THE PASSING OF TED KENNEDY

As Susie and I watched the funeral service of Ted Kennedy, I thought back to a 1976 TV movie, FRANKLIN AND ELEANOR, starring Edward Herrman and Jane Alexander. The part of the movie that I recall most vividly dealt with the early years, when Franklin was courting Eleanor [the two were fifth cousins once removed]. The couple came from old upper crust New York society -- Theodore Roosevelt was Franklin's role model, and Eleanor's uncle. In one scene, at a formal society party, the two step out onto the veranda of the stately home in which the party is being held, and carry on a long, thoughtful conversation about what they owe to those less fortunate than themselves. There is nothing condescending or pompous about the conversation. It seems perfectly natural to these two young fortunates that, because life has to given them so many of the material blessings of wealth and social connection, it is incumbent upon them to find some way to justify that good fortune by making a contribution to the welfare of others.

Wealthy White people were not better when I was young. In some ways -- racial prejudice, restriction of opportunities for women, even -- heaven help us -- acceptance of gay and lesbian men and women -- they were a good deal worse. But many people really did think as Franklin and Eleanor did, and those who did not had the decency to pay lip service to principles they knew they ought to embrace.

Those of you too young to remember that period could do worse than to watch the 2003 movie, SEABISCUIT. Although it is a movie about a race horse, it conjures up the Depression mentality and era better than any movie save the immortal GRAPES OF WRATH.

Say what you will about the Kennedys, especially their appalling father, Joe, they seem to have been the last large, wealthy White family to keep alive, and genuinely to live by, this ideal of Noblesse Oblige. It has become fashionable of late to use that phrase with a sneer. Many of the privileged these days would not be caught dead suggesting that they, or any of their fellow fortunates, owe anything to the world. The hollow ideology of the free market encourages the fortunate to attribute their wealth and position to their own sterling character.

One last story, which I have told before. When I was an undergraduate at Harvard, in the very early fifties, my hero Carl Sandburg came to Cambridge to give a lecture. New Lecture Hall was packed, and I ended up standing along one wall, as I recall. Sandburg told the following story:

Two cockroach brothers were riding into town on the back of a farmer's truck, when the truck hit a bump. Both brothers bounced off the truck. The first fell onto a pile of dung -- very heaven for a cockroach. The second fell into a sewer. For weeks, the second brother struggled mightily to pull himself out of the sewer and back onto the road. By the time he had succeeded, he was thin, his coat was mottled and dull, and he looked just awful. Meanwhile, the first brother had prospered, growing fat and shiny. The unfortunate cockroach looked up and saw his kinsman, fat and sassy, on top of the dung heap. "Brother," he cried. "How have you done so well for yourself, while I have barely survived?" His brother looked down from his perch with a sneer, and said, complacently, "Brains, and hard work."

Can anyone imagine at speaker at Harvard today telling that story?

THE DOG DAYS OF SUMMER

August is winding down, and as we approach the resumption of the real world, after Labor Day, the Republican craziness is imploding. After riotous town meetings, death threats against Obama, birther bizarrerie, and even the egregious Michelle Bachman being booed at a constituent meeting, with cretinous creeps like Chuck Grassley fresh out of plausible pontifications [do you ever wonder how some of these people actually got elected?], with Ted Kennedy lying in state, and serious talk of reconciliation now to the fore -- with all of this, it looks as though we will get a health care reform bill that has a good deal, but by no means all, of what we dreamed of and hoped for and voted for. JUST AS I PREDICTED. This is not rocket science or brain surgery, folks, it is Congressional legislating, pretty much as it has always been.

Let us suppose that I am correct. As we approach the Thanksgiving/Christmas season, where will we be? Well, the economy will slowly, painfully, be turning around, having avoided a second Great Depression, but unemployment will still be unacceptably high -- although much of the Stimulus Bill spending will still lie before us. We will finally have significant health care reform, though muich will remain to be done. The first serious attempt at confronting global warming will be law. A Special Prosecutor will be investigating the Bush Justice Department. And the President will be able to ask himself and the country, "What shall we do in my second year?"

I mean, seriously, what more did you really expect? Gay rights remains to be addressed, though the first steps have been taken. Barney Frank will have to find a way to shepherd serious financial reform through Congress. And Obama will have to actually wind down the Iraq war and place realistic limits on the Afghanistan involvement. But Peace Talks will be restarted in the Middle East, and we may even see some sort of major change in Iran, though that is up to the Iranians, not us.

I think back again to the wisdom of Herbert Marcuse. Marcuse argued that all of us carry within us repressed infantile fantasies of immediate and effortless gratification -- fantasies to which an enormous amount of libidinous energy is attached, but which are, in their very nature, unrealizable. Combining the deepest ideas of Marx and Freud, Marcuse tells us [this in EROS AND CIVILIZATION] that the realistic goal of any revolution can only be to diminish the quantum of surplus repression imposed on men and women by the demands of capitalism and tyranny. But what fuels revolutionary fervor is the promise of LIBERATION, which is to say the fulfilment of those repressed fantasies. That is why those who have lived through revolutionary times, no matter how dangerous and uncomfortable, look back on them as the most glorious moments of their lives [rather like the way people think about tornados, hurricanes, wars, and floods, and for the same reason.]

Well, the election of Obama was no revolution, but for a moment it felt like one. Now we are seeing that the reduction of surplus repression, so to speak, still leaves us with repressed fantasies of liberation, and so we feel let down. That is normal, understandable, but not really vrey grown up of us, and so we must put away our fantasies and get back to the daily work of making as many incremental improvements in the life of this country as we can.

In an odd way, I think Teddy understood this, but that Jack and Bobby did not. That is why Jack was actually an indifferent President, and Bobby an indifferent Senator, but both were spectacular bearers of our fantasies of instant and infinite gratification.