By ‘Mister Gripes’…………………………………… January 24, 2012

Jefferson Airplane – Growing up on Long Island in the 1950’s, Mr. Gripes could not have had a more benevolent childhood – baseball, Root beer floats, Elvis, Howard Johnson ‘3-D’ hamburgers, Frank Gifford, Soupy Sales and a town ‘duck pond’ –a childhood friend of mine once described the town we grew up in as ‘Eden.’ Yes, there were family crises, and stressful times, often self-inflicted, but for the most part, I led a carefree, unscripted existence. And, of course, that colored my perceptions of my country, its inhabitants and the larger world – I naturally thought that everything would ultimately work out well, and people could be taken at their word. My God, was I mistaken.

Certain occurrences in my life, insignificant as they seem today, irrevocably altered my naïve, innocent perceptions. To the point now that, I am, as my readers know only too well, in a state of permanent dyspepsia. Here’s one particular event I reflected on recently:

The rock ‘n roll band, ‘Jefferson Airplane’, was an immensely successful group in the ‘60’s and ‘70s. At that time, the country was convulsed in its version of a revolution: kids from Coconut Grove and Scarsdale, and other well-heeled towns, children of doctors, lawyers and corporate CEO’s, pretending to be Che Guevara, marched in the streets, chanting for a government overthrow. In retrospect, ‘playing’ at revolution was so childish and amateurish. But, that period of drugs and corrosive rebellion really ruined a lot of lives. Back then, all of that nonsense was taken very, very seriously.

Jefferson Airplane, riding the crest of the coming revolution, created a hit, ‘Up Against the Wall, Mother-f—ers’. Yes, ‘Mother-f-ers’. It was, of course, cleaned up to play on the radio, but that was the song’s name in its original form. And, it became huge, as millions of kids obviously felt a comrade’s camaraderie with ‘Airplane.’ Consider that for a moment: those musicians were actually exhorting their fans to line up some cops against the wall, and – not asserted per se in the song, but insinuated strongly – shoot them. Left-wing Pied Pipers, they might have considered themselves, leading on young kids to kill policemen [and other ‘authority figures’.]

Well, my late brother went to an Airplane concert one night, in Florida, I think. Drugs were rift at the outdoor performance, and the group dutifully pushed all the revolutionary, anti-war slogans during the show, exhorting the massive crowd to take action.

Then, at precisely 11:55 pm, the band, in mid-song, suddenly ceased playing, picked up their instruments, and left the stage. Concert over. No warning. It’s over.

The crowd, stupefied, could not comprehend what had just happened. After yelling for a half-hour, they streamed out of the parade grounds.

It turned out, my brother told me, there was a midnight curfew in effect, imposed on the group by the county in which the concert had taken place. Jefferson Airplane, big tough guys exhorting their fans to kill, leading to a toppling of the American government, were frightened they might play past some candy-ass curfew, and get arrested. ‘God-damn, we might have to spend a couple of hours in jail and pay a $200 fine; the police are coming – I’m so-o-o scared, let’s get out of here.’

What a bunch of wimps. Disgusting hypocrites, too. Revolution and stopping the war were not the true passions and beliefs of Jefferson Airplane. Far from it — it was selling records and making lots of money, which they pulled off by deceiving gullible kids. My brother was appalled, of course, when I spoke to him the next morning.

Of course, in retrospect, Jefferson Airplane couldn’t have believed in an American revolution, not for a moment. They had to be more savvy than that.

But, some synapses in my brain snapped as I finished that phone chat with my brother Tommy. It was a seismic epiphany that I’ve taken to heart ever since: Politicians, entertainers, anyone in the public eye actually: every one of them is all about self-interest, ego, manipulation and the dollar. Be assured none of them can be trusted to tell us the truth.

‘I Am Woman, I Am Strong’… Remember Helen Reddy’s hit? It was horrible music, but certainly a song of its time. Women, after all, were on the march, liberating men-only establishments like McSorley’s Ale House, fossilized university clubs and athletic clubs, demanding equal rights and equal pay, insisting that the supercilious, smug male gender wake up and accept women as equal partners. Those times heralded in the future a true parity between sexes.

I’m afraid not. Jump twenty or thirty years ahead, and, in Mr. Gripes’ saturnine opinion, it sure looks like women as a gender have surrendered up the cause.

The other day on a subway platform, I observed a poster for an upcoming movie, ‘One for the Money,’ starring Kathleen Heigl. The stunning Ms. Heigl, peering out at the viewer in an over-the-shoulder leer, has dangling from one of her blood-red lacquered fingers a set of hand-cuffs. The message is explicit: ‘let’s you and me get it on, in any kind of kinky, sado-masochistic sex game you wanna play, got it, you dangerous, gorgeous hunk of a man.’

It’s overtly disrespectful of women. The poster denigrates the gender, and — I abhor ‘empowerment’ language but I’ll use one such word in this case – it ‘objectifies’ women as sexual beings, and nothing else.

Is there even one tiny tendril of protest from women’s groups? The silence is deafening. The movement appears to have disintegrated. Women still do 80% of housework and child-rearing, and earn less than men for commensurate jobs. Corporations still lean heavily toward men for leadership positions. The Women’s Rights Movement is a joke.

Ah, but women have had huge success in one area: hyphenation. Nowadays, many children are burdened with hyphenated names, undoubtedly foisted on them by mothers who, damn-it, are going to keep their maiden names come-hell-or-high water, even if it’s attached and behind a paternal name. For the record, Mr. Gripes just cannot stand hyphenated names – imagine if you went through life with a handle like ‘O’Brien-Hirshbaum’ or ‘Ruggiero-Spellman’. If I were a kid possessing a name like that, I’d put my head under my desk whenever attendance was taken. There’s nothing pretty or stirring about double-names.

Besides, they’re confusing and difficult to remember. Mr. Gripes lived in Mexico for a short time, and he recalls everyone’s surname was composed of many relatives’ names, piled higher and higher upon each other; I never got the knack of correctly addressing individuals. In fact, I was often tempted to resort to Babe Ruth’s sure-fire mnemonic technique: he simply could not recall anyone’s, so he addressed all comers – eight to 80 – as ‘Kid.’ [The Bambino might have soberly reasoned, “I make big money hitting them monster homeruns, not to remember the name of some jackass.”]

Just imagine the scenario in which a marriage of two hyphenated individuals occurs: the enmity and domestic fury released in deciding the make-up of their children’s last names would create a ton of divorces. An ugly, ugly spat to say the least.

In any event, let’s avoid all that and simplify our hopelessly complicated lives just a little – a ban on hyphenated married names, and a return to the golden years of only one last name, and one last name only. Your children will be forever grateful.

Jim Israel
www.mistergripes.com
January 24, 2012

www.mistergripes.com December 20, 2011

‘Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones, But….’ President Obama has been called a ‘fascist,’ a ‘communist,’ the ‘vanguard of the femino-lesbian movement’ [Mark Savage], an ‘idiot,’ a ‘destroyer of this country,’ [that’s from a summer-house neighbor of mine], a ‘thug’, a ‘racist,’ an ‘anti-colonialist’ thinker [Newt said that], a ‘criminal,’ a ‘Kenyan’ [Newt and Trump share that one], Hitler, Stalin, and in what may be the meanest slur of them all, Mr. Obama was compared to that dunderhead-dunce-clown prince, Hugo Chavez, of Venezuela .
Mr. Obama, through it all, has kept his composure serene and his gun powder dry, further enraging his enemies, and, Mr. Gripes suggests, driving them nuts. More power to him. It’s so emblematic of the bile that now seeps through every facet of American culture and conversation. His enemies talk about resuscitating the fundamental — albeit perhaps mythical — American national character, which incorporates a spirit of good will, cooperation and generosity. Then, in their discourse, they speak exactly the opposite. Shameful.
By the way, you ought to get your facts straight, guys: Mr. Obama cannot be simultaneously Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler. For 150 years, Communists and Fascists have detested each other. Hitler, the ultimate murderous fascist, in fact initiated an Eastern-Front war against Joseph Stalin, the ultimate murderous communist. Combined, they were responsible for 30 million deaths of their own citizens in World War II. I understand you hate Mr. Obama, but, please, you jabbos out there, study a little history.

Every day, as I peruse my morning newspaper [no, it’s not The Daily Worker, it’s the Wall Street Journal] I am flabbergasted at how detached from reality we Americans have become, or, perhaps more accurately, how numb we’ve become. Freddie Mac, since the onset of the financial meltdown in 2008, in the eyes of many critics, was the primary cause of the financial collapse – not the thievery and avarice of Wall Street, not the 40-1 loan-to-collateral leveraged deals, not ‘AAA’-rated mortgage securities which were actually worthless, not Alan Greenspan’s free-market, fool’s-gold, Ayn-Rand-infused gobbledygook. Nope, conservatives say, the meltdown was totally the result of the collusion between bribed elected officials, via Freddie political contributions, and senior management of Freddie Mac. Freddie Mac was the neutron bomb that almost destroyed the American economy: that has been the gist of the Republican argument.
So, guess what? Newt Gingrich, a recipient of over a million dollars [$1.8 million, actually] from Freddie Mac to lobby its programs among his former colleagues in Congress, is the new frontrunner in the Republican presidential race. Not just ahead, way ahead. Has there been any noisy pushback on Mr. Gingrich for his association with Freddie Mac? Eerily, there’s been a strange quietude regarding Mr. Gingrich’s money-haul. Again, I emphasize that Mr. Gingrich was being paid a boatload of money to actively promote and support a Tea Party archetypal enemy. Where’s the purity on issues that Tea Party adherents theoretically always insist on? Mr. Gingrich, in effect, got in bed with the devil.
Oh, pardon me, Mr. Gingrich asserts, I was not a lobbyist; I was merely advising Freddie Mac as an ‘historian.’ Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. An historian? Yeah, and I’ve been selected prima ballerina for the Bolshoi Ballet’s European Spring Tour. No one, including my daughter’s one-year-old dog, Greta, believes that historian fable for a moment. It’s a bold-faced lie. Yet, he’s the frontrunner today. One individual, just one time, should have the guts to walk up to the rotund and eternally smug Mr. Gingrich, and merely enunciate the obvious, “Newt, you’re a lying SOB.” It’s not going to happen; the Washington press corps won’t do it, scared stiff they’ll no longer be invited to those Georgetown parties, to munch on caviar-and-egg canapés and chat with towering thinkers like George Will. Right now Mr. Gingrich is ahead in state primary polls. In our great land of magisterial hypocrisy, this one takes the cake.

