By Edwin Cooney
October 12th, 2007 (Originally posted October 12th, 2005)
CHRISTOPHER WHO?
It’s all a part of our modern befuddlement! First it was “Spiro who?” Then it was “Jimmy who?” However, for the last five hundred years or so, for many Americans it has been “Christopher Columbus who?”
COLUMBUS DAY—JUST ANOTHER DAY?
I don’t know about you, but for me, Columbus Day, when I was growing up, was just another day!
Halloween was much more fun!
On Thanksgiving Day, one ate turkey with all the trimmings.
On Christmas Day, there was baby Jesus and neat presents (except for the clothes, of course).
Valentine’s Day meant cards and candy and maybe a kiss from a sweet little classmate.
George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were bigger men than your daddy, which was why we celebrated their birthdays. Both George and Abe, after all, were born in log cabins which they helped their fathers build.
I mean, they were real folks!
Easter was about resurrection, rabbits, and candy.
Memorial Day and Fourth of July were about soldiers and firecrackers, marshmallows and watermelons.
Labor Day was the last fun picnic day before school.
As for Columbus Day, there were parades, but you very seldom got the day off from school—and besides, who was Christopher Columbus anyway?
In the fall of 1792, about the time President Washington was reluctantly seeking re-election, the New York City Society of St. Tammany celebrated the 300th anniversary of Columbus’s discovery of America.
Not until 1866 and 1869 did the Italian-American communities of New York and San Francisco, respectively, celebrate the man whose name is spelled and pronounced Cristoforo Colombo in Italian and Cristóbal Colón in Spanish.
In 1892, it was just good politics for President Benjamin Harrison to issue a proclamation honoring the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s first great discovery. (Not that it helped much: Harrison lost his bid for a second term to Grover Cleveland, the man he’d beaten four years before.)
In 1905, the state of Colorado began celebrating Columbus Day as a holiday. By 1920, October 12th was annually celebrated just about everywhere as Columbus Day.
In 1937, FDR made October 12th a federal holiday.
Always seeking to do things bigger and better, in 1968, LBJ made Columbus Day the second Monday in October so that federal workers might use that extra day as part of a long weekend vacation.
WHO WAS CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS?
Sometime between August 26th and October 31st 1451, Christopher Columbus was born the eldest son of Domenico and Susanna Fontanarossa Columbus. He would eventually have three younger brothers, Bartolomeo, to whom he was closest, Giovanni Pellegrino, Giacomo, and a sister Bianchinetta. Most historians believe he was born and raised in Genoa, Italy where his father was a woolen merchant. Christopher and brother Bartolomeo were interested in sailing and fascinated by cartography, the study of maps and charts. It was this fascination that eventually took both Columbus brothers to Portugal which, in the late 1470s, was the world leader in oceanic exploration. While there, he met and married Doña Felipa Perestrello e Moniz, the daughter of a wealthy merchant seaman who had sailed with Prince Henry the Navigator. As part of his marriage dowry, Columbus received his late father-in-law’s oceanic maps and ocean current charts. It should be noted that the Columbus brothers had little formal education and had taught themselves Italian, Latin, Greek, Spanish and Portuguese.
The couple was married in 1479 and had their only son Diego in January 1480. By 1485, Felipa was dead. Later that year, rather than merely sticking the five-year-old in a convent, Columbus took Diego to Spain. There, Columbus met Beatriz Enriquez, an orphan who was a weaver, and became her lifelong mate. Although the couple never married, Columbus taught young Diego to think of Beatriz as his mother. In 1488, Christopher and Beatriz had a son Ferdinand. Ferdinand and Diego both became pages to Prince Juan of Spain, son of Ferdinand and Isabella. It was Isabella who would partially finance his four voyages (in 1492, 1493, 1498 and 1502) to the New World.
Although Columbus could be vain, ambitious, and cruel, it is still reasonable to believe that he was usually responsive to the needs and vulnerabilities of those around him. By the time he left Palos, Spain on August 3, 1492 for what he believed would be East Asia, he was typical of the young upwardly-mobile professional of his time.
WHAT DID HE DO?
Although Leif Ericsson and Thorfinn Karlesefni, two Viking explorers, preceded Columbus to the New World by nearly half a millennium, it was timing that made what Christopher Columbus did matter. Columbus’s first voyage began the continuum of exploration that resulted in our comfortable occupancy of 2005 America.
During his first voyage, it is generally acknowledged there was no mistreatment of the native population. He agreed with Queen Isabella that Christian love rather than coercion was the best way to treat the Arawak natives who greeted him on Watling Island, one of the Bahamian Islands, that October 12th 1492. Columbus renamed Watling Island San Salvador. Cuba and Hispaniola were his final two ports of call during his first voyage. Native artifacts, some gold, and even some Indians were the souvenirs which Columbus brought back as gifts for Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand. The queen fell in love with the natives and dressed them in clothes made of the softest velvet!
On his second journey to the New World, Columbus discovered that the thirty-nine men he had left behind at the settlement called Navidad had been killed by the natives for assaulting their women. It may well have been this episode that brought out the harsh side of Christopher Columbus for it was during this second voyage that he became tough on both his own men and the native populations he visited.
Near the close of his third voyage, which began in 1498, the king and queen sent a governor to Hispaniola who was authorized to arrest Columbus and return him to Spain in chains. There were reports of native enslavement as well as physical abuse against both the Spaniards and natives. There is documentation that Columbus ordered some of the enslaved natives to mine for gold under the threat of having their hands chopped off if they were unsuccessful. Finally, there is documentation of sexual enslavement of the native population.
By the time he returned to Spain in November 1504 from his fourth and final voyage, Christopher Columbus had fallen from royal favor. He was no longer Admiral of the Oceans and Seas or Governor of the lands he had visited. This was in part due to complaints about him as an administrator, but there were other factors.
First of all, he was no longer unique. Other explorers had visited the New World on behalf of Spain, Portugal, and England. Maps of the northern and eastern parts of South America had by then revealed that Columbus had not reached the riches of eastern Asia as he had claimed. One of those explorers was an Italian mapmaker named Amerigos Vespucci. It was he and not Christopher Columbus for whom the two American continents would be named.
CELEBRATING CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS!
In evaluating whether or not Columbus’s clear mistreatment of Native Americans or indigenous people should bring about his removal as one of our national heroes, three things should be considered. These are:
(1.) Was his treatment of Native Americans unusual for his time?
(2.) Was his treatment of Native Americans a part of a pattern of treatment followed by others at his specific recommendation?
(3.) Was his accomplishment enough of an historical turning point to make him uniquely significant?
For me, the answer to the first question is, that as horrible and reprehensible as his mistreatment of Native Americans was and as difficult as it is for our modern consciences to stomach, it is instructive to take the following into account: Great empires such as those of Alexander the Great, Genghis Kahn, the Ottoman Turks, as well as Spain, France, and England advanced via their militaries rather than by their physical and social scientists; Also, one should consider how Spain, France, and England treated their own people; Columbus’s last voyage was over by 1505 and Britain’s Henry the Eighth hadn’t even begun his thirty-eight year Reign of Terror in England yet; The Catholic Church and the governments of France and Spain hadn’t even begun to draw, quarter, hang, behead or burn any of their political opponents and religious heretics in Columbus’s lifetime; Therefore, why single out Columbus for special condemnation?
The answer to question two is a slam dunk. Columbus as much as anyone else you want to name is singularly accountable for his own actions and absolutely no one else’. He didn’t direct or command the actions of either Cortes or Pizarro. Of course Columbus’s cruelties are a part of the record of his life, but so are the practices of the religious, political and social mores of the 15th and 16th centuries which most certainly had their effect on his behavior. The days in which Columbus lived were a combination of religion tinged by superstition along with social and political institutions that demanded the absolute submission of the poor and those who were different. This explanation does not excuse Columbus; it includes him in a time that is much beyond our comprehension.
Finally, it was Christopher Columbus who, with his brother Bartolomeo and his two friends Martin and Vicente Pinzo, were ready to command the Santa Maria, the Pinta and the Nina respectively, before anyone else was ready to sail for any other country. Thus began a continuum, not of immorality but of discovery. That is what we celebrate.
By all accounts Christopher Columbus was an excellent father, a considerate and faithful lover, a marvelous brother, and a loyal friend. On top of all that, he was one hell of an explorer.
No way, however, would he ever get my vote for governor!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Monday, October 15, 2007
Monday, October 1, 2007
LIED IN? LIED OUT?
By Edwin Cooney
I devoutly wish I had thought of this myself, but I heard the following point made by a political observer yesterday during a discussion about the forthcoming 2008 presidential campaign.
Asserting, as most people do these days, that we were lied into the Iraqi war by the Bush administration, this observer suggested that we could be lied out of it by well-meaning but ambitious Democrats. Strangely enough, that thought, in all its stark clarity, hadn’t occurred to me before. However, when you think about it, such a possibility makes sense. Just as a nation can be lied into a policy, it can be lied out of that policy as well. After all, the pain in many of our hearts over the destruction and death we’ve caused the innocent civilians of a nation that has never invaded or done us any harm, may cause us to lie, deny, or even mythologize our way out of Iraq.
As Lady Hillary leads a pack of dissatisfied Democrats toward the nomination, the overwhelming consensus of their “progressive/liberal” backers favors a complete American military withdrawal from Iraq before—if possible—but certainly by the spring of 2009 under a new Democratic administration.
As historians will no doubt observe in twenty or thirty years, the devil to the solution of the war in Iraq will have been found in the details. The main purpose of an American pullout would of course be to lessen tension within Iraq. This would then solidify the current government so that it could not be swamped by Al-Qaida or pro-Iranian forces which might use Iraq’s rich petroleum resources as the source of its possible military reprisal against us.
It’s reasonable to assume that a nervous Iraqi government will be looking to the world community for support if it can’t find sufficient support for its existence at home. One of the sad ironies of President Bush’s tenure in the White House is that right after the 9/11 Al-Qaida attack on us he could have asked the world for just about anything America needed in order to sustain practically any purpose or goal we sought and he would have received it. However, after he flaunted world opinion in favor of his own determination to run our foreign policy according to the neocon membership of PNAC (Project for A New American Century), it appears that the world community’s mood or inclination has swung almost completely in the opposite direction.
Thus, it may be the first task of the next administration, even if it is headed by Rudolph Giuliani, to call for an international peacekeeping force to substitute for American troops and corporations in Iraq. Even should such an endeavor proceed smoothly enough, it’s still likely that more American lives may well be sacrificed during whatever extended period of time is required to bring about such a transfer of leadership.
It was thus discomforting for some when Senator Clinton, Senator Obama and former Senator Edwards suggested during one of the interminable Democratic presidential debates last Wednesday night that a residual military striking force might be required in the region until 2013. Such suggestions almost always make idealistic voters exceedingly nervous and even cynical. Prior to taking the helm of national responsibility, a presidential candidate has the luxury of sympathizing with the heartfelt anxieties of his or her ideological constituency. However, any potential leader who totally surrenders to that inclination just to please rather than to educate his or her supporters risks a loss of their essential integrity once it comes time to report to the people from the great height of the presidential lectern.
Hence the rub. Even the most sincerely idealistic president must come to terms with the broken world he or she inherits. It is from the height of that high and mighty office that its occupant, formerly a mere citizen, now must face and cope with the world situation created by the inclinations and actions of an imperfect predecessor.
There is also the recent history of our presidential leadership. Some will remind us that back in 1968, Americans looked to a new party and president to get us out of the continuing and nightmarish Vietnam conflict. They got Richard Nixon and a continuation of that war’s death and destruction. Even so, history, I believe, demonstrates the inclinations and the solutions of previous generations seldom fit with the situation of today.
Forty years ago, the lessons of World War II determined the foreign policy guidelines followed by our national leadership:
Never be cowed by a brutal dictator;
Challenge rather than appease dictators and you’ll avoid war;
Military strength and moral vigor are the only sure antidotes to war.
We, of course, can’t afford to completely abandon these principals, as they do have a place in responsible international assessment. However, it seems to me that the above principles should be accompanied by the lessons of some even more recent experiences.
Mr. Nixon used to assure us that we would lose all of our credibility in world affairs should we abandon South Vietnam to Communist adventurism. However, less than five years after our frantic departure from our embassy roof in Saigon, both Israel and Egypt warmly and even hungrily accepted President Jimmy Carter’s assistance in creating a peace settlement which has lasted nearly thirty years. This was possible in large part because both Prime Minister Begin and President Sadat felt understood and acknowledged by the United States of America. Lesson: one commands respect and power as president when demonstrating a thorough understanding of the realities of others’ existence.
