Chappaquiddick – Weird how the brain functions when you’re approaching the age of decrepitude, as Mr. Gripes may be experiencing. One moment, a memory that’s been buried 20 leagues under a sea somewhere, resurfaces with all the original emotion and shock intact.
I happened upon a novel, ‘Black Water,’ by Joyce Carol Oates, which is – pardon the cliché – a ‘thinly veiled’, fictionalized portrayal of the events leading up to the drowning death of a campaign worker, Mary Jo Kopechne, in a submerged car driven off a wooden bridge by Senator Ted Kennedy in July 1969.
The entire evening is channeled through the thoughts of Ms. Kopechne – beginning with her attendance at a summer lawn party on Chappaquiddick Island, her subsequent meeting up with the late-arriving senator, and an ensuing walk on the beach with him. She’s smitten, of course, and later accepts a ride in his car to a ferry heading to the mainland, and a hotel tryst that was to be the inevitable conclusion of the evening.
In the car, Ms. Kopechne realizes the senator is drunk, or at least very much impaired, and is driving too fast along a rutted, damaged road that was supposed to be closed to automobiles. Intimidated a bit, she doesn’t raise any concerns to the senator. Soon the speeding car is slipping sideways onto a sandy road shoulder, and drives off a tiny wooden bridge, into the ‘black waters.’
From then on, the reader is privy to the panicky, increasingly incoherent thoughts of a drowning Ms. Kopechne, upside down in a sunken automobile, trapped in her seat, her right knee severely injured, but never giving up hope and the belief that her hero-senator would save her. To the last sentence of the novel, she’s certain he’s coming for her, and will lift her out and up to the surface. Then ‘she dies,’ Ms. Oates writes suddenly, and the story’s over.
At the book’s conclusion, Mr. Gripes recalled that Mr. Kennedy got off scot-free. All the Kennedys-on-Cape-Cod power and clout were brought to bear after this event, and somehow the Senator managed to emerge unblemished, his ass not in jail, and his political career intact.
After a little research, I present the rest of that night: after the accident, Mr. Kennedy immediately extracted himself from the car, but made no attempts to rescue Ms. Kopechne, or seek any assistance. Instead, he abandons the car, and Ms. Kopechne, and begins to walk back toward the party. At some point, later in the evening, still without contacting the authorities, he swims across the sound – a considerable physical feat, incidentally – and returns to his motel on the mainland. It’s now a couple of hours after midnight, 3 or 4 hours after the accident, and still no one’s been contacted. He stays there for the remainder of the night.
The car, sunk in 6 feet of water, and Mary Jo Kopechne’s body were discovered early the next morning, before Kennedy had made any contact with island authorities. In fact, it wasn’t until Kennedy spoke to his lawyer around 10:45 the following morning that calls were made to report the accident, nearly eleven hours after his car ran off the bridge. Unbelievable.
In the end, Kennedy was given a two-month suspended sentence for leaving the scene of an accident, with no mention of the dead woman in the affadavit. [Another curious fact: Ms. Kopechne was buried one day after she died, and no autopsy was performed.]
The entire event seems right out of ‘Ripley’s Believe It or Not’, doesn’t it? Later he runs for President of the United States, with allusions to the crime mysteriously never brought up, even by opponents. Seems crazy all these decades later.
If this had occurred today? Posted instantaneously would be 100,000 vitriolic messages on the internet and social media. The hue-and-cry would have compelled the police to haul Kennedy to jail, and arraign him on very serious felonies; we’d have for our viewing pleasure a trial that would have made OJ’s seem as insignificant as a parking-ticket dispute in traffic court. Just imagine the press presence. Plus, Kennedy’s political career would be finished.
When Senator Kennedy died, once again there was very little mention of his complicity in the death of Ms. Kopechne. I don’t recall any, in fact.
Instead, he was eulogized, glowingly, in speech after speech, as one of the great Senatorial ‘Lions’ in American history.
