FAMILY, FAMILY! THERE’S JUST TOO MUCH FAMILY!

By Edwin Cooney

The above words were spoken by actress Naomi Brossart while playing Jacquline Kennedy on comedian Vaughn Meader's hit comedy record, The First Family, recorded and released on Cadence Records in 1962. More about that later!

From the very outset of our history, the function and reputation primarily of prominent families has been an element in American politics especially as moral issues have increasingly come to matter. The Adams, Rockefellers, Roosevelts and Kennedys are obvious examples.

Today we must add the Bidens due to the negative attention Mr. Trump has paid to the family of his political opponent. By so doing, he has imperiled the fate of the Ukraine, a sovereign nation, and subjected himself to impeachment, thereby making American politics even more squalid than it traditionally has been. To what purpose? None, I can comprehend!

What makes it significant as to what the American family is legitimately has to do with our individual sense of social and spiritual morality. Some have been convinced for a lifetime that marriage shouldn't be interracial. Others are convinced that homosexual marriages ought to revert to being illegal. Still more Americans believe deep down in their souls that their own separations and divorces are actually immoral!

The danger in all of this controversy is the effect it has on our judgment of one another. Are we as moral or principled as our forebears? Even more tragic is the effect our moralizing has on the children of nontraditional families!

Every parent assumes responsibility and even to some extent accountability for his or her child’s lifelong activities.

A number of presidents have had siblings and offspring who made headlines to their detriment: Billy Carter, Roger Clinton, Neil Bush, and almost all of FDR's four sons and daughter made news during their administrations. The question is: to what real effect? Does it tell us anything about the president's character? I don't think so!

The most tragic example was George Washington Adams, the son of John Quincy and Louisa Catherine Adams. He was brilliant: a graduate of Harvard and a lawyer, he was elected to the Massachusetts Legislature the year his father lost to Andrew Jackson. However, young George became unstable running up debts, getting a girl pregnant, being absent from his practice. On a streamer from Boston to New York, he accused other passengers of harassing him and he either jumped or fell into Long Island Sound. What presidential family was more upstanding than the Adamses?

The American family has become the chosen constituent of political and social conservatives as they are linked to the church or to what politicians refer to as “family values.”

I own a recording of a speech given by Barry Goldwater in 1965, the year following his defeat by LBJ. The album is called “Your Family is the Target.” He asserts that there’s nothing Communists would like more than to destroy America’s family values. Barry goes on to condemn Social Security and the proposed Medicare program as examples of Communism’s tool to undermine America through the destruction of its “family values.” 

Invariably, however, the American family doesn't march in lockstep with expectations. How many American families were broken apart during frontier days when America was establishing its "manifest destiny” during the 1840’s? Nor did family values prevent a lot of husbands from running off to California’s gold fields to get rich.

Finally, if any family's legal or moral crisis is automatically the public's business, what is the future of the individual's right to privacy? 

The ideal of the family is something to cherish, but all families are to a great degree dependent on the values of members of the family who are — ultimately — individuals!

Here's an irony for you: The First Family album was recorded in New York City on the night of Monday, October 22nd, 1962 as President Kennedy was revealing the Cuban Missile Crisis to the public which could have been fatal to families all over the world!   

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

CHURCHILL’S FAVORITE AMERICAN INQUIRY!

By Edwin Cooney

Twenty-first century America is a complex society of many traditions, moods, and expectations. No people are more generous and selfish, materialistic and spiritual, conservative and creative, fair-minded yet temperamental.

Born primarily as an agrarian society that rejected dominance by both royalty and royalty's church, 18th Century America was determined to prosper while it made a living. As valuable as the prerogatives of a free press and a fair judiciary were, the rights of privacy and prosperity were the most vital aspects of the world's first Democratic Republic despite the fact that capitalism as a method of prosperity isn't referred to anywhere in the Constitution that the young nation established..

Only slowly but inevitably have "we, the people" come to realize that both equity and prosperity are dependent on national unity even as we employed Native American genocide and chattel slavery toward Blacks.

During the era that linked George Washington and John Quincy Adams, America was establishing its state and federal institutions and their functions.

Between Andrew Jackson and James Buchanan, the voter franchise was expanded beyond the landed gentry. Under    Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, the national agenda was that of  re-establishing the union between the states and the federal government through Civil War and Reconstruction and political reform.

From Ulysses S. Grant through William McKinley, America transitioned from an agrarian to an industrial society. Thus,    there occurred conflicts between management and newly established labor unions.

The presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt through Woodrow Wilson featured the growing expectations of voters as constituents and consumers. Voter prerogatives included the three progressive demands — initiative, referendum and recall — which helped control state and regional governments.

Presidents Harding, Coolidge and Hoover focused on widening our national prosperity through business and commercial investment, and the prevention of future wars through the use of disarmament and international isolationism.

Franklin Roosevelt through Lyndon Johnson generally emphasized the civil rights of workers, consumers, minorities, and increasingly expanding labor unions along with the establishment of defense mechanisms and programs for maintaining international peace and protection against international Communism.

Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, both President Bushes and Trump maximized the prerogatives of businesses and banks, and the redressing of traditional conservative grievances going back to the days of FDR's New Deal.

Only Presidents Clinton, Obama and, now, Joseph Biden have had a progressive agenda.

Today, there are two apparent agendas and they both have to do with the fate of former President Donald J. Trump. Behind Mr. Trump's fate there lies two more dangerous possibilities. These possibilities are best enunciated as questions!

First, are we headed toward an oligarchy — a society ruled exclusively by the rich and powerful? Second, are the rights and traditions of white, Anglo-Saxon America about to be swept aside by a growing left-wing human secularism?

I'm convinced that while there are sufficiently scary book-selling and voter-gathering assertions in these national bogeyman fears, America isn't ready for anything approaching a revolution.

Back in the 1970s, anti-Vietnam War protestors were very revolutionary while school was in session, but they disappeared during summer vacations. Those protestors came to be called “sunshine patriots.”

While it's likely that we'll continue to suffer from isolated pockets of criminal violence, we, the "citizens of the land of the free and home of the brave,” will demand continuation of the one phenomenon we insist on even more than our civil rights.

That phenomenon is our right to be comfortable. Revolutions are neither comfortable nor cheap.

Hence, Mr. Churchill's inquiry: where do we go from here?

Answer: we remain exactly where we are— millions may love Mr. Trump, but let him spend his money rather than ours on his fate.

As for oligarchy, humanity went through that a long time ago. It was called medievalism. As for socialism, only the mildest form of socialism in the style of Canada and  continental Europe is ever likely here.

Finally, since the government must prove its case within a reasonable doubt, Donald Trump is likely to remain free as well as a former president. Mr. Trump will not be elected to a second term.

Since poverty and starvation affect only the fringes of our society, America will remain both comfortable and free! 

Relax America: you're in better shape than you realize!     

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

HEROES: WHO WERE YOURS? HERE ARE SOME OF MINE

By Edwin Cooney

Yep! Elvis Presley was my first hero. What was and still is strange about that is that I liked Carl Perkins' version of "Blue Suede Shoes” better than Elvis' version. In retrospect, I suppose there were two reasons for my Elvis Presley heroism. First, his singing, especially of sad and sometimes desperate feelings and longings for love, was melodramatic causing my throat to close and my eyes to become tearful. The second factor was  essentially my sympathetic defense of who he was. He was my Brooklyn Dodgers, the perpetual underdog fighting for recognition and acceptance by my adult teachers and caregivers who, by comparison, favored Pat Boone or Perry Como. I liked them, too, but in comparison to Elvis, they were easy to appreciate. To like Elvis Presley wasn't easy because he needed defending and that was a challenge.

The New York Yankees were collectively my second heroes, but they became favorites due to my Uncle Joe's fandom. Mickey Mantle was a rather odd combination of physical strength and physical vulnerability due to his "brutal strength” and weak legs and knees which had to be taped before every game. (I used to think that the tape they used was sticky tape rather than strips of cloth.) Roger Maris became my favorite, even over Mickey Mantle, due to the honesty he displayed regarding the Babe Ruth sixty home run record which he and Mantle were pursuing as well as the loyalty he openly displayed toward his wife Pat whom he wouldn't even pretend to take lightly.

Politically, I was “GOP” all the way. Ike, I admired because of his office, but to me, men such as Richard Nixon, John Foster Dulles and J. Edgar Hoover were top American defenders against "godless Communism." That had to be admired because it was so essentially American. Time and events would eventually set these teenage and young adult priorities aside, especially due to the Vietnam War and the Watergate affair. The Vietnam War stripped away my earlier admiration for matters military. Both events broadened my search for and acceptance of new heroes such as Jimmy Carter, Michael Dukakis, Jackie Robinson, Martin Luther King and Barack Obama.

Other heroes have included Billy Martin for his baseball knowledge and intensity, boxer Floyd Patterson for his struggle against painful shyness, singer Jim Reeves for his velvet voice, Paul Harvey for his dramatic presentation of the news, Paul McCartney (my favorite Beatle) for his creativity, and finally (and mostly) Jimmy Carter for all he has done both during and since his presidency. Today, my baseball hero is Aaron Judge for his awesome ability and for his apparent respect for the challenges and rules of his profession. 

Historic heroes include George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, Frederic Douglas, Jane Adams (of Chicago's Hull House), Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (for his emphasis on the legitimacy of all classes of citizens), Harry Truman (for the thoroughness of his administration of both domestic and foreign events during his presidency), Jack Kennedy (for his growth in office and for the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty), Adlai Stevenson (for his elegance and his principles), and Winston Churchill (for his political savvy, World War II leadership, and statesmanship.)   

Some of my heroes have turned out to have feet of clay including Billy Martin, Aaron Burr (whom I insist on admiring for views ahead of his time and his modern attitude regarding women's rights). As for his shooting of Alexander Hamilton, both agreed to the duel. Regarding the matter of  Burr's treason, Burr was found not guilty.

My personal heroes include Marsha Cooney for her loveliness, Rhoda Portugal for her abiding friendship and loving support as she is the editor of these weekly musings, Marleen O'Neill as mother of my two sons, Eric and Ryan Cooney, my sons, and the late and lovely Edith Rachel Gassman for all she did to bring me from the depths of teenage loss and despair. 

Men and women can be both heroic and imperfect at the same time. All of them touch us in different ways.

Someone, I've forgotten who, has put it this way: people may forgive you for what you did, but they'll always remember how you made them feel.

My heroes have caused me to be proud and encouraging in their individual fortunes. They didn't always reflect my "better angels," but they generally made me proud of my principles!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY