BY EDWIN COONEY
Written Friday, May 25th, 2007
As I’ve stated on numerous occasions—privately as well as in my columns—I’m a Jimmy Carter Democrat and have remained so, through thick and thin, since 1976.
Last weekend, my political hero startled some pretty impressionable people by asserting that the Bush administration was the worst in history in-so-far as our effect on the world was concerned.
The former president’s assertions in the Democratic Gazette of Little Rock, Arkansas as well as over the BBC were considered by many to have been exceedingly harsh and even unprecedented. Douglas Brinkley, one of Mr. Carter’s biographers, called his remarks “fighting words,” suggesting that Jimmy Carter’s words were unusually abusive to President George W. Bush.
It’s hard to understand how Mr. Brinkley could reach that conclusion had he bothered to do just a little research. Former presidents have often been every bit as harsh on their successors.
One of the richest sources for what former presidents have said about each other is William A. DeGregorio’s Complete Book of U.S. Presidents. The following presidential observations are from the fourth edition of Mr. DeGregorio’s work.
President Washington had no predecessor to criticize him. However, criticism by Thomas Paine -- whom many consider to be the Father of the American Revolution through publication of his famous pamphlet “Common Sense”, which swore enmity to all tyrannies -- was pretty powerful stuff by the end of President Washington’s second term of office. Paine, who gained the admiration and friendship of George Washington during and after the American Revolution, felt abandoned by Washington when Paine became a prisoner during the French revolution. In an angry open letter to President Washington from France in 1796, Thomas Paine excoriated George Washington thusly:
“AND AS TO YOU, SIR, TREACHEROUS TO PRIVATE FRIENDSHIP (FOR SO YOU HAVE BEEN TO ME, AND THAT IN THE DAY OF DANGER) AND A HYPOCRITE IN PUBLIC LIFE, THE WORLD WILL BE PUZZLED TO DECIDE, WHETHER YOU ARE AN APOSTATE OR IMPOSTER, WHETHER YOU ABANDONED GOOD PRINCIPLES OR WHETHER YOU EVER HAD ANY.”
President Washington more than survived Thomas Paine’s attack, but many, especially Jeffersonian Republicans, deeply believed that Washington’s tendency to lean toward Britain was elitist and potentially damaging to Thomas Paine’s perpetual goal—freedom.
Thomas Jefferson didn’t live to see Andrew Jackson become President, but he witnessed Jackson’s frequent rages on the floor of the United States Senate. Jackson was a young Senator from Tennessee and Jefferson, Vice President under John Adams, was Senate President when he asserted that Jackson was “…A DANGEROUS MAN.”
John Quincy Adams as Secretary of State under James Monroe had supported Andrew Jackson when Secretary of War John C. Calhoun wanted Jackson arrested following his 1820 invasion of Spanish Florida. He was defeated for re-election as President by Old Hickory in 1828. Of Jackson John Quincy Adams later wrote:
“A BARBARIAN WHO COULD NOT WRITE A SENTENCE OF GRAMMAR AND WHO COULD HARDLY SPELL HIS OWN NAME.”
Whether it was pure anger over his defeat by Jackson or jealousy of Jackson’s popularity that led John Quincy Adams to attack Jackson isn’t clear. What is clear however is that Adams saw Andrew Jackson, with all of his popularity, to be an inferior individual and leader.
President James Knox Polk was conducting a war with Mexico in 1848 which many -- including Illinois Representative Abraham Lincoln -- considered to be an immoral war despite America’s triumph. Said Lincoln of President Polk:
“I MORE THAN SUSPECT THAT HE IS DEEPLY CONSCIOUS OF BEING IN THE WRONG—THAT HE FEELS THE BLOOD OF THIS WAR, LIKE THE BLOOD OF ABEL, CRYING IN HEAVEN AGAINST HIM…HE IS A DEEPLY BEWILDERED, CONFOUNDED, AND A MISERABLY PERPLEXED MAN.”
Whatever President Polk might or might not have felt about his presidency in general or the war in particular, his weakened physique enabled him to live only three months and eleven days after his term. He died on June 15th, 1849.
Former president Franklin Pierce, whose own personal tragedies and failings led up to the Civil War, said of President Lincoln:
“LINCOLN IS, FOR ALL HIS LIMITED ABILITY AND NARROW INTELLIGENCE, THE ABOLITIONISTS’ WILLING INSTURMENT FOR ALL THE WOE WHICH, THUS FAR, HAS BEEN BROUGHT UPON THE COUNTRY FOR ALL THE DEGRADATION, ALL THE ATROCITY, AND ALL THE DESOLATION AND RUIN.”
Like President Washington, Abraham Lincoln easily survived the attacks on him made by “handsome Frank” Pierce, primarily because Pierce by the mid 1860s was seen even by his New Hampshire neighbors as having been a political and personal failure due to personal tragedy and perhaps even heavy drinking.
Then, of course, there was Teddy Roosevelt’s assessment of Woodrow Wilson. TR was never happy; it seems, with any president who served after he did:
“FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE, NEVER ALLUDE TO WILSON AS AN IDEALIST, MILITAIRE, OR AN ALTRUIST. HE IS A DOCTRINAIRE WHEN HE CAN BE SO WITH SAFETY TO HIS PERSONAL AMBITION….HE HASN’T A TOUCH OF IDEALISM IN HIM. HIS ADVOCACY OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS NO MORE REPRESENTS IDEALISM ON HIS PART THAN DID HIS ADVOCACY OF PEACE WITHOUT VICTORY….HE IS A SILLY DOCTRINAIRE AT TIMES, AND A COLD-BLOODED POLITICIAN ALWAYS.”
TR’s criticism of Wilson came in 1919 just days before his January 6th death while President Wilson traveled triumphantly through Europe following the November 11th, 1918 armistice that ended “The Great War” and “saved the world for democracy,”--a sentiment expressed by Wilson and millions of others.
Former President Truman’s assessments of Republicans were seldom if ever gentle. In the volume the late Stephen Ambrose wrote about Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency, he quoted Truman as saying of Ike:
“HE DOESN’T KNOW ANY MORE ABOUT BEING PRESIDENT THAN A PIG KNOWS ABOUT SUNDAY.”
Truman’s assessment of General Eisenhower in Mr. DeGregorio’s book doesn’t represent an improvement of President Truman’s evaluation of President Eisenhower in Professor Ambrose’s book:
“IKE DIDN’T KNOW ANYTHING AND ALL THE TIME HE WAS IN OFFICE, HE DIDN’T LEARN A THING. IN 1959, WHEN CASTRO CAME TO POWER DOWN IN CUBA, IKE JUST SAT ON HIS ASS AND ACTED AS IF HE DIDN’T NOTICE WHAT WAS GOING ON DOWN THERE. WHY, MAYBE CASTRO WOULD JUST GO AWAY OR SOMETHING.”
One of Mr. Truman’s least favorite politicians in any party was future President Richard M. Nixon. What President Truman said about Richard Nixon may have been said long before RMN was elected. It goes as follows:
“RICHARD NIXON IS A NO-GOOD LYING BASTARD. HE CAN LIE OUT OF BOTH SIDES OF HIS MOUTH AT THE SAME TIME AND IF HE EVER CAUGHT HIMSELF TELLING THE TRUTH, HE’D LIE, JUST TO KEEP HIS HAND IN.”
As harsh as it sounded last weekend, by comparison with the above, Jimmy Carter’s assessment of George W. Bush as “AS THE WORST PRESIDENT IN OUR HISTORY IN-SO-FAR AS OUR PLACE IN THE WORLD IS CONCERNED,” is reasonably mild. However, it brought down on Mr. Carter the force of all of the Conservative dogma attacks which those of us sympathetic to Jimmy Carter have heard since he was President. Accordingly, President Carter is far more affective when he addresses himself to issues than he is when he addresses himself to personalities or persons.
Every former president has an official right that President Carter knows about and actually spoke of some years ago in an interview. That right is to address the United States Senate at any time.
Suppose President Carter, feeling as he did about President Bush’s pending invasion of Iraq in March of 2003, had availed himself of this prerogative and had appeared before the U.S. Senate to say something like this:
“I STAND BEFORE YOU TODAY, NOT IN OPPOSITION TO OUR PRESIDENT, FOR I KNOW WHAT IT IS TO SERVE AS PRESIDENT AND THUS TO SUFFER ALL OF THE FRUSTRATIONS WHICH THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF THAT OFFICE OFTEN BRING TO ITS OCCUPANT. NOR, DO I COME AS AN OPPONENT OF ALL WAR BECAUSE, TERRIBLE AS IT IS, WAR CAN BE ESSENTIAL TO HUMAN FREEDOM AND INDIVIDUAL SECURITY.
“I STAND BEFORE YOU TODAY RATHER IN SAD OPPOSITION TO PRESIDENT BUSH’S PROPOSED INVASION OF IRAQ BECAUSE I SEE WITHIN THE VERY CIRCUMSTANCE OF THAT INVASION THE GATEWAY, NOT TO VICTORY OVER TERRORISM, BUT RATHER TO AN UNINTENDED INVITATION TO THE INCREASE OF DEADLIER AND MORE WIDESPREAD TERRORISM…”
I think it might have been a hell of a speech and might well have increased Jimmy Carter’s status as a statesman even if it had brought him temporary criticism.
I’d have been delighted to help him write the speech. Late as it is—I just did.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Monday, May 28, 2007
Saturday, May 19, 2007
EVERY DAY MATTERS -- This One Perhaps Most of All
BY EDWIN COONEY
Written Friday, May 18th, 2007
Yah, I know, my ex-wife -- a lady of uncommon judgment and uncanny foresight -- IS right—I must have way too much time on my hands when I do what I did today.
The problem is that I have an ingrained obsession about the significance of historic events and the dates on which they occurred. Thus, I hit the internet to learn what important or significant events had taken place on May the 18ths of the past. As usual, I was fascinated. Not only that, I almost decided for myself what I believe to be the most significant event that occurred in history on this date. However, since I couldn’t quite make up my mind, I did what I always do in such instances.
I went to my local watering hole to find my buddies Lunkhead and Dunderhead—and there they were. Lunkhead was looking a little grim leaning on his left elbow, the fingers of his left hand spread through what little hair he has, a dead cigar poking out of the left side of his mouth, and his scotch glass about a third empty. Dunderhead was leaning on his right elbow looking to his left along the bar at Lunkhead with a self-satisfied smirk on his thin face as though he’d just said something very clever to Lunkhead. There was a nearly full glass of beer in front of him.
“What’s up?” I asked, as I took the stool between them and ordered a beer.
“Oh,” said Dunderhead, “Lunkhead is in mourning for both the San Jose Sharks and the Golden State Warriors.”
“I’d be lucky if that’s all it was,” muttered Lunkhead. “My wife didn’t care about the hockey playoffs but, as you’ll recall, she’s from Salt Lake City and I was dumb enough to bet her that the Golden State Warriors would beat the Utah Jazz in the recent basketball playoff series. Unfortunately for me, they didn’t. Now, I have to do anything she tells me to do for a week beginning tomorrow. She generously gave me a few days to get ready and tomorrow -- on a Saturday, of all days -- it starts,” Lunkhead moaned.
“Well, perhaps this’ll take your mind off your troubles for at least awhile, Lunkhead,” I said, handing both fellows printed copies of the historic events I had printed from the website. The lists are broken into three major categories: significant May 18th births, deaths, and historic events both here and abroad.
“So,” I suggested, “what do you say if we first decide on the most significant May 18th birth?” and they both nodded.
Suddenly, Lunkhead sat up straight and laid his cigar on the bar and Dunderhead lowered his exotic beer. They both began running their forefingers along the first column of names.
“Good God!” said Lunkhead, “Nicholas II, the last Tsar of Russia, was born on May 18th, 1868, and Bertrand Russell, the British mathematician, Nobel Prize winner, and pacifist philosopher was born on the same day in 1872—hmmmm.”
“Neither one of those guys,” said Dunderhead (having obviously started from the opposite end of the list) can hold a candle to Jennifer Streblow, Miss Wisconsin of 1997. And Lunkhead, look -- here’s a Golden State Warrior for you -- Donyell Marshall was born May 18th, 1973. How about that?”
“He’s long gone to the Cleveland Cavaliers, and what’s worse, his team is still in the playoffs,” said Lunkhead hanging his head again.
Both men continued to run their fingers along the May 18th births:
Baseball slugger Reggie Jackson, 1947; Albert Hammond of “It Never Rains In Southern California” fame, 1942; Frank Capra,1894, producer of “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Arsenic and Old Lace”; the late Senator Jacob K. Javits of New York, 1904; and Brooks Robinson, 1937, the Baltimore Orioles “vacuum cleaner” at third base for almost twenty-two years now in the Baseball Hall of Fame (along with Jackson); former Senator Warren Rudman of New Hampshire, co-author of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings balanced budget act of the 1980’s GOP-controlled U.S. Senate.
Suddenly, the silence was interrupted and, for the next ten or twelve minutes, I had to listen to both Lunkhead and Dunderhead singing songs like:
“Catch a Falling Star”, “Tom Boy”, and “Hot-Diggity, Dog-Diggity, Boom What You Do To Me!”
Long before they got to “The Bluest Skies You’ve Ever Seen Are in Seattle”, I knew that Perry (Pierino) Como (May 18th, 1912) -- the singing barber -- was their choice for the most significant birth I was just grateful that they stayed away from “Ave Maria,” not because I dislike it, mind you, but rather because it’s a beautiful hymn.
It took less time than I possibly could have imagined for them to decide on the most significant May 18th death. At least they didn’t settle for Jacques Marquette, the Jesuit Missionary. (Dunderhead made the derisive comment that he’d been turned down at Marquette when he’d applied for admission to the university back in the 1960s.) Indeed, Mary McLeod Bethune of education and civil rights fame who died May 18th 1955, and Jeannette Rankin, the maverick GOP Congresswoman from Montana who had been elected to two terms in the House of Representatives in 1916 and 1940 so she could vote to keep us out of both World War I and II before being denied re-election both times, got no reaction at all. Not even Wilbur J. Cohen, the first employee of the Social Security Administration who died on May 18th, 1977 got the slightest sniffle.
Then, suddenly, it came.
“Oh, no,” Lunkhead and Dunderhead cried together, as if it had happened on May 18th, 2007 rather than on May 18th, 1988. They were talking about the death of Daws Butler, the voice of Yogi Bear and Huckelberry Hound.
“But,” I cried, “Why not Lawrence Welk who died of pneumonia on May 18th, 1992 at the age of 89?”
“Naah,” said Lunkhead, “I couldn’t vote for anyone who had lemons for sisters. The Oak Ridge Boys are more my type of music anyway.
“Lunkhead,” said Dunderhead, “They were the Lennon Sisters, not the Lemon sisters! Open your ears and your mind might follow!”
“Yah, but they were lemons just the same as far as I’m concerned,” Lunkhead growled, retrieving his dead cigar from the bar and putting it back into his face.
