Archive for October, 2009

EVERYONE RUN! IT’S FOX NEWS!

Sunday, October 25th, 2009

Lions and tigers and bears…oh my!  Even Burt Lahr with his furry hind quarter and over-active tail showed more courage protecting Dorothy from the flying monkeys, than our own President has been able to show protecting himself from…gulp…Fox News.

The missive from the White House last week, distributed via the usual venue…the Sunday morning talk-show circuit, was that other news outlets “should not follow Fox News” and that Fox was not “a real news organization”.  Not a real news organization?  That’s not what the ratings say.  In yet another stunning display of Obama’s incredibly thin skin, the attack on Fox is unsettling in many other ways, not the least of which is the underlying message to other media outlets…”don’t get on our enemies list.”

First, it is another chorus of whining from a White House, that as Chris Wallace said, is inhabited by the biggest bunch of babies he has ever seen.  It is as American as apple pie to question and be wary of our government.  Certainly, many were cynical during the Bush administration.  What is this child-like aversion to disagreement and complaint?  Particularly from a candidate, and now President, who has had and continues to have nothing short of adulation from nearly every other media outlet.  Chris Mathews’ famous “chill” up his leg, and Keith Olberman who is…what…a news man?  You’ve got to be kidding.  Didn’t he recently describe Michelle Bachman as a “bag of meat”?  Yes…he’s a regular Walter Cronkite.

And how about the mainstream media’s treatment of Sarah Palin?  Serious news people, I suppose.  Fair reporting.

There is no doubt that a few Fox News anchors are decidedly rabid when it comes to Barack Obama, but then again, so is about half of the population.  To paint an entire organization with that brush, however, is ridiculous.  Fox, and Roger Ailes, have built a first-class operation.  Sheppard Smith presents world news with aplomb, Greta Van Sustern is as harmless as they come.  Hannity and Beck are known quantities, but still…enough that the President should try to sway people away from them?  Don’t follow them, don’t pay any attention.  It reeks of the kind of information control that we might expect from Russia, North Korea or Iran, but not America.

And how about O’Reilly, who gave Obama a very fair interview during the final stages of the campaign and who has been very fair with Obama since he was elected.  How about the stellar work that O’Reilly did with his Jessica’s Law campaign, the first time in history that a major news anchor has used his position to try and institute legislative action in every state.  He was tenacious and effective, and we’ll never know how many young children were spared a violent nightmare because of his efforts.  There isn’t a single politician who committed such time and energy to protecting children.  Yes…that “evil” Fox News.

O’Reilly even managed to get Pepsi to pull an advertisement featuring the vile rap-star Ludicrous who is best known for his lyrics espousing the joys of women as sex toys, killing cops, and putting a “cap” in this, that and the other thing.  Our own President would do himself and the country well to busy himself with such things.  There has been no mention from this administration about the outrageous violence in this country or any of our other myriad social ills.  Indeed, while they fine tune their strategy against Fox News, our own servicemen and women in Afghanistan continue to wait for a decision from him on whether or not they will get the additional troops they so desperately need.  Obama should have been the first one to announce the lunacy of anyone in his administration worrying about a news outlet while so many critical decisions remain in flux.

“Change”.  Be careful what you wish for.  Increasingly, it is a shame how this man continues to spend his once significant political capital on pet projects like health care and Guantanamo Bay, while the economy and our culture continue to unspool, states, cities and towns running out of money, schools churning out under-educated and ill-equipped young people, a decaying national infrastructure, and so on and so on.  He has kept one promise, though.  It’s not politics as usual.  It’s worse.

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SUGAR AND SPICE

Monday, October 19th, 2009

Sugar and spice and everything nice.  Everything nice, and…taxable.  The not-so-distant rumble from state and federal governments is yet another tax freight train rounding the bend.  We are on the cusp of being taxed for soft drinks and cheeseburgers, under the guise of early  compensation for the anticipated damage they will do to their consumers.  The tax collectors, ever vigilant for new and improved ways to abscond with more of our income, are now targeting our eating habits as the source of their next cash cow, no pun intended.

