tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-364046022024-03-07T00:44:24.060-05:00Connecting.the.Dots"The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know." –Harry S TrumanROBERT STEINhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11999996852219220599noreply@blogger.comBlogger3709125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36404602.post-42531195952184357812020-02-08T10:58:00.001-05:002020-02-08T10:58:48.330-05:00Kirk Douglas' Inner Issur (Repost from 4/11/2009)At 92, best-known now as Michael Douglas' father and Catherine Zeta-Jones' father-in-law, a movie legend is taking "an audit of my life" and, of course, doing it on stage and in front of cameras.<br />
<br />
Kirk Douglas' career is at the heart of a larger 20th century American story: how the children of refugees from European cruelty went to Hollywood and, as John Updike put it, "out of immigrant joy gave a formless land dreams and even a kind of conscience.”<br />
<br />
After World War II and the growing popularity of foreign films had paved the way for more realism, Issur Danielovitch followed a generation of Jewish studio heads and writers out there to explode on the screen with the kind of passion and intensity unseen in pretty-boy Hollywood heroes until then.<br />
<br />
They changed his name, of course, and Kirk Douglas became the angry star of "Champion," "Ace in the Hole," "Young Man With a Horn" and "Detective Story," among other tales of irresistible (in every sense) male aggression.<br />
<br />
Along the way, according to his first biographical book, "The Ragman's Son," Issur-turned-Kirk played his role of sex symbol as avidly off screen as on.<br />
<br />
He went on to become a producer who finally buried 1950s political blacklisting by giving Dalton Trumbo, who had been writing under aliases, credit for the screenplay of "Exodus" and continued aging passionately before our eyes for decades.<br />
<br />
Now he is playing himself by recounting his near-death in a helicopter crash that killed two, his suicidal thoughts after a stroke in 1994, the loss of his youngest son to an accidental drug overdose five years ago and still trying to make sense of his relationship with a father who could never show love for him.<br />
<br />
Over the years, our paths crossed a number of times, but what stands out is the time we were at one of those gatherings where the privileged babble away with no human connection whatever. To keep the conversation going, I suggested a game: Name the actor you would want to star in a movie of your life. “As for me,” I said, nodding at Douglas across the table, “I see Kirk in the part.”<br />
<br />
He smiled the familiar dazzling smile that never quite reaches his eyes, a flash of the amused anger that fueled his movie-star charm. I smiled back in what I took to be a moment of shared irony between boys of dirt-poor immigrant parents being wined, dined and bored by the very rich.<br />
<br />
Now he has finally stopped impersonating others and is playing himself, letting his inner Issur take a bow after all these years. As always, it must be a riveting performance.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript"><!--
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1f497d;">Portions are eerily prescient:</span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1f497d;"> </span><i><span style="font-weight: normal; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">4/21/11 Trump, Reagan and Karl Marx:<br />
"History repeats itself," said the father of Communism, "first as tragedy, then as farce." He foresaw what's going on now in a disoriented GOP that still hates his guts...With disgust now at the rage level, the Trump boomlet is riding a much stronger current. Unless a plausible Republican stops his momentum, it could carry him to the nomination by default and fulfill the Marxist prophecy with a Groucho Marx farce. But few Americans would be laughing. </span></i><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmzsdKI14jDQKZK9dqzgcTNQp3w1WuyDgxsWujjfRKlp-8-NtgQbZPEAOZv0-tqX8JVG77-NWC-j_9lFAA-KArWpuOB11yajVvLpoRDggI_0N0JlGEwfkBXVpAxxIgDNrlqToI4w/s1600/trump.jpe" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="141" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmzsdKI14jDQKZK9dqzgcTNQp3w1WuyDgxsWujjfRKlp-8-NtgQbZPEAOZv0-tqX8JVG77-NWC-j_9lFAA-KArWpuOB11yajVvLpoRDggI_0N0JlGEwfkBXVpAxxIgDNrlqToI4w/s200/trump.jpe" width="200" /></a></div><i><span style="font-weight: normal; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">4/26/11 Trump's Bully Pulpit: As a fake reality star, Trump is now taking it all to the logical extreme, stepping off the set of his own show to run rampant all over the small screen, cutting out interviewers, the middle men, by taking over both parts of the dialogue. If he gets there, he can stock the White House Briefing Room with cardboard reporters and ask himself only the questions he wants to answer. He is giving us a preview of that now.</span></i><br />
<h2><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Thursday, April 21, 2011</span></h2><h3><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="8992047972743175645"></a><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Trump, Reagan and Karl Marx </span></h3><div class="MsoNormal"><b>"History repeats itself," said the father of Communism, "first as tragedy, then as farce." He foresaw what's going on now in a disoriented GOP that still hates his guts.<br />
<br />
If Donald Trump stops tripping over himself to <a href="http://people-press.org/2011/04/20/trump-most-visible-among-possible-gop-contenders/">win the nomination</a>, the party line would hail him as the Second Coming of Reagan, but the parallels are not the ones they would be selling.<br />
<br />
Both candidates were created by TV, Reagan as a pitchman for <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703983704576276564256544634.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories">General Electric</a> (a global corporation that now pays no taxes) and Trump as the fictional business giant who, in real life, keeps losing other people's money and going bankrupt. <br />
<br />
Unlike Trump, Reagan's ratings went south. As a former not-quite-movie star and one-time Democrat, he turned to conservative politics the way washed-up contemporaries now flock to celebrity reality shows and roasts, delivering a canned speech about free enterprise with such sincerity that he found himself Governor of California.<br />
<br />
But in today's souped-up media-ocracy, no experience is required as presidential apprenticeship: Trump is poised to go directly from what David Brooks calls "Blowhardia" to a <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0411/53469.html">White House run</a> with none of Reagan's experience in the government trenches.<br />
<br />
Political incorrectness might not stand in the way. Just as Reagan became the first divorced president ever, conservatives may overlook Trump's flamboyant personal life the way many backed a multi-married, cross-dressing, pro-choice Rudy Giuliani the last time around. Desperation for a winner breeds tolerance.<br />
<br />
After the bumbling of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, Reagan rode into the White House on public disgust for two soothing terms as a Great Communicator who did little domestically and almost got himself impeached for illegal behavior in the Iran-Contra dealings but is now remembered mostly for his "Morning in America" rhetoric.<br />
<br />
With disgust now at the rage level, the Trump boomlet is riding a much stronger current. Unless a plausible Republican <a href="http://www.frumforum.com/how-to-beat-trump">stops his momentum</a>, it could carry him to the nomination by default and fulfill the Marxist prophecy with a Groucho Marx farce. But few Americans would be laughing. With the possible exception of Democrats who, other than Obama and Clinton, have held a monopoly on ridiculous candidates over the past half century.<br />
<br />
<i>Update</i>: The Trump farce continues as he berates Jerry Seinfeld for pulling out of one of his charities with <a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/trump_blasts_seinfeld_pullout_0S8zYf2OzIeUveWAFr88MO">unpresidential nastiness</a> and to keep the publicity pot boiling promises to reveal "very interesting things" about <a href="http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/21/trump-says-hell-reveal-interesting-things-on-obama/">the search</a> for Obama's birth records.<br />
<br />
Anybody here old enough to remember Geraldo Rivera's big buildup to opening Al Capone's safe and finding it empty?</b></div><h2><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="http://ajliebling.blogspot.com/2011/04/donald-trump-ronald-reagan-and-karl.html">http://ajliebling.blogspot.com/2011/04/donald-trump-ronald-reagan-and-karl.html</a></span></h2><h2><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Saturday, April 23, 2011</span></h2><h3><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="1369615535352654641"></a><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Mixed Blessing for Trump: A Flashback </span></h3><div class="MsoNormal"><b>Billy Graham's son and successor says <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/franklin-graham-trump-candidate-choice/story?id=13437543">the Donald</a> may be his "candidate of choice" for the Presidency, stirring memories of how the fabled minister got his start as the spiritual advisor to Presidents. <br />
<br />
In backing Trump, the Grahams would be coming full circle on gambling casinos from a founder of Las Vegas to the honcho of Atlantic City.<br />
<br />
In 1940s after starting out as a Fuller Brush salesman, the elder Graham went to L. A. and started saving celebrity souls. A young evangelist not adverse to publicity, he was landing only small fish until he hooked onto the mobster who helped Bugsy Siegel invent Vegas, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Cohen">Mickey Cohen</a> ("I have killed no man that didn't deserve killing." Think Harvey Keitel in Warren Beatty's <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101516/">1991 movie</a>, "Bugsy.").<br />
<br />
The conversion lasted only long enough to generate headlines but, after Cohen did a prison stretch, the Rev. Graham tried again, <a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,862547,00.html#ixzz10SLslUJ9">breaking bread</a> with the reformed gangster.<br />
<br />
"I am very high on the Christian way of life," Cohen said afterward. "Billy came up, and before we had food he said—-What do you call it. that thing they say before food? Grace? Yeah, grace. Then we talked a lot about Christianity and stuff."<br />
<br />
Alas, the conversion was not a complete success and, after flaunting his legitimacy in the media, Cohen was sent back to prison for tax evasion. "Christian football players, Christian cowboys, Christian politicians," he shrugged. "Why not a Christian gangster?"<br />
<br />
But the Graham ministry has never backed down from a challenge and, in Donald Trump, they will have the biggest to date. In converting to piety a loudmouth, loose-living, double-dealing egomaniac, they will be moving up from praying with Presidents to trying to create one.<br />
<br />
Heaven help them--and the rest of us. "God does play dice with the universe," Albert Einstein famously said, but legendary evangelists apparently do, if they are willing to put Donald Trump's finger on the White House nuclear button.</b></div><h2><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="http://ajliebling.blogspot.com/2011/04/mixed-blessing-for-trump-flashback.html">http://ajliebling.blogspot.com/2011/04/mixed-blessing-for-trump-flashback.html</a></span></h2><h2><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Tuesday, April 26, 2011</span></h2><h3><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5585920043436550117"></a><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Trump's Bully Pulpit </span></h3><div class="MsoNormal"><b>Anderson Cooper, who was pushed around by a Cairo crowd earlier this year, takes a <a href="http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/25/trumps-newest-blast/">verbal mauling</a> while trying to interrupt Donald Trump's tirade about the Obama birth certificate with a few facts.<br />
<br />
This was not what Teddy Roosevelt had in mind when he called the Presidency a bully pulpit. Luckily for the CNN anchor, it was a phone interview so the shoving was verbal as the non-candidate kept pelting him with shaky assertions even as Cooper struggled to get a few words in to question the sources on which they were based.<br />
<br />
As bad as the mud wrestling was, CNN will air the rest of the interview tonight. Why so much Trump trumpery? Cable news, of course, is about ratings, not journalism, and as the network honcho explained his importance in the 1970s movie "Network" to the insane anchorman, "Because you're on TV, dummy."<br />
<br />
Ironically, Trump's <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0411/53694.html">media ride</a> comes as HBO is showing a muddled movie dramatizing the origin of reality TV, the 1973 PBS series about the Loud family, under the title "Cinema Verite" (pretentious, <i>moi</i>?).<br />
<br />
One <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/too-much-relationship-verite/?scp=1&sq=heffernan%20cinema%20verite&st=cse">theme</a> of that effort is how journalists, even "documentary" filmmakers, and their subjects "manipulate each other and thus warp the story they're co-creating." <br />
<br />
As a fake reality star, Trump is now taking it all to the logical extreme, stepping off the set of his own show to run rampant all over the small screen, cutting out interviewers, the middle men, by taking over both parts of the dialogue.<br />
<br />
If he gets there, he can stock the White House Briefing Room with cardboard reporters and ask himself only the questions he wants to answer. He is giving us a preview of that now.</b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1f497d;"><a href="http://ajliebling.blogspot.com/2011/04/trumps-bully-pulpit.html">http://ajliebling.blogspot.com/2011/04/trumps-bully-pulpit.html</a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript"><!--
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My father Robert Stein passed away Wednesday morning July 9th at my Connecticut home under hospice care from kidney issues related to his several month battle with multiple myeloma cancer. All and all, it was blessing as he had spent the last month in the hospital and was adamant about wanting to die at home in his sleep which he did. Needless to say it’s been a grueling few months for our family but we are relieved that he did not suffer at the end.<br />
<br />
As per his wishes we have no plans for services. I will post links to his obituaries as they are published. While we are fortunate that his eight years of blogging has served as a chronicle of his life, he also wrote several hundred pages of memoirs which I hope to post in the near future on this site along with some more photos for anyone interested. <br />
<br />
My family would like to thank every one of his blog followers. He enjoyed writing immensely and greatly appreciated that he had faithful readers to inspire him in his 90s. <br />
<br />
If anyone has comments, questions or condolences, please feel free to post a comment or send a private message to <a href="mailto:robertstein@optonline.net">robertstein@optonline.net</a>.<br />
<br />
Sincerely,<br />
Keith Stein <div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript"><!--
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college student is the most fascinating character in Michael Lewis’ new book
claiming the US stock market is “rigged” by computers trading in nanoseconds.</span></b><br />
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">On “<a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/is-the-us-stock-market-rigged/" target="_blank">Sixty Seconds</a>” (an old-media eternity) this weekend, the author of “Flash Boys”
explains how it works: “The complexity disguises what is happening. If it's so
complicated you can't understand it, then you can't question it.”</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">In countering
this “dark market” that serves brokers rather than customers, opponents found a
key ally in the resume of a Stanford junior named Dan Aisen, “Winner of Microsoft’s
College Puzzle Challenge,” an annual contest in 2007. </span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">“There’s
some element of mechanical work and some element of ‘Aha!’ ” says Aisen, who
got a job and a nickname, the Puzzle Master, soon shortened to Puz, who helped dissidents
create their own stock exchange powered by a system called Thor.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">It
takes patience and concentration to read through <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/06/magazine/flash-boys-michael-lewis.html?pagewanted=all" target="_blank">Lewis’ narrative</a> and its
compelling conclusion that, when it comes to protecting customer interests and
their own, the most trusted names on Wall Street don’t hesitate.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Yet embedded
in its <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/01/books/flash-boys-by-michael-lewis-a-tale-of-high-speed-trading.html" target="_blank">tortuous tale</a> of cables twisting through a crucial few miles in
suburban New Jersey is more than another story about how in our society, speed
can not only kill but steal big.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">“Taking
advantage of loopholes in some well-meaning regulation introduced in the
mid-2000s,” Lewis concludes, “some large amount of what Wall Street had been
doing with technology was simply so someone inside the financial markets would
know something that the outside world did not. The same system that once gave
us subprime-mortgage collateralized debt obligations no investor could possibly
truly understand now gave us stock-market trades involving fractions of a penny
that occurred at unsafe speeds using order types that no investor could
possibly truly understand.”</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">His
book is unlikely to bring down Wall Street’s rich and powerful, but it’s
comforting to know that the brain power of a college undergraduate is giving
them some anxious moments.</span></b></div>
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</script></div>ROBERT STEINhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11999996852219220599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36404602.post-46365524149612649472014-03-31T02:18:00.000-04:002014-03-31T11:11:49.911-04:00Fear of Flying<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</xml><![endif]--><b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Endless fascination with the Malaysian airliner goes
on, rippling out to TV commercials unseen now for decades: courses for those
afraid to fly.</span></b><br />
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">The condition has a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pteromerhanophobia" target="_blank">scientific name</a>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pteromerhanophobia</i>, afflicting the
famous from football commentator John Madden to comic Whoopi Goldberg, and bringing
back memories of my own struggles with the condition.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Briefly in World War II, when I was doing clerical work
on a B-17 bomber base, my best friend was a gunnery instructor who arranged for
my first flight ever on a practice run. At the last minute, he took me off one
of the four planes and put me on another for a three-hour boring night flight.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">The next morning, he shook me awake to tell me the
first plane had crashed, killing four. He had taken me off because it didn’t
have an instructor pilot aboard.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Such initiation aside, my postwar job as a writer and
editor put me in the air often without a qualm (including a flight to Puerto Rico where they weighed me along with my luggage) until one day on a pre-jet trip
to Washington I found myself with a tray in my lap and the thought suddenly
struck, “What am I doing up here <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">eating</i>?”</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Flying was never the same again. My strategies for
coping included Scotch before boarding, a flask for the flight and the
discovery that anxiety soaks up whiskey like water, leaving me cold sober and
ready to work after landing.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">During that time, one airline had the brilliant idea
of putting monitors next to seats to show takeoffs and landings. I told the
flight attendant I wasn’t interested in seeing myself go down in flames,
ordered another drink and buried myself in a book.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">On a helicopter in California, taking off westward
according to standing orders, I told the pilot, “We’re not looking for Amelia
Earhart, right? Can we go back?” </span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Now in an age where almost everyone flies without
thinking twice, the mystery of the Malaysian plane’s disappearance brings back
those old days and recalls the human mind’s ability to adapt but not without a
price.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">At 24 days and counting, will a new generation of
frequent fliers ever rest easy until an answer is found?</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Meanwhile, I’ll be in the back of the bus with Madden
and Whoopi. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
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</script></div>ROBERT STEINhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11999996852219220599noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36404602.post-88230253619767773782014-03-22T16:50:00.002-04:002014-03-22T16:51:24.034-04:00The Putin/Tea Party Axis<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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Maher targeted two right-wing Congressmen for defeat <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/bill-maher-michael-grimm-blake-farenthold-104915.html" target="_blank">this weekend</a>, but the
candidate he really nailed was in a spoof on a potential GOP 2016 primary winner,
Vladimir Putin.</span></b><br />
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">As
they unroll this year’s cuckoo’s-nest equivalents of Bachmann, Cain, Perry et
al to contrast with Obama, the Russian premier is really getting under
Democrats’ skin, first by bailing out Assad in the debate over attacking Syria