The pick for the most historic event was, of course, going to be the toughest and probably the most significant choice. The possibilities included:
The 1631 election of John Winthrop as the first governor of Massachusetts; the 1652 decision by Rhode Island to make slavery illegal; the May 18th 1804 crowning of Napoleon Bonaparte as emperor of France; the infamous decision of the people of Massachusetts on May 18th 1852 requiring all children of age within the state to attend school; the beginning of the siege of Vicksburg by General Grant during the Civil War in 1863; the panic by many in 1910 when the earth passed through the tail of Halley’s Comet; the 1934 reference to the Academy Award Statue as “Oscar” for the first time in print by Sidney Skolsky — none of which got any reaction from either man.
The 1953 breaking of the sound barrier by Jacqueline Cochrane, the first woman pilot to do so, did get a reaction from Lunkhead who said that his wife had broken the sound barrier many times without thinking anything of it. Both men thought it was remarkable that Catholic Italy had approved the legalization of abortion as early as 1977—and both thought it was quite “manly” that Chung Kwung Ying had performed 2,750 “atomic” hand-stand push-ups on Sunday, May 18th, 1986. The amazing thing is that they missed it -- both of them.
There was dead silence. They couldn’t make up their minds. Perhaps it was the unfamiliar name that had caused their attention to skip over it. I pronounced it—Edwin Budding. Then I pronounced the year—eighteen thirty.
I thought Lunkhead was going to pass out. Suddenly he saw it: in 1830, an English engineer named Edwin Budding from Stroud, Gloucestershire had invented the lawn mower -- the bane of every husband nearly every Saturday of his life between May and October. Yes, indeed, that was it. I hadn’t known about Lunkhead’s pickle before presenting my lists, but what can one say or even do when history proves so real and relevant?
Suddenly, there we were, me on one side and Dunderhead on the other, leading Lunkhead home to face the first chore Bertha Lunkhead would surely demand of her groggy husband tomorrow morning.
“I can just hear her now,” Lunkhead cried. “Before you do anything else, mow the lawn dear!!!”
“Lunkhead,” I asked sweetly, “what price would Bertha have had to pay had the Warriors and not the Jazz won the recent series?”
Oh, that’s easy,” shot back Lunkhead, “she’d have had to do anything I wanted her to do for a week beginning tomorrow, of course. After all, I’d have given her prep time, I’m not a brutish man you know,” he insisted.
“Okay,” I said “then what would you have asked her to do first that she never does?” I inquired as I snickered at Dunderhead over Lunkhead’s bent head.”
“Oh, hell, that’s easy, too. Mow the lawn, dear,” he said with just the slightest tremor in his voice.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Written Friday, May 18th, 2007
Yah, I know, my ex-wife -- a lady of uncommon judgment and uncanny foresight -- IS right—I must have way too much time on my hands when I do what I did today.
The problem is that I have an ingrained obsession about the significance of historic events and the dates on which they occurred. Thus, I hit the internet to learn what important or significant events had taken place on May the 18ths of the past. As usual, I was fascinated. Not only that, I almost decided for myself what I believe to be the most significant event that occurred in history on this date. However, since I couldn’t quite make up my mind, I did what I always do in such instances.
I went to my local watering hole to find my buddies Lunkhead and Dunderhead—and there they were. Lunkhead was looking a little grim leaning on his left elbow, the fingers of his left hand spread through what little hair he has, a dead cigar poking out of the left side of his mouth, and his scotch glass about a third empty. Dunderhead was leaning on his right elbow looking to his left along the bar at Lunkhead with a self-satisfied smirk on his thin face as though he’d just said something very clever to Lunkhead. There was a nearly full glass of beer in front of him.
“What’s up?” I asked, as I took the stool between them and ordered a beer.
“Oh,” said Dunderhead, “Lunkhead is in mourning for both the San Jose Sharks and the Golden State Warriors.”
“I’d be lucky if that’s all it was,” muttered Lunkhead. “My wife didn’t care about the hockey playoffs but, as you’ll recall, she’s from Salt Lake City and I was dumb enough to bet her that the Golden State Warriors would beat the Utah Jazz in the recent basketball playoff series. Unfortunately for me, they didn’t. Now, I have to do anything she tells me to do for a week beginning tomorrow. She generously gave me a few days to get ready and tomorrow -- on a Saturday, of all days -- it starts,” Lunkhead moaned.
“Well, perhaps this’ll take your mind off your troubles for at least awhile, Lunkhead,” I said, handing both fellows printed copies of the historic events I had printed from the website. The lists are broken into three major categories: significant May 18th births, deaths, and historic events both here and abroad.
“So,” I suggested, “what do you say if we first decide on the most significant May 18th birth?” and they both nodded.
Suddenly, Lunkhead sat up straight and laid his cigar on the bar and Dunderhead lowered his exotic beer. They both began running their forefingers along the first column of names.
“Good God!” said Lunkhead, “Nicholas II, the last Tsar of Russia, was born on May 18th, 1868, and Bertrand Russell, the British mathematician, Nobel Prize winner, and pacifist philosopher was born on the same day in 1872—hmmmm.”
“Neither one of those guys,” said Dunderhead (having obviously started from the opposite end of the list) can hold a candle to Jennifer Streblow, Miss Wisconsin of 1997. And Lunkhead, look -- here’s a Golden State Warrior for you -- Donyell Marshall was born May 18th, 1973. How about that?”
“He’s long gone to the Cleveland Cavaliers, and what’s worse, his team is still in the playoffs,” said Lunkhead hanging his head again.
Both men continued to run their fingers along the May 18th births:
Baseball slugger Reggie Jackson, 1947; Albert Hammond of “It Never Rains In Southern California” fame, 1942; Frank Capra,1894, producer of “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Arsenic and Old Lace”; the late Senator Jacob K. Javits of New York, 1904; and Brooks Robinson, 1937, the Baltimore Orioles “vacuum cleaner” at third base for almost twenty-two years now in the Baseball Hall of Fame (along with Jackson); former Senator Warren Rudman of New Hampshire, co-author of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings balanced budget act of the 1980’s GOP-controlled U.S. Senate.
Suddenly, the silence was interrupted and, for the next ten or twelve minutes, I had to listen to both Lunkhead and Dunderhead singing songs like:
“Catch a Falling Star”, “Tom Boy”, and “Hot-Diggity, Dog-Diggity, Boom What You Do To Me!”
Long before they got to “The Bluest Skies You’ve Ever Seen Are in Seattle”, I knew that Perry (Pierino) Como (May 18th, 1912) -- the singing barber -- was their choice for the most significant birth I was just grateful that they stayed away from “Ave Maria,” not because I dislike it, mind you, but rather because it’s a beautiful hymn.
It took less time than I possibly could have imagined for them to decide on the most significant May 18th death. At least they didn’t settle for Jacques Marquette, the Jesuit Missionary. (Dunderhead made the derisive comment that he’d been turned down at Marquette when he’d applied for admission to the university back in the 1960s.) Indeed, Mary McLeod Bethune of education and civil rights fame who died May 18th 1955, and Jeannette Rankin, the maverick GOP Congresswoman from Montana who had been elected to two terms in the House of Representatives in 1916 and 1940 so she could vote to keep us out of both World War I and II before being denied re-election both times, got no reaction at all. Not even Wilbur J. Cohen, the first employee of the Social Security Administration who died on May 18th, 1977 got the slightest sniffle.
Then, suddenly, it came.
“Oh, no,” Lunkhead and Dunderhead cried together, as if it had happened on May 18th, 2007 rather than on May 18th, 1988. They were talking about the death of Daws Butler, the voice of Yogi Bear and Huckelberry Hound.
“But,” I cried, “Why not Lawrence Welk who died of pneumonia on May 18th, 1992 at the age of 89?”
“Naah,” said Lunkhead, “I couldn’t vote for anyone who had lemons for sisters. The Oak Ridge Boys are more my type of music anyway.
“Lunkhead,” said Dunderhead, “They were the Lennon Sisters, not the Lemon sisters! Open your ears and your mind might follow!”
“Yah, but they were lemons just the same as far as I’m concerned,” Lunkhead growled, retrieving his dead cigar from the bar and putting it back into his face.
The pick for the most historic event was, of course, going to be the toughest and probably the most significant choice. The possibilities included:
The 1631 election of John Winthrop as the first governor of Massachusetts; the 1652 decision by Rhode Island to make slavery illegal; the May 18th 1804 crowning of Napoleon Bonaparte as emperor of France; the infamous decision of the people of Massachusetts on May 18th 1852 requiring all children of age within the state to attend school; the beginning of the siege of Vicksburg by General Grant during the Civil War in 1863; the panic by many in 1910 when the earth passed through the tail of Halley’s Comet; the 1934 reference to the Academy Award Statue as “Oscar” for the first time in print by Sidney Skolsky — none of which got any reaction from either man.
The 1953 breaking of the sound barrier by Jacqueline Cochrane, the first woman pilot to do so, did get a reaction from Lunkhead who said that his wife had broken the sound barrier many times without thinking anything of it. Both men thought it was remarkable that Catholic Italy had approved the legalization of abortion as early as 1977—and both thought it was quite “manly” that Chung Kwung Ying had performed 2,750 “atomic” hand-stand push-ups on Sunday, May 18th, 1986. The amazing thing is that they missed it -- both of them.
There was dead silence. They couldn’t make up their minds. Perhaps it was the unfamiliar name that had caused their attention to skip over it. I pronounced it—Edwin Budding. Then I pronounced the year—eighteen thirty.
I thought Lunkhead was going to pass out. Suddenly he saw it: in 1830, an English engineer named Edwin Budding from Stroud, Gloucestershire had invented the lawn mower -- the bane of every husband nearly every Saturday of his life between May and October. Yes, indeed, that was it. I hadn’t known about Lunkhead’s pickle before presenting my lists, but what can one say or even do when history proves so real and relevant?
Suddenly, there we were, me on one side and Dunderhead on the other, leading Lunkhead home to face the first chore Bertha Lunkhead would surely demand of her groggy husband tomorrow morning.
“I can just hear her now,” Lunkhead cried. “Before you do anything else, mow the lawn dear!!!”
“Lunkhead,” I asked sweetly, “what price would Bertha have had to pay had the Warriors and not the Jazz won the recent series?”
Oh, that’s easy,” shot back Lunkhead, “she’d have had to do anything I wanted her to do for a week beginning tomorrow, of course. After all, I’d have given her prep time, I’m not a brutish man you know,” he insisted.
“Okay,” I said “then what would you have asked her to do first that she never does?” I inquired as I snickered at Dunderhead over Lunkhead’s bent head.”
“Oh, hell, that’s easy, too. Mow the lawn, dear,” he said with just the slightest tremor in his voice.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Friday, May 11, 2007
She's Mom Because She's the Flower of God's Greatest Creation: You and Me.
BY EDWIN COONEY
Last week, I concluded my sketchy history of the celebration of Motherhood throughout history by saying that I wasn’t sure what it all meant. After all, my recitation concluded with the founder of Mother’s Day bringing suit and demonstrating for florists to stop using the holiday as a money-making vehicle.
Now, seven days later after hearing and reading countless ads for everyone to provide mother with candy, flowers, jewelry, household appliances, teddy bears, and so much more -- for the lowest reasonable price of course -- it’s not hard to be at least slightly sympathetic to the late Anna M. Jarvis’s anxiety as to what she had wrought. After all, Anna was under the erroneous illusion that one could adequately express one’s deepest feelings of respect, tenderness and love for Mama without spending a dime—or even a penny. Come to think of it though, what did Anna Jarvis know anyway: very few women worked for a dollar during most of her lifetime! How could she be expected to realize the value of a buck?
Various visions of Mom come to us amidst the advertisements and the heartfelt appeals to our sentiments regarding Mom.
The New York Lottery put out a radio ad that goes something like this:
Mom: “Oh, Son! Thank you for that card—-it was so lovely.”
Son: “It was a lottery card, Mom.”
Mom: “Yes, I know, dear, and there was a place on it that I was supposed to scratch, but I didn’t want to. But your father said that I should, so I did and I won $250,000.”
Son: “Mom, you won that much money? That’s wonderful.”
Mom: “Money has nothing to do with it because, in order to win any money, I’d have to turn the card in and I’d never turn a card sent by you in. Remember the first Mother’s Day card you ever sent me? It was made of macaroni and rubber bands. It was beautiful and I still have it. So is this one and I’m keeping it.”
Son: “But, Mom, this one has money in it.”
Mom: “Yes, Son, and it’s beautiful and that’s why I’m keeping it—yes, it’s just beautiful—so is the envelope!”
Thus, we have a vision of Mom as one whose maternal instinct is so dominant that despite her son’s (and, supposedly, her husband’s) incredulity, she’ll keep something given to her by her precious offspring rather than turn it in for a larger and more practical reward. Some would wonder if there might be a mom in America who could really be that stupid. It’s hard to imagine that anyone exists, Mom or not a Mom, who would be so wonderfully and dreamily principled. Yet there is a doubt in the corner of our minds --because of our experiences with some of the more saintly among us -- and that’s why an ad of this type works. Mom, after all, is so sainted around this time each year by the seriously poetic that such a mom as portrayed above and below might even exist.
A few days ago a friend sent me the following which she thinks is beautiful and it’s hard to argue the contrary.
The young mother set her foot on the path of life. "Is
this the long way?" she asked. And the guide said: "Yes and the way is hard.
And you will be old before you reach the end of it.. But
the end will be better than the beginning."
But the young mother was happy, and she would not
believe that anything could be better than these years. So she
played with her children, and gathered flowers for
them along the way, and bathed them in the clear streams; and
the sun shone on them, and the young Mother cried,
"Nothing will ever be lovelier than this."
Then the night came, and the storm, and the path was
dark, and the children shook with fear and cold, and the mother
drew them close and covered them with her mantle, and the children said,
"Mother, we are not afraid, for you are near, and no harm can come."
And the morning came, and there was a hill ahead, and
the children climbed and grew weary, and the mother was weary.
But at all times she said to the children," A little patience and we are there."
So the children climbed, and when they reached the top
they said, "Mother, we would not have done it without you."
And the mother, when she lay down at night looked up
at the stars and said, "This is a better day than the last, for my
children have learned fortitude in the face of hardness. Yesterday I gave them courage.
Today, I've given them strength."
And the next day came strange clouds which darkened
the earth, clouds of war and hate and evil, and the children groped
and stumbled, and the mother said: "Look up. Lift your eyes to the light.”
And the children looked and saw above the clouds
an everlasting glory, and it guided them beyond the
darkness. And that night the Mother said,
"This is the best day of all, for
I have shown my children God."
And the days went on, and the weeks and the months and
the years, and the mother grew old and she was little and bent.
But her children were tall and strong, and walked with
courage. And when the way was rough, they lifted her,
for she was as light as a feather; and at last they came to a hill,
and beyond they could see a shining road and golden gates flung wide. And
mother said, "I have reached the end of my journey. And now I know the end
is better than the beginning, for my children can
walk alone, and their children after them."
And the children said, "You will always walk with us,
Mother, even when you have gone through the gates."
And they stood and watched her as she went on alone, and the gates
closed after her. And they said: "We cannot see her
but she is with us still. A Mother like ours is more than a memory. She
is a living presence......."
