The Hundred Years’ War, fought in the late Middle Ages between two royal houses for the French throne, actually lasted 116 years. America’s Culture Wars could last longer.
For readers under fifty who might be unfamiliar, a history of the Culture Wars might go like this: the Beats, as they were called (proto-Hippies in Greenwich Village, LA and San Francisco), challenged the country’s prevailing Ozzie-and-Harriet cultural norms in the mid-1950s. They were succeeded by the Counterculture, which was a grab bag of Hippies and Civil Rights and Vietnam War protesters, in the mid-to-late 1960s. The Counterculture (the Civil Rights movement in particular) then inspired the Women’s Movement and the Gay Rights Movement in the 1970s, and the Civil Rights movement gave way to more radical groups like the Black Panthers.
Those who participated in these various anti-establishment movements were mostly young people who had been born between the end of WWII and 1960, otherwise know as the Baby Boom generation (then the largest demographic cohort in America’s history). But not every Boomer was a Hippie or a demonstrator. A lot of young people supported their parents’ social values and the war, and were skeptical or even threatened by the various rights movements that advanced the interests of blacks, women and homosexuals. Which side of the fence you were on was usually determined by where you grew up, your socio-economic status, and where – or if – you went to college.
Bill O’Reilly and I were on opposite sides of the divide. I grew up in a Republican household in Pennsylvania and became an anti-war protester when I went to Wesleyan University in Connecticut. Bill grew up on Long Island and kept his distance from the Counterculture during his years at Marist College in Poughkeepsie.
Our paths crossed when we enrolled in the Broadcast Journalism master’s degree program at Boston University in the fall of 1973. There were only about two-dozen students in the two-year program, so Bill and I got to know each other fairly well. And even though I’d marched on Washington and celebrated the Age of Aquarius at Woodstock, and Bill had played college sports and kept his nose clean, we had a friendly relationship. I was an amateur photographer and Bill occasionally asked me to shoot pictures for him to accompany articles he was writing for the school newspaper. I remember taking a photo of Bill interviewing Eli Wallach; another time Bill and I took pictures of each other with the porn star Linda Lovelace when she won Harvard’s Hasty Pudding Award.
If you had asked anyone in our program what they thought Bill O’Reilly would do with his career, I think most of us would have said that he would end up as a TV sports or entertainment reporter. Bill was fascinated by Hollywood celebrities, and he loved the New York Knicks. But though he’d studied history in college, he seemed to have almost no interest in the burning issues of the day. The Senate Watergate hearings, which had riveted the nation and exposed the duplicity and criminality of the Nixon White House, had taken place the summer before we arrived in Boston. The Vietnam War was still raging, and racial tensions in Boston and other northern cities were high. Bill seemed untouched by any of it.
But O’Reilly fooled us all. He managed to build a successful broadcasting career by tapping into the anger and resentment that all of those jocks and straights felt toward the Hippies and the demonstrators, and in the process became a spokesman for the sons and daughters of Nixon’s “silent majority.” The rest of us took our places in the much-maligned Mainstream Media, serving witness to history-in-the-making and searching for the next government conspiracy or social injustice.
I recently came across a quote I copied from a New Yorker profile of the late Yale chaplain, William Sloane Coffin, who was a significant figure in the anti-war movement. Coffin said, “Not to share in the activity and passion of your time is to count as not having lived.” As a young man, I shared in the activity and the passions of my time. Now, as I look at the Tea Party movement and the demonstrations on the right, I suppose Bill is sharing in the activity and passions of his.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Friday, April 16, 2010
Playing for Time
Every New York school child learns the story of Peter Minuit and the handful of Dutch settlers who, it’s said, purchased the island of Manhattan from the Indians for $24 worth of beads and trinkets.
The original record of the transaction, dated 5th November 1626, says that they “purchased the Island Manhattes from the Indians for the value of 60 guilders,” which, as Russell Shorto explains in his wonderful history of Manhattan, The Island at the Centre of the World, amounted to the going rate for real estate in the New World at that time. The settlers didn’t pay cash, which, as Shorto notes, “the Indians would have found useless.” Instead, they gave the natives goods worth 60 guilders. The actual merchandise isn’t specified, but in a similar deal for Staten Island, Peter Minuit gave the Tappans tribe “Duffels, Kittles, Axes, Hoes, Wampum, Drilling Awls, Jews Harps and diverse other small wares.” This merchandise sounds more useful than beads and trinkets, but however you calculate it, there can be no doubt that in 1626, New York real estate was a steal.
And, in fact, the idea of theft has become a common theme in discussing the European colonization of the New World. I think most Americans now accept the notion that the natives who originally inhabited North and South America were either cheated out of, or forcibly driven from their lands by the Europeans who arrived on their shores. But though most of us would probably acknowledge this – perhaps with a touch of politically correct regret – few of us, Native Americans excepted, would even consider the idea that the descendants of the original European settlers should ever give the land back to its original inhabitants.
Why?
Because too much time has passed, too much history has unfolded and too much change has taken place. However morally just the claims of the original Manhattan Indians, it’s been too long and there’s simply no rolling back the clock.
Now contrast the European colonization of the Americas with the colonization of Africa. Many of the same players were involved (the English, the Dutch, the French and, to a lesser extent, the Germans, the Portuguese and the Italians), but the results, historically speaking, were completely different. In Africa, the European colonists first took control of the continent, as they had the Americas, and then, beginning in the early 1960s, gave it back.
A lot of factors contributed to Europe’s decolonization of Africa in the second half of the 20th Century, but I’d venture to guess that the biggest factor was demography. There were just too many Africans and never enough Europeans to make European domination stick.
South Africa was one of the last redoubts of European colonial rule, and I distinctly remember a conversation I had with an Afrikaner at a dinner party shortly after I’d moved there in 1988. As I recall, I was full of righteous (and justifiable) indignation about the plight of the Africans who were suffering under the yoke of apartheid, and it was clear that my dinner companion, a descendent of the Dutch settlers who had colonized the country, had heard it all before. I remember that he listened patiently to my rant and then said, “Yes, I’m sure you’re right. I guess we should have just killed them all, like you did in America.”
But, of course, the Europeans didn’t “kill them all” (though, in fact, they killed many). Instead the European “masters” used the Africans for cheap labor, to work the fields and the mines. From the European point of view, this proved to be a short-term success but a long-term failure as, in country after country, it became impossible for a tiny minority to dominate and suppress the overwhelming majority. Demography, it turned out, was destiny. The Africans had the numbers and the Europeans were shown the door.
Which brings us to the Middle East.
I’ve often wondered why the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been so resistant to a peaceful resolution, and I’ve decided that the problem is that both sides believe time is on their side.
