By Jeffrey Page

For some reason unknown to me now or then, The Times Herald-Record sent me to Kansas City to cover the Republican National Convention of 1976. I wasn’t much of a political reporter, but the editors were interested in feature stories about local delegates and party leaders.

And off I went to the heartland.

The 1976 convention was exciting. After all, here was Gerald Ford, a man who was appointed vice president after Spiro Agnew had to resign and who then became president when Richard Nixon quit. And here was Ronald Reagan mounting a serious challenge to Ford, the never-elected incumbent. And here was Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina carping that Reagan’s vice presidential choice, Senator Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania, wasn’t conservative enough. There was talk of William F. Buckley’s mounting a challenge to Schweiker.

And finally, with Ford’s nomination, there was Reagan’s concession speech in which he paraphrased St. Matthew and referred to America as “a shining city on a hill.” It was that single line in that single speech that brought the house down and which would identify Reagan for the rest of his life. Conservatives fell in love with him after being out in the cold since the Goldwater rebellion of 1964.

Now in Kansas City, the GOP made news, I wrote features. And then Republicans seemed to come this-close to nominating me for president of the United States.

I think it was the second night of the convention. I was in the press tent a few hundred yards from the Kemper Arena, where the convention’s public business was conducted. The Kemper was a huge venue, holding about 20,000 people. I had been on the phone with an editor in Middletown and missed the last bus over to the arena. With my credentials dangling from my neck I hoofed it to the Kemper.

I was drenched with perspiration – Kansas City is not pleasant in summer – and I looked like I’d had a bad night at McNulty’s Saloon. I found an open door and walked in. If there were security guards on duty that night, they were practicing the art of invisibility.

So now I was in the arena but wasn’t sure of how to get to the press area, which I knew was not far from the rostrum, where speeches were delivered, promises were made, Jimmy Carter was dismissed, and where Reagan would come close to snatching the nomination from Ford.

I walked the perimeter of the arena and finally came to an inclined corridor leading to arena itself. I walked up the stairs and just as I reached the third or fourth step from the top, all the lights in the Kemper Arena went out. I couldn’t see a thing. The darkness didn’t stop the delegates. They just kept cheering, yelling, whistling and applauding. A voice on the PA system was saying something but I couldn’t make it out.

From across the arena a single spotlight shone up and down and side to side, like it was searching for something. Then it landed on me and stopped and 20,000 people in the Kemper started cheering even louder. I mean cheering with passion. The band played some music; I forget what it was.

I began feeling a little panicky in just that one light and with everybody cheering me. The sweat rolled down my face and chest. My shirt was soaked. I looked like hell. And still they cheered. Then I did what I knew might seem like a joke; I looked behind me, thinking the person they were expecting would be there. Or that security guards were finally arriving to drag me off to jail. But they never showed up.

So I did what had to be done.

I waved.

Nothing big. Not like Eisenhower used to do with both arms up, but just a modest little wrist shake to acknowledge the delegates’ worshipful feelings toward me. I thought about the old Frank Capra movie “Meet John Doe,” and wondered about an unknown (me) assuming leadership of a major political party. Of course Doe had to do it by threatening to commit suicide; I was not ready for that.

I would like to tell you that I also thought about who I would pick for my running mate and what I would deal with in my first 100 days, but I had no such thoughts. I simply stood there, dumbstruck and not having a clue about what to do next.

I waved again. The house lights came on and I understood what had happened. In a major breach of security, I had walked up a corridor to the point on the circumference of the arena where friends, family members and guests of Republican VIPs were seated.

They weren’t cheering me. They were cheering Betty Ford, who had been introduced by the guy in the PA system and was being seated at the moment I climbed those stairs.

Betty waved. The delegates forgot me and responded to her. They loved Betty Ford. Didn’t we all?

But I was severely annoyed. This meant that no matter what happened on Election Day, I wouldn’t be able to appoint John Lennon as my secretary of state.

