Letter in the Mail

Got a letter in the mail the other day. It was from the president. Apparently. At least, it bore his signature by Xerox.

One doesn't always get one of these. I wondered, before I opened it, what it was that he was going to tell me.

Would it be some kind of campaign promotion, exhorting me to vote for Republicans in my state? That was my original thought. If so, he would be wasting his time and whatever it cost to put this screed in the mail.

But no, it wasn't. It was a promise. A promise to send me $90.

Ninety bucks isn't exactly great wealth. Neither will it go a long way in these days of artificially skyrocketing consumer prices because of an ill-begotten war fought illegally and unnecessarily. But it was a promise to pay because my health insurance rates were about to go up, based, I suppose, on what a gypping Republican Congress is intending to do after the first of the year--make health care costs jump through the roof.

So: Here's ninety bucks. Hope it helps. And it will, for probably one payment of medications or for a doctor's visit, or--and this would be laughable--for badly-needed surgery. No mention of the upcoming mid-term elections tomorrow. None necessary.

Everybody knows that he could have sent us ninety bucks during the summer, before Labor Day. Everybody knows that this is a reminder that the president, in all his power and self-proclaimed majesty, can send us a check at his whim, which is what drives all his decisions: Not policy, not history, certainly not compassion. Just what he feels like doing when he feels like doing it for his benefit: A moral zero.

By now, we know about what our president does with promises, especially to give anyone money for anything. He gets them all excited, then he stiffs them.

I do not expect a dime of this. There is no reason, either, for me to change my mind about voting for Republicans in any circumstance. Their cowardice in the face of our president's corruption--and for some, their participation in it--has been disgusting for so long that it goes practically without saying. 

The Democrats haven't been exactly dynamic in crafting their responses, but--that's all we have. A major restructuring of our political system has been needed for a long, long time, but that will have to wait for another day, probably beyond my lifetime.

Meanwhile, I have a few questions:

• Is this letter really from the president? Could it be from someone acting for the president, maybe a very friendly member of Congress with a relaxed viewpoint of the franking privilege? After all, the envelope is addressed from DHS, which has been up to all kinds of runarounds lately.
• Is 90 bucks per taxpayer more, or less, than what has been spent on the ridiculous Iran war so far?
• Will it cover the cost increases for Medicare which are in the offing? (big NO here)
• How will 47 answer questions about the 90 bucks which he's promised but which are obviously not coming? Will anyone accuse him of offering a cheap bribe for their votes?
• Why isn't the presidential seal on the top of the letter, even photocopied?
• What else is he going to gyp taxpayers about? Lie to them about? Try to deceive them about?
• Will things get better, or worse, with the Democrats in control of at least one house of Congress?
• How many people will, finally, understand the depths to which this incredible shyster will go for his own aggrandizement, and stop giving him blind, token, absurd support?

If you have definitive answers, please let me know. In the meantime, our Constitutional system will, I predict, be put under additional, perhaps unprecedented strain, what with the Republican Congressional bobbleheads now forced into the background. The results will be calls for a new Constitutional Convention, which will eventually be addressed in this space.

Hang on, everybody. You thought the seas were rough before? Ha.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

It Was Thanksgiving That Did Hong In

It was Thanksgiving. That much I know. It was that simple.

Francesca Hong's candidacy for Wisconsin governor might have survived her comments about the police--namely, that she favored not only defunding it but eliminating it altogether--and might have managed to flick them aside as an overreaction to the George Floyd tragedy that nobody really believes in anyhow. Maybe, although you know Tom Tiffany, the Republican MAGA devotee', would have included that on every ad on which he would have attacked her (which would have been all of them, owing to the Republican inclination to distract from who he really is and what he really wants). Maybe, if she would have come clean soon after gaining the nomination, which she very nearly did, she might have managed to convince a majority of Wisconsin voters to forgive, if not forget.

Maybe. But not her comments about Thanksgiving. There are very few things that Americans can agree on, even if at the table they're all opening their mouths now only to take in the stuffing and the cranberry sauce to avoid stalking out of whomever's house after an intense, ridiculous argument breaks out between people who are still thinking versus people who stopped as soon as 45-47 took that first trip down the escalator and took them with it. One of them is having Thanksgiving, period.

That's the comment that did her in, trust me. The New York Times is trying to figure out how David Crowley managed to come from oceans behind to defeat Hong,. Predictably, the article is filled with social science and tendencies, including Wisconsin voters who wait until the last minute to figure things out-- which in this particular case, with four other candidates too chicken to call each other out during the waste of time that the Milwaukee Channel 12's debate was the other day, made perfect sense.

No. Forget the polling with the fancy analysis, crosstabs, probability, reliability and other statistical gobbledygook. Hong lost because she wants, and has always wanted, an end to Thanksgiving, that most American of all holidays and chocked so full of culture it practically bursts (including the day after, swelled up with shopping). She didn't mutter it with an open mike, either. She said so online and on record.

