Conservative humorist P. J. O'Rourke needs no introduction from me. But I do, and Mr. O'Rourke has just provided me one.
My name is Jeremiah Horrigan. I recently wrote an essay for the anthology "Woodstock Revisited." Mr. O'Rourke recently reviewed the anthology in his column in The Weekly Standard.
I won't repeat his comments. Suffice it to say he was, as anyone familiar with his perspective will guess, disgusted by what he found.
But I’m not here to mock Mr. O'Rourke but to praise him, as he does me. Although he unjustly maligns the book in which my essay is embedded, he has kind words for my contribution.
Mr. O’Rourke’s harsh judgment of “Woodstock Revisted” was unworthy of someone perspicacious enough to spot a hot, talented essayist such as myself in the pages of a book where, I feel it safe to say, he least expected to find one. Maybe he was just trying to be funny.
The essay I wrote was my humble attempt to capture, in a mere 1,100 words, the essence of what's come to be known in aging ex-hippie circles as "the Woodstock Experience."
I want it known here and now that I do not know Mr. O'Rourke personally and have not solicited, leaned on, threatened, bribed or begged him for a literary endorsement. I did not attend high school with him. Nor did we attend clandestine meetings of the Young Americans for Freedom during our college careers. I did not, to my knowledge, march with him in any anti-war parade back in the dark days before he saw the light and converted to Republicanism.
I have read, over the years, several of his essays and have found them hilarious, easily the equal of my best efforts, which have suffered, over those same years, from a lack of public exposure, due no doubt to my principled refusal to "play the game" of "literary log-rolling" in which the works of one's friends are praised to the skies in the certain knowledge that when these selfsame authors are asked for a kind word on the occasion of the blurbster's latest work (in my case, a soon-to-be- self-published comic memoir bearing the working title: "To Hell in a Collection Basket: Confessions of a Bad Altar Boy") they will return the favor.
But now, thanks to Mr. O'Rourke's unsolicited praise, I have an unexpected friend in the literary establishment. I too have seen the light and am prepared to throw off my hidebound and financially counter-productive "principles" in order to sit back and enjoy the benefits of a verifiably true literary blurb.
Here, then, in its entirety, is what P. J. O'Rourke had to say about my work:
"The 240-page paperback contains exactly one intelligent sentence, from a Jeremiah Horrigan, who asks, ‘Who invited Sh-Na-Na to the party?’”
Forget for the moment that Mr. O'Rourke misquotes me by misspelling "Sha-Na-Na." Since I am not without writerly sin, I will not cast the first typograpghical stone. Forget I even mentioned it. I’m only trying to be funny.
My wife suggests Mr. O'Rourke’s praise is nothing more than stealing my material for his own uses. Perhaps, I tell her. But to be the subject of a literary highjacking by one so otherwise as he is an honor, and a high one. And in any case, I, like so many other successful writers, plan to do my own version of literary highjacking.
When "Bad Altar Boy" is finally published, you can be assured Mr. O'Rourke's quotes will prominently displayed. The front cover will say simply "Intelligent! – P. J. O’Rourke." And, in answer to a rhetorical question contained on the back cover, "Isn't this the best comic memoir of a guilt-ridden Caboomer you've ever read?" Mr. Rourke will be quoted as saying "Exactly!" His encomiums will be prominently featured, along with quotes of a somewhat longer, if less profound nature, given by people you've never heard of who owe me money.
And should anyone complain about the selectivity of my quotations, I'll quote Mr. O'Rourke one last time, by putting my index finger to my lips and quoting him once again by just saying "Sh."
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Sunday, February 15, 2009
A Toast to My Son Grady, on the Occasion of his Birth
My son Grady will be 36 tomorrow, Sunday, Jan. 4 at 7:28 pm. I was there when he was born, in the upstairs bedroom of an exceedingly drafty old house deep in Buffalo New York's working-class West Side. We didn't have a midwife to make our home birth possible. Couldn't find one. What we had was a doctor, a very brave one.
Home births were essentially illegal in the early '70s in New York State. But you could say my wife Patty and I had a taste for illegality back then. We'd both been active in what was then known as the Catholic Radical Left. We burned or stole or otherwise destroyed draft files. I'd dropped out of college to do such things. Legal? We weren't even married at the time.
In the spring of 1972, when Patty found herself pregnant and I'd gotten a suspended sentence for my draft board action, she went looking for a midwife. She knew she wanted to have the baby at home. Midwives were scarce and doctors were worse. The ones she called said she was wrong to even think such thoughts. They called her names -- including the old standby, "Communist" -- and all but threatened her with arrest. Such, such were the glory days of politically polarized America.