Your Mother is always with you.... She's the whisper
of the leaves as you walk down the street; she's the smell of bleach
in your freshly laundered socks; she's the cool hand
on your brow when you're not well. Your Mother lives
inside your laughter. And she's crystallized in every teardrop.
She's the place you came from, your first home; and
she's the map you follow with every step you take. She's your first love
and your first heartbreak, and nothing on earth can
separate you.
Not time, not space... not even death!
That deeper view of Mom possesses powerful eloquence which places every mother on the purist and loftiest pedestal. Your experience may be very different from mine, but I don’t know many moms who would really identify with this last testimony, any more than those moms who could live up to the New York Lottery’s characterization of “dearest Mom.”
Moms are special, of course, because they’ve been granted a God given power—which no man possesses—that of both giving and nurturing life. A male doctor can sustain and even strengthen life, but only a Mom can give life. How able she is to sustain life once it’s given depends upon forces way beyond her control.
What the above tribute to Mom almost entirely ignores is Mom’s very humanity. Further, it assumes that all Moms are blessed with obedient children willing at all times to follow Mom. It takes no account of the tens of thousands of moms who, with broken hearts, find that their children have chosen unhappy paths of existence. Nor are all ends better than the beginning. Nevertheless, in its own perspective, the above homage to Motherhood is worthy because it does express the all-encompassing power that uninhibited mother love can bring when a mother’s children are willing to receive and value her love.
To me, Mom is a very special person for all that is stated above. However, it seems to me that the moms who are truly the best of all are the moms who grapple with and strive to overcome their own imperfections. Also, I can’t resist the following observation:
The loveliest Mom is the Mom who sets standards but, because she’s struggled through her own imperfections, still loves you despite yours.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Last week, I concluded my sketchy history of the celebration of Motherhood throughout history by saying that I wasn’t sure what it all meant. After all, my recitation concluded with the founder of Mother’s Day bringing suit and demonstrating for florists to stop using the holiday as a money-making vehicle.
Now, seven days later after hearing and reading countless ads for everyone to provide mother with candy, flowers, jewelry, household appliances, teddy bears, and so much more -- for the lowest reasonable price of course -- it’s not hard to be at least slightly sympathetic to the late Anna M. Jarvis’s anxiety as to what she had wrought. After all, Anna was under the erroneous illusion that one could adequately express one’s deepest feelings of respect, tenderness and love for Mama without spending a dime—or even a penny. Come to think of it though, what did Anna Jarvis know anyway: very few women worked for a dollar during most of her lifetime! How could she be expected to realize the value of a buck?
Various visions of Mom come to us amidst the advertisements and the heartfelt appeals to our sentiments regarding Mom.
The New York Lottery put out a radio ad that goes something like this:
Mom: “Oh, Son! Thank you for that card—-it was so lovely.”
Son: “It was a lottery card, Mom.”
Mom: “Yes, I know, dear, and there was a place on it that I was supposed to scratch, but I didn’t want to. But your father said that I should, so I did and I won $250,000.”
Son: “Mom, you won that much money? That’s wonderful.”
Mom: “Money has nothing to do with it because, in order to win any money, I’d have to turn the card in and I’d never turn a card sent by you in. Remember the first Mother’s Day card you ever sent me? It was made of macaroni and rubber bands. It was beautiful and I still have it. So is this one and I’m keeping it.”
Son: “But, Mom, this one has money in it.”
Mom: “Yes, Son, and it’s beautiful and that’s why I’m keeping it—yes, it’s just beautiful—so is the envelope!”
Thus, we have a vision of Mom as one whose maternal instinct is so dominant that despite her son’s (and, supposedly, her husband’s) incredulity, she’ll keep something given to her by her precious offspring rather than turn it in for a larger and more practical reward. Some would wonder if there might be a mom in America who could really be that stupid. It’s hard to imagine that anyone exists, Mom or not a Mom, who would be so wonderfully and dreamily principled. Yet there is a doubt in the corner of our minds --because of our experiences with some of the more saintly among us -- and that’s why an ad of this type works. Mom, after all, is so sainted around this time each year by the seriously poetic that such a mom as portrayed above and below might even exist.
A few days ago a friend sent me the following which she thinks is beautiful and it’s hard to argue the contrary.
The young mother set her foot on the path of life. "Is
this the long way?" she asked. And the guide said: "Yes and the way is hard.
And you will be old before you reach the end of it.. But
the end will be better than the beginning."
But the young mother was happy, and she would not
believe that anything could be better than these years. So she
played with her children, and gathered flowers for
them along the way, and bathed them in the clear streams; and
the sun shone on them, and the young Mother cried,
"Nothing will ever be lovelier than this."
Then the night came, and the storm, and the path was
dark, and the children shook with fear and cold, and the mother
drew them close and covered them with her mantle, and the children said,
"Mother, we are not afraid, for you are near, and no harm can come."
And the morning came, and there was a hill ahead, and
the children climbed and grew weary, and the mother was weary.
But at all times she said to the children," A little patience and we are there."
So the children climbed, and when they reached the top
they said, "Mother, we would not have done it without you."
And the mother, when she lay down at night looked up
at the stars and said, "This is a better day than the last, for my
children have learned fortitude in the face of hardness. Yesterday I gave them courage.
Today, I've given them strength."
And the next day came strange clouds which darkened
the earth, clouds of war and hate and evil, and the children groped
and stumbled, and the mother said: "Look up. Lift your eyes to the light.”
And the children looked and saw above the clouds
an everlasting glory, and it guided them beyond the
darkness. And that night the Mother said,
"This is the best day of all, for
I have shown my children God."
And the days went on, and the weeks and the months and
the years, and the mother grew old and she was little and bent.
But her children were tall and strong, and walked with
courage. And when the way was rough, they lifted her,
for she was as light as a feather; and at last they came to a hill,
and beyond they could see a shining road and golden gates flung wide. And
mother said, "I have reached the end of my journey. And now I know the end
is better than the beginning, for my children can
walk alone, and their children after them."
And the children said, "You will always walk with us,
Mother, even when you have gone through the gates."
And they stood and watched her as she went on alone, and the gates
closed after her. And they said: "We cannot see her
but she is with us still. A Mother like ours is more than a memory. She
is a living presence......."
Your Mother is always with you.... She's the whisper
of the leaves as you walk down the street; she's the smell of bleach
in your freshly laundered socks; she's the cool hand
on your brow when you're not well. Your Mother lives
inside your laughter. And she's crystallized in every teardrop.
She's the place you came from, your first home; and
she's the map you follow with every step you take. She's your first love
and your first heartbreak, and nothing on earth can
separate you.
Not time, not space... not even death!
That deeper view of Mom possesses powerful eloquence which places every mother on the purist and loftiest pedestal. Your experience may be very different from mine, but I don’t know many moms who would really identify with this last testimony, any more than those moms who could live up to the New York Lottery’s characterization of “dearest Mom.”
Moms are special, of course, because they’ve been granted a God given power—which no man possesses—that of both giving and nurturing life. A male doctor can sustain and even strengthen life, but only a Mom can give life. How able she is to sustain life once it’s given depends upon forces way beyond her control.
What the above tribute to Mom almost entirely ignores is Mom’s very humanity. Further, it assumes that all Moms are blessed with obedient children willing at all times to follow Mom. It takes no account of the tens of thousands of moms who, with broken hearts, find that their children have chosen unhappy paths of existence. Nor are all ends better than the beginning. Nevertheless, in its own perspective, the above homage to Motherhood is worthy because it does express the all-encompassing power that uninhibited mother love can bring when a mother’s children are willing to receive and value her love.
To me, Mom is a very special person for all that is stated above. However, it seems to me that the moms who are truly the best of all are the moms who grapple with and strive to overcome their own imperfections. Also, I can’t resist the following observation:
The loveliest Mom is the Mom who sets standards but, because she’s struggled through her own imperfections, still loves you despite yours.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Saturday, May 5, 2007
READY? SET? — CELEBRATE
Originally submitted Friday, May 4th, 2007
BY EDWIN COONEY
It’s only a few days away you know! No, I’m not talking about either an upcoming major league baseball game or even the Kentucky Derby — it’s Mother’s Day that’s front and center this week.
With almost any phenomenon I think or write about, my first curiosity is its history—even more than its significance. So, I went to the internet to research the history of Mother’s Day and discovered--not at all to my surprise—both its history and significance.
I knew before hitting the computer keys that Mother’s Day, as we know it, was the brainchild of Anna Jarvis of Grafton, West Virginia. It was celebrated there for the first time on Sunday, May 10th 1908 at Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church which was designated as a shrine to Mother’s Day in 1962. I believe I’d also read that it was widely celebrated across America by 1912 and that President Woodrow Wilson had made it official with a presidential proclamation by 1914.
The celebration of Mother’s Day goes back to ancient Egypt and was celebrated there in honor of Isis—goddess of the pharaohs. According to ancient Egyptian mythology, the goddess Isis’s brother-husband was slain by her other brother, the jealous Seth. After his body had been cut into thirteen pieces, the goddess reassembled him and was thus able to impregnate herself from his body. She gave birth to Horace whom she was forced to hide from his jealous and deadly uncle Seth. Once he was grown, Horace confronted and slew Seth and was able to reign, as a god, over a united Egypt. Thus, Isis was celebrated as the mother of the pharaohs.
In ancient Greece as well as throughout Asia Minor, Rhea is celebrated as the mother of the gods. In Rome, Cybele whose myth stems from the Greek goddess Rhea, according to one of my sources, was central to the celebration of “Magna Mater,” or Mother’s Day. However, another source asserts that “Matronalia,” celebrated the goddess Juno with mothers receiving gifts in honor of the day. What both sources do agree on is that in Rome, Mother’s Day was celebrated around the vernal equinox.
Britain began celebrating “Mothering Sunday” on the fourth Sunday of Lent—three weeks before Easter--as far back as the 16th century. Mothering Sunday was taken so seriously by the British that even those bound to apprentice servitude were permitted by their masters to go home to mama every year to celebrate Mothering Sunday. Strange as that may seem, supposedly even British apprentice masters had mothers too, but there may have been another motive for the celebration of motherhood during the darker days of British history. Celebrated as it was on the fourth Sunday of the Lenten season, it was a break in the season. Those who served mother, sharing flowers and cakes with her, could feast and drink all day to their heart’s content. Goodness! Even old Scrooge had to go for that chance. After all, as a good Englishman he surely enjoyed his pint!
In America, Mother’s Day had its origins in idealism. Anna Reeves Jarvis, the mother of Anna M. Jarvis (the actual founder of America’s modern Mother’s Day), began celebrating Mother’s Working Day from the Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church where she taught Sunday school. During the Civil War, Mrs. Jarvis worked not only to improve sanitary living conditions in what by then had become West Virginia, but also to reunite families whose affection had been injured or even severed due to that divisive conflict.
After the war, the author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”, Julia Ward Howe, so despised war that she began working with Mrs. Jarvis for the celebration of a national Mother’s Day. The more prominent Mrs. Howe began using her influence and even money for the celebration of Mother’s Day in some of America’s larger cities such as Boston, New York and Philadelphia, as a day proclaiming peace among people and nations of the earth.
In 1870, with the memory and wounds of the Civil War so fresh and the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in Europe a stark reality, Julia Ward Howe issued the following declaration:
Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise all women who have hearts,
Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears
Say firmly:
We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of
charity, mercy and patience.
We women of one country
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says, "Disarm, Disarm!"
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice!
Blood does not wipe out dishonor
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have of ten forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war.
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions.
The great and general interests of peace.
As stated above, Mrs. Howe backed her words for some years with her money thus funding Mother’s Day in some of our larger cities. Eventually the funding was spent and thus Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day was history even in her adopted home city of Boston, Massachusetts.
By 1908, the daughter of Anna Reeves Jarvis, Anna M. Jarvis, got her mother’s old church to take up the celebration of Mother’s Day. Each congregant would be given two carnations—one white in commemoration of women by then dead and one red or pink for those living. The idea spread and by 1912, forty-five of the forty-eight states were celebrating Mother’s Day.
By the mid 1920’s however, Ms. Jarvis began to revolt against the increasing commercialization of Mother’s Day by America’s florists. She began to sue to stop such commercialization of what she considered to be a sacred celebration of love and idealism.
She lost, of course, and during the 1930’s she had to be arrested for disrupting a Mother’s Day celebration by the Mothers of World War I War Veterans. Ms. Jarvis died in 1948 in a nursing home -- bitter, blind and childless. America, however, almost in defiance of her, still celebrates.
Thus we have Mother’s Day which we celebrate in the way we have freely chosen to celebrate it. As to what I think about it all having gathered the above information, at this writing I’m not quite sure.
This week, I’ll leave the thinking to you!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
BY EDWIN COONEY
It’s only a few days away you know! No, I’m not talking about either an upcoming major league baseball game or even the Kentucky Derby — it’s Mother’s Day that’s front and center this week.
With almost any phenomenon I think or write about, my first curiosity is its history—even more than its significance. So, I went to the internet to research the history of Mother’s Day and discovered--not at all to my surprise—both its history and significance.
I knew before hitting the computer keys that Mother’s Day, as we know it, was the brainchild of Anna Jarvis of Grafton, West Virginia. It was celebrated there for the first time on Sunday, May 10th 1908 at Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church which was designated as a shrine to Mother’s Day in 1962. I believe I’d also read that it was widely celebrated across America by 1912 and that President Woodrow Wilson had made it official with a presidential proclamation by 1914.
The celebration of Mother’s Day goes back to ancient Egypt and was celebrated there in honor of Isis—goddess of the pharaohs. According to ancient Egyptian mythology, the goddess Isis’s brother-husband was slain by her other brother, the jealous Seth. After his body had been cut into thirteen pieces, the goddess reassembled him and was thus able to impregnate herself from his body. She gave birth to Horace whom she was forced to hide from his jealous and deadly uncle Seth. Once he was grown, Horace confronted and slew Seth and was able to reign, as a god, over a united Egypt. Thus, Isis was celebrated as the mother of the pharaohs.
In ancient Greece as well as throughout Asia Minor, Rhea is celebrated as the mother of the gods. In Rome, Cybele whose myth stems from the Greek goddess Rhea, according to one of my sources, was central to the celebration of “Magna Mater,” or Mother’s Day. However, another source asserts that “Matronalia,” celebrated the goddess Juno with mothers receiving gifts in honor of the day. What both sources do agree on is that in Rome, Mother’s Day was celebrated around the vernal equinox.
Britain began celebrating “Mothering Sunday” on the fourth Sunday of Lent—three weeks before Easter--as far back as the 16th century. Mothering Sunday was taken so seriously by the British that even those bound to apprentice servitude were permitted by their masters to go home to mama every year to celebrate Mothering Sunday. Strange as that may seem, supposedly even British apprentice masters had mothers too, but there may have been another motive for the celebration of motherhood during the darker days of British history. Celebrated as it was on the fourth Sunday of the Lenten season, it was a break in the season. Those who served mother, sharing flowers and cakes with her, could feast and drink all day to their heart’s content. Goodness! Even old Scrooge had to go for that chance. After all, as a good Englishman he surely enjoyed his pint!
