Feigned Ignorance

Not everyone who read my last letter about the “feigned” ignorance of Eisenhower and Sarah Palin realized it was written tongue in cheek. So I want to make a heartfelt apology to Ms Palin for having suggested, even in jest, that her ignorance is not genuine. As president, Ike had occasional reason to fake it. Sarah doesn’t need to because she’s a natural.

Sarah’s assortment of non sequiturs is reminiscent of Gracie Allen. Much of Gracie’s “ignorance” was written for her, making her literally a comic actress. Sarah’s written speeches plus whatever she can write on her hand, are just run of the mill doctrinaire. It’s when she has nothing to read and has to wing it that the fun begins. The following, quoted in Newsweek, says it all. “Oil and coal?  Of course, it’s a fungible commodity and they don’t flag, you know, the molecules, where it’s going and where it’s not….So, I believe that what Congress is going to do also, is not to allow the export bans to such a degree that it’s Americans who get stuck to holding the bag without the energy source that is produced here, pumped here.” Few if any speech writers are capable of this kind of prose. Gracie’s was a stage persona while Sarah is all method acting.

From the preceding verbal meandering it might be hard to tell on which side of the fence she sits. One look at the audience at her rallies leaves no doubt. They are on the older side and very, very white. To her credit, in talking to reporters she has managed to memorize key words to many right wing talking points, not always relevant to the subject in question. I see a rough similarity to dolls that “speak” words when a string is pulled.

Now that Sarah’s vice presidential flirtation is behind her and the imminent threat has been removed, she is just what the doctor ordered, comic relief for a nation in distress. This may be a case of sending in the clowns. Circus audiences were once a slice of Americana and I’m for whatever might work. So I want to thank her for giving us laughs at a time when we need them. And lest we forget, a hearty note of appreciation to John McCain for abandoning her on our doorstep.

Ignorance and Bliss

A TV retrospective on the Eisenhower years told of an exchange between Ike and his Press Secretary James Haggerty. When asked about his planned response at a scheduled presidential press conference to the threat of an invasion of Taiwan by Mainland China, Ike said not to worry, that he would “confuse them.” And confuse them he did.

His response to the expected question was sufficiently incoherent to compete with any Bush dissertations, George Senior that is. Junior’s classics were brief, often one word. He seemed unused to speaking, and maybe even thinking, in long sentences.

Many people listening to Ike’s response might have considered him uninformed. But since his career had been the military this simply wasn’t the case. Unlike Douglas MacArthur a few years earlier, he realized that China’s intentions were inscrutable. Knowing he had no proper answer he got by with feigned ignorance.

The Straits of Formosa have been peaceful since so his response evidently served its purpose. An unequivocal answer might have aggravated the situation. This shows that there are times when appearing dumb can be an asset. By now you may have figured where this is going. Yes, I am thinking of the Belle of the Yukon. (I know the Yukon is in Canada, not Alaska. But the phrase has a nice ring to it and what the hell, north is north)

If knowledge can be camouflaged by apparent ignorance we may be overlooking the bright side of a possible Sarah Palin presidency. If the expertise she’s hiding is proportional to the ignorance she uses to hide it, this has to a milestone in the history of political rope a dope. Newsweek’s Jacob Weisberg has described her ramblings as “Fox News without punctuation.” I wish I’d a said that!

My guess is that we will continue “misunderestimating” this woman because I don’t expect her to run for president in 2012, at least not in a serious way. I don’t think she wants to be president. There’s too much work involved which would take too much time from what she likes best which is being herself, Aimee Semple McPalin.*

*Aimee Semple McPherson was a famous evangelist in the first half of the 20^th Century. For those interested there’s plenty about her on the internet.

The Price is Right

While I’m of the impression that most people receiving these letters agree with most of what’s in them, here’s an opinion that should be an exception. I believe Congressional salaries should be raised. A majority on both ends of the political spectrum probably think otherwise, more so the political right because it’s currently a nominal minority in both Houses.

I first got this notion from a book by Tip O’Neill. As respected as the former House Speaker was, any argument involving the arguer’s well being should be taken with a grain of salt. But his reasoning did make sense as far as it went. He wrote that as his party’s leader in the House of Representatives it was his job to recruit candidates to run for Congress. Many qualified people were reluctant to leave jobs that paid considerably more than they could make in Congress if they were elected.

Congressional salary of $175 thousand may seem like a lot of money to most of us and the fringe benefits are considerable. But to many people earning something in the vicinity of seven figures or more, this is insufficient income to build the nest egg that people of that earning capacity have in mind. This income doesn’t even qualify for the top tax bracket.

The difficulties in recruitment encountered by Mr. O’Neill are part of a larger picture. In offering only upper middle class salaries for some of the nation’s most important jobs, the aphorism “you get what you pay for” comes into play. In addition to eliminating many of the most qualified, the pool from which these legislators come is expanded to include people of lesser ability, integrity or both. Along with the opportunity to in effect sell one’s vote, albeit at a seriously discounted price, this is a recipe for disaster.

There are exceptions of course. The deserved disapproval of Congress is not a fair reflection of all 535 members of the two Houses. It has been shown recently and repeatedly that it doesn’t take a majority to gum up legislative machinery and it doesn’t require close scrutiny to learn who is doing the gumming. A modicum of reason and knowledge will do. Unfortunately many of our most vocal citizens are lacking these qualities and voters seem on the verge of rewarding the gummers.

It’s hard to make the case for rewarding bad performance. But we can see where the status quo has put us. Congress, our national legislature, is not close to working as well as it should. In light of the circumstances under which its members are admitted, it is working as well as it can.

14th Amendment

Constitutional Amendments are a frequent and relevant subject of political discourse. The Fourteenth, granting automatic citizenship to all people born in the United States, is now front and center. In response to those clamoring for more restriction on immigration, leading Republicans are threatening to revoke it.

While I disagree with their conclusion, I concede their point. On one hand it’s hard to impugn the motive of an expectant Mexican mother going to great length to make her child an American citizen. But it’s at least plausible, if not probable, that this was not the intent of the people who wrote this amendment. As an aside I suspect that the “Founding Fathers,” commonly spoken of as being of one mind, didn’t see eye to eye on everything they signed. The conflicting interests of thirteen colonies had to be reconciled so the results had to have reflected compromise, an element once present in Congress by both parties.

There’s no questioning the wording of the 14^th Amendment on this subject and I’ve yet to hear a threat of judicial appeal. To repeal or even modify a Constitutional Amendment, another must be enacted. The Twenty first Amendment repealing prohibition was necessary to nullify the Eighteenth that established it. So we’re talking about revising the Constitution, a process considerably more cumbersome than an Act of Congress. In the late 1970s the E.R.A Amendment passed both Houses, but failed to win ratification by the required number of state legislatures.  

Because of its inherent difficulties, passing a Constitutional Amendment requires a fairly broad consensus. We’ve only had twenty seven, the most recent being in 1992. In effect it deferred any pay raise Congress might vote itself until the next Congress convened. The law that required this change was hardly a high point in the legacy of those who wrote it.  Even the Founding Fathers were human. To their credit, attempts at correcting this oversight began in 1789 and came to fruition two hundred and three years later. As I said, this is a cumbersome process. The next to last Amendment in 1972 lowered the voting age to eighteen. With draftees of this age dying in Vietnam, passage was both easy and sensible.

Many of the current crop of enthusiasts want to make repeal retroactive by stripping citizenship from those who have come by it in this manner, further evidence of the  emptiness of these threats. The noise being made by GOP bigwigs is purely a symbolic attempt to strengthen a base less in need of enthusiasm than reason. As an indicator of things to come, I’d put it on a level with those three cornered hats. 

Oh Rochester

An overlooked item in last week’s news is that the tea party, by setting up offices in a state, has become the Tea Party. Now we know to capitalize those two letters. Punctuation aside, I consider April 15, 2009 the real birth of the movement. That was when a bunch of people staged a nationwide protest over taxes due that day. These taxes were, in a way not yet specified, more objectionable than taxes they’d paid at the same rate the previous year when Bush was president.

The organization took its name from Boston Tea Party, a colonist protest against a British tax on tea. The original event required strapping men to throw heavy barrels of tea into Boston Harbor at the risk of being killed by the British. This defiant spirit is being renewed by little old ladies with tea bags tied to their bonnets. Could the original tea baggers have had a Woman’s Auxiliary? 

I can’t begin to describe these people. Ok I can at least begin. My guess is a sizeable portion consists of inveterate Republicans who don’t like losing the presidency and are still fighting the War of 2008. Many of them particularly dislike losing it to someone like him. I’m not sure what they’re for, but one thing they’re all against is government. When one considers that many of them are against legalized abortion, and consequently for government enforcement of its prohibition, the situation gets a bit fuzzy. As I said I can only begin to describe them.

The time has come when they have become less a subject of humor than a source for concern. Advocates from extreme ends of the political spectrum are a legitimate part of democracy. But there are some limits to the extremes which they can be advocate. The prescribing of “Second Amendment remedies” for what we think ails us exceeds those limits. Michael Reagan in a talk radio podcast said that Google and Yahoo are sending 90% of their political contributions to “liberal” groups. He was clearly urging a boycott of these businesses by people who don’t like liberals. Mr. Reagan sir, this is not the ‘50’s and these companies are not subversives talking about overthrowing the government. You folks own that one now. They are successful enterprises in a capitalist nation that isn’t in the habit of blacklisting corporations whose transgression is not agreeing with you.

What the Tea Party may lack in numbers is balanced in part by enthusiasm. Given the usual light turnout for midterm elections its adherents may have an inordinate effect on America’s near future. It remains to be seen how much damage they can do. But in the longer run their influence is bound to diminish considerably. Just one look at participants at Tea Party rally and you know that they are not spring chickens. A major driving force behind their anger comes from their cultural view of people of color, particularly that color, as shiftless, frightened or at best as simple happy servants. Their influence will diminish gradually and inevitably as the influence increases of people who know of Rochester only as a city.

War Party

In a 1964 recorded phone conversation Lyndon Johnson tells Richard Russell, his mentor in national politics, that he would like to abandon Vietnam. But he repeats his decision to escalate because he feels the Republicans would damage him politically if he didn’t. No I’m not suggesting that Republicans bear primary responsibility for a war that is now widely considered a mistake. We’ve been told where the buck stops. I mention the incident as part of a pattern of which it may have been the beginning.

Every Democratic President since LBJ has been hounded and forced to “compromise” with considerable success by strident opposition that could hardly be called “loyal,” perhaps none more than the current White House occupant. The firing of Shirley Sherrod is the most recent evidence of this pattern. Obama had to have approved it, although I doubt he anticipated the disrespectful manner in which it was done.  Whatever his personal feelings, he was reacting to the sounds of the footsteps from the racist right. I believe similar fear from opposition hawks, rather than personal conviction, was the basis of his decision to send more troops to Afghanistan.

Intimidation by the political right has also been effective in Congress. Some Democrats who voted for the Iraq war resolution may have believed the “intelligence” presented by the Bush administration. In my opinion most were influenced by the fact that Republicans scheduled the vote two months before the 2002 elections while the country was still fired up by 9/11. The point can be made that every war from Vietnam until today has at least been stoked, if not initiated, by Republicans. Difference of opinion on military matters in general has broken consistently along party lines, if Congressional votes and polls are any indication.

The familiar GOP battle cry, “they all do it” doesn’t fit every situation. Roughing up and intimidating virgin presidents from the other party is a field of particular Republican expertise. Can you imagine Ronald Reagan or either of the Bushes receiving the treatment Obama is now getting? The civility once pervading politics has become a relic. Somebody should inform the Democrats.

Racism du Jour

There’s general agreement on the facts in Shirley Sherrod’s being fired by the Agriculture Department. Most of the commentary, which has come from the left, draws two conclusions; that foul play was used in editing the recording of Ms Sherrod’s speech and that the initial response by the administration and NAACP was craven. I agree with both. The intent of the caper was proving that anti white racism also exists among blacks. This is one of the few things on which I agree with these folks. So what else is new?

I find the following anecdote relevant. In 1994 six of us white males were customers on a charter fishing boat the day the O.J. Simpson acquittal was announced on our radio. The news was followed by a continuous stream of “nigger” jokes. Fishing was slow so the jokes continued to the point where I felt the need to interrupt. I mentioned that I was a jazz musician, that many of my heroes and friends were black and that I’d appreciate changing the subject. I was accommodated in my request. But not before receiving a “fuck you” from a man who later became solicitous to the point that I’m sure he was trying to make up for his incivility. Another later quietly told me that he understood and agreed with me.

How can anyone believe that there isn’t a black counterpart to this sort of interchange and why does the right feel the need to prove there is? Considering the physical response to the Rodney King verdict we can be sure there were some very unkind things said about us whites, or ”ofays” as we were called us in the old days. That’s pig Latin for foe. Not having been privy to any of these sessions, I’m curious what their current equivalent of the n word is. “This redneck (or cracker) says to the other….?”

Racism is with us, has been with us and will be for some time to come. On one hand it can be argued that more than two centuries of slavery and Jim Crow can’t be dismissed. On the other, most of today’s black Americans experienced neither, many have received some extra tax dollars and are at times beneficiaries of a modicum of preference in college admission and modest paying jobs. On balance it’s my opinion that, all things being equal, an American being born white still has been dealt a better hand.  

Prejudice is part of human nature and most of us are subjected to it in varying degrees. In a civil society it’s imperative to keep it within limits of respectability. Public figures exceeding these limits are not hard to identify. Picking Shirley Sherrod as one of them must have been a case of mistaken identity.