Beyond Sharpie

Hurricane Dorian has come and gone, but has also left lessons behind. The most obvious one is about climate change, suggesting that it is to blame for the increasing potency of such storms. But there’s another one. Computers are great forecasting tools, but just because we see a path on a map doesn’t mean a storm is going to follow it.

The President soooo wanted that Sharpie-assisted cone on his  map to include Alabama so that he could be right. But as we look now at the path Dorian actually followed, being right was not easy.

Dorian started in the eastern Caribbean as a tropical storm and originally wasn’t supposed to amount to much, as I recall. Then it grew and threatened Puerto Rico, but struck only a glancing blow, compared to what was to come. It continued to grow and seemed to be heading straight for a major impact on Florida, on the way inflicting Biblical-level damage on two Bahamian islands. There, it put on the brakes, changed direction enough to curve away from Florida, then headed up the Southeast coast, following its curvature with unusual precision, close enough to mess up one coastal city after another, only making landfall on the extreme eastern end of North Carolina, But it wasn’t done yet as it raced northeast. Even Atlantic Canada, was hit with Category 2 winds.

If we like, we can fault the weather scientists for not doing a better job with all their spaghetti-line projections. But those same scientists are the first to remind us that while forecasting has made tremendous strides over the years through satellite and computer technology, it’s far from perfect. They do get the path right most of the time, but then there’s a Dorian. Maybe it’s God trying to remind us who’s in charge.

Many years ago I was an intern at a major-market television station that included a weather segment in its evening news. No fancy graphics then: the TV weatherman drew lines on a regional map with a black Magic Marker (Sharpies had not been invented yet). During the 6 o’clock news, the weather guy would draw a big circle around our city, saying “Let’s get oriented,” then did his forecast.

After the show, he went out  to dinner, a meal at which he was known to consume more than a few adult beverages. But he still had an 11 p.m. show to do. When the time came, he again said, “Let’s get oriented,” and drew on the map. By then, it was not always a circle, and not always around our city. We were lucky if he was even in the ballpark. So let’s cut our current weather folks a little slack. We have indeed come a long way, baby.

It's Stability, Stupid

I’m sorry I never took up day-trading on the stock market. It looks like Vegas to me, or playing the horses, and I don’t have the emotional constitution for it. Even so, with all the twists and turns of this administration’s financial and trade policies, often communicated by tweet, the market has spent long periods in wild swings up and down, and it’s via these changes that sharp traders can really make money.

For most investors, though, it makes for a queasy stomach. They have enjoyed a decade of watching their 401(k)s and similar instruments grow, not without periodic setbacks, but the long-term trend has been upward. These days, however, the R word (for recession) is heard more and more frequently, and the media are trumpeting the indicators that point to it.

Clearly, bull markets don’t last forever. They really aren’t supposed to. The economy simply can’t grow at the same rate all the time. Big windfalls, a sudden killing on the market, or even the “sugar high” of tax breaks, aren’t enough to produce a real feeling of prosperity. That comes from a prolonged period of trust in the ability to weather the storms - the EGBOK thing, as the L.A. radio hosts used to say: Everything’s Gonna Be OK. That’s an elusive state of mind right now.

The President may enjoy keeping the international competition guessing. It may have worked in business for him as a negotiation tactic – though not always, apparently. But when it comes to the current trade wars and constant switching of direction, he’s playing with the house’s money - meaning ours. He seems incapable of thinking in any terms other than winning and losing.

The modern economy has enough pressures as it is. Climate change is one. Automation is another. Those are just two that are visible. The sea is rocky enough, we don’t need to be rocking the boat too.

Wars, military, economic and otherwise, are not usually the end of the story. More often, they end at negotiating tables, with the opposing parities forced by circumstances to make compromises. We eventually find we all can get along, because…well, we just have to.

It's Just Joe

This is my birth month, so the issue of how the aging are viewed hits much closer to home than it used to. Is ageism in the Presidential race a thing?

It has certainly focused attention on Joe Biden in particular, largely because of his occasional verbal stumbles and his seeming to be not quite fast enough on the draw when responding to challenges such as that presented by fellow candidate Kamala Harris in one of this summer’s debates. Some feel that these are signs that he’s a bit past it now.

Like anyone with a long track record in politics, Mr. Biden has his share of twists and turns in position to explain. If he now demonstrates a change of heart or mind, is it evolution or a flip-flop? We can only go back to that long track record for clues. As for the gaffes, they have been going on for a long time, perhaps well before anyone would link them to getting older.

Among those qualities we appreciate in a President are authenticity and the ability to absorb new information, especially from experts focused on a particular knowledge base. But we also appreciate a President who chooses words carefully, mindful of the enormous impact they have on the country’s mood and that of the rest of the world. I am not endorsing Joe Biden nor discouraging support for him here,  I’m just saying that occasional gaffes are his thing.

The media are merciless. Remember when President Ford, at a considerably younger age, said in a debate that there was no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe? He was also famous for a physical stumble. George W. Bush was infamous for  “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job!” after Hurricane Katrina, and the "Mission Accomplished" banner on the ship after the invasion of Iraq. When it comes to unfortunate utterances or phrases associated with Presidents, this list is longer than we like to think. The point is, it’s not about aging. It’s about being human, and sometimes, being just plain wrong.

At my age, I have some issues. I repeat stories I have told before. I try to tell them to new people or audiences, but am not always successful. People I have known for a while have blanket permission to cut me off if they’ve heard something already, and they do.

I’ll leave you with this little story. Some years ago, my wife and I were out to dinner at a Chinese restaurant with a colleague of mine, who is white like me, but his wife is Asian. The restaurant brought us many dishes, and she graciously served us from them. She served me first, which was a surprise. “You are the wisest,” she explained, which I wanted to take as a compliment, but that’s not quite it. In her native country, the custom is that the oldest one at the table is served first. By the way, I apologize to those of you who have heard this one before. I’ll shut up now.

Cracking the Nut

No question about it. The two hardest legislative nuts that seem to defy cracking are healthcare and immigration. I want to talk about the first one today.

To start with, I do agree with those who feel that the business model of insurance is the avoidance of paying claims. But are voters ready to wipe out the private health insurance industry with Medicare for All? No, not yet.

I am old enough now to be on Medicare myself, and it is not a magic bullet that covers all medical costs. It’s just another form of insurance. Not all providers accept it, and even if they do, plain Medicare is not sufficient to pay for everything, so supplements are necessary, and there are choices to be made. Medicare itself has standard supplements available at different premium levels. Healthcare providers offer their own plans, called Medicare Advantage, which pay for more stuff but restrict the user to a particular health network, like an HMO.

Why is health insurance tied to employment? This is not exactly sacred tradition. It stems from a time during World War II when there were salary caps, and to attract workers, employers had to offer health benefits to get around them. These employer subsidies were exempted from taxes. The salary caps are long gone, but the exemption remains. To receive these benefits, however, employees generally have to be full-time workers. So yes, some people stick with jobs they hate, largely for the insurance.

I also agree with those who say that employer contributions to an employee’s health insurance premiums are income and should be taxed as such. This would help level the playing field. But there still needs to be some kind of reasonable plan available to those working in the gig economy or in between jobs. If there’s a gap to be filled by government, that  would seem to be the one.

Whatever we do, we can’t bring back the good old days when most healthcare was affordable, based on fee-for-service, and insurance was needed only for catastrophes. These days, almost any health issue can be catastrophic when it comes to cost, so insurance is a utility. Obamacare was a step in the right direction, but it hasn’t been much help with cost. Fixing this will require balancing business models with patient needs and deciding who pays for what. That’s where the policy wonks have to pick up the ball.

It may seem impossible, but as I often say, there are plenty of smart lawyers in Congress, who could figure out how to crack this nut. It may be unlikely, but I believe  it IS possible.

