Trav Trivia

Volume 4, Number 42

January 26, 2009 -- William Steig drew cartoons and covers for the New Yorker magazine for decades, with the popularity that had many of them reproduced on napkins and t-shirts and sets of glasses. One from a popular set showed a big upright wooden crate, sitting on its end with a forlorn figure sitting inside in a fetal position, looking out and saying “Mother Loved Me But She Died.”

I thought of that cartoon in watching the inauguration ceremony, seeing George Bush, hunched in a top coat warding off the chill in the air, looking somehow surprisingly diminished and, it seemed to me, forlorn. The old decider, with too many disastrous decisions behind him, wearing his unpopularity like a wooden cross, condemned to sit in silence to watch and listen to the wildly popular charismatic orator there to replace him. Poignant.

There they were - an estimated two million people in what New York Times columnist Gail Collins, a veteran of both events, called “a cold-weather Woodstock.” Without the mud. There must not be anyone in the county who did not hear that speech. Extraordinary use of the English language. Not a poetic speech, but a somber one. Befittingly austere. Arianna Huffington called it “Obama’s Sober Sermon on the Steeps.” It did a neat autopsy of the Bush administration with the perpetrator of same sitting practically at the orator’s elbow. And, as NY Times columnist Frank Rich put it: “Cheney, who, in black hat and wheelchair, looked like the misbegotten spawn of the evil Mr. Potter in ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ and the Wicked Witch of the West.” The feeling I got from the departure of the old president was that he more or less just slunk away.

As Bush leaves, Politico’s Roger Simon reports this surprising, to me, comment: "I don't think George W. Bush ever wanted to be president. Not really.” He wanted to be Commissioner of Baseball, but was pushed into running for president. “There were always people around him willing to do the pushing,” seeing him as a vehicle for their own ambitions. I’ll buy into that.

The two lines that I saw most quoted from the speech were “extend a hand to those who unclench their fists” and “Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.” In point of fact, Obama laid it on all of us, you and me, to step in and change our wayward ways for the betterment of the country. Cynic that I am, I’ll believe that when I see it. As Rich writes in the New York Times we have run up nearly $1 trillion in unpaid credit card balances (WaMu has my credit card … no wonder they had to be taken over). And, we can’t seem to get through to hot-shot financiers to have respect for other people’s money. Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain was lauded for keeping the company afloat with a merger with Bank of America. But this week it is revealed that he spent $1.2 million redecorating his office. While laying off Merrill employees by the thousands, he tried to get a personal bonus of as much as $30 million. He didn’t get it, but he did dole out billions in last-minute bonuses to his staff on the Q.T. just before Bank of America took over, and just before the government forked over a second bailout to cover Merrill’s unexpected $15 billion fourth-quarter loss. “Taxpayers have spent $45 billion on this mess” says Rich. I just can’t conceive of a predator like Thain getting away with it without going to jail. If Bernie Madoff has to go to jail for reducing 91-year-old Zsa Zsa Gabor and others like her to abject poverty, Thain ought to be handcuffed to him on the way in. We have been living in what Christopher Leach calls a “culture of narcissism.” Stop admiring the image in the water. It is just you.

Albert Creamer, in a blog on Huffington Post, thinks in a surprise for the right, Obama’s election has caused a patriotic spirit to sweep America. That’s a good thing, if we could only get the Fox News wicked windbags to go along. The first couple of days they were quiet about Obama, the only criticism I heard was by Fox News’ Shepard Smith complaining about the way Barack danced at the ball. Stereotypes are breaking down everywhere. We have a president who is black, but can’t dance according to Smith? Worse still, I received my Nutrition magazine which this month rates the health benefits of vegetables. Here again we have a president, the role model as America’s first eater, who is black, and though collard greens are ranked third at a score of 733 (behind kale at 1,280 and spinach at 931), the man likes arugula, at 133 ranked 21st. A missed opportunity (it’s so easy to be politically incorrect).

After a couple of days of grace, however, the wicked windbags at Fox News, and hate broadcast in general, warmed up and revived their outrageous outrage. If you watched the Daily Show this week you saw a clip of Rush Limbaugh stating he fervently hoped Obama failed. Never mind the welfare of the country, the important thing is that Obama fails. And of course millions of people, more than celebrated on the Mall at the inauguration, take their cue from these clowns. Let’s hope Obama has some success in getting them to join in trying to heal the country. Sure he will.

