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Last January was the 50th anniversary of my uncle John Kennedy’s inauguration and the swearing in of my father as attorney general. I had known it would be an emotional week, full of pride in what they had accomplished and sadness at the terrible loss. I went to events at the Capitol and the Kennedy Center, and I also was asked to represent my family with a talk at the Justice Department, where I had served. The week brought back the excitement of that time, the bold initiatives, the fights over civil rights, the launching of the Peace Corps. Despite the numerous citings of my uncle’s inaugural challenge, I almost never hear anything like that call to sacrifice for the good of our country from our leaders today. The reality of the week turned even more difficult when my uncle Sargent Shriver died, as did my father’s long-time secretary, Angie Novello. The evening wake at Holy Trinity and the funeral were filled with great stories of Sarge’s enthusiasm and his determination to make the Peace Corps work. Angie, too, was honored for her steadiness and devotion. I was filled with conflicting feelings as a slew of relatives, cousins, and their children continually met up at one memorial after another. I listened and laughed, but then I cried. The gaping holes in history and our hearts couldn’t be filled simply with memorials and great stories. Months later, I can still feel the outpouring of affection for my family and a sense of the adventure of public service. Mostly, though, I’m puzzled by the disjunction between 1961 and now. Despite the numerous citings of my uncle’s inaugural challenge, I almost never hear anything like that call to sacrifice for the good of our country from our leaders today. Maybe they imagine that the only response would be the frantically jammed exit ramp in Tom Toles’ cartoon. Read the rest of… (To those of you new to the RP Nation, we welcome you to one of our longest-standing traditions: the RP’s Top 5 best-of-pop-culture-lists. Check out his previous entries…if you dare: Favorite Breakup Songs, Favorite Hoops Books, Most Jew-ish Gentiles, Favorite “Docs” who Weren’t Doctors, Pretty Boys I Begrudgingly Admire, and Guilty Pleasures.) As I venture through middle age, it’s amazing some of the strange and obscure things I remember from my adolescence. Such as the middle name of my first serious girlfriend: Miriam. OK, OK… I married her…You got me. One truly inexplicable memory that’s stuck with me is that of my high school youth group buddy, Stacey. When it came to music, she didn’t have a favorite band, or even a favorite song. No, Stacey had great affection for brief moments in the middle of popular tunes. Like a fleeting Keith Richards guitar lick. Or a Mariah Carey high-C note. Or — since it was the 80s, after all — some fancy synthesizer work. For me, always a voracious reader and wannabe writer, my passion has been directed toward a brilliant lyric. Sometimes, it’s just a line that is particularly clever or moving or instructive. So, in salute to Stacey, I offer my Top Five Pop Music Lyrics: 5. “…And Then Meeting His Beautiful Husband.” I hate Alanis Morisette’s “Ironic.” I simply hate it. Here’s this extremely bright and insightful singer/songwriter who just set the world on fire with her extraordinary breakup song, “You Oughta Know“; she comes up with a catchy tune and a great thematic idea…but then totally flubs the execution. Nearly every example she gives of “irony” is not irony. Rain on your wedding day sucks, but it’s not ironic, unless maybe you’re a meteorologist. A black fly in your Chardonnay is gross, but does not even approach irony. I get Marvin the Martian angry whenever I hear the song; so when an acoustic version popped up on the radio recently, I used it as a teaching moment for RPette #2, who was sitting shotgun in my car. But as I was about to explain to her why learning that an attractive, appealing man is married is not ironic, Alanis pulled a fast one on me and changed a word from the original version of the song: “It’s like meeting the man of your dreams/and meeting his beautiful…husband.” As a recently admitted and very proud gay marriage proponent, I had to smile: One of my favorite lines appears in one of my least favorite songs. Isn’t that ironic? 4. “This’ll be the day that I die.” “American Pie” is one of those songs you either love or completely despise. Some claim it’s a brilliant symbolic exposition of the history of rock music; others term it a childish recitation of popular events, a la Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” (which would be #2 if I compiled a Top 5 list of horrible songs by musicians I love — right behind “Ironic,” of course.) Blame it on my adolescent nostalgia (“American Pie” was one of the few songs I could play and perform roughly in tune), but I fall in the former camp. By positioning Buddy Holly’s death as a critical moment in rock history, and transposing Holly’s most famous lyric, McLean evokes tragedy with appropriate reverence to one of rock-n-roll’s original masters. With forty years of distance, the Mick Jagger/Satan metaphors later in the song seem a bit overwrought, but “This’ll Be the Day that I Die” still rings sincere and true today.
In every generation, there’s that seminal moment: An event so memorable that you can remember exactly what you were doing when you learned it happened. For the Greatest Generation, it was the bombing of Pearl Harbor. For Boomers, it was JFK’s assassination. For us Gen Xers, at least of the Hebraic variety, it was Adam Sandler’s first performance of “The Chanukah Song” on Saturday Night Live‘s “Weekend Update.” As I’ve argued previously at this site, America’s Seinfeldization — the prominent public emergence of so many proud and open Jewish comedians during the 1990s — helped pave the way for the historic Joe Lieberman candidacy in 2000. And the pivotal moment was learning from Sandler that so many revered celebrities (Paul Newman! Harrison Ford!) had Jewish blood. So, midway through the song, when the comedian name-dropped OJ Simpson — who infamously was in the middle of the trial of the century — I took a deep breath, and was finally able to exhale with a belly-quaking laugh, relieved that he was no Member of the Tribe. That line doesn’t provoke as much laughter today, but at that precise moment, it was the funniest line ever written. (2011 Postscript: Casey Anthony…Not a Jew). Read the rest of…
Although I grew up in Washington D.C., to me Capitol Hill was a very distant place. I felt that I was living in the real world; while Capitol Hill was in some parallel universe. I just didn’t understand how people up there thought. And I have to tell you the truth, as I watch our elected leadership deal with the very serious issues facing our nation’s fiscal health, I still don’t. Take perhaps the most basic question of all when it comes to tax and budget policy—do deficits matter? That question has generated a lot of debate in Washington in recent weeks. I am mystified it has to be asked. I am aware of the academic debate concerning the interplay between deficits and interest rates. I also acknowledge the points often made by The Wall Street Journal’s editorial pages about the empirical evidence casting doubt about the absolute linkage between the two, for example. I first learned the value of a dollar not from The Wall Street Journal, but from a sharecropper’s daughter who had little choice but to drop out of school to work the tobacco and cotton fields of South Carolina. She later went out into the world fighting to provide for a family with only a 5th grade education. She worked for 45 years in a Laundromat, and the most she ever made in her life was about $3.80/hour. Through the remarkable example of her life and her will, my mother taught me about fiscal discipline, the value of a dollar, budgeting; and most importantly, how thoughtful investment, when coupled with hard work, can provide empowerment and opportunity. So, as someone who has struggled to run a small business, and who had to balance budgets and manage that most precious of resource—taxpayer dollars—as a statewide elected official in a state where budgets must, by law, be balanced—deficits do matter.
So as our nation convulses from one more report of rising unemployment (now 9.2 percent), and more and more of our citizens doubt the sincerity, let alone the ability of elected officials to actually get something done, what must the White House, the GOP led Congress and Democrats in the Senate do to show they get it and are serious about restoring strength to our economy? (1) Respect where the money comes from in the first place—you and me; (2) Make the tough choices—now, not down the road; and (3) stop playing political games to block needed reforms. Read the rest of… After today’s focus on the debt ceiling debate, tomorrow, we look at the bigger picture — how is the American Dream surviving under our new economy paradigm, and what is the role of the individual citizen? Tomorrow, two of our most well known contributing RPs — Michael Steele and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend (most from Maryland) — take a look at our country during this current economic downturn. Citing JFK, MLK Jr, and others, the two offer their distinctly different visions about America’s future. And to make sure you know we aren’t taking ourselves too seriously, the RP offers another one of his Top 5 pop culture lists. We think you will really enjoy it. So join us tomorrow! The Politics of Tech A collab-oration that includes several large ISPs has recently been announced. The plan would call for the ISPs, including Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner, etc., to slow down, redirect, or possibly even cut off internet access for people accused of copyright infringement. [Wired] If you have never heard of Dropbox you should know they are taking the time to do right by their users. They recently updated their TOS to be explicitly clear: your stuff belongs to you. A direct quote from the new TOS: “You retain full ownership to your stuff. We don’t claim any ownership to any of it.” Companies like Facebook that intentionally write in vague and broad language into their TOS should take a page out of Dropbox’s book and realize that users appreciate honesty and privacy. [Dropbox Blog] Bob Lutz, the former Vice chairman of General Motors, has stated that his way to get the economy going is to take the power away from the MBA’s and give it back to the engineers. Personally, I find his argument that consumers are best served by a product-driven philosophy very agreeable. [TIME] A group of 90 law professors has banded together to oppose the Protect IP Act that is making it’s way through Congress on the grounds that it violates the First Amendment right to free speech. [ars technica] As part of today’s theme here at The Recovering Politician, the RP himself weighs in on the debt ceiling crisis consuming Washington. Here is his column, cross-posted at The Huffington Post:
Click here to read the rest of the RP’s column at The Huffington Post. Shopping for a new religion? The social enterprise group The Blood Foundation has a way for you to test-drive Islam in their “Muslim for a Month” program. [BBC News] The United Church of Christ, a denomination that has been a long time advocate for gender neutral God language, updates its bylaws to replace the term “Heavenly Father” with “Triune God,” and in doing so, draws criticism from many Christian websites. [USA Today] The last movie in the Harry Potter series premieres in theaters this week. While some religious groups condemn the series as promoting witchcraft, others have embraced the series as promoting the ideals of love, forgiveness, and grace. Here is one article that examines Harry Potter based on Christian theology. [Huffington Post] (For those of you who need something to tide you over until Friday, click here to watch the official trailer of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2.) |
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