Sometimes, you can tell a lot about a guy by his sense of humor - or lack thereof. The incoming Governor of New York, young David Patterson of Harlem, the first African-American to serve in the chair of Clinton and Jay, Hughes and Roosevelt, Smith and FDR, Rockefeller and Carey had the line of the day when asked by a reporter if he'd ever patronized a prostitute.
"Only the lobbyists," he said.
And thus, got off to a very good start indeed.
My favorite couple of blocks in all of New York (from the existential perspective, I mean) has no doorways, no stoops, no storefronts, and barely any sidewalk to speak of. Indeed, by rights it shouldn't have a name. But it does.
Tunnel Exit Street.
There was no famous denizen of Murray Hill named Tunnel Exit whom the City Council saw fit to honor with a sign. No legendary saloon keeper or actor or civil rights lion. Though as a name, come to think of it, Tunnel Exit has certain cinematic quality that I like.
No, Tunnel Exit Street is the barren stretch of roadway running north between East 37th Street and East 41st Street. It begins outside the west-bound exit of the Queens Midtown Tunnel and is essentially a conduit between Second and Third Avenues with the sole purpose of diffusing rumbling trucks onto less-congested side streets rather than a single, already grid-locked avenue.
There are no addresses on Tunnel Exit Street, yet there is a thin sidewalk on the east side and pedestrians - oh, say those making a quick trip to the Frontier Coffee Shop from the old News Building, just for argument's sake - often use it as a shortcut.
And the city, in its wisdom, has seen the justice of placing formal green street signs on every corner. They hang there each day on their bleak couple of blocks where no mailman needs to tread, no delivery trucks pull up, and they speak their simple message with some strange, civic pride.
Mister, every street in this town has a name even if it has no addresses. No dwellings. No places of business.
And you, sir, are on Tunnel Exit Street.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt still matters in New York State, as anyone who hits the road on an Indian Summer weekend north of the city certainly knows. Yesterday, we took the Taconic State Parkway, created by a commission chaired by FDR as his first foray back into politics after his paralyzing illness and a clear sign of the big shoulders government Roosevelt was to later create.
The Taconic was an extension of the Bronx River Parkway, built by Robert Moses to connect the city to Bear Mountain, and that's where we ended up yesterday, with the temperature in the mid-80s. We hiked down to the zoo and the historic sites by the Bear Mountain Bridge, and on the way back stopped at the surviving redoubt of Fort Clinton, where the British put American soldiers to the bayonet in the hundreds in 1777.
You can see the four-pointed star formation, some the stones laid as walls, and the mounded grass. The mid-Hudson actions of 1777 were a series of failed land battles by the Americans, but they held up the British long enough to prevent the reinforcement of Burgoyne's men at Saratoga and the Crown's effort to split the mutinous colonies along the line of the Hudson failed.
Later, we climbed Perkins Drive (via Honda, not foot) to the summit and once again marveled at the views, and at the hawks circling below us. Bear Mountain is one of those incredible New York State parks - like Jones Beach - that amaze in their very existence as public accommodations. Only liberals create what lower New York State has in public beauty.
Driving up the Taconic, slicing over toward the Hudson at Peekskill and up and over the Bear Mountain Bridge to the park - then on to West Point or back over to Cold Spring (or in our case, down the Palisades Parkway to the mall, dinner at Johnny Rockets and an hour in the Lego Store with the two boys) is a brilliant reminder of the existence of what I call Taconic Style, that blend of rustic architecture, roadways and parkland that is unique to the Hudson Valley.
The artist and I had our wedding reception on old ferry chugging through the highlands two decades ago, and we sipped champagne will watching the lights twinkle above us at West Point. We return to the highlands at least once a year, and always bring out-of-town visitors to the peaks and vistas of those hills. Today, we were once again the in the Taconic region, but east on Lake Mahopac. For the boys, it was still warm enough to swim and I took a turn in the kayak. Tomorrow's an early one, so we didn't stay late - just long enough for the day to wane, and the lights to glimmer across the lake.
Yesterday, I was honored to be a speaker at the 2007 Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize Symposium in New York. I'll wrote about it for onPhilanthropy, but I've been mostly offline for more than a day. It was worth it: the Symposium drew a crowd of more than 300 leaders in philanthropy and provided a rare global perspective on the confluence of development work, government policy, and the world economy. The keynote address was delivered by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, who saw the need for greater cooperation between philanthropic organizations and the world body - “Civilians continue to bear the intolerable brunt of crises not of their own making….and life-saving assistance cannot wait for the next round of peace talks.”
The Symposium was at the Waldorf. I figure I've spent several weeks of my life in that building over the years, from political dinners in my reporting days to the endless round of fundraising galas. The name comes from William Waldorf Astor, who built the original where the Empire State Building stands. The "new" Waldorf has been on Park Avenue since 1931 and it's as New York as it gets, even though it fairly crawls with tourists. The ballroom is essentially New York's parish hall, where the dances and fundraisers and more upscale, star-studded type of bingo night are held near-nightly.
The Waldorf's been a home for visiting movies stars and Presidents, as any walk down one of the back hallways will tell you in black and white photography, but my favorite Waldorf movie is The Out-Of-Towners with Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis as the Ohio couple who barely survive muggings, various strikes, and some bad 1970 New York attitude on the way to discovering that middle America is more aligned with their true selves. So okay, I hate the stupid ending. But I love the 1970 New York and the collection of character actors that inhabit it.
Would that AMC's Mad Men had gone a similar casting route. (Yes, that was a long way to get to what is essentially a reminder that I'll be live-blogging Mad Men tonight at 10 PM EDT over at newcritics.com). Outside of Robert Morse as Bert Cooper, there's more essential New York in almost any episode of Sesame Street (or any classic Bugs Bunny cartoon, for that matter). Still, last week's was the best episode to date and thanks to the fab MA Peel, well-blogged as well. I'll try to keep up my end tonight. Please show up.
I'll admit it: the new Silicon Alley Insider slipped beneath my vacationing, blogging, media-obsessed radar since its beta launch a month ago. And I have to be honest. I don't think in terms of "Silicon Alley" any more, and don't know too many people who do. There's an archaic, historic quality to the term and it goes nicely mixed with two full jiggers of "back in the day" around the better media watering holes.
Silicon Alley Insider. That was me about a decade ago. I was described as exactly that many a time, and I remember it all moderately well.
