• Home
  • Blog
DANGEROUS TIMES
  • Home
  • Blog

5/31/23

5/31/2023

2 Comments

 

AN AMERICAN FAIRY TALE

Picture
WE'RE IN THE MIDST of a perilous fairy tale, and the worst part is that it’s the Democrats who are falling for it.
   It goes this way:

   Once upon a time in the Kingdom there was a terrific president.
   This president - we'll call him Joey - was everything you could ask for in a Main Guy.  Joey was kind and capable, and he accomplished a great many wonderful things that improved the lives of the citizens of the Kingdom, although the citizens seemed hardly to notice.
   In 2020, he drove out an Evil Prince from the White House, and that was a particularly big deal, because the Prince was not only a clownish nitwit, but was, at his core, a racist and cruel fiend.
   Joey appointed capable, smart people to his cabinet, and got the Kingdom running on an even keel, approaching the kind of government that the citizens of the Kingdom long had taken for granted, therefore gave Joey little credit for this stunning achievement.
   Joey made good on his pledges to address climate change, improve the economy, and champion long-held values like being absolutely opposed to the use of of military-grade rifles to murder children for going to school.
   Joey came to the rescue of Ukraine after it was invaded by a Russian bully, who was a great pal, if not the actual puppet master,  of the Evil Prince, and he got a lot of Western countries to supply weapons, training and advice that helped Ukrainians resist the bully.


BUT LIKE ALL FAIRY TALES, this one has a dark side.
   While unquestionably advanced politically, Joey also was quite advanced in his years, having reached category of what commonly known as being an "old fella," an "elderly guy,"  a "geezer," and an "80-years-young codger."
   Joey continued to get older and older and older, day after day after day. This worried a great many people, including Joey’s stanchest supporters, who were some of the Kingdom’s most kindly, compassionate  and caring citizens, often referred to as Democrats.
   Like everyone in the Kingdom, these Democrats were quite familiar with people who were 80 or more in their years, in fact, they had witnessed what actually happens with advancing years, a story that always ends the same disappointing way. And in lots of cases, prior to death, oldsters became mentally and physically disabled as their bodies and brains wore out, like a '67 Corvettes that's been around too many blocks, too many times.
   But Joey ignored all of this and for both patriotic and egotistical reasons, he decided to seek another four-year term.
   The Democrats took immediate steps: they worried, fretted and agonized endlessly about Joey’s advancing age. And did nothing about it.


THERE IS A GOOD FAIRY in this tale.
   She/he also was a worrier, but like all Good Fairies, preferred action to fretting and agonizing, and thus dispatched a case-in-point to Democrats, an actual a member of the United State's Senate, a body which the Kingdom inaccurately referred to as “The Upper Chamber.”
   We’ll call this emissary “Diane.” She was 89 in her years and had had an inspiring history as a political reformer and progressive, serving many terms in the Upper Chamber. But recently, she had not been at the Senate for months, because of a painful affliction called shingles and its effects.

Picture
    Suffice it to say when Diane finally got back to the Kingdom’s capital, her condition was even worse than feared. Her appearance was described by one of the nation’s leading heralds of unwelcome news, the New York Times, and it was upsetting just to read:

   Using a wheelchair, with the left side of her face frozen and one eye nearly shut, she seemed disoriented as an aide steered her through the marble corridors of the Senate, complaining audibly that something was stuck in her eye.

   It gets worse, Jim Newell, another herald of bad tidings, in this case for Slate, told of a "conversation" that he and another reporter had with Diane; Newell asked how she was feeling, and she said:

   “Oh, I’m feeling fine. I have a problem with the leg.”
    A fellow reporter staking out the
(Capitol) elevator asked what was wrong with the leg.
   “Well, nothing that’s anyone concern but mine,” she said.
   When the fellow reporter asked her what the response from her colleagues had been like since her return, though, the conversation took an odd turn.
  “No, I haven’t been gone,” she said.
   "OK."
   “You should follow the—I haven’t been gone. I’ve been working.”
    When asked whether she meant that she’d been working from home, she turned feisty.
   “No, I’ve been here. I’ve been voting,” she said. “Please. You either know or don’t know.”


    Plainly, and avoiding evasions and euphemisms favored in both fairy tales and the Upper Chamber, Diane didn’t know whether she was coming or going.
   Not Diane’s fault. We all get there sooner or later. A least the Good Fairy tried to alert the Democrats to the folly of magical thinking that pretended that that age doesn’t matter and presidents live happily ever after.
  