A friend in the movement was a nurse. She thought she knew a young doctor, a resident, who might actually be willing to deliver the baby at home. The doctor she had in mind was named Louie Hevizy.
Louie was Hungarian. A Hungarian prince, he told us. A Hungarian prince who had been strung up by the neck to a Budapest lamppost during the 1956 uprising. A Hungarian prince who had been cut down from that lamppost at the last minute by anti-Communist partisans who then spirited him to the underground from where he was eventually allowed to emigrate to the States "with the help of the Rockefeller family," as he always explained.
I liked Louie from the start. He was the only man I'd ever met who was skinnier than I was. He spoke with a deightful accent and loved to brag about his various flirtations and love affairs, the women he lured to the bachelor pad where his giant bed awaited, its vastness outfitted with black silk sheets.
Years later, when I first heard and saw Roman Polanski interviewed, I thought of Louie. They were both great lovers and talkers and braggarts and irresistibly funny.
I never asked to see the burn marks on his neck that would have confirmed Louie's story about his being hanged. Never asked him to explain his family history. He was the least political political refugee I've ever met. He hardly even seemed a doctor -- he seemed more intent on having a good time doing whatever he wanted.
When he looked at us, he couldn't have seen a payday. We were indigent and proud of it. But where every other doctor saw only a pair of hippies or Communists or flakes, Louie saw people. When he looked at Patty, he saw a determined young woman in need. Perhaps he saw a challenge. He never explained why he agreed to risk his career -- because that's what it would have meant -- to respond to our request, to act like a real doctor.
Beverly, our friend the nurse, quietly collected the stuff we'd need and stashed it in the bright orange-and-yellow delivery room we'd made of our bedroom. I remember especially a number of hot water bottles she'd lifted from her hospital with which she lined the baby's garishly red-painted basinette.
It was Louie who, when summoned on that snowy Buffalo day, arrived at our door with his doctor's bag, half a dozen bottles of Asti Spumante and a camera. And it was Louie who delivered Grady Kane-Horrigan 36 years ago today and who took the photos and toasted us with his Asti and hung around downstairs with two dozen friends and family members who'd gathered belowdecks for the great occasion. He even circumcized the poor kid, while allowing me the honor of cutting the cord.
It seems, as I look back on it, a great adventure, a perfect reflection of the times, with its authoritarian despots, idealistic rebels, its naivete and its happy ending. Or beginning. For Grady was our beginning.
I lost track of Louie after he delivered our daughter Annie three years later. Times had changed. We had to go to the hospital. The people there tried their best to shut me out. Annie was born in a surgery whose main features were cold steel gurneys and chains hanging from the ceiling. Though something had been lost, Annie made it easy to forget our disappointment.
We moved from Buffalo a few years after that. Among the many people I lost track of was Louie. What I know of his life after our departure I'm not comfortable relating. I wish I could re-write his story to fit the happy ending he deserved but didn't get.
But today I'll raise a glass to Louie Hevisy, the doctor who broke the rules and went against the odds and brought my son into the world. He was a doctor, a Lothario, a crazy Hungarian and maybe sometimes a bullshit artist. But more than anything else, Louie Hevizy was a prince.
Home births were essentially illegal in the early '70s in New York State. But you could say my wife Patty and I had a taste for illegality back then. We'd both been active in what was then known as the Catholic Radical Left. We burned or stole or otherwise destroyed draft files. I'd dropped out of college to do such things. Legal? We weren't even married at the time.
In the spring of 1972, when Patty found herself pregnant and I'd gotten a suspended sentence for my draft board action, she went looking for a midwife. She knew she wanted to have the baby at home. Midwives were scarce and doctors were worse. The ones she called said she was wrong to even think such thoughts. They called her names -- including the old standby, "Communist" -- and all but threatened her with arrest. Such, such were the glory days of politically polarized America.
A friend in the movement was a nurse. She thought she knew a young doctor, a resident, who might actually be willing to deliver the baby at home. The doctor she had in mind was named Louie Hevizy.
Louie was Hungarian. A Hungarian prince, he told us. A Hungarian prince who had been strung up by the neck to a Budapest lamppost during the 1956 uprising. A Hungarian prince who had been cut down from that lamppost at the last minute by anti-Communist partisans who then spirited him to the underground from where he was eventually allowed to emigrate to the States "with the help of the Rockefeller family," as he always explained.
