Trav Trivia

Volume 5, Number 15

July 20, 2009 -- According to news reports, sorry to say the Pope has suffered a broken wrist. While we wish the Pontiff a swift recovery, it would seem that he, of all people, would be able to bless himself without suffering an injury.

At times I find it easier to relate the current events on the world stage to Broadway musical productions (sometimes makes it go down easier like fantasy) and this, a few lines from a lyric in “Guys and Dolls” comes to mind, where Adelaide complains in song “You’re at it again, you’re running the game …” This week the boys running the game again are the big boys in the financial market. JPMorgan Chase announced a huge $2.7 billion second-quarter profit. Goldman Sachs Group Inc, earned $3.44 billion in the second quarter. Isn’t that just wonderful? Big profits are what America is all about. But the second half of that song has Nathan Detroit singing to Adelaide “So sue me, sue me, what can you do me …” And that seems appropriate since despite being able to do so because of public bailout money, the public furor over excessive compensation, Goldman is preparing its largest bonus payout in history, earmarking $11.4 billion so far this year for its workers, which works out almost $800,000 a person (although I don’t think we’re talking about the clerical worker here). AIG has set aside $235 million so far to pay bonuses (you don’t like it? So sue me). JPMorgan Chase is a little hamstrung by being required by federal regulators to allow shareholders to vote for measures tying executive bonuses to the banks long-term stock performance.

Why isn’t making all of this money a good thing, if we can get past these people for thumbing their noses at public opinion on the matter of compensation? Well, obviously, it’s a good thing for financial executives but not so good for the rest of us. These companies do not really create anything but paper wealth using other people’s money. They don’t create anything. The services they are supposed to provide have to do with getting funds distributed to where they are needed in a sound fiscal management fashion, but the system as it stands rewards taking big risks because that is where the big profits lie. The bigger the profit, the bigger the bonus and once that bonus is distributed, it’s gone, no way to recover it even if the deal ultimately goes sour and losses occur. And the way things are now if deals go bad, we the taxpayers pick up the tab. As small banks go down during these hard times, these big institutions grow bigger in picking up the slack. As my generation used to put it, these financials carnivores have a bird’s nest on the ground.

The good news is that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have announce the first six members of what is called the “Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission” to study what went wrong and to recommend changes. The bad news is that it will be bipartisan, fifty-fifty Democrats and Republicans and we know how that usually works out. In my business I never found designing anything by committee resulted in anything bit mismash. Meanwhile, unless someone does something the Wall Street Wizards will carry on as if nothing ever happened to create yet another bubble down the line and another big burst. You can count on it, like money in the bank (if there will be a bank next time left to put it in).

The death of Walter Cronkite, the figure more than any other in our time the face of journalism, is an opportune moment to reflect on the role journalism should play in our society. As NYT columnist Roger Cohen wrote after coming back from covering the tumultuous aftermath of the Iranian elections, despite the “24/7 howl of partisan pontification, and the scarcely less-constant death knell din surrounding the press, a basic truth gets lost: that to be a journalist is to bear witness.” Someone needs to bear witness whether it is to the shenanigans of “boys gone wild” on Wall Street, the hypocrisy inherent in family-value proclaimers involved in tawdry sex scandals or the kabuki dance of the Senate hearings to confirm Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. If it were Hollywood Squares, it would be one of the personalities up in the boxes asking the questions rather than the MC. At first the Senators seemed to talk about themselves more than the candidate, and it seemed to bring out the worse in them. Republicans seemed to have thought they had found a “wise Latina” racist, especially the most racist of Senators, especially those from the South, who I suppose were convinced they know one when they see one. It’s in their genes. I’m Southern born, bred and buttered but I will take a ‘wise Latina woman’ over some of those bubbas any day.

Then there is the “empathy” concern. Should a member of the Supreme Court say this at a confirmation hearing: “When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account.” But wait. That was not Sonia Sotomayo. That was Judge Samuel Alito at his confirmation hearing. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), one of the most outspoken critics of the lot, just the other day before the hearings said "I will not vote for -- and no senator should vote for -- an individual nominated by any president who believes it is acceptable for a judge to allow their personal background, gender prejudices, or sympathies to sway their decision in favor of, or against, parties before the court." Yet as “The Progress Report” points out, Sessions was happy to vote to confirm Alito. Hypocrisy, anyone?

Howard Fineman of Newsweek, also a lawyer, has this suggestion: “stop holding Supreme Court confirmation hearings.” They have no clear or useful purpose he says. “They make everyone involved look bad.” They confuse the public about what the Supreme Court does and undermine respect for law and judges. Hard to argue with that.

Over 3,000 cases came before Sotomayor over 17 years which ought to give a clue about what kind of judge she will make. Will she be an “activist" judge? What is she going to say? John Roberts described himself as a neutral umpire. Did John Roberts lie about being a neutral umpire, only to be a “down-the-line conservative” on the Court or as Fineman put it, the “Incredible Hulk of ‘activism.’”

