Tag: John McCain

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Life is Long. Life is Short.

CREDIT: Christopher Halloran | Dreamstime.com

As I write this, the news is full of stories about Donald Trump googling himself at 5:30 a.m., not liking the results, and subsequently tweeting that Google was biased because most of the news about himself was “bad.” That darn Google. So unfair.

I don’t even know where to begin in order to process that level of narcissistic ignorance.

The news is also full of stories about Senator John McCain, who died of brain cancer this week and was honored by friend and foe alike for his service to the country. Except for one foe, of course — President Trump — who had to have his arm twisted before lowering the flag over the White House and issuing a brief statement noting McCain’s service. Trump likes heroes who weren’t captured.

Christopher Halloran | Dreamstime.com

Senator John McCain

Meanwhile, the MAGA supporters and ‘bots were busy spreading scurrilous posts on social media about McCain being a traitorous “songbird” who “broke” while captured by the North Vietnamese and gave information that caused the deaths of American servicemen. These claims, which were initially created by political operatives during McCain’s presidential primary run against George W. Bush, have been thoroughly debunked. But that didn’t stop the lies from being spread by people who wouldn’t last two minutes under interrogation by my high school gym teacher.

I met McCain once, in the spring of 1986. I was flying to Phoenix, where I was going to spend three days hanging out with a young baseball player named Barry Bonds for a Pittsburgh magazine cover story. Sitting behind me were two men who spent the entire time we were airborne talking about politics. They were animated, and seemed to be in the know. As we prepared to deplane, one of the men stood up and began shaking hands with his fellow passengers. “Good to meet you, Congressman,” the passengers said. “Good luck, Congressman.”

It was McCain, then an Arizona representative, who was running for the Senate seat he would win and hold until his death, 32 years later. He reached out to shake my hand and I wished him luck, though I had no idea who he was at the time, and didn’t much care.

I had more interesting things to do, like spending the next few days hanging with the young man who would go on to post the greatest hitting stats of any modern baseball player. At that time, he was an eager kid, living in an apartment in Tempe with a kitten, thrilled to have been drafted by the Pirates, and excited to be the subject of a magazine story.

My main take-aways were Bonds’ love for the obscure movie, Enemy Mine, and his hours-long daily training regimen, which included the astounding practice of swinging at baseballs with a sledgehammer. Like I say, nice kid. We posed him with a sledgehammer on the cover.

After the story came out, I got a sweet note from Bonds’ mother. After that, her son proceeded to hit 762 home runs in 21 years, more than any man in history, before retiring in disgrace in 2007, tainted by the steroids scandal. His head got really big, in more ways than one.

So, is there a point here? I’m not sure, except that life is long and life is short and nobody’s perfect. And the way you feel about someone can change over time. I grew to dislike Bonds after subsequent encounters with him, though I always respected his talent — until it became obvious that he himself didn’t respect it enough to play by the rules.

I respected McCain, though I didn’t often agree with his politics. He reminded me of my father’s Republican party — conservative, cranky, and principled, for the most part — a necessary balance in a two-party system. I respected the fact that McCain saw through Trump’s blather, even if he didn’t always stand up against it as I wished he would.

But he’s gone now. The two men who defeated McCain in his attempts to win the presidency will speak at his funeral. And the president who didn’t think McCain was a hero will sit and fume — and google himself — as a good man’s body lies in state in the Capitol Rotunda.

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Taking a Knee …

CREDIT: Traceywood | Dreamstime

Last Thursday, my wife and I were driving to my Missouri hometown to celebrate my stepmom’s 97th birthday. We were listening to NPR on Sirius, and much of the news and commentary concerned President Trump’s then-recent speech in Alabama, in which he said that any NFL owner who had a player on his team who knelt for the National Anthem, should “fire the son of a bitch!”

The president’s agenda was clear: If you kneel, you’re a flag-disrespecting son of a bitch. If you stand, you stand with real Americans and, of course, with Donald Trump. NASCAR fans wouldn’t kneel, Trump added, further finessing the not-so-hidden racial element of his Alabama speech.

