I KNOW PEOPLE, people who are friends of mine, white people who are friends of mine, who use the word nigger like you or I would say motherfucker or cocksucker. Which is to say not often, but often enough to recognize that we say motherfucker and cocksucker more often than we should. I miss a shot in a game of pool and I bark, "Cock-SUCK-er!"

Sometimes afterwards I apologize in front of women. But it's less of an apology than a "God bless you" after a sneeze. "Cocksucker." Sorry. "Motherfucker." Sorry. They're naughty words without the meaning of nigger.

To me nigger isn't only a bad word, it is the unreachable star of bad words. It is the Arc of the Covenant of the unspeakable. It is the frozen flagpole of tongue-worthiness. You could say that nigger is the new cunt but nigger was the old cunt as well. Nigger is a word that has frightened and fascinated me since I was old enough to know not to say it.

I guess my parents never had to tell me not to say motherfucker. They never had to tell me not to say nigger either. My mother set the tone. She was cultured. Academy of Notre Dame and Manhattanville College educated. She used the word jigaboos. Or jigs for short.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright has reminded us why the word nigger will never go away. Not that he is one, but that he thinks I think he's one. He thinks that I go back to that secret society of white people and say, "Did you see what that nigger said?" And he's right in a way. Except that my secret society of white people is as public as Dirty Franks or the Daily DeLeon. And the words that I used to describe the Rev. Wright were, "Did you see what that nutcase said?" There was a nigger lawyer sitting to my left when I said it, and a athiest professor sitting to my right. Neither of them had to ask which nutcase I meant.

Jeremiah Wright, who has become the pedophile priest in Barack Obama's background -- "Why didn't you report this abuse the first time it happened?" -- flew over the cuckoo's nest on Monday at the National Press Club in Washington. After a thoughtful and restrained appearance on PBS with Bill Moyers on Friday night in his first public interview since his famous "God damn America! God damn America!" video became the focus of one of his congregants presidential campaign, Wright allowed the Holy Spirit to reveal his true nature on Monday. And his true nature is pissed off. And not in a Jesus way. Jeremiah Wright is an Old Testament preacher, weaned on Hebrew prophets of doom, not redemption. In other words, a nutcase.

Curiously, while watching him speak I thought of Adolph Hitler -- and, yes, I am comparing Jeremiah Wright to Hitler, another nutcase (albetit a nutcase with one testicle) -- whose manner of speaking was more communicative than the words he used. Jeremiah Wright could have been speaking German, but I would have understood that he was pissed off and not going to take it anymore. And my understanding would have been just as nuanced as my understanding of Hitler speaking a language I do not understand. I didn't need to understand the language to comprehend the anger.

And for Barack Obama this was like presidential candidate John Kennedy hearing Fr. Patbottom explain why he likes altar boys.

What I found incomprehendible about Wright's remarks on Monday was his lack of Christian conscience regarding the impact of his statements on Obama. He knew exactly what he was saying -- nutcases aren't crazy -- and he said it anyway. As distrustful as he is about white America, sounding like a World War II great uncle raging about the Japs until the day he died, Wright did what black people distrustful of authority know not to do. He snitched.

In front of white people he revealed the Gordian knot of rage in the heart of so many successful African Americans. By calling the criticism of his remarks an attack on the Black Church he sounded like a Roman Catholic bishop describing the spiritual sanctity of a confessional booth equipped with a glory hole and saying it's no one else's business . It's a Catholic thing. You wouldn't understand.

Well it isn't. A black thing. A Catholic thing. An anything but American thing. Wrong is wrong, you nutcase. And now you may have poisoned the well for the first black man to have a chance to show this country that "it doesn't have to be this way." You have renewed white America's license to be suspicious. And believe me, I know how many white racists are racing around out there without a valid license.

Let me tell you a story: I was in a bar in South Philly having a terrific time talking to a funny guy I've known for years. This is a racist-friendly Irish bar where I am known to be racially sensitive. Which is to say that when they use the word nigger they look at me and smile. So I see a lot of smiles. This funny guy is telling me a story about this Iranian guy who has become his friend and at first I think it's a story about getting over false impressions or prejudice. But it turns out that the point of the story is that this Iranian guy broke off with a white woman he was dating because he found out that she had a child by a black guy.

The funny guy looks at me with a "YouknowwhatImean?" look and I reply, "Did I ever show you a picture of my granddaughter?" He sort of ignores my first mention and continues seeking my confirmation about the correctness of his and his immigrant friend's revulsion to the white girlfriend's unforgivable past. I persist. "Did I ever show you a picture of my granddaughter?" and something about the way I pull out my wallet to show him Daphne DeLeon's photo leads him to interrupt, "Don't tell me you've got a nigger baby."

And as happily as I could muster, I replied, "As a matter of fact, I do."

I haven't been back to that bar since. Not because of that. Not because I'm angry or hurt or bewildered or even disgusted. But if someone were to ask why, I suppose they would understand if I replied, "The chickens have come home to roost."

Continue reading "IN DEFENSE OF THE NUTCASE THE REV. JEREMIAH WRIGHT" »

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OK, SO HILLARY'S GOT GAME. We knew that already. And we knew that she was supposed to win the Pennsylvania presidential primary by almost exactly the percentage that the returns show as of a minute before midnight on election day. I am eager to see how the pundits deconstruct the outcome at the polls because you know it won't be enough that Hillary Clinton won as predicted over Barack Obama. It will be how -- or rather who -- she won. Angry white men, for instance, evidently voted for Hillary in larger numbers than expected, even though she criticized Barack Obama for claiming that such a species of "bitter" Pennsylvania voter existed.

