Happy Retirement to the Good Jesse
Happy Retirement to The Good Jesse
There was much to criticize in Helms' long political career. He's a protectionist, homophobe, at least marginally racist and he often engaged in obstructionism for sheer sport. His derailing of William Weld as ambassador to Mexico was one of the stupidest causes Helms wasted time on. But any man of principle who can cause fits among the disgraceful aristocrats who control The New York Times deserves his nation's thanks. As both Robert Novak and Al Hunt, ideological opposites, have noted, without Helms' crucial support of Ronald Reagan in the North Carolina primary in 1976 against President Ford, Reagan would've run out of gas that year?instead of challenging Ford right up until the convention?and most likely wouldn't even have captured the Republican nomination four years later. That's certainly the Senator's most important legacy.
Here's a Helms quote, printed in Sunday's Times, that demonstrates why there's such a well of affection for the old-timer among conservatives. In 1999, Helms told Bill Clinton's corrupt attorney general, Janet Reno: "If an East German mother had died trying to cross the Berlin Wall with her child, can you imagine for one instant throwing the child back over the wall? Elian [Gonzalez] must not be thrown back over the wall simply because his mother did not survive the crossing."
That's good enough for me, if not for Howell Raines, Hillary Clinton, Barbara Boxer, Sidney Blumenthal, John Kerry, Al Sharpton, Barney Frank, Teddy Kennedy and Gary Condit.
1. Henry Luce's Tears. Sports Illustrated is no longer the stylish magazine of decades past; its descent into a fog of smug, formula-driven journalism hasn't been as rapid as sister weekly Time, which has fallen off the relevance radar, but unread copies of S.I. pile up in my basket, destined for the recycling bin. (Time sinks lower and lower: its Sept. 3 cover is devoted to women's tennis, with the two right-hand corner snipes reading "Who Stole the Surplus?" and "What's Hot This Fall.") However, the Aug. 27 S.I. did contain a lead feature?"The Most Overrated and Underrated"?which, despite the cheap "list" hook that's found once a month in Entertainment Weekly (another lazy AOL Time Warner publication), was compelling enough that I read it upon its arrival in the mailbox.
Michael Bamberger wrote a convincing essay disparaging baseball's Mark McGwire in comparison to Stan Musial; E.M. Swift was on the mark in touting the superb Whitey Ford over the absurdly lionized Nolan Ryan; and it was gratifying to see Kostya Kennedy stick up for poor Bill Buckner, who had to leave Massachusetts for Idaho to escape the taunts of knuckleheads who hold him solely responsible for the Red Sox's collapse in the '86 World Series. It was also bracing to read Swift's nod to Rocky Marciano (while knocking the post-'67 Muhammad Ali), especially the quote gathered from Joe Louis: "The Rock didn't know too much about the boxing book, but it wasn't a book he hit me with. It was a whole library of bone-crushers."
I'm a Johnny U. man myself, but if Peter King believes Phil Simms is the NFL's most underrated quarterback it's no skin off my nose. And former Baltimore Sun writer Tom Verducci said it better than anyone about the mania of Cal Ripken's never-ending farewell tour, dismissing The Streak as an "oddity" rather than a benchmark baseball achievement. He writes: "Ripken's record has great gee-whiz appeal?like the world records for pogo-stick jumping, pole-sitting and the rest of the feats that keep the people at Ripley's and Guinness in business?but looking for true significance in the feat is no more fruitful than trying to explain why someone would scarf down 50 hot dogs in 12 minutes."
Jeff MacGregor's Bosox-bashing, in the category "Most Overrated Hopeless Obsession," was obnoxious more for his sophomoric writing than the actual idea, which was coincidentally vindicated, in part, by Nicholas Dawidoff's Aug. 26 New York Times Magazine piece. Dawidoff, who could be the model for MacGregor's dismissal of some Sox fans as "hopeless faux-brainiac romantics," couldn't have been snootier when he mused, probably in a nonsmoking jacket, about the pleasure Cubs, Phillies and Red Sox obsessives derive from a continual lack of success on the baseball diamond.
Proving that elitism at the Times isn't confined to the editorial pages, Dawidoff, making George Will look like a beer-instead-of-chardonnay kind of regular Joe, wrote: "In fact, the private conviction of fans supporting doomed teams holds that there is something dissipating about success, and something less stimulating. Baseball is no different from Shakespeare and Chekhov, in that the most appealing stories are always tragic. Othello and Gene Mauch are far more compelling than Henry V and Derek Jeter... All of this is to say that Cubs, Phillies and Red Sox fans will be disappointed once again when this October comes, but they will not be unduly unhappy. For them, to lose is to win."
Sorry, chief, but when the Sox fell short in 18 innings to the Rangers last Saturday, I was pissed, not pleased. And when Boston lost again in Arlington on Sunday, making errors and stranding runners, I fumed. I also break out in hives when reading the Times' Buster Olney and Murray Chass, who both consider themselves "Fifth Yankees," tarnishing Murray the K's legend. Chass, this past Sunday, was especially loathsome, writing that "just maybe" the Sox will play in the postseason, even though a month remains in the schedule. But should Boston not make the playoffs in October, I won't even watch the World Series. Instead I'll be muttering about Derek Lowe, Rod Beck and Nomar Garciaparra's injury until Ground Hog's Day.
MacGregor is too cute when he tosses all Sox fans into the same stew. His take: "An object of masochistic adoration fit only for vain and miserable flagellants like postmodern comic novelists, flinty Down East spinster schoolmarms...the Boston Red Sox play out their useless seasons as an endless loop of tragicomic self-immolation. The curs'd stage upon which they enact their stupefying dumb show, Fenway Park, is no better than a black hole into which the rosy dreams of egghead fans from Halifax to Hartford have been sucked since the second administration of Woodrow Wilson... The Red Sox, in short, are losers. Accept it. Get on with your life. I did."
That's lovely, Jeff. May I suggest a remedial history course as you get on with your life?and perhaps a stern word for S.I.'s factcheckers?since anyone who rags on Fenway ought to know it opened in 1912, the year that Wilson was elected to his first term.
By far the most irritating entry in this spread was Michael Silver's denigration of Francis Scott Key's "The Star Spangled Banner" as the national anthem. He favors the patriotic, but Hallmark-tinged, "America the Beautiful" (although probably preferring the groovy "Get Together") as a prelude to baseball games, writing, "What evokes a more pleasing image: Key's tale of bombs, rockets and a perilous fight or this ode to spacious skies, fruited plains, purple mountain majesties and amber waves of grain? This is a lean, clean song that won't scare the wits out of young children and small dogs."
Silver can wave his pacifism flag high, and flash his ACLU card for all I care, but resilient "young children" can handle the content of Key's hastily written but powerful poem about England's unsuccessful attack on Baltimore's Fort McHenry on Sept. 13, 1814. There's no better hymn that describes America's still-fragile independence from the British, no finer spontaneous burst of pride commemorating our country's fledgling democracy.
Sad to say that most citizens probably don't even know the words of "The Star Spangled Banner," so here's the first verse. "O! say can you see, by the dawn's early light,/What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming./Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,/O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming?/And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,/Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there./O! say does that star spangled banner yet wave,/O'er the land of the free, and home of the brave?"
Hard to sing? Yeah, but so what? Most people have lousy voices anyway. The evocation of our country overcoming a military invasion on our home turf is infinitely more inspiring than a benign hallelujah to the country's heroes and agricultural largesse.
2. The Birthday Waltz. When Nat King Cole sang about those "lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer," he couldn't have envisioned the past two weeks in the MUGGER household. As I mentioned last week, hard on our vexing vacation at Hilton Head?thanks, by the way, to the dozen South Carolina readers who sent dining tips to me?was the delightful visit of cousins Xela and Kira from San Luis Obispo. It was a packed four days that included trips to Yankee Stadium, trendy boutiques in Soho, Chelsea Piers, plus a dinner at Roc, lunch at Balthazar and a viewing of Rat Race. My late brother Doug would've been tickled to see how his daughters got along with Junior and MUGGER III, the four of them taking over the loft and making the same sort of mischief that I remember growing up in a household of five boys.
Not far in the backdrop was the countdown to our youngest son's seventh birthday on Aug. 25?by divine coincidence the same date on which my mother was born in 1917, a fact that MUGGER III thrills to, saying, "I never knew Grandma, but I hope she's having chocolate cake in heaven." Not surprisingly, it was a brutally early a.m. reveille call on Saturday?even by my rigorous farmer's schedule?with Junior waking everyone up at 3:30. We held off for a couple of hours on opening presents, but then it was pandemonium. MUGGER III's big brother was an enormous help this year, not only wrapping gifts with Mrs. M, but helping me at the sacred temple Forbidden Planet, speaking with the cashier in a completely foreign language. All that jazz about Japanese adapters, Game Boy advanced cartridges, portable PlayStation screens and rare Gigantor action figures was way beyond my comprehension.
We spent part of the day at Coney Island, the Brooklyn landmark that reminds me of Fenway Park in several ways: Once a state-of-the-art swimming/amusement complex by the Atlantic, Coney's in serious disrepair, if a wheezing but still breathing monument to a long-forgotten era. When Mrs. M and Junior crashed into the wall in their bumper cars, I could feel my own neck in a state of whiplash; in fact, most of the rides are similar to those in Second or Third World countries, where you can envision devastating accidents just waiting to happen. That said, I did enjoy the whirl inside Dante's Inferno, with the pitch black leading to lit-up mummies and skeletons, even if my shirt got caught briefly on a nail as our car slammed through doors.
Beats me why, but both boys passed up a Nathan's dog in favor of lunch at Pizza Hut. While inside we had a spirited conversation about world history and politics. We'd spent a bunch of loot at one of the arcades: I was mesmerized by the Golden Skis game, where you deposit quarters trying to dump other coins into the gutter, which in turn earn you tickets redeemable for cheesy prizes. While the kids ate their pizza, I held up a big stuffed dog we won at a balloon-popping booth?after $15 worth of darts, my sidearm delivery finally kicked in?and said, "One guess where this was made?" Everyone, to my satisfaction, correctly answered "China."
I digressed into a harangue about the Bush administration's far too lenient relations with China, explaining that while I'm an ardent free-trader, that hostile country ought to be excluded from our capitalistic beneficence, at least until its schizophrenic leadership demonstrates the kind of diplomacy and regard for human life that extends past the murderous regime of Mao. Let's do business with India instead.
This segued into a lesson about China's lack of a First Amendment, and the jailing of innocent people whose only crime is sneezing around the wrong authority, and then a discussion about the World Wars in the first half of the 20th century. The boys were properly horrified when told about the millions of civilians killed by Hitler and Stalin, the brave English subjects sleeping underground to avoid the nightly bombings and the United States' entry into World War II after the raid on Pearl Harbor.
We drove home, and after Mrs. M's birthday cake was gleefully torn asunder, everyone was tuckered out. The boys and Mrs. M fell asleep early that night, leaving me to read Commentary and The Economist while checking the AOL ticker on that 18-inning Sox-Rangers game. I gave up at midnight, with the score tied in the 11th, assuming Derek Lowe would blow it in the end. I just hope I'm as accurate in predicting an upset win for Bret Schundler in this November's gubernatorial race in Jersey.
3. Appetizers on the House? There aren't many benefits to a recession, at least if you're not an ambitious politician or skilled financier, but the manners of restaurateurs certainly improve. Mrs. M and I joined Andrey Slivka last Friday night?he'd just turned 30?at Tribeca's City Hall, an estimable seafood & steak joint that's very popular in the neighborhood. But like most high-end restaurants in this economic slump, business is off, and not just in the waning days of summer. Time was, just two years ago, that not only was a two-week-in-advance reservation necessary at City Hall, but the hostess would also require a credit card number as a place-holder. I hate that practice; same thing happened in the late 80s before the downturn of 1990-'91.
On this occasion, I called the same day for a table, and got the impression from the happy tone on the other end of the phone that it'd been a slow afternoon. We had a fine meal of crabmeat salads, grilled asparagus, mixed shellfish pan roast, sirloin steak and salmon, and the staff couldn't have been more solicitous. The waiter pushed dessert on us?we were too full?and not because he wanted a higher tab; rather, I think, it was for the company and something to do since the dining room was almost deserted at 7:30 p.m. Five different City Hall employees bid us goodnight after the meal, and while the employees there have never been surly like, say, at a Soho velvet-rope asylum, all this attention was a first. I wouldn't be surprised if the "For Rent" sign on the sadly out-of-business Rosemarie's down the street isn't a daily reminder to area restaurant owners that this economic climate demands high civility.
4. Who's Eating His Words Now? Earlier this month (Aug. 12) London's Observer ran a long excerpt of my friend John Strausbaugh's excellent Rock Til You Drop, which prompted a response the following Sunday from a local reader. The letter read: "The excerpt...will restrain no one of my age in my business. It's all been said before. However, I did take offence at the legend 'Colostomy Rock.' In 1988 my father, a musician who still played professionally at 68, developed trouble 'down there.' He was wary of doctors and unwilling to let anyone grope around his bottom. The cancer in his colon spread to his bowel. He had a colostomy. Usually these save the lives of patients and allow them to live to a grand age, but my father left it too late and later that year died in terrible indignity. Strausbaugh lazily uses 'colostomy' to signify self-inflicted, undignified, ugly ageing, rather than an illness which could affect any one of us."
It's a typical complaint about Strausbaugh's book from 60s libertines and Angry Young Men who now take their second set of kids to arena concerts and jive to David Crosby singing "Almost Cut My Hair." The punchline of this story, however, is that the correspondent was the Who's Pete Townshend, who in another life smashed guitars and hoped he'd die before he got old. Which, of course, is the point of Rock Til You Drop.
I have no interest in the music currently produced by these once-vital musicians?seeing the reconciled Everly Brothers at London's Royal Albert Hall in '87 cured me of nostalgia tours?but I still on occasion play the songs that energized my youth. Listening to the Stones, say, or Buffalo Springfield, in 2001 is a worthwhile diversion; not at all dissimilar to 30 years ago, when I'd spend hours with the collected works of Bessie Smith, Hank Williams and Billie Holiday. Mick Jagger, who's on the current cover of Saga, a British seniors' magazine, can still leave me spellbound when I return to an album like Beggar's Banquet. It was amazing how the Jagger/Keith Richards compositions were at the same time brilliant and condescending to most of their devotees.
One my favorite songs, "Salt of the Earth," contains these lines: "Raise your glass to the hard working people/Let's drink to the uncounted heads/Let's think of the wavering millions/Who need leaders but get gamblers instead/Spare a thought for the stay-at-home voter/His empty eyes gaze at strange beauty shows/And a parade of the gray suited grafters/A choice of cancer or polio/And when I look in the faceless crowd/A swirling mass of grays and black and white/They don't look real to me/Or don't they look so strange."
I didn't think of it back in '68, but Jagger never had any patience with the power-to-the-people-type slogans that many romanticized, and far preferred champagne, models, cool duds, superior drugs and foie gras. Not that I care. The rare vocal of Richards in "Salt of the Earth," as well as Jagger's peak-of-his-career voice, can still stud my arms with goosebumps.