Cliff Notes

This is how it’s going to work. We will NOT go off the cliff. The Congress and the White House will reach a miraculous agreement at the last minute, at least to kick the can down the road into 2013. The finger-pointing may not turn into handshaking and back-slapping, but everyone will feel pretty good about themselves. The stock market will go up hundreds of points, and the New Year will begin on a high note.

There’s still a lot that’s wrong with this picture. Once the problem is solved, it will be back to business as usual. We will be so relieved that we won’t remember what the folks in Washington put us through. It has happened before, and will likely happen in the future when similar issues arise. We are so used to this dysfunction that it feels normal. That’s the dangerous part.

Just so you know where I stand on the chief sticking point, which seems to be a number, I do not consider those with annual incomes of $250,000 “wealthy.” Comfortable, yes – a lot of folks would rejoice to have that much coming in – but wealthy, no. At least the Republicans tried to put a number on the table. And once a number is on the table, you’d think there’s room for negotiation.

I have another problem with word usage: “entitlement” programs. The E word is pejorative, because it brings to mind people who don’t deserve something feeling as if they’re owed. But in the case of Social Security, for example, they ARE owed – they paid into this system while they were working. That said, I personally wouldn’t be opposed to some sort of means testing. If someone really is wealthy, they probably wouldn’t miss the relative pittance they get back from SS. Since in general, we’re living longer, it probably is time to gradually raise the retirement age as well.

I must confess I haven’t read Simpson-Bowles through, but Republicans and Democrats shouldn’t feel the need to re-invent a wheel that people with real brains spent time coming up with. At the very least, it should serve as a framework for discussion.

But to return to this moment, let’s try hard to remember the pain we’re in right now, and figure out how we can make Washington feel this pain when the next cliff looms.

And BTW, I don’t know what I’ll do the next time I hear someone say “déjà vu all over again.” I bet even Yogi would tell you he’s heard that once too often. All I can do is issue a warning: you don’t want to be in the same county with me if that happens.

Still Here

The solstice came and went, uneventfully, in spite of predictions attributed to the poor misunderstood Mayans. I still have to wrap Christmas gifts and still have to pay American Express. The Fiscal Cliff remains.

One of the things forecast to happen was the flipping of polarity, either on the Earth or the Sun. I thought, maybe something did happen. Maybe Republicans turned into Democrats, for example, and red states turned blue. But of course, it would have to happen the other way, right? It didn’t, but even if it had, polarity’s polarity, after all. I was almost hoping a polarity flip would reverse my moral compass and that I’d be on my way to Vegas right now, but that’s not happening, either.

No, the End is going to continue to be a limited group experience, or for some people, an individual one. I’m hearing this song from the’60s in my head, sung by Tennessee’s Skeeter Davis, accent and all:

Whah does the sun go on shahning?
Whah does the sea rush to shore?
Don’t they know, it’s ind of the world
‘Cause yew don’t love me anymore…..

Then there’s that other song from the later ‘60s, growled by Barry McGuire:

And you tell me, over and over and over again my friend
You don’t believe, we’re on the Eve of Destruction…

(Actually, shoulda been singing that one yesterday.)

Life not only goes on – it’s actually beginning for millions who are being born on this day. They’ll be able to tell their grandchildren that they came into the world on Doomsday. Even Mayans, or their descendants are having babies.

But enough of all this eschatological talk. Going back to gift-wrapping. BTW, if you see seven guys in the sky with wings blowing trumpets, then we’ve got something to talk about. Otherwise, just leave a message when you hear the beep. Thanks!

Final Thoughts?

Remote as the possibility may seem to some – even me – this could very well be my last post in this space if the Mayans and various doomsayers are right. So what have I got to say for myself?

I haven’t lived a spectacular life by modern standards, but it’s been a pretty good ride. I’d have to give it a B-minus. That, of course, is an average. The highs were high and the lows were low, and no, I’m not bipolar and temporarily off my meds.

I’m glad I have been alive for this particular span of years. It feels like I have one foot planted way back when, almost before TV, and the other firmly planted in the current age of communication miracles. And I have friends from a wide span of age groups, which has been very enriching.

There are many things I would do over again if given the chance, like many of you, but for the most part, I made the best decisions I could with the information available at the time. The things I regret mostly involve having treated people badly, and it would be nice to be able to go back and make amends. The only downside of that process is that I’ve actually tried it on a number of occasions, and most of the victims have no recollection of the rotten way I behaved toward them. It’s not like they ever forgave me, they just forgot about whatever it was and moved on. Maybe that’s the best payback for someone who hates to be ignored.

They say that no matter how fine a human being you have been or think you have been, there are always about 10 percent of those you meet who just won’t like you. In my experience, this is another average. I found myself in some places where it seemed everyone loved me to death, and in others where I couldn’t get arrested.

According to the stats page, this blog has had just under 6,000 clicks over a period of about four years -- not exactly viral -- but I’m grateful to all of you who have visited here from all over the world. I’m only sorry I couldn’t help those looking for porn or knockoff Vuitton. But if I’m still here Saturday, or posting from the “other side,” stay tuned. You never know what a desperate writer will do to attract readers.

Mental Cases

First we were talking gun control, now we’re talking mental health. It’s certainly true that anyone who picks up an assault weapon and shoots up an elementary school has obviously fallen through some sort of crack in our health care system. But I’m curious to know how exactly this is going to be fixed.

One obvious remedy, as it is to many of life’s problems, is more money – in this case, to offer more access to mental health services. The only problem is, the potentially dangerous people we hope to control don’t necessarily want more access to health services. They usually have to be forced to take advantage of them. If they’re adults, who’s going to do the forcing? Will therapists get more authority to commit people? What kinds of behavior will cause that kind of response?

In the absence of facts in the Newtown case, which are slow to come out (or slower than cable news would like), the talking heads are filling time discussing autism, schizophrenia and other conditions. Parents of autistic children are already worried that this syndrome is being stigmatized as one that could lead to the mayhem that we saw last week. One of the signs, according to the discussion I heard, is “lack of empathy.” So people who aren’t empathetic, who lack social skills, or maybe just prefer to be alone instead of joining the crowd, may be suspicious? How exactly are we going to screen for this, and what are we going to do with that information? Gun control may be politically difficult, but it’s way easier than this issue, and now I'm getting a little nervous.

It reminds me of one of my favorite lines from a horror movie of the 1930s, in which one attendant at an English insane asylum says to another, “Sometimes, I think everyone around here is crazy, except for me and for you. And then again, I has me doubts about you!”

Pieces of the Puzzle

The call for gun control following the Newtown, Connecticut shooting, while producing the expected backlash from gun enthusiasts and Constitutional fundamentalists, has also brought reminders that limiting access to assault weapons and mega-magazines won’t eliminate massacres. Improved school security is a natural component, though the challenge is finding ways of making schools safer without turning them into fortresses.

There are those who blame violent movies, TV and video games for poisoning people’s minds. And then there’s the issue of mental health. There are a lot of unstable people out there – including people who seem fine today but could go off the deep end tomorrow if their buttons were pushed. The now-viral blog post, “I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother” details the struggles of a woman trying to deal with a mentally disturbed and sometimes violent son, and how few options there are for helping him, or even controlling him, short of jail. Civil liberties often interfere with what seem like wise and timely intervention efforts.

While gun control proponents may be focusing on only one piece of the puzzle, tossing all the other pieces on the table in a big heap should not be an excuse for paralysis. It’s true that people kill people, but why should the marketplace make it easy for them by supplying assault weapons and huge bullet magazines? It’s logical to start with gun regulation. Difficult as this issue is politically, it’s actually the easiest one for us to get our heads around at this moment. Adam Lanza’s real mother owned guns, including the Bushmaster assault-weapon wannabe, to which her son was able to get access.

Guns do have their function. It certainly reasonable for those concerned about self-defense to have a means of doing so – as long as their own need is reasonable (there’s that dangerous R word again).

But if you want to talk about the really big picture, why are guns the American symbol of power to the chronically powerless, and how can we change that perception? Once we find that puzzle piece, many of the others will fall into place.

The Moral Cliff

We’ve been spending a lot of time talking about the fiscal cliff, but the Newtown shooting has revealed a moral one. Now is the time to consider reasonable gun regulation. “Reasonable” is a dangerous word, but I’m willing to bet that the majority of Americans know what that means in this case.

As I’ve said many times, we accept regulations in many areas of life. Traffic laws are a great example. They affect most of us, and typically, they are clearly understood. And experience makes them reasonable. If there were a traffic signal or stop sign at every intersection, there would be gridlock. But there would also be gridlock if there were no controls at all. Effective regulation actually makes traffic flow better. You can’t leave this one up to human nature. Liberty is a very lofty concept, but we agree to give up some of it to improve the functions of daily life.

I am not opposed to the right to bear arms, but it should be plain that there is no reasonable need for civilians in the United States to own functioning automatic or semi-automatic weapons, or huge magazines that allow scores of bullets to be fired. And background checks should be required at all gun-sale venues, including gun shows. If we could work on just these issues, we’d be solving a lot of the problem.

Some feel that one of the answers lies in improving security at places like schools. But while Newtown has resulted in great psychological trauma for children, turning elementary schools into armed camps will have effects too. It’s about balance.

In the Old West, it was reasonable for almost everyone to own a gun, because there was a reasonable fear that individuals would be called upon often to defend themselves. This isn’t the Wild West anymore, unless we allow it to be.

I’m tired of hearing that we can’t move this ball forward because the gun lobby is too strong and that members of Congress have to take money from it because they need to get reelected, and that’s just the way life is. But it doesn’t have to be that way all the time. At some point, if you’ll forgive the metaphor mix, the dog is going to have to decide that the tail isn’t going to wag it anymore.

Always the Gun

This is America, home of apple pie. Then there’s the other thing. How much more convincing do we need that it’s time to do something about it?

From a practical point of view, it’s impossible to regulate intentions. People are going to be bullied, or jilted by their girlfriends, mistreated by an employer they’ve served faithfully for decades, you name it. There’s always going to be a motive or, if you like, a trigger, that will make someone pick up a gun and take out their rage on innocent people. In the case of the Connecticut shooting, there couldn’t be more innocent targets than elementary school children.

If you can’t regulate intentions, then you have to move on to what you can regulate: the means. Can anyone today seriously advance the argument that civilians need access to semi-automatic weapons with magazines, and if anyone does advance that argument, how many can seriously accept it? Today! How many blows of the 2-by-4 do we need before we get the message?

Being practical again: Sweeping bans on common behavior don’t work. If you’ve been watching “Boardwalk Empire,” you can see why Prohibition was a failure. So if you want to deal with guns, you have to do things in pieces, and you have to accept that it’s going to take time – but the important part is, you get started. It’s an evolutionary, not a revolutionary process.

We actually have had success at this in many fields. Smoking is one of the best examples. All over the country, we have laws restricting where people can smoke, and there are fewer and fewer places where it’s legal to do it. The fact that these regulations are in place is reflective of the fact that smoking just isn’t cool anymore. Considering that this habit was brought to the civilized world hundreds of years ago, we’ve come a long way in a relatively short time toward eliminating it, but it seems like forever.

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of hearing about the psychological state of demented perpetrators, how sad a day it is, listening to more grieving families, and how we all have to keep folks in our thoughts and prayers. Thinking deeply and praying are very good, but what’s even better is realizing that we can take practical steps toward preventing these incidents, and now, we have the opportunity.

It will be a challenge. There’s something else just as American as apple pie and guns. It’s the short attention span. Will we care as much about enacting effective gun laws in 48 hours as we do today?

Practical Jokes Aren't Jokes At All

I have often quipped that there should be the death penalty for those who perpetrate practical jokes. I never found them funny, especially, of course, when I was the victim. The humiliation – and the rage – stayed with me a long time, maybe longer than for most.

This could be hereditary. I remember when my mother was the target of a “Candid Camera” TV stunt in a New York supermarket. The nature of it escapes me, but the crew, of course, was hoping she’d have a sense of humor and be a good sport about the whole thing. She did not. When asked if she would sign the release to allow the bit to be broadcast, she not only refused, but stamped her foot while doing so. That meant she was REALLY mad.

Many of us are rightly outraged and disappointed at the two Australian DJs who pretended to be Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles calling into a hospital about the condition of the pregnant Princess Kate. They talked to a nurse, who gave them some personal medical information about the royal, and the interview was broadcast. The nurse was later found dead, an apparent suicide.

The incident is being investigated, but it’s hard to avoid what looks like the obvious conclusion that the nurse’s death was an unintended consequence of the hoax. It could be argued that the nurse must have had other emotional issues percolating inside her and that no reasonable person in that situation would have taken her own life. But how can the perpetrators of this practical joke ever be sure that it wasn’t their action that pushed this woman over the edge?

The DJs involved, who were the subject of death threats themselves, have since tearfully apologized. But the CEO of the parent company of the radio station, while (according to the Huffington Post) admitting the incident was tragic, said such jokes were a standard part of radio culture.

As a former radio broadcaster myself, that’s not a standard I’d be publicly accepting. If that’s anywhere close to true, the industry better start doing some heavy navel-gazing about now.

Got Your Number

OK, everybody, knock it off!

I got it. It’s 12.12.12, and this is supposed to mean something. The Bible is full of 12s – 12 tribes of Israel, 12 apostles. There are 12 inches in a foot. We buy eggs by the dozen. 12 dozens is a gross.

Why must we humans heap meanings on things that really have only one? 12 by itself is a NUMBER. That’s where it begins and ends. It may have interesting mathematical properties. So have a good time, but don’t get exercised about it.

Apparently, 12 has lots of significance in Judeo-Christian culture, but there are other cultures. From what I read, the big number in China is 8, so couples jumped through hoops to get married on 8.8.08.

A numerologist once told me on a radio show that my life path number was 5. I read that I’m supposed to be happy-go-lucky and adventurous. I am neither. The description says that I’m a good communicator. I’ll leave that up to the readership here.

It’s a little like astrology. You think you were born under a certain sign, and it may have worked as a pickup line in a bar in the ‘70s, but in fact, the sun apparently travels through two extra constellations these days, so what you think you are, you’re probably not.

To return to numbers, the only ones that have any great practical use for me these days are those in the bank account, the cholesterol count and perhaps the percentage of body fat. There may be one or two more.

But in the end, can at least some of us agree that this preoccupation with the meaning of numbers is all about having too much time on our hands?

Subway Morality Play: What Would YOU Have Done?

For the past week or so, the New York Post photographer who took the picture of the guy on the subway tracks about to be hit by the train has been peppered with questions which are all basically the same: So why didn’t you put down your camera and act like a human being, meaning, try to rescue the victim?

The photog, who gamely submitted to the interviews to defend his reputation, said he was too far away, wasn’t strong enough to pull the guy out and that he was using his camera flash to try to alert the driver of the oncoming train. You can believe him or not, but is all this beside the point?

Newspeople, by inclination or by training or both, tend to perform in certain ways during crises. I had a similar train thing happen to me earlier this year. I was in the lead car of a commuter train that struck a man on the tracks as the train was pulling into a station platform, an apparent suicide. Was I trying to comfort my shaken-up fellow passengers? No, I was on the phone to the city’s top news radio station, where I had worked part-time once.

My wife reminds of the time an early-morning 7-point earthquake struck, awakening us. Did I roll over to see if she was OK? No, she, said, I was on the phone to a national radio network even before the shaking stopped.

So do I have ice water running through my veins? If necessary, I’ll get a blood sample for you, but the bottom line is, I had always behaved this way as a news professional. Someone asked me about this once, and my answer was that when disaster struck, I was more fortunate than most, because I had a job to do.

As has been frequently pointed out by reporters like Anderson Cooper of CNN, most people have no clue about how they might react in a crisis until that crisis arrives. The average milktoast wimp might perform like a superhero, while sometimes those who are expected to lead shrivel up in terror at the prospect of making a life-or-death decision under extreme pressure.

You can go back to the Bible for a perfect example. Jesus expected Simon Peter to deny him three times, and even told him so, saying a rooster would crow after the third time. Peter assured Christ that he would always have his back. But as predicted, when the bad guys asked Peter if he knew Jesus, he said in effect, never heard of him, and the cock crowed. And yet, Jesus shortly thereafter founded his church, naming Peter (Greek for “rock”) its leader. Was that the behavior of a “rock”? Go figure.

To return to that New York subway scene, many others besides the Post photographer maybe could have helped the victim, but didn’t, instead taking their own smart-phone pictures. And then, of course, we might consider the New York Post editors, who, under much less pressure, decided to publish their photographer’s shocking photo on the front page.

We are all very complex creatures, and “acting like a human being” can, fortunately or unfortunately, have many meanings. But judging too quickly can be a dangerous business too.

Chemical Bashar

There it is: NBC reported today that Syria is loading chemical agents into bombs, presumably for use in a last stand if the regime of Bashar al-Assad is up against the ropes. Well, the ropes are in sight.

What exactly are we talking about here? One analyst reported on CNN tonight that one shell or one bomb dropped in a populated area could kill 18,000 people easily.

President Assad has pledged not to use this stuff on his own people. But if he thinks foreign-inspired terrorist invaders are involved – and his own survival is threatened – it’s believed he won’t hesitate. Some say even if he escapes from Syria, there’s little to stop his commanders from pulling triggers.

Of the “red line” drawn by President Obama against the use of these weapons, Senator John McCain said the administration was giving a “green light” to all atrocities short of their use. That green light wasn’t turned on this week. It’s been on for well over a year – and that’s why we have this situation now.

Some critics say the U.S. has been hyping this threat to provide a pretext for going in, just as was done with the WMD stories about Iraq 10 years ago that proved to be false. But there’s a big difference. President Bush was looking for any excuse he could find to invade Iraq. President Obama has been looking for any excuse he can find NOT to go into Syria. Except now, it seems he’s about run out of them.

Then there is the concern that if used, clouds of gas might waft into neighboring non-combatant countries, or that supplies of this stuff might fall into the hands of real terrorist organizations.

To be as potent as they are, these weapons had to be experimentally tested. I don’t think I want to know on what – or on whom.

It’s clear that we all have to keep our eyes fixed on this region, because the next few days could be dicey. I would say it’s not an exaggeration to suggest that those of us who are good at praying better get started.

"Getting" Twitter

Look, I’m not one of those old people who is being dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st Century. I’m all in favor of modern communications. As a ham radio operator, I was texting way before it was cool, as I may have mentioned to some of you. I leave Facebook running in the background while I work at home; I have no co-workers with this sort of a job, so with all its limitations and increasing spam, etc., FB is still a source of company.

I need help, though, with finding much of a general use for Twitter, other than one: for breaking news alerts, or for those who need to get a message out of a desperate place, there’s no question about its value. Or maybe to send an angry message to your member of Congress or something.

But is there anyone out there I feel the need to “follow”? I’m a huge fan of certain performers, but am perfectly happy to just watch their shows or listen to their music. Seriously, do I need to know what they’re thinking at any given moment? No, I can probably wait till their next show.

