I’ve always been impressed by people in public life who have mastered the art of the public apology. Some have couched their pleadings in terms of remorse as, for example Timothy Geithner, Tom Daschle and Charles Rangel, throwing themselves on our mercy, hoping that the media and the public would buy into their “forthright” confessions of ignorance and innocence in the matter of their blatant tax evasion.
Their ploy is to publicly castigate themselves for their naiveté and stupidity or worse, hoping that their thespian qualities and careful scripting by public relations consultants paid or volunteered would carry the day. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t as poor Tom Daschle found out. Perhaps there was too much public resentment about Daschle using his Senate inner knowledge to make a killing financially, appearing to severely weaken his populist image.
One of the most artful tactics of apology came from Richard Nixon when he was the Vice-Presidential candidate running with Dwight Eisenhower. He had been accused of being the recipient of a so-called slush fund that was designed to subsidize him in his political career, a situation that seemed to seriously dance around the bounds of legality.
His television speech, forever dubbed as the Checkers speech, since that was the name of the family cocker spaniel, was an outright plea for mercy on the grounds of economic hardship and the perils and wonders of a Horatio Alger boyhood, still in vogue at that time. He cited his devotion to public service and the fact that his poor wife only wore a “Republican” cloth coat since they were, as he implied, unable to afford a mink coat. Apparently the public bought into that exercise in self-pity and justification and, as we know, the Eisenhower-Nixon ticket won the election.
He took a different tack during the Watergate scandal, a hard-headed refusal to cooperate with investigators and, despite a huge election win and a massive effort at damage control, couldn’t save himself from resignation, nor keep his enablers out of jail. He was forced into exile and did not emerge until pardoned by President Ford in what was characterized as one of the greatest political payoffs of all time. Ford offered no apology for his action but used “we must put it behind us” reasoning which, in the end, doomed his chances for a second term.
The most masterful public apology in history was the one perpetrated by young Senator Ted Kennedy, who with the help of family and an army of retainers, orchestrated a brilliant apologia that is hands down a text book study of a public relations coup. In that case, a young woman Mary Jo Kopechne was drowned in a car driven by Senator Kennedy after a party in the Chappaquiddick section of Martha’s Vineyard in Cape Cod. He had driven the car into the water and managed to escape while the poor girl was left trapped in the car and drowned.
One still wonders how he managed to escape without helping the young lady to safety along the same escape route he had taken. Worse, he did not report the accident until the next day and was charged with leaving the scene of an accident, a minor violation. There were rumors of heavy drinking but the Kennedy loyalists at the party appeared to have closed ranks against the allegation and the drunken driving accusation became sidetracked.
His apology on television was a tribute to his thespian abilities and the brilliance of the acolytes and public relations experts who fashioned the speech which was probably rehearsed many times before it was delivered. It was chocked full of confessional platitudes like dubbing his actions in not reporting the accident as “inexplicable”, a good word, which puts reason on hold and he was groomed for the event like a mature innocent choirboy. Clearly though, panic, fear and confusion after the fact trumped any accusation of intent to deliberately end the life of this young woman.
His television apologia one-upped the Checkers speech and proved its mettle by saving Kennedy’s Senatorial career for its forty year run where he had won accolades for his hard work and consistently effective work for populist causes.
Those with a more acute long term memory will note that he was not rewarded with the Presidency he worked so hard to seek, not being able to gain enough traction in the primaries. If one very reluctantly puts aside the horror of Mary Jo Kopechne’s aborted young life, and sets it against the terrible tragedies of the Kennedy family, one is conflicted but cannot ignore a measure of compassion and clemency for the youngest brother of this ill fated clan. Perhaps there are moments when redemption is called for, although it comes with the curse of Mary Jo’s untimely death.
Even raising the issue years after the event while Senator Kennedy might be on the verge of answering his call to the beyond comes with some reluctance and sadness that cannot be ignored in the context of this essay.
But the weirdest attempt at an apologia came from none other than Bill Clinton who insisted, in the face of all evidence and against all the known logic of human behavior that he “did not have sex with that woman.” Of course no one believed him, even his wife, especially since his definition of sexual congress was mystifying. Indeed, there are those that truly believe that his putting oral sex beyond the boundaries of sexual activity set off a wave of true believers, especially among teenagers who, in apparent response, measured by statistics and anecdotal evidence, put oral sex into a category of popular amusements no more harmful than monopoly or roasting marshmallows at a campfire.
He was impeached despite his breakup with his chubby teenage intern but somehow held on to his post until George W. Bush took over. His image recovery is nothing short of miraculous. His effort at denial was an astounding success and he is now a role model for those who aspire to high office.
President Obama had two shots at apologia and handled them brilliantly. The first was in the matter of Reverend Wright whose church he had attended for decades. His method was to deny that he had ever heard the good Reverend’s obnoxious sermons. Despite the raised eyebrows everywhere, he had by then established such an unblemished image of probity that he was able to rise above the noise of his critics.
His second was in the matter of having gotten an especially good land deal from one of his financial sponsors Tony Rezko, now in jail and awaiting trial on other corruption charges. During the campaign Obama called his decision to make the deal in the first place “boneheaded.” Of course, he wasn’t running for President at the time of the real estate transaction which increased the size of the land footprint on his house and certainly increased its value. Given the state of Illinois politics, such obvious influence dealing was par for the course. We fervently hope there is no other shoe to drop in this case.
The problem with apologies in public life is that one cannot go to the well too often. In the President’s case the public will quickly tire of his multiple admissions of “screw-up’s”. I’m sure he knows this and given the infancy of his administration, he will undoubtedly put the brakes on the apology of self-effacement as time goes on.
Ex-Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich took the denial road. He mounted a PR campaign on television to tell people he did nothing wrong. Since he was also indicted for corruption and was soon to go to trial in Federal Court his pleas of innocence fell on deaf ears and he was unanimously kicked out of office by acclamation of the Illinois legislature. If I had to guess what did him in in the long run, despite the damning evidence of his wiretapped rants, I’d say it was his hair. Something about that hair-do was off-putting.
Apology dramatics is an important part of a politician’s toolbox and the fidelity of the apology is directly proportional to the politician’s words and demeanor. Perhaps the secret of the Kennedy apology was his Catholic upbringing where confession is a ritualistic commandment and redemption a necessary response.
The truth is that a confession, especially if it comes with some histrionics, like moist eyes and the obvious facial ticks and body language of sorrow and innocence, can induce forgiveness.
But then, as George W. Bush and Bill Clinton have proven, strong jawed and steely eyed denial can be a lot more effective in the short run. Perhaps in the long run as well.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Monday, February 2, 2009
Will a Historical Hitler Make a Comeback?
In five more years, 2014, it will be one hundred years since the start of World War I. The chances are that there are few, if any, living humans who can bear witness to any of the events associated with that war.
Indeed, the virulent hatred of Germany and the Kaiser generated by that cataclysmic event has long receded. It is left to historians to dispassionately record the facts of that hatred as merely a background study of the attitudes of the populations who supported the allied cause. The hated villains of that era, the Kaiser and his mad Generals who instigated the slaughter, have long disappeared from living memory and become footnotes to the main drama of the killing fields and its disastrous aftermath.
Unlike the Hitler era, the Kaiser’s reign did not enjoy the technological advantages of sophisticated and heroic moving pictorial images, leaving historians and information consumers bereft of material to accentuate and propagandize his legacy on television, the internet and movie theaters.
No living creature, even those whose ancestors died and suffered at the hands of the Germans during that bloody conflict, can possibly be roused to raw unforgiving hatred for those World War I perpetrators with the same immediacy and power of those who actually lived through these terrible events. Time, that great leveler which can make grieving subside in the living, has the power to cool even the most persistent of hatreds.
It is now the turn of those who lived through the terrible events of World War II to pass slowly into oblivion. With them will disappear the living memory of a war that contributed to the deaths of possibly 70 million people, a bloodbath of unprecedented barbarism, savagery and destruction that spawned a state sponsored method of human disposal, which became known as the holocaust, and a massacre of millions of non-combatants.
To those who lived through it, the personification of evil, the monster of monsters behind that slaughter is the man Adolph Hitler. As one who was an eyewitness to those events through the vast media coverage and the actuality of the war and its effect on my immediate world and the people in my circle, my memories are vivid and enduring.
While I was too young to serve as a soldier in that war, I and everyone I knew was totally involved in the fervent support of the war, and I fulfilled my patriotic duty as a proudly committed teenager to the war effort. As a boy scout, I participated as a bugler on parade with my troop, dedicating numerous plaques that were raised in every neighborhood marking the names of all who served in the Armed forces. I collected newspapers, metal and contributed my limited pocket money to every cause that was marshaled to help our troops and the home front.
Both of my parents were air raid wardens. Without protest we took our ration books seriously, as well as the blackouts, the air raid drills and any other instructions we got from the government on how we were to conduct ourselves to win the war. It was, as I continue to remember it, a sacred mission.
As far as I could tell, everyone in America was committed to the winning of the war and our hatred of Hitler and the Germans was manifest in everything we did. We had no doubt that America was fighting the worst monster in history. My memories of those times are vivid. At the news of the final surrender of Japan and the end of the war, I rushed down to Times Square to shout my joy along with thousands of like-minded citizens. As a boy scout in our troop drum and bugle corps, I marched down Fifth Avenue in the Victory Parade, a proud and cherished moment.
The aftermath, the pictures of the victims of the holocaust was beyond description. The enormity of its cruelty still defies comprehension. But the pictures could not be denied. We followed the war crimes trials at Nuremberg. The missing man from those trials, the arch villain, the inhuman disgusting monster who perpetrated these cruelties had escaped through cowardly suicide. Our hate for this man was palpable. It still is.
We ridiculed the chorus of denials that came from the conquered German people. “We had no idea of what was happening” or “we were only following orders” was the accepted and frequent response. Of course, we dismissed such excuses. They knew. Everybody knew.
Who then were the ecstatic Germans who lined the streets and filled the auditoriums and sports arenas and hailed their hero at every available opportunity? Is it possible to forget the brilliant films of Leni Riefenstahl, showing magnificently staged Nazi rallies filled with images of frenzied crowds expressing their ecstatic admiration of the Fuehrer, cunningly portrayed as a living God? Indeed there is a huge and apparently unstoppable and continuing commercial interest in the filmed images of that era and a heroic Hitler as its principal actor.
As the years progressed and the German people began to accept the reality of their defeat and recovered their footing and commitment to freedom and democracy, we wished them well and still do. They, too, were zealous in drowning out the horrors afflicted on them by the man their parents and grandparents called the Fuhrer and who followed him blindly to the verge of Armageddon. On many levels we have reconciled with the German people, and the animosity inspired by the two World Wars has been dissipated by time.
But the eyewitnesses of the Hitler era are beginning to die off and there are disturbing signs of small changes on the horizon that suggest that perhaps the image of the monster could be softening. It took a number of years after the war for the Holocaust deniers to stake their claim. Is this a sign that the monster is making a comeback?
Despite the legal banishment of such denials, the voices seem to be gaining momentum, stoked by the ravings of what appears to be a Hitler wannabe President Ahmadinejad of Iran. There can be little doubt that his bombastic false assertions are gaining traction both inside and outside of Iran. Indeed, the media of the Arab world has taken a page out of Hitler’s book when it comes to anti-Semitism. One who remembers as I do, sees the same familiar words and images which were in vogue in Germany and Europe during the Hitler era finding their way into the mainstream Arab media.
The evil genius of Josef Goebbels who masterminded Hitler’s propaganda efforts could be getting the last laugh. His carefully crafted outright and shameless lies continue to resonate. It was Goebbels who proudly boasted that if you repeat a lie long enough it eventually morphed into a truth. While it turns my stomach to say so, he may have been on to something.
The once dismissed phony book “The Protocols of Zion,” is circulated throughout the Arab world as if it were a true account of the Jews attempt to take over the world. Worse, the influence of such anti-Semitic lies and distortions is flaring up again in Europe through the good offices of the growing Moslem populations of these countries adding fuel to the still smoldering ashes of that Continent’s entrenched anti-Semitism.
The drumbeat of this hatred goes far beyond a criticism of Israel. It is directed at Jews everywhere.
It has never ceased to baffle me, why the Jewish people, who number about thirteen million of the world’s population of more than six billion people, a minuscule number barely qualified to be a statistic, are scapegoated with such venom. The continuing catalog of lies about this people now amplified on the Internet is beyond my understanding and belief.
Worse, I note in the realm of popular entertainment, two movies: The Reader being one, where the old shibboleth of “I was only obeying orders” has raised its ugly head again. The main character of this book to movie effort, a former female concentration camp guard, is made sympathetic by emphasizing that she was illiterate and therefore not fully capable of realizing the enormity of her crime, a ridiculous assertion. Another movie, Valkyrie, suggests that it was a feat of heroism to attempt to assassinate Hitler, avoiding the brutal truth that it was only after the German officers who made the attempt had served the Fuhrer with blind loyalty until he was leading them to sure defeat. Where were they in the early days of his ugly attempt to Nazify Europe and the world and exterminate the Jews?
Indeed, the sudden reappearance of newspaper inserts from that period heralding stories and headlines of the Hitler era under the guise of being “historical” are flying off the newsstands. Am I being cynical to suggest nostalgia or yearning for the glorious past?
I am fully aware that I am hinting at a rather shocking prognostication and I do not lay claim to being a psychic. Perhaps I am overwrought by what I see happening, but I am concerned about what will occur when all the eyewitnesses are gone and the Hitler era becomes merely a historical fact, richly enhanced by the enormous media library portraying the action film hero Adolph Hitler as a near deity. Will a sense of nostalgia develop for the heady and allegedly glorious days of the Third Reich, clearly a high point in German history, a time when Germans ruled Europe?
Once the painful stings of living memory disappear how will history cast that moment? Will Germans of the future one day erect monuments and museums to mark that historical period and reclaim and celebrate those years when Germany was transcendent and the man who created the moment was a Godlike creature who, they might allege, was defeated by a Jew inspired mongrel rabble?
Will they further allege and amplify that he might have had the right idea and given them a taste of glory that they had never before enjoyed or imagined? Will those who hate and vilify Jews, a cursedly persistent and implacably weird phenomenon, band together to aid in Hitler’s resurrection, perhaps anointing him as a prophet? Stranger things have happened.
But when the eyewitnesses completely die off, the accuracies and nuances of living memory expires and what is left is the interpretations of dispassionate historians and, in this case, an astonishing record of edited movie images which, we have learned, have the power to distort memory and camouflage reality.
We can only hope that such a rehabilitation of this human monster never occurs. Such hope may be an exercise in futility. Unfortunately, those of us still living who were witness to these events, won’t be around to correct the distortions and rationalizations that are certain to emerge in the historical record.
Indeed, the virulent hatred of Germany and the Kaiser generated by that cataclysmic event has long receded. It is left to historians to dispassionately record the facts of that hatred as merely a background study of the attitudes of the populations who supported the allied cause. The hated villains of that era, the Kaiser and his mad Generals who instigated the slaughter, have long disappeared from living memory and become footnotes to the main drama of the killing fields and its disastrous aftermath.
Unlike the Hitler era, the Kaiser’s reign did not enjoy the technological advantages of sophisticated and heroic moving pictorial images, leaving historians and information consumers bereft of material to accentuate and propagandize his legacy on television, the internet and movie theaters.
No living creature, even those whose ancestors died and suffered at the hands of the Germans during that bloody conflict, can possibly be roused to raw unforgiving hatred for those World War I perpetrators with the same immediacy and power of those who actually lived through these terrible events. Time, that great leveler which can make grieving subside in the living, has the power to cool even the most persistent of hatreds.
It is now the turn of those who lived through the terrible events of World War II to pass slowly into oblivion. With them will disappear the living memory of a war that contributed to the deaths of possibly 70 million people, a bloodbath of unprecedented barbarism, savagery and destruction that spawned a state sponsored method of human disposal, which became known as the holocaust, and a massacre of millions of non-combatants.
To those who lived through it, the personification of evil, the monster of monsters behind that slaughter is the man Adolph Hitler. As one who was an eyewitness to those events through the vast media coverage and the actuality of the war and its effect on my immediate world and the people in my circle, my memories are vivid and enduring.
While I was too young to serve as a soldier in that war, I and everyone I knew was totally involved in the fervent support of the war, and I fulfilled my patriotic duty as a proudly committed teenager to the war effort. As a boy scout, I participated as a bugler on parade with my troop, dedicating numerous plaques that were raised in every neighborhood marking the names of all who served in the Armed forces. I collected newspapers, metal and contributed my limited pocket money to every cause that was marshaled to help our troops and the home front.
Both of my parents were air raid wardens. Without protest we took our ration books seriously, as well as the blackouts, the air raid drills and any other instructions we got from the government on how we were to conduct ourselves to win the war. It was, as I continue to remember it, a sacred mission.
As far as I could tell, everyone in America was committed to the winning of the war and our hatred of Hitler and the Germans was manifest in everything we did. We had no doubt that America was fighting the worst monster in history. My memories of those times are vivid. At the news of the final surrender of Japan and the end of the war, I rushed down to Times Square to shout my joy along with thousands of like-minded citizens. As a boy scout in our troop drum and bugle corps, I marched down Fifth Avenue in the Victory Parade, a proud and cherished moment.
The aftermath, the pictures of the victims of the holocaust was beyond description. The enormity of its cruelty still defies comprehension. But the pictures could not be denied. We followed the war crimes trials at Nuremberg. The missing man from those trials, the arch villain, the inhuman disgusting monster who perpetrated these cruelties had escaped through cowardly suicide. Our hate for this man was palpable. It still is.
We ridiculed the chorus of denials that came from the conquered German people. “We had no idea of what was happening” or “we were only following orders” was the accepted and frequent response. Of course, we dismissed such excuses. They knew. Everybody knew.
Who then were the ecstatic Germans who lined the streets and filled the auditoriums and sports arenas and hailed their hero at every available opportunity? Is it possible to forget the brilliant films of Leni Riefenstahl, showing magnificently staged Nazi rallies filled with images of frenzied crowds expressing their ecstatic admiration of the Fuehrer, cunningly portrayed as a living God? Indeed there is a huge and apparently unstoppable and continuing commercial interest in the filmed images of that era and a heroic Hitler as its principal actor.
As the years progressed and the German people began to accept the reality of their defeat and recovered their footing and commitment to freedom and democracy, we wished them well and still do. They, too, were zealous in drowning out the horrors afflicted on them by the man their parents and grandparents called the Fuhrer and who followed him blindly to the verge of Armageddon. On many levels we have reconciled with the German people, and the animosity inspired by the two World Wars has been dissipated by time.
But the eyewitnesses of the Hitler era are beginning to die off and there are disturbing signs of small changes on the horizon that suggest that perhaps the image of the monster could be softening. It took a number of years after the war for the Holocaust deniers to stake their claim. Is this a sign that the monster is making a comeback?
Despite the legal banishment of such denials, the voices seem to be gaining momentum, stoked by the ravings of what appears to be a Hitler wannabe President Ahmadinejad of Iran. There can be little doubt that his bombastic false assertions are gaining traction both inside and outside of Iran. Indeed, the media of the Arab world has taken a page out of Hitler’s book when it comes to anti-Semitism. One who remembers as I do, sees the same familiar words and images which were in vogue in Germany and Europe during the Hitler era finding their way into the mainstream Arab media.
The evil genius of Josef Goebbels who masterminded Hitler’s propaganda efforts could be getting the last laugh. His carefully crafted outright and shameless lies continue to resonate. It was Goebbels who proudly boasted that if you repeat a lie long enough it eventually morphed into a truth. While it turns my stomach to say so, he may have been on to something.
The once dismissed phony book “The Protocols of Zion,” is circulated throughout the Arab world as if it were a true account of the Jews attempt to take over the world. Worse, the influence of such anti-Semitic lies and distortions is flaring up again in Europe through the good offices of the growing Moslem populations of these countries adding fuel to the still smoldering ashes of that Continent’s entrenched anti-Semitism.