President Ronald Reagan, though personally furious over the shooting down of Korean Flight 007 on September 1st, 1983, over Sakhalin Island in Soviet territory only went so far in his response. On September 15th, he revoked Aeroflot’s permit to fly in and out of American cities--a ban which lasted until April 29th,1986. Additionally, he deliberately embarrassed the Soviets in the United Nations. Still, there was no further loss of life beyond that of the passengers and crew of Flight 007. Lesson: The measured response even to international barbarism is the most effective type of response;
President George H. W. Bush built a mighty and genuine coalition of Middle Eastern nations supported by Japan, Great Britain and others to drive Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. Lesson: realistically identify the legitimate ambitions and fears of those affected by the crisis which you consider important enough to involve the treasury and lives of the American people.
As I see it, giving President Bush the benefit of the doubt even in the wake of testimony that our March 2003 invasion was being planned in 9/11’s advance, Iraq is the result of our knee jerk reaction to Al Qaida’s attack on the World Trade Center. Lesson: even when you find yourself outrageously victimized, don’t allow your response to create a civil war that your own people will be forced to pay for with too many of their young lives.
Thus the question: If we were lied into Iraq, isn’t it all right if we’re lied out of a situation we never should have been in?
Answer: Absolutely not. A lie creates harmful conditions or circumstances in both personal and international relations which otherwise wouldn’t exist. While it’s certainly true that some of our most capable leaders have been capable liars, those lies have always damaged rather than enhanced their reputations as well as causes. Insofar as I am aware, no successful historic venture has been predicated on a lie. If we allow our fears to dominate our capacity to wisely and realistically view the world as it is rather than as we fearfully see it, we will indeed be vulnerable to any or everyone’s persuasive deception.
As for the likelihood of being lied out of as we were lied into Iraq, I think it’s remote. But as remote as it is, it does bear watching.
My guess is that the best place to begin watching for our vulnerability to being lied out of Iraq is within our individual selves.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
I devoutly wish I had thought of this myself, but I heard the following point made by a political observer yesterday during a discussion about the forthcoming 2008 presidential campaign.
Asserting, as most people do these days, that we were lied into the Iraqi war by the Bush administration, this observer suggested that we could be lied out of it by well-meaning but ambitious Democrats. Strangely enough, that thought, in all its stark clarity, hadn’t occurred to me before. However, when you think about it, such a possibility makes sense. Just as a nation can be lied into a policy, it can be lied out of that policy as well. After all, the pain in many of our hearts over the destruction and death we’ve caused the innocent civilians of a nation that has never invaded or done us any harm, may cause us to lie, deny, or even mythologize our way out of Iraq.
As Lady Hillary leads a pack of dissatisfied Democrats toward the nomination, the overwhelming consensus of their “progressive/liberal” backers favors a complete American military withdrawal from Iraq before—if possible—but certainly by the spring of 2009 under a new Democratic administration.
As historians will no doubt observe in twenty or thirty years, the devil to the solution of the war in Iraq will have been found in the details. The main purpose of an American pullout would of course be to lessen tension within Iraq. This would then solidify the current government so that it could not be swamped by Al-Qaida or pro-Iranian forces which might use Iraq’s rich petroleum resources as the source of its possible military reprisal against us.
It’s reasonable to assume that a nervous Iraqi government will be looking to the world community for support if it can’t find sufficient support for its existence at home. One of the sad ironies of President Bush’s tenure in the White House is that right after the 9/11 Al-Qaida attack on us he could have asked the world for just about anything America needed in order to sustain practically any purpose or goal we sought and he would have received it. However, after he flaunted world opinion in favor of his own determination to run our foreign policy according to the neocon membership of PNAC (Project for A New American Century), it appears that the world community’s mood or inclination has swung almost completely in the opposite direction.
Thus, it may be the first task of the next administration, even if it is headed by Rudolph Giuliani, to call for an international peacekeeping force to substitute for American troops and corporations in Iraq. Even should such an endeavor proceed smoothly enough, it’s still likely that more American lives may well be sacrificed during whatever extended period of time is required to bring about such a transfer of leadership.
It was thus discomforting for some when Senator Clinton, Senator Obama and former Senator Edwards suggested during one of the interminable Democratic presidential debates last Wednesday night that a residual military striking force might be required in the region until 2013. Such suggestions almost always make idealistic voters exceedingly nervous and even cynical. Prior to taking the helm of national responsibility, a presidential candidate has the luxury of sympathizing with the heartfelt anxieties of his or her ideological constituency. However, any potential leader who totally surrenders to that inclination just to please rather than to educate his or her supporters risks a loss of their essential integrity once it comes time to report to the people from the great height of the presidential lectern.
Hence the rub. Even the most sincerely idealistic president must come to terms with the broken world he or she inherits. It is from the height of that high and mighty office that its occupant, formerly a mere citizen, now must face and cope with the world situation created by the inclinations and actions of an imperfect predecessor.
There is also the recent history of our presidential leadership. Some will remind us that back in 1968, Americans looked to a new party and president to get us out of the continuing and nightmarish Vietnam conflict. They got Richard Nixon and a continuation of that war’s death and destruction. Even so, history, I believe, demonstrates the inclinations and the solutions of previous generations seldom fit with the situation of today.
Forty years ago, the lessons of World War II determined the foreign policy guidelines followed by our national leadership:
Never be cowed by a brutal dictator;
Challenge rather than appease dictators and you’ll avoid war;
Military strength and moral vigor are the only sure antidotes to war.
We, of course, can’t afford to completely abandon these principals, as they do have a place in responsible international assessment. However, it seems to me that the above principles should be accompanied by the lessons of some even more recent experiences.
Mr. Nixon used to assure us that we would lose all of our credibility in world affairs should we abandon South Vietnam to Communist adventurism. However, less than five years after our frantic departure from our embassy roof in Saigon, both Israel and Egypt warmly and even hungrily accepted President Jimmy Carter’s assistance in creating a peace settlement which has lasted nearly thirty years. This was possible in large part because both Prime Minister Begin and President Sadat felt understood and acknowledged by the United States of America. Lesson: one commands respect and power as president when demonstrating a thorough understanding of the realities of others’ existence.
President Ronald Reagan, though personally furious over the shooting down of Korean Flight 007 on September 1st, 1983, over Sakhalin Island in Soviet territory only went so far in his response. On September 15th, he revoked Aeroflot’s permit to fly in and out of American cities--a ban which lasted until April 29th,1986. Additionally, he deliberately embarrassed the Soviets in the United Nations. Still, there was no further loss of life beyond that of the passengers and crew of Flight 007. Lesson: The measured response even to international barbarism is the most effective type of response;
President George H. W. Bush built a mighty and genuine coalition of Middle Eastern nations supported by Japan, Great Britain and others to drive Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. Lesson: realistically identify the legitimate ambitions and fears of those affected by the crisis which you consider important enough to involve the treasury and lives of the American people.
As I see it, giving President Bush the benefit of the doubt even in the wake of testimony that our March 2003 invasion was being planned in 9/11’s advance, Iraq is the result of our knee jerk reaction to Al Qaida’s attack on the World Trade Center. Lesson: even when you find yourself outrageously victimized, don’t allow your response to create a civil war that your own people will be forced to pay for with too many of their young lives.
Thus the question: If we were lied into Iraq, isn’t it all right if we’re lied out of a situation we never should have been in?
Answer: Absolutely not. A lie creates harmful conditions or circumstances in both personal and international relations which otherwise wouldn’t exist. While it’s certainly true that some of our most capable leaders have been capable liars, those lies have always damaged rather than enhanced their reputations as well as causes. Insofar as I am aware, no successful historic venture has been predicated on a lie. If we allow our fears to dominate our capacity to wisely and realistically view the world as it is rather than as we fearfully see it, we will indeed be vulnerable to any or everyone’s persuasive deception.
As for the likelihood of being lied out of as we were lied into Iraq, I think it’s remote. But as remote as it is, it does bear watching.
My guess is that the best place to begin watching for our vulnerability to being lied out of Iraq is within our individual selves.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Monday, September 17, 2007
9/11—THE DATE I HATE TO THINK ABOUT
By Edwin Cooney
Okay, here it is. I don’t like to even think about September 11th, 2001, let alone celebrate it. “Why?”You ask.
The answer is simple. It hurts too much. In fact, I don’t believe that it’s healthy for President Bush to think about it either. If you ask me, I believe the greatest tragedy of the Bush administration is that the President is both humiliated by and obsessed with, the September 11th, 2001 attack on our shores. Furthermore, it appears that practically all of the President’s foreign policy actions are linked to what occurred on the second Tuesday in September six years ago.
Hence, last Tuesday morning when I turned on my radio, I heard pretty much what I expected to hear. Everyone, including our most prominent local radio talk show host, was vividly recounting the events that occurred two thousand one-hundred and ninety-one days before and pleading with us to never forget. Not far down the radio dial, the angry and insistent voices of “lefty” and “righty” talk show hosts made compelling cases for both my dissatisfaction with as well as my support for our foreign policy response to 9/11.
To me, the 9/11 actions of Al Qaida were as “dastardly” as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on that December 7th Sunday back in 1941. Nothing the United States government has done or failed to do can possibly justify that murderous Al Qaida attack on us. It’s hard even to argue with President Bush’s determination to respond militarily against Al Qaida and Taliban base camps in Afghanistan.
It’s painful enough to think of the loss of innocent lives on that terrible day -- American and otherwise -- people who were working:
at the World Trade Center,
at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.,
or those who may have been flying aboard United Flight #93, the Boeing 757 which exploded in a Pennsylvania farm field,
or aboard American Flight #11, the Boeing 767 which hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center,
or on United Airlines Flight #175, the Boeing 767 which struck the South Tower of the World Trade Center,
as well as on American Airlines Flight #77, the Boeing 757 which crashed into the Pentagon.
The personal pain, emphasized and dramatized by the films taken that day of the crash scenes, invoked an intensity of anger and heartache that, no doubt, will cause long term anguish and illness in hundreds of thousands of innocent hearts and souls for years to come. It’s the very energy produced by the horror of 9/11 that most disturbs me.
Even worse than recalling the pain and suffering experienced by so many perfectly innocent human beings six years ago is the sense of helplessness so many of us feel as to what we can effectively do to redress that outrage and to prevent future outrages perhaps of even more catastrophic severity.
As far back as the March 5th, 1770 Boston Massacre, Americans have been urged by various elements in our society to vividly recall and respond to our national misfortunes.
We were asked to remember the cruelty of the pre-revolutionary “bloody British”. “Remember the Alamo” was the cry when that San Antonio fortress fell to Mexican General Santa Anna on March 6th, 1836. Two editors named Pulitzer and Hurst prodded us to “Remember the Maine”, the American battleship that blew up in Havana harbor on February 15th 1898 thereby compelling a reluctant President William McKinley to ask Congress for a declaration of war against Spain. Later from Tin Pan Alley came “Remember Pearl Harbor,” just one of the songs we sang to keep our respective chins up, especially during the early months of World War II when news from distant battlefields was all bad.
Two centuries ago, our forefathers created a government pledged to defend our liberty and designed to carry out our will. While there is some argument as to whether or not our “Founding Fathers” established a republic or a democracy, there’s little disagreement even among our most radical opinion makers of today that our government is expected to be responsive to both the will as well as the safety of the American people.
Thus my dilemma: I share President Bush’s outrage against Al Qaida and the Taliban. However, there is a difference between an angry response and an effective response. Additionally, it seems to this observer that Mr. Bush, our leader, has done more to rile us than he has done to reassure, let alone comfort, us.
If the magnitude of the crisis with Radical Islam is as great as President Bush insists, America is hardly in a position to handle it alone. It used to be a presidential strategy to establish international alliances, but sadly, it doesn’t appear that President Bush respects the international community enough to realize that he could lead it if he only would.
In the fall of 1991, during the administration of President George Herbert Walker Bush, the largely bloodless final days of Soviet-sponsored international terror came about. Although President Bush and former President Reagan took bows for having brought this gigantic and nuclear-muscled “Godless” monster to its knees, not even they believed that they had accomplished the deed alone.
Communism was resisted first by nine American presidents, from Mr. Truman through Mr. Bush the elder, thirteen Secretaries of State (Edward Statinius through George Shultz) as well as leaders named Attlee, Churchill, Macmillan, De Gaulle, and Adenauer. Finally, who can forget those brave Berliners who prospered over Communism even more than they fought against it with weaponry?
It is important to keep two things in mind. Presidents do deserve more support than they are likely to receive given our self-appointed modern media experts at all points of the political spectrum. However, just as important to keep in mind is that distinction between citizen and presidential responsibility.
We the people can afford to be sad, joyous, resentful and angry about world attitudes and events. Of course, Citizen Bush may have the same reactions, but not President Bush. After all, he chose to be elected President and to responsibly shoulder our burdens. As Jimmy Carter used to say when asked about the burdens he carried, “They go with the territory.”
The challenge to 9/11 faced by President Bush is vastly different than the challenge FDR faced by an angry and ambitious Japan in 1941. Unlike Japan, Al Qaida isn’t a nation state anchored to Mother Earth awaiting the hot and poisonous breath of an atomic bomb. Thus the forces needed to still Al Qaida or other powerful pockets of Radical Islam require a different strategy than that of the Axis sixty-seven years ago.
Iran or a radical Iraq -- or any nation -- knows its destruction is assured if it unloads its nuclear capacity on America or any other country. Thus, it seems to me that President Bush’s challenge is to devise a strategy aside from preemptive war -- which has already proven to be a disastrous policy -- to prevent an attack on us by a crazed future antagonist.
Meanwhile, September 11th, 2001, the date I hate to think about, is indelibly carved into our national history. The suffering it marks is not something to celebrate. To celebrate 9/11 is to allow the horrors and outrages of that day to fester in our national heart.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t a festering heart the same as a broken heart? If so, can we afford a broken heart?
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Okay, here it is. I don’t like to even think about September 11th, 2001, let alone celebrate it. “Why?”You ask.
The answer is simple. It hurts too much. In fact, I don’t believe that it’s healthy for President Bush to think about it either. If you ask me, I believe the greatest tragedy of the Bush administration is that the President is both humiliated by and obsessed with, the September 11th, 2001 attack on our shores. Furthermore, it appears that practically all of the President’s foreign policy actions are linked to what occurred on the second Tuesday in September six years ago.
Hence, last Tuesday morning when I turned on my radio, I heard pretty much what I expected to hear. Everyone, including our most prominent local radio talk show host, was vividly recounting the events that occurred two thousand one-hundred and ninety-one days before and pleading with us to never forget. Not far down the radio dial, the angry and insistent voices of “lefty” and “righty” talk show hosts made compelling cases for both my dissatisfaction with as well as my support for our foreign policy response to 9/11.
To me, the 9/11 actions of Al Qaida were as “dastardly” as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on that December 7th Sunday back in 1941. Nothing the United States government has done or failed to do can possibly justify that murderous Al Qaida attack on us. It’s hard even to argue with President Bush’s determination to respond militarily against Al Qaida and Taliban base camps in Afghanistan.
It’s painful enough to think of the loss of innocent lives on that terrible day -- American and otherwise -- people who were working:
at the World Trade Center,
at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.,
or those who may have been flying aboard United Flight #93, the Boeing 757 which exploded in a Pennsylvania farm field,
or aboard American Flight #11, the Boeing 767 which hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center,
or on United Airlines Flight #175, the Boeing 767 which struck the South Tower of the World Trade Center,
as well as on American Airlines Flight #77, the Boeing 757 which crashed into the Pentagon.
The personal pain, emphasized and dramatized by the films taken that day of the crash scenes, invoked an intensity of anger and heartache that, no doubt, will cause long term anguish and illness in hundreds of thousands of innocent hearts and souls for years to come. It’s the very energy produced by the horror of 9/11 that most disturbs me.
Even worse than recalling the pain and suffering experienced by so many perfectly innocent human beings six years ago is the sense of helplessness so many of us feel as to what we can effectively do to redress that outrage and to prevent future outrages perhaps of even more catastrophic severity.
As far back as the March 5th, 1770 Boston Massacre, Americans have been urged by various elements in our society to vividly recall and respond to our national misfortunes.
We were asked to remember the cruelty of the pre-revolutionary “bloody British”. “Remember the Alamo” was the cry when that San Antonio fortress fell to Mexican General Santa Anna on March 6th, 1836. Two editors named Pulitzer and Hurst prodded us to “Remember the Maine”, the American battleship that blew up in Havana harbor on February 15th 1898 thereby compelling a reluctant President William McKinley to ask Congress for a declaration of war against Spain. Later from Tin Pan Alley came “Remember Pearl Harbor,” just one of the songs we sang to keep our respective chins up, especially during the early months of World War II when news from distant battlefields was all bad.
Two centuries ago, our forefathers created a government pledged to defend our liberty and designed to carry out our will. While there is some argument as to whether or not our “Founding Fathers” established a republic or a democracy, there’s little disagreement even among our most radical opinion makers of today that our government is expected to be responsive to both the will as well as the safety of the American people.
Thus my dilemma: I share President Bush’s outrage against Al Qaida and the Taliban. However, there is a difference between an angry response and an effective response. Additionally, it seems to this observer that Mr. Bush, our leader, has done more to rile us than he has done to reassure, let alone comfort, us.
If the magnitude of the crisis with Radical Islam is as great as President Bush insists, America is hardly in a position to handle it alone. It used to be a presidential strategy to establish international alliances, but sadly, it doesn’t appear that President Bush respects the international community enough to realize that he could lead it if he only would.
In the fall of 1991, during the administration of President George Herbert Walker Bush, the largely bloodless final days of Soviet-sponsored international terror came about. Although President Bush and former President Reagan took bows for having brought this gigantic and nuclear-muscled “Godless” monster to its knees, not even they believed that they had accomplished the deed alone.
Communism was resisted first by nine American presidents, from Mr. Truman through Mr. Bush the elder, thirteen Secretaries of State (Edward Statinius through George Shultz) as well as leaders named Attlee, Churchill, Macmillan, De Gaulle, and Adenauer. Finally, who can forget those brave Berliners who prospered over Communism even more than they fought against it with weaponry?
It is important to keep two things in mind. Presidents do deserve more support than they are likely to receive given our self-appointed modern media experts at all points of the political spectrum. However, just as important to keep in mind is that distinction between citizen and presidential responsibility.
We the people can afford to be sad, joyous, resentful and angry about world attitudes and events. Of course, Citizen Bush may have the same reactions, but not President Bush. After all, he chose to be elected President and to responsibly shoulder our burdens. As Jimmy Carter used to say when asked about the burdens he carried, “They go with the territory.”
The challenge to 9/11 faced by President Bush is vastly different than the challenge FDR faced by an angry and ambitious Japan in 1941. Unlike Japan, Al Qaida isn’t a nation state anchored to Mother Earth awaiting the hot and poisonous breath of an atomic bomb. Thus the forces needed to still Al Qaida or other powerful pockets of Radical Islam require a different strategy than that of the Axis sixty-seven years ago.
Iran or a radical Iraq -- or any nation -- knows its destruction is assured if it unloads its nuclear capacity on America or any other country. Thus, it seems to me that President Bush’s challenge is to devise a strategy aside from preemptive war -- which has already proven to be a disastrous policy -- to prevent an attack on us by a crazed future antagonist.
Meanwhile, September 11th, 2001, the date I hate to think about, is indelibly carved into our national history. The suffering it marks is not something to celebrate. To celebrate 9/11 is to allow the horrors and outrages of that day to fester in our national heart.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t a festering heart the same as a broken heart? If so, can we afford a broken heart?
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Monday, September 10, 2007
THE “WE” VS. “THEE” SCANDAL
By Edwin Cooney
The fate of Idaho Senator Larry Craig has been inevitable given the socio/political climate under which we‘re living -- and given who he is.
Shortly after noon on Monday, June 11th, 2007, the 62-year-old third term Conservative Republican Senator visited a Minneapolis-St. Paul men’s room at the airport. Entering one of the stalls, Senator Craig placed his luggage in front of him so that it blocked the space in the front of the stall. He peered through the space to his right where police Sergeant David Karsnia was seated on a commode in the adjoining stall.
Sergeant Karsnia had been assigned to perform a sting operation because of complaints about homosexual solicitation activities which had recently been occurring in area public bathrooms.
Senator Craig, of course, did not know that the gentleman in the stall just to his right was a policeman. Nor did Sergeant Karsnia have any idea who had taken the stall just to his left. However, the occupant of that stall proceeded to place his right hand, palm up, through the space connecting the two stalls moving it back and forth several times. Next, he placed his right foot against Sergeant Karsnia’s left foot and proceeded to make a toe tapping motion. This series of actions, according to those who know these things, are exactly the signals used by those seeking homosexual engagements. Sergeant Karsnia, in accordance with procedure, flashed his police badge and motioned with his left hand toward the bathroom exit. Senator Craig got up from the commode and, without flushing the toilet, rolled his luggage along with him to leave the men’s room. Sergeant Karsnia informed Senator Craig that he had received his set of signals and asked the Senator to accompany him to the airport security operations center. Senator Craig refused the request. The Sergeant then informed Senator Craig that he was under arrest and that Karsnia didn’t want to make a scene.
Ushering his quarry to the police security operations section of the airport, the former occupant of the men’s room stall just to the sergeant’s left, did a bit of his own credentials flashing. Protesting his innocence, Mr. Craig said to the sergeant “I’m a United States Senator. What do you think about that?” Only then did Sergeant Karsnia learn that he had just landed one of the 100 biggest of a particular brand of “fish” in the United States of America.
About forty-five minutes after having been taken into custody, Senator Craig was cited and released. On Wednesday, August 1st -- seven weeks and two days later -- Senator Craig pled guilty to a disorderly conduct charge, a misdemeanor. He paid $575 of a $1,000 fine and was released on one year of unsupervised probation.
Nearly four weeks passed by before Senator Craig’s arrest, guilty plea and fine were even announced. It appears that Senator Craig didn’t inform his staff or his colleagues of what had occurred. (When he told his wife Suzanne about the incident would be interesting to know, but rightfully is a private matter.)
The date was Monday, August 27th when the June 11th incident and the August 1st guilty plea were made public.
By Wednesday, the 29th of August, GOP Senate leaders Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, John Kyl of Arizona, and John Ensign of Nevada had met and stripped Senator Craig of all his chairmanships and special assignments thus lowering him to the rank of a freshman senator. They also submitted his case to the Senate ethics committee for investigation. Such an investigation would of course be public and could reflect poorly on the senator.
Thus, on Saturday morning, September 1st , asserting that he always had and always would do what was best for Idaho, Senator Larry Craig announced his resignation from the U.S. Senate effective September 30th. At his side were his wife Suzanne and his daughter Shea along with Governor and Mrs. Otter and Congressman Bill Sali.
Three days later, a spokesman for Senator Craig announced that the Senator had decided to try and have his guilty plea withdrawn -- and that if he could do it before September 30th, he might not resign after all. Additionally, the Senator, a member of the political party that seeks public favor in part by demonizing lawyers, has hired two or three very high-powered attorneys. One of those attorneys represented Michael Vick, the professional football player recently convicted of participating in an illegal and brutal dog fighting, gambling and abuse operation.
It is notable that the GOP leadership is now insisting that having made the decision to resign his Senate seat, Larry Craig should keep his word. His continuing presence in the Senate would keep the touchy issue of possible Conservative homosexual vulnerability before the public’s attention at a time when the GOP is on the political defensive as it prepares for the 2008 national election campaign.
Of course, no political party can function as successfully as it otherwise might when the values and morality of its leading officeholders are in doubt. There are many who believe that because it didn’t adequately chastise its senior Massachusetts Senator, the Democratic Party has suffered even more than Senator Edward M. Kennedy from the Chappaquiddick tragedy of 1969. However, Senator Craig insists that his personal values and actions are in complete compliance with the dictates of Conservative Republicanism. His problem, he insists, is that his actions in the St. Paul, Minnesota airport were misconstrued by officer Karsnia and that he pled guilty to a charge of disorderly conduct only because he thought that would be the most efficient way to rid himself of the outrageous and certainly nettlesome incident.
Almost as intriguing is the fact that Senator Craig was advised recently by his fellow Republican Senator Arlen Specter, a man of lifelong prosecutorial experience, that the case against him was sufficiently weak that he could have easily challenged it. It apparently never occurred to Senator Craig, a Conservative Republican, that Senator Specter, a Liberal Republican, might well have provided him invaluable assistance before it was too late (so much for traditional Senate collegiality!)
There is, of course, nothing new about scandal in America. Our system of government was very young indeed when:
In 1795, the corrupt Georgia legislature—which would be replaced in its entirety by angry voters that fall—sold land in the Yazoo River valley to four land speculation companies for its own enrichment;
In 1797, former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton publicly confessed to having purchased sexual favors from Maria Reynolds through her husband James Reynolds using private rather than public funds;
In July 1804, sitting Vice President Aaron Burr shot the same Alexander Hamilton to death in a duel in Weehawken, New Jersey.
...So much for the absolute purity of “our founding Fathers.”.
