To put it bluntly, the eyesight of this old essayist is not as sharp as it was when soldering was my occupation. So after 67 years of driving cars and trucks and airplanes, my head prevailed over my heart and my retirement from driving cars has now occurred. If there is an emergency, of course, there is no prohibition on my coming out of retirement to take the wheel once more.
When one approaches the eighth decade of life, it becomes an article of faith with every newspaper reporter that in the case of any mishap, the lead sentence will pivot on the age of the oldster. If, for example, an 82 year old man parks his car, enters a drugstore and his car is hit while he is buying his Geritol, the lead sentence in any newspaper account will say, “The car of an 82 year old man was involved in a serious collision.” That is the way it is. My retirement is meant to thwart such journalistic bombast.
Being a retired driver means that Ms. Chicka drives while freeing me to look at the passing scenery and to muse a bit now and then. Actually, my musing goes on pretty much full time as there is no attempt on my part to tell Ms. Chicka how her driving could be improved. My contribution is to look out the window, adjust the heat controls and think about esoteric facts of life. In Army days, the pilot flew the plane and my job was to look for FW190’s or Messerschmitt 109’s. So things haven’t changed much. My current ponderings often have no obvious conclusion, but they give me something to think about now that my responsibilities no longer include driving. So you are invited to ponder and muse along with me on some of life’s mysteries.
Lawn Signs and Bumper Stickers
As these lines are written, the 2004 elections are three or four weeks into history. Summit, New Jersey, an affluent community, seems to tolerate lawn signs even on 15 or 20 room mansions on Hobart Avenue. The signs urge the viewer to vote for various people for councilman or woman as well as candidates for the presidential race. Bumper stickers abound mostly on the rear bumpers where following drivers are forced to look at them.
The printing industry must make handsome profits on signs and stickers. That is all well and good, but can anyone assure me that a driver encountering signs and stickers, will say, “That’s the man or woman who gets my vote because it looks so nice on the lawn sign or the bumper sticker?” For my money, it is a case of one politician printing such signs because his opponent has such material. At election time, put your spare cash into printing company stocks.
Entrepreneurial Hijinks
You will see many car trunks and fenders these days with an eight or ten inch loop saying, “Support the Troops.” These loops have an adhesive on the back so they will stick to any surface.
The loops were hijacked from messages urging people to be aware of breast cancer. The loops about the troops are sold in hardware stores, drugstores and convenience stores.
A not very bright fellow was asked by a television reporter about the profits produced by the loops. He said the profits went to the troops. How could anyone be so dense. The profits have nothing to do with troops of any kind. The profits go to the marketers who invented the idea, to the printing companies and to the people at the point of sale. And those people have no intention of becoming Privates, PFC’s and Corporals. They are much too busy banking their profits to think about taking up soldiering for their life’s work.
Soon there will be loop signs that say, “Bring the troops home.” Some are now appearing. But again, whatever profits there are won’t be going to troops of any kind.
Odd size waist measurements – Men’s Division
Clothing manufacturers have an aversion to odd size waist measurements. If a person has a 35 inch waist line, his clothing store may shoehorn him into a 34 inch pair of pants. For an additional fee, the pants may be altered so that they fit. Ah, but that is not the American way. Is there a constitutional prohibition on garments, particularly pants, manufactured in odd rather than even sizes?
Belt makers produce belts only in even sizes. Does anyone know if belt makers who produce odd size belts will find themselves prosecuted? This charade has been going on for all of my life. Maybe after Congress deals with the 9-11 Commission findings, they may give some thought to men’s clothing. In my lifetime, that is a forlorn hope, but it is one of my musings.
Rooney on election results
Andy Rooney is, of course, the well known essayist who delivers four or five minutes of comment at the end of “60 Minutes” broadcasts. He got a hostile message which claimed that all the people at CBS News were liberals who voted exclusively for John Kerry. Rooney said that was not the case at all. He said the 50%-50% split at CBS News was the same found throughout the country. Rooney said, “50% of us voted for Kerry and 50% registered their hatred for Bush.”
Several commentators have said Kerry lost because of guns, gays and God. They may well be right.
