The Zeitgeist with Howard Barbanel

 

The Kumbaya President

(This originally appeared in the Feb 10th issue of The South Shore Standard)

Pete Seeger and Joan Baez both recorded versions of Kumbaya in 1958 and 1962 respectively which became a paradigmatic anthem for the civil rights movement and all the utopian causes that were prevalent in the 60s. The song became standard fare at countless campfires at sleep away and scouting camps in the 60s and 70s among primarily affluent, white suburban youth – becoming  so ubiquitous so as to have lasting meaning decades later when using the song’s name as a political reference point. That the song’s provenance is derived from a black spiritual from the sea islands of South Carolina and Georgia only added to its appeal among liberals.

In the “Kumbaya” state of mind, everyone sits around together in a harmonious circle, clasping hands in multi-cultural brotherhood, ushering in an era of world peace and unending harmony (literally and figuratively). President Obama is in deep “Kumbaya” mode with the release of his proposed 2013 budget and the cuts he plans to make in defense spending while concurrently dramatically hiking taxes on anyone earning a few shekels.

The nig attention-grabbing “world peace” cut in defense spending, preparedness and deterrence is the President’s initiative to unilaterally eliminate 80 percent of our nation’s nuclear arsenal. This is an offer he’s got on the table while asking absolutely, positively nothing whatsoever from the Russians or the Chinese or anyone else with nuclear weapons for that matter. The President envisions a nuclear-free world, which, while it would be nice, doesn’t take into account the world’s realities.

Reality number one – Russia is ruled by a neo-fascist strongman in the form of Vladimir Putin who yearns for the day when his country will again bestride the earth like the colossus it was during the Brezhnev years. Russia is a country ruled by a man with little to no accountability to his public and who harbors illusions of grandeur combined with policies supporting rogue terrorist-supporting nations like Iran and Syria. Putin would like nothing better than to see an emasculated U.S., the easier to bully us and Europe around.

Reality number two – China is on a fast track to dramatically expand its navy, including the construction of aircraft carriers. They’ve got a space program going that’s not about collecting moon rocks. They’re also an authoritarian regime that backs repugnant nations like North Korea, not to mention the aforementioned Iran and Syria, among others. China holds way too much of our debt. If we become weaker militarily, we risk being reduced to vassal status.

Reality number three – the Islamic Bombs – Pakistan (a highly unstable country as it is) has nukes. Iran is moving at all deliberate speed to create them while developing missile delivery systems that threaten the entire Middle East and Europe. The Obama Administration, sanctions aide, is sitting on it’s hands while uranium gets enriched to a higher degree day by day. The Iranians don’t care about economic sanctions. Iran’s leaders have a martyr/kamikaze complex and wouldn’t care one whit if they sacrificed 20 million of their own people to kill a comparable number of “infidels” in Israel, Europe and elsewhere. At the very least they seek to dominate the Middle East and the essential oil supplies there – putting the West in a choke hold. The President did nothing two years ago to support the “Green Revolution” in the streets of Iran’s cities, ensuring the continued enslavement of its masses to the Mullahs. Iran is Syria’s main sponsor, along with the harbingers of hate in the form of Hezbollah and Hamas.

The President’s proposed 2013 budget also slashes about 100,000 troops from the armed forces. It cuts bases. It cuts aircraft. It cuts ships. It cuts weapons systems and weapons development. The budget proposes $472 billion in cuts over 10 years. More worrisome is the specter of another $600 billion in cuts in defense spending unless Congress can find a way to realize another $1.2 trillion in spending mandated by the Budget Control Act.

While our military preparedness is being gutted the President proposes nearly a billion dollars in various and sundry pork barrel “stimulus” spending to “create jobs,” when none of the enormous prior stimulus expenditures did a thing to staunch the recession.

Further eroding our strategic position are the never-ending deficits – another $1.327 trillion for 2012 with a similar number projected yet again for 2013. The deficit is now over $15 trillion with $5 trillion added to that in just the past three years – a level of government deficit spending not seen since the end of World War II.

The fiscally tottering and precarious nature of the social welfare state being envisioned and constructed by the Administration endangers the nation’s ability to defend its vital strategic interests around the world. And make no mistake, the world is a dangerous place with bad people and evil forces rampant. The bad guys have no interest in sitting around the campfire toasting marshmallows while singing folk songs. They mean real harm to the U.S. and our allies. The U.S. needs to be dominant economically and militarily to ensure world peace. Notwithstanding France and Britain’s foray into Libya last year, no other nation can be counted on to maintain stability, prosperity and civilization itself other than the U.S. The quickest route to global chaos is massive unilateral U.S. disarmament noxiously combined with fiscal policies guaranteed to hobble our ability to buy coffee let alone preserve world order.

The Zeitgeist with Howard Barbanel

 

Be My Valentine

(This appeared in the February 10th issue of The South Shore Standard)

Sixth grade Valentine’s Day in Mrs. Raffel’s class at Long Beach’s Lindell School back in the Paleolithic ages of 1969 was quite a big deal. Valentine’s Day cards flew from desk to desk with a light speed that wasn’t to materialize until decades later with the advent of email. There was a card hierarchy with the mushiest of cards reserved for those girls you “really liked” and might have considered “going steady” with. If you didn’t receive at least five or six cards, then you were not considered a social success. You could call it “low-tech ‘friending.’” Early childhood brushes with Valentine’s are the kind of things that travel with you through life, even into adulthood – as the implications of the day are fraught with all kinds of ramifications many years on.

Teenagers, especially those who were in those awkward years or who were late bloomers, harbored no end of angst and anxiety as February 14^th rolled around (I imagine that adolescence is still pretty similar even with today’s enhanced hand-held technology) because teenage Valentine’s was a Darwinian affair, clearly separating the popular from the not. As one progressed to college and one’s 20s, whether or not you got cards wasn’t nearly as significant as whether or not you had a date. Moving into relationships and marriage, Valentine’s started to mean less and less to men and more and more to women. Woe be unto the myopic dolt who forgot the occasion or, who, even worse, didn’t do the right thing or enough for their wife or girlfriend (or, if you are Tony Soprano, Newt Gingrich, JFK or Herman Cain, also for their mistress) or in a moment of temporary insanity, ordered the wrong kind of roses from the wrong florist!

My numero uno Valentine’s Day was in 1983 when I got engaged to my first ex-wife. Once you’ve hit the apogee of Valentine’s by proposing marriage (and having it accepted), everything else pales in intensity. We were in our early 20s, a time when anything and everything seems possible and infinite. She looked like the late comedic actress Brittany Murphy in the film Just Married (with Ashton Kutcher) and the sparks were flying all over the place as only they can when you’re young.

Valentine’s Day, coming as it does towards the back end of winter serves as a literal bright spot in the otherwise blah gray monotony of the season. The holiday arrives when more daylight is making itself felt each day and with that, more Vitamin D, so folks start to come alive a bit more and it signals that spring will soon make an appearance. After Christmas, Chanukah and New Year’s, winter takes on a grim patina in most of the Northern Hemisphere and an injection of love, romance and joie de vivre is good for the soul (and the jewelry, greeting card, candy, flower and restaurant industries in what otherwise might be a very slow month). Valentine’s Day prompts  many a married couple make an effort to break the routine, which is a good thing in and of itself. While the holiday got started as a Christian saints’ day, it was removed from the Roman Catholic calendar in 1969 and in America has essentially become a secular celebration of love and romance.

Romance is a big business because it addresses one of humanity’s highest aspirations – finding true love as a salve for its polar opposite – loneliness. Regardless of Valentine’s Day, assuaging and vanquishing loneliness is something people spend big on. In the 20^th and 21^st Centuries whole industries took off because of the mitigating effects they had on being alone in the isolating modern urban industrial era. To wit: movies, radio, recorded music, television, the internet (including the huge industry of dating websites), email, cell phones (well, that’s also for business…), text-messaging, Facebook and Twitter. The need for connectedness is innate and pervasive. Before industrialization and urbanization, folks had their towns, villages, families and communities. Today, sadly, many mainly have their hand-held multi-media devices where you can be “plugged in” and never be alone for as long as the batteries last.

You can have upwards of 800 Facebook “friends,” but have very few real ones on a corporeal level. You can work in a huge office building but spend your day mostly alone. You can live in a giant apartment building but not know your neighbors. You can go to big parties but only know a handful of people there and not meet more than another one or two. You can be in a marriage or a relationship yet feel lonely due to a lack of communication or affection.

Man’s yearning for love may even exceed his desire and passions for money, success and fame. Babies die without love. Adults turn into Ebenezer Scrooge or Mr. Potter (from It’s a Wonderful Life) or “go postal” without it.  Speaking of It’s a Wonderful Life, one reason this is one of America’s most popular and enduring films is because it is in essence a love story and the idealized wife of Jimmy Stewart (played sublimely by Donna Reed) is what every man wants when they don’t want the blonde floozy Violet Bick.

In 1966 the great Percy Sledge hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart with his When a Man Loves a Woman. It’s number 54 in Rolling Stone’s “500 Greatest Songs of All Time.” Michael Bolton also hit number one with it in 1991. The song’s lyrics are completely appropriate for Valentine’s Day and it sums up the value men place on love:

“When a man loves a woman
Can’t keep his mind on nothing else
He’ll trade the world
For the good thing he’s found
If she’s bad he can’t see it
She can do no wrong
Turn his back on his best friend
If he put her down

When a man loves a woman
Spend his very last dime
Tryin’ to hold on to what he needs
He’d give up all his comfort
Sleep out in the rain
If she said that’s the way it ought to be…”

The Zeitgeist with Howard Barbanel

Football as a Metaphor for Americanism and the Giants as the “Home Team” for Red State Republicans

(This appeared on February 3rd in The Huffington Post) 

Two weeks ago more than 50 million Americans watched the New York Football Giants (what’s with the “Football” part of their name anyway? There hasn’t been a “Giants” baseball team in New York for more than 50 years now) defeat the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC Playoff Game to decide who will face the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl on Sunday. This was the largest audience for an NFL playoff game since the 1994-1995 season. The ratings were all the more remarkable given that 16-18 years ago there were far fewer media options, nary an internet and recording a show on your VCR was a monumental pain.

Some ascribe football’s recent huge ratings to its escapist nature, the vicarious violence acting as a salve to the frustrations of an American public over the seemingly never-ending recession and the beer consumed concurrently with the games as a balm to soothe Americans’ anxieties. For three hours or more we Americans get to virtually crush something or somebody whereas in real life many of us feel pretty powerless and besieged. We get to be a part of something bigger than ourselves and garner some reflected glory the next day at the gym or water cooler if our team wins. The vicarious release of repressed frustration is also why violent video games are posting gigantic sales numbers as well. Will the NFL do as well if the economy turns around, I wonder?

Others credit the proliferation of “Wild Card” teams in the playoffs of both football and baseball for ramping-up the popularity of both sports on TV and at the stadiums – professional sports have been termed the “ultimate reality programming,” because you never know what’s going to happen. Wild Cards add uncertainty and unpredictability to be sure, but they also add a measure of unfairness. Take a look at the 15-1 Green Bay Packers and their quarterback Aaron Rodgers, arguably one of the top three QBs in the game today – they do an astonishing job all season with the best record in the NFL and then lose in their first post-season outing to the Giants who had a paltry 9-7 record and only got into the post-season because everyone else in the NFC East did worse. New Yorkers are understandably elated that the Giants managed to win their last five games, including their last three playoff games on the road, but if you lived is Wisconsin, you might be crying “foul.” The same goes for the New Orleans Saints with a 13-3 record and their outstanding quarterback Drew Brees who will also be watching the big game from their couches Sunday evening.

It has come to a point where winning your division, whether in football or baseball isn’t a guarantee of anything – the late bloomers can come and take a whole season’s worth of outstanding play away. So while there is a ragingly unpredictable entertainment value to the Wild Card, the issue of “fairness and equity” (to paraphrase President Obama) may be sorely lacking. New Yorkers are happy the Giants have been dealt a winning hand and all New Yorkers wish them victory over the hated New England Patriots on Sunday but if a New York team were 15-1 or 13-3 and sitting out the big game, I’m sure most of us would not be pleased.