and now by moving in on Crimea.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">In headlines
unsettling Americans, he has made the White House look impotent, giving Tea
Party warriors ammunition while risking little in his own campaign to outmuscle
Obama on the world stage.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Putin’s
moves have made foreign policy the center of attention, drawing attention away
from the <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/global-affairs/russia/201333-obamas-bully-pulpit-struggle" target="_blank">President’s campaign</a> to boost Obamacare enrollment, allowing even old
Cold War warrior <a href="http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/03/13/lindsey-graham-challenger-calls-senator-ambiguously-gay" target="_blank">Lindsey Graham</a> some hope in his primary fight against
accusations of being “ambiguously gay.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Yet overall, the Russian media takeover is providing
help to the Tea Party by making even sane voters jittery, reinforcing attacks
on <a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/tea-party-express-rino-thad-cochran" target="_blank">“moderate” Republicans</a> like Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran for not being enough
like Ted Cruz or Mike Lee.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">What we have now is Vladimir Putin, who pocketed a
diamond <a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=2096909" target="_blank">Super Bowl ring</a> from an American capitalist years ago, now making
mischief on our domestic political scene and stealing the spotlight from an
already beleaguered White House. </span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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</script></div>ROBERT STEINhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11999996852219220599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36404602.post-39854089209218330382014-03-16T22:55:00.002-04:002014-03-16T23:00:10.011-04:00The Far End of Obamacare<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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80, we all become MDs with one patient. Most waking hours are spent on medical
appointments, taking pills, checking out symptoms—-in short, maintaining bodies
morphing from a two-way connection with the real world into what <a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/politico-live/2014/03/rnc-chair-obamacare-main-target-185189.html" target="_blank">Paul Ryan</a>
would call, in the words of his former mentor Ayn Rand, “takers.”</span></b><br />
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">As
one of those aged, I sympathize with Ryan and his Tea Party colleagues in their
unhappiness over such dependence; I deplore it in myself and am shamed, after a
lifetime of caring for others, to need so much assistance in just staying
alive. Should it really take an MD to cut our toenails? </span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">But
short of setting up Sarah Palin death panels (it was never clear whether she
was accusing Democrats of planning them or advocating them herself), what are
we as a “Christian,” humane society to do with people who paid their dues and
unexpectedly outlived everybody’s expectations, including their own?</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">From
this pain-filled old age that movie star icon Bette Davis characterized as “not
for sissies,” a more mentally than physically competent nonagenarian would
suggest that younger generations, now that Obamacare is legal and more or less
in effect across the country, <a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/politico-live/2014/03/rnc-chair-obamacare-main-target-185189.html" target="_blank">come to terms </a>with what they consider its unfairness:
that the young grit their teeth and deal with it, not only because it protects
them against the unlikely chance that they will be stricken but because,
imperfect as it is, it is their turn to pay a toll on the long road toward a
fair life in a just society.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">In an
America that became the most powerful nation in the world by, however slowly
and grudgingly, recognizing that race and gender should not overwhelm empathy, it
would be foolhardy to sells others (and ourselves) short by not looking far enough
ahead.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><b>Sooner
or later, if we live long enough, we all become physically dependent. It would
be a shame if we couldn’t find some morally just ways to live with that
inevitability. </b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span></div>
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</script></div>ROBERT STEINhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11999996852219220599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36404602.post-77706024936121726872014-03-13T15:07:00.000-04:002014-03-13T15:10:36.496-04:00The Fire This Time<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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building explodes in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/14/nyregion/east-harlem-building-collapse.html?hp&_r=0" target="_blank">Harlem</a>, leaving four dead so badly burned they cannot be identified,
but we know they are not white.</span></b><br />
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">At
the same time, a leading GOP thinker <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/03/13/3399441/ryan-research-lazy-inner-cities/#" target="_blank">Paul Ryan</a>, who has been on government
payrolls since college, proclaims that young “inner city” men are “not even
thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work” because
they rely on government assistance to survive.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">In
1963, my high-school classmate <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Baldwin" target="_blank">James Baldwi</a>n wrote in “The Fire Next Time” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that “one of the reasons people cling to their
hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be
forced to deal with pain.”</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">The
Harlem explosion brings back years of commuting through those streets with
their decaying buildings that had stood for a century and still stand today, as
symptoms of Americans inability to love one another as brothers.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">In
his lifetime, Baldwin was a brilliant writer who happened to be both gay and
black, half a century before most Americans accepted him as fully human, but
even with a biracial President in the White House, those Harlem tenements and Ryan’s
clueless ignorance are still acceptable as part of normal life today.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">After
all the official backside-covering in New York and backpedaling in Washington,
will we be any closer to facing the real pain in American life today or simply
putting, to borrow Sarah Palin’s eloquence, more “lipstick on a pig?”</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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</script></div>ROBERT STEINhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11999996852219220599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36404602.post-4367455364104977132014-03-09T19:21:00.000-04:002014-03-10T10:15:21.617-04:00The View from 90<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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4, 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated. It was my ninth birthday.</span></b><br />
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">In
April 1945, I was a 21-year-old foot soldier on the floor of a German farmhouse
when someone shook me awake to whisper that FDR had died.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Now,
at 90, I am inevitably shaped by those years after a working lifetime as
writer, editor and publisher trying to explain the world to others—-and myself.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">The
scenes around me today are filled with human folly, selfishness and shameless
behavior, but that’s far from the whole story. My so-called Greatest
Generation, which survived a Depression and World War, does not in retrospect
seem so morally superior to those that succeeded it but only more limited in
education, experience of the world and outlook.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Many
of our virtues were rooted in ignorance: no TV, cable, computers, Internet, no
electronics of any kind, only radios with music, soap operas and swatches of
evening news lifted from newspapers (as a teenage copy boy, I wrote some of
them.)</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">As a
nation we were united, but in an innocence that also had its dark side—-racial
ghettos, religious prejudice, rural isolation—-where only unseen white men, all
Protestant, held power over our lives in government and business.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Women
then lived no fuller a life than those in Nazi Germany: Kinder, Küche, Kirche
(children, kitchen, church). Our mothers patrolled homes in house dresses, with
only one exception.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Although
we knew her as Mrs. Goldstein, nothing went with that matronly name, not the
shimmer of clothes clinging to her trim body, or the beauty-parlor hair, the
high-heeled shoes and face painted with makeup even in daytime, or the sweet
perfume cloud that came into the living room in late afternoons when she kissed
her son goodnight and dazzled the rest of us playing there with a cupid’s bow
smile on her way out.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">She
always seemed on the move to someplace exciting or, if my mother’s mutterings
could be believed, sinful. I had no idea what <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nafka</i> meant, but Mrs. Goldstein gave our pre-teen senses a whiff of
hope that the night life on movie screens existed somewhere in the real world.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Jump
cut through decades: a World War; prosperous but Man-in-the-Grey-Flannel-Suit
Fifties; JFK, the Youthquake, Civil Rights awakening and Women’s Lib of the
televised Sixties; a backlash of the Silent Majority and Watergate in the Nixon
years; Reagan’s Morning-in-America to paper over growing economic and political
gulfs followed by Clinton’s centrism and self-centeredness barely surviving
Gingrich’s loopy Contract with America; and then almost a decade of W’s
preemptive war and mindless tax cuts to bring us into the Obama years of almost
total Tea Party collapse of the <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/03/17/140317fa_fact_solomon?currentPage=all" target="_blank">civility that held us together</a> all that time,
with Racism showing its naked face.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Yet,
in perspective, what looks so grim now may only be the low point of another upward
spiral to come. A year ago, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New York
Times</i> posted a symposium, “Are People Getting Dumber?” Harvard’s brilliant
Steven Pinker anchored it with an essay, “To See Humans’ Progress, Zoom Out”:</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">“Can
we see the fruits of superior reasoning in the world around us? The answer is
