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.

Dodger Blue Language

Haven’t had so much fun at a ballgame in a long time. It wasn’t just that through a friend of Jon’s we got to sit in the first row behind the Dodgers’ dugout; it wasn’t just that it was Steven Strasburg’s long-heralded return a year after major surgery; it wasn’t that he pitched five scoreless innings, giving up two hits and striking out four; it wasn’t that the game was not well attended due to rain, which held up the game for 30 minutes during the 7^th inning.

It was because Jon was in his finest form, and I wasn’t too bad, either, in the art of heckling the visiting team, the home plate umpire and the home team Nats. We could be heard! And we were not profane and not threatening. We were damned amusing, actually, and it is part of American sports fan history to needle the visitors and hope to unnerve them just a little – if not engage with those multimillionaires whom you usually see only from a distance far greater than about the 10 feet we were from the vaunted Dodgers.

However, the fascist freedom-hating jackbooted security officials hired by the Nationals to dim the fan’s experience, actually warned a group of us fans to stop heckling because “they’re tired of it.” We could not get an answer as to who “they” were – the umpires (with whom we engaged in light banter on their way in and out of the weather stoppage), the Nats who struck out an amazing 17 times or the Dodgers themselves who either ignored us, or in the case of Dee Gordon interacted with us with a smile and a souvenir baseball for Jon’s soon-to-be- born son, or in the case of my newfound favorite pitcher and Cy Young Award candidate Clayton Kershaw, who turned around and told us, “I think it’s funny.” Apparently he was referring to comments about a rookie teammate’s awful haircut, or about Jon’s needle-sharp review of the home plate umpire, which someone who has pitched could pull off.

However, potential MVP candidate Matt Kemp, who makes $7.1-million-a-year, was not so amused, which was made evident when after the Dodgers finally went ahead he yelled to a group of fans, “Shut up you motherfucking sons of bitches.” (Note: anyone with entrée to Major League Baseball’s discipline chief Joe Torre, feel free to repost this.)

I’m not sure whether this was before or after Jon yelled into the celebrating Dodger dugout, “So you’re celebrating beating the Nationals in September. That’s sad.”

In fairness, Kemp might possibly have been irritated at the relentless reminders from fans near the dugout about his one-time relationship with Rihanna. Whoever that is.

The serious part is that this is not the first time that employees of the Nationals have told fans when we could stand and cheer and when we could not and what we could or could not say in a public forum that supposedly encourages fan-player interaction. And next week they will ask me to plunk down another full season’s worth of not-so-cheap tickets. I am wondering for what.

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.

Deconflict THIS

The Washington Post is running an informative series about the U.S. intelligence community, focusing on duplication of effort among agencies providing so much top secret information that no one can find the terrorist needles in the haystack of data.

What troubles me as an American citizen and a defender of language is the thought process that underlies the nation's spying apparatus. In a lengthy response to the newspaper's analysis of the analysts, the Office of the National Director of Intelligence, defends the use of redundant, sometimes conflicting, reporting systems says:

". . . many individuals who have access to a wide variety of programs within their areas of responsibility are able to take steps to deconflict as necessary."

I say we need to take steps to terminate such misuse of the language -- with extreme prejudice.

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.

Stale of Play

"State of play" is one of those buzz words I have always despised, all the more so because an insufferable young stuffed shirt reporter I once worked with used it all the time to ask questions of official spokesmen: "What's the state of play on (whatever)."

This was back in the '80s, and then, as now, the phrase has utterly no meaning except as a catchword, just as "optics" is today ("The optics of Wall Street executives getting bonuses are terrible.)" People in the communications industry -- newspapers, advertising, public relations people and entertainment producers--seem to exist to muddy up the language, which of course, muddies up our thinking, which leads to torture being called "enhanced interrogation."

Anyway, before I wander too far into the ozone, I would like to disrecommend a movie I just got back from seeing.

It is called, naturally, "State of Play," which among its other disattributes has a title that has nothing to do with the plot or the theme. Just three words put together to indicate Washington mumbo jumbo.

I went because it is a "Washington" movie, a thriller mixing politics and journalism, and every time there is such a movie, it sucks. Producers don't realize that you don't have to inject moronic plot twists and impossible locations and details that are utterly false on their face to have a good political/journalistic movie.

"All the President's Men" did pretty well without taking too many liberties. "State of Play" involves a journalist, a newspaper blogger, a corrupt congressman and Blackwater, Inc., all of whom involved in conflicts of interest that would never exist, even in Washington.

This movie has been done much better in 1982 when it starred Sally Field and Paul Newman in "Absence of Malice."

What I just saw was a state of movie-making garbage that is worthwhile only if you like to watch Russell Crowe and/or Ben Affleck. The best part was the visual narrative of how a newspaper is actually printed-- the rolling of the presses--and it ran during the closing credits.

DC Droppings - XIII

Mobocracy

I didn’t think Democrats were that nutty or that Republicans would be so damn anti-business all of a sudden.

But both parties, and the president of the United States, have been frightened to death by the mob, whipped into a frenzy by all-consuming cable television and talk radio.

The issue of course is executive compensation for managers at AIG. The bonuses so much in the news are an infinitesimal amount of the bailout, and they do happen to be the result of a contract.

What eludes me is the line of logic you hear every day about neighbors who took out a mortgage they couldn’t afford or about industrial titans who make a lot of money while you don’t. As long as you have a roof, a job and food on the table, shut up. This country is a cesspool of class resentments, the class you hate being the one containing the guy who makes more money than you do.

I saw this first-hand when I briefly worked for a member of Congress during a time when members were considering a routine pay raise. A rightwing radio guy gave out my boss’s phone number and I spent the day listening to this, in one form or another: “I’m a (occupation) and I only make (dollar amount). I don’t see why he should get a raise.”

Well, members of Congress, business executives, people with competence, moxie and brains should make more than some bozo with nothing better to do than listen to talk radio. Extend the logic a bit and everyone but you becomes overpaid.

What is the right compensation for AIG employees? I dunno. No more than I know what the right compensation is for a teacher, an astronaut or a ballplayer. You get what you can and either take it or leave it. Simple, right?

But back to AIG. The very people who Congress is demanding give back their legal bonuses are the only ones who know how to get the company back on its feet, and since you and I own 80 percent of it, it would seem to be in our interest to change future compensation. Because if they have a legal right to the money, and they do, an attempt to take it back would cost AIG a lot more in lawsuits. And doing what Congress wants would destroy the foundation of contracts anywhere.

Besides it is obviously unconstitutional. The Constitution Article I, Section 9, paragraph 3 provides that: "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law will be passed."

Now, bills of attainder don’t usually occupy much of our conversations, but it means Congress is prohibited from passing a law punishing individuals without trial.

It is exactly what members of Congress are proposing for AIG executives– taxing them at 90 percent or 100 percent, or otherwise “making” them give the money back.

It is bad law, bad precedent and an ugly example of mob mentality.

Bayh Polar

Another ugly thing is Sen. Evan Bayh, a goofy looking genetic disaster sprung from the loins of a perfectly decent senator of the ‘60s and ‘70s.

Bayh, a Clinton-supporting moderate from Indiana, was bypassed for vice president by Obama, so know he is publicly doing what he was privately doing – screwing the Democratic party and the president by opposing the basic elements of the program a majority of the country voted for. On every single major element of the Obama platform, Bayh says he is going to join with Republicans, who don’t give a damn about a thing other than sticking it to Obama, and ruining the country in the meantime.

I say, read him out of the party and let him sit with Lieberman, men without a party. And without principle other than ego.

P.C.M.C.

I am still reeling from attending a public meeting today at a bastion of political correctness, in which the woman who was the host of the gathering introduced herself not once, but twice, as “madam of ceremonies.”

I shudder for my country and wish Congress, Evan Bayh and this stupid hunk of overeducated political correctness would just shudder up.

Get Thee Behind Me, Empress

Back in the early ‘70s, the literati – namely young Washington journalists with too much time on their hands – began playing a game called, “Stennis, Anyone,” in which you strung together the names of congressmen and senators to come up with funny names for legislation.

Stennis, of course, was the racist from Mississippi, but, hey, the name worked. One of the best examples was something like the Fong Hong Spong Long Hong Kong bell bill. Or the Bible Church Bell Tower bill to do something for religion.

This kind of word game has been a specialty of mine and it is the biennial version of it that inspires my best work for the Style Invitational. It is my favorite right next to the annual competition, see last week’s The Nitty Gritty posting, to make funny couplets about the previous year’s crop of dead people.

Tomorrow morning the results of the legislative bill-names contest are published. And all I got was a shared mention with another contestant, using his (or the Empress') wording, but not mine.

Empress, I divorce thee.

No more entries, no more brain teasing, no more Empress, and basically since I am not reading the print version much any more, no more Post subscription.

Judge for yourself as to whether any of these deserved mention.

Bright-Cao resolution to replace Rudolph on Santa’s sleigh team

Kissell-Massa resolution to improve civil discourse in the House.

Austria-Shock trooper provision banning military training to neo-Nazi governments.

Harper-Lee bill to protect the species Mimus polyglottos

Schauer-Shock bill to prevent home water heaters from exceeding 120 degrees.

Kaufman-Coffman hernia research bill

Hunter-Lujan-Begich-Udall-Udall- anti-nepotism bill

Peters-Hunter Capitol Page School Protection Act

Risch-Fudge diabetes research bill

Adler-Coffman-Kaufman-Dahlkemper-Driehaus-Franken-Heinrich-Leutkemeyer-Schauer-Schock-Schrader-Risch-Austria “Talk Like a Teuton Day” Resolution.

Fleming-Coffman lung congestion relief act

Austria-Posey act to replace the edelweiss as the national flower

Lance-Peters anti-torture bill.

Risch-Paulsen amendment limiting treasury secretaries to net worths of $10 million.

Udall-Udall-Warner tax relief for the start-up Warner Cousins movie studio.

Franken-Paulsen amendment to publicly finance campaigns of actual comedians.

Pingree-Lee bill to honor the contributions to children’s television of Pincus Leff.

Kosmas-Hunter bill renaming the Naval Observatory after Carl Sagan.

Rooney-Polis bill renaming Maryland’s capital after the Steelers’ owner following the Ravens loss in the AFC championship game.

Pierluisi-Perriello-Hagan bill prohibiting immigrant Irish from taking the jobs of consiglieres.

Franken-Lee “My Dear I Don’t Give a Damn” resolution honoring famous last words.

Franken-Titus bill to fund mad scientists’ work on inflammatory diseases.

Hunter-Thompson libel law reform and shotgun control act.

Hunter-Thompson ridiculous final Act.

Cao-Peters Anti-Cloning Bill

They Don't Like Me, They Really Don't Like Me!

As some of you know, I am a frequent contestant in the Washington Post’s Style Invitational contest, which more often than not awards me an honorable mention for my worst entries, ignores my really good stuff and honors people who had the same idea I did but who did not write the entry as cleverly.

This rant would be boring if I did it too much, but the honors for this week were handed out for one of my favorite contests: Write a couplet or short rhyme about anyone who died in the previous year. I got one lousy honorable mention from the following, and it is among the more obscure and least funny.

I did place high in this contest a few years ago for noting Terry Schiavo’s passing thusly:

Bill Frist thought he could diagnose better,
Making you wonder who was brain deader.

In a few hours, one of the following bon mots will have been in print. See if you can figure out which lame entry The Empress (sole judge) of the contest thought was funniest. And feel free to offer your own favorites. And I promise not to rant too much on this subject again.


Eartha Kitt
New Faces of ’52 -- the best one, maybe
Eartha Kitt’s held up till she purred “adieu, baby”

Eartha Kitt and Heath Ledger
Gained fame through really mem’rable disguises
Joker and Catwoman met their demises

Harold Pinter
Now that the word miser Harold Pinter is dead
Maybe he thinks there’s more to have been said

Tim Russert
You hosted your share of morons and clowns
Who left moaning, “Sunday morning came down”

W. Mark Felt
Hal Halbrook was fine but consider Ray Liotta
For the remake as Woodward and Bernstein’s Deep Throata

W. Mark Felt
His suspicions were sorely inchoate
Till Woodward met Mark Felt, as Deep Throate

Paul Newman
Hollywood suffered a terrible loss
And we, our popcorn and spaghetti sauce

Paul Newman
He lived his life so calmly and placidly
Not like the cliff-diving Butch Cassidly

Irvine Robbins
When ice cream gets your palate throbbin’,
Give scoops of thanks to Irvine Robbins

Irvine Robbins
Thirty-one flavors that no one hates
From Rocky Road now to “pearly gates.”

Bobby Fischer
Bobby Fischer
Was a pisher

Mickey Vernon
Mickey Vernon, a Nat, played with grace
For teams that couldn’t get past third base

Killer Kowalski
A gentle man of Polish extraction
Killer Kowalski put men in traction

Jim McKay
(A postlife interview)
“So what has your life been about, Jim? Pull up a seat!”
Said McKay: “Thrill of vict’ry – you know the rest, Saint Pete.”

Sir Edmund Hillary
“Why? asked St. Peter as he pulled up a chair.
“Simple” replied Edmund: “Because it was there.”

Georgia Frontiere
The football players paid by Frontiere
Wound up on the field on their derrieres

Genuine Risk
Genuine Risk burned up the Churchill Downs course
But she died of old age, not hung like a horse.

Johnny Podres
Treasure of the Sierra Madres
Can’t compare to the Dodgers Podres

Johnny Podres
Boys of Summer fans everywhere shed a tear
‘Cause Podres can no longer “Wait ‘til next year”

Sammy Baugh
If he played for Joe Gibbs, Mr. Sammy Baugh
Would be asked before punting to run a draw.

Mr. Blackwell
You were so bitchy ‘bout hemlines and busts
How do you look now in ashes and dust?

George Carlin
Carlin’s words could make you pucker
How we’ll miss that *&$#*$*%!&#!

George Carlin
His famous words they numbered seven
The same as minutes in a chukker
He dissed religion, God and Heaven
Said St. Pete: “Get lost, *&$#*$*%!&#!”

Jesse Helms
That sound Obama will hear for a spell
Is Jesse Helms turning over in hell

John Stewart, Nick Reynolds
Two of the Kingston Trio have died;
Join Charlie on an eternal ride

John Stewart, Nick Reynolds
Now they’ll be able to see
Their cousins in Roxbury

Roy Scheider
Roy Scheider, a character actor of note,
Crossing over, he asked for a bigger boat

Charlton Heston
For Charlton Heston, no “ifs,” “buts” or “ands”
They pried his gun from his cold dead hands

Charlton Heston
Parting the Red Sea, he made one of his stands
The last when they parted the gun from his hands

Larry Harmon
Chicagoan Larry Harmon, has died
He was Bozo, thus Senate-qualified

Mildred Loving
Won a court case that changed a nation
Made archaic “miscegenation”

Rocky Aoki
The founder of Benihana changed lives
Including those who survived flying knives

James Bevel
Bevel was close when King parted the waters
Sadly, though, he was too close to his daughters.

Albert Hofmann
Discoverer of lysergic acid diethylamide
Is not even aware that in two-thousand-and-eight he died

Obama and the Butler

I don't know if there is a Pulitzer Prize for a single piece of newspaper feature writing, but if there is, give it to Wil Haygood and retire the award, because no one will ever top this Page One story from yesterday.

A Butler Well Served by This Election

For 34 Years, Eugene Allen Carried White House Trays With Pride. Now There's Even More Reason to Carry Himself That Way.

By Wil Haygood

Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, November 7, 2008; A01

For more than three decades Eugene Allen worked in the White House, a black man unknown to the headlines. During some of those years, harsh segregation laws lay upon the land.

He trekked home every night, his wife, Helene, keeping him out of her kitchen.

At the White House, he worked closer to the dirty dishes than to the large desk in the Oval Office. Helene didn't care; she just beamed with pride.

President Truman called him Gene.

President Ford liked to talk golf with him.

He saw eight presidential administrations come and go, often working six days a week. "I never missed a day of work," Allen says.

His is a story from the back pages of history. A figure in the tiniest of print. The man in the kitchen.

He was there while America's racial history was being remade: Brown v. Board of Education, the Little Rock school crisis, the 1963 March on Washington, the cities burning, the civil rights bills, the assassinations.

When he started at the White House in 1952, he couldn't even use the public restrooms when he ventured back to his native Virginia. "We had never had anything," Allen, 89, recalls of black America at the time. "I was always hoping things would get better."

In its long history, the White House -- just note the name -- has had a complex and vexing relationship with black Americans.

"The history is not so uneven at the lower level, in the kitchen," says Ted Sorensen, who served as counselor to President Kennedy. "In the kitchen, the folks have always been black. Even the folks at the door -- black."

Sorensen tried to address the matter of blacks in the White House. But in the end, there was only one black man who stayed on the executive staff at the Kennedy White House past the first year. "There just weren't as many blacks as there should have been," says Sorensen.

"Sensitivities weren't what they should have been, or could have been."

In 1866 the abolitionist Frederick Douglass, sensing an opening to advocate for black voting rights, made a White House visit to lobby President Andrew Johnson. Johnson refused to engage in a struggle for black voting rights. Douglass was back at the White House in 1877. But no one wished to discuss his political sentiments: President Rutherford Hayes had engaged the great man -- it was a time of high minstrelsy across the nation -- to serve as a master of ceremonies for an evening of entertainment.

In the fall of 1901, another famous black American came to the door. President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington, head of the Tuskegee Institute, to meet with him at the White House. Roosevelt was careful not to announce the invitation, fearing a backlash, especially from Southerners. But news of the visit leaked quickly enough and the uproar was swift and noisy. In an editorial, the Memphis Scimitar would write in the ugly language of the times: "It is only recently that President Roosevelt boasted that his mother was a Southern woman, and that he is half Southern by reason of that fact. By inviting a nigger to his table he pays his mother small duty."

Fifty years later, invitations to the White House were still fraught with racial subtext. When the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow pianist Hazel Scott to perform at Constitution Hall because of her race, many letters poured into the White House decrying the DAR's position. First lady Bess Truman was a member of the organization, but she made no effort to get the DAR to alter its policy. Scott's husband, Harlem congressman Adam Clayton Powell, subsequently referred to Bess Truman as "the last lady of the land." The words outraged President Truman, who vowed to aides he would find some way to punish Powell and barred the fellow Democrat from setting foot inside the Truman White House.

The first black to hold a policy or political position in the White House was E. Frederick Morrow, a former public relations executive with CBS. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower's presidential campaign operatives were so impressed with Morrow's diligent work during the 1952 campaign that they promised him a White House executive job if Ike were elected. Ike won, but Morrow ended up being placed at the Department of Commerce. He felt slighted and appealed to Republican friends in New York to force the White House to make good on its promise.

The phone finally rang in 1955 and Morrow was named administrative officer for special projects. He had hoped the title would give him wide responsibilities inside the White House, but found himself dealing, for the most part, with issues related to the Brown desegregation ruling, the Rosa Parks-led bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala., and the 1957 Little Rock school crisis.

"He was a man of great dignity," says Stephen Hess, senior fellow emeritus at the Brookings Institution, who worked as a speechwriter for Eisenhower. Morrow was in a lonely position, but "he did not complain," says Hess. "That wasn't Fred Morrow."

When Morrow left his White House position, he imagined there'd be corporate job offers. There were not. "Only thing he was offered were jobs related to the black community," says Hess. Nonetheless, "after Morrow, it was appropriate to have a black person on the staff of the White House."

'Pantry Man'

Before he landed his job at the White House, Gene Allen worked as a waiter at the Homestead resort in Hot Springs, Va., and then at a country club in Washington.

He and wife Helene, 86, are sitting in the living room of their home off Georgia Avenue NW. A cane rests across her lap. Her voice is musical, in a Lena Horne kind of way. She calls him "honey." They met in Washington at a birthday party in 1942. He was too shy to ask for her number, so she tracked his down. They married a year later.

In 1952, a lady told him of a job opening in the White House. "I wasn't even looking for a job," he says. "I was happy where I was working, but she told me to go on over there and meet with a guy by the name of Alonzo Fields." Fields was a maitre d', and he immediately liked Allen.

Allen was offered a job as a "pantry man." He washed dishes, stocked cabinets and shined silverware. He started at $2,400 a year.

There was, in time, a promotion to butler. "Shook the hand of all the presidents I ever worked for," he says.

"I was there, honey," Helene reminds. "In the back, maybe. But I shook their hands, too." She's referring to White House holiday parties, Easter egg hunts. They have one son, Charles. He works as an investigator with the State Department.

"President Ford's birthday and my birthday were on the same day," he says. "He'd have a birthday party at the White House. Everybody would be there. And Mrs. Ford would say, 'It's Gene's birthday, too!' "

And so they'd sing a little ditty to the butler. And the butler, who wore a tuxedo to work every day, would blush.

"Jack Kennedy was very nice," he goes on. "And so was Mrs. Kennedy."
"Hmm-mmm," she says, rocking.

He was in the White House kitchen the day JFK was slain. He got a personal invitation to the funeral. But he volunteered for other duty: "Somebody had to be at the White House to serve everyone after they came from the funeral."

The whole family of President Jimmy Carter made her chuckle: "They were country. And I'm talking Lillian and Rosalynn both." It comes out sounding like the highest compliment.

First lady Nancy Reagan came looking for him in the kitchen one day. She wanted to remind him about the upcoming dinner for West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. He told her he was well ahead in the planning and had already picked out the china. But she told him he would not be working that night.

"She said, 'You and Helene are coming to the state dinner as guests of President Reagan and myself.' I'm telling you! I believe I'm the only butler to get invited to a state dinner."

Husbands and wives don't sit together at these events, and Helene was nervous about trying to make small talk with world leaders. "And my son says, 'Mama, just talk about your high school. They won't know the difference.'

"The senators were all talking about the colleges and universities that they went to," she says." I was doing as much talking as they were.

"Had champagne that night," she says, looking over at her husband.

He just grins: He was the man who stacked the champagne at the White House.

Moving Up, but Slowly

President Kennedy, who succeeded Eisenhower, started with two blacks, Frank Reeves and Andrew Hatcher, in executive positions on his White House staff. Only Hatcher, a deputy press secretary, remained after six months. Reeves, who focused on civil rights matters, left in a political reshuffling.

The issue of race bedeviled this White House, even amid good intentions. In February 1963, Kennedy invited 800 blacks to the White House to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. Louis Martin, a Democratic operative who helped plan the function, had placed the names of entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. and his wife, May Britt, on the guest list.

The White House scratched it off and Martin would put it back on. According to Martin, Kennedy was aghast when he saw the black and white couple stroll into the White House. His face reddened and he instructed photographers that no pictures of the interracial couple would be taken.

But Sammy Davis Jr. was not finished with 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. He got himself invited to the Nixon White House to meet with the president and talk about Vietnam and business opportunities for blacks. He even slept in the Lincoln Bedroom once. When Davis sang at the 1972 Republican convention in Miami, he famously wrapped his arms around Nixon at a youth rally there, becoming forever identified with a White House that many blacks found hostile.

Lyndon Johnson devoted considerable energy and determination to civil rights legislation, even appointing the first black to the Supreme Court. But it did not translate to any appreciable number of blacks working on his staff. Clifford Alexander says he was the sole black in Johnson's White House, serving first as a National Security Council officer, then as associate White House counsel.

"We were fighting for something quite new," says Alexander. "You knew how much your job meant. And you knew President Johnson was fighting on your behalf." As a young man growing up in Harlem, Alexander had heard about Morrow. Mothers and fathers pointed to him as a grand success story. "Fred was a lovely man," says Alexander. "But they did not pay any attention to him in the Eisenhower White House."

Colin Powell would become the highest-ranking black of any White House to that point when he was named President Reagan's national security adviser in 1987. Condoleezza Rice would have that same position under President George W. Bush.

The butler remembers seeing both Powell and Rice in the Oval Office. He was serving refreshments. He couldn't help notice that blacks were moving closer to the center of power, closer than he could ever have dreamed. He'd tell Helene how proud it made him feel.

Time for Change

Gene Allen was promoted to maitre d' in 1980. He left the White House in 1986, after 34 years. President Reagan wrote him a sweet note. Nancy Reagan hugged him, tight.

Interviewed at their home last week, Gene and Helene speculated about what it would mean if a black man were actually elected president.

"Just imagine," she said.

"It'd be really something," he said.

"We're pretty much past the going-out stage," she said. "But you never know. If he gets in there, it'd sure be nice to go over there again."

They've got pictures of President and Mrs. Reagan in the living room. On a wall in the basement, they've got pictures of every president Gene ever served. There's a painting President Eisenhower gave him and a picture of President Ford opening birthday gifts, Gene hovering nearby.

They talked about praying to help Barack Obama get to the White House. They'd go vote together. She'd lean on her cane with one hand, and on him with the other, while walking down to the precinct. And she'd get supper going afterward. They'd gone over their Election Day plans more than once.

"Imagine," she said.

"That's right," he said.

On Monday Helene had a doctor's appointment. Gene woke and nudged her once, then again. He shuffled around to her side of the bed. He nudged Helene again. He was all alone.

"I woke up and my wife didn't," he said later.

Some friends and family members rushed over. He wanted to make coffee. They had to shoo the butler out of the kitchen.

The lady whom he married 65 years ago will be buried today.

The butler cast his vote for Obama on Tuesday. He so missed telling his Helene about the black man bound for the Oval Office.

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.

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.

Too Manny Cliches

I saw a movie tonight “(Gone Baby Gone,” which could have been entitled “Long Baby, Long) and was distressed to hear a line of dialogue that grates on me worse than any other in daily use. It seems to be a new formulation for those who can’t explain what they see.

It is what it is

This just in

"... Today, 'it is what it is' has become a favorite phrase of Mrs. Clinton."
New York Times, Oct. 26, 2007

Well, excuse the French, but what the fuck is that supposed to mean? It has become an instant cliché and means nothing – other than “I have no idea,” which, in effect, means it isn’t what it is.”

Maybe we have Bill Clinton to thank for complicating “is,” the simplest word in the English language, except possibly for “no.”

The derivative of this is applied to individuals by wags and pundits who couldn’t find a clue if, as the proverb goes, they smeared their bodies with clue musk and did the clue mating dance in a field full of horny clues at the height of clue mating season. It goes, like this:

It’s just Manny being Manny

This week, the sports drivellers on TV are referring to the Red Sox’ Manny Ramirez, perhaps the most selfish prima donna currently playing baseball. Feel free to pick your favorite nutjob about which to say “X is just being X.

For the record, Ramirez, upon his team’s loss in the playoffs said “it isn’t the end of the world.” Of course it isn’t, but that cavalier attitude from someone who refuses to play hard when he doesn’t feel like it should be enough to make his teammates wrap his dreadlocks around his thick neck and strangle him.

Just as the sportcasters were bleating, “Manny being Manny,” Ramirez was too lazy or chicken to slide into home plate to avoid being put out, and then stood admiring a long fly ball he hit, trotting to first base, and thinking he had homered. The ball did not leave the ballpark and Manny wound up on first base, instead of at least second. (George W. Bush, on the other hand, was born on third base and thought he tripled.)

The Red Sox, at this writing, may yet win the American League playoffs and advance to the World Series, and whether Manny is being Manny or Manny is being an asshole, I will have to root for them against the Colorado Rockies for reasons previously expressed on this blog.

Damn it.

D.C. Droppings – V

Political Soundings

After a week of watching TV news more than is healthy, I have come to a number of tentative conclusions about the 2008 presidential race, and I agree with whoever said on one of the Sunday morning talk shows that people are, indeed, paying attention this early. Popularity polls don’t mean anything yet, but the cut of various candidates’ jibs is coming into view.

So, first, I have to ask what’s the big deal about Mitt Romney being Mormon? Sure, it’s a strange religion, a cult even, that subscribes to bizarre beliefs in the eyes of most other Christians. Anyone who knows me knows how I feel about religion and public expressions of it, but we already have a president who believes in imposing his cultish beliefs on civil law more than any Mormon president ever would.

Second, I have decided I cannot and will not support Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. Not that I would vote for any Republican against her, mind you. It isn’t so much about policy differences, nor about her propensity to play every angle to remain politically viable, nor about her being a woman nor about her being from New York.

I can’t stand the woman’s voice. And that, is exactly what I think most people subconsciously use as a guide for whom to vote. Whom do you want to have to listen to for the next four or eight years? I believe it is essentially why people chose Bush over Kerry and why Bush came so close to defeating Gore. He sounds normal.

I am going to have a problem with John Edwards for much the same reason, though he seems capable of modulating his southern accent and a penchant for talking down to us. Joe Biden appeals to me, both politically and vocally, but he does talk so much he winds up distracted from the main task by having to apologize. Chris Dodd is an old-world, Kennedy-style, Homeric stentor.

Whom does that leave? Barack Obama and Bill Richardson. Everyone is talking about Obama, and I think I like him enough to support or even work for his election. His voice is so good that when I was listening to TV from another room, I went back to see who this marvelously erudite, easy-going, (yes, “articulate”) voice belonged to. It was Obama. Richardson also speaks common sense in a down-to-earth style as your neighbor might.

Who are the most qualified candidates, in terms of experience, judgment, leadership and charisma? Biden and Richardson. Either would make a terrific president but chances are not good for people from states with eight electoral votes combined.

On the Republican side, Rudy Giuliani will be soon dismissed as a common scold with an accent that has never gone far in national politics. Romney speaks easily and well and is the best-looking candidate by far. But watch for a guy you have never heard of – Mike Huckabee, another former governor from Hope, Arkansas. He is a dangerous right-wing evangelical, but he sounds good.

I guess it’s a good thing I wasn’t around to endorse candidates in the 1860 election, because I am sure I would have gone with the guy with the better debating style and better voice – Stephen Douglas.

George Orwell Bush

For as long as I have been alive, whenever it snows in Washington, the federal government announces whether offices will be closed, whether there will be a two-hour delay or whether employees may come in late without having to use their leave. The latter category was known widely as “a liberal leave policy.” This administration, as do dictatorships around the world, has changed the language. Today, with snow and ice on the ground, there is no longer a “liberal leave policy.”

It is “an unscheduled leave policy.”

God and Oscar

Another difference between class and trash? At the Academy Awards, that blivet Jennifer Hudson first thanked God for her winning a golden calf … I mean, Oscar. “Look what God can do. I didn't think I was going to win.” Poor, little Abigail Breslin, Adriana Barraza, Rinko Kikuchi and Cate Blanchett. They must have pissed off God somehow.

On the other hand, Forest Whitaker, who also thanked God, noted that He looks over everyone, the losers in his category and presumably all else. Whitaker also noted he will take the honor to the end of his life and beyond. I feel sorry for Peter O’Toole, who seems to have had his last chance to get an Oscar in this life. He must wonder who will rid him of those troublesome Academy voters.

Verbal Abuse -- II (and More D.C. Droppings)

In my salad days, I sat through maybe hundreds of congressional hearings. Then I entered my vegetable days.

What you hear sometimes is just jaw-dropping. I was reminded of that today while watching on TV a House investigative committee looking into alleged improprieties (profiteering) in the Iraq reconstruction.

Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., a former high school social studies teacher, naturally, said the following: "I want to say this in terms people will understand. We had a guardian at litem relationship" with the Iraqi populace.

Let me suggest the lady is a tad non compos mentis if she thinks she is speaking in terms the people will understand.

It also reminded me of the complaint by some analyst during the Falkland Island war between England and Argentina that a settlement was impossible because "the two parties just aren't speaking the same language."

--------------------------------------------

Later that night, I attended the first in a series of black-tie press/politician dinners. I used to go to them all, but that was when I was a contendah. Until last year, I hadn't gone in 15 years or so. Of course, no one invited me, either. But as a former board member of this particular dinner, I inquired as to why I didn't get invitations, and I was told I should have.

So for two years now, I have spent enough money to feed a Bangladeshi neighborhood to see and be seen. It is my night out.


This year I was at a table of old farts who used to be somebody, including the ex-president of my alma mater and his chatty wife. But in front of us was a table with both Miss America and Daryl Hannah. Daryl Hannah, I can report, is very tall -- perhaps close to six-feet tall -- in her flippers.

I only saw the back of Miss America. It said, "Made in the Dominican Republic."

Way in the front with Chris "Jesus Christ Superstar" Matthews was Sam Waterston. Last year, the best the dinner could come up with was Joey Pants, otherwise known as Joe Pantaliano -- or Ralphie from the Sopranos.

This year's dinner -- run by a group that used to be women-only because the guys wouldn't let the girls into the big press club -- honored Helen Thomas, one of my former colleagues and favorite people and still a friend. Unfortunately, the woman they honored last year died.

The event featured, if you can call it that, bad humor by House Minority Leader John Boehner and Ted Kennedy. The difference is that Kennedy can afford the better gag writers.

Aside from a decent filet mignon, the best stuff was from emcee Bob Schieffer of CBS News, who wondered if the Democrats put the "can" back in "Republican" the Republicans would put the "ic" back in "Democratic."

The only reason for going was for people to know I remain alive, which in the p.r. business is always good. And also to see my son, who now is a member of the board of this organization and whose guest was a new member of Congress whose first name is Gabrielle. She represents Tucson, is only a couple of years older than he is and is dating an astronaut. Would have loved to have heard THAT conversation. One of his grandmothers would have been proud of his official "date," as Rep. Gabrielle Gifford is apparently Jewish.

But his wife would not.