The Obamas have moved into the White House, a house built by slaves. David Remick tells the story in The New Yorker Magazine of West African origin, they began construction in 1792 as sawyers, quarrymen, carpenters, stonemasons, and brick makers. Some 216 years later one of their ilk gets to live inside. Twelve American presidents owned slaves, eight of them while in office.

It would take a book to document all of the advice, observations, various calls for action the new President is being given on solving the financial crises, but we ought to give him a couple of days to pass miracles. Next week ought to do it. By Sunday, in the words of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, “all will be revealed.” If the pundits can wait that long.

Meanwhile, the man has just moved into a new home. He has personal things to take care of. Like paper train a new puppy. Or before that, paper train his feisty chief of staff. Rahm Emanual.

The Wall Street Journal, probably the paper of record of most Scotch drinkers, calls our attention to the fact that today is the 250th anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns, the bard of Scotland, and kind of a symbol of all things Scottish, and “all around the globe enthusiasts will be gathering at Burns suppers” (may we call them wee, timorous feast-ies?). Special Burns cocktails will be drunk, like the Capercaillie (whisky, Cointreau, apricot liqueur and pineapple juice). I have a little trouble associating pineapple with a poet who lived 250 years ago, but to each his own. In this country there is a Bobby Burns cocktail which seems to upset all of the purists. Do not call him "Bobby" (or "Bobbie") they say. Do you refer to “Tommy Hardy” or “Bernie Shaw,” they ask? Interesting point.

Perhaps we should loosen up, give our famous figures pet names. Oh, we refer to “Teddy Roosevelt,” but not to Georgie Washington, Benny Franklin, or Tommy Jefferson. It might serve to humanize them. And how about the present day? Georgie Bush, Dickey Cheney, or Billy Kristol? No, there is no way to humanize those guys. In the seventies I had a friend and business associate who had emigrated after the War, from Bavaria. Who is it, I asked him one day who pronounces W’s like V’s. and V’s like W’s. He looked at me for a moment, and said “Vee do.” So I asked, how would you pronounced Travis? The answer: “Tra – Wee.” I don’t particularly like the association with the word “Wee” so I think I will have a Bobby Burns (oops, Robert Burns) cocktail and think about that a bit.

Volume 4, Number 41

January 19, 2009 -- The mind is a peculiar thing, like a murky pool full of flotsam, randomly floating around, floating to the surface here and there. This has been a flotsam week for me, old images clanking against the new.

When I was a tyke (I was once a “tyke?”) one of my favorite books was “White Fang” by Jack London. Read it many times. If I remember correctly (tykedom was a very long time ago) the most rambunctious dog was put in the front position of the sled dog team, effectively being chased by dogs behind him, who at the end of the day’s run ganged up on the leader. Welcome to Washington, Mr. Obama. While enthusiasm for you incoming administration runs high, every move you make is critiqued, found lacking in one way or another by one persona or another including members of your own party and your strongest supporters. Whether it is your stimulus plan, your appointments, perceived backing away from some campaign promises, even your choice retaining the present Whitehouse chef and search for a family dog are criticized while you are still two days away from taking office.

Foodies wanted a celebrity chef in the White House kitchen but the Obama’s chose not to flaunt “elitism.” It is unlikely they will feature weird new food rends, like squirrel which the British reportedly are taking to with gusto (squirrel hazelnut pâté, for example). Or Raccoon, which is gaining in popularity in Kansas. For that matter, will guests be served things like an elitist raspberry-vodka-and-hibiscus-tea martinis? Sarah Palin might have gone for the raccoon or the squirrel, but I don’t see her with those martinis.

The man can’t even choose a family dog without controversy. PAWS, the Pets Are Worth Saving organization (now isn’t that cute) are asking what’s taking so long? You have some pet lovers in an uproar. And the two breeds you are looking at are not always found in animal shelters where you promised to get your dog. We members of WOOF (White House Out of Fleas) ask why must every president have to have a dog? I don’t believe Obama had to promise his girls they could have a pet. I believe that he just knew a White House with an obligatory dog would be too much change; the populace couldn’t handle it. As for the time factor, it takes time for a dog to fill out all of those forms that are required by the Obama transition team.

Columnist Frank Rich in Sunday’s New York Times calls our attention to an issue of “Onion,” and this bit of satire. Headline: "Man Given Nation’s Worst Job,” having “to spend four to eight years cleaning up the messes other people left behind.” Well, that’s kind of par, isn’t it, for ethnic minorities? Cleaning up somebody else’s mess?

