Category Archives for Politics

Imam Rauf: Consummate Wordsmith

Many years ago, when I taught composition and literature to first- and second-year college students, I’d spend some time talking about what writers of prose could learn from poets: thrifty use of language, nuanced phrasing, the sound of the words and how they look on the page. I’d like to think those lessons served my students well, not only as writers but also as readers.

Looking for poetry in prose is my habitual way of reading, and, as is true in so many avenues of life, I often find what I seek. Such was certainly true when I settled down to read the remarks Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf addressed on September 13 to the Council on Foreign Relations. His words are exquisitely chosen, eloquent and evocative. His words, precise and economical, bespeak the gift of education America bestowed upon this naturalized son. No wonder, I thought, this man is a teacher; no wonder his influence spans the globe. Read his text along with me, and see for yourself.

Imam Rauf begins his address with his autobiography, the oft-told tale of upper-class-kid-comes-to-America-and-makes-good-following-in-his-highly-educated-father’s-footsteps.

The young immigrant steams into New York Harbor.

From there, to establish further context, he compares American Muslims with “other groups and faiths [that] have found themselves targets of such prejudice — Jews and Catholics, Irish and Italians, blacks and Hispanics.” He continues the comparison, enriching his point by quoting the civil rights anthem/gospel song “We Shall Overcome”: “in time each group has overcome these challenges, and [America’s] core values have been affirmed. We must overcome. We shall overcome. Now it is our turn, as Muslims, to drink from this cup.”

This photo documents the sad history of racism in America.

So does this photo.

Prejudice knows no color lines.

The imam’s metaphor helps us to see that Americans who subscribe to the Muslim faith are no different in their suffering today than black Americans in Mississippi who nearly fifty years ago won their voting rights facing down a brace of attack dogs, or young black students in South Carolina who suffered mightily for the simple right to buy lunch at a five-and-ten counter. Reaching farther back into history, and using folks from another hue in the rainbow community of victimhood, the imam’s reference to Irish-Americans turned away from jobs because they “need not apply” recalls the torment of contemporary Muslim Americans who everyday must endure the humiliation of “no dogs, no Muslims” signs in every Manhattan shop window.

Proving that we all are in the struggle together, through his use of metaphor and allusion, the imam then makes his argument in favor of locating the Cordoba Institute in a building damaged on 9.11.2001 by flying debris from one of the two airplanes that was that day driven into the World Trade Center. Admittedly, the insult to the structure that had once housed a Burlington Coat Factory was nothing in comparison the fires caused by exploding jet fuel and eventual collapse of the twin towers, but Park 51 nevertheless bears the scars of that terrible day.

All of that is in the past, though, and we need to move on so as not to become mired in the gooey, overwrought fanaticism of the friends and families of those who died on 9.11. Says the imam of those who oppose his urban renewal plans, “We must not let the extremists, whatever their faith, whatever their political persuasion, hijack the discourse and hijack the media. That only fuels greater extremism.” By rhetorically linking the 9.11 survivors with the 9.11 pilots through careful, deliberate word-choice (emphasis added), the imam gives us an enlightening glimpse into his heart and mind. A glimpse that is augmented when he continues, “genuine understanding can only happen when there is honesty, sincerity of motive, and an open heart. For when issues are politicized or used as fodder for commentators on the right or on the left, we just pour fuels on the flames of misunderstanding.”

As a man of letters, Imam Rauf is aware of the significance of how he says what he says; in fact he comments on the importance of words during his remarks, stating “From experience, I can tell you, talking can be powerful. As Churchill said, better to jaw-jaw than to war-war.” He makes this point even more forcefully when he exhorts “You, the media, can fuel the radicals or you can limit their airtime.” The use of the word “airtime” is particularly poetic, in that it means “broadcast time” but is highly suggestive of in-flight time, or time spent in the air.

As his remarks draw to a close, the imam says,

In recent days, some people have asked is there really a need for an Islamic community center in Lower Manhattan? Is it worth all this firestorm?

