Okay, this is a shameless attempt to combine several distinct topics in a single post. First, John Updike. Certainly one of the most versatile figures in American literary history, prolific in all genres; stories, novels, poetry (mostly light, often bawdy), and criticism, scads of criticism, on literature, on art, on politics. There is no one like him today (though perhaps Joyce Carol Oates comes close), and its hard to think of anyone approaching his talents as a generalist, and he is up there with any of the great literary generalists, from Pushkin and Goethe to Henry James. And like Haydn’s 104 symphonies, what was impressive about Updike’s work was not just its quantity, but its quality, with a limpid and precise prose style that always made me think of Nabokov. I wasn’t a particularly avid reader of his fiction—I suppose I read about 8 to 10 of his novels—but I loved his criticism, and his abundant powers of critical sympathy with writers who were very different from himself; I can’t tell you how many books I placed on my “let’s try to read this one” list after reading a review. He has been a part of my intellectual life for as long as I can remember, and he will be greatly missed. James Wollcott’s hilarious and trenchant review of Updike’s latest Eastwick novel in a recent issue of the London Review of Books is worth retrieving on-line.
Topic two: One of the most striking aspects of Updike’s career is that, as far as I know, he never held a university position. He was just a writer, free and unattached. And one of the things that troubles me about the new bailout package, through the House with nary a GOP vote, for all of Obama’s bipartisanizings, is how much of the money is going to support institutional education, $150 billion of the $850 billion packages. Don’t get me wrong, schools, from K to 12, and from 13 to Ph.D seminars, are all great things, and all worthy of being supported. But what was so striking about the analogous New Deal programs is the extent to which they both supported existing institutions while at the same time creating new ones, like the WPA projects for writers and artists. I would love to see new kinds of support for scholars outside of the academy—employing historians to create new on-line state encyclopedias, a national gazetteer, an oral history corps. Given the dangerous situation journalism is facing, a national reporter’s project would be a wonderful idea, giving journalists a place to research and write important stories outside of the context of the shrinking resources of the great metropolitan dailies. As with the New Deal, we have a chance to rethink our cultural institutions, and I would hate to see all the money simply gobbled up by the insatiable financial appetites and perpetually open maws of our bigger colleges and universities.
This leads somewhat indirectly to topic three, another admonition on the creeping Obaian pusillanimity. Please, no “bad bank!” Certainly no bad bank where 1) the government overpays for assets, and 2) the banks are then freed to give their executives bonuses and eschew lending, under the unwatchful eye of federal regulators. Geithner needs to recognize he no longer works for the New York Fed. I can only hope the stories that the Treasury Department will avoid nationalization are not true. What needs to happen is that 1) the government buys the toxic assets for what they are worth, which is next to nothing 2) the banks fail, 3) the government takes them over, and manages them as prudently as possible, until, either a) the banks are recapitalized as private companies, or b) the First National Bank remains the First Nationalized Bank, or c) some combination therein. (This is what we did during the S & L crisis.) Taking over the banking system will be cheaper than the $3 to $4 trillion some observers are predicting it would take to keep the private banking system a going concern, and I see no reason to doubt that a government run banking would be at least as efficient (or at least no less inefficient) that our current crop of crappy capitalists. And if there is anyone who should have been around to capture and anatomize this current mood of middle class angst and foreboding, damn it, it should have been John Updike.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
New Thinking for New Times
In the middle of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln addressed the Congress with words that bear repeating in our current economic crisis.
Failures to do this are all around us, most recently on the front page of today's amNewYork, with the headline: "Bonus Blues: How the Wall Street pay bus is going to pinch your wallet." The article asserts that in our city, in tight times, "cash-cow bonuses are harder to vilify." Bologna.
As a recent state comptroller's report points out, Wall Street bonuses fell by 44% in 2008. This certainly means that a lot of workers whose jobs depend on the largess of Wall Street executives are going to suffer.
But instead of pining for the days when bankers' bonuses fuelled service workers' paychecks, we ought to be thinking about building a new economy in New York City that isn't so deeply dependent on Wall Street.
The days of billions in bonuses are not something we want to get back to. We need to look to the future and build an economy in New York City that directly serves the vast majority of New Yorkers, not a handful of billionaires.
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise — with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.
Failures to do this are all around us, most recently on the front page of today's amNewYork, with the headline: "Bonus Blues: How the Wall Street pay bus is going to pinch your wallet." The article asserts that in our city, in tight times, "cash-cow bonuses are harder to vilify." Bologna.
As a recent state comptroller's report points out, Wall Street bonuses fell by 44% in 2008. This certainly means that a lot of workers whose jobs depend on the largess of Wall Street executives are going to suffer.
But instead of pining for the days when bankers' bonuses fuelled service workers' paychecks, we ought to be thinking about building a new economy in New York City that isn't so deeply dependent on Wall Street.
The days of billions in bonuses are not something we want to get back to. We need to look to the future and build an economy in New York City that directly serves the vast majority of New Yorkers, not a handful of billionaires.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
New York Follies
So I go away for a few days, and New York State politics decides to go through a version of primal scream therapy. I don’t know. Where to begin? I was all ready to post on our new senator Caroline Kennedy, and while I had initially opposed her nomination, primarily because I wanted an upstater, I had come to like her, especially her press conference inarticulately studded with uhms and “you knows.” Just the way I would talk if were nervous, not used to speaking before a large media circus. And she would have made a fine senator, I think. Instead, we get the upstater I wanted, in the form of Kirsten Gillibrand, whom I knew very little about, the first significant New York Kirsten, I think, since the redoubtable Kirsten Flagstad, the greatest opera singer of the 20th century, donned her horned helmet on the stage of the Old Met.
But I digress. Much of the controversy around Ms. Gillibrand concerns her perfect NRA voting record, which is sort of a ridiculous thing for a Democratic congressperson from New York State to have. But she is from the most rural district in the state, which tends to vote very conservatively, and if you have to vote against cities being able to adequately register handguns to placate some hunters who somehow think urban gun regulations will prey their shotguns from their stubby fingers, I guess that’s what you have to do to get elected. All I can say is that if she continues to have a perfect NRA voting record as senator, she’s going to be drilled full of political buckshot ere long.
And if Caroline Kennedy had the artless grace of the amateur, Gillibrand has the artful gracelessness of the political professional, of whom, the best that could be said about her is that she is a great fundraiser, and how very sad that this is the standard whereby we now judge our politicians. And when Gillibrand said that “we in upstate like to shoot our turkeys for Thanksgiving” I thought—“hey, Kirsten, its stupid, ignorant city folks who think upstate is populated by hicks and taxidermists, please do not give credence to this stereotype. “ Upstate, Kirsten, is not a place at all, and all it has it common is that it is not NYC or its environs. Those of us in Rochester have no more connection to you than do the folks on the South Fork of the Island. And most of us in Rochester and its suburbs, purchase our Thanksgiving turkeys in Wegmans, selecting from a mound of nicely wrapped Butterballs. Upstate, which does include true rural areas like the central Adirondacks, as well as cities, suburbs, slums, exurbs, and every other type of conurbation, is more diverse in its populations than NYC itself. Don’t forget this, Kirsten.
But enough Gillibrand bashing. I am sure she will make a good senator, in the hard charging Chuck Schumer mold, who evidently wanted an upstate alpha female to balance his downstate alpha male. The person who came out looking pretty poorly was David Paterson. Even Rod Blagoevich managed to pick a US senator with less controversy (not counting the controversy over his unorthodox method of selection.) Paterson definitely looked maladroit, and managed to stir up more bad feelings than Joe Torre’s new book about his Yankee years, but he was given an impossible job, the judgment of Paris, awarding the golden apple to Helen of Troy, or for that matter to Kirsten of Troy, Glens Falls, and Lake Placid. I think that this is the sort of thing that politicians and those who follow politics closely care much about, but it doesn’t have much impact on the voters at large, and there are enough big issues ahead that Paterson will be able to change the topic fairly easily. But getting the Kennedys, the Cuomos, and the Clintons united in their pissitude toward you is no inconsiderable task.
And for the topping of the weekend’s news, amid all of this noise, Joe Bruno was indicted on Friday for taking at least $3 million in bribes from numerous contractors. This was hinted at last year, and is one possible reason for his surprising decision to step down as senate majority leader last summer. This is the final proof of the corruption of the state Republicans, whose venal hold on the state senate, the place where, for the past four decades, all good bills go to die, is finally at an end. I am sure Bruno claim he did nothing wrong, and this was just business as usual. Probably this was true, and more’s the pity.
It might be my bias, but I long felt that the Democrats were marginally less corrupt than the Republicans, and now they have the chance to prove it. But Joe Bruno, Joe Bruno of Troy (that is actually where he is from), will not be soon forgotten, from the Joe Bruno Amtrak Station (which is lovely), to the Joe Bruno baseball stadium (which is also very nice), to the Joe Bruno era of state politics, to which his indictment is a fitting coda. Next time I go away for a weekend, New York politicians, try not to be quite so eventful.