The drumbeat of this hatred goes far beyond a criticism of Israel. It is directed at Jews everywhere.
It has never ceased to baffle me, why the Jewish people, who number about thirteen million of the world’s population of more than six billion people, a minuscule number barely qualified to be a statistic, are scapegoated with such venom. The continuing catalog of lies about this people now amplified on the Internet is beyond my understanding and belief.
Worse, I note in the realm of popular entertainment, two movies: The Reader being one, where the old shibboleth of “I was only obeying orders” has raised its ugly head again. The main character of this book to movie effort, a former female concentration camp guard, is made sympathetic by emphasizing that she was illiterate and therefore not fully capable of realizing the enormity of her crime, a ridiculous assertion. Another movie, Valkyrie, suggests that it was a feat of heroism to attempt to assassinate Hitler, avoiding the brutal truth that it was only after the German officers who made the attempt had served the Fuhrer with blind loyalty until he was leading them to sure defeat. Where were they in the early days of his ugly attempt to Nazify Europe and the world and exterminate the Jews?
Indeed, the sudden reappearance of newspaper inserts from that period heralding stories and headlines of the Hitler era under the guise of being “historical” are flying off the newsstands. Am I being cynical to suggest nostalgia or yearning for the glorious past?
I am fully aware that I am hinting at a rather shocking prognostication and I do not lay claim to being a psychic. Perhaps I am overwrought by what I see happening, but I am concerned about what will occur when all the eyewitnesses are gone and the Hitler era becomes merely a historical fact, richly enhanced by the enormous media library portraying the action film hero Adolph Hitler as a near deity. Will a sense of nostalgia develop for the heady and allegedly glorious days of the Third Reich, clearly a high point in German history, a time when Germans ruled Europe?
Once the painful stings of living memory disappear how will history cast that moment? Will Germans of the future one day erect monuments and museums to mark that historical period and reclaim and celebrate those years when Germany was transcendent and the man who created the moment was a Godlike creature who, they might allege, was defeated by a Jew inspired mongrel rabble?
Will they further allege and amplify that he might have had the right idea and given them a taste of glory that they had never before enjoyed or imagined? Will those who hate and vilify Jews, a cursedly persistent and implacably weird phenomenon, band together to aid in Hitler’s resurrection, perhaps anointing him as a prophet? Stranger things have happened.
But when the eyewitnesses completely die off, the accuracies and nuances of living memory expires and what is left is the interpretations of dispassionate historians and, in this case, an astonishing record of edited movie images which, we have learned, have the power to distort memory and camouflage reality.
We can only hope that such a rehabilitation of this human monster never occurs. Such hope may be an exercise in futility. Unfortunately, those of us still living who were witness to these events, won’t be around to correct the distortions and rationalizations that are certain to emerge in the historical record.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
A Brief Encounter
Twenty years ago I attended a book party for a friend of mine, Nancy Holmes, who had just written a novel. She was being honored by an old acquaintance who had booked the party room at Chasen’s in Beverly Hills, one of the long standing celebrity restaurants of that era, now defunct. It wasn’t a large group, no more than forty people, many of them celebrities and former high officials of the government.
The atmosphere was friendly and congenial. One of the guests was James Stewart, an iconic figure who had graced the silver screen for most of my life. He put out his hand and introduced himself to me.
“I’m James Stewart,” he said, as if I didn’t know.
Of course, I knew a lot about James Stewart and I was tempted to show my knowledge of his background by addressing him by his military title, General. I demurred and in those few brief moments of conversation, we touched on a topic that, for some reason, engaged us both in a strange male bonding experience. I can’t remember how we got into it, but it concerned the Boy Scouts. Imagine, here was one of the iconic figures of American movies, a decorated General in World War II and me, a former corporal and novelist drifting into a conversation about, of all things, the Boy Scouts, going back in decades of time.
Stewart seemed to light up when he recalled his Scout experiences which, like mine, continued to resonate in our lives as a quintessentially happy moment of adolescent camaraderie and joyful male bonding. The actor had been an Eagle Scout, the highest achievement attainable in scouting. I hadn’t made Eagle, only Life Scout, one rung below Eagle. I guess he was always a super achiever.
Being a serious Boy Scout required an enormous commitment for a boy, which for most of us was of a five year duration starting from age 12. There were numerous meetings, band rehearsals if a Drum and Bugle Corps was involved, day hikes, overnight hikes, summer camp and home study to learn the ropes for acquiring merit badges in numerous disciplines from outdoor cooking, bird study, first aid, camping, and the like.
During the discussion, my imagination conjured up a picture of a proud Jimmy Stewart as a lanky skinny teenager festooned in his Eagle Scout merit badge sash and his neat Boy Scout uniform. We took a great deal of pride in that uniform which announced that we were something quite special, and we believed implicitly in the values that the organization espoused, values that continued to resonate in the zeitgeist of our world view. It is no surprise that James Stewart was the first famous Hollywood star to enlist when America went to war against the Nazis and the Japanese. Unfortunately, I was too young to have made such a grand gesture.
It was obvious that both of us really loved the experience. I had no doubt that his memory recalled halcyon youthful days when the world, to both of us, was still a young and hopeful place. Indeed, we shook hands again with the Boy Scout handshake as if all the years between then and now never happened despite the fact that his scout troop was in the Midwest and mine was in Brooklyn. Such is the power of connection, especially when it comes to adolescent memories.
The sense of commonality continues to connect and whenever I see an old movie with James Stewart or hear his name, that odd experience pops into my mind.
I can still recite the scout’s oath and the scout law. I bet James Stewart could as well. Against the background of what the world has gone through since Stewart and I were Boy Scouts, the 12 points of the scout law are worth revisiting again, after years of maligned neglect and criticism. Indeed, to many, the Boy Scouts have often been dubbed as a relic, a naive anachronism that had long been left behind in the laissez-faire new world of anything goes. I fervently disagree.
The 12 points of the Scout Law were quite simple and usually recited with a three finger raised right hand to brand it as a solemn pledge. It went like this: A scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.
Recite that to a rebellious hippy of the sixties or a hip hop singer of the new millennium or the gaggle of misanthropic and boneheaded executives and politicians involved in guiding us through the shoals of our recent past and current misfortunes, and they might regurgitate at what they deem as empty clichés. Maybe it’s time for them to swallow a vatful of antacids and confront the real source of our national folly, their own timid politically correct rejection of these values.
However you might characterize these 12 points of the Scout Law, I have come to believe that, despite what a rough ride they have gone through in my lifetime, they represent the magnetic arrow of the moral true north. In an age when we are confronted with daily affronts to these bedrock virtues, they somehow seem stronger and more resilient than ever.
Think of how the moral compass struggles against the magnetic north. While our language is lofty and inspiring and we thrill to read such titles as “The Audacity of Hope” and “The Purpose Driven Life” and the inspired stories they represent, the moral compass at times seems to have lost its bearing.
How is it possible that our financial system which must operate on trustworthiness, the first point in the scout law, has produced such tawdry violators such as Bernard Madoff and his ilk, and the liars and greedy fools who operate the systems we all must depend on like the banks and brokerages on main street and Wall Street.
And look at all the Hail Mary passes being handed out by Congress, even as our new President struggles to maintain a high moral tone. A treasury secretary who evades taxes, a secretary of state whose husband accepts donations from countries of dubious moral intent with whom she must negotiate, the head of one of the most crucially important committees of Congress avoiding taxes and soliciting funds for a personal venture on the people’s stationary. And on and on.
I don’t mean to be partisan or nasty minded, only contemporary. There is enough moral baggage floating down the Potomac in the wake of the last administration that would be too numerous to mention in a limited essay. But there are moments when I do gulp hard and try my best to believe in redemption. The memory is long and if the name Chappaquiddick still resonates, you know what I mean.
I like the idea of being courteous, helpful, kind, friendly and cheerful, five other points in the Scout Law. Witness the way people reacted during the inaugural of our new President. That enormous crowd that shoehorned their way into Washington D.C. was a real tribute to these qualities. Indeed, it is possible, to obey these simple virtues.
Obedience, another point in the law has its place. Ask any teacher. And being thrifty has been a virtue ever since old Ben Franklin championed the process back before we were a country. As for clean, my generation was brought up on the idea that cleanliness was next to godliness. I never quite knew what that meant, but apparently my mother knew since she repeated the phrase ad nauseam and I can still feel the pressure of her washcloth on my ears.
And what of bravery? Are we not the land of the brave and the free. Anything wrong with that concept? There are lots of ways to define bravery. We who served in the Armed Forces know its meaning but there are millions of brave acts being carried out each day by ordinary people acting out of simple and unheralded dedication, decency and self-sacrifice. Who doesn’t believe that being brave means being noble and fearless in the face of adversity?
As for reverent, there is room in our system for both believers and non-believers as our new President intoned in his inaugural speech. Indeed, as a lover of words, I am a great fan of lofty rhetoric, although I do occasionally listen with a jaundiced ear as I beat down a tendency to be jaded and somewhat cynical at times.
I am well aware that in certain sophisticated circles, this essay might sound cornball and naïve. Who cares. Yes, I do know how conflicted the Boy Scout leadership is on the issue of gays and I don’t pretend to have a solution. But I believe in my soul that the Boy Scouts gave me something precious which has stayed with me throughout my life and I, along with the great James Stewart of blessed memory, knew it in the marrow of his bones.
Its just strikes me as strange and wonderful how a Midwestern bred film star and a kid from the roustabout streets of a vanished Brooklyn had a brief encounter, a moment of commonality that continues to linger in memory as an odd personal beacon of light in a troubled world.
The atmosphere was friendly and congenial. One of the guests was James Stewart, an iconic figure who had graced the silver screen for most of my life. He put out his hand and introduced himself to me.
“I’m James Stewart,” he said, as if I didn’t know.