More to the point, it’s the Internet-age-old question: Does anyone really care what I’m doing or thinking at this moment? Why even ask? I have enough trouble getting people to read this blog. Some media outlets charge money for consuming their content. Heck, if I could afford it, I would reverse the process – PAY people to consume my content. But then, there’s the obligation to actually produce something worthy of the name “content.”

On NPR this morning, I heard of a growing trend to tweet while you’re watching TV. Apparently a large number of us can’t watch a show or a movie without having to discuss it instantly with other people. I’m exactly the opposite. I want the thing I’m watching to fully absorb me, which means I at least have to bring my attention into the bargain – and even then, of course, the thing I’m watching may lose me. Anyway, I’m perfectly happy to discuss the show AFTER I’ve seen it, but not DURING. There’s a reason they make you turn off your phone in movie theaters. And nobody seems to feel the need to talk about what they’re watching in such a setting. There’s no need to turn everything into a giant Super Bowl party, is there?

I hear now that even the Pope has a Twitter handle, and already has more than 300,000 followers, even though he has yet to send out his first tweet. Maybe it will give new meaning to the phrase “papal bull.” I guess if you tweet the Pope back, it might be a good idea not to kick it off with “OMG.”

Maybe the Catholic Church (to which I no longer adhere) will start using some of these platforms for online confessions. I’d clearly need more than 140 characters for any of my sins, but well, that’s, as they say, a whole ‘nother program.

All the World's a Stage

You may recognize that from Shakespeare. While I was in the shower a while back, I was inspired to add a little something to this. I recognize that the image of me being in the shower is probably not the most successful way to start off a post in this space, but here’s what came to me:

We all play parts on each other’s stages. Sometimes they’re lead roles, and sometimes minor ones. The minor ones are difficult, because if you’re like me, when you get on a stage, you want to be noticed; you want the critics to write good reviews about you. You’re tempted to overact, to take up more space or time on another’s stage than your role calls for.

That never works. If you’re smart, you know exactly what your role is, and you say the lines you’re given as best you can. Sometimes, you hear your cue to get off – time to leave the stage and maybe go sit in the audience and clap at the end for the stars as they take their curtain call. It’s all about minding your own business (and “business” is one of those fancy terms they use in the theatah, correct?). Chances are, you have bigger roles on other stages, or will have, before your acting career is over.

Those of you who know me may naturally be asking, so WTF (as they say these days) is he talking about? I’m going to have fun with this, hearing your wheels turn, trying to figure out what the situation is -- and knowing that you just might be wrong! But if I told you, you might miss the message here.

Actually, if any of us look over our “credits” objectively, there are probably multiple situations like this in our lives, which are clues to our patterns. I think we all have them, playing similar roles over and over again. That’s a whole ‘nuther program – in fact, I’ve posted about that before.

In the olden days of TV, stations didn’t stay on the air all night, or didn’t have real programming after a certain hour. It might stop at 1 a.m., and they’d either sign off or run a “test pattern” all night, until it was time to start the broadcast day again. When that happened, they usually began with a “sermonette” – a short religious, spiritual or philosophical message, and then launched into regular programming.

So that’s what I’m doing here. Sermonette over -- time to return to Christmas shopping, the Middle East, Pacquiao-Marquez, the Fiscal Cliff…and, of course, the Mayans. Have a great day (and let’s enjoy those we have left, LOL).

Instant Advice

Among my character flaws is that I love to give advice! This is especially pleasurable when (1) I have no demonstrated experience in the subject I’m advising about; (2) I can’t do what I’m advising you to do; and (3), and most important: you didn’t ask for it.

Tip No. 1: Buy stocks now, especially in brand names you recognize and that are in a growing industry or involve a popular or needed product. Just for the first few days of the Thanksgiving weekend holiday shopping period, one report says spending is already up 13 percent over last year. The pent-up money is coming out from all those mattresses.

Congress and the President WILL avoid the fiscal cliff! The members of Congress may be crazy, but they’re not stupid. They know that their constituents will be…um…less than hospitable if they return home without having done anything. The tar will already be heated up and the feathers waiting for them. The good news is, when the fiscal cliff is averted, the United States will get its credit rating back, and the stock market will go through the roof, which I define as 300-plus points in one day and more after that.

Tip No. 2: Buy a home or condo someplace warm now, not subject to overly violent weather. Think of all those Baby Boomers retiring. They like heat. And if they live in the Northeast, a lot of them are gonna want outta there after Sandy. I would suggest California’s Coachella Valley, around Palm Springs, where there is underpriced property, virtually no snow ever, and a great international airport if you have to get away. And for most of the summer, it’s a dry heat.

(Side tip A, to real estate people: Tell these eager customers as little as you can about (1) taxes and (2) earthquakes.)

(Side tip B: If you know any Mayans, tell them to pipe down already, at least for four weeks or so.)

As they say in the fine print, there is no guarantee of success for actually following this advice, and this blog assumes no responsibility, yadda, yadda, yadda....you know the drill.


Well, that’s all I have for now. If you need any more advice, don’t ask me. It’s no fun if it’s actually solicited.

How About Black SATURDAY? (Reprise)

I’m not one to risk an arm, a leg, an eye or teeth – much less contracting frostbite – just to be the first through the big-box store door on Friday morning to score a flat-screen TV or tablet, but the whole concept of Black Friday still is offensive. This year, of course, some retailers aren’t even waiting till Friday, and we all know what that means for Thanksgiving, which should be one of those sacred holidays (and why they call them “holidays” is a mystery to me, but that’s another program).


The “black” part is supposed to be about retailers kicking off the season so they can be “in the black” at the end, but historically, putting “black” in front of a day of the week has always meant a financial panic or some other disaster. I guess the naming was deliberate, but I’m not sure it has the desired effect.

It’s all just a big game, though, as retailers have to show the huge numbers for Black Friday as an indicator of how the shopping season will go and the overall health of the economy. But I resent the idea that you have to have your will on file somewhere and your life insurance in force before you go shopping.

At the very least, can’t we compromise a little bit and push it all back to Saturday, if only as a Thanksgiving digestion aid? And please, can we eventually go back to celebrating seasons some time during the actual seasons?

I’m waiting for a kid to show up at the front door next Halloween dressed as Santa – trust me, it’s coming.

Can You Say, "Overkill"?

If Fred Rogers were alive today – and spoke fluent Hebrew – would he be saying this to the Israeli government?

I don’t begrudge Israel the right to defend itself, but you can’t tell me there isn’t a proportion problem involved in its response to the Hamas-fired rockets coming from Gaza. This is the most densely populated place on Earth, so it’s said, and Israel’s “surgical” air strikes to damage Hamas can’t help but kill civilians. The sheer number of them seems to have another purpose, what we in the U.S. call shock and awe. And if there isn’t enough awe inspired, Israel might launch a ground invasion.

Does Israel think that its military response is somehow going to liberate Gaza from Hamas domination? It’s more likely to have the opposite effect: uniting the Palestinians and drawing in support for them from other players in the region.

What has Israel offered to Gaza as an alternative to Hamas? During a discussion I heard on CNN this week, it was noted that while Gaza is firing rockets at Israel, there’s been no such aggression from the other Palestinian enclave, the West Bank. According to the commentators, this is because the West Bank actually has something resembling a middle class, for whom revolution isn’t top-of-mind.

Perhaps the Israeli government believes that Gazans deserve their misery for electing Hamas as their own leaders in the first place, so the place is left to fester. I once compared Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto, which, of course, is seriously unfair. Even so, you would think that having the Warsaw Ghetto in its experience might make Israel a little more sensitive to what happens to millions of desperate people crammed into a small space.

At what point will Israel finally conclude that its message has been sent? We can only hope that point comes soon.

Two Minds

It may not be a surprise to some of you, but it was to me, how small-minded Mitt Romney is. For him to suggest that President Obama bought re-election by providing “gifts” to certain portions of the electorate is more than just poor sportsmanship. It’s offensive on multiple levels, and it’s exactly the message the GOP doesn’t want to be putting out right now. It’s no secret that the Obama campaign targeted women, minorities and young people to bring them to the polls. But it’s also no secret that Romney simply didn’t have the ground game to win. And Mr. Romney himself is apparently unable to grasp the fact that minority votes may very well have been bought with ideas, not gifts. Slip of the tongue? Poor choice of words? I think not.

There are small minds, but then there may be deceptive ones. I think most of us still haven’t sorted out this Benghazi business. Now we’re hearing sources say that General Petraeus, as head of the CIA, knew instantly that the U.S. ambassador was killed in a pre-planned al-Qaeda attack on Sept. 11, not by some angry mob. Whom did Petraeus tell? If U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice was given bad information about the Benghazi incident before she talked about it publicly, who gave her that information, and why? Who benefited – and what exactly was the benefit? Nothing seems to compute, so far.

If lipstick’s being put on a pig here, who’s the makeup artist? Perhaps the congressional hearings on all this will clear things up. It’s impossible to come to a conclusion about it, based on what’s out there right now, but there are two choices, neither of them good. Either this thing was handled incompetently -- or flat-out deceptively. Guess we just have to stay tuned.

Casting Call

Some of my Facebook friends and I are currently engaged in a game to see who can successfully cast the inevitable movie about this Petraeus/Broadwell/Kelly/Allen thing. So far, I’ve seen votes for William H. Macy to play Gen. Petraeus and Drew Barrymore for Ms. Broadwell. I might prefer Julianne Moore for Broadwell; having trouble with the Petraeus character.

To us, of course, it’s just a game, but I don’t think there are enough buckets in Hollywood right now to catch all the saliva this drama is generating. Is it a soap opera or a spy thriller? “Homeland,” “The West Wing,” or “Revenge”? Oliver Stone must have his running shoes on for this one already. The story has just about everything you could want for a film treatment.

But I still have doubts whether, at bottom, it isn’t just a four-star soap opera. I really hope that’s all it is. I’m not looking forward to those congressional let’s-get-to-the-bottom-of-this hearings, at which all the sordid details of this incident, if that’s what we can call it, are dredged up.

As I said in earlier posts, I think the Obama administration’s handling of the Benghazi attack in which our ambassador to Libya and others were killed would get a flunking grade in Crisis Communications 101. The election is now over, and so should be the game of political football. That said, the administration still owes the country, and the victims’ families, a full explanation of what happened in Benghazi. I’d rather see the administration lay it out than Congress drag it out, along with the other juicy stuff, titillating as that may be.

Does anyone really believe national security was in jeopardy because of Petraeus and Broadwell? National security really is at stake as we inch closer to the Fiscal Cliff. Fixing that would be a much better use of time in Washington.

Falling in Love

OK, so stop me if you haven’t heard any of these stories before: Powerful man in highly sensitive government post has an extramarital affair. A biographer falls in love with the subject of the work. A leak occurs; powerful man quits. These things don’t always happen in the same way or in the same order, but the elements are the same.

When he knew that his affair with Paula Broadwell was no longer a secret, Gen. David Petraeus, probably the most respected military leader of the last decade, quit his post at the CIA. The question for me is, how much of his business is our business?

I am a great admirer of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, but I don’t agree that this is necessarily Congress’ business. That said, I do recognize that these kinds of things can be potential security risks, simply by the nature of the commission of an act the individuals involved want to hide. I’ve always believed that what Bill Clinton did with Monica Lewinsky fell into this category; this is very much the same. The FBI has investigated the Petraeus affair, however, and has found no breach of security, at least so far, which would be the trigger for the agency to inform Congress. I think times have changed a little since J. Edgar days!

It’s true that many of the facts haven’t come out yet. For example, Ms. Broadwell gave a speech in which she said the Benghazi attack may have been in retaliation for the CIA holding two terrorism suspects in Libya. How did she know that, and should that have been dribbled out in a speech?

Some Europeans, of course, think we’re getting worked up about very little. A powerful man having an affair is not a news story to them. But our Puritan roots are always exposed by these cases. You would think we’d be less Puritanical as time goes on, not more. It’s ironic that we’re able to “compartmentalize” the religious beliefs of powerful individuals, but we can’t seem to do it with their sexuality.

There are real tragedies here, as both Gen. Petraeus and Ms. Broadwell have families. But beyond those private issues – which should remain so – there is a public tragedy. The country, at least in the short term, is deprived of the talents of two high-achieving individuals. For the moment, Gen. Petraeus’ career and the wealth of knowledge that he brought to his new job are functionally useless. Biographer Broadwell, for her part, is no fawning girl: she is a West Point graduate with an impressive career of her own. The Europeans have something of a point when they say that our reactions to these things are a little out of proportion. And BTW, don’t we have other things to think about in Washington right now, like fiscal cliffs?

But hey, this is America. I’m an American, and if you’re like me, you may be a little conflicted. We’re poised to lap up every sordid detail of this business so we can pass judgment on it – as we wonder whether it’s really our business at all.

I Want It Done Yesterday

It never fails. The power goes out for tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, or even millions – it doesn’t matter what the size of the thing is – and frustrated folks start taking it out on the evil power companies for not working hard enough to get the lights back on.

But let’s be clear. In terms of the geographic scope of the damage, the results of the Eastern weather phenomena this month rival what happened after the Japanese earthquake. Power line crews had to be brought in from all over the country to help with repairs. Some people had power restored pretty quickly; others still don’t have it. Some are without it while neighbors in the next block have it back. All recipes for frustration. As soon as the power line techs get the lights back on, they’re heroes. What were they when the customers were still in the dark? Can’t we cut the power companies a little slack in these situations? Easy for me to say, of course, as I sit in a heated home typing this.

Cut to this past week’s elections. A friend complained about how slow election officials were in counting ballots in a close congressional race and wondered who was running the show. Perhaps he forgot that in order to make things more convenient for people to vote, the absentee voting privilege was widely extended some time back. Here in California, many people waited till the last minute to return those ballots, not because they were undecided about Romney and Obama, but because of a long list of critical propositions. Though county staffs were beefed up way ahead of time, it still wasn’t enough to deal with the last-minute crunch of these mail-in ballots, which take longer to count. So convenience at the front end of the process meant inconvenience at the back.

Even for those voting at polling places on Election Day, lines were long, partly because, at least in this state’s case, the average voter spent a long time in the booth for the same reason – a long and complicated ballot. We’re all shocked by the stories about people waiting in line six hours to vote. You can already hear the sound of some politician pounding his fist on a podium demanding a full investigation of who dropped the ball. They shoulda done this, they shoulda done that.

At least it wasn’t the Middle East, where some voters stand in line never quite sure whether a bomb isn’t going to go off at the polling place. And God deliver us if we ever get a 90 percent turnout in this country.

No doubt, balls were dropped in some cases. But let’s say you’re on the receiving end of people’s frustrations. There’s always someone out there ready to judge you about how you do your business, and how they could do it much more efficiently than you if only they were in charge.

All I can say is that if there’s a new story in all of this, I haven’t heard it yet. Patience is not an American trait.

Downtime

After weeks of nasty political campaign ads, debate zingers and robocalls, you probably feel the need for an alternative. You’re in luck. Here’s another song from an SF alternative rock band…


"Firecracker," with Leila Armush and Opal Axis

This blog does not have a Shameless Commerce Division, like the public radio car guys. However, I do take care of the “shameless” part. If you like this music, though, Leila and her band wouldn’t mind a little “commerce.” There are more of their songs available at CD Baby and iTunes.

Just for the record (so to speak), I’m not being compensated for this pitch – I’m just a fan. In any case, I hope you’ll agree that this music is pretty interesting stuff. And if you like it, please spread it around!

No Change of Horses

In 1864, when President Abraham Lincoln was at his most unpopular and running for re-election, his campaign slogan was “Don’t change horses in the middle of the stream.” Whether you think invoking Lincoln here is appropriate or not, it appears the country has decided to hang on to Mr. Obama for another four years.

Even for Obama-haters, there are certain advantages to this situation. There’s no reasonable cause anymore for congressional Republicans to refuse to deal with him. For the next four, he’s what they’ve got. For Mr. Obama, there’s no reason for political timidity. He doesn’t have to worry about re-election. It opens the door to compromise – a relatively short time before the mid-term election for Congress – where the two parties could actually get something accomplished. President Obama did not win anything resembling a mandate; the Republicans didn’t substantially improve their position in Congress. It’s a wash, so there’s nothing to crow about, and crowing is a waste of time, anyway.

I have some requests for things both sides can work on going forward – after they pull us back from the “fiscal cliff.”

TAX REFORM. Mitt Romney had the germ of a great idea. The issue isn’t just about taxing the rich, which would only be a Band-Aid on top of old Band-Aids. Simplify the tax code! In the end, it will benefit everyone, taking a huge monkey off the backs of individuals and businesses alike. This is one of the keys to dealing with the deficit.

I heard a horror story on NPR this morning about something called the Alternative Minimum Tax, a regulation adopted in the 1980s to make sure wealthy people were paying their fair share of taxes. Apparently, the story said, this regulation was never indexed to inflation, and Congress has to “patch” it each year. If they fail to do so, the AMT could apply to incomes as low as $75,000 – which could mean an instant tax hike as much as 20 percent for the average middle-class family. This is one of the poster children for why the tax system needs to be overhauled – and soon.

IMMIGRATON. Solve this one once and for all. Do the best job you can sealing the borders. Then, come up with a national system that both recognizes realities and is fair to the people who’ve been playing by the rules. Mr. Obama, you promised to deal with this in your first term. You have another opportunity to make good on your promise.

HEALTH CARE. Just because Obamacare is the law, it doesn’t mean Congress and the President have to stop working on this issue. How about tort reform, for one thing? And maybe some real controls on insurance charges?

OTHER STUFF. If there’s time, why not work on getting rid of the Senate filibuster, abolishing the Electoral College, and take a whack at campaign finance reform so we don’t have to endure another election like this one?

These are all very difficult, but they can be solved if elected officials make up their minds to work together to solve them instead of posturing. The President – and the Congress -- have a real opportunity to leave a legacy.

Mr. President, if I may address you directly, enough of the electorate has decided that you are the more effective leader than Mitt Romney. So LEAD already! Get out IN FRONT of issues instead of letting them beat down your door. Put plans on the table before your opponents do. And hold more news conferences -- keep us updated; bring us along with you as you deal with these problems. We just told you we're on your side -- as long as it's the side of getting things done.

The Death Penalty

Today I get to sit down with my overlong California absentee ballot, say goodbye to the ranks of the undecided, and make a commitment to something, which for me has always been difficult. As usual, most of these measures are, in the end, about taxes, but this year, there’s one about death: Proposition 34, which calls for the abolition of the death penalty in California.

I actually listened to a debate about this when I woke up in the wee hours and put the radio on this morning. A former prison warden, who thinks the death penalty is useless and expensive, wants us to vote “yes” on this measure; a district attorney, who wants a “no” vote, says the savings figures being touted by the proponents for abolition of the penalty are illusory and that the decision shouldn’t be about money: some criminals, like serial torture/murderers, are just so evil that we have to make them go away.

My feeling about the death penalty has always been that it’s useless, largely because it’s almost never used. For these evil people the DA was talking about, it’s years and years between the crime of which they’re convicted and the actual carrying out of the sentence. It gives lawyers something to do, the victims’ families have to be constantly reminded of what happened, and at the end, they basically get to watch the perpetrators go to sleep.

Years ago, I had the bad taste to come up with the idea that if the death penalty supporters really wanted a penalty that accomplished something as a deterrent, they should figure out a way to get the job done faster, and put the event on pay-per-view cable TV, with the revenues going to the victims’ families. But someone had even worse taste than me, if you can believe it. Someone actually produced one of those late-night-cable movies on the same theme. You may be pleased to know that I’ve forgotten its name.

But all that’s beside the point. I have long believed that being forced to spend the rest of one’s life in prison is much worse than death. True, the families whose lives the perpetrators have damaged through their crimes have to deal with the knowledge that those perpetrators remain on Earth, but at least those families have the option of filling their lives with other things. In prison, the perpetrators have to live with the consequences of their crimes every waking moment.

I have also long believed that what we need is a Devil’s Island, a place in the middle of the ocean somewhere to which these perpetrators can be sent, kind of like a civil version of Guantanamo, where they could be far removed from the rest of civil society. It doesn’t have to be as harsh as Guantanamo, but it would be really “away.”

But I digress, as usual. There are two final issues. One, which has been much discussed in recent years, is that occasionally, the wrong individual is executed because of a dishonest prosecution, a feeble defense, or a wacky jury, or exculpatory evidence that surfaces too late.

And the other is that some of these hopelessly evil people the DA wants to make disappear may actually have at least the opportunity to repent of their crimes while they’re alive, in a place with no legal escape. Repentance usually involves suffering, which is sort of the point of prison in the first place, right?

Now that THAT's over, I'll move on to the other cheery propositions, like the one dealing with genetically modified foods.

A Bad Time for Control Freaks

Occasionally it seems that Mother Nature feels the need to remind us that we aren’t in control, and that there are no guarantees in life, and no place, on Earth at least, where we’re 100 percent safe.

Just when Americans start to feel that catastrophic events don’t really happen here, we get a Katrina, or a Sandy, or an F5 tornado. Earthquakes happen where they aren’t supposed to – at least in our narrow little concept of what we call history. We talk about 100-year storms and 500-year storms. What was Sandy? A 1,000-year storm? There’s no file footage for when the last time this happened.

I was moved by two things this morning in the media reporting about Sandy. The female Weather Channel anchor was cold, tired, and feeling a little giddy, and made sort of an inappropriate joke (which I won’t explain). Her co-anchors weren’t sure what to do with it. But they chalked it up to her being punchy after many hours with no sleep, soaked to the skin. Then there was the New Jersey reporter standing in the middle of a hard-hit coastal town who broke down for a few seconds – as did the police chief of the same town whom he had interviewed a half-hour earlier. When disasters happen, reporters and public safety people don’t get to be human beings – at least right away – but eventually, it has to come out. Control goes out the window.

What hasn’t happened yet, at least on a large scale, is the blame game – who should have done what when. But there are some events that are way beyond games like that, and this is one of them. This is even beyond “you chose to live there and you should have known better.” There’s no argument about big government or small government – maybe this is one of those times that no government can ever be quite big enough. The absolute last thing he’s thinking about right now, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said, is next week’s election. All of a sudden, control over time, in the form of a schedule, is secondary. Or tertiary, or whatever comes after that.

In the space of a few hours, what we’ve earned, what we’ve built, what we’ve collected, can disappear. The control freak’s worst nightmare isn’t a Katrina or a Sandy. It’s having to rely on others for help.

As John Lennon once said, life is what happens when you’ve made other plans. But life is also about flexibility, and our ability, and even the opportunity, to make new ones when we have to.

Historic Proportions

That’s the phrase the forecasters are using to describe Hurricane Sandy. If on the Perfect Storm scale, the 1991 New England event was a Perfect 10, this could be a Perfect 11, or so they say.

I grew up in New York City, and the whole notion of almost 400,000 people being evacuated is a completely foreign concept to me. The only hurricane I remember directly impacting us in Manhattan was Donna. It seemed like a big deal then, but I was young.

The T-shirts tell us (bleep) happens, and our modern (bleep) threshold is pretty low. Where I live, the TV stations go into frenetic STORMWATCH mode if a couple inches of rain threaten. But many of us can pass a lifetime without every witnessing a real cataclysm.

Crater Lake is a beautiful spot in Oregon visited by many tourists. The water fills an old volcanic caldera. The volcano, called Mt. Mazama, erupted thousands of years ago. I read once where this enormous blast covered parts of western North America in feet – FEET – of volcanic ash. But our continent was relatively unpopulated. There were no Eyewitness News teams around to record what happened. The most we have are stories passed down through oral tradition, and whatever after-the-fact evidence scientists are able to collect.

For those who can’t live without their adrenaline fix, the Weather Channel has a show called “It Could Happen Tomorrow.” The fact is, it already has. Just as an aside, the 18th and 19th centuries brought major earthquakes to Boston and to Charleston, South Carolina.

(Bleep) really did seem to happen in the 19th century. A huge earthquake rocked not California, but the central part of the country, along Missouri’s New Madrid fault in 1811 -- again, a relatively unpopulated area, but the quake caused the Mississippi River to run backwards. In 1859, the worst recorded solar flare ever to hit the Earth caused telegraph wires to burn up. A similar flare hitting the Earth the same way today would cause a Biblical-level catastrophe. We wouldn’t need hacker terrorists to wipe out our electrical grid. The sun would have done that for us.

For most of us alive today, the standout natural cataclysmic event may be the Japanese earthquake of 2011, which killed tens of thousands and triggered a devastating tsunami and a nuclear disaster. Contrast that with last night’s partiers gathering on Hawaiian beaches to witness a tsunami a few INCHES high.

As for cataclysmic events, they actually happen all the time, but the slower-moving ones sometimes escape our notice, especially if we’re not directly affected. Famine. Drought. Climate change. The virus-du-jour. But it also seems most cataclysmic events aren’t Mother Nature’s fault. We’re much better at doing these things to ourselves. War. Recession/depression, you name it.

(Bleep) is always going to happen. The story really isn’t about the (bleep); it’s about how we react to it. Sometimes we react well; other times we freak out.

But so far, one thing seems to be constant: We survive.

Horror Films I Like

Well, it’s getting to be that time again, when you decide on your favorite Halloween rentals. I prefer the classics, both vintage and recent. These are some of my faves, NOT ranked, BTW, in any kind of order. My only rule for good horror flicks is, scare me, don’t terrorize me or excessively gross me out. Leave the knives, hatchets and chainsaws in the garage. Teeth are OK, though.


1. THE MUMMY (1932)
2. DRACULA (1931)
3. FRANKENSTEIN (1931)
4. THE WEREWOLF OF LONDON (1935)

(The first four are almost obligatory).

5. DRACULA (1979) – Good production, not sure about Langella as the Count.
6. THE BLACK CAT (1934) – Lugosi and Karloff, an interior decorator must-see.
7. THE OMEN (1976) –The girl’s suicide haunted me for weeks. LOUSY sequels.
8. THE EXORCIST – Get the uncut one with the spider walk.
9. THE EXORCIST III – Surprisingly good sequel, Geo. C. Scott & Ed Flanders.
10. GHOST STORY – Very creepy with wonderful cast.
11. CAT PEOPLE (1982) – Sexy, and the cats are nice, too.
12. THE SHINING (1980) -- Here’s Johnny.
13. SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE – Is it a movie project or for real?
14. THE HUNGER -- Catherine Deneuve a vampire. I’ll stop there.
15. THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT – They shoulda had a cell phone with them.
16. THE RITE – I’m the only one who likes this, but it does have Anthony Hopkins.
17. PSYCHO – Showers or baths?
18. ROSEMARY’S BABY – It may give you morning sickness.
19. POLTERGEIST – Talk about homes being underwater!
20. ANGEL HEART – Back when Mickey Rourke was…Mickey Rourke.
21. SILENCE OF THE LAMBS – Join me in a nice chianti, Clarice.
22. THE DESCENT -- For those of you who think caves are fun. They’re not.
23. 30 DAYS OF NIGHT – Why vampires prefer winter.
24. VAN HELSING -- Not great, but I love the flying bat-girls.

SCI-FI (not exactly horror, but close enough for Halloween)

1. ALIEN and the folo, ALIENS (not the later two).
2. THE FLY (Jeff Goldblum version)
3. INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS – the 1978 remake was shot in SF.
4. MIMIC – If in NYC, you’ll think twice about ever taking the subway.
5. THE THING (1982) – Much better than the original (or later) versions.
6. PITCH BLACK – Before Vin Diesel was a star.
7.  THE FOURTH KIND -- Alien-abduction thing, very creepy.

I know I’ve left a lot out, but these should get you started. And if you really need a fright, you can always watch Romney-Obama debate reruns.

Verbal Minefield

Today we have the story of Republican U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock of Indiana saying that he’s opposed to abortion in the case of pregnancy due to rape, because if the pregnancy occurred, it must be “what God intended.” Putting rape, pregnancy, and God together is not a successful mixture, especially for a Republican.

The fur, as you might expect, is flying, with President Obama’s spokespeople calling the pregnancy remark “outrageous.” Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, who was to make a campaign appearance with Mourdock, canceled, and GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, while continuing to support Mourdock’s candidacy, said through a spokesman that he disagrees with Mourdock’s view.

While Mourdock was concerned that his statement would be misinterpreted and offered an apology for any offense caused, he also said that when he gave voice to his conviction about pregnancy, he was speaking from his heart.

To be honest, part of me admires Mourdock for standing by his basic conviction instead of trying to weasel-word his way out of it or saying that his tongue slipped. But he has no business interpreting God’s intentions to women. It’s up to the woman in that situation to hear from God directly, if she’s even listening for such guidance. Under the law as it stands, the period goes after the fifth word in the last sentence here.

Look, I am no fan of abortion; in fact, there are probably very few of those who are. The notion that a woman might consider this as a last-resort form of birth control is ridiculous on its face. The only way, it seems to me, that an individual can begin to be comfortable with abortion is by considering a fetus just a hunk of biological matter. If it’s life, well then, abortion is homicide, and no other conclusion is possible. But abortion is not something we’re supposed to be comfortable with. It’s one of those cases, again under the present state of the law, where we permit homicide under certain extenuating circumstances.

BTW, don’t read Roe v. Wade back to me or talk about viability. I’m sure I’ve stepped on a verbal land mine of my own somewhere in here. When all is said and done, words don’t work very well in this area. As a practical matter, we need lawyers – more than theologians and certainly more than politicians -- to define “life” and “death” for us so we can move on to more mundane matters.

But the take-away for any politician, especially a Republican, is you'd better practice your lines before you start talking about this stuff. And if you really believe what you’re saying, don’t back away from it. The voters need to hear someone running for office who actually speaks from the heart, even if it’s wrong. That’s where the phrase “courage of convictions” comes from.

Talked Out

Well, that’s it, the debates are done. Now, it’s pretty much our turn.

The only thing that made me watch the final debate instead of the World Series is that the debate was closer – but not by much.

President Obama clearly “won” it – but then again, he was supposed to, right? The guy on the outside – Romney – can’t very well compete with the guy on the inside, who has all the answers the challenger doesn’t. Mr. Romney seemed to be reaching for it, while Obama was scoring points the whole time. It was only when Romney was able to pivot the discussion from foreign policy to the economy that he was able to make much ground, except for the fact that we’ve heard his arguments before.

Romney did score a couple of points, in one case reminding us of the President’s off-mike remark to the Russian president that he could be more “flexible” after the election. He called Latin America a real opportunity (nobody EVER talks about Latin America) and blasted the President for failing to support the Green Revolution in Iran. But most of the time, Romney had to agree with the President’s policies.

So Obama won, and he may be scoring points in the final rounds. But what about the earlier rounds, and I’m not only talking about election season. His big failure all along, in my own estimation (and long before mine, in Bill Maher’s) is that he hasn’t made an effort to communicate with us. He holds almost no news conferences. He doesn’t bring the American people into the discussion – except at election time. Doing what you think is the right thing is only half the battle, Mr. President; you have to bring the rest of us along with you, and this you haven’t done.

Romney has all kinds of problems. He’ll say almost anything to please an audience, and he has trouble connecting with people. But when it comes to business, he definitely has a skill set the President doesn’t. Likewise, Mr. Obama has expertise built up over four years that Romney clearly lacks.

Do I sound like an undecided voter? I’m not. As I’ve told my friends, I’ve made up my mind whom I’m going to vote for. But you better talk to me again next week; I might feel differently.

My position is, we’re really ALL undecided voters until we actually cast that ballot. And fortunately, that moment is just about here.

Intermission

Starting with Monday night’s debate, the air is going to get thicker and heavier over the next couple of weeks around here, so it’s time for another musical interlude from my friends at thie SF Bay Area band called Opal Axis:

"Moving On" with Leila Armush and Opal Axis

Feel free to leave a review if you happen to hear this. Oh...l think.they’d be upset with me if I failed to mention that their music is available at CDBaby and iTunes!

P.S.  If you were directed to this site in search of porn or knockoff handbags, well, I can't help you, but if you like this song, spread it around -- and Leila and the band wouldn't mind if you actually bought this or other songs of theirs from one of the music sites listed above. Thanks!

In the Top of the News...

My radio listening this morning brought three stories worthy of comment.

Malala, the 14-year old Pakistani girl shot in the head by a Taliban militant for having the temerity to advocate education for women, stood up for the first time in a British hospital today, and now they’re saying she could make a full recovery.

I take a little offense at the notion that religion prompted this shooting. While I’ve long contended that religion often gives God a bad name, Islam doesn’t go this far off the rails. While it would be nice if Jesus comes back, I think he should wait in the wings and let the Prophet Muhammad (blessings and peace be upon him) return first and straighten some of these crazies out.

BTW, while fundamentalist Islam displays its low opinion of women by forcing them to wear burkas, that policy doesn’t say much about men, either. Why do women have to wear burkas? Is it because men can’t control themselves at the sight of a female?

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Today marks the 25th anniversary of the 1987 event known as Black Friday, when the stock market dropped 22 percent in one day. I was working in radio, and we had to take our business/stock reporter out for at least one drink to calm him down. I remember that his tie was loosened at the neck, sort of like what Jerry Lewis used to do on those charity telethons to denote long hours of stress.

Could a similar thing happen today? Not in a single day, the experts say, thanks to automatic trading curbs that would kick in. It would just be elongated. Like four years, maybe? Well, it is nice to see the market coming back.

***********************************

And finally, it’s also great to see Mitt Romney and Barack Obama having fun with each other at the Al Smith dinner in New York. The boxing analogy fits like a glove over the debates we’ve seen so far – that’s how we “score” them, by jabs, power punches, etc. The dual appearance at the dinner reminds me of what we often see in the ring, when two boxers who have furiously beaten each other up for 11 rounds come out for the 12th – and the first thing they do is touch gloves.

A Missed Opportunity in Syria

In opening the “stats” for this blog today and looking at the “all-time” list covering four years, I was surprised to find that No. 3 of the most-read posts – and the only one listed for 2012 – concerned Syria, It was “Send a Message to Assad,” posted in March, and to spare you reading it, the blog suggested that if the West took out just one Syrian tank or one piece of heavy artillery, perhaps with a drone strike, the Syrian president would get the message that the free world disapproved of what he was doing -- that we didn’t want to go to war with him, only that he should stop using a mechanized army to slaughter civilians.


But the talking heads were already on the air, listing all the reasons why the U.S., or any group outside of the U.N. framework, shouldn’t get involved militarily in Syria. We provided the Syrian rebels with communications equipment, etc., but were reluctant to supply them with heavy weapons, because they might fall into the wrong hands, meaning Al Qaida.

Well, that was 20,000 lives ago, and this week we hear that the Syrian forces are now using old Russian cluster bombs against the population. Cluster bombs are typically dropped from the air and open up to release “bomblets” that spread out and are effective at killing large numbers of people on the ground. They are banned by international agreement, which the U.S. has not signed. (One of the reasons given, I read today, is that modern cluster bomblets are smarter and can be individually programmed to hit the right targets. Great...!) I wonder what the regime will use next, when it's really cornered.

The general in charge of the Free Syrian Army was on “60 Minutes” Sunday and said that when the Assad regime is removed, the Syrians who come to power will never forgive the West for standing by while people were being slaughtered. As for Al Qaida, well, he said, they’d accept help from anyone willing to give it to them. So whose hands do we think Syria is going to fall into, exactly, thanks to our having done virtually nothing?

Former Secretary of State Zbigniew Brzezinski said on NPR that we’d be nuts to get involved militarily in this situation, that the region was like a huge pool of gasoline, into which we’d be tossing a match. Well, the pool is still there, and unless something changes, there’s going to be a bigger fire, whether or not it’s our match that sets it off.

It's way too late for us to get involved now. But history, I guess, is going to have to tell us whether we were wise to stay out of Syria, or whether we blew a significant opportunity. As for President Assad, it’s ironic that someone trained as an ophthalmologist could be so blind.

Draw!

The "boxing" analysts are at it again: number of jabs, power punches thrown and connect percentages. I think Jim Lampley and Max Kellerman could score the Romney-Obama debate just as well as any of these cable TV folks or political science professors with all those letters after their names. The process, when all is said and done, is exactly the same.

The President redeemed himself after the first debate, and it may be that many observers are scoring him higher just because he outperformed himself after being knocked down in the last contest. But Romney didn’t do poorly.

What’s the takeaway? Debates measure debating skills. They tell us to what lengths the candidates will go to play to particular audiences. Were they talking to all of us, or just Ohio?

But as I’ve said before, these events do tell us how the candidates behave under stress; how they treat each other, the questioners and the moderator are all little pieces of the puzzle that contribute to their portraits as human beings.

I’ve always believed that whether we like it or not, we are electing human beings to office, not just five-point plans or positions on issues. And they are human beings with particular knowledge bases and skill sets, and as voters, we have to decide the urgency of various issues facing us and who has the best tools to deal with them. If the economy is No. 1, the businessman’s skill set is paramount; if foreign policy is our thing, then it’s no time for a “rookie” in that department. And who offers the better balance?

I also always try to remember that Presidents are rarely able to deliver on all the promises they make to get elected, and today’s problems, in their specifics, may not be tomorrow’s. If a particular issue goes away, we’re still left with a human being in office. The fact is, neither of these guys has the degree of control over things he’s trying to convince us he has. But what we do have the right to expect is, whatever challenges surface, we have someone at the top who can lead us through them.

If someone puts a gun to my head and says that I have to vote today, I know which one I’ll pick. But I’m NOT voting today. I may very well have a different answer in a couple of weeks.

The Missiles of October

I hope the creators of the movie don’t mind my borrowing the title for this post, but I’m too lazy to think of anything clever, and of course, now you know what this is about.

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the start of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Being now old enough to play the “I was there” game, this is what I remember about it.

In those days, I was a student at one of those fancy New England prep schools, at which I received a great education, partly because TV wasn’t really an option. The television was in the housemaster’s quarters, and only rarely were we allowed to watch. Certain exceptions were made occasionally, though, for stuff like “The Andy Griffith Show.”