The Israelis have adopted the Dutch-in-Manhattan mindset. They know that between half a million and a million Palestinians were displaced when Israel was created in 1948, but rather than argue the morality of their national existence, they’ve decided to play for time. At some point in the future they figure that 1948 will become like 1626, and Israel’s right to exist will no longer be challenged. So I think that the Israelis figure that any comprehensive peace agreement with the Palestinians now would only work to their long-term disadvantage. In their view, the more history they can put between 1948 and an eventual settlement with the Palestinians, the better.
The Palestinians, too, think time is on their side. And their logic, as you might expect, follows the African model. Yasser Arafat once famously said that the “womb of the Palestinian woman” was the best weapon of the Palestinian people. In his view, it was inevitable that the Israeli position in Palestine would become untenable as the number of Palestinians rose relative to the number of Jews. For Arafat, demography was destiny, and the longer a peace agreement with Israel could be delayed, the better terms the Palestinians might expect.
Most of the political conversations about Middle East peace revolve around endless arguments about who’s right and who’s wrong, who built the first temple and who fired the first shot. Dialogue like that supports the delay-and-get-a-better-deal strategies of politicians on both sides, but in the end I think it's immoral to pretend to talk about peace when innocent Israelis and Palestinians are being killed. It was probably right to create a homeland for the Jews, and it was probably wrong to displace the Palestinians. But a comprehensive peace agreement that accommodates that messy reality will be hard to achieve. What's needed, of course, is a serious plan for peace. But that seems unlikely when both sides are playing for time.
The original record of the transaction, dated 5th November 1626, says that they “purchased the Island Manhattes from the Indians for the value of 60 guilders,” which, as Russell Shorto explains in his wonderful history of Manhattan, The Island at the Centre of the World, amounted to the going rate for real estate in the New World at that time. The settlers didn’t pay cash, which, as Shorto notes, “the Indians would have found useless.” Instead, they gave the natives goods worth 60 guilders. The actual merchandise isn’t specified, but in a similar deal for Staten Island, Peter Minuit gave the Tappans tribe “Duffels, Kittles, Axes, Hoes, Wampum, Drilling Awls, Jews Harps and diverse other small wares.” This merchandise sounds more useful than beads and trinkets, but however you calculate it, there can be no doubt that in 1626, New York real estate was a steal.
And, in fact, the idea of theft has become a common theme in discussing the European colonization of the New World. I think most Americans now accept the notion that the natives who originally inhabited North and South America were either cheated out of, or forcibly driven from their lands by the Europeans who arrived on their shores. But though most of us would probably acknowledge this – perhaps with a touch of politically correct regret – few of us, Native Americans excepted, would even consider the idea that the descendants of the original European settlers should ever give the land back to its original inhabitants.
Why?
Because too much time has passed, too much history has unfolded and too much change has taken place. However morally just the claims of the original Manhattan Indians, it’s been too long and there’s simply no rolling back the clock.
Now contrast the European colonization of the Americas with the colonization of Africa. Many of the same players were involved (the English, the Dutch, the French and, to a lesser extent, the Germans, the Portuguese and the Italians), but the results, historically speaking, were completely different. In Africa, the European colonists first took control of the continent, as they had the Americas, and then, beginning in the early 1960s, gave it back.
A lot of factors contributed to Europe’s decolonization of Africa in the second half of the 20th Century, but I’d venture to guess that the biggest factor was demography. There were just too many Africans and never enough Europeans to make European domination stick.
South Africa was one of the last redoubts of European colonial rule, and I distinctly remember a conversation I had with an Afrikaner at a dinner party shortly after I’d moved there in 1988. As I recall, I was full of righteous (and justifiable) indignation about the plight of the Africans who were suffering under the yoke of apartheid, and it was clear that my dinner companion, a descendent of the Dutch settlers who had colonized the country, had heard it all before. I remember that he listened patiently to my rant and then said, “Yes, I’m sure you’re right. I guess we should have just killed them all, like you did in America.”
But, of course, the Europeans didn’t “kill them all” (though, in fact, they killed many). Instead the European “masters” used the Africans for cheap labor, to work the fields and the mines. From the European point of view, this proved to be a short-term success but a long-term failure as, in country after country, it became impossible for a tiny minority to dominate and suppress the overwhelming majority. Demography, it turned out, was destiny. The Africans had the numbers and the Europeans were shown the door.
Which brings us to the Middle East.
I’ve often wondered why the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been so resistant to a peaceful resolution, and I’ve decided that the problem is that both sides believe time is on their side.
The Israelis have adopted the Dutch-in-Manhattan mindset. They know that between half a million and a million Palestinians were displaced when Israel was created in 1948, but rather than argue the morality of their national existence, they’ve decided to play for time. At some point in the future they figure that 1948 will become like 1626, and Israel’s right to exist will no longer be challenged. So I think that the Israelis figure that any comprehensive peace agreement with the Palestinians now would only work to their long-term disadvantage. In their view, the more history they can put between 1948 and an eventual settlement with the Palestinians, the better.
The Palestinians, too, think time is on their side. And their logic, as you might expect, follows the African model. Yasser Arafat once famously said that the “womb of the Palestinian woman” was the best weapon of the Palestinian people. In his view, it was inevitable that the Israeli position in Palestine would become untenable as the number of Palestinians rose relative to the number of Jews. For Arafat, demography was destiny, and the longer a peace agreement with Israel could be delayed, the better terms the Palestinians might expect.
Most of the political conversations about Middle East peace revolve around endless arguments about who’s right and who’s wrong, who built the first temple and who fired the first shot. Dialogue like that supports the delay-and-get-a-better-deal strategies of politicians on both sides, but in the end I think it's immoral to pretend to talk about peace when innocent Israelis and Palestinians are being killed. It was probably right to create a homeland for the Jews, and it was probably wrong to displace the Palestinians. But a comprehensive peace agreement that accommodates that messy reality will be hard to achieve. What's needed, of course, is a serious plan for peace. But that seems unlikely when both sides are playing for time.
Monday, April 12, 2010
The People's Capitalist
Probably few Times readers caught the update on the Khodorkovsky trial on the inside pages of last week’s paper. The former Russian oil magnate was first arrested in late 2003 – for tax evasion on YUKOS Oil sales – and has been in a Siberian jail for the past five years. He was scheduled to be released in 2011, but the Russian government brought new charges of embezzlement against him last year. In a development worthy of Orwell or Kafka, the Times reported that Khodorkovsky is now charged with stealing the same oil he was formerly charged with selling.
When I met Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 2002, he was the president of YUKOS and one of the richest men in the world. The circumstances of our meeting were interesting. Jacob Rothschild, of the famous European banking family, had invited Khodorkovsky to Waddesdon Manor, the palatial Rothschild estate in Buckinghamshire, England for a high-level, three-day conference designed to drum up business for a private jet company called NetJets.
The Waddesdon Conference was presented as an elite international business gathering where global leaders would discuss world affairs – a sort of a mini-Davos – but its real purpose was to interest wealthy European business leaders in buying shares of NetJets planes. The idea was to put happy NetJets owners (Lord Rothschild owned a share of a NetJets plane) together with prime NetJets prospects and hope that the former would persuade the latter to become NetJets customers. The guest list included Warren Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway company owns NetJets, as well as Paul Volcker, Barbara Walters, Jim Wolfensohn, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bono, David Frum, and some wealthy European business leaders whose names are less familiar (except to other wealthy European business leaders). I served as the Director of Communications for NetJets Europe in those days, and I was privileged to serve as the Master of Ceremonies for the conference.
Khodorkovsky arrived on the first day, and he was friendly but very shy. He spoke little English and his translator was constantly by his side. He was invited to address the conference and I remember that he talked briefly about the history of YUKOS Oil and the current business environment in Russia. Knowing what happened later, I wish I’d taken notes, but I was busy preparing an introduction for the next speaker and I didn’t pay careful attention.
The next time I met Khodorkovsky was in October of the following year. I was attending a World Economic Forum meeting in Moscow and was asked to chair a session on the outlook for global business in the “new Russia.” Khodorkovsky and two other prominent Russian businessmen were on the panel.
Relations between Khodorkovsky and Russian president Vladimir Putin had soured since I’d seen the Russian billionaire at Waddesdon Manor. The Russian president was angry about the fact that Khodorkovsky had donated money to several opposition parties in the run-up to the State Duma elections in 2003. Even worse, Khodorkovsky had publicly criticized Putin’s “managed democracy” economic model in the international media.
“It means that theoretically you have a free press,” he told the New York Times, “but in practice there is self-censorship. Theoretically you have courts; in practice, the courts adopt decisions dictated from above. Theoretically there are civil rights enshrined in the constitution; in practice, you are not able to exercise some of these rights.”
During our panel discussion in Moscow, Khodorkovsky complained that the Russian economy was not structured in a way that allowed the poor to move up to the middle class, a problem that he identified as critical to Russia’s future. After the session ended, I asked him what he’d meant by that.
“I recently returned from a vacation with my family to South Africa,” he said, “and I was struck by the fact that the wealthy people there all live behind high walls, with armed security guards. The rich people are constantly afraid that the poor people will climb over the walls and take what they have. It’s not healthy, and it’s not good for democracy. I don’t want my own children to grow up in a country like that.”
The next morning, Russian president Vladimir Putin was scheduled to deliver remarks at the Forum’s final plenary session, and Mikhail Khodorkovsky was seated in the audience. Putin was uncharacteristically late and I could see the Forum organizers fidgeting and making calls on their cell phones. A rumor spread that Putin had decided that he would not address the gathering if Khodorkovsky were in attendance.
As the minutes dragged on, Khodorkovsky’s cell phone rang and he hurriedly left the hall to take the call. His offices, he was told, were being ransacked by the secret police. The billionaire jumped into a waiting car and sped to the YUKOS headquarters. Several minutes later, Vladimir Putin entered the hall and delivered his prepared remarks.
Three weeks after the Forum’s Moscow meeting, Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested at Novosibirsk airport and charged with fraud. Anticipating the worst, he had arranged to have his YUKOS shares transferred to Jacob Rothschild in the event he was arrested, but in a matter of days, the government froze YUKOS’s assets and the value of the shares plummeted.
I really don’t know whether Mikhail Khodorkovsky was a legitimate businessman or a thief. There was a Wild West quality about Russia in the early, post-Soviet days and a lot of people got very rich, very fast – Khodorkovsky among them – so it’s certainly conceivable that the oilman cut corners and took advantage of a lax regulatory system to build his empire. But it’s equally possible that Russia’s rulers felt threatened by the country’s newly wealthy oligarchs and just decided to take Khodorkovsky out, Soviet-style, to send a message. Given the Russian government’s aversion to transparency, I suppose we’ll never know the truth.
But whatever the source of Khodorkovsky’s billions, he seemed to understand a basic truth that often eludes less thoughtful business leaders. Any system that allows the rich to get richer while the poor get poorer is ultimately bad for the rich and the poor. Khodorkovsky learned that in South Africa, and it helped make him a “people’s capitalist.” Other wealthy businessmen I’ve met, like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, seem to have learned the same lesson as they’ve made their own fortunes.
Over the years I’ve followed Khodorkovsky’s trials and tribulations with interest, but with little hope for his eventual freedom. He’s already spent almost seven years in prison and the new charges he’s facing carry a 27-year sentence. He was eligible for parole in August of 2008 but the presiding judge dismissed his application. Khodorkovsky, the judge said, had “refused to attend jail sewing classes.”
When I met Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 2002, he was the president of YUKOS and one of the richest men in the world. The circumstances of our meeting were interesting. Jacob Rothschild, of the famous European banking family, had invited Khodorkovsky to Waddesdon Manor, the palatial Rothschild estate in Buckinghamshire, England for a high-level, three-day conference designed to drum up business for a private jet company called NetJets.
The Waddesdon Conference was presented as an elite international business gathering where global leaders would discuss world affairs – a sort of a mini-Davos – but its real purpose was to interest wealthy European business leaders in buying shares of NetJets planes. The idea was to put happy NetJets owners (Lord Rothschild owned a share of a NetJets plane) together with prime NetJets prospects and hope that the former would persuade the latter to become NetJets customers. The guest list included Warren Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway company owns NetJets, as well as Paul Volcker, Barbara Walters, Jim Wolfensohn, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bono, David Frum, and some wealthy European business leaders whose names are less familiar (except to other wealthy European business leaders). I served as the Director of Communications for NetJets Europe in those days, and I was privileged to serve as the Master of Ceremonies for the conference.
Khodorkovsky arrived on the first day, and he was friendly but very shy. He spoke little English and his translator was constantly by his side. He was invited to address the conference and I remember that he talked briefly about the history of YUKOS Oil and the current business environment in Russia. Knowing what happened later, I wish I’d taken notes, but I was busy preparing an introduction for the next speaker and I didn’t pay careful attention.
The next time I met Khodorkovsky was in October of the following year. I was attending a World Economic Forum meeting in Moscow and was asked to chair a session on the outlook for global business in the “new Russia.” Khodorkovsky and two other prominent Russian businessmen were on the panel.
Relations between Khodorkovsky and Russian president Vladimir Putin had soured since I’d seen the Russian billionaire at Waddesdon Manor. The Russian president was angry about the fact that Khodorkovsky had donated money to several opposition parties in the run-up to the State Duma elections in 2003. Even worse, Khodorkovsky had publicly criticized Putin’s “managed democracy” economic model in the international media.
“It means that theoretically you have a free press,” he told the New York Times, “but in practice there is self-censorship. Theoretically you have courts; in practice, the courts adopt decisions dictated from above. Theoretically there are civil rights enshrined in the constitution; in practice, you are not able to exercise some of these rights.”
