December 2008 Archives

WHEN WERE YOUR BORN? If you're reading this then I'm guessing you were born before the year 2000, unless you're one of those really, really smart Philadelphia public school third graders who read newspapers and go to Masterman school. So if you're not under the age of nine, you are stuck here with the rest of us who were born in a decade with a name while living in decade that has none.

If you are 20, you were born in the 80's but just barely. If you were born in the 70's, you would be at least 38. I am a child of the 50's and 60's which means I am older than I ever imagined I'd live but feel younger than I ever thought I'd feel at this age. And yet all of us pre-millenials have what the Masterman kids don't -- the comfort of knowing what to call the decade of our birth.

What decade are we currently living in? What do you call it? I would suggest that our current decade, almost a decade old itself, doesn't have a name anyone can agree upon. In a few days we will begin the final year of whatever we call the period between Jan. 1, 2000 and Dec. 31, 2009. And frankly I'm surprised.

We've had all this time to think about it, not to mention the hype leading to the end of the 1900s and the beginning of the 2000s, and we still haven't acquired a name for the time in which we live, let alone a nickname, like the "roaring 20's" or the "swinging 60's." If in 30 years or so the Masterman kids have a popular TV comedy like "That 70's Show" what will it be called? "That First Decade of the 21st Century Show"?

I'll admit that I've been ahead of the curve on this issue. I wrote a column for The Inquirer on Dec. 28, 1989 asking the question, "What do we call the decade after the 90's?" And nobody seemed to have a clue. One suggestion was to call them "the 00's" (pronounced the aughties), which I thought was a longshot and that has proven to be accurate.

But in a label obsessed culture such as ours, I am amazed that someone somewhere hasn't come up with a term we can agree upon to describe the unit decade of the new millennium. "Turn of the century" sounds so 1900ish and "post 9/11" discounts the one year, nine months and ten days that preceeded it, and "since the year 2000" sounds like a Conan O'Brien skit.

Whatever we decide, or if we ever do, it certainly hasn't been a pressing issue considering that we've gone this long without a name. But let me go on the record early to ask the next obvious question: what are we going to call the decade between Jan. 1, 2010 and Dec.31, 2019?

THE FATHER OF HISTORY is a man named Herodotus, a Greek writer who lived in the ancient times before the birth of Alexander the Great or even Richard Nixon. Herodotus has been called the first "historian" in that he made it his business to write down the story of mankind as best he could with the available information in the 4th Century B.C., which was way before Google or Wikipedia.

As a result Herodotus has been referred to, even by some of his contemporaries, as "the father of lies." His chief sin seems to have been a willingness to report popular lore alongside verifiable fact. For instance, during the reign of the Persian king Cambyses, the evil and murderous son of the first Persian conqueror, Cyrus, Herodotus wrote that a Babylonian journalist threw both his shoes one after another at the most powerful ruler in the world during a farewell press conference in Baghdad.

Centuries later scholars of antiquity doubt if such a preposterous event could have taken place in such a heavily guarded and hyper vigilant venue as a close quarters photo-op by a universally unpopular and commonly detested foreign monarch in occupied territory.

Clearly Herodotus was just making this stuff up. And so, undoubtedly, will our current technological state-of-the-art Geek historian -- You-Tube-Us --be rejected by future generations who will be expected to believe that the President of the United States was dodging hurled shoes like some kind of Whack-The-Mole video game.

Puh-LEESE! We all know how this kind of "live" video can be digitally enhanced, altered or completely fabricated. Will we expect intelligent life forms 2,500 years from now to believe that that was a a real event featuring the actual United States President, George W. Bush, grinning that infuriatingly guilty grin of his, ducking those Iraqi soles last week?

We live in extraordinary times, you and I. Herodotus would have a field day describing how in a little more than 10 years the greatest power in the world has gone from impeaching its president for lying about marital infidelity to allowing a president to go unprosecuted for lying about everything from reasons for going to war in Mesopotamia to reasons the economy went to hell in Middle America. And instead of standing up like men and hurling our shoes in the president's face out of conviction, American journalists have acted like boys lighting a flaming bag of dog poop outside the White House front entrance and then ringing the doorbell before running to hide behind the wall to wait and see if the president opens the door and dirties his shoes.

YOU WANT TO SEE THE DIFFERENCE Democrats can make when in charge of American politics. Consider this: Rod Blagojevich won't quit, Caroline Kennedy wants to run, and George Bush can't run fast enough to dodge Iraqi shoes. This is a new world order, ladies and gentlemen. I have no idea what it means or will mean. I have great hopes for it. But whatever it is, it has begun.

I'm old enough to remember thinking that Bobby Kennedy was a shameless opportunist when he ran for senator from New York -- he was a Kennedy from Massachusattes just like his dead brother. It struck me as obscene in a sort of Philadelphia neighborhood way. How could you just move to New York and get elected senator?

Well, sir, I have learned my lesson about American politics. I have seen a Boston Irish anti-Brahmin not only become the first Catholic president but have seen his scheming younger brother win election and my heart. And I have felt that heart, still broken from the first, break again. And then I swore off Kennedys and wondered why anyone would ever trust them again. We need leaders not martyrs.

But the hope of what the Kennedys represented has bubbled forth like liberal plasma beneath the Republican magma all these years, as long I've been alive basically, and I no longer doubt its potency. I always thought Ted Kennedy was overrated, if not under investigated. I thought young Joe was terrific and dreamy. I thought John John was doomed doomed along with the rest of the cousins. And now Caroline wants to replace Hillary in the United States Senate and all of a sudden it makes more sense than not. Why not another Kennedy? What's our risk? At least it's not another Bush.

The way our President, George Bush, dodged those shoes thrown at him from close quarters in Iraq reminded me of a vaudeville comedian dodging thrown tomatoes. Like he was expecting it. Like he was glad to finally see it coming. Thank God, an honest reaction. There was no fear in the president's eyes. Only that infuriating Bush amusement with the events at hand.

This is what we call a transition. From a president who laughs and ducks to a president who stands and laughs.

ONE OF THE BRAGGING RIGHTS enjoyed by Philadelphia newspaper columnists over news commentators from other American cities is the simple declaration that our politicians are more corrupt than theirs.

I remember being interviewed by Noah Adams of NPR's "All Things Considered" during the height of the Abscam scandal in the early 1980's when Philadelphia elected officials, from City Council to Congressmen, were being locked up faster than a drive-through window at McDonalds. By the end of the sting operation prosecutions Philadelphia had lost two members of the U.S. House of Representatives and a half dozen members of City Council -- including Council President George Schwartz -- in the most outrageous pay-to-play scam ever concocted by the FBI. (Federal agents wearing phony beards were videotaped pretending to be Arab sheiks offering bribes to Pennsylvania and New Jersey politicians. Nowhere did elected officials sell their offices faster and more greedily than Philadelphia).

At the end of the NPR interview about which city was more corrupt, Philadelphia or Chicago, I reminded Adams, "Just remember, we're Number One!"

It wasn't simply the scale of the graft sought by Philadelphia's crooked politicians, it was the style. Who can forget a drunken South Philly Congressman Michael "Ozzie" Myers boasting on videotape to federal agents that in Philadelphia, "Money talks, bull-- walks." Or a few years later when City Councilman Leland Beloff tried to shake down developer Willard Rouse for a million bucks using a Roman salute to silently signal the deal was done? I mean these guys acted like they were part of Tony Soprano's crew.

We Philadelphia newspaper columnists looked upon our corrupt politicians as a naturally replenishing resource, like our legendary sports fans.

But then along came Blagojevich and our "corrupt and contented" title got blown away by the Windy City. Ill. Gov. Rod Blagojevich (pronounced: blah-GOY-o-vich) of Chicago has reclaimed the throne of "There ain't no corruption like Cook County corruption." by not only attempting to sell the president-elect's U.S. senate seat to the highest bidder, but to threaten to cancel funding to a children's hospital unless a $50,000 "contribution" was made and then to attempt to leverage a deal with the owner of the Chicago Tribune contingent upon firing editorial writers critical of the governor.

Not since Chicago's City Hall was taking orders from mobsters in Cicero, Ill. has the level of municipal corruption reached such heights in America. On behalf of a humbled Philadelphia I symbolically doff William Penn's hat to the new champion city astride Lake Michigan. Our Fumo is no match for their Blago.

WHY DOES BEING A LIFELONG EAGLES FAN have to feel so much like being the parody of a bad cliche? After Sunday's solid and workmanlike victory against the best team in football I found myself apeing that sourpuss mug of "Miami Steve" Van Zandt playing Silvio Dante from the Sopranos apeing Al Pacino playing Michael Corleone from Godfather III, "Just when I thought I was out, they PULL me back in."

The Eagles knocked the defending world champions flat on their asses at Giants stadium by doing what the Eagles haven't been able to do against an NFC opponant all season -- run it down their throats -- and I react like a made man swearing eternal fealty to a mob boss who just arrived fresh from the federal witness protection program.

Why am I such an easy gabbone? Loyalty to this green "thing of ours" has caused me more agita in recent years than decades of rooting for losing Phillies teams, mediocre Sixers teams or overmatched Flyers teams. I don't claim to understand the dynamic of this peculiar hold over my better senses enjoyed by the Eagles. Since adulthood I have tried to school my emotions with a hard-learned maxim about the nature of the National Football League: "On any given Sunday the Eagles can defy the odds and lose."

The reverse is true, of course, just take Sunday's upset over the Giants. But for every Miracle in the Meadowlands there's been a Fogbowl in Chicago and, most recently, a Clinker in Cincinnati. Let's face it, Philadelphia, both the fans and the sports media, treat the Eagles like the city's legacy and premier professional sports team. This despite the fact that every other major league franchise in Philadelphia has won two world championships apiece -- not to mention the titles by the Phantoms, Wings, Soul or Kixx --since the Eagles last NFL championship in 1960. You could look it up.

So knowing all this, why am I actually allowing myself to, you know, believe that the Eagles can run the table? Can steal a wild card? Can beat Dallas away? All based on this infuriatingly inconsistent team's performance last Sunday? My answer is simple. I've seen them do it before. With backup quarterbacks. Jim McMahon in 1991, Rodney Peete in 1995 and Jeff Garcia in 2006.

I figure this is Donovan's year to do the impossible. And that's why they keep pulling me back.

SYNDICATED CARTOONIST Robb Armstrong is a Philly guy. I met him years ago at a going away party for Bob Greenberg, who was as old school a newspaperman as you'd ever want to meet, and who was the Philadelphia Inquirer features editor who took a chance on the young cartoonist by signing the Inquirer up for a daily comic strip about a middle class two-income -- dad's a cop, mom's a nurse -- black family in Philadelphia.

The strip has always been filled with brotherly love and the issue of race, while always present, is hardly ever an issue. The strip is about family and home and it just so happens that the comic strip family's home town is our home town. And in the Inquirer's Sunday funnies the Jumpstart family (even the curmudgeonly unibrow partner Crunchy) celebrated the Phillies victory the way we all did. In fact, I took some pictures of Philadelphia cops looking a lot like these guys on Broad Street after the Game Five clincher on Oct. 29.

Interestingly, I spoke to the son of a Philly cop who was stationed on Broad Street that night who said that his father told him that he was never as scared as a police officer as he was that night. Probably because he realized that the crowd was so huge that it couldn't have been controlled by a thousand cops if the night had turned nasty.