It’s always something

When I was about seven years old, my favorite movies in the entire world were “Clue” and “Haunted Honeymoon”… I guess because Kid Sara was very into nostalgic 40s-set comedies that look really cheesy now that I’m in my 30s, but that are still awesome.

Anyway, that’s how I knew who Gilda Radner was when she died of ovarian cancer in 1989 at the age of 42. Of course, for me she was “the funny lady from ‘Haunted Honeymoon’” and not “the original SNL cast member,” but I promise that I grew to appreciate her non-“Haunted Honeymoon” work as I grew older. I’m not trying to cast myself as a Radner super-fan, just to say that, when my mom told 9-year-old me that the funny lady from my favorite movie had died, it mattered.

My sisters and I were always pretty goofy. We had a stock of cast-off costume pieces and props with which we developed and performed all manner of skits for our parents, friends, or sometimes just our exceptionally patient Labrador Retriever. (RIP, Bailey.) I mean, most girls are goofy, but at some point a lot of them figure out that people are observing their goofiness and they start feeling self-conscious about it, and they get more into perfume and boys and anything that’s not goofy. But we were unabashedly goofy, and part of the reason for that* is that we had role models like Radner and, as I’ve written before, the cast of “Designing Women” and other TV shows to show us that women could be the goofy, stubborn, vulnerable, sexy and still somehow capable of running entire businesses, whether any men were watching or not.

(*And a giant amount of credit has to go to the amazing parents who exposed us to these movies and TV shows, and who endured our probably-noisy goofy playtime.)

When I wrote above that “it mattered” to me when Radner died, it’s because she was probably the first celebrity whose death I was aware of. What’s it like for a kid who’s told of a death? A kid who’s old enough to understand what death means, I mean. There’s this person you’re used to seeing on a screen and wanting to do what she does because it looks so fun, and you’re only vaguely aware that she’s a real person when she’s not on that screen – and then you learn that she won’t be there anymore. For a kid whose grandparents were still in their 40s and 50s at the time, it my first real sense of this kind of loss.

I thought of all that this week when the news came out that a chapter of Gilda’s Club, the cancer charity founded in Radner’s memory,was considering dropping her name from its title because, supposedly, too many younger patients don’t know who Radner was.

*profanity alert for the faint-hearted*

Damn, that’s some bullshit.

First of all, it’s pretty asinine for a charity to expect top-of-mind name recognition for the person on its letterhead. Pop quiz – Jane Addams, Susan G. Komen, Betty Ford: give me a 100-word bio, no Googling. You probably can’t, and it doesn’t really matter. If your nonprofit depends upon its namesake, as opposed to its mission, to raise funds and awareness, then you have issues and Gilda Radner’s enduring popularity ain’t them.

But the bigger bullshit (I’m making that a proper use of this noun now, okay? Okay.) for me is the idea that anyone under age 30 A) doesn’t know who Radner was, and B) shouldn’t, because, I mean, it has been 20+ years since she died and all.

John Belushi. Andy Kaufman. Lenny Bruce. All funny, and all dead for a long time. Richard Pryor and George Carlin – dead more recently, but still dead, nonetheless. But if you’re an aspiring comedy writer who’s not aware of the work of a single one of these men, pretty much anyone would consider you to be lacking.

Why isn’t Gilda Radner on that list? How is Radner not an automatic when you’re listing the essential comics of the late 20^th century?

The thing is – to her contemporaries, she was. Here’s SteveMartin hosting SNL right after Radner died.  And, folks, when Steve fracking Martin gets choked up over your passing, that’s how you know you’re a genuinely awesome and talented motherfucker.

If you’re reading this and thinking to yourself, “Gilda Radner? Who the hell was Gilda Radner?” then here’s what you need to do: Step 1 – shut up. Step 2 – school yourself. There’s fracking YouTube now, what’s wrong with your clueless ass?

The dream

Okay, so when I was home at Thanksgiving, I had more than one person come up to me and ask why I didn't post more often. The thing is that I have a lot less free blogging time than I used to. I don't have the time I would like to take to develop and source posts.

And more than one person said, we don't care - we just want to hear what's on your mind.

Okay.

So, I have this recurring dream where nothing of any importance happens. In fact, the events of the dream are different every time, and sometimes I don't even remember the whole dream-plot. But in every one of the dreams in this loose series, I hear a cover of Queen's "Fat Bottomed Girls" played by Johnny Cash.

Not 60s "Folsom Prison Blues" Johnny Cash. The 2000s American recordings-era Johnny Cash that remade "Hurt" and the like.

And every time I have this dream, I wake up somewhere between sad and pissed off because I know that no one else will ever hear Johnny Cash sing "Fat Bottomed Girls," which sucks because it was AMAZING.

Happy now?

Sad juxtaposition: Election Day and Veterans Day

I know this feels anti-climactic, given that it's my first post since the election last week... But, honestly, what to say about the election? Polls that were conducted well were right. The president won every state he was expected to win and lost every state he was expected to lose, and only people who consume exclusively non-fact-based media were surprised by this. Now we move on.

Except for the sad people in 20 (20!) states who've signed secession petitions in the last week. I say "sad" because, first of all, it's downright pitiable that news of this would come out on Veterans Day, which for nearly a century has honored the men and women who fought (and died) in our nation's wars. Even more sad that many of the people signing these things probably genuinely believe that it's they who represent American ideals, as opposed to the millions of Americans in a diverse coalition who re-elected President Obama a week ago.

They're wrong. No, I'm not saying that people who voted for Romney are un-American - nothing could be further from the truth; they're just people who want to solve our common issues differently. No, I'm not saying that every long-gone past veteran would've voted for Obama, because that's stupid. (But you can bet that some of them would've.) But one thing the "greatest generation" and other past Americans, whether veteran or not, had in common was this: when a single election didn't go their way, they didn't take their ball and go home.

Any historian will tell you that the reason the election of 1800 was so remarkable is that it's the first time that the direction of executive power changed hands. George Washington and John Adams were on one side, and president #3 Thomas Jefferson on the other. When Jefferson beat Adams for the presidency, it would've been the easiest thing in the world for then-Federalists in a country less than 25 years old to have seceded and formed their own country. America would've broken into a number of countries, possibly warring over the years for territory and supremacy. In other words, we'd be Eastern Europe right now. We certainly wouldn't be the geographically, culturally unified country that, a century after its founding, was already one of the world's super-powers.

But, for the 1800 losing side, the idea of America as America was more important than having a continent full of small territories that each believed different things. The country as one country was more important than them having their way. It's astonishing that people who fetishize the Founders don't understand this, because it's all there in contemporary accounts that most of us studied in high school history classes. And this is a pattern anyone can see repeated throughout U.S. history: your ideas lose, and you either get better at convincing others that you're right or you change your ideas. You don't just quit.

It's particularly disgusting to me to think that the people signing these petitions are doing so not because they really don't want to be part of the U.S. (unless they've been refunding their Social Security checks en masse and I just missed it), but because they see this as a valid act of protest over the results of the election. Are we really here now? Because, if Mitt Romney had somehow managed to win last week and you had 20 state's worth of Obama supporters signing their names* asking to be straight up let out of the country, well, I don't even want to think about the size of the mushroom cloud that would be floating over Fox News HQ right now.

Do the people who don't think that the president or his supporters are "America" enough think that they're being clever? They're not, and they're setting a seriously dangerous precedent for future elections. What could be more divisive, and threatening to our republic, than the faction that loses thinking they can just opt out when they don't get their way? It's crap like this that led to Fort Sumter. And if you think that's a good thing, maybe you should leave.

Because when my dad was drafted into the Army, when two of my grand-fathers signed up (Navy and Marine Corps), when my aunt and uncle enlisted (Air Force), and when countless Americans sign up to represent and defend our country, the one thing they DON'T ask them is who they voted for for president. Because that's just about the last thing that matters.

*Re: "signing their names"... These petitions exist because the White House allows any American with a modem to start an online petition, and publicly posts those that reach 50,000 signatures, something I'm fairly sure doesn't happen in China. "Petitioners only have to put a first name and last initial on the site," says the Washington Post. Wow, that's really courageous of you, online secession petitioner. You're totally right up there with the men who openly signed their (full) names to a Declaration that was mailed to King George knowing he could hang them for treason if they lost. *Applause* *Applause*

What's up with Bloomberg?

So, last Sunday I volunteered at a Halloween-themed 5k race near my house. It's one of those where everyone runs in costume, so it's a lot of fun. I was assigned to a barricade at a low-traffic intersection, keeping cars from driving onto the course. At the higher-traffic points, city police cars were stationed to block traffic for the duration of the race.

Between volunteers and police, there were at least 30 points where traffic had to be stopped, and this was for a 5k. That's roughly three miles.

The New York City Marathon, on the other hand, is 26.6 miles. This afternoon Mayor Bloomberg finally announced that the marathon wold not take place Sunday as planned, even after spending the entire week insisting that Hurricane Sandy's destruction of the region wouldn't affect the race. And the world's reaction is basically "DUH." I mean, they're still pulling bodies out of houses in Staten Island, Mike. A fracking footrace would be pretty fracking tacky under those conditions.

This surprises me so much because Bloomberg has shown himself to be a pretty savvy politician so far. Saying something like, "Earlier this week, we thought we'd be able to do the marathon. But now we know that it's just not the right priority for the city right now" would be the most natural thing in the world for him, and anyone would accept that.

Instead, even as he announced the marathon's cancellation, Bloomberg said:

"While holding the race would not require diverting resources from the recovery effort, it is clear that it has become the source of controversy and division... We would not want a cloud to hang over the race or its participants, and so we have decided to cancel it. We cannot allow a controversy over an athletic event -- even one as meaningful as this -- to distract attention away from all the critically important work that is being done to recover from the storm and get our city back on track."

Really? It's the controversy that would be the distraction? You're going to come right out and say that resources wouldn't be diverted, when that's in fact the obvious truth? You can't have a marathon without police to block streets and control the crowd - police that would otherwise be keeping people from rioting at gas stations if they weren't busy making sure people had running lanes. That's the very definition of "diverting resources," and it's absolutely baffling that Bloomberg can't admit this.

I don't know Bloomberg enough to guess what's going on with him. But, in an otherwise steady handling of this crisis, he's really missed the mark when it comes to this marathon.

What Romney should say

Part of being in a leadership position in any organization is staring into a crystal ball and attempting to predict the future. We all do this, every day. That strategy will work; that one won’t. If you have an agenda, you tend to cast predictions based on your pet philosophy – and let’s be honest, most of us aren’t objective enough to look beyond whatever prejudices we have and admit that what the other guy is suggesting just might work.

That’s particularly an issue for anyone running for office, because most of them are bound (even nominally) by the positions their particular party holds. One reason that following politics is so frustrating is that those of us watching a debate or speech know that what the candidate is saying is being filtered through an ideological lens. Really, Republican, you can’t think of one single instance where a public agency is better at doing something than a private company? Really, Democrat, there’s not a single public school teacher who’s not good at his or her job?

It’s like in 2008 when then-candidate Barack Obama couldn’t say publicly that President Bush’s troop surge in Iraq had worked, because you can’t be the guy running on the platform that everything the guy before you did failed when at least one of those things actually succeeded. So, candidate Obama’s position was that decreasing violence in Iraq was due to both the surge and the Sunni awakening. (And then as president, he sends a troop surge of his own to Afghanistan, which shows just exactly how effective he thought the surge concept was.) Most voters roll their eyes and deal with this kind of thing because we know that it’s just part of the game.

But what about when something a candidate says is proven to demonstrably wrong, as opposed to just a difference of opinion?

In 2008, when the U.S. auto industry was teetering on the edge, Mitt Romney published an op-ed in the NewYork Times saying that GM, Chrysler and the gang should be allowed to go bankrupt and be picked apart by private investors. (The fact that there were no private investors willing to do so apparently escaped him.) On one level, you can look at this as something Romney needed to do as a presumptive front-runner for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination – that is, distinguish himself from the administration he’d be running against.

If I’d been working for Romney at the time, I’d have advised him to soft-pedal a bit. When you’re predicting the future, it’s wise to allow for the possibility that you might be wrong. It would’ve been possible for Romney to make the case that the auto industry needed to adapt to modern markets without writing something as explicit as: "If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye." That's kind of hard to step back from.

But Romney can’t re-write that op-ed. So now what? Romney’s in a position where he has few paths to Electoral College victory, and most of them go through Ohio, a state heavily dependent on auto industry jobs. What do you say when a position you publicly staked in the past turns out to be dead wrong?

Option 1: Pretend You Didn’t Say That – something Romney’s had no trouble doing on pretty much every issue thus far. It’s a bad idea in this age where everything lives forever online… unless you just really like being made fun of on “The Daily Show.”

Option 2: Double Down – what Romney seems to be doing. He’s still running ads in Ohio implying heavily that Jeep is moving jobs to China, a stretch of truth so egregious that even Chrysler and GM CEOs have felt compelled to refute it. Even for the non-Romneys, this is risky. You think it makes you look resolute, but it actually makes you look stubborn, out-of-touch and kind of douchey. “Who do you believe, me or your lying eyes?” isn’t a viable PR strategy in the Internet age.

What Romney should do is bite the bullet and go with Option 3: Acknowledge and Move On. It’s not that hard. “Given my lengthy business experience, I genuinely did see a structured bankruptcy as the best option at the time. I’ve seen it work time and time again. In hindsight, though, I can see how the administration’s bailout did benefit the auto industry in an unprecedented economic circumstance. We got lucky. But we won’t always be lucky, which is why I believe” yadda yadda yadda Ayn Rand. See? Now it’s over.

Acknowledge and Move On isn’t easy. Much of the time, it means swallowing your pride, when what you really want to do is step and front of every available TV camera and scream “I WAS RIGHT, DAMMIT! ONE DAY YOU PEOPLE WILL WRITE SONGS ABOUT ME!!!”

But that’s what leaders have to do. Leaders also have to take in new information even if it means challenging their dearly held views. President Obama was going to close Gitmo on day one, until whatever he learned post-inauguration convinced him not to. He was opposed to same sex marriage, until he adapted and changed his mind. I know, I know – whether it’s a genuine conversion or a pragmatic understanding that the prevailing winds have shifted doesn’t really matter. What matters is that a leader responds to what he or she takes in, and he or she does so without pretending that the past didn’t happen.

If Mitt Romney honestly thinks that, as president, he’s never going to be put on the hot seat by Congress or the media or the 300 million Americans it’s his job to serve, then personally I don’t want him anywhere near the White House. It’s not about positions. It’s about his apparent inability to say that at any point in history he was ever less than 100 percent right. That’s a dangerous quality for anyone to have, let alone the President of the United States.

Class warfare and the 47 percent

I was going to write about Mitt Romney’s “China cheaters” ad that’s been all over my TV all week, but then this happened.

Yesterday, Mother Jones posted online a snippet of a video shot secretly at a Romney fundraiser back in May. They’ve since posted the entire thing, but it was the initial excerpt that got people all riled up, myself included. Here’s what Romney said:

“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.”

There’s so much to refute here that it’s hard to know where to begin. Let’s start with my annoyance that once again Romney is conflating two things that have little to do with one another either because he doesn’t understand them or he does, and just hopes that you and I don’t. It’s true that nearly half of Americans don’t write a check to the IRS each year, and it’s probably true that half of Americans get some form of assistance from the government. But these aren’t the same people, and they sure as hell aren’t all Obama voters.

First, the tax thing. It’s a well-worn right-wing talking point that 47 percent of Americans “don’t pay taxes,” usually presented in such a way to make whoever’s hearing it feel outraged because he or she is a hard-working American and those 47 percent are probably sitting at home playing X-box and lighting their cigars with your tax dollars. The problem is that the hardworking American who’s hearing about the 47 percent – and the person who’s telling them – are both likely part of it.

