A Blog of My Own

Tony Miceli takes his first steps after knee replacement surgery.

I think Barack Obama has torticollis.

First, let me say that I’m greatly heartened by his unequivocal rejection of Jeremiah Wright today. (The above screen shot is from his press conference that greatly heartens me.) The disgust he expresses, which goes much farther than his “race” speech in Philadelphia, is everything one could wish for.

But second, let me say that the head tilt that is evident in the screen shot has me a little worried. Not on America’s behalf, but on Barack’s. I first began to notice it about a month ago, in the last debate, the one held in Philadelphia. (The one in which he endured 45 minutes of questioning about his personal associations.) That night, he showed a consistent tendency to tilt his head camera-left (to his own right), and it is apparent that he is still doing this. The tilt is actually more pronounced than the sreen shot shows.

At the time, I remarked on this to my personal trainer (I am working on my own posture, which leaves something to be desired), and she replied that it could be torticollis. Torticollis can either be congenital (part of your m.o. from birth), or it can be acquired in adulthood. If congenital, the cause

is unclear. Birth trauma or intrauterine malposition is considered to cause damage to the sternocleidomastoid muscle in the neck. This results in a shortening or excessive contraction of the sternocleidomastoid muscle, often with limited range of motion in both rotation and lateral bending. The head is typically tilted in lateral bending toward the affected muscle and rotated toward the opposite side.

If torticollis is acquired in adulthood, the cause can be anything from consistently sleeping in a bad bed, to (God forbid) a tumor at the skull base, to (God forbid again) the taking of antipsychotic drugs. I don’t know what is causing Obama’s torticollis (and the screen shot doesn’t do justice to the degree of head tilt I’ve seen him demonstrate in the last month), but my lay diagnosis is that he has it. I hope he finds the cause, and then finds the cure. I want my President to have his head screwed on straight.

Ellis Weiner has the most convincing explanation I’ve read of why Hillary’s argument (“Barack hasn’t won the big Democratic stronghold states in the primaries, and so can’t win them in the general”) doesn’t make sense.

There has been no lack of responses to this argument of Hillary’s, but Weiner’s logic is the first that persuades me. Likening the Democrats to one team and the Republicans completely another, he writes:

Saying that Obama can’t win Pennsylvania in November because he lost to Hillary is like watching an intra-squad practice game among, say, the San Antonio Spurs, and concluding–after one team “loses”–that the Spurs can’t possibly hope to compete in the playoffs.

As usual with Weiner, the piece is witty along with being well-reasoned. Read it by clicking the link.

Back in October, I identified two things in our lives today which, against all odds, are unchanged in the last fifty years. Here’s another.

Intercity train conductors.

And thank God for them.

In this day and age, a system which requires a human to walk through a train car and physically take tickets—then put stubs into slots above the seats in order to signify who has produced a ticket, where he got on, and where he’s getting off—then walk through at each new stop to check the stubs and collect tickets from new passengers who don’t have stubs yet—then remove stubs from above the seats where previously-boarded passengers have detrained—seems antiquated. Surely there must be a “better” way! But can you think of one? I can’t.

Not only that; I can’t think of any other solution that would work at all, if railroads are not to let passengers ride free at will.

A typical Amtrak run—say, the one that starts in Washington and ends in Boston, with stops in Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia, New York, and Stamford—during which any given car contains a mix of passengers who boarded in any of these several cities and who are destined for any of them—creates the possibility for no other solution than the train conductor. He is unchanged since 1958. Essentially, he is unchanged since 1858!

And every Amtrak train conductor I’ve ever met has been a thorough professional, well-trained in his work, friendly and helpful to passengers. In 2008, how remarkable is that? He, or she, provides one remaining contact with humanity in this increasingly dehumanized world.

Someday, someone may invent an electronic way to do what the train conductor does today. I hope that day does not come until after I’m dead.

When it comes to train conductors, I am “all aboard.”

The newest issue of Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor is out, and at fine comic book stores everywhere. And guess what? I and my wife Angie are in it.

Harvey and his wife Joyce Brabner have been friends of ours for about twenty years now. A couple of years ago they were in Chicago again, staying with us, and Harvey writes about this trip in a story called “Chicago Visit,” illustrated by Hilary Barta.

