Watching TV.

All day.

Well, six hours anyway. I wouldn’t miss tomorrow’s health care political extravaganza. I’m planning to crack open a brewski and a bag of Cheet-Os, and splay out in front of the boob tube for the full six excruciating hours. C-Span on steroids.

What’s wrong with me? Don’t I know health reform is dead? Don’t I know the Obama administration was dumped into the dustbin of history following election to the Senate of Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown, which overturned what all viewed as a permanent Democrat/Kennedy lock on the ultimate safe seat?

Oops, there I go, getting wonkish. Well, that’s what it is with me. I used to cover health policy – wrote, edited and published a newsletter called “Health Policy Week,” for God’s sake – and I can’t get it out of my blood. The issues I covered during 1982-86 are, basically, the same issues as today. They weren’t resolved then – indeed, the solutions of the ‘80s and ‘90s (managed care, prospective payment) may have made things worse – and there’s a fair chance they won’t be resolved this time.

But that doesn’t have anything to do with my plans for tomorrow. Sure, I believe passionately that health reform must pass or this great nation will go bankrupt. And yes, in my opinion the current compromise pretty much stinks, may not work, needs the public option or something like it, yada yada yada. Health policy does indeed matter to me. But the reason I’ll be glued to the TV tomorrow has more to do with spectator sports. What NFL football and NBA basketball are to others, health reform is to me. Even if I had a full schedule, I’d cancel all engagements.

Now, as it happens, I don’t have any engagements tomorrow. The decks are clear for stultifying TV. I’ve been home from the hospital since last Friday, recovering from total knee replacement.

Thirty-plus years ago, skiing, I ripped the cartilage in my right knee. I had surgery and did great for 25 of those years, but the bill came due at last.

How did I make ready for the impending operation? By strapping on my rusty-trusty brace and going to Colorado with son Sam and buddy-from-college Bill Tetzlaff, where we skied our brains out. We had a spectacular week, my skiing was about as good as it ever is (not all that great), the knee held up pretty well considering, and I got off the plane at Dulles barely able to walk. For the next two weeks, I’m pleased to report, it hurt like a son-of-a-gun. Constantly. So when they gave me the gas, I had no regrets. Goodbye, right knee, and good riddance. You served me well but it’s time for you to go.

What does this have to do with health reform?

I haven’t gotten any bills yet, but wonder how much I just cost Medicare? $35,000? $45,000? $55,000? Don’t matter to me; I ain’t paying a penny. Medicare is the best health insurance I’ve had since the golden days of Blue Cross in the ‘60s. For total premiums of around $6,000 a year (today’s dollars), Carol and I have health insurance about five light-years better than what we were paying $18,000 a year for in 2004 dollars. Given the steady advance of health cost inflation (7%-10% a year, vs. a CPI advance of around 2%-3% a year), that $18,000 would be about $30,000 today.

It isn’t costing me a cent for an operation that (a) didn’t exist when I originally injured my knee, (b) is as high-tech and invasive as any you’d care to list, and (c) is really, when you think about it, elective surgery. Sure, if I didn’t get the knee replacement, eventually I’d have to stop playing tennis, skiing, walking and standing, but hey: I’d live.

The person who’s paying for my delightful knew knee, Dear Reader, is you. Us. The American taxpayer. And we can’t keep doing it. When one sector of society keeps gobbling up GDP at a 7%-10%/year rate, eventually that sector gobbles up all of society. I get a knee, you (and your kids, and your kids’ kids) get bankrupt. Even I, the guy enjoying the knee, knows that isn’t fair.

So what the heck. Let’s all take tomorrow off, watch TV, and root for the good guys.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. This wouldn’t be a blog posting without a little marketing thrown in, so here it is. Assuming I’m on my feet by then, I’ll be appearing Wednesday, March 10, at 7:30 p.m., at the Duncan Library in Alexandria VA. If you’re in the D.C. area, please pack up some rotten eggs and tomatoes and come on over. Here’s a link to the Duncan Library: http://www.alexandria.lib.va.us/branches/duncan_map.html

P.P.S. Yeah, yeah, I know, it’s been forever since I posted anything to this blog or e-blast or whatever you want to call it. But here I am again, homebound and missing you all. To remind you, you are receiving this love note because, in the mists of the past, you agreed to do so. I hereby reiterate my standing promise: I will not share or otherwise abuse your e-mail address and, of course, you can opt off any time you want, no hard feelings.

I’d like to bring your attention to an event 700 miles away, but one you may wish to attend just the same — Chicago Day at the Bethesda (MD) Library on Saturday, Oct. 24.

There’ll be Chicago-style hot dogs, deep-dish pizza and headliners galore, including –

• Scott Simon of NPR on Chicago politics. Simon is the author of a hilarious new novel on Chicago politics, “Windy City.”

• Clarence Page, Pulitzer Prize-winning Chicago Tribune colunmnist, on Chicago’s storied and stormy journalism.

• And a Cubs-vs.-White-Sox smackdown pitting David Broder, Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist (for the Cubs), vs. Mark Plotkin of WTOP (for the White Sox). The moderator is Paul Dickson, author of the recently released Third Edition of “Dickson’s Baseball Dictionary.” Dickson is at work on a biography of Bill Veeck, under whose ownership the White Sox had their most glorious of glory days.