yes.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">“In
recent decades the sciences have made vertiginous leaps in understanding, while
technology has given us secular miracles like smartphones, genome scans and
stunning photographs of outer planets and distant galaxies. No historian with a
long view could miss the fact that we are living in a period of extraordinary
intellectual accomplishment...</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">“Ideals
that today’s educated people take for granted--equal rights, free speech, and
the primacy of human life over tradition, tribal loyalty and intuitions about
purity--are radical breaks with the sensibilities of the past. These too are
gifts of a widening application of reason.”</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Others
point out a worldwide rise in IQ scores, innovations complicating our lives
with “upgrade upon upgrade” that don’t “lower our native intelligence but
"relentlessly burden it” and, perhaps most important of all, a blogger
about stupidity notes:</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">“You
can get a perfect score on your SATs and it will barely register in a world of
200 million tweets a day. But give just one stupid answer in a beauty pageant,
and you’ll be the laughingstock of the world before you have time to clear your
name on the next morning’s ‘Today’ show.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">”And
while watching something smart takes time, you can see something stupid in a
flash. Today at work, when I had a spare moment, I didn’t try to learn a new
language. I watched a video of a guy getting a tattoo removed with an air-blast
sander. And now I know that’s not a very good idea.”</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">As I
blew out a blast furnace of birthday candles on </span></b><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/09/us/politics/leading-republicans-move-to-stamp-out-challenges-from-right.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0" target="_blank"><b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">this weekend</span></b></a><b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"> of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/09/opinion/sunday/douthat-four-factions-no-favorite.html?pagewanted=all" target="_blank">ominous headlines</a>, I
was silently repeating Dr. Pangloss’ mantra, that with a little courage—-and
some luck--we may all soon be living again in “the best of all possible
worlds.”</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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</script></div>ROBERT STEINhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11999996852219220599noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36404602.post-24225474323056012552014-02-21T14:16:00.000-05:002014-02-21T14:20:38.940-05:00F.U. for President<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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started watching “House of Cards” Season 2 in a perfect setting: A sleepless
night of hoof-and-mouth pain from big-toe surgery and a gum infection seemed to
call for brainless distraction, but as with the first series, Netflix outdoes
Nature in torturing rather than diverting.</span></b><br />
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Halfway
through the initial new installment when Kevin Spacey, as Francis Underwood (F.U.,
ho ho), is being instructed by the maker of his favorite breakfast barbecue on
how exquisite abuse of pigs heightens the flavor, I cast a porcine vote and
switched to hours of Las Vegas poker, where the acting is just as bad but the
game provides imaginative diversion and a less predictable final score.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">“Cards”
insults the intelligence in so many ways it’s hard to keep track. Even the
formatting offends. After dozens of cardboard characters endlessly screw one another
literally and figuratively in Season One, new installments start with no recap
of the main players, who just take up where they left off without a clue to who
the hell they are, what they’re doing and why—-except that it’s all ugly and
dirty.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Perhaps
that’s a plus. Comparing how low Washington politics and TV drama have sunk in
the decade since “The West Wing” dazzled us with creative savvy, when you get
past real actors like Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright, the “House of Cards” supporting
cast seems to have been recruited from high school. But then again, could any
thespian outdo <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/house/198856-boehner-id-rather-kill-myself-than-raise-the-minimum-wage" target="_blank">John Boehner</a> and <a href="http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/article/Ted-Cruz-signed-Green-Eggs-and-Ham-goes-for-5252802.php" target="_blank">Ted Cruz </a>in serving up ham on nothing?</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">In
view of so much bad acting on the tube, should there be any surprise over
chicanery and <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/house-of-cards-threatens-to-leave-if-maryland-comes-up-short-on-tax-credits/2014/02/20/bf9a8206-9a70-11e3-b931-0204122c514b_story.html" target="_blank">double-dealing</a> behind the scenes with producers squeezing
politicians for endless kickbacks?</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">“House
of Cards” makes Las Vegas look like Disneyland. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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</script></div>ROBERT STEINhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11999996852219220599noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36404602.post-20353076136079569822014-02-16T15:46:00.003-05:002014-02-17T18:44:13.523-05:00CNN's Killer Intervew<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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note: Chris Cuomo’s extended sitdown with George Zimmerman will air <a href="http://www.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment/blogs/tv-guy/os-george-zimmerman-cnn-interview-debuts-monday-20140215,0,1747851.post" target="_blank">tomorrow</a>
instead of Tuesday as planned.</span></b><br />
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Cynical
observers may see a connection with the <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/15/justice/florida-loud-music-trial/" target="_blank">Michael Dunn verdict</a>, but has teenage
murder become just another chess piece in the media ratings game? Is crazy racism
to be sold between commercials for mouthwash and erectile dysfunction?</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">What
happened to Jordan Davis in a Florida parking lot when he went there for gum
and cigarettes and was carried out dead will put Dunn away for the rest of his
<a href="http://crooksandliars.com/2014/02/shocking-interview-michael-dunns-neighbor" target="_blank">twisted life</a>, as Zimmerman’s encounter with Trayvon Martin should have.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">But
what is the role of reporting in feeding our shock and disgust? Will an extended
interview with Trayvon’s killer ease the pain of that miscarriage of justice or
simply exploit it?</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">We
are not talking about censorship here. Zimmerman is free to talk to anyone he
wants and CNN has every right to interview him, but where is the line between
expanding the news and exploiting it?</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">In coming
weeks, we will <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/02/15/3286451/make-sense-dunn-verdict/" target="_blank">hear more</a> about Michael Dunn than any reasonable person
would want to know, and there will be talking heads aplenty to preen about
racism, gun control, courtroom justice and mental illness in our culture.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">For
now, can we just agree that it is no triumph of American journalism to be
shoving George Zimmerman into our faces right now?</span></b><br />
</div>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Update: </span></i><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">God is “the only judge I have
to answer to” is the <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/17/justice/george-zimmerman-interview/" target="_blank">takeaway</a> from Zimmerman’s interview, according to CNN’s
website. Now we don’t have to watch and risking throwing up. </span></b></div>
</div>
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</script></div>ROBERT STEINhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11999996852219220599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36404602.post-14555423082255362012014-02-13T14:38:00.003-05:002014-02-13T14:40:59.786-05:00Blizzards of Misinformation<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</xml><![endif]--><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Cable news crawls about the
worst storm ever are as accurate as their political hyberbole, that is not at
all, at least for New York and its environs.</span></b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_blizzard_of_1947" target="_blank">Great Blizzard</a> of 1947,
which brought the Northeast to a standstill, dumped 26.4 inches of snow on
Manhattan during Christmas week. Plows stacked up piles as high as ten feet, some
of which did not melt for months. It was described as the worst storm in
history since the fabled Blizzard of 1888. </span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">I know that for a fact because
I had to dig out the first car I ever owned, a shovelful at a time. Unlike
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/14/us/winter-storm.html?hp&_r=0" target="_blank">today’s weather</a>, which is predicted with pinpoint accuracy, that storm came in unexpectedly
from the Atlantic rather than the usual path of west to east.</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">As governors and mayors
struggle to cope with today’s devastation, it might be useful to remember that,
despite all scientific advances, life in many ways still remains unpredictable.</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">In Washington, politics is even
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/13/us/politics/vote-no-hope-yes-defines-dysfunction-in-congress.html?pagewanted=all" target="_blank">more erratic</a> than the weather, as Congress tries to disentangle itself from the
worst man-made mess ever. They will be wallowing in Tea Party detritus long
after the winter weather has subsided.</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Keep the shovels handy.</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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</script></div>ROBERT STEINhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11999996852219220599noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36404602.post-31925554449890467352014-02-11T21:47:00.001-05:002014-02-11T21:52:27.243-05:00Shirley Temple's America<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</xml><![endif]--><b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">The
woman who <a href="http://www.latimes.com/obituaries/la-me-shirley-temple-black-20140211,0,6338754,full.story#axzz2t3GmRilA" target="_blank">died today</a> at 85 takes with her a world that is unimaginable today.
