By Bob Gaydos

“Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack …”                 RJ Photography

   I think I’m making this a thing. In a world of TikTok, Twitter (no bird!?), streaming and binge-watching, the world we live in is more and more like a stream of consciousness experience.

    So, let me report on the past week in which two events affected me in a personal way, the first being (1.) the death, at 96, of the legendary Tony Bennett who seemed determined to go on forever, singing standards despite Alzheimer’s and being decades older than his collaborators and 70 years removed from his first big hit, “Because of You,” which I sang as an 11-year-old in front of Mrs. Godlis’(?) 6th grade class in P.S. #3 in Bayonne, N.J., for reasons I can’t remember but a memory which still fills me with warm feelings, as does the memory of an old friend, the late, great musician, Hal Gaylor, of Greenwood Lake, who backed Bennett up on bass on many recordings and, like Bennett, was also a wonderful artist, the kind of person you wish could just go on forever, unlike the (2.) Gilgo Beach serial killer suspect, charged with the murder of three young women and suspected in many more on Long Island between 1996 and 2011 and who, it turns out, police in Suffolk County had a solid description of (as well as his truck) within days of the discovery of the bodies 13 years ago but (3.) were too busy covering up an assault by their police chief to bother doing anything about it, which is kind of like (4.) what Chief Justice John Roberts did when asked to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee to discuss the lack of any code of ethics among the ethically challenged justices, a decision which (5.) prompted the Senate committee to propose Legislation to set ethics rules for the court and a process to enforce them, including new standards for transparency around recusals, gifts and potential conflicts of interest, which (6.) all the Republicans on the committee voted against because the party is too busy (7.) in the House of Representatives trying to manufacture an impeachment of President Joe Biden somehow connected to his son Hunter, who (8.) agreed to plead guilty to tax evasion charges and unlawful possession of a weapon, with no jail time, which (9). a judge questioned and delayed and Republicans said was a sweetheart deal because of his dad being president, which (10.) is pretty much what the Education Department says it’s looking into regarding Harvard’s legacy admissions policy wherein top colleges give preferential acceptance treatment to children of alumni, who are often white (and sometimes rich), a practice which has been under fire since (11.) the Supreme Court last month struck down the use of affirmative action as a tool to boost the presence of students of color, which was in stark contrast to (12.) the same court’s recent ruling that Alabama had to redraw its district voting lines to more fairly represent black voters in the state, an example of reasonable thinking which stands in contrast (13.) to BiBi Netenyahu’s increasingly autocratic Israeli government, which voted to remove the “reasonableness” of an action as something for Israel’s Supreme Court to consider, a vote which (14.) has led to massive anti-government demonstrations and (15.) strained the relationship between Israel and the U.S., which has historically been strong, much like that of American men and baseball, a bond which (16.) drew four relatively new friends (me being one of them) to a minor league baseball game on a Thursday night in Dutchess County, N.Y., to see the Brooklyn Cyclones (a Mets farm team) meet the Hudson Valley Renegades (a Yankees affiliate) on a comfortable summer night billed as Halloween in July at the ballpark, where hot dogs and caps came with the price of admission, peanuts and Cracker Jack were also consumed and the home team lost because of one horrendous inning by the starting pitcher, several bad base-running decisions by other Renegades, a couple of questionable umpiring calls and a leaping catch at the wall with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning by the Cyclones’ right fielder to take a game-tying home run away from Spencer Jones, the Renegades player everyone says is the next Aaron Judge, who (17.) reported to Tampa, to practice swinging again with the toe he injured a while back breaking down a wall in right field in Los Angeles while taking a home run away from the Dodgers, who used to play in Brooklyn where the world-famous roller coaster called the Cyclone is located and (18.) who says there’s no symmetry in this world?