The "Can't Do" Attitude

I’m a little hesitant to talk about assault weapons, for fear of not saying anything new, and the arguments against gun control are all the same: You can’t ban assault weapons because there are too many of them out there. Buy-back programs don’t work, what gun owner is going to give the weapon up? You can’t write a good law because the definition of “assault weapon” will always leave something out. If you ban them, there will just be a black market, and the crooks, the crazies, and the home-grown terrorists will be able to get them anyway. You can write all the bills you want, but Mitch McConnell will just kill them in the Senate. It’s all feel-good legislation, it will accomplish little. We hear similar things when it comes to the rants of white supremacists. There’s the First Amendment, you can’t do anything about it.

I’m getting tired of hearing what can’t be done, and I would welcome feeling good about something these days. When it comes to an assault weapons ban, there are a lot of eminent attorneys in Congress, some of whom maybe went to the law schools at Harvard or Stanford or places in between. They could write legislation to cover most of these weapons and modification techniques. Didn’t we already have such a ban on the books once before? As for buy-backs, we spend hundreds of millions of military dollars on one bomber; do you think we could spare something that might save at least a few domestic lives?

As for free speech, the First Amendment says Congress shall make no law to abridge it, but there are limits. The most famous example is, you can’t yell “fire” in a crowded theater. Heck, I bet those smart lawyers could find a way to broaden the definition of both “fire” and “theater.” The Amendment does not prohibit media (conventional or social), search engines and other providers from blocking hate speech. That isn’t illegal censorship. I believe that’s called “editing.”

No law covers everything. There will always be a crazy who can get an assault weapon., just like a drunk who can get behind the wheel of a car. But is there anything we can do to make it just a little more difficult for those things to happen?

On the gun culture, there will likely come a time when guns just don’t seem as necessary. Remember when smoking used to be cool? How many decades has it taken for that to change? These days, the sheer expense caused by taxes heaped on tobacco has made it more difficult for smokers, who also have fewer and fewer places they can legally, or socially, do it.

When it comes to gun legislation, the perfect, as they say, should never be the enemy of the good, or even the pretty good. There is one greater enemy than perfection: doing nothing.

What We Need to Know

To start with, this isn’t about gun control. I want to talk about media coverage of mass shootings, and the information we need and don’t need. To their credit, the major media in general are aware of the role they play in these incidents and are trying to make adjustments.

First, there is the response right after the incident. The pressure is on to hit the air or the Internet live, with anchors at the mercy of the waves of constantly changing data coming at them. That information arrives in spurts. The anchors have little to fill the spaces in between but platitudes and speculation and, of course, social media phone videos.

It is amazing to me, when there’s a shooting and people are running for their lives, how many have enough presence of mind (or as a colleague calls it, stupidity) to record the whole thing on their phones, with jerky pictures, as they flee. What are the poor anchors to do but run them as they arrive? The trouble is, they don’t stop. The videos run for hours, even for days, in spilt-screen, even while authorities are providing real facts about what happened. Enough, already.

Then there is the issue of the shooter’s name. Some media won’t use it at all, for fear of glorifying the individual. The problem with this is, we do need to know who it is, their background, what the motive may have been, and whether they worked alone.

In this regard, I’m in favor of more information rather than less. It’s increasingly clear that while each case is individual,  most of these incidents seem to follow a pattern. Working with patterns is how weather forecasters have learned to predict storms with more and more accuracy, and provide better warning. The same is true of earthquakes. There are more sensors around, and while each quake is unique, they also tend to follow patterns, allowing the provision of even a few seconds of warning now. These principles could apply to mass shooting incidents, where the red-flagging of certain individuals might prevent tragedy.

I’m not suggesting here that the media start calling out suspicious people before they commit crimes. But digging into the motives of perpetrators when these incidents do happen results in educating the rest of us about why they get so frickin’ angry, as the Gilroy guy apparently said he was.

Each one of us is like one of those earthquake sensors. I hope we can develop some kind of reasonable red-flag laws to stop shooters before they start, but for these laws to work, we all have to know what the red flags look like in the first place, and through telling us these stories, the media can help us do that.

Defining Citizenship

The endless Twitter wars about race, ethnicity, and going back to countries of origin all take us to the following question: Who is an American?

Let me begin by saying that I am not a Birther. It’s worse than that. I’m more of an un-Birther. Does simply being born here make us American? I think the answer must be no.

The notion of birthright citizenship is a romantic one, as is the Constitutional requirement that an individual be born here to qualify to be President. But let’s be honest. Those of us who were born here had absolutely nothing to do with that process and can take no credit for it. As I have often said, it doesn’t make us better than others. We were just lucky.

I’m probably not the first to suggest this, but suppose everyone who is here, by birth or not, who intends to stay here, had to pass the same civics test that foreigners seeking legal citizenship must, followed perhaps by taking an oath? Do you think that might level the playing field a little?

Clearly, there would have to be categories, maybe a point system of sorts. If you’re born here, maybe you get the first 25 years of citizenship for free, then you have to take the test. You might get a point advantage for military service or being a Dreamer or a descendant of those who were brought here against their will. There are questions of disability and other access issues and, of course,  what happens if you repeatedly fail. But just being born here wouldn’t be quite enough. 

As for the Presidential birth requirement,  why should a foreigner, who commits him- or herself to our national values, like the rule of law, for example, or a free press, be unqualified to serve? I don’t have a problem with the current age and residency rules. But what advantage has the birth requirement brought us? I frankly think the record is a little spotty. By the way, the current citizenship oath for a foreigner requires the individual to give up allegiance to a foreign power. How are we doing with that one?

America, as we call it, is not just a place. It’s an idea. The place has been here for millions of years, but this idea has only been alive for about 250. It should require some kind of buy-in, in the form of a demonstrated rudimentary knowledge of how it works.

Yes, I subscribe to “love it or leave it,” but first we have to clearly understand what “it” is about. It is not only about being white, Christian, straight, or owning a gun. And it’s a heck of a lot more than just being another carbon footprint, taking up space.

Being There

It was July of 1969. I was living in Washington, DC, working as a management trainee at one of the city’s TV stations. My apartment was a few blocks east of DuPont Circle – not a great neighborhood in those days, but my address was 1600 Q Street NW. 1600, In Washington! Only one of the reasons I might have been a little full of myself at the time.

It was the week that climaxed with Earthlings taking their walk on the moon. Unlike the Vietnam War, ongoing racial tensions, and hippies spreading everywhere, this story would be laser-focused on a single moment: Neil Armstrong’s first step on the lunar surface. I looked forward to the first edition of the Washington Post carrying the story on the front page, and snapped one up quickly in the fear that if I didn’t, they would be gone. I was right.

When I got into work for my next shift. I noticed Deanna, an attractive young fellow trainee. She looked upset. “What’s the matter?” I asked. Deanna was almost in tears. “I went out to buy a Post with the moon landing story,” she said, “and all the news-racks in my area were empty. I tried five newsstands, still no luck. Kicking myself that I didn’t jump on it sooner.”

This began to look like something of an opportunity, so I went to what constituted my desk, pulled out my precious copy of the Post, and presented it to Deanna. “Gee,” she said, “you’d do this for ME? Thank you so much. I can never thank you enough!”

She was partly right about that. I think I expected a little  more appreciation from Deanna, but it was not to be (hey,  cut me a little slack here, I was single and in my 20s, and it was 1969). Anyway, a few months later, I moved on to another job, as did she. These days, especially this week, I’m wondering if Deanna has ever pulled out her copy of the Post, which I have a strong feeling she kept, to show to her grandchildren, if she has them, and, of course, if she remembers how she happened to come by that paper.

I sort of miss it. When I mentioned this to a younger colleague recently, he said, “No worries. You can get one on eBay for 10 bucks.” Nope, not the same. I collected that copy of the Post with my own hands, because I was alive when the big story happened. To my colleague, it is only history; to me, it’s experience, a whole different thing. And I did share that moment with Deanna.

