Deception, Thy Name Is Nostalgia

Ahh, nostalgia!

It sure can be deceptive.

Looking back over our memories tends to create the illusion that things were better then than they really were.  Such selective memory gets particularly bad if something today really bothers us, and we imagine that previous generations must have been far more proficient than the bozos running things today are.

Take, for example, the standard many Americans use for our country's glory years:  the post-war 1950's, during our epic baby boom.  Life seemed so much more vibrant then.  Opportunity was in the air.  We were inventing and growing and exploring and rocking and rolling and driving and building.  You didn't even have to be rich to enjoy the bounty in lifestyle advancements that have become a hallmark of that unique period of time.

But you did have to be white.

And indeed, it was, as we're soberly discovering, simply a unique period of time.  A period of time that, despite being as productive as it was, probably wasn't as great overall as we like to imagine it was.

What A Ride

Still, even for those of us who were born much later, the 20th Century's middle decade represents a quintessential period of socioeconomic exuberance and optimism.  Consider all of the measures by which the 1950's are fondly - if not entirely accurately - referred:

• Designs of the American automobile, such as the Cadillac fin, the '57 Chevrolets, and the Ford Thunderbird
• Epic cinematic spectaculars and iconic TV shows, such as Ben Hur, The Ten Commandments, I Love Lucy, and Superman
• Big cities were still economic engines, even as suburbia was gaining momentum
• Public education was considered safe, efficient, and admirable
• Rock and roll was still in its infancy, and its audience almost as naive
• Dads went to work, moms stayed home, and their kids were wholesome (or, so Leave it to Beaver says)
• Interstate highways were brand-new and uncongested
• Passenger train service was then what air travel is today, only more pleasant
• Only the Army had annoying government regulations
• The incredible shrinking nuclear family was early in its evolution; extended family still lived close by, not across the country
• Divorce was rare
• Sundays were for church
• Baseball was America's game
• ... and on and on...

It Wasn't All Fabulous

In retrospect, however, despite how nice it all may sound to you - and, yes, some of it sounds nice to me, too - I have to admit:  I wouldn't want to go back and live in the 1950's.

For one thing, medical care was woefully inferior to the standards we expect today.  Think of how far we've come in the fight against cancer, the repair - and replacement - of broken bones and malfunctioning organs, and basic life expectancy.  Would you want to relinquish the advancements in health science that have been made in the past 60 years?

We also didn't know much about how badly we were corrupting our ecosystems with the massive amounts of pollution our economic engine was belching into the air, water, and landscape.  Unfortunately, it took about three decades for us to realize the amount of toxic residue "progress" creates.  Even today, much of the pollution we think we've removed from our society we've simply relocated to poorer and less politically powerful parts of our world, where people who can't complain as loudly about environmental degradation suffer from the byproducts of our plastic universe.

Plastic universe, indeed.  Our economy was rebuilding itself by becoming a consumer-driven one.  Driven to consume a lot of cheaply-made stuff we really don't need.  Instead of farming, the manufacture of basic utensils and equipment, and other industries we'd consider primitive by today's standards, our version of capitalism flopped into dependency mode after World War II, a mode in which products needed to be designed, sold, and purchased in a pattern that sustained companies that otherwise provided little upon which human life is based.  Things like striped toothpaste, Wiffle balls, hairspray, powdered milk, Frisbees and hula hoops, frozen French fries, and Kentucky Fried Chicken.  In terms of raw economics, as long as you have customers willing to pay market price, all of these commodities can only help improve a society's economy.  But people of faith should know that contentment is not based on acquiring or consuming things; those are two lifestyle patterns a consumer-based economy wantonly encourages.

Then there's the whole crisis with racial segregation and other forms of institutionalized racism that raged just beneath the surface of the 1950's, finally to erupt in the 1960's.  Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court decision outlawing "separate but equal," came in 1954.  The ugly Little Rock Integration Crisis at that Arkansas city's main high school took place in 1957, three years after Brown v. Board of Education had been decided.

I still remember the first time I saw a photo of one of the black female students being taunted by a crowd of white kids outside Little Rock High School (photo at right).  I was reading a textbook in Mrs. Wolf's sixth grade class in upstate New York, where the only black family in town lived in one of the nicest homes in town, and I had no idea why anybody would dislike black people.  I looked behind the tall, dignified black girl in the white dress and sunglasses, to the short white girl with the short hair directly behind her.  Her mouth galvanized into a loud snarl, her eyes dark with vitriol... had this black girl done something to inflict physical pain on her?  The leering law enforcement men in the background, the other white woman clucking her tongue; none of it made sense to me then.  I'm glad I didn't have to live through it - either as a black person, or a white one.

Can We Move Forward By Selectively Idolizing the Past?

Turns out, that evil episode in Little Rock back in 1957 served as a stepping stone upon which race relations in America made its way across a sea change in how blacks participate in modern, 21st Century life.  Things still aren't perfect, just as they aren't perfect in our economy, which, although vastly expanded from even its 1950's robustness, has been struggling for years to accommodate swings and trends in the buying patterns of consumers.  Healthcare, too, has become so complex, its costs have exploded, and we've yet to determine how the overwhelming majority of us can afford to pay for it.

At least the Cold War is over.  Or is it?  During the 1950's, Americans lived in increasing degrees of fear, a mindset that helped precipitate the vase military-industrial complex that the decade's signature president, Dwight Eisenhower, warned an otherwise cavalier country against.  While diplomatic relations with Russia and China may now be on a low boil, and as Communism has petered out virtually everyplace else - with bothersome last-gasps from North Korea and Cuba, the international politics of the Cold War may be history.  Meanwhile, however, our country is grappling with staggering responsibilities for all of that redundant weaponry whose nuclear components won't evaporate like political dogma.  Then there are the millions of private sector jobs created by a misguided patriotic zeal from Cold War arms race industrialists, and sustained today by hawkish advocates for unparalleled military superiority.

As Britain's Lord Acton wrote in 1887, "power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Have we become so dependant on a taxpayer-funded military-industrial complex that we're like frogs placed in a pot of cold water?  As the heat from our military's demands on our Treasury gets turned up, we acclimate to the rising costs until we're boiled to death.  All in the cause of protecting ourselves more extensively than any other society in history.

Which, actually, is where this whole infatuation with the 1950's comes full circle.  "Sure, we had the Cold War then," we allow, "but look at how much else in our country was going so well."

I suspect that part of our national commitment to Eisenhower's dreaded military-industrial complex comes from a desire to live in a simpler time, when we knew who our enemies were, and what it took to at least keep them in checkmate.  The USSR had as much to lose from a nuclear holocaust as we did, and we both pretty much used the same playbook when it came to securing our respective nation's interests.

These days, our fiercest enemy isn't a state as much as it is an ideology.  An ideology with capricious splinter factions within it.  They don't want the same things we want.  They don't live like we do.  Our cultures have little in common.  In the face of such contentious unconventionality, it can be enticing to try and revert to the 1950's and somehow capture its mojo in a bottle, à la Back to the Future.  But not only can we not go back, it's really only in nostalgic retrospect - and only if you're Caucasian - that the 50's were idyllic.

Charles Dickens says it best in A Tale of Two Cities:

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair."

With selective perception, we can still relish through nostalgia the good things our country experienced during the 1950's.

But not only can we not go back, how does it help our nation's current woes to try?

Twenty Years Later, I Can Still Hear It

The First World Trade Center Attack: Friday, February 26, 1993

I can still remember it.

I was at work, in an aging Art Deco building a couple of blocks south of the World Trade Center.  Suddenly:  A shudder, and a muffled explosion, jolting our office on the 25th floor.

Twenty years ago this morning.

My desk faced north, and it was as if a sonic boom had rolled our building backwards, and then forwards. Just for the briefest of moments.  I can still hear it.  In a city full of noise and distraction, this was utterly unique.

Our office's lights went out.  Down the hall, cables clanged in the elevator shafts, like somebody was trying to ring old church bells in a steeple.  Computers went dead.

It all happened so fast, we didn’t have time to be scared. Our desktops clicked and beeped back to life, florescent ceiling lights flickered back on, fax machines that had been in mid-transmission began squawking error messages, and alarm bells from the elevators started ringing.

And of course, a chorus of muttered expletives erupted from co-workers who, like me, did not welcome this disconcerting setback. It was lunchtime. It was also Friday, invoice day, and billables needed to go out the door. Crashed computers and jammed fax machines were even less tolerated than on a normal day.

As we rebooted our computers and somebody reset the fax machines, we wondered aloud at what had happened. Did something blow up in our building, a 30-story pre-war tower perched along the Hudson River in Lower Manhattan? Maybe there was a massive wreck at the entrance to the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, which snaked by the entrance to our building? Nah, it was probably stupid Con-Ed’s fault, New York’s problem-prone power provider; one of their steam pipes probably blew.

And being New York City, where one worries little about what you can’t see, and even less about why it might be important, we went back to work. As I’ve said before, New York life is lived in inches. Your power's coming back on? Then get a move on!

So we were only marginally curious when the office manager in the next-door law firm came over, and invited us to come take a look out their north-facing windows.

“All this black smoke is coming out of the Trade Center garage,” she informed us.

Located four blocks south of the World Trade Center (WTC), our office building's north face gazed up West Street, straight towards the Twin Towers.

Sure enough, from the law firm's office, looking due north as the street below us curved slightly, we saw thick, sooty smoke billowing out of the entrance to the Trade Center's parking garage. Not just puffs of gray, but heavy, charcoal-colored plumes.

And true to the New Yorkness of the moment, cars continued to plow through the smoke as it blew across West Street. Pedestrians still plied the sidewalks and crosswalks, more concerned about dodging traffic than the smoke which must have been making their eyes water. We could hear sirens, though, and within moments, a couple of police cars rolled up the street.

They were the first of what we'd later learn would be a massive turnout of first responders to the first terrorist attack on the Twin Towers.

Lunch Brake

With a brownout imposed by Con-Ed across the Financial District taking away our computers, my co-workers and I decided to take an early lunch.  Maybe full power would be back in an hour or so.  Since it was a bitter, snowy day, they ordered lunch from a greasy diner down the block and had it delivered, but I wanted to see what was going on at the WTC.  I strolled up to the two-story Burger King on Liberty Street, across from the WTC, which is still in business.  Eerily enough, this same Burger King where I had lunch twenty years ago today would narrowly miss being destroyed on 9/11.  The police turned its ashen dining rooms into their temporary command post on that fateful day.

Liberty Street's Burger King after 9/11

Although the streets outside were choked with emergency vehicles by the time I arrived for lunch, everything seemed normal inside the Burger King, until after I started to eat.  I looked around the dining room, and at the next table, I noticed several young women huddled over hot teas and coffees. They had no coats on this frigid day, and their blouses were dingy gray. Their hair had fine soot on it, and their faces looked like they had been hastily washed, maybe in the Burger King's bathroom?

Turns out, they had been evacuated from one of the towers, with not even enough time to go and get their coats from a nearby closet. They had broken into a sweat while trudging down what seemed like miles of emergency stairs, they had frozen when hustling across the open plaza at the base of the towers, and they were coughing from all of the soot they’d inhaled both inside and outside the buildings.

Something really bad was taking place right across the street!

After lunch, and wishing the Damsels in Distress success in finding a way back to their homes in New Jersey, I still had some time before trying back at the office to see if our computers were working again.  I walked down to the Bankers Trust tower, a black steel skyscraper that, having been rechristened the Deutsche Bank building by 9/11, was irreparably damaged during the second attack on the WTC.

On this February afternoon, throngs of people had gathered on an outdoor mezzanine along that charmless bank headquarters, looking quietly to the Trade Center, their chilled faces marked by bewilderment and pensiveness.

I turned to follow their gaze.

Snow, Smoke, and Soot

And there I saw them. 

Long, shuffling lines of gray and black, some people wearing coats, others coatless, but all covered to varying degrees in soot. Coughing, but otherwise silent, without expression or vigor.

These were the evacuees from the Twin Towers, thousands of them. About 50,000 people worked in or visited the WTC daily. Take the entire population of Biloxi, or Ames, or Sheboygan, and funnel them out of two 110-story towers, four shorter buildings, and a shopping mall, one by one. And you have the miserable, sooty lines of evacuees that February Friday.

I was taken aback. Talking to the Damsels in Distress at Burger King, it hadn’t occurred to me that a massive evacuation was taking place at the WTC.  I still didn't realize that both towers had become two giant smokestacks.  Later, we would learn that police helicopters plucked over 100 people from the tower roofs that day, including a pregnant woman who gave birth soon after being rescued.

Evacuation can be a great equalizer. At least from skyscrapers. When you’re emptying such enormous buildings, executives, managers, secretaries, clerks, and custodians suddenly become one human mass facing the same predicament. There isn’t one emergency stairwell for million-dollar CEOs, and another one for hourly employees. It’s sheer physical fitness, not your job title, that spells the difference between getting out with enough energy to make it home, or just getting out.

Indeed, all ages, body types, and physical conditions were represented in the grim, sooty lines of WTC tenants shuffling out of the towers. Some were walking arm-in-arm for mutual support, some were almost being carried by others.

None were talking; many were coughing.

I vividly remember one tall woman with what we Texans call "big hair" that was dusted with soot. She was wearing a plush, knee-length mink coat – obviously having taken the time to retrieve her valuable fur before vacating her office – and still had on her high heels. After all, even in an emergency, some New Yorkers wouldn’t dare forgo their fashion sense. She walked towards me, patting the sleeves of her thick mink, and each time she did, soot puffed out of her coat.

Undaunted, or perhaps simply resigned to reality, she strode past me and into the throngs of people milling about emergency vehicles, on into the bizarre afternoon.

Try Again?

Part of the bomb crater in the WTC parking garage in 1993

By the end of that weekend, we would learn it wasn’t Con-Ed’s fault at all. Instead, Muslim terrorists had rented a yellow Ryder truck in New Jersey, loaded it with explosives, and detonated it in the WTC’s underground parking garage.

Apparently, their plan was to topple Tower One with their bomb, and that as it fell, Tower One would destroy Tower Two.

I remember our office staff laughing out loud when we heard on the radio days later that the FBI had closed the case. A couple of the terrorists, upon learning that their plan hadn't worked, reported the Ryder truck stolen, and went back to Ryder to claim their deposit, where the FBI was waiting for them. With idiots like that trying to blow up New York landmarks, we quickly assumed that while the city might be plagued with other crises in the future, we had little else to fear for the Twin Towers.

In fact, after the WTC was cleaned, repaired, remodeled, and reopened, I was standing in line in the lobby of Tower Two, waiting to get a photo identification badge that would give me open access to the complex, since I often ran errands for the company there. I remember chatting with a couple of other guys in line, also waiting for their badges, and we got to joking about the foiled destruction of the very building we were in.

Like typical civilians who mock government bureaucracy, we saw the I.D. procurement process as useless red tape meant to pacify building tenants who might be leery about moving back into the towers. Just another hoop to jump through; just a veneer of security to try and show that the Port Authority is serious about protecting their trophy property.

After all, nobody would be insane enough to attempt the destruction of the Twin Towers ever again!

I so wish we were right.
_____

(Condensed from four essays I'd previously written in memory of the six people who were killed on that tragic day.)

And a Child Shall Advise Them

It's one of those ubiquitous questions most enthusiastic grandparents ask.

"Can I tell you about my grandkids?"

Well, I don't have any grandkids, or any kids, for that matter, even though it sobers me to realize I'm probably now old enough for not only the latter, but the former as well.  So I'm gonna have to tell you about my neighbors' kids instead.  And specifically, their precocious, blond-haired son, who just turned the wise old age of seven last week.

Yes, seven.  His extreme youth is vital to this story.