Also: A panel on Chicago after the Great Fire; a panel on the two world’s fairs, the 1893 Columbian Exposition (subject of the best-seller “The Devil in the White City”) and the 1934 Century of Progress; and long-lost, much beloved Riverview Amusement Park. I’m moderating the Riverview panel. I’ve invited two old pals to join me — Elliot Greene, whose family ran a hot-dog stand across from Riverview, and Bill Costanza, who attended Lane Technical High School across street from Riverview.

The all-day event begins at noon and ends with a meet-the-speakers-and-eat-the-pizza reception 7-9 p.m. at the Edgemoor Club, three blocks from the library. View the flyer at http://f1.grp.yahoofs.com/v1/0L_ZSqvQsrwKIu0BNzDwNKaozhu8O68zPjhPKi-k2Y4vAayKoXqOEbu4QWKlKsHXoI7MOnmUMa9J9affFyBXDK8Yskckp1FHQwiy/Chicago%20Day%204.pdf

The library is at 7400 Arlington Rd., Bethesda, MD 20814. Here’s a link to a Google map:

http://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/Apps/Libraries/branchinfo/be.asp#map&ved=0CA4QngIwAA

For more information, please contact me at keycom@verizon.net or 301-656-8753.

Hope to see you there!

Frank S. Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. It’s ages since I posted to this blog — not because I didn’t want to, but because I’ve been hugely busy doing other (good) things. I’ve almost finished writing TO WALK HUMBLY — might even write “The End” this coming week. When it happens, you’ll know. And maybe at that time I’ll start posting more regularly again.

I received quite a few responses to my last posting, “Traffic Court.” That’s typical. There are about 850 people on this distribution list and they (you) respond in droves whenever I post. (I post on the Web too, at http://tolovemercy.com/frank_joseph_blog/, but I don’t think anyone reads it there. I’ve spoiled you all.)

The responses are gratifying indeed. Despite the salutation, I don’t actually have 850 personal friends (though nearly everyone on the list is at least an acquaintance, if only via email).

My postings have diminished sharply in the last year, as long-time “Friends of Frank” are aware. When I started this list about three years ago, in the rush of early discovery I posted once a week or oftener. Then the frequency started to decline, eventually dwindling down to less than once a month. As they say in email-land,  .

The principal reason the postings have declined is simple and crass: This blog or e-blast or whatever you call it was for the purpose of marketing my first novel, TO LOVE MERCY. And it worked. Many of you guys bought, read, and (if you’re telling the truth) loved TO LOVE MERCY. Not only that, you advocated for it, posted lavish praise for it on Amazon.com and BN.com, became my ambassadors. Thank you, thank you and thank you again: I am forever in your debt.

But TO LOVE MERCY, like most novels, had its day — and that day has passed. Right now, with TO WALK HUMBLY still not finished and TO DO JUSTICE a mere distant gleam in my eye, I ain’t got nuttin’ to market. So, few posts. How’d that go again?  .

There’s a lesser reason why I’m not posting very often, and that is that it takes way more time than you’d think. I get 20-30 responses, say, and of course I must reply. Some of those replies are no more than a  :)  or a  , but even that takes time.

And when, in response to something I’ve written, someone pours out his or her heart, or takes me to task, or riffs on my riffs, why, I have to respect that, take focus and respond appropriately. That takes LOTS of time. When I was posting a lot about race a year or two ago, for example, I sometimes was responding for 2-3 days following a particularly provocative posting.

This last posting, I retold a personal experience (in traffic court) that startled me. FYI, I wrote almost the entire draft of that post in the 20-30 minutes it takes the Metro to get from Judiciary Square to Friendship Heights. I finished it sitting in the sun at a table outside Starbucks: Total elapsed time, no more than 45 minutes. It was fresh in my mind and it poured right out. As I wrote, I realized it was great material for a short story almost as written, and I plan to turn it into one.

You guys responded vigorously, as usual, and — as is often the case — many responses were surprising. You didn’t always read my story the way I thought I wrote it. Some of you focused on aspects and drew conclusions that didn’t jibe with what I thought you “ought” to think and feel. But hey, that’s the fascinating thing about writing. It’s always that way, and writers like me ought to get a life, pull up our socks, sit back and enjoy it.

So now, presenting … the response I enjoyed most. This is from Lynn Rotman Ansfield, one of the many on this list with whom I went to high school. (Yes, I promoted TO LOVE MERCY to my fellow Rich High alums, and boy was THAT a good idea. I wrote an email to the high-school alumni list that I still think is one of my most brilliant direct-marketing pieces ever. It had my 18-year-old, crew-cut graduation photo on top, and the headline was: “Here’s How I Came Out.”)

Lynn now lives in Madison WI where she has a happy life indeed, married to a doctor, three great kids, a long and successful career as an aide in the Wisconsin Legislature. All three of her kids are writers in one way or another, and she says that writing was her secret ambition. I’m not surprised. Read what Lynn wrote:

Dear Frank –

I, too, received a speeding ticket this year after 50(!) ticketless years of driving. I deserved the ticket and sent in the fine without complaint. But I have to tell you about the ticket I didn’t get.

I was driving my 16-year-old grandson to a Wendy’s Drive-in just minutes from his high school, after driving him all the way home. He became “starved” for his usual after-school three cheeseburgers the minute we entered his home. As I retraced our route back past the high school, we discussed a movie he wanted to see, and I missed a stop sign that I had seen nearly every day for years.

I stopped just past the intersection and called the local police on their non-emergency number. “I just ran a stop sign with my grandson in the car,” I told the dispatcher.