During our panel discussion in Moscow, Khodorkovsky complained that the Russian economy was not structured in a way that allowed the poor to move up to the middle class, a problem that he identified as critical to Russia’s future. After the session ended, I asked him what he’d meant by that.
“I recently returned from a vacation with my family to South Africa,” he said, “and I was struck by the fact that the wealthy people there all live behind high walls, with armed security guards. The rich people are constantly afraid that the poor people will climb over the walls and take what they have. It’s not healthy, and it’s not good for democracy. I don’t want my own children to grow up in a country like that.”
The next morning, Russian president Vladimir Putin was scheduled to deliver remarks at the Forum’s final plenary session, and Mikhail Khodorkovsky was seated in the audience. Putin was uncharacteristically late and I could see the Forum organizers fidgeting and making calls on their cell phones. A rumor spread that Putin had decided that he would not address the gathering if Khodorkovsky were in attendance.
As the minutes dragged on, Khodorkovsky’s cell phone rang and he hurriedly left the hall to take the call. His offices, he was told, were being ransacked by the secret police. The billionaire jumped into a waiting car and sped to the YUKOS headquarters. Several minutes later, Vladimir Putin entered the hall and delivered his prepared remarks.
Three weeks after the Forum’s Moscow meeting, Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested at Novosibirsk airport and charged with fraud. Anticipating the worst, he had arranged to have his YUKOS shares transferred to Jacob Rothschild in the event he was arrested, but in a matter of days, the government froze YUKOS’s assets and the value of the shares plummeted.
I really don’t know whether Mikhail Khodorkovsky was a legitimate businessman or a thief. There was a Wild West quality about Russia in the early, post-Soviet days and a lot of people got very rich, very fast – Khodorkovsky among them – so it’s certainly conceivable that the oilman cut corners and took advantage of a lax regulatory system to build his empire. But it’s equally possible that Russia’s rulers felt threatened by the country’s newly wealthy oligarchs and just decided to take Khodorkovsky out, Soviet-style, to send a message. Given the Russian government’s aversion to transparency, I suppose we’ll never know the truth.
But whatever the source of Khodorkovsky’s billions, he seemed to understand a basic truth that often eludes less thoughtful business leaders. Any system that allows the rich to get richer while the poor get poorer is ultimately bad for the rich and the poor. Khodorkovsky learned that in South Africa, and it helped make him a “people’s capitalist.” Other wealthy businessmen I’ve met, like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, seem to have learned the same lesson as they’ve made their own fortunes.
Over the years I’ve followed Khodorkovsky’s trials and tribulations with interest, but with little hope for his eventual freedom. He’s already spent almost seven years in prison and the new charges he’s facing carry a 27-year sentence. He was eligible for parole in August of 2008 but the presiding judge dismissed his application. Khodorkovsky, the judge said, had “refused to attend jail sewing classes.”
Saturday, March 27, 2010
What's in a Name?
“Charles” does not play well in America. It’s too formal-sounding, like Reginald or Humphrey. Too butler-ish, maybe, or too British. And probably for that reason, it gets more nicknames than any name I can think of. Charlie, Chuck, Chip and Chaz are the most common, but there are plenty more. I have an uncle named Charles who has been called Buster all his life (he just turned 89). His daughter, my cousin, named her son after her father. He’s also a Charles, but they call him Chad. My grandfather was Charles Donald Maclean, but he was called Mac. My father is Charles Donald McLean, but he has always gone by Don. I was born Charles Donald McLean, Jr., but was called Skip as a boy (and well into my adult life).
When people address me by a nickname I don’t like – Chuck, for example – I usually correct them, casually and politely, and say, “I go by Charles.” And if they persist in calling me Chuck, or Chaz, or some other name I don’t like, I assume they’re deliberately trying to provoke, offend, or antagonize me. Or maybe they’re hard of hearing. But in any event, it’s my name and I get to pick how I’d like to be addressed.
Which brings me to politics.
If you listen to John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Eric Cantor, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, or almost any other Republican spokesperson, you’ll notice that they commonly refer to their political opponents as members of the “Democrat” Party. Not Democratic. Democrat.
Now these are all career politicians, and most of them (Ms. Palin excepted) have spent virtually all of their adult lives in Washington, DC, where politics is the big game in town and they get to suit up with the varsity. They know that Democrats belong to the Democratic Party (it’s in the dictionary!), but they persistently refuse to use the proper adjective for the Party’s name.
I think this is a case of Chuck for Charles, and I blame Bob Dole. Back in 1976, when Dole was running for Vice President, he debated his Democratic challenger, Walter Mondale, and blasted the “Democrat” wars of the 20th Century. Republicans loved Dole’s skewed take on history, and were apparently even more pleased with how his use of “Democrat” as an adjective riled their opponents.
Frank Luntz, the long-time spinmeister for the Republican establishment, actually road tested the adjectival use of “Democrat” with a focus group in 2001. As Hendrik Hertzberg reported in The New Yorker a few years later, Luntz concluded that “the only people who really dislike it are highly partisan adherents of the – how you say? – Democratic Party.”
Not all modern-era Republicans have been guilty of this gratuitous insult. “Ronald Reagan never used it in polite company,” Hertzberg reported, and neither did George Bush senior. William F. Buckley, Jr., often called the Father of Modern Conservatism, was also no fan of the “Democrat” slur. “I have an aversion to ‘Democrat’ as an adjective," he wrote in a National Review column in 2000. “It has the effect of injecting politics into language, and that should be avoided.”
But Buckley’s heirs – at the Weekly Standard and the National Review, at Fox News and the conservative think-tanks, and, of course, in the halls of Congress – don’t seem to share Buckley’s reservations. In fact, George W. Bush, the most recent Republican president, was a chronic offender, routinely referring to “the Democrat Party” in his press conferences and weekly radio addresses. And the “Democrat” slur has, if anything, become even more popular among Republicans – and now with the Tea Party Movement – since Democrats won control of the White House and Congress two years ago.
So next time you hear a Republican lawmaker on Meet the Press or Face the Nation talking about how the “Democrat Party” refuses to reach across the aisle and negotiate in good faith with the minority, you might want to say, “Excuse me?” Because if Republicans really want to do business with the Democrats, they should start by showing some respect. They should get the name right.
Democratic, not Democrat.
Charles, not Chuck.
When people address me by a nickname I don’t like – Chuck, for example – I usually correct them, casually and politely, and say, “I go by Charles.” And if they persist in calling me Chuck, or Chaz, or some other name I don’t like, I assume they’re deliberately trying to provoke, offend, or antagonize me. Or maybe they’re hard of hearing. But in any event, it’s my name and I get to pick how I’d like to be addressed.
Which brings me to politics.
If you listen to John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Eric Cantor, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, or almost any other Republican spokesperson, you’ll notice that they commonly refer to their political opponents as members of the “Democrat” Party. Not Democratic. Democrat.
Now these are all career politicians, and most of them (Ms. Palin excepted) have spent virtually all of their adult lives in Washington, DC, where politics is the big game in town and they get to suit up with the varsity. They know that Democrats belong to the Democratic Party (it’s in the dictionary!), but they persistently refuse to use the proper adjective for the Party’s name.
I think this is a case of Chuck for Charles, and I blame Bob Dole. Back in 1976, when Dole was running for Vice President, he debated his Democratic challenger, Walter Mondale, and blasted the “Democrat” wars of the 20th Century. Republicans loved Dole’s skewed take on history, and were apparently even more pleased with how his use of “Democrat” as an adjective riled their opponents.
Frank Luntz, the long-time spinmeister for the Republican establishment, actually road tested the adjectival use of “Democrat” with a focus group in 2001. As Hendrik Hertzberg reported in The New Yorker a few years later, Luntz concluded that “the only people who really dislike it are highly partisan adherents of the – how you say? – Democratic Party.”
Not all modern-era Republicans have been guilty of this gratuitous insult. “Ronald Reagan never used it in polite company,” Hertzberg reported, and neither did George Bush senior. William F. Buckley, Jr., often called the Father of Modern Conservatism, was also no fan of the “Democrat” slur. “I have an aversion to ‘Democrat’ as an adjective," he wrote in a National Review column in 2000. “It has the effect of injecting politics into language, and that should be avoided.”
But Buckley’s heirs – at the Weekly Standard and the National Review, at Fox News and the conservative think-tanks, and, of course, in the halls of Congress – don’t seem to share Buckley’s reservations. In fact, George W. Bush, the most recent Republican president, was a chronic offender, routinely referring to “the Democrat Party” in his press conferences and weekly radio addresses. And the “Democrat” slur has, if anything, become even more popular among Republicans – and now with the Tea Party Movement – since Democrats won control of the White House and Congress two years ago.
So next time you hear a Republican lawmaker on Meet the Press or Face the Nation talking about how the “Democrat Party” refuses to reach across the aisle and negotiate in good faith with the minority, you might want to say, “Excuse me?” Because if Republicans really want to do business with the Democrats, they should start by showing some respect. They should get the name right.
Democratic, not Democrat.
Charles, not Chuck.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Tano
On the spur of the moment I decided to adopt a baby elephant. Actually, I took out the adoption papers in my daughter’s name, so Tano (who will celebrate her first birthday in May) is technically and officially my daughter Olivia’s foster daughter, and my wife and I are, technically and officially, Tano’s foster grandparents.
She is adorable and spirited, and watching her romp in a mud bath with her 19 orphaned playmates, as I had a chance to do in Nairobi last week, you couldn't imagine the hell she’s been through.
Tano is one of the lucky baby elephants whose lives have been saved by the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Nairobi, Kenya, which rescues baby elephants orphaned by poachers. Elephants are delicate creatures, and many of the orphaned babies die before they reach the age when they can be returned to life in the wild. But Tano looks like a good bet for survival. The Trust’s records contain the following entry about her:
“Tom Silvester, the Ranch Manager of Loisaba, rescued this tiny female who was only about 2 ½ months old. She had been located near ‘Boma Tano’ (the 5th Cattle Enclosure on the Ranch) and was suspected to be a poaching victim. The baby was too young to understand fear, and was trusting of humans from the start, instantly capturing the hearts of the Ranch Staff and the Manager’s children. They asked that she be named ‘Tano.’”
I visited the Sheldrick elephant orphanage last week during a business trip to Kenya and I was enormously impressed by the care and attention paid to these beautiful and intelligent animals. Dozens of Keepers tend to the elephants’ needs – feeding them a special, imported milk formula every three hours and even sleeping next to them at night. “No elephant is ever without a Keeper,” we were told. And the Keepers know the names and histories of every elephant in their care.
“That’s Turkwel over there,” the Trust’s spokeswoman told us. “A Park Warden risked his life by taking a team into a dangerous area around the South Turkana National Reserve, where warring tribes were constantly fighting over grazing lands for their livestock. With gunfire all around, he managed to get Turkwel safely to a landing strip and they flew him out to Nairobi.”
“And that’s Olare. A safari tourist in the Masai Mara spotted her clambering over her mother, who was stumbling, half paralyzed by a poacher’s bullet that had shattered her femur. Despite her excruciating pain, she struggled to protect her panic-stricken calf. Sadly, we had to euthenaze the mother, but we were able to save Olare.”
“And that’s little Shaba over there. He’s named for his homeland, the Shaba National Reserve in the northern part of the country. The drought has been tough on the local Samburu herdsmen who live there, and many of them have taken to grazing their cattle on the Reserve. Some of the tribesmen have also taken to poaching elephants in order to sell their ivory. Last September, a young schoolboy named Jacob noticed that a baby elephant, just days old, was trustingly following him as he walked home. The elders in his village alerted the Rangers, who called us. We were able to arrange a flight to rescue Shaba and bring him here the next day.”
And so it went. Story after story, and usually with a common thread: poachers killing elephants for their ivory, and calves, too young to have tusks of their own, left wandering in the bush. About half a million elephants remain in Africa, but conservationists estimate that poachers take the lives of as many as 60,000 of these extraordinary animals every year. Without restrictions on the ivory trade, they predict, African elephants could become extinct as early as 2020.
The 175-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) imposed a ban on the ivory trade in 1989, but granted permission to Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe to sell limited stocks of ivory to Japan in 1997 and 2002, when African elephant populations appeared to have stabilized. Not surprisingly, the easing of restrictions on ivory sales resulted in a dramatic up-tick in poaching throughout Africa. As the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust note in their literature, “As long as there is a demand for ivory, and a legal market for it, the story will not end. But the existence of the elephants will.”
Tanzania and Zambia recently petitioned CITES to lift the ban on ivory sales once again, but just yesterday, at the CITES meeting in Doha, the Convention’s delegates – led by the US, the EU, and courageous conservationists in Kenya – voted against lifting the ban.
“It’s welcome news,” Dr. Ian Douglas-Hamilton of Save the Elephants told reporters. “But my anxieties remain about the increased levels of poaching in Africa.”
The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust does great work. If you would like to adopt an elephant of your own, you can do so by visiting the Trust’s website: www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org. A minimum donation of $50 will get you a “fostering certificate” with a profile and photograph of your adopted orphan, plus regular e-mail installments of a “Keeper’s Diary,” charting the progress of your baby elephant. Most important, you’ll have the satisfaction of helping save an endangered species. And speaking as Tano’s foster Grandpa, I can tell you, it’s a pretty good feeling.
She is adorable and spirited, and watching her romp in a mud bath with her 19 orphaned playmates, as I had a chance to do in Nairobi last week, you couldn't imagine the hell she’s been through.
