THIS TROUBLESOME PRIEST

The line I mentioned in the previous post about conflicts having contexts is part of a scene in which I, as the character of a Marine communications and data specialist, am verbally attacked by my commanding officer for the fascination I have with history and facts.

A few lines before the context line he mocks my character’s atheism. A three line interchange then takes place which launches the argument.

I respond by saying, “With all due respect, sir, atheists make the best historians.”

This concept is easy enough for me to wrap my head around and connect with as the actor.

The second research paper I ever wrote was about King John of England. A king considered so bad by history that even though it has been eight hundred years since he reigned no other king of England since has had the same name. A king famously portrayed as evil in many of the legends of Robin Hood as well as in Shakespeare’s play, “King John”.

Prompted by a novel sympathetic to the infamous king entitled Myself As Witness and written by James Goldman, who also did a number on John’s legacy in his play “Lion In Winter”, I began my studies. I learned that even though John would never be considered a great king, he was also not an evil one. He wrecked his legacy forever when he feuded with the Pope and was excommunicated along with his country for awhile. The monks and priests, who were the major recorders of history in Western Europe at the time, retaliated by putting any act of John’s in the worst possible light and probably expunging any act he did that would be considered respectable from the record. No doubt, John might have benefited from a couple of atheist historians with a publisher who didn’t have an axe to grind.

Thus the image of King John and his resentful chroniclers usually involuntarily comes to mind when I speak the line.

My commander responds, “No, Deconstructionists make the best historians.”

“Deconstructionist” is one of those words I heard all the way through college and most of grad school, but which I never used since I had no idea what it meant. This is not to say that I didn’t nod understandingly whenever it was uttered always having the intention to look it up later.

I first surmised its meaning during my third year of grad school when a classmate of mine described a New York production of Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” she had recently seen as performed by a deconstructionist company.

I nodded.

She then went on to describe that the character of Solyony was portrayed as a television wheeled around the stage on a cart. On the screen was the head of the actor playing the character and every time he spoke, his words were so loud and distorted that they were unintelligible and annoying.

I nodded--Only this time, I finally understood the concept—at least as far as it pertained to theatre.

The director had chosen one aspect of Solyony and magnified it for his purposes. I happened to be playing the same character in a much more traditional version of the play at school. Due to this fact along with the fact that I had been studying the play and the playwright for the previous two years, I knew there were more layers to Solyony than just playing a function as a disruptive and annoying distraction in otherwise quiet, mirthful, or sentimental moments. But I also realized this was a valid over-simplification and that there were layers to be perceived from the way this company chose to interpret the character.

Not that any of this helps to make my present character understand what the commander is saying. The image of a squawking television on wheels gives me no insight into what makes a deconstructionist a perfect historian. This is all fine, however, since my next line is, “Sir, I’m not sure that even makes sense.”

I have since acquired an understanding of what the commander means. The first clue came from my director when he alluded to the line during a conversation regarding current events. He pointed out how news organizations take clips from speeches and other sound bytes and sometimes even rearrange them from their original order. The purpose for the editing is so that it will service the narrative the organization wants to tell. The director also pointed out how a clip on YouTube can lie dormant for months and then suddenly become popular and seem more current than the event or events it preceded.

Thus secular news people can behave as holy scribes of the Middle Ages, arranging events to fit their agendas. But rather than doing so for the purpose of revenge, they do so for the purpose of entertainment and ratings.

Thus, somewhat ironically, the 40 year career of a pastor can be boiled down into three clips totaling not more than a minute and a half in running time.
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As I have mentioned before I am a bit more wary of such events as the attack on Jeremiah Wright since the days when I watched Howard Dean “scream” encouragement to his supporters in Iowa in 2004 over and over and over again. In the case of Reverend Wright, I have to stop and ask myself if I’m actually offended by what he’s saying or are the reporters and pundits telling me that I am offended?

I’ve watched all three clips several times now and even though they are very short, I do perceive some clues as to what context from which they might have been lifted. These clues lead me to find that I am less inclined to be offended. They also incline me to dissect the clips to figure out if there was anything offensive to begin with or is the shock really more to do with his vehement delivery and the, out of the ordinary for an American clergyman, either traditional or traditional inspired African garb he is wearing.

The clip I was first introduced to, the one which seems to have as its main point of contention that Hillary Clinton has never been called a n----r, is the easiest for me to dispense with. It is a statement in and of itself that is so obvious that other than the use of the “N-word” it doesn’t even strike me as mildly offensive. In fact it seems kind of silly. I am aware that Wright is trying to make some point about how Barack Obama’s experience as an American is different from the other candidates and therefore he holds a connection with the parishioners that they do not and can never have.

My immediate response to the quote is… “Okay?”

I agree that Hillary Clinton has probably never been called that word. But unless Barack Obama looks very convincing in drag and ventures out in it at least as often as Rudy Giuliani, he has probably never been called several words that Hillary Clinton gets called and has been called for over 20 years on a daily basis. I am also willing to bet that at least half the people in the pews have been called some of those names as well.

Regardless of my present feelings toward Hillary Clinton, I am well aware that the over- calculating, seemingly mean-spirited entity that she has become is due in large part to such attacks. I am also certain it is the main reason why she still holds so much support among older women.

This statement when it stands on its own doesn’t meet my criteria for either being offensive or profound. Knowing what I know about Wright’s intellect, I would gather that his whole sermon probably had a greater theme than this.

The next clip is the one that is best known for his statement, “God Damn America” which he repeats three times.

If anything, I feel like this section suffers from one of my least favorite forms of rhetoric but also one for which I am sure I am guilty. One that is often found in emotion driven oratory. What I refer to is the choice of the speaker to reverse or invert a well-known saying such as “God Bless America.” In so doing, more often than not, the specificity of the speaker’s point is surrendered for rhetorical flourish.

A quick study of the words just prior to the thrice repeated refrain, words which referred to laws passed by the U.S. Government which could only have an adverse effect on poor black communities gives some credence to the overall point, which is, I infer, God may want to bless America but America is damning itself.

Just before this clip cuts, Wright announces that “it’s in the Bible.” This probably accounts for his choice of words. And he is right there are many instances in the Bible of rulers being warned or actually being brought down because they had abused the most poor and disenfranchised of their subjects.

This is also the clip that I thought included the reverend’s comments about the government introducing Acquired Immune Deficiency or AIDS into the black community. I haven’t been able to find verification that this is the same sermon where he said this but since I planned to write about it at this point, I’ll do so.