(Which goes back to my original observation that Obama didn't lose any votes by the uproar over those comments because he wasn't going to get their votes in the first place. In fact pollsters on election day said the "bitter" backlash was mentioned by exactly zero percent of people in exit polls across Pennsylvania.)

The big story, of course, is Larry Farnese blindsidng Johnny Doc in the First District State Senate race to replace Vince Fumo. I can't wait to see who claims credit for that piece of Philadelphia electoral alchemy. For the last two weeks it seemed like the entire Pennsylvania primary was brought to you by Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electoral Workers who sponored so many get-out-the-vote public service ads on TV that you almost forgot that Dougherty was, in fact, the leader of that union who happened to be seeking elective office.

Until more reasonable and prudent election analysis is forthcoming, I am going to insist that Dougherty's campaign was doomed by the bitter dago turnout in South Philadelphia.

Oh, by the way. While the Democratic race is being placed under the microscope -- why can't Barack finish this off; did Hillary's win only postpone the inevitable? -- let us not lose sight of the fact that presumptive Republican nominee John McCain still lost 12 percent of the Pennsylvania GOP vote to Mike Huckabee, a candidate who isn't even running Between that and the "bitter" Ron Paul voters, McCain lost close to 30 percent of the votes in an unopposed race.

Continue reading "I Am Woman Hear Me Roar" »

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"ARE YOU FROM IOWA?" I asked a lady with her teenaged daughter standing next to me at the Barack Obama rally Friday night on Independence Mall. She didn't look corn fed but she was wearing a gray T-shirt with the word Iowa across the front. "I grew up in Iowa but I live in Massachusattes now," she replied, adding, "We drove down for this."

Pennsylvania has been in the spotlight for so long in this presidential primary, and so much has happened during that time, it's hard to remember when Hillary and Barack weren't stopping by the house for coffee every morning. This must be what it feels like to live in Iowa or New Hampshire every fourth year with candidates offering to shovel your walk. Pennsylvania voters aren't used to this sort of prolonged courting by presidential hopefuls. But we sure got a taste for it over the last six weeks.

When the Hillary Express and the Obama Tsunami arrived in the Keystone State back in March, it seemed like the news media had grown impatient with the primary election process. The talking heads looked ready to explode if this thing wasn't settled in Texas or Ohio. But since setting up camp in Pennsylvania the national media seems to have lost that anxious "get it over with already" edge.

Perhaps because of the quickening pace of embarrassing campaign disclosures, starting with the Obama's Chicago preacher's post-9/11 remarks followed by Hillary's Bosnian sniper recollection and culminating in the media-fueled contraversy over "bitter" small town Pennsylvanians. What future generations may remember most about the Pennsylvania primary may not be the outcome, or the manufactured gaffs, but rather Obama's ground breaking speech on race at the Constitution Center. YouTube has made that 37 minute address accessable to anyone with a computer, and I believe it will be the one lasting memory to come out of this six-week focus on Pennsylvania.

Unless Obama wins tomorrow. If the Illinois senator can pull off an Iowa-like upset in the face of unbudging polls that have shown Hillary leading consistently, if not in double digits, it will be the coup de grace for the Clinton campaign. Certainly the barking of the news media hounds will be deafening if Hillary loses in Pennsylvania and contuinues her campaign through the Democratic National Convention. Pennsylvania is Hillary's to lose, and she better not.

Continue reading "Another Iowa Upset In The Making?" »

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THIS IS AS CLOSE AS I GOT to Barack Obama the other night at Independence Mall in front of the Constitution Center. But this was pretty cool. In fact the whole deal was petty cool. It was like Dr. King speaking. "I dream of a moment when black people and white people can stand together, shoulder to shoulder, hour after hour, on a picture perfect April evening in Philadelphia, waiting, waiting, waiting, without getting angry,"

It was kind of like that. I mean, when was the last time you spent three hours standing shoulder to shoulder with someone, lots of someones, you've never met before?

What, last week?

Well it's still new to me.

Continue reading "Sheeeee' if he ain't the one, who be?" »

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THIS LOOKS LIKE SOMETHING OUT OF A MOVIE but this was the scene on Independence Mall Tuesday night when protestors from-and-for Tibet autonomy used the guarantees of the American Constitution to speak out against China during the Democratic debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

I'm headed down to the Obama rally at Independence Hall Friday evening. Hope to get some great shots.

Continue reading "Independence Is a Beautiful Thing" »

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I DIDN'T ASK HIS NAME. But I did ask if he'd step from behind the sign so I could take a picture of him with it. And he did. And I did. And this is what it looked like outside the Constitution Center when Hillary Clinton debated Barack Obama. Polite middle aged working men holding posters of dead babies as big as themselves.

That is what they believe and they represented. And as jarring as their images are, as horrible as their taste, they chose the perfect place.

Free Tibet. Free the Fetus. Free us all. Stand up for what you believe.

Continue reading "A Man's Gotta Do What a Man's Gotta Do" »

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THEIR SIGNS SAID HILLARY but their wallets said, "Gimme one of those Obama shirts." At least that's what it looked like to me outside the Constitution Center Wednesday night minutes before the beginning of the great debate between Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Hillary people and Hillary posters outnumbered Obama mammas, papas and union members, but not street vendors.