It was red meat for all. Here you go, Fox! Here you go, CNN! Have at it, NPR! Your news cycle is set, courtesy of President Blowhard.

My wife and I listened to this stuff for a while, but we soon tired of it and turned it off. We began talking about Mom and her long and interesting life. She was a woman ahead of her time, serving in World War II as a sergeant in the U.S. Marines. After the war, she worked as a secretary in various companies in St. Louis, before moving to my home town in the early 1950s, where she met and married my dad. She got three very young boys with that deal: me and my two brothers. Three little hellions, to be honest.

It can’t have been easy, but she was a firm and caring mother, and she and dad had more than 50 years together — and my sister. After my dad died, Mom kept going, driving her pristine vintage Buick to the grocery store and church and taking long walks around my hometown. We had to take the car away last year, and in recent months, her health had declined. She was living in a rehabilitation facility after suffering a broken hip in August.

Most years, the family gathers from around the country for Mom’s September 24th birthday — my brothers, my sister, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. My wife and I arrived Thursday night. Mom died at 6:30 Friday morning. So, what was going to be a birthday weekend became a family gathering for a funeral. We buried her Monday. There were plenty of tears, but there was laughter, too. At two days short of 97, she’d had a life well-lived and one well worth celebrating. She was always frugal and Midwest-practical; we decided she just went ahead and passed, knowing we were all going to be in town, anyway, thereby saving us a trip.

Semper Fi, Mom.

On the way home, the radio pundits were still parsing the NFL/anthem controversy. Trump had kept feeding the fire over the weekend, alternating insults of NBA and NFL players with insults of Senator John McCain, an American war hero and Republican who’d had the nerve to call out the GOP’s “health-care” bill for the sham that it is.

Trump has made a habit of disparaging McCain, of course, most famously by saying in 2015, “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” This, from a man who got out of serving his country by claiming he had flat feet. What a patriot.

Trump has crossed the line of human decency so often and so egregiously, that his stupidity and cruelty have become almost normalized. Trashing a dying man who’s served his country for 60 years is just par for the course for this unrepentent dotard.

Like Senator McCain, my Mom served her country, and like McCain, she was a life-long Republican. And though she would be horrified by the words, I like to think even Mom might agree that when it comes to this president, it’s time to fire the son of a bitch.

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Editorial Opinion

Geniune Vetting of Trump Cabinet Nominees Needed

CREDIT: Senator Jeff Sessions

At his annual “issues meeting” with constituents from his 9th Congressional District on Monday, Memphis Congressman Steve Cohen called the roll of what he saw as unsatisfactory or outright dangerous cabinet officer-designates named by Donald Trump, and Cohen’s list was fairly inclusive of the President-elect’s entire list.

Those singled out by the Congressman included Attorney General-designate Jeff Sessions, who, he said, had been wrong on civil rights and civil liberties issues when the Senate rejected him as a potential federal judge in the 1980s and was “no better” now; climate-change rejector Scott Pruitt as director of the Environmental Protection Agency; Betsy DeVos, an advocate of for-profit charter schools, as Secretary of Education; and former Texas Governor Rick “Oops” Perry, who has extensive ties to the oil and gas industries, for Secretary of Energy.

Senator Jeff Sessions

Not mentioned specifically by Cohen but equally suspect, surely, are Secretary of the Treasury-designate Steven Mnuchin, a banker with close ties to financial-industry members who advocate loosening government restrictions on Wall Street; Secretary of Labor-designate Andy Puzder, a disbeliever in the minimum wage; Secretary of Commerce-designate Wilbur Ross, an investor best known as a “turnaround artist”;  Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson, who publicly confesses knowing nothing about his subject; Secretary of Health and Human Services-designate Tom Price, a former congressman known for his opposition to the Affordable Care Act and public health measures; and Secretary of State-designate Rex Tillerson, the Exxon Mobil oil mogul whose ties with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin are notorious.