In no way do I believe that members of our government actively conspired to liquidate all homosexuals, drug users or impoverished minorities by infecting individuals with AIDS.

In every way do I believe that the members of our government with the most power ignored the epidemic for as long as they could, either because of political expediency or moral revulsion or both.

If I remember correctly from the book and film “And The Band Played On” the first cases of AIDS, which was then called GRID, started appearing within the United States in 1982. By 1985 suburban parents, such as mine, were warning their kids who were leaving for college, such as me, about this disease. This is an indication of how prevalent it had become in the mind of Americans. Even so, President Reagan had not even uttered the name of the disease in public until a news conference in October of that year when a reporter asked him his feelings about the death of Rock Hudson, who had once been a professional acquaintance of the president. (They were both actors in Hollywood at the same time).

Jump forward to 1992 and the Republican Convention. A convention I affectionately remember as “Hatefest ‘92”.

By this year, I was in my final year of grad school and had seen massive portions of the famous AIDS quilt in two places during my travels. Horrifying statistics and prognostications were being put forward about the future of the disease if major funding was not put into research. Even so the incumbent president and Republican nominee, George H.W. Bush, didn’t even mention anything about this major health crisis in his acceptance speech.

Do I believe that this is all part of some nefarious plan on the part of the U.S. government? No.

But a government whose historical legacy includes, Slavery, the 3/5’s compromise, The Trail of Tears, diseased blankets handed out to unsuspecting native-Americans, Wounded Knee, Jim Crow, Japanese/American internment camps, and the Tuskegee Experiment, must at some point accept that it must take on the burden of Caesar’s Wife in such matters and force itself to be transparent and reactionary when it’s people are dying regardless of the size of their voting block.

If not, such myths as the one Wright uttered will be embraced. Let me make it clear that I chose the word “myth” instead of “lie”. I include the following definition of myth which I read in the August 7, 2006 issue of NEWSWEEK:

“ As a term, myth is much misunderstood; hearing it, many people take the word to mean "lie," when in fact a myth is a story, a narrative, that explains individual and national realities--how a person or a country came to be, why certain things happen in the course of a life or of history, and what fate may have in store for us. Myths are a peculiar hybrid of truth and falsehood, resentments and ambitions, dreams and dread. We all have personal myths running through our heads, and some chapters would withstand fact checking while others would fail miserably.”

With that in mind I consider what Reverend Wright said about Aids is a myth. I can think of nobody who would disagree with the maxim that “no decision is still a decision.” Even so I agree with Senator Obama that such statements are divisive and aren’t really helpful with solving the problem. I find the statement inexact but not offensive.

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Now comes the clip from September 16, 2001. Had I been at Trinity United and heard these words alone, I probably would have been very hurt and I might very well have yelled out…

...if I had heard only those words.

While reviewing the clips on Youtube before I wrote this, I came across a ten minute version of the clip which included this “coming home to roost” statement. It turns out that the thesis for the entire sermon was a plea for peace. Wright was begging his parishioners and, by extension Americans to think before they acted. At one point he said that he was going to digress from the sermon to quote something he had heard former Reagan administration ambassador, Edward Peck say on T.V. He then launched into the statement which has been played over and over again on the news shows.

I glanced at my journal to get an idea of how I felt that weekend. I was living in New York then. My wife had been two blocks from the towers when they fell and for thirty minutes I had been under the impression that she had perished in the collapse. She ended up being fine. I had forgotten how completely, blindly angry I was on that following weekend. On Saturday, the 15th, my wife and I decided to attend a service at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. I had always wanted to go there and something about the idea of being someplace that was beautiful and still being built and would still be being built long after I died was comforting. Even so, I remember and find by what I wrote that I was very annoyed by the sermon given at the Cathedral that night. It was a plea for peace. The minister was begging us and, by extension, all Americans to think before we acted. Much softer in delivery than Wright’s but the same message.

It is an interesting side-note that my wife and I, after the service, ended up at the U.S.S. Maine Memorial at the bottom of Central Park. It was heartbreakingly beautiful that night with candles and written poems for the missing and dead and paper rolled out on the pavement for passersby to write on. I wrote the opening to the speech that Antony gives over Caesar’s body, the one that ends, “Let slip the dogs of war.” I stood up to look at the sculpted memorial and the possibility for future irony did not escape me. The explosion and sinking of the Maine in 1898 was the event which launched this country into the Spanish American War. The disaster was probably due to an accident with explosives onboard but the newspapers and government used it as the excuse to fight a war of conquest. I wondered if those who had decorated the memorial in its present adornment even knew about its inspiration.

The sermon that had annoyed me a couple of hours before now gave me pause.
So then I ask myself how I would have felt and thought if I had heard Reverend Wright say those words on September 9th, 2001 rather than the 16th. I probably would have nervously considered his point as valid. It becomes a question of timing and not offense.

So, finally, after considering all of these clips I find that I was only truly offended once and it had more to do with an action than a word.

Expertly dropped into the Hillary quote is a moment from an unrelated sermon where Wright says that Bill Clinton never helped Black people. In fact, he did to black people what he did to Monica. The reverend then simulates a sex act vaguely enough to resemble galloping on a horse to unknowing eyes. The audience claps and cheers in approbation.

This may very well be a personal issue but I feel like modern life is so bombarded with verbal and visual images of the male role in the sex act being an act of dominance or abuse that it becomes almost considered absolutely for those purposes. I would prefer if the pulpit of my church was at least one place where it is not portrayed as such. This is not to say that I am such a prude that I feel like matters of sex should not be addressed at all in church. It’s just that if my son had been beside me at that moment, I really would not want to explain to him later why it was not okay for our minister to behave that way. I would not have left the church for this but I would have informed the preacher that I think he lost control.

That moment aside, all these moments that I am told I should be offended by are not offensive at all. It then leads me to conclude that this overuse of the word “offensive” is yet another case of the English language being edited and relieved of needed specificity. In the same way that the word tragedy is often misused as a synonym for catastrophe, or myth for lie, or Al Qaeda for Shiite Extremist, it now seems that offensive is often misused as a synonym for provocative.

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In my early twenties I considered being a minister in the same denomination, essentially, as Reverend Wright. I even wrote and spoke four sermons. The advice I had gotten from all of the ordained ministers was to write my sermon in such a way as to provoke thought in the listeners. In the past, congregational churches thrived on dialogue between those in the pews and those in the pulpit. But television and radio and modern life had caused the religious service to become a more passive activity. It was important for the minister to provoke an unspoken dialogue with his parishioners by saying things that would force them to think rather than simply accept.
Couple this discipline with the advice of Fredrick Douglass to all civil rights leaders who came after him to always “Agitate, Agitate…Agitate”, and one has a clear idea of where Jeremiah Wright is coming from.

