Look Back In Anger ( N'est pas?)

I was walking back to the TV studio from Union Station this morning when I found myself in a crowd of French tourists. My poorly remembered college French only allowed me to get the gist of their conversation, but I gathered they were excited to see the US Capitol. As one walks from the west side of the station, the Capitol dome is suddenly revealed from behind a screen of trees glimmering in the morning sun, with the statue of Freedom ever looking to the east. I began to wonder what Madame Freedom would think of the 'debate' in this country about torture, and it stuck me that all those brave men and women who fought and bled over the years under her banner are owed a profound apology by Msrs. Bush, Cheney et. al. My father and the men of his generation went to Europe with the moral authority to conduct the trials at Nuremberg. Where has that authority gone now in the wake of Abu Garib?

So I tell you what Mr. Obama, it's not for you alone to decide if we should prosecute those responsible for spitting on our constitution.... ask these tourists which country they came to see: Bush and Cheney's or Washington and Jefferson’s. Ask my father and the women and men in all those neat rows across the river in Arlington. Ask the lady on top of that alabaster building on the hill. Look back? Hell yes Mr. Obama, look back with anger.

Ghosts On The Red Line

Riding the train again.. all these years now on the Red Line..sleepy workers with chains of ID hung round our necks like talisman, screaming tourists children swinging on the hand rails, and the flickering images half seen and half imagined out dirty windows. More and more now I have these small daydreams as we rock and sway under the city......I startle awake as we stop at Dupont Circle, and then back to these half dreams.. Jan on that beach watching Lake Huron... kissing Davida under the moonlight, Sheila's scent on my fingers as I picked up my guitar, Nicki in a taxi on 48th street, blues on that Naw'lins station with sweat in my eyes, the housewife south of Kalamazoo, Kiwi in the shadows of Salt Lake... all these ghosts filling my head...and I wonder is this just the price for the life I've lived, is this the cost of loving more than once or twice?
If you could have told me all those years ago when I was a sandy virgin on that beach with Jan that some day I'd be old and dreaming and seeing her face on a dirty subway window.. I don't think I would have understood.... I didn't have the vision then...I'd never seen the ghosts.

Morons On The Edge Of America, The Price Of Mercy & Karla Faye

Here in South Carolina at the beach (in more ways than one the edge of America):

I overheard a young guy the next table over at Boots & Johns Biscuit Shack yesterday. He was 'explaining things' to his friends: The British had 'something to do' with the Boston Tea Party. And he was pretty sure (though not positive) that the Three Musketeers were French. Somewhere Msr. Dumas is rolling in his French grave. When you enter Boots & Johns there is a photo on the wall of the owner (not sure if it's Boots or John) with Dick Cheney, and Fox News is always on the Tee Vee behind the counter. Something tells me that the young idiot I sat next to may turn up at one of those 'spontaneous' "Tea Party" protests organized by Fox News. Someday when the sad history of the decline and fall of America is written, I'm quite sure that repeal of the fairness doctrine will figure prominently on the historian’s list of precipitate causes.

My friend was telling me the other day about a married couple she knows. They are both doctors, very nice people and wonderfully successful. It seems they have made their bundle by running a group of 'pain clinics'. It turns out that they have made so much money; they've managed to buy their own island somewhere. This is the point where I lost my mind and started yelling: "They have their own fucking island?? "Selling pain relief?? In a country where 50 million people have no health insurance?? How in the name of jumping fucking Jesus did we end up with a system that puts a price tag on pain? The last time I checked the words of the master did not say, " Blessed are the merciful for they shall be able to buy their own fucking island".

I am reminded of the man who only promised paradise to one living soul on this earth: the 'good thief' dying beside him at the hands of the state. I don't much care for that ' six dudes you'll meet in heaven' nonsense being sold these days, but two folks I'm pretty sure you might see there are Karla Faye Tucker and that fella from the hill outside the city.

Overheard At The K&W Resturant

Conversation in a restaurant April 2009

Older man seated alone on cell phone:


Hey yeah it’s me how ya doin?

Yeah yeah? So hows that wife?

Everybody?

Uh huh ahh yeah I see what’s that?

Oh yeah? Really?

What ..Cancer?

Uh huh… yeah that’s too bad ..she was a good dog I remember.

Yeah..sorry uh huh.

.How’s the store this year?

In the black or red?

Oh yeah we’re fine…..yeah yeah I just….

Well….I uh..yeah, oh oh..I almost forgot

Yeah when you come down

Yeah I got a set of (unintelligible) yeah I piad 795..no shit…

no no I’m gonna let ‘em go for 275 tops yeah….

You’ll see ‘em when you come down.

OK then..yeah I just you know I yeah