Tom Watson

Oops, He Did It Again

Following that cultural siding to nowhere laid down by the likes of New York Times right-wing sex columnist Maureen Dowd, John McCain continued to roll along the tracks of cluelessness with one lame-ass mess of a political attack spot conflating the oratory of Barack Obama with the wiggly non-lyricism of Britney Spears and the talent-lacking porn preening of Paris Hilton, two headliners from the latest edition of Yesterday's News.

Even John Weaver, a longtime McCain confidante, called this bit of juiceless video puffery "childish," and he's dead on. Sadly, the Good Ship Tone Deaf will sail along, aided and abetted by sad excuses for commentators like Dowd, who has zeroed in on portraying the almost Democratic nominee as an anorexic starlet (to use Digby's phrase) whose even thinner resume is roughly akin to lightweight celebrity club kids boffing the paparazzi bloggers.

This is exactly how low the Republican Party and its once-proud nominee have sunk - and watch out kids, it's still July.

We understand: McCain has to go negative to have a shot. He didn't have to go ridiculous as well.

The Kaine Mutiny

The smart money is moving to Virginia Governor Tim Kaine as the lead horse in Barack Obama's veep stakes race, and the yawns can be heard from here to Kalamazoo. I'm sure Kaine is a decent Democrat, a good man. But he's also the blankest of slates, an empty political canvas, and a profoundly disappointing choice.

In fact, he's the non-choice choice - the very closest Obama could come to making no choice at all, shy of a Constitutional amendment.

Kaine may help in Virginia. But let's face it, he's the third most prominent Democrat there at best, many fathoms below Jim Webb and Mark Warner. Nationally, he's in the lower percentile of political heat as well. Kaine's a one-term governor, a former Jesuit missionary, and a well-respected housing lawyer. He's a former City Councilman and Mayor of Richmond, and like Bob Casey, a member of Democrats for Life of America, a pro-life group. All well and good, but no national profile. Most people will respond, "Tim Who?"

It's almost as if the Obama camp doesn't really want the difficulty of a two-person ticket; another human doesn't fit the branding very well. Hard to blame them, really. Remember Joe Lieberman? Dan Quayle?

And, of course, choosing Tim Kaine destroys the unity case in Obama's playbook, but he may not need it - I cannot imagine him losing to John McCain. Still, an Obama-Clinton ticket would surely have been evidence of true commitment to Democratic union, to building a much bigger governing party. Not choosing Hillary and electrifying the party is small-minded, somewhat narrow, and tactically conservative. I can fully understand it, without honoring the motivation. It's not as good for the party or for the nation, perhaps. But the campaign believes it's good for Barack Obama. Safe and sound.

And maybe that's fine.

But say the name "Tim Kaine" aloud a few times. Or "Obama-Kaine." No thrill up the leg? Not mine, anyway. It will probably suffice. And Governor Kaine may be a fine public servant.

But you only get this opportunity once in a political career - one vital choice, one opportunity to unify. And the non-choice choice...well, it's a very quiet decision indeed.

Return With Us to 1962

The world of Sterling Cooper has changed in two years, or so the creators of AMC's hit series Mad Men tell us as the series resumes Sunday night, a fictional two-year leap in storyline. In real life, too - over the past few months Mad Men has become a Golden Globe winner, an Emmy nominee, and the darling of television critics from coast to coast. Over at newcritics, we take a more jaundiced view of the the advertising business in the Roger Maris era - and of the series and its slow (some would say nonexistent) plot line. Yet, we will reconvene on Sunday evening at 10 pm EDT for our live-blogging of Don Draper and company - I'll take the first shift, and my partner in MM commentary, the fab M.A. Peel (who has a terrific preview up right now), will trade off on upcoming shows. Please be there with swizzle sticks aswim and Electrosizers set to full snark - Mad Men blogging is back!

The Summer Times of John McCain

The summer does not love John McCain. The humidity seems to descend like a warm cloud on his campaign, locking in the ill humors and dreadful political vapors. Last summer, he was a mere ghost hanging around the Republican field. This summer...well, he's a mere ghost hanging around the fast-moving presidential heels of Barack Obama.

As the Democrat conducts facsimile diplomacy that seems so damned close to the real thing, McCain talks about "the situation on the Iraq/Pakistan border."

While Obama cuts the cards on troop withdrawal with Prime Minister Maliki in Iraq and projects increased American strength in undernourished Afghanistan, McCain hunkers down with a vice-presidential pick that seems to be narrowing to Mitt Romney.

But no humiliation comes close to the rejection The New York Times op-ed page laid on the GOP nominee. Attempting to respond to Senator Obama's piece on Iraq, McCain weighed in with his own column, figuring the NYT would naturally want the opposing viewpoint.

Not so fast.

Op-ed editor David Shipley rejected McCain's response, wishing aloud for a version that "mirrors Senator Obama's piece." And then, oh the recognizable ignominy for those among us who have ever flashed a pen in the vain hope of publication: "I'd be pleased, though, to look at another draft."

The horror. McCain's not good enough at rattling the old prose around to appear on the NYT's op-ed page...when he's the nominee of the Republican Party...for President...and is responding to an opponent's piece that clearly attacks his own policy positions. Oh my.

And this a page that actually publishes Maureen Dowd, for heck's sake. Twice a week.

McCain's is a campaign that appears as viable over the long-term as John Belushi, circa 1979. It's almost enough to make you feel some sympathy for the old warrior. Then you remember that whole "future of the republic thing," and you hope this long, hot summer of McCain's discontent continues until the winds blow and the leaves fall from the trees around the nation's polling places.

The First Real Change

The big change bus missed my corner stop last summer, and the highest  positive emotion stirred hereabouts by the wave of Obamania has been a deep, slowly-building respect for the man's political operation and personal stamina. I hang no posters. I do not swoon, though I do root. Yet, the photograph above hit me - if not with a Matthewsesque leg shiver, then with that rare summer Sunday gulp of realization. Look past Barack to the crowd of American soldiers, behind him at the gym in Kuwait. Look at their faces. If anyone yearns for change in our populace, it's the men and women of our armed forces - all of them facing two or three tours of hard duty, years away from home, careers put on hold, and the threat of death or serious injury on a daily basis. In their shoes, change has a far different meaning and the choice seems stark indeed. Senator McCain seems bent on running like he's the William Westmoreland of 2008, clinging to a policy of pure disaster. Senator Obama may well shift his Iraq policy once he grasps power, and he's certainly right about Afghanistan. He's no peacenik. But his election would begin a broad shift in American foreign policy: I'm not an Obama believer , I'm not baptized into the faith - but I  believe this deeply. And those people in fatigues behind the Democratic nominee? They're the ones who need a bit of hope.

My Mental Recession

Another bone-headed decision by the limping Presidential campaign of mercurial Republican Senator John McCain: why distance yourself from Phil Gramm when the man is so obviously right? We are immersed in a "mental recession," and I should know. Ever since Obama clinched and darted immediately toward the center of the fish tank, crowding those colorful clown fishes next to the bubbly deep-sea diver - pretty damned near the purpley  Lieberman coral - I've felt a deep political malaise settling in. The tank grows cloudy on me.

Yes, I know that's Jimmy Carter's moment of depressed descriptive for a bit of a national slump, but damned if the GOP Doctor Phil (good one, Barack!) didn't top it.  "Mental recession," indeed...it paints a vivid word picture of retreating American brains, like a Ramones song. The mental economists define a mental recession as two straight quarters in which the GMP (gross mental product) declines. [As an aside,  I just love the word "mental" if you can't tell; it's just so darned "old guy."]

Then there are the mental culture critics.  No, not the late-80s L.A. speed metal band. No, I mean the twisted sisters of taste, the wild-eyed decriers of New Yorker magazine covers. Every paragon of old media righteousness and his blogging brotha is flogging the magazine's bit of rather clever satire (drawn by cartoonist Barry Blitt). And the Obama campaign is upset; its designated spokesman-for-outrage Bill Burton called the cover “tasteless and offensive.” Even McCain agreed.

Silly me. I thought that well-executed absurdity in literature or art helped to illuminate the foolishness of its subject; by portraying the Obamas as a fist-bumping duo of terrorists, one Islamic and the other 70s era Black Panther, in the Oval Office, the New Yorker image renders the actual calumnies laughable. Foolish. The wispy products of goofballs and lunatics. Totally mental.

Here's another thought: George Carlin's been dead just two weeks and suddenly a piece of mainstream political satire that wouldn't have turned a single lefty head in outrage 25 years ago is suddenly branded obscene, beyond the pale.

Now, we're visited with the specter of feuding cartoonists and critics. "Not particularly well-drawn or interesting," sniffed Stephen Hess at Brookings. Rrrrrrrr! Cartoonist fight!

Nick Anderson, president of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, lambasted the  cover. “There is a constant and natural tension in the creation of satire,” Anderson told Politico. “The delicate art of satire is suffocated by heavy-handed elucidation. But, if the satirist fails to make the point clearly enough, the whole enterprise backfires in unintended misinterpretation.”

"Heavy-handed elucidation?" Well, the point is pretty clear to me. The cover is worth a laugh or two, a moment of thought perhaps, and is perfectly laudable in the context of an artist examining our current national political context. It would have passed largely unnoticed by anyone but the magazine's stuffy readership (like me!) if Obama and his chorus of supporters hadn't cried foul. Besides, as editor David Remnick said: "What I think it does is hold up a mirror to the prejudice and dark imaginings about Barack Obama's — both Obamas' — past, and their politics...The idea that we would publish a cover saying these things literally, I think, is just not in the vocabulary of what we do and who we are... We've run many many satirical political covers. Ask the Bush administration how many."

Well, exactly. Or as Gawker so delicately put it: "Remnick Defends Obama Cover, Idea That Readers Aren't Retards."

Or mental. As the case may be.

UPDATE: Jon Swift: "There is not much the members of the liberal blogosphere and I agree on but I salute them on their efforts to stamp out humor and especially satire and bring more earnestness to our political discourse." Hee hee. Also, Hitchens and Gary Kamiya.

Raising Some Dough for the Cultural Conversation

Hey there. Over at newcritics - our glorious group culture blog - we're officially in fundraising mode . Please give/pledge what you can to keep it all clicking. This is the first newcritics fundraiser and we will limit it to one week. Please feel free to email your friends, reach out to regulars who comment, and promote it on your own blogs! As you may know, we were maliciously attacked - but the site is back, it's on a spiffy new server that moves at least twice as fast, and we're all set for blogging. We're getting ready to live-blog the season premiere of Mad Men in two weeks - and yes, there are other film fests in discussions. So please help with the costs in whatever way you can. Will you chip in? I've created a newcritics campaign page here. You can use PayPal to make a quick contribution - or just make a pledge.  Thanks in advance!

The Tough Cleon Jones

When I was seven or eight or nine I'd often grab a bat or a broom handle or just an old stick and stand in the backyard in Yonkers imitating the batting stance and swing of Cleon Jones. While I dug in right-handed  - a closed and upright stance - down the hill from the old crabapple tree, my voice would take on the twang of Lindsay Nelson or Bob Murphy as I described myself-as-Cleon taking his hacks against Fergie Jenkins or Bob Gibson. Unobserved for the most part, the solitary game always reached dramatic heights. Agee was almost always on third and Boswell or Harrelson on first, Mets down by two, ninth inning. Wouldn't you know it, Cleon - we were on a first-name basis like on Kiner's Korner - always went deep.

Cleon Jones was my favorite player on the Miracle Mets and the teams that came immediately after. He was a feared line drive hitter until his knees did him, and a fine left-fielder with a good arm - his left one actually; Cleon was one of those rare hits-right, throws left players. Jones batted .340 for the 1969 Mets (third in the league behind Rose and Clemente) with a .422 on-base percentage and was their best everyday player, starting on the All Star team. That was easily the best year Jones put up, though he was a productive player on some decent Mets teams, including the improbable '73 National League champs.

But he remained my favorite throughout - even as he seemed to attract the kind of attention and trouble that eventually led (along with sore knees) to leaving New York in the era of M. Donald Grant and Dick Young. There was the time Gil Hodges trudged all the way to leftfield to remove his best player from the game for dogging it after a base hit. The fight with Bud Harrelson. The feud with Yogi Berra. The prominent scar on his left cheek from a head-on crash in the early 60s. The woman in the van and the Met-mandated public apology. Cleon Jones would never back down.

Yet Jones also had his goofy but good moments: the shoe polish pitch in '69, catching the last out off of Dave Johnson's bat against the Orioles in the Series, that crazy play in '73 when a sure homer landed on top of the left-field fence - and bounced directly back to Cleon. I was reading some of the great stories about Cleon Jones on the excellent Ultimate Mets site, and this jumped out:

One sad incident in my life also involved Cleon. About 8 years old (I know it was before the '69 season) I was talking baseball with some friends, and stated that Cleon Jones was my favorite Met. Another kid looked surprised and commented, "But he's black!" (And all of us were white.) It was my first exposure to racism. Thankfully, it didn't affect my worship of the Mets greatest left fielder.

Yep, I remember that too - when the most coveted baseball card in my pack was No. 21 on the Mets - that huge thread of Jones stories proves I wasn't alone.

Last year, I was out at the old heap of Shea Stadium watching the new place rise in its beam ends and light towers out behind left-field - a short toss from where Cleon Jones caught the last out of the '69 series - and the team had a special guest on top of the visitors dugout to sing Take Me Out to the Ballgame. Gravel voice, face like Google Earth set to 3D topography. Sunglasses. George Thorogood, bad to the bone at the old ballgame - which reminded me of his devotion to the Mets, and to my favorite player:

I liked the Mets, and the tough Cleon Jones. Not just Cleon Jones, see, but The Tough Cleon Jones. When ever my friends mention him to me it’s The Tough Cleon Jones. So they’re my team, and they’ve been my team since 1965.

When they won the World Series in 1969 it was the greatest thing to happen in baseball. It was David slaying Goliath. It was fantastic. After that, I was content for them to slide back into the second division.

Cleon Jones, like his buddy Tommie Agee and Hank Aaron, hailed from Mobile, Alabama, growing up during an era of legislated segregation. He was one of those young players in the era after Jackie Robinson, a time when black players could indeed be tough and outspoken. Three years ago, he told MLB.com a story about playing in Atlanta in the early 60s:

"Now, I was 20, 21 years old, and I hadn't been exposed to a lot. The year before I played in Raleigh, and we lived in a segregated area. The bus would drop us off at a family's house and take the white players to a hotel. But now we're in the big leagues, so to speak, and Atlanta is coming to town the next year and they have to integrate the hotels."

Jones said he and his teammates had no problems at their hotel during their stay. It was when they left the hotel to get something to eat that the issue of race arose. Jones and his teammates encountered bigotry at a nearby restaurant, which led to his first sit-in.

"[Elio] Chacon went across the street to eat and they wouldn't feed him because of segregation. He came back to the hotel, upset with tears in his eyes, saying he wanted to go back to Venezuela, saying how could he play ball if he couldn't eat. Ricketts was our captain, and he said we should all go eat there. So we went back there, sat in and they said they wouldn't feed us.

"We sat there until they called the police. But they said that civil rights had passed and they had to feed us. About that time I made up my mind that I didn't want to eat, that I was just going to sit there and see what took place. Finally, they said they would feed us, and they brought out food but I wouldn't eat."

The Tough Cleon Jones - I like that, Thorogood has it right - though I also remember his great sense of humor on Kiner's Korner. And I remember my grandmother sitting with me in front of the television in those Nixonland days yelling "C'mon Cleon, get a hit!"