Yup. She claims that to be part of her wokeness. Good for her purity. It never occurred to her, I guess, that she should have said something like, "Listen, I think that whole thing is an insult to Natives so I'm not taking part, thank you very much. If y'all want to do it, then fine, but remember what you're doing." You know, give the culture the benefit of the doubt, because turning that around is kind of like climbing Mount Everest with a mule and a six-pack of Gatorade.

I'm guessing--and no polling on that question has been attempted, because pollsters believe themselves to be so superior to the rest of us that such a simple question can be ignored--that uncommitted Democrats took one look at that and thought of Francesca Hong as something of a kamikaze pilot, determined and willing to destroy herself and the Democratic Party.

If you think Tom Tiffany would have jumped all over her comments about the police, think about his next ad, which would have been having dinner at 'Thanksgiving (instead of the picnic table, at which he eschewed his Old Fashioned in an earlier, very stupid ad for a glass of milk, which he didn't raise to his mouth, in an unwitting attempt to demonstrate his 'old fashioned'--get it?--values in the Dairy State) and would have made complete and deserved fun at Hong for forgetting what 'real Americans' appreciate, along with God and family and the Packers, not necessarily in that order. There would have been several spinoffs about that, too, which he would have followed up with because he would have gotten so much Elon Musk money that he would not have needed to count it--which the Republican-loaded Supreme Court has pretty much told everybody never to worry about again.

Crowley isn't immune to Tiffany's needle, either, and not without good reason. He got out of the race, then suddenly redeclared his candidacy about six seconds after the otherwise retiring Governor Tony Evers saw this runaway train heading toward an inevitable disaster that was Francesca Hong. Evers must have called someone to call someone and suggested that if Crowley could possibly be persuaded, he would do his best, at the last possible minute, to give him a badly needed boost and maybe snatch something akin to victory from debacle. You can guess what Tiffany's going to chant now: Flip-flop, flip-flop!

That Crowley only saw the path that he previously said he didn't see before Lt. Governor Sara Rodriguez was forced to leave the race when the only financial thing that could have derailed her candidacy actually did--outright theft by her financial chair--was a demonstration of political opportunism that, at least not recently, has not been matched. Not only was that one hell of a good break for Crowley, but also good for the rest of us Democrats, because Rodriguez would have probably finished second in the primary to a victorious Hong, a pyrrhic win if there ever would have been one.

All of this has switched the question completely: From 'Do the Republicans actually think they have a chance?' to "Will the Democrats actually get their act together in time to avoid another embarrassment?'

I have no idea. Crowley has a few things in his favor, though: 

• He's black--yes, hoping to be our first black governor, which is always a double-edged sword because, while it's likely that the blacks will now come out in November, we can count on Tiffany to resurrect race-baiting in a statewide race, kind of like what Michael Gableman did to Louis Butler in the state Supreme Court race back about two decades or so;
• He happens to be the County Executive of Milwaukee County, which any Democrat needing to win needs to carry by at least 62 or 63 percent with a big turnout; 
• He has some momentum going; and
• He speaks relatively well.

How well that plays in the following counties: Douglas, Bayfield, Ashland and Door--the first three at the very top of the state, but with a decent Democratic following and the ones that Evers managed to win in each of his two campaigns, where he barely edged his opponents, including incumbent Scott Walker; the last one a crucial swing county--remains to be seen, but are indicators of how this showdown may go. 

But other questions linger. Will Dane County, oozing with Madison liberals, still come out for Crowley, now that its darling, Hong, has been turned back at the very last second? 

And what about Rebecca Cooke? Can she bring Democrats with her in the 3rd Congressional District race, which she lost by all of two points in 2024, against the closest thing we have to Simon Legree, the sinister, snarling Derrick Van Orden, especially in the Eau Claire area, to help Crowley win a grand slam?

Stay tuned. Let's hope Democrats can celebrate Thanksgiving 23 days later with an extra Brandy Alexander or two, toasting a continuance of rationality in the governor's residence. Almost by default, we still have a chance to have that.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

McRaven, I Said. So I'll Say It Again.

I'm going to say this one more time. I said it more than four years ago, and he turned down the possibility. He can't turn it down again. The country's in too much trouble.

William McRaven should be our next President. And indirectly, I believe more than one person would agree with me.

One may be Messa Gassen of the New York Times. In an article that ran a few weeks ago she analyzed the  campaign of Peter Magyar, who buried Viktor Orban in a huge upset that will change the dynamics of the political landscape in Hungary, putting an end to "illiberalism," as those ensconced in it will admit. She gave eleven hints about how he did it.

But one caught my attention: it put the other ten into perspective. To wit: "The person best positioned to break the power of [47] would not be an anti-[47] Republican but an outsider to the Democratic establishment, someone who can credibly claim that [47] didn't happen on his watch."

