Twisting Slowly in the Wind

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There have been many tragic stories coming from Egypt in recent weeks, but the most tragic may well have been the report of the sexual assault and barbaric beating of CBS correspondent Lara Logan.

Reports of attacks on foreign journalists have been fairly common, but Caroline Glick writes, in the Jerusalem Post, that "the most egregious attack ... took place ... when ... Lara Logan was sexually assaulted and brutally beaten by a mob of Egyptian men."

I can't argue with that.

CBS, Glick goes on to say, "took several days to even report the story, and when it did, it left out important information. The fact that Logan was brutalized for 20 to 30 minutes and that her attackers screamed out 'Jew, Jew, Jew' as they ravaged her was absent from the CBS report."

Glick tells a tale of journalistic cowardice and misogyny that makes the attack on Logan seem virtually inevitable, and she begins her column with the bewildered questions that many people no doubt were asking after word of the attack began to spread:

"The Western media have been unanimous in their sympathetic coverage of the demonstrators in Egypt," Glick writes. "Why would the demonstrators want to brutalize them? And why have Western media outlets been so reticent in discussing the significance of their own reporters' brutalization at the hands of the Egyptian demonstrators?"

Such questions distract from the facts. This wasn't some kind of uncontrolled response to persecution. The mob wasn't angry about unfavorable representation in the media. What happened to Logan was a crime, and the people who were responsible should be treated like criminals. No one should justify their acts because their acts cannot be justified.

I am reminded of a scene from the Jack Lemmon–Sissy Spacek film "Missing," in which an American has disappeared during a coup in Chile and his father, played by Lemmon, and his wife, played by Spacek, try to find him.

Lemmon believes his son must have done something to lead to his arrest, and he keeps asking people to tell him what it was. Then a native scoffs at the idea. "You Americans," he says, "you always assume you must do something before you can be arrested."

"Isn't that the way it usually works?" Lemmon asks.

"Not here," the man replies.

And that isn't the way it works in Egypt, either. I've read many reports on the attack on Logan, and I have found not a single word that suggests that she was doing anything other than her job when she was attacked. Meanwhile, the men who did this to her have been protected, their faces blurred to hide their identities in broadcasts of videos showing Logan with her assailants just before the assault.

Here in America, there are still people who think a woman brings such an assault on herself, usually by dressing and/or behaving provocatively. But even if Logan was wearing a short, tight skirt and a low–cut blouse and grinning suggestively at the men who attacked her, that would not make what was done to her all right — by any stretch of the imagination.

Logan's attack presents an ugly picture, and it tells a twisted and shameful tale of media coverage in foreign lands. Many foreign journalists have been intimidated by their treatment in the Middle East, and they have been eager to avoid rocking the boat.

The absence of courage among Western journalists has been, to use the most charitable term possible, disappointing.

But what this says about the treatment of women is, if anything, even worse, because it isn't the kind of thing that is confined to Egypt or other places teetering precariously between freedom and repression. The subjugation of women is often tolerated in supposedly free nations.

In essence, journalists (who have always been willing to risk their lives to bring the news to their readers and listeners — but who could usually count on a certain amount of support and protection from their employers and governments in return) are being left to, in the words of Nixon aide John Ehrlichman, "twist slowly in the wind."

That may be an unfamiliar sensation for many journalists. But the women in their ranks have long felt that way in Egypt and elsewhere.

What happened to Logan may yet yield some good things because it shines the spotlight on the appalling treatment of women in Egypt. As Jeff Jacoby writes in the Boston Globe, "Perhaps the most shocking thing about the despicable sexual attack on CBS correspondent Lara Logan ... is that to those who know Egypt, it wasn't shocking at all."

Nearly three years ago, the BBC reported that 83% of Egyptian women — and nearly all foreign visitors — had been subjected to some form of sexual harassment. The BBC called it "Egypt's cancer."

Mary Rogers wrote about sexual harassment at CNN.com nearly four months ago.