I have found nowhere where this man has advocated violence against any other group or race. No “final solution” to the white people problem. No call to burn giant icons in white people’s yards. All of his friends and colleagues in his denomination, which is 90% white, by the way, have nothing but absolute respect and admiration for him. His successes in his attempt to rebuild communities make it very clear that he is nothing but a credit and positive force in the world immediately around him.

I think it is an inability and a fear this collective culture of American society has. An inability and fear of arguing with any depth and substance about anything besides who should be thrown off the popular reality show at the given moment.

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I have been thinking a great deal about one of the transgressions that Jeremiah Wright lists in the Sept. 16th sermon. Whether these are Ambassador Peck’s words or his, he refers to the dropping of the Atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as one of the thoughtless acts we perpetrated without ever “batting an eye.”

In my 41 years. I have witnessed the continued transformation of the popular view of this event. First, it was simply a stunning and sobering act that ended the bloodiest war in human history and established the U.S. as the greatest superpower on the face of the earth. Then the horrific consequences of the act, the casualties, radiation, Cold War, and possibilities for nuclear annihilation came into focus. Then the act was justified again by calculations of how many would have died if a conventional invasion of the home island of Japan had been the manner of closure. Then, by the time I was in college, I heard about reports which said that these calculations where greatly exaggerated. Now it has been boiled down to empirical statements such as Peck/Wright’s where the view of the entire incident gives one the image of hand rubbing, decrepit, villains committing acts of blithe annihilation. As we move further and further away from Hiroshima and Nagasaki the event seems to be pulled more and more out of context.

During my time from junior high through high school, the history class was always treated like a required but totally unnecessary subject. Out of those six years, I remember only two of my teachers being primarily trained in what they were teaching. The rest were athletic coaches assigned to the class so they could draw full time paychecks. Not a single one of them showed any interest in investigating historical events beyond the facts of what happened. A couple of them didn’t even care if we knew on what date certain events occurred. I can remember at least once a year, a student asking, “Why do we have to learn this stuff?” I can only remember one of these teachers even coming close to trying to answer the question and they answered with a sense of commiseration saying something about history being a blueprint and “we have to know where we have been to know where we are going.”

This one brief reference by Reverend Wright has opened has made me think a great deal as to how we should be completely overhauling the way we teach history in this country in a way that would encompass many other skills than simple fact retention.

As I mentioned above I have written research papers. Nothing shocking here. I am pretty certain that everyone who is reading this has written as many and probably more research material than I have. This is my point. Such an activity is a shared experience between most if not all American adults with a high school education. However, if the experience was like mine, the paper was written, handed in and after a few weeks returned with comments written in red in the margins and a grade scribbled across the top. Perhaps some of the comments were challenging questions which were to be responded to in a rewrite or simply posed as fodder for contemplation.

I don’t consider any of this bad. I certainly remember the experience as being extremely challenging. But when considering all I have written on this blog I begin to wonder if it is even close to enough.

Also I have observed that another shared experience I have with most people in this country, within twenty years of my age, is the study of three Shakespeare plays during high school. With some variance it seems that most students read “Romeo and Juliet” as freshmen, “Julius Caesar” as sophomores and either “Macbeth” or “Hamlet” or both as seniors. I have had many enjoyable conversations about these experiences; who read what role when the plays were read in class. How we did on the tests. Depending on our ages, which version of R&J did we see, the Zeffirelli or Luhrman and if we had to get signed parental permission to see either. Many times the discussions remained superficial, but also, many times discussions deepened regarding how the teacher approached the material or what discoveries were made through classroom discussion on the plays.

Over the last decade as I have occasionally toured schools with various projects, my experience has been that my liaisons are either excited young Arts and Humanities or English teachers who are becoming frustrated with the manner they are compelled to teach their subject matter, or burned out older teachers of the same subjects who are either preparing to quit teaching or ambivalently counting the days until retirement for the same reason. Their complaint is always the same that education is becoming more and more about regurgitating dictated facts and less and less about critical thought.

Nothing shocking here either. As I look back over my junior high and high school years, only three teachers through shear force of their wills, charm, and passion for the material were able to challenge their students to think beyond rote, past practical application, and into true creativity.

I’ll digress slightly and include their last names and subjects as an all too feeble homage: Mr. Bianchi—Biology, Mrs. Moore—English and Literature, and Mrs. Fowler—American Government.

This is not to say that the rest of my teachers were garbage. I really liked most of them, and depending on my love for the subject matter most of them were able to make space for me to challenge myself. The difference was that these three teachers, either through built up good will because of past positive results or because of unique imagination to find loopholes in the strictures of the curriculum, were able to be challenging without risking being too controversial.

That’s the problem: controversy is everywhere.

If the main objective of education for the young is to prepare them for life as an adult, then a major component of that goal should be preparation on how to deal with controversy. The best way to do that is to learn how to argue as an adult rather than the accepted practice now of the dismissal of those who disagree with you as being either insane or evil.

The decision to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki has to be one of the four or five overwhelming historical legacies of the United States. It is also one of only a few such world changing events that ultimately ended up being decided upon by one person, Harry Truman. And one with an everyman life story at that.

Wouldn’t it be an amazing thing if every Junior or Senior high school student in America was compelled to write a researched position paper on what they would have done if it would have been them who had to make that decision? Further, wouldn’t it be amazing if they were then put into groups with others who had both differing and similar conclusions to themselves and, under the guidance of instructors trained to conduct healthy disagreement on such a weighty topic were encouraged to discuss their conclusions? Rather than these instructors being forced to maintain impartiality there should be more than one in each group who also hold differing opinions so that they can make an example of how to behave and argue constructively.

Before anyone dismisses this notion because it is simply too dark a subject, let me point out that at 17 I remember getting my first recruitment calls from the military. I have been told by recruiters that such a practice is still common. Someone must think high school juniors and seniors are capable of making mature decisions about life and death.

I also am not saying that this should be the first time students should be exposed to constructive argument. They should be trained and prepared for this as an ultimate event.

There is a great amount of material written about what was going on at the time. There is also conjecture on what other decisions could have been made. Also plenty of evidence is written about the consequences of the event to our present day. Any or all of that could be used when writing the papers and presenting the arguments. There is so much material that I could see this being a topic dealt with every year. But I could also see the possibility of a need to rotate topics.