That someone is William McRaven. Hands down. He has consistently turned down any notion of running for any political office, much less the presidency. But it is time for him to come in from the sidelines and re-arrange this country, tighten the ship, so to speak, and bring us back into sanity and something akin to stability.

He hasn't exactly hidden from the public. He's published five books, including his best known "Make Your Bed." He'd served as president of the University of Texas. Beyond that, he's distinguished himself for being a public servant without scandal and without controversy. I'm not sure why that is, exactly, not being a resident of Austin anymore, but I would bet it's at least partially because his rhetoric is moderate and remains that way.

Fareed Zakaria, moderator of the excellent CNN show, "GPS," which gives you the best impression of world affairs you can possibly have (on Sundays in Milwaukee at 9 a.m.), had McRaven on his show not long ago. After an intelligent discussion, Zaharia thanked McRaven and commented that he would like to mention that he was running for president.

That's the impression McRaven gives you: Distinguished, articulate, measured, thoughtful, still in good physical condition (instead of the fat, repugnant slob we have now), and not given to extreme statements. Add to that his largely military background (He oversaw the raid that brought down Osama bin Laden in 2011), and you have a candidate that can withstand the obvious attacks that either 47 or one of his minions will unleash on him.

Some things have to be as true of the USA as was true of Hungary, though: Namely, that people got pretty tired of the enforced drudgery of power, politics and hopeless lies and bombast coming from the top office. Add to that deteriorating conditions everywhere you look: 

• prices going through the roof; incredible incompetence;
•  unprecedented corruption for which 47 should have been rousted from office long ago; 
• a useless new quagmire of a war that could easily have been avoided; 
• wreckage to the reflecting pool adjacent to the Lincoln Memorial and the now destroyed East Wing of the White House--symbolic for their intentional disasters; and 
• an elected national leader who cares only for whatever gilded overgloss he thinks will be a permanent addition to his legacy--except his successor, if he or she has any brains, will remove it as soon as possible, at additional cost to taxpayers.

Enough people have to be tired enough of this wretched excess. But first, we must reflect this collective disgust through the Congressional mid-terms, which will be challenged only if Democrats win control of both Houses of Congress. That there is a distinct possibility that that won't happen, even after the succession of blow-ups and mishaps and horrible judgment now on display, including the continuation of the vapid, piteous capitulation and self-repudiation of Congressional power in order to hang on to nothing more than personal titles, makes this time all that much more amazing. If 47, at no higher approval rate than 34%, manages to survive another challenge to his power without even further expanding it, we will have a potential accumulation of senselessness.

Only someone like McRaven can stand in the way, someone with his stature and presence, someone who will return the presidency to the decency and prestige that it used to have. Can he be urged to run? Who knows?

More to the point: Can a substitute, third-party candidacy suit him best--Lincoln Project, anyone?--one that won't attach too closely to either, emptied-out, banal political party, one without fresh ideas for at least half a century, the other with too many ideas completely out of touch from the vast middle that's still there and wants to be re-recognized? That's probably the best question. 

The 21st Century Catch-22 is that nobody with an ounce of sense in them would even consider running for president about now, except that's what we desperately need in huge quantities. The country is increasingly ungovernable; I have said so in this blog more than once. It calls for a Democrat with a firm hand, who will put down any incipient uprising that's likely to happen should Republicans lose the office, as much as they'll try cheating, massive lies and deceptions, and perhaps more violence to keep it. One more time: William McRaven fits the bill. He may be the only one who does.

My connections with real pols has faded through the years, and not for bad reasons: I've watched this disaster develop step-by-step, while being another, less prestigious, futile squeaking in the wind. Nobody's listening to me, either. But, since I'm a little (!) healthier now, I'm going to reach out to whatever connections I might have left and see whether, eventually (but it needs to be pretty soon to get machinery started), someone can contact Admiral McRaven and get an audience with him. I'm available, but I don't need it. The country does.

Maybe he's already been approached. Maybe that's already been unsuccessful. I don't know. But it won't hurt anything to find out.

High-minded? Sure. Far-fetched? Perhaps. Worth a shot? Hell, anything is by this time. I'll let you know if I get any meaningful attention and/or connection.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Clarence Thomas: Originalism Stupidized, Santa Notwithstanding

Clarence Thomas is to the Supreme Court what 47 is to the presidency: the wrong person for the wrong time, in fact for any time at all. He just doesn't get it. He never has.

The other day, he moved to declare part of the Constitution, an amendment that we have utilized to give rights to millions, to be in fact unconstitutional (a neat trick) and should lose the meaning which it's inherited over the last 150 years. That's kind of like saying that Santa Claus  shouldn't have anything to do with Christmas anymore.

