Yesterday is Gone

Some of my friends think I’m a culture snob.  I hope not.  I like theatre–we go a lot.  I like dance and have have a subscription to the ballet for decades.  Go less often than I used to but that is because I started to subscribe shortly after Ballanchine died and the New York City Ballet was still wonderful back then.  I hope I’m not turning into a crochety old man but incessant curtain calls for mediocre performances are making me nuts.

Curtain calls used to be for special performances.  I’ve been a New York Yankee fan since the days of Mickey Mantle.  He hit 536 homeruns, some montrously long, many crucial, game winners in the world series, a grand slam in the world series, upper deck jobs that  seemed Ruthian.  Curtain calls?  Maybe at the end of his career (the early years he was booed incessantly for not homering every time up) a few times.  Now there seems to be a curtain call for every routine home run that increases the lead from 7 runs to 8 runs.

Theatre is worse.  I can’t remember the last musical where there wasn’t a standing ovation. I take that back–I do.  I saw “Company” when it was revived last year twice.  The first time was at night and the audience was relatively quiet in their applause until the showstopper ending song “Being Alive.”  But that seemed to inspire even louder applause from a standing audience five minutes later when the show ended.  I saw it again a few weeks later at a matinee with my in laws.  I had promised to take them to see “Company” whenever it was next revived in a major production; they had bought us tickets to see a local performance in their home town which was painful to watch–didn’t want them to wonder why I love Sondheim musicals as much as I do.  New York matinees are filled with elderly theatre goers.  They will stand for a great show but they have seen a lot of great shows over the last 4 decades and they have to be impressed.  The matinee was actually a better performance than the evening one before–there had been a mediocre stand in for one of the characters at the evening show.  But the applause was loud but short.  They had seen the original.  They remembered Dean Jones or Elaine Stritch or Donna McKechnie.

Curtain calls at the ballet are silly nowadays.  On my regular subscription nite, the crowd is rarely overwhelmed as the choreography is less impressive than when Mr. B ran the show.  The company itself has floundered under the direction (misdirection?) of Peter Martins.  It is rare to have an exhilerating evening though individual pieces can be exquisite.  But no matter how unexciting the soloists are–and you can’t make great dance out of mediocre dances– the curtain is pulled and out they come.  Not once but twice.  Half the audience is in the aisles heading for the bathroom or something to drink figuring the alcohol may help them more enjoy the eve  or even trying to dash out to make an early nite of it but there are obligatory curtain calls.  The audience claps briefly and then pauses but nothing stops the second curtain call.

Special occasions are special because they are rare.  We cheapen them when we pretend that they are special because we were there.

In the last three weeks, Hillary Clinton has managed to convince me that she should not be President.  The three main reasons are her pandering, her divisiveness and now her offensiveness, all mixed in with some weird sense of entitlement.  It leaves a miasma that is nauseating.  I’ve begun to doubt her ability to function in the Senate next year–certainly this campaign hasn’t burnished her reputation but tarnished it.

The gas holiday was the classic pander.  To allow Americans to drive more on the Memorial day weekend and through out the summer, federal taxes are to be reduced on gasoline.  Obama gets points for refusing to pretend to be a sugar daddy to the Americans who bought Hummers.  No surprise that McCain joined in–pandering is easy, it is popular, it is short term (and therefore the memory fades quickly).

But what would happen if the national taxes were reduced by say 10 cents.  The immediate reaction of oil companies would be to immediately raise their price 5 cents.  They get away with a price increase and you don’t feel it since the federal government is paying for half of it.  Of course, the federal government is paying only in the sense that there is less money raised, which means we borrow more and the deficit increases.  You have to be pretty dumb to do something like this.

The proposal collapsed instantly because one person refused to be the complete political hack.  Many bad ideas collapse if just one person has the guts to simply say it is a bad idea.  When Guliani was forced to leave the mayor’s office because of term limits, he proposed that everyone immediately deem his leaving office a crisis of epic proportions threatening the safety of the five boroughs and its 8 million occupants.  He suggested that he would be willing to stay in office (that is, stay in power and glory) until the 9/11 crisis was over.  Amend the city charter overnite, change the constitution.  A number of Democratic spineless candidates acquiescensed but one, the Bronx Borough President, said no.  As he said it straightforwardly, that if I’m not able to handle this situation, why am I running for office?  The Guliani for lifetime mayoralty balloon sank as fast as his later presidential campaign sank.  The spineless hacks lost in the primary though the Bronx Borough President later lost to a far superior candidate who had the good fortune to be a billionaire (which to his credit he earned).  The spineless hacks will reappear no doubt to pander again in the next mayoralty election as time limits now prevent Bloomberg from running again.