This entrepenuer said he staked out the southwest corner of 6th and Arch Streets across from the Constitution Center around noon and despite his corner being overwhlemed by Hillary-poster bearing enthusiasts, he managed to do a brisk business in Obamabalia such as T-shirts, buttons and longsleeve shirts reading, "He's Black and I'm Proud!!"

Despite being outnumbered something like 100-to-one (The Hillary people were organized out the kazoo) the Obama sign bearers seemed to co-exist harmoniously with everyone, including the anti-abortion protesters who showed up with eight foot-tall signs showing aborted fetuses magnified to the size of full grown men.

A block away the right to protest guaranteed by the Constitution was was being demonstrated by a group of about 100 people holding up "Free Tibet" signs with Independence Hall in the background. In the foreground was a large chest-high pale granite block with the words, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abriding the freedom of speech or of the press; or the right of people peaceably to assemble and petition the government for redress of grieveances." Below that it said, "The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution."

Sometimes it all seems too good to be true.

Continue reading "Outside The Great Debate in Philadelphia" »

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OH, FOR THE LOVE OF. . .NOW WHAT? "Obama 'Deeply' Regrets Choice of Words" reads the headline that appeared on the front screen on AOL during most of the weekend. The Associated Press story refered to the "political tempest" unleashed by Barack Obama's description of some small town Pennsylvanians as "bitter." The New York Times reported, "The Democratic nominating fight took a sudden turn" in the wake of Obama's remarks at a private fundraser in San Francisco.

Hillary Clinton has accused Obama of being "elitist and out of touch" for daring to suggest that rural Pennsylvania is populated with right wing whack jobs holding a gun in one hand and a Bible in the other.

If only Obama had said "right wing whack jobs" then maybe this (air quotes) political tempest would make some sense. Instead, what he said is so clearly true and inoffensive that it's a wonder anyone could be upset. Describing the mentality of some working class small town Pennsylvania voters, Obama said, "It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Clearly, these are the words of the antichrist. On Saturday Obama said he regets his choice of words but stood by the truth of his observation, and I paraphrase, that rural Pennsylvania has its share of bandolier-and-camo wearing gun freaks who wouldn't vote for a black man named Barack Hussein Obama until their cold dead fingers are pried off their NRA membership cards.

Hillary Clinton said Obama is trying to divide the country between "those who are enlightened and those who are not." As if politics isn't all about that all the time. Whenever "we" stand up against "special interests" that's a stand by the enlightened versus those who are not, isn't it? What's amusing to me is how the news media is reacting to this like a hungry dog smelling bacon bits.

"Political tempest" my patoot. What kills me is that Obama's remarks are being parsed for evidence of elitist tendencies when we've just suffered under eight years of a presidential admiministration whose attitude toward the will of the majority of Americans was brilliantly summed up recently by Dick Cheney, "So?" Or as he calls those right wing whack jobs in rural Pennsylvania, "My base."

Continue reading "A Pennsylvania voter prepares for election day" »

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WE ALL KNOW WHAT IT FEELS LIKE to witness history as it happens. Anyone reading this is old enough to remember Sept. 11, 2001, undoubtedly the most historic day in our lifetimes. Even before the second tower had fallen, the events of that morning were being described as moments that "changed everything." None of us were quite sure what that meant, but we were all in tacit agreement that nothing would ever be the same again.

Many of us had felt the same way when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. And most of us who remember that day cannot believe that it happened 40 years ago.

Black people were still called Negros in the newspapers that reported Dr. King's death in April 1968. There was a continuing disagreement among blacks (and whites) whether the term "black" was pejoritive. Many whites had just graduated to the use of the term Negro from the still common, but unhip, term "colored." What bears remembering in 2008 is that at the time of his death Dr. King was not the universally beloved icon that four decades of martyrdom have bestowed upon his memory.

In the increasingly radical velocity of the Black Power movement in the spring of 1968, Martin Luther King was demeaned by some as the house Negro of the Civil Rights movement. Too accomodating, too non-violent, too "churchy" to represent the true struggle playing out on the streets of Oakland where a new group called the Black Panther Party led by Huey Newton and a Philadelphian named Bobby Seale was practicing civil rights through the barrel of a gun.

If 9/11 was single day that changed everything, the assassination of Martin Luther King was an epic event in an epic year that changed everything. It started with the Tet Offensive, the turning point in the Vietnam War, followed by the My Lai massacre (which we learned of a year later), followed by President Johnson's announcement he would not seek re-election , followed by the assassinations of King and Bobby Kennedy, followed by the police riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, which led to the election of Richard Nixon, who campaigned on his "secret plan" to end the war in Vietnam, which did not officially end until 1975, a year after Nixon was forced to resign from office.

Continue reading "A sad day in an epic year that changed everything" »

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A WEEK AGO I COULDN'T have told you the name of the governor of New York. I'm not proud of that. I should have known. Especially because he would become so famous so suddenly. "Of course, Gov. Eliot, um. . . Wasn't he a something before he became a something?"

Apparently, yes. Eliot Spitzer was a self-righteous prick before he became a scandalized schmuck.

Watching his awkward attempt to man up in the midst of his public humiliation was the short course in Spitzer 101. His two press conference appearances since being outted as Love Client Number Nine had all the appearances of candor, with none of the satisfying chewy taste . Spitzer spoke like a semaphore, flashing words like "atonement" and "remorse" and "apologize" in sentences crafted with the grace of Morse code. He acknowledged responsibility for wrongs he never admitted. He shouldered the burden of disappointing millions of New Yorkers who believed in the values "I tried to stand up for" when in fact it was laying down that got him into the mess he's in.

