Penelope’s Loom

 Where oh where is Edward R Murrow?   I know. I know. Dead.  But his brand of journalism. I’ve touched on this in a past post, and yet I still feel the need to talk about this again. Or rather to write about it. I think that today, we have Rachel Maddow for a while anyway, and perhaps Lawrence ODonnell. And yet…one yearns back for the paternal reassurance of Walter Cronkite saying: It just doesn’t get better than that folks. And yet perhaps I should also include someone else here: Goodnight and good luck indeed.  In one of my first posts, I included a clip from Aaron sorkins series “newsroom”. In it Jeff Daniel’s bemoans the loss of integrity in journalism. And I believe there is truth in this: Ok. I am belaboring my point. 

 Author of just a few romantic novels, and yet still the brain that produced “pride and prejudice “ “Emma” and “persuasion”. In just a few years, Austen created some of the most memorable characters in English literature. Mr Darcy. Elizabeth Bennet. Emma wood house. Anne Elliot from persuasion. These characters have captured the imagination of millions, but why?  What inestimable qualities did Austin’s characters have to warrant immortality?   What a damn good question.  I mean who could resist this man?  😉 In times of extreme distress I always watch or read Austen as a way to feel better—to revisit an orderly world is sometimes therapeutic for me. It reminds me of a time where the fugue of the twenty first century passes away for a little while.   Well for me at least it’s a comfort and release, but I do not romanticize it. This was not a time for women in any sense to live freely or to find intellectual fulfillment.  And yet we do have extraordinary...

NO. Not those Addams’! THESE Adams’:THIS Adams… Ah, July 4th, 1776.  I was at a grocery store once, and when the cashier finished, the total was $17.76. I joked (or tried to) with the cashier by saying “well! That’s a coincidence!”  The cashier looked at me blankly (she was about 12), and I said, “1776? JULY?”  “The fourth?”  She just looked at me, mystified. I sighed and said “never mind!” With a bright smile on my face, inwardly mourning the complete lack of interest in the history of our country by just about everyone.  Let me say, first and foremost Dear Reader, that I am an unabashed patriot. I am proud of this country, and love it. It is always painful for me when our current leadership does not respect our most deeply held traditions. It also amazes me how under appreciated our freedoms are by over 70% of the American people. After all, you never miss what you take for granted, right? But it also frustrates me, that most Americans don’t know the real even...

Well, Nixon’s White House was not really like that!  It was rather more like this:   Alright. I know that the Custer analogy is totally obvious. Yet the important thing to remember here is that this is how Nixon perceived his situation by 1973–a general watching his command slowly being stripped away by really pissed off Indian warriors. The events leading up to Nixon’s resignation in August, 1974, became ever more dramatic, as revelations gradually revealed the extent of the coverup. So, how did those threads begin to unravel? One of the first was the death of the spouse of one of the watergate burglars, Dorothy Hunt. Married to E Howard Hunt, she was killed in a plane crash in Chicago in 1972, and yet in her purse was approximately some $10.000 in sequential bills. Some agencies, such as the FBI (and Mark Felt, whom some of you may know by his nom de plume, "deep throat") knew instantly when the money was found, that there was mischief afoot.  And, so began the long jou...

 Watergate was one of the more complicated Gordian Knots of American political history.  While it appeared to be about a break-in at the Democratic National Committee Headquarters in Washington DC (which were of course located in the Watergate complex), it was actually about so much more--a systematic series of covert actions by the men in Nixon's White House, that broke literally every political law we have in this country.  Watergate began as a weird story about some middle aged former spies, who were arrested for breaking and entering the home court of the opposing political party, one fine early morning, and ended with the resignation of a president. So, how did it begin?  Well, in a former post, I dealt with Nixon's history of political dirty tricks, particularly in terms of winning elections.  Remember ratfucking?  By 1972, Nixon was convinced that the radical Left was gunning for him.  He was obsessed with the fact that the radical Left was some...

Richard Nixon came to government at a ridiculously young age right after World War Two where he had a marvelous career as a card shark while serving in the Pacific theater.  As a young congressman, Nixon did his best to represent his rural Californian district. Oddly enough, JFK came to congress in the same year. For a brief space of time both freshmen found some comfort in the display of their staunch anti-communist credentials.  Nixon proved to be something of a genius in taking advantage of his political opportunities, and a few years saw him taking a senate seat away from liberal Helen Gehagan Douglas.  It’s also of note that Nixon s tactics in that campaign earned him the nickname of “tricky Dick” from Douglas—a nom de plume that would follow him for the rest of his political career.  What kinds of shenanigans ?  I can only refer you to the term popularized during Watergate—“ratfucking”.   Should you wish greater insight into this method of political ...

 There are few murder cases in modern history that have exercised more speculations and controversies than the killing of j f k. I would hazard a bet that this cold case and the identity of the perpetrator (s??) has warranted as much print as have the murders in white chapel. Perhaps the cases still fascinate because of their tragic qualities.   And yet there is also something of a guilty voyeurism in our preoccupation with the case of j f k. If you think about that November day in 1963, the whole affair was spectacularly dramatic, down to the way in which the president was killed, and to the blood stained pink designer suit that Jackie wore. In thinking about the end of the Kennedy administration one naturally thinks about obvious things, like lost possibilities. The what would-have-beens of any situation.  There are a few cliches that illustrate, but I am particularly fond of one—a favorite show of the president’s was a musical production called “Camelot.”  Th...