I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: politics

  • Yikes! The Presidential Debates are Coming! RUDE – Call Security!


    The campaign slogan for one of the Presidential candidates in the debate that night was It’s experience that counts to which the other candidate responded  I’m not satisfied with the way things are… I think we can do a better job.

    “A good record is never to stand on, but sometimes it can be used to build on,” said the older man with skin so white he looked pasty to the television viewing audience.

    “I want to say these are the years when the tide came in for America – not when it rolled out,” said the cool confident handsome younger man.

    I was fourteen years old in September, 1960 when the first presidential debates aired on television and radio by the only three networks operating at the time: NBC, CBS and ABC. I’d like to say I have fond memories of the debate – or really any memories of the debate – but I must have filed them in a safe place where they are currently unavailable for recall so after watching Bon Qui Qui at the King Burger again today for the umpteenth time because that youtube video guarantees me a good laugh, I inexplicably clicked on the video of the initial Kennedy/Nixon presidential debate.

    Now why would I connect Bon Qui Qui to presidential debates…who knows…perhaps because her hilarious Rude – call Security lines from that routine jump-started my brain to the  images I’m already dreading of the first debate of the 2016 presidential campaign which is coming up in prime time Monday night. My approach/avoidance nerves are already jangling at the prospect of a forum that will be less than inspirational. Rude – call security.  Play nice, please.

    Richard Nixon was the Republican Vice President of the United States when he decided to run for President the first time in 1960.  He had served under President Dwight Eisenhower for seven and a half years and his campaign slogan was It’s Experience That Counts. In the course of the first debate that evening in September, 1960  he touted his contributions to the Eisenhower administration and powerfully argued their two terms in office had been successful ones for the nation.

    John Fitzgerald Kennedy was a Senator from Massachusetts when he entered the presidential race in 1960 and the televised debate was a huge opportunity to introduce himself to a country that didn’t really know much about him other than his religion was Catholic and he was very young. In his first eight minutes of television time, he defined himself as the candidate of change with a skilled oratorical style reminiscent of a Baptist revival preacher about to give an altar call.

    Following Senator Kennedy’s passionate I’m not satisfied rhetoric in his opening remarks, Nixon agreed that both candidates wanted to see the country moving forward but their disagreement was in the means to make that happen. One of the biggest disagreements was the role of the federal government in dealing with issues such as  farming supplements, health care for an aging population, balanced budgets,  income taxes, labor unions and a host of other problems. Nixon implied the Democrats looked to the federal government for too many answers. “I don’t believe in big government, but I do believe in effective government action,” Senator Kennedy argued.

    The first debate was supposedly on domestic issues, but both candidates linked domestic problems to foreign affairs.  Senator Kennedy’s boogeymen were Soviet Premier Khrushchev and the Chinese Communists, and his warning If the United States fail, then the whole cause of freedom fails was a strong statement advocating global leadership for America.

    Unfortunately for Vice President Nixon, the television cameras were not kind to him. While the radio listeners subsequently declared Nixon to be the winner of the first debate, television viewers gave the nod to Kennedy.  One historian said that Nixon had hurt his knee getting out of a taxi before going  into the debate and was in a great deal of pain throughout the debate which probably didn’t help his onstage look.

    His pale skin was due to refusing any makeup, and he didn’t win points when he kept glancing at a clock on a wall in the room which made it appear that his eyes were shifty and he was unfocused on the topics. All in all, Richard Nixon had poor optics and poorer preparation for television.

    It wasn’t Nixon’s eyes or Kennedy’s delivery that struck me most about these debates of fifty-six years ago, however.  No, what gobsmacked me was how little the campaign themes have differed through the years but how much the style of the debates has taken a flying leap out of control to the dark side.  Experience versus change. That is still the language of today’s candidates, although the party roles are reversed from the 1960 campaign.

    I have watched presidential debates since 1976 with the same passion and critiques I usually reserve for the Grand Slam tennis tournaments. I don’t miss them, and ordinarily I would be ecstatic at the opportunity to watch the first female presidential candidate participate in the debate.  Yet, the debate style has gotten so off the grid from political issues to personal attacks I fear the worst. Most def…which leads me to a second Bon Qui Qui quote from her King Burger routine as a counter consultant for a major fast food chain: Have it your way, but don’t go crazy.