Neither Conservatives, Liberals, Republicans nor Democrats are absent from history’s roll call of moral villains. For every Bill Clinton, there’s a Warren Harding. For every Ted Kennedy, there’s an Alan Simpson. (Former Senator Simpson openly admits to a youthful indiscretion that apparently cost a life.)
The dilemma currently facing Senator Craig and his GOP colleagues is the light in which they have placed homosexual activity. Hence, many gay men and lesbian women find themselves in sympathy with Senator Craig’s vulnerability even though he insists that “I’m not gay.”
Whether or not Senator Craig is gay, his interpreted action, in a public place, is a violation of the law in Minnesota and most everywhere else. Even if he had been soliciting heterosexual favors, he would have been vulnerable to arrest and conviction. Violation of just laws is rightfully punishable whether a person is powerful or meek. Such punishment is particularly essential when it involves the politically influential because of their potential vulnerability to blackmail.
In recent years, in part as a response to Roe v. Wade but also in response to the civil rights status that Liberal Democrats have granted to gays and lesbians, Conservatives (especially the “Moral Majority”) have made gayness and lesbianism immoral and hence a political -- if not societal -- crime.
By so doing, they assign the Republican Party a role it can’t possibly sustain—that of moral watchdog over the sins of the American people. The sad truth is that Conservatives, no more and no less than Liberals, are subject to personal temptation and thus vulnerable to inevitable political and even moral judgment.
Idaho Senator Larry Craig may or may not be gay (although an Idaho friend of mine -- a proud Conservative Republican -- tells me that there has been speculation for a long time as to the Senator’s sexual orientation). However, the June 11th St. Paul incident has resulted in Senator Craig’s biggest political crime. His personal or “me needs” have embarrassed the powerful “we”, his righteous colleagues.
Hence, even if Senator Craig gets his guilty plea invalidated—which I’m told is an exceedingly remote possibility—his GOP sponsored political career is over. So, you might ask, how much does this matter?
On the surface, probably not much, but over the long run the “knee jerk” reaction of Senator Craig’s Conservative colleagues is continuing an unhealthy trend.
That trend by resourceful, powerful and self righteous ideologues is the socio/political punishment of people for their strictly personal activities whether or not they victimize anyone. Hence, even the morally pure have impure colleagues. Even more humbling is the reality that they have impure sons, brothers, cousins and fathers -- oh, no -- and wives and mothers as well. As everyone knows, such associations can be destructively embarrassing when so allowed to be!!!
In the realm of criminal behavior by a public official, Senator Larry Craig has barely hit a single. My guess is that in five years only the most obsessed political junkie outside of Idaho will even recall his name. However, the political “We” will still be judging the political “Thee” and setting themselves up for their own future political and historic obscurity.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
The fate of Idaho Senator Larry Craig has been inevitable given the socio/political climate under which we‘re living -- and given who he is.
Shortly after noon on Monday, June 11th, 2007, the 62-year-old third term Conservative Republican Senator visited a Minneapolis-St. Paul men’s room at the airport. Entering one of the stalls, Senator Craig placed his luggage in front of him so that it blocked the space in the front of the stall. He peered through the space to his right where police Sergeant David Karsnia was seated on a commode in the adjoining stall.
Sergeant Karsnia had been assigned to perform a sting operation because of complaints about homosexual solicitation activities which had recently been occurring in area public bathrooms.
Senator Craig, of course, did not know that the gentleman in the stall just to his right was a policeman. Nor did Sergeant Karsnia have any idea who had taken the stall just to his left. However, the occupant of that stall proceeded to place his right hand, palm up, through the space connecting the two stalls moving it back and forth several times. Next, he placed his right foot against Sergeant Karsnia’s left foot and proceeded to make a toe tapping motion. This series of actions, according to those who know these things, are exactly the signals used by those seeking homosexual engagements. Sergeant Karsnia, in accordance with procedure, flashed his police badge and motioned with his left hand toward the bathroom exit. Senator Craig got up from the commode and, without flushing the toilet, rolled his luggage along with him to leave the men’s room. Sergeant Karsnia informed Senator Craig that he had received his set of signals and asked the Senator to accompany him to the airport security operations center. Senator Craig refused the request. The Sergeant then informed Senator Craig that he was under arrest and that Karsnia didn’t want to make a scene.
Ushering his quarry to the police security operations section of the airport, the former occupant of the men’s room stall just to the sergeant’s left, did a bit of his own credentials flashing. Protesting his innocence, Mr. Craig said to the sergeant “I’m a United States Senator. What do you think about that?” Only then did Sergeant Karsnia learn that he had just landed one of the 100 biggest of a particular brand of “fish” in the United States of America.
About forty-five minutes after having been taken into custody, Senator Craig was cited and released. On Wednesday, August 1st -- seven weeks and two days later -- Senator Craig pled guilty to a disorderly conduct charge, a misdemeanor. He paid $575 of a $1,000 fine and was released on one year of unsupervised probation.
Nearly four weeks passed by before Senator Craig’s arrest, guilty plea and fine were even announced. It appears that Senator Craig didn’t inform his staff or his colleagues of what had occurred. (When he told his wife Suzanne about the incident would be interesting to know, but rightfully is a private matter.)
The date was Monday, August 27th when the June 11th incident and the August 1st guilty plea were made public.
By Wednesday, the 29th of August, GOP Senate leaders Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, John Kyl of Arizona, and John Ensign of Nevada had met and stripped Senator Craig of all his chairmanships and special assignments thus lowering him to the rank of a freshman senator. They also submitted his case to the Senate ethics committee for investigation. Such an investigation would of course be public and could reflect poorly on the senator.
Thus, on Saturday morning, September 1st , asserting that he always had and always would do what was best for Idaho, Senator Larry Craig announced his resignation from the U.S. Senate effective September 30th. At his side were his wife Suzanne and his daughter Shea along with Governor and Mrs. Otter and Congressman Bill Sali.
Three days later, a spokesman for Senator Craig announced that the Senator had decided to try and have his guilty plea withdrawn -- and that if he could do it before September 30th, he might not resign after all. Additionally, the Senator, a member of the political party that seeks public favor in part by demonizing lawyers, has hired two or three very high-powered attorneys. One of those attorneys represented Michael Vick, the professional football player recently convicted of participating in an illegal and brutal dog fighting, gambling and abuse operation.
It is notable that the GOP leadership is now insisting that having made the decision to resign his Senate seat, Larry Craig should keep his word. His continuing presence in the Senate would keep the touchy issue of possible Conservative homosexual vulnerability before the public’s attention at a time when the GOP is on the political defensive as it prepares for the 2008 national election campaign.
Of course, no political party can function as successfully as it otherwise might when the values and morality of its leading officeholders are in doubt. There are many who believe that because it didn’t adequately chastise its senior Massachusetts Senator, the Democratic Party has suffered even more than Senator Edward M. Kennedy from the Chappaquiddick tragedy of 1969. However, Senator Craig insists that his personal values and actions are in complete compliance with the dictates of Conservative Republicanism. His problem, he insists, is that his actions in the St. Paul, Minnesota airport were misconstrued by officer Karsnia and that he pled guilty to a charge of disorderly conduct only because he thought that would be the most efficient way to rid himself of the outrageous and certainly nettlesome incident.
Almost as intriguing is the fact that Senator Craig was advised recently by his fellow Republican Senator Arlen Specter, a man of lifelong prosecutorial experience, that the case against him was sufficiently weak that he could have easily challenged it. It apparently never occurred to Senator Craig, a Conservative Republican, that Senator Specter, a Liberal Republican, might well have provided him invaluable assistance before it was too late (so much for traditional Senate collegiality!)
There is, of course, nothing new about scandal in America. Our system of government was very young indeed when:
In 1795, the corrupt Georgia legislature—which would be replaced in its entirety by angry voters that fall—sold land in the Yazoo River valley to four land speculation companies for its own enrichment;
In 1797, former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton publicly confessed to having purchased sexual favors from Maria Reynolds through her husband James Reynolds using private rather than public funds;
In July 1804, sitting Vice President Aaron Burr shot the same Alexander Hamilton to death in a duel in Weehawken, New Jersey.
...So much for the absolute purity of “our founding Fathers.”.
Neither Conservatives, Liberals, Republicans nor Democrats are absent from history’s roll call of moral villains. For every Bill Clinton, there’s a Warren Harding. For every Ted Kennedy, there’s an Alan Simpson. (Former Senator Simpson openly admits to a youthful indiscretion that apparently cost a life.)
The dilemma currently facing Senator Craig and his GOP colleagues is the light in which they have placed homosexual activity. Hence, many gay men and lesbian women find themselves in sympathy with Senator Craig’s vulnerability even though he insists that “I’m not gay.”
Whether or not Senator Craig is gay, his interpreted action, in a public place, is a violation of the law in Minnesota and most everywhere else. Even if he had been soliciting heterosexual favors, he would have been vulnerable to arrest and conviction. Violation of just laws is rightfully punishable whether a person is powerful or meek. Such punishment is particularly essential when it involves the politically influential because of their potential vulnerability to blackmail.
In recent years, in part as a response to Roe v. Wade but also in response to the civil rights status that Liberal Democrats have granted to gays and lesbians, Conservatives (especially the “Moral Majority”) have made gayness and lesbianism immoral and hence a political -- if not societal -- crime.
By so doing, they assign the Republican Party a role it can’t possibly sustain—that of moral watchdog over the sins of the American people. The sad truth is that Conservatives, no more and no less than Liberals, are subject to personal temptation and thus vulnerable to inevitable political and even moral judgment.
Idaho Senator Larry Craig may or may not be gay (although an Idaho friend of mine -- a proud Conservative Republican -- tells me that there has been speculation for a long time as to the Senator’s sexual orientation). However, the June 11th St. Paul incident has resulted in Senator Craig’s biggest political crime. His personal or “me needs” have embarrassed the powerful “we”, his righteous colleagues.
Hence, even if Senator Craig gets his guilty plea invalidated—which I’m told is an exceedingly remote possibility—his GOP sponsored political career is over. So, you might ask, how much does this matter?
On the surface, probably not much, but over the long run the “knee jerk” reaction of Senator Craig’s Conservative colleagues is continuing an unhealthy trend.
That trend by resourceful, powerful and self righteous ideologues is the socio/political punishment of people for their strictly personal activities whether or not they victimize anyone. Hence, even the morally pure have impure colleagues. Even more humbling is the reality that they have impure sons, brothers, cousins and fathers -- oh, no -- and wives and mothers as well. As everyone knows, such associations can be destructively embarrassing when so allowed to be!!!
In the realm of criminal behavior by a public official, Senator Larry Craig has barely hit a single. My guess is that in five years only the most obsessed political junkie outside of Idaho will even recall his name. However, the political “We” will still be judging the political “Thee” and setting themselves up for their own future political and historic obscurity.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Saturday, September 1, 2007
LABOR DAY, WHAT DOES IT CELEBRATE?
By Edwin Cooney
Monday, September 3rd, 2007
Okay! Ascribe this to what you will: I assert that Labor Day—with all of the deservedly high sounding phrases that have been welded together to describe what it stands for—is the least enthusiastically celebrated holiday on the American calendar. It rates right down there with National Prune Day in our patriotic regard.
Think about it. How much did your mother, father or even your teacher tell you about the significance or history of Labor Day?
Labor Day was celebrated for the first time in New York on Tuesday, September 5th, 1882 under the sponsorship of the Central Labor Union of New York City. There is something of a dispute as to who was the actual father of Labor Day. The contenders, as you might guess, are two Irishmen both named McGuire (to further confuse matters, I’ve seen both men’s last names spelled interchangeably —Maguire and McGuire.)
For many years it was thought that Peter J. Maguire Secretary of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners was the force behind the original promotion of Labor Day by the Central Union of New York City in 1882. However, it’s been recently discovered that Matthew McGuire, Secretary of both local 344 of the International Association of Machinists in Paterson N.J. as well as of the Central Union of New York City, sent out the invitations to workers to attend the scheduled parade and picnic. Keep in mind that since it was an unofficial holiday, attendees would be sacrificing a day’s pay in order to participate in the first Labor Day, so the invitations had to be pretty compelling. Hundreds of people so sacrificed and Labor Day became, first a municipal, next a statewide and finally a nationally celebrated holiday.
Some people have concluded that the reason Peter J. Maguire was favored over Matthew McGuire--as the father of Labor Day—had mostly to do with Matthew McGuire’s politics. Though both men dabbled in Socialism as young labor activists, Matthew McGuire had the audacity to run as the Vice Presidential nominee on the Socialist Labor Party ticket in 1896 under the party’s presidential candidate Charles Horatio Matchett. Thus, because of labor’s early association with Socialism both here and abroad, Americans who insist that they admire nothing more than hard work have been quite touchy about celebrating the value of the American laborer because of labor’s link to socialist doctrine.
