DON'T NEED ANY STINKING BADGES!

Yesterday our man appeared on Fox News Sunday. The Decider, referring to Republican ideology when he speaks of "....a philosophy that is compassionate and decent..." continues to insult. He, nor the supposedly intelligent Republican right, seem not to have an understanding of the condescending nature of their use of the word compassion. Are there rings to be kissed? Genuflections to be made? I don't remember the exact line fromTreasure of the Sierra Madre but there's a line that goes something like "Badges? We don't need any stinking badges!" Read compassion here. So go back to where ever you came from. Put your trailing ermine robe in storage and give your luggish ring of compassion to an appraiser who will tell you it's glass. Godspeed and enjoy retirement. (I just walked the dog and am listening to his last official news conference, and he is again referring to compassion. 'nuff already!)

Tom Paine

GRAVITAS AND LIKEABILITY

James Michael Curley

Poets, lawyers, and politicians, many of them I would think, successful ones, manifest a certain gravitas and likability. Gravitas? Several years ago political and social pundits were tripping over themselves in an effort to say gravitas first, or second, or third on the Sunday morning television news panels. The word is less heard still gravitas remains an element critical to a candidate's image. A stump speech, a formal speech, or impromptu banter are all enhanced when the speaker possesses this gravitas yet quickly is able to join it with wit. Gravitas sounds somewhat serious, so sober. But it is a bit of that. Yes gravity and...likability. Huckabee has it. Obama has it. Others don't. (Having said that, I think Hillary looked and sounded great on SNL during the campaign.)

James Michael Curley, a Mayor of Boston, was known for his oratory. When he campaigned his neck size increased so much that he needed a shirt with a larger collar. He was essentially a jump up street urchin who learned the hard way how to take the vote. Yes take. He learned to quote from literature and poetry. He might not have read the book but he was able to quote from it, make his point, and by inference his audience might consider him well educated. Poetry and literature were in his bag and well he used those clubs. (I golf). Abraham Lincoln. Imagine listening to him! To have been at Gettysburg, to have been at one of his debates with Douglas. A politician who aspires to high office or an ambitious lawyer would do well to study great speeches and continually study the art of debate. Although debating and attendant rhetorical skills are important and can be learned, gravitas and likability cannot.

Poets, politicians and lawyers (and their campaigners) leave us with unforgettable words:"Tippecanoe and Tyler too!", "I like Ike", "If the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit!" The poet? Well, as someone must win and someone must lose, look to Whittier who left us with "For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: It might have been."

Tom Paine

YOUNG LOVERS IN IRAQ

Dylan, Sinatra, Shakespeare,and Company

Words and phrases, from poems, songs, plays and other prose are often borrowed unconsciously, prompting and suffusing constant thoughts of loved ones far from home. The original intent of the author or artist is enhanced rather than corrupted.

Dylan’s “Boots of Spanish Leather” is poetry that can be shared today by lovers separated by war. It is timelessly beautiful and meaningful. The sweet sorrowful parting of lovers, even for a day, brings forth memory of Juliet and Romeo who parted with Romeo one evening wishing “I would I were a bird” implying constant presence. Juliet answered “Sweet, so would I/Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing./Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow/That I shall say good night till it be morrow.” Alas, today’s fifteen month partings promise no joyful near morrows for our loved ones be they wed, betrothed, or simply –simply, simply, simply loving life itself; some so young and offish that they haven’t finished falling out of love with themselves. Some wear stripes-some bars. Dylan’s lament, his phrasing, is timeless and immediate.

It was 1961, and Dylan played at the “Café Wha?” In Greenwich Village. My sister and her girlfriend were going to be at the Wha? to read some poetry they had written. We were less than half an hour away and Brian and I would check the Village out every once in a while. Knowing my sister would be at the Wha?, we checked it out. It was a coffee house and did not serve alcohol. My sister and her friend didn’t read their poetry yet and there was a performance going on; a guitar was probably part of what was going on. It was a while ago. Was Dylan there? Could have been but I don’t know and it would have been meaningless to me anyway. Like others he was just an unknown guy looking to play gigs. (I was in Asheville recently and that city really did remind me of the Village the way it was back then.) The Wha? Wasn’t the biggest place in the world-kind of small. This was not a doo wop environment which was my comfort zone. Interest in the Wha? I would guess was a bit of east coast wonderment at the west coast beatnik and flower power cultures. Some people couldn’t quite nail it down-that is, just what was going on then. I was one of those. I think it was rear view mirror kind of thing. It went by and only when you looked back did you realize what it was. Today I can listen to Dylan and enjoy him because I’ve learned to pay more attention to the lyrics. You can hear Dylan sing Boots and think of someone in Iraq.

