Monday, November 23, 2020

Turkey, Gravy, and a Good Helping of Humility

My younger son (The Silverback Chihuahua) and his fiancĂ© will not be coming for Thanksgiving this year. They wanted to, really they did, and they are disappointed they won't be able to. 

They live in Los Angeles and my wife (Cruella) and myself live in Northern California. Though I asked them to come up, wanted them to come up, in some ways needed them to come up to celebrate a Thanksgiving like no other I have ever experienced before, he said they couldn't do it. Actually he said he wouldn't do it.

And I couldn't be more proud of him. 

He lives in South Central Los Angeles in a quaint California bungalow he has worked tirelessly to restore. His neighbors are a mix of African-American and Latino families, families where grandma and grandpa live with mom and dad and the kids. It's a beautiful vibrant neighborhood where the ice cream truck competes with the elote corn cart for kids who come charging out of houses and yards dollar bills clutched in their fists when either one announces their arrival via jingling bells and/or canned music. In fact music is everywhere. Men sit in front yards talking, complaining, arguing, women sit on porches and do the pretty much the same all while speakers strategically placed in windows blare out salsa, the blues, and rather incongruously Billy Joel.

That's in normal times. But these are not normal times.

South Central has one of the highest COVID infection rates in Southern California which has the highest infection rate in California and of course California is the most populous state in the country. Add to that the stunning statistic that the Hispanic/Latino population is ten times more likely to become infected than any other ethnic community. You do the math. 

So the not so young anymore son and his soon to be Mrs. don't feel they should travel 400 miles for basically one dinner that we will have to eat either outdoors or strategically placed around the dining room and with the door open. They don't feel they should because their chances of being carriers of the coronavirus are higher than normal. They don't want to potentially infect their (to them) elderly parents. They are disappointed, my son particularly because he'll miss his mother's turkey on Thursday and her artichokes on the Wednesday before. Disappointed, but accepting.

I couldn't be prouder.

Because I think this shows Cruella and I did a pretty good job raising our boys. We taught them to look out for the other guy, to be concerned not just with their own welfare but the welfare of the community as a whole. We taught them that sharing and sacrifice were worthwhile, beneficial concepts that made them better people. 

And as a consequence of that they learned to take disappointment with dignity and grace. Sometimes you don't get to do the thing you most want, whether that is to be with your whole family on Thanksgiving or have a second term as President. You accept that disappointment with humility and you graciously concede that what you wanted you did not get. Game hen instead of tom turkey. Presidential pension instead of second presidential term. These are the qualities that make a good person. 

Or in the language of my forbearers, a mensch.  

If you have any info on voter fraud I can arrange it
 so one of your buddies is dinner.






Friday, November 13, 2020

A Final Round Double Bogey at the 18th Hole

 It's Masters Weekend.

But instead of the usual blooming azaleas and walks along freshly mown spring grass, the Golf Gods decided in this year of COVID to hold the tournament as the shadows lengthen and thoughts of Thanksgiving dinner and it's inherent new fangled difficulties begin to fill our heads. The first two rounds have both had to be extended to the next day because of a lack of daylight in order to finish them (honestly, why didn't they take a silly thing like daylight into consideration?). Nevertheless the tournament will be played and some young white guy or Tiger Woods will be modeling that oh so preppy green jacket come Sunday night.

But I'm not here to talk about sports. I'm here to talk about sportsmanship.

A couple of days before the election, soon to be ex-Vice President Mike (Mommy Says I'm A Good Boy) Pence called up Jack Nicklaus and asked him to endorse the Trump/Pence ticket. Jack Nicklaus is the greatest golfer of all time until someone else is better and I guess the campaign was worried about potentially losing the white male country club vote.

That alone shows they really didn't know how to run a campaign.

Well Jack being as Republican as can be wrote a full throated endorsement of the Great Orange Cheeto and then went on to imply, no downright say that the other side were communist authoritarians. It was that last bit that was a bridge too far even for white shoes America. Golf fans of all stripes decided old Jackie double bogeyed that hole and let him know it. But Nicklaus, finding himself in front of a microphone for the first time in many a year decided to double down on that $5 Nassau and go on to state that he thought the COVID numbers, both cases and deaths, were overblown. He even said someone he knew was asked if it was okay to say their late parents had died of COVID because the hospital would get more money (hmm, where have I heard that line before?).

Yup, old Uncle Fuzzy ruined everyone's Thanksgiving by sitting down at the end of the table and going off on how the COVID can't be real cause he ain't gotten it. Pass the yams.

Skip ahead 10 days. The Masters traditionally begins with a ceremonial tee shot from one or two living legends of the sport. Stand on the first tee, have someone hand you a driving wood, and have everyone ooh and ahh at how an 80 year old can still get it out there a hundred yards or so. Then take a couple of questions from reporters and shuffle off to the clubhouse for a mimosa.

Before going any further I should mention how Jack Nicklaus was thought to be one of the great exemplars of sportsmanship. Famously he told his opponent at a deciding Ryder cup match to go ahead and pick up his ball when it was sorta close to the hole, thus causing a tie in the match and allowing his opponent and the rest of the opposing team to save face. In his lifetime he preached sportsmanship over winning, and that cheating was not to be tolerated in any facet of life. 

Do you see where I'm headed?

Sure enough one of the first questions was from Christine Brennan of USA Today:

“As you know, I wanted to speak with you before I wrote my column about your very public support of President Trump. I’d love to ask this now if I may. You are known as the ultimate gracious sportsman in the game of golf and really throughout sports, certainly with your career, with Ryder Cups, the way you’ve handled victory and defeat and the like. I’m just curious: What is your advice to President Trump on how to accept defeat?”  

Jack stood tall, squared his shoulders, drew a breath and replied:

"I think I’ve said enough about that. I don’t think this is the place for politics.”

Um, yeah. You said a whole lot with that statement. You said that the wanna be presidente for life was right to go ahead and keep contesting an election he has clearly lost. You said it's okay to keep looking for legal loopholes to stay one step ahead of the Southern District of New York's prosecutors. You said the will of the American people should be disregarded because, well, they're wrong and he (and me) are right. You said you believed the lies and the falsehoods Donald Trump has perpetuated on the public these last four years are okay by you so long as those godless Demoncrats don't get into the White House. 

In other words, what you said was that sportsmanship doesn't matter. Being a gracious loser is for suckers. Winning at any cost is all that matters.  

Just like your hero Donald Trump, who by the way is well known to cheat at golf. 

Ohh shanked that one good. Can I get a mulligan?


Saturday, November 7, 2020

Some thoughts on the 2020 Election

 Everybody happy? Everybody feeling good?


Well, I have a few thoughts.

1) There are a lot of issues the new administration is going to have to deal with but could they please add these to the list and a little higher than you might initially think. Let's get serious about reforming or eliminating the electoral college. We are the laughingstock of the world to scream about democracy but say well yeah I know this person got over 50% of the vote, but 250 years ago the founders had to give slave states a sop called the Electoral College so they'd feel better about themselves and yeah well the guy with fewer votes won. This has to end. Majority rules, that's what you're taught from pre-school on. And while on the subject it's time to go to full in on mail in elections. The highest number of people voting EVER was when states loosened their restrictions on mail voting because of COVID. 145,000,000 people participated because if they didn't want to they didn't have to wait in line for hours, they didn't have to beg for time off from work, and they didn't have to face intimidation at a polling place. This is coming from the guy who wrote odes to the polling place as the embodiment of civic engagement. This is the reality of life in the 21st Century. Mail in voting works. It works really well. Especially in states like California where we count votes as they come in and even Florida where they stop accepting ballots on the Sunday before the election so on Monday they can start counting. And if Republicans shout that that doing these two things means Democrats will win every election then perhaps it's time to re-evaluate the principals of your party. Maybe you need to start thinking as leaders and not as politicians.

2) Democrats, don't go patting yourself on the back just yet. This election was about one thing and one thing only -- Donald Trump. This victory is because Republican voters crossed over (hello Lincoln Project) to vote ABT, anybody but Trump. 70 million people still voted for Trump which would be a record for any presidential candidate were it not for the fact he lost to a guy who got 75 million votes. Look down the ballot. Lindsey Graham got re-elected? You couldn't beat a mealy mouthed lickspittle Trump lapdog in a year when Trump was defeated? Did you flip any state legislatures so Republicans can't gerrymander the hell out of my beaten up census? Hell you even have to wait till January when passions won't be as high and nothing else will be on the ballot in Georgia to try and win two senate races against Republicans who were so stupid they got caught selling off their stock portfolios after the first COVID briefing. And that's probably gonna be just to get to 50-50 so Kamala can break ties. While you still control the House you lost 8 seats, for the most part seats you flipped in the Blue Wave two years ago. Those Republicans who voted for Biden this time will likely return to the fold when a more "normal" GOP candidate runs four years from now. You sure 40,000 of them won't be in Pennsylvania? Or Georgia? Or Wisconsin?

3) One thing I truly hope is that the Trump years will kill forever this notion that "We need a good businessman to be president". I know, I know, Trump is not a good businessman, but my point is that it is a total fallacy that businessmen make good leaders. They don't . They make money. That's their job. The job of government is not to make money. At the absolute best government should be a zero sum proposition, but in point of fact government should run a deficit and use the money it takes in to stimulate the private sector. Also it is the government's job to regulate the private sector to prevent "an overabundance of exuberance" from crashing the entire thing down on our heads. A businessman will never do that. The professional political class is who needs to be making the laws, not someone with his thumb of the scale.

4) What is with Cuban Americans in south Florida? Hey compadre I know you didn't like the dictator Fidel, but you voted hand over fist for the dictator Trump and thus handed him the state. Your guy Batista is not coming back, your ancestral farms and property are not going to be returned, and if you really want to help your brothers on the island then demand the US engage Cuba in real trade agreements and start opening things up. As long as you lap at the mojito the Republicans get you drunk with they are never going to help the people of Cuba. But maybe that's what you want, things to get so bad there that a Batista Jr. will sneak in under the cover of night and bring back a right wing military dictatorship that's hand in glove with the Mob. How'd that work out for you the last time?

5) Don't think I'm letting you off California, I got a few things to say to you as well. Really, you don't want a nurse or doctor to be mandated to be in a dialysis clinic cause that's what that proposition was about, not in any way about closing clinics. But you didn't read the proposition you just saw the TV ads. And you want Uber and Lyft to economically rape their employees (yes, you drive for them, you work for them, that makes you an employee) cause that's what you voted for. But you didn't read the proposition you just saw the TV ads. And you think it's perfectly fine for huge corporations to keep on not paying their fair share of property taxes cause that's the reality of that proposition, not the "oh poor us we're gonna lose the family farm" who would have hardly been effected by it at all. But you didn't read the proposition you just saw the TV ads. But you did vote to restrict the amounts of information Big Tech can gather on you. But then again, Big Tech didn't run any TV ads opposing that so you actually read the proposition.

6) 70 million Americans voted for the man who through his incompetency, his hubris, his hatred of anything instituted by his, let's all say it together, African-American predecessor KILLED a quarter of a million fellow citizens. 70 million Americans voted for the man who said white supremacists are "fine people". 70 million Americans voted for the man who pissed on foreign allies, got into a disastrous trade war, cozied up to any and all dictators, separated children from parents who were LEGALLY attempting to enter the country and now can't reconnect the families, put those children in cages, lost interest in and never built his fabled wall along the border, spent most of his day watching Fox news to see how many times his name got mentioned, moved so fast to appoint a replacement for Ruth Bader Ginsberg that Merrick Garland's name wasn't even able to be mentioned, showed contempt for experts in science or military affairs or economics because "I know more about it than anyone else" and you can go on and fill in your own favorite Trump calamity. 70 million people. 70 million people who believed him that Joe Biden and the Democratic Party are the evil socialists who are gonna...well what exactly? Make sure you can get health care? Make sure the air is fit to breath and the water fit to drink? Make sure you get paid a fair wage for a fair day's work and not have some corporate suit come along and say sorry we're not making enough money so we're shipping your job overseas? Make sure that if you are not white or not even the right kind of white you're not going to have a cop beat or kill you? 70 million people believed him and his crime family were only doing the best for the country and if they skim a little off the top well that's okay cause everyone does it (no, they don't). 70 million Americans believed his crap. Thank the universe for the 75 million who didn't.

But tonight let's pop the champagne and toast Joe and Kamala. And tomorrow lets all get back to work to heal up the jagged knife wound the past four years have infected us with. It's not going to happen overnight. It might not even happen in the next four years. But we've got to make a start and we've got to keep working. We owe that to those who came before us and those who will come after.