Ashcroft on the way out
John Ashcroft is the worst Attorney General of the U.S. in our 228 years as a government. He is so utterly terrible that George Bush told him his services were no longer needed. Ashcroft comes from a Missouri town near Howard Davis’s ancestral home of Defiance.
My musings about Ashcroft have to do with “providence” and crime and terrorism. Brother Ashcroft said recently that providence was responsible for there being no terror attacks on the U.S. since the Bush Administration took over. If that is even halfway true, where was Ashcroft’s providence on September 11, 2001 when the same crowd of neo-cons was also in control? Poor old John can’t have it both ways.
When Ashcroft resigned, he did not dictate a letter to his secretary. No, he produced a five page handwritten letter to Bush in which he said the campaign “against terror and crime has been accomplished.” Presumably, the disappearance of crime and terror came about because Ashcroft was the Attorney General. If those facts are even remotely true, why do we still have police departments, and soldiers getting killed in Iraq?
In the main hall of the Justice Department building in Washington there is a statue of a woman largely unclothed. One of Ashcroft’s first acts was to order the breasts of the statue to be covered. To the extent that we have naked female statues in the halls of justice, we will also have crime and terror. Ashcroft has pulled a magical triple play. By covering the breast or breasts of the statue, he set in motion the sacred campaign to wipe out crime and terror. For that he has earned our eternal thanks. Even Howard Davis never thought Ashcroft could do it.
Condoleezza and airplanes
During the hearings of the 9-11 Commission, the National Security Advisor stated that there is no way anyone in the Bush Administration could be blamed because terrorists flew airplanes into the World Trade Center. Condoleezza, who advises the U.S President, believed this was a new form of warfare never before contemplated. No one ever thought of such a thing, she said.
Condoleezza must not be a scholar of World War II. In that conflict, the Japanese had squadrons of Kamikazi pilots whose sole duty was to fly their airplanes into such things as U.S. aircraft carriers.
Harry Livermore, who was aboard the carrier “Ticonderoga,” saw a Kamikazi cause something like 300 American deaths when it struck his ship. The Russians used some of their aircraft propellers to slash holes in German planes during aerial warfare against the Soviet Union. The Russians were partial to the P39 Bell Air Cobra which we had lend-leased them. When ammunition ran out, the Russians used their own propellers to down German aircraft.
It is distressful to me that Condoleezza had no idea about aerial warfare including flying an airplane into a building or a ship or another war plane. My musings and pondering make me wonder what gave her qualifications such weight as to become Secretary of State. It beats me.
Porter Goss and the rules of the road for CIA employees
When George Tenet found himself the fall guy for the intelligence failures of the Bush Administration, he quit. Bush picked Porter Goss, a Florida Republican congressman, as his replacement at the Central Intelligence Agency.
In theory, the CIA is a non-political organization where different points of view are heard and tolerated. The thought being that our intelligence has to be impartial and to reflect the best estimates of the CIA. The CIA used to present facts to the administration and to Congress. Sometimes these facts run counter to political desires.
Old Porter took over as the head of the CIA with the obvious thought that this was a nest of leakers and nay-sayers. The resignations of 15 top CIA officials have been offered so far. More resignations are on the way as we write.
In a letter to CIA employees, Porter Goss said to forget all that B.S. about impartiality and differing points of view. In his second month of the job, Goss said he wanted to clarify “The rules of the road. We support the administration and its policies in our work.”
If the policy is to attack Iran, the CIA is expected to “support the administration.” If the policy is to attack Peru, every CIA gringo is expected to say, “go get ‘em.”
My ponderings are those of an old soldier. Somehow this all seems bass ackward. The CIA produces the intelligence which must guide the rest of the government. In Porter Goss’s view, the Bushies make a policy and require the CIA to support it. It seems to some of us that such a reversal of the normal order of things can bring us nothing but disaster. Is the government really going to say it is our policy that country “X” is suspected of having an atomic bomb and it is up to the CIA to produce the evidence even if there is none. This is Alice in Wonderland political stuff which causes me to muse and ponder about it. If the U.S. government is going to make policy before we have evidence, we are asking for more Vietnams and more conflicts with the Arab world. It is sort of like my knocking down a man in the street and requiring the cops to produce a justification for my attack. As we said, this is all totally bass ackward, to use one of my mother’s phrases.