    Please, for all of our sake Monday night. Have it your way, but don’t go crazy… or we might have to say Rude – call Security and switch to Monday Night Football.

     

  • Okay – So Here’s The Deal


    OMG, the US Open ended Sunday after two weeks of intensive and extensive TV coverage that demanded my attention from sun- up to sundown every day. Beyond the obvious “live” matches that were fantastic, I had to get the late-night  commentary reviewing the day’s completed matches that occasionally went into the wee hours of the next morning and of course had to get the previews of the day’s matches every morning starting in the wee hours on the Tennis Channel. Honestly, Pretty and I were exhausted after the men’s final Sunday afternoon, but the tennis Grand Slams are my one weakness.

    Okay. So here’s the deal. I am somewhat of a morning person – not necessarily early morning –  but the dogs and I usually start our routine around 7:30. Pretty typically prefers the 9 o’clock range; consequently Charly and Spike and I are left to our own ramblings for the first hour and a half every day. As long as tennis commentary is on during that time, all goes well.

    Beep, Beep, Beep…danger lurks when there are no tennis matches for retired tennis pros to discuss on an early morning sports talk show because that means I will be surfing for…I’m not sure what for…just channel surfing.

    When I began the search this morning, the first image to pop up was a semi-attractive woman leaning on a small stand that held an open Bible which she was apparently using as a reference manual for her message to depressed people to get up and get going with their lives. No more lying around in bed until 9 o’clock. Absolutely not. Get out of bed and make something of yourselves. Depressed people of the world, unite – it was like a Create Space on steroids for adults.

    My goodness, I said to Charly who was lying on the floor next to my chair. Maybe Pretty needs to get up right this minute and we need to busy ourselves doing something. But before I could pursue going upstairs to wake her, the woman on the TV began promoting her new book that could be mine if I made a donation to keep her show on the air so I lost interest and switched the channel. No thanks, I have my own books to sell. Plus, my doctor prescribed wellbutrin for depression and that means I rise and shine every day full of piss and vinegar – well, piss certainly.

    Ding, Ding, Ding – step away from the TV, Charly said to me.  Oh, if only I’d listened to her. Instead,  I decided to watch a news show called Morning Joe because the ostensible co-host Mika the Meek was hosting in Morning Joe’s absence. My apologies to the Morning Joe lovers in cyberspace, but I find him to be rather rude. I may even agree with some of the comments he makes, but I do wonder why Mika Brzezinski stays with him sometimes. Perhaps it has something to do with the $2 million she receives every year whether she says a word or not. Which is mostly not word one when Morning Joe is around; Mika turns to mush when he’s at the table. I have to fight the urge to tweet: Mika, be no longer Meek. Speak up, your opinions are just as valuable as Joe’s.

    But I don’t know how to tweet on my cell phone so she’ll never know how much I’m longing for the day when she will speak  up and out loudly above the men who regularly sit at the MSNBC desk with her. This is a woman who writes about equality for women and then lets her cohorts ignore her.  Sweet Lady Gaga.

    Surprise, surprise. This morning’s topic was the 2016 presidential election and the ongoing public concern with the health of the two leading candidates – a concern that became a firestorm of news items after Secretary Clinton had to leave a 9-11 ceremony in New York this past weekend due to a highly classified secret that she had pneumonia. She needed three days of bed rest before rejoining the fray that is her life right now. I hope no one tells the semi-attractive Bible lady that HRC was in bed – the Bible lady might just vote for Trump who is not in bed and is in a dead heat with Hillary according to the most recent polls.

    Noted famous TV personality Dr. Oz interviewed Donald Trump about his general health on his wildly popular TV show and Mr. Trump produced a two-page note signed by his mother releasing him to run for President. Just kidding – the note was signed by a certified doctor who proclaimed him fit to serve…for something.

    Sigh. Then the Morning Joe conversation went downhill from there when visiting opinionated person Donny Deutsch interjected the interesting fact that 40 – 60% of men Donald Trump’s  70 years of age have erectile dysfunction.  Neither Mika nor I wanted to think about that fact. Charly barked at the TV and ran upstairs to get back in bed with Pretty. Spike jumped down from the living room sofa and walked back to get into his crate in the laundry room. Alas, only Mika and I wandered in the wilderness of erectile dysfunction together until the clock struck 9 and thankfully, Morning Joe was over.

    Tomorrow I plan to sleep until 9 o’clock. How many days until the Australian Open in 2017…hm…too many. Maybe I can get the Singapore tournament on the Tennis Channel – it’s almost like a Grand Slam.

     

     

     

  • I’m Thinking of a 4-Letter Word that Rhymes with Fall…


    Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
    With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
    Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
    A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
    Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
    Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
    Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
    The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
    “Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
    With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
    Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
    The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
    Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
    I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

    This poem New Colossus was written by Emma Lazarus for a fundraiser to complete the construction of the  Statue of Liberty on Bedloe Island in New York Harbor in 1886. The people of France gave the copper sculpture to Americans to celebrate the emancipation of slaves and the survival of the democracy in the United States following the Civil War that ended in 1865. It had been shipped in 350 pieces, however, and was no small task to assemble – not to mention the additional $120,000 of expenses that would be necessary for the project.

    Emma Lazarus initially declined to participate in the Libertas construction fundraising efforts because she was very much involved in the movement to relocate Jews fleeing anti-Semitic persecution in eastern Europe and relocating them in the United States. Luckily, she reconsidered and found a way to express her own activist feelings in a poem with powerful words that have  become almost as famous as the iconic statue itself in welcoming the brave people who cross oceans and continents to find a home in the land of the free. The last lines of New Colossus are on a plaque in the museum at the base of the monument.

    Last night in Phoenix, Arizona – a city that is 2,400 miles from New York Harbor –  a brazen giant of the very small screen rewrote New Colossus as he talked once more about building a Great Wall along the US/Mexican border to keep the huddled masses yearning to breathe free south of the border down Mexico way where they belong.  Don’t send your tired…and certainly not your poor…northward. We don’t want them. As a matter of fact, we are deporting 12 million Latinos who live in this country through a hole in the Great Wall back to you. See how you like them apples,  my new BFF President Nieto.

    And don’t think we want any wretched refuse from your teeming shores in eastern Europe or the Mid East, either.  A hundred thirty years ago in 1886 the problem  we were worried about bringing over to America was the Jewish refugees – now it’s the Muslims. Sometimes it’s hard to keep straight exactly who we want and who we don’t want. But I’m pretty sure now it’s Muslims and Mexicans in the don’t want category. Hm…something about the M words…gosh, next it might be the Morrises that we need to deport. They’ve always been a suspect family group.

    Innnnyhowww, as my friend Libby Levinson used to say to me, I’m thinking of a four-letter word that rhymes with Fall and it turns out to be Wall, a wall that has become a talking point in the 2016 presidential campaign in these United States by he who shall remain nameless. A wall meant to separate, to divide, to exclude – a wall that has captured the imagination of millions of potential voters in November.

    When T and I drove to Sioux Falls, South Dakota in March to watch our Lady Gamecocks play basketball, we took a small detour through downtown Sioux Falls on a sleepy Sunday morning after an early spring snowfall. We were looking for the park where the actual Sioux Falls were located. I never will forget the three people, two men and one woman, who were standing on a corner of the main street in town holding a homemade sign which read: Build The Wall.

    If people in the Midwest were worried about the border between my home state of Texas and neighboring Mexico, the light from the lamp of the lady in the harbor in New York City was surely gradually dimming and in danger of going out. But of course the Mother of Exiles will overcome the doubters and naysayers and continue to glow her world-wide welcome to those who need her and the Great Wall will remain where it belongs – in China.

    At least, that’s what I’m counting on.

     

     

     

  • A Hard Candy Christmas


    I’ll be just fine and dandy,

    Lord it’s like a hard candy Christmas.

    I’m barely getting through tomorrow,

    but still I won’t let sorrow bring me way down.

    ——  Carol Hall lyrics from the musical

    The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas

    Gosh, the hard candy Christmas has gone viral.   I thought we could keep it local with just a few hits along the holiday trail stories but nope, Newtown, Connecticut changed the name of that tune.   We Americans have a tragedy of unspeakable grief that will quickly reverberate in cyberspace around the world to a populace who will ask themselves, What is wrong with those people in America?

    I think it’s a fair question and one that we must ask ourselves.   What is wrong with us?   How do we enable and encourage this rage and senseless violence against our own?   Why do we have a Columbine in our not-too-distant history and how will these same historians record the massacres in Aurora, Colorado and at Virginia Tech?  What can possibly be written about the Sandy Hook Elementary School horror of losing twelve little girls and eight little boys and six adults who were their educators in a few minutes on a regular Friday morning at their public school.  Much will be written through the coming years, but what we do in response to these shocking events will define our culture and our country.

    To the politicians in Washington I say, You need to become statesmen and stateswomen.  You need to set aside your vitriolic verbal attacks on each other.  You are the adults in our family, and we have placed our trust in you by electing you to represent us and when what we see on our Ipads and Iphones and other high-tech gadgets as well as on our regular old television programs is bitterness and bickering and bashing each other verbally, you’re setting a bad example for your children.  You make them believe that rage is not only acceptable but necessary.   Take a deep breath.  Step back for a moment.  Look at yourselves and see what images you project for your people.   Could you please just play nice.

    To the parents who have brought children into our world and have great expectations for their futures and who now are bipolar between anger and anguish, I say I’m so sorry.    No one deserves this.   No one is being punished for removing God from Sandy Hook Elementary School.  God isn’t in this equation or else we would have to blame Him for allowing the assailant to have weapons, wouldn’t we?  Not so fast, my friend, or as my daddy and Ann Richards used to say, That old dog won’t hunt.  But what can we do?  Should we as parents insist on police protection for our children in all public schools regardless of age?   Would police protectors be able to thwart the enraged and armed assailants?  These are the questions we ask ourselves.

    Which brings me to the central dilemma of the complex  challenge of early identification and intervention for our Angry Ones and that is, of course, beyond Thunder Dome to me.  Our children are now raised in a culture of violence.  They play games with it, they sing songs about it, their heroes are violent athletes, their movie stars make action movies with so much “action” their hearing is impaired when they leave a theater, their country sends soldiers to places they have to learn to pronounce and spell like Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria…Viet Nam…Korea..and these soldiers kill other people in the name of peacekeeping.   Our children are surrounded by violence.   They may go to sleep with the sound of gunfire in their neighborhood and on their street corners.  They may wake the next morning to find a friend, cousin, uncle, father or brother has died during a battle over what?   Drugs?   Gangs?  Money?   Territory?  Aha.  There we have it.  There is no escaping the violence so why on earth would we be surprised that these children who are accustomed to violence, who have access to weapons, would shoot us when we make them mad or when we are, well, just being ourselves and they don’t like us that way?

    This is the season of hope, joy and celebration for some; the Prince of Peace and Santa Claus are the bearers of Good News and Great Gifts for many of us. But it is also a season of sadness for those who have lost family during 2012 and who will be reminded that their holiday season is different this year. The season won’t be the same – ever.  Some people will struggle to find the money to give their children what they want under the tree.   Friction and tension will make family gatherings more problematic than peaceful.  In our sense of hurry and anxiety over putting food on the table we might miss the opportunity to say: I love you today, I love you every day and you will always be special to me.

    I remember a hard candy Christmas with the disappointment of not getting what I wanted from Santa Claus but rather getting a sack of penny candy of bright different colors that tasted alternately sweet and sour but couldn’t be chewed at first because it was so hard.  Gradually though, if you waited long enough, you could bite the smaller piece in two and swallow them both.  Success.  Astonishingly delicious.