I liked Louie from the start. He was the only man I'd ever met who was skinnier than I was. He spoke with a deightful accent and loved to brag about his various flirtations and love affairs, the women he lured to the bachelor pad where his giant bed awaited, its vastness outfitted with black silk sheets.
Years later, when I first heard and saw Roman Polanski interviewed, I thought of Louie. They were both great lovers and talkers and braggarts and irresistibly funny.
I never asked to see the burn marks on his neck that would have confirmed Louie's story about his being hanged. Never asked him to explain his family history. He was the least political political refugee I've ever met. He hardly even seemed a doctor -- he seemed more intent on having a good time doing whatever he wanted.
When he looked at us, he couldn't have seen a payday. We were indigent and proud of it. But where every other doctor saw only a pair of hippies or Communists or flakes, Louie saw people. When he looked at Patty, he saw a determined young woman in need. Perhaps he saw a challenge. He never explained why he agreed to risk his career -- because that's what it would have meant -- to respond to our request, to act like a real doctor.
Beverly, our friend the nurse, quietly collected the stuff we'd need and stashed it in the bright orange-and-yellow delivery room we'd made of our bedroom. I remember especially a number of hot water bottles she'd lifted from her hospital with which she lined the baby's garishly red-painted basinette.
It was Louie who, when summoned on that snowy Buffalo day, arrived at our door with his doctor's bag, half a dozen bottles of Asti Spumante and a camera. And it was Louie who delivered Grady Kane-Horrigan 36 years ago today and who took the photos and toasted us with his Asti and hung around downstairs with two dozen friends and family members who'd gathered belowdecks for the great occasion. He even circumcized the poor kid, while allowing me the honor of cutting the cord.
It seems, as I look back on it, a great adventure, a perfect reflection of the times, with its authoritarian despots, idealistic rebels, its naivete and its happy ending. Or beginning. For Grady was our beginning.
I lost track of Louie after he delivered our daughter Annie three years later. Times had changed. We had to go to the hospital. The people there tried their best to shut me out. Annie was born in a surgery whose main features were cold steel gurneys and chains hanging from the ceiling. Though something had been lost, Annie made it easy to forget our disappointment.
We moved from Buffalo a few years after that. Among the many people I lost track of was Louie. What I know of his life after our departure I'm not comfortable relating. I wish I could re-write his story to fit the happy ending he deserved but didn't get.
But today I'll raise a glass to Louie Hevisy, the doctor who broke the rules and went against the odds and brought my son into the world. He was a doctor, a Lothario, a crazy Hungarian and maybe sometimes a bullshit artist. But more than anything else, Louie Hevizy was a prince.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
A Devil's Dictionary for a Departing Daschle
Anyone remember Tom Daschle? I didn't think so. Nevertheless, here are a few political cliches that are belong in the permanent lexicon of American politics: Originally posted in Open Salon after the guy decided he hadn't been spending enough time with his family.)
"An honest mistake" -- The point from which, once admitted, a politician yearns to "move on."
"To move on" -- The publicly pinioned politician's starkest wish; to pretend, against all evidence, that what the whole world knows is true isn't so and really, when all is said and done, doesn't matter all that much anyway.
"A tax-related issue stemming from Washington, DC unemployment" -- What a politician develops when she makes it impossible for her servants to file for Workers Comp.
"Sadness and regret" -- The proper emotions for a politician who is only too happy to see an honest mistake-maker take a powder.
"A troublesome distraction" -- A politician who can't convince the public it's time to move on.
"The little guy" -- He who pays taxes in accordance with the law of the land; never said of a politician, whose job it is to make the law of the land, with an option to ignore it.
"An honest mistake" -- The point from which, once admitted, a politician yearns to "move on."
"To move on" -- The publicly pinioned politician's starkest wish; to pretend, against all evidence, that what the whole world knows is true isn't so and really, when all is said and done, doesn't matter all that much anyway.
"A tax-related issue stemming from Washington, DC unemployment" -- What a politician develops when she makes it impossible for her servants to file for Workers Comp.
"Sadness and regret" -- The proper emotions for a politician who is only too happy to see an honest mistake-maker take a powder.
"A troublesome distraction" -- A politician who can't convince the public it's time to move on.
"The little guy" -- He who pays taxes in accordance with the law of the land; never said of a politician, whose job it is to make the law of the land, with an option to ignore it.
What Movie changed your Life?
Originally posted in Open Salon.
Last fall, I strolled around the Woodstock Film Festival strapped into a sandwich board, the last shreds of my dignity forfeited in the name of journalistic inquiry. I'd like to ask you that same question: What movie changed your life?.
The first thing most folks said when they saw me coming was "Great question!" The answers were equally great.
To summarize what happened: most people had an answer to the question within seconds, once they realized I wasn't asking about their favorite movie. I wanted to know what movie made a difference in their lives-- changed them or their way of looking at things. It was an exercise in emotional recollection, not intellectual case-making. I was hoping, in fact, to short-circuit the urge for give an intellectual answer.
I was surprised at how quickly the movies came to mind, and how eloquent people were in explaining their impact. Folks seemed at times stunned by the answers that came up for them.
I'll document some of those responses in a subsequent post, including some very revealing responses from filmmakers on the scene. I'll of course reveal my own answer (which surprised me.
Just to prime the pump, I'll list a few of the films that were mentioned: Dumbo. Two Women. The Shaggy Dog. El Topo.
Remember: the idea is to bypass the urge for a favorite film (although that may in fact be the movie that comes to mind). If you'd like to answer the question, give yourself a moment. Your answer will rise up like a fisherman's float. Grab it before you start thinking too much, then write and post your response as quickly as you can. Thanks - Jeremiah
Last fall, I strolled around the Woodstock Film Festival strapped into a sandwich board, the last shreds of my dignity forfeited in the name of journalistic inquiry. I'd like to ask you that same question: What movie changed your life?.
The first thing most folks said when they saw me coming was "Great question!" The answers were equally great.
To summarize what happened: most people had an answer to the question within seconds, once they realized I wasn't asking about their favorite movie. I wanted to know what movie made a difference in their lives-- changed them or their way of looking at things. It was an exercise in emotional recollection, not intellectual case-making. I was hoping, in fact, to short-circuit the urge for give an intellectual answer.
I was surprised at how quickly the movies came to mind, and how eloquent people were in explaining their impact. Folks seemed at times stunned by the answers that came up for them.
I'll document some of those responses in a subsequent post, including some very revealing responses from filmmakers on the scene. I'll of course reveal my own answer (which surprised me.
Just to prime the pump, I'll list a few of the films that were mentioned: Dumbo. Two Women. The Shaggy Dog. El Topo.
Remember: the idea is to bypass the urge for a favorite film (although that may in fact be the movie that comes to mind). If you'd like to answer the question, give yourself a moment. Your answer will rise up like a fisherman's float. Grab it before you start thinking too much, then write and post your response as quickly as you can. Thanks - Jeremiah
How I know I'm going directly to Heaven when I die
Originally posted in Open Salon:
The Catholic Church is bringing back a theological Golden Oldie called "plenary indulgences."
To Catholic Boomers like myself -- Caboomers -- indulgences were nothing less than a ticket to Heaven -- a free pass from purgatory's fires for you and yours, a bailout for your very soul. Indulgences fell out of favor in the '60s, when Vatican II ordered the Church to go native, to swap the wheezy pipe organ for a seminarian's out-of-tune guitar and endless choruses of "Michael Row the Boat Ashore."
Here's how it worked in the bad old days: It was well-known among Caboomers that they were all sinners. We were told this five days a week by the nuns who taught us to fear God as much as we feared them. Indulgences were like work-release programs for convicted sinners -- a way to bank up good time against the punishments of sin that every child above the age of seven stood constantly accused of.
There were two kinds of indulgences, plenary and partial. Partials were just what they sound like -- certain short prayers, for example, usually got you 300 days off your accruing sentence in purgatory (i.e., hell with an escape hatch). The nuns would pass out holy cards like so many baseball cards. On one side was a picture of a saint. On the other side was a short prayer whose days-off value would be noted.
These short prayers were called "ejaculations." That's all I'll say about them just now, for fear of providing an occasion of sin for Caboomers who are easily led astray.
Plenary indulgences were seeming jackpots for junior sinners (whose darkest sin was usually something on the order of calling your brother a stupid-head.).
The New York Times described plenaries with admirable concision Monday: they eliminated all your sins, at least until another one was committed. You could get one for yourself, or for someone who was dead. Even for your brother. But you couldn't buy one either (especially on the money a paper route got you in those days). And there was a limit of one plenary per sinner per day.
Plenaries, in other words, seemed like the smartest bargain. Sin was everywhere back then -- you could go to hell for eating meat on Friday. As George Carlin once noted, "there are guys down in hell today doing time on a meat rap."
But because the plenaries were such an all-or-nothing deal, smart Caboomers like myself looked to the partials for long-term redemption. Simply by ejacula . . . saying something as simple as "Oh Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recoursed to thee," you could get almost a year lopped off your inevitable sentence in purgatory. It was an extremely good deal, incareation-wise: big time off for very little time spent.
Have you any idea how many prayers like that a hell-haunted little kid can rattle off in a single hour? A day? A year?
The nuns' prophecies came true, as will any such poisonously proposed prediction will. I've led a sinful life. But I'm Heaven-bound anyway. I figure I've got a stockpile of partials so deep and wide, the Pope might envy me, if envy weren't such a sin and he weren't such a Pope.
But if you think I'm ever doing time on a meat rap, you must be some kind of stupid-head.
The Catholic Church is bringing back a theological Golden Oldie called "plenary indulgences."
To Catholic Boomers like myself -- Caboomers -- indulgences were nothing less than a ticket to Heaven -- a free pass from purgatory's fires for you and yours, a bailout for your very soul. Indulgences fell out of favor in the '60s, when Vatican II ordered the Church to go native, to swap the wheezy pipe organ for a seminarian's out-of-tune guitar and endless choruses of "Michael Row the Boat Ashore."
Here's how it worked in the bad old days: It was well-known among Caboomers that they were all sinners. We were told this five days a week by the nuns who taught us to fear God as much as we feared them. Indulgences were like work-release programs for convicted sinners -- a way to bank up good time against the punishments of sin that every child above the age of seven stood constantly accused of.
There were two kinds of indulgences, plenary and partial. Partials were just what they sound like -- certain short prayers, for example, usually got you 300 days off your accruing sentence in purgatory (i.e., hell with an escape hatch). The nuns would pass out holy cards like so many baseball cards. On one side was a picture of a saint. On the other side was a short prayer whose days-off value would be noted.
These short prayers were called "ejaculations." That's all I'll say about them just now, for fear of providing an occasion of sin for Caboomers who are easily led astray.
Plenary indulgences were seeming jackpots for junior sinners (whose darkest sin was usually something on the order of calling your brother a stupid-head.).
The New York Times described plenaries with admirable concision Monday: they eliminated all your sins, at least until another one was committed. You could get one for yourself, or for someone who was dead. Even for your brother. But you couldn't buy one either (especially on the money a paper route got you in those days). And there was a limit of one plenary per sinner per day.
Plenaries, in other words, seemed like the smartest bargain. Sin was everywhere back then -- you could go to hell for eating meat on Friday. As George Carlin once noted, "there are guys down in hell today doing time on a meat rap."
But because the plenaries were such an all-or-nothing deal, smart Caboomers like myself looked to the partials for long-term redemption. Simply by ejacula . . . saying something as simple as "Oh Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recoursed to thee," you could get almost a year lopped off your inevitable sentence in purgatory. It was an extremely good deal, incareation-wise: big time off for very little time spent.
Have you any idea how many prayers like that a hell-haunted little kid can rattle off in a single hour? A day? A year?
The nuns' prophecies came true, as will any such poisonously proposed prediction will. I've led a sinful life. But I'm Heaven-bound anyway. I figure I've got a stockpile of partials so deep and wide, the Pope might envy me, if envy weren't such a sin and he weren't such a Pope.
But if you think I'm ever doing time on a meat rap, you must be some kind of stupid-head.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Blagojevich the Unworthy
There's been an awful lot of outraged huffing and puffing going on in the wake of the accusations against Governor Rod Blagojevich, the bad-haired boy of Illinois. Editorial writers across the country have had a field day denouncing Blago, as the tabs have tagged him. He's making deals! He's feathering his own nest! He's using bad language! And so's his wife!
Gosh Almighty. The editorialistas at USA Today even compared Blago's alleged offer to sell Barack Obama's Senate seat to Caligula's famous nomination of his horse Incitatus for the job of Roman consul.
But the comparison is unfair; Blago has none of Caligula's flair for the outrageous. Blago's name will be as distant from public memory as Sen. Larry "Wide Stance" Craig.
Despite the puniness of Blago's alleged abuses, the editorialistas have been calling for his head.
Excuse me if I fail to get exercised about reforming the sea of corruption that has suddenly hove into view thanks to only three months of government wiretaps in the governor's office. And forgive me if I fail to be shocked -- shocked! -- at the man's venality. The wiretaps reveal a tough-talking Chicago pol who, in the words of another such bird, appears to have merely been caught in the act of seeing his opportunities and taking them.
That other pol, the historically minded may remember, belongs to a long-gone (but not completely forgotten) former Democratic Senator from New York named George Washington Plunkitt, a proud and wealthy son of Tammany Hall. It was Plunkitt who made famous, in an interview with William Riordon in 1905, the distinction between "honest graft and dishonest graft."
"There's all the difference in the world between the two," Plunkitt said. He admitted -- with more than a touch of pride -- that he'd made a "big fortune" out of the game of New York politic is "and I'm gettin' richer every day." But his wasn't money made by dishonest graft, which would have been "blackmailin' gamblers, saloonkeepers, disorderly people, etc." No. It was none of that, said he:
"It was honest graft, and I'm an example of how it works. I might sum up the whole thing by sayin': 'I seen my opportunities and I took 'em."
Plunkitt then described to Riordon how, for example, knowing where a new bridge was scheduled to be built might be a valuable bit of information when the bids went out and the once-worthless land that he'd bought up for peanuts could be sold at a handsome profit when the time rolled around.
"Ain't it perfectly honest to charge a good price and make a profit on my investment and foresight?" he wanted to know.
And he didn't confine his investment opportunities to real estate speculation either. "Anything that pays is in my line." He then explained how he bought 250,000 granite blocks for $2.50 at auction. Imagine what he would have asked for if, like Blago, he'd had sole responsibility for the appointment of a seat in the U.S. Senate.
Am I endorsing political chicanery here? You bet I am, especially since I don't have an answer to this question: Who, besides Blago, was hurt by these revelations? The public? Not apparently. Whatever money he was hoping to make wasn't going to come from public coffers.
What's been hurt in all this is someone's IDEA of political propriety. A seat in the Senate shouldn't be up for sale. A price tag is so . . .unseemly.
Blago seen his opportunities and, in a political tradition that pre-dates Caligula, he took 'em.
If Blago had been more discrete, if he'd met directly with the job applicants in a room that was noisy enough to obliterate the possibility of being bugged, he would still be the funny-looking, highly self-regarding and wealthy Chicago politician with an unpronounceable name that he always was.
Now he's become the poster boy for what's wrong with the political system, and that's a shame, because he's such a drab example of the species he's come to represent.
What's discouraging about Blago isn't his greed or his unseemliness but his utter lack of style. A good big-city pol would by now have launched a loud pr counter-offensive, sent up a barrage of fireworks, blamed his chief of staff, blamed the media, the prosecutor, the winds off Lake Superior. A real Chicago pol would by now have generated enough good newspaper copy in defense of his actions to sell enough papers to pay off the Chicago Tribune's back debt.
Imagine for a minute what a pol like Plunkitt would have done in Blago's shoes. Or imagine what any of Plunkitt's true heirs would have done. Imagine The Kingfish, Huey Long of Louisiana or James Michael J. Curley, a chunk of whose fourth term as Mayor of Boston was spent in a federal peniteniary or, closer to home, imagine Albany's Mayor-for-Life, Erastus Corning. They were political operators of the first water, men who gave the people what they wanted by manipulating the levers of political machines they has mastered. Yes, they were greedy and corrupt by any moral standard you choose to use, and reformers of their day relished bashing them. But the names of the upstanding moralists Plunkitt called "goo-goos," good-government types, are lost to history while characters like Long, Curley and Corning are still remembered as friends of the people they may have fleeced but who also delivered whatever goods or services the people needed or wanted. The results are great and once-great cities, built by thieves whose peculiar strengths and weaknesses are the stuff of legend.
Blago, the inheritor of this colorful tradition, is unworthy of it. His alleged chicanery was all about him, not his constituents. Worse, he talked nakedly about his self-enrichment plans on a telephone he suspected was tapped. That's plain stupid, and whatever you want to say about the Plunkitts of the world, they weren't stupid.
Blago spilled the beans that any village trustee knows to keep tightly sealed and well hidden. He showed not that he was a corrupt politician but someone far more dangerous and dull -- an inept one, someone who couldn't play the game by rules that have been in effect since before Caligula's day, rules that have nothing to do with propriety and everything to do with making things happen, sometimes for the good of the public, sometimes for the good of the pol and sometimes for the good of all.
Gosh Almighty. The editorialistas at USA Today even compared Blago's alleged offer to sell Barack Obama's Senate seat to Caligula's famous nomination of his horse Incitatus for the job of Roman consul.
But the comparison is unfair; Blago has none of Caligula's flair for the outrageous. Blago's name will be as distant from public memory as Sen. Larry "Wide Stance" Craig.
Despite the puniness of Blago's alleged abuses, the editorialistas have been calling for his head.
Excuse me if I fail to get exercised about reforming the sea of corruption that has suddenly hove into view thanks to only three months of government wiretaps in the governor's office. And forgive me if I fail to be shocked -- shocked! -- at the man's venality. The wiretaps reveal a tough-talking Chicago pol who, in the words of another such bird, appears to have merely been caught in the act of seeing his opportunities and taking them.
That other pol, the historically minded may remember, belongs to a long-gone (but not completely forgotten) former Democratic Senator from New York named George Washington Plunkitt, a proud and wealthy son of Tammany Hall. It was Plunkitt who made famous, in an interview with William Riordon in 1905, the distinction between "honest graft and dishonest graft."
"There's all the difference in the world between the two," Plunkitt said. He admitted -- with more than a touch of pride -- that he'd made a "big fortune" out of the game of New York politic is "and I'm gettin' richer every day." But his wasn't money made by dishonest graft, which would have been "blackmailin' gamblers, saloonkeepers, disorderly people, etc." No. It was none of that, said he:
"It was honest graft, and I'm an example of how it works. I might sum up the whole thing by sayin': 'I seen my opportunities and I took 'em."
Plunkitt then described to Riordon how, for example, knowing where a new bridge was scheduled to be built might be a valuable bit of information when the bids went out and the once-worthless land that he'd bought up for peanuts could be sold at a handsome profit when the time rolled around.
"Ain't it perfectly honest to charge a good price and make a profit on my investment and foresight?" he wanted to know.
And he didn't confine his investment opportunities to real estate speculation either. "Anything that pays is in my line." He then explained how he bought 250,000 granite blocks for $2.50 at auction. Imagine what he would have asked for if, like Blago, he'd had sole responsibility for the appointment of a seat in the U.S. Senate.
Am I endorsing political chicanery here? You bet I am, especially since I don't have an answer to this question: Who, besides Blago, was hurt by these revelations? The public? Not apparently. Whatever money he was hoping to make wasn't going to come from public coffers.
What's been hurt in all this is someone's IDEA of political propriety. A seat in the Senate shouldn't be up for sale. A price tag is so . . .unseemly.
Blago seen his opportunities and, in a political tradition that pre-dates Caligula, he took 'em.
If Blago had been more discrete, if he'd met directly with the job applicants in a room that was noisy enough to obliterate the possibility of being bugged, he would still be the funny-looking, highly self-regarding and wealthy Chicago politician with an unpronounceable name that he always was.
Now he's become the poster boy for what's wrong with the political system, and that's a shame, because he's such a drab example of the species he's come to represent.
What's discouraging about Blago isn't his greed or his unseemliness but his utter lack of style. A good big-city pol would by now have launched a loud pr counter-offensive, sent up a barrage of fireworks, blamed his chief of staff, blamed the media, the prosecutor, the winds off Lake Superior. A real Chicago pol would by now have generated enough good newspaper copy in defense of his actions to sell enough papers to pay off the Chicago Tribune's back debt.
Imagine for a minute what a pol like Plunkitt would have done in Blago's shoes. Or imagine what any of Plunkitt's true heirs would have done. Imagine The Kingfish, Huey Long of Louisiana or James Michael J. Curley, a chunk of whose fourth term as Mayor of Boston was spent in a federal peniteniary or, closer to home, imagine Albany's Mayor-for-Life, Erastus Corning. They were political operators of the first water, men who gave the people what they wanted by manipulating the levers of political machines they has mastered. Yes, they were greedy and corrupt by any moral standard you choose to use, and reformers of their day relished bashing them. But the names of the upstanding moralists Plunkitt called "goo-goos," good-government types, are lost to history while characters like Long, Curley and Corning are still remembered as friends of the people they may have fleeced but who also delivered whatever goods or services the people needed or wanted. The results are great and once-great cities, built by thieves whose peculiar strengths and weaknesses are the stuff of legend.
Blago, the inheritor of this colorful tradition, is unworthy of it. His alleged chicanery was all about him, not his constituents. Worse, he talked nakedly about his self-enrichment plans on a telephone he suspected was tapped. That's plain stupid, and whatever you want to say about the Plunkitts of the world, they weren't stupid.
Blago spilled the beans that any village trustee knows to keep tightly sealed and well hidden. He showed not that he was a corrupt politician but someone far more dangerous and dull -- an inept one, someone who couldn't play the game by rules that have been in effect since before Caligula's day, rules that have nothing to do with propriety and everything to do with making things happen, sometimes for the good of the public, sometimes for the good of the pol and sometimes for the good of all.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Perhaps a Banana
Twenty years ago, I wrote "Perhaps a Banana," a column inspired by the nefarious antics of one Oliver North. He was a sort of male Sarah Palin, a right wing-nut who captured a lot more attention than he deserved back in the Reagan era. This column isn't strictly about him, he's the occasion rather than the subject of a story about the role of language in politics. It begins with the testimony of Robert W. Owen, a non-entity of the day, as quoted in The New York Times:
Q: And this signature - 'Warm regards, Steelhammer' - to whom did that refer?
A: That was one of Ollie North's code names
Q: Did f Contra leader] Adolfo Calero also have a code name?
A: Occasionally we called him Sparkplug.
Q: And did you haue a code name for yourself?
A: I would usually sign my memos 'T.C.'
Q: And what did T.C. stand for?
A. The Courier.
- Irangate testimony of Robert W. Owen, quoted in The New York Times
The buzzer summoning me into the Colonel's office buzzed. Actually, it rang, because it was a bell. Sometimes the Colonel finds it necessary to call one thing another. Actually he always finds it necessary to call one thing another. Today, the bell was a buzzer. Tomorrow, perhaps a banana. Only time and the Colonel's code book would tell. I entered the Colonel's basement redoubt.
He looked up at me. The medals on his chest jingled smartly, which was especially impressive since he was naked from the waist up. I noticed the Colonel had his service revolver trained on me. A look of firm resolve covered his face like a horse blanket. Through clenched teeth, he uttered a single command:
"Baascrwrd."
Seeing the puzzled look on my face, he relaxed his jaw muscles and repeated himself: "Password."
I was ready for him. "Waldorf salad."
He jumped from behind his desk, his automatic pointed in my face. I heard the safety flick off.
"Prepare to die, Marxist-Leninist tomato!"
My mind raced.
"Ooby Dooby!"
The Colonel's face relaxed.
"Ooby Dooby what?" he asked quietly.
"Ooby Dooby ... sir."
"That's better. At ease, T.C."
The Colonel shouldered his revolver and sat down behind his bullet-scarred desk. He turned to me.I could see there were tears in his eyes. He was obviously thinking about the freedom fighters. The gun fell off his shoulder.
"T.C.," he said, "this ol' poodle's going to
My mind began to race again. "Poodle" was today's codeword for "the world." And
The Colonel must have seen the consternation on my face.
"Handbasket," he mumbled helpfully
At once I understood.
"Yes sir, the poodle certainly is going to
"T.C., I want you to take an important Buick over to the Popcorn, pronto."
"The Popcorn, sir? The Popcorn of the
"No, no, the enchilada's in
The phone rang in the middle of the Colonel's explanation He pointed to it.
"Get the banana, will you? I've gotta take a wicked maple tree."
He disappeared behind a door marked "Wombats." I got the banana on the third ring.
"Popcorn here. Give me Steelhead."
"Do you mean Colonel, uh, Steelhammer?
"Yeah. The Big Cheese ..."
"I'm sorry, sir, but there's no Mr. Cheese here. But if you'd like to leave a Buick for
"Okay, okay. Tell him the eyes of the potato are upon him. Repeat. The eyes of the potato are upon him. Got that?"
"Got it.
"Good. Have a nice combat boot."
The line went dead. The Colonel returned, wiping his cabbages on his carburetor.
"Who was on the horn?"
"Sir?"
"The banana, stupid. Who called?"
"The Popcorn, sir."
"Any Buicks?"
“He said, ‘The eyes of the potato are upon you.’
The Colonel became livid.
"Is that a canary'? Well, you run right over there this minute and you tell his excellency I've had about enough of his Peoria-fired potato-eyes. Where's his sense of Hershey Bar? Whatever happened to good ol' American corn muffins? What's this great hockey stick of ours coming to, when a red-blooded American lampshade can't kick a little Marxist-Leninist candycorn without a bunch of Congressional teabags getting all steamed up? You tell Mr. Potato Head that the tuna fish has hit the overhead projector, and pretty soon, it's gonna be every wombat for himself."
"But sir, will the Popcorn understand what you're saying? I think he's missing a few pages from his code book."
The Colonel shook his head dismissively.
"He knows what I'm talking about. Him and me - we speak the same pineapple. Now get going. And shut the damned cottage cheese behind you."
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