Belated thoughts on the death of Steve Jobs

I was in North Carolina last week when I pulled up the New York Times home page and saw that Steve Jobs had died. I don't know why I was so shocked. I'd seen the photos of the man from his last appearance in June, and I'd written about his resignation from Apple in August, and you didn't have to be a genius to do the math.

For some reason, I just can't seem to shake this death off as being just that of another famous person I'd never met. I'm quite sure much of it is that Steve Jobs was only four months older than I am, and when you start seeing your own birth year as the first of the two dates in obituaries and tombstones, it drives home your own mortality in a way nothing else really does. But there's something heartbreaking about seeing a guy who from all indications did everything right with his health, was a vegan, a Zen Buddhist, had access to the best medical care, and died of one of the more horrific cancers anyway.

Yesterday I was reading Newsweek's coverage online, because I think someone at the postal service took my print copy (something that happens every time there's a particularly interesting cover story.) I happened upon this photograph of Steve Jobs with his wife Laurene:



...and just completely lost it.

Again, not sure why, except that it's easy to pore over the many photographs of the smartypants college dropout, the young executive with his Macintosh, and the many, many photos of the cool guy inveiling his latest cool gadget, even as the trajectory of those images is to watch the man fade away. But I think what this photograph drove home is that there was a Steve Jobs we never considered. We knew about the pregnant ex-girlfriend he'd abandoned and his role as deadbeat dad. But what we never, ever saw that this wasn't just the guru of techniks everywhere, but also a man who grew, matured, and became a devoted husband and father. It depicts a side of this man that the world never saw, because he guarded it so ferociously.

That he WAS so private, even as he was so public, makes it doubly appalling that some on the right have decided that since Steve Jobs was adopted, it makes him the perfect poster child for a movement which assumes that all women who have abortions decide to do so as blithely as they would decide to have a pedicure and go out for a nice lunch. They're dragging out the "What if Steve Jobs' mother had aborted him?" canard. We've seen this before, in the context of President Obama; the assumption being that every woman who decides that for good reason she just can't have a child right now, is carrying the next Steve Jobs or Barack Obama; never conceding that a woman could instead be carrying Jeffrey Dahmer or Adolf Hitler. It's something they never had the gall to do when Jobs was alive, but now that he's gone and can't rebut them, he's fair game.

This morning as I drove to work, I passed by a Verizon Wireless store that had about fifty people waiting outside. At first I thought it was another strike, until I realized that these people were waiting outside at seven AM on a Friday morning to buy the new iPhone; to have in their possession the last phone blessed in person by Steen Paul Jobs. AAPL closed today at $422 a share, up $13.57.

Life goes on.

I suppose I'm at the age where I had better get used to news like this

There's no good news for Democrats ANYWHERE.

Kara Kennedy, daughter of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy has died:

Kara Kennedy, daughter of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, suffered a heart attack and died late Friday evening, sources confirm to ABC News. She was 51.

In 2002, Kara Kennedy, the oldest daughter of Ted and Joan Kennedy, was diagnosed with inoperable cancer.

With her father’s help, she found a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston who removed a portion of her lung as part of the treatment. Five years later, her mother told the Boston Globe that Kennedy was cancer free and was running five miles a day.

“My daughter was my best friend,” Joan Kennedy said today. “She stayed with me all summer long in Hyannisport. … We had a wonderful summer together.

“She was beloved by everybody who knew her. She was beloved by all of her cousins,” she said. “So many people have been calling me today and it makes me feel good to know how much everybody loved her.”

In August 2009, Kennedy gave a touching reading of Psalm 72 at her father’s funeral at the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Boston.

Ted Kennedy often prayed at Our Lady in 2003 while his daughter was being treated for lung cancer at the nearby hospital.

Kara Anne Kennedy was born February 27, 1960. She has two siblings, Teddy Jr. and Patrick, the former congressman.

She was a graduate of Tufts University and was a producer for VSA arts, a non profit organization founded by her aunt Jean Kennedy Smith.

She was also on the board for the National Organization on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome along with her cousin William Kennedy Smith.

Previously she was a producer for the television program Evening Magazine at WBZ-TV in Boston.

She was married to Michael Allen, a professional sailor, in 1990 and they had two children, Grace and Max.

Kara Kennedy was one of the rare people who survives for more than five years after being treated for lung cancer. Word is that she died suddenly at a Washington-area health club. A heart attack is suspected.

And Eleanor Mondale, daughter of former Vice President Walter Mondale, has died at the same age. Mondale had been diagnosed with brain cancer in 2005, which recurred in 2008.

It's one thing to look at data from clinical trials of cancer treatments to try to solve a system problem. It's quite another when you realize that this data is about actual, living people. And a double-whammy like this makes us realize what a long way we are from combating this disease.

Betty Ford: Trailblazer

This woman would be regarded as a liability for today's Republican candidates

Too bad the trail seems to have ended.

My first reaction to the news of the passing of Betty Ford last night at the age of 93 was "Well, she had a good, long run." My second reaction was a profound sadness, because it all came rushing back to me just what a groundbreaking figure she was, and about how much the role of the First Lady has backslid since Gerald Ford ran for re-election in 1976 and people sported buttons that said "Betty's Husband For President."

Today, the perfect Republican prospective First Lady is quiet, unassuming, has that glazed thorazine stare, looks adoringly at her husband and says little else, and most importantly, keeps her mouth shut. Maybe she can take on libraries as a cause, or some vague thing the press refers to as "education", but mostly her job is to wear elegant but modest dresses to state dinners, kiss babies, and show the country just what a swell guy her husband is.

In the years since Betty Ford left the White House, we have had two First Ladies who didn't match that expectation, and both of them have been Democrats. We all know the kind of crap Hillary Clinton took from the right and the media for having the temerity to believe taht being First Lady meant you could do more than just, as she famously (and tactlessly) said, "stay at home and bake cookies." Now we have Michelle Obama, a successful attorney, who is taking no end of crap for having the temerity to suggest that we should get kids eating better and getting outside and moving around.

Hillary Clinton may have been the first feminist-era First Lady, and Eleanor Roosevelt may have been the first one who was actually a feminist (before the word even existed), but Betty Ford brought a radicalism to her role that perhaps no Democratic First Lady could have. Her brief time in the White House was a "Nixon Goes to China" moment in our history; a time when a World War II-generation woman "got with the program" and showed that it's OK for a woman to be human.

Today we have marathons and fundraisers with pink ribbons and baseball players who wear pink socks for breast cancer awareness, but before Betty Ford announced to the world in 1974 that she had undergone a mastectomy for breast cancer, the disease was something to be hidden; something shameful. To the extent that there has been progress with this disease it is because Betty Ford "took it out of the closet." I know a woman, a few years younger than I, who is currently undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer. She is strong and fierce and unfortunately is the one who has to reassure everyone she tells when they get, as she calls it, "the sad face" upon hearing the news. To the extent that we can celebrate any death, the fact that Betty Ford made it to 93 after treatment should give her hope at a time when she and everyone around her needs it.

When I went looking for just the right photo of Betty Ford, I found that when you search Google Images for "Betty Ford", you get plenty of photos of the former First Lady, but also many of Lindsay Lohan, and so we move on to what is perhaps Mrs. Ford's greatest achievement -- revealing that it isn't just poor people and people of "bad moral character" who become strung out on drugs. When you look at the wives of today's Republican candidates, which one of them do you think would have the guts to attach her name to a substance abuse rehabilitation center? The Betty Ford Center was founded long after Mrs. Ford left the White House, but she had already earned her place in the hearts of Americans -- a place that allowed her to gently tap on the door behind which lay tens of thousands of substance abusers and say, "I am one too, and there is help for you." When you look at the glazed stare of so many Republican women, you wonder how many of THEM are strung out, but in today's judgmental climate, it's hard to imagine any potential First Lady having the guts that Betty Ford had back in 1976.

Betty Ford favored abortion rights, she favored passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, she was sanguine about possible marijuana use and cohabitation by her children -- she was the kind of "cool mom" that it was hard to imagine in those days, when so many of our parents had been utterly freqked out by what had gone on over the previous ten years. And she was a Republian, no less.

The passing of this remarkable woman isn't sad because of her death itself. Most of us would be grateful to live for 93 years and leave behind a legacy of kindness, nonjudgmentalism, and making a difference in the lives of breast cancer patients and their families and friends and of those trapped in the maw of substance abuse. It's sad because when we look back at the life and work of Betty Ford, and we think about the war that her political party has declared on women who are not fundamentalist Christians, we realize just how much we've lost. Betty Ford blazed the trail, but we have been remiss in continuing to clear the way for future generations of women.

Somehow this makes me terribly, terribly sad

About a year and a half ago I was in Berlin for a conference. Our flight arrived early in the morning, and some of my colleagues wanted to go sightseeing. I knew that we had four long days of workshops ahead of us, I hadn't slept much, and I begged off, pleading that I needed a nap. The Berlin zoo was not far from our hotel, but I just wasn't up to going.

Now I wish I had, because it would have been my only chance to see Knut, the polar bear who as a baby captivated an entire world:

The baby bear's relationship with his handler Thomas Doerflein, brought fame to both, and many, including I suspect Mr. Doerflein, shed a few tears when he had to break the bond because Knut was getting just too big. Doerflein died of a heart attack not long after.

Unfortunately, our fascination with the adorable wore off when the cute little powder puff grew into a large, grungy bear that bore little resemblance to the snow-white bears we see in arctic photos or to his former self.

Our anthropomorphizing of Knut extended to news reports that he was depressed after Doerflein's death, and when a female bear, Gianna, arrived from Munich in 2010, the hype was akin to what we now see for Prince William and Kate Middleton. Here are Knut and Gianna in February 2010:

Here's Knut lass than a month ago, reunited with his mother, Tosca:

...but this picture apparently belies a reality of Knut being bullied by the Tosca and two other females in his enclosure.

But today Knut was alone in his enclosure when in front of 600 visitors, he suddenly collapsed and died.

My heart goes out to everyone in Berlin at the loss of "Knuti." And I'm going to go blubber a little bit myself.

God, he was funny

R.I.P. Leslie Nielsen

I really can't add anything to this:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Thanks for the laughs.

Grumpy Old Men - and one classy one

The easiest thing to do in New York is to be a Yankees fan. I mean, here you have a team steeped in tradition, which for most of its history has offered up a product that when it wasn't excellent, was often colorful. That wasn't because of the baseball offered up on the field, which like most American League baseball, is devoid of the zaniness that seems to come naturally to National League teams. My father, a Giants-turned-Mets fan, used to say that watching the Yankees was like watching a bunch of guys from IBM in suits, white shirts, and briefcases play baseball. Of course you have to realize that this is a guy who used to take me to a 3/4 empty Shea Stadium during the Great Suck Years, when Jane Jarvis played the organ, Ed Kranepool played first base, and the usher chomping a cheap White Owl cigar would come up to you in the cheap seats and say "You don't want to sit there. You want to sit down here." He'd move you down to field box seats, wipe them off with a dirty rag in a bizarro foreshadowing of squeegee men, and Dad would tip him a buck.

For most of the time I can remember anything about the Yankees, they have always been about two things. Bob Sheppard and George Steinbrenner. Just as something will be lost to the Mets forever when the ancient-but-still-full-of-stories Ralph Kiner shuffles off this mortal coil, the Yankees have lost their voice with the death of Bob Sheppard. You know the voice, they called it the "Voice of God." As mannered as it was, it was always the voice of the Yankees. Now, Yankee fans are left with nothing but the repulsive John Sterling, who makes me want to kill myself every time I hear a game recap in which he does that "THUUUUUUHHHHH....YANKEES WIN!!!!!!!!!!" -- as if this was some kind of miracle like Jesus and the fishes. I mean seriously. Was there any doubt? This is a team that eats opponents like Pac-Man, and when they win, the appropriate response is to shrug and say, "What did you expect?"

There was a time when the Yankees were colorful too. It was the says when someone was always feuding with Steinbrenner. If it wasn't Billy Martin (and wasn't THAT one of the most dysfunctional relationships in baseball history) it was Reggie Jackson, or Dave Winfield, or even =tokke= Yogi Berra, who at one time vowed to never go to the Stadium again as long as Steinbrenner owned the team.

In recent years, Steinbrenner wasn't seen much, as his health failed. Instead, it took TWO Steinbrenners to do what ONE did when George was in his prime. One son, Hal, does the quiet operation of the organization, leaving the day-to-day stuff in the capable hands of the smart baseball man known as Brian Cashman. The other one, Hank, has the job of being the Asshole Steinbrenner. But without the side that cares about quality baseball, all you have left is the asshole. George did both, and did it well:

Far away from the Glittering Dome of Yankee Stadium lies a city that despite the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, has always exemplified futility. And that city is Cleveland, Ohio. And it is there that Harvey Pekar, a man who became famous for being a crank, died on Monday. But Pekar was no ordinary crank; he had a kind of zen wisdom as he observed his own life and the world around him, aided by cartoonists like R. Crumb, who put his thoughts into picture. But outside of the geekerati, Pekar is best known for being the subject of one of my favorite movies of recent years, American Splendor. Here, Paul Giamatti as Pekar asks, "What's in a name?"

As I observed when the film came out:

I am Harvey Pekar. And so are you, or you wouldn't be reading this. And because of movies like Crumb and Ghost World and now AMERICAN SPLENDOR, we are no longer misfits. We are now cool. Is this an improvement? Is this supposed to make us feel better?

Well, yes. Because Harvey Pekar was the patron saint of all of us who have always felt that we were put here by mistake, that our worldview is completely and utterly out of sync with the rest of the world. We observe the world around us and wonder why it seems to completely, utterly mad. The difference between those of us who blog, and Harvey Pekar, is that he was doing it long before we were. And he found a way to make a career of it, such as it was.

There's something intrinsically lonely about those of us who analyze everything, who see a world in which we never quite fit. Sometimes we luck out and find similarly iconoclastic friends. If we're very lucky, as I've been and as Pekar was, we find a life partner who by some strange karmic coincidence, lives on the same slightly off-kilter plane of reality that we do. But it doesn't change the fact that we struggle every day to live in this strange alien place.

Here, in another clip from the film, the real Harvey voices over an oddly appropriate clip of Giamatti, talking about loneliness:

Keep going, Harvey. Someone's bound to turn up.

The Redemption of Robert Byrd

The news just broke of the death of West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd at the age of 92. This loss, expected as it may have been, since a man going into the hospital with a serious condition at age 92 is never good news, is incalculable for reasons that go beyond party numbers in the Senate.

Robert Byrd was the living embodiment of America's shame, and its progress, about race. Every time I have written about Byrd on this blog for the last six years, and indeed every time his name has been mentioned anywhere, some wingnut troll who is no doubt now attending teabag rallies and pretending that his rage isn't about race, will come along and talk about Byrd's membership in the Ku Klux Klan.

So in memorializing this great man, let's get that out of the way up front, shall we?

We can excoriate Thomas Jefferson for owning slaves, or D.W. Griffith for the horrific portrayal of black people in Birth of a Nation. We can rightly criticize Robert Byrd for having joined the Klan in his early twenties as a product of the racist south. But we cannot criticize any man for not being ahead of his time.

Byrd clung to the legacy of the racist south for far longer than we would have liked, even joining a filibuster of the Civil Rights act of 1964 -- perhaps the most important piece of legislation of my lifetime. It was the last gasp of the "Dixiecrats" -- southern Democrats of the Civil War legacy most of whom when their own party turned its back on racism, became Republicans -- men like Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms. Byrd did not, however. Byrd recognized that the world was changing and he was willing to change with it. In 2008, he supported Barack Obama for the presidency early on.

The very same people who want to delude themselves that they have a free pass into heaven despite supporting policies that keep peole mired in poverty, despite cheating on their wives and getting into bed with corporations that ruin their God's creation, don't want to give a man whose later life was about as solid a demonstration of penitence as I've ever seen, the same chance at redemption. So let them talk about the Klan instead of the apology, let them talk about the mistakes of a young man who was shaped by the most vile practices in this country's history, and who opened his eyes to realize the injustice in which he was raised. Let those who continue to use racist code to dogwhistle to those who would undo all the racial progress of the last fifty years remain focused on a renounced past. Let them project their own bigotry. Because what we honor today is not a life without mistakes, a life of unequivocal virtue. What we honor today is a life which demonstrated the possibility of growth and redemption.

Robert Byrd in his own words:

The above video is from 2009, in which Sen. Byrd questioned the very Afghanistan "surge" that is still keeping us mired in that country, just as he said then that it would.

...on the need to investigate Bush torture policies:

The rule of law is not just a lofty concept to which we should aspire only when convenient. It is a fundamental principal upon which our Republic was founded, and it is the foundation of our free society. I understand the desire to look forward and to forge a new path on high ground instead of on the low road of the past eight years. But to use the need to move on as a reason not to investigate basic human rights violations is unacceptable. Excusing individuals at the highest levels of government from adhering to the rule of law, whether in wartime or not, is a dangerous precedent, for it undercuts the principle of accountability which permeates representative democracy.

Sadly, the world will discover more and more about the acts committed at Guantanamo Bay, Bagram, and elsewhere around the world. There is no avoiding that eventuality. It is our choice as a nation whether to pursue the path of truth ourselves, or leave the details of the abuse to be painfully revealed by others. Releasing the OLC memos was a courageous and admirable first step. But we must not stop there.

Whether it is through an independent investigation, a "Truth Commission," a Congressional investigation, or a criminal investigation by the Department of Justice, action must be taken. As long as those who condoned and approved these despicable acts are permitted to escape the consequences, we allow our moral standing in the world to be severely compromised. September 11 did not suddenly legalize torture, nor did it exonerate those who authorized such a heinous deviation from the rule of law. How we address these abuses will shape the image of the United States for decades. In order to truly clear our good name and put the past behind us, the United States must strive to be sure that this dark period of sick and secretive torture schemes receives the scrutiny it deserves.

...on corruption in Iraq:

“The U.S. judicial system is also not doing its part to deter corruption and fraud by aggressively prosecuting the perpetrators of these crimes. Many cases that are painstakingly built in Iraq by investigators are, my staff was told, turned over to the Department of Justice or U.S. attorney offices for prosecution only to fall into a black hole, an abyss of cynical indifference to punishing criminals and recovering billions in lost funds. We are not deterring fraud and corruption, and we are not demonstrating the benefits of a just “Rule of Law.” How can we ask Iraqi investigators and judges to arrest and prosecute their citizens for these crimes, often at great risk to their personal safety, when the Americans there doing the same thing go unpunished?

“Senator Dorgan, as you know, I invited Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Attorney General Michael Mukasey to an Appropriations Committee hearing on September 17 to address the problems my staff uncovered. Overcoming these barriers is neither insurmountable nor expensive, but it does require attention and sincere commitment from these Cabinet officers.

“However, neither Secretary Rice nor Attorney General Mukasey could find the time to address these serious problems for which they have responsibility, problems that have squandered our resources, and problems that are arming our enemies. Our witnesses today will bring more attention to the scope and consequences of these problems, and I look forward to hearing their testimony.”

...on Afghanistan as the "Grave of Foreigners":

“Mr. President, what is really at stake for the United States in Afghanistan? We all know that Afghanistan is not a threat to us militarily. The Taliban is not a threat to us militarily. Al Qaeda, however, is a demonstrated threat to us with ambitions and a philosophy that must keep us vigilant. But the link between al Qaeda and Afghanistan is a tenuous one, based only on the temporary expediency of location, an expediency that has already been replaced as the al Qaeda leadership has moved, and may move again.”

“Building a Western-style democratic state in an Afghanistan equipped with a large military and police force and a functioning economy based on something other than opium poppies may or may not deny al Qaeda a safe haven there again. It will guarantee that the United States must invest large numbers of troops and many billions of dollars in Afghanistan for many years to come, energy and funds that might otherwise go toward fueling our own economic recovery, better educating our children or expanding access to health care for more of our own people. And yet there are many here in this body -- the Senate -- who believe we should proceed with such a folly in Afghanistan. During a time of record deficits, some actually continue to suggest that the United States should sink hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars into Afghanistan effectively turning our backs on our own substantial domestic needs -- all the while deferring the costs and the problems for future generations to address.”

...on the historical context of the filibuster in the face of an obstructionist Republican minority:

In his notes of the Constitutional Convention on June 26, 1787, James Madison recorded that the ends to be served by the Senate were “first, to protect the people against their rulers, secondly, to protect the people against the transient impressions into which they themselves might be led... They themselves, as well as a numerous body of Representatives, were liable to err also, from fickleness and passion. A necessary fence against this danger would be to select a portion of enlightened citizens, whose limited number, and firmness might seasonably interpose against impetuous councils.” That “fence” was the United States Senate.

The right to filibuster anchors this necessary fence. But it is not a right intended to be abused.

During this 111th Congress in particular the minority has threatened to filibuster almost every matter proposed for Senate consideration. I find this tactic contrary to each Senator’s duty to act in good faith.

I share the profound frustration of my constituents and colleagues as we confront this situation. The challenges before our nation are far too grave, and too numerous, for the Senate to be rendered impotent to address them, and yet be derided for inaction by those causing the delay.

There are many suggestions as to what we should do. I know what we must not do.

We must never, ever, tear down the only wall – the necessary fence - this nation has against the excesses of the Executive Branch and the resultant haste and tyranny of the majority.

The path to solving our problem lies in our thoroughly understanding it. Does the difficulty reside in the construct of our rules or in the ease of circumventing them?

A true filibuster is a fight, not a threat or a bluff. For most of the Senate’s history, Senators motivated to extend debate had to hold the floor as long as they were physically able. The Senate was either persuaded by the strength of their arguments or unconvinced by either their commitment or their stamina. True filibusters were therefore less frequent, and more commonly discouraged, due to every Senator’s understanding that such undertakings required grueling personal sacrifice, exhausting preparation, and a willingness to be criticized for disrupting the nation’s business.

Now, unbelievably, just the whisper of opposition brings the “world’s greatest deliberative body” to a grinding halt. Why?

Because this once highly respected institution has become overwhelmingly consumed by a fixation with money and media.

Gone are the days when Senators Richard Russell and Lyndon Johnson, and Speaker Sam Rayburn gathered routinely for working weekends and couldn’t wait to get back to their chambers on Monday morning.

Now every Senator spends hours every day, throughout the year and every year, raising funds for re-election and appearing before cameras and microphones. Now the Senate often works three-day weeks, with frequent and extended recess periods, so Senators can rush home to fundraisers scheduled months in advance.

Robert Byrd entered the Senate when it was a chamber of statesmen, and remained there to watch it turn into a pack of mad dogs. The loss of Robert Byrd isn't simply just another old man who didn't know when to leave. Having Robert Byrd, a man who studied history and its lessons, as the conscience of the Senate, always provided a voice of intellect and reason amidst the baying of the wolves. Without him, incurious, willfully ignorant idiots like Jeff Sessions rule the day.