Here are a few frames from the story. We entertained Harvey and Joyce at home, took them to some of our favorite haunts (including our friend John’s hair salon Urban Lift, where Harvey got a haircut, and to our favorite deli, The Bagel, so that they could meet our favorite waitress, Brenda), and went with them to the venues in which Harvey was appearing. We really enjoyed the days we spent together, and it was gratifying to read in the story how much they enjoyed it, too.

You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania…the jobs have been gone now for 25 years…And each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to…anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Obama doesn’t seem to think blue-collar workers have a legitimate reason to be anti-trade. If they are against it, it must be because they “cling to” an anti-trade “sentiment.” It couldn’t possibly be a rational response to what’s happened to their lives. Oh no.

I might have used the word “embrace” rather than “cling to.” But Obama didn’t. “Cling to” has connotations of irrational desperation, and in the context of a list of beliefs that also includes racism (as Obama’s list did), there’s no other way to interpret the phrase. And I might have used the word “position” rather than “sentiment,” which, being about feelings, also suggests irrationality. But Obama didn’t. Net, the small-town folks of Pennsylvania must not know any better than to be anti-trade. They just don’t get that global trade benefits us all!

The truth is that the blue-collar people who hate free trade are speaking from enlightened self-interest, and we white-collar types who welcomed it unreservedly were dumb, because we didn’t see how bad the consequences would be. Nor how they might spread to include us. (If anything, some of us have been “clinging to” something—the faith that global trade is for the common good.) Blue-collar people are not scapegoating free trade as “a way to explain their frustrations.” They are correctly identifying free trade as what did them in! Why must Obama believe they are incapable of analyzing their situation and expressing their position directly?

If the jobs of the ruling elite, the management and professional jobs, were the ones at risk of going overseas in the last three decades, do you think for one moment that the managerial/professional class would have let that happen? The idea is preposterous. But we let it happen to blue-collar jobs—let me rephrase that: to grow our wealth, we made it happen to blue-collar jobs—because those weren’t our jobs.

Unfettered free global trade is an assault by the white-collar class on the blue-collar class. They see it for what it is. Some of us still don’t.

Global trade may be (let’s hope) a net plus, but we haven’t cared very much about those on the short end of its stick. We gave lip service to the reality that there were going to be winners and losers, but we didn’t spend much effort on limiting the damage to the losers. And the reason we didn’t is that we “clung to” a religion that said that global free trade was an unmitigated blessing.

Was he hipper than he seemed? He’d almost have to have been.

Mike Douglas hosted a daytime TV talk show that at its peak was syndicated to 171 U.S. markets and watched by 6 million viewers a day. The show began as a local effort by station KYW in Cleveland in 1961. Westinghouse Electric, which owned the station, started airing it on its four other owned-and-operated stations in 1963. (One of these was WJZ in Baltimore, which is how I became acquainted with The Mike Douglas Show as an after-school watcher early on.) In 1965 the production of the show moved to Philadelphia, and it was seen on stations all over the country.

You never knew whom you might see on the show during its near-20-year run. From Barbra Streisand to Mother Teresa, from Mel Brooks to Martin Luther King, from The Rolling Stones to Richard Nixon, from Alfred Hitchcock to a two-year old Tiger Woods in his first television appearance, the show had them all.

Douglas had an amiable wit about him, but you always sensed him playing safe because of his keen awareness of his audience, comprised mainly of women at home in the afternoon. He’d been a singer in show business for twenty years when the show first aired. But on his show, he played the naif, easily shocked by anything outside the mainstream. Undoubtedly he was pandering to his audience, playing the surrogate (as he imagined it) for the 38-year old housewife from Council Bluffs. He had a square and smarmy hit record, improbably enough in 1966, called The Men in My Little Girl’s Life, which continued the brand. Listen if you dare.

One of show’s trademarks was to have a celebrity sit in with Mike each week as co-host for all five shows. Undoubtedly the strangest mashup occurred February 14, 1972 through February 18, when Mike was joined all week by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. The whole week is available on DVD, and I thought it would be a gas to watch. I was wrong. But it is fascinating, for one thing to try to figure out just what Mike Douglas really feels about John and Yoko.