Reading Rich’s Sunday column made me feel that I have not reacted dramatically to this momentous moment when we are about to install the first black president. I have to focus on it to even think of it that way. Otherwise I just see a man with a superb intellect, apparent rare skills of organization, and a lifestyle like any other successful American. Yet my life parallels the slow, inexorable march to this point of racial freedom, from the days we had couples living down in the cabin, the black musicians I admired, the black musicians I worked with on shipboard in the Navy giving our stewards gun position at general quarters, taking a black business associate into our segregated company cafeteria, working on a team that worked to integrate restaurants in Houston, hiring qualified black people for meaningful positions. Not much to brag about, I didn’t march, but this occasion probably does cause for celebration. Besides, I owe it to one Ben Alexander, who was an integral art of my early life. I remember how proud he felt when Joe Lewis became Heavyweight Champion of the World. I’ll toast this one for you, Ben.

Frank Rich writes that he grew up, white and privileged, in the District of Columbia where “the District’s black population had long occupied ‘a secret city’ all but unknown to the white world round about.” The city was led by Congressional racist white Southerners (then Democrats, now Republicans). Before Rich’s time I had by chance a view of the upper strata of that “secret city.” It was 1943, I was in the Navy, eighteen years old on a couple of days break from training in East Tennessee. Adrian Rollini, a noted jazz xylophone player had a small group at a hotel. My buddy and I asked him where we could go to hear some jazz. There is an after-hours club, The Offbeat he told us at if I remember it correctly 11th and U. To get in, he said, you ask for Mr. Freddie Green and tell him Nick from New York sent you.

Our white cab driver was reluctant to take us to that part of town in the middle of the night, but when we got there we found a handsomely livered doorman beneath a colorful canopy, who took us up three flights of stairs to the office of Mr. Freddie Green who, after I delivered the appropriate message escorted us down a flight of stairs into one of the most beautiful night clubs to be seen, appointments all top drawer. There was a stage with a six-piece group playing jazz and for dancing, an MC in a tuxedo, a high-kicking chorus line and the patrons wore smart business sits, a tuxedo here and there, long evening gowns. They politely ignored us. The buddy with me was another white boy raised in the South, Miami where his father was a judge, was very nervous because we were the only whites in the place, but he relaxed when Charlie Barnet, a leader of one of the more popular big bands of the era, and a well-known jazz bassist, Tubby Jackson, came in. The point of this story is that to a couple of young white kids raised in the South it was a revelation: people who acted and looked just like people in our communities, except they had black skin. That was a startling lesson in 1943. I got back to the club another time or two when I got to DC, always well accepted, one time even allowed to sit in.

As in Rich’s younger years, the district citizens are still living under taxation without representation. It was led by racist white Southerners, who then were Democrats, the difference today being that they are Republicans. Republicans kill any bill that attempts to give them representation in Congress because, like most people on the lower economic ladder, they tend to vote Democratic. That is just part of the drill that had the U.S. Justice Department chasing after supposed voter fraud, the intimidation by police of minority voters n Florida and the current drive for voter identification photo ID. The poll tax is unconstitutional but a photo ID is O.K.? The latter is a solution to a problem that does not exist. There is no indication of a problem anywhere. Texas is one of those Republican states trying to pass such a law. Houston Chronicle columnist Rick Casey wrote last week about an extensive investigation of the so-called problem in San Antonio, Texas and out of 800,000 votes cast in a ten year period there were 41 that were bogus, most by people who thought they were authorized to vote.

As it turns out “the Great White Father is black.” Obama is very big with American Indians, who plan a big presence at the inauguration. The Crow people have dubbed him “Barack Black Eagle” He is a little handicapped if he has quite smoking and can not handle a peace pipe, and two percent of the voting public, Native Americans, is at stake.

Other flotsam of the week: Albert Gonzales is writing a book about his White House experiences, but other than a fly leaf, what will be in it? He is the guy who could not “recall” anything.

On the energy front, billions of dollars are being poured into research on alternative fuels, which would be a good thing except it is being done by United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. They intend to be the energy providers no matter what. Exxon has put some money into research at a college in California; no billions but it was $100.000.

Do ask, do tell. A gay bishop has been invited to say a prayer at an Inaugural Event. Oh Lord, please accept my rebuttal to the Rev. Rick Warren.

The President has held his last news conference. That’s the best news the White House news corps has had in years.

Last week we learned more about the fellow we want to make Secretary of the Treasury and in charge of the IRS, Tim Geithner, who failed to pay about $34,000 of his taxes. He is considered a “Wall Street Wonder Boy” and we need him so he will probably win confirmation. Besides, look at it this way. If the Feds need to catch him they know where to find him. Right down the hall.

In a column about what the new president has to clean up, Maureen Dowd made reference to Hercules and his task of cleaning up the Augean stables. That was a rather delicate way of putting what Obama will face when he reaches the White House. Stable stuff.

Robert Creamer in Huffington Post cited as the Bush biggest achievement as “putting into practice the Neo-Conservative theories of pre-emptive war and unilateralism” which demonstrated their failure for all to see. The same can be said for trickle-down economics.

Obama broke bread last week with conservative media. George Will had him to dinner along with Fred Barnes, Bill Kristol, David Brooks and others. No word whether Joe Biden was there to act as his food taster. To be fair, Obama met with the liberal pundits the following morning.

Dipping deeper for a little more flotsam in the murky pool of the brain some random phrases buried there bubble to the surface, for no particular reason. As Dick Cheney does his exit interviews I keep listening for him to use that quote from an old James Thurber fable, “Everybody has a flaw, mine is being evil.” Listening to the President in his exit interviews, I get the impression that invading Iraq was a temptation too great to resist, no matter what the facts were. From Dr. Mardy’s quotations comes this by Oscar Wilde: “I can avoid everything except temptation.” As for all who would eschew nanny-state directives is this, from a teenager complaining about what she thought was the idiocy of the abstinence only program, read on the Tonight Show by Jay Leno: “I’ve already lost my virginity. And I will probably lose it again before I marry.” And finally, one by me about me, a left over from the Tom Swifty days: “The new Administration augurs well for the future, he said boringly.” I ought to leave it to Wilde.

Volume 4, Number 40

January 12, 2009 -- “Hop when I holler, skip when I snap. When I say, “do it,” jump to it.”

The words are from the song “Peel Me a Grape” but they could stand in for the mantra of the new administration due to hit the decks running just nine days from now. Obama expects everybody to get a move on. As Michelle Cottle in the New Republic wrote, the Obama White House is “embracing the work-all-hours, sleep-is-for-wimps. personal-lives-would-be-nice-if-only-there-were-time” ethos. And in the middle of this Obama is going to quit smoking?

The 111th Congress has begun. With a couple of notable exceptions, senators have been sworn in. The average age is 63, and among new senators it is 57. The average tenure is 12.9 years or about 2.2 terms. Senate leader Harry Reid could channel Rodney Dangerfield with “What a group, what a group.”

Confirmation of cabinet members has begun. Tom Daschle was up first as secretary of Health and Human Services. Popular guy in Congress, Tom. He set the tone by saying he didn’t want a health care package that passed by 51 votes. He wanted one that passed by 80 to 90 votes. That represents a lot of compromise with a lot of Republicans, which concerns some advocates. As NY Times columnist Gail Collins worries, it could end up with a watered down version. At this stage of the game, though, we should cut Obama some slack.

Daschle got along so well with his Congress panel it was almost an old Gallagher and Shean Vaudeville routine: after you, Mr. Gallagher, no after you, Mr. Shean.

In addition to his cabinet, Obama will also have a bevy of advisers hunkered down in the West Wing, charged with cutting through the usual bureaucracy, a czar for this and a czar for that.

NY Times columnist David Brooks, right wing not West Wing, wonders about overload and how he is going to get all of this done: tax cuts, state aid, road and bridge repair, broadband projects, special education programs, a new power grid, new scientific research, teacher training projects to mention a few domestic consideration. He says “By this time next year, he’ll either be a great president or a broken one. Everybody wants a piece of him. Want the Everglades fixed? Obama will do it.

Everybody is telling him what to do. From Bob Herbert’s column in the NY Times: “Another month, another half-million Americans out of work… unemployed have now stretched beyond saved by putting a pitiful $500 into the hands of the average taxpayer. And it won’t be saved by gift-wrapped concessions to the G.O.P. in the form of business tax cuts. Create jobs through infrastructure investments (building and repairing roads, bridges, tunnels and water and sewer systems) … clean energy initiatives, in public transportation systems, and in school construction; and by providing access to health care.” That’s a pretty full dance card.

