By Jonathan Miller, on Mon Apr 4, 2011 at 12:00 PM ET  My dad and I circa 1968 Today — as on every April 4 — as the nation commemorates the anniversary of one of the worst days in our history; as some of us celebrate the anniversary of the greatest speech of the 20th Century; my mind is on my father. And my memory focuses on a winter day in the mid 1970s, sitting shotgun in his tiny, tinny, navy blue Pinto.
I can still remember my father’s smile that day.
He didn’t smile that often. His usual expression was somber, serious—squinting toward some imperceptible horizon. He was famously perpetually lost in thought: an all-consuming inner debate, an hourly wrestling match between intellect and emotion. When he did occasion a smile, it was almost always of the taut, pursed “Nice to see you” variety.
But on occasion, his lips would part wide, his green eyes would dance in an energetic mix of chutzpah and child-like glee. Usually, it was because of something my sister or I had said or done.
But this day, this was a smile of self-contented pride. Through the smoky haze of my breath floating in the cold, dense air, I could see my father beaming from the driver’s seat, pointing at the AM radio, whispering words of deep satisfaction with a slow and steady nod of his head and that unfamiliar wide-open smile: “That’s my line…Yep, I wrote that one too…They’re using all my best ones.”
He preempted my typically hyper-curious question-and-answer session with a way-out-of-character boast: The new mayor had asked him—my dad!—to help pen his first, inaugural address. And my hero had drafted all of the lines that the radio was replaying.
 This was about the time when our father-son chats had drifted from the Reds and the Wildcats to politics and doing what was right. My dad was never going to run for office. Perhaps he knew that a liberal Jew couldn’t get elected dogcatcher in 1970s Kentucky. But I think it was more because he was less interested in the performance of politics than in its preparation. Just as Degas focused on his dancers before and after they went on stage—the stretching, the yawning, the meditation—my father loved to study, and better yet, help prepare, the ingredients of a masterful political oration: A fistful of prose; a pinch of poetry; a smidgen of hyperbole; a dollop of humor; a dash of grace. When properly mixed, such words could propel a campaign, lance an enemy, or best yet, inspire a public to wrest itself from apathetic lethargy and change the world.
Now, for the first time, I realized that my father was in the middle of the action. And I was so damn proud.
– – –
 Click above to watch my eulogy for my father My dad’s passion for words struck me most clearly when I prepared his eulogy. For the past two years of his illness, I’d finally become acquainted with the real Robert Miller, stripped down of the mythology, taken off my childhood pedestal. And I was able to love the real human being more genuinely than ever before. The eulogy would be my final payment in return for his decades of one-sided devotion: Using the craft he had lovingly and laboriously helped me develop, I would weave prose and poetry, the Bible and Shakespeare, anecdotes and memories, to honor my fallen hero. In his final weeks of consciousness, he turned down my offer to share the speech with him. I will never know whether that was due to his refusal to acknowledge the inevitable, or his final act of passing the torch: The student was now the author.
While the final draft reflected many varied influences, ranging from the Rabbis to the Boss (Springsteen), the words were my own. Except for one passage in which I quoted my father’s favorite memorial tribute: read by Senator Edward Kennedy at his brother, Robert’s funeral:
My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.
Read the rest of…
The RP: My Dad, RFK & the Greatest Speech of the Past Century
By Grant Smith, RP Staff, on Mon Apr 4, 2011 at 10:00 AM ET
The Webby Awards are coming! Have you nominated The RP yet? [Webby Awards]
N.Y. Congressman’s Congressional Correspondents’ Dinner monologue goes viral. [BoingBoing]
Your YouTube fix for the week. Full disclosure: we have yet to install a Bieber-filter. [TheBestYouTube]
Even the Google-Bot likes The RP. Have you liked us yet? Well, what are you waiting for? [PC World]
So, the boss still hasn’t caught you surfing The RP??? Time for best of the web, then!!! [Web100]
By Jeff Smith, on Mon Apr 4, 2011 at 8:30 AM ET 
One year ago, I arrived in the small town of Manchester, Kentucky, a scenic spot tucked deep in an Appalachian mountain hollow, where I would be spending most of 2010. Before I was shown my new digs, the staff processed me. That meant going repeatedly through the standard battery of questions. The third questioner finished and sent me to a heavyset woman.
“Height and weight?” she asked.
“5’6”, 120.”
She examined my slight frame and frowned. “Education level?”
I winced. “Ph.D.”
She shot me a skeptical look. “Last profession?”
“State Senator.”
She rolled her eyes. “Well, I’ll put it down if you want. If you wanna play games, play games. We got ones who think they’re Jesus Christ, too.”
She then sent me to the counselor, a small sandy-haired man wearing a light blue polo shirt and a wispy mustache. He flipped through the pre-sentencing report, pausing briefly to absorb the summary of the case, and shook his head. “This is crazy,” he said quietly, without looking at me. “You shouldn’t be here. Waste of time. Money. Space.”
A guard approached and escorted me to a bathroom without a door. Then another guard appeared. Gruff and morbidly obese, he spoke in a thick Kentucky drawl. “Stree-ip,” he commanded. I stripped.
“Tern’round,” he barked. I turned around.
“Open up yer prison wallet,” he ordered.
I looked at him quizzically.
“Tern’round and open yer butt cheeks.”
I complied.
“Alright, you’s good to go.” he said.
I wasn’t Senator Smith anymore, or Professor Smith. I was #36607-044.
Read the rest of…
Jeff Smith: The Long and Winding Journey to My Second Act
By Jonathan Miller, on Fri Apr 1, 2011 at 5:00 PM ET I hope you enjoyed our first day of posts on The Recovering Politician. Please take seriously my request to offer your critiques, suggestions and ideas in the comments section below. And if you like what you read, please recommend this site to your friends via the buttons in the upper right of every post, and share it through the buttons below every post.
As we work out the kinks of this grand new experiment, and as other recovering politicians join the fray, I promise that the best is yet to come.
Speaking of which…
Next week will feature the debut post of three new recovering politicians. On Monday, we will lead off with the remarkable story of a young elected official — identified by many, including a well-respected documentarian, as a national rising star — who made an enormous mistake that abruptly stalled his political career. Now that he has paid an extraordinary price for his misdeed, he is sharing his story with The RP’s readers to help ensure others avoid the same pitfalls, as well as to offer comprehensive reforms for the toxic system which enveloped him. Tune it at 8:30 AM EDT on Monday.
Later that morning, I will offer my thoughts on the anniversary of what I believe is the greatest political oration of the 20th Century. A hint: Look at your calendar for Monday’s infamous date.
And of course, we will have more Weekly Web Gems, and robust debate and conversation in the Comments section.
Have a great weekend.
And…oh, yeah…to my readers in Connecticut, I give you my most heartfelt condolences in advance of your big loss Saturday night. Go Cats!
By Grant Smith, RP Staff, on Fri Apr 1, 2011 at 3:00 PM ET
Apple on track for its first $100 billion revenue year. Well, is there an app for that? [Forbes]
The dismal science and the teams we love: the economics of March Madness. [Yahoo News]
Preventing the President from calling you a cheap date: what it takes. [CNN Money]
A reality-show stranger than fiction: Trump proves he was born a US citizen. Any Apprentice-birthers out there? [Huffington Post]
Steamed-up over Mad Men? A financial breakdown of the negotiation’s consequences. [Hit Fix]
By Robert Kahne, RP Staff, on Fri Apr 1, 2011 at 1:30 PM ET The Politics of the Planet Since the tsunami and subsequent nuclear meltdown in Japan, people have wondered about the global impact. Want an honest, albeit pessimistic take? Read this post from Barry Riholtz’s blog [The Big Picture].
Not enough bad news for you? The Physicians for Social Responsibility have issued a statement which says they are deeply concerned about the amount of radiation in food. [PSR]
Google, Kings of the Internet, have decided to use their philanthropic project, Google.org, to take on Global Climate Change skeptics. [Solve Climate News]
Check out this very interesting read about how the Chinese environmental movement will be considerably different there than it has been in the United States, and different from how it tried to be in the USSR. [The Atlantic]
Japan’s nuclear problems have created repercussions on the other side of the Eastern Hemisphere. Germany’s ruling party, the Christian Democrats, have now lost a former stronghold to the Greens. Here’s a super-informative piece with context about how global events have impacts that are truly global. But read it quick, before it goes behind that paywall. [New York Times]
The EPA made waves in 2009 when it ruled that greenhouse gasses were a threat to human health. Read this profile of how Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has served as ringleader of efforts to overturn this scientific ruling through political means: [Lexington Herald-Leader]
An interesting read concerning the Obama administration’s recent ruling about genetically modified crops and its impact on organic farming. [The Rural Blog]
By Jonathan Miller, on Fri Apr 1, 2011 at 12:00 PM ET An uninformed visitor to my old Kentucky home this week might conclude that they’d mistakenly walked onto the compound of a Prozac-fueled utopian cult. An odd but euphoric delirium had descended upon the hills, hollers and hamlets of the Bluegrass State. Men and women walking more upright, a bounce in their steps, a huge grin on their faces. You couldn’t meet a stranger: In grocery stores and city parks and shopping malls, neighbors who months before felt nothing in common were now greeting each other with warm words, high fives, and fist bumps. Weeks from now, we’ll return to our regional camps, our partisan corners. But for now, we’re united; the sun’s shining just a bit brighter.
The Wildcats have once again made the Final Four. March Madness matters.
Smack Laettner with your mouse click to watch the worst moment, well, in all of history I’m often asked by my friends from urban America how a Jewish pischer like me could win statewide election in an inner notch of the Bible Belt. It’s simple: There’s only one state-sanctioned religion in the Commonwealth, and that’s Wildcat basketball. Besides, Kentucky features some of the most rabid anti-Christian hatred in the country. Anti-Christian Laettner, the aptly nicknamed Duke Blue Devil, that is.
It’s been common cause of that same coastal elite to declare the recent demise of college basketball. Just last week, the expositor of all that is right and just — the New York Times — asked “Does College Basketball Really Matter Anymore?” Much blame for the sport’s so-called march towards irrelevancy is directed at the National Basketball Association’s controversial “one and done” rule that permits pro teams to draft 19 year olds who are at least a year out of high school. Since many exceptional underclassmen leave for the NBA instead of staying all four years to graduate, the argument goes, the college talent pool is drained thin, diluting the excitement of the sport.
Dicky V just hates "one and done." Even the over-polished-teeth-gnashers who make bank by hyping the sport have decried the rule’s impact on the game: Cue lovable loudmouth broadcaster Dick Vitale, who termed the one-and-done system — in his own inimitable style — as an “absolute joke and fraud to the term ‘student-athlete.’” Meanwhile, the rest of the chattering class’ perennial echo chamber lambasts Kentucky coach John Calipari for daring to master the rules he was given and actually recruit players with the expectation that they would leave for the pros after a year in college. As the Final Four approaches and smaller schools such as Butler and Virginia Commonwealth are adopted by the rest of the country, the Cats are branded with a scarlet “W” and charged with undermining the Athenian ideal of amateur athletics, as well as contradicting the purity of the sport, the value of higher education in general, and the American Way. Quipped Washington Post political reporter/conventional wisdom decoder Chris Cillizza on the eve of an NCAA tourney ballgame last year, tongue lodged only partly in tweet: “Is there anyone in America not rooting for Cornell over Kentucky tonight? And if so, can they rightly be called American?”
 George (at left, above) is VERY young looking, for a 50-year-old A Sarah Palin-like appeal on behalf of a New York-based Ivy League squad?! Just slightly more serious and playful is the needling I’ve endured from my decades-long “frenemy” George—an insufferable Dukie, natch. He asks how can I, a progressive, Harvard-educated, policy-wonk, invest my emotional well-being in a semi-pro team of mercenaries with a league-lagging 2.02 GPA and a pitiful 31 percent graduation rate?
The truth is that since middle school, much of my kind—the jump shot-challenged intelligentsia, that is—have scoffed at the popularity, coddling, and public financing of the jock culture. College is our sacred realm—for academics, scholarship and research, not professional sports-grooming. Like Major League Baseball, why can’t the NBA establish its own minor league system that encourages talented high school athletes to bypass college entirely? Ironically, this argument was advanced on Op-Ed pages nationwide by Richard Hain, a mathematics professor at…wait for it…Duke University.
There’s no question that colleges need to do a better job of preparing student-athletes for the postgraduate work force, particularly since the vast majority will never gasp a whiff of sports-related riches. But scrapping the current system and replacing it with a glorified intramural product would suffocate an invaluable national asset.
For while the literary and media elite have branded cerebral baseball and primal football as our national pastimes; college basketball, particularly here in the heartland, really does matter. And flaws and all, big-time, big-money college roundball is not only the people’s sport; it’s also good public policy.