Bearing witness. To the undercurrent of racism on the Supreme Court hearings to the blatant racism popping up in the public sector. On MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show, Pat Buchanan said “this has a country built basically by white folks.” Meaning what, Pat? Audra Shay, a 38-year old woman who made racist comments on Facebook and other social-networking sites (“need to take this country back from all of these mad coons … and illegals.”) just won election as head of the Young Republicans. No wise Latina, this lady. The appeal of Sarah Palin largely stems from this disdain for “others” who are not like you and me. One more time, NYT columnist Maureen Dowd nailed the person of Ms. Palin: “Sarah Palin is the definition of irrational, a volatile and scattered country-music queen without the music. Her Republican fans defend her lack of application and intellect, happy to settle for her emotional electricity.” I say “wired” is the word.

Associated Press has “born witness” on some of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford’s activities in addition to the sex parts. The Governor who does not want stimulus money, who preaches frugality, and makes his aids stick to it, has been not so frugal when it comes to his expenses charged to taxpayers. Like the trips he’s taken at taxpayer expense. More than $5,000 to fly to Poland in April, including at least part of the trip in the more expensive business-class seating; $4,685 on a Lufthansa business-class flight to Munich in April 2007; flying the most expensive "envoy class," or first class, on a U.S. Airways flight to London in 2006 at a cost of $7,065 not to mention that one trip to Argentina that included time with his mistress.

In the news again is the house on C Street in Washington called the dormitory and meeting place for a group of conservative Christian lawmakers ("The Prayer House"). Two cases of infidelity have already turned up among the regulars: Sanford and Ensign, the Senator from Nevada whose parents paid $96,000 to his mistress and her husband out of the goodness of their hearts. And now a third episode as the estranged wife, Leisha, of former Rep. Charles W. Pickering has filed an "alienation of affection" lawsuit claiming he carried on an extramarital affair with a onetime college sweetheart while he lived at that house. You have to wonder what those guys were praying for, and if their prayer were answered.

Journalists may have to be the witness bearers to history if history textbooks fall into the hands of people like those appointed to the Texas Board of Education by now infamous Governor Rick Perry, he who talked about Texas withdrawing from the Union, he who turned down stimulus money but now wants to “borrow” that same money from the federal government. No wonder Keith Olbermann has named him (Perry) “Worst Person in the World” at least three times lately. The kind of people Perry appoints, including his newest to chair the State Board of Education, Gail Lowe, are after more than substituting Creationism for evolution, they want to eliminate certain historical figures and events, like César Chávez, Thurgood Marshall, and Henry Cisneros from social studies and history textbooks for 4.7 million Texas school children. At least they have not yet denied the Holocaust. Typical of the Perry supporters is the Rev. Peter Marshall who contends that Watergate, the Vietnam War, and Hurricane Katrina were God's judgments on the nation's sexual immorality. By that reasoning I want to know what Texans have done to bring down God’s wrath in the form of a governor like Rick Perry.

It’s difficult enough on any given day to keep up with and sort out all of the complicated non-English names of international figures and places in the news, but if at the same time you are trying to get a grasp of some of the grape varieties used in making wines in Spain it can get terribly confusing. In a random stream of words all tangled up you get Bramcellao, Bruni, Mouratón, Medvedec, Sousón, Rafsanjani, Grozny, Garnacha, Kadyrov and the like. In the confusion your wine tasting notes might read: Bruni, exotically scented (no, that’s Carla Bruni, the wife of the President of France, visiting and singing in New York City this week), Medvede, a big red (well of course, he’s the President of Russia), Mousavi began well but had a weak finish (Mir Hossein Mousavi came in second in the disputed Iranian election), Grozny reflects its terroir (it should, it’s the capital of Chechen, in the news because of the murder of a prominent human rights activist), in Kadyrov the nose is very strong (the President of Chechen’s denial of involvement in the murder of the activist smells). Oh, well, what the hell, bottoms up.

Volume 5, Number 14

July 13, 2009 -- Please dear God, how can we make it go away, the constant stream of information about the person NYT columnist Frank Rich calls a “born avatar,” Sarah Palin. And in that description lies an ugly story.

Despite what Rich calls her “combative resignation soliloquy” she refuses to go away. This reminds me of a problem the police department of Port Arthur, Texas once faced. To train agents and dogs to detect marijuana they planted a crop in one of the police official’s backyard. When training was done they tried to get rid of it. But no matter what they did it kept coming back. In desperation, they finally just paved the whole area with cement. I know it would be inhumane but one wishes for a solution akin to what happened in the old 1944 black and white movie ”The Canterville Ghost:” in which Charles Laughton was walled up in the castle. Come to think of it he then haunted the place for another three hundred years and we don’t want that. It feels like we are being haunted already. And we have to live with a new expression: “Pullin’ a Palin.”

Certainly her decision to “drop out and cash in” (Rich) has provided fodder for chewing over the subject by everybody who has a keyboard, a camera, a mike or a platform from which to comment. Syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker claims the media invented Sarah Palin, and quotes H. L. Mencken as follows: “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”

In that vein this latest maneuver has actually boosted her standing with the GOP as per the latest Today/Gallup poll which shows that 71 percent of Republicans said they would vote for her for president! NYT columnist Maureen Dowd in a spoof has Palin saying “Pundits think I should read a book before I write one?” Our eggiest-headed columnist extant, David Brooks, sees this contrast between a Palin and an Obama: “Palin: unfamiliar with the traits of equipoise and constancy, which are the sources of authority and trust” as opposed to “Obama: exemplifies reticence, dispassion and the other traits associated with dignity. The cultural effects of his presidency are not yet clear, but they may surpass his policy impact.” Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson refers to “Palin and her know-nothing legions” who rail against what they see as the “elitist and sexist” criticism.

This may just seem like pundit fun and games but the born avatar aspect of Palin is a cover for a serious and ugly aspect of our society, which is what Frank Rich agonized over in today’s column. As he says, too hitch-hike on the old Colin Powell expression, she broke the Republican Party, now she owns it. What with sex scandals and all else, there is no other Republican to be the face of the party (Mike Huckabee, he says, is Palin-lite). And what she represents is a movement of “dwindling white nonurban America that is aflame with grievances and awash in self-pity as the country hurtles into the 21st century and leaves it behind.” It’s “emotional, not ideological.” Racist? (“not like you and me”). She’s for “real America,” or white rural America. And as he writes “The politics of resentment are impervious to facts.” Palin “puts a happy, sexy face on ugly emotions” and that is both scary and a sad commentary on society.

With or without Palin, as Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen puts it, GOP candidates seem determined to “stay uncorrupted by knowledge” and all of them “must be vetted by the party's Grand Inquisitor, Rush Limbaugh, a belch from the gutter.”

Republicans have Palin, Democrats have Al Franken, and what a contrast that is. Franken the comedian? How about Franken the Harvard grad with honors and a degree in political science. Author. Keen observer of the political scene all his life. Friend and supporter of the late beloved Democratic Senator Paul Wellstone (killed in the crash of his plane, which led Franken to consider entering politics to carry on his goals). Family man, but of course things being what they are that might not hold now that he is officially sworn in to the Senate (giving the Democrats a clear majority allowing them to focus on fighting now among themselves) … must be something in the water. I’ll take the Democratic face any time. “Live from Washington it’s the Senate in Session.”

As the Frankens move to Washington another American family is taking the Grand Tour. The Obamas first toured Russia after which the President received generally good reviews for an agreement to reduce nuclear arms stockpiles and a compromise on Afghanistan. No luck on Georgia. And no report on exactly what he saw in Putin’s eyes that George Bush saw before, except strength and determination.

On then to Italy and the Gang of Eight (are we beginning to sound like the Chinese, which we might as well get used to?). No agreement from the G8 on climate abatement but they did pledge $20 billion over three years, $5 billion more than expected, for agricultural investments and to fight hunger, and the kids probably got to see where authentic pizza comes from.

The most interesting part of the Italian visit was a session with the pope in which, according to E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post the pontiff greeted the President as a potential ally on matters dear to his heart. Parts of the hierarchy are working with the Administration on health care reform, immigration and climate change legislation. According to Dionne, Benedict is not as bent out of shape over abortion and stem cell research as the bishops in America, and the most intriguing thing is that he is much farther to the left than Obama on many things.

Pope Benedict XVI and many of his advisers also see Obama as a potential ally on such questions as development in the Third World, their shared approach to a quest for peace in the Middle East and the opening of a dialogue with Islam. The Pope is seen as a conservative who views Obama more favorably than do most Catholic conservatives in the United States when you read his latest encyclical of a few days ago. We have the unusual situation of a Pope preaching what some would call socialism to an American President: "Distributive justice and social justice, redistribution of wealth, world political authority to oversee the global economy in the name of the common good." Sounds great coming from the Pope. Coming from Obama would be political suicide.

In Ghana Obama put on his community organizer hat, calling for responsibility and stability. That line might have been suitable in Italy at the moment, come to think of it.

It is ironic that a Supreme Court over here stacked with Catholics is swinging so far to the right in direct contrast to the Pope’s encyclical. In the Supreme Court term just up workers, voters and the environment took it on the chin big time. The rights of workers and voters to be free of discrimination were repeatedly cut back. Time and again rulings went for big entities over individuals. All five environmental cases were against defenders of the environment, overturning at least four long-standing precedents. Oh well we always worried about the Vatican trying to dictate our politics. We need new blood on the Court, but first there is apt to be new blood on the floor of the upcoming conformation hearing.

