Foggy Forest
Greetings and salutations from the sand, sun and surf of Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and the once again, sea, I told you so, foggy island of Nantucket! Great to be with you and yours on this Friday morning, the twenty-fifth day of May, 2012, and, if you look above you, you can clearly see the fog that was present only moments ago on fair Cotuit Bay, yes sir, in this quaint little off beat Old Cape Town of Cotuit, ‘where the ocean meets the wood’, fog that will, if you look at the bottom of this ‘message in a bottle’, namely seacapecod.net, be gone, like the wind (although not quite yet), as it, like many other things in life, is merely an illusion, a weather phenomenon, ‘nothing to worry about’, a gloom of what is seemingly all around you, yet only a few hundred feet above one’s head is the clear blue sky, a blue sky, last time I checked, that was still blue…and to quote a New York Times advertisement (my favorite kind of ‘tv’) recently, regarding the journalistic excellence over at that fine news paper, “there’s just no debating that”, unless, of course, you are quite insane. Now, this humble reporter is not suggesting that the republican nominee for the President of the United States has lost his mind, on the contrary, he is, by all accounts, a sane man, a good man, a family man, a man who appreciates trees like the ones you SEA above, a man who has had experience in both the private and the public sectors, succeeding in both, succeeding, of course, depending on one’s perspective of both personal success and the overall word success in the bigger picture, i.e creating health care in this great state of Massachusetts! But this election cycle’s debate is not about success or the character of either Mitt Romney or President Barack Obama, no sir, this is about scrutinizing the efforts made by BOTH men and focusing like a laser beam on their directives and vision for the future of this grand, proud and beautiful nation WE ALL share–rich, poor, black, white, gay, straight, woman, man, religious (spiritual) or atheist, none of that matters, the central question WE are all grappling with is who can guide US through this fog bank that has surrounded our political narrative and dare I say moral compass for far too long? For I say unto you this day in May, there is a way out, a distant light if you will, that can bring US to truth, justice and the American way–just ask Superman, “he’ll tell ya, he just bought property on the good side!” (credit the late, great Rodney Dangerfield from the classic 1980 film, “Caddyshack”, also starring another star that was here on earth way to short a period of ‘time’, Mr. Ted Knight, who played Mr. One Percent, the co-founder of the elite, made up Bushwood Country Club, of which he had a particular problem with an equally successful man in his own right, the wealthy builder Rodney Dangerfield, who although most likely a vicious opponent in the business world, in the end, had a heart, much to the chagrin of “Judge Smails” (Knight) who told Rodney, “I’ll guarantee you’ll never be a member here!”, to which Rodney replied, “…member?, why I was thinking about buying this dump.” Face flush with rage, red as a lobster on a hot summer day right here on Cape Cod, Judge Smails responds, grabbing the throat of old Rodney, “…buy Bushwood?!!!, you!!!, you!!!, (shaking Rodney violently back and forth, quickly broken up by “Ty”, played by the great Chevy Chase and “Dr. Beeper”, imploring some kind of decorum, “gentlemen, gentlemen…”, and as calm is suddenly restored, Knight turns to his doc golf partner, ‘Dr. Beeper’, rationalizing, “…you saw it, you were there, he was trying the choke me,” to wit Rodney turns to “Ty” explaining and exaggerating just a bit, “…he called me an Orangutan, he thinks I’m his wife!”). You see you can’t have it both ways, gentlemen (for some out there I use that term loosely), on the one hand, you have groups like Karl Rove’s super PAC “Crossroads/GPS” which is not really ‘affiliated’ with the Romney campaign, wink wink, nudge, nudge, (we will try and take that ‘explanation’ at face value for the moment without laughing), OK, so, on this one hand, this group–among many others ‘birthed’ via this monumental folly that defines the Supreme Court’s Citizen United ruling–has put out ads questioning Obama’s loyalty to America, calling into question not only his relationship with the rest of the world and how that equates, somehow, into him being ‘an apologist’, or some other such nonsense, but