Penny Hope, a ‘humanist,’ who opened the door to women at Billy Goode’s bar
FORTY-NINE YEARS AGO, Penny Hope stepped into a legendary Newport, R.I. tavern, just momentarily, to escape the summer heat. Instead, she found herself in the middle of a national storm about – among other things – where a girl could get a drink. The tavern's root went back to Prohibition, as a speakeasy mischievously called “The Mission.” After repeal, it was renamed for its owner, William J. Goode, who ran the establishment into his 90’s, a sanctuary for all ranks of drinking men – military men, working men, business men – the operative word being men. When the whirlwind subsided, Goode was forced to renege on his vow that if he were ever forced to admit the likes of a Penny Hope, he’d tear off the door to the restroom. (Instead, he reportedly ordered a lower portion of the door sawed off). Penny described herself as an accidental – but not reluctant – player in the crusade to advance women’s rights at Billy Goode’s and beyond. She was distressed by how she and other women were treated during the controversy – as sex objects, as commodities. But she was also perplexed. She’d lived in New York City and doubted that even the proprietors of a men's-only Big Apple bar would have put a woman out on the streets for little or no reason on a hot summer day: “It just wasn’t the kind of manners I was used to. I wasn’t as horrified as I was puzzled.” THE INCIDENT BEGAN Aug. 15, 1974, when Penny, who was 32 and known as Penny Goff, planned a night out with her friend, Richard Donelly, a 27-year-old plumber. First, Richard wanted to stop by Billy Goode’s to pick up his paycheck. Every Thursday, a truck from the plumbing company he worked for would drop off workers’ checks at the tavern. Billy Goode himself, seated at a corner table, cashed the checks, dispensing bills from a cardboard box. In return, the workers usually moved to the bar, where they left a fraction of their weekly earnings. “She stood in the doorway; not even coming in,” Richard recalled in a 2012 interview. He told the bartender, Edward J. Sharkey, Goode’s nephew and the tavern’s manager, he was there for his check. Richard liked Sharkey, a “good guy,” who would run a tab for patrons short on cash. Then Sharkey spotted Penny: “She’s got to get out of here. She can’t come in here. She has to leave.” Penny remembered Sharkey’s instructions as more thunderous. “I believe it was August – and hot, which is why I came in,” she said. “I don’t even think there was air conditioning, but there were fans. It was shady and cool, so I came inside the door.” She didn’t know Ed Sharkey or his uncle. “Whoever it was, he pitched a fit. Screaming. I thought that maybe there was a fight. I could not imagine what they were screaming about. But they were screaming because I had set foot in the place.” Richard and Penny left. But after they had gone about 50 feet, the plumber had second thoughts. “Hey, wait a minute,” Richard said to Penny. “He doesn’t have any right to say you can’t. You want to go have a beer or something at Billy Goode’s? Okay, alright, alright. Let’s go. Let’s go cause some trouble.” So, they went back in, and Sharkey would not serve them. A week later, they made a repeat visit, this time with Bruce Sherman in tow, a Newport Daily News reporter. Sherman interviewed people at the bar, including a father of four: “I still think a working man should have a place where he can come after the work day and express himself forcefully in the same way he does on the job," the guy told Sherman. "We're not in the beauty parlor… This is my hangout. If I want to go out with the family, I go someplace else.” After the Daily News article came out, the incident became fodder for a talk show on the local radio station, WADK. Penny was home, painting a wall or washing floors, and was “horrified” by what was being said on the radio. “I heard women being called things: homewreckers, sluts and whores.” Richard Donelly, driving on Broadway in his truck, also was listening. “People would call up and say things like: ‘This woman has kids. I know who she is. She has three kids, and what is she doing, hanging around a bar all day?’” Donelly said. Then the show’s host announced: “Well, we have Penny Goff on the phone right now, and she wants to give her side of the story.” Penny told the listeners that she and Richard had no intention of drinking at the tavern that day, and from her point of view, that would not have been their choice of a place to drink: “I would never drink in Billy Goode’s. But it’s my choice. Not theirs.” ALMOST FORTY YEARS LATER, Penelope Lee Hope was back at Billy Goode’s Tavern, now under the stewardship of Kevan Campbell, who ran it as the last of Newport’s authentic taverns, common ground for politicians, artists, Navy officers, writers and a variety of musicians, who performed at its intimate concert space. Hope was being interviewed for a magazine story about Billy Goode’s, and she had chosen the tavern as the place to talk, relishing the irony of being back at a place that once, but no longer, was so hostile to her and other women. Still, she was nervous. She sat facing away from the bar, so the conversation could not be overheard by other patrons. The sting of the long-ago controversy remained acute. “It’s a good story and I’d like to do it freely," she said. "But I really want to be careful about not embarrassing anybody and not embarrassing myself.” The challenges to Billy Goode’s men-only rule continued. The local president of the National Organization of Women (NOW), called Penny: “Listen, some of the girls and I are going down to Billy Goode’s for a beer. Would you like to come?” When she arrived, NOW members were drinking beer at the bar. But someone running the place recognized her: “I must have been here for altogether six or seven minutes, and they closed the bar rather than serve me.” (The bartender later maintained it was closing time). Other forces were at work. In Providence, U.S. District Court Judge Raymond J. Pettine had ruled in a suit brought by women against a men's-only bar in the capital city, setting the stage for women’s inclusion elsewhere in Rhode Island. Penny Hope went onto a varied career as a writer, teacher and actor. Richard Donelly split his time as a plumber and, increasingly, as an actor with Rhode Island’s premier theater groups, including the Gamm Theatre and Trinity Repertory Company, as well as film and TV productions. Billy Goode’s went out of business in 2013. Hope’s commitment to women’s rights was fierce but nuanced. She earned a doctorate at the University of Rhode Island, with her thesis examining the influence of Biblical era patriarchy in 18th Century novels. “I’m not a feminist. I’m a humanist,” she told her interviewer. “How do I feel? That’s how feel. I feel like a humanist.” “I think it sorted out right, you know,” she said of the Billy Goode’s episode, because the patriarchy that excluded women gave way to the inclusionary forces of democracy. “I have a vision that patriarchy cannot co-exist with democracy,” Hope said. “Neither can feminism and democracy co-exist.”
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AS THE CASE AGAINST ‘THE DEFENDANT’ UNFOLDS, LET’S KEEP JOE BIDEN IN MIND. |
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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.
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. |
THE SLAUGHTER ENDS WHEN N0-GUN WIMPS (LIKE ME) SAY: 'NO MORE!'
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?"
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?"
WILL JOE BIDEN'S BIG ANNOUNCEMENT
BE THE SPEECH OF MY DREAMS?
JOE BIDEN'S BIG ANNOUNCEMENT about his future - and ours - is supposed to be Tuesday.
Because I’m a big fan of the president, here’s what I’m looking for:
Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. will do something extraordinarily presidential: he’ll say that he’s not going to run for a second term.
“I’m too old,” Biden will tell the country.
“Right now, I’m doing great,” the president will say.
“But, folks, let’s face facts. I’m 80. And just like my dad used to say: ‘Joey ….’ “Actually, I don’t think either my Dad or my Mom had much to say about what happens when you get really old.”
I'm guessing that Biden didn’t get much guidance because getting old is the last thing anyone wants to think about, much less talk about or do anything about. Getting old is a wretched subject, and so is its nasty corollary, death.
People put off writing their wills, saving for retirement or writing down what the want, or don't want done, to them if they get desperately sick.
It makes sense. The purpose of life is life. The whole idea, Job One, is to stay alive.
And for those of us lucky enough to have had terrific and long lives, living as we've known it is not about giving up.
Since I’m Biden’s age , this is one subject on which I actually know what I’m talking about.
Now, let's see ... where we?
Oh, yes, Joe Biden's big video.
Because I’m a big fan of the president, here’s what I’m looking for:
Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. will do something extraordinarily presidential: he’ll say that he’s not going to run for a second term.
“I’m too old,” Biden will tell the country.
“Right now, I’m doing great,” the president will say.
“But, folks, let’s face facts. I’m 80. And just like my dad used to say: ‘Joey ….’ “Actually, I don’t think either my Dad or my Mom had much to say about what happens when you get really old.”