Clock Management

I’m not a sports fan, but I was born into a family of them and then married into one. One of the things I learned early on is that whenever it’s a game where a time limit is involved, clock management near the end of the contest is critical. This is especially true in a close football game. The team that’s slightly ahead does everything it can to slow the game down and keep possession of the ball until the clock runs out and they win. If the losing team gets possession, the coach may have to decide in the short time remaining whether to call for the field-goal kicker or take the risk of going for a touchdown. Both teams use their limited number of time-outs, not to rest the players, but to rattle the other team, interrupting the opponent’s momentum. The legendary coach Bill Walsh was said to be especially good at clock management.


Right now, activist Democrats in the House are calling for opening an impeachment inquiry into the President, but party leaders,
 including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, aren’t ready to go there. She fears that impeachment proceedings would consume energy and allow the President to play the victim. And the Republican-dominated Senate wouldn’t vote right now for his removal anyway. In Pelosi’s view, House Democrats must first make the case against the President in order to flip Republicans, and most importantly, persuade the electorate that impeachment is necessary.


It seems, of course, that  there is not enough time before next year’s election for impeachment to be concluded. But do the Democrats look toothless if they don’t  impeach? If they do, and the proceedings drag on into next year, will the voters get tired of it all?


To me, it’s clear that the Democrats have the ball, and it looks like the best strategy is running out the clock. They certainly wouldn’t want a vote in the Senate too soon, handing the President the ball at the last minute. But an open impeachment inquiry would at least settle the go-or-no-go question and put a point on the spear. The drip-drip-drip of negative information arising from the investigation might persuade those who currently support the President or those still on the fence to carefully consider their votes in 2020, when it will finally be “game over,” and the fans of one team or the other can finally tear down the goal posts. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait.

Panning for Dirt

“Everyone does it,” said our President, when confronted about taking pre-election dirt from the Russians on his opponent. We know that every candidate does NOT welcome or solicit such material from foreign sources, especially those considered adversaries. But opposition, or “oppo” research, as the President noted, is standard now in major campaigns. Negative advertising about a political opponent will never go away, because, well, it works.

We have to admire those who run for political office nowadays, because they are exposing themselves, and in many cases, their families, to invasive scrutiny that could change their careers – and lives -- forever. 

That said, information is information. During campaigns, it comes to journalists in a variety of ways, often through tips or leaks. Usually, reporters don’t waste time trying to figure out the motives of tipsters. When I was in that field, there were only two questions: ““Is it true?” and “Is it a news story?”

As a news manager myself, I once got a call on the evening  before Election Day about a candidate for a local office, a respected individual, who had been born in another country and came to this one as an adult and acquired US citizenship. The caller said this candidate had been something of a bad actor in the original country, but it didn’t sound all that serious to me, and there was no time to corroborate it before the election. The whisperer, in my case, had just waited too long.

What is  a voter supposed to do, though, in evaluating a candidate about whom a negative story surfaces? A major factor for me has always been how the candidate responds. Does the answer come right away? If the story is true, can the candidate explain it or say, “I’m sorry”? In that case, is the apology sincere and sufficient? If it’s untrue, can the candidate refute the allegation calmly, and with facts? 

For most of us, this is not our first rodeo, as they say, and we already have experience with political mud-slinging among candidates. In spite of pledges of civility, the gloves inevitably come off, maybe sooner than we’d like. It will not be pretty. For our part, we can watch how the candidates perform under this pressure. 

As voters, when it comes to negative material, we must always consider the source, and recognize when someone is playing our violin.

Reparations

It’s a tough subject on the campaign trail right now: Are African-Americans owed compensation for the injustices of slavery? And what form should it take? The first concept that comes to mind, of course, is money. Should checks be sent out? And to whom, exactly?


The root of the word “reparations” is “repair.” Anyone who has dealt with auto mechanics knows that throwing money at a problem doesn’t necessarily mean fixing it. If it were just about money, payment made to African-Americans in that form might allow us white people to feel that the debt has been settled somehow. The truth, of course, is that it’s a debt that can never be fully paid in such a fashion. 


Then there is the issue of whether current generations of whites are responsible for atrocities committed by their ancestors in past centuries. The original sin, so to speak, has left a stain that has bled through layers of time and persistent attempts to revise history. The white-dominated federal government did make a good-faith effort at reparations after the Civil War called Reconstruction. It just didn’t stick.


We do have an ongoing responsibility to compensate descendants for the economy that was built upon slavery and the vestiges that remain today. The precedent has already been set, both here and abroad. Not long ago, we compensated Japanese-Americans who were forced into internment camps during World War II. Germany and other European countries saw funds set up to compensate Holocaust survivors. Whether these attempts were adequate or not is a question, but they were at least gestures.


It would be nice if we could come up with quickie list of who gets paid, how, and when, but the answers are not simple. It may be up to a proposed commission to explore the questions of eligibility, the claims process, and what compensation should consist of. Cash payments may be one form, but might it also be about assistance with home loans, the payment of college tuition, or other things? The commission route would be a contentious and messy one, but it’s important that there is buy-in from a wide variety of quarters before any reparation program is launched.


Then of course, there is the issue of fairness, as members of other historically oppressed groups start asking when it’s their turn to get paid. But being fair is no excuse for doing nothing, especially when it’s about the “peculiar institution” that is part of this country’s definition, whether we like it or not.

A Nice Problem

Some years ago, an event coordinator I knew was surprised when the number of those planning to attend her function increased dramatically as the date approached, forcing her to scramble at the last minute to accommodate them. “A nice problem to have,” she said, a little breathlessly.

So it is with the two dozen Democratic candidates for President. Why do so many want to run? First, of course, there is the desire to keep the current occupant from serving another four years. But what might some other motives be? Personal publicity? Partly, but I think there’s more to it. I’m sure at least some of these folks realize full well that the sun will rise in the west before they actually win the nomination. But if nothing else, candidacy is a chance to ensure that their key issues become part of the agenda.


Democratic voters do have a nice problem. The problem part is that the choice is not an easy one; they will have to sit through many more town halls and debates before next year’s primaries, when they make that choice. The nice part, though, is that every one of these candidates seems qualified to serve as President, at least so far.


The second dose of nice is that whoever wins the nomination will have some great options, not only for a running mate, but for potential Cabinet members in the event of a November 2020 victory. I ask you to let me do some “what iffing” here. To start with, if she doesn’t win the nomination or get chosen for No. 2, who would make a better attorney general than Kamala Harris? Or Elizabeth Warren for Secretary of the Treasury? Beto O’Rourke could do a nice job at Homeland Security or Health and Human Services. Pete Buttigieg could do well at Commerce or Veterans Affairs. Jay Insley, outspoken on climate change, could be perfect for the Department of Energy. And Joe Biden would make a fine Secretary of State, not only because of his foreign policy experience, but because those in other countries don’t share the American penchant for dismissing older people. Whether any of these individuals would accept Cabinet positions if offered is another question. But none would be bent on destroying or minimizing the department he or she is heading.


I have left some important names out here, of course, and likely you will be doing some what-iffing of your own. But continuing with the niceties of this” problem,”  there are no losers among that crowded field. And it could all be a win-win for the country, too.

Down from the Mount

Robert Mueller holding a news conference is almost up there with Moses coming down from Mount Sinai. Like Moses, Mueller brought a hard message with him. Here is what it made me think about.

In a standard criminal case, the cops collect evidence of a crime and present it to the DA. If the DA decides the evidence is sufficient, the suspect is charged with the crime. The case has to be brought into the right court, and is TRIED (that’s where we get the word “trial” from). If the charge is not proven beyond a reasonable doubt, the defendant is acquitted (or exonerated) by the jury.

Mr. Mueller said that the evidence against President Trump in the Russia probe was insufficient for a charge of conspiracy. In the case of obstruction of justice in particular, Mueller said he and his team did not decide on a charge because it was not their business to do so, according to Department of Justice rules. Mueller insisted, however, that Trump had not been exonerated by the investigation. That would be up to Congress. So, the water is still muddy.

