I KNOW, CUZ I WENT TO THE SOURCE!

By Edwin Cooney

I’m not sure many of you know much about the current controversy between two of the most infamous entities in 2013 American society, Alexander Emmanuel Rodriguez (A-Rod) and the mighty New York Yankees. However, because it’s a fascinating story filled with dramatic accusations and implications, and in order to get a better understanding of it all, I went to the source of the whole controversy.  Before I describe that “source” that passed on the wise perspective I’m about to impart to you, I’ll briefly summarize this most intriguing situation.

A-Rod, who is under a multiyear contract with the Yankees, is getting old and brittle.  He has had at least two hip surgeries over the past two plus years and his quick and mighty bat doesn’t consistently do what it once did.  The Yankees "business model" since the days of George Herman (Babe) Ruth, has been the multitalented baseball star, but they have come to believe that the 90 plus million dollars they owe A-Rod will not only fail to bring them glory, but will likely bring them nothing but financial and professional embarrassment. 

In addition to his brittle physique and sluggish bat, A-Rod, in 2009, felt compelled to ask forgiveness from the public and his teammates for having experimented with steroids and human growth hormone. Since then, it has been revealed that A-Rod invested in Biogenesis, a company that has been selling these newly outlawed substances to athletes all over the country.  Thus, although A-Rod seems to have recovered from his hips malady, he’s appealing a 211 game suspension by Major League Baseball and the loss of approximately 35 million dollars in salary. Understandably, the Yankees won’t be sorry not to have to pay him the 35 million while he’s suspended.  However, they appear to be quite sorry that they will have to pay the additional 55 million they will owe him after the 211 games are over and A-Rod remains their property at the age of forty-two.

Now the plot has thickened according to Tyler Kemper in the Sunday, August 18^th New York Times.  Joseph Tacopina, one of A-Rod’s lawyers, says the Yankees knew last year that A-Rod had a torn labrum in his right hip and used him knowing he couldn’t produce. They hoped that his injury would be aggravated sufficiently to bring about his retirement thus enabling them to collect a nice chunk of insurance money.

If what A-Rod’s lawyer charges is true, the Yankees deliberately played an injured player with the goal of collecting insurance money rather than with the proper goal of defeating the Detroit Tigers in the 2012 American League Championship Series.  If such is the case, the Yankees are not only guilty of conspiracy, but far, far worse, they are guilty of treachery of their fans and of injury to the integrity of professional baseball.  The Yankees deny this, of course, and A-Rod is leaving it to his lawyers to speak for him.  Even more fascinating is the statement recently made by A-Rod himself that before this is over, there will be several more big stories for baseball and its fans to absorb.

So, it’s just possible that A-Rod’s suspension may constitute the biggest threat to the integrity of baseball since the 1919 World Series “Black” Sox scandal when it was discovered that eight Chicago White Sox had helped their opponents, the Cincinnati Reds, win that year’s World Series.  With all this in mind, I went to the real source behind all this drama to get at the truth. 

I shouldn’t brag, of course, but while others have been asking everyone from A-Rod, his lawyers, his teammates, the commissioner’s office and baseball fans all over the country for their assessment of this dramatic situation, I spoke with the real power behind all of this controversy.  Since “money talks,” I went straight to the money that’s bound to settle this matter.

Seventeen distinguished Americans (fifteen men and two women) have been designated by Congress to appear on American money.  Some of these people are in A-Rod’s pocket and some are in the pockets of everybody else concerned with this dispute.  Hence, one or more (which may include George, Tom, Abe, Alex, Andrew, Ulysses, Ben, Bill, Grover, James, Salmon, Woodrow, Frank, Jack, Ike, Susan B., or Sacagawea) spoke to me under my guarantee of anonymity.

“What can you tell me and my readers about what’s really going on with A-Rod, the Yankees, and Major League Baseball?” I asked my source.

