FERRARO: RUDE; TALKING HEADS: RUDER; SHARPTON: RUDEST
AS VOTERS WITNESSED THE FIRST AND ONLY FEMALE YET NAMED TO THE TICKET OF EITHER MAJOR PARTY, THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1984 ASSURED ITS MENTION IN HISTORY BOOKS. ELECTION NIGHT SAW A ONE-SIDED LANDSLIDE, RONALD REAGAN WAS REELECTED BY AN ALL-TIME RECORD MARGIN, WINNING EVERY ELECTORAL COLLEGE VOTE, EXCEPT THOSE CAST FOR RESIDENTS OF WASHINGTON D.C., MASSACHUSSETTS AND THE FELLOW MINNESOTANS OF THE VANQUISHED FORMER VICE PRESIDENT, WALTER MONDALE.
THE MOST NORTH MEDITERRANEAN CLIMATE ON THESE SHORES HAS SAN FRANCISCO IN IT, WHERE THE DOG DAYS OF SUMMER IN ORWELL’S YEAR PROVIDED A RARIFIED MILIEU; THOSE GATHERED OUT THE AIR CONDITIONED DRONE OF NEW YORK, CHICAGO AND COUNTRYSIDE IN AUGUST; MUST HAVE BREATHED DEEP QUAFFS OF UNTREATED AIR, TO NEED A SWEATER AT DUSK WAS LIKE NEW FREON. THEY WERE TRUE BELIEVERS AGAIN! DEMOCRATS! THE DELEGATES GOT GASSED ON THE CADENCE OF JESSE JACKSON ORATORY, MARIO CUOMO, ERUDITE, KEYNOTE ON THE TWO AMERICAS A PURE CHRYSTAL OF TRIBAL CREED WERE TRANSPORTED. WALTER MONDALE, A MINISTER’S SON, GAVE THE PROCEEDINGS ITS APOGEE, CHOOSING REPRESENTATIVE GERALDINE A. FERRARO OF NEW YORK AS A RUNNING MATE, THE ACCLAIMATION GIVEN TO THAT TICKET COULD BE FELT ALL THE WAY TO THE WEST SIDE OF DETROIT THROUGH THE CATHODE RAY TUBE AND SPEAKER ON THE COLOR RCA, AS I WATCHED, I KNEW I’D ALWAYS BE A DEMOCRAT, EVEN IF I GOT RICH; UNLIKE NEW DEAL DEMOCRAT RONALD REAGAN WHOSE IDEOLOGY DID A 180 DEGREE TURN WHEN THE PROSPERITY OF THOSE YEARS PUT HIM IN A HIGHER TAX BRACKET.
MORE APT AS CORPORATE SHILL THAN ACTOR. AFTER THE HOLLYWOOD GIGS DRIED UP, AS HOST/SPOKESMAN OF TV WESTERN “DEATH VALLEY DAYS” TOUTING 20 MULE TEAM BORATEEM AND LATER G.E. ACTOR; BANK ACCOUNTS AND PARTY AFFILIATION COULD BE CHARTED ON A GRAPH. THAT CONVENTION WAS FAMILY REUNION, TENT MEETING ALTAR CALL, ROCK AND ROLL, GROUP THERAPY, UNIVERSITY LECTURE HALL,THE LAST TRIBAL ONE.
NOW EXPERTS PREARRANGE; EXTRACT RANDOMNESS; ENGINEER UNITY, THE RESULT DREARIER EVERY FOUR YEARS WITH ALL THE ATMOSPHERE OF A HIGH SCHOOL ASSEMBLY, A ROTTEN TV VARIETY SHOW NOBODY WOULD WATCH IF THE NUCLEAR FOOTBALL WASN’T SOMEHOW INVOLVED. WANTING MOST JUST TO WIN, TO HOLD POWER, CANDIDATES ARE SO ADEPT AT STAGECRAFT, AND PARTY LINES ARE BLURRY AT BEST.