Of course, I knew a lot about James Stewart and I was tempted to show my knowledge of his background by addressing him by his military title, General. I demurred and in those few brief moments of conversation, we touched on a topic that, for some reason, engaged us both in a strange male bonding experience. I can’t remember how we got into it, but it concerned the Boy Scouts. Imagine, here was one of the iconic figures of American movies, a decorated General in World War II and me, a former corporal and novelist drifting into a conversation about, of all things, the Boy Scouts, going back in decades of time.
Stewart seemed to light up when he recalled his Scout experiences which, like mine, continued to resonate in our lives as a quintessentially happy moment of adolescent camaraderie and joyful male bonding. The actor had been an Eagle Scout, the highest achievement attainable in scouting. I hadn’t made Eagle, only Life Scout, one rung below Eagle. I guess he was always a super achiever.
Being a serious Boy Scout required an enormous commitment for a boy, which for most of us was of a five year duration starting from age 12. There were numerous meetings, band rehearsals if a Drum and Bugle Corps was involved, day hikes, overnight hikes, summer camp and home study to learn the ropes for acquiring merit badges in numerous disciplines from outdoor cooking, bird study, first aid, camping, and the like.
During the discussion, my imagination conjured up a picture of a proud Jimmy Stewart as a lanky skinny teenager festooned in his Eagle Scout merit badge sash and his neat Boy Scout uniform. We took a great deal of pride in that uniform which announced that we were something quite special, and we believed implicitly in the values that the organization espoused, values that continued to resonate in the zeitgeist of our world view. It is no surprise that James Stewart was the first famous Hollywood star to enlist when America went to war against the Nazis and the Japanese. Unfortunately, I was too young to have made such a grand gesture.
It was obvious that both of us really loved the experience. I had no doubt that his memory recalled halcyon youthful days when the world, to both of us, was still a young and hopeful place. Indeed, we shook hands again with the Boy Scout handshake as if all the years between then and now never happened despite the fact that his scout troop was in the Midwest and mine was in Brooklyn. Such is the power of connection, especially when it comes to adolescent memories.
The sense of commonality continues to connect and whenever I see an old movie with James Stewart or hear his name, that odd experience pops into my mind.
I can still recite the scout’s oath and the scout law. I bet James Stewart could as well. Against the background of what the world has gone through since Stewart and I were Boy Scouts, the 12 points of the scout law are worth revisiting again, after years of maligned neglect and criticism. Indeed, to many, the Boy Scouts have often been dubbed as a relic, a naive anachronism that had long been left behind in the laissez-faire new world of anything goes. I fervently disagree.
The 12 points of the Scout Law were quite simple and usually recited with a three finger raised right hand to brand it as a solemn pledge. It went like this: A scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.
Recite that to a rebellious hippy of the sixties or a hip hop singer of the new millennium or the gaggle of misanthropic and boneheaded executives and politicians involved in guiding us through the shoals of our recent past and current misfortunes, and they might regurgitate at what they deem as empty clichés. Maybe it’s time for them to swallow a vatful of antacids and confront the real source of our national folly, their own timid politically correct rejection of these values.
However you might characterize these 12 points of the Scout Law, I have come to believe that, despite what a rough ride they have gone through in my lifetime, they represent the magnetic arrow of the moral true north. In an age when we are confronted with daily affronts to these bedrock virtues, they somehow seem stronger and more resilient than ever.
Think of how the moral compass struggles against the magnetic north. While our language is lofty and inspiring and we thrill to read such titles as “The Audacity of Hope” and “The Purpose Driven Life” and the inspired stories they represent, the moral compass at times seems to have lost its bearing.
How is it possible that our financial system which must operate on trustworthiness, the first point in the scout law, has produced such tawdry violators such as Bernard Madoff and his ilk, and the liars and greedy fools who operate the systems we all must depend on like the banks and brokerages on main street and Wall Street.
And look at all the Hail Mary passes being handed out by Congress, even as our new President struggles to maintain a high moral tone. A treasury secretary who evades taxes, a secretary of state whose husband accepts donations from countries of dubious moral intent with whom she must negotiate, the head of one of the most crucially important committees of Congress avoiding taxes and soliciting funds for a personal venture on the people’s stationary. And on and on.
I don’t mean to be partisan or nasty minded, only contemporary. There is enough moral baggage floating down the Potomac in the wake of the last administration that would be too numerous to mention in a limited essay. But there are moments when I do gulp hard and try my best to believe in redemption. The memory is long and if the name Chappaquiddick still resonates, you know what I mean.
I like the idea of being courteous, helpful, kind, friendly and cheerful, five other points in the Scout Law. Witness the way people reacted during the inaugural of our new President. That enormous crowd that shoehorned their way into Washington D.C. was a real tribute to these qualities. Indeed, it is possible, to obey these simple virtues.
Obedience, another point in the law has its place. Ask any teacher. And being thrifty has been a virtue ever since old Ben Franklin championed the process back before we were a country. As for clean, my generation was brought up on the idea that cleanliness was next to godliness. I never quite knew what that meant, but apparently my mother knew since she repeated the phrase ad nauseam and I can still feel the pressure of her washcloth on my ears.
And what of bravery? Are we not the land of the brave and the free. Anything wrong with that concept? There are lots of ways to define bravery. We who served in the Armed Forces know its meaning but there are millions of brave acts being carried out each day by ordinary people acting out of simple and unheralded dedication, decency and self-sacrifice. Who doesn’t believe that being brave means being noble and fearless in the face of adversity?
As for reverent, there is room in our system for both believers and non-believers as our new President intoned in his inaugural speech. Indeed, as a lover of words, I am a great fan of lofty rhetoric, although I do occasionally listen with a jaundiced ear as I beat down a tendency to be jaded and somewhat cynical at times.
I am well aware that in certain sophisticated circles, this essay might sound cornball and naïve. Who cares. Yes, I do know how conflicted the Boy Scout leadership is on the issue of gays and I don’t pretend to have a solution. But I believe in my soul that the Boy Scouts gave me something precious which has stayed with me throughout my life and I, along with the great James Stewart of blessed memory, knew it in the marrow of his bones.
Its just strikes me as strange and wonderful how a Midwestern bred film star and a kid from the roustabout streets of a vanished Brooklyn had a brief encounter, a moment of commonality that continues to linger in memory as an odd personal beacon of light in a troubled world.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Who Can We Trust?
My normal level of skepticism is reaching paranoid proportions. Who can one trust, truly trust?
Can you trust the regulatory agencies charged with protecting you from thieves like Bernard Madoff who got away with his Ponzi scam for decades?
Can you trust the idiots in Congress who allowed Fannie and Freddie to get away with buying mortgages that were clearly credit unworthy, while the executives of these institutions enriched themselves with giant-sized compensation?
Can you trust the incompetent government intelligence services who failed to detect the truth about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction programs?
Can you trust the bankers and brokers who sliced up credit unworthy mortgages, packaged them with allegedly more secure mortgages and sold them off to other banks and investors who are equally guilty of stupidity?
Can you trust the pharmaceutical companies who pay off doctors to plug their wares, doctors who don’t reveal their ties to these companies? Worse, can you trust them to advertise their products on television with the absurd caveat to consult their doctors on the basis of their advertising claims? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?
Can you trust the endless barrage of propaganda coming from governments that manipulate photos and create vast fictional accounts to promote their point of view?
Can you trust the media to tell you the truth about anything?
Can you trust most of the advertising with which you are bombarded on a daily basis, especially those who use celebrities as spokespersons who are merely paid to lie about the wonders of the products they are endorsing?
Can you trust the endless stream of misstatements and a vast array of misguided opinions proliferating on the Internet, where anyone who can speak or type can offer anything as if it were the truth? (I yield to the judgment of the readers of this blog. Nevertheless, I cling to the belief that my essays are more questioning and cautionary rather than bombastic or ideological.)
Unfortunately, buried in this clutter of outright lies, half-truths, obfuscations, exaggerations, canards and deceptions are some genuine bedrock truths that get short shrift in the avalanche of what passes for information. How is one to separate the wheat from the chaff?
Remember the days when most of us gave our unqualified trust to priests, politicians, stockbrokers, scoutmasters, teachers, doctors, and a whole array of authority figures? Who has not been shaken by recent revelations and discoveries of malfeasance, manipulation and downright cruelty and deception by those who once basked in our confidence?
This doesn’t mean that there aren’t people out there: our parents, grandparents, siblings and others in our extended families and social circles who have our interests at heart and whose trust and love we treasure. Nevertheless, even in these relationships, trust often goes awry and there is enough evidence of horror and betrayal to question one’s absolute devotion to the idea of the loyalty of friends and family. I’ll drop anchor on this one. It is just too scary and dangerous to surrender to total cynicism. Once you lose your optimism even Little Orphan Annie won’t be singing about the sun coming out tomorrow.
Short of dispensing truth serum to the chattering masses or planting a lie detector chip in everyone now living, I offer my own protective prescription.
Believe nothing at face value. Do as much due diligence as possible. Attempt verification. Ask questions. Get second opinions, third and fourth if you are not completely satisfied. These activities are time consuming and perhaps wasteful, but think of yourself as being a perpetual target who must protect yourself from harm and the deliberate rifling of your money and trust.
Beware of the proverbial “man on the white horse” who has the solution to all the ills of mankind. He or she doesn’t exist. Everyone is fallible.
Recognize that human nature has its dark side. Think of yourself as a human junk filter, not unlike the junk recognizer in your computer program. It may not catch all the junk, but at least it tries.
Of course, you are still subject to be fleeced and manipulated. I know I’m being preachy and have painted this essay with a very broad brush. Sometimes I feel that I’m baying at the moon, merely making sounds of anguish into the night sky.
So who can we trust?
I call your attention to the motto on our money, “In God We Trust.” Substitute whatever non-human supernatural force that suits your faith or fancy and keep your eyes open and your fingers crossed.
Can you trust the regulatory agencies charged with protecting you from thieves like Bernard Madoff who got away with his Ponzi scam for decades?
Can you trust the idiots in Congress who allowed Fannie and Freddie to get away with buying mortgages that were clearly credit unworthy, while the executives of these institutions enriched themselves with giant-sized compensation?
