John Martin Meek

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It’s the communications, Stupid

Anyone old enough to be living in Green Valley should remember the famous Jewish comedian named Georgie Jessell, otherwise known as the
”Toastmaster General.”       

In one of his comedy routines Georgie said his mother was going to be 80 years old and he wanted to give her a pet as a birthday gift. A cat would have been okay but she hated cats. Living in a Manhattan apartment, walking a dog was not safe. So he sent her a parrot to keep her company.

‘A week or so later he called his mother.

“Mom,” he said, “how did you like the parrot I sent you?”

“Oh, Georgie,” his mother said, “that was a nice gift. I had it for dinner last night and it was wonderful!”

“Mom,” yelled Georgie, “I can’t believe you ate that parrot. Why, it could speak five languages.”

“Well then,” his mother responded, “it should have said something.”

Does this story sound familiar when we hear, watch or read the news about the United Arab Emirates port deal gone south?

Years ago when he was on the Reagan White House staff I met briefly with Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Robert Kimmitt, chair of the group that approved the Arab business taking over the operation of some of our largest and most vulnerable ports.

Bob Kimmitt is no fool. I cannot believe he did not understand this was not a contract that should be given a full public airing, inasmuch as we have had some problems as well as some help from Dubai, the contractor.

If not, he should spend some time with B. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the very polished and articulate military spokesman for months after the war began in Iraq.

Whatever, the lesson to be learned here is that somebody in the Bush administration should have said something.

Had this not been sprung as a big surprise at the last moment before the contract was finalized, my guess is there would have been no major flap. So how out of touch could the Bush administration be, already up to its neck in quicksand made of the Iraq war, FEMA’s hurricane fiasco and the Medicare drug benefit Gordian knot, to not take this port deal public?

The answer is, to use one of LBJ’s favorite quotes, the Bush crowd at times does not know how to pour piss out of a boot with with the directions written on the heel.

In the warrens of the White House basement the National Security Council staff knew how the UAE has helped us in the war on terror and that key bridges, tunnels, government buildings and almost anything you can name except the New York Yankees is owned by foreign interests in countries around the globe.

             But the chances are that if the NSC staff did suggest advance communications and lobbying work putting silicone on the track to assure no backlash from politicians of both parties, trained by the Bush fear mongers to heel or be tagged as unpatriotic, someone high up vetoed the idea.

            Sometimes from outside the Beltway it may seem the behind-the-scenes magicians such as Karl Rove make no mistakes. That’s because most manipulate the media to create a persona that is infallible.

            But they aren’t.

            Candidate for president Bill Clinton had his brain trust made up of Paul Begala, James Carville and George Stephanopoulos whose clever strategy elected a most unlikely person to unseat a sitting president.

            However, once elected it was immediately clear they had not looked ahead to Jan. 21, 1993 when Clinton began to govern. But the incompetence went far beyond the sainted three to most of the White House staff. It later was reported that Stephanopoulos and his associates in fact had a cynical view of the power of the Oval Office when Clinton became president.

            And people call George Bush dumb.

            As one who has spent most of his career as a professional communicator, I can summarize Bush’s port deal disaster and Clinton’s gays in the military fiasco (both have had so many plans gone wrong it’s not easy to pick examples) in one simple sentence: People do not like surprises.

            Now that Bush has been caught literally and figuratively in bed with the Arabs, wrongly perceived by most Americans as part of the terrorist threat, this may mean the end to the White House portraying any person opposed to the war in Iraq as aiding the enemy.

            It’s up to the Democrats now to see that when they throw their mud on the wall, it sticks.

In the Matter of Medals

            There are so many distinguished military personages in the Tucson area I am reluctant to offer my two cents about the medal controversy now the focus of the Bush-Kerry presidential campaign.

            Locals include Gen. Davey Jones, a pilot with the Doolittle Raiders, and Gen. John Wickham, who fought in Vietnam and later achieved the high position of Army Chief of Staff.

            Once long ago I served as a Navy corpsman with the 1^st Marine Division during the Korean War. In a small way, some power came with this job because I alone could make the decision about who in my unit was awarded the Purple Heart for wounds sustained in combat.

            In our medical kits we carried a little book not unlike ones used by meter maids. We wrote the name of the wounded man on a ticket and attached it to his uniform. The book created a carbon copy for official records.

            I wrote tickets for men who had small shrapnel wounds not serious enough for evacuation, and for those killed by enemy rounds through the heart of head. In terms of the Purple Heart, that ticket book was a great equalizer because both situations qualified for the medal.

            As for minor wounds, obviously if a man was close enough to be nicked he was close enough to be fatally wounded.

            With heroism, people awarding military medals are no different than Olympic officials who mistakenly gave Paul Hamm a gold rightly earned by a Korean competitor. We make mistakes.

            For more than two years I have been working with U. S. Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) to have the Army upgrade two World War II heroes from the Distinguished Service Cross to the Congressional Medal of Honor.

            The men are Gen. Ken Taylor, who resides in Alaska but spends winters in Tucson, and the late George Welch, killed as a test pilot in 1954.

            Taylor and Welch were newly commissioned second lieutenants serving with a fighter squadron at Wheeler Field when the Japanese attacked the base and awakened them about 8 a.m. on Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941.

            Their squadron had been at gunnery practice flying from Haleiwa, an auxiliary field 10 miles from Wheeler. The two pilots quickly dressed and raced in Taylor’s car to the little field where their P40’s were armed and ready for takeoff.

            Acting on their own, Taylor and Welch took to the air facing a Japanese attacking force of some 300 fighters and bombers.

            After expending their ammunition, both pilots landed at Wheeler to be rearmed. Against direct orders from Wheeler’s senior officers, they went up again and shot down more Japanese planes. On the second flight a round from a Japanese plane on his tail whizzed by Taylor’s head and exploded in the cockpit, injuring his left arm. Welch saved his friend by downing the Japanese plane.

            To have any chance of getting Taylor and Welch’s medals upgraded, I must have written testimony from those who witnessed their great heroism. Several squadron members are still alive, but not a single one contacted can swear Ken and George did anything but take off and land twice. Even the number of planes each pilot downed is in dispute.

            After Dec. 7, the Army moved with unusual speed to award a DSC to both Taylor and Welch. In a press release issued Dec. 13, 1941, U.S. War Dept. Communiqué No. 19, they also were declared the first designated heroes of World War II.

            Although newspapers on December 14,1941 carried major stories about the two young heroes, based on Communiqué No. 19, a recent search by the National Archives found it was missing from the records. No. 18 is there. So is No. 20. No. 19 has disappeared.

            The Navy awarded a dozen Medals of Honor after Pearl Harbor and I have read the citations for all of them. Relatively speaking, Taylor and Welch would seem easily qualified for that high honor.

