Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever
Even in the darkest hours of the last half century, did you ever think they
would overturn Brown v. Board of Education? The Supreme Court has now spoken-- by a 5-4 vote, ruling that local school districts cannot take even modest steps to overcome residential segregation, and keep schools racially-mixed, unless they can prove the classifications are narrowly drawn to achieve specific educational purposes.
The Senate has spoken as well...
The following Democratic Senators voted to confirm the nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court in 2005:
Byrd (WV)
Conrad (ND)
Johnson (SD)
Nelson (NE)
The following Democratic Senators voted to confirm the nomination of John Roberts (author of today's ruling) to the Supreme Court in 2005:
Baucus (MT)
Bingaman (NM)
Byrd (WV)
Carper (DE)
Conrad (ND)
Dodd (CT)
Dorgan (ND)
Feingold (WI)
Johnson (SD)
Kohl (WI)
Landrieu (LA)
Leahy (VT)
Levin (MI)
Lieberman (CT)
Lincoln (AR)
Murray (WA)
Nelson (FL)
Nelson (NE)
Pryor (AR)
Rockefeller (WV)
Salazar (CO)
Wyden (OR)
The following Democratic Senators voted to confirm the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court in 1991 (in a Democratic-controlled Senate):
Boren (OK)
Breaux (LA)
DeConcini (NM)
Dixon (IL)
Exon (NE)
Fowler (GA)
Hollings (SC)
Johnston (LA)
Nunn (GA)
Robb (VA)
Shelby (AL)
The following Democratic Senators voted to confirm the nomination of Anthony Kennedy to the Supreme Court in 1988 (in a Democratic-controlled Senate):
All of them. Kennedy approved 97-0.
The following Democratic Senators voted to confirm the nomination of Antonin Scalia to the Supreme Court in 1986 (in a Democratic-controlled Senate):
All of them. Scalia approved 98-0.
Remember these five roll calls the next time you hear someone explain that principles must sometimes be compromised to ensure that Democrats get elected.
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Nader on
Michael Moore and "Sicko".
Nader on
Hillary Clinton.
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I'll be in Cincinnati beginning tomorrow to watch the Cardinals play the Reds. Friday night is "Flash the 'Stache" night. The first 20,000 fans receive a free 1869-style handlebar mustache. There's also, evidently, a new Pete Rose exhibit at the Reds museum that is
not to be missed! Despite my pleas, the car will not be stopping, en route, at Terre Haute, IN to visit
the Eugene Debs Museum. Nor will we be stopping at
the Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY, where I had hoped to have my picture taken perched upon a model of a Triceratops wearing a saddle.
Out of hiding
I have long fought the temptation to let the on-line world know what I look like, as people tend to think you're not very smart if you're really good-looking, but tonight, due to popular demand, my IT team posted a picture of me on the profile page. I chose a photo of myself wearing an emotionless expression so that the alternately serious and hilarious content of the blog is never compromised. The leather jacket implies that I'm tough, and the scarf reveals my stylistic side, though it clashes with the futon behind.
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More
Paul Shirley.
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Lennon and McCartney vs. Brian Wilson. One critic
declares a winner.
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Book recommendation: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's "On the Shoulders of Giants- My Journey Through the Harlem Renaissance": We didn't get African-American history in school, but it's never too late.
During the renaissance
It's an extraordinary time for Major League Baseball. Barry Bonds is seven home runs shy of becoming the all-time record-holder in that category. Craig Biggio needs four hits to reach 3,000 for his career. Sammy Sosa clubbed home run #600 last week, and did so against his long-time employer, the Chicago Cubs. Ken Griffey Jr. tied and passed Mark McGwire for seventh place on the all-time home run list yesterday with #'s 583 and 584, and he did so in Seattle against his first team, the Mariners. Roger Clemens' next victory will be the 350th of his career, which would make him the first pitcher since 1963 to post as many, and Greg Maddux, four years younger than Clemens, lags just 10 wins behind at 339. The six teams leading their divisions this morning have won only five World Championships between them since 1970, and none of the six have won more than one during that period.
