Obama, Fox News, Louis Menand, Anger & George Carlin

Louis Menand, distinguish professor of English at Harvard, advises President Obama to avoid criticizing Fox News directly. "The state may, and should, rebut opinions that if finds obnoxious, but it should not single out speakers for the purpose of intimidating them," he writes in the New Yorker. "At the end of the day, you do not want your opponents to be able to say that they could not be heard."

Can you imagine Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Bill O'Reilly ever claiming they could not be heard? Part of the cant of the loud-mouth right is the paranoid style, it is true, but they never claim they cannot be heard, because that might undermine their self importance. These guys all claim they have audiences of millions, silent masses raptly hanging on their every word, while the forces of darkness are always trying to prevent the truth from getting out, but never succeeding because Rush, Glen and Bill are so bravely unintimadatable.

Menand does cite an interesting number: Half of Fox "News" Channel is over sixty-three years old. "Contact your doctor if you have rage lasting more than four hours," Menand says--his best line.

Menand says Obama's attacks on Fox have left Obama's fans "dispirited."

Just the opposite, of course, is true.

What is dispiriting is watching the playground bully beat up on the fat kid who will not or cannot throw a counter punch.

Menand may speak for a group of Obama well wishers, perhaps people with whom Menand has dinner, a crowd which might be characterized as "effete." That is a loaded word, of course, harkening back to the days when Republicans began chiding Democrats as flaccid girly men who lacked backbone. Democrats are wusses who lack nerve, courage, testosterone, passion, all the things leaders ought to have in abundance.

But I speak for Obama well wishers who become frustrated and distraught by our President's disinclination to throw a punch at those who richly deserve it.

I would like to see more fire from the President for the emotional satisfaction of seeing him score points I cannot score because I am not onstage. It felt good to see Lloyd Benson's withering disdain for Daniel Qualye zinging him with that "Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Let me tell you, you're no Jack Kennedy."

This is why men watch football, prize fights--they get vicarious pleasure out of seeing someone tag a deserving target.

On the other hand, there is a question of style.

Until recently, I did not get Dana Carvey's characatur, "The Angry Old Man." I never realized some men get cranky when they get old. I just thought those old geezer were always cranky.

But watching George Carlin over the years, it is amazing to watch him get cranky as he aged. His wonderful, restrained, understated rifts on Muhammad Ali and the government's tactic of saying, "No, no, if you won't kill them, we won't let you beat them up," as he described the government saying if Ali refuses to be drafted to kill people, the government would not let Ali fight in the ring, was a wonderful jab. Contrast that to his latter day observations about the anti abortion crowd, "Did you ever notice the people who are against abortion are people you wouldn't want to f..k in the first place?" which is essentially a non sequetor.

Carlin was still funny in his cranky old man phase, but not as funny as he was in his mellow phase. He sucked you in in his mellow phase. He trusted you to see the essential absurdity in the government's argument, and in so many things about the Church. The Church granting dispensations, allowing you to eat meat on Friday if your group came in first in the scrap metal drive. Then the undoing of eating meat on Friday as a sin--completely reversing a doctrine during his lifetime--so he could remember those unfortunate souls doing eternity in Hell for the sin of eating a hot dog on Friday.

So maybe Obama is trying to be the early Carlin, zinging them better by zinging them softly. If that is what he's trying, I can tell you it isn't working.

At least not for me.

Not that zinging Rush Limbaugh is easy. To do this, you first have to listen to him and that takes a strong stomach. Even when I listen, trying to figure out what it is he is saying, there is not enough substance there to really reposite.

Listening to Limbaugh takes time--he will carry on with a lengthy imagining of Bill and Hillary Clinton having sex and the essence of this is they are both very overweight and the difficulties this would create and what the bed would sound like, groaning under their weight. This, you have to remember is coming from Rush Limbaugh, not exactly a waif himself.

But how do you respond to that "criticism?"

