CAMELOT OR A CESSPOOL?

Jackie Mason and Raoul Felder

The Kennedys recently endorsed Barack Obama, and Teddy Kennedy drew a parallel with President Kennedy – a vision of a new Camelot rising like a Phoenix from the ashes of the Bush Administration. Either he was addressing the largest group of amnesiacs ever gathered in one place in history or the media and much of America has been eating funny mushrooms and is in the throes of a mass delusion.

Back to reality: The late President Kennedy bears responsibility for the initiation of one of the bleakest episodes in modern American history – the Vietnamese War. Only because Khrushchev had more common sense than he, did we avoid an enormous catastrophe. After the fall of the Soviet Union, when the Russians' secret files were opened, we learned (among other bits of knowledge, such as the fact that the Rosenbergs were indeed Russian atomic spies) that there were functioning, deployed, short- and mid-range atomic missiles in Cuba. If we ever, as threatened, tried to land troops directly after the Bay of Pigs debacle on Cuban shores, our troops would have been slaughtered – one missile, thousands of Americans annihilated. This is all not to mention that the fiasco of the Bay of Pigs was authorized by President Kennedy himself, and then he left the Cuban patriots out to dry by withholding promised air support.

Many of Kennedy's private and cabinet sessions were secretly recorded; and many years later, one of these recordings from the time of the Bay of Pigs episode reveals Kennedy musing that for a President to go down in history he has to have a war. "Where would Lincoln be without the Civil War?" A cynic might therefore suggest that Kennedy's trip to the brink of a nuclear holocaust was not the result of his inexperience but, rather, it had a more selfish origin. On the domestic front, he accomplished little, and his promises had to be delivered by President Johnson. He did, however, inaugurate the White House revolving door policy as far as women were concerned, and even in this area it needed a subsequent President (Clinton) to bring it to a point of perfection.

The other members of the Kennedy bunch are also hardly poster boys for responsible government – or even human beings. The liberals hug Robert Kennedy's memory, but choose not to remember that he personally authorized the wiretaps on Dr. Martin Luther King. He also carried on the President's policies; and, as in many families, there were traditions such as passing down clothing from an older to a younger child – only they did this with women. (The most well known of these involved the late Marilyn Monroe.) After the President was through with her, he passed her down to Bobby. Ultimately, as we all know, the poor woman eventually killed herself.

There are, of course, the gaggle of Kennedy relatives who have been arrested and charged with everything from drunk driving, to rape, and even murder. This, of course, brings us to the present Bloviator-in-Chief, Teddy Kennedy. It would be easy to write him off as another senatorial windbag. But he bears a distinction born by no other Senator: He has killed someone – and not while serving as a member of the armed forces. After a drunken party, he drove off a bridge and left his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, alone to drown to death, trapped in his car.

All of this makes us wonder at the judgment of Mr. Obama, or the American public. Camelot, once the fairytale aspect is put aside, is as attractive as a cesspool – and may even smell a lot worse.

Obama and Clinton

Don’t get me wrong. I would vote for Obama if he was an Albino, Penobscot Indian whose religion was sun-worshipping, or if his sex life included sleeping with a horse (except, as Jackie Mason noted, if it were MY horse). This would all make no difference to me … IF he was the most qualified person running for President, and I felt that he would be the best person suited to deal with emergencies and the unexpected crises facing the next President that will certainly arise. Unfortunately, Obama has nothing in his background or foreground that indicates he is that person. Sure, he is charismatic, but so was Clark Gabel, but I would not have voted for him for President. Obama’s experience in governance is non-existent. This is not a place for on-the-job training. If I wanted to hire somebody to run a supermarket I would want a person who has some experience in running a supermarket. As for running a country, I would want – at least – a bit more experience.
Talking about experience, Hillary Clinton keeps saying she has 35 years of experience. Her experience, doing what? Her experience is having been married to the man who was the President. Since when does sleeping with somebody give you experience? If I knew a doctor’s wife or girlfriend, does that mean because of sleeping with him she is competent to take out my appendix? As a matter of fact, if sleeping with Bill Clinton gives Mrs. Clinton the experience to run the country, there must be 100 girls around Washington who could claim even better – or at least more – experience through him.

BRITNEY SPEARS

In a crazy sort of way, Britney Spears being taken to a mental institution may be the best thing that ever happened to her in terms of her custody case. It’s one thing to be a rotten, spoiled, willful and immature brat. These are basic character traits with which the law deals, with difficulty. But if a person is a drug addict or an alcoholic, or mentally ill person, the courts are experienced with those situations and when a parent is so possessed of such an affliction, usually when they come into court they present proof they have sought treatment and are actually undergoing treatment. America loves to give people second chances, and in those sad cases, the courts usually condition visitation and/or custody upon continued treatment and policing of that treatment. If I were Britney’s lawyer, that’s exactly how I would play it: she has an emotional problem for which she is undergoing treatment, but basically she is a decent person who is ill, and illnesses of this sort today can be, if not cured, at least contained, with the victim being able to function appropriately.

9/11 AND BLAME

Every time the subject of 9/11 comes up, the sunshine soldiers and summer patriots of the “could’ve, would’ve and should’ve” school of criticism lecture us about all of the mistakes that were made when 9/11 happened and its immediate aftermath. Back in the real world, 9/11 was the most deadly attack on American citizens – claiming thousands of victims – that has occurred in the long history of this country. Further, the strike was unexpected and without warning or suspicion of impending doom. Of course, once it happened, the City could have simply been shut down. But this would have devastated the economy of New York and in turn, since New York is both the central financial hub of both America and the world, not only would America’s economy have been ruined, but there would have been a worldwide economic collapse.

On June 22, 1941, when Russia was attacked by Germany, Joseph Stalin was so paralyzed that for days he locked himself in a room in his Dacha, paralyzed into inaction, while the Nazis overran his country, killing and capturing literally hundreds of thousands of soldiers, and destroying the Russian air force – and this was after he was warned by numerous sources that the attacks were about to occur.

This was not what happened here in New York. The institutions of government were reconstructed on an immediate basis. If business did not go on as usual, at least there was a reasonable facsimile thereof. On the West Side Piers there was the astounding spectacle of each of the City agencies up and running in makeshift, but functioning, mode. Large signs were hung over desks indicating “Corrections Department,” “Sanitation Department,” “Water Department,” “Social Service Department,” etc. Huge fax machines spewed out hourly updates on the conditions of gas and power lines in the smitten area. The Mayor gave almost hourly reports to the public, keeping them informed and calm in the knowledge that there was a steady hand at the helm. An adjacent building was turned into a survivor’s center where missing loved ones could attempt to be contacted through a network of hospitals and aide centers. While all the searching went on, Chaplains, aide workers, Red Cross workers, etc. were available both to administer to the family’s needs and take care of children at a play center while the adults went about their grim business. Sadly, there were literally no survivors, but that was the fault of the despicable fanatic Muslims and certainly not the fault of any City official.

Furthermore, notwithstanding any temporary confusion, the Federal Government immediately recognized who the guilty parties were, the armed forces were mobilized and accomplished devastating strikes against the right people.

With the visual acuity of hindsight, the Emergency Response Center could have been constructed differently and in a different location. Different precautions could have been taken to protect first and second responders. But who knew? If we knew when it was going to rain with any degree of certainty, we would never be caught without an umbrella. The City acted on the best available information both before and after the event and, incidentally, as far as the Emergency Response Center was concerned, various Federal agencies were located in the same building and in the vicinity, and they, too, were devastated.

Anybody who witnessed New York and the downtown area immediately after 9/11, at the same time had to be appalled at the degree of devastation and marvel at the correctness of the response of a Mayor who led rather than dither. He wrote the textbook for the role public officials should assume when catastrophe strikes. The people coming out of the woodwork now could well fit under the category, to paraphrase Shakespeare, “He jests at scars that never felt a wound.” Let us, and public officials – including the Mayor – be praised for what we did that was right, and not condemned for what could have been done differently, because we view, and judgment is made through the prism of time and knowledge certainly not available on 9/11.

Thoughts On The Writers Guild Strike

The Writers Guild is about to go on strike and the networks shamelessly announced that this would immediately affect the evening talk shows and daytime soap operas by forcing re-runs to be substituted for their usual fare. There was not a hint of embarrassment in this announcement. Is it then admitted that we are left with television notables who cannot even carry on quasi-coherent conversation and actors who cannot improvise the subnormal discourse with other actors intended for the IQ challenged viewers addicted to TV’s daily inanities. Ghost writers have become a recognized occupation beginning with our Presidents down to our comedian (which, in some cases, might be the same).

The role of Ghost Writers first became memorialized in our political culture with FDR. He utilized, among others, the services of Sam Rosenmund, a New York Judge, who Roosevelt brought with him when he moved from Governor to President. But Roosevelt heavily edited the speeches written for him thereby molding it to his personality. His “Day of Infamy Speech” – indeed that very phrase – was basically his alone.

As time passed, the creative role of the President in writing his speeches became less and less, finally arriving at the point where he basically became an announcer. Not only was it generally acknowledged Peggy Noonan was the author of Reagan’s Pont du Hoc speech but she wrote a book about it, explaining in exquisite detail how she crafted the speech. Bottom line: Reagan, the great communicator, was basically an announcer. Can anyone imagine Lincoln hiring a speech writer to write the Gettysburg Address? From there it goes downhill. Mere mortals who have a ghost write a book for them, usually have the decency to put “as told to,” or “with” etc. under the author’s name. But not politicians. Hillary Clinton’s best seller “It Takes A Village,” did not list any other writer except herself even though it was generally acknowledged that it was ghost written. And, of course, the joke was that Kennedys’ “Profiles In Courage,” was the first book written by a ghost writer to win a Pulitzer Prize.

Now, can anybody imagine George Carlin or Jackie Mason not being able to carry on a conversation without somebody holding up cue cards?

Maybe the strike is a good thing. At least the public will discover that the Emperor has no clothes. Lord knows, they might even be forced to buy a book written by its real author.

Race And Intelligence

America is the home of the free and the land of the brave. At least that is what we all learned in school. A basic tenet of the role science has in a free society is that the government does not direct science or instruct scientists where their quests must lead; that scientists are free to explore and search for truth, whether that truth is convenient, politically correct, contradicts government policy, or runs contrary to the sentiments of the day. Truth is truth, whether you like it or not and agree with its existence. Truth is not like your wife who may look beautiful to you and ugly to your girlfriend, or vice versa. When the Inquisition forced Galileo to recant the Copernican theory, after he did so, he muttered, “And yet [the Earth] it still moves.”

Apparently a subject that has attracted scientists is the question of the correlation between race and intelligence. Now don’t get us wrong. We believe that basically this is an area of wasteful analysis. In our lives, we don’t deal with “races,” we deal with individual people. For instance, if science has determined that Jews are smarter than Buddhists, the fact is if we needed an operation, we would rather have a smart Buddhist picking up the scalpel than a dumb Jew. But if scientists want to explore a particular subject for what they believe is a search for the truth, and want to waste their (hopefully, not the public’s) money on a particular piece of nonsense, so be it.

A worldwide uproar occurred because Nobel Prize winner James Watson made a racist statement about the lower intelligence of Africans. “All our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours,” according to the London Sunday Times, but then he added, “Whereas all our testing says, ‘Not really.’” Who cares? Even if true – which we believe it is not – it is basically an irrelevancy. Does that mean, if Watson is to be believed, that Africans should not be entitled to an equal share of the economic pie, the right to be equally educated, or the right to have all the protections and benefits that government can offer? In short, even if it were true – again, which we do not believe it is – who cares? Might not centuries of exploitation and denial of the benefits of education and health facilities cause testing to be skewed?

Watson’s position is eerily similar to that of Professor Arthur Jensen, who wrote an article in 1969 in the Harvard Educational Review wherein he postulated that racial differences in intelligence test scores may have a genetic origin. He suffered the same fate as Dr. Watson.

While one may believe or disbelieve this sort of pseudo-science – and we do believe these “results” should be dumped into the dustbin where we personally put global warming and the Loch Ness monster – scientists like Watson and Jensen should have a right to journey to wherever their scientific quest leads them and not be attacked personally. The problem is, if we start attacking the scientists, somewhere down the line we will only produce scientists who produce what the government wants them to produce. Their role will basically be one of validating positions that have already been taken by the authorities before they begin their undertakings. Even if these explorations result in cockeyed results and theories and, in the long run, theories that should impact our thinking not one bit, the alterative – cutting off the scientists before they do the work, or making them feel that if they don’t produce the desired results they will be personally discredited – is much worse than the nonsense they eventually produce.

100th Anniversary of the Plaza Hotel

This week I attended the 100th anniversary of the Plaza Hotel. About 1,000 people were packed into the area in front of the Hotel, by invitation, after having gone through a double security check. There were many police facilities around the event, all paid for, undoubtedly, by the City. Performing was an orchestra that looked like the New York City Pops, and behind that was a jumbo-thon television screen. The orchestra seemed to be playing primarily Cole Porter songs. Whoever made the choice of music was blithely oblivious to the fact that Cole Porter lived at the Waldorf Astoria and, in fact, his piano is still there. It became apparent that most of the people were in real estate, congratulating each other for the reformation of the Plaza Hotel. The unworthy thought that occurred to me was – congratulating each other for what? There was no work of beauty to elevate or enoble a man’s sensibilities, there was no new invention, discovery, that will help people in terms of their health or welfare, no housing for people who don’t have homes – just a lot of people congratulating each other for building condominiums to sell to very rich people. Is this really something that we need to celebrate?