I have had it in my mind to do a Blog each week on something that folks would find interesting, fun, informative or just some stuff. Well this is one of those “stuff” weeks. My problem is that I got involved in making a guitar stand. As you probably know from my blog picture, I play the guitar, mostly as a way to sing and give me a little three chord accompaniment. My hands are feeling some creeping arthritis. One remedy is to keep using them. Hence, play the guitar more often. The guitar is presently in a case. If I want to play I have to unpack at every use.
This led to, “why don’t you make a guitar stand so that it will always be right out there in the open and you would play and sing more often?” I agreed. So began the guitar stand project. Looking at the pictures on the internet, I found a model using just six sticks. Now the Internet guy wanted $400 for it and I said he’s crazy. I have a lot of pieces of white oak laying around the shop and “it’ll be duck soup to make this thing.” Oh yeah? It always starts out that way. Then I find I am either to Bau House functional or Kate esthetic. So began the weekend. I finished up with A for esthetics but a fat C for functional. That’s the opposite of where I usually end up.
One of my guiding stars when it comes to shop work is a saying Fiorello LaGuardia used to close his reading of the Funnies over the radio during a newspaper strike, “patience and fortitude.” That’s how I am able to get through my many woodworking projects, “patience and fortitude.” In the case of the Guitar stand I need to remake some things that look pretty, but don’t fit the guitar. There’s the lesson for today, how to achieve the ultimate in “form and function?” Not easy.
I’ll be back in a few days with some thoughts on the gender issue in the the primary campaign. In the meantime Spring really is here even if the nights are cold. The Forsythia are blooming and there’s the promise. That’s how I am able to set aside the craziness out there in the world. It’s temporary, but it’s one of the many ways we can maintain our humanity.
Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Nightmare at the Y
For many years I suffered regularly from a terrible nightmare of finding myself at lets say the Easter Parade on Fifth Avenue or some other embarrassing place, balls ass naked. Between trying to cover up as best one can with my hands over the “gentles” (thank you Mel Brooks) and slipping in and out of doorways, the anxiety grew and grew into such a bundle of fear that I just woke up thankful I was at home in my own bed.
Another favorite sight for this particular nightmare was at a podium delivering an important talk on, for instance, ”Why Workers Join Unions.” Low and behold, again I am as God delivered me with not a stitch on. As long as I stayed behind the podium I was okay. But what happens when I have to leave? So I keep talking, sort of a filibuster to hide my privates from public scrutiny. The audience is getting restless. I’m in a rising anxiety crisis and whamo! I wake up. The nightmare became a regular part of my dreaming life. Of course there were other dreams, but here is the one we are writing about today.
During my years as an employment specialist, both working for the City of New York as well as the Ford Foundation, I would regularly find myself in Washington D.C. attending yet another meeting on what to do with the army of unemployed Black youth. It was at one of these “schmoozes” (that’s what I began to call them), attended by Mike Sviridoff, George Bennet and an assortment of other aficionados in the field, that Mike, who was my boss at both the City and Ford, suggested we all go for a “schwitz” in the YMCA. Mike took any opportunity for a good sweat before dinner. Traveling in Sweden with Mike was like being in his heaven. Before any dinner with Swedish officials there was always an opportunity, as Mike said, “for a good schwitz in a sauna as a rebirth before dinner.” In New York City in the twenties there were many Turkish Baths that were famous for their steam rooms.
Back to the Washington meeting. We had some time to spare between the late afternoon and evening meeting when Mike suggested we all go to the YMCA for a good schwitz. I was not nearly as enthusiastic about schwitzing, but to be a good group member I went along with the suggestion. At the Y we were given a couple of towels, keys to a locker, and directions to the steam room and the pool.
With towels wrapped around our bottoms, we were sort of self conscious about our nakedness as we made our collective way to the steam room. We sat on the benches in the steam, with Mike waxing poetic, “isn’t this just best thing in the world” and me beginning to think “I can’t take this much longer.” (I suffered from hypertension, I shouldn’t have been there at all.)
I said I would take a swim to cool off and meet the rest of the gang in lobby of the Y. On the way to the pool were big wire fence doors that had a way of slamming behind you that made clear it was definitely closing. After my nice cool swim in the pool I began to realize I did not know my way back to the locker room. In a hasty moment I went through a wire fence door and, in my effort to catch it before it closed, I lost my big towel. What I was left with was a small hand towel about as good as Adam’s fig leaf. No I think the fig leaf was bigger.
Standing in a maize of wire fence passageways, I tried to remember how I had come in? Nothing seemed to be the same. I was lost in the bowels of the YMCA with nothing but a fig leaf. I tried desperately to go back, but without any success. All the wire doors locked as soon as you went through them. There was no way back. There was only one way forward up a flight of stairs and through a door that said “Lobby.” I thought “Okay. So what if I end up in the YMCA Lobby in my fig leaf. Someone will come to my rescue. Besides, the men in the lobby will certainly understand and we will all have a good laugh.”
The “Lobby” door was big and heavy. In my effort to open the door I dropped my fig leaf towel, yanked the door open, and before I knew what happened “bammo”, it was closed. Now all I had was my two hands to cover the “gentles.” It all happened in an instant flash. I looked around and only saw young women in the lobby. What flashed through my mind was, “Hey, this is only my dream.” A young, laughing woman with a big towel came running over saying, “Don’t feel bad. You’re in the YWCA. It happens all the time. You see we are neighbors and we share some things we would rather not, but the police or fire or some department insists on these various exits.” I am now pleading with my rescuer, “How do I get my clothes back?” She is beginning to annoy me as she is not only attractive but keeps giggling as she says, “I think this is hilarious. It sure puts some guys in their place.”
The rest of my group are sitting in the YMCA lobby. As I am delivered, they are having the laugh of their life. The guy at the desk already told them what probably happened to me. As we settled down for dinner at Harvey’s there was no letup. “How did it feel to be balls ass naked in the YWCA?” “So what did those girls make of you running around naked in their lobby?” “I betcha they figured you were flashing them? Tell the truth Schrank, isn’t that what you were doing?” And so it went all evening and the next day. Whenever we passed each other in the hall Mike would say, “Schrank, let’s have the truth about what happened in the YWCA that afternoon?”
So what did happen that afternoon? I’m not sure, but I have never had my “caught naked dream” again. I had been caught naked in a public place in the real world and survived. Maybe that’s the reason the nightmare went away. Now if I can just figure out how to make the one about “what gate is the plane leaving from” or “where in the city did I park my car?” or a couple of others that can make me wake up in a sweat.
Thanks Kate. N.H.W.Y.
Another favorite sight for this particular nightmare was at a podium delivering an important talk on, for instance, ”Why Workers Join Unions.” Low and behold, again I am as God delivered me with not a stitch on. As long as I stayed behind the podium I was okay. But what happens when I have to leave? So I keep talking, sort of a filibuster to hide my privates from public scrutiny. The audience is getting restless. I’m in a rising anxiety crisis and whamo! I wake up. The nightmare became a regular part of my dreaming life. Of course there were other dreams, but here is the one we are writing about today.
During my years as an employment specialist, both working for the City of New York as well as the Ford Foundation, I would regularly find myself in Washington D.C. attending yet another meeting on what to do with the army of unemployed Black youth. It was at one of these “schmoozes” (that’s what I began to call them), attended by Mike Sviridoff, George Bennet and an assortment of other aficionados in the field, that Mike, who was my boss at both the City and Ford, suggested we all go for a “schwitz” in the YMCA. Mike took any opportunity for a good sweat before dinner. Traveling in Sweden with Mike was like being in his heaven. Before any dinner with Swedish officials there was always an opportunity, as Mike said, “for a good schwitz in a sauna as a rebirth before dinner.” In New York City in the twenties there were many Turkish Baths that were famous for their steam rooms.
Back to the Washington meeting. We had some time to spare between the late afternoon and evening meeting when Mike suggested we all go to the YMCA for a good schwitz. I was not nearly as enthusiastic about schwitzing, but to be a good group member I went along with the suggestion. At the Y we were given a couple of towels, keys to a locker, and directions to the steam room and the pool.
With towels wrapped around our bottoms, we were sort of self conscious about our nakedness as we made our collective way to the steam room. We sat on the benches in the steam, with Mike waxing poetic, “isn’t this just best thing in the world” and me beginning to think “I can’t take this much longer.” (I suffered from hypertension, I shouldn’t have been there at all.)
I said I would take a swim to cool off and meet the rest of the gang in lobby of the Y. On the way to the pool were big wire fence doors that had a way of slamming behind you that made clear it was definitely closing. After my nice cool swim in the pool I began to realize I did not know my way back to the locker room. In a hasty moment I went through a wire fence door and, in my effort to catch it before it closed, I lost my big towel. What I was left with was a small hand towel about as good as Adam’s fig leaf. No I think the fig leaf was bigger.
Standing in a maize of wire fence passageways, I tried to remember how I had come in? Nothing seemed to be the same. I was lost in the bowels of the YMCA with nothing but a fig leaf. I tried desperately to go back, but without any success. All the wire doors locked as soon as you went through them. There was no way back. There was only one way forward up a flight of stairs and through a door that said “Lobby.” I thought “Okay. So what if I end up in the YMCA Lobby in my fig leaf. Someone will come to my rescue. Besides, the men in the lobby will certainly understand and we will all have a good laugh.”
The “Lobby” door was big and heavy. In my effort to open the door I dropped my fig leaf towel, yanked the door open, and before I knew what happened “bammo”, it was closed. Now all I had was my two hands to cover the “gentles.” It all happened in an instant flash. I looked around and only saw young women in the lobby. What flashed through my mind was, “Hey, this is only my dream.” A young, laughing woman with a big towel came running over saying, “Don’t feel bad. You’re in the YWCA. It happens all the time. You see we are neighbors and we share some things we would rather not, but the police or fire or some department insists on these various exits.” I am now pleading with my rescuer, “How do I get my clothes back?” She is beginning to annoy me as she is not only attractive but keeps giggling as she says, “I think this is hilarious. It sure puts some guys in their place.”
The rest of my group are sitting in the YMCA lobby. As I am delivered, they are having the laugh of their life. The guy at the desk already told them what probably happened to me. As we settled down for dinner at Harvey’s there was no letup. “How did it feel to be balls ass naked in the YWCA?” “So what did those girls make of you running around naked in their lobby?” “I betcha they figured you were flashing them? Tell the truth Schrank, isn’t that what you were doing?” And so it went all evening and the next day. Whenever we passed each other in the hall Mike would say, “Schrank, let’s have the truth about what happened in the YWCA that afternoon?”
So what did happen that afternoon? I’m not sure, but I have never had my “caught naked dream” again. I had been caught naked in a public place in the real world and survived. Maybe that’s the reason the nightmare went away. Now if I can just figure out how to make the one about “what gate is the plane leaving from” or “where in the city did I park my car?” or a couple of others that can make me wake up in a sweat.
Thanks Kate. N.H.W.Y.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
KKK Legend
Before I get to a new Blog please, please contact both Obama and Clinton Web-sights and insist that they stop hitting the destruct button with their mudslinging as it will simply assure John McCain’s election. Ask you friends to do likewise. Thanks, RS
KKK Introduction
This is an opportunity for an old friend, George Gamble, to be a guest blogger. I first met George about 40 years ago. We have been in contact on and off ever since. Here’s a little background to his piece on the KKK.
In 1965 I went to work for Mayor John Lindsey after spending four years running the Work Programs at Mobilization For Youth, the lower east side effort to help ghetto youth become productive citizens. As Deputy Manpower Commissioner my major responsibility was the development of employment programs for disadvantaged youth.
In the 60’s there was a concerted effort by the very conservative John Birch Society to get Mayor Lindsey to fire me because of my radical past. (I had insisting on telling Lindsey about that past when he hired me.) City Hall was besieged with letters from John Birchers from all over the country insisting that he “get rid of that notorious red who is running the biggest anti poverty program in the country using our good God fearing taxpayers’ money.” Lindsey, who had a very pixy sense of humor, would pass me in City Hall saying, “What on earth did you do to get the John Birch red neck crowd all worked up to get you fired?” I knew it stemmed from the attacks against me when I was leading the Machinists’ Union in NY State and I had the union busters after my hide. Lindsey just laughed it off saying, “It’s quite a credit to us to have those folks send me letters about you.”
And so it came as a surprise when George told me about his KKK experience. I did not think that the right wing crowd was so well organized that the John Birch gang was telling the KKK arm what they had to raise hell about. It also reminded me how I was ridden out of Trion, Georgia back in the thirties for trying to help Textile Workers organize Clarks ONT Cotton. Thanks George for your reminder of another time.
“The KKK Legend of Bob Schrank” by George Gamble
It happened in the fall of 1968, about 6 years after I had left the home of my friend Bob Schrank to join the Peace Corps. Bob is a great story teller, and I heard many of his labor organizing stories during that year when I worked with him and lived with him and his family in the Bronx. But I never expected to hear strangers tell stories about him, least of all strangers in a distant place. But that’s exactly what happened; I heard the legend of Bob Schrank.
After my Peace Corps service in Gabon, getting married to another Peace Corps Volunteer that I met in New York, and finally finishing up my undergraduate degree at Long Island University (LIU) in Brooklyn, my wife Dee and I moved to North Carolina for me to do graduate work in anthropology at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill (UNC). An anthropology professor at LIU had suggested UNC to me as a good place to pursue my education in anthropology. I applied and was accepted into their program.
We arrived in Chapel Hill in the summer of 1967 never having been in the South before. I was born and raised in New York, initially in the city and later on a farm upstate and Dee was born and raised on a farm in Colorado. Although we both had traveled and worked overseas as Peace Corps Volunteers, Dee in Colombia and me in Gabon, we had seen very little of the US outside our respective regions.
Chapel Hill was a small university town, with about 40,000 residents including the university’s 15,000 students. In many ways it was a sleepy Southern town, hot and humid in the summer, with little air conditioning anywhere, still running on its history and traditions. In many ways it was not unlike other NC towns, but in some ways also very different. It was after all a university town where people read, and thought and discussed ideas, old ideas and new ideas. Politically it was a progressive island in a very conservative state. The civil rights movement which began in the late 1950’s took hold in Chapel Hill and in some other NC cities was slowly beginning to change the segregated Jim Crowe laws of the past. By the time we arrived in Chapel Hill in 1967 formal segregation was gradually giving way to integration in the public schools, and in other arenas of daily life. But there was still the racial divide, a racial tension that was more or less evident from one situation or one day to another.
Driving home from classes one day I saw a roadside billboard advertising a Ku Klux Klan Rally for the next week at a rural location close to Chapel Hill. We had heard and read about the Klan, but never so close before. Ensuing discussion with Dee and a fellow graduate student resulted in our decision to attend this rally to see for ourselves what’s up with this group nowadays. For us budding anthropologists it was field research.
At the scheduled date and time the three of us drove to the site of the KKK rally, some 15 miles outside of Chapel Hill. Our apprehension increased as we drove up to the rally entrance, a roadside gate opening onto a large field, attended by two white men dressed in military uniforms including helmets and hand gun holsters. To identify the site unambiguously for potential attendees and other passer-bys there was a small propane-fired cross, a KKK emblem, close to the entrance. We were admitted upon expressing our interest to attend the rally.
The scene at the rally site was simple and crude. A telephone-pole sized cross wrapped in kerosene-soaked burlap was the predominant feature. A flatbed trailer from an 18 wheeler was the stage with lights and amplified sound. People parked their cars and pickups facing the stage and then leaned or sat on their vehicles to hear and see the speakers. There were probably some 25 or so vehicles there and perhaps 50 or so people. There was a cadre of a dozen or so folks who were wearing the infamous white sheets and caps, but their faces were uncovered. There was a Victrola playing “The Old Rugged Cross” in the background and the speakers began. Many details of their talks are lost to my memory but I do clearly remember two things which surprised me. The first was their vitriol against groups other than the Negroes. In fact Negroes didn’t even get top billing, they came second or third behind the Catholics, the Jews, and the Communists. All of whom were decried as morally inferior to upstanding, white, bible-thumping Protestants like the speakers.
And then came the real shocker. While railing against these groups one of the speakers told a story about one of those labor organizers, those Communists, who came down to NC and tried to stir up the workers at the textile mills and destroy their traditional, moral way of life. That Communist, Bob Schrank was his name, he was a real disreputable character. My jaw dropped. Bob Schrank, my friend, my buddy being demonized here in NC years after his labor organizing in the area. Bob had become a legend in his own lifetime! What a fantastic achievement. In the years since I’ve recounted that story many times to Bob and we laughed until our sides ached. Bob remembers his labor organizing in the South in less dramatic terms. He didn’t think his work down there merited such legendary magnitude. But that’s his perspective. He must have put the fear of god in those “good ol’ boys”, those “red necks”, so much so that they can’t forget him even years after he had been there.
I sorely regret not having spoken to that Grand Poo Ba after the rally and asked him if he personally knew Bob and to tell me more about him. I suspect that he didn’t know Bob, it was just the legend of Bob Schrank that was passed along from one Klan group to another.
Viva Roberto and all his agitating and labor organizing.
George Gamble
KKK Introduction
This is an opportunity for an old friend, George Gamble, to be a guest blogger. I first met George about 40 years ago. We have been in contact on and off ever since. Here’s a little background to his piece on the KKK.
In 1965 I went to work for Mayor John Lindsey after spending four years running the Work Programs at Mobilization For Youth, the lower east side effort to help ghetto youth become productive citizens. As Deputy Manpower Commissioner my major responsibility was the development of employment programs for disadvantaged youth.
In the 60’s there was a concerted effort by the very conservative John Birch Society to get Mayor Lindsey to fire me because of my radical past. (I had insisting on telling Lindsey about that past when he hired me.) City Hall was besieged with letters from John Birchers from all over the country insisting that he “get rid of that notorious red who is running the biggest anti poverty program in the country using our good God fearing taxpayers’ money.” Lindsey, who had a very pixy sense of humor, would pass me in City Hall saying, “What on earth did you do to get the John Birch red neck crowd all worked up to get you fired?” I knew it stemmed from the attacks against me when I was leading the Machinists’ Union in NY State and I had the union busters after my hide. Lindsey just laughed it off saying, “It’s quite a credit to us to have those folks send me letters about you.”
And so it came as a surprise when George told me about his KKK experience. I did not think that the right wing crowd was so well organized that the John Birch gang was telling the KKK arm what they had to raise hell about. It also reminded me how I was ridden out of Trion, Georgia back in the thirties for trying to help Textile Workers organize Clarks ONT Cotton. Thanks George for your reminder of another time.
“The KKK Legend of Bob Schrank” by George Gamble
It happened in the fall of 1968, about 6 years after I had left the home of my friend Bob Schrank to join the Peace Corps. Bob is a great story teller, and I heard many of his labor organizing stories during that year when I worked with him and lived with him and his family in the Bronx. But I never expected to hear strangers tell stories about him, least of all strangers in a distant place. But that’s exactly what happened; I heard the legend of Bob Schrank.
After my Peace Corps service in Gabon, getting married to another Peace Corps Volunteer that I met in New York, and finally finishing up my undergraduate degree at Long Island University (LIU) in Brooklyn, my wife Dee and I moved to North Carolina for me to do graduate work in anthropology at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill (UNC). An anthropology professor at LIU had suggested UNC to me as a good place to pursue my education in anthropology. I applied and was accepted into their program.
We arrived in Chapel Hill in the summer of 1967 never having been in the South before. I was born and raised in New York, initially in the city and later on a farm upstate and Dee was born and raised on a farm in Colorado. Although we both had traveled and worked overseas as Peace Corps Volunteers, Dee in Colombia and me in Gabon, we had seen very little of the US outside our respective regions.