Work with me here: Santa Claus was added to Christmas because he's part of the spirit of Christmas and part of the joy that Christmas is supposed to bring. But I could say, if I were someone's stooge, that because Santa Claus was added to Christmas hundreds of years after Christmas first happened, it shouldn't be included as a celebration of Christmas any longer.

I could say that. And you could dismiss me as dizzy-headed, incredibly backwards, and beyond fuddy-duddyness. 

And you'd be right. Because to suddenly declare Santa Claus null and void would be ridiculous. Santa's not only not hurting anyone, but makes Christmas far more enjoyable. It allows parents to work with Christmas, turning it into something larger than it is, modernizing it and allowing it to be adaptable in whatever time you're living. 

So, too, with the Fourteenth Amendment, which the Supreme Court was asked to rule, or perhaps, re-rule, upon the other day. The plain wording of that amendment allows any person, indeed every single person, born on American soil to be a citizen of the United States, and of the state in which they reside, for life.

That's what the words say. Period, end of story. But the racists within the 47 regime want to reverse that, as if they actually could because, they say, there are too many non-citizen, non-white mothers who are infiltrating across national lines in Texas, California, New Mexico, and Arizona, who dare to either get pregnant or conclude their pregnancies the natural way, with childbirth (and who don't prefer, can't afford, or get in too late to have an abortion, in a part of the discussion that's never brought up). That way, they fulfill a promise they've obviously made to themselves: to start families with the kinds of opportunities they either never had or are lunging to realize in the best place to do it, the good old USA. If not that, now, since they're hunted like animals by ICE, at least to leave their children in the land of, uh, milk and honey.

Instead of a joyous victory, this has been a growing disaster for 47's tribe. They can't stop the flow at the border, hard as they may try, so they round up whoever looks like they'd potentially be vagrants and/or fugitives from another government's inadequacies and shove them into barbed-wired hog pens en route to, well, somewhere else.

Not that that matters much to them. They promised to be complete bastards to those straining to start new lives, and complete bastards they are.

Suffice it to say that this is one bad look. Three would-be protectors of migrants have been murdered so far, and heaven knows how many more will take place. Worse, ICE and 47 have figured out that their best work be done surreptitiously to skip organizing meant to stop, delay or otherwise deter it.

So Clarence Thomas wants to interrupt that social justice movement by declaring that babies born of non-citizens on American soil are not, in fact, citizens and, I suppose, go through the paperwork, the classes, and the angst of trying to naturalize themselves. So he's not saying that they can't be citizens: he's saying that they have to get in a new kind of line--one that will take at least 18 years to find the front of. So, you know, why bother?

The other irony in his reasoning is that, since the original (huge word there) purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to grant the freed slaves their citizenship, that amendment should be obsolete, since its purpose has been fulfilled. There are no more freed slaves alive, so that amendment should be relegated to the ranks of the Three-Fifths Clause and the Twenty-One Years Clause, both relating to the status of slaves. Simple as that, with a swipe of the hands to clean it up. Done.

But that denies the jurisprudence that has resulted in the Fourteenth Amendment's expansion: extensive and flexible utilization of the "equal protection" clause; the "privileges and immunities" clause; and what is called the incorporation of the amendment to cover all protection of the Bill of Rights to every person (not only citizens) who needs it in the U.S. Though the realization of incorporation didn't demonstrably take place until the Warren Court brought it assertively forward in the '50s and '60s, the concept was being worked on in the Supreme Court by the likes of such jurists as Louis Brandeis and Hugo Black, starting in the 1930s. Brandeis, a Jew from Boston, started the tag-team and passed it on to Black, from Alabama and briefly a member of the Ku Klux Klan before FDR snuck him in the back door of nomination during a Senate break one year.

That incorporation is how we have the need for all those accused to get a lawyer (Gideon v. Wainwright); and the idea of being told you can have one, entering a new word into the dictionary: 'mirandized' and its ultimate meaning of having your rights read to you upon arrest (Miranda v. Arizona, in which Miranda was re-tried and found guilty anyhow). And those rights are for everyone, new and old alike.

If those two giants of legal history, from entirely different backgrounds, can agree on that concept, it would take a complete damn fool to try to undo it. It was nearly done on a 5-4 decision though. Clarence Thomas tried, but his opinion is so narrow as to almost pre-empt utilization. Brett Kavanaugh, though, suggested that Congress--nudge, nudge; hint-hint--could pass laws to get around the Fourteenth Amendment. 

I suppose it could. It wasn't too long after the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted that the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed (1883), which forbade the emigration of that ethnic group in one of the more blatantly racist acts of Congressional history. 

Thanks, Brett, for that encouragement. You'll be remembered. Too.