While I'm on the subject, a good place to begin moving past the "socially acceptable bigotry" (in Glick's words) that is permitted to exist would be to start calling that attack what it was.

I don't mean to insert a note that is too frivolous for the subject, but I have long been a fan of the late George Carlin — and I particularly enjoyed his observations about language.

Carlin didn't care for euphemistic language. He said Americans had invented a "soft language" to help them avoid dealing with reality, and he was right. Sometimes, as he pointed out, the euphemisms were fairly innocuous — like saying "bathroom tissue" instead of "toilet paper." No harm, no foul, right?

But sometimes euphemisms are used to hide really ugly truths, and this case seems to be loaded with euphemisms like that.

If Logan was sexually assaulted (by approximately 200 men, I have heard) and the attack went on for 20 or 30 minutes, she was raped.

I know the Wall Street Journal disagrees with that. The Wall Street Journal, quoting an unnamed source, insists that she was not raped. But could such a thing really be possible?

"Sexual assault" sounds like it was not as bad as it almost certainly was. It makes it sound like it involved everything but penetration (which wouldn't be particularly good, either, but some people could use that distinction to minimize what happened).

It sounds to me like the attackers were in a frenzy. How many blows would have been required to render Logan unconscious and then strip the clothes from her body? Are we supposed to believe that her attackers suddenly stopped after fondling Logan and said to each other, "Stop! We can go no farther. We are already guilty of sexual assault. If we go past this point, it will be rape."

Let's call it what it was — rape.

Even if, technically, only one of Logan's attackers committed the rape. Or two. Or three.

Wouldn't anyone who stood by while someone else committed a rape be guilty of, at the very least, being an accessory?

I'm not a lawyer, and I don't know the fine points of the law so I could be wrong. But it would be consistent.

See, "sexual assault" is rather broadly defined and is often used interchangeably with "rape." But "sexual assault" could mean a lot of things.

"Not all sexual harassment is physical," Jacoby writes. "[B]esides groping women's bodies, grabbing at their clothing, and indecent exposure, it can also include blatant ogling, sexual catcalls, and stalking."

And, for the "I'm–too–sexy–for–my–shirt" naysayers, Jacoby has this: "More than half the Egyptian women reported being molested every day. And contrary to popular belief, most of the victims were wearing modest Islamic dress."

Different jurisdictions have different definitions for rape — or statutory rape. And they don't necessarily have to include intercourse. Even if Logan was not violated (which I still find doubtful), her assailant(s) could be charged with rape.

The sight of Egyptians protesting against their corrupt government certainly was stirring for many pro–democracy types, including those who aren't especially worried about whether freedom really is inclusive.

But, as Miranda Devine writes in Australia's Herald Sun newspaper, a free Egypt will mean nothing to its women ...

... And it will mean even less to its foreign visitors.

Surely, there must be some way for justice to be served — and for Egypt's newfound freedom to have real meaning.

Let's stop hiding behind words. Let's say what we mean and mean what we say.

And let's take a resolute stand against this kind of behavior, wherever we find it.

The Passion of the Prez

Neal Gabler has a piece in the Boston Globe that I read this morning — and it's been on my mind all day.

Gabler makes the case that Barack Obama lacks passion — and I agree with him.

"Obama acts as if he were a Solomon who always chooses to cut the baby in half," Gabler writes. To be blunt, "Obama seems to be missing the passion gene."

Gabler reminds readers of a few things:

"[W]hat few seemed to foresee is just how diffident he would be, how unmoved he seems to be, at least publicly, by the plight of the jobless, those who are struggling to afford health care, or the soldiers who must fight our battles. You wonder what, if anything, can really get his dander up, which is not a good thing to wonder."

Certainly, it isn't a good thing to wonder about a president.

Gabler has some political and cultural excuses, even personal ones, for Obama's apologists to use in his defense.

"Obama may feel that he is so circumscribed by the Republican obstructionists that fighting more forcefully may not only be useless but counterproductive," he writes.

"Part of this may also be cultural. The last thing Obama wants to be perceived as is an angry black man, which may be why he feels he has to modulate everything he does, lest he give his enemies yet another point of attack. And part of it may be personal history. As the child of two idealistic but flighty parents whose heads were in the clouds, Obama seems to have made every attempt to be grounded. He is nothing if not calm, practical, and realistic — 'careful not to expect too much,' as he put it in Dreams from My Father."

I find it ironic that Gabler alleges that Obama has delivered the presidency that Michael Dukakis promised the American people two decades ago — "cautious, deliberative, reasonable, experienced, not terribly ideological and entirely competent."

In case you've forgotten, Dukakis was criticized during the 1988 campaign for being something of a dead fish. He lacked passion, it was said, especially when answering a hypothetical debate question about whether he would favor the death penalty if someone raped and murdered his wife.

Regardless of which end of the political spectrum they occupy, Americans like to know that their president believes in something, even if they don't agree with him. They want to feel that he is motivated by their best interests, and he will be their advocate. Gabler's most damning indictment of Obama, I think, is when he writes that George W. Bush did have passion.

"[T]he American people often don't care what a president is passionate about, so long as he is passionate," Gabler writes. "If George W. Bush had nothing else — and he didn't have much — he at least had that going for him. He might have been wrong, but he gave the sense that he wasn't about to be deterred. He knew that splitting the difference is not the road to presidential accomplishment. You must believe."

There were many occasions this time last year when I heard people refer to Obama as a latter–day FDR, a transformational figure poised to take the helm of the ship of state and guide it out of choppy waters. But there was a key difference between the two men, as Gabler observes.

FDR, he wrote, "was elected more on hope than on passion, but he quickly energized the nation, not by being temperate or lusting for compromise but by calling for boldness. There was something fearless about FDR. He didn't mince policies or words. When the economic interests opposed him, he said, 'I welcome their hatred.' Above all, he gave the sense that he cared deeply, that there were some initiatives too important to treat as if they were business as usual, that he wasn't about to go down without a fight. In short, he gave the sense that he had the passion of his convictions, which helped through political osmosis embolden the country as well."

It's my guess that played a big role in FDR being elected president four times.

It's also my guess that the absence of that passion may work against Obama in 2012.

Absence of Empathy

The day after last week's shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, the Boston Globe pondered, in an editorial, Americans' expectation that their president "capture the mood and moment" of tragic events "with the right blend of emotion, empathy and urgency."

The Globe conceded that this is a "delicate act of timing and tone." Not every president has been able to manage it. In fact, George W. Bush was criticized by many for his somewhat flat speech to the nation on the evening of Sept. 11, 2001, although he made up for it with a stronger effort in his speech to Congress a week later.

But the presidents who have succeeded — in recent times, one thinks of Ronald Reagan and the attack on the Marines' barracks in Beirut (and, later, the Challenger disaster) and Bill Clinton and the Oklahoma City bombing — have been rewarded for, to borrow Clinton's phrase, feeling Americans' shared pain.

Barack Obama, the Globe wrote, "despite his eloquence and dignity, has yet to master" this role. The newspaper admitted that, in his initial remarks following the shootings, Obama eventually made statements that were "respectful and appropriate.

"But it took him too long to get to the point of delivering them," the editorial complained.

Bloggers on different points of the political spectrum have been quick to take the baton from the Globe and run with it.

Here is a sample.

"The tragedy at Ft. Hood was a moment and a chance for a president, about whom the armed forces aren't yet sure, to step up and assume one of the most important roles he has — that of commander in chief," wrote Bruce McQuain for the QandO blog. "And, frankly, he blew it. Even the liberal Boston Globe understood he'd blown it."

The complaints remind me of how I felt back on Labor Day.

I felt certain that Obama would use the occasion of Labor Day to speak to the nation about the unemployment situation. Remember Labor Day? It was just a couple of months ago, but, in many ways, it seems so much longer.

The Labor Department had just announced a few days earlier that unemployment had risen to 9.7%, its highest level in 26 years. It was the ideal time, I thought, for him to reassure the unemployed that he felt their pain and that he was focusing like a laser on finding an answer.

But, instead, he embarked on a campaign trip to drum up support for health care reform. And his lieutenants were busy putting out fires that had been started by his announced intention to speak to the schoolchildren of America the next day. If he said anything about unemployment that day, I never heard about it.

"What happened?" an unemployed friend of mine asked me in an e–mail that evening. "Why didn't he talk about unemployment?"

My friend didn't have to say who "he" was. We both knew because we had discussed this very subject by e–mail earlier in the day. I had to admit that I didn't know why he didn't speak about unemployment on what was the most appropriate day to do so.

Things have gotten worse since then. Last week, the Labor Department reported that unemployment was over 10% for the first time since April 1983. And today I read that an unemployed fellow blogger whose marriage is breaking up is leaving his soon–to–be ex–wife and their daughters in Massachusetts to live with family members in Florida or Missouri.

He has written about his struggles before, and his friends in the blogosphere have been hoping things would turn around for him.

"When a gunman fired those shots at Fort Hood, the country immediately felt the pain," the Globe wrote last week. "Obama missed the first moment to show he understood just how much it hurt."

The unemployed have been in pain for a long time, and most, if not all, would like some reassurance from their president.

My guess is most could have told the soldiers in Fort Hood not to expect much empathy from this White House.

Breaking News

The dire situation facing newspapers in America these days is every bit as severe as the unemployment problem.

In many ways, it is worse, I think, because a free press is so important in a democracy. Without it, I see no way for a free nation to remain free because there is no one to fill the watchdog role that literally keeps an eye on what elected officials do — or do not do.

Newspapers have been tumbling like dominoes in the last year or two, and, regardless of where one stands on the political spectrum, that should be a cause of concern for all of us.

A friend of mine sent me an e–mail this week. He observed that the New York Times Co. has decided not to sell the Boston Globe because its financial prospects had "significantly improved."

My friend concluded that this was a sign that the economy is getting better. From a business perspective, I suppose that isn't an unreasonable conclusion.

Unfortunately, his e–mail arrived in my inbox the same day that reports were circulating that the New York Times plans to eliminate 100 newsroom jobs by the end of the year.

So what is one to make of this?

I've heard many theories about the decline of newspapers. As someone who studied journalism in college and worked for newspapers for many years, I suppose I am naturally drawn to this subject. I have written about it in the past, in part to help me understand what is happening, and I see a certain amount of logic in each point that is raised.

I've heard it said, for example, that newspapers are struggling because the quality of writing has fallen. In turn, that has led to a drop in paid circulation.

There's no doubt in my mind that there is a relationship between writing that is weaker (or perceived to be weaker) than it used to be and decreased demand for the product.

But the thing that newspaper people understand that people outside the industry do not is that a drop in paid circulation is like a symptom of a disease. The disease that is killing daily newspapers is the decline in advertising revenue.

It never has been possible to pay all the expenses involved in running a daily newspaper with the revenue of a product that sells for 25¢ or 50¢ a copy. Even if a newspaper could sell its product at the Sunday rate seven days a week, it wouldn't be possible.

But the income from advertising is a different story. When advertising dollars begin to dry up, that's when the writing is on the wall for a newspaper, no matter how good (or bad) its writing is.

I was reminded of this today when I read the latest installment at a blog called The Arkansas Newspaper War. It is devoted to a topic with which I am familiar — the newspaper war between the Arkansas Gazette and the Arkansas Democrat that raged when I worked for the Gazette in the 1980s.

Today, the blog gives grades to the different departments at the Gazette, and the one in which I worked — news — gets an A+. If any of my former Gazette colleagues read this blog — and I know that at least one does — I'm sure that is a source of pride for them, as it is for me.

But then the author of the blog makes an important observation: "The Gazette ... was both weak and strong. Unfortunately, her weakness was in an area vital to success. If the well of ad dollars dries up, a daily newspaper cannot survive."

As the crisis in the newspaper industry has worsened, I've seen and heard a lot of talk about the rise of citizen journalists and internet news coverage taking their toll on daily newspapers. But, like declining paid circulation, they are only symptoms of a much larger problem for daily newspapers.

The real problem is the loss of advertising revenue. Unless newspapers can find someone with really deep pockets to pick up the slack — and it is worth noting that, in its final years, the Gazette's ownership, the Gannett Co., had pretty deep pockets — they cannot continue to exist.

And that is the kind of news that breaks a journalist's heart.

More Thoughts on the Nobel Prize

Two days have passed since Barack Obama was named the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Pundits are continuing to voice their support — or opposition. And I continue to try to make sense of it.

An old friend of mine spent quite a bit of time Friday trying to persuade me of the "global perspective" that the Nobel Committee showed in naming Obama this year's winner. Obama is such a change from his predecessor, my friend said, that he has altered the way the world looks at America.

But he acknowledged that was the only conclusion he could reach. When it comes to recognizing Obama's achievements, he admits, as even the most diehard Obama supporters must, that the cupboard is bare of the sort of accomplishments that Nobel historically honors.

My friend may be right. I hope he is. But, absent a tangible achievement like a peace agreement or even a potential achievement, the Nobel Committee's decision clearly is open to interpretation.

And I think the Nobel Prize runs the risk of being diminished (to at least a certain extent) in the eyes of the world if Obama's potential as a peacemaker is not realized.

A friend and I were talking about this (among other things) at lunch after church today. And we agreed that Obama and his party are facing serious setbacks at the polls next year — due, in no small part, to the fact that Obama has spread himself thin in his first year in office.

I sympathize with the fact that he is in a hurry, but it would be embarrassing — at least, ironic — if domestic tranquility is damaged by the manner in which the Nobel Peace Prize winner's administration has ignored the worsening labor market. I don't think that is the kind of image the Nobel Committee wants its prize winners to project.

I know Obama didn't campaign for this. But it is his to live up to now:

• In the Washington Post, Jim Hoagland gives the Nobel Prize a positively Dickensian spin. It is, he says, in recognition of events yet to come.


• Similarly, Tim Rutten observes, in the Los Angeles Times, that, since the Nobel's deadlines would have required Obama to be nominated after less than two weeks in office, it was intended "to reward words and not deeds." That's a noble sentiment, but not especially in keeping with what I have always believed to be the Nobel's purpose.


• Derrick Jackson writes, in the Boston Globe, that the Nobel Committee was actually recognizing the American voters for electing Obama. In the absence of any actual international achievement, I suppose that is as good a reason as any.


• Left–leaning Eleanor Clift of Newsweek speculates that this has the potential to contribute to a Saturday Night Live parody promoting "Obama as a politician who makes grand promises but doesn't deliver."


• Well, SNL may not have picked up on it yet — I didn't watch the show last night so I have no idea if there were any skits about it — but right–leaning Mark Steyn of the Orange County Register thinks the Nobel Committee has outdone SNL in the Obama joke category.
  
  "Obama took office on Jan. 20," Steyn writes. "Gosh, it's so long ago now. What 'extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy' did he make in those first 12 days?"

I seldom agree with Steyn, but I must admit that it is a good question.

Of course, that conclusion depends on the presumption that the Nobel nomination was for something that happened between Jan. 20 and Feb. 1. Technically, it is possible that the prize is in recognition of something that occurred before Obama took the presidential oath of office.

But the problem for Obama is that there was little in the preceding 50 weeks besides charismatic — and, sometimes, well staged — campaign speeches. In 2008, he was a senator — and, for a short time, president–elect.

There have been many senators who sought their party's presidential nomination. And some of them did win the nomination. And a few were elected. But I don't recall hearing that any of them were nominated for the Nobel Prize.

So I think it is reasonable to conclude this prize is linked to Obama's actual presidency.

And, for Obama, the problem with his actual presidency is there is little beyond potential to reward. Right now, anyway. That could change in the future. But doesn't that raise the bar to impossible heights for Obama? If he does something extraordinary on the world stage, he can't really be rewarded for it now, can he? Wasn't that what this prize was intended to recognize — his unfulfilled potential?

Seems to me that anything that fulfills that unfulfilled potential is, by definition, ineligible to be rewarded a second time.

if anyone can provide an equally reasonable answer, that person may well be next in line for next year's Nobel Peace Prize.

The Paradox of Politics (aka The Civil War)

Ellen Goodman tries, in the Boston Globe, to figure out why the Barack Obama of the campaign trail has not lived up to expectations since moving in to the White House.

Last year, she writes, he was the "Oprah candidate" — he "believed we could talk with anyone, even our enemies," but that reconciliatory approach doesn't seem to be particularly suited for handling global problems.

Heck, it doesn't really seem to work too well domestically. Obama's Republican adversaries have never seemed especially eager to work with Democrats, but lately even Democrats have been reluctant to work with him.

Democrats, Goodman writes, have been "waiting for Obama's inner fighter," but he keeps frustrating them. Even when they want to blame resistance on racism, Obama double–crosses them, saying that racism is "not the overriding issue."

Well, that was his chance to pass the buck, wasn't it? Everyone on the left lately, it seems, has been eager to blame racism for the administration's problems — Maureen Dowd and former President Jimmy Carter have been front and center.

Strange. Even Dowd wrote about her frustrations with Obama's hesitance hours before his congressional address. "Sometimes, when you've got the mojo, you have to keep your foot on your opponent's neck," she wrote.

But then Joe Wilson gave her the excuse to blame racism. Wilson gave it a face. Dowd didn't have to rely on hunches or gut feelings. And Carter piled on. And they've been followed by folks in the press who ought to know better — but economics drives everything, and those folks know that, right now, there is no better way to give sagging circulation figures a temporary boost than by taking sides in the racism debate.

So David Harsanyi of the Denver Post weighed in. And, from overseas, Janet Dailey weighed in in The Telegraph. And so did Toby Harnden in the Daily Telegraph.

Each has tried to put his/her own spin on the issue. But, in fact, the chorus has been predictable. It's like two sides of a football stadium yelling at each other. Even when they're yelling for the same thing, it seems hostile.

In recent days, Joe Klein of TIME has written about the race issue. And so has David Brooks in the New York Times. Eugene Robinson wrote about it in the Washington Post.

With an issue like racism and a president like Obama, it can be hard to get a handle on what it's all about. But I thought Goodman did a pretty good job.

"Can you be a healer and a politician? If you try to mediate an ideological divide, do you just end up in the crossfire?"

Maybe, as Goodman suggests, it's a matter of civility. Or the absence of it.

And maybe, as Harsanyi writes, civility is just plain overrated.

But when the debate is about racism, I think Yale lecturer Jim Sleeper made a good point in the Washington Post. Essentially, writes Sleeper, focusing on race "as the chief source of rage is a trap into which liberals have fallen too often."

I think the race issue was destined to be an ongoing factor for the first black president. When the first woman becomes president, she will have to contend with the gender issue. It will be easier for those who follow.

But right now, all of us must live through the growing pains that are the unavoidable byproduct of the first black presidency.

It was absurd to think we might be able to bypass this part of the growth experience — sort of like thinking one might get through one's adolescence without ever feeling awkward or stupid or ugly.

Choosing Kennedy's Successor

Ted Kennedy's body is in its final resting place.

The eulogies have been given. The mourners have returned to their homes. The president is back in Washington. Kennedy's congressional colleagues are wrapping up their late summer break.

And, back in