Like New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey's famous "I am a gay American" speech, Spitzer's oddly worded resignation statement seemed more like a political address to the future. It was all about values rather than judgement. As if there were values involved other than the $4,300 price tag for a piece of tail. And in true American compound-the-hypocrisy fashion, the famous faithless husband acknowledged his fall from grace before the world with his stunned and catonic, yet loyal, wife beside him, boring laser hole into his skull with her sad tired eyes.

Humbug. It's all humbug.

(And I wonder how much Kristen charges for a humbug job.)

Continue reading "with a name like spitzer, he's got to be screwed" »

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ON A RAINY FRIDAY AFTERNOON on the same day that it was reported that Barack Obama had raised an inconceivable $196 million dollars for his presidential campaign I stood next to a young woman offering herself as a volunteer at the reception desk at Obama's Philadelphia headquarters on the fourth floor of former bank building a 15th and Sansom Sts. in Center City. She asked for a Barack Obama poster to put in her front yard in Powelton Village. She was told that such a sign would cost her five dollars. And she paid.

"I felt guilty,"she said later, noting that when she worked as a volunteer for Chaka Fattah during his run for mayor of Philadelphia no one ever charged her for campaign posters. She didn't have to add that she also felt stupid and vaguely insulted. Five dollars for a campaign poster? This is change? Earlier that same week a middle aged city employee and District Council 47 union activist used her lunch hour to stop by Obama's newly opened Sansom Street headquarters to ask for an Obama for President sign to put in her South Philly rowhouse window. She was treated like a bag lady trying to get over on Ebay. "You people come in here expecting free material," said a shockingly unpleasant man.

If I hadn't witnesssed the one incident I wouldn't have believed the other. But in a very short time Friday evening I heard mutiple and unforced stories about how creeped out people were by their Barack Obama Philadelphia headquarters experience. "They looked at me like I was al Queda," said one very non-Muslim looking guy with an Irish surname who walked out of headquarters the same time I did. Maybe Obama campaign staffers thought he was a Hillary mole. Whatever, the negative unwelcoming vibe was as noticable as it was unnecessary

So why would Obama campaign people in the newly opened Pennsylvania primary headquarters act like surly twenty-something sales clerks at The Gap? I could venture a guess or two, none of them kind and none of them a valid excuse. Maybe they were tired. Maybe they were hungry. So what? They'll never have another opportunity to make a good first impression. And that's bad politics. The last thing the Obama campaign needs now is to appear uninterested and disconnected from the people in Pennsylvania, a state that doesn't love you back, as well as a commonwealth thickly populated by lifelong residents who never forget a slight. And if a free campaign poster is too much to ask for, what are the odds of getting universal health care?

Continue reading "What's up wid dat?" »

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IT WAS DURING RUSH HOUR at the Pen and Pencil Club, that frantic hour between closing time everywhere else in Center City and the 3 a.m. last call at the bar of the storied journalists' club on Latimer Street, when I turned to the attractive companion of a friend of mine who had arrived for a nightcap and asked, "So what do you think of Barack Obama?"

I know, I know, it sounded like a pick up line, especially since my friend's attractive companion happened to be an African American woman in her 30's and I could expect a warm and enthusiastic response to my inquiry, or perhaps a guarded counter-question asking what I thought of Barack Obama. What I wasn't expecting was her reply. "I think he's a sleeper."

I beg your pardon. "I think he's a sleeper," she repeated. Since Obama's presidential candidacy is picking up momentum like a freight train on a down slope I knew she couldn't mean "sleeper" as in a candidate that comes out of nowhere to win the nomination -- say John McCain six months ago. "You mean you think he's an enemy agent?" I said and she nodded yes.

Now I have heard that such people exist but I've never met one face to face and she certainly didn't fit whatever stereotype I had imagined an Obama-is-a-sleeper-Islamo-fascist-agent true believer. So I walked her through a series of questions to establish that she wasn't a). drunk, b). putting me on, or c). out of her freakin' mind. By the time I had established that she was none of the above a number of people were listening to my interrogation and joining in with questions of their own.

"If he was a sleeper, why would he keep a name as obviously foreign as Barack Hussein Obama?" That's part of the plan, she said. Hide in plain sight. "If he becomes president, what is he going to do? Surrender? Declare Islam as the state religion of the United States?" She wasn't sure, but whatever he did would be at the bidding of some unnamed mastermind in the Middle East. She also pointed out that Obama's step father was a colonel in the Iraqi or Iranian army. "What?!"

In the end her opinion was backed by no hard facts, merely an internet fed conspiracy that she embraced "hole" heartedly despite more gaps in logic than slice of swiss cheese. Faced with such an intractable position at so late an hour there was only one thing to do, fight rumor with rumor. "You know who's the real Manchurian candidate?" I said. "Which presidential candidate spent years of torture as a foreign prisoner of war?" Mister McCain? Mister John SIDNEY McCain?

Continue reading "Hail to the Sleeper" »

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PENNSYLVANIA GOVERNOR ED RENDELL spoke the unspeakable the other day in a private session with members of the editorial board of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. He said that some people -- he didn't say WHO -- would not vote for Barack Obama because -- GASP! -- he's black.

Will someone alert the media, for crying out loud.

This actually made news. People seem shocked, SHOCKED, that Rendell would speak such, such, kes ca say? duh, no shit, who don't know that, common sense, truth. I wonder if Rendell went out on a limb and said that some black people might vote for Obama because he is black.