One of two political parties has nominated every human ever elected to the executive branch of U.S. government. The two party system has survived or Americans have survived it; it continues. Third Party candidates gin up the fervor of true believers in occassional quadrennials, gumming up the works for number-crunchers, party hacks and the big-party candidate whose support on the margins may be bled for irrational reasons; too much agreement on issues with #3, historic forces outside the ken of elected officeholders who wield only as much power and influence as a majority allows, splitting political loyalties, grudges held against LBJ for positions, decisions dictated by historic inevitability, by southern democratic grudges held against rended party identidy useless, despite longstanding concord on an array of issues other than Civil Rights; recreated the political landscape, and the “Solid South” that delivered its votes to the democratic candidate, except national hero Eisenhower, like clockwork each cycle since FDR, wavering in 1960 when JFK, a Roman Catholic was nominated; has been Republican fodder since 1968, when Alabama’s Democratic Governor George Wallace ran third party, support for Democrat Humphrey had all slack pulled out of it, giving Nixon a narrow victory.
FERRARO: RUDE; TALKING HEADS: RUDER; SHARPTON: RUDEST
After a paid speech last week at the Torrance Cultural Center in California, Geraldine A. Ferraro, 1984 Democratic Party nominee for vice-president, was quoted in a Torrance newspaper, The Daily Breeze: “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman of any color, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”
The first I heard of the Bruhaha was MSNBC, whose on camera personnel is a subject of my closest observation since my disability checks started, OK even before that.
first impression : it was such a rude thing, that even the whole New York City personna thing, and hearing her accent (Bronx? Queens? Far Rockaway? Islip?) as The practiced replies of a welltrained politician flowed like city water from a kitchen faucet, to whichever, whosever camera was next; the whole set : including corect voice modulation, tone, volumes, each offering customized as approriate to fit whichever provisos, context, and juxtiposed reasons not to misunderstand her, or take her too seriously,…using her skills extemporaneous, improvising, theanswer quality varied with the esteem the asking reporter rated, personally, establishment-wise, tv ratings; so that her level of interest, annoyance, level of education and other valuations I won’t presume to label; a dazzling performance. Her bag of tricks were as comfortable to her as a pair of broke in shoes; even the reactions to her top shelf material; that revealed something more real, offering a glimpse, of how much more well educated she is than you or anyone else you know. probably almost anyone confronted in her political career required her to tone it down to avoid intimidating even some friends, and it was a lesson learned how offputting when men realize she is smarter than they ever thought true of their own self, smarter right now than they can get even in a make believe world or no matter if life extectancy doubled. In the span of time since academy days and satisfying enough ofher private mother-housewife lifescript she was psychologically unable to avoid, ethnic &cultural forces aside, raising her three boys still provided a stronger sense of achievement than anything else she set her hand to, especially the whole vice president episode; she realized before she said yes to walter it meant her name would appear in print and be read by schoolchildren for as long as america lasted or us history was taught in it; so many people had jabbered a rendition of the facts as if by a rare, uncommon sense and sensibility, they percieved what millions with good eyesight, and even correctable vision failed to, as if seeing through a glass darkly, the glass look being looked through has yet to be other than tv picture tube glass, of the tv set they were watching in august 1984, watching a tv channel as wall to wall convention coverage by all three networks preempted many favorite shows. a tv set then was the filter through which three networks and pbs offered pictures and descriptions of the outside world. with fewer outlets and before the vcr became more affordable (it wasn’t yet like a toasteroven for people our age), the information source most convenient and free was tv news and increased reliance cut across all lines: economic, racial, regional, generational, religious, Ethnic, less so across educational lines-studies seemed am at proving that the longer you go to school and read books causes a drop in the entertainment experienced watching tv.
As television eroded cultural boundries on every front, homogenizing american awareness of what was going on around them in both rich and poor, black and white, yankees, hillbillies, cowboys, indians and city slickers started talking more alike, and people of all ages enjoyed america’s funniest videos, cops and other programs like they were all the same age, tv watching provided common ground for jew and gentile, catholic and protestant to laugh at each other, and provided a view of atheists, aliens and/or foreigners (legal and/or illegal), poor people, criminals, and other miscellaneous outsiders, a non sectarian fear of the unknown, leaving all worship, dietary laws to the individual as jehovah commanded whatever flock, sect, etc. etc. to obey, in his segment of the judeo-christian opening to all us citizens who believe in at least jehovah and the old testament of the holy bible a framework of mutual understanding that any english speaking member of a recognized traditional judeao-christian following, temple, cathedral, etc. etc. will find unoffensive offering hope a future era of interfaith cooperation by agreeing together who are those we mutually need to keep an eye on and/or straighten out
Accomplishments and financial reward until enough time and freedom allowed her the mobility and contact outside the home to begin the formation of real world adult goals to pursue, that it was into a male oriented , Patrician paradigm she entered, where the view of women as objects to be dominated had the greatest circulation in the currency of ideas she expected was commonplace in a run of the mill business environment aspects demands lifescript requirements ithe course professional, political, and important social relationships surerank, . cunning the yokels her easily as Grandma might open the handsome wooden case that held her good rodgers silver on Thanksgiving when all the family’s there.
The meanness conveyed in her words was undeflected, and her minimizing couldn’t blunt what a sore loser she is and probably always has been. Senator Barack Obama winning votes she coveted for Hillary meant being African American was lucky this year; like some bratty kids I remember from my 2 seasons playing organized Little League baseball. Luck explained any success an opponent might have. No one likes losing but the big reason sports are encouraged in childhood development is learned by playing the game itself, by osmosis, without lectures and books. It even must dawn on slow-witted kids, the appreciation for the skill and effort of others; the value of hustle and effort, learning what a game is; only a game. One learns to accept loss; as well as how to be a good winner. It usually works.
I clearly remember seeing the first game of the 1968 World Series on TV: it was the first World Series game I ever watched, the whole 3rd grade watched it together at school, the hometown Detroit Tigers played the defending World Champion St. Louis Cardinals, Bob Gibson pitched a shut-out, with 17 strike outs, still the single game record for World Series play. My unaided memory of the game is that the Tigers never had a chance (see box score below) after a 1st inning double by Tiger legend Al Kaline, 4 singles and a walk account for all Tiger baserunners, with Mickey Stanley getting caught stealing. I don’t recall seeing a post season major league game even close to being as lop-sided as that one seemed. Bob Gibson won 24 games and ended the regular season with an astonishing compiled ERA of 1.12 earning both the 1968 National League Cy Young Award and MVP, receiving every first place vote cast for senior circuit MVP.
| Baseball Almanac Box Scores Detroit Tigers 0, St. Louis Cardinals 4 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Game played on Wednesday, October 2, 1968 at Busch Stadium II | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Game played on Wednesday, October 2, 1968 at Busch Stadium II | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Bob Gibson belongs among a rarified elite of clutch World Series performers. He appeared in three World Series during a five season span (1964, 67, 68) against three different teams, all required Gibson to start a decicive game 7 for all the marbles, pressure that Gibson, a peerless competitor, appeared to welcome. 2-1 in game seven starts, a 7-2 post-season performer before the playoff era makes Gibson one of the most sucessful non-Yankee World Series starters of all time, he equaled the World Series record 3-0 best pitching performance in a seven game series, and set a World Series game record for strikeouts, fanning 17 in game one against Detroit in 1968. Few athletes ever offered a team what Bob Gibson supplied. The difference winning requires at the championship level in a professional team sport cannot be measured just by crunching numbers, and made more difference to the winning St Louis teams of the 60’s than any one player I can name. Gibson shocked the baseball world in 1964 as St. Louis won its first pennant since 1946, over the Phillies dead body.
and they played all day games in the Series back then, Detroit had been absent from World Series play since Allied Forces achieved complete victory on VJ Day ending WWII, they beat the Cubs about two months after US bomber crews dropped a pair of A-Bombs on the Japanese mainland ( Cub fans know the 2008 season is the 63rd since fielding an entrant to the fall classic). Our teacher, Mr. Perry rolled one of metal carts the 4 foot tall atop which B&W TV sets were mounted bolted or welded. Yet each set was heavily marked “A/V Dep’t” in black letters with a 1960’s era magic marker, Southfield School Board bought in bulk: Touching any known surface with the uncapped felt of the business end of one meant change of a permanence nature unfamiliara no going back permanent color (forget cloth), kept locked in their desk, away from kids not to mention cloth in case a little K-6 crook swiped one, these TV sets that to be as heavy as a kitchen stove, it could be identified.
Ms. Ferraro did not disavow the remark. Mrs. Clinton, while calling it regrettable, did not break with her. On Wednesday, March 12, who was on the Clinton finance committee, resigned from the campaign after being criticized by Mr. Obama’s advisers, among others.
She accused the Obama campaign of misrepresenting her remarks to hurt Mrs. Clinton, saying: “They have played the race card time after time after time. The campaign has a goal, which is to attack Hillary. They have to find a way and they can’t do it on experience, on issues, so they look for places. They came up with this, and, well, here we go.” She specifically accused David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, of using race as a tactical weapon and of implying that her remarks were racist.
Mr. Axelrod, responding in an e-mail message Wednesday night, said, “I never suggested that. I’ve known Gerry for a long time, and I don’t believe that. But what she said was plainly wrong and divisive.” Mrs. Clinton’s reluctance to sideline Ms. Ferraro drew a sharp rebuke on Wednesday from the Rev. Al Sharpton, the black political leader in New York and a former presidential candidate, who questioned whether Mrs. Clinton’s campaign was keeping the issue alive as a way to win white votes in Pennsylvania.
In addition to Ms. Ferraro’s remark, Mr. Sharpton cited Mrs. Clinton’s decision not to fire her top ally in Pennsylvania, Gov. Edward G. Rendell, for saying in February that some white voters there were “probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate. “When you hear the lack of total denunciation of Ferraro, when you hear Rendell saying there are whites who will never vote for a black, one has to wonder if the Clinton campaign has a Pennsylvania strategy to appeal to voters on race,” Mr. Sharpton said in an interview. “I would hope Mrs. Clinton would make it clear that she is not doing that.”
Both Sharpton and Ferraro made unsucessful bids to be New York’s Democratic Party candidate for U.S. Senate in 1992, losing the state primary to Robert Abrams.. Incumbent Republican Al D Amato won reelection over Democrat Abrams by 2.7% in a six-way race, in which candidates from the Libertarian, New Alliance, Natural Law and Socialist Workers Parties claimed 2..8% from voters that I’m guessing were sending a message to a Democratic Party seen by many traditional supporters as ideological deserters; abandoning principles desperately seeking power, using the coded hate speech of the right.
In 2001, she announced that she was suffering from multiple myeloma, a form of bone cancer
Ferraro Is Battling Blood Cancer With a Potent Ally: Thalidomide
he remembers hearing the word thalidomide half a lifetime ago, when she was a young mother in Queens and it was a pharmaceutical scourge that maimed children.
Now, Geraldine A. Ferraro punches a single tablet of thalidomide through a foil seal before she goes to bed every night. She swallows the pill that once was banned around the world, then sleeps like a rock for eight solid hours.
Thalidomide is prolonging her life, Ms. Ferraro and her doctors believe, in the teeth of an incurable illness.
After a routine physical in December 1998, her physician discovered that Ms. Ferraro was in the early stages of multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that erodes the bones and leads to death within five years for half of those with the diagnosis. For two years, Ms. Ferraro's disease was classified as ''smoldering myeloma,'' or inactive.
When blood tests showed that the cancer cells were increasing, she began to use thalidomide, one of the very first patients in her condition to receive the drug.
''Such a strange thing,'' said Ms. Ferraro, who is 65. ''What was terrible for a healthy fetus has been wonderful at defeating the cancer cells.''
