How to Treat Kennedy's Death

My friend Elizabeth Nolan Brown had this to say about the way the American chattering and political classes are handling Ted Kennedy's death:

Maybe I’m just being falsely nostalgic, like when I wish ladies still wore hats and pretty stockings even though I can hardly be bothered to comb my hair and apply mascara on a daily basis; maybe it’s just, as the[LA Times] article goes on to point out, the “more elemental … difference between knowing someone as an individual rather than a political caricature” … but maybe it really is a sad, sad [indictment] of our current political culture and the kind of respect and diplomacy that’s been lost …

I found myself vacillating on how to treat Teddy in death because of my contempt for him while he was alive. Save one rather nasty tweet I wrote while somewhat intoxicated--that I subsequently deleted--I have been quite reserved in my public criticisms. The respect and diplomacy of which ENB writes I think is--like nearly any 'good ol' days'--indeed a 'false nostalgia' for things that never really were. But, nevertheless, I decided to hold my contempt for Teddy at bay, for the most part.

Most of my venom, instead, has been directed at the glowing obituaries that mention his most tragic act as nothing more than a political misstep for him--likening the death of a young woman to Gary Hart's pictures that cost him the nomination in 1984. That, I think, has been the most reckless part of this Kennedy media overdose.

But as this two-decade old profile in GQ illustrates, the man of the people wasn't really one of the people. Like the aristocratic politicians that counted plebes as their patrons in ancient Rome, the Kennedys' modern day Julio-Claudian mythology belies their personal, decadent, self-involved natures. The legendary personal "foibles"--as many are wont to use so-milquetoast of term--of the lot of the Kennedy men were stunts of such depraved indifference to other people that only those immune to laws of government and the judgment of society could survive politically. Yet, they are widely held to be "America's Royal Family," known for their empathy toward the downtrodden and helpless that could never approach them in their personal lives, lest they be molested on a restaurant table or hit in the face with a flying drink.

Obits like this one, penned by another friend of mine, J.P. Freire (who is, by the way, an unapologetic conservative), project a fragile humanity onto the man that,--while J.P.'s article was moving to read--I don't think was really there. Matt Yglesias, a proud "progressive", responding to some "right-of-center" rebukes this week for being confounded by modern politicians' motivations, wrote:

The formal model of the self-interested legislator is very easy to understand. What I’m saying is hard to understand is the actual psychology of this kind of behavior. I think I now have a much better grasp than I once did of what’s going on inside the heads of people who have ideological beliefs I disagree with. But I find it very difficult to extend my powers of moral imagination to the kind of people who hold high political office in the United States.

...

Instead, we’re fated to be ruled by the sort of people who are really desperate to cling to power. But it still strikes me as a very odd mentality.

If prostitution is the oldest profession, then man maneuvering to rule/control his fellow man is a close second. (Of course, the line between the two is hardly clear.) Governing politics embodies ideas so old and basic they've made it into the religious canon, and suffice it to say one doesn't need a degree in psychology to figure them out. What I want to know is how, after we have known how corrupting power is for--quite literally--thousands of years, intelligent people, especially those of us who live and work near the locus of political power, could ever be so naive as to happily grant the governing authority more power over our money and individual liberty, whatever the politicians use for their stated motivation.

Some may state that comparing today's politicians to Rome is not fair, given the great societal changes of the past two millenia. But I ask, has human nature changed in that time? Have the Seven Deadly Sins been erased from the human heart? And more concretely, have these things changed since the days of Mark Twain?H.L. Mencken? Sinclair Lewis? Will Rogers? Woodward & Bernstein? How politicians grab and cling to power is far less mystifying to me than someone as intelligent as Yglesias looking at the bloated bureaucracy of government, the dog-eat-dog fights that we call "election cycles," the cloakroom logrolling deals "to get things done"and then attempt to rationalize and assign any moral commitment to the people whose ability to lie to your face is a career necessity. (And while a perhaps noble gesture on J.P.'s part, I also have a hard time imagining the quiet torture of life as Ted Kennedy, especially after reading and hearing this).

I'd like to think that Yglesias's overall point is what he said it was in the follow-up post: that he just can't get into the mind of a politician. However, it still seems to me that there is a dramatic cognitive dissonance between what he--and, extending it further to most well-meaning "progressives"-- feels politically and what he painfully admits to knowing about politicians when he writes sentences like this about the departed senior senator from Massachusetts (who indeed was excellent on trucking and airline deregulation in the 1970s):

The moral of the story isn’t that “regulation is bad” but that progressive politics at its best isn’t about bigger government but about attacking privilege and power.