Politics. The seemingly never-ending theme of the subject of sex in the political arena is startling to an old guy like me who grew up when the thigh of the chicken was called the “second joint,” the word ”thigh” being a little too racy to use in mixed company. Maybe it’s better to relax and face it, rather than repress it. Now it turns out Nevada Senator John Ensign’s wealthy parents gave almost $100,000 to his former lover and her family, but that wasn’t black mail or payoff. It was just out of the kindness of their hearts. We have prenuptial agreements; why no pre fooling around agreements? NYT columnist Gail Collins enumerates Ensign’s family values credits. In Washington, he lived with some other conservative Christian lawmakers in a building known as the “Prayer House.” Ensign was “one of the people who demanded that President Bill Clinton resign over the Lewinsky affair, that he votes against financing for education and contraception services to combat teenage pregnancy and that he supports a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.” Before his $96,000 affair.

As for Mark Sanford , the South Carolina Governor, this piece from the Jewish Daily Forward says it all:

NEWS ITEM: South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford disappeared for a week explaining he would be hiking in the mountains on vacation. Actually, he engaged in a secret tryst in Argentina with his inamorata.

Should we forbid a governor

From dallying with sweet amour?

His job is hard beyond belief,

So why deny him some relief?

South Carolina is the state

Whose governor just couldn’t wait.

To Argentina off he flew,

Sub rosa, to his sweetie-poo.

At home he left his lawful spouse,

Abandoned in their vacant house.

He told his staffers quite a fib:

That he was going hiking! Glib!

Cavorting in the Argentine,

The governor, adulterine,

Resembled more a fugitive

Than top most state executive.

It never ceases to perplex,

What men will do, impelled by sex.

One must be hardened to resist

Enticements of romantic tryst.

What unsigned laws were on his desk

While he pursued the picaresque?

What duties did the gov neglect

While primal urges went unchecked?

Big problems rise in governance

When breathing comes with hottest pants.

Such happenstances should we rate

And simply dub “affairs of state”?

(Thanks to friend Arthur Hersch for forwarding the above to me.)

Personally inspired by all of this, being a male with normal instincts, I submit the following:

TRAV’S LAMENT

I wish I gotta’

Inamorata

A nice consort

That I could court

For me I want a

Sweet amante

A covivant,

My own romaunt

To have a mistress

And not be tryst-less

Why don’t they have

Just one for Trav?

I’m forced to lie

With succubi.

Volume 5, Number 13

July 6, 2009 -- As my first granddaughter reached toddler stage I came across an unusual item I thought would be fun for her to have, and bought it for her. It was a big, rotund, life-like inflatable plastic gorilla, sitting on its hunches, about four feet tall. I inflated it, visualizing her laughing, punching it, jumping on it, moving it around the floor. She toddled into the room, took one look at it, spun around, and toddled out as fast as her little legs would take her. I was stunned. At just a little over a year old, from where or what did she get her fear of gorillas? With no time or experience to acquire it the fear had to be inborn.

It all goes back to the Pleistocene Age as Nicolas Kristof writes in the New York Times addressing out slow reaction to climate change. “Evolution has programmed us to be alert for snakes and enemies with clubs,” (and apparently gorillas) “but we aren’t well prepared to respond to dangers that require forethought.” Ice caps are shrinking, arid zones spreading, at an accelerating rate? Temperatures will rise an estimated 9 degrees or more by the end of this century? Tsk, tsk, we ought to think about this just as soon as we kill this snake. “We have no ‘preparedness’ to fear a gradual rise in the Earth’s temperature.” Kristof quotes Professor Jonathan Haidt of the University of Virginia as saying, “most Americans prefer $50 now to $100 in six months.” It’s the Scarlet O’Hara mind set, “I’ll think about that tomorrow.”

The House managed to pass the Waxman-Markey climate-change bill in a squeaker. Not a perfect bill, but a start. Now it is up to the Senate where it faces Senators from five coal producing states and the climate change deniers, like the one who says it is all a big hoax, a sort of conspiracy we presume among a thousand or more evil scientists world-wide who have banded together for the sole purpose of ruining the economy of the Great State of Oklahoma. If he has a grandchild born about now who lives to be eighty there will be no rich wheat farms in Oklahoma which will resemble the Sahara desert that only a camel could love. To quote again from the Kristof article, “This short-circuitry in our brains explains many of our policy priorities.”

There is another side to this argument, an economic one. What’s the point of our trying to go green if China does not? Well, according to NYT columnist Thomas Friedman, the Chinese have drastically switched gears. Whereas they used to tell him “Hey, you Americans got to grow dirty for 150 years, using cheap coal and oil. Now it is our turn,” sees it differently today, not only for self preservation since they have been drowning in their own pollution, but because “energy technologies that produce clean power and energy efficiency — is going to be the next great global industry.” Instead of cheap tennis shoes and plastic salad shooters they want to be the big exporter, the source of everything to do with wind, solar, and nuclear power. In a world that is adding one billion people about every 15 years it is a huge market that we are going to lose out on if we don’t get with it. As in the movie “The Graduate” where Dustin Hoffman was given career advice as “Plastics,” today it should be “clean energy.”