some even go back to questioning once again, the origin of his birth, subtly suggesting his is an outsider, or worse, a Muslim socialist who wants your guns, “religious freedom”, and your jobs. The late, great John Belushi (who plays “Jake”) stated it so eloquently in “The Blues Brothers” (circa, again, 1980) … true musicians helping out the nun who raised them, in search of another one of their long, lost band members to ‘get the band back together’… Jake and Elwood dined one fine evening (not by invite) at the high end Chez Paul restaurant in Chicago, where they knew they would find one of their best horn players,“Mr. Fabulous”, employed as the Maitre d’, with “Jake” stating to an obviously stunned friend who wants them no where near the property, stating, under no uncertain terms, “we’re on a mission from God”, and as the horn player told them “no” without hesitation, “Jake” turns to “Elwood” , who shoves a giant piece of bread in his face while gulping down Champagne out of “the wrong glass sir”…(played by the great Dan Aykroyd), pauses for a moment and slaps the man sitting in the table behind him on the back, startling him, a man who is having dinner with his wife and three daughters, then loudly screaming in his ear (dressed in an all black suit, black tie, black shoes and a black hat, with black sun glasses he is, of course, wearing at night),“we want your women, we want to buy your women, how much for your daughters? Sell them to me!! ha, ha, ha, ha…!!!” . Casually turning back to Mr. Fabulous Jake says calmly, “if you say no, if don’t agree to come back and play with the band, my brother Elwood and I will come back and dine here for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day of the week”, to wit the horn player sighed, sat down dejectedly in Belushi’s seat, sitting in defeat, throwing in the proverbial towel, disguised as a cloth napkin, tossing it on the table and simply saying, “you got me, you got me”. At that Jake and Elwood get up from the table, and just stroll on out the door, leaving the man whose family was just ‘terrorized’ stunned and angry looking for that Maitre d’ who was now sitting right in back of him, the same seat as John, listening to that man screaming at the top of his lungs, obviously very angry at the management, “…sir? sir?! sir?!! SIR!!!!” There have been, of late, many examples of distortions, or blatant lies, put out by the Romney campaign about Obama, (please read 5-24-12 seacapecod.net for more), for we all know the crazy far out on a limb ‘birthers’ led by all kinds of folks, fueled by FOX & ‘friends’ (with friends like those, who needs enemies?) gibberish that puts the ‘n’ in nonsense, red meat nonsense that is gobbled up by the masses, a shrewd move on Crossroads’ behalf, all while claiming foul in regard to this calling out of the GRAND CANYON gap between the haves and the have nots in a nation that was based on the concept of a FAIR SHAKE for ALL, claiming foul that how dare the President go after a company that his rivals have been going after for months now, short term memory problems? (Mitt’s), rivals such as Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Jon Huntsman and other old school republicans who cried out regarding Bain Capital as ‘not so good’, this went on for months, debate after debate after debate after debate. Not only that Mitt, you have a problem with the FACT that it was you sir who brought up your handy work at ‘fixing companies’ in the first place, you know, putting people back to work, a grand old cliched talking point dragged out from the early oh, I don’t know, 1980’s, yes, you are going to do all of that while cutting taxes, again, for the top .001 percent, increase defense spending, cut social programs through the bone (as it has been whittled down to that bare bone already) and destroy our environment forever by allowing the big polluters out there (i.e. Exxon-Mobile, Koch, Chevron, you name it) to continue to spoil this beautiful land of OURS for THEIR damn profit, yes, somehow, with all of that (perhaps with the help of the Keebler Elves?) you are going to bring down our debt, CREATE JOBS (like you did at Bain Capital and the state of Massachusetts as Governor, where you were 47th out of 50 states in job creation. “Job creation” again, your platform, not made up one by some liberal tree huggin bastard like myself, and navigated the manufacturing sector to shrink by 14 percent, creating how many more jobs? Is this your plan? Or is the plan to suppress as many votes as possible, smear the fine President we currently have, confuse the public as to the merits of vulture capitalism and ultimately gain the White House by default, is that it? To quote “Carl Spakler”, played by the great Bill Murray in the same great film you must SEA this week end to get in a better mood after all of the horse$hit of this past week, “I think it is…!!!”, going on to say, “…when I have been pushed, I think it’s time we pump about 15,000 gallons of water down ‘der to teach you a little bit of a lesson (talking to the gopher of course)! The ‘assistant greens-keeper’ Carl (Bill Murray) then picks up an industrial sized professional water hose used on golf courses and other sporting fields and sticks it in the gopher hole, turning the water on full blast… That, my friends will be the Ad nausea felt around the nation this summer, you were right Cory!, about that, and we are not dumb enough to suggest private equity does not have it’s place in our capitalistic society, on the contrary, the flip side of that coin, “Venture Capitalism” can be a very, very good thing, but more on that later. The point is, Mitt, you have made the claim that your work in the private sector, again, your words, not ours, ‘created hundreds of thousands of jobs, no wait, tens of thousands of jobs, um, well, at least a thousand jobs? Will you just accept that?’. Maybe they did, and maybe they did NOT Mitt, but it is clear you do not want questions regarding any of this. I know how you must be feeling, I too was in the corporate world, not as ‘high’ as you, but in the game none the less, because it is all a GAME, yes sir, a high standing executive at ‘one juncture’ (credit the great President George H. Bush, truly a good man), and I know what the main function of high finance is--TO MAKE MONEY!. But, if you truly want this job, YOU have to come up with a better plan than cutting more from the revenue stream so that our friends, and I have plenty of them, at the top, get all of the breaks, while those at the bottom, especially, as our friend Jesus once stated, ‘what you do to the least of me, you do unto ME’, get the old heave hoe, the shaft, get screwed, pick your metaphor. I think that if I were in your shoes, I would take a hard look at that position and reconsider. Not only for this world, but for the world Jesus speaks of after this one is all said and done, your ultimate reward–Heaven itself. Gold is gold, but the Golden Rule reigns supreme, ‘do unto others as you would have done unto you’. This humble tree hugger believes that our savior, so to speak, is actually right in front of our very noses, for it is in my brothers and sisters that “we will SEA me”, Jesus once said, seeing truly with real eyes, not the tired eyes of the ego, rather, new eyes that were born of the Holy Spirit, a spirit that is in each and every one of us, making us all truly the children of God, no one better, no one worse, equal in every sense of the word and just as LOVED. Someone once said to me, Michael, you are not special, you may be unique, with certain gifts, etc., but rest assured, you are no better than that boy you see running through the fields of the Masai Mara in Kenya, the largest animal reserve in the world. When my father said that to me when I visited Kenya on an 18 day Safari, I no longer took notice of their ‘lack of wealth’, as they lived in mud huts, rather, I noticed the broad smiles on their faces, I noticed the peace, love and joy in their eyes, I heard, perhaps for the first time, their true voices as they sang out in the bright sunlight of the savannah, somehow KNOWING that that peace, Love and Joy are God given, not man made, and like another great film made that same aforementioned year, circa 1980, ironically the year Ronald Reagan came into office, named, “The God’s Must Be Crazy”, a film depicting everything going to hell after a Coke bottle fell from the sky one day in a similar African tribal land, well, it makes you think just a little bit, for is this not about the stewardship of this beautiful planet? Is this not about that next generation? Leaving this planet just a little better than when we entered it, alone I might add, is the best that one can do and I think we have an obligation to our children and our grandchildren to at least give it a college try, strike that, a college WIN. Have a wonderful Memorial Day week end folks–stay safe, stay strong, stay sane–it’s all an illusion anyway, so why not have some fun! PRESERVE THE WILDERNESS! Peace~M