Feverishly tracking mezzanine rounds while swilling free booze and picking at massive sushi boat centerpieces while girls danced in cages to the sounds of third-rate Moby knock-offs and hungry headhunters, pr guys, and investment bankers circled the silicon slam dance just waiting for the moment when a bunch of money-sucking startups led by guys who kept their dogs in the office started to throw off cash.
In other words, that was then. That ain't now. Web 2.0 and the ever-churning media circus of New York does nothing to capture that scene, which was powered by art as much as money, by driven free-wheeling invention and the knowing waste of overcapitalization by leering, good-time trust-funders and hungry bridge and tunnel kids.
Still, Kevin Ryan's new venture proceeds from a feeling that New York's wired and entrepreneurial community is under-represented in a world that makes Michael Arrington relevant. He may be right. And he's got some interesting partners: investor Dwight Merriman,and former Forbes scribes Dan Frommer and Peter Kafka. And who better to report on the post-Henry Blodget era in technology than Henry Blodget himself - he of former cheerleading Prudential analyst days, more lately a quieter, more thoughtful analyst.
I have some advice, fellas - having co-created the original Silicon Alley insider with Jason Chervokas in 1995. A wire service of deals and hirings involving New York new media companies large and small won't cut it. Nobody needs TechCrunch East. We don't have the deal-flow, to be honest about it. But we do have the brains, and we do have the advertising. Go for personality, go for analysis, go for the jugular. Or people won't care.
Poke a few holes in business plans. Question a few financings. Rattle some cages in midtown and find some under-capitalized talent out in Brooklyn or the South Bronx or Hoboken. Tell me what the kids are doing, what the artists think. Tell me something new. I want a reason to get exited about new media in this town. Give it me, and I'll keep you guys around the feed reader forever.
We heard the rumble and thought it was thunder. Then it went on for a while and I said to Phil Li: "Wow, I hope that's thunder." The we looked out onto Second Avenue and saw people running ... very clearly running away from something big and bad and rumbling to the west. Then we all ran, just as the alarms began to go off.
Down seven flights, out onto Second Avenue, down to 41st where we looked west and saw a massive rolling plume of smoke and steam just two blocks away, blotting out the public library. And the never-ending thunder rattled off the limestone facades and glass curtain walls.
So we went east through Tudor City, took a breath, and I suggested the plaza at 43rd and First across from the UN - I knew from my lunchtime walks that it was a full story below where we stood and was encased in a sheath of concrete and granite. "Let's stay together," said Susan. So we hustled over there, not quite as panicked as before. I was thinking about that rolling plume, and I as pretty sure it was going up and not out. A transformer, or a big pipe.
Con Ed and not al Qaeda. Pretty sure. Like 80 percent sure. But we waited a while just to be sure. The rumble quieted, the cell phones began to work again, and news drifted in. An underground fire, an explosion, a huge steam pipe. Injuries and closed streets.
Now 99 percent sure, we walked back to work through the crowds and flashing lights and barricades and put on the television. A hell of an explosion. A miracle that no one was killed at rush hour.
The subway is closed but the trains are running. I'm sitting in an air-conditioned car right now in Grand Central, waiting to head home. Cool and calm. But also reminded, quite clearly, of what went on before.
You could feel the panic; it was an instantaneously communicable disease that swept the stairwells and streets. We sucked it in like air. People screamed. "It's coming! Run! Oh my God!" There were tears and prayers and then some embarrassment after - better that, better a few laughs really.
The city felt brittle in a flash-frozen instant. Very brittle.
UPDATE: One dead, 11 hurt. And I'm realizing listening to the passengers around me that if you were close enough to feel that roar, to link it to the sound of collapsing buildings and that rolling, boiling cloud, you were scared. You were one of thousands who fled, either in panic or some form of semi-controlled flight. Farther away, you were just concerned. It works like that.
Can't See This: Martin Johnson Heade's Approaching Thunder Storm
Well, another blogger has run smack into the pathetic blocking action the Metropolitan Museum of Art puts up around its superb collection of American paintings. You may recall that my Memorial Day trip to the Met was ruined by the museum's insane decision to close off American works on a national holiday:
On Memorial Day, we were prevented from viewing Washington Crossing the Delaware, by Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze. Sure it's a work of nationalistic myth, an idealized view of a founding military moment. But if not today, when? Same goes for the collection of Gilbert Stuarts, the Charles Wilson Peales, the John Singleton Copleys, the John Trumbulls.
Less patriotic but more interesting in the artistic if not the historical sense are the 19th century works: the brilliantly-lighted landscapes of Thomas Cole and Frederic Church, the visual stories of George Caleb Bingham and Martin Johnson Heade, the deeply human paintings of Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins, and the telling portraits of Mary Cassatt, James Whistler, and John Singer Sargent.
David Parmet had a similar experience recently. The author of the Marketing Begins at Home blog took his son to the Met and found the blue suits shutting down the American wing - and all those brilliant paintings. Writes David:
Unfortunately, if you did try and see everything, make sure you don’t catch any of the staff when their lunchtime is approaching. Because when we finally found our way up to the American painting galleries (make a left at Dendur and go up the stairs) we were informed by at least 15 guards who were ushering the visitors out, that they were short-staffed and closing down the gallery. So no Washington Crossing the Delaware. Or no lingering - I did manage to force my way into a few moments to point out this important bit of American Iconography to the Boy. They weren’t going to deny me that.
By the by, my written complaint to the Met's executive staff? No answer.
I will point out that one of the Met's greatest patrons is now considering a third party run for President.
Of the United States. Whose more talented citizens produced the fine work on view (but not very often) in the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. To which he donates millions of bucks. Just a thought, Mr. Bloomberg.
UPDATE: Another blogger complains about the American Wing's constant closure.
The irony firmly in place this warm Memorial Day places the philanthropist Mayor of New York in the supporting league of a major arts institution that is clearly in crisis. Michael Bloomberg and the company he founded are major patrons of the Metropolitan Museum of Art - and the Met is letting them down, wasting their money, and giving the city itself a cultural black eye.
On Memorial Day, we took the family to the Met with several agendas: everyone wanted to see the wonderful collection of American art, the boys eagerly awaited the George Washington paintings, our daughter looked forward to Grant Wood, my wife wanted to see the Japanese scrolls and bask in the quiet of the Astor Court, my older son anticipated the arms and armor collection, and the little guy just wanted to see "William," the ancient Egyptian hippo that has become so symbolic (and marketable) to children.