Husbands and wives, sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, all of you, full of life and joy and wanting elusive and changing morrows, oh that your loved ones were present birds such as Romeo wished he were and that they had never left home. Distant changing morrows yield too frequent tears. Tears….
Forfend they come through Dover. Some come home early may pass through this place, unseen coffins en masse (no photographs said the Decider) of the debacle far away, the crime thus far of this young century. Those brave young lovers who pass through Dover, unable anymore to love in life, unable to share a sweet morrow with a lover, will always be in the hearts of their lovers and loved ones. And too there will be those tears -tears heartbreaking, gut wrenching, and inadequate. “Everybody Loves a Lover” sang Peggy Lee. And do we do. And we too cry.
Frank Sinatra sang a song about young lovers but not written in the context of war. Rodgers and Hammerstein captured a sense joy about young lovers and we might think of it as we think of our loved ones in Iraq. Sinatra expresses empathy and compassion. Change a word or phrase if you want (I will later) but the original lyrics convey to me this sense of caring and concern. I heard it the other night and thought immediately of our brave young in Iraq. Sometimes a melody or lyrics will take you to a place not intended by the singer or lyricist. Too, I thought of an earlier war and how it resolved with many dead loved ones-many dead lovers forever lost to their loves. He begins:
Hello young lovers whoever you are/I hope your troubles are few/All my good wishes go with you tonight/I’ve been in love like you
Be brave young lovers and follow your star/Be brave and faithful and true/Cling close to each other tonight/I’ve been in love like you
Not too many years later, Muhammad Ali, who by self- proclamation was known as “The Greatest”, wrote poetry:
Clean out my cell
And take my tail to jail
‘cause better to be in jail fed
Than in Vietnam, dead

It too was an unpopular war. The draft was in effect. He went to jail for a while and he lost his right to fight-for a while. And so wars go on and lovers are separated-for a while.

America grieves for sons and daughters lost in war regardless of the war’s cause or purpose. Comments on the debacle in Iraq require sensitivity to those who believe that lives lost are lives that were lost because of a justified war. To question the necessity of the war could be considered as saying the lives lost were wasted. Borrowing from Hammerstein America plaintively speaks:

Hello young lovers wherever you are.
I hope your troubles are few.
All my good wishes
Go with you tonight
I’ve been in a war before

Be brave young lovers and follow your star
Be brave and faithful and true
Cling close to each other tonight
I’ve been in a war like you

Tom Paine

An Arab She Said

An Arab she said. I went to bed after reading about Palin’s abuse of power. Waking up I had some convoluted memory of a dream. Some characters you just can’t forget and one of them is Captain Dudley (LA Confidential). Seems our socially ignorant Arab hater was transformed into a young soldier bleeding to death on a battlefield. A transfusion would save her but the only available soldier with her blood type was an Arab-American. Captain Dudley said the transfusion would save her but she would have none of it. She would not have that blood in her veins. Cradled in Captain Dudley’s arms her eyes were wide in fear as the good Captain placed his hands over her nose and mouth and said “Hush now dear and get on with your dying.” Staring into her eyes he was. And then, as a dream might go, he had a microphone in his hand and he said, “No, no. He is a good decent man with whom I have disagreements.” As Dudley morphs into John McCain, he hands the mike to another supporter and breaks into a sweat not knowing what the comment or question might be.

Tom Paine

PALIN'S PERSPECTIVE

A Great Shower Curtain
She just knows the wee nubbin out there is Russia.

I've been subscribing to the New Yorker, off and on, for years. I kept a cover that was a cartoon map of the United States from a New Yorker's perspective. It is in a box in an attic. It is torn here and there. Well it turned out the cover was very popular indeed. It became the basis for a shower curtain and was sold by the New Yorker for years. It still may be.

Looks like I have another keeper coming in the mail. A "Palin's Perspective" shower curtain?

Tom Paine

Mars Attacks

Mars Attacks!

It wants 800 billion ephemera*!

I’m reading about Palin and the wrecked economy on the Huffpost and there’s a movie “Mars Attacks” on too. Yes, I’m a Democratic elitist. The info screen says “It’s up to a handful of brave-but-zany goofy survivors to stop the onslaught.” Glen Close, Jack Nicholson, Danny DeVito, etc. are part of an ensemble cast; the movie was released in ’96. You might need to see it to appreciate this.

