Clutter, Clutter Everywhere

If you took the time to read the voluminous obituary of Arthur Ochs Sulzberger in Sunday’s NY Times, you'd have come across this description deep inside the story of his life and work as publisher of The Times:

“By nature, he was fastidiously neat. The habitual clutter on reporters’ desks drove him to distraction.”

As a former reporter, I can vouchsafe a cluttered desk is part of a journalist’s DNA. Our desks could be, should be, condemned by fire marshals as potential fire traps. But as seemingly disheveled as it appears, a reporter’s desk is unique to him or her in its self-ordered filing system. With a deft hand, a reporter could sift through the mess on his desk and surrounding floor space to produce the report or notebook containing the exact quote or citation needed for the story approaching deadline.

One of my favorite Abbott & Costello routines was their take on efficiency experts. Abbott upbraided Costello for the mess on his rolltop desk. Papers were strewn every which way. Calmly, Costello reassured Abbott everything was in order, in its proper place. Anything Abbott would want could be easily retrieved. Go ahead, test my system, Costello challenged him. Sure enough, whichever contract Abbott requested, no matter how deeply it was buried under mounds of paper, Costello pulled it out from the pile with a pair of scissors. Duly impressed, Abbott raced off to tell their boss and invite him to a demonstration of Costello’s efficiency. Costello’s triumph was aborted by a sudden gust of wind when the door to their office was opened by their supervisor, sending all the papers flying across the office. They were fired on the spot.

I carried the reporter’s prototype desk well into my days as an editor and publisher. It would exasperate my superiors who forever were urging me to clean up my surroundings. I'd reply with the time honored line, “A clean desk is the sign of a sick mind.”

During one of my vacations, our company president demanded my office be cleaned up. My boss's assistant dutifully straightened up all my papers. Barbara didn't throw any out, she made neat piles of loose papers, magazines, newspapers, and assorted reports. But when I returned to work I was unable to find anything for more than a week. I threatened to have her fired if she ever touched any of my stuff again. She never did (shortly thereafter I promoted her to an editorial position; she’s been reading and editing copy for the last 15 years). 

My desk resembling the aftermath of a typhoon blowing through a stationery store, I had to advise my staff they should never put anything they want me to see on my desk if I wasn’t sitting before them. Always, I told them, put papers on my chair. I always looked at my chair before sitting down.

Much to Gilda’s chagrin, now that I'm retired, my desk in the home office we share remains messy. She has a hard time concentrating at her desk amidst the clutter on mine. Why my desk should bother her is beyond my ken. She's always promoting the virtues of a neat desk. Sometimes, even I find it necessary to clear the decks and throw out really old newspapers with stories I had tagged for blog posts but never got around to writing. Try as I might, I revert to old pack-rat ways. My clutter is habitual. I guess that will always confirm I’m a reporter at heart and in mind. 

The First Debate

In a discussion between fellow presidential debate moderators aired today on CBS Sunday Morning, Jim Lehrer told Bob Schieffer he would consider a successful debate one in which the things “that matter most to the voters, to hell with the candidates, to hell with the moderators and to hell with the handlers, to hell with the pundits, but the things that the voters care most about have been discussed and have been discussed in a way that they can now understand what the differences are. That's what these debates are really all about.”

With that in mind, here are some questions I would like Lehrer to ask, this first debate Wednesday night being restricted to domestic issues. (I’d also like to see Lehrer challenge Barack Obama or Mitt Romney if either skirts around a question and simply delivers standard campaign pablum. Let’s get some real answers.) I figure the 90-minute debate will include 15 questions at most. Here are 16, just in case the debate runs a little long:

1. Are Americans better off today than we were when President Obama took office in January 2009?

2. What are your specific ideas for job creation? 

3. To balance the budget and reduce the deficit, program cuts would have to be enacted and tax loopholes would have to be closed. Please provide specific areas that would be affected under your next budget?

4. Would you accept a “grand bargain” of spending cuts tied to a slight tax increase?

5. Do you believe in global warming? Scientists have charted the rise in sea levels? What steps should we take, if any, to protect our shorelines?

