The 25% Solution

 

There’s an old ad that starts, “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV.” It’s a parody on the endless stream of medical TV shows and has been the subject of any number of spoofs itself. Go to any restaurant and your waiter may be a struggling actor yearning for any role, even playing a doctor on TV. Here in New York City, it seems that this make believe is now reality. Beginning today the city’s eateries are allowed to have patrons eat indoors, but before anything may commence your server has to take your temperature and pronounce you fit enough to eat. Forget Obamacare—it seems M.D. now means marinara deliziosa.

Some 25,000 restaurants in the Big Apple, and over 300,000 of their employees, have been robbed clean by Gov. Cuomo, allowed only to provide takeout or delivery. Eventually restaurants in town could add sidewalk dining or sheds in the street. As a summertime diversion, it was all kind of fun—Mardi Gras comes to Manhattan. Nobody had a job, or if they did it was all “remote working at home,” and you could drink on the streets without much of a hassle from the cops. There was a vague Parisian café scene, well that is if the French liked traffic zooming by inches from your table and the leaking stench of garbage bags surrounding you.

Make no mistake, though, the party has been a Potemkin village. Where half a dozen waiters would roam inside in addition to a host and a bartender or two, now there was but one waiter and a manager, the latter doubling as busboy and drink maker. Doing the math, the luckiest of places might put out 25% of their chairs—chairs that had to be back inside by 11:00 PM. Not exactly a recipe for success in the city that never sleeps.

25% is also the percentage of seats that are now allowed for indoor dining. Beyond the expense of hospital-grade ventilation and other requirements more suited to a surgical suite, restaurants have to close indoor dining at midnight. If there seems to be no rhyme or reason to any of this, there isn’t. For months the city has been at an infection level that officials have considered safe for indoor dining. In fact the rest of the state has had indoor dining at 50% capacity, in some counties for months. It’s enough to drive a man to belly up to the bar and try ease this pain with a drink—except drinking inside bars will remain banned.

Why are the Governor and Mayor at war with the food industry? I have no idea. You wonder if this would be so very, very different if they were up for reelection in five weeks. They claim that unlike the rest of the state, the city’s restaurants pose a special health hazard. Pre-Covid, the greatest hazards have been slow service or the eventual, overpriced bill. But breathing is breathing, be it in Brooklyn or upstate Broome County. How one is worse than the other is a legal mystery, one soon to be unraveled. Lawsuits about this very point—how areas with the same infection rates can be treated so differently—have been filed and are making their way through the courts. It will be interesting to see how Cuomo’s lawyers will try to wriggle out of this logic, and if any judge will buy it.

Alas the battle may already be over. While the Mayor has offered outdoor dining as a year-round option, he also says that any enclosed outdoor tents can only have…25% capacity. While enjoying a beer and snack in winter’s cold is an après ski tradition in Park City, Utah, frozen alfresco dining off of Park Avenue isn’t likely to catch on. And with 90% of the city’s restaurant’s unable to make rent last month, 25% capacity, inside or out, is financial bleeding that any doctor—medical or financial—cannot fix. Even on TV.

© 2020 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.

The Instrument of Surrender

 

We like to say that we’ve visited historic places. Families still take pictures in front Rome’s Coliseum, albeit making Facebook their photo album. Civil War buffs take the hour-long trek across the battlefield of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where one marvels at both the abject destruction of life and the fact that anyone could survive. Dealey Plaza in Dallas is now less a roadway than death’s arrow marker or point of infinitesimal conspiracy, take your pick. There are thousands more locations across the planet where the course of history changed; some mark major events, many more just points of human progression. Few, however, mark a spot where both the world changed and such an event will never happen again. Such a spot exists, and I have been there. 75 years ago today, over the course of four minutes, that spot closed the door on one horrific chapter of human history and opened up the possibility to the end of humanity.

Today marks the 75^th anniversary of Japan’s unconditional surrender to the Allied forces. It’s the poor stepchild in WWII history—the bombing of Pearl Harbor, invasion of Normandy, and destruction of Hiroshima are commemorated annually by world leaders and the press. V-E and V-J days benefit from well-photographed celebrations in Times Square—who can’t like the exuberant images of chaos, confetti, and kissing. The contrast is even starker when you see the small plaque embedded in the deck of USS MISSOURI (in all-caps as a tip to my Navy friends), its few words marking the place where representatives of the Empire of Japan signed the instrument of surrender. And in the four minutes it took enemy and Allied representatives to exchange signatures, the last of all world wars, as we know them, ended.

