Expect Impeachment But No Conviction

After three sometimes gripping, at time contentious, sometimes pedestrian days of hearings by the House Intelligence Committee, the questions to be answered are, Did Donald Trump’s actions rise to the level of an impeachable offense? And, given the Democratic Party majority on the committee and on the Judiciary Committee which would have to pass impeachment charges, and its majority in the full House of Representatives which has to affirm the charges which would then be sent to the Senate for consideration, is there any prospect that the Republican controlled Senate will vote to convict and thereby remove Trump from office?

Yes, the House will vote along party lines to impeach; no, the Senate will not vote to remove.

There was no smoking gun testimony as there was during the Watergate hearings and impeachment inquiry. No secret tapes (as far as we know). Nothing and nobody to testify to direct person to person dialogue with Trump about his actions to withhold congressionally approved military aid to an ally unless Ukraine investigated Joe and Hunter Biden.

Unless, and it is a big unless, former national security director John Bolton chooses to testify. Assuming, of course, that he would finger Trump for actions specifically in violation of his oath of office. 

At the end of the day Trump will get off with no more than a slap on the wrist. Like a cookie jar pilferer who gets caught by an admonishing mother, he no doubt will return to equally provocative acts, believing that as long as the Senate remains Republican controlled he will be immune from removal.

Here’s another question central to our democracy—when, if ever, will Republicans return to their long held beliefs? When will they once again condemn executive office overreach? When will they recall their opposition to a ballooning national debt and their desire for a balanced budget? When will they again champion unfettered foreign trade not hamstrung by tariffs? When will they advocate for strong and respectful international alliances? When will they rebuke a president who trusts Russia more than his own intelligence agencies?

Is the answer only when Democrats regain the presidency?

Have we so tribalized our politics that we cannot accept any action by a president from the opposition party, and the corollary, that we blindly accept whatever “our guy (or  gal)” does?

Has our politics become so toxic that anyone we disagree with immediately becomes the object of smear campaigns and physical threats? 

Don’t expect answers from me. I’m as perplexed, as depressed, as woebegone as you. 

Oyez, Oyez, Oyez, The Court Should Now Hear The U.S. House of Representatives v. Donald J. Trump

The time has come to find out if we live in a constitutional republic or in an autocratic state. It is time to go directly to the Supreme Court for a decision on the House of Representatives’ powers of impeachment and whether the executive branch can withhold documents and other evidence the House deems crucial to its investigations. 

By an 8-0 vote in 1974 the Supreme Court ruled Richard Nixon had to turn over secretly recorded White House tapes that ultimately revealed criminal behavior by the president in the Watergate scandal coverup. But that was back then, when respect for the rule of law was central to our political essence, regardless of party. We did not have a president who demeaned courts and judges who disagreed with him. And we did not have a president who openly flouted the law, often doubling down on the very crime he is accused of committing. 

Today’s Supreme Court must decide if the Constitution is still relevant. If a president can stonewall due process. If the Founders’ belief in equal branches of government is an 18th century anachronism or if it remains a document a democratic republic nation can live by. 

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi must give up any hope of White House cooperation for surely Donald Trump has provided no reason or action to maintain that illusion. She must immediately authorize an expedited challenge to the Supreme Court to verify the House’s absolute right to obtain material relevant to its inquiries. The court must reaffirm its 1974 ruling that the claim of executive privilege has limitations when it comes to a legitimate House investigation, that no one, not even the president, is above the law. 

It is counterproductive to waste the nation’s time and patience with thrust and parry politics. The Supreme Court must be asked to accept the challenge and must rule expeditiously. 

Nancy Pelosi, it is your move!

A Red White House: To those who bicker that Democrats are trying to take over a White House they couldn’t win in 2016, let me remind them that a Trump removal would not turn the Oval Office blue. A solidly conservative Republican vice president, Mike Pence, would succeed the dumped Trump. 

In many ways Pence could prove to be more anathema to Democrats as he is more deliberate, more focused, more of an ideologue, more conservative, more religious, more schooled in the ways of governing, and less of a lightning rod than Trump. 

One of the more vexing questions confronting Americans, New Yorkers in particular, is the transformation of Rudy Giuliani from “America’s Mayor” after 9/11 into Trump’s rabid attack dog. 

So, naturally, I was drawn to a New York Times Op-Ed Tuesday with the relevant headline, “What Happened to Rudy Giuliani?”. When I looked at the byline I was more intrigued. I thought the name looked familiar, the uncommon way it spelled Frydman. Hadn’t a Ken Frydman worked on Nation’s Restaurant News, a trade newspaper, shortly after I did some 40 years ago? Sure enough, it was him. 

I checked out his online background discovering Ken not only worked for Giuliani but was actually married by him in a city hall ceremony. For decades Ken carried a picture of the ceremony in his wallet. 

Here was an intimate witness to Rudy’s transformation. So, without further ado, here are two links, the first to the Op-Ed piece, the second to a bio of Ken who has quite an accomplished resume:

What Happened to Rudy Giuliani?

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/07/opinion/giuliani-trump-ukraine.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Ken’s bio

http://sourcecommunications.net/about/

Woodstock, Mona Lisa, Red Squirrels and a Jewish Lament

The closest I got to Woodstock was marrying a woman who had a ticket to the 1969 three day festival but chose not to attend. 

With three of her friends Gilda bought $18 tickets to the transcendental festival after seeing a poster in Greenwich Village near where she worked for Hartz Mountain during the summer between her sophomore and junior years at Brooklyn College. Delores, Karen and Gilda would travel upstate to Bethel, NY, in Barbara’s car as she was the only one with a driver’s license and a car. 

This was nearly a half year before I showed up on Gilda’s radar, or she on mine, so the fact that she was madly infatuated with another young man at the time was not a cause of concern to me. During the summer of 1969 I was enjoying another splendid eight weeks as a division head in a sleepaway camp, Kfar Masada, in Rensselaerville, NY. 

As fate would have it, Gilda’s longing for a date with her heartthrob came to fruition on the same weekend as the Woodstock concert. She chose amour over music, sold her ticket, and bid her friends happy times.

They never made it to Yasgur’s farm. Traffic, overwhelming traffic, kept them and tens of thousands others from reaching their destination. Her friends pulled off Route 17 and found a church to sleep in on the floor. They went home the second day of the concert. 

As you undoubtedly figured out, Gilda’s love interest failed to reciprocate. Our paths crossed, repeatedly, during the next school semester. We began dating in December 1969. Yes, 1969 was a very good year.

Mona Lisa, Mon Amour: August used to be a good time to see the Mona Lisa at the Louvre. Parisians generally exit the city during August, leaving tourists to contend just with ... tourists. But these days there’s an abundance of tourists—the Louvre attracted a record 10.2 million gawkers last year, way more than any other museum, anywhere—meaning time spent staring at Mona Lisa’s eyes can be no more than the equivalent of a drive-by encounter, especially now that the Leonardo da Vinci portrait has been moved to temporary quarters 

(https://nyti.ms/2MeyNdn).