Shirley Temple became a movie star at three, won an Oscar at five and was <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/12/arts/shirley-temple-black-screen-star-dies-at-85.html?pagewanted=all" target="_blank">more popular</a> in the 1930s than FDR.</span></b><br />
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Her
charms escaped me then because I was only a few years old older, but after
undergoing mastectomy in 1972, she wrote a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">McCalls</i>
article about it for me after holding a press conference at her hospital
bedside to encourage preventive mammograms and choice of treatment.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">The
cuddly moppet had morphed into a strong-minded woman, writing, “The doctor can
make the incision, I’ll make the decision,” confiding that she was a secret
surgical buff, who had used her celebrity to get doctors to break rules and
allow her to observe operations.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">When
stardom ended in her twenties, Shirley Temple married a superrich second
husband and went into politics and was named United States Ambassador to Ghana
and later to Czechoslovakia. She later served as Chief of Protocol of the
United States.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">In
those Depression days when she was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the</i>
American Idol, as TV news no doubt will keep endlessly showing, she was
partnered with Bill “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Robinson" target="_blank">Bojangles</a>” Robinson, an elderly African-American hoofer in
an interracial breakthrough for movies that were shown in segregated Southern
theaters.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">In
today’s sophisticated time, her passing comes on the heels of the Woody Allen
child abuse furor to remind us how different life was then.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">But
not entirely. A celebrated British novelist, in his role as film critic, wrote
in a magazine that she was “a complete totsy” as a nine-year-old:</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">“Her
admirers—-middle-aged men and clergymen—-respond to her dubious coquetry, to
the sight of her well-shaped and desirable little body, packed with enormous
vitality, only because the safety curtain of story and dialogue drops between
their intelligence and their desire.”</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Shirley’s
studio sued and won enough to remain in trust for her until she was 21, when
she donated it to build a youth center in England.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">That building
no doubt still stands as a tribute to her memory, as well as in the hearts of
women whose lives may have been saved by her frankness about breast cancer in
those days when the subject was not openly discussed.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">“The
Good Ship Lollipop” has sailed off but won’t be forgotten.</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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</script></div>ROBERT STEINhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11999996852219220599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36404602.post-63589327739852840552014-02-03T09:28:00.001-05:002014-02-03T09:32:35.232-05:00Philip Seymour Hoffman<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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actor <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/03/movies/philip-seymour-hoffman-actor-dies-at-46.html?pagewanted=all" target="_blank">who died yesterday</a> gave me an experience I have had only twice on screen—-coming
face to face with the reincarnation of a close friend. In the 2005 “Capote,”
for which he won an Oscar, he <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">was </i>the
title character not only in looks and manner but essence. Four years later, in “Julie
and Julia,” Meryl Streep created the same effect as Julia Child.</span></b><br />
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">The
death of Philip Seymour Hoffman at 46 is a wrench, and pairing him with Streep
only makes it more painful. Unlike the diva who has played the hell out of
almost every famous woman in the civilized world, Hoffman was a blue-collar
actor who erased himself in performances that drew audiences in rather than
holding them at arm’s length to admire.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">In
life as in art, there is often a steep price for authenticity that comes with
talent unprotected by powerful ego, and Hoffman apparently has been paying it
in a career of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000450/?ref_=nv_sr_1" target="_blank">fifty films</a> over a quarter of a century with prescription pills,
drugs and alcohol.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Whether
as a dim baseball manager in “Moneyball,” a compulsive gambling banker in “Owning
Mahowney” or a manic rock writer in “Almost Famous,” he was always doing so
much more than earning a paycheck.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">As he
passes from the scene, I recall one of his last in a 2011 movie, “<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1124035/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_11" target="_blank">The Ides of Marc</a>h,” written, directed and starred in by George Clooney, playing a gross political
manager who is eventually done in by his passion for personal loyalty.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Playing
mano a mano with Paul Giametti, another actor who submerses himself in every
role, he brings life to what might have been just another cliché.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">That’s
what Philip Seymour Hoffman was doing in every role he played in a brilliant and
regrettably shortened life. </span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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</script></div>ROBERT STEINhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11999996852219220599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36404602.post-56121681816830132642014-02-02T07:50:00.000-05:002014-02-02T07:51:26.023-05:00Woody Allen, Child Abuser<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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can create great art, but how should we feel about them? In Woody Allen’s case,
make that facile popular art, but the question remains.</span></b><br />
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">In
the wake of a Golden Globe Lifetime Achievement Award, his adopted daughter
Dylan, now 28, comes forward to accuse him of <a href="http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/01/an-open-letter-from-dylan-farrow/?module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog%20Main&contentCollection=Opinion&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs&region=Body" target="_blank">sexually abusing her</a> at age seven.
We are not in the murky area of childhood memory here: A Connecticut prosecutor
concluded back then there was enough evidence to charge him but dropped criminal
proceedings to spare <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">her</i>. </span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">(Full
disclosure: A decade older, I met Woody Allen in 1965 when he was doing standup
at a dinner I emceed. The audience was baffled [“My wife had a tough divorce
lawyer—-If I get remarried and have children, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">she</i> gets them”] and, as he came offstage in a daze, I tried to
comfort him [“You were great, it’s not you, it’s them”].</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">(I
enjoyed and admired his early movies but was increasingly so put off by his
whiny self-love and moral disingenuousness I found it hard to watch him on
screen. Only when someone else finally inhabited his persona, as in “Celebrity”
and “Match Point,” could I relent and watch his protagonists’ atrocious behavor.)</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Dispassionate
as we try to be, can we decline to judge? This is the man who was living back
then with Mia Farrow, who discovered pornographic pictures of another child
Soon-Yi, whom he later married. Allen shrugged: “I fell in love with my girlfriend’s
adopted daughter.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">By
all means, let him keep his <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2014/01/13/this-is-why-mia-and-ronan-farrow-dont-think-woody-allen-deserved-the-golden-globes-lifetime-achievement-award/" target="_blank">Lifetime Achievement Award</a> and other honors as a
film maker, but the rest of us can retain our opinions of him as a human being.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Reading
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/02/opinion/sunday/kristof-dylan-farrows-story.html" target="_blank">Nicholas Kristof’s account</a> of it all, along with the accompanying links, may
not turn your stomach but it will certainly keep you from watching “Annie Hall”
or “Hannah and Her Sisters” with the same eyes again.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">When
it comes to aging movie icons, I’ll take Clint Eastwood, chair and all. </span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
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</script></div>ROBERT STEINhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11999996852219220599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36404602.post-56530144981699531092014-02-01T17:10:00.001-05:002014-02-03T03:55:28.535-05:00Friction-Free Matron of the Year<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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prototypes like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann blew up after leaving the
launching pad, but <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2014/01/state-of-the-union-2014-cathy-mcmorris-gop-response-102772.html" target="_blank">Cathy McMorris Rodgers</a> is in orbit as their new Matron of
the Year, full of empty catch phrases with no content whatsoever but friction-free.</span></b><br />
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Only SNL or the Daily Show would be mean enough to
parody a nice farm girl, first in her family to attend college, who worked at a
fruit stand and McDonald’s in her teens but has been, like fellow Congressman
Paul Ryan, only on the government payroll since graduating.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Her constituents, as <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/31/opinion/egan-when-biography-trumps-substance.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0" target="_blank">Timothy Egan</a> points out in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New York Times</i>, had an “unemployment
rate 30 percent above the national average last year. One in six people live
below the poverty level. One in five is on food stamps. And the leading
employer is government, providing 3,023 of the 9,580 nonfarm payroll jobs last
year.”</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Yet in Rep. Rodgers’ cozy view, government is the
enemy, as she opposes Obamacare, raising the minimum wage and extending jobless
benefits in a Republican “year of real action--by empowering people--not making
their lives harder.” </span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">How? The Matron of the Year sayeth not, but
statistics show her constituents signing up for that dreaded<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/03/opinion/krugman-delusions-of-failure.html?pagewanted=all" target="_blank"> health coverage</a> at
a brisk rate in a state that, before her emergence, had raised the minimum wage
