Jonathan J. Prinz / Beyond All That

At the movies, real time.

Joseph Wiseman died back on October 19.  He was 91.  You’ll be forgiven if his name isn’t top of mind.  After all, he was only what they call a character actor.  It’s a label that has always mystified me.  Isn’t playing characters exactly what all actors do?   Whatever.  Wiseman’s career spanned almost seven decades, and he was superb at his craft.  I remember taking note of him first in Elia Kazan’s classic Viva Zapata.  But his best known role came ten years later when he played Dr. No in the first, and some feel best, James Bond film.  So we may not all remember his name, but who could forget that emblematic 1962 performance? Despite Wiseman’s demise, an invigorated Dr. No remains with us, especially these days.

As we approach the final weeks of 2009 and await a vote on the Senate healthcare bill, I don’t think of Ben Bernanke, Time’s Person of the Year, but of Dr No.  When we looked toward the inauguration of President Obama last December and of a widened majority for Democrats in both the House and Senate, we had high hopes for the year to come.  We had a leader who seemed bent on ending divisiveness and a Congress that finally could address some long smoldering problems and do so with decisiveness.  That hasn’t quite happened.  This is not to suggest that there weren’t significant accomplishments across many fronts, but each has fallen short, been less (sometimes much less) than it might or should have been.

Yes we can.  How quickly a euphoric chant can fade into distant memory, or more accurately be forced off the stage.  As controversial as he was, George W. Bush could count on a few Democrats, often more than a few, to support The President on matters of national interest, including his budget busting tax cuts and ill conceived venture into Iraq.  That was not to be for Barack Obama.  Considering that this President came in with a decisive popular and Electoral College victory compared with Bush’s disputed elevation, that’s really astounding.  In some measure of course it reflects the unintended consequences of the Democrats regaining power, much of it at the expense of the few moderate Republicans that were still around.  In fact, while the now majority party is even more diversified, the GOP is increasingly homogeneous; a party that is ideologically right of right.

It’s been clear from the early votes on rescuing a tanking economy to this moment that Republicans have made a strategic decision to play Dr. No.  They have always been better than Democrats at finding the right battle cries and preemptive self-serving descriptors – partial birth abortion, death tax – but now they have imposed a single voice rule that is truly impressive and equally disquieting.  It demands lockstep adherence to the party line with an ever-present threat of primary challenges to any elected official to strays from their now clearly defined reservation.  It’s a calculated gamble that may pay off ideologically in the short term  and perhaps even at the polls in 2010, but a high risk calculation nonetheless.  It’s a stance that in the end is neither good from them or, I would argue, for us.

Thoughtful opposition and alternative ideas are a necessary component in making democracy work best.  It isn’t merely checks and balances that are required but a broadening and enrichment of legislation.  By catering to their so-called ideological base, it has been said that the Republicans are marginalizing themselves and embedding their minority status into concrete.  Predictions like that are often the product of wishful thinking or one of those media inventions aimed at hyping and insuring the drama of those critical revenue-producing election cycles.  What astounds me and challenges credulity is that there is not a single Republican Senator ready to vote for better healthcare.  What’s going on with Snowe and Collins from Maine or the otherwise non-ideological (onetime mayor) Lugar of Indiana?  One has to wonder how these people, and probably some unnamed others, really feel about their actions, how they can look themselves in the mirror.  It’s truly hard to forgive them for seemingly thinking more about their own reelection than the good of their fellow citizens, so many of them lacking healthcare.  No Profiles in Courage here.

And Dr. No is not limited to Republicans.  The duplicitous arrogance of Joe Lieberman and the personal religiously motivated stance of Ben Nelson who have used unvarnished blackmail to gain their 15 minutes of fame is equally reprehensible.  The pious Senator from Connecticut may deny influence by the fat cat Insurance companies that make their home in his state.  Yes and there is a Santa and the Red Sea really parted at the raising of a staff.  Nelson’s stance, in this case used for his own leverage and display of self-importance, represents yet another assault on the wall of separation between church and state.  These two men apparently are not going to stand in the way of passing a bill, but must be held accountable for a bill that is significantly less than it should have been.  In that Lieberman may be the worst offender because his stance denying a public option or an extension of Medicare affects the underlying structure of the system, delaying the inevitable and destined to hurt a lot of people in the interim.  Nelson’s draconian abortion funding restrictions may well be Unconstitutional.

Come let us reason together.  These words have faded even more into history than yes we can.  They were spoken by Lyndon Johnson, a man who knew how to reach legislative consensus but who in the end may be responsible for sewing the very seeds of division that plague us now.  It’s not too soon to suggest that the poison of mistrust in this country began with Viet Nam, a war that absolutely tore us apart.  It was a time of hardening positions for both citizens and politicians, something that now has morphed into an environment driven and characterized by conflicting absolutes.  He was Vice President at Dr. No’s release, but assuredly could never have dreamed how enduring the idea embodied in the villainous Ian Fleming named character could be.  Watching this year’s events has truly been experiencing a movie in real time.  Don't expect an Academy Award for this one.

Easy to say.

President Obama has made his long awaited Afghanistan speech.  I’m not thrilled about his decision to add wood to that insatiable fire, nor convinced that it will make much difference in the long run.  But what came to mind in watching another eloquent performance was how much ink and airtime would be expended in the following days parsing his words and opining on his decision.  More precisely, I thought about the difference between his job and the myriad of commentators from broadcast and print to countless bloggers, myself included.  I also thought about that inspiring and hopeful 2008 campaign for change.  My conclusion: it is easier to say than to do–far easier.

It is a clichéd truism that a democracy depends heavily and equally upon citizens both having and exercising free speech.  In that, for all its weaknesses, punditry of all stripes is essential.  Between elections especially, it’s all we have, and fortunately there are many very thoughtful people across the political spectrum to challenge office holders and us.  An objective view from independent outsiders with little or no vested interest is of particular value, but we shouldn’t discount the importance of subjective opinion, which so often reflects what many of us are thinking.  That said, in the end talk is cheap.  We have no price (other than loss of credibility and perhaps reputation) to pay for our expressed thoughts, no responsibility.  That makes it easy to be a purist and to deal in absolutes.

The President and those who serve with him find themselves in a totally different situation.  With the rhetoric of campaigns behind them (rhetoric often not unlike unfettered punditry), they must move beyond saying to doing.  In December 2004, during a question and answer session with troops, Army Specialist Thomas Wilson asked Donald Rumsfeld about the deficiencies in equipment born by soldiers in Iraq.  He got a vintage and now legendary response.  You go to war, the Defense Secretary said, with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.  The answer evoked universal outrage and, in the context of an already controversial war, rightly so.  The now discredited Rumsfeld can be accused of many things including vanity and insensitivity, but even his harshest critics don’t think him stupid.  His response to Wilson was ill timed but it was no doubt candid and, hard as it is to admit, insightful.  In fact, it applies precisely to the predicament faced by this Administration.  You don’t lead the government or deal with the problems you might want but the ones you have.

So Obama, the President verses the candidate, was destined to disappoint not because his inspiring campaign words were without substance, but because he (like all his predecessors) is constrained by all those pesky facts on the ground.  Frank Rich and Paul Krugman on the Left, David Brooks and Ross Douthat on the Right are free to say whatever they want, and all do it exceptionally well but, as Ram Emanuel once pointed out, they don’t have to get anything through Congress or convert their words, no matter how on target, into action.  Obama must function in what I suggested in my last post are essentially dysfunctional facts on the ground.  If you have any doubt about that, tune into C-Span and watch the Senate debating healthcare.

Democracy is messy and cumbersome.  While Presidents have enormous power on some level (Bush took us into war and curtailed stem cell research), they are severely constrained in most matters of lasting import, especially those that involve real change.  That’s not an excuse for deficiencies of leadership and delivery, but the stark reality given voice in Rumsfeld’s notorious remark.  It is part of that sobering reality that makes it so much harder to do than to say.  Take healthcare where the President doesn’t merely need concurrence, but 60 Senate votes, a super majority, just to have any substantive doing considered. 

At issue during the long ’08 campaign was the importance of experience for successful governance.  At one point, Bill Clinton suggested to Charlie Rose that going with Obama was like throwing the dice.  In the end, voters settled the issue, bringing a fresh face in the White House.  But in the realm of doing rather than saying, the new President opted for a highly experienced team.  Read Peter Baker’s interesting NY Times report on the Afghanistan decision and you’ll see him surrounded by a group of the most seasoned hands.  That’s both good and bad news and it does impact on doing.   On the one hand, as Jimmy Carter discovered surrounding himself with bright, neophytes, you need people with experience in facing tough issues.  On the other, the same people bring baggage that constrains doing, if only that you must take their been there done that view into serious account.  They aren’t likely to want potted plant roles.  They also aren’t likely to be change agents, but the reality is you can’t function without them.  Again, doing is much harder than saying.

Don’t read this as an excuse for where we are or satisfaction with, or acceptance of, the status quo.  I’m far from being a happy camper.  Like others, I’ll keep at the saying what I think and parenthetically keep on hoping.  My only point in noting the challenges of doing is that we with voices raised and keyboards struck should be a little more humble–and yes forgiving–in our saying.  Many of us will find that part hard, though not nearly as hard as doing.

What's happening?

Hey, what’s happening?  We always want to know “what’s happening” when in fact, more often than not, nothing is.  We have evolved into an emotionally infantile generation with notoriously short attention spans and an obsessive need for activity.  We have little or no patience, demanding instant gratification even in the face of the most complex problems.  Like children on a long car trip, we’re incessantly asking that familiar question, “are we there yet?” The news media, with our full blessing and support, obliges us by playing into and feeding this state of affairs.  So dependent upon and addicted to the idea that something must always be happening, it often shamelessly invents news to fill a totally arbitrary 24/7 cycle.  Much has been made of the precipitous decline, some would say free fall, of our once robust newspapers.  What may have gone unnoticed is that as The New York Times and others shift online, they too have fallen into of the moment reporting, with stories appearing and disappearing on their home pages with the blink of an eye.  Much of this feverish pace is kept not so much to inform as to feed their often mega corporate beast and insecurities.

Hey, what’s happening?  Of course, there are times when something really is happening.  In fact, at present I would argue that less is happening than should be, far less than is needed.  Following critical healthcare and climate change legislation make its way through Congress is like watching paint dry.  It’s an arduous procedure, one purposefully designed by the Founders.  Laws that may materially impact on our lives, they reasoned, should not be taken lightly, dare not be rushed.  That said, it’s highly unlikely they had in mind what’s currently playing out in Washington. Congress and consequently our government have become effectively dysfunctional, as grown and supposedly responsible people are involved in a purposeful and methodical process of destructive engagement.  On one side are the proposers on the other naysayers.  Consider the source rules the day; substantive content or need seems irrelevant.  To say witnessing this process is frustrating would be to grossly understate the situation.  It’s grotesque on its face, deeply depressing and potentially perilous.

Perilous is what Tom Friedman thinks and on this I could not agree more.  In a democracy everything depends on compromise, meeting each other at least half way.  In the best of circumstances, there are enough people of good will and with the national interest at heart, to rise above parochial concerns and find more than sub-optimal solutions, which is all we are doing these days, if at all.  At present, those charged with guiding the ship of state don’t seem to share even the pretense of a common goal.  It seems that only the threat of Armageddon, as was the case when the financial system faced the brink, will result in even a minimum of joint action, and that with a substantial amount of bluster and posturing.  So, in those infrequent moments we often reach too far and, terrified of losing the opportunity, too fast.  The Patriot Act came that way, as did TARP.  But those moments are just that and soon the inmates descend into their now assumed stance of governing by irrational divisiveness.  That can’t sustain us.

In assessing President Obama’s recent trip to Asia, a number of analysts pointed to the fact that the Chinese take a longer view of things that do we.  They think they have time, and don’t like getting ahead of themselves.  In a sense, navigating the new world means facing deep and multiple cultural divides on all fronts.  For us, who like to begin each encounter with, Hey, what’s happening, it is tantamount to speaking a language whose difference transcends, say English and Chinese.  It is a language difference of mindset not characters and words.  When our side is comprised of people with infantile impatience compounded by an inability to communicate, much less work, with one another, it’s fair to wonder if the very democracy that we’re practicing today remains viable.  Can it get anything important done?  Let’s face it, the winners in the twenty-first century are likely to be grownups.  I’m not sure our current behavior, what’s happening and what is not, always makes the cut.

Render unto Caesar

Oh, that fragile wall of separation, so prone to dents and leaks.  Conventional wisdom has it that we are the most religious Western democracy.  How deep, widespread and enduring that religiosity is can be debated.  What’s clear is that some among those seeking to maintain religion’s preeminence continue their assault on the barriers erected by the Founders to separate church and state.  Nowhere was that more evident than in the healthcare bill recently passed by the House.  Nowhere was the incursion more blatant.

Emblematic of that (as reported by the AP’s Julie Hirschfeld Davis) was Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick’s call made from Rome to Speaker Nancy Pelosi shortly before the final vote.  McCarrick, and staffers of the U.S. Conference of Bishops who spent three subsequent hours lobbying the Speaker, wanted to make sure that the bill specifically excluded the public funding of abortions, with a provision that, in its sweeping application, exceeds the restrictions embodied in the 1976 (Henry) Hyde Amendment.  Pelosi was told in no uncertain terms that her Church was ready to withhold support of healthcare reform if its demands were not met.

This is not the first time Catholic or other clergy have been involved in matters of public concern.  Father Theodore Hesburgh, President Emeritus of Notre Dame, along with other priests, ministers and rabbis were forceful advocates of civil rights.  President Eisenhower appointed him a charter member of The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, a body he later chaired.  Catholic clergy and lay leaders, as noted in earlier posts, have advocated tirelessly for the poor and indeed for universal healthcare.  Without question, Hesburgh and others like him rooted that advocacy and activism in their individual faiths.  But their views on those issues were hardly exclusive to religious teaching.  Rather they could be characterized as universal and faith agnostic, with civil rights more specifically Constitutional than Biblical.  Even there, activism among clergy always risked wall infringement and indeed I left the active rabbinate during that period feeling my political engagement might ultimately cross that line.

Abortion is totally different than civil rights.  Opposition to the termination of a pregnancy has no medical foundation.  Indeed there are times when doctors perform abortions to save the mother’s life – which is why the House bill provides a specific exception in such instances.  That’s important to understand in the context of a healthcare bill and in fact the exception itself only underscores the point.  Blanket opposition to abortion is rooted purely in specific (and not universally held) religious dogma.  It is not something motivated by their faith but demanded by it on theological grounds, on dictum not social conscience.  Cardinal McCarrick was speaking for that Church doctrine and in his official capacity when he called Pelosi.  In doing so, he was willfully breaching the wall of separation. 

The abortion issue is perhaps the most explosive on our political landscape.  People have been killed over it.  It is also an issue that blinds and often overlooks (on both sides) how very traumatic the decision to abort can be for any woman (or couple for that matter), religious or not.  Women make decisions to proceed with an unplanned pregnancy every day without any regard to religious teachings.  Conversely, other women bring babies to term mandated by deep religious conviction, a right all should and do have in this democracy.  Citizens must always be guaranteed the right to express their views and to live by them; that includes clergy and laity, the religious and the secular.  For some people, abortion is a question of choice for others it is not.  I may see your action as the result of choice but fully understand that you do not consider it so; your beliefs afford no such option.  I am bound respect that view and most importantly would defend it absolutely and unconditionally.

The wall of separation was not erected to undermine religion, quite the contrary.  The Founders wanted us all to be free to exercise religion or not as we saw fit and to be fully protected by government in doing so.  A key component of that protection is not to impose the religious doctrine of one over the other.  When it comes to abortion, the Church’s intervention does exactly that.  The Roe decision didn’t impose abortion on anyone; it simply didn’t deny abortion to a woman who chooses to have one.  Think of this analogy.  When someone eats roast pork for dinner, she is not infringing on the rights of a Jew whose dietary laws forbid her doing so.  That may seem a trivial example, but in fact it is precisely its seeming lack of equivalency the makes the point.  We don’t get emotional about cuisine choices, but (leaving aside safety hazards) they too are an important part of our fundamental rights.  Would a legislated imposition of eating only fish on Fridays (a onetime Church dictum) or forbidding consumption of pork be fundamentally any different than restricting the right (or covering the cost) to reproductive choice?  I think not.

Before the Roe decision, abortions were performed across America and, if the current Court ever reverses it, be assured that will continue to be the case.  The well off can always find solutions to special problems and highly competent practitioners willing to act behind closed doors when properly compensated for their service.  The problem then, and if the House bill’s restrictions hold, was and is what happens to the financially disadvantaged.  They are those often most in danger of unwanted pregnancies and least likely to have the resources to address them, not to mention support an unwanted child.  Many such women died as the result of back alley abortions, just as the uninsured are dying today for lack of medical attention.  From that perspective alone, it is ironic that a healthcare bill aimed to covering all will lead straight back to those dark and foreboding alleys.  Welcome to Cardinal McCarrick’s twenty-first century and to that dangerously compromised wall of separation.   

Caught in the middle.

In his recent piece entitled Benedict’s Gambit, Ross Douthat, the NY Times’ young and thoughtful conservative columnist, assesses Rome’s outreach to dissident Anglicans.  Douthat, himself a Catholic, speaks of the concessions his Church is willing to make to accommodate these potential Anglican converts, including accepting their married clergy into the priesthood.  He points, as have others, to its meaning as a reflection of the Church’s move away from the ecumenism started in the 1960s and of the Pope’s more overt attempt to bring those on the fringes back into the fold, most notably his “controversial outreach to schismatic Latin Mass Catholics”.  But Douthat sees this in a larger, and largely missed, context. “In making the opening to Anglicanism”, he suggests,  “Benedict also may have a deeper conflict in mind — not the parochial Western struggle between conservative and liberal believers, but Christianity’s global encounter with a resurgent Islam.”

His comments bring to mind George Bush’s instinctively evoking the Crusade word in the early days of his war on terrorism.  While he backed away from it’s use, many believe it accurately reflected his views about the real nature of the threat and consequent response, both heavily laden with religious overtones.  And it isn’t only conservative Christians who seem to hold that view.  It is one shared by the ardent atheist Sam Harris who writes, “The idea that Islam is a ‘peaceful religion hijacked by extremists’ is a dangerous fantasy”.  

This fear of the other and its real agenda is hardly one sided.  Times journalist David Rhode, in the account of his seven-month captivity by the Taliban, describes young fighters who are convinced that Christians (and Jews) are out to destroy Islam.  So we may have arrived at the digital age but we remain mired in medieval conflict.  In the same vein, ultra-orthodox Jews digging in on the West Bank see themselves engaged, if not in an overt religious war, then certainly in a struggle to prevent Muslims from occupying their God-promised land and ultimately for their own religious survival.

Perhaps there have been periods in which the religious did not feel threatened by those who worshipped different or differently named gods, but for many who consider themselves followers of the authentic way, the days of mister nice guy seem to be over, if they ever existed.  In Europe, as Douthat points out, devout Christians find themselves caught between widespread secularism on one side and growing Islam on the other.  While both are threatening, Islam may be more so in that it offers a powerful alternative, rather than any loss of, faith.  The existence Islam, in its very being, somehow questions Christianity’s core beliefs and thus its legitimacy, not to mention supremacy.  It’s an age-old back and forth challenge manifest, among others in Ferdinand and Isabella’s 15^th century brutal Spanish Inquisition focused on both Jews and Moslems.  In that, because its adherents had ruled their country, Islam may have represented the greater threat.

We don’t yet know if the Fort Hood shootings were religiously motivated, but even the idea that they might be evoked words of urgent caution from Army Chief of Staff Gen. George W. Casey Jr.   The potential for Christian-Muslim tinderbox tension is palpable and ever-present in a post 9/11 United States.

To say that all the world’s conflicts are religion based would be a gross overstatement, but that very many have a religious component is undeniable.  To be sure, even those that seem totally religious in nature have to be understood in a more nuanced fashion.  The Taliban, for example, are clearly motivated by extreme religious ideology and govern accordingly, but also by nationalism.  Let’s remember they aren’t merely fighting infidels but also an invasion by foreigners.   That said, it is the religious ideology that produces the passion and, in their case, with the most cruel and lethal consequences.

Culture makes a huge difference in how we position ourselves.  Radical Islamists seem more prepared to put religion forward as their standard bearer in conflict.  We in the West, which by virtue of sheer numbers means the Christian West, are loathe to do so or even to admit that religion plays any role in our actions – Bush pulled back on Crusade.  But we should not misread that cultural affect.  To use an analogy, the British are stereotypically known as people who don’t display emotions but that doesn’t mean they lack feelings or indeed passion.  The religious tensions, labeled as such or not, are so close to the surface that political leaders feel it necessary to regularly speak of tolerance and inclusiveness.  From the day of his inauguration, President Obama has sought to temper religious tensions and he continues to do so on a regular basis. 

Nonetheless, we find ourselves somehow caught in the middle of these religiously tinged epoch conflicts.  The term medieval wasn’t used lightly because for many of us the struggle we’re witnessing and the turf being defended has little or no relevance to the twenty-first century or to us.  It is one of the reasons the Pope finds himself in a Europe much of which has turned away from religion altogether and where even in Italy 75% of Catholics no longer attend mass.  It is perhaps why no-religion-at-all is growing at a faster rate than any faith in America.   So Douthat may be right about Benedict’s real concerns, ones no doubt shared in reverse by leaders of the Islamic faiths.  Many of us are just tired of being caught in the middle, collateral damage as the religious face off in unending no-win conflicts.  Their problem is the other’s faith.  Our problem is increasingly with all of them.

Two worlds: a morality tale.

Here are two vastly different worlds.  You decide which is more attractive, more in touch with reality.

The Chapel Hill News lands at the foot of my driveway every Wednesday and Sunday morning.  Like many free periodicals, it’s sparse editorial pages serve mostly as wrappers for advertising supplements.  So it usually goes directly into the recycle bin with no more than a cursory glance.  But last Wednesday’s headline really got my attention, Top school leaders forgo bonuses.  Citing funding shortfalls and a freeze on teacher salaries, Superintendent Neil Pederson and his top deputies asked the school board not to pay their contracted performance bonuses.  The top payout would have been a modest $12,000, but a significant sum to any public school educator.

Two days later a New York Times story carried this heading: Bonuses Uncertain for Bloomberg Election Aides.  It seems that, considering a razor thin victory, the Mayor’s campaign staff are concerned they might not receive the kind of bonuses paid them by His Honor in past campaigns.  In their case, top bonuses had been an eye popping $400,000, often for but a few months work.  That’s probably close to the combined annual salaries of Pederson and his three deputies in Chapel Hill.  By the way, Bloomberg spent twenty-five times as much on his reelection campaign as the total Chapel Hill funding shortfall, “pocket change” to him, an essential lifeline for teachers and students.

Two worlds – they are as if on different planets with divergent mindsets and distinct sets of values: selflessness verses selfishness.  In the context of a nation in pain with still growing unemployment and the struggle of so many who, like those teachers, face wage freezes, cuts in pay or are underemployed there is something obscene about the fretting of Bloomberg staffers.  To put this in a broader context, consider that in Charlotte, a two hour drive from Chapel Hill where Pederson gave up his bonus, Ken Lewis whose “leadership” almost brought down Bank of America will be walking away any day now with $125 Million including $53 Million in severance.  His bank, which has already made drastic cuts, is expected to lay off some 30-35,000 more people in the years ahead.  The vast majority will exit with nothing but a pink slip.   That’s the world in which most of us live, the one Pederson clearly understands and that seems a mystery to the tin-eared in the land of make believe.

Oneness/Sameness

In One and the Same Abigail Pogrebin offers up an exquisitely written, moving, informative and, perhaps above all else, courageous story.  The prose throughout in its journalistic clarity and unpretentious elegance is stunning, most especially in its introduction, which at times borders on the lyrical.   I think that’s because it’s so candidly personal.  As someone who spends considerable time trying to string the right words into coherent sentences I confess my reaction to those pages was, yes, twinish: a combination of admiration and jealousy.  This book is informative, if only in bringing into sharp focus why academics who devote their energy to understanding the human condition and dynamic spend so much of their time studying twins.   It is moving because it tells, sometimes joyfully and sometimes poignantly, her own and other twin stories.  And it is dually courageous because Abigail reveals so much of herself and all the more so because Robin has given her permission to open the door to that other personal self.  Robin’s courage, as she would probably want us to acknowledge, is found in the implicit permission given that is evident and permeates every page and every word.

Full disclosure.  Abigail’s mother Letty and I were college classmates.  We both ended up  living blocks apart on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.  Two of our children, her David and my older son Tommy DOG are age piers.  Interestingly Letty, who is one of the preeminent and most articulate feminists of my generation, chose to use her husband’s name, personally and professionally.  The girls, like my sisters, have not.  In Letty’s case, counter intuitive as it may be, it’s not surprising.  Bert Pogrebin is one of the most engaging and thoroughly decent human beings I have ever known.  Who wouldn’t want to associate with that?  The age difference between the girls and my kids was not that significant but in childhood a few years magnify.  So with what I would call an ad hoc relationship with their parents, my contacts with Abby and Robin were sadly tangential.  Seeing what has become of each of them, makes me aware of how very much I missed.

One and the Same is an important book.  Perhaps Kermit the frog found that being green wasn’t easy, but his challenge couldn’t hold a candle to being an identical twin.  In these pages we’re introduced to twins in all flavors, ages and circumstances.  We see them gathered in convention, making their twiness a business or leveraging it for all its worth.  We see twins who study twins, who live together or in proximity and others who live far apart, in some few cases purposefully as far as possible.  We meet those who still more or less act twinish by dressing alike or in one case creating works of art together.  We meet a twin who has adapted to  the other's sex change and now calls his once brother sister.  We see wrenching tragedy in the twin who lost his brother in the Trade Center (there were others) or the twins whose genes in a statistically unlikely happenstance contributed to the deaths of one of each of their very young children.   She makes us laugh and cry.

Twins are (at least) two things, and Abigail is at once the thorough journalist faithfully conveying tape recorded tales and quoting research that adds substantive meat to the bones of her story but in a profound way always a full participant.  In their narrative or in the expert opinions gathered, she sees herself, she sees her sister.  This book is a very personal journey, and you would think a therapeutic one.  But that would diminish what it really is.   It’s power comes from an unmistakable personal voice, an unvarnished, candid and sometimes emotional voice, but one that never makes you feel like an unwanted onlooker spying into her private self, quite the opposite.  There is, at least there was for me, not a second of unease or discomfort that would befall an uninvited voyeur. 

The power of this story, and the draw of twins is that, while on the surface they seem so different – on some level even exotic – they are as much a mirror of us as they are of themselves.  Their challenge, puts into focus what we all face in navigating between togetherness and apartness.  In that sense, as Abigail listens to these varied stories of fellow twins and sees herself, we can all do so as well.  Perhaps the twin experience is unique, but it resonates.  To me one of the most moving lines comes in a conversation when Abby asks Robin how her life would be if she were gone.  Her sister responds simply, “it would be broken”.  Most of us can relate to that feeling whether with siblings, partners, children or some especially dear friend.

The book’s dustcover presents us with photos of Abigail and Robin; prominently as young children on the front and spine.  But without any hesitation, my favorite is on the back showing two grown women in loving embrace, still in loving embrace.  Abby says they don’t do that much any more, but it remains a vivid window.  They are together, but from everything we’ve learned they are equally singular.  Children together can be adorable; adults engaged  in embrace are ultimately what life is really all about.  We strive so much to individuate, and to do it well, but we yearn equally for connection.  To have both is perhaps best expressed as Nirvana.  This is the journey Abigail takes us on, the story she tells us.

Disgrace in the Moral Landscape

To say the pending Wall Street bonus feeding frenzy and the brazen use of bogus “research” by the insurance industry in trying to kill healthcare reform is troubling would be a gross understatement.  Both exhibit severe and shared moral compass malfunction.  Giving them no slack, which they surely don’t deserve, one still has to wonder why the captains of industry should be held to such a high standard of morality when we see blatant moral deficiency in religious institutions. Two such moral lapses could be found in the pages of the New York Times this past week.

The first, on October 14 was Paul Vitello’s report that the Brooklyn ultra-orthodox Hassidic Jewish community is finally being forced to let its child abusing rabbis and teachers go before civil courts.  This is in effect a follow-up on a previously covered story that, on a much smaller but nonetheless equally disgraceful scale, mirrors the long running scandal of predator Catholic priests. 

The second, on Oct 16 by Laurie Goodstein was something new, and no less disturbing.  Goldstein reports the story of Father Henry Willenborg, a Franciscan priest, his five-year romantic relationship with religious retreat attendee Pat Bond and the resulting fallout, which includes their son, Nathan, now grown and suffering terminal brain cancer.  The priest, supported by his order that seems happily but stingingly to have tried paying Ms. Bond and her son off, not only has kept his job, but has continued up the career track.  A relatively low level friar when meeting Bond, he now serves as senior pastor of a 1,350 family Wisconsin church.  Do you detect a pattern here, one that echoes the Church’s sex abuse saga, including cover-ups and consistent rewards for bad behavior?  It appears that this modus operandi remains alive and well and is more widespread than we might have thought.

It shouldn’t be necessary to say so at this point, but as bad as a crime may be, the cover-up, which is usually institutional and more pervasive, is corrosive and often immoral.  Sad to say so, but it seems standard practice in the billion- member Catholic Church.  Let me hasten to add, that bad behavior affects other religious groups of which the Brooklyn Hasidic example is just one of many.

The Catholic Church seems to have a particular problem with sex.  That includes forcing its clergy to be celibate (something not demanded by other churches) and opposing birth control including the distribution of the condoms that consensus says can help prevent the spread of HIV-AIDS.  To be fair, many in the church continue to lobby aggressively for married priests and the majority of Catholics in this country ignore their Church’s strictures preventing safe, not to mention purely enjoyable, sex.  The problem is that the Church itself not only exhibits a blind eye to infractions of its own rules, most especially in its clergy, but goes to extraordinary lengths to both cover up the wrongdoing and, most egregiously, to reward the culprits and punish the victims, if only by outright neglect or delayed and inequitable compensation.   William Lobdell (Losing my Religion) gives a definitive account of the sex abuse story and Ms. Goodstein opens our eyes to the escapades of priests, a story that is probably but the tip of the iceberg.  Research she cites suggests 20% have had such ongoing relationships and who knows how many Nathans and cover-ups are out there.

There is no church that echoes corporate structure and hierarchy more than the Roman Church.  It is run by a Chief Executive and supported by a structure complete with vice presidents at the executive, senior and regular level.  It has its rules, which include severe caps on compensation, but the higher personnel move up the executive ladder the greater the perks.  Perhaps the CEO and various vice presidents don’t amass corporate millions and billions, but they live very well indeed, especially in uppermost echelons.  As to that moral compass in our society, and let’s not pretend it is only off kilter on Wall Street, it seems that the “don’t follow what we say but what we do” rule is in play.  One corporate group follows another.  The underlying problem is not only that the compass dial is running haywire, but that those involved don’t even seem to understand something is terribly amiss.  The Wall Street bankers are clueless in the face of the widespread unemployment that can be laid directly at their doorstep and the Church functions as if nothing terrible is hidden behind its sacramental curtain.

At moments like this, we tend to excuse our behavior with the bad apple defense.  Remember Abu Ghraib, Enron and most certainly the events that precipitated this post.  Not so fast, there is disgrace in the moral landscape, and it seems to have more to do with the tree than its fruit.

An aspirational prize.

The kids will always get it right.  You got a prize Daddy…but remember it’s the dog’s birthday and a three day weekend from school.  Translation.  Time to have breakfast and get on with life.  His brief statement invited no questions from the press.  Undaunted, one could be heard shouted out as he walked back to the Oval.  “What are you going to do with the money?”  Doesn’t that perfectly sum up the level to which much of the “journalism” has fallen these days?  Every once in a while a “lifetime achievement” award is given to someone in early or midstream career.  How to react? Like Malia and Sasha.  Time to get back to life, back to work.

A Nobel at this juncture is much more campaign than governing appropriate – it is a hope, an aspiration, for what might come.  Pundits on the right like Bill Kristol and on the left like Nick Kristof (it pains me to put their names in the same sentence as if they were somehow equivalent) question this seemingly premature award for predictably different reasons.  But in some respects they miss what the Nobel judges often do in seeking to use this high profile symbol as more of a light on the path ahead than on the one already traveled.  Everything is politics, everything a campaign and this august body is not immune from trying to influence the game.

Obama’s statement was measured, full of familiar phrases from a man who some (not me) think comes before us too often.  I’d rather see a leader than have him hide in the rarified bubble of power.  My major take away from this particular statement was a reminder planted deep in the text. A sitting president is commander in chief.  Peace Prizes notwithstanding, he has more power to go to war than to bring about peace.  Sadly war takes only a command and is too easily and readily justified.  Obama inherited his wars, but that doesn’t get him off the hook.  Perhaps the speed with which the Nobel folks acted shows how fast our world is moving and also that presidential honeymoons are more part of our past folklore than of today’s reality.  The watch and all the responsibility starts on day one.

Peace takes a lot of work and to a degree far more courage than war.  In this “God blessed” country, presidents sometimes have to defend their reaching out an olive branch much more that rattling the sword.  We all know where peace is needed.  It’s easy to feel that the prize has put a special burden on Barack Obama to reach with that branch and turn the spears and swords into pruning hooks.  But he will depend on us to support that effort.  I think he’s up to the task.  I’m not always sure about us.

Cash for New Jobs

One of the most visible and successful programs of the recovery act was Cash for Clunkers.  It breathed some life, however short lived, into the auto industry and its beleaguered dealers and got some gas-guzzlers off the road.  Unfortunately it may have had little or no sustaining benefit.  The fact is that what we really need are investments that will have a lasting impact.  Among those of course are sorely needed infrastructure projects and the like.  We are still beneficiaries of Roosevelt era WPA efforts three quarters of a century later.

But our most immediate problem, as illustrated again in another dismal report, are saving and restoring jobs.  While many of the losses can be attributed directly to the missteps of past years – a misguided US auto industry, the nose dive of real estate and the collapse of financial institutions, some of what we’re seeing now is the result of businesses being overly cautious or running just plain scared.  Whatever the reason, it is feeding on itself, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Some economists believe that further stimulus will be necessary, and unless we see a real upturn soon, they probably are right.  Whether the President will have the will or more importantly Congress will have courage to do the right thing remains to be seen.  I do think that there is one program that they might consider, one that would have far more lasting impact that the Clunker effort.

It’s time to offer employers Cash for New Jobs.  This might come in the form of an outright payment or a tax credit.  If we were willing to put $4 K on the table for a depreciating piece of steel, glass and rubber, should we be willing to do any less for getting people back on the road?  The idea I have in mind is a payment to any employer that puts a new person to work, provided that it legitimately adds to payroll and that the job be secure for at least one year, ideally two. 

Think of what such a program would do.  First it would put food on the table of thousands of American families not to mention secure their shelter.  That food would have to be purchased which would accrue to the benefit of a whole other set of citizens.  Other purchases, now on hold, might be initiated.  From day one, the newly hired worker would become a taxpayer, in effect producing immediate financial return on the government’s investment.  And if things go well, if the ripple effect takes hold, that job will sustain for years to come and will, in its success, spur further employment and further tax revenues.  It is a gift that will keep on giving.

Conventional wisdom has it that employment is a lagging indicator (sounds like that terrible war euphemism, “collateral damage”).  That may well be true, but why do we have to just sit by and wait.  More to the point can we afford not to act now if we are to stem the tide and really recover from this mess?  The time has come to put cash on the table for jobs.

A further note on the healthcare debate:

Health Cooperatives are a sad, if not disgraceful, joke.  They don’t work competitively and,  based on those that exist, don’t reduce costs or necessarily lead to lower premiums.