            I haven’t given up on this effort. But if I do not succeed I certainly have learned much about the controversial issue of military medals.

John Martin Meek,

Meek is a retired communications executive who has worn

the uniforms of the Army, Marines and Navy.        

When Does A Father Give A Son Advice

November 2nd, 2006

When Does A Father Give A Son Advice?

When does a father really give a son advice? For most fathers, it’s probably only in their dreams.

And when does a son usually ask a father for advice? Can you spell N-E-V-E-R?

These two issues count in the father-son relationship from beginning to the end.

My father didn’t give advice, he gave orders – usually, go to work or to the little smokehouse where he dealt his punishment with a razor strap. Education for their nine children was not a high priority among my parents.

So as we sons/fathers go through life we reap what our father sowed in us and what we sow in our children.

This is not a piece on sociology. It’s about the relationship between President Bush and his son, President Bush.

Becoming head of the world’s greatest superpower, where your father has held the same job, is not the same as a son consulting his father about the interest rate for the mortgage on a house he wants to buy

It’s about how our nation progresses, regresses, invades a country on an assumption, loses allies and loses the support of the people who look to their leader for wisdom and reasonable decisions.

Most of us don’t know much about the Bush-Bush relationship.

One story going to bad feelings is when Bush sons Jeb ran for governor of Florida and lost and George ran for governor of Texas and won, all on the same day.

Eventually George received a congratulatory call from his father, who only wanted to talk about the bad news with Jeb. They say this call still sticks in our leader’s craw.

More publicly known is what Bob Woodward has told us in his book, “Plan of Attack.” In October 2005 I heard Woodward speak and he related two chilling tales from the book.

At some point during his face time with the president he wanted to know if Bush had consulted his father about invading Iraq. This was a sensible query inasmuch as his father only a few years earlier had sent our military forces into battle with the same despot who headed the Middle East nation.

Bush’s response was that he had consulted with a higher Father. Since God has not talked to most of us recently, wouldn’t you like to know what He told the president?

Even more chilling was when Woodward asked our president how history might judge his actions.
“We may not be around to find out,” was the response.

To be fair and much optimistic, considering their own ages that might be true. After all, historians still have no consensus on the presidencies of Wilson, Roosevelt, Grant, Truman and Reagan.

However, since Bush was just approaching sixty it could be taken that we may all be toast at some time in the near future.

Former Gov. Tom Kean, who cochaired the 9/11 Commission, said on television recently his greatest fear is the catastrophic circumstances of terrorists exploding a nuclear device in New York or Washington.

Marry the comments of Bush and Kean and the future scenario is not just chilling, it’s damn scary.

In September, 2006, while on vacation in New Zealand the owner of the B&B where I was staying said he and his wife had friends from the States who had come down there years ago to escape a nuclear holocaust.

Come to think of it, they might have had a good idea.

A Matter of Guilt

October 7th, 2006

A Matter of Guilt

A little of fall has come to the southern desert of Arizona. This evening I am sitting pleasantly on my patio looking across the valley to the two sharp, young peaks of the Santa Rita Mountains. A cool breeze stirs the big mesquite in my neighbor’s back yard with its graceful branches weaving like a hula dancer.

It’s a most glorious site as the sky nears sunset. Above the mountains reflected on the scattered clouds are the bright colors of red, yellow, blue and gold as light shining through a prism.

As the sun moves down on the western horizon and the colors above the mountains disappear, a full moon rises highlighting the clouds of a buttermilk sky. It is a photo frame where Ansel Adams would have set up his tripod and loaded a camera to capture the contrast between the whiteness of the clouds against the blackness of the sky. No filters needed.

I know how lucky I am to be enjoying this delicious evening. Yet, in my thoughts there is a touch of guilt.

Who in sanity does not feel some guilt? The way we treat our parents, children, friends and even strangers. It’s human but not healthy if carried beyond reason.

My guilt is that I am thinking of our young men and women in Afghanistan and Iraq thousands of miles from the tranquility I am enjoying. It must be about 3 a.m. in the Middle East. Some troops are on guard duty while the majority sleep, perhaps restlessly knowing the day will bring patrols, convoys and dozens of other ways to be killed or wounded.

It’s not I feel I should be there with them. What could I do?

Recently on a trip to Washington, DC my son let me try on the helmet and armored vest he wore as a journalist embedded with the 82nd Airborne last summer in Afghanistan. Wearing this equipment and decked out as our military men and women are over there, I would be doing well to walk ten feet.

But once I was young and did carry heavy packs, a weapon and other equipment up the snowy mountains of Korea. As with any other group activity, doing chores such as that give you strength when with those in similar circumstances. Bitching in these situations is acceptable. Whining is not.

Periodically, as happened this week, one of the locals is killed over there. The military seems to try to get the bodies home as soon as possible with an escort from the unit, who often gives an emotional eulogy at the funeral or memorial service.

What grabs me in my gut is that both men and women killed in our wars are parents, mostly young guys with a wife and little children as survivors.

The wives seem very brave when seen on television or in newspaper photos. I’m sure they want to believe the husbands and fathers died for a noble cause. I feel guilty that I cannot bring myself to believe this is so.

However, I cannot imagine what happens in those homes after the cameras go away.

Not all these women are educated or have professions paying enough to sustain a family. If they can find work a major task likely will be finding day care for the kids.

Even with those burdens aside, think about the loneliness in those homes. Many of the children are much too young to know daddy will never be coming home with hugging and kissing as when he went away.

This loneliness must pervade and overwhelm the adult survivors. No matter how supportive friends and families may be, there will never be time when there is not a need to have a conversation, an argument, a consultation, laughs and the companionship that are parts of marriage.

So sitting here my mind becomes a commuter moving from the thoughts of dangers in the war zones to survivors back home, as a bee moves from one flower to the other.

I feel guilty that I did nothing more in the 2000 election than just vote against this president who has through self-devised propaganda led us into such a mess no one can seem to come up with a reasonable exit strategy.

Two years later I feel guiltier that I did not do more than vote for his opponent who, as the veteran of a terrible war, might have conceived a way to at least resolve an impossible situation in Iraq.

Finally, I feel some guilt but more remorse about all the emptiness in thousands of homes across the land with a human void that never can be filled.

It has been said that one person with enthusiasm is a majority.

And my heart is heavy that in some way I could not have filled that role.

— John Martin Meek

I Might Just Be Right –Again

October 6th, 2006

October 4, 2006

A Matter of Arrogance

Who does not remember a cliché question of the last decade when people asked, somewhat rudely, “What is it that you don’t understand about this?”

Now, an appropriate question might be, “What is it that you don’t understand about the way the House leadership is handling the Mark Foley crisis?”

I think I understand. Not because of all those years I spent inside the Beltway, but what seems perfectly obvious where I live 2,500 miles from the nation’s capital, and attitudes I’ve observed since George W. Bush took office on Jan. 20, 2001.