(PS: Cracker Jack boxes are now smaller, but come in a pack of three ($4) and the “prize” is a code to some online game. I preferred the whistle.)

rjgaydos@gmail.com

By Bob Gaydos

Here’s another stream of consciousness report on the news because, well, we seem to be living in a stream of consciousness world:

     The week began in what has become a normal pattern these days with (1.) Donald Trump asking a judge to postpone his trial for stealing and refusing to return classified government documents until the 12th of Never or he gets elected president again, whichever comes first, which was a disturbing development because said judge is believed to have a crush on the twice-impeached former president and might rule in his favor, which isn’t what happened to (2.) some of Aretha Franklin’s offspring, who went to court four years after her death to decide which one of her wills was the real one — the notarized, signed one found in a locked cabinet or the scribbled, unsigned one found stuffed in a couch cushion, which also contained comments about the singer’s ex-boyfriends, which may have convinced the jury in Pontiac, Mich., that it was the legit will because that’s how they decided after only an hour of discussion, a ruling some found as curious as (3.) the World Health Organization’s determination that the artificial sweetener, aspartame could cause cancer while a special panel appointed by the same UN organization simultaneously said the sweetener was still safe for regular use, which is pretty much what (4.) the NRA said about the widespread availability of all types of guns in response to a report that the U.S. in 2023 had experienced the deadliest six months of mass killings since 2006, or 140 killings in 180 days, not that anyone noticed, (5.) what with record numbers of tourists flocking to Death Valley hoping to experience record high temperatures as the thermometer hovered near 130°F, (6.) which wasn’t far from the heat generated on picket lines in Los Angeles by striking actors and writers, led by The Nanny, Fran Drescher, president of the Screen Actors Guild, who roasted film and streaming companies executives for, among other things, wanting to use artificial intelligence- generated images of background actors instead of real people in order to save money, which is the opposite of (7.) what India had in mind when it launched a rocket to the Moon, hoping for a soft landing for a lunar rover to explore the surface of the moon and bolster India’s emerging space program as a major source of revenue, rather than, as some cynics speculated, as an exploration for a future home for some of the nearly 1.5 billion people living in a country whose trains keep running into each other and (8.) whose neighbor, China, is being difficult over some disputed borders between the ancient countries, who have maintained a careful relationship with (9.) Russia as it slogs through a misbegotten war against Ukraine, who has (10.) been promised NATO membership in the future, whether or not (11.) Russian President Vladimir Putin figures out which of his generals knew about the attempted coup before it unraveled almost as quickly as (12.) Twitter when Elon Musk bought it to show us again how smart he is.

    Whew. … Oh yeah, (13.) The New York Times announced it was eliminating its sports desk and pretty much nobody noticed.

     There.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

By Bob Gaydos

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand
… holds hearing on AARO

What with all the news all the time being all things Trump these days, it has been easy to lose track of some of our elected representatives not directly involved in that slog through history.

For example, New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, always an active, outspoken member of the upper chamber of Congress, had fallen completely off my radar. As a New Yorker, I assumed she was working diligently and, well, no news is good news, right?

       Then she recently reappeared in as unlikely a place as I could imagine and, almost literally, back on the radar.

        Remember those “Chinese” balloons flying over the United States a few months back? Perhaps you’ve seen on TV recently released Navy videos of strange objects their pilots couldn’t identify. UFOs. Or, as the government prefers to call them today, UAPs. Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.

      They’re on Gillibrand’s radar. She is chairman of the Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee. As such, she is charged with overseeing that government agencies charged with identifying, assessing, protecting against and notifying Americans about any emerging threats — identifiable, flying or not — are doing their jobs. Especially that notifying part.

     Those balloon sightings and recent public comments by a recently retired high-level intelligence officer that the government has had a long-standing secret program of crash retrieval and reverse engineering of unidentified spacecraft of “non-human origin,” have given sudden urgency and immediacy to Gillibrand’s Senate post. And she’s taking it seriously.

     She and Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, succeeded in adding an amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill requiring that any private enterprise which has been given a contract to retrieve, research or re-engineer anything discovered from unidentified, non-human phenomena make that information known to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office.

