OBAMACARE FACES CAPTAIN KANGAROO COURT.

Bob Keeshan! Thou should'st be living at this hour: Congress has need of thee: it is a pen of ignorant toddlers.

     Mr. Keeshan was for thirty years a children's television host named Captain Kangaroo. Wearing a blue uniform and a neat, grey mustache, he kept a generation of boomers quiet and well-behaved for an hour while they watched his show. Mr. Keeshan is gone, but his mustache lives on. I saw it on TV recently. It (or a close likeness) squats beneath the snout of Rep. David McKinley (R. West Virginia). I noticed it during TV coverage of a congressional hearing into the flawed roll-out of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The irony is that it was on a congressional Republican, who was behaving worse than a spoiled child.

     At the hearing by the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Thursday, 10/24, Rep. McKinley demanded an apology from four government contractors who worked on the trouble-plagued Obamacare website. "I haven't heard one of you apologize to the American public . . . for problems associated with not having this thing ready. Are apologies not in order?"

     No, they aren't, you fatuous booby. Not until you apologize for shutting down the U.S government. How dare you ask for an apology when you cost taxpayers billions of dollars for no reason. You didn't even apologize to fellow Republicans for embarrassing them because you got nothing in return for this bizarre stunt.

     Worse, according to The United Health Foundation, David McKinley represents a state with a crushing need for Obamacare. West Virginia ranks forty-ninth in the health of its citizens as measured by obesity, heart disease and diabetes. Its only competition is Mississippi and, sometimes, Louisiana. The Mountain State, however, is second to none when it comes to missing teeth among its elderly. Half of them have no teeth at all. What's more, the region is, shall we say, economically distressed, so the need for low-cost healthcare is acute. Yet, their Congressman is doing his best to make sure it isn't available. Instead, David McKinley is whining, pouting and petulantly demanding an apology because the Obamacare website isn't ready on schedule. 

     The real Captain Kangaroo would know what to do with this brat. He'd put him over his knee - and not to take his temperature.

THE LAUGHS MENAGERIE.

    The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams may be a classic of the American theater, but it could be funnier. It works perfectly as a tragedy, but is only a few, small changes away from being a comedy. Perhaps a great one.

     The play begins with a close, immediate family living together at home in St. Louis. There's a doting mother and a daughter with 
romantic problems. Right there, it could be Meet Me In St. Louis (1944). The only thing missing is Judy Garland's heart beating like a trolley bell. I'll go further and suggest that Tennessee Williams was a big Judy Garland fan. (I have no proof, but you see where I'm going.) Williams, of course, went in a different direction. A fatherless family - living in reduced circumstances - in St. Louis - during The Depression. Such concentrated misery that, among playwrights, it's known as, "The Quadruple Bypass."

     Still, dark and foreboding as this play seems, there are laughs to be mined here. Take Laura, the fragile, acutely shy daughter with a limp. She finds human company so intolerable that a class at the local business college overwhelms her. How will she ever find someone to care for her the way she cares for her tiny glass animals? If her name was Elizabeth Barrett and she lived on Wimpole Street, a handsome, young poet named Robert Browning would rescue her from her stern parent and they would live happily ever after. 

     Okay, not laugh out loud, but a romantic comedy nonetheless. It certainly worked for Rudolph Besier in his play, The Barrets of Wimpole Street. Unfortun-ately, the only poet in Laura's life is her brother, Tom, an aspiring writer, who works in a warehouse. Not being one of those poets with great career prospects and reserves of personal strength, his rescuing her is unlikely.

     Tom, sensitive as well as poetic, feels very guilty about not being able to save his sister. It's not, however, his only source of guilt or the only way in which he is being tortured. Standing head and shoulders above his sister is his mother, Amanda. Abandoned by her husband, Amanda is wedded to her past. A not inconsiderable past as she never tires of reminding us.

        Amanda was no mere southern belle, she was the southern belle exercising her whim of iron on an endless stream of obeisant gentleman callers. Now, though, all the whim is gone and her children must contend with the iron. They react differently. Laura is pushed so far in that her voice is barely an echo. Tom is pushed violently away, yet being the only man in his mother's life, she refuses to let go. She won't let him grow up, either, lest he become like his old man. No wonder Tom feels trapped and has to go out every night.

