The Inquiring Manatee

Fallout From the Tsunami in American Samoa

      The tsunami tragedy in American Samoa and Samoa is even worse news for fans of the National Football League. The South Pacific U.S. territory and neighboring sovereign nation are where all the linemen with the exotic names come from. I hope all those enormous guys could run fast enough to get to the high ground so they'll be around for next year's college recruiting and NFL draft.

Send This Man to Copenhagen

    

Wonderful, wonderful CO-penhagen, salty old queen of the sea!
                                                  -- "Hans Christian Andersen," The Movie

     If President Obama wants to go to Copenhagen to flog Chicago to the International Olympic Committee, let him go, says I.
     Those who criticize him for his decision -- they say it's unpresidential, it's too much like working for the "Illinois Chamber of Commerce," it risks having him look bad if Chicago loses -- are the same people who said he shouldn't even have dared to make a stay-in-school speech to America's children. Whatever Obama does or proposes, they're automatically against.
     Whether the 2016 Olympics end up in Chicago, Tokyo, Rio or Madrid, these carpers should be lined up in the stadium's javelin target area. Let the throwers heave at 'em.
      Now, personally, I think Rio deserves the Olympics more than Chicago does. No Olympics have ever been held in South America. And the Brazilians know how to throw a party, just as Chicagoans know how to rig an election.
     Oh, sure, there's lots of street crime in Rio, but how about Chicago, where a hapless teenager was beaten to death on the street the other day as a cellphone recorded the Third World scene? You want safety, go to Tokyo. Or maybe Madrid.
     But Chicago is Barack and Michelle's hometown, and if he's still thinking like the junior senator from Illinois that he was, it's hard to shake those habits. The benefits would not accrue merely to Chicago, moreover. It would be a patriotic plus for all Americans to snag another Summer Olympics, even though we had St. Louis in 1904, Los Angeles in 1932 and 1984, and Atlanta in 1996. We need something more to brag about these recessionary days.
     So bon voyage, President Obama. Come back with those quadrennial Games nailed to the wall. And if you don't succeed, you're still not likely to lose Illinois in 2012.

Let's Not Be Beastly to Roman Polanski

   