     That mouthful of an office was established in 2022 for the express purpose of resolving decades of UFO reports … and non-reports. Its report, due in June of next year, is supposed to include “any program or activity that was protected by restricted access that has not been explicitly and clearly reported to Congress,” and “any efforts to obfuscate, manipulate public opinion, hide, or provide incorrect unclassified or classified information about unidentified anomalous phenomena or related activities.”

      Any coverups.

      Typically serious about her responsibilities, Gillibrand fought for and gained additional funding for AARO, so that it could actually perform the function for which it was ostensibly established. Previously, it just had enough funding to cover office expenses. A front.

     Gillibrand wants any private businesses to report to AARO about any involvement in such retrievals and reverse engineering efforts and the requirement includes substantial financial penalties for anyone refusing to do so or hiding such information.

     The interesting thing about the claims made by the whistleblower, David Grusch, is that nobody in the government tried to quickly shut him up.

     Gillibrand’s subcommittee held both a classified closed hearing and an open hearing on AARO in April. Its director, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick was the sole witness. He testified: “I should state clearly for the record that in our research AARO has found no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off world technology, or objects that defy the known laws of physics. In the event sufficient scientific data were ever obtained that a UAP encountered can only be explained by extraterrestrial origin, we are committed to working with our interagency partners at NASA to appropriately inform U.S. government’s leadership of its findings.”

   Does Gillibrand believe Grusch or others who have reported witnessing non-human vehicles or other phenomena for decades?

     “I have no idea,” she recently told a reporter who asked her. “So I’m going to do the work and analyze it and figure it out.”

     She’s back on the radar.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

By Bob Gaydos

“The truth shall make us free.”

   That was the motto of Adelphi College, my alma mater. Still is. Been around since 1896. It’s a good one, I think, as mottos go.

    Of course, it’s also a bit selective in that, today, it would preclude any loyal Republican from attending or teaching or in any other way participating in activities at such a socialist opponent of  free-speech.

    I know. That makes no sense. But neither do today’s Republicans.

    The problem arises today mostly in the minds of Republicans who confuse “free speech” with the right to say anything they feel like, without regard to the truth and certainly without regard to the repercussions of the lack of truth in their statements.

    But that’s not the end of it. They also don’t want people pointing out the fact that they might be spreading misinformation, or, heaven forbid, even lying. People like social media fact checkers or independent fact checkers or even government employees such as FBI agents or health care officials.

      Republicans have even found a Trump-appointed judge in Louisiana to say that officially for them.

       Last week, Judge Terry A. Doughty granted a preliminary injunction saying the Department of Health and Human Services and the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other government departments must stop communicating with social media companies for “the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”    

      “Protected free speech.” Like misinformation on Covid-19 or vaccines or election fraud. The judge, whose ruling will be appealed, said the government, which might well have factual information on the matter, should not inform social media platforms about the possibility of dangerous misinformation being spread on their platform.

     Now, much of this fear-mongering, conspiracy spreading and outright lying is caught by independent fact-checkers, be it simply other users or researchers or non-profit agencies. But they say the government agencies have never pressured social media companies to remove content, simply alerted them to possibly dangerous, non-factual content.

     Of course, non-factual content has become the entire Republican Party playbook since it swore allegiance to Donald Trump: Obama’s birth certificate, Hillary’s emails, Hunter Biden’s laptop, Mexico will pay for a wall, COVID’s not serious, stolen elections, January 6 didn’t happen, the mainstream media lies.

      I’m not aware of any Republican court challenge to the right of the free press to print the truth about Trump et al. It may be a bridge too far right now. Of course, newspapers printed long lists of Trump’s lies in office. Not that most Republicans, especially hard core MAGA Republicans, were concerned. They believed the lies. There’s the rub.

     A classmate of mine at my high school alma mater, Bayonne High School, has a theory on how even those who recognize the lies can unwittingly help them gain credence.

      If memory serves me correctly, Dr. George Lakoff was valedictorian of the BHS Class of ‘58, my class. He went on to become a highly regarded cognitive linguist and philosopher at University of California, Berkeley. A smart guy.