This is the kid who, two summers ago, when he was five, corrected me by saying a cicada's shell is called an "exoskeleton."  I can still remember the look on his face, as if he was thinking, "You're an adult.  You should know this."  Which I did, but I didn't think HE did!

I keep telling that story to other neighbors who may not have yet heard it, and it always gets a good laugh.  Last fall, he overheard me.

"Are you telling that story again?!"  I couldn't tell if he was embarrassed, or trying to figure out if I was infringing upon some copyright he might hold on that anecdote.  Seriously - I wouldn't doubt he knows something about intellectual property rights.

Just before Christmas, a section of the wood part of the fence separating our two backyards had blown over - again - in high winds, and I was trying to fix it, cheaply, by myself.  And he was watching me, supervising the whole operation from his treehouse right next to the fence, even offering me the use of his "contraptions," if they'd help.

"I've got a ton of 'em," he explained of his contraptions.

At one point, things weren't working the way I'd expected them to, and I hung my head in a moment of frustration.  "Oh, dear..." I sighed to myself.

"Yes," my wise little neighbor offered sympathetically, "sometimes that's all you can say."

Then last evening, at dusk, I took advantage of our unseasonably pleasant weather to go outside and putter about the backyard for a few minutes. Up in his treehouse, my next door neighbor saw me, and greeted me.

"What are you doing?" he asked, watching me do nothing in particular.

"Oh, just goofing off," I replied. "It's what I do best."

Without missing a beat, he affirmed: "Well, if it's what you do best, it's what you should be doing!"

I started laughing so hard at his uncanny sophistry, I had to come inside for fear he would assume I was making fun of him.

Quite to the contrary!  I'm telling you - with a neighbor like him, I don't need grandkids, do I?!
_____

Hizzoner's Last Subway Ride

I took this photo in 1988 at New York's annual India Day parade.  Ed Koch, a Bronx-born Jew with no Indian blood in him at all,
owned the crowd, even the ones booing him and giving him a double-thumbs-down (see background).

hiz-ZON-er; a colloquial contraction of the words "his" and "honor," in reference to the mayor of New York City, sparsely used before and more widely developed during the three-term administration of former mayor Ed Koch, and now used for any of the city's mayors.


I'd already begun writing this essay yesterday, but when word came this morning of Hizzoner's passing at the ripe old age of 88 from congestive heart failure, I immediately decided to switch gears a little.

I didn't embrace all of Mayor Ed Koch's politics, but by many accounts, he was the most straight-shooting, unapologetically blunt, charmingly opinionated, and blatantly in love with his constituency as any politician can - and should - be.  Nobody can deny that Koch was one of America's rare big city mayors who's left his city profoundly improved for their investment in it.

It's easy to forget how truly remarkable a feat that represents, especially considering the times in which Koch served.  Big cities all across the country were in turmoil, but none more so than New York, having stared bankruptcy in the face, reeling from white flight, whipped by the steady exodus of corporate headquarters, struggling with unprecedented crime and death associated with drug abuse, and buckling under the disarray of its rapidly decaying infrastructure.

Then along came Koch, a gregarious bachelor of relatively modest means, who refused to run away from the city's problems, or his critics.  In fact, he embraced them.  He'd famously barge into a crowd of New Yorkers on the street and pump them with questions he expected them to answer on the spot about his results as mayor.  "How'm I doin'?" became his slogan, his performance review, and his give-it-to-me-straight-I-can-take-it feedback form.

How a Liberal Became New York's Conservator

Although a staunch Democrat - and a Greenwich Village liberal one at that - Koch didn't hold rigidly to any party line.  Indeed, in one of his mayoral campaigns, he ran as both a Democrat and a Republican, and crushed his main opponent, who was running, ironically, for the Unity party.  Koch resisted affirmative action, reasoning it was unfair to minority workers whose job performance was equal to or better than that of whites.  He supported the death penalty, and worked to reduce the welfare rolls, but engineered one of the biggest public housing programs in the city's history. A Jew more socially than theologically, he strongly criticized Jesse Jackson for his anti-semitism, even though doing so cost him political clout among New York's black voters.

Unfortunately, his last term in office was tainted by corruption among his staff.  His successful efforts at weeding out complacency in the city's welfare department caused civic leaders in minority neighborhoods to question his Democratic credentials.  Gay rights activists bitterly accused him of being a closet homosexual as he dragged his feet during the AIDS crisis.  When it came time for his fourth mayoral primary race, left-wingers and the city's blacks overwhelmingly switched their allegiance to David Dinkins, an elegant tennis aficionado who became New York's next mayor, and first black in that office.

I remember seeing Koch at an India Day parade in the late 1980's, after scandals in his administration had taken a hit on his popularity. Some people in the crowds lining Fifth Avenue were booing him, and in a photo I took (above), you can see somebody giving him a double-thumbs-down.  Still, Koch was soaking it all in, and, with his arms high in the air, waving at them like he was a victorious conqueror!  He even loved it when his constituents felt comfortable booing him.

Once he was no longer "Hizzoner," Koch became a partner in a Manhattan law firm, wrote movie reviews, taught some college classes, and replaced the retired Judge Wapner on two seasons of The Peoples Court.  Impolite journalists occasionally floated questions about his sexuality, but Koch, who would freely share his opinion on everything else, kept that part of his life fiercely hidden.  Several years ago, he announced he'd bought a burial plot in Washington Heights' Trinity Cemetery, Manhattan island's last remaining active graveyard, saying that when he died, "the thought of having to go to New Jersey was so distressing to me."

Mayor of Eight Million Stories in the Naked City

The New York I remember most is the New York of graffiti-splattered subways, trash piled high on the curbs, taxi cabs so dented they looked like yellowed wads of aluminum foil clattering down avenues, and pristine black Cadillacs prowling the seediest neighborhoods.  I remember the jarring juxtaposition of sleek steel skyscrapers next to rickety brick walk-ups, back before so much of Midtown and Downtown recovered its Fortune 100 mojo.

Friends called you up and let the phone ring just once so you'd know they'd gotten home safely from a dinner party.  It was a New York of Benzi boxes (for your car radio), Brownies (Department of Transportation officers in brown sedans chiding rubberneckers through bumper-to-bumper traffic), leaks in tunnels, rusty bridges, and putting on your jewelry after you got to the office.

Brownstones were what upwardly-mobile white people were selling for a pittance so they could escape to the bucolic suburbs.  Homeowners literally couldn't give away burned-out shells of row houses in Harlem.  Brooklyn was considered no-man's land, as were what's now the hip enclaves of SoHo, Chelsea, the East Village, and TriBeCa.

This was also the New York City of Ed Koch's mayoral tenure.  But it wasn't the city he wanted to leave to posterity, so he set in motion an approach that was equal parts haphazard, unrealistic, painful, conceited, expensive, and in-your-face for resuscitating the wounded warrior his hometown had become.

Being the irascibly belligerent place it's always been, perhaps New York City would have somehow managed to pick itself up from the brink of insolvency and reinvent itself into the wildly popular place it has once again become.  Perhaps if another person had been mayor instead of Koch, the Big Apple would have been able to reclaim its status as the world's capital in an even shorter period of time.  After all, Koch would have been the first person to tell you he wasn't perfect.

But Ed Koch is the person who won three consecutive elections during one of the most pivotal times in the city's history.  It was his love for his hometown, combined with his independent spirit and his plucky - some would say goofy - tenacity, that either egged on his detractors to prove their own worth, or championed his supporters to ignore naysayers and keep forging ahead towards the light at the end of the tunnel.  Even if it might turn out to be an oncoming subway.

Disagree with his politics if you must, and I do disagree with some of them, but Koch's ability to convince New Yorkers that they were exceptional and resilient speaks volumes to the impact one person's personality and charisma can have in turning around a sinking ship.  Granted, New York's renaissance isn't entirely due to Hizzoner, but if anybody else had done anything less than what he did, the city it seems everybody now wants to visit - if not live in - would be a far lesser place.

The Race to Replace?

Perhaps fittingly, then, the year in which Koch died is also a mayoral election year in New York, and it's shaping up to have some real fireworks that Koch would have probably relished.

First, you've got your left-wingers like Christine Quinn, a married lesbian, who worked her way up the non-profit ladder, and today exhibits a firm grasp on how New York's socially liberal apparatus runs.

Then there's a mish-mash of lesser liberals like John Liu, the city's comptroller, whose campaign has been caught up in corruption charges.  Bill DeBlasio, the city's public advocate, is a tall white guy married to a short black woman, whose son sports a head of hair - a tall, wide, round, stunning afro - the likes of which we haven't seen since the early Koch era.

Thanks to Rudy Giuliani, and now Michael Bloomberg, Republicans in the Big Apple feel comfortable in thinking they have some skin in this mayoral race yet again.  And it's not like they don't have at least two high-profile candidates that could put up strong numbers against any liberal opponent.

First is Joseph Lhota, who just resigned as chairman of the city's Metropolitan Transportation Authority for his mayoral run, and who acquired significant name and facial recognition during and after Hurricane Sandy's flooding of the city's subways.

Then there's grocery store magnate John Catsimatidis, who earned his billions in the energy industry, but portrays himself as a folksy, hometown New York businessman trying to make a profit in the notoriously expensive and regulation-heavy city.  So far, he's the most unlikely person to win the race, considering the substantial girth of his that he proudly swaddles in cheap suits, his utter lack of political experience, and his penchant for schmoozing more with fellow Greeks at ethnic events than with the city's vainglorious power brokers.

Surprisingly, however, Catsimatidis is a licensed jet pilot, and his bleached-blond daughter is married to a grandson of the late President Nixon.

It's unknown who Koch would have ended up officially endorsing for this year's mayoral race, but my guess is it would probably have been Quinn, not so much for her liberal credentials, but because she likely has the most bona-fides for City Hall's extreme rough-and-tumble politics.

But I would not have been at all surprised if Koch gave Catsimatidis some consideration, at least if the Greek tycoon managed to squeak through the Republican primary.  Although Catsimatidis is a lot of things Koch never was - stupendously wealthy, married with kids, one of whom is hitched to a Republican icon, and - oh yeah - a Republican himself - Koch once supported New York's current billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, when he was still running as a Republican.  And Catsimatidis has the same affable bluster and chutzpah that endeared Koch to so many New Yorkers during those grim years a generation ago.

Indeed, no matter how unattractive or odd they may be, genuine people seem to bring out the best in New Yorkers, and that's what Koch was.  A genuine person who hid almost nothing.

That's why, even though he was a liberal, conservatives like me can still look back on the guy with a fair degree of admiration and respect.  If I was then the person I am today, I probably wouldn't have voted for him, at least in his first mayoral run.  But for the time, and the place, he proved himself to be somebody the city truly needed.  And nobody can deny him that legacy now.

If New York can possibly be epitomized by one person, I can't think of anybody more appropriate to be that person than Ed Koch.

"Ya done good, Yerroner."
_____

Vetting Another Corvette's Allure

And then there's this:

A paint-pitted, faded Corvette for $225,000?

On Monday, I wrote about Chevy's brand-new 2014 Corvette Stingray being introduced at Detroit's auto show.  Although most people won't be able to justify the purchase of such a car for their personal use, since Corvettes take a sports car's usual inefficiencies as a passenger vehicle to the extreme, the Corvette is still a bellwether of how American drivers expect their dream rides to look and perform.

Oftentimes, America's premiere sports car doesn't make waves in the international automotive media the way next year's Vette did this week, but the nameplate's legend and aura consistently boasts remarkable resiliency.  Since it holds a revered place in the hearts and minds of automotive enthusiasts, even during Detroit's decline, when Chevrolet shipped hunks of misfitting fiberglass out to the carbuying public and labeled them "Corvettes," longsuffering fans would patiently admire their model's glory years and console themselves that somehow, someday, the Corvette would be back.

The car is that iconic.

That's why it's not really much of a surprise to learn that a yellowed, paint-pitted 1954 model from Maine is going on the auction block in Florida tomorrow with a plausible selling price estimated to be between $175,000 and $225,000.

Two hundred and twenty five thousand dollars!  For a completely unrestored, as-is 1954 car that hasn't been driven since it was entombed by its original owner into a grocery store in Brunswick, Maine, in 1959.

That's Corvette love for ya, folks!

It also helps to explain how this car's story is part of its value.  As they say in the antiques trade, it has a great "provenance," or history.

Purchased new by Maine grocery story magnate Richard Sampson, the car was driven mildly for about five years.  I say "mildly," because there are only 2,331 miles on the untouched odometer.  With winter weather being exceptionally grueling in the Pine Tree State, many owners of exotic or "cream puff" cars put them in storage for the snow and ice season, and while I don't know it for a fact, it's likely that Sampson only got this car out of mothballs for the few days during Maine's glorious summers when driving is indeed pure pleasure.

And this Corvette, being a convertible, likely made it an ideal cruising car for both the back roads of Maine, as well as its narrow lanes that wind along its shoreline.  A while ago, I commented that I used to find it remarkable that so many Maine residents own convertibles, considering the state's brutal weather, but I can't help but acknowledge that a perfect day in Maine really is a perfect day, and a convertible is a great way to enjoy those few yet perfect days.

Anyway, at one point in 1959, Sampson decided to preserve his wonderful little two-seater for posterity, and had it bricked into its own tomb in a store under construction in Brunswick.  Eventually, the brick coffin was taken down, and the car was enshrined in Sampson's daughter's home in Florida.

Can you imagine having your father's vintage white Corvette convertible sitting in your living room?  Its years of being bricked away in Brunswick were amazingly kind to the car, with the only serious visible damage being to the paint job - it pitted, which, considering GM's abysmal record of bad paint jobs over the decades, isn't surprising - and the wide white sidewalls yellowed with age like untended fine linen.  The convertible top has stains from being left out in Maine's many rainy days, but the interior is practically flawless, as are its flashes of chrome.

Experts estimate it's the only unretouched, completely original 1954 Corvette in existence.  And fortunately, 1954 was a glorious year for the Corvette.  No warped fiberglass on this beauty, but plenty of elegant flourishes and sexy lines, along with chic wire "veils" over each oval headlight, mimicking the veils women of that era wore on their hats.

If its fetching looks don't grab you, or the price it may well fetch this weekend at auction, how about this stunning bit of trivia:  even if it sells for $225,000, this "entombed Corvette" won't be the most expensive Corvette ever.  That distinction goes to a far less glamorous 1969 Corvette L88, which sold for $446,250 in 2007.

Almost half a million dollars!  And that's for one of Chevy's newer 'Vettes.  Granted, the grand champion Corvette was built for racing, while the 1954 model was mostly for prestige touring.  But still, it tells you something about the Corvette market out there, and the interest these cars command.

As does our prized 1954 model.

One guy bricked up his pampered convertible for 27 years, his daughter displayed it inside her house, and even with pitted paint and yellow sidewalls, it could command upwards of a quarter-million-dollars at auction tomorrow.

Yesterday I warned that we Americans don't know as much about our history as we should.  Judging by the keen interest people still have in our vintage cars, and the prices they're willing to pay for them, maybe I was wrong about that.

The antique car market, and Corvette aficionados in particular, prove that we Americans can learn our history when we want to!
_____

Update:  Our "entombed Corvette" was Lot #S187; updated selling info has yet to be posted as of Monday evening.

Corvette Mania Tests Driverless Allure

They're being hailed as America's next great lifestyle revolution.

Driverless cars.

Automakers are increasingly exploring the market for such an innovative transportation option, and creating new technologies in anticipation of its promise.  But who's really on-board with the whole concept?

Sure, the number of lives experts say can be saved by taking humans out of the driving equation is high.  And it's not like driverless cars will take over our roadways anytime soon; plenty of the technology, laws, and standards necessary to implement the driverless concept still need to be invented, not just refined.  That means we have time to prepare, both logistically, and in terms of our driving mindset.

However, isn't it just a bit ironic that, just when America's environmentalists and techno-geeks have been able to froth up their pitch for driverless cars, the North American International Auto Show opened today in Detroit?

And instead of a driverless car, the new automobile commanding most of the attention today was Chevrolet's brand-new 2014 Corvette?  This isn't just any Corvette either, mind you, but the 2014 Stingray, a rare breed of Corvette that boasts extraordinary power and - for this fiberglass fantasy - remarkable fuel efficiency and structural rigidity.  It's Chevy's no-holes-barred attempt to muscle back into the elite halo of muscle car bragging rights, which helps explain its uncanny resemblance to its brand's lesser sibling, the mass-market Camaro.

Now, while the automotive world and sports car enthusiasts debate the merits - or lack of them - in the Corvette's evolution, isn't it odd that with so many people supposedly wild about removing the driver from the controls of our vehicles, we're even talking about the Corvette anymore?

After all, if the public is pushing for self-driven cars, why should we care whether this new Corvette carries on America's premiere sports car legacy or not?

Most of the journalists who are writing stories about driverless cars live either in California or the Northeast, where congested roadways and hours-long commutes are frustratingly common.  Most of these writers are also men whose idea of a commute is probably more singular, in terms of getting to the office and back home, rather than tangential, like a woman's list of errands she runs before and after work.  Since the average American rush hour commute is 25 minutes one-way, however, the grief experienced by these male journalists in our big cities likely isn't as bad for everybody else as they assume it to be.  Granted, nobody likes being stuck in traffic, but are most Americans anxious to give up conventional driving for self-driving cars?

If we are, why the fuss over Chevy's newest hot rod, or Detroit's flagship auto show in general?  It's not that today is an otherwise slow news day; we get heavy reporting of Detroit's annual winter car carnival every year.  And if news organizations didn't think the public was interested in the new offerings from the world's automakers, isn't there plenty of other non-news to report instead of what next year's Jeeps are going to look like?

Rather, isn't this fuss over the new Corvette simply to be expected from a car buying public that loves cars?  Sure, most of us understand most of us only need - or can afford - a utilitarian vehicle, but we still like to drool over hot automobiles, don't we?  Sure, a driverless car sounds wonderful for people who endure a mind-numbing and nerve-wracking bumper-to-bumper crawl to and from work every day.  But how many people purchase the Corvette Stingray for ordinary commutes?  Corvettes are about a state of mind, much like Bentleys, which ooze idyllic luxury, or massive 4x4 pickup trucks, which reek of testosterone.  They're illogical vehicles, but we still ogle them.

And that can't be good news for fans of the driverless car.

As much common sense as such driverless technology may hold, American society does not value common sense as much as it does power, speed, luxury, image, and individuality - all things that driverless cars will minimize, if not obliterate.

Who needs a powerful car when a street grid adapted for driverless cars tells your onboard computer how much you can accelerate?  And who needs speed when your computer will regulate how fast you can go?

Who needs luxury when so many of a car's gadgets will become standardized so computers from different vehicles can communicate more seamlessly?  After all, our idea of luxury isn't based on how many gadgets a car has, but how many gadgets your car has that other cars don't.

Who needs image when the standardization this technology will inevitably require levels the automotive playing field?  And by this time, you've no individuality left, since it's not your car anymore, but in reality, the street's.  According to some proposed driverless scenarios, which include massive car-swapping paradigms, the car you ride home may not even be the same one you ride back to the office in the morning.

Take the concept of driverless cars to their logical conclusion, and you don't have the Great American Automobile anymore, but a glorified mass transit system in the form of individualized pods.

To the extent that, yes, such a system would save tens of thousands of lives per year, thanks to incredible accident-avoidance technology, it could be argued that driverless cars would be worth the investment.  Even if the auto industry never makes it to a totally driverless future, some of the safety inventions it comes up with in the meantime could themselves be worth the ride.  Just don't be sucked into thinking all that technology would cost you less than what you drive now!

But as Americans - and indeed, drivers around the world - react to Chevy's new Corvette this week, do any of the environmentalists and computer nerds pushing for driverless technology think their battle for driverless cars - and by extension, driverless driveways, streets, and freeways - will be won on the basis of safety and efficiency?

Who actually needs a two-seater fiberglass box on wheels that can rocket from zero to 60 mph in under four seconds?  Who needs 450 horsepower or a multi-tone exhaust system?  Nobody needs the new Corvette, but a lot of people would love to own one.  The dream of roaring down a deserted road with your love interest sitting beside you, eating up the pavement as your mighty machine responds instinctively to your every turn of the wheel or shift of its gears... it's the stuff that car commercials are made of, and it's what car buyers want to imagine for themselves.

Even as we putz along in morning traffic, the reality of our daily grind slapping us in the face every time we have to tap the brakes, crawling through one accident scene after another, wondering why life has to be so hard... there's a little bit of Corvette owner in many of us that hopes for a faster, sexier, automotive future.

Right now, however, it's unlikely driverless cars will be faster or sexier.  Safe and convenient, maybe, but oh, so dull.  Yes, they may take away much of the pain we experience in normal driving scenarios, but are Americans willing to give up the Corvette dream for a commute that's all about equalizing the experience for everybody on the road?

Just look at what most people are talking about in Detroit's auto show.  And that's probably your answer.
_____

Picking on Pickup Trucks

It's raining today.

Which means, for many construction workers, the workday may have been called short.

Driving back from Dallas after lunch this afternoon, in a drizzle which kept everything wet between sporadic downpours, I noticed on the freeway a lot of pickup trucks with equipment haphazardly stacked in their beds.  This being Texas, where construction is a way of life, you always see pickup trucks hauling equipment, but in the rain, it seemed like there were more of them on the road than on job sites.

Indeed, most of the stretch of freeway I drive between Dallas and Arlington is one long series of construction sites, and they were all deserted this afternoon.

In addition to being a construction hotspot, Texas is also pickup truck country.  More pickups are sold here than in any other state.  All of the brands have "Texas" editions, with special badging, wheels, and options packages designed to appeal to Lone Star truck buyers.  Toyota even builds their full-size pickups here in San Antonio, although Ford, Chevrolet, and Dodge still duke it out for the preponderance of market share.

It's hard getting pickup truck drivers into import brands.  After all, when you're talkin' redneck, these motor vehicle owners really do have red necks, from working all day in what's normally a brutal Texas sun.  Country music, patriotism, football, American beers, and the occasional Confederate flag.  Toyota and Nissan just don't fit, and Honda, which builds the Ridgeline, just gets laughed out of the picture.

Pickup truck owners in Texas may buy a Honda passenger car for their wife, but they lose serious man points if they pay money for what Honda calls a truck.

Then again, plenty of women own pickup trucks here, too.  And not just trucks that are all girlied-up with chrome bling.  You'd be surprised at the burly guys who claim all of that froo-froo shininess for their own pickups.

I've never owned a pickup truck, although I've come close.  A few years ago, I was evaluating a Ford F-150 Supercrew, because I loved all of the room it gave the driver, as opposed to the compressed space most passenger cars give guys as big as me.  But I was only a block away from the dealership on my test drive before I had to pull off the road and turn around - it was just too big a vehicle!  I felt like I was plowing a piece of earthmoving equipment, and was petrified I was going to hit something.

My male cousin in Finland, an owner of economy cars, couldn't understand why I'd want to buy a pickup truck anyway.  "Then you'd never get married," he assumed, speaking from a sensible European mindset.  "Who wants a guy who drives a huge ugly truck?"

Are you laughing?  I was!  My cousin obviously didn't understand how American women - and Texas women in particular - go for guys who drive pickups they either don't need or guzzle more gas than is necessary to get from Point A to Point B.  Contrary to my cousin's assumption, there's no compromising one's sexual allure with the purchase of a pickup truck here.  In fact, my Honda sedan probably is more punitive to whatever allure I hold than a truck would be.

Unless it was a Ridgeline, of course.  By comparison, I probably earn macho points by owning a Honda sedan over the Japanese brand's truck.

In New York City, the status car is probably some imported luxury sedan.  In Chicago, it's probably a loaded Cadillac.  In Los Angeles, it's probably a Bentley convertible with leather seats the same custom color as its paint job.  Here in Texas, with the possible exception of snooty Dallas, the status vehicle isn't a car, but a truck.  And it doesn't even have to be brand-new, or top-of-the-line.

Or even clean.

1970 Chevrolet pickup truck

Until his messy divorce, a neighbor up the street had an orange 1970 Chevrolet pickup.  It belched blue smoke, and this neighbor - like many of traditional truck ownership's dying breed - didn't always keep it clean, but it was still a cool ride.

Although a tiny truck by today's standards, it was the kind of vehicle I'd grown up assuming a pickup is supposed to be.  Two-wheel drive, long bed, single-cab, two doors, and all-around no-nonsense.  No-nonsense not just in its lack of frills, but in the way it acknowledged its purpose:  working.

This truck wasn't built to show off, or to make somebody look masculine, or to give somebody an air of off-road adrenaline-pumping action.  It was built to get somebody - probably a guy, but not necessarily - to a destination that had less to do with status and image and more to do with everyday work or everyday recreation, like fishing or camping.

My Uncle Arthur and Aunt Hattie drove a dark green Chevy of the same vintage in Maine - they only ever owned one pickup at a time.  No need for more than that.  Except that when Uncle became unable to drive, Aunt Hattie went into town and traded in their pickup for a more ladylike coupe!

You've likely seen pickups advertised on television that are shiny, glistening with chrome, and hauling ridiculous amounts and types of cargo while staying in pristine condition.  Meanwhile, how many office parks and shopping malls around you are full of those same $45,000 fully-loaded pickups without a scratch, dent, or clump of mud anywhere on them?

Like I said, I go past construction sites all the time when I take my regular freeway rides back and forth to Dallas, and most of the construction workers at these sites park their beat-up old sedans and coupes behind concrete barriers, and contractors drive their plain-Jane white trucks in the dirt, but I don't see many souped-up trucks like what are advertised on television as work site workhorses.

Misleading advertising isn't common just to pickup trucks, of course.  Yet increasingly, pickup truck manufacturers are selling more of an image and a perception of a certain lifestyle, instead of just a utilitarian vehicle.  The fact that you can spot non-commercial pickup trucks on the urbane avenues of New York City these days proves that.

All this, while most of the jobs for which we're told pickup trucks are designed pay a fraction of the sticker prices those trucks display at dealerships these days.

Fortunately, at least for Texans, old trucks have an uncanny ability to hold their value.  Especially the ones that didn't have all the bells and whistles to begin with.  The bells and whistles that tend to malfunction in their American-made vehicles.  Turns out, a good, honest workhorse is still a good value, whether it's the Old West, or today's Lone Star State.

If you do happen to get stuck on the job site during rainy weather like today's, however, that fancy doo-dad called four-wheel-drive probably does come in mighty handy.
_____

Ark or Arc?

Ahoy, mates!

It's the ship that has captivated the attention of people around the world.

No, not the Titanic.  This time, we're talking about Noah's Ark.  The world's first cruise liner, or cargo ship.  Or lifeboat.

In Doredrecth, Netherlands, today, Dutch carpenter Johan Huibers officially opened for tours his hand-crafted version of the Biblical boat, a floating, life-sized, full-scale replica of what Noah originally built to save his family from God's wrath.  The book of Genesis, in the Old Testament, contains a narrative of an epic flood sent by God to punish mankind for their abominable evil.  A level of evil mankind had managed to foment against God in what was already a relatively short span of time; what has been chronicled in the Bible's first book, and in its early chapters, no less!

If God was so enraged by how His creation had turned against Him at that nascent stage in human history, what what His anger towards us be today?

You don't need to be a born-again evangelical Christian to have heard the story:  God saved the patriarch Noah because his family was the only one, out of all the people that had populated the Earth since the beginning with Adam and Eve, that still worshiped God.  God sent supernatural rains to flood His creation, and for 40 days and nights, it rained enough for water to completely cover our planet.  There was so much water, it took 150 days for the water to recede.

Some people consider this Biblical account more of a religious allegory than a historical fact.  Some believe it's a folk tale, since Christianity isn't the only religious tradition with such a story in it.  For evangelical Christians, however, Noah's Ark really was built by a guy named Noah.  The vessel really did serve as a sanctuary for representative samples of every living creature, and all life forms alive today can trace their roots back to those creatures - both human and otherwise - that exited that craft after the flood.

Dutchman Huibers is one of those believers.  For the past 20 years, he's been laboring over his replica as a way of testifying about his faith.  Back this past summer, Huibers officially completed its construction, and starting today, it's open for tours after receiving all of its necessary government certifications.  Huibers even plans on taking his ark on tour, since its water-tight hull floats on water.  However, it won't be making any trans-Atlantic crossings.  Huibers' vessel may have been constructed according to the dimensions and requirements God gave Noah that are recorded in the Bible, but the patriarch didn't have modern shipbuilding codes by which he had to abide.  No insurance company today would certify Huibers' replica as an ocean-going vessel.

With or without a cargo of lions, tigers, and bears!

Indeed, can you imagine how animal-rights groups would protest, even though all the animals roaming our planet today owe their existence to Noah's floating zoo?  Perhaps out of deference to animal lovers, as well as to control cleanliness and odor factors, Huibers has populated his vessel with stuffed animals and household pets.  And it's probably safe to assume he'll be spraying to prevent roaches, woodworm, and termites from taking up residence amongst all that wood.

Perhaps trying not to be outdone by Huibers' publicity, a small group of Pentecostals in the hills of western Maryland are also trying to remind the public that they've got their own ark project going on.  Their ark, though, being constructed by pastor Richard Greene and the church he founded, God's Ark of Safety Church in Frostburg, is being made of steel and concrete bolted into the ground.  Greene says God told him back in 1974 to build the ark, but apparently his faith didn't extend to water reaching that far west from Chesapeake Bay.  Instead, a segment of the project has been erected alongside Interstate 68, with its towering steel framework testifying to... well, folly, mostly.

At least they're anchoring this ark to the ground as a testament to God's promise that He'd never again flood the Earth.  Huibers' ark isn't designed as a "rescue" ship, either, although having it floating in water helps reduce the weirdness factor of which Greene's project helplessly reeks.  But like anything else, "weirdness" is relative.  Huibers' ark is available for weddings, parties, and corporate meetings, as well as tours.  Greene wants his ark to be a miniature pentecostal city, with a sanctuary, private school, and medical clinic all tucked inside.

While maybe it's easy to deride these spectacles as tawdry distractions from the Gospel message implicit in Noah's very need for an ark to begin with, perhaps they can help remind us that God may be slow to anger, but that doesn't mean He doesn't get angry.  Sin is abominable to Him, and while the highly-publicized sins of adultery and debauchery may be the targets of people like Huibers and Greene, the sin of self-aggrandizement might be haunting these arks in the Netherlands and western Maryland.  It's a fine line between reminding folks of the sinful world in which we live and being all holier-than-thou.

Having said that, it still would probably be cool to visit Huibers' newly-completed ark to get an in-person sense of its dimensions and how Noah must have felt being the admiral of the only ship left on our planet.

Then again, I prefer reminding myself of God's power and grace by simply spraying my garden hose into the air on a sunny day, and letting rays of light create a sparkling rainbow in the mist, God's eternal sign of His promise never to flood the Earth again.

The rainbow, after all, is an "arc," too!
_____

Walking In Shoes a Cop Bought

What can you do?

In this rhetoric-infused era of railing against entitlements, it's easy to forget that there are real people who need real help.  Yet whether that help should come from one's family, one's church, one's government, or a mixture of all three, the dilemma of homelessness defies all easy answers.

And by homelessness, we're not just talking about the increasing numbers of families with kids showing up at homeless shelters for a nutritious meal and a roof over their heads.  These people have found themselves running out of jobs and money, and hopefully will re-establish themselves into their community after they catch their economic breath and regroup.  This version of homelessness presents a genuine problem for our economy these days, but its contributing factors are at least relatively easy to define, and even if their solutions are still painful, at least solutions exist.