A terrible loss to the blogosphere

Sometimes when I think of what my circle of friends would be without the many, many people I've met online, some of whom have moved into "meat world" and others who are still just virtuous, I realize what a Godsend the Intartoobz are to those of us who have tended to be shy, or awkward, or uncomfortable around other people. But then there are those we know only through their writing, and when they disappear, it's hard to describe the grief we feel when they are gone, because these aren't people we know. They aren't our friends, they aren't people we have coffee with or exchange voluminous e-mails with, furiously brainstorming novel plots or sharing family nuttiness. They're people whose writing enriches our lives, they are kindred spirits, and in that kinship we have allowed room for them in our lives.

It's in that spirit that I pass on the terrible news of the passing of "Jon Swift", whom we now know courtesy of Tom Watson was really one Al Weisel:

The great Jon Swift has died. That's the "blogging" angle to a personal tragedy. In reality, the voice of Jon Swift - the hilarious faux conservative blogger whose talent and passion were evident in every post - belonged to Al Weisel, a sweet and good-natured journalist who happened to be the college roommate of my once-and-future collaborator Jason Chervokas.

I didn't know him well, but Al graciously agreed to be part of my little newcritics experiment of a couple of years back and his presence at some of our New York gatherings was generous, friendly, and low key - though the humor could sometimes be appropriately biting.

Al was on the way to his father's funeral in Virginia when he suffered a sudden aortic aneurysm and underwent several surgeries in an attempt to save his life. Sadly, they did not succeed.

Heartbreakingly, Al's mother has posted this comment to the Jon Swift blog, unmasking the true identify of her brilliant son - and yes, he was a blogging super-hero to many of us.

I don't know how else to tell you all who love this blog. I am Jon
Swift's Mom and I guess I'm going to OUT him. He was Al Weisel, my
beloved son. Al was on his way to his father's funeral in VA when he
suffered 2 aortic aneurysms, a leaky aortic valve and an aortic artery
dissection from his heart to his pelvis. He had 3 major surgeries
within 24 hours and sometime during those surgeries also suffered a
severe stroke. We, his 2 sisters, his brother, his partner and his best
friend since he was 9 years old were with him as he took his last
breath. We have all lost a shining start who warmed our hearts,
tormented us and made us laugh as he giggled at our pulling something
over on us. He passed away on February 27, 2010. My beloved child will
live on in so many hearts. I miss him more than I can say. If you are
on Facebook, go to organizations and join "Friends of Al Weisel,
Unite!" It will give you just a taste of how special he was. Farewell,
Jon (Al)

Al Weisel was the political poser's worst enemy as Jon Swift, but he was also a good guy to hang around the pub with and commiserate over New York's shrinking freelance rates. Gone all too soon, he'll be truly missed by many.

Not a week goes by that I don't hear about some outrage and wish that Steve Gilliard were still around to write about it. I've checked back at Jon Swift regularly over the last year wondering where he's disappeared to and wishing, longing for him to return with his razor-sharp takedown of conservative phonies and liberal wusses. There are bloggers, and then there are the Great Wits of Blogtopia (™ Skippy) -- people like TBogg and Driftglass -- and Jon Swift; those modern-day Thurbers and Wodehouses, satirists who sharpen their knives on the preposterousness of modern life. There are damn few of them and today there is one less. And on top of everything else, and all the despair I feel in general lately, this just makes me so fucking sad.

More from Skippy, who's also linking to other tributes. They're worth your time, because that's how much the "Swiftian" humor meant to us.

Forget about yet another empty speech, listen to a real American patriot who left us today

I guess Howard Zinn couldn't bear to hang around long enough to listen to Barack Obama spout a bunch of crap which he has no intention of fighting for either.

Howard Zinn, 1922-2010:

We should take his advice.

(JP is liveblogging the SOTU. I had to get to work this morning for a 7 AM teleconference and had to go to a schmooze-with-the-managers event tonight. I'm going to bed.)

Condolences to the TBoggs -- again

When I was a kid, we always had dogs. I always figured I was a dog person. Oh, later on we always had a cat too, but I was always the kind of person who'd cross the street to pet a dog. I still like dogs, but after 26 years of having cats, I guess you could say I've become kind of a crazy cat lady.

I don't blog about my cats as much as some people do. This is mostly because I have trouble taking photos of Maggie doing something cute, or Jenny being regal. Maybe other people's cats are just more interesting. I know that John Cole's cat, Tunch, is about to get his image on Cafe Press swag.

Some bloggers allow us to know their pets so well that they become a part of our lives as much as theirs. I've always had a particular fondness for TBogg's Thursday Basset Blogging, where weekly updates of the adventures of Satchmo, Beckham, and more recently Fenway, would demonstrate to audiences the perfect confluence of soulful sadness and silliness that is the Basset Hound.

When Satchmo passed away about a year ago, it was a loss to the entire blogging community, as we'd all come to know the ever-patient dog with the sad, sad face. I wrote about Satchmo's passing here. The Tboggs' other Basset Hound, Beckham, seemed to be a whippersnapper with years ahead of him, but alas it was not to be.

There's something about Bassets. A friend of mine had had a Basset many years ago, and when her daughter passed away suddenly a few years ago, she decided it was time to bring another Basset into her life to help her through -- and ended up with two of them. As I said -- the perfect confluence of soulful and silly.

I don't know why the loss of pets we've never really seen owned by people we don't know can affect us so deeply. Perhaps it's because so many of us who blog are pet people, owned by pets with larger-than-life personalities that lend themselves to share in the blogging process. And of course all of us who are pet people know what the TBoggs are going through, because most of us have been there, and if we haven't, we will.

