Bobby

Awhile back, I read a fascinating account of how, on the night of Martin Luther King's assassination, riots broke out in virtually every US city. Every city except for Indianapolis. That night, in front of a crowd that was largely black - and extremely pissed off - Robert Kennedy gave an impromptu speech that calmed the crowd and helped lock him in the country's imagination forever.

As the train carrying Kennedy's remains traveled across the country, two million people lined the tracks to say goodbye. The last time something like that happened, the train was carrying Lincoln's body.

Thurston Clarke's The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days That Inspired America attempts to explain who Kennedy was in the light of his brief presidential campaign - and how it had such a powerful influence over the United States.

One of the sadder aspects of the book is the specter of death looming over the campaign. Everyone - Kennedy included - expected a hail of bullets at any moment:

"Yes, of course he has the stuff to go all the way," John Lindsay replied. "But he's not going to go all the way. The reason is that somebody is going to shoot him. I know it and you know it. Just as sure as we're sitting here is somebody going to shoot him. He's out there now waiting for him . . . And please God, I don't think we'll have a country after it."

Despite the premonitions and the pall hanging over the campaign, it pressed on, through Indiana, Nebraska, Oregon and California. At campaign stops, Kennedy defied all logic - and advice - and repeatedly told off his audiences. '"To the club members-big, heavy men, most of them well-fleshed and still occupied in shoveling in their lunch - the Senator from New York spoke of children starving, of 'American children, starving in America.' It was reverse demagoguery - he was telling them precisely the opposite of what they wanted to hear,"' wrote Tom Congdon, Jr. of the Saturday Evening Post.

Despite this - crowds were drawn to Kennedy, and Clarke does a fine job evoking the carnival atmosphere at many campaign stops, along with the crowds surging ahead, desperate to see or touch him before he left.

Clarke doesn't waste any time with speculation - something a lot of people might have done. He has no idea what a second Kennedy administration would have been like. Instead, he focuses on what it was that drew people to him - his humanity and sincerity. In an era where politicians talk down to crowds and pander to their worst instincts, Robert Kennedy spoke to their intelligence and better impulses, and he paid the ultimate price for it.

I read a lot of nonfiction - histories and the like, but I can say that so far this year, it's the best history book I've read.

Born To Kill

Shortly before US troops swarmed into Iraq, the Pentagon embedded Rolling Stone reporter Evan Wright with the First Recon Marines, one of the units spearheading the invasion. Originally, Wright was not supposed to accompany the unit into combat, but after making arrangements with their commanding officer (he had to leave his satellite phone behind), he joined the Second Platoon on their run through Iraq.

After a brief round of hazing, the men in the unit began accepting and opening up to Wright, and what resulted was a series of stories in Rolling Stone, a book, Generation Kill, and ultimately, the miniseries currently airing on HBO. Since I'm not a big Rolling Stone fan and I don't get HBO, I settled in with the book recently.

Wright sums up his title early in the book:

They are the first generation of young Americans since Vietnam to be sent into open-ended conflict. Yet if the dominant mythology that war turns on a generation's loss of innocence - young men reared on Davy Crockett waking up to their government's deceits while fighting in Southeast Asian jungles; the nation falling from the grace of Camelot to the shame of Watergate - these young men entered Iraq predisposed toward the idea that the Big Lie is as central to American governance as taxation. This is, after all, the generation that first learned of the significance of the presidency not through an inspiring speech at the Berlin Wall but through a national obsession with semen stains and a White House blow job.

What can you say about a generation that was raised on the scandal du jour, gangsta rap, and Grand Theft Auto? Are they as noble as their grandfathers, charging headlong into combat against the Nazis and Japanese? In their own way, yes, and they're just as human as anyone who has put on the uniform and fought - and killed - for their country. Wright did a fine job showing both the best and the worst of this humanity in action.

Wright spends much of his time with Sergeant Brad Colbert - the Iceman, a "stone cold killer" known for his complete calm in combat who commands one of the Platoon's lead humvees. As the missions progress and they push deeper into Iraq, Colbert frequently hands out food and water to the displaced civilians; he also orders his men to dispose of undetonated artillery in the streets of Baghdad. Many of the Marines are like this - highly trained, dedicated and ruthless in combat, but also deeply concerned about their comrades and the pain and suffering they see during the invasion.

I give Wright a lot of credit for not simply showing the good sides of these soldiers -they're profane, sometimes racist, sometimes ignorant and frequently ineptly led, but they always accomplish their missions and actively try to keep from harming people caught in the crossfire. The men frequently complain about their commanding officers, orders and lot in life.

While I found this candor refreshing and eminently creditable, there was some fallout - many men did not receive promotions and Wright has come under fire for his portrayal of some of the officers. However, if you're looking for an insight into the soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as a look into the terror of modern combat, Generation Kill is a great place to start.

It's Official

We are the dumbest nation on earth. This story proves it.

Heaven forbid we have journalists in this country who actually spend time studying candidates and their positions on real issues, giving us nuanced, intelligent writing about what we could expect under a McCain or Obama presidency, rather than soundbites breathlessly delivered on the moment. Instead we get dog owners saying they prefer McCain.

Jesus Christ.

This probably shouldn't surprise anyone; with newsrooms shrinking in step with circulation, papers are nearly to the point where only j-school grads are filling newsrooms. And while I'm not saying this is all bad, perhaps a little experience and perspective would help things out. Believe me - I used to be a j-school grad, and I didn't know a damn thing when I graduated. Still don't, but I probably would have thrown up in my mouth a bit when this assignment landed on my lap.

We've reverted to 1800, where people got their news from papers that were fronts and propaganda pieces from the political parties. And while we as a nation survived for 200 years, I'd like to see us maybe move forward rather than backwards.

According to the piece, only a few presidents haven't had pets of some sort, including Polk, Fillmore, and Arthur. Damn that Fillmore; I always thought he was shifty. All these presidents were one-termers; I guess we can now infer that an Obama presidency will end the same way.

At least that's what the tea leaves told me yesterday.

Old Tyme Religion

Much as I try to tune it out, the "culture wars" keep creeping into my consciousness from time to time. And frankly, I find most of them to be utter bullshit.

Take the separation of church and state. Basically, there's a custody battle going on over the founding fathers, and just what their intentions were as they framed the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Were they god-fearing Christians, hoping to settle a new Christian nation, and achieve the ideal City on a Hill, or were they ardent rationalists or deists?

Steven Waldman attempts to answer these questions in Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, which he largely does.

I think it's very easy to view historical figures as static portraits on a canvas. They don't move, they don't change, and they always remain the same, so it becomes very easy to not look at the founding fathers as actual people, with the same strengths and weaknesses. Take Thomas Jefferson, someone the right wing loves to take out of context. Jefferson believed in Jesus - but as a philosopher. He utterly rejected the divinity of Christ. In his spare time, Jefferson wrote his own version of the Bible, one that contained no references to the supernatural: no miracles, no healing, only Jesus teaching his followers. In fact, Jefferson had little use for organized religion.

Madison actually wanted even more separation between church and state, but political realities and necessities forced him to compromise. Washington frequently used religion to rally his troops, but he rarely attended church himself (as did most citizens in the early years of the nation).

Waldman does a fine job researching the views of several founders, and he comes to the conclusion that the truth lies somewhere in between the two sides of today. While some founders weren't comfortable with the idea of state-supported religion, others saw little or no problem with it. However, Madison and Jefferson were firmly in support of a strict separation between the two.

While the book is a little dry and academic at times, it is still an interesting topic and well worth the time.

77 (out of 100).

Unfocused

The first chapter of David Halberstam's The Coldest Winter is completely compelling and totally absorbing. Unfortunately, the other 620 pages fail to live up to the promise of the first few.

The Coldest Winter purports to be a history of the Korean War, a story ranging from the lowly privates who fought the battles to the heads of state who sent their young men to fight for a country that no one was particularly interested in.

After spending time with the soldiers who initially fought the Chinese at Unsan, Halberstam goes on to describe the various players involved in this drama - Kim Il Sung, Mao Tse Tung, Joseph Stalin, Chang Kai Shek, Douglas MacArthur, Dean Acheson and Harry Truman. The combined miscalculations, fears and egos of these men lead to five years of war in a country that none of the principal fighters really wanted to fight over.

China wanted to strike at the United States in defiance of its support for Taiwan. Douglas MacArthur wanted to leave the world stage as a great general, Joseph Stalin wanted China and the United States at each other's throats, and Harry Truman had a powerful China lobby and resurging Republican minority at home to contend with.

Needless to say, that's a hell of a lot to cram into a book, and Halberstam does it, but I don't think he did it particularly well. He goes into great details outlining the causes of the war and its early days, but he completely glosses over the last two years of the war. He goes into some detail on some of the battles and completely glosses over others - I would have liked to read how the First Marine Division held off six Chinese divisions while escaping the Chosin Reservoir, but all we get is "it was a magnificent battle." I'll bet it was.

Overall, I would say if you're looking to learn more about Korea, this is a good place to start. I plan to spend a little more time reading about it in the near future, but hopefully, I'll find something with a little more focus.

Hoodwinked

A little aside here - I read this about a month ago, and I had to return it to the library; however, I also lost my notes, so this isn't one of my finer reviews . . . it's coming straight from (my somewhat poor) memory. With work and the wedding plans coming along, I've fallen behind in this little project - I have three more books to write about in addition to this one.

I'm not an economist; hell, I can barely figure out that whole checkbook thing. However, it's always seemed to me that something was off with how our government spends our money, and how the party of fiscal responsibility was acting like anything but.

Enter Jonathan Chait's The Big Con: How Washington got Hoodwinked and Hijacked by Crackpot Economics.

Chait tells a rather eye-opening tale, of how of the three big supply-side economics proponents, only one had a background in economics - and he was run out of the Nixon administration on a rail after grossly overestimating the GDP, to his boss's chagrin. However suspect their economic theories may have been, members of the Republican party began to see this as a nice way to start picking up votes.

A book like this could easily become a liberal rant against the modern conservative movement, but Chait doesn't really fall in this trap; he's well-read and well-researched, and he writes the book with a nice bit of bemused exasperation throughout.

Chait could have also filled this book with endless tables and charts, but it doesn't drag down into an Economics 101 lesson; it's more a long look at recent history and how we got where we are today. I enjoyed reading this, although I found myself rolling my eyes at the leaps of logic the supply-siders take to justify their theory with a near-religious fervor.

Looking Back

A few weeks ago, someone asked me just how much I read. I couldn't answer. I probably read 25-30 books last year, but I honestly can't say for certain. So my plan is to write a paragraph or two about everything I read this year and see just how far I get. I already posted one review, and here's the second.

I'm shamefully ignorant of Missouri and St. Louis history. I know quite a bit about US and world history, but Missouri & St. Louis? Little, if any. This is not something I'm proud of. St. Louis has a long and distinguished history as French and Spanish traders settled a small outpost just below the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers.

Which led me to A History of Missouri: 1673 to 1820 by William E. Parrish. It's the first in a series regarding the region's history. I found this to be fairly interesting, especially in the early settlement period, where names such as the Chouteau, Christy, and Rosati frequently came up.

I'm not going to call this a particularly engrossing book, however. Parrish's writing style is very dry and factual. There's not a lot of side stories or deep looks into the characters of the early settlers of the region, but that's not the purpose of the book or the series. As a survey of Missouri history, it was very informative and a quick 200 pages, which made it nice to read as I recovered from the flu last week.

I'll probably pick up the next book in the series sometime this spring, but I have plenty to occupy my time between now and then.

Yikes

One thing about reading history: you get to see just how close we repeatedly come to accidentally blowing ourselves and others up.

Faux Pas

I've taken to the gym again - especially since I get free membership at the JCC, thanks to Darcy's employment there. Overall, I've been very happy with the experience - people are really there to exercise, if they're going to chat, they take it elsewhere.

On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, I work on cardio training. Right now, I'm focusing on building endurance by treadmill running. After I get over my total hatred of running, I may try taking it up outside, weather permitting, but for now, I'm sticking to the treadmill. After a treadmill session, I hit the elliptical machine, where I can work on cardio and read while doing it. (Yes, they have TVs, but once you've seen Judge Judy 100 or so times, the novelty wears off).

Wednesday, I carried in my latest acquisition from the library - a dual biography on George Patton and Erwin Rommel, two of the most famous generals of World War II. As I carried it into the building and glanced down at the book.

And noticed the cover was liberally sprinkled with swastikas. As I'm walking into the JCC - also known as the Jewish Community Center.

Yes, there were stars as well, but seeing as I was walking into a building containing people who in all likelihood:

• fought in the war
• survived a concentration camp

I thought that perhaps I should go ahead and leave it in my locker. I realize that my intentions were pure, but a small part of me feared chugging away on the elliptical machine, reading my book as an elderly gentleman walks by, sees the cover, flips out, screams "Auschwitz!" and smacks me upside the head with a cane.

Next time, I'll pick an alternate book from the nightstand. It just seems less painful that way.

So Bobby, Do You Like Gladiator Movies?

“So the Spartans fight in their underwear?” asked Darcy after I showed her the trailer for 300. Earlier in the day I received a free pass to see in on the IMAX, so I figured I’d give her the right of first refusal – a right she accepted – something about watching 300 scantily-clad men slaughter thousands of Persians didn’t do much for her.

On the other hand, I was looking forward to seeing it – the impossible odds and fighting thing, that is – not the men fighting in underwear thing.

There are many reasons to see 300 – it’s a beautiful film, with scenes that look like they were lifted straight from Frank Miller’s graphic novel. Sometimes that doesn’t work too well (HULK SUCK! -errr SMASH!), but Zack Snyder, the director, and Larry Fong, the cinematographer, chose bright color and high contrasts to bring the pages to life.

Gerard Butler did a fine job as Leonidas, the king of the Spartans, pulling off a nice combination of regal authority and almost homicidal bloodlust.

And the fight scenes were spectacular if not a little repetitive. There’s only so many ways that you can show people being hacked to pieces, and this is where the movie started losing me.

On the one side, you have the Spartans and other Greeks, who all look like they came straight from the modeling agency. On the other side, there’s the Persian army, which looks like the casting call specified circus freaks and lepers. Persian soldiers range from eight-foot-tall ogres with blades replacing their hands to an unholy cross between humans and pigs, and don’t get me started on Xerxes, the Persian king. Rodrigo Santoro was apparently channeling Jaye Davidson in Stargate as he played Xerxes. (For those of you who haven't seen Stargate, let's just say that Ra, Davidson's character, was a very bad - and disturbing - "man").

I also had a problem when the Greeks – the Spartans especially – started spouting off about how they were fighting for their freedom. Maybe I’m wrong here, but I seem to recall that the Spartans weren’t exactly known for their open society.

And finally, I realize that movies like this are not historically accurate. I know this. I understand it, and yet it still irks me. If memory serves, Thermopylae was actually fought between a small Greek army and the Persians. The 300 Spartans stayed behind with a few hundred other Greeks when their position became untenable because the Persians found the goat trail, so the Spartans stayed behind to allow the remaining Greek army a chance to escape. I would have preferred they stuck to the idea that the Spartans were sacrificing themselves to save the beleaguered army rather than cries of FREEDOM! LIBERTY! EQUALITY!

But I nitpick. Overall, I enjoyed the movie for what it was – violent eye candy of the check-your-brain-in-at-the-door variety, and I can safely say I didn’t hate myself for having seen it.

6.0/10

From the Ashes

Fascinating account, censored until now, of how the Pacific fleet was rebuilt after the attacks at Pearl Harbor.