Edward Koch, a former mayor of New York back in the 1980’s, in a Democratic primary election this past September, backed, let’s call him for purposes of this item, Candidate ‘A’. He supported this individual for just one position he took: candidate ‘A’ opposed the Obama Middle-East policy. That’s it. Nothing else meant anything to Mr. Koch.
Trillion-dollar debts don’t bother Mr. Koch; an intractable 9% unemployment doesn’t faze Mr. Koch; a collapsing educational system doesn’t worry Mr. Koch; the palpable loss of American prestige and power means nothing to Mr. Koch. Nope. Only Obama’s position on Israel means a damn thing to the former mayor. Mr. Gripes can be exercised about many things going on in this country lately – that’s for sure. But the myopic stance by Mr. Koch just rankles me to no end.
Ed, take note, please: this country has bestowed on you an extraordinarily rich, productive life you couldn’t have imagined as a young man – it would have been too fanciful. You’ve had a run in this life that would not have been possible in any other country in the world. You might choose to refute that statement, but, in reality, it’s the truth. Mr. Gripes is far from a ‘Live-Free-or-Die’ nut-job patriot type, but I fervently believe Ed Koch’s primary allegiance and loyalty ought to be, should be, in fact, to America. American citizens should be loyal, first and foremost, to this country — not to Armenia, not to Greece, not to Chad, not to the Philippines, not to Uruguay, not to anywhere else: you reside in this country; you partake in its gifts, and have been a recipient of its munificence. I just don’t get it: we’re experiencing so many problems now in this country, but instead of focusing on solving those immensely difficult issues, Mr. Koch ignores his country, turning his back away.
Besides, Israel can take care of itself very well, thank you, as it has since 1948. That missile factory/military base in Iran which was recently bombed out and destroyed – perpetrator still ‘unknown’ – is ample proof.
If, indeed, Mr. Koch’s interests revolve solely around Israel, and none regarding the country of his birth, I’ll be delighted to proffer a suggestion: go bye-bye on an airplane to Israel and live out your final days there. I’m sure they’d love to have you.

Imagine this tableau: Late November, a Saturday afternoon, just prior to Thanksgiving. Sunny and clear, light wind, mid-50’s — college football stadium at the northern tip of Manhattan. From high up in the stands, spread out in front of the crowd is a gorgeous view of fall foliage and the river. I come to the game accompanied by a close friend up from Florida and another friend from the neighborhood, and meet up with former rugby teammates and college pals. Free beer and Italian-hero wedges [you know the kind: at least seven types of salami and cheeses on crusty bread] at an Ivy version of tailgate.
I turn to a friend early in the game, and announce, “This is the authentic American experience. This doesn’t happen in England, Ethiopia, or Japan. Only here.” And, for obscure reasons I’m sure, I’m very touched by that sentiment. I’ve felt this way before: very early on, as a child of 11 or 12, I was playing centerfield one very hot July afternoon, with my Labrador Teddy reclining and panting 20 feet from me on the grass. Fifty years later, I have a clear memory of crouching, waiting for the baseball to be pitched, and thinking ‘I’m an All-American boy; I couldn’t live anywhere else. I’m very lucky to be in this spot at this time.’ That’s the identical emotion I had sitting up in the stands last month.
I thank God I didn’t go to one of those big-time football schools, with their dirty recruiting scams, their million-dollar coaches defecating on academic standards , dictatorial, corrupt personages like Joe Paterno riding rough-shod over university trustees, boosters obsessed with winning at all costs, and the gigantic hypocrisy of athlete-scholarship. It’s a filthy, stinking business. That world is so far removed from the stadium at the tip of Manhattan.
The game itself is utterly insignificant: my alma mater has a record of 0-9, and its opponent possesses a desultory .500 record. There are no bowl invitations in the offing, just the last game of a lackluster season, and the final game ever for the seniors. The crowd is small but lively as the game proceeds. The two bands play their college fight songs to everyone’s delight. [This being New York, many alumni of the visiting team who live in the city come up on the subway and roar loudly and happily from the other side of the field.]
The game meanders along, and the alma mater is losing by two touchdowns late in the third quarter. And then, miraculously, the home team scores twice, ties up the game, and the battle goes into overtime. The players continue to play hard, caught up in the excitement and drama of it all. Eventually, the alma mater pushes through for a score, and wins the game. We all rise and cheer and cheer as a mob of players exalts in the middle of the field.
Ivy League football. Catch it!

Jim Israel / Mister Gripes
December 20, 2011
My apologies for the long absence. Next column will appear on or before January 7, 2012.

by Jim Israel, aka Mister Gripes
www.MisterGripes.com
June 22, 2011

Dylan — In April, Bob Dylan, the putative avatar of the young protest generation of the 1960’s, gave a concert in mainland China as part of an Asian tour. He was asked to submit to Chinese authorities a list of the songs he intended to play at the concert; he complied with the request. At the show, songs pointedly, he did not perform included ’Blowin’ In The Wind’ and ‘The Times, They Are A-Changin’,’ his enduring ‘protest’ ballads, which, incidentally, he played a week earlier in Taiwan. By the time he got home, many people were not happy.

Mr. Gripes will comment on Mr. Dylan’s missteps a little later, but first he does have some comments on Bob Dylan, the reality:

I’ll give Mr. Dylan credit for one unassailable achievement: he’s a survivor. Virtually every other folksinger of that era has disappeared from the American music scene, their music relegated to a bat-guano dung heap a long time ago. Robert Goulet has more staying power. They’re forgotten for one very obvious reason: the music is unremittingly horrific. A short list of the erstwhile celebrity songwriters: Judy Collins [music: awful]; Phil Ochs [tendentious, ear-shattering ‘message’ music]; Joni Mitchell [an astonishingly disharmonious mélange of indecipherable lyrics and cacophonous melodies]. The ‘folk rock’ that emanated from those times is worse: a generational mass psychosis can be the only explanation for songs such as The Byrds’ ‘Tambourine Man’ and ‘Turn, Turn, Turn’ attaining ‘hit’ status 35 years ago.

Oh, and we mustn’t forget Pete Seeger. This guy, who must be 163 years old if he’s a day, still is hanging around, sailing in his sloop on the upper Hudson, and twanging on his guitar such gems as ‘Where Have All the Flowers Gone?’, or ‘If I Had a Hammer.’ [Sample Gaga-like lyric: ‘If I had a hammer, I’d hammer in the morning’ – the jute joints sure are jumping with that line, eh?] God bless him, I suppose, although he’s probably still waiting for Joe Stalin to get that damn Commie revolution turned around and back on the right track.

One more whom Mr. Gripes actually feels sorry for: Joan Baez, who still possesses a gorgeous, angelic voice. In her affluent days, though, she made some terrible financial mistakes, taking to heart that garbage about giving all your money away to liberal causes; the millions are now gone, record contracts went poof!, and her gigs these days probably go for 200 bucks and a ham sandwich. She’s essentially broke.

That brings me back around to Mr. Dylan: he ain’t broke, that’s for sure. He grinds on slowly, one tour after another, year-round, all over the world. And, he accomplishes this with a harsh, gravelly voice that cries out desperately for some sort of emergency esophageal surgery. I’ll cede to Mr. Dylan he never made any claims he was a vanguard for any movement, anti-war or otherwise. He’s not a phony-baloney activist, spewing out radical cant, and acting the opposite. No, that’s never been him. But, he is an exemplary Capitalist, amassing huge stacks of cash, way beyond what he and successive generations of Dylans will ever need. A greedy Wall Street and Bob Dylan have a lot in common.

China? Bob Dylan certainly showed his true colors there – one color, actually: green. The Chinese authorities continue to be one of the most repressive regimes in the world in terms of personal freedoms: no freedom of assembly, no free press, no open internet, only crackdowns. The government controls all. As far as playing a song like ‘The Times They Are A-Changing’? That’s not going to change the behavior of Chinese Communist brutes one iota. Avoiding certain songs is no big deal, although I suspect Mr. Dylan self-censored his song list before the authorities could do it for him.

But it was unconscionable Mr. Dylan did not raise one word of protest at the concert about the arrest and detention of Ai Weiwei, a Chinese artist [He was the designer of the ‘Bee Hive’ Stadium built in Peking for the 2008 Olympics]. Dylan could have brought a lot of media attention to Ai Weiwei’s plight. So what if the authorities would then accuse Dylan of ‘interference in Chinese internet affairs,’ as surely they would do. Who really cares what those bastards have to say? As an ‘artist’ himself, Dylan had a moral obligation to express some sort of solidarity with Ai Weiwei and other artists in illegal detention. He kept his mouth shut, took the ‘Communist cash’ [Maureen Dowd’s words], and hightailed it back to the States. A burnt-out Mr. Dylan just doesn’t give a damn. Shameful, Bob Dylan, shameful.

Paul Revere’s Ride, I Think –Great Britain exalts with Wellington and Churchill; France, DeGaulle and Napoleon; Russia, Tsarina Catherine and Peter the First. The Great United States of America? Let’s listen in on a history lesson as rendered by a recent candidate for national office:
“He [Paul Revere] warned, uh, the British that they weren’t gonna be takin’ away our arms, uh, by ringing those bells, and um, makin’ sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be sure and we were going to be free, and we were going to be armed.”

God Save the Republic — we’re going to need Him.

Jack Dempsey and Dad — Aging, and the attendant knowledge that time is limited, bring their own imperatives: in Mr. Gripes’ case, a compulsion to unearth the long-ago-forgotten artifacts of his immediate ancestry. An e-mail exchange with his first cousin, Burt, whom, regrettably, he had not spoken to in about 50 years, initiated the endeavor.

I mentioned to Burt that his dad, Abe, the oldest of eight in the Israel clan, introduced my father to boxing. Burt never knew that, unaware even that his father had been a boxer. What a shame, I thought: our first-generation American fathers, intent on moving on and upward, never took the time to relate their often startling and rich biographies to their children. It’s such a loss.

That generation, I think, didn‘t dwell on its forefathers for very sensible reasons: My grandparents, after all, by coming to America, had recently escaped a centuries-long family history dominated by poverty, fear and oppression – their emigration ensued, in fact, soon after an edict was issued mandating forced conscription into the Russian army. America represented a brand-new template; the bleak lives left across the ocean were best forgotten.

In any event, since my chat with Burt, I’ve been combing through accounts of my father as a young man: my cousins and especially my children will one day read the tale with some curiosity and fascination, I hope.

It’s an exhilarating, out-of-body experience looking backwards some 85 years at a father’s young life:

New York University Daily News, March 23, 1925: “Murray Israel last weekend took a train to Baltimore and won the Junior National Amateur Championship at 135 lbs by knocking out 3 opponents over three nights.” As a writer, I appreciate the understated, deadpan phrasing — ‘…. last weekend [he] took a train to Baltimore, … and won….’ – Raymond Carver couldn’t have put it any better. The journalist, of course, had no idea that particular weekend was the dramatic turning point of my dad’s life — a wealthy NYU majordomo took notice after he won the championship, became a mentor, and subsequently paid for the rest of his undergraduate education, and medical school, too. The boxing accomplishments were indeed remarkable, but my dad’s goal from age 8 was to become a doctor.

NYU Daily News, November 25, 1925: at a charity event to raise funds for a university gym, the boxing team was recruited to put on a few exhibition bouts. Someone lent to the school for the occasion the identical ring in which Jack Dempsey and the Argentinean ‘Wild Bull of the Pampas’ Luis Furpo fought for the heavyweight championship of the world in the Polo Grounds two years prior. That fight, with eleven knockdowns, produced one of the iconic images in boxing history: late in the first round, the great Dempsey was knocked through the ropes, out of the ring, landing on his back and rump amidst sportswriters and typewriters arrayed along press row. [Mr. Dempsey, propelled back into the ring by the boxing scribes, proceeded to knock Mr. Firpo down several more times, finally finishing him off in the second round. Artist George Bellows recreated the scene in a magnificent painting – Google it.]
My father was not a man to divulge to his children much of his interior life. But, we kids somehow understood he was a very emotional and thoughtful man. Dad, 19-years-old, adrenaline streaming through his body at the exquisite prospect of beating the crap out of his opponent, as he climbed through those ropes into the very ring his hero Jack Dempsey danced on, certainly must have realized, if only for a moment, how far he had come in his very young life. God willing, he might have thought, with intelligence, ambition, drive and education, and living in this miracle called America, the future was as bright and limitless as a Texas sky.

Jim Israel
June 22, 2011
www.mistergripes.com

By Jim Israel, aka Mister Gripes
May 22, 2011

The End — Mr. Gripes, awoken at the ungodly hour of 5:45 by his always insistent cat Seamus, stumbles into the living room, and clicks on the television. Half-asleep and bleary-eyed, he does notice along the ESPN ‘crawl‘ at the bottom, words far removed from the normal sports lingo: ‘dead,’ ‘Bin Laden,’ ‘raid,’ ‘American forces.’ Wait a damn minute. The brain begins to comprehend one of the great surprises of his life: America, ridiculed, maligned and laughed at for a decade, has located and killed the bastard.
Mr. Gripes couldn’t have cared less that two dozen Navy SEALs entered that house and shot an unarmed Bin Laden in the head. Mr. Gripes had not forgotten the 3,000 civilians, including Muslims, simply going to work at the World Trade Center, who were murdered by that monster. Good riddance, and, with all due respect to my Buddhist friend Alan R., may he burn in hell.
A few days later, a whining Michael Moore on CNN complained that Bin Laden should have been arrested and brought to trial, rather than killed. He asserted a trial would have demonstrated to the world that ‘we are different than the terrorists.’
Mr. Moore has some nerve suggesting that this country, by eliminating Bin Laden, is somehow on an equivalent moral ground as Al Qaeda. Michael Moore has not only enjoyed enormous freedom doing nothing but being critical of America, but he’s become a multi-millionaire in doing so. He can complain about this country until the cows come home, yet no one lifts a finger to stop him. Michael Moore is a very fortunate man to live in the United States.
If he were to reside in China, or Russia, or Singapore, or Thailand, or Vietnam, or anywhere in Africa or the Middle East, for examples, he’d be whisked off to jail immediately and harshly. Dissent is simply not tolerated in most places.
In China, they’d lock him up with that poor artist who was arrested two months ago, and whose relatives still don’t know where he’s been taken. Mr. Moore would be sweating off that rather commodious behind of his picking mica out of some rock pile in Manchuria for 25 years.
Besides, can you imagine the circus that a trial of Bin Laden would devolve into? It’d be 15 years before there would be a verdict. And, knowing how the justice system operates here, it wouldn’t surprise Mr. Gripes in the least if Bin Laden’s lawyer, some leftover from the ‘60’s who defended Abby Hoffman, asserted that Bin Laden wasn’t read his Miranda rights, and Bin Laden gets off.
Those SEALs did kill Bin Laden, but obviously took pains not to hurt the nineteen children living in the compound. The women, who could very well have possessed information about the Al Qaeda network, were nevertheless neither harmed nor imprisoned [except for one who resisted]. You know why? So those children, undoubtedly already traumatized by what had transpired, could be comforted by their mothers. Mothers and children remained together. Think about that for a moment. That’s a policy of a civilized and humane nation.
The gloating Bin Laden, who could barely conceal his glee that he killed 3,000 Americans, in his megalomania figured he was going to get away with it. Mr. Moore, come down off your holier-than-thou perch and join the rest of us who celebrated raucously and joyously the death of this evil malignant son-of-a-bitch, OK? As Mr. Obama said, the world is now a safer place.

Oh, Those Clever Devils…. Donald Trump. One moment the greatest thing since sliced bread to Republicans, the next instant he’s deader than a Gloucester codfish that’s been left out in the sun. What happened? Generally, Mr. Gripes is chary of casting aspersions on political strategists, like David Axelrod, and he’s reticent about denigrating the President of the United States, but I just have a hunch they laid a big trap for The-Mouth-Whose-Casinos-Went-Belly-Up.
Here’s how the Machiavellian mind of Mr. Gripes – and any competent strategist — works:
Mr. Obama holds a press conference to refute definitively the tiresome and noisome question of his birthplace. A more informative birth certificate from a hospital in Honolulu did the trick – no more nonsense about his being born in Kenya, and being spirited back to Hawaii to claim American citizenship. Mr. Trump, who certainly must have suspected this whole fairy tale of the President’s African birth was indeed a canard, acknowledged that Barack Obama was a naturally born American. Then, he actually took credit for ferreting out the truth.
OK, Mr. Trump did take a hit, but not a terrible one at this point. Not yet. Here’s where it gets interesting: Mr. Obama, upon releasing the certificate, demonstrates some petulance and annoyance – perhaps feigned – that’s he’s wasting his time with a trivial issue like this. He asserts, “I’ve got better things to do.” He repeats, almost indignantly, “I’ve got better things to do.”
[An aside: of course, within a couple of hours, his next ‘better thing to do’ that day was to catch a plane to Chicago and appear on Oprah, but that’s a tale for another day.]
Just keep in mind at that very moment he’s in the final planning stages of approving a plan to raid Bin Laden’s compound and killing him.
And, sure enough, within 48 hours he’s announcing the death of Bin Laden by Navy SEALs.
Bingo. I’ll wager Messrs. Axelrod and others orchestrated the synchronization of these three events: the press conference to obliterate the birth question; a couple of days after, the previously-scheduled Correspondents’ Dinner at which Donald Trump was made a fool of, and immediately after that, the successful elimination of Bin Laden. Trump never saw it coming. A-one-and-a-two-and-a-three.
I’ll describe the chain of events in boxing lingo: ‘Southpaw Obama lands a tremendous left hand to the solar plexus of Trump, who stumbles backwards, gasping for air’ [Obama has more important matters to work on.] ‘As Trump tries to stay upright, the President unloads a huge left hook right under his chin, sending him to the canvas, flat on his back, and out cold, with only his left foot twitching.’ [Obama announces triumphantly that Bin Laden is dead, unleashing riotous celebrations around the country.] ‘Trump is motionless.’
We have not heard a squeak out of Donald Trump since. He’s now at 8% popularity among, get this, Republicans only – no Democrats were polled. Donald Trump is as dead as that possum I saw last weekend splayed out in the middle of Taconic Parkway.

X-Rated … Leave it to the irrepressible New York Post to hammer the final nail into the coffin of Bin Laden. A day or two after it was revealed that pornography was found in Bin Laden’s compound, the Post, exhibiting perfect pitch, printed on page one the now-familiar image of a seated Bin Laden viewing his television set. Emblazoned on the screen is the movie title, Debbie Does Abbottabad. Long live the New York Post.

Jim Israel May 22, 2011

www.mistergripes.com

Bartender No More – On occasional dreary December afternoons, Mr. Gripes likes nothing better than to repair to his local tavern, Smith’s, to imbibe a couple of pints, watch a dozen or so football games simultaneously, his head swiveling from TV to TV like a parrot’s, while chatting with more than a few inebriated, ossified old men about the good, old days and the current bewildering, discordant ones. It’s completely mindless, and a lot of fun to blow off a few hours.

Behind the bar, on those Sundays I’d inevitably find Jerry working. Customers will treat Jerry to a glass of lager from time to time, so he’s generally in his cups by 11 am. A weathered, wise fellow who puts that Stella down in front of Mr. Gripes before he’s even on a bar stool, Jerry’s the real deal.

Imagine what Jerry would say if he were to take a glance at the New York Times Style section, or peruse one of those high-gloss, fancy-pants magazines and find that he’s no longer a ‘bartender’, but a ‘mixologist.’ The message in those haughty magazines, after all, with their tsunami of novel recipes for strange, new-fangled drinks, is that ‘bartender’ is too déclassé. The subtext of the articles is that authentic working occupations no longer matter; it’s all about shiny suits, glib snake-oil salesmen, and the soft whirr of the computer stock trade.

America no longer makes real things like automobiles, vacuum cleaners or cotton gins; we’ve become a country of get-rich-quick schemers and late-night TV preachers selling debt-free dreams. New drink concoctions bring sky-high prices – say, $17 for what is, minus all the verbiage and sleight-of-hand, nothing but a gin-and-tonic. And, hand-in-hand with the egregiously priced drink is the arrogant restaurant adjoining the bar featuring a $43 Greek salad or that not-to-be missed $87 steak drizzled with Gorgonzola.

And, of course, ‘bartender,’ a word historically connoting an affable soul who works
hard for his money, can’t be the operative term any longer. A working-class word is too plebeian for the newly affluent but status-starved. ‘Mixologist’ carries a more distinguished tone, the editors insist, more in line with reader aspirations.

Let’s bring it me back to my friend Jerry. If any of his patrons ever suggested that Jerry was no longer a bartender, but a mixologist, it would take him, despite his inebriated and decrepit state, about a second and a half to come over that bar and seize the customer by the neck with both hands, screaming, “You’re calling me a mixologist. What the bleep is that? You think I’m some kind of pervert? Don’t ever call me that again, you understand, or you’re a dead man.”

Pants … Whenever Mr. Gripes observes a horde of teenagers pulling up their pants – and, by the way, also flopping around in sneakers without any laces – I’m consumed by two parallel thoughts: ‘permanent underclass’ and ‘guess who’s going to pay for it.’ Because there’s no way, in a world more and more dominated by sophisticated, complicated electronic processes, these kids will ever be ready to compete for meaningful jobs. No bleeping way.

And, what’s the inspiration for all the pants-down-to-the-knees and untied shoes? It is penitentiary garb. Is Martin Luther King or Jackie Robinson a role model today? Yeah, right. Do we hear one word of rebuke from putative leaders like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton? We hear nothing. Instead, idols to be emulated these days are three-time losers clad in oversized clothing taking their hour of recreation in prison yards. Pathetic.

It’s no wonder that America’s educational-achievement rankings these days are positioned somewhere between Belarus and Haiti. If you were constantly preoccupied with holding up your pants up, while simultaneously trying to keep your lace-less shoes on your feet, there’d be no time or energy left for you to study the atomic structure of potassium or solve a quadratic equation. That’s for sure.

The Double-Double . . . Nowadays, even the most indifferent listener of sports commentary knows that virtually every blowhard sports jock revels in announcing new records, whether they’re seasonal, world, league, team. No matter how picayune, records are trumpeted loudly every day.

In pro basketball, there’s a statistic colloquially referred to as a ‘double-double.’ A double-double during a single basketball game means a player scored at least 10 points and secured 10 rebounds during that game [‘double’ is shorthand for ’10 or more’, as in double-digit]. This season, one player, Kevin Love, had an ongoing streak of double-double games. As the streak hit 25, 30, 40, 50 games, viewers were appraised at every step of the way that Mr. Love was attempting to set a double-double record for “the modern era.” With great fanfare, when Mr. Love did finally accomplish the feat, a little over 50 games, he was heavily lauded by every sports media outlet in the country.

The always-skeptical Mr. Gripes just knew something was amiss. Nothing, at first, he could put his finger on. But, ‘modern era’? Professional basketball has only been around about 60 years. The entirety of its existence has been in the modern era. And what about Wilt Chamberlain, the greatest offensive player in the history of the National Basketball Association, who retired in 1973? He surely amassed double-double stats in his time.

So, I looked up Mr. Chamberlain’s career. Kevin Love, I repeat, had 53 consecutive double-double games in 2010-2011. Mr. Chamberlain? He had a streak of 227 games in a row of at least 10 rebounds and 10 points. That’s correct: 227!! Not one sports announcer mentioned this astonishing record of Mr. Chamberlain.

I couldn’t comprehend: Why the huge omission? Here’s my theory, which I’ll admit may sound rather far-fetched: the study of history demands complexity and some understanding of context. Billion-dollar entities like the NBA traffic in immediacy, not in nuance. History, for marketing purposes, is not simply altered, it’s obliterated. In today’s attention-deficit world, it’s all about impulse and instant gratification. In our hopped-up, consumerist society, everything is disposable, including historical fact. A ‘new’ record is artificially created so ESPN can chew up about 45 seconds of chatter on their broadcasts. Then it’s immediately tossed into the Staten Island landfill, buried and forgotten.

And what about the magnificent Wilt Chamberlain? He’s so over. He played during the dark ages, so kick him aside. Let’s grab a cab, hurry up to the Garden, and catch Carmelo.

Angelo – At the mortgage conferences I used to attend, Angelo Mozilo was the undisputed champion. Chairman and CEO of Countrywide Financial, the largest independent mortgage banking company in the world, the eternally tanned Mr. Mozilo exuded a serene self-assurance, enormous energy and a barely concealed belief that he was always the top dog in the room. He was king of the mortgage-banking world. His demeanor was of a man who had fulfilled all his dreams.

He blew it.

Mr. Gripes was stunned to catch this small item in the WSJ a couple of days ago: ‘Countrywide, now owned by Bank of America, currently has 1.3 million mortgage customers on its books. Over 85% of those individuals are now at least 60 days behind on payments.’ Mr. Mozilo left Countrywide a long time ago, but I would imagine the public shame and humiliation he’s experiencing will linger for the rest of his life.

Yes, I know, no one feels sorry for Mr. Mozilo. In America, nowadays, the villains aren’t beheaded, they don’t die in a gunfight, or exiled to remote islands. Instead, with a net worth of a half-billion dollars intact, and no jail time, Mr. Mozilo retires to residential opulence in gorgeous Pasadena.

But he’s hurting bad. To an extraordinary achiever like Mozilo, it’s not a question of money. A sterling reputation and far-flung renown are the currencies for men like him. Now, every night, Angelo Mozilo goes to bed well-aware that Americans view him as one of those greedy scoundrels who almost destroyed the American economy. That may be punishment enough.

James Israel
www.mistergripes.com
April 19, 2011

March 15, 2011

Just Wondering about That Hat

– It’s puzzling: why does it seem virtually every former crack dealer-turned-hip-hop-artist-turned-record-mogul wear, seemingly 24 hours a day, a New York Yankee baseball cap?
On second thought, perhaps it shouldn’t surprise anyone. Sure, all Mr. Gripes hears is that these ‘artists’ will never forget where they came from. That’s pure baloney. Relaxing on your 2,000 square-foot patio abutting your 35-room mansion, taking in a spectacular view of a becalmed, glittering Pacific Ocean on a stunning California afternoon, a frosty banana daiquiri at the fingertips, would tend to eviscerate any residual fondness for the gritty streets of one’s youth. You can bet on that.
These gentlemen essentially have turned their backs on their far-less-fortunate brethren. Now it’s all about their money, their power, and the inequitable advantages of the elite. The Yankees are the personification of all that. Any lingering concern for the oppressed and indigent? Are you kidding? Identification with that baseball cap tells it all: we now march and strut with the oppressors, the gaudy and opulent ruling class – we don’t give a crap about those miserable peons back there. The fondly-recalled ‘hood’ might as well be situated in northern Manchuria.

An Apology? Some Chance