I can’t tell you why, and I should be ashamed of myself, but Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska, soon to be ex-governor, makes me think of Mrs. Robinson. It is an aura of meanness about her I think. NYT columnist Maureen Dowd sees her worse than that, saying “Caribou Barbie is one nutty puppy.” Dowd called the speech the Governor made giving up her position with 18 months to go, “incoherent, breathless and prickly stream of consciousness,” which pretty much described it for me.

Abrupt, unexpected, peculiarly timed in front of a handful of people in her back yard, downright weird, her resignation is and will be fueling commentary, analysis, and speculation that will have media bursting at the seams to handle it all. Why did she do it? If she really did not want to be a lame duck governor, since she was not going to run for reelection, wouldn’t that have made her a lame duck the moment she took office? According to Todd Purdum in the Vanity Fair article on Palin, some Alaskans believe she fits the description of “narcissistic personality disorder.”

So why did she do this weird thing? Pick your commentator, take your choice. Her biggest fan, the man most responsible for bringing her to national attention in the first place, Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, with tongue hanging out and salivating as usual as the mere mention of her name, says she may be “crazy like a fox” using the next eighteen months to write her book and prepare herself to run for the presidency. NYT columnist Gail Collins writes “Basically, the point was that Palin is quitting as governor because she’s not a quitter. Or a deceased salmon” referring to Palins remark about “only dead fish go with the flow.” And a move to interrupt plans of “TV newscasters to spend the entire weekend pointing out that Michael Jackson is still dead,” a “canny move to get her back down to the lower 48, with as much time on her hands as Mitt Romney.” I love this woman.

Other speculation has it that Palin may be faced with another and more sever ethics violation charge as suggested by writer Shannyn Moore as well Max Blumenthal and other bloggers on the Web. That brought a reaction from Caribou Barbie’s lawyer: "This is to provide notice to Ms. Moore, and those who re-publish the defamation, such as Huffington Post, MSNBC, the New York Times and The Washington Post, that the Palins will not allow them to propagate defamatory material without answering to this in a court of law." So there. Can Obama go back and sue Palin for accusing him during the campaign of consorting with terrorists? Do I need a lawyer because I wrote this?

What I hold against Palin the most is being the flag bearer for a movement that denigrates intellectualism. Being educated, being smart is bad. Only people like Joe the Plumber should run the country. They are not bothered with too much acquired knowledge. On that subject we might examine the qualifications of Al Franken as the new Senator from Minnesota. Yes he comes from show business as an award-winning writer of comedy and political satirist as well as a book author, but in his upper fifties he has spent his life as a close observer of politics. He has a degree from Harvard to boot. This makes him easily as qualified as fellow show business politicians such as Fred Thompson, Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger and the bar tender on the TV series “Love Boat” who served in Congress. He is a serious guy about to find out what it’s like to be on the receiving side of the barbs. I expect him to be a kind of straight Barney Frank after he is finally sworn in on Tuesday.

Franken participated in six Independence Day parade. The President hosted 1,200 military families for a Fourth of July barbecue on the South Lawn of the White House. Vice President Joe Biden spent a few days in Iraq meeting with top officials. He also had breakfast with his son Beau, an Army captain in Iraq. Second Lady Jill Biden observed Independence Day by visiting American troops in Germany en route to an education conference in Paris. “Sparky Sanford” as Maureen Dowd calls the disgraced “family values” Governor of South Carolina spent the holiday with in-laws in Florida, which I have to say called for a lot of guts under the circumstances. No word on Sen. Ensign from Nevada. All said and done it seems to me the Democrats did a pretty good job of showing “values” and patriotism this Independence Day.

It seemed to be a week of unending obituaries, with pundits looking for significance in every death. NYT columnist Bob Herbert, for example: “The Michael-mania that has erupted since Jackson’s death — not just an appreciation of his music, but a giddy celebration of his life — is yet another spasm of the culture opting for fantasy over reality. We don’t want to look under the rock that was Jackson’s real life. As with so many other things, we don’t want to know.” Farah Fawcett was mourned as a kind of symbol of an age that came and went. Karl Malden? A rugged, no nonsense actor that belied the pretty boy found today. The shooting death of Steve McNair, Super Bowl quarterback just occurred so we have yet to learn what to make of that one. Murder-suicide? Why? Sex, or love if you prefer, may have had something to do with it.