But the days in question were unusual. There was one night -- October 22 -- when we were required to watch TV. We all assembled in the various housemasters’ apartments around the school to hear JFK deliver his now-famous address to the nation, warning the Russians not to station missiles in Cuba. You can find this easily on YouTube, but here’s an especially memorable line:

“It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear attack launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.”

Yes, that gets your attention! Sounds like something Harrison Ford might say, and probably has said, in one of his movies. But this was no movie. Nowadays, people who worry about the end of the world are considered one beer short of a six-pack, as they say – but for a few days, we actually had to consider it a real possibility.

I don’t remember much else about the experience at school. The headmaster was a minister, and there were daily chapel services we were required to attend, and the sermons at that time, as you can expect, were pretty heavy. And as President Kennedy actually had attended the school himself as a student, his address had a special meaning for us.

Since I’m able to write this, the world did not end. The Russian boats turned around. While the President got kudos for standing up to the Soviets, we all know now that there was a backroom deal: our own missiles in Turkey, which upset the Russians, had to go away. Even so, those are the times when you really appreciate a President with a brain.

As for movies, well, we needed some lightening up, and Stanley Kubrick gave us “Dr. Strangelove” a few years later. As I recall, it wasn’t until 1974, though, that “The Missiles of October” was shown on TV, and by then I was old enough to decide for myself what to watch. All I can tell you is, no actor has ever done as good a JFK as Bill Devane.

Is My Microwave Oven Spying On Me?

We are by no means Luddites in my house, but we were perfectly content to use a microwave oven that was the better part of 40 years old, until it began emitting strange sparks and flashes not seen since the original 1931 version of “Frankenstein.” It’s a little early for Halloween movie rentals. But we had to think about safety first.

So, we bit the bullet and decided to buy a new oven, and this is a whole different animal in many ways. For one thing, it puts out twice as much cooking power. For another, it has all kinds of bells and whistles the other one didn’t have. With the old one, we just turned the time dial to the desired cooking duration and pressed the button. When it was done, it was done. The new one not only has a digital display, but seems to know what you’re going to cook ahead of time – or maybe it’s my imagination.

There’s a particularly intriguing feature called Total Cook Plus. With this one, you read a code off the package of microwave food you want to cook, punch it in with the oven’s keypad, and the oven cooks the food according to specification – you don’t even have to read the directions on the package.

But here’s the thing: To activate this feature, you have to put in your Zip code. Why on earth would an oven want your Zip code? Well, it figures out the atmospheric pressure where you live. and it makes adjustments accordingly. Such things affect cooking, apparently.

Well, at least that’s what they say. But how do I know it doesn’t have other applications? You’ve been hearing the stories about how electronic devices made in China and sold here are feared to have some “back-door” technology that allows someone sitting at a computer in Fujian or someplace to control the device. I suppose if I’m cooking Chinese food, and someone in China has a better idea of how to do it than the oven does, I should remain open to suggestions. But what else is that oven doing? What kind of data is it mining? It already knows what I eat. What’s next?

This all reminds me of a movie from the 1970s called “The Demon Seed,” in which a computer tries to get Julie Christie pregnant. Maybe that’s a better rental for Halloween.

A Republican President

I am loath to make predictions, but I think there’s a better-than-even chance we’re going to have a Republican president.

A lot of it has to do with timing. The Obama forces made plenty of hay with Romney’s “47 percent” remark. But remember – that statement was made to a closed group of supporters last May, and only surfaced fairly recently. Many pundits called it a fatal error. It may have hurt, but it wasn’t fatal. That was then, and this is now, and Americans live in Short Attention-Span Theater, to borrow a title from Comedy Central.

Mr. Obama has had some significant victories: killing Osama Bin Laden, bailing out the auto industry – even getting his healthcare plan passed. The first two are clear victories, the last win is a matter of debate – but again, those were then.

Now, we have his perceived loss in the last debate, coupled with the strange scenario over what happened in Benghazi, Libya, when Ambassador Chris Stevens and several others were killed. I still don’t get this one. First, there was an angry mob, then there was no angry mob, now it’s a terrorist attack, and Stevens was insufficiently protected, even though he or someone in his camp requested more help. It’s a total mystery to me why the administration can’t get a better handle on how to manage the public relations of this thing. The mother of one of the victims says she has been assured by Messrs. Obama and Biden personally that she will get answers – and she’s had none. And the Republicans are successfully beating up the administration with it.

Mr. Romney will say almost anything to get elected, true – but he says it with absolute confidence, whether it’s right or wrong. I used to work in radio, and we had a rule for reading copy. If you encountered something you didn’t know how to pronounce, like the name of some foreign dignitary, you had to pick a pronunciation and deliver it with confidence. Even if you were wrong, only half the audience – actually, much less – would know you were an idiot. If you stumbled, everyone would know it.

Vice President Joe Biden’s “these kids today don’t know anything” pose may have worked for him in his debate with Paul Ryan, but it wasn’t the clear victory that Romney scored over the President. Now we have another debate coming between the top two. Will Obama overcompensate by being too aggressive an attack dog? If he’s perceived as “losing” this next one, in my view, he’s done. There are too many people taking advantage of absentee ballots and early voting. They’re not going to wait around for the third debate.

The first bit of good news in all this is that, in my view at least, this country will probably be no worse off if either man wins next month. If President Obama is re-elected, the issue of Republicans in Congress stopping at nothing to defeat him will go away. He won’t be able to run for another term, and the Republicans will figure out they have to work with him, or lose their own seats if gridlock continues. If Romney wins – and this again is my personal view – whatever you think about Mormons, they are terrific managers. Every Mormon I know who runs a business – without exception -- does it successfully. And a little management from the top – with an eye on perceptions – wouldn’t be such a bad thing right now.

The second bit of good news, for those of you who have read this far and don’t like it, is that my predictions are usually wrong.

In Defense of Narcissism

I heard a rather remarkable interview today on NPR’s “Fresh Air.” Host Terry Gross talked to comedian Tig Notaro, whom most of us never heard of until she took the stage for her show and announced, “Good evening, hello. I have cancer! How are you?” She had just been diagnosed with cancer in both breasts, and earlier that day had decided to dump her previous plan for the evening’s show and work it around her illness.

She told Gross that she hesitated before making this decision, on the grounds that she didn’t want to offend those in her audience who might have cancer themselves or be experiencing it in their families. But finally, she concluded it was her show, and her story. So well did she do, in fact, that a much better-known comedian, Louis C.K., who was there that night, deemed it one of the greatest performances he had ever seen, and posted a recording of it to a million-plus followers. Notaro, BTW, is now doing fine medically, but only after a double mastectomy.

A Facebook friend of mine, who is about to have her first baby, started a blog about it. She, too, had hesitated on the grounds that someone else had told her it was narcissistic to write about herself this way – but she happens to be a great writer, and I’m happy she moved forward with her plan. I have other social media friends who write about themselves constantly, leaving almost nothing out, even crossing the dreaded TMI line once in a while.

Coming from a different generation – as many as two ahead of some of these folks -- I was raised differently, plus I have struggled to learn to shut up. There are personal things now that I could never discuss with anyone, much less post about them. If I ever should contract a terminal illness, I plan to tell as few people as possible, only because when you’re in that way and everyone else finds out, you have the additional task of making all of them feel better as well as yourself. Hopefully that’s a bridge I’ll never have to cross.

Nevertheless, I am very grateful for narcissists, if by that we mean people who talk or write about themselves all the time. Life doesn’t come with an instruction manual, and as human beings, whether we like it or not, we depend on narcissists to tell us how we “work.” From narcissists, we learn we’re not alone. If we’re going through something, chances are there’s a narcissist somewhere among us who has been there and done that and expressed themselves on the subject. We may not work it out the same way, but it does give us hope, and often puts a few signs on the trail for others making the journey.

Of course, it’s a question of style. Tig Notaro shared her story as a comedian. Many do it with poetry or song. But I have always deeply admired those who have thought carefully enough about their own experience to clearly articulate exactly what’s going on with them. So please, narcissists, keep it up – you have fans out there, whether they’re willing to admit it or not.

And if you’re really a narcissist, as Carly Simon might say, you probably think this post is about you – and you might be right.

Miles to Go Before We Sleep

“It ain’t over till it’s over,” quoth Yogi (did he really say that?). According to the “copybox numbers” most of the pundits are scoring the debate in Mitt Romney’s favor. President Obama had rhetorical weapons that he didn’t use, some said. The President is a great orator, but debating is actually a different skill from speechmaking. Romney did a better job of marshaling facts and figures, but Obama actually scored some solid counterpunches. Personally, I was pleased that the two men stuck to the issues and that the discussion was relatively zinger-free. My immediate conclusion is that that these are two very smart people, and in spite of what you may hear, the country is not going to collapse if either one is elected.

The debate really didn’t decide anything, but it sure leaves me wanting to hear the other ones on different topics, such as foreign policy. I feel a little bit sorry for those engaging in early voting. Undoubtedly, some had cast their vote before hearing the debate, which presumably would provide vital information about whom to vote for. I am in favor of early voting, but more like a week, not this early, as in Ohio.

As I said in a previous post, those voting this early may be depriving themselves of those final pieces of the puzzle that would give them a clear picture of these candidates. When it comes to jobs, I am of the firm belief that this is an issue that neither candidate has any real control over, and to pretend that they do is just babble.

Candidates say things in these forums that may or may not reflect their real beliefs. It’s up to us as observers to determine whether they’re being genuine, and whether they give us the feeling that they could lead. One CNN observer said we voters are looking for a Moses who could lead us all out of the mess we’re in. That may be aiming a little high, but the two Presidents whose last name was Roosevelt provided some pretty good models. Yes, I have a preference among the current two, but that preference could still change in the weeks ahead.