    I expected a hard candy Christmas personally this year for a number of reasons, but I wasn’t prepared for a national one.  Regardless, here it is and my hope is that America will never be the same – ever.  That our national consciousness is raised to include in our vocabulary the words kindness and reconciliation and forgiveness and a genuine passion for a better world.   We’ve waited long enough.  We have tasted both the sweet and the sour and, as Dolly Parton sings through the lyrics of Carol Hall, we won’t let our sorrows bring us down.

  • Benghazi – Revisiting the Obama Presidency


    Our lecture for today, O cyberspace class, is the epistemology of the second chance. (Sometimes I just throw in a big word to see if anybody’s paying attention.)  Frankly, I don’t remember  much about epistemology from my scholarly life except that I heard it used in my undergraduate philosophy classes and my graduate studies in theology.

    To refresh my memory, I looked up the definition and found the word epistemology involves knowledge and the justification of knowledge; but then the dictionary wandered off into a question of what is knowledge and how can it be justified and I immediately remembered why I dropped out of seminary. Way too much digression and iffiness and grey areas for a 23-year-old CPA who dealt in absolute numbers before answering a “call” to the ministry that was surely a wrong number.

    I gave up absolutes many years ago, however, about the same time the numbers became images on a computer screen and lacked any connection to reality. Who knew if 2 + 2 equaled 4 any more and who cared?

    So I’ve grown accustomed to vague responses and half-truths and tried to blend in with a landscape camouflaged by degrees of knowledge  that are justified with competing strident voices blasting away at each other from polarized positions of territorial absolutes. Wow. Now there’s a mouthful to chew on.

    Yep, nothing like trying to convince people you own a piece of knowledge when they don’t agree with you. You just can’t justify it to them no matter how hard you try and how loud you get. Because, see, they own a piece of knowledge, too, and it happens to be totally different from yours. And there’s the rub.

    A good example is the current turmoil over an Anti-Muslim film that was Made in the USA. The American President has denounced it, the American Secretary of State has apologized for the fact that it was filmed in California where they film every possible film you could ever think up without anybody checking to see if it’s inflammatory because that would require an Army of Film Checkers, but the justification of the knowledge of the situation is irrelevant to a Muslim world that owns a different enlightenment which doesn’t include the concept of second chances.

    That’s how it all goes downhill and the histrionics aren’t far behind.  I’m wondering how many Muslims are golfers?  If they were golfers, they would know about Mulligans.   Mulligans are second chances.

    If you hit a shot with your driver off the tee on the first hole and the little white golf ball vanishes mysteriously in deep woods closer to the fairway for the third hole than they are to the first hole and you know you’ll never be able to find it, you can say Mulligan and have a second chance to locate your own fairway again.

    You may hit a beautiful shot for your Mulligan or you may not, but the important thing is you have a new opportunity. The American government asked for a Mulligan from a partner who doesn’t play the game the same way it does. The game is over before it even starts.

    In our personal lives second chances are sometimes painfully obvious and at other times so subtle we may miss them.   Lesson Number One: Be open and available and alert and don’t think you won’t ever need one.  You will.

    Lesson Number Two:  When you get a second chance, try not to think of it as an opportunity to repeat mistakes.  Mistakes are hard to take back so don’t blow the Mulligan.

    Lesson Number Three:  Be sure to tell your friends about your second chance. It may give them hope and inspire them to offer one or accept one. Honestly, can there be too many second chances going around?

    Lesson Number Four:  Your second chance may be your last chance.   Really?   Really.

    Lesson Number Five: Never be afraid to take a second chance when you have one. As Franklin Roosevelt famously said when the Hounds of the Baskervilles were closing in around him, We have nothing to fear but fear itself.

    And so, O cyberspace class, the lecture concludes with a little bit of knowledge mixed with a bunch of justification that adds up to the epistemology of the second chance as seen from the eyes of a 66-year-old who has had her own share of second chances and has, at various times in her life, blown them, needed a third or fourth, and had some of them bring incredible joy and happiness.

    Be generous to those you love and even to those whose knowledge is different from yours. Ouch. Is that really necessary?  Absolutely.