By Jeffrey Page

This is a certainty. Rep. Todd Akin, who is 65, knows less about human reproduction than a precocious 12-year old. His explanation of the relationship between rape and pregnancy is right out of the Dark Ages.

“It seems to be,” he said, “first of all, from what I understand from doctors, it’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to shut the whole thing down,” he said.

As a result of Akin’s bizarre reference to “legitimate rape” – is that the kind where you ask permission? – the Republican Establishment, such as it is, called for him to withdraw from the Senate race in Missouri. But he promptly told Mitt Romney, Karl Rove and Senator Scott Brown, (R-Mass.) and others to go to hell. In the incumbent, Democrat Claire McCaskill, Akin sees easy pickings and nothing like a little ignorance on pregnancy is going to knock him out of the campaign.

Quit the race? When a day after his idiotic remark, Akin apologized but made sure to inform listeners to Mike Huckabee’s radio program that he was running by the grace of you know who? Romney and other critics must be nuts.

So that’s how it stands.

Except that when you ignorantly dismiss an issue affecting half the American population, there are questions you are required to answer.

Congressman Akin:

–How “really rare” is it for a woman who has been raped to get pregnant? You attribute this to some doctors. Identify them.

—How many doctors told you that such pregnancies are really rare? Was it more than two?

–What were their sources? Police records? FBI crime statistics? Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention? Oh, wait. These agencies don’t differentiate between legitimate rape and illegitimate rape, so what information did you examine? You did actually see this information, didn’t you?

–What precisely is a “legitimate rape?” How does a legitimate rape differ from an illegitimate rape? Has anyone else ever used the word “legitimate” to describe a rape? Or are you breaking new ground?

–Do you have any idea of what you’re talking about when you say that a woman’s body “has ways to try to shut the whole thing down”? What are those ways?

–In your apology you said your comment was ill-conceived and wrong, and that you apologize. But you also said, “I used the wrong words in the wrong way.” Please elaborate. And please give an example of how someone could use the wrong words in the right way.

–Please explain why your initial statement and subsequent apology appear on your campaign web site, but not on your Congressional site?

Todd Akin, who is old enough to qualify for Medicare, is the father of six children. You’d think by this time he would know a little something about sex.

jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

A late note on Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader of the Senate, who is an idiot. Of this there can be no doubt. It was Reid, after all, the supposedly distinguished gentleman from Nevada, who said Barack Obama has “no Negro dialect unless he wanted to have one.” That was not in the Stone Age of American politics, but just two years ago. He also chided Obama for his different vocal inflections when speaking before the NAACP and less formal gatherings.

“Negro dialect?” In 2010? (Reid also noted for anyone who cared to listen, that Obama was a “light-skinned” black person.

And now, along comes Harry Reid jumping into the fray over whether Mitt Romney has paid any income tax for the last decade or so. He has not, Reid said. He asserted this on the floor of the Senate, where members can’t be sued for what they say. Someone who worked at Romney’s Bain Capital slipped Reid this juicy bit of information, he said. But alas, it was a confidential tip so Harry was unable to reveal the source’s identity.

And there it hangs: The belief that Romney paid no taxes. Clearly, Reid accomplished what he set out to do.

Meanwhile, some of Romney’s defenders don’t sound very helpful when they go into attack mode against Reid.

First up was Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, who called Reid “a dirty liar” on national TV.

There are problems with Priebus’s logic. If Romney’s tax affairs are Romney’s business and no one else’s, as he and his allies insist, how could Priebus conclude that Reid was lying? He never backed up his “dirty liar” assertion by saying Romney showed him his 1040s. I think Priebus knows as much about Romney’s taxes as I do. Which is nothing at all.

Then there was Senator Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. discussing Reid on television: “I think he’s lying about his statement of knowing something about Romney. I think he has created an issue here. I think he’s making things up.”

Not exactly a ringing endorsement of Romney and his relationship with the Internal Revenue Service. Graham thinks Reid is lying, thinks Reid has created an issue, thinks Reid is making things up. If you’re waiting for Graham to say something for certain, let me know when it comes. In the meantime, his use of think needs a little work. Because if I say I think he’s a dolt it means I can’t be sure.