I know that with Maggie being ten years old now, I'm more patient with her near-constant yowling. I don't get as irritated with her demands the way I used to. When she comes up on the bed and puts one par under my neck and one over it and spoons me and purrs in my ear, I try to etch it into my brain because I have to realize she won't be with me forever. It's part of the bargain we make when we open our hearts to these creatures. And we make that bargain gladly, again and again. But it still hurts like hell when we have to pay up.

And so once again, our thoughts are with the TBoggs tonight. We wish Beckham a speedy passage over the bridge and we wish Fenway a complete recovery.

R.I.P. and thank you, Miep Gies

The other day I was watching Schindler's List on TV and thinking about just how close Stephen Spielberg came in this film to the masterpiece everyone thought it was. Then that damn scene at the end where once again, Spielberg doesn't trust his audience and stages this weepy breakdown where Oscar Schindler (Liam Neeson) blubbers about he could have saved more -- and pisses you off, until the very end, where the actual Schindlerjüden and the people who play them in the movie file past Schindler's grave. And then you forgive him.

These days, as lunatics who know nothing about actual facts, only what they hear on Fox News, decide that Barack Obama is the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler, it's kind of instructive to take a look at what hatred of "the other" results in, whether "the other" is Jew, or Muslim, or Mexican, or anything else. And it is in this context that we, the denizens of the 21st century, say goodbye to another hero of the Holocaust, Miep Gies, who has died in a nursing home in the Netherlands at the age of 100:

Miep Gies, the last surviving member of the group who helped protect Anne Frank and her family from the Nazis, has died in the Netherlands aged 100.

She and other employees of Anne Frank's father Otto supplied food to the family as they hid in a secret annex above the business premises in Amsterdam.

Anne's diary of their life in hiding, which ended in betrayal, is one of the most famous records of the Holocaust.

It was rescued by Mrs Gies, who kept it safe until after the war.

Miep Gies died in a nursing home after suffering a fall just before Christmas.

Speaking last year as she celebrated her 100th birthday, Mrs Gies played down her role, saying others had done far more to protect Jews in the Netherlands.

She and her fellow employees kept Anne and the seven others supplied for two years, from 1942 to 1944.

Anne Frank died in a Nazi concentration camp in 1945

When the family were found by the authorities, they were deported, and Anne died of typhus in the German concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen.

It was Mrs Gies who collected up Anne's papers and locked them away, hoping that one day she would be able to give them back to the girl.

In the event, she returned them to Otto Frank, who survived the war, and helped him compile them into a diary that was published in 1947.

When I was growing up, there wasn't a girl in this country who didn't read Anne Frank's diary. We read it as literature, or we read it as Jews, or we read it as a peek into the mind of a girl who was so much like us. I'm not sure Miep Gies realized, as she scooped up the pages from the floor of the "Secret Annexe" where she had hidden the Frank family before they were found and taken to the camp at Bergen-Belsen, the role she would play in giving Anne Frank the kind of immortality that few of us achieve no matter how long we live. I always wondered what Anne Frank would make of her enduring legacy.

In 1997, Miep Gies answered questions from students at the Scholastic web site. In answer to a question about whether she was frightened about what she was doing in hiding the Frank family, she replied:

Of course, initially life is more comfortable if you stay out. You might silence your concern about injustice or cruel things happening to other people by telling yourself that those people should solve their problems themselves. It is a very selfish attitude, but, as I said, safe in the beginning. But, I could foresee that there would come a day that my conscience would start to bother me. This would be a kind of burden. Just like many people, all over the world, are unhappy and restless today because they did not help the Jews during the Holocaust. Think for instance of the ships with Jews that tried to enter the U.S. and were sent back! So, my conclusion is that really thinking of yourself is often better served by making some sacrifices today than having a miserable life later, feeling remorse about the help you failed to give to those who needed you....Yes, I would help again. Although, some people (rightfully) state that I could have not saved Anne's life, I still helped her to live another two years. During these years she wrote her wonderful diary, touching the heart of millions of people and inspiring them. Because I could rescue this diary, it was not a lost effort. From this we learn that it is always better to try. Sure failure results from not trying. My decision to help Otto was because I saw no alternative. I could foresee many sleepless nights and an unhappy life if I would refuse. And that was not the kind of future I wanted to for myself. Permanent remorse about failing to do your human duty, in my opinion, can be worse than losing your life.

And this differs from what they've been doing....how?

For three decades, the Moonie Times has been a wingnut tract masquerading as a newspaper. While its correspondents, many of whom champion the Christian right cause while working for a guy who managed to get himself crowned the Messiah in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, found their way onto shows like Meet the Press as journalists, the fact remains that the Washington Times was about as much a newspaper as Fox News is a news channel.

Well, the Rev. Moon's plan for World Domination via the press has run aground:

With the announcement that 40 percent of the Times' staff is getting pink-slipped, and that the daily's no longer even going to bother with traditional who/what/where/when/why reporting, instead publishing an opinion-heavy publication that will be free of charge at a diminished number of local outlets, Times owners look like they're angling to be a Weekly Standard wannabe, churning out lots of predictable GOP Noise Machine opinion
prattle. (Paging Andrew Breitbart!) What is clear is that the daily's days as a functioning newspaper are now over.

R.I.P. The Washington Times.

At this time of reflection, it's worth pondering two rather astonishing facets about the Times and its bizarre life and looming death. The first is the deep irony of how the Times, a clarion voice
of partisan right-wing values, was run as a charity for nearly three decades and
whose business model made a mockery of the free-marketplace system supposedly
cherished by conservatives. The second is the even deeper irony of how the
Times was owned by a delusional prophet whose apocalyptic visions made an even bigger mockery of the Christian values supposedly cherished by conservative activists.

Indeed, the woeful
Times has for decades stood at the center of a Beltway marriage-of-convenience for the ages, as conservatives nearly developed cataracts turning a collective blind eye to the glaringly obvious contradictions that Moon's worldview created with conservatives. (FYI, Moon proclaims to be more powerful than God, that Jesus was a failure, and that dictatorial rule is best. Hmm.....)

