The Most Wonderful Time of the Year.

I saw a man standing at the corner of Madison Avenue and 57th Street - perhaps the most fashionable intersection since Anna Wintour met clothes - and he was wearing a sleeveless mink coat! A full-length, sleeveless mink coat. He looked like Conan the Vulgarian.

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Robert Bork, whose 1987 nomination to the Supreme Court was rejected by the Senate, is dead at 85. Reacting to the nomination, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) said, "Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could not be censored at the whim of government and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is - and is often the only - protector of the individual rights that are at the heart of our democracy."

To which Mr. Bork's many, ardent supporters replied, "Sure, when you put it that way!"

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Did your mother collect guns? Mine didn't.It's just as well, too. If my mother had a weapon besides guilt, the world would be empty. Still, she did pretty well with guilt.

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Ha ha happy holidays sounds cynical. Happy ho ho holidays sounds lewd. How about,"Eat, drink and be merry?" Yeah, that's the spirit.

"KIss of Death" Starring Senate Republicans.

     “Kiss of Death” is a 1947 film noir starring Victor Mature as a reformed criminal and Richard Widmark as the killer who gets revenge on him in a particularly hideous way. He pushes the man’s crippled mother down the stairs in a wheelchair, laughing maniacally the whole time. That is what Senate Republicans did on Tuesday (12/4), minus the entertainment value. They blocked ratification of a U.N. Treaty that would protect the rights of disabled people around the world. Particularly children - in wheelchairs. How could they behave in such a Grinch-y fashion? Envy. The envy of people without spines towards people with broken ones.

      Conservatives hate the United Nations and anything connected to it.According to Jennifer Steinhauer in the New York Times (12/5) “A majority of Republicans who voted against the treaty . . . said they feared it would infringe on American sovereignty. Among their fears about the disability convention were that United Nations bureaucrats would be empowered to make decisions about the needs of disabled children - and that it could trump state laws concerning people with disabilities.” In other words, supporting the treaty would make us the U.N.’s bitch. Thus, any Republican who voted in favor would forfeit his conservative credentials and, very likely, re-election.

     It would be easier to understand their reluctance if the treaty concerned global warming, chemical weapons or, god forbid, economic policy. It doesn’t. The U.S. was asked to join 126 other countries in banning discrimination against people with disabilities. What’s more, the treaty is based on the Americans with Disabilities Act. So, instead of threatening our world leadership, the U.N. is enshrining it.

To be fair, not every Republican senators voted against ratification. Six supported it. Among them, Scott Brown (R-MA), a lame duck, Olympia Snowe (R-ME), who’s retiring and John McCain (R-AZ) who’s lame and should have retired a long time ago.

     The chief speaker in favor of the treaty was John Kerry (D-MA) and I can understand Senate Republicans resisting his appeal, but what about Bob Dole? Aging and very ill, the former Senate Majority Leader and Presidential candidate was wheeled onto the floor of Congress to personalize the issue and rally bi-partisan support. Surely, his colleagues, old and young, and the party he devoted his life to had to be influenced? Not so. They subjected him to a humiliation so public and so complete, it was almost ritual in nature.

     Ultimately, it’s not their craven grubbing for re-election, irrational fear of world organizations or even treating Bob Dole like a leaking bag of garbage that bothers me about Senate Republicans. It’s their hypocrisy. Given the chance to push a real crippled child down the stairs, I’m sure a good seventy per cent would refuse.