FAIRY TALES ARE SUPPOSED TO END with a  moral, such not letting the wolf in through the front door, or avoiding the temptation of eating someone else's porridge, although it’s apparently okay lose one or more shoes after the dance or to kiss a frog.
   The moral of this story is that it's going to end badly unless Democrats stop pretending that it’s okay to have a president who's 80 and more, and that just because nothing has gone wrong for him so far, that things will continue to do so for the next five years.
   It won't.  Wishful thinking is ridiculous thinking. Sooner or later – and I’m betting on sooner, because I'm Joey's age and every couple of months I've been writing remembrances about more and more of my contemporaries – a crisis will develop, and the Kingdom’s kind, compassionate and caring Democrats are going to have to find a replacement for Joey. 
   Anticipating this before it actually happens is a two-step process:
  • Democrats have to to stop believing in fairy tales. Joey is going to die. Maybe that will be preceded by his having a stroke. Maybe he’ll develop Alzheimer's disease. Maybe he’ll be confined to a wheelchair; maybe they’ll call it Wheelchair One.
  • Secondly, Democrats need to persuade Joey to quit the race for a second term, or, if he refuses, to throw him out of the race by defeating him in the primary elections.
IT'S TIME FOR DEMOCRATS to treat Joey as the Big Bad Wolf, as dangerous to the country as the Evil Prince and his Russian Pal/Puppeteer.
   Competent, realistic and tough-minded Democrats need to step forward and present themselves as alternatives to Joey. And persuade the country that there are plenty of other potential Main Guys and Main Gals  throughout the Kingdom.
   If you want some names - everybody keeps asking me for names, since I've written this sort of essay many times - I've attached a list of people, many of whom are still a mystery to most of us, but who, when you start to think about it, are credible.
    The fact that most of us know little or nothing about Joey alternatives is my best argument for Joey getting out of the way so people can become familiar with his possible replacements.
    Frightening forces, known as Republicans, are afoot in the Kingdom.
    Sadly, we've reached a point in our history where every election is a crisis.
    As the Evil Prince has demonstrated, the Constitution has flaws, half the electorate feels some kinship to the Evil Prince, and  that's why we are only one election away from catastrophe.
    Consider what's at stake: climate catastrophe; an American dictatorship committed to discrimination by race, religion, gender and national origin; economic inequality; censorship; biased courts; and the rest of the Republican agenda.
   The sad fact is that this story is never going to have a happy ending unless Democrats get serious about fairy tales, stop pretending Joe is going to live forever, offer their sincere thanks for his exemplary service, and then gently guide him out of the Oval Office and in this way, save the Kingdom.
                                                                                 *     *     *

                              DEMOCRATS WHO COULD BE PRESIDENT
   Ranked by age, which isn't a factor for any of them - they are all youngsters in Democratic  standards - and any of them might do a credible job.
   I've supplied a similar list in previous writings, which have been pretty much based on the same theme.  This one is plucked from a recent Washington Post roundup:
   
  • Amy Klobuchar, 63, Senator from Minnesota.
  • Kamela Harris, 58, vice president.
  • J.B. Pritzker, 57, governor of Illinois
  • Gavin Newsom, 55, governor of California.
  • Raphael Warnock,, 53, Senator from Georgia.
  • Gretchen Whitmer, 51, governor of Michigan.
  • Josh Shapiro, 49, governor of Pennsylvania.
  • Jared Polis, 48, governor Colorado.
  • Pete Buttigieg, 41, U.S. secretary of transportation.
  
   Feel free to add some of names of your own. Time's a-wasting.


2 Comments

6/7/23

5/7/2023

1 Comment

 

JACK MONAGHAN
REMEMBERED

Picture
 JACK MONAGHAN, who died May 4 at 89, was a newspaper editor of the “old school.”
   “Old school” is a cliché, and one that always needs an explanation, first as whether it’s a compliment, and secondly, what it actually means, thereby using  precious space in a story and toying with a reader’s fragile attention span.
   It’s unclear how Jack would have treated this cliché if he were editing this piece, as he did during the last century as managing editor of The Evening Bulletin, the more robust and lively of Rhode Island’s  two sibling dailies, the other being the morning Providence Journal.  Both papers were owned by the same company, but they had different personalities, reflecting the eccentricities of their editors, like Jack.

