Ratbang Diary

Role Models

2012-02-13T09:28:00.000-05:00

Whitney Houston died on Saturday, February 11th at age 48.

She’s being touted as a role-model for young black girls.

I never liked Charles Barkley when he was a Philadelphia Seventy-Sixer, or ever, actually. I always thought he was a smart-mouth arrogant asshole. But I loved one of his quotes: When media idiots called him a role-model he said, “I'm not a role model... Just because I dunk a basketball doesn't mean I should raise your kids.”

Similarly, just because Whitney Houston could sing and became a pop-music idol does not mean she is a role model for youngsters. She was a talented singer, and a not-too-bad actress. But she also was an unstable drug-addict who needed to go into rehab time-after-time.

Ignoring her flaws and calling her a role model reminds me of a comment I recently received on Facebook. I had roundly decried a chain-letter type post. The postee commented that if I didn’t like something, I should just ignore it.

Ignoring things we do not like is neither helpful nor effective.

We cannot opt to pick-and-choose character attributes when we call people role models for our youngsters.

Role models for adults are different from role models for kids. An adult who has been in jail and who has become a pillar of his community, or a recovered drug-addict may very well be seen as a role model for adults with similar problems. But to point to Whitney Houston who never conquered her demons and say she is a role model for young black girls makes celebrity a god and excuses egregiously bad life choices as mere peccadilloes.

And another thing…must we suffer through days and days and days of media attention on celebrities or well-known people who die? I was sick of Joe Paterno before he died. The blockbuster media death orgies for him made me hate him. I have found Whitney Houston's life tiresome for many years. I don’t like her any better now that I cannot escape the media's obsession with her death.

Cardinal Egan Asks for Do-over on Apology

2012-02-08T11:20:00.000-05:00

Ten years ago, When Edward M. Egan was Archbishop of New York, he did the right thing and offered an apology regarding how the Roman Catholic church handled sex-abuse cases in the states of New York and Connecticut. His post had previously been in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

In his 2002 apology, Egan said: “It is clear that today we have a much better understanding of this problem. If in hindsight we also discover that mistakes may have been made as regards prompt removal of priests and assistance to victims, I am deeply sorry.”

It was a bit weasel-worded with that “mistakes may have been made” nonsense, but still, it was an apology that needed to be made and was made.

Now, today, the New York Times reported that Cardinal Egan who is 79 and retired in 2009 has taken back his apology. In an interview in the February issue of the Connecticut magazine, Egan said, “I never should have said that, I don’t think we did anything wrong.” The NYT said Egan denied many things in the article that were facts. For instance he stated that no sex abuse had occurred on his watch in Bridgeport. Egan told the Connecticut magazine “I never had one of these sex abuse cases. If you have another bishop in the United States who has the record I have, I’d be happy to know who he is.” In fact, Cindy L. Robinson, a lawyer whose firm represented Bridgeport abuse victims, said that more than 90 sex abuse accusations were made to authorities while Egan was Bishop in Bridgeport from 1988 to 2000.

I don’t believe this denial is due to senility on Egan’s part. Just as substituting lies for facts in political parties cannot be blamed on senility

What is happening is that members of elite groups are not aware they can no longer lie with impunity. They are not aware, for reasons of not wanting to be aware or for reasons of not being savvy regarding Internet technology, that lies and denials will be caught out and proved wrong in the blink of an eye.

Egan now looks like a idiot being manipulated by the Vatican. Which may or may not be true. But we will know shortly…within seconds, I have no doubt.

Banning Cell Phones in Cars

2011-12-14T12:20:00.000-05:00

When people say our lives were simpler sixty years ago, they mean it was easier to remain unthinking and ignorant sixty years ago. It was easier to live unexamined lives sixty years ago. Sixty years ago we were not faced daily with opinions and facts that were diametrically opposed to our own. We could have black and white beliefs about the world and have those beliefs corroborated by our like-thinking neighbors, like-thinking politicians, and like-thinking newspapers. We could go for months on end without having our beliefs refuted or challenged.

This was a choice sixty years ago.

And many people opted for this choice. Those that didn’t decide to remain ignorant had complicated lives sixty years ago, just as we do today.

The topic of banning the use of cell phones by vehicle drivers has come up due to a study by the National Transportation Safety Board. The study reports that cell phone use causes distractions and these distractions are causing accidents on the road. Therefore, all cell phone use by vehicle drivers should be banned,.

The people against the ban say that hands-free cell-phone use is as safe for drivers as when they talk to a passenger.

But a complicating factor needs to be studied before a course can be set regarding vehicle drivers and their use of cell phones.

What area of the brain is used when hands-free cell phones are used by drivers? Is it a different area of the brain in use than when drivers talk to passengers? And if it is a different area, is the use of this area of the brain more likely to be a distraction than when a driver talks to a passenger?

The larger question, of course, is: How ignorant do we want to be in this technology-driven world?

Or, put another way: How ignorant can we afford to remain and not kill ourselves off sooner than the Cosmos has already ordained?

Pearl Harbor

2011-12-07T13:39:00.005-05:00

I do remember Pearl Harbor.

I was ten years old when the news came. It was Sunday. Every Sunday afternoon, my dad drove my sister and me downtown to the Paxton, Illinois movie house. We each had a quarter to pay for the show and a nickel for Milk Duds. My sister was 13 then. She was getting old to be with her little sister on a Sunday afternoon. Still, it was something to do. Tony Fratia was the manager. He took the tickets and stood at the back of the theater when we came out and smiled and shook people’s hand when they said, “Nice picture, Tony,” or “Good show”.

I don’t remember the movie we saw on December 7, 1941. I just remember that it was cold and rainy/snowy, and that when dad picked us up, he said, almost as soon as we got in the car, “The Japs bombed Pearl Harbor”.

I wasn’t sure who the Japs were or where Pearl Harbor was. But I was very sure that something awful had happened. My dad hated President Roosevelt like poison. But we all sat around the radio at noon the next day, very solemn and with respect while Roosevelt made his “day of infamy” speech and declared war against Japan. A few days later, we sat around the radio again and listened as Roosevelt declared war against Germany on December 11, 1941.

On a day-to-day basis, the wars probably affected Paxton less than many communities. We had rationing. But ours was a farming community, and I don’t remember going without anything. We felt only a little deprived of gasoline, meat and sugar. We had a black and white “A” gas rationing sticker on the car windshield. That meant we were among the many who got the least gas. But we didn’t go many places anyway. And we started using oleo instead of butter. The oleo came in white chunks that had a capsule of yellow dye included. Actually, I loved oleo days. My mom would churn up the white chunk and the dye capsule in the Mixmaster so it looked like butter. I couldn’t stand the taste unless it had plenty of sugar and cinnamon mixed in. But the good part was that after mom put the yellow oleo in a container, she made a cake out of the oleo sticking to the sides of the bowl.

People were always giving my dad things in exchange for I don’t know what. Dad had a great personality. He looked like Gary Cooper and he knew the names of all 2700 people living in Paxton. He was a cashier in the First National Bank, and I know he wasn’t giving away free samples. But what he did for people that made them give him sugar and meat, I don’t know. I think it was little things, like helping old people figure out their bank statements or giving people more of a grace period than their loan agreements allowed, but I’m not sure.

People put a fringed flag in their window with a red star in the middle when a son enlisted or was drafted. Occasionally, the red stars changed to gold stars when they were killed. It didn’t happen often, but often enough to remind us in grade school that there was a war on.

I listen to old-time radio shows on XM-Sirius. The ones that ran during the war years still include PSA’s about buying bonds and remembering to turn in lard for the war effort. To this day, I don’t know what lard was used for in making ammunition. But I remember collecting containers of lard and grease with my friend Marilyn. We went around our neighborhood on Saturdays with her red wagon and collected lard, then we took the containers to a war-effort center downtown. It made us feel good.

To run a really good war, the enemy has to be demonized. Our Defense Department did that and does that, in spades. As kids, we loved to hate the Japanese and Germans. From the time I was 10 until I was in college I was very standoffish about people with Asian eyes or a German accent. I think I started to realize how illogical that was when I worked closely with Doug Kimura in an art-supply store at the University of Illinois. Doug was one of the most attractive, funny, warm-hearted men I have ever known. And he sounded like he’d been born in Iowa, which he probably had been.

My mom’s biggest fear during the forties was that my sister or I would get pregnant by a sweet-talking soldier in nearby Chanute Field. The air force base was in Rantoul, just 12 miles south of Paxton, straight down Route 45. And it’s true, I did walk along Railroad Avenue rather than take another route home from the stores on Main Street because there were always convoys of soldiers rumbling down the highway, and I would get whistled at. But I don’t think mothers knew how pragmatic and independent the war had made their daughters. At least some of us had decided our lives would be on our terms, whatever that entailed.

The wars became a way of life for us kids. There were daily reminders on the radio, in the newspapers or at the moviehouse where “The News of the Day” ran just before the feature. But we adapted our lives to the far-away atrocities. And even as the Honor Roll down at the Legion Hall got longer and longer, our lives had a familiar, secure, hum-drum, day-to-dayness until May 8th 1945 when VE Day was announced. And finally VJ Day arrived on August 15, 1945.

I was 14. And NEVER would my mom have allowed me to go to a party with my sister under normal circumstances. But Mom just said, “Go ahead”, and even though my sister wasn’t thrilled about having a tag-along to a major party…it was VEEJAY DAY!!!!

And the party was one hell of a blow-out. And yes, soldiers from Rantoul had heard about it. Turns out, the telephone was just as effective back then as Facebook and Twitter. And there was beer, there was kissing, there was fumbling and groping and truth to tell, this fourteen-year-old was all-eyes and a little scared. Funnily, I didn’t drink any alcohol. I am positive it was because of an adventure I had when I was eight years old while my folks were out shopping. I found my dad’s cache of homemade wine and stole a Kool cigarette from my mom’s stash. And I had a little party. I just barely got myself cleaned up and out of the bathroom by the time they came home. It was quite a few years before I tried booze again.

Of course, the whole world has learned a thing or two since Pearl Harbor Day. We’ve become cynical. We’ve learned that no war, no fighting anywhere is about freedom or human rights and protecting the homeland.

We’ve finally learned that all wars are about enriching people, particularly those in positions of power who can start wars. We’ve learned that no war anywhere is worth the costs in men and material except to the powerful people who get enriched because they started the war in the first place. What we haven't learned is how to keep powerful people from starting wars to enrich themselves.

We’ve learned that people in power tell powerful lies. We've learned that all people in power tell lies.

And though it’s tempting to look back 70 years and idealize the “good wars”, we know that we were being lied to back then too.

Bush Administration Lies Still Haunting Lives

2011-11-07T10:41:00.004-05:00

On November 6th, the long-running CBS news magazine “60 Minutes” featured a segment called ‘”Operation Proper Exit”. It was about a program to return soldiers to Iraq who have experienced profound psychological problems caused by their deployment(s) to Iraq. The reasoning behind this program is that many of the soldiers were medevacked out of Iraq and either in shock or under anesthesia and they never had a chance to mentally sort things out. Many Iraq vets in the throes of post-traumatic stress flashbacks are unable to let go of their anxieties. It is believed that returning to Iraq will alleviate these agonies.

One of the soldiers interviewed was Cpl Steven Cornford who went to Iraq when he was 18 in 2007. He is now 22. He wept during the whole interview and was clearly still having severe problems due to his time in Iraq. His depression and distress was caused by his witnessing the death of his friend—a death he says he should have been able to prevent. He returned to Iraq under the “Operation Proper Exit” and feels it has been helpful. He said he is not as angry, not as “snappish”, more kindly to his wife and family, and not as furious with those around him that he sees as “complainers”.

The worst part of watching this young man who is still so horrifyingly damaged by his stint in Iraq was hearing him say that he gets mad at people in the United States who complain about their lot because, he said, “They just go about their daily lives, while there's still people dyin' every day. For them.”

And this young man obviously believes that the reason the United States inserted itself in the affairs of Iraq was in order to protect Americans in the United States from the threat posed by Iraq.

Perhaps it is necessary for severely damaged veterans to believe that the reason they lost limbs, eyesight, and are not in their right mind is because they were fighting a predator that was intent on crushing the American way of life…a predator like Hitler’s Third Reich.