Thus, to his way of thinking, one must give more privilege and power to the privileged and powerful to take away privilege and power from others, who happened to be the government who you gave the privilege and power to in the first place. Like the man it praises, this aim of Matt's sentence is undercut by the means to achieve its stated goal.

In the end, Ted Kennedy was a deeply flawed man, of flawed moral and political character. He was bred for power, he attained it through legacy, and he used it to ends that suited him, for good and ill. With more Bushes, Clintons, and Kennedys still on the political horizon, I don't think we've seen the last of the political dynasties. But I sincerely hope that we have seen the end of the likes of Ted Kennedy.

Edward M. Kennedy, R.I.P.

Michael Jackson, RIP

I had originally wanted to start blogging again next week, but I feel compelled to say something about Michael Jackson's life and music as we head into what is certainly a perfect media storm of bullshit.

I heard that semi-literate, speech-impaired token named 'Sway' on MTV call Michael's death a "tragedy" yesterday. Perhaps, in addition to a much needed haircut, someone should get that brother a newspaper because no one with the depth of a rain puddle would call the (natural?) death of a 50 year old man with the influence, power, wealth and popularity Michael Jackson had a tragedy. In light of events elsewhere pretty much anywhere else around the world, this ranks somewhere in the "damn, that sucks" range of emotion.

That said, I was admittedly saddened by his death.

Michael became a freakish embarrassment over the past 15-20 years and to those in Gen Y and after, I can fully understand their air of dismissal about his music and their surprise of the general reaction to his death. But anyone alive in the early 80s, at the pinnacle of his career, understands exactly how huge he was. He was a superstar of the highest order--he was, after all, simply "Michael."

Jokes about his skin-lightening and hair straightening aside, Michael was racially transcendent well before Barack Obama's candidacy brought in the pundits' half-assed search for words to describe a "post-racial America." People of all races knew and wore his red leather jacket, tried to emulate the moonwalk, and danced jubilantly to his songs. He was a musical ambassador to the world before Bono appointed himself the patron saint of musical philanthropy. There wasn't a politician, musical artist, or sports superstar who would refuse Michael anything. Put simply, whether some like to admit it today or not, Michael Jackson was indisputably the coolest man on Earth.

The allegations surrounding his more recent personal life are well-known and just add to the awfulness of what I believe Michael's image became--whether they were true or not. I think he was a tortured man, for reasons I never will understand and, as far as I'm concerned, those reasons died with him. The media circus that is already underway will be sickening to me and anyone else who fondly remembers what Michael used to be.

I was talking to a friend and mentor last night, via IM, who was most definitely touched by Michael's death. She said:

I get that it's silly to a lot of people and I know people think he was a bad person...[but] for him, the pain is over. But I think he was a beautiful soul and his music has brought me incredible amounts of joy, has moved me to tears, [and] has made be boogie my ass off.

Michael's music made my friend, me, and millions of others smile nearly any time one of his songs came on a radio or jukebox. To this day, I can barely keep from dancing when I listen to 'Billie Jean' or 'Beat it' or a half-dozen other songs that immediately bring back memories of my childhood and happy times.

I will choose to remember him as he was at the Motown 25 celebration when he debuted the Moonwalk, and am glad that now, at least, the media can't hound him anymore and he will finally be left alone.

RIP, Michael.

Jack Kemp, RIP

Jack Kemp, the former football star turned congressman who with an evangelist’s fervor moved the Republican Party to a commitment to tax cuts as the central focus of economic policy, died Saturday evening at his home in Bethesda, Md. He was 73.

The cause was cancer, said his son Jimmy Kemp. Jack Kemp’s Washington consulting and lobbying firm, Kemp Partners, announced in January that he had cancer but did not disclose the type.

Mr. Kemp was secretary of housing and urban development under the first President George Bush and the Republican vice-presidential nominee in 1996. But his greatest legacy may stem from his years as a congressman from Buffalo, especially 1978, when his argument for sharp tax cuts to promote economic growth became party policy, one that has endured to this day.