But I digress. Much of the controversy around Ms. Gillibrand concerns her perfect NRA voting record, which is sort of a ridiculous thing for a Democratic congressperson from New York State to have. But she is from the most rural district in the state, which tends to vote very conservatively, and if you have to vote against cities being able to adequately register handguns to placate some hunters who somehow think urban gun regulations will prey their shotguns from their stubby fingers, I guess that’s what you have to do to get elected. All I can say is that if she continues to have a perfect NRA voting record as senator, she’s going to be drilled full of political buckshot ere long.
And if Caroline Kennedy had the artless grace of the amateur, Gillibrand has the artful gracelessness of the political professional, of whom, the best that could be said about her is that she is a great fundraiser, and how very sad that this is the standard whereby we now judge our politicians. And when Gillibrand said that “we in upstate like to shoot our turkeys for Thanksgiving” I thought—“hey, Kirsten, its stupid, ignorant city folks who think upstate is populated by hicks and taxidermists, please do not give credence to this stereotype. “ Upstate, Kirsten, is not a place at all, and all it has it common is that it is not NYC or its environs. Those of us in Rochester have no more connection to you than do the folks on the South Fork of the Island. And most of us in Rochester and its suburbs, purchase our Thanksgiving turkeys in Wegmans, selecting from a mound of nicely wrapped Butterballs. Upstate, which does include true rural areas like the central Adirondacks, as well as cities, suburbs, slums, exurbs, and every other type of conurbation, is more diverse in its populations than NYC itself. Don’t forget this, Kirsten.
But enough Gillibrand bashing. I am sure she will make a good senator, in the hard charging Chuck Schumer mold, who evidently wanted an upstate alpha female to balance his downstate alpha male. The person who came out looking pretty poorly was David Paterson. Even Rod Blagoevich managed to pick a US senator with less controversy (not counting the controversy over his unorthodox method of selection.) Paterson definitely looked maladroit, and managed to stir up more bad feelings than Joe Torre’s new book about his Yankee years, but he was given an impossible job, the judgment of Paris, awarding the golden apple to Helen of Troy, or for that matter to Kirsten of Troy, Glens Falls, and Lake Placid. I think that this is the sort of thing that politicians and those who follow politics closely care much about, but it doesn’t have much impact on the voters at large, and there are enough big issues ahead that Paterson will be able to change the topic fairly easily. But getting the Kennedys, the Cuomos, and the Clintons united in their pissitude toward you is no inconsiderable task.
And for the topping of the weekend’s news, amid all of this noise, Joe Bruno was indicted on Friday for taking at least $3 million in bribes from numerous contractors. This was hinted at last year, and is one possible reason for his surprising decision to step down as senate majority leader last summer. This is the final proof of the corruption of the state Republicans, whose venal hold on the state senate, the place where, for the past four decades, all good bills go to die, is finally at an end. I am sure Bruno claim he did nothing wrong, and this was just business as usual. Probably this was true, and more’s the pity.
It might be my bias, but I long felt that the Democrats were marginally less corrupt than the Republicans, and now they have the chance to prove it. But Joe Bruno, Joe Bruno of Troy (that is actually where he is from), will not be soon forgotten, from the Joe Bruno Amtrak Station (which is lovely), to the Joe Bruno baseball stadium (which is also very nice), to the Joe Bruno era of state politics, to which his indictment is a fitting coda. Next time I go away for a weekend, New York politicians, try not to be quite so eventful.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
The Content of Our Character
Editor's note: Steve Zurier of Columbia, Maryland contributes this first-hand account of the inauguration in Washington, D.C.
My wife and I took our two teenage sons to the inauguration in Washington, D.C. yesterday and we can proudly say that we were there when Barack Obama brought America together. While this is most certainly a high point in African-American and civil rights history, it is also a great American moment. In the crowd, people didn't care if you were black or white, rich or poor, polished academic or work-a-day construction worker. What mattered was that you had made the trip to celebrate Barack Obama's special victory. What mattered more was the content of your character. Each person, by their mere presence, was making a powerful statement.
The general feeling among the crowd was that of tolerance. And that's tolerance for one another and tolerance for the enormity of what everyone was collectively experiencing. Many people walked up to 10 miles to navigate around D.C. today. The streets were packed and too often at various entry points in the mall the flow of the crowd stopped and people simply had to be patient. But there were few major mishaps. Yes, I saw one man step off a curb and fall and another man passed out from the strain of walking several miles around the city to the mall. Yet, each time someone fell, there were at least two or three people there to pick the person up or attend to the incident. If this is where American is headed count me in. Hopefully the Darwinian era of Republican politics will be replaced by a truly kinder and gentler America. We can only hope.
This most public of ceremonies was also very personal for me. I went to Clifton High School, in nearby North Jersey. When I graduated in 1973, the only black student at the high school was the star running back for the football team. I went from that environment to the melting pot of Livingston College at Rutgers University. Years later, in the 1990s and 2000s, I raised my family in Columbia, Md., the planned city that prides itself on its racial tolerance and diversity.
It is astounding when I think about how far the country has come and how my personal journey reflects this long march toward racial progress and understanding. As a middle and high school student, I knew no black children. But one of my son Ben's teammates on his basketball team was named Kenyatta, after the great Kenyan leader; and at my son Solomon's bar mitzvah a few years ago at least half of the friends he invited were African-American.
The truth is that even the modest social changes my family experienced living in Columbia are far from the norm in our country, but let today's event be a new beginning. For more than 30 years conservatives have held sway in Washington and America is worse off for it. I really believe our new president is just getting started at honing his community organizing skills. Turning around American will take years, not months or days. But I can promise you that the millions who came to celebrate Obama's inauguration can all be counted on to do their share.
My wife and I took our two teenage sons to the inauguration in Washington, D.C. yesterday and we can proudly say that we were there when Barack Obama brought America together. While this is most certainly a high point in African-American and civil rights history, it is also a great American moment. In the crowd, people didn't care if you were black or white, rich or poor, polished academic or work-a-day construction worker. What mattered was that you had made the trip to celebrate Barack Obama's special victory. What mattered more was the content of your character. Each person, by their mere presence, was making a powerful statement.
The general feeling among the crowd was that of tolerance. And that's tolerance for one another and tolerance for the enormity of what everyone was collectively experiencing. Many people walked up to 10 miles to navigate around D.C. today. The streets were packed and too often at various entry points in the mall the flow of the crowd stopped and people simply had to be patient. But there were few major mishaps. Yes, I saw one man step off a curb and fall and another man passed out from the strain of walking several miles around the city to the mall. Yet, each time someone fell, there were at least two or three people there to pick the person up or attend to the incident. If this is where American is headed count me in. Hopefully the Darwinian era of Republican politics will be replaced by a truly kinder and gentler America. We can only hope.
This most public of ceremonies was also very personal for me. I went to Clifton High School, in nearby North Jersey. When I graduated in 1973, the only black student at the high school was the star running back for the football team. I went from that environment to the melting pot of Livingston College at Rutgers University. Years later, in the 1990s and 2000s, I raised my family in Columbia, Md., the planned city that prides itself on its racial tolerance and diversity.
It is astounding when I think about how far the country has come and how my personal journey reflects this long march toward racial progress and understanding. As a middle and high school student, I knew no black children. But one of my son Ben's teammates on his basketball team was named Kenyatta, after the great Kenyan leader; and at my son Solomon's bar mitzvah a few years ago at least half of the friends he invited were African-American.
The truth is that even the modest social changes my family experienced living in Columbia are far from the norm in our country, but let today's event be a new beginning. For more than 30 years conservatives have held sway in Washington and America is worse off for it. I really believe our new president is just getting started at honing his community organizing skills. Turning around American will take years, not months or days. But I can promise you that the millions who came to celebrate Obama's inauguration can all be counted on to do their share.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Hope and History
Barack Obama's inaugural address was animated by the same sense of history that elevated his presidential campaign. With it, he acknowledged the crimes and limitations of our national past, recognized that we are at a grave turning point, and invoked our great strengths--freedom, labor and sacrifice for the common good--to point us to a better future. It was indeed a day, to use Seamus Heaney's phrase, when hope and history rhymed.
All the talk I heard on the television tonight about whether Obama's call to "responsibility" is fundamentally conservative (and I don't think it is) misses the real point: Obama's election marks the end of conservative dominance and division that dates to the 1960s. As E.J. Dionne observed years ago, Republicans have prospered at the expense of the nation since the Sixties by exploiting and distorting the divisions of that decade.
In fact, Americans of the 1960s confronted fundamental racial inequalities, the role of the federal government as a source of social and economic justice, and the place of American power in the world. Conservatives may have won the immediate battles of the decade, but in the long run the majority of Americans are closer to Democrats on these issues than Republicans.
Obama's genius as a candidate was his ability to craft an electoral majority that preserves the best progressive gains of the Sixties but moves us into a new future. It is the Republicans, with their politics of wedge issues and inequality, that are now the party of the past.
