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Burned up.

Bill McGraw had a heart­breaker in the Freep today, about a fatal fire in south­west Detroit last week, one where the two clos­est pumpers were out of ser­vice for “staffing rea­sons.” They weren’t in ser­vice because the city couldn’t pay fire­fight­ers to staff them. A third pumper, also closer, was taken out of ser­vice per­ma­nently three years ago, for the same rea­son. You want to read some chill­ing sta­tis­tics? How about these:

In May, the Free Press reported that 22% of the city’s 66 fire­fight­ing vehi­cles either were unavail­able to answer alarms or were work­ing with bro­ken equip­ment.

On the day Mar­ian Rem­bis died, 27% of the fire vehi­cles were out of ser­vice or work­ing with acknowl­edged defects — such as lad­der trucks with lad­ders that won’t rise. Ten rigs in good con­di­tion sat idle in their quar­ters that day because the depart­ment couldn’t staff them.

The prob­lems play out every day, though mostly beyond pub­lic view.

Bat­tal­ion chiefs, who super­vise at fire scenes, some­times can be heard on the radio beg­ging dis­patch­ers to send them a truck with a func­tion­ing lad­der, even though their bosses dis­cour­age them from speak­ing so explic­itly over pub­lic air­waves.

On Feb. 6, the first lad­der truck — Lad­der 10 — to arrive at the scene of what became a five-alarm fire at the For­est Arms apart­ment build­ing near Wayne State Uni­ver­sity did not have a work­ing lad­der, but it was not needed to per­form imme­di­ate res­cues. Lad­der 10′s lad­der has been bro­ken since at least early Jan­u­ary, fire­fight­ers said.

If a city has any busi­ness col­lect­ing taxes at all, job one is pub­lic safety. Police and fire. In recent years it’s become fash­ion­able for city gov­ern­ment to ven­ture into eco­nomic devel­op­ment, and I have no objec­tion, but only as long as they’re still cov­er­ing the basics. In some respects, the city’s police depart­ment has all the money they need, cer­tainly enough to give the mayor a pub­licly funded secu­rity entourage that’s said to be the biggest in the nation for a mayor. I went out to din­ner with the girls the other night, and one was talk­ing about a Demo­c­ra­tic fundraiser in Grosse Pointe Farms. The gov­er­nor, a woman, showed up with one state police offi­cer work­ing as dri­ver and escort. The mayor of Detroit, Kwame Kil­patrick, arrived a few moments later in a black Cadil­lac Escalade with a full com­ple­ment of mus­cle. Because the GP can be a pretty dan­ger­ous place, I guess.

A few weeks ago, Metro Times colum­nist Jack Lessen­berry chided those of us who were gig­gling over the text-message scan­dal, say­ing it was only lurid cover for real tragedy, the ongo­ing tragedy of Detroit and, in a larger sense, all of rust­belt urban Amer­ica, and I’ve come to see he’s right. This is like the comic relief in Ham­let, but while you might smile at the Poor Yorick scene, there’s no deny­ing the stage will be cov­ered with bod­ies at the final cur­tain. It takes an event like this fire to remind us that one of the bod­ies will be a 37-year-old Down Syn­drome vic­tim, too scared to run out of a burn­ing house and too far from a fully staffed fire sta­tion to get help in time.

The Metro Times lays out its case for res­ig­na­tion in this week’s issue, by the way.

For­give me the late post­ing today. I’m hav­ing one of those days. The Com­mit­tee has been work­ing over­time this week, and I sim­ply could not get over the hump with­out some extra morn­ing sleep today, which I accom­plished by skip­ping the morn­ing cof­fee and going back to bed once Kate had been shuf­fled out the door. I got my sleep, but woke up with a caffeine-deprivation headache, which is pretty absurd when you think about it — you can’t sleep because you haven’t had any cof­fee. Also, my reded­i­ca­tion to the gym this week reveals, once again, just how stiff and out of shape I am. So here I sit, headache-y, mus­cle ache-y, ache-y break-y. In a few min­utes I’m going to get a shower, then head off to Star­bucks for some med­i­cine. An ibupro­fen latte, please (aka triple espresso).

Hear­ing William F. Buck­ley Jr. has died is hav­ing no effect on my day, Danny. I can’t say any­thing bad about him. He started some­thing, and oth­ers are end­ing it now, and I’ve got to think he’d dis­ap­prove of what’s become of his beloved con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment. Never cared for his twee affec­ta­tions, but give him this: The man died in the sad­dle. At his desk. Writ­ing some­thing. That’s how I want to go. (If this headache gets any worse, that may well be my fate.)

