OBAMA ‘PLAGUED’ BY PROBLEMS

By Harriet Posnak Lesser

(My friend Mischa Goss, who works for the White House Requisitions Office, sent me this top secret memo from Holy Moses Enterprises of Egypt Land, NY. Please read before Election Day. It explains a lot.)

Dear Barack Obama,

We regret any inconvenience caused by a mix-up in the online order you placed in December 2009. The blame rests with our OT guys. No, we did not mean IT guys, we meant OT guys as in Old Testament.   Your order somehow ended up with our Bible Department, which has been sending you plagues instead of the plaques you actually requested.  (You know, the ones that said “HOPE” in big blue caps. REMEMBER??) Our office, which until recently used only stone tablets, has now gone hi-tech thanks to a generous grant from the Melissa and Bill (Golden) Gates Foundation and therein lies the problem.  We realize that you inherited a financial crisis, an overwhelming unemployment rate, a huge budget deficit and John Boehner, but according to our eye for an eye; tooth for a tooth policy, we have to charge you for the order, aka The Deluxe Exodus Package, which includes the following:

Frogs: We arranged for a swarm of frogs, fish, sea birds, etc. to come out of the Gulf of Mexico in 2009, following the explosion of a BP drilling rig that dumped millions of barrels of oil into the water. Amazing how that always works. 

Lice: We sent most of them to Congress where they are working both sides of the aisle and irritating the heck out of people. Really hairy situation.

Dog flies:  Couldn’t find any flying dogs so we launched a Navy drone over Iran in 2011 and let the Iranians bring it down.  Never learned how that ended, so we are not billing you at this time.

Murrain:  A fancy name for the cattle plague  which was mailed to the White House shortly after your inauguration.  You spoiled that by immediately banning sick cows from the food supply. Guess you didn’t trust the chef, a leftover from the Bush administration.

Boils: 2011 was our best year yet for wildfires.  We hit Arizona, Texas and California real bad.  Then you stepped in with the big bucks and ruined everything.

Just Plain Plague: We delivered our combination Bird/Swine flu in 2009, causing an expensive albeit fleeting distraction. Billed as the deadliest strain ever, it was renamed H1N1 and disappeared shortly afterward. Lots of swine and a few birds sued the government for slander anyway.

Darkness:  This one had nothing to do with us. Blame it on daylight saving time and Ben Franklin.

Hail: In 2010, you pledged $100 million in aid to Haiti after a killer earthquake decimated the island. Guilty! One year later, we hit Japan with a quake and followed up with a tsunami.  Even we get tired of same old.

Hail 2: We made history with Hurricane Irene in August 2011. Because you’re such a good customer, we’re putting Irene on the installment plan to be paid in full by January 2012 or January 2016.  We call such arrangements “term” insurance.

Firstborns:  Please be advised that we’ve dropped Plague Number 10 in accordance with our No Smote-ing Policy.

Like the Biblical originals, all these plagues have worked.  Check out what’s happening in Egypt now.  Meanwhile, we owe you one more shipment.  You have a choice of locusts or Kardashians, the worst plague known to 21^st century humanity.  And that’s fer sher.

A Time of Mickey Mantle, Me and J. Edgar Hoover

By Stan Isaacs

The Federal Bureau of Investigation seems to be in the news these days on many issues. It reminds me of a time when, to my great surprise, the FBI linked my name with none other than Mickey Mantle.

In the summer of 1998 CBS Channel 2 in New York broke the story that the FBI had investigated Mantle. It cited some1969 correspondence between President Nixon’s domestic adviser, John Erlichman, and the FBI. New York Times sports media columnist Richard Sandomir noted that I was listed along with Mantle, Billy Martin and Mr. Branch Rickey.

It turned out to be in connection with the 1969 baseball All Star Game in Washington. Nixon invited a large group of baseball people, executives, former players and the press to a reception the afternoon preceding the night game. The White House had asked for an FBI check on the guests who would be attending the affair, and a CBS correspondent had used the Freedom of Information act to acquire copies of the FBI report. It mentioned Mantle and me among others.

Actually, the report stated that “the central files of the FBI reveal no pertinent derogatory information regarding the following individuals.” A long list of blacked-out names followed. Some names that were not blacked out included baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn, Kansas City Royals owner Ewing Kauffman, NBC executive Carl Lindemann, Pittsburgh Pirates broadcaster Bob Prince and Los Angeles (nee’ Brooklyn) Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley, whom many law-respecting folk might have regarded as a true enemy of the people.

All of the above were given a clean bill of health by the FBI. There was, however, another section that said, somewhat ominously I believe, “attached are separate memoranda regarding the following individuals: Stan Isaacs, Mickey Mantle, Billy Martin and Mrs. Branch Rickey.” I’d like to think I was listed first because I was the most suspicious suspect, but I take it that the names were listed in alphabetical order.

It developed that Mantle was in the FBI files because he had received threatening letters in the mail, and that in 1956 he reportedly was blackmailed for $15,000 after being caught with another man’s wife in a compromising position. And because his name--and probably Martin’s too—had come up in connection with gambling. A 1963 entry has a source telling the FBI that Mantle received telephone calls from a known gambler.

It is difficult to comprehend why Mrs. Rickey, the gentle wife of the general manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates, also was worthy of special treatment by the FBI. It couldn’t be, could it, because she approved of her husband’s role in breaking the color line in baseball by signing Jackie Robinson?

I believed that my newfound eminence stemmed from having started my newspaper career in the long ago with the Daily Compass. That was the late-but-not-lamented-by-many left wing daily of the McCarthy era that existed for three financially challenged years. It was most noted for having been the paper of residence of the legendary I.F. Stone.

After my name in the FBI report was cited in the Times, I decided to do what I had meant to do for a long time: ask the FBI for my file. Eventually it was sent to me. It consisted of 15 pages. I thought it would include some juicy stuff stemming from my days at the Compass as a possible enemy of the republic when I argued for such subversive causes as putting Satchel Paige in the baseball Hall of Fame.

Nope. My file included nary a word about the Compass. It started when I was at Newsday where I settled in as sports reporter two years after the Compass folded. It noted that I worked for Newsday and gave my address on Marshall Street in Elmont, Long Island where I had lived previously. It even listed my old phone number at West 88^th Street in Manhattan.

I have to admit I was a disgustingly upstanding citizen because it was recorded that there were no “negative reports” on me from the Credit Bureau of New York, the New York Bureau of Motor Vehicles and the Bureau of Criminal Identification.

The name of the person who seemed to have ratted on me was blacked out on several pages. I couldn’t figure out what would have been subversive about me at Newsday other than the fact that I once wrote a glowing piece about the football team of the Red Devils of Freeport High School. My wife thinks it was because I wrote the column called, “Out of Left Field.”

I must have passed muster with J. Edgar Hoover’s sleuths because I went to the reception. Nixon told us about listening on the radio to the tumultuous development in the 1929 World Series when the Philadelphia Athletics overcame the Chicago Cubs with a 10-run rally in the seventh inning of the fourth game. He wowed the baseball people by reciting a batter-by-batter description of the happening. I learned later that Nixon had, the night before, bade his son-in-law, David Eisenhower, to research that inning and give him the specifics details.

Like all the others, I had my picture taken shaking hands with Nixon. My mother disapproved of the photo.   

Some Slings and Arrows -- Touching a Few Bases

By Stan Isaacs

Some short shots in sundry directions:

How unhappy would we all be if the United States pulled its troops out of Iraq , Afghanistan, Germany and South Korea?

I am not a fan of the new “Sunday Review” section of the New York Times. At a time when we are inundated with opinions -- from every source this side of a loudmouth orating on a street corner --  the Times has joined the cacophony of pronunciamentos. I preferred when the Times presented intelligent summaries that put the week’s news in perspective.

I keep waiting for somebody to undue the boffo mistake of eliminating the cartoons and the jokes of the late-night comedians from the Sunday section. The “Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me” feature plays well on public radio stations; it doesn’t read funny in print.

I miss Bob Herbert from the Times op-ed page. And Frank Bruni doesn’t make up for the loss of Frank Rich to New York Magazine. And I do wish that President Obama and his people make it a point to start their day with Paul Krugman’s column, when he writes.                 

                                      *         *            *

With all that, here’s an about-face: praise and appreciation for the breaking-the-mold act of running a near 4,000 word piece by Emory University psychology professor Drew Westen on Aug. 7. Westen’s “What Happened to Obama’s Passion” was a brilliant analysis of  President Obama’s ineffectiveness and the disappointment of a populace that  expected so much more of him. 

Westen’s book “The Political Brain” was a groundbreaking investigation into the role of emotion in determining the political life of the nation. He has drawn considerable attention in Democratic circles.

At the heart of his essay on Obama is this: “When faced with the greatest crisis, the greatest levels of inequality, and the greatest levels of corporate influence on politics since the Depression, Barack Obama stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze. Instead of indicting the people whose recklessness wrecked the economy, he put them in charge of it.”

In the same vein was a column by Philadelphia Inquirer’s Dick Polman who urged the President to adopt the 1968 campaign “give-‘em-hell” style of Harry Truman.  Polman wrote, “Mr. President, can you speak Truman? If you want to stay in office beyond 2012, you need to channel his language.”

He asked that Truman heed the words of Cicero, the orator of ancient Rome. Cicero reputedly said that if you find yourself stuck in politics, start a fight. Even if you don’t know how to win it, it’s only when the fight is on that you can hope to see your way through.

A friend who wants so badly to see a rally by Obama struck a poignant note in a recent discussion about Obama’s difficulties. He said, “They are eating him up.”

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders (Ind.) also makes a significant point. He says there is no doubt Democrats will be voting for Obama in 2012 because the Republican alternative will be so way-out -- or awful. But that doesn’t mean he should be given a pass now. Sanders  urges Democrats to put the heat on Obama for progressive policies, the very heat applied by Westen in his epic essay.

I have tried, without luck, to find out if the Westen essay made any kind of impact at the White House. I hope so.

The greatest con job pulled on the American people is the Republicans making the case that by not taxing the filthy rich, it helps create jobs for the needy poor. 

Gripes:

            -The low sound level in too many new movies; American flicks as well as British.

            -The ear-piercing sounds coming out of public address systems at ball parks and arenas.

           - Movie theaters loading up several commercials,  then five full-of-violence movie previews (we used to call them “coming attractions”)  before delaying the movie anew by displaying the names of several production companies.  

            - Long delays between pitches at big league baseball games.

            - Long delays between points in tennis matches, notably the incessant bouncing of balls by Novak Djokovic before he serves. .

            - Long waits by golfers standing over their putts; a reason to root for Rory McElroy, who goes up to the ball and, without a pause, hits it.    

            - Screeching by women tennis players as part of their serves

I feel sorry for Tiger Woods.

Do Republican House of Representatives leaders John Boehner and Eric Cantor deserve any more respect than the most rabid Tea Partyniks?

I feel sorry for the Mets

It doesn’t thrill this NY-Brooklyn loyalist that the Los Angeles National League team seems to want to assuage guilt by wearing uniforms with “Brooklyn” on the uniform front with a B” hat on certain day games. The Walter O’Malley stain can never be washed away.

The Rupert Murdoch hacking story needs a juicy ending. That would be the discovery of criminality by Murdoch’s Fox Network and NY Post.  

I’d like to see one major league franchise alternate “This Land Is Your Land, This Land is My Land” with the usual “God Bless America” during seventh-inning stretches.

An Open Letter to My Fellow Vanguardians:

Let’s Save the Economy this Week

By Harriet Posnak Lesser

Well, you’ve done it again.  You’ve made me revert, albeit briefly, to the self-doubting, inarticulate newbie I was in the fall of 1950.  This time you did it in one fell swoop.  (Oops; see what I mean?)  Actually, in several -- and - -recent fell swoops.

There was Stan Isaacs’s wonderful dissertation on Paul Revere’s horse; Larry Eisenberg’s hilarious response; the brilliant and biting piece that Myron Kandel sent around  on Joe Republican; Sheila Klass’s heart-wrenchingly brave articles,  and Norman Gelb’s riveting report on the London riots. All of this literary largesse amplified by Herb Dorfman’s excellent and witty commentary. 

Then I thought, hey, maybe I’m not that unworthy after all. I’m here.  I’m blogging. And that has given me the courage to offer up an idea that could save the economy.  Yes, the ECONOMY.  Don’t turn away.  Don’t turn the page.  It would be a huge mistake, as well as a physical impossibility.

Read me out: Everybody’s talking about the economy, but nobody’s doing anything about it. I don’t know a macro from a mackerel, but there seems to be a relatively simple fix to our major problem – restoring consumer confidence.   According to a report from Reuters, consumer confidence dropped from 63.7 in July to 54.9 in early August, the lowest since May, 1980. Consumer expectation plummeted as well.  Help is definitely needed, but figuratively and literally, there’s nobody home in Washington.

So here’s how it would work:  Declare a national Consumer Confidence Day.  Set aside a specific date and ask everyone in America to go out and spend a maximum of $20 on something they really don’t need.  (Bread doesn’t count, even for carb freaks like me.  Chocolate does qualify, however.)  Stores, most of them heavily overstocked, would cooperate by offering bargains in hope of getting their share of the action.  Employment would get a brief boost because extra help would be needed in the way of clerks, private sector store guards, truck drivers to transport the merchandise and additional people in warehouses and factories to get merchandise ready for transport and sale.

This could be bigger than Black Friday and certainly more ecumenical.  I don’t know about you, but my personal need for Christmas tree ornaments is limited. 

I’m not joking! Think I’m misguided, demented, off my trolley? (as an aside --anybody remember the Church Avenue trolley?)  Well, if I am any of the above, it’s your fault, my dear fellow Vanguardians, for having been and continuing to be such darned good writers.

Together we can stave off a “1984” future. (And remember, all’s well that’s Orwell.) Are you with me? I think it’s worth a shot.  If it fails, we can always revert to that time honored solution of our childhoods.  We can put on a show.  Hey, it worked for Judy and Mickey. 

Sincerely,

Harriet Posnak Lesser

Once Upon a Time …

By Harriet Posnak Lesser

I am writing this with trembling hand.  My inkwell is almost empty and my old quill pen has seen better days (but haven’t we all?).  Despite the debilitating hunger that saps my strength and inflames my brain, I am determined to share my tale before it is too late. Read it and weep, as I have. The story of Grimmelda Miller is a tragic parable for our time.

I met Grimmelda in the summer of 2011 shortly after she moved to Happyland, an idyllic American suburb. Perhaps you are old enough to remember that terrible time; it was a season marked by political upheaval and climate change gone mad.  Grimmelda was heavy with child and despite the fact that her husband had left her for a Michele Bachmann lookalike, she was content with her lot. Grimmelda had a special talent for coping with adversity. Hand her a lemon and she made lemonade.  Give her a cracked egg and she made an omelet.  She could even spin dross into gold.  (If you’re wondering what dross is, I Googled it and it means waste matter.) How could poor Grimmelda know that her exceptional ability would spell destrucshan (distruckshen?) for herself and the rest of the country?

One day her father-in-law, a wastrel like his son, ran into the richest man in Happyland and, to make himself appear important, he bragged that he had a daughter-in-law who could spin dross into gold.  Being a man of few words, the rich neighbor said,  “Bring her house later, do demo.”

The wealthy man led Grimmelda to a small dark room in the basement of his McMansion.   There was a spinning wheel, a chair, and a huge pile of dross. “Spin dross gold tonight or die,” he warned before walking out and locking the door.  Poor Grimmelda was terrified and began to sob.  There was no way she could complete the task by morning.  Just then, the door flew open and in walked a strange little man who asked, “Wassupkiddo?”

“I have to spin this #$%^#  pile of dross into gold by morning or die.”

“What’ll you give me if I help you out?” he queried.

“How about my first born child?” she asked brightly.

“Nah,” said the little man.  “I hate kids.  Just sign this piece of paper and I’ll turn that heap of dross into gold.”

Grimmelda complied and the manikin seated himself at the spinning wheel and worked all night until the dross was gone.  The rich gentleman was very pleased, but instead of letting Grimmelda go, he married her and gave her more piles of dross to spin into gold.  Each night the little man returned to help her.  His only request was for people to sign his mysterious paper and pretty soon, he had the signature of everyone in Happyland.

And then, without warning, he stopped coming around.  The piles of dross grew bigger and bigger, and Grimmelda’s greedy husband threatened to leave her. She had almost given up hope when the little man suddenly reappeared.  “Did you happen to find a very small pair of bifocals?” he asked .“I can’t read that paper.”

“BTW, what does your paper say?”

“I thought you’d never ask.  It gives me permission to lower tax ceilings on every house in Happyland and crush all the people living there.”

Grimmelda began to cry uncontrollably.

“Stop being a wuss. They knew what they were signing,” the manikin said.

“It’s fine with me, but I need help with my spinning,” she sobbed.

“Okay. I’ll do it if you can guess my name.”

“Game on!” Grimmelda said.  And she guessed one name after another.  “Harry, John, Nancy, Mitch.”

“No way,” the little man squealed, jumping up and down with joy.

Grimmelda mentioned every name she could think of and then in an unexplained moment of enlightenment, she asked, “Is it Grover Norquist?”

“Who told you?” he screamed, waving his precious piece of paper. His face became redder and redder until he disappeared in a puff of smoke.And so, ceilings did not crash, lives were not crushed and everyone was saved, at least for a while.

But there will always be people willing to sign dumb pledges.  

Problem is, they all live and work in Happyland, a suburb of Washington D.C.   

“An Accidental Sportswriter” Touches Significant Bases

By Stan Isaacs

I find it hard to write a column about Bob Lipsyte’s new book, “An Accidental Sportswriter.” It’s hard to write about somebody in your trade who is a better writer and keener thinker than you are.

Lipsyte of the Times is more than Lipsyte of the New York Times. He has written several works of fiction, some prize-winning young adult fiction, a stunning book with comedian Dick Gregory, books about different aspects of sports, notably “Free to Be Muhammad Ali” and hosted TV discussions. A youthful-looking 73, he is a man who is somewhat of a blend of self-questioning and hubris.

In an important book that includes encounters with Billie Jean King, Howard Cosell, Mickey Mantle, Ali, Gregory, Joe DiMaggio, Lance Armstrong and Bob Costas, Lipsyte writes, “”I hadn’t figured out that sports led to everything and everything led to sports.”  (Confession: I skipped the chapter on a car racer.)

Lipsyte is a contrarian. He goes against the grain of most of what we have been fed in what he calls “Sports World”. He has been in the forefront of writing about women in sports, racism, gays, drugs, the Muhammad Ali dynamic. While I have dipped a toe into these issues, Lipsyte has seized them as his own and emerged as a more significant sportswriter than many of the names that have dominated the sports journalism of our time. But he is not perfect; he misuses the word, “fulsome” (it has a negative, not a positive connotation) and he has an affinity for exclamation points.

He is funny. He is fair. He can praise an individual while laying out his faults. He is right on with the description of Howard Cosell, the dyspeptic, mad, hypocritical egotist of the airwaves. He writes, “Sure, he (Cosell) hustled sports—football, boxing, baseball briefly, the Olympics, and some made-for-TV early reality games—but he also delivered thundering jeremiads against greed, exploitation, racism, and the spurious use of tax dollars and eminent domain to build stadiums that would enrich the owners with whom he loved to mingle.”

He admits he loved Cosell. Certainly, the friendship was solidified by the high regard Cosell had for Lipsyte. Cosell hired him as a handsomely-paid writer on his short-lived variety show which the head writer said “is so bad not only is no one watching, they are going next door to turn off their neighbor’s set.”

Mohammad Ali has been a significant figure in Lipsyte’s career. He writes, “He was the single most important sporting lens through which I learned about politics, religion, race, and hero worship….in watching him change and grow for almost fifty years I’ve watched myself.”

He had bitter disagreements with Ali over Malcolm X. “By pointedly saying that anyone who turned away from Elijah Muihammad deserved death,” Lipsyte writes, “Ali seemed to be almost offering his preapproval of Malcolm’s execution.” They would argue angrily until someone intervened.

He writes about the much-married Ali’s outrageous skirt chasing. In one scene Ali picks up three young girls and then takes one in the motor home he was using as a dressing room for a charity boxing match. Lipsyte writes, “Ali grinned at us as he closed the door behind himself. I watched for a while, until the motor home began to jiggle on its springs. I imagined that the champ was floating and stinging.”

At times like these I remember the early Cassius Clay trumpeting that he wouldn’t be like Joe Louis, trafficking with many women, winding up broke. Ali hasn’t wound up broke. The man who was vilified when he challenged authority is now a cash cow trotted out for a fee by the establishment he so often railed against.

As I do, Lipsyte loves Billie Jean King. He writes, “I believe Billie Jean was the most important sports figure of the 20^th century. Not only was she the feminine symbolic leader of the movement representing half the world’s athletes and potential athletes, she had also been a leader of the revolutionaries that had overthrown the most oppressive concept in sports – amateurism -- a dictatorship by which sports officials (well-paid executives if not wealthy aristocrats) controlled unpaid athletes. “

Lipsyte gained access to the black world through his association with Dick Gregory in the writing of Gregory’s autobiography, “Nigger.” The title shocked many people; they would not buy the book even if they were sympathetic to Gregory’s social message. But, writes Lipsyte: “I loved his dedication: ‘Dear Momma—Wherever you are, if you ever hear the word ‘nigger’ again, remember they re advertising my book.”

Access is the greatest aphrodisiac, and if I am at all jealous of Lipsyte—and I am—it is because I think his association with the Times and sports documentaries gave him closer access to big names. He had the same kind of early brush-offs from Mantle and DiMaggio that I had, but then he goes back to them and comes away with kindlier feelings about them than I ever had.

Lipsyte has had a long fight battling testicular cancer. His own use of drugs makes him less than critical of athletes accused of using performance-enhancing substances--bicyclist Lance Armstrong in particular. There was the time a woman stopped Armstrong and asked him how his belief in God had helped him as a cancer patient. He writes, “Armstrong replied, ‘Everyone should believe in something,’ he said in his direct, almost chilly way, ‘and I believed in surgery, chemotherapy, and my doctors.’ ”

Fascinating for me is Lipsyte’s relationship with Bob Costas, as brilliant a television voice as Lipsyte is a writer.  Of their first intense conversation, Lipsyte writes, “Costas suggested that I might be happier—certainly my readers might be happier—if I tried less to be provocative and more to be open-hearted. He said he sensed my humanity but thought I was suppressing it, moving past the boundaries of skepticism into cynicism, not finding pleasure in the games or the goodness of even flawed athletes.”

Lipsyte says of Costas, “No one else has ever walked so gracefully the line between journalist and shill. He is one of Jock Culture’s most treasured cheerleaders, and that’s no pose. His 2000 book on baseball pointed out the game’s flaws in such statesmanlike prose that people thought he might be a candidate for Major League Baseball Commissioner. Why not? We’ve done much worse.” Grudging praise but praise nevertheless.

They had another intense dialogue, this one more comfortable, 14 years later. “There were areas where we needed to agree to disagree. It was apparent that I did not consider him the journalist he thought he was. There was no chapter on steroids in his baseball book. (‘I was talked out of it,’ he said, ‘and I regret that now.’)”

Yet there is admiration in Lipsyte quoting Costas’ take on him. He says Costas wants “a dash of celebration and admiration along with the excoriation. It gives you more credibility for when you criticize.

Costas goes on: “In the sixties and seventies the issues were more clear cut—gays, women, Ali—and you were on the right side. When you made your bones on those big issues, the prevailing tone needed a counter-puncher. ..But now the prevailing tone is so mean you have to play it straight. ..There needs to be more nuance…more of a need to celebrate. …It’s not a breach of integrity to find within what you disapprove things that are worthy of approval and celebration.”

Lipsyte came away wondering “if Costas and I were secret sharers in some way, each disappointed in the other and perhaps even disappointed in himself.”

The last chapter of “An Accidental Sports Sportswriter” is an eloquent paean to his father, Sidney, an educator who lived past 100. I think it is the chapter Bob Lipsyte most enjoyed writing.

Sarah Palin’s History Is

As Good as Longfellow’s

History is what you make of it, and Sarah Palin enriched the lore of Americana recently with her startling retelling of the Paul Revere saga. People haven’t appreciated her excursion into pedagogy and are laughing at her. Not me. I am indebted to her for bringing Revere and his horse back into the national consciousness.

I don’t think Palin’s retelling the story of Revere’s ride is a funny matter because I have a passionate interest in the subject. I long have sought the answer to this burning question: What was the name of Paul Revere’s horse? Or more accurately, the horse that Revere rode into history and into Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, “Paul Revere’s Ride.”

I admit that Palin got her facts wrong when she said, “He who warned the British that they weren’t gonna be takin’ away our arms by ringing those bells, and makin’ sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be sure and we were going to be free, and we were going to be armed.”

He was warning his fellow countrymen, not the British. A mistake for sure. But old Longfellow, the poet, made a few mistakes of his own. He rates as one of the great public relations flacks of all time for the job he did ennobling Revere. He had Revere warning colonists all the way to Concord. Not true, because Revere was captured by the British outside Lexington. And Longfellow conveniently forgot to mention that there were two other riders, William Dawes and Samuel Prescott. They were not caught.

I am a bit disappointed in Palin, though, because she didn’t mention anything about Revere’s horse. If she did, she probably would have gotten that wrong, too, because most people who have given Revere’s horse a name have been wrong. I have tracked down and exposed these names as phonies: Peg, Sparky, Dobbin, Thunderer and Scheherazade. Nor was it Silver, Mr. Ed, Man o' War, Secretariat or Rosinante.

In view of the mountain of misinformation about the name of the horse, I am not offended by the theory offered now by the eminent Yiddishist, Larry Eisenberg. He writes that “Revere was Jewish. His original name was Reverowitz. He called his horse, ‘Ferdela’ and he would frequently order it to ‘giddyyepsheh.’ ” (Ferdela is Yiddish for horse-which Palin might not know).

I wouldn’t be surprised if Eisenberg wound up as a vice president running mate of Sarah Palin.

Harriet Posnak Lesser, another Brooklyn College scholar, picked up on Palin’s history lesson to enlighten us further. She writes that “Revere was the 15th of 12 children, born to the Reveres who were known for their truthfulness, fruitfulness and lousy math skills…Grandpa Revere is credited with saying, ‘Two can live as cheaply as one, if one is a cross dresser’…After the famous Boston Massacre in 1903 (Boston Red Sox five games, Pittsburgh Pirates three) Paul became a patriot until he realized he was in the wrong ballpark because the Patriots are a football team…In 1763 he joined the Sons of Liberty but switched to the Sons of the Pioneers when Roy Rogers made him an offer he couldn’t refuse…”

I regret to inform that Lesser’s history errs on the colorful side. In actuality Revere was an on-call messenger for the American colonies He was taken in a rowboat on the night of April 18, 1785, across the Charles River from Boston to Charlestown. He took off on a borrowed horse of Deacon Larkin in Charlestown and rode almost 13 miles toward Concord. He was captured outside of Lexington where a British major ordered him to give his horse to a sergeant.

In his diary of the event Revere wrote that he “got a horse of Deacon Larkin…I set off on a very good horse.” No mention of the name.

So we know that it all goes back to Deacon Larkin. And that leads to one legitimate claim. It comes from a thin book entitled, “Some Descendants of Edward Larkin” (Knickerbocker Press, 1930) by William Ensign Lincoln. It states, “Samuel Larkin, born Oct. 22, 1701, died Oct. 8, 1784; he was a chair maker, then a fisherman and had horses and stable. He was the owner of Brown Beauty, the mare of Paul Revere’s ride…The mare was loaned at the request of Samuel Larkin’s son, Deacon John Larkin, and was never returned to her owner.”

This persuaded the historian David Hackett Fischer to declare in his book, “Paul Revere’s Ride” that Brown Beauty was the name. That should be the end of it. But I am not convinced. Doesn’t Brown Beauty ring a little too hollow? Doesn’t it sound too much like Black Beauty of the famous novel? Hmmm.

I wish Sarah Palin had said something about this. I wish she had come up with a name. She probably would have got it wrong, but so what. It is fashionable to be wrong when trying to recreate Paul Revere’s ride. (See Longfellow’s poem).

There is one person who never gave a damn for the horse or Paul Revere. That was Joe E. Lewis, the pixieish comedian and degenerate horse player. He said he disliked Revere because he “gave one of history’s bad rides. He took the horse wide at Lexington.”

Palin Reveres Paul

By Harriet Posnak Lesser

Sarah Palin, former beauty contest winner, former sportscaster, former mayor, former governor, and former vice presidential nominee, is expected to formally announce her bid for President at a launching of her new historical biography titled Paul Revere:  One if by Land, Two if by Sea, Three if by Greyhound.. 

Here are some excerpts:

Paul Revere was born on January 1, 1735 to a French Huguenot father and a French HugueYES mother.  Paul was the 15^th of 12 children, born to the Reveres who were known for their truthfulness, fruitfulness and lousy math skills.  The family was also very thrifty, a trait inherited from grandpa Ru Paul Revere and grandma Ru Paul Revere who were actually the same person.   Grandpa Revere is credited with the saying, “Two can live as cheaply as one, if one is a cross dresser.”

As a young child, Paul’s parents took him to the annual Boston Tea Party where everyone dressed as Indians and threw tandoori chicken into the Hudson River. Little Paul wore a diaper and wowed the crowd with his karaoke version of Gandhi Man.   He learned an

important life lesson that day: “No taxation without representation -- if you earn over $250,000 a year.”

The years passed and Paul grew up to be a Silversmith, a huge surprise to his family because nobody else was Jewish.  After the famous Boston Massacre in 1903 (Boston Red Sox, 5 games, Pittsburgh Pirates, 3) Paul became a Patriot until he realized he was in the wrong ballpark because the Patriots are a football team.

In 1763, he joined the Sons of Liberty but switched to the Sons of the Pioneers when Roy Rogers made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.  In addition to being lead tenor, Paul doubled as a courier under General Thomas Gage, military governor of Massachusetts, a plum job.  One night, armed with a couple of lanterns, a mug of ale, and a McRib sandwich, Paul set out to warn the British that the Americans were coming.  He rode his faithful horse all the way to New Hampshire, stopping off at bars in Concord and Lexington for shots heard around the world.  (See footnote.)

Anyways, Paul finally found the British in Massachusetts and warned them that they better not take away our arms by ringing those bells and by making sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were gonna be secure and we were gonna be free and we were gonna be armed.  So help me Benedict Arnold!

(And from this Longfellow made a poem?  He shouldaquit with Hiawatha.)

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Footnote:"What I love about New Hampshire and what we have in common is our extreme love for liberty. You're the state where the shot was heard around the world in Lexington and Concord."  Michele Bachmann, Revolutionary War expert.