At lunchtime one Los Angeles day in 1978, I was leaving the trendy Ma Maison restaurant after dining with owner Patrick Terrail when filmmaker Roman Polanski passed me, coming in. We nodded to each other in recognition, since I had interviewed him twice for Newsweek -- as I had interviewed his beautiful late wife, Sharon Tate, on two occasions before she was murdered by the Manson family in 1969.
    Polanski's lunch at Ma Maison came on what turned out to be his last day in Hollywood. Hours after my encounter with him, he jumped on a plane to France to avoid the perceived threat of imprisonment on charges of unlawful sex with 13-year-old Samantha Geimer. He has been a fugitive ever since, roaming freely around continental Europe, making movies. He is married to French actress Emanuelle Seigner, with whom he has two children.
    To the consternation of nearly everyone, Polanski was arrested Sunday in Zurich, Switzerland, on an arrest warrant submitted by the Los Angeles County district attorney's office. Instead of starring as the red-carpet guest of the Zurich Film Festival, Polanski is behind bars, awaiting possible extradition proceedings that could bring him back to Los Angeles (but not to Ma Maison, which closed years ago).
     Polanski is the lead in a remake of "Les Miserables," playing the part of Jean Valjean opposite D.A. Steve Cooley as Inspector Javert.
     The director's arrest and possible prosecution are controversial. Should the American legal system leave Polanski alone, even dismissing the old charges? Or should the law take its course against him as it would against any nose-thumbing fugitive?
     Those who side with the 76-year-old moviemaker argue that he was getting a raw deal in 1978 from a publicity-obsessed judge, the late Lawrence Rittenband, who was about to renege on an agreement to sentence Polanski only to time already served: 42 days behind bars for "diagnostic testing." Polanski's friends also note that Geimer settled a civil lawsuit with Polanski, forgave him and sides with his efforts to get the charges dismissed.
     Polanski, it is also said, merits sympathy because he has had a tortured life: fleeing the Cracow ghetto as a small child to escape the Nazis after his mother was taken to the gas chamber; then, losing his pregnant wife in that horrific 1969 mass slaying (I was at the scene the morning the bodies were discovered, later conducted interviews in that creepy house and covered the Manson trial).
     Finally, and much less persuasively, some argue for what amounts to an "artist exception" to the criminal laws. Yes, the argument goes, Polanski acted execrably -- he plied the young girl with champagne and part of a Quaalude during a photo shoot, then forced himself on her -- but he is the great artist who made "Knife in the Water," "Repulsion," "Chinatown," "Rosemary's Baby" and many other films, and his "The Pianist" won an Oscar. And everybody knows that artists are eccentric and not to be treated like you and me.
     On the other side, one point is that the law is the law for everyone and Polanski should have returned years ago to take his medicine at a sentencing hearing. Polanski has expressed in the past a willingness to return to the U.S., but only on his own terms. One promising plea deal collapsed years ago because Polanski objected to having TV cameras present in the courtroom -- an objection that seems silly and petty in retrospect. More recently, his lawyers said he would present himself in court only if the charges were first dismissed. Nope, said the new judge in the case, he would not put the cart before the horse. Polanski simply should take his chances with the system, this argument goes.
      Both sides have merit to them, and it's far from an easy question. But I come down on the side of leniency. It's an old case. Polanski has settled with the victim, who has forgiven him. He has built a new life and has stayed out of trouble -- like Valjean. The district attorney's office, unfortunately, does not have what the law calls "clean hands" in this case, since an intermeddling deputy D.A. who had nothing to do with the Polanski prosecution had inappropriately counseled Rittenband to get tough with Polanski in sentencing.
    It is in the interests of justice, all things considered, that charges should be dismissed. Polanski should be sprung from the Zurich hoosegow and freed to spend the last years of his distinguished career in Hollywood or anywhere else his artistic ideas take him.
   Feel free to disagree.

Public University Tuition is Close to Unaffordable

  

I know it sounds like ancient history, but when I was going to UCLA from 1956 to 1960, tuition at the prestigious, cheerfully taxpayer-funded University of California's nine campuses was $42 a semester for state residents. Throw in mandatory membership in the Associated Students -- another 8 bucks -- and the bill came to $50. That's $100 for an academic year.
    This fall, a year's in-state tuition at UC is about $8,000.
    That's an increase of around 1,600 percent. Even averaged out, the rate of yearly increases comes to 32%. Sounds almost as bad as health care inflation.
     I feel sorry for today's college students -- or would-be students -- and their low- or middle-income families. They simply don't have the opportunities that my generation had to pull themselves up a rung or more in society. It was a commitment to public education that gave California the nation's No. 1 workforce and helped make the Golden State the most populous state. Now, virtually unaffordable prices and mediocre budgets threaten the future not only of a great university but of a once-great state.
     Causes for this lamentable situation start with the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in 1964. Taxpayers were so maddened by the sight of what they considered coddled and lucky students protesting and demonstrating that they voted for Ronald Reagan as governor in 1966, ushering in a long retrenchment from liberalism, the speedy firing of the luckless UC President Clark Kerr and the start of a slide in the university's place in Californians' affections and attention.
     Conservative anti-tax sentiments (seen glaringly in 1978's property tax-cutting Proposition 13) and lately the recession's hit on state budgets have combined to boost tuition to its damaging levels. The Legislature has cut its UC funding by 22% in recent months. The strapped Regents of the UC system have had little choice but to make up as much of the shortfall as possible on the backs of the students.
     Student protests get pained sympathy but no rollbacks. And the trend promises to worsen.
     In a depressing time, it's especially saddening to see the dimming of the old promise of a free public education -- a social contract that set America apart from most other countries and led to this nation's comparatively high proportion of college graduates.
      For myself, I'd be willing to pay more taxes to give a break to the students who are following me -- and a break to the future of California.