I’ve gazed upon the Mona Lise several times, the first being in August 1966 when I was 17 and visiting Paris for the first time. Accompanied by my cousin’s then husband, a struggling painter who spoke no English while I, despite two years of high school instruction, knew barely enough French to ask which way to the library (“Ou est la bibliotheque”), made my way through hall after hall of the Louvre. No doubt I passed by many works by renowned masters. Sadly, I couldn’t take advantage of my companion’s expert commentary. But as I wandered around the Louvre, mostly oblivious to the treasures before me, he did manage to point out the Venus de Milo standing amidst other statues, and, after I had walked past it, he brought me back to view the Mona Lisa. Back then she was treated like any other painting, hanging nondescriptly on a wall with other works of art. 

Red Scare: I spent more than a few minutes today, I sheepishly admit, entranced by the efforts of a grey squirrel to negotiate around a large inverted plastic funnel designed to prevent the rodent and his brethren from gaining access to the bird food I assiduously hang from trees in my side yard. Most of the time the enterprising squirrel backs away or falls to the ground without clutching the suspended cage holding the desired food. If he is successful, I shoo him away, admonishing him that the food is intended for the feathered, not the bushy tailed. 

The attempted incursion is mild compared to what is going on across the pond. Seems North American grey squirrels have taken over the British landscape and are threatening the existence of native born red squirrels, a more genteel species popularized in children’s books. The reds are about half the size of their trans-Atlantic cousins who are more aggressive food gatherers and who carry a disease the reds cannot withstand. 

It’s gotten so bad that in parts of the United Kingdom bounty hunters have been hired to kill grey squirrels. It’s a scenario a nativist like Donald Trump would embrace to safeguard against an unwanted immigrant horde (https://https://apple.news/A78Qbg70wT8-GP4bZSxE-nA).

Oy, Vey Ist Mir: If you are of a certain age and Jewish, there’s an ethnic ritual your parents practiced on you. Whenever a person of distinction, be he or she an entertainment celebrity, a scientist, a professional athlete, a politician, or any position, even a hoodlum, that brought you into the public eye, your parents would point out if they were Jewish. Younger readers may recognize what I am referring to if they are familiar with Adam Sandler’s Hanukkah song that highlights members of the tribe. 

Of course, not every high profile Jew elicited pangs of pride. Mobster Meyer Lansky was no source of chest thumping, though he did make life difficult for the pro-Nazi German-American Bund before World War II. Neither was Bernie Madoff a short time ago. And Jeffrey Epstein has clouded Jewish skies of late. Oy, the shame of it all. 

I’ve seen too many episodes of Homeland to categorically discount conspiracy theories surrounding how he was able to allegedly commit suicide in a federal lockup. I’m not willing to name whom I think might be behind Epstein’s demise, but I would definitely grill all the security guards at the Manhattan Metropolitan Correctional Center. Someone(s) had to be paid off. The key, as it was in Watergate, “Follow the money.” Someone is going to start spending dollars way beyond their pay grade. It might take years before the urge to splurge surfaces, but it will. It always does. 

Sell the Sizzle, Not the Steak

Robert Mueller’s testimony Wednesday on his investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible conspiracy and obstruction of justice by Donald Trump, his campaign and administration reminded me of one of the first tenets of successful marketing I learned when I started covering retailing back in 1977: 

“Sell the sizzle, not the steak.” Presentation, not taste, was more important in restaurants trying to capture consumer acceptance. The concept applies to almost all consumer goods. Watch most automobile ads and you’ll see what I mean. Car ads sell you a feeling, an experience, not an actual product.

Sadly, watching or listening to a 74-year-old man dodder his way through six hours of grueling and grilling testimony, roughly half of which was intended to pierce his patriotic professionalism in defense of our country while his detractors defended a would-be despot, was an exercise so painfully depressing Gilda and I independently had to turn off the broadcasts we were tuned into in separate rooms, she while doing her yoga, I while eating my breakfast. 

Bob Mueller was no 34-year-old John Dean testifying cooly and controlled before Congress about a “cancer” growing on the presidency of Richard Nixon. Of course, most of the country wasn’t alive back in 1973 when Dean testified during the Watergate hearings while his wife Mo (Maureen) sat pertly and stoically behind him, her blonde hair pulled back tightly in a bun. 

The substance of Mueller’s findings were already known from his 448 page report. Anti-Trumpers wanted bold vocal confirmation that obstruction of justice had taken place in the Oval Office, that Russia had compromised the election. They had to settle for a less powerful than hoped for performance. 

Pro-Trumpers—in other words Republicans and the man himself—reveled in the optics. They claimed no verbal knockdown meant they won the day, ignoring Mueller’s assertion his report did not exonerate Trump from a charge of obstruction and that once he left office he could face prosecution. 

For those who didn’t tune in for all six hours of testimony, their take on the proceedings came from their main news outlets. So their views were reinforced. 

Few minds, I would think, changed opinions on the matter. You either like Trump or fear for our republic. 

Trump Off and Running Leaves Me in Wonder

Inexplicably to me, the official start of Donald Trump’s reelection campaign began Tuesday night in Orlando. Silly me. I thought the dastardly deed had been baptized back on January 20, 2017, when papers were filed with the Federal Election Commission by the Trump campaign declaring his intention to run again. 

Why the rush when other presidents waited years to formally register? Follow the money, as we learned from Watergate. According to Huffington Post, “Trump’s paperwork renewing his campaign committee allowed him to collect donations and spend money for an election three years and 10 months away. It also permitted him to continue diverting some of those donations into his own private businesses, which he still controls and from which he still profits.

“In that same time period, the Republican National Committee, which Trump effectively took over at his nominating convention in 2016, spent $690,181 at Trump’s golf resort in Doral, Florida; $403,259 at his hotel in Washington, D.C.; and $289,335 at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach.

“In all, the Trump campaign and the RNC together have funneled $4,341,083 to Trump businesses since Trump took office, with some of that going directly into the president’s own pocket.”

There were some who held out hope Trump would tire of the demands of office. Ha! They didn’t compute Trump’s creative use of “executive time.” Nor did they appreciate how he could turn golfing into a government paid job. He clearly has shown Barack Obama was an amateur when it came to leisure world activity while the world heats up from man-made climate change and assorted tension spots. 

Some had hoped the Mueller Report and a Democratic House of Representatives would shame him into early retirement. How little they know the bully. He relishes combat, or should I say, verbal haranguing. He has debased our modern modes of political decorum (for the record, numerous presidential contests were much more rancorous in the 1800s). 

Trump has fashioned an extreme presidency that some, including myself, fear could result in the ultimate constitutional crisis. Should he lose the election he may well invoke emergency powers to challenge the legitimacy of the vote. After all, before the 2016 ballot he said he might not accept its validity if he lost. He has since repeatedly questioned the tally and has done nothing to protect the sanctity of the election process from interference. 