The state of Oregon was the first to adopt Labor Day as a state wide holiday in February of 1887 followed by Colorado, New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts that same year. By the mid 1890s, Labor Day was celebrated in nearly thirty states.
To further blur the legitimacy or respectability of the labor movement in the minds of the American people, there exists another unfortunate historic reality. The president, who signed the legislation creating the American worker’s holiday we call Labor Day, wasn’t really very friendly to the American worker. In fact at the time President Grover Cleveland signed the Labor Day proclamation on Thursday, June 28th, 1894, the Nation was in the middle of the infamous “Pullman Strike” against the Pullman railroad car maker George Pullman. Five days after signing the congressional legislation creating Labor Day, President Cleveland sent troops to Kensington, Illinois just outside of Chicago, to enforce a court injunction declaring that the strike was “interfering with delivery of the mail” and thus the strike was in violation of interstate commerce and illegal.
Shortly thereafter, the president declared that he’d insure the delivery of the lowliest postcard if it took the whole army to deliver it. What the president didn’t so readily acknowledge was that he was doing this in part to appease his Attorney General Richard Olney. Olney had been a railroad director and was, even while in office, the attorney for several railroad companies.
It appears that President Cleveland wasn’t cruel or unfeeling toward the working man or woman, it’s just that he had an old fashioned idea that the owners of private property possessed behavioral activity rights on their own property that superseded the rights of the working -- man, woman or even child who had only conditional rights on someone’s private property. Thus, Stephen Grover Cleveland was able to both kiss and kick labor at the same time and in all good conscience.
President Cleveland’s conscience aside, one of the most common threads that runs through American history is our confusion about and the inconsistency we display on the value of labor or work.
Let’s start from the very beginning. For as far back as I can remember, I was taught to regard Jamestown Colony founder Captain John Smith’s assertion that “…those who don’t work, don’t eat,” as a statement reflecting the Protestant work ethic.
That pronouncement was made by the twenty-eight-year-old Captain Smith at a time when the less than two-year-old colony, made up largely of the British upper class who were not used to hard labor, was facing a combination of disease epidemics, environmental challenges and Indian attacks which were threatening to destroy Great Britain’s second attempt to establish a colony in Virginia.
Young Smith had recently been returned to the colony by Algonquin Chief Powhatan after having spent four weeks as a captive in the wake of an attack which had killed his companion. (Smith, who believed that he’d been saved by the chief’s daughter Pocahontas, was probably saved by the “magic” in the compass that the chief most likely confiscated from his person.) Thus, Smith’s wide experiences had taught him situational lessons more than they had taught him moral precepts. Hence, when John Smith said “…those who don’t work, don’t eat,” he was telling the truth more than he was preaching a sermon. Had Captain Smith actually been preaching a sermon, his congregation in Jamestown hardly got the moral force of his message. A decade after Smith’s departure from Jamestown, Smith’s former neighbors began importing black slaves from West Africa to do the work they couldn’t or wouldn’t do themselves. Not even Captain Smith would assert that chattel slavery was established for the moral upgrading of black Africa.
Of course, during the two-hundred plus years following John Smith’s observation or pronouncement, which ever you prefer, work was a way of life primarily because it was intensely personal. One had to work in order to eat, get shelter, and be adequately clothed as well as to be protected against disease, malnutrition or from hostile attack.
Not until the dawning of the industrial revolution in the 1830s did Americans en masse begin working for someone else who needed their labor to sustain or advance his or her wealth. As working conditions and worker’s pay made life increasingly unsafe and unprofitable in an increasingly cash-oriented society, workers began banding together to use the sheer weight of their numbers to improve their working and living conditions. Hence the American Labor Movement was born in all its infamy or glory.
Then, of course, there is the distinction between labor and work. Labor, in the minds of most, is hard physical (usually unskilled) toil which drains the energy and, if prolonged, the spirit of the laborer. (Thus, new Moms suffer “labor pains” rather than work pains.)
Work, on the other hand can be both skilled or unskilled. Thus the American Labor Movement has such divisions as craftsmen, carpenters and joiners, assembly workers, musicians, plumbers, garment workers and so on.
What it all boils down to is the value we put on labor or work. We say we value the “work ethic” as a cornerstone to our fundamental religious affiliations, but do we?
Who gets more monetary compensation?
The teacher who can provide both the inspiration and the information to our children that creates industry and hence their future employment or the sports hero who entertains us all;
The nurse who eases our pain or the movie star who expresses our cultural values:
The preacher we say we believe can provide sufficient counsel to save our souls or the Black Jack dealer in one of our major resorts?
It should also be kept in mind that work is required to perform some pretty unsavory activities: A masterful bank robbery requires precision planning. The same goes for the successful planning of other dastardly crimes such as embezzlement, murder and war.
Then, of course, there are the perfectly legal and hard working men and women — in many cases our own sons daughters, brothers, and sisters — whom we disdain as “bureaucrats. These are very often conscientious people who have worked hard for their college degrees in preparation for honest employment. Yet, even with all of the industry and initiative these men and women possess, we still eagerly vote for politicians who promise to put them in unemployment lines.
Finally, do any of us really and truly compare our monetary compensation to the personal satisfaction we derive from our enterprise or employment? Even more, would we -- if we could afford to?
As we celebrate Labor Day, we, of course, celebrate the laborers or workers who built our homes, our towns, our roads, our schools, our places of worship. We celebrate the labor or work of our teachers, our preachers, our business entrepreneurs and caregivers—and all of those who labor and work for the genuine enhancement of a peaceful, prosperous and equitable society.
Samuel Gompers, the Scotsman immigrant who founded the American Federation of Labor, explained the meaning of Labor Day as follows:
"Labor Day differs in every essential way from the other holidays of the year in any country. All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man's prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or Nation."
Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers.
It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.”
That sounds good enough to me, Sam, as long as we celebrate (to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln) the better angels of our labor or work.
One more thing: I’m all for celebrating Labor Day as long as we don’t forget the picnic that goes with it.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Monday, September 3rd, 2007
Okay! Ascribe this to what you will: I assert that Labor Day—with all of the deservedly high sounding phrases that have been welded together to describe what it stands for—is the least enthusiastically celebrated holiday on the American calendar. It rates right down there with National Prune Day in our patriotic regard.
Think about it. How much did your mother, father or even your teacher tell you about the significance or history of Labor Day?
Labor Day was celebrated for the first time in New York on Tuesday, September 5th, 1882 under the sponsorship of the Central Labor Union of New York City. There is something of a dispute as to who was the actual father of Labor Day. The contenders, as you might guess, are two Irishmen both named McGuire (to further confuse matters, I’ve seen both men’s last names spelled interchangeably —Maguire and McGuire.)
For many years it was thought that Peter J. Maguire Secretary of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners was the force behind the original promotion of Labor Day by the Central Union of New York City in 1882. However, it’s been recently discovered that Matthew McGuire, Secretary of both local 344 of the International Association of Machinists in Paterson N.J. as well as of the Central Union of New York City, sent out the invitations to workers to attend the scheduled parade and picnic. Keep in mind that since it was an unofficial holiday, attendees would be sacrificing a day’s pay in order to participate in the first Labor Day, so the invitations had to be pretty compelling. Hundreds of people so sacrificed and Labor Day became, first a municipal, next a statewide and finally a nationally celebrated holiday.
Some people have concluded that the reason Peter J. Maguire was favored over Matthew McGuire--as the father of Labor Day—had mostly to do with Matthew McGuire’s politics. Though both men dabbled in Socialism as young labor activists, Matthew McGuire had the audacity to run as the Vice Presidential nominee on the Socialist Labor Party ticket in 1896 under the party’s presidential candidate Charles Horatio Matchett. Thus, because of labor’s early association with Socialism both here and abroad, Americans who insist that they admire nothing more than hard work have been quite touchy about celebrating the value of the American laborer because of labor’s link to socialist doctrine.
The state of Oregon was the first to adopt Labor Day as a state wide holiday in February of 1887 followed by Colorado, New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts that same year. By the mid 1890s, Labor Day was celebrated in nearly thirty states.
To further blur the legitimacy or respectability of the labor movement in the minds of the American people, there exists another unfortunate historic reality. The president, who signed the legislation creating the American worker’s holiday we call Labor Day, wasn’t really very friendly to the American worker. In fact at the time President Grover Cleveland signed the Labor Day proclamation on Thursday, June 28th, 1894, the Nation was in the middle of the infamous “Pullman Strike” against the Pullman railroad car maker George Pullman. Five days after signing the congressional legislation creating Labor Day, President Cleveland sent troops to Kensington, Illinois just outside of Chicago, to enforce a court injunction declaring that the strike was “interfering with delivery of the mail” and thus the strike was in violation of interstate commerce and illegal.
Shortly thereafter, the president declared that he’d insure the delivery of the lowliest postcard if it took the whole army to deliver it. What the president didn’t so readily acknowledge was that he was doing this in part to appease his Attorney General Richard Olney. Olney had been a railroad director and was, even while in office, the attorney for several railroad companies.
It appears that President Cleveland wasn’t cruel or unfeeling toward the working man or woman, it’s just that he had an old fashioned idea that the owners of private property possessed behavioral activity rights on their own property that superseded the rights of the working -- man, woman or even child who had only conditional rights on someone’s private property. Thus, Stephen Grover Cleveland was able to both kiss and kick labor at the same time and in all good conscience.
President Cleveland’s conscience aside, one of the most common threads that runs through American history is our confusion about and the inconsistency we display on the value of labor or work.
Let’s start from the very beginning. For as far back as I can remember, I was taught to regard Jamestown Colony founder Captain John Smith’s assertion that “…those who don’t work, don’t eat,” as a statement reflecting the Protestant work ethic.
That pronouncement was made by the twenty-eight-year-old Captain Smith at a time when the less than two-year-old colony, made up largely of the British upper class who were not used to hard labor, was facing a combination of disease epidemics, environmental challenges and Indian attacks which were threatening to destroy Great Britain’s second attempt to establish a colony in Virginia.
Young Smith had recently been returned to the colony by Algonquin Chief Powhatan after having spent four weeks as a captive in the wake of an attack which had killed his companion. (Smith, who believed that he’d been saved by the chief’s daughter Pocahontas, was probably saved by the “magic” in the compass that the chief most likely confiscated from his person.) Thus, Smith’s wide experiences had taught him situational lessons more than they had taught him moral precepts. Hence, when John Smith said “…those who don’t work, don’t eat,” he was telling the truth more than he was preaching a sermon. Had Captain Smith actually been preaching a sermon, his congregation in Jamestown hardly got the moral force of his message. A decade after Smith’s departure from Jamestown, Smith’s former neighbors began importing black slaves from West Africa to do the work they couldn’t or wouldn’t do themselves. Not even Captain Smith would assert that chattel slavery was established for the moral upgrading of black Africa.
Of course, during the two-hundred plus years following John Smith’s observation or pronouncement, which ever you prefer, work was a way of life primarily because it was intensely personal. One had to work in order to eat, get shelter, and be adequately clothed as well as to be protected against disease, malnutrition or from hostile attack.
Not until the dawning of the industrial revolution in the 1830s did Americans en masse begin working for someone else who needed their labor to sustain or advance his or her wealth. As working conditions and worker’s pay made life increasingly unsafe and unprofitable in an increasingly cash-oriented society, workers began banding together to use the sheer weight of their numbers to improve their working and living conditions. Hence the American Labor Movement was born in all its infamy or glory.
Then, of course, there is the distinction between labor and work. Labor, in the minds of most, is hard physical (usually unskilled) toil which drains the energy and, if prolonged, the spirit of the laborer. (Thus, new Moms suffer “labor pains” rather than work pains.)
Work, on the other hand can be both skilled or unskilled. Thus the American Labor Movement has such divisions as craftsmen, carpenters and joiners, assembly workers, musicians, plumbers, garment workers and so on.
What it all boils down to is the value we put on labor or work. We say we value the “work ethic” as a cornerstone to our fundamental religious affiliations, but do we?
Who gets more monetary compensation?
The teacher who can provide both the inspiration and the information to our children that creates industry and hence their future employment or the sports hero who entertains us all;
The nurse who eases our pain or the movie star who expresses our cultural values:
The preacher we say we believe can provide sufficient counsel to save our souls or the Black Jack dealer in one of our major resorts?
It should also be kept in mind that work is required to perform some pretty unsavory activities: A masterful bank robbery requires precision planning. The same goes for the successful planning of other dastardly crimes such as embezzlement, murder and war.
Then, of course, there are the perfectly legal and hard working men and women — in many cases our own sons daughters, brothers, and sisters — whom we disdain as “bureaucrats. These are very often conscientious people who have worked hard for their college degrees in preparation for honest employment. Yet, even with all of the industry and initiative these men and women possess, we still eagerly vote for politicians who promise to put them in unemployment lines.
Finally, do any of us really and truly compare our monetary compensation to the personal satisfaction we derive from our enterprise or employment? Even more, would we -- if we could afford to?
As we celebrate Labor Day, we, of course, celebrate the laborers or workers who built our homes, our towns, our roads, our schools, our places of worship. We celebrate the labor or work of our teachers, our preachers, our business entrepreneurs and caregivers—and all of those who labor and work for the genuine enhancement of a peaceful, prosperous and equitable society.
Samuel Gompers, the Scotsman immigrant who founded the American Federation of Labor, explained the meaning of Labor Day as follows:
"Labor Day differs in every essential way from the other holidays of the year in any country. All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man's prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or Nation."
Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers.
It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.”
That sounds good enough to me, Sam, as long as we celebrate (to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln) the better angels of our labor or work.
One more thing: I’m all for celebrating Labor Day as long as we don’t forget the picnic that goes with it.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Sunday, August 12, 2007
PRESENT PLUS PAST EQUALS — FAME OR INFAMY?
By Edwin Cooney
Dated Friday, August 10th 2007
THE PRESENT, Tuesday, August 7th, 2007. As everyone knew it would, when it finally happened it only took an instant. The scoreboard clock read 8:51 p.m. Pacific Time as Washington National’s left-hander Mike Bacsik fired a fastball toward the inside corner of home plate at China Basin’s AT&T Park in San Francisco, California.
In less than three tenths of a second from the time the ball left Bacsik’s hand, Barry Bonds studied the rotation of the baseball hurdling toward the protective armature on his right elbow — and decided to swing at the ninety plus mile per hour pitch.
That decision made, Bonds had to hurl the head of his thirty-three ounce maple bat at the incoming pitch at just the right height and at the exact angle essential for solid contact by a round bat against a round ball.
If Mr. Bonds was right, the ball would change direction ever so slightly away from Barry’s right elbow and cross the plate in front of him where he judged it was going to be. If Bonds was wrong, the ball would either dip sufficiently below and inside of the range of Barry’s bat head or outside and out of the range of Bond’s bat, causing the determined slugger to hit the ball at a bad angle or to miss the pitch entirely.
Because forty-three year old Barry Lamar Bonds judged correctly, there was a sharp crack as maple met cowhide. The nine inch, five-and-a-half ounce baseball was on its four-hundred and thirty-five foot trajectory to Section 144 just to the left field side of the four-hundred and twenty-one foot sign in the right center field bleachers. Reaching its destination, the well-hit baseball became the seven-hundred and fifty-sixth home run of Barry Bonds’ major league career. Finally, at long last, Bonds had passed Hank Aaron’s record of seven-hundred and fifty-five major league career home runs.
Once in the bleachers, the baseball would be the object of much pushing, shoving, poking, diving and falling by desperate and ill-mannered fans. Finally, the ball would be pounced upon by twenty-two-year-old Matt Murphy of Queens, New York—-a New York Mets fan.
As fate would have it, Murphy was on his way to Australia with a friend (whom I’m told wore a Yankees shirt) and just happened to have come to AT&T Park during his San Francisco layover. Matt Murphy just happened to have purchased a ticket for the game about an hour before game time. His reward, after a short and somewhat bloody tussle, was the yet to be valued (but nevertheless priceless) “Bonds’ ball”.
As the crowd cheered, Giants’ officials gathered for a special ceremony. Directing everyone’s attention to the scoreboard video screen in centerfield, Barry, his family, Willie Mays (Barry’s godfather) and everyone else saw the image of Henry Louis Aaron (the just-deposed home run king) congratulating Barry Bonds in a short but very dignified and tasteful statement.
Asserting that home run hitting required skill, longevity and determination, Aaron, now seventy-three, declared:
“…I move over now and offer my best wishes to Barry and his family on this historical achievement. My hope today,” concluded Aaron, “as it was on that April evening in 1974 [referring to his seven-hundred and fifteenth home run which broke Babe Ruth’s seven-hundred and fourteen home run career record], is that the accomplishment of this record will inspire others to chase their own dreams.”
Next came the newly crowned home run king himself. Thanking the fans of San Francisco, his team mates, the visiting Washington Nationals (for their understanding of the need for the ceremony), his godfather Willie Mays, his mother, his wife and children, Barry Bonds concluded with an especially emotional tribute.
Pointing to the sky as he had right after crossing home plate and hugging his bat boy son Nikolai, Barry thanked his late father Bobby Lee Bonds who had taught him everything he knew about baseball. The tears and cheers that followed sent a message to the skeptical world outside of San Francisco that, whatever the outside world thought or felt, Barry Bonds was both a hero and home run king in San Francisco. Long live the king! So powerful was that message that it obscured, in the awareness of most, the fact that the night would end with a loss of the game by the San Francisco Giants to the Washington Nationals by a score of 8 to 6.
THE PAST. One-hundred and thirty-one years have passed since the modern game of baseball was born. It has become America’s “National Pastime”. More than any other sport, baseball relies on tradition as a major part of its appeal.
In watching what took place the other night at San Francisco’s AT&T Park, tradition was very evident. Not only was the new home run king, the son of Bobby Lee Bonds, a fourteen year and eight team Major League veteran, but Michael Joseph Bacsik, the son of Michael James Bacsik, was a five year and two team Major League veteran as well.
In fact, daddy Mike Bacsik had pitched to Hank Aaron on August 23rd of 1976 after Aaron had hit what would be his last career home run, number seven fifty-five. Thus, Mike, Sr. and young Mike both pitched to men who had the same number of career home runs. Had Mike Sr. given up a home run to Hank Aaron, father and son would have both given up career number seven fifty-six to the two men. Bacsik Sr, a right-hander, was pitching for the Texas Rangers in 1976 while Hank Aaron was playing out his final baseball season with the American League’s Milwaukee Brewers. Even that was baseball tradition as the Atlanta Braves, Hank’s team when he broke Babe Ruth’s record in 1974, had once been the Milwaukee Braves. Hank had helped bring a world championship to Milwaukee when his Braves beat the Yankees in the 1957 World Series. By the time Mike Bacsik, Sr. pitched to “Hammerin’ Henry”, there were no home runs left in Aaron’s powerful wrists and potent bat. Aaron did get a single off the senior Bacsik, but that was it. No one could know on that August Monday in 1976 that another tradition had been born—but that’s baseball.
Born to Bobby Lee and Patricia Bonds on July 24th, 1964, Barry Bonds was the son of a baseball star. He became the godson of a baseball “super star”. (It also should be noted here that through his mother Patricia Bonds he is a cousin of still another baseball superstar, Reggie Martinez Jackson.) Barry was four years old when the San Francisco Giants brought his powerful and speedy dad to the majors to play alongside of Willie Mays.
Unlike Willie Mays, Bobby Bonds’ gifts of both power and speed (primarily because they weren’t as persistent or long lasting) were not rewarded with team loyalty. After the 1974 season, Bobby Bonds was traded from the Giants to the Yankees. While that was worthy of a star, playing at Yankee Stadium made pressure-packed demands on the senior Bonds. What exactly happened to Bobby Bonds while he was a member of the Yankees, I’ve never learned. However, it must have been significant, because although Bobby Bonds hit 32 home runs for the Yankees, he was traded off to the California Angels after only one year in New York. Even more, during the six years remaining of his career—1977 through 1981—Bobby Bonds would play with six more teams.
The demands and the unfairness of a professional baseball experience obviously made a lasting impression on young Barry. Signed by the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1985, Barry was in the majors by 1986. It was in 1990 that he came into his own, batting .301, hitting thirty-two home runs, stealing fifty-two bases and winning the first of his seven National League MVP awards.
Following his 1992 MVP season with Pittsburgh, Barry Bonds signed with the San Francisco Giants. His father had also signed, that spring, a Giants’ contract as their first base coach. Barry had come home, but his presence cost the Giants $43,000,000 through 1998. It can’t be denied that Barry earned every penny! However, with all of his considerable achievements, there was a downside to Barry Bonds.
Bonds was often moody with teammates, the press and even with the fans. It wasn’t until the 1998 season that there was a discernable change in Barry Bonds.
That year, Mark McGwire, a man whom it is said Bonds considered an inferior player, captured nationwide headlines by hitting seventy home runs for the St. Louis Cardinals. It has also been asserted by some that McGwire’s burst of power wasn’t so much a matter of ability as it was the result of taking growth hormone steroids. So, many people believed that Bonds decided that if McGwire could do it and get away with it, why shouldn’t he? Thus, history began to be made.
Beginning in 1999, Bonds’ weight went from about one-hundred and ninety pounds to about two-hundred and thirty. At the same time, his home run production went from an average of thirty-four per year over his first twelve big league seasons to an average of forty-six per season.
In 2003, federal investigators began investigating Balco Laboratory in Burlingame, California. The names of thirty big league players who had received treatment through the lab’s products, including Barry Lamar Bonds, was uncovered. A grand jury investigation and Bonds testimony followed. Bonds’ boyhood friend, Greg Anderson, a trainer at Balco Lab was arrested for refusing to testify about his recent relationship with Barry Bonds as a lab employee.
Through all of this, we learned from the testimony of Barry Bonds’ former girlfriend Kimberly Bell that Bonds was jealous of Mark McGwire and that he was determined to compete with McGwire’s reputation.
FAME OR INFAMY. Meanwhile, Barry Bonds denies and fans take sides. In San Francisco, many fans don’t want to believe. Still other fans believe but excuse. “How perfect was Ty Cobb or Babe Ruth?” they ask, pointing to Ruth’s drinking and womanizing along with Ty Cobb’s mean and nearly demonic behavior. Some even concede that Bonds may have taken steroids, but they defend it by wondering outloud how many pitchers were probably taking steroids at the same time, thereby equalizing or even countering the power of a batter such as Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa or Barry Bonds.
Home run hitting requires more than strength. It also requires judgment and timing—which is why I began my description of Bonds’ record breaking home run as I did. Past baseball rosters are loaded with the names of brutally strong men who couldn’t and therefore didn’t hit home runs.
Outside of the Bay Area, fans are far less understanding. Commissioner Bud Selig has obviously hedged his bets by offering Barry Bonds offhanded and almost noncommittal congratulations.
What the future holds for Barry bonds, no one can say. The statute of limitations on his possible perjury before the grand jury runs out in 2008, so Barry may well avoid punishment for perjury. However, the weight of public opinion on Barry Bonds’ reputation may matter when the time comes to vote him into the baseball Hall of Fame.
Barry Bonds is talented beyond all question when it comes to production on the baseball diamond. For that reason, he deserves to be famous. However, if the sum total of Barry’s past and present adds up to infamy as much or more than it totals fame, then he may join Benedict Arnold, Aaron Burr, Spiro Agnew and others in the American public’s Historic Hall of Shame.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Dated Friday, August 10th 2007
THE PRESENT, Tuesday, August 7th, 2007. As everyone knew it would, when it finally happened it only took an instant. The scoreboard clock read 8:51 p.m. Pacific Time as Washington National’s left-hander Mike Bacsik fired a fastball toward the inside corner of home plate at China Basin’s AT&T Park in San Francisco, California.
In less than three tenths of a second from the time the ball left Bacsik’s hand, Barry Bonds studied the rotation of the baseball hurdling toward the protective armature on his right elbow — and decided to swing at the ninety plus mile per hour pitch.
That decision made, Bonds had to hurl the head of his thirty-three ounce maple bat at the incoming pitch at just the right height and at the exact angle essential for solid contact by a round bat against a round ball.
If Mr. Bonds was right, the ball would change direction ever so slightly away from Barry’s right elbow and cross the plate in front of him where he judged it was going to be. If Bonds was wrong, the ball would either dip sufficiently below and inside of the range of Barry’s bat head or outside and out of the range of Bond’s bat, causing the determined slugger to hit the ball at a bad angle or to miss the pitch entirely.
Because forty-three year old Barry Lamar Bonds judged correctly, there was a sharp crack as maple met cowhide. The nine inch, five-and-a-half ounce baseball was on its four-hundred and thirty-five foot trajectory to Section 144 just to the left field side of the four-hundred and twenty-one foot sign in the right center field bleachers. Reaching its destination, the well-hit baseball became the seven-hundred and fifty-sixth home run of Barry Bonds’ major league career. Finally, at long last, Bonds had passed Hank Aaron’s record of seven-hundred and fifty-five major league career home runs.