Read the rest of…
The RP: Why March Madness Matters
By RP Staff, on Fri Apr 1, 2011 at 10:00 AM ET How many political careers might this app have saved? We’ll never know, but it might save your love life—and maybe even your career! [Last Night Never Happened]
No examination of the politics of love would be complete without a glimpse into the lives of three enigmatic lovers and the worlds they ruled: [The Guardian]
An overabundance of patriotic devotion or just fulfilling a heartfelt desire? You decide! [Politics Daily]
It turns out love really can charge your nanowires: [The Daily Mail]
Poignant story of the power of friendship, even on Capitol Hill: Reps. Gabby Giffords and Debbie Wasserman-Schulz: [Politics Daily]
Classic Seinfeld: George Tries to Say [“I Love You”]
By Jonathan Miller, on Fri Apr 1, 2011 at 8:30 AM ET Mark Twain once quipped: “Everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it.”
The same can be said about the turbulent storm that’s been hailing down on our country’s discourse. Particularly after a national tragedy — Oklahoma City, 9/11, Tucson — the hyper-partisan politicos, cable TV screaming heads and ideological flamebloggers all pledge to tamp down their rhetoric as they wax poetically about civility. And then, inevitably, they return to their partisan corners, crucifying the other side over the next urgent issue.
Today, we launch The Recovering Politician to provide a civilized forum as an antidote to our nation’s toxic addiction to vitriol and demonization. Here is a place for debating and discussing the issues of the day — politics, sports, pop culture, religion, you name it — without the finger-pointing and blame-assigning that’s all too typical on the Web and among our more crass media.
 Your host and frequent commentator is Jonathan Miller, the Recovering Politician. The RP is a proud progressive Kentucky Democrat, but he’s learned that we must put aside our labels on occasion to work for the common good.
The RP does not belong to a traditional 12-step program, but as a great admirer of friends who have battled real addictions, and a proud advocate of programs that empower them (see Recovery Kentucky), the RP has learned that many of the same principles espoused in recovery — candor, humility, compassion — can be a valuable tonic for our system at large and the players within.
The RP will be joined by dozens of other contributors — recovering politicians who’ll offer their own ideas about how to fix America’s most intractable problems: climate change, skyrocketing health care costs, our multi-trillion-dollar debt, crowning a college football national champion, celebrity idolatry, mom jeans, yadda, yadda, yadda. (OK, maybe not mom jeans; too polarizing…)
Like The RP, the site’s contributors are in the process of trying to prove F. Scott Fitzgerald wrong: that there are second (and third, and fourth…) acts in American lives. You’ll get the perspective of those who’ve survived the arena, and now are free to offer their critiques, unburdened by political pressures. You’ll hear from all sides of the spectrum, as well as from folks who’ve already carved their niche in the real world to share their expertise.
Every week day, the site will also feature a handful of “The RP’s Weekly Web Gems”: a set of links focused on a particular issue (i.e., the environment, health care, fashion. the NFL), culled by the RP’s crack staff, that reflect the best civil discourse on the Web.
Be forewarned: civility does NOT imply preciously-sincere, campfire-style appeals for spiritual unity. Nor does it require compromising core beliefs, watering down faith or appeasing bullies. Expect passionately-opinionated, controversial, imagination-provoking posts. Get ready for vigorous, rigorous debate. But all within the spirit of mutual respect and a determination to advance us all to workable solutions.
 Click on Al Gore's face for an instructive video on how to affect the weather And you’re encouraged to join the fray and make some helpful noise: Please share your comments, early and often, through your Facebook account. It’s easy.
At a minimum, please share your thoughts on the site itself through your comments. And if you like what you read, please recommend articles via the buttons at the upper right of every post and share them with your friends through the buttons at the bottom.
One last admonition: Please be patient. It may take us a few days to complete our mission to rescue the nation from its polarizing, paralyzing discord. Then, and only then, will we try to do something — finally! — about improving the weather around here…
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This was about the time when our father-son chats had drifted from the Reds and the Wildcats to politics and doing what was right. My dad was never going to run for office. Perhaps he knew that a liberal Jew couldn’t get elected dogcatcher in 1970s Kentucky. But I think it was more because he was less interested in the performance of politics than in its preparation. Just as Degas focused on his dancers before and after they went on stage—the stretching, the yawning, the meditation—my father loved to study, and better yet, help prepare, the ingredients of a masterful political oration: A fistful of prose; a pinch of poetry; a smidgen of hyperbole; a dollop of humor; a dash of grace. When properly mixed, such words could propel a campaign, lance an enemy, or best yet, inspire a public to wrest itself from apathetic lethargy and change the world.
