A Christmas Quandry

December 25th is more than a birthday: it's the most important day of the year. I mean it's more imporant for the US economy. The celebrations start with door busters the day after Thanksgiving, maybe even intruding on Thanksgiving, and ending with bargains well into January. Now, here comes Pope Benedict with the news that the 25th has nothing to do with the birth of Christ. It was a blunder of a 6th century monk who got mixed up with the calendar. And that's not the only error Benedict points out but let's not go there and instead concentrate on the important issue, when was Santa Claus born? Santa has no cross to bear, he's resurrected each and every year. When you listen to Eartha Kitt singing “Santa Baby” you're already in heaven. Still, there are mysteries to clear up. He visits every home in every town. He always came to my town on the Canadian prairie. We didn't even have to dream of a White Christmas, it came to town with Santa. Every year he makes a list and checks it twice because he wants to know who's been naughty and nice. How does he deal with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: he's on both lists! Better give him what he wants.

Have the movies lost it?

I read this week that attendance and revenue are down this year. I go to the movies quite often so it isn't my fault. However most films aren't made for me. “Dark Knight”? Not! A young woman said she didn't care for stories about the past, such as “The King's Speech” preferring modern stories like “The Social Network”, which is really just an update of “What Makes Sammy Run?” from the 1940's. Who wants costume stuff anyway, like Shakespeare and Ibsen, when you can see attractive young people ready to emote, mate and sometimes marry. I saw “Argo” this week and liked the script and the direction even though it's really an update on the WWII Errol Flynn escape movie: “Desperate Journey”--the one where the Nazi interrogator asks Ronald Reagan's character his nationality and Reagan answers, “Half American, half New Jersey”. A young guy in London said that he craved good writing but “Chinatown” was all he could find. I said, “I'll give you two wonderfully written films: “Double Indemnity” and “All about Eve”. He'd never heard of either one. One cheerful note, they're going to make some new Star Wars” episodes: “The Empire Holds an Election”? You can always count on remakes so look for: “King Kong in Hong Kong” with Jackie Chan and “The Count of Monte Cristo on Mars”, with Will Farrell. Anything that boosts the box office.

How to spend millions and annoy everybody

No, I'm not talking about the New York Yankees, I mean the round-the-clock bombardment of political advertising here in Las Vegas. More political commercials have aired here than anywhere else. It is the most saturated media market in the country, churning at the rate of 10,000 spots a week. I had insomnia last week and turned on the TV and there was a Crossroads message at 4 in the morning! Because I'm an Independent I'm in the crosshairs of Crossroads getting robocalls day after day. This is no way to befriend a voter. I don't care who they nominate I'm voting the straight Democratic ticket. There's an ancient saying in the advertising world where the client says, “I know half my money is wasted but I don't know which half.” I do: the half spent by the losers.

Incompetent nonsense

That's what ad legend David Ogilvy called the commercials he was seeing, and that was years ago. You can see it today in the barrage of adolescent bathroom humor and irrelevant messages aimed at the young. Lots of unshaven young men in bars with their condoms and credit cards swizzling beer with single young ladies. What's the message? It's not taste or value and certainly not up-market status. You can see it in the worst campaign on the air: Geico insurance. Ogilvy also said there were no good ads, only good campaigns and Geico is a cacophony of conflicting campaigns that includes flying pigs, banjo players and a lizard with a down-market English accent. I was told as a young copywriter to avoid borrowed interest such as opening a commercial with an erupting volcano and saying: “Speaking of volcanoes have you tried our coffee?” It's all volcanoes now with little time for product benefits. The missing link is good copy. The art guys and the producers are calling the shots and the poor copy guy is still pleading: “What does it mean?” McLuhan warned that television would pollute the thought environment and I now think that today's advertising is obstructing the economy by not serving our real needs. We're in a tough recession. We need real ideas for frugal, intelligent living not big dumb wasteful dollars supporting overpriced brands. The iconoclastic adman Howard Gossage tells the story of a soap company owner who says that if his ad spending stopped his market share would drop, and Gossage's answer was, “Would anyone in America be any dirtier?” You can still sell with taste, wit and class. Maybe I shouldn't be blaming the agencies since they're only in it to make a buck. Perhaps we have to get down on all fours and look at it from the client's point of view.

What we're seeing is manufactured rage

That's the astute phrase Salman Rushdie used on the Charlie Rose show this week. He usually knows what he's talking about. Many years ago Salman and I worked for the same ad agency in London. He would pop into my office from time to time to hold forth on world events and expound on US history, which he knew far better than I did. Unfortunately he couldn't write an ad to save himself. He was promptly fired clearing the way for him to become one of the world's foremost authors. Growing up in India he knew the Muslim world but he didn't foresee that he would be the object of their hatred and lose eleven years of life in hiding from the Ayatollah's fatwa. Ambassador Chris Stevens lost all of his life to Muslim terrorists. Chris was the perfect emissary to Libya. He spoke the language fluently and the people there loved him. It didn't matter to the thugs. He was a lifelong friend who went to my alma mater, UC Berkeley, where he learned, as I did, that it is better to be rich in experiences than material things. I've been to the middle east as a tourist and found it awesome (Karnak, Jerusalem and Santa Sophia) and scary ( a snake charmer in Marrakesh chasing me with the snake because I didn't pay him $1 for snapping his picture). If you want a safe middle east experience, don't' go to Egypt, go to the Luxor in Las Vegas. It's clean, friendly fun in a pyramid, and you may even meet Cleopatra. Rage is the Muslim metier de jour. So stupid. So hopeless. Millions of guys who need a shave and a job, and no chance of ever getting either. Or go to the zoo where the wild animals are kept behind bars.

Chris Stevens, a brave American

“How do these things happen”?, said Hilary Clinton in her announcement that Ambassador Chris Stevens had been killed by terrorists in the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. I think this happens when a person puts his own safety second to the cause he is fighting for, a cause he believes in. Orwell did it by going to fight for the Republic in the Spanish Civil War. He escaped, just barely, with a bullet wound to the throat. Chris couldn't escape the relentless barrage of bullets and rockets aimed at his Consulate. He lived a life of purpose, not settling for a life in an air-conditioned office in Washington writing memos. He served in the Peace Corps in Morocco and in the Foreign Service in many middle east postings. He was fluent in Arabic and could mingle with the people. He wasn't into palace intrigues and big power posturing he was a soldier for democracy. I'm especially grateful to his father, Jan, for his very deft introduction to my wife Peggy. We celebrate our 55th anniversary September 14th. I have pictures of Chris and our son Tony when they were three years old, along with our daughter Alison who was just an infant. Chris was a classmate of Alison's at UC Berkeley. Through the years we saw him grow and mature to be intelligent without being pedantic; handsome without being vain and dedicated without being arrogant. Now he belongs to the shared history of our country. In the words of the poet Phillip Larkin: All the uncaring, intricate, rented world begins to rouse...the sky is white as clay, with no sun...work has to be done”. As Secretary Clinton reminded us: “We need more Chris Stevenss”.

Pinocchio Paul Ryan

He fibs, he lies, he exaggerates and his nose grows longer and longer but what can you expect from a wooden dummy. You can't see who's pulling the strings but it's probably that arch-enemy of the truth, Karl Rovespierre. Of course he's only a hired hand working for the people who own the tent: casino clown Sheldon Adelson and the shadowy Koch brothers. Lord Acton said that power corrupts and in America that means too much money corrupts. Something comes to mind from the distant past. When famed criminology professor Orlando Wilson was appointed Chicago Chief of Police his main job was to clean up the bribery and corruption. In a meeting a cop asked, “How do we stop corruption?” Wilson said, “Start by paying for your cup of coffee on the beat”. All the money pouring into the political commercials is subject to the two parts of the message: concept and execution. Anyone with money to burn can do the execution but without a real, energizing, thoughtful concept it's just million dollar wallpaper. So, as the great Republican, Sonny Bono, said, “The beat goes on”. We shall see what works on November 6th. When our little wooden boy sings “there are no strings on me”, and falls flat on his face, Jiminey Cricket says, “OK, make a fool of yourself, then maybe you'll listen to your conscience”. After he twirls and spins and the audience claps, Jiminey says, “They like him, he's a success”. Sure, but only in cartoons.

America is rough and lacks the interesting

A refined, upper class English woman told me that years ago in London. If you drive up the middle of Nevada, as I did last week, you might agree. There's nothing to see except the odd McDonalds and a few Shady Lady brothels. Of course when you swing over to California you are entering a verdant paradise of orchards, lakes, mountains and oceanfront an Englishman can only dream about. And the people are very interesting and well educated. We spent an evening dining al fresco on one of those soft summer nights discussing art, music and literature. Not too rough. We even devoted an evening to watching a video of “Swan Lake” by the Maryinsky Ballet and since we had all been to St. Petersburg and some of us spoke Russian, we could enjoy it about as well as the average bloke in Basingstoke. Dickens also complained in “American Notes” (1840) that the Americans he met were boring businessmen and traders. Well, they weren't as exciting and devious as Bill Sykes, Fagin and Abel Magwitch. DeToqueville understood us best, but then he was a Frogie Frenchman, wasn't he? I happen to love England but I do prefer a cold beer on a hot day to a warm one on a cold day. The one who understood England best was Orwell. He wrote in his diary in June 1940 about an item in the Tory Telegraph lamenting that the rich would have to give up their cooks during the war. He wrote, “apparently nothing will teach these people that the other 99% of the population exist”. Make that 100%.

The greatest race never run.

I could have gone to the 1948 Olympics in London when I was 13. I don't say I was Bob Mathias or Emil Zatopec but I ran my kind of race. I could probably be in the 2012 Olympics in London even though I'm 77. Unfortunately my event has never been sanctioned by the sanctimonious. arrogant elites that run the IOC. I'm referring to The Three-Legged Dash. You know, the one where they tie the inner legs of two people together and send them hopping off to the finish line. Today's Olympics are a television event or how would you describe beach blanket bikini volleyball, BMX motorcycle races and synchronized swimming, diving, schlepping? Even the time-honored Triple Jump seems like a form of aggressive hopscotch. I don't say they have to go as far as the Monty Python group that put on women's clothes for Drag Racing, but there has to be something for the non-steroid viewer. It's all politics,isn't it? Backroom arm twisting and blackmail. Greece is bankrupt and so is the Olympic Committee. In Orwell's “Animal Farm” the motto of the triumphant animals over the farmers was “Two legs bad, four legs good”. Well, I say, “Two legs boring, three legs thrilling”.

Facebook! Farcebook! Fleecebook!

I'm an adult so I don't have a Facebook or Twitter account. I don't believe in them because I believe in privacy. They are just Big Brother on your computer screen. Don't kid yourself, you are under constant surveillance around the clock. One of the aspects of Orwell's “1984” was “Facecrime”, the dangerous condition if your thoughts were deemed suspicious in a public place. Dossiers are being compiled on you right now by some service that is tracking your capacity to buy and spend. Harmless you say, well, read Andrew Keen's book: Digital Vertigo-how today's online social revolution is dividing, diminishing and disorienting us. Facebook has nearly one billion “users” so I am just a lone voice pleading for reason. Well, I'm not totally alone. The late Gore Vidal said, “It's of no consequence what people think of you, the only thing that matters is what you think of them”. I don't often quote Ayn Rand, but in The Fountainhead she has the villain, Ellsworth Toohey ask the hero Howard Roark, “What do you really think of me?” and Roark replys, “I don't think of you at all.” So we now have this mighty company that began trading in May at $100 billion valuation. It's now about $60 billion and heading south daily. Of course the underwriters and Mr. Zuckerberg have banked their proceeds and the public is left holding the bag. I'm not sure you can sell “liking”. It's an unreal product and not very essential to everyday life. And advertising doesn't fit comfortably into the popular mobile format, probably why GM and other advertisers are dropping out. Only time will tell but it's good to remember Prohibition's speakeasy queen, Texas Guinan who traditionally greeted patrons with a hearty “Hello suckers”. Hello Zuckers!

Mitt Romney, Nowhere Man

Although I won't be voting for Gov. Romney let me say I think he is a good American. But golly Miss Molly he sure can put his foot in his mouth. He had the misfortune to question arrangements for the London Olympics. Nothing really serious but the Brits are, how shall we say, a little brittle these days. The PM extolled London and said, “it's not like putting on an Olympics in the middle of nowhere”. I agree, but those Mormon souls in Utah were not amused. Sigh. What's coming on his next two stops; in Israel he might say that some of his best friends are Jewish; in Poland he can tell jokes like: What does it say on the bottom of a Coke bottle in Warsaw...open other end. I think the problem is that he is a rich guy and there is no one to fire him or reprimand him so he tells it like it is (for him). I only wish he were funnier like James Watt, the Secy. Of the Interior who was asked a few years ago if he backed Indian rights and he said, unequivocally “Without any reservations”.

Airstrip One hosts the Olympics

Airstrip One was Orwell's name for England in “1984”, a country perpetually on a war footing, sort of like now for the London Olympics. There are gunboats on the Thames, an aircraft carrier, soldiers, sailors, commandos, cops, security teams—and this is just a huge track meet. This isn't the London I know and love—the London of “A nightingale sang in Berkeley Square”, of a smile from Julie Christie on a Mayfair street and some good conversation in the Camden Brasserie. Luckily for me it's now just a telly event far from the madding crowd. Orwell points out in one of his essays that international sports events do not unify, they antagonize. No one here will be cheering for Germany when there are Yanks in every event. And speaking of Dear Old Deutschland, the 1936 Games in Berlin were pretty memorable. Sure, you had Adolf and the Nazis hogging the best seats but you also had the wonderful performance of Jesse Owens and that epic and beautiful film “Olympiad”. But that was peacetime, wasn't it?

So sue me!

Student loan debt is now over $1 trillion. These loans cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. So thousands of young people and their families are held hostage by the courts and their banking masters. They have been betrayed by their dreams and will have to sacrifice their lifestyles and be robbed of their future lives for decades. No more home equity to lean on. A $34,000 (that's modest) debt will in time grow to $50,000 with interest over a standard ten year period. What to do? Stop paying the lenders who hold 90% of college tuition debt. They've been bailed out and have billions in the coffers. The rest goes to bonuses. You can keep paying the 10% of the debt held by. the government since the terms are far more lenient. You could meet your obligations if only you could find a decent job. You could apply for a scholarship but there aren't many Chinese Running Backs in college football. Or you can just stagger along and bear the crushing weight of the loan. Maybe even drop dead in self defense in your cubicle. Or you can take the advice of the headline in this blog. Fold your arms and stop paying so you can get on with your life. What can they do, take away your education and degree? No, they only want the money. If enough of you do this you'll probably get a better deal down the line. You have nothing to lose but your credit cards.

Homage to my two heroes

Read the August issue of Vanity Fair (Alex Baldwin cover). Amidst all the fashion fol de rol is a piece by Christopher Hitchens titled: “The Importance of Being Orwell”. It is the best and most complete review of George Orwell by the late, mourned voice of modern Orwell. In it you can see the genesis of the public intellectual who championed political honesty and moral courage. You can also see where “doublethink” originated and is now so much a part of today's hypocritical politics. Also read today's (July 15th) New York Times Book Review Q&A of Dave Eggers the talented American novelist. He says that if he could meet any writer it would be George Orwell. Of those authors he's already met, Christopher Hitchens most impressed him. Eternal truths for our times.

A product of our times

Whatever happened to Flit?

Whatever happened to Quink?

Whatever happened to Ipana,

And all those who were told to Think Pink?

Where did they go

All those brands we so adored?

What about Oxydol, Hadicol et al

Or did we over time just get bored?

No one could save them

Once we simply didn't care

They went to their graves

Like the dear departed Corvair.

But don't give up hope

We still have Kitty Litter,

And the always inviting,

Time-waster they call Twitter!

Food glorious food

Maison Prunier, the one in London and the one in Paris. Fouquets, the place mentioned in “Grand Illusion”, La Closerie de Lilas, Hemingway's Left Bank favorite, Le Petit Zinc, which my wife and daughter and I closed for good one mad cap memorable night. Such, such were the joys of our days in Europe before the dubious Euro zone decided to shutter the good life. I live in Vegas now. There are plenty of Michelin star restaurants here and I've been to most of them, including the marvelous Wing Lei in the Wynn. Still you have to agree with Bugs Bunny when he and Daffy Duck went to Las Vegas and Daffy enthused: “excitement, sex, adventure” and Bugs reminded him, “ also a hot spot for the elderly”. Yes, it's now 2 for 1's at the buffets and even Denny's (20% off after 4 pm). What can you do, that's what dining out is in America now. We have found a small French bistro but you have to look hard. I saw this week that Olive Garden and Red Lobster are experiencing big sales slumps. It's about time. Joe Queenan, the NY critic says that they are two of the most deadly places in American culture, along with “Cats”, “Phantom of the Opera” and “Walker Texas Ranger”. I would add Barbra Streisand to that list. C'est La Vie. Proust had his taste buds to jog his memory. I have my memories to jog my taste buds. Hemingway said that Paris was a moveable feast. C'est vrai, toujours vrai.

SHOULD YOU GIVE YOUR KIDS A COLLEGE EDUCATION OR A GUITAR? Or boxing gloves? Or dancing lessons? Or a football? You want to avoid crushing tuition debt because it is not “dischargable”, thanks to a neat double-cross by Congress. And since most degrees now are in business and accounting you're not going to get much bang for the buck from an English degree or teaching credential or, heaven forbid, a theology or Classics BA. Politicians can't help you because they only represent themselves. I saw that famous shauspieler Bill Clinton intone that kids have to buckle down and study math and science. Of course when he took physics and the assignment was to “dress the electron” he tried to “undress the electron”, failed and gave up. At Stanford an undergraduate degree can cost up to $200,000. No wonder Steve Jobs and Bill Gates dropped out of college and Elon Musk left Stanford after two days. My extremely well-read son Tony dropped out of a swank private college to get to New York and get a job at The New Yorker. Later, he did get a degree from NYU but he said astutely, “Why are we paying thousands of dollars to read books I can do on my own?” Of course you can always get a football scholarship while you're taking remedial reading and waiting for the NFL Draft. But that's for schools like the University of Memphis and East Louisiana State A&M. I didn't need college to be smart or to have a career but my father, who never finished high school, insisted, and he was writing the checks. So I was sent off to UCLA . The first thing I did was join a fraternity since I was 1500 miles from home. I wasn't a scholar but I got my A's in Russian and English and earned 5 athletic letters (in minor sports of course). John Dewey points out that “education is a mode of social life in which we learn the most by working with others”. I left Berkeley with my gentleman's C average and the biggest prize of all, my wife Peggy. In the 1971 film “Taking Off” Milos Forman spoofs the middle class by having the young daughter run away from home. She returns with her goofy-looking boyfriend. The smug father, who has never made more than $19,000 in his life, baits the young man, who is a rock musician, by asking how much money he made that year, and got the answer, “only $237,000”. If you want to make real money don't let college stop you. Today's university has pledged itself to a Holy Trinity of: football for the alumni, sex for the undergraduates, and parking for the faculty. However, if you change your mind (and actually care for it) you can harken to William James who said, “Learning of all kinds opens us up to the fruits of life. The American college is too important to be permitted to give up on its own ideals.”

Peggy gives her notice on "Mad Men"

Who can blame her? She won't be allowed to work on the glamor account. She doesn't get to share the lobster dinner with the rest of the creative staff. She does a brilliant impromptu save on an account and when she and the team report to Don, the creative director, he sneers and throws a wad of bills at her. I often yell at the program since I had many similar experiences in my own Mad Man career and so last Sunday I shouted to Peggy: “Leave, leave, it's over “. She's going, and for more money, the best revenge. When you're not valued go where you will be. The final insult, and a grave new turn in the plot, is when a prospective client asks the boys if he can sleep with Joan. She agrees, providing she gets a partnership, more money, etc. Only the conflicted Don tries to stop her. But she goes ahead and they get the account. These things happen but I have lost all respect for that ad agency. All they care about is the sale. No philosophy there and no loyalty either. I've worked at a few shops like that and it's no place to be anybody.

Can America ever get healthy?

There's good news and bad news. According to new statistics, health spending is flattening out for Medicare and Medicaid. This is attributed partly to the recession but also to changing behaviors of consumers. The second item is that the States are receiving less income from their “tobacco bonds”, a sign that Americans are smoking less. On the down side, obesity keeps growing, especially in the South. On my first trip to Atlanta we went in to a Krispy Kreme shop to give it a try. We found ourselves chatting with a customer who said he just came from a funeral. I'm not making this up but he said his friend was buried in a red, white and green Krispy Kreme casket. The donut tolls for thee. Medical expenses, hence the deficit, could be reduced greatly if we only made healthy lifestyle choices. Control your weight, exercise and eat nutritious foods. We're not Sweden but we don't have to be Mississippi either.

FILTHIEST HABIT IN AMERICA (Keep reading!) The internet is one big tease. You can’t get anything straightforward, only the come-on that a carnival barker would use, and that includes the CBS and NBC Nightly News. It’s a proven technique to coax readers into a story, but there’s really no reward in an item that starts: “What the star says”, “Bizarre cookbooks”; “Aniston’s ex moving on?” . AOL even has a daily section called “Weird News” with must-know items such as: “Octomom Broke”; “Grandmother 60 take up pole dancing” and “Watch: man attempts robbery with underwear over head”. Of course this is Dwight MacDonald’s grim world of Masscult which he described long ago as a page in Life magazine about the UN facing a page with a horse on roller skates. It’s the real world done as a comic strip. Now, dear reader, to satisfy your morbid curiosity about the headline. It comes from a Lil’ Abner strip of long ago when Dogpatch was horrified that someone in town had the filthiest habit in America. Al Capp played this for a few weeks until he revealed that the culprit wore the filthiest riding habit. It needed dry cleaning, that’s all. Gotcha!

MISS LONELYHEARTS IS STILL GETTING LETTERS. When I first read Nathanael West's strange and episodic story 60 years ago I thought it was just picaresque, a sort of dark Damon Runyon. Now I know how prophetic it was. It tells the same story of the deadness and disorder that stalks the land today. We still have deadbeat dads, police gunning down unarmed citizens, maimed and crippled veterans coming home from war, except for the ones in coffins. We have drug ODs, drunks, abortion taboos and enough mayhem and melancholy to fill every newscast. Week after week Miss Lonelyhearts (a nameless young man) got letters from unfulfilled lives, troubled and tortured people, heartaches aplenty which prompted despairing but hopeful advice in his newspaper column. The only difference between now and 1940 is that we get the letters sent to us personally on the news, the papers and the internet only we've added corruption in the capitol, and fallen political idols. We're getting to be cynical like his boss Shrike who belittles any compassion for anyone. So here we are, decades later, in the same eternal despair. However there is another more likable character West created (an anti-hero of course) in his scathing novel of Hollywood: “Day of the Locust”. His name is Homer Simpson. Ring a bell?

Style: the decline of.

How many pairs of jeans did Frank Sinatra own? None. How many did Fred Astaire own? Not a one. I haven’t worn a pair since high school. But of course millions do, looking like a massive army of ditch diggers. Clothes are language so dress up and speak well for yourself. Perhaps clothes are my private vice incurred from all my years in London where looking smart is a civic duty. Yes, I had my suits and jackets custom made on Savile Row but I suggest you could go to Costco and still come out looking like a million dollars. The cosmetic mogul Harry Revson said to women: “You have plenty of clothes but you don’t have a look—get one!” Tap into your inner Fred Astaire or Audrey Hepburn. I was in Wynn on the Vegas Strip this week. My son Tony is getting married there next month. I was there when he picked out his tux and I’ve seen his fiancee’s wedding dress. They are going to look very smart and there won’t be any Elvis impersonators at the service. Wynn is like a tastefully done airport with hordes of poorly dressed people milling about. They simply don’t fit the venue. I suppose a pair of ripped jeans, a cheap Led Zepplin t shirt and a baseball cap proclaiming “Ukiah Lumber” is a hip look, but remember that clothes make the man . Don’t join the “schlepers and lepers”, adopt my motto: Dress British, Think Yiddish. OK, so I’m a snob but I will put in a good word for jeans. I have a picture of Marilyn Monroe lying on a bench hoisting a couple of small barbells. She’s wearing a pair of jeans and a bra. She looks wonderful.

It's always 1984 at the Pentagon

One of the prime slogans of Orwell’s “1984” is “War is Peace”. That’s using Newspeak, the official language of the Party. I prefer Oldspeak: “War is War”, especially our ten year war in Afghanistan, our war without end. A US soldier kills helpless civilians after serving four hellish tours of duty. There’s a surge. There’s a pause. A General leaves. A new General takes over. It doesn’t matter. Karzai gets mad. Karzai cools off but mostly he gets paid millions of dollars of our tax money. We’re stuck in Doublethink with the Pentagon’s 27,000 public relations staff systematically falsifying our goals. Let’s go back to a real Commander-in-chief, Dwight Eisenhower, who famously warned of a permanent arms industry of vast proportions. He said, “the danger of military influence over public policy will drive spending and encourage fear and even war”. During Eisenhower’s two terms, precisely one American was killed in combat, by a sniper in Lebanon. In the beginning, Washington and Hamilton wrote that “wise American leaders will avoid the necessity of an overgrown military establishment which is particularly hostile to republican liberty”. As for us, a Russian general warned us about the Afghans : “You’ll see. You’ll see”. Will we? As that wise philosopher Pogo Possum said many years ago, “We has met the enemy and he is us.”

Sing a Depression song

Potatoes are cheaper, tomatoes are cheaper, now’s the time to fall in love..
She can cook your eggs and bacon and live on what you’re makin’”
Unfortunately potatoes, and especially tomatoes, aren’t cheaper, they’re dear, Dear.
I suppose you can still find a million dollar baby in a 5 and 10cent store—if you can find a 5 and 10 cent store.
You can still whistle while you work if you can find any work.
Brother can you spare a dime…for Starbucks? Well, at least FDR is on the dime.
More likely you can sing: “No more money in the bank,..no more kids for us to spank..
What to do about it..let’s turn out the lights and go to sleep”.
Just be wide awake come Nov. 6 2012.

Red Wings and Giants forever

David Brooks writes about trying to become a Washington Nationals fan, but to no avail. He is permanently committed to the NY Mets even though he lives in DC. He says rightly that team loyalty begins with youthful enchantment. That explains how I became a Detroit Red Wings fan even when I lived in soggy Vancouver and didn’t know where Detroit was other than somewhere south of Saskatoon. It might have been the all red uniforms, the Stanley Cups, Lindsey, Abel and Howe or just the team photo on my barber’s wall. By the time I lived in Detroit 20 years later I was running though the snow with my wife Peggy to games at the old Olympia. And speaking of Dame Peggy she is a diehard NY/SF Giants fan probably inspired by one bright shining day in 1955 as she sat in the Polo Grounds and watched Willie Mays pull in fly balls in that massive outfield. She has been in every home park the Giants have played in including Seals Stadium (where she caught a foul ball hit by Hobie Landrith), windy Candlestick, and cozy AT&T park. Teams choose us through some mystical process of identification. Root for the Dodgers? Forget it. Cheer on the Canadiens? Jamais! Till death (or relocation) do us part.

Rush Limbaugh: A failure with a following

The man has 20 million listeners so his voice is heard far and wide. He is primarily a bombastic oaf but then, that might be the profile of his constituents. He went way over the line last week when he slandered a poised young lady who dared to testify before Congress on the Health Bill. He has since apologized (probably under sponsor pressure) in a trite, mealy-mouthed statement saying,, ‘My choice of words was not the best”.
Of course he can’t call back “slut” and “prostitute”. Well, let’s not mince words. Only a coward would hit a woman. That makes you a coward Rush. He has been divorced three times which tells me that, maybe the only thing well-endowed on him is his voice.. His rhetoric is so impoverished that no one can feel enlightened or motivated to do better or have any emotion other than smug bigotry. So he is just so much hot air over the airwaves. I’d like to get him in the locker room with my old hockey coach. He would get a drubbing from a guy who knew how to choose very choice words, finishing with his ultimate insult, “Rush, you’re a pig of a man!”

At last, a financially sound casino

Las Vegas has had its troubles since the Crash and that includes the casinos on the Strip. They’re carrying tons of debt and struggling to narrow their losses but things are about to change for the better. The first German-themed casino resort is in the works. It’s to be called Schloss Vegas and will be in the grand tradition of the City. It will have a sexy show: the Deutsche Doodle Dandy Revue. There will be a Non-comedy room where The Great Himmelfarb will do tricks with memory. The casino floor will have hundreds of slot machines including Wheel of Misfortune and U Bet Your U Boat. What can go wrong? The money’s there. The theme is new and inviting and the buffet features food you can feast on, Greeks, Italians, Spanish, French (I mean their food,) . The slogan says it all: Immer Essen! (Always eating). Today Vegas, Tomorrow the ..oops, Tomorrow The Opening.

Computers are making people easier to use.

The Internet is too much with us. It is crowding out the real world, It was bad enough when TV took all our spare time, now Facebook, Google, Twitter, Bing etc have captured what’s left of us. It started with cell phones years ago when I heard people talking to themselves in restaurants and city streets. Now it is a population with their heads lowered to the screens in their hands.
This is the updated social type first labeled in The Lonely Crowd by David Riesman in 1950 as the “other directed”. These were modern middle class people who abandoned traditional inner-directed motives to focus on how others were living, what they consumed, what they did with their time, what their views were, culminating in a personality that was willing to accommodate others to gain approval. So here we are, autonomy has been compromised. Privacy has vanished. Reality and nature have been digitalized.
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by a sight so touching in its majesty..Hey look, free WiFi!
She was a phantom of delight when first she gleamed up on my sight…Who? What? Where? Facebook?
My heart leaps when I behold a rainbow in the sky.. Look at this YouTube, a horse on roller skates!
What’s that water spout in Yellowstone called? How should I know, Google it. Under what name? Try Old Geezer.
(William Wordsworth contributed to this piece.)

Advertising brave enough to be great

The Super Bowl commercial for Chrysler called ‘Half-time in America’ starring Clint Eastwood, resurrects the art of copy and artful production into a historic message. I congratulate Wieden & Kennedy for avoiding the sophomoric, egotistical, pointless special effects that make up the incompetent nonsense called the Super Bowl commercial. This message continues in the tradition of a print ad of 100 years ago called “The Penalty of Leadership” for Cadillac, considered iconic by ad men who know their history. Actually I applaud all things Detroit since I worked there for over 4 years. I can’t claim to have ever done anything great but I always tried. GM wanted a hard hitting driver safety ad so I did one called ‘ Onward Christian Drivers’. After much review the finished ad said; ‘Drive safely” I’m proud of doing the first James Bond commercial and the best read ad by men in England. I never had $30 million plus to do “Half-time” but the money was well spent.

Meeeting Margaret Thatcher

I have a picture of Baroness Thatcher listening to me. We met at a small cocktail party at the RAF Club in Piccadilly about ten years ago. She was very cordial and, of course, quite intense. We didn’t talk politics, but rather about the Eagle Squadron, the Yanks who flew in the RAF during the Battle of Britain. I had a good friend who was one of the Eagles and was the only American at El Alamein, a decisive battle in the desert in August 1942, “the end of the beginning” in Churchill’s famous phrase. I told her that my daughter wrote for The Guardian (oops, a Lefty newspaper). She asked what her name was, and when I answered “Alison Powell”, she said approvingly, “a most English name”. She also spoke of Ronald Reagan, saying quite sadly, “the last time I saw Ronnie he didn’t recognize me”. And now we have Meryl Streep in “The Iron Lady” as the aging Thatcher in her twilight years also in late stage dementia. Of course, in flashbacks she is still vital, attractive, Britain’s first female Prime Minister, ten years in office and every inch the leader. I lived in London during the blackouts,, the garbage piled high on every street and it was chaos. She was the leader they needed. I found myself agreeing with everything she said in the film: Don’t let the mindless mob of miners destroy society, teach the tinpot Argentine fascists not to trifle with the English Lion, keep Britain out of the disastrous Euro zone. “Grocer’s daughter”, one of her “spineless pygmys” mumbles under his breath while orchestrating her ouster. Well, I was a grocer’s son myself, spending my earliest years behind my father’s grocery store. I found myself in agreement with her, which is saying a lot from a citizen of The People’s Republic of Berkeley. History has already placed her in the pantheon of great leaders. I do, too.

Socialism::the dirtiest word in American politics

You hear Republicans like Mitt Romney decrying Obama for leading us to a European socialist future. Who does he mean? Not Finland, Germany, the Netherlands and Luxumbourg who, unlike us, still have a AAA rating. Are they picking on poor little Greece or Ireland? Nick Kristof points out that even Europe’s poorest countries produce a wealth of beguiling supermodels. So let’s pick on someone our own size, like Canada, that bilingual socialist monarchy to the north (or the south if you live in Detroit). But wait a minute, even with full national health services it’s the only industrial country that didn’t have a bank failure during the Crash. The truth is that these critics wouldn’t know Keir Hardie from Oliver Hardy. When I was a freshman at UCLA I asked my political science prof. why there was no major socialist party in the US and he answered simply, “There’s no sentiment for it”. OK, point well taken. I re-read Marx last week, the Communist Manifesto, hardly a sound bite and not a single mention of socialism. It is primarily an economic history showing how feudalism gave way to the medieval guilds then the industrial revolution and finally Adam Smith capitalism. What it really seems to point out is that the 99% and the 1% have always been with us. Capitalism creates and destroys over and over again. But here’s a positive note. Warren Buffet is on the cover of Time this week being called The Optimist. Way back in 1935 Alexei Stakhanov was also on the cover of Time. He is the Soviet miner who could produce 5 times his quotas every day. He’s the model for Boxer, the hard-working horse in Orwell’s “Animal Farm”. You see, the sage of Omaha and the lowly miner actually have something in common: they’re both optimists. Workers of the world you have nothing to lose but your credit cards.