6. What is your view of evolution? Do you believe Creationism should be an alternative taught in our schools? Do you believe dinosaurs and man lived at the same time?

7. Explain your evolved positions on same-sex marriage (Obama) and the right to an abortion (Romney)?

8. Do you support the Dream Act? How would you deal with our illegal immigrant population?

9. What are your views on government regulatory agencies? Would you do away with any and why specifically those agencies? 

10. Do we need to raise the age eligibility for Social Security and Medicare? Should we means-test for Social Security and Medicare benefits?

11. Is it government’s obligation to provide all Americans affordable health care as a right? What specific changes still need to be enacted to health care?  

12. What level of safety net protection is appropriate for government to provide the unemployed, school children, the impoverished?  

13. Do you see any danger in the disparity between the earnings of the average worker and that of corporate management?

14. Neither of you is a hunter. Explain your position on the right to possess assault rifles and super-sized bullet magazines, both of which are not necessary or used for hunting?

15. What is the proper balance, if indeed there is any need for balance, between a comprehensive energy policy and protection of our environment?

16. Are we better off with federal-administered programs or with programs pushed down to the individual states to administer?

Gee, that’s 16 questions and I didn’t ask about their plans to end the housing crisis, or how they feel about the effect super-PAC money has on the political process, or the need, if any, to provide more regulation on the financial industry, or what is the proper role of the federal government in education. 

Let’s hope we get some real answers to whatever questions Lehrer poses. Let’s hope the candidates aren’t merely posturing or engaging in a sound-bite-off. We have too much at stake.

Slapping Down a Jester, a King, a Crowley

I’m a big fan of Jon Stewart, as anyone who reads this blog regularly knows. But someone needs to tell him that hosting The Daily Show on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, was unseemly. Though he’s not religiously observant, Stewart often refers to his Jewish heritage. Indeed, on his Thursday night show he bantered with Amar’e Stoudemire of the NY Knicks about fasting on Yom Kippur (Stoudemire has traced some Jewish roots). But to the casual viewer, seeing Stewart appear on his Tuesday and Wednesday night shows, both taped during the Day of Atonement observance period, was a discordant signal. Stewart should have emulated Sandy Koufax, and other professional athletes, who chose not to perform on Yom Kippur, even when it meant missing a World Series game. 

Perhaps Stewart’s guest list was limited Tuesday night because of the start of Yom Kippur, but I found it serendipitous to see King Abdullah II of Jordan sitting across his interview desk. Given Jordan’s strategic, or unfortunate, global position situated as it is on the borders of Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the West Bank and Israel, and just a missile’s lob from Iran, the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, King Abdullah could be expected to provide an insider’s perspective on the various conflicts in the region. He is considered a moderate among the Arab and Muslim community.

Yet, I was more than alarmed to hear him describe the root cause of Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear program as a response to the Israeli-Palestinian problem. “The reason why they have a nuclear program is what Israel is doing to the Palestinians and the future of Jerusalem,” he said. He asserted if the Israelis and the Arabs solve their problems “then there’s no raison d'être for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.” 

One problem with this reasoning is Iran is not an Arab state. Persians live there, Persians who have fought Arabs for some 3,000 years, including the recent 10-year war with Iraq. The Iranians have no love for Arabs. Now, the king might have couched Iran’s support for the Palestinians as one Muslim supporting another. But here again there is historical reason to question that argument: Iran is Shia; most Palestinians are Sunni. Those two sects don’t like each other. They keep blowing up each other, in their respective mosques, at funerals, in marketplaces. Anywhere. 

Furthermore, by King Abdullah’s reasoning, we would expect not just Iran but also other Muslim countries to want to nuke up their armaments to leverage a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem. Are we prepared for a nuclear Indonesia? Or Bangladesh? Or Albania? Or any of the other 45 majority Muslim countries of the world? 

Sorry, King Abdullah, but Iran’s nuclear ambitions have little if anything to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. By implying they do, King Abdullah is following the example of dictators throughout the Middle East who have used the conflict as a pretext to keep their own people suppressed, economically and politically. King Abdullah might be considered a moderate, his British-educated accent pleasant to the ear, but his type of reasoning is what has kept tensions in the Middle East at the simmering point ever since Jews started reclaiming the land of their heritage.

There’s a lot of hand-wringing these days about the state of education in the United States. Apparently our educational standards have a long history of laxity. To wit, here’s what one of our Ph.D.s, with a degree earned from Columbia University, no less, recently wrote the day after our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was attacked and four American foreign service officers, including our ambassador, were killed: 

“The Middle East is aflame, much of which is a result of Obama’s policies of helping to dislodge allies like Hosni Mubarak and Moammar Qaddafi and replace them with the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists. He may use the orchestrated violence as a pretext to act in order to get Americans’ attention off the economy.  I don’t know.  But in any case, Obama must be defeated on November 6 if we’re to have any hope of surviving as a serious world power. Maybe surviving, period.”

Could be I was sleeping through these last 30 years or so, but when did Qaddafi become an ally of ours, much less a “key ally,” as Monica Crowley further elaborated on her written comments during a sit-down with Sean Hannity of Fox News September 12. During the Bush II years America championed the idea of democracy in the Middle East. Now that a democratically elected leader (not to her liking) is seated in Mubarak’s old chair, Crowley is all agog, yearning for those good old days of tyranny and torture, all for the good of the U.S. of A, mind you. Let’s not pretend to care what the Egyptians get out of this change of circumstance.

I also didn’t know America was in jeopardy of losing its status as a serious world power. Can you think of any other country people around the world are clamoring to enter, legally or not? Can you think of any other country even remotely as powerful as we are? Yes, our economy is still in the doldrums, but so is almost every other country’s. Even China is in flux. 

Every time a Democrat is president or running for the office conservatives raise the specter of our own annihilation. Yet they remained silent when the Neocons dragged us into two wars (and ran up the deficit by not funding them on the books). I am despondent to think the viewers of Fox News don’t recognize the absurdities they hear from that channel. Here’s another example: recently Fox News polled its audience to ascertain their election choices. Guess what? 90% favored Romney, 10% Obama. Duh!

Religion to the Nation's Rescue

There are lots of theories as to why Mitt Romney’s bid to unseat Barack Obama is slipping further and further away from fruition. No need to recount them here. Rather, I’d like to proffer my own—in a country increasingly religious, many voters are turning to their Bibles to find reasons to support the incumbent and question the sincerity of the challenger.

As I was sitting in temple Wednesday during Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) services, I listened as the following excerpt from the Book of Isaiah 58:3-7 was read (in Hebrew, but here’s the English translation from our prayer book): 

3 “Why, when we fasted, did You (God) not see? When we starved our bodies, did You pay no heed?” Because on your fast day you see to your business and oppress all your laborers! 4 Because you fast in strife and contention, and you strike with a wicked fist! Your fasting today is not such as to make your voice heard on high. 5 Is such the fast I desire, a day for people to starve their bodies? Is it bowing the head like a bulrush and lying in sackcloth and ashes? Do you call that a fast, a day when ADONAI (God) is favorable? 6 No, this is the fast I desire: to unlock fetters of wickedness, and untie the cords of the yoke to let the oppressed go free; to break off every yoke. 7 It is to share your bread with the hungry, and to take the wretched poor into your home; when you see the naked, to clothe them, and do not ignore your own flesh.

Surely, there are religious men in the Republican Party. Perhaps House Minority Whip Eric Cantor read these words while he was in his temple on Wednesday. He might well interpret them to mean individuals have the obligation to help the less fortunate. Charity is a noble endeavor. But it would hardly balance the inequities and inequalities we currently face as a nation. 

In my readings of Scripture, I’ve never come across any capitalist manifesto. Yet time after time the Bible, the Old and New Testament, exhorts us to care for the needy, to make them whole again. Catholic bishops have weighed in that the proposed Romney-Ryan budget cuts too many dollars from social services and even some total programs. Romney might believe a budget that supports social welfare initiatives comprises income redistribution on a national scale. He would be right. He could find justification for such an idea in the Bible. During each jubilee year God commanded land be redistributed to original owners. If that’s not income redistribution, what is? 

So my reading of the political winds these days is that after hearing, in his own words, what Romney stands for and his true, unfiltered lack of compassion for the “47%,” religious Americans are having second thoughts. They may not like Obama, but they believe his compassion is real, his values are ones they find in concert with their own. Over the next six weeks their conviction will be sorely tested by the withering assault Republican Super Pacs will unleash against the president. They’ll have to keep in mind verse 4 from Isiaiah 58. 

I’m apparently not the only one to believe religion will help swing this election. Pastor Rick Scarborough of Texas, a big supporter of Rick Perry’s aborted bid for the GOP presidential nomination, is launching a 40 Days to Save America crusade tomorrow. He’s asking for prayer, fasting and action to change the direction of the country. 

I don’t normally hear about the good pastor’s ideas, but Stephen Colbert’s Wednesday show enlightened me about the plans to sway undecided voters, including, according to Colbert, “the biggest undecided voter of all, God. He may be all knowing, but He’d still like to know a little more about Mitt’s tax returns.”

Colbert suggested Romney might have an edge is appealing for God’s vote. He does, after all, fit Romney’s “core demographic—old, male, vengeful and lives in a gated community.”

Seeking Consistency

Predictably, my softball team lost its playoff game Sunday. The season is over, a season of consistency if you consider lack of hitting, lack of fielding, lack of smart baserunning, lack of solid pitching and, most importantly, lack of sound baseball sense, traits to applaud for their game in-game out consistency. But was it fun losing 14 of 17 games? Overall, I’d say it was worth the effort and enjoyable enough to get out of bed early Sunday mornings from April through September. 

It wasn’t pretty watching a reincarnation of the 1962 NY Mets (or the 2012 Mets), but I can’t say my teammates didn’t try. After all, if they tried their hardest, isn’t that all you can ask for? My only real regret is that somehow, in one of the few games we won early in the season, somehow I twisted my left knee and it now pops and cracks every time I exert myself (I’ve self-diagnosed it as a medial collateral ligament sprain). Softball season might be over but last night my indoor tennis season began and I immediately felt constrained by my inability to pivot on my left leg. 

For months Gilda has been telling me I needed to exercise to strengthen the quad muscles surrounding the knee. She’s right, of course. She’s consistently right about the need to exercise and I, unfortunately, consistently resist. Well, I’ve gotten to the point where it’s either exercise or stop playing tennis. I think my exercise program begins the day after Yom Kippur, a day in which I will atone for not listening to her sooner.

Chutzpah: Not sure how many of you read the business section of the NY Times, but if you’d like a real-world example of chutzpah, read this article about the choice of Tim Pawlenty to be the new president of an influential Wall Street lobbying organization: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/09/24/about-face-for-bankers-new-lobbyist/?ref=business

It’s the latest example of a politician’s lack of principles, in this case, how the former governor of Minnesota, who for years consistently criticized the financial industry during his erstwhile run for the Republican presidential nomination, has decided to go for the big bucks and become his supposed arch-enemy’s mouthpiece. We’ve often seen ex-senators and congressmen from both parties become lobbyists, so it’s not a head-spinner that Pawlenty has turned to the dark side. What is news is that almost all his predecessors to the lobbying trough had experience dealing with their new clients through Senate or House committee assignments. Pawlenty has no background in the financial industry. Another example of how politicians consistently never fail to amaze.

Football Frenzy: For years I consistently avoided wasting my money on football pools. I prefer losing money the old fashioned way, in a poker game where I have direct involvement, rather than letting ballplayers or game officials determine the outcome. Nevertheless, this year I joined a Football Frenzy pool, the object of which is to pick as many winners each week as possible. Through three weeks I can say I have been consistent, picking seven winners each week. That record of accomplishment has placed me 20th out of 22 participants. I’m only seven points behind the leader (shout-out to Gregg), but there are 14 more weeks of play so there’s still time to recoup my investment.

