country; has deferred too much to others; has simply not been the bold leader many had hoped he'd be. And now I think he has let the GOP, which had been flat on its back in the first row of seats like a wrestler hove out of the ring, climb back between the ropes bloodied but eager (and strong enough) for a fight.
Let us review for a moment the health care issue. Perhaps it wasn't obvious until right now that the thing ought to have been wrapped up and delivered before the election. The message moderates will take from the pair of big GOP gubernatorial victories is that Obama may not be magical after all; and that they need not support him on health reform. I could be wrong, but I think Obama has let the moment pass. Thanks to his pusillanimous fellow Dems in the Senate (especially the no-account Harry Reid) and thanks even more to the ever-perfidious Lieberman (who seems perversely to enjoy ruining any laudable cause he can influence), I think health care is going to be lost like a ship foundering in heavy seas, and that reform will be found only in Davey Jones' locker.
Let us now review New Jersey if we must. What gave the Democrats the idea they could win with a guy from Goldman Sachs who talks like an undertaker and doesn't know how to tie on a seat belt at high speed? Corzine stank of all that stinks in this land--the cynical manipulation of events with mountains of ill-gotten cash--and the voters went for the Other Guy, who happens to be a member of the Party of Limbaugh. Nice going, Dems.
Finally let us review Afghanistan. The right thing is to get us the hell out of that historical destroyer of empires. How many times does a person have to see "The Man Who Would Be King" before he realizes Afghanistan is a lose-lose proposition? And yet we waste blood and treasure there as if bin Laden were somehow just down the next street awaiting capture. I know Obama never said he wanted out of Central Asia. But so what? Afghanistan only adds to the sense that the extremely historic election in 2008 has resulted in nothing of great note on the ground. And lets just not talk about Iraq for now.
Sure, the stimulus has worked somewhat. Sure, there's lip service and some progress on some fronts (gay rights, energy independence); but any garden variety Democrat could have done as much.
Maybe Obama needed a wake up call. It's just that I'm not sure I know who he is right now, and what he'll do once he wakes up.
But for Democrats, last night was, I believe, a watershed of a different type. For me, anyway, it proved that Obama has waited too long to put his positive stamp on the country; has deferred too much to others; has simply not been the bold leader many had hoped he'd be. And now I think he has let the GOP, which had been flat on its back in the first row of seats like a wrestler hove out of the ring, climb back between the ropes bloodied but eager (and strong enough) for a fight.
Let us review for a moment the health care issue. Perhaps it wasn't obvious until right now that the thing ought to have been wrapped up and delivered before the election. The message moderates will take from the pair of big GOP gubernatorial victories is that Obama may not be magical after all; and that they need not support him on health reform. I could be wrong, but I think Obama has let the moment pass. Thanks to his pusillanimous fellow Dems in the Senate (especially the no-account Harry Reid) and thanks even more to the ever-perfidious Lieberman (who seems perversely to enjoy ruining any laudable cause he can influence), I think health care is going to be lost like a ship foundering in heavy seas, and that reform will be found only in Davey Jones' locker.
Let us now review New Jersey if we must. What gave the Democrats the idea they could win with a guy from Goldman Sachs who talks like an undertaker and doesn't know how to tie on a seat belt at high speed? Corzine stank of all that stinks in this land--the cynical manipulation of events with mountains of ill-gotten cash--and the voters went for the Other Guy, who happens to be a member of the Party of Limbaugh. Nice going, Dems.
Finally let us review Afghanistan. The right thing is to get us the hell out of that historical destroyer of empires. How many times does a person have to see "The Man Who Would Be King" before he realizes Afghanistan is a lose-lose proposition? And yet we waste blood and treasure there as if bin Laden were somehow just down the next street awaiting capture. I know Obama never said he wanted out of Central Asia. But so what? Afghanistan only adds to the sense that the extremely historic election in 2008 has resulted in nothing of great note on the ground. And lets just not talk about Iraq for now.
Sure, the stimulus has worked somewhat. Sure, there's lip service and some progress on some fronts (gay rights, energy independence); but any garden variety Democrat could have done as much.
Maybe Obama needed a wake up call. It's just that I'm not sure I know who he is right now, and what he'll do once he wakes up.
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