Most ominous of all is probably Trump’s choice for National Security Advisory, former Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, whose erratic views caused him to be forced out as Defense Intelligence Agency head and whose son, with apparent paternal approval, has been a public advocate of some of the more monstrous examples of “fake news,” like the canard that Bill and Hillary Clinton were running a child-kidnapping ring out of a Washington D.C., pizza joint.

Unfortunately, the senior Flynn is not subject to Senate confirmation. The other mentioned Trump appointees are, however, and can in theory be rejected in the formal hearings that begin this week. The chances of that happening in a body dominated by Republicans is not great, but Cohen raised at least a modicum of hope when he suggested the names of several Republican senators who might be moderate or open-minded enough to join Senate Democrats in holding up some of the more noxious Trump nominations.

The names were those of Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine, John McCain and Jeff Flake of Arizona. Cohen added, with what sounded like genuine wistfulness, the names of Tennessee’s own Republican Senators, Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander.

Though it is axiomatic these days that no Republican will admit to being “moderate” or anything quite so sissified-sounding to GOP ears, Corker and Alexander do, like Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam, enjoy a reputation for relatively fair-mindedness. We join Cohen in hoping that our two senators can rise to the occasion in applying a genuine acid test to the nominees of President-elect Trump.

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Editorial Opinion

Onward into Trumpland!

Well, here it is: 2017. And anybody entering this new year who is optimistic about the state of things in America and around the world is by definition a Trump voter. The rest of us have forebodings out the kazoo — no few of them having to do with the man whose two most famous resolutions are to build a wall and to make American great again.

The outlines of the wall are already evident. The problem is that the one Trump has already begun to construct is not the one he promised to build between the U. S. and Mexico. That one, we suspect, will remain within the boundaries of myth. We doubt that the GOP barons of privilege who rule Congress will sacrifice the revenues needed to finance that boondoggle — unless they can conjure up a way to siphon tax dollars to various well-connected construction companies. No, the real wall is the barrier the soon-to-be-president of all of us has erected between the separate parts of this nation. When Time magazine gave the Huckster-in-Chief his due, naming him Person of the Year, it referred to him on the cover as “President-elect of the Divided States of America.”

That’s about right. And the division is not just the one exposed in the widening electoral rift between the blue states of the two coasts and the red states of the hinterland, but between those of us who trust in some form of verifiable reality and those for whom such a regard is beside the point. Like the Red Queen in Lewis Carroll’s Though the Looking Glass, the Donald  can say “Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” And said twice as many more.

Can Trump really believe, apropos his loss of the popular vote by the grand total of nearly 3 million voters, that that formidable gap consisted entirely of “illegal” voters? Does he have any evidence to support that, or his famous claim that climate change is a “hoax” perpetrated by the Chinese? Or, most recently and notoriously, that the entire intelligence-gathering apparatus of the government he is about to head is mistaken in its painstaking conclusion that the Russian government engaged during the election in internet hacking on his behalf?

It is this last assertion, along with Trump’s dangerous and foolhardy reliance on the good faith of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, that exposes the sheer presumption of his campaign slogan about making America “great” again. There is nothing great or even tolerable about the concept of hitching our nation’s future to the whims of a despot who even now is bringing death and destruction to innocent civilians in Syria, undermining the independence of his neighbor nations, and doing his best to undermine the historic shield of NATO.

There is a silver lining, and it goes by the name of bipartisanship. Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham are now touring the threatened nations of Eastern Europe in an effort to reassure the worried populations and governments there that America will not forsake them. There are glimmers of hope, too, that there are enough concerned Republicans in Congress to join with Democrats in thwarting the more reckless domestic plans of the new president.

The statement was often made, after our nation had passed through the ordeal of Watergate, that “the system works.” We suspect it’s in for another test now — a big one. Happy New Year, and buckle your seat belts.

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Editorial Opinion

Donald Trump: The Manchurian Candidate

The outcome of the 2016 presidential campaign was already regarded as nightmarish by various blocs of Americans — and not just those who call themselves Democrats. But the persistence of President-elect Donald Trump’s bizarre affinity to and connection with Russia has become unnerving to increasing numbers of his constituents-to-be, including members of Trump’s adopted Republican Party.