Or, another time, he listed each expense for the transportation of President Clinton on a trip to Chicago. He went on in excrutiating detail about the cost of transporting by airplane the armour limousine, the cost of the gas for the airplane, the salaries of the pilots down to the penny, all in a mock rage, incredulous laughter, with many asides to the effcct, "Can you imagine if the world only knew about this, how quickly they would throw this clown out of office?"

But, of course, lost in this half hour tirade about the waste of money was the underlying point whenever a President chooses to leave the White House, it costs money. So what was Limbaugh saying? The President should never leave the White House? It's too expensive?

And if the President followed this advice can you imagine Mr. Limbaugh's umbrage at the thought of an out of touch President who never deigns to connect with the common man, with the salt of the earth in the heartland?

But I'm dating myself. I am recalling a tirade from the last time I was trapped in a car long enough to listen to an extended Limbaugh rant. And that was the Clinton administration. Since then I've been unable to keep my fingers away from the button which silences Mr. Limbaugh.

This is a problem I will work on. Trying to fashion a response to knuckle draggers.

Stay tuned.

Fox News and President Obama

David Carr, in a New York Times tried to give President Obama a little motherly advice about not responding to provocations from various Fox News sources.

Don't respond to these attacks, Mr. Carr advised Mr. Obama. Your great strength is your ability to exude "a certain cool confidence."

It's like being on a basketball court and your opponents are trash talking and everyone knows these trash talkers "Would not find much space for rent in Mr. Obama's head."

Cute imagery, but wrong.

On the basketball court, you can answer, with your own actions, by scoring and smiling wordlessly, so everyone in the arena can hear it: Take that sucker.

"Mr. Obama has also shown a consistent ability to disarm or at least engage his critics."

Actually, not.

The real history is Mr. Obama did not have to engage or disarm his critics during the campaign. He knew this. He did not respond and he leaned back against the ropes like Muhammad Ali, and let his opponents wail away at him and become arm weary. He did not have to throw a punch because George Bush had already handed him the election before any of the arguments began.

"I got this," Mr. Obama reassured his supporters who urged him to throw some counter punches.

Mr. Obama could real a poll. He could see the economy tanking and he knew it didn't matter how much Sarah Palin taunted him. People were not listening to her or to John McCain. They were looking at their accounts and their mortgage payments.

But those factors which are external to all arguments are no longer working in Mr. Obama's favor.

Now it's his economy and his budget and his financial crisis and his healthcare program.

He cannot win with Rope a Dope any more.

Now he has to show he can fight for what he believes in.

Truth is, Fox News is no more partisan than newspapers in the early years of our Republic, which were the voice of one political party or another. There was a Federalist press which attacked Jefferson relentlessly, portraying him as a rum soaked anarchist. Democratic papers savaged Abraham Lincoln.

The whole notion of a dispassionate, objective news organization with no axe to grind, a neutral reporter of the Truth, is actually fairly new.

I'm no historian, but I suspect the current ideal of a neutral press dates back only to Walter Cronkite, who appeared to report the news from Viet Nam with great neutrality. Of course, CBS news ran nightly videos of American soldiers expressing their disgust at the whole idea of even being in Viet Nam. But it was not CBS News saying those things. It was the soldiers.

The pretense of "objectivity" is, of course, a basic form of dishonesty.

At least if you let your listener know what your bias is, the listener can say to himself, "Okay, I'll hear this point of view and I'll look elsewhere for the other side."

If President Obama fails, it is more likely he'll fail because he could not man up and say, "I think I'm right about this and this is what we are going to do."

As dismal a Presidency as Ronald Reagan's at least had the virtue of leadership--leadership in the wrong direction. But at least you knew where he stood. "The nine scariest words in the world, 'I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.'" That's what Reagan said. He was the anti-government, government can't do anything well President. And under his governing practice, he proved his point.

Mr. Obama was a savvy candidate. He knew all he had to do was say nothing and ride the waves of discontentment to the Presidency.

But now he has govern.