Mr. Kemp, having embraced a supply-side economic theory, told the House that year that the nation suffered under a “tax code that rewards consumption, leisure, debt and borrowing, and punishes savings, investment, work and production.”

Ronald Reagan adopted the issue as a central one in his 1980 presidential campaign, and in 1981 he won passage of a 23 percent cut over three years. The legislation was known as Kemp-Roth, named for Mr. Kemp and William V. Roth Jr., the Delaware Republican and his Senate co-sponsor.

Mr. Kemp’s other great cause, in his 18 years in the House and for three decades thereafter, was to get his party to seek more support from blacks and other minorities.

“The party of Lincoln,” he wrote after the 2008 election, “needs to rethink and revisit its historic roots as a party of emancipation, liberation, civil rights and equality of opportunity for all.”

I really don't have much to add to this, other than to say that Jack Kemp was one of the good guys--a thoughtful conservative that put ethics and economics above religious sanctimony and hyper-partisanship. We could use a lot more like him.

The Cost of War

Below is a photograph, of the first of its kind since 1991, of the body of a U.S. serviceman returning home Sunday night after being killed in action.


The man in the casket was USAF Staff Sgt. Phillip Myers, 30, of Hopewell, VA, killed two days ago by an IED.

Even though this cannot capture the tragedy and grief of his friends and family, I believe that this is an important reminder of what our men and women of our military face every time our politicians send them into harm's way. Whether you believe the action is justified or wrong-headed, America's short attention span should be jolted by images like these to remind it of the real cost of war--beyond and before the money is counted.

I have several friends who have come home from the battlefields--all safely, thankfully--and I know of a couple others from years back still serving there. I want them to come back home safely to their happy families at the airport and not like this.

But the return of those who gave their very lives in service to their country should not be done under the cloak of government secrecy. I can't speak for my friends, past and present, in the service, but I personally view it as dishonorable that the government would hide them, as if we were ashamed of them. These men and women sacrificed themselves: the least we could do is acknowledge them as they return home.

R.I.P.

UPDATE: Better write-up of Sgt. Myers' return at WaPo.

Slain Oakland Officers Laid to Rest

Just because of my subject of professional interest--the Drug War and criminal justice abuses--I tend to be much more critical of the police on this website than not. I think it is of vital importance that media and policymakers hold law enforcement to account for the abuses of authority that often happen. Absent a check on the police power, a police state will naturally emerge.

This is not to say, however, that I don't respect the men and women who serve as police officers around the country. There are very good officers serving in nearly every precinct in the United States, and often they will be overlooked because they are doing their jobs well. Their names are tarnished every time a fellow officer goes to far in their duties or in their personal lives.

My father is a retired officer and detective from the Fort Wayne Police Department. He was a beat cop for most of his career. He's directed traffic and pulled over motorists, in addition to the murder investigations he conducted as a detective. What happened to the four officers in Oakland could have happened to him at some point in his career. My sympathies go out to the families of the murdered officers.

Ofc. John Hege
Sgt. Mark Dunakin
Sgt. Ervin Romans
Sgt. Daniel Sakai

R.I.P.

John Hope Franklin, (1915-2009)

Anyone familiar with "Black Studies" or whatever you want to call it (AA History, AAADS, etc.) knows the name of John Hope Franklin. He literally wrote the book on Black History--'From Slavery to Freedom'--the 8th edition of which is a about two feet away from me on my office desk as I type this. He died today at the age of 94.

He was a gifted scholar and an engaging writer--something difficult to find among historians. Anyone who is dismissive of "Black History" has never read Dr. Franklin's work, and is lesser for it.

The NYT obit here.

Rest in peace.

UPDATE: An excellent tribute by Walter Dellinger, legal juggernaut, in WaPo here.

Levi Stubbs, (1936-2008)

Sad news for Motown lovers:

DETROIT -- Four Tops lead singer Levi Stubbs, who possessed one of the most dynamic and emotive voices of all the Motown singers, died Friday at 72.

He had been ill recently and died in his sleep at the Detroit house he shared with his wife, said Dana Meah, the wife of Stubbs' grandson.

One of my favorite songs from the Four Tops:



And one of the classic group battles:



Levi Stubbs, RIP

Goodbye, Yankee Stadium

I am certainly among the minority of my friends insomuch as I hail from the Midwest and I am a Yankees fan. People ask why--most think it is because of their ridiculous run in the late 90s and that I, like so many of the people sporting the spankin' new blue hats with the red "B" emblazoned on their ignorant domes, was some sort of bandwagon jumper. Au contraire. Strat-o-matic baseball and Don Mattingly are to blame for this Indiana boy's love of the pinstripes. But I digress.

Anyway, so last night was our final farewell to the House that Ruth built 85 years ago. As a Yankees fan, there was certainly something missing as there is only a slim mathematical (i.e., no) chance of the Yankees making the playoffs this year. But, it was good to watch it anyway.

But for those of you who, like so many of my friends, are Yankee haters--envy, it seems, becomes most baseball fans--I found this little gem this morning over at Volokh:

Yankee Stadium, R.I.P. Today is, of course, the final game for “the Yankee Stadium,” as it used to be called, and the Sunday NY Times has a terrific 2-page spread with reminiscences of their “Stadium moments” by Paul Simon, Jill Abramson, Robert Creamer, Keith Olbermann, Michiko Kakutani, and several others. They’re quite moving. I’m a Brooklyn boy, and I was six years old when our Dodgers left town, never to return, and to say I never got over it is an understatement. I couldn’t root for them anymore, needless to say – damn you, Walter O’Malley, damn you to hell! – but at least we still had the Yankees . . . to continue to loathe and despise. It was a hard time to be a Yankee-loather – from 1957 to 1964, the Yankees of Mantle, Berra, Ford, et al. won 7 American League pennants in 8 years (though, blessedly, they only won the Series three times in that span). But in my candid moments, I have to concede: at least they were the kind of team worth hating. That was always the thing (and still is) about the Yankees; I guess there are people who “hate” the Atlanta Braves, or the Colorado Rockies, or the Houston Astros – but you can’t hate one of them like you can hate the Yankees, which is a purifying, soul-affirming, life-enhancing kind of hate.

I had the chance to see the Yankees at the Stadium twice this year. (both losses, but whatever.) The second time was with two of my best friends--one Cards and one Cubs fan--and even they got a little misty when they showed the video of Yankee Stadium highlights.

Love 'em. Hate 'em. You have to respect them.

There's always next year. LET'S GO YAN-KEES!

Yankee Stadium 1923-2008, R.I.P.

Bernie Mac (1957-2008), R.I.P.

One of the unsung giants of comedy has passed away.

Bernie Mac was been a staple of black comedy for over 30 years, only relatively recently receiving his due appreciation from the mainstream (read: white) audiences. His status within the world of black comedy can be noted in his placement as the closing act in Spike Lee's 2000 Original Kings of Comedy--a more prominent placement than three other more commercially successful comics Cedric the Entertainer, Steve Harvey, and D.L. Hughley. Mac's talent was his vivid tell-it-like-it-is, no bullshit storytelling. This probably hindered his career as far as the wider audiences, but no doubt endeared himself all the more to his fans.

Here is his opening bit from Kings. Needless to say, the audio is NSFW:



R.I.P.

Bo Diddley, R.I.P.

For my Mood Music Monday, I thought I'd just play a little ditty from the late Bo Diddley:

Mildred Loving, R.I.P.

I really don't want this blog to become an obituary column, but I can't very well let the passing of Mildred Loving go by unmentioned.

Mildred Jeter, a black woman, married Richard Loving, a white man. Their ground-breaking case, Loving v. Virginia, challenged and overturned anti-miscegenation laws in at least 17 states, including my home state of Indiana -- which one of my friends recently referred to as "the South's middle finger."

Indeed.

As a product of a bi-racial marriage, I owe my existence to this decision. I grew up in the 1980s when my school system was still attempting to desegregate; while my parents tried to shield me from it, I had to endure cruel jokes and treatment from other kids and their parents because I was a "half-breed"; and to this day, when I date a white woman, I still have to ask how her parents are going to take my race. (You may be surprised how often it is actually a problem.) Yet, all that pales in comparison to what happened to Mildred and Richard (from a statement released by Mildred last year on the 40th anniversary of the decision):

We didn’t get married in Washington because we wanted to marry there. We did it there because the government wouldn’t allow us to marry back home in Virginia where we grew up, where we met, where we fell in love, and where we wanted to be together and build our family. You see, I am a woman of color and Richard was white, and at that time people believed it was okay to keep us from marrying because of their ideas of who should marry whom.