Good Luck, Senator Kirk

    

It's official: Massachusetts has a second United States senator again, temporarily filling the seat of the departed Ted Kennedy. He is Paul G. Kirk Jr., 71, a former Democratic national chairman and a longtime friend and ally of the Kennedy family.
     In appointing Kirk today, partisan as the action undoubtedly was, Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick did the right thing for Massachusetts and the entire country in signing and expediting the law that state legislators passed Wednesday to authorize an interim appointment pending the special election on the distant date of Jan. 19, 2010.
      With health care reform at stake, Democrats and 46 million Americans without health insurance needed that potential 60th vote from Massachusetts to defeat Republican attempts to sabotage the reform process. This is no time for Massachusetts to be losing its voice.
      Yes, it was nakedly partisan for Beacon Hill's Democrats to have taken away from former Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican, the ability to appoint a Senate successor to John Kerry had he won the presidency in 2004, and then for the legislators to reverse the action and allow a Democrat to make such an appointment. In this case, the end justifies the means. And I don't see the Republicans refraining from partisanship these days.
      Paul Kirk, a co-founder of the Commission on Presidential Debates and a Harvard Law School graduate (like Obama and this blogger), will make a classy, if brief, addition to the rolls of the United States Senate. Ted Kennedy's last wish is fulfilled. And that's a good thing.

"Fed": A New Low in Whipped-Up Anti-Government Anger

     

They found 51-year-old, part-time Census taker Bill Sparkman hanged from a tree in Kentucky's Daniel Boone National Forest, the word "fed" carved viciously into his chest.
       Not since the Manson family killers carved "pig" into the chests of their victims has such a brutal homicide been seen in the United States. Anti-government sentiment in Kentucky has run high since moonshining began, but this murder and mayhem marks a dangerous and particularly stupid escalation. A harmless Census taker is not a "revenooer." And even revenooers don't deserve to die for performing their lawful duties. In fact, it is a federal crime to murder any federal employee because of his or her job.
       It happens that the county where Sparkman's murder occurred is a hotbed of methamphetamine manufacture and drug dealing. Anybody knocking on a door and identifying himself as a government employee might be suspected as some sort of narc.
       But more than drugs are responsible for this heinous offense. I blame the wildly reckless anti-government rants that have been whipped up for months and years by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Fox News in general and cynical Republican leaders manipulating their ill-educated and extremist "base." A climate of permission to murder anyone connected with "the gummint" now pervades too much of America. We have seen it in recent weeks in the repeated carrying of guns to appearances by President Obama. We have heard it at the "tea parties."
        This is the type of paranoid atmosphere that led to Lee Harvey Oswald feeling entitled to assassinate John F. Kennedy in Dallas. This is the atmosphere in which "militiaman" Timothy McVeigh bombed 169 people in Oklahoma City and abortion-performing doctors have been slain. And poor Bill Sparkman is the latest victim.
        Federal and local officials should swarm this backwoods Kentucky county and find the murderer with dispatch, sending him toward McVeigh's fate -- execution. Odds are that the cretin who carved up Bill Sparkman bragged about his deed. Let's have a reward that will bring forth the truth. And let justice in this case sober those who are so profitably and perilously driving the low-IQ government-haters to actions that threaten the future of America.

Celebrities With Dog Names

   

It's truly amazing, when you think about it, how many celebrities are named after dogs. Here is a list. You are welcome to add any names you can think of.
    Barbara Boxer
    Cybill Shepherd
    The Pointer Sisters
    Ferlin Husky
    Chow Yun-fat
    Ellen Barkin
    King Charles
    Angela Bassett (OK, so I'm spelling-challenged)
    Jacqueline Bouvier
    Joe Cocker
    Jerry Springer
    Mark Spitz
    Harry Golden
    Eric Dane
    Dane Clark
    New York State Sen. Serphin Maltese
    William Manchester
    Skye Aubrey
    Ione Skye
    Brittany Murphy
    Morgan Brittany
    Saint Bernard Madoff
    ....and Bernard Malamute (well, close)

The Paranoiac Right Wing: America's Own Sunnis

    

The superconservative white Americans who stage "tea parties," rant at health care hearings, call Obama an "Indonesian Muslim" and worry about black-clad foreign troops seizing their phallic guns are acting exactly like the politically disaffected Sunnis of Iraq.
     Will car bombs be next for them?
     The Sunnis suddenly lost power in Iraq when their boy, Saddam Hussein, was deposed after 30 years of leading his coreligionists in lording it over the majority Shiites at gunpoint. The long period of easy oppression may have ended, but the embittered Sunnis didn't lose their sense of entitlement. Their suicidal or roadside bombmaking dissidents would rather destroy the country through violence than acknowledge the new political realities.
     So it is with the Fox News Right. Outraged, in deep denial, fundamentally unwilling to acknowledge the workings of democracy when it doesn't suit them, and, yes, harboring unspoken racial prejudice against a black president so much more articulate than they are, these conservatives take refuge in ever more bizarre conspiracy theories and spiraling hatreds to avoid accepting their loss.
     It was a loss that was largely of their own making. When they had control of Congress for 12 years and of the White House for 8 of those years, they cheerfully went along with Karl Rove's strategy of socking it to moderates and liberals of both parties while the Republicans who were using them as election-year fodder catered to their whims. Abortion funding, stem-cell research, the Terry Schiavo fiasco -- they simply pushed their total power over the better-educated too far, just as Saddam did in elevating his Sunni cousins and keeping the Shiites down.
     The right-wingers don't realize how lucky they are that moderates and liberals revolted at the polls rather than in the streets, as they are doing now.
     You lost fair and square in the democratic process, far righters. If George W. Bush was a legitimate president, so is Barack Obama. If you don't like his policies, organize and try to vote him out in 2012. But stop your bellowing, your name-calling and your ignorant cries of "socialism," "fascism," "Hitler." If you don't like the corporate bailouts, remember that they started under Bush. Listen to what's actually being proposed for health care reform before going off half-cocked, driven by demagogues.
      Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi is right to be worried about violence. Half of these militia-minded morons are mentally unbalanced. And they're all armed to the teeth.
       It's a bad time in America, and mainly because the right-wingers see it that way.
     

Good Move on Eastern Europe Missiles, but Don't Expect Miracles

   

This blog's summer hiatus is over. The writer is back in California after 10 weeks in bucolic Vermont. So here goes:
  Through Defense Secretary Bob Gates, the Obama administration appropriately has decided to scrap George W. Bush's ill-considered plan to station antimissile missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic. The idea was a super-irritant to the Russians from the start -- from their standpoint, the equivalent of what Khrushchev's reckless placing of ICBMs in Cuba in 1962 was to John F. Kennedy and the United States.
    The Bushies argued that the missiles were needed in Eastern Europe to counter anything flying up from Iran. But the Russians never could be convinced that the Bush missiles weren't aimed at them as part of an envelopment strategy that included attempts to integrate Ukraine and Georgia into NATO.
    Maybe the land-based missiles would have worked against Iranian incoming. Maybe not. But Gates said today that ship-based missiles would work equally well. And the Russians can hardly complain about the shift.
     Clearly, President Obama wants better relations with Putin and Medvedev. The Russian foreign ministry welcomed today's announcement. But such moves by the U.S. administration, though valuable on their own merits, can go only so far to warm up the Russians. Moscow is not apt to drop its fears of other forms of what it considers envelopment, and the Russian leaders have not only their own national interests to pursue but seemingly a need to stake out policies opposed to those of the U.S. Hence the emerging alliance with Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.
     Despite today's move on missiles, the Russians are going to remain truculent and troublesome on many fronts.