All were closed. Every one of the exhibits. Closed. Roped off. Shut tight.
And today was one of those special holiday Mondays, during which the Met, normally closed on Mondays, is opened with funds from Bloomberg LP.
They shouldn't have bothered. We trudged around, looking for our favorites, only to encounter ropes and locked doors and grim-faced guards in blue suits. Yet here's what you read if you look up the "Met Holiday Mondays" on the museum's site:
"More than 200,000 people have visited the Museum on a Met Holiday Monday in the three years since the program was inaugurated, and we have been gratified by their positive and enthusiastic response," commented Emily K. Rafferty, President of the Metropolitan Museum. "Met Holiday Mondays add seven extra viewing days to the year and, in turn, these represent seven additional opportunities to visit the Met and enjoy our outstanding permanent collection as well as our roster of superb special exhibitions. We look forward to another year of welcoming the public to experience great art."
I'm sure Emily Rafferty was nowhere near Fifth Avenue today, or surely she would have taken the situation in hand and moved the appropriate employees to open those crucial galleries. I'm sure that the famed director of the Met, Guy Philippe Henri Lannes de Montebello, wasn't on Fifth today, either. He certainly would have understood the horrific symbolism of closing the American wing's historic paintings - on Memorial Day! He would have moved personnel from the museum's shops (fully-staffed with employees, we noticed) to the museum's galleries.
Surely, Emily Rafferty wouldn't have allowed her museum to be such terrible and public failure on a major American holiday - and with money provided by one of her most important benefactors.
Surely, she wouldn't have kept me from some of my favorite paintings. Not that American art is particularly important to the Metropolitan Museum. It's an also-ran, over in the corner, despite its phenomenal collection. And its American paintings galleries are often the quickest to close when there aren't enough security personnel to go around. Yes, this is a personal complaint - I love many of the paintings in the American wing; they represent the kind of cultural synthesis in the visual arts that blues and jazz and rock and roll represent to musical history. They're vitally important the progression of the visual arts, and they take a second row to no other culture. I'll admit it's galling to find, say, the Rockefeller galleries on primitive art wide open and well-staffed while the American paintings are shuttered away.
No art museum in any other major world capital would be as dismissive of its own culture.
On Memorial Day, we were prevented from viewing Washington Crossing the Delaware, by Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze. Sure it's a work of nationalistic myth, an idealized view of a founding military moment. But if not today, when? Same goes for the collection of Gilbert Stuarts, the Charles Wilson Peales, the John Singleton Copleys, the John Trumbulls.
Less patriotic but more interesting in the artistic if not the historical sense are the 19th century works: the brilliantly-lighted landscapes of Thomas Cole and Frederic Church, the visual stories of George Caleb Bingham and Martin Johnson Heade, the deeply human paintings of Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins, and the telling portraits of Mary Cassatt, James Whistler, and John Singer Sargent.
They were to have made up our own American "Memorial Day Parade," as I'd planned it. No. I filed a complaint with a polite docent at the information desk, who agreed that closing off the finest in American art was a shame and directed me to the modern wing, where he assured me that some fine 20th century American works were on view. If only he'd been right. The European paintings were open, but the singular galleries centered around American paintings from 1900-1945 - an incredibly fertile period in American art - were closed. Not enough security personnel, I was told. So we only got a glimpse across a long and empty room at an Edward Hopper. And we were barred from the Grant Woods.
Yes, the Frank Stella retrospective was open (I'm not a fan, though some of the constructions were interesting) and we did see the Warhols - where we did finally see a massive, nationalistic icon. Sure, it was Chairman Mao, but it's a memorable work indeed.
My question now is for the corporate philanthropy staff at 
Bloomberg LP: do you know your company's brand is being damaged by the incredibly poor experience you're funding at the Met?
My other question is for Philippe de Montebello and Emily Rafferty: what kind of museum are you running?
Oh, and where did you spend Memorial Day?
There's this fellow who works the entrance to the Number 7 train on the south side of 42nd Street, just west of Third. His job is to give away the freebie tabloid daily amNewYork, which on surface of it wouldn't seem to be a difficult task. As he's always hollering as I brush by, "hey hey, the price is right, the price is right."
But every morning, this guy is out there selling it - which really counts for something when your product is free. New Yorkers are grouchy in the morning, especially those who've just survived the long, lurching ride form outer Queens and the slow-as-hell escalator ride up from deep below the street. They don't want free - they want caffeine.
But this man moves units - he hawks those free papers. He's got a particular way with the ladies, shall we say - calling attention quite loudly to their particular charms or manner of attire. "Hey, hey young lady - you're lookin' fine - I saw you coming a block whole away!" Funny, they always take a paper.
Some mornings, when I'm drag-assing myself toward an annoying meeting or some gut-twisting deadline, this amNewYork hawker serves as instant inspiration, imparting a kind of Buddhist devotion during my shuffle along 42nd Street. Whatever you do, form a relationship with it. Embrace the task, whether it's pushing newsprint or nailing a client pitch. Perform each task properly, with attention to detail. The ability to work is a gift.
Funny thing. I've never taken one of his papers. Generally, I roll quickly by, semi-lost in some remote iTunes track. And I've never yet cracked amNewYork, but I've learned a lot from its public face - that loud, friendly guy on 42nd Street. Maybe I'll take one tomorrow.
Watching the rise of Barak Obama, I am reminded of no one so much as Stuart Garcia. A year apart at Columbia in the early 80s, they were early-form good government, activist types during a decidedly non-activist period on Morningside Heights. Stuart believed in student government and took a very active, public role. Obama was involved in the anti-Apartheid movement, which provided the only truly active political moments during my four years there.
I knew Stuart Garcia, but didn't run into Barak Obama. Stuart was my class year, Obama the year before, and he was a transfer student. Not that I looked, mind you; too many brain cells were busy meeting their wonderful ends.
But I thought of Stuart a lot as I digested all the recent Barak hoopla, and I thought: there but for the killer virus goes my former psych lab partner, fellow freshman orientation carouser, and friend.
Stuart Garcia was one of the early casualties of AIDS, dying only two years after graduation, in 1986. He was a natural politician, had the common touch. Short, friendly, with a shock of thick straight hair that levitated when he walked. There is no doubt in my mind that he'd be a figure in politics had he lived, either in his native Texas or somewhere else. He was open, not shy, a friend to all - my opposite, in those years, really. And he was 23 when he died. Steve Waldman, who was a close friend, summed it up well in his recent BeliefNet column:
It seemed especially cruel because Stuart was one of those people who seemed destined to do something important. I met him in college when he was the president of the student body and I was the editor of the school newspaper. He had that rare combination of talent, earnestness, and ambition that makes for great men and women.