“There’s a lot of fact and fiction out there, but it is so scattered among us that it is not possible for us to reach any conclusion about it at present.  Some of us are in A-Rod’s and his lawyer’s pockets and some of us are in the pockets of Yankee officials and their lawyers.  Others of us are in the pockets of the Major League Baseball Players Association and those of Major League Baseball officials. One of us very recently spent the night in A-Rod’s bathrobe pocket which was hanging on one of his bed posts.  It’s a little early for us to confer since a sufficient number of us haven’t fallen into the right pocket or pockets to influence a conclusion. I can assure you, however, from decades of experience, that it’s just a matter of time before we’re all in the best place to influence the outcome of this whole thing.

“When you’re properly situated in the right place (or pocket), will there be justice for A-Rod, the Yankees, Major League Baseball, or for the fans? I asked.

“Look, all I can tell you is that there will be supreme satisfaction for someone.  After all, we’re money, not love.  We’re usually most effective in great numbers, just as people like to believe that they are effective as citizens of a democracy or a republic.  Eventually we’ll be in the right place at the right time to sufficiently grease the wheels of liberty energizing commerce.  Remember, “IN GOD WE TRUST” is stamped on each and every one of us,” insisted my source with hand over heart. 

“Wow, that’s incredible,” I cried. “Do you mean to tell me that you’re at the bottom of this whole scandal?” I demanded to know.

“Of course we are,” my money source scoffed, “We’re at the top, bottom, to the right, to the left, inside and outside of everything that goes on.  We’re the yin and the yang, we’re both the problem and the solution.  We are why everything happened that ever has happened throughout American history.  We are why the colonists broke away from Great Britain and why Britain wanted to hang on to them.  We are why there was slavery and why slavery was abolished.  We are why people are conservative and liberal, why people are sad or happy. It might be said that we are why people are people.  Remember,” my informer bragged, with an exceedingly mischievous grin, "we’re money, far ahead -- as many will tell you -- of anything else that comes in second!”

“Wow! I’m staggered,” I exclaimed.

“You should be,” said my informant. “We’re the big reason Columbus discovered America, Campbell’s invented canned soup, and the major reason Richard Nixon didn’t burn his tapes.”

My next question was obvious.

“Is there anything that has ever taken place for which you had no responsibility?” I inquired.

“I hate to admit this,” my source said glancing down at the floor, “but we lose control and even influence when human beings practice the 'golden rule,' although even then we’re often the object given for day-to-day human empowerment.  Otherwise, we have pretty much of an iron grip over the rest of human intercourse.

“Well, then,” I asked, “is there anything we can do to break your iron grip over practically everything that takes place?”

There was dead silence lasting nearly half a minute.  When the response came I had to cup my good right ear to hear it.

“You’ve got to stop believing that money is important,” my source whispered.

"Okay, I will,” I cried.

“You’d better not,” came the response. “because if you do, you’ll never ever have the slightest chance of becoming as rich as A-Rod, the New York Yankees, and Major League Baseball.  Even more, you’ll cease to be a true American.”

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

YOU CAN BE SURE THERE IS A CURE!

By Edwin Cooney

If anyone is more miserable these days with less cause than the average American citizen, I’m damned if I know who it is!  The misery of America the blessed and beautiful crosses social class lines, political ideologies and religious faiths!

For openers, it’s bad enough that for too many Americans our twice-elected president is: a spendthrift Liberal, a deliberate baby killer, a closet Islamic terrorist and jihadist.  Others insist he’s: an inadequate Liberal, both too black and not black enough—and a black racist unappreciative of America’s great heritage.  Internationally he’s both an appeaser and a careless drone thrower.  Worst of all, “he wasn’t even born here!”

As for Congress, it’s fashionable to believe that: it’s loaded with self-seekers more interested in their own incumbency and personal benefits than in our comfort or security.  Millions have become convinced that Congress is packed with men and women who’ve never had a “real job” and who insist on different living standards for themselves than they legislate for you and me.  Some continuously put forth the idea of “the citizen legislature” which never existed.  (I guess we’re to believe that Clay, Webster, Calhoun, the Lafollette’s, several generations of Tafts, Adams’s, and Harrisons—among others—weren’t career politicians and never served the country they loved.)  Yet, it’s my guess that most of those who make that judgment couldn’t even begin to explain to their children how a bill is passed by Congress.

Then, there’s the national judiciary which is infested with lawyers—and everyone knows how corrupt and self-seeking lawyers are!  The court system, we’re told, legislates rather than adjudicates.