The answer, ladies and gentlemen, is a categorical yes. Why? Because this center will be a place for all faiths to come together as partners, as stakeholders in mutual respect. It will bring honor to the city of New York, to American Muslims across the country and to Americans all over the world.

Again, the imam’s choice of the poetic “firestorm” is worthy of a moment’s reflection on its dual meaning of protest and the intentional consequence of lobbing a bomb or other explosive device.

Readers tend to cut poets a lot of slack; we’re fascinated by the words they choose, and can spend many hours pondering why one word is chosen over another. When we see patterns in a text—“hijack” at least five times and “fuel” at least four appearing in the imam’s talk, for example—we wonder what point such repetition is meant to convey.

I wonder.

In the spirit of the imam’s call for spiritual partnership, I too will borrow some words from Winston Churchill, the same Churchill Imam Rauf quotes. History, Churchill said, is written by the victors.

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Abusing History Can Be Laugh-Out-Loud Funny

Just ask Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times. He writes, magnanimously and patronizingly, that most of those who oppose building an Islamic center and mosque in a building damaged in the attacks of 9/11 aren’t “bigots”; they’re merely ‘fraidy cats in the long tradition of “patriots [who fear] that newcomers don’t share their values, don’t believe in democracy, and may harm innocent Americans.”

Sage Advice from Nicholas Kristof

These petrified patriots are just like their 19th and 20th century forebears who were terrified that gin-swilling Irish Catholics would snatch good Protestant babies out of their prams for a clandestine dip in the baptismal font. Today’s sissified citizens trace their ancestry to the good people who hid their daughters in fear of polygamist Mormons on the hunt for fresh woman-flesh. Or so says Kristof, who acknowledges that “[h]istorically, unreal suspicions were sometimes rooted in genuine and significant differences. Many new Catholic immigrants lacked experience in democracy. Mormons were engaged in polygamy.” Then, Kristof delivers his punch line: “And today some extremist Muslims do plot to blow up planes, and Islam has real problems to work out about the rights of women.”

Is it just me, or is Kristof’s equation of 1) unfamiliarity with democracy and 2) the practice of bigamy with 3) mass murder just a little off the mark? Think about it: “Some” Catholic immigrants needed to adjust to a new form of government. Early Mormons had eccentric ideas about marriage. And today, Muslim extremists fly planes into buildings and kill their teenaged daughters for wearing blue jeans. Gee, I sure see the similarity among these put-upon groups.

Americans used to be afraid of this.

And this.

Today we are afraid of this.

His tortured analogy breaks down further when he writes:

Followers of these movements against Irish, Germans, Italians, Chinese and other immigrants were mostly decent, well-meaning people trying to protect their country.…Most Americans stayed on the sidelines during these spasms of bigotry, and only a small number of hoodlums killed or tormented Catholics, Mormons or others.

I can’t recall any incidents of Moslems being “killed” or “tormented” by American “hoodlums” because of the controversy over the cultural center/mosque. Can you? Do you, like me, find it offensive that Kristof insinuates that “most Americans…on the sidelines” of the debate about the proposed Islamic center are in reality enabling bad guys who would do harm to followers of Mohammed?

If you don’t, you should.

Reading Nicholas Kristof: so funny I forgot to laugh.

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Board of Governors, 1; Quincy College, 0

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

College presidents come and go, too. Some, as in the case of Liberal Arts College USA, blessedly sooner rather than later. As the door slams on his retreating derriere, let us pause to contemplate the achievements of his short-lived tenure. It’ll be but a brief pause, given that his meager accomplishments are easily summarized as 1) rooting out and eliminating all staff guilty of AWF—Administering While Female—2) larding the payroll with hangers-on, friends of friends, and parasitic common-law spouses of ill-advised trophy hires and 3) bloating the organizational chart with ever-more grandiose titles for exceptionally ordinary functionaries. But at least the talented new president has no need to sweep away any half-baked plans or initiatives as she takes on the daunting task of rebuilding LCA, her predecessor having thoughtfully left the planning tabula utterly, totally, completely rasa.