Sounds like Obama's current press to me. A couple of Stuart memories: being hypnotized together during freshman orientation in front of hundreds of mocking classmates; taking Stuart to Max's Kansas City and introducing the kid from Texas to the New York music scene (and finding that we shared a common love for Joe "King" Carrasco, who was then the rage in the downtown clubs); locking each other in refrigerator-sized isolation booths to gauge our reaction to various stimuli in Skinner psychology; chatting briefly with Jesse Jackson, he as the big student government dude, me as the accidental tourist on the way to pick up pizza for a Stratomatic marathon. He was the activist. I was, er, something else entirely.
Barak Obama has a ton of hype to live up to, and he may well do it. I like what I hear, and I like how he goes about it, the respect he shows for all audiences. He's a Columbia guy from the early 80s who still lives his early activism at a higher level. And there are whispers of Stuart Garcia when he talks.
We live somewhere now in post neo-classic proto pre-post punk rock land. Everything is derivative, but there's more of it, and sometimes it makes you tap your toes on the morning commute. Always there in the DNA is the strange and wonderful cluster of gene markers known roughly to scientists as "New York punk." Others call it the Johnny Thunders mutation. Whatever it is, it's a historic part of our musical evolution, a marker on a place where music changed - and it changed best here.
Clearly, one of places in the long dual ribbon of DNA bears the name CBGB. A dark pestilent hole that attracted talent: that's the elevator speech. CB's closes tomorrow, but it's all so anti-climatic. All the youngsters wearing the iconic black t-shirts under their Gap jackets is testimony to a lasting rock brand - one that Hilly Kristal and his advisor's apparently hope to keep alive in Las Vegas and along the byways of cyber-commerce.
My buddy Brendan has a must-read elegy to CBGB on his blog today - here's a taste:
It's true, CBGBs as an entity started to "think who it was" in its old age. The CBs Gallery, the record label, the angry-girl/guy-with-guitar-on-SubPop acts, the utterly ham-handed artsiness and pretense were late '90s East Village unbearable. But then CBs would surprise you with a really killer friday night lineup of old standbys or someone new who was actually worth listening to. Done as an homage to the faded letters on the awning. I won't miss CBGBs as it is today, but I will mourn the loss of the CBGBs that was a large part of my wild youth.
I spent a great deal of time in the clubs of New York City, drinking beer and generally causing trouble from the time I was about 13 years old and my brother took me to see Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers at the Mudd Club. Within 4 years I was doing gigs in second tier shitholes with a punk band I co-started called Social Insecurity.
Way, way back, Brendan and I played in the same neighborhood band - he went on to some great musical highlights; I play for my kids and in our corporate house band. Read his whole post for the history. Now we're Metro-North regulars, reading the paper on the commute, working for our kids and our families, plugging politicians, exchanging links and files like we once exchanged chord changes. We still have our stories of CB's, Max's, the Mudd Club, the Pep Lounge, Hurrah's, Danceteria, Trax, Tramps, Heat, the Ritz, the Bottom Line and other assorted dives and pit stops.
Now again, I dial up the playlist on the old, trusty iPod. There's Johnny and Walter Lure, Iggy and the Stooges, Richard Hell, Cheetah Chrome, the Ramones, Lou Reed, the Dolls, Patti Smith, the Senders, David Jo, various members of Television, Voodoo Shoes, the Damned, Stiv Bators, the Sex Pistols, Elvis Costello, Talking Heads, the Clash, and so on.
I tap my shoes on the train and see some ghosts out the window. A bridge and tunnel boy still. As Brendan says:
I read that Hilly planned to gut and preserve CBs (even the urinals, he said) and move the pieces to Vegas where it would rise from the ashes as a CBs-themed nightclub and presumably casino.
But like an old junkie, it's been so long, and the big dogs don't live forever.
UPDATE: James Wolcott says it perfectly, with the long lens:
It never occurred to any of us then that someday the CBGB's t-shirt would be a ubiquitous cultural signifier, Richard Hell's byline would grace the op-ed page of the NY Times, the Ramones' "Hey ho/let's go" would rev up car ads, Please Kill Me would be as much a classic of oral history as Edie or Studs Terkel's books, and Deborah Harry would achieve her dye-job dream of being a Warhol superstar in a post-Warhol world.
The barricades have come down, the explosive-sniffing dogs are back in their kennels, and you can rent a room without a full body search at the Sheraton. The Clinton Global Initiative wrapped up last Friday afternoon in New York, sending 50 heads of state, one first lady and one former first lady, two ex-presidents, one almost president, several secretaries of state, a few movie stars and singers, and scads of pinstriped moguls and CEOs back into the real world - the one where war dominates, politics polarizes, and well-intentioned efforts often smash to tiny bits of well-funded flotsam on the sea of world turmoil and base human hatred.
For three days, CGI was a kind of dressed-up Woodstock for corporate generals and NGO dreamers - three days of peace, love and understanding keyed by groovy world music overtones to accompany slick Powerpoint and desktop video. Everybody got along (at least onstage - cable interviews were another thing entirely).
I was there all week, writing about the conference for the website I founded for the nonprofit world, onPhilanthropy.
Bloggers were plentiful. Bushes and Clintons mixed with Gores and Murdochs. And 215 pledges were made totaling $7.3 billion, all aimed at changing the world in one of four areas: environment, poverty, tolerance and health. But in the words of one waggish bystander in the Sheraton hallways last week: this ain't no capital campaign.
Indeed not. Nor was it - like someone else suggested, an upscale Jerry Lewis Telethon (Ed McMahon was not present). The "pledges" were really was the Clinton team would prefer to think of commitments; multi-year promises to invest time and money and in-kind goods in making the world a better place. In some cases, the dollar value was extraneous to the importance of the commitment. And although they were all "philanthropic," much of the total was not philanthropy - not as the U.S. Tax Code defines it, or really, how popular culture has always considered it since the earliest societies adopted alms giving to the poor.
The largest single commitment was Sir Richard Branson's pledge to use all the profits from his Virgin transportation businesses to fund research into alternative energy sources and technologies. But the estimated $3 billion was not a gift; Sir Richard will invest the company in other companies, including one he already owns, to try and move the developed world to better energy policies. Yet he could have put the money into his pocket, as the largest shareholder.
It's as if the Clinton team was determined to destroy the entire accepted parlance of the philanthropic world. Venture philanthropy? Not quite. Corporate philanthropy? In part. Foundations, nonprofits, NGOs? All part of the mix. Major gifts? Very major indeed, but not all "gifts."
Last week's Clinton confab was part of a discernible trend in "philanthropy" - that is to day, the rapid deconstruction of the accepted term. The reach and economic might of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the disposal of Warren Buffett's fortune, the creation of the loosely for-profit Google.org, Branson's "gift," and the kind of economic studies that come out of the World Economic Forum and the Milken Global Conference all point in the direction of blurring the boundaries between philanthropy, business, and nonprofits.
How this changes democracy is clearly a question we who live in democracies must ask. As major-league funding efforts to change the world cross international boundaries and move far outside the oversight of our individual elected representatives, does the average Joe maintain any say on the global commons? Does this mean we have to reconsider how we view tax-exempt status in the U.S.? Should we reconsider the legal strictures on American foundations? And beyond that, does it work?
In the end, even a room with the heft of the Clinton Global Initiative has a hard time fixing the political realities that hinder real change in the world, that keep people dying from bad water and poverty and disease - ills that modern society can fix. Cynics blasted CGI as a staged love-in that broke down fewer boundaries than it appeared to. Part of that is fair criticism; no three-day conference can change the world. But what it can do is get people talking, and get people thinking - and at a level where real change is possible. You can dismiss CGI as Clinton's government in exile, but you can't dismiss the very real commitments made there. And the sense that an American leader can and should set the stage for change - and commitment throughout the world.
[Note: Cross-posted from the incredible, wonderful DMIblog].
Supplicants for the Republican nomination for President two years hence should pay attention to the current Senate race in New York. You misogynist lefties, listen up as well. Hillary Clinton, who deflected her anti-war primary like she would an Arkansas mosquito, is lining up gung-ho Yonkers Marlboro Man John Spencer in the general. This is gonna be a game of T-Ball, folks. No bookie will touch this action, though you can lay a fiver on just how far Senator Clinton will swat Spencer's gray, conservative cranium into rightfield. The unestimable Spencer is a stand-in for any conservative Republican man not named McCain or Giuliani - an incredibly accurate preview of, say, a Clinton-Allen matchup, a Clinton-Romney contest, or a Clinton-Frist tilt. Remember DeNiro in The Untouchables? Watch out for the splatter. Here's my preview: Spencer goes after Clinton with the usual stuff - liberal, carpetbagging, feminist, presidential wannabe anti-Christ yadda-yadda. Clinton smacks Spencer's noggin the length of the Montauk Highway. And then the Republicans (and many Democrats) continue to underestimate her (and the big guy) going into '08. Get yer peanuts here!
Two years ago, as President Bush was running for a second term, a catchy folk rock hook would filter down from the rafters of the halls Karl Rove packed with glassy-eyed yes-people who bought and consumed the Administration's lies uncooked, fully raw and filled with brain-killing organisms. The hook was written by John Hall and performed by his early 70s rock band Orleans. As it turned out, buoyed by lies and personal attacks, Bush was sadly Still The One, but the campaign was forced to quit playing the song after Hall complained.
But John Hall wasn't just another songwriter peeved at having his work stolen by a political movement he abhored - nope, John's a politician too. Democrats, liberal variety, environmentally movitated. Yesterday, Hall won his primary in New York's 19th Congressional District and with it the right to face Bush lackey Sue Kelly, a Congresswoman for whom the utterance of the word "aye" is directed solely by the political whims of Mr. Rove.
Now, my one encounter with John Hall came in 1979 when he organized the fantastic No Nukes concerts in New York City, which included performances by Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, James Taylor, Carly Simon, The Doobie Brothers, Jesse Colin Young, Gil Scott-Heron, Tom Petty, and others. A grooving time was had by all, but the grassroots anti-nuke movement never really achieved that level of pop culture sophisitication since. Funny thing, though - Hall never stopped. From his Wikipedia bio:
He has been involved with Mid-Hudson Nuclear Opponents, who successfully fought the siting of a nuclear power plant on the Hudson River in Greene County. While living in Saugerties, John co-founded Saugerties Concerned Citizens, and helped write the town's first zoning law. When Ulster County announced plans for a 200 acre solid waste dump on the historic Winston Farm, John led the opposition. This effort culminated in his 1989 election to the Ulster County Legislature. In the late nineties, after three successive school budgets were rejected by the voters, John ran for, and was elected twice to, the Saugerties Board of Education. His fellow trustees elected him president, and budgets were passed each year of Hall's tenure.
So he thought globally and acted locally - a fine old 70s slogan he actually lived by (most of us didn't, though we wore it on t-shirts and the like).
Another strong point in his favor: Hall has the strong backing of two buddies of mine, Brendan and Lance, which counts for a lot. Brendan, who I've known for all of his four decades, had this to say on his terrific blog.
John Hall's victory speech was inspiring, and gave me hope that the disastrous neocon social experiment may soon truly be coming to an end.
This is a guy with brains, guts and a list of endorsers a mile long - most notably Rep. Maurice Hinchey, the outspoken Bush critic and true champion of the middle class. This is a first for Hinchey, having never endorsed a congressional candidate before Hall.
The future looks bright.
As Karl Rove and his ilk sharpen their knives to eviscerate a genuinely decent American, as the neo-con money train chugs toward the Sue Kelly campaign HQ, as Sue Kelly's campaign workers start planting signs and start probing for weaknesses, as the whole status quo turns a hoary eye toward Beacon and Hall's campaign HQ, the man himself stands ready and anxious to join the fight.
Sue Kelly, while she stood alongside Newt Gingrich, campaigned on promises of supporting term limits.After 12 years of her brainless rubber-stamping of one Bush fiasco after another, it's time to put an end to her limitless terms.
Lance also met Hall, and wrote: "He's got the stuff, not just to beat Kelly, but to be an exemplary legislator."
Good enough for me. John Hall for Congress. Make a contribution if you can.
Bob Dylan's sweet and ancient voiced warbled through the speakers, as drove up Route 9 the morning after his concert in centerfield at the home of the Hudson Valley Renegades. The new record was in heavy rotation, and I hummed along to the instant classic Workingman's Blues No. 2:
There's an evenin' haze settlin' over town
Starlight by the edge of the creek
The buyin' power of the proletariat's gone down
Money's gettin' shallow and weak
Well, the place I love best is a sweet memory
It's a new path that we trod
They say low wages are a reality
If we want to compete abroad
Up past the colleges, past the old mills and rundown row-houses, past the closed insane asylum, higher into the Valley. Then we turned left through the gates of a grand, old estate, leaving the the strip malls and and the multiplexes behind. Part two of the late summer pilgrimage, a little inspirational trip to meet two great men - one very much alive and kicking (and debuting his album at No. 1 on the charts for the first time in three decades) and other dead these last 60 years.
Yet the spirit of FDR still animates Hyde Park. You feel his presence - and Eleanor Roosevelt's - in the old house, in the library, along the tree-lined drive, and in the study of his Presidential Library - the first of its ilk and the only one to actually be used by a sitting President. The greatest President since Lincoln, the greatest man to serve in that high office in the lifetimes of anyone you or I have ever known, still matters very much. He created our modern nation - robust in its outward vision, and compassionate in its inward view.
And he inspired my children. As I intended.
Let's be honest: compared to the current vintage, Roosevelt seems like a golden, exalted king. Devious and brilliant, ambitious and vindictive, charming and wise. And big, much bigger even in a body shriveled by polio. "He was real, Dad," said my daughter. As in a real leader, a real visionary, a real war-time President.
Lete's be even more honest: I wanted them to know the difference, to see the contrast. And I didn't hesitate to point it out, either. Especially in the Library, which is now a museum. As we walked through the halls and paused to look at the exhibits - the leg braces, the political pins, the original hand-written draft of the "Fear Itself" inaugural address - I thought about what the curators of this President's someday library will highlight.
The flight suit. The Mission Accomplished banner. The terror warnings.The National Intelligence Estimate he never bothered to read before committing the nation to a losing war of adventure. A marble engraving of the Sixteen Words. The guitar he strummed while New Orleans sank. A lifesized waxen Brownie. The shredded Geneva Conventions. A chainsaw.
Oh, the bullhorn is in storage no doubt, or has been bronzed. The great shining moment on the pile of New York rubble - I'm sure it will gleam under spotlights as you walk through the doors in Crawford. But it represents failure, the dead opposite of the hand-lettered Day of Infamy Pearl Harbor Speech you'll find in Hyde Park.
FDR was no perfect man, nor a perfect President. But he was both a great man and a great President. I hope my children see his like in their lifetimes. The challenges are certainly there. The ideals that Roosevelt believed in are still there. Is the will?
To feed the will, drive up Route 9. turn left at the Hyde Park Motel, and get little FDR fix. And remember that this country can still do great things.
My son and I took a short trip to the border this weekend, a place where anyone with anything to say about American immigration should spend an hour or two in silent contemplation. I'm talking about Terminal Four at JFK, the best place in New York to get a clear picture of the magnetism of these United States in under 60 minutes.
While we waited for my brother's plane (he was returning from a month in Africa with his girlfriend in the Peace Corps), we sat quietly on a luggage cart and watched the arrivals.
Even as Washington argues immigration policy, the real battle is about culture - the smiling Pat Buchanan face on Republican politics that chuckles like your favorite right-wing uncle while slipping American society the deadly shiv of "Anglo culture" and "Judeo-Christian tradition."
The scowling, pinstriped Lou Dobbs crowd finds an economic argument they like amid a huge field of better arguments they don't, and they talk about the rule of law. But they're really grasping for the America they grew up in - a place where the browns, and blacks, and grays knew their place.
"Why does everyone want to come here, Dad?" asked my 11-year-old at the airport as we split a pack of Twizzlers. He'd watched tearful reunions, huge rolling carts piled with cases, men exchanging dual-cheeked kisses, and chattering in Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, German, Japanese, and languages neither of us could identify. "Because it's the place to be," I said - a quick, slangy answer but I meant every syllable.
It is the place to be. And while competent security is vital, an open source America must endure. Despite our problems, we're like honey to an aspiring world. Immigrants are our strength. Just spend an hour in Terminal Four.
Oh and meanwhile, check out Andrea's first column - on immigration and Mr. Dobbs - in the Daily News. She's gonna be a regular.
A cool wind swept down from the mountains south of Interstate 84, slapped the guard tower of the state penitentiary, crossed the highway and rattled the curtains of the stage in centerfield at Dutchess County Stadium. Tropical gusts and low pressure moved up from the south, into the Hudson Valley and here - just 30 feet from the stage, we stood and watched Bob Dylan and his band swing into Cat's in the Well, our three children standing on their toes to see the man their father always describes as America's greatest living poet.
The rain held off, but the cold wind seemed to animate the band and Dylan - who can be enigmatic in concert, to say the least - really sold the material, stretching his elderly voice, and growling the lyrics in a 14-song set that ran from classic to obscure:
Cat's In The Well
You Ain't Goin' Nowhere
Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum
The Man In Me
Watching The River Flow
Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again
Not Dark Yet
Highway 61 Revisited
Visions Of Johanna
I'll Be Your Baby Tonight
Sugar Baby
Summer Days
(encore)
Like A Rolling Stone
All Along The Watchtower
In truth, the outdoor concert - part of Dylan's now-traditional summer tour of minor league ballparks with a touring cast that included sizzling min-sets by bluesmen Jimmie Vaughn and Junior Brown, and bluegrass star Elana James & The Continental Two - was something of a pilgrimage for our family. Part of their Dad's ongoing scheme for a broader education beyong school walls. My annual "learning can be fund, kids" Griswoldian tour. And a chance to see a living legend in childhood - something they'd always remember. Sometimes it's monuments, sometimes battlefields, sometimes ancient castles - and this time, a wise and ancient poet who, in his mid-60s, retains his sense of humor. In short, a wise-ass. Brilliantly so.
We arrived early, camped out in line, and spread our blankets up front, grabbing cold beers, fried dough, and hotdogs. The kids loved the opening acts, which played short, rambunctious, crowd-pleasing sets. They were tired and the crowd pressed in tightly to our former campsite (the usual drunks) and the 8-year-old fell asleep on the blanket.
Then Dylan was there, and over the next hour the education continued - mine, of course. Oh, the kids won't forget although they complained that they couldn't understand the words. And they didn't understand why Dylan stuck behind his keyboard, juking and twitching like an inspired backwoods preacher. And Kelsey asked why he didn't play Hurricane, his personal fave.
All the way up in the car, we played the new record, just out: the fine Modern Times, to me the best of his latest three-record "comeback" period. (In particular, I've been singing the wonderfully elegeic Workingman's Blues No. 2 over and over again - the record's a marvel and I may have some further thoughts later - Fred's review is here).
The sky was dark and starless, and the wind picked up. Remants of the tropic storm were on the way. And the band fell into the sublime Not Dark Yet. A slow shuffle, very slow. I could hear the words to this one and they stuck. We huddled together, and I closed my eyes and sung along quietly to one of my favorite Dylan masterpieces.
Shadows are falling and I've been here all day
It's too hot to sleep time is running away
Feel like my soul has turned into steel
I've still got the scars that the sun didn't heal
There's not even room enough to be anywhere
It's not dark yet, but it's getting there.
UPDATE: Pete Townshend, departing for his tour, shared some thoughts on the new Dylan record:
I heard some tracks from Bob Dylan’s new CD on BBC radio last night. They are great. Mature just as Bruce Springsteen’s last album was. The critics were favourable about the way Bob Dylan is facing his ageing process and is remaining connected with his ageing audience. It made me think; I believe I have done something like this on some of the songs on the Who album. But on some of them I have borrowed the voices of an imaginary young band of musicians, and allowed them to speak when very young, when young and middle-aged, and then when they are even older than I am today. I wonder why we, the song-writers of today, feel the need to even think about this? Did Cole Porter worry about the creatures of his craft growing old gracefully, bitterly or resolutely? Did Frank and Ella concern themselves about how strange it might be to sing songs about young love, when both of them were in old age?
The storm brought winds from the northeast, and covered the map from New Haven to Barnegat. Squalls swept across Long Island Sound, down into New York Harbor, and on into Sandy Hook. They slowed the ferries on the East River and the Hudson, and made the engineers ride their brakes on the slick rails along the commuter trains from Islip and Greenwich. The fishing fleets in Montauk and Shelter Island and Sag Harbor stayed at their moorings, as did their cousins at the quays down in Manasquan and Little Egg Harbor. The fisherman stayed bottled up in the pubs and bars along the docks, some mending line under awnings and in sheds, others just drinking away a day with neither catch nor pay.
New York Harbor still operated on a day like this, of course, but more slowly; the tugboat crews pulled on slickers and kept a hand free to grapple for safety in the unpredictable swell. At all hours, truckers in the container yards huddled under loading dock porches, smoking cigarettes and talking traffic, while the longshoremen alternated between frantic activity and menacing ease, secure in the protection of their bosses, union and otherwise, and hopeful of overtime pay.
In Manhattan, the rain created a shine on the impressionist painting of urban modernity, the grim overcast shrouding the tops of the tallest office buildings. Pools gathered on the streets, but little torrents ran down the avenues. Yellow cabs backed up on the elevated roadway above the station, turning through huge swamps at the bottom of the ramp onto 42nd Street. The musty smell of soaked wool and sweat filled the cars of the IRT and drifted through the expanses of Grand Central Terminal, where newspaper hawkers were chased from their street corners to shout headlines in the humid side passages. They sat by the bundled piles of newspapers, the broadsheets face up with grim news out of the eastern battlefields; the tabloids were face down, showing photos of a troubled ballplayer.
In the Bronx, the rain blanketed the tenements of Mott Haven and Mosholu, the depot at Hunts Point and the low warehouses and factories down near Hell’s Gate. It soaked the back streets in Melrose and Belmont, and up in Riverdale, the old trees of Delafield’s estate swayed in the storm, and a sea of black umbrellas held back the water outside of a small stone church not far from the bluffs above Spuyten Duyvil. There in the drive, the rain rolled off the polished black hood of a hearse that delivered the casket to the church.
Truth was, a heavy rainstorm didn’t clean New York as much as it stirred up the dirt, and caught the detritus and slime of eight million and floated it like sewage to the surface. The hot, dry pavement spattered with warm rain gave forth the telling odor of its borough, its neighborhood, its block. Stale beer in front of Tammany-era saloons, thin paper down Broad Street. Animal blood and rended fat swam in the meat-packing district; reeking fish guts on Fulton Street, and assorted oils, cabbage, and turned milk clouded rainwater puddles in the ethnic bedroom stretches of the outer boroughs. The city ran with its own filth in the rain, and some of it washed into the East River and the Hudson River and the Sound and the Harbor; the waters turned a satisfying gray-brown, the true melting pot of New York, neither pleasant nor aromatic, just overflowing and full of filth.
Sitting comfortably in the super-charged path of my Kenmore 5000 - a Category Five blast of pure kilowatt-sucking air-conditioned power - I was stunned by a line in one of those wonderful Richard Russo novels about poetic, hopeless goobers stuck in some backwater helltown up past Albany: "The paper says rain."
The paper? The damned paper? Who gets their weather from the paper anymore? For Crissakes, the freaking paper was printed last night. At the very best, the so-called "weather" is circa yesterday afternoon. It's about as relevant as the Compromise of 1850. Entire cold fronts have shifted in the last half-day. Tropical depressions have moved hundreds of miles in that slow, creeping timespan.
These days, "the weather" changes as fast as - well, er - the weather.
That is to say, reporting is real-time, baby. They show the latest forecast in my office building's elevator. Desktop applicatons abound. Text messages drop into the queue. I want (and can get) the latest Doppler 4000 charts on my mobile. The old-fashioned time/temperature sign outside the local funeral home or bank has mainlined some brand of instant data heroin and is multiplying in demonic Fantasia broom-sequence madness all over the wireless world.
This pre-dates New Orleans, my friends. It's not that "eveything has changed" and we're living in some strange post-Katrina landscape in which Mother Nature takes on the sinister killing glare of an al Qaeda operative. This goes back a ways, back to some blurring of the space-time continuum, a moment when the Weather Channel went from cheap charlie basic cable throw-in extra to "programming."
Have you seen Storm Stories? Or Full Force Nature? How about It Could Happen Tomorrow? Me either, but I know some people who have. I come from a long line of weather buffs actually. Barometer fiddlers. Weather-band radio buyers. Generator owners. Foul weather gear wearers.
It is for them, and their growing ranks, that programmers create this "disastertainment." For ratings, of course. And so that we can all be prepared...When Nature Strikes!
And it will strike, of that I'm convinced. As a confirmed lightning-phobe who closes windows tighly and will not use the telephone during an eletrical storm, I have a healthy fear of the natural elements. There was that hurricane my family rode out on the Jersey Shore back in '71, another I covered for The Riverdale Press in the 80s (when a falling tree just missed my Ford), and the heat-related blackouts of '77 and '03. I can still see the image of Jerry Koosman on the hill at Shea go dark as the electricity ebbed. That and the announcement three years ago in a 44th Street bar that the tap was dry, they'd stopped serving, and our dwindling band of sweaty office refugees would have to be sent into that warm, hopelessly dark Manhattan night to somehow bribe a cabbie into taking us home - either that, or sleep in Bryant Park.
Yeah, the worst weather is always summer-borne, in my llving memory. Blizzards leave me cold.
So this week's triple-digital weather - as the TV weather stars intone with such good cheer - is part of our own huge, all-encompassing reality show. Yesterday, as a massive pro-Israel rally kicked out the jams here on East 42nd Street (and a tiny anti-Zionist counter-rally looked for shade across the street), everyone still talked about the heat. Especially the handful of cops in full, black battle gear, index fingers outstretched on M-16s and sweating pouring from underneath Kevlar helmets like the East River through Hell's Gate.
Sure enough, MSNBC's bright, newsy homepage made the switch today. All-out war in the Middle East became a sidebar. The new headline? "Summer Sizzler." Part of their in-depth global warming coverage, I guess.
Did I mention, it's hot?
UPDATE: Tropical Storm Beryl - which just happens to be my nickname for the Artist - is bearing down on defenseless coastal New England, and Lance Mannion is live on the scene in the BloggerSeven News Truck. We switch now LIVE to Chatham. Lance, what can you tell us about conditions there?
Tags: Weather+Channel weather Beryl hurricaneI love when this happens. You write a post, seemingly in isolation from most of the world, and then someone incredibly close to the situation finds the post (however obscure the subject matter) and responds. It's happened so many times on this blog, I can't begin to count: an old bandmate of Johnny Thunders drops me a line, Guitar Center works argue about their employer in response to a post, authors respond directly to criticism of their work. And so on.
This week's comment kudos go to "Metro-North Conductor," who with a little fast clickwork, is revealed to be Bobby, a terrific blogger who writes from the conductor's POV over on his excellent site, Derailed. Here's what he had to say in response to this post of mine:
According to Metro North Revenue rules, a single ride ticket, like the one the hispanic commuter had, are non-transferable between lines. If this individual had a montly ticket, like yourself, his ticket could be used on all three lines.
I've never understood this policy, but it probably has something to do with how CT funds their portion of Metro North versus how NY funds it.
Having said this, I would have let the guy go. I think I might know who your particular conductor was, and believe me, he would have thrown you off just as fast as the hispanic guy.
Of course he would have let the guy go - most of the conductors I run into would have; it's what made the incident memorable. In any case, here's a bonus from Bobby - who often writes about the celebrities he meets up and down the rails - and this one has an incredible common sense lesson about politicians:
During the 1992 presidential campaign, then Governor Bill Clinton made a campaign stop in Grand Central. He was followed by a huge press corp, jostling cameras and carrying microphones. As I walked by the crowd I paused to see what all the commotion was about. Clinton saw me, a workingman dressed in full uniform. He paused (he knew this was a great photo opportunity,) and held his hand out to me. He looked me straight in the eye and firmly grasped my outstretched hand with his right hand as he clasped my forearm with his left. He made me feel as if I were the only person in that cavernous station, and I was not surprised when he won the election that November.
Howard Dean on the other hand did not impress me at all. It was after the democratic primaries but shortly before he had been named Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. He boarded the train and sat down right across from the train’s lavatory. Unfortunately, most lavatories on our trains emanate a foul barnyard odor. Smart commuters avoid the seats surrounding the lavatory like the plague. Even though there were several other seats available, he chose to sit right across from the lavatory.
Now I ask, if a man does not have enough sense to not sit across from a bathroom on a Metro North train, how can he ever hope to be the leader of the free world?
So Mr. Chertoff and his Homeland Security goons want to cut funding for anti-terrorism efforts in New York. The nerve. Five years ago, we lost more Americans here than have been killed in the Iraq war - to date, sadly. Reports ABC News's The Blotter:
The formula did not consider as landmarks or icons: The Empire State Building, The United Nations, The Statue of Liberty and others found on several terror target hit lists. It also left off notable landmarks, such as the New York Public Library, Times Square, City Hall and at least three of the nation's most renowned museums: The Guggenheim, The Metropolitan and The Museum of Natural History. The form ignored that New York City is the capital of the world financial markets and merely stated the city had four significant bank assets.
No landmarks? Well, that's easily answered: the list above will do - though it doesn't include Pete's Tavern, the Algonquin, the Oyster Bar, Fraunces Tavern, the Olde Town, or McSorley's.
But icons? Did they not notice Ms. Katie Couric and her courageous farewell to the peacock? Isn't Dave an icon, and Conan, and Jon? We've got icons by the dozen: geez, you trip over them on Fifth Avenue some days. Look, there's Woody, and Belafonte, and DeNiro. There goes rhymin' Simon. Cuomos, Kennedys, Careys, Clintons and Koch. Jeter, Namath, Willis, Mex, Whitey and Yogi.
Icons?! We got your stinkin' icons, Mr. Thin Man Wannabe G-Man (speaking of New York icons). I saw John Updike on line for the bank last week. Lou Reed was reading the Post on the 4 Train not long ago. He nodded at me. Gore Vidal poured himself from a cab on Seventh Avenue.
Keep this up and we're gonna go all Eddie Hayes on your scrawny Let New Orleans Drown Homeland Security neck, pallie. Sean Combs may be knockin'. Imus is listening. Trump is getting jiggy. Or maybe Tom Verlaine.
Helloooo Homeland pup - this is the homeland. Seinfeld? Little clan known as The Rockefellers? James Freaking Gandolfini? Marv??!!
Yeah, go buy s'more Segways for downtown Omaha, chump. You're an icon of failure, a monument to political disgrace and historic ignominy.
UPDATE: Homeland Security claims New York screwed up the paperwork and that NYPD drills are stupid. Hmm. So we're incompetent. Hmm. Bush-Cheney-Chertoff vs. Bloomberg (whom I didn't even support, truth be told). A battle of competency. Of managers. Let's see. Yes. Whom would you choose? [insert hummed Jeopardy music here]. Such a tough choice. I wonder....
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