I went to the same park today and took some photos.
Spring has come early this year, a very pleasant surprise. It was very nice to be out walking.
I feel I have much to be thankful for.
Love life, fear death.
— Roger Smith, email to a friend
March 25, 2016
Robert W. Tighe
The following is a message of mine posted on Facebook in response to a daughter of my former English teacher Robert W. Tighe.
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In your Facebook post of March 23, 2016, you said, regarding your father: “[his] chosen occupation aligned with his passions, in his case for learning, and sharing his love of learning with others, as well as for language and the role language plays in shaping our understanding of the human experience throughout history and the role it plays in the present as a tool for influencing the thoughts and actions of others.”
Very true, I believe.
From my experience of your father as a teacher, I would say that some things that drove him were:
a love of books, reading, and language;
hatred (if one can use such a strong term) of pomposity and obfuscation in writing and in written and oral expression in general; an abhorrence of cant.
It seemed that this would cause him at times to be impatient and to be a harsh critic.
He was no phony or fake and he didn’t like it when others “put on airs,” so to speak, when writing, declaiming, or participating in a conversation or class discussion; when someone would try to conceal their lack of knowledge, or grasp and penetration of issues, behind a “smokescreen” of bad writing.
He had no use for mawkish, flowery, or overblown language when used to impress the reader or show off.
He was constantly inveighing against excess verbiage and wasted words. His summum bonum was clarity.
I had a close friend from another town in New England. His father was chairman of the English department in the local high school. Once, when I was visiting, my friend took me upstairs and showed me some of his father’s students’ papers. There was an A paper by a star student, a girl. My friend’s father had written comments praising it highly. I read some of the paper and, being a student of Mr. Tighe, immediately realized that it was a God awful paper. It was insipid, mushy writing of the kind your father would have detested.
A few additional comments.
Your father loved Samuel Johnson. I was told by someone that he had read Bowell’s Life of Johnson something like nine times. One can see why this affinity existed. Samuel Johnson hated cant and hypocrisy, and would skewer with verbal repartee — with his (Johnson’s) legendary wit and sarcasm — anyone who engaged in it.
Your father taught me to read poetry. Sort of. Which is to say that I never really had an ear for poetry or much of an ability to understated it. But, your father would have us reading John Donne, William Blake, or T. S. Eliot and understanding it, getting to the heart of the poem, and, once I could manage to do this, loving the poetry for its ingenuity and beauty.
— Roger W. Smith
March 25, 2016
The game of Base-Ball, now very generally practiced, is one of the very best of out-door exercises; the same may be said of cricket—and, in short, of all games which involve the using of the arms and legs.
— Walt Whitman, Manly Health and Training (1858)
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The ladders and hanging ropes of the gymnasium, manly exercises, the game of base-ball, running, leaping, pitching quoits.
— Walt Whitman, “Chants Democratic,” Leaves of Grass, 1860-1861
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… There was a big match played here yesterday between two base ball clubs, one from Philadelphia & the other a Washington club—& to-day another is to come off between a New York & the Philadelphia club I believe—thousands go to see them play—
— Walt Whitman to Alfred Pratt, 26 and 29 August 1, 1865 [written when Whitman was employed in the Attorney; General’s office Washington]
Note: The Philadelphia Athletics defeated the Washington Nationals 87 to 12 on August 28, 1865. Baseball scores were typically much higher then. On the following day the Nationals played the New York Atlantics.
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I am feeling hearty and in good spirits—go around more than usual—go to such doings as base-ball matches and the music Performances in the Public grounds—Marine Band, etc.
— Walt Whitman to John Burroughs, July 2, 1866
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We have had an awful rain storm of five days, raining with hardly any intermission. The water is way up on the base-ball grounds & on 11th st from the Canal most up to the avenue.
— Walt Whitman to James Speed, October 13, 1866
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Upon the race-course, or enjoying picnics or jigs, or a good game of base-ball,
— Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1867)
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There was a very exciting game of Base Ball Played here to day, between the Nationals, & the Olympics, both of this city, i went out to see them & enjoyed it very much when the game ended the score stood Nationals 21, Olympics 15 old Base Ball Players say it was one of the best games they ever saw.
— Peter Doyle to Walt Whitman, September 21, 1868
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Dear Walt.
I thought I would write a line or so to you and let you know that we are all well. …
On the back of the envelope accompanying Harry Stafford’ letter, Whitman wrote a list, as follows: “envelopes at [Altemuss?] | take the white hat to 8th st | shoes (base ball) | see about a pair for Mrs Stafford | stuff for trousers | some stockings & [hokfs?] at Johnny’s | coffee”
— Harry Stafford to Walt Whitman, July 9, 1877
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Tuesday, June 5, 1888.
Talking of Sunday agitation generally and Gloucester baseball in particular W. said: “I believe in all that—in baseball, in picnics, in freedom: I believe in the jolly all-round time—with the parsons and the police eliminated.”
— Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Volume 1
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Sunday, September 2, 1888.
Evening at 8. … Sunday—Sunday: we make it the dullest day in the week when it might be made the cheeriest. Will the people ever come to base ball, plays, concerts, yacht races, on Sundays? That would seem like clear weather after a rain. Why do you suppose people are so narrow-minded in their interpretation of the Sunday? If we read about Luther we find that he was not gloomy, not sad-devout, not sickly-religious: but a man full of blood who didn’t hesitate to outrage ascetic customs or play games if he felt like it on Sunday. The Catholic regards Sunday with a more nearly sane eye. It does seem as though the Puritan was responsible for our Sunday: the Puritan had his virtues but I for one owe him a grudge or two which I don’t hesitate to talk about loud enough to be heard.”
— Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Volume 2
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Sunday, September 16, 1888
W. said to me: “I like your interest in sports—ball, chiefest of all—base-ball particularly: base-ball is our game: the American game: I connect it with our national character. Sports take people out of doors, get them filled with oxygen—generate some of the brutal customs (so-called brutal customs) which, after all, tend to habituate people to a necessary physical stoicism. We are some ways a dyspeptic, nervous set: anything which will repair such losses may be regarded as a blessing to the race. We want to go out and howl, swear, run, jump, wrestle, even fight, if only by so doing we may improve the guts of the people: the guts, vile as guts are, divine as guts are!”
— Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Volume 2
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Monday, May 6, 1889
10.35 A.M. … Had been interested in paper account this morning of … Camden [New Jersey] ministers inducing horse railway company not to run cars on Sunday. “I see,” said W., “they have done it—and think they have done a big thing. I, for my part, should say that Sunday of all days they should run the cars. I do not publish myself on the point, but I should argue for absolute freedom—cars, ferry-boats, base-ball, picnics—nothing hindered, prohibited.”
— Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Volume 5
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Tuesday, May 7, 1889
[Thomas] Harned [Horace Traubel’s brother-in-law] came in and was heartily greeted. W. inquired after Tom, after the family. … Afterwards Harned said he had witnessed a base-ball match this afternoon. W. then asked: “Tell me, Tom—I want to ask you a question: in base-ball, is it the rule that the fellow who pitches the ball aims to pitch it in such a way the batter cannot hit it? Gives it a twist—what not—so it slides off, or won’t be struck fairly?” And on Tom’s affirmative— “Eh? that’s the modern rule then, is it? I thought something of the kind—I read the papers about it—it seemed to indicate that there.” Then he denounced the custom roundly. “The wolf, the snake, the cur, the sneak, all seem entered into the modern sportsman—though I ought not to say that, for the snake is snake because he is born so, and the man the snake for other reasons, it may be said.” And again he went over the catalogue— “I should call it everything that is damnable.” Harned greatly amused at W.’s feeling in the matter. W. again: “I have made it a point to put that same question to several fellows lately. There certainly seems no doubt but that your version is right, for that is the version everyone gives me.”
— Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Volume 5
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Sunday, April 7, 1889
1.30 P.M. … He [Whitman] he gave me a[n] … interesting piece of news. “Did you see the baseball boys are home from their tour around the world? How I’d like to meet them—talk with them: maybe ask them some questions.” I said: “Baseball is the hurrah game of the republic!” He was hilarious: “That’s beautiful: the hurrah game! well—it’s our game: that’s the chief fact in connection with it: America’s game: has the snap, go, fling, of the American atmosphere—belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly, as our constitutions, laws: is just as important in the sum total of our historic life.”
Note: in 1888–1889, baseball executive Albert Spalding took a group of major league players on a world tour to promote baseball and Spalding sporting goods.
— Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Volume 5
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Tuesday, June 11, 1889
8 P.M. W. sitting in parlor, hat on, and Mrs. Davis there talking with him. Had but just returned from his “jaunt” with Ed. “It was baseball today.” He takes a great interest in the boys out on the common. Sits watching them for long stretches.
— Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Volume 5
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Monday, November 11, 1889
I was out in my chair yesterday—Warrie took me and we went up towards the city hall. Generally, on weekdays, there are boys playing base ball—a fine air of activity, life, but yesterday everything was glum—neither boy nor ball to be seen. I thought then—told Warrie, too—how much better it would be for the boys to be in the place—how much better the play, the open air, the beautiful sky, the active movement, than restriction, Sabbathism.”
— Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Volume 6
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He [Whitman] is taken out regularly in his chair, perhaps to the outskirts of the town, where he may scan the free sky, the shifting clouds, watch the boys at base-ball, or breathe in drowsily—” for reasons,” he would say—the refreshing air; or he is guided to the river, with its boats and tides and revelation of sunset.
— In re Walt Whitman: edited by his literary executors, Horace L. Traubel, Richard Maurice Bucke, Thomas B. Harned (1893)
— compiled by Roger W. Smith
March 2016; updated March 2018
“Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?”
“Song of the Open Road” (1856)
I too walked the streets of Manhattan Island, and
bathed in the waters around it,
I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within
me,
In the day, among crowds of people, sometimes they
came upon me,
In my walks home late at night, or as I lay in my
bed, they came upon me.
“Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” (1860)
My joys in the open air—my walks through the Mannahatta
“To My Soul” (1860)
I continually enjoy these streets, planned on such a generous scale, stretching far, without stop or turn, giving the eye vistas. I feel freer, larger in them. Not the squeezed limits of Boston, New-York, or even Philadelphia; but royal plenty and nature’s own bounty—American, prairie-like. It is worth writing a book about, this point alone. I often find it silently, curiously making up to me the absence of the ocean tumult of humanity I always enjoyed in New-York. Here, too, is largeness, in another more impalpable form; and I never walk Washington, day or night, without feeling its satisfaction.
In my walks I never cease finding new effects and pictures, and I believe it would continue so if I went rambling around here for fifty years.
Walt Whitman, Letter from Washington, New-York Times 4 October 1863
Lo, the most excellent sun so calm and haughty,
The violet and purple morn with just-felt breezes,
The gentle soft-born measureless light,
The miracle spreading bathing all, the fulfill’d noon,
The coming eve delicious, the welcome night and the stars,
Over my cities shining all, enveloping man and land.
“When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” (1865)
GIVE me the splendid silent sun, with all his beams full-
dazzling; ….
Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers,
where I can walk undisturb’d; …
While yet incessantly asking, still I adhere to my city;
Day upon day, and year upon year, O city, walking
your streets, …
Give me faces and streets! give me these phantoms incessant and endless along the trottoirs! …
Give me such shows! give me the streets of Manhattan!