     Not comic gold, I'll grant you, but not beyond hope. There is lightness at the end of the tunnel. Hidden in the midst of all of life's worst situations is a door into a secret garden of guffaws: it's called being Jewish. Not that Tennessee was Jewish, his father was a minister. (I know, I know, you thought he worked for "the phone company." That's only in the play. Although, it depends on how you define "long distance.") All I'm saying is that a Jewish writer would have made this play a comedy. 

     A loving mother with a strong personality and a baleful effect on her children? Not unknown in Jewish culture. Weak or absent fathers? One or a million. Force them to share the same cramped quarters until they drive each other crazy? It's
almost impossible not to laugh. Make them two divorced men sharing a New York apartment and you've got The Odd Couple by Neil Simon. (I'll bet his father wasn't a minister.)

     Please don't list all the sad plays written by Arthur Miller. I don't consider him Jewish. Look at Death of a Salesman. You won't find boys named Biff or Happy in Hebrew school. Loman is not a Jewish name. (Loehmann, maybe.) Besides, what kind of Jew marries Marilyn Monroe except in his dreams. Most inglorious (Pronounced ime-goyish) is that he lived in Connecticut.

     Ultimately, the difference between The Glass Menagerie and, say, The Laughs Menagerie is a difference in outlook. Williams prefers a world lit by candles and the soft glow of nostalgia. As he has Blanche DuBois say in A Streetcar Named Desire, " I don't want realism, I want magic!" It's hard to be funny about that - especially when a feeling of being permanently excluded feeds your poetic yearning. To see the comedy in Amanda Wingfield and her children, you have to accept - not in a resigned, tragic way - you have to embrace a world lit by lightning - when it strikes people on a golf course! Caddyshack (1980) being a hilarious example. 

     Again, there's nothing wrong with the way The Glass Menagerie is written. It's gripping enough without electrocuting someone on stage. Yet, like the funeral guest who keeps insisting that the deceased be given chicken soup, "It couldn't hurt."

WHY DICK CHENEY?

    I saw Dick Cheney on TV last night (10/20). He was being interviewed on 60 Minutes by Dr. Sanjay Gupta. If you watch 60 Minutes, you're old enough to remember Mr. Cheney, the rest of the audience may need some help. Dick Cheney was a blight on our government for thirty years. The last eight of which he served as Vice-President to George W. Bush, a position akin to being wife to Michael Jackson: necessary, but not in the way that you think.

     The interview covered his longevity in life as well as politics. Indeed, his medical history is so unusual that he's co-written a book about it with his cardiologist. (A book whose public-ation - surprise - coincides with his appearance on 60 Minutes.) Dick Cheney has survived five heart attacks, a quadruple bypass, arterial stents, balloon angioplasty, a pacemaker, a left-ventricular assist device, two vascular procedures on his legs and a heart transplant. This man has more zippers than a motorcycle jacket. If you want to know the secret of Cheney's longevity or the significance of his survival, look somewhere else. What you get is Dr. Gupta fanning some weak flames about the Vice-President's fitness to govern while fighting severe heart disease. What he, in turn, gets is the familiar cobra stare and soft, unmodulated voice that Cheney uses to express disdain.

     What I don't understand is: why Dick Cheney? Why should this man, of all people, benefit from decades worth of advances in medicine? You don't have to know him to be outraged. He is such a malign presence that it's obvious from a short interview. Look at the way he uses the reporter's first name to belittle instead of bond. Then there's his eagerness to take credit for "enhanced interrogation techniques" - more commonly known as torture. Specifically, "waterboarding." He even refers to himself as "Darth Vader." Not mockingly, either. This is not a man who reflects. Nor does he engage in reassessment or regret. Lying to get us into war, war as an excuse for torture, torture as a form of national security, Dick Cheney dares you to make him feel guilty. You can't because he can't. He has no inner life.

     Don't get me wrong, I don't begrudge Mr. Cheney - or anyone - their medical care. I leave that to the Tea Party. What bothers me is the vast amounts of expensive, high-quality medical resources that could have been better used. The boundless amounts of sheer luck that - ideally - should have been shared. The question remains: why Dick Cheney? There were nicer people with heart disease who deserved longer lives. 

THE GRASS IS ALWAYS WIENER.

"And maybe if the internet didn't exist. Like, if I was running in 1955? I'd probably get elected mayor."                       
                               - Anthony Wiener

                                                        October, 1955

WALTER WINCHELL: Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America from border to border and coast to coast and all the ships at sea. Let's go to press. What former New York congressman has been showing his ding-dong to every school girl between here and Poughkeepsie? Not only is this not-a-nudist eyeing the New York Democratic mayoral nomination, he's married to a sloe-eyed beauty with a gold-plated Rolodex and entree to the highest government circles. Stay tuned for more developments in what may be the best scandal of the campaign season - or the wurst!

J.P. MORGAN CHASTENED.

(Sung to the tune of "A Foggy Day In London Town." Music by George Gershwin)

Will Jamie pay

for what he's done?

His bank was fined

thirteen billion.

He viewed the headlines 

with alarm.

The bad news kept coming

and doing more harm.

How long he wondered

will his job last?

His London branch owes

six billion in cash.

Add legal fees 

and double that sum.

Now, the chairman, Mr. Dimon,

looks more like zirconium.

MARLIN STUTZMAN; VOTED "MOST LIKELY TO IMPEDE."

          An otherwise unremarkable congressman, Marlin Stutzman (R-IN) made a remarkable utterance recently. According to NBC’s Frank Thorp, Stutzman said, “We have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is.” He’s not talking about selling his baseball card collection on E-Bay. Or a signed program from a Ted Nugent concert. Rep. Stutzman is referring to shutting down the U.S. government. Four days ago, He and eighty or so of his Republican colleagues in the House refused to agree on an operating budget for the federal government unless the Affordable Care Act was delayed or denied funding. Thus, forcing our nation’s government to halt many of its functions and suspend without pay thousands of employees.

         What’s remarkable is how Mr. Stutzman can act so recklessly and be so honest about it. He’s beyond caring – if he ever did – about his party’s ostensible goal of denying health care to millions of Americans or the shutdown’s undeniable results, mass unemployment among others. Stutzman and his cronies refuse to end the shutdown until they get “something.” At this point in a hostage situation, when the criminal or terrorist is surrounded, but refuses to speak with negotiators, the police usually send for the perpetrator’s mother, wife, or girlfriend to talk with him through a bullhorn. Not applicable. Nor is Rep. Stutzman risking his re-election in a state that reveres Dan Quayle and in 1924, elected a Governor, who was in the Ku Klux Klan. Our only hope may lie in the fate of Rod Blagojevich, former Governor of Illinois. In a phone call wiretapped by the FBI, he stated, as follows, his intention to “sell” the Senate seat vacated by Pres. Obama, “I’ve got this thing and it’s f***ing golden, and, uh, uh, I’m just not giving it up for f***in’ nothing. I’m not gonna do it.” Gov. Blagojevich is currently serving fourteen years for corruption in a federal penitentiary.

         Rep. Stutzman preceded his comment about getting something by saying, “We’re not going to be disrespected.” That’s a common enough sentiment among gang members and an organizing principle of La Cosa Nostra, but rarely is it copped to so bluntly - at least, in public - by U.S. Congressmen. We are beyond political compromise here. The Republicans controlling the House of Representatives clearly won’t end the government shutdown for anything less than ring-kissing. I’ll admit that my experience with the Mafia is long on Corleones and short on actual capos, but an adequate parallel might be found in Carmine “The Snake” Persico, reputed leader of the Colombo crime family. In June, 1987, Persico ordered the murder of William Aronwald, a retired prosecutor who had allegedly been disrespectful. Two hitmen killed Aronwald’s father, George, by mistake. They paid with their lives. Then, the gunmen who killed them were silenced. Persico is currently serving 139 years on charges of murder, extortion, loansharking, racketeering and gambling.

I’m not saying that Mr. Stutzman and his cohorts are criminals or belong in jail. What they’re doing isn’t illegal. It’s – what is it? Immoral? Unethical? Inappropriate? Their behavior falls outside recognizable human conduct, so it’s up to their fellow Republicans to take action. Not John Boehner, of course. That walking Dorito thinks that being crunchy is a sign of strength. I’m talking about the House - and Senate – Republicans who are neither blinded by hate nor motivated by it. I’m not expecting the School of Athens, just some professional legislators who know that

crapping and fall back into it does not constitute a political position.