Many people no doubt would attribute this arrogance at the White House and even on Capitol Hill, with the GOP controlled House and Senate, to Karl Rove.

Unlike most top presidential aides who keep a low profile not competing with the boss, Rove probably would accept the accolades. He doesn’t deserve them.

What has happened simply is the arrogance of power. Sen. Frist and Speaker Hastert don’t need coaching on arrogance from Rove. It comes from a traditional arrogance of the GOP as the party of the rich and powerful and the years they have controlled Congress.

Sam Rayburn, the Democratic speaker for many years, is turning over in his grave.

As I write tonight, Bill Moyers is dissecting the Abramoff scandal in a 90-minute PBS special. At one point he mentions some of this going back to 1983.

In truth, it began shortly after Reagan took office and lobbyists who were workers in his campaign were flooded with clients sent to them inappropriately by top White House staff.

In the first Reagan year I invited a friend, bureau chief for Newsday, to give him facts, not hearsay, about some of this hanky panky. To my amazement, he frankly told me he did not care what the White House did. He would not look into it.

In 1983 after I had formed Hartz/Meek International with Jim Hartz, former host of NBC’s “The Today Show,” our public affairs division was hired to represent a kidney patients coalition to fight Reagan’s plans to cut funds for dialysis.

I was able to get “Nightline” to do a program on the issue and Dr. Art Ulene, with no contact by Hartz, did a “Today” segment pointing to this crisis.

A friend of years at the Los Angeles Times also was doing a major piece about the cut in funds. When she submitted it, word came from LA that the Times wanted no more negative stories about Reagan.

When I told Hartz, who knew Jack Nelson, the Times Washington bureau chief, he could not believe it.

“Why,” I asked," would this person make up a tale that could jeopardize her career as the reason for spiking a story?”

In some ways our paradigm for government came from the British. We have two legislative houses, a president with somewhat the same powers as their prime minister but without the royalty to fill the national coffers via loot from tourists.

But from long involvement and observation of the Brits, my view is that in government and the private sector the rule is to do whatever is necessary to succeed so long as you are not caught. If you are caught, then just go quietly into the night.

In modern times the Democrats and Republicans have had three speakers – Jim Wright, Carl Albert and Newt Gingrich – who chose the British way.

Dennis Hastert is sitting somewhere in Illinois tonight thinking he is going to ride out the Foley page scandal and screw those little media gnats who keep buzzing around as those when he rocks on his front porch.

Forget his loss of memory when the media first brings up Foley to the speaker. Remember all the details when talking to Rush Limbaugh, the king of media arrogance, on his radio show.

Contrary to what many think, Republicans do have tolerance for homosexual behavior. For example, several years ago my congressman, Jim Kolbe, joined Barney Frank and others in Congress who have come out of the closet. Back in our mostly right-wing district, Jim has won easily every two years and it was his decision – not any major Democratic threat – to retire.

Traditionally, we would expect anyone tainted with the Foley scandal to clear out his desk and move on down to K Street where you can send suggestive emails to teenagers with no fear while putting millions in a bank account.

But Speaker Hastert is not going to emulate Jim Wright and Carl Albert.and Newt. In the Republican arrogance prevalent for years in Washington, he is going to shrug it off and go on ruling over a legislative body as useless as those appendages on a boar.

I don’t think it will work. The Republican aide resigning today said Hastert knew about Foley’s preying on the page kids as long as three years ago.

And as another example of this kind of GOP arrogance that has spread across the country, the Republican state chairman for Minnesota said on “The Lehrer News Hour” tonight the people in his state are more focused on how the Twins will do in the baseball playoffs than the possible sex abuse of kids.

Of course he was safe in saying the Foley matter should be investigated to the fullest, arrogantly confident that Attorney General Gonzalez will never let the FBI go too far.

Both parties have had their members involved with teenagers in Washington from Congress to the White House. But, as Stan Greenberg, a Democratic strategist, said on “Lehrer” tonight, voters are not going to be looking at history when the Foley scandal is barely more than a month from the November elections.

Hastert’s reaction to Foley’s behavior is reminiscent of another cliche of the past from the women’s lib movement. “You just don’t get it do you?”

What the speaker could do is resign, stating frankly he did not act responsibly considering the body of evidence against Foley and his relation with the congressional pages.

He wouldn’t be a hero, but many would applaud him for admitting he was errant in his duties and was remorseful if young pages were inflicted with damage for the remainder of their lives.

But, arrogance prevails. Yet, I think he will be forced from his high position as the second in line to be president of the United States.

What he does not seem to realize is that even if through some miracle he stays, the reputation that took him to this high office will be sullied and history will remember Dennis Hastert as a man of high office who, though his lack of action, harbored a predator of teenage pages.

UPDATE on Hastert:  JUNE 2007:

Life goes on for House's Hastert

View From Down Under

September 21st, 2006

Auckland, NZ — Tonight I’m sitting pretty.

It’s almost 9 p.m. and I’m at the Ascot Parnell, a luxurious B&B in Auckland, New Zealand, with warmth from the fireplace and down below not far away are the lights of the harbor spread out as if on a giant, wide screen at the movie theatre. Even though there is a fancy stereo system in my suite, I have brought my own little MP3 and two small Sony speakers. At the moment Arthur Fiedler is directing the theme song from “High Noon.”

This is my second night in Auckland and I haven’t been out to dinner as I did every night when I first came here four years ago at the same time of the year — the end of New Zealand’s winter. Just a few hundred yards away is Parnell Road with a fine restaurant every other door. They can wait.

Tomorrow I will be 77 and dining at the St. Tropez, a restaurant with a reasonable reputation among the locals.  And guess what? I can celebrate twice. Tomorrow is Sept. 4 in New Zealand and the next day it will be Sept. 4 back home in Arizona.

It would be nice to have some dover sole meuniere, but outside of salmon the fish in New Zealand have strange names not unlike the cities and towns that probably reflect the indigenous Maori influence as do Native American communities such as Broken Arrow, Oklahoma and Cheyenne, Wyoming. Towns with names like Whangamata, Tauranga and Rotorua.

Forget the British colonial political connection as a paradigm for New Zealand.

Here voters register either as Maoris or New Zealanders. Because of the inevitable mixture of races, the darker color of the Maoris does not matter. A blue-eyed blonde can register as a Maori if she wishes.

Last year New Zealand elected a woman as prime minister on the same day Germany elected a woman as chancellor. With the conservative influence of Britain’s “Iron Lady” Margaret Thatcher still felt in the UK, perhaps this does tell us something about the chances Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) can become president of the United States.

But these are big issues better left to the media giants such as columnist Tom Friedman of The New York Times and others who have several Pulitzer Prize certificates hanging on their ego walls.