Under Mueller’s principle of fairness, it would have been wrong to even say Trump was chargeable, because the President does not have the ability to defend himself in the regular criminal justice system. If House Speaker Nancy Pelosi really feels that Trump may have committed an impeachable offense, as she put it recently, applying Mueller’s principle of fairness, she has simply added to the mud, and the case should now be pursued through the system that applies to a sitting President, namely, the impeachment process.

Opening an impeachment inquiry is not just a political chess move. Even on those terms, as a former Congressman, who is a Republican, observed in a TV interview, Democrats may suffer more damage by NOT moving toward impeachment than by doing so. If they want to retain their power in Congress, at some point they have to exercise it.

As with any court activity, the outcome of an impeachment proceeding isn’t certain. Even if the House makes a good case, the President may get a pass in the Senate, and then, he could claim full exoneration. But there is still another court, the supremest one of them all, in politics at least: the court of public opinion. As voters, we all have jury duty in 2020.

Our Best Angels

The feel-good story of the past week has got to be the pledge by billionaire Robert F. Smith to pay off the student loans of the graduating class at Atlanta’s Morehouse College. It’s important on many levels. It’s not just about a wealthy man “giving back.” The benefactor billionaire in this case is black; the beneficiaries are students at a traditionally black college. 


By now you have heard all the late-night TV jokes about the pressure this has put on other famous or wealthy people invited to speak at graduation ceremonies, who are all going to feel like pikers, and how picky the schools will be about courting speakers for next year. And then there are some serious critics, who say that students shouldn’t have to depend on angel benefactors to take care of their burdensome loans. It doesn’t seem fair to other students still bound by loans, or who had to pay them back in the past, and some of the lucky ones may actually feel guilt about their good fortune. But I say, thanks to Mr. Smith for setting the example. Helping even one is better than helping none.


In a related gesture, NYU last year announced the elimination of tuition for students entering its medical school, thanks to the generosity of its trustees and alumni.


Democratic presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren has put forward a plan to tax the super-rich so that millions of students would have their loans forgiven and public colleges would be tuition-free. Whether you agree with the concept or with her numbers or not, it’s an idea that may be largely responsible for putting her among the top-tier candidates for 2020. It has taken a while, but  the financing of college education is officially a thing now.


There’s a lot of talk about investing in infrastructure, like roads, bridges, pipelines, etc. Now we have started the conversation about investing in human infrastructure – the people who can learn how to design all these things, create new technologies, and maybe even cure disease or help us all deal with climate change. College may not be for everyone, but we have the opportunity now to figure out how to make it accessible to those who could really benefit from it. It’s a benefit all of us could share in.

The Next Civil War

A woman’s ability to terminate her pregnancy under Roe v. Wade is under attack on several fronts, but these are just the opening battles in a long war. The new anti-abortion measure signed into law by Alabama’s governor is so extreme that even evangelist Pat Robertson can’t quite stomach it. The law won’t take effect anytime soon, due to legal challenges.  But the anti-abortion forces are rolling out their artillery in the hope of fighting their way to favorable ground at the Supreme Court.


Those against abortion often stand on the belief that life is sacred. That’s kind of shaky ground in Alabama, which is among the top 15 states in carrying out the death penalty. Isn’t it interesting how often those two positions seem to go together, especially in the South?


Just so you know, I am in favor of a woman’s right to choose, but abortion has always been a little troubling to me. For example, Ohio just passed a law banning abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected. It’s very hard to believe that something with a heartbeat isn’t actually alive. Or that a fetus isn’t quite a human being.


That said, our laws permit the taking of life under certain circumstances. There is self-defense, of course, and the aforementioned death penalty. But we have also come around, at least in some states, to allow assisted suicide; why shouldn’t a choice be allowed at the beginning of life? There are good reasons why a woman may need to make this choice. In the first trimester, she doesn’t have to have a reason satisfactory to anyone but herself. I believe, however, that there are very few pregnant women who make this choice casually.


Many commentators say that while draconian laws like Alabama’s won’t make it through the Supreme Court, other state laws chipping away at Roe will survive, and there will be an expansion of “abortion tourism,” with women fleeing restrictive states to get their procedures done in the liberal ones. The first Civil War was fought over a social condition. So might the next one.


The current phase of the conflict is just the beginning. But before anyone  thinks victory is in the bag, our history has shown that those on the Supreme Court don’t always do what the Presidents who appointed them intended. Conservative or liberal, they have their legacies to consider, and public opinion does get through.

Timing the Punch

t seems like there’s a contest going on among Democratic presidential hopefuls as to who uses the I-word and how often. The ”I”, of course, stands for impeachment. Should the Democrats simply focus on turning Donald Trump out of office next year, or go down the impeachment road now and risk not only diverting attention from governing, but also a devastating loss of face if the effort fails, paving the way for Trump’s re-election?

We are all drawn back to Watergate days and how similar this time seems to that. But it was different in one critical respect. The Watergate fallout unfolded early in Richard Nixon’s last term. It took a full two years to make the case for impeaching him, plus, there was the much-referenced smoking gun in Nixon’s own words on tape. The current situation is happening late in President Trump’s first term. Is there time to build an impeachment case against him before next year’s election?

I’m reminded of a professional boxer I used to see on TV years ago. He wasn’t a Muhammad Ali. His style wasn’t pretty; he lumbered ungracefully around the ring. But he had a devastating right-hand punch. The thing is, he rarely threw it. Few opponents survived the match when he did, but all were afraid of it and kept a respectful distance. This boxer knew he could be patient and wait for the right time to throw it.

If the impeachment “punch” were thrown today, it’s a given that it would fail. In spite of what’s already on the record in the case of this President, the votes just aren’t there in the Senate for it to succeed. But the vote isn’t being taken today. It doesn’t have to mean, however,  that impeachment is off the table. Opponents of Trump can continue building a case, not only for the Senate, but for the court of public opinion. It has to be so overwhelming a case that Trump supporters finally realize the game is up.

Now for a little metaphor mix. In my garage there are a lot of tools. Most were there long before I moved in to this house. I am not especially handy, but if a fix-it problem comes up, I am pretty confident that I can find something in the garage that will help me solve it. There are some tools I have used rarely, only once or twice. But I’m grateful they are there and that my in-laws, who were here before me, collected them. Impeachment is like one of those tools, or to return to the original metaphor here, that feared right-hand punch that is still available when – and if – it’s time to throw it.

Taming Facebook

It might seem premature to be using “mid-life crisis” in talking about something  that’s been around for less than two decades, but it’s still a long time for a company like Facebook. For some of us, Facebook is almost a utility now. For others, it’s an obsession, and for still others, a soapbox. For the individual user, like me for instance, it likely has been each of those things at different times.


The news is telling us that Facebook is looking down the barrel of a $5 billion federal fine for failing to take steps to protect users’  privacy. Negotiations are underway about this, and one of the remedies is the appointment of a committee -- yes, of actual humans – to oversee Facebook’s privacy policies.


Meanwhile, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been talking about transforming the whole user experience to stress communication with friends and family and de-emphasize the use of FB for exhibitionism, interference by foreign adversaries, and hate speech. It’s kind of a shame that people can’t play nicely in the sandbox, and now the sand itself has to be changed.


Many have decided that it’s not a nice place to play at all anymore and have pulled the plug, at least for personal use, notably the millennial congresswoman we call AOC, who termed social media a public health risk. I tried to give FB up for Lent, with what I and my friends will agree were decidedly mixed results. I did manage to use it less, and yes, I did get more things done in what’s generally known as real life.


But if we use Facebook, is not that still part of our real life? We have constantly heard the social scientists talking about work-life balance, as if what we do for a living (if it needs to be for a living) is not part of life, that life is only what we do in our free time. We can even revisit the expression “free time.”


The useful part of that work-life phrase, though, is balance. It’s possible to exercise some control short of disconnection. I saw an article online today about spring cleaning strategies for our social media experience. The writer borrowed from neatness guru Marie Kondo, whose mantra is, if it gives you joy, keep it, and if it’s no longer useful, thank it for its service and kiss it goodbye (almost literally).