It’s funny, we don’t even talk about “slippery slopes” anymore.  It’s as though the taxed-to-death public is punch drunk, staggering around the ring, bleeding from the nostrils, seeing double 1040 forms.  It must be that the ever increasing tax on cigarettes is reaching the point where even politicians know that asking for more will soon be laughable.  A perfect example of the blurred line between “concern for public safety” and not wanting to rock the boat of a veritable money machine.  Afterall, if it was really about public safety, the health of the masses, curbing the public appetite for “bad” things, then we wouldn’t even allow the manufacture of cigarettes, would we?  We complain about smokers and the tobacco industry, but every state coffer benefits immensely from those tax dollars.

And now…Pepsi and cheeseburgers?  Really, is there a point where reasonable people can agree that maybe…just maybe…government is getting a little big for its britches?  Is this truly what most Americans want, a nanny government slapping our hand when we reach for the cookie jar or a Twinkie?  The specter of “Food Police” breaking the door down and dusting for Cheeto residue or cakes with cream filling, all under the pretense of protecting people who overeat or eat poorly, should be a tough sell.  Instead, it seems lost in the cacophony of looney proposed government policies, and the public seems to shrug it off as no big deal.

It is a big deal, though.  It’s a big deal because it ignores so many other greater problems in our culture, like 10% unemployment, the demise of the traditional family, rampant violence against children, rampant violence against adults, a generation of youngsters that have been raised by a tv screen or computer monitor, and on and on.

It’s a big deal because it’s just a money-grab from the people who can least afford it.  Cheeseburgers?  How many times can that little beef pattie be taxed before it reaches my stomach?  Let’s start with the farmer who raises the cow.  He makes a small profit and is taxed by the government.  The guy he buys grain from is taxed on the profits from his grain business.  The land which comprises the farm is subject to property tax.

The truck that delivers the beef to McDonalds pays a diesel fuel tax, registration fees and a federal tax.  The trucker pays income tax and the trucking company pays taxes on their profits, assuming they have any.  The trucker needs insurance to carry that hamburger and the insurance company pays taxes on their income…well…if they have any profit after distributing bonuses to CEO’s.

Finally, McDonalds cooks the hamburger, passes it to the consumer by way of an employee who also pays income tax, and then the consumer pays his cheeseburger tax, because he is a bad person and must be punished.  Hopefully, eventually, nobody will want, or be able to afford, a cheeseburger or a sweet drink or pastry, and the guy who raises the cow can just go out of business and get a job at Wal-Mart like the rest of us.

Or, maybe, we let people make their own choices and pay the consequences that nature deems fit.  It’s not a slippery slope at all, really, it’s a swan dive into the Grand Canyon.  How ridiculous it’s all become.  The notion that someone’s repeated calls to Pakistan might be monitored by the NSA brought a media-frenzy and the usual chorus of “Big Brother” naysayers.  Why then, when that same government, under a different President, suggests something ten times more invasive, and with no link to national security, is the silence so deafening?  We should remember the old adage…if you criminalize cheeseburgers, only criminals will have cheeseburgers.

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WE’VE GOT MAIL

Monday, October 12th, 2009

Hello?  New Hampshire?  America?  You’ve got mail, and it’s not good news.  It is time to read it, though, rhetorically speaking, indeed it is late in the game to be reading it.

As a second-generation Milford native, like everyone around me, I am still stunned, shocked, and deeply saddened by the horrific murder in Mont Vernon, NH last Sunday morning.  Less than a mile from where my widowed mother resides, at the end of a long, private driveway.  I have worried about her, in this changing town, but have always been able to comfort myself with the knowledge that we live in an inordinately safe place.  I have grown up here never locking a door, smirking at the thought of home security systems, and generally not concerned with those types of “city” considerations to personal safety.

That’s been changing, though, over the last several years, and last Sunday, the pendulum not only swung fully in the other direction, it left the clock completely and is now in a low orbit somewhere over the Atlantic.

Last Sunday, roughly around 4:00 a.m., 42 year-old Kim Cates, a mother, wife, nurse at local hospitals, and beloved member of her community, was violently slashed to death in her bed.  Her daughter, 11 year old Jaime, was beaten, stabbed, and her throat slashed and left for dead.  She didn’t die, though, she survived.  She survived in body, at least, but what the future holds for this young girl remains to be seen.

Kim’s husband, who works for BAE, an aerospace firm, was travelling on business.  He returned after being informed of the event, and as of this writing has not left his daughter’s bedside at Children’s Hospital in Boston.  I try to imagine that plane ride.  The other passengers… trying to be composed… minutes passing like dreadful hours from an endless pile.  What an awful nightmare…what an exercise for anyone’s brain to try and begin to comprehend what happened…and why.

In a community like ours, rumors travel fast, and by Sunday evening word was out, but without names or details of the circumstances.  The location itself made the story untenable, yet there it was.  As more news came out, that it was Kim Cates, and that her daughter had been found outside, left for dead, the task of comprehension became increasingly difficult.
By Monday most of the details were out, and, incredibly, by late Monday arrests had been made.

Relief, surely, that there was not a maniac on the loose, soon turned to utter disbelief when it was announced that four local teens had been charged.  Steven Spader. 17, of Brookline, Christopher Gribble, 19 of Brookline, William Marks, 18, of Amherst and Quinn Glover, 17, also of Amherst.  How could this be?  What motive could there possibly be?  What connection between these unlikely parties?  Anyone who knew the Cates’ at all knew that drugs, or some kind of love-triangle, or any of the few things that jump to mind in this kind of event…were not a possibility.  So what was it…what could have possibly inspired the explosive rage that one would expect to be the catalyst in such a brutal crime?  Well…as it turns out, it was just a fun night out for this group.

And this is why “we’ve got mail”.  As a town, a state, a country, a culture, we need finally to seriously address where this comes from.  I have written before that I believe it is primarily born from our media and entertainment.  I grew up watching a talking horse and some kid named “Beaver”.  I see stuff on early evening children’s programming now that would make an adult blush.  I hear lyrics in music that are the most vile, hateful prose I have ever heard, espousing the joys of killing cops and of misogyny.  Video games that celebrate killing ,violence and death.  Combine these influences with the general decline in parenting skills that the last few decades have seen, and I don’t believe you need a doctorate to do the math.

Could anyone argue, that when four young men, most of whom showed no outward signs of this kind of extreme personality disorder, are able to execute a plan like this, to hack, with a machete and knives, a young woman and an 11 year-old child, and then return home with the demeanor of someone who had just been out for pizza…that we have a social fabric unwinding faster than a ball of yarn in a Texas twister.

One really has to stop and imagine the act.  Pure evil.  There is no denying it or sugar-coating it.  Our community ripped at and shredded, a family destroyed, ripples emanate from this act like a grand piano had been dropped into a lake.  It will always be here.  For locals, any ride past that road will forever reignite this memory.  It leaves a permanent stain on everyone’s psyche.

What are we to do, as a society?  Even trying to pass legislation to protect our children from sexual predators is like pulling teeth.  Imagine tackling the entertainment industry, parents, schools, trying to bring national attention and a movement to this cause?  Boycotting violent video games, music and movies?  Ostracizing offenders, naming names, shaming entertainment moguls?  This is what it will take.  But I am not optimistic.

It took America falling trillions of dollars into debt and a litany of corruption scandals to bring Americans into the street to say “enough!”  It will probably take many more home-invasions and murders and children left on lawns before we take seriously the erosion in our moral culture that has left us with this raw, exposed wound…our disenfranchised youth with a thoroughly mixed up idea of what it means to “be a man”.  And long after this story disappears from the front pages, a father and daughter will have to return to their Mt. Vernon home.  He will have to visit that room, where he once lay with his wife, and he will have to pack her things in boxes.  His home will not feel like home anymore, indeed, no place may ever feel like home.  He will struggle with insurmountable pain, grief, and irreconcilable loss.  Loss for no reason at all.

Last week, I entertained at a benefit for Word War II veterans.  Many of them were just 17 or 18 years old when they shipped off to war, to see horrors they could never have imagined.  Many never returned, and those who did certainly had something to be angry about.  But they didn’t come home to be angry, they came home to build a life.  Having been deprived of every comfort, of having to skirt death, they still embraced their future with bravado.

What a different, sad time, we live in now.  With cell phones, i-pods, video games, two cars, an allowance and no responsibilities, for our 18 year-olds, “embracing life” now requires taking someone else’s.  Yeah…we’ve got mail…whether we want it or not.

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THE OTHER “OLD MAN”

Monday, October 5th, 2009

I was fortunate when I was a kid, because occasionally I would travel around New England for days at a time with my late father, who represented the six New England states as a sales representative for his European giftware import/export business.  Aside from the scenery and some sporty driving, the best part was the characters we met along the way, and the lifelong friendships he developed with his customers.

One of those customers was the Clark family in Lincoln, New Hampshire.  He sold to the gift shop there and I remember well the attached little room at the end where the toy cars were.  Baskets full of them, and they are still there today.  It wasn’t the gift shop, though, that made this stop special, it was the Clarks themselves.  An eclectic bunch, I knew even at a young age, with a genuine “Wolman” on the payroll who was part of the entertainment, along with a trained bear show, at their wonderful roadside attraction.

My father had a penchant for genuine New Englanders, especially the New Hampshire kind, and I suppose he had a soft spot for the Clark family as they had started as Clark’s Eskimo Dog Ranch in the late 1920′s.  My father kept Siberian Huskies and we did a little “mushing” in our family as well.  In addition, my father had apparently fallen for the lure of the North Country, as I spent much of my childhood hiking the White Mountains and skiing there as well, including Tuckerman’s Ravine.

So, it was with a heavy heart that I read of the death of Edward M. Clark on September 24th, at age 85.  I had never met him, but I knew his brother Murray, the veritable P.T. Barnum of the “bear show” side of the family, and I suspect they were of similar fabric.  Murray, who turned over the bear shows to the next generation of Clark’s, was all Yankee-dry-wit, but with a sharp intellect underneath it.  It was their father who had begun the sled dog ranch as a tourist attraction which later became the Trading Post with bear shows and an adorable “Old Main Street USA” that is a must-see.

I didn’t know much about Ed Clark but what I read about him doesn’t surprise me. He embodied everything that us New Hampshire natives love about our state.  A dedication to his hometown and culture, and of course his family.  A supreme intellect hidden behind humble attire and a wild flock of hair.  A wisdom in his eyes that I know all too well, from my own father and from so many of that generation who had seen things our generation will never see, and who had lived a life full.

According to his daughter, he never said “goodbye” when leaving a conversation or meeting, but instead would say “think big…be great”, or, “square your shoulders”, another one of his favorites, apparently.  Good advice, especially poignant from a man who walked the walk.  He lived an outstanding life.  At age 18 he was dispatched to Iceland to train British Troops in sled-dog use and maintenance, part of a military effort preparing to take out a “heavy-water” plant in Norway.  Older brother Murray was on similar duty in Scotland.

After this he returned to Boston and joined the Merchant Marines.  He was on a transport ship at Normandy, and during this time, having requested the “engine room” as his area of responsibility, he developed a deep fascination with all things mechanical, which endured his entire life.  This fascination is evident in the astounding display of antique machines and contraptions of every kind which are on display at various stores and garages which line the “Main Street” at Clark’s.

His fascination turned to trains and steam engines and he built the White Mountain Central Railroad, also an attraction at Clark’s, as well as working on other railroads throughout the North Country, including on the Cog Railway on Mt. Washington for a few years, where he invented a device for transporting crews up and down the tracks at high speeds.  He also worked on the famous Kancamagus Highway during it’s construction, an historical deed in itself.

Later he ran the North Stratford Railroad which ran to the Ethan Allen factory in Beecher Falls, Vermont.  Later, he bought three hydro-electric dams, the Goodrich Falls hydro in Bartlett, New Hampshire, followed by the Apthorp station in Littleton and the Lisbon station.  He renovated them to better-than-new condition and operated them until his death, selling electricity to Public Service Co. of New Hampshire, Littleton Water & Light and also the New Hampshire Electric Coop.

Ed Clark epitomized Yankee-ingenuity.  He personified that kind of larger-than-life persona that made not just New Hampshire, but America, a great place.  While others would demand parades and fanfare, speeches and studies, committees and panels, the Edward Clarks of the world just go out and do it.  He understood the importance of, and was fascinated by, the prospect of clean, renewable energy.  Before it was in vogue, and long before it was a political issue, it was a matter of pragmatism for Ed Clark.

He was one of the original promoters of the White Mountains and North Country as a tourist attraction, beginning as an organized effort in 1958.  He was, and is, truly one of a handful of iconic figures who brought this stunningly beautiful part of the country to the attention of the travelling public.  “My Dad travelled all over the world”, said daughter Carol, “but all roads led back to Lincoln.”  And the rest of us should be thankful they did.  On my next trip North, I’ll set aside a quiet moment for Ed Clark.  As with my late father, I’ll sense his presence in the wind as it rushes up, over and through the rugged terrain, and will mourn the passing of yet another truly special man.  They don’t build ‘em like that anymore.  “Think big.  Be great.”

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