With the other kind of homelessness, however, solutions can be profoundly elusive.

Might Beggars Be Choosers?

We're talking about the guys we used to call "bums;" the greasy, dirty men - few are women, although there are some - who actually refuse to stay in homeless shelters.  They refuse to stay in shelters because such places can be dangerous, but also because many shelters are run by a slate of rules, and if patrons of these shelters wanted to abide by rules, they likely wouldn't be habitually homeless in the first place.

It's politically incorrect to assume that they have mental problems, but it's patently obvious that virtually all of them do.  How else can you explain what seems to be their preference to choose the harsh, dangerous streets of our communities than the many outstretched arms from churches, charities, and our own government offering help?

Take, for example, Jeffrey Hillman, Manhattan's shoeless man who unwittingly became the Internet's poster child of homelessness last week.  New York Police Officer Lawrence DePrimo took pity on the guy, who was ensconced on the sidewalk outside a brightly-lit shoe store near Times Square, and bought him some brand-new boots with his own money.  DePrimo's generosity was captured for posterity by a tourist's cell phone camera, and then went viral.

Although the tableaux witnessed by the tourist may be heart-warming, many jaded New Yorkers have seen it all before.  Hillman wasn't shoeless simply because he'd lost his previous pair, was he?  Might he have bartered them away for booze or narcotics?  How many other pairs of shoes might he have tricked other kind-hearted passers-by to get for him, considering he'd camped out in front of - of all places - a shoe store?  What are the chances he figured it would be easier to display bare feet and play on somebody's naivete in front of a shoe store, instead of a deli or bank?

The cop fell for it, since he's relatively young, and as we've learned, lives in the suburbs.  The tourists certainly fell for it, since New York City is one big playground for them, where human drama becomes much more poignant amidst the bizarre intensity of the city's urban density.

Still, the cop did a good thing, even if jaded New Yorkers have long ago learned that such altruism doesn't really last very long.  And indeed, we're now learning that Hillman has since been found, shoeless yet again in Manhattan.  When asked where the shoes DePrimo had bought for him had gone, Hillman won't give a direct answer, except to say that they're worth a lot of money to people of the street like himself.

If he's hidden them, as he has intimated, he's defeated the whole purpose of DePrimo's compassion and the solution that compassion sought to create:  warm protection for his feet.  It's not like DePrimo bought Hillman a gold necklace that should only be worn on special occasions.  Shoes are functional, particularly for pedestrians in New York.  If he was afraid he'd get mugged for those new shoes by other homeless people, why didn't he simply find some dirt someplace, rub his new shoes in it, scuff them up a little bit along some concrete, and instantly disguise their newness?

Chances are greater that Hillman has already hocked those shoes for more cheap liquor or hard drugs.  After all, those shoes were likely the most valuable possessions he'd acquired in quite a while.

Or were they?

According to his family in Pennsylvania and Texas, who are horrified at this turn of events, Hillman's street life is something he's basically chosen for himself.  He has an open invitation to return to his family at any time.  It's not even like he's officially homeless.  According to various social welfare agencies in New York City, Hillman has had an apartment for at least a year in the Bronx, paid for with welfare and veterans benefits.

"Homeless," my foot.

Whose Responsibility?

In a goofy tirade on CNN, writer Frida Ghitis blames efforts to stifle government assistance to poor people for Hillman's sad episode, but she fails to have done the research that New York's oft-reviled tabloids have done.  That research confirms New York City, New York State, our Social Security Administration, and our Veterans Administration have already done a lot for Hillman.  He's not one of those guys who's slipped through the cracks.  In fact, the system has worked mightily for him, despite his apparent obstinacy.  He even calls his family every year - content to be in control of the information they have about him, but not wanting them to be able to contact him.

So, what is this?  Some sort of perverse selfishness on Hillman's part?  A narcissistic grip of ambivalence towards the concern others show him, combined with the willful abuse of the government safety net that's supposed to repatriate him back into "normal" society?

Or is this sheer mental retardation of some sort?  A sincere inability to grasp reality?

What's becoming increasingly clear is that Hillman's story only reinforces old stereotypes.  The bums on the streets want to be there.  They're probably crazy, so you shouldn't go near them, or acknowledge their presence in any way.  We're throwing all this money away on people like Hillman who either don't want our help, or don't want to take the responsibility we expect recipients of public assistance to exercise as part of their social contract with the rest of us.

For lack of a better term, then, we're left with the conclusion that Hillman is crazy.  Plenty of people manipulate society, but only crazy people reject society.

Then yesterday, again in New York City, and again, near Times Square, a crazed panhandler threw a man waiting for a subway onto the tracks, in front of an oncoming train.  Witnesses say the victim, a middle-aged husband and father from Queens, had tried to calm down the panhandler, who reportedly was threatening other riders waiting on the platform.  Tragically, the victim's widow has said he'd left their home after drinking and arguing with her, so it's unclear whether inebriation played any role in his inability to crawl up onto the platform, away from the train rushing into the station.  Either way, his attacker stalked out and into Times Square, although police have detained a man in connection with this case.  Whether the suspect is indeed homeless, as many eyewitnesses have assumed, remains unknown.

Crazy, huh?

Granted, it's difficult to see somebody like Jeffrey Hillman working himself into the type of rage that would pick up a guy and throw him onto subway tracks.  But these incidents prove that mental instability takes a variety of forms, and produces a variety of outcomes.  None of which benefit anybody.

Questions of Obligation

The easy way for us to move on from these stories is to rationalize away the impact they could have on us.  And to a certain extent, marginalizing these incidents because they are relatively rare, and therefore relatively unworthy of concerted attention, allows us to excuse the elusiveness of their solutions in favor of projects we know we can get done.  We could drive ourselves crazy over-analyzing cases like Hillman's.  Did his stint in the military injure his brain somehow?  Did some romantic relationship in his life backfire badly?  People who knew him when he was growing up say Hillman's life today makes no sense compared to his stable, wholesome upbringing.  Did something snap?  And how much did it snap?

As far as the extent of society's obligation to Hillman, it appears, at least right now, that we were doing everything we knew to do.  More government, as has been suggested by some, won't have helped, unless we'd assigned Hillman with his own taxpayer-funded personal assistant, psychiatrist, and chauffeur.  Could Hillman's family have done more?  Maybe, and maybe not.  One of his brothers works for a church, but that doesn't seem to have been any tangible benefit to him.  Should it have been?

Despite all of these unanswered questions, however, should we just walk away from society's Hillmans?  Yes, New Yorkers are a jaded lot, and perhaps part of the newsworthiness of this story involves a humble beat cop's spontaneous act of compassion amidst a city teeming with homeless vagrants.  You want to hope that DiPrimo doesn't lose his tendency for compassion just because this episode has turned out so disappointingly.  But who'd be surprised if he did?

And what is the extent to which DiPrimo actually - albeit unwittingly - enabled Hillman's behavior? 

Perhaps all we can do is admit that we can't really fix stuff like this.  Perhaps we need to be content in the fact that God looks at our hearts, and He judges accordingly.  He knows DiPrimo's motivations, and well as Hillman's.

Maybe that's too much of a Sunday School answer, but meanwhile, if we're content to just ignore situations like these, what is God seeing in our own hearts?

Christ says the poor will always be with us.  That's a hard truth, isn't it?

Meanwhile, what we can do about it may involve hard questions, too.
_____

Update 12/6/12:  Apparently, Naeem Davis, the man police have arrested for pushing Queens resident Ki-Suck Han onto subway tracks in Times Square, is indeed homeless.  As a child, Davis may also have suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome.  At least one witness has testified that she could smell alcohol on Han's breath.

WWJD About Price Gouging?

Here's a flashback for you.

Remember the WWJD fad from the 1990's?

"WWJD" stood for "What Would Jesus Do," and was intended to help provoke Christ-like responses among believers towards all sorts of circumstances.

In other words, say, you're driving along in heavy traffic, and somebody cuts you off.  WWJD?  Instead of cursing the driver, you graciously back away, and re-construct the buffer zone you'd been maintaining between vehicles.

Or maybe you're at church, and you overhear a couple of people complaining about your pastor.  WWJD?  Well, we know Christ wouldn't sidle up to those folks and join heartily in the gossipy vilification, would He?  But would He take a posture of unquestioning defense for the pastor, without admitting maybe the complainers have a point?  Or would He simply keep walking away, praying for those malcontents under His breath, but not wanting to personally intervene and foment more antagonism?

What about when you happen upon a homeless panhandler?  If your town has a well-run homeless shelter to which you and your church contribute time and money, do you just pass by the homeless person without acknowledging their presence, assuming maybe they'd gotten kicked out of the shelter for bad behavior?  Do you pass by with a quick shout-out about the homeless shelter being just down the street, in case the panhandler isn't aware of it?  Or do you stop, give the person $10, or take them to a restaurant, or welcome them into your own home?

Would What Jesus Does Change Your Behavior?

You can see how quickly the simple WWJD mantra proves itself insufficient in addressing some surprisingly complex issues.  Thus, the WWJD trend became hollow quickly.

It wasn't enough, when you were asked a question about morality, ethics, or the propriety of a course of action, to simply utter "WWJD?" and assume you'd addressed the quandary.

Many people used WWJD as a social gospel validator, applying Biblical truths about grace and mercy inappropriately.  In some liberal circles, WWJD became a pithy excuse to chastise more conservative evangelicals who, even back then, were clamoring for welfare reform, or gun rights, or immigration reform.  Basically, liberals mistakenly assumed, Christ would have pretty much let people do whatever they wanted as long as it didn't involve ending generational poverty, carrying weapons, or enforcing national sovereignty laws.

So it scares me a little bit these days to find myself increasingly asking myself, "WWJD?"  Yes, I'm a moderate Republican, but I'm no liberal patsy.  I believe in - and am immensely grateful for - mercy and grace, but those are gifts God provides to His people along with expectations for how we're to exercise them.  Both as recipients, and benefactors.

I'm no liberal patsy, and neither is Christ.

To a certain extent, I cannot argue that our modern American culture hasn't bred a spirit of dependency on our government.  There have always been needs, and needy people, but it just makes sense to me that localized communities, starting with one's family and church, provide the best-balanced and benevolently accountable environments for meeting these personal needs.  National governments come in handy for broader efforts like building highway networks, electrical dams, sovereign defense forces, and ensuring the civil rights of each citizen.  But historically, government-run charities don't have a great track record, at least in making sure systems aren't abused and genuinely needy people don't go without.

When it comes to charity, the Biblical book of Proverbs has plenty to say both about our obligation to help the poor, and about the expectations a society is correct in having of each participant, and how each person is to contribute to their community.  And I don't disagree that over the years, our society has shifted from a bottom-up form of reliance to a top-down form, with our government at the top.

Sock It To the Ones With the Most Money?

Yet as I continue to encounter Libertarian viewpoints in our evangelical media, the question "WWJD?" has begun to flutter around in my brain.  Perhaps on account of all the empty space up there, true; but also, because some evangelicals appear to have quit the grace-and-mercy side of our faith cold-turkey.

Exibit A is an article for World magazine by D.C. Innes entitled, "Price Gouging as Neighbor Love."  Innes, a professor at New York City's conservative Kings College who lives out on Long Island, writes about how he observed the long lines and rationing at gas stations across the metropolitan area in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.  He bemoans the unfair restrictions against price gouging imposed by New York State on its gas station owners.  He sounds convinced that it's actually a manifestation of Christ's command that we love our neighbors to let the price of gas go as high as the market will bear during a crisis.

"State law forbids anything more than a 10 percent price increase at the pump during a shortage," Innes complains.  "But while our guardians of the common good meant well in making that law, I think their kindness was cruel."

I think my jaw dropped open when I read that.  So... he thinks Jesus would endorse price-gouging?

"The market system of setting prices serves everyone," Innes claims, apparently assuming that we live in a perfect world.  Generally speaking, when a community is not reeling from a natural catastrophe, free markets do have a way of settling into a sort of stasis which benefits the most people.  But Innes doesn't believe that preying on the unfortunate is sinful behavior?

In challenging the government's need to mitigate a fuel shortage, Innes tries to argue that "there is always a shortage of some sort insofar as there is generally less of things than we would like."  But I can't think of any tangible commodities that we Americans could have more of if they were available.  What is there less of that we would like?  Lexus seems pretty good at making just enough luxury automobiles to satisfy the demand of people who can afford them.  Oreos hasn't faced an outcry over shortages of their nutritionless cookies, although devotees of Hostess Ding Dongs have recently.  In fact, the world has no shortage of food - famine these days is a political crisis, not a production crisis.

Innes is correct in pointing out that price controls don't do a good job of eliminating the black market, and he witnessed people buying gas for one price and selling it for double to people waiting at the end of long lines.  But all that proves is that sin corrupts our world, not that price controls automatically - or solely - cause black markets.  Black markets flourish in countries - or even neighborhoods in America - where some products are officially unavailable.  Would Innes blame the despicable proliferation of child porn on the black market, for example, on price controls?

It's hard to tell where morality fits into his viewpoint.  "If gas stations had been able to raise their prices to reflect the radically reduced supply," Innes postulates, "lines would have been shorter, and there would have been easier access to gas supplies for those most in need of it."  How does anybody know that if there were no price controls, only the people who most needed gas would have easy access to it?  The only way you can determine that is by placing the proposition's value not on the person "needing" the gas, but a person's ability to pay what the market can charge.

Talk About Reviling the One Percenters!

And, voilà, you have the indelible scourge of Libertarianism, folks!  The value in a Libertarian economy is not on the person, but on the person's financial worth.  What can they pay?

The value of a person becomes not who that person is, what they might need the gas for, or what factors have impacted their life in a way that prevents them from paying exorbitant prices.  The only value a person has comes from whether or not they can play the higher price.  Money becomes more important than the person.

For example, suppose a medical doctor and a hedge fund manager need fuel for their cars.  Sure, the doctor may be able to afford quadruple the price to drive to the hospital and perform a life-saving operation.  But if the hedge fund manager can afford ten times the price or more, should finances be the sole reason that doctor would be prevented from getting the necessary fuel?

What would Jesus do?  This past Sunday, the pastor at my church pointed out in his sermon that Jesus healed the ten lepers, but only one went back to thank Him.  Was Christ's healing power any less lavish on the other nine?  Apparently not, since His grace doesn't depend on how well we thank Him for what He does for us.  Is this the same Christ who would mock His people by setting the price for what we need at a level only a few could pay?

When the Bible talks about fairness in our business dealings, mandates like "accurate and honest weights," wealth being worthless in the "day of wrath," and not taking advantage of others are interwoven with accounts of Boaz letting Ruth collect food for free.  Free!  And maybe I'm being woefully literal by assuming "honesty" is concerned less with how much money you can exact from a customer, and more with being able to look your customers in the eye the next day.  However, don't you have to be a pretty rigorous Gospel revisionist to believe that loving our neighbor means figuring how much they're willing to pay for something they desperately need?

God has shown us what is good and what He requires of us.  We're to "act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God." 

Must only WWJD bracelet-wearing, coffee-mug-holding social gospel liberals believe that?

Then again, would Jesus have given away the gasoline?  Probably not, since it wasn't the gas station owners' fault that Hurricane Sandy crimped access to fuel.  Nor could the industry control whether they had electricity to transfer their gas or not.  Selling fuel during a crisis is not what's wrong here.

So, would Jesus condone price gouging?  Since neither penalizing nor accommodating people based solely on their net worth is Biblical, I humbly stand in opposition to Professor Innes and say that no, He wouldn't.

If you believe He would, however, and your faith controls your politics, then maybe we've found another reason for why a certain political party lost this month's presidential election.
_____