Let’s throw it to the AP:

“Forty-six percent of the country's households -- some 76 million -- paid no federal income taxes last year, according to a study by the Tax Policy Center.

While it's true most of those families are poor, the numbers include many others who got tax breaks because they are old, have children in college or didn't owe taxes on interest from state and local bonds. And of those who didn't write checks to the IRS, six in 10 still paid Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes, and more than that paid federal excise taxes on items such as gasoline, alcohol and cigarettes, said Roberton Williams, who analyzes taxes at the center.”

Now, Romney quoting the easily refuted tax thing is ignorant and/or deliberately misinformative . Romney pulling out the “people who get government money are lazy and entitled” thing is just offensive.

You know who gets government money? My dad, a Vietnam vet who’s on 100 disability from the VA from that time 40 years ago when Uncle Sam sent him to jungle to get shot four times. My grandfather, who gets the Social Security benefits he paid into his entire working career. Me, who got through college thanks to the low-interest, government-backed student loans that I’m now paying back. Anyone who got a small-business loan to help “build that.”

Oh, I know, I know. Romney wasn’t talking about us. He meant the bad ones, the ones who abuse the system. The mythical welfare queens driving Cadillacs and managing to use their food stamps on liquor, even though that’s illegal.

Except that he didn’t do that. He said this: everyone who doesn’t pay income taxes only survives because they live off the government, and everyone who gets a dime from the government is also a free-loader who doesn’t pay into the system. And they’re all automatic Obama voters because we’re terrified that a President Romney will make us actually get off the couch and wash ourselves.

The fact that none of this is true doesn’t seem to bother Romney, which I guess is just par for the course at this point. He’s shown himself to be concerned less with fact and more with how lies make his supporters feel: superior to those of us that think a progressive tax rate has worked pretty well, actually.

Here’s a thought… what about the other 47 percent? So to speak – I’ve no idea what the actual percentage is of people who would vote for Mickey Mouse if he were running against Barack Obama, but they’re out there. They’d do so despite demonstrated evidence that our economy grew faster when the tax rate on the highest earners was higher than it is now; or that our country is a better place now that we require kids to go to school instead of to factories; or that 21^st century Democrats really do have no interest in taking their guns. Why isn’t Romney tsk-tsking about the rationality of those voters? Why isn’t he publicly worried about fraud in federal welfare programs like subsidies for oil companies, or tax loopholes that allow a retired investment banker earning millions a year to pay a lower income tax rate than I do?

It’s okay. We already know why Romney’s not talking about those things. It’s because you talk about what’s important to you, and I guess if you’re Mitt Romney, you just make up the rest.

Something like war, something unlike presidential

Pop U.S. history quiz: on what date did the U.S. officially enter World War II?

Though Japan’s sneak attack at Pearl Harbor happened on Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, President Roosevelt did not ask Congress to declare war on Japan until the next day, Dec. 8. We didn’t officially declare war on Germany and Italy until Dec. 11, and that was only after they declared war on us.

Now, hold that thought.

Like most Americans, I woke up this morning to the news that our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, had been attacked and four Americans, including our ambassador to Libya, had been killed. All kinds of thoughts ran through my head… Are we going to be dragged into another war? was the overarching one. Because, when someone attacks American soil (which an embassy is, legally), something like war usually happens. Maybe not World War II, exactly, but still – ships get moved, bombs get dropped. People die.

It’s not something anyone in leadership takes (or should take) lightly. Even after Pearl Harbor, it took another day for our country to say, yes, we’re going to war. Facts have to come in and be processed.

And, after Libya, the facts are still coming in. I read news reports first thing in the morning, at lunch and again before leaving work at the end of the day. From that time, the story moved from: attack in Libya – by whom? Its new post-Qadaffi government? No, by rebels, and the Libyan government is condemning them. Was the date (Sept. 11) deliberate? Wait, there was a less violent, but still frightening protest at the embassy in Cairo, which appears to have been motivated by some movie that no one has seen that insults the prophet Muhammed. By late afternoon, reports were that the Libya attack may’ve been planned after all.

All I could think this morning was: please, God, don’t let the election dictate our country’s response in any way. American lives – and the lives of the Libyans who’d be caught in the cross-fire – are too important to turn this grave incident into a political opportunity. What should happen is the State Department telling our supposed Libyan allies, “Either you find the people responsible for this, or we will,” and that actually happening because the Libyan government doesn’t want a giant piece of glass on the north side of Africa where Libya used to be. THAT is Teddy Roosevelt’s big stick, despite what our resident idiots-with-Facebook think – the threat of what our military is capable of should we not get what we want using diplomacy.

How naïve of me, to have worried about the president. Because it turns out that the guy who thinks he can be president was the one who’d screw this up.

At 10:09 last night, Mitt Romney started. Oh, he embargoed his statement bashing President Obama until midnight, so he wouldn’t technically be violating the unsaid prohibition against politicking on the anniversary of the worst attack on our country in history (which kind of pisses me off even more, actually. Own it, you weasel.) Anyway, Romney’s statement said:

"I'm outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi. It's disgraceful that the Obama Administration's first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks."

Note: this (the tweets) came BEFORE the fatal attack in Libya, so I guess at that point Romney was responding to a riot at the Cairo embassy, which at one point breached the embassy wall. It sounds awful, and had to have been terrifying for the Americans inside, especially considering what day it was. It was the embassy staff that tweeted the messages Romney apparently objected to, not the White House or the State Department (again, BEFORE the Libya attack.) The relevant tweets are listed on this timeline link. None of them were ok’d by the Obama Administration. And Romney's statement does nothing to point out that the tweets he's responding to were about an impending riot, NOT a murder of a U.S. diplomat.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a statement at 10:38 p.m., and the president’s full official statement came about 7 this morning, confirming Ambassador Chris Stevens’ death. Romney continued to criticize the administration this morning, not admitting that the entire premise of his original statement was wrong, or even saying that the situation was more serious now that U.S. diplomats had been murdered. Instead, Romney continued to conflate tweets from a random embassy staffer with official U.S. foreign policy.

Right now – a full 24 hours after Cairo, after Benghazi – there are Americans in embassies and consulates all over North Africa and the Middle East. There are college students and mission workers volunteering their time. There are employees of multi-national corporations just doing their jobs. And right now, if there really is a coordinated terrorist movement to take out Westerners, every single one of them is a target. It’s the State Department’s, and President Obama’s, job to get them all out of harm’s way before any more sh*t hits the fan.

And a guy who has a 50-50 shot of being our next “decider” going on national TV to basically say “Screw waiting – let’s start lobbing some cruise missiles!” or whatever the hell Romney was going on about – that DOES NOT HELP. A president gets this. (They have TVs in Libya, Mitt! And they watch them!)

A president is also aware of the fact that, 18 months after the Arab Spring, places like Egypt and Libya are going through what countries always go through when they get free of dictators – a long, painful, sometimes violent negotiation between radical and moderate factions. The U.S. may be a symbol, but ultimately it’s not about us. There are times when the best thing we can do is say “My name’s Paul, and this is between y’all,” and get the hell out of Dodge – we’ll be here with aid and investors when y’all get it figured out.

Even other conservatives are saying that Romney should’ve just kept his mouth shut. It isn’t about discretion on 9/11, or about presenting a unified front when our country’s interests are attacked – although Fox News would be having a stroke now if this were 2008 and Obama’d said half of what Romney did today. Romney all but disqualified himself as a potential commander in chief by rushing to judgment, albeit with just as few specifics about what he thinks we should do as he has on the subject of his domestic policy. “No apologies” is not a foreign policy. Does Mitt Romney know that?

It took Franklin Roosevelt days to enter World War II. It took George W. Bush weeks to send troops to Afghanistan after 9/11. It took George Bush months after Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait to launch the Gulf War. It took Mitt Romney mere minutes to declare that President Obama wasn’t doing enough, while not bothering to say what he’d do differently. And who would be affected.

Maybe he just didn’t think that part was important.