In the Washington Post, columnist E. J. Dionne Jr. asks “Will the package be big enough and what mix of spending and tax cuts would do the job best?” Joe Conason in the New York Observer says “We must spend big and spend fast.” Even in his own party, Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Feinstein got their noses out of joint over perceived slights (Ladies, you might be better served if you kept it to yourselves … but I shouldn’t use “Ladies,” it’s demeaning to these tough, hard-working public servants, and now the House has decided to make its official language gender neutral. No longer will there be references to “he,” “chairman,” and things like “his duties”). More and more women are serving in Congress, and in government. It’s a unisex world, even though so far only women wear the pearls.

All of this costs money. Obama warns of a "trillion-dollar deficits for years to come.” Even so there are some who do not believe it is enough, like Nobel Prize winner and NY Times columnist Paul Krugman. He worries about the economy’s gap between the economy’s potential and its likely performance. Tax cuts to businesses worry others, which sounds like more discredited “trickle down” economics. As Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa says the “madness of trickle down and its corollaries ruined the economy and millions of Americans with it.” I’ve always been for piddle up, rather than trickle down, myself.

At this point there are a couple of things to keep in mind. Obama is flexible. In Sunday meetings with members of Congress, more changes in the stimulus package were agreed upon. And second, the country elected him to fix things, with an approval rating currently in the 70s, not Congress, not columnists, not pundits. And one thing is obvious: he is going to keep his cool and do it the way he thinks best. No Dick Cheney is going to run over him. If he just hadn’t quit smoking.

Cheney of course is sailing along, giving exit interviews to friendly news outlets, serenely proud of the mess he made, in what has been called a White House “Louche Fest.” Despite it all, the President seems proud of himself. “I think I’ll be remembered as a guy who was dealt some pretty tough issues and I dealt with them head on and I didn’t try to shy away.” Donald Rumsfeld did an “outstanding job” as Secretary of Defense he avows. His idea of who the Medal of Freedom should go to included former British Prime Minister Tony Blair (in England called Bush’s poodle) and John Howard of Australia whose personality rivals that of Attila the Hun. And the list goes on and on. So many people are gnashing their teeth that there will be no retribution for this gang of what Maureen Dowd refers to as “Constitutional thuggishness.” No war crime trials. But the country does not have the heart, the time nor the stomach for it. And this, the most secret of all White Houses, is expected to illegally spirit away documents, and records, leaving no tracks, just as the Bush Texas National Guard records disappeared.

In other news this week, all living presidents as well as incoming President-Elect Obama gathered at the White House this week. So? Did anyone have any ideas on what to do about Israel and Palestine in Gaza, Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Mumbai Attacks in India, or Baghdad (the United States finally opened its new embassy building at a cost of $592 million in which will be staffed 1,200 employees, at the same time the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction reported a $50 billion rip-off). Any ideas fellows? Great photo op, though.

Caroline Kennedy is still in pursuit of an appointment to the senate from the state of New York, after years of quietly living and working (effectively) in her own private cocoon, now calling on people, talking to people, submitting to interviews. She has her detractors, who complain that she hasn’t earned her dues, and she has her supporters who know her well, like NY Times columnist Maureen Dowd. After all, she is a "51-year-old Harvard and Columbia Law School grad and author who is smart, cultivated, serious and unpretentious." I'm not sure the Senate is ready for someone like that.

Even Dowd makes note of a little verbal tic Kennedy spatters through her conversations – the frequent “y’know.” Of course most of us have verbal tics, an “uh,” an “I mean,” an “I hear you.” Not long ago when my granddaughters were in middle school they began making frequent use of the word “ergo,” using it properly, in what seemed to be gentle mocking of their stepmother, which was her tic. I thought that was amusing until I just realized now, in high school, they are making frequent use of “indeed,” which I now recognize as my tic. I’ve been trying to break the habit, but it isn’t easy. Indeed.

So many sounds that make up words in the English language, thousands more than in any other language. At one time many, many years ago there was interest in “basic English.” At the time I got enthralled with semantics, word maven Ogden had come out with his 860 word list of basic English with which you were supposed to be able to communicate anything. Never mind the other 10,000 or so other common words. Then there is the 100 basic English words that make up 50 percent of the words we use every day. That list contains “good” but not “bad” Words not on the list include: need, want, give, love, or hate. You can still use those 100 words, but it is not easy. I tried “Far From The Madding Crowd.” Far from many people? Maybe. But “Out Damned Spot” is another matter. “Out Not Good Small It” doesn’t cut it.

William Safire in his language column in the Sunday New York Times Magazine takes up the problem of what to call our present global financial crises, words that encompass everything, not just Wall Street, words that convey the serious nature of it but do not evoke panic. No “meltdown.” No “Great Depression,” (it’s taken) etc. Foreign Affairs Magazine suggests “The Great Crash, 2008.” Safire is asking for suggestions. Here are some thought starters: 2008 Wealth Eater ... Evacuation of Value ... Paper Value Purge ... Downsizing Wealth ... Subsiding of Civilization (too grim ... only seems that way).

Words, words, words. Browsing through the news, columns, blogs I run across unfamiliar words, and some, like “Outré,” I haven’t thought of in awhile. Use ‘em or lose ‘em. A sentence rather poorly making use of this week’s batch (including one in Yiddish):

Ensconced in my favorite Osteria, brooding about a reputation labeled Outré, this one-time Sheygets blamed it on lack of Atreus.

I should quit while I think I’m ahead … stick to basic English.

Volume 4, Number 39

January 5, 2009 -- “Well, I've been down so Goddamn long that it looks like up to me” sang The Doors 40 or so years ago.

After eight Bush administration years and decades of Republican rule that seems a fitting way to begin 2009. It all looks up to me. As columnist Eugene Robinson put it in the Washington Post it is a “bright line between yesterday and tomorrow.”

All of the punditry, and the denizens of the White House, have spent the last few days and weeks reflecting on the past or foretelling the future. Most of the famed columnists of the New York Times have been taking time off lately. I thought it was just to enjoy the holiday season, but it could be that they are out looking for other work. The mighty Times is on the list compiled by 24/7 Wall St of organizations that will not make it through year 2009. The Rock of Gibraltar of the newspaper business. Makes you think of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem “My candle burns at both ends, it shall not last the nig, but oh my foes and oh my friends it gives a lovely light.” If the Times goes down it can be said it gave a lovely light.

Like the Lord High Executioner in The Mikado he’s got a little list which includes Chrysler, Sirus XM, AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Rite-Aid, and Pier 1 among others. Is it too early to say Sayonara?

There is much to look at in the rearview mirror. For instance, where did the money go? On Wall Street, about $7 trillion of shareholder’s wealth, to paraphrase the character Roy in the movie Bladerunner, washed away “like tears in rain.” It represented the gains of the last six years. Market value lost totals $30.1 trillion. Banks that failed in 2008 numbered 25. That’s a pretty penny (an expression that no longer has meaning).

If you would like to revisit the last eight years, the February issue of Vanity Fair published an excellent piece: “Farewell to All That: An Oral History of the Bush White House.” The threat of 9/11 ignored. The threat of Iraq hyped and manipulated. Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. Hurricane Katrina. The shredding of civil liberties. The rise of Iran. Global warming. Economic disaster. How did one two-term presidency go so wrong? “A sweeping draft of history—distilled from scores of interviews—offers fresh insight into the roles of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and other key players”… all of it. You can read it on line, but I suggest you not print it out. It is 31 pages in 12 point type. Wait and buy the magazine.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/02/bush-oral-history200902?printable=true¤tPage=all

As the President makes his rounds of exit interviews, more than any other outgoing President has ever done before, his reflective mood is chilling, especially if you have seen the Frost/Nixon movie, or play, in which Frank Langella does such a masterful job as Nixon. New York Times columnist Frank Rich calls these interviews the Bush “legacy project.” You can watch Nixon, vilified, disgraced, admitting at last his capability, and think but Bush and his cohorts did so much more damage and yet they are getting off free. Scot free.

Rich is particularly rough on the President, calling him “smaller than life. Even the banality of evil is too grandiose a concept for 43. He is not a memorable villain so much as a sometimes affable second banana. Pity him until you remember how vast the wreckage is.”

Rich writes about the Bush “alternative-reality history.” He asks how “someone so slight could inflict so much damage?” But then “his every action is blessed from on high.” The Lord works in mysterious ways.

Karl Rove, as well as Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard, claims Bush has been reading as many as 95 books a year. Not just any books, but ones as intellectually challenging as Albert Camus. As he reads and reflects, you wonder if he came across this quote by Camus: "Life is the sum of all your choices.” courtesy of Dr. Mardy’s quotes this week. Richard Cohen in the Washington Post calls this … “dropping the good ol' boy persona and picking up the ol' bifocals one.”

I have a hard time buying this for several reasons. That’s about a book slightly over every three and a half days. What with reading those books, riding his bike, and cutting brush, when did he have time to be President? Condi Rice was quoted as telling others to keep their memos short because the President was “not a reader.”

The real question in my mind is how can you read all of those books and not get a better feel for the English language? Here are a few of the memorable Bushisms from a long list compiled by the Associated Press.

"I want to thank the dozens of welfare-to-work stories, the actual examples of people who made the firm and solemn commitment to work hard to embetter themselves." April 18, 2002, at the White House.

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." Aug. 5, 2004, at the signing ceremony for a defense spending bill.

"We look forward to hearing your vision, so we can more better do our job." Sept. 20, 2005, in Gulfport, Mississippi.

"I remember meeting a mother of a child who was abducted by the North Koreans right here in the Oval Office." June 26, 2008, during a Rose Garden news briefing.

"This thaw _ took a while to thaw, it's going to take a while to unthaw." Oct. 20, 2008, in Alexandria, Louisiana as he discussed the economy and frozen credit markets.

The President may be a little pensive and reflective, but the Vice President is as brazenly unremittingly Cheney as ever. No second thoughts for him. Everything went swimmingly. On December 21, Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday even got him to echo the Richard Nixon line that caused such a stir. He asked Cheney "If the President, during war, decides to do something to protect the country, is it legal?" "In general proposition, I'd say yes," Cheney said. Nixon said “If the President does it it’s not illegal.” From a man who fit’s the criteria of “war criminal.”

But what of some of the things we may expect in 2009? What if Obama makes his summer White House in Hawaii? George Bush made his in Crawford and invited visiting heads of state to visit him there. If Obama does the same, can you picture a Saudi in flowing robes on a surf board? Or German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the beach in a bikini?

Here are odds of certain personal disasters befalling you in 2009, by NASA. The likelihood of being hit by any of the six substantial Near Earth Objects is 1 in 2,518,070. Your chances of falling out of bed or off other furniture is set at 1 in 329,819 (considering my track record I don’t believe I could get anyone to give me odds like that). Choking on food: 1 in 343,179. Motor vehicle accident: 1 in 6,539. Have a Happy New Year.

On a sober note, columnist E. J. Dionne Jr. in the Washington Post writes "We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country." We need to get away from the concept of a “War On Terror.” We are battling against “ideas rooted in the medieval past.” He writes of the “urgency of disenthralling ourselves from dated market ideas.” We cannot operate without significant regulations. Well, now I’m pretty disenthralled.

It looks like we will not have governor and ex-presidential candidate Bill Richardson as Commerce Secretary after all. Under investigation for some kind of supposed misdeed, he withdrew his name from consideration. Republicans in the Senate are threatening to filibuster against seating ex-comedian Al Franken as senator from Minnesota, proving once again that the GOP has no sense of humor. The famed Rainbow Room will be closing its restaurant, the sign of a new era, though the owners plan to keep the bar and banquet space open. “The Rainbow Room has symbolized cosmopolitan elegance since it opened in 1934, during the Great Depression” (AP). It is located above NBC's studios at Rockefeller Center. I suppose they will have to disinter the remains of Guy Lombardo and the Royal Canadians and move them someplace else.

On the food and drink front, Bon Appétit magazine says it will be the year of Peanut Butter. The trend is to peanut butter desserts. (Sugar that sticks to your teeth ought to be a boon for dentists). Locavores will be snaking on caffeinated sunflower seeds, potato chips, and candies according to Time magazine. That ought to make for a hyper year. Tex-Italian is a trend. Jalapeño stuffed with Gncchi?

Upscale Saki is a trend, with one Las Vegas restaurant offering 110 varieties. The Japanese are drinking less Saki, but more Scotch. We are drinking less scotch, but more Saki. Wonder if we can get them to buy American cars?

“Beer is the new wine” they say. Now they tell me, after years of trying to get that “hint of saddle” or “wet dog finish” out of my glass of wine. I will have to count on help from the beer Sommelier, and some restaurants now have them.

Thanks to Dr. Mardy again, comes this quote from author, playwright Jean Kerr: "Even though a number of people have tried, no one has yet found a way to drink for a living."

I would take that as a challenge, except it is too late in life. I’m just happy to be able to get the glass to my lips now and then.