I could hear in her voice her recognition of the lesson I was trying to teach my grandson. She told me that she couldn’t issue a ticket, since my offense wasn’t seen by an officer. “But,” she told me, “take this as a personal warning and concentrate on your driving.”

I turned to my grandson for his approval of my honesty. “Grandma,” he said, “that was the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen you do.”

On second thought, he probably is right.

– Lynn

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. No P.S. this time. Ain’t nuttin’ to flog. Direct-marketing secret: Did you know the P.S. is widely believed, among direct-marketing practitioners like myself, to be the second most powerful place in any sales letter? That’s believed to be so because prospects read the opening, then drop immediately to the P.S. — looking, presumably, for the juiciest stuff.

P.P.S. Oh what the hell. All right, there IS a P.S., and here it is: I have a carton and a half of copies of TO LOVE MERCY sitting on the credenza behind me that’d make great presents for, um, Memorial Day. Or Independence Day. I mean, whatever. Just buy ‘em. The cover price is $14.95 but for you, dear Friends of Frank, this week only, such a deal, $9.99 (OK, $10) but I eat the postage. And autographed! Try to beat that on Amazon.com, I dare you.

I appeared in Traffic Court today. I’d been stopped for going 44 in a 30 zone. I was guilty but, naturally, crestfallen. Despite the careless way I drive (anyone will tell you so), I hadn’t had a moving violation on my record for a long time — 10 years or more.

That’s what I told the officer — minus the part about the habitual carelessness, not to mention a certain insouciance regarding traffic laws in general. She said, “Why don’t you go down and tell that to the judge?” “Would it do any good?” I asked. “You never know,” she replied.

So I suit up — one always wants to look one’s best in court; if you doubt it, watch any random episode of Judge Judy — and find myself before Hearing Examiner Mark Green in Rm. 1145 of the D.C. Municipal Building, Bureau of Adjudication. It’s more like a large office than a courtroom, with the hearing examiner seated behind a desk with a keyboard and screen in front of him. Along each side wall are rows of chairs where we miscreants sit. There are only two of us.

The other is a large and bulky white woman of advancing age. She is very white indeed. Her white hair flies around in unruly fashion. She wears a men’s dress shirt with blue and white stripes, exaggerating the pale effect. She is squeezed into a pair of jeans a size or two too small, and she is a woman who should never wear jeans to begin with. She has on brown suede sneakers that don’t go with anything else. Her head is a mallet. She looks for all the world like a female version of Arnold Dornfeld, my sainted editor at City News Bureau of Chicago a lifetime ago. If she wore muddy work boots and a red-checked flannel shirt, I’d have taken her for Dornie.

On her large bosom rests a large brown wooden cross, the kind you see on nuns in mufti. Given her lack of courtroom style sense, I think, maybe that’s what she is.

Her case is called first. She has been accused of running a stop sign in Northwest D.C. a few blocks from where I was stopped, though on a different day. As she takes her seat at a long wooden table in front of the judge — the only courtroom-like accessory in the room — she slips me a conspiratorial look. I respond with a perfunctory smile and look away, annoyed. I am not her ally.

She pleads not guilty and explains at length, punctuating her testimony with digressions, asides, and inappropriate laughter. She goes on and on, saying too much, laughing when she shouldn’t, looking sidelong toward me for support. But my gaze is now directed purposefully toward Hearing Examiner Green and Officer Santos.

She winds down at last. The hearing examiner taps and taps at his keyboard, for minutes. What in the world is he writing, a novel?

Finally he looks up and asks whether she has anything to add. She looks flustered for the first time, as if she’s been asked an unexpected question by a severe teacher. She flounders a bit, then says no. He taps more. She squirms with discomfort in the silence.

Then she starts to talk. She repeats portions of her story, adding semi-snide commentary. She makes a point about the black SUV in front of her, if you want to see someone who REALLY ran that stop sign. She reminds the hearing examiner how small her car is and how defenseless against SUVs like that big black one. It’s red, she says, not for the first time. A Festiva. 1994.

More taps. She squirms again, then launches into a complaint about how many hours, days actually, it took to schedule this hearing. The hearing examiner looks up inquiringly. “Of course,” she says, “you probably can’t do anything about THAT.”

More taps, more silence, then the ruling is rendered. Hearing Examiner Green recounts the facts, the applicable section of the D.C. Municipal Code, and pronounces his decision: Waive the points but pay the fine. Wow, lady, I think, you lucked out.

I hear a sound and shift focus from the hearing examiner to her. Her shoulders are sagging from their cocky elevation into a slump, and she is sobbing.

“That’s an awful lot of money,” she chokes out.

No one says a word. In the silent room, her sobs are the only sound.

After a minute or two, she regains control enough to ask what’s next. the hearing examiner says she can go to Rm. 1157 and pay the fine.

“Can I use a credit card? That way I won’t have to pay until next month’s Social Security check comes in.”

The hearing examiner doesn’t seem to know. “You can pay on line too,” he says.

“I’m not on line,” she says.

She stands up; collects her giant blue bag with stuff overflowing from it and the blue plastic water bottle she filled at home; turns, opens the door, and stalks out. The hearing examiner calls me to the chair. As I’m getting seated, the door opens behind me and she sticks her head back in the room.

“Thank you,” she says, and closes the door.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. I admitted with explanation, told my story, and asked that he waive the $100 penalty because I’d misread the website instructions. He waived the penalty and the points but let the $100 fine stand. I said thanks, picked up my stuff and headed out the door, thinking I’d had a pretty good day.

Dear Friend of Frank,

I was on television yesterday, not once but twice. In the morning I was interviewed by an eighth-grader at Westland Middle School in Bethesda MD, and in the evening I read from TO LOVE MERCY at an event in a Baltimore coffee shop, the Koba Cafe, sponsored by www.AuthorsBookshop.com, one of the many fine vendors where you can still buy a copy of TO LOVE MERCY for the old Amazon price of $11.66 (cover price $14.95). Autographed yet.

If you’d known about it, you could have watched the AuthorsBookshop.com event live in real time because it was streamed onto the Web. (God, can you believe what I just wrote? In 1990, that sentence would have been gibberish. If I’d uttered it, they’d have taken me away.)

The fact that you didn’t know about it is no matter though, because it has been posted in all its glory at www.BookBurn.com/video for your video enjoyment. Why not log on right now, assuming you have an hour to spare. Or you can cut that to about 15 minutes by skipping the foreplay and just watching my reading, which starts about 30% of the way in. But …

… the foreplay is fun, and not entirely because of the great music that begins the event (see below). In the opening few seconds of the video, I discover the event is being webcast (webcasted?) and call Carol on my cell phone — another thing I’d've been unlikely to do in 1990. My lawyer Steve Paley, the earliest of early adopters, had a proto-cell-phone around that time. It was so big and heavy he had to lug it around in a gadget bag.

‘Hey!’ I said to Carol on the cell phone. ‘This is live! Go watch it!’ She dutifully logged on while I stood in front of the camera and made an ass of myself for a few seconds. This has been recorded for posterity and all time. I invite you to watch it right now at www.BookBurn.com/video.

It turned out to be a lovely event, not least because of the music that preceded and ended it, three songs by the extremely talented Safai (sp?) Grochowski and her sister Shelley (sp?). Safai’s husband Brad is the genius behind AuthorsBookshop.com and the guy who cooked up this event in the first place.

The school session won’t even be broadcast or webcast, but it will be shown intra-school just before the Westland Book Fair, when it will stimulate the sale of dozens of copies of TO LOVE MERCY. In my dreams.

Both these events were very low-tech — camcorders on tripods, no lights. Real TV involves so much heavy stuff, it takes two or three trips just to lug it from the car to a field shoot. I know, because lately I’ve been doing these back-breaking shleps myself. I’ve been co-producing a TV show for the Friends of the Library, to be aired on community access TV some day if we ever get it “in the can”. This has required me to obtain certification as both a field producer and a studio producer, and learn more than a bit about TV. Two things I’ve learned:

– It’s bad to clown in front of the camera the way I did last night. Even if you’re nervous, don’t let it show.
– It’s good to be relaxed, engaging, natural and enthusiastic, qualities that are difficult to gin up if you’re feeling nervous, and who isn’t nervous unless they’re  on TV all the time?

I took on this TV project to help the Friends, of which I am vice president. But I also took it on because it looked like an easy entree to something three-dimensional and cool after an uncool lifetime in two dimensions as a writer, editor and publisher.

Well, here’s what I’ve discovered. Anything “cool” about TV has resulted from painstaking pre-planning. Because of the gear and cost and manpower, “real” TV lacks the spontaneity possible when one writes. Even on the simplest field shoot you must arrange for someone to run the camera; in the studio, multiply that to no fewer than 7 or 8 behind-the-scenes people. Afterward, you must spend hours with another technical person, an editor, assembling your footage into a coherent 30-minute show. If you think those “reality” shows are actual reality, think again.

Another thing that ought to have occurred to me about TV is that, by the time I finally got around to it, it’s no longer cool. Well, video is cool, but TV as we knew it in the days of Uncle Miltie is going the way of the buggy whip. Even cable is a yawn. These days, even middle-schoolers produce TV shows, and it’s about as easy to obtain a camcorder as it was to buy a Kodak Brownie when I was a kid.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. As is obvious, my blog output has declined lately to near zero. I’ve been busy finishing TO WALK HUMBLY, one of hopefully two sequels to TO LOVE MERCY. It’s the early to mid ’50s and Steve and Sass have re-encountered one another at Hyde Park High School. Stay tuned.