Because the mythical housewife in Council Bluffs valued politeness towards ones’s guests, Douglas seems to strain hard to adopt an air of nonjudgmentalness towards his radical cohosts—a politesse that seems to cloak a genuine disapproval.

But you can’t tell what’s real and what isn’t, because he may very much want Mrs. Council Bluffs to feel that he has contempt for these Commie hippies, and so wants that disdain to come through.

Yet it may have been a disdain he didn’t actually feel.

Does he think he’s conveying nonjudgmentalness, unaware that his underlying disapproval (if genuine) is obvious? Or does he want to convey contempt, and thinks he’s being clever to disguise it as nonjudgmental curiosity, well-aware that the disguise is transparent? When he conveys disapproval and distance, is that what he actually feels, or does he dig them and can’t show it because appearing to dig them would alienate his audience, sponsors, and corporate masters?

In this eight-layered Napoleon pastry of real and faux, how many of the layers are phony and how many are genuine, and which are which? Are layers 1, 5, 6 and 8 sincere, while layers 2, 3, 4 and 7 are not? The permutations are endless. It’s exhausting to try to figure out, and not that pleasant to watch.

And yet perversely fascinating.

What led to the bizarre booking? John and Yoko had something to gain. John, regarded as a political enemy by the Nixon White House, was fighting deportation. (A fight that’s documented in the recent film The U.S. Vs. John Lennon.) Finding some way to appeal to “middle America,” prove he wasn’t a threat to national security, and win the hearts and minds of moms everywhere, was obviously their game plan.

I think the sheer WTF factor explains what was in it for The Mike Douglas Show. But then, having signed on for that, Douglas felt it obligatory to play the disapproving “grownup” all week. Quel drag.

Nevertheless, I will probably get the new DVD, Mike Douglas: Moments & Memories, that came out a couple weeks ago. Essentially a highlights-reel from the show’s long run (plus bonus interviews), it may provide a clue to the enigma wrapped in a conundrum wrapped in a sweet flaky crust that was Mike Douglas, who died in 2006.

Here’s what really impresses me about Obama’s bowling a 37. Michael Dukakis does something he’s clearly not comfortable doing (wears a helmet and rides in a tank) and loses an election because of it. George Bush does something he’s clearly not comfortable doing (talks, tap dances), and a nation rises up in ridicule. Barack Obama does something he’s clearly not comfortable doing, and it only makes him more fantastic! At least I think so. If it is possible for me to like him more than I did before the bowling, I like him more after it.

Many of the commentators are saying, “What a fool. Doesn’t he know that if you’ve never done something, you should never do it for the first time in front of millions of people?” Blah blah blah. Here’s the narrative I put to the event: “I am a man with exceptional talents, but I am also a man with shortcomings. I am not afraid for you to know this. I have no need for you to believe that I am perfect, for I am not. There are things I cannot do. If you are honest with yourself, you will admit that there are things you cannot do. Don’t be afraid of being human. And don’t be afraid, even, to make a fool of yourself from time to time. Don’t go around feeling that the only side of yourself that you dare to show to people is the ‘perfect’ one. Be brave.”

Bernadette Peters’ concert version of a song from Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George–which my iPod put on shuffle-play about an hour after I wrote the above, in another one of those weird iPod synergies–feels like the perfect soundtrack to Obama’s bowling. Click here to listen to an excerpt.

The recent violence seems to provide clarity by showing that the surge hasn’t worked, which provides clarity that we should just get out. There, that was simple. But in whose hands does Iraq end up if we do? It looks like it ends up in Iran’s hands. (Based on the news that yesterday’s ceasefire was brokered by Iran.) So, do we want an Iran twice as big and oil-rich as now? It appears our national security reason to be in Iraq is not to “achieve stability” in Iraq, but to keep it from becoming a satellite of Iran. Which is actually a really good reason!

(And, our own security aside, what do we do about the millions of Iraqis who don’t want to be living in Iran 2 but are powerless to prevent it?)

On the third hand, would I want my nephew, who turns 18 this year, to get drafted to fight for this cause? No. Am I OK with Americans dying there just because they volunteered, which they probably did for want of any better prospects? No.

Boy, am I glad I’m not running for President.