Give me Broadway, with the soldiers marching—give
me the sound of the trumpets and drums! …
Give me the shores and the wharves heavy-fringed
with the black ships! …
People, endless, streaming, with strong voices, passions,
pageants;
Manhattan streets, with their powerful throbs, with the
beating drums, ….
Manhattan crowds with their turbulent musical chorus
—with varied chorus and light of the sparkling
eyes;
Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me.
“Give Me The Splendid Silent Sun” (1865)
NIGHT on the prairies;
The supper is over—the fire on the ground burns
low;
The wearied emigrants sleep, wrapt in their blankets;
I walk by myself—I stand and look at the stars,
which I think now I never realized before.
Leaves of Grass (1867)
My little dog is stretched out on the rug at full length, snoozing. He hardly lets me go a step without being close at my heels—follows me in my slow walks, & stops or turns just as I do.
letter from Whitman to his friend Pete Doyle, 26–27 March, 1874
SKIRTING the river road, (my languid forenoon walk, my rest,)
“The Dalliance of the Eagles” (1880)
I came down yesterday amid sousing rain & cloudy weather—but this forenoon it is sunshiny & delightful—I have just returned from a two hours ramble in the old woods—wintry & bare, & yet lots of holly & laurel—& I only wish I could send you some cedary branches thick with the china-blue little plums, so pretty amid the green tufts— … We had a flurry of snow last evening, & it looks wintry enough to-day, but the sun is out, & I take my walks in the woods.
letter from Whitman to Herbert Gilchrist, 30–31 December 1881
Thy windows rich, and huge hotels—thy side-walks wide;
Thou of the endless sliding, mincing, shuffling feet!
Thou, like the parti-colored world itself—like infinite, teeming,
mocking life!
Thou visor’d, vast, unspeakable show and lesson!
“Broadway” (1888)
Sunday, October 21, 1888.
7.20 evening. W. lying on the bed, dressed, I entered very quietly: stood there without a word. He had been dozing. Started up. “Come in! Come in!” After we had shaken hands he described his day: “… he [Whitman] asked: “And you—what have you done with the day?” I had been far in the country on a long walk. I said something about “the joy of going on and on and not getting tired.” This aroused him. “I can fully realize that joy—that untranslatable joy: I have known its meaning to the full. In the old days, long ago, I was fond of taking interminable walks—going on and on, as you say, without a stop or the thought of a stop. It was at that time, in Washington, that I got to know Peter Doyle—a Rebel, a car-driver, a soldier: have you met him here? seen him? talked with him? Ah yes! we would walk together for miles and miles, never sated. Often we would go on for some time without a word, then talk—Pete a rod ahead or I a rod ahead. Washington was then the grandest of all the cities for such strolls. In order to maintain the centrality, identity, authority, of the city, a whole chain of forts, barracks, was put about it and roads leading out to them. It was therefore owing to these facts that our walks were made easy. Oh! the long, long walks, way into the nights!—in the after hours—sometimes lasting till two or three in the morning! The air, the stars, the moon, the water—what a fullness of inspiration they imparted!—what exhilaration! And there were the detours, too—wanderings off into the country out of the beaten path: I remember one place in Maryland in particular to which we would go. How splendid, above all, was the moon—the full moon, the half moon: and then the wonder, the delight, of the silences.” He half sat up in bed as he spoke. “It was a great, a precious, a memorable, experience. To get the ensemble of Leaves of Grass you have got to include such things as these—the walks, Pete’s friendship: yes, such things: they are absolutely necessary to the completion of the story.”
Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Volume 2
Tuesday, November 20, 1888.
W. had another letter for me. He picked it up from the accustomed place on the table. “It’s from Rossetti,” he said: ” I’ve been reading it over: William Rossetti: full of wise beautiful things—overflowing with genial winsome good will: you ‘ll feel its treasurable quality.” I sat there and read. He said: “Read it aloud: I can easily enjoy it again.” When I got to the passage describing the walks W. interrupted me: “Oh! that’s so fine—so fine, fine, fine: he brings back my own walks to me: the walks alone: the walks with Pete [Doyle, Whitman’s friend]: the blessed past undying days: they make me hungry, tied up as I am now and for good in a room …
Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Volume 3
AH, whispering, something again, unseen,
Where late this heated day thou enterest at my window, door,
Thou, laving, tempering all, cool-freshing, gently vitalizing
Me, old, alone, sick, weak-down, melted-worn with sweat;
Thou, nestling, folding close and firm yet soft, companion better than
talk, book, art,
(Thou hast, O Nature! elements! utterance to my heart beyond the
rest—and this is of them,)
So sweet thy primitive taste to breathe within—thy soothing fingers on
my face and hands,
Thou, messenger-magical strange bringer to body and spirit of me,
(Distances balk’d—occult medicines penetrating me from head to foot.)
I feel the sky, the prairies vast—I feel the mighty northern lakes,
I feel the ocean and the forest—somehow I feel the globe itself swift-
swimming in space;
Thou blown from lips so loved, now gone—haply from endless store,
God sent,
(For thou art spiritual, Godly, most of all known to my sense,)
Minister to speak to me, here and now, what word has never told, and
cannot tell,
Art thou not universal concrete’s distillation? Law’s, all Astronomy’s
last refinement?
Hast thou no soul? Can I not know, identify thee?
“To The Sunset Breeze” (1890)
Friday, February 14, 1890
On B[uckwalter]. expressing his pleasure that W. got out of doors, W. said: “I got out yesterday—today it has not been possible. Yesterday’s jaunt—and it was quite a jaunt—was a fine one. The sky, the river, the sun—they are my curatives.”
Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Volume 6
Who was not proud of his songs, but of the measureless ocean of
love within him, and freely pour’d it forth,
Who often walk’d lonesome walks thinking of his dear friends, his
lovers, …
wandering hand in hand, they twain
apart from other men,
Who oft as he saunter’d the streets curv’d with his arm the shoulder of his friend, while the arm of his friend rested upon
him also.
“Recorders Ages Hence” (1891)
— posted by Roger W. Smith
March 2016
Maspeth, Queens, NY, April 2016
photograph by Roger W. Smith
Norfolk-Suffolk Federalist, vol. 4, no. 6 (March 1963)
NERC was the acronym for the New England Regional Committee of Liberal Religious Youth (LRY)
I was an active member in the early 1960’s of Liberal Religious Youth (LRY). During the 1963-1964 academic year, I was the Chairman of the New England Regional Committee (NERC).
Prior to that, I was the representative to NERC of the Norfolk-Suffolk Federation.
The May 1963 Norfolk-Suffolk Federation newsletter had a story based on a supposed popularity poll. The headline read, “ROGER SMITH VOTED MOST IMMORAL BOY IN FED!”
The joke was that I was regarded as such a straight arrow.
The spoof article showed that in the “poll,” I was — besides being voted “most immoral” — also voted “most intelligent,” “most rule-conscious,” “most conservative,” and “most likely to succeed.”
Rev. John Coffee, our advisor, minister of the Unitarian Church in Roxbury, cooked this up and took great delight in his joke.
Rev. Coffee told me years later that several adults were alarmed by this headline and wanted to know just who this “immoral boy” was and just what was going on.
Rev. Coffee passed away in 2014.
Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays.
One great thing about it is that it comes on a Thursday and that normally means a four day weekend for all, with time to travel to and join families.
Another thing I like is that there are no gifts associated with it, and little commercial hoopla.
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In New England, where I grew up, Thanksgiving was done right. It was a truly memorable and wonderful day. My family really knew how to celebrate it.
There was an appropriate sense of solemnity about the day — not so much anything piously enforced — just because people cherished the day and knew how to observe it.
It came at the end of fall (a gorgeous season in New England), when the air was crisp and the trees had become bare.
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From when I was about twelve years old, we lived in the suburbs. Schools always had a half day on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving (which, as far as I know, is not observed by schools elsewhere in the USA).
On Wednesday night, there would be a bonfire and rally for the Thanksgiving Day football game. High school Thanksgiving football games were a big deal in Massachusetts.
Our high school team in Canton, Massachusetts had some memorable games against our hated arch rivals, Stoughton.
I will never forget the 1959 game, which we won 18-8 in a stunning upset. (The Stoughton team had been nearly undefeated up to that point.) I remember that game and the excitement of the buildup to it vividly. It was one of the most memorable sports events I ever witnessed.
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Thanksgiving for us always meant a family gathering, at our home or grandparents’. We always had a big sit down dinner with invited guests: mostly relatives; sometimes a friend or acquaintance who was away from home. My parents liked to reach out to others and include people at the dinner table whom they thought would be interesting company. While the family aspect was important, they were “catholic” — broad minded — when it came to invitees. Before we moved from Cambridge to Canton, my parents rented rooms to Harvard graduate students. They would occasionally invite foreign ones to share holiday dinners with us. They liked to invite people who would appreciate being included and had nowhere else to go. They did something similar with my mother’s aunt Etta, an unmarried relative whom they always made sure to invite.
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The dinner was truly marvelous. A whole day was spent, it seemed, preparing it (well, all morning), and it took a long time for a team of volunteer dishwashers to do the dishes. (I was never drafted for this duty.) Establishing when the turkey was done was a source of great concern.
My mother would put it in the oven very early in the morning; she would get up especially to do so. It was huge. It had to be done just right, of course, and it always was. My father always carved. I used to think that carving was a great skill, one that I would never learn or possess.
My mother was the main cook, but others contributed. My father used to make scalloped oysters, a side dish he loved and would labor over with enthusiasm. Guests would invariably bring more stuff, mostly pies; we always had about five or six pies to choose from, always homemade.
The number of side dishes was truly outstanding: stuffing, gravy, mashed and sweet potatoes, squash, all sorts of vegetables (including Brussels sprouts and cranberries, neither of which I particularly cared for), and rolls. Plus, cider and wine and a variety of nuts for appetizers. The turkey was enormous. The amount of effort lavished on the meal was prodigious. Eating it was sheer pleasure.
In the evening, we would have a light snack from a platter of cold turkey. The next day, my mother would make turkey soup, which seemed to take her forever. The turkey soup would last for several days. I couldn’t get enough of it, it was so nourishing. I would come home from school and ask my mother what was for dinner. “Turkey soup” was the answer. My mother would ask, “Would you like another bowl?” The answer was always yes.
A truly American holiday. Begun in New England and, originally, celebrated only there.
It makes me miss my parents.
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Postscript
When I was in my twenties, I was working in a hospital in Connecticut and could not get home for Thanksgiving one year. I went with four or five other hospital workers to a restaurant where we had a Thanksgiving dinner. We tried to be festive, but it was a big letdown.
Not long ago, my wife and I decided to do as a Polish family whom she knew was doing and order a turkey cooked for us by a Polish catering service. It was rather expensive. But, we didn’t feel in the mood for cooking and it seemed like a good idea.
The turkey that we got was inexcusably flavored with garlic that had been rubbed into it everywhere — it was cooked totally wrong. I was so angry over this, I couldn’t eat the turkey, which helped to ruin my Thanksgiving. I thought to myself, they can’t even get a turkey right! All you have to do is put it the oven and baste it a few times.
— Roger W. Smith
November 24, 2016
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Addendum:
Re the time of year, I can’t help thinking of the following famous lines of Shakespeare:
That time of year thou may’st in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold;
Bare ruin’d choirs where late the sweet birds sang.
— Sonnet 73
My parents, Alan W. and Elinor Handy Smith, with granddaughter Alison.
Note: what follows was written by me as an email to Gilbert T. Sewall, the head of an academic foundation for whom I was doing editorial work, in January 1998, when the Monica Lewinsky scandal had just broken.
— Roger W. Smith
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Dear Gil:
Just thought I would send you a missive containing various musings on the day’s news.
I’m starting to feel that the media feeding frenzy is wrong.
I’ve already perused (I should say devoured) all the Clinton stories in this morning’s Times; watched a bit of the Today show; started to read the Wall Street Journal on the same subject (e.g., an Albert Hunt column which caused me to do some ruminating); and bought the Post, Daily News, and Newsday.
The Post has five or six pages devoted to the latest revelations, with photos and all.
Starved for pictures, the media has taken to running high school yearbook photos of Ms. Lewinsky at various stages (freshman, sophomore, junior, etc.).
Anyway, I’ve been gorging myself on all the Clinton stories (question: do you think the photo of him and Hillary embracing in bathing suits a week or so ago was staged?), but I’m beginning to feel sated, like someone who’s overindulged on junk food.
A few thoughts:
I don’t believe Clinton’s denials in this instance, in the Paula Jones case, or with regard to the Jennifer Flowers revelations. It’s sort of amusing to “deconstruct” Clinton’s remarks and to see how carefully and artfully/legalistically worded they are: I was never in the hotel alone with her (Paula Jones); there is (at present) no sexual relationship; I didn’t do anything improper; I don’t recall (meeting her); and so forth.
I have been disappointed in a lot of Clinton’s public pronouncements lately. I don’t find him particularly credible in a lot of instances, and he also seems to be inclined to speak in a mishmash that verges on the ludicrous: let’s all have a dialogue about race; and he really did mean it when he said (a year and a half or so ago) that the troops would be out of Bosnia within 18 months. He’s always hedging, equivocating, and speaking in platitudes; his politico-speak is egregious.
I heard him on NPR a month or so ago speaking about the Asian economic crisis just after one of Japan’s biggest financial services firms had failed, and he was claiming it was nothing to be concerned about (just a mere “blip on the screen”) — that the Japanese economy was really healthy — and I felt and thought that he sounded like a real idiot whose remarks had no grounding whatsoever in fact or current realities, that he could care less what the facts were as long as whatever he said sounded good for public consumption and would wash.
Having said all that, I think we as a nation — with respect to our collective consciousness, so to speak — are awash in hypocrisy.
Why do the Gospels speak to us with such power and resonance? Why do sayings like “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” have such staying power? Jesus was a genius to speak as he did in parables. Everything is so pithy and epigrammatic, yet so homely and concrete (grounded in stark, memorable stories).
Anyway, to me the level of public hypocrisy is absolutely amazing.
Everyone is saying, well, if Clinton did in fact do such and such a thing, it’s totally reprehensible and he should be impeached. Now, what, at the worst, have he and his accomplices done? Some of them have done things (it seems) that should, by public standards of morality, be deemed immoral: e.g., crude sexual advances in the Paula Jones case; adultery (Jennifer Flowers and the current case); an affair with a women some 20 or more years his junior; lying; orchestrating (allegedly) a “cover up” in which the “partner in crime” (co-adulterer/ess) is urged to deny his or her involvement as well.
So what?
Have not we all – as per Walt Whitman in his wonderful poem “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” — “Blabb’d, blush’d, resented, lied, stole, grudg’d, / Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak”?
Let’s sick the snoops on all of us — I would especially like to see this happen to the Sam Donaldsons and George Wills of the world — and see what they turn up. What is called for are Starr Chamber type proceedings; no denials or lies whatsoever will be accepted.
Have you ever been to a psychiatrist? Purchased or read obscene material? Viewed pornography? Had an affair in which you behaved less than admirably? Have you in any way, at any time, ever patronized the commercial sex industry?
You say the infractions were minor and are past history. Sorry. We are going to dredge them all up now and muck around in your murky past to see what we can find. It’s a question of CHARACTER. Yours.
You say you are a moral person whose life on a whole has been conducted and governed by appropriate rules of conduct? We have Mr. or Ms. so and so here who became intimately acquainted with you some 20 years ago when you were somewhat looser in your moral standards, or at least less considerate of others’ feelings, and this individual is prepared to testify that you acted in a loutish way and caused him or her considerable pain and distress. They have old scores to settle and (for a price) are willing to tell all.
You say this is all irrelevant because your mental faculties and judgment are unimpaired; you have dealt with and put behind you the issues of the past; that, to the extent you’ve made errors, you acknowledge them and won’t let them happen again (or at least will try not to, and you probably won’t, because you’re older, less passionate and headstrong, and more mature now). Sorry, that doesn’t count, because your past is reflected in the trust we can put on you now. It’s the credibility/character thing.
Why must our public servants be totally blameless, flawless individuals, without the slightest blemish or taint, and what does this have to do with their ability to exercise power or govern? What if all corporate execs were put under the same spotlight (though the politically correct crowd would probably like it if they were)?
What does the fact that she may or may not have had an illegal nanny have to do with whether or not Zoë Baird is qualified to be attorney general?
Truly, this age will be looked back on, through the lens or prism of history, as one of stark raving collective madness.
I must admit that the Vernon Jordan link of arranging a job at MacAndrews & Forbes (Revlon) for Ms. Lewinsky and of getting the same firm to give consulting work to Webster Hubbell does look fishy. But this Tripp woman who taped her own conversations with Ms. Lewinsky sounds like a vindictive bitch. It’s good old John DeLorean style entrapment. (I’m glad he was acquitted, because I didn’t think it was fair the ways the feds set him up.)
It’s a pretty sleazy business, isn’t it? The front page of today’s Newsday reads “The Relationship Was Not Sexual” (in quotes). That’s the tactic now: print the charge, then make the denial the story.
Honestly, I think the accusers (media) are worse than the accused (Clinton). I’m convinced he’s a womanizer, a prevaricator (to put it kindly), and a sexual “opportunist” (and probably male chauvinist pig, to boot), but I honestly don’t believe that whatever he has done is that criminal or bad and is grounds for impeachment.
I repeat, if all our own private sins and peccadilloes — be they sexual, or other embarrassing private things we would rather not come out, like psychological impairments, or problems with private relationships and/or erratic or strange behavior patterns, likes/dislikes, prejudices, and other secret thoughts we wouldn’t care to admit to (least of all publicly) — came out in the open, it would be real horror show and feeding frenzy for anyone who cared to notice. I am convinced that this is true of practically everyone and of all the media types who so sanctimoniously intone about the seriousness of these allegations, and I’d like to see them forced to undergo public scrutiny and to twist and turn in the wind.
But you know, there’s something funny, when you’re smacking your lips (this, I admit, includes me) and tut-tutting, and sort of secretly enjoying, the latest revelations about Clinton’s misdeeds, or Hugh Grant’s, or Prince Charles’s, or any other public figure, there’s a tendency to forget one’s own troubles and one’s own vulnerability to exposure (should anyone have the means or desire to do so), and therein probably lie the charm and attraction of such feeding frenzies. How enjoyable it is to laugh at others’ misfortunes, and what sadistic pleasure we take in seeing the high and mighty caught in a trap and entangled in their own lies.
— Roger W. Smith, email to Gilbert T. Sewall, January 1998
When the satisfaction or the security of another person becomes as significant to one as is one’s own satisfaction or security, then the state of love exists. … under no other circumstances is a state of love present, regardless of the popular usage of the word.
— Harry Stack Sullivan, Conceptions of Modern Psychiatry: The First William Alanson White Memorial Lectures. New York; W. W. Norton & Company, 1966. pp. 42-43
— posted by Roger W. Smith
March 2016