As evidence continues to emerge indicating that Trump’s relationship with Russia, America’s longstanding national adversary, might be something more ominous than an unseemly flirtation of the mutual-admiration sort with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, the GOP’s congressional leadership itself is being forced to take notice. That includes no less a figure than Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose adamantine resistance to incontrovertible facts uncovered by the CIA prevented a pre-election joint congressional statement affirming Russian responsibility for acts of espionage and sabotage against Democrat Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

Yes, we said “espionage” and “sabotage.” What other words are appropriate to describe the organized invasion of private email correspondence and the carefully directed leaks that clearly achieved the obvious goal of casting doubts on candidate Clinton’s bona fides and crippling her prospects? If there was communication or, worse, complicity between some members of Trump’s campaign entourage and the Russians, the question becomes whether treasonous activity took place.

Trump’s behavior bears undeniable echoes to the general circumstances depicted in the classic novel/film The Manchurian Candidate, which concerns an unfriendly foreign power’s Trojan-horse plot to implant its own man in the White House. Let us count the ways: Candidate Trump calls for a rethinking, perhaps even a scuttling, of NATO’s traditional function as a multi-national security buffer; he lets no opportunity pass to make fawning public statements about Putin or to suggest that a profitable strategy for the future is to make common cause with the Russians. (That word “profitable” is on purpose, too — especially for someone like Trump who imagines all international questions to revolve around “deals.”)

Trump not only went out of his way to douse suspicions that the Kremlin was the source of the unending Wikileaks revelations plaguing his opponent, he actually made (however facetious) a public plea that the Russians turn up missing emails from Clinton’s private server!

Now, he stands victorious, happily making fox-in-the-henhouse appointments to head every important cabinet post — none more eyebrow-raising than Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State, an oil-and-gas tycoon whose background in foreign affairs consists mainly of his long-term friendship with Putin. 

Already there were Republicans such as Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham ready to pin down Trump for his breaches.  But for McConnell to come forward is revealing. Responding to Trump’s continued denial of untoward conduct and his spiteful remarks about the nation’s intelligence community, the majority leader said, “Any foreign breach of our cyber-security measures is disturbing, and I strongly condemn any such efforts. The Russians are not our friends. I have the highest confidence in the intelligence community,” and, most significantly, that “this simply cannot be a partisan issue.”

The smell of fish is in the air.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Blind Trust

CREDIT: Reuters | Yuri Gripas

As Thanksgiving approaches, the country is still feeling the fallout from our recent national election. Around 25 percent of the country’s eligible voters are displeased with the results of the presidential race, while 25 percent are pleased. The other 50 percent of the voting pool declined to participate. Thanks, idiots.

For the second time in 16 years, the candidate who won the presidential popular vote lost the election, meaning the country as a whole is now as gerrymandered as most states are.

It isn’t going to change soon, not when the winning party has all the levers of power. There’s going to be a President Trump, for better or for worse, and we’re going to have to adjust to what promises to be a very challenging near-future.

As he demonstrated during his campaign, Trump has little regard for traditional political behavior. With this president-elect, everything is personal, and his skin is remarkably thin. We can only pray that his handlers — and Congress — can find the courage to restrain his more impulsive behavior.

The past two weeks have not been encouraging. Trump has complained relentlessly via Twitter about Saturday Night Live, the cast of Hamilton, and The New York Times all being “unfair.” He called in the top brass and on-air talent of all the major networks to Trump Tower, Monday, for an off-the-record meeting at which he called CNN “liars” and chastised NBC News for using an unflattering picture of him that Trump said made him appear as if he had multiple chins. Trump hasn’t held a press conference since July.

Meanwhile, in the federally owned Ronald Reagan building in Washington, D.C., Richard Spencer, the head of a white supremacist group calling itself the National Policy Institute, gave a speech in which he shouted, “Hail Trump, hail our people, hail our victory!” (You know how to say “hail” in German, right?) He went on to call the media “lügenpresse,” the nazi name for press critics, and added several anti-Semitic comments. The speech ended with the audience applauding wildly and giving Spencer the one-armed Hitler salute. In a federal building.