One kind of sex or another seems to dominate the news. Don’t ask, don’t tell is still a controversy. Britain, Denmark, and Israel, among other nations, allow openly gay men to serve in their armed forces, but over here since 1993, more than 13,000 troops have been discharged for being gay. Last year, 619 military personnel got the boot, about average in recent years. Some of them had invaluable specialties, such as fluency in Arabic. The problem must be that unlike women in the WAVES, or women in WACS or the Tuskegee air men, gay people did not earn their stripes by first having their own unit before being integrated to serve alongside straights. An all-gay unit first just to show how they, too, can shoot to kill, and then allow integration. We always do things the hard way.

When old guys in retirement sit around over lunch or a drink the topic of conversation is usually sex or politics. Now they seem to be one and the same. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of promiscuity. The political world has been and is awash in revelations of affairs. Since it is personal, do we care? Should we care?

There is the hypocrisy of all of those “family value” conservatives who don’t seem to be able to control themselves any better than the people they like to lord “holier than thou” over. As columnist Gail Collins put it in reference to the tolerance South Carolina conservatives are showing to wayward Governor Mark Sanford: “Sex is irrelevant unless it leads to a tax increase.”

But in a NYT column by Eduardo Porter he notes that in the family values branch of the Republican Party they rank philandering as less morally acceptable than the death penalty, cloning humans, or suicide. “Pew Research Center three years ago found that Americans considered adultery worse than abortion, smoking marijuana or cheating on taxes.” In the last decade, adultery’s approval rating has never risen above 9 percent (adultery has an approval rating?). You remember Kinsey. According to his statistics half of married men reported having an extramarital affair at some time during their marriage. A quarter of married women had an affair by the time they were 40 (isn’t that two men for every woman? Doesn’t sound fair).

This brings up the question that was raised last week: “is monogamy normal?” Like everything else, I suppose, our sexual activities and attitudes probably developed in Pleistocene Age and we’ve stuck with them ever since. Governor Sanford could have used that in one of his several explanatory apologetic press conferences.

About fifteen years ago The New Yorker Magazine had an in-depth article by an anthropologist detailing the correlation of the size of male testicles of mammals and the promiscuity of the female of the species. The larger the testicles, the more promiscuous the females. The testicles of man in relation to body size are the largest of all of the primates. And then there is this: 40 years ago the biologist Robert Trivers predicted that the evolutionary imperative to maximize offspring would lead to mostly promiscuous males and non-promiscuous females. It would seem that we have a predilection to extra marital sex that requires will power to overcome, and apparently that’s a lot to ask of politicians, especially uptight, family-value conservative ones.

But then there is a certain allure about political figures, maybe it’s the power thing, that attracts females. An evolutionary ecologist who studies fireflies says if the males have certain traits that make them attractive to females they will mate more often than other males (that enzyme in the firefly’s tail that drives a chemical reaction that makes light, and one male’s tail can be brighter than another’s, and so it must be with politicians). Right now the political field looks like a meadow full of fireflies, blinking away, ready to mate.

Volume 5, Number 12

June 29, 2009 -- The rousing finale of the old Broadway Musical “How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying” was a rendition of “There’s a great big brotherhood … of Man … fraternity … of Man” it goes on to acclaim. In the context of the show it was meant to be satirical, yet those words keep coming to mind this week.

In the few days after Japan surrendered in 1945, in the city of Sendai, a city a few hundred miles north of Tokyo, a city where vast areas of suburban housing had been reduced to no more than three or four inches of ash by raging fire storms set off by incendiary bombs dropped by American planes I stood downtown on its main street. Coming toward me was a middle aged man, a little taller than the average Japanese, a slender almost gaunt figure wearing a simple kimono over a black business suit, wide-brimmed hat perched on the back of his head, tears welling up in eyes behind big round glasses. He did seem fueled by alcohol. But with a little open mouthed gasp, little rivulets of tears sliding down his cheeks, he gave me a strong embrace. It was a touching attempt to express a kind of brotherhood, or so I read it.

Of course there was the Rape of Nan king, the Baatan Death March, and innumerable despicable acts by other Japanese, but not by this little man nor by me; two members of the fraternity of mankind.

Earlier this week David Bromwich wrote in Huffington Post “Iran was an easier enemy before we saw their faces.” And we’ve been seeing their faces, despite efforts of a repressive government to prevent it. Faces of “men and women were holding up cell phones or placards written black on green, or waving a bloodied shirt or bandage; or holding a rock” to quote Bromwich. Faces on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart of little kids playing ball like all little kids, young people wanting to rap, people who want to leave the 9th Century and enter the 21st. And especially the women, the driving force behind this backlash.