Poor people always suffer
Just off hand, we have several friends in Florida who formerly worked for AT&T. One lives in the Northeastern part of the state, one lives in the northwestern part of the state and one lives far to the south below Naples. The hurricanes that struck Florida were relentless, but all of our acquaintances seem to have survived unharmed. But the poor people who live in trailers and insubstantial housing were largely wiped out. As these lines are written some three months since the hurricane season began, there are families waiting to acquire new housing, even if it is only a trailer.
This is a familiar tale. The people who have little most often suffer the most. My musings wonder if the suffering comes about because they have a high rate of abortions, which played such a part in the 2004 elections. Or was it that these poor people had a high rate of same sex marriages which some voters seemed to detest?
My ponderings tell me that poor people will take whatever money they have to buy bread and cheese for their children and for themselves rather than to give it to an abortionist. My instincts tell me that abortion and same sex marriages are developments that are seldom – if ever – thought about by poor people.
Many of us were raised during the Hoover Depression of the 1930’s when there was no work and we were poor. We did not worry about abortions and same sex marriages, but we still wonder why it is that nature or providence or unseen gods make it so hard for poor people to enjoy life.
Sin is damn near everywhere
Bob Carney who resides in that Sodom and Gomorrah liberal city of Wilton, Connecticut, reported on a conversation he had overheard in Jacksonville, Florida. Carney and his lawfully wedded female wife, were waiting for their luggage in the baggage area of the Jacksonville Airport. He reports, “We heard a well dressed woman and her daughter chatting with a skycap about how she would not raise her daughter in New York.” “Too liberal,” she said. The skycap agreed citing the “wrong values up there.” Minutes later, Carney’s wife began talking about a recent episode of “Desperate Housewives.” The woman who would not raise her child in New York said, “I love that show. It is so much fun.”
“Desperate Housewives” is the show that had its leading actress dressed, apparently only in a towel, in an encounter with the Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Terrill Owens. This was a short skit prior to a Monday night NFL football game. At the conclusion of the skit, she dropped the towel and jumped into Owens’ arms. This is very artsy stuff. All of it was done to promote “Desperate Housewives”!
The woman who thought New York too liberal most likely joined the rest of the voters in the 2004 election to support Bush. Curiously, the Pecksniffian right wingers who attend church services regularly the most, are the most regular watchers of TV trash such as “Desperate Housewives” and the Fox Network. These facts are not propaganda from the political opposition. These facts come from weekly independent studies done by the broadcasters themselves.
It must be a case of give sin hell on Sundays and on election day, but please don’t deprive me of my trash TV viewing all the rest of the month. My muses and my pondering say, “Go figure.”
Whatever is left of my mind will probably continue to collect musings and ponderings as Ms. Chicka does the driving. The yard signs urging support of political candidates are gone now, but the bumper stickers remain. My notes tell me there is material on hand to support Volume II of musings. If Volume I if a big seller, you may be sure its successor will be waiting in the wings unless this old essayist is distracted by broadcasts of trash television. The preachers are right. Sin is everywhere including right here in Short Hills, New Jersey.
E. E. CARR
November 27, 2004
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Nine essays in one! That’s gotta be some kind of record.
There was an interesting NYT piece the other day about how the cultural divide in this country manifests itself through TV viewership. The core of the piece is 50 maps showing viewer density for all sorts of different shows. Shows like Duck Dynasty and Teen Mom are extremely popular in places like Kentucky, but not so much in New York, which is watching The Daily Show and Game of Thrones.
With the yard signs and bumper stickers, I think that these matter a lot more for local elections than they do for national ones. People react well to name recognition, so if you’re driving around your neighborhood and see a ton of signs for like, a harbor supervisor, then you’re more likely to put that person’s name down if you get to the polls and can only remember that one name. For elections where a) parties play a big role and b) everyone knows both candidates anyway, like presidential elections or senate races, it’s hard to imagine they do any good whatsoever.
As a final thought, if the Bush administration was committing to “policy first, evidence later,” I wonder if team Trump will go with “policy first, evidence never” or “‘alternate facts’ first, policy second.” Both seem like good candidates.