Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest

By Bob Gaydos

A good friend of mine recently had a WTF???!!! moment on Facebook and it had nothing to do with Mitt Romney. For a writer who is thoroughly disgusted with the American political system, this is the best gift of all.

The posting concerned an effort in Selma, Ala., to renovate, reconstruct, replace and in general spiffy up a monument to Civil War Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest. Now, for starters, I have had it up to my red, white and blue boxers with Southerners who continue to fight the Civil War. It was over almost 150 years ago. It was a brutal war, killing hundreds of thousands of Americans. It was, if you will, a treasonous war for all the states who chose to leave the union and attack the government of the United States of America. It was a war fought to defend an indefensible principle — slavery. And the South lost.

What is there to celebrate with all the flags and monuments? A failure to destroy the country to which you now pay very public and presumably proud allegiance?

This is annoying and, just my opinion, stupid. But that is not the WTF???!!! element of this story. It turns out that Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest (last time I use all three names), who is revered in his home state of Tennessee, as well as Alabama, was also the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

I’ll wait while that sinks in.

It’s true. In Selma, no less, where Martin Luther King Jr. began his march to Montgomery for racial equality, there has been a statue honoring a founder of the Ku Klux Klan and a group known as Friends of Forrest wants to repair and replace what has been damaged or stolen (the head) from it over the years. The City Council is debating the issue.

A little history on Forrest. He was by most accounts, one of the South’s brightest generals. Also one of its most ruthless. With no military training, he quickly rose in the ranks to serve as, what is widely regarded, the best cavalry general in the war. A brilliant tactician, who emphasized having a fast, mobile force, his motto was, “Get there first with the most men.”

His unofficial motto might well have been take no prisoners, since he is blamed by most historian for several violent assaults, including the Massacre at Fort Pillow in 1864. A large force headed by Forrest attacked a small Union force that sought to surrender. Forrest’s troops killed more than 200 black Union soldiers and a like number of white troops who were fighting side by side with them.

That reputation for violence, especially against blacks, went with him after the war and the founding of the Klan in Tennessee. There, the violence continued. Ironically, Forrest is said to have given the order to disband the KKK after five years because it became even too violent for him. That order was probably so much 19th century spin, however, since he couldn’t really control the Klan groups outside of Tennessee and everyone knew, with increased attention from government forces, the group was taking its activity underground.

Now for the hopeful part of the story. Even in Selma, common sense and decency exist and technology has taken root. Malika Fortier, a citizen of Selma, heard about the plans to buff up Forrest’s image and began a campaign to stop it. A community leader proud of her city’s contribution to the civil rights movement, and aware of the KKK outrages committed against Selma’s citizens — many whose families still live there — she started a petition to the mayor and city council to stop the monument renovation.

Fortier posted the petition (which has about 300,000 signatures) on social media outlets on the internet, which could be viewed as a 21st century version of getting there first with the most troops. The petition is posted at ForceChange.com. Here is the link: Stop the Renovation of Ku Klux Klan Leader Monument – ForceChange. Sign it if you agree.

To be thorough and legally accurate, this is an effort at moral persuasion. The city council probably has no legal grounds to prevent this renovation since the monument was moved off public land years ago to a private cemetery after public outcry. And people have a legal right to be racists in this country, so long as they obey the law. And, some argue that Forrest was a great general.

But really, Selma, is this what you want to teach your children? Is there to be no end to the war fought 150 years ago? Cannot healing and conciliation finally replace hate and fear? Do Selma’s residents need to be reminded of the atrocities committed there by one of the most hateful groups in this country?

Forrest (yes, Gump was named after him) was a brilliant general and a horrid human being. Surely, the people of Selma can find someone more deserving to honor with a monument.

 bob@zestoforange.com

Mitt Romney defends his criticism of President Obama, after four diplomats were killed during protests in Benghazi, Libya. Photo by Charles Dharapak/AP.

By Emily Theroux
With only eight weeks to go before the 2012 election, tensions are ramping up in Rightwingistan. Mitt Romney, sadly, got no bounce from his disastrous convention, while President Obama soared with a 12-point spike in the polls among independents. And even more humiliating for Mitt, Fox News released the poll results.

By September 11th, conservatives were wringing their hands. Nothing they could think of seemed to be selling this bill of goods to any undecided working-class voters who weren’t dyed-in-the-wool racists. (One white Virginian, who voted for Bush twice and firmly believes Obama is a Muslim, told a reporter that she wouldn’t vote for Romney because he didn’t know “everyday people” like her and would only help the wealthy. Surprisingly, Obama will get her vote. “At least he wasn’t brought up filthy rich,” she observed.)

