Meals From The Marketplace

            Call me a dinosaur, a romantic, a kid at heart or an inveterate dreamer, but I can’t help getting excited when the winter sports finally give way to (or at least make room for) talk of pitching matchups and pennant races.  Baseball has changed over the years, but it is still the single game that Americans can claim, without fear of contradiction, as their own.  The game is to sports what jazz is to music.  Both were born here.  Both have spread generously to other lands and have been embraced by other cultures.  Both contain in their histories the dynamic story of America’s development and evolution as a nation.

            I began collecting baseball cards at the age of four (thereby learning to read at a rudimentary level so I could correctly associate the players with their teams).  Almost immediately, living not far from Ebbets Field, I developed an affinity for the Brooklyn Dodgers.  The Dodgers were my first love, and, like many first loves, they frequently broke my heart, almost every year losing either the pennant or the World Series by a single game. 

            To grow up a baseball fan during those years was about as good as it gets.  All three New York teams (Brooklyn’s Dodgers, Manhattan’s Giants and the Bronx’s Yankees) were powerhouses; the World Series always featured one, and usually two, of the three teams.  The big argument in those days among my young friends was who the best center fielder in the game was.  Strong cases could be made for all three: the Yanks’ Mickey Mantle, the Dodgers’ Duke Snider and the Giants’ Willie Mays.  (All three were subsequently elected to the Hall of Fame.)

            As a youngster, I quickly came to realize (after only two years of little league ball) that I could not hit, catch or throw well enough to avoid tremendous humiliation whenever I took the field, which for a young teen is not a pleasant prospect, especially if you are also beset with a severe case of acne and an inability to speak intelligibly to members of the opposite sex.  Undeterred, I took my love for the game inside, learning as much as I could about the many facets of the sport that escape the casual fan. 

            Why, for instance, can certain pitchers handle certain hitters, while others can’t?  In what situations will a good batter punch the ball to the opposite field instead of swinging for the fences?  What is a manager likely to be planning with a two-run lead in the bottom of the seventh?  All of these and countless other stratagems and nuances became my homework, and I studied it all by listening to the likes of Vin Scully, Red Barber, Mel Allen and Lindsey Nelson.

            I also studied the box scores and learned how to compute batting averages and earned run averages and “magic numbers” (the number of wins needed to clinch a pennant), quickly developing thereby a facility with numbers (these being the days before computers, or even hand held calculators). 

            My love for reading started with baseball, because I soon learned that it was fun to read what the sports writers wrote about the games I’d listened to on the radio the night before.  And so, by reading newspaper reports by Dick Young, Leonard Koppett, Jimmy Cannon, and Roger Kahn, I came to appreciate the ways in which writing could capture and even enhance the memory of a game, a single play, a fleeting moment.

            And, as I studied the game and its history, I became more aware of the history of my country, thereby gaining a more mature sense of patriotism, one that reveres the potential for the country’s greatness that its Constitution provides, while also recognizing the realities of the less noble pursuits and accomplishments that its politics often promote.

            My love of reading soon led me to experiment with my own writing skills, at first merely describing the things I observed, later adding the emotions I felt, and, ultimately, crafting essays that sought to express an idea I’d formed.  Viewed in hindsight, I can easily see the child who was the father of the man I’ve become – lawyer, teacher, writer – and it all began with baseball.

            And now, as yet another spring arrives and another season begins, I am again in touch with those joyful days of my youth.  The start of a new baseball season and the advent of spring seem to be almost one and the same experience, so joined are they at the hip. 

            Both herald a sense of hope.  For the teams, a new race for a pennant begins, with optimistic visions of improved performance from returning players and boosts of enthusiasm from newly acquired teammates.  For the rest of us, spring creates a sense of renewal and a hope that the future will be better than the past. 

            But the baseball season is long (six months and 162 games), and over the course of that span of time, the realities of life all too often take hold.  Injuries occur to key players; slumps derail expectations; mid-season trades don’t lead to improvement; players lose the confidence of their managers; managers lose the respect of their players.

            In the end, many hopes are dashed, and only one team remains standing when the chill of autumn takes hold and the sports headlines are dominated by the game played with an oval-shaped ball by men wearing all manner of padding and helmets.

            Such is life.  It dawns with hope and expectations of great joy and eternal happiness, only to be buffeted by cruel fates and human imperfections.  And each opportunity for renewal or rediscovery (the new diet, the commitment to exercise, the promise to be faithful, the resolution to break a bad habit) soon gets lost in the dog days of summer and the chill of fall.

            But spring is when hopes revive and when everything is once again possible.  The Dodgers came close again last year.  Surely this year, they’ll secure a World Series title.

            Or not. 

            But just to have the feeling again is enough to recall that it’s good to be alive.

“Here comes the sun;

“It’s been a long, cold, lonely winter.

“Here comes the sun;

“It seems like years since it’s been here.

Here comes the sun; here comes the sun,

And I say, it’s all right.”

-George Harrison 

            It happens every year, of course, and, give or take a few weeks, it happens at just about the same time of the year, too.  After what seemed, for reasons either real or perceived to be so, to be an especially lengthy season of wintry conditions (including record snowfalls in the eastern U.S. and similarly miserable meteorological happenings elsewhere in the country), it has finally arrived right about on schedule once again this year. 

            Yes, the arrival of that glorious season known as spring never ceases to rekindle sanguine feelings for anyone who is old enough to understand the vagaries of life.  And it is a season that especially salutes those who are still young enough to think they will escape those vagaries.

            Each season has its purpose and provides its lessons, to be sure.  Winter is hard, as is life. It brings the flu and other maladies that fester and that pester our psyches, causing as much psychological disquiet as physical discomfort.  The days are cold, the evenings frigid.  One dares not linger far from shelter for long.  Less activity seems the wisest course in winter.

            Summer is active, providing the opportunity to play, and work, in the fullness of the day. We are at our best in summer, or so we hope.  But summer is also real, with stifling heat often forcing us to forego the dreams we had and the plans we made.  Summer is the time of our excesses, when our indulgent nature often brings us more pain than pleasure.  It is a time of broken promises, when expectancies become disappointments.

            Autumn is peaceful, but it is a false peace: the calm before the storm.  It is a time for saving up for the cold days ahead, and it is a time for recovering from the excesses of summer.  Autumn is the reality of failure and defeat.  It pretends to give us a second chance, but it hides its true intent, which is to usher us back to the bitter hostility of winter.

            And then there is that most wondrous of seasons, the time of spiritual rebirth and unbridled optimism, of renewed energy and re-found enthusiasm, when dreams are made and hope “springs eternal.” 

            Spring is all about expectancy, reflecting the idealism of youth.  It is a time when everything seems new and often is.  For those species that spend the harshest parts of winter in the almost comatose state of hibernation, the world must seem ripe for rediscovery when the morning frost softens to glistening dew and the slumbers of the recent past give way to a need to forage again for sustenance. 

            Of course, there are reasons for the sense of rebirth that spring creates.  First of all, nature calls attention to it in the re-greening of the land.  Blossoms appear, a few at first, tentatively, on barren limbs, soon to be joined by countless others.  Buds develop where lifeless stems had been only days before.  In short order they will bloom into the most resplendent of floral displays.  

            It is the warmer weather and the concomitant longer days that waken the flora of the land, of course.  So, too, do they waken the spirits of the fauna, most notably the human variety thereof.  What is it about spring that rekindles the energy to do so much more?  Certainly those longer days and warmer mornings help.  No one, it seems has energy for much of anything when we must drive to work in near darkness and return in much the same circumstance.  Short days suggest early bedtimes, or at least, little activity.  But longer days, with the sun awakening us from our slumbers and awaiting our return from a day of labor, hint at greater possibilities than a dreary evening spent watching even drearier sitcoms.

            And once daylight savings time kicks in, with the sun now beckoning us to get out, to stay out, to DO something, it is hard to imagine how we let ourselves become so lethargic.  And so we look for things to do, or rather, we find things that always needed doing, but somehow had escaped our attention.  Spring cleaning is not just a cliché.  It is a real phenomenon, brought on by a need, in some a sudden compulsion, to clear out the cobwebs from our lives.  Spring does have that effect.

            Spring brings baseball, which, in America, is still youth personified.  What other sport simply exalts in the turn of the season?  Basketball and hockey are really indoor sports, meant to be played when it is too nasty to be outside.  Football is a sport for rain and snow and mud and sludge, conditions that match the animalistic ferocity of its participants. 

            But baseball is as lush as a meadow in full bloom, with long stretches of inactivity for many of its players, the better to appreciate the wonders of the season.  Baseball is the sport for dreamers who dream alternately of lazy afternoons and magnificent feats of physical prowess.

            Poets and others with a creative bent are inclined to discover new themes on life that lead to new artistic endeavors in the spring.  Could Shakespeare have written “Romeo and Juliet” at any other time of the year?  He may have, but it hardly seems possible.

            Love comes more naturally in the spring.  Certainly there is a need to couple and procreate that is inherent in all living beings.  But the ardor and passion that accompany coupling by members of our species seems most intense in the spring. 

            In part, I surmise, this happy occurrence is occasioned by the fact that we all feel more attractive at this time of year.  And, feeling so, we are naturally seen in this light by others, who, also feeling just a little more special, become all the more appealing to us.  The rest, as they say, just seems to come naturally. 

            Ah, Spring.  It’s all right.

          Glenn Beck has taken a new tack in his war against all things “un-American.” 

          Beck’s radio program (syndicated nationally) and TV show (aired on Fox News) feature the host “educating” his listeners and viewers on the great threats to America’s heritage and legacy.

          Beck is largely credited with the creation of the “tea party” movement.  He rails nightly about things like President Obama’s birth certificate and Nancy Pelosi’s socialist agenda.  He is prone to tear up over his love of his country and has authored a whole catalog of books promoting the idea, in one way or another, that America would be a near Utopia if it could just be rid of liberals and their ilk.

          To dismiss Beck as a fringe player on the cable TV cast of characters would be easy were it not for the fact that his show is wildly popular and his books are surprisingly so as well.  In other words, Mr. Beck has become a brand with significant market shares in a cross-section of modern media.  He could be the poor man’s Bill O’Reilly, but that expression gives too much credit to his prime-time cable mate.  The better description might be a different blend of the same drink (tea, of course).

          In case the foregoing description doesn’t make the point obvious, Mr. Beck hates all things Democratic (as in the Party).  Thus, it was no surprise when he sought out the recently resigned Congressman Eric Massa, after Massa claimed he had been forced out by the House leadership (and had previously been “strong-armed” by White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel).

          Beck surely thought he had scored a real journalistic coup in devoting the full hour of his Fox broadcast one night last week to an interview of Massa.  He probably expected the just-resigned Congressman to throw his former Democratic Party colleagues and leaders under the bus (to use the in- vogue expression), thereby providing Mr. Beck a week’s worth of ammunition to paint the Democrats as all the horrid things he surely believes they are.

          Unfortunately, Mr. Massa only gave up himself in the interview.  Despite repeated prodding from Beck, Massa would not reveal any juicy stuff on Speaker Pelosi, Mr. Emanuel, or any other Democrat. 

          Instead, he claimed he brought it all on himself.  “It” here being the utter disgrace of admitting to sexual harassment along with absolutely bizarre tales of “tickling fights” and “snorkeling” (not the underwater kind) all while claiming not to be gay.

          At the end of the hour, Mr. Beck went to his chalkboard (a prop he uses to emphasize the educational value of his show) and essentially apologized for “wasting” his viewers’ time with the Massa interview, by which he undoubtedly meant he hadn’t gotten any new evidence of Democratic corruption, the implicit purpose of the interview.

          The Massa interviews (he followed his appearance on Beck’s show with an equally weird one on Larry King’s) provided great fodder for Saturday Night Live, which had a hilarious segment on the Weekend Update segment with Jerry Seinfeld and Seth Myers entitled, “Really?!?”  But the real news from Mr. Beck’s show, the news that got covered in last Friday’s edition of The New York Times among other legitimate news reporting media, concerned very serious remarks Beck had made the previous week.

          On his March 2 radio broadcast, Mr. Beck called on his listeners to leave their churches if those churches preach or otherwise speak of social or economic justice.  Specifically, he said, “I beg you, look for the words ‘social justice’ or ‘economic justice’ on your church Web site.  If you find it, run as fast as you can.”  Those terms, he went on to proclaim, are “code words” for Communism and Nazism.

          Beck added, “If you have a priest that is pushing social justice, go find another parish.  Go alert your bishop.”

          As might be expected, Beck’s remarks did not go over well with many religious types. 

          “What he has said attacks the very heart of our Christian faith, and Christians should no longer watch his show,” said the Reverend Jim Wallis, who heads a Christian anti-poverty group. 

          Mr. Beck claims to be a converted Mormon, which puzzled Philip Barlow, the Arrington professor of Mormon history and culture at Utah State University.  Professor Barlow, informed of Beck’s remarks, said, “One way to read the Book of Mormon is that it’s a vast tract on social justice.”  He then added, “A lot of Latter-Day Saints would think that Beck was asking them to leave their own church.”

          As of last weekend, Mr. Beck had not recanted or amended his earlier remarks.  I don’t expect that he will.  Beck’s view of America is that it functions best and adheres most closely to its founding ideals when it fosters and preserves a robust free enterprise system in which the successful are rewarded for their success, thereby setting an example for others to follow.

          Social justice is, for him, a code phrase for government handouts and government regulation.  Economic justice equates in his lexicon with government interference with the kind of freedom most closely associated with laissez-faire capitalism.  These are not laudable policies or goals for Glenn Beck.

          That his attitudes are offensive to many Christians (and those of most other religious faiths) is also not surprising.  Christianity (at least those versions built on the teachings and gospel of Jesus Christ) emphasizes love for fellow humans, to the very “least of these,” as Jesus himself put it (Matthew 25:40). 

          It espouses a true social justice and rejects the accumulation of wealth for its own sake.  “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:24) is but one of many sayings attributed to Jesus that depicts the religion’s values and commitment to social justice.

          And so, as Mr. Beck continues his assault on everything, including the teachings of Jesus himself, it is entirely appropriate to ask how the Messiah would fair in Mr. Beck’s Utopian America.

            Health care reform is either going to happen within the next few weeks or it isn’t going to happen in this decade.  If the Obama administration fails to push through some form of the legislation that is under consideration by Easter (less than a month from now), neither his nor a successor administration will touch the subject for years to come.

            In other words, it’s do or die on what is for many Americans a matter of life and death.

            Arguments for and against “Obamacare” have been tossed around for the better part of a year, even though it is only within the last month that the President has actually stated firmly what he wants (and even then, he stated it in true Obama-speak, leaving out more details than he specified).

            The administration’s plan is to force the Senate version of the bill through the House on a straight up-or-down vote and then amend the new law (as it will then be) with a second bill that will be forced through both houses as a reconciliation measure.  The result, if both bills become law, will be significant reform of the health care insurance industry (no more uninsurable “pre-existing conditions,” no loss of coverage coincident with the loss of a job), a mandate for an additional 30 million Americans to have health insurance, regulation of insurance premium increases, and a system of subsidies and tax credits for individuals and businesses that cannot on their own afford coverage for themselves or their employees.

            It will cost under 900 billion dollars over ten years and will result in net savings to the federal budget of over 100 billion dollars.

            It will also increase the choices consumers have in making health insurance decisions and will decrease the ability of insurance companies to ignore the needs of insured patients by refusing to allow doctor-ordered treatments and tests. 

            Sound good?  It is if you believe the federal government should accept an active role in the health care that is available to American citizens.  It is if you believe that access to health care should be more a right than a privilege in America.  It is if you believe that the purpose of insurance should be to insure rather than to restrict.

            So why, then, are the Republican members of both the House and the Senate in constant and unwavering lockstep in their opposition to this effort to reform the system (a system, it might be noted, that everyone agrees – albeit for different reasons – is not working and is not sustainable)?

            Some, all right maybe many, of those who are adamantly opposed, are strictly playing politics with the issue.  In other words, they want Obama to fail, they want the Democrats to fail, they want to get back in power.

            But unless you are a tea-bagger or some other form of ill-informed but angry and frustrated American, you know that politics is not all that simple.  For even if the Republican opposition to all-things-Obama is principally motivated by the thirst for power, there is a basic morality that creates that thirst.

            For, in the end, it is morality, or one’s view of that concept, that creates the ideologies that direct the policies of those on the left and those on the right of the political spectrum.

            For those on the left, the morality of healthcare reform is that no one should suffer from ill health needlessly or because a bureaucratic system denies him or her available care.  In America, that care is available.  The problem isn’t with the quality of our health care; it’s with its accessibility.

             For those on the right, it’s a little more complicated.  The morality of the health care issue for those on the right is all tied up in the idea of freedom.  Freedom is almost prayerful to Republicans, and it (or some variant of it) is used in all contexts of domestic and foreign policy.

             “Iraqis should be free to choose their own destiny,” was a talking point in the months leading up to the invasion of that country.  “Americans should be freed from the oppressive nature of high taxes,” was one that Ronald Reagan put in play a generation ago.  “Free markets are the best way to secure prosperity for all,” is the mantra that the Chicago School of Economics devised in the latter half of the last century.

             All of this talk about freedom probably has some link to the most fundamental of freedoms from the perspective of those on the right – free will.  The freedom to choose what to believe, and more specifically whether to believe in God, is the essence of conservative thinking.  It is their morality.

             Conservatives reject wholeheartedly anything akin to Hobbesian determinism.  That concept might make sense in a physical world where cause and effect control.  But in the human mind, the human soul, there is a freedom to choose, and it must be preserved and cherished at all costs (unless of course it is the freedom to choose what to do with one’s own body when it is impregnated, but that’s another story for another day).

             And so, Americans must be free of all government programs or directives or regulations.  The purest form of government is the one that does nothing other than assure the freedom of its peoples.  Thus, all federal spending that is directed at anything other than protection (from foreign invasion, domestic violence, and crimes against personal property) is wasteful at best and immoral at worst.

             The foregoing is only hyperbolic in the means I have chosen to express the thought.  In fact, it represents the core of conservative morality, and I speak as one who in my youth adhered closely to that view of morality.

             And if you understand what I have just expressed, you may begin to understand why the Republican Party, politics aside, is so adamantly opposed to the Obama health care reforms. 

             It isn’t that those reforms might not work to alleviate suffering for millions of Americans; it’s that they deny the freedom of Americans to choose for themselves how to live their lives.