TRUST THE VOTERS! HECK NO -- I missed a bet yesterday when I wrote about the problems with the Electoral College. It wasn't about large states and small states at all, although one could argue that at the time it was regional.
And they didn't even have talk radio or 24-hour cable news.
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TOO EASY TO JUDGE -- Bill Clinton was a pretty good president ... but he cheated on his wife.
Thomas Jefferson probably had the greatest mind of the 18th century ... but he had sex with his slaves.
It amazes me that there are so many people now -- looking at the past -- from the perspective of the present and being quick to condemn great men who were flawed. Maybe it's because the flaws are so apparent these days.
O.J. Simpson was a great football player and no worse than mediocre as an actor, but he can't get a pass for being a serial wife abuser, let alone for murdering two people. Bill Cosby might be one of the five best comedians ever, making millions of people happy. But with the help of rohypnol and other drugs, he probably had unwelcome sex with dozens of women.
I'm listening right now to one of my very favorite singers, a man who has been one of the great songwriters for nearly half a century. But Jackson Browne was arrested in the '90s for beating up Darryl Hannah, his girlfriend at the time.
Browne's 1977 album, "The Pretender," would certainly be somewhere in my personal top 10.
I always thought the title song was the masterpiece, but the older I get, the more I love the song before it, "Sleep's Dark and Silent Gate."
"Oh God this is some shape I'm in when the only thing that makes me cry is the kindness in my baby's eye."I agreed with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar when he said celebrities shouldn't be anyone's role models, that they should be celebrated for what the do well and not for what sort of person they are.
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HAPPY BIRTHDAY -- Today is my younger brother's birthday. It falls 25 days earlier on the calendar than my own, but I'm essentially a decade older than he is.
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| 1963 or '64? |
Strangely, one of the only memories I have of my fifth grade year is the day he was born. In those days, we didn't know what sex the baby would be until the birth. I had two younger sisters and I was hoping the fourth child would be a boy.
It was morning recess at Kittyhawk Elementary School in Huber Heights, Ohio. I was playing football and someone came out and told me I had a little brother. I was so elated I ran for a touchdown.
I remember thinking I was going to be a great big brother, that I would teach him good things and at the same time keep bad things away from him.
Of course it didn't happen that way. If I had to compare myself to a famous big brother, it probably would be Wayne Arnold of "The Wonder Years." When he was 4, I broke his leg horsing around. When he was 12, I nearly killed him. We were horsing around and my carelessness caused him a cerebral contusion.
Our parents were in Japan, and when he started getting drowsy, I decided to take him to the emergency room, and on the way there he started convulsing. I put two fingers in his mouth to keep him from swallowing his tongue. He bit down almost to the bone as I drove with one hand.
I knew where the nearest hospital was. What I didn't know was that they didn't have a 24-hour emergency room. They closed at 8 p.m., and under the heading of the Lord looking out for idiots, we got there at 7:55 p.m.
He was in the hospital for a week, the first 48 hours on the critical list. I had called my uncle Jerry Linker in New York as soon as we were settled in, and he flew down that night and took charge. He was one of the finest men I ever knew. Sadly cancer took him at a younger age than I am now.
My brother survived, and the scare of what had almost happened calmed me down a lot in the way I treated him.
And now he's 57 years old.
Happy birthday, kiddo. You are a wonderful man and I hope you live a very long life.
I remember so well. That was a long night at the hospital and we were both overjoyed when your Uncle Jerry showed up in a cab from the airport.
ReplyDeleteYou made a mistake, but you were absolutely heroic in your response to Stephen's need at the time.