So while Facebook may be cleaning up its act, perhaps we can do something similar. If you are one of those who can unplug entirely, congratulations may be in order. But for those of us who don’t or can’t, we can at least face up to the part that social media use plays in our lives and work on putting it in its place. I believe that by now, we have to accept that it has one.

Slo-Mo Terrorism

The Mueller report has sparked much debate about whether the President has colluded or conspired and/or obstructed justice, and whether he’s a candidate for impeachment. But there is virtually no debate about the report’s finding that the Russians have been attacking us. And we are also repeatedly told that the American electorate doesn’t care, that we are all too busy with our persistent kitchen-table issues.

On 9/11, planes were flown into buildings. Thousands died. Manhattan’s skyline changed dramatically, and so, apparently, did our attitudes about certain foreigners. On Easter Sunday this year, a coordinated attack in Sri Lanka killed more than 300. We can broaden the definition of terrorism to include the shooting incidents in New Zealand, Parkland, Pittsburgh, Las Vegas -- the list goes on. All these things shock us into attention.

But what about the Russian interference in our elections, the spread of fake news and the attempt to foment discord among us? It’s reported that trolls have even tried to spark debate about vaccinations. In these cases, there is no attempt to shock, just the opposite, it’s all designed to be under the radar. The goal is the same, to bleep with our system and make us doubt ourselves. And the Russians are probably not the only actors on this stage. But isn’t this terrorism too? Just slower? Isn’t the damage even more widespread?

The President may blame previous administrations for failing to deal with it. Actually, he may be partly right about us being late to get on to what was happening. But now it’s his problem. Whether he colluded or conspired, we can have a discussion about,  but there is little doubt that he has done virtually nothing about it, in fact, welcomed whatever could be done to help get him elected. Isn’t our President, by sworn oath, supposed to be defending us against this stuff?

We may get angry with the Russians and want to respond in kind. We have to be careful about that, because we don’t know exactly what will happen if they start pushing the buttons they likely have already set up. In the words of Democratic presidential hopeful Kamala Harris, this will be a war without blood, but it could still be a devastating one if it escalates. The strategy must be defense, and we need leadership going forward that makes it a priority to face up to what many in the intelligence biz are calling our greatest modern threat.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes

I was never a climate-change denier, but I always believed that the real changes were way bigger than what the puny human race was responsible for. There is evidence of a great overarching cycle. There was an Ice Age long before there were enough human beings doing enough things to create it. Palm trees did once grow in Greenland, and the places we call deserts today were once moist and lush.


The big cycle is not a nice neat sine wave. We agonize over the rising average temperature of the Earth and the drastic changes we need to make to hold it down. The Earth actually knows how to do this. A Krakatoa volcano or a Mt. Pinatubo explode, and the tons of stuff they pump into the sky can lower the temperature in months. We have no control over these really big things. Even the sun has a cycle, and all it will take is one correctly aimed solar flare and our electrical grid could be fried.



Well, all of that said, the argument that the big natural cycles are in charge and that  we humans aren’t to blame for climate change doesn’t hold water anymore. When there are almost 8 billion of us in various stages of civilization doing what we do, sheer logic says we must be having an impact. The changes that used to take millennia are now happening within a couple of generations, it seems. So why shouldn’t we take the steps necessary to clean up after ourselves and save our planet? We are the frogs in the about-to-be boiling water. Some of us, at least, can feel it getting hotter.



Al Gore’s warnings about climate change have faded a bit, but now it’s a 29-year-old former waitress and bartender from the Bronx, and those like her, who are leading us forward. The congresswoman we call AOC is truly a global thinker, and whether we agree with her on everything or not, she is great at commanding attention and focusing it on what we need to do – and fast.



If the Bible is any guide, the Lord’s patience is running short. As the story goes, when humans were too engrossed in sinful behavior to change, he decided to start over, sending a great flood over the Earth and wiping almost everybody and everything out. These days, we have two choices, it seems: clean up our act, or start building a really big boat.

Space Invaders

I really didn’t want to write about this topic AGAIN, but here we go. Now it’s former vice president Joe Biden accused of inappropriately touching females. In this case, most seem to feel there was no sexual intent, but at least one complained that her “personal space” was violated.

I know what that means, and I’m not dismissing it. But there’s still something wrong with this picture, and it’s not my own gender defensiveness. Under modern standards, as I have said before, I couldn’t be elected dogcatcher. But don’t worry. “Ah shall not seek, and ah will not accept...”


We’ve heard a lot about courageous women coming forward through #metoo over the past couple of years to report sexual abuse by men. But it’s unfortunate that shame has been weaponized. We certainly need to discuss appropriate behavior and what the new standard should be. But the first behavior that needs adoption is that men and women must learn to have this discussion between each other, preferably  at the time of the offense, instead of turning it into a Twitter bomb later. Men have to stop this behavior, and if they don’t, women need to look them in the eye and say, “Please don’t do that,” or find another way to communicate it directly, whether it’s to a date, a celebrity, a superior, a clergyman, or even a family member. That requires even more courage than taking it to the media.


As for Mr. Biden, I don’t think it’s this behavior that is disqualifying. He would certainly make a good President. That said, I do think the combination of his gender, age, and even race may be. Democrats seem to be looking for younger candidates who appear to better reflect them and who have a good working knowledge of the new challenges of the future. It’s not about space invasion.


In the meantime, maybe there’s a tech solution to this. Give us a phone app that creates a force field around us, that we could set at will. The field could be as little as a few inches or up to a few feet, or we could turn it off entirely for cocktail parties. But when it’s on, anyone who enters our personal space would get a mild shock or hear a buzzer. Now THERE's a billion-dollar idea.


I don’t know whether it’s related, but I heard a statistic the other day to the effect that young people in the US are having 23 percent less sex these days. But hey, that’s great news for the environment, no? Fewer little carbon footprints to worry about. Why isn’t THAT in the Green New Deal?

Green Is Not Always Good

When we hear “green” these days, most of us get a good feeling. We think of lovely vegetation, green building standards, the Green New Deal. But then, there is “green with envy.” I wondered why envy has always been associated with a pleasant color like green. Thanks to Google, I didn’t have to wonder very long. In ancient medicine, green was associated with illness – in particular, the accumulation of excess bile.

I admire Elizabeth’s Warren’s passion for fairness, but when she starts in on wanting to slam more taxes on the wealthy just for having stuff, she starts to lose me. I’m not a fan of luxury taxes. Unlike a house, a Rembrandt on the wall doesn’t consume public services (and no, I don’t have one on my wall). Anyway, Senator Warren doesn’t strike me as an envious person, but she is tapping into people out there who feel that the wealthy only got that way because of some unfair advantage. I think luck has a lot more to do with it than most of us want to admit.

Were you born in the United States? Are you able-bodied? Is your skin white? Did daddy and/or mommy leave you something? Did a billion-dollar idea come to you? As for the last, why did it come to YOU?

You may say, I deserve my wealth, it was my idea, and I worked hard for every penny. Congratulations. But even then, there are circumstances. The value of what you had to offer still had to come to people’s attention or get to market, and the timing had to be right. I had a relative who had great ideas and worked hard for them, but his timing was often not so great. Decades ago, he opened a nightclub in San Diego. Business was promising the first week. Then Pearl Harbor was attacked. There was a war on, and the Navy needed his building.

I thought God was supposed to be fair. But maybe he or she (and pardon me for this binary gender thing) is more like a dealer in Vegas who gives you a little house money to play with and says, “Here, kid, see what you can do with this.” Yup, some are given more than others.

Let me be clear: I don’t have a problem with taxing the wealthy more on their income. We used to tax rich people’s income at a much higher rate a long time ago, and they survived. True, some wealthy people are so consumed by greed that there is never such a thing as enough. That usually undoes them.