Tano is one of the lucky baby elephants whose lives have been saved by the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Nairobi, Kenya, which rescues baby elephants orphaned by poachers. Elephants are delicate creatures, and many of the orphaned babies die before they reach the age when they can be returned to life in the wild. But Tano looks like a good bet for survival. The Trust’s records contain the following entry about her:
“Tom Silvester, the Ranch Manager of Loisaba, rescued this tiny female who was only about 2 ½ months old. She had been located near ‘Boma Tano’ (the 5th Cattle Enclosure on the Ranch) and was suspected to be a poaching victim. The baby was too young to understand fear, and was trusting of humans from the start, instantly capturing the hearts of the Ranch Staff and the Manager’s children. They asked that she be named ‘Tano.’”
I visited the Sheldrick elephant orphanage last week during a business trip to Kenya and I was enormously impressed by the care and attention paid to these beautiful and intelligent animals. Dozens of Keepers tend to the elephants’ needs – feeding them a special, imported milk formula every three hours and even sleeping next to them at night. “No elephant is ever without a Keeper,” we were told. And the Keepers know the names and histories of every elephant in their care.
“That’s Turkwel over there,” the Trust’s spokeswoman told us. “A Park Warden risked his life by taking a team into a dangerous area around the South Turkana National Reserve, where warring tribes were constantly fighting over grazing lands for their livestock. With gunfire all around, he managed to get Turkwel safely to a landing strip and they flew him out to Nairobi.”
“And that’s Olare. A safari tourist in the Masai Mara spotted her clambering over her mother, who was stumbling, half paralyzed by a poacher’s bullet that had shattered her femur. Despite her excruciating pain, she struggled to protect her panic-stricken calf. Sadly, we had to euthenaze the mother, but we were able to save Olare.”
“And that’s little Shaba over there. He’s named for his homeland, the Shaba National Reserve in the northern part of the country. The drought has been tough on the local Samburu herdsmen who live there, and many of them have taken to grazing their cattle on the Reserve. Some of the tribesmen have also taken to poaching elephants in order to sell their ivory. Last September, a young schoolboy named Jacob noticed that a baby elephant, just days old, was trustingly following him as he walked home. The elders in his village alerted the Rangers, who called us. We were able to arrange a flight to rescue Shaba and bring him here the next day.”
And so it went. Story after story, and usually with a common thread: poachers killing elephants for their ivory, and calves, too young to have tusks of their own, left wandering in the bush. About half a million elephants remain in Africa, but conservationists estimate that poachers take the lives of as many as 60,000 of these extraordinary animals every year. Without restrictions on the ivory trade, they predict, African elephants could become extinct as early as 2020.
The 175-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) imposed a ban on the ivory trade in 1989, but granted permission to Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe to sell limited stocks of ivory to Japan in 1997 and 2002, when African elephant populations appeared to have stabilized. Not surprisingly, the easing of restrictions on ivory sales resulted in a dramatic up-tick in poaching throughout Africa. As the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust note in their literature, “As long as there is a demand for ivory, and a legal market for it, the story will not end. But the existence of the elephants will.”
Tanzania and Zambia recently petitioned CITES to lift the ban on ivory sales once again, but just yesterday, at the CITES meeting in Doha, the Convention’s delegates – led by the US, the EU, and courageous conservationists in Kenya – voted against lifting the ban.
“It’s welcome news,” Dr. Ian Douglas-Hamilton of Save the Elephants told reporters. “But my anxieties remain about the increased levels of poaching in Africa.”
The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust does great work. If you would like to adopt an elephant of your own, you can do so by visiting the Trust’s website: www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org. A minimum donation of $50 will get you a “fostering certificate” with a profile and photograph of your adopted orphan, plus regular e-mail installments of a “Keeper’s Diary,” charting the progress of your baby elephant. Most important, you’ll have the satisfaction of helping save an endangered species. And speaking as Tano’s foster Grandpa, I can tell you, it’s a pretty good feeling.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
A Disease of the Soul
My return trip from Nairobi, Kenya took about nineteen hours, airport to airport, and I was exhausted by the time I arrived home. But I was delighted to sit down to a home-cooked meal with my family and share my experiences. Over a fresh salad, chops, vegetables and rice, we talked about hunger in Africa.
I’d flown to Nairobi to meet with a non-profit called the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). Their mission is to modernize agriculture on the continent and, in so doing, help end the chronic hunger and starvation that claim millions of lives there every year.
At this point – the beginning of paragraph three – you’re probably tempted to stop reading this column. Please don’t. These are problems that you might think you understand, or think you’ve heard enough about, but you don’t and you haven’t.
For five years, back in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, I served as Africa Bureau Chief for NBC News, and during that period I covered famines in Ethiopia and Mozambique, and visited rural farming communities in Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Swaziland and South Africa. It was clear then that Africa was losing the battle against hunger. But in the past two decades, things have gone from bad to worse.
UN health and food organizations estimate that 25,000 people in the developing world die every day from hunger, malnutrition and related diseases. As Wall Street Journal reporters Roger Thurow and Scott Kilman point out in their book, Enough: Why the World’s Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty, that’s the equivalent of sixty jumbo jets crashing every day. And fully half of these hunger victims are in sub-Saharan Africa, where close to half a billion people are undernourished.
The statistics are numbing, and that’s part of the problem. Like so many challenges in Africa, it’s tempting to put hunger and malnutrition in the “Too Hard” basket and move on to more tractable problems. Fortunately, powerful organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and African organizations like AGRA aren’t moving on. They’re tackling the challenge head on.
The Green Revolution began with the work of an agronomist named Norman Borlaug, who received his PhD from the University of Minnesota in 1942. Two years later, Borlaug was recruited by the Cooperative Wheat Research Production Program to help Mexico increase its grain production. During his fourteen years with the program, Borlaug developed new varieties of high-yield, disease-resistant wheat that helped Mexico go from a net wheat importer to a net wheat exporter. In 1963, the Rockefeller Foundation sent Borlaug to India, where he replicated his success. Wheat production there increased from 12.3 million tons to 20.1 million tons in just five years. Borlaug moved on to Pakistan, and then to China, adapting the techniques of the Green Revolution to the specific soil and climate conditions he found in each country and region.
But Borlaug’s efforts foundered in Africa, where smallholder farmers, mostly women, struggled against both the natural elements (primarily drought) and an economic infrastructure that stymied efforts to improve crop production and profitability. To make matters worse, misguided environmentalists campaigned against Borlaug’s utilization of genetic crossbreeding and use of inorganic fertilizers and pesticides, the very techniques and products that had saved so many lives in Mexico, India, Pakistan and China.
“If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they’d be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things,” Borlaug said of his critics.
The folks I met with at AGRA are trying to re-start the Green Revolution Borlaug began decades ago, but this time, they say, it will be a revolution with an African face. Led by its chairman, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, and the organization’s president, Dr. Namanga Ngongi, AGRA is looking to reduce food insecurity by 50% in at least 20 African countries and double the incomes of 20 million smallholder families in the next decade.
These are ambitious goals, and it will take more than Gates and Rockefeller money for AGRA to achieve them. It will take a genuine commitment by Africa’s fifty-two nations to work together to defeat hunger and end starvation, and it will require the cooperation and collaboration of countries around the world – especially with regard to tariffs and farm subsidies – for Africa’s Green Revolution to succeed.
I left Africa on Wednesday evening convinced that AGRA’s goals were achievable, at least on paper. They’ve assembled a talented group of smart and experienced people to meet the challenge, and they have some powerful allies and champions. But it’s also clear that success will require a level of selflessness, generosity and commitment from nations and political leaders that has been, sadly, in short supply.
Volli Carucci, who works for the United Nations World Food Program in Ethiopia, observed that starvation is “something people in Europe and the United States have forgotten about." But Carucci, working on the front lines in the battle against hunger, said he couldn't forget. "Looking into the eyes of someone dying of hunger," he said, "becomes a disease of the soul.”
Norman Borlaug, the founder of the Green Revolution, died six months ago, at age 95, after a life of extraordinary achievement. When he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, it was estimated that he had saved more than a billion people from starvation. In accepting his award in Oslo he said, “Man can and must prevent the tragedy of famine in the future instead of merely trying with pious regret to salvage the human wreckage of famine, as he has so often done in the past.” He concluded, “We will be guilty of criminal negligence, without extenuation, if we permit future famines.”
Forty years later, our criminal negligence continues.
It needs to stop.
I’d flown to Nairobi to meet with a non-profit called the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). Their mission is to modernize agriculture on the continent and, in so doing, help end the chronic hunger and starvation that claim millions of lives there every year.
At this point – the beginning of paragraph three – you’re probably tempted to stop reading this column. Please don’t. These are problems that you might think you understand, or think you’ve heard enough about, but you don’t and you haven’t.
For five years, back in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, I served as Africa Bureau Chief for NBC News, and during that period I covered famines in Ethiopia and Mozambique, and visited rural farming communities in Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Swaziland and South Africa. It was clear then that Africa was losing the battle against hunger. But in the past two decades, things have gone from bad to worse.
UN health and food organizations estimate that 25,000 people in the developing world die every day from hunger, malnutrition and related diseases. As Wall Street Journal reporters Roger Thurow and Scott Kilman point out in their book, Enough: Why the World’s Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty, that’s the equivalent of sixty jumbo jets crashing every day. And fully half of these hunger victims are in sub-Saharan Africa, where close to half a billion people are undernourished.
The statistics are numbing, and that’s part of the problem. Like so many challenges in Africa, it’s tempting to put hunger and malnutrition in the “Too Hard” basket and move on to more tractable problems. Fortunately, powerful organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and African organizations like AGRA aren’t moving on. They’re tackling the challenge head on.
The Green Revolution began with the work of an agronomist named Norman Borlaug, who received his PhD from the University of Minnesota in 1942. Two years later, Borlaug was recruited by the Cooperative Wheat Research Production Program to help Mexico increase its grain production. During his fourteen years with the program, Borlaug developed new varieties of high-yield, disease-resistant wheat that helped Mexico go from a net wheat importer to a net wheat exporter. In 1963, the Rockefeller Foundation sent Borlaug to India, where he replicated his success. Wheat production there increased from 12.3 million tons to 20.1 million tons in just five years. Borlaug moved on to Pakistan, and then to China, adapting the techniques of the Green Revolution to the specific soil and climate conditions he found in each country and region.
But Borlaug’s efforts foundered in Africa, where smallholder farmers, mostly women, struggled against both the natural elements (primarily drought) and an economic infrastructure that stymied efforts to improve crop production and profitability. To make matters worse, misguided environmentalists campaigned against Borlaug’s utilization of genetic crossbreeding and use of inorganic fertilizers and pesticides, the very techniques and products that had saved so many lives in Mexico, India, Pakistan and China.
“If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they’d be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things,” Borlaug said of his critics.
The folks I met with at AGRA are trying to re-start the Green Revolution Borlaug began decades ago, but this time, they say, it will be a revolution with an African face. Led by its chairman, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, and the organization’s president, Dr. Namanga Ngongi, AGRA is looking to reduce food insecurity by 50% in at least 20 African countries and double the incomes of 20 million smallholder families in the next decade.
These are ambitious goals, and it will take more than Gates and Rockefeller money for AGRA to achieve them. It will take a genuine commitment by Africa’s fifty-two nations to work together to defeat hunger and end starvation, and it will require the cooperation and collaboration of countries around the world – especially with regard to tariffs and farm subsidies – for Africa’s Green Revolution to succeed.
I left Africa on Wednesday evening convinced that AGRA’s goals were achievable, at least on paper. They’ve assembled a talented group of smart and experienced people to meet the challenge, and they have some powerful allies and champions. But it’s also clear that success will require a level of selflessness, generosity and commitment from nations and political leaders that has been, sadly, in short supply.
Volli Carucci, who works for the United Nations World Food Program in Ethiopia, observed that starvation is “something people in Europe and the United States have forgotten about." But Carucci, working on the front lines in the battle against hunger, said he couldn't forget. "Looking into the eyes of someone dying of hunger," he said, "becomes a disease of the soul.”
Norman Borlaug, the founder of the Green Revolution, died six months ago, at age 95, after a life of extraordinary achievement. When he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, it was estimated that he had saved more than a billion people from starvation. In accepting his award in Oslo he said, “Man can and must prevent the tragedy of famine in the future instead of merely trying with pious regret to salvage the human wreckage of famine, as he has so often done in the past.” He concluded, “We will be guilty of criminal negligence, without extenuation, if we permit future famines.”
Forty years later, our criminal negligence continues.
It needs to stop.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Lessons from the Pinewood Derby
My favorite possession is a wooden racecar about eight inches long and about two and a half-inches wide, plastic wheel to plastic wheel. It was originally glossy black, but it’s pretty scuffed up now and the paint is chipped and worn at the edges. An orange number 3 is painted on the tail.
My Dad and I made the car more than fifty years ago, when I was a Cub Scout. It was our entry in the Pinewood Derby, a father-son event that began in 1953 and has been an annual tradition ever since. Every spring, tens of thousands of Cub Scouts around the world enter their cars in local Derby matches, racing them down carefully constructed, regulation-grade wooden ramps in elimination heats that culminate in a final showdown race to determine the Pinewood Derby champ.
Our car started out as a block of pine, two wooden cross axles, four narrow plastic wheels and four one-inch steel nails. Our job was to shape the block of wood and the various bits and pieces into a racecar, then paint it and prepare it for competition. The Pinewood Derby kit came with a set of rules. You had to use the wheels supplied with the kit, for example, and the final weight of the car could not exceed a certain number of ounces.
My Dad and I knew what a real racecar should look like. Every September we’d go to the midget car races at the Allentown Fair and watch young hot shots drive scaled-down Indy cars around the fairground’s dirt track. It was loud and dusty for the spectators and frequently dangerous for the drivers (we usually saw a spinout or two, and sometimes a crash). But it was really, really fun. And it was something I did with my Dad.
So we tried to make Number 3 look like a real racecar, at least in its basic proportions. My Dad was a dentist (we lived upstairs, above his office) and he was good with his hands. He kept a few basic tools around the house, including a power drill. To shape the racer, he fitted a sanding disc to the drill and had me hold the drill steady while he pushed the pine gently against the abrasive surface.
We ended up with a handsome car, streamlined and sleek. We put a drop of oil on the hub of each wheel and tested it by racing it up and down the hallway. Then my Dad had a thought. He asked me to take the car down to Rader’s Market, a block and a half away, and ask the butcher if he’d mind weighing it. I probably made it there and back in under ten minutes.
“We’re light,” my Dad said, looking at the numbers the butcher had scribbled on a piece of paper. “If we can put some weight on this car, she’ll pick up speed down the ramp and we’ll have a better chance to win.”
My Dad took the sanding head off the drill and fitted a fat, quarter-inch bit in its place. He drilled four or five holes in the bottom of the car, then went down to the lab in his dental office and mixed up some amalgam. I just had some fillings replaced and I know that the material used today is a lot stronger, lighter, and safer than the amalgam my Dad used in the ‘50s. But this stuff was absolutely perfect for a block of pine in need of an extra ounce or two.
Again I raced down to Rader’s, but the car was still way too light. Another half dozen holes. More amalgam. Another trip to the market. Then more holes, and yet another dash to Rader’s.
When Number 3 was placed on the scale on Derby day, she weighed in at a fraction of an ounce under the maximum allowable weight. If you’d flipped her over, you would have seen seventeen neatly-filled “cavities,” still visible under a thin coat of black paint. She was fast and she was beautiful, and in heat after heat, she proved to be a winner.
What I remember most about that experience wasn’t winning the Derby, but the pleasure I had making that car with my Dad. He was young then, much younger than I am now, and he was busy building his dental practice and putting food on our table. But he always seemed to have time for me.
As the years went by, we put together electric train sets in the basement, and built gas-powered model planes that we flew in circles on the baseball field. We threw a softball in the backyard in the spring and a football in the fall.
I’ve been a father myself for about twenty years now, and I often reflect on all I learned from my Dad. He did so many things right, and I know I’ve often come up short by comparison. But I’ve always tried to be there for my daughters, the way he was there for me. It’s a lesson I learned from him and one I’m reminded of every time I glance over and see Number 3, chipped and worn, on the corner of my desk.
Don McLean, co-champion of the Pinewood Derby, will turn 88 on Sunday. He’s a great man and a great father. And twentysome years into his retirement, he’s still pretty good with his hands.
Happy Birthday, Dad.
My Dad and I made the car more than fifty years ago, when I was a Cub Scout. It was our entry in the Pinewood Derby, a father-son event that began in 1953 and has been an annual tradition ever since. Every spring, tens of thousands of Cub Scouts around the world enter their cars in local Derby matches, racing them down carefully constructed, regulation-grade wooden ramps in elimination heats that culminate in a final showdown race to determine the Pinewood Derby champ.
Our car started out as a block of pine, two wooden cross axles, four narrow plastic wheels and four one-inch steel nails. Our job was to shape the block of wood and the various bits and pieces into a racecar, then paint it and prepare it for competition. The Pinewood Derby kit came with a set of rules. You had to use the wheels supplied with the kit, for example, and the final weight of the car could not exceed a certain number of ounces.
My Dad and I knew what a real racecar should look like. Every September we’d go to the midget car races at the Allentown Fair and watch young hot shots drive scaled-down Indy cars around the fairground’s dirt track. It was loud and dusty for the spectators and frequently dangerous for the drivers (we usually saw a spinout or two, and sometimes a crash). But it was really, really fun. And it was something I did with my Dad.
So we tried to make Number 3 look like a real racecar, at least in its basic proportions. My Dad was a dentist (we lived upstairs, above his office) and he was good with his hands. He kept a few basic tools around the house, including a power drill. To shape the racer, he fitted a sanding disc to the drill and had me hold the drill steady while he pushed the pine gently against the abrasive surface.
We ended up with a handsome car, streamlined and sleek. We put a drop of oil on the hub of each wheel and tested it by racing it up and down the hallway. Then my Dad had a thought. He asked me to take the car down to Rader’s Market, a block and a half away, and ask the butcher if he’d mind weighing it. I probably made it there and back in under ten minutes.
“We’re light,” my Dad said, looking at the numbers the butcher had scribbled on a piece of paper. “If we can put some weight on this car, she’ll pick up speed down the ramp and we’ll have a better chance to win.”
My Dad took the sanding head off the drill and fitted a fat, quarter-inch bit in its place. He drilled four or five holes in the bottom of the car, then went down to the lab in his dental office and mixed up some amalgam. I just had some fillings replaced and I know that the material used today is a lot stronger, lighter, and safer than the amalgam my Dad used in the ‘50s. But this stuff was absolutely perfect for a block of pine in need of an extra ounce or two.
Again I raced down to Rader’s, but the car was still way too light. Another half dozen holes. More amalgam. Another trip to the market. Then more holes, and yet another dash to Rader’s.
When Number 3 was placed on the scale on Derby day, she weighed in at a fraction of an ounce under the maximum allowable weight. If you’d flipped her over, you would have seen seventeen neatly-filled “cavities,” still visible under a thin coat of black paint. She was fast and she was beautiful, and in heat after heat, she proved to be a winner.
What I remember most about that experience wasn’t winning the Derby, but the pleasure I had making that car with my Dad. He was young then, much younger than I am now, and he was busy building his dental practice and putting food on our table. But he always seemed to have time for me.
As the years went by, we put together electric train sets in the basement, and built gas-powered model planes that we flew in circles on the baseball field. We threw a softball in the backyard in the spring and a football in the fall.
I’ve been a father myself for about twenty years now, and I often reflect on all I learned from my Dad. He did so many things right, and I know I’ve often come up short by comparison. But I’ve always tried to be there for my daughters, the way he was there for me. It’s a lesson I learned from him and one I’m reminded of every time I glance over and see Number 3, chipped and worn, on the corner of my desk.
Don McLean, co-champion of the Pinewood Derby, will turn 88 on Sunday. He’s a great man and a great father. And twentysome years into his retirement, he’s still pretty good with his hands.
Happy Birthday, Dad.
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