By Don Klein
When you have the nerve to express your opinions publicly you have a tendency to occasionally to put your foot in your mouth. I experienced such a moment a mere three weeks ago when I scolded President Obama for what I concluded was a reckless abandonment of principles in giving in to the extension of tax cuts for the wealthy.
I described Obama as a " reluctant warrior" who demonstrated "failed leadership" because of his compromise with the obstinate Republican senators on extending the Bush tax cuts. I said Obama was a disappointment and was suffering from a "massive dose of languor" because he didn’t fight harder for his principles.
Then came the final week of the Lame Duck Congress just before Christmas. It proved I was wrong.
Obama turned the tables in a sudden unpredictable sweep of legislation that would have made any president proud. It was unprecedented. He managed, with the help of solid Democrat support and a handful of moderate Republicans, to demonstrate that he did indeed have the clout we all hoped he would have. He improved his image as a leader here and abroad. All of which accrues to the benefit of the nation as a whole.
Just in case you have forgotten, this is what the Obama Congress accomplished in his first two years. It is as formidable as any president could have done and surpasses the efforts of previously Republican leaders:
>Lilly Ledbetter Act, January 29, 2009. Makes it easier for workers to file
employment-discrimination lawsuits.
>SCHIP, February 4, 2009. Expands health care coverage for children.
>Stimulus, February 17, 2009. Provides $787 billion in tax cuts and additional spending to aid U.S. economic-recovery efforts
>Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, April 21, 2009. Creates incentives to foster volunteer opportunities through programs such as AmeriCorps.
>Credit Card Bill of Rights, May 22, 2009. Enhances safeguards to protect consumers from abusive practices.
>Tobacco, June 22, 2009. Provides the Food and Drug Administration with enhanced authority to regulate tobacco products
>Cash for Clunkers, August 7, 2009. Provides consumers with a cash incentive to buy automobiles with higher fuel-efficiency standards.
>Hate-Crimes Bill, October 28, 2009. Enhances law-enforcement resources to prosecute crimes based on gender and sexual orientation.
>Health Care, March 30, 2010. Overhauls the U.S. health care system to provide insurance coverage for more Americans.
>Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act, March 30, 2010. Makes the federal government the provider of all student loans.
>Financial-Regulatory Reform, July 21, 2010. Expands federal government’s role in regulating financial markets.
>Tax Cuts, December 17, 2010. Extends for two years the tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003.
>'Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell', December 22, 2010. Lifts the ban on openly gay men and women from serving in the military
>Food Safety, December 21, 2010' Strengthens regulatory standards intended to protect the nation’s food supply.
>New START, December 22, 2010. Implements a new arms-control treaty between the U.S. and Russia.
>9/11 First-Responders Bill, December 22, 2010. Funds medical care for first responders sickened after the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Add them up and there are 16 important bills in two years. Admittedly not all of them were perfect, but that is not unusual in legislation. Nothing is ever really the way many people prefer it to be. But is a sign of accomplishment.
What must be remembered is that all this was accomplished in the face of an obstructionist senate which at the whim of a single senator, bills could be delayed into oblivion. We should be particularly proud of the Democrats who stood by their guns to fight for the people down to the bloody end. We also must take our hats off to the dozen or so Republican moderates who joined the majority near the end of the session to salvage much of this legislation.
Even though may, including me, are still extremely unhappy with the extension of tax cuts for millionaires, many of whom said they would happily forgo the benefit, it seemed to be the plunger that dislodged the hopelessly stuffed legislative pipeline. I am only sorry that Obama didn’t rise to the can-do occasion before the election to possibly save the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives.
Make no mistake. The next two years will be no picnic on Capitol Hill. I doubt the president will be able to do as much, in fact I think most of his energy will be used to stave off the GOP, which allowed much of what was accomplished this session only because they planned to kill some of the laws by not funding much of this new legislation in the next Congress since they hold the purse strings in the House.
Nevertheless there is a new sense of reliance in Obama and his strategists. I would not sell him short given his successes during the first half of his term. The sadness is the failure of the Dream Act to pass. That should work to the disadvantage of the Republicans in the presidential election of 2012. Hispanics would be fools not to remember which party submarined the bill to aid the innocent children of illegal aliens.
The important fact is the Republicans now know they have a notable opponent in Obama and will not take him lightly as we move on to the next Congress. I look forward with lots more enthusiasm to the next two years.
Showing posts with label Sunday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sunday. Show all posts
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Bring Aleve into the voting booth
By Don Klein
Barack Obama is coming under a great deal of criticism lately and to a large extent he deserves it. His popularity is way down. Even on the campaign trail this critical year, Democrats are opting for former President Bill Clinton to campaign for them rather than the current president. To many it seems his usefulness is waning.
Obama’s major flaw seems to be his inability to make any noticeable progress with the weak economy which appears to be getting even weaker with every statistical report. His victories in health care and stricter Wall Street regulations are pyrrhic – no Democrat in a tough race this year mentions either if they can be avoided.
He also has run into and unexpected flaw. You would think someone with Obama’s oratorical skills would be able to reach out and transmit his thoughts effectively to ordinary people. Many have the feeling he is too cerebral in determining and explaining policy as well as being too oblivious to outlandish criticism. He is not effective with rank and file voters.
At times he seems to be a replica of Adlai Stevenson with the inclination to speak over the heads of grass roots types and at other times he behaves like another Democratic presidential candidate, John Kerry, during his disastrous 2004 campaign in not explaining with clarity where he stands on issues. There isn’t that fire in his personality that so many admired during the last election campaign.
Let it be clear that I reject all the off-the-wall criticisms hurled at Obama by what I call the lunatic fringe. Glenn Beck can call Obama phony names and weirdos can question where he was born and whether or not he is a Muslim. These facts do not enter into my political equation. I am looking at the real Obama, not the false one painted by mean-spirited political morons.
Evaluating his real problems, there are the times when Obama stubs his toes making totally unnecessary statements about circumstances that have no bearing on his office nor reflect on his moral responsibility. Many of Obama's off-the-cuff remarks make people cringe. The minute he entered the Cambridge brouhaha without fully understanding what went on between the professor and the police officer, nor having any definable presidential purpose, everyone but he knew it was a serious error.
Experts in public relations and those who toil for years in government service know that there are times you don't have to express an opinion, especially if it has nothing to do with your job.
There are a number of other incidents like that where we find Obama plunging into issues he doesn’t have to. At present I think of the New York mosque dispute. He propelled it into a national scene when in essence the matter was solved by the people of New York city. Now it is being used by a looney Florida pastor as a bargaining chip in his Qur’an-burning threat.
Personally I do not like the advice he is getting on many levels. To push so hard for health care reform all of last year and to settle for a washed down version when the major problem in the country was jobs is another misdirected effort. He seems to be more concerned about how history will treat him as the first president to succeed on health care than solving urgent current problems.
The only thing that keeps Obama in good stead is the outrageous GOP policy of obstructionism, and its love affair with the kooks of the Tea Party. This disastrous Republican strategy will save Obama from defeat in 2012 and might even mitigate the likely, or potential, losses of Congressional Democrats in this November's off year elections.
The trouble with American politics is that on one side we have an inexperienced and spontaneously miss-speaking president and on the other side a callous, leaderless and abusive opposition. One could conclude the nation is on the brink of chaos as a result.
During the primary campaign I supported Hillary Clinton on the grounds she had the experience and the balls to do what a president sometimes has to do. I supported Obama when Hillary was eliminated in the primaries. There was no choice in the general election since McCain-Palin was a joke ticket that would appeal only to rock-ribbed Republicans and simpletons.
I also supported Obama because I had the hope that he would deliver the country from the madness of the Bush-Cheney years. The added attraction was that I liked Obama. He was the kind of man I could vote for. But he has degenerated the upbeat support I once had for him to what has become the norm for me in past general elections – the choice of the lesser of two evils.
Now the question is what do we do about it? Given that the GOP appears ready to oppose Obama in 2012 with Gingrich or Palin, the choice is clear. I will swallow a handful of Aleve and vote for Obama.
To me, the Republicans are the most demoniacal of political parties. First they gave us the village idiot, George W. Bush. No need to go into specifics about him. Then by offering the senseless choice of McCain-Palin in 2008 and very likely Gingrich or Palin in 2012, they have almost guaranteed a second term of an inexperienced and often misdirected Obama.
Talk about history. It looks like we are standing on the precipice of the fateful end of the American reign of world power. The chill up my spine is caused by not knowing which budding foreign power will pick up the reins of leadership when America drops it. I see no qualified candidate for the job.
Barack Obama is coming under a great deal of criticism lately and to a large extent he deserves it. His popularity is way down. Even on the campaign trail this critical year, Democrats are opting for former President Bill Clinton to campaign for them rather than the current president. To many it seems his usefulness is waning.
Obama’s major flaw seems to be his inability to make any noticeable progress with the weak economy which appears to be getting even weaker with every statistical report. His victories in health care and stricter Wall Street regulations are pyrrhic – no Democrat in a tough race this year mentions either if they can be avoided.
He also has run into and unexpected flaw. You would think someone with Obama’s oratorical skills would be able to reach out and transmit his thoughts effectively to ordinary people. Many have the feeling he is too cerebral in determining and explaining policy as well as being too oblivious to outlandish criticism. He is not effective with rank and file voters.
At times he seems to be a replica of Adlai Stevenson with the inclination to speak over the heads of grass roots types and at other times he behaves like another Democratic presidential candidate, John Kerry, during his disastrous 2004 campaign in not explaining with clarity where he stands on issues. There isn’t that fire in his personality that so many admired during the last election campaign.
Let it be clear that I reject all the off-the-wall criticisms hurled at Obama by what I call the lunatic fringe. Glenn Beck can call Obama phony names and weirdos can question where he was born and whether or not he is a Muslim. These facts do not enter into my political equation. I am looking at the real Obama, not the false one painted by mean-spirited political morons.
Evaluating his real problems, there are the times when Obama stubs his toes making totally unnecessary statements about circumstances that have no bearing on his office nor reflect on his moral responsibility. Many of Obama's off-the-cuff remarks make people cringe. The minute he entered the Cambridge brouhaha without fully understanding what went on between the professor and the police officer, nor having any definable presidential purpose, everyone but he knew it was a serious error.
Experts in public relations and those who toil for years in government service know that there are times you don't have to express an opinion, especially if it has nothing to do with your job.
There are a number of other incidents like that where we find Obama plunging into issues he doesn’t have to. At present I think of the New York mosque dispute. He propelled it into a national scene when in essence the matter was solved by the people of New York city. Now it is being used by a looney Florida pastor as a bargaining chip in his Qur’an-burning threat.
Personally I do not like the advice he is getting on many levels. To push so hard for health care reform all of last year and to settle for a washed down version when the major problem in the country was jobs is another misdirected effort. He seems to be more concerned about how history will treat him as the first president to succeed on health care than solving urgent current problems.
The only thing that keeps Obama in good stead is the outrageous GOP policy of obstructionism, and its love affair with the kooks of the Tea Party. This disastrous Republican strategy will save Obama from defeat in 2012 and might even mitigate the likely, or potential, losses of Congressional Democrats in this November's off year elections.
The trouble with American politics is that on one side we have an inexperienced and spontaneously miss-speaking president and on the other side a callous, leaderless and abusive opposition. One could conclude the nation is on the brink of chaos as a result.
During the primary campaign I supported Hillary Clinton on the grounds she had the experience and the balls to do what a president sometimes has to do. I supported Obama when Hillary was eliminated in the primaries. There was no choice in the general election since McCain-Palin was a joke ticket that would appeal only to rock-ribbed Republicans and simpletons.
I also supported Obama because I had the hope that he would deliver the country from the madness of the Bush-Cheney years. The added attraction was that I liked Obama. He was the kind of man I could vote for. But he has degenerated the upbeat support I once had for him to what has become the norm for me in past general elections – the choice of the lesser of two evils.
Now the question is what do we do about it? Given that the GOP appears ready to oppose Obama in 2012 with Gingrich or Palin, the choice is clear. I will swallow a handful of Aleve and vote for Obama.
To me, the Republicans are the most demoniacal of political parties. First they gave us the village idiot, George W. Bush. No need to go into specifics about him. Then by offering the senseless choice of McCain-Palin in 2008 and very likely Gingrich or Palin in 2012, they have almost guaranteed a second term of an inexperienced and often misdirected Obama.
Talk about history. It looks like we are standing on the precipice of the fateful end of the American reign of world power. The chill up my spine is caused by not knowing which budding foreign power will pick up the reins of leadership when America drops it. I see no qualified candidate for the job.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
No fodder for the GOP
By Don Klein
George W. Bush liked to be portrayed as a warrior president yet during the last four years of his dominance in Washington the Taliban regained power in Afghanistan and its cousins, the Taliban in northern Pakistan, solidified their hold on Waziristan territory.
In contrast, Barack Obama, who the GOP painted as being soft on national security, stepped up the battle with the Taliban by sending more troops to Afghanistan and more drone attacks in Waziristan where American troops were barred by Pakistan. Both appear to be impeding the hostiles. Obama changed the tide of warfare in just one year.
During the early days of the Bush era, Dick Cheney sat down behind closed doors and put together a super secret energy policy with heads of energy corporations. The meetings were sub-rosa and no one outside this group ever learned what deals were made, if any. Now we discover that safety regulations were modified in favor of business.
If I were a Republican leader I wouldn’t be criticizing President Obama for such preventable happenings as the oil spill off the Gulf states or, for that matter, the Times Square car bomb attempt. Both arguments could backfire on them.
Sniveling about the lack of speed in reaction to the British Petroleum spill is tantamount to a skunk complaining about the odor of an alley cat. Everyone still remembers when their man was in the White House during Katrina he refused to interrupt his Texas vacation for four days while New Orleans citizens died in the streets.
Grass roots Republicans are ill-served by most of current leaders who seem to think the only way they can make points with voters is by twisting every incident during the Obama years into harsh criticism. Remember the story about the boy who cried wolf?
The more the GOP gang cries out, the less people believe them. Especially when they employ weak arguments.
There is a credibility limit. Most importantly both the oil spill and the scotched New York bombing have a history that relates badly for Republicans who genuflected at the foot of the Bush Administration, that did just about every thing wrong. We are paying the price for those failures these days.
Let’s take the oil spill first. Think back to the early days of the Bush Administration and the behavior of his vice president. Cheney, the former head of the Halliburton oil empire, loosened many regulations demanded by big oil. He had always been a shill for the oil companies offering them sweetheart contracts starting when he was secretary of defense.
To make a point, if offshore drilling is to be safe there should have been the equivalent of a deadman switch, which would have automatically stopped the flow of crude if workers in the tower were unable to shut it down.
It is hard to understand why the oil companies would not have installed such a device which is required at their European deep sea rigs. It would be a lot cheaper than paying damages in the wake of a massive oil spill. But businessmen are always quick to spot ways of cutting costs to increase profits.
If these automatic cutoffs were installed at BP’s gulf equipage, there would be no threat today to wild life, the economy and the seashore of Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida.
The cockeyed notion expressed by Michael Brown, discredited Bush FEMA head, that Obama is deviously thrilled about the spill because it now gives him reason to halt drilling after he had approved it just months ago, sounds a bit like Alice’s favorite Mad Hatter on the loose.
"This president has never supported Big Oil, he’s never supported offshore drilling and now he’s got an excuse to shut it back down." Brown said, "This is exactly what they want because now he can pander to the environmentalists and say, I’m going to shut it down because it’s too dangerous."
If you want to hear adults acting like conspiratorial children just tune in on House Minority Leader John Boehner, his No. 2, Rep. Eric Cantor and Rep. Mike Pence, all chirping away as if Obama is behind the spill which in reality happened because Cheney allowed Big Oil to avoid installing automatic cutoffs.
Now let’s talk about Faisal Shahzad, the disgruntled Pakistan-born naturalized American citizen who was so incompetent or nervous he failed to set off a bomb in Times Square. He was arrested two days and five hours after the bomb was discovered and faces numerous criminal charges.
Shahzad reportedly became a militant because he objected to US drone attacks on Pakistan insurgent hideouts, killing many. During a visit to Pakistan he was indoctrinated in terrorism and sent back to the US to wreak havoc.
It turns out the impetus for this attack was the effectiveness of increased US drone activity approved by Obama in contrast to the inept undertakings by Bush to contain Taliban belligerents.
How come sad sack Shahzad got the Times Square assignment that failed so miserably? The consensus is the Taliban is so decimated by the drones, they have few skilled operatives left to carry out their terror, thanks to Obama’s policies.
The Republicans say that we were lucky in the Times Square case, but others could conclude that it was success in destroying terror hideouts overseas that resulted in an incompetent getting the bombing mission here. It’s an axiom that winners make their own luck. That seems to be the case.
It would be prudent for the GOP to stop criticizing the president -- at least on these two matters – if only to avoid being tarred with their own brush. But there is something unique about the current breed of Republicans. They are slow learners and no doubt will entrap themselves in continued foolishness.
George W. Bush liked to be portrayed as a warrior president yet during the last four years of his dominance in Washington the Taliban regained power in Afghanistan and its cousins, the Taliban in northern Pakistan, solidified their hold on Waziristan territory.
In contrast, Barack Obama, who the GOP painted as being soft on national security, stepped up the battle with the Taliban by sending more troops to Afghanistan and more drone attacks in Waziristan where American troops were barred by Pakistan. Both appear to be impeding the hostiles. Obama changed the tide of warfare in just one year.
During the early days of the Bush era, Dick Cheney sat down behind closed doors and put together a super secret energy policy with heads of energy corporations. The meetings were sub-rosa and no one outside this group ever learned what deals were made, if any. Now we discover that safety regulations were modified in favor of business.
If I were a Republican leader I wouldn’t be criticizing President Obama for such preventable happenings as the oil spill off the Gulf states or, for that matter, the Times Square car bomb attempt. Both arguments could backfire on them.
Sniveling about the lack of speed in reaction to the British Petroleum spill is tantamount to a skunk complaining about the odor of an alley cat. Everyone still remembers when their man was in the White House during Katrina he refused to interrupt his Texas vacation for four days while New Orleans citizens died in the streets.
Grass roots Republicans are ill-served by most of current leaders who seem to think the only way they can make points with voters is by twisting every incident during the Obama years into harsh criticism. Remember the story about the boy who cried wolf?
The more the GOP gang cries out, the less people believe them. Especially when they employ weak arguments.
There is a credibility limit. Most importantly both the oil spill and the scotched New York bombing have a history that relates badly for Republicans who genuflected at the foot of the Bush Administration, that did just about every thing wrong. We are paying the price for those failures these days.
Let’s take the oil spill first. Think back to the early days of the Bush Administration and the behavior of his vice president. Cheney, the former head of the Halliburton oil empire, loosened many regulations demanded by big oil. He had always been a shill for the oil companies offering them sweetheart contracts starting when he was secretary of defense.
To make a point, if offshore drilling is to be safe there should have been the equivalent of a deadman switch, which would have automatically stopped the flow of crude if workers in the tower were unable to shut it down.
It is hard to understand why the oil companies would not have installed such a device which is required at their European deep sea rigs. It would be a lot cheaper than paying damages in the wake of a massive oil spill. But businessmen are always quick to spot ways of cutting costs to increase profits.
If these automatic cutoffs were installed at BP’s gulf equipage, there would be no threat today to wild life, the economy and the seashore of Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida.
The cockeyed notion expressed by Michael Brown, discredited Bush FEMA head, that Obama is deviously thrilled about the spill because it now gives him reason to halt drilling after he had approved it just months ago, sounds a bit like Alice’s favorite Mad Hatter on the loose.
"This president has never supported Big Oil, he’s never supported offshore drilling and now he’s got an excuse to shut it back down." Brown said, "This is exactly what they want because now he can pander to the environmentalists and say, I’m going to shut it down because it’s too dangerous."
If you want to hear adults acting like conspiratorial children just tune in on House Minority Leader John Boehner, his No. 2, Rep. Eric Cantor and Rep. Mike Pence, all chirping away as if Obama is behind the spill which in reality happened because Cheney allowed Big Oil to avoid installing automatic cutoffs.
Now let’s talk about Faisal Shahzad, the disgruntled Pakistan-born naturalized American citizen who was so incompetent or nervous he failed to set off a bomb in Times Square. He was arrested two days and five hours after the bomb was discovered and faces numerous criminal charges.
Shahzad reportedly became a militant because he objected to US drone attacks on Pakistan insurgent hideouts, killing many. During a visit to Pakistan he was indoctrinated in terrorism and sent back to the US to wreak havoc.
It turns out the impetus for this attack was the effectiveness of increased US drone activity approved by Obama in contrast to the inept undertakings by Bush to contain Taliban belligerents.
How come sad sack Shahzad got the Times Square assignment that failed so miserably? The consensus is the Taliban is so decimated by the drones, they have few skilled operatives left to carry out their terror, thanks to Obama’s policies.
The Republicans say that we were lucky in the Times Square case, but others could conclude that it was success in destroying terror hideouts overseas that resulted in an incompetent getting the bombing mission here. It’s an axiom that winners make their own luck. That seems to be the case.
It would be prudent for the GOP to stop criticizing the president -- at least on these two matters – if only to avoid being tarred with their own brush. But there is something unique about the current breed of Republicans. They are slow learners and no doubt will entrap themselves in continued foolishness.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
An unholy comparison
By Don Klein
"The use of stereotypes, the passing of personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt, remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism," read a high ranking Vatican priest quoting from a letter written by a Jewish friend.
Wait a minute. Was he equating the public scorn aroused by the Vatican's protection of Catholic clergyman who abused children with the ageless Christian theme of unremitting bigotry against Jews? Does this cleric have his head on straight? Why would he read out loud such a ridiculous conclusion?
Father Cantalmessa, the priest making the remarks, holds the title of preacher of the papal household. Is there any wonder that respect for the Catholic priesthood has dropped so precipitously. They are now almost as low in public standing as members of Congress.
Let’s look at this comparison factually. Just the truth please. Jews have been victims of discrimination throughout history by Christian clergy, specifically the Catholics, for no other reason than being Jewish and not followers of Jesus. Their conversion is high among Catholic targets.
It wasn’t until Pope John XXIII that official anti-Semitism ended.
If it wasn’t for this dishonorable and ageless hatred of Jews, chances are the Holocaust never would have happened. Hitler probably would not have had the support of most Germans for the slaughter that killed over six million innocent non-Christians.
That was anti-Semitism at its peak. There were hundreds of other less horrible examples. Christians imposed laws that denied Jews the right to own land, to work in certain employment, to travel freely, and Jews were expressly and regularly branded from the Sunday pulpit as heretics and worse.
Even in the US where all men supposedly where created equal, Jews in my lifetime could not live in any neighborhood they chose, could not work in any industry they preferred, could not even be elected to public office until they overcame this built-in prejudice through education, by moving gingerly through life and by hard work.
Now compare that with the priests who for generations sexually abused children in their charge with the knowledge that if they were caught they would be transferred to another diocese where a whole new array of virginal youngsters became available prey for their lust. They understood that the church’s predominant concern was protecting its image, not its flock.
After decades of ugly revelations of what it meant to be a Catholic youngster in numerous American cities and being victimized on a regular basis, the focus now turned to Ireland, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria and even the pope’s home territory in Germany. It was no longer "an American problem" as the church liked to claim in kissing off the previous abuse allegations.
It seems that Irish kids, German youth, and children from other areas of Europe were also being victimized by beguiling clergymen, who after being caught, were not punished, nor defrocked, nor arrested, but hidden away by church elders at a new location to protect the "reputation" of the church.
When this was revealed to have happened in the diocese under Cardinal Joseph A. Ratzinger’s authority, wasn’t it natural for the public to demand the truth especially since the erstwhile cardinal is now the pope? But as it has been many times before with this pope, the issue has been stonewalled.
In the case of the horrors of the Irish priesthood’s authority over the infamous work houses for the destitute young people and other sexual abuses there, the pope apologized and said he is sorry for the pain they caused. But not a single clergyman responsible for the frightful conditions was disciplined.
As for the abuses in his German home grounds, the pope had a different answer. He said he didn’t know about it even though many have claimed they reported the circumstances directly to his office. Pope Benedict is beginning to sound like former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testifying before Congress not too long ago.
How these different scenarios equate to religious prejudice is beyond most thoughtful people. To describe criticism of the pope as similar to centuries of anti-Semitism is a crock.
"Father Cantalamessa chose to equate calumny against the Jewish people as the same as criticism of Pope Benedict," said Kristine Ward, a spokeswoman for the National Survivor Advocates Coalition told The New York Times. "It is incomprehensible that Father Cantalamessa did this and that Pope Benedict, the ultimate authority in this church who presided at the service, did not stand during the service to disavow this connection to anti-Semitism."
The church quickly disassociated itself from Cantalamessa’s remarks, The Times reported. Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, stressed that Father Cantalamessa’s sermon represented his own thoughts and was not an official Vatican statement. Lombardi said the remarks should not be construed as equating recent criticism of the Catholic Church with anti-Semitism.
"I don’t think it’s an appropriate comparison," he added.
And, of course, then there was what I consider justifiable reaction from Jewish sources. Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League in the United States, attributed the remarks to ignorance, not malice. "You would think that a senior priest in the church would have a better understanding of anti-Semitism than to make this hideous comparison," he said.
It really doesn’t matter whether it was ignorance or malice on the priest’s part. In either case it was an incomprehensible statement and the fact that the pope was sitting in the room listening to this idiocy without reaction is a telling message to me as to where his thoughts are at this time of church strife.
It is a classic case of making the offender into the victim.
"The use of stereotypes, the passing of personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt, remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism," read a high ranking Vatican priest quoting from a letter written by a Jewish friend.
Wait a minute. Was he equating the public scorn aroused by the Vatican's protection of Catholic clergyman who abused children with the ageless Christian theme of unremitting bigotry against Jews? Does this cleric have his head on straight? Why would he read out loud such a ridiculous conclusion?
Father Cantalmessa, the priest making the remarks, holds the title of preacher of the papal household. Is there any wonder that respect for the Catholic priesthood has dropped so precipitously. They are now almost as low in public standing as members of Congress.
Let’s look at this comparison factually. Just the truth please. Jews have been victims of discrimination throughout history by Christian clergy, specifically the Catholics, for no other reason than being Jewish and not followers of Jesus. Their conversion is high among Catholic targets.
It wasn’t until Pope John XXIII that official anti-Semitism ended.
If it wasn’t for this dishonorable and ageless hatred of Jews, chances are the Holocaust never would have happened. Hitler probably would not have had the support of most Germans for the slaughter that killed over six million innocent non-Christians.
That was anti-Semitism at its peak. There were hundreds of other less horrible examples. Christians imposed laws that denied Jews the right to own land, to work in certain employment, to travel freely, and Jews were expressly and regularly branded from the Sunday pulpit as heretics and worse.
Even in the US where all men supposedly where created equal, Jews in my lifetime could not live in any neighborhood they chose, could not work in any industry they preferred, could not even be elected to public office until they overcame this built-in prejudice through education, by moving gingerly through life and by hard work.
Now compare that with the priests who for generations sexually abused children in their charge with the knowledge that if they were caught they would be transferred to another diocese where a whole new array of virginal youngsters became available prey for their lust. They understood that the church’s predominant concern was protecting its image, not its flock.
After decades of ugly revelations of what it meant to be a Catholic youngster in numerous American cities and being victimized on a regular basis, the focus now turned to Ireland, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria and even the pope’s home territory in Germany. It was no longer "an American problem" as the church liked to claim in kissing off the previous abuse allegations.
It seems that Irish kids, German youth, and children from other areas of Europe were also being victimized by beguiling clergymen, who after being caught, were not punished, nor defrocked, nor arrested, but hidden away by church elders at a new location to protect the "reputation" of the church.
When this was revealed to have happened in the diocese under Cardinal Joseph A. Ratzinger’s authority, wasn’t it natural for the public to demand the truth especially since the erstwhile cardinal is now the pope? But as it has been many times before with this pope, the issue has been stonewalled.
In the case of the horrors of the Irish priesthood’s authority over the infamous work houses for the destitute young people and other sexual abuses there, the pope apologized and said he is sorry for the pain they caused. But not a single clergyman responsible for the frightful conditions was disciplined.
As for the abuses in his German home grounds, the pope had a different answer. He said he didn’t know about it even though many have claimed they reported the circumstances directly to his office. Pope Benedict is beginning to sound like former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testifying before Congress not too long ago.
How these different scenarios equate to religious prejudice is beyond most thoughtful people. To describe criticism of the pope as similar to centuries of anti-Semitism is a crock.
"Father Cantalamessa chose to equate calumny against the Jewish people as the same as criticism of Pope Benedict," said Kristine Ward, a spokeswoman for the National Survivor Advocates Coalition told The New York Times. "It is incomprehensible that Father Cantalamessa did this and that Pope Benedict, the ultimate authority in this church who presided at the service, did not stand during the service to disavow this connection to anti-Semitism."
The church quickly disassociated itself from Cantalamessa’s remarks, The Times reported. Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, stressed that Father Cantalamessa’s sermon represented his own thoughts and was not an official Vatican statement. Lombardi said the remarks should not be construed as equating recent criticism of the Catholic Church with anti-Semitism.
"I don’t think it’s an appropriate comparison," he added.
And, of course, then there was what I consider justifiable reaction from Jewish sources. Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League in the United States, attributed the remarks to ignorance, not malice. "You would think that a senior priest in the church would have a better understanding of anti-Semitism than to make this hideous comparison," he said.
It really doesn’t matter whether it was ignorance or malice on the priest’s part. In either case it was an incomprehensible statement and the fact that the pope was sitting in the room listening to this idiocy without reaction is a telling message to me as to where his thoughts are at this time of church strife.
It is a classic case of making the offender into the victim.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Is failure our watchword?
By Don Klein
When is a war crime not a war crime? When government lawyers exonerate other government lawyers for violating established international law.
Everyone knows that torture is against everything this country stands for. Except, perhaps, the Justice Department lawyers in judgment of the Bush lawyers who inspired the travesty of creating new language to give US agents the green light during the years of authorized water boarding.
We have backed off from the Nuremberg trials which established the rule that "I was ordered to do so" is no excuse for committing war crimes. Dozens of Nazis were charged and at least 12 were sentenced to death for war crimes. The United States led the world in condemning acts of official brutality and installed the rule of decent treatment of all captives, military and civilian, and banning torture.
The Bush Administration, pumped by the warped ideals of Vice President Dick Cheney, reneged on this honorable commitment. Now the Obama Administration has let off the hook the men who justified Bush torture policy. Current Justice Department lawyers probing former Justice Department lawyers ended up slapping the culprits on the wrist for legalizing harsh treatment of captives held by this country.
It’s enough to make one think there is no hope that the US government can ever do anything right anymore. Not only are they not to be tried as war criminals, the lawyers who authored the pernicious rule that led to water boarding, Jay S. Bybee and John C. Yoo, are now "honorable" members of society. Bybee is a federal judge and Yoo a university professor.
According to the decision by the Justice Department the two used flawed legal reasoning but were not guilty of official misconduct. Are these the kind of men we want on the federal bench and teaching in an American law school? They should be serving a term in the penitentiary, or at least suffer disbarment.
This is just one more case of President Obama’s impotence. He is so afraid of offending Republicans he is distorting his entire approach to the right things to do. He bends over backwards to get Republican bipartisanship in the Senate and gets slapped in the face time and again. He has brought turning the other cheek to new level of disillusionment.
His party has already taken war crimes trials off the table for Bush and Cheney, now the government won’t even find anything seriously wrong with the lawyers that were used to give torture the air of legality. It makes it extremely difficult for one-time Obama supporters to maintain their enthusiasm for the man. He just does not seem to have what is needed to do all things he said he would do during the campaign.
Where do disenchanted Obama backers go? There is nothing for them in the two party system. The GOP is bold and drives the country into the arms of the profiteers and Neanderthals, and the Democrats make wonderful promises to reform this, that and everything else and despite having a clear majority in both houses of Congress are scared off from doing anything once resistance raises its ugly head.
Unlike fairytales, our white knights are colossal cowards. Cheney openly brags of his role in propelling torture into the American national image and he trots freely on our streets and on our television screens. Bush rests in comfortable Texas banishment trying on his flight suit whenever he gets bored with reading the comics and ignores the national turmoil he helped create.
Meanwhile, the people are close to rebellion. The Tea Party adherents, embracing their political ignorance – and Sarah Palin, want to secede from the Union. On the other side, the Liberals are disenchanted and won’t come out to vote in important elections which allowed the usually Democratic Senate seat in Massachusetts last month to go Republican for the first time in a half century.
I won’t say this frustration is all Obama fault, but much of it is. He showed little gumption to fight for his programs during his first year in office. People view him as a pussycat being frightened into the corner at the mere mention of a filibuster. He is not the tiger they thought they elected in November 2008.
There is a serious possibility that now, after more than a year of going nowhere on health reform, bank regulations and environmental issues that the Democrats will surely take a beating when the midterm elections come in November. No one wants to be a Democrat running for office this year – with good reason. They are one gigantic national flop.
Now they add insult to their political impotence by allowing war criminals to get away with their malevolent behavior. The inability of the government to perform on any level has paralyzed the nation and America will soon be a wonderful dream that, we in this generation, failed to nurture and pass on in decent shape to our progeny.
Just think of it. During the last decade we had a tragic war, a disastrous economy which has bankrupted the country and a stymied government resulting in massive unemployment plus thousands of dead and horribly injured American servicemen and the loss of global prestige and no government policy maker will be held accountable for it.
If the Republicans take control of the Senate and maybe even the House of Representatives this fall that will mean the end of all progress – as if that would be any worse than it already is.
After Bush many swore never vote for a national Republican again. Now the problem is compounded. They must ask, after Obama, "what do I do?"
When is a war crime not a war crime? When government lawyers exonerate other government lawyers for violating established international law.
Everyone knows that torture is against everything this country stands for. Except, perhaps, the Justice Department lawyers in judgment of the Bush lawyers who inspired the travesty of creating new language to give US agents the green light during the years of authorized water boarding.
We have backed off from the Nuremberg trials which established the rule that "I was ordered to do so" is no excuse for committing war crimes. Dozens of Nazis were charged and at least 12 were sentenced to death for war crimes. The United States led the world in condemning acts of official brutality and installed the rule of decent treatment of all captives, military and civilian, and banning torture.
The Bush Administration, pumped by the warped ideals of Vice President Dick Cheney, reneged on this honorable commitment. Now the Obama Administration has let off the hook the men who justified Bush torture policy. Current Justice Department lawyers probing former Justice Department lawyers ended up slapping the culprits on the wrist for legalizing harsh treatment of captives held by this country.
It’s enough to make one think there is no hope that the US government can ever do anything right anymore. Not only are they not to be tried as war criminals, the lawyers who authored the pernicious rule that led to water boarding, Jay S. Bybee and John C. Yoo, are now "honorable" members of society. Bybee is a federal judge and Yoo a university professor.
According to the decision by the Justice Department the two used flawed legal reasoning but were not guilty of official misconduct. Are these the kind of men we want on the federal bench and teaching in an American law school? They should be serving a term in the penitentiary, or at least suffer disbarment.
This is just one more case of President Obama’s impotence. He is so afraid of offending Republicans he is distorting his entire approach to the right things to do. He bends over backwards to get Republican bipartisanship in the Senate and gets slapped in the face time and again. He has brought turning the other cheek to new level of disillusionment.
His party has already taken war crimes trials off the table for Bush and Cheney, now the government won’t even find anything seriously wrong with the lawyers that were used to give torture the air of legality. It makes it extremely difficult for one-time Obama supporters to maintain their enthusiasm for the man. He just does not seem to have what is needed to do all things he said he would do during the campaign.
Where do disenchanted Obama backers go? There is nothing for them in the two party system. The GOP is bold and drives the country into the arms of the profiteers and Neanderthals, and the Democrats make wonderful promises to reform this, that and everything else and despite having a clear majority in both houses of Congress are scared off from doing anything once resistance raises its ugly head.
Unlike fairytales, our white knights are colossal cowards. Cheney openly brags of his role in propelling torture into the American national image and he trots freely on our streets and on our television screens. Bush rests in comfortable Texas banishment trying on his flight suit whenever he gets bored with reading the comics and ignores the national turmoil he helped create.
Meanwhile, the people are close to rebellion. The Tea Party adherents, embracing their political ignorance – and Sarah Palin, want to secede from the Union. On the other side, the Liberals are disenchanted and won’t come out to vote in important elections which allowed the usually Democratic Senate seat in Massachusetts last month to go Republican for the first time in a half century.
I won’t say this frustration is all Obama fault, but much of it is. He showed little gumption to fight for his programs during his first year in office. People view him as a pussycat being frightened into the corner at the mere mention of a filibuster. He is not the tiger they thought they elected in November 2008.
There is a serious possibility that now, after more than a year of going nowhere on health reform, bank regulations and environmental issues that the Democrats will surely take a beating when the midterm elections come in November. No one wants to be a Democrat running for office this year – with good reason. They are one gigantic national flop.
Now they add insult to their political impotence by allowing war criminals to get away with their malevolent behavior. The inability of the government to perform on any level has paralyzed the nation and America will soon be a wonderful dream that, we in this generation, failed to nurture and pass on in decent shape to our progeny.
Just think of it. During the last decade we had a tragic war, a disastrous economy which has bankrupted the country and a stymied government resulting in massive unemployment plus thousands of dead and horribly injured American servicemen and the loss of global prestige and no government policy maker will be held accountable for it.
If the Republicans take control of the Senate and maybe even the House of Representatives this fall that will mean the end of all progress – as if that would be any worse than it already is.
After Bush many swore never vote for a national Republican again. Now the problem is compounded. They must ask, after Obama, "what do I do?"
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Learning a lesson the hard way
by Don Klein
I was a rabid Yankee fan when I was a Bronx teenager. That was before George Steinbrenner took over the team in 1973 and bought pennants by corralling every available top free agent around. He became famous as baseball’s free spender who drove up player’s salaries to absurd levels.
That’s when I became an anti-Yankees fan.
Today I became a Yankees fan again. And I’ll tell you why. They took a prudent step to discourage ethnic aspersions by people associated with the team.
Irish tenor Ronan Tynan was scheduled to sing "God Bless America" during the opening game of the American League Championship series at Yankee Stadium last Friday. Amazingly he was told not to bother. That was extraordinary since Tynan had become a fixture around the team singing the patriotic song with great zeal on endless occasions for ten years.
But the day before the current series began he admitted making a stupid anti-Semitic remark. Tynan was introduced to a potential tenant in his Manhattan apartment house by an agent who said, "Don’t worry, they are not Red Sox fans." He responded with "I don’t care about that as long as they are not Jewish."
When word got back to the Yankees they withdrew the invitation for him to sing on this occasion. Howard Rubenstein, a spokesman for the Yankees, said Tynan apologized to the offended party, but the team said he would not sing the famous refrain for them the rest of the playoff series this year.
No one knows what was in Tynan’s mind when he made the insulting remark which could have been meant as a joke or it could have been his true feeling. I’ll give the tenor the benefit of the doubt and say he was trying to be cutesy and that he really doesn’t care if a Jew moves into his building or not.
Even if that was the case, the Yankees did the right thing by barring Tynan from singing under their auspices. Ethnic slurs may be funny to some people but it should never be tolerated. There are enough other innocent approaches to poking fun at people. It is especially unacceptable in Tynan’s case.
Here is a man -- once was an integral part of the famous Irish Tenors – who is loved and admired by all ethnic groups. He lost both his legs in a tragic automobile accident when he was 20 but went on to star in numerous paralympics and at 33 he took up singing. He was already a medical doctor at the time. He knew strife and conquered adversity at many levels.
For him to sink to a reviling ethnic joke is inexcusable. Yet others have been punished more for what I think was a lot less.
Remember of 1988 case of Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder’s remark on CBS Sports. He said African Americans dominate sports because they were bred for strength. Snyder claimed that slave owners bred black slaves to be strong, that black athletes have bigger thighs which allow them to fun faster and jump higher.
Whether his comments were accurate is not important (there is so much inaccuracy flung around in sports talk) but certainly the comment in itself was not derogatory. Yet Snyder was dumped by CBS as it reacted too swiftly to the resentment felt in some black quarters.
That was a lot less offensive than the words of Jesse Jackson, a man who claims to be a great spokesman for minorities, when he referred to New York City as "Hymietown" during a 1984 interview with a black Washington Post reporter. He assumed the remark would not get into print because of his racial bond with the newsman. Hymietown was his way of demeaning the strong Jewish political influence in New York.
To this day many Jews never forgave Jackson for that remark. Neither has many members of the press who felt Jackson maligned them with his false argument accusing the press of deliberately misquoting him.
There is no way that should be the result of Tynan’s relations with American Jews or the press. He was man enough to stand up immediately, apologize to the injured party and take his medicine from the Yankees without passing the blame on to others.
The lesson here, given that Tynan was just joking, is we all must be a lot more sensitive to the feelings of others. I never quite got the point of indelicate ethnic jibing. Years ago in the Army I heard fellow GIs of Italian extraction call each other Wops and Dagos and who hasn’t witnessed black comedians, especially on cable TV, refer to themselves and others of their race as Niggers.
We have to make it clear to all that such language is not welcome in modern civilized company. I am sure Tynan is embarrassed by the whole incident and wishes he never had opened his mouth. It is certainly hard to understand since many of his Yankees admirers and top executives are Jewish and the song that thrust him to favor among Americans was written by a Jew.
We must remember in our criticism of Tynan that this is a man of great fortitude and courage. He never gave up despite his horrible youthful injuries and not only did he become a practicing doctor, a tough enough achievement for able bodied men and women, but also an accomplished performer and singer with an enchanting powerful voice.
So even though the Yankees were correct in disciplining him to the extent they could, he should be given the benefit of the doubt and be welcomed at future events as a man of considerable good nature and stature who made a puddingheaded mistake.
I was a rabid Yankee fan when I was a Bronx teenager. That was before George Steinbrenner took over the team in 1973 and bought pennants by corralling every available top free agent around. He became famous as baseball’s free spender who drove up player’s salaries to absurd levels.
That’s when I became an anti-Yankees fan.
Today I became a Yankees fan again. And I’ll tell you why. They took a prudent step to discourage ethnic aspersions by people associated with the team.
Irish tenor Ronan Tynan was scheduled to sing "God Bless America" during the opening game of the American League Championship series at Yankee Stadium last Friday. Amazingly he was told not to bother. That was extraordinary since Tynan had become a fixture around the team singing the patriotic song with great zeal on endless occasions for ten years.
But the day before the current series began he admitted making a stupid anti-Semitic remark. Tynan was introduced to a potential tenant in his Manhattan apartment house by an agent who said, "Don’t worry, they are not Red Sox fans." He responded with "I don’t care about that as long as they are not Jewish."
When word got back to the Yankees they withdrew the invitation for him to sing on this occasion. Howard Rubenstein, a spokesman for the Yankees, said Tynan apologized to the offended party, but the team said he would not sing the famous refrain for them the rest of the playoff series this year.
No one knows what was in Tynan’s mind when he made the insulting remark which could have been meant as a joke or it could have been his true feeling. I’ll give the tenor the benefit of the doubt and say he was trying to be cutesy and that he really doesn’t care if a Jew moves into his building or not.
Even if that was the case, the Yankees did the right thing by barring Tynan from singing under their auspices. Ethnic slurs may be funny to some people but it should never be tolerated. There are enough other innocent approaches to poking fun at people. It is especially unacceptable in Tynan’s case.
Here is a man -- once was an integral part of the famous Irish Tenors – who is loved and admired by all ethnic groups. He lost both his legs in a tragic automobile accident when he was 20 but went on to star in numerous paralympics and at 33 he took up singing. He was already a medical doctor at the time. He knew strife and conquered adversity at many levels.
For him to sink to a reviling ethnic joke is inexcusable. Yet others have been punished more for what I think was a lot less.
Remember of 1988 case of Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder’s remark on CBS Sports. He said African Americans dominate sports because they were bred for strength. Snyder claimed that slave owners bred black slaves to be strong, that black athletes have bigger thighs which allow them to fun faster and jump higher.
Whether his comments were accurate is not important (there is so much inaccuracy flung around in sports talk) but certainly the comment in itself was not derogatory. Yet Snyder was dumped by CBS as it reacted too swiftly to the resentment felt in some black quarters.
That was a lot less offensive than the words of Jesse Jackson, a man who claims to be a great spokesman for minorities, when he referred to New York City as "Hymietown" during a 1984 interview with a black Washington Post reporter. He assumed the remark would not get into print because of his racial bond with the newsman. Hymietown was his way of demeaning the strong Jewish political influence in New York.
To this day many Jews never forgave Jackson for that remark. Neither has many members of the press who felt Jackson maligned them with his false argument accusing the press of deliberately misquoting him.
There is no way that should be the result of Tynan’s relations with American Jews or the press. He was man enough to stand up immediately, apologize to the injured party and take his medicine from the Yankees without passing the blame on to others.
The lesson here, given that Tynan was just joking, is we all must be a lot more sensitive to the feelings of others. I never quite got the point of indelicate ethnic jibing. Years ago in the Army I heard fellow GIs of Italian extraction call each other Wops and Dagos and who hasn’t witnessed black comedians, especially on cable TV, refer to themselves and others of their race as Niggers.
We have to make it clear to all that such language is not welcome in modern civilized company. I am sure Tynan is embarrassed by the whole incident and wishes he never had opened his mouth. It is certainly hard to understand since many of his Yankees admirers and top executives are Jewish and the song that thrust him to favor among Americans was written by a Jew.
We must remember in our criticism of Tynan that this is a man of great fortitude and courage. He never gave up despite his horrible youthful injuries and not only did he become a practicing doctor, a tough enough achievement for able bodied men and women, but also an accomplished performer and singer with an enchanting powerful voice.
So even though the Yankees were correct in disciplining him to the extent they could, he should be given the benefit of the doubt and be welcomed at future events as a man of considerable good nature and stature who made a puddingheaded mistake.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Horrifying road images
By Don Klein
The tragic death of eight guiltless people, including four children, on New York’s Taconic Parkway on a recent July Sunday brought back a troubling nightmare which to this day – more than a half century later -- reoccurs in my thoughts.
I am talking about the incident in which a mother of two was driving her offspring plus three young nieces back from an upstate lakefront campsite when for some unknown reason she ended up driving the wrong way on a busy Westchester County road. After a miraculous 1.7 mile flight of accident avoidance as others swerved around her, she plowed her minivan into a SUV occupied by three men.
The driver of the errant vehicle, Diane Schuler, 36, her daughter and nieces, ranging in age from 2 to 8 years, and the three men all perished. Only her five year old son survived and will spend weeks in the hospital recovering. This disaster reminded me of what happened in 1955 when I was a young reporter just out of college at my first newspaper job.
I can remember it as if it happened yesterday and that’s the worst part of it. I was finishing off my morning rewrites at about 11.30 when the editor of the The Journal-News in Nyack, NY, came over. "There’s been a bad accident," he said, "Why don’t you grab one of the cameras, run over and get some pictures for tomorrow’s paper."
My boss, Norman Baker, was an experienced and easy going leader who helped shape the early years of my career. As a 9,000 circulation community paper in the shadow of the giant New York city dailies, he had to focus on local news to hold readers. Norm, an instinctive newsman, was always thinking of tomorrow’s front page.
I was eager to cover a breaking story. After all wasn’t that the reason I wanted to be a journalist and weren’t those the skills they tried to instill in us at NYU’s journalism school? The breaking news I had envisioned were major stories in New York, or big time politics in Washington or crucial stories of conflict and wars around the world, not a traffic accident. But you had to start somewhere.
I grabbed one of the paper’s two archaic Speed Graflex cameras and headed for the scene. When I arrived it was clear there was a calamity unfolding. Emergency vehicles with flashing lights were all over the place and as I approached the crash site with camera in hand I could see what happened.
A giant tanker-trailer had crossed over the center line and crushed a private sedan against the opposite side railing. The crash had occurred on an elevated portion of the road where it passed over a small hamlet in the valley several hundred feet below. The cab of the tanker had been propelled over the edge and crashed in a field many feet below. The tanker itself was crunched against the squashed car on the road.
The auto looked as if a King Kong-like creature had stepped on it and as the volunteer firemen were working feverishly to free its inhabitants I couldn’t understand why they were still at it some 20 minutes after we had learned of the accident by police radio.
Later I learned that the rescuers feared using acetylene torches to cut away the roof of the car to get to the trapped souls because they did not know the contents of the tanker and feared a spark could cause an explosion. Instead they used giant hand-powered saws to cut off the roof.
When they were close to hacking through the roof I positioned myself a few feet up a lamppost for a better view, focused my camera on the car and watched as the rescuers bent back the shattered remains of the car. I then saw a vision which has haunted me ever since.
There were six people inside, all members of one family. There was a father and mother, two children and two grandparents. They were jumbled up and entangled like the sorriest collection of discarded dolls in a child’s closet. The difference was that these were human beings. The first one out was the young mother. You could see she had a terrible head wound and was dead. Her eyes stared sightlessly at the sky as they carried her body passed where I was standing.
The elderly couple also were crushed beyond life as was the little girl. Their bodies were horribly contorted by the crash. Blood was everywhere. The father and son recovered, and were hospitalized for many months. The truck driver died inside his fallen cab many feet below. I took many pictures which appeared in the next edition and wrote the story. Made sick by the experience, I couldn’t eat dinner that night.
The investigation found no obvious cause for the accident and in the end police concluded that the truck driver, who had been on the road for a long stint, apparently fell asleep as his rig entered the bridge, crossing into oncoming traffic and caromed into the car crushing the family coming in the opposite direction.
The final toll: Five people died, two were seriously injured. Two families – those in the sedan and the truck driver’s wife and children – were decimated.
The conclusion: It didn’t have to happen if only the truck driver had rested.
The Taconic accident also didn’t have to happen. A toxicology report revealed that Ms. Schuler’s blood-alcohol level was twice that for determining drunken driving and there was a high level of marijuana in her system.
Less than 30 minutes before the fatal crash she had spoken to her brother by cell phone and complained of having trouble focusing. He told her to pull off the road and he would come get her. She didn’t.
If only she had heeded his advice.
The tragic death of eight guiltless people, including four children, on New York’s Taconic Parkway on a recent July Sunday brought back a troubling nightmare which to this day – more than a half century later -- reoccurs in my thoughts.
I am talking about the incident in which a mother of two was driving her offspring plus three young nieces back from an upstate lakefront campsite when for some unknown reason she ended up driving the wrong way on a busy Westchester County road. After a miraculous 1.7 mile flight of accident avoidance as others swerved around her, she plowed her minivan into a SUV occupied by three men.
The driver of the errant vehicle, Diane Schuler, 36, her daughter and nieces, ranging in age from 2 to 8 years, and the three men all perished. Only her five year old son survived and will spend weeks in the hospital recovering. This disaster reminded me of what happened in 1955 when I was a young reporter just out of college at my first newspaper job.
I can remember it as if it happened yesterday and that’s the worst part of it. I was finishing off my morning rewrites at about 11.30 when the editor of the The Journal-News in Nyack, NY, came over. "There’s been a bad accident," he said, "Why don’t you grab one of the cameras, run over and get some pictures for tomorrow’s paper."
My boss, Norman Baker, was an experienced and easy going leader who helped shape the early years of my career. As a 9,000 circulation community paper in the shadow of the giant New York city dailies, he had to focus on local news to hold readers. Norm, an instinctive newsman, was always thinking of tomorrow’s front page.
I was eager to cover a breaking story. After all wasn’t that the reason I wanted to be a journalist and weren’t those the skills they tried to instill in us at NYU’s journalism school? The breaking news I had envisioned were major stories in New York, or big time politics in Washington or crucial stories of conflict and wars around the world, not a traffic accident. But you had to start somewhere.
I grabbed one of the paper’s two archaic Speed Graflex cameras and headed for the scene. When I arrived it was clear there was a calamity unfolding. Emergency vehicles with flashing lights were all over the place and as I approached the crash site with camera in hand I could see what happened.
A giant tanker-trailer had crossed over the center line and crushed a private sedan against the opposite side railing. The crash had occurred on an elevated portion of the road where it passed over a small hamlet in the valley several hundred feet below. The cab of the tanker had been propelled over the edge and crashed in a field many feet below. The tanker itself was crunched against the squashed car on the road.
The auto looked as if a King Kong-like creature had stepped on it and as the volunteer firemen were working feverishly to free its inhabitants I couldn’t understand why they were still at it some 20 minutes after we had learned of the accident by police radio.
Later I learned that the rescuers feared using acetylene torches to cut away the roof of the car to get to the trapped souls because they did not know the contents of the tanker and feared a spark could cause an explosion. Instead they used giant hand-powered saws to cut off the roof.
When they were close to hacking through the roof I positioned myself a few feet up a lamppost for a better view, focused my camera on the car and watched as the rescuers bent back the shattered remains of the car. I then saw a vision which has haunted me ever since.
There were six people inside, all members of one family. There was a father and mother, two children and two grandparents. They were jumbled up and entangled like the sorriest collection of discarded dolls in a child’s closet. The difference was that these were human beings. The first one out was the young mother. You could see she had a terrible head wound and was dead. Her eyes stared sightlessly at the sky as they carried her body passed where I was standing.
The elderly couple also were crushed beyond life as was the little girl. Their bodies were horribly contorted by the crash. Blood was everywhere. The father and son recovered, and were hospitalized for many months. The truck driver died inside his fallen cab many feet below. I took many pictures which appeared in the next edition and wrote the story. Made sick by the experience, I couldn’t eat dinner that night.
The investigation found no obvious cause for the accident and in the end police concluded that the truck driver, who had been on the road for a long stint, apparently fell asleep as his rig entered the bridge, crossing into oncoming traffic and caromed into the car crushing the family coming in the opposite direction.
The final toll: Five people died, two were seriously injured. Two families – those in the sedan and the truck driver’s wife and children – were decimated.
The conclusion: It didn’t have to happen if only the truck driver had rested.
The Taconic accident also didn’t have to happen. A toxicology report revealed that Ms. Schuler’s blood-alcohol level was twice that for determining drunken driving and there was a high level of marijuana in her system.
Less than 30 minutes before the fatal crash she had spoken to her brother by cell phone and complained of having trouble focusing. He told her to pull off the road and he would come get her. She didn’t.
If only she had heeded his advice.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
A case of class & privilege, not race
By Don Klein
If I was arrested for mouthing off to a policeman who came to my house to investigate a suspected illegal break-in no one outside my family and friends would know about it – or care. But when a renown Harvard scholar gets hauled in for the same reason it becomes an issue for presidential comment.
That’s what gets my blood to boil. What gets me even more riled is the fact that everyone immediately applies the wrong reason for the incident in the first place. Of course I am talking about the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the professor, by Sgt. James Crowley, the cop.
Gates and all of his defenders, including a disappointingly erring President Obama, claimed that this was a case of racial profiling. My ultra liberal friends are quick to jump up and down derogating a police officer in the rightful performance of his job. They quickly spell out the history of police harassment and abuse of blacks as a justifiable cause for Professor Gates’s extraordinary misbehavior when confronted by the cop.
As I see it what really propelled the brouhaha had nothing to do with race. It was a matter of privilege and class on display in its most blatant configuration. Just take a look at the two main characters in this unhappy scenario. Here is my version:
On the one side we have a distinguished, highly acclaimed man of erudition and stature, the professor himself. Gates, an American literary critic, educator, scholar, author, intellectual, sometimes called "the nation’s most famous black scholar," had just returned home from a long foreign trip only to find his front door jammed.
You can imagine the vexation as the poor guy just wanted to get home, kick off his shoes and relax but frustratingly could not even get passed his front door. He forced the malfunctioning portal, even asked the cab driver who brought him from the airport to help, when a passing neighbor notices the ruckus and calls police. She feared a crime was in progress.
A few minutes later Sgt. Crowley responds to the call and confronts the professor now inside the house. The cop doesn’t know the homeowner once won the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship and was the holder of numerous honorary degrees and awards for teaching, research and development of academic scholarship of black culture. No, all the cop saw is what all cops see upon reaching a possible crime scene – a victim or a culprit. He doesn’t know which at this time.
What is more important is what Professor Gates sees. That’s simple. No one more insignificant than an anonymous street cop banging on his door with inconsequential questions about a break-in that never happened. All Gates wants to do is put an end to a rigorous day and this macho peace officer is pestering him with vacuous questions as "do I live here" and "can I prove it."
Race has not entered anyone’s mind at this point. The cop is doing his job by the book. He is investigating a report of a crime. The professor is at home after an exacting day of travel, being denied the peace and quiet he so readily seeks by the officer. No doubt he might have thought – why is this cretin bothering me with this folderol.
The professor lets loose with a stream of invective he usually reserves for dim-witted students and uses his superior position in the social ladder to demean Sgt. Crowley. "Do you know who I am?" he demands. The officer backs off initially, apparently realizing by now he is dealing with an irate non victim. Gates, overflowing with bravado at Crowley’s retreat in emboldened and continues with a stream of abuse, when his bluff is called. He is arrested.
It is a clear case of social class, not race, at this moment. The superior intellect of Gates was being employed to bulldoze an ordinary cop. But in this case the cop was no pushover as Gates thought he was. Crowley had no racial demerits in his background a la Mark Fuhrman, the Los Angeles detective in the O.J. Simpson case. Crowley possessed an exemplary record, instructed other policemen on the perils of racial profiling, even tried to save a dying black athletic on a basketball court with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
Once arrested Gates no doubt realized that superior intellect was not an adequate defense for disorderly conduct. That’s when he drew the race card and claimed he was hauled in because of his skin color. Unfortunately, the president was dragged into the case and everything skyrocketed out of control because of Obama’s instinctive response in favor what he thought was the black "victim."
It is so easy in this country for a black man to claim victimization. But it was not true in this case and the public concluded it a lot quicker than the black president who still remembers his own experience as a racial target.
When the professor’s lawyer claimed publicly that the case had nothing to do with race, it became clear to me that it was what I suspected from the very beginning. It was a matter of a distinguished Harvard professor’s belief that he stood higher on the social ladder than an ordinary police officer. A modern incarnation George Bernard Shaw’s Professor Higgins or the bitterly
intemperate Sheridan Whiteside, of "The Man Who Came to Dinner" fame.
Everyone now seems to believe that if both parties to this dispute had used cooler heads, none of this would have made the headlines. That clearly is true. What is also true is that when a prominent man uses his blackness to cover up for his behavioral faults he weakens every legitimate claim by other blacks who are truly victims of racism.
If I was arrested for mouthing off to a policeman who came to my house to investigate a suspected illegal break-in no one outside my family and friends would know about it – or care. But when a renown Harvard scholar gets hauled in for the same reason it becomes an issue for presidential comment.
That’s what gets my blood to boil. What gets me even more riled is the fact that everyone immediately applies the wrong reason for the incident in the first place. Of course I am talking about the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the professor, by Sgt. James Crowley, the cop.
Gates and all of his defenders, including a disappointingly erring President Obama, claimed that this was a case of racial profiling. My ultra liberal friends are quick to jump up and down derogating a police officer in the rightful performance of his job. They quickly spell out the history of police harassment and abuse of blacks as a justifiable cause for Professor Gates’s extraordinary misbehavior when confronted by the cop.
As I see it what really propelled the brouhaha had nothing to do with race. It was a matter of privilege and class on display in its most blatant configuration. Just take a look at the two main characters in this unhappy scenario. Here is my version:
On the one side we have a distinguished, highly acclaimed man of erudition and stature, the professor himself. Gates, an American literary critic, educator, scholar, author, intellectual, sometimes called "the nation’s most famous black scholar," had just returned home from a long foreign trip only to find his front door jammed.
You can imagine the vexation as the poor guy just wanted to get home, kick off his shoes and relax but frustratingly could not even get passed his front door. He forced the malfunctioning portal, even asked the cab driver who brought him from the airport to help, when a passing neighbor notices the ruckus and calls police. She feared a crime was in progress.
A few minutes later Sgt. Crowley responds to the call and confronts the professor now inside the house. The cop doesn’t know the homeowner once won the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship and was the holder of numerous honorary degrees and awards for teaching, research and development of academic scholarship of black culture. No, all the cop saw is what all cops see upon reaching a possible crime scene – a victim or a culprit. He doesn’t know which at this time.
What is more important is what Professor Gates sees. That’s simple. No one more insignificant than an anonymous street cop banging on his door with inconsequential questions about a break-in that never happened. All Gates wants to do is put an end to a rigorous day and this macho peace officer is pestering him with vacuous questions as "do I live here" and "can I prove it."
Race has not entered anyone’s mind at this point. The cop is doing his job by the book. He is investigating a report of a crime. The professor is at home after an exacting day of travel, being denied the peace and quiet he so readily seeks by the officer. No doubt he might have thought – why is this cretin bothering me with this folderol.
The professor lets loose with a stream of invective he usually reserves for dim-witted students and uses his superior position in the social ladder to demean Sgt. Crowley. "Do you know who I am?" he demands. The officer backs off initially, apparently realizing by now he is dealing with an irate non victim. Gates, overflowing with bravado at Crowley’s retreat in emboldened and continues with a stream of abuse, when his bluff is called. He is arrested.
It is a clear case of social class, not race, at this moment. The superior intellect of Gates was being employed to bulldoze an ordinary cop. But in this case the cop was no pushover as Gates thought he was. Crowley had no racial demerits in his background a la Mark Fuhrman, the Los Angeles detective in the O.J. Simpson case. Crowley possessed an exemplary record, instructed other policemen on the perils of racial profiling, even tried to save a dying black athletic on a basketball court with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
Once arrested Gates no doubt realized that superior intellect was not an adequate defense for disorderly conduct. That’s when he drew the race card and claimed he was hauled in because of his skin color. Unfortunately, the president was dragged into the case and everything skyrocketed out of control because of Obama’s instinctive response in favor what he thought was the black "victim."
It is so easy in this country for a black man to claim victimization. But it was not true in this case and the public concluded it a lot quicker than the black president who still remembers his own experience as a racial target.
When the professor’s lawyer claimed publicly that the case had nothing to do with race, it became clear to me that it was what I suspected from the very beginning. It was a matter of a distinguished Harvard professor’s belief that he stood higher on the social ladder than an ordinary police officer. A modern incarnation George Bernard Shaw’s Professor Higgins or the bitterly
intemperate Sheridan Whiteside, of "The Man Who Came to Dinner" fame.
Everyone now seems to believe that if both parties to this dispute had used cooler heads, none of this would have made the headlines. That clearly is true. What is also true is that when a prominent man uses his blackness to cover up for his behavioral faults he weakens every legitimate claim by other blacks who are truly victims of racism.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
A bridge in Brooklyn for sale
By Don Klein
So you expected a vast change in direction for the country after the November election sweep by the Democrats who won not just the presidency, but the House of Representatives and the Senate? I suppose recent actions in Washington has brought you back to earth.
Although I lean towards the Democrats in general because I feel in most cases they are more concerned with the welfare of the public rather than guaranteeing unbridled profits of huge corporations who the Republicans usually support, I am often disappointed in the behavior of Democrats at crucial moments in history.
I recall with dismay the fact that all but one of the Senate Democrats in October 2002, including such stalwarts and Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, voted in favor of the Bush legislation which authorized the inexcusable war in Iraq. Although they all insisted since that they were misled by the powers of the day, they really voted in favor of the war because they feared being stigmatized as soft on terror at the next election.
It seems being reelected is a more important priority for spineless politicians than doing what is right for the people. The Democrats are too anemic too often for my taste. They share a portion of the blame with the Republicans for the many deaths of US troops and foreign civilians in the Iraq conflict.
Today, when it is safe to oppose the war because the overwhelming majority of voters have turned against the conflict, these intrepid Democrats are all on the right side of the issue. They deserve no praise for their stance. Fortunately, this hypocracy does not include President Obama, who was against the war from the beginning. But he did not hold federal office at the time the relevant vote was taken.
You would have thought the fat-cat Democrats would have learned something from that ill-fated issue. But no, they are back at their wishy-washy ways again. While on the one hand they introduced legislation in Congress to require registration of guns and rifles, when it came down to voting on a unrelated matter they again went astray. They voted overwhelmingly in favor of an amendment to the credit card bill which allows loaded firearms to be carried on national parks property.
And we simple citizens thought the Democrats, with a strong majority in the Congress, could stop such underhanded and malicious legislative maneuvering. But this is a National Rifle Association issue and most senators lack the courage of a ladybug when it comes to thwarting the will of well organized and financially sound political action groups. I call it cowardice, but no one in Washington seems to care.
Then we come to the matter of closing the Guantanamo prison camp, a promise made by the Democratic Party’s own president before he was elected. Here is another case of categoric cowardice. Opponents of the plan circulated the ridiculous concept that more than 200 dangerous captives would be brought to US shores among the American populace if the Cuban base was closed.
The proponents of keeping the prison camp open and continuing the Bush policy of questionable legal detention of alleged terrorists were using the same fear tactic that Bush and Cheney had employed so effectively since 9/11. It was built on the basis that anything was justified in protecting Americans from another attack, even violation of the US Constitution. In order to keep Guantanamo open they had to destroy any hopeful Obama plan to close the camp.
They sold the idea of terrorists on American soil as a threat to every civilian in the country. But the fact is that these terrorists would never be set free in the US. The plan was to house them in maximum security federal prisons, from which no one has ever escaped, and try them in American courts. These facts obviously didn’t matter when timid Democratic senators voted overwhelmingly to deny the administration the funds needed to close Guantanamo.
Again the Democrats were craven at the thought of being painted weak on terror and endangering Americans by bringing these prisoners to US prisons. Gutlessness took over once again.
Worse, such shallow commitment to doing what is right when weighed against getting reelected will endanger everything that the Democrats hoped to do in Congress this term.
Before the year is over Obama hopes to pass a universal health care bill. It would not be unreasonable to think that such needed legislation might be jeopardized if Republican opponents can find an issue that would be construed by some as antithetical to the country’s welfare. They already did as much back in the Clinton years when they killed off a health care bill with a television campaign of misstatements and twisted facts.
This is what we all have to fear. If weak-kneed Democrats cannot stand on the decent principle of banning guns in national parks and funding the closing of Guantanamo, what can we expect from them on important and expensive matters like universal health care, establishing controls over business, carrying on the war in Afghanistan and delivering a greener country to us all?
Or even worse. How strongly will they support an Obama supreme court nominee if the GOP defines him to the public unflatteringly as nothing but a socialist tool?
If you are guileless enough to believe just because the Democrats hold a majority in both houses of Congress that every thing Obama promised during the campaign will come to fruition, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I’d be happy to sell to you.
So you expected a vast change in direction for the country after the November election sweep by the Democrats who won not just the presidency, but the House of Representatives and the Senate? I suppose recent actions in Washington has brought you back to earth.
Although I lean towards the Democrats in general because I feel in most cases they are more concerned with the welfare of the public rather than guaranteeing unbridled profits of huge corporations who the Republicans usually support, I am often disappointed in the behavior of Democrats at crucial moments in history.
I recall with dismay the fact that all but one of the Senate Democrats in October 2002, including such stalwarts and Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, voted in favor of the Bush legislation which authorized the inexcusable war in Iraq. Although they all insisted since that they were misled by the powers of the day, they really voted in favor of the war because they feared being stigmatized as soft on terror at the next election.
It seems being reelected is a more important priority for spineless politicians than doing what is right for the people. The Democrats are too anemic too often for my taste. They share a portion of the blame with the Republicans for the many deaths of US troops and foreign civilians in the Iraq conflict.
Today, when it is safe to oppose the war because the overwhelming majority of voters have turned against the conflict, these intrepid Democrats are all on the right side of the issue. They deserve no praise for their stance. Fortunately, this hypocracy does not include President Obama, who was against the war from the beginning. But he did not hold federal office at the time the relevant vote was taken.
You would have thought the fat-cat Democrats would have learned something from that ill-fated issue. But no, they are back at their wishy-washy ways again. While on the one hand they introduced legislation in Congress to require registration of guns and rifles, when it came down to voting on a unrelated matter they again went astray. They voted overwhelmingly in favor of an amendment to the credit card bill which allows loaded firearms to be carried on national parks property.
And we simple citizens thought the Democrats, with a strong majority in the Congress, could stop such underhanded and malicious legislative maneuvering. But this is a National Rifle Association issue and most senators lack the courage of a ladybug when it comes to thwarting the will of well organized and financially sound political action groups. I call it cowardice, but no one in Washington seems to care.
Then we come to the matter of closing the Guantanamo prison camp, a promise made by the Democratic Party’s own president before he was elected. Here is another case of categoric cowardice. Opponents of the plan circulated the ridiculous concept that more than 200 dangerous captives would be brought to US shores among the American populace if the Cuban base was closed.
The proponents of keeping the prison camp open and continuing the Bush policy of questionable legal detention of alleged terrorists were using the same fear tactic that Bush and Cheney had employed so effectively since 9/11. It was built on the basis that anything was justified in protecting Americans from another attack, even violation of the US Constitution. In order to keep Guantanamo open they had to destroy any hopeful Obama plan to close the camp.
They sold the idea of terrorists on American soil as a threat to every civilian in the country. But the fact is that these terrorists would never be set free in the US. The plan was to house them in maximum security federal prisons, from which no one has ever escaped, and try them in American courts. These facts obviously didn’t matter when timid Democratic senators voted overwhelmingly to deny the administration the funds needed to close Guantanamo.
Again the Democrats were craven at the thought of being painted weak on terror and endangering Americans by bringing these prisoners to US prisons. Gutlessness took over once again.
Worse, such shallow commitment to doing what is right when weighed against getting reelected will endanger everything that the Democrats hoped to do in Congress this term.
Before the year is over Obama hopes to pass a universal health care bill. It would not be unreasonable to think that such needed legislation might be jeopardized if Republican opponents can find an issue that would be construed by some as antithetical to the country’s welfare. They already did as much back in the Clinton years when they killed off a health care bill with a television campaign of misstatements and twisted facts.
This is what we all have to fear. If weak-kneed Democrats cannot stand on the decent principle of banning guns in national parks and funding the closing of Guantanamo, what can we expect from them on important and expensive matters like universal health care, establishing controls over business, carrying on the war in Afghanistan and delivering a greener country to us all?
Or even worse. How strongly will they support an Obama supreme court nominee if the GOP defines him to the public unflatteringly as nothing but a socialist tool?
If you are guileless enough to believe just because the Democrats hold a majority in both houses of Congress that every thing Obama promised during the campaign will come to fruition, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I’d be happy to sell to you.
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