Meanwhile, the NBA Finals recently registered a record-low 6.2 television rating, the NHL pulled an infinitesimal 1.6 for their Stanley Cup Finals, and the top football headlines of the day are Adam "Pacman" Jones posting bail after his arrest in connection with a triple shooting at a Las Vegas strip club, police "tasering" a Miami Dolphins' lineman early Saturday, and Michael Vick postponing his charity golf tournament in the wake of the ongoing investigation into
a dogfighting operation at his home in Virginia.
So why is Commissioner Bud Selig in hiding?
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Former big-league pitcher Rod Beck died Saturday at the age of 38. His pitching record in the majors was impressive (13 seasons, 3 All-Star nods, 286 career saves), but part of his spirit will always reside in the minor league city he touched in 2003-- Des Moines, Iowa. For part of that summer, while attempting to resurrect his career with the Iowa Cubs, he lived in a mobile home just beyond the right field fence at Sec Taylor Stadium, often inviting fans into his post-game world. In the four years since, I've run into several people who say they spent part of an evening or two with baseball's "Shooter" that summer when the RV lights came on and one of baseball's best bought the round. Wayne Drehs
remembers.
History in perspective
In 1850s America, the two dominant political parties, the Democrats and the Whigs, were united in their support of an economic system constructed upon the enslavement of Africans.
Out of that heinous political predicament, a third party, the Republicans, comprised in large part by principled slavery abolitionists, was born. The third party carried Illinois in 1854, electing a senator, and then six years later, delivered one of their own, Abraham Lincoln, to the White House. Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, and then in 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment, outlawing slavery, was added to the U.S. Constitution.
In early 21st century America, the two dominant political parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, were united in their pursuit of corporate and military industrial support, and in their backing of an imperial occupation of Iraq. In 2003, members of both political parties in the Senate joined together in brushing aside that chamber's sole authority to declare war, and allowed the nation's chief executive to pursue permanent military action in the battle-torn Middle Eastern country. The decidedly-minor of the two major political parties at that time, the Democrats, began waging congressional and presidential campaigns under the public rhetoric of "reform," but upon gaining control of both houses of Congress in 2006, set about proving their promises hollow-- funneling even more tax money into the illegal and bloody occupation, and granting the country's corporate and military industrial machine greater freedom to construct permanent bases in that Mideast region, inflaming the world.
Out of that heinous political predicament, an as-yet-to-be-determined number of principled citizens began calling for better options on their political ballots. The populace had grown so dissatisfied with their political choices by this time that the concept of an independent candidate for president who could
buy his way into the White House with his own personal finances-- an anti-democratic idea if ever there was one-- was considered a more attractive alternative than the status quo-- candidates whose loyalties lied with monied interests in the shadows.
The best option on the ballot
promised to be Ralph Nader, perhaps the country's greatest public citizen. Over a lifetime of work, Nader had proven he was beholden to no one but the citizenry at large, and had enlisted thousands of other impassioned Americans to help deliver the progress in which they collectively believed-- fairer elections, greater corporate accountability, safer transportation, cleaner air, and better dissemination and availability of information. Sadly, he has, thus far, encountered more vicious opposition from the players in our corporate-strangled government than he ever did from even General Motors, the corporate behemoth in his crosshairs of reform in the 1960s that
futilely attempted to ensnare him in public scandal. What will the future bring?
Children of the Cosa Nostra
Cashing in on "The Sopranos" buzz, the latest
Newsweek features a where-are-they-now
profile of the Joe Bonnano family, by writer Gay Talese ("Honor They Father," and the 1966 magazine piece
"Frank Sinatra Has a Cold".) "Doctor Soprano" was a beautiful dream, but "Doctor Bonnano" truly exists.
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I'm moving out of my apartment this coming weekend, and into temporary residence with my good buddy Rob until my new condominium unit becomes habitable. Tonight, for the first time in 14 years, I came home from work or school and
did not divide out the quarters in my pants pockets for use in a communal laundry room.
Fourteen years of plugging coins into pay-per-use washers, not to mention the dryers! Over the years, I must have spent well in excess of what? 50 bucks? I always paid heed to the countdown on the machines, never neglected nor abandoned my clothes, inconveniencing others, always emptied the lint screens, and if someone dropped an extra quarter in my dry cycle to aid the fluff, they were paid back in kind. I'll miss the neighborhood gossip the most.
President Lieberman
This is a must-read for anyone who still supports voting for party over principle. Al Gore's running mate in 2000, Senator Joe Lieberman, has now become even more hawkish than George W. Bush and Condoleeza Rice, by publicly supporting a military attack on Iran.
"I think we've got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq," he told CBS on Sunday, "and to me, that would include a strike over the border into Iran." Bill Clinton campaigned for Joe Lieberman as recently as last summer.
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Meanwhile, the new Hillary Clinton biography, "Her Way," by New York Times reporters Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr., is helping to puncture Senator Clinton's unexplainable reputation as one of the chamber's most thorough and diligent legislators.
The authors quote Sen. Jay Rockefeller (WV), then-vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee, as saying that only six (unnamed) senators had read the entire National Intelligence Estimate, outlining Saddam Hussein's weapons supplies and possible links to Al Qaida, and Clinton won't say whether she did or not.
On the campaign trail, Senator Clinton and former Senator John Edwards have both separately implied that fellow presidential candidate Barack Obama might have supported granting war authorization to the president in 2003 if he had been exposed to the same intelligence reports that they had been, but what reports were these exactly? Did our senators do their due deligence in even reading the reports available? Dennis Kucinich was in the Congress in 2003 and, with access to the very same intelligence, voted
against surrendering congressional war authority.
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After failing to control illegal international trafficking by Iowa cell phone salesmen, the U.S. Alcohol-Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau
has legalized a version of absinthe, the one-time hallucinogenic product of choice for Vincent Van Gogh.
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The Supreme Court unanimously agreed today that car passengers, as well as drivers, have a right to legally challenge a police officer's decision to stop a car. "When police make a traffic stop," wrote Justice David Souter for the court, "a passenger in the car, like the driver, is seized for Fourth Amendment purposes and so may challenge the stop's constitutionality." In a separate, more controversial ruling, the court determined that the driver of a car has radio authority over all other passengers.
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An
art exhibit highlighting the Negro Leagues has arrived at the State Historical Building in Des Moines.
Baseball stooges
Commissioner Bud Selig has always been a kind of cartoon character (picture Elmer Fudd wearing glasses and sleeping at night in a business suit), and he has slipped further into caricature this season attempting to mock up public support for his "independent" steroid investigation and his chief investigator, former Senator George Mitchell. This week, Selig reportedly threatened to suspend Jason Giambi for what was considered by most observers to be the Yankee firstbaseman's implied admission last month that he used steroids during the late '90s and early '00s.
To begin with, the Commissioner's capacity to suspend or fine a baseball player-- because of a tacit confession of steroid use during a time when the substances weren't specifically banned by the league's Collective Bargaining Agreement-- is virtually nil.
But further, slugger Mark McGwire was crucified by the media in March of 2003 for expressing, before a Congressional committee, his desire "to talk about the future" of baseball, instead of the past, in reference to steroid abuse. Today, his words ring with more resonance than ever, as Selig continues to try to wipe clean the slate of monumental errors made by Major League Baseball on his watch. He wants desperately to connect the issue to pre-2002 player behavior that violated no league policies existing at that time. It's a microcosm of the problems with our national drug policy at large-- treating the issue as a "law and order" problem, with public shaming, retribution, and largely symbolic legal prosecutions, rather than as a public health matter, involving corporate and government culpability.
Meanwhile, Selig still refuses to declare whether or not he'll be in attendance when Barry Bonds breaks Hank Aaron's all-time home run record later this season. What message will that send if he refuses to show, or even as he simply continues to prevaricate? This one-- Major League Baseball's product is illegitimate, and it has been for the last 20 years.
And if that is indeed the case, we should all expect large refunds on our financial investment in the game during those two decades. Think we'll get them?
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Newspaper passage of the day #1: From the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Bernie Miklasz, this morning:
"(Tony) La Russa may be able to beat the DUI charges filed against him in Florida. There was an interesting item in the Palm Beach Post earlier this week about the conduct of the law-enforcement officers on the scene of TLR's arrest; a video reportedly shows the cops laughing, joking around and talking about how to "scare" the driver (La Russa) inside the vehicle. And, according to the newspaper, two officers supposedly "prepared" La Russa for jail by teaching him gang signs. If these accounts are true, the seeming lack of professionalism will be exploited by La Russa's attorney and could work in La Russa's favor if the case goes to trial."Palm Beach Post item
here, with more gooey details.
Newspaper passage of the day #2: From the
Chicago Tribune's Paul Sullivan, yesterday:
"Mark Buehrle still gets heat for wearing a St. Louis Cardinals cap at a World Series game last October, but Carlos Zambrano one-upped Buehrle before Thursday's Cubs game. Zambrano motioned to reporters standing around the clubhouse and pointed to a box that contained a pair of red shinguards. "It's a gift from my next catcher, Yadier," Zambrano said. Zambrano was referring to St. Louis catcher Yadier Molina, although he didn't specify whether he was going to St. Louis or Molina was coming to the Cubs."Molina's not going to the Cubs, as no one believes Zambrano intended to imply, but after watching Carlos mix it up in another ballpark brawl this afternoon, I'd say Zambrano's next catcher is most likely to be a fellow inmate in the yard of a psychiatric prison. The guy's a nutcase.
Cleaning out the cupboard 6/13/07
A mix of stuff tonight:
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The Cleveland Cavaliers of the NBA are one game away from going down to defeat in the league finals. There would have been no small celebration on the banks of Lake Erie if the Cavs had managed to pull it out. Their town hasn't enjoyed a championship in a major team sport since the Browns won the 1964 NFL Title. Baseball's Indians (Are they seriously still the
Indians?) have gone without a championship every year since 1948. Fox Sports.com's Jeff Gordon (also of the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch) ranks
the 10 most frustrated sports cities.
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I couldn't post last night because I was watching my brand new DVD copy of "An Unreasonable Man," a 2006 biography of Ralph Nader, released just yesterday and purchased by me sight unseen. It is, as I suspected, stupendous. Finally, Ralph and his supporters have been given a forum to defend themselves against the capitulating Democrats who have been frothing at the mouth for seven years over Nader's so-called "political naivete." The film footage of our duopoly's security thugs attempting to keep Nader out of the debate hall in 2000 is priceless. Skip Michael Moore's next movie and watch this one if you want to be inspired by real courage.
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I've decided you can't hate Paris Hilton unless you've ever envied her, and I never have. A true child of privilege has loving, involved parents who teach that monetary wealth will not buy happiness and fulfillment. Drunken driving ravages our society, and Hilton owes a great debt to society, but the pile-on by America's social critics and celebrity enablers turned into overkill long, long ago. Christopher Hitchens maintains
a healthy perspective on it all. Scandal is the oxygen of show business. Discuss.
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I'm piggy-backing on blogger Ken Levine once again. Yesterday,
he envisioned how "The Sopranos"' finale might have looked different had it aired on network television.
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One of the promising post-
Sopranos series to come on HBO is
"East Bound and Down," by Adam McKay and Will Ferrell, about a retired ballplayer who returns to his hometown and becomes a substitute gym teacher.
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Your favorite baseball player when you're 10 years old is your favorite baseball player for life-- mine is Ozzie Smith. Osborne has been entirely too absent from Busch Stadium the past few years, but an on-line reporter caught up with "The Wizard" recently, asking the pertinent
20 questions. Kind of funny.
The journey as reward
Major Spoiler Alert (Do not read if you choose not to know what happened on the final "Sopranos"): David Chase's 86th and final installment of "The Sopranos" was an artistic masterpiece. The last scene, despised, it seems, by a surprisingly large number of people, encapsulated every thing that made the series great-- in particular, the heightening of tension and a stubborn refusal to fall into any category that has come before. The episode, entitled "Made In America," is destined to accomplish that which is the most difficult thing to achieve in the visual arts-- reward progressively more with each subsequent viewing. If it wasn't your cup of tea, I take no pleasure in informing you that you've just witnessed the future of television.
Much of America wanted the long-running narrative of the Soprano family to come to an end last night without any loose ends. (Blogger
Ken Levine is still hoping that Carmela and her father will get the construction bid for the new Yankee Stadium, and that Junior will become a presidential advisor .) Instead, it concluded decidedly perfect in its imperfection. In terms of conveying Chase's ultimate message, the A.J. Soprano character carried the ball over the goal line. Anthony and Carmela's son experienced an existential crisis during the series' final season. Following his uncle Bobby's funeral Sunday, he chided his dinner companions for "watching these jack-off fantasies on TV," with the words boaring through television sets across the North American continent, "You people are fucked. You're living in a fucking dream!" By the end of the hour, though, Che Soprano was dead-- bought off by his parents, and forsaking a dangerous, but meaningful career in the military as a liaison officer for a position on the film crew of Little Carmine Lupertazzi's next splatter-fest, "Anti-Virus." The cycle of destruction continues.
Even the multitude of viewers who say they enjoyed the final episode seemed to
miss the point. The series didn't end on an ambiguous note so that it might one day be primed for revival or film adaptation. You heard it here first-- "The Sopranos" is gone for good. It's history. The series never existed for its creator as a matter of commerce, the only conceivable purpose for keeping it alive. That was the beauty of it. It's something damn near impossible to achieve in this country, actually. There were never any sponsors or advertisers to risk offending. It's timing was such that it became bigger than its network. Chase had complete artistic freedom from his distributor and financiers, and the complete faith and confidence of his employees. For David Chase, it was what every artist dreams of having, but rarely achieves.
As a loyal viewer with high expectations, I found plenty of tiny bows to wrap on Chase's monumental gift to the world Sunday night. In fact, I find there's very little uncertainty that still exists in my mind about the fate of these characters. It's quite obvious, you see, that Tony is being shot dead in the final moment by the man who disappeared into the bathroom, an homage to Michael Corleone and "The Godfather." The deafening silence that greeted our post-"Sopranos" existence echoed the conversation Tony had had with his brother-in-law in the first episode of this final season, and was recalled in the penultimate episode last week-- the one about never hearing the gunshot when your time arrives. I welcome any dissent on this hypothesis.
Among the other highlights and poignant swan songs of Sunday night, there were: Tony and Carmela beginning a new and obviously fruitless effort to resolve their personal and marital woes through psychotherapy, validation, I believe, for Dr. Melfi's ultimate abandonment; Meadow's struggle to parallel park her BMW in the closing moments, symbolizing her future problems reconciling her desire to defend the defenseless with her motivation to right the perceived wrongs toward her father, himself an oppressor; hideous justice for Phil Leotardo, and for his wife as well, who I never much liked; and a job promotion for Paulie Walnuts, who, if we can trust that mischievous cat, looks to be in for exactly the justice he deserves as well. The cat was a thing of beauty. If it's a body reincarnated, its staring at the picture of Christopher at the Bing implies that it may be Adriana , or better yet-- Christopher, himself, driving Paulie to distraction and self-doubt--- or best of all, Big Pussy taking a literal form.
In the waning moments of the series, I cherished the expression on Carmela's face when she found out what her daughter's starting salary would likely be if she caught on at a prestigious law firm. The look was equal parts pride and disbelief that she was finally getting what she wanted for her daughter all along, perhaps more than she deserved as her mother. (Edie Falco might just be the best actor we've got.) The most poignant scene was the one between Tony and Uncle Junior. It was so obvious, in retrospect, that the final two-part season would end with a nod to the incident that started the final charge. When Tony, letting down his guard, asked his father's brother, if he remembered Johnny and Junior "running all of North Jersey," I came the closest to tears all evening. The Johnny Boy Soprano character hung like a dark cloud over the entire series. He was the greatest cipher of them all, and I'm glad his image crystallized again so late in the series' final hour.
Finally, I applaud the selection of the final song, "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey. I doubt the song is David Chase's or Steven Van Zandt's favorite, but it is exactly the song that Tony would select on the juke box at the given moment, and undeniably moving if you belong to a certain 25 year demographic range. The given song, at that moment, belongs to the characters, as the concluding scene was edited too suspensefully for the audience to linger over the words:
Some will win, some will lose/Some were born to sing the blues/Oh, the movie never ends/It goes on and on and on and on. Not only are the lyrics fitting, but so is the name of the band.
R.I.P. Tony Uncle Johnny.
Moeller Entertainment Report 6/7/07
Village Voice film critic J. Hoberman, on "Oceans 13," opening nationwide this weekend:
"Pirates of the Caribbean" effectively glamorizes piracy. Similarly, "Oceans 13," Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney's latest remake of Frank Sinatra's rat pack Vegas caper, the essence of curdled ring-a-ding-ding, is the surest bet in showbiz. It's a spectacle blatantly predicated on a smug gaggle of mega movie stars in boss threads ostentatiously having fun by pretending to steal the house's money, while actually taking yours. See it if you must, but don't forget to pack the Air Wick. These breezy doings are mustier than a Glitter Gulch casino at 4 a.m.Former President Abraham Lincoln, about the same movie, on last night's "Late Show with David Letterman":
In my time, we didn't have motion pictures, so to entertain ourselves we'd sit around and bet who'd be next to die from typhus. Luckily, now there's the good-natured "Ocean's 13" to keep this ol' rail-splitter amused. Clooney, Pitt, and Damon are at their devil-may-care best and looking at sexy Ellen Barkin, I am left with malice towards none, charity for all and firmness in my pants. Overall, I give it 3 1/2 stovepipe hats. This is Honest Abe signing off, and remember, the balcony is closed.---
"The Sopranos" bows on Sunday night at 8... for good. But you knew that.
Here, Slate's Timothy Noah attempts to answer a few viewer questions. I realize your 9 o'clock hour on Sunday evening will likely be filled with meaningful conversations with friends and family about the outcome of the 86 hour series, and maybe a sneak look at David Milch's new HBO series, "John From Cincinnati," but I'd like to endorse, if I may, a Comedy Central special,
"Brian Regan: Standing Up." One of my finest evenings was spent last year watching Regan on stage at the Hoyt Sherman Theater in Des Moines. Tune in Sunday, safely following "The Sopranos." You won't be disappointed.
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If you ever read
The Des Moines Register on-line, you know that the news stories posted there are spiced up at the end by some of the most innane commentary of all-time posted by their readers. It makes me truly thankful for the always thoughtful, and frequently profound and/or hilarious comments contributed by each of you on this blog.
The Registers' on-line conversation usually devolves quickly into a battle of nitwits with accusations thrown around of liberal and Communist conspiracies.
This thread from today is my new favorite-- all from a story that's basically just a weather report.
Fleeting expletives
A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York on Monday overruled the Federal Communications Commission that had determined expletives uttered on network television violated decency standards. In the justices' words, the FCC's new policy against "fleeting expletives," i.e. Cher and Nicole Richie using the words "fuck" and "shit" on live television, is "arbitrary and capricious."
Most interesting was that the court pointed to the use of those two words by the President and Vice President as evidence that they are not necessarily sexual, execratory, or indecent. Specifically, they referred to Bush's remark to U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair that the United Nations needed to "get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit," and Cheney's widely-reported request on the Senate floor that Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy go "fuck himself."
The United States of America-- saved for the moment by the innate decency of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
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Former Yankee Clete Boyer died Monday at the age of 70. Clete was a big leaguer for 17 years, and along with his brother Ken, long-time of the Cardinals, became the first pair of brothers to hit home runs in the same World Series. (They were opposing thirdbasemen in the 1964 Classic.) There were 14 children in the Boyer brood in Alba, Missouri, and brother Cloyd also enjoyed a seven year Major League career. In 1995, during a cross-country trip along historic Route 66, Aaron and I ventured about 20 miles off the beaten path in order to lay our eyes upon tiny Alba, Moe, and "Boyer Field" therein. Ken, whose uniform #14 has been retired by the Cardinals, died of cancer in 1982 at age 51.
Whenever the Boyer name surfaces, I call back on a morsel of information in Whitey Herzog's 1987 literary masterpiece "White Rat: A Life in Baseball"-- four Midwestern guys, established big leaguers, shared the same apartment in New York City in 1966. In those days, baseball saw to it that a city with two teams would always have one team playing at home while the other played on the road. Herzog, then a third base coach, and Ken, in the twilight of his playing career, inhabited the apartment when the Mets were in town, and Clete and Roger Maris resided there when the Yankees played at home.
It's a different baseball world today.
The talk clock
Sunday night's Democratic candidate debate on CNN featured vast differences in
the amount of free air time given to candidates. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, two candidates who lead in the polls, received 16:00 minutes and 14:26 minutes of talk time, respectively, while on the low end of the field, Christopher Dodd and Mike Gravel received 7:28 and 5:37 minutes. Isn't it a little fucking early to be winnowing down the pool of candidates? We're still
17 months away from the general election, seven away from the voter primary in New Hampshire, the state in which this debate took place.
Time-Warner... er, CNN, placed candidates Gravel and Dennis Kucinich both on the far ends of the stage-- reminding voters that the two men are "extremists" before they begin challenging their opponents on the discrepancies between their rhetoric and resumes. Before the second half of the debates, during which the candidates would be seated, network goons installed tables between a few of the chairs, choosing a bizarre formation that served to further isolate the two "fringe" candidates.
It's appalling, but typical of a mainstream news media that covers elections like horse races, content to report on the positioning and posturing of the candidates rather than on the substance of the issues, and equating corporate fundraising with voter appeal. It's worse than a horse race, actually, because the oddsmakers are allowed to determine the positioning at the starting gate.
From its very beginning, Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, a very populous "red" state, has been a sage about America's disastrous foray into Iraq-- and that war is the #1 polling issue of the campaign, but Hillary Clinton, with her undistinguished voting record in the Senate, was granted a full five more minutes of talk time during this debate, in part, it would seem, because her husband, a former president, lived it up like Gene Simmons during his tenure in the White House.
For added measure on Sunday night, CNN outfitted Clinton with a very visible stepping stool behind her podium (Why not one for Kucinich?) and, once again, refused to identify their on-staff analyst, James Carville, as a "Clinton '08" campaign supporter and fundraiser. Ultimately, what's the point of Democratic candidates having rejected a televised debate on FOX News if the other cable news outlets are going to throw their weight behind
Rupert Murdoch's candidate as well?
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Baseball icon Yogi Berra delivered the commencement address two weeks ago at St. Louis University in his hometown.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch sports columnist secured a transcript of
the speech.
Remember: Half the lies you hear won't be true, and half the things you say, you won't ever say.
"Newhall, Newhall, You're the town for me"
My hometown of Newhall, Iowa celebrates the 125th anniversary of its founding next weekend, June 8th through 10th. Party planners will have their work cut out for them to match the celebration of the town's
centennial in 1982, a formative moment of my childhood.
My parents' brothers and sisters, and many of my grandparents' siblings and their children as well, were on hand for the big event a quarter century ago. The Newhall Public School building (PS1?) had not yet been demolished, though district consolidation had sent the local students off to the neighboring town of Van Horne over a decade earlier. If I recall correctly, census figures put the town's population during the 1980s at 799, and there must have been at least that many people in the school gymnasium on that opening Thursday night for the Centennial Pageant, a musical written by a local husband and wife team, school teachers Mike and Linda Peitz. This pageant would be my dramatic debut (though not my
stage debut as I had already played the piano in a few recitals).
My twin brother Aaron and I, (both) seven-years-old at the time, portrayed Hugo and Herald Grovert, respectively, in a scene set at the real-life, but long-shuttered Moeller Ice Cream Parlor on Newhall's Main Street (yes, relation), and I remember feeling a great sense of pride that I got to portray Herald because he was still living in 1982 and attended the performance. (Hugo, evidently, had been killed in World War I.) The elderly Herald, then in his 90s, had been pointed out to me at church and he happened to live with his wife across the street from the high school.
Writer's embellishment added now: I stayed with Herald for a few weeks that spring and was able to get a good sense of his mannerisms, his life's motivations and regrets, and heard stories about his youthful love for ice cream that I could channel during my performance.
Later in the production, Aaron and I were used again in a scene during which a group of kids were chased around town (that is, down the theater aisle) by some crazy man with a pitchfork (I forget the dramatic context). The crazy man was portrayed in the pageant by the proprietor of Wally's Grocery, Wally Embretson, one of the most gregarious, and outstanding guys of his or any other time... for a Cubs fan. Wally caught me in the aisle during the actual performance, as I recall, and lifted me up over his shoulder, even though that wasn't in the script. (He had been to the Strasberg school, I think.)
Beyond that episode, I remember a lot of dancing girls in another scene, long legs and garters, and a big finale musical number with the lyric-- "Newhall, Newhall/You're the town for me/There are others that are larger/or finer, far to see/But mostly, dear old Newhall/
something, something, something/Newhall, dear old Newhall/I love you best of all."
The parade was held Saturday morning, and that was the one and only time I ever remember getting caught in a traffic jam in town. Coming into Newhall from our farm house four and half miles north and east, cars were backed to what's instinctively called "the Newhall curve" and to old Ralph Boddicker's place. 1982 may have been the last year that the railroad, responsible for the very existence of the town, still rumbled through-- once or twice a day past Chuck's filling station and the NewCo grain elevator, which my dad would later manage, but that wasn't the reason for the backup. The streets were jam-packed. We gathered with the Moeller cousins at my Grandpa and Grandma's house on 5th Street (the southern edge of town).
At this particular time, Dad was the proprietor of the Farmer's Depot in nearby Shellsburg, a grain store taking up residence inside of an old rail station. My folks and their pals designed and built a parade float, utilizing fabric and chicken wire to create a swell, unlicensed, likeness of the Muppets' Miss Piggy coming out from inside of a birthday cake. The Farmers' Depot would soon fall prey to the Farm Crisis of the '80s, but the Miss Piggy was housed in one of our upstairs bedrooms for the next eleven years, even as I lived in mortal fear of both the character's unperturbed facial expression and her lethal karate chops.
The Newhall
Quasqui-Centennial in 2007 offers up athletic competition in the form of a 5 kilometer race (when did Newhall go metric?), but it's unlikely to produce anything like the cutthroat horseshoe throwing contests of the early 1980s. Newhall's Central Park, party headquarters for celebrations new and old, then and now, had its horseshoe pits dug up and sodded over in the early '90s, but in 1982, it was still a daily occurrence to see some of the old men in town gathered in the afternoon by "the pits." The elder among them were old enough to have worked the horses when the animals still did the heavy lifting on the farms. I remember a large gathering on the Saturday afternoon of the Centennial. The pits were located on the corner directly adjacent to the Lutheran Church-- presumably, to discourage gambling.
That Saturday evening, Newhall's talent was on display. Pictures were taken of all the families, like ours-- Mom, Dad, Aaron, and me, that dressed in the period costumes of the old settlers, men like Jebediah Newhall. Many of the men, like my Dad, grew out long facial hair for the beard-growing competition, and I stopped shaving, too, as I recall. My grandpa, Elmer Moeller, sang with a chorus, as he was inclined to do. The big wheel races were on, with a number of future NASCAR afficionados at the foot pedals, and one of the headlining acts of the evening was a Ralston-Purina-sponsored pop-music band, whose members Aaron and I got to meet personally because Dad was the local Purina man.
If I could go back to one moment in my life, that Newhall Centennial weekend might have to be the one. To have had all of the family together, and to be surrounded by good friends and neighbors, bonding over our own distinctive community, was--
and is-- something very special. I can't wait for Saturday.