     Lakoff says, “Without knowing it, many Democrats, progressives and members of the news media help Donald Trump every day. The way they help him is simple: they spread his message.”

    He likens it to telling people not to think about an elephant. They can’t get rid of the image.

        “When arguing against the other side,” Lakoff says, “don’t use their language because it evokes their frame and not the frame you seek to establish. Never repeat their charges! Instead, use your own words and values to reframe the conversation. When you repeat Trump, you help Trump.”

       Trump’s barrage of outrageous claims has grown with each new report on his criminality and incompetence. It is being buttressed by a coordinated Republican assault on the truth, aimed at schools, think tanks, the news media, as well as the Biden White House.

     Republicans frame it as a fight for the First Amendment. Don’t buy it. This is a fight for the truth.

     And the truth shall make us free.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

(Adelphi College was founded in 1896. It became a university in 1963, the year I graduated with a degree in English, but not before I graduated, meaning I am part of the last class to receive a diploma that says Adelphi College.)

(Dr. George Lakoff’s views on politics, language and your brain can be found at https://substack.com › @framelab).

By Bob Gaydos

Yankees Pitcher Domingo German pitched a perfect game.

   When one’s primary focus is offering commentary on the most significant news of the day and it’s a day (or week) in which Donald Trump has not been indicted, arrested, convicted or imprisoned, well, one has to look around at the rest of the world and choose what’s important. Kind of stream of consciousness reporting.

      For example, (1) in a week in which the leader of a ruthless mercenary military group in Russia apparently decided to call off a coup attempt aimed at Vladimir Putin in midstream and (2) reports say some Russian generals may have known about the plan and Putin may be about to purge them, how significant was it that the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court (3) blew up affirmative action and (4) Joe Biden’s college loan forgiveness plan, (5) said (despite a Colorado state law barring discrimination) that a wedding website designer could refuse to design a website because the would-be clients are gay, all the while (6) holding fast to the argument that the top court in the U.S. should not be bound to conflict of interest rules like every other court in the land, apparently suggesting that Supreme Court justices should (7) be able to take lavish vacations paid for by clients who have cases before the court, (8) that the fact that a justice’s spouse actively encouraged a coup attempt aimed at the U.S. government didn’t matter and (9) that another’s spouse got millions in business from another frequent visitor to the court did not matter either because, well, apparently because the High Nine are morally perfect individuals, which is not necessarily the case with (9) Domingo German, a pitcher for the New York Yankees, who pitched a perfect game against the Oakland A’s and, despite the fact it was only the 24th perfect game in Major League Baseball ever, was criticized by some because he had been (10) suspended by MLB a couple of years ago for spousal abuse, even though one must presume (or at least hope)  he had made significant enough changes in his life by now to merit reinstatement, while others suggested the accomplishment wasn’t much because (11) Oakland is one of the worst teams in baseball at the moment, an argument which ignores the fact that these are all major league players, the best ball players in the country, making a guaranteed minimum salary of $720,000 a year, and, all the while, much of the country (including New York State, where I live) witnessed all of this (12) through a choking haze of smoke courtesy of thousands of wildfires still burning in Canada, undoubtedly aggravated by (13) global warming, which almost no one is talking much about lately, certainly not (14) Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s former lawyer, who we learned sat down voluntarily for a chat with Special Counsel Jack Smith in connection with (15) investigations into the Jan. 6 insurrection and efforts by Trump to steal the 2020 election, leading to speculation that Giuliani, disbarred and disgraced, might be (16) looking for a plea deal to avoid a long prison term in exchange for information leading to (17) the indictment, arrest, conviction and imprisonment of the aforesaid Donald Trump.

     I knew I’d get there.

                 ***

PS: The Yankees have had four perfect games thrown by their pitchers, more than any other team. I watched on TV as Don Larsen threw his against the Dodgers in the 1956 World Series and 43 years later listened on radio as David Cone achieved perfection. People tend to forget that, not only the pitcher, but the whole team has to be perfect to accomplish this. Have a nice week.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

Bob Gaydos is writer-in-residence at zestoforange.com.

By Bob Gaydos

Yevgheni Prigozhin
… man without a country?

I’m not sure if Yevgeny Prigozhin is the bravest or dumbest man in Russia. Well, I guess Belarus now. However, I have no doubt he has shown the world that Vladimir Putin’s 20-year, vise-like grip on the reins of power in Moscow has slipped.

   Even if that weakening is ever so slight, in Putin’s Kremlin that is cause for concern for him.

    Prigozhin’s dramatic  Saturday dash for Moscow with his Wagner fighting forces electrified and captured the attention of the world only to fizzle out just as TV commentators were getting used to the words Russia and revolution in the same sentence.

      Just as dramatically as it had begun, it was over. What happened? It remains the 64 million ruble question.

      First reports said that Putin’s patsy neighbor, Alexander Lukashenko, president of Belarus, had brokered a deal giving Prigozhin amnesty in Belarus and Putin dropping treason charges in exchange for Prigozhin calling off his apparent assault on Moscow. The Wagner forces would also not face charges and would be allowed to join the Russian military.

      Prigozhin reportedly said he turned his troops around to “avoid spilling Russian blood.”

       Then what was the point? He had been clear and very vocal about his displeasure with the way Russia’s military leaders have been conducting the war in Ukraine. He had gone even further, accusing Russian troops of attacking his Wagner forces. He was demanding a change in leadership at the top.

      The dramatic (and easy) seizing of Rostov-on-Don, a key military headquarters in Russia and the movement of a force of mercenaries hundreds of miles unhampered towards Moscow certainly seemed like Prigozhin was finally turning his words into action. Reports said the Wagner forces were cheered as they left Rostov-on-Don to head to Moscow.

       Later reports, however, quote Prigozhin saying he never intended to actually try to seize power in Moscow but rather, apparently, just make a show of force to bring about a change in Russia’s military leadership.

     Well, I’m not an expert on Russia, but I have been around long enough to know that Vladimir Putin does not take kindly to other Russians publicly challenging his leadership, never mind sending a well-trained fighting force to do something or other in Moscow. Nor does he usually forget calling someone a traitor.

     Nor am I convinced that Lukashenko could come up with such a deal so quickly as to stop a rebellion literally in its tracks. I see the hand of Putin in that and I also see Prigozhin being a fool if he thinks he is safe in Belarus. If anything, Lukashenko’s regime is worse than Putin’s and Belarus is virtually an annex of Russia.

    If Prigozhin stays there, he’s going to have someone testing his water or vodka before drinking for the rest of his life. Poison is Putin‘s favorite means of getting rid of enemies. This looks like a quick stop for Prigozhin just to go elsewhere. But where would he be safe or welcome?

      Meanwhile:

— Putin went incognito for a few days while the Russian parliament went about passing a law prohibiting private mercenary groups such as Wagner.

— Russian state-controlled media continue to report that treason charges against Prigozhin are still on the books.

— Wagner forces returned to Ukraine, though apparently not sure what their next mission would be or who would be their commander. The uncertain future of the Wagner group, the most brutal Russian forces fighting in Ukraine, was good news for Ukraine.

— Ukrainian forces hoped to take advantage of the chaos in Russia in their counteroffensive against Putin’s troops.

— There was no indication of any changes in leadership of Russia’s military command.

— Russia’s military power was once again shown to the world to be much less than advertised.

— Putin reappeared to insist that his Kremlin team and, indeed, all Russians remained united against any forces who wanted them “to fight each other.” He was also left to wonder if, next time, the revolution won’t make a U-turn on the highway to Moscow.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

Bob Gaydos is writer-in-residence at zestoforange.com.

By Bob Gaydos

Special Counsel Jack Smith meets the press.

   It’s not exactly writer’s block. More like writer’s fatigue. It’s what happens, to me at least, when there’s really only one story to tell and I’ve told it from every possible angle, for, oh, about seven years now.