The key is humility. If you are wealthy and you understand that good fortune itself played a part in you acquiring your good fortune, then sharing some of it may not be as much of a problem. If you’re not wealthy right now, you can either choose to be a permanent victim of circumstances, including difficult ancestry, or, like the dealer said, see what you can do with what you have. I’m an optimist – I like to think that if we look through our cards, we can all find at least one we can play.

Unfair Game

The college admissions scandal that ensnared wealthy parents who used deception to get their children admitted to prestigious universities is certainly shocking, but hardly surprising. For decades, parents have fought  to get their kids into the right pre-school, let alone prep school or college. The motivation? Creating what they believe  is the best future for their children, and yeah,  getting to say they have a kid at Yale. In the recent case, the parents have done no favors for their offspring, putting the kids’ college careers under a dark cloud.

But now, the spotlight beam is taking in the broader relationship between money and college admissions. What has happened for years is a situation like the following: Worthington Gotrocks III gives the university he went to a zillion dollars for a new robotics center, in part hoping to get young Worthington IV (or daughter Worthingtonia) into the school. Suppose the son or daughter is actually qualified to do so, and his or her application and that of an equally qualified disadvantaged or minority kid land on the admission officer’s desk. Who do you think might get a second look?

It’s not fair, but like it or not, it has been part of the business model, especially for private institutions, for a long time. But the donations of the wealthy may actually have helped make them the places that students are clamoring to get into now. In the case of the Gotrocks Robotics Center, all interested students at the school will have access to it, regardless of gender, race, or socioeconomic status. So there is actually a cost-benefit ratio to consider here.

OK, full disclosure: I went to an Ivy League university myself, but for what it’s worth, I was pleased to see a 60 Minutes story recently about how the school is affirmatively recruiting disadvantaged and minority young people to create a more diverse student body. The good news is my alma mater is not alone in such efforts.

That said, universities will be under intense pressure now to keep the development office as far away as possible from the admissions office, and will likely have to match the FBI in application fact-checking. Will that produce an even playing field? Chances are the field is already named after somebody who donated the money to pay for it. 

At the end of the day, though, the message for young people is this: Going to Yale or USC doesn’t guarantee anyone a successful life, nor does going to Podunk State deny anyone such a life. Fairness is elusive, and in the end, most of us are forced to play with the cards we are dealt. And we are probably not going to stop money from talking. It’s all about what the wealthy make it say, and who is listening.

Keep It Simple, AOC

By now you may recognize the acronym for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest new member of Congress, who has burst upon the scene not only with her shocking upset election victory in New York, but with her current role as the face of the Green New Deal. Of course it’s not just her face – she is sharing the spotlight, at least technically, with a fellow Democrat, veteran Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts -- and hey, don’t say, “Ed Who?”

So what is the Green New Deal? At its core, it seems to be about emergency measures related to climate change, such as getting the US completely off of fossil fuels within 10 years. But wait, there’s more, including digitizing the country’s power grid, creating a high-speed rail network, changing farming practices to minimize…er…cow emissions (is that still in there?) and did I mention eliminating air travel? GND supporters have been tossing other stuff in the stew, like reducing income inequality, providing affordable health care for all, jobs at fair wages, and perhaps making higher education free. I’m not sure about what’s in and what’s out at the moment.

If I sound a little skeptical, though, it’s only because I think focus is important. When it comes to multiple goals, we can walk and chew gum at the same time, but THAT many pieces of gum? Success will mean prioritizing a few of the most doable and impactful things and making the same kind of commitment that JFK made to putting a man on the moon within a decade. That was an easy one to sell to the public. There was competition and romance in it – a lot more than in keeping Earth’s average temperature down. But when you propose drastic changes in lifestyles and business models, sales will indeed be your first job.

Remember the Occupy movement? It made a lot of noise but didn’t really change things. Perhaps one of the reasons was that every protester in the Occupy crowds seemed to have a separate agenda, There’s merit in picking one or two key goals and beating them absolutely to death. The Republicans have been much better at this than the Democrats.

Also, this is America, there is a need for a snappy slogan. What does our history tell us? Don’t Tread on Me. 54-40 or Fight. Remember the Maine. A Chicken in Every Pot. Loose Lips Sink Ships. Whip Inflation Now. Just Say No. Mission Accomplished (OK, well, not all of them work, but you get the idea).

Dominus Vobiscum

Child sexual abuse is the earthquake that has shaken the Catholic Church to its foundations, but will the Church collapse  – and should it? Pope Francis recently held a summit on the abuse issue at the Vatican. While the result is essentially a series of promises to deal with this problem, it is not enough for  abuse victims, who feel there are no real specifics for action. Is the Pope trying to lead the Church forward, or is he simply playing catch-up?

I was raised in Catholicism, and though I no longer practice it, I believe the pontiff to be genuine in his intentions. Like many large organizations, including corporations and public agencies, the Catholic Church, for decades, and even for centuries, has kept  its dark side hidden within the family. There are plenty of bad priests, and plenty of higher-ups in the Church who have known full well what’s been going on. Yes, the sins must be revealed, the bad eggs thrown out, and the victims compensated. Then what?

Perhaps the required pastoral vow of celibacy is the problem. Those who vow to be celibate are shutting off part of their humanity for a higher purpose. That may be admirable for those who can keep such a commitment, but the level of abuse shows that there are a great many who can’t.

The question arises, would the abuse of children stop, or at least decrease, if Catholic priests were allowed to marry? The worry for Catholicism is, would the Church still be the Church if the current practice were changed? This is above my pay grade, so to speak, so I’m not going to debate that here, except to say that I am old enough to remember that the Masses I attended as a child were delivered almost entirely in Latin. The Church gave that one up and still managed to survive. In the case of sexual abuses committed by those in clerical authority, we are learning that this problem is by no means confined to the Catholic Church.

As for Pope Francis, it may appear that he is coming at this too little too late, and we may well ask, over his long service in various Church posts, what he knew and when he knew it. The necessary reforms may not happen with the speed that some are insisting on, but they have to start someplace, and Francis is trying to turn a really big ship around in the middle of the ocean. We must also remember that there are millions more involved here than just abusers and victims: the many millions of Catholics in the middle who have a say in what happens, too.

A Small Lenten Sacrifice

It didn’t quite work as a New Year’s resolution, but I have another shot. I’m giving up Facebook for Lent. Not that I’m especially religious, but it seems like a good opportunity.

Just so you understand, it will be far from a hard FBexit. No plugs are being pulled, no account suspended, and I won’t be silent in groups I belong to. I will see all notifications and respond to PMs – I never turn down a chat or a heads-up. I will also continue to post these weekly blogs and podcasts. But general posting, commenting and news feed browsing will be kept to a minimum, and I won’t be checking the phone all day in idle moments (of which there are far too many). The goal is to restore an FB/life balance. It’s a personal experiment.

I had considered an account cancellation earlier because of all the stories about what Mr. Z. was doing with our data. But I’m a bit of a performer and need a certain amount of attention, so I’m staying.

On Facebook, I have relatively few friends, but the quality is very high. Some are sweet. Some are angry. Others are a little profane. Still others go overboard on memes And there are some really brilliant writers and artists.  But nobody is trivial!

I have found myself living in others’ lives a little too much, envying those who seem to have made better choices than I, and being frustrated that I can’t do more for  people in worse circumstances than mine (but believe me, if I come into great wealth, I know exactly which friends to help financially, at least as much as the IRS permits).

So we’ll see what happens here. BTW, I did think about just taking a break with no announcement, because who really cares anyway? That said, now that it’s out, I have a commitment to live up to to. I will be proud of myself if I make it to April Fool’s Day, and I’ll certainly look like one if I don’t, right?

But hey, if Lent is too heavy a concept, let’s just call it Spring Break.

Let Oscar Be Oscar

I grew up in an era when there were certain TV events you just had to watch every year. There was virtually no discussion about it. If you didn’t watch them, you might even find yourself shunned as a weirdo or a Communist or something. The World Series. The Rose Parade. The Super Bowl, The Miss America Pageant, and the State of the Union address (times HAVE changed, haven’t they?). But at the top of the list, at least as I recall, was the Oscars.