Mainly because I hate it when suggestions are made by someone who is unwilling to put themselves on the line I’ll include what my conclusion might end up being.

With all that I have learned so far about the event I would investigate the pros and cons of what would have happened if I would have evacuated Iwo Jima after its capture, put all high ranking P.O.W.’s on a ship at a safe distance for the island and then I would have detonated “little boy”, the Nagasaki bomb. I would then send the captives with photos of the devastation along with an ultimatum to their superiors. It would have read as follows:

“This war is over and you have lost. There is no shame in this. All members of your military have given all that can be expected of them. As the leader of my people I can not, in good conscience, ask them to continue to fight and die for a cause that is already decided. If it is, however, your decision to do so—to continue to fight and die, then I have no other recourse but to drop another bomb like the one detonated at Iwo Jima on one of your cities and continue to do so until you either surrender or perish.”

This is not a perfect decision. There were only two atomic bombs in the U.S. arsenal at the time and it would have taken many months to make more. I would have been bluffing somewhat.

There would also be those who would argue against dropping the bomb at all. Claiming it would have been better to invade and accept the losses which would probably not have been as awful as estimated.

I would argue that there was a string of precedents with names such as Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Peleliu, the Philippines, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa, where Japanese soldiers and civilians alike fought long after their cause was lost and, in so doing, wasted their own and many an Allied life.

It also comes to my mind that this notion of Americans not even “batting an eye” is unfair. I had three uncles serving in the south pacific, who might have been involved in an invasion of Japan. I would imagine they and their families back home were euphoric about being able to breathe again after four years of constant anxiety and dread rather than indifferent with eyes un-batted at the suffering of the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I would also maintain that, a decision to drop such a bomb would be inconceivable if the decision was to be made in early 1942. But after four years of monolithic warfare, the threshold for wanton destruction had been lowered to such a point that such a decision might seem almost obvious.

I am certain that all of you reading this are already formulating rebuttals to my conclusion. Some are defending Truman’s ultimate decision. Some are questioning the use of the weapons at all. Some are coming up with variations of all three arguments.

Perfect.

In fact, the other night, I saw the opportunity to insert a brief debate on the subject during a conversation with some friends. Surprisingly, all joined in and information I was either not aware of or that I had forgotten was brought up. So much so that I would be forced to reconsider, research and possibly re-assess my conclusions.

The ultimate conclusions of these informed arguments are not near as important as the process. It is a process which prepares students to live in a world where controversial statements are made, and where the students are prepared to challenge them or agree with them only after careful study and consideration.

Since it was mainly U.S. Marines who fought those battles on those islands, and since my research on the play that I am in has taught me that most U.S. Marines have a strong sense of their own history and since the reverend Jeremiah Wright served his country as a U.S. Marine, I would imagine he knows much better than I do what went into the decision to drop the atomic bomb. I would also imagine that his statement along with many others he has made like it have less to do with how he views this country and more to do with how he knows others view it. When the context of his comments is taken into consideration, he seems to be warning and criticizing rather than condemning.

Even if these comments reflect exactly how he views this country I am certain that he has earned his opinions through careful study and consideration. His personal history indicates as much.

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In the four weeks since I began writing this I have watched Hillary Clinton show contempt for the electorate by pretending that she is the ultimate defender of the Democratic voters of Michigan and Florida. She pretends that she never agreed to the decision to not seat the delegates of those states because they scheduled their primaries too early. She did and she would care less about the two states if she were the one in the lead. If not for her cynical tactics, the voters of those two states would back the Democratic nominee readily but she is going to distort recent history.

In the four weeks since I began writing this I have watched John McCain conflate Sunni and Shiite extremists into one organization known as Al Qaeda. His reason seemingly is that Americans are too dense and racist to recognize the difference.

In the four weeks since I began writing this I have watched Barack Obama give a speech that respected the intelligence of the listener by confronting the racism in this country. Even so, I was saddened by his “condemning” of the words of his friend and pastor, Jeremiah Wright. I was saddened that in what was an otherwise brave and intelligent speech were a few placating comments to those who can’t see a difference between offense and provocation.

In this case I find myself disagreeing with all the media personnel I have heard and even with Obama himself. Jeremiah Wright is not his biggest weakness but may very well be one of his greatest assets. Maybe I should put it this way; in a country that truly valued education, substantive debate and empathy, Jeremiah Wright would be one of Barack Obama’s biggest assets.

“Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want rain without thunder and lightning.”--Frederick Douglass

J.A.L.

(The later parts of this posting were inspired by conversations I had with Dr. Steven Benton while he was writing his dissertation, “ICHABOD’S CHILDREN: Anti-Intellectualism and the American Pedagogical Imagination.” It is also a celebration of the successful adjudication of that same document.)

Something Worth Reading

Sometimes it is better to defer to those who actually know something...


http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-oped0314obamamar14,0,2169730.story

J.A.L.

all that counts

“In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

The above is from the October 17, 2004 New York Times Magazine article, “Without a Doubt”. By Ron Suskind. Although it has been reprinted many times in books and websites and blogs over the last four years, it occurs to me that many of you who read this might never have seen it.

It is a commonly held belief that the “senior advisor” was Karl Rove, but even if it wasn’t it is someone who holds a strikingly idealogical if not physical resemblance to him.

This quote has come to my mind several times over the past few weeks.

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In the play I’m in right now, I have a line: “Every conflict has a context”. Whenever I work on a character I try to find places where that character and I are alike and where we differ. This particular character and I share a complete veneration for history. We differ in the fact that while he approaches all history with fascination but a sense of total neutrality, I am often drawing conclusions and assessing where opportunities were gained or, more importantly, missed.

Nothing happens in a vacuum. Everything always leads to something even if we aren’t aware of it until after the fact.
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The Following is a Timeline which brought me to this place:

February & March, 2003—I am performing a supporting role in the musical “1776” in the Louisville area. At some point, when it is becoming imminent that the U.S. will invade Iraq—probably after Powell’s speech, I make the comment that I wish the U.N. inspectors would be allowed to finish their job. Although most members of the cast are outwardly ambivalent about the invasion there is a vocal quarter of the cast who are very much for it. Members of this group begin to make sneering comments about the U.N. and speak over my responses. I am silenced.