Hillary’s second strike was her incessant race baiting.  Obama can’t win working class whites.  That might be so.  But the message, like so many of the messages we have seen from Republicans aimed at racial fears, is just that.  It really says there are so many black hating whites that a black person could never win.  Since there are so many of you (us?) out there,  it is OK to be one.  She might be right but the changes in this country since LBJ are substantial–America is a lot less white than it was and a lot less racist than it was.  I don’t insist candidates talk in code.  But to say in the Democratic primary, to say to Democratic voters, that I’m more electable solely because I’m white is tasteless and assumes we are stupid.  I’m voting for any Democrat who will get us out of Iraq and will pick decent people to the Supreme Court.  Electability is an issue I considered when casting my primary ballot.  I am still worried about it.  But I’m not encouraging whites to cast a vote against Obama because he is black.

The reference to the political season not being over because RFK was murdered in June made me think that Hillary was morphing into Nixon.  The Secret Service was assigned to Obama earlier than any other candidate because there are thousands of gun toting racist bastards in this country.  In a country of 300 million, to have thousands of racist fanatics is not a surprise.  And we all feel, even if we are reluctant to express it, some trepidation about one of them getting close enough to attack him.  But to suggest that political assassination is somehow a factor that inures to her benefit and justifies keeping alive a campaign that cannot win (for her) and can only lose (for the Democrats) is offensive.  Hillary apologized to the Kennedys.  What about to Obama’s family?

If I am Obama, that ends Hillary being on the ticket and for good measure, I’m not bailing out her campaign debts either.

CBS News is rumored to be ready to dump Katie Couric from the evening news.  It is good news and sad news.  It is good in that perhaps CBS will look for a serious journalist instead of a puff piece reader to head the evening news; it is sad to reflect how poorly the public is served by the news media.  I grew up listening to Walter Cronkite.  In that era at CBS, the Evening News wasn’t a big money maker but it was prestigious.  It was important for  a public serrvice media to have serious news for its listeners.  And CBS, with Walter Cronkite was the most prestigious.  LBJ is said to have planned his resignation when Cronkite turned against the Vietnam War, reportedly telling advisors (Johnson had advisors?) that if he has lost Cronkite he has lost the country.

The Evening News is hardly prestigious anymore for any station, just another profit maker or in most cases a non profit maker.   I suspect the stations would be happy to show another round of Jeopardy on reruns rather than spend the money it takes to  present real news.  Simultaneously,  fewer and fewer people read serious newspapers anymore. The simultaneous splintering of the media with so many channels of so much banality and the dumbing down are like a double play  of bad events.  There is so little “hard” news, so little unbaised news.  The big three are no longer the big three–ABC, NBC, and CBS have less and less influence.  Fox , the de facto organ of the Republican party, has also contributed to the dumbing down of the news.  “Soft” features instead of hard news is felt to get better ratings and is cheaper to produce.  Why do you need overseas correspondents when you can focus on whether a potato chip looks like some soon forgotten celebrity?  Katie Couric was hired because she was cute, vivacious, and would bring popularity if not substance back to CBS.  The only real effect of her hiring was to chase serious viewers to the other networks.  When I ask what channel my step son at Bates watches, he told me the BBC.  It is the only station that has information about the world and world events.  I’ve started watching the BBC on BBC-America.  He is right.
Cronkite and his era of broadcasters were journalists, not TV personalities.  Eric Severeid was a war correspondent during WWII as was Cronkite.  One felt that Huntley and Brickley were serious people, even well read.  They were involved in the writing of the news.  They transferred to TV after a career of serious journalism and brought their sense of journalism ethics to TV.  The newscasters of the last decade are not journalists.  They’ve never written for a paper, never done research, prepared their own  interviews or  dug up stories.  They read words  that someone else has written.  CBS would have been a lot wiser to have hired Bob Scheiffer as a permanent replacement–Cronkite’s seat would have remained with a person of gravitas.