Of course war didn’t go away, as USS MISSOURI and her fellow ships were soon part of hot proxy battles in the Cold War. These were real fights where real men and women, uniformed and civilian, fought and died, losing limbs and loved ones. It was, unfortunately, much of the same, just on a smaller scale.

But a world war as we know it is a thing of the past. WWII was really the only time in history where every country and every person on the planet was somehow involved. Governments needed to choose Axis or Allies and bear arms in support. Every man and woman was either fighting or somehow supporting the fight. The most distant hideaways were still under the watchful eyes of both sides, either or both ready to pounce on any traveler.

And while the conflagration took the greatest number of lives ever seen, we still recognize it as warfare we understand. Battlefields are preserved with stray armaments left strategically for tourists. Monuments in towns large and small stand to commemorate the dead, sometimes listing the fallen by name. Looking out from the bow of USS MISSOURI, where she is now moored in Pearl Harbor, and not even a long par-4 play away lies USS ARIZONA in her watery grave. Above her the famous white monument hovering just above the Hawaiian waters with each name of the dead sailors and marines carved into a marble wall. Such commemorations have been that way since the beginning of the US republic and for much of the rest of the world from the time of the written word.

Another world war will get no such remembrance. Another world war, where every nation chooses a side, when they put all of their military industry into combat, would look nothing like the usual run up of troops getting to the front. For the next world war would be nuclear aerial assault, with an initial wave of missiles taking an hour or so to start the conflict and whatever bombers that are left still flying following soon after to mop up what hadn’t been destroyed. Few would be remembered as there would be little left. Hundreds of millions of bodies would instantly evaporate; some might be far enough away from the blast zones to leave a shadow of their burned remains on the pavement where they stood. The battlefields would be where survivors remain; no memorials to the dead with record books gone and computers destroyed.

I offer neither disarmament nor first strike as solutions to our problems. But today would be a good time for all to reflect about what transpired during those few minutes in Tokyo Bay 75 years ago. Since that ink dried mankind has not tamed its bad natures. But maybe in a prayer for peace we can resolve never let our world get to that point of no return. Success would mean that those many veterans buried in our cemeteries did not die in vain.

© 2020 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.

Arnold R. Weber, 1929-2020

 

I’m not sure what was more startling, the fact I was up sometime before noon on a Sunday during college or that Northwestern’s 14^th president and his wife were strolling through the fraternity quad. As I was more focused on obtaining something greasy to sop up the previous evening’s alcohol, I gave the sighting no more thought until later that afternoon when someone came rushing into the TV room. “Guys,” he said, “Guys, we have got to go outside and clean up from last night’s party now. The Dean of Students just called me. President Weber walked by the house a little while ago and was pissed that the place was a mess.” With that we hurried out and beautified the landscape in record time.

There was, of course, a bigger lesson from this than a scare from the administration. First, as we’ve been told since kindergarten, clean up after yourselves. But more importantly, don’t give the authorities a reason to put you on their radar, especially for something as petty as plastic cups in the shrubs. Suffice it to say that going forward we assigned a more responsible crew for post-party clean up. It was also a classic Arnold Weber move. Don’t overreact to the minor problems, but make sure the message gets out there. Be fair but let everyone know where you stand. With Dr. Weber’s passing last week at age 90, it is a chance to reflect on how to run an organization.

In today’s world we look at leaders as our friends—whether it’s an association on Facebook or, increasingly at colleges, even taking a class taught by the President themselves. I could think of nothing more repugnant to Arnold Weber. Don’t get me wrong—he was, in our few interactions, perfectly sociable in a polite way, but tweedy and worried about your feelings he was not. There wasn’t a chip on his shoulder, but every time he opened his mouth, his highly intelligent voice boomed through a distinct Bronx, New York working middle-class background. His habit of chain smoking unfiltered Camels added even more gravel, and no less gravitas, to his tone.