In the end, incorporation ran into stupidized originalism, and survived. Barely. It is another comment upon the twisted status of this Supreme Court majority's march back into an abandoned past. Sam Alito, it is said, will now bow out and retire just in time for someone of like silliness to replace him--the ultimate MAGA team player ascendant (as opposed to Breyer and Ginsberg, who had the temerity to retire when they damn well pleased, the former's retirement setting up Mitch McConnell's underhanded ruse in 2016).  This way, 47 can nominate someone even worse to replace him. Oh, joy. Onward we stumble, lying in wait for November. Oh, and Merry Christmas.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Patriotism? How Now? Go to the Museum

Our quarter-millennium as a nation is fast approaching. The state of this republic is repugnant. The wrong people have control and, lacking confidence in the future as they should, are trying to once again game the system so they maintain it ad infinitum.

It's safe to say, lacking other evidence, that, though supportive, no one with any legal leverage to prevent another perversion of democracy reads this. Thus, I offer the following question: With 250 years passing and being unsure about how many years of this famed arrangement remain, how best to celebrate it?

One could simply sigh in relief, but that is normally reserved for having accomplished something that has drained lots of energy, like your kids graduating from high school without being held back or arrested for something, or from college without needling to file for bankruptcy. I'm not sure if that reaction's appropriate any longer. The republic, tattered and battered as it has been these past ten awful years, moves on--maybe not forward, but it is moving. Somewhere. 

Exhaling implies a goal being reached. There ain't time for that any longer. Nor may it be for the rest of our lives. The present regime is bound and determined to see through all the reforms it says the country needs. From what I've seen, this is akin to an adolescent being grounded until age 18 for cutting the lawn the wrong way. It has coached its Supreme Court nominees to lie to cover up their absolute resolve to end abortion forever and ever, except mail-order drugs and driving across state lines can't be stopped (but watch them try). They also pretend that stopping minorities from voting was a creation of the Jim Crow years which, to them, have passed and no longer need monitoring.

All this implies that someone has decided to turn back the clock on America, as if that could be done. Not all the way back to 1776, but to the era when people didn't seem to worry much about inequalities that have been existent in America ever since then. Or, maybe, not as many people. Or, maybe, not as many people with access to media.

Which brings me to CBS and its abduction by various forces with massive money. Paramount has already cancelled The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, trying to cover its tracks by claiming that it was losing too much money, as if the ultimate powers that be were also having a tough time getting dinner on the table.

There is also the rape and pillage of "60 Minutes" by reducing it to the hard-hitting impact of wet laundry against your basement wall. It will either land as an annex to "CBS Sunday Morning," a continuation of news so soft it rivals fresh bread dough, or "Fox News, Jr," which will look right past whatever mistakes the current regime has made or will make while attacking something, anything, that liberals have done or want to do. If it's anything different, let me know. I won't be watching.

Lesley Stahl, veteran, hard-nosed journalist that she is, is not above being as naive as Snow White. Someone got to her and convinced her that, Scott Pelley having been ejected like being in a burning jet fighter, she could go on without the show "dying" right in her lap. 

Leslie: You missed the memo: The show has already been dying, not from what it has included, but what it has already excluded. Think back if you've been a fan these many years: When was the last time anything critical of either 47 or his wayward, awful, incompetent administration ever made air-time on that show?

Uh-uh. Bari Weiss buried that. And it will stay like "Saturday Night Live" declared Francisco Franco: Still dead.

CNN, having been purchased through the same hostile merger, will probably follow suit. Anderson Cooper might have thought that he would make a sideways switch by focusing his time exclusively to his show on that network, instead of doubling up and, with his "60 Minutes" reports, become at least the most watched, if not the best (though very good) TV journalist around. The day will come when we will also  be absent from his reportage, along with Erin Burnett (who's also very good) and a few others. Will MS NOW need more than 24 hours in a day to absorb these stars? Stay tuned.

Really. Stay tuned, and see where all this ends up.  Follow your favorites. Don't cave and become addicted to Tony Dokoupil or other insipid stand-ins. Am I asking for a total boycott of CBS? Hey, there are some Packer road games you might want to think about (home games are on Fox, and I don't stick around for the latest swill from Sean Hannity. Like, everrrrrr.). But maybe Amazon Prime will snap that up, too.

So take your pick. But if you want to be patriotic on this, our sestercentennial (yeah, I had to look that one up. Nobody'll use it ever again.), I have a suggestion to do the really cool, American things that people tend to overlook: 

• Spend a day at a museum. Milwaukee has a pretty neat art museum, certainly one of the most uniquely designed in the world. If you don't live here, go to the one (like Chicago: outstanding) that's nearest;
• Go to the library. Avail yourself of their services. Ask about crazies that insist that libraries carry bad things for people who have no idea how to judge things for themselves (which are very, very few and far in-between), and of course read something it has (like, maybe, Fahrenheit 451) that might cause eyebrows to rise;
• Go to the theater, the nearest one to you. Immerse yourself in the grand manner of storytelling;
• Go to a concert by someone, anyone. If you know the words, sing along. Sing loud. Sing like you're free--because, of course, you are; and
• Watch public television. Continue your education that way. They have magnificent presentations and in-depth news analysis. Stay current, and keep your pocketbooks handy because they're going to run out of money in the not too distant future because the people in government power are paranoid morons.

Why all or any of this stuff? Because if you partake, you are participating in the culture. You are engaging in free speech because you are the absorber of that speech. All plays, films, books. essays, architecture, painting, sculpture and the like are statements of their creators. 

Those statements are supposed to be protected speech--that is, no penalty can or should (probably the more important word) be assigned to it. And if you believe in it enough to absorb it and even comment to a friend or family member who might also be accompanying you, you are being an American because in essence, that's what America still is and still should be--a place where you can say whatever you want whether someone likes it or not.

One of the most brutal and repressive acts of the Nazis was the confiscation of important and brilliant artwork from whatever countries they conquered--not to destroy it, but to keep it for themselves in another act of condescension and pretension that they were the only ones who deserved to see it. And, of course, the muting of speech to protest those heinous acts. The 47-Republican efforts to hamper the development of public television, and its unnecessary domination of CBS--the network of Murrow, Shirer, Cronkite, Kuralt, Reasoner, and Pelley--is a slap at the idea of letting ideas free to settle as they please. 

The purveyors of pseudo-freedom would like nothing better than to have the rest of network television under their thumbs. That may be out of our control, but doing the kinds of things I've mentioned above is also a comment--a comment that freedom to comment is more American than anything they may support in its stead.

Bari Weiss may not be taking her orders surreptitiously from 47, but I no longer trust that she's not. I will therefore steer clear of CBS as much as I possibly can; it provides no essential programming--not even the Packers; I can listen to the game on radio.

The best citizenry is still an active one: independent, creative, and sustaining. It is the best way to celebrate who we really are and the benefits thereof. What's more, you don't have to wait until the next election to take part. 

Happy 250th. Carry on. See you at the museum.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Mom: 1924-2026

Lynn Cebulski, 1924-2026 

Eleanor Roosevelt, someone who Mom admired, once said, "You must do the thing you think you cannot do." That moment is here. I don't want to write this. But I must.

We lost our Mom last Friday. At 101, she was still reading books as late as Wednesday and sharing whatever commentary she had about anything you'd care to discuss. But Thursday, she took a clear turn for the worse when the malady that the medical folk had already predicted as her ultimate demise finally crept too deeply into her. By Friday she was uncommunicative, and the end came rapidly and mercifully.

What does one say, though, when the major force in your life has been extinguished? How does one get your head around it? With an admission, first of all, of utter emptiness, of a sense of wandering around as if in the dark. Nothing seems to matter much anymore. The way to get your head around it, I suppose, is in the facing of the simple fact that you can't. Its momentousness, while ultimately predictable--memento mori, say the Stoics, remember that you must die--is yet to be absorbed, the impact yet to be fully understood. But I can still see it, not far from the horizon, like a storm approaching.

Mom lived a brave and steadfast life. Again, Eleanor Roosevelt: "Life was meant to be lived and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn [their] back on life." Mom went through far more than anyone should have while still quite young, suffering major setbacks. The picture below is Mom as a girl, when she could have turned her back on life without anyone blaming her.

She lost her Dad, James Foreman, to a car accident when she was 6, in 1930. She was the oldest of three, at a time when the country plunged deeper into the Depression, felt in no small way on a rural Wisconsin farm. Somehow, Grandma pulled the remainder of the family through. Think you're pretty tough? Try that.

But Mom paid an even bigger price she couldn't have foreseen, either. Upon graduation from Bonduel High School (about 40 miles or so west of Green Bay), this very active, very studious young lady had been offered an assistantship to Northland College in Ashland, on the shores of Lake Superior. But in spring 1942, after World War II had begun but before the job market had caught up, Grandma told Mom that she needed to make money for the family. College, a terrific accomplishment for a small-town female in those days, would have to be set aside. It broke her heart. Again.

Her fondest hopes dashed, Mom, then known as Lurlyn Foreman, eventually moved to Milwaukee to get a job with Cutler-Hammer, known for its electrical equipment. She joined a bowling league, and there she met a wise-cracking former sailor, Eugene "Cy" Cebulski, who'd lost his own dream of post-war plans for extending his navy hitch on an aircraft carrier. That sank when his father caught pneumonia and, as the family's only son, he was needed back home. He gave her a little lip, she gave it right back, and that's pretty much how it went for the next 77 years. Mom's name changed to Lynn Cebulski.

In between all that, they had four sons--Jeff (married to Barb), Mark, Gary (Amy), and Eugene (Jane), of which I am second. Mom went to work in the Grafton public school system, ostensibly to make the needed money to send her sons off to college; in the meantime, she rose to the position of an elementary principal's secretary, meaning that she had a large role in running that school. 

Meanwhile, she was living the experience of college through her boys. At least, that's what we thought.

But she had never given up on her dream of college, and when an opportunity arose for her to get an associate degree from Concordia University in nearby Mequon, she jumped at it. Her curiosity still strong and alive, she had to know whether she could handle the rigors of higher education--not that anyone who knew her had much doubt; she remains the best read person I ever knew. In 1991, at 66, she finally had the college diploma she'd waited her whole adult life for.

Her immediate family, Grandma (Clara), her stepfather Clarence Peterson, brother James, and sister Marion Teckam, have passed before her, as well as two grandchildren, Sarah and Allyssa Cebulski. Beyond that, there are 10 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren, and loving nieces and nephews. Her wish was to have a small, private, immediate family service.

On Mother's Day, the Milwaukee Brewers completed the sweep of a three-game series from the New York Yankees. Everyone who knew Mom, a die-hard Brewers fan, knew how much she would have loved that. We would have celebrated her again much as we did before, too, with flowers and cards and hugs.

Hugs: Just one more would have been so nice. Just one. I will wander aimlessly now, missing that and so much else: the presence of an incomparable life force, a well of gentle strength to draw from. Instead of turning her back on life, she doubled down and got on with things, much of what made her a thriving part of the Greatest Generation. She found fulfillment where she never expected it, inspiring a family that widened and surrounded her with their love, after she had surrounded it with hers.

The family wants to extend their sincerest and deepest appreciation to the staff of the skilled care unit at Cedar Lake Health and Rehabilitation Center in West Bend. Mom loved to read and could never have enough books, so in lieu of flowers, a donation may be made to the Grafton and West Bend Public Libraries in her name. We love you, Mom.

The Reg I Remember

Reg Weaver, former NEA president, has passed away at 86. They took a couple of hours to memorialize him a couple of weeks ago on Chicago's south side, where he was best known, but by the time he passed, that was a close competition; he made you feel as if you knew him, you were close, by his very presence. More than one person at the mike noted: Everybody's got a 'Reg' story. He was a man of radiant charisma and fairly glowed with emotions and feelings he wanted to share on behalf of a union that he loved so dearly. Let me tell you the story by which I remember him the most. (P.S. I couldn't make it to the ceremony; had a dizzy spell in recovery from my latest malady.)

My familiarity with Reg Weaver was acquired over time. I served on the NEA Executive Committee for six years, five of which came while he was president. That meant that at all meetings in the NEA building in Washington, DC, both planned and unplanned, he was the chair.

That's not where you get to know someone. A chair of a meeting rarely has a chance to show you who he-she is. They have to keep track of Robert's Rules of Order, make sure people get heard within limits of propriety, and generally move the agenda. That takes work, energy, and careful attention. Those who are good at it get respected, sometimes grudgingly so. 

One of the raps on Reg was that he didn't run small meetings well. Small, as in 15 to 20 people there, of which there were no end at the NEA. I never found this to be so. He did fine at running meetings of the NEA Board of Directors, I thought. Passive? Yes. But the importance of the matters being discussed, as well as the egos at the table (sometimes enormous, and not falsely earned; all Executive Committee members, for instance, have to win their positions by campaigning nationally), dictated to him that he would rather people get a chance to express themselves with the process's 'rules' being bent a little.

Just a little, though. He had understood, far before I did, that less was more. When he would say that enough was enough, his voice, which had many tones and could get impressively powerful, dictated that in no uncertain terms. He was charismatic, to be sure; many still say how inspirational he could be, and you don't get to a high-ranking position in the NEA unless you can speak publicly, fairly leap at the chance, and are at least pretty good at it. But there is the business of conducting business, and at that for him anyhow, less expressed control tended to work its own way out.

No, it was elsewhere that I saw it. It was the spring of 2008, the last one in which Reg would be serving as president. NEA officers get invited all over the place to speak to members, so it was no surprise when I learned that he was to speak in the great Wisconsin "up north" to a group of Native Americans. When the NEA president shows up in your home state, and you're on the Executive Committee in a supportive role, you do not hesitate; you try to make it whether you're asked to do so or not. It was a long drive for me from the Milwaukee area, over three hours. 

Didn't mind that a bit. He was the same old Reg: a simple message, simply put--you have more power than you ever thought. Don't give up on yourself. He was fond of reciting a poem that had as its central core the phrase, "Don't you quit." He was dressed in what we have come to know as a leisure suit, this time a brown one, but with additional, Native bling around his neck: a bolo and with matching cufflinks, all in turquoise, all in respect for the tribes to which he spoke. The colors stood out in contrast but somehow worked. His speech was, as always, a smash hit.

I thought it was really nice of him to ask me to drive him to the Rhinelander airport to catch his connecting flight back to DC. We chatted partly about my future, which had been thrown to the wolves in a sense by my school district, which hadn't wanted me back from my skein as a member of the Executive Committee.

Then we saw it: a pub advertising food. Reg, as solidly rounded as he was as a former wrestler, looking far more like a block of black granite than the Pillsbury Dough Boy, didn't miss too many meals. He was hungry and said so. We pulled in.

It was about 2:30 or so on a Friday afternoon, so I didn't think much of what we were going to see because I didn't think it would be much. It was, after all, northern Wisconsin, largely a rural area, where small-town folks did small-town things. I figured the place to be largely vacant, being about an hour or so before the 3:30 crowd would head in for a weekend nosh, perhaps, and brewski or two before embarking on their weekends of fishing or something similar.

That supposition was quite inaccurate. The place was teeming with country boys, yowling and laughing and cussin' out somebody or other. We had walked into something akin to an unofficial clubhouse, the kind that's stronger than the ones that have names, the kind where you can puff up for a moment and discard the world around you.

It was sufficiently odd that someone with a tie on, like me, would walk into a joint where the most formal thing people could imagine was a flannel shirt. Taking one look around, the last time someone had looked like me was probably about the time Eisenhower was president. That made it uncomfortable enough.

But with Reg, a black dude from Chicago? That may have been unprecedented. It suddenly turned stone quiet: the foreboding silence of those just waiting for trouble to begin.

I thought momentarily about the scene in "48 Hours" where Eddie Murphy, playing a criminal on temporary parole, is looking for a thug and he and Nick Nolte, playing a cop, saunter into a nightclub filled with good old boys. The same brooding silence, the same odd looks: what the hell are you doing in here? Murphy eventually jives his way out of the situation, taking firm control of it but busting a few jaws and breaking a few glasses en route.

There was a moment, a fleeting moment, when I thought we would be bombarded with insults in an attempt to pick a fight. But that moment passed. "We're looking for something to eat," I said rather loudly, faking a natural panache. I tried to make the implication clear: and that's all we're doin'. Reg hadn't yet said a word. You could cut the tension with a bar coaster. While everybody acted politely, we weren't there to campaign for Democrats and they weren't there to listen.

With my next breath, though, I also thought: Reg has been through a few of these, too. His home state of Illinois, especially the southern three-fourths, has its share of similar clientele. Now that we had seated ourselves at the bar, we sure as hell couldn't walk out: that might bring about the very thing that had edged toward trepidation . At the very least, it would demonstrate fear, which Reg, I'm sure, could not have abided.

We both ordered chili, which I tend to eat when it's on the menu to compare it with my own. It was damn good, actually. Probably didn't hurt to say so, which I did.

The sounds gradually returned, Everyone decided to mind their own business, which is still what America's supposed to be about: Live and let live. They would move on with the rest of their days, probably noting a unique story upon returning home: You'll never guess who waltzed into the bar today.

But on the way out, Reg showed his effectiveness as a leader. I've never returned to that bar, and undoubtedly neither did he; we would never see those fellows (they were all male) again. Yet, he went out of his way to introduce himself, shake hands, and engage in brief small talk. 

To read their faces, he had caught them off-guard. It was his friendliness, not applied union power, that had touched them. I hope it occurred to them what had happened: A very special, very black person had shown up, had chosen this locale, and sought to make new acquaintances.

He could have made them feel very intimidated. He did not. He chose the opposite: You attract more bees with honey than you do with vinegar. I watched that in awe. Neither one of us knew what was inside those walls, but he made the best of it.

He chuckled as we pulled away; his familiar, earthy chuckle. I had been a one-person audience to something I didn't see before and haven't seen since. It sure wasn't the south side of Chicago. In cordiality, you show respect. Then you move on.

The deeper you get into the union experience, the more you tend to descend into a kind of bubble, one in which the reality of the outside tends to blur, while all that happens in the inside, the micro-events, tend to take unbalanced dominance. Reg had never lost that balance; that was clear. An NEA president, no doubt, has to keep that in mind.

It wasn't always roses between us, either; some thorns got in the way, too. Reg openly rebuked me during a public Executive Committee meeting once, for something for which I meant no harm. Later, privately, he apologized.

I was moved by that, too; it takes a big person, sometimes, to say you're sorry and mean it. And NEA presidents don't have to apologize to anybody about anything; the job is incredibly demanding, and decisions have to be made that nobody else can or wants to make. I knew, though, that he felt all right about me by the simple amount by which I came to be asked to speak in his absences at various places, sometimes at the drop of a hat. As highly regarded as he was, an NEA president also can't be everywhere at once.

Anyone who rubbed up against him will carry part of his soul with them until they join him in the hereafter. They are glad, as am I, that they got close to him--great speaker, great advocate; he made you feel warm if you gave him half a chance--while he walked the earth. I hope someone still thinks that in Rhinelander, too.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark