Day 133 of Nat'l Emergency: Digging Up Dirt Is Dirty Business

The sins of the fathers taint the acts of the sons no matter how noble the latters’ causes may be. Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities” showed us that reality with the persecution of the St. Evrémonde family during the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror. Charles Darnay was found guilty of oppressing the populace even though he renounced his family title and the nobles who killed and otherwise exploited the peasants.   

And so we now are witnessing the persecution of The New York Times because ancestors of the founding family were slaveholders. Had their coffin draped by the Confederate flag. Were member of the Daughters of the Confederacy (https://nypost.com/2020/07/18/the-family-that-owns-the-new-york-times-were-slaveholders-goodwin/?utm_source=url_sitebuttons&utm_medium=site%20buttons&utm_campaign=site%20buttons).

To be sure, The Times has been cast as guilty of a supreme journalistic sin, that of foregoing objectivity, quashing dissenting voices while permitting bullying of any staffer who deviated from the corporate line.

Never mind that today’s Times champions civil rights. By publishing a special report last year on the  400th anniversary of slavery in the British colonies and laying the foundational reason for the break with the king on perpetuation of slavery, The Times is accused of misrepresenting history while ignoring its own involvement in the despicable practice.

The article demanding genetic purity from The Times was written by a former Times staffer of 16 years. It appeared in The New York Post, a newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch, an ardent supporter of Donald Trump. Murdoch also owns The Wall Street Journal, arch rival of The Times. Could The Journal benefit from knocking The Times off its lofty perch? No doubt.

That being a real possibility the truth of slaveholding by Times family ancestors is not diminished. But is it damning?

Slavery was part of colonial DNA. It continued into the 19th century even in northern states. New York, for example, did not outlaw all forms of slavery until July 4, 1827. Among northern states only New Jersey permitted slavery longer.

The Ochs family, which bought and reformatted The Times into the preeminent paper in the United States if not the world, had its roots in the Antebellum South. They owned slaves.

I find it increasingly difficult to accept the wholesale tarring of family descendants, especially when one considers how the newspaper over the last 50 years has been a steadfast champion of press freedoms, civil rights and has been a bulwark of defense against abuses of power on local, state and national levels. 

One could surely legitimately argue that The Times has shed some objectivity in its coverage of Donald Trump. That it holds Israel to a higher standard than Palestinians and Arab countries. That its Op-Ed page is mostly a forum for progressive, not conservative, ideas.

Even if guilty on all counts The Times cannot be equated with the symbols of the Confederacy protesters seek to topple. Those statues and the stars and bars flag are symbols of rebellion against our duly elected government. They were traitors unworthy of any reverence or fealty, no matter how valiantly or competently they fought.

My lens of history, of historical perspective, is biased. I admit it. Friends and relatives swear by The Journal as a better newspaper.

Perhaps it is. I don’t read it often enough to make an assessment. Same thing with The Washington Post. They are both owned by tycoons.

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, has invested heavily in The Post to restore it to its Pentagon Papers/Watergate era prominence.

But in achieving his rank as the richest person in the world Bezos put lots of companies out of business and lots of people out of work. My magazine’s readership included many of those companies and people affected. I derive only some comfort from his resuscitation of The Post.

From Rupert Murdoch I take absolutely no comfort. Anchored by Fox News, his media empire is largely responsible for the distrust many Americans feel toward their country and the resultant emergence of Donald Trump as an avatar of transformation based on misinformation, conspiracy theories and outright lies.

The Times is not pitch perfect. But it still retains a voice that is noteworthy and dedicated to the improvement of our country, despite the less than perfect history of its founding family’s members. 

Day 105 Nat'l Emergency: Extremism Reigns

Back in 1964, in accepting the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater said, “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!” 

It should be obvious to any thoughtful citizen that we are in the midst of extremism from the right and left. Destroying statues of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Ulysses S. Grant were not acts of excessive exuberance in support of Black Lives Matter but rather acts of excessive ignorance and intolerance. 

The very public displays of white supremacists bearing neo-Nazi and Confederate flags, coupled with the reluctance of Donald Trump and other Republicans to unequivocally denounce such actions, chills hope that right wing extremism can be tamped down to the fringe corners of society.

Grant’s statue was toppled, despite his being the Union general most responsible for destroying the Confederacy and slavery, because at one time he owned a slave. One slave. Without any compensation Grant freed William Jones two years prior to the Civil War, an act of courage uncommon where he lived around St. Louis, MO. 

Out of their mind protesters acted like an unruly mob absent any knowledge or context. Ridding public spaces of memorials to traitors who fought the Union or politicos who defended slavery or held beliefs counter to the nation’s creed of equality, however elusive its attainment has been, is not in itself a contemptible act. 

While Confederate generals and office holders are part of the country’s heritage, there is merit in denying them a public place of honor for actions that were not honorable and not sustainable on the battlefield. Nor should they be rewarded for the back door tributes they secured from Jim Crow laws and a media-manufactured retelling of the antebellum South. 

But tearing them down, acting like a lynch mob, besmirched the cause the protesters espouse (unless the protesters were anarchists acting under the cover of legitimate protest). 

Those who are seeking perfection in our national heroes past and present will be sorely disappointed. They come adorned with character warts we at present would find not just discrediting but also disqualifying for elective office or reverence. Martin Luther King was no saint. Neither was Malcolm X. Nor JFK. Nor FDR. Nor Barack Obama. 

What can be said of our icons is that despite their flaws they advanced the dignity of our country, they fought and sometimes died for the expansion of rights and freedoms. 

They were better than the prevailing mores of their times. They weren’t perfect. We should not judge them solely by 2020 standards. 

Perhaps it is a good moment for a collective time out to look at the Bible. Not the New Testament, not because I am not Christian, rather because Jesus seems to be beyond reproach with no flaws.

Look to the Old Testament for leader upon leader, patriarch after patriarch, who is imperfect. King David was an adulterer and conspired to have his consort Bathsheba’s husband killed in battle. He was not a great father. He turned a blind eye as his henchmen assassinated his foes. Yet, he is venerated as Israel’s greatest monarch. 

Jacob was a trickster, on multiple occasions. Samson married a pagan. Saul failed to follow God’s command to kill all of the Amalekites and destroy their possessions. 

Even wise King Solomon, who should have known better, succumbed to excess—excessive taxes, excessive marriages to pagan women and excessive construction of temples to his wives’ gods to whom in his old age he followed. 

Despite his shortcomings, Solomon is lionized. Perhaps the lesson to be learned is a figure’s place in history must be measured by his entire resume, not just a smudge on the page. 

At the 2015 funeral of one of the nine martyred at the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC, Obama concluded his eulogy by singing “Amazing Grace.” It was a stirring moment. 

But that haunting hymnal was written by a one-time slave trader, John Newton. By today’s ethos of puritanical extremism, should “Amazing Grace” be stricken from the roster of messages of consolation, forgiveness and redemption because of its originator? 

I think not. 

Someone Get Me Rewrite!

Sometimes you need a good editor to make your writing better. I was a good editor, but it’s not easy improving your own text, ergo the thankful acknowledgment by many a revered author to his or her editor. That’s a longwinded way of saying I just realized that a cutesy paraphrase of a biblical saying included in a posting two weeks ago could have been sharpened by an editor. 

Concerning the controversy over the status of monuments to Confederate generals and soldiers, Columbus and other notables, I wrote, “In a variation on what Jesus said, let he who is without sin be memorialized with a statue.” 

Reading that line today I believe it would have been better if I had written, “In a variation on what Jesus said, let he who is without sin be cast in stone.” 

Behind the Scenes: Now that Paul Manafort and Rick Gates have been indicted in a federal probe linked to the election of Donald Trump, I was wondering, why is it that just those two were named in a scheme to launder foreign money and evade taxes? Are we to believe that Manafort and Gates had the smarts and wherewithal to hide their activities without the aid of lawyers, accountants, bankers and others, perhaps a few real estate agents, who might have provided counsel on how to circumvent without detection federal law? 

I know, you’re probably saying they were caught, so it proves, or at least strongly suggests, they acted alone. I think not. I am waiting to see who else might be entangled in their web of deceit.

Meanwhile, for an eerily revealing behind the scenes look at the dynamics of Manafort, his family, and his alliance with Trump, there’s hardly any more enlightening read than the emails his daughter, 31-year-old Andrea Manafort Shand, exchanged with friends from March through August 2016: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/paul-manafort-daughter-trump-texts_us_59f748b6e4b03cd20b832fe0.

Kelly Turns Green, as in spoiled or rotten. There are few better feelings for a journalist than to be proven correct in an assessment of a character. I feel good that my repudiation of John F. Kelly, Trump’s chief of staff and by many accounts the White House executive looked to as ballast to Trump’s excesses, is being confirmed by Kelly’s own actions.  

Having been shown to be a dissembler of truth when it came to the controversy involving the death in Niger of Sgt. La David T. Johnson and Trump’s condolence call to his widow, Kelly’s appearance Monday night on the Laura Ingraham show on Fox News reinforced his jaundiced view of history. Asked about removing plaques of George Washington and Robert E. Lee from a church in Alexandria, Va., Kelly said,

“I would tell you that Robert E. Lee was an honorable man. He was a man that gave up his country to fight for his state, which 150 years ago was more important than country. It was always loyalty to state first back in those days. Now it’s different today. But the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War, and men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had them make their stand.”

Historians have excoriated Kelly for his depiction of followers of the Confederacy and the idea that failure to compromise resulted in war. Here’s a sample:  http://wapo.st/2gRznMq?tid=ss_tw-bottom&utm_term=.b8f3e02ab210. 

Let’s look at his evaluation of current loyalties, specifically his comment that “It was always loyalty to state first back in those days. Now it’s different today.” 

Has Kelly been asleep during the repeated assault by states, almost always Republican controlled, to push back against federal laws and regulations in the interests of “states’ rights”? Individual states have fought against the legalization of abortion rights, environmental safeguards, worker benefits, national parks and monuments, voting rights, gender equality and civil rights.

Indeed, a central plank of Trumpism is a dissolution of federal power in favor of state authority. 

Retired Marine Corps general John F. Kelly may have been a solid leader of men in battle but he is a flawed advisor and gatekeeper to the equally if not more flawed leader of our country.

Damn Yankees, For One Night Only

Now I know the joy of rooting against the NY Yankees. Bliss would be one more loss, tonight, against the Tampa Bay Rays followed by New York victories throughout the post-season. But tonight, this die-hard Yankee fan wants his team to lose again to Tampa to give the Rays the opportunity to edge out the Boston Red Sox for the final baseball playoff spot. Boston must play its part in this psycho-drama by either losing tonight or tomorrow in a potential one game showdown against Tampa.

It was a truly weird experience watching the Rays last night turn a near-disastrous bases loaded with Yankees, no out, one-run-already-in situation into a thrilling around-the-horn triple play, and then to cheer when Matt Joyce unloaded a three-run home run to give Tampa a 5-3 lead in the bottom of the seventh. It was even stranger hoping Kyle Farnsworth would record a save against the very same Yanks he so miserably could not perform for during his stint as a set-up man for Mariano Rivera a few years back.

Sports talk radio and the blogosphere are full of the pros and cons of Yankee fans wanting Boston in or out of the playoffs. Only a fool would want his mortal enemy to have time to regroup to fight another day. Don’t those who want Boston to make the playoffs so the Yanks could beat them in the second round (assuming both teams make it there) realize that scenario would mean the Red Sox have righted their slide and defeated either the Texas Rangers or the Detroit Tigers, both formidable foes? When they would play the Yankees they’d have their swagger back.

No, it’s much better to stomp out your opposition when they are down, before they can recover. Abraham Lincoln knew this. That’s why he anguished over the failure of several generals to pursue Robert E. Lee’s forces during the Civil War. It was only when he found a kindred mind in Ulysses S. Grant that Lincoln was confident of victory over the Confederacy.

How strange to be rooting against the Yankees, even for one night. I won’t be watching the game. Gilda has prepared a sumptuous feast for 31 members of our family and friends on the eve of Rosh Hashanah. A Yankee loss, coupled with a Boston loss, would be a grand way to start the new year.