I drifted off. In my reverie a bunch of nasty Republicans have destroyed the economy and blame the people of earth (mostly American taxpayers). Their army, they call it the core, unleashes battalions of unibrow fundamentalists and southern racists advancing the flag of Sarah Palin, now Queen of the Unibrows, and Mumbles McSame who are dedicated to defeating a black candidate, a nice guy, seeking the highest office in the land. This is war. Security has been doubled at Saint Regan’s sepulcure at Valhalla.

Throughout all of this, the Republicans constantly play “Onward Christian Soldiers” which really gets the core going. Democrats counter with “Brother Can You Spare a Dime” which drives the Republicans nutty and they implode as they eat their young.

I woke up remembering most of what I dreamed. At the end, Obama and Biden were holding the key to the White House and a bag with an IOU stating “IOU 800 Billion ephemera* –get it off the taxpayers. Ha! Ha!” (signed) George Bush.

Tom Paine

*Ephemera is used instead of dollars. Tom paine will write more on this subject in the near future

GLOSS?

Gloss?

You wouldn't want to accuse either McCain or Palin of glossing over the facts for fear of their considering that they have been maligned by another reference to lipstick.

Can there be any doubt that we are looking at a ticket headed up by right wingers whose allegances are not with the common man and woman? I'd suggest that McCain and Palin express an obtuse understanding of this nation's living history that is counter to America's best interests, to our best interests. Being a war hero, being a governor,being a woman, being a man, being a mayor, being a senator, are nothing less than punch holes on a ticket that some would hope gives them entre to the highest office. The punch holes are meaningless if the bearers are, as the saying goes, intellectually dishonest.

In the current New York Review of Books, Andrew Hacker reviews three books on the disenfranchisement of blacks in America. Titled "Obama, The Price of Being Black," his piece tells us of successful efforts by the right to make it very difficult if not impossible for many black people to vote.

Look around and find someone who will need to be registered to vote and help them to register. Haunt them. Drive them to the ballot box. Get out the vote!

And if one wants to bring God into all of this, then thank God for a free press.

Tom Paine

Change In Washington, DC

Up Change

I sense the most successful at working for real change in Washington are the talented buskers who play music in the D.C. Metro stations. They brighten the day for grey bureaucrats and politicians. What a great way to start the day, helping buskers with change.

Unfortunately, the memory of music fades, soon overcome by the elegiac droning of bushspeak and govbull. Change becomes much less a goal than an unwanted interruption to a comfortable status quo.

Tom Paine

A KISS IN HAVANA

A KISS IN HAVANA

Sugar cane before the revolution

And the Coke we think we knew

The memory of the taste

Of a kiss under two straw hats

Away in Miami

Remembering

Tasting Coke and kisses

Remembering

After seeing Andy Garcia's Lost City

Tom Paine

Noonan, Rhetoric, and Red Pigs

This morning on "Morning Joe," Peggy Noonan expressed disdain over Barrack Obama's acceptance speech last night at the Democratic National Convention.

Noonan, Rhetoric, and Red Pigs.

I heard her. She only wishes she could have written it for Reagan. Rhetoric my butt. Isn't that what Reagan was about-rhetoric? Didn't Reagan read her rhetoric laden speeches?

Speeches she wrote for Reagan were delivered by a man who seemed to lack passion. Reagan the great orator was not that to me. I thought his delivery was wooden, hollow, Republicaneese wrapped in cliches and cute phraseology. Obama evidenced a passion never heard in Reagan. I hope he can achieve much of what he ambitions he might.

When Noonan had her problem with accusations of plagiarism, Imus graciously continued bringing her on his show. I listened and admired Imus for his constancy, believing Noonan and taking her at her word. I agree she probably did not do what she did intentionally. However, her evaluation of Obama's speech says much about her and, as she writes history, her negative comments seem worthy of at least a footnote in a history. I now know all I will ever, ever need to know of her.

Washington's a tough town with lots of little piggy's mucking about for a teat they can cling to for four years. It is the sows that need be kicked out of town. The piggys will follow. Pigs and sows dressed in red are the same nonetheless. I must say however (with an apology to Will Rogers), that I never met a blue pig I didn't like.