Oh, my God, there I've gone and done it. I've brought race into this election.

Will everyone please grow up. Saying that some white people might not vote for Obama because he is black is like saying some Republicans won't vote for a Democrat. Are we supposed to act surprised? Do Republicans vote for Democratic candidates? Yes. Do Democrats vote for Republicans? Yes. But is that the way to bet on an election?

Rendell -- who got into trouble in 2004 while chairman of the Democratic National Committeee for suggesting that some people might not vote for a Jewish vice president -- got into trouble for that despite being Jewish himself. He also told the editorial board of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette that he thought some voters wouldn't vote for Hillary Clinton because she was a woman. (Don't stand next to Fast Eddie in a lightning storm!) According to the radio report from NPR's WHYY-FM, the Post-Gazette columnist who wrote about Rendell's remark about people not voting for Obama because he's black didn't mention Rendell's remark about people not voting for Clinton because she's a woman because the columnist wasn't surprised by that.

Doh!!!

Continue reading "fast eddie, you got a biiiiiiggggg mouth" »

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TUESDAY IS THE FIRST DAY of the rest of our lives, which is about how long the 2008 presidential campaign promises to last. Super Tuesday's primary results will certainly be a more accurate indicator of who will become the next American president than those Groundhog Day elections in New Hampshire and Iowa, when the first winning candidates poke their heads above the snow causing the eager news media to predict the coming of spring in November. Even if the groundhog happens to be a Huckabee.

By Tuesday midnight we'll know if Barack has a shot at the title, if Hillary is more unpopular than imagined, if Mitt can catch on despite being too rich, too handsome and too Mormon and if Die Hard candidate John McCain can out-box office his name-alike movie hero in this primary sequel. Bnt no matter what, when the fog clears Wednesday morning, the elephant will still be standing in the living room crapping on the carpet.

America will still be trapped in a foreign war we never should have started in a country we never should have invaded for reasons the proved to be a pack of lies. Not only did we not impeach the liar directly responsible, we reelected him. And instead of shaking an outraged fist at the White House, Democrats argue over which candidate came out against the war last, while Republicans argue over who spoke words that might comfort an enemy that didn't exist until we blew up their country.

And you know what? I've seen it, heard it all before. "If we don't beat them there, we'll have to fight them here." For those of us of a certain age, Vietnam was the defining personal and political argument of our youth. Vietnam posed all the right answers that started with the wrong question: which side are you on, boy, which side are you on?

Of course, American boys died by the boxcar load in 1968 -- more than four times as many as have died in Iraq in five years of war. There was a presidential election that year and Americans chose the candidate proclaiming to have a "secret plan" to end the war. His name was Richard Nixon. For the record, we lost the war in Vietnam in 1975, three years after Nixon was reelected , and a year after he resigned.

As for the inevitable Vietnamese Communist threat to America, I offer this anecdote: about a year after 9/11 I bought a baseball hat from a street vendor. It said NYFD on the cap and inside on the tag it said "Product of Vietnam."

Who said irony is dead?

Continue reading "The elephant in the living room" »

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WELL BEFORE THE IOWA CAUCUSES vaulted Barack Obama into the lead in the Democratic presidential primaries, West Philadelphia artist Joe Tiberino completed this oil portrait of "Change" candidate Obama flanked by the three progressive Democratic and Civil Rights icons of the 1960's, John and Robert Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King. Tiberino calls his painting, "Is He The One?"

As heroic as Obama looks in this portrait painted from photographes, I find the trio of ghosts behind him as unsettling as much as inspiring. It's one thing to associate the charismatic senator from Illinois with these heroes from an era of hope and despair during an era in America that started with Camelot and ended with My Lai. But you can't look at those faces without contemplating their tragic end, all identical , all killed by a bullet in the head fired by an assassin.

It's been 40 years since Bobby fell in Los Angeles during the presidential primary campaign in June 1968, just three months after Martin had been gunned down in Memphis, and not quite five years after JFK's murder in Dallas. And 40 years later the memory is fresh and painful for those of us who lived through that national nightmare.

"Is He The One?" can be seen at the Ellen Powell Tiberino Musuem at 3819 Hamilton Street in Powelton Village. For information and tour availability, call 215-386-3784.

Continue reading "Has anybody here seen my old friends. . .?" »

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IF BOBBY KENNEDY WAS ALIVE and 42 years old and running for president the same way he did in 1968, he'd be trailing Dennis Kucinich in this year's Democratic presidential primary race. Kennedy didn't even officially announce his candidacy until March 16, four days after the New Hampshire primary in 1968. By mid-March this year, the winners of the major party nominations for president will be so last month's Super Duper Tuesday ago.

Continue reading "Bobby, ye hardly knew we" »

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I STOOD IN LINE more than two hours yesterday afternoon and evening to shake Mayor Michael Nutter's hand, and this is what I saw: City Hall in all its magnificence. I was not alone. In a receiving line of more than 4,000 people that snaked around the Hall from south to north, there wasn't much to do on a balmy January dusk except stare in wonder at the architectural soul of Philadelphia, this mountain of marble and granite among us, this defining structure that we see all the time but rarely, if ever, spend a couple of hours contemplating and appreciating.

Continue reading "Meet the Mayor, Greet City Hall" »

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THE MAYOR OF PHILADELPHIA presided over a same-sex till-death-do-us-part commitment ceremony in City Hall over the weekend, and I can't help but wonder why. Why now? Why in City Hall? Why not somewhere, anywhere, else? And why did one of the grooms feel comfortable enough to explain to TV cameras afterwards, "We just got married today. And if you saw how much money we spent, you'd know it was a real wedding." As if that was what the larger significance of the event rather than the fact that John Street is a lame duck.