   Reporters never knew how Jack might react to our stories.  He had standards, not a good omen for a story centered on a cliché.  But numerous other factors were always at work:  whether a deadline was closing in; how many other stories he was juggling; and what kind of a mood Jack was in – which was mostly upbeat, because  he absolutely loved newspapers and the fact that he was working for one of the best.
  What wasn’t in question was that Jack was in charge. Totally, absolutely, indisputably, the boss. Yes, he would listen to a reporter defend his story – just not for very long. And it surely wouldn’t be a negotiation.
   Jack was not among the new breed of collaborative editors eager to bat around the pros and cons of a story  with a reporter, seminar style.  Jack also disliked long stories, especially the narrative kind that were gaining favor throughout the industry, mammoth expositions that not only consumed entire inside pages, but whose writers sometimes took their sweet time in getting to the point.

  Jack was a hard news guy, devoted to breaking news stories that started out with scant facts early in the Bulletin’s news cycle and were developed steadily the rest of the morning and into the early afternoon, constantly being updated and rewritten,  edition by edition,  until they were as complete a masterpiece as possible by the final, premier City Edition. What especially moved him were stories with a political element – especially if they were discomfiting to a powerful, but sketchy office holder, who wouldn't want the City Edition version in his scrap book.
  Jack was fair – both as a journalist (a word he likely considered pompous) and as a  boss. But if he was a challenging editor, who demanded both excellence and loyalty, he returned the favor, not only as an editor, but as a friend.

  That friend part confounded those of us who were “Jack’s reporters” – a handful of general assignment/ “rewrite” staffers tied  to our  phones and typewriters, and later computers, to churn out stories on deadline.
    That's because - to use another cliché -  Mr. Tough Editor turned out to be a softie, an unusually warm friend. He not only fraternized with the troops, he verged on the sentimental (a line he would have excised from this  story).
   Below, I’ve included some personal recollections, followed by  a long excerpt about Jack  from a memoir by the late C. Fraser Smith, one of the Journal-Bulletin’s towering journalists and a Monaghan contemporary,  describing what it was like to work at outstanding newspapers like the Providence Journal and The Evening Bulletin in their heyday.
   Unfortunately for Jack, this makes for just the kind of long-winded pieces that he abhorred, but in this instance, is helpless to prevent.
Picture
 MY AWARD-WINNING SUIT
   When there were lots of thriving newspapers, the Associated Press and United Press International news services, plus various professional associations, gave out lots of prizes for best deadline story, best feature, best blurb written on a computer and so forth, and I happened to win one, which was to be handed out at  hotel dinner in  the near future.
   Jack decided that I needed a suit for the occasion. I’m not sure why, but it’s possible that it was because reporters were slouches when it came to clothes, and Jack did not want the Journal-Bulletin’s table to be embarrassed when I walked up to recieve my plaque and no money.
   So, one day after the City Edition was wrapped up, he walked me to a downtown clothing store, Briggs Limited, where he was on a first-name basis with the owner and instructed “Briggs” to work up a suitable suit for his young associate, wool, dark blue with faint pin pinstripes and a three-button vest. I, and certainly not the newspaper, had to pay for it. But I relished the outing – it felt like Jack was my own father, taking me to buy my first grownup outfit. It wasn’t my first suit, but it was the best one I ever owned, and I still wear it a half century later.
 
JACK & FRIENDS' CANOE TRIPS

Picture
  Jack loved the outdoors, and especially canoe trips that involved expeditions to northern-tier New England rivers and lakes. Every summer, he organized trips that included some of his former Brown University classmates, plus members of the newsroom staff. I’m not sure whether members of either group were as enthusiastic about these outings as Jack, and if they felt the outings were truly optional.
   Jack planned each one – where they would happen, and when, what equipment was needed and what meals would be served (Jack was an above average camp cook) and the logistics of how we would get to the put-in point – and, hopefully return.
   Some trips were more successful than others. It rained during the first one, soaking ill-prepared paddlers, some of whom suffered mild hypothermia. Jack made a command change of plans, in which we “camped” in a nearby motel and went home slightly ahead of schedule, the next day. On another occasion, gentle rapids swamped one or more of the canoes. Another trip felt like we were sleeping on rocks, which made sense, because our tents were pitched on a mini-range of lakeside boulders.
   Even as the current trip was ending, Jack was concocting the next one. He distributed group photos in the off-season so that the crews might remember the upsides of the trips and forget the rest.
   The fact is that canoeing with Jack really was a highlight of the summer, providng in the same sense of satisfaction you’d get after accomplishing something worthwhile, like  putting out an exceptional  edition of The Evening Bulletin.