Spencer calls his group “alt-right.” As a critic said this week, that’s like calling a pool of vomit “alt-brunch.” They are nazis, and, like the KKK, they feel it’s now safe to come into the light because of Trump’s victory.

Also problematical for Trump — and the Constitution — is his vast network of businesses around the globe, which present unprecedented risks of conflicts of interest for the new president, who will be dealing with many national leaders from countries where he has operations. In the past, presidents have put their financial interests in a blind trust, so as to avoid any possible appearance of self-interest while serving the country. Trump, on the other hand, has said he will leave the control of his business empire to his children, but he’s also made it clear his children will be involved in his administration, so we will have to blindly trust that he and his children will never discuss the family business. Sure.

It’s one thing to flout the traditional rules of campaigning — revealing your tax returns, for example — and quite another to flout the constitutional rules that restrain a president from accepting favors from a foreign government, which is classified as treason by the Constitution. The bottom line is that we will need to rely on what statesmen remain in the GOP to stand up for what’s right, arguably a thin reed to lean upon.

Still, at your Thanksgiving table, it might be prudent to say a little prayer for Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain and any other lawmakers who might find the courage to do the right thing when called upon. It’s either that or blind trust.

I miss the “war on Christmas” already.

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Editorial Opinion

Viva The Donald

The Republican Party, the pundit class, the news-watching public of the United States — nay, the wide, wide world — all these have to be wondering right now just how long Donald Trump, the deal-making Manhattan billionaire and reality-show celebrity, can do the bumblebee trick of staying airborne in the presidential race without visible means of either navigation or flotation.

Come to think of it, The Donald actually somewhat resembles a bumblebee in his general contours and coloration, not to mention the nuisance factor he presents to the over-fastidious.

Some might say that the real question is not how long Trump might stay in that rarefied air but how he got there in the first place. Let us suggest that both questions have the same answer. It is Trump’s unparalleled self-confidence — or, as some might put it, his unmitigated gall.

Unmitigated: That’s an interesting word, and a key one in coming to an understanding of the Trump phenomenon. It is beginning to be obvious that nothing Donald Trump is, does, or says is mitigated in the slightest, or ever has been.

Does what he say on any political subject under the sun make sense — from Mexican “rapists” to the unheroic nature of legendary American P.O.W.’s to the hormonal influence on female TV anchors who ask him pesky questions? Of course not. Are the opinions he expresses today from the stump — on subjects ranging from abortion to government subsidies to intervention in foreign countries — the same as he used to express back when he considered himself a Democrat? (Look it up, folks. That part of his life is fairly recent.) Once again, of course not.

But that’s part of the Trump magic. Not only has he been able to adjust to the overcooked atmosphere of today’s Republicanism, one gathers he could just as well proclaim himself a socialist or a vegetarian candidate and make it seem perfectly acceptable to his rabid admirers.

Interestingly, Trump’s crowds are as delighted to see him come off the top of his head with the non-sequiturs that happen to occur to him on the stump as are, on the Democratic side, the throngs that are now coming out to see and hear Bernie Sanders, a legitimate and coherent bona fide socialist, who knows exactly what he thinks and why.

That Trump’s extraordinary confidence is based only in himself, while Sanders’ is based on his belief in his politics is beside the point. Neither man is premeditating or calculating anything. They are just being who they are, sans focus groups, pollsters, consultants, Venn diagrams, fund-raising mavens, or what-have-you.

We like watching The Donald for the same reason as everybody else, evidently. He’s high-handed, vain, pompous, etc., etc., just as he was when, for the most arbitrary of reasons, he would decide which sycophantic celebrity to “fire” on his TV show. But, he is unfiltered. A rare thing, indeed, in this era of bought-and-packaged pols.

Do we want him to win? Oh no, we’re not crazy, but we enjoy seeing him rattle the cages. And we have faith: There’s got to be a high side to all this. Maybe the national GOP will have to rebuild from scratch. Now that would be the ticket!