Don’t look to me for a definitive call on the last second touchdown or interception on the final play of the Packers-Seahawks game Monday night. I’ve seen videotape of the play and heard numerous interpretations of the rule book. Suffice to say, the replacement refs are consistently challenged to work up to the standards set by the regular officials who are on strike. But like my softball teammates, they are trying, they just don’t have the experience or skill sets to police a game that whizzes by their competence levels. Let’s be honest, however. In the past there have been plenty of controversial calls from regular officials. It’s just easier to complain, and more visible, when replacement refs blow a call.

A Pet Peeve: I consider myself a fairly well educated person, with good vocabulary skills. I wonder, however, why some writers purposely include words that the average, nay, even the elite, would never deem to use in normal prose. Here’s an example from a recent NY Times Book Review by Mark Lewis of “The Fish That Ate the Whale”: “At times, (Rich) Cohen waxes almost Kiplingesque as he celebrates the man and his myrmidons.” 

What the hell are mymidons? Was it the Lewis’ intention to have me put down his review and open a dictionary to ascertain that a myrmidon is “a faithful follower who obeys orders unquestioningly”? After gaining that knowledge, am I supposed to include myrmidon in my next conversation or blog about Assad or the Ayatollah? 

I’d say it is a certain consistent conceit that infuses the literature of some writers. By the way, The Fish That Ate the Whale sounds like an interesting book. It’s about Samuel Zemurray, his leadership of the United Fruit Company, and how “Sam the Banana Man” affected American foreign policy in Central America as much as any elected official.

The Bachelor

Here’s a line that could just as easily have been said back in 1633 by the Vatican to Galileo as it was to CBS News correspondent Alan Pizzi in Rome Wednesday when he sought comment on the possibility Jesus was married: “Let the scholars say and think what they like, the Church stands by its doctrine which goes back to the earliest Christians,” a Papal spokesman said, which Pizzi said translated to, “Jesus was a bachelor.” 

It’s been a rather fascinating several days, what with the leaking of Mitt Romney’s secretly taped 47% speech and the revelation of a fragment of Coptic Church literature that puts into question two of Catholicism’s central tenets—celibacy of Jesus (and clerics) plus the male-only church hierarchy.

It’s always dicey chiming in on someone else’s religion, but I can’t help but being fascinated by the married or not married status of Jesus (I also find it rather humorous that this subject comes up the same week as Romney’s travails, Romney, of course, being the scion of a religion that for many years advocated polygamy). 

To understand the rest of this post you’ll have to take a few minutes to read the Op-Ed piece at the end of this link: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/opinion/mr-and-mrs-jesus-christ.html?ref=opinion

Okay, now that you have The Rev. James Martin’s opinion, let me chime in with some thoughts on his analysis. First, Rev. Martin claims the four familiar Gospels were written much earlier than the Coptic manuscript which he dates from either the second or fourth century (the Gospels were written in the late first, early second century). Therefore, he gives them more credence. But there are inconsistencies even among those Gospels, so their complete credibility is open to question.

Second, he asks why there is no mention of Jesus's wife among family members who make a surprise visit to him in Capernaum. The simple answer is, she already was with him when he left Nazareth. Third, he suggests that since no wife was mentioned during Jesus’s public ministry days, ergo he had no wife. But we know the story of Jesus in many ways paralleled that of Moses. From the time Moses arrived back in Egypt to free the slaves and begin his ministry, his relationship with his wife Zipporah is barely mentioned in the Bible.

Fourth, Rev. Martin cites the Rev. John P. Meier’s hypothesis that Jesus “remained celibate on religious grounds.” But Jesus was Jewish; religious Jews and prophets were not required to be celibate. Only the prophet Jeremiah, among all Jewish leaders, is believed to have been a bachelor. Since we know celibacy among Catholic priests was not a strictly enforced canon requirement until the  second millennia, and some say only then mandated to circumvent any inheritance claims against church property, perhaps the male church leadership of today doth protest too much about the egalitarian view of its leader and his marital status.