Chapel Hill was a small university town, with about 40,000 residents including the university’s 15,000 students. In many ways it was a sleepy Southern town, hot and humid in the summer, with little air conditioning anywhere, still running on its history and traditions. In many ways it was not unlike other NC towns, but in some ways also very different. It was after all a university town where people read, and thought and discussed ideas, old ideas and new ideas. Politically it was a progressive island in a very conservative state. The civil rights movement which began in the late 1950’s took hold in Chapel Hill and in some other NC cities was slowly beginning to change the segregated Jim Crowe laws of the past. By the time we arrived in Chapel Hill in 1967 formal segregation was gradually giving way to integration in the public schools, and in other arenas of daily life. But there was still the racial divide, a racial tension that was more or less evident from one situation or one day to another.
Driving home from classes one day I saw a roadside billboard advertising a Ku Klux Klan Rally for the next week at a rural location close to Chapel Hill. We had heard and read about the Klan, but never so close before. Ensuing discussion with Dee and a fellow graduate student resulted in our decision to attend this rally to see for ourselves what’s up with this group nowadays. For us budding anthropologists it was field research.
At the scheduled date and time the three of us drove to the site of the KKK rally, some 15 miles outside of Chapel Hill. Our apprehension increased as we drove up to the rally entrance, a roadside gate opening onto a large field, attended by two white men dressed in military uniforms including helmets and hand gun holsters. To identify the site unambiguously for potential attendees and other passer-bys there was a small propane-fired cross, a KKK emblem, close to the entrance. We were admitted upon expressing our interest to attend the rally.
The scene at the rally site was simple and crude. A telephone-pole sized cross wrapped in kerosene-soaked burlap was the predominant feature. A flatbed trailer from an 18 wheeler was the stage with lights and amplified sound. People parked their cars and pickups facing the stage and then leaned or sat on their vehicles to hear and see the speakers. There were probably some 25 or so vehicles there and perhaps 50 or so people. There was a cadre of a dozen or so folks who were wearing the infamous white sheets and caps, but their faces were uncovered. There was a Victrola playing “The Old Rugged Cross” in the background and the speakers began. Many details of their talks are lost to my memory but I do clearly remember two things which surprised me. The first was their vitriol against groups other than the Negroes. In fact Negroes didn’t even get top billing, they came second or third behind the Catholics, the Jews, and the Communists. All of whom were decried as morally inferior to upstanding, white, bible-thumping Protestants like the speakers.
And then came the real shocker. While railing against these groups one of the speakers told a story about one of those labor organizers, those Communists, who came down to NC and tried to stir up the workers at the textile mills and destroy their traditional, moral way of life. That Communist, Bob Schrank was his name, he was a real disreputable character. My jaw dropped. Bob Schrank, my friend, my buddy being demonized here in NC years after his labor organizing in the area. Bob had become a legend in his own lifetime! What a fantastic achievement. In the years since I’ve recounted that story many times to Bob and we laughed until our sides ached. Bob remembers his labor organizing in the South in less dramatic terms. He didn’t think his work down there merited such legendary magnitude. But that’s his perspective. He must have put the fear of god in those “good ol’ boys”, those “red necks”, so much so that they can’t forget him even years after he had been there.
I sorely regret not having spoken to that Grand Poo Ba after the rally and asked him if he personally knew Bob and to tell me more about him. I suspect that he didn’t know Bob, it was just the legend of Bob Schrank that was passed along from one Klan group to another.
Viva Roberto and all his agitating and labor organizing.
George Gamble
Sunday, March 2, 2008
The N.Y, Times & McCain
Now that the donnybrook over the McCain piece in the N.Y. Times of Feb. 21st has given the right wing boys their dream reason for supporting the “uncertain candidate”, we also get a peek into the coming presidential election campaign. I think the Times made a very serious mistake. The Times article covers 74 inches of type from page 1 to 1 Now 9. The mistake was the suggestion of a “romance” between McCain and the lobbyist Vicki Iseman for which they had only anonymous sources. That part of the Times story took up exactly 14 inches or about 20% of the story. Yet that’s all that McCain and his supporters decided to get indignant about. So what was the whole story about?
The story is about McCain’s cozy relationships with lobbyists, of which Vicky Iseman is just one of many that he was and remains very cozy with. In fact the Times’ article says that there are presently lobbyists on his campaign who work for nothing. Is that just friendly devotion or would you guess that if he is elected he might just owe them something?
None of those who were all fired up about the liberal NY Times attacking our most beloved war hero had a word to say about the coyness between McCain and the lobbyists. Are you surprised? Of course not. But what it tells me is that this crowd is just warming up for the coming presidential campaign. I believe they will out do anything we have ever seen in a presidential election in terms of demonizing the Democratic candidate. There have been a rash of books about Hillary and Barack that will supply the demonizers with all the material they need, including brand new stuff we don’t even know about, like last Sunday’s column by Nicholas Kristof about Obama’s step-grandmother in Kenya living without water or electricity. You can just hear it. “What kind of a grandson would permit is grandmother to live in that condition?” And so on and so forth.
All of this is to say that the Obama camp, who I assume at this point is going to be the nominee, better start spring training for dealing with the onslaught of shit that will be coming out of the right wing Karl Rove crowd. If they duck and fill they will suffer the same fate as Michael Dukakis back in 1988. They have to be ready to respond with instant slam dunk on any underhanded crap coming over the fence from the far right. Yes they need to stick to the issues, but please do not underestimate the importance of instant and righteous indignation to any “swift boat” attacks, especially the ones that come from “unknown sources.” Any slipping and sliding on those occasions can cost the election. Democrats, this is not a fight fought according to the rules of the Marquess of Queensberry. So start learning to fight according to the rules of the street.
The other bad news is that once again a bored and not knowing what to do with himself Mr. Nader has decided that he has to keep making mischief by running for president. Nader, get a hobby or find something more useful to do for yourself and the country.
Footnote: I think the Times story about McCain’s lobbyists and romance was in part an attempt to balance its story of Obama’s reefer smoking that they ran in the same series called “The Long Run.”
The story is about McCain’s cozy relationships with lobbyists, of which Vicky Iseman is just one of many that he was and remains very cozy with. In fact the Times’ article says that there are presently lobbyists on his campaign who work for nothing. Is that just friendly devotion or would you guess that if he is elected he might just owe them something?
None of those who were all fired up about the liberal NY Times attacking our most beloved war hero had a word to say about the coyness between McCain and the lobbyists. Are you surprised? Of course not. But what it tells me is that this crowd is just warming up for the coming presidential campaign. I believe they will out do anything we have ever seen in a presidential election in terms of demonizing the Democratic candidate. There have been a rash of books about Hillary and Barack that will supply the demonizers with all the material they need, including brand new stuff we don’t even know about, like last Sunday’s column by Nicholas Kristof about Obama’s step-grandmother in Kenya living without water or electricity. You can just hear it. “What kind of a grandson would permit is grandmother to live in that condition?” And so on and so forth.
All of this is to say that the Obama camp, who I assume at this point is going to be the nominee, better start spring training for dealing with the onslaught of shit that will be coming out of the right wing Karl Rove crowd. If they duck and fill they will suffer the same fate as Michael Dukakis back in 1988. They have to be ready to respond with instant slam dunk on any underhanded crap coming over the fence from the far right. Yes they need to stick to the issues, but please do not underestimate the importance of instant and righteous indignation to any “swift boat” attacks, especially the ones that come from “unknown sources.” Any slipping and sliding on those occasions can cost the election. Democrats, this is not a fight fought according to the rules of the Marquess of Queensberry. So start learning to fight according to the rules of the street.
The other bad news is that once again a bored and not knowing what to do with himself Mr. Nader has decided that he has to keep making mischief by running for president. Nader, get a hobby or find something more useful to do for yourself and the country.
Footnote: I think the Times story about McCain’s lobbyists and romance was in part an attempt to balance its story of Obama’s reefer smoking that they ran in the same series called “The Long Run.”
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