And the last week kind of summed up the year. A year of stark contrasts. Two people left their mark on our society. One performer who gave us fifty years. Another helped us heal after a painful decade in which our belief in our own values was sorely tested. The third and final was a beast that we helped build through our own stupidity and the people he terrorized worked their own system of justice to dispatch him.
Alan Freed hosted his dj show on WINS – AM 1010 in the 50’s. You’ll recall that he coined the phrase rock ‘n roll playing James Brown, Fats Domino, The Platters, Little Richard, Billie Ward and the Dominoes; you get the idea. Freed would open up the studio microphone while he beat on a phone book in cadence to James Brown and The Famous Flames. This was the halcyon age. In the fifty years since, no performer has ever come close to claiming the title of “The Hardest Working Man in Show Business”. James Brown, an American Original – we are richer for the talent he possessed and poorer without him.
Gerald Rudolph Ford didn’t have presidential aspirations. After a college career where he excelled at football (his jersey #42 has now been retired; a fitting tribute from his favorite Wolverines), he honorably served this country in our Navy, then moved into public service.
When you’re re-elected to the same congressional seat 13 times, each time with a 60% approval rating, it’s a pretty good indicator that you’re serving the folks back home, not your political ambitions. Quiet decency is what his constituents in Grand Rapids rewarded by electing him each of those 13 times.
Of course no good deed goes unpunished. True to form, Chistopher Hitchens, writing in the online journal “Slate” attempts a real hatchet job on the 38th President, but I wonder if Hitchens remembers just what the national mood was like back in 1974. The Watergate scandal exposed the pettiness and meanness of the President and his cohorts; the venal measures they employed to virtually subvert the Constitution. After August 9th, Gerald Ford assumed the office and shortly thereafter proclaimed that “…the national nightmare is now over”. Of course, with his pardon of Richard Nixon a scant month later, many Americans (myself included) wondered if it really was. Looking back thirty-some years, we’ve come to realize that he really did have it right. President Ford knew the importance of moving on even then. History is a fairer judge of the man known as ‘the accidental president’ than we were, or that Chris Hitchens could ever be. Dignity. Honor. Decency. Just the qualities that we should seek in those who aspire to the highest level of public service.
And then we have the flip side of the coin. Saddam Hussein. Right up there with the likes of Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Pinochet, Shah Reza Palavi. How ironic the image of Donald Rumsfeld paying tribute to Gerald Ford, juxtaposed to the image on CNN just a few days earlier with Rumsfeld buddying up with Hussein right after we sold billions of dollars of military hardware to Iraq. Is that a cruel irony or what? “The enemy of my enemy is my friend”, or so goes the saying in that region of the world. And, since we loathed Iran for taking 52 Americans hostage for 444 days, we thought it clever to have Saddam Hussein inflict death and destruction on Iran in our stead.
As stated at the outset, we had a great part in building that beast, and the blood of those thousands of Kurds and Shia that stained his hands in part was made possible by our own complicity. Good riddance, Saddam. We ourselves will still see our own face in the mirror while your ghostly countenance will haunt our nightmares for years to come.
Today is January 3rd; 748 days left until the end of the Bush Administration.
Tomorrow: Bits and pieces from everywhere.
Alan Freed hosted his dj show on WINS – AM 1010 in the 50’s. You’ll recall that he coined the phrase rock ‘n roll playing James Brown, Fats Domino, The Platters, Little Richard, Billie Ward and the Dominoes; you get the idea. Freed would open up the studio microphone while he beat on a phone book in cadence to James Brown and The Famous Flames. This was the halcyon age. In the fifty years since, no performer has ever come close to claiming the title of “The Hardest Working Man in Show Business”. James Brown, an American Original – we are richer for the talent he possessed and poorer without him.
Gerald Rudolph Ford didn’t have presidential aspirations. After a college career where he excelled at football (his jersey #42 has now been retired; a fitting tribute from his favorite Wolverines), he honorably served this country in our Navy, then moved into public service.
When you’re re-elected to the same congressional seat 13 times, each time with a 60% approval rating, it’s a pretty good indicator that you’re serving the folks back home, not your political ambitions. Quiet decency is what his constituents in Grand Rapids rewarded by electing him each of those 13 times.
Of course no good deed goes unpunished. True to form, Chistopher Hitchens, writing in the online journal “Slate” attempts a real hatchet job on the 38th President, but I wonder if Hitchens remembers just what the national mood was like back in 1974. The Watergate scandal exposed the pettiness and meanness of the President and his cohorts; the venal measures they employed to virtually subvert the Constitution. After August 9th, Gerald Ford assumed the office and shortly thereafter proclaimed that “…the national nightmare is now over”. Of course, with his pardon of Richard Nixon a scant month later, many Americans (myself included) wondered if it really was. Looking back thirty-some years, we’ve come to realize that he really did have it right. President Ford knew the importance of moving on even then. History is a fairer judge of the man known as ‘the accidental president’ than we were, or that Chris Hitchens could ever be. Dignity. Honor. Decency. Just the qualities that we should seek in those who aspire to the highest level of public service.
And then we have the flip side of the coin. Saddam Hussein. Right up there with the likes of Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Pinochet, Shah Reza Palavi. How ironic the image of Donald Rumsfeld paying tribute to Gerald Ford, juxtaposed to the image on CNN just a few days earlier with Rumsfeld buddying up with Hussein right after we sold billions of dollars of military hardware to Iraq. Is that a cruel irony or what? “The enemy of my enemy is my friend”, or so goes the saying in that region of the world. And, since we loathed Iran for taking 52 Americans hostage for 444 days, we thought it clever to have Saddam Hussein inflict death and destruction on Iran in our stead.
As stated at the outset, we had a great part in building that beast, and the blood of those thousands of Kurds and Shia that stained his hands in part was made possible by our own complicity. Good riddance, Saddam. We ourselves will still see our own face in the mirror while your ghostly countenance will haunt our nightmares for years to come.
Today is January 3rd; 748 days left until the end of the Bush Administration.
Tomorrow: Bits and pieces from everywhere.
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