Millennials need to learn, you don't mess with the tunes

I've got no problem with people who don't like baby boomers.

Even though I am one (matriculated in 1949), I'm not really a big fan of my g-g-generation. Davy Crockett, Howdy Doody and Eddie Haskell were cool and we certainly got off to a good start, but we pooped out in the mid '70s and never really got it back.

I mean Good Lord, we had John F. Kennedy and we ultimately settled for Gee Dubya Bush.

We had great music, especially from about 1962 to 1974, but instead of just playing our albums, eight tracks, cassettes or compact discs, we were the generation that created the horrific thing known as an "oldies" station.

So depending when you turn on your radio, you're just as likely to hear the Beatles singing "Day Tripper" than hearing anything by Brit Brit or The Bieb. We're going to have to do a term in purgatory for that.

Bieber

But a young editorial writer at the Washington Post, eager to write something cool for a change (Hey, been there and done that), says it's time for boomers to let our music pass gracefully into oblivion along with "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree," "Mairzy Doats" and the entire Al Jolson catalog.

Young Rachel Manteuffel ...

Hey, Ich spreche ein bischen Deutsch, Rachel. Cool name.

... attacks our music by chasing a sacred cow known as "Yesterday." She goes through the entire song and points out the foolishness in the lyrics, and ends basically by asking us if we want our wheelchairs turned toward the windows or away from the windows.

1966

Yes, John Lennon once said the Beatles were more popular than Jesus, but at least he never called his fans "beliebers."

Anyway, judging the value of the Beatles by their early stuff is like the right wingers who said President Obama's only pre-White House gig was as a community organizer. Sort of unfair.

If you want to judge the value of the Beatles, look from about 1967 on -- "Sgt. Pepper's, the White Album, or maybe the best of all, "Abbey Road."

There's no way Bieber even comes close.

Anyway, there was so much wonderful stuff that had nothing to do with the Beatles. Look at "Beggar's Banquet," "Let it Bleed" and "Exile on Main Street from the Stones, or "Tommy" or "Who's Next" from Roger, Pete and the boys.

We get it, Rachel. You don't like Paul. You think he wrote sappy songs. A lot of us would agree with you. I mean, look at "Silly Love Songs" or "My Love." That's stuff even Britney could have done.

But Paul still had some great stuff in him. "Live and Let Die" won an Oscar, and "Band on the Run" was a helluva song and album.

You might be surprised to see that a lot of boomers thought "Something" was a much better song than "Yesterday." A decidedly non-boomer guy named Sinatra said it was the greatest love song ever written. Even better than "Oops, I Did It Again."

But don't forget people like Elton John, Jackson Browne, the Eagles and that kid from Asbury Park, N.J. He was not only "Born to Run," he was born a baby boomer.

Yes, for every Bruce Springsteen there were probably three Tommy Roes. For every Beatles, there were too many 1910 Fruit Gum Companies.

But as I understand it, Biebs and Brit Brit are the big stars now.

Seems to me you millennials have a long way to go even to get to "Yesterday."

Does Piers getting the boot mean another life for Larry?

I never saw Piers Morgan's show on CNN. I was aware that he had replaced Larry King a few years back, but I had never watched Larry's show either.

I didn't need to see his replacement.

You see, I think it's possible to trace much of the decline and fall of media over the last 40 years simply by looking at King.

Larry King and Katie Couric

His career actually started in Miami in the late '50s, but in 1978 he moved to Arlington, Va., and did a national overnight show on the Mutual Broadcasting System from midnight to 5:30 a.m. The show was something of a hoot. He always started with a guest, but for the last 2-3 hours he took calls from anyone who wanted to talk to him.

He was a one-man show, without even a call screener. He would tell people to just let their phone ring and ring and ring and eventually he would answer and talk to them. What was hilarious about it was the way he would deal with the goofiest callers.

"You're drunk, sir. Sleep it off."

"You're an idiot. Stop calling me."

He went to CNN in 1985 and eventually became an international television star. His interview show on CNN at 9 p.m. most nights brought him some of the biggest names in the world. And people watched.

His ventures into print journalism were inadvertently hilarious. He wrote a column for USA Today for nearly 20 years, a column that consisted of little items like, "If you're having pie, invite me over" and "If you look in the dictionary under thriller writer, you'll see Tom Clancy's picture."

I've got to think the editors knew people were laughing at him, not with him.

Another column he wrote was even worse, so much so that I couldn't even find it on Google. For six months or so, sometime in the '80s, King wrote a weekly column for The Sporting News. In it, he consistently did something no other sportswriter in the country would do.

When he interviewed a player or coach and asked them a question, here's how they always responded:

"Well, Larry ..."

Truly awful. His CNN television show eventually slid into self-parody, and no one got it better than comedian Kathleen Madigan.



I've told the story before of how I punked Larry King in April 1992 in the press box at Dodger Stadium, but since the whole deal on this Website is things I find interesting, I'll tell it again in a slightly condensed version.

On an ESPN Sunday Night Baseball game, I found myself sitting next to King -- actually two seats apart -- and we talked about the new Camden Yards park in Baltimore. Then in the seventh inning, King got up to leave.

I was ready.

"Gee, Mr. King, I am so glad you're not one of those East Coast types always ragging on us here in L.A. for leaving games early."

He got this horrified look on his face.

"Oh, I never leave games early. I just have an appointment."

I just smiled and nodded. Heck, I know how busy Sunday nights can be in Los Angeles.

So now Piers Morgan is leaving, and who knows what CNN will do with the coveted time slot.

I know one thing they'd better not do.

When he heard the news about Morgan, King pounced.

"If they want me to, I could come back."

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!

I couldn't be more proud to be a member of Sigma Phi Epsilon

There are numerous accomplishments in my life of which I am proud.

I have been a good father, a good husband and a good friend. I have one friendship that has lasted 51 years and two others that will be 50 years in the summer of 2015.

Although I started late, I had a good career as a journalist that lasted nearly 30 years. I worked at excellent papers in South Carolina, Colorado and Nevada, and I did really good work in four different areas -- sports, business, entertainment and column writing.

Nothing matters more than family.

If it didn't end well for me, it was at least partly my own fault for staying too long in a situation that was sliding downhill for quite some time.

I was called a "great reporter -- with soul" for sports coverage, and one of the most respected regional economists in Southern California called me the best reporter he had ever dealt with.

Are you finished bragging yet?

Almost. The first time I went bowling at age 10, my score was 9. Less than 30 years later, I rolled a 222. The first time I played golf on a full-length course, my score was 135. Two years ago, I broke 80 for the first time, and on a different occasion, I shot 37 -- one over par -- on the front nine.

Finished now?

Yup.

The point of all that -- and there was a point -- was to say that along with all sorts of other things of which I am proud, I feel very good about my membership in Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity.

There have been many times I have felt I was born 20 years too late. Too late for the last Golden Age of newspapers, too late for it to be really stylish to join a fraternity.

When I joined Sig Ep in the fall of 1978 at George Mason University, I had the wonderful opportunity to be one of the founding brothers of a new chapter. Sig Ep has been around nationally since 1901, and my membership number has six digits. But my number as a member of the Virginia Mu chapter is 5.

front right, cowboy boots

I was very proud of the chapter we built, although there have been some problems on and off during the 33 years since I was there. I made it back in November 2010 -- the month we moved from California to Georgia -- for a 30th anniversary banquet.

It's difficult to believe that those of us who founded the chapter are now in our 50s and 60s, but we are.

The time will come when the meetings won't be at reunions, but at funerals. If there is one thing true and incontestable about life, it's that it is so damn short.

Sig Ep was in the news this weekend for something none of us were happy to hear. Three Ole Miss freshmen -- all  Sig Eps from Georgia -- were expelled from the fraternity for placing a noose and a Georgia flag on the statue of James Meredith, the first African-American to enroll at Ole Miss in 1962.

James Meredith at Ole Miss

In addition, the Sig Ep national office suspended the entire Ole Miss chapter until the action can be investigated.

The thing is, there are fraternities that emphasize their Southern origins. Kappa Alpha Order was founded at Washington & Lee University in 1865, a time when the president of the university was a guy named Robert E. Lee. KA used to hold "Old South" celebrations to which members would dress in replicas of Confederate uniforms.

I don't want to pick on them. Sig Ep was founded in Richmond, Va., in 1901, and has grown into one of the biggest fraternities of all. We outlawed hazing decades ago, and I've been told we don't even serve alcohol at undergraduate functions.

Animal House it isn't.

If someone asked me how I could defend my fraternity if three young members did something like this, I'd say this:

The act is indefensibile ...but look how quickly and how decisively we dealt with it.

I am very proud of that, and I am also very proud we were the first national fraternity to fully integrate -- in 1959. We integrated our fraternity before Ole Miss integrated its university.

That's a legacy worth defending.

Remembering a time when 'Saturday Night Live' was something special

I literally cannot remember the last time I turned the television on to watch a new episode of "Saturday Night Live."

I'm almost certain it wasn't a year that started with a "2," and I would probably have to go back some in the 1990s to find one. When I look at Wikipedia's timeline of who was on the show and for how long, I would probably guess it was in the first half of the '90s, when Dennis Miller, Dana Carvey and Mike Myers were regulars.

It's hard to remember for certain. With YouTube and Hulu and all the others, it's easy to watch stuff piece by piece at your leisure, and I did watch a lot of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler during the 2008 presidential campaign.

But I watched it in 1975. We all did. Back then, in those last years before VCRs, it was a phenomenon. When we went out on Saturday nights, all across the country people were cutting their evenings short to be home by 11:30 to watch.

It wasn't called "Saturday Night Live" that year. There was a godawful variety show in prime time in ABC trying to recapture the old "Ed Sullivan Show."

Back in 1975, we thought the idea of "Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell" was the goofiest, kitchiest thing you could imagine, but if you want to get a laugh with Cosell these days you had better be talking to people who are at least in their late 40s.

It took more than the first season for SNL to hit its stride, but everybody was enjoying "I'm Chevy Chase and You're Not," Bass-O-Matic ("Mmm, that's good bass!") and just the idea of live comedy from 11:30 till 1 a.m.

 Newman, Belushi, Morris, Curtin, Chase, Radner and Akyroyd

The second season was the one that really made us fall in love with the show, when Chase made a really bad decision and left SNL to be a movie star.

Bill Murray replaced him, and after he did three really good seasons on SNL, he left and really did become a movie star.

He did a few movies during those three years, but the one that was his breakthrough to comedy movie star was "Caddyshack," in which he appeared with Chase.

His next three movies hit the trifecta -- "Stripes," "Tootsie" and "Ghostbusters." He wasn't the first big breakout from the show. Chase did a few movies, but John Belushi hit with "Animal House" and "The Blues Brothers" before dying of a drug overdose in 1982.

Murray did some great bits, but the one everyone seemed to love the most was his lounge singer, and hisd performance of the "Star Wars" theme was his most memorable.



I think the only time I was a regular viewer after the original cast left was in the late '80s and early '90s. A pretty good cast, good writing and hey, I was living alone.

But I didn't come home early to see it. I had a VCR by then, and it usually wasn't worth taping anyway.

By then it was really just another show anyway. Not like 1975, when we were just coming of age and when it was our show. It was the first show we could remember that was aimed at us as adults, and that was what made it special.

There's nothing like that now -- unless they bring back "Matlock" or "The Golden Girls."

Lot of water under the bridge.

Losing to Canada not as big as losing to the Commies -- or the Dutch

I know people who will be very upset that the U.S. men's hockey team lost its semifinal match to Canada at the Sochi Olympics.

It wasn't much of a surprise. Canada has always been good at hockey -- it's the national game up there -- and while its origins go back centuries to Europe, the modern game was invented in Montreal in the 1870s.

And while four of the original six teams in the National Hockey League were in the U.S. -- Detroit, Chicago, New York and Boston along with Toronto and Montreal -- the league was dominated by Canadian players. Just as U.S. athletes back then grew up playing baseball or football, Canadian kids were all on skates for as much of the year as possible.

Hockey in the Rockies

 In this country, once you got to the Mason-Dixon Line, you stopped seeing rinks.

If you tried to name the greatest hockey players of all time, it would be a while before you got to one born in the United States.

So it's their game, and when they play the U.S., they usually win. The two greatest American victories ever in the Olympics both came against the USSR, in 1960 and 1980, and were both played in the United States.

It was easy in those days to get worked up about those games. I mean, hey, it was the Commies.

It's tough to get too riled about playing Canada. I mean, they're just like us, even if they do say "aboot" instead of "about." Their animals are pretty much the same as ours, and except for Quebec, we came from the same parents.

Canada celebrates.

So we lost, 1-0. They'll play on Sunday for the gold and we'll play on Saturday for the bronze.

My guess is more Americans will get worked up by the comments by Jillert Anema, the Dutch speed-skating coach. He told the press that the reason Americans didn't win more medals in winter sports was that we waste too much time on silly sports.

"You have a lot of attention for foolish sport, like American football," Anema told CNBC. "You waste a lot of talent, athletic talent, in a sport where it's meant to kill each other, to injure each other. (The U.S.) is so narrow-minded, and you waste a lot of good talent in a sport that sucks."

Hey, good thing he can make it home from Sochi without coming anywhere near the U.S.

***

I'll tag this on today because I've been thinking about it and because it's probably not worth a full entry.

When I was growing up, my family was not really into amusement parks. We did go to Freedomland twice in the early '60s, but I think my folks must have seen an educational value there.

This one's in Vancouver.

So I don't know how old I was when I went on my first roller coaster, but I do remember when and where I rode my first Wild Mouse.

If you're not familiar with the Mouse, it's in the roller coaster family, although it's much more compact, with smaller cars and a lot more horizontal action and smaller vertical ups and downs. The Mouse went really fast and the turns were nearly all at right angles. Right when you thought you were going to fly off the end, the car did a 90-degree turn.

Get the picture?

I was 12 the first time I rode on one, and it was at the wonderful Ohio State Fair in Columbus. It was my first time on the Mouse, but my last time at the Fair. We moved to Virginia the following winter.

Chapin tried to prove what one life could be worth -- and succeeded

I think it was 1973 when my friend Bill Madden introduced me to the music of Harry Chapin.

Bill was a wonderful singer/songwriter who did some beautiful songs of his own, but he had a few songs by big names that he did very well. As recently as a few years ago, he posted a video clip of him singing Paul Simon's "Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard" at a club in the town in Florida where he now lives. That seems to have become his favorite to perform, but I remember him doing a beautiful job back in the day on "Taxi," the song that gave Chapin his breakthrough.

I started buying every Harry Chapin record I could find, and while I was happy that he had a breakthrough No. 1 single in 1974 with "Cat's in the Cradle," I never felt it was one of his better songs. I loved his album "Portrait Gallery" and especially loved the first song on the album, "Dreams Go By," about two people who had a good life together even though neither's youthful dreams came true.




I remember being in London for Christmas 1977. It was a strange week to be there; the holidays made it difficult to do much real sightseeing, so we saw movies and plays, we visited wonderful bookstores and one afternoon we found ourselves in a record store back in those days of vinyl.

We were living in Vienna, and in those days before Skype and the Internet, it was tough to keep up with what was happening back home in the States. That's why I could look inside a box of record albums at our little commissary back in Austria and find an album called "Born to Run" that I had only barely heard of.

Harry Chapin

But there I was in London, fishing through some albums and finding a brand-new Harry Chapin double album called "Dance Band on the Titanic." It was nearly a week till I could play it, but once back home I played it over and over ... and over.

I particularly loved the finale, a 14-plus minute song called "There Only Was One Choice." It was about singing, particularly about singing to make a difference the way the greats like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger did for so long.

Chapin mattered. After he had established himself, he began working to fight world hunger. Especially in his last few years, what he did was do every other concert for himself. The others he donated all the money he made to charity.

I was fortunate enough to see him in concert once, it must have been 1974 or '75, at the Cellar Door in Washington, D.C. I always thought there would be other opportunities. He was only seven years older than I was. Our birthdays were four days apart in December.

But in July 1981, he was killed in an automobile accident near his Long Island home. He had a reputation as a terrible driver, and he was on his way to do a concert for charity.

His epitaph on his tombstone was from a song of his:

"Oh if a man tried to take his time on Earth and prove before he died what one man's life could be worth, I wonder what would happen to this world ..."

From the time my friend Bill introduced me to Harry Chapin's music to the time he died was only about eight years. I went from age 23 to 31, and I have been listening to his music ever since.

I don't know why it is that so many good people, so many people trying to change this world for the better, die so young, and people who live only for themselves and actually hurt others seem to live forever. I am reminded of a quote from the 1944 movie "Since You Went Away." An old retired soldier learns that his grandson has been killed in action.

His response is heartbreaking.

"The good die first. And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust burn to the socket."

Picking the greatest film actors is an almost impossible task

Who are the 10 greatest film actors in history?

Of course it's a completely subjective question, because acting is not a measurable skill. It's completely up to whether people like the performance and the man giving it.

But I want to try something here. I'm going to give you a list of 10 inarguably great actors. Maybe not the best 10, but none of them would embarrass you in the picking. Then I'll give you another 20 names, any of which would be fine on the list.

Newman

Here are my 10, in no particular order: Marlon Brando, Robert DeNiro, Dustin Hoffman, Spencer Tracy, Paul Newman, Humphrey Bogart, Lawrence Olivier, Gregory Peck, Robert Duvall and Daniel Day-Lewis.

If that last one makes you wonder, he's the only actor ever to win three Best Actor Oscars.

Anyway, reasonable. Right?

Here are 10 more: Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, James Stewart, Burt Lancaster, Jack Lemmon, Gary Cooper, Henry Fonda, Cary Grant, Clark Gable and Sidney Poitier.

There's not one name that couldn't be subbed into the first 10 and look out of place.

Hanks

How about 10 more: Gene Hackman, John Wayne, Fredric March, Jimmy Cagney, Denzel Washington, George C. Scott, Charles Chaplin, Rod Steiger, Tom Hanks and Paul Muni.

Ten more great ones, without a doubt.

How about these guys: Melvyn Douglas, Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman, Peter Sellers, Anthony Hopkins, Sean Connery, Robert Redford, Gene Kelly, Harrison Ford and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

O'Toole

That's 40, and there are still great actors we haven't mentioned, guys like Johnny Depp, Sean Penn, Tommy Lee Jones, Maximilian Schell, Fred Astaire, the Marx Brothers ...

And movie stars like Michael Caine, Peter O'Toole, Mickey Rooney, Tom Cruise.

Pretty amazing, huh?

And what about Leonardo DiCaprio and numerous other young actors currently brightening films?

If I were really going to be serious about a top 10, I think I would bump four of the ones on the list above to the second 10. Olivier because he was primarily a great stage actor, and DeNiro, Duvall and Hoffman because there's no shame at all in being in the second 10.

Chaplin

I would replace them with Grant, Gable and Stewart, three of the greatest stars ever. My last promotion might be a little controversial, but there ought to be one guy on the list who was basically funny. I would boost Charles Chaplin from the third 10 to the top 10.

Jack? My biggest problem with Jack is there are too many times I feel like he's playing himself. Mr. Nicholson will have to be happy with No. 11.

Moorea was wonderful, but next time it's on to Australia

In the summers of 1998 and 1999, I had the opportunity to take two wonderful vacations to places I never thought I would see.

In 1998, Nicole, Pauline, Virgile and I spent 12 days on four different Hawaiian Islands. We had won a raffle at the high school band carnival that helped with the cost -- $500 and five nights in a time-share Maui condo -- and we visited Kauai, the Big Island, Maui and Lanai. We had a wonderful time, and with Pauline 18 and Virgile 13, it was last last big family vacation we took together.

The next summer, Nicole and I did the tropical thing one better. We decided to spend a week at the Club Med in Moorea, French Polynesia. Moorea is not the best known of the Society Islands -- Tahiti and Bora Bora probably are -- but I don't know if I've ever been anywhere more beautiful than the next island west from Tahiti.

Club Med is aimed more at international tourists than at Americans. It's actually a French corporation headquartered in Paris, and most of its locations are outside the United States.

To get to Moorea, you fly from Los Angeles to Papeete and then catch an island-hopping flight. It was the first time in my life -- and to date the only time -- I have been south of the Equator.

The Club Med was a lot of fun, and I always thought we might go back someday. But when I checked the Website a few years later, I saw that there was no longer a Club Med on Moorea.

Club Med Moorea

It was just a year or so ago that I finally learned what had happened. In 2001, just two years after we were there, the Moorea Club Med had been destroyed by a fire. The damage was complete, and it wasn't feasible to rebuild.

I doubt I'll ever make it back to Polynesia. It was 4,100 air miles from Los Angeles to Papeete, but it's only 3,800 more to get to Sydney from there.

And as much as I loved the South Seas, there is no place in the world of all the places I have yet to visit that I would rather see than Australia.

I may be more than halfway through the back nine in my 18 holes of life, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to play it out.

And enjoy it very much.

A few ways to start the job of fixing our government

If there's one thing people on the left and people on the right seem to agree on, it's that some changes need to be made in the way our government runs things.

Of course, each side wants to see different changes made.

Folks on the right would just as soon see cuts in programs designed to help the have-nots, while those on the left want to see the extremely wealthy treated with a little less adoration.

Let's look at some things that could be done without too much ideology:

1. Reducing the connections between Capitol Hill and K Street ...

For decades now, a synergy between elected officials and lobbyists has been growing and growing and growing. With the cost of campaigning growing almost exponentially, both representatives and senators spend at least a couple of hours out of every working day fundraising.

Since lobbyists can often write large checks, they get the access that means almost everything to them. And with the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling establishing the concept that corporations have the same rights as individuals, there are even more opportunities for money to influence votes.

So how can we change that?

Remember that we're trying to keep ideology out of it, while at the same time improving the quality of the government we get.

What if we said that serving in Congress meant that you could never work as a lobbyist dealing with Congress after your term in Washington ended? What if we treated elected positions as the honor they are instead of looking at them as entry-level jobs to the upper echelon of corporate America?

Liberal or conservative, one thing we ought to be able to agree on is that integrity is a good thing.

2. Term limits for elected officials ...

This is one I have resisted for a long time, and I'm still somewhat negative about the idea. The only way it could work at all is in conjunction with No. 1. Otherwise, the influence of lobbyists becomes even greater as term-limited officials would be looking for jobs a lot more often.

The idea behind term limits goes back to the 1780s, to the idea of citizen legislators serving for a while and then returning home. The thought that someone would be elected to Congress at age 30 and still be serving in his 70s or 80s. would have staggered Thomas Jefferson or James Madison.

At present, the only federal official who is term limited is the president. Republicans pushed through the 22nd Amendment to make sure Franklin D. Roosevelt didn't run for a fifth term, even though he was already dead.

Since then, four presidents -- three of them Republicans -- have served two complete terms. Two were popular enough but not healthy enough to be elected to a third term, and the third was as unpopular as a president could be when his second term drew to a close.

The only one who could have won a third term was Bill Clinton.

3. Cutting spending by reducing privatization ...

Dating back to the Reagan years, Republicans have worked to turn governmental functions over to private corporations. The idea was that there would be greater efficiency, but the fact that a private company would want to make a profit somehow never fazed them.

The biggest mistake was turning part of the military's mission over to companies like Halliburton or Blackwater USA. So we got mercenaries being paid $250 a day, far more than enlisted soldiers. KBR, the renamed Halliburton, ran some support functions, charging soldiers as much as $25 for a six-pack of Coca Cola.

A report in the Financial Times said that contractors had made $138 billion off the Iraq War, with KBR -- Dick Cheney's former company -- raking in $39.5 billion.

It seems only logical to me that if something is important enough that we want the government to do it, then the government ought to be the one actually doing it.

4. Eliminate obsolete programs ...

Why do we still have a Rural Electrification Administration? When FDR took office in the 1930s, 90 percent of farms were without electricity. It was a program that served a solid purpose, but 80 years later, there aren't really rural parts of America without electricity.

So why does the REA still exist?

Why do dozens if not hundreds of military bases that once served a real purpose but now aren't needed still exist?

Well, every obsolete base or obsolete program represents jobs in some congressman's district or some senator's state. And one way these people win elections is by stressing constituent service. Allowing hundreds of people who live in their district to lose their jobs isn't a way to get re-elected.

5. Obviously there's more, but ...

Without too much ideology, the four suggestions above might be a start in getting back to some form of good government. Reduce corruption, limit terms, reduce expensive outsourcing and eliminate obsolete programs. Once that was done, we can start discussing more ideologically charged issues.

It's been 13 years, but Republicans still chasing after Bubba

What did Monica Lewinsky do to deserve Rand Paul?

Oh, yeah. That.

Paul, of course, is the junior senator from Kentucky of the looneytarian, er, libertarian, persuasion who apparently thinks he would make a good presidential candidate in 2016. He recently shifted from his almost constant attacks on President Obama and the Affordable Care Act to start sniping at the Clintons.

He somehow decided that the best way to win friends and influence Republicans was somehow to resurrect the Clinton impeachment stuff that went so well for them back in 1998.

Rand has the same problem some other conservatives have. He just can't seem to understand why something that bothers him wouldn't bother everyone else.

The stunning thing that causes their brains to lock up is that Clinton was more popular with the country when he left office than when he took office. And in the 13 years since then, he has become a sort of beloved elder statesman to much of the country.

If that was all that was at stake here, Paul probably would be complaining about something different. But of course, Republicans seem to see the greatest obstacle to them regaining the White House in 2016 as Hillary Clinton. A recent survey said 73 percent of Democrats favored her as the 2016 nominee, an amazing number for someone who is neither an incumbent nor a former nominee.

That's why Republicans have been hammering away at her for so long on Benghazi. Since that hasn't worked all that well, Paul took the debate back to the future with Lewinsky.

After all, Republicans' Benghazi attacks were ringing sort of hollow because of the fuss they hadn't made about eight embassy attacks between 2001-09 under President George W. Bush.

And of course there's 911.

Hearing Republicans blather about no one being fired for the four dead in Benghazi sounds almost imbecilic when compared to no firings when more than 3,000 Americans lost their lives on Sept. 11, 2001.

The irony of Paul going after the Clintons on Zippergate, or Zipperghazi to give the GOP its modern rhetoric, is that in her role as aggrieved yet forgiving spouse, Hillary Clinton found herself on the right side of Americans' affections for the first time.

For every angry woman furious that she stood by her man, there were two or three who understood why a woman could forgive the man she loved and appreciated her for it.

If there's one thing Republicans don't seem to comprehend, it's that when all they do is preach to the choir, to their own hard-core supporters, they are appealing to a voting bloc that is getting smaller every year.

In fact, the demographic group that votes most solidly Republican is white people over the age of 65. That's a rapidly growing group if you consider baby boomers -- I'll join it in December -- but the more boomers who reach 65, the less conservative the overall group looks.

You don't grow a political party by excluding people.

You need to be inclusive, and to be inclusive, you have to find new ways to appeal to people. You don't do that by trying to stir up an old issue that didn't even happen in this century.

Especially when it means going after the most beloved president since Ronald Reagan.

For years of 'pubic service,' years of being the butt of jokes

"Lay down with dogs, get up with fleas ..."

I don't know where the expression comes from, but I certainly know what it means. If Sarah Palin, aka Snowbilly T. Grifter, ever comes anywhere near Georgia, I'll spend the day in Alabama.

Snowbilly T. Grifter

Everyone who comes into contact with her ends up suffering for it. The latest victim appears to be Richard W. Postma Jr., who is apparently both black and a former judge in Alaska. He is suing several people, although none of them are named Palin, for ridicule he received from the time the former governor appointed him to a judgeship.

The problem was that in the letter officially appointing him in 2007, Palin thanked Postma for his "pubic service."

Now I'm certainly not saying a governor in any state types his or her own correspondence. I'm not blaming the mistake on Palin, but I do think when you have what is certainly a short, sweet letter intended to be special to the person who receives it, you ought at least to glance at it.

Think of it this way:

If you were told that a governor of a state had signed a letter in 2007 with this mistake in it, would there be any doubt your first thought would be that it must be Palin?

The problem is that the mistake ruined the job for Postma from the get-go. He claims that people began hazing him over the mistake, some of them saying he earned his appointment "by performing oral sex on former Governor Palin."

Others were apparently a little more imaginative. They went on "to suggest Postma was actually the biological father of Trig."

The "Pubic Enemy No. 1" sign was apparently also put together by hazers.

In 2010, Postma even lost his job. The commission that makes recommendations on such things suggested that he not be reappointed (apparently the stress was affecting him a lot) and later that year, voters removed him from office.

He returned to practicing law, but he says he is having trouble getting fair hearings for his clients. In addition, he says, the Alaska Bar Association tried to take away his license to practice law.

If I wanted to be flip about it -- OK, more flip -- I would say that the biggest surprise in this story to me is that there are black people in Alaska. Actually, though, according to the 2010 census, 3.6 percent of the state's population is listed as Black.

I do feel sorry for the guy. Really I do, but my guess is he probably overreacted when the hazing first started, which is of course the worst thing you can do. Seems to me a couple of "contempt of court" citations would have crimped their style.

And when the oral-sex-on-Snowbilly jokes started, just saying, "Hey, guys, I kiss my mother with that mouth" might have helped a lot.

As for Trig, that's just taking a dumb joke too far.

Leave the kid out of it.

But once again, you lay down with Sarah, you get up with fleas.

Alabama is just an hour away.

Remember that brief shining moment when we all got along?

I don't know if there has ever been a time in my lifetime when our country was truly united.

Think about it for a minute.

We went from the Red Scare of the early '50s to the struggle for integration and civil rights in the '60s to Vietnam and Watergate in the '70s. We then had gas lines, a hostage crisis and trickle-down economics. We had more and more things that separated us in the '90s and beyond, and our political system became more and more toxic as each side started seeing the other as not just wrong but evil.

But there was one brief time, little more than a moment historically, when we came together not just as a nation but as a people. It only lasted a month or two, but it showed how we can be when we are at our best.

'We are all Americans.'

In fact, most of the world stood with us.

When terrorists took down the Twin Towers in 2001, even iconoclastic France had a front-page editorial in Le Monde that summed everything up in four words:

"Nous sommes tous Americains."

"We are all Americans."

And for that short time, we were not Republicans or Democrats, not liberals or conservatives.

We were unified in a way we probably hadn't been since World War II. I remember writing at the time that President Bush had an opportunity to be a great president and do something wonderful for the country. All he needed to do was say that this was no time for partisan politics, that we needed to stand together as Americans and that our sole purpose was healing our country by going after the people who had done this.

He could have said that tax cuts for the rich could wait, that America had never gone to war and cut taxes at the same time and it just wouldn't work.

Keith and Mick

Americans still stood together six weeks after the attacks, when New Yorkers filled Madison Square Garden to see the Concert for New York City.

The show was nearly five hours long and it was wonderful, even if most of the biggest names present weren't Americans. David Bowie opened the show and Paul McCartney finished it, with the Who, Elton John and Rolling Stones Mick Jagger and Keith Richard in the middle.

The crowd cheered both Democrats and Republicans alike, and Roger Daltrey of the Who sang "Won't Get Fooled Again" without the words "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss" for maybe the first time ever.

The Who

Bill Clinton was there, but the only George W. Bush in the house was the impersonation done by Will Ferrell. I don't remember, but to be fair it was probably a security thing.

If only the president had kept his sights on what really mattered -- going after Osama bin Laden and ignoring partisan politics -- so many of the fissures that had opened in our society might have been healed.

Or at least kept from getting worse.

But the people behind Bush knew how close the last election had been, and they didn't want to waste the chance to get their agenda implemented. Within a year, a massive tax cut for the rich had been rammed through Congress and the administration started gearing up for a war against Iraq. Saddam Hussein had had nothing to do with 911, but many of the people in the new administration had served under Bush's father and had been against stopping short of Baghdad in the Gulf War.

Less than 18 months after 911, with the country more divided all the time, Bush put on his flight suit and declared "Mission Accomplished."

And 11 years later, we are more divided than ever.

The only thing both sides seem to agree on is that no one likes George W. Bush.

Oh, and most people do still like McCartney, Bowie, Jagger, Richard and Daltrey.

Rock 'n' roll will never die.

I never saw the Beatles in concert, but I spent an evening with Ringo

I never saw the Beatles in concert.

At least not all four of them. Their last tour of the United States was in 1966, when I was 16. I went to my first rock concert in 1967, when I saw the Lovin' Spoonful in Charlottesville, Va.

One thing strange about the Beatles in looking back is how short their time in the spotlight was. They came to America for the first time when I was 14 and they broke up before my 21st birthday.

They toured the United States just three times, not counting their February 1964 visit. That initial visit was for three appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show and single concerts at the Washington Coliseum and at Carnegie Hall in New York.

February 1964

The concerts were more celebrations than actual concerts. Nearly every time the Beatles performed, the screaming from girls in the audience made it very difficult to hear them.

They came back to Washington and performed at what was then D.C. Stadium in August 1966. I still wasn't going to concerts, but the funniest thing about it looking back was that tickets were only $5.

Even if you figure inflation, that would put the price between $35 and $40.

Not bad.

I did see the Spoonful for just $3 in '67. They were good, but they weren't the Beatles.

By the time I started going to concerts regularly, the Beatles were a thing of the past. I saw so many great concerts in the '70s, but one I missed in May 1976 stuck with me. My first wife and I were going to be spending two years in Austria for her job. She was going over two months before me, and on the day she left, there was a concert scheduled that evening at Capital Centre.

1976

I had really wanted to see the Wings Over America tour, but I couldn't bring myself to go alone. So I missed my one chance to see Paul McCartney in concert.

Then John Lennon died in 1980 and it was apparent there would never be a Beatles reunion.

The only concert I saw in the mid '80s was Bruce Springsteen in 1984 in St. Louis. I went to Colorado and then on to Nevada and I wasn't bothering with concerts anymore.

But in the summer of 1989, an interesting possibility arose. I was living in Reno, about a two-hour drive from Sacramento. The California State Fair was scheduled for late August, and one of the concerts on the schedule was Ringo Starr and His All-Starr Band.

Ringo, 1989

Now Ringo took a lot of crap over the years, and it was pretty obvious that musically, his songs were the least memorable of anyone in the group.

But he has toured for 25 years now with 12 different incarnations of his band, and 1989 was the first.

I bought two tickets, called my lifelong friend Mick in Los Angeles and invited him to come up for the show. Mick was the biggest Beatles fan of any non-girl I knew in the '60s, and I knew he would enjoy it.

The band was made up of Joe Walsh, Nils Lofgren, Dr. John, Billy Preston, Rick Danko, Levon Helm, Clarence Clemons, Todd Rundgren and Jim Keltner. The way the concert worked was each of the band members played the song they were best-known for and then Ringo did his catalogue.

It was a good show, and if it turns out to be the only time I ever see a Beatle, so be it.

I've seen a lot of great concerts in my lifetime. I can really only think of three or four acts I wish I hadn't missed -- Elvis, John Fogerty and the Who.

And of course those other Beatles.

Some places, some people stay with us for as long as we live

"There are places I remember all my life, though some have changed. Some forever not for better, some have gone and some remain."

We all have places we remember fondly, places we will remember all our lives even though some of them no longer exist. My friend Mick will never forget a crummy youth baseball field, poorly kept up in the best of times, that was his dream field from 1965-69.

These days it's the parking lot of an office building, but when he looks closely enough, he can see the bases, the fences and the backstop. I'm sure he wishes he had brought a camera back then and taken some pictures.

My grandmother is at lower left, my grandfather lower right, in 1920.

The places that hide deep in my heart are hundreds of miles farther west. I've written about them before. Most of them are in the small Ohio town where my mother was born, where my grandparents lived almost all of their long lives. The last time I set foot in their house was the day in 1990 that we buried my grandmother next to my grandfather, who had died nearly five years earlier.

It was a small house, three bedrooms and one bath, built in 1918 and listed at 576 square feet. It always seemed big enough, though. My cousin Peter, who is maybe five years younger than I am, said it perfectly that day. "We had so many happy times in this house and now we'll probably never set foot in it again."

My earliest memories of my grandfather are from when I was five or six, which would have put him just past 60. In the above picture, taken on his wedding day, he was 24. He has been gone for nearly 30 years, and I will be 65 on my next birthday. There is something very strange to me about all that.

The second picture is from 1985, when we were all in Ohio for my grandfather's funeral. I blew it up as large as I could to show faces. I wish I had other pictures of my grandmother, who is top center in the picture with my parents to her left and my uncle and his wife to the right.

But the main reason I used the picture is the view it shows of my grandparents' house, where at least until I was 13 or so was the single place in the world where I have the most happy memories. I had been there four months before this picture, stopping by to see my grandparents on the way back to my home in St. Louis after a vacation.

The house had sort of an old-fashioned porch, where you could sit out and enjoy the cooling temperature of the evening. I remember my grandfather sitting in a lawn chair and listing to Ernie Harwell broadcasting the Tigers games on WJR from Detroit.

He had sort of lost interest in the Cleveland Indians, who hadn't been in the World Series since 1954 and who could generally be found near the bottom of the American League. That was when my grandfather taught me that the most important pitch in baseball is Strike One; I must have heard him complain a hundred times about pitchers who fell behind in the count before throwing a strike.

It really is funny the things we remember. Four of the people in that picture are no longer alive, and at least two others are no longer part of our extended family. But what fills me with the most nostalgia is looking at my younger brother and my three younger sisters. Three of the four of them were still in their twenties. They look so young and so happy.

I also see a fourth generation in there -- my cousin David's children -- and I know the little kids in the picture are now grown with children of their own.

Memories do last. They really do.

"Though I know I'll never lose affection for people and things that went before. I know I'll often stop and think about them ..."
-- IN MY LIFE, Lennon/McCartney

In a beautiful house, the goofy office has its fans

We have been living in Georgia for more than three years and tonight we did something we hadn't done here before.

We entertained.

The last three years have been a long haul for us, health-wise, but it's beginning to look as if we're coming out the other side. We had seven friends over tonight for a dinner party -- appetizers, salad, wine, lasagna and dessert.

The food was a mixture of purchased and prepared. I made the lasagna from scratch, and it was a 50 percent success. It didn't look good aesthetically, but it tasted just fine. At least I got the right 50 percent right.

One funny thing happened. Our house is beautiful. My wife and her decorator Kate Dague created a beautiful ambience in our home, but as I have written before, I was given the privilege of decorating one room -- my office.

My wall of fame.

While the rest of the house is elegant and almost empty-looking in places, my office might be compared to the old saying about 100 pounds of manure in a 50-pound bag. There is nowhere on any of the walls where there is a square foot of open space. Almost every shelf of the wall of bookcases is double-lined. I've got hundreds of books and hundreds upon hundreds of movies on DVD.

And I've got sports memorabilia -- jerseys, bats and more than a hundred autographed baseballs.

I've got one case of 30 balls -- right under the Elway jersey -- in which every ball in the case represents a player in the Hall of Fame. The upper row is names like Koufax, Bench, Mantle, Williams, DiMaggio, Banks and Seaver. The bottom has only one -- faded but legible, Babe Ruth.

Me at 20?

I've got memories of Texas, of the days I wrote a column, pictures of Walt Masterson and of me interviewing Chris Evert Lloyd in 1981, a picture from my grandparents' wedding in 1920 and a picture of me on my 20th birthday.

The thing that was so goofy about that picture was that the first time I saw it again, about 35 years later, I honestly had a hard time figuring out who it was.

For one thing, I don't remember having a black shirt. For another, I really was never that good looking.

Anyway, that's my office, and what was funny about it was that the guests we had tonight who had never been in our home before were absolutely enthralled by my office -- the baseballs, the pictures, the movies.

Maybe I did a pretty good job after all.

We're at a point where elections aren't about telling the truth

If there's one thing that's funny about American politics, it's how little insight most people have.

Democrats never really understood why Ronald Reagan was so popular in the 1980s, and Republicans cannot comprehend how Bill Clinton (a philanderer) and Barack Obama (a liberal --to them -- and a Negro to boot) were able to win election and re-election by fairly comfortable margins.

To Democrats, Reagan succeeded by telling sweet stories about a long-gone America and saying we could have it back. I'm not sure the people who loved Reagan really believed him, but it's certainly fair to say they wanted to believe him.

He ran for president at a time when the American spirit was depressed, and he won by telling a lie that all candidates since him have echoed.

Ron, Nancy and Jacko

"America's best days are ahead of us."

Reagan's two terms saw a lot of positive things happen. The years 1981-89 were pretty much the last ones in which people believed Michael "Jacko" Jackson was a nearly normal person.

But more importantly, what happened was the beginning of something that has lasted up to this day, a tax system that let the richest Americans keep more and more of their money.

Republicans were able to get voters to believe that if wealthy people were taxed less, they would be able to spend more on products and services, which would enable those providing those products and services to make more money themselves.

Only it didn't work that way. Reagan said a rising tide would lift all boats, but too many Americans were boatless and barely stayed afloat. But when the Democrats challenged the policy, they sounded negative and Reagan kept on smiling. Just as Gilbert and Sullivan sang about the "very model of a modern major general," Reagan looked just like people thought a president should.

George H.W. Bush even got one term in the White House out of it, but by 1992, the economy was struggling and Bill Clinton rode campaign manager James Carville's slogan all the way to the White House.

Republicans couldn't understand why people liked Clinton. After all, he had woman troubles, with story after story about affairs he may or may not have had.

But Clinton was the first Democrat to learn the lessons of Reagan, that an optimistic outlook, a big smile and a healthy dose of charisma could carry a candidate a long way. He beat Bush, who always seemed a little out of touch, and then Bob Dole, who looked like what he really wanted to say was "You kids get off my lawn."

Elections since then have shown that the candidate who seems more human, more upbeat about the future wins. Call it what you want -- the "have a beer question," or something like it -- but elections seem to have become less about the platforms and more about star quality.

Obama winning in 2008 was no surprise. The economy had fallen so far under George W. Bush that any Democrat could have won that year, but Republicans were stunned they couldn't topple him in 2012. They might have, except that their candidate seemed even less human than Dole had.

Mitt Romney would have had an uphill battle anyway, but his comments about the 47 percent who were dependent on the government made him seem completely heartless.

So Obama won, and now both parties are looking to 2016. It will be interesting to see who the nominees are, and which party follows the lesson of the last 36 years and nominates an upbeat, charismatic candidate. I'm a Democrat who doesn't believe Hillary Clinton will run in 2016; she will be 69 years old before Inauguration Day, and that's just too old. Reagan showed us that.

The one thing I'll guarantee about the 2016 election is that whoever runs, they will be telling us the same lie everyone since Reagan has been telling us.

"America's best days are ahead of us."

I wonder how long it will take before a candidate can tell us the truth and still have a chance to win.

Who would have imagined such a ridiculous future?

When I was a kid, I assumed that the world of the future was going to be a wonderful place.

So many great things would happen. Inventions would make our lives better and better, and when we talked about flying cars and disposable clothes and all those sorts of marvels, we couldn't wait to see them. Work would become cleaner and more fulfilling, and we would all find a way to respect each other and get along.

The future

Nobody even suggested that someday television sets would be 10 times bigger and would have high-definition pictures and really sharp sound. If they had, I honestly think we would have asked why. We didn't value television enough to put so much effort -- and so much money -- into it.

If they had told us sports stadiums would be built into entertainment palaces at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars or more, we would have laughed and wondered what was the point. Especially when we were told that tickets to games would cost 10-20 times as much as they did for us. It wouldn't have made sense.

Maybe they would have told us that stores would be open 24 hours a day and closed only for Christmas, and that an awful lot of jobs would require working nights, weekends or even the ominously named "graveyard shift." What would be the point?

What if they had told us that by the time we were old enough to have children of our own, both parents in most families would be working but they wouldn't be any better off financially? Why would anyone think that was a good idea?

In the late '60s, as we came of age, people talked about the Age of Aquarius, a time in which peace and understanding would grow and prosper and the materialism of the '50s would fade away.

Instead of that happening, the wheels came completely off the wagon in the '70s and '80s. We went from the Age of Aquarius to the Age of Rodeo Drive almost without missing a beat. By the time the Bicentennial came along in 1976 we were locked into the Me Decade.

The '80s would be even worse.

It was an era about self-love and self-help, of Pet Rocks, Mood Rings and getting in touch with your inner child. We were told to love ourselves as we were, when we actually could have benefitted from at least an oil change and at most a complete makeover.

We started going to war with each other. Half the country thought Ronald Reagan was a national savior and a little less than half thought he was a dangerous bonehead. But it seemed far more important to worry about who had shot J.R.

Between consumerism, television and the fact that people weren't reading anymore, we were so far down the rabbit hole we couldn't even see the way back out. And we really never have made it back. I don't have a TV that covers an entire wall, but we have three 47-inch high definition sets in a house where only two people live.

I haven't been inside a movie theater in nearly three years, but I have hundreds and hundreds of my favorite movies that I watch again and again. Still, I liked it a lot better when a movie was something to see with my friends and not something I could own and watch whenever I wanted.

I would imagine that many of us who grew up in the '50s and '60s would consider the world we live in now somehow nightmarish. We grew up in the most egalitarian era in modern times and we're growing only in a nation whose inequality rivals the third world.

I remember seeing that there are roughly 3 million people in the U.S. who are millionaires. If that's true, that's about 10 percent of the country. My wife and I are very fortunate; we would be in the group just below that 10 percent. But I have close friends who I would imagine aren't in the top 50 percent, and there is something very wrong about that.

There shouldn't be so few winners and so many losers when it comes to financial success.

Especially when so many of the really wealthy seem to insist on policies that won't help the poor or working class at all.

Donald Trump doesn't need more money. Neither do the Koch brothers or the Walton family.

We need to find a way to create more opportunity for the people who really need it and less success for the people who already have plenty.

Otherwise, the future isn't going to be pretty.