WHAT DID JACK THINK OF “HIS” REPORTERS?
   Because Jack was objective to a fault, you could be on his team for years, but never sure where you ranked.
   For example, I was often slow in turning out feature stories, which the rewrite crew worked on after the City Edition’s deadline. My pace infuriated Jack, who wanted stories yesterday, to use another cliché. He once took a story away from me and gave it to another reporter to finish.
   And he couldn’t stand to see a reporter transcribing a tape-recorded interview. I was a prime offender, because I was a terrible note-taker with an even worse memory, but  obsessed with getting quotes exactly.
   Whereas, Jack, a Brown University classics major, who was  in “intelligence” during his Army service, was a brilliant guy who remembered everything.
   Jack also was possessed of  a  “what-have-you- got-for-me-today” attitude, which gave no credit for stories you thought were terrific, but that were yesterday’s news, no longer remembered either by readers or editors. So,  you were constantly on edge, working , but never confident, of meeting Jack’s demanding requirements.
   I got a hint of where I stood one day when, with some excitement, Jack told me that I was to write a small Page One blurb announcing that the Journal-Bulletin   was switching to an entirely  computerized system; this blurb, Jack said, was historic, because the tiny story was the first demonstration of how it actually was done.
   That Jack wanted me to write this blurb, on a computer, was a compliment.
   I think.
  JACK &  JOAN.  CHIP &  MARGO.   AND PHOEBE
Picture
JACK, with Margo and Bob Chiappinelli at their 50th wedding anniversary party last summer. Jack and his late wife, Joan, had brought them together.
Picture
    Jack adored his wife, Joan. His official obituary says that they were married for 53 years, and that they traveled widely.  Joan died in 2019. Her loss was deep, painful and obvious. Jack often spoke about her, never with tears, although you wouldn’t have minded if there were.
   One of the couple’s accomplishments was bringing together Bob and Margo Chiappinelli. “Chip,” whose byline was S. Robert Chiappinelli, was a top-tier feature writer and columnist, who disliked the negative, critical, gotcha character of most  news stories – the kind that Jack relished. Nevertheless, Chip’s talent wasn’t lost on his editor. Last year, Jack, not an eager public speaker, retold the story of the Chiappinelli's “arranged” marriage – by Jack and Joan – which he narrated  at their 50th wedding anniversary. He read from a script, which went on at considerable length, and which was expertly crafted.
   Jack was a big fan of Phoebe, our late Labrador-Husky mix, who was universally described as “sweet.” Jack made several trips from his home in Cumberland to visit us in Newport. I suspect that Phoebe justified  such a trip – an Odyssey in Rhode Island terms. 
   Phoebe was the central fixture in an anti-Trump blog that I wrote, with fresh photos of Phoebe included in each posting, along with “her”  alarmed observations  about the seditious president. Jack was a faithful reader, and he would generously flag grammatical and spelling errors. After Phoebe died, I converted the blog into personal column, minus the Phoebe photos. The editor’s corrections likewise went missing.

 FRASER SMITH ON JACK MONAGHAN

Picture
JACK MONAGHAN, center, with Ham Davis, left, and Fraser Smith, at the Geezers' luncheon where Fraser talked about his journalism memoir.
   C. Fraser Smith was one of the giants of a generation of Journal-Bulletin writers that included Jack Monaghan. He covered city politics and developed a poverty beat during the national war on poverty, and for a year, he moved his family in a troubled public high-rise housing complex, so readers could get a taste of what that was like. He went on to work at the Baltimore Sun, and later for an NPR station in Maryland, and wrote books.
   In 2019, he published a “The Daily Miracle – A Memoir of Newspapering.” The book includes a number of pages about Jack. Fraser  came to Rhode Island to promote the book, and visited the monthly luncheon of “The Geezers,” a gathering of ex-Journal people which, for this occasion, included Ham Davis, the onetime chief of the Journal-Bulletin’s Washington bureau, who’d come down from his home in Burlington, Vt.
Fraser died two years ago this month. Here’s what he wrote about Jack:
    We all worked for Jack Monaghan, who ran the Providence afternoon paper, The Evening Bulletin, He had the requisite edgy focus of an old schooler, augmented by the focus of the soccer goalie, which he had been for Brown University.
   Every morning he stalked the newsroom floor, foraging for stories.
   “We have a paper to get out. Maybe you remember.”
   Every reporter working that day took the question as if it  were directed at him or her (not so much). And it was.
   No, I would say, occasionally, lowering my head in the hope he would keep walking.
   “That a firm no?” he would ask. I said yes often enough (so that)  I could get away with a no. But we lived in a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately-world.
   On occasion, when the copy search failed, Jack's boss would suggest going back to our notes in search of something he referred to as “tight, light and bright” –  something cryptic. He meant concise, not mysterious. Duh.
  Jack stayed on us. He knew we would never have as long as we wanted to “work” a story. He knew we might have to file something that would have been better with more time. He knew this as well as we did, but the paper had to come out.
* * *
   His father had been an editor of the Pawtucket Times, a paper of 44,000 circulation, well below the Providence Journal's number, about 150,000 when I was there. Having heard his father talk of every imaginable newspaper issue and working there as a teenage copy kid, he had more knowledge of the job and the culture of newspapers than most of us, new or veteran. Jack was a representative of that group of newspaper people who give journalism, generation after generation of practitioners born to the job.    There was a kind of built-in replenishment.
 
* * *
   Monaghan liked the license, the entre reporters were granted. We could go in and talk to governors and mayors. It made you think you could do something useful, something important.
   He had an early taste of the political world as well. (Many, if not all editors, had been on the street. They covered the beats. The system thereby reinforced itself and provided a path upward if you wanted to go that way. It made newspapers one of those self-sufficient organizations. People learned the work and the ethical guidelines.  Where will all that school come from In the future?)
   On one election day as a “runner,” he ferried information, turn-out out estimates, voting machine problems, if any, from polling places to the (Pawtucket Times) city desk. In addition to the various candidate races that year, voters were being asked to approve changes to the city charter, the basic rules of running government. Democrats, who knew the existing rules by heart, opposed changes that would have removed their advantage, at least for a while.
   One of the polling places was across from the Democratic Party wardroom or headquarters on Pawtucket Ave. The party had managed to be located near what mattered most to them.
   After the polls closed, city police took the paper ballots to City Hall. But maybe not directly to City Hall, not on this night at least.
   Young Jack followed the cops …  and watched them walk to the Democratic wardroom, a blatant, outrageous hijacking. Through a window, he watched party men replace some of the ballots with new ones marked “no” on the charter question.
   The editor's son reported what he had seen. The stakes were high. The city's governing document might be affected. But what he saw could go no farther. He was just a high school kid. If you're going to report something seriously corrupt, your reporter had to be a reporter, a professional.
   As it turned out, the charter changes were approved. And the Democrats were spared embarrassment or worse.
   * * *
   After Brown, he worked seven years for his father's paper before getting hired by the Journal.
   He covered some of the early years of the War on Poverty aggressively enough to become a prime irritant to Sargent Shriver, a Kennedy family member and the program’s national director. Shriver tried to hire Monaghan – a compliment, to be sure. For Shriver, it may have been a two-fer. He'd get a good PR guy and he'd lose an annoying reporter who was asking the right questions. That sort of preemptive approach happened often as some reporters left for higher wages in private (and) public jobs.
   Jack declined. He had a young family and no interest in moving to Washington, DC.
   All the while, life in the Newsroom as in the rest of society was changing. The newspaper needed black reporters. So Monaghan and the Journal's only black reporter toured the country looking for good black reporters.
   “The Times was always there first, so the people we wanted, we couldn't get.” he said.
  * * *
   For me and others at the paper, Monaghan earned a career award during one of the newspaper’s days of ignominy. The paper decided to invest in a refurbishment of the city's premier hotel, the Biltmore, across the street from City Hall and down the shallow hill from the rail station.
   When the work was done, the editor sent out one of the papers columnists, Tony Lioce, to write a feature.
“Really nice,” Lioce wrote, “but bring your checkbook.”
   The managers of the newspaper were not amused. They ordered a punishment. Lioce would no longer have a column, and he was forthwith reassigned to the Newport Bureau. This was not the worst place in the world to work, but it was a clear demotion. In truth, it hurt the paper more than Lioce. His prose enlivened every offering, gave it reach beyond the straight-ahead newspaper style. (He was a bit closer to Hunter Thompson's model.)
   Pretty embarrassing – if publisher types could be embarrassed….
   Monaghan thought he was dealing with a columnist, a writer with a columnist’s license to write with flare. Apparently, they thought Lioce would know what they wanted or didn't want. Maybe he did.   
   But until then, he thought his newspaper wanted columnists to exercise their mandate. It was not the first time they had displayed their misunderstanding of their newspaper’s role.
   Jack defended the column, defended Lioce and upheld the newspaper’s professionalism. He found himself in a certain degree of bad odor with ownership for a time -   for doing his job. Not a happy story, but one that showed principle could survive, if not cleanly. Monaghan got “stand-up” cred. 

Picture
  At another point in the memoir, Fraser recounts the appearance in the newsroom of an organized crime enforcer named Dickie Callei, accompanied by his lawyer, a state legislator and  future chief justice of the  Rhode Island Supreme Court, Joseph A. Bevilacqua.
   Fraser gives two versions of what Callei wanted from the paper. Jack’s was that Callei was upset that the paper wasn’t using enough of his criminal record, which he wanted known so as to scare his targets. 

 He (Monaghan) called Bevilacqua to his desk.
“Get this thug out of here,” he told the lawmaker. They left. But    Callei came back that afternoon.
   “Now, I'm going to die,” Monaghan thought.
    Callie walked up to his desk. And apologized.
   “Sorry about this morning,” he said.
1 Comment

5/5/23

5/5/2023

1 Comment

 

THE SLAUGHTER ENDS WHEN N0-GUN WIMPS (LIKE ME) SAY: 'NO MORE!'

Picture
HOW DO WE STOP the gun madness?
   By saying “enough” to guns and the people who own them.
   We need to stop being so polite, so understanding, so deferential, so respectful of guns and people who are crazy about them.
   I’m talking not just about folks with AR-15s who need  them for their killing sprees at the mall, the synagogue, the Third Grade, the country music festival, the driveway, the home of a neighbor the gunman thinks is too noisy or the home of a neighbor who thinks the gunman is too noisy.
   I mean everybody who has a gun of any sort for any reason: a small caliber squirrel gun; a shotgun for duck-hunting; a scoped rifle to kill Bambi in the name of better forestry management; the family heirloom musket over the fireplace or the just-in-case Smith & Wesson on the bedside table.
   The killings will stop when the rest of us decide guns don’t belong in our homes.

I KNOW HOW RIDICULOUS this sounds.
   Absurd and impractical. I know that.
   There are too many guns and too many people who are devoted to guns to think they’ll simply go away – ever.
   Guns are too deeply woven into our lives and our culture to believe that attitudes will suddenly change. Then there’s that Constitutional “right” to kill 48,830 people a year.
   But change has happened to other things that kill us.
   I’m thinking cigarettes.
   At one time, smoking was a part of everyday life, and non-smokers were a huge part of the problem.
   Non-smokers in the bad old days were extraordinarily conciliatory to the cigarette crowd, so understanding of their addiction, so accommodating to their habits, so respectful of their “rights.”
   Hate the smoke; suffer the smokers.
   Even in non-smoking homes,  thoughtful hosts rushed for  ashtrays that were always at the ready in case a visitor asked "Okay if I light up?"
   No longer.
   Who wants a friend who's killing himself while putting your life in jeopardy?
    Today, the only smokers you see now are in black-and-white movies.
   Just 11 percent of adults smoke, the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention says, compared to 42 percent in the 1960s.
  
LET ME REPEAT: I understand what I’m saying is nuts.
    Worse, I have absolutely no idea what specific steps will finally put guns on America’s cultural trash heap – just that someday, that’s where guns will end up.
   It won’t happen overnight, and certainly not in my lifetime, although that's not saying much, since I’m 80.
   It won’t happen with a sudden attack on the people who own guns, or with a “Shame On U” bumper sticker or with a pithy personal insight: “You are a despicable child-murder-in-waiting, you creepy monster gun nut."
   Just as happened with cigarettes, guns will become so despised by so many people that almost anyone we know simply won’t want them.
    But first, we have to identify the culprits.


 I SUSPECT most of us feel that the problem with guns is the people who own guns. Which is true, sort of. But there's a problem, too, with the rest of us who have little or nothing to do with guns.
   We are the “Un-
Gunned.” And we're wimps, just like the Gunned people say we are.

   We are afraid of hurting the feelings of, and eventually becoming estranged from, the people who own guns.  Gun owners are our fathers, sisters, aunts, best friends, fellow gym rats, neighbors, worshipers in the next pew, electricians, uncles and our neurosurgeons.
   We think we should be inclusive – especially in a democracy.
   Big mistake.

   The other day, I was looking at the website of the Brady organization. That’s the outfit that works to stop gun violence and is named for the late Jim Brady, the press secretary who was severely wounded in 1981 when an assassin tried to kill President Ronald Reagan.
   Here's what the group has to say about gun owners:

   “Brady acknowledges the important role that responsible gun owners play in our communities. Gun owners are an essential part of preventing gun violence.”
   That sounds so reasonable, so inclusive, so insightful, so coalition-building.
   And it's so absolutely, completely and totally absurd.
   Can you imagine the American Lung Association posting something similar:
   “We acknowledge the important role that responsible smokers play in our communities. Smokers are an essential part of preventing cancer."

   There is no such thing as a responsible smoker.
   And no such thing as a responsible gun owner.
   Want to stop the killing? Get rid of the guns.
   How? Get gun owners to wish away their arsenals.
   We can’t take their guns away.
   But we can make owning a gun a terrible thing, a thing of shame, something that people just don't want to do.

LET US COUNT the obstacles.
    It’s a cliché to say there are more guns in the United States than people.
   A group called “American Gun Facts” puts the number of guns at 466 million; the population is 334 million.
   This means that if you placed an AR-15 in every baby's crib; put a shotgun in every student’s backpack; stocked every maximum security cell with a Beretta; and made sure that that every nursing home complied with Medicare’s “packing heat” requirements, there would still be plenty of guns.
   About 30 percent of U.S. adults owns at least one gun, according to the Pew Research Center; another 11 percent of people told Pew that while they don’t own a gun, someone else in their house does. About one-third of gun owners say they have at least least five.
   Why?
   For work.
   For collecting.
   For sport.
   For hunting.
   For protection, which is Reason Number One.
   I understand Reason Number One.
   I’m a scaredy cat.  I can imagine that if I was traumatized by crime, felt someone was out to get me or my family and knowing that the cops might not  be around when it counts, I’d be first in line at Don's Good Guys' Guns Ammo and Camo Last Stop.
   All of us are so stupid about guns.

BUT WE DON'T have to be stupid forever.
   Take drunk driving.
   When I was growing up, drunk driving was celebrated; it was the subject of epic tales of wild rides on hairpin mountain roads, unimaginable close-calls with the cops, near collisions with un-drunk drivers, heroic Odysseys  limited only by the raconteurs' impaired recall.
   Eventually, dead people’s mothers got MADD; and now drunk driving is not just against the law, it’s a cultural sin.
   I mean people still do it; but no one defends drunk drivers unless they are paid to, and no one
is proposing a
Constitutional right to drive drunk.

ONE DAY, having a gun in the house will be considered just as dangerous as having a pack of cigarettes on the kitchen counter or an empty six-pack in the front seat.
     Someday, lock-down drills to survive school shootings will be ancient history, just like  duck-and-cover drills to survive nuclear war.
   Someday it will be safer to go to school, go shopping,  turn into the wrong driveway, ring the wrong doorbell,  have an argument with your spouse or to ask a neighbor to lower the noise so the baby can sleep.
   Someday, enough Americans will get angry enough about guns.
   "Seriously. You own a gun?"
1 Comment
    BRIAN C. JONES
    Picture
      I'VE BEEN a reporter and writer for 60 years, long  enough to have  learned that journalists don't know very much, although I've met some smart ones. 
      Mainly, what reporters know comes from asking other people questions and fretting about their answers.
       This blog is a successor to one inspired by our dog, Phoebe, who was smart, sweet and the antithesis of Donald Trump. She died Feb. 3, 2022, and I don't see getting over that very soon.
       Occasionally, I think about trying  to reach her via cell phone.


     

    June 2025
    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • Blog