In America, Mother’s Day had its origins in idealism. Anna Reeves Jarvis, the mother of Anna M. Jarvis (the actual founder of America’s modern Mother’s Day), began celebrating Mother’s Working Day from the Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church where she taught Sunday school. During the Civil War, Mrs. Jarvis worked not only to improve sanitary living conditions in what by then had become West Virginia, but also to reunite families whose affection had been injured or even severed due to that divisive conflict.
After the war, the author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”, Julia Ward Howe, so despised war that she began working with Mrs. Jarvis for the celebration of a national Mother’s Day. The more prominent Mrs. Howe began using her influence and even money for the celebration of Mother’s Day in some of America’s larger cities such as Boston, New York and Philadelphia, as a day proclaiming peace among people and nations of the earth.
In 1870, with the memory and wounds of the Civil War so fresh and the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in Europe a stark reality, Julia Ward Howe issued the following declaration:
Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise all women who have hearts,
Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears
Say firmly:
We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of
charity, mercy and patience.
We women of one country
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says, "Disarm, Disarm!"
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice!
Blood does not wipe out dishonor
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have of ten forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war.
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions.
The great and general interests of peace.
As stated above, Mrs. Howe backed her words for some years with her money thus funding Mother’s Day in some of our larger cities. Eventually the funding was spent and thus Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day was history even in her adopted home city of Boston, Massachusetts.
By 1908, the daughter of Anna Reeves Jarvis, Anna M. Jarvis, got her mother’s old church to take up the celebration of Mother’s Day. Each congregant would be given two carnations—one white in commemoration of women by then dead and one red or pink for those living. The idea spread and by 1912, forty-five of the forty-eight states were celebrating Mother’s Day.
By the mid 1920’s however, Ms. Jarvis began to revolt against the increasing commercialization of Mother’s Day by America’s florists. She began to sue to stop such commercialization of what she considered to be a sacred celebration of love and idealism.
She lost, of course, and during the 1930’s she had to be arrested for disrupting a Mother’s Day celebration by the Mothers of World War I War Veterans. Ms. Jarvis died in 1948 in a nursing home -- bitter, blind and childless. America, however, almost in defiance of her, still celebrates.
Thus we have Mother’s Day which we celebrate in the way we have freely chosen to celebrate it. As to what I think about it all having gathered the above information, at this writing I’m not quite sure.
This week, I’ll leave the thinking to you!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
GETTING MY OWN GRIP
Originally written Friday, April 27th, 2007
BY EDWIN COONEY
It’s been a tough ten days for me—although not nearly as tough for me, of course, as it has been for the victims at Virginia Polytechnic at Blacksburg who were killed or traumatized less than two weeks ago -- as well as their fellow students, friends and families.
My problem is like most of America’s — that of grasping the scope and meaning of Seung-Hui Cho’s selfish and deadly deed. I’ve had plenty of assistance, of course, in my efforts to “get a grip” from politicians, talk show hosts and other commentators throughout America who sit so proudly on my left and on my right. However, somehow my guess is that some politicians, columnists, talk show hosts and their political talking point supporters are less interested in comforting me than they are in riling me. Before commenting further on what I’m expected to take note of or to feel, let me take you back in time for a bit of perspective.
The tall slender man with that mass of reddish-brown hair, sensitive blue eyes and upper crust Boston accent who stood at the Yale University speaker’s podium at around 11:30 that Monday morning of June 11th 1962 wasn’t without his political apologists or opponents. Nor was John F. Kennedy, as politician and our thirty-fifth President, totally free of his own political practicality when it came down to the need for expediency as opposed to absolute truth-telling. After all, he had in part achieved his coveted and lofty position through a deception of his own—his false assertion during the 1960 presidential campaign that the Eisenhower administration had created a “missile gap” in favor of the Soviets which was endangering the safety and security of the American people.
Now, however, he was President and his responsibilities were above any strictly political requirement. That morning, in an effort to explain the nation’s rather sluggish economy to an impatient citizenry, JFK asserted a reality that, regardless of any political or social outlook, one would be well-advised to keep in mind—as its power and truth extended way beyond matters either economic or political. Said the President:
“As every past generation has had to disenthrall itself from an inheritance of truisms and stereotypes, so in our own time we must move on from the reassuring repetition of stale phrases to a new, difficult, but essential confrontation with reality
“For the great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie—deliberate, contrived and dishonest—but the myth—persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forbears. We subject all facts to a set of prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. Mythology distracts us everywhere.”
From that point in his address, the President went on to talk about the truisms, myths and realities of a modern economy. However, his observation of our need to “disenthrall ourselves” from the myths and clichés of past generations so that we might be freed to cope with the realities of today, was—I believe—a most valid and powerful admonition.
I can’t imagine that anyone viewed the actions of Seung-Hui Cho, including members of his stunned and appalled family, with anything but horror. However, many of our social and political leaders have sought to shape the horror and nature of Cho’s act to suit their political and social agendas. Thus they proceed to persuade me that their outlook is superior to that of all others.
Gun control advocates want me to believe that there are too many guns which are too easily attainable. Had there been tighter restrictions on who could obtain guns in the Commonwealth of Virginia, Cho couldn’t have done what he did—they say.
Some opponents of gun control want me to realize that since people rather than guns kill, Cho’s act might well have been limited had some of his victims been armed.
Some socio/political critics, with a clear political agenda, tell me that I should understand that Cho was not stopped from doing his evil deed primarily because authorities have been cowed by political correctness from taking action against an immigrant minority member even when exhibiting strange behavior.
Next, there are those, on both the right and left, who blame the elements of society for everything from parental permissiveness and the profit motive to the existence of violent video games for Cho’s massive brutality.
There are, I believe, truths that support the contentions of most of the critics—both left and right. The problem is that these truths are sufficiently broad so that they don’t adequately cover individual backgrounds, motives and conditions. Critics from most all of the points on the political and social spectrum are at least partially right:
People, not guns, do make the decision to kill; criminals will obtain guns despite whatever the law dictates—after all, criminals are themselves law breakers; there are inadequate laws on the books to deter criminal acts; there is a reluctance on the part of many of our institutions to take critical notice of immigrant and other minorities largely because such peoples have been so shabbily treated in the history of our free society; there is too little attention or money and too few treatment facilities available for the humane and effective treatment of those who suffer from mental illness—and there’s also much public confusion as to what exactly mental illness is; and finally, there was an element of envy and “class warfare” in Cho Seung-Hui’s tortured statement of cause.
All of the above notwithstanding, Seung-Hui Cho was the sole cause of the carnage at Virginia Polytechnic Institute on the morning of Monday April 16th, 2007. Neither liberals nor conservatives, Christians nor atheists, immigrants nor citizens are indictable for Cho’s crime.
There is however a myth being bantered about that says that Seung-Hui Cho, the Korean immigrant and envier of the wealthy, was the champion of all mass murderers in American history. The truth however is as follows.
The champion to date for killing the greatest number of students goes to a native born Midwesterner by the name of Andrew Kehoe. He was the treasurer of the school board in Bath Township Michigan. On Wednesday, May 18th 1927, he first murdered his wife and proceeded to the school which was then in session. He put the charge to strategically placed bombs made in large part from pyrotol, an incendiary used primarily during World War I. When his work that morning was complete, he and forty-three school children between the ages of approximately six and sixteen were dead. In addition, fifty-eight others were injured. (One of the injured, a little girl, later died following hip surgery, thus becoming Kehoe’s forty-fourth victim). Andrew Kehoe’s reason was as senseless as were the complaints of Seung-Hui Cho about drink-swilling rich kids.
What, you may well ask was Mr. Kehoe’s cause? Andrew Kehoe was a disgruntled tax payer. He insisted that his property taxes were the cause of his inability to keep up the payments on his farm.
It might be instructive to keep in mind the date of Kehoe’s outrage—May 18th 1927. If you insist that Kehoe’s act represented the state of American society during the 1920s you might also recall that just two days afterward, Charles Lindbergh --“Lucky Lindy” or “The Lone Eagle”-- demonstrated other aspects of the American character to which everyone was more than willing to subscribe.
Thus the myth that tax-eaters not taxpayers value society was born. No, neither Calvin Coolidge, Ronald Reagan, Teddy Kennedy nor Bill Clinton nor their conservative or liberal minions can be held responsible for individual actions. Even in totalitarian societies, there are, after all, men and women of equal nobility to the most saintly among us.
From the instant most of us are born, we begin experiencing the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” and, in-so-far as I know, there will never be an earthly society sufficiently constructed to provide the individual absolute protection from such misfortune. Therefore, each of us, not society, is ultimately accountable for our sins as well as worthy of praise for our valor. Might that reality be of sufficient solace thus enabling you and me to be freed from our unworthy myths?
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
BY EDWIN COONEY
It’s been a tough ten days for me—although not nearly as tough for me, of course, as it has been for the victims at Virginia Polytechnic at Blacksburg who were killed or traumatized less than two weeks ago -- as well as their fellow students, friends and families.
My problem is like most of America’s — that of grasping the scope and meaning of Seung-Hui Cho’s selfish and deadly deed. I’ve had plenty of assistance, of course, in my efforts to “get a grip” from politicians, talk show hosts and other commentators throughout America who sit so proudly on my left and on my right. However, somehow my guess is that some politicians, columnists, talk show hosts and their political talking point supporters are less interested in comforting me than they are in riling me. Before commenting further on what I’m expected to take note of or to feel, let me take you back in time for a bit of perspective.
The tall slender man with that mass of reddish-brown hair, sensitive blue eyes and upper crust Boston accent who stood at the Yale University speaker’s podium at around 11:30 that Monday morning of June 11th 1962 wasn’t without his political apologists or opponents. Nor was John F. Kennedy, as politician and our thirty-fifth President, totally free of his own political practicality when it came down to the need for expediency as opposed to absolute truth-telling. After all, he had in part achieved his coveted and lofty position through a deception of his own—his false assertion during the 1960 presidential campaign that the Eisenhower administration had created a “missile gap” in favor of the Soviets which was endangering the safety and security of the American people.
Now, however, he was President and his responsibilities were above any strictly political requirement. That morning, in an effort to explain the nation’s rather sluggish economy to an impatient citizenry, JFK asserted a reality that, regardless of any political or social outlook, one would be well-advised to keep in mind—as its power and truth extended way beyond matters either economic or political. Said the President:
“As every past generation has had to disenthrall itself from an inheritance of truisms and stereotypes, so in our own time we must move on from the reassuring repetition of stale phrases to a new, difficult, but essential confrontation with reality
“For the great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie—deliberate, contrived and dishonest—but the myth—persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forbears. We subject all facts to a set of prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. Mythology distracts us everywhere.”
From that point in his address, the President went on to talk about the truisms, myths and realities of a modern economy. However, his observation of our need to “disenthrall ourselves” from the myths and clichés of past generations so that we might be freed to cope with the realities of today, was—I believe—a most valid and powerful admonition.
I can’t imagine that anyone viewed the actions of Seung-Hui Cho, including members of his stunned and appalled family, with anything but horror. However, many of our social and political leaders have sought to shape the horror and nature of Cho’s act to suit their political and social agendas. Thus they proceed to persuade me that their outlook is superior to that of all others.
Gun control advocates want me to believe that there are too many guns which are too easily attainable. Had there been tighter restrictions on who could obtain guns in the Commonwealth of Virginia, Cho couldn’t have done what he did—they say.
Some opponents of gun control want me to realize that since people rather than guns kill, Cho’s act might well have been limited had some of his victims been armed.
Some socio/political critics, with a clear political agenda, tell me that I should understand that Cho was not stopped from doing his evil deed primarily because authorities have been cowed by political correctness from taking action against an immigrant minority member even when exhibiting strange behavior.
Next, there are those, on both the right and left, who blame the elements of society for everything from parental permissiveness and the profit motive to the existence of violent video games for Cho’s massive brutality.
There are, I believe, truths that support the contentions of most of the critics—both left and right. The problem is that these truths are sufficiently broad so that they don’t adequately cover individual backgrounds, motives and conditions. Critics from most all of the points on the political and social spectrum are at least partially right:
People, not guns, do make the decision to kill; criminals will obtain guns despite whatever the law dictates—after all, criminals are themselves law breakers; there are inadequate laws on the books to deter criminal acts; there is a reluctance on the part of many of our institutions to take critical notice of immigrant and other minorities largely because such peoples have been so shabbily treated in the history of our free society; there is too little attention or money and too few treatment facilities available for the humane and effective treatment of those who suffer from mental illness—and there’s also much public confusion as to what exactly mental illness is; and finally, there was an element of envy and “class warfare” in Cho Seung-Hui’s tortured statement of cause.
All of the above notwithstanding, Seung-Hui Cho was the sole cause of the carnage at Virginia Polytechnic Institute on the morning of Monday April 16th, 2007. Neither liberals nor conservatives, Christians nor atheists, immigrants nor citizens are indictable for Cho’s crime.
There is however a myth being bantered about that says that Seung-Hui Cho, the Korean immigrant and envier of the wealthy, was the champion of all mass murderers in American history. The truth however is as follows.
The champion to date for killing the greatest number of students goes to a native born Midwesterner by the name of Andrew Kehoe. He was the treasurer of the school board in Bath Township Michigan. On Wednesday, May 18th 1927, he first murdered his wife and proceeded to the school which was then in session. He put the charge to strategically placed bombs made in large part from pyrotol, an incendiary used primarily during World War I. When his work that morning was complete, he and forty-three school children between the ages of approximately six and sixteen were dead. In addition, fifty-eight others were injured. (One of the injured, a little girl, later died following hip surgery, thus becoming Kehoe’s forty-fourth victim). Andrew Kehoe’s reason was as senseless as were the complaints of Seung-Hui Cho about drink-swilling rich kids.
What, you may well ask was Mr. Kehoe’s cause? Andrew Kehoe was a disgruntled tax payer. He insisted that his property taxes were the cause of his inability to keep up the payments on his farm.
It might be instructive to keep in mind the date of Kehoe’s outrage—May 18th 1927. If you insist that Kehoe’s act represented the state of American society during the 1920s you might also recall that just two days afterward, Charles Lindbergh --“Lucky Lindy” or “The Lone Eagle”-- demonstrated other aspects of the American character to which everyone was more than willing to subscribe.
Thus the myth that tax-eaters not taxpayers value society was born. No, neither Calvin Coolidge, Ronald Reagan, Teddy Kennedy nor Bill Clinton nor their conservative or liberal minions can be held responsible for individual actions. Even in totalitarian societies, there are, after all, men and women of equal nobility to the most saintly among us.
From the instant most of us are born, we begin experiencing the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” and, in-so-far as I know, there will never be an earthly society sufficiently constructed to provide the individual absolute protection from such misfortune. Therefore, each of us, not society, is ultimately accountable for our sins as well as worthy of praise for our valor. Might that reality be of sufficient solace thus enabling you and me to be freed from our unworthy myths?
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
HEROES IN CARNAGE
Originally written Friday, April 20th, 2007
BY EDWIN COONEY
Only six short months have passed since a 32 year-old milkman named Charles Carl Roberts did his dastardly deed at the schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania ending the lives of eleven innocent Amish girls.