Was that the original awards show? Seems like it. I could be wrong, but I think it was the Oscars that inspired almost every business or professional association to hold an awards event. I attended one for my profession in Beverly Hills where they gave out 45 awards, and all the winners, including me,  had to give speeches on stage after picking up the gold things. Unlike the Oscars, some of the lesser awards, like mine,  were bestowed at the end of the long evening ceremony. Mine was almost the last, and most of the audience had left, so my speech was short. I should have offered to take the few remaining in the hall out to breakfast. I could easily have afforded it.

There have been big changes in the movie business. In the old days, it seemed they showed the top films at any time of the year. Now  almost all are crammed in to the last quarter, to drive the audience into theaters and to be fresh in the minds of Academy members, who do the voting. As with major elections, there are primaries and such. I used to live in Palm Springs, where the International Film Festival took on the role of what I call the Iowa caucuses of the movie biz, as it starts the first few days in January. Close on its heels are the Golden Globes, the DGA and SAG awards, and in the UK, the BAFTAs.

The Oscar ceremony, though, is still the big one. But the Academy better not take this for granted. In the past, it seemed like we could always count on Bob Hope to emcee, but then they started changing hosts more frequently. This time around, the forces of PC got to comedian Kevin Hart, and he bowed out. Perhaps because hosting the Oscars is a no-win situation, the show is now going host-less. And then here was  the proposed “blacking out” of some of the more technical awards by presenting them during commercial breaks. A vigorous protest forced the shelving of that idea.

This is a show I’d like to see keep its “must watch” status. Look, it survived Sacheen Littlefeather, the streaker and his “shortcomings,” Sally Field’s “You like me!” a musical number about female body parts, even an Oscar announced for the wrong recipient. But the Academy doesn’t need to fix what isn’t broken.

Those Closet Skeletons

Last week in this space I talked about the reported misdeeds of the top elected officers in Virginia – things they admitted to doing or were “credibly,” as the terminology goes these days -- alleged to have done. After my post, I joked to a friend that under modern standards, I couldn’t be elected dogcatcher (and I mean no disrespect to dogcatchers).

So what did I do? Well it wasn’t a crime, nobody was physically injured or bullied, it wasn’t sexual or blasphemous, and no property was stolen or destroyed. It was a comedic skit. Nobody, as I remember, even expressed offense at the time. But it was in really bad taste, the subject matter wasn’t funny, and I should have known better. Am I now going to tell you what it was? No, as I’m not asking for your money nor your vote. And since it was the better part of 60 years ago, I don’t quite remember whom to apologize to anyway. But I am sorry for it to this day.

Our current President has been credibly accused of many things, and in a number of cases, there is hard evidence. So why did he get a pass from voters? Among other reasons, supporters wanted somebody free of the shackles of PC, someone who wasn’t afraid to say the things he felt. 

Just as he represents an extreme reaction to PC, the current atmosphere is an extreme reaction to him. It seems now like we expect our public figures to be angelically pure. But in these days of social media, #metoo, and opposition research, who might that be? Who would want to give up a comfortable private family life to deal with that level of scrutiny, and be exposed to public shame?

It’s one thing to be morally outraged over sins committed long ago by a prominent figure you don’t know. But if it’s about something that someone in your own circle did that offended you, I would ask one thing. The offender might not even know it or may have forgotten. But if you think you’re owed an apology, before you text Ronan Farrow, contact the offender privately, or have a friend or representative do it, and let them know the damage you have suffered. Give them an opportunity to answer and make amends, and in the case of a prominent figure, to take public responsibility for the offense. If they do apologize, you can accept it and go back to your life without having further dealings with them. If that’s not good enough for you , or you believe the authorities or others really need to know. then do your worst. It’s risky, but at least you can say you touched that base of one-to-one contact first.

And going forward, if someone steps on your toes, please train yourself to say “ouch” to their face quickly, loud enough so you know they hear you. Before you pick up that popular modern weapon called public shame, do the brave and fair, thing.

Unringing Bells

I  often wonder: As time goes on, are we more forgiving, or less?

There are seemingly unforgivable sins these days hat carry a life sentence in the court of public opinion, as Governor Ralph Northam is finding out in Virginia. He apologized for appearing in a photo of two figures, one in blackface and another in a Ku Klux Klan robe, from his medical school yearbook of 35 years ago. His clumsy handling of all this, first admitting it, then denying it, then saying he did go blackface on another occasion, when he dressed up like Michael Jackson for a dance contest, has all but done him in politically. To complicate matters, it’s not just him. Virginia’s attorney general, Mark Herring, admitted to blackfacing at a college party in 1980, and then there’s the lieutenant governor, Justin Fairfax, whose face IS black, accused of sexual assault, which he denies. Are all these men, with ostensibly solid records of public service, betrayers of public trust?

At times like this, it’s hard not to think of the Bible, and the case of Saul, who zealously persecuted Christians during the Roman Empire until he “saw the light” on the road to Damascus. Afterward, he was never the same. Not even his name, which was changed to Paul. He became the most prominent Christian of his time, and now he’s considered among the most prominent saints.

Peter, an apostle of Christ whom Jesus essentially made the first Pope, had denied knowing Jesus three times, until the rooster crowed. Jesus knew  it would happen, but Peter apparently did not suffer a loss of status. He is now known as the saint who greets us at the pearly gates if we’re good enough to take the elevator up instead of down. According to Oscar Wilde, every saint has a past and every sinner a future, but I don’t think even Peter or Paul would skate in 2019.

Maybe it’s our media culture now. When such revelations arise, even after time has passed, it’s as if the sins have been committed all over again. Whether he was in it or not, the last mental snapshot many people will have of Northam will be that old photo, no matter what he has done with his life or career since.

Please understand that I am not apologizing for nor absolving anyone of anything here. But for me, it’s a reminder that all of us, even young people, need to be careful of the bells we ring, as that sound may never fade away. The new Puritanism has arrived – or maybe the old one just never quite left.

Reel Life

Many of us are thinking about movies, now that the Oscar nominations are out. Personally, I don’t care about the nomination count, who or what was snubbed, not even what  racial or ethnic groups were slighted. I just like movies. But a couple of months ago, I read a blog by a very successful businessman who said one of the secrets of his success was not wasting time watching films.

We all know that movies represent an escape, but are they a waste of time? Some more than others, of course. At their best, though, they can teach in a way that other media can’t. History, for instance. The Roman Empire, British royalty through the centuries. The Civil War (and every other war we can think of). Presidential assassinations. The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, and lately, even Brexit. Yes, they distort and often play fast and loose with the facts, but even when they get things wrong, movies can still inspire us to do our own fact-checking on the subject involved.

Speaking of taking us places, that’s what foreign films do. I remember attending a film festival and seeing an entry from Burkina Faso. Where on Earth is that? I had to look it up – turns out it’s in Africa. It showed me through drama what it’s like to live there, and how the people think and communicate, in a special way that even traveling there might not reveal.

We all know that movies teach us fashion and lifestyle. The downside is that the perfect folks we see on screen often impose unrealistic expectations on us. So maybe the upside is, we take better care of ourselves. I remember that when I moved from the East Coast to Southern California, it seemed like everybody might have been a movie star.

In another sphere, movies can actually teach us how to feel. I have been convinced that most people are not born with empathy or compassion, and even if some of us were, we may not know how they work until we see them demonstrated in a movie. We learn about ourselves: what makes us laugh, or cry, or afraid.

On a public radio show I like, they have an occasional segment with a woman who says that movies are her church. I get that. I grew up in New York City and remember when movie theaters were like cathedrals, not like today’s megaplexes. The Loew’s theater on East 72^nd Street had a fancy baroque interior with pinpoint lights like stars on the ceiling, and what looked like actual clouds moving across the sky. Sometimes that was more entertaining than the movie.

By that successful businessman’s standards, I guess I must be a miserable failure, but if it’s because I spend too much time at the movies, I think I can live with it.

Security Risks

How many times has our President talked about creating jobs? But on his watch, some 800 thousand federal workers, at this writing, find themselves unable to do theirs, at least temporarily, due to the government shutdown. Of course, some have been required to work without pay. Essential workers, they’re called. Excuse me, but there’s another name for that job status. If I were forced to work for free indefinitely, what might my attitude be toward that  job, however essential it is? How secure might I feel about my life going forward?

The President would like us to think of him as a champion of security by holding out for his border wall. Yes, it would protect us from a few gang members, drug importers, and the odd terrorist or two, among thousands of Central American women and children seeking to get away from such people back home. But what about the bad guys who come here through legal ports of entry every day? Or those who were born here and live here already? Pardon me for engaging in what-about-ism, but…well?

For someone so concerned about security, the President, his associates, and even members of his family, seem much too cozy with powerful figures in Russia. What kinds of security risks are involved there, and how did we used to handle them? Just go back a few decades, when Red was not a good political color. Consider what happened to Americans who took too much of an interest in the USSR, went to the wrong meetings, or hung out with what were thought of as the wrong friends or colleagues? What happened to those Americans who were found to have acted as agents for Soviet Russia? It was a bit more than just a few years in prison. And there were no cable interviews or book deals at the end of that road.

I wish we would have been more focused in recent years on building a cyber wall rather than a steel or concrete one. These days we have to be careful not to get too belligerent with our adversaries. I worry that all they have to do is click once, and it’s lights out here.

As for walls, I heard one wag on a British radio talk show who said he favored a US border wall, but not one limited to the border with Mexico. Put it around the whole thing, he said, not to keep foreigners out, but to keep Americans in. Sounds like we have an image problem with some folks right now, ya think?

The President we put in office not only represents us, but, whether we like it or not, defines us too -- something to keep in mind as we pick the next one.

R.I.P. Brûlée

After some 18 years with him, we knew the time was getting close, and it finally arrived a few days before Christmas, when Brûlée the cat collapsed on the living room carpet and died a short time later.

The calculation of a cat’s age in human years varies, depending on the veterinarian. One we know (not Brûlée’s doc) said that for the first two years, the animal gets the equivalent of 25 human years, and it’s four human years per cat year after that, which would have made Brulee 90, though his actual vet felt it was closer to 100.

My wife and I got Brûlée from the animal shelter in July of 2001, when he was said to be about nine months old. We had an early indication of what we were getting into when, on the way home in the car, we heard a scratching sound in the cardboard carrier they gave us at the shelter. As we crossed the railroad tracks, a white head popped through a new hole in the side of the carrier. He was male, though we used the feminine form of the name Brûlée for him after “crème brûlée,” which we thought was closer to his coloring. He was mostly what they call flame-point Siamese, cream-colored with orange ears and a tail with orange bands on it, reflecting another breed involved in his ancestry.

Anyway, we soon found that our house had a new supervisor, and we had to resign ourselves to our new roles as staff. Brûlée was not shy about making his demands known. Not shy about anything, really. When somebody rang at the front door, he answered it.

In his prime, Brûlée’s prodigious acrobatic talents entertained guests. Through the use of cat toys, we could get him to leap several feet into the air, even do 360-degree spins. This all happened well before social media and smartphone cameras. What we called “Cirque de Brûlée” would certainly have gone viral.

Now that he is gone, we are keenly aware of daily things we don’t have to do anymore, but still at least start to do out of long habit. Having a cat, as many of you know, can be like having a perpetual human toddler. Sometimes you have to close doors to keep the animal from harm or from causing trouble. Turning on hall lights at night so as not to trip over him in the dark, or step on his tail, was important. And then there was filling and cleaning litter boxes, more of which were needed around the house to accommodate an aging cat. I still can’t bring myself, at this writing, to throw out the last remaining box on the back porch. Finally, there are the daily rituals that have suddenly ended, like my lap time with him as I drank my morning coffee, turning up the heat in the house on cold days so he could sit next to his favorite furnace vent, or having him join us for dinner.

Though we have no children, a relative who’d had them tried to make us feel better by comparing the impact of Brûlée’s departure to an 18-year-old child’s heading off to college. No, not quite the same. Still, we take comfort in reporting to you that Brûlée remained Brûlée right up to the end, which I hope others can say about us when it’s our turn to go.

Baby, It's Cold Everywhere

It’s hard to think of a Christmas season song actually offending anyone, but “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” has managed to do it. The classic holiday tune is heard by some as sanctioning date rape. At first, I was in the “Oh, come on now” crowd, but I guess I can see their point. That said, this doesn’t seem like the best battle to pick.

But it IS a good excuse for me to offer you a little Christmas allegory about the types of men women encounter. It goes like this: It’s holiday shopping season, and a locked car is parked on a city street with a brightly decorated package clearly visible in the back seat. We don’t know what’s in the package, but the wrapping is impressive and attracts attention. Four different men walk by.

The first is doing a business deal on his phone. He sees the package, says, “That’s nice,” but keeps walking and returns to his phone  He’s busy. The second guy, sees the package, says, “That’s nice. I want that, but it's not mine and hasn’t been offered to me, and I’m really not a candidate for it.” He walks on. The third sees the package, stops, says “That’s nice. I want that. Maybe if I hang around nearby for a while, the owner will show up and I can persuade her to share it with me.” Finally, the fourth man appears, stops, says “That’s nice. I want that. And because I want it, I’m entitled to it!” He smashes the car window to steal it.

OK, so we all know that the last guy is a bad penny, but what about the other three? We could give the first man credit for resisting temptation, but he simply had other priorities. The second guy may be the mensch of the group. He is tempted by what he sees but but resists on principle. The third guy hopes to get what he wants by following what he perceives to be the rules. Maybe he’s a nice, normal, charming individual -- or maybe he’s just a manipulator.

So what’s the point here? It’s that to face the modern world as realists, women must prepare themselves ahead of time for how they are going to respond to any of the kinds of men crossing their path, and there are certainly more than these four. There are good ones out there. Men, for their part, can ask themselves what a real man might appreciates in a real woman. And adults in general must make it a priority to teach children what successful relationships are and what their role in them will be as they grow up. It’s way more than about fixing song lyrics.

Naming, Blaming, and Fading

You have no doubt heard by now of the drive to remove the Zuckerberg name from the San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center. The new building was made possible in part by the $75 million contribution from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife. But lately Mr. Zuckerberg’s name is MUD. Or at least he’s picked up some on the soles of his shoes, largely because of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the seemingly cavalier way in which Facebook handled users’ information.

It’s hard these days to get a name to stick on things. In the San Francisco Bay Area, the home of the Giants ballpark has had three names since it was built: Pac Bell Park, SBC Park, and now AT&T Park. For a while, the late legendary Candlestick Park was Monster Park, after a prominent manufacturer of electronic cables.

Events change names, too. I spent some time in Palm Springs, in  an area that is the site of  many. The now-well-known Palm Springs International Film Festival, for a number of years, was known as the Nortel Networks Palm Springs International Film Festival, and an annual film achievement award was even named after the sponsor company’s CEO. Nortel went bankrupt a while back. The women’s golf tournament once known as the Colgate Dinah Shore is now called the ANA Inspiration. The Bob Hope Desert Classic became the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic, and then his name fell off.

It’s one thing when names just fade into history, and another when history turns on them. The famed Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University almost lost its name when it was determined that President Wilson was something of a racist. These days, many iconic figures of the past have been found to have had unacceptable flaws or were simply on the wrong side of history. Maybe the safe thing to do is not to name anything after anyone. Or, paint the names on with watercolors, so they can be easily washed off.

I have had only one thing named after me – a sandwich in a local restaurant that has long since closed. I didn’t care what they actually put in it, as long as they held the mayo.