But this, of course, is not true.

Can these vets allow themselves to realize that they were in Iraq so that Vice President Dick Cheney could enrich himself by selling equipment of war through his Halliburton Company? Can they allow themselves to realize that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld went along with the lies about weapons of mass destruction in order to once again feel the testosterone surge of being involved in the glories of WAR? Can they let themselves understand that George W. Bush and all the neocons were in Iraq in order to steal Iraq’s oil resources for the benefit of the United States and in order to gain a foothold in the Middle East? Can these vets allow themselves to know they ruined their lives for nothing more than to make little men feel powerful and to get rich?

Can these vets allow themselves to know that the war in Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with protecting Americans or protecting the United States?

Both Cheney and Rumsfeld have recently come out with books about their time in the Bush administrations. “In My Time” has been written by the insane and sick warmonger Dick Cheney with the help of his daughter Liz. And “Known and Unknown” is the product of the war-loving but ultimately bumbling, past-his-prime Donald Rumsfeld. If these two men are able to justify and even glorify the fact that they and George W. Bush killed, maimed and ruined the lives of thousands and thousands of young men and women for no good reason, then they are luckier than men like Steven Cornford, who live every day with the horrors they wrought.

Booze and Breast Cancer Risk

2011-11-02T12:46:00.002-04:00

The New York Times article about drinking and breast cancer in the NYT “Well” Department this morning is so annoying.

But first, let me say that all cancer coverage being hyped in the news these days is annoying. Take for instance a recent Jennifer Aniston ad. She wants us to buy a T-Shirt because, she says in the beginning of the ad, the money will help find a cure for cancer. But at the end of the ad, she says “100% of the money will go to fighting cancer”.

Fighting cancer and finding a cancer cure are two different things. Fighting cancer is giving money to pharmaceuticals for their chemo drugs, giving money to huge hospitals for radiation therapy, giving money to huge hospitals to fund their testing and technology departments.

Fighting cancer is not about finding a cure for cancer…far from it. Fighting cancer is about funding all the people and hospitals and doctors who are making a living off of cancer. Not that there is anything intrinsically wrong with that, but it’s not the same as devoting energy and technology to finding a cancer cure. And ignoring the difference or exploiting the difference in confusing ways is unconscionable.

This morning, we read in the NYT that a new study at the Harvard Medical School has been “looking at the habits of more than 100,000 women over 30 years” which “adds to a long line of studies linking alcohol consumption of any kind” to breast cancer risk. The study has concluded that if a woman has more than three drinks a week of alcohol of any kind, she’s at risk for breast cancer.

The article has a few caveats. For instance, it says: “Like much of the previous research on alcohol’s risk and benefits, the new study was observational and lacked a control group, and it drew from self-reports, which can be unreliable. Nor was it able to determine whether changing one’s drinking habits over time – drinking a lot early on, for example, and then stopping at age 50 – made any difference.”

Another red light re the reliability of the study was: “Among the factors women will have to consider, experts say, are family history of heart disease and cancer, as well as their use of hormone therapies like estrogen. Alcohol may increase the risk of breast cancer in part by raising a woman’s levels of estrogen, the authors said.”

Translation in layman’s language: THE STUDY IS FLAWED.

This study is like saying 100,000 women ate pickles three times a week for 30 years and two-thirds of the women have developed colon cancer; we think there may be a connection but we’re not sure how many of the women were being treated for colon diseases or had a family history of cancer; however, we conclude that eating any kind of pickle puts women at risk for colon cancer.

How about if the women in the Harvard Study started drinking because their doctors put them on estrogen therapy and the side effects were causing angst and depression? How about if there is no connection between booze and breast cancer but all the women in the study drank moderately and had a family history of cancer? How about if many of the women didn’t tell the truth and there was no way of checking their veracity?

How about if researchers exercised some caution and restraint before publishing conclusions that are suspect?

The Aftermath…The Real Problem

2011-10-18T10:27:00.003-04:00

An editorial in the October 18th issue of the New York Times (“Republicans and Foreign Policy”) states that “Accusing President Obama of being weak or refusing to lead is ludicrous when you consider all he has done to repair the damage his predecessor did to America’s standing in the world.”

None of the Republican presidential candidate frontrunners are coming close to a viable foreign policy platform, the editorial concluded.

At a recent debate, Texan Rick Perry was asked what he would do if the Taliban took control of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. Perry jumbled up names and facts, the NYT said, “and ended up accusing Washington of refusing to sell F-16s to India, which actually had declined to buy the combat planes.”

Herman Cain said a leader does not need to know the names of people who run places like “Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan”. But apparently Cain doesn’t know that although Uzbekistan’s President Karmov is a tyrant with a woeful human rights legacy he allows America to use Uzbekistan as a supply route to Afghanistan.

Romney wants to increase defense spending but gives no idea how. Hunstsman wants the US out of Afghanistan right away, while Senator Santorum wants the US to mount an aggressive push to win, but gives no clue as to how the US is to do that. Neither Perry nor Romney give an indication as to when or if they would get troops home, the NYT said.

The aftermath always brings with it a stew of recrimination, complicity and hopeful alliances that may or may not work out. Back in the 1960’s, everyone was waiting for Madman genius Jerry Della Femina to come up with a blockbuster idea at a brainstorming session his first day working on a Panasonic ad campaign. Finally he said, “I've got it!” How about 'From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor.'"

All of us, including the Occupy Wall Street folks, would love to see Obama solve the problems of the aftermath of the Bush administrations. But he didn’t and he hasn’t. However, claiming that he caused the problems is silly and not productive. A simple statement from the Repubs that they don’t know how to get themselves, us and the world out of the mess their guys caused, would be the most healing and positive thing they could do.

Will they do it?

Of course not.

AMA’s Biggest Problem: Doing Harm

2011-10-10T09:56:00.005-04:00

The American Medical Association, which had its inception in 1844, has a mission. It is to: promote the art and science of medicine for the betterment of the public health, to advance the interests of physicians and their patients, to promote public health, to lobby for legislation favorable to physicians and patients, and to raise money for medical education.

Doctors and healthcare workers take a Hippocratic Oath which states that above all, doctors are to do no harm.

However, the truth is that in 2011, the AMA has but one aim. And that is to enrich itself and physicians and hospitals. And the AMA doesn't give a damn about doing nothing but harm to patients.

Yesterday, I heard from three friends who underscore the reality of the above statement.

Friend No. 1

Her cancer has returned after five years of having no recurrence. Her physician is demanding that she undergo a toxic series of chemotherapy which may prove to be so debilitating and horrendous that permanent impairment or death could ensue. My friend, who has made a second career of researching her own disease, wants to try radiation therapy, but her doctor is adamant and will only advocate chemotherapy.

Friend No. 2

Obeying her doctor’s advice over this past weekend, she entered a hospital in her city to have her heart medications changed. However, during a test, the artery to her heart was “nicked by accident”. She went into cardiac arrest; her chest had to be opened in order for the damage to be repaired and for her heart to be restarted.

Friend No. 3

A few months ago, he fell and broke his hip while walking to a grocery store. Nine-One-One was called. He was transported to a hospital (not of his choosing) where an emergency hip transplant was performed. Now it has been discovered that the physician who did the transplant neglected to insert a necessary washer to keep the device from abrading a bone. My friend will go into the hospital this week to have this oversight corrected. He is in his eighties.

In case you are not aware of it, EMT’s answering a 911 cannot go to specific hospitals, but only to hospitals their ambulance company requires. And they cannot recognize preferences as to “do not resuscitate” since their oath says they must save lives no matter what it entails and no matter how ill-advised in reality.

The AMA has made unconscionable pacts with the pharmaceutical industry so that all physicians prescribe drugs to all patients, whether necessary or not, whether safe or not, and which often have side effects more deleterious than the disease being treated.

The aim of the AMA is to have all persons (including babies) under a doctor’s care and on some sort of drug therapy FOREVER.

All doctors are advising all patients to undergo expensive tests that are unnecessary, thus driving up the cost of healthcare and enriching doctors and hospitals.

The main problem with healthcare in the United States is not that there are no adequate affordable health insurance plans—which also can be laid at the door of physicians and hospitals—but the main problem with healthcare in the United States is the avarice of doctors and hospitals that are greedy and immoral and doing horrendous harm.

And by the way, if you think the medical community is avidly trying to find a cure for cancer, it is not. Cancer is too lucrative to doctors, the pharmaceutical industry, hospitals and auxiliary organizations to have it cured and no longer in our lives.

I believe if a cure for cancer were found, the person who made the discovery would be either discredited or murdered. There is a frightening similarity between the Vatican and the AMA.

Where Is Ed Rollins Going Now?

2011-09-20T12:02:00.000-04:00

It’s clear that Ed Rollins, who was the brains (well, some of the brains) behind Nixon, Reagan, Bush-the-First, and Ross Perot, has totally decamped from no-brains Michele Bachmann’s campaign. Rollins is still listed as a Bachmann “senior advisor” and he cited the usual suspect—health reasons—as to why he stepped down from the day-to-dayness of keeping Bachmann from killing her own campaign with her stupidity. Still, the NYT reported this morning that he told Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC, that Mrs. Bachmann does not have the money or resources to compete with her better-financed rivals, Mitt Romney and Rick Perry.

“Right now,” Rollins said, “she’s competing hard in Iowa, but she doesn’t have the ability or resources to go beyond Iowa at this point in time, where Perry and Romney can go into South Carolina, Arizona and other places.”

The NYT said Rollins had pinpointed Bachmann’s biggest roadblock to winning the Republican nomination. The NYT did not say that she can’t get the dough to go further than Iowa because people are realizing what a total know-nothing and loose cannon she is.

So, okay, Rollins’s reasoning is pretty elemental. But, as the NYT notes, why is Rollins making these statements now?

Where is he going? And what candidate is he going to be using his "guerilla campaign" tactics on? Stay tuned.

Malaprop Michele Blunders Away

2011-09-16T11:22:00.000-04:00

To paraphrase Calvin Trillin about George W. Bush, obliviously on she sails.

Whether Michele Bachmann will have malapropped herself into an entire book of gaffes, misstatements, flubs, slip-ups and outright lies before she gets the bad-act hook, only the GOP backroom boys know.

Her latest effort to show she is capable of being on equal footing with presidential candidates Texas Governor Rick Perry and Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, had her claiming that Perry issued an order for Texas schoolgirls to be vaccinated against a sexually transmitted virus and that the vaccination caused mental retardation.

In fact, Perry’s order never was enacted because the Texas legislature decided against it. Bachmann made her mental retardation claim after talking to a woman who said her daughter got the vaccination and then became retarded. Experts quickly said there is no evidence whatsoever linking the vaccine to mental retardation.

No attempt was made by Bachmann to check out the woman or her statement. And Bachmann’s minders either didn’t know she was going to blurt out her non-fact on Fox News and NBC’s “Today” show, or they didn’t care.

Even folks close to the campaign who spoke to the New York Times on the condition of anonymity say Bachmann is influenced by the last person she talks to.

In attempting to put the best face on Bachmann’s shoot-from-the-hip habit of making uninformed statements, the members of her staff who are paid to clean up her messes, say she is “real”, “driven” “emotional” and “impulsive”.

Great. Just the kind of president we need in this age when our biggest enemies are also real, driven, emotional, impulsive, and ignorant.

Add to that, after particularly tense situations, our Mrs. Malaprop winds up in the hospital with severe migraine attacks requiring medication (read, knockout drops).

Bachmann said recently that little girls who have a negative reaction to the papillomavirus vaccination don’t get a do-over.

Hey! Neither do we if a president makes an asshole statement and the conversation leads to a nuclear attack.

Well, I’m just saying…because Michele Bachmann hasn’t a prayer to become president or dog-catcher. But I wonder what the GOP is going to do to rid itself of its prime clown act?

Enter Sarah Palin.

GAIL COLLINS NAILS IT

2011-09-08T09:54:00.003-04:00

Collins’s New York Times op/ed tagline this morning: “It is the genius of the Republican Party in recent decades that it continually selects candidates who make the ones who went before appear better. Remember how great George H.W. Bush seemed once we’d lived with his son for a while? And I have a strong suspicion that whoever the nominee is this time will make us yearn for the magic that was W.”