But persona is no substitute for substance, and Dr. Weber showed real leadership on the toughest of issues. One such example is the tale of Barb Foley. The good Dr. Foley was, charitably, a character—one who was an actual card-carrying communist and not afraid to invoke class warfare at the slightest provocation of imperialist aggression. While I never took one of her classes, the collegiate gods had a good laugh when they assigned her to me as my freshman advisor. She walked through the ministrations of academic advice about my intended courses (Econ for a career on Wall Street for me, naturally) and even hosted an outing to a theater performance in downtown Chicago with her other advisees.

By following year Foley had jumped through the final hoop of academia’s obstacle course, recommendation for tenure, and had but Weber’s signature to seal a guaranteed lifetime of employment. But in an ironic twist, one of the great symbols of the anti-communist fight, the Nicaraguan contras, snatched paradise away. One of the group’s leaders was on campus and temptation was too great. Not satisfied to picket and pamphlet outside the lecture hall, Foley led a group into the room and splashed red paint on the speaker, symbolizing the blood of Nicaragua (of course!) while also proclaiming to the audience that “This man cannot be allowed to speak.” The continuing disruption and threats caused the speech to be canceled and the speaker hustled out by campus police for his own safety.

This was no he-said, she said incident. Foley proudly owned her actions and declared victory. That is until Dr. Weber just as decisively rejected the tenure recommendation, effectively firing her. Here was a university where free speech and thought, the exchange of ideas, was paramount and Foley would have none of it. Weber understood that allowing this to pass would undermine the entire concept of academic freedom. Appeals and litigation ensued, but Northwestern’s decision survived and its reputation remained intact. Comrade Barb exiled herself to the People’s Republic of New Jersey and continued the proletariat struggle at Rutgers. It may also have marked the last moment of sanity at this country’s elite institutions of higher learning. For any university president to take the same action today would be unthinkable; in fact they wouldn’t just give Foley tenure, they would name a teaching chair after her.

But behind the intellect and rock-solid principles was a biting humor to make his point. Early on in his time on campus he organized a few “meet the new President” session-really just a question and answer get together. The first one had, maybe, two participants, and Weber made it very clear that people would have to show up if they wanted these to continue. As a campus photographer I was assigned to cover the second event, and sure enough a larger group gathered at the student center. As time passed, one particularly irritated student started in on some of the renovations Weber had started. Railing against newly-installed rocks demarking walking paths, the student ended up red-faced, denouncing, in light of the expensive tuition, why Weber could be “planting all of these trees!” In classic Weber fashion he quietly ashed his cigarette before taking a few soothing puffs. Thus fortified, he looked the youth in the eye and sternly proclaimed, “I like trees.”

And there is was. Clearly this student never got a phone call about cleaning up the garbage. Trees weren’t some Sierra Club manifesto or green energy plan; he wanted the place to sparkle, academically and physically, and he sure as heck wasn’t going to let a few bucks get in his way. He sorted out the school’s finances by fundraising like nobody before him and judiciously cutting where he had to. By his retirement he definitely left the campus better than when he arrived.

And so I give thanks for having known Arnold Weber, albeit in only that slightest of ways. But looking back, seeing leadership with integrity, force of personality, and keen intellect matched with sharp wit was as important as any class I took. And whatever the afterlife holds, I know that for one person it will be filled with trees. Lots and lots on neatly planted trees.

© 2020 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.

It’s All Greek To Me

If you thought practicing the piano was just a nice way to pass the time, you would be wrong—it was more like a full-contact workout in an overheated gym. How would I possibly know this, as I can’t even bang out chopsticks, you ask? Early Saturday evenings, my junior year fraternity roommate Mike would come back drenched in sweat from a few hours of piano rehearsal. Aside from the annual mud football games, few guys came back to the house from any kind of workout looking as drained as he did. This weekly ritual culminated in a spring recital, and naturally I would be attending. What was truly impressive was that 20 or more of our brothers made the trek down to south campus and took in the performance, without even the promise of booze afterwards. I’d put good money that only a couple had ever heard of Debussy, or even had attended any kind of classical music performance, save a sibling’s end-of-school-year show. But that was the great thing about my fraternity—these were your friends and supporters, often times when you least expected it.

With colleges reopening this month there’s a new punching bag across campuses. Greek life has always had its doubters; some out of a false sense of intellectual superiority and others simply had no interest. The latter never bothered me—in fact I respected them for not caring about it. The former, however, always seemed to invoke the Groucho Marx line about not wanting to be in a club that would admit them. What they never got was that that Groucho was making fun of himself, not the institutions. Now the not-so-funny joke at colleges is the move to disband the Greek system by members of the Greek houses themselves.

This new pandemic of social crusading centers on the tenet that the Greek system is beholden to, and promoter of, inequality, elitism, and racism. The most vocal critics are students at such institutions such as Vanderbilt, Duke, Emory, and my alma mater, Northwestern. Of course, these students also claim that these very same institutions that they attend are also propagators of inequality, elitism, and racism. Oddly, they aren’t leaving campus in protest or calling for the closing of the schools, or at least not until they get their degrees. And I can personally attest that there was neither inequality nor elitism in my fraternity—all the booze was equally cheap and bad.

It’s the charge of racism that particularly rankles me. There was no sign over our door saying “Whites Only.” At any given time we would have had three or four black members, which as a percentage of the house almost perfectly matched the University’s minority percentages. We were probably slightly more progressive than some other houses, especially with a number of South Asian members. During rush week we would have daily meetings to evaluate pledge candidates. Unlike the movie Animal House, we didn’t set up an overhead projector to show face book photos and throw beer cans at the wall when we didn’t like somebody. Actually we tried that once and Hollywood makes it look much easier than it really is. But during these “hash” sessions, nobody, and I mean nobody, ever said, “We have a black guy, why do we need more?” or “Gee do you think it’s going to look bad if I say I just don’t like the guy and he happens to be Hispanic?” Minds met, bids were handed out, and pledges made. As Groucho also said, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

A final, and overarching, complaint from the disaffected is that there is no “meaning” to the Greek system. I have vague recollections of the meaning of the secret lessons from my initiation ceremony. You can look up the meaning of my fraternity’s crest in any standard reference book of heraldry. As with anything in life, meaning comes from what you put in, and it varied for each man. Some guys were active in the house all through college, living, breathing, and drinking it in for four years. As junior and senior years came, more distanced themselves, perhaps just paying dues and doing door duty for parties, but not so involved in the day-to-day. Some just faded away.

But there was real meaning in the day-to-day life. Our weekly chapter meetings were nominally to go over the house’s business, but more gossip sessions from the previous, pre-social media, weekend’s parties. Occasionally, however, the meetings turned ugly. The President storming out of the meeting and threatening to resign ugly. Calls for an active to leave the fraternity ugly, only for that active to defend himself in speech so eloquent that it ended in a cacophony of applause. Verbal knife fights that would have ended in blood with real weapons ugly. As unpleasant as these incidents were, I’ve applied what I learned in my personal and professional life time and time again. That’s what college should do for you, and my fraternity definitely did.

Which brings us to the question that Greek members who call for the elimination of the Greek system can’t seem to answer: Why did you want to join in the first place? It seems that these youths felt that their purpose in life was to change the Greek system into some functionary of social change and promoter of “social justice.” This isn’t just naïve but utterly stupid. These days there are a hundred campus organizations, with every flavor of disaffection, that are looking to change the world. The Greek system isn’t it. The virtue signaling of deactivating after failing to complete this mission simply completes this circle of self-absorption.

I won’t defend every Greek house in America. There are plenty of idiots to want to funnel booze into an 18 year-old’s throat or throw them out into the cold woods as pledge training and not expect bad things to happen. There’s no place for that, or if there is it’s probably jail. A friend of mine once recounted a hazing ritual, best not repeated here, whose purpose was to confirm that these fine young white men would not be aroused by black women. Obviously there’s no place for that either. And if there was a shortcoming in my house, it would have been the difficulty for those who were exploring their sexual identities. We all knew members who were gay, but it wasn’t as if they could bring a boyfriend to formal.

Yet there is still plenty of meaning for most of those who have gone through the Greek experience. About a dozen of us have gone on virtual reunions during this Covid time. Predictably, the years have added a few pounds or taken away some hair, but overall the crew is in great shape. The conversation revolves around the issues of 50-something men—how kids will adjust to college this year, golf, and hoping Northwestern’s football team will be at least average. But the jokes are just as cutting as they were three decades ago, and as my wife pointed out she hadn’t heard me laugh that hard in a long time. The camera also shows that our careers have been successful enough that we can afford better cocktails than the swill we had in the past. This brotherhood, in its own way, is Stellis Aequus Durando, “Equal to the Stars in Endurance.” I only wish Mike were alive today to give us all one more performance, even if it were just over a blurry Zoom video.

© 2020 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.

Just Two Words…

The recent passing of comedian and director Carl Reiner gave us all a chance to remember a master of his craft. It also gave me a chance to reread one of my favorite, and shortest, comedy bits of all time. Playing the reporter to Mel Brooks’ 2,000 year-old man, Reiner asks an obvious question, “Did you ever meet Jesus?” As nonchalantly as ordering an egg cream at a lunch counter, Brooks’ character replies yes, “Nice guy—wore sandals.”

Brilliance in four words.

No matter what faith, we are still talking about Jesus, Son of God, not a son of the Ferragamo shoe family. Yet blithe indifference is the beauty of this bit, the throw-away nature is what makes me burst out laughing every time. It’s not a punch line, not a carefully constructed story set up, and that second it takes to register makes the line all the greater.

Craftsmanship isn’t the art of the obvious, it’s knowing how perfect it is but still marveling at every detail and finding something new to appreciate. When my wife and I visit Rome, a visit to Gucci is tops on the (well, her) agenda. And while our budget doesn’t allow for the $3,000 black leather handbag, I can appreciate it for a lot more than a way to carry lipstick and 20 Euro bill. Touch the leather and you realize what “buttery soft” really means. Try seeing the stitching. You really can’t—the illusion of a straight line is the sewing equivalent of Seurat’s pointillism. The shine both beautifully diffuses the light but also draws it in like a black hole.

I’ve been thinking about beauty, particularly in the use of words, lately and how it can show up in the oddest of places.

The modern masters of the quip, rather than the stand-up joke, are well known—folks like Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, and Winston Churchill were not only craftsmen but also commanders of the language. Unlike these writings, they didn’t need a second draft. The quip elevated to the front page of a newspaper is a great headline, and none was better than the New York Post’s “Headless Man in Topless Bar.” There in five words a master told the story (clearly not a natural death), a description of the salient details (decapitation), the place where it happened (strip joint), and all under tawdry air. Brilliance splashed across a page in 150 pt. type. You’re smiling just reading it.

But sometimes these gems come not from polished writers but from those who don’t even try. Watching the recent Netflix documentary on the Commission mob trials, the film showed Genovese crime boss “Fat Tony” Salerno as he was hustled into his car after making bail. On cue, the reporters swarmed around the vehicle in the usual scrum. What followed is unintentional comedy gold:

Reporter: “Mr. Salerno, do you have any comment about the charges.”

Fat Tony: “Go f—k yourself.”

Reporter: “Thank you.”

Fat Tony: “You’re welcome.”

“You’re welcome.” Just two words. But it’s the reflex reaction that just keeps me laughing. The “Thank you” is a wise ass retort to profanity, and funny in its own kind of way. But “You’re welcome” takes you back to any kid who gets a gift from a friend of their parent’s. The parent will ask “What do you say?” and the child will give a sheepish grin and reply, “Thank you.” The friend, smiling at this teachable moment, will then over exaggerate the “You’re welcome” and all is good with the world. So it was with Fat Tony, this weird reflex moment of politeness that momentarily interrupted his normal string obscenities and orders to murder people. In reality, it was just another way to say f- you, but so funny because the film clip shows how he startles himself with his own false courtesy.

Words and the behavior it engenders have been at the forefront of the news around New York, well at least if you are trying to get a drink outside. While inexplicably not allowing any indoor dining, and the related revenue it would bring to desperate restaurants, the state and city have concocted a series of ever-changing rules for extended outdoor eating and drinking. Bars in particular have had to tread carefully, as the line between violating open container laws and lawful business is ill defined. King Cuomo’s court issued a set of rules that allowed outdoor imbibing with the purchase of food, “which shall mean a diversified selection of food that is ordinarily consumed without the use of tableware and can be conveniently consumed, including but not limited to: cheese, fruits, vegetables, chocolates, breads, mustards and crackers.” While we were all getting a good laugh that “mustards” are a legally-defined thing, a wise-ass bar owner soon whipped up a batch of “Cuomo chips” to comply. Unsurprisingly, our Albany monarch was not amused.

Thus another magisterial edict came down with even newer, and not necessarily improved, language. As reported in the tabloids, “According to the new SLA guidance, a bag of chips or nuts does not meet the food requirement, but ‘sandwiches, soups or other foods, whether fresh, processed, precooked or frozen,’ do pass muster. ‘Other foods,’ according to the SLA, “are foods which are similar in quality and substance to sandwiches and soups; for example, salads, wings, or hotdogs would be of that quality and substance.’”

And so we are left to reflect upon these many, many words. This isn’t intended as comedy, but the joke is really on the suffering businesses and the patrons who just want to cool their thirst on a hot summer’s eve. So if you are out and about trying to grab a drink with friends, keep an eye out for the inspectors doing less-than-God’s-work checking on your social distancing and the edible selections with your beverage. Should they ask you anything, just give them a two-word answer, “You’re welcome.” Let them figure out what you really mean.

© 2020 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.

Helpless People in Lawless City

Changing of the management guard is often times cause for a celebration. My college newspaper was no different and every spring we hosted a banquet for that year’s retiring editorial board. “Banquet” was really a fancy way of saying that we shelled out a few bucks at the hotel across the street from campus for a room with non-paper tablecloths and chicken sandwiches on decent china. The break from the brutalist concrete of the student center was welcome, and the relaxing atmosphere kept the stories flowing. The photo editor put together a slide show (a time long before any fourth grader could whip up a multi-media PowerPoint) and popped a cassette tape into a boom box he had brought along. The strains of “Dirty Laundry” started up, with a predictable groan from all in the room. The outgoing editor-in-chief looked dour, a Serious Journalist who would go on to do Serious Journalist Things, and all I could hear him quietly mutter was, “I hate that song.”

35 years after that lunch, Don Henley seems almost quaint in poking fun at the fourth estate. Long before predicting that bubble-headed-bleach-blonds and innuendo would rule the airwaves, there was the standby tabloid mantra, “If it bleeds, it leads.” Unfortunately for New York City, there is so much blood on the streets it’s hard to know what story would start the day’s coverage. Only the vintage New York Post headline, featured on a long-ago opening credit of Saturday Night Live, captures what is going on: “Mayhem In The Street.”

Starting with the Covid populace imprisonment to the George Floyd protests, property crime progressed from petty theft to pretty well-well run theft rings. But after that, the wheels have fallen off the axle of law and order. We are at a point now that shooting deaths and hospitalizations outnumber Covid cases.

How the hell did we get here?

Nine shot last Sunday.

15 shot over 15 hours the previous weekend. Three in 15 minutes.

A six year-old girl runs for her life as her father is shot next to her in broad daylight as they crossed the street. The father dies.

A one year-old is shot in the park at a family picnic, the victim of a stray bullet. The Mayor visited the grieving family. The Police Commissioner visited the grieving family. Presumably, like any high profile case on the show Law & Order, the Chief of D’s [Detectives] was on the phone to the precinct to establish how important it was to crack this case.

The NYPD’s Chief of Patrol was one of three officers hurt trying to break up a melee.

On. And on. And on.

But wait, shouldn’t we all be safe with the city and state having, depending on how you look at it, the toughest gun laws in the nation? Now Chicago and Washington, D.C. could also argue that they have the toughest gun control laws as well. Chicago and Washington, D.C., by absolute numbers for the former and percentage by the latter, are in even worse shape than New York City.

So really, how the hell did we get here?

Blame lies across a land so large it could almost cover all of blood splattered on the sidewalks. Responsibility and action are, unsurprisingly, in shorter supply than hope for a Covid vaccine.

Our Governor was “concerned,” calling the violence “horrific.” Beyond that no plan of action to end this scourge has been forthcoming. Our insipid Mayor once again shunned any responsibility, blaming the Courts for closing up shop during the pandemic. The Court system, being a government entity, had plenty of statistics to back up their rebuttal that tens of thousands of cases had been processed during Covid. Unfortunately, no matter how efficiently the Courts work, New York’s new bail laws don’t just create a revolving door for criminals but hand out a permanent get out of jail card that is the envy of this real-life Monopoly game. Naturally the Mayor endorsed these “criminal justice reforms” and the Governor gleefully signed them into law. The effect has been to let out repeat offenders so that they could go out and repeat again, including the alleged attacker of the NYPD’s Chief of Patrol.

Perhaps disbanding the NYPD’s “anti-crime” unit, in order to appease the non-law abiding, curfew-breaking Floyd rioters, was the tipping point. Maybe, maybe not. I’ve never been a fan of the unit’s name, as I can’t imagine there is a companion “for-crime” unit. But what was the purpose of the group? Getting the guns off the street that the mighty cloak of the law was supposed to shield us from in the first place.

And for the rest of us, really almost every every person in the city, who are just trying to live our lives? What is the message our “leaders” give us?

Kick 'em when they're up. Kick 'em when they're down.

© 2020 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.

One Hand Clapping

Recently my classic rock station had another ‘80’s rock weekend promotion. It’s kind of ironic since the 80’s saw a lot of great music—Madonna’s pop, Police’s new wave, and Prince’s…well however you define him. Aside from sandwiching Van Halen and Guns ‘n Roses at each end of the decade, it was not a time for the next Stones, Who, or Beatles. The station was really announcing that it was cheating on its musical roots but the listeners were going to like it anyway. So a quartet of folky female voices wafted through the speakers before a Gibson guitar screamed and a pounding high tom announced the Bangles’ “Hazy Shade of Winter.” As part of the soundtrack for the coke-fueled ‘80’s film Less Than Zero, this cover of the otherwise forgotten Simon and Garfunkel piece was an appropriate choice. But while the decade of decadence featured drugs, sex, and money as their own kind of sport, the actual sports world is now the Sounds of Silence.

Some leagues have made a few returning moves, but mostly with things using four means of propulsion. NASCAR was first to roar back, turning laps in front of empty stands. As a television event, it wasn’t so different because the crowd noise always gets drowned out by the over-revved car engines.

The sport of kings dipped its hoof onto the track, and it showed how much fans are part of the entire experience. Now I’ve been by the rail of Saratoga’s backstretch when they start a race. 30,000 fans are opposite me, but only if the wind is right can you hear their distance shouts. The starting gate opens and the magnificent beasts hurtle past you in a mostly chestnut blur. The only sound is the pounding of horseshoes on sandy turf, a muffled puff, puff, puff from each horse, and a contrast to the power generated by nearly a ton of horse going 25 miles an hour.

As demonstrated at Belmont Park a few weekends ago, it all makes for boring television. There should be 100,000 people screaming for a triple crown, literally shaking the stands and TV cameras. I’ve been on the rail by the finish for that. I’ve been in the stands for that. I’ve watched it on TV at home and would do so again. Except for street bookies hustling for any kind of betting action, it was a mediocre two minutes of fleeting interest after months in a new broadcast content vacuum.

Basketball promises to return, again without fans in the stands. What’s the point of watching without a couple of guys in the seats, one with a large “D” and the other with a white fence cutout, with the organ pounding away as the crowd sings “De-fense”? I saw the Michael Jordan documentary and enjoyed watching the ’92 Olympic scrimmages and his comeback practices. How the NBA is going to top the squeaking sneakers and occasional profanity of those clips is, at best, unclear to me.

All of which brings us to our nation’s summer game, baseball. It should be the summer game, but neither the players nor owners could figure out how to play in front of empty stands to kick off the Fourth of July weekend. It’s not that I look forward to the crack of the bat and an announcer frantically calling a dribbling ground out to short as the greatest athletic feat ever performed. I’m not looking forward to endless commentary about social distancing precautions as the outfield camera pans across players far enough away from each other to constitute their own countries. What I am really not looking forward to is the fact there isn’t a season. 60 games? College teams put that together while driving to their own world series. Joltin’ Joe’s hit streak would have encompassed 93% of this “season.”

Sports is now a temptress, the Mrs. Robinson of TV trying to seduce us with false promise. Indeed, where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? It seems that in trying to come back, the thrill of sports has left and gone away.

© 2020 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.