Therein lies the current American conundrum -- it is fair to say that the Giants are the “free market capitalists” of the NFC and the post season is a form of unfettered capitalism that makes football a red-meat metaphor for the American way of life – the Giants as Wall Street corporate raiders or venture capitalists, swooping in on that big deal at the last moment with the inherent unfairness of unbridled capitalism manifest in putting the best product on the market, even if you’re a late entry and irrespective of how long some other team has been slogging away at it. Tell it to Eastman Kodak or Polaroid after digital photography stole their thunder.

The Giants and the NFC also represent conservative, established interests. Most teams in the NFC are old time original professional football teams – kind of like mid 20^th Century blue chip stocks. Teams like the aforementioned Packers and Saints, teams such as the Lions and Eagles and Bears (oh my!). There are even Cardinals, Rams and Cowboys.     There is a Wall Street-Super Bowl index that posits that when NFC teams win the big game, the stock market goes up and when AFC teams win, the market goes down. In this contest Tom Brady and the Patriots represent liberal “Taxachusets” and the Hollywood/Media Elite and the Giants are representing Chris Christie’s New Jersey.

The Giants will be the default “home team” for Red State Republicans and Joe Sixpacks from coast to coast. Brady is a jet-setter married to A-list super model Gisele Bundchen and they live in a $20 million L.A. mansion. The Giants’ Eli Manning is a shy, self-effacing family man living in suburban New Jersey whose biggest celebrity moments are doing Toyota Camry commercials. The Giants are come from behind underdogs while the Pats come with an air of arrogance and entitlement. Sunday’s game will be a clash of the two Americas, a precursor to the big contest in November for the future of the country.

Brushes with Spring

(This appeared in the February 3rd issue of The South Shore Standard)

This week we were treated to some teasingly warm weather, especially on Wednesday when the mercury edged up towards the low 60s. For a day or two at least the heavy coats were put back in the closet in favor of the kind of lighter jackets we typically wear in October and November. Teenagers (who feel both immortal and immune to any potential malady) were running around town in their shirtsleeves.

Winter 2011-2012 so far has been one of the warmest on record, which is a welcome respite to the Siberian/Antarctic snow-buried deep freeze that was last winter. Some environmentalists wring their hands over the prospect of global warming, but from where we’re sitting this season, the world is still not warm enough. In fact we’re happy to take an official editorial position in favor of global warming if it results in many more winters such as this one in the years ahead. Just think of all the unsold fuel oil the Arabs and Venezuelans would have to sit on were that the case! Think of all the rock salt that wouldn’t have to be excavated from the earth to melt ice on the roads. Think of all the potholes that wouldn’t have to be filled (and the wheel alignments avoided by local motorists) and streets that wouldn’t need to be plowed incurring all kinds of overtime expenses – oh, and fewer service delays on the LIRR!

We are exactly 45 days from the first day of spring which this year falls out on Tuesday, March 20^th at 1:14 a.m. You can’t help but notice that the days are getting longer, which brightens everyone’s spirits. Because we’ve had so few days below freezing this winter, it is possible we’ll see some early blooming of spring flowers as the ground wasn’t permafrosted and doesn’t need to thaw out. Spring is called the “Vernal Equinox,” and according to The Old Farmers Almanac “the word equinox is derived from the Latin words meaning “equal night.” The spring and fall equinoxes are the only dates with equal daylight and dark as the Sun crosses the celestial equator. The tilt of Earth is zero (relative to Earth). With no tilt, the North/South Poles are basically straight up and down.”

An early auger of spring is the return of daylight savings time which this year comes out on Sunday, March 11^th at 2:00 a.m. which is a mere 36 days away. This also coincides with the second week of spring training for Major League Baseball, whose return also is a welcome indicator that Old Man Winter is packing his bags and not a moment too soon.

It’s Not My House, It’s You…

(This appeared in the January 27th issue of The South Shore Standard)

Last week I wrote about putting my home up for sale owing in part to the profusion of objections of a karmic nature emanating from various women I’ve been dating in the past 15 months or so of my newfound single hood. If you didn’t read last week’s column, what’s transpired is that these ladies have told me, completely unsolicited on my part (as I’d not asked anyone to move in with me or to get married) that they felt the house had “bad luck” in their minds because of the prior marriage that resided there and that they didn’t want to live in such a hexed abode (to be fair, some of the ladies also had objections to our wonderful neighborhood as well) notwithstanding my willingness to completely redecorate within and without. (You can read last week’s column at http://standardli.com/category/opinion/barbanel/).

The column set off a flurry of comments from friends and neighbors, most of whom were either aghast or appalled or incredulous or all of the above that women such as this actually, in fact, really exist and that if the median age of said women is around 40 (it is) then this explains much as to why they’re still single on the precipice of middle age and the looming expirations of their biological clocks. Many female (married) friends of mine were adamant in telling me that “these are the wrong girls for you” and that “if they aren’t interested in your feelings about the house” and “not willing to upgrade their places of habitation from small apartments” then these women ought to be dropped off by the wayside in favor of other women who would want to make me happy and who also would like to live in a nice place. Some of these friends are on second marriages and related how one or another new spouse moved into an existing house and everything worked out fine.

Other friends and neighbors were upset at the prospect of my possibly leaving the area (I’m not planning to…). Here is what one neighbor emailed me early this week:

“I do not agree with these women’s views.  I moved in with my current wife to her home, which she bought with her ex and they raised two children for a few years before getting divorced. We stayed there until the neighborhood began changing, and not for any other reason.  (The Karma is with the individuals and not the house) You know where we now live and have moved here the same month you did in 2001.  All total, 15 years we have been together and love the neighborhood.  I would not change it for the world.

My conclusion is the women were not for you to begin with.  If they really got to know you the way they should, they would have jumped all over you and moved in lock, stock and barrel.  The right person will come along.  Patience is a virtue.  Our block needs you.”

This profusion of both encouragement and wisdom made me sit back and reevaluate a whole lot of things – I’ve come to the conclusion that my friends are right not only about the house but also probably about the women I’ve been seeing.

The other evening I found myself in Brooklyn’s tony Park Slope neighborhood where small one bedroom apartments can go for well north of a half million bucks and whole townhouses are in the seven-figure stratosphere. Now, these townhouses, often with nary a view and cheek to jowl with one another (in fact jammed up against each other) are narrower, shorter and have a whole lot less air and light and land than my moderately-sized domicile here in The Five Towns. (Let’s not get started on bathrooms). In a “eureka” or epiphany moment (like Saul/Paul on the road to Damascus) while perambulating Park Slope, it dawned on me why the suburbs were such an allure and attraction to our parents and grandparents generation – duh! – it’s about the quality of life! Like the opening theme to “Green Acres:” “Land spreadin’ out far and wide, keep Manhattan, just give me that countryside…”

In the chic precincts of Manhattan and Brooklyn (Park Slope, Brooklyn Heights, Williamsburg) people delude themselves that putting up with crime and grime, offensive subways, claustrophobic accommodations, expensive food of every variety, even higher taxes, lack of community and sickly gray pallors is worth paying five to 10 times more to live owing to the “proximity of culture” and “sophisticated” restaurants and nightlife – and – more to the point – to appear hip, cool and with-it even if you’re pushing past the big 4-0 and the youth culture cueing up behind you will soon relegate you to the outer fringes of frisson, because self-image is everything and why be a “country bumpkin” in your mind when you can lord your cosmopolitan suaveness over the rest of America by dint of your zip code and access to trucked-in locavore meats and vegetables and easy access to Zagat’s new restaurant of the week? Why admit that you’re not 25 anymore by “copping out” and living in the ‘burbs?

So, here I am still in The Five Towns and I thank my friends and neighbors for dousing my face with that bracing glass of cold water which made me realize that “it’s not my house, it’s you” and that no end of air, light, space, view and bathrooms just 21 miles from Midtown for a fraction of the cost of those “trendy” urban wards is a good deal indeed. (Oh, and I’m also a pretty good catch given my good values, pleasant demeanor, a full head of hair at 53, slim waistline and lack of wrinkles – and, of course, the house. So, any eligible ladies looking to upgrade their lives and their digs, shoot me an email).

No Newt Is Good Newt

(This Appeared on January 27th in The Huffington Post)

Watching the Republican presidential debates and the masterful performances given by Newt Gingrich, one can't help but be struck by just how bright a man he is -- because it's no small hurdle to be able to overcome a disgraceful exit from politics and public office and before recent polls in Florida, assume the frontrunner position in the battle for the GOP nomination.

Read More Here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/howard-barbanel/no-newt-is-good-newt_b_1241822.html