Collins column was about the Republican candidates’ first debate Wednesday night and the paucity of serious discussion. I didn’t watch it. Apparently, the big aim of all contenders is to be the front-runner in the Anyone But Romney horserace. Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, Jon Huntsman, Jr., Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul were participants in this first silly-season event.

And, of course, the candidate field is still open to the come-lately crowd. Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin are fidgeting in the wings, waiting for their big moment. Now that puppet-master Ed Rollins has ditched Bachmann, one wonders where he is going to land next. And who will Karl Rove bless with his encyclopedic knowledge of below-the-belt campaign tactics?

Already, we see ultra-conservative groups like the Liberty Institute in Texas coming out with erroneous facts about Obama. Today, it is saying it was Obama who passed legislation against groups offering unwanted prayers at veterans’ funerals against the family wishes. In fact, it was George W. Bush who enacted this ruling.

As we come closer to Sunday’s 10th anniversary of the 9-11 attack and the lugubrious, contentious, sentimental, fact-ignoring memorials that are sure to take possession of TV and cyberspace, let us not forget the woeful response of the leaders at the time. Particularly President George W. Bush who sat as though paralyzed and uncomprehending for seven minutes while he waited to be told what to do. And let us not forget the ways the Republican administration used the 9-11 attack and the lies it told in order to further its nefarious political aims.

The best memorial to 9-11 this Sunday would be to turn off our computers and TV, sit quietly at home or in church, offer prayers for the dead and contemplate making the world a more peaceful planet.

ED ROLLINS SIGNALS BACHMANN'S DEMISE

2011-09-06T09:38:00.003-04:00

Ed Rollins has worked for Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George Bush the First and Ross Perot. He joined Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann’s presidential campaign this past summer and guided her to a straw-poll victory in Iowa.

But the New York Times reported this morning that Rollins has stepped down from the “day-to-day operations” (health reasons were cited) and is now a senior advisor. Add to that, the fact that Rollin’s deputy David Polyansky is leaving the Bachmann campaign and campaign bullshit aside, the message is clear: Ed Rollins fulfilled his contract and has opted out.

But another message is even clearer: The GOP back-room boys are finished with Bachmann as their clown act so they gave Rollins the high sign

However, from the reports about the Republican presidential candidates’ Labor Day activities, the GOP is going to have to forge a more powerful platform than pro-forma grousing about Obama having single-handedly put the United States in the woeful situation it finds itself in.

Because that is not going to fly.

Too many journalists, Democrats and Republicans themselves know the blame for our collapse lies in the Republican Bush administration and the GOP itself.

And by the way, when “the Republican Party”: or “the GOP” is cited in any news report, it means the people pulling the strings and making the decisions in Republican political matters including the Tea Party. The Tea Party is another clown act that is just about to get a notice from the bosses about the rules of the game. Whether Sarah Palin can acquiesce to the requirements is a big question. But the GOP has made it clear Bachmann is out, fun-times are over and it will give Palin a chance to prove she has grown up enough to act like a real contender.

I'm betting she will blow it due to her narcissistic pathology because that's her nature.

BACHMANN WAS “JUST JOKING”

2011-08-30T12:29:00.000-04:00

Except she wasn’t.

On August 28th, when the rest of the Eastern Seaboard was either cleaning up after Hurricane Irene’s on-slaught or in the midst of it, Minnesota presidential candidate Michele Bachmann said during a campaign stop in Sarasota, Florida: "I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We've had an earthquake; we've had a hurricane. He said, 'Are you going to start listening to me here?"' Reuters reported that she made similar remarks elsewhere in Florida on Saturday.

This morning, Bachmann’s spokeswoman Alice Stewart said, "Of course she was saying it in jest.” And Bachmann added that anyone who knows her knows she has a great sense of humor.

This is pure gold—having it both ways.

Anyone who knows Bachmann knows she really believes that God is angry and that He is punishing earthlings for not listening to Him--that is to say, not listening to far-right religious fanatics like Michele Bachmann.

So on the right, the religious fanatics believe Bachmann is in their corner…which of course, she is. And now by claiming she was joking, she has pandered to her detractors on the left.

BTW, according to the Pew Report on religions in the USA, evangelical Christians (which include the far-right) make up about 26% of the population of people who claim a religious affiliation.

Can Bachmann have it both ways? No. But that’s not really the point regarding GOP politics in general and the next election in particular.

And this is the thing that Sarah Palin knows, which Bachmann doesn’t know or doesn’t care about: Until the GOP gets its platform straight and its candidates on-message, it needs distractions. Bachmann is a perfect distraction. Palin is not about to be turned into an official GOP distraction even though that is what she has made of herself anyway.

How smart are Bachmann and Palin? Do these women really want to be President of the United States? Do they really think they can be elected?

They both are smart in a basic egocentric way. They both see becoming President of the United States as a HUGE justification of self-worth. But neither woman is intelligent. Neither woman has had to be intelligent to get what she wants—material comfort and control.

And here is where we once again have been left with a garbage pile by the George W. Bush administrations.

Both Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin and their minders can look at an ignorant ne’er-do-well like George W. Bush and rightly assume that all one needs to do is get elected. After that, other people run the country.

When the dust clears, could Bachmann or Palin get elected? No. And oddly enough, in this modern day in the 21st century, the main thing against both Bachmann and Palin is not their ignorance or silliness or lack of knowledge about civics and running the country. The main thing against these women in the GOP is that they are women.

THIS IS YOUR REMINDER

2011-08-09T11:57:00.000-04:00

Lest you forget….

All the woes being experienced today were caused by the George W. Bush administrations from 2001 through 2009. The insane war and the money spent on a war that should not have happened; the collapse of the economy; the whole ball of wax was caused by GWB and Co.

And if by chance you do not take me seriously, take a gander at Joe Nocera's new opinion piece in the New York Times this morning, "While the Markets Swoon".

Nocera asks, "Has any president in American history left behind as much lasting damage as George W. Bush?" He goes on to say, "In addition to two unfinished wars, he also set us on the path to our current financial mess. The Bush tax cuts, which turned a surplus into a growing deficit, have been disastrous. As James Fallows pointed out in a prescient 2005 article in The Atlantic predicting a meltdown, they reduced tax revenue 'to its lowest level as a share of the economy in the modern era.' (In its downgrade report, S.& P. suggested that it did not believe that Congress would let the cuts expire at the end of 2012, as they’re supposed to.) Then, in 2003, Bush pushed through prescription drug coverage for Medicare recipients. David M. Walker, then the comptroller general, described 2003 as 'the most reckless fiscal year in the history of the Republic,' adding some $13 trillion in future entitlement costs."

And yet, presidential candidate and former governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney had the temerity yesterday to say that President Obama was "primarily responsible" for Standard and Poor’s downgrade of longterm federal debt. And even though the shortterm memory of the nation can so easily call to mind the gormless machinations of George W. Bush that virtually insured yesterday’s actions by S&P, Romney also was foolish enough to say: "I'm afraid the president (Obama) is just out of his depth when it comes to understanding how the private economy works."

And I am afraid Mitt Romney is out of his depth when it comes to understanding the speed with which the nation's comics are going to jump on his irresistible quotes.

THE MIGRAINES DILEMMA

2011-07-27T12:27:00.000-04:00

Ever since Michele Bachmann came out with her news on July 20th that she has incapacitating and debilitating migraines, everyone has been putting his oar in about the subject.

Me included. I have an article about it in Philadelphia’s “Broad Street Review”.

Predictably, there was a piece about migraines on July 26th in The New York Times Health section (“Migraine Miseries Push Patients in Ways of Coping” by Tara Parker-Pope).

As is to be expected, most people are defending the right of people with migraines to run for president on the grounds that migraines are treatable, and controllable with proper medications.

Migraines are treatable. But they can't be controlled. And there is no such thing as proper migraine medications.

There are diseases and conditions that are treatable and controllable and/or cured with proper medications: Diabetes, Hansen’s (leprosy), transplanted organs, epilepsy, psoriasis, some forms of cancer in some stages, lupus, MS in the early stages, HIV/AIDS and on and on.

But Lou Gehrig’s disease? No. Depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder? Yes, until the person goes off his meds or until the meds don’t work anymore. And then we have migraines, the disease that is now Number One on the “Defend This Disease” list.

Anyone (like me) writing about migraines and the fact (yes, fact) that no one with migraines should run for president, is not saying that migraine-sufferers are less worthy than the rest of the population.

What I am saying is this: Look at the disease and how it acts. All you doctors who are so hotly defending the medications available for migraines, take an honest look at what is happening to all the patients who are getting the best possible treatment for migraines. And what does one find?

One finds that doctors don’t know much about migraines. One finds there is no way to properly treat and control migraines. One finds that anyone afflicted with severe migraines will still have severe attacks of migraines no matter what medication is given.

One finds that most doctors who are treating migraines do not have migraines themselves. And I am not suggesting that any surgeon performing appendectomies should have performed an appendectomy on himself.

However, with migraines and the fact (yes, fact!) that so little is actually known about the malady, it would be helpful and instructive for the doctors who are treating migraines with such confidence and assurance, to at least know something firsthand about the disease they are treating.

Yesterday’s NYT column reported that, “Some migraine sufferers, including Ms. Bachmann, experience pain so severe they go the emergency room. But a recent review of emergency room doctors in Ontario found that patients were rarely treated with the proper drugs for migraine, according to a report last month in the journal Pain Research & Management…The data suggests that more education is needed.”

Well, that sounds fine and dandy. But the fact is (yes, fact), all drugs given for migraines are on a trial-and-error basis. To even suggest that there is a “proper” regimen, that there is a “proper” drug or combination of drugs, that there is a “proper” life-style that will keep migraines at bay is the worst kind of sophistry and fallacious hogwash.

There is no proper way to treat migraines. Whatever works, works. But anyone with migraines knows any treatment will not work all the time--it may work once and never again, and when it’s the worst possible time for a migraine to attack, that is when it will hit and that is the moment the drugs of choice--the oh-so-proper-combination--will not work.

In the NYT article, assistant professor of neurology at the John Hopkins Headache Center Dr. Satnam Nijjar, said, “If it’s not well controlled with the right combination of preventative or acute therapy, it can be very disabling. It’s probably the most common cause for time missed from work in the U.S.”

And Robert Dalton, executive director of the National Headache Foundation in Chicago, said that while migraines can be impairing, the larger problem is that many sufferers aren’t getting proper medical care. “What we want to make sure people understand,” Dalton said, “is that it’s a debilitating disease when it’s not managed properly.”

Nijjar and Dalton are just fooling themselves and desperately trying to fool you and all people who want to believe there is a way to properly manage migraines so that they don’t control one’s life.

There isn’t. At this point in time, there is no perfect, proper drug or combination of drugs and regimen for the management of migraines. Some drugs work some of the time, some drugs work for some people, some people take epilepsy drugs, some people stay away from bright lights, some people can’t drink red wine. But everyone who has severe migraines knows the day will come when they will be incapacitated and they simply will have to give in to their affliction, no matter what drugs their doctor deems proper.

And let it be said, it’s a rare doctor (and a rare patient with plenty of health insurance and cash in the bank) who will give a patient all the time he needs to explain the varied symptoms of migraines. More than a few doctors get really fed up with people whose migraines don’t succumb to the doctor’s drugs of choice, and more than a few doctors get really fed up with people with migraines.

So, at long last, here is my point.

Doctors may not want to tell you straight out and honestly, but, this is a fact: If we elect a person who has severe migraines to be our president, there will be a day when that president will have to abdicate his power to a lesser light because his migraine medications aren’t working and he is having a severe attack.

That is the day that president will be hugging a commode, vomiting his guts out, with a blinding headache and begging for relief or death. Or he will be in the hospital, sedated and uncomprehending.

In either scenario that president will not be able to transact White House business. And we who elected him will have had prior knowledge that the day would come, as surely as death, taxes and migraines, when a severe migraine would incapacitate, debilitate and cause that president to be useless.

WHO’S TAKING LESSONS FROM WHOM?

2011-07-20T11:32:00.000-04:00

It’s hard to know if Don Joseph Alois Ratzinger, aka Pope Benedict XVI, capo di tutti capi in the Vatican takes lessons from Don Rupert Murdoch, capo di tutti capi at World News, or the other way around. But whoever is the capo di tutti capi of evil-doers world-wide, it’s pretty obvious, lessons are being learned.

