Dementia’s the Rage – We love movies. My readers may recall when Afghanistan was liberated from the Taliban in the aftermath of September 11, white sheets were immediately tacked up on walls in Kabul storefronts – the no-fun Taliban had banned movies – and the movie ‘theaters’ were packed soon after. [Guns, memorably, were checked and lined up along walls in ‘coat rooms.’] Watching movies is one of the most human of pleasures.
Mr. Gripes, like the vast majority of his readers, has seen all kinds of movies. I recall gritty Westerns, with the good guys and bad guys; film noir, in black and white grandeur, highlighted by clever, fedora-clad private eyes and vicious, malevolent criminals; or, how about the magnificent mobster films, like Scorcese’s ‘Casino’, and Coppola’s miraculous ‘Godfather I’ and ‘II’ – perfection both.
Of course, there have been clunkers and disasters: Mr. Gripes recalls in his incipient college years Swedish films were the flavor de jour. Having recently read – albeit not comprehending one sentence – philosophers Kierkegaard and Spinoza, et al, a bunch of us full-of-ourselves, know-it-all collegians one day decided to go down to Times Square [yep – Times Square] and see a ‘deep’ Ingmar Bergman film. He was in vogue at the time. Mr. Bergman must have been a deeply depressed figure, because his movies invariably took place in some unheated log cabin, situated in a dismally cold, remote corner of northern Europe, with about four feet of snow on the ground, a blizzard howling outside. The film’s black and white hues only enhanced the general bleak nature of the story.
And, talk, talk, talk was all the characters did. No action whatsoever, just interminable, indecipherable, lugubrious talk. Nothing could have been less appealing to maxed-out-on-testosterone nineteen-year-olds.
When we left the theatre after a couple of hours of agony, my friend Bob S. turned to me, and said, ‘What the f____ was that?’ My sentiments exactly: Mr. Gripes hasn’t seen one frame of a Bergman movie since.
I bring up that sad saga now, because there’s been a number of uni-themed movies coming out lately that leave Mr. Gripes thoroughly perplexed – we’ll call it the school of ‘dementia’ cinema: I have just one question: Why?
Why on earth would the great moguls, movers and creative geniuses in Hollywood make movies about Alzheimer’s? It makes no sense.
I’m not going to bore my readers with a recitation of the particulars of Alzheimer’s. Someone in your family has probably dealt with the disease already, and you may have been involved in the direct or indirect care of that family member. I certainly have: my father died of early onset of Alzheimer’s [probably due to brain damage initiated by an amateur boxing career of 165 fights, with no head gear, all before the age of 23] and my mother, still here at 103, has been in the final stages of the disease for 15 years. There’s nothing at all enlightening about observing progressive, inevitable brain deterioration.
And, there’s nothing remotely cinematic, dramatic, and gripping – whatever adjective you choose – about Alzheimer’s. In reality, the disease meanders along slowly, and, one by one, the brain functions that make us human disappear. For the immediate family, especially for the primary caregiver, as the disease progresses, it becomes increasingly difficult to care for the afflicted person. [My father became more and more cantankerous, and he became almost impossible for my mother to handle.]
Before I go further, I confess I have not seen ‘Still Alice’, a recent movie about a middle-aged woman suddenly afflicted with Alzheimer’s; Julianne Moore won an Oscar for her portrayal. I did see one such film a while back, though: ‘Iris,’ about the poet Iris Murdoch and her struggles with the Alzheimer’s disease.
I will not see ‘Still Alice’ for one fundamental reason: whatever is put up there on the screen as the ‘story’ is not the truth. It can’t be. For one thing, these movies, as far as I can tell, always have a perfect supporting cast for the ‘patient’: perfect kids, perfect job [Ms. Moore, in fact, has a cushy job as tenured professor at Columbia University], and a wonderful, loving, sacrificial, and, let’s be honest, not-to-be-believed spouse. And, when does Alice come to grips with Alzheimer’s for the first time? Walking on the esplanade of the Columbia campus, one of the great repositories of Western knowledge, where – get it? -- human experience, memory and thought are treasured assets, precisely the attributes that the disease will slowly wrest from Alice. Oh, the irony -- about as subtle as a sledgehammer, eh? The gilded Hollywood gloss of this film to heighten the cinematic experience of the viewer is inherently false and dishonest. It’s a lie.
Movies generally are thematically built around redemption, hope, and, end, in a lot of cases, happily. Alzheimer’s disease is all about the erosion and eradication of the human spirit. Hollywood should stick with what it knows - Alzheimer’s is too sad and too tragic to be trifled with.
The Beatles, Without Genuflection – A couple of months ago, sitting placidly in Madison Square Garden, between games of a college-basketball doubleheader, listening idly to music blasting throughout the arena, not paying particular attention to any of it, I suddenly sat straight up in my seat, transfixed. I was hearing, at a decibel level exquisitely cacophonous and raucous, ‘I Saw Her Standing There,’ by the Beatles.
It was joyous…that gorgeous rock ‘n roll beat relentlessly washing over the whole arena. ‘…Standing There’ is, to Mr. Gripes, a perfect rock and roll song: no pretensions other than pure, pulsating, urgent, noisy, chaotic, juke-joint music. Hearing that song and that kind of music – this sounds ridiculous, I know – soothes the inevitably distressed soul of Mr. Gripes.
The song, written in 1963 at the beginning of the Beatles’ incredible run, was on the ‘B’ side of their biggest hit, ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand,’ another superb rock ‘n roll song. Both were inspired, according to Paul McCartney, by the real king of rock and roll, Buddy Holly. In fact, Mr. McCartney has said the first fifteen songs he and John Lennon wrote were all attempts to emulate Mr. Holly. The Beatles, when they had the mind to do it, could write peerless, undiluted rock.
Alas, Mr. Gripes – and he understands his opinion may be his alone – thinks the Beatles soon lost their way, and were ultimately a huge disappointment. They could have created a library of some of the best rock and roll ever; their instincts and talents were that superlative. It didn’t happen.
Sure, just glancing at the Beatles 1963-65 ‘book’ of music, I’m struck at the richness and power of most of the songs: ‘All My Loving’; ‘Any Time At All;’ ‘Ask Me Why’; ‘Back in the USSR’; ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’; ‘Eight Days A Week’; ‘I Call Your Name’, or ‘I’m Happy Just to Dance With You’. And there’s a lot more than these.
But, after the early years, the Beatles either got ‘cute’ or simply lost interest in rock and roll. One theory of mine is that John Lennon, certainly a complicated man to start with, got increasingly uncomfortable with the group process, and became estranged; his surely caustic displeasure led to the eventual evisceration of the group’s cohesion.
Drugs, especially psychedelics, certainly could have played a part in the dissolution of the Beatles’ collective genius, too. As well, fame and renown ‘killed’ the Beatles: everywhere they went people were telling them how cosmically ‘significant’ the group’s music had become; consequently, the Beatles may have begun to try too strenuously to create ‘important’ music. And, that’s a killer as far as creativity is concerned.
Just take a look at the Beatles songs composed after 1966-67: most of it, to this rock and roll purist, is rubbish, and, in fact, will not even be heard 25 years from now. Songs like: ‘Rocky Raccoon’; ‘Why Don’t We Do It in the Streets’; ‘Strawberry Fields’; ‘Revolution’ [awful: compare it to the Rolling Stones’ rebel yell, ‘Street Fighting Man’]; ‘Octopus’s Garden’; ‘Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds’; ‘Magical Mystery Tour’, and, yep, even ‘Norwegian Wood’. Plenty of others, too: all throwaway tunes.
From the creators of ‘I Feel Fine’, we get, five years later, ‘I Am the Walrus.’ Dear readers, Mr. Gripes rests his case.
Iran: Are You Nuts, Senators? – At the conclusion of last month’s ‘Mr. Gripes’ column, I vowed, ‘No, no more Iran. I’ve beaten that tired horse half to death.’ A promise I can’t keep, I’m afraid.
You see, readers, Iran, Israel, nuclear negotiations, Obama, centrifuges, Netanyahu, the American Congress, 2016 Presidential politics, they’re all intertwined, with developments shifting all the time. Mr. Gripes has following foreign affairs closely since he was 15 years old, and the Iran-America-[Israel] nuclear talks going on currently are particularly convoluted and fascinating.
Take this for instance: I open up the Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks ago, and read that Israel has utilized agents to spy on the Iran-US negotiations in Zurich, amassing intelligence data successfully, and subsequently sharing that information with Republicans in the United States Senate. The Republicans then used the purloined information to formulate their opposition to the Obama Administration’s negotiations with the Iranians over a suspension of their nuclear program.
No longer am I generally astonished at anything I see in the morning papers, but when I read this, I almost fell off the living room sofa, freaking out a dozing cat. What?!? Are they nuts!?! Are Republicans so dead-set against Obama – ‘hate’ is not too strong a word -- and anything he tries to accomplish that they’d accept classified – and, yes, it’s classified, alright – intelligence from a foreign power, without permission from the executive branch, and use that information to sabotage negotiations concurrently going on between this country and a foreign enemy? From here, it sure as hell looks that way.
Accountability for one’s actions in this country no longer is a guiding tenet –that ceased to exist a long time ago. But, if in fact our elected senators and representatives were held to the intent and letter of our sedition statutes, those Republican Senators who saw those intelligence reports would be branded ‘traitors.’ With information they have no right to possess, they’re interfering with the President of the United States from carrying out his international duties. As I sit here writing this piece, I’m still cannot get over the temerity of those senators.
Someone else about this issue has piqued my curiosity: why does a Senator from, say, Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma care so fervently about the State of Israel? [Or about any other country, for that matter.] Don’t get me wrong: of course Israel has a right to exist, but you can’t tell me that an elected representative from the middle of America can be so exorcised over another country. Politicians can talk, talk, talk publicly about ‘standing firm,’ but in the real world, [see: ‘House of Cards’, of which Bill Clinton said, ‘99% of that show is true.’] they could care less. They’re all about political edge, risk/award, advantage, and brass-knuckled combat; they’re too calculating, too ‘realpolitik,’ too cynical to quibble over ‘principles.’
So , let’s forget the hallowed ‘principles’ angle: there’s a more important element in all of this: Cold Cash. …Money…. Political Donors… Re-election. That’s the nub of it. My guess is that a ton of money from somewhere is pouring into the coffers of Republican Senators who support Netanyahu and are dead-set against this treaty. And, please, I’m not talking about a ‘Jewish conspiracy.’ All I’m saying is a lot of money must be gushing in the form of political contributions from some advocacy lobbying groups. I’d start looking into the contributions of that casino owner, Sheldon Adelson, in Las Vegas, and go from there. Big money will turn the heads of all politicians. We all know that.
Republicans, however, may have miscalculated, again, and shot themselves in their collective rear ends, again: a recent poll indicates that 59% of Americans favor negotiations with Iran. It’s evident that most Americans, despite all the grandstanding and the bizarre, imbecilic behavior emanating from the United States Congress, comprehend that the consequences of failed negotiations will be, down the line, another American war in the Middle East. And, Americans most assuredly don’t want their sons and daughters dying in that godforsaken part of the world ever again.
Jim Israel
Mr. Gripes
April 6, 2015
Measles and the Idiots – To Mr. Gripes, it seems the Rationalists have taken it on the chin for years. Rationalism, of which Mr. Gripes is a devoted advocate, respects scientific evidence – anything else is a lie.
Yet, the fabulists seem to always dominate the public debate. The media, of course, plays a part: it’s always looking for conflict, not necessarily truth. The press pushes for ‘balanced’ debate, and consequently incredibly imbecilic theory is often given far more attention than warranted.
Creationism versus Darwinism is a perfect paradigm of this conflict. To a Creationist, a crucial tenet of the dogma is that man existed and walked on earth at the same time the dinosaurs roamed the earth. Human beings, no doubt already clad in Brooks Brothers suits, were fully formed when they arrived on Earth. The Darwinists, of course, adhere to the theory that all forms of life evolved from simple to complex: mankind came upon the earth millions of years after the dinosaurs. Or, put another way, mankind came to exist only after billions of mutated life forms pushed life to its present complexity. That’s, essentially, evolution.
The Creationists are simply incorrect. Nothing, of course, will convince them otherwise – there’s even a Creationism theme park for children in Ohio – but they’re dead wrong. And, yet, Creationism, in essence a fairy tale, is taught right alongside Evolution in some states, mandated so by state educational entities. Why is this country so enraptured by so many irrational ideas, and whose believers can never be swayed? Can you imagine, say, the Netherlands advocating, with state backing, a fraudulent theory like Creationism in biology classes for their children? Never, ever would happen.
But, all is not lost: for once, and probably for only a brief period, science has triumphed – emphatically – over bogus theory. For the first time in 25 years, there’s been a measles outbreak across the country. Concurrently, and not coincidentally, the percentage of children being vaccinated for diseases like measles and mumps is at its lowest point in decades.
It turns out that some individuals – Deidre Imus, Don’s wife, is probably the most well known – have pushed, quite vociferously, the theory that autism, a brain disorder that appears in childhood, has been caused by vaccination. Parents, naturally, decided that keeping their child out of school for two weeks with measles is a far more benign risk than autism, and the vaccinations were ignored.
Ms. Imus’ proof? A study by some clinician which said mercurial residue that shows up in the vaccinating fluid causes autism. It turns out the study was thoroughly discredited, and in fact, the doctor running the study eventually lost his medical license, a very harsh sentence indeed. But, evidence be damned, Ms. Imus, utilizing loudly the far-flung platform of her husband’s radio show and, incidentally, selling a lot of books, managed to scare the daylights out of parents, and the myth has held. Legislatures, in fact, started passing laws that did not mandate the vaccinations of children in school, and even permitted unvaccinated children to attend school, an incredibly short-sighted and irresponsible decision.
It takes about 85% vaccination ‘coverage’ of a school population to prevent a measles outbreak. When the percentage of vaccinated children failed to reach 85% in some places, the current outbreak happened.
The ignoramuses were exposed. It’s simple: when a given population is inoculated, measles is essentially non-existent. When that given population is exposed to the virus without inoculation, outbreaks happen. Imus and her true believers are wrong: so simple and so obvious. For once, the Rationalists won.
Israel-Iran-America – Every red corpuscle in Mr. Gripes’ body cries out: ‘Don’t write about Israel or the Middle East.’ Each time I have done that, I received some very vicious replies, the mildest of which spoke of my being a ‘traitor’ to the state of Israel. [To the ‘gentleman’ who accuses me of being a traitor to Israel, the last time I looked I am an American citizen, solely, and a proud one at that, and my loyalties or disloyalties are toward this country alone; any charges of sedition against a country not my own are a bit misplaced, overheated and ignorant.] I make it a policy, for the most part, of not responding to mindless vituperation, vowing at one point never to write about Israel, and, by extension, the Middle East again.
But, assuming the posture of the intrepid truth-seeker that Mr. Gripes pretends to be in his column, I cannot ignore the ongoing Iran-United States [and other powers including Russia, by the way] negotiations regarding Iranian nuclear arms capability, and an attempt by the major powers now to thwart that push.
First, though, I have to comment on Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the American Congress yesterday: what kind of stunt was that? At this critical juncture in the ongoing Iran-American negotiations to suspend, hopefully for a long time, Iranian nuclear-arms attainment, a foreign leader ignores an American President and makes a rip-roaring anti-negotiations speech in front of the clapping seals we call our elected representatives. It’s totally outrageous. The Congress should be ashamed of themselves. President Obama responds to the speech by simply noting that the negotiations haven’t been concluded yet, and everyone should wait to take a look at the completed deal. A perfectly reasonable request absent any hysterics, that only highlights the utter lack of class from Bibi Netanyahu.
As far as the status of the ongoing negotiations, the issue is very complicated, of course, so let’s just go back three or four years: at that time, Iran obtaining nuclear status was the most pressing issue of the day: columns in newspapers spoke of the ‘existential’ threat of Iran possessing nuclear capability. If my readers can recall that time, it was very scary.