A few days later, another member of the cast, I don’t remember who, makes an even more definitive statement against the invasion. Like a pack of terriers hearing a doorbell the vocal quarter goes after the individual. I sit in silence. My mind is repeating two quotes that will stay in my head from then until now:

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity”
--Yeats (The Second Coming)

“Woe to those who began this war if they were not in bitter earnest.”
--Mary Chestnut

While I didn’t know about it at the time, Illinois State Senator, Barack Obama has made a speech

against the invasion four months before and continues to speak out against it while preparing to run for the U.S. Senate. Within the past year, to my knowledge, Bill Maher has lost his network job and the Dixie Chicks are getting death threats due to critical comments against the administration, Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin is constantly being attacked and ridiculed by the right for his anti-war stance, Al Franken, arguably the most visible, unelected spokesman for the Left is speaking in favor of the war, there is a general widespread feeling of blind patriotism in the country, and I am sitting silently in a dressing room near the Ohio River because I am afraid of verbal reprisals and accusations from a group of musical actors.

February, 2007—Barack Obama announces his candidacy for president. Within the intervening four years, my wife and I have moved to Chicago and had a son. Although I put little stock in his ability to gain the nomination this time, my location and fatherhood lead me to read his book, Dreams From My Father. I decide that this will be the most important of his two books to read since it was written before he became a politician and I might get a better idea of who he is. After reading it, I don’t necessarily feel inspired. I realize that his vision of America requires a willingness by the populace to volunteer for some form of community service. I fear that most Americans, including myself, are either too selfish or too conditioned to having the president take care of things to give Obama much of a chance. I also realize that I like the guy a great deal and I wish his vision of this country was more of a possibility.

Early Fall, 2007—I am listening to a recording of the Howard Stern Sirius Satellite Radio show. A discussion begins about the primaries. Stern says that he expects and hopes the nominees will be Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton. If this is so, although he likes Hillary, he will be voting for Rudy.

I bring this up because I remember being disappointed in Stern. This is not an understatement. I was simply disappointed. This is significant because it reminds me that there was a time I wanted Hillary Clinton to be president.

Around this time is also when I had the discussion with my visiting Republican friend, mentioned in an earlier entry. So my want was not a passionate one. It was probably more simple expectation.

Final Weeks of 2007—Hillary Clinton appears in a taped interview during the first segment of “This Week with George Stephanopoulos”. She seems to be coming off as expected, but then she says something at the end of the interview that gives me pause; She says that it “Will all be over by February 5th .” The implication is clear that she expects to be the nominee by then. I think to myself that it seemed extremely smug. She’s running against quite a few worthy candidates. I remember that Stephanopoulos gives her a chance to clarify her statement. She does so but I don’t find it sincere. Although I don’t expect it I remember thinking that it would be kind of cool if one of the other candidates challenge her. The two people that immediately spring to mind are John Edwards, because of his realistic views on the “Two Americas”, and Joe Biden because I feel like he has the best grasp on the Iraq situation. I begin to consider voting for one of them on Super Tuesday, February 5th.

In my mind, Obama is more realistically a dream candidate for Vice President. I am hopeful he will have enough clout to be president in 2016.

January 3, 2008—Barack Obama is winning the Iowa caucus. I am humbled that a predominately white state has come out in support of him. I see real progress in this and I feel it is a great moment in U.S. history even if he has to drop out by February 5th. Immediately after these thoughts three events occur on top of each other which lead me to what I refer back to as my “Grinch” moment: 1. MSNBC announces that Barack Obama has actually won Iowa. 2. The two women who live downstairs begin to cheer wildly. It is the first time I’ve ever heard them in the seven months since we moved in. They have had an Obama placard in their window, at least, since April when we first looked at the apartment. 3. Barack Obama appears on screen to make his first victory speech. Behind him are many twenty-somethings. Some of them are admittedly very goofy looking but it puts a thought in my head that maybe the idea of volunteerism is not so far-fetched.

“Well...in Chi-town they say That the LF Jackal's small heart Grew three sizes that day!”

Mid-January, 2008—Reports begin to come out about the national housing market and what effect this will have on the overall economy. As my wife and I listen to one of these reports on NBC news, I say, matter-of-factly, well that pretty much gives the nomination to her. My wife agrees. We both know that the Clintons' bread and butter is the economy. It’s how Bill won in 1992. Although I am not happy about this, neither am I sad. More wistful. At least for this time, Obama’s name joins the names of Nunn, Simon, and Bradley as Democrats who I would have loved to have as a nominee but they either never ran or didn’t make the cut.

Mid to Late January, 2008—Campaigning for the Nevada caucus and South Carolina begins and the Clintons begin a campaign of passive aggressive and misleading attacks. At the South Carolina debate, the name “Rezko” makes it’s first national appearance and John Edwards comes off as the adult in the room. It is a grim preview of what might happen if this campaign continues too long.

At times I become so annoyed with Hillary Clinton throughout these days that I openly consider voting for McCain in November.

I pull myself together…barely.

January 26, 2008—The South Carolina Democratic primary is held and Obama doesn’t just win. He crushes. A line from a David and David song comes to my mind:

“And though we know that deep down in our hearts
That someday this will all fall apart
For right now
Let’s just be heroes.”

I’ll just enjoy it while it lasts.


January 31, 2008—A very civil debate takes place in Los Angeles. What differences there are, are defined. Amiable arguments take place. I could see why someone would vote for either of these people. If Hillary wins out, I could vote for her. I hope against hope that the remaining three debates as well as the rest of the campaign can maintain this air.

I begin to consider how great it would be if every state and territory could vote on these two candidates before one dropped out. What a great message that would send if the Democratic party and it’s constituents could behave, on the whole, as grown-ups.

I realize that this is highly unlikely and as the reporters and commentators begin to complain about how boring the debate was, I get very nervous.


February 4, 2008—I have been writing and rewriting an email in support of Obama in my mind and sometimes in a notebook. It is always way too long and I hate the idea of being a nuisance. I am also noticing that as Obama talks about his approach to running his administration, it sounds familiar. My favorite book of the last decade has been, TEAM OF RIVALS by Doris Kearns Goodwin. It is a book about how Lincoln put together a cabinet of people who could have easily turned against him because they had all run against him in the election of 1860. He somehow was able to channel all these egos with their conflicting ideas towards positive goals. Not only am I excited about what Obama wants to do as president I like the way he wants to approach it. I make an almost unconscious deal with myself.

I am wrestling one last time with the idea of writing this email while sitting on the couch. One of the 24-hour news channels replays a Katie Couric interview where she asks each remaining candidate what book, besides the Bible, they will take with them to the White House if elected. Obama immediately responds, “Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin…”

Within five minutes, I am writing an extremely edited version of my email.

The Remainder of February, 2008—Obama wins twelve contests in a row. Even though this has been predicted by many—that Hillary Clinton could have a rough month but still bounce back in Ohio and Texas—a new story begins to arise that Obama is becoming the inevitable nominee. I’m not buying it although many of my younger friends are telling me I’m being silly.

The general belief being shaped by Saturday Night Live, a show whose home is New York City—a city in the state Hillary represents—as well as by the Clinton Campaign, that the press is far harder on Clinton than it is on Obama. The press picks up on this.

I feel this is all a matter of perception. As Obama continues to win, the panels on the election shows always discuss, “What can Hillary Clinton do to stop Barack?”. The panels then begin to openly brainstorm on live T.V. about what the best way would be to defeat the Obama campaign. At times certain members seem almost perplexed—as if this man should not be winning.

After Obama wins Wisconsin, many of the same reporters who talked about a rough month of February for Clinton, begin to say that it’s all over. These were the same people who said she would turn it around in March. I begin to wonder whether the press is actually trying to create it’s own narrative. Whether I’m watching a political race transformed into a reality show.

The Time Between Wisconsin primary and Mar 4, 2008—The Clinton campaign announces that they will be throwing “The Kitchen Sink” at Obama. It is a simple but clever way of saying that they will do whatever it takes to win. Clinton begins to compare Obama to Bush, and Rove in her speeches. She then scolds and sometimes rants sarcastically about his opitimistic message.

Rather than listing everything. I think “The Kitchen Sink Strategy” is best exemplified by an event that some might have missed.

On Sunday, March 2nd's “This Week with George Stephanopoulos”, The first segment was devoted to an argument between Howard Wolfson, in studio and for the Clinton campaign, and David Axelrod, by satellite and for Obama.

Very early on, Wolfson began demanding that the Obama campaign produce every file, email, etc. pertaining to Obama’s relationship with Tony Rezko. He asked if Axelrod would turn it over, “yes or no”.

Rather than answer Axelrod kept clarifying that there was no reason to turn over any of that material since Obama was in no way implicated in any of Tony Rezko’s legal troubles. Wolfson was asking an unanswerable question.

As I listened to this exchange, which Wolfson utilized to take up a great deal of the segment, I was reminded of an event of which, in a way, I felt bad to be reminded.

Soon after Bill Clinton became president his oldest friend, Vince Foster, committed suicide in a D.C. area park. Immediately after this was made known Hillary Clinton sent two of her personal assistants, one of whom served as her security guard, to Foster’s office to retrieve several files before even FBI agents had gotten to the office to investigate. As far as I am concerned those files probably had to do with attorney/client privilege and since Hillary worked at the same law firm as Foster, they were probably shared cases. I believe the Starr investigation looked at them in private. Even so, to this day conspiracy nuts on the web conjecture about darker possibilities.

As I listened to Wolfson repeat that Axelrod had not answered the question yes or no. I was both regretful and thankful that the universe did not work the way I wished it would.

If it did, Axelrod would have morphed into me and I would have suddenly answered:

“Of course I won’t answer yes or no. If I say no, you’ll just make up shit about what I give you that isn’t true, and if I say yes you’ll say, “ooooh! What’s he hiding?” …On second thought, Wait!...Wait!...You like to play with fire scarecrow?!?!. I’ll make a deal with you: I’ll give you all that material and you give me all those files from Vince Foster’s office and throw in all those files from the Clinton Library. Then we’ll play a game. Let’s see how many news cycles we can gum up with bullshit scenarios about what we find between now and Denver, while children starve in most parts of the world and get blown up in the Middle East! Together we’ll make sure that McCain skates into the White House even if he spends every morning in October running naked on the sidewalk around it ranting, “ME GONNA LIVE HERE! ME GONNA LIVE HERE!”….By the way, Stephanopoulos, you wear great ties.”

This probably would lose the election but it would feel really good. On second thought, I probably would have to vote for McCain if he did that. It’s my kind of October surprise.


March 4, 2008—This was the night of the first preview of the aforementioned play I am in so I was unable to watch the five hours of primary coverage live. I taped it. I'm very lame.

Marcus a fellow member of the cast and intense Obama supporter asked me my prediction on the primaries as we walked to the El after the show. I gloomily said that Obama would go 1-3. He laughed and predicted 2-2 and reminded me that I had been equally as negative before the last few primaries. I said I knew but this night was different.

Had I watched the entire results coverage only fast forwarding through commercials I would not have gone to bed until 4 am. With a show to do the next night and a twenty-one month-old son who keeps a strict schedule, I knew this was impossible. I watched the first hour and a half and then began to fast forward hour-by-hour. It was quite an experience.

During that first hour and a half all the experts were saying that even if Hillary Clinton won Texas and Ohio by margins less than massive, she was pretty much done—even though she had to stay in the race through April 22. Fast forward an hour and the races are too close to call. Fast forward an hour and Hillary has won Ohio—eventually by ten percentage points. Certainly a substantial win but not the margin described at the top of the coverage. Fast forward an hour and she has won Rhode Island by a lot. Fast forward another hour and she has won Texas by four percentage points, but he is winning the caucus. She eventually nets around five pledged delegates but the same experts from the beginning are now saying she’s back and Obama is in trouble.

I have always half believed the claims that the press crafts the narrative of an election now I truly believe it.

I remember a story I read in the New Yorker about the often drunk but always eloquently provocative Christopher Hitchens. He tells about how he and his fellow columnists decided that Howard Dean was a dangerous candidate in 2004 and set about to ruin him. He claimed that “the scream” footage in Iowa was their opportunity and they took it. I have always smirked at this but now I wonder why the “Shame on you” and “Heavens are gonna open” footage of Hillary are not considered at least as unsettling as the footage of a man working a room of young supporters with an ill-executed “Yee-Haw”.

I still don’t believe the press colludes to craft the story. I prefer to think it is more a case of the image Jon Stewart has of the press at election time. He says they look like six-year-olds playing soccer. All of them clustering around the ball wherever it goes without any standing back for perspective.

During the first hour and a half of coverage, just after it seemed like those at MSNBC had a sense of what was going on in Ohio, Howard Fineman came on in a particularly somber mood and commented that the Clinton campaign had been almost completely negative over the previous two weeks. He seemed disturbed by the fact. He said that, if she was triumphant,her attacks would only worsen and grow more negative.