Once in the bleachers, the baseball would be the object of much pushing, shoving, poking, diving and falling by desperate and ill-mannered fans. Finally, the ball would be pounced upon by twenty-two-year-old Matt Murphy of Queens, New York—-a New York Mets fan.
As fate would have it, Murphy was on his way to Australia with a friend (whom I’m told wore a Yankees shirt) and just happened to have come to AT&T Park during his San Francisco layover. Matt Murphy just happened to have purchased a ticket for the game about an hour before game time. His reward, after a short and somewhat bloody tussle, was the yet to be valued (but nevertheless priceless) “Bonds’ ball”.
As the crowd cheered, Giants’ officials gathered for a special ceremony. Directing everyone’s attention to the scoreboard video screen in centerfield, Barry, his family, Willie Mays (Barry’s godfather) and everyone else saw the image of Henry Louis Aaron (the just-deposed home run king) congratulating Barry Bonds in a short but very dignified and tasteful statement.
Asserting that home run hitting required skill, longevity and determination, Aaron, now seventy-three, declared:
“…I move over now and offer my best wishes to Barry and his family on this historical achievement. My hope today,” concluded Aaron, “as it was on that April evening in 1974 [referring to his seven-hundred and fifteenth home run which broke Babe Ruth’s seven-hundred and fourteen home run career record], is that the accomplishment of this record will inspire others to chase their own dreams.”
Next came the newly crowned home run king himself. Thanking the fans of San Francisco, his team mates, the visiting Washington Nationals (for their understanding of the need for the ceremony), his godfather Willie Mays, his mother, his wife and children, Barry Bonds concluded with an especially emotional tribute.
Pointing to the sky as he had right after crossing home plate and hugging his bat boy son Nikolai, Barry thanked his late father Bobby Lee Bonds who had taught him everything he knew about baseball. The tears and cheers that followed sent a message to the skeptical world outside of San Francisco that, whatever the outside world thought or felt, Barry Bonds was both a hero and home run king in San Francisco. Long live the king! So powerful was that message that it obscured, in the awareness of most, the fact that the night would end with a loss of the game by the San Francisco Giants to the Washington Nationals by a score of 8 to 6.
THE PAST. One-hundred and thirty-one years have passed since the modern game of baseball was born. It has become America’s “National Pastime”. More than any other sport, baseball relies on tradition as a major part of its appeal.
In watching what took place the other night at San Francisco’s AT&T Park, tradition was very evident. Not only was the new home run king, the son of Bobby Lee Bonds, a fourteen year and eight team Major League veteran, but Michael Joseph Bacsik, the son of Michael James Bacsik, was a five year and two team Major League veteran as well.
In fact, daddy Mike Bacsik had pitched to Hank Aaron on August 23rd of 1976 after Aaron had hit what would be his last career home run, number seven fifty-five. Thus, Mike, Sr. and young Mike both pitched to men who had the same number of career home runs. Had Mike Sr. given up a home run to Hank Aaron, father and son would have both given up career number seven fifty-six to the two men. Bacsik Sr, a right-hander, was pitching for the Texas Rangers in 1976 while Hank Aaron was playing out his final baseball season with the American League’s Milwaukee Brewers. Even that was baseball tradition as the Atlanta Braves, Hank’s team when he broke Babe Ruth’s record in 1974, had once been the Milwaukee Braves. Hank had helped bring a world championship to Milwaukee when his Braves beat the Yankees in the 1957 World Series. By the time Mike Bacsik, Sr. pitched to “Hammerin’ Henry”, there were no home runs left in Aaron’s powerful wrists and potent bat. Aaron did get a single off the senior Bacsik, but that was it. No one could know on that August Monday in 1976 that another tradition had been born—but that’s baseball.
Born to Bobby Lee and Patricia Bonds on July 24th, 1964, Barry Bonds was the son of a baseball star. He became the godson of a baseball “super star”. (It also should be noted here that through his mother Patricia Bonds he is a cousin of still another baseball superstar, Reggie Martinez Jackson.) Barry was four years old when the San Francisco Giants brought his powerful and speedy dad to the majors to play alongside of Willie Mays.
Unlike Willie Mays, Bobby Bonds’ gifts of both power and speed (primarily because they weren’t as persistent or long lasting) were not rewarded with team loyalty. After the 1974 season, Bobby Bonds was traded from the Giants to the Yankees. While that was worthy of a star, playing at Yankee Stadium made pressure-packed demands on the senior Bonds. What exactly happened to Bobby Bonds while he was a member of the Yankees, I’ve never learned. However, it must have been significant, because although Bobby Bonds hit 32 home runs for the Yankees, he was traded off to the California Angels after only one year in New York. Even more, during the six years remaining of his career—1977 through 1981—Bobby Bonds would play with six more teams.
The demands and the unfairness of a professional baseball experience obviously made a lasting impression on young Barry. Signed by the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1985, Barry was in the majors by 1986. It was in 1990 that he came into his own, batting .301, hitting thirty-two home runs, stealing fifty-two bases and winning the first of his seven National League MVP awards.
Following his 1992 MVP season with Pittsburgh, Barry Bonds signed with the San Francisco Giants. His father had also signed, that spring, a Giants’ contract as their first base coach. Barry had come home, but his presence cost the Giants $43,000,000 through 1998. It can’t be denied that Barry earned every penny! However, with all of his considerable achievements, there was a downside to Barry Bonds.
Bonds was often moody with teammates, the press and even with the fans. It wasn’t until the 1998 season that there was a discernable change in Barry Bonds.
That year, Mark McGwire, a man whom it is said Bonds considered an inferior player, captured nationwide headlines by hitting seventy home runs for the St. Louis Cardinals. It has also been asserted by some that McGwire’s burst of power wasn’t so much a matter of ability as it was the result of taking growth hormone steroids. So, many people believed that Bonds decided that if McGwire could do it and get away with it, why shouldn’t he? Thus, history began to be made.
Beginning in 1999, Bonds’ weight went from about one-hundred and ninety pounds to about two-hundred and thirty. At the same time, his home run production went from an average of thirty-four per year over his first twelve big league seasons to an average of forty-six per season.
In 2003, federal investigators began investigating Balco Laboratory in Burlingame, California. The names of thirty big league players who had received treatment through the lab’s products, including Barry Lamar Bonds, was uncovered. A grand jury investigation and Bonds testimony followed. Bonds’ boyhood friend, Greg Anderson, a trainer at Balco Lab was arrested for refusing to testify about his recent relationship with Barry Bonds as a lab employee.
Through all of this, we learned from the testimony of Barry Bonds’ former girlfriend Kimberly Bell that Bonds was jealous of Mark McGwire and that he was determined to compete with McGwire’s reputation.
FAME OR INFAMY. Meanwhile, Barry Bonds denies and fans take sides. In San Francisco, many fans don’t want to believe. Still other fans believe but excuse. “How perfect was Ty Cobb or Babe Ruth?” they ask, pointing to Ruth’s drinking and womanizing along with Ty Cobb’s mean and nearly demonic behavior. Some even concede that Bonds may have taken steroids, but they defend it by wondering outloud how many pitchers were probably taking steroids at the same time, thereby equalizing or even countering the power of a batter such as Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa or Barry Bonds.
Home run hitting requires more than strength. It also requires judgment and timing—which is why I began my description of Bonds’ record breaking home run as I did. Past baseball rosters are loaded with the names of brutally strong men who couldn’t and therefore didn’t hit home runs.
Outside of the Bay Area, fans are far less understanding. Commissioner Bud Selig has obviously hedged his bets by offering Barry Bonds offhanded and almost noncommittal congratulations.
What the future holds for Barry bonds, no one can say. The statute of limitations on his possible perjury before the grand jury runs out in 2008, so Barry may well avoid punishment for perjury. However, the weight of public opinion on Barry Bonds’ reputation may matter when the time comes to vote him into the baseball Hall of Fame.
Barry Bonds is talented beyond all question when it comes to production on the baseball diamond. For that reason, he deserves to be famous. However, if the sum total of Barry’s past and present adds up to infamy as much or more than it totals fame, then he may join Benedict Arnold, Aaron Burr, Spiro Agnew and others in the American public’s Historic Hall of Shame.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Sunday, August 5, 2007
CLINTON VS OBAMA — DEBATE OR SHOW?
By Edwin Cooney
Dated Friday, August 3rd, 2007
It had to happen, you know. It was just a matter of time. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were bound to have a difference the media would find compelling and on which you and I could take sides.
The question is whether there is really an issue of experience vs. naïveté here or whether this is a contrived quarrel
It all began during a CNN/YouTube Democratic debate on the night of Monday, July 23rd. Senator Barack Obama responded affirmatively to a question as to whether or not he would agree to meet with rogue leaders of such countries as Syria, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela during the first year of his administration. Senator Clinton wasted little time suggesting that Senator Obama’s response was reckless and naïve and indicative of his lack of experience so essential to any successful presidency. A few days later on the campaign trail, Senator Obama upped the intensity of the “debate” by asserting that what America doesn‘t need is “Bush Lite” in the White House.
From what I’ve gathered, the consensus is that Senator Clinton has come out ahead on this “issue” because everyone knows that any substantive bilateral meeting or “summit” necessarily requires careful preparation. Pre-summit preparedness was one of the rare issues on which John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon concurred during their second debate in 1960.
“Ah, but that’s politics,” you say — but that’s just the point. JFK and RMN had little to gain by disagreeing on the need for pre-summit preparation, but Barack and Hillary both have something to gain by debating this issue.
Senator C. wants to demonstrate that Senator O.’s inexperience is shown by his willingness to consider summitry with “rogue” leaders during the first year of a possible Obama presidency. She wants you to think that she’s experienced and he’s merely naive.
Senator O. wants to demonstrate that Senator C. is simply taking the path of least resistance or “the establishment position” just as she did when she voted to authorize President Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq — which he, with all of his inexperience, opposed. He wants you to see him as bold and creative and to view her as dangerously narrow and cautious.
What neither Senator Clinton nor Senator Obama is expounding much on is what it takes to conduct a successful summit. Neither are they speculating much about the significance of past summit meetings. So, perhaps a quick look at some questionable summit meetings might be helpful.
Since May 8th, 1945, which we celebrated as VE Day, there have been 18 meetings between American presidents and Soviet leaders. The first one, held at Potsdam just outside of Berlin, Germany, has been considered a failure by many historians and commentators because it solidified and officially sanctified the Soviet Union’s tyranny over Eastern Europe. No one, in-so-far as I’m aware, chalks that failure up to President Truman’s mere three months of presidential experience—and they shouldn’t. After all, post-war spheres of influence by the great powers were regarded as inevitable throughout the war. As for preparedness being a factor at Potsdam, it could hardly have been a factor especially since the British government changed hands in the middle of the conference. Winston Churchill came to the Potsdam conference as Prime Minister and was replaced on July 23rd by Clement Atlee… so much for summit predictability or continuity.
The second post-war meeting between the two “Super Powers” didn’t occur for ten years after World War II. American-Soviet meetings were “conferences” during the war. However, now that the war was over, we and the Soviets were adversaries rather than allies, thus our meetings became “summits” rather than conferences.
By July 1955, President Eisenhower felt that the Soviet Union might well be ready for the easement of international tensions. The Soviets, after all, had agreed to the independence of Austria the previous May (thereby allowing for the restoration of Austria’s constitutional monarchy) and had expressed a willingness to discuss the limitation of nuclear stockpiles.
The American people weren’t so sure of the wisdom of an American - Soviet meeting at “the summit.” Many believed (I think incorrectly) that FDR was either bullied by Stalin or bamboozled due to naiveté and illness into “giving away” Eastern Europe to the Russians during the Yalta conference of February 1945. They thought that this allowed for the drawing down of the “Iron Curtain” and they didn’t want to see any more presidential “surrendering” to the Soviets.
According to Cary Reich, one of Nelson A. Rockefeller’s biographers, Secretary of State Dulles tried to talk Ike out of the conference going so far as to insist that Geneva, Switzerland, where the summit was to be held, would be too packed with summer tourists. Ike wasn’t buying it, however.
It wasn’t until President Eisenhower made his dramatic “Open Skies” inspection proposal that either the President or the Secretary of State was sure who was making the decisions on the Soviet side. Winston Churchill had been calling for a “Big Four” summit for two years. The Soviet government was still in transition following the death of Josef Stalin. No one knew for sure whether the goateed Premier Nikolai Bulganin or the bald and beefy First Secretary of the Communist Party Nikita Khrushchev was in charge. As a result, President Eisenhower, Churchill’s successor Prime Minister Anthony Eden of Great Britain, Prime Minister Edgar Faure of France, and the Soviet leadership met at the Palace of Nations, the old League of Nations headquarters, on Monday, July 18th, 1955.
On the afternoon of the fourth day, President Eisenhower -- without consulting either the British or the French -- announced that the United States would be willing to allow Soviet aerial inspection of its military installations for purposes of verification if the Soviets would do the same. Amidst everyone’s astonishment at the President’s proposal, a sudden loud thunderclap caused the lights to go out — as if nature itself were applauding Ike. Soviet Premier Bulganin’s comments followed Mr. Eden and Mr. Faure’s favorable responses. The Premier said that the President was obviously sincere and that the Soviet Union would give the proposal serious consideration.
Once the meeting broke up, Nikita Khrushchev cornered Eisenhower and made it plain that, as far as he was concerned, such inspection was a bald espionage ploy. Secretary Khrushchev went on to question why, if the United States was so peace-loving, it didn’t get down to business with the recent Soviet proposal for disarmament talks. Ike responded that he’d be happy to do that if the Russians would accept his proposal. Khrushchev turned and walked away.
The summit was ultimately considered a success because of the propaganda and psychological advantage the United States had gained in the eyes of the world by offering to expose its military to inspection if the Russians would do the same. In addition, our government came out of the summit with a better understanding of who was making the decisions in the Soviet government.
The first American - Soviet summit became known to the world as “The Open Skies Summit”. While “the Spirit of Geneva” wasn’t any more long-lasting than “the Spirit of Camp David” four years later in 1959, I think it’s reasonable to say that summitry was useful because the easing of tensions encouraged the leadership on both sides of the “Iron Curtain” to seek out face-saving methods of survival in the event of potentially lethal crises.
The Camp David summit occurred at the close of Nikita Khrushchev’s September 1959 visit to the United States. It set up the “Big Five” summit scheduled for Paris in May of 1960. That summit was scuttled by Khrushchev after the Russians shot down our U-2 flight and captured both the pilot and the spy plane. That failure was a failure of calculation rather than preparation.
When JFK met Khrushchev in Vienna in June 1961, the President was under two disadvantages. The first was as the result of our participation in the recent disaster at the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. The second disadvantage was the occurrence of the “Freedom Riders” antidiscrimination campaign back home which exposed to the world the citizen inequalities existing in the United States. The ’61 summit would be followed by the Berlin crisis and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Luckily, JFK’s knowledge of Khrushchev and Khrushchev’s knowledge of JFK enabled both leaders to find face-saving ways to avoid a disastrous confrontation. It might even be argued that the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was one of the results of the 1961 Kennedy/Khrushchev summit meeting. (However, the immediate aftermath of the 1961 Kennedy Khrushchev summit meeting was the construction of the Berlin wall along with tanks muzzle to muzzle in the streets of Berlin, bomb shelter construction here at home, and missiles and quarantine in the Gulf of Mexico in October of 1962.)
President Nixon and Soviet President Brezhnev were both well prepared for the 1972 Salt I Treaty summit meeting in Moscow and there was much ceremony and even hope, despite the yet unresolved Vietnam War. However, when they were together at Nixon’s home in San Clemente in 1973, there occurred a spontaneous disagreement over the Middle East in the middle of the night. Brezhnev had gone to bed in Tricia Nixon Cox’s room and suddenly, without warning, he called for a late night meeting with the President. The discussion, as reported by President Nixon in his memoirs, was both spontaneous and even “brutal”, but Mr. Nixon said, it paid dividends during the Yom Kippur War the following October.
In summation then, summitry can be a treacherous emotional minefield regardless of the degree of “spadework” or preparation. Neither Obama’s creativity nor Clinton’s calculated caution adequately addresses the subject of summitry for the edification of the American people. Now that Senator Obama has been creative and Senator Clinton has been defensively cautious, it should be noted that neither one of them has been through a summit meeting. Thus, it’s clear to this observer that this “debate” is much less about issues than it is about political positioning and theater.
As I said at the outset, the debate may be both entertaining and even instructive as to the judgment, creativity, and temperament of both candidates. It may even be necessary.
But even though it’s a hell-of-a-good-show, I believe those smirking people out there buying popcorn are Republicans.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Dated Friday, August 3rd, 2007
It had to happen, you know. It was just a matter of time. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were bound to have a difference the media would find compelling and on which you and I could take sides.
The question is whether there is really an issue of experience vs. naïveté here or whether this is a contrived quarrel
It all began during a CNN/YouTube Democratic debate on the night of Monday, July 23rd. Senator Barack Obama responded affirmatively to a question as to whether or not he would agree to meet with rogue leaders of such countries as Syria, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela during the first year of his administration. Senator Clinton wasted little time suggesting that Senator Obama’s response was reckless and naïve and indicative of his lack of experience so essential to any successful presidency. A few days later on the campaign trail, Senator Obama upped the intensity of the “debate” by asserting that what America doesn‘t need is “Bush Lite” in the White House.
From what I’ve gathered, the consensus is that Senator Clinton has come out ahead on this “issue” because everyone knows that any substantive bilateral meeting or “summit” necessarily requires careful preparation. Pre-summit preparedness was one of the rare issues on which John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon concurred during their second debate in 1960.
“Ah, but that’s politics,” you say — but that’s just the point. JFK and RMN had little to gain by disagreeing on the need for pre-summit preparation, but Barack and Hillary both have something to gain by debating this issue.
Senator C. wants to demonstrate that Senator O.’s inexperience is shown by his willingness to consider summitry with “rogue” leaders during the first year of a possible Obama presidency. She wants you to think that she’s experienced and he’s merely naive.
Senator O. wants to demonstrate that Senator C. is simply taking the path of least resistance or “the establishment position” just as she did when she voted to authorize President Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq — which he, with all of his inexperience, opposed. He wants you to see him as bold and creative and to view her as dangerously narrow and cautious.
What neither Senator Clinton nor Senator Obama is expounding much on is what it takes to conduct a successful summit. Neither are they speculating much about the significance of past summit meetings. So, perhaps a quick look at some questionable summit meetings might be helpful.
Since May 8th, 1945, which we celebrated as VE Day, there have been 18 meetings between American presidents and Soviet leaders. The first one, held at Potsdam just outside of Berlin, Germany, has been considered a failure by many historians and commentators because it solidified and officially sanctified the Soviet Union’s tyranny over Eastern Europe. No one, in-so-far as I’m aware, chalks that failure up to President Truman’s mere three months of presidential experience—and they shouldn’t. After all, post-war spheres of influence by the great powers were regarded as inevitable throughout the war. As for preparedness being a factor at Potsdam, it could hardly have been a factor especially since the British government changed hands in the middle of the conference. Winston Churchill came to the Potsdam conference as Prime Minister and was replaced on July 23rd by Clement Atlee… so much for summit predictability or continuity.
The second post-war meeting between the two “Super Powers” didn’t occur for ten years after World War II. American-Soviet meetings were “conferences” during the war. However, now that the war was over, we and the Soviets were adversaries rather than allies, thus our meetings became “summits” rather than conferences.
By July 1955, President Eisenhower felt that the Soviet Union might well be ready for the easement of international tensions. The Soviets, after all, had agreed to the independence of Austria the previous May (thereby allowing for the restoration of Austria’s constitutional monarchy) and had expressed a willingness to discuss the limitation of nuclear stockpiles.
The American people weren’t so sure of the wisdom of an American - Soviet meeting at “the summit.” Many believed (I think incorrectly) that FDR was either bullied by Stalin or bamboozled due to naiveté and illness into “giving away” Eastern Europe to the Russians during the Yalta conference of February 1945. They thought that this allowed for the drawing down of the “Iron Curtain” and they didn’t want to see any more presidential “surrendering” to the Soviets.
According to Cary Reich, one of Nelson A. Rockefeller’s biographers, Secretary of State Dulles tried to talk Ike out of the conference going so far as to insist that Geneva, Switzerland, where the summit was to be held, would be too packed with summer tourists. Ike wasn’t buying it, however.
It wasn’t until President Eisenhower made his dramatic “Open Skies” inspection proposal that either the President or the Secretary of State was sure who was making the decisions on the Soviet side. Winston Churchill had been calling for a “Big Four” summit for two years. The Soviet government was still in transition following the death of Josef Stalin. No one knew for sure whether the goateed Premier Nikolai Bulganin or the bald and beefy First Secretary of the Communist Party Nikita Khrushchev was in charge. As a result, President Eisenhower, Churchill’s successor Prime Minister Anthony Eden of Great Britain, Prime Minister Edgar Faure of France, and the Soviet leadership met at the Palace of Nations, the old League of Nations headquarters, on Monday, July 18th, 1955.
On the afternoon of the fourth day, President Eisenhower -- without consulting either the British or the French -- announced that the United States would be willing to allow Soviet aerial inspection of its military installations for purposes of verification if the Soviets would do the same. Amidst everyone’s astonishment at the President’s proposal, a sudden loud thunderclap caused the lights to go out — as if nature itself were applauding Ike. Soviet Premier Bulganin’s comments followed Mr. Eden and Mr. Faure’s favorable responses. The Premier said that the President was obviously sincere and that the Soviet Union would give the proposal serious consideration.
Once the meeting broke up, Nikita Khrushchev cornered Eisenhower and made it plain that, as far as he was concerned, such inspection was a bald espionage ploy. Secretary Khrushchev went on to question why, if the United States was so peace-loving, it didn’t get down to business with the recent Soviet proposal for disarmament talks. Ike responded that he’d be happy to do that if the Russians would accept his proposal. Khrushchev turned and walked away.
The summit was ultimately considered a success because of the propaganda and psychological advantage the United States had gained in the eyes of the world by offering to expose its military to inspection if the Russians would do the same. In addition, our government came out of the summit with a better understanding of who was making the decisions in the Soviet government.
The first American - Soviet summit became known to the world as “The Open Skies Summit”. While “the Spirit of Geneva” wasn’t any more long-lasting than “the Spirit of Camp David” four years later in 1959, I think it’s reasonable to say that summitry was useful because the easing of tensions encouraged the leadership on both sides of the “Iron Curtain” to seek out face-saving methods of survival in the event of potentially lethal crises.
The Camp David summit occurred at the close of Nikita Khrushchev’s September 1959 visit to the United States. It set up the “Big Five” summit scheduled for Paris in May of 1960. That summit was scuttled by Khrushchev after the Russians shot down our U-2 flight and captured both the pilot and the spy plane. That failure was a failure of calculation rather than preparation.
When JFK met Khrushchev in Vienna in June 1961, the President was under two disadvantages. The first was as the result of our participation in the recent disaster at the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. The second disadvantage was the occurrence of the “Freedom Riders” antidiscrimination campaign back home which exposed to the world the citizen inequalities existing in the United States. The ’61 summit would be followed by the Berlin crisis and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Luckily, JFK’s knowledge of Khrushchev and Khrushchev’s knowledge of JFK enabled both leaders to find face-saving ways to avoid a disastrous confrontation. It might even be argued that the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was one of the results of the 1961 Kennedy/Khrushchev summit meeting. (However, the immediate aftermath of the 1961 Kennedy Khrushchev summit meeting was the construction of the Berlin wall along with tanks muzzle to muzzle in the streets of Berlin, bomb shelter construction here at home, and missiles and quarantine in the Gulf of Mexico in October of 1962.)
President Nixon and Soviet President Brezhnev were both well prepared for the 1972 Salt I Treaty summit meeting in Moscow and there was much ceremony and even hope, despite the yet unresolved Vietnam War. However, when they were together at Nixon’s home in San Clemente in 1973, there occurred a spontaneous disagreement over the Middle East in the middle of the night. Brezhnev had gone to bed in Tricia Nixon Cox’s room and suddenly, without warning, he called for a late night meeting with the President. The discussion, as reported by President Nixon in his memoirs, was both spontaneous and even “brutal”, but Mr. Nixon said, it paid dividends during the Yom Kippur War the following October.
In summation then, summitry can be a treacherous emotional minefield regardless of the degree of “spadework” or preparation. Neither Obama’s creativity nor Clinton’s calculated caution adequately addresses the subject of summitry for the edification of the American people. Now that Senator Obama has been creative and Senator Clinton has been defensively cautious, it should be noted that neither one of them has been through a summit meeting. Thus, it’s clear to this observer that this “debate” is much less about issues than it is about political positioning and theater.
As I said at the outset, the debate may be both entertaining and even instructive as to the judgment, creativity, and temperament of both candidates. It may even be necessary.
But even though it’s a hell-of-a-good-show, I believe those smirking people out there buying popcorn are Republicans.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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