     That would be the transformation of the Republican Party by Donald Trump from a responsible, conservative partner in the nation’s two-party system, a party once dedicated to the rule of law and respect for the traditions on which our democratic republic was founded, into a race-baiting, power-hungry, intolerant, lying, bullying collection of ignorant bigots and cowardly hypocrites. I think that covers it.

    But how many times can you say that? It’s what’s happened and is still happening and neither a federal indictment of Trump in Florida for hoarding classified government documents after he left the White House nor a conviction and $5 million fine in New York for sexually assaulting a reporter in a changing room at Bergdorf Goodman and then defaming her has changed the basic story.

     Most Republicans, even some who are competing with him for the party’s presidential nomination, still refuse to condemn his behaviors. They refuse to say he is unfit to hold any public office, much less the highest office in the land. Some actually agree with Trump’s methods. Others don’t, but they also don’t want to roil what they still think is the party’s base of cult-like followers loyal only to Trump. Fear and loathing 2023.

      It’s a self-inflicted situation for the GOP. But there, I’ve said it again.

      These are perilous times for our democracy. I fear far too many Americans still don’t grasp that. Trump and his lackeys have threatened our very foundation — a nation where all men and women are created equal and all — regardless of status — are treated equally under the law.

   Jack Smith, Chris Christie, Chris Sununu. They get it. Smith, of course, is the no-nonsense special counsel appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate Trump’s refusal to return classified government documents and his involvement in the Jan. 6 insurrection.

     My favorite Smith moment, in fact the only Smith moment thus far, was his brusk reading of a brief explanation of the documents indictment and then walking off the stage as the media shouted questions at him. It’s all there in the indictment, folks, see you in court.

      Christie is the somewhat disgraced former New Jersey governor who has entered the primary race for the GOP presidential nomination with what appears to be the sole purpose of telling the truth about Trump every chance he gets as bluntly as he can. As a New Jersey native, I can tell you that can be pretty blunt and he will not back down.

       And Sununu is a respected Republican governor of New Hampshire who has decided not to run for president, but to also point out, in a New England way, how morally, intellectually and politically unfit Trump is for the job.

       So, good for them. And good for us.

       But the Republican Party still offers the likes of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is out to prove he can be worse than Trump, and former Vice President Mike Pence, who saw the noose waiting for him on Jan. 6, brought by Trump’s army, but still can’t find the courage to tell the whole truth about his former boss.

      I always try to be optimistic, but there’s another presidential campaign looming and, as I said, I’ve told this story before. On October 20, 2016, with an election looming, I wrote: “Republicans, Trump is not one of you. He is Trump. Period. You created him. Your hypocrisy and cowardice have emboldened him and his ilk. He has sullied us all. And he has destroyed you.”

     Here’s to Jack Smith, Chris Christie and Chris Sununu.  It’s time for a new plot line, folks.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

By Bob Gaydos

Dinner with Trump? No words.

   It was a good question. An excellent question, actually: “What would you say to him if you did have dinner with him?”

     The “him” in this case would be Donald Trump. The notion of having dinner with him was the subject of a recent column I wrote regarding an email (actually several) from Trump inviting me to enter a lottery for a chance to have dinner with him. One lucky person will win! Just donate!

     Ultimately, I didn’t donate and then killed all the emails and wrote a column about what a unique experience it would be to have dinner with a former president, especially this recently indicted and convicted and still under investigation former president. But then, what would I, a mere retired journalist, possibly say to Trump, I asked jokingly, “Pass the ketchup?”

      The moderator of a Facebook site to which I belong and where I had posted the column (The Thom Hartmann Bloggers Group) approved the post and then called me on it in the comments section. “What would you say?”

       I hate when they do that. Make you get all serious about stuff. But, I thought, it’s a legit question. So I’ve given it some thought.

        Knowing what a narcissist Trump is, there’s always the basic question to ask a prominent person: Who was the biggest influence on your life?

        But I probably wouldn’t want to hear about his racist, slumlord father or his old friend and thug-of-a-lawyer Roy Cohn. Not dinner talk.

        Family? “How’s Baron? When’s the last time you saw him? Does he play any sports? How do you feel about Ivanka losing interest in politics? Wasn’t that something how the woman in the changing room at Bergdorf Goodman looked so much like your second wife, Marla, in that photograph?”

       Scratch family.

       Sports? “How come that hotshot football player, Herschel Walker, whom you signed to play for the New Jersey Generals in the doomed-to-fail USFL when they wouldn’t let you have a team in the NFL, lost, despite your support, when he ran for the Senate in Georgia?”

    No.

    I finally decided the only question I really wanted to ask Trump was, “What did Putin say when it was just the two of you in that room together with no one taking notes and you came out looking like someone who had just been blackmailed over incriminating photos and he was smiling like he had just swallowed the canary?”

     I also figured he’d never answer.

     Umm, “How do you live with yourself?”

     He wouldn’t understand.

     Ultimately, I decided there could be no dinner talk with Donald Trump because from what I’ve seen, he doesn’t have conversations. He talks at you. He makes pronouncements. He tosses out gratuitous insults. He comments on how much he knows about so many things. He makes stuff up. He doesn’t understand a lot of stuff. He has no sense of humor. For some reason, he likes to show off old maps he found lying around the White House. If you’re an attractive, young female, he’ll put his hand on your thigh and slide it as far as possible because he can because, as he’s said, he’s a celebrity.

     And then there’s this: He has, by extension, called me, an ink-stained wretch of a newspaperman, “the enemy of the people.”

      “Pass the ketchup,” it is.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

 Bob Gaydos is writer-in-residence at zestoforange.com.

(Updated to reflect the passage of time.)

By Bob Gaydos

JFK … at a press conference

 Ten years ago, I wrote a column about what I see as the synchronistic connection between myself and John Fitzgerald Kennedy, beginning with the fact we share the same birth date, May 29. The key point in the column, at least to me, was my pledge “to remember to honor him not on the date he died, but on the date we both were born.”

      It’s a pledge that’s even more important today, I think, when there is such a dearth of public figures who inspire the kind of hope and pride in America that JFK did for me and millions of others. Hope and pride are two elements in short supply in today’s political debate. They’ve been replaced by deceit and anger, which only begets more deceit and anger. A path to ruin. So today, on what would be JFK’s 106th birthday, I choose hope.

       My connection with Kennedy began to take shape in my college years. His handling of the Cuban missile crisis allowed me to graduate on time. But as I was home waiting to report to Fort Dix, N.J., for basic training, JFK was assassinated, on Nov. 22, 1963, postponing my duty for a month. And 20 years later, as fate would have it, the first editorial I was asked to write as the new editorial page editor for The Times Herald-Record in Middletown, N.Y., was to mark the 20th anniversary of Kennedy’s death. Headline: “The Measure of the Man.”

     Six years ago, I wrote: “Much of it still applies. The legend of JFK — Camelot (Jackie, John-John and Caroline), PT-109, Navy and Marine Corps Medals, the Purple Heart, “Ich bin ein Berliner,” “Ask not …”, the challenge to put a man on the moon, the Peace Corps, the New Frontier, a limited nuclear test ban treaty — still far outweighs his failings, including extramarital affairs, hiding illnesses from us, escalation of the American troop presence in Vietnam and a reluctance to take a firm stance in the growing battle over segregation in America.

    “He is regularly rated as one of this country’s greatest presidents, a testament I believe to his ability to inspire hope, faith and courage in Americans, especially young Americans like me, at a time of grave danger. Much of that owes to his youth (he was 43 when elected president, the youngest ever) and his ability to eloquently deliver the words written for him by Ted Sorensen, a synchronistic match if there ever was one. But Kennedy, a Harvard graduate, was no slouch at writing either, having won a Pulitzer Prize for biography with “Profiles in Courage.”

    “… Kennedy’s (message) was unfailingly one of hope. We can do this. We are up to the challenge. We care. His average approval rating as president was 70 percent. He also ranked third, behind Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mother Teresa, in Gallup’s List of Widely Admired People of the 20th century, according to Wikipedia.”