Pastor Terry Jones

Rush Limbaugh was desperately goading Mitt to “get tough” with Obama, and Mitt’s pal Bibi Netanyahu was saber-rattling about Iran, suspiciously close to the November election. A show of “force” was needed on the world stage to bring independent stragglers into the GOP fold. When Florida’s infamous, Koran-burning pastor, Terry Jones, proclaimed this year’s September 11 anniversary “International Judge Muhammad Day,” and talked up the YouTube debut of a crude, anti-Muslim video, Romney saw his chance.

When the video appeared in an Arabic translation, outraged Muslims tuned in to horrifying, “cartoonish” depictions of their beloved Prophet Muhammad as “a child of uncertain parentage, a buffoon, a womanizer, a homosexual, a child molester, and a greedy, bloodthirsty thug,” wrote David D. Kirkpatrick  in The New York Times.

Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens

News of the blasphemy spread quickly online.  Furious protestors ran riot in  Libya, attacking the American consulate and killing four American diplomats, including the widely respected U.S. ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens. It was the first time since 1979 that such a high-ranking diplomat had been murdered in the line of duty. In Egypt, protestors scaled the wall of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and burned the American flag.

Mighty Mitt, hearing that a statement condemning “religious incitement” had been issued by the embassy in Cairo,  rushed in to seize the day. Before Stevens’ body had even been identified or his family notified, Mitt  issued an ill-advised proclamation of his own (despite the fact that he had vowed to refrain from politicking on the September 11 anniversary):

“I’m outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi. It’s disgraceful that the Obama Administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.”

Never mind that the embassy’s statement was issued six hours before the protests began. Obama apologized for America again! was Mitt’s take on it, and he was sticking to it. Obama loves Muslims. (Good line; reinforces the canard that Obama is a Muslim.) How dare “the Obama regime” target the “good-guy” American filmmakers instead of the evil Muslim protestors?

Then Mitt just sat back and waited for the fireworks to explode.

Faced with mounting criticism, Romney dug in
This morning, after the negative reviews of his rash reaction started flooding in, Mitt stepped to the microphone again and, instead of making amends, shocked the political establishment by doubling down:

“When our grounds are being attacked and being breached, the first response should be outrage Apology for America’s values will never be the right course. We express immediately when we feel that the president and his administration have done something which is inconsistent with the principles of America.”

“A terrible course for America is to stand in apology for American values,” Mitt later told a reporter. (What does that even mean? Whose values – his? The entire substance of his attack on Obama was based on a deliberate, compound falsehood. The embassy didn’t issue an apology; their statement was an attempt to stave off the violence they saw coming well before the attacks; and Obama had no direct involvement in what they said.)

Did Mitt Romney jump the gun in issuing statements “that were laced with politics,” asked NBC’s Peter Alexander?

“I don’t think we ever hesitate when we see something which is a violation of our principles,” replied a testy but self-righteous Mitt.

Romney clearly deplores “bad form” more than he appreciates good substance.

Mitt’s foreign-policy moves ‘craven,’ amateurish
The far right performed as expected. The following snarky Fox tweet was par for the course:

Somebody get some bandages and salve for Obama’s press corps — Romney just delivered a thumping.

— toddstarnes (@toddstarnes) September 12, 2012

Michelle Malkin, Breitbart.com’s John Nolte, and Dan Calabrese, writing for CainTV, piled on.

But moderate and even conservative members of the mainstream press — and members of the GOP establishment — took a much dimmer view of the way the candidate handled this contretemps.

• “They were just trying to score a cheap news cycle hit based on the embassy statement and now it’s just completely blown up,’ said a very senior Republican foreign policy hand, who called the statement an ‘utter disaster’ and a ‘Lehman moment’ — a parallel to the moment when John McCain, amid the 2008 financial crisis, failed to come across as a steady leader.” — Ben Smith, BuzzFeed Politics
• “Likely to be seen as one of the most craven and ill-advised tactical moves in this entire campaign” — Mark Halperin, Time magazine
• Romney hasn’t been “doing himself any favors. Sometimes, when really bad things happen, hot things happen — cool words, or no words is the way to go” — Peggy Noonan, former Reagan speechwriter
• “Irresponsible”; “a bad mistake” — Chuck Todd, MSNBC
• Romney’s attack “does not stand up to simple chronology” — Jake Tapper, ABC
• Romney’s actions “ham-handed” and “inaccurate” — Ron Fournier, National Journal
• “The Romney campaign’s politicization of the embassy attacks is even worse than I expected” — Blake Hounshell, Foreign Policy
• “Who told Mr. Romney to issue a political broadside against the commander-in-chief the day after a U.S. ambassador was murdered?”  — Joe Scarborough, MSNBC
• “Tolerance of a religion that represents 1/7th of the world’s population is a very wise policy” — former ambassador to NATO  R. Nicholas Burns

“I can’t remember in foreign policy, anything like this,” said Democratic strategist Bob Schrum, who served as a consultant to numerous Democratic campaigns. “This guy seems to have an instinct for saying the wrong thing, at the wrong time, in politics. He came across as craven and incompetent on national security. This is a disaster; this guy’s just not ready for prime time.”

As progressive radio host Joe Madison said, “This man is stuck on stupid.”

Is Mitt Romney even qualified to be Commander-in-Chief?
My question: Should someone with Romney’s personality flaws even be under consideration for the sensitive job of leading the most challenging foreign policy operation in the world? He lacks both experience and any respectable source of  advice. As far as I can tell, he doesn’t even have what my father, a Dallas native, used to call “kitty brains” — in this case, the instincts to choose a running mate who knows his way around the world. Romney has no habit of critical thinking, no facility for introspection, and no empathy for other people — and there’s not a diplomatic bone in his body. To my mind, he’s not at all “presidential.” All he’s got going for him is a boatload of money — and good hair.

Foreign policy involves a great deal more than braying chauvinistically about “American values,” shooting big guns, and deciding where and when to “put boots on the ground,” as the Bush/Cheney debacle should have taught the people who don’t understand how critical it is that they not vote for a redo of eight years of  sheer folly.

Someone said today that this was Mitt Romney’s three A.M. phone call. Thank God he didn’t have his finger on the nuclear trigger, or Benghazi might have been reduced to radioactive rubble last night.

September Salt Marsh

By Carrie Jacobson

If my mother — Mary Ann Hook Cooper — were alive, this would have been her 85th birthday.

She’s been gone for six years now, but she’s with me, every day, every minute. She’s in the blood that runs through me. She’s in my long upper lip and my bad right foot. She’s in my taste for peanut butter, and she’s in my outlook and my optimism. My mother is in my love of color, my sense of adventure and my delight in laughter.

And she’s in my paintings. She is in the courage that it takes to start, and the tenacity it takes to keep going when – inevitably, in every painting – it looks like disaster is looming. She is in my love of the landscape and the creatures in it, in my love of color and movement and sense and sensation.

She is at my heart and in my soul, and she is in the heart and the soul of every painting I make.

Today, Mom, I miss you as I miss you every day. But today, more than anything, I celebrate you, and the beautiful, strong life you lived and which you shared with me.

By Jeffrey Page

It is 2012. We’re supposed to have advanced over the last 100 years. We’re supposed to be smarter, maybe even more compassionate. Workers are supposed to be better off. Management is supposed to be more enlightened. But I’m sitting here looking at The Times’s account of two clothing factory fires in Pakistan and the deaths of 300 workers, young people for the most part between 18 and 25.

I read, and reread, a line in the Times story – “Officials said panicked workers [of a garment factory] were trapped inside the multistory building, which had just one exit” – and something sounds familiar. The calamitous Triangle Shirtwaist fire of 1911 in downtown Manhattan was in a multistory building with one fire escape, two stairwells and lots of locked doors. The loss in the Triangle fire was 146, mostly young women who had immigrated from Italy and Eastern Europe to find a better life.

I keep reading and learn that that the garment factory in Karachi had 1,500 workers and one exit. Additionally, management had installed grills to stop employees from leaving through windows. The bosses didn’t approve of people going home before the end of their shifts.

And I think about the fearless Clara Lemlich and the feckless Mitt Romney.

Lemlich was a garment worker and union organizer who led a strike in New York in 1909 over working conditions and who declared at a meeting of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union, “I have listened to all the speakers. I have no further patience for talk, as I am one of those who feels and suffers from the things pictured. I move we go on a general strike.”

For her courage and for the fact that the bosses’ hatred of her was matched by the adoration of thousands of clothing workers, Lemlich was attacked by thugs hired by management. Later she was blacklisted from work in the industry. Despite serious physical injury – she was just 5 feet tall but the lead attacker made sure to bring some help – and the difficulty in finding work, Lemlich never quit. She lived to the age of 97 and, as reported by the great Jim Dwyer of the Times, in her final years helped organized the workers in her nursing home.

And then there is Romney and another nice bowl of Pablum he serves up for anyone who will listen. Recently he uttered the standard right wing line about labor unions: “Over the years, unions have made extraordinarily important contributions to American society.” Which of course is not the whole story.

Labor didn’t make those contributions. Rather, Labor won those contributions, sometimes through calm, peaceful negotiations and at other times through the use of Labor’s only real weapon: the strike. As a result, in some cases, windows were unlocked, doors were allowed to swing open and shut. Workers could get out. Salaries went up. Medical insurance was offered.

“But today, the effects of unionization have changed in ways that need to be recognized,” Romney says at a campaign website. “Too often, unions drive up costs and introduce rigidities that harm competitiveness and frustrate innovation.” And he goes on to make the lame argument that union officials don’t care about anything except staying in business. As if to say that workers are the stooges of their union leaders.

What Mitt Romney, and others like him who had to struggle along on an income of $22 million last year, refuse to accept is that every time a union has won a concession for its members, there were two parties at the bargaining table. This is not complicated unless you don’t wish to understand.

If Romney can cite an example of Labor’s holding a gun to the poor oppressed skull of management, I will retract the following observation: Mitt Romney knows as much about the work life of ordinary people as another famous millionaire, Scrooge McDuck.

jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Michael Kaufman

We never called him Art. In our little house in Oceanside we called him Artie and sometimes my mother would refer to him as Arthur because that is the name Charlotte Heyman used when she talked about her son the basketball player during the weekly mahjong game at our house. I thought of Charlotte when I read the obituary in The New York Times under the headline, “Art Heyman, Star at Duke, Dies at 71.”

I was in junior high when Artie played on the Oceanside High School varsity team. As noted by the Times, “Heyman was one of the most highly recruited high school players in the nation in his senior year…” Not mentioned was the anti-Semitism he was often subjected to during high-school games in some parts of Long Island. He was often the target of Jew-baiting barbs from opposing players and he just as often responded….sometimes with harsh words of his own or perhaps later in the game with a hard foul or well-placed elbow.

I remember an away game in which Artie and a player for the home team exchanged punches and a bunch of people rushed onto the court from the stands. My father (ignoring my mother’s plea to “stay out of it Jack”) ran down too. He wrapped his strong arms around a larger man who seemed to be trying to get at Artie, and held him that way with his arms pinned until things calmed down. Then he helped the officials clear the court so play could resume.

Artie’s involvement in these sorts of incidents gave him a reputation for being ill tempered. The Times quotes an article in Sports Illustrated in 1961, his sophomore year at Duke, which described his playing style as “calculated to make points, not friends.” His nickname was the Pest. Earlier that season he and Larry Brown, his longtime rival since their playground days in Nassau County, had been suspended for a fight that occurred late in a game between Duke and North Carolina. A grainy video is available on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0RroAH4vwU. (The fight begins after about 23 seconds, as Brown drives for the basket.) Duke coach Vic Bubas told Sports Illustrated he had since been working to calm Heyman’s temper, “and he has improved 100 percent.”

“As much as any other human being,” Bubas said last week upon learning of Heyman’s death, “Art was responsible for Duke University becoming a national power in college basketball.” In his three years on the varsity, Heyman averaged 25.1 points and 10.9 rebounds. He made the all-Atlantic Coast Conference team all three years and in his senior season (1962-63) was named NCAA player of the year by The Sporting News, and “most outstanding player” of the Final Four.

A first-round draft pick by the Knicks, Heyman averaged 15.4 points per game and made the all-rookie team. But, as the Times observed, his NBA career was short lived. In 1967 he joined the newly formed American Basketball Association, where he helped lead the Pittsburgh Pipers to victory over the New Orleans Buccaneers for the league’s first championship in 1968. Ironically, Larry Brown was a starting guard for the Bucs.

“By his own account,” according to the Times, “Heyman could be difficult to deal with, clashing with coaches, players and eventually his alma mater, which he resented for not retiring his jersey number, No. 25, until 1990.” That is when it struck me. I always thought it was anti-Semitism that caused Artie to be “difficult to deal with.” But maybe his mother had something to do with it too.

Charlotte Heyman was at the center of a controversy that nearly put an end to the weekly mahjong games. Before it was over, my mom and her friends were forced to choose between Charlotte and Muriel Rothkopf, who said she would no longer continue to play if Charlotte were present. Charlotte, for her part, said it was “no big deal” and she had no problem playing with Muriel. My mother and the other players were torn. All agreed that Muriel had good reason to be upset. But was she right to insist that Charlotte be banished?