I want to write about some less important matters observed from almost a dozen trips including destinations in Europe, Mexico and around our own country.

After recovering from back surgery in March, 2005 and feeling well enough to travel a long distance, I first went to Italy. From Tucson it was a 24-hour flight to Rome, another flight to Bari which has been the historic site for invasions of Italy and then a three-hour drive to a resort called Akiris at Nova Siri under the arch of the boot.
There were several notable observations about Italy.

First, all men — tourists and locals — were wearing jeans. No khakis, no dress trousers, just jeans. Old Levi Straus would be very proud of having created perhaps the world’s greatest fashion statement.

Second, here was a country literally covered with grape vines and everybody was drinking beer. It begged the question, if the Italians are not drinking their own wine then who is?

Third, everybody I saw was smoking a cigarette.

For Italy, I predict an enormous economic disaster. With countries such as Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, Germany, New Zealand. South Africa, Spain and the United States flooding the market with fine wines, what will be the market for Italian vino?

We know vineyards in the U.S. have increased by the hundreds in recent years.

In New Zealand, there were 516 licensed wineries last year, an increase of 53 over the previous year. Since 1996, the amount of land used for growing grapes has more than tripled. Grape and wine production has increased by 200 percent and wine exports have soared in value by around 700 percent.

For your next trip to Trader Joe’s look for Malborough Sauvignon Blanc — the most popular variety abroad.

Another economic problem European and Asian countries face will be the exploding costs of health care to take care of the numerous diseases brought about by chain smoking.

After only two days in New Zealand I see another major health situation, recently brought to the attention of the American public by former Surgeon General of the United States Richard Carmona of Tucson.

It’s called obesity. The negative consequences are in the areas of cardiology, high blood pressure and in time hip and knee replacements.

Dr. Carmona’s obesity program definitely is one of the best ideas to come from the Bush Administration in its six years of governance.

However, the likelihood of real results in a national obesity program likely will be far more challenging and less successful than President Eisenhower’s surgeon general who first called the nation’s attention to the harmful effects of cigarettes.

The reason is simple. While only a small percentage of Americans smoke, 100 percent eat. Do the math.
When I first came to New Zealand in 2002 I was much impressed with the number of young women, trim, well dressed and just all around unusually attractive.

Enter the Mickey Dee’s syndrome where moderation in food consumption is as passé as garter belts and Peter Pan collars on blouses.

In New Zealand the beautiful female clothing has been replaced almost exclusively by faded jeans looking as if they have not been washed since they were purchased a year ago.

The trim bottoms of the young females more or less are no more, having being replaced by the “saddlebags” named for the protruding leather appendages to saddles that viewed from the rear add to a horse’s girth.

Maybe we can blame some of this decline in dress on Seattle, where the grunge look originated.
Now grunge has turned to gross.

How far will this go? To the point of where young guys get together in the old “Marty” tradition to go bowling, playing darts at the local tavern or watching sports on HDTV plasma TV screens in somebody’s rec room– because they seem more viable pastimes than dates with women in dirty jeans, with saddlebags befitting John Wayne’s Horse in “She Wore A Yellow Ribbon.”

We could be optimistic because what drives the fashion industry is change. Even the $3 thongs bought at Wally World are built well enough to last quite a long time. They are like Toyotas and Nissans where 200,000 clicks on the speedometer are routine anymore.

Therefore, to sell the products of the so-called “rag” industry there must be change and the more change the better.

The question is, will the fashion gurus keep driving grunginess until it goes over the cliff, or return to classy dress that turns the eyes of young men from bowling balls to those nice round things that swing back and forth under a nice pair or tight black wool slacks.

Because of the way we operate in America I’m betting the fashion industry will pull a “Thelma and Louise” act and drive the “jean look” over the brink of the canyon.

As the saying goes, “If something isn’t broken, then don’t fix it.” And it appears the jeans fashion statement doesn’t come close to having 200,000 miles on its speedometer.

To conclude the fashion observations, let’s go back to Seattle where the grunge look began and I spent a week recently.

The first two evenings I was treated to dinner by an old friend who was with CBS back in my political days almost 40 years ago.

There was no grunginess among either the women or the men in two different, upscale restaurants. It would appear that in the case of the hippy dress starting in San Francisco and spreading world wide, Seattle has come full circle to dressing up a bit.

In my novel “The Christmas Hour,” the young male teacher who is having an affair with a female student stands in the doorway of his home and watches his honey and her friend walk away in tight jeans. He feels there is nothing sexier to him than a great female rear in a close-fitting pair of jeans.

Did I really write that? What must I have been thinking?

This jeans kudzu spread might be compared to a kid in a candy shop. One or two pieces are great. But when sated with candy the kid becomes sick in the tummy.

And I can’t wait until people get out of old Levi Straus’ jean store.  

I Hate Grouches

March 5th, 2006

Move Over Andy Rooney, It’s My Turn To Be A Grouch

Move over Andy Rooney, you curmudgeonous old coot. You’ve had decades to gripe to us every Sunday night from the prestigious pulpit of CBS’ “60 Minutes” program. I have a few gripes of my own.

You know what I’m sick and tired of, Andy? Grouches.

Now, who could not love Oscar when he comes out of his garbage can to grouch on “Sesame Street?” After Kermit the Frog, Oscar is my favorite character on the show. Moi? I’ve just never been much of a Miss Piggy fan.  Especially, I’m annoyed by guys such as Andy, who get rich being professional grouches about nitpicking subjects that usually don’t amount to a hill of beans.

It’s not enough that we have to hit the “mute” button on our remotes every Sunday night while Andy grouches, but now they’ve added another Andy grouch piece on my very favorite TV program, “CBS Sunday Morning.”

Andy, now something like 86, many times has mentioned his service in the Army during World War II.

Early on, an Internet bio says, Andy served in England with an artillery unit but was then transferred to work on Stars & Stripes, the military newspaper. I assume he and Bill Mauldin, the great cartoonist who started with Stars & Stripes, were big buddies back then.

That gives him some credentials as a dogface, but apparently his sole combat experience was when he and several other correspondents flew in American bombers on a mission over Germany.

And I bet Andy would, if he thought of it, love to do a “60 Minutes” segment on how LBJ got a medal serving in the Navy during World War II when he flew on a mission in the South Pacific.

I give Andy credit for several hours of bravery on that flight. But of course he came back to a base with an officer’s club or a town with a pub, hot food and a room with sheets on the bed.

Wait a minute, that’s not right. I don’t think Andy was in any officer’s club because he never rose above the rank or corporal or maybe sergeant.

However, in the tradition of Richard Nixon I will not extend my grouchiness to what Andy did in the war. After all, everybody can’t be a great hero like Sgt. York, Audie Murphy and Vernon Baker, only African American to receive the Medal of Honor (from President Clinton in 1997) in World War II.