It is time, as President Obama put it so well, "to choose our better history."
All the talk I heard on the television tonight about whether Obama's call to "responsibility" is fundamentally conservative (and I don't think it is) misses the real point: Obama's election marks the end of conservative dominance and division that dates to the 1960s. As E.J. Dionne observed years ago, Republicans have prospered at the expense of the nation since the Sixties by exploiting and distorting the divisions of that decade.
In fact, Americans of the 1960s confronted fundamental racial inequalities, the role of the federal government as a source of social and economic justice, and the place of American power in the world. Conservatives may have won the immediate battles of the decade, but in the long run the majority of Americans are closer to Democrats on these issues than Republicans.
Obama's genius as a candidate was his ability to craft an electoral majority that preserves the best progressive gains of the Sixties but moves us into a new future. It is the Republicans, with their politics of wedge issues and inequality, that are now the party of the past.
It is time, as President Obama put it so well, "to choose our better history."
Heil sei dem Tag!!
I cried during large parts of the inauguration ceremony, though Obama’s address left me rather cold. I thought Joseph Lowery and Aretha Franklin were the standout performers. Rick Warren was okay. The poem left me uninspired. Obama was pretty good, though it sounded more like a campaign speech than the an inaugural address. Conservative commentators who think that Obama’s call for an age of responsibility means a repudiation of “rights-based” discourse misunderstood his message. We all need a better sense of our responsibilities, especially our leaders and business executives, he was saying. Anyway didn’t Kennedy in his “ask not” say much the same thing? Anyway the hoo-ha about inaugural addresses is much exaggerated; only three addresses are remembered; Lincoln’s 2nd, FDR’s 1st, and Kennedy’s, and I don’t think this on that level, but its too early to tell. But the significance of the day, freighted with symbolism, was more important than anything anyone said or did.
I liked the classical interlude, though when you write a setting of “Simple Gifts” its going to sound a lot like Aaron Copland, which it did. I liked the marching band music, the Holst and the Sousa. But it was unheard music that I heard even more insistently. Pardon a few free associations. The music that I kept on hearing goes like this:
Heil sei dem Tag! Heil Sei der Stunde! Heil! Heil ! Heil!
When I think of music of celebration, of utter rapture and joy, the first music that always comes to mind is the opening of the last scene of Beethoven’s only opera Fidelio. The hero has just been rescued from prison, by the heroine, Leonora, and all the other prisoners (all unjustly imprisoned; they had been political prisoners) sing and rejoice on their liberation. “Hail to the day!,” they sing. “Hail to the hour! Hail, Hail, Hail!” It seems unfair but unavoidable that the German word “Heil” has forever been hijacked by the Nazis. But when Beethoven wrote Fidelio, his great hymn to human freedom around 1814, the Nazis were far in the future, and it seems cruel that Beethoven’s work on the power of freedom and the possibility of overcoming evil tyrannies has to be seen through the lens of the filthy murderers who turned Europe into a prison. So, a new era of freedom dawns; Heil, Heil, Heil!!!
Still, if this makes you uncomfortable, another piece of music comes to mind, the greatest piece of music, IMHO, ever written for the sort of event we celebrate today, the peaceful change of the head of state. I am thinking the second of George Frederick Handel’s coronation anthems, written in 1727 for the coronation of King George II, “Zadok the Priest.” I believe it has been played at every coronation of a British monarch ever since, and no one has ever written music of triumphal magnificence better than Handel (not even, Bruce Springsteen, Rob.) The words aren’t much: “Zadok the Priest and Nathan the Prophet/Annointed Solomon King/And all the people rejoic’d, and said/God save the King, long live the King/May the King live forever!/Amen, Alleluja!” but you have to hear the music, just flowing and bursting with majesty.
But via Matt Yglesias, let me give the last word to someone else, George Henry White, the last of the black Reconstruction members of Congress, who managed to hold onto his seat until the election of 1900. In his farewell speech, on January 21, 1901, he said:
This, Mr. Chairman, is perhaps the Negroes’ temporary farewell to the American Congress but let me say Phoenix-like he will rise up some day and come again. These parting words are on behalf of an outraged, heart-broken, bruised and bleeding, but God-fearing people. . . . The only apology I have for the earnestness with which I have spoken is that I am pleading for the life, the liberty, the future happiness, and manhood suffrage for one-eighth of the entire population of the United States.
Amen. Alleluja!
I liked the classical interlude, though when you write a setting of “Simple Gifts” its going to sound a lot like Aaron Copland, which it did. I liked the marching band music, the Holst and the Sousa. But it was unheard music that I heard even more insistently. Pardon a few free associations. The music that I kept on hearing goes like this:
Heil sei dem Tag! Heil Sei der Stunde! Heil! Heil ! Heil!
When I think of music of celebration, of utter rapture and joy, the first music that always comes to mind is the opening of the last scene of Beethoven’s only opera Fidelio. The hero has just been rescued from prison, by the heroine, Leonora, and all the other prisoners (all unjustly imprisoned; they had been political prisoners) sing and rejoice on their liberation. “Hail to the day!,” they sing. “Hail to the hour! Hail, Hail, Hail!” It seems unfair but unavoidable that the German word “Heil” has forever been hijacked by the Nazis. But when Beethoven wrote Fidelio, his great hymn to human freedom around 1814, the Nazis were far in the future, and it seems cruel that Beethoven’s work on the power of freedom and the possibility of overcoming evil tyrannies has to be seen through the lens of the filthy murderers who turned Europe into a prison. So, a new era of freedom dawns; Heil, Heil, Heil!!!
Still, if this makes you uncomfortable, another piece of music comes to mind, the greatest piece of music, IMHO, ever written for the sort of event we celebrate today, the peaceful change of the head of state. I am thinking the second of George Frederick Handel’s coronation anthems, written in 1727 for the coronation of King George II, “Zadok the Priest.” I believe it has been played at every coronation of a British monarch ever since, and no one has ever written music of triumphal magnificence better than Handel (not even, Bruce Springsteen, Rob.) The words aren’t much: “Zadok the Priest and Nathan the Prophet/Annointed Solomon King/And all the people rejoic’d, and said/God save the King, long live the King/May the King live forever!/Amen, Alleluja!” but you have to hear the music, just flowing and bursting with majesty.
But via Matt Yglesias, let me give the last word to someone else, George Henry White, the last of the black Reconstruction members of Congress, who managed to hold onto his seat until the election of 1900. In his farewell speech, on January 21, 1901, he said:
This, Mr. Chairman, is perhaps the Negroes’ temporary farewell to the American Congress but let me say Phoenix-like he will rise up some day and come again. These parting words are on behalf of an outraged, heart-broken, bruised and bleeding, but God-fearing people. . . . The only apology I have for the earnestness with which I have spoken is that I am pleading for the life, the liberty, the future happiness, and manhood suffrage for one-eighth of the entire population of the United States.
Amen. Alleluja!
Expiration Day
Just one more post on this, pardon my self-indulgence (though that is of course the birthright of any self-respecting blogger.) I cannot believe, as I write this, that the Bush presidency (and Cheney vice-presidency) has a little less than three hours to go. I know it doesn’t speak well of me, and exposes me for the petty, vindictive person that I am, but as excited as I am about Obama becoming president, I am twice as excited that Bush is leaving.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. I earn my keep as a historian of the African American experience. Later this week I will be going down to Morehouse College for a few days, where I am sure the joint will still be jumpin.’ I listened this morning to a collection of freedom songs from the Civil Rights era and some spirituals by Marian Anderson, thinking of her 1939 concert on the Washington Mall, and what she would think today, and what every man, woman, and child who bore the lash of slavery, who suffered through Jim Crow and its de facto northern equivalent, and every person of every color, creed, and religion, who was ever marginalized and devalued by the powerful white men of British extraction who have run this country from the beginning, would think today. Harriet Tubman, Crazy Horse, Sidney Hillman, Susan B. Anthony, Howard Thurman, Mother Jones, Denmark Vesey, Jose Marti, Joseph Brant, Paul O’Dwyer, and my dad, Joseph Eisenstadt, who died ten years ago to the day, this is for you.
But tomorrow Obama starts to disappoint people, and tomorrow Obama’s racial background ceases to matter. His ethnic background will not have any impact on how we judge what he decides to do about the TARP money, the aftermath of Israel’s brutal war against Gaza, the stimulus package, getting out of Iraq and Guantanamo, and the myriad of other issues he is faced with. Today is his last day as a symbol.
So with that in mind, I can only think that whatever the Obama turns out to be, and we start today full of hopes--with the knowledge that for the first time in 16 years (the first two years of the Clinton presidency), no make that 33 years (the opening years of the Carter presidency), no make that 45 years (the first two years of the Johnson presidency), really, for the first time in our adult lifetimes, the Democrats control both houses of Congress, the White House, and the national agenda--I am glad, above all, that George W. Bush’s eight plus years of mendacious, meretricious, malevolent rule is about to end. Starting with his lying over the Florida recount, to his distortions over 9/11, to the horrors of the unnecessary war in Iraq, to the tortures, invasions of privacy, malfeasance over Katrina, and maladministration of the economy, the Bush administration has been a disaster from beginning to end. We have been governed by a bunch of small, petty men (and women, too, Condoleeza), who have ruled by smirks and innuendo, by cliché, and by an utterly unearned hauteur and sense of superiority.
Okay, I’m really excited about Obama, too, and hope my heart isn’t broken too badly in the years to come. And if it is, I’ll always have today. But every inauguration day is also an expiration day, I for one will be incredibly glad that the moment Barack Hussein Obama takes the oath of office, George W. Bush becomes, as we historians like to say, history.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. I earn my keep as a historian of the African American experience. Later this week I will be going down to Morehouse College for a few days, where I am sure the joint will still be jumpin.’ I listened this morning to a collection of freedom songs from the Civil Rights era and some spirituals by Marian Anderson, thinking of her 1939 concert on the Washington Mall, and what she would think today, and what every man, woman, and child who bore the lash of slavery, who suffered through Jim Crow and its de facto northern equivalent, and every person of every color, creed, and religion, who was ever marginalized and devalued by the powerful white men of British extraction who have run this country from the beginning, would think today. Harriet Tubman, Crazy Horse, Sidney Hillman, Susan B. Anthony, Howard Thurman, Mother Jones, Denmark Vesey, Jose Marti, Joseph Brant, Paul O’Dwyer, and my dad, Joseph Eisenstadt, who died ten years ago to the day, this is for you.
But tomorrow Obama starts to disappoint people, and tomorrow Obama’s racial background ceases to matter. His ethnic background will not have any impact on how we judge what he decides to do about the TARP money, the aftermath of Israel’s brutal war against Gaza, the stimulus package, getting out of Iraq and Guantanamo, and the myriad of other issues he is faced with. Today is his last day as a symbol.
So with that in mind, I can only think that whatever the Obama turns out to be, and we start today full of hopes--with the knowledge that for the first time in 16 years (the first two years of the Clinton presidency), no make that 33 years (the opening years of the Carter presidency), no make that 45 years (the first two years of the Johnson presidency), really, for the first time in our adult lifetimes, the Democrats control both houses of Congress, the White House, and the national agenda--I am glad, above all, that George W. Bush’s eight plus years of mendacious, meretricious, malevolent rule is about to end. Starting with his lying over the Florida recount, to his distortions over 9/11, to the horrors of the unnecessary war in Iraq, to the tortures, invasions of privacy, malfeasance over Katrina, and maladministration of the economy, the Bush administration has been a disaster from beginning to end. We have been governed by a bunch of small, petty men (and women, too, Condoleeza), who have ruled by smirks and innuendo, by cliché, and by an utterly unearned hauteur and sense of superiority.
Okay, I’m really excited about Obama, too, and hope my heart isn’t broken too badly in the years to come. And if it is, I’ll always have today. But every inauguration day is also an expiration day, I for one will be incredibly glad that the moment Barack Hussein Obama takes the oath of office, George W. Bush becomes, as we historians like to say, history.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Inaugural Poem
And from Oahu and Chicago
One will come to lead us
After his predecessor
Came only to bleed us
Pity our poor country
Pummeled, on the ropes
But our new champion comes
(a brown bomber, perhaps)
Audaciously, giving hopes
For we have sinned grievously
Bratty with misbehavior
Spank us and pardon us
Our newly elected savior
Oh we don’t expect miracles
Just a little walking on water
More respect for the rule of law
And a little less disorder
From our long national nightmare
Rouse us, please let us awaken
Our prince charming, perhaps?
I hope we’re not mistaken
Your problems will be many
Brutal wars and a great depression
(But to look on the bright side
At least there's no secession)
All that we want
Is that no tragedies your tenure mar
And that you always talk like Lincoln
And learn to act like FDR
You’re our kansaskenyan
Our national blend
Our tall cup of black coffee
Our national friend
We are sorely troubled
Keening, bent over with grief
But hail to us, for voting for you
And hail to you, chief.
One will come to lead us
After his predecessor
Came only to bleed us
Pity our poor country
Pummeled, on the ropes
But our new champion comes
(a brown bomber, perhaps)
Audaciously, giving hopes
For we have sinned grievously
Bratty with misbehavior
Spank us and pardon us
Our newly elected savior
Oh we don’t expect miracles
Just a little walking on water
More respect for the rule of law
And a little less disorder
From our long national nightmare
Rouse us, please let us awaken
Our prince charming, perhaps?
I hope we’re not mistaken
Your problems will be many
Brutal wars and a great depression
(But to look on the bright side
At least there's no secession)
All that we want
Is that no tragedies your tenure mar
And that you always talk like Lincoln
And learn to act like FDR
You’re our kansaskenyan
Our national blend
Our tall cup of black coffee
Our national friend
We are sorely troubled
Keening, bent over with grief
But hail to us, for voting for you
And hail to you, chief.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Skiing at Minnewaska
When there is snow on the ground, the trails at Minnewaska State Park Preserve near New Paltz provide some of the best cross-country skiing in the northeast. Yesterday, with fresh snow and clear, cold weather, the trails and mountain views were in good form. Get there and ski while you can.
Cutbacks have reduced services at the park, so some trails are closed. Nevertheless, my two favorites were open: the route from Lake Minnewaska out the Upper Awosting Carriageway (green blaze) past Lake Awosting and Castle Point, and back to Minnewaska on the blue-blazed Castle Point Carriageway.
The big vistas and solitude of Minnewaska were rewarding as always, from the views over Lake Awosting to the forests and cliffs of the return route. Altogether, the trip of about 7.5 miles took me four hours, with a half hour stop for lunch near Castle Point.
The Upper Awosting Carriageway is a smooth and gradual ascent; the hardest stretch on it is the short ski down from the parking lot, which is within the grasp of any beginner with a good snowplow. The Castle Point trail, however, skirts near the edges of cliffs in ways that might make some beginners queasy. If in doubt, just head back on the Awosting Carriageway that you came in on.
For more information, check the official park website or the Lake Minnewaska page that gives you access to trail maps and more.
Friends, Government and FDR
A small exhibit at the New-York Historical Society, "A New President Takes Command: FDR's First Hundred Days," explores the opening of Roosevelt's presidency. Amid the photographs, recordings, films, letters and artifacts assembled, two phrases stick out: "my friends" and "your government." Each helps us understand some of the greatness of Roosevelt and the New Deal.
The phrase "my friends," which Roosevelt used with great effect, conveys his talent for speaking with Americans as one of them. He didn't talk down to them and he didn't pander to them.
FDR used this style brilliantly in his first fireside chat, delivered over the radio on 12 March 1933, which you can listen to at the exhibit. In familiar yet confident tones, Roosevelt explains the collapse of the banking system, the bank holiday called to set it right, and his plans for future policies. He is utterly serious and acknowledges vast problems, but he explains the situation with great faith in his listeners' intelligence. We need more such presidential addresses.
Equally important, he talks about "your government." Unlike Republicans, who have demonized goverment for decades, FDR describes government as the possession and instrument of the people, a force for healing a damaged nation.
Roosevelt is often acclaimed for his "first class temperament," but the exhibit is a reminder that behind his style lay an appreciation of the capacities of ordinary people to understand and solve the problems of their time. Equally prominent in Roosevelt, of course, is his understanding of government as a force for social justice. Our next president will need both traits.
"A New President Takes Command" is open through 3 May 2009. The show is jointly presented with the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Museum at Hyde Park, where the larger "Action and Action Now: FDR's First Hundred Days," will be up until fall 2009.
The phrase "my friends," which Roosevelt used with great effect, conveys his talent for speaking with Americans as one of them. He didn't talk down to them and he didn't pander to them.
FDR used this style brilliantly in his first fireside chat, delivered over the radio on 12 March 1933, which you can listen to at the exhibit. In familiar yet confident tones, Roosevelt explains the collapse of the banking system, the bank holiday called to set it right, and his plans for future policies. He is utterly serious and acknowledges vast problems, but he explains the situation with great faith in his listeners' intelligence. We need more such presidential addresses.
Equally important, he talks about "your government." Unlike Republicans, who have demonized goverment for decades, FDR describes government as the possession and instrument of the people, a force for healing a damaged nation.
Roosevelt is often acclaimed for his "first class temperament," but the exhibit is a reminder that behind his style lay an appreciation of the capacities of ordinary people to understand and solve the problems of their time. Equally prominent in Roosevelt, of course, is his understanding of government as a force for social justice. Our next president will need both traits.
"A New President Takes Command" is open through 3 May 2009. The show is jointly presented with the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Museum at Hyde Park, where the larger "Action and Action Now: FDR's First Hundred Days," will be up until fall 2009.
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