I'm guessing that Biden didn’t get much guidance because getting old is the last thing anyone wants to think about, much less talk about or do anything about. Getting old is a wretched subject, and so is its nasty corollary, death.
People put off writing their wills, saving for retirement or writing down what the want, or don't want done, to them if they get desperately sick.
It makes sense. The purpose of life is life. The whole idea, Job One, is to stay alive.
And for those of us lucky enough to have had terrific and long lives, living as we've known it is not about giving up.
Since I’m Biden’s age , this is one subject on which I actually know what I’m talking about.
Now, let's see ... where we?
Oh, yes, Joe Biden's big video.
FOR STARTERS, when you're 80 and relatively healthy, you don’t think you really are 80.
Your brain thinks you can still do all of the things that you used to do. You can move furniture. Stay up late. Go for a run. Dash up and down the stairs. Get out of bed early. Pay attention. Drive eight hours without a break. Twirl. Skip. Hop. Remember things - don’t ask what things - just things.
And you realize how much you love all that you do. Why would you want to give up driving? Holding your great granddaughter? Why stop working, running, walking, kayaking across the bay, baking carbohydrate-rich desserts, sawing down a 50-year-old tree, sitting in the living room with your wife watching bottom-ranked Southampton hold top-ranked Arsenal to a 3-3 tie?
Now, imagine that you are Joe Biden, and you are President of the United States, the commander-in-chief, the Boss.
You live rent free in a relatively big mansion that comes with a huge workforce that’s really good at what they do: all the vacuuming, cooking, mowing the grass, driving the car, parking the car, getting people on the phone for you, playing music just because you walk into a room, flying you around in one of the world’s biggest, best airplanes. And all you have to do for that is practically nothing.
WELL, NOT NOTHING. Just on your say so, you decide whether people can have enough to eat, have a home, breathe fresh air, pay for college, walk into a doctor’s office. And you have at least some say on whether the oceans rise or fall, and whether the planet does its Biblical fire and brimstone thing.
And there’s more; If you can remember the “codes,” you can blow another country to smithereens. You decide whether one country can fight off the invaders, and another can't. You decide who crosses the border, whether some sacred mountain should be a park and whether the Department of Justice lives up to its name.
You’d have to be crazy to give all that up - or a patriot .
PLUS, IF YOU ARE JOE BIDEN, you have a burden that no other one-term president in history has had to consider: Donald John Trump.
Even though he is a treasonous, seditious psychopath, a cheat, a bully, a pants-on-fire liar, a racist, an accused rapist and a misogynist – Donald Trump is, at this moment the likely Republican candidate in 2024, which makes it conceivable, even though it’s absolutely inconceivable , that he could be the next president of the United States. He did it once and could again.
So, the logical thing that the 80-year-old brain wants to do – and it’s not crazy, far-fetched or selfish – is to say on Tuesday: "My Fellow Americans, the future of the United States of America rests on my shoulders. These shoulders, Mr. and Mrs. America, may be weak and feeble – and they are: the joints may need to go to the machine shop every so often; there's a little sag I wish wasn't there. But the sad fact is that my shoulders are the only shoulders available."
BUT IN MY DREAM, Biden says this:
“Folks, let’s be honest: the idea that I, Joe Biden, and only I, Joe Biden, can save the country, that’s a bunch of malarkey.
"If the future of the greatest democracy in the history depends on one 80-year-old man who needs to speak to you via a video, so he can get through his speech without his flunkies having to spend the next 24 hours cleaning up after him, clarifying, explaining, denying he said what he actually said, then we don’t have much of a a democracy.
“I know I beat Donald Trump the last time,” Biden could say.
“But that was the last time. Maybe I could do it again; maybe I couldn’t. I’m not doing great in the opinion polls. Beats me why not. I RESCUED the freaking Soul of America, and I’ve done a knockout job putting the country back on its feet, getting the government functioning on some sort of sane, normal level, and I've been doing amazing things, like reshaping the entire automobile industry so that sometime, a lot of us could be driving electric cars.
“And let’s say that I do win. I’ll be second guessed every minute of every day for the next four years, at the end of which, God willing, I'll be 86 years old. Every word I say, every move I make, every breath I take will be viewed by just one standard: Is Joey too old? If I garble my lines, dribble my oatmeal, stumble getting on or off Air Force One, if I have one Bad Day – And isn’t it the God-given right of every American to have at least one Bad Day? – will you be asking, just like my Dad used to put it: ‘Joey, are you getting soft upstairs?’ “
“No thanks. I’m not going to put you, the country, through that. Come noon, Jan. 20, 2025, I’m outta here. And if I can pass my diver’s license in the state of Delaware, there’s a '67 Corvette Stingray waiting for me in a garage, buried under some boxes marked Top Secret.”
Your brain thinks you can still do all of the things that you used to do. You can move furniture. Stay up late. Go for a run. Dash up and down the stairs. Get out of bed early. Pay attention. Drive eight hours without a break. Twirl. Skip. Hop. Remember things - don’t ask what things - just things.
And you realize how much you love all that you do. Why would you want to give up driving? Holding your great granddaughter? Why stop working, running, walking, kayaking across the bay, baking carbohydrate-rich desserts, sawing down a 50-year-old tree, sitting in the living room with your wife watching bottom-ranked Southampton hold top-ranked Arsenal to a 3-3 tie?
Now, imagine that you are Joe Biden, and you are President of the United States, the commander-in-chief, the Boss.
You live rent free in a relatively big mansion that comes with a huge workforce that’s really good at what they do: all the vacuuming, cooking, mowing the grass, driving the car, parking the car, getting people on the phone for you, playing music just because you walk into a room, flying you around in one of the world’s biggest, best airplanes. And all you have to do for that is practically nothing.
WELL, NOT NOTHING. Just on your say so, you decide whether people can have enough to eat, have a home, breathe fresh air, pay for college, walk into a doctor’s office. And you have at least some say on whether the oceans rise or fall, and whether the planet does its Biblical fire and brimstone thing.
And there’s more; If you can remember the “codes,” you can blow another country to smithereens. You decide whether one country can fight off the invaders, and another can't. You decide who crosses the border, whether some sacred mountain should be a park and whether the Department of Justice lives up to its name.
You’d have to be crazy to give all that up - or a patriot .
PLUS, IF YOU ARE JOE BIDEN, you have a burden that no other one-term president in history has had to consider: Donald John Trump.
Even though he is a treasonous, seditious psychopath, a cheat, a bully, a pants-on-fire liar, a racist, an accused rapist and a misogynist – Donald Trump is, at this moment the likely Republican candidate in 2024, which makes it conceivable, even though it’s absolutely inconceivable , that he could be the next president of the United States. He did it once and could again.
So, the logical thing that the 80-year-old brain wants to do – and it’s not crazy, far-fetched or selfish – is to say on Tuesday: "My Fellow Americans, the future of the United States of America rests on my shoulders. These shoulders, Mr. and Mrs. America, may be weak and feeble – and they are: the joints may need to go to the machine shop every so often; there's a little sag I wish wasn't there. But the sad fact is that my shoulders are the only shoulders available."
BUT IN MY DREAM, Biden says this:
“Folks, let’s be honest: the idea that I, Joe Biden, and only I, Joe Biden, can save the country, that’s a bunch of malarkey.
"If the future of the greatest democracy in the history depends on one 80-year-old man who needs to speak to you via a video, so he can get through his speech without his flunkies having to spend the next 24 hours cleaning up after him, clarifying, explaining, denying he said what he actually said, then we don’t have much of a a democracy.
“I know I beat Donald Trump the last time,” Biden could say.
“But that was the last time. Maybe I could do it again; maybe I couldn’t. I’m not doing great in the opinion polls. Beats me why not. I RESCUED the freaking Soul of America, and I’ve done a knockout job putting the country back on its feet, getting the government functioning on some sort of sane, normal level, and I've been doing amazing things, like reshaping the entire automobile industry so that sometime, a lot of us could be driving electric cars.
“And let’s say that I do win. I’ll be second guessed every minute of every day for the next four years, at the end of which, God willing, I'll be 86 years old. Every word I say, every move I make, every breath I take will be viewed by just one standard: Is Joey too old? If I garble my lines, dribble my oatmeal, stumble getting on or off Air Force One, if I have one Bad Day – And isn’t it the God-given right of every American to have at least one Bad Day? – will you be asking, just like my Dad used to put it: ‘Joey, are you getting soft upstairs?’ “
“No thanks. I’m not going to put you, the country, through that. Come noon, Jan. 20, 2025, I’m outta here. And if I can pass my diver’s license in the state of Delaware, there’s a '67 Corvette Stingray waiting for me in a garage, buried under some boxes marked Top Secret.”
"LISTEN, FOLKS, I love being president. I think – I know – that I’ve done a great job. But I don’t want the country to be at risk because I refuse, just like lots of my fellow Americans, to face facts. And one of those facts is, as my dad used to say: ‘Joey, none of us gets out of here alive.”
In the video, and spelled out in my dreams in a lengthy, historic essay that takes up both pages of the New York Times editorial section, Biden explains why a second term would be too risky and just plain wrong for democracy.
“Let me be straight with you – and don’t misinterpret my use of that word, because I believe in gay rights; one of my top cabinet secretaries happens to be what my Dad used call – well, skip that – and he would make a crackerjack candidate to say nothing of a president – do you want someone running the country who’s just been rushed to Walter Reed Hospital for who knows what?
"Do you want somebody as president whom you suspect should be tested for dementia; who’s just tripped on the Oval Office rug; or who one day when the sun is shining, the grass is green, Southwest's jets are on time and everything seems to be hunky-dory, simply drops dead?”
“Then fine. Take your chances; spin the wheel; flip a coin. Lots of people do just perfectly well in their 80s. Not everyone falls at a hotel like Mitch McConnell,81, and disappears from the U.S. Senate for weeks; or are like Dianne Feinstein, 89, who gets shingles and disappears from the Senate Judiciary Committee for god knows how long.
"But if you care about your country, why take extra and unnecessary chances? So, I’ll be the best president I can be for the next one-and-a-half years – I think that’s how long I’ve got (I should have had somebody look that up.)
“The rest is up to you. Pick the best man or woman you can find – he or she MUST be a Democrat, because the Republicans are deranged - no exaggeration. And let’s say the GOP candidate is one Donald John Trump, because if I could beat him, and I did, any decent Democrat can do the same.
“I hope.”
In the video, and spelled out in my dreams in a lengthy, historic essay that takes up both pages of the New York Times editorial section, Biden explains why a second term would be too risky and just plain wrong for democracy.
“Let me be straight with you – and don’t misinterpret my use of that word, because I believe in gay rights; one of my top cabinet secretaries happens to be what my Dad used call – well, skip that – and he would make a crackerjack candidate to say nothing of a president – do you want someone running the country who’s just been rushed to Walter Reed Hospital for who knows what?
"Do you want somebody as president whom you suspect should be tested for dementia; who’s just tripped on the Oval Office rug; or who one day when the sun is shining, the grass is green, Southwest's jets are on time and everything seems to be hunky-dory, simply drops dead?”
“Then fine. Take your chances; spin the wheel; flip a coin. Lots of people do just perfectly well in their 80s. Not everyone falls at a hotel like Mitch McConnell,81, and disappears from the U.S. Senate for weeks; or are like Dianne Feinstein, 89, who gets shingles and disappears from the Senate Judiciary Committee for god knows how long.
"But if you care about your country, why take extra and unnecessary chances? So, I’ll be the best president I can be for the next one-and-a-half years – I think that’s how long I’ve got (I should have had somebody look that up.)
“The rest is up to you. Pick the best man or woman you can find – he or she MUST be a Democrat, because the Republicans are deranged - no exaggeration. And let’s say the GOP candidate is one Donald John Trump, because if I could beat him, and I did, any decent Democrat can do the same.
“I hope.”
BRIAN C. JONES
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 the 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, and I don't see getting over that very soon.
Occasionally, I may try to reach her via cell phone.
Mainly, what reporters know comes from asking other people questions and fretting about the 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, and I don't see getting over that very soon.
Occasionally, I may try to reach her via cell phone.
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