Sometimes, though, college presidents depart before they even arrive. Take, for example, the rollicking saga of one Philip Conroy, the man who until yesterday aspired to the top job at Quincy College in Quincy, Massachusetts. QC is a public two-year institution; this is important for you to keep in mind. Back in June, QC’s board of governors, in a tight 6-5 vote, recommended that Mr. Conroy be offered the college’s presidency. Mr. Conroy, a vice president at an independent two-year college in the Commonwealth eagerly accepted. The appointment seemed to make a lot of sense. After all, Mr. Conroy is a native son of Quincy, and he has administrative experience in both public and private higher education, including at the university level, which gives him an important dual perspective on transfer issues of students seeking to continue their educations after community college enrollment.

Yesterday, however, the Patriot-Ledger printed an excerpt from a letter Mr. Conroy had just written to the board: “’It has become increasingly clear to me that the board of governors is unable to unite behind a new president,’” Conroy’s letter reads. ‘(W)hile the offer of the position was extended there has been no movement toward a contract. Therefore, it is with a profound sense of sadness and disappointment that I respectfully decline the offer to serve as president of Quincy College.’” One might quibble about whether “decline” is the right verb, given that what the board offered Mr. Conroy included apparently nothing in return for the services he was willing to render.

A pirated copy of Mr. Conroy's contract, rescued from the briny waters of the Fore River.

The board members were too busy fighting amongst themselves to devise a contract for the hapless Mr. Conroy. The close vote that brought him to the brink of the presidency he was ultimately denied bespeaks the kind of high-stakes intrigue public institutions in Massachusetts are so famous for. It seems Mr. Conroy’s closest competition for the position was Peter Tsaffaras, Esq., Director of Employee Relations and Benefit Administration for the Massachusetts Board of Education, and former member of the Quincy College Board of Governors. Cozy, no? The summer months in Quincy sizzled from heat generated by the procedural maneuvers, scheduling chicanery, and character assassination that emanated from the board.

As one who has watch similar dramas unfold, I can say with great assurance that there are few fights as nasty, no tactics so dirty as those the bottom feeders feasting at the public chum in the Massachusetts pond politic employ when attempting to move themselves or their cronies up the food chain. It makes those who engage in the superfluous nepotism of certain private institutions look like the bush league players they are.

LCA's buy two, get one deal.

Mr. Conroy will remain the vice president of the college that currently employs him. I don’t know the man, but I wish him well, and would advise him and any other potential candidates for the presidency of Quincy College to stay far away until the board’s feeding frenzy is over and the ragged claws of the governors are busy scuttling across the floors of silent seas to the more hospitable waters of the Turnpike Authority.

Mr. Conroy meets his competition.

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Most Definitely Not the Father of His Country

Each morning I wake up in the grip of fear, convinced that I’ll open the morning paper and find some new piece of information that will ratchet up my growing alarm that the fate of our nation is in the hands of a dangerous man. Every morning, it seems, the fear and alarm are justified.

On June 21, for example, a day late and a dollar short, President Obama said the following in his Father’s Day remarks to an audience at The Town Hall Education Arts & Recreation Campus (THEARC) in Washington:

Over the course of my life, I have been an attorney, I’ve been a professor, I’ve been a state senator, I’ve been a U.S. senator — and I currently am serving as President of the United States. But I can say without hesitation that the most challenging, most fulfilling, most important job I will have during my time on this Earth is to be Sasha and Malia’s dad.


Enjoy Frank, or fast-forward to 1:04 to hear an excerpt of the president’s speech sung by Ole Blue Eyes.

