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.
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