Tom Paine

She does seem to have some redemptive quality about her. Her Regan worship irks most. (Added 03/01/09)

HER OLD KENTUCKY HOME

Champagne from bottles explodes.

A festive crowd roars.

Eight Belles' ankles quietly pop

and the band plays on.

A trophy for an owner.

Silks to a wall.

A needle for Eight Belles

and the band plays on.

Tom Paine

BOHEMIA OF THE MIND

Here's an edited copy of an email I sent to an expat in a warm climate who had written a column recently that melded with thoughts on other recent reads. Will continue to edit. And edit.
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Thoughts converge on recent articles that have a common thread or two. Your column, "On Going Where Nothing Will Be the Same As It Used To Be" had me refer to these and I refer you to them.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21210: In "Finding a Lost Prince of Bohemia" Robert Danton writes of bohemian culture in Paris and other cities. The essay will be included in to be published "Les Bohemiens." Gypsies ( I think of your column here and elsewhere) are mentioned. A great piece of history this. It is online and the New York Review of Books to which I subscribe is a source of continuing enjoyment. NYRB maintains much of what it has currently published online. The essays and book views are enriching.

The thread I see here is that a bohemian culture, the arts fine and performing, have a place to be or to go to. Ergo the old Bohemias and the new ones. Bohemias are always with us whether they be of the mind or a place. It is the disappearing (though reborn elsewhere perhaps) of places that I find troubling. Some American cities did not survive urban renewal. Some places, some possible Bohemias are lost forever.


http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2008/07/hitchens200807: Well know as an atheist and criticized for being opinionated, I enjoy his perspective. In a recent Vanity Fair (I tip the postman at Christmas for his heavy bag) Hitchens wrote "Last Call, Bohemia: Entertainment and Culture." He writes of the West Village and places I know of and have been to or a least driven by many times. I was born and raised in Jersey City just outside the Holland Tunnel and worked and partied in New York. Just through the tunnel were pieces of a larger Bohemia: The Cafe Wha (my sister read poetry there, Dylan played there), the White Horse (a Behan haunt for short time) wound up a few blocks away hanging around the "No Name Bar"-it was on the way (kind of) to and from the Holland Tunnel). Shaft was filmed there and a scene shot in the "No Name" is in the movie. Had a run in there with a guy named Featherstone from 'The Westies', a gang from Hell's Kitchen. Scary-another story.

At the No Name, enjoyed a scotch with Jason Robards, Jr. It was after hours and he lived across the street. This was before the accident; he was still drinking. His bodyguard was former Secret Service and he said he was with Kennedy in Dallas. He wrote two books, The Detail and The Fourth Man. He moved to Canada. Both books were published in England. He died in Canada where he moved. Haven't read the Fourth Man yet. Wilson McCarthy his name. Intriguing. He was Secret Service but I cannot find reference to him; I looked all over the internet. He seems to have disappeared. A U.K. site had the book, The Fourth Man, available for 40 some odd dollars. This for what would seem to be an inexpensive potboiler. Intriguing. I digress.

I always thought The Village was just something else. Went to grad school at NYU and did not like seeing older buildings being torn down. I could go on here quite a bit but I won't. The point here is that Hitchens is bringing our attention to a nasty bit of business in NYC wherein 7th Avenue is being realigned. The O'Toole bullding he mentions is a wondrous looking building. Its windows resemble the portals on ships. It's hard by St. Vincent's Hospital where Jersey City girls went to work and study. Not far away the Waverly Theater would show movies that were not seen in many other theaters in the United States. One was "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" remains a favorite. The ending has a special meaning. We went our own ways and she is gone now.

Bohemians might seem to be running out of places to be in common. They will always have a certain commonality of mind, but perhaps not one of place. Cities should preserve their storefronts and walkups. New high rise construction should include storefront occupancies and every effort should be made to promote and integrate the arts into urban renewal, into new development.

I am thinking of the Jersey City waterfront where we went skinny dipping in the '50's. It was a coal pier and right across from the undreamed of World Trade Center. In fact when the WTC was built, many small shops and homes were demolished. I worked too in Manhattan (the Home Insurance Company) and remember taking lunch down at the East River. I'd doff my shirt, tee, and tie and lay out on a pier in the summer. I ate lobster outside, on an outside counter of a corner seafood store. Sloppy Louie's was nearby (gone now) and of course this was all happening during the daytime when the Fulton Street Fish Market was asleep; it was fully awake at 0' dark thirty though and the area was transformed. What a sight. We would go to watch the mongers after closing time in the pubs. It is gone now too. It is now in Hunts Point where by coincidence the old produce market (worked there one night-enough) went years ago. The old market was in......the village.

As I review what I write here, I need to not that I am not intending to speak of myself, per se; rather offerieng a reflection of experiences and observations of a Bohemian environment.

A recent story in the Jersey Journal (Jersey City) spoke of the high cost of living in Jersey City and the need for less expensive housing for municipal employees. I won't digress on the horrible crime rate in the city and wish proponents luck. Jersey City was never demolished by urban renewal. There are housing projects and they are coming down (some have) and other kinds of housing will be built. Friendly housing. No more twenty story cages. Places for a Bohemia still exist. I ponder, we might be too close to Bohemia to realize we are in it.

Downtown, the city is alive with new places to eat and venues for the fine and performing arts. There seems to be more of them since I left 25 years ago. New Yorkers coming over in droves. I remember the city very well. Many storefronts are in place, ripe for young businesses. We had garrets, I know where there are still a few. The city is always having a discussion with builders who want more building and less retention of historical place.

I memorized the streets in my district. I walk the city in my thoughts. It was a great place to grow up. I wished my daughters could have experienced it. It's a long, very long story.

Anyway, I recommend the two articles to you. Hitchens by the way has prompted me to write a bit and idle thoughts may be found at http://painesense.blogspot.com/. I use Tom Paine as a nom de plume. Paine's writing was not, to the best of my memory, referred to in the Catholic schools I went to. I understand why. Talk about living a provincial life.

You mentioned Baldwin and Stein. When Baldwin went to Paris, he left a city, New York, that was always a bit of Paris. And Stein too could have had her salon in New York, still and always an attraction for artists and writers. Doubtless she had a leg up acquiring new art and meeting avant garde artists. Bohemia is important as a place, yet it is the bohemians who make it that place. Like gypsies, they will wander. Especially if their garrets are bulldozed or the rents go up. Make experiences a place to be. Cull the good from the bad; ditch the baggage; keep the suitcase. Have we not, some of us, a Bohemia of the mind?

Pictured above is Kiki by Mann Ray. She was know as the 'Queen of Montparnasse.' She was an artist, model, and cabaret singer who was the symbol of bohemian Paris. The Man Ray photo will be remembered in advertisements for the broadway play 'Oh Calcutta.'

Tom Paine

PICTURE OF MITT "DORIAN" ROMNEY

A Portrait of Mitt "Dorian" Romney (Also known as Portrait of a Flip Flopper)

The portrait in the attic is true to Mitt's bare soul,
and it's really quite dramatic to see this hidden toll.
Some blues have turned to red,
and his head's a bit awry.

An eye has gone to bed,
and an ear is on his tie.
As oils run in that dark place,
on a portrait kept at bay.
Romney runs a heated race,
a race to lose on a clear bright day.

(Regards to Oscar Wilde, author of "The Picture of Dorian Grey")

McCain could use a Vice President with financial smarts who might help him fix the economy that the Bush administration has trashed. Romney is one of those guys who doesn't care much for the working man or woman. He is totally focused on business. There seems to be a a certain meanness about him. Something about this guy. Last time he rang my bell was a crack he made about unions.

It's easy to think of Romney as the official in charge of the execution of Eddie Slovik in WWII. I see him stopping the order to shoot because he hears Slovik praying. He runs up to Slovik and rips the beads from his hands and he is so agitated that he right then gives the order to shoot.

Tom Paine

THE TALL AND SHORT OF IT

On July 26th, the Commission on Presidential Debates proposed that two of three scheduled debates have the candidates seated. At 6'1" a standing Obama would seem to have some advantage over McCain who is 5'9" (some say less). It is thought that such a format would soften the differences in height and offset what might be an advantage to Obama.

Differences in appearances juxtaposed could lead to unfair assumptions. Think of Rostand's Cyrano. With no willful insult to McCain, rather a tongue in cheek comment, may I suggest that Christopher Smith, in "The Author Apologizes to a Lady [read electorate here] for His Being a Little Man," writes in part:

Yes, contumelious fair, you scorn The amorous [little man]* that courts you to his arms,

But ere, you leave him quite forlorn,

And to some youth gigantic yield your charms [your vote],

Hear him-oh hear him, if you will not try,

And let your judgement check th' ambition of your eye.

*A substitution here for a word that might be offensive

Tom Paine