to the highest in the country at $9.32 an hour (close to the $10.10 Democrats
are seeking nationally) and has since shown job growth above the national
average.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">But with her wholesome good looks and soporific
manner, this year’s GOP Matron of the Year has no rough edges like Sarah Palin,
who is still taking <a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2014/01/sarah-palin-hits-peggy-noonan-182440.html" target="_blank">cheap shots</a> at Bush I’s token woman Peggy Noonan for being
too slow to join Tea Party loudmouths in calling this week’s SOTU "a
spectacle of delusion and self-congratulation." </span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">If Republicans want to perfect their robotic Matron
of the Year and keep raising <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/02/us/politics/rebel-conservatives-lead-way-in-gop-fund-raising.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0" target="_blank">tons of money</a> before the next election cycle, they
will have to persuade Palin to stand behind a poster of Rodgers and confine
herself to her successor’s smiling platitudes. </span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Or go back to the GOP lab for attitude retooling.</span></b></div>
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</script></div>ROBERT STEINhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11999996852219220599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36404602.post-10614434461704449992014-01-31T08:30:00.000-05:002014-01-31T14:02:57.163-05:00Immigration Brings Racism Front and Center<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</xml><![endif]--><b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">After building the most powerful nation on earth by
welcoming those around the world who want a better and freer life, a significant
number of Americans now want to slam the gates. </span></b><br />
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Sorting out and integrating millions of illegal
aliens is no easy matter, too long delayed, but John Boehner and Ted Cruz are
taking off the masks that Republicans donned after losing the White House in
2012 largely because of the minority vote. </span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Shackled by his right-wing caucus, the House Speaker
is having trouble selling members even a narrow<a href="http://blogs.rollcall.com/218/boehner-releases-immigration-principles/" target="_blank"> punitive path </a>to citizenship he
has outlined, while Cruz wants the Senate to<a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/01/30/Exclusive-Ted-Cruz-House-GOP-leadership-s-amnesty-plan-would-destroy-chances-at-retaking-Senate-this-year" target="_blank"> turn away</a> from the issue altogether
until after the November elections.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Those of us who grew up on “God Bless America”
(written by a Jewish immigrant) can barely recognize a nation of people whose
forebears came here in the last century or the one before to escape tyranny and
make a better life for their children.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">In its details and implementation, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/31/opinion/fixing-immigration-in-principle.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0" target="_blank">immigration reform</a>
is a massive undertaking but not for a nation built on the principle of freedom
and opportunity for all, even though it took a Civil War and a post-World War
II outpouring of protest to move forward to the point of having an
African-American president.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">What is most troubling is the meanness of today’s
debate. After demonizing Barack Obama for five years with undisguised racism,
the GOP Right can’t bring itself, even in the face of its self-interest at the
ballot box, to honor the tradition of inclusiveness that built America.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Boehner’s plan wants Latinos to pay fines and back
taxes, submit to criminal checks, study civics and go through other <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mea culpa</i>s before even being considered
for citizenship, but even all that is not enough to overcome the <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/johnstanton/some-republicans-see-racism-as-a-factor-in-immigration-stale" target="_blank">barrier of racism</a>
for some of his members.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">As usual, all this will be seen through the prism of
getting and holding political power but, even by that standard, the Republican
resistance to a start on immigration reform is senseless. Yet for a party that
was making the likes of Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and Rick Santorum front
runners for the White House four years ago, anything is possible.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">As the GOP struggles with the issue, Boehner may want
to think about his German “barkeep” father’s immigration and Cruz about his
family who had to move to Canada to escape Castro tyranny even more recently
before settling in Texas.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Yes, they played by the rules, but those old rules can’t
deal with millions who came here not only for their own freedom but to provide
cheap labor for <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>America’s sacred free
enterprise. The principles haven’t changed, even though the skin color has. </span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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</script></div>ROBERT STEINhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11999996852219220599noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36404602.post-62496022289447325152014-01-29T04:37:00.001-05:002014-01-29T15:46:31.219-05:00SOTU: Super Bowl with No Game<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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the sharpest commentary was a repeated cutaway to John McCain smirking as the
President went through a laundry list of ways to improve the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/us/politics/obama-state-of-the-union.html" target="_blank">State of the Union</a>, mostly by <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304632204579338793559838308" target="_blank">executive action</a>, inviting the GOP to join the game with him.
But with John Boehner visibly reacting only to the reference to himself as the “son
of a barkeep” who attained high office, the Republicans refused to suit up.</span></b><br />
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">It
was like the Super Bowl, with one team staying off the field, while the other
raced up and down the field, eating up yardage while nobody scored.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">McCain
may have a point. With the President ending two Middle East wars and trying to
avoid new ones, what is there for those like him to get excited about? They
will have to make do with rehashes of Benghazi.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">The lobotomized
atmosphere continued into the postgame with the GOP trotting out a tranquilized
<a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2014/01/state-of-the-union-2014-cathy-mcmorris-gop-response-102772.html" target="_blank">Sarah Palin lookalike</a>, complete with her own Downs Syndrome child, but no
zingers, offering instead a <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mcmorris-rodgers-comes-through-for-gop-in-response-to-state-of-the-union/2014/01/29/3e8f3dd0-88b1-11e3-833c-33098f9e5267_story.html" target="_blank">sweetly reasonable</a> content-free alternative to the
President’s vision, consisting mostly of a rehash of her life story from humble
beginnings and “offering a prayer” to God three times in her last sentence. </span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Barack
Obama, for all his eloquent proposals that make sense, will in his last two
years continue to play a game against a team that stays on the sidelines sniping
and waiting for time to run out so they can win the next two elections by
blaming Democrats for not scoring big.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Even
if he achieves some of his goals laid out last night in lame-duck time, Obama’s
legacy is already engraved in stone as a President who couldn’t get the big
things done and had to settle for symbolically small and/or tainted accomplishments
like Obamacare in a time that called for FDR-like transformation.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Perhaps
the most pointed commentary on all this was the final standing, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/us/politics/state-of-the-union-address-text.html?pagewanted=all" target="_blank">roaring tribute</a> to
Sgt. Cory Remsburg, an Army Ranger nearly killed by a massive roadside bomb in
Afghanistan who was found in a canal, face down, underwater, shrapnel in
his brain.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Both
sides of Congress ended the SOTU with a standing ovation for this young
man in the gallery, his body wrecked in the service of his country, in a war
that the President says is ending but, in the fine print, will go on.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Is
the maiming of our best young people all that politicians can agree on in a
time of urgency for the nation?</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Cory
Remsburg’s heart is still alive and beating, but what about the dead hands of
Tea Party naysyayers as they applaud him but obstruct every value that he was
defending?</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">In
the Super Bowl Sunday, somebody will win. In last night’s Washington, everybody
lost.</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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</script></div>ROBERT STEINhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11999996852219220599noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36404602.post-28714793838295095002014-01-26T00:24:00.000-05:002014-01-26T15:24:44.599-05:00Crazy in Love<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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very old age, stories haunt you, not necessarily your own. Some have such a
wild resonance with your inner life they demand to be told.</span></b><br />
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Louis
B. Mayer, at the height of his power as head of MGM in the 1930s, the most
highly paid man in America, maker and breaker of studio executives, the supreme
Beverly Hills poobah, came down with an unconsummated crush on a would-be starlet.
</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">He
courted Jean Howard with fatherly advice about doctors and dentists, avuncular
offers to help with any problems she might have. When Mayer finally asked her
out to dinner, she told him she had a date with a woman friend. Undeterred, he
took them both. “He never grabbed me or tried to kiss me or do anything that
almost everybody else had,” Jean Howard later recalled.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">At
the time, she was having a stormy affair with an agent, later a producer, named
Charles Feldman who, she had just found out, was also seeing someone else. When
Mayer asked Jean Howard to go to Paris with him, she agreed, but only if her
woman friend could come along as chaperone.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Soon
after they arrived at the hotel, an MGM press agent called, urging Howard to
come to Mayer’s room where he was clutching a sheaf of papers—-a detective’s
report on her comings and goings with Feldman. “How could you do this to me?”