I am not a sports fan and never have been. I paid a huge price for this when I was a kid, living as I did among White Sox and Cubs fans of the most rabid variety, e.g., 8-year-olds. During one sidewalk dispute, I failed to know some fact so basic that the others started ganging up on me. (Not the first time.) They demanded I name my favorite player and I couldn’t remember a single one, on either team. No Luke Appling, no Dave Philley, no Bill Wight … no Phil Cavaretta, no Andy Pafko, no Peanuts Lowrey … nuttin’. Finally, after more merciless pushing, I coughed up Bill Nicholson, Cubs shortstop. Or so I thought. But a check at Baseball-Almanac.com shows that Bill Nicholson played … right field.
Thank God my grandson K.A. isn’t similarly cursed. Just the opposite. Not only can K.A., 8½, hit and throw a ball like a 10-year-old. He also is a huge, dare I say obsessive, fan. In warm seasons, his love for our hapless Washington Nationals is without bounds. And in winter, it’s the NHL Washington Capitols all the time.
I don’t follow sports but I do love my grandson. Occasionally I’ll glance at the sports pages to have something to talk about. Recently the headline said the Caps were on a 6-game winning streak, their longest ever. When I saw K.A., I said something original like, ‘How about them Caps?’
Me: Think they can keep it up?
K.A.: Oh yeah!
Me: Who do they play next?
K.A.: Montreal Canadiens.
Me: Who’s gonna win?
K.A.: Capitols!
At that moment, my evil alter ego, Foxy Grandpa, emerged. I said, “Wanna bet?”
K.A.: Ten bucks.
I told him I didn’t think he had $10. He ran into his bedroom and came back waving bills. When he counted them out, though, there were only $3.
Foxy Grandpa: Put your money away. Here’s the bet: If the Caps win, I’ll shave off my moustache. If the Canadiens win, you have to shave your head.
(Note: I am not a total sadist. I already knew the kid was due for a haircut.)
So we shook.
A week passes and it’s the following Saturday, game day. Foxy Grandpa has entirely forgotten about the bet. He goes out all day, doing stuff, and rolls in around 7. Carol is standing there with the fishy look.
Carol: K.A. just called.
Me: Mmm?
Carol: He sounded very worried.
Me: Mmm?
Carol: He said you’re making him shave his head.
I had the impulse to duck. But ol’ Foxy Grandpa, bursting out of my id the way The Alien bursts out of John Hurt’s chest, started roaring with laughter.
I stopped laughing and started apologizing without really feeling apologetic. What I felt was a surge of pride and love, and the tears in my eyes weren’t all from laughter. But I told Carol I’d go over and let K.A. off the hook.
Next morning, I called Shawn to tell her I was on my way over.
Shawn: Did you know K.A. shaved his head?
Me: [Groans, then the laughter begins. Foxy Grandpa is grabbing for the controls.]
Shawn: He said he made a bet with you.
Foxy Grandpa: [Laughter grows louder.]
Carol (in the background): Is she mad?
Foxy Grandpa: Are you mad?
Shawn: I’m proud of him.
Foxy Grandpa (the tears coming up again): Me too.
Shawn had not actually shaved K.A.’s head, just given him a heavy trim. I drove over with our haircutting kit so she could smooth things out with the electric clippers. I couldn’t wait to see my beloved grandson and deliver some smarmy lesson about being a Man of Your Word. But when I got there, I didn’t even mention the matter, just gave him a big hug.
I figured, he’s learned this lesson on his own. He doesn’t need a pat on the back from Foxy Grandpa, or anyone.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. I’m going skiing! Me and Mister Sam connect with my old friend from college, Bill Tetzlaff, tomorrow at North Lake Tahoe for a week of guy fun. Ta-ta.

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As an old ex-Chicago newsman, I for one am hoping Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich resists the calls to resign. I haven’t had this much fun in a long time.

Guys like Blagojevich have been making Chicagoans merry since Matthias “Paddy” Bauler, the 19th Century ward boss, uttered his deathless words, “Chicago ain’t ready for reform.”

When I lived there, every Chicagoan I knew savored political corruption. We stood in awe of the slick operations of Jake Arvey, the power behind so many thrones. We gasped when cops in the old Summerdale district were caught running a booming business in stolen property. We doffed our hats to Mayor Daley the Elder when he stole the 1960 election for Jack Kennedy, using such time-honored traditions as having dead people vote. (The phrase ‘Vote early and often’ was born in my home town.)

In between bouts of actual corruption, we could enjoy the music of such worthies as long-time City Councilman Vito Marzullo, who once told the Sun-Times:

“I ain’t got no axes to grind. You can take all your news media and all the do-gooders in town and move them into my 25th Ward, and do you know what would happen? On election day we’d beat you fifteen to one. The mayor don’t run the 25th Ward. Neither does the news media or the do-gooders. Me, Vito Marzullo, that’s who runs the 25th Ward, and on election day everybody does what Vito Marzullo tells them . . . ”

In Chicago, corruption meant the Democratic Party – because Republicans almost never got elected within the city limits. But Republicans ruled downstate, and didn’t mind giving us big-city folks a run for our corruption money. Who could forget Illinois Secy. of State Paul Powell (R), discovered in possession of three-quarters of a million dollars in bribes (in small bills), stuffed in shoeboxes in his permanent hotel room in Springfield?

In Chicago, corruption also meant the Mob. Don’t get me started telling Mob stories; I’d never stop. Suffice it to say that we journalists had a tradition, from which we never varied, of prominently posting the mobster’s nickname in every story. Let’s see, there were –

– Mob boss Tony “Big Tuna” Accardo (previously known as “Tough Tony” and also “Joe Batters,” but re-monickered following a Florida fishing trip)
– Joey “Doves” Aiuppa (so named, I think, because of a little matter involving smuggling racing pigeons across state lines)
– Frank “The Enforcer” Nitti (no explanation necessary)
– Paul “The Waiter” Ricca (his real name was Felice DeLucia, Wikipedia informs me – why’d he switch from such a euphonious name?)
– Sam “Teetz” Battaglia (go ahead, guess)
– And my personal favorite, Jackie “The Lackey” Cerone

The nicknamification of mobsters had the effect of turning them from heinous brutes into Robin Hoods. Similarly with our corrupt pols, whose antics often strained credulity. Mob story or political scandal, there was one or the other every time you opened a newspaper or turned on the TV. You could take this stuff seriously for a while - and organizations like the Better Government Assn. did, as well as stiff-necked liberals from Hyde Park or the Gold Coast. But as to the rest of us, after a while you just had to laugh. Corruption became our favorite spectator sport.

If that was true for the average Joe, it was true in spades for us self-styled hard-bitten journalistic heirs of Ben Hecht and Charlie MacArthur. From an early age, we City News kids and AP cub reporters cultivated an air of cynicism to cover up the idealism we felt. Aping our elders (if not betters) – guys like Ray Brennan and Art Petacque and Bobbie Loughran and Bill Garrett and Arnold Dornfeld of sainted memory (some of whom actually covered the great Capone, or anyway so averred) – we took to smoking and wise-cracking and mistreating nice girls and putting our feet up on desks and drinking more than was good for us. Some of us still do some of those things, I’m told.

Now comes the magnificently named Rod Blagojevich, the latest – and, dare I say, greatest – in this long line of goons, buffoons and poltroons.

The jaw drops at Blagojevich’s arrogance and stupidity. (Oops, sorry – “alleged” arrogance and stupidity.) Here’s a guy who’s been under a microscope for several years – multiple investigations, plummeting popularity – I mean, from some of the comments the FBI taped, the guy himself even knew he was being bugged. Yet on he went, blabbing away.

After Obama’s election, there was a brief shining moment when Chicago suddenly was the coolest place in America. For a week or two, I and all my Chicago friends past and present kvelled with pleasure that the world was suddenly in love with our town. Then along came Blagojevich like a sullen storm to blow the picture apart.

But did he? Not really. I think Mr. Blagojevich did a favor in disguise for me and my Chicago friends, and the rest of the world besides. What Blagojevich really is saying to me and you is this:

‘Sure, Chicago has a great skyline and great pizza. Sure, we’re a nice place to visit and even a nice place to live, especially if you like bad weather. Sure, we’re friendlier than New Yorkers. And sure, we gave you a president who, even though he’s a transplant, looks like the real Chicago deal.

‘Love us if you will, or hate us: your choice. But don’t kid yourself about us. Hear me now: I, Rod Blagojevich, am the real deal too.’

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. Anyone want to rent our home for the Inaugural? Call me — 301-656-8753.

It’s been hard to concentrate. All week. Monday I couldn’t write, so I assuaged some guilt and manned the phones for Obama for six hours. Tuesday I couldn’t write, think or do anything — except vote, then plan for the big evening.

Our dear friends Nick and Tory were coming for dinner plus the big show afterward. Carol was cooking, so I prepared too in my own way. I wrote up a list of the five TV channels I’d be surfing. I went over my state-by-state predictions (Obama 354, McCain 184 — pretty good, Frank!). I set out three bottles of whiskey, just in case.

Now it’s Wednesday, the Big Day + 1, and again, I can’t concentrate. Phone calls. Emails. Visits. Exultations. Condolences with my Republican friends. (Sure I have Republican friends. Every Democrat needs them, or how else will we ever struggle out of the Bushes? My advice to Democrats: Go befriend a Republican or two.)

The emails today have been especially interesting. Because I’m too distracted to compose much of an email myself, I’m sharing two others I received. The first is from my cousin Maura Judkis, a Web producer at U.S. News & World Report and recent George Washington University graduate. The second is from … one of those Republican friends of mine.

In case you didn’t make it out onto the street last night, in case you aren’t 22 any more, in case you don’t have the whole future shimmering before you, well … here’s Maura, to tell you what you missed:

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This is what it’s like to be in D.C. on election night. As I write this, at 4:24 a.m., having just returned home, I can still hear a few car horns blaring. At our neighborhood bar for the first wave of results, and as the fries and pitchers of beer come to our table, we toast nervously to early returns from D.C., Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Illinois. But with each state CNN calls, we grow bolder. “I’m going to cry when he gives his winning speech.” “If he gives his winning speech.” We knock on wood. We clink our glasses. We turn to the TV at the sound of CNN’s dramatic prediction percussion, and yell at it when they show a hologram of will.i.am instead. “CNN is such a tease.”

We care about nothing more than Ohio and Virginia. And they come, with sizeable margins - first one, then the other. At exactly 11 p.m., it’s all over. And that’s when everyone takes to the streets. Bodies stream towards U Street, the most historic black neighborhood in D.C. Someone sets off fireworks about 40 feet away. At the intersection of 14th and U, people young and old dance around a drum circle. Kids climb to the top of traffic lights, trees, anything with a view. Cars, honking at first in frustration, resign to the fact that they aren’t going anywhere, and honk to the beat of “O-BA-MA.” Someone produces a giant American flag out of nowhere, and runs through the crowd with a conga line forming behind. Another guy wears a banana costume. Our president-elect - though at this point, I have not yet thought of him as this - starts his speech, and we can’t get to a TV, because all of the bars are full. Cars park in the middle of the street, open their windows, and turn the radio broadcast of the speech up to full volume for everyone to hear. “Yes we did.” It starts to pour.

We’d left our umbrellas behind in the excitement. Makeup smudges around my eyes, and water drips down my back. A friend and I head down the street to the first bar that has any space to breathe – 3 blocks later, on a street full of bars, we arrive. A drink to dry off. The place start to close. We walk down 16th street to the sound of honking horns. Everyone high-fives everyone. I drop my friend off – she’s tired, and it’s 2:30 a.m., so on my own, I follow the sound of screaming. It leads me back to 16th street, and I enter a parade of hundreds walking down the middle of the street. We join thousands at the White House, screaming and dancing and singing in Lafayette Park. “Na-na-na-na hey-hey-hey, goodbye!” “Pack it up!” “We are the champions!” If I can hear it from my apartment six blocks away, Bush can certainly hear it from within. Did it disrupt his sleep, his peace of mind?

I watch the Secret Service snipers patrol the roof. A stranger inexplicably asks for a picture with me. A hipster on a vintage bike holds up his handmade victory sign, but the marker has started to run in the rain. Colleagues join me, and the mass starts to move. Up 15th, across K, down 13th to Pennsylvania Avenue, and then – yes, we’re walking to the Capitol, drums beating and photographers in everyone’s faces, and drivers still laying on their horns. We meet a British guy who is in D.C. on holiday to the America for the first time. “So we’re going to the White House, then?” “No, this is the Capitol.” “There’s not a bloody bar open this late?” The rain has stopped, and we’ve walked two miles. They climb a statue – the umpteenth thing to have been climbed tonight, and they are starting to run out of chants. The lessening crowd looks behind at the Capitol dome, ahead towards the Washington Monument, and down from the statue, and the phrase on the tip of everyone’s tongue, but that no one has dared to say, is “this is all, at last, ours.”

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And now this, from my Republican friend. She is not merely Republican; she is PASSIONATE — a true member of the “base”. She not only opposed a Democratic victory, the prospect actually seemed to frighten her. Yet read this lovely, gracious message, which I reprint in its entirety:

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To all of you!

I am thinking of you. What a night! There is hope that we will be led by a charismatic, inspirational Commander in Chief. It is wonderful to see so many around the world thrilled at the results, tearful and so very joyful. Joy to the entire world! — Laurie

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If, as I believe, today is the first day of something really really new, then let’s all us … Democrats and Republicans, blacks and whites, young and old, gay and straight, Christians and Jews and Muslims and Mormons and Rastafarians and hard-shell Baptists too … paste on a big American smile (whether we mean it or not), and see can we take this thing seriously for once in our lives.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

When I relocated from Chicago to Washington DC in 1969, my first job was as a reporter for National Journal, then three weeks away from publishing its first issue. My beat was consumer affairs and communications. The principal agencies I covered were the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Postal Service. At that point in my life, age 29, I had spent approximately four weeks of my entire life in Washington. I had never covered regulatory affairs. I didn’t know nuttin’ about nuttin’.

So I did what a reporter is supposed to do. I went to the FTC and the Postal Service and walked around. I went to various floors of the headquarters buildings, more or less at random, and knocked on doors. The occupants would welcome me in and invite me to sit down for a chat, which typically began, ‘What do you guys do in here?’

For the next 20 years or so, I spent all or much of my time as a working journalist in Washington. I interviewed dozens of regulators, members of Congress and their aides, even White House functionaries now and then. Not once was I denied access. There was no need to keep roaming the halls at random once I started figuring things out, but I only remember one occasion when I had to pass security. That was the time I interviewed Chuck Colson – then a top aide to President Nixon, later convicted and imprisoned in the Watergate scandal – in the Old Executive Office Building next door to the White House.

One of the great things about Washington, I would exult to my journalist friends stuck in the provinces, is the incredible openness here. Washington journalism is the easiest form to practice anywhere. Like shooting fish in a barrel. Everyone talks. You can hardly shut them up.

Starting perhaps in the ’80s, things began tightening up in the wake of scary events such as the assassination attempts against Ford and Reagan and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. But only after Sept. 11, 2001, did the world turn upside-down.

In the massive wave of fear following 9/11, every government building rushed to install airline-style security. Police cordoned off every street approaching the Capitol; to drive the two blocks up Constitution Avenue to Capitol Hill, you had to pass through an eyeballing and a license check by the cops.

Few questioned the need for such measures at the time. We were a nation gripped in fear.

But then they closed Pennsylvania Avenue to vehicle traffic in front of the White House. Beautiful Lafayette Square across street, scene of many a peaceful sandwich break as well as historic protests and demonstrations, was sealed by jersey barriers. So was the Capitol itself, that temple of representative government, the people’s building in the nation’s capitol if there ever was one. Tourists were confined to the rotunda and a few other official areas – if, that is, they made it past the metal detectors.

It’s understandable that places like the White House would come in for top security. Defense and intelligence agencies too, as well as monuments like the Lincoln Memorial that are high-value targets for terrorists. The Capitol? Understandable too, sad to say. But … the agency I was involved with at the time, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management – the government’s HR office, for God’s sake – was secured as tightly as the Pentagon. Why any terrorist would even think to bomb OPM is anyone’s guess. But good luck to the terrorist who might try.

Voices began to rise in protest at the erosion of these and other manifestations of our American freedoms and birthrights. These voices were largely drowned out by the voices of the fearful, and so the erosion continued – encouraged, aided and abetted by a deeply cynical leadership that saw political advantage in keeping us jittery, submissive and cowed.

But it truly wasn’t until the tide of favor turned against this political crowd that protesters began to feel safe to climb out of the woodwork, and our supposedly free and independent press – which had lost its nerve after 9/11 along with most of the rest of us – started finding its voice again. Nothing to be proud of.

As you contemplate your choice on Tuesday, you probably didn’t consider this topic as being among the issues. You ought to.

Regardless who is elected, don’t expect the airline-style security to disappear – not overnight, maybe not in our lifetimes. And do expect whichever man is elected, Obama or McCain, to continue the fight against terror and terrorists – effectively, I pray. But neither one, it seems to me, is the sort to keep using fear to club us into submission.

On Tuesday, choose the guy YOU think will be most likely to restore civility and lessen this pernicious climate of fear. Choose the Democrat, choose the Republican, choose a third-party candidate — but choose someone. Turn out, and show the world how much we value our democracy and our freedoms. If you needed yet another reason go to the polls on Tuesday, that’s a good one.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. On Sunday, Nov. 15, 3 p.m., I’m reading my story “Our Lady of the Helicopter” at Constellation Books, 303 Main Street, Reisterstown, Maryland 21136 (410-833-5151). The story is included in NEW LINES FROM THE OLD STATE, an anthology of the best writing by members of the Maryland Writers Assn. (It first appeared in “Scribble,” MWA’s literary magazine.) My fellow authors are reading too. I invite you to attend — it’ll be fun — but if you can’t, order your own copy now at www.marylandwriters.org/publications.html

P.P.S. Schedule an appearance at your organization, library or bookstore! Contact me and I’ll pass the word to the appropriate authorities at MWA.

                     “There are no atheists in foxholes, and no ideologues in financial crises.”

                      — Federal Reserve Chm. Ben Bernanke, quoted in today’s New York Times

As a direct-marketing copywriter (call it junk mail if you must), I’ve spent a good deal of my adult life following first principles: Sell fear, greed or — if possible — both.

It’s cynical but it works. People who feel fear or greed tend to act on those feelings (and, hopefully, buy whatever I’m selling), because fear and greed are bedrock human impulses.

Watching the current financial crisis unfold, I’ve been thinking a lot about greed. Greed got us into this mess. Mortgage lenders were greedy, making loans to people who couldn’t even pay down their credit card balances. Wall Street was greedy, reselling bundles of bad loans to unsuspecting investors, and peddling financial instruments incomprehensible even to those who created them. Not least, homebuyers were greedy, thinking they could get something (a house) for, basically, nothing — little or no money down, ridiculously low introductory interest rates.

But in the immortal words of Gordon Gecko, the savage that Michael Douglas played in the movie WALL STREET, “Greed is good.” Can that also be true? ‘Fraid so, sometimes. Greed is just another word for “incentive,” and incentives have brought about every change that defines our lives, for better and for worse. Without incentives, we wouldn’t have internal-combustion engines, open-heart surgery and AquaFresh Extreme Clean. (Nor Claymore mines, Superfund sites and American Idol.) Without incentives, we’d still be painting antelopes on cave walls.

And greed cannot be curbed. At least I don’t think so. That’s our nature, or so my direct-marketing experience tells me.

Here’s where it gets cute though. When all us greedy people selfishly pursue our own selfish interests, an extraordinary thing is said to happen. Something emerges called The Marketplace, a theoretical entity where everything sorts itself out for the greatest good of the greatest number of us. A lot of people believe in this seemingly magical ability of Mister Market. Heck, even I believe it (with certain caveats), and I call myself a liberal. Most importantly, in recent years a majority of our political leaders have believed it.

At least they did so until some time last week.

Those leaders have elevated The Marketplace to the level where bishops frolic and the Pope presides. If we are left to pursue our various self-interests, those leaders assert, Mister Market will sort it all out. Free markets, they say, make a free people, and anyone who says otherwise must be a Socialist.

(Yeah, they say that. I have Republican friends who use the S word. Some even sling around the M word. Pardon me, but I don’t think there’s been a practicing, believing Marxist in America since Joe McCarthy rooted the last one out of the State Department in 1954. A heartfelt thanks from all of us, Joe, wherever you are.)

So OK: Freedom is good. Got that. If some freedom is good, more freedom must be better, right? Check. If more freedom is better, than total freedom must be best of all. Why, of course it must. Let’s all carry Smith & Wessons for personal protection. No, make that AK-47s. No, make that Claymore mines.

This is where we are now. When things to get to the Claymore mine stage, this is where we always wind up. In moments of national crisis, governments usually do what our government is doing right now. When they fail to do so, we get a Great Depression or a decade-long stagnation like Japan in the ’90s. Most times though — this time, thank heaven — government jumps in with both feet, doing whatever it must to save and protect us. That always, always involves intervention, regulation, and the tossing-out-the-window of free-market fundamentalism.

Sure, Gordon, greed can do good in the world. Sure, Mister Market, in the long run, I have total confidence that you will sort things out for the greatest good. However, to quote another famous economist, John Maynard Keynes, “In the long run, we are all dead.”

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. My short story “Our Lady of the Helicopter” has been chosen for inclusion in the anthology NEW LINES FROM THE OLD LINE STATE, published by the Maryland Writers Assn. (The story first appeared in SCRIBBLE, the MWA literary magazine.) The anthology will be introduced at the Baltimore Book Festival this Sunday at 5:30 p.m. and I’ll be among the authors reading.

Earlier that same Sunday afternoon, I’ll be signing copies of my novel TO LOVE MERCY at the AuthorsBookshop.com tent.

The Baltimore Book Festival takes place Friday-Sunday in Mt. Vernon Square and it’s always lots of fun. Hope you’ll make it! Here’s the link: www.baltimorebookfestival.com/index.cfm?page=schedules

P.P.S. And don’t forget to visit the “Fall for the Book” festival at George Mason University in Fairfax VA this coming Thursday at 1:30 p.m., I’ll be reading from TO LOVE MERCY and signing books in the Provident Bank tent, along with fellow authors Solveig Eggerz, Peter Brown and Elaina Loveland. Here’s the link: www.fallforthebook.org/events.html