Is there hope for intelligent journalism on TV?  I don’t know.  CNN has made an effort and gotten surprisingly good ratings for trying to be a serious news station.  Their election coverage is far better than CBS’ right now.  Their ratings will never be as popular as Cronkite’s were in his era but that is true for all stations.  Perhaps though it will survive and make money in the same way that classical radio stations make it.  Classical radio  listeners are not that numerous but they are prosperous and well educated.  Advertisers still want smart, well educated people who buy expensive things.  And maybe even Republicans will want real news not Fox/ faux news.  Mencken is supposed to have said that no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the average American; that seems to be the mission statement  of the Murdoch empire.  Maybe with the Couric experiment over, it will no longer be the position of CBS.

There is a well known rule in politics that people will not tell pollsters the truth about issues that reflect badly on them. It is most common with race. It is a great thing about this country that people are uncomfortable  to say something that will appear racist. Ask a person in a poll whether they will vote for a better black man over a less qualified white man and the result is largely going to be yes. And it is a fairly accurate statement. People will find ways unconsciously to find the white person more qualified. Polling for newspaper headlines can almost always let you determine the result; it is the choice of the question  though even such wording  can be useful if you ask the same questions for years. It is certain that more people would answer that question “yes” in 2007 than would have 20 years ago ( a more interesting question is to ask Black voters whether whites would vote for a more qualified black person). But it is no coincidence that the solid Democratic South that won all those elections for FDR, Truman and even Kennedy is now the solid Republican South. It turned as soon as Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights legislation in the mid 60’s and shows no sign of reversing. Southern whites abandoned the Democrats over race and the south is politically more segregated than it was 40 years ago. Democrats continue to try to win nationally by having southerners at the head of the ticket and it has workedalbeit barely for Jimmy Carter (who beat the weakest Republican candidate to run in 50 years) and for Bill Clinton (the more you think about it, the more amazing that is).  It hasn’t been the smartest of strategies but that is another issue.

But what about Obama? Can he persuade white voters to win for him in significant numbers?

Some things suggest he can. This country has changed dramatically since the civil rights movement.  In the late 50’s Nat King Cole had a TV show that southern stations refused to put on the air.  Now,  among the most popular advertising icons are Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan and Derek Jeter. It is significant that two are biracial, like Obama. Tiger is a phenomena, certainly the greatest player of the last 20 years, perhaps the greatest golfer of all time. And he is playing in what is a white, upper middle class sport. If there is a sport you have to take up for business, golf is it. Part of the perks a friend of mine receives as chief lobbyist for a big firm is memberships in two golf clubs, both exclusive, both near D.C. so he can take his guests out as part of his lobbying efforts. I’m told the membership fees are a quarter million dollars.  That is the world Tiger succeeds in.    Tiger is also perceived as non threatening to the status quo–one suspects that Augusta would still be segregated if he had been the first black player to be eligible.
Jordan is also disassociated with the civil rights movement though he played in  one of two major league sports dominated by black Americans.   But Jordan has never been associated with the gangster rap style of either basketball or football players. He may also have peaked as an advertising draw–don’t see him being the equivalent of Joe DiMaggio’s Mr. Coffee at age 60. Jeter who by most accounts is a far nicer person than the other two,  is applauded for his sense of team play, for his clutch, for simply appreciating the game as few other players do. He speaks well, reflecting his parent’s education (Jeter is only a high school graduate), and guards his privacy and reputation from scandal with zeal. Jeter could be Mr. Coffee after his retirement.  I think Jeter is seen as racially neutral for advertising purposes.  Can Obama be seen as racially neutral for white voters?
What started this thought were two separate events. First the polls show both Clinton and Obama beating McCain but not close to  the margins one would expect considering the same newspapers reflect polls thinking 81% of the country thinks we have lost our way. The Clinton campaign has made no secret that its strategy from here on will be “we can win, he can’t” with the unstated but understood subtext that no black person is going to get white male whites while their candidate is so tough the same voters might forget she’s a woman.
The second event was going thru security at O’Hare. Upon seeing my driver’s license and possibly because he recognized me, the TSA guard said “when you get to your home state, give my regards to Governor Paterson, that great morale leader.”  Now Governor Paterson is a political hack, a man of undistinguished qualities who no one thought would have any role whatsoever in the running of NY State, considering how insignificant the Lt. Governor job is and how overbearing Eliot Spitzner was.  But Paterson’s marital infidelities hardly cast any real morale outrage in NY.   It isn’t the first time a political family has had marital difficulties.  And I’m not sure sexual infidelity is a big issue anymore.  I don’t remember Reagan losing all those votes because he had been divorced.  If Spitzer hadn’t been seen as such a holier than thou son of a bitch, I think he could  have ridden out the storm–the only real problems were the use of state police to get him to and fro the liascons.  But the TSA guy never mentioned Spitzer, a much better target in his comment.  Just Paterson, the person perceived not incorrectly as being on the ticket (and now Governor)  because he was black.