Continue reading "Quacks like a duck,limps like a duck. . ." »

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LISA NUTTER STARTED HER HUSBAND'S election night victory party with a joke. The crowd at the Warwick Hotel in Center City had listened respectfully through two introductory speeches from the mayor-elect's pastor and his father, and the enthusiastic assembled were positively kvelling to see the victorious candidate in the flesh when the senior Mr. Nutter began his introduction, "And now please welcome the next mayor of the city of Philadelphia . . .!" and amid the cheers and applause, Michael Nutter's wife stepped forward, took the microphone into her hands and shouted, "SIKE!"

Continue reading "A New Kind of First Philadelphia Lady" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 01:04 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

SO HOW COME A REPUBLICAN stole the thunder from the Democratic candidates in the Presidential Debate last night at Drexel University? If you didn't watch the debate on MSNBC broadcast live from West Philadelphia, you missed one of the beautiful moments of American politics -- like when a UFO-spying midget from Ohio makes more sense than his taller and wealthier competitors for job of president.

While John Edwards and Barack Obama did their best to barbecue Hillary Clinton on live TV, the one shrimp at the barbie, Dennis Kucinich, laid down a a napalm airstrike that glowed all the way to the White House. Why? -- Kucinich asked in outraged tones equal the the importance of what he said -- do we have a nut like George Bush still in office?

Earlier the former boy-mayor of Cleveland and the current longshot for the Democratic nomination had elicited the most authentic barely-stifled applause from the polite Drexel University audience by pointing out, accurately, that George Bush and his henchmen have suspended the Constitution, waged an unjust and illegal war, violated their oathes of office and should be impeached.

Yes, he said it. And to hear it from a candidate on the same stage as the Democratic frontrunner, whose husband was impeached for lying about a BJ rather than a foreign war, was a thrilling moment. Even the most articulate Democratic candidates seem to be tiptoeing past the cemetery of American lives, fortune and honor, too afraid to state the obvious.

But then Kucinich took it up a notch. He basically said the President is crazy. As proof he offered Bush's bewildering decision to publicly and repeatedly accuse Iran of fomenting "World War III." The president of the most powerful nation on earth should not be using the WWIII-word. It tends to scare the bejabbers out of the rest of the world. A world that already has seen this president use the non-existent WMD-word to justify an invasion of an irritating but soverign nation half a planet away.

Kucinich said what we all know. He said, "We all know that the invasion of Iraq was about oil." And now a barrel of oil costs twice as much as it did before Bush's transparent attempt to secure Middle East oil reserves by overthrowing the most unpopular dictator in the Musilim world. And what has Bush learned from his failure? He thinks he can get away with it again. New country, same approach. Except now he's amped up accusations of "weapons of mass destruction" into "World War III"\

No, Bush isn't nuts. We are for pretending he's sane.

But despite what Kucinich said so effectively, the long-shot candidate for president who proabably gained the most from the Democratic throwdown in Philadelphia was a Republican. Supporters of Texas Congressman Ron Paul, an anti-war anti-tax Republican, camped out behind the outdoor set of Chris Matthews for the entire hour of his post-debate analysis show on MSNBC. "Ron Paul Revolution" signs were the most prominent and unavoidable backdrop among a cadre of candidate poster bearers.

Then, as if it was scheduled, anyone turning to Jay Leno immediately after the post-debate show ended, saw candidate Ron Paul killing the Tonight Show audience with his wry humor and straight talk.

Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich are the monkey wrench candidates in this presidential election. They seem to make more sense and speak more clearly than any of the candidates who actually have a chance-in-hell of becoming our next president. Like Ross Perot, we're more in love with their blunt and startling honesty than their possible success.

It's a shame too. The way things are weighed these days, by the media, by the political parties, by the money, by the irresistible flow of meaningless information that demands an answer as to who will win an election more than a year away. And we all buy into it. We are as impatient for resolution as the impatient forces we mock or pretend to ignore.

If you didn't watch the Democratic Presidential debate last night you may have missed the last chance to take a good look at all the candidates -- one of whom you may actually like for reasons that suprise you - before, one by one, each slip into the obscurity that comes with failing to play the game dishonestly enough to win.

Continue reading "But the big winner at the Philadelphia debate. . ." »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 05:27 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I KNOW ONE OF THE COPS who responded to the Abay's Wheeler Bar shooting in West Philadelphia where three people were killed and another was left critically wounded Saturday night. The bar was full of people at the time of the shooting, but by the time the cops arrived the only humans present had bullets in them. There were no witnesses and none have stepped forward. During that same weekend in the city of Philadelphia a total of 42 people were shot or stabbed. Seven of them died. By any standards, the "next great city" has some 'splainin' to do.

Tuesday evening when I saw one of the cops who responded to the bar shootings, he offered this explanation: "The brothers and sisters are running the city." He said it sadly. Without irony. Without disgust. He sounded nothing but tired. The brothers and sisters are running the city. And they're killing each like their job was murder.

Mayor John Street made those words famous a few years back while addressing a convention of African American municipal leaders from the East Coast. With almost Pentacostal joy, Street shouted, "The brothers and sisters are running this city. Oh yes!" His point being that Philadelphia government was dominated by qualified African Americans in leadership positions.

And perhaps this is why Street has cast a blind eye to the mayhem on the streets where most brothers and sisters live. How could they be running the city and killing each other at the same time. Don't they know how bad that makes him look?

Street has stood by his clueless Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson like father knows best long after the house has burned down. These two will go slouching toward January together like some awful prophesy unable to stop itself. Atlas shrugged. And Street blamed the media.

When the mayor and the police commissioner turn palms up to the citizens they protect and claim there is nothing more they can do, it is a sign of End Times. Street's press conference outside Abay Wheeler's death bar Monday was a classic. Sounding like George Bush defending his failed attorney general, Mayor Street described Johnson as "a great police commissioner." The last paragraph of the Inquirer press conference story by Marcia Gelbert contained a quote from Street during an interview last week, "It's real easy for a person to say, 'Where's the mayor? . . .'But I say, 'Where are you?'"

Well, thank you John F. Kennedy. Ask not, what the police can do for you. Ask what you can do for the police.

I'd say, "You jitbag." but then Street would have to Google it.

Continue reading "He Just Doesn't Get It" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 04:00 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Earth to Street! Earth to Street! Come in, Street! For crying out loud, John, answer your freakin' iPhone, will you? You went through all that trouble, discomfort and ultimately, public humiliation, just to be the first one on your block -- or the first mayor in America -- to own the latest geek magnet created by Steve Jobs, the least you could do is answer the damn thing when it rings.

That is, if it does ring. Knowing what little I know about John Street after watching him as a public figure since the days when he was defending his brother Milton's right plant a vending truck in concrete on the southeast corner of Montgomery Avenue at 13th Street on the Temple University campus in 1972, I can only imagine what the ring tone on Hizzhonor's iPhone would be. Presumably to get his attention Street's mobile phone would require a 500 volt electric shock. Either that or the theme from Star Trek.

We are not alone, you and I, in wondering how cuckoo John Street has been all along if he is capable of choosing to inauguate his final six months as mayor of Philadelphia by camping out in a lawn chair at 3:30 a.m. in order to buy the newest techno-gadget that wouldn't go on sale for another 14 hours and 30 minutes. What was he thinking? we all asked ourselves.

Who is this guy? visitors from out-of-state arriving for Philadelphia's weeklong Fourth of July celebration must have asked when they saw the TV and newspaper images of the mayor camped on a city sidewalk like some Dungeons and Dragons freak outside a Sci-fi Con.

Earth to Street! This didn't make you look like a man of the people. This didn't make you look mayoral. This made you look like Nerdly McBlingbling, a man with all his priotities in an alternate universe.

In a city where kids die over new sneakers and the latest sports team jackets, the sight of a mayor voting with his seat outside the AT&T store selling the latest must-have $600 gizmo sends a message. I gots to have it. I gots to have it now.

And John Street's mystification that the media would make such a fuss about his choice to a). sit outside a store for hours on a weekday, and/or b). have a city paid cop take his place in line, shows how little he has learned about a). the news media, and/or b). being mayor of Philadelphia.

Not since Frank Rizzo accepted the Daily News challenge of taking a lie detector test, has a sitting mayor invited such unnecessary ridicule. Maybe it played well in John Street's alternate universe, but on the streets of Philadelphia it looked STOOPID!

Continue reading "Nerdly McBlingbling Gets His Thingthing" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 02:43 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

THERE WAS THE STINK of newspaper columnists about them, crowded as they were in America's oldest press club, the Pen and Pencil. So many opinions. So little time. This was last night during the National Society of Newspaper Columnists convention in Philadelphia. How can you go to a newspaper columnists convention without popping off about something? Being bossy with your opinions is part of your job description. Or that's what people think..

In my experience (and what do I know, really, about newspaper columnists?) most columnists would describe themselves as "basically shy." I'm basically shy. In my opinion. Most newspaper columnists don't like to bother people. Most newspaper columnists aren't bullies. But most newspaper columnists share a common dream. They want to be heard. They want to matter. They want to find the right words and speed them into print.

And then there are the rest, the glory seeking hound dogs who get found out for what they are almost faster than you forget their names afterward. Nothing but barks in the wind.

And then from across the room I saw him. The gold standard. Dave Barry. Hilarious human humorist. Suddenly Carley Simon was singing the background soundtrack, "He walked in. . .to the party. . . . like he was stepping on board a yacht."

Actually, Dave Barry is one of the most unassuming guys your'd ever want to meet. Still, in a room full of columnists he was a rock star. He was scheduled to address the convention this morning and I told him I'd be there if I wasn't hung over. I was and I didn't. But we had a great time catching up. Dave and I go way back. He was a reporter with the West Chester Daily Local News when I started as a suburban reporter covering Chester County at the Inquirer in 1972. Two years later at the age of 24 I was writing a daily column in the metro section of the Inky, a column called The Scene, which I continued to write for the next 20 years. Frankly, it was pretty flattering to hear Dave Barry decribed me as "my hero" to other newspaper columnists, most of whom had never heard of Clark DeLeon.

Anyway, that's a pal shot of Dave and me at the reception for the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. My suggested caption for that photo is:
"Not Just Gay,
Gay Americans."

Continue reading ""In God We Trust. All Others Pay Cash"" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 04:11 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

THE NEWS THAT FIVE SUSPECTED ISLAMIC TERRORISTS plotting a murderous attack on Fort Dix all lived (or had once lived) in Cherry Hill, N.J., was almost comical in a scary, unfunny way. It was like finding out that Huey and Riley Freeman the angry suburban black nationalists pre-teens from Timid Deer Lane from Boondocks had actually planned to assassinate their middle school principal. We live in a world where the usual suspects kill each other at an alarming rate in the city of Philadelphia, where a milkman can murder innocents in an Amish schoolhouse, where a deranged Korean immigrant can mow down dozens of students and teachers on a mountainside college campus in Virginia. So why wouldn't we believe that a Philadelphia cab driver and a suburban pizza deliveryman would join forces with other illegal immigrants to murder members of the armed forces of the country they sought out to find freedom and a new way of life?

Because to most of us it seems preposterous, that's why. We can't wrap our minds around it. It's too mundane, too bizarre, too hideous to contemplate. You can't hail a cab in Philadelphia without being asked your destination by a driver speaking English with an accent from a country thousands of miles away. The same with home delivery fast food. The news that one of the the alleged terrorist plotters from Cherry Hill delivered for a pizza parlor called Mario's invited images of a Donkey Kong-type video game with the massively bearded and mustacioed Mario Brother Jihadists leaping over barrels and other obstacles rolled down at them by Uncle Sam.

But it isn't a game is it? It's as real as the computer screen you're reading. Nine-eleven really happened. Nickle Mines schoolhouse really happened. Virginia Tech really happened. The slaughter in North and West Philadelphia really happens. And yet life goes on somehow. There is happiness and pride and love and expectations we all feel, even though we know that none of us gets out of this world alive. There may be a heaven or a paradise waiting at the end of that, but I don't know if that gives us the courage to open our eyes in the morning. Of all the lessons America has learned from Sept. 11, 2001, the one most real to me, the one I can visualize more clearly than all the images we have seen a thousand times, is the indivisible lesson we learned from Flight 93. Average Americans siezing the moment, fighting until the end. Together.

Continue reading "Why We'll Win" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 04:38 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I was arguing politics not long ago with a guy who thinks a lot like me. It started as a discussion about politics but at some point he was shouting and I was shouting back. What we were arguing about was the next mayor of Philadelphia, who that person should be and why. He's Irish, this fellow I'm mixing it up with. I hadn't even decided who "my guy" for mayor was, a discovery I made after he announced "his guy." Then and there I found out for the first time what I was really thinking by listening to the words that came out of my own mouth.. Which is why honest political arguments are not only healthy but crucial. We should be able to explain, if only to ourselves, the reasons we chose to cast our vote for one or any candidate for mayor of Philadelphia. For those of us who live in the city, the only vote bigger is for President of the United States. That is, if you believe that the mayor matters, or that the president matters, or that your two cents add up to one vote.

The number of people who don't care, don't believe, don't hope, don't vote is appalling, really. I know some very smart, very decent and very disillusioned middle class taxpaying adults who haven't voted since Vietnam because "voting only encourages them." Them being politicians, a subspecies so dependably despicable that politicians spend millions every election claiming not to be one. Everyone has a right not to vote. No one can force you to care.

. Thing is, my opponant and I didn't disagree on anything that mattered in terms of what each of us desires from the next mayor. In a brilliant feint, my Hibernian antagonist pulled a rope-a-dope. Instead of attacking he got all limp and sincere, leaning toward me and asking, "What can he do?" meaning the next mayor, or any mayor, perhaps. "What can he do?" about the obscene murder rate among young black males. The homicide statistics by age, race and gender in Philadelphia are as appalling as the hunched shoulders response by everyone from City Hall to the rowhouse kitchen table. Most homicides in the city are a rigged lottery, a two-for-one crime: One gets taken out, one gets taken away. If such a devastating racial imbalance was about jobs, or housing or educational opportunities instead of bloody murder, maybe more people would be upset. All I know is that if 10 white people were murdered over the weekend, or in a single week, this city would be going nuts. Why? Because it would be unacceptable. Because we would all demand that something be done. By comparison as a city, both black and white, we've lived silently with the awful truth of this self-selected genocide for decades. "What can he do?" the Irish man asked quietly. And I could only nod sadly.

Continue reading "A City Worth the Arguement" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 12:41 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

These kids with the skateboards. They rumble under the highway like Jets and Sharks, like Montagues and Capulets, like skateboard against bicycle, in as far south as you can go in Philadelphia without being in the the Navy Yard. The skateboard guys built these ramps, that I know. And who can blame them for being P.O.ed when surfers of another look try to ride the very waves they built.

But this is Philadelphia. You find its essence in the corners, if not in shadow, certainly in shade. This scene under the highway felt good to me. Fathers respectfulling trailing their awe-struck 12-year-old sons, wearing helmets and riding bikes. When a skateboarder does a good trick, or survives a stunt, their fellows applaud by tapping their skateboards onto the concrete like pool cues on a wooden floor after a winning shot. I like that.

What else? Oh yeah, everyone in Baghdad got killed yesterday.

Or was it only two or three hundred? A general got fired. Everyone's all upset.

Is it Tet yet?

You tell me. When was our Tet in the Iraqi War? At what moment did the war in Iraq seem as hopeless as the war in Vietnam, at what moment did we all get it, liberal or conservative or don't give a shit. In Vietnam it happened in January 1968 during the widespread and costly Tet Offensive by Iraqi citizens which in those days we called Viet Cong. Charlie is now Hajji. He looks like anyone else. He'd as soon kill your ass and a couple of hundred innocents as he would blow himself up. Which seems to be his problem. Hajji doesn't care. He's already dead.

It's hard to fight a dead man. He has an unfair advantage. He's smarter than our president.