One individual who seemed to get universally bad reviews was Jim Lehrer, the PBS news anchor who was the moderator. I think I could solve the moderator’s problem by going down to the trophy shop and spending about $20 on a little thing called a GAVEL. I used to moderate local election debates in the town I lived in, and I found that there is nothing more effective at silencing candidates who are over-babbling. Even if they continue to talk while the gavel is being struck, they look and sound “out of order.” It would make a huge difference, trust me.

Naming Winter Storms

I woke up this morning to hear the meteorologists on the Weather Channel saying that in the coming season, they’re going to be assigning names to winter storms. Just like hurricanes, a storm of sufficient intensity will be given a name. This is more than a game. The Weather Channel people feel that naming the storms will heighten public awareness about them and encourage both emergency managers and average citizens to take them seriously, just as they would an approaching hurricane, as these winter storms can cause just as much hardship

I don’t think I have a problem with that argument. It’s about the names: ATHENA, BRUTUS, CAESAR, DRACO, EUCLID, FREYR, GANDOLF, HELEN, IAGO, JOVE, KHAN, LUNA, MAGNUS, NEMO, ORKO, PLATO, Q, ROCKY, SATURN, TRITON, UKKO, VIRGIL, WALDA, XERXES, YOGI, ZEUS.

A couple of things stand out here. Many of the names come from Greek mythology. When you think winter storms, is Greece the first place that comes to mind? Not. When you do winter storms, you’ve got to think Scandinavian, Nordic or Wagnerian, and there are only a couple of such offerings here. How about Helga? Brunhilde? Ulle? Liv? Gerhard? Wolf? I could go on, but do you really want me to? (And BTW, why were the Irish left out?)

If there’s Rocky, there should at least be Bullwinkle. And how are you going to feel when Orko bears down on you? Or Q (didn't Mr. Bond need him)?

If we start this, where is it going to end? Will they name desert sandstorms, or tornados, or hot spells? Or train wrecks and traffic accidents? “The 101’s closed right now, thanks to Tom.” This should be done very sparingly.

I’ve known young couples expecting babies who practically get into fistfights trying to agree on what they’re going to name the new arrivals. Maybe we should quit while we’re ahead.

The Undecided Idiot

I am a big fan of Bill Maher, but I have to take issue with him on his opinion of undecided voters in this election.

Maher basically characterized the undecideds on a recent show as uninformed idiots. While I’m sure there are quite a few who fit that description, you don’t make it on NPR unless you have a brain cell or two, and I’ve heard their reporters talked to plenty of folks who are still on the fence.

Actually, it’s my belief that there is no such thing as a fence. I can’t stand fences, and I think most thinking human beings hate them. I make up my right away about most things. The only problem is, if you talk to me an hour later, I will likely have made a new decision the other way. What makes me change? Usually, it’s new information.

So here comes the first Presidential debate, which many pundits say may be the ultimate showdown between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. But what do debates accomplish? Detractors will say that they only tell us who’s the better debater. But that is no small skill, as an effective President has to be able to persuade, and persuasion is part of leadership. It’s another piece of information.

Some of us are waiting to see a train wreck: a gaffe, a stumble, an insensitive remark, or the betrayal of something the individual would prefer to hide. The fact is, both President Obama and Mitt Romney have been caught at these things already. Most recently, Romney has had to deal with the “47 percent” remark, but remember when Obama told the Russian he’d be more flexible after the election?

Information is one thing; of course, it’s all about what we do with it. Those who see virtue in having made up their minds for good will look for information in the debate that confirms their decision; otherwise, they’ll have to think of themselves as wishy-washy. Others may receive enough information to change their minds.

Yes, I’ve made up my mind about the man I think would make a better President, but I’m not ready to tell you, and I probably won’t be ready after Wednesday. There’s still time for new information – those final pieces of the puzzle -- to come along, and then I’ll do what I usually do, vote with my gut, which, all things being equal, has a pretty good track record at doing the right thing in these situations.

Speaking in Tongues

You have to admit that languages are amusing. Today, a woman who is a former colleague posted a new picture of herself on a social media site. She looks great, so I thought I’d be clever and tell her she was beautiful in Afrikaans, as she now lives in South Africa and is married to an Afrikaner. The word for “beautiful” in that language is “pragtig,” if I read the Google-supplied translation site correctly.

PRAGTIG? Does that sound like anything close to “beautiful” to your ears? Probably not if you’re an English-speaker. In any event, I tried the same tactic on the Filipina teller at my bank, using the Tagalog word for beautiful, which is “magunda.” She broke into a smile, so I guess it worked. But “magunda” just doesn’t have the flow that ”beautiful” seems to have.

As you can probably guess, the benefits of indulging in this hobby are limited, so I don’t do it all the time. But it’s interesting how many of us think our language is the best, just because that’s the one we grew up with, and besides, we like the sound of it. Unfortunately, some of us think our native language is the only one that should be spoken in our own country.

Admittedly, most linguists will tell you that not all languages are equal. Some are better as applied to some things. We have words in English for which some other languages have no equivalent, and the same is true in reverse.

All this brings me back to one of my favorite themes, that language is nothing more than a tool of communication, not a political weapon or something to take special pride in. Used to be, if you wanted to be cool and demonstrate your savoir-faire, as that very expression implies, your second language, at least, had to be French. But that was 200 years ago.

I believe that children who are raised in and educated to fluency in only one language are children in danger of growing up to think there is only one way of approaching problems – not good for the brain.

Here’s a good theme for a romantic science-fiction novel: a mysterious cloud spreads over Earth, and people find that they are unable to fall in love unless it’s with someone who doesn’t speak their language. Either Rosetta Stone would be flying off the shelves, or there’d be no need for it – I don’t know which.

I Was There, and So Were They

This week’s annual meeting of the U.N. in New York reminds me of my own little box seat on world events as I was growing up in the city.

We lived on the second floor of an apartment building which had a good view of Park Avenue (yes, the average person actually had a shot at affording such an abode in those days). I was right across the street from Hunter College, but more importantly, my bedroom window had a beautiful view of the USSR mission at 680 Park.

That building was the frequent target of demonstrations, mostly by Hungarian expatriates protesting the Soviet Union’s use of tanks to suppress freedom movements in their country. Sometimes there were only a few demonstrators; other times the crowds were large, so much so that New York police on horses were there to keep the peace. The crowds were not violent – they made noise and carried signs, but it was the late 1950s, after all.

The Soviet mission had a wonderful architectural feature: a good-sized balcony overlooking Park Avenue. It was not uncommon for Russian and other dignitaries who were staying or who were invited there to appear on the balcony and wave at the crowds, even unappreciative ones.

On more than one occasion, then-Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, when he was in town, would appear on the balcony. Sometimes this was in the evening, when my parents were having people over for dinner. Not to miss an opportunity, my mother would bring the guests back to my bedroom, open the window, and look out. It didn’t really matter to them whether I was actually in bed or not. Once, Fidel Castro and Mr. Khrushchev had a meeting at the mission. My memory is bad on this point, so I don’t know whether they appeared on the balcony together, but if they did, I’m sure my mom and her dinner guests were craning their necks out the window. My mother would sometimes go downstairs to invite the police on their horses to come upstairs for a drink. No ma’am, they said, we’re on duty. And then there was the issue of what to do with the horses.

Even our side street adjacent to our apartment building was useful, because limousines carrying important people on Park Avenue would sometimes use it to escape heavy traffic. Once, the limo carrying French President Charles de Gaulle turned down the street while I was looking out the window, and I could swear that he saw me wave at him and waved back. But maybe that was just my first childhood delusion of grandeur.

Right across the side street, as I mentioned, was Hunter College, and carved into the wall was this saying by Ralph Waldo Emerson: “We are of different opinions at different hours, but we may always be said to be at heart on the side of truth.” I saw it every morning when I got up and looked out the window.

Which tells me I better not make too much stuff up here, historical or not.

Romney and the Duchess

They’re still talking about it on cable news – whether Mitt Romney blew his campaign out of the water with his remark about 47 percent of Americans being dependent victims. And then there are the topless photos of Kate Middleton, now the Duchess of Cambridge, which have hit print in Europe.

What’s the relationship here? In Romney’s case, he thought he was speaking to a specialized audience about campaign strategy. The Duchess was just trying to get a little sun, and wasn’t playing to an audience at all, or at least, thought she wasn’t.

The price of fame keeps going up. When you’re really famous, you can run, but it’s almost impossible to hide these days. It’s a reality that those folks find themselves having to learn to deal with. And everywhere they go, whatever they say, they have to wonder whether there’s a data-gathering device nearby. And now, everyone has them. Still, the Duchess did have a reasonable expectation of privacy, and it’s hard to blame Prince William, who saw his mother essentially killed by paparazzi, for being angry.

I of course have less sympathy for Mr. Romney, who is actively seeking as much publicity as he can get. He should know by now that everything that comes out of his mouth is probably going to be within range of a smartphone – and fair game. Did he really blow his campaign up? The thing that will probably keep him viable is our woefully short attention span. We still have those debates yet.

I haven’t seen the pictures of the Duchess, but I think I’m safe in guessing that they offer no anatomical surprises, and that the world will move on.

All that said, these incidents demonstrate to me how increasingly rare safe places are for people with fame, beauty, political power or ambition, and/or money. And with cameras and microphones attached to everyone like new physical appendages, even we common folk are getting a taste of this problem.

Safe places, where we can wear as much (or as little) as we want or say what we want to say, are disappearing faster than the Brazilian rain forest – and I hope we start figuring out how to preserve them in our own lives, because famous or ordinary, we all need them.