Needless to say, the TSA guy was a young white male,  and this remark was seen by me as a racially tainted remark (can’t imagine what the remark would have been if the Paterson fling was with a white woman).    Can Obama win may come down to can he make enough TSA type males think of him as something other than black.

Being bi-racial is a big advantage to Obama.  Not being raised in a black environment–he was raised by his white mother and went to school in Hawaii, not exactly a state dominated by black people–Obama lacks the urban, raised in black neighborhood political vocabulary and style  that make many black politicians successful locally and yet makes them unable to win outside black areas.  If his wife were allowed to talk more, she would sink the campaign since she sounds like an inner city policitian–she is  too angry in tone, there is an edge to her, her inner sense of constituency is too limited to win as a minority candidate.
I’m not sure who is the stronger of the two Democrats; if I were a super delegate my vote would be for whoever I felt could win.  If either could, I’d be inclined to vote for Obama but there is some truth to the statement he hasn’t won a real primary in any state the Democrats have to win.   The Governor of Pennsylvania made the “politically incorrect” but probably politically accurate comment that many of his voters aren’t ready to vote for a black man.  Obama has to impress them that he is at least more white than black.  He still has time.

The biggest selling issue of Sports Illustrated is the annual swim suit issue.  The models are  beautiful though the stories that go with it are fluff about fluff–I stopped reading that part years ago.  Most models are barely high school graduates; some might live interesting lives for a brief period of time but not for long.  And a travelogue about how they film someone in some resort is not likely to get me to make a reservation.  I really don’t think it matters where you photograph women in bathing suits, do you?  To attempt to give it a patina of class by suggesting some justification for going to the Virgin Islands to shoot is nonsense.  It has to be warm–you don’t shoot cheesecake of the coast of Maine in February.

Notwithstanding Oscar Wilde’s  observation that it is only the shallow people who do not judge by appearances,  I’m amazed that  this issue makes so much money.  Each year the issue  gets bigger and bigger as do the models’ chests, the enhancements somewhat  squeezing into spandex the size of the masks they wear in Japan to avoid spreading colds.    I’m not a prude.  I notice women on the street who are scantilly dressed though I never turn around–that would be losing some secret battle of one upmanship.  But  it has been  three decades since I last read Playboy and have never read Penthouse and who knows what else is on the market.

I can’t figure out how the dichotomy of sex selling fits into  this very religious country.  I think I know who is  buying Sports Illustrated–generally normal males I believe–but   who is watching  the  nonsense on sin on TV?  How many of them co-exist with the rest of us who buy the swimsuit issue to look at quasi naked women.  And are more people repulsed or curious about politicians and sex?

The issue following the  SI swimsuit  always used to feature panting letters from teenagers asking  about more pictures as well as irate mothers cancelling their teenage sons subscriptions describing the issue as porn.  I expect my teenage nephews to look carefully over the issue but I’m told that teenagers see so much hard core porn on the internet that this is nothing.  Gee, I’m old enough to remember when kids took out National Geographic just to see half naked women in third world cultures.
Beauty is an advantage. To be  more attractive helps a woman to succeed as it has always been an advantage for a man to be tall.  But I never thought models or woman who become bunnies or pets to be anything but exploited, sad people.  The idea of putting them on a pedestal is laughable.  Yet last weeks issue of SI has a Red Sox rookie pitcher’s Dad announcing that his son is moving up the ladder since he is now dating a Penthouse Pet instead of a Victoria’s secret model.  That is moving up the ladder?  What is the ultimate–going out with a $1000 hour hooker a la Eliot Spitzer?  When I was growing up, my high school women classmates thought being a cheerleader was exploitive–they were all for woman as atheletes not women as cheerleaders.  And in high schools, that has changed for the better as cheerleader competitions are gymnastic exhibitions.  But what role do cheerleaders at professional football games serve?  It just seems to encourage crude behavior by overconsuming beer thugs.