A few years ago the National Society of Newspaper Columnists held its annual meeting at one of those high-end hotels on the north side of Tucson.

Andy, who also writes a newspaper column, was the speaker and received the Ernie Pyle Award from the NSNC. I guess they didn’t know about my brilliant columns or they would have given the award to me.

When the dinner was over, I hoped Andy would go to the group’s hospitality suite and I could ask him at what point in his life did somebody lick the red off his lollypop.

I also wanted to ask him if he would like to borrow my weed whacker to trim his eyebrows.

Instead, old and bent, he stalked out of the room where the dinner was held looking as grouchy as ever.

Recently someone sent me an email about one of Andy’s weekly grouch sessions. It was about what we can do to reduce our deluge of junk mail.

A sidebar here, as they say in the newspaper business.

When I spent 12 years with one of the largest international public relations firms, a client was the junk mail industry. Some smarty, possibly one of my associates, came up with a fancy new name for the group, “Direct Mail Marketing Association.” Probably got a raise for it.

The junk mail group’s Washington lobbyist was a tall, beautiful blonde who couldn’t tell the difference between the Capitol and the White House.

But she had this bright little guy who was her sidekick and carried her briefcase while she schmoozed with the association bigwigs. His name was Gary Bauer, the righteous right-winger who ran for the GOP presidential nomination in 2000. I think Gary was going to law school at night when I knew him, and obviously night school paid off.

One of Andy’s tips was to take the letters, brochures and applications from the credit card companies, put them in the enclosed self-addressed, stamped envelopes and send them back.

Andy’s thesis was that these credit card companies, usually big banks, are stuck with paying the return postage.  Brilliant. I can see this little trick is going to make a huge dent in the profits of Capital One or Chase, which probably did more than $10 billion each in credit card business last year.

Thanks, Andy, for telling us how to stick it to the big boys

I think I missed Andy’s segment that week because I would like a tip on what to do with all those catalogs coming every day from L.L. Bean, Sierra Traders and the Pottery Barn.

What I do is take a big magic marker, black out my name and address and throw them in the trash. This costs me, because I get so many catalogs a magic marker lasts only about a week.

I’m going to end this diatribe with one more grouch

If I’m going to be stuck with that stack of junk mail catalogs every day, why can’t I now and then get one from Victoria’s Secret?

Zippers and Zappers of Nostalgia

February 25th, 2006

Zippers and Zappers of Nostalgia

Nostalgia for some is zip and to others it’s zap (read sap).

I’m a zapper, and the death of Curt Gowdy, the famous sportscaster, brought back many fond memories.

To a kid growing up in a very small town in Oklahoma, listening to sporting events on the radio was god. During the World Series I always wanted to play hooky to listen to games in the afternoon but I didn’t.

Of course, during those depression years we would all huddle around the radio at night to listen to FDR’s fireside chats.

That was before Gene Autry gave us “never is heard, a discouraging word” from “Home on the Range.” Easier said as a rich cowboy actor and singer, than as a poor telegraph operator when Will Rogers discovered him in the Claremore, Okla. train depot.

The first time I remember hearing Gowdy was his broadcast of baseball games in Oklahoma City, which had a team that was a farm club of the Cleveland Indians.

Curt also did the commercials. Strangely for a kid reared in a strict, fundamentalist Baptist home, the commercial I seem to remember was for a beer. I can still hear Curt’s voice touting “Silver Fox, made from the choice of the brewer’s hops.”

Except I’ve never known anybody who could remember a beer, probably marketed only in Oklahoma, called Silver Fox.

But I’m pretty certain. (On Google, I found some cat with a label from a Silver Fox bottle.)

It’s somewhat like my memory of going to school in New York during my Navy years and there being four pro football teams playing there. For years when I brought up the subject in guy talk everyone thought that simply wasn’t true. Then one day in a business meeting with a former New Yorker, I put forth my memory and he ticked off the names.

They were the Bulldogs, Dodgers, Giants and Yankees, and somewhere in an old scrapbook I have ticket stubs from the Bulldogs’ games.

But sometimes I am a little too much taken with my half-vast memory.

In 1982 Doubleday asked me to write a book about Washington lobbying, using my success stories as case histories. (And where were these guys when I finally did have books to publish?)

So I sat down at my typewriter at home and started. But as a former newspaper reporter I knew it was best to check the facts even if I was writing about events in the recent past.

I was shocked to find how wrong I was on votes in Congress on the issues where I had a client interest. So when I started writing my novel, “The Christmas Hour,” in December of 1997 I researched one issue in the book almost every day for a year and a half.

Back to Curt, I didn’t even know he was from Wyoming until I was visiting there once and saw a park named after him.

As with Bill Stern and Mel Allen, Curt Gowdy will always live in my memories of those wonderful days of radio when with their words and a lot of imagination, I could in my mind’s eye see exactly what was happening on the baseball diamond or football field.

Not always exactly as it was happening.

When I was on the staff of the Naval Hospital in San Diego in 1949, the city leaders created a New Year’s Day event called the Harbor Bowl.

The teams selected to play were Nevada and Villanova.

Nevada had a quarterback named Stan Heath who was the leading passer in college play that year. Villanova had a bunch of big old boys who were sons of Pennsylvania and West Virginia coal miners.

A few plays into the game a Villanova defensive player charged through the line and hit Stan. An ambulance came out on the field and took Stan to a hospital.

That was the game so far as fans were concerned with the great passer out, and it eventually ended with a score of 27-7 Villanova. Not to Bill Stern, who was calling it on the radio. I had brought a little radio with me and until the very end, Bill would have had his listeners thinking it was the game of the year.

One year when the Cardinals were in the series it was quite cold for a game in St. Louis. Whoever was calling the game was describing something players were wearing under their uniform tops called a “turtleneck” sweater.

I thought that was really cool. But it was years later when I started skiing before I ever owned one.

Were the players really wearing turtlenecks? What I can’t remember is ever seeing any photograph showing one wearing a turtleneck but that doesn’t mean this tidbit, too, wasn’t just created by a kid’s imagination.

As we moved on from radio to television we did not need those great voices to paint word pictures because the cameras did that for us.

That is not all good. As a friend, an Olympic gold medal winner, said to me last week in discussing the Winter Olympics in Torino, “Why don’t those commentators just shut up. How many opinions and technical details do we need to know when all those pretty pictures are right there on the screen?”

That won’t change. And with appropriate respect to our current sports commentators such as Bob Costas and Al Michaels or anyone else you can name, in my opinion they just don’t make them anymore like those old radio guys.

Adios, Bode. Ever Hear of the Betty Ford Clinic?

February 18th, 2006

Adios, Bode. Ever Hear of the Betty Ford Clinic?

Can’t we just bode (sic) farewell to Bode Miller, the world-class skier?