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Electoral success as seen in the Obama campaign comes from the ground up, vast numbers of uncounted non-voters whose dormancy has cast the most deciding votes in post-war elections. We have seen repeated examples how the nation survives mediocrity rising to the top instead of cream, is it more a republic or more a state afterward? money is allowed to control public discourse, dissemination of information and the political process with ownership of the airwaves by a shrinking elite, secure in the supremacy of property over people before the law, the skillfully crafted free speech argument will always prove the Constitution entitles one to all the speech he can afford; and conversely withholding the means of mass communication from an unsupervised public rabble by proof of ownership of the very means required. How American “Public Television” and “Public Radio” devolved from its origin as a protected cummunity enterprise into the commercial monstrosity it is currently, its very name requiring change to “The Corporation of Public Broadcasting” with corporate sponsors requiring the High Class Commercials seen on PBS; touting these donors not only for the value added product offered for sale as on CBS, ABC, NBC by the sponsor, but praising the dedication to culture, the generosity, the pioneer spirit of these ones made so rich by the labor of so many who now fork over the bread to show a government subsidized film of the natural habitat of far off varmints, ballet dancers it’s impossible to attract a viable commercial audience to; commonly a BBC ripoff, you can’t understand the limeys on; all this support of public betterment made tax deductible long ago, so what began as a sort of American BBC to be supported by tax revenue, was smothered in its crib, U.S. public ownership of anything has been dicey to even talk about even in one’s home muttering to himself, as any millionaire lawyer will tell you, in front of the judges appointed by politicians beholden to billionaires for any credible political campaign in a nation of our current population, increasingly more dependant on modern technology for communication.
Even hopes the future of human community may be less brutal and violent must be phrased correctly, to avoid alienating sources of capital required to keep the show on the road.
Patrick Healy
Jeff Zeleny
JIM DWYER
CAR CRASH
I am from Detroit so I've done a lot of freeway and winter driving, I was never in a serious accident and only saw one but it is enough. I was in a car near downtown with Dave a friend of mine in those days. We were both getting a ride from a third dude Dave knew in December. It was snowing and we were on I-375 a spur off I-75 everyone's heard of if they've been to Florida, it runs right through midtown by the Baseball stadium etc. any. The snow was deep but it was powdery, and since I noted you're in New York so I'm not telling you anything, If snow is powdery it's the safest snow to drive on because it hasn't melted and tires can get a grip on it almost like sand
We were going along about 35-40 in the flow of traffic and I could hear hear the tires rolling over the snow, which is cool, practically ideal winter conditions but you can't overcome the elements; a car came around us on the right all of a sudden going too fast; I was certain of that because we were going as fast as conditions allowed. (We were in the middle lane but I hate when people who pass on the right especially then-we had just passed Tiger Stadium and the roadway is below street level, for a couple miles there's a concrete barrier in the middle and a sheer sheer twenty feet of concrete a yardaway from the right lane both ways; there's nowhere to go)
The car got just ahead of us on the right and was coming over in our lane to pass another car and it was so wierd, because just an split second before anything happened my emotions went faster than my thinking and as pissed off as I was one second I got scared before a watch could tick; then the fucker started spinning, and time seemed change, to This
THE SHRINE
I found your Shauna Grant Shrine, about a month ago, it's the nicest thing I've seen about her on the web, well written and compassionate; Thank you for that,
I first heard of her after death, I watched an hour long documentary about Shauna Grant and the milieu.she entered, when she went to Southern California
after HS graduation seeking what every person her age were after, when they start West, possessing on average the funds to get there enough to eat for a week or so. I made that same decision in 1979; for the same reason as Shauna, any of the uncounted multitude who make California pilgrimage- American Mecca- seeking proof their life is some more than the dead end they departed.,
When Shauna got has more to do all later events then any factor involving morality, sex drive, rebellion or any of the code our right wing masters to blame the victim in the name of personal responsibility
Even University trained economists were unaware (or refused to warn us) :
Tthe forward march of technology, American Mercantilism, Sexual Repression, Hypocrisy, Sexist Double Standards, Supply and Demand, were about to converge; EXPECT CASUALTIES"
Perfecting mass production of affordable home video exploded the market for porn because millions of people that would not attend a public screening of X film because public stigma created risk (embarrassment, police raids, zoning law
requirements assured locations were either unsavory, inconvenient or both or worse).
Producing such a film requires performers willing to fuck for the camera; interpretation/perversion of law allowed police to regard the use or presence of photo graphic equipment as per se sex for renumeration.; detection of the equipment and people creation any commercially viable requiresof photogenic young women in Southern California in required a created porn a differant nd all I knew waswatched PBS documentary PBS compiled about her after her death, . it was like watching a car crash, in real life I mean. . Appealing as she is her story was so poignant, her angelic look still captivating.
Write back if you have time, please ; .
Over 20 years ago-