Ted Kennedy, in a supreme moment of crisis, turned out to be nothing but a quivering, fearful little boy, hoping that all of this was a very bad dream, and would just go away. Some lion. He was nothing but a shameful coward.
My views on what’s permissible in terms of human conduct and relationships coincide splendidly with those of that wise man, Mark Twain, who famously wrote, “I don’t care what people do, as long they don’t frighten the horses.” [I’ve paraphrased a bit]. Live and let live, be it a homosexual coupling, heterosexual, transgender, transvestite, whatever: at my age, I’m too grizzled and gray to give a damn in what manner anyone manages to bring some serenity and contentment to this often disappointing life.
BUT, my equanimity about same-sex relationships only goes only so far. I read a couple of weeks ago of a physical dispute between a gay couple one evening in Houston. Nothing unusual these days about news of a domestic disturbance, of course. The argument, ending in the arrests of, and injuries to, both parties, was between two professional female basketball players, who happen to be married to each other. [Subsequently, these players were suspended by the Women’s National Basketball Association, which runs the league, for a few games.] Still nothing to get all hot and bothered about, Mr. Gripes reasoned.
Mr. Gripes’ equipoise regarding this affair, however, was shattered by one two-word phrase in the newspaper account: ‘Ms. Griner and her wife were released early from jail…’ You see, Mr. Gripes, who once toiled as a typesetter, and is almost Prussian in his obsessive adherence to the rules of correct grammar, cannot possibly abide by that ‘her wife’ phrase. It just sounds dumb and ignorant. [Granted, ‘his husband’ doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue easily, either.]
It’s often stated that languages never are finished, and certainly they can’t be. Change is the one constant all over the world, and language must adapt to these changes. There’s nothing static about a language ever. In that vein, I fervently hope new words and expressions are created to fill the vacuum of language around same sex relationships. Because, as long as Mr. Gripes continues to bitch and moan on this earth, he will never use ‘her wife’ in a meaningful sentence. Enough is enough.
A Lady Knight in Shining Armor? ‘Who Hates Barack Obama the Most?’ That was the unspoken, essential qualification which, up to a couple of months ago, every prospective Republican candidate for the Presidency 2016 had to adhere to. Not any longer. Now, Republicans, with their detestation of Obama certainly still intact, have altered the calculus: These days, it’s ‘Who can beat Hillary?’ Whoever comes out ahead in that contest will win the nomination.
In that vein, Mr. Gripes, who finds the Donald-Trump-Rand-Paul-Gov-Bridgegate-of NJ-George-Pataki [!!]-Bobby Jindal-Mike Hucklebee clown-car array of Republican candidates blissfully hilarious, now presents his selection of the one individual who has the best chance – by far – of beating Mrs. Clinton. Jeb Bush sure as hell isn’t going to beat Hillary, and neither will Scott Walker or Mario Rubio. Losers. No chance. Only one could do it…
Carly Fiorina…
Why? For one, the electorate will not be inundated with a thousand stentorian ‘feminist’ shibboleths that Ms. Clinton’s operatives will surely view as a winning strategy. There’ll be no ‘It’s the Year of the Woman,’ or ‘Be Part of History: Elect the 1st Woman President’, and, thank God, we’ll be spared about a million tedious-to-the-point-of-narcolepsy ‘Women’s Empowerment’ television ads. You see, Carly Fiorina, unfortunately for Democrats, is a woman, too. Bill and Hillary, where Mr. Gripes comes from, we call that checkmate.
Another thing: Ms. Fiorina is no shrinking violet, and does not suffer fools easily. Mr. Gripes was struck how quick on her feet she has been in dealing with the smarmy press, who are always looking for those ‘got-cha’ moments. She’s obviously very smart, and it looks to me that she’ll do very well in any Presidential debates; in that setting Ms. Fiorina could crush Ms. Clinton, who is too wedded to rehearsed, drab sound bites.
Also, Ms. Fiorina has had a very successful career in the private business world – she was CEO of Hewlett-Packard, so she’s had a lot of experience dealing with a huge staff, bureaucracies, budgets, planning and financial crises, executive skills she’ll need as President. In contrast, Hillary Clinton has worked only in government for the past 40 years: she’s been on the public dole forever.
However, there is one major problem regarding the prospect of Carly Fiorina emerging as the Republican candidate: in a political party that still is contesting abortion rights, gay rights, and equal pay issues, as if we’re still living in the 1950’s, is this party ready for a woman to run under the GOP banner? A female President may be simply too ‘radical’ an idea for all those conservative Republican voters in state primaries leading up to the nomination. The notion that only a man can and should be President may be too formidable to be dislodged.
But, Mr. Gripes would relish a Fiorina-Clinton battle. It’d be a lot of fun.
Jim Israel
Mr. Gripes
June 4, 2015
Hillary & Bill – Here’s how the conversation between Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton may have transpired a few years ago:
Hillary: ‘Now, listen, Bill, I’m too busy flying all over the world shaking hands with blood-on-their-hands dictators and autocrats to pay any attention to the foundation, so it’s all on you: yes, raise as much money as you’d like for the [Clinton] Foundation, but do it all on the up-and-up. No shenanigans, OK?’
Bill: ‘Of course, honey. I’ll be on my best behavior – nothing for you to worry about, I promise.’
Sure enough, Hillary trusted Slick Willie again, and he betrayed her once more. You’d think she learned her lesson about her husband after Monica. Not a chance. Bill Clinton, Mr. Gripes asserts, starts off with good intentions, then his immense ego gets the best of him again. He has to be #1 in everything: raising more money for charity than Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg becomes a competition, his foundation begins taking short cuts, and soon skirting the law is a normal procedure. Hillary then announces a run for the Presidency. Boom! The anti-Hillary contingent, and it’s huge, took dead aim at the foundation. Sometimes, the Clintons are so dense, so stupid: how could they not have seen this total mess coming? They should have minded their ‘P’s and ‘Q’s on every front. But, let’s face it, Bill has never been careful: he’s always in some kind of disarray and chaos. That’s his DNA.
‘I gotta pay our bills…’ That’s exactly what Bill Clinton asserted, when asked if he was going to cease making speeches now that his wife was running for President. Rings a bell, eh? Sure it does. Hillary Clinton, on her infamous book tour a year or so ago, tells reporters that she and her husband ‘were dead broke’ after leaving the White House. She never mentioned that, at the time of Bill’s departure, they owned one townhouse in upscale Georgetown in DC, and another residence in Westchester County, both homes together worth about $4 million. Amazing, isn’t it? Essentially, both Bill and Hillary invoked the same lame ‘woe-is-me-we’ve got no money’ defense; a statement like Bill’s makes the 99.999% of us who are less affluent very, very irate: no one wants to hear about a couple with a net worth of at least $105 million anguishing over their cable bill. Talk about a disconnect with the public. Sometimes Bill and Hillary are as blind as a belfry full of bats.
The Prime Minister and Pig Tails – Perhaps my readers know about this incident: a dining Prime Minister of Australia pulls on the pigtails of an attending waitress in a restaurant. It caused a stir in that country, as well it should. The prime minister, of course, says it was all done in a playful manner. Mr. Gripes, though, offers another conceivable mindset of the PM: first, men – not all, but most – do, on occasion, lose their minds over women. We, and I’m speaking for the male-idiot gender now, are wired that way. That in no manner excuses Mr. Prime Minister’s behavior – after all, he should be a mature, judicious fellow who is capable of controlling his libidinous tendencies, and his impulses.
But, there’s something else possibly going on here: this elected official, the most powerful single politician in the country, probably worth a good deal of money, has had many opportunities to meet women during his political career. And, many women have been attracted to him, considering his status and power. Women have always been accessible, so it’s not been hard for him to be ‘successful’ with them. In fact, finding women has not been a problem at all; he doesn’t have to work at it. Courtship? Bang-bang is his preference. He naturally begins to think that women are essentially commodities, to be trifled with and played with, nothing more. The cute waitress with the pigtails was just another potential girl-toy for Mr. Big. Mr. Big just knew there’d be no consequences. Ergo, a grin, a laugh, and a pull on the pigtails. No one ever had told him before what a disgusting pig he actually is.