Midway through the 2006 Olympic Winter Games in Italy all Miller has done is embarrass himself, his family and friends, the Olympic team mates and his country.

So farewell, the Mouth from the South (as in the way his Olympic skiing has gone).

Perhaps I would be as zoned out as Bode if I tried to diagnose his problem from several thousand miles away.

But, knowing a bit of his recent history talking about skiing while “wasted,” it could be that as with some I’ve known the bottle takes precedence over pride, profession and most of all family and friends.

How else can we account for the most favored skier, based on his recent record, essentially crashing and burning in three races up to Feb. 18?

And just look at one of his major competitors, Hermann Maier – the Herminator — from Austria. My goodness, as CBS sports commentator Dick Engberg would say, Hermann has been around so long he is old enough to be Bode’s father. Yet the Herminator, victim of a bad motorcycle accident and reported to be ill in Torino, added silver to his vast collection of World Cup and Olympic medals in the Super G downhill on Feb. 18.

Where was Bode? Somewhere off the course and probably where he should be until he gets his act together.

Or with Lindsey Jacobellis, who hot-dogged her way out of a gold in the snowboard cross final and Johnny Weir, the American figure skater who dresses like a swan and took a swan dive during his big moment on the ice.
Poor Lindsey will have her foolishness in “styling,” when way ahead near the end of her race, hanging like a millstone instead of a gold medal around her neck for the rest of her life.

After the race, the NBC Sports commentators were discussing it and neither could remember any similar situation in Olympic history where an athlete so obviously snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

Yes, she is young enough to come back in four years. She may win gold in Vancouver in 2010 but not without a flood of commentary about a squandered opportunity in Italy.

Who cares what happens to Weir? My opinion would come down on the side of many who think figure skating is more an art form than a sport and shouldn’t even be in the Olympics.

Until a few years ago, the Summer and Winter Olympics were held in the same year and in different locations around the world. But that was changed so that instead of having to wait four years for the big show, one or the other would happen every two years.

In my career I’ve known and worked with a number of Olympic gold medal winners. I could call them “recipients” but they really are winners. The years of sacrifice and the brutal training schedule they endure are almost beyond comprehension.

When that big moment comes, often in a few seconds they will win or lose the gold.

One of the most heart breaking of all stories about contemporary Olympians is that of Dan Jansen, who had to race in Calgary with his young sister dying of cancer back home.

Dan had his falls and the world cried with him. He never gave up, came back again and again to finally win gold and set another world record.

In addition to working with Dan, I also once met Bonnie Blair who retired with the largest number of Winter golds (5) for any American. Bonnie was so tiny she could skate between my legs. But what a heart that little lady had for training, racing, winning and making all Americans proud.

Then we come full circle to Bode.

While all Olympic-class training has its endurance often in less than favorable conditions, I don’t know of any quite matching ski racing.

Think about it. Almost year around you are spending all your days on a frozen mountain. For the ski racers there is far more danger of a serious or life-threatening injury than the other sports.

Even the half pipers of ski boarding are not likely to have an injury such as those incurred by someone zipping down a mountain at 80 miles an hour.

You know, as with the Bush twins getting caught at underage drinking in Austin, TX, what Bode is doing in Italy may in fact be a call for help. Maybe he is really saying to family and friends, “Can’t you see I’ve got a problem here? Can’t you help me get treatment so I can get over it?”

In the Arizona Daily Star on Feb.19 there was an article about another celebrity named Philip Seymour Hoffman, heavily favored to get the best male actor award this year for his role in “Capote.”

As I was steaming over a late breakfast during which time CNN told me Bode had tanked again in a race today, I saw this headline, “Getting sober enabled Hoffman’s ascent.” The story quotes Hoffman saying he never would have reached such heights had he not sobered up16 years ago.

Regardless of what Bode’s demons may be, no athlete with his proven talent should be focusing more on drinking than skiing in pre-Olympic media interviews where he is talking to the entire world.

If Bode ever wants to leave sports and get into films some day, he can be the new Steve Martin in a remake of an old movie called “The Jerk.” 

Among Our Greatest Sins

February 17th, 2006

Among Our Greatest Sins

In a film called “The Devil’s Advocate,” Al Pacino, who plays the devil, near the end tells a young lawyer who works for him that greed is the greatest sin.

When we look at the alleged hanky panky by Jack Abramoff, Michael Scanlon and Tom Delay, the Enron crowd and the head of American General who transferred $1.1 billion to his wife the day before he was sent packing, the king of evil does seem to make a point.

And who am I to argue with someone who has such alleged powers as the devil? But I will. And the subject isn’t about making money or lust or one that is very exciting.

It’s about water.

And my opinion is that out here in a desert state our greatest sins are illusion and denial.

I had been in Arizona numerous times prior to 1987, but hadn’t really come to know it until my firm was hired to represent the state that year. My belief is that when you represent somebody or some entity, it’s prudent to get yourself educated on the situation ASAP.

For example, did you know Arizona is the only state with seven temperate zones? That the little Mt. Lemmon ski slope is the most southern ski resort in America? Or that Kitt Peak has the largest number of observatories of any place in the world?

And that beautiful Jamie O’Neill had a big hit song just a few years ago called “There Is No Arizona.”

The chorus goes like this:

“There is no Arizona
“No Painted Desert, no Sedona
“And if there was a Grand Canyon
“She could fill it with the lies he told her.”

Aha.

Jamie didn’t include the water problem, and that’s where the illusion and denial come into the picture.

In getting to know Arizona I learned that Tucson, unlike Phoenix, has a tradition of not having lawns to be watered. It is not a law, just a tradition and observed by the vast majority of homeowners. To humorously make the point, one of my neighbors has an old-fashioned push lawnmower as a bit of kitsch sculpture sitting in the middle of his lawn of rocks.

When I moved to the south end of the Sonoran Desert six years ago I expected to find major efforts underway to convince the area’s residents to conserve water.

Au contraire.

In Green Valley it looks today as if there is a bulldozer clearing every available piece of land for more houses.  Recently the media carried a story about plans for a humongous development at Benson.

Several years ago Pima County pared by a few thousand homes the ambitious plans for Canoa Hills. Who does not believe the developers will have the political clout to let the south end of Green Valley reach to Tubac or beyond?

It can’t go on forever, not in a desert. Some morning we will get up and when we turn on the tap to wash our faces it will not have a drop.

As a refugee from Disneyland East I came to Arizona, and in no way do I believe others should not have that opportunity.

Recently a UA professor wrote an op-ed in the Arizona Daily Star about an almost certain future crisis with our water supply.

I sent him an email saying most of us on the desert know the problem, but what did he think was the solution? He responded that it was in the political area.

That helps.

What should happen actually is political, but not I think what the professor had in mind.

The state, counties and communities should get organized immediately with a major conservation program having the urgency of the immigration problem.

There could be surprising results.

Way back in the energy crisis during the Nixon presidency, he went on television asking drivers to slow down to conserve fuel.

The pundits in DC laughed at Nixon’s plea. But they were wrong. It worked.

The place to start with a public conservation program is with the kids in the elementary grades. Trying to sell something to high school students, experience shows, is a waste of time.

When the water crisis looms, there will be all sorts of loony ideas to solve it such as having tugs tow an Alaskan glacier to Arizstonia’s beach front property, whacking off the tops of barrel cacti and drinking from their fountains, cloud seeding by 747s and, of course, the traditional Native American rain dance.

Republicans and Democrats will be pointing fingers as each other saying, “I told you so!”

But by then, if campers keep walking away without putting out their fires and smokers keep tossing their cigarette butts out of the windows of their vehicles, we may be all burned out with no one to weep because there is no water.

So here on the desert we continue to live with illusion and denial. The illusion is a state with a healthy, vibrant economy and jobs for all. The denial is that there will be a never-ending supply of water.

With appropriate deference to the devil, greed is not always our greatest sin.

Everybody Is A Hero

February 10th, 2006

Willie Nelson sang, “my heroes have always been cowboys.” In a movie that has somewhat shocked America and may win several Oscars, our current most famous cowboys are gay.

Bette Midler had a hit song about a hero who had been “the wind beneath my wings.” That seems a fitting tribute for the families of those in our military forces serving in combat zones of the current war.

Since 9/11, all firemen and cops are heroes even if they were only 15 years old on that terrible day. Now everyone wearing a military uniform is a hero.

Growing up I had “heroes.” In baseball it was Dizzy Dean and Bob Feller.

Among movie stars they were Gene Autry and Roy Rogers.

The question is, what is a hero?

My 1999 Webster’s dictionary first says it is someone who stands out. It also infers all heroes are male.

So much for Florence Nightingale, Mother Teresa, Coretta Scott King and Sally Ride.

Forget Webster’s chauvinistic description, only those women I have mentioned are real heroes.

But don’t we need some standards for use today to determine who is and who is not a real hero?

I served as a medical corpsman in a war and saved lives. That was what I was trained and paid to do, so I was no hero. Alan Alda, a surgeon in television’s long-running series, M*A*S*H, is a hero by Webster’s standard and he never actually saved anyone.

And if all cops are heroes, what about the officer who shot a guy just back from Iraq. A video someone taped of the incident shows the victim seemingly trying to obey what the officer was asking him to do.

It seems to me this entire post 9/11 hero business has gotten entirely overblown and over used.

Everyone in our armed forces today volunteered, for better or worse. The majority only will be in harm’s way riding down an interstate highway fraught with careless drivers. Is that heroic?

Are Bob Woodruff, the ABC anchorman, and his cameraman heroes because they were wounded on assignment in Iraq? I’m sure they are so considered in the ABC newsroom.

My daughter called this morning from Nashville and said last night she picked up an elderly man stuck in a roadside ditch and drove him home. Questionable judgment, yes. Heroic, no.

I know several people, members of the Good Samaritans group, who drive out in the desert near the Mexican border around Arivaca to give food and water to illegals. Possibly dangerous, sometimes heroic.

But here is the bottom line.

If almost everyone is a hero, then the term is cheapened and becomes meaningless. I think that is especially true with law enforcement officers, firemen and military personnel who have not been officially cited for bravery.

We have an abundance of clichés. In politics it may be “hot-button issues.” In sports, when a football player runs into the end zone to score he has “taken it to the house.”

Clichés come and go. Hopefully we will find a new term to be rid of everyone being a “hero,” along with “hot-button issues” and “taking it to the house.”  

Are We Really Safer in the Air?

February 10th, 2006

Are We Really Safer in the Air?

Maybe you never heard of Barry McCaffrey, an Army retired four-star general. Prior to becoming an expert on airline security, he was President Clinton’s drug czar.

Gen. McCaffrey may be the most decorated person in the military services since Audie Murphy in World War II. He is not a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor, but twice was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. In a way, the DSC is the highest honor for bravery in combat because the Medal of Honor, as in the case of Charles Lindbergh, can be given for non-combat heroism.

McCaffrey also has two Silver Stars, never given for outstanding paper work in the rear echelon, and three Purple Hearts. In short, here is a man who has walked through the valley of the shadow of death and kept on going.

Prior to moving to Arizstonia late in 1999, I had fairly frequent contact with Gen. McCaffrey as we both worked on education programs for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund — the organization that built The Wall.

So, why, you may wonder, would I want to be peeing on the leg of this great American military hero I so much admire?

As with my fellow Oklahoman, Will Rogers, all I know is what I read in the papers and what I read in The Washington Post about McCaffrey’s efforts to control the sale and use of illegal drugs was not impressive.

A few years ago there was a noted movie. “Traffic,” where the major character, the White House drug czar, was played by Michael Douglas. A co-star was his beautiful wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Some of the movie was filmed in Nogales, Mexico right before my eyes. But, as with Denny Crane in this week’s episode of “Boston Legal,” I did not see Ms. Zeta-Jones or her notable breasts.

At one point in the movie Mr. Drug Czar and his top staff are traveling in a private jet and he asks them to come forward with answers to the problem that may be more threatening to our nation than Al Qeada.

“Come on,” he says, “let’s think outside the box.” What followed must have been thinking outside the plane, because inside there was total silence. And that’s about what I could see of Barry McCaffrey controlling our drug problem.

To make this timely, the Arizona Daily Star on Feb.3, 2006 reported Gen McCaffrey was in Tucson for an airline security conference.

“It’s like night and day,” the general said, comparing air security today with what it was on 9/11.

This is very interesting assurance from a man who in recent years who probably has, as with the movie scene of Michael Douglas, done all or most of his air travel in government and corporate jets.

If he’s talking about security on those private jets, I do believe he is right. However, should he be talking about airline travel my view is he hasn’t a clue.

Tonight, Feb. 8, CBS Evening News was promoting a segment coming up tomorrow night about some of the things passengers try to take on airplanes more than five years after 9/11.

I don’t have to watch CBS. We are from time to time given the frightening results of federal government agents testing airport screeners. Passengers are showing up and getting through security these days with everything short of chainsaws.

(Maybe not. Among the items confiscated at airports and shown on CBS were a machete about two feet long, a wrench a foot long and all sorts of handcuffs. Items taken at the East Coast airports are being sold on Ebay.)

A year or two ago the airport screeners were taken in as federal employees. According to an article published today by Garrison Keillor, the basic salary is $27,000 and all re given 13 holidays. With any seniority they also will have 30 days vacation and 30 days sick leave, plus the option for several good health plans.