Good night, and good riddance.

Perhaps he couldn't bear to watch his own party finish selling out health care to the insurance companies

NYT:

Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, a son of one of the most storied families in American politics, a man who knew triumph and tragedy in near-equal measure and who will be remembered as one of the most effective lawmakers in the history of the Senate, died late Tuesday night. He was 77.

The death of Mr. Kennedy, who had been battling brain cancer, was announced Wednesday morning in a statement by the Kennedy family, which was already mourning the death of the Senator’s sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver two weeks earlier.

“Edward M. Kennedy – the husband, father, grandfather, brother and uncle we loved so deeply – died late Tuesday night at home in Hyannis Port,” the statement said. “We’ve lost the irreplaceable center of our family and joyous light in our lives, but the inspiration of his faith, optimism, and perseverance will live on in our hearts forever.”

Mr. Kennedy had been in precarious health since he suffered a seizure in May 2008. His doctors determined the cause had been a malignant glioma, a brain tumor that often carries a grim prognosis.

As he underwent cancer treatment, Mr. Kennedy was little seen in Washington, appearing most recently at the White House in April as Mr. Obama signed a national service bill that bears the Kennedy name. Last week Mr. Kennedy urged Massachusetts lawmakers to change state law and let Gov. Deval Patrick appoint a temporary replacement upon his death, to assure that the state’s representation in Congress would not be interrupted by a special election.

While Mr. Kennedy had been physically absent from the capital in recent months, his presence had been deeply felt as Congress weighed the most sweeping revisions to America’s health care system in decades, an effort Mr. Kennedy called “the cause of my life.”

Health care "reform" that's going to require buying junk insurance that covers less than your policy, if you have one, does now aside, for those of us born in the 1950's, the death of Senator Kennedy is truly a knock on the ghoulish door that tells us we're next.

I'm sure that we're going to see the Usual Suspects popping up in the comments talking about Chappaquiddick, the incident that ruined Ted Kennedy's presidential aspirations forever. Funny, isn't it, how the narrative of sin and redemption comes into play when Republican politicians fall from grace, but where Ted Kennedy is concerned, thirty years of redemption isn't enough for them.

As the last of the Kennedy brothers leaves us, it's useful to note how different the Kennedys were from the Bushes. Old Joe Kennedy was as nasty a piece of work as any robber baron, but somewhere along the lines his sons got the idea that a career in public political life was about public service, not about getting the keys to the kingdom so that you can plunder the treasury to make your friends richer. I think that John Kennedy is sainted far beyond what is appropriate by virtue of being cut down before he had a chance to really screw up, and Bobby Kennedy too has joined the ranks of the mythologized, his assassination being the first real inkling that baby boomers had that the dice were loaded.

But Ted Kennedy, who seemed to me to be the Lesser Brother, the Designated Family Shithead of the Kennedy clan, the also-ran, carried the family baggage -- the drinking and the womanizing -- with far less aplomb than his brothers. And yet after their deaths, and especially the horrific wake-up call that took place in Chappaquiddick, Ted Kennedy became arguably the greatest of the Kennedy brothers.

Kennedy was an unabashed liberal from a wealthy family; something you rarely see today in this age of "I've got mine and fuck you" coming from all income levels. His causes were those that make the lives of ordinary Americans better: Civil rights. Health care. Labor and work. Education. Today, politicians from wealthy families (see also: George W. Bush, Mitt Romney) represent the interests of their cronies and friends. Ted Kennedy, older than Bush and Romney, recognized that Americans born without his advantages should have a piece of the pie too. You never heard of corporations buying Teddy Kennedy's vote. Perhaps they knew they couldn't.

Much has been made of the long friendship between Kennedy and Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch. This is a friendship that could never happen in the Senate today without the Democratic Senator being a Blue Dog or a Joe Lieberman, willing to expose his belly to the Republican bully in the duo. With Kennedy's death, Orrin Hatch is now free to join the frothing, sweating, screeching wingnuts of his party in assuming that those on the other side of the aisle are not intelligent people of goodwill who disagree, but are unworthy of even being called Americans. That's why Kennedy's death is yet another nail in the coffin of the nation in which I grew up. The Senate used to be a place in which those in opposition would actually sit together and compromise, not the capitulation by Democrats that constitutes "bipartisanship" these days. Perhaps neither party was completely ecstatic with what resulted, but by and large Americans were reasonably content with their lot. Then in 1980, it all changed, and we got the Reagan legacy of pummelling the opposition into the ground and then defecating on it while it's spitting dirt out of its mouth and wiping its bloody nose. This is what politics have become in the post-Kennedy era which began long before the Lion of the Senate's death.

We've all known that this day was coming ever since we heard the words "malignant glioma" last year. Those of us born in the 1950's read Death Be Not Proud as kids and knew what "glioma" meant. But even so, and especially after Kennedy's rousing speech (which turned out to be his farewell to his party) at last year's Democratic convention, we still sort of thought he'd go on forever, because, well, in some ways he WAS the Senate.

The next generation of Kennedys has dabbled in politics a bit, but with the exception of Ted's son Patrick, none are currently on the national political stage, thereby proving that at least for the Kennedy family (Caroline Kennedy's ill-fated toe-dip into the waters of Hillary Clinton's Senate seat notwithstanding), the sense of dynastic entitlement runs nowhere near as strong as it does in the Bush family, where Poppy is looking at Jeb's son George P. and salivating over what he thinks are guaranteed Latino votes for one of his son's "little brown ones". The younger (now middle-aged themselves) Kennedys are still involved in public service, albeit in a quieter way.

Edward M. Kennedy lived a good and full life, even with all its flaws and and the tragic, fatal mistake of Chappaquiddick. It's about all any of us can ask. But when we look at the state of politics today as compared to his family's heyday, as we look at Barack Obama, his community organizing years long behind him as he hobnobs on the golf course with the president of a bank being investigated for running illegal tax shelters, the death of Senator Kennedy just whacks us over the head with the knowledge that the days of statesmanship are over for good.

More from Bustednuckles, who pre-emptively kneecaps the "What about Chappaquiddick?" crowd far more effectively than I do.

R.I.P. John Hughes

Gen-X is learning awfully early what it's like to see the icons of your youth pass....

The last great American news anchor has died

I feel sorry for young people today who don't remember what it was like when the network news that was on every night was about actual news and events, rather than nonstop coverage of Michael Jackson's hair catching on fire. There was a time when news was "stuff you should know", rather than the news-o-tainment that dominates the networks and cable news shows in the age of the 24 x 7 news cycle.

I remember when TWA 800 crashed thirteen years ago, and Brian Williams, not yet ready for prime time, was phumphering his way through the coverage. I remember watching the news coverage on September 11, 2001, when news reporters were as freaked out as the rest of us.

And even though I was only eight years old at the time, I remember Walter Cronkite covering the assassination of President John F. Kennedy:

Even though we had been through the Cuban Missile Crisis and Nikita Krushchev banging his shoe on the table at the U.N., quoted as saying "We will bury you", it's hard to imagine how shaken this nation was on that day in 1963. On that day, the nation turned to Walter Cronkite.

Cronkite went on so long, outliving by many years compatriots like Chet Huntley and Eric Sevareid and Howard K. Smith, it had begun to seem as if Walter Cronkite would always be with us -- a reminder of the golden age of television journalism, when news anchors weren't look-alike bots with poufy hair, but were seen as authoritative figures. And no one was more authoritative than Walter Cronkite. After this on-air editorial about the Vietnam war in 1968, President Lyndon Johnson was reported to have said, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America."

For all that today's Republicans are at the beck and call of lunatics like Rush Limbaugh and the increasingly unhinged Glenn Beck, it's hard to imagine a Republican President with any grip on consensus reality saying "If I've lost Limbaugh, I've lost Middle America" -- and have it sound anything but just as unhinged as the current purveyors of white male hysteria.

A look through the archives at YouTube shows Cronkite as a real-life broadcast version of Forrest Gump, present at every major event of the mid-to-late 20th century: The Kennedy assassination shown above. The assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. Three Mile Island. The 1979 total solar eclipse.

In the era of real television news anchored (if you'll pardon the expression) by Walter Cronkite, news was news and entertainment was entertainment, and the twain did not meet.

One of the hardest parts about growing old is watching pieces of your childhood fall by the wayside. Some of them, like Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, died young of their own youthful recklessness. Others have died too soon ravaged by diseases we used to associate with old people. Many of the people who were part of our lives when we were kids were part of our parents' generation, some of them long forgotten until their deaths, others still present in public life, their deaths a reminder that we, the next generation, are in the on-deck circle to the great beyond after they depart. That Walter Cronkite stayed with us so long always seemed reassuring, that as long as that piece of the world in which we grew up was still there, we were somehow still safe.

And now Walter Cronkite, the kindly voice of world events for so many decades, has left us. And like children forced to spend our first night without our security blankets, we feel the world to be a bit meaner, a bit scarier, and even less certain than before.

Insert your own snark here

They're dropping like flies....I'm sorry the man is dead, but I was tired of getting yelled at by a commercial pitchman all the time:

Tampa police say Billy Mays, the television pitchman known for his boisterous hawking of products such as Orange Glo and OxiClean, has died. He was 50.

Authorities say Mays was pronounced dead Sunday morning after being found by his wife at home. There were no signs of a break-in, and investigators do not suspect foul play. The coroner's office expects to have an autopsy done by Monday afternoon.

Mays' wife, Deborah Mays, says the family doesn't expect to make any public statements and asked for privacy.

If there's an afterlife, I hope the TVs have fast-forward through the commercials.

Ruth Brown brought the sass, but Koko Taylor brought the sex

The OTHER queen of the blues is gone:

Koko Taylor, the Grammy Award-winning "Queen of the Blues," died Wednesday afternoon at Northwestern Memorial Hospital of complications from surgery, according to Marc Lipkin of Alligator Records. She was 80.

Taylor, born Coral Walton on a sharecropper's farm outside Memphis, came to Chicago in 1952 and worked as a house cleaner. She began to sit in with blues bands and in the early 1960s signed a contract with Chess Records after being approached by Willie Dixon. In 1965 she recorded her signature song, "Wang Dang Doodle."

Everyone else is going to be posting her signature song, Wang Dang Doodle, so let's take a look at her at age 79 at the Kennedy Center Honors for Morgan Freeman last year:

Thanks for the gift of your voice, Koko.

UPDATE: Blue Girl has a remembrance.

Delara Darabi

The BBC's Jon Leyne in Tehran says that early on Friday morning Delara Darabi made a desperate phone call to her parents, saying she could see the hangman's noose.

"Mother they are going to execute me, please save me," she said, before a prison official took the phone away and said: "We are going to execute your daughter and there's nothing you can do about it."

Delara Darabi was hung on Friday in disregard of a stay of execution granted by the head of Iran's judiciary & international protests. She was 23 years old, had been convicted of a murder committed when she was 17 & for which she said she confessed to save her boyfriend. There was a strong possibility that this was the truth. Which shouldn't have mattered. Iran will not renounce the execution of juvenile offenders.

Why she mattered

Trailer, The Handmaid's Tale (1990):

For nearly twenty years, Natasha Richardson has for many women been the haunting face of the kind of world women face when we are unable to control our own destiny. Margaret Atwood's book and this film may be fiction, but at times since 1980, it has felt all too plausible.

Farewell to a great artist.

Eartha Kitt, 1927-2008

I don't remember Eartha Kitt before she became a parody of herself, but this must have been quite something in 1962: