To This Partisan Irish Catholic, More Change We Can Believe In (Mary Lyon)

[Tace]

Mary Lyon, From The Left -- World News Trust

Aug. 30, 2009 -- Watching the pageantry accompanying the passing of Senator Ted Kennedy was striking, touching something way deeper in my heart than I expected.

Okay, full disclosure here -- Irish Catholic, went to the schools, went to Mass, did the Missal thing, the Confession thing, the Rosary thing, learned the prayers and the hymns and when you stood up and when you sat down and when you genuflected. All my male Irish Catholic elders wound up looking pouchy and potato-like, with thick, full heads of white hair just like Teddy's. Their wakes were perhaps a little rowdier than his. I could identify with this. Even when my father veered off into Reaganism, it wasn't all "IGMFU" (I Got Mine and the other two initials tell you the rest). He still carried that same deep sense of obligation to remember where you came from, look after those less fortunate, and to stand up to racism and discrimination.

For several days now, I've been trying to put my finger on exactly what it is that has moved me so deeply about the end of this era in American politics and history. I never met Senator Kennedy. In my days as a reporter, I interviewed several of the members of the next generation of his illustrious family, but never anyone at his level. I was a little girl when I witnessed another even littler girl and her still littler brother frolic in that big mansion where the President lives. It was the first time I could even minimally identify with anything about Washington DC realities, long before I understood much about politics or any of its major national players. Everything before Ted's brother John and his family ascended was vaguely about the stewardship of benign elderly grandparents - never about anyone who reminded me of my parents or myself. Maybe that was it. The Kennedy family was loaded with vibrant young-ish adults who kind of looked like my mom and dad, and lots of kids only a little younger than I was. Something to latch onto.

As I grew, learned, observed conditions in my country that I did not like, and searched for ways to change and improve those conditions, I came to appreciate the mission of the Kennedy family. I learned that matriarch Rose Kennedy infused her babies' bottles with the moral nutritional supplement summed up by -- "of those to whom much is given, much is expected." Translated to my own children's baby food decades later, that would become "much blessed, much obligated." No matter how many or how few words, the idea behind such slogans was always the same. You gave back. You helped someone who couldn't help themselves. If you had more, you thus had more to share. If you were positioned such that you could afford to offer assistance, then you were morally bound to do so. Raised in Catholic schools, we studied The Beatitudes and the mission of Christ on earth. Nowhere did The Savior ever measure your worth based on your politics or your wealth or position or connections or your race, age, nationality, fitness, sexuality, religion or lack thereof. When a poor person asked Him for help, He never sneered back to stop mooching off the system and go get a job, and there was never a litmus test applied to gauge the merit of the querant. It always seemed to me that He meant for us to follow that example. Something else for which I came to appreciate the Kennedys.

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http://worldnewstrust.com/commentary/3620-to-this-partisan-irish-catholic-more-change-we-can-believe-in-mary-lyon

[Me.]

1. K & R For Calimary

[Tace]

2. Hail Mary!

: )

[calimary]

5. Still doing that Catholic thang...

Bless you my son!

:headbang:

[calimary]

4. Thanks!

:hi:

[babylonsister]

3. Rec'd! Very lovely, and you have

a more forgiving heart than I do. But I loved this. Thanks.

[calimary]

6. It just really hit me. I'll never regard Orrin Hatch the same way again.

He ceased being a prissy, judgmental gargoyle of 13th-century thinking, and turned into a genuine human being for me. Pretty good magic this Kennedy guy had, 'eh? He could weave straw into gold.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

7. Then he'll vote against the public option,

make a statement about how single payer will never work in this country, and you'll remember why you so justifiably despised him in the first place.

Ted Kennedy's friends weren't necessarily good people..........................

[calimary]

8. Well, I thought it was best to be diplomatic. Especially about john mccain - who

breezed by Vicki Kennedy last night at the wake without even stopping when she approached to hug him.

But it just didn't seem - well - uh - seemly, I guess.

Still, I find myself hoping that somebody in that God-forsaken snake-hearted party will soften even just the slightest bit - and do it for Teddy. There's GOT to be a human being in there somewhere.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

9. Once, there was -

Nelson Rockefeller, who even DIED like a Democrat.



But, of course, he also was the force behind those Draconian drug laws in NY state.

Still, he had a certain liberal quality to him that I fancied, and Nixon hated him, so I fancied him even more.

But, since then, naw, not one.

What McPOW did to Vicki Kennedy last night - I had to come here to make sure I'd really seen what I thought I saw - was inexcusable. People have tried to advance all kinds of reasons, excuses, why he did that, but my sense is that he's enough of an old pro to do the right thing, and what he did was completely and utterly inexcusable. I don't care if you're wetting your pants, or if you're so broken up, or anything like that, you stop and pay your respects to the grieving widow.

She matters more than you do, Senator McPow.

Shameful.

Sorry, I wandered.

No, there are none. A long time ago, before Reagan, there were Republicans with whom Democrats could work, make deals, pass meaningful legislation.

Those days are gone forever, alas.......................................

[Avalux]

10. You summed up my emotions over the past few days perfectly.

I was also raised in an Irish Catholic family and related to the Kennedy family in much the same way you do. I've never been so affected by the death of someone I did not know personally.

As I watched Orrin Hatch at the memorial, a funny thing happened to me - I didn't hate him any more. I felt sorry for him, shared his pain over the loss of his friend. Maybe Teddy's death will make everyone stop and think before demonizing; maybe it will bring both sides of the political aisle together to finish what Teddy spent his life working towards. I pray it does.

[calimary]

11. Wouldn't that be fantastic? Probably too much to hope for, but out of consideration

and respect for Ted Kennedy, I'm gonna let myself hope for exactly that. All we need is just one or two or maybe three. To show us they actually have warm human hearts instead of cold hard stones in their chests.

[bleever]

12. For the best of him to leaven the best of us

is a poetic blessing I believe he'd appreciate.

:thumbsup:

[WillyT]

13. Hey Mary... What Do You Think happened ???

Great article BTW, I felt the same thing.

But what I mean is... how did we get to this polarizing enmity in our national politics and discourse?

You heard the stories they told of Teddy and how even his most ardent opponents came to love and admire him. And I do believe there used to be a hell of a lot more of that in the past. I remember even Ex-Senator Alan Simpson (R-WY) bemoaning the fact that congress critters didn't develop friendships like they used to in Washington. No getting together for drinks anymore, no golfing or camping trips either. And I'm talking about both within the same party, but particularly between parties.

My old man, a Marine Bomber (B-25) pilot in WWII, was before and after that (plus Korea) a journalist. He wrote for a Chicago paper as a police reporter, then for the San Diego Union, the Copley News Service, Cox... and eventually was part of the California Highway Commission which built our state's freeway system. He knew, at least in the cosmos of California, all sorts of politicians, lobbyists, and movers and shakers. Hell, he'd hold cocktail parties, and I as a young tyke would spend my time stealing the onions out of the martinis of state senators and assemblymen.

Hell, when Reagan was running for re-election for governor of California, he invited the journalists covering the capitol, and their families, to the mansion for a huge BBQ complete with a cowboy on a horse doing rope tricks and such. Me and Skipper, now known as Ron Reagan, were the terrors of the dunk tank that day. And everybody, young old Republican or Democrat had a great time. My dad would not allow me to wear my Jesse Unruh button to the party, but he did get a kick out of the attempt.

My point is, from what I saw in the late sixties and into the seventies, from my youngish viewpoint, was that these guys, and they were almost always guys, seemed to actually get along no matter their party. They may have vociferously disagreed, defended their positions, their donors and their constituents, but they always seemed to like and respect each other at the end of the day.

And I sometimes wonder if some of this was the generation that survived WWII, and the fact that they had survived it. I mean they all knew guys that didn't come back from the war, and many that came back in pieces, both physically and or mentally. And I tend to think that with the support of the GI Bill and society in general, they took their good fortune at surviving and ran with it.

Hell, they basically built the middle-class and modern society as we know it. And they also seemed to respect and know each other in a sense, apparently. I was surprised to find out, my old man knew Pierre Salinger, and the author of 'In Harms Way', even getting drunk and hitting a bridge abutment trying to take his buddy Joe Rosenthal (Iwo Jima picture\memorial fame) from San Francisco to the state fair in Sacramento. Mom had to go rescue them.

I'm probably rambling here, but I think that the shared experience of WWII, and the surviving of it, combined with an entire society backing their second chance at life, may have been something profound as to why even though politically from opposite sides of the aisle, they could respect each other. They fought hard, they worked hard, and they played hard, and left a better America for us all. And although everything wasn't perfect back then, or even totally fair, they seemed to get things done, and America seemed a little more... I don't know... American back then???

Watching the Kennedy services and funeral this week reminded me of those times. It reminded me that there were, and still are, honorable men and women that want to do what's right for this country. But it was people like Teddy, and others now gone from Washington, and my dad, now gone since 1975, and his fellow compatriots, that knew how to derive joy out of the thing. That could share a heartfelt laugh, or give honest human support to the guys and the gals on the "other" side.

God I hope that we haven't lost that with the passing of Teddy.

Anywho... great article, and thanks for listening.

WillyT

:hi:

[calimary]

14. Wow - thanks for that comment - you have a really good point to make.

I think that whole "survived World War 2" theory makes a lot of sense. This last few days has made me think about generational shifts. This is a big one, at least for me. I think I tried, feebly, to point that out in my essay. This brackets my life, this passing of Ted Kennedy. It's not just the people of Massachusetts who, after almost 50 years, no longer have a Kennedy representing them in the Senate. Almost 50 years! That's significant if only numerically! Extra mindboggling when I further ponder the fact that I myself have been alive more than 50 years. That's a lot of years. People who have lived that long are ... (yikes) old... Or older.

Did you look at those photos of the three Kennedy brothers, especially as you first remember them in their prime as you yourself were coming of age or becoming aware of the world beyond the tip of your own nose? How Ted advanced in years and wound up the lovingly rumpled old gent with the pouchy face and the full head of snow white hair. He used to be the YOUNGEST! And I remember identifying with him as such. I remember when I was young and dewy looking with taut, firm skin and long dark hair. My hair has long since done what Ted Kennedy's hair and my Irish Catholic dad's hair did - stay long and thick and full but blanche naturally platinum.

My parents are gone now. That whole generation is fading into history. The last of "The Kennedy Brothers" is now gone. It's a generational shift. Ted was the one who aged to grandfather status. And so did we. There was a quote referenced by Keith Olbermann, I think, during the coverage after Friday evening's wake at the JFK Library. Something said after President Kennedy was killed and how that changed America, to the effect of "we'll be okay, but we'll never be young again." It was a JFK contemporary - his and our parents' generation - saying that. Now WE are the ones saying that - with everything that OUR generation went through and survived. They survived the Second World War. We survived other things. In our case now, too, that chapter is now ended.

Sure has made for a lot of thinking and reflection, hasn't it? That, in and of itself, may be a great blessing.

on edit -

I didn't address your question - "what do you think happened?" Shit, I don't know what happened. Well, I think I do in one of my more insufferable blowhard moments. I guess maybe it boils down to anger and fear and resentment and reluctance to accept and flow with REAL change, such deep down - to the bone marrow - change that it's too terrifying to contemplate. Accepting some really jolting things like - America may indeed be in decline. We may never again have it as good as we had it (or thought we had it in our once-upon-a-time Ozzie & Harriet perception). Our position of world dominance may be teetering. Hey - ALL empires wax and wane like the moon does. Name me an empire through history that was world-dominant and stayed that way. There aren't any. Used to be the sun never set on the British Empire. The Third Reich was supposed to have a thousand-year shelf life. Alexander the Great actually did conquer most of the known world. Egypt and Greece and Rome each in turn had their centuries of supremacy. So did the USSR. Communism rose and fell. Will Capitalism eventually do the same - go the way of all flesh? Prove to be essentially utopian and unworkable in the long run?

Will people come to realize and accept that, or will they continue to dig in their heels and resist the natural erosion?

And what of this country - now in utter upheaval within some small fearful quarters, who cry out at town meetings that they want "their America" back. These are inevitably middle-aged and older white people paralyzed with fear that those who aren't like them are outnumbering them and taking over. A different kind of shift. Maybe the word is societal? You fear what you don't understand. They don't understand that all those people who look and sound different from them are starting to crowd them and they don't like having to make room when it used to be that they just didn't have to.

I think that's the essence of it. Fear of change. Fear of evolving life and reality and culture and society and population makeup and technological overkill. Fear of having to face problems so damned mindboggling as to throw you into stone cold shutdown with a big electric "TILT" sign blinking across your forehead. Fear and anger and intimidation and an inability to deal with change and accept it and adapt to it and own it. Which we as mature, reasoning humans are supposed to do. Small but significant segments of the population chooses not to face the changing reality with the times. It's just hard to understand and be okay with what you've always been used to - being shaken up, and sometimes shaken to the core.

I wrote a column a year or two ago that I called "The Meaning of America," and it was basically about how mean so many of us are becoming. During the republi-CON Convention, after sarah palin night, I wrote one called "Republicans are Mean" based on the many genuinely mean-spirited, snarky, smart-ass, insulting things she said in her speech. We ARE becoming meaner as Americans. The public discourse has grown harsher, angrier, more shrill, more mean, more willing, even eager, to hit as far below the belt as possible. I'm surprised people aren't actually coming to blows on some of the TV and cable shows. And I think it has to do with the verbal poison unleashed to the suppressed, fearful, and angry fringes ready to grab their guns to settle things or just make themselves feel superior by the likes of limbaugh, beck, that-guy-whose-name-rhymes-with-Vanity, and more. They give public voice and thus a kind of validation to the icky little feelings held in the darkest crevasses of some fearful little minds. Things you did not say in public, and ways you did not behave in public are now somehow okay. The only question is - how much louder and more ferocious and bullying can they get?

Lots to think about, especially in the "where'd it all start going bad" department. Back when we were civil, and intellect was king, and we behaved and treated each other with respect even when we disagreed - there's certainly no more of that. Besides, it doesn't get ratings. Stirring things up and making a stink and a mess of the place gets ratings. If it bleeds, it leads.

Sigh... just the ramblings of yet another keyboard philosopher.

Just that much more to kick around in the mind. I'm glad you weighed in.

[WillyT]

15. LOL !!! - Yeah, I'm Gonna Be 54 In November...

And my hair went gray, er I mean... silver, some time ago, which I blame on the old man because he was gray in Korea in his 30's for gosh sakes!

But like you, I still have a thick head of hair.

;)

But you are correct, it was a strange mirror we were peering into this weekend...

You don't suppose were about to turn into those, "Well when I was your age..." kind of people, do you?

:scared:

I guess what I was focusing on was the joy. Teddy gave it, took it, and definitely spread it around. He enjoy his work, and his colleagues, and that tended to make people want to work for some common good.

I hope it's not a lost art.

:hi:

[MagickMuffin]

16. The Answer to your question is The Party of No The Party of NOPE, has reared his ugly head

The division between the parties and not getting along and trying to work together is because the republicons don't WANT to work with the Democrats. I think a lot of it had to do with the "Culture War" the republicon's started during the late 60's. They feared the "Liberals" they hated them. You can glean how that hatred still manifests itself when you listen to them talk.

When Reagen was elected the shift started to get worse. And it continued to get more hostile from there. GWH "Poppy" Bush dehumanized Liberals every chance he got.

Then came the '94 "Contract On America" Newt along with Lutz knew how to manipulate "the base" within their party by using propaganda and smears of Democrats, President Clinton and House Speaker Jim Wright became Newt's targets.

Then came the (S)election of 2000. More illusions of "Uniting our Country" which was only a slogan to entice the gullible. They ARE really good with their sloganeering. And the masses are extremely gullible. Their slogans are a lot like a car salesman, the offer sounds so good, "why, we can't pass up such a good deal."

I "know" that Dick Cheney had a lot to do with this and considering how long Dick has been an "insider" of DC politics. I "know" this is true because of articles I read about him telling the Republican Congress when he was VP to NOT work with the Democrats. NO compromise. NO deals. For Christ sakes they had "Loyalty Oaths" where I can only assume meant "I pledge my 'Loyalty' to the republicon party, above the good of the country."

Also Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, along with the smear merchants who write books, and the whole Faux News network helps to divide the party further into chaos. They thrive on chaos.


Thus dividing our country even more, and ensuring nothing gets done in Congress.


Just my thoughts on this topic.

[WillyT]

17. I Hear Ya... Most Republicans In My Youth Seemed To Be Honorable Men...

Except for Nixon, LOL!

And although you could see it coming with Goldwater and then Reagan, I think it was the candidacy and failed presidential bid of Pat Robertson that really turned the Republican Party into the Party of No, and started kicking out all the moderate\reasonable Republicans.

When he lost in 1988, he told his followers\supporters to get involved in local politics instead of national. All of a sudden, a couple years later, you had right-wing loons a city councils, county boards of supervisors, boards of education, etc...

And THESE were the people that ended up becoming delegates to the Republican conventions and writing the party platform. I remember in 1996 at the Republican Convention in San Diego the then Governor Pete Wilson getting screamed at by wight-wing loons during an interview in the bowels of the convention hall. Wilson looked horrified and told the guy, "Young man, you keeps screaming like that and you're gonna lose your voice."

I remember sitting there stunned, that any member of the Republican Party would ambush and sabotage a sitting governor from his own party, during their own convention, on national television because of his intolerant beliefs. I knew then that something was really rotten within the Republican Party. And the evidence grows to this very day.

Hell... I miss the old Republicans.

:shrug:

[calimary]

18. God, I remember that one. Wasn't that the "Gidget Goes to the GOP Convention" -

when that pathetic ditz Susan Molinari was the keynote speaker and they paraded her name around at every interview to prove how cool they were with women? She got up there and might as well have had a high school cheerleader uniform on and zit cream. What an embarrassment. And then Elizabeth Dole tried to do an Oprah with a wireless microphone, strolling around the dais instead of standing at the podium to give her speech - to show yet again how cool the republi-CON party was for women (look what we let them cute li'l gals do, Vern!). That fat rat haley barbour was chairman. And yeah they started getting mean.

And it was indeed the newt gingriches and frank luntzes and others who manipulated the language. They knew how important bumper-sticker politics was as a concept - to get the short-attention-span, dumbed-down, "I know what I know" Bye-bull thumper crowd hooked. Especially when they had that other fat rat limbaugh telling people over and over on the radio - "you don't even HAVE TO think! I'LL do the thinking FOR you!" I remember hearing him actually say that. I couldn't believe people would actually swallow that - it was that incredulous to me, not to mention a big red flag in the back of my head. But somehow I knew many of them would embrace that. Great! No muss no fuss! I don't have to work at this! He'll spoonfeed me and all I'm gonna have to do is just tune in every day. He'll tell me what to think and what to say!

For the life of me I do NOT understand why SOMEONE in the Democratic Party hierarchy hasn't hired George Lakoff to be the anti-luntz. He's expert at reframing messages and crafting bumper-sticker slogans - that enhance and advance OUR side's views. Like calling the bad guys' view of health care coverage - "Idontcare." And referring to OUR view of health care coverage "Americare" or, hell, why not steal the bad guys' thunder and call it "Patriotcare"?

We HAVE to start fighting this war that way. HAVE TO. It's all about the packaging, marketing, sloganeering, antics with semantics as it were. Maybe it's dumbing down, but we have to reach them where they are - in the idiot gallery.

[calimary]

19. My husband and I were talking about this recently.

Well, actually, we talk about it a lot. He grew up in a very conservative community and at a young age, came to know, understand, and recoil from the local republi-CON party and Young republi-CON groups. All John Birch Society stuff, he told me. And when we talk about about when it all started, we work back through gingrich and luntz and I usually bring up lee atwater. Then my guy responds with donald segretti and charles colson. Which does make sense. You could even argue it goes farther back - to the disgraceful "tailgunner joe mccarthy" - when mudslinging and calling someone a commie (yesteryear's traitor, al Qaeda supporter, or Osama lover) became the vogue from the extremist wrong-wing.

I think it probably began in earnest after Goldwater was defeated in '64. The whole party got shellacked. And LBJ proceeded to throw his weight around some more and bend people to their wishes. For better or worse, some Dems had a backbone back then. But the GOP on the other hand decided to regroup. They decided to grow and buttress their movement to keep it from the verge of extinction. They started investing heavily in political infrastructure. CONservative think tanks and foundations started sprouting like weeds all over Washington, Maryland, and Virginia, and elsewhere. Wealthy conservative families all over the country kicked in oceans of money to finance all this. CONservatives could hide out there in those little nests and write position papers and generate pseudo-academic books and editorials and even sometimes the laws and regulations and policies themselves. They had refuges in which to take cover after they'd been voted out of office but still needed a paycheck. They could commission polls that they then could write more position papers about, and of course, the inevitable press releases and resident experts and senior fellows available at any hour to go on TV as talking heads. And they still had access to their friends on the Hill for lunch or cocktails or tennis or something.

Meanwhile, large, many-tentacled organizations would also be on watch for, recruiting, and grooming the next generation. The same or similar wealthy elites, also in control on corporate end, took to buying up broadcasting properties with one hand while with the other bribe-stuffed hand, their pals and advocates were talking enough legislators from reagan to Clinton into declawing the legal standards imposed upon broadcasters. Bye-bye Fairness Doctrine and most limits to ownership, which meant - Bring On the Monopolies!!!

And don't forget the ralph reeds of the world also advising his so-called Christian Coalition armies to inflitrate from the grassroots, from the bottom up. Go for the city council, be an alderman, run for school board. From there you could build your power base and climb - to higher office, trashing civil liberties and government guidelines and progressive gains wherever you could. Soon enough, this infrastructure even included establishing their own universities, complete with their own law school, where they'd teach what the Old Testament view of law would be (see Regent University and Liberty University and their "law schools").

They started back then building this broad and deep infrastructure that metastasized like a fast-growing cancer.