March 7, 2008—Samantha Powers, top foreign policy advisor to Barack Obama refers to Hillary Clinton as a “monster”. Within three hours of my learning this, Ms. Powers has resigned from the campaign.

I have been thinking about writing a blog entry for several days now—a bold-faced, sneering attack on Hillary. The kind of one I wish the Obama campaign could make if it was not for the fact that the press claims that if he did so he would be breaking his own promise of practicing a different kind of politics. I begin to wish that until people can recognize the tactics of someone like Hillary Clinton that there could be a new category in politics. I have watched my candidates take the high road while being attacked for the last twenty years and they uniformly lost. I feel like there should be "mud-slinging" and then “responding in kind.” "Responding in kind" would only be seen as a proper response and not stooping to negative campaigning. Pipe dream. The Press wants a knife fight.

To call someone a “monster” or refer to their actions as “monstrous” in Shakespeare is far worse than calling someone a villain or referring to their actions as “villainous”. Villainous was almost a playful term like calling someone a jerk. Monster was pretty much the worst thing you can call someone back then. I had been thinking as I planned my more scathing entry to slip in the word “Monster”. Thinking it wouldn’t seem as harsh as I intended. A little personal joke. I thought better about it, though since it is name-calling and petty. Plus I don’t know any of these candidates personally so it would be rather ridiculous to make such attacks. All I had to go on were her tactics and they were definitely monstrous.

If Hillary Clinton has shown one talent that she has greater than Barack Obama, it is that she has the power to be destructive. She has systematically set out over the last few weeks to destroy her opponent's character. She has attempted to destroy his credibility as a commander and chief—going so far as to say that McCain would be a better choice. I can see no reason to do this except as a scorched earth policy that if she doesn’t get the nomination, then she’ll make it not worth having. My guess is that if Obama loses the general, it betters her chances for another run filled with self-fulfilling “I told you so’s” in 2012.

How else can all this that she is doing be described but as monstrous?
***************************************************

The political fact and reality is this; Whether it is due to necessity or original strategy, the Obama campaign funded itself extremely well by donors who, like myself, have given small amounts of money over a period of time. The argument is he had to do this since the Clinton campaign had sucked up all the machine big money donations. If this money had been available for Obama, he would have taken it. This may be true, but it wasn’t and he and his people figured out a way to make a deficiency an overwhelming strength.

Whether it is due to necessity or original strategy the Obama campaign set up a fifty state plan. It was clear that party machines, familiarity, and concentration of the opposition would make swing and blue states at least difficult to win. Hillary Clinton chose to campaign as if she was running for president of the eighteen blue and swing states of America. Obama has campaigned as if he was running for the United States of America. In doing so he has accumulated a delegate lead that forces Clinton to win the remainder of the contests with somewhere between 60 and 70 percent of the votes. Each time she loses a state or wins by less than that amount the winning percentage need goes higher. This varies slightly but stays essentially true even if Michigan and Florida re-vote if I understand Chuck Todd's statements on MSNBC.

I was keeping track of the polls in Ohio and Texas during the three weeks before March 4. Depending on the poll, Clinton had an average of a 19 point lead in Ohio, an average of a twelve point lead in Texas. She ended up winning Ohio by 10 points and Texas by 4 points. This means he cut severely into her lead over those three weeks. And all evidence points to the fact that the main reason she even won by that much was because of a lie about a Canadian memo in Ohio and a scare tactic in Texas.

All that being said, I am aware that the Clinton campaign has and will continue to shape every win as a stunning reversal in favor of their side.

Even though the numbers are still in Barack Obama’s favor, I must admit that I am losing hope.
***********************************************************************
"The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

--October 17, 2004 New York Times Magazine article, “Without a Doubt”. By Ron Suskind.

Maybe it is a fact that Rove, Clinton, Bush, Cheney, Wolfson and all those like them understand and embrace a truth that I’m not willing to accept. That in a nation of so many it is impossible to honestly know our leaders on the highest levels and because of this, the simplest way to win is to play upon the darkest thoughts and fears of the masses to gain their goals.

In the case of Barack Obama I can’t claim to personally know him. I can only answer with these simple facts. He left New York to become a community organizer in Chicago. After dealing with city and state legislators he claimed that he recognized that the way to affect the most change was through the law and politics. He then got accepted to and attended Harvard Law School. His degree was in Constitutional law and he was the first Black president of the Harvard Law Review. He was offered well-paying corporate jobs and with his credentials could have easily been a clerk to a Supreme Court Justice. Instead, he returned to Chicago and even though he eventually took a job at a law firm where he met the woman he would marry, he continued his community work and that’s what finally put him in the Illinois State legislature. *************************************************************
“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which one is true."
--Nathaniel Hawthorne

The toothpaste is out of the tube. After sixteen years of overwhelming evidence, I recognize Hillary Clinton for what she is. I am fully prepared for her to be the Democratic nominee. The status quo just seems too fearful or unwilling to let Obama win. I also expect that I will vote for her in November. But I will do so while vomiting into my closed mouth.

As a Hillary Clinton presidency proceeds, I will listen to the attacks made by my Republican friends and relatives as I did sixteen years ago only this time, I will quietly agree.

Perhaps this is for the best. I came to consciousness during the Nixon era. Although it has been enjoyable, it has also felt unfamiliar to have so much excitement for a presidential candidate. I am much more comfortable holding my leaders in contempt.

My support for Barack Obama was the inverse of what I had come to believe. As Tip O’Neil said, “All Politics is local”.
***************************************************************

Conclusion

“So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.”
--Bob Dylan

March 9, 2008—I am watching “Meet The Press”. Ed Rendel is appearing on behalf of Hillary Clinton. Tom Daschle for Barack Obama. Very early on, I recognize that Rendel is sending up a test balloon for what might be the lie of the week. He mentions that the Clinton campaign is for a re-vote in Michigan and Florida. He then says that the Obama campaign is against it. A few minutes later he repeats this. Only this time he says that the Obama Campaign is silent rather than openly against the re-vote. A few minutes after that Daschle finally says that the Obama campaign is not against re-doing the primaries in Michigan and Florida. I am still annoyed because I feel that Rendel should be called on his tactic and forced to take back what he said. The Obama campaign has said over and over that they would abide by the rules set by the DNC.
At some point, Tim Russert asks Rendel if Hillary Clinton will concede the nomination if Obama wins the delegate count, the number of state contests, and the popular vote. Rendel says she will not if she wins Ohio, Michigan, Florida and Pennsylvania. Russert repeats the question moments later and Rendel gives the same answer.

It is worse than I described above. Hillary Clinton is not running to be president of eighteen states. She is running to be president of four. The other forty six, plus the territories are just along for the ride.

In this moment I realize that as far as the Clintons are concerned, this is their country and all of us are either their loyal or unruly pets.

If Hillary Clinton gets the nomination under the stipulations outlined by governor Rendel, then, in my mind, the Democratic Party is the “Fredo” of American politics and the sooner it gets in that fourteen footer for its final fishing trip, the better.

I am losing hope.

As I marvel at the continuing implementation of this scorched Democratic Party policy, I re-realize that, although I am 41 years old and I have voted in every presidential election since it became legal for me to do so, I have never voted without the name “Bush” or “Clinton”on the ballot. They are the Yorks and Lancasters of the United States. (...The Kennedys are the Angevins...of course.)

It will take a conscious and concerted determination by the people to break this trend…

determination…

I have a vivid recollection of something from Bill Moyers Journal. I go to that show’s website. I find a transcript for an interview I had seen three weeks before with Sarah Chayes. She is a U.S. citizen and former NPR reporter, who left her job to live in Afghanistan and help women there to start their own businesses and trade with the region and, hopefully, the world. Her task is constantly thwarted by Pakistan, the resurgent Taliban, Opium poppy farmers, and the disastrous foreign policy of her home country.

The interview ends with this amiable exchange:

BILL MOYERS: There's a thin line. As I listen to you, there's a thin line we sometimes walk, we human beings, between hope and folly.

SARAH CHAYES: Hmm.

BILL MOYERS: Are you very close to that line?

SARAH CHAYES: I don't think that hope is relevant. I think determination is all that counts. You just have to try. It doesn't matter if you hope you're going succeed or not. You have to keep trying.

OBAMA ‘08

J.A.L.

And So It Goes...on.

As I went to bed last night I was reminded, as I'm often reminded on bad days, of a short conversation William Tecumseh Sherman had with Ulysses S. Grant after the first day of Shiloh:

--"Well, Grant, we've had the devil's own day, haven't we?"

---"Yes.... lick 'em tomorrow, though."

WELCOME TO THE SILLY SEASON

Either just prior to or just after the New Hampshire primary this year, I called a friend of mine in Philadelphia. At that early date, I already felt too caught up in the process and I wanted to find out if this was an anomaly that was occurring nationwide, or was it just because I had a viable candidate coming out of the state where I resided, Illinois.

My friend, who was born and grew up in Canada, admitted that she was not caught up in the election as of yet and she was actually extremely annoyed by it. She was bewildered by how much time these candidates were spending campaigning when they should be doing their jobs.

I had not expected such an observation and had no response for it. Two months later I find I completely agree with the sentiment. Sill, the two candidates that come to mind that made special efforts to do their jobs, Biden and Dodd, were out of the contest relatively early. It seems that short of a law forbidding candidates who are also congressmen or cabinet members from actively campaigning at the expense of their elected position, or an across the board agreement by citizens not to vote for such people, nothing can be done to stop this. At least for 2008 it must be an accepted fact that all three remaining major party candidates for presidency are active members of the U.S. Senate who are running while neglecting at least some if not most aspects of their job.

Since 1900 only two people have been elected president while serving in the Senate, Warren G. Harding and John F. Kennedy. This is not due in any way to a lack of attempts. The two most recent candidates have been Bob Dole and John Kerry. Admittedly Dole resigned his post once he became the nominee but I think he still counts. Usually these senatorial candidates are at a disadvantage due to the fact that their opponent is not a senator. Often they are incumbents and can use the neglect as a weapon against the congressionally employed adversary. Many times the opponent may be an active governor. The senator can still be at a disadvantage as the opponent and his supporters can then use the senator’s voting record and manipulate the American public’s woeful ignorance of the workings of the U.S. Senate against them.

The patron saint of such activity is Zell Miller the former Democrat turned ranting right-wing coot who gave a ridiculous yet probably election winning speech at the 2004 Republican Convention.

The focus of his speech was all the weapons and weapons systems John Kerry had voted against during his years in the U.S. Senate. Towards the end of the several minute lie Miller asked what Kerry expected U.S. Armed Forces to be armed with, “spit balls?”

Funny stuff.

The only problem was that many of those weapon and weapons systems were also voted against by many of the people in that room including Dick Cheney. Many other ones had been attached to much larger bills unrelated to the weapons or weapons systems. When they were attached to more agreeable bills or were the main subject, Kerry voted for them.

Since then I have always been mindful of how much I wish the workings of our government were taught in greater detail than in a nine month course during the senior year of high school. Such ignorance is what I believe to be the main reason why so many qualified senators have not become president.

Add to the manipulator worshippers of Zell Miller the name: Hillary Clinton.

I had hoped that since all three candidates were senators that an agreement reminiscent of a mutually assured destruction pact would be unofficially made: No attacks on senatorial inactivity between the period of official announcement of candidacy and the end of the respective campaign.

The desperate Clinton broke such an agreement with her final T.V. ad before the March 4 primaries. In fact she had broken it several times over the past week in several speeches as well as her last debate appearance.

The subject was the fact that Barack Obama has not held a substantive meeting of the subcommittee he chairs on NATO. The fact that Obama received this chairmanship after the campaign began is not overlooked by the Clinton campaign they consider it shameful that Obama would shirk his duties to pursue his bid for president.

On February 11, just prior to the Potomac primaries a vote was taken in the senate regarding government wiretapping and cooperation by the telephone companies. It was an extension of the controversial law that gave the telephone companies immunity from investigation. Obama voted against the extension McCain voted for it. Clinton was unable to attend the vote due to campaign commitments she had. It was just a vote. A one day thing that was far from being as time consuming as preparation for a substantive subcommittee hearing that probably would have been viewed as political grandstanding by a presidential candidate.

By the way, in case you forgot, the Potomac Primairies took place in and around Washington D.C.

Coincidentally, that’s also where the Senate sometimes—in fact always—votes.

The fact that the Obama campaign has not made an issue of this as of yet shows more restraint than I could imagine as well as intelligence since it would become a constant round robin of accusations of neglect.

It’s a valid complaint. But they are all guilty of it. So it should not count against one more than another.

My reason for writing this is to make it clear this is either a non-issue or a transgression for which all three candidates should apologize.

J.A.L.