Tom Watson

The (Much) Wider Web

If the statistics are to be believed, millions are taking up the virtual pen and blogging all over the world. So why then are the same dozen or so suspects always used in panels and on TV as the "voices of the bloggers?" Why are these so-called "citizen's media" leaders content with the mantle of gatekeeper when all of them - to a man and a woman - argue that gatekeepers in media are sooooo last millennium, baby. As regular readers know, self-appointed spokespeople for the entire Web just rub me the wrong way. So how cool then that one of the dirty dozen is throwing off that hypocritical mantle? NYU prof Jay Rosen has one of the great posts about blogging in quite some time (so much navel-gazing "we're leading the revolution" dross out there) and points to just a handful of other committed voices in the blogosphere. Run, don't walk, to PressThink and read it. Well said, Jay.

Streets of Philadelphia

Back from an overnight to Philadelphia with the Cub Scouts, taking the railed parallel to I-95 and the Post Road on Amtrak, whisking around the historic district, and flying back the same way this afternoon. Sleep-challenged with my ears still ringing, here's what's on my mind: city planning, infrastructure, scale, and public services. Like most cities, Philly gets both sides of a pass-fail grade. In the news, a grand collaboration in wireless access, creating a broad wi-fi zone in downtown Philadelphia. Originally, the wi-fi was to be free, cut city planners caved to the telecomm industry, started a separate nonprofit to govern the offering, and will charge $16-20 a month. No giant Bryant Park for Philly. So they turned a homerun into a cheap, bad hop single, but it shows they care about planning. The same cannot be said for the disaster area around one of the gems of all of public America, Independence Hall. Sure, it's run by the National Park Service, but the jumble of chain link and bulldozers that has characterized the area around Independence Hall is a disgrace to a city that has always had an identity crisis of geography, lodged as it is like a stray poppy seed between the shining front teeth of New York and Washington. Can't they get this right? Yeah, there are shiny new welcome centers and museums on this sacred ground, one housing the Liberty Bell. But the makeshift security fences to create a "secure area" along Market Street that - get this - still allows traffic to pass down the narrow block, and the armed Gestapo-like NPS officers patting down Scouts and grannies makes this space a hodge-podge. And there are still bulldozers tearing it all up! Couple that with Independence Hall's bedraggled back garden, which should be an outdoor show place, and the general decripitude about the fading Stalin-era bank and insurance towers and the smelly back-alleys of the neighborhood, and the seat of Liberty does not stand tall enough. Still, the boys had a great time on the train, we watched the silly but entertaining Nicholas Cage vehicle National Treasure on hotel room pay-per-view, featuring some of the sites we'd just seen, and we were surprised by the beauty and warmth of the city's revitalized waterfront, shining as it does across from the lights of Camden.

UPDATE: Some readers took issue with my Philly takedown, which probably was a little strong. I'm just frustrated with the state of the historic district, despite many millions of investment. And let me clarify the pathetic "security" problem. To visit the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, and Congress Hall, you must pass through security that's tougher than the folks out at JFK (ok, but not quite Gestapo-like). They yell at little kids. Loudly. They make Cub Scouts take their belts off. Then - get this - you exit the building and walk across an open Market Street to Independence Hall, passing a couple of rangers who open little people pen gates. Let me repeat: the street is open. So while the tourists are nearly strip-searched by surly armed guards, any old car bomber or fertilizer truck driver can rumble on through, a mere 15 feet from the room where the Declaration of Independence was ratified and signed. A pathetic incidence of the cover-your-ass planning that masquerades as "security" in our post 9/11 cities.

That said, I don't want to leave the impression that Philadelphia's not worth a visit on leisure (having been there many times on business). It is. My 10-year-old, who's obsessed with American history these days, can't wait to go back. Oh, and the folks at PhillyFuture.org - a great city-based blog network - had some comments for me:

He says a few nice things, too (he was "surprised by the beauty and warmth of the city's revitalized waterfront"), but the criticism seems selective and unwarranted. 'Cause hey, at least we haven't turned our historic buildings into giant billboards.

Oh, and someone should tell Mr. Watson that the front tooth of Washington was knocked out five years ago. What you see there now is a cosmetic implant.

DeLay No Longer

Clearly, the White House has pulled the lever on the trapdoor under the snarling, battering ram political career of Congressman Tom DeLay. The abandonment of the man with the legendary whip hand and a heart of stone cold conservatism by Mssrs. Rove and Cheney and their man Bush was so familiar. When politicians step too far, when power corrupts, when the tipping point is reached, the fall can be breathtaking.

I've seen this play before; indeed, in the Bronx in the 1980s, I played a minor but memorable (to me) part in the precipitous fall of three powerful pols.

In those days, the Democratic Party ruled New York's three mainland outer boroughs with almost absolute power. Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx were the big three in city politics, with alliances of their powerful borough presidents, county leaders, and myriad state and city officials holding majority power in the old Board of Estimate. Each borough was a patchwork quilt of competing but tightly-knitted interests: local political clubs, the county committee, school boards, district leaders. The vote belonged to the borough president but the power usually resided in the county leader. That leader had near absolute power over the Democratic line on the ballot for State Senate, Assembly, Congress, and the judgeships. (Indeed, in those days, it wasn't so much Republicans vs. Democrats as regular Democrats vs. so-called "reform" Democrats, a sub-species of ork that espoused high ideals in public, but could usually be bought off in the backroom).

Now, Tom DeLay may be a national figure, scare the hell out of his Republican Congressional sheep, and command an army of snarling conservative poilus, but I guarantee that even on his best day, DeLay never had as much control over his organization as Stanley Friedman did on his worst.

Friedman was both a legend his time - and in his mind. He followed in the grand Tammany tradition - adjusted for more ethnically diverse times - and was the successor to FDR protege Ed Flynn, among others. He made judges, pure and simple. He was also a wonderfully picaresque  character with a love of intrique and deal-making and symbolism. As a 24-year-old political reporter for The Riverdale Press in 1986 when Friedman was indicted for racketeering, I believed he'd beat the charges because he was Stanley Friedman. The system didn't punish him; he ran the system. But I was wrong, as Time Magazine recounted on its pages that year:

The trial involved payoffs in an obscure New York City agency, but the cast of characters and sordid details made for great drama. Here was Donald Manes, borough president of Queens and a powerful Democratic Party boss who killed himself by thrusting a kitchen knife into his chest last March just as the inquiry got under way. Here was Bronx Democratic Leader Stanley Friedman, an equally mighty politico who was accused of bribing Manes to arrange a city contract with a company in which Friedman held stock. The case pitted Manhattan U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani, a prosecutor with political ambitions, against Thomas Puccio, the attorney who won acquittal for Claus von Bulow on charges that he tried to kill his wife. The prosecution's chief witness was a confessed extortionist who had set up a phony clinic where, he admitted, he had sex with several patients. After four days of deliberations, the jury last week found Friedman and three others guilty of racketeering and bribery. Friedman vowed to go on fighting, and he was as good as his word. Shortly after the verdict, Friedman scuffled with a woman photographer and was promptly arrested on assault charges.

Later that night, as I recall it, Friedman returned to the Bronx for an emergency meeting of the county Democratic committee in their wood-panelled second story office in strip mall on Williamsbridge Road. I sat on the stairs outside the the committee room with the other reporters. A terse, typed statement soon followed. Friedman was out, just like that.

An appeal was promised. Belief in his innocence and probity was proclaimed. But it was over, and the fall was fast. Within the year, the other two most powerful Democrats, Borough President Stanley Simon and Congressman Mario Biaggi, were also gone, headed for jail.

Power vacates quickly. Those in the political game will always almost act in self interest. And as the stories and investigations into DeLay's empire grow and spread and worsen, you can feel the self interest shifting. When a wound becomes palpably mortal, "friends" move in quickly the finish the job, euthanize the injured, staunch the bleeding, and save themselves.

Ask Stanley Friedman. A written statement is forthcoming.

The Altar of Baseball

Sometime in the early 70s, in the middle of summer, my friend Doug and I snuck into the press level at Shea Stadium. We left our mezzanine seats, walked up the down escalator, found a back stairway, crossed a little catwalk, and there it was: the sacred booth of Channel Nine. Security in those days wasn't what it is now - arrogant, fearful, and litigious - and a couple of skinny boys barely got a glance. We were somebody's kids. No one asked whose. And now we found ourselves bumping into the bigshots of off-field Metdom. General manager Bob Scheffing walked by. The towering Ralph Kiner stepped out of the booth. Bob Murphy stepped past him, as they shared a chuckle over something. And we caught a glimpse of a broad-checked green sportcoat. Lindsey Nelson.

Royalty in the land of royal blue and orange, when Shea was still new, when it was a temple sheathed in plates of corrugated colors, sponsored by Reingold and Royal Crown and Manufacturer's Hanover. I was reminded of this hagiography chapter in my Mets memory by Jason's ode to Opening Day this morning:

Every culture, every religion, has its own spring rebirth ritual — a death, a sacrifice, followed by emergence and renewal. The Christians have Easter. The Jews have Passover. I have Opening Day.

Opening Day marks always a new season of hope. It is perhaps the only day of the baseball season on which all possibilities are open, on which every team is a contender. It's not only the day when teams start playing again, and fans start living and dying by box scores, it's also a day when millions of Americans begin again a kind of national communion, a shared dialogue, that connects people who have buried themselves in icy impassivity during the long, cruel winter.

That's well said. This year's icy impassivity faces a much deeper and potentially satisfying thaw for Mets fans. There is real excitment in the rotting hullk of concrete in Flushing, where the Mets open their 44th season (while our Mayor tosses billion-dollar stadium bon-bons to open-mouthed fellow plutocrat Woody Johnson for his eight home Jets games a year across town). Pedro Martinez and Carlos Beltran are the big acquisitions. David Wright and Jose Reyes are the big home-grown talents. Kaz Matsui, Doug Mankiewicz, Tom Glavine, Braden Looper, Kris Benson (and his wife), and the old hold-over, Mike Piazza, make the interesting supporting cast. This is a team that can hit more than a bit, run, field, cover ground. It's younger, more athletic, more sunny and optimistic (discounting the dyspeptic Cliff Floyd, of course). Judging by the spring - oh fool that I am - the Mets seem to play hard and take the game seriously.

This reflects well, in the early going, on freshman manager Willie Randolph, who comes to Queens from Brooklyn and the Bronx. Borrowing his rulebook from Joe Torre, his confidence from  Reggie Jackson, and his quick step from Thurman Munson, Randolph appears to be the man for his times at Shea. The Mets will be both fun to watch and in the talent-swamped National League East, one of the teams to watch. Already, baseball acumens such as those belonging to Murray Chass and Peter Gammons have tabbed Pedro for the NL Cy Young Award. The consensus Mets prediction seems to be something along the lines of 88-74, third place. Not bad at all. Worth paying attention to, a feel-good story, as Murphy used to say.

The game surely needs it. Stung by Balco, by Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi, by Mark "I'm here to talk about the future" McGwire, by its failed commissioner and union leaders, baseball needs its game to rescue its business. Surely it will; it always seems to, from 1919 to 2005. The always astute Gammons got it right in his season-opening column for ESPN:

Be it 1919 or 1994, baseball has always survived because of the game, the players and the ties that bind generations to franchises. Barry Bonds is going past Babe Ruth, get over it. The game will move on because it always does.

So true. I'm bound to the Mets franchise, whether it's owned by Dame Joan Payton or the Wilpons, skippered by Gil Hodges or Davey Johnson or Bobby Valentine, led by Tom Seaver or Cleon Jones or Keith Hernandez or Piazza. It's the orange and blue, the obscure statistics, the useless, pointless knowledge, the sounds and smells of the game. Play ball.

The Blogging Pope

Sometime in early 1994, I was - as the kids said back then - browsing the de novo World Wide Web, visiting sites of gray background and bright blue links, all stacked neatly top to bottom with the occasional postage stamp image dropped in. For some reason, I was dropping in on museum pages from around the world, amazed at the evident death of geography in basic research. And I clicked on something labeled The Holy See. Accustomed as I was, through more than three decades of incense-tinged experience, to the ancient nature of church protocol, I figured this must be the site of some intrepid Catholic Web "designer" because it was pretty advanced for its day; heck, it had tables and a smooth white background! So I looked at the copyright tag, checked the domain registration, and found .... mirabile dictu! .... that this was the site of Pope John Paul II.

Poet, author, diarist, commentator, reader, writer. Karol Wojtyla of Poland was a blogger at heart.  And his Papacy earned early adopter status amidst the cobwebs and Latin scrolls of the Church. Hidebound to tradition in many ways, progressive in many others, Pope John Paul II embraced new technology to the fullest, and used the Internet as a tool for evangelism from its earliest days of consumer adoption. Not only was he the most traveled Pope, he was the most wired Pope, and he understood the power of the worldwide network of digital information and opinion.

Very early on, the Church became a strong Internet player under John Paul II. It understood the intrinsic value of its vast collections of art and texts, and gradually made much of it available online - thereby drawing in Catholics and non-Catholics. Almost immediately, the Holy See created versions of its Website in many languages and was among the first major worldwide institutions to use database-and-object technology online to publish, moving quickly away from the flat html pages of the mid-90s.

Moreover, the Pope understood the power of networked communication, especially for the young. He pushed the Church to adopt technology, to open communications. Here's a quote from one official statement on World Communications Day (2002):

For the Church the new world of cyberspace is a summons to the great adventure of using its potential to proclaim the gospel message...I dare to summon the whole Church bravely to cross this new threshold, to put out deeply into the Net....

Note the humor in the pun. The Blogging Friar Jack calls John Paul "the most media-savvy pope ever." As late as last year, in failing health, he continued to urge the Church to invest in - and embrace - the Internet. Speaking to a group of French bishops, he commented:

Your conference and numerous dioceses have well understood the positive character of this change, proposing Internet sites directed especially to young people, where it is possible to be informed, to be formed, and to discover the different proposals of the Church. I cannot but encourage the development of these instruments to serve the Gospel and to promote dialogue and communication.

Modern technology has created the kind of death watch we all witnessed over the past few days. In most ways, it is useless and crude. But the spread of information - the more open Church - that John Paul II encouraged will not be reversed easily. Visit the Vatican online today and you'll find a vast and nearly complete database of his thoughts: homilies, speeches, letters, messages - a record of his Papacy online.

And that instinct toward transparency, remarkable for this Church, should be considered a major portion of the legacy of this blogging Pope.

UPDATE: CNN picks up on this story, which I'm pretty sure went from this blog, to Jarvis, and thereby to a much wider audience. No credit of course!

Carry That Weight

The funeral home tonight was so familiar. My grandfather was waked there years ago. My kids go to the parochial school up the hill. I've been there a bunch of times for friends, for family. Fitz, whose father died at 82 this week after a long bout with kidney disease, knows the territory better than most. When we were both young, one of his sources of income came from carrying coffins  from the home, through church, to the cemetery. Tonight, his beautiful four-year-old daughter socialized through at least three generations in the room, amid the lillies with a precocious charm that - I must note - comes from her mother.

These days, Fitz and I converse mainly through the Internet, e-mail, IM, or on this blog - where we continue political arguments begun two decades ago on Morningside Heights.  And so, these funerals are strangely welcome gatherings. Familiar faces, older. Despite the clamor of business and family life, the line grows longer and continues. It hit me: I remembered Fitz's dad best when he was our age, taking us to Cub Scout meetings, to altar boys, to baseball.

Now, he'd been released from the burden, the weight, and quite peacefully by all accounts. We carry that weight now, Fitz and I and the rest of you, three or four decades on. When Pope John Paul II made the decision this week not to return to the hospital in Rome, to accept his condition and its end, that choice seemed comforting to me. The courage of his struggle would be completed with the courage of his own choice. The message: no one escapes suffering, or the finite nature of life itself.

We were leaving the funeral home, my artist and me, when Fitz's brother handed me a tiny paper cup. Single malt. And the words from the prayer card, traditional, iconic, American in their Gaelic sensibility. "... May the sun shine warm upon your face." The whiskey burned. The warmth spread. And I walked into the night, refreshed and glad.