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant (September 18, 2014)

A few months ago, no one outside of the defense establishment had ever heard of ISIS, but now that the president has offered a strategy to combat these barbaric psychopaths, the right-wing geniuses in Congress and every talking blonde-head on Fox News has suddenly become an expert on Middle East foreign policy.

It’s clear that the terrorist organization has become an existential threat to the U.S. Recently, an ISIS leader paraphrased George W. Bush, saying, “You are either with us or we will kill you.” Their savagery has again taken this nation back into a sectarian war, and if that is the case, the reactionary Obama haters need to sit down and shut up. When the criminal Bush invaded Iraq under false pretenses, he was at least given the courtesy of bipartisan support before his lies were exposed. No such support for Obama.

An editorial appeared in the New York Times, composed by John McCain and Lindsey Graham, the Abbott and Costello of war-mongers. It attempted to goad the president into stronger action, including more American troops on the ground. After Obama’s televised address outlining plans for assembling a coalition to join the fight, a speech, by the way, which could easily have been given by G. Dubya, Graham ran to Fox News Sunday and said, “Our strategy will fail yet again. The president needs to rise to the occasion before we all get killed here at home.”

The ‘Bama-bashers first took issue with the president for using the term ISIL, instead if ISIS. I was baffled too and had to Google it for myself. So, ISIS means the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria; ISIL stands for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Which raises another question: Levant is an antiquated term used mainly by archaeologists, meaning the area currently in conflict, but also including Palestine and Israel. The apocalyptic conspiratorialists went blotto, claiming Obama had a hidden agenda. One end-of-times website said, “When Obama refers to the Islamic State as ISIL, he is sending a message to Muslims all over the Middle East that he personally does not recognize Israel as a sovereign nation, but as territory belonging to the Islamic State… Obama’s ultimate goal is the destruction of Israel.”

Really? Another article credited to the Fox News staff joined the argument over the president’s choice of words. A massive mob of jihadist maniacs are running wild in Iraq and Syria, committing mass killings, public executions, beheadings, and crucifixions, and the conservative crazies over at Fox are arguing over semantics. Meanwhile, Obama has killed more terrorists than sand fleas and crotch rot.

These three gruesome videos of a knife-wielding, British-sounding ISIS terrorist, who will soon be known as “ashes in a keffiyeh,” are meant to goad the West into sending in ground troops as targets. Aside from our Special Forces who, to no one’s surprise, are already there, these savages aren’t worth sacrificing a single soldier for. In this case, Obama’s strategy is correct — use air strikes and drone the hell out of them. Recently, I viewed a video online that was either leaked or classified because it was quickly taken down. It showed the view from a U.S. helicopter warship over a camp of ISIS killers, scurrying like rats in a barn while being targeted and blown to hell by our military. I must admit, it was the most engrossing thing I’ve seen online in a while.

We have the technology to halt the advances of this group of disaffected men without women, but the need for ground troops is the subject of the current Paris Conference. Muslim countries need to combat this threat directly, but the cavalry isn’t coming — not from our dear friends the Saudis, or the Turks, or the United Arab Emirates — the “Coalition of the Threatened.” Our military claims that an army of Shiite Muslims is necessary to fight the Sunni dominated ISIS militia.

Y’all know me. I’m a leftist peace-nic. There hasn’t been a war since Vietnam that I haven’t opposed. But these thrill-killers are a different animal. This is a moral issue. Remember the first Gulf War after Iraq invaded Kuwait and Poppy Bush drew a line in the sand? You could question the motives for the war, but not the conduct of the operation. Under the direction of General “Stormin’ Norman” Schwarzkopf, a force of 675,000 troops from 28 countries was assembled to fight Hussein’s brutally loyal Republican Guard. After getting their asses kicked out of Kuwait, the Iraqi army retreated in a single-file column, making it easy for U.S. fighter jets to transform them into one long smoking strip of bacon in the desert. I’ve noticed the same single-file progression of ISIS through Iraq. Perhaps the Schwarzkopf strategy can be dusted off one more time and air strikes could be used to create even more lines of crispy critters in the sand. Better still, the CIA could start a blood feud between ISIS and Al Qaeda and let them shoot it out among themselves. There is no negotiating with someone missing their soul. It may come as a surprise, but this pacifist says, “Smoke ’em.” Nothing deters a terrorist quite like death.

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Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

CREDIT: Christina71087 | Dreamstime.com

People crack me up. Really, when I see some people, my skin starts to crack up. Well, not really. But for the love of all the things in this world that I couldn’t care less about — fancy furniture, quitting smoking, keeping a spotless house, who has the best nachos, whether there are billboards in Germantown,
anything that comes out of John McCain’s mouth, riding a unicycle, doing yard work, shopping, Zydeco music, sending Christmas cards, ever setting foot again in the Atlanta airport (well, I do care about that because I’d rather be forced to look at naked photos of John McCain), other people’s dreams, people’s photos of their kids and vacations, video games, action movies, donuts, Lady Gaga, those people on Duck Dynasty, any reality television show, gun rights, exercise, and a whole slew of other things the thought of which makes me yawn — there are just some people who defy explanation.

Christina71087 | Dreamstime.com

Lady Gaga

I just read about Trinity United Methodist Church in Midtown getting a citation for allowing six homeless people to spend the night there because the church doesn’t occupy at least five acres, and I am fairly baffled. I’m baffled as to why a church needs to sit on five acres of land to allow a handful of homeless people to have a hot meal and a good night’s sleep. Who came up with that ordinance and why five acres? It’s not like they are going to be out there farming or horseback riding. They are just inside, where it’s warm, resting, and not bothering anyone. I think I’m even more baffled by the people who don’t think homeless people should be helped in residential neighborhoods. Personally, I don’t think SUVs with private school stickers should be allowed in residential neighborhoods. But that’s just me.

I have an idea for helping the homeless that has been keeping me up at night. I’ll never have the money to make this idea happen, so I’m going to toss it out there. I’m sure there will be plenty of comments posted later telling me that I have the IQ of an eggplant, but I couldn’t care less about them either.

I think someone needs to buy the old French Quarter Inn in Overton Square and turn it into a really chic, contemporary boutique hotel and have it all operated by homeless men and women, only they wouldn’t be homeless anymore because they would live there too. At least for a time until they saved enough money from their new jobs to get their own houses or apartments.

The hotel would be named SHELTER. Formerly homeless employees would move in and start going through a training program. Counseling and other services would be available. All employees would be provided with uniforms just like any other hotel, only they would be very stylish, and they would have access to free dry cleaning and laundry services. Of course, some of them would work in dry cleaning and laundry services, just like any other hotel.

SHELTER would have a warm but modern restaurant named the Soup Kitchen, and the menu would focus on seasonal gourmet soups, maybe eight different ones a day and some mainstays, and they would be served with various crostini, salads, and small plates. There couldn’t be a bar because alcohol and homelessness don’t mesh too well in lots of cases. But it would be a really nice restaurant, and who wouldn’t want to go to a restaurant that specialized in soups? I wish there was one of those, in any case. All of the hotel staff would have breakfast together every morning and discuss the plans for the day. Guests would be treated like they would at any ritzy hotel, down to the last detail.

The marketing plans for SHELTER would be geared toward socially conscious travelers who, I think, would love to stay in a hotel like this and would pay above-average rates knowing they were helping support this cause. And it would be, after all, right there in Overton Square, where there is so much to do and so many places to eat and drink. But the hotel would also offer live entertainment for its guests and for regulars. Memphis can’t seem to get it together and have one club dedicated to just jazz, so maybe it could become known for its live jazz.

As new employees came on board, the seasoned, formerly homeless employees would mentor and train them. In essence, they would feel a sense of ownership in the hotel. Of course, all of this would have to be a nonprofit entity and operate through grants and other funding sources for some time until the hotel became self-sustaining, like many nonprofit organizations. It could collaborate with other for-profit hotels. There would be a board of directors to oversee and guide the project, but essentially the staff would make most of the important decisions and definitely run the day-to-day operations without much oversight after a while.