Yesterday, while being grilled by members of Parliament in London, the Murdoch Dons Rupert and James said they had no knowledge of any of the blatently illegal shenanigans going on at the Murdoch newspapers, and that they should not be blamed for the actions of underling miscreants.

Coincidentally, in Philadelphia yesterday, Archbishop Justin Rigali was sent packing in favor of a Native-American Archbishop Charles J. Chaput newly flown in from Denver.

Rigali was not driven out of Philadelphia because he had been at the center of the Philadelphia pedophile priest scandal—protecting and defending 21 pedophile priests who serially raped little boys during Rigali’s eight-year tenure. No. The Vatican says Rigali was 75 years old and therefore was required to resign.

In fact, no mention whatsoever was made yesterday of the scandal that has rocked the Philadelphia Roman Catholic community since 2005 when the first Grand Jury report became known. Rigali could have stemmed the tide of priest abuse at that time, but he chose instead to protect the priests until last February when another Grand Jury report made graphic and horrendous headlines about the magnitude of the vicious rapes of little boys by 21 priests--priests whose activities were known and protected by Justin Rigali.

Just as Rupert Murdoch allowed that yesterday was the “humblest day” of his life, Rigali made an obscure pass at alluding to his monstrous behavior by saying, “If I have offended anyone in any way, I am deeply sorry. I apologize for any weaknesses on my part in representing Christ and his church worthily and effectively.”

It’s impossible not to laugh at a sentence from Rupert Murdoch using the words “humble” and “my life”. It’s also impossible not to be incensed at Archbishop Rigali for suggesting he represents Christ in any capacity except unworthily.

Regarding the pedophile scandal in the RC church, Capo Ratz said in March 2010 that he “would not be intimidated by gossip”. On Monday when Scotland Yard assistant commisioner John Yates resigned because of his close ties with the Murdochs, Yates said, “huge amount of inaccurate, ill-informed and, on occasion, downright malicious gossip” had forced his resignation.

In the end, all criminals sound alike.

RUPERT AND RATZ

2011-07-19T16:23:00.000-04:00

Any chance the head of the notorious News Corporation Rupert Murdoch and the head of the notorious Roman Catholic Church Pope Benedict XVI aka Joseph Alois Ratzinger were twins separated at birth?

No, I suppose not. Ratz was born in Bavaria, Germany in 1927, and Rupert was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1931.

Still, their similarities are stunning. They both are ambitious beyond the ken of normally ambitious men. Neither one has an ingrained sense of right and wrong—they only know what feeds or damages their egos. Both men equate self-worth with the success of their corporations. Both men are viciously protective of their corporations. Both men are dictatorial, tyrannical and despotic.

I’m thinking both men have small-man’s disease. Info from the Vatican says Ratz is 5’7”. But I suspect that’s in heels…I mean, who would know what’s under those frocks? However, just try to find out Rupert’s height. Conjectures on Google run from the size of a giant toad, as in, 3’2” to 5’1”. What’s really wonderfully perfect is that this man who is so incredibly ugly inside and out has managed to keep his height out of the newspapers because of his vanity.

In any case, both Pope Ratz and Rupert Murdoch have jumped the shark.

Both men, at the peak of their power and influence, have done things so reprehensible that they can never regain their reputations or recover from their own self-inflicted wounds. It is fair to say that both men would not have engaged in their arrogant acts of coercion, oppression and intimidation had they not been psychotic in their need for power, and unconcerned with the extent to which they had become toxic and malevolent to gain that power.

Pope Ratz willingly and willfully harmed little children, intimidated underlings and faithful parishioners, lied and cheated in order to protect the reputation of the Roman Catholic Church and to protect his reputation during his climb to the top of his profession. There is no difference between Pope Ratz and Rupert Murdoch who has lied, cheated, intimidated and oppressed thousands of cohorts, coworkers and underlings in his climb to the top of his profession.

I firmly believe that both men have used the services of thugs, gangsters and murderers and have sacrificed the lives of little children to gain their unholy ends.

HERE IT IS...MICHELLE BACHMANN IN A NUTSHELL

2011-06-27T23:30:00.002-04:00

Bachmann (R-Minnesota) returned to Waterloo, Iowa on Monday June 27 where she spent the first 12 years of her life, in order to announce her presidential candidacy.

The last two paragraphs of the New York Times report on her Waterloo visit illustrate Bachmann’s grasp of facts, in general, her monumental stupidity, and are a microcosm in the macrocosm of why her candidacy is doomed.

As the NYT reported: “’John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa,’ Mrs. Bachmann told Carl Cameron of Fox News in an interview. ‘That’s the kind of spirit that I have, too.’

“The actor was actually born in Winterset, Iowa, which is about 150 miles southwest of Waterloo. It was John Wayne Gacy, known as the killer clown who raped and murdered 33 teenage boys in the 1970s, who lived in Waterloo.”

OH NO! COLUMBO HAS DIED!

2011-06-24T16:01:00.004-04:00

When I was Secretary (Executive Secretary, if you please) at the Actors Studio in New York, Peter Falk came in to sign up to do an audition.

I sat at a desk which was positioned at the far wall of the first room of the old church on West 44th Street where the Studio is located. This was in 1959-1960. I had to take the names of the people who wanted to audition and then inform them when the preliminary audition would take place. A lot of people signed up and never actually did the audition. If I remember rightly, Jake LaMotta was one of the no-shows…Raging Bull Jake LaMotta. It was always a treat to see the celebrities in the flesh.

I can’t remember what play or film Falk was doing at the time. He had been in The Circle in the Square’s production of O’Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh” in 1957, and he was in the film of Jean Genet’s “The Balcony” released in 1963. But anyway, I was pretty star-struck by him at the time, and I tried to be really cool when he came sauntering in.

The funny thing is, Peter Falk did three separate auditions at the Actors Studio. I’m pretty sure he passed the first audition each time, which meant he went on to a Final Audition in front of Gadg Kazan, Lee Strasberg and Cheryl Crawford. And he never got into the Studio.

I’d be the last one to be able to tell you what the criteria was for the Three Directors. It may have changed with the year. I remember when James Earl Jones was accepted. I remember when Ron Leibman got in. I even remember when little Peter (Bat) Masterson got in--he was adorable--his daughter is Mary Stuart Masterson.

And I definitely remember that Peter Falk did not get in. But I don’t know why. It may be that he did the auditions as a lark and only because one of his best friends, Ben Gazzara, was a Member. In any case, it will forever be a mystery to me that Peter Falk did not get into the Actors Studio, because he was a great actor with the best of them.

With the rest of the world, I greatly mourn Peter Falk’s passing.

The Lutheran Pastor Was Right

2011-05-31T18:58:00.006-04:00

Okay…what am I referring to?

There was a story in the “New York” section of the New York Times today--May 31, 2011--about a Lutheran Pastor’s daughter who now is a Rabbi in Brooklyn.

When the Lutheran Pastor’s daughter (Heidi Hoover by name) fell in love with Michael Rose, a Jew, she went to a Lutheran Pastor (not her father) to get counseling over the thorny issue.

The issue being their issue. That is to say, Michael Rose was just as in love with Heidi Hoover as she was with him, and he wanted their children to be raised as Jews.

So during the counseling session, Heidi asked the Pastor what God would think about her situation. And the Pastor said, “I don’t know what God thinks.”

Well, my dears, this infuriated Heidi. As quoted in the NYT story, she said, “I was very angry…I was like: ‘What’s God’s deal? How could God want two people who love each other to be kept apart?’”

And this circumstance lead to this-and-that, and now Heidi Hoover Rose is a rabbi in Brooklyn.

All of which is an interesting human interest story.

But the point is, the Lutheran Pastor was right. He said he didn’t know what God thinks.

There are a great many things that are taught in seminary. But the knowledge of what God thinks is not one of them. The certain knowledge of what one should do in any given situation because one knows, or an enlightened being knows, what God thinks about it, is not taught in any class or seminar in Christian God- schools.

I suspect it’s not taught in rabbinical school either, but I don’t know for sure.

When Moses married a Cushite woman, what did God think? We know Moses’ brother Aaron and sister Miriam were not pleased. But did they ask God what he thought, and did he tell them? We know many people's thoughts on the Cushite woman. We know that being a Cushite may not have been the deal-breaker we have thought it was. We even know that maybe the woman we thought was a Cushite wasn't a Cushite. But what God thought? We don't know.

If someone in Rabbi Hoover’s congregation asks, “What does God think about Sarah Palin?” Will Rabbi Hoover cite writings and ruminations from the past to indicate what men have thought God might think about people like Sarah Palin? Or will she kindly suggest that Sarah Palin is not a subject about which one can or should query God?

Or will she honestly say, “I don’t know what God thinks about anything.”

Why Mistrust Politics, Religion and the AMA?

2011-04-07T09:12:00.002-04:00

Because there is a common failing in the Big Three.

And it’s not because the practitioners are evil bastards out to corrupt humanity, which also may be true.

I was reminded of the nonsense going on in the Big Three when I read Gail Collins’ op/ed column (“Medicine on the Move”) in the New York Times this morning. Collins was commenting on the fact that the medical community has gone from falling down in awe of estrogen therapy for women, to loathing estrogen therapy, and now is back to a guarded love for estrogen therapy for some women, sometimes.

Likewise, the AMA has gone from loving calcium supplements to despising calcium supplements, from castigating eggs to absolving eggs of cholesterol crime, from loving mammograms to suspicion regarding mammograms, from hating coffee to prescribing it for elders.

And why are doctors so vacillating and so drug-therapy happy? Yes, of course, the whole AMA is in bed with the pharmaceutical industry, but that’s not the real reason its aim is to have every man, woman and child in the USA under a doctor’s care and on drugs.

The reason is: The people in the medical community want to make their patients and clients happy. They want to keep their jobs.

Which is exactly the reason you cannot trust anyone in politics--they want to keep voters voting for them.

And religious leaders want you in their religious edifices on the sabbath in order to keep their jobs.

Not that it’s necessarily a bad thing for these providers to want to keep on being providers. Who doesn’t want to keep his job so that the dough keeps coming in, so that the rent gets paid, so that food gets bought so that kiddies and constituents get fed?

But still…most of us have harbored the hope that people in politics, religion and medicine have a higher calling.

Forget about it. It’s not true. Get over it.

Keep fighting the good fight in politics. Keep on believing in God. Go to the doctor when you must.

But don’t for one minute think that the guys who profess to be the loyal messengers of religion, politics and medicine are in any way a cut above the rest of us as far as being vulnerable to lying, cheating, flattery and corruption.

These guys simply want to keep their jobs. Just like you and me.

Cardinal Rigali, and the Big Problem

2011-03-09T11:24:00.001-05:00

The New York Times reported this morning: “The Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced Tuesday that it had suspended 21 priests from active ministry in connection with accusations that involved sexual abuse or otherwise inappropriate behavior with minors…The announcement was a major embarrassment for Cardinal Justin Rigali, who, in response to the grand jury report, had initially said there were no priests in active ministry “who have an admitted or established allegation of sexual abuse of a minor against them.”

The Big Problem in the Roman Catholic Church regarding all these announcements of pedophilia and abuse of children is that covering up priests’ crimes and misdemeanors has become so common and widespread over the centuries in the RC church that the RC hierarchy isn’t even aware when it’s engaging in covering up crimes. It is simply going about the normal business of totalitarian rule and the right of the RC church to lie and mislead.

Rigali is still apologizing for the behavior of Philadelphia priests and never once saying mea culpa about his own behavior, or the behavior of his predecessor, Cardinal Bevilacqua. Bevilacqua, who is now 87 has gotten himself a lawyer who claims Bevilacqua is too old and infirm to be investigated. But the point is, Bevilacqua wouldn’t have to engage a lawyer if he would just man-up and admit he had covered up the crimes of pedophile priests while he was in charge in Philadelphia. Which he most assuredly did.

Ugh! The cowardice! The dissembling! The hiding! The blaming everyone and everything but themselves!

Will we ever hear Pope Ratz or anyone in the Vatican or Rigali or Bevilacqua say, “The buck stops here…I was wrong…I did it…I covered up these crimes”?

No.