   The question I still ask myself is, what might JFK have done, what might he have meant to America and the world, if he had lived longer?

    In that column six years ago, to my ever-lasting embarrassment on the Internet, I also said that I shared a birthday with another great communicator, Bob Dylan. I was off by five days (May 24). Belated happy 82nd birthday to the Nobel poet laureate anyway.

     On a positive note, I subsequently discovered that May 29 is also the birthday of Harry G. Frankfurt. The professor emeritus at Princeton University authored a 67-page essay entitled “On Bullshit.“ It was a New York Times best seller in 2005. And it also explained to me how a person like Donald Trump could say the things he said, flying in the face of other things he had recently said, none of which had any basis in reality, and keep doing it. It’s not lying, Frankfurt explains, it’s bullshit. The liar has to remember what he said. The bullshitter does not. He doesn’t care.

     Professor Frankfurt is apparently alive and well and celebrating his 94th birthday today. Happy birthday, to you, too, professor. A day for hope and truth

rjgaydos@gmail.com

Bob Gaydos is writer-in-residence at zestoforange.com.

By Bob Gaydos

Alice Cooper, Joe Perry and Johnny Depp, the Hollywood Vampires

  I don’t really remember how the conversation found its way to Johnny Depp. One minute we were talking about The Rapture and the book, “Left Behind,” the next I was saying, “Johnny Depp, isn’t coming to Bethel,” as more of a question than a statement.

     “Yes, he is,” Ernie replied, “with the Hollywood Vampires on June 1.”

      “Well then,” I said, “he can hang out for the weekend and ride on a float in the Pine Bush UFO Fair and parade on June 3.

      Let me back up a little here. This column is clearly an intersection of synchronicity and what an editor once told me a long time ago: Every story is local.

       As near as I can recall, we were talking, as we often do, about the sorry state of politics in this country and one of us (probably me) mentioned the need for a charismatic leader to appear and lead us out of this mess. Hence, “Left Behind” and the Rapture, which provides such a “savior” for humanity.

     Ernie correctly pointed out the “savior” was actually the Antichrist, but I’m thinking this is where I came up with Depp to play the role.

      Why Depp? Well, he was obviously in my vortex. There was all the publicity of the Amber Heard defamation trial in Virginia (Depp won) and his recent coolly received film at the Cannes Film Festival and, out of nowhere but on YouTube, a woman romance-scammed out of tens of thousands of dollars by a guy pretending to be, yep, Depp.

      So Ernie says Depp’s in the Hollywood Vampires group coming to Bethel Woods on June 1. I’d never heard of them, but since this group also includes Alice Cooper and Joe Perry, I realized it’s a pretty big deal, even for a place (the original Woodstock site) that specializes in big deals. It’s a big local story, if anyone were still doing big local stories.

     And making it an even better story, I mused, would be Depp hanging around and doing his savior of the Planet Earth schtick two days later in Pine Bush, the UFO capital of the Northeast, as a  charismatic alien, a role he could surely own if he had any more use for Hollywood, which he has said he doesn’t.

     He could join a group of UFO experts giving talks, lots of locals dressed in weird alien getup, other musicians probably willing to share the mike with him and lots of happy people walking around, snapping photos and making videos. Fans.

      So, there it is. A lot of synchronicity, a bit of imagination and two local venues combining for a great local story. If anyone were still doing big local stories.

    But the thing is, synchronicity and imagination notwithstanding, Johnny Depp and the Hollywood Vampires really are going to be in Bethel June 1 and Pine Bush really is having a UFO Fair June 3 and both are likely to be pretty entertaining affairs. A good way to ignore, for at least a short while, where we came in — the sorry state of politics in this country. And that’s the story.

      You’re welcome.

(Information on both events can be found online at Bethel Woods and Pine Bush UFO Fair. Bethel and Pine Bush are in the Hudson Valley/Catskills area of New York state, a little more than an hour drive from New York City.)

rjgaydos@gmail.com

Bob Gaydos is writer-in-residence at zestoforange.com.