Think about it. If you were traveling to another city and making your plans and you ran across a high-quality website that showed a beautiful hotel in the middle of a vibrant entertaining and dining district and you saw that it was a nonprofit operated by formerly homeless people, wouldn’t you want to stay there? I know I would.

Now, someone with some loot make this happen and make it a model for other cities and let this be one more good thing for which Memphis is known. As far as I can tell, no one has done this yet.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

In Florida, awhile back, Senator John McCain said, “I’m sorry to tell you, my friends, but there will be other wars.”

Who’s supposed to fight in these wars? Not our current military, which is stretched to the limit. Not me or my generation; we’re still busy fighting over the Vietnam War and the domestic cultural shifts that arose because of that bloody conflict. We’ve been doing that for 40 years now, partly because of the disrespect directed toward the soldiers who were sacrificed by the “Greatest Generation” for dubious causes and because of the fight over what determines “patriotism” when you find your country is engaged in an immoral conflict. American participation in Vietnam ended in 1973 but not before 58,000 men, average age 19, perished.

The terrible costs of Vietnam were never resolved at home. We decided it was better not to talk about such unpleasantness and went on a decade-long disco and cocaine bender instead.

I swore that when I grew older, I would never say, “When I was your age …” to a young person. But I will anyway. When I was your age, we were at war. A despised president put us there. Then an attractive candidate emerged who was adored by the young. He was a champion of the destitute and the downtrodden. Bobby Kennedy promised to end the war and bring our soldiers home in order to concentrate on the growing domestic unrest exploding in every major city. The similarities between 1968 and 2008 are striking, with two exceptions: 1) The draft was feeding my peers who weren’t able to take refuge in college into a meat grinder; 2) the voting age was 21. Despite being only 20, I had been drafted and was emotionally invested in Kennedy’s candidacy. You can imagine how crushed we were when he was murdered in Los Angeles.

Deeply dispirited, my generation chose to withdraw from politics, ensuring the election of Richard Nixon, five more years of war, and 20,000 more dead American soldiers.

There are a lot of “what ifs” in this life. Young people voting in large numbers then could have literally saved lives. My generation, which once believed we were going to transform the world, blew it — big-time. Nixon’s bag of “dirty tricks” soon turned people cynical about their government, and “wedge politics” were used for the first time — and they worked. We have been divided ever since. You can help change that now, if you remember two things: Assume nothing — this race is far from over — and do not discount the importance of your actions. Go to the polls as if your single vote were going to determine the outcome and bring a friend with you.

You’ve seen the best and the worst of my generation. We gave you Bill Clinton, a brilliant policy thinker and communicator who couldn’t keep his pecker in his pants. Then we gave you George W. Bush, a moral absolutist and former drunk who took this country to war because his Nixon-worshipping neocon staff convinced him that it was the Lord’s will. To paraphrase JFK, it’s time to pass the damn torch already. We have lived too long with prejudices that the young have never had to experience, and it clouds our thinking. Can you imagine that I never sat in a classroom with a non-white person until college? We desperately need to alter our nation’s course, but I wonder if the young are aware of the potential political clout that they possess. Being too young to vote in 1968 — when my ass was personally on the line — changed me. I am one of the laziest men walking (it took me 28 years to complete my bachelor’s degree), but I have never missed voting in a single election since. Now, it’s your future that’s at stake.

It’s this simple: If young people come out in numbers and vote, Obama will win. If they don’t, he won’t. And history is not on your side. Young people might have saved us from a second Bush term, but registering on campus is not the same as going to the voting booth. In every election since Nixon, young voters have disappointed those candidates who depended on them. Just ask Al Gore. If you don’t know where your polling place is, you can call or Google your local Election Commission. Don’t wear your campaign gear or some zealot will make you turn your T-shirt inside out. And bring an ID and prepare to do battle with those who would challenge your rights. You have the power to decide this election, and if we do it right this time, you also have the ability to recapture a lot of forgotten dreams. If I could, I would come and beg each of you individually — please vote.

Randy Haspel writes a blog, “Born Again Hippies,” where this column first appeared.