i LISTEN TO RIGHT WING radio on The Big Talker, WPHT-AM, for the same reason some guys watch pornographic videos. I know I'm not going to see/hear anything that I haven't seen/heard before. I know that the plot is pathetically predictable and that the dialogue between caller and host is as wooden and insincere as a MILF feigning surprise upon answering the doorbell to discover the pizza delivery man. But I listen anyway because as depressing as it is to watch/listen to, there is a certain reassuring inevitability shared by hard core porn and right wing talk radio -- it all comes down to the sound of slap, slap, slap, slap, slap and the money shot.

When I was a kid people like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity performed in nothing but masks and black socks where they cavorted on 16 mm film images flickering on a bedsheet hung up as a makeshift projection screen in some other kid's dark smokey basement. Now I listen to the same thing on my car radio in broad daylight.

The difference is that Limbaugh, the highest rated radio talk show, and Hannity, the second highest rated radio talk show, pretend that they're bishops rather than porn stars. During their three-hour daily services call-in conservative supplicants seek their blessing -- "You're a great American" -- while both ministers in full vestments proceed to have unprotected sex with the notion of a the viability of a two-party body politic.

Their America is divided between true believers and scam artists, hard working folks and elitists, those who are committed to traditional values and those who are manipulated by Socialist appartchiks. It's a hoot. And I thank God I live in a country that can allow these two windbags to be the most popular voices on radio, while also being the same country that told the two of them to stuff it by electing a radical Muslim terrorist-supporting white-bashing racist-pastor-worshipping miscogenist-offspring foreign-raised black man with a white mother as president of the United States.

I honestly believe that if -- minutes after he was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States on Inauguration Day -- Barack Obama ascended physically into heaven, both Limbaugh and Hannity would report that this is proof that Obama is "just like Mohammed."

It reminds me of something the late great Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo once said about how he couldn't do anything right according the the liberal media. "I was standing next to Cardinal Krol one time on Penn's Landing when the wind knocked his hat into the Delaware River. So I climbed down, walked across the water and retrieved the Cardinal's hat," Rizzo joked. "And you know what the headline on the next day's Inquirer said? 'RIZZO CAN'T SWIM.'"

Continue reading "YOU CAN'T FLY WITH ONE WING" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 09:17 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

HAVE I EVER TOLD YOU my Liberty Bell story? I've been developing it during the last six months that I've been working part-time as a tour guide around Independence Hall. My Liberty Bell story is the difference between Ben Franklin and me. I know he'd tell it differently. He'd be calling it the State House bell and tell you wonderful, important and tedius stories about how the bell cracked the first time it was rung, and how rather than send it back to England where it was cast at the Whitechapel Foundry in London, two young Philadelphia metal-working dudes, both named John, became immortalized as Pass and Stow.

Their names are on the Liberty Bell. Pass and Stow. These were like the original iron workers who put the little statue of William Penn atop the highest beam of the Comcast Center. And Philadelphia booed the bell from the beginning. Broken at birth. A civic embarrassment. Rather than waste the better part of a year sending it back to England, the locals called in all the young dudes. Pass and Stow gave it their best shot, and they sucked. Their new bell sounded like crap no mattter what it really sounded like. So Pass and Stow melted the bell down, added some tin and melody, and boldly included their names when they recast it.

They signed their names in the wet concrete of America. Pass and Stow. Those lucky bastards.

Tell you what, I'm doing walking tours on Friday at 11 a.m., 1 p.m. and 3 p.m.out of Independence Visitors Center at 6th and Market. Go to the sight-seeing counter at the back of the building where they sell the bus and trolley tours. The walking tour I do costs 14 bucks, ten for kids. I work for tips. And I like my Liberty Bell story because it's not only factual, but it's true. It's my truth told my way. And, if I do say so myself, it's pretty damn good and original.

It wasn't the Revolutionary War the made the Liberty Bell famous. It was the Civil War. And that crack represented the fundamental flaw written into the law of the land No matter how you describe the peculiar institution of slavery the Constitution of the United States placed its value at three-fifths of a human being.

Interesting fact: in the years between the first meeting of Congress in Philadelphia in 1789 and the Secession of Southern States in 1860, there were 35 Speakers of the House elected by its membership. Twenty-five of them were from slave states. Three-fifths my ass.

Not only is slavery the original sin of America. It's the sin that keeps giving. Relatively recently, in the last five years, Philadephians discovered for the first time -- and I count myself among that number -- that while George Washington was President of the United States in the 1790's he kept slaves in the Philadelphia White House. And slavery had been outlawed in Pennsylvania since 1780.

The irony of this is that it was the construction of the new Liberty Bell Center that unearthed the remains of the President's House on the southwest corner of 6th and Market where Washington and John Adams lived when Philadelphia was the capitol of the United States.

See, I got too many stories to tell. Come on down on Friday. Keep me company.

I've got a bell of a story.

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ON THIS BEGINING of Thanksgiving Week I want you to read this column with visions of gooey yellow butternut squash and delicious turkey stuffing lathered with brown gravey and giblets. I want you to think of every tasty and wonderful and colorful foodstuff that defines our feast of Thanksgiving, in which we give thanks for the bounty surrounding our lives.

I want you to imagine all these dancing sugarplum and candycane images as I the describe the joy my family has experienced since the birth of our granddaughter, the most beautiful baby girl in the world, a princess-in-waiting to be known henceforth as Pooperella.

Pooperella is indeed the fairest of them all. Her porcelain snow white skin blushed pink in all the right places makes her look like a spokesinfant for a brand name product like Huggies, Pampers, or if measured by quantity, Depends. Because our little Pooperella can fill a diaper in ways that would gag a Gerber Baby.

Which is not to say that Pooperella is stinky in the traditional sense. And by that I mean noticeable from across the room. In fact, I have had Pooperella on my lap and subtley detected the piquant odor of "unfreshness" and then happily begun to act of changing her only to utter, "Oh, my GAWD!" upon unveiling the mother load in her diapy. And this from a baby yet to eat solid food.

The colors are kalidoscopic. The impact of the odor just short of smelling salts. The actual poop distance travelled is roughly in the range of from the ankles to the ears. And the whole time, while in the background people shout, "Don't step in that!" she looks like the most beautiful baby in the world as her mother or grandmother (I always bail when it comes to cleaning the yellow creases of her Michelin Tire Man legs.) wipe those creases clean while cooing what a wonderful baby she is.

These are the sorts of intimate joys that usually remain the private province of close family members, but ever since Pooperella's mother returned to work this remarkable baby has been the talk of the infant daycare workers, where she is not only the staff's odd-on favorite to be crawling and walking before any of the other eight-month olds, but she is the only one whose diaper needs to be changed five times a day.

And not just for number one.

I fear the daycare worker's nickname for our little princess may be different than ours.

Poopinstein, perhaps.

Continue reading "A cinderella Story? It all Depends" »

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THE ELECTION OF BARACK OBAMA as president of the United States and the transition between now and when he assumes office on Jan. 20 reminds me of my favorite line from a Beach Boys song: "You know it seems the more we talk about it. It only makes it worse to liiiiiiive without it. . . But let's taaaaalk about it."

Ba-DUM, ba-DUM! "Wouldn't it be niiiicee?"

And I further quote, "Wouldn't it be nice if we could wake up in the morning when the day was new. And wouldn't it be nice if our president wasn't an embarrassment to you and me and the United States of America everytime he opened his Uncle Stupidhead mouth."

Wouldn't it be nice not to be preconditioned to wince everytime the president flys solo with his tongue on automatic pilot.

Wouldn't it be nice to expect bon mots rather than faux pas from an American leader who thinks French's is the name of a particularly yellow mustard?

Wouldn't it be nice to have a commander-in-chief of the most powerful nation on earth who could pronounce the word "nuclear" without it sounding like "nuke-u-ler?"

To give you an example of what it feels like for me to listen to President George Bush say almost anything publicly, imagine how you would feel about President-elect Barack Obama if you heard him practicing for his inaugural address which would end with this stirring call to action, "Axe not what your country can do for you. Axe what you can do for your country."

I'm not saying that the current occupant of the White House is an idiot. But I will say that after eight years in office he still sounds like an idiot. And anyone from Kansas to Katmandu can hear it in his choice of words and body language. He's got a carefree shrug like a scofflaw explaining $1,200 in parking tickets to a traffic court judge when the fix is in. It's not only insincere, it's infuriating. If I were a member of the jury I'd acquit him just to end the agony of watching him testify under oath.

My president is an oaf and it makes me ashamed.
Watching Barack Obama field questions from CBS news correspondent Steve Croft on 60 Minuites Sunday night in the president-elect's first extensive TV interview since the election brought me back in tune with my inner Beach Boy. Each answer was better than the one before. Each revelation built on his legacy of intelligence and humanity and level-headedness. He did not bombasticate, he did not discombobulate, he did not rhyme like Dr. Seuess.

He spoke to me like a man. Like a husband and a father and, yes, a president. It wasn't what he said as much as how he said it. Consider the difference between these words spoken by Barack Obama if they had been spoken by George Bush, "Steve, I'm not stupid. That's why I got elected president of the United States." Obama said it like a joke. George Bush would have said it like a declaration.

And he would have felt the need to add, "TWICE. . .sort of."

Continue reading "Good to feel like a Beach Boy again" »

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AUTUMN PEAKED LAST WEEK with the most spectacular display of reds and yellows and burnt oranges that I have ever seen. I mean ever. It seems like we wait later and later each fall for the colors to finally come alive on the trees around Philadelphia, and this year in wasn't until November that the trees decided to give it up. And, boy, did they surrender.

For awhile there it looked like were were going to have a lousy autumn foliage season. Early on, well into October, the trees that were changing seemed to go directly from lush green to dry brown. But that was only a prelude to the spectacular that arrived with a "can you beat this?" last week in October followed by an un-freakin'-believable first week in November. It was as if the trees were saluting the Phillies and Barack Obama in one orgasm of the brightest colors I've ever seen. Ever.

This is a photo I took Tuesday at Montgomery County Community College in Whitpain Township when it was already past prime time.

Continue reading "A fall worth waiting for" »

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I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS MOMENT my entire life and last Tuesday in an historic electoral landslide it finally happened. I'll admit that in many ways I've been afraid of just such a presidential election despite its inevitability. It was bound to happen in my lifetime, if I lived long enough. It could have happened years ago, but for one reason or another the right candidate never came along.

And I honestly had no bias against Barack Obama for possibly being the one. In truth I never even noticed (and no doubt some people reading this are clucking their tongues muttering, "Sure, you didn't.") the most obvious personal difference between Barack Obama and myself. In fact it wasn't until after the election that the full weight of what happened hit me square in the face: for the first time in history, come January 20, the president of the United States will be younger than me.

I am old enough to have seen the first Catholic president, the first Texan president, the first pardoned president, the first born again president, the first movie star president and the first idiot president. Barack Obama's election as the first African American president is perhaps the most notable development in the presidency in history, let alone my lifetime. But being the first "younger" president has enormous implications.

It's almost as unsettling as the first time I was pulled over by a cop who was obviously younger than me and who called me "sir" like he meant it.

Being older than the president of the United States has its advantages, I'm sure. Can't think of any off hand, but give me some time to discover them. If I was the same age in 1960 as I am now, John F. Kennedy's election would have thrown me for a loop. JFK was not only the youngest president ever elected, but he would have been 15 years younger than me. And this was back in the days when 30 was the new 50.

Middle aged people acted like senior citizens back in the 60's. If you look at old movies showing a theatrical production everyone in the audience had white hair. Having a president younger than me could be considered a sign of encroaching geezerhood. And I suppose there's only one way to fight that.

You heard it hear first: McCain in 2012!

Continue reading "So this is how it would have felt" »

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WIITH THREE WORDS, WITH THREE FUCKIN' WORDS, Chase Utley became a Philadelphian. He uttered the unspeakable that spoke for us all. "World fuckin' Champions." He said it on live TV in front of -- oh, I don't know, a billion people? -- and he said it as deliberately and magnificently as his fellow Californicatin' Phillie said it. At the victory celebration in 1980 at JFK Stadium at the end of the biggest parade in this city that anyone had ever seen, Tug McGraw shouted, "New York can take this World Championship and stick it.!" And we cheered each of them immediately -- Tug and Chase -- passionately and forever. Their blood has become our blood.

Utley spoke for us all when he dropped the F bomb to describe the indescribable, a feeling that comes once in a lifetime. Twice if you chose the right century to be born. World fuckin' champions. God, that feels good. All the local stations were running live feeds of the victory ceremony at Citizens Bank Park when Utley dropped the big one, and you could actually hear NBC10 anchor Tim Lake laugh before coming on the air to apologize for the profanity that just went out over the airwaves. Perhaps the most unnecessary and insincere apology ever uttered.

What is it about Philadelphia that brings out the rude and inappropriate? Could it be about coming from a city that speaks it's mind? Fuck you, King George. Bring on your lobsterback army. Fuck you New York. Bring on your money. Fuck you Washington. Bring on your power. Fuck you L.A. Bring on your Hollywood fame. And while you're at it, fuck you in general. I'm from fuckin' Philadelphia. The one thing I cannot stand, the one thing that drives me crazy, is to be looked down upon. Why? Because I'm from Philadelphia, you jit.

I'm from Phila-fuckin'-del-phia. I don't have to explain my city to you. I can barely explain it to myself. But I carry in my genetic code a pride you cannot imagine. I'm from the City of Brotherly Love where we will beat your ass as happily as opening Christmas presents. Try us. I'm from Philadelphia. And so is Chase Utley

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Continue reading "Utley utters the eternal truth" »

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