“You hair looks nice today,” Charlotte had said. Muriel smiled and was about to say thank you when Charlotte added, “Not like last week. Last week you looked like a chicken!” 

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Jeffrey Page

If I want to avoid the truth I could be brazen and tell you No when the truth is Yes.

Or, I could dance the old soft shoe and hope you don’t suddenly realize you’re being duped.

Or, like Mitt Romney, I could just immerse you in delusional blather. Romney is great with blather.

His sentimental acceptance speech was designed to make us think of him as just an ordinary humble guy, that is, an ordinary humble guy with a 2011 income of $22 million. To do so, he employed one of the more unfortunate metaphors you’re likely to hear. “The soles of Neil Armstrong’s boots on the moon made permanent impressions on our souls…. ” he said, and then, with gooey ordinary humble-guy sincerity, he played the Armstrong card a few more times.

“Tonight that American flag is still there on the moon,” Romney said, not bothering to explain how he knew this or what this factoid was doing in a partisan political speech. “And I don’t doubt for a second that Neil Armstrong’s spirit is still with us…. ”

Question: Was that the unsubtle Romney’s elusive attempt to suggest, with the grace of a Ringling Bros. elephant stepping into a bucket, that the late Neil Armstrong was – or had been – on board the Romney bandwagon?

Question: Was it just me, or did you also hear that little catch in Romney’s throat? You know: that mawkish gasp he uses on special occasions, such as when he’s trying to connect himself to an American hero or when he’s talking about Little League and the need for Americans to find more time so they can coach their kids’ soccer teams.

More time for soccer? Is Romney of this Earth? Soccer, when many of us are striving to meet the mortgage payment or go out on interview after interview trying to land a job? Does Mitt Romney have any understanding of what’s going on out here? And, by the way, could he please identify the soccer team he coached.

He jabbers about “when your son or daughter calls from college to talk about which job offer they should take…. And you try not to choke up when you hear that the one they like is not far from home.”

Which job to take? Doesn’t Romney understand that young people with degrees in their pockets are not choosing between one job close to Mom and Dad and one job on another coast? Instead, they’re scrounging for whatever job they can find to put some money in their pockets and to start their living their lives. And many, instead of getting an entry position with a corporation or a law firm, are slinging burgers and living with Mom and Dad, whom they dearly love and who they’d like to get away from – ASAP.

Romney exhales heavily when “we see that new business opening up downtown. It’s when we go off to work in the morning and see everybody else on the block doing the same.” I’ve been wondering: Precisely which “block” does Romney live on?

But back to Neil Armstrong.

Blathering ever onward, Romney said Armstrong’s spirit embodies “that unique blend of optimism, humility and the utter confidence that when the world needs someone to do the really big stuff, you need an American.” Well, not if you’re talking about other big stuff such as the development of penicillin, the invention of the movable-type printing press, the formulation of aspirin, the use of paper money and the invention of the stethoscope. All done by people who were not Americans.

Maybe Neil Armstrong would have signed on to the Romney campaign. But he never signed and we’ll never know.

jeffrey@zestoforange.com

Canton Sunflower Farm

This life offers some odd interactions.

I am painting on a recent morning, on the side of Route 44 in Canton (pronounced the Ohio way, not the China way), when a red truck pulls up.

The door opens, and out steps an old guy wearing a T-shirt and a sort of strange hat. He looks to be in his 80s.

He comes over to me, and peers around the easel.

He stares at the painting for a moment, then turns to me.

“Do you ever paint regular?” he asks.

***

This whole interchange got me thinking. What is regular for me is just not regular for everyone else – and vice versa.

It’s interesting to see painters at any show, side by each, selling their work. Interesting to see the approach, the technique, the framing – and the variety (or lack of variety) that each show’s jury selects.

At my most recent show, there was one abstract multimedia guy who made very long skinny pieces, like 36 inches by 4 inches. There was my friend Ronet Noe, who makes fabulous, colorful, whimsical paintings that often have areas of papier mache that are raised from the canvas. There was a guy who paints nautical scenes so gorgeous and so detailed that I wondered whether they were photographs (he was mean to me when I asked). And another guy who paints finely detailed but not completely realistic scenes. And then there was me.

There’s no measuring one against the other. No judging. It’s just interesting to see the variety. And I am always glad to be included, regular or not.

***

So what does the old guy mean?

He wants someone to paint a scene on a saw.

Guess it won’t be me.