When Richard and I came back to our home in Virginia, happily married, we had no intention of battling over the law. We made a commitment to each other in our love and lives, and now had the legal commitment, called marriage, to match. Isn’t that what marriage is?

Not long after our wedding, we were awakened in the middle of the night in our own bedroom by deputy sheriffs and actually arrested for the “crime” of marrying the wrong kind of person. Our marriage certificate was hanging on the wall above the bed. The state prosecuted Richard and me, and after we were found guilty, the judge declared: “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.” He sentenced us to a year in prison, but offered to suspend the sentence if we left our home in Virginia for 25 years exile.

My mother hinted at problems my parents encountered when they were together in public back in the 70s, but I don't know what they went through. I'm sure it was pretty nasty...I know for a fact that her father's side of the family still doesn't know I'm black. I've never even met them. I assumed they were all dead until just a few years before my mother died. Even then, she wouldn't introduce me to them. (I've been told they wouldn't approve.)

Well, thanks to Mildred Jeter Loving, people like me have become more accepted in society and people like my parents can live together without fearing the police barging into their homes and arresting them for being who they are and loving each other.

Mildred Loving, R.I.P.

Another Victim of the Drug War

I'm tempted to start a body count on how many lives the "War on Drugs" takes excepting --if only because they are less sympathetic -- the 1000s who have died on the streets as a result of gang warfare which is fueled by illicit drug sales. There have easily--EASILY--been more fatal casualties in the "Drug War" than the present wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. This is just the latest I've heard about...and perhaps one of the more tragic:

A musician who was denied a liver transplant because he used marijuana with medical approval under Washington state law to ease the symptoms of advanced hepatitis C died Thursday.

The death of Timothy Garon, 56, at Bailey-Boushay House, an intensive care nursing center was confirmed to The Associated Press by his lawyer, Douglas Hiatt, and Alisha Mark, a spokeswoman for Virginia Mason Medical Center, which operates Bailey-Boushay.

Dr. Brad Roter, the physician who authorized Garon to smoke pot to alleviate for nausea and abdominal pain and to stimulate his appetite, said he did not know it would be such a hurdle if Garon were to need a transplant.

Yes. If you smoke weed, for medical purposes no less, you will be denied a life-saving organ transplant. Yet, and as a Yankees fan it pains me to say this, as a life-long alcoholic baseball legend you can get a liver transplant...in spite of the fact that your habitual and grossly irresponsible drinking to excess over a span of decades killed your liver.

As incidents like these pile up, the already dubious "moral" cause for the "War on Drugs" erodes rapidly.

Hat tip to Radley for following this story.

R.I.P. Timothy Garon

D.C. Madam Dies in Apparent Suicide

George Carlin once asked: "Selling is legal. Fucking is legal. So why isn't 'selling fucking' legal?"

Well, I can't answer that question. And it seems Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the woman dubbed the "D.C. Madam," ended her own life while awaiting sentencing for "selling fucking."

According to the Washington Post, Palfrey, 52, was facing around 4 to 6 years for her conviction on federal racketeering charges.

The details of her "crime":

Palfrey ran her business, Pamela Martin & Associates, by telephone from her California home, and authorities said she grossed about $2 million from 1993 to 2006, splitting the money about evenly with her escorts. They said she employed at least 132 women over the years, dispatching them nightly to clients in homes and hotel rooms in the Washington area.

Yes, that awful, dreadful woman gave "socially polished, college-educated women" gainful employment providing a service to men (and maybe other women, I suppose). Oh, I'm sure there are some wives and scorned ex-lovers who are going to relish this news -- but it seems to be a tragic waste of taxpayers' money (i.e., the investigation and prosecution) and one woman's life just because some men stepped out with call-girls.

I don't have a moral problem with prostitution, but I personally find it disgusting. Furthermore, I would feel personally degraded if a woman were pretending to enjoy--shall we say "my company"?-- for $250.

But to each, their own.

So, one woman is dead. Her family mourns. Lives have been tarnished; reputations destroyed.

Can someone please explain to me what the hell was accomplished by all this?

WFB, Jr. (1925-2008)

I am very saddened to hear of the passing of William F. Buckley, Jr. While I certainly had differences with his opinions on many issues, there is no man who had a greater impact on my ideology, personal politics, and the professional life I have chosen for myself.


WFB, R.I.P.