Next come public school teachers who’ve destroyed the public school system by teaching secular civics rather than “the golden rule.”

Then of course there’s the Internal Revenue Service whose very existence is a national sin since it requires the tax payer to pay more than the ten percent prescribed for the support of the church by scripture!

Internationally, some insist we’re allied with a decadent NATO which is made up of a bunch of near-socialist European republics on the edge of being taken over by radical Islam.

Lawyers, we’re told without differentiating between brilliant Republican and nasty Democratic or people’s lawyers, are ready and anxious to sue well-meaning corporations who profit only when they adequately serve the public. After all, “the free market” not government, guarantees the well being of free men and women.  (Don’t let this get out of the room, but there’s no such thing as the “free market.” It costs money to play in any market!)

Front and center for criticism these days is the “bureaucrat” who works full time for all governments rather than sitting home accepting welfare checks.  What most people refuse to acknowledge is that “bureaucrats” are someone’s kids who were sent to college to learn a profession by red-blooded American moms and dads.

Not even places of worship are above politics these days, especially since much of today’s clergy, it appears, love politics almost as much as they love their profession.  This has always been true, but upon the arrival of late Twentieth and early Twenty-first Century America, politicians have come to seek, and clergymen and women find it satisfying to grant them, “moral licenses” to political causes.  Hence, some faiths are too evangelical and others are too “secular humanist”!  The list goes on and on as to what’s wrong with 2013 America.  The last president to enjoy overwhelming support upon taking office was Lyndon B. Johnson and that occasion marked a national tragedy.

All of the above is brought to our attention by a relatively recently-bred species of political animal known as talk show hosts.  They’re Conservative and they’re Liberal and most of them are bedecked with specific criticisms and almost devoid of easily applicable solutions.  Even more telling, none of the really well-paid talk show hosts are likely to subject themselves to the responsibilities of elected or appointive office anytime soon.  Ah, but there’s good news; you might even call it a cure for our national funk.  Even more important, you personally can begin applying this cure.  Here it is:

First, stop listening to talk show hosts of all political types, especially those who substitute ideologically and politically proscribed ridicule for thoughtful political, social, and spiritual analysis.

Second, get over the idea that any president (including our greatest) (Washington, F.D.R., Lincoln, Truman, or even Ronald Reagan) has ever solved a major national moral dilemma.  Really effective presidents, congressmen and women, governors, mayors and other elected officials adequately respond to socio/political conditions not moral dilemmas.

Third, allow yourself the luxury to believe, until you possess irrefutable proof to the contrary, that every elected official is genuinely interested in serving the public regardless of how their philosophy of government differs from yours.  You surrender no important principle by giving others the benefit of the doubt.  Furthermore, chronic institutional chipping away of leadership credibility lessens your political hopeful’s capacity for influencing events once your support enables them to assume high office.

Fourth, set a standard for political critics of all stripes.  If someone tells you President Obama believes or has done this or that, before swallowing it, familiarize yourself with that someone’s capacity for objectivity.  If someone tells you all Conservatives are racist or fascist, or that Liberals are mentally ill or unpatriotic, determine how well they understand political theory and how their ideas differ before endorsing their judgment.  Even more, gauge for yourself their capacity to tolerate contrary opinions and conditions they can’t control.

Fifth, understand that there’s legitimacy in a variety of socio/political orientations.  Conservatism is most applicable to business and individual dilemmas.  Liberalism is more applicable when considering what’s best for society as a whole.  Unfortunately, both Conservatism and Liberalism, as traditionally practiced in America, are too often assigned roles they’re incapable of fulfilling and thus often fall short of their goals.  Subsequently they’re too often used to bludgeon one another to death.

Most of our assessments concerning where we are and how well off we are today are based on political and social mythmaking.  No one, to my knowledge, ever addressed the subject of political and social mythmaking better than John F. Kennedy at Yale University on the morning of Monday, June 11^th, 1962.  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 prefabricated set of interpretations.  We enjoy the comfort of opinion rather than the discomfort of thought.  Mythology distracts us everywhere. “

I believe that if you allow yourself to have confidence in your own worthiness and believe that your country has the physical, fiscal, intellectual and spiritual resources to prevail into the far distant future, sooner than you can possibly imagine: You’ll reside in America, the blessed and beautiful once again.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

POLITICAL BECAUSE IT MATTERS!