Prior to his Tuesday night rally, as I drove to one of my errands, I heard a Floridian interviewed by CBS News exult in Trump’s accomplishments. He is “looking out for the common people,” the man explained. 

I wondered, how does undermining Obamacare help the common people? Trump claims he has a great replacement with more coverage at less expense, but like snake oil salesmen who plied the country in the last two centuries he won’t reveal what’s in his elixir. 

I wondered how the common family was helped by a tax reform bill that gave the lion’s share of benefits to the one percenters and just crumbs to common working folks, especially those who relied on mortgage, state income tax and charitable contributions to reduce their tax burden. 

I wondered how common people would benefit from a change in the way the federal poverty line is computed. According to ThinkProgress, a progressive news site, “The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a progressive think tank, has released its analysis of a government proposal for updating the inflation rate that determines the federal poverty line. The study suggests that if authorities adopt a “chained Consumer Price Index” — which calculates the cost of living at a slower pace than the current method — millions of low-income Americans will lose health and food benefits within 10 years.

“Who would suffer most? The technical change would disqualify 300,000 kids and pregnant women from receiving health coverage under the Children’s Health Insurance Program.”

I wondered for how long the American people will remain gullible and susceptible to re-education according to the Trump-is-great doctrine. Trump and his propagandists erase all mention of the positive economic performance under his predecessor. They only tout the rise in the stock market since Trump took office.

To put some perspective onto what has transpired economically, Fortune magazine recently compared how Wall Street fared during Obama’s and Trump’s respective first 28 months in office:

“So, how do the two presidents measure up in terms of growth in major indexes, measured between their inauguration and May 31 of their third year in office?

“The short answer is that Trump has quite a way to go. Under Obama, the S&P 500 grew by 56.4%. The Dow Jones Industrials Average was up 50.6% and the Nasdaq, 92.9%.

“The numbers under Trump were 21.4% for the S&P 500, 25.2% for the Dow, and 34.2% for Nasdaq.”

I wondered how common people would do better with dirtier air and water from Trump’s push for more fossil fuel use and lower pollution standards, how deregulation of health and labor safeguards would make their lives better.  

I wondered about a lot more before reaching my destination. I pondered the idea of a consecutive term for Trump before settling onto a variation of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s comment, “I don’t want to see him impeached, I want to see him in prison.” For me, “consecutive terms” would refer to consecutive prison terms.

Seeing the Future But Not Always the Present

I watched or listened on the radio to 90% of Michael Cohen’s Wednesday appearance before the House Oversight and Reform Committee. The most significant part I missed was Cohen’s closing statement. Here’s how John Dean, White House counsel under Richard Nixon and the man who famously told him that the Watergate coverup represented a “cancer” growing on the presidency, described Cohen’s parting words: 

“He thanked the members, and again accepted responsibility for his bad behavior. He then told the legislators, ‘Given my experience working for Mr. Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020 that there will never be a peaceful transition of power, and this is why I agreed to appear before you today.’ This was the most troubling—actually, chilling—thing he said in his five hours before the committee.” (https://nyti.ms/2XzehH8)

I couldn’t agree more. But I was not surprised by Cohen’s dire prediction, as back on January 30 I postulated the same possibility, er, probability. Here’s how I put it: 

“But with 2020 looming and his polling numbers down, Trump is now in a position to do real damage to the republic should he lose reelection. He would continue, after all, to be president for more than two months until January 20, 2021, a lame duck in name but not in power to respond to emergencies. 

“It is not a far reach to think Trump would invoke executive powers to declare a rigged election created a national emergency. Consider the border wall contretemps a potential test case before the Supreme Court of his authority to enact executive rule.” (http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2019/01/trumps-next-constitutional-crisis.html)

I take no pleasure in being among the first to counsel wariness about our democratic future. But it is reassuring to know others are similarly pre-occupied. I only hope they are preparing plans to insure my forecast does not come true. 

Wannabe-in-Chief: His detractors have likened him to a would-be dictator, what with his cozying up to actual despots like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un, taking their word over the conclusions of his own intelligence agencies and diplomatic corps. 

But now, Donald Trump has added multi-hour oratory to his autocratic repertoire. Appearing at CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference,  just hours after flying home from a fruitless summit in Hanoi with the North Korean potentate, Trump emulated authoritarian leaders like Fidel Castro in delivering a two hour-plus highlight reel review of his campaign, presidency and bouts with unsatisfactory staffers and runaway investigators (https://www.vox.com/2019/3/2/18247712/trump-cpac-bizarre-rant).

Sadly, Trump’s performance was not the most troubling part of CPAC. Rather, it was the fawning, sycophantic, hyperbolic approval he received from an audience that in the past cherished American values but now has been hoodwinked by a wannabe absolute monarch. 

My Blindspot: Of course, my vision is not perfect. Case in point—For more than 30 years I had my hair cut at Young & Classy, a salon on Central Avenue in Scarsdale. After Young & Classy closed down more than a year ago my haircutter Rosie moved to a different salon. I followed her there.

A few months ago Gilda accompanied me. While I was getting my hair washed Rosie told Gilda that the spa and massage parlor next to the Young & Classy location was raided by police because it turned out to be a front for a den of illicit sexual activity. Throughout the day men could be seen coming and going from the storefront next door. 

Who knew? Who knew that right next door, while I was getting shorn, other men were getting…pleasured? 

Illegal massage parlors have been in the news a lot lately, since the arrest of Robert Kraft, owner of the seemingly perennial Super Bowl champion New England Patriots, as part of a roundup of patrons. Kraft denies soliciting sexual activity while a customer of Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Jupiter, Florida. 

Sexual indiscretion of another kind, the extra-marital kind, has engulfed another billionaire, Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and the world’s richest human. His affair and breakup of his 25-year marriage have become fodder for tabloid journalists and, to his extent the actions could have an impact on Amazon’s businesses, also for mainstream news outlets (https://nyti.ms/2EIX9qP).

In case you’re wondering, here’s why I have not previously commented on Amazon—unlike many other retailers, I met Jeff Bezos only once or twice. Actually, to say I met him would be a stretch. I was part of a large press and securities analyst pool. Basically, the only takeaway I have from Bezos is the sound of his laugh. It is among the strangest noises one could hear. It is more than a hacking sound. It is loud. It reverberates. There is nothing infectious about it. Were it not for his billions and his obvious brilliance there would be multiple reasons to distance oneself from the sound. 

Exposing Our Greed and Venality Trump Distracts Attention From Damage to Our Protections

By now we should be used to his excessive vulgarity, his racism, his lying, his cheating. It should roll off our consciousness like water off a duck’s back.

Surely Melania must know about his sleaziness. No doubt, she has made a Faustian compact to live in a gilded palace, and now the White House, in return for accepting his casual infidelities, if not in actual deed, for certain in lewdness.

The rest of us, and the world, have to endure a considerably less than perfect projected presidential image of America. 

The real tragedy of Trump is that he has exposed the venal selfishness and bias inside too, too many of our citizens and the men and women chosen to represent us in the legislative and administrative arenas intended to benefit us all.

Trump’s characterization of Haitians and Africans squares effortlessly with the persona recognized by anyone who has followed his career. The surprise from this incident is the failure of public officials and ordinary citizens to emulate Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) and Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) to express revulsion in the face of racism, bigotry and the denigration of the standards of the office of the president. (One wonders what was Trump’s response when challenged by Graham. Bullies usually back down. Did he express remorse or did he continue to violate proper decorum?) 

Reminiscent of the “I cannot recall” testimony of Republican operatives in the Nixon White House during the 1973 Watergate hearings, and 14 years later by Rear Admiral John Poindexter during the Iran-Contra hearings, Senators Tom Cotton (R-AR) and David Perdue (R-GA), astonishingly claimed they heard nothing. Surely if Graham admonished Trump, as he said he did, it could not have been in whispers. Nor in private. Were Cotton and Perdue, along with other attendees House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Rep. Robert Goodlatte (R-VA), and Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) sleeping through this meeting?  Or playing with a fidget spinner?

Cotton and Perdue have tried to blunt the report on Trump’s language by casting doubts on Durbin’s integrity. “I’m saying that this is a gross misrepresentation, it’s not the first time Sen. Durbin has done it,” Perdue said on ABC’s This Week. But Graham, recently thought to have a close relationship with Trump, has not denied Trump’s vulgar language (http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/13/politics/trump-remark-reaction/index.html).

Trump has declared he is not a racist, but his actions (against black athletes, minority voters, Hispanic immigrants, Muslims and Jews) and at times silence in the face of White Nationalist provocations have been more affirmative than any rejection of the appellation. 

Those Americans who voted for Trump are a mixed bag. The true believers, among them evangelicals of all religions who have abandoned their respective god’s principles to idolize a vengeful, egotistical leader devoid of compassion, absolve him of any wrongdoing regardless of its accuracy or provenance. Theirs is a belief grounded in zealotry and intolerance (https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/01/12/politics/trump-supporters-react/index.html).

Economics drives those who held their noses and voted for Trump. They might not like what he says or how he acts but they like the rise in their stock portfolios. They have sold their principles, along with environmental protections and American world leadership, in exchange for riches. But as Jesus told his followers in Matthew 6:24, “You cannot serve God and mammon.”

As a nation we have aged beyond the time when a Walter Cronkite could express on the CBS Evening News disenchantment with the war in Vietnam and a president (Lyndon Johnson) could reportedly have said, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.” Today we tune into cable telecasts (hard to call them newscasts) that reinforce our prejudices (https://apnews.com/2761a6d6cedc4b91b739a6db93a3a236). There is little opportunity to build a national consensus of truth and facts.

A duck gliding smoothly across a lake is an image of tranquility. As is often noted, however, the real action is below the surface where the duck’s legs are busily paddling away. 

Trump is no serene image but he is a distraction to the destructive activity underway in the halls of government, not the chambers of Congress, rather the offices of agencies and departments now supervised by men and women dedicated to dismantling regulations that protect consumers, workers, voters, the environment, international agreements and other initiatives intended to balance the greed of the wealthy and empowered with the needs of the common populace (Here’s the latest in Politico’s weekly review of five things Trump did while you weren’t looking: https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2018/01/12/trump-policy-medicaid-immigration-trade-000619.)

Trump garners our attention. He galvanizes the resistance. He will bring voters to the polls, against and for him, in numbers a Mike Pence or any other Republican would not. But, in substance, he is no worse than what any other conservative Republican would be doing. 

Except, in the cult of personality he is generating and in his in evocation of powers, real and imagined, presidents before him rarely, if ever, espoused, Trump is a dangerous political phenomenon.

Which leads me to conclude with an excerpt from a reflection written by Jules Harlow contained in the Lev Shalem (whole heart) prayer book read during an ecumenical service Sunday night honoring The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at Temple Israel Center of White Plains. 

“Help us, Eternal, to honor humility.

Too often we follow the foolish and the wicked; 

Too often we follow mockers and the arrogant.

“Protect us, Sovereign, from ourselves as from others.

Too often we speak slander and violence;

Too often we falter in our faithfulness.”

  

Chaos-Creator-in-Chief Inflames Passions over Immigration, Leaks, and, Naturally, Chaos

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Journalism in the Age of Trump

I came of age professionally at the dawn of the Watergate era. While studying for a master’s degree in newspaper journalism, my Syracuse University classmates and I met with Jeb Magruder, president Richard Nixon’s re-election committee head in early 1972, just months before the Watergate break-in, two years before Magruder would plead guilty to conspiracy to obstruct justice, to defraud the United States, and to illegally eavesdrop on the Democratic Party national headquarters in the Watergate Hotel.

During our first summer of matrimony, in 1973, Gilda spent most of her days watching the Senate Watergate hearings. Lowell Weicker Jr. of Connecticut gained national prominence during the hearings as a Republican critic of Nixon. I interviewed Weicker at his Greenwich home on the Friday of Labor Day weekend. We made national news when I quoted him asserting he would not try to capitalize on his new-found prominence by running for president in 1976, though he did try to mount a presidential bid in 1980.

In the years following Watergate and the bravura reporting of Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, not to mention their celluloid alter-egos Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford, it seemed every young person graduating college wanted to be an investigative reporter, someone who toppled the high and mighty. It didn’t matter if their chosen targets presided in Washington or Podunk, Indiana. What mattered was the press had to show that it was supreme.

For the most part the nation benefitted from such zeal, though excesses did occur, such as the intrusive, destructive coverage of Gary Hart and his non affair with Donna Rice, which submarined his presidential hopes in 1988.

Relations between the press and presidents (and would-be presidents) are rarely absent of acrimony. Reporters are a skeptical, cynical lot, always looking for the real story behind any presidential action. They bristle at any attempt to corral their activity. Administrations, on the other hand, are the ultimate public relations practitioners. Media access is to be restricted and managed.

Which brings us to media coverage in the age of Trump. The Internet has vastly expanded the number of bodies able to disseminate news, real and fake. The biggest body of all belongs to Donald J. Trump and his peripatetic fingers.

The twit-in-chief has upended traditional news distribution routes. His team has hinted of changes to the daily briefings in the White House press room. Indeed, the very room itself may become extinct.

It is a strategy to bypass traditional media that Trump believes is biased against him. He may be right about the bias claim, but he is fooling himself if he seriously believes upsetting the press room applecart will stifle critical reporting and analysis of his administration. If anything, it will galvanize real reporters to probe deeper.

The contretemps over Buzzfeed’s publishing the contents of a questionably accurate dossier of behavior by Trump while in Russia several years ago is the latest example of the press pushing the limits of journalistic decorum.

Yet, it is the height of chutzpah for a president-elect who uses Twitter bullying tactics, the retweeting of falsehoods and innuendo and near total disregard for the truth to complain about his coverage and portrayal in the media.

I suspect Trump is not very well read, but he probably knows the saying, “Those who live by the sword, die by the sword.”

He might also be acquainted with another proverb journalists embrace: “The pen is mightier than the sword.”

Political Potpourri: Wedge Issues, Romney, Bridgegate, Trump as Candy Man, Couturiers

In the wake of the Orlando massacre, another wedge issue has moved to the forefront in defining the race for the presidency as well as campaigns for control of the House and Senate: gun control, specifically, the ability to deny the legal sale of firearms to those on the Do Not Fly and Terrorist Watch lists or to those with mental health issues. A subsidiary issue is the availability of assault rifles such as the AR-15 to the general public. The Orlando shooter, as well as the San Bernadino shooter and other mass killers, used an AR-15 rifle.

Wedge issues this year include abortion rights, Planned Parenthood, the Supreme Court, immigration, income inequality, same-sex marriage, the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Islamic terrorism, campaign finance, and the minimum wage. 

The essence of each wedge issue can be summed up as the forces of fear and bigotry vs. the forces of hope and tolerance.  . . .

The Democrats’ best friend in this election might be Mitt Romney. The 2012 Republican standard bearer has been vocal in his antipathy, even animosity, toward Donald Trump. If he can sway fellow Mormons to withhold their votes for Trump, Hillary Clinton could win some Mountain States that are a challenge to any Democrat (http://nyti.ms/1XR6ktS).

But Trump’s negative coat tails might not paint the Senate blue as Mormons and other anti-Trump voters might prefer to keep the Senate red as a counter-balance to a liberal president.  . . .

Just when you think this election season can’t get any weirder two reports this week evoked Watergate memories. First came word that Democratic Party files had been breached, not physically as in Watergate but electronically. Not by Republicans but by Russians who wanted to gather data on Trump.

Second, the spirit of Rosemary Woods lives on.  The 18-1/2 minute gap in Richard Nixon’s White House tapes, allegedly created by an inadvertent contortion Woods performed at her secretarial desk while transcribing them, possibly has been matched by lost or erased emails and texts from New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, communications linked to the investigation into Bridegate, the allegedly illegal disruption of traffic across the George Washington Bridge to punish the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee for not endorsing Christie’s reelection bid.  . . . 

Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans want to reduce tax rates, especially for the wealthy. They also profess a desire to return to simpler times, as life was in the 1950s. They lambast Democrats for wanting to impose higher taxes on the rich. Elizabeth Warren, says Trump, wants to impose a 95% income tax rate. 

Sounds Draconian, until you realize that back in the 1950s under President Eisenhower, when unions were strong and  the middle class grew, the top effective tax rate was 91%.  . . . 

Trump is not alone in issuing damning statements about Hillary Clinton. The other week on NPR I heard U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.—one of the three female House members who prefer to be called “congressman”) attack Clinton, saying she lies and cheats while “Trump is a candy man” who gives people what they want.

I seriously doubt Blackburn knows that “candy man” is street talk for drug dealer. It would be an appropriate description for a candidate who is trying to dupe the electorate. . . 

Should Hillary Clinton win the presidency, the most negatively impacted group would be couturiers. After eight years of stunning gowns, dresses and ensembles showcased by first lady Michelle Obama, fashionistas would no longer have a White House muse to clothe. There are, after all, just so many variations on the tuxedo Bill Clinton can be expected to wear.


Your election witticism of the day, courtesy of whowhatwhy.org:

Don’t buy a single vote more than necessary. I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for a landslide. —Joseph P. Kennedy

Brady and Hillary Share Deleted E-Message Legacies

Tom Brady is the Hillary Clinton of the National Football League. Hillary Clinton is the Tom Brady of politics.

Regardless of what you think about them, both have stellar resumes. Millions adore them. Yet both have sizable portions of the population that abhor and despise them. Their detractors won’t believe a word they say. And they now share legacies of deep-sixing sought-after electronic messages that could implicate them, or vindicate them, in scandal. 

Politics in the United States has been steeped in conspiracy theories, probably going back at least to Aaron Burr and the unsuccessful attempt to convict the former vice president of the United States of treason in the early 1800s. There indeed was a conspiracy, a partially successful conspiracy, to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln and members of his cabinet. Never proven were innuendos that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt knew in advance about Japan’s plans to attack Pearl Harbor but let it proceed as a pretext to enter World War II against Japan and Germany. Nor were conspiracy theories proven for the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. 

Richard Nixon’s Watergate conspiracy engendered numerous other “-gate” investigations, two of which involved two more Republican presidents—Ronald Reagan’s Iran-Contra affair and George W. Bush’s weapons of mass destruction in Iraq hoax. Lots of investigations into Bill Clinton’s presidency produced no tangible conspiracy. Hillary’s actions before, during and after the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi remain an open festering wound Republicans continue to investigate as a means to derail her presidential bid.

So what do I think about Hillary and Brady? Nothing so far has swayed my belief she is the best announced Democratic candidate. Yes, she showed hasty judgment in deleting all of her emails. But aside from fostering more conspiracy theories, many of which have been dispelled by Republican-led Congressional inquiries, Hillary’s main challenge is weathering the years-long assault on her character the GOP has waged. Such is the life of a frontrunner.  

With four Super Bowl rings, Brady, as well, is a leader. His image is now tarnished. But I will say that tinkering with equipment, as Brady is alleged to have done in Deflategate, is not unusual in almost all sports. Jerry Rice, considered the best receiver in football history, admitted to putting stickum on his gloves to aid in catching passes. Hockey goalies have been known to dress in leg pads wider than permitted, while their teammates try to bend the rules by curving their stick blades beyond the legal limit. Returning to football, linemen swab their uniforms with Vaseline so their opponents can’t grab them easily. Vaseline also was a favored tool of baseball pitchers hoping to influence the flight of a ball, while batters corked their bats to hit it further. 

Did Brady have his minions on the New England Patriots take the air out of balls used in the team’s 45-7 victory in the AFC Championship game? Who knows? What we do know is that in the second half, in driving rain, after the referees inserted properly inflated balls, Brady scorched the Indianapolis Colts with 28 points compared to scoring 17 points in the first half using under-inflated balls. 

Perhaps a better question to ask is why Brady would think he needed the supposed advantage of under-inflated balls. Probably for the same reason Nixon had the Democratic Party offices bugged in the Watergate Apartments. Because they could and they thought they could get away with it. And no matter how sure you think victory is, they think it’s never wrong to take steps to make sure of that victory. Until, that is, you’re caught. When that happens, it’s wise to remember, it’s not the crime but the coverup that trips you up. 

Ben Bradlee Inspired Many a Journalist

Don’t count me among the legions inspired to become journalists by Ben Bradlee and his then-young reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. It’s not that I didn’t admire this trio of Washington Post muckrakers. It’s just that I had decided to become a reporter three years before Watergate entered the public consciousness.

My muse was another editor at a different Post, along with the writing behind the exposure in Chicago of official corruption, albeit the fictional kind. 

I was motivated by James Wechsler, the bow-tied editor of The New York Post. Now, don’t be put off by your thoughts about today’s New York Post. Back in 1969, The Post was still a bastion of liberal, progressive thought wrapped inside standard police-fire-and-general-mayhem tabloid fare upfront and a superlative sports section in the back.

The death earlier this week of Bradlee, retired executive editor of The Washington Post, has brought forth the expected tributes about his defining role in the paper’s dogged investigation of the Watergate break-in (initially criticized by Republicans, a big shrug-of-the-shoulders by almost everyone else) and his eventual triumph and vindication with the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon. It is not too far a reach to state, as others have, that Bradlee-Woodward-Bernstein begat a new generation of journalists, each seeking to leave his or her mark by exposing and toppling members of the power elite. 

I started my pursuit of a career in journalism a full three years before Watergate after being brought up reading The New York Post every day. As a youngster I would read the comics—Nancy, Mutt & Jeff, Dennis the Menace. As I grew older, the sports columnists Maury Allen, Vic Ziegel, Milton Gross, Paul Zimmerman and Leonard Schechter romanced my interests in baseball and football. Next I delved into the social columnists, the Entertainment Tonight-Perez Hilton-TMZ of their day: Leonard Lyons, Earl Wilson, Sidney Skolsky, whose signature line in every weekend celebrity profile was whether she or he slept in the raw, an impressionable image for a hormonally stimulated early teenager. 

Finally, with more maturity, I absorbed the political mavens: Wechsler, Max Lerner, Mary McGrory, Art Buchwald, William Buckley, Drew Pearson, Jack Anderson, Murray Kempton, and a newcomer, Pete Hamill, a counter to Jimmy Breslin’s man-of-the-street prose in The Daily News. 

It was a column by Wechsler, a review of a 1969 revival of the Ben Hecht-Charles MacArthur play The Front Page that ignited my interest in being a reporter, an upgrade from my position as editor of Calling Card, a Brooklyn College newspaper. 

On one of our early dates I took Gilda to see The Front Page revival starring Bert Convy and Robert Ryan. To this day I revel in watching two movie adaptations of the play—the 1931 film starring Adolphe Menjou and Pat O’Brien, and the 1940 adaptation, His Girl Friday, with Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell—about star reporter Hildy Johnson’s desire to leave the Chicago Examiner to get married, all the while trying to overcome the machinations of managing editor Walter Burns to keep Johnson on the payroll. Along the way they expose the corruption of the mayor and sheriff who want to execute an innocent man. 

I don’t mean to suggest my life as a newspaper reporter and magazine editor and publisher matched the frenzied excitement of The Front Page. But I had my share of stimulation and sensationalism. During my time as a reporter for The New Haven Register, I covered the largest industrial arson in the nation’s history, interviewed U.S. senator Lowell Weicker during a break from his duties on the Watergate Committee, profiled a survivor of an Eastern Airlines crash in the Everglades and a pilot who vied with Charles Lindbergh to be the first to fly solo non-stop across the Atlantic, to name a few memorable stories.

When I interviewed to be a field editor on Nation’s Restaurant News in Manhattan in 1977, the group vice president coyly asked me if I preferred a job at The New York Post, by then a Rupert Murdoch property. Just say the word and he’d call a friend there. I resisted the bait, telling him only after experiencing the job as a business-to-business writer would I be able to determine if I found the task rewarding. I must have, as I stayed with the company for 32 years, all but that first year on Chain Store Age.

It was rewarding, both financially and emotionally. To be sure, I rarely covered politicians, except when they got involved in minimum wage or other issues affecting the retail and restaurant industries. So when candidates for my Chain Store Age staff would inevitably ask for my comparison between the gratification of working for the consumer press and a trade journal, I would respond that my ego was stroked by getting to know many of the men and women who, every day through their stores, catalogs and Internet sites, touched the lives of most Americans. My magazine also provided insight into many merchandise and systems suppliers that have transformed the way we shop. I was fortunate, I would tell them, to work in a publishing house that allowed, encouraged actually, probing editorial that dissected retail strategies and exposed them when they didn’t work.

We didn’t topple any retail empires. No president, even of a retail company, resigned because of our reporting. That was not our mission. But I take pride and comfort in what Fred Barbash, now the Morning Mix editor of The Washington Post, wrote back in January 2000. Under the headline, “Investing tip: Read the trade publications,” Barbash repeatedly referenced an issue of Chain Store Age to detail how article after article informed his knowledge of the stock market. “When it comes to getting ideas for buying stocks before the whole wide world knows about them, when it comes to resources that cost little or nothing compared with some of the pricey newsletters, I think you can’t beat … www.chainstoreage.com.”  

My Watergate Summer Link

Forty years ago this Friday afternoon before Labor Day, I was sitting in the third floor newsroom of The New Haven Register trying to finish up my Sunday feature story. I don't recall what it was about, but I do remember suburban editor Larry French calling me over to tell me I had been chosen for a special assignment that could only be done later that afternoon.

It was the summer of the Watergate hearings. Gilda watched most of the hearings as she crocheted a quilt we still have (but hardly ever use). I would watch highlights on the evening news. Folksy Sam Ervin (D-NC) chaired the Senate committee. Sam Dash, whose daughter, Judy, I would work with four years later on Nation’s Restaurant News, served as lead majority counsel of the committee. Howard Baker was the ranking minority senator on the panel. The most vocal and righteously aggrieved Republican was Lowell Weicker, the junior senator from Connecticut.

With Congress in recess, Weicker was back home in Greenwich. At the last moment he agreed to sit for an interview, a personality profile.

The newsroom was mostly depleted by early weekend evacuees. Looking over their options, the top editors chose me, a 24-year-old reporter with barely a year of small town reporting on my résumé.

It was a hot muggy afternoon. I drove my un-airconditioned Chevy Vega down the Merritt Parkway to the Round Hill Road exit, made a few turns, and came to the Weicker estate. An heir to the Squibb pharmaceutical company, Weicker had a stately colonial home which, like my Vega, I soon discovered, lacked air conditioning. No a/c, not even a fan to agitate the dank hot air.

We sat and talked for about an hour in the study. Or maybe it was the living room. I sweat onto the fabric of the couch I sat on. I took pictures of Weicker and his then wife Bunny and one or more of their children walking on the property. 

I remember little about the interview except Weicker’s stern admonishment that no one should seek political gain from service on the Watergate committee. He forcefully asserted he would not run for president.

That was my lead. The front page Sunday story was picked up by the Associated Press. My first national story. Seven years later, reacting to the increasingly conservative tone of his party, Weicker sought the Republican presidential nomination. He did not get it. Ronald Reagan did.

Weicker served in the Senate until 1989, losing his seat to Joseph Lieberman. His liberal leanings led him to leave the GOP.  He was elected governor of Connecticut as an independent in 1990. It was during his first and only term of office that Connecticut enacted a state income tax.

About two years ago one Sunday afternoon, while Gilda and I were enjoying one of the best pizzas anywhere in Sal’s on Wooster Square in New Haven, I noticed Weicker, most probably with his current wife, sitting at one of the tables near the kitchen. I resolved to say hello to him, but didn't want to disturb his meal. As we were sitting near the front door, I decided to wait till he was on his way out. 

The encounter never happened. I didn't realize there was a side door near the kitchen. Weicker had shifted passed me again. 

Homeland and Other Worries

So here's my problem with Showtime’s Homeland, now that Gilda and I are watching the DVD of the first season. The suspected Al Qaeda plot the CIA and FBI are investigating—a sniper attack against the president as he leaves or boards his Marine One helicopter at Reagan National Airport—is based on erroneous fact. Air Force One, the only plane the president flies in, does not use Reagan. It flies in and out of Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, nowhere near the Virginia house Abu Nasir's terrorist cell bought and planned to use in their assassination attempt because its roof has a direct view of the helicopter landing pad at Reagan. 

There are no doubt other points we could dissect but this one is troubling. You'd think the CIA and FBI would know the president doesn't use Reagan National Airport. Maybe the dilemma is cleared up in the last two episodes of season one which we hope to view this weekend. I hope so, because otherwise I really like this show and can’t wait for the second season DVD to become available.

Fox Hunting: Homeland's plot arc has a former prisoner of war suspected by a CIA agent of being a sleeper terrorist turned by Al Qaeda during his eight years of captivity. Marine Sergeant Nicholas Brady is elected to Congress, where he can wreak havoc from within the political system. My niece in England sent me a link to an article in the Guardian about Rupert Murdoch’s failed attempt to co-opt the American presidential race from within. 

It's by Carl Bernstein who has experience in these matters (for those too young to know, he’s the Bernstein of Woodward and Bernstein of Watergate reporting fame). Here are two links, the first to Bernstein’s article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/20/bernstein-murdoch-ailes-petreaus-presidency), the second to the actual voice tape of the conversation between General Petraeus and K.T. McFarland of Fox News referred to by Bernstein that was obtained by Bob Woodward. Keep in mind this conversation happened a year before Petraeus’ downfall from his alleged affair

(http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/petraeus-in-2011-fox-news-interview-im-not-running-for-president/2012/12/03/c0aa0c72-3d6d-11e2-a2d9-822f58ac9fd5_video.html). 

Signature Moment: Ordinary Americans always strive to identify with their politicians. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Whatever. My point is, the brouhaha over Treasury Secretary nominee Jacob J. Lew’s signature—a series of connected loops looking much like a Slinky on its side—has me identifying directly with the man whose scrawl would appear on all paper currency should he be confirmed by the Senate.

I for one can’t find fault with his illegible writing. Mine is what I call my executive signature, stroked so quickly that only, and just barely at that, can you make out the “M” of my first name. Sometimes when I sign legal documents I slow down, but that causes a problem, as when I go to the bank to gain access to our safety deposit box. I can never remember which signature I am supposed to match. 

My poor penmanship must be in my genes, for Dan as well has a signature where only the “D” is legible. I used to think Ellie’s signature was decipherable, but since she got married and changed her middle and last names, she too has channeled me, and I know what she’s supposed to be writing. 

Blame, or Praise, Me: If you're wondering why there hasn't been any snow this month, I have an explanation. In my quest for the perfect snow shovel I recently bought a wheeled shovel, good for up to six inches of flakes. I eagerly awaited the next snowfall to test out my purchase. 

Naturally the power(s) to be have thwarted my ability to test drive this model by spritzing rain on us versus snow. I hope you all appreciate this gift I have given you, unless, of course, you like shoveling snow and skidding along on snow-covered streets.

Recalls From Hell: Here are headlines over press releases you really don’t want to have to issue if you run a company:

“Columbia Sportswear Reannounces Its Recall of Batteries Sold With Jackets Due To Fire Hazard”

“High-Pressure Scuba Diving Air Hoses Recalled by A-Plus Marine Due to Drowning Hazard”

Sewer Commissions and Other Noteworthy Beats

Over the course of many years as a journalist I’ve been approached by numerous students and recent graduates enamored with the idea of becoming a reporter. In the late 1970s and into the 1980s, I attributed it to the Woodward and Bernstein effect. Everyone wanted to be a crusading investigative reporter, exposing their own Watergate scandal to topple an administration. In the most recent decade interest in journalism has been jump-started by the Internet. With a laptop, or even a smart phone, anyone who could master technology could become an on-the-spot reporter.

When asked about the profession, I would counsel that most practitioners struggle to make a living, that the life of most reporters is one of drudgery, of going to one sewer commission meeting after another. Not that sewer commission meetings aren’t important. They are extremely vital to homeowners who desire to rid themselves of septic tanks by hooking up to the municipal waste system. It’s just not a very glamorous beat. 

But leave it to Linda Greenhouse, the former Supreme Court reporter and current blogger for The NY Times, and now a senior fellow at Yale Law School, to plumb the depths of a sewer commission dispute from Indianapolis to cast some perspective on how the Court may rule in the most important case before it, the validity of health care reform commonly called Obamacare. She doesn’t project how the Court will rule, but her analysis is intriguing. Here it is: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/13/when-enough-is-enough/

Weariness has overtaken me. Though an admitted political junkie, I need a break from the never-ending cycle of presidential election news, especially when Romney refuses to provide specifics about his programs and the press lets him get away with it, the most recent case being their inability to pin him down on whether he would repeal Obama’s executive action not to deport under-30 illegal immigrants brought into the United States by their parents when they were young. Barring any action that may demand immediate commentary, I plan to step back from tossing more pabulum onto the pap pile until the nominating conventions. 

I’ll be more than mildly surprised if I adhere to this intention. Perhaps to make up for leaving you with less than a complete plate of political goodies, I’ll link you to commentaries I find interesting (in other words, ones I agree with). Here’s the first, from Timothy Egan: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/14/the-clown-and-the-cop/

If I’m not going to write about politics, will sports assume more importance? Nah, but I do have to admit I was guilty a few weeks ago of not remembering the baseball season is a marathon, not a sprint. Back on May 22 I lamented how long a season it might be considering how poorly the NY Yankees were playing. 

Fast forward to today. The Yankees are in first place in the American League East. They’ve won eight in a row. Their pitching has been exceptional. As soon as they really start hitting (that means you A-Rod, Teixeira and Martin), they have a real shot at justifying their big salaries. Saturday they finally won a game without the benefit of a home run. The summer is looking better with each passing day. 

California Winds, Elvis and Nixon

Gilda and I got caught up, actually, grounded would be a more appropriate word, in the Santa Ana winds that pummeled Southern California Wednesday night. The winds knocked out power to Los Angeles International Airport just as we approached the terminals in the rental car shuttle. Suddenly all the street and traffic lights went out, as did the lights in the buildings inside and outside the airport.

For almost an hour we waited inside a terminal lit by just a few overhead lights powered by emergency systems. We were taking the night flight back to JFK in New York. It was supposed to land around 5 am Thursday, early enough for us to beat the rush hour traffic on our way home to recuperate before Gilda goes back to work Friday. But as the delay endured, I realized we would land in the heart of rush hour. I also realized we might not get out because aircraft coming into LAX would be diverted because of the power failure. Indeed, Jet Blue personnel at first asked us to go down to the baggage area to board buses to take us to Long Beach Airport where our diverted plane was headed. After 15 minutes or so of waiting for buses, Jet Blue reversed course and told us to go back upstairs as the plane had reverted to its original destination once power had been restored.

Controlled chaos ensued. Imagine your worse day at the airport, trying to get through the security check. Or imagine the longest serpentine line at Disney World. We finally took off two hours late. I barely slept during the flight. Gilda didn’t sleep at all. The only consolation for us was that the passenger for the middle seat in our row never showed up so we had room to spare. And when we arrived at JFK our luggage was among the first to come down the shute. The ride back to Westchester, however, was just as I feared, almost continuous traffic.

During our trip to Los Angeles, the main purpose being attending the wedding of my sister’s oldest child, Ari, I accomplished a feat I’d venture to say few if any of you have—I can now claim to be among the chosen who have visited the birth homes of both Elvis Presley and Richard M. Nixon.

Elvis was born in Tupelo, Miss., in a two-room house. I had traveled to Tupelo with one of my advertising salesmen. We were early for an appointment, so we played tourist to see where the King’s life began. It was truly humble surroundings.

Visiting Nixon’s birthplace was an intended tourist stop. Gilda and I planned a few extra days in LA after the wedding to avoid any travel delays from the long Thanksgiving weekend (ha!). We chose to go to Yorba Linda and the Nixon Library and Museum because of the new Watergate exhibit rather than visit the Reagan Library in Simi Valley.

Nixon’s birth home is part of the compound. Standing on the very spot where his father built it from a kit, it is a modest home of some 900 square feet. The Nixon boys lived in the attic, now off limits to visitors because of the low ceiling. As his mother rarely threw out anything, almost everything displayed in the house was original to the family.

The presidential museum itself is impressive in appearance but with the exception of the Watergate wing is mostly a whitewashed history of the 37th president. You might be wondering why a facility dedicated to the memory of Richard Nixon would be so honest about his downfall. It’s because the museum no longer is privately run by friends and supporters of the Nixon, but rather, it is part of the National Archives. Watergate was the first exhibit area government historians and archivists worked on. Here’s an interesting article contrasting the Nixon and Reagan libraries: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/13/us/13libraries.html?ref=richardmilhousnixon

Number Two's Plus More Amazing Hacker-Gate News

During Saturday’s NY Yankees-Oakland Athletics game, a 4-3 loss, announcers Michael Kay and Paul O’Neill wondered aloud why Yanks manager Joe Girardi removed pitcher A.J. Burnett in the sixth inning after he had loaded the bases with two outs. After all, they bantered, Burnett is your number two pitcher. Why wouldn’t you let him work his way out of the trouble he himself created?

What Yankee team have they been watching this year (or last year, for that matter)? Burnett might be their second highest paid starter, but he has not shown he is their number two pitcher when on the mound. If the playoffs were to begin today, Burnett would be my fourth starter, behind C.C. Sabathia, Freddy Garcia and Bartolo Colon. (Burnett’s record and steadiness last year were so suspect he didn’t even pitch in the playoffs.)

This year Burnett is 8-8 with a 4.21 ERA.; Garcia is 8-7 with a 3.21 ERA; Colon 7-6 with a 3.29. Clearly the team has a better chance of winning when a pitcher gives up fewer runs per nine innings. I’d even pitch Ivan Nova over Burnett. Though currently in the minor leagues, Nova posted an 8-4 record and a 4.12 ERA before being sent down to accommodate Phil Hughes’ return from the disabled list.


More on Number 2: Yankee fans griped earlier this week on sports radio about Derek Jeter’s lack of pressure hitting. They demanded his demotion from the lead-off or number two spot in the batting order, citing his failure in the Tampa Bay series to repeatedly knock in runs in critical situations.

It’s true, Jeter is not the same clutch hitter of his youth. Compared to other lead-off hitters in baseball, he’s smack-dab in the middle when you look at batting average, runs batted in, runs scored and on-base percentage. Hardly any crazed Yankee fan can accept mediocrity.

But let’s not forget that baseball is a nine-man game. In two out of the last four contests, one run losses to Tampa Bay and Oakland, Jeter had three important late inning hits his teammates failed to convert into runs. Against the Rays he doubled into left center field but was stranded. Against the A’s he twice got into scoring position, first by doubling in the 7th inning and then by singling, stealing second and tagging up to third in the 9th. Jeter’s value has always been as a table setter. The Yankee captain, who wears #2 on his uniform, did his job, but baseball is a quirky game. The Yanks who scored 17 runs Friday night barely mustered 3 on Saturday afternoon. All too often, individual accomplishments are wasted by the inefficiency of your teammates. In today’s game, Jeter knocked in an important seventh run in the bottom of the eighth.

Bottom line: Over the long haul, Jeter remains a positive force high up in the batting order, whether first or second.

Bases Loaded: I finally heard an announcer give the record of a pitcher facing the bases loaded. In today’s Yanks-A’s game, Michael Kay noted batters hit .250 against Mariano Rivera in such situations, as the incomparable reliever tried to close out his 25th save of the season against the stubborn Athletics. Josh Willingham promptly singled to left to narrow the Yankee lead to 7-5. Mo and the Yanks escaped with a victory despite the next batter’s scalding line drive because it fortuitously went directly to Mark Teixeira who stepped on first to double-up Willingham for a game-ending double play. It was Rivera’s 15th consecutive year with at least 25 saves.


Hacker-Gate Update: It’s not baseball-related, but I couldn’t wait to post this. Last week I commented how Hacker-Gate had similarities to Watergate (http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2011/07/murdoch-most-vile.html). Maybe I was stretching a little, but the comparison continues to be bizarrely appropriate.

Word came Friday about the firing of another Murdoch editor because of the hacking scandal. If you haven’t heard or read about it, you might not believe your eyes. His name—Matt Nixson!!! (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/21/matt-nixson-news-of-the-world-the-sun)

Don’t you just love the way the British spell their names? Hacker-Gate's Andrew Coulson vs. Watergate's Chuck Colson. Matt Nixson vs. Richard Nixon. Is there a Deane waiting in the wings?