Baltimore – What Mr. Gripes will write shortly will undoubtedly distress some of his liberal friends, I’m sure: those ‘protestors’ who tore up and looted that Baltimore neighborhood in the aftermath of a black man’s death in the custody of the police ought to be caught and charged with serious felonies. The vast majority of those individuals, when they chose to set afire and/or obliterate 200 [!!] businesses in the area, are, if I may put it bluntly, low-life thugs and criminals who have managed to destroy the lives of many, many of their neighbors, now former proprietors of storefront businesses. Those small businesses, many without insurance, aren’t coming back.
Even the larger commercial enterprises won’t be returning; do you actually believe that the gutted, eviscerated CVS store will ever be rebuilt by its corporate owners? I seriously doubt it. Why would CVS invest a ton of money in another store that may very well be destroyed again during the next riot? And, so what if CVS is white- and corporate-owned? It served a very real purpose in the community: dispensing essential medicinal drugs to residents. The elderly, for sure, must have depended on a pharmacy that was located nearby. The looters, of course, didn’t think of that when the store was razed to the ground. Running off with a couple of cases of Coke was their sole intent. Rage is not ever an excuse for wanton and criminal behavior. Find the perpetrators and arrest them.
Gaudy ‘Gala’ at the Met – There’s been an annual fundraiser taking place for the Metropolitan Museum of Art here in New York around this time of year for decades. Once upon a time, the grandees of New York Society attended, and wrote substantial checks for the museum – a Rockefeller, Harriman and investment bank big-shots would certainly be in attendance. It was a genteel and decorous affair, without a great deal of pomp or flash.
Not any more -- 2015’s version took place last night in the Costume Institute of the Met – it’s all about big gowns and statuesque, virtually naked celebrities. Mr. Gripes was astounded to see pictorials of the affair in today’s newspapers. And, to be honest, the photographs were appalling.
The Metropolitan Museum is one of the great repositories of world art and antiquities. You could take a week and not see everything there. So, it should be treated with the utmost courtesy and respect. There’s no chance of that these days: this event now resembles a chorus girl dance line.
You see, it’s all about commercialism now. The old-time stuffed-shirt bankers are shuffled aside, out of sight. Fashion designers pay big money to have celebrities wear their most outrageous gowns at affairs like this. And, the museum undoubtedly receives huge donations from the fashion houses on display. Scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours. It’s all so unseemly.
But no more serious-issue stuff. Let’s get to the clothes and the ladies:
Rihanna, who I’ll wager wouldn’t know the difference between a Warhol and a Rembrandt, and cares less, essentially wore nothing under her ensemble, if that’s what you call her outfit. Imagine that: a young lady prancing naked amidst the caverns of the Temple of Dendur at the Met.
Jennifer Lopez? Her dress, with its innumerable slits and openings, conjured up one image immediately: a very high-class, expensive hooker working the $5,000-minimum blackjack tables in Steve Wynn’s casino.
But the piece-de-resistance [see link below] of the evening has to go to Sarah Jessica Parker: she had atop her head some kind of head piece, the sight of which nearly knocked Mr. Gripes off his dining room perch: a flaming, gargoyled, Dairy Queen-like swirl that rose mightily about two or three feet in the air. And, along with that, she wore enough caked-on makeup to suffocate a rhinoceros. Initially, I thought, ‘This calamity looks like someone who is about to attend a Dark Ages pagan sacrifice ritual to appease the Gods. No, wait one second: Ms. Parker may indeed be the reincarnation of the goddess Medusa.’
The demise of Western civilization marches on, unrestrained and unabated.
http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-style/news/sarah-jessica-parker-wears-gigantic-flaming-headdress-met-gala-2015-201545
Jim Israel
Mr. Gripes
May 5, 2015
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