I remember when Wayne Gretzky married another centerfold star.  It was very awkward in the locker room since her picture was well known around the room before she was ever introduced to any of them.    I would be more than a little uncomfortable knowing too many intimate physical details about my teammates’ spouses.

“Gypsy” reopens this week with Patti Lupone in the title role.  The show isn’t about Gypsy Rose Lee, the famous stripper.  It is about her mother, Rose, and what she does to make her children successes.  And in real life she did succeed.  Both Gypsy and her sister had careers on stage.  Perhaps otherwise they would have been waitresses in Seattle.  But they paid for their success. Burlesque was big  entertainment in the 20’s though my impressions have always been that it was a lot more like the scenes in “Gypsy” from Kansas City featuring 3 down and out strippers struggling to get by than the glamourous star that emerges at the end of the play.  Gypsy is great theater–if you have never seen it performed, you’ve really missed how great Broadway can be.  The book is terrific, the music is great, Sondheim’s lyrics are incomparable and no show has ever matched “Rose’s Turn” as an ending.  But I’m still with Herbie, Rose’s agent who walks out when Rose has her daughter become a stripper to be a success.  And I really wouldn’t want to hang out with penthouse pets, strippers or the like.  It is too damn exploitive.

It is a New Yorkism to say that ” he treats people like garbage.”  Tends to come from people of my father’s generation.  Trash is too soft sounding a word; sewage would work about as well.  Heard that a lot about Eliot Spitzer this week.

It is amazing, is it not, to see how quickly this man was written off.  I don’t recall seeing anyone saying a kind word about him, saying the usual pablum of spinmakers that he was a valuable politician or  he accomplished great deeds.  Besides the Republicans who he has threatened with his infamous bluster that he is a “[expletive deleted] steamroller”–love using that Nixonian term, his major contribution to American culture–and the wall streeters who hated his holier than thou qualities who you would expect to rejoice in his downfall, the complete absence of any of his former supporters saying a kind word is startling.

Spitzer had a mandate when elected.  He proceeded to throw it  away when  by immediately investigating the opposition for misuse of a state plane–had all the qualities of a political witchhunt.  Ironically, the state Republican leader is being investigated by the feds right now and he may be gone soon as well.   But Spitzer’s actions  looked so underhanded, so much of a set up,  that his ratings dropped like a stone.  The public had no feeling of warmth towards him.  His political allies obviously couldn’t stand him.  Now NY, , facing a financial crisis due to the rapid slide of the nation’s economy,  has a new light weight governor of unknown talents who was placed in that position solely because he balanced the ticket.  No one imagined that he would ever matter.
Was at the Cooper-Hewitt museum today looking at the rococo exhibit.  Rococo, I learned, is a very ornate style of decoration dating back to Louie XV which reappears periodically in periods of unbridled prosperity.  Its main feature is excess.  Completely over the top.  The quality of Spitzer’s downfall has that same quality of imperial excess.  I’m not sure if he will be indicted for his crimes–usually Johns are not though Dick Summer tells me in Sweden they are the ones arrested.  But how overbearingly stupid can someone be?  Spitzer was not only someone who prosecuted high priced prostitution but did so in the name of morality.  Mr. Clean not only went after greedy bastards in Wall Street but expensive sex rings.  He knew that his bank accounts would be watched.  Yet he converted  $80,000 into cash to pay off  hookers.  And no one is supposed to notice?
Incidentally, where does one carry $5000 in bills?  Even in hundreds it must have  made a bulge in his suit.      Or was it in his carry on  bag–won’t those  X ray machines show up a bundle of cash?    And how does a governor go to his local North Fork bank and leave unnoticed with $5000 or so in cash?   Wouldn’t someone comment?  Some teller has to think “who is he paying off with $5000?”

The big joke in  DC is why did he pay $1000/hour for his liaison to travel by train to Washington.  They are confident DC  has the local talent to take care of him and delivery  is cheaper.   I understand why she would want to take the slow train  but  a Harvard educated lawyer could have done the math and put her on the Acela.  Regular train is 3.5 hours and the Acela cuts that down by 45 minutes which is $750 of billing time.  And she would be in such a better mood by avoiding the hoi polloi on the regional train.  And one does not hire a $1000 hooker to get someone who mingles with the hoi polloi.    And why does he only have to pay to get her there and not the return travel?  Was it $1000/hr plus the cost of the round trip ticket?  And the four state troopers guarding him?  Where do they stay while he is at a suite at the Mayflower?  And exactly what is there job if a unidentified person can casually walk into his room?

When the 2000 election was in the Supreme Court, my brother and I would chat as to how this was the most amazing, historical election, something we would all talk about and kids would read about. In the end, George Bush, who is making Jimmy Carter seem like the second coming of George Washington, was appointed President 5-4. The election was almost that close. It has been a terrible 8 years. But as my mentor used to advise me the more the pendulum swings to one side, the more eventually it will swing back and 2008 might just be that year. Like 2000, it really is an amazing campaign.

Bill Clinton, who managed to be out of the headlines for a few weeks is back again. Having announced that Hillary’s campaign would be over if she couldn’t win Texas and Ohio at a time that momentum seemed to have finally swung over to Obama for the last and final time, it seemed like he was preparing her to gracefully give way. But the “big mo” just stopped. Senator Clinton, presumed on life support somehow now seems stronger than she has been in months. I thought she was preparing her concession speech; now the dream ticket idea is being talked about. I don’t think it will happen. Don’t think Obama wants to be on her ticket. But the significant change is that the assumption is that she will be offering him the second chair while a month ago questions in a debate in California were to him asking about her. Just amazing. And if she does win Pennsylvania, the professionals who are supposeably the super delegates will have to consider who can win the blue states and maybe a red state or two and be President.

I have a few meters to gauge politics. My own sense of what is going on is not one of them. When I did survey research in college, I felt I had a sense of what polls meant, where they were useful, when they were not. When I got to law school (I went to school in DC), I quickly realized that politics was not something I really wanted to do, I would never be very good at it but I learned one lesson: listening to people in DC was useless. It was what people do in Washington. They talk politics to each other, they think politics, they report in whispers what the insiders report to them but the truth is you might as well just read the Washington Post–it is mostly stories being repeated until they become conventional wisdom. There may well be people who have their pulses on the American public but I’m not one of them and I don’t know anyone whose numbers I trust. So I use the responses of people I know well to gauge how others must be thinking.

For Senator Clinton, the gauges are middle class professional women. I’ve never quite understood why they seem to dislike her intensely. I’m not fond of her–always seems rather cold to me–but I don’t dislike her. Most professional women I know do. But on the other hand, they all think she is pretty smart, more principled than I think she is and think she is being unfairly portrayed. They always say the pictures of her in the paper are unflattering. She isn’t photogenic but it always seems a contest to see which photo is the most goofy looking–when they find it, it is page one. And my professional women’s diall shifts back and forward. It now seems to be to the Hillary side, more sympathetic, that her ideas on health insurance can outweigh her other baggage. If she can’t win these people over, she can’t win but once again she seems to be making headway. Maybe the crush on Obama is over.

Two numbers for today. A recent book estimated that we are now spending $12 billion in Iraq each month. The NY Times today reported that because of the rise in oil, Iraq is expected to earn $56 billion in profits on oil this year.

When Bush first invaded Iraq, there was an undercurrent of rumors that went essentially “this is really to keep the price of oil down–we’ll immediately save the oil wells and take them over.” In fact, securing the oil wells was an immediate goal. But the incompetent boobs who planned and approved the invasion have never figured out how to stabilize the economy and even today Iraq has less electricity, less oil production and just about less of everything in spite of billions and billions of dollars we have spend supposeably rebuilding infra structure. Can you imagine spending billions each month on troops, supplies, Haliburton and yet there is less country there than there was before we threw in the billions of dollars?

Meanwhile this country is going into a major recession. The price of oil is an obvious cause but food prices have shot up. Corn is being turned into gasoline; the costs to farmers to run their tractors is up and other now more prosperous countries are Americanizing their diets, eating more meat (which requires more grain to feed more cattle and other farm animals), raising the demand for grain. Simultaneously there has been an enormous drought in Australia that has ruined many crops in a traditional grain exporting country. We are going to spend the next 10 months of this lame duck administration throwing away another $120 billion. And we keep borrowing money to throw away the 120 billion on a venture that any objective person would say was a bad idea from day one which only gets worse.

John McCain is going to keep us there for 100 years if need be at a cost of $12 billion per month and never raise taxes since that would be bad for the economy. Do you think we can create a national health program for 120 billion? Do you think we can rebuild an infrastructure in this country for 120 billion? Iraq has 56 billion right now in oil that can be used on their own infrastructure though I admit I suspect most of that money is never going to wind up in public works projects but in private militia pockets.

It has been time to get out since the day we discovered that there were no weapons of mass destruction and that we had been lied to or been misinformed. Now it is becoming an economic imperative to get out.

There is a trial going on in Queens, NY this week.  It isn’t an unusual trial but it is a noteworthy one.  It isn’t unusual since it involves police officers, usually white, and shots fired at people, usually black.  There have been a number of such events.  I’m sure they were frequent in the 30’s, 40’s, 50’s in NY and in every major northern city.  They were frequent but not particularly noteworthy during the same time periods in southern cities and no doubt more frequent.  After all, white cops/poor blacks is a theme in Porgy & Bess–and George Gershwin wrote that music in the early 1930’s.

But times have changed.  Many big cities have had major recruitment drives to increase their minority representation in the police force (and in recent years, to get woman to apply for the jobs).  NYC certainly has.  When I was a public defender in the mid 1970’s in Manhattan, a fair number of the police officers were black or hispanic, particularly on the undercover drug teams where being  a white undercover in a black neighborhood bordered on silly.  Black police officers volunteered for this incredibly dangerous work, which often required wearing a wire under your clothing living with the  fear of being patted down by very bad guys with guns.  They volunteered because it was the quickest way to a promotion to Detective.   For what it worth I never found black officers to be more truthful or sympathetic to my clients who ethnically were overwhelming minorities,  than their white counterparts but the black cops didn’t express their hatred of the defendants with the same visceral impact of their white brethren.  The theory behind recruitments were that minority officers were less likely to be racist, would have a better understanding of cultural differences and their presence would seem less oppressive.  I guess that is so.  Yet there is no doubt in my mind, then and now, that young black males are pulled over for questioning when a white male doing the same activity in a white neighborhood would not.  It is also true that 90% of my clients and an even higher percentage of those indicted for serious crimes were black or hispanic.

This trial involves an undercover investigation of clubs in South Jamaica, a largely black neighborhood.  South Jamaica isn’t necessary a poor neighborhood–it was the home of many black celebrities in the entertainment business and in the St. Albans portion, the homes are valuable and attractive.  However the poorer areas are particularly poor and drugs and crime are high though not nearly as high as it was a decade ago or when I was practicing criminal law.   The undercover team was supposeably investigating drugs, prostitution but so far the testimony has been of a team without much to do trying to justify what they did do.  A young man, black, drunk, at a bachelor party got into a fight outside with another man, conversations may or may not have been overheard suggesting a gun (one police theory is he went to his car to get his gun to take care of someone inside–sadly a not uncommon report involving late nite clubs), an unmarked police car may have moved up when it was rammed by the drunk young man, and police opened fire.  A number of police officers are charged with manslaughter as 50 bullets were fired.

There are a number of unusual historical events here.  First the police are being charged.  It wasn’t covered up.  In fact strong political pressure was applied against the police instead of in favor of the police.  The sense that the police defendants would be convicted was so strong that in a borough that is still majority white, the defendants, one of whom is black, chose to waive a jury and let the judge try the  case.  Can you imagine in the 50’s that a white police officer would waive a jury in front of his largely white jurors?  That is quite a cultural change.  Would Bull Connor have waived a jury if prosecuted in state court in the early 1960’s (of course the jury would have been 100% white as blacks couldn’t vote and therefore would never be jurors)?  Would any cop have done so in Queens even in the 1970s?

We have the usual outside the courtroom  buffoonery of Al Sharpton (exactly what does he do for a living and does he ever pay taxes?) keeping his name in the paper but now there is no jury to inflame, his presense will just be a 30 second nuisance captured in the photo op.  But even so, outside of the media looking for a personality, his presence is marginal at best.  This too is different.

We have the prosecutor bringing in the police team commander to testify against his troops and mostly trying to not get fired and yet not help the prosecution.  This lieutenant’s  ineptitude has been startling; it earlier came out that the undercovers were drinking on duty at the club and perhaps a little too much.   I’m not sure what the prosecution has to work with since the obvious defense is the cops were in fear of their lives and panicked.  Once someone starts shooting, everyone grabs their gun is a common thought.  In fact it is amazing in NYC how infrequently police fire their guns–the entire force will fire less in a year than an average Kojak episode and most times the first shot comes closer to hitting their foot than the target.   Here they kept firing though no one was firing back.

I’m not one to discount fear.  When I went on my investigations of crimes scenes, I rarely went alone.  The investigators that worked for my office were all retired police officers and all carried guns.   I wasn’t all that thrilled when they dropped me off at subway stations in bad neighborhoods–almost all these crimes were in bad neighborhoods– late at nite to go home (you went at nite because you wanted to see the scene at the same time the event occurred, though nite often was just after dark–the investigators weren’t getting overtime).   I don’t know if I would have the guts to be a cop in NYC.  The excitement is all in the rough neighborhoods; writing speeding tickets and routine traffic patrol is a soft job.  Most police work through out the country is routine and boring.  But I’ve heard enough stories from officers I believed and represented enough unpleasant people to understand how easy it is to overreact–you can really get hurt if you hesitate.

So what is going to happen?  I don’t know.  The deceased was drunk, rammed into a vehicle but otherwise was just a drunken kid and we see them every day.  They don’t routinely get shot and killed.  The police officers have proved themselves incapable of doing their job and have to be retired/fired.  But I doubt there was any pattern of abuse with these men nor has it come out they were cowboys.  It looks like terrible judgment, panic and horrible circumstances.  If the deceased had a gun and just hadn’t gotten it out in time, it would be played up as an heroic event.  Glad I’m not the judge; I’d be looking for an inability to prove intent.

Does anyone really doubt that Roger Clemens  stayed Roger Clemens without the aid of performance inducing drugs?  Atheletes don’t get bigger and stronger as their careers approach twilight; they get heavier, slower, the fast ball velocity drops.  When he threw the bat at Piazza didn’t you suspect ‘roid rage?

What I can’t figure out is why did his lawyers invite the Congressional hearing?  What was the possible upside?  It is obvious they knew something was up–the bipartisanship of this hearing was distressing–but still it is likely someone is going to recommend an investigation.  I couldn’t imagine letting one of my clients putting himself in a criminal investigation stoplight and daring something to do something.  I doubt the feds had any case against him without the hearing.  Who is their witness?  A former cop thrown off the force–cops getting dismissed is a pretty rare occasion though I haven’t heard what was the cause.   That will come out during a trial.   And all this Human Growth Hormone (HGH).  How did this trainer get such a drug?  In the Balco scandal book, much of the HGH was bought from AIDs patients who were prescribed this drug because they were suffering from “wasting”.  Wouldn’t you love to cross examine him about who he got the drug (illegally) from.  By the way, giving someone an illegal drug is a drug sale in most states.  I wonder how many drug sales this guy would have to admit to on the witness stand.
So before the hearings there was a dishonest ex-cop and no confirming evidence.  It was a basic “yes he did, no I didn’t” case which is a dog to prosecute.  Now there is some linkage–juries love DNA testing even if it isn’t clear exactly what it proves since Clemens hasn’t denied getting shots–but even this evidence is pretty insignificant so I still think it is unlikely that there will be a prosecution.  Maybe in light of the way the Republicans defended him, the lawyer really does feel he has an a friend in the White House.

As for Petitte, his former close friend and protege I must admit to a  slight  sense of  schadenfreude.     I find his  illegal drug use somewhat of a relief–I won’t have to listen to his  religious babble as the  reason his  pitches sink or don’t sink in the strike  zone.  But I’m more convinced than ever that this is only a small sampling of the performance enhancing drug use.  The Balco scandal involves only a few trainers/drug salesmen.  But every teen age kid in a gym seems able to find people who have steroids for sale.  Every player near the Mexican border can find performance enhancers; the Dominican players seem to have no trouble as teenagers bulking up.  The FDA rules aren’t as tight there  and the poverty is so wretched that the risks of steroids is a reasonable risk to many of these kids.
But if this occurs in baseball where bulk isn’t everything, what about football where bulk is everything?  Does anyone really doubt that every linesman in professional football and probably every college linesman does steroids?  How often are they tested?  And how often do they test positive?  Be real.  And what about olympic weightlifters?  Runners? The Balco scandal showed that a planned strategy of performance enhancement could change a top 200 sprinter into a top 4 sprinter.  And the bike racers with blood doping?  It makes you wish your favorite sport was curling.