Interesting part of this contretemps is that, unless I’m seriously mistaken, that was about the extent of the defense of Mitt and his tax habits. The Messrs. Paul, Gingrich, Perry, Cain, Huntsman, Pawlenty, Santorum, and Ms. Bachmann, all of whom had plenty to say (mostly negative) about Romney before he crushed them, have been uncharacteristically silent in their presumed outrage over Reid’s charge against their presumed nominee.

Finally there was Romney himself. In a campaign stop in Nevada, he declared: “Let me also say categorically: I have paid taxes every year. A lot of taxes. A lot of taxes.”

So have I, so have I, Mitt. So has everybody else in this country. We pay sales tax, county tax, village tax, school tax, gasoline tax, and, oh yes, federal and state income taxes.

Here are the questions that apparently will not be answered and thus will not go away. Which taxes do you pay, Mitt? A lot, you say? What’s a lot, Mitt? How much in flat dollars? And how much as a percentage of your adjusted gross income?

Obama’s man David Axelrod put it plainly: Mitt Romney ought to take 10 seconds and release his tax returns. “Why don’t they just put it to rest?” Axlerod said. “What is it that he is hiding?”

jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

I never met Jim Farrell, the district attorney of Sullivan County, but he’s now on my imaginary list of people I’d like to have over for dinner along with Jackie Robinson, Clarence Darrow, Shakespeare. You know what I mean. Farrell, for no other reason than he seems to be one of those rare public officials who refuses to mince words.

My admiration came to light this week when I read about Farrell’s reaction to a judge’s remarks as he sentenced a man Farrell had prosecuted. County Judge Frank LaBuda reasoned that if you’re two years shy of the legal drinking age, and if you nevertheless drink to the point where your blood alcohol level is 50 percent higher than the statutory limit, and if you smash your car into a tree, you somehow become “a hero” for getting two passengers out of the burning wreckage even if you’ve killed your third passenger who, it turned out, was your cousin.

LaBuda noted that driving drunk was “a mistake” on the motorist’s part. Now, I can understand the defendant’s family rallying around him with this dubious argument about “mistakes” and “heroes.” I might offer it myself in a similar circumstance. But the judge?

Charles Wolff, 19, had pleaded guilty to vehicular manslaughter and driving while under the influence of alcohol and marijuana, the Times Herald-Record reported. On the night of the crash, his blood alcohol level was 0.12 percent.

(The legal limit in all states is 0.08 percent, but this doesn’t indicate sobriety. Imagine you weigh 180 pounds and you drink four bloody Marys in one hour, and the world starts spinning out of control and you’re having a little trouble remaining vertical. Guess what. Your blood alcohol level would be 0.08 percent, according to a BAL calculator – www.ou.edu/oupd/bac.htm – offered by the University of Oklahoma.)

It was sentencing day for Wolff, and some of the pleas LaBuda heard could be expected. They were the words people use to describe their kin in the hope of getting a dose of mercy from a judge.

“He is a good kid,” said the father of the cousin who died. The father of one of the injured friends also asked for a sentence of probation and no jail time. So did the other injured friend.

Then Judge LaBuda described Wolff as “a hero” for having rescued his two friends from the crash. He declined the family’s requests for a strictly probationary sentence, and, having the option of sending Wolff away for seven years, sent him to the county jail for six months.

“Even a hero who makes mistakes, there must be accountability for our actions,” said LaBuda, according to a story in the Times Herald-Record. “There must be incarceration when life is lost.”

Farrell was having none of it.

“I would certainly take issue with the judge’s definition of [Wolff] as ‘a hero.’ He is not a hero,” Farrell said. “He caused the death of his cousin.”

One of these days, society is going to take drunken driving seriously. It will begin with an understanding that forgetting to pay a parking ticket is a mistake. Driving drunk into a tree and killing your cousin is a felony.

jeffrey@zestoforange.com

Willie Mays, "the catch," 1954 World Series, the Polo Grounds.

By Bob Gaydos

I wasn’t planning to write for the Zest blog this week because I had other stuff on my mind and nothing about which I felt a need to expound. That wasn’t good enough for my fellow Zester, Mike Kaufman.

He felt a need to call me out in a column he wrote — he actually did two of them — on whether it’s OK to let your dog pee on a neighbor’s mailbox post. Really. Even did a poll on it. Since I thought this question was covered by the “do unto others” credo by which we all aspire to live, I ignored it. But he insisted. Yes or no, Bob, pee or no pee. Exasperated, I answered: No pee! No pee! Never let your dog pee on my or anybody else’s mailbox post! Yucch.

But the pee question turned out to be a straw dog. Mike, a former sports writer, was really calling me out on the designated hitter in baseball, which I had supported in one of my previous posts. At the end of his dog pee column, he added: “NOTE TO BOB GAYDOS: Ron Blomberg of the New York Yankees was the American League’s first designated hitter on Opening Day 1973. Thirty years later he expressed regrets: ‘I screwed up the game of baseball. Baseball needed a jolt of offense for attendance, so they decided on the DH. I never thought it would last this long.’ If even Blomberg can recant, it is not too late for you, Bob. Please come to your senses. Come home to the real game of baseball.”

First of all, Ron Blomberg is one of those Old Timers Day “Oh yeah, he was a Yankee, too“ guys. He had a couple of decent years and faded fast. He was never big enough to screw up the Yankees, let alone the whole game of baseball.

But Blomberg and Kaufman miss the point. There is simply no going back to anything. Baseball has evolved over the years, becoming more attuned to what fans like, which is more offense. It’s why they lowered the pitching mound. Sure, everyone can appreciate a good pitching matchup and no-hitters are special. But a whole season of teams batting .256 facing each other and watching opposing pitchers avoid number eight hitters with .230 averages to get at a pitcher who is an almost sure out is not fun. Nor does it necessarily win games. Good pitching always trumps all else. But when all else is equal, the teams that can hit — and that means mostly American League teams with designated hitters — will prevail. Look at the inter-league games records. The American League destroys the National League

I don‘t know what happens to pitchers when they leave high school. Until then they are usually the best players all around on all their teams. That means they could hit, too. But even before the DH, major league pitchers were no longer feared hitters. Players can’t bunt anymore. It’s a disgrace. The hit and run is almost obsolete. Baseball went bonkers with steroids for a while, and everyone was a home run threat. Now, things are back to seeming normalcy, but next year teams are going to play teams in the other league every day. That’s not fair to American League teams whose pitchers will have to bat. National League teams will gladly find a guy on the bench to add some punch to their anemic lineups.

The point is, the players union will never give up the jobs and the fans who see the DH every day will never go back to so-called “real baseball.” Not that long ago, baseball players used to leave their gloves on the field and wearing a batting helmet was unknown. But once upon a time, in the 1860s, nobody (not even the catcher) wore a glove, the ball was pitched underhanded from 45-feet from home plate, the ball could be caught on a bounce or on the fly for an out and you couldn’t overrun first base. In addition, foul balls were not strikes and if the umpire, standing to the side of the batter, didn’t happen to see the pitch, it didn’t count.

Now, that’s old time baseball, too, and they still play it in Cape May County, N.J., Michael, if you’re interested. For a whole season, I’m sticking with the current version.

* * *

While I’m at it, I might as well take care of all the dog-eared baseball questions. In response to my own poll (“Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio?”), my colleague Jeffrey Page responded: “Bob, What about the Question of the Eternal Triangle: Mantle? Mays? Snider? My heart says Duke. My head says Willie. Mantle? He was pretty good, too.”

OMG, Brooklyn, get over yourself. Yes, New York City had the three best center fielders in baseball in the 1950s, but the Duke was always number three and you know that in your head, if not your heart. Mantle could have been the best ever but he drank like a fish and wrecked his leg and was still an all-time great and notches above Snider. But Willie Mays had it all, including a flair for the dramatic. I watched him rain triples and chase down fly balls all around the Polo Grounds and my head and heart have never doubted his preeminence. Best ever. Willie, Mickey and the Duke. 1,2,3.

* * *

Which brings me back to Michael and his dog pee. The most fascinating thing about his poll to me is that, of the 10 people who replied, four apparently said let your dog go wherever, whenever. I want their names, Michael. I don’t have a dog, but I have a friend who has three and they’re looking for new fields of dreams.

 bob@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

The next time some Second Amendment zealots say they can’t understand what’s so strange (or dangerous) about someone like James Holmes possessing an M-16 semiautomatic rifle, a 12-gauge shotgun, and a couple of .40 caliber semiautomatic handguns, please say a prayer for Veronica Moser.

No need for a formal entreaty, just a please-God reminder that Veronica walked among us for a while, that she had a great smile, that sometimes she liked to wear a pink boa and heart shaped earrings, that she was shown in one picture doing what people her age often must do (trying to rescue the dregs of her ice cream from a cone leaning at a precarious angle), that she was one of the 12 people Holmes murdered in his assault in Aurora, Col.

She was 6 years old. We should remember that as well.

In the months to come, there also will be people offering explanations for Holmes’s felonies and will use his troubled state as an argument against capital punishment.

When that happens, could everyone – people on both sides of the issues of capital punishment and gun control – remind themselves not only of Veronica, but of her mother, Ashley Moser, 25, who Holmes shot into critical condition with bullet wounds to her neck and to her abdominal area, where her unborn child resides.

Additionally, the next time a James Holmes strikes, could someone please read the following list out loud: Fayetteville, Ark., 2; Santee, Calif., 2; Tucson, Ariz., 4.; Florham Park, N.J., 2; Red Lake, Minn., 8; Nickel Mines, Pa., 6; Blacksburg, Va., 32; DeKalb, Ill., 6; Cambridge, Mass., 1; Fort Hood, Texas, 13; Huntsville., Ala, 3; Oakland, Calif., 7.

Those are just 12 of the approximately 75 public shootings that have occurred in the United States during the first 12 years of this new millennium. In the dozen listed we lost 86 of our friends, relatives, and neighbors. There were many more in the 2000s and in decades previous.

Say a prayer. If you don’t know a prayer, just spend a minute remembering them and others we have lost to lunatics with guns.

As for Holmes. Doubtless in the months to come, we will be deluged with explanations for him, the kind of “clarification” we have grown accustomed to over the years, and which some of us are no longer buying. Chances are someone will tell us Holmes had an unhappy childhood, or that he was bullied at school, or that he had a drug dependency, or that he was sexually abused as a child, or that he didn’t get along with his father, or that he didn’t get along with his mother, or that he was paranoid, or that he feared the world, or that he was a loner, or that his girlfriend left him.

Lots of excuses.

Fine, but let us never forget that in addition to walking into that movie house with guns, James Holmes attacked Veronica, and Ashley and all the others out for a midnight movie, with gas (he had a mask) before firing, and that, previously, he had booby trapped his apartment in order to kill as many cops and neighbors as possible. Do I really have to listen to someone tell me how troubled poor James Holmes is?

Doubtless some of these tales about Holmes will be coupled with pleas to Colorado officials to forego seeking a death sentence and go for life imprisonment because it is the more humane thing to do. Must the test of our humanity involve the way we dispose of James Holmes?

A life sentence would mean that if Holmes lives to the age of 80, Colorado taxpayers, possibly including Ashley Moser, would have to shell out enough money to feed him about 61,320 meals. They would pay for his medical care. They would pay for his dental care. They would pay for his clothing. They would pay for everything in his life.

How does society benefit by keeping Holmes alive? Does it demonstrate its humanity? Does it show us as a better people? Not if Holmes is in jail and Ashley Moser has to visit her daughter’s grave. And not when you come to grips with his wish to murder far more people than were in the theater.

I spent most of my life opposed to capital punishment. In most cases, I think I still am, though I accept that anti-death penalty absolutists will disagree. Whatever remains of my humanity is shaken by the likes of the Sons of Sam, the Timothy McVeighs, the Dylan Klebolds and the Eric Harrises. And James Holmes.

Do I, yet again, have to prove my decency by standing for the right of James Holmes to live? I don’t think so. Would society’s decision not to put him to death make the world a better place? I don’t think so.

I hope they serve Holmes whatever he wants for his last meal, and I hope dessert is an ice cream cone.

jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

Ed Gillespie is one of those Republican “strategists” – the Democrats have them, too – who seem to materialize in presidential election years and who are interviewed by TV and print reporters so they can spin issues in favor of their candidates.

They’re also called upon to clean up the mess their candidates occasionally create. Such was Gillespie’s appearance recently in The Further Adventures of Mitt Romney and l’Affaire Bain.

At its core, the issue is this: Romney says he left Bain Capital early in 1999, but government documents filed by Bain in 2002 have him listed as president, CEO, and chairman. How could this be?

Actually, Gillespie said with a straight face, Romney retired “retroactively” from Bain. Neat trick, and you’re left wondering how someone could utter those words without snickering. Gillespie is good; he doesn’t snicker when he says things like that. But you could not be blamed if your first thought after hearing Gillespie’s line is of the famous politician who, when asked a certain question before the grand jury, said: “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”

Would that I could do things retroactively. I could enter high school retroactively and pay attention in class retroactively, read my assignments retroactively, make a decent average for myself retroactively and head off to Princeton retroactively. It, uh, didn’t happen that way.

Retroactively I could be a kinder person. But I and 300 million Americans understand this. Mitt Romney does not.

Here are some people who would benefit from retroactivity:

–The governor of Maine, Paul LePage, could go back several weeks and choose not to compare the Internal Revenue Service to the Gestapo. (This is the same Governor LePage – no relation – who once described the NAACP as a “special interest group” that could “kiss [his] butt” if it objected to his refusal to attend the organization’s state convention.)

“Do you have a sense of what the Gestapo did during World War II?” a reporter from Politico asked LePage.

“Yeah, they killed a lot of people.”

“And the IRS is headed in that direction?”

“Yeah,” LePage said.

“Are you serious?”

“I’m very serious,” LePage said. Later he said, “I’m saying the federal government is taking away the freedom of Americans to make choices.”

Later the governor issued one of those completely meaningless conditional apologies. You know what I mean. “I apologize to Jewish Americans if they feel offended,” LePage said.

“If” they feel offended. For LePage, it’s an unanswered question.

LePage should have met my Uncle Harry, who spent several years in a Nazi forced labor camp in the Pyrenees. With Harry, there was no “if.”

–Nan Hayworth could retroactively rethink her idiotic postcard on which she thanks me for having participated in her telephone town hall. The fact is I wasn’t there.

She could take a minute to understand the silliness of her salutation – “Dear Neighbor” – since we are not neighbors. Not only do we live in separate towns, but in separate counties that are divided by the Hudson.

Note to Mitt: You can’t retroactively retire just as you can’t retroactively kill your Massachusetts health care system on which the Obama plan is based. You supported it as governor. Do you think anyone is going to buy the line that you retroactively think it’s a bad plan?

Or will people recognize your retroactive this-and-that for what it is: Another example of your saying anything – anything – to get elected.

jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

Certain decisions by people with loads of money and monumental pretensions cry out for comment. The same goes for decisions by news editors.

In the Styles section of The Sunday Times just past, we were offered a story about the wedding of a couple in Santa Barbara. He is 30. She is 29 and comes from a rich family; her father was executive producer and co-creator of some popular TV shows.

The reporter gave us 29 breathless and fairly vacuous paragraphs about how the happy couple met (through friends out for a drink), and how the woman found the man acceptable even though he wore a fanny pack (“I knew when his fanny pack didn’t bother me that this was the real thing”), and the fact that she is stylish and he once had worked on the Harvard Lampoon, and that their feelings for each other got warmer during his absence on a previously planned vacation.

Packed into those 29 paragraphs were 1,586 words of which 27 were: “It is not guaranteed but if a stylish woman forgives her date for wearing a fanny pack, all that follows can be pretty much considered a breeze.” This wedding story contained about double the number of words in a typical column by the great Maureen Dowd one of whose recent pieces contained 889 words of which 37 were: “Standing a few feet away from Jerry Sandusky, as he laughed and reminisced with friends in the front row of the courtroom, made me want to take a shower. Just not in the Penn State locker room.”

One of the two pictures accompanying the wedding story showed the newlyweds playing skeeball on two alleys, a little something the bride’s parents had installed when they redesigned their barn so it could be used for what Dad called “the cocktail part of the party.” They also moved a half-acre of earth to create a hill. They felt they needed a hill so the guests would have, in the reporter’s words, “stunning water views during the ceremony.”

The story reported that the bride had consulted “the family psychic” about whether the man was right for her and that the soothsayer’s response was “You know that you know that he’s the one,” which sounds suspiciously non-committal on the seer’s part.

The story took up two-thirds of the page. I know about story placement. I know that a wedding story, unless it’s William and Kate, doesn’t go on Page 1 and that a story about children dying violently doesn’t go in Styles. Some news that got short shrift on the day of the story of the wedding with the ocean view demand attention because their treatment made The Times look foolish.

–That same Sunday edition contained a 466-word story about two Lebanese people killed by shells fired from Syrian territory. One of the victims was a boy in the village of al-Hisheh. He was 8. His father and four siblings were injured. A woman was killed when a shell landed in her home.

–Officials in Myanmar freed 20 people whom they’d seized en route to a major demonstration with political overtones. This was told in 328 words.

–In New York, the police reported that six people had been slain in the last few days. In one case, a woman bludgeoned her son to death. He was 9. A man was shot to death in Bay Ridge with a bullet in his neck. He was 65. The other four dead were in the Bronx and Queens. The Times gave it 632 words.

That’s three life-and-death stories, not one of which involved building a hill so wedding guests could see the water.

page@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

I do this every year around July 4 – sit down with my copy of the Declaration of Independence and marvel at this extraordinary, if imperfect, document, the signing of which amounted to a self-imposed death warrant for Jefferson, the Adamses, Franklin, Hancock and the others. The Declaration is, after all, a 26-count indictment of a sovereign.

The Declaration was the courageous thumb in the eye of George III and a hope for a reasoned future. But, problematically, it didn’t do much for all the participants in that American future.

I’m always astounded by the manner in which the signers described George III and his atrocities. Not once in the Declaration’s 1,381 words did they use his name. Instead, they reduced him to “he.” It said a great deal when the signers informed the world that the King’s outrages against his people entitled him to no more than a pronoun in history.

“He has plundered our Seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our Towns, and destroyed the Lives of our People.”

“He has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies, without the consent of our Legislatures.”

“He has erected a Multitude of new Offices and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their Substance.”

“He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the Executioners of their Friends and Brethren or to fall themselves by their Hands.”

And so on.

Just in case the world didn’t quite understand George’s treachery, the signers declared on paper what many colonists would have been afraid to whisper: “In every stage of these Oppressions we have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble Terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated Injury. A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a free People.”

The Declaration of Independence was not without defect. It spoke of the King’s atrocities but did so on behalf of one class of people, not for all classes.

The signers believed it was “self-evident” that all men are created equal. We, 236 years later, can insert italics to discuss certain truths that Jefferson et al. ignored. All men equal in 1776? It would have been more accurate for the signers to state it as: “all men, but not all men are created equal.”

The nation would require decades and centuries to finish what the Declaration began.

It took America 89 years after the Declaration of Independence to adopt the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which outlaws slavery.

Five years later, the right of all citizens to vote (regardless of race, creed, or – most significantly – previous condition of servitude, but not regardless of sex) was guaranteed by the 15th Amendment.

It would take 144 years after the Declaration was signed for women to get the right to vote.

It was only as recently as 1964 – 48 years ago – that the 24th Amendment ended the payment of poll taxes. In 1971, the voting age was reduced to 18.

In a kind of reverse order, the Declaration has spent the last 236 years catching up to America, which itself hasn’t set speed records when it came to extending rights – or equality – to all.

It had its shortcomings, but when you read the Declaration’s charges against the King, plus the signers’ reasoned explanation to the world of how tyrannical George was and how they persevered in trying to reason with him, you find that you’re light years removed from what passes for political discourse in 2012.

jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

I’m not sure who first confronted a liar and declared, “You, sir, are a stranger to the truth.” Nor do I know how the great Yiddish expression “Pish nisht af mein fus, un dertzail mir az si regant” (Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining) came into being.

But here we are after what seems like the hundred years of the Republican campaign, now with just 131 days left until the election and both expressions have significance.

It finally dawned on the Republicans that they may get their money from guys in white shoes and pastel colored golf blazers, and they may yap on and on about their view that government should not provide any service except what is specifically mentioned in the Constitution, but that elections are decided by ordinary people with mortgages, illnesses, kids to educate, and intense worry about the future of their jobs.

And many of those people are Latino.

So when the Supreme Court tossed most of the onerous Arizona immigration measure – salvaging the part that allows the police to declare like Peter Lorre “Your papers are not in order” as they write a ticket for overtime parking – reporters called on Mitt Romney for comment. But Romney had a problem:

His party’s Supreme Court made the ruling against most of the Arizona law.

His party’s Arizona governor had enacted the law with her signature.

His party’s outer fringes have serious problems with people born someplace overseas.

His party’s members still capable of rational thought, who have resisted the onslaught of the Tea Party, understand that that the GOP’s continued nativist fear and/or loathing of immigrants – as the immigrant population increases – will cost them dearly in elections to come, maybe starting with the one in November.

So, did Mitt call a news conference and proclaim, “This ruling stinks?” Or did he assert, “The court should be commended?”

He did neither. Instead he did what he does so well. He ducked having to face the press on what is arguably the most contentious issue of this election year, and issued a gutless press release in which he attacked President Obama’s executive order on allowing certain undocumented young people to remain in the U.S. And Mitt declined to say anything else about the specifics of the court’s ruling.

Romney doesn’t understand that refusing to respond seriously – and issuing a press release is such a refusal – when you’re after the most important job in the world, is a form of dishonesty. It’s kind of like the time Romney said Obama is unqualified to be president because he’s “never worked in the private sector.” This of course ignored Obama’s work as a writer, attorney, teacher and community organizer. That’s OK Mitt, maybe no one noticed.

Maybe he had nothing to say into a TV camera for fear of offending some Republican yahoos. Or maybe some Hispanic or Latino voters, but he will continue to condescend to them by uttering the required “Buenos Dias” at southern and western campaign stops and then turn the show over to his son Craig, who is fluent in Spanish, to deliver the message.

“How can we trust him on anything?” Newt Gingrich has said.

“If a man’s dishonest to obtain a job, he’ll be dishonest on the job,” Mike Huckabee has said.

Romney is a “chameleon,” Michelle Bachmann has said.

Chameleon? Mitt? In 1994 Romney (running for the Senate), said abortion should be safe and legal – though he opposed it. In 2002 Romney (running for governor), asked abortion supporters for their backing. That same year, Romney responded to a Planned Parenthood survey, saying he supported state funding of “abortion services” under Medicaid. “In 2005 Romney (as governor), identified himself as pro-life. In 2007 Romney (running for president), was quoted in The Times: “I never said I was pro-choice, but my position was effectively pro-choice.” This year (running for president), Romney said Planned Parenthood should be defunded.

Hold on. I hope that’s just rain on my leg.

jeffrey@zestoforange.com