I looked and listened in vain for commentary about this shocking and revealing statement, and could find none. Contrast, if you will, the president’s admission with the self-sacrificing patriotism of General David Petraeus and of his family. The General answered the call of his commander-in-chief to assume command in Afghanistan and did so without hesitation or public tears for his wife and children. There is no doubt in my mind that the General cares as much about his son and daughter as the president cares about his offspring. But in a time of war, he went where is country needed him, an action that speaks louder than any of the president’s alleged “eloquence.”

Two fathers, one patriot

For a sitting President of the United States to state that “without hesitation that the most challenging, most fulfilling, most important job I will have during my time on this Earth” is something other than the presidency is appalling. The audience at THEARC, of course, applauded the president’s confession. One imagines the president’s handlers gleefully thinking a bit of emoting would play well in the approval polls, giving voters a chance to see that the president is a regular guy—a family man brimming with fatherly love and affection.

But that opportunistic interpretation is not my take on what the president said. What he said, quite simply, is that the presidency to which he was elected is of secondary importance to him. I don’t care how devoted a father President Obama is, if the United States of America is not his first priority he should not be its president. Period.

I do not deny that Sasha and Malia are fortunate to live in a two-parent family and to have a father who obviously loves them and cares about their welfare. I think it’s great. For them. There is a certain poignancy, too, in the fact that that their father provides them the stability and the knowledge that they are wanted his father could not be bothered to give him.

Much ink has been spilled about the president’s inscrutability. This is a foolish concern. Best to focus on what we do know; best to take the president at his word. Which in this instance is that rare case of the known being scarier than the unknown.

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A President Responds to the Crisis in the Golf


Dear Mr. President: It’s spelled with and “U” not an “O.” G-U-L-F not G-O-L-F. Have you no shame?

PS: You might also want to remind your Chief of Flatulence Rahm Emanuel 1) that if he wants to give advice about PR, perhaps he should look first to the 18th hole instead of the Isle of Wight and 2) that as usual, the members of your administrative cabal focus their attention on illusion rather than reality. BP’s PR is the last thing the staff should be worrying about.* Save a little concern for the oil workers your administration has callously thrown out of their jobs.

*Unless, of course, they are planning ahead for the next time they put the bite on BP for campaign contributions.

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Oh Captain, My Captain…Our Fearful Trip is Just Beginning

While the waves lapping against Louisiana’s shoreline bring with them sticky tar balls, the nation’s airwaves are also thick with the sludge of claims and counterclaims about the president’s response to the disastrous oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. All that leaking crude has ignited a firestorm of ugly accusations and addled rhetoric. This morning in the New York Times, for example, part-time columnist, full-time Obama hagiographer Charles Blow finally ran out of excuses for the impotence of Obama’s leadership during this crisis, so turned instead to—turned on, actually—the American people. Turns out, we, all of us, including maybe even those of us here illegally, are to blame, according to Blow. Americans are, he says “fickle and excitable, hotheaded and prone to overreaction, easily frightened and in constant need of reassurance.”

Hot-tempered Americans in search of presidential leadership.

That many are critical of the president’s myriad errors in judgment, which reflect the systemic failure of his administration, is nothing more than the “overreaction” of a bunch of wimpy, temperamental crybabies. If there is any accuracy at all to that characterization, I think it applies more to a single American—you know who—than to the American people.

I had my clock cleaned on another website earlier in the week when I hazarded my opinion that the administration was failing to meet its most basic responsibility: to provide for the common defense. Our waters and our land are imperiled by the leaking oil. Our country is in urgent need of defense from this chemical attack. That is the job of the federal government. And while it is true I favor limited government, I am a firm, enthusiastic supporter of the government fulfilling its promise to keep its citizens and homeland safe from external threats. There is nothing inconsistent in this point of view. One commenter called me an idiot, and another asked me if I expected the president to “put on his Superman suit and plug the whole himself.” This savvy writer went on to let me know that “Republicans clinging to their god, rifles, guns and bibles” made him “sick.” Good to know, but hardly relevant to me or what I wrote.

As I responded to savvy writer, no. I do not expect the president to don fancy dress. But the reality is that during this crisis Obama has changed his affect as often as the Sex and the City II gals change costumes. Just in the last few days he has tried on an unbecoming insolence and swagger, promising to “kick ass.” Before that he was way overdressed as the concerned father figure, dragging poor Malia into the fray and sonorously assuring us that children are our future so we owe them beaches that are tar-ball free. Before that, he played the busy executive, clad in an ill-fitting grey flannel suit, delegating here and there so that he could focus on the country’s most pressing problem, raising campaign funds for Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer.

The reality is that the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico has terrifyingly documented that the administration has failed to learn the single most important lesson from the aftermath of 9/11: establish a unified command. While the president is busy shrieking like a woman scorned to “make BP pay,” thousands of unemployed folks—their joblessness as much a result of the insane decision to suspend offshore drilling as anything BP failed to do—are trying to find someone to help them. While the president panders to his union sugar daddies, offers of assistance from foreign vessels with the equipment and manpower to Hoover up the oil are ignored. Other offers are rejected because for every 5,000 gallons of oil a vessel vacuums from the Gulf, a couple of pints are returned, temporarily, to the water. While the president natters on about a future he admits he cannot envision, the rest of us wonder if any of his thoughts are focused on the clear and present danger that is staring the rest of us in the face.

Does this president have no sense of the magnitude of the disaster he is facing? Does he not understand that the soft-focus verdant future he longs for is endangered by his own fecklessness?

Why won't you let me help, Mr. President?

I don’t know the answer to the questions, but like savvy reader, I am sickened when I entertain the thought that the president, cool, calm and collected as he is, is not, in fact, letting this crisis go to waste.

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My Town’s Boycott is Better than Your Town’s Boycott

As you may have gathered, I live in a company town. Three institutions of higher learning—two independent colleges and one large public university—draw thousands of students to my little burgh and employ thousands more of us townies.

Living in a college town has many perks, a fact real estate hustlers but a few short years ago exploited by marketing the laid-back life academical to gullible empty nesters. The pitch was short and sweet: live amongst faculty and students and you too will be immersed in a scholarly miasma of heady debate, controversial artistic endeavor, and exuberant youth with a thirst for knowledge.

As anyone who has observed the discarded beer cans after a weekend of youthful exuberance knows, those college kids are thirsting for more than book-learning. But don’t let a little detail like nightly noisy campus parties going strong at 1 a.m. deter you from living on the perimeter of a campus.

Hey! You didn't tell us about the keggers!

Those same real estate hucksters dreamed up a similar fantasy for land-rich, cash poor colleges looking for ways to spin hay fields into goldmines. Indeed, in the midst of the housing bubble, a new industry grew up, one in which a corporation had two branches, the first made up of impartial consultants who for a significant fee would conduct a market survey to see what interest was out there amongst the 55+ set for selling the family home and moving into new campus-side digs. The second arm of the corporation was—I see you are ahead of me here—developers of said digs.

More than one board of trustees grew intoxicated by market surveys that indicated Buster and Barbara Boomer’s eagerness to surround themselves with other on-the-go seniors and set up housekeeping in hastily constructed, densely populated condominium “communities.” More than one board of trustees was eager to unleash on their campuses a pride of cougars and a pack of horn dogs, if it meant that these marauding species kept the wolf from the college door.

The possibilities for rental income are endless, when you live in Collegetown USA!

Some of the more fatuous trustees were even coaxed into believing that such high-density housing, plunked down in a rural setting, was far kinder to the land than, say, a handful of single-family residences designed to preserve the bucolic, gentleman-farmer spirit of the neighborhood. But no, many a board bought hook, line and sinker the developer’s assurance that quick cash from a land-lease agreement and a continuing cash crop of rental payments was a green investment for all concerned.

The joys of country condo living in Collegetown USA.

That many of these developments are now stalled due to the caprices of the real estate market is a blessing in disguise for boomers and colleges alike. Maybe each will come to their senses, and realize that grown-ups (no matter how fervently they reject the nomenclature) and college students (of the pricy residential college variety) do not mix. They do not have the same intellectual interests. They do not have the same capacity for self-discovery. And they most emphatically do not have the same taste in adult beverages.

And the BEST part is, I can see the campus from my backyard!

But, I digress.

I admit that I am a boomer who lives across the street from a college; in fact, I once sold the school some of my acreage so that it could expand its developable holdings. But I held on to enough of my land so that there is a comfortable buffer between me and the undergraduates.

No buffer, though, can insulate a resident of an academic company town from the hi-jinks of its governing bodies. In a community such as mine, town meetings come to resemble nothing so much as faculty meetings on steroids. They are not for the faint of heart, and if you attend one, better be packing your Robert’s Rules along with the No-Doze.

Members of the Select Board, Collegetown USA

Town meeting time only rolls around once a year, though, and in between times the “select board” keeps my town safe from the dangers that lurk outside the comforting, cocooning certainty of its intellectual and moral superiority. In fact, back in the 1980’s when declaring this, that, and the other “nuclear-free zones” was all the rage, my town was among the first to jump on the bandwagon but presciently added a “reality-free” amendment to its no-nukes resolution.

I cannot tell you how well that humble amendment has served my town. Under its sheltering auspices we’ve been able to cancel high school performances of Leonard Bernstein’s ferociously racist musical West Side Story, roll out the welcome mat for sprung denizens of Guantanamo, direct the federal government to reduce military spending, impeach George Bush, and, most recently, ban town employees and representatives from conducting business with or traveling to entities and locations in Arizona.

The Arizona boycott also urges citizens and businesses within my town to do likewise. To comply with this suggestion, for the colleges and university that call my town home, this means true sacrifice: they will have to return donations from alumni who live in Arizona and cease asking them for additional gifts. The schools will not be able to send admissions recruiters to Arizona (a great place to find applicants who will beef up the institution’s diversity profile) or accept tuition dollars from current students who have the bad luck to be permanent residents of the state.

I’m sure these fine institutions of higher learning will find a way to cope with the loss of income. Maybe start charging a fee or two for all of those town-gown activities that give university towns such a great quality of life. Perhaps reduce the custodial staff that picks up the beer cans after a long night of parties. Maybe let the grass on the quad go uncut a little longer. Maybe decide not to make the payment in lieu of taxes that would otherwise have helped the town buy a new fire engine. Maybe even lease more land, this time to a strip-mall developer. The possibilities are endless!

So, all of you “active seniors” out there contemplating a move to Collegetown, USA: caveat emptor.

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Did I Say “James Cameron”? I Meant “Clive Cussler.”

On Tuesday the Environmental Protection Agency issued a nationwide call for experts in a wide variety of fields to put their heads together and help solve the ongoing crisis in the Gulf of Mexico:

More than 20 scientists, engineers and technical experts attended the meeting, which also included representatives of the Energy Department, Coast Guard and National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

Other organizations represented at the gathering included the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute; Oceanographic Institute at Harbor Branch, Florida Atlantic University; University of California at Santa Barbara; Nuytco Research Limited; World Wildlife Fund; and the University of California at Berkeley.

The punch line to this bulletin from the Associated Press is as everyone knows the inclusion of James Cameron, the serially monogamous director of Aliens, Titanic, and Avatar and sometime king of the world.

This poor sod is wondering how James Cameron can save the world when he can't even get the make-up off the extras' faces.

I think it is terrific that the Obama administration is thinking outside the box to fix a spill that never needed to have taken place had the United States had anything approaching a sane energy policy. (The cornerstone of such a policy would of course be drilling full bore in ANWAR, where the costs to the environment inhabited by humans would be negligible and where no succulent shrimp or tasty redfish need sacrifice its life until it met up with my frying pan.)

I think it is terrific that the president, represented by his minions at the EPA, put out the APB for the KOTW, although I am deeply distressed by this tacit admission that the billions poured into the NSF is insufficient to fund the research necessary to finding a solution.

I think it is beyond terrific that to staunch the leak the president has turned to a poster-boy not only for exuberant capitalism, but for excessive, go-for-broke energy consumption. Who better to turn to than someone who needs those gushing gallons to fuel his Malibu lifestyle and produce his gargantuan budget films, second only to black holes in the energy they devour? Here’s a guy with a vested interest in seeing that oil hoovered up and recycled for his abundant, conspicuous consumption.

We've got to fix the leak. James Cameron's Malibu cottage needs the energy.

But just in case Director Cameron doesn’t come up with a solution that will finally enable our president to answer daughter Malia’s poignant question, I’ve got another suggestion for President Obama. It too is outside the box, but no more so than seeking advice from a tinsel town tinhorn. Why not call on the guys from NUMA?

Conspicuously absent from the devastation taking place in the Gulf of Mexico is the can-do team of Dirk Pitt, Al Giordino, Rudi Gunn, Hiram Yeager, St. Julien Perlmutter, and, of course, Admiral James Sandecker. Since 1979 these agents of the National Underwater and Agency have tackled cataclysmic disasters far worse than anything BP has dished up so far. From the icy waters of the North Atlantic to the Mediterranean to the Gulf of Mexico itself the NUMA crew has quietly, efficiently thwarted potential environmental apocalypses with nary a Golden Globe or an Oscar to show for their effort.

What’s that? What’s that you say? NUMA doesn’t exist. It’s but a figment of the magnificent imagination of writer Clive Cussler. No. That can’t be. You’re wrong. Next thing you’ll be trying to tell me is that there is no Pandora and that the President is on top of the disaster in the Gulf.

The self-effacing Dirk Pitt is camera-shy.

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Al and Tipper Call it Quits: Single Ladies Clear Your Calendars!

Calling Maureen Dowd! Calling Maureen Dowd! A new age-appropriate man is on the meet ‘n mingle scene. No, I am not talking about the dreamy Karl Rove, who not too long ago divorced his wife. Nor the new-to-the-secondary-market heartthrob SC Governor Mark Sanford. Rumor has it he’s already spoken for, and by an insultingly younger woman, no less. No, I mean the double dreamy Al Gore. Today Al and Tipper, some forty years wed, have announced, via email, their separation.

As a single person it always perplexes me when old marrieds call it quits. Perhaps because I do not understand the marital relationship in the first place, it’s even harder for me to apprehend why couples who literally have seen each other’s dirty underwear, maybe even sniffed it too, would bother with the chaos divorce brings to their private lives and the lives of the people who love them. Ah well, not mine to wonder why.

What I do wonder is how Al will fill out his Match.com and eHarmony.com profiles. Well, actually, first I wonder what he won’t put there. Will he shave off a few years to appeal to, ahem, a broader demographic? Will he shave off a few pounds to attract more buff hotties? Will he discard recent photos posting instead those of his senatorial days to back up his claims? I can’t wait to find out.

Where is she? Where IS Miss Right?

Or maybe he’ll try a different dating site, perhaps PlanetEarthSingles.com, which is

Created by environmentalists, for environmentalists! This is a singles dating site designed for environmentally conscious, “green singles” to meet. It is much easier to be in a relationship with someone who recycles, conserves fuel and generally lives a “green lifestyle” that is mindful of our limited resources. Our members tend to be “conscious” in general and value a holistic, healthy lifestyle, buying locally grown, organic food (many are vegetarians and vegans), gardening, spiritual growth, conservation, sustainability, alternative power and doing what they can to help “cool the planet”. Our goal is to provide you with a conducive environment where you can meet like-minded / like-hearted people and, ideally, meet that ONE, special someone to share your life with!

Should Al decide to enter the green scene, he’ll be able to search national and international data bases. That international info will come in handy as he jets from one global hot spot to another. But suppose he meets that someone special? Will he then have yet another moral dilemma to struggle with: What if sparks fly? What if unbridled passions ignite a flame that refuses to be extinguished? What if the friction of two bodies joined in urgent congress heats up to the point that all thoughts of off-setting carbons fly out the window? All that steamy romance can’t possibly be good for a rapidly warming planet.

Hey, Al: Check out that can!

It’s too much to ask, I think, to expect Al to fly solo for the rest of his life just in order to prevent climate change. Especially when PlanetEarthSingles.com promises he can meet recycling women who are “’conscious.’” (And people tell me my standards are too high!)

If I were Al, I’d forget about the dating sites and remain true to the planet-lover’s creed: reduce, reuse, recycle. Think, Al. Think about your past. Miss Right is there, waiting patiently. Go on. Do it. Give Ali McGraw a call.

Where do I begin?

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Father Knows Best: When You’re Losing the Audience, Unleash the Kids and Pups

Even though the BP oil spill has cast a dark cloud of terrible catastrophe over the Gulf of Mexico, it’s not without its silver lining. I’ve taken enormous delight giggling as I read the faux critiques of President Obama’s insipid reaction to the spill.

Dana Millbank, Maureen Dowd, Thomas Friedman, David Broder are all on the same page: the president’s trademark intellectual, reasoned approach to this crisis cannot stand. Americans, especially those cracker-types who live way down yonder, are just too ignorant to appreciate a brainy law professor analyzing, synthesizing, and analogizing his way to solving a grave national crisis. The pundits agree that the president needs to dumb down, so he can meet the people at something approaching their lowly level.

But the critiques soon turn to hosannas when all four of them quote exactly the same passage from the president’s press conference. As Mr. Friedman said, better late than never the president transforms himself into everyman:

It took almost the entire press conference at the White House on Thursday for President Obama to find his voice in responding to the oil disaster in the gulf — and it is probably no accident that it seemed like the only unrehearsed moment. The president was trying to convey why he takes this problem so seriously, when he noted:
“When I woke this morning and I’m shaving and Malia knocks on my bathroom door and she peeks in her head and she says, ‘Did you plug the hole yet, Daddy?’

Sometimes Malia doesn't bother to knock.

Leaving aside my perception that the president’s comment sounded just like everything else he says—words robotically delivered by someone whose mind is elsewhere—it’s indeed a sad reality if our president takes things “so seriously” only when one of his kids asks him a question. Almost as sad as the rhetorical Kama Sutra-positions Mr. Friedman et al assume when claiming that mentioning Malia makes the president look “empathetic.” In order to show empathy, you must also have respect for the individuals with whom you are forging an emotional bond.

Earlier in the press conference, though, President Obama showed just how paltry is his respect for the fishermen, shrimpers and oil workers whose livelihoods have been threatened when he said:

But, look, we’ve gone through a difficult year and a half. This is just one more bit of difficulty. And this is going to be hard not just right now, it’s going to be hard for months to come. … The Gulf is going to be affected in a bad way. And so my job right now is just to make sure that everybody in the Gulf understands this is what I wake up to in the morning and this is what I go to bed at night thinking about.

Translation: “You-all havin’ a hard time? Well, times are tough all over. I’ll sleep on it.” Respectful. Empathetic.

Given the successful exploitation of his younger daughter in last week’s press conference, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if on his next visit to the Gulf of Mexico the president brings along Bo, who is after all a Portuguese water dog. Imagine the brave companion animal paddling through murky tides valiantly rescuing all manner of despoiled water fowl as his master stands barefoot in the sand looking earnestly out to sea.

Bo's stunt double patiently awaits his moment in the surf.

WC Fields is credited with some great lines about children and animals: Never work with them. Any man who hates kids and dogs can’t be all bad. Do you suppose if Fields were around today he’d also say “Never trust a president who uses his daughter as a prop to give you an even break.”

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