By Bob Gaydos
  
 “… I shall send you a copy of the book ” — even O’Brien, Winston noticed, seemed to pronounce the words as though they were in italics — “Goldstein’s book, you understand, as soon as possible. It may be some days before I can get hold of one. There are not many in existence, as you can imagine. The Thought Police hunts them down and destroys them almost as fast as we can produce them. It makes very little difference. The book is indestructible. If the last copy were gone, we could reproduce it almost word for word.”
 
 Imagine if George Orwell had imagined the delete button.
 
 In unassailable proof that Whoever or Whatever Controls This Universe has a keen sense of humor, Orwell’s classic novel “1984,” from which the above quote comes, has become the book and Amazon.com Big Brother’s Thought Police. In about as dumb and heavy-handed a bit of customer service (in Doublespeak, of course, it means the opposite), the internet giant recently deleted thousands of copies of  “1984,” as well as Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” from clients’ Kindles.
 
 Kindles, which also escaped Orwell’s imagination, are those handheld electronic devices that are supposed to replace paper books (and newspapers and magazines), putting all kinds of people out of work as readers upload whatever they want, whenever they want, for a fraction of the cost of the hard copy. Except, of course, if Amazon decides to delete it. With English teachers everywhere relishing the irony of the situation — an invisible, powerful purveyor of thoughts destroying all traces of a book about thought control from the files of unsuspecting consumers — the Kindle’s future has become much less certain. After all, the basic assumption of book lovers is that, if they bought a book, they own the book. Forever. To do what they wish with it.
 
 Of course, Amazon had already voided another rule by prohibiting the sharing of downloaded books. That ought to have been a strong argument against the Kindle, but the convenience of carrying around hundreds of books, bought on the cheap, was apparently enough to overcome resistance for many readers.
 
 But erasing books from what were thought to be private files? Isn’t that a crime? Shouldn’t it be? Can Barnes and Noble come in to my home and confiscate a hard copy of “1984”? Are you listening, Congress?
 
 The “1984” caper has generated a fair amount of commentary in the blogosphere, with defenders of Amazon pointing to the company’s belatedly given reason for the mass deletions. Amazon said the digital editions of “1984” and “Animal Farm” were added to the online Kindle store by a company that was not authorized to sell them. This company used the self-service function of the site. When Amazon discovered this, it said, it rescinded the orders, refunding buyers the 99 cents they paid for each book and deleting the books from those previously believed to be private files.
 
 Kindle owners did not know Amazon could erase stuff at will (heck, apparently no one did) and, despite the company’s claim to the contrary, the sales contract for the device does not appear to inform buyers of the remote delete option. Most customers were upset to learn this, with students whose Orwell files also contained notes on the books being especially angry.
 
 While belatedly admitting the deletions were a bad idea, Amazon did not say it would never do this again. What it did say was, “We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers’ devices in these circumstances.”
 
 A bit vague, no? How about in any circumstances? Will newspaper or magazine articles disappear if they contain an error of fact discovered later? How about a bit of conjecture that turns out to be false or something eventually adjudged libelous? Can Amazon hope to retain the power to unring the bell? Not in any brave new world in which I live.
 
 I’m not interested in any of the techno jargon arguments excusing Amazon’s actions because it did not foresee its machines doing things Amazon geniuses did not anticipate. That’s stuff for Isaac Asimov. Even allowing that Amazon was concerned that it was infringing on U.S. copyright law by allowing the sale of the books, that still doesn’t mean it had to delete the copies of all the people who thought they had bought the digital books legally. The real problems are that its web site was set up poorly, allowing unauthorized sales to occur and then automatically deleting all evidence of those sales, including the books themselves, once they were discovered and the delete button pushed. The problem was Amazon’s not its customers’.
 
 Even more to the point, until and unless Amazon forswears any right, intent or ability to delete content from customers’ Kindles — to remove books from electronic bookshelves — the company can have no credibility among serious readers who look upon their books as, well, their books, digital or otherwise. As Orwell wrote — “indestructible.”

 We will not unremember this.

Bob can be reached at bob@zestoforange,com.

By Bob Gaydos

 Just when I think I’m out, they drag me back in. (Hey, if it’s good enough for Pacino, it’s good enough for me.)

 When I retired from the Times Herald-Record, I wrote a final editorial decrying our desensitized, argumentative society that constantly looks for fault and someone to blame rather than working together for the common good we so loudly proclaim to want. I put politicians squarely in the bull’s eye of this farewell and committed myself to not being part of this problem in the future. To look for ways out of the confusion, or at least to not add to the noise.

 With that in mind, I fully intended to write a (probably) sentimental piece about a brief visit to the Pioneer Valley in western Massachusetts. My sons went to a lacrosse camp at the University of Massachusetts last week and, since one of them had to come home early, I decided to stay over and  take a brief vacation from my retirement. Nice, huh? And it was. I got to watch them play and explored a bit of what is really a lovely, laid-back area of colleges, farms and artsy stuff. 

 But no sooner do I get home and prepare to write about Historic Deerfield and Amherst and a butterfly conservatory than the headlines bring that angry, desensitized world crashing back into mine. Sarah (yes her) Palin, whose campaign for the vice presidency was all about responsibilities (she insisted she had had a lot of them) says she’s quitting her job as governor of Alaska with a year and half left in her term because, well, I’m still not sure why. But she blames the mainstream media for, you know, asking her questions.

 Then The New York Times tells me that Leon Panetta, the new CIA director, told Congress that some of his employees told him that way back in 2001 Vice President Dick Cheney told them not to tell Congress about a secret counterterrorism program the agency began developing in the aftermath of 9/11. This admittedly not shocking news comes a day after reports that Cheney also ordered a lid placed on knowledge of the National Security Agency’s program of eavesdropping without warrants. Ah, liberty.

 Now, as it turns out, these are two of my least favorite people in the world, not because they are Republicans, but because they are examples of that political world I have come to despise. Cheney takes no one’s counsel who does not agree with him, sees no approach but the one he prefers and arrogantly ignores the laws he swears to uphold. Palin hasn’t got a clue on solving any problems, hypocritically ignores the personal values she extols on the stump and unfailingly blames others for her misfortunes, which, by the way, she is parlaying into a small fortune.

 You want Democrats? Take the New York State Senate — as Henny Youngman would say — please! Start with Pedro Espada, the turncoat from the Bronx (maybe) who defected to the Republicans with a buddy who is charged with beating his girlfriend. They brought state government to a grinding, shouting, Marx Brothers-like halt for nearly a month. Why? So Espada could blackmail both parties into electing him majority leader of the Senate. He says it was about institutional reform. When he was with them, Republicans — who had 40 years to reform the rules but never did — agreed. They still insist it was worth punishing state taxpayers for this political power play.

 Espada has now created a Democratic Senate majority with so many factions it will be a miracle if it lasts until the next election. There is a Hispanic faction, a black faction, a combo city faction, a combo city-suburban faction, a combo suburban-upstate faction. None of these factions talks about what it wants to do in the Senate. The members just want to be the ones to decide. The ones with the bigger offices and staffs. It is about politics, not governing. No one in Albany talks about governing except occasionally the governor.

 That’s the whole deal here. Palin doesn’t care about governing. If she did, she’d stay on as governor instead of giving speeches to people who don’t blink when she says Alaska is a microcosm of the United States. Maybe if you count moose as minorities. And Cheney, well, he doesn’t want so much to govern as to rule the country. And nothing, but nothing, that happened in the eight years of his reign is his fault.

 And finally, as I am still entertaining notions of recounting the pleasures of three carefree days in the Pioneer Valley, comes the coup de grace. With a sneer no less. A story in the Record about the nation’s economic recovery includes a comment from Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia. Cantor happens to be the House GOP whip. That means he’s supposed to make sure his party has its votes in order on whatever business is being conducted. Thus far this year, his job has been easy. Republicans just vote no on every proposal put forth for President Obama.

 In the newspaper article, Obama argues that his economic stimulus package needs more time before its impact on the economy can be felt. House Republicans, who offered no alternative, simply call it a failure. Cantor, whose accompanying photo has him sneering almost in joy, if that’s possible, says simply, “This is now President Obama’s economy.”

 Now there they go again. Obama inherited the worst economic situation in 70 years from George W. Bush, along with two wars and a world of international ill will. Obama has had all of six months to try to fix what Bush took eight years to break. But, Cantor says, this mess is now Obama’s, without even knowing if the programs will work. And if they do work, the GOP will probably try to claim credit for something for which it has offered no support. They have not tried to help Obama govern; for the most part they have stood bye, hoping for him to fail. That is a political strategy of a sort. It substitutes for actually having ideas, but it is not governing. It is not helping to find solutions.

 And it is not limited to Republicans. Some of the president’s supporters have expressed displeasure with him over different issues because he has not held firm to what they thought were liberal positions he possessed. But Obama’s campaign was always about forging bipartisan or even non-partisan solutions to lingering questions. He is liberal, yes, but he is also a pragmatist. By definition, seeking consensus requires occasional compromise. It’s how you govern effectively. Bill Clinton recognized that when he was president and it served him well. It’s easy to criticize and hold out hope for better days when campaigning for the presidency, but when you get elected, the hard part begins. For Bush it was the other way around.

Bob can be reached at bob@zestoforange.com.

By Bob Gaydos

 When I decided to join the blogosphere, I wrote a piece for Zest explaining that, now, after spending 23 years of relative anonymity as an editorial writer, my opinions would be personal. It’s not that what I wrote as editorials weren‘t my personal opinions,  but of necessity they needed to be of universal topics. Things people might want to read about. I also had to consider where the views appeared, their audience and that, ultimately, I was speaking for the publisher of the newspaper. Unencumbered by those legitimate preconditions, I now feel free to also write about things people should want to read about and to vent some of my own strictly personal views on perhaps less-”important’ topics. Topics that I hope may have some universal appeal.

 That’s a too-lengthy way of getting to something that has bugged me for several years and shows no sign of abating: the cultural phenomenon of cable TV talking heads spewing nonsense, anger and even hate under the guise of “news.” Although I am retired, I still write newspaper editorials on occasion. That requires me to keep up to date on what’s going on in the world and, since I try to be thorough, I try to listen in to what the cableheads are blabbing about.

 It’s impossible. Forget water boarding. A week of the Foxes, the NBC’s and even CNN is pure torture. Not only do the gatherings of opinion-mongers start with a biased view of what the story is, they virtually never try to fairly present the other side. Forget simply giving the facts. But what really gets under my skin is that, for all the heat and anger and controversy these shows strive to create, for all the pointed questions they pose, they never try to come up with an answer.

 In the corporate world, the 12-step world, for all I know every world that depends on  some kind of logic, it is said that if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. It’s even a cliché. I hereby submit that cable TV “news” shows (and the financial ones are guilty of this, too) are and have been a major reason for the divisiveness in American society. They not only talk about the divisiveness, they cause it. They are predicated on finding fault with someone or some proposal or some law and ripping it to shreds, usually with specious facts. They do not care about offering reasonable compromises because solutions do not generate heat or ratings. They’re boring. Did Jerry Springer make his millions by putting marriages back together?

 Politicians, being self-absorbed and primarily worried about collecting enough money to run enough attack ads to win elections, have bought into the process. Maybe they even started it. Doesn’t matter. It is pandemic in political life in this country, which is why Barack Obama is  having less success convincing Congress that things have to change than he is with the American public.

 Still, his election suggests that Americans may have started to get fed up with  politicians who are good at attacking each other, but useless at finding solutions to problems. New Yorkers need look no farther than Albany for a perfect example of political egos making a mockery of government. Is there a solution? Not a political one if neither party will bend. We might hope the courts will see what’s going on in the State Senate as an emergency, which it is, and create some temporary solution. Maybe some good government group (NYPIRG? LWV? COMMON CAUSE?) will sue to demand that the vacant position of lieutenant governor be filled by special election or gubernatorial appointment to break the deadlock in the Senate. But it seems obvious that some solution will have to be imposed on these knuckleheads because clearly they do not see themselves as the problem. That remains for voters to demonstrate.