Now, a 23 year-old legal immigrant man from South Korea, Seung-Hui Cho, has tripled Roberts’ carnage total just six months distance in time and a few hundred miles south at Blacksburg, Virginia’s Polytechnic Institute.
Like all tragedies, the hows and whys are being examined and the opportunities and driving forces of the killer are the source of genuine review, regret and, most certainly, opinion.
Although there are indeed circumstances of this tragedy that are explainable and even understandable, it is likely that both time and the inevitable investigations will uncover facts which may, in many of our minds, make this tragedy appear more like a calamity.
Though we will insist that we genuinely seek solace for ourselves and the victims’ families, the fact is that Americans are pretty hard to satisfy when it comes down to identifying and ultimately agreeing on what the essential realities are in connection with an event of this magnitude.
For instance, local police authorities have explained that the reports surrounding Cho’s killing of Ryan Clark, the dormitory resident advisor, and Ms. Emily Hilscher around 7:15 that morning appeared to be a “domestic matter,” and that they had no way of knowing that other students in other parts of the Blacksburg, Virginia campus were at any risk. Still it seems to many observers that some kind of precaution might reasonably have been taken since this violent and deadly crime had occurred in a place of such a highly dense and vulnerable population. The sheer logic of such an assumption by local police and school authorities—that the early morning killings was a domestic matter--was most certainly a factor, however small, in the shooting episode that began nearly two and a half hours later at Norris Hall.
Then, too, there is the significance of Cho’s temporary confinement in the Carilion mental facility at nearby St. Albans, Virginia in December 2005 following reports to the police of Cho’s “scary” behavior as experienced by two campus coeds. Some, no doubt, will insist that since one of that agency’s doctors had pronounced Cho as “mentally ill,” although of no apparent danger to himself or anyone else, that he should have been removed from Virginia Polytechnic Institute. However, there is reason for the institute’s position that since the school isn’t in the mental health business and wasn’t privy to the diagnosis, it was not within the school’s domain to take any punitive action against Seung-Hui Cho.
Next, there is the concern expressed about Cho’s behavior on the part of several members of the university’s English faculty. One professor, Nikki Giovanni—-a poet—-had expelled Cho from her creative writing class as early as October 2005 because his behavior was frightening other students. Additionally, other professors including Dr. Lisa Norris -- who separated Cho from the rest of her creative writing class last fall and tutored him herself due to his strange behavior and writing style -- and Dr. Edward C. Falco -- who had become appalled over the profanity and violence of Cho’s work --expressed their concerns to Carolyn D. Rude who is currently the Chair of the school’s English Department. Finally, according to the New York Times, Dr. Norris passed her concerns about Cho on to Mary Ann Lewis, the Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences. Even more frustrating, it appears that Dean Lewis was helpless to act since she apparently had no record of complaints about Cho except the concerns expressed to her by the English Department faculty.
Thus we have a chain of ironies which paved the way to the holocaust of Monday morning, April 16th, 2007!
So, what of the rest of us? What can we possibly learn from the almost unfathomable events which took place last Monday at Blacksburg, Virginia’s institute of academic endeavour?
The answer to that question isn’t easy to identify, but perhaps there is a clue. That clue can be found—I believe—in the actions of two of the heroes of this, America’s latest nightmare.
The first of the two heroes I have in mind was one of Seung-Hui Cho's victims. His name was Liviu Librescu, a native of Romania who, during World War II, was, due to his Jewish faith, an object of Nazi Germany’s brutality. Then, during the 1960’s and 70’s, Dr. Librescu found himself persecuted once again in Nicolae Ceausescu’s Romania for refusing to join the Communist Party. The release of his book on aerospace technology, which was secretly funneled through Norway during the mid 1970s, brought Dr. Librescu to the attention of western scientists and engineers. Hence, he first migrated to Israel and then to the United States. Since 1985, he had finally found a peaceful life on the campus of Blacksburg, Virginia’s university teaching engineering. Then, without warning, came the crazed gunman Seung-Hui Cho . Suddenly there was no time for Dr. Librescu to think of the peaceful walks he liked to take in the woods or the classical music he enjoyed so much at home or even of Marlena-his wife-or indeed of his forty-year-old son Yossi, a computer engineer in Israel. All there was time for was to stand in the open doorway of his classroom and direct as many students as he could to evacuate the building through the room’s open windows while he took five of Cho’s bullets into his body.
Hero Number Two is the good Reverend Alexander W. Evans of Blacksburg’s Presbyterian Church. Beginning on Monday afternoon, it was he who took on the task of informing and comforting the almost countless family members and friends of that morning’s victims. Hour after hour, the sobs and moans of the bereaved as they desperately sought to grasp and cope with the loss of those they loved must have seared not only into Reverend Evans’ ears, but most assuredly into his very soul! Nevertheless, Reverend Evans listened, prayed and comforted with all of the energy both physical and spiritual that he possessed. Without a doubt, he sanctified a good many of his prayers with his tears. However, if he was to be true to his soul, what else was there to do?
One of the satisfactions I get out of writing these weekly columns is that of venting some of my opinions. While that is a perfectly acceptable thing to do in today’s opinionated America, out of respect for Dr. Librescu and the Reverend Mr. Evans, I’m going to resist, at least for this week.
Why? Because sometimes opinions are just too easy. Also, more often than we like to think is the case, opinions can be quite self-serving, especially when they’re driven solely by our political and/or personal agendas. However, there’s a much more substantial reason which I believe encompasses the heroic trait common to the brave actions of both Liviu Librescu and Alexander Evans.
What lives at the core of the courage of these two men is their certain knowledge of the power of genuine humility. Both demonstrated during this time of tragedy and sorrow that sometimes the needs of others are more important than how we feel or what we think! However important our “well-founded opinions” may be, the welfare of the least of us is more significant by far than the opinions of all of us!
Liviu Librescu and Alexander W. Evans are heroes because they dared to put you and me first!!!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
BY EDWIN COONEY
Only six short months have passed since a 32 year-old milkman named Charles Carl Roberts did his dastardly deed at the schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania ending the lives of eleven innocent Amish girls.
Now, a 23 year-old legal immigrant man from South Korea, Seung-Hui Cho, has tripled Roberts’ carnage total just six months distance in time and a few hundred miles south at Blacksburg, Virginia’s Polytechnic Institute.
Like all tragedies, the hows and whys are being examined and the opportunities and driving forces of the killer are the source of genuine review, regret and, most certainly, opinion.
Although there are indeed circumstances of this tragedy that are explainable and even understandable, it is likely that both time and the inevitable investigations will uncover facts which may, in many of our minds, make this tragedy appear more like a calamity.
Though we will insist that we genuinely seek solace for ourselves and the victims’ families, the fact is that Americans are pretty hard to satisfy when it comes down to identifying and ultimately agreeing on what the essential realities are in connection with an event of this magnitude.
For instance, local police authorities have explained that the reports surrounding Cho’s killing of Ryan Clark, the dormitory resident advisor, and Ms. Emily Hilscher around 7:15 that morning appeared to be a “domestic matter,” and that they had no way of knowing that other students in other parts of the Blacksburg, Virginia campus were at any risk. Still it seems to many observers that some kind of precaution might reasonably have been taken since this violent and deadly crime had occurred in a place of such a highly dense and vulnerable population. The sheer logic of such an assumption by local police and school authorities—that the early morning killings was a domestic matter--was most certainly a factor, however small, in the shooting episode that began nearly two and a half hours later at Norris Hall.
Then, too, there is the significance of Cho’s temporary confinement in the Carilion mental facility at nearby St. Albans, Virginia in December 2005 following reports to the police of Cho’s “scary” behavior as experienced by two campus coeds. Some, no doubt, will insist that since one of that agency’s doctors had pronounced Cho as “mentally ill,” although of no apparent danger to himself or anyone else, that he should have been removed from Virginia Polytechnic Institute. However, there is reason for the institute’s position that since the school isn’t in the mental health business and wasn’t privy to the diagnosis, it was not within the school’s domain to take any punitive action against Seung-Hui Cho.
Next, there is the concern expressed about Cho’s behavior on the part of several members of the university’s English faculty. One professor, Nikki Giovanni—-a poet—-had expelled Cho from her creative writing class as early as October 2005 because his behavior was frightening other students. Additionally, other professors including Dr. Lisa Norris -- who separated Cho from the rest of her creative writing class last fall and tutored him herself due to his strange behavior and writing style -- and Dr. Edward C. Falco -- who had become appalled over the profanity and violence of Cho’s work --expressed their concerns to Carolyn D. Rude who is currently the Chair of the school’s English Department. Finally, according to the New York Times, Dr. Norris passed her concerns about Cho on to Mary Ann Lewis, the Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences. Even more frustrating, it appears that Dean Lewis was helpless to act since she apparently had no record of complaints about Cho except the concerns expressed to her by the English Department faculty.
Thus we have a chain of ironies which paved the way to the holocaust of Monday morning, April 16th, 2007!
So, what of the rest of us? What can we possibly learn from the almost unfathomable events which took place last Monday at Blacksburg, Virginia’s institute of academic endeavour?
The answer to that question isn’t easy to identify, but perhaps there is a clue. That clue can be found—I believe—in the actions of two of the heroes of this, America’s latest nightmare.
The first of the two heroes I have in mind was one of Seung-Hui Cho's victims. His name was Liviu Librescu, a native of Romania who, during World War II, was, due to his Jewish faith, an object of Nazi Germany’s brutality. Then, during the 1960’s and 70’s, Dr. Librescu found himself persecuted once again in Nicolae Ceausescu’s Romania for refusing to join the Communist Party. The release of his book on aerospace technology, which was secretly funneled through Norway during the mid 1970s, brought Dr. Librescu to the attention of western scientists and engineers. Hence, he first migrated to Israel and then to the United States. Since 1985, he had finally found a peaceful life on the campus of Blacksburg, Virginia’s university teaching engineering. Then, without warning, came the crazed gunman Seung-Hui Cho . Suddenly there was no time for Dr. Librescu to think of the peaceful walks he liked to take in the woods or the classical music he enjoyed so much at home or even of Marlena-his wife-or indeed of his forty-year-old son Yossi, a computer engineer in Israel. All there was time for was to stand in the open doorway of his classroom and direct as many students as he could to evacuate the building through the room’s open windows while he took five of Cho’s bullets into his body.
Hero Number Two is the good Reverend Alexander W. Evans of Blacksburg’s Presbyterian Church. Beginning on Monday afternoon, it was he who took on the task of informing and comforting the almost countless family members and friends of that morning’s victims. Hour after hour, the sobs and moans of the bereaved as they desperately sought to grasp and cope with the loss of those they loved must have seared not only into Reverend Evans’ ears, but most assuredly into his very soul! Nevertheless, Reverend Evans listened, prayed and comforted with all of the energy both physical and spiritual that he possessed. Without a doubt, he sanctified a good many of his prayers with his tears. However, if he was to be true to his soul, what else was there to do?
One of the satisfactions I get out of writing these weekly columns is that of venting some of my opinions. While that is a perfectly acceptable thing to do in today’s opinionated America, out of respect for Dr. Librescu and the Reverend Mr. Evans, I’m going to resist, at least for this week.
Why? Because sometimes opinions are just too easy. Also, more often than we like to think is the case, opinions can be quite self-serving, especially when they’re driven solely by our political and/or personal agendas. However, there’s a much more substantial reason which I believe encompasses the heroic trait common to the brave actions of both Liviu Librescu and Alexander Evans.
What lives at the core of the courage of these two men is their certain knowledge of the power of genuine humility. Both demonstrated during this time of tragedy and sorrow that sometimes the needs of others are more important than how we feel or what we think! However important our “well-founded opinions” may be, the welfare of the least of us is more significant by far than the opinions of all of us!
Liviu Librescu and Alexander W. Evans are heroes because they dared to put you and me first!!!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
NO! IT CAN’T BE!
Holy Ronald Wilson Reagan—get a load of this!
Originally written Friday, March 31, 2006
BY EDWIN COONEY
According to a Reuter’s news agency report out of San Antonio, the Alcoholic Beverage Commission of the State of Texas has a new sting operation. Ms. Carolyn Beck, a commission spokesperson, announced that the Lone Star State sent thirty-six state government agents into thirty-six bars in a Dallas suburb one night recently. Their mission was to detain the drunks before they could do harm to themselves or to the community. The catch for the evening was thirty drunken patrons. Wow! That’s 30 out of 36, an 83 per cent success rate. What efficiency!
I’ve been under the impression for years that it was illegal in Texas to operate a motor vehicle without an open six-pack on the front seat. I’ve also heard that the distances between Texas cities are often measured in beers. Example: It’s just three beers between Dallas and Fort Worth.
Even more amazing is that this government sting operation is taking place in the reddest of the GOP red states. After all, Texas has such an aversion to Liberals that it hasn’t given its electoral vote to a Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter captured its then 26 electoral votes in 1976. Since then, the former independent Republic of Texas has sent two Bushes to the White House — both advertised as true devotees of Conservative doctrine. I guess they’ve both met the test, but if you really wonder how true-blue they’ve been, check with Pat Buchanan.
One of the main tenets of Conservative doctrine is, of course, that your business whether it be the state of your health, the quality of your education, the cleanliness of the air you breathe and the water you drink, or where and whether you can carry a gun is none of the government’s business. Another tenet of Conservative doctrine is that corporations have a monopoly on efficiency. It stands to reason, Conservatives tell us, that “if a private business isn’t efficient, it fails. On the other hand,” they often smugly assert, “there’s nothing closer to eternal life on this earth than a government bureau!” Finally, Conservatives are really and truly grateful for government inefficiency because, all kidding aside, they’d really be scared if government really worked — or so they often insist.
Now I have no information as to who appoints the Alcoholic Beverage Commission in Texas, but I do know that the state has a Conservative governor, Rick Perry, that Republicans have an 87 to 63 majority in the state House of Representatives and a majority of 19 to 12 in the State Senate. If the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission isn’t Conservative, it simply can’t be 93 year-old Lady Bird Johnson’s fault, now can it!
What I think we’ve discovered is that Republicans, like their Democrat cousins, actually have a social conscience. It would appear that quite a few Texans must be interested in having the state government do something effective about public intoxication!
Ms. Beck’s explanation, justification, whichever you prefer, was enlightening. First she reminds all of us that a bar is a public place and that there are laws against being drunk in public. Then she gets to the root of it all. Not only do drunken people drive -- everyone, of course, is against that -- but they walk out into streets. They might be run over by an innocent and sober Texas driver who hasn’t yet opened the first can of his six-pack. Also, she says that drunken people often try to dive into pools from hotel room windows and often miss. Could it be that the Commission worries about drunken Texans becoming disabled and perhaps a drag on their insurance company as well as possibly on the Texas Department of Rehabilitation?
What appears to be at the heart of the Commission’s concern is that someone might get hurt and cost the taxpayer or perhaps the stockholders of an insurance company a lot of money. Is that not a legitimate as well as responsible government concern for the fiscal welfare of all them Long Horns? Sure it is, but is it true Blue? Is some Liberal bureaucrat running amuck deep in the heart of Texas?
Now, I’m not as scandalized by this government sting operation as some of my Conservative friends may be, but I’m a Liberal. I actually believe that the public is often well-served when, through their elected representatives, the people set forth both requirements and regulations for human as well as corporate behavior for the safety and stability of society.
What I really suspect is that Conservatives, like the Liberals they really love, deep down, are just as interested in spending public money on worthy causes. Here are just a few of their government priorities:
(1.) Just tell us where you want that prison and we’ll build it so long as it isn’t in or near our neighborhoods.
(2.) Capital punishment? Don’t complain to me how much it costs, just get on with it!
(3.) Health care is acceptable as long as there’s enough public money available for hospital construction and pharmaceutical company needs.
(4.) We won’t squeal too much about public expenditures for education so long as there’s money available for the school voucher program.
(5.) As long as I get my tax cut, borrow as much money from abroad as you need—even if some of it does come from those damn Chinese Communists.
The Reuters story didn’t identify who Carolyn Beck is, let alone who supervises her. Her announcement was issued on Wednesday, March 22nd and, presumably, she isn’t hiding from capture by Governor Perry’s Conservative constituency. In fact, she was quite definite that these anti-public intoxication sting operations would not only continue, but also be expanded to cover the entire state of Texas. That’s a lot of covering and a lot of public money that’s about to be spent, I would imagine.
What’s really happening in the Loan Star State is that the definition of what's strictly your business has contracted. It’s still your business if you get drunk in your own home or while visiting the home of your Liberal brother-in-law or perhaps even while sitting in your car. Just don't get drunk after strolling to your neighborhood bar!
Could it be that there's an even bigger story here? Might the Conservative government of Texas be engaging in a practice Republicans have complained about since the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: "the root of all evil?"
Rather than freedom, is Texas actually practicing SOCIAL ENGINEERING?
No! It simply can't be! I can just hear President Reagan exclaiming in frustration from under his heavenly halo:
"THERE THEY GO AGAIN!"
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Originally written Friday, March 31, 2006
BY EDWIN COONEY
According to a Reuter’s news agency report out of San Antonio, the Alcoholic Beverage Commission of the State of Texas has a new sting operation. Ms. Carolyn Beck, a commission spokesperson, announced that the Lone Star State sent thirty-six state government agents into thirty-six bars in a Dallas suburb one night recently. Their mission was to detain the drunks before they could do harm to themselves or to the community. The catch for the evening was thirty drunken patrons. Wow! That’s 30 out of 36, an 83 per cent success rate. What efficiency!
I’ve been under the impression for years that it was illegal in Texas to operate a motor vehicle without an open six-pack on the front seat. I’ve also heard that the distances between Texas cities are often measured in beers. Example: It’s just three beers between Dallas and Fort Worth.
Even more amazing is that this government sting operation is taking place in the reddest of the GOP red states. After all, Texas has such an aversion to Liberals that it hasn’t given its electoral vote to a Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter captured its then 26 electoral votes in 1976. Since then, the former independent Republic of Texas has sent two Bushes to the White House — both advertised as true devotees of Conservative doctrine. I guess they’ve both met the test, but if you really wonder how true-blue they’ve been, check with Pat Buchanan.
One of the main tenets of Conservative doctrine is, of course, that your business whether it be the state of your health, the quality of your education, the cleanliness of the air you breathe and the water you drink, or where and whether you can carry a gun is none of the government’s business. Another tenet of Conservative doctrine is that corporations have a monopoly on efficiency. It stands to reason, Conservatives tell us, that “if a private business isn’t efficient, it fails. On the other hand,” they often smugly assert, “there’s nothing closer to eternal life on this earth than a government bureau!” Finally, Conservatives are really and truly grateful for government inefficiency because, all kidding aside, they’d really be scared if government really worked — or so they often insist.
Now I have no information as to who appoints the Alcoholic Beverage Commission in Texas, but I do know that the state has a Conservative governor, Rick Perry, that Republicans have an 87 to 63 majority in the state House of Representatives and a majority of 19 to 12 in the State Senate. If the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission isn’t Conservative, it simply can’t be 93 year-old Lady Bird Johnson’s fault, now can it!
What I think we’ve discovered is that Republicans, like their Democrat cousins, actually have a social conscience. It would appear that quite a few Texans must be interested in having the state government do something effective about public intoxication!
Ms. Beck’s explanation, justification, whichever you prefer, was enlightening. First she reminds all of us that a bar is a public place and that there are laws against being drunk in public. Then she gets to the root of it all. Not only do drunken people drive -- everyone, of course, is against that -- but they walk out into streets. They might be run over by an innocent and sober Texas driver who hasn’t yet opened the first can of his six-pack. Also, she says that drunken people often try to dive into pools from hotel room windows and often miss. Could it be that the Commission worries about drunken Texans becoming disabled and perhaps a drag on their insurance company as well as possibly on the Texas Department of Rehabilitation?
What appears to be at the heart of the Commission’s concern is that someone might get hurt and cost the taxpayer or perhaps the stockholders of an insurance company a lot of money. Is that not a legitimate as well as responsible government concern for the fiscal welfare of all them Long Horns? Sure it is, but is it true Blue? Is some Liberal bureaucrat running amuck deep in the heart of Texas?
Now, I’m not as scandalized by this government sting operation as some of my Conservative friends may be, but I’m a Liberal. I actually believe that the public is often well-served when, through their elected representatives, the people set forth both requirements and regulations for human as well as corporate behavior for the safety and stability of society.
What I really suspect is that Conservatives, like the Liberals they really love, deep down, are just as interested in spending public money on worthy causes. Here are just a few of their government priorities:
(1.) Just tell us where you want that prison and we’ll build it so long as it isn’t in or near our neighborhoods.
(2.) Capital punishment? Don’t complain to me how much it costs, just get on with it!
(3.) Health care is acceptable as long as there’s enough public money available for hospital construction and pharmaceutical company needs.
(4.) We won’t squeal too much about public expenditures for education so long as there’s money available for the school voucher program.
(5.) As long as I get my tax cut, borrow as much money from abroad as you need—even if some of it does come from those damn Chinese Communists.
The Reuters story didn’t identify who Carolyn Beck is, let alone who supervises her. Her announcement was issued on Wednesday, March 22nd and, presumably, she isn’t hiding from capture by Governor Perry’s Conservative constituency. In fact, she was quite definite that these anti-public intoxication sting operations would not only continue, but also be expanded to cover the entire state of Texas. That’s a lot of covering and a lot of public money that’s about to be spent, I would imagine.
What’s really happening in the Loan Star State is that the definition of what's strictly your business has contracted. It’s still your business if you get drunk in your own home or while visiting the home of your Liberal brother-in-law or perhaps even while sitting in your car. Just don't get drunk after strolling to your neighborhood bar!
Could it be that there's an even bigger story here? Might the Conservative government of Texas be engaging in a practice Republicans have complained about since the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: "the root of all evil?"
Rather than freedom, is Texas actually practicing SOCIAL ENGINEERING?
No! It simply can't be! I can just hear President Reagan exclaiming in frustration from under his heavenly halo:
"THERE THEY GO AGAIN!"
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
WHAT’S LUCKY ABOUT?
Originally written March 17th, 2006
BY EDWINCOONEY
What’s your definition of luck? My dictionary defines luck as prospering or succeeding through good fortune or by chance.
Luck is indeed a fickle companion! Seldom, very seldom indeed, is luck a partner. Luck, after all, is much too fickle to be anyone’s partner! It often seems that just when one is certain that “Lady Luck” is the figment of some lucky guy’s imagination, there she is smiling directly at you.
This train of thought occurred to me on Monday, March 6th as we all absorbed the news of Dana Reeve’s death at age 42 from lung cancer. “The woman didn’t even smoke!” many people said, “What awful luck!”
Mrs. Reeve was, of course, the widow of Christopher Reeve whose ordeal with quadriplegia was the result of a riding accident a decade or so prior to his death in 2004. “Rotten luck!” This tragedy was compounded by the fact that Chris and Dana Reeve left behind a 13-year-old son.
Many people wondered how such bad luck could come to such a beautiful, talented, wealthy and worthy young couple with so much to offer. Others, more insistent and angry, demanded to know why God would let such outrageous fortune happen to such admirable people as the Reeve family. I heard one radio talk show host assert that “God sure has a lot of explaining to do!”
At about the same time, 45-year-old Kirby Puckett, a man with a lifetime batting average of .318 and a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame since 2001, died suddenly of a stroke. My immediate reaction to that news was to think to myself, “Strokes don’t happen to men that young! What kind of luck is that?”
Kirby hadn’t always been “lucky” though. Following the 1995 American League baseball season during which Puckett hit 28 homeruns and batted .314, he was suddenly forced to retire after just twelve big league seasons due to the onset of glaucoma.
Luck is usually something we think of as being a good thing that should happen to the people we care about — as well as to ourselves. From the time we’re very young we verbally lavish it on each other like champagne after a championship game. Often we speak of it without even applying the adverb “good”. After all, everyone knows what “luck” is!
One of the nicest things about luck is that it’s usually cheap. After all, it doesn’t cost anything, not even money -- especially not money --- to wish someone “luck”—or even “good luck”. In fact, it is tradition for opposing prize fighters, baseball managers and even football team captains to wish one another “good luck” before the big match or game. They may not really mean it, but they do offer it!
So the question is: What is luck? For the sake of time and space, as well as my limited capacity for analysis, I’ll focus here on “good” luck.
One of my friends defines luck as being the place or domain in which opportunity meets up with good preparation. That’s not a bad definition but it’s a rather limited one. My friend is rather inhibited by his strong Protestant work ethic and his almost spiritual bond to every capitalist’s holy temple—the free market place—where voluntary and therefore calculated exchange presumably results in good fortune. His disapproval of gambling, which is both rationally and morally based, has to deny luck as being a factor in someone’s good fortune because he bases luck on the stellar qualities of studied and calculated preparation —neither of which are much present in Las Vegas, one of Lady Luck’s favorite playgrounds!
The real flaw in my friend’s definition of luck is it suggests that luck can be earned. I’m not sure even he really believes that, but being the splendid fellow that he is, he likes to think that good things can happen to good people even when there is no explanation for it.
The key word in the dictionary definition of “luck”, it seems to me, is the word “chance”. Chance makes luck both fickle and unexplainable--which means that luck is ultimately undependable and most certainly unaccountable!
Wanting luck to be forever present, another thing we often do is put a time expectation on luck. The only response one can make to that observation is that time-honored comment: “Lots-a-luck!” In other words, in order to be REALLY lucky, one must always be lucky!
Most of us see ourselves as being lucky only when something happens to us that is both unexpected and unusually pleasant.
“Uncle Ike got a hole in one on the golf course yesterday! Wow, what luck!” Some, of course, would remind us that Uncle Ike is a pretty good golfer! They might also observe that lucky things usually happen to good golfers more often than they happen to average or poor golfers.
“Did you hear that Cousin Harry won yesterday’s fifty million dollar lottery??” Someone surely has asked excitedly. Ah! But the real question is how will Cousin Harry handle the challenges that accompany his luck?
While most of us would dearly love to face Cousin Harry’s new challenge, the point is that even luck has its price—and it is often, very often, a much higher price than most of us realize. Uncle Ike must, henceforth, live up to his enhanced reputation as a good golfer and Cousin Harry must now wisely use his newfound resource, his wealth! Also, Cousin Harry must now keep in mind what’s written in scripture about rich men and the eye of the needle (and so on).
Christopher Reeve surely felt lucky on the day that he made Dana his bride. He simply would never have guessed that he’d have to spend most of their life together looking up at her from his bed or his wheelchair. Christopher and Dana Reeve doubtless felt both lucky and proud as new parents the day their son was born--never dreaming that they would be forced to leave him on his own too soon.
Nelson Rockefeller lived a luxurious life of riches and rewarding public service, but he also suffered a bitter divorce that was enough to ruin his reputation. Even worse, in 1961, he lost his son Michael during a trip which the lad was taking through the jungles of New Guinea.
The beautiful, the talented, and the rich have no monopoly on luck. My guess is that luck isn’t really a reward, but -- at best -- a fleeting grant of resources which we are expected by God to utilize while we have the time to do so.
Not all of the good things that bless our lives have anything to do with luck. Most people earn most of what they have or achieve throughout their lives. Ultimately, we explain the unexplainable by categorizing the unexplainable as “luck”… but that doesn’t mean that we’re the source of our personal and unfathomable good fortune!
My conclusion is that luck comes to us as a grant from God. Sometimes it comes to us as a talent, sometimes it may come to us as money or as a special relationship with a special person or set of unique people. Ultimately, though, my guess is that we’re expected to share what it brings to us with others.
Like our lives, luck is usually fleeting, but like so many of those intangible gifts from which we benefit -- such as creativity, tolerance and love -- its ultimate value is the power of its energy. Neither life nor luck lasts forever. What they have in common, aside from their often meteoric existence, is their source—God!
You know, something just occurred to me! Early in this writing I referred to “Lady Luck,” and as I think about it, luck really and truly is a lady.
“Lady Luck” even has a name. Her name is GRACE!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
BY EDWINCOONEY
What’s your definition of luck? My dictionary defines luck as prospering or succeeding through good fortune or by chance.
Luck is indeed a fickle companion! Seldom, very seldom indeed, is luck a partner. Luck, after all, is much too fickle to be anyone’s partner! It often seems that just when one is certain that “Lady Luck” is the figment of some lucky guy’s imagination, there she is smiling directly at you.
This train of thought occurred to me on Monday, March 6th as we all absorbed the news of Dana Reeve’s death at age 42 from lung cancer. “The woman didn’t even smoke!” many people said, “What awful luck!”
Mrs. Reeve was, of course, the widow of Christopher Reeve whose ordeal with quadriplegia was the result of a riding accident a decade or so prior to his death in 2004. “Rotten luck!” This tragedy was compounded by the fact that Chris and Dana Reeve left behind a 13-year-old son.
Many people wondered how such bad luck could come to such a beautiful, talented, wealthy and worthy young couple with so much to offer. Others, more insistent and angry, demanded to know why God would let such outrageous fortune happen to such admirable people as the Reeve family. I heard one radio talk show host assert that “God sure has a lot of explaining to do!”
At about the same time, 45-year-old Kirby Puckett, a man with a lifetime batting average of .318 and a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame since 2001, died suddenly of a stroke. My immediate reaction to that news was to think to myself, “Strokes don’t happen to men that young! What kind of luck is that?”
Kirby hadn’t always been “lucky” though. Following the 1995 American League baseball season during which Puckett hit 28 homeruns and batted .314, he was suddenly forced to retire after just twelve big league seasons due to the onset of glaucoma.
Luck is usually something we think of as being a good thing that should happen to the people we care about — as well as to ourselves. From the time we’re very young we verbally lavish it on each other like champagne after a championship game. Often we speak of it without even applying the adverb “good”. After all, everyone knows what “luck” is!
One of the nicest things about luck is that it’s usually cheap. After all, it doesn’t cost anything, not even money -- especially not money --- to wish someone “luck”—or even “good luck”. In fact, it is tradition for opposing prize fighters, baseball managers and even football team captains to wish one another “good luck” before the big match or game. They may not really mean it, but they do offer it!
So the question is: What is luck? For the sake of time and space, as well as my limited capacity for analysis, I’ll focus here on “good” luck.
One of my friends defines luck as being the place or domain in which opportunity meets up with good preparation. That’s not a bad definition but it’s a rather limited one. My friend is rather inhibited by his strong Protestant work ethic and his almost spiritual bond to every capitalist’s holy temple—the free market place—where voluntary and therefore calculated exchange presumably results in good fortune. His disapproval of gambling, which is both rationally and morally based, has to deny luck as being a factor in someone’s good fortune because he bases luck on the stellar qualities of studied and calculated preparation —neither of which are much present in Las Vegas, one of Lady Luck’s favorite playgrounds!
The real flaw in my friend’s definition of luck is it suggests that luck can be earned. I’m not sure even he really believes that, but being the splendid fellow that he is, he likes to think that good things can happen to good people even when there is no explanation for it.
The key word in the dictionary definition of “luck”, it seems to me, is the word “chance”. Chance makes luck both fickle and unexplainable--which means that luck is ultimately undependable and most certainly unaccountable!
Wanting luck to be forever present, another thing we often do is put a time expectation on luck. The only response one can make to that observation is that time-honored comment: “Lots-a-luck!” In other words, in order to be REALLY lucky, one must always be lucky!
Most of us see ourselves as being lucky only when something happens to us that is both unexpected and unusually pleasant.
“Uncle Ike got a hole in one on the golf course yesterday! Wow, what luck!” Some, of course, would remind us that Uncle Ike is a pretty good golfer! They might also observe that lucky things usually happen to good golfers more often than they happen to average or poor golfers.
“Did you hear that Cousin Harry won yesterday’s fifty million dollar lottery??” Someone surely has asked excitedly. Ah! But the real question is how will Cousin Harry handle the challenges that accompany his luck?
While most of us would dearly love to face Cousin Harry’s new challenge, the point is that even luck has its price—and it is often, very often, a much higher price than most of us realize. Uncle Ike must, henceforth, live up to his enhanced reputation as a good golfer and Cousin Harry must now wisely use his newfound resource, his wealth! Also, Cousin Harry must now keep in mind what’s written in scripture about rich men and the eye of the needle (and so on).
Christopher Reeve surely felt lucky on the day that he made Dana his bride. He simply would never have guessed that he’d have to spend most of their life together looking up at her from his bed or his wheelchair. Christopher and Dana Reeve doubtless felt both lucky and proud as new parents the day their son was born--never dreaming that they would be forced to leave him on his own too soon.
Nelson Rockefeller lived a luxurious life of riches and rewarding public service, but he also suffered a bitter divorce that was enough to ruin his reputation. Even worse, in 1961, he lost his son Michael during a trip which the lad was taking through the jungles of New Guinea.
The beautiful, the talented, and the rich have no monopoly on luck. My guess is that luck isn’t really a reward, but -- at best -- a fleeting grant of resources which we are expected by God to utilize while we have the time to do so.
Not all of the good things that bless our lives have anything to do with luck. Most people earn most of what they have or achieve throughout their lives. Ultimately, we explain the unexplainable by categorizing the unexplainable as “luck”… but that doesn’t mean that we’re the source of our personal and unfathomable good fortune!
My conclusion is that luck comes to us as a grant from God. Sometimes it comes to us as a talent, sometimes it may come to us as money or as a special relationship with a special person or set of unique people. Ultimately, though, my guess is that we’re expected to share what it brings to us with others.
Like our lives, luck is usually fleeting, but like so many of those intangible gifts from which we benefit -- such as creativity, tolerance and love -- its ultimate value is the power of its energy. Neither life nor luck lasts forever. What they have in common, aside from their often meteoric existence, is their source—God!
You know, something just occurred to me! Early in this writing I referred to “Lady Luck,” and as I think about it, luck really and truly is a lady.
“Lady Luck” even has a name. Her name is GRACE!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT—Itself a Death Row Inmate?
Originally written Friday, March 3rd, 2006
BY EDWIN COONEY
I abhor capital punishment—not for what it does to the criminal—but for what it does to the innocent! An example of what I mean took place on a local Bay Area talk show not long ago.
It was Tuesday morning, February 21st. I turned on my radio that morning to one of the most erudite talk show hosts in the profession, Ronn Owens of KGO in San Francisco, a thirty-plus year veteran of talk radio.
At one minute after midnight of the previous evening, the State of California was to have administered a lethal injection to 25 year death row inmate Michael Morales. It hadn’t happened and for a solid hour Mr. Owens and most of his callers vented their spleens.
Rightfully outraged by Morales’ subhuman crime, discussion participants displayed both anger as well as outrage-driven logic for the enlightenment of listeners, describing what ought to have been Morales’ just fate.
Host Owens expressed his ideal punishment for the convicted murderer as being death via the same method which the criminal used to kill the victim. It was also suggested that ideally the inmate--like the victim—should be left wondering when his death would occur. Thus, the death row inmate would always be “…watching his back.” The application of maximum pain during the execution process had its plentiful proponents as well.
Amidst the just and angry cries against murder on the program, the little opposition to Capital Punishment itself was very mild and almost defensive. What was even more disturbing was what WASN’T discussed: whether the reason for the delay of the execution had any merit. You can be sure that the judge who created the condition that caused the delay was labeled a Liberal, but frustrated labeling was about as far as this veteran professional talk show host was capable of to guide the discussion that morning.
The previous day, a federal judge had ruled that an anesthesiologist should be present during Morales’s execution to guard against excessive pain throughout the procedure. The presence of an anesthesiologist would satisfy the requirement against the application of “cruel and unusual punishment” under the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment. Ultimately, the “fly in the ointment” was that the anesthesiologists in attendance that day refused on both legal and professional grounds to take the assignment. Thus, the execution of Morales was first postponed until one minute after seven on the evening of Tuesday, February 21st and, finally, postponed indefinitely.
An anesthesiologist is, of course, a doctor and is subject to the moral code of the Hippocratic Oath. Thus, any doctor who assists in the taking of life, under the laws of the State of California, is in violation of that oath and thus subject to punishment resulting in the permanent withdrawal of his or her license.
This reality has many fascinating scientific, medical, legal and moral implications which constitute a natural grist for any talk show’s discussion mill. Ronn Owens and his callers might have discussed the moral and ethical implications of a doctor’s participation in capital punishment; they may have talked about the method that some states use to get around the moral and legal drawbacks to doctor-assisted executions, they may even have compared the medical professional’s moral dilemma with that of the clergy. They may have discussed any and all aspects of this most fascinating situation, but they were prevented from doing so by the most deadly force ever confronted by human kind: THEIR OWN ANGER!
Almost any discussion or debate between a proponent and opponent of capital punishment features a higher degree of outrage on the part of the proponent by the very nature of the discussion. The proponent of capital punishment, after all, enters the conversation with a “solution” to one of humankind’s most despicable acts: the crime of murder. The opponent of capital punishment starts out the discussion having to justify his or her own equally heartfelt moral certainty that that “solution” is flawed. Inevitably, the opponent of capital punishment finds him or herself charged with a lack of compassion for the murdered victim and their family.
Of course, any shortened life is a tragic life. I believe that the only possible justification for destroying any human life is the immediate preservation of an innocent one who may be under attack. Beyond that there are numerous ramifications which are practical, moral, institutional, and personal.
From a practical standpoint, if the cost of saving the most innocent life from the riggers of accident and disease is more expensive than ever before, can anyone reasonably expect that the cost of saving a guilty life isn’t going to increase geometrically? No one, not even the angriest and most determined contemporary judge, politician or citizen, has found a way to administer executions both efficiently and on the cheap! Nor can anyone expect reasonably that someone on trial for their life shouldn’t be afforded the best possible defense. It should also be kept in mind that the amount of public money currently being spent to execute the most deserving criminal is subsequently unavailable to feed, educate, provide health care, improve the environment for, or increase the personal safety of any citizen. This reality is the obvious as well as the most chronic effect capital punishment has on the innocent.
From a moral standpoint, once the urgency of taking a life to prevent the loss of an innocent one has become irrelevant, usually because the victim is gone and the murderer is effectively detained, then the act of killing is stripped -- it seems to me -- of its moral fiber! Thus, killing becomes murder whether it is done by the State or by John Wilkes Booth. As for executions being essential for closure or for the “peace of mind” for the victim’s next of kin, I would ask this question: Is murder less tragic to the victim and their families when the murderer commits suicide? In other words, does the murderer’s suicide erase the horror and outrage of the crime?
From an institutional standpoint, the cost of permanently housing lifers has become miniscule in proportion to the cost of appeals. Another reality is that the number of inmates serving time for “capital murder” is less than ten per cent of the prison population.
From a personal standpoint, I don’t believe I can be accused of having any pity for murderers just because I oppose capital punishment. Michael Morales’s act of rape and murder was nothing short of being both vain and despicable. The act itself was even more despicable than the act of capital punishment, because capital punishment at least has as its purpose the “greater public good”. However, I’ve never read, even in scripture, that one sin erases another sin. I have read in scripture that life is God’s to give or take and that God is jealous of His exclusive rights. I’m sure that that reality has occurred more than once to Michael Morales during the past twenty-five years. In fact, our society might also be well-served to keep that bit of scripture in mind.
Historically, doctors have gotten involved with society to make executions more efficient as well as humane. The most dramatic example was in France. During the eighteenth century, a French physician constructed a machine that bears his name. It came out just in time for the French Revolution. Beheading via axe could be both messy and inefficient---thus Dr. Joseph Guillotin’s killing machine filled the bill with perfection.
During the 1890’s, the inventors of the electric chair demonstrated its efficiency to a session of the New York State Legislature by electrocuting a chicken. Unfortunately, history doesn’t record whether or not that distinguished body immediately adjourned to the capitol lawn for a chicken barbecue!
It is just possible that the unwillingness of some in the medical profession to take a life may put a sufficient crimp in the continued use of capital murder but, if history is any indication, such is probably not the case. In Illinois, for example, a law has been passed declaring that assisting in capital punishment is not a medical practice. Had that law been in effect in California, perhaps Michael Morales would today be history.
There may be no room for you in the neighborhood, at a school, in a hospital, on a talk show, in the dining-room, in the arms of your lover, or even at the inn. But there’s always room for you on death row!
I believe that capital punishment deserves a place for itself on death row… right next to the death chamber. The execution process for capital punishment may be long and agonizing, it may even be “cruel and unusual,” but its demise, I hope, is inevitable. I devoutly believe that the real victims of capital punishment are not our criminals, but our innocent selves.
Perhaps our greatest tragedy, even as we declare ourselves to be children of God, is that after so many centuries of experiencing the miracle of life, we really believe that we can solve our problems by killing one another!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
BY EDWIN COONEY
I abhor capital punishment—not for what it does to the criminal—but for what it does to the innocent! An example of what I mean took place on a local Bay Area talk show not long ago.
It was Tuesday morning, February 21st. I turned on my radio that morning to one of the most erudite talk show hosts in the profession, Ronn Owens of KGO in San Francisco, a thirty-plus year veteran of talk radio.
At one minute after midnight of the previous evening, the State of California was to have administered a lethal injection to 25 year death row inmate Michael Morales. It hadn’t happened and for a solid hour Mr. Owens and most of his callers vented their spleens.
Rightfully outraged by Morales’ subhuman crime, discussion participants displayed both anger as well as outrage-driven logic for the enlightenment of listeners, describing what ought to have been Morales’ just fate.
Host Owens expressed his ideal punishment for the convicted murderer as being death via the same method which the criminal used to kill the victim. It was also suggested that ideally the inmate--like the victim—should be left wondering when his death would occur. Thus, the death row inmate would always be “…watching his back.” The application of maximum pain during the execution process had its plentiful proponents as well.
Amidst the just and angry cries against murder on the program, the little opposition to Capital Punishment itself was very mild and almost defensive. What was even more disturbing was what WASN’T discussed: whether the reason for the delay of the execution had any merit. You can be sure that the judge who created the condition that caused the delay was labeled a Liberal, but frustrated labeling was about as far as this veteran professional talk show host was capable of to guide the discussion that morning.
The previous day, a federal judge had ruled that an anesthesiologist should be present during Morales’s execution to guard against excessive pain throughout the procedure. The presence of an anesthesiologist would satisfy the requirement against the application of “cruel and unusual punishment” under the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment. Ultimately, the “fly in the ointment” was that the anesthesiologists in attendance that day refused on both legal and professional grounds to take the assignment. Thus, the execution of Morales was first postponed until one minute after seven on the evening of Tuesday, February 21st and, finally, postponed indefinitely.
An anesthesiologist is, of course, a doctor and is subject to the moral code of the Hippocratic Oath. Thus, any doctor who assists in the taking of life, under the laws of the State of California, is in violation of that oath and thus subject to punishment resulting in the permanent withdrawal of his or her license.
This reality has many fascinating scientific, medical, legal and moral implications which constitute a natural grist for any talk show’s discussion mill. Ronn Owens and his callers might have discussed the moral and ethical implications of a doctor’s participation in capital punishment; they may have talked about the method that some states use to get around the moral and legal drawbacks to doctor-assisted executions, they may even have compared the medical professional’s moral dilemma with that of the clergy. They may have discussed any and all aspects of this most fascinating situation, but they were prevented from doing so by the most deadly force ever confronted by human kind: THEIR OWN ANGER!
Almost any discussion or debate between a proponent and opponent of capital punishment features a higher degree of outrage on the part of the proponent by the very nature of the discussion. The proponent of capital punishment, after all, enters the conversation with a “solution” to one of humankind’s most despicable acts: the crime of murder. The opponent of capital punishment starts out the discussion having to justify his or her own equally heartfelt moral certainty that that “solution” is flawed. Inevitably, the opponent of capital punishment finds him or herself charged with a lack of compassion for the murdered victim and their family.
Of course, any shortened life is a tragic life. I believe that the only possible justification for destroying any human life is the immediate preservation of an innocent one who may be under attack. Beyond that there are numerous ramifications which are practical, moral, institutional, and personal.
From a practical standpoint, if the cost of saving the most innocent life from the riggers of accident and disease is more expensive than ever before, can anyone reasonably expect that the cost of saving a guilty life isn’t going to increase geometrically? No one, not even the angriest and most determined contemporary judge, politician or citizen, has found a way to administer executions both efficiently and on the cheap! Nor can anyone expect reasonably that someone on trial for their life shouldn’t be afforded the best possible defense. It should also be kept in mind that the amount of public money currently being spent to execute the most deserving criminal is subsequently unavailable to feed, educate, provide health care, improve the environment for, or increase the personal safety of any citizen. This reality is the obvious as well as the most chronic effect capital punishment has on the innocent.
From a moral standpoint, once the urgency of taking a life to prevent the loss of an innocent one has become irrelevant, usually because the victim is gone and the murderer is effectively detained, then the act of killing is stripped -- it seems to me -- of its moral fiber! Thus, killing becomes murder whether it is done by the State or by John Wilkes Booth. As for executions being essential for closure or for the “peace of mind” for the victim’s next of kin, I would ask this question: Is murder less tragic to the victim and their families when the murderer commits suicide? In other words, does the murderer’s suicide erase the horror and outrage of the crime?
From an institutional standpoint, the cost of permanently housing lifers has become miniscule in proportion to the cost of appeals. Another reality is that the number of inmates serving time for “capital murder” is less than ten per cent of the prison population.
From a personal standpoint, I don’t believe I can be accused of having any pity for murderers just because I oppose capital punishment. Michael Morales’s act of rape and murder was nothing short of being both vain and despicable. The act itself was even more despicable than the act of capital punishment, because capital punishment at least has as its purpose the “greater public good”. However, I’ve never read, even in scripture, that one sin erases another sin. I have read in scripture that life is God’s to give or take and that God is jealous of His exclusive rights. I’m sure that that reality has occurred more than once to Michael Morales during the past twenty-five years. In fact, our society might also be well-served to keep that bit of scripture in mind.
Historically, doctors have gotten involved with society to make executions more efficient as well as humane. The most dramatic example was in France. During the eighteenth century, a French physician constructed a machine that bears his name. It came out just in time for the French Revolution. Beheading via axe could be both messy and inefficient---thus Dr. Joseph Guillotin’s killing machine filled the bill with perfection.
During the 1890’s, the inventors of the electric chair demonstrated its efficiency to a session of the New York State Legislature by electrocuting a chicken. Unfortunately, history doesn’t record whether or not that distinguished body immediately adjourned to the capitol lawn for a chicken barbecue!
It is just possible that the unwillingness of some in the medical profession to take a life may put a sufficient crimp in the continued use of capital murder but, if history is any indication, such is probably not the case. In Illinois, for example, a law has been passed declaring that assisting in capital punishment is not a medical practice. Had that law been in effect in California, perhaps Michael Morales would today be history.
There may be no room for you in the neighborhood, at a school, in a hospital, on a talk show, in the dining-room, in the arms of your lover, or even at the inn. But there’s always room for you on death row!
I believe that capital punishment deserves a place for itself on death row… right next to the death chamber. The execution process for capital punishment may be long and agonizing, it may even be “cruel and unusual,” but its demise, I hope, is inevitable. I devoutly believe that the real victims of capital punishment are not our criminals, but our innocent selves.
Perhaps our greatest tragedy, even as we declare ourselves to be children of God, is that after so many centuries of experiencing the miracle of life, we really believe that we can solve our problems by killing one another!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
THE PHONE CALL NEVER MADE
Originally written October 5th, 2005
BY EDWIN COONEY
Alexander Graham Bell’s famous and practical invention, the telephone, has generally been a useful tool for Republicans. If you don’t believe me, ask Michael Savage, Dr. Laura, Sean Hanity, and most definitely Rush Limbaugh.
One of the most constant themes that runs through these national call-in talk shows is the resentment millions of Conservatives feel toward the black civil rights movement here in America.
Then came last Thursday. Former Reagan Education Secretary and Bush (41) drug czar William J. Bennett was on Washington D.C. radio conducting his “Morning in America” call-in talk show. He and a caller were discussing statistics as they reflect the existence and severity of crime in America.
Suddenly, Bill Bennett had an idea. He was sure that he could voice it because, after all, everyone knows that he opposes abortion. So he observed, while calling it morally reprehensible, that if we could abort a generation of black babies, crime in America would soon substantially decrease.
Suddenly Bill Bennett was swamped with hurt and angry reactions from the black and Liberal communities. Not even his fellow Conservative, the President of the United States (according to his press secretary), thought that Mr. Bennett’s observations were “appropriate”.
Like their Liberal forebears of the 1930s, modern Conservative revisionists have
managed to adopt the glories of our past as their own virtues. At the same time,
they assign the imperfections of past policies and institutions to their morally
inferior liberal antecedents as liberal New Dealers did to Conservatives during the Depression.
Although the Conservative outlook on most issues has become pretty main stream, there is one area of national concern that Conservatives have not been able to dominate. Furthermore, they seem genuinely puzzled by it. It is civil rights. How can it be, they wonder, that we can’t convince blacks that we’re as concerned about their welfare as any Liberal has been? After all, our party is the party of Abraham Lincoln and free enterprise. Together, Lincoln’s legacy and free enterprise have been both the symbol and substance that guarantee freedom for everyone including black Americans, haven’t they?
The answer to such an inquiry is “perhaps” -- but Republicans may have missed their best chance to have black Americans as fellow political constituents because of a telephone call that was never made.
On Wednesday, October 19, 1960, during that year’s presidential campaign, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested along with seventy-five other blacks during a peaceful demonstration at the Magnolia Room of Rich’s Department Store in Atlanta, Georgia. All those arrested except Dr. King were soon released. A local judge sentenced Dr. King to six months of hard labor because he was still on probation for having violated a traffic law prohibiting driving with an out-of-state license.
Coretta Scott King was concerned because her husband had twice been awakened in the night. Put in handcuffs and leg-irons, he had been driven to rural Georgia for interrogation. Might he not return alive some night?, she wondered.
Just weeks before, Vice President Richard M. Nixon, the Republican presidential candidate, had visited Atlanta and received an overwhelmingly warm reception. One of those endorsing his candidacy was Martin Luther King, Sr. The major reason for Reverend King’s endorsement of Mr. Nixon was Jack Kennedy’s Catholic faith.
But there was also the compelling fact that the Republican administration, of
which Mr. Nixon was a part, had authored and signed two civil rights bills—and, even more significant, had appointed a Supreme Court that was one of the most sympathetic to minorities in the history of America.
If the Democratic party was the party of Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey, it was also the party of Dixiecrats like Georgia’s Richard Russell and South Carolina’s Strom Thurmond. In September 1960, due to their Protestant orientation and the seeming promise of the party of Abraham Lincoln, millions of blacks were ready to vote for Richard M. Nixon.
For Mrs. King, the question was which of the two presidential candidates might care enough to use his influence to save her husband’s life?
Nixon was already in trouble with Conservatives in his party due to a public promise by his Vice-Presidential running mate Henry Cabot Lodge that “…if Nixon is elected there will be a qualified Negro in the cabinet.”
Kennedy worried that if he got involved in the King matter, he might lose his already delicate Southern support.
Former baseball hero Jackie Robinson caught up with Vice President Nixon in the Midwest and urged him to call Mrs. King or the judge in the case or both. To Robinson’s frustration, Nixon responded that if he did something like that it might be seen as “merely grandstanding,” and thus there would be no call. Fear of inappropriateness, it would seem therefore, short-circuited even Vice President Nixon’s most genuine concerns.
John F. Kennedy would make that call and reap the subsequent political benefits in 1960. He seemed to care about the welfare of someone who meant a lot to many people while Vice President Nixon appeared cautious and calculating as well as indifferent.
Whatever opportunities may have been missed back in 1960, the question now is what will it take to remove the personal hurt and shame from the domain of race relations in this, the freest land in the world?
It seems that even a strictly rational discussion on racial issues breeds resentment by its sheer lack of emotion unless the participants are reasonably close on their ideology. Too often, whites try to minimize the issue here in America by pointing out that five-sixths of the world population is nonwhite. Therefore, racial discrimination is a human failing, not a problem particularly germane to white America.
Blacks counter by observing that slavery and post slavery discrimination in American society is more virulent than anywhere else in the history of humanity because of its ties to our economic values. Elsewhere in the world, they argue, slaves were people -- not property.
While there is much truth in both of the above observations, the key to solving nearly 500 years of racial turmoil in America is in both the existence and the nature of a very real and special phenomenon. That phenomenon is greater and much more powerful than either Liberal or Conservative doctrine.
Someone once pointed out that America is the only nation on earth with a birth certificate. We call it the Declaration of Independence. This imperfect society populated by imperfect people created a promissory note for itself at its very outset as a nation.
That promissory note which pledges us to realize the full potential of our own strength, dignity, and morality can never be fulfilled as long as we minimize and even humiliate one another.
If we insist to anyone that society might be “improved” if the next generation were eliminated, as Bill Bennett did when speaking of black Americans last Thursday, we are really commenting on our own limitations and ignoring our God-given potential.
And any time someone diminishes rather than empowers us, no matter what his or her political or religious doctrine may be, that’s sad!
Forty-five years, nine presidencies and three major civil rights bills have passed since Vice President Nixon decided not to call Mrs. King or the judge. Had that call been made by Richard Nixon, it is just possible that America's demand for forward movement in civil rights might have had a Conservative rather than a Liberal stamp on it.
Perhaps frustration over a sense of missed opportunity rather than racism is what fuels mean and non-constructive ideas such as those advanced by Mr. Bennett on his radio talk show last Thursday. History indeed might have been very different had Richard Nixon just picked up that phone.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
BY EDWIN COONEY
Alexander Graham Bell’s famous and practical invention, the telephone, has generally been a useful tool for Republicans. If you don’t believe me, ask Michael Savage, Dr. Laura, Sean Hanity, and most definitely Rush Limbaugh.
One of the most constant themes that runs through these national call-in talk shows is the resentment millions of Conservatives feel toward the black civil rights movement here in America.
Then came last Thursday. Former Reagan Education Secretary and Bush (41) drug czar William J. Bennett was on Washington D.C. radio conducting his “Morning in America” call-in talk show. He and a caller were discussing statistics as they reflect the existence and severity of crime in America.
Suddenly, Bill Bennett had an idea. He was sure that he could voice it because, after all, everyone knows that he opposes abortion. So he observed, while calling it morally reprehensible, that if we could abort a generation of black babies, crime in America would soon substantially decrease.
Suddenly Bill Bennett was swamped with hurt and angry reactions from the black and Liberal communities. Not even his fellow Conservative, the President of the United States (according to his press secretary), thought that Mr. Bennett’s observations were “appropriate”.
Like their Liberal forebears of the 1930s, modern Conservative revisionists have
managed to adopt the glories of our past as their own virtues. At the same time,
they assign the imperfections of past policies and institutions to their morally
inferior liberal antecedents as liberal New Dealers did to Conservatives during the Depression.
Although the Conservative outlook on most issues has become pretty main stream, there is one area of national concern that Conservatives have not been able to dominate. Furthermore, they seem genuinely puzzled by it. It is civil rights. How can it be, they wonder, that we can’t convince blacks that we’re as concerned about their welfare as any Liberal has been? After all, our party is the party of Abraham Lincoln and free enterprise. Together, Lincoln’s legacy and free enterprise have been both the symbol and substance that guarantee freedom for everyone including black Americans, haven’t they?
The answer to such an inquiry is “perhaps” -- but Republicans may have missed their best chance to have black Americans as fellow political constituents because of a telephone call that was never made.
On Wednesday, October 19, 1960, during that year’s presidential campaign, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested along with seventy-five other blacks during a peaceful demonstration at the Magnolia Room of Rich’s Department Store in Atlanta, Georgia. All those arrested except Dr. King were soon released. A local judge sentenced Dr. King to six months of hard labor because he was still on probation for having violated a traffic law prohibiting driving with an out-of-state license.
Coretta Scott King was concerned because her husband had twice been awakened in the night. Put in handcuffs and leg-irons, he had been driven to rural Georgia for interrogation. Might he not return alive some night?, she wondered.
Just weeks before, Vice President Richard M. Nixon, the Republican presidential candidate, had visited Atlanta and received an overwhelmingly warm reception. One of those endorsing his candidacy was Martin Luther King, Sr. The major reason for Reverend King’s endorsement of Mr. Nixon was Jack Kennedy’s Catholic faith.
But there was also the compelling fact that the Republican administration, of
which Mr. Nixon was a part, had authored and signed two civil rights bills—and, even more significant, had appointed a Supreme Court that was one of the most sympathetic to minorities in the history of America.
If the Democratic party was the party of Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey, it was also the party of Dixiecrats like Georgia’s Richard Russell and South Carolina’s Strom Thurmond. In September 1960, due to their Protestant orientation and the seeming promise of the party of Abraham Lincoln, millions of blacks were ready to vote for Richard M. Nixon.
For Mrs. King, the question was which of the two presidential candidates might care enough to use his influence to save her husband’s life?
Nixon was already in trouble with Conservatives in his party due to a public promise by his Vice-Presidential running mate Henry Cabot Lodge that “…if Nixon is elected there will be a qualified Negro in the cabinet.”
Kennedy worried that if he got involved in the King matter, he might lose his already delicate Southern support.
Former baseball hero Jackie Robinson caught up with Vice President Nixon in the Midwest and urged him to call Mrs. King or the judge in the case or both. To Robinson’s frustration, Nixon responded that if he did something like that it might be seen as “merely grandstanding,” and thus there would be no call. Fear of inappropriateness, it would seem therefore, short-circuited even Vice President Nixon’s most genuine concerns.
John F. Kennedy would make that call and reap the subsequent political benefits in 1960. He seemed to care about the welfare of someone who meant a lot to many people while Vice President Nixon appeared cautious and calculating as well as indifferent.
Whatever opportunities may have been missed back in 1960, the question now is what will it take to remove the personal hurt and shame from the domain of race relations in this, the freest land in the world?
It seems that even a strictly rational discussion on racial issues breeds resentment by its sheer lack of emotion unless the participants are reasonably close on their ideology. Too often, whites try to minimize the issue here in America by pointing out that five-sixths of the world population is nonwhite. Therefore, racial discrimination is a human failing, not a problem particularly germane to white America.
Blacks counter by observing that slavery and post slavery discrimination in American society is more virulent than anywhere else in the history of humanity because of its ties to our economic values. Elsewhere in the world, they argue, slaves were people -- not property.
While there is much truth in both of the above observations, the key to solving nearly 500 years of racial turmoil in America is in both the existence and the nature of a very real and special phenomenon. That phenomenon is greater and much more powerful than either Liberal or Conservative doctrine.
Someone once pointed out that America is the only nation on earth with a birth certificate. We call it the Declaration of Independence. This imperfect society populated by imperfect people created a promissory note for itself at its very outset as a nation.
That promissory note which pledges us to realize the full potential of our own strength, dignity, and morality can never be fulfilled as long as we minimize and even humiliate one another.
If we insist to anyone that society might be “improved” if the next generation were eliminated, as Bill Bennett did when speaking of black Americans last Thursday, we are really commenting on our own limitations and ignoring our God-given potential.
And any time someone diminishes rather than empowers us, no matter what his or her political or religious doctrine may be, that’s sad!
Forty-five years, nine presidencies and three major civil rights bills have passed since Vice President Nixon decided not to call Mrs. King or the judge. Had that call been made by Richard Nixon, it is just possible that America's demand for forward movement in civil rights might have had a Conservative rather than a Liberal stamp on it.
Perhaps frustration over a sense of missed opportunity rather than racism is what fuels mean and non-constructive ideas such as those advanced by Mr. Bennett on his radio talk show last Thursday. History indeed might have been very different had Richard Nixon just picked up that phone.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)