I Beg Your Pardon;
The One You Promised in the Rose Garden
Friday, April 14, 2000
- Title: "I Beg Your Pardon; The One …" This is a play on the song: I Beg Your Pardon, I never Promised You a Rose Garden" performed by Patsy Cline and Lynn Anderson - Written by: Joe South - © 1967. Here is a short clip.
- "...non-denial denial ..." Ben Bradlee was the managing editor of the Washington Post during the Watergate investigations and is quoted as using this term, at least, in the movie "All the President's Men."
- "Paradoxically, Al 'I-Invented-Gerald-Ford' Gore …" Gerald Ford succeeded Richard Nixon after Nixon resigned. Ford, it was reported, as part of the deal to have Nixon step down, pardoned Nixon for anything he might have done during his term as President. This was a terrific political problem for Ford in his one and only term.
- "… painted himself into a political corner…" Gore broke from the Clinton administration as well as most liberals when he decided to support the position favored by the Miami relatives which is this is a custody battle, not an immigration battle.
The net result of this is Gore is seen as having pandered to the Cuban community - which doesn't believe him or like the Administration - and has lost a considerable amount of support among his liberal backers.
Full Rant on the Lack of Attention to the Children of Africa:
- On the Elian front, the entire Clinton/Gore Administration seems to be frozen on the issue of one little boy - Elian Gonzalez - in Miami. Attorney General Janet Reno, with nothing better to do with her time, flies to Miami to visit personally with the boy's relatives and meets in Washington with the boy's father.
- Meanwhile, the Washington Post ran a front page story about yet ANOTHER famine looming in Africa - which has, apparently, completely escaped everyone else's attention.
- How about this?
- How about we leave Elian in Miami and start bringing starving African children TO the United States?
- How about Janet Reno and the National Council of Churches flying private jets to Ethiopia, to deliver food rather than using them to fly well dressed and well-heeled government officials and lawyers around?
- How about the demonstrators who are gathering in Washington to demonstrate for the TV cameras at the IMF and World Bank meetings going back to their college dorms and parent-supported apartments and donating, instead, whatever they might have spent on travel, food, drink, hotels, and printing to the relief of the children of Africa?
- How about John Sweeney and the union workers who gathered at the Capitol yesterday throwing a couple of bucks apiece in a bucket and sending that off to their fellow workers who can't feed their families - much less pay for the SUV, the boat, the house, and the kid's college?
- How about Bill Clinton pledging the equivalent amount of US tax dollars he wasted on his trip to India and Pakistan last month to famine relief in the Horn of Africa. How many children would 50 million dollars save from starvation?
- How about the U.S. House and U.S. Senate dropping their boxing gloves for a day and doing something that is good - just for the sake of doing something that is good, and not for partisan bragging rights?
- How about CNN, MSNBC, FOX and all the others sending correspondents to stake out villages in Rwanda or Somalia or Zaire or Sudan to keep tabs on the minute-by-minute movements of little boys and little girls, rather than standing in front of well-trimmed houses in Bethesda, Maryland and Miami, Florida?
- How about President Clinton and House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt showing some true leadership by talking about getting food to these kids, rather than callously showing up in Colorado to make political hay out of the Columbine tragedy?
- How about the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee joining together to send some - SOME - of the tens of millions of dollars they have raised to a non-partisan relief agency?
- How about all of us - people like you and me - looking past our vacation brochures and summer camp applications for ways to help people who have no choices? No choices at all.
- We have seen how one child can gain our national attention. Kudos to the Washington Post for reminding us there are a lot of people - a lot of children - who do not have half of the U.S. government worried about them.
- If this whole mismanaged, misguided, Elian Gonzales episode is worth anything, it is worth reminding us that EVERY little boy and EVERY little girl is - and should be - as important to us as Elian Gonzalez.
END RANT
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