And do you know why? Because that might cause the people in the pews to contemplate, to reflect and to wonder…hmmm…maybe these guys who contend they are God’s representatives on earth haven’t been truthful about other things. Maybe they don’t have God’s ear. Maybe this whole Vatican operation is just a grand scale con run by a bunch of pathetic clowns who like to dress up in their mother’s gowns and jewelry.

And God forbid the people in the Roman Catholic Church start to think.

Roman Catholic Church’s Mendacity

2011-02-15T12:30:00.000-05:00

Living in Philadelphia, it’s hard to read the stories coming out about the cruel abuse that Roman Catholic priests have been heaping on children in Philadelphia parishes for decades. It’s hard to read that Cardinal Bevilacqua and now Cardinal Rigali have routinely protected those priests rather than protect the children from the rapist priests.

And it was especially hard to read Cardinal Rigali’s statement last Saturday: "Once again the issue of the sexual abuse of minors is raised, as well as the role of the Church and her leaders in addressing this abuse. As Catholics we are hurt and confused, and perhaps even quite angry and feeling betrayed,” he said.

To read Rigali, one would think he were an on-looking parishioner, rather than one of the Church leaders who has knowingly allowed this abuse to go on. The same is true of Pope Ratz. To hear him and his apologists, one would think he were a victim of cruel lies rather than the mastermind behind policies that have allowed pedophile priests to use Roman Catholic children as their personal sex slaves for decades.

And these men are using the hoary and weary excuse that the Church didn’t realize how heinous a crime pedophilia was; that the Church leaders assumed it was a peculiarity that could be cured.

Even if that were true, which it isn’t, how can the RC hierarchy want to keep a man doing parish priestly duties who has even once raped a nine-year-old boy and then gone off to rehab to be cured? It’s not about forgiveness. That’s fine. Forgive the man. But FOR GOD’S SAKE, take him out of the rotation.

Most of us don’t want people who do ugly, unspeakable things to children to even be our stock brokers, and we forgive our stock brokers many and multifarious sins. But for church leaders to lie and circumvent civil and canon laws in order to keep pedophiles in jobs where they have access to children for their entire lives as priests, is an unspeakable crime as horrible as the abuse of children.

So here is the big question. How can Pope Ratz and Cardinal Rigali live with themselves? How can they get in high dudgeon and run to their church lawyers and mount defenses and excuse themselves and tell lies to excuse themselves, and claim ignorance and innocence in the face of the mounting evidence that they knew and have always known that these pedophile priests were using children as sex toys?

How can they lie and deny and live with themselves? I will tell you.

All the Popes’ men in the Vatican and all these little Cardinal-underlings can live with themselves while lying and cheating and allowing criminals to abuse children because they are no better than drug lords, money launderers and mob bosses.

These higher-ups in the Roman Catholic Church are SCUM!

Palin Says: “This Isn’t About Me”

2011-01-19T11:33:00.001-05:00

Oh hahahahahahahahaha! Oh ROTFLMFAO!!!

Gotta catch my breath! Okay…I’m composed now.

The New York Times reported this morning (“Obama Benefits in Having Palin as His Foil”) that on Monday, Sara Palin had assured Sean Hannity on Fox News that “she was not going to be silenced, no matter what abuse might come her way”. And she added, several times, "This isn’t about me".

Well of course it’s about Palin as far as Palin is concerned. There’s nothing that is not about Palin, to Palin. If a butterfly flaps its wings in Timbuktu, the resulting ripples are about Palin to Palin.

And as the NYT said, a lot of Repubs wish it weren’t true. But Palin taking advantage of being center stage because of her inappropriate remarks in the aftermath of the Giffords shooting, the GOP news is all about Palin.

And Palin in her self-absorbed glory cannot see that her motor-mouth ignorant arrogance is the best thing that could have happened to Obama. As the NYT says, every president needs the kind of critic who can remind the public of why he seemed so presidential.

Or, as a writer who is not as circumspect as an NYT reporter (me) might say—every president needs a loudmouth gormless asshole to remind the public that the prez is an intelligent and caring class act.

Carry on Sarah Palin. Your getting it wrong is doing right by the Dems.

Some Things Always Make Me Smile

2011-01-17T20:02:00.002-05:00

I was thinking about the apartment I wrote about in “Yeemin, Jason, Sukarno and Me”.

That apartment was at 302 E. 70th Street in Manhattan. We’re talking about 1956. When Fritz Bultman’s father died, Fritz and Jeanne bought a really nice brownstone on 95th Street between 3rd and Lex. That meant Fritz could move out of his painting studio which was on the top floor at 302 E. 70th St. Which meant Ron and I could move from our slum apartment at 516 E. 12th Street to a slum apartment on the fourth floor of a slum building on the upper East side. Much better.

Betsy Ross Zogbaum and her son Rufus lived on the first floor at 302. Betsy was an editor on a fashion magazine and her boyfriend was Franz Kline. I don’t remember who was on the second and third floors. But Karl Mann had a studio across the hall from Fritz’s studio. Karl was making pots of money with his seed paintings and he needed a whole studio for his assistants to do the seeding-by-numbers drill with Elmer’s Glue and fingernail files in order to crank them out.

Smile No. 1

My husband and Karl had known each other in high school in Chicago.

I’m really fuzzy on the particulars now, but Karl wanted to take off for six months to study acting or film-making or some such in Mexico and Ron wanted to take off and paint in Mexico. So Karl said I could stay in his studio as a sort of apartment sitter for the time they were both away.

Karl had fixed up his studio. And although it had no heat, he’d put in a hot water heater and he’d stripped the walls down to brick and the place looked really nice, compared with the scuzzy painter’s digs we had across the hall.

When Karl got back and Ron and I had gotten back together again and were living across the hall again, “The New Yorker” decided to profile Karl because he had become a real mover-and-shaker in the art world. Ron and I eagerly read the Profile. One line stuck out. Karl complained that he had let a couple impoverished artists live in his studio while he was away and they had eaten all his expensive seeds.

It was true…I had. Heh…heh-heh.

Smile No. 2

Karl’s expensive seed paintings started to sprout on people’s walls.

Yeah…some things never cease to make me smile.

Sara Palin’s “So What” Paragraph

2011-01-13T12:40:00.001-05:00

When I was doing investigative reports for the Philadelphia alternative newspaper “Welcomat”, we had a name for the ubiquitous paragraph that had to appear in newstories to reiterate well-known facts. It was the “So What” paragraph.

For all of Sara Palin’s pains to cast herself as the injured party in recent newstories about her notorious and ill-conceived rants against government, the So-What paragraph appearing in all the stories is haunting her re-inventions of herself.

Up until this morning, that paragraph has been: ”In the midterm elections last year, Ms. Palin used a map with cross hairs over several swing Congressional districts, which Ms. Giffords highlighted in a television interview at the time as an example of overheated political speech.”

But now, as of this morning, a new entry is sure to be added to reports about Palin. And that is: "Referring to the Gabrielle Giffords shooting, Palin said: 'Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own, especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence that they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.'"

Blood libel yet.

This morning, the New York Times noted that “blood libel is a phrase fraught with religious symbolism about the false accusation used by anti-Semites of Jews murdering Christian children.” The NYT said it wasn’t clear whether Ms. Palin was aware of the historical meaning of the phrase.

And that, of course, is the problem with Palin issuing her own responses from her own studio. As the NYT said, Palin’s video "showed her continued determination to tend to her image on her own terms and under her own control, without responding to questions or appearing in a public forum.”

And obviously, her home studio output is not being vetted by anyone who has even a vague knowledge of appropriate verbiage and/or historical facts. Because, as we know, Sarah Palin is absolutely certain she knows what is best for herself, her family, the nation and the world.

I am fervently hoping wiser heads do not prevail on Palin to listen to their counsel. I can’t wait for the next unsuitable, tasteless, wrong-headed, ill-timed, incorrect and out-of-place video to erupt out of Palin’s home studio. The spin generated by frantic Republicans trying to mitigate the political damage Palin’s ignorance causes the GOP, generally has been hilarious.

However, the idea that Palin might listen to an adviser is ridiculous. In Palin’s unstable mental condition, there is no wiser or more informed person in this world or the next than Sarah Palin.

YEEMIN, JASON, SUKARNO AND ME

2011-01-07T11:43:00.000-05:00

This is a story about New York in 1956. Every word is true. And though we all are ancient or dead now, names have been changed to protect the people who don't want to remember.

YEEMIN, JASON, SUKARNO AND ME

She called herself Yeemin. We accepted it because she had an exotic background. Forget that she had gone to Bennington, the weaving and pots school. She had in fact lived in Jakarta.

Her name was Nancy Perkins.

The most striking thing about her was the thick straight as a stick naturally blond hair that hung to her shoulders. And her blue eyes. She spoke Indonesian and French and some Mandarin Chinese. She'd lived in Hong Kong off and on.

Her English had a clipped quality, not really American, but certainly not British. She sounded like someone who had been away a long time.

Men routinely fell in love with Yeemin. There was the way she moved her mouth. I know for a fact she copied it from Emma Blakely. All the girls at Bennington had copied Emma Blakely--right down to Betsy Stokes who was the most level-headed of the lot. Emma talked out of the corner of her mouth, just slightly. It was very engaging and it was absolutely unique. And Yeemin and Betsy copied it. If you hadn’t known the original, seeing Yeemin talk slightly out of the corner of her mouth would have knocked your socks off. But I knew Emma. Still, Yeemin had so much going for her that wasn’t off-the-rack that the way she moved her mouth was just one more charm in her treasure box. She would suddenly appear, stick around for a few months and then go back to Jakarta or Hong Kong or Paris.

I’d been subletting a railroad-type apartment in a slum building at 70th Street and Second Avenue when the telephone rang one torpid August afternoon. It was Yeemin. It was 1956.

Her voice was unmistakable. I knew who it was as soon as she said Hi.

“Where are you?”

“Here...I mean, New York.”

“For how long?”

“I’m not sure, but certainly until mid-September. Sukarno is coming over then.”

I wasn’t particularly interested in international politics or what the tyrants in small countries were up to. But I did know Sukarno had been making noises about becoming more than just a figurehead. And I knew Yeemin was on a Howdy basis with him.

“What’s he coming for?”

“Just a press relations tour. I have to find entertainment for his reception. Are you still singing?”

I told her to come over. I said we’d talk. The idea of an Indonesian dictator having to listen to Benjamin Britten at an Upper East Side soiree was particularly appealing.

When she arrived she ran up the four flights of stairs as though she did it every day. She wore a white cotton shirt and a full skirt. Both were hand-woven and hand-embroidered. Her hair was the same tow color that I remembered when we had met a few years before. She was a little younger than I. She was maybe twenty-three.

“I just got my hair cut,” she said, walking into the kitchen. “If that barber in Chinatown dies I'm sunk. He’s so old. But he just cuts. No talk, no baloney and I pay him. He doesn’t like me though. I know that.” She twirled in a circle and her skirt fanned out as her hair fanned out. “See what it does when I turn. Isn’t it perfect?”

She sat on a bench at the kitchen picnic table and rummaged in the huge straw bag she always carried. This one was shocking pink.

“Here, these are for you.” She held out a little package of purple tissue paper. I unfolded the paper. A pair of delicate silver earrings lay on the tissue. I thanked her but she was wearing the ones I really wanted. They were heavy silver and had little balls on the tips reaching nearly to her shoulder.

“My ears aren’t pierced. These would look better on you anyway,” I said. I handed them back to her.

“Well, get them pierced then.”

I shrugged. Yeemin had grace and elegance and I felt rough, jagged and sweaty by comparison. The purple tissue lay on the table between us.

“Do you have a potato?” She looked around the kitchen and back to me. It wasn’t easy to follow her conversation sometimes. She flitted from thought to thought, from here to there.

“Sure. Why?”

“How about a darning needle and dental floss?”

“Yeah….” I thought for a minute. “Oh God Yeemin...you're not going to....”

“Why not? We’ll need a couple ice cubes, a cotton ball and a little rubbing alcohol.”

I had no time to think. I gathered together the things Yeemin said she needed. She fetched up an eyebrow pencil from her bag and I sat down on the bench. She stood over me and marked dots on my earlobes. I had wanted pierced ears all my life.

It didn’t take long. She swabbed my ears with alcohol and told me to hold the ice cubes on my earlobes for a minute to get them numb. She cut the potato in half, held it behind my ears and dipped the floss-threaded needle in alcohol. She poked the needle through my earlobe into the potato and pulled it out the other side. I had little loops of dental floss hanging from my ears before I could change my mind.

“Take these,” she said, pulling off the earrings I liked so much. “They’re more you anyway.” In a week, she said, I could put in gold posts. She took two little gold eardots from her bag and handed them to me. I reached up and touched my ears.

“They won’t bleed, keep them clean and move the floss around a lot.” She folded up the purple tissue and put it in her bag. She smiled and sat cross-legged on the wooden bench.

“So...what’s new?”

Yeemin and I hadn't had a long shmooze in over a year. We caught up on the meat and potatoes of our lives. Vic and I had separated. He was in Mexico trying out abstract expressionism in the crystalline air and bright sunlight. I had quit working at Bloomingdale’s and was modeling in art schools while I auditioned in every theater in town but no one was interested. The owner of a piano bar in the Village said I sounded too legit.

“Life goes on,” I said. That seemed to sum it up.

She had been happy in Indonesia, Yeemin said, but rebellion was always a threat with so many factions. “It’s only a matter of time until there is big trouble. I’m really at loose ends.” She didn’t want to live in the United States and couldn’t stand France and Hong Kong anymore. “Things have changed so in Indonesia. Sukarno openly opposes U.S. policies. I’m not sure what I should do.”

“I hear he’s randy as King Farouk.”

“Well...say what you will about him, the United States government seems to be interested in Indonesia. So it might do you some good to sing for a bunch of diplomats while he’s here. Just say you’ll do an audition.”

“Sure. What the hell.”

She sat with her hands folded in her lap and I suddenly realized I hadn’t offered her anything to drink. She was Indonesian enough not to ask.

“How about a beer?”

“I brought some marvelous tea,” she said. Once again she reached into the bag and brought out a little parcel. It was wrapped in green tissue. She moved to the stove, picked up the teakettle and filled it with water. I showed her where the teapot was above the sink and set out two cups on the table.

I sat down and let her wait on me. She did everything so easily. She poured hot water in the teapot, swished it around and poured it out before putting in the tealeaves. “I ran into Morley on the way over here. Wait till you see his car! Did you know he was in the CIA?”

I had heard the rumor. It lent a romantic aura to Morley-the-mystery-man. No one knew much about Morley. Where did he get his money? What went on behind those steel-rimmed eyeglasses?

“What’s his story anyway?”

“He’s a voyeur.”

”What’s that supposed to mean?”

“He can’t seem to live his life. He just watches everyone else’s. This is a bathtub, isn’t it?” She pointed to the large porcelained metal top covering the tub next to the sink. I never tried to follow Yeemin’s train of thought. It chugged along making unscheduled stops.

“Stoking up the fireplace in the winter and taking a long bath is wonderful,” I said. I knew I didn’t have to defend the facilities. Yeemin was as fascinated with how I lived as I was with her intercontinental hopscotch. We all seemed to watch each other. I had never heard Yeemin's complete curriculum vitae, not from her anyway. But I'd gotten bits and pieces on the grapevine. Her American father had either owned or managed a rubber plantation in Java. Her Brit mother had gotten sick of the whole Malay culture years before and had bugged out to live in Hong Kong. Yeemin had been raised by tutors and nannies and pretty much had done whatever she liked her whole life. I only wished I could live the way she did for a couple months.

The teakettle whistled. She made us wait while the tea steeped exactly five minutes. It was strong and acrid and had a kick like espresso coffee.

We quietly sat drinking our tea. It was nice not having to make conversation with Yeemin. Words came when they came.

“Did you ever have the feeling you could completely change your life if you wanted to?” I asked. It had been something on my mind since Vic took off for Mexico.

“Anyone can.” Yeemin said, tracing her finger over a wet circle on the tabletop. “We all can do that anytime.” A breeze gently blew through the windows while the sun streamed in and we drank the hot tea.

“I’d never realized it before,” I said. I looked at the tealeaves in the bottom of the cup. “I mean I know that all I’d have to do is make the decision right now and everything will be different. I know I have that power but I would feel so guilty. Like it’s unfair.”

“Then you’re a fool”, Yeemin said, suddenly looking serious. “Men don’t think it’s unfair to change their lives.”

I stirred the tealeaves with my finger. “It’s frightening though, you know? I wonder if I can get along without Vic.” Yeemin reached over and squeezed my hand. The buzzer rang from the vestibule downstairs.

“I’ll bet that’s Morley. He said he wanted you to see his car.” We ran down the hall to the living room and stuck our heads out the windows facing 70th Street. Two men walked down the front stoop of my building and crossed the street to stand by the most amazing car I’d ever seen.

“Jesus! Yeemin! What is that!”

“A 1937 Phaeton touring car. Did you ever?” Morley Huxtable and another man waved to us. They lounged against the car, smoking.

“He can’t get the top to go up...but what the hell,” Yeemin said, waving back. They yelled for us to come down. Every kid on the street was running around the car screaming, “Mira! Mira!”

My heart was pounding. I went to a chair and sat down.

"Do you know who that is? The man with Morley?”

“Well of course. It’s Jason Berman. He played at Betsy’s wedding. You were there.”

“This is awful. God! I can’t go down there....”

“Oh no! Oh how funny! You’ve got a crush on Jason!" Yeemin yelled out the window that we’d be right down. "Oh God! This is too great!”

She grabbed the huge canvas bag I used for a handbag and tossed it to me. I looked down at my khaki shorts and work shirt.

"You look terrific, you have no idea!" Yeemin said. “Got your keys? Come on! We’ll make them take us for a ride.”

Betsy and Jack’s wedding in June had been the biggest event in the East Village in years. It was as though everyone had put on clothes from their parents’ attic. Betsy wore an antique lace dress. Jack had found white tails and a top hat in a thrift shop. Vic wore a white suit and Panama hat. And I made a dress out of mattress ticking. It had slits up the side nearly to the waist and an orange silk slip.

Every young artist and musician in New York turned out for the wedding to play dress-up and to party.

Jack had begun to make a name for himself with his animated cartoons. He used cutouts, clay figures and wild colors. His films were years before Monty Python. A screening at a Madison Avenue art gallery had caught the attention of the major art and film critics. And it didn’t hurt Jack’s reputation that the fast action and visual effects made one patron sick to his stomach at the opening and he vomited on at least ten of Jack’s fans. Jack was the avant-garde filmmaker of the season.

The wedding reception went on for a day-and-a-half. They had rented a jazz club. Jason was the other jazz-French horn player in the world. He rounded up his friends for a jam session marathon. The hash, grass and Champagne supply seemed endless.

The minute I walked into the reception that Saturday afternoon and saw Jason in his white tux everything seemed brighter, more intense and a few rpm's faster. He and the wedding party and a couple early arrivals were sitting on a low platform just inside the club's front door. Vic and I beelined to Betsy and Jack to say our Best Wishes and Congrats and Jason smiled and said, "Hey! Look who's here, now the party can begin." Jason and I had met once before at a gallery opening. My heart had raced then. It raced now. Vic went to a table loaded with bottles of Champagne. He filled two glasses and brought them back for us. Jason and I couldn't take our eyes off each other. Suddenly a group of twenty people burst in the door and broke the spell.

By the time the party was at full frenzy Jason had taken off his tux jacket, shirt, shoes and socks and stood sweating, hairy, barefoot and magnificent playing the French horn like no one had heard it before. I sat down alone at a tiny table close to the bandstand watching. You could see all the muscles in his chest and stomach when he took a breath. He seemed to be in another world--only the music mattered. He kept his eyes shut as he played. Or they seemed to be shut. Then he stepped out of the group, walked to the center of the stage, turned to me and played a hauntingly sweet solo chorus of “Tenderly”. He jumped down from the platform, let the other musicians finish the set and came over to my table.

“I love that tune,” I finally managed to say.

“It seemed right.” He sat down and grabbed a napkin lying on the table. He was wet all over. His whole body shined. He mopped his face, his hair, his neck. “I just wanted to say I’d like to get to know you.” He smiled. I could smell the metal of the horn mixed with the smell of his sweat. It was so hot. There was so much pungent smoke in the air. I felt dizzy.

He picked up a bottle of champagne from the table and filled my glass, then tipped the bottle in my direction. “L’chayim,” he said and put it to his mouth nearly draining it. I wondered where Vic was.

“Is it true you’re married?” he asked, cocksure and smiling. His confidence amazed me.

“Yes, it’s true.“ I drained my glass.

“Seriously married?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Okay...I’ll drink to that....”

Jason finished off the champagne. Reaching across the table he took the two pins out of my hair that kept it from tumbling down. It fell all the way down my back. He kissed me on the forehead and went back to the little stage.

Everything that was familiar seemed to be shifting and sliding. Even the floor had become shaky. I stood up to leave but the room started spinning. I sat back down.

Yeemin and I ran down the stairs to the waiting Phaeton. I wound my hair into a bun on top of my head and jammed in hairpins as we flew down the four flights.

An open fire hydrant half a block away made a river in the gutter. We jumped across. Morley tossed his cigarette away.

“What do you think?” he said, motioning to the car that had taken up a space-and-a-half along the curb.

The street kids couldn’t believe the headlights staring out bug-eyed from each side of the radiator. They walked reverently around the car, touching the hood and sides gingerly. “It suits you Morley,” I said. Jason opened the door to the back seat for me. The jump seats rested against the leather of the front seats. You could stretch out full-length from the back seat and still not touch the jump seats.

”I haven’t seen you since the wedding,” Jason said. He took my canvas bag and put it on the floor.

“It’s a wonder you remember....”

“I wasn’t stoned. I can’t play high.”

“I was.”

“Yeah. But you do remember....”

“Yes. I remember.”

Yeemin sat in front with Morley.

"Sorry. My manners are slipping,” Morley said, turning around and looking first at me and then at Jason. “But I guess you’ve met. Where shall we go?” There wasn’t any doubt where to go on a sweltering August afternoon in New York.

“Coney Island,” we all said.

Morley started the engine and we smoothly pulled away from the curb. All the store proprietors came out to watch the open car glide down the street. The women, whose chief entertainment was leaning out their apartment windows and sitting on the stoops, waved and the kids shouted, “Mira! Look at the movie stars!”

“I have to get some entertainment together for Sukarno’s reception,” Yeemin said to Morley. "I think Liz should sing."

“I think Jason should play,” I said. The more I thought of it the more I knew I was not Sukarno’s dish of tea.

”And I think Sukarno wants a gamelan and hootchy-kootchy,” Morley said.

Morley and Yeemin yammered away about politics and world affairs. He couldn’t ask her enough questions about Indonesia. Jason and I said almost nothing in the backseat.

The sun was setting as Morley parked near the beach.

“I hate to leave this rig for long, you know?" Morley said.

“At least it won’t get stripped,” Jason laughed. “Who could use the parts?” Morley was not amused.

The beach crowd had thinned out. Most of the bathers had already packed up their paraphernalia and headed home, leaving chicken bones, french fries and orange peels to the seagulls. They screamed and swooped down. The tide was going out. The sky was blue and orange and aquamarine striped.

Yeemin took off her shirt and skirt and ran into the water in her underwear. Jason took off his jeans and teeshirt and ran after her. Morley and I sat down on the sand.

“Where’s Vic?”

“Mexico.”

“You split up?”

“Sort of. I don’t know. We’ll see.” Morley took off his shoes and dug his toes in the sand. “In France they’re smarter about going to the beach.”

“Yeah?"

“People wear their bathing suits to the beach, take them off at water’s edge, go for a swim and come out and put on their suits. Makes sense.”

We watched Yeemin and Jason ducking each other and playing in the surf. They ran back to us dripping and panting. They looked like the healthiest happiest two people in the world.

“Those wet things are going to feel great going back,” I said, squinting into the setting sun at Jason.

“No sweat,” he said.

“No sweat,” Yeemin said. They both took off their underwear and put their clothes back on. The few people on the beach either didn’t notice or didn’t care. Jason grabbed my hand and pulled me up. “Let’s go for a walk.”

“Don’t be too long,” Morley said. He and Yeemin headed for the car.

“Vic finally make a run for the border?” Jason asked. We walked and kicked at the water lapping the beach.

“Why? You talk to him about Mexico?"

"He talked to everybody about Mexico. I ran into him at the Cedar Bar. "

"He never mentioned you."

"He wouldn't."

"He wanted to try painting down there. I don’t know what's going to be. I guess we’ve got to decide.”

“You don’t know what you want."

“I know what I don’t want. I’m scared. I’m not going to make it as a singer, I know that.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t care that much. You’ve got to care. It’s tough enough even if you care. What about you? Going to play jazz the rest of your life?”

“Jazz isn’t my life. It’s part of my life. I’m a composer. I happen to be good.”

“Ever have a performance of your stuff?”

"You been living in a cave or what?"

Jason picked up a small flat rock and skimmed it over the calm water before the next wave came in.

"I had a world premiere with the Philharmonic last year. I thought you were a musician.”

“Oh…sorry.”

We stopped walking and Jason pulled me close. He smelled like salt-water and the sun. He kissed my check. His mouth was cool against my hot face.

“We’d better get back,” I said.

“Morley won’t mind. He’s always had a letch for Yeemin. Even if he doesn't know what to do with her."

I stepped back. “And you would do what?” His hair had dried. The curls had red glints in the sun.

“That doesn’t matter. I’m not Morley.” Jason took my hand. “But if you want to know. I’d just drive her home and take her to bed.”

“What a Romeo."

“Well you asked and if it was me and if I felt what Morley feels, then so would she. You don't have to talk it to death.”

We turned our backs to the ocean and walked in the sand toward the street and the car. We could see Morley and Yeemin from two blocks away. The car was in the shade. They leaned against it eating ice cream cones.

“Hungry?" Jason asked. “We could go back to my place.”

“Oh Jason! No, I’m not hungry. No, I’m not going back to your place. “ I stopped in my tracks. Jason turned with his arms outstretched, “What?”

"I'm not any good at this."

"Jesus! At what?"

"You know…all this casual bullshit. I really like you Jason…a lot. "

"And…?"

"And I can't…."

"Can't?"

"I'm not going to…."

“Uh-huh…?"

I started to cry.

"Don't do that."

"It's so complicated."

I wiped my nose on my sleeve. He reached into his back pocket, took out a handkerchief and handed it to me. He put his arm around my shoulder and pushed a wisp of hair out of my eyes. "It's okay…it's okay."

The ride back was silent in the back seat. Yeemin and Morley talked and laughed and argued.

Jason climbed up in front with Morley when they let us out. “Take it easy,” he called as we walked across the street.

Yeemin and I fixed a salad from whatever was in the refrigerator. I poured out a shot of gin and drank it down.

“Want me to read your palm?” she asked after we’d eaten. She was having a cup of tea. I was having more gin.

“What’s the point? I can tell you my fortune. Jason and I will get involved for a couple of months. Vic and I will keep breaking up and getting back together, I will remember this summer for the rest of my life and Jason will forget it by Thanksgiving.”

“Well smarty, if you know so much you can avoid the misery, right?”

The phone rang. I knew it was Jason.

“Wrong. I can’t avoid one minute of it.” I reached for the phone. “That’s just how it is.”

As it turned out, my crystal ball was very accurate.

And so was Morley’s.

Sukarno wanted gongs, dancers and hotcha!

A Reader Vents

2010-12-21T13:41:00.002-05:00

I think in the six years I have been doing this blog, I have commented on a comment once. This is because Ratbang Diary is not a dialog, nor is it a conversation. Readers are welcome to say what they want, unless it's overly abusive or overly long, and I will print comments. But although I think comments are interesting to readers, they are not interesting or important to me.

However, I just received a comment from "anonymous" regarding my blog today (December 21, 2010) about the Pope. Anonymous said: "ma vedi di andartene affanculo!!" Or, "see, go fuck yourself".

And I am going to comment on it.

Leaving a nasty comment in a language other than English and signing it "Anonymous" is not clever. It's weaselly, ignorant and silly. Disagreement is good, well-thought-out argument is good. But cowardice and abuse is not good. And cowardice and abuse is exactly what the Roman Catholic Church has been guilty of and is what I am railing against.

Dear Pope Ratz: Don’t Ask Yourselves, Ask Me!

2010-12-21T11:04:00.001-05:00

Get this! The guy in the Vatican who bears the main responsibility for the monumentally wrong-headed, uncivilized and unconscionable goings-on in the Vatican for the last 30 years--Cardinal Raztinger, now Pope Benedict XVI—on Monday addressed the current abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church and said in a Christmas message to the Vatican hierarchy: “We must ask ourselves what we can do to repair as much as possible the injustice that has occurred, We must ask ourselves what was wrong in our proclamation, in our whole way of living the Christian life, to allow such a thing to happen.” He also said the abuse scandal had reached “a degree we could not have imagined” this year.

Well, maybe Ratz could not have imagined it because he and the Curia and all the Church sycophants who unctuously kiss his ring and live in Vatican City—a rarified, isolated little universe in Rome where the inhabitants are protected by Italian law from knowing or understanding anything about what goes on in the world---but any 16-year-old outside of Vatican City could have imagined in full-color and easy-to-read prose exactly the degree to which the abuse scandal would gain traction and become known to the world.

It was Ratz who was Pope John Paul’s “enforcer” and whose job it was to silence all Roman Catholic dissidents. It was Ratz who was was made head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith in 1981 and whose job it was to deal with priests who were accused of molesting children. And although this month the Vatican has found and made public a letter from 1988 that shows that Ratz had tried to find ways to punish pedophile priests, the Vatican says he was unsuccessful.

And why do you think he was unsuccessful? Because he didn’t want to be successful.

Ratz also said in his Christmas message that we have to realize that even in the 1970’s the devastation of pedophilia was not well understood.

Now that is pure bullshit! The effects of pedophilia on the victims has been well understood for decades everywhere in the world but in the Vatican, which, for reasons not well understood, has chosen to ignore the information on pedophilia that has been available.

And who, we might ask, is the boss in the Vatican that within the last year has allowed a Vatican spokesperson to report to the world at large that the abuse scandal was a concoction of the New York Times and RC haters who wanted to discredit the Church? Who allowed a Vatican spokesperson to opine that press coverage of the RC Church abuse scandal was like anti-semitism? Who allowed a Vatican spokesperson to say that women priests are worse than pedophiles? Pope Ratz,that’s who.

So…yesterday, for Christmas, the Pope declared that he and his cohorts must look all over and in every nook and cranny and find the reasons WHY the RC Church is in the sad state it’s in.

Well, Pope, you have two options:

No. 1) You can ask me and I will tell you; or,

No. 2) Look in the mirror. There he is: The RC Church abuse-enabler for the last 30 years.

Prequel to “The Man Who Hated Christmas”

2010-12-20T16:48:00.001-05:00

Yesterday, the New York Times printed a page 1 story in the Metropolitan Section about Bob Kulicke. It was called “The Man Who Hated Christmas” by Wendell Jamieson. Jamieson had been a sort-of stepson of Bob’s in New York City during the late 70’s, 80’s and 90’s.

I loved the article because Bob Kulicke had been a really good friend to me in the 50’s and 60’s—‘way before Wendell Jamieson’s mom and Bob got involved, Bob had even saved my sorry ass one memorable time.

When I knew him, Bob Kulicke had a frame shop at 73rd Street and York Avenue on the east side of Manhattan. My husband Ron Gorchov and I and our tots Michael and Jolie lived on the first floor of a three-story brownstone at 73rd and York. Ron was (and still is) a painter. Bob did the framing for the Museum of Modern Art back then. He was a sweet, warm-hearted, volatile, very funny guy. By 1960, Ron and I were in the midst of a break-up and Ron had moved out. I think Bob and his wife Barbara (Bobby) were having troubles back then too.

Our son Michael was about 7 years old and he loved going over to the frame shop. Bob let him help making frames, like applying the first coat of gesso on what would become a baroque and “distressed” rococo frame. It wasn’t unusual for Bob to drop by our apartment around 4:00 in the afternoon for a cup of coffee. One afternoon, I recognized his knock on the door and I invited him in. The kitchen was the first room you entered. I’d just made a pot of coffee.

We sat down at the round kitchen table near a window looking on 73rd Street. Bob happened to glance over at a wide shelf on a floor-to ceiling-cabinet where I kept odds and ends like cookbooks, pens and pencils and bills to be paid. An item on the shelf caught his eye. He picked it up.

“What the fuck is this…I mean…what IS this?”

“Hmmmm…well Bob…I guess it’s what it says…it’s an eviction notice.”

Eviction notices came in different colors. Like, the first one was pink. One ignored pink ones. The second one was yellow. One ignored yellow ones. The final one was green. You either didn’t ignore the green one or you got evicted. Bob was looking at a green one.

“But jesuschrist! This is for tomorrow.”

“Yeah…nine ayem…that’s what it says.”

“And you are doing WHAT?”

“I’m getting evicted!”

You’d have to know Bob to picture him bolting out of his chair and waving his arms and yelling, “Well Jesus! Well my God! What the hell! FUUUUUCK!”

He stalked into the room that had been Ron’s painting studio before he had moved out. “What have you got to sell? You got anything to sell?”

“Bob, look around…I got NOTHING…that’s why I’m getting evicted.”

“What’s this?”

“It’s a painting John Graham left with us before he went to Europe. It doesn’t belong to me.”

“Of course it belongs to you…it’s here and he’s there.”

Bob picked up the painting...it had no frame. It was just the painting on the stretched canvas. But it was a quintessential Graham—about 18” by 18”, the head of a woman with crossed eyes, and a gash on her neck, in a blue dress and a big black hat.

“I’m buying this,” Bob said. “How much is your rent? How much do you owe?”

“You can’t buy that, I don’t own it. And my rent is $120 and I owe three months.”

“Of course I can buy it. I’m buying it. Okay?” Bob tucked the painting under his arm and walked back to the kitchen. He sat down at the table and reached in his pocket for his wallet. He pulled out two checks and started scribbling on the checks. “Here’s a check for $360, and another one for $100. Go pay your rent and go buy some food or whatever for yourself.”

Needless to say, I stopped arguing and took the checks. I grabbed my baby daughter from her crib, threw some warm clothes on her and put her in her stroller. We ran up to 80th Street to the realtor’s office. We got there just as he was leaving for the day.

Funnily, just before Bob had knocked on my door that afternoon, I had been lying down having a conversation…a rather one-sided conversation…with God. “Alright,” I had said. “The ball is in your court. I’ve done everything I can do. Now it’s up to you.”

Words of Christmastime Wisdom

2010-12-07T10:18:00.001-05:00

What’s It All About?

Getting through all this shit with some kind of grace. Because no matter who you are or what you believe in, you are going to have to go through a whole truckload of shit.

And, as Elizabeth Edwards would no doubt tell you this morning: Everything she thought was important, isn’t.

Like, a plain Jane marrying a self-absorbed male beauty and attempting to turn him into a person; reviving a moribund marriage by trying to replace a dead child and using questionable medical wizardry to do it that was all but guaranteed to cause horrendous mental and physical problems; making the trophy hubbo president of the United States at all costs. None of it was worth a damn.

More words of wisdom: slow down accomplishing everything important you have to do. And speed up everything that can be done whenever.

That’s it.

DEA: YIKES! Headley Is a TERRORIST!

2010-11-08T08:16:00.002-05:00

This morning the New York Times’ David-Headley-crew (Ginger Thompson, Eric Schmitt, Souad Mekhennet) published another astonishing story about the United States’ Laurel-and-Hardy drug-and-spy bumblers—DEA, CIA, FBI--"DEA Deployed Mumbai Plotter Despite Warning".

We are coming up to the second anniversary of the terrorist attack on Mumbai, India that occurred November 25, 2008, in which American (and sometimes Philadelphian) David (Daood) Headley was one of the masterminds.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the DEA, which used Headley as an informant, was negligent in two areas concerning Headley. The drug agency chose not to believe numerous reports from people close to Headley that he was a terrorist. And it chose to let him run so free without supervision that he was able to train in Pakistan in terrorist craft like making bombs and scoping out attack venues.

And why was the DEA so laisser-faire? Because Headley was theirs. They had bought him and they trusted him.

Did you have any idea the DEA was so girly? Headley fed them a line of bullshit, the DEA fell in love and then (sob!) he done them wrong.

At first, the DEA said it started using Headley as an informant in 1987 but stopped using him in 2001. Recently, the DEA back-tracked and said it stopped using him in 2003. Now it is clear from investigative reports that the DEA used Headley as an informant even after 9/11.

Everyone being interviewed now is so surprised David Headley would go from dealing drugs to terrorism. Why the surprise?

In 1983, when Daood and I worked in his mother’s bar in Philadelphia, he was a violence-spouting, AKA-47-harboring, Shiite sympathizer. And I believe, though I cannot prove it, that when Daood was jailed in Pakistan in 1983 for selling drugs and miraculously was set free by the intercession of his mother, it was then he started working with the DEA. I also believe, with no proof to back it up, that Daood worked with the DEA right up to the point in 2009 when he told them he was a Mumbai terrorist. And oh yes! He TOLD them…the entire sorry DEA agency admits it didn’t see it coming, or so it says.

This is a woeful story of American hubris and naivete in our drug and law enforcement agencies.

WHAT THE HELL WERE THE GUYS IN THE DEA, FBI, and CIA thinking? They weren’t thinking. They simply believed the heroic stories they told about themselves and assumed no one could outsmart them.

Daood Headley loved to use Britishisms like “bully” and “jolly good”. He also was partial to the expression: “assume makes an ass of u-and-me”.

NYT Election Post-Mortems

2010-11-04T12:36:00.002-04:00

First, it’s heartening to see that the New York Times reminds readers this morning: “the likely House speaker, John Boehner” has made a few boasts that aren’t true, such as, American voters want to repeal health care reform and they blame Obama for our economic problems.

In its “Sorting Out the Election” column, the NYT said: “The ‘loud message’ to cut spending cited by Mr. Boehner was actually far more muted. The polls showed that 39 percent of voters say cutting the deficit should be the highest priority of Congress, but a statistically equal 37 percent prefer spending money to create jobs. Fully a third of those who want to spend money to create jobs were Republicans.

“More voters (correctly) blamed President George W. Bush for the economic problems than President Obama, and even more (also correctly) blamed Wall Street.”

It’s no doubt a path Boehner is going to stick to—claiming results for this election that aren’t true--because the GOP has failed to propose alternatives to Obama’s policies.

Or, as the NYT said this morning, “The question is how the Republicans will act. For two years, they have refused to cooperate on any of those ideas (Obama’s) simply to deny Mr. Obama a policy victory and try to reduce his re-election prospects. If they are serious about accepting Tuesday’s mantle, they will join in governing and not simply posturing."

Now that the GOP has won an advantage, John Boehner and his cohorts are going to have to put aside their horror at having a black president and start working for the good of the country…if they can remember what working for the good of the country entails.

Reminders From Me and Frank Rich

2010-10-31T13:43:00.002-04:00

Reminder One, Mine:

In the midst of the election posturing, DO NOT FORGET: Every woe we are facing today is directly due to the crimes and misdemeanors perpetrated by the George W. Bush administration from 2000 through 2008. And whatever Barack Obama has faced since the moment he took office on January 20, 2009, and whatever he has done during his term has been to alleviate and correct the mess left by the Bush administration in 2008.

Reminder Two, Frank Rich’s:

As usual, Frank Rich’s column in the New York Times this morning cut through the bullshit that has taken over the media’s reporting on Obama’s presidency so far and the up-coming election.

In his lede paragraph, Rich wrote: “One dirty little secret of the 2010 election is that it won’t be a political tragedy for Democrats if a Tea Party icon like Sharron Angle or Joe Miller ends up in the United States Senate.”

And the reason is, Rich says: “The Tea Party’s hopes for actually affecting change in Washington will start being dashed the morning after. The ordinary Americans in this movement lack the numbers and financial clout to muscle their way into the back rooms of Republican power no matter how well their candidates perform.”

However, Rich also points out that the movers and shakers in the Republican Party will be thankful if the Tea Party candidates lose since they are a distraction and embarrassment. But the fate of the Tea Party candidates doesn’t really matter. The old-guard, far-right, hooray-for-the-wealthy-and-me-and-mine Bush administration GOP power brokers are going to call the shots in the Republican Party in any event.

And Rich says, “what the Tea Party ostensibly wants most — less government spending and smaller federal deficits — is not remotely happening on the country club G.O.P.’s watch. The elites have no serious plans to cut anything except taxes and regulation of their favored industries.”

“That’s not happening either,” Rich says. “Mitch McConnell (Minority Leader-KY) has explained his only real priority for the new Congress with admirable candor. ‘The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.'"

There you have it. Frank Rich has put it in a nutshell. The GOP has allowed the Tea Party candidates to be center-stage, to distract, to embarrass, to muddy the waters, to be the clown act in the Republican three-ring-circus, because the real aim from January 20, 2009 until the next election for president is to unseat Obama, no matter what it takes.

The Republican focus has not been about policies, it has not been about ending or continuing wars, it has not been about Health Care, and it has not been about the economy--which will correct itself in time.

The GOP’s cause celebre has been to make sure Obama does not win a second term. And in light of that fact, we can toss down the toilet the idea that Sarah Palin will run for Prez in 2012. That would be folly. The GOP will have to run an electable male candidate.

Ignorant, narcissistic female buffoons need not apply.

Daood/David Headley…Again

2010-10-17T16:12:00.005-04:00

So…the New York Times came out with a news story this morning about David Headley (“U.S. Had Warnings About Plotter of Mumbai Attack”). Not to go into too much detail, but Daood/David Headley is the son of Serrill Headley who owned a couple bars in Philadelphia. I worked in one of them with Daood/David in 1983. He subsequently plotted the devastating terrorist attack on Mumbai in 2008.

Now we learn that two of Daood's three wives ratted him out to the US Embassy, telling the officials that they were sure their husband was plotting a horrendous deed. It is fascinating to find out he was married to all three women at the same time.

The US (as in, the FBI and the CIA) is claiming that they listened to what the women had to say, but thought they were simply women who were pissed off at an errant husband.

We also find out that the DEA says it used Headley as an informant but ceased the association in 2001.

Um…do I have some opinions about all this?

Are pumpkins orange?

Opinion Number 1

It is safe to assume that the DEA NEVER cuts off ties with informants who sell their souls to the DEA in exchange for favors like the DEA making it impossible for toxic governments (Pakistan and India) to do whatever they want and with great creativity to drug-dealing scum.

Opinion Number 2

Although American newspaper accounts are full of info about Daood’s arrests in 1988 and 1997 for drug-trafficking, they never mention that Daood tried to sell drugs in Pakistan in 1983 and his mother had to go to Pakistan and get him out of the jam.

Now I grant you, Serrill Headley could summon up salty tears to sob over her life in general (which version she changed to suit her reason for the histrionics), her disastrous love affairs and her son’s wayward ways. But she told me (yes, in tears) that Daood had been arrested in Pakistan and that she was going over to get him out. I know he went to Pakistan toward the end of 1983 to visit relatives, I know he contacted his mother that he was in jail. And I know she went to Pakistan and he returned to Philadelphia. All of us who worked in the Khyber Pass North bar were amazed she could do it. We conjectured she had friends in high places or spent a fortune on bribes or both.

This had to be in 1983, because I never saw any of the crew again after Daood fired me the day after the Raiders won the Super Bowl in 1984.

Opinion Number 3

What I cannot corroborate, but would bet my bottom dollar on, is: it was in 1983 that Daood started working for the DEA and he never stopped working for the DEA.

And that is why the NYT reported this morning: “An examination of Mr. Headley’s movements in the years before the bombing, based on interviews in Washington, Pakistan, India and Morocco, shows that he had overlapping, even baffling, contacts among seemingly disparate groups — Pakistani intelligence, terrorists, and American drug investigators. Those ties are rekindling concerns that the Mubai bombings represent another communications

breakdown in the fight against terrorism, and are raising the question of whether United States officials were reluctant to dig deeper into Mr. Headley’s movements because he had been an informant for the D.E.A.”

Some things are predictable, if not inevitable. Whenever he’s in trouble, Daood will always cut a deal, with whomever, wherever and do whatever it takes.

Woody Allen in Today’s New York Times

2010-09-15T16:12:00.000-04:00

A guy named Dave Itzkoff interviewed Woody Allen about Allen’s new movie (“You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger”) and one quote stood out.

Itzkoff asked, “Were you prepared for the firestorm of media coverage you set off by casting Carla Bruni-Sarkozy in your next movie, ‘Midnight in Paris’?”

Allen said, “I was very surprised at the level of journalism that occurred in relation to her. She has a small part in the movie — a real part, but it’s a small part. And I shot with her the first day, and then all the papers said she was terrible, and I did 32 takes with her. Of course I didn’t even do 10 takes with her. This was just a magical number that some guy created in a room. Then they printed that her husband came to the set and was angry with her. He came to the set once, and he was delighted. He felt she was a natural actress and couldn’t have been happier.”

Nicholas Sarkozy is, of course, the current President of the French Republic, and Carla Bruni is, of course, the woman he married in 2008 after a torrid and public affair.

Allen went on to say, ”For some reason, the press wanted to say bad things about her. I don’t know if they had something against the Sarkozys, or it was a better way to sell papers. But the fabrications were so wild and so completely fake, and I wondered to myself, Is this is what happens with Afghanistan and the economy and matters of real significance? This is a trivial matter. That’s a longwinded answer to your question: I was not prepared for the amount of press that was attached to the picture because of Madame Sarkozy.”

I too wonder if that’s what the press does concerning matters of true importance.

Another trivial matter that makes one wonder about matters of real importance was a Versace ad on page 29 of the September 20th issue of "The New Yorker”. It had been so weirdly photo-shopped that the sleeve of the woman in white looked like she had elephantiasis. Probably the armpit of the woman in black had to be re-defined so that it didn’t melt into the woman in white…but still…in so doing everything got loopy and out of proportion and out of sync.

Our news is getting loopy, out of proportion and out of sync. It all started when reporters (or their editors and publishers) decided to change the old Who-What-Where-When formula of the lede paragraph of all news stories, to a paragraph that sounds like the beginning of an asshole’s idea of the Great American Novel.

Not a good change.

LATEST MORMON/JEW CLASH IS NUTTY

2010-09-02T16:35:00.002-04:00

But then…most religious disagreements are nutty.

That said, this one goes beyond reason, if one can reason about religion.

This morning, the New York Times reported (“Utah: Mormon Holocaust Survivers Reach Accord”): “The Mormon Church says it has changed its genealogical database to better prevent the names of Jews killed in Nazi concentration camps from being submitted for posthumous baptism by proxy.”

That lede sentence is mind-numbing to start with. Take a moment to try to wrap your mind around it.

Okay…continuing....

The short article went on to state: “In a joint statement on Wednesday, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors said a new computer system and policy changes should resolve a yearslong disagreement over the baptisms. Mormons believe posthumous baptism by proxy provides an opportunity for deceased persons to receive the Gospel in the afterlife. The names used are drawn from a church-run genealogical database. Jews are offended by the idea that Mormons are trying to alter the religion of Holocaust victims.”

I have to admit, I laughed.

But, the fact is, the Mormons believe they can baptise people into their religion after they have died. This, of course, is to save those who weren’t baptized while living from eternally roasting in hell now that they are dead.

I, who am not noted for being all that compassionate towards people whose belief systems differ from mine, can understand that this is a deeply held belief of the Mormon religion and I can respect it. (Just barely, but what the hell.)

But for the Jews to get their undies in a twist over this belief of the Mormons is, by me, totally nutsoid.

It’s my understanding that the Jews do not hold with baptisms. It is not part of their belief system.

So fine. I, personally, like the idea of baptism…the rite, by me, is lovely, whether done to babies, or taken on by adults, I like it.

But what I don’t understand is: Why do the Jews care if the Mormons baptise everyone who ever lived and who are now dead?

The folks are dead…so WHAT THE FUCK?

Oh well, maybe these Mormons and Jews don’t have enough to worry about. Maybe what is going on in the world of the quick is not sufficiently worrisome, so they are taking on the vast world of the dead to fill the void.

But to me, it is totally nutty. And even the détente is nutty.

But I will grant, a nutty détente is preferable to a nutty argument.