Mayer screamed, gulped a tumbler of whiskey and tried to heave himself out the
window. It took Howard, her friend and the MGM man (who broke a thumb) to
wrestle him to the floor. </span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">After
being sedated by a doctor, Mayer meekly agreed to arrange Howard’s return to
the States. In the taxi, on his knees, he swore he would divorce his wife and
begged her to marry him, but she left for New York, where Feldman was waiting. (She
married and later divorced him but kept living in the same house, a tempestuous
Hollywood life in which her greatest achievement was taking pictures of the
rich and famous at parties she hosted.)</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">At
about the same time that Mayer was succumbing to passion, the King of England
gave up his throne to be with the “woman I love” whom he would not be allowed
to marry. No sexual innocent as the Prince of Wales, King Edward VIII had cut a
wide swath through a generation of young British women before succumbing to the
charms of Wallis Simpson, an American about to be divorced from her second
husband. </span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">After
his abdication of the throne, the couple spent the rest of their lives in Café Society
as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, she an imperious figure with a fondness for
jewelry, he trailing her with a sad face and the couple’s dogs. </span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Obsessive
love touched me when my best friend left his wife and two children to marry a
younger woman who had bewitched him. No philanderer, he had interviewed and written
sympathetically of such women as Jacqueline Kennedy, Ingrid Bergman and
Princess Grace.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">When sex
researchers Masters and Johnson wanted a book in their name on love and
commitment, they asked him to write it with them. It ended with the assertion
that “in their later years, it is in the enduring satisfaction of their sexual
and emotional bond that committed husbands and wives find reason enough to be
glad that they still have another day together.”</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">No so
for my friend. Soon afterward, his young wife casually betrayed him without
bothering to hide it. He literally took that to heart but even on his deathbed
implored me to help in her career as a magazine editor. I kept that promise and
gave the eulogy at his funeral with a heavy and troubled heart.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">I
draw a confessional veil over details about the woman who inspired obsession in
me with her grief after a traumatic divorce that left her face as if in a glaze
of broken glass, setting off romantic rescue fantasies that broke my heart but
never touched hers. She took every ounce of my passion and the comforts that
came with it, as if by divine right, and gave back only permission to be
adored. After thirty years, it still hurts.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">The
men in these stories did no harm to the objects of their passion, quite the
opposite, yet are seen as addled predators, but no note is taken of the women’s
use of them on their impervious paths to totally self-absorbed lives while
leaving behind the kind of deep endless pain they themselves were incapable of
feeling.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Perhaps
Dante was lucky to have met Beatrice only briefly before she inspired his
passion for “The Divine Comedy.” In real life she married a rich man in
Florence and lived a very ordinary life.</span></b></div>
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</script></div>ROBERT STEINhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11999996852219220599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36404602.post-74737940593418775512014-01-21T16:39:00.002-05:002014-01-21T16:50:39.998-05:00Governors Gone Wild: Now Vitter?<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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running a state used to be a boring job. Mostly signing papers and posing at
the opening of small town rec centers. But no more.</span></b><br />
<br />
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">On
the heels of the Christie circus comes word that Sen. <a href="http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/vitter-to-run-for-louisiana-governor/?module=BlogPost-ReadMore&version=Blog%20Main&action=Click&contentCollection=Politics&pgtype=Blogs&region=Body#more-247764" target="_blank">David Vitter</a> wants to go
back and govern Louisiana. </span></b><br />
<br />
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Surely
you remember Vitter: Since being outed seven years ago as a frequent flier on
the DC Madam’s joy circuit, he has been busy lowering his profile in the Senate
with such landmark moves as casting <a href="http://ajliebling.blogspot.com/2009/01/hillary-oked-vitter-dissents.html" target="_blank">the solo vote</a> against Hillary Clinton’s
confirmation as Secretary of State.</span></b><br />
<br />
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Now
he proposes to go back to Baton Rouge and brighten<a href="http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/01/21/sen-vitter-announces-bid-for-louisiana-governor/" target="_blank"> his home state</a> after two
decades in Washington.</span></b><br />
<br />
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Those
with long memories may recall Mrs. Vitter’s reaction to the Madam revelations.</span></b><br />
<br />
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">“I’m
a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary,” she said about her husband’s
philandering. “If he does something like that, I’m walking away with one thing,
and it’s not alimony, trust me.”</span></b><br />
<br />
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">“I
think fear is a very good motivating factor in a marriage,” she added. “Don’t
put fear down.”</span></b><br />
<br />
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">(<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_and_Lorena_Bobbitt" target="_blank">Bobbitt</a>
was famous back then for removing her abusive husband’s penis with a knife.)</span></b><br />
<br />
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Depending
on how the Vitter marriage has been going since then, his ascension as governor
would provide Republicans with a bookend for the portly Christie on the GOP
governors roster. </span></b><br />
<br />
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Meanwhile,
New York’s Democratic Governor <a href="http://politicker.com/2014/01/conservative-pundits-weigh-in-on-cuomo-no-place-in-the-state-controversy/" target="_blank">Andrew Cuomo</a> is taking conservative heat for
saying “extreme conservatives, who are right-to-life, pro-assault weapon,
anti-gay...have no place in the state of New York,” a remark his staff insists
that is being taken out of context.</span></b><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%; text-decoration: none;">Whatever. Crazy is seeping down from DC at an alarming rate.</span></span></b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%; text-decoration: none;"><br /></span></span></b></span><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript"><!--
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</script></div>ROBERT STEINhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11999996852219220599noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36404602.post-23328440439978530292014-01-20T08:55:00.001-05:002014-01-21T02:12:17.294-05:00Christie, Nixon and Their Enemies Lists<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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can expect a Checkers Speech any time now in New Jersey as Chris Christie
follows the <a href="http://www.people-press.org/2014/01/20/christies-image-turns-more-negative/" target="_blank">career path</a> of the only US president to be driven from office for
criminal behavior in the last two centuries.</span></b><br />
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">With
each new revelation, Christie evokes Richard Nixon who divided the world into
friends and enemies and, with ruthless helpers, punished those on the wrong
list and played dirty tricks on them. </span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">In
his first run for national office as Eisenhower’s VP, Nixon had to make <a href="http://watergate.info/1952/09/23/nixon-checkers-speech.html" target="_blank">a mawkish TV talk</a> to save his place on the ticket after revelations that he had
taken under-the-table contributions from supporters. Admitting illegality, he
argued it was not “morally wrong” because the money was for political not
personal use, closing with a mock-defiant promise to keep the family gift dog
Checkers nonetheless because “the kids love it.”</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">As
President almost two decades later, Nixon escaped impeachment by resigning
after revelations of a “massive campaign of political spying and sabotage”
against opponents by aides in charge of “<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/watergate/articles/101072-1.htm" target="_blank">dirty tricks.</a>”</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">On a
state level, Gov. Christie is running well ahead of his role model as we learn
not only of bridge traffic jams but <a href="http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/us-attorney-inquiry-christie-widens" target="_blank">new accusations</a> that he withheld Hurricane
Sandy relief from Jersey mayors who did not do his political bidding.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Opinion
polls suggest that Christie’s thuggish approach to governing has not taken hold
enough with voters to derail his budding presidential campaign, but the signs
are all there for those with memory of Nixon and Watergate to see.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Democrats
are <a href="http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/01/scandal_allegations_dog_chris_christie_during_his_florida_fundraising_trip.html" target="_blank">pressing the issue</a>, and it’s a safe bet that New Jersey is filled with
Woodward and Bernstein wannabes beating the bushes for more evidence of
Christie’s dirty tricks against perceived enemies.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Stay
tuned. </span></b></div>
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</script></div>ROBERT STEINhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11999996852219220599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36404602.post-54251169523995352672014-01-18T08:28:00.001-05:002014-01-18T22:19:31.366-05:00"Give Me Liberty or Mass Death"<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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Founding Fathers are often cited in the debate over government surveillance vs.
individual freedom, but we don’t have to go back that far to disentangle
rhetoric from reality.</span></b><br />
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">In
the aftershock of 9/11, the bipartisan commission found ample evidence that the
FBI and other agencies, out of sloppiness or squeamishness, kept <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/terrible-missed-chance-67401" target="_blank">ignoring evidence</a> of Arabs enrolling in American flight schools to fly commercial
airliners without too much interest in landing them but failed to grasp<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/18/us/traces-of-terrorism-the-warnings-fbi-knew-for-years-about-terror-pilot-training.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm" target="_blank"> its significance</a> and follow up assiduously.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">As
the <a href="http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/17/live-coverage-of-obamas-n-s-a-speech/?_php=true&_type=blogs&module=BlogPost-ReadMore&version=Blog%20Main&action=Click&contentCollection=Politics&pgtype=Blogs&region=Body&_r=0#more-247722" target="_blank">President addresses</a> the furor over NSA excesses, directing his government
to “develop options for a new approach,” his self-righteous critics should not
be allowed to obscure the bottom line, security against another 9/11. Glenn
Greenwald and Edward Snowden won’t be held accountable for a sneak nuclear
attack.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">“Some
who participated in our review,” said the President yesterday, “as well as some
in Congress, would like to see more sweeping reforms to the use of national
security letters, so that we have to go to a judge before issuing these requests.