Roger Cohen, columnist for the New York Times, reporting from Tehran writes, “a slender woman clutching her stomach outside Tehran University after the blow; a tall woman gesticulating to the men behind her to advance on the shiny-shirted Basij militia; women shedding tears of distilled indignation; and that young woman who screamed, “We are all so angry. Will they kill us all?” Sixty percent of university students are women and are tired of having to cover up, to worry about accidentally showing a little flesh at the neck or a wind-blown long skirt to reveal an ankle, any of which is cause for arrest by the moral police, the Banji. And yet clerics and the dominate male population call women who do not cover up, or complain about segregated beaches on the water front, whores. Here we are more civilized. Rush Limbaugh would simply call them “feminazis.”

France has taken a hard-line view toward this method of dress. President Nicolas Sarkozy told the French parliament "The burqa is not a religious sign, it's a sign of subservience, a sign of debasement — I want to say it solemnly. It will not be welcome on the territory of the French Republic." He’s right, of course, but it would not be easy to put that over in this country. If you could ban the burqa, you could just as easily ban my cowboy hat. Might be worth it if we could also ban the peaked cone hat of the Ku Klux Klan. No, I believe we want to be free to put any stupid thing we want to on our heads.

Now that we’ve seen their faces could we really do what John McCain has advocated in song on the campaign trail, “bomb, bomb, bomb Iran?” That really went over well with those faces on the street who won’t forget it. Nor will they forget the calls to intervention by McCain and his cohorts. As Bromwich points out, “There is not one politician in that country of 70 million who wishes the United States to be his special backer.” They’ve had enough of our interventions. And while we have seen the faces on the street of resisters, we have also seen the faces of the Banji, the cruel young punks given batons to wield against any man, woman or child who demonstrates. But it’s a little hard to bomb selectively.

What has happened there is in many ways our fault. Yours, mine, through the people we elected to act on our behalf. We just have to have oil to shoot into our veins like the junkies we are. In 1951 Iran had a democratically elected president, Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, but his government nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. We consider that a no-no, so the CIA and the British Intelligence Service maneuvered to overthrow the government and install the Shah, which resulted in a reign of terror. Secret police. Torture (under training it is thought of the CIA). Opposition leaders and followers killed by the thousands. Until the populace rose up again in 1979, and a repressive clergy-driven government with a tiny tad of democracy. They believe, as well, that the United States supplied Saddam Hussein, then our buddy courted by Dick Cheney, with the poison gas used in the Iran-Iraq war that has debilitated tens of thousands of Iranian men. Our government is not the one they would want to fill in at the top of their dance card.

Oil is all they have going for them. Their fortunes rise and fall with the price per barrel. They have an economy that makes nothing the world wants, unemployment is high, so people depend on the largess of Khamenei” and Ahmadinejad. Our sanctions don’t work at $70 dollars a barrel, but at $25 a barrel they’ve got problems.

Friday the House passed what is seen as a groundbreaking energy bill. Conservative opponents have been claiming it would cost consumers thousands of dollars in new energy expenses but the tab is expected to be no more than $80 to $111 a year. How would you feel about a $1 a gallon “Freedom Tax,” with rebates to the poor and elderly that could be used to develop alternative sources of energy while reducing our thirst for oil? I didn’t think so. This is a pet idea of NYT columnist Thomas Friedman and it would probably work but you would have to hand every politician who sponsored it or voted for it a ritual political suicide sword.

Arianna Huffington wrote about the frantic efforts of lobbyists fighting reform of banking, energy, and health care. Joe Conason of the New York Observer, reports that Max Baucus (D-MT), the chairman of the key Senate Finance Committee, “received more campaign money from health and insurance industry donors than any other single member of Congress.” It’s nice to have friends in high places. Reform without the "public option” is sham reform and as economist/columnist Paul Krugman says would merely bail out corporate medicine. He says “we can afford universal health insurance — even those high estimates were less than the $1.8 trillion cost of the Bush tax cuts.” About the fear of the public option, the President says if they really believed their own rhetoric about government waste and inefficiency, they wouldn’t be so worried that the public option would put private insurers out of business. But that’s too logical.

If you are a political junkie you may want to listen to the Nixon secret tapes. The National Archives just released another 154 hours which makes 2,371 in total. If you can devote eight hours a day to it you can get it done in just over 59 5-day weeks. In college I had a dorm mate and friend who tried to join the Communist Party. If my name comes up let me know before you inform the F.B.I.

News reports being as grim as they are, we’ll break for a little light reading.

"You have a particular grace and calm that I adore. You have a level of sophistication that so fitting with your beauty. I could digress and say that you have the ability to give magnificent gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curve of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of the night's light - but hey, that would be going into sexual details...”

Barbara Cartland? Playboy? No, text from e-mails sent by South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, the “self-righteous, Bible-thumping prig who pressed for Bill Clinton’s impeachment” (NYT columnist Maureen Dowd’s words) to his “Amante” (also Dowd’s word) in Argentina. There is something about a good sex scandal that brings out the best in the award-winning Dowd.

As the world now knows, the Governor did not disappear to go hiking on the Appalachian Trail as he attempted to have people think. No, he flew to Buenos Aires to be with, to quote the one-time Prince of Wales, “the woman he loves.” Temporarily, since on his return he tearfully fessed up, over and over again, apologizing, over and over again, and is back to work in the State Capital, presumably still opposing gay marriage as a threat to traditional marriage (like his). However, nobody likes his chances anymore of running for president. Although if you come to think of it, in a Clintonesque way, he is already broken in for office.

The commentary has been intense and interesting. Katherine Jean Lopez for the National Review refers to it as another of the “Beltway loose-belt scandals.” Sex scandals are bipartisan of course, but there is so much hypocrisy on the Republican side. As Dowd says to Sanford, Gingrich, Limbaugh, Palin, Ensign, Vitter, and others “stop being two-faced.” As Charles Blow writes in his New York Times column labeled “The Prurient Trap,” Conservatives used “sexual morality as a weapon and now it's shooting them in the foot.” Or somewhere.

I was amused by a headline in the New York Times that read “South Carolina Governor May Have Broken The Rules.” Adultery has rules? Is there a book? Like Hoyle? Actually, South Carolina still has a law against adultery which could get you a year in jail. Nobody has been brave enough to prosecute.

Sanford’s name joins a long list of penis peccadillo perpetrators of national prominence. With thanks to NPR, the list includes:

Senator John Ensign (R-NV), number four GOP guy in the Senate, just owed up to an affair with the wife of his former chief of staff. (2009)

Gov. Jim Gibbons (R-NV): The Gov. “is in the midst of salacious divorce proceedings, where his wife has accused him of extramarital affairs with several women, including a former Playboy model. Gibbons is up for a second term in 2010.” (2009)

Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick (D): His “sworn denial of a romantic relationship with Christine Beatty, his chief of staff, evaporated when racy text messages between the two were uncovered. Kilpatrick, married, was soon charged with perjury.” (2008)

Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) “became the first Republican to be elected to the Senate from Louisiana since Reconstruction, doing so in part by appealing to conservative, "family values" issues. But his phone number appeared in the records of an escort service (read: prostitution ring) run by Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the so-called "D.C. Madam." (2007)

Former Florida Rep. Mark Foley (R) “was revealed to have been sending explicit instant message conversations to male, underage, congressional pages.” (2006)

Former Governor Jim McGreevey (D-NJ) “resigned as governor of New Jersey after admitting he was gay and had an extramarital affair with the man he had hired as a homeland security adviser.” (2004)

Former Senator John Edwards (D-NC), of hair fame, now heir fame. (2009)

Former Senator Larry Craig (R-ID): conservative GOP senator from Idaho, who toe-tapped in the men’s restroom. (2007)

Mayor Gavin Newsom (D): “The mayor of San Francisco admitted to having an affair with the wife of his campaign manager.” (2007)

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (D): "Amid speculation that he would run for governor of California in 2010, Los Angeles Mayor Villaraigosa acknowledged having an affair with Mirthala Salinas, a TV reporter." (2007)

Former Rep. Gary Condit (D): “The relationship between Condit, a moderate California Democratic congressman, with Chandra Levy was revealed after the D.C. intern disappeared.” (2001)

Jack Ryan (R): "Ryan was forced to quit as the Republican nominee for the Senate in Illinois when damaging details about his divorce from actress Jeri Ryan were leaked." (2004)

Former Governor Eliot Spitzer (D-NY) Client Number 9. (2008)

Former House of Representatives Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R) in his 2007 memoir, admitting an affair while attempting to prosecute President Clinton.

Newt Gingrich (R), same as DeLay …

Rudy Giuliani (R), one time presidential hopeful likes marriage so much he has gone for it three times ... so far, with an affair or two in between.

As Rodney Dangerfield used to say “What a crowd, what a crowd.”

Deep thinker columnist David Brooks delves into evolutionary psychology and something called “certain mental modules.” That seems to be “0.7 waist-to-hip ratio (that’s a 24-inch waist and 36-inch hips); women: taller and slightly older.” He reports the average American adult knows 60,000 words and mates with someone who caresses with language. That limits the choices for the guy who only know how to say “What a Rack!”

The adventures of Governor Sanford inspired some additional lyrics to that old Cole Porter song “Let’s Do It.” As follows:

Each political pair

In a public affair

Do it

Politicians who think it’s De Rigueur

Do it

Let’s do it … let’s fall in love

Senators who win

Condemning sin,

Do it

Governors and stalwart Congressmen,

Do it

Let’ do it … let’s fall in love

South Carolina’s main man’s the latest on the list

Sneaking off to Buenos Aires for his latest tryst

Mark Sanford, the Gov

And his lady love.

Do it

While bill and cooing like some turtle dove

Do it

Let’s do it … let’s fall in love.

Enough. Inspired by Sanford, I am going to check on taking a hike along the Appalachian Trail. His way.