Then, quickly, the immediate threat dissipated. Mr. Gripes seems to recall that U.S. intelligence determined that Iran was a few years, at least, away from that capability. Then, Iran and the United States signed on in 2013 to an interim agreement suspending Iranian nuclear progress while talks proceeded on a permanent deal. And, the world exhaled. [Mr. Netanyahu, incidentally, opposed this earlier, successful deal as well.]
Alas, if the present negotiations fail, it’s back to being an existential threat once again, and the future could be very, very scary.
There is a glimmer of hope, though: the deal being worked up right now, with an end-of-March deadline, would push back Iranian nuclear-capability attainment at least 10 years in exchange for Iranian economic sanctions being lifted and Iran joining the world financial markets once again. That lifting of sanctions is the carrot, obviously.
Israel is opposed to any negotiations at this point, or at the minimum, Iran must dismantle its nuclear program in total. Netanyahu says the Iranians are totally untrustworthy, so international safeguards and vigilance are useless. Israel knows damn well that Iran will never agree to a total cessation of its nuclear program. Israel knows that under their non-negotiable demand, there will never be a deal. It’s off the table.
And that’s exactly Netanyahu’s intention: he wants the negotiations to collapse because that would mean there’s only one option for America: the nuclear facilities in Iran will be taken out, bombed. And, guess who will end up doing that dirty work? America. If Israel bombs Iran, the Middle East, and probably the world, will be thrown into utter chaos: there’ll be surely a total Middle East oil embargo, among other actions, and financial markets across the world will plummet. A world depression is not out of the question. America will have to take the lead in taking out Iran. The U.S. is going to be Israel’s stalking horse.
War should always be absolutely the last option, so Mr. Gripes takes a more nuanced position: if in fact negotiations are successful and we extract from Iran a suspension of their nuclear program for at least 10 years, let’s take the deal. This country and Israel will of course have in place very stringent oversight standards regarding Iranian compliance, and if violations are discovered, we can always bomb later. Iran, a country with much stronger people-to-people ties to America than any other Middle East country [Israel, excepted], can hopefully be brought back into the world’s good graces. It’s worth 10 years to see if that’s possible.
Netanyahu, and Israel, don’t want to take that chance. I say, let’s go for it.
Wilt: His Dominance Shines – A decade ago – it’s been 10 years since ‘Mr. Gripes’ was launched as a human-interest column on an employer’s website, desperate for copy one weekend– I wrote of the unsurpassed, extraordinary career of Wilt Chamberlain, professional basketball player.
I bring his Eminence up again, after reading last week of the death of Norm Drucker, a referee who worked NBA games as a contemporary of Mr. Chamberlain. In his obituary, it’s mentioned Mr. Drucker threw Wilt out of a game after three successive technical fouls, the last of which involved Wilt yelling at the ref that he must have money on the game. Keep in mind that technical fouls are not particularly rare events, occurring once or twice a game, and are not particularly noteworthy.
Yet, that expulsion is still remembered 53 years after the fact, as it illuminated one incredible fact about Wilt Chamberlain: his indefatigability. Mr. Chamberlain, back then, never took a rest on the bench – never.
Consider this: An NBA season in those days consisted of 80 games, 48 minutes a game. The particular season I’m talking about, 1961-62, was Wilt’s most productive, and arguably the most brilliant season ever: he averaged 50.7 [!] points a game, and collected 25 rebounds a game as well. Absolutely astonishing, and probably the greatest season ever in professional sports.
But the scoring achievement is not my focus here.
Wilt Chamberlain, in those 80 games that season, played every minute of every game, except for one blemish: when Norm Drucker threw Wilt out of the game, there were 8 minutes and change left in the game. Those little-over-8-minutes were the only time in that entire season that Wilt rested. That was it.
Just consider the expenditure of energy during a professional basketball game: Chamberlain was a center, the guy in the middle, down under the basket; that position, with elbows in the back, knees to the legs, arms being pulled on, and all the banging and punching absorbed from the oppositional center, is the most physical taxing of any position on the court – It takes a tremendous toll on a person.
Yet… only 8+ minutes the entire season did Wilt sit.
There’s one gloriously terse eulogy that was applied to Chamberlain the day he died: New York Knick Walt Frazier, one of his more heralded foes, said simply, “Wilt was NBA’s Superman; there’ll never be another one.’’
Hey, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Kareem and all you greats, yeah, go ahead and take a breather. ‘Wilt Chamberlain, the greatest of them all, is still out on the floor.’
Jim Israel
‘Mr. Gripes’
March 3, 2015
Je Suis NOT Charlie…My father, whose ultimate lot in his life was to keep alive and functioning some very sick people, sometimes would, out of the blue, assert, ‘The most powerful of all instincts is the instinct of self preservation.’ I thought of those words immediately after I learned of the horrific murders of those cartoonists and journalists at Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris.
Why, of all words, were those evoked? Because, I think, self preservation was not, regrettably and tragically, a motivation of those journalists. They made some very elementary, grievous mistakes. In a fashion, they engineered their own deaths.
Mr. Gripes can only wonder, ‘What on earth were they thinking?” They couldn’t have been surprised, in the sense that September 11 2001 stunned all of us. After all, they were rather shockingly forewarned: their offices were firebombed by terrorists in 2011, causing severe damage. The firebombing should have set off all kinds of alarms. Apparently, though, it did not. That’s hard to believe.
Now, I don’t know a thing about Mohammed and Islam, and don’t care to know, but I do know this: if I were to draw a caricature of a naked Mohammed, which is absolute anathema to Islamists, and publish it in a magazine for millions of people to see, I would have to assume I may provoke and inflame some very dangerous, crazy, determined people, who would attempt very assiduously to kill me….and consequently I would take the necessary precautions to prevent that.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m a strong advocate of the press: a critical press and freedom of speech are the linchpins of democracy. Shackled and intimidated journalists in any country are the death knell of a free people [see Putin, Russia]. But, none of us live in a utopia – far from it, in fact – and common sense must rule; there’s a very good reason why yelling ‘Fire’ in a crowded movie theatre is against the law.
So, I can’t sit here and write that these dead cartoonists deserve all the posthumous praise coming their way for their ‘bravery’ and ‘courage.’ ‘Brave,’ yes, but they were also brazen and reckless; they couldn’t have been that naïve as to not comprehend the gravity of what they were doing.
A basic precept of defensive military strategy is that the leadership-command tier must be preserved; the dispersal of top-echelon leadership is essential. The same strategy should have held for the Charlie Hebdo editorial staff, but that was not done: week after week, on the identical day and time, in the same conference room, there was an editorial meeting of the magazine’s writers and staff. There was absolutely no need to congregate like that: just have everyone call in from their own residences, and conduct the meeting via teleconferencing.
All together in that one room meant they were sitting ducks when the attack occurred; the terrorists had discovered the precise details of the weekly editorial gathering. It was no coincidence that the two terrorists showed up on precisely the day and time of the meeting. Also, why was there only one bodyguard protecting the office, and, additionally, in possession of inferior firepower? He probably was blown away by an AK-47 in about 3 seconds.
No, I can’t just declare the dead cartoonists deserve all the honoraria for their bravery and courage. Yes, they were certainly ‘courageous’ in the face of all the threats that must have come their way. That doesn’t really suffice, though. They did not take the proper precautions. Perhaps they were all in denial.
One victim left a wife and four young children, the youngest of which is five years old. On television two days afterwards, she insisted she was very ‘proud’ of her husband. ‘Proud’? With some rudimentary precautions, her husband would still be alive. Six months from now, after the shock has worn off, as she sits at the dining room table late one Sunday night, alone, with the children finally asleep, and their father gone, I suspect her sentiments may be entirely different.
Oh, My Kingdom for Some Visuals --Huge blizzards, destructive floods, terrible train crashes, frightening plane crashes – the professional politicians love what these ‘visuals’ will provide. Of course, they’ll manage to look concerned, or aggrieved, or empathetic, but don’t let that fool you for a moment: they’re cold-bloodedly calculating the risk/reward of the optics. After all, disasters, the bigger the better, give our selfless public servants a golden opportunity to pose and strut: ‘I’m a take-charge guy, I’ll pull all the levers of power to take care of and protect all of you, my fellow citizens’. It’s a professional secret, of course, but politicians of all stripes welcome disaster events. Success, to these low-lifers, is getting that photo-op broadcast on television. In reality, though, it’s all a rehearsed show, and has nothing to do with actual competence.
Mr. Gripes chooses to comment on this American phenomenon [though Vladimir Putin, I admit, was the creator of the ultimate visual, puffing out his bare chest for all to see] after observing the two major political figures in New York – Andrew Cuomo and Bill DeBlasio – acting like children, all in an effort to look good on TV.
Despite DeBlasio’s prediction – and maybe his hope, I might add – that New York City would be hit by an ‘historic’ blizzard, perhaps two or three feet, we ended up getting a measly six inches. Prior to the snow, DeBlasio appeared on TV and began ordering New Yorkers to get off the streets, insisting they don’t go to work, even shutting down the subway system, a drastic move for a city that never sleeps.
The next day, when the storm wimped out, Governor Cuomo couldn’t let DeBlasio steal the stage – oh no, if that happened, Cuomo, the alpha male, would look like he wasn’t in control; so he pulled an old chestnut out of his pocket: he leapfrogged the scheduled DeBlasio press conference, starting a half hour prior, and, quickly, after donning a de rigeur working-men’s union windbreaker with the logo on the chest – that’s a visual, baby – he emerged triumphant, throwing out orders left and right to all his sappy lieutenants to get the city and state moving again.
Mr. Gripes, watching this, could just sense the tension between the governor and mayor. You see, it’s always a question of who gets that photo-op, and in this case, Cuomo ‘won.’ He probably doesn’t realize just how disturbingly ambitious he appeared, yakking away, in that windbreaker, managing to suck all the oxygen out of the room. Every one of these politicians is obsessively ambitious, but God forbid you look like it on TV – that’s bad optics.
A more egregious instance of staged optics is when New Jersey Governor Chris Christie ‘lucked out’ the day superstorm Sandy hit the Jersey shore. That event, to a superb practitioner of political stagecraft, like Christie, was equivalent to hitting the jackpot. When he embraced President Obama, who visited to observe for himself the devastation along the Jersey coast, he wasn’t concerned so much with the welfare and safety of his constituents.
Nope. He figured by hugging the President, the No. #1 Democrat devil, he would look like the great unifier – prospective national voters would think, ‘Wow, here’s someone who will work with his Democratic opponents and get things done.’ Mr. Christie, even as he toured the damage, knew the image of him and Obama embracing would catapult him onto the national stage.
As for Christie the unifier? Obsolete baloney, of course. Not a year later, when the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee refused to endorse Mr. Christie for re-election, the George Washington Bridge, which both originates from and empties into Fort Lee, was mysteriously pinched to only one working lane, causing absolute chaos and gridlock. The ‘Great Unifier’ turns out to be the ‘Great Divider.’
Talk about bad optics -- Mr. Gripes concludes this piece with a couple of observations regarding President Obama and his golf game. Let’s face it: golf is terrible optics for any president. Vacationing for two weeks in Hawaii, while 80% of his constituency is freezing their buns off on the mainland, is bad enough [maybe he gets a pass for this, because it is his home state], but watching him saunter down a beautifully groomed fairway, gentle breezes wafting through the palm trees, exotic birds chattering joyously against an impossibly blue and cloudless sky in the background, just another perfect day in paradise is, I’m afraid, a horrible visual for this President. As the rest of us watch this, we suffer at that moment from a terminal case of envy. Green-with-envy doesn’t properly describe the depth of our distress – it’s more like raging with debilitating jealousy.
One more thing, Mr. President: get rid of those white golf shoes, will you? For the candidate who promised us hope and change a million years ago, those white shoes say one thing: ‘I now identify with the very rich: the hedge fund guys, the Wall Street manipulators and bongo-artists, the Silicon Valley billionaires, George Clooney and other Hollywood glitterati. As for the increasingly marginalized working class? That’s so over for me and Michelle.’
A word of advice: You can’t espouse caring about the struggles of the middle class when you’re wearing shoes that even Jay Gatsby would love to have in his closet. The visuals clash.
Jim Israel
Mr. Gripes
February 8, 2015