Bob can be reached at bob@zestoforange.com

By Bob Gaydos

 It’s all Eliot Spitzer’s fault.

 If the cocky former governor had been able to keep it in his pants, or at least in his own bedroom at home, the state government would not be in a shambles as it is today and comedians looking for examples of messed up states to ridicule would have to focus on California or Florida. But Spitzer spent thousands on hookers in Washington, D.C., and the feds busted him, forcing him to resign, making Lt. Gov. David Paterson governor and leaving the state without a lieutenant governor so that when two turncoat Democrats decided to bolt to the Republican Party in a state Senate that had only gone over to slim Democratic control this year, thus creating a 32-32 standoff, there was no lieutenant governor available to perform the only significant duty required of that office — to break ties in the state Senate.

 Sex and power. Ipso facto. Thus has it ever been in politics and don’t let any of those politicians claiming this is all about reform kid you. It’s not. It’s about who’s in charge and the devil and taxpayers be damned.

 As I’m writing this, nothing of  worth is getting done in Albany and the question of who is in charge of the Senate rests in an Albany courtroom thanks to a ruling Thursday in a Kingston courtroom. Appellate Court Judge Karen Peters, a former Ulster County Family Court judge, issued a temporary restraining order preventing one of the mutineers from taking over as president of the Senate until the question could be thrashed out in another court. That judge adjourned the arguments until Monday (June 15) and urged Republicans and Democrats to work it out, or he would.

 Throughout all the wrangling and posturing, the words “coalition” and “reform” were thrown about like confetti at a wedding. But the likelihood of a happy coupling was remote. Yet there was a local senator — John Bonacic, a Republican from Mount Hope —  gushing about the reforms that this political coup was likely to produce in Albany, even though his party had ignored reforms for four decades and even though one of the two defectors to the GOP, Sen. Pedro Espada of the Bronx, is a walking textbook on why reforms are needed.

 Espada is under investigation in the Bronx because there is some question whether he actually lives in the district he represents. Also, he owes thousands of dollars in fines for violations of campaign finance laws and he is under investigation for possibly taking thousands of dollars in grants given to not-for-profit health organizations he created and diverting them into his campaign account. Espada, who has agreed not to leave the country, was poised to assume control of the Senate until Peters said not so fast.

 And there was the senior local senator, William Larkin, Republican from Cornwall-on-Hudson, noticeably silent on the defection of Sen. Hiram Monserrate of Queens to the GOP, even though a mere six months ago Larkin signed a resolution urging the Senate not to seat Monserrate until felony assault charges leveled against him were resolved in court. Monserrate is accused of slashing his girlfriend in the face with a piece of glass. Apparently now Larkin presumes him to be innocent.

 And lurking behind the scenes in this “push for reform” was a man voters have rejected three times when he ran for governor — billionaire lobbyist Tom Golisano. Golisano, angry that legislators had come up with a tax on the rich, worked out this coup in secret meetings with the defectors, in which they all say nothing was promised in return for their switch because, after all, that would be illegally trading votes for favors. The noble Golisano would only say repeatedly that  if the two men pursue the reform agenda on which they had agreed, he would “support” them. Since he has an independent political organization that is not considered a PAC, that means both men could get thousands for their future campaigns — in which they will certainly face opposition — and thousands more for legal representation, which it appears both will need.

 Another point to ponder: If Espada becomes Senate president he would be next in line for the governorship. As ineffectual as Paterson has been, having a Golisano puppet running the state would be the ultimate disgrace for New York. Golisano, who moved to Florida to avoid New York taxes, could in effect buy a state through secret meetings and secret promises, all in the name of reform. Talk about your banana republic.
 
 This is not reform, Mr. Bonacic.
  
Bob can be reached at bob@zestoforange.com.

By Bob Gaydos

I didn’t intend to launch my entrance into the blogosphere with a lot of stuff about what I like, don’t like, who I think is a moron and other strictly personal observations kept in check, of necessity, during 23 years of writing editorials for the Times Herald-Record, but I spotted something on Facebook the other day that changed my mind.

First off, yes, Facebook. I had no idea what it was until a couple of weeks ago when two friends fessed up that they had Facebook pages and Time magazine ran an article explaining why it was the ideal Internet social network for grownups. Being retired and having some time on my hands to explore new horizons, I joined the throng. But don’t come looking to have conversations with me or anything like that yet because I still don’t quite get it. And I only have two friends, one of whom is my 17-year-old son, who does get it and who I asked to make me a friend so I would have at least one. But then someone else asked to be my friend and, since I do know her and always considered her to be a reasonably sane and decent person, I said yes. Then, of course, I checked to see who else she counted among her friends.

… Keith Olbermann?

Yes, it was that Keith Olbermann, the left-wing TV blowhard whose ego is actually bigger than his head, the liberal response to Rush Limbaugh and all the other right-wing blowhards who have trashed traditional journalistic commentary in favor of the much easier and — at least to those of their fans who aren’t overly concerned with facts and logic — the more entertaining approach of trashing and burning everything said or done by someone they don’t like.

 Yes, I think most of the far-right bloviators are all about getting ratings and recognition rather than trying to help listeners really understand what is going on in the world and most of them continue to operate that way even though a strong majority of Americans rejected that approach by electing Barack Obama president. But while I might share much more of Olbermann’s political philosophy, I find him to be just as unwatchable as the pompous Limbaugh, the excitable O’Reilly, the insufferable Ann Coulter and the shameless Lou Dobbs. It’s not just the Olbermann ego, it is his unrelenting smugness. The “I get it and I am now going to explain it to you in an-oh-so-clever way that you can’t help but think the target of my attack is an utter imbecile and I am a genius” approach.

The only one on Olbermann’s side of the political spectrum who is more convinced of his own moral and intellectual superiority, who masquerades as a political pundit while dropping sarcastic asides like so much bad gas, whose smugness literally oozes out of his pores when he speaks is HBO’s Bill Maher. Once upon a time he was a so-so standup comic. Then he discovered that millions of other Americans realized their emperor had no clothes and made a new career of ridiculing “W”.

Fair enough. He had it coming. I’m no fan of Bush 43 by any means. The only thing I’m saying is that smug is smug and self-righteous is self-righteous whatever label you put on it and I don’t like it. It makes my skin crawl and I don’t see how it contributes to the general well-being of society. That is a personal view.

I cannot warm up to people who are pompous, arrogant, deceitful, self-serving, ill-tempered, intolerant or just plain dumb and proud of it. For the record, my friend on Facebook is none of those, but seeing Olbermann led me to think of Maher, who led me to Blago, the carny governor of Illinois and that stooge Burris who ought to be hauled out of the U.S. Senate by his collar, who led me to David Stern, the commissioner of the NBA who insists that borrowing $200 million to divide among 12 to 15 teams is a sign of the league’s strength, which led me to wonder if there was any pro sport whose athletes whine more about officials’ calls than he NBA, which led me to the absolute travesty Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig and the baseball players union have made of the steroid scandal and the futility and hypocrisy of Congress getting involved in it at this late date when there are so many more pressing issues to tackle which led to wonder just what the heck was that woman who had the octuplets thinking and why is the doctor who implanted all those eggs in her even though she already had six kids and no job still practicing medicine?

Like I said, now it’s personal.

Bob can be reached at bob@zestoforange.com.

By Bob Gaydos

“And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
— John 8:32
Alex Rodriguez is a prisoner of his own mind. Blinded by pride — the mother of all sins — and unable to speak, perhaps even to see the truth, he has managed to turn what might have been the greatest baseball career of all time into a traveling sideshow of contradictions, disappointment and lies. So many lies.

So engrossed is he in protecting what he regards as most important in life — his image of himself — he could not even allow a confession of wrongdoing, a moment of humility, to be simply that. Exposed by a reporter as one of baseball’s growing number of steroid users, Rodriguez had the good sense not to deny what was evident. Yes, he had used a substance for three years when he was playing in Texas, he said.

“I screwed up,” he said at his recent press conference. He was “young,” he said. He was “naive,” he said. He was “stupid,” he said. It was a “loosey-goosey” period in baseball, he said.

Were you cheating? he was asked. “I’ll leave that to others to decide,” he answered.

Of course he was cheating. That’s the whole point of using illegal performance enhancing drugs — to gain unfair advantage against one’s peers. It doesn’t matter if others were doing it as well, it was cheating. And when he told Katie Couric on TV that he had never used steroids, he was lying, because he thought the evidence would never be made public. And by his own admission, he only stopped using steroids when Major League Baseball instituted a test and penalties for steroid use. There is nothing admirable in that.

Nor was there a lot to admire in his confession/apology. He gets points for saying he did it, unlike others who continue to deny. But if that’s the case, why did he need a prepared statement to read to the press? Just tell your story. This is not a stupid man. This is not a naive man. He was no kid when this happened. This is a world class superstar whose physical condition is his fortune and whose private life is front page news as much as his baseball exploits are back page news. He knows what he did. He knows how many times he did it, how he did it. Why he did it. It is not believable to say otherwise. He probably remembers every home run he hit in Little League, every touchdown pass he threw in high school, yet he would have fans believe he did not remember the first time his cousin, or whoever it was, injected an illegal substance into his buttocks, where it happened, what it felt like and what the drug did for him as a baseball player?

Absurd.

Maybe the only genuine moment in his press conference came when he began to thank his teammates for showing up to support him. He choked up and couldn’t say anything for half a minute, finally managing a “Thank you.” The toughest skeptics have claimed it was staged, that he was acting. I don’t believe that. I believe that Rodriguez, a man so unused to letting down his guard and showing genuine emotion in public was truly overwhelmed by what he had to know was a strong display of support that he did not deserve, something he could only imagine giving in lip-service terms. After all, he had betrayed these teammates, cast further doubt on the performance of all baseball players and, as he has ever since coming to New York, made everything all about himself again.

Of course, the Yankees need Rodriguez to perform well on the field and he has nine years left on his contract, so they would like him to perform in a manner befitting the highest-paid player in the game. Judgments on the records and the Hall of Fame can wait for now while he tries to salvage his reputation. That will not happen if he continues to nourish his pride and protect his ego. Half-measures will not do.

Which brings us to the so-called rehabilitation of A-Roid. The Yankees and their third baseman announced simultaneously with the press conference that he would be lending his support to the efforts of the Taylor Hooton Foundation to combat steroid use by young athletes. The foundation was established by Don Hooton after his son, a high school athlete, became seriously depressed from taking steroids and committed suicide.

And just what is Rodriguez going to do for the foundation? Give it money? Fine, it can use it. That’s easy. But, hey, Mr. Rodriguez, didn’t steroids help you get that $300 million contract? Didn’t they help hook you up with Madonna? So what’s your message to high school and college athletes? Don’t be naïve, don’t be stupid, don’t mess up, don’t get caught?

Why is it wrong to use steroids without a prescription, Alex? Are there serious physical risks? Mental risks? Do they become addictive? Besides being illegal, is it unethical? Does it rob you of your self-worth? Does it diminish your accomplishments? Is it for crying out loud, cheating? And does it leave you, ultimately, worrying solely about how you appear to everyone else and utterly clueless about who you really are?

Until the greatest ballplayer of his era can answer those questions honestly –and he hasn’t even tried yet in public — he has nothing of value to tell young America.
* * *
“In general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes.” — John Ruskin

“And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin is pride that apes humility.”
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“Pride attaches undue importance to the superiority of one’s status in the eyes of others; And shame is fear of humiliation at one’s inferior status in the estimation of others. When one sets his heart on being highly esteemed, and achieves such rating, then he is automatically involved in fear of losing his status.” — Lao-Tzu

“Pride goes before destruction,
a haughty spirit before a fall.”
–Proverbs 16:18–19

Bob can be reached at bob@zestoforange.com.