By Edwin Cooney

According to a feature article in the Sunday, July 28^th, 2013 Erie (Pennsylvania) Times-News, a Millcreek Township, Pennsylvania group is doing something about abortion, a public policy it opposes on moral grounds.  They’ve formed a nonprofit organization called “Save Unborn Life” and they are putting their time, energy, organizational skills, money (theirs and others), as well as their hearts into the organization’s mission.  Their mission is to save the lives of the unborn.  Their strategy is to pay $3,000 to every mother who contracts with them to carry her baby to full term.  Their president Laura Merriott reports that they’ve saved the lives of forty-four babies, five of which have been put up for adoption, and they currently have contracts with four more women including a mother from Texas -- the first woman outside of Pennsylvania to contract with them.  In addition, they’re making plans to let every crisis center know that “Save Unborn Life” will pay women considering abortion $3,000 to avoid the procedure.  Before commenting further on “Save Unborn Life” and its mission, I’m going to get a little personal.

I was born prematurely and out of wedlock in 1945 to a young widowed woman who was already the mother of a baby daughter.  I’ve never known my father’s name.  It’s my guess, and only my guess since my mother has never confided in me, that had a safe abortion been available, I might not have been carried to term.  Not knowing my father has often left me with an empty and anchorless feeling.  Even more, living as the object of my mother’s rather resentful indifference has been, at some very sensitive and crucial times in my life, quite dehumanizing.  Thus, over the years (and especially since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973), while I appreciate the idea that a woman is a woman before she’s a mother and should have control over her productive capacity, I’ve also been intensely sensitive to the fate of unwanted children.             

Now, as for the mission of “Save Unborn Children,” I applaud it long and loudly. Some will be critical of its strategy of “bribing” women to carry their children to term.  However, I’ll argue that if you strongly insist upon the individual’s freedom of choice as the proper way to handle this sensitive moral question, you must cheerfully allow women who choose to carry their children to term the same “freedom of choice” you insist upon for yourself.

Whether the abortion option should be legal is, quite naturally, both a practical and moral question.  Sadly, throughout our history, moral questions regarding slavery, civil rights and human rights have, prior to their ultimate solutions, fueled the ambitions of politicians from all political parties.

While most anti-abortion advocates reside these days in the Republican Party, Ellen McCormack’s 1976 presidential candidacy in the Democratic Party constituted the original effort to overturn Roe verses Wade.  Due to the overwhelming demand by Democratic women who insisted that the rights of the unborn were the business of mothers rather than politicians, Republicans have inherited the anti-abortion issue.

As political practitioners of both parties learned from FDR, still the Twentieth Century’s most masterful politician, in politics issues matter much more than solutions.  Hence, the following realities go begging: 

First, while there’s serious debate as to when life begins, there is absolutely no doubt that life continues after that precious baby’s birth.

Second, to be truly “pro-life” is to be pro-life no matter whose life may be in the balance!

Third, principles matter until they cost money.  It’s cheaper to advocate for the unborn than it is to pay for their care once they’re with us.

Fourth, everyone is against killing until they think their individual well-being is at stake.

Fifth, and finally, neither “pro-lifers” nor “freedom of choice” advocates have a monopoly on morality when it comes to our national abortion agony.

When “freedom of choice” advocates become really concerned about the dilemma of vulnerable mothers, we’ll see them be more sympathetic to the concerns of parent’s efforts to influence their teenagers’ sexual activity.

When conservatives become really and truly concerned about the fate of the “unborn,” they will advocate for a public policy that cares for children once they’re born regardless of the cost or even if it requires the establishment of a little more government.

Meanwhile, Laura Merriott (the organization’s president), Laura’s sister Terri Dworaczyk (vice president), Teresa Augustyniak (treasurer), and Joanna Sanzo (secretary) of “Save Unborn Life” carry forth their mission.  It should be applauded because it both meets the demands of their religious faith and beckons the rest of us to care for its progeny some distant day even if it costs money.

Finally, because it matters, both liberal and conservative politicians and ideologues will insist their positions are moral when they are mostly political.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

LEAD ON, MR. PRESIDENT -- LEAD ON!

By Edwin Cooney

Back on Friday, July 19^th, 2013, in an eloquent off the cuff statement from the White House press room after the not guilty verdict of George Zimmerman, President Obama listed a number of factors that in a subtle but significant way affect the relationship between black American males and most of the rest of us.  The president’s message was a powerful one in the way it addressed the nature and effects of human prejudice.

As I see it, there are five types of prejudices we practice towards one another: religious, racial, ethnic, economic, and functional.  (I define “functional prejudice” as the attitude by the general public regarding the usefulness of people who live with disabilities.)

One reality all of us have in common is our individuality.  No matter how welcome or unwelcome we are at birth, we enter, exist in and exit this world separate from everyone else in our individual personhood.  Our personal blessings and maladies affect us not only in the way they inhibit or enhance our capacity to function, but also in how others perceive them.  Hence, everyone who read or listened to what the president had to say reacted to his message depending on his or her own perception of the president as well as experiences with socially inhibiting prejudice.

As I listened to President Obama, I tried to imagine myself as a black American male.  I felt comfortable doing that for two reasons.  First, I strongly identify with the president and what I know of his way of viewing most public matters.  Even more importantly, however, I fully comprehend the challenges that those who are “born different” inevitably face.

There are prejudices against which all of us invariably struggle.  Some of these prejudices are only circumstantial.  Other prejudices are unfortunately endemic to more permanently ingrained attitudes.

To be a black male is to realize early on that people in general (and whites in particular) have limited expectations regarding your energy, creativity, intelligence, and decency. Even more, you learn from early and sometimes bitter experience that a significant portion of the white population is far from eager to like -- let alone befriend -- you.  Tolerance and genuine friendship may follow a period of pleasant proximity, but the benefit of most people’s doubts is something you’ll have to “earn” even though they seem to be so easily granted, as a birthright, to everyone else.  Thus, the president’s references to the way people often almost automatically react to black males were sad but instructive to hear.

If you’re born with a disability, you learn two things pretty early in life.  They are that the world is designed, for the most part, for the able-bodied, and that most people, be they parents, teachers, friends, potential service providers or employers, are genuinely surprised to learn how useful or helpful you can be to them as they meet their personal and professional obligations.

A number of years ago, I heard an address by the late Kenneth Jernigan, the long time president of the National Federation of the Blind, in which he observed that the blind and disabled face a special brand of prejudice.  Racial, religious, or ethnic prejudice, Dr. Jernigan asserted, is historically based on fear and hatred.  Opportunity discrimination (one of prejudice’s meanest deeds!) against the blind and/or disabled however is usually energized by love and a desire to protect.  To resist the well-intended protection or discrimination of people who love you can be a soul-destroying task!

Hence, all minorities whether ethnic, religious, racial, disabled, or economic are born into a considerably skeptical world!  However disconcerting that reality may be, the victims of prejudice face the challenge of navigating life’s outrages with all the fortitude they can muster.

Nor should we assume for one moment that the successful escape social ostracizing.  We’ve all heard how difficult it can be to be a preacher’s kid, the offspring of a celebrity, or even the child of a popularly elected public servant. The capacity for doubt, skepticism, and prejudice is by no means the sole prerogative of the successful.  Just as the poor, the black, and the disabled are often the victims of skepticism, doubt, and discrimination, you can be sure that their victimhood has taught them how to dish out their own brand of resentful prejudices.

As happenings, the tragedy of Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of George Zimmerman indeed have little to recommend them.  As object lessons, however, these occurrences could be invaluable if they teach us to make tomorrow “kinder and gentler” than yesterday and today have ever been.

Sadly, human prejudices and opportunity discrimination are likely to be with us as far ahead as the most foresighted among us can see. As the president pointed out, however, the good news is that every generation seems to be doing a better job countering and potentially healing the outrages of racial, and other dehumanizing, prejudices.

As I see it, President Obama’s calm, non-accusatory manner and optimistic outlook is leading us in that most desirable direction!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY