Don't Forget Tisha B'Av!

I have had it with liberals of all advocacies whining, as they do on Facebook, “Whyyy didn’t we learrrrnn about THISSS in school?"

Well, maybe it’s because history is infinite. It is not just one thing; all things are connected. You learn basics in elementary school, more details in middle school, concepts and linkages in high school, and particulars in college. In fact, you never stop learning about history if you read. So all these things that snowflake bozos bitch about not being taught are not unknown. What they want is a history curriculum attuned to their desires, which of course would not be history at all but curricula of cultural superiorities.

If history teaches anything, it teaches that there is no single accurate viewpoint, but a patchwork of ideas, movements, and individuals that rose to an occasion for better or for worse.

Is there a single person reading this who did not know about Juneteenth until George Floyd was killed? Yet apparently we need a national holiday so Republicans can have something to claim they did for African-Americans. We have Lincoln’s birthday (subsumed into President’s Day), we know when the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, we all know about the beginning and end of the Civil War and Reconstruction. We know about Bloody Sunday at Selma and we celebrate MLK’s birthday as a national holiday.

By all means, take note of Juneteenth, as we might note St. Patrick’s Day, Pulaski Day, and, yes, Columbus Day. Without Columbus, we wouldn’t be here to complain about the kind of oppression that has gone on since the beginning of time and conducted by every single nation-state and ethnic group. But do we need national holidays for Americans of Greek, Turk, Czech, Polish, German, Armenian, or Palestinian descent?  (I am very sensitive to national “days” because out of 365, only one commemorates nothing – “National Nothing Day,” which falls on my birthday.)

So we do know stuff because we are exposed to history texts, teachers, and books, not to mention "Jeopardy." What many of us learn about our own heritage is done through religious and family instruction. Must everything with a political following be made into a national observation? Maybe so, and then watch for “Juneteenth” mattress sales. But stop the mewling that “the white power structure didn’t teach us what they wanted hidden.” There is only so much to teach in schools and only so much to be absorbed by tiny minds that overpopulate social media.

Now, what about Tisha B’av? (Pssst, it's July 29-30.)

I Really Wish He WERE a Carpenter

Now that the Nats season is over, I would like to unload on the most sickening aspect of the team – lead TV announcer Bob Carpenter. There is not a cliché he hasn’t overused, not  a poor play that he hasn’t made an excuse for, and not an unctuous word undelivered. As a game show host he would be mediocre. As a baseball announcer, he makes me glad I am losing my hearing.

I naively believed that to be a journalist, as I was, you had to have a pretty good command of spelling and grammar to get a job and then you could improve your writing. I believed that in broadcasting, you had to at least be able to speak correctly to get a job and then add whatever personality flourishes you wished. Local television news and the Internet have disabused me of both myths. And baseball color analysts, like F.P. “he should of went” Santangelo, seem to be hired BECAUSE they do not know grammar.

However, my point here – and I wish to ask any linguists reading this if I am wrong – is that Carpenter deviates so much from normal inflection as to make me even more insane. The articulation crime is the repeated emphasis on the wrong word in a multi-word phrase. For instance:

“The clean-UP hitter”

“A road TRIP”

“A home STAND”

“A home run to start the NIGHT”

“Seven base RUNNERS”

“A good rbi GUY”

“He had elbow PROBLEMS”

“A real crowd PLEASER”

“The on deck CIRCLE”

“The New York Police DEPARTMENT”

“A big power HITTER”

“From the Chicago AREA”

“The one major holdOVER”

“A pitch-OUT”

“The box OFFICE” … ad nauseam. 

This pox on broadcasting also has a peculiar and annoying tic, shared by Barack Obama, of hissing the final “s” on plurals or possessives ending with a “z” sound. As in “boyce and girlce” “runs the basessss,” “Alcatrassss Island.” 

Carpenter is from St. Louis, where I recognize that the “aw” sound is pronounced as “ah” as in the “shartstop” position. But does being from St. Louis mean you must emphasize the wrong word in a pair that everyone else knows how to articulate? It is as grating as in the Washington-Baltimore-redneck use of “ice CREAM,” “CEment” and “DE-troit.”

Officially Dead

The most overused phrase on broadcast news and on the Interwebs is “It’s official!” (More so than the single word "just.")

Stupid, ignorant, thoughtless, uncreative drones who want to say something cannot say it without first inflating their importance by saying, “It’s official.” Aside from the fact that nothing except a law or judicial order can be said to be official, the phrase just delays a reader from getting to the point and tells dear reader the author fell out of the cliché tree and hit every branch on the way down.   

It is not official when a baseball trade is made, it is not official when  Jonathan Pollard is given parole days after it was leaked that he would. It is not official when Apple releases a new phone. It is not official when some “on-again-off-again” thing is declared by a puerile news writer to be “on again” (of “off again.”) Things just "are" -- officially or not.

There used to be a silly little game teenage boys would play with songs on the “Top 40,” consisting of placing the phrase “between the sheets” after the title of each song. (Try it!)  Now, scroll to the next blog or Facebook post, look at a piece of junk mail, or God forbid pick up a book and randomly  find a sentence and put “it’s official” in front of it.   

It is is even more infantile for an actual writer who actually gets paid to begin a narrative with “It’s official.” No. It. Isn’t.  

And even if it were, the phrase is officially the mark of a tedious dullard.

Capital Day

Had a satisfying Labor Day, indulging first in my love of small-town parades and then a baseball game from prime seats with my family.

As the columnist E.J. Dionne says, it should be called “Capital Day,” because it is no longer about the labor movement, which has gone the way of the milkman, but just another faux-patriotic day that marks the end of summer, the start of school, renewed mattress and car sales and the continuation of political campaigning. It irks me that moron broadcasters remind us that Labor Day is the traditional start of the campaign season. It is the traditional start of the campaign season in a campaign year, not the year before! Thus the lamestream media create traditions and rewrite history.

This Labor Day comes in the midst of a national orgy of wallowing in a disaster of 10 years ago; every public or broadcast reminder of 9/11 is tied in with promoting a particular network’s program or selling a product in the name of veterans. I probably should find a cave to hide in for the next week, but instead I will probably continue to challenge public displays of phony patriotism.

Anyway, here are some photos of the Kensington, Md., Labor Day parade, where the local and state pols are available for casual chat and ride in antique cars, where they ride behind the other horses’ asses (of mounted state troopers) and nursery schools, dancing schools and pirates entertain passersby, kids and dogs.

I wouldn’t miss it, and look forward to being there next Memorial Day, which has now become the start of summer and a chance to glorify current and future wars by paying pretend homage to the cannon fodder of past ones.

Disfigures of Speech

Yesterday, I was in a community center when the public address system informed us that a test of the fire alarm was about to commence and that we should ignore it. I did, to the best of my ability -- but I could not help but wonder what a “fire annunciator” is or how exactly a “fire emergency” differs from, say, a mere fire.

Later, I was grocery shopping in a high-end store and was taken aback in the cosmetics aisle (just passing through, mind you) by a legend reading, “Ethnic Care.” I don’t know about you, or if this is just a girl thing, but I don’t know of anyone who has ethnics to care for anymore. (In the D.C. area, ethic care, maybe.)

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I am watching too much TV, which is not good for one’s language comprehension. Or logic.

Think about how many times you hear a broadcaster – an expert in television! – tell you that the station will have “film of the events” on a later show. I don’t know the exact date that film stopped being used on television, but I suspect it was around the time that an 8-track tape was last heard.

Of course, newspaper writer are equally ignorant of technology when they so frequently describe TV cameras “whirring.” Whirring went out approximately when Edward R. Murrow’s last cigarette did. (I would rather gay soldiers being wedded to each other than professional communicators wedded to clichés.)

On the same technology road to perdition, the revered Washington Post had an article yesterday about a political operative who was “expanding his Rolodex” That guy ought to find another profession is he is still using a Rolodex! (Actually they all should.)

Any time a newspaper reporter is trying to make sense out of something for which s/he has no actual evidence or on-the-record quotations, it is clear “a portrait is emerging.”

When a cable TV anchor doesn’t understand something (which is 24/7/365), she often “can’t wrap my head around it.” What a portrait emerges there! Clearly, I hope, she malapropped “can’t get my head around it” or “can’t wrap my arms around it.”

How about a simple, “Beats me?”

Going Forward

I recently heard a government official pay a sparkling tribute to a pioneer in her field, until the end of the remarks when a hiccup of bureaucratic jargon let the fizz out of the speech. The speaker honored the pioneer by declaring that because her early work was so courageous and inspirational, her successors “have kept the promise – and we will! Going forward.”

I hate clichés, abjure words that have no meaning and wonder why people with first-rate minds feel the need to bloat their extemporaneous thought with phrases that truck drivers find banal and that dilute thought, which is always embellished by brevity. As a writer, editor and former journalism teacher, I live by one rule: If in doubt, cut it out. The best rewriting is done with the “del” key.

Here is a "thought experiment" (as if other experiments require no thought, though putting Sarah Palin on the GOP ticket may nullify my proposition.) Take "going forward," which I am certain you hear at least 50 times a day, and imagine its use going backward.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character going forward.

And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country going forward.

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear going forward is fear itself.

I know not what course others may take going forward, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death.

Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 -- a date which will be going forward in infamy -- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

Their cause must be our cause too. Because it's not just Negroes, but really it's all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome going forward.

For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die going forward.

Rolling Blunder and Sunshine Camo

Washington, D.C., is full of crap most of the time, but this weekend it is all of the time.

The crap this Memorial Day weekend is "Rolling Thunder," the massing of flag-waving bikers commemorating Vietnam veterans by revving their motors and pounding their chests in case anyone might think these losers also lost that undeclared, indecent, unnecessary and un-American war.

Most people don't even know what "Rolling Thunder" means. It was the name of most prolonged and least successful military campaign waged in modern times -- the three-and-a-half-year carpet bombing by the United States of civilian targets in North Vietnam, far surpassing the morally questionable, though probably justified, air terror unleashed by the Air Force against Germany in World War II.

Speaking of misplaced loyalties, the San Diego Padres baseball team showed up today in jerseys decorated in military camouflage, no doubt in tribute to the city's major industry -- training Navy and Marine Corps warriors.

These players are generally between the ages of 20 and 40 and among the physically fittest of Americans. Why aren't the American citizens among them wearing real uniforms instead of their phony camo jerseys?

If you would like your very own sunshine patriot camo jersey, you can get it on the Internet for $199.

Spittin' Images

I am not so much bothered by Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal's belief that he actually served in Vietnam as I am by his past assertions that veterans of that war were spat upon as they returned.

As I have maintained for nearly 40 years now, it never happened. How do I know this?

1) I was in a position in that era to watch the news wires every day and I do not remember any such news story -- and as a draft dodger and anti-war zealot, I would have paid attention.

2) Had someone been spat upon in an airport or other public place, three things could have happened: a) it would have been reported as an assault b) the serviceman would have decked the spitter or c) nothing would have happened, meaning bystanders would have looked on silently in approval. If a) or b) occurred, there would have been a police report. Even absent a report, it would have made the newspapers, and back then, newspapers verified what they printed.

3) Every time someone made this outlandish claim, when pressed, would say well I heard it from my brother-in-law's cousin's friend.

If anyone can document a specific incident of an antiwar protester, or anyone else, spitting on a returning serviceman, I will give $1,000 to that person's favorite charity.

It doesn't count to say, "It happened to me" or "I saw it." Because that would make the claimant look like a coward since there was no report made of it.

So let's stop this spit, once and for all.

Child Porn on Channel 9

Shame on Peggy Fox of WUSA-TV, Channel 9, in Washington, and shame on the CBS Morning News, and shame on all the other CBS affiliates that thought a YouTube video of 7 year old girls gyrating to a Beyonce song was news. Maybe it was. Maybe it is either a perverted reminder of Jon Benet Ramsey or maybe girls should be encouraged to exhibit their talents.

But clearly it was a news story because of the outrage the network and its affiliates wanted to engender. And how did they engender such outrage? By showing the pedophilic video at length, repeatedly.

The only comparison I can think of is the History Channel’s fascination with Hitler.

D.C. Droppings -- XXI

A Basement

Now that language maven William Safire has ascended to a higher state of existence, to exchange bon mots with the Great Lexicographer, who will police the abasement of English?

I am in a stupor, perhaps because I spent three hours late yesterday sitting in a 42-degree rain watching a meaningless and incompetently played college football game. But also because I spent some choice time this Sunday morning watching cable news and reading the Washington Post.

These are among the canaries in the coal mine of language, the harbingers of a slow lingering death of thought:

Upon every change of possession or roughly every two minutes, the football game was interrupted by “official timeouts” not charged against either team. These are understood to occur because the network broadcasting the game needs to sell commercial time. For decades, they have been known as “TV timeouts.” Fine. Yesterday, a what bills itself an outstanding national university, these stoppages of play were announced as “media timeouts.” Assuming “media” mean “mass media,” which presumably meant journalistic enterprises, I have to ask whether it was the Baltimore Sun that asked for the timeout? Or Sports Illustrated? Or www.turtle-soup.com? No, it was TV! Yes, it was a TV timeout. Why gild the lily with a stinkweed?

Why would a university with aspirations for becoming one of the top 10 public universities pay one of its highest salaries to an ungrammatical slob who says such things as “I don't think the teams we are playing are better than us.” Last year he belittled the American victims of a Second World War atrocity when he compared his team’s injury roll to the Bataan Death March.”

In this morning’s Washington Post sports section, it was written that “Washington Nationals high-priced prospect Stephen Strasburg reached 99 miles per hour with his first pitch.” How can you “reach” a point on the first attempt?

In the more serious section of the newspaper, I read an excerpt from a book co-authored by the legendary Bob Woodward, who has an unparalleled penchant for interviewing people just before they die and then printing their words when they cannot deny them is, wrote “ … Westmoreland is like the leader of a block of some 20 senators … ” The correct word has always been, and remains, “bloc” – defined by dictionary.com as:
1. a group of persons, businesses, etc., united for a particular purpose.
2. a group of legislators, usually of both major political parties, who vote together for some particular interest: the farm bloc.

It is one thing for Woodward, of whom it was said 36 years ago that he wrote English as if it were his second language, to misuse the language, but what about his book editors? What about the crack editors at the Washington Post?

On a lesser scale of idiocy, comes MSNBC’s weekend airhead, Alex “the Twit” Witt, who a few days ago informed viewers that Pakistan and Afghanistan have “a very superfluous border.” This morning, she told us that “Heene was greeted by a barrage of reporters.” A barrage denotes the frequency and intensity of something, as a barrage of artillery fire, and is not a group of fellow sensation-seeking journalists. A minute or two later she reported that Pacific Hurricane Rick “is scheduled to hit Baja California on Thursday.” This would be real meteorological news if you can schedule, rather than merely predict, landfall.

The Silence of the Cowards

That Washington Post excerpt containing the dying apologies of two of the “best and brightest” minds of the 1960s for their complicity in the continuing degradation of America’s national security, is a must-read for those too young to remember the Vietnam War, the single worst U.S. misadventure since Bush invaded the wrong country.

We are paying for Bush and paying for Robert McNamara and McGeorge Bundy’s malfeasance in the service of war criminal Lyndon Johnson. It was not McNamara’s and Bundy’s misjudgment that is to blame for the death of 57,000 American troops and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians, it was their cowardice. They knew Vietnam was wrong from the beginning, they say they tried to tell LBJ, but they were more concerned with how to tell him rather than what to tell him, and they did not resign when that moral monster persisted in mass murder.

Their legacy is that, like Bush's, of making it impossible to fight any war with any moral clarity no matter what, which means the United States of America is a second- or third-rate power in decline. Thus, the actions of Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, McGeorge Bundy and George W. Bush are not those of national leaders – they are the actions of traitors.

Still in a Purple Haze

I wanted to share the following e-mail exchange I had with the "Presidential Inauguration Committee, which sent me a note asking if I wanted to buy even more merchandising crap.

Where were you when Barack Obama was sworn in as president?

It's a question our kids and grandkids will be asking us for years to come.
---------------------------
You know where I was? I was standing for hours in 15-degree weather freezing my ass off outside the Purple Gate, denied entrance to the Capitol grounds despite a ticket. So this was an event I will always remember -- as the first instance of incompetence, which I now see running through the ranks of the civil service under political hacks who have no sense of how things really work or ought to work.

We Purple Gaters never got so much as an apology or a make-good event with the president. I wish Obama well, but I wish unremitting hell to whomever thought the opening lines of this marketing scam was clever.

Personal Musings - IV

Dellirious with Joy

Following up yesterday’s tale of woe with Dell, Inc., I am happy to report that I seem to have some satisfaction of my claim.

I got a return voice mail from the company’s p.r. guy offering to have me call him back for advice on how to solve the problem. But before I got the message, a customer service supervisor, one of about a dozen Dell employees I have talked to since Monday, connected me to a department I didn’t know existed – the Cancellations Department.

There, somewhere in Central America, Carlos (Badge 122203) kept me on hold on two occasions for several minutes each time, but he was able to cancel my order, which any number of other Dell employees and an e-mail response from the company told me was impossible. Even if I get delivery, I am to return it, prepaid, for a full refund.

I recommend that folks with a consumer complaint that is handled satisfactorily by phone ask for the customer service rep’s supervisor to tell him or her about the good job. They hear the bad stuff all day.

Thanks, Carlos.

Now, if anyone has advice on how I should obtain a high-speed, high memory laptop that will sit on a docking station, feel free to offer it here or privately.

Putting a Band-Aid on Cancer

I spent the day doing exactly that – trying to keep a several Band-Aids in place between the edge of my chin and my lower lip. Pretty difficult, given the musculature necessary to eat or talk.

The reason for putting a Band-Aid on cancer, which is equivalent in the argot of clichedom to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, was that, well, I had cancer.

Not surprisingly, given family history, fair complexion and childhood sunburns, I was diagnosed with a basal cell carcinoma. That’s cancer. But it doesn’t usually kill anyone unless it goes untreated for a really long time; and it is not the kind of cancer that spreads beyond its original boundary.

So I had it removed yesterday, which involved excruciating pain from the anesthetic injection (the face having nerves closer to the skin than anywhere else, I am told) and involved an ugly, literally defacing, wound. The Band-Aid just holds the Neosporin to the wound and is recommended really only to hide the disfigurement, which should recede into a very light manly scar after a few scabby weeks.

My point is not to recommend readers to rush to their dermatologists. But if you have a family history of skin growths, fair skin or early exposure to sun, pay attention. I made a routine check-up appointment to have him look at some unsightly growths. He looked around my arms, neck and back and said “those are no problem. But this one is.” (If you are lucky enough to have someone authorized to do so, have him or her check your back for changes in moles or growths. You don't exactly notice them yourself.)

It was a minuscule discoloration that I barely had noticed even though I shaved over it every day, but the doc recognized it right away. But being a doctor, he had an assistant call me a week after the exam to say the biopsy revealed it was cancerous and I should make an appointment to have it removed. But not for three weeks until the doc got back from vacation.

It Could Have Been a Chevy Plant

I just hate bad punctuation. Give this sign some commas, for Christs sake!

Another Ice Hole in the White House

So Mr. Obama thinks he so tough, coming from Chicago. Tough enough to make fun of Washingtonians today because his little girls’ private school was closed because of snow followed by ice.

"When it comes to the weather, folks in Washington don't seem to be able to handle things … My children's school was canceled today, because of what? Some ice? …. As my children pointed out, in Chicago school is never canceled.”

He said he would have to “instill some flinty Chicago toughness” to D.C. residents.

Instill this, cowboy:

--- It gets really cold and snows a lot in Chicago, therefore plans are made and money is spent to keep roads open and clear. It does not snow nearly as much – in fact this is the latest snowfall in D.C. history in a generation, and it hardly snowed at all the past few years. (Global warming, anyone?) When Obama gets done spending $875 billion dollars on economic stimulus, maybe he could get some economic advice from the mayor of Washington, his good friend and long-time supporter. The advice is: You don’t spend a ton of money to prepare for a low-risk event.

--- You get big cold. We get big heat and tropical storms. We don’t lose many people to heat waves, but Chicago lost 600 in 1995.

--- The leaders of all the Democratic-led outlying jurisdictions might tell you that road conditions vary in different parts of the counties, and counties run the schools and the buses, so passable conditions in one part of a county may not reflect impassability a few miles to the north or west.

--- The roads, of course, as more jammed with commuters than anyplace east of Los Angeles, and where do they go to work? For the government, mostly. Therefore, if you want your girls to go to school, shut the government down so the schools can safely remain open by ridding the streets of cars. It isn’t that D.C. kids couldn’t get to their neighborhood schools, but you are complaining about the closing of Sidwell Friends, the elite of the elite, whose students come from the entire metropolitan area.

--- Maybe, Mr. Lunkhead, you could get your own U.S. Geographical Survey to point out how Chicago is flatter than the economy – not a single hill west of Cleveland and east of Kansas – and the D.C. area, being along the Fall Line separating the coastal plain from the piedmont has hills. Not great for motoring, or walking, when covered with ice. (You want to know what ice does? It took me 45 minutes to clear a short path from front door to the car and get the ice off the car, breaking the rear window in the process.)

Two final questions, Silly Face: How far do your girls walk to their limousine? How far do you have to drive to work?

Inaugural Droppings -- VIII

DiFi Harder

Well, the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, its czarina herself, Dianne Feinstein and the U.S. Secret Service are falling all over themselves now to shift the blame for yesterday’s Inaugural seating fiasco – to someone!. They have set up commissions to investigate!

The initial excuses – too many interlopers, equipment malfunctions, people rushing another gate causing police to be diverted from the purple gate, people’s polar clothing being so bulky they could not quickly be screened and especially the lies that too many tickets had been given out and that people showed up too late – are preposterous and refuted by marvelous satellite photography.
What you see here is at the extreme right of the photo, the Capitol steps and the site of the actual Inauguration. At the extreme left, you see brown patches behind sections of seated guests. The brown patches represent bare ground where nobody is standing. It is called the purple section. Another part of the space picture shows me and several thousand of my best friends clumped two blocks away, penned up like sheep. (The long white diagonal image toward the bottom is the Secret Service checkpoint.)

The Money Shot

I didn’t get any pictures yesterday, and the one I really wanted was this. It says it all. Na-na-na-na, goodbye!”

Now I'm the Maddest M*****f*****

Did I mention that Samuel L. Jackson and Vanessa Williams were in the wrong line and, according to the Washington Post, were “rescued” by a policeman and escorted to, you guessed it, the purple section.

Hey, I've Been Shut Out of Better Parties Than This!

Maybe I should get no sympathy for being locked out by the crowds. The same newspaper reported that the crowd at Sunday night’s party at the home of New York Times columnist Maureen Down (MoDo) was so thick that Tom Hanks, Ben Affleck and Bruce Springsteen couldn’t get in.

Inaugural Droppings -- VII

Purple Rage

I held a valued and hard-to-get ticket to the purple section of the Capitol Inaugural viewing area. Standing room, but still a historic and privileged vantage point. Here is what I saw:

Thousands of purple ticket holders, including me, never got in. Never got close. The security gate was closed long after it was to have opened, it could not handle the number of people who had tickets and who got there in time, even though organizers knew exactly how many people were given tickets and how long it should take them to clear security.

But there were no cops, no volunteers, no signage, no crowd control. Organizers, whom we will get to in a moment, apparently thought everyone would come by getting off the same subway stop and march like ants down one street toward the gate. As a result of poor signage, thousands were in the line who had no tickets but thought it was the place to go to gain general admission to the Mall.

From ground level, even at 6’-2” level, the only markings were huge purple signs that said “Purple Gate.” But they gave no indication of where the line was supposed to start, finish or snake into the equivalent of an airport security station.

No cops, no volunteers, no signage, no crowd control. People had come from all over the country and contrary to the snot nosed replies the police gave, nobody got there late. Friends with tickets in another section on the other side of the mall, maybe three-quarters of a mile away, got to their security checkpoint at 10:20 and were in place in a few minutes.

The frustration was not incompetence but not knowing where to go. From ground level, even at 6’-2” level, the only markings were huge purple signs that said “Purple Gate.” But they gave no indication of where the line was supposed to start, finish or snake into the equivalent of an airport security station. We were stuck at the building of the National Association of Letter Carriers – and some of us were ready to go postal.

People were chanting “let us in” and if this were not a decent crowd of Obama supporters, there would have been a riot. Sure, some, including the infirm and infant, would have been hurt, but thousands of people storming the 12-foot fencing between the street and the security checkpoint could have overtaken either the Secret Service -- or the news.

Now, maybe I was lucky standing for three and a half hours going nowhere in 20-degree weather, because other purple ticket holders were – if you can believe this – told to stand in a tunnel, where like good little Germans stood claustrophobic and freezing for hours.

This was an outrage worthy of local governments. This was an outrage of Bushian proportions. This was an abomination for the Obama nation. I have been to inaugurals and I live nearby. But there were thousands who came from all over the country for this event and got there on time, who did what they were supposed to do but were foiled by the U.S. Secret Service and the real villain of this piece, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Why her? This former San Francisco City supervisor was in charge of the arrangements. The Obama campaign was the most efficient organization I have ever seen. Scary organized! But this was not their doing.

Dianne Feinstein, the Secret Service and God knows who else fucked this up so badly “Purplegate” will make Watergate a fond memory in the annals of government stupidity.

On the way back, I kept thinking that Dan White shot the wrong supervisor.

For new details, including the kind of comment from the Senate sergeant-at-arms that should get him fired by tomorrow, see the Washington Post article.

Every day above ground is a gift … I guess

Corporate America and me

You’ve no doubt heard the adage that opinions are like assholes – everybody has one and they all stink.

I feel pretty much the same way about birthdays, and what measurable ones are left on the Great Calendar bring me that much closer to not having to exist in a world that is plainly going to hell..

I awoke with the kind of digestive issues I haven’t had in about six or seven years, which caused me to be a little late to work, where I was greeted by colleagues with a gooey cake. Digestion notwithstanding, the cake stood little chance!

Then Mrs. Nitty Gritty and I left after half a day of work to accomplish some errands, renewing our driver’s licenses and completing a commercial transaction.

First the transaction. Let me start by noting that in recent years I have owned small amounts of stock in two of the greatest names in American corporate history – so famous their stock exchange symbols are instantly recognizable: S and GE. I lost money on both, and I should have taken that as a sign to stop doing business with them. (In fact, I am going to return to “the simple” life if for no other reason that if you keep score long enough, you collect enough companies you will never do business with again.)

Add Sears and General Electric.

This should have been simple. Last May I saw a microwave oven on sale at Sears, and knowing that our current one at 18 years old (123 in human years) was about to be in need of burial, I bought it, took it home and it was not the color of what I had ordered. So I returned it. A few months later, the 18-year-old zapped its last kernel of popcorn. I went back and bought the same model but in the right color.

Now, just five months later, the new one flashed, banged and lost it nuking ability faster than Iran will after the Israeli Air Force gets the “go” sign. I did what any upstanding American man would do. I ignored it and tried again the next day to see if time would heat the wound. Then I sent Mrs. N.G. to Sears to see what redress was in the offing. (C’mon, there was a football game on TV!) She was told we only had a 90 day warranty with Sears which had expired, but would she like to buy the very same model for $20 off? That’s why I sent her. I would have murdered the sales clerk.

Two days later, a Monday, I got to work and, on your taxpaying dime, starting phoning GE to find out (remember I’m a guy, now) which portion of the microwave to hit to get it to work again. Several rounds of hold, “let me transfer you” and automated hang-ups produced a cheerful, helpful voice that advised I actually have a one-year warranty from GE, not the 90 says Sears lied about, and that the company has had problems with model, which has been designated as “vendor return.” I was led to believe all I had to do was schlep it back to the local mall and Sears would replace it with another model.

When I did went back to Sears, no question but that it was the same sales clerk who lied a few weeks before who I had to deal with. (All this, of course, is taking hours and hours out of my dwindling life instead of out of those whose product was crap.) She went through the incorrect warranty S.O.L. song and dance, but finally got two managers in on it. When they finally understood that GE wanted to make good, I found out I had to go first to the Sears service center about 20 miles away, which I did with Mrs. N.G. this afternoon. It only got worse. The guy there first tried to charge me $29.99 just to look at the microwave. No matter how much I explained, no matter how many times I showed him the GE warranty card with the model and serial numbers, he could not understand he owed me a microwave.

He called on a manager (did I mention that no one in all of these detours spoke English as a first language?) who, while I was on the phone with an even less helpful GE “customer service” rep, finally made me understand I had to go without a microwave for at least 10 days while they sent it to another Sears service headquarters 30 more miles away for a determination of what was wrong. Duh. IT DOESN’T WORK!

Then in 10 days or so, I will then have to go back to the service center 20 miles away to pick up either a repaired machine (no thanks) or a voucher to take back to my neighborhood Sears for a replacement. But GE told me it would be a different model. Does Sears know that? Does Sears care?

I have already mau-maued Macy’s, I am halfway there with Sears and GE will be lucky to survive as a corporation even if I do get a new microwave. This is principle! I really don’t like or much use microwaves.

Who would have thought MVA was the efficient one?

Giant steps backward

Then we went on a joint grocery run to a chain store where between us, parents and children and our parents, this family has shopped for about 200 person years. Giant Food, a Washington-Baltimore area icon of enlightened ownership, community service, consumer-friendliness and a wide selection of superior food, went into the toilet about a dozen years ago when the founding family sold to a Dutch conglomerate that has since gone bankrupt.

Now, there is little selection of name brands, empty shelves due to low inventory, stupid underpaid clerks and, worse, automation that makes you do the work of the labor force Giant has fired. That is, you scan and bag your own food, which is difficult, annoying, tiresome, confusing and lengthier than having a well-paid (once totally union) staff check you out with a smile. After that experience today, I am ready to check out either with a smile or harp music in the background. Maybe both.

Isn’t this strange! Sears and GE cannot handle a simple problem, but the Motor Vehicle Administration of Maryland zipped us both through in minimal time.

Change we can believe in

So, from the porcelain throne, to the gooey birthday cake, to the humiliation of having your driver’s license picture taken and have to keep the pose, the hair and the double chins for another six years, to the apoplexy of dealing with those corporate vermiculates known as Sears, GE and Giant, things brightened.

For my birthday, a priceless ticket became available, and I will be spending Tuesday inside the gates of the West Front of the Capitol, with a seat for what should be one of the most memorable moments in recent, or even ancient and future, American history.

Two's company

Hear no evil

see no evil

EVIL

The Day the Music Died

My honeymoon is over.

I listened to Obama’s first post-election press conference and cringed.

OK, I am sorry his grandmother died, but I had no idea he was bereft of his English grammar as well as his Hawaiian one..

“There will be a serious discussion between myself and the president.”

“They generously invited Michelle and I.”

“Reiterate once again"

“Enormity”

“Sooner rather than later”

And although this is not a grammar or usage issue, I still can’t believe he said, “I want to move with all deliberate haste.”

You could hear him almost say “speed,” meaning he knew full well the odious nature of the phrase, and the internal contradiction he conveyed that he does not want to move at all on whatever the issue was (the economy?)

For younger readers, the 1955 Brown v. Board of Education II case ordered desegregation of schools “with all deliberate speed,” meaning none at all.

Signs of the Times

No this isn't about President Irrelevant.

It is about the sorry state of a local university, whose mascot is a Terrapin and whose athletic slogan is "Fear the Turtle." A while back this picture appeared in Sports Illustrated in an article about clever fan insults, this one from a Dukie.




But I can't complain, because I recently saw this sign at the local university.

Just the Facts Today-o, Day-o

Like every other Internet megalomaniac, I have a Google alert that notifies me every time my name is bandied about in cyberspace. Unfortunately, it doesn’t happen anymore except for the difficult fact that the chapel at the University of Vermont and a speaker’s venue is named “the Ira Allen Chapel.”

This is not some cosmic joke; rather it reflects the fact that the founder of said university, the founder of Vermont and the lesser known of the Green Mountain Boys was, indeed, Ira Allen. So, this week I was alerted to a news story in the Burlington paper about a Martin Luther King Day speech by one of my folk music and social justice idols, Harry Belafonte.


However, as a recovering journalist I despair when bad facts are used in service of good causes. Belafonte, as have John Edwards, Barack Obama and many others, casually dropped an assertion into a speech that was just plain wrong.

The supposed fact is that there are more minority men in prison than in college.

But according to the Census Bureau, in 2005 there were many more black men in college than federal or state prisons and jails of any age -- including lifers. For black men between 18 and 24, more than four times as many black men are in college than incarcerated. (Hispanics have a lower rate of imprisonment and a lower rate of college attendance than blacks, but it is not likely at all that there are more nonwhite males in jail than college.)

Belafonte et al may bring a gasp from an audience, but they also reinforce a stereotype, which has the added distraction of being untrue.