Here, I have concerns that we should not set a standard for terrorism
investigations that is higher than those involved in investigating an ordinary
crime.”</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">As
the Administration struggles to curb abuses without damaging our chances of
preventing future attacks, critics have every right and duty to demand that
more and <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obamas-restrictions-on-nsa-surveillance-rely-on-narrow-definition-of-spying/2014/01/17/2478cc02-7fcb-11e3-93c1-0e888170b723_story.html" target="_blank">better safeguards</a> be developed.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">What
they <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">don’t</i> have the moral standing to
do is follow <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/17/obama-nsa-reforms-bulk-surveillance-remains" target="_blank">Greenwald’s lead</a> in denouncing the President thus:</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">“They
vow changes to fix the system and ensure these problems never happen again. And
they then set out, with their actions, to do exactly the opposite: to make the
system prettier and more politically palatable with empty, cosmetic ‘reforms’
so as to placate public anger while leaving the system fundamentally unchanged,
even more immune than before to serious challenge.”</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">In
the Internet Age, talk is cheap, but in the aftermath of an another attack on
the US homeland, it won’t be Greenwald or his puppet Snowden telling the
American people what went wrong.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Barack
Obama took a solemn oath to protect America. He is not immune to criticism but deserves
the respect and credibility that should accompany that burden as he struggles
with a bottomless pit of conflicting pressures. Political posturing is not the
issue.</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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</script></div>ROBERT STEINhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11999996852219220599noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36404602.post-88925904353942488932014-01-17T01:17:00.002-05:002014-01-17T01:18:39.251-05:00MLK st 85: Person of the Century<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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was no plaster saint, this remarkable man who brought a race out of American
darkness with soaring words and body rhetoric more muscular and effective than
any mob uprisings might have been.</span></b><br />
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">In
his 39 years on earth, Martin Luther King Jr. preached nonviolence to the
oppressed. “Our weapon is love,” he told them, and he used it with stunning
force.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">At
the dawn of TV, he brought into American homes images of peaceful protesters being
beaten, driven with high-pressure hoses and arrested without fighting back. Their
stoic suffering exposed racial hatred to a nation as never before.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">His
birthday this weekend will elicit the usual eulogies, grainy old videos of speeches
and marches as well as tributes from the first African-American President and
other nation leaders for whom he paved the way to <a href="http://www.thenation.com/blog/177962/members-congress-introduce-new-fix-voting-rights-act#" target="_blank">political power</a>, but they can
barely revive the essence of the greatest figure of our time on earth.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Of
the many gifts he bestowed on America, the most undervalued may be hope, an
unyielding optimism transcending the kind of bitterness and hate that divides
people and would eventually take his own life.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">“The
reports are that they are out to get me,” he told his parents before the murder
in Memphis. “I have to go on with my work, I’m too deeply involved now to get
out, it’s all too important. Sometimes I want to stop. Just go away somewhere
and have some quiet days, finally, a quiet life with Coretta and the children.
But it’s too late for that now. I have my path before me. I know what I have to
do.”</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">That
kind of selfless dedication is an invitation to see Dr. King as a martyr, but
he was also a mortal man with human failings that led J. Edgar Hoover to bug
his hotel rooms and have anonymous letters sent urging him to commit suicide.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">In
Hoover's files were angry scrawls on press clippings. On Dr. King receiving the
St. Francis peace medal from the Catholic Church, he wrote "this is
disgusting." About the Nobel Prize: "King could well qualify for the
'top alley cat' prize!"</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">During
his last years, despite gratitude to LBJ for pushing through a landmark Civil
Rights law, Dr. King had turned against the Vietnam War and was actively
opposing it, much to the President’s displeasure. His focus remained on human
life, not politics.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">In
1966 Dr. King wrote for me about an apartment he had rented in Chicago’s slums
to connect with gang members: “I was shocked at the venom they poured out
against the world.”</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">He
asked them to join Freedom Marches in Mississippi and they did in carloads,
where “they were to be attacked by tear gas. They were to protect women and
children with no other weapons but their own bodies...</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">“They
learned in Mississippi and returned to teach in Chicago the beautiful lesson of
acting against evil by renouncing force...</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">“And
in Chicago the test was sterner. These marchers endured not only the filthiest
kind of verbal abuse but also barrages of rocks and sticks and eggs and cherry
bombs...</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">“It
was through the Chicago marches that our promise to them—-that nonviolence
achieves results--was redeemed and their hopes for a better life rekindled, For
they saw that a humane police force, in contrast to police in Mississippi,
could defend the exercise of Constitutional rights as well as enforce the law
in the ghetto.”</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Some
of those young men Martin Luther King helped to grow up and away from their
worst selves to exercise their civil rights must have been among the millions
of Americans of all races to vote for Barack Obama in 2008.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">In
the past five years, they and we have learned that the old hatreds die hard,
but bitterness was not in Martin Luther King’s character. If he were still here
at 85, he might well remind us as he did toward the end of the brief life we
celebrate:</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">“Those
of us who love peace must organize as effectively as the war hawks. As they
spread the propaganda of war, we must spread the propaganda of peace. We must
combine the fervor of the civil rights movement with the peace movement. We
must demonstrate, teach and preach, until the very foundations of our nation
are shaken. We must work unceasingly to lift this nation that we love to a
higher destiny, to a new plateau of compassion, to a more noble expression of
humaneness.”</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Amen.</span></b></div>
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2008, Barack Obama told Tim Russert with a worried smile on “Meet the Press”
that his wife and friends thought he was still there behind all the hype and on
60 Minutes admitted that the “attempt to airbrush your life...is exhausting.”</span></b><br />
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Five
year later, we can still see an authentic person in the Oval Office, the man
himself not buried in all the sludge that has been heaped on him by rabid
opponents.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">The
contrast comes up with the undoing of Chris Christie in just a week, from
plain-spoken populist to <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2014/01/the-trouble-with-christie.html?currentPage=all" target="_blank">mean-spirited pol</a> who plays dirty tricks on those who
cross him and, when caught, throws his closest <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/14/nyregion/aide-fired-by-christie-is-called-loyal-team-player-not-rogue-operative.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0" target="_blank">associate to the wolves</a> to cover
his tracks.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Say
what they will about the President, even those who hate him can’t pair him with
<a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/chris-christie-college-political-machine" target="_blank">Christie as inauthentic</a>. In defending the Jersey governor, <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/online/wishful-thinking-limbaugh-wants-obama-to-cheat-on-michelle/" target="_blank">Rush Limbaugh</a> is
reduced to daydreaming of better scandals.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">“Why
can’t we have Obama running around on Michelle or something?” asks El Rushbo.
“Wouldn’t that be a much better scandal than Christie and bridge lane closures,
for crying out loud?”</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">As
the President wades into Year Six of his tenure with straightening out <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/01/14/the-death-of-obamacares-death-spiral/" target="_blank">Obamacare</a> and <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2014/01/unemployment-benefits-update-102165.html" target="_blank">extending unemployment</a> on his plate, no matter what valid criticisms
may be aimed at him from Left or Right, no rational observer will pair him with
the intellectual and moral pygmies like Christie, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Ted
Cruz and their ilk that the GOP is teeing up to replace him in the 2016
balloting.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">When
all their “airbrushing” is done, will Republicans have to fall back on someone
like Jeb Bush, as they did last time with Romney, to create even the illusion
of authenticity?</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">“You
can beat somebody with nobody” is an old political axiom, which may lead to a
2016 retro match of former White House names.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Whatever.
One thing is sure: Michelle and Barack Obama will be leaving the place hand in
hand, Limbaugh’s fantasies not withstanding. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript"><!--
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<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://widget.blogrush.com/show.js">
</script></div>ROBERT STEINhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11999996852219220599noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36404602.post-71693126391124094872014-01-14T12:29:00.000-05:002014-01-17T10:47:46.795-05:00The Moral Heart of "Downton Abbey"<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</xml><![endif]--><b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">In
life, a minor character can assume a crucial role. For one who has experienced
this phenomenon often, so too in popular art, as the housekeeper <a href="http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0265466/bio" target="_blank">Mrs. Hughes</a>,
who has figured in all 34 episodes of “<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1606375/?ref_=nv_sr_1" target="_blank">Downtown Abbey</a>,” increasingly comes to
the heart of conflicts that beset other characters.</span></b><br />
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">That
someone who has willingly suppressed her own passions in the service of others
should be in this position is not an unexpected irony for those sensitive to
the chasm between human beings who mindlessly eat the world for their own
pleasure and those imbued by nature and/or experience to compassion and caring
for others.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">In
the latest plot turn, Mrs. Hughes is again burdened by an impossible dilemma,
her sole knowledge of the shocking assault on the housemaid Anna and what to do
about it. Telling might punish the rapist but drive Anna’s husband to murder;
concealing it forces her to share in the pain and guilt.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">In
life, as others keep pushing ahead mindlessly from day to day, the most
responsible people are often put to such choices by their own natures,
swallowing their own suffering in silence.</span></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">At
every point, Mrs. Hughes takes the consequences of turning down her second
chance to become a farmer’s wife in Season 1 and providing moral support and
practical help to other Downton denizens at the price of her own emotional pain.</span></b><br />
<br />
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<![endif]--><b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Even
with her own strict moral code, she is compassionate over Bates’ physical
handicap, the housemaid who is impregnated by a wounded soldier, the plight of
Carson’s former vaudeville partner, Mrs. Patmore’s shifty suitor--anyone
wounded by circumstances in an unfair world.</span></b>
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<b>
</b><br />
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<b><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">As
viewers worry over the fates of all the other cast members, they may want to
spare a good thought for the only one (beside her upstairs counterpart Matthew's mother) who keeps carrying the burden of being a
feeling human being rather than a cardboard cutout. And for those she may
resemble in real life.</span></b></div>
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