For my money, that means not putting Olympia Snow in charge of your health care plan. That means saying, "The Republicans are in the pocket of the insurance industry. They do not want any change to their cozy, privileged world. We've tried to include them in the process of change but their only desire is to obstruct and prevent change. So much for bipartisanship. We tried that. Now we are going to do what we were elected to do. If we are wrong, then vote us out."

And while he's at it, he ought to say over and over, "The Republicans tried to kill Social Security under President Bush. They called it 'Privatization,' and what they meant was taking your safe money out of the government coffers and giving it to the stock market. And they fought Medicare. Now they are fighting health care. Why? Because they care more about money and keeping money for their friends and for themselves than they care about you. I'm sorry to have to say it, but that's the truth."

And while he's at it, he ought to single out John Boehner and that nut from South Carolina and Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, not necessarily by their names but by quoting them, for special ridicule.

Why should this be left to Jon Stewart?

If he could do that, he could energize his supporters and put those right wingers on the defensive.

Those who oppose health care changes are either ignorant and frightened or simply selfish and satisfied and President Obama ought to be the one saying that. He ought to be throwing the punches, not relying others to do it and playing the nice guy.

We need more than a nice guy right now.

He cannot depend on me to say it.

Nobody reads my blog, anyway.

But he's got an open mike. He has to use it, not just hum along.

Paul Pillar, One Eye in the Land of the Blind

(Edward Hopper)



Watching TV, the various Americans touted as wise men can be seen testifying before Congress, at the Brookings Institution, on Jim Lehrer's New Hour, I feel, momentarily transported back to the city of my birth and longtime home, but things look so different from the land where I have immigrated, New Hampshire.

From up here, where so many are simply trying to figure out how to pay the mortgage, pay their taxes (such as they have taxes in New Hampshire) and send their kids to school or, more often up here, send their kids out into the work world, the whole issue of Afghanistan and Iraq looks different.

There are two perspectives up here: 1/ How does this war effort affect me personally? 2/ If it doesn't affect me personally, what makes sense for the country in these overseas efforts?

About half of the people I meet every day consider the military efforts from the point of view of employment. It affects them because the military is often one of the most viable options for employment for their kids, after high school. They mix that in with a little talk of "Patriotism" but the parents are looking at potentially losing their kids forever and so they get past the patriotism stuff pretty quickly. One attraction of the military is it's a reasonably secure job without much prospect of getting laid off and it does remove the worry about supporting your kid financially. When you've got five or more kids and you are making a living at the Portsmouth boatyard, that can be a pretty attractive prospect.

If your kids are not likely to need that option, then you tend to think in more general, almost academic terms, with the intellectual remove of the academic. Not that this means you think originally. Many of my fellow townsmen fall back into patterns of thought acquired during their youth--America should not "Cut and Run." America should "honor its obligations," or countries like Iran will disrespect us and make more trouble for us down the line.

That "Disrespect" argument is actually pretty interesting. It's a motivating force for all sorts of crazy actions you see in inner city culture. You can read about it in the novels of the inner city by George Pelecanos (Washington, DC) or you can see it in The Wire (Baltimore.) Presumably these writers base their depictions on what they actually knew about the culture of the inner city, where a fourteen year old boy is shot to death because he "Disrespected" someone with a gun, for the grave offense of making a disparaging comment about the shooter's sneakers.

How much more sophisticated, restrained and smart are those who argue the USA cannot withdraw from Afghanistan because Iran or Somali or Yemen or North Korea will see that and conclude we are too cowardly to defend ourselves? We got to shoot that Afghanie because if we countenance disrespect, we open ourselves to loss of fear from our enemies.

Watching Paul Pillar, the Georgetown professor, former CIA analyst, answer this argument, calmly, is quite amazing. He says, actually, that's not what happens in the world beyond our shores: If we withdraw from Afghanistan that doesn't guarantee a chain reaction of testing attacks from our enemies. Just as Russia's antagonists in countries it had under its thumb did not immediately rise up and attack Russia when it withdrew from Afghanistan, we are unlikely to face any emboldened enemies. Others watching a big power withdraw simply conclude Afghanistan didn't mean enough to America for America to bother with it.

Our enemies are at least that sophisticated.

We got out Somalia and the entire continent of Africa did not rise up to test us.

We got out of Viet Nam and all the dominoes of South East Asia did not fall.

As for allowing safe havens, Pillar calmly pointed out the 9/11 attackers did not have safe havens in Afghanistan or Somalia or Yemen. Their save havens were in apartments in Germany and hotel rooms in Florida and Portland, Maine.

Pillar notes quietly Al Qaeda does not need geography, it does not need a land base or an aircraft carrier. All it needs is the internet. It needs a credit card, a cell phone or maybe a boat or a ton of fertilizer, or a stolen nuclear bomb. But safe havens, forts, flags, factories to stitch together uniforms, not so much.

But nobody in those Congressional hearings seemed to hear Professor. He didn't have any punchy or memorable lines to quote. His lines were all understatement and unemotional reason. Sitting next to him in the hearing room were much more colorful advocates of bringing the fight to Al Qaeda, of "Fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them in the streets over here," of not falling into the weak kneed posture of submissiveness, of "Cut and Run" policies.

Even at the Brookings Institution, where he sat on panel with a Congresswoman and a couple of Brookings Institution gurus who also worked for some high power sounding institutes of policy analysis or centers for strategic studies or something equally grand sounding, Pillar was politely given time to say his piece and ignored.

He was ignored in Washington, but I heard him up here in New Hampshire.

Trouble is, I'm not sure how many other people in New Hampshire, or elsewhere across our continental sized nation, were tuned in.

All The Answers

The Supreme Court currently dominated by Justice Antonin Scalia and his like minded enthusiasts, Thomas, Roberts and Alito have given the phrase "Strict Constructionists" new meaning.

For me, this idea has an old meaning going back to an old black man I used to see sitting in a park. He held in his hand a very worn, leather bound Bible, and he would page through it, stopping at various passages and tell passers by that "All the answers," were contained in this book.

"All the answers to what?"
"All the answers."
"You mean all the answers to life's big mysteries? Who are we? Where do we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going?"
"Those and everything else."
"You mean, like: Should we legalize prostitution? Should we legalize marijuana? Is homosexuality a sin? Is divorce okay? Should we cut down the forests? Should we drill for oil or build more nuclear reactors? Should we allow corporations to promote candidates? Should we allow a teenager to hold up a sign, Bong Hits for Jesus?"
"All the questions, all the answers, right here," he would say, shaking his head at the enormity of it. Right here in this book. If only we are smart enough to read it. Read it properly...and understand."
"What about answers like how to make a vaccine against AIDS?"
"All the answers," he'd say. "All the answers, right here."

Now one thing you can say about absolutists: They are consistent. They do not get caught up in the contradictions which arise when presented with specific cases.

So his utter faith, his belief in that book held a certain charm and reassurance. There is one God, and he speaks through one book and all we have to do is look to that one source and--here's the rub--interpret it and we'll know the Truth.

Having learned in school about evolution, and having absorbed the idea a "Plan" a divine "intention" may take a rather free flowing form, I had my doubts the Bible could point the way to a vaccine against AIDS. Even if it was written by men under the guidance of God, I doubted it covered every problem.

As dreary as many of my courses in science had been, they had at least inculcated a dim awareness there are more questions than answers and each new instance requires a temporary answer which works for while until it is found inadequate and set aside for a new answer to take its place. The immutability of an "answer," loses its impact the more you study nature.

So we learn about microbes. Then we learn about antibiotics which kill microbes. But then we learn microbes have DNA which can mutate and make them invulnerable to those antibiotics until you can design a new antibiotic to kill them in a new way their DNA hasn't adapted to, yet.

The Bible, as far as I know, does not really guide you much there.
But then again, I cannot call myself much of a student of the Bible.
Maybe I'm just ignorant.

All this is a way to say, I cannot really buy the idea of a sacred text which contains all the answers, especially as new problems arise, as DNA mutates and presents new problems.

So it is with me and our Constitution as a sacred text.

Again, I admit I'm ignorant. I really should have learned more about the framers, about Jefferson and Madison and Washington and Franklin and Adams and all those guys and what they knew and what they were thinking.

But I do know, they lived in the eighteenth century, before the human voice could be amplified, before television could bring a politician's image to millions, before the Internet, before automatic weapons and telescopic lenses could transform a single citizen into a killing machine who can kill a President or wipe out a classroom, before corporations could drill for oil, despoil vast prairies, before airplanes could fly from Africa bringing passengers infected with Ebola virus to our shores, before terrorists could steal an atomic weapon and blow up whole cities, before terrorists could steal airplanes and attack cities, before cities, actually, in the modern sense of a New York City, before skyscrapers, before tunnels and suspension bridges.

Having read just a little about Jefferson and his contemporaries, I do have the sense he had insight into his own limitations. I may be wrong, but I think the men who wrote then amended the Constitution had some sense of humility about what they were doing. Maybe I'm wrong, but they seemed to be a little humble about sailing uncharted seas, about creating a form of government which had not been tried in any vast way (except by a few Greek Villagers and some Roman senators in some nascent form) and they were somewhat tentative.

If Jefferson said he thought a little revolution every now and then was necessary for Democracy, I don't think he was thinking about rolling out a guillotine, but about changing course, with an election, maybe even with a Supreme Court ruling, although I gather he would be rather startled by the power and reach of our current Supreme Court.

The writers of the Constitution were men of their times, and in their times slavery was a fact of life and they included slaves in the head count of the population and even mentioned a formula for how to apportion representatives to Congress to account for the number of slaves living in their territory. But, if I understand what these men were like, they did not look into the future thinking they could predict all the problems their creation would encounter, so they built in a lot of flexibility so the government they created could morph and change to face future problems--could accommodate a little revolution now and then.

If they were geniuses, it was in their recognition they did not have all the answers for all times and for all problems. All they were doing was positing a way future problem might be discussed and resolved without resort to civil wars. Smart men, seems to me, would have not attempted to write a document with all the answers. They would have said, you guys solve your own problems which arise in your own times. Don't look to us for all the answers.

They were, in other words, fathers who refused to have all the answers, who refused to play the role of God, who said to their progeny: You're on your own now. Don't look to me or to my writings to solve all your problems for you.

Of course, as Lincoln discovered, the Constitution and the government those men devised did not work to solve every problem.

When you got down to the problem of whether or not a man could be considered property, you got the Dred Scott case, which found in the sacred text an answer that if "Other persons" who counted 2/3 of a white male person had been mentioned, then slavery was enshrined in the Constitution and was all right with the founding fathers.

Until a war changed what the founding fathers said, and a couple of amendments to the Constitution got added. There's a not so little revolution, of the sort Jefferson would probably preferred to avoid.

So when you have Antonin Scalia saying all the answers are in the Constitution, and the Supreme Court cannot do anything but hew to the ideas of those eighteenth century authors, he is missing the very point of the authors, who, I am imagining now, if they were as smart as I suspect they were, knew they did not have all the answers and would be only too glad to believe their government was flexible enough to allow the Supreme Court to write a Brown vs the Board of Education and to begin the process of ending the life of the mutant child of slavery, Jim Crow.

There are people, who for whatever reasons, want to think of the world as an orderly creation, the idea of a single force or God, which becomes disorderly and needs to be brought back into conformity with a single will. And what could be more orderly than a single source?

Well, actually, two sources, the Constitution and the Bible.

Just look there and you do not have to think any further.

Of course, you may not get a polio vaccine, a heart lung machine for heart surgery, airplanes, atomic bombs, computers, cell phones, automatic teller machines. But,you'll have order.

I look at those four justices who believe in strict construction and I cannot help but wonder when they will start wearing powdered wigs.

I do miss those stripes Chief Justice Renquist sewed on his sleeves to show he was the grand master. Those black robes are pretty impressive get ups. But they are so unadorned. The priests I see on TV all have doo dads on their robes--crosses, little symbols of big mysteries, stripes of course, and colors, wow the colors. The Supreme Court justices could use a little of the pizazz of the television preachers. Maybe some shoulder boards with stars on their shoulders. They might take a look at the dazzle on the coats of the generals who really have a sense of color and the possibilities of adornment.

Heaven forbid justices of the Supreme Court should become "Activist" judges, making up new laws the Congress never passed. Of course, what makes you an activist is actually when you make up a new law which offends the sensibility of Justice Scalia. It's okay to make up a law which says a teenager cannot hold up a sign across the street from a school parade which offends the principal and the justices who don't know what it means but they know they don't like the word "Bong." That's just being a strict constructionist.

The guys who wrote the Constitution were clearly against Bong Hits for Jesus.

It's all right there,in the Constitution, along with all the rest of the answers.

The Sunshine Makers

As Afghanistan swirls into a whirlpool, it all looks so familiar: American soldiers, strangers in a strange land, a war with no borders and no geographic objectives, no capital to capture, no uniformed army to defeat, no more mission other than to "pacify" a whole civilization, to wins hearts and minds of people whose language, culture, hopes and fears are foreign.

The big difference is supposed to be that this time the people we are attacking are supposed to have been the source of the 9/11 attack, and, we are told, will be again. We've got to get them before they strike us again, is the line. And if we leave them alone, they'll have "sanctuaries," as if they do not already have sanctuaries.

It all reminds me of a very strange and haunting cartoon which every male of my generation remembers distinctly, "The Sunshine Makers," about a group of tiny elf like men who skulked around singing, "We're happy when we're sad." One of these black clad gnomes fires off an arrow at the white clad happy guys, who bombard these black guys into happiness.

It was an unsettling notion, even to a seven year old, the idea one group could bombard another into happiness, could by warfare convert them to love, could win their hearts and minds by bottled sunshine. Even as a child, the idea somewhere, deep down was disquieting. I had the feeling, "Get Real." I knew I didn't know much about the world, but I knew that cartoon felt not just bogus but dangerous.

There is an old saw about medical interns: The most dangerous intern is not the intern who does not know--it's the intern who does not know he does not know.

What I don't know about Afghanistan is titanic. I cannot even picture the place. It is a country of millions, I read, but the only images I've seen of it are dusty little villages with mud for streets. I've read about the poppy farmers and the drug trade which feeds the Taliban and Al Qaeda. I've read about their "elections." And I've read about Richard Holbrooke riding around the place, trying to apply the lessons he learned in Viet Nam.

But Mr. Holbrooke does not appear to have learned the big lesson of Viet Nam.

It may be we have to fight Al Qaeda, but sending in uniformed American troops looks to me like a show for the folks back home watching on their T.V.'s.

It is a continuation of the Bush era idea of strutting onto main street with guns slung low and looking for someone to shoot it out with.

Trouble is, Al Qaeda is too smart to strut down main street.

How do I know this? I can only guess. What would I do, if I were in the position of Al Qaeda or the Taliban? Would I expose myself? Or would I hid under a rock until I had a clear shot, maybe with a roadside improvised explosive device.

That I am woefully ignorant of Afghanistan does not necessarily mean I am wrong.
Richard Holbrooke can base his conclusions on experience talking to Americans and Afghanies on the ground. But that does not mean he is correct in thinking we can "win" a war of pacification there.

I am so ignorant, in fact, I have to rely on a fictional account of how an indigenous underclass deals with a more powerful ruling armed force--as in The Wire, which was fictional only in form, not in understanding.

The fact is, no occupation force, whether it is made of soldiers or police can pacify a local population unless the people living in the territory have very good reason to want to help.

What would I do?

I think I'd get all the uniformed soldiers out of the country. Then I'd send in the guys who can collect information, who can blend in, who can listen in, if we have enough of those guys. And when Osama, and the Taliban peep their heads up, maybe then we'll have a shot at them. It's the difference between listening on the wire, understanding what the mopes are thinking and planning and being very patient, not breaking down doors until you have the top guys. Whenever I see stacks of cocaine or heroin in front of top brass displaying the haul, which they always say has a "Street Value," of a billion dollars, I think of The Wire and know we are being sold and manipulated. It's not the stuff you pick up on the street that means anything. It's the people you don't see behind it who mean something.

Another analogy is medical: what you see on the skin is what catches your eye, but if you don't dig down to the real source of the problem, you are just amusing yourself and deceiving the patient into thinking you have cured him when all you've done is strut.

Of course, if the President did remove the troops, the frat boy Republicans would howl about how he's caved in and when there's another attack, it'll be all his fault and he'll lose the election.

So it's not likely we'll see the soldiers coming home any time soon.

But that's democracy. Your President can only be as good as the people who elect him will allow.

As Tommy Carcetti once said, "Tomorrow, I'll wake up in Baltimore and the election will be over. And I'll still be white."

Which is to say, you can't change deeply rooted biases of the electorate, even with reasoned arguments.

When Republicans Say Democrat

(Chop Suey--Edward Hopper)




One thing I liked about Howard Cosell, the sports announcer, was his statement when Cassius Clay changed his name to Muhammad Ali. He said, simply enough, a man ought to be entitled to be called by the name he wishes to be called by.

Sounds simple and self evident, but there was a ton of psychology afoot in America of the 1960's and 1970's and white people, especially establishment types in the media, did not want to call Muhammad Ali by that name which evoked violent Black Muslims who, it was said, wanted to form a separate black nation led by Malcom X or that other Black guy who led the Nation of Islam. The name was an act of rebellion, a sort of hot cinder in the eye of white America.

First Ali beats Sonny Liston, costing a lot of smart white guys who bet against him a lot of money. That was bad enough. Now he wants to change his name, after we had all taken the trouble to learn Cassius Clay. Celebrities are not allow to re-brand like that.

But Cosell persisted and eventually other white people discovered they could love Muhammad Ali as much as Cassius Clay and Western Civilization did not fall to Islam or the Mongol Hordes, and some of us forgot he was ever named Cassius Clay.

Personally, I sort of liked Cassius because I dimly remembered some line from Julius Caesar to the effect, "Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look," which was meant to imply, I gathered, the old Caesar was a little worried about the upcoming younger guy who might want to depose the old lion and take over the pride.

But I started calling him Ali because Cosell persuaded me that was the decent thing to do.

Now we have Democrats, who refer to their party as the Democratic Party. And they use the adjective, Democratic.

But the Republicans seem to think it sounds degrading to refer to the "Democrat" party or a "Democrat" bill going through Congress.

It reminds me of how George Wallace, the Governor of Alabama, who Martin Luther King famously described as the governor who had hate dripping from his lips, Governor Wallace used to pronounce the word "Negro," (which was then polite enough useage) as "Nigra," which sounded to most Northerners a lot like "Nigger." It was the Southerner's little frat boy ploy to be able to go on national TV and called African Americans (as we now say) "Niggers," without anybody being about to do anything about it because they would reply, all wide eyed in mock innocence, "You just don't understand my accent. You'all are just intolerant of us Southerners and the way we sound."

So now you've got smirking John Boehner and all the Republicans and certainly all the Rush Limbaugh's saying, "Well, the Democrat party is completely wrong about that," or more commonly, "Well, isn't that just like the Democrat party to want to cut and run."

The Democrats have other fights to fight and say nothing about this. But the Republicans all have this smirky little smile of victory whenever they refer to that dorky Democrat party, getting a little kick every time they taunt with a little political epithet. See we can call you Wop or Mick or Democrat and take you down and you can't do anything about it.

What a bunch of frat boys.

And they have all got together at some frat council and agreed to hew to that line; if you don't know the party of the man being interviewed you know as soon as you hear, "Democrat Party." That's their audible frat pin.

All those smug boys on the porch in their tassled loafers, no socks, drinking beer or bourbon out of plastic cups and shouting about interesting things like how much they planned to drink or what sort of cars they own and feeling very good about themselves because they are in the club.

There you have the perfect image of the Republican Party today.

What are Sue Collins and Olympia Snow doing with that crowd?

Who Knew?

One thing you got to say for Obama, he did not start his Presidency by going right after the toughest, most important issue around--gays in the military.

He had to slap aside his own version of the Cuban missile crisis which was thrown at him by the fates just to test him, and then he went after something which should have been a no brainer, something everyone could gather round the campfire and sing Kumbaya: healthcare.

He could have diddled around with Afghanistan, that graveyard of empires. Aside from the families of those fighting there, and aside from the effects on the economy of spending all those billions a month on those military exercises, most of us here in the Land of the Free, Home of the Brave are not much affected by what goes on over there.

But healthcare, now there's something which effects every last man, woman and child, one way or another, eventually, right here in the homeland.

You got to hand it to him, he chose wisely.

And every one has an opinion about healthcare here.

We all know, for example, that whatever it is we are doing here, it has got to be the best. This is America. We are always the best at everything, except maybe at soccer, but that's a game for guys with no deltoids and no biceps.

And we also know that next to all the Mexicans streaming across our Southern border looking for jobs, the next biggest illegal immigration problem we have is all those Canadians flooding across the Northern border looking for hip replacements, and they are coming here for brain tumor surgeries which they have to get on a ten year waiting list to have in Canada.

Because, outside of the US of A: HEALTHCARE IS RATIONED.

You want it, you cannot get it. At least, you can not get it instantly,which is very unAmerican. It's unAmerican because here in America you always can get whatever you want instantly. Just look at our supermarkets open 24 hours and our refrigerators which are just packed with instant gratification.

Americans have always had health care instantly and supersized. At least that's what we tell ourselves.

And, oh, did I forget to mention how all the best medical research and all the big innovations are done right here in the US of A, because we got competition here, driving innovation and unleashing the powerful horses of mental acuity--except for a few things like CT scans which the English somehow stumbled upon, and adjuvant chemotherapy for breast cancer (Italy) and about two dozen other major advances which we would have come up with sooner if it hadn't been for the FDA and all those government agencies which hold back the flood of energy coming from our medical schools and universities.

See, we are so much better than the rest of the world because the rest of the world all has socialized medicine. The rest of the world is just too dumb to fend for themselves, so they walk like sheep into the maw of these big socialized bureaucracies where they get inefficient care. Except maybe for England, Italy, Germany, Spain, Canada and mabye even Cuba where polls show the local citizens are quite happy with their care.


You know, I can't understand the English. They say they wouldn't have our healthcare system to save their lives--which is exactly what health care systems should be all about. They say we've got the world's best system for 10% of our population and one of the worst for the other 90%.

But, hey, when did we ever worry about losers here in America?

What we got here in America is efficiency and sometimes progress requires some tough choices.

Just consider this: There are roughly 400,000 physicians delivering health care in this country. There are roughly (and this is a hard number to pin down because the insurance industry is a little embarrassed by it) 15 million people working for health insurance companies, efficiently denying insurance to sick people, people with pre existing conditions, old people who just might get sick and reduce profits, people who don't work for big companies, people who have been sick, visited doctors in the past (showing they are inclined to use the system and cost companies money) and people who just don't look healthy.

Now, if you figure the average salary of all these people is $50,000, going from all the clerks who process the forms to the CEO's of the insurance companies and the members of their boards of directors, you get roughly $250,000,000 as the cost of the insurance company employees.

If none of those insurance people showed up for work tomorrow, not a single patient would go without care, nobody would die or get sicker.

But if any of the 400,000 doctors failed to show up for work, bad things would happen.

So have we got efficiency here in the USA or what?

And now Obama wants to wreck all that. He's gonna ruin everything.