And Governor Janet Napolitano wants the feds to help pay for border security. She should be happy Uncle Sugar, not Arizstonia, is paying the cost of airport security
In recent months I’ve done a lot of traveling – Italy, France, Mexico.

Twice I went though the security at the airport in Zurich Switzerland. The last time there was one man and one woman at the x-ray machine.

Leave from Tucson International Airport and there are enough security people huddled around the two x-ray machines and elsewhere to staff a Wally World.

And something that really made me feel safe was a documentary I saw a few nights ago on The History Channel. It played off some of the testimony given at the 9/11 Commission hearings with what really happened that fateful day.

According to this program President Bush waited something like seven minutes after chief of staff Andy Card told him of the Twin Towers incident, as he was reading to school children (“Dick and Jane” no doubt), before he left to get on Air Force One.

Did you know this?

Once on Air Force One ($500 million a copy) according to THC, the plane’s communications system did not work and our commander-in-chief could not talk to the White House. I’ve heard from another source he had to borrow an aide’s cell phone.

Moreover, according to the documentary, the Air Force jets scrambled from Langley Air Force Base near Norfolk were instructed to go to Baltimore but ended up for some unknown reason flying out over the ocean.

Some terrorist experts predict Osama bin Laden will not go the airline route with his next strike against America. After pulling off such a big one with his only glitch a few brave men on one of the hijacked jets, something much larger would be in order.

Last year, I flew about 37,000 miles on commercial airlines without fear. But if you think I believe Gen. McCaffrey and his “night and day” assessment of air security today compared to 9/11, then I also would believe there is a pot of gold at the end of those rainbows we sometimes see over the Santa Rita Mountains.

Those airport security issues aside, perhaps we should be more concerned about those former Navy pilots now flying for Southwest, who sometimes forget little airports such as Midway don’t have restraining devices on the runways.

Uncle Walter Reprise: The War in Iraq Also Is Unwinnable

January 25th, 2006

In Walter Cronkite’s office at CBS one spring day in 1999, he uncharacteristically asked the camera crew to take a break. He was having trouble with mucous in the throat that had brought him fame and riches as the anchor of CBS Evening News. He said a virus had been recycled through his office staff and still lingered in his upper respiratory system.

We were there to shoot Walter doing the Web site introduction to a Vietnam War curriculum being given to all high schools in the country by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund.

I brought up the subject of his famous1968 television documentary after a visit to Vietnam, which he ended with a footnote stating in his view the war was unwinnable. Supposedly after the program aired, President Johnson said, “If I have lost Walter Cronkite, I have lost Middle America.”

With my cue, Uncle Walter told the whole story. The guy with the camera was so mesmerized he did not have it rolling to record this little bit of history. I kept motioning to him to start shooting, but I frankly have never looked at the tapes – stored somewhere in my garage – to see how much of the story might have been recorded.

A few days ago Cronkite did a reprise. On a visit to California the 89-year- old former anchor told a group that it was time to get out of Iraq.

If he had stopped to think about, Cronkite would have realized it was a long way from narrating a television documentary when he was at the top of the TV anchor heap speaking to millions of Americans as opposed to having his word spread second-hand by other journalists.

Putting aside its fairly recent problems with reporters such as Judy Miller and Jason Blair, The New York Times remains the newspaper of record for this country.

The forum for Uncle Walter to bring serious attention to his views on Iraq would have been a substantial op-ed piece in the Times. The kind of thoughtful and timely op-ed piece former Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach wrote for the Los Angeles Times on January 15.

In his piece Katzenbach, one of our top law enforcement officers under LBJ, related how J. Edgar Hoover had gone over the top on the grounds of national security to order, with the Justice department’s approval, wiretaps on Dr. Martin Luther King. The King wiretap was Katzenbach’s way of giving a warning on the alleged illegal wiretaps on American citizens ordered by President Bush.

So I think Uncle Walter missed a great opportunity to have had a significant influence on public opinion relating to the terribly mismanaged conflict in Iraq.

The reason is that Cronkite in poll after poll for years was voted as the “most trusted man” in America.

Over the years millions of us saw the great anchor come near to tears as he announced that President Kennedy had died of an assassin’s bullets in Dallas, and a huge “Whew” after telling us that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had safely landed their little spaceship on the moon.

During his era as CBS anchor there was no discernable evidence that he approved or disapproved of the mostly bad news he reported.  Dan Rather, Cronkite’s successor, came to the job as a perceived Nixon-baiter and thus many felt he had a liberal or biased axe to grind. Rather never outlived that perception and it was an incident involving a Republican presidential candidate that essentially ended his long television career.

In recent years Cronkite wrote for a time a newspaper column where he finally revealed that he was not a conservative. Some were very critical of President Bush and his policies.

No doubt after reading the story on Cronkite’s condemnation of the Iraqi war this weekend, many may pass off his views as that of an old has-been.

That would be a mistake. While his wonderful voice that soothed us through many a national and international crisis may be wavering, his thoughts reflect the experience of conflicts that began with his reporting during World War II and last until today.

President Bush, unlike President Johnson, will not feel that because of Uncle Walter’s views he has lost Middle America. The truth is he has lost most of America, and it now appears he will be the last one to know.

PTSD

January 3rd, 2006

Posted today on AOL’s story about the “Marlboro Marine” and his delayed problems after serving in Iraq.

As we grow older and have more people in our lives, we begin to hear horror stories about someone with a major health problem that should have been easily diagnosed but wasn’t until it was too late.

Diseases such as cancer and AIDS (the first physician to diagnose a case of AIDS is a friend) can be tricky to spot with the best of medical experience and equipment. But, just think about the complications of our minds.

Recently I have been involved with my first experiences with depression. In one situation, a case of depression seemed clear to me but apparently was not to the parents and physicians. This is not a family on food stamps. If something moderately serious can go for years without detection by those who can afford health care, consider the estimated 40 million Americans who cannot pay these costs.

In my war, we had a guy who often talked to himself and was sometimes the subject of that ridicule military people use all too often. But, on reflection I think he might well have been the most mentally adjusted man in the outfit. So these mental things can be especially insidious.

Once at a private sector staff dinner at a fancy restaurant, an outsider made a comment about the Vietnam War. One of my vice presidents who had lost most of his company as a Marine officer, jumped up and nailed him just as the Marlboro Marine jumped the sailor during the Katrina rescue effort. We were all shocked, but I understood.

The next day the vice president called in and apologized, and said he was taking the day off. I told him that the next time he took a swing at the guy who made the remark and missed, he would be fired.

I think much more could be done to help identify those with PTSD who need help. It may not be much, but the Doonesbury comic strip has been dealing with this issue in recent months with one of the main characters. But, maybe some of those with PTSD will read the strip and recognize they need counseling before counseling is too late.

John Martin Meek, Korean War Veteran