Can you trust the incompetent government intelligence services who failed to detect the truth about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction programs?
Can you trust the bankers and brokers who sliced up credit unworthy mortgages, packaged them with allegedly more secure mortgages and sold them off to other banks and investors who are equally guilty of stupidity?
Can you trust the pharmaceutical companies who pay off doctors to plug their wares, doctors who don’t reveal their ties to these companies? Worse, can you trust them to advertise their products on television with the absurd caveat to consult their doctors on the basis of their advertising claims? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?
Can you trust the endless barrage of propaganda coming from governments that manipulate photos and create vast fictional accounts to promote their point of view?
Can you trust the media to tell you the truth about anything?
Can you trust most of the advertising with which you are bombarded on a daily basis, especially those who use celebrities as spokespersons who are merely paid to lie about the wonders of the products they are endorsing?
Can you trust the endless stream of misstatements and a vast array of misguided opinions proliferating on the Internet, where anyone who can speak or type can offer anything as if it were the truth? (I yield to the judgment of the readers of this blog. Nevertheless, I cling to the belief that my essays are more questioning and cautionary rather than bombastic or ideological.)
Unfortunately, buried in this clutter of outright lies, half-truths, obfuscations, exaggerations, canards and deceptions are some genuine bedrock truths that get short shrift in the avalanche of what passes for information. How is one to separate the wheat from the chaff?
Remember the days when most of us gave our unqualified trust to priests, politicians, stockbrokers, scoutmasters, teachers, doctors, and a whole array of authority figures? Who has not been shaken by recent revelations and discoveries of malfeasance, manipulation and downright cruelty and deception by those who once basked in our confidence?
This doesn’t mean that there aren’t people out there: our parents, grandparents, siblings and others in our extended families and social circles who have our interests at heart and whose trust and love we treasure. Nevertheless, even in these relationships, trust often goes awry and there is enough evidence of horror and betrayal to question one’s absolute devotion to the idea of the loyalty of friends and family. I’ll drop anchor on this one. It is just too scary and dangerous to surrender to total cynicism. Once you lose your optimism even Little Orphan Annie won’t be singing about the sun coming out tomorrow.
Short of dispensing truth serum to the chattering masses or planting a lie detector chip in everyone now living, I offer my own protective prescription.
Believe nothing at face value. Do as much due diligence as possible. Attempt verification. Ask questions. Get second opinions, third and fourth if you are not completely satisfied. These activities are time consuming and perhaps wasteful, but think of yourself as being a perpetual target who must protect yourself from harm and the deliberate rifling of your money and trust.
Beware of the proverbial “man on the white horse” who has the solution to all the ills of mankind. He or she doesn’t exist. Everyone is fallible.
Recognize that human nature has its dark side. Think of yourself as a human junk filter, not unlike the junk recognizer in your computer program. It may not catch all the junk, but at least it tries.
Of course, you are still subject to be fleeced and manipulated. I know I’m being preachy and have painted this essay with a very broad brush. Sometimes I feel that I’m baying at the moon, merely making sounds of anguish into the night sky.
So who can we trust?
I call your attention to the motto on our money, “In God We Trust.” Substitute whatever non-human supernatural force that suits your faith or fancy and keep your eyes open and your fingers crossed.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
The E-Book Vindication
The recent front page story in the New York Times confirming that the e-book concept has finally caught on and is surging, has prompted many of my friends, colleagues and readers to e-mail me expressing kudos and congratulations for my so-called perceptive insight, expressed a dozen years ago, that electronic books will one day dominate the publishing world.
Yes, I have been flacking that concept for a little more than half a generation, ever since I re-acquired my entire published library of 30 novels and short stories and digitized them in every known format. In that time, I have been excoriated by my foolhardiness, castigated for daring to predict the ultimate demise of the paper book, and being cast as a pain in the butt by the publishing establishment.
In that time I have watched the body count of like-minded advocates, as they lay strewn along the highway of commerce like insect infested logs. As the numerous essays in my long catalogue of blogs will attest, I have been hammering this drum relentlessly despite the cacophony of naysayers whose vision was inhibited by nostalgia and stubborn resistance to the notion that, in the end, content would trump its delivery system.
What was wanting in this scenario was a more reader comfortable device that would be competitive to the long dominance of the paper book. With the Kindle and the SONY Reader, and more gadget makers joining the fray, the sun has at last risen on the concept and it will remain in the sky forever.
Some publishers still cling to the notion that sales of e-books are still a fraction of total book volume and continue to resist the conversion to digital, which brings to mind the image of the fiddling Emperor Nero ignoring the destruction of Rome. They are, as they say, dead men walking.
As a long time lover of the paper book and a practitioner in the supply of fictional content, I had little doubt that the swift emergence of digital technology would, one day, supplant the paper book. In fact, I used to predict that by the middle of the 21st Century the paper book would be a relic, a collectible antique, as dead as the record and tape industries.
I am now revising my estimate by twenty five years. At its present speed of acceptance, I predict that the paper book’s demise will be at the tipping point by 2025. With other book lovers, I will mourn its passing in advance. Being right has its satisfactions. It has its downside as well. Yes, I will miss the tactical feel of the paper book and its unique effluvia of ink and cellulose. I will miss the views of my old friends who will no longer be stacked like retired soldiers on my bookshelves, which even now groan with the weight of years of collecting.
The ramifications of this revolution will be profound in many ways. The impact on brick and mortar stores will follow the well-trodden path of retailers in the Tower Records mode. The visual displays of book covers in these stores will be sorely missed, as will the joys of browsing the stacks and sampling at leisure the content of the displayed books.
Although the digital devices like the Kindle cleverly offer sample chapters before making a purchase and are an excellent form of browsing, they come up short against the physical act of browsing allowed by the bookstores. Nevertheless, this form of browsing electronically will prevail. While the initial investment of upwards of three hundred dollars to buy these devices seems pricey, the cost of the content is lower by more than half and on the Kindle, never exceeds ten dollars and, for classics, much less.
Major publishers will seriously have to revise their business plans and pricing. While they will garner extraordinary savings by severely reducing warehousing and productions costs, they will encounter marketing obstacles because of the severe reduction of newspaper space and the proliferation of the Internet and television channels. This means that there will be no giant all encompassing conduit for advertising their wares. This will not be merely an obstacle in the book business but a severe rethinking for all products seeking to attract ears and eyeballs.
On the other hand, there are many who believe that the marketing of books among battalions of readers is far more dependent on word of mouth than on advertising and publicity. They may be right. While there is no scientific measuring stick to prove the point, I am inclined to believe that there is a mysterious content recommending virus that passes from inspired reader to inspired reader that may be the reason some books get read more than others.
Publishers generally will, if they choose to stay in the business, become primarily the gateway to content and will have to concentrate on developing more innovative ways to market their wares through digital channels if they want to stay financially viable.
The entire system of textbooks will be totally revised to accommodate the electronic publishing revolution. The day of the backpack will disappear. Libraries, too, will revise their programs in ways that will result in a radical change of services. The breathtaking plan of Google to digitize every book ever published is certainly a broad clue to the future that is fast engulfing us. But while these changes are obvious, the rules of unintended consequences will kick in and further embellish the profound changes in store for us.
Indeed, even I have discovered an unintended consequence in the use of these devices. I have, for example, bought and read more books since acquiring the devices than I have ever read before. They seem easier to read and faster, but this could be my imagination.
From the point of view of economics, a dedicated reader like myself who can purchase as much as 50 books a year, both fiction and non-fiction, the cost of the device becomes a minor expense and the convenience and immediacy of the purchase cannot be matched. Indeed, the Kindle download takes less than ten seconds for most books, there is no hassle or lines at the cash register and one does not have to use a connection to a computer to search the Kindle store. The SONY reader still requires a computer connection to its store to make a selection, although a new model has been promised that will eliminate that inconvenience. Also, the SONY is not yet connected to the Apple platform, but I assume that, too, will one day be corrected. The exclusivity of these devices will change as well as more and more competitors join the fray.
Futurists will, of course, have additional ideas on how digitization will affect the publishing business, but these few prognostications are pretty obvious and absorbing its meaning will be the challenge of every one involved in the business evolution of publishing. Pervading these predictions is the prevailing opinion and hard research that young people are reading less and less, and this will have grave implications for the future of content, however it is delivered.
Despite the surveys, I do not share the gloom and doom that predicts the further diminishment of the reading public, especially among the young, who have sold their souls to computer games and the visual arts.
I have great faith in the ultimate future of literature and the value and importance of storytelling and acquiring knowledge through the artful use of words, now migrating from paper to electronic screens. So far, I have not seen a replacement for the human imagination, the so-called theater of the mind, which embellishes and enriches the word and spins its yarns in ways that cannot be replicated by any man-made visual contrivance.
Yes, I have been flacking that concept for a little more than half a generation, ever since I re-acquired my entire published library of 30 novels and short stories and digitized them in every known format. In that time, I have been excoriated by my foolhardiness, castigated for daring to predict the ultimate demise of the paper book, and being cast as a pain in the butt by the publishing establishment.
In that time I have watched the body count of like-minded advocates, as they lay strewn along the highway of commerce like insect infested logs. As the numerous essays in my long catalogue of blogs will attest, I have been hammering this drum relentlessly despite the cacophony of naysayers whose vision was inhibited by nostalgia and stubborn resistance to the notion that, in the end, content would trump its delivery system.
What was wanting in this scenario was a more reader comfortable device that would be competitive to the long dominance of the paper book. With the Kindle and the SONY Reader, and more gadget makers joining the fray, the sun has at last risen on the concept and it will remain in the sky forever.
Some publishers still cling to the notion that sales of e-books are still a fraction of total book volume and continue to resist the conversion to digital, which brings to mind the image of the fiddling Emperor Nero ignoring the destruction of Rome. They are, as they say, dead men walking.
As a long time lover of the paper book and a practitioner in the supply of fictional content, I had little doubt that the swift emergence of digital technology would, one day, supplant the paper book. In fact, I used to predict that by the middle of the 21st Century the paper book would be a relic, a collectible antique, as dead as the record and tape industries.
I am now revising my estimate by twenty five years. At its present speed of acceptance, I predict that the paper book’s demise will be at the tipping point by 2025. With other book lovers, I will mourn its passing in advance. Being right has its satisfactions. It has its downside as well. Yes, I will miss the tactical feel of the paper book and its unique effluvia of ink and cellulose. I will miss the views of my old friends who will no longer be stacked like retired soldiers on my bookshelves, which even now groan with the weight of years of collecting.
The ramifications of this revolution will be profound in many ways. The impact on brick and mortar stores will follow the well-trodden path of retailers in the Tower Records mode. The visual displays of book covers in these stores will be sorely missed, as will the joys of browsing the stacks and sampling at leisure the content of the displayed books.
Although the digital devices like the Kindle cleverly offer sample chapters before making a purchase and are an excellent form of browsing, they come up short against the physical act of browsing allowed by the bookstores. Nevertheless, this form of browsing electronically will prevail. While the initial investment of upwards of three hundred dollars to buy these devices seems pricey, the cost of the content is lower by more than half and on the Kindle, never exceeds ten dollars and, for classics, much less.
Major publishers will seriously have to revise their business plans and pricing. While they will garner extraordinary savings by severely reducing warehousing and productions costs, they will encounter marketing obstacles because of the severe reduction of newspaper space and the proliferation of the Internet and television channels. This means that there will be no giant all encompassing conduit for advertising their wares. This will not be merely an obstacle in the book business but a severe rethinking for all products seeking to attract ears and eyeballs.
On the other hand, there are many who believe that the marketing of books among battalions of readers is far more dependent on word of mouth than on advertising and publicity. They may be right. While there is no scientific measuring stick to prove the point, I am inclined to believe that there is a mysterious content recommending virus that passes from inspired reader to inspired reader that may be the reason some books get read more than others.
Publishers generally will, if they choose to stay in the business, become primarily the gateway to content and will have to concentrate on developing more innovative ways to market their wares through digital channels if they want to stay financially viable.
The entire system of textbooks will be totally revised to accommodate the electronic publishing revolution. The day of the backpack will disappear. Libraries, too, will revise their programs in ways that will result in a radical change of services. The breathtaking plan of Google to digitize every book ever published is certainly a broad clue to the future that is fast engulfing us. But while these changes are obvious, the rules of unintended consequences will kick in and further embellish the profound changes in store for us.
Indeed, even I have discovered an unintended consequence in the use of these devices. I have, for example, bought and read more books since acquiring the devices than I have ever read before. They seem easier to read and faster, but this could be my imagination.
From the point of view of economics, a dedicated reader like myself who can purchase as much as 50 books a year, both fiction and non-fiction, the cost of the device becomes a minor expense and the convenience and immediacy of the purchase cannot be matched. Indeed, the Kindle download takes less than ten seconds for most books, there is no hassle or lines at the cash register and one does not have to use a connection to a computer to search the Kindle store. The SONY reader still requires a computer connection to its store to make a selection, although a new model has been promised that will eliminate that inconvenience. Also, the SONY is not yet connected to the Apple platform, but I assume that, too, will one day be corrected. The exclusivity of these devices will change as well as more and more competitors join the fray.
Futurists will, of course, have additional ideas on how digitization will affect the publishing business, but these few prognostications are pretty obvious and absorbing its meaning will be the challenge of every one involved in the business evolution of publishing. Pervading these predictions is the prevailing opinion and hard research that young people are reading less and less, and this will have grave implications for the future of content, however it is delivered.
Despite the surveys, I do not share the gloom and doom that predicts the further diminishment of the reading public, especially among the young, who have sold their souls to computer games and the visual arts.
I have great faith in the ultimate future of literature and the value and importance of storytelling and acquiring knowledge through the artful use of words, now migrating from paper to electronic screens. So far, I have not seen a replacement for the human imagination, the so-called theater of the mind, which embellishes and enriches the word and spins its yarns in ways that cannot be replicated by any man-made visual contrivance.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
What Was Madoff Thinking?
While the curious, the inquisitive, the lascivious and the various investigators and detectives of enforcement focus on what Bernard Madoff was doing as he bilked investors out of billions, I have been exercising my novelist’s prerogative by concentrating my speculations on why Bernard Madoff was doing it.
Just in case you were vacationing on planet Mars in the last few weeks, Madoff is the 70-year-old con man who is the mastermind behind the bizarre Ponzi scheme that cost friends, family, clients and charities 50 billion, give or take, in vanished funds. The scheme, named after a former practitioner of the racket pays out alleged dividends not from legitimate earnings but from fresh funds contributed by new “investors.”
By all accounts Madoff was a pleasant looking, low-key, soft-spoken fellow who oozed integrity and modest authority. He was apparently regarded as a financial whiz and a man of great wisdom and compassion by his peers, who inhabited his social realm of country clubs and philanthropies. He was worshiped by an army of sycophants who sought his counsel, market wisdom and especially access to his remarkable investments that returned fabulous steady earnings in good times and bad.
He had earned the trust of numerous fund operators who used his alleged expertise at getting high returns as their calling card to lure huge international players into the Madoff net. A kind of sucker virus took hold and spread across borders.
So what was he thinking as he doled out these lavish returns knowing that he was cheating family, friends, charitable institutions, banks and countries? Did he believe he was helping people by providing returns that actually dwarfed what similar investments were paying? Did he revel in the praise of his peers as he basked in their awe and respect? Did his ego require such constant iteration?
What was his justification? I am tempted to think that he might have actually convinced himself by simple arithmetic that he was doing good deeds. If, for example, one had “invested” a hundred million with Madoff say ten years ago, one would have garnered, at a minimum, a hundred and twenty million return. Who would not think that Madoff was a genius? A charity might be doing somersaults having such wonderful returns to dispense their good deeds.
An elderly couple, who had placed a large sum with Madoff and lived prosperously off the proceeds, might have felt that they had discovered nirvana by this association with the mild mannered super fellow that befriended and supported them. And Madoff might have told himself how wonderful he was to supply these people with such largesse, enjoying the applause and believing, really believing, that he had become a human Santa Claus.
Did he have trouble sleeping nights? Did any ripple of conscience disturb his tranquility as he enjoyed the proceeds of his own entitlement, the numerous lavish homes, the yachts, the jets, the joys of being a generous respected Dad and Grandad, the recipient of kudos and awards for his celebrated contributions to the downtrodden and diseased? Once a lifeguard, he might have easily believed that he was still in the business of guarding lives.
Did the joys of oversized respect and admiration trump any tiny pangs of guilt, as he knowingly screwed his new “investors” by using their money to provide a continual flow of cash to his older investors? Was it not one happy family, his own included?
He was, of course, a man who knew the markets intimately. Perhaps he had reasoned that at some point in time, he would find a way to refund the coffers that he had rifled with his own bloated assets and what must have been optimism gone amuck. Perhaps he had tucked away huge bags of gold coins and artwork, waiting for the moment that he might cash in his horde and repay his funds. Perhaps he had stashed billions in overseas accounts or secret vaults hidden from investigators that he planned one day to retrieve and pour back into his empty money pit?
Touted as a family man, can one believe that he was really outed by his two devoted sons or, as many have speculated, a plot was contrived by the three of them to have good old Dad take the rap for the kids? Every avenue remains open in trying to assess how this man’s devious mind operated. Is it possible that behind the façade lurked other gossipy scandals, mistresses with outsized appetites, mafia dons who found ways to launder money through Madoff and other strange encounters with a shadowy underworld? Who knows?
Think, too, of the so-called “respected” money managers who begged him to take them on, throwing due diligence to the winds in the race for greater and greater returns. And what of the money managers who put all their clients’ funds with Madoff and took their usual commissions while doing not a lick of work to earn them? Never mind the obvious losses, think of the massive amounts of legal fees that will be enjoyed by that profession as everyone sues everyone else. The dominoes will fall for years as the big ego guys who made piles of money try to reclaim their tattered reputations in the law courts, a dubious proposition at best.
Most of all, people are speculating how Madoff was able to concoct such a massive fraud right under the noses of what could only be characterized as the brain dead SEC. If your own ox wasn’t gored, watching this crime unfold can be a form of entertainment. It would not surprise me if Madoff is currently fielding massive publishing and movie deals to satisfy the public curiosity about how he did it. And why? Look at me. Here I am spending time and mental treasure trying to figure out his motives?
Does Madoff feel any remorse? Perhaps this requires more expertise about the criminal mind than I possess? Interpreting the pictures of him being accosted by reporters and cameras as he walks along Madison Avenue, I see a cryptic little smile as if he is laughing at these hordes of busy bodies trying to probe his innermost secrets. From seeing that picture and my own reading of events surrounding Madoff, I’m willing to bet that in his heart of hearts, he feels no remorse or pity for the broken promises and wounded lives his scam has caused. I doubt if he feels anyone’s pain.
On the contrary, he may feel elation at having carried out this cleverly orchestrated scheme that escaped detection for decades and drew in people who considered themselves brilliant winners in the game of life, especially in the amassing of giant fortunes. Was he laughing at their greed and stupidity, celebrating his guile and cunning with his own internal laughter?
As for the ruined lives floating aimlessly in his wake, one cannot help but feel sorry for those who depended on these so-called returns to maintain their lifestyle. If they had any doubts about the origins of their good fortune, the avalanche of fat checks surely tranquilized their doubts. Indeed, if they had the temerity to question the source of their good fortune, Madoff was quick to cut them out of the roster.
To further prove his “integrity” he eagerly refunded principal, the origins of which came from entry-level investors. Wasn’t that a brilliant ploy to advertise his sterling reputation as a man of honor? This man was beyond shame.
As for the super rich who got their various appendages caught in the ringer, I feel no empathy for their bruised parts and crumbled egos. In fact, one has to cheer for their comeuppance and the explosion of their self-righteous worship of the Gods of Greed.
There is, however, a subliminal casualty of this strange affair and that is the earthquake of distrust that Madoff has inspired in these hard times. Without trust, we are all doomed to suffer the arrows of misfortune that people like Madoff take from their quiver to arm their bows. Without trust, the foundation that underpins our lives becomes a vulnerable house of cards.
Unfortunately, the punishment of Madoff will never fit his crime. His cunning lawyers paid for with the fruits of his ill gotten gains will game the system, and Madoff will become a star and advisor to fellow cons in the country club prison circuit devised for white collar criminals during what is sure to be a short penal vacation.
Perhaps it might be worth quoting the parting wisdom of that old rascal Carlo Ponzi, whose dying words characterized how he viewed the experience of his victims and sundry observers.
“Even if they never got anything for it, it was cheap at that price. Without malice aforethought I had given them the best show that was ever staged in their territory since the landing of the Pilgrims! It was easily worth fifteen million bucks to watch me put the thing over."
Was it worth fifty billion? You tell me.
Just in case you were vacationing on planet Mars in the last few weeks, Madoff is the 70-year-old con man who is the mastermind behind the bizarre Ponzi scheme that cost friends, family, clients and charities 50 billion, give or take, in vanished funds. The scheme, named after a former practitioner of the racket pays out alleged dividends not from legitimate earnings but from fresh funds contributed by new “investors.”
By all accounts Madoff was a pleasant looking, low-key, soft-spoken fellow who oozed integrity and modest authority. He was apparently regarded as a financial whiz and a man of great wisdom and compassion by his peers, who inhabited his social realm of country clubs and philanthropies. He was worshiped by an army of sycophants who sought his counsel, market wisdom and especially access to his remarkable investments that returned fabulous steady earnings in good times and bad.
He had earned the trust of numerous fund operators who used his alleged expertise at getting high returns as their calling card to lure huge international players into the Madoff net. A kind of sucker virus took hold and spread across borders.
So what was he thinking as he doled out these lavish returns knowing that he was cheating family, friends, charitable institutions, banks and countries? Did he believe he was helping people by providing returns that actually dwarfed what similar investments were paying? Did he revel in the praise of his peers as he basked in their awe and respect? Did his ego require such constant iteration?
What was his justification? I am tempted to think that he might have actually convinced himself by simple arithmetic that he was doing good deeds. If, for example, one had “invested” a hundred million with Madoff say ten years ago, one would have garnered, at a minimum, a hundred and twenty million return. Who would not think that Madoff was a genius? A charity might be doing somersaults having such wonderful returns to dispense their good deeds.
An elderly couple, who had placed a large sum with Madoff and lived prosperously off the proceeds, might have felt that they had discovered nirvana by this association with the mild mannered super fellow that befriended and supported them. And Madoff might have told himself how wonderful he was to supply these people with such largesse, enjoying the applause and believing, really believing, that he had become a human Santa Claus.
Did he have trouble sleeping nights? Did any ripple of conscience disturb his tranquility as he enjoyed the proceeds of his own entitlement, the numerous lavish homes, the yachts, the jets, the joys of being a generous respected Dad and Grandad, the recipient of kudos and awards for his celebrated contributions to the downtrodden and diseased? Once a lifeguard, he might have easily believed that he was still in the business of guarding lives.
Did the joys of oversized respect and admiration trump any tiny pangs of guilt, as he knowingly screwed his new “investors” by using their money to provide a continual flow of cash to his older investors? Was it not one happy family, his own included?
He was, of course, a man who knew the markets intimately. Perhaps he had reasoned that at some point in time, he would find a way to refund the coffers that he had rifled with his own bloated assets and what must have been optimism gone amuck. Perhaps he had tucked away huge bags of gold coins and artwork, waiting for the moment that he might cash in his horde and repay his funds. Perhaps he had stashed billions in overseas accounts or secret vaults hidden from investigators that he planned one day to retrieve and pour back into his empty money pit?
Touted as a family man, can one believe that he was really outed by his two devoted sons or, as many have speculated, a plot was contrived by the three of them to have good old Dad take the rap for the kids? Every avenue remains open in trying to assess how this man’s devious mind operated. Is it possible that behind the façade lurked other gossipy scandals, mistresses with outsized appetites, mafia dons who found ways to launder money through Madoff and other strange encounters with a shadowy underworld? Who knows?
Think, too, of the so-called “respected” money managers who begged him to take them on, throwing due diligence to the winds in the race for greater and greater returns. And what of the money managers who put all their clients’ funds with Madoff and took their usual commissions while doing not a lick of work to earn them? Never mind the obvious losses, think of the massive amounts of legal fees that will be enjoyed by that profession as everyone sues everyone else. The dominoes will fall for years as the big ego guys who made piles of money try to reclaim their tattered reputations in the law courts, a dubious proposition at best.
Most of all, people are speculating how Madoff was able to concoct such a massive fraud right under the noses of what could only be characterized as the brain dead SEC. If your own ox wasn’t gored, watching this crime unfold can be a form of entertainment. It would not surprise me if Madoff is currently fielding massive publishing and movie deals to satisfy the public curiosity about how he did it. And why? Look at me. Here I am spending time and mental treasure trying to figure out his motives?
Does Madoff feel any remorse? Perhaps this requires more expertise about the criminal mind than I possess? Interpreting the pictures of him being accosted by reporters and cameras as he walks along Madison Avenue, I see a cryptic little smile as if he is laughing at these hordes of busy bodies trying to probe his innermost secrets. From seeing that picture and my own reading of events surrounding Madoff, I’m willing to bet that in his heart of hearts, he feels no remorse or pity for the broken promises and wounded lives his scam has caused. I doubt if he feels anyone’s pain.
On the contrary, he may feel elation at having carried out this cleverly orchestrated scheme that escaped detection for decades and drew in people who considered themselves brilliant winners in the game of life, especially in the amassing of giant fortunes. Was he laughing at their greed and stupidity, celebrating his guile and cunning with his own internal laughter?
As for the ruined lives floating aimlessly in his wake, one cannot help but feel sorry for those who depended on these so-called returns to maintain their lifestyle. If they had any doubts about the origins of their good fortune, the avalanche of fat checks surely tranquilized their doubts. Indeed, if they had the temerity to question the source of their good fortune, Madoff was quick to cut them out of the roster.
To further prove his “integrity” he eagerly refunded principal, the origins of which came from entry-level investors. Wasn’t that a brilliant ploy to advertise his sterling reputation as a man of honor? This man was beyond shame.
As for the super rich who got their various appendages caught in the ringer, I feel no empathy for their bruised parts and crumbled egos. In fact, one has to cheer for their comeuppance and the explosion of their self-righteous worship of the Gods of Greed.
There is, however, a subliminal casualty of this strange affair and that is the earthquake of distrust that Madoff has inspired in these hard times. Without trust, we are all doomed to suffer the arrows of misfortune that people like Madoff take from their quiver to arm their bows. Without trust, the foundation that underpins our lives becomes a vulnerable house of cards.
Unfortunately, the punishment of Madoff will never fit his crime. His cunning lawyers paid for with the fruits of his ill gotten gains will game the system, and Madoff will become a star and advisor to fellow cons in the country club prison circuit devised for white collar criminals during what is sure to be a short penal vacation.
Perhaps it might be worth quoting the parting wisdom of that old rascal Carlo Ponzi, whose dying words characterized how he viewed the experience of his victims and sundry observers.
“Even if they never got anything for it, it was cheap at that price. Without malice aforethought I had given them the best show that was ever staged in their territory since the landing of the Pilgrims! It was easily worth fifteen million bucks to watch me put the thing over."
Was it worth fifty billion? You tell me.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
The Fallout
With the elections over and interest in news faltering, the media has suddenly gotten lucky and like sharks converging on blood, they have found a new killing field that will keep them chomping on raw meat for months if not years.
I refer to the appalling shocker of Illinois Governor Blagojevich offering, among other abominations, to sell the Senate seat made vacant by President Elect Obama. It is manna from heaven for the beleaguered journalists and their vast army of wannabes who seek the fame and fortune of Woodward and Bernstein.
No amount of media bias of whatever flavor is going to keep this story under wraps. Journalist ambition always trumps ideology. Think of all those ambitious journalists suffering from job anxiety and election withdrawal in a declining industry, who are suddenly confronted with an opportunity to make their bones and secure lucrative publishing contracts and movie deals to tide them over the present bloodbath in the news business.
The aftermath of this once in a decade story has all the temptations and insinuations of a potential Watergate, Lewinsky or OJ tsunami. I pray I am wrong, but my gut instinct is that there is no way to contain it. Even if it rises to the level of Whitewater which nearly crushed the early days of the Clinton administration, it will register high on the journalism Richter scale.
While every effort will be made to keep the new President from the quicksand and stench of the Chicago politics that nurtured him and, indeed, everyone involved has gone out of their way to keep him free from the predicted fallout, proximity alone will seduce every investigative journalist assigned to the story to look for a connection. We hope none is ever found, but the very fact of the probing could open wounds where none existed before. Yes, life is unfair. But politics in America, especially at this point in time, is a cruel and ruthless blood sport.
Just look at the initial cast of characters. A neanderthal Governor from a state and city where political corruption is a way of life and the main exit strategy of that office is to keep from exchanging the State House for the Big House. Names like Rostenkowski and Rezko, familiar with the interior furnishing of a jail cell, have already surfaced. Perhaps people of long memory will invoke the name of another Chicago celebrity, Al Capone.
Chicago is home base of the President elect, his new Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and the mastermind of his political fortunes David Axelrod and others in their circle, including Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. President Obama’s campaign co-chairman and others yet to be revealed.
The sad fact is that all of these people have political and social ties to the actors in this tragic drama, and, however much they attempt to dig a moat between themselves and the governor, the ambitious media battalions will throw anyone under the bus if it inhibits their search for the story that could assure one’s future fame and fortune. As if that were not enough, slings and arrows to point in the direction of our new President, think of all those on the rightist side of the media continuum sharpening their knives and probing for the soft underbelly of the new folks about to operate the levers of national power.
It is, indeed, sad that the promise of this new administration and this young man, who offers so much hope for change and decency in government, has to be distracted by such a sordid story. He doesn’t deserve it. Worse, the once admiring media, in my opinion, will show him no mercy. The mere fact of his association by geography and occupation will draw him into the bonfire. Our hope, of course, is that the smart people who surround him will shield him from the heat, a tough chore in today’s laissez-faire information roundelay.
Perhaps I am overreacting to my own personal experience and memories. I lived in Washington during the Watergate fiasco. Every day a front-page story bylined by two young reporters appeared in the Washington Post, revealing some new aspect of the situation. It started out as a minor irritant to the people in power, at first speculative and only vaguely accusatory. It was doled out by the Post editors like a suspense thriller, which it was. The exposure was a weapon in itself. More people stepped forward with more information. Other news organizations joined in the fray. The law of unintended consequences kicked in. An ex-boxer judge got suspicious and the elaborate protective hull of the ship of state sprung leaks.
Richard Nixon, who knew he was being recorded since he was instrumental in setting up the system himself, was a willing participant in his own political assassination. He began to panic, confessing to his tape recorder. His people panicked. Some jumped ship. Like Blagojevich who suspected also that he was being recorded, he was not constrained from engaging in his own political self-annihilation.
Such stories are mother’s milk to journalists who are a driven lot. They will spare no energy or expense to crawl into every dark corner to satisfy the insatiable public maw for this sinister type of public entertainment. The fact that there is a connection, however dubious and unfair, to the highest political officer in America, whets the appetite of the media fame seekers who seek to expand such stories into Shakespearean epics.
These scandals have a tendency to become an industry. Watergate spawned hundreds of millions of dollars in publishing and movie deals and made Woodward and Bernstein and others rich men. Having observed the Watergate story first hand from its inception, having known most of the actors including the principals of that great political drama, some intimately, some peripherally, and having written my own fictionalized spin off of the event, “The Henderson Equation”, I can say without reservations that this story, unless contained at its root, a Herculean task, has an ugly potential to distract the new administration at a time when all their energy and concentration must be focused on righting our faltering ship of State.
It is highly doubtful that Blagojevich will go quietly into the night. It seems obvious that he will be just as reckless in his defense as he has been in perpetrating his own criminal intent. He will not be above attempting to involve Obama and many of his Chicago people. He will make wild allegations and they are bound to spill their poison over the new administration.
It will take great skill and candor on the part of our new President to protect himself from the fallout. I’m sure most Americans, as I am, are rooting for him and hoping that this ugly incident will leave him unscathed. I know, too, that such thoughts offered at this sensitive time in our national history will be considered feckless and inflammatory by many. Perhaps I am exercising too much blogger’s license, but I am certain that as this story unfolds this aspect of the drama will be injected copiously into our national conversation.
Obama and his Chicago friends can expect no mercy. Journalists are bloodhounds. Right, left or center, they will follow the story where it goes or where they want it to go, taking no prisoners as they burrow in to get out what they believe is the so called truth or their version of it. Expect every scandal mongering detail to emerge. Where there are allegations of corruption, sex is sure to follow. The media will spare no expense of their dwindling purse to search for ears and eyeballs.
Unfortunately in the rush for exposure and revelation, everybody will try to get into the act. Hearsay and lies will appear within quotes. Everybody and their brother who had even the most trivial and dubious tie to this story will seek his or her fifteen minutes of fame. Some people will believe them. Conspiracies will be hatched. Reputations made and lost.
Perhaps there might even be a silver lining to all this. Obama could seize the opportunity to mount a massive, gargantuan, monumental campaign against all political corruption, not merely as an empty gesture but with the kind of sharp teeth commitment to an ethical standard and punishment that can truly eliminate the power of money from the political equation. Fat chance you think? Here again the laws of unintended consequences might work in the new President’s favor.
But then, given the present national climate, it is very difficult to be optimistic. At best the fallout from this mess will be, for lack of a better word, challenging.
I refer to the appalling shocker of Illinois Governor Blagojevich offering, among other abominations, to sell the Senate seat made vacant by President Elect Obama. It is manna from heaven for the beleaguered journalists and their vast army of wannabes who seek the fame and fortune of Woodward and Bernstein.
No amount of media bias of whatever flavor is going to keep this story under wraps. Journalist ambition always trumps ideology. Think of all those ambitious journalists suffering from job anxiety and election withdrawal in a declining industry, who are suddenly confronted with an opportunity to make their bones and secure lucrative publishing contracts and movie deals to tide them over the present bloodbath in the news business.
The aftermath of this once in a decade story has all the temptations and insinuations of a potential Watergate, Lewinsky or OJ tsunami. I pray I am wrong, but my gut instinct is that there is no way to contain it. Even if it rises to the level of Whitewater which nearly crushed the early days of the Clinton administration, it will register high on the journalism Richter scale.
While every effort will be made to keep the new President from the quicksand and stench of the Chicago politics that nurtured him and, indeed, everyone involved has gone out of their way to keep him free from the predicted fallout, proximity alone will seduce every investigative journalist assigned to the story to look for a connection. We hope none is ever found, but the very fact of the probing could open wounds where none existed before. Yes, life is unfair. But politics in America, especially at this point in time, is a cruel and ruthless blood sport.
Just look at the initial cast of characters. A neanderthal Governor from a state and city where political corruption is a way of life and the main exit strategy of that office is to keep from exchanging the State House for the Big House. Names like Rostenkowski and Rezko, familiar with the interior furnishing of a jail cell, have already surfaced. Perhaps people of long memory will invoke the name of another Chicago celebrity, Al Capone.
Chicago is home base of the President elect, his new Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and the mastermind of his political fortunes David Axelrod and others in their circle, including Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. President Obama’s campaign co-chairman and others yet to be revealed.
The sad fact is that all of these people have political and social ties to the actors in this tragic drama, and, however much they attempt to dig a moat between themselves and the governor, the ambitious media battalions will throw anyone under the bus if it inhibits their search for the story that could assure one’s future fame and fortune. As if that were not enough, slings and arrows to point in the direction of our new President, think of all those on the rightist side of the media continuum sharpening their knives and probing for the soft underbelly of the new folks about to operate the levers of national power.
It is, indeed, sad that the promise of this new administration and this young man, who offers so much hope for change and decency in government, has to be distracted by such a sordid story. He doesn’t deserve it. Worse, the once admiring media, in my opinion, will show him no mercy. The mere fact of his association by geography and occupation will draw him into the bonfire. Our hope, of course, is that the smart people who surround him will shield him from the heat, a tough chore in today’s laissez-faire information roundelay.
Perhaps I am overreacting to my own personal experience and memories. I lived in Washington during the Watergate fiasco. Every day a front-page story bylined by two young reporters appeared in the Washington Post, revealing some new aspect of the situation. It started out as a minor irritant to the people in power, at first speculative and only vaguely accusatory. It was doled out by the Post editors like a suspense thriller, which it was. The exposure was a weapon in itself. More people stepped forward with more information. Other news organizations joined in the fray. The law of unintended consequences kicked in. An ex-boxer judge got suspicious and the elaborate protective hull of the ship of state sprung leaks.
Richard Nixon, who knew he was being recorded since he was instrumental in setting up the system himself, was a willing participant in his own political assassination. He began to panic, confessing to his tape recorder. His people panicked. Some jumped ship. Like Blagojevich who suspected also that he was being recorded, he was not constrained from engaging in his own political self-annihilation.
Such stories are mother’s milk to journalists who are a driven lot. They will spare no energy or expense to crawl into every dark corner to satisfy the insatiable public maw for this sinister type of public entertainment. The fact that there is a connection, however dubious and unfair, to the highest political officer in America, whets the appetite of the media fame seekers who seek to expand such stories into Shakespearean epics.
These scandals have a tendency to become an industry. Watergate spawned hundreds of millions of dollars in publishing and movie deals and made Woodward and Bernstein and others rich men. Having observed the Watergate story first hand from its inception, having known most of the actors including the principals of that great political drama, some intimately, some peripherally, and having written my own fictionalized spin off of the event, “The Henderson Equation”, I can say without reservations that this story, unless contained at its root, a Herculean task, has an ugly potential to distract the new administration at a time when all their energy and concentration must be focused on righting our faltering ship of State.
It is highly doubtful that Blagojevich will go quietly into the night. It seems obvious that he will be just as reckless in his defense as he has been in perpetrating his own criminal intent. He will not be above attempting to involve Obama and many of his Chicago people. He will make wild allegations and they are bound to spill their poison over the new administration.
It will take great skill and candor on the part of our new President to protect himself from the fallout. I’m sure most Americans, as I am, are rooting for him and hoping that this ugly incident will leave him unscathed. I know, too, that such thoughts offered at this sensitive time in our national history will be considered feckless and inflammatory by many. Perhaps I am exercising too much blogger’s license, but I am certain that as this story unfolds this aspect of the drama will be injected copiously into our national conversation.
Obama and his Chicago friends can expect no mercy. Journalists are bloodhounds. Right, left or center, they will follow the story where it goes or where they want it to go, taking no prisoners as they burrow in to get out what they believe is the so called truth or their version of it. Expect every scandal mongering detail to emerge. Where there are allegations of corruption, sex is sure to follow. The media will spare no expense of their dwindling purse to search for ears and eyeballs.
Unfortunately in the rush for exposure and revelation, everybody will try to get into the act. Hearsay and lies will appear within quotes. Everybody and their brother who had even the most trivial and dubious tie to this story will seek his or her fifteen minutes of fame. Some people will believe them. Conspiracies will be hatched. Reputations made and lost.
Perhaps there might even be a silver lining to all this. Obama could seize the opportunity to mount a massive, gargantuan, monumental campaign against all political corruption, not merely as an empty gesture but with the kind of sharp teeth commitment to an ethical standard and punishment that can truly eliminate the power of money from the political equation. Fat chance you think? Here again the laws of unintended consequences might work in the new President’s favor.
But then, given the present national climate, it is very difficult to be optimistic. At best the fallout from this mess will be, for lack of a better word, challenging.
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