Of course, all these comments are the views of a fascinated outsider. But if Jesus was indeed married, did his wife get along with her mother-in-law? Since Mary remains a central part of the religion, perhaps they didn’t see eye to eye on all things Jesus and she influenced the writers of the Gospels to keep his wife out of the sacred texts. Far-fetched, you say? Not if you’ve heard as many stories as I have about Jewish mothers-in-law. 

Back to the Stone Age

In the wake of the killings of four American diplomats Tuesday night in the consulate in Benghazi, Libya, now thought to be perpetrated by adherents to or sympathizers with al-Qaeda, and angry mobs in several Moslem countries protesting against the United States and other Western countries over a less than flattering depiction of the prophet Mohammed in a movie produced by right wing Christian conservatives, it’s time to ask a fundamental question—would we all be better off reconsidering monotheism in favor of good old-fashioned polytheism? 

Seems to me the ancients fought wars just for the sake of conquest, not in the name of religion. It was a whole lot easier back then to know your enemy and to defend yourself. Nowadays, at least from the time Jehovah told the Israelites to rid Canaan of the seven nations who lived there, or maybe even before that when He smote the Egyptians with 10 plagues so the Hebrews slaves could be freed to worship Him in the desert, societies have been killing each other over which one has the one true god. 

Back in those idolatrous times, gods didn’t move around. They had territorial boundaries. Only when monotheism expressed a universal presence did the concept of a singular god residing everywhere take hold, with the inference that He could be conjured up to save the souls of Indians, Black Africans, Asians and other indigenous peoples not privileged to have been touched by the grace of Jesus or Mohammed. 

Of course, even those so graced have not been immune to religious warfare. Catholics have fought among themselves. Catholics have fought Protestants. Russian Orthodox have fought among themselves. Christians have fought Muslims. Muslims have fought Muslims. All of the above have fought Jews. Religions that espouse peace and love for all are guilty not just of denying peace and love to outsiders but also to sects within their own religion. In the name of god, how could we allow such a defamation of religion to occur?

Muslim extremists have usurped their religion’s embodiment to the world. The West is appalled by Sharia law practices. In Northern Mali, thieves had hands and feet cut off in public demonstrations of justice. Accused of adultery, men and women have been stoned to death in Afghanistan. Honor killings are still common in backwater villages. Western nations are powerless to stop these practices. Indeed, many Muslim extremists welcome a return to the era of the Caliphates, back to the 7th to 12th centuries. 

Perhaps we should let them go back in time. It is futile and foolish to believe we will ever be able to soothe the savage breast of a people who reject Western culture and codes of behavior. As insulting and provocative as the film “Innocence of Muslims” may be, it fell within the bounds of freedom of speech cherished by Western societies. This wasn’t the first time the Muslim world has reacted violently to the alleged slander of Mohammed. Nor can we expect it to be the last, given our tilt away from censorship except in extreme cases of national security. Perhaps the answer is disengagement.

Let’s put aside for a moment the West’s collective need for oil buried under the sands of Arabia. Let’s consider how we might disengage and assist the Muslim world in its quest for yesteryear. Let’s start by not supplying them with any modern convenience—no TVs, no cars, no cell phones, no computers, no radios, no modern medicines, no irrigation projects, no aircraft, no trains, no Internet, no indoor plumbing, nothing but handwritten books, no modern military equipment. You get the picture. 

Naturally, this idea has more than its share of problems and hyperbole. We’d never get the industrialized world to embargo its goods to Muslim countries. And we still need its oil. But we really must figure out a way to stimulate a culture war within Islam, forcing its citizens to choose if they’d like to live in the 21st or 10th century.  

During the Vietnam War, General Curtis LeMay suggested we bomb North Vietnam “back into the Stone Age.” I’m not comfortable with that game plan. I think we’d have a better shot at world peace if we voluntarily return to idolatry.