Granted, a lot of what he wrote was crap, but Michael Jor­dan missed a lot of bas­kets, too.

What I’m mainly dread­ing is the reac­tion. After read­ing Ann Coulter’s eulogy for her daddy — Now Daddy is with Joe McCarthy and Ronald Rea­gan. I hope they stop laugh­ing about the Reds long enough to talk to God about smit­ing some lib­er­als for me. — I can only imag­ine what they’ll say about Bill. I’m vir­tu­ally cer­tain we can expect a goo-fest from Tim Goe­glein. He was a reg­u­lar week­end guest on Bill’s piece of Con­necti­cut water­front. Huh — so was Rod Dreher:

Just this past week­end, Julie and I were talk­ing about the time we went to the Buck­leys’ Con­necti­cut house on the water, and we were both kind of intim­i­dated by the indomitable Mrs. Buck­ley. Then she sat down next to Julie and they started talk­ing about gar­den­ing, and the evil of squir­rels. Pat, with her smoker’s cackle, said she used to lie in bed upstairs at their place and take aim with her .22 rifle at the lit­tle bulb-eating bas­tards in the yard. It was hilar­i­ous to hear her this locked-and-loaded socialite talk about her adven­tures in gar­den­ing with gun­pow­der. Julie and I laughed in recall­ing the human­ity of the Buck­leys. That’s how they are.

Proof Dreher isn’t the Right Sort: Well brought-up girls have been taught hunt­ing skills by their dad­dies for gen­er­a­tions. Ask Ann Coul­ter.

Any­way, I never met the old gas­bag, but I did meet his son, Christo­pher, who was eas­ily one of the nicest and most charm­ing fel­lows I’ve ever had the plea­sure of mak­ing small talk with. What­ever part of that he owes to the old man, he couldn’t have been all bad.

Posted on Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 at 1:37 pm in Current events, Detroit life. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.


45 responses to
“Burned up.”

  1. sue said on February 27th, 2008 at 2:00 pm

    Ahhhh, sleep. Since I work two jobs now, it is a com­mod­ity to kill for, and any­one call­ing before 10:00 a.m. on a Sat­ur­day had bet­ter have a very good rea­son. I love sleep – have you heard that say­ing “I’m very good in bed; I can sleep 12 hours straight”? That’s me. I’m prob­a­bly the only mom in the world who never had a prob­lem with her kids sleep­ing in. They just roll their eyes and say “yeah, mom, I know: ‘Sleep heals’”.

  2. Danny said on February 27th, 2008 at 2:13 pm

    Sorry you are feel­ing crappy, Nance. Sleep depri­va­tion sucks.

    A cou­ple of other head­lines caught my atten­tion today:

    Sixteen-foot scrub python stalks fam­ily dog for days before swal­low­ing the silky terrier-Chihuahua cross­breed whole in front of two hor­ri­fied chil­dren.

    I hate snakes. Any­one who “owns” a sixteen-foot python has ques­tion­able men­tal bal­ance.

    Con­gress asks Jus­tice Depart­ment to inves­ti­gate whether Roger Clemens lied under oath to House com­mit­tee review­ing steroid use in base­ball.

    This should make michaelj Barry Bonds sup­port­ers happy(ier). It does bring some equity to the sit­u­a­tion.

  3. alex said on February 27th, 2008 at 2:14 pm

    The fey Mr. Buck­ley called Gore Vidal a “fag” to his face on live tele­vi­sion in 1968. The two flam­ing sissy patri­cians were serv­ing as com­men­ta­tors dur­ing that year’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign cov­er­age. O, for the days when a gay mar­riage meant a respectable arrange­ment like his and Pat’s.

  4. Jonathan said on February 27th, 2008 at 2:25 pm

    How can you have “10 rigs in good con­di­tions” sit­ting idle, while a bro­ken one is in ser­vice? How hard could it be to swap out on of the bro­ken ones for one of the idle, good con­di­tion ones?

  5. Dexter said on February 27th, 2008 at 2:38 pm

    alex…wanna hear it? First, here’s a 22 minute “debate” between Buck­ley & Vidal..,

    http://www.pitt.edu/~kloman/vidal.mp3

  6. Julie Robinson said on February 27th, 2008 at 2:39 pm

    Buck­ley was too full of him­self, but my Mom always loved read­ing him. Sad to say they were in lock­step. But Mom (who was vale­dic­to­rian back in high school) admired his vocab­u­lary. She said it was a rare col­umn that didn’t drive her to the dic­tio­nary. So for that, and how her love of words and read­ing rubbed off on me, I will salute him.

    Christopher’s writ­ing is more to my taste. There are no sacred cows he won’t take on, and he’s funny. We need all the funny we can get.

  7. Dexter said on February 27th, 2008 at 2:42 pm

    alex, it’s on this page , on the right, in a box….

    http://www.pitt.edu/~kloman/debates.html

  8. nancy said on February 27th, 2008 at 2:47 pm

    Liv­ing at a lat­i­tude with vir­tu­ally no poi­so­nous ones, I’m a snake agnos­tic. But Danny, please — you gotta believe that watch­ing a python take on a silky terrier/chihuahua cross would be awe­some.

    How do they know the snake “stalked” the dog for days? That implies upper-level preda­tory think­ing skills.

    On Isle Royale, Alan spot­ted a garter snake mid­way through swal­low­ing a toad, just off the trail. We both watched for a while. Hyp­notic.

    And as for the fire-department tra­vails, Jonathan, the temp­ta­tion is to throw up hands and say, “For­get it, Jake. It’s Chi­na­town.” But that would be a cop-out. My guess is, it comes down to petty tur­fism. The fire­fight­ers become attached to their rigs and don’t want to loan them out, maybe? I hear a cer­tain super­star jour­nal­ist keeps his news­room key­board under lock and key when he’s not using it. Just likes the way it feels, and it’s his, dammit.

    Buck­ley also advo­cated “tat­too­ing the but­tocks” of peo­ple with AIDS. I always wanted to ask him, “But what if you’re a bot­tom? Or like to warm up with some fel­la­tio? You might not see it until it’s too late!” Just to get the party started.

  9. Dexter said on February 27th, 2008 at 2:50 pm

    I some­times watched Buck­ley on TV on week­end after­noons many years ago…I was a polit­i­cally astute teen, as that goes, but the high-falutin’ Buck­ley used words an Indi­ana paper boy would never under­stand, and his trade­mark flip­ping of his longish hair was annoy­ing.
    As he aged and I could begin to under­stand him, his phys­i­cal appear­ance declined badly.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    And what about Willy Cun­ning­ham on WLW-AM 700 and XM 173?
    Rather stepped on it, eh? But , c’mon now! His words yes­ter­day lit­er­ally echoed the sen­ti­ments McCainites have about “Barack Hus­sein Obama” which Willy kept repeat­ing. That’s Cunningham’s schtick and I can’t believe McCain’s peo­ple didn’t know it—Cunningham has been walk­ing that line and drink­ing the Kool-Aid for decades on WLW.

  10. Dexter said on February 27th, 2008 at 2:54 pm

    I under­stand the “it’s mine and keep your god­dam hands off my STUFF!!” atti­tude. When I drove a fork­lift I had to scrub tobacco-spit-juice off the steer­ing wheel and seat area for 15 min­utes before my shift started. Then I hid the key. That didn’t fly at all with the boss who needed parts moved. Some­times we have to be nice chil­dren and share.

  11. Dexter said on February 27th, 2008 at 2:57 pm

    20 foot pythons , 250 pounds each, will dom­i­nate a third of the US soon as global warm­ing con­tin­ues. It made my day, Yahoo! News a cou­ple days ago.

    And then comes CLOVERFIELD !!!

  12. brian stouder said on February 27th, 2008 at 3:00 pm

    My dad always liked WFB; got me read­ing his syn­di­cated columns in the good ol’ News-and-Sentinel; but my tastes shifted to John Roche – who had been in the John­son admin­is­tra­tion (I recall a col­umn of Roche’s where he described blithely advis­ing the pres­i­dent to move a car­rier bat­tle group through some strait or another – in reponse to some press­ing thing….and then, when the pres­i­dent took his advice, sweat­ing out a sleep­less night, ’til the car­rier bat­tle group made it through with­out inci­dent. …a nice ‘where the rub­ber meets the road’ bit of pun­ditry.

    Any­way – I recall read­ing a Buck­ley book about sail­ing, which was a won­der­ful book. It had belonged to my dad, who had prob­a­bly been dead for 10 years by the time I read his Buckley/sailing book. Dad was a 4-pack a day man (and, one sup­poses that most folks who are ’4-pack a day” peo­ple get referred to in the past tense), and as I pro­gressed through the book, odd bits of fluffy grey dust would turn up on the pages, and on my hands…cig­a­rette ashes!; which was oddly… affect­ing (ashes to ashes, and dust to dust, indeed)

  13. Danny said on February 27th, 2008 at 3:08 pm

    I believe this Cun­nigham fel­low was men­tioned here a long while back. The one quote I read that really dis­gusted me was when he said that the media would “peel the bark off Barack Hus­sein Obama.”

    Appar­ently this was a ref­er­ence to some con­nec­tion with a fundraiser con­victed of a felony, but it sounds like he really wanted to say some­thing like “lynch” instead of “peel the bark.”

  14. Danny said on February 27th, 2008 at 3:13 pm

    Brian, indeed.

    Reminds me of a friend of mine who is read­ing his deceased father’s book col­lec­tion. His dad would put a let­ter grade at the back of each book and ocas­sion­ally a com­ment.

    So, my friend has taken to read­ing the books first and assign­ing his own grade before see­ing if he and his father would have agreed.

  15. Kirk said on February 27th, 2008 at 3:45 pm

    Bill Cun­ning­ham is get­ting what every other third-rate radio enter­tainer cov­ets: free pub for his idi­otic time-wasting. Very cal­cu­lated in a Clear Chan­nel kind of way.

  16. Dorothy said on February 27th, 2008 at 4:01 pm

    William F. Buck­ley & Myron Cope on the same day. Wow.

    For the unini­ti­ated:

    http://​www​.post​-gazette​.com/​p​g​/​0​8​0​5​8​/​8​6​0​7​5​0​-​13.stm

  17. Jeff said on February 27th, 2008 at 4:04 pm

    Brian — Don’t get me started on Roche, but let’s just say he took the whole patri­ar­chal nar­ra­tive sequence in Gen­e­sis a lit­tle too seri­ously. For starters, but i ain’t gonna start. Willy Cun­ning­ham is . . . ah, why even go there? He’s like the John Birchers insist­ing that Eisen­hower was a lib­eral.

    WFB should be read through the lens of Whit­taker Cham­bers, and if you don’t have the patience for “Wit­ness,” i won’t try to twist your arm. But they both under­stood and lived out the old saw “if you’re not a lib­eral when you’re young you have no heart, and if you’re not more con­ser­v­a­tive as you age, you have no brain.” Buck­ley was effec­tive because he under­stood the very real rea­sons of the heart for look­ing into Com­mu­nism and Social­ism as solu­tions to the cru­el­ties and injus­tices of the world, but asked us to con­sider along with him a few of the prob­lems of appli­ca­tion when it came to the solu­tions of the Third Inter­na­tional or the IWW. If it wasn’t for Buck­ley, i wouldn’t have watched or still loved “Reds” so much, and Cham­bers helped me feel it, right winger though i may still be.

    And Nancy, could it have been a black racer with a yel­low belly stripe (blue/black upper body, solid color or stri­ated)? Garters eat frogs, but small ones and not often. Rac­ers would make sense for up on the Isle.

  18. michaelj said on February 27th, 2008 at 4:36 pm

    Well damn, Alex, Buck­ley actu­ally called Gore a “god­damn queer” and threat­ened to punch him in the face, but only after being called a “crypto-Nazi” at least twice by Mr. Vidal. This all some­how hap­pened with no tape delay on live TV. I was watch­ing (and I think I’ve got the slurs right). Wait, here it is.

    The fun­ni­est thing about it was hear­ing that sanc­ti­mo­nious dick­head Howard K Smith (who evi­dently came back as Wolf Blitzer and Brit Hume) swal­low­ing his tongue and gur­gling “gen­tle­men, gen­tle­men, there’s no need to resort to name-calling”. I truly despised Howard K. at the time, because about two months ear­lier, he’d anchored cov­er­age of the Cal­i­for­nia pri­mary, and spent the evening den­i­grat­ing Bobby Kennedy, right up until the time Sirhan pulled the trig­ger. I was hop­ing Vidal and Buck­ley would jump the mod­er­a­tor and beat him to a pulp.

    Buck­ley ended up suing Vidal and being counter-sued. It’s inter­est­ing that both guys were founders of mag­a­zines at rad­i­cal poles of the polit­i­cal spec­trum, but Vidal had it all over Buck­ley by virtue of his par­tic­i­pa­tion in the infa­mous Bob Guc­cione pro­duc­tion of Caligula.

    The exchange was part of my for­ma­tive years, maybe the Yorick scene to add irony to two assas­si­na­tions, and avid per­sonal par­tic­i­pa­tion at the Chicago con­ven­tion. (Very nice, Nancy.)

    By the way, If any of you are fans of John Doe, Wilco, or both, npr
    has both stream­ing live from some club in Wash­ing­ton tonight at 8p est.

  19. nancy said on February 27th, 2008 at 4:40 pm

    Jeff, I defer to your ama­teur her­petol­ogy. Prob­a­bly, yes, a racer. I tend to think of all small, harm­less snakes in our area as garters, even while I know most of them aren’t. (Don’t they also pee on you when you pick them up?)

    As for Myron Cope, I think the best any of us can hope for is an obit with a lede like this:

    Myron Cope, the much-decorated mas­ter of the writ­ten word, the ever-celebrated sand-blaster of the spo­ken word, and a pre-eminent Pitts­burgh sym­bol of not only our selves but of our hopes and our innate joy­ful­ness, died today.

    It goes on:

    Mr. Cope was 79. He had been in declin­ing health since even before his 2005 retire­ment from the Steel­ers broad­cast booth, where he spent 35 years. The cause of death was given as res­pi­ra­tory fail­ure.

    The pic­ture shows him yap­ping away to a micro­phone, ges­tur­ing with a cig­a­rette. Look­ing innately joy­ful.

  20. nancy said on February 27th, 2008 at 4:52 pm

    I heard WFB inter­viewed a few years ago, and he was asked about his fond­ness for what the NYT called “ten-dollar words.” He pointed out there are nuances to words con­sid­ered even close syn­onyms, and he likes to pick just the right one. Men­tioned “regal” and “kingly” as two exam­ples, and I couldn’t help but agree. A writing-teacher friend of mine does an exer­cise where he writes the word “fat” on the black­board and has the class call out syn­onyms until they can’t think of any more, and then they break down each one and how you might use it.

    That said, there’s another school of thought that says you should never say “obese” when “fat” will do, and I respect that, too.

    I had a triple espresso with a big glop of whipped cream on top, by the way. Feel­ing much bet­ter.

  21. michaelj said on February 27th, 2008 at 4:54 pm

    William Frank Buck­ley, Jr.
    Requi­escat in pace
    Super­cil­iously Sesquip­i­dalian to the Denoue­ment

    I believe that mid­dle name must have caused him bor­bo­ryg­mus, which is what you live with when you’re a scion of that priv­i­leged class that’s never afflicted with actual flat­u­lence.

  22. nancy said on February 27th, 2008 at 4:54 pm

    Oh, one last note: In re Buck­ley and the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment, read this.

  23. Sue said on February 27th, 2008 at 5:05 pm

    Speak­ing of ten-dollar words, the other night I acci­den­tally had Den­nis Miller on the radio, and before I could switch I heard the word(?) “troglo­did­ian”.

  24. Jeff said on February 27th, 2008 at 5:26 pm

    Ele­giac on WFB’s behalf, Wol­cott nicely worked Dick Gau­tier and Kaye Bal­lard into his clos­ing para. There’s some­thing unseemly about the ten­dency to paint neo­con­ser­v­a­tives as purely war­mon­ger­ing thugs. They may be wrong, but they have a Weltan­schau­ung that makes sense of the world in a par­tic­u­lar, sec­u­lar way; they’re Puri­tans who got the fal­l­en­ness of humankind with­out stop­ping to pick up a bucket load of redemp­tion on the way out. As Wol­cott rightly points out, Buck­ley was a com­mit­ted Catholic; as he wrongly implies, he didn’t take from it a lock-step mind-set, but a will­ing­ness to for­give and a desire to par­tic­i­pate in the redemp­tion of the world that was any­thing but bel­li­cose . . . just rue­fully aware that the road to peace would still pass through a great deal of con­flict.

    And i say again, it was Buck­ley (and Cham­bers) who helped me under­stand the vis­ceral and prac­ti­cal allure of Marx­ism, which was noth­ing but a mys­tery to me as a mid­dle class col­lege kid. Buck­ley explained the ide­al­ism of Com­mu­nism (and the flaws of col­lec­tivism) in a way that made Com­mu­nists not the enemy, but as dia­logue part­ners who *must* be con­vinced of the error of their ways, for their own sake as well as our own. But con­quered, not so much.

  25. Crabby said on February 27th, 2008 at 5:34 pm

    And here is WFB’s last arti­cle, about words.

  26. Kirk said on February 27th, 2008 at 5:43 pm

    And don’t for­get he smoked dope on his yacht — legally, he said, because he went out­side the three-mile limit. Now how it got there, I don’t know.

  27. john c said on February 27th, 2008 at 7:19 pm

    I didn’t care for Buckley’s pol­i­tics or his affected way of talk­ing. I will say this, though, he was a great sailor and a great writer about sail­ing.

  28. brian stouder said on February 27th, 2008 at 7:51 pm

    I agree with Jeff; the Wol­cott arti­cle Nancy pointed to was gen­er­ally good stuff. Back in the early ’80′s I was a National Review sub­scriber, and it was pretty good stuff. D Kieth Mano always had good stuff, as did WFB. In those pre-internet days, it was inter­est­ing to see the fea­ture where WFB reprinted cor­re­spon­dance with var­i­ous peo­ple (sort of a very-slow-motion ver­sion of NN.c)

    R Emmett Tyrell was the lunatic fringe in those days – I could never get into his Amer­i­can Spec­ta­tor (I recall send­ing an old-fashioned, stamped let­ter to Nancy Nall, care of the News-Sentinel, answer­ing back some­thing she had said about one of Tyrell’s syn­di­cated columns, which drew a funny response from her about how that guy railed against curb cuts for the hand­i­capped!).

    And then one day a lengthy let­ter to the edi­tor in National Review was printed, by “Rush H Lim­baugh III” – and that was it – I was done with that mag­a­zine.

    Lim­baugh – moreso than Pod­horetz – strikes me as the phony, or the usurper. Lim­baugh never cast a sin­gle vote for Ronald Rea­gan, for exam­ple; all he is, is a lip-flapper and a huck­ster.

    But I digress.

    Wolcott’s civil expres­sion of affec­tion for WFB is the sort of clas­sic respect amongst polit­i­cal adver­saries that peo­ple like Sen­a­tor Obama seems to per­son­ify, and which guys like Lim­baugh overtly detest

  29. john c said on February 27th, 2008 at 8:01 pm

    I remem­ber see­ing Buck­ley speak at Boston Col­lege in the early 80s. It was a con­tro­ver­sial visit as a pro­tester was dragged from the room. But the line I recall went some­thing like this. Some­one in the audi­ence – obvi­ously not a con­ser­v­a­tive – asked Buck­ley to com­ment on a recent report that 40 per­cent of chil­dren in Cleve­land (not sure I’m remem­ber­ing the num­ber or the city, but it doesn’t mat­ter) aren’t given “a liv­ing diet.” Buckley’s first response, which drew jeers, was “Why aren’t they dead?” I don’t care for the cal­lous joke at the expense of the poor. But as a mat­ter of lan­guage usage, he had a point.

  30. joodyb said on February 27th, 2008 at 8:54 pm

    Bill Cun­ning­ham, pressed and pressed again by Robert Siegel this after­noon to admit it was actu­al­lly McCain him­self and not the media who threw him under the Straight-Talk Express, had to con­fess he wouldn’t reject Hillary for Pres­i­dent. If that didn’t under­score his utter pan­der­ing paul har­vey­ness, i don’t know what could have. he had tried to posit that refer­ring to Obama by 3 names is com­mon with pres­i­dents or would-bes and that he reg­u­larly cites his erst­while can­di­date as John Sid­ney McCain III. what a bone­head. Queen Citians must be proud.

  31. Michael said on February 27th, 2008 at 10:04 pm

    Nancy, you are cor­rect about the charm­ing Christo­pher. I have had the plea­sure on sev­eral occai­sions to share a cock­tail hour with him. I will also say, that in addi­tion to charm, and witty rap­port, he pro­vided value. I once used him as a din­ner speaker for a large event. He arrived before any of my guests, and was the last to leave, as the hotel staff vac­u­umed around us. I have to say, I believed he enjoyed my event as much as the donors and sup­port­ers who were there to hear him speak. It even crossed my mind today to send him a note, which com­pletely over­states any friend­ship I can imag­ine I had with him. The thought only goes to con­firm the abil­ity he had to con­nect with each of us. And for that, some credit can be placed with his father.

  32. nancy said on February 27th, 2008 at 10:12 pm

    That was pretty much exactly my expe­ri­ence. When we were leav­ing, he gave me his card. Not a busi­ness card (he was edi­tor of one of the Forbes books at the time), but his per­sonal call­ing card, the one with his name, home address and home phone num­ber. I still have it stuck in my copy of “Thank You for Smok­ing.”

  33. Dexter said on February 27th, 2008 at 10:15 pm

    Brian St.:
    Your tale of “ashes to ashes” was a mov­ing trib­ute to your dad.
    My life is filled with lit­tle things that are sou­venirs of long-ago times, like the one dol­lar base­ball from 1964 , worth­less except to me, because it has Indi­ana native and my per­sonal patron saint of baseball’s Gil Hodges auto­graph on it. I had him sign it in Chicago that year, and it has a dirt smudge from the Iowa Field of Dreams first base area. I’ll also do dumb stuff like pick up a small smooth stone from ocean beaches and mark them and save them.
    Decades ago I was friends with a WWI vet, who was the smartest man I ever met…he knew every US Pres­i­dent and could rat­tle off every mem­ber of every one’s cabinet…well, he was just very intel­li­gent. My momen­tos of his life are “The Intel­li­gent Woman’s Guide to Soci­aism” and his shav­ing mug and shav­ing brush.

  34. Dexter said on February 27th, 2008 at 10:23 pm

    Oh…believe it or not, Ama­zon has two copies of that book by George Bernard Shaw that I men­tioned…

    http://​www​.ama​zon​.co​.uk/​I​n​t​e​l​l​i​g​e​n​t​-​S​o​c​i​a​l​i​s​m​-​C​a​p​i​t​a​l​i​s​m​-​S​o​v​i​e​t​i​s​m​-​F​a​s​c​i​s​m​/​d​p​/​B​0​0​0​W​4​H​7​6​Y​/​r​e​f​=​s​r​_​1​_​1​5​/​0​2​6​-​8​8​1​5​4​9​3​-​9​6​6​2​8​5​4​?​i​e​=​U​T​F​8​&​a​m​p​;​s​=​b​o​o​k​s​&​a​m​p​;​q​i​d​=​1​1​9​4​8​0​3​3​0​2​&​a​m​p​;​s​r=1-15

  35. Jeff said on February 27th, 2008 at 11:24 pm

    Y’know, con­ser­vatism doesn’t need more idiots on the bus, and i could wish that Madame Blog­mistress and oth­ers of y’all were too harsh by half on Mr. Goe­glein, but the sad fact is that in this sym­po­sium on National Review Online, Tim has the Trite-o-meter pegged beyond the red line — http://​arti​cle​.nation​al​re​view​.com/​?​q​=​O​G​Q​x​Y​z​F​j​O​D​Y​5​Z​j​c​4​M​T​F​h​N​m​I​3​M​j​J​j​Y​2​Y​y​N​D​E​0​N​TA4OTE=

    Vin­di­ca­tion for your pre­dic­tion, although i sup­pose it could be suc­ceeded by an even worse iter­a­tion in the Fort’s print venues.

  36. nancy said on February 27th, 2008 at 11:53 pm

    Ah-yup. Only a cer­tain type of con­ser­v­a­tive could write this…

    Friend­ship, I think, can have a spir­i­tual nature. Per­haps that is what Aris­to­tle meant when he said the high­est kind of friend­ship is rooted in virtue, a kind of moral excel­lence where a per­son loves his friend for his own sake, wish­ing him well because of who he is and not with any expec­ta­tion that some­thing is wanted in return. This atti­tude is rec­i­p­ro­cal, a love of benev­o­lence.

    …but still frown on the idea that a per­son might want to have sex out­side of a reli­giously sanc­tioned mar­riage. Read­ing Tim talk about his spir­i­tual friend­ships makes me think of a tent in the woods, two school­boys, the furtive rustling of a sleep­ing bag, and then…moral excel­lence!

  37. Dexter said on February 28th, 2008 at 2:36 am

    A few thoughts per­tain­ing to Brian St.’s dad’s four-pack con­sump­tion:
    I knew two peo­ple who smoked five packs, and also I remem­ber read­ing that Jackie Glea­son smoked five packs.
    One man was my friend’s dad, and he died of lung can­cer when he was 52 years of age. He smoked fil­ters. A friend smoked five packs of non-filters per day. He had a mas­sive coro­nary at 46 , still smokes fil­tered cig­a­rettes, and is now 61.
    I used to smoke 2 packs a week,and quit 26 years ago.
    My point is this: if you smoke non-filters now, you get nick­named for it.
    I lis­ten to XM radio, and on the Opie & Anthony Show a char­ac­ter is “No Fil­ter Paul.”

  38. Dexter said on February 28th, 2008 at 2:41 am

    On the topic of syn­onyms, I object heartily to the inclu­sion of the word ginor­mous into the Amer­i­can lex­i­con.
    It just seems wrong. Now it’s an offi­cial entry in the dic­tio­nar­ies.

    I also do not under­stand the demise of the semi­colon, my favorite punc­tu­a­tion mark.

    http://​query​.nytimes​.com/​g​s​t​/​f​u​l​l​p​a​g​e​.​h​t​m​l​?​r​e​s​=​9​4​0​C​E​1​D​D​1​4​3​1​F​9​3​B​A​2​5​7​5​1​C​0​A​9​6​E​9​C​8​B​6​3​&​a​m​p​;​s​c​p​=​1​&​a​m​p​;​s​q​=​s​e​m​i​c​o​l​o​n​s​&​a​m​p​;​st=nyt

  39. brian stouder said on February 28th, 2008 at 8:04 am

    Dex­ter: Win­ston 100′s – gold pack with red writ­ing. If dad was awake, he was smok­ing, and he was dead at 53 (which I am 6 years away from).

    And my favorite punc­tu­a­tion is (are?) paren­the­sis, and their cousin – the dash. But semi­colans are pretty cool, too

  40. alex said on February 28th, 2008 at 8:20 am

    I got all Aris­totelian and altru­is­tic this morn­ing so gonna be late for work. But I don’t care. The best moral excel­lence always hap­pens at sun­rise in this house.

  41. Jeff said on February 28th, 2008 at 8:34 am

    You guys . . .

    Reminds me of the story about the woman who was shop­ping with her child and hus­band who had not wanted to go along at first, but then kept turn­ing aside and hang­ing back, say­ing “Just a sec, Mom’” and “Hey, hold on a sec, i wanna see this.” Need­ing to move along and get into a check­out line before a clot of peo­ple got there before them, she urged her crew for­ward, to which one mut­tered indis­tinctly “In a sec, hon.”

    To which Mom said loudly “Secs, secs, secs, i’m tired of secs — can we just fin­ish shop­ping first?” And the entire front of the store turned towards the baf­fled mother, look­ing stunned . . .

    . . . and then all the women at the reg­is­ters and in line began to applaud. And the lady in ques­tion, after a thought­ful delay, blushed furi­ously.

  42. Jeff said on February 28th, 2008 at 8:47 am

    Before we flip to today’s post, here’s the best WFB overview/tribute, with some­thing for respecters and despis­ers alike, from the edi­tor of the NYTimes Book Review –
    http://​paper​cuts​.blogs​.nytimes​.com/​2​0​0​8​/​0​2​/​2​7​/​q​a​-​w​i​t​h​-​s​a​m​-​t​a​n​e​n​h​a​u​s​-​o​n​-​w​i​l​l​i​a​m​-​f​-​b​u​ckley/

  43. Kim said on February 28th, 2008 at 9:38 am

    “The prob­lems play out every day, though mostly beyond pub­lic view.”

    I got that far in the story and thought: Whoa. What a stu­pid thing to write/say. I get the impres­sion the fire dept. keeps quite busy pro­tect­ing — or try­ing to pro­tect — the pub­lic. The fact that this has played out in pub­lic view but nobody’s noticed says quite a bit more. To me, any­way.

    Nancy, the “moral excel­lence” bit has me laugh­ing aloud.

  44. Danny said on February 28th, 2008 at 10:03 am

    Nancy, the “moral excel­lence” bit has me laugh­ing aloud.

    Me too. That is if “laugh­ing aloud” could be a euphemism for “groan­ing inwardly.”

  45. LAMary said on February 28th, 2008 at 1:26 pm

    He not only smoked dope, he took Ritalin for­ever. Speed. I saw him once on one of his boats, anchored in Stir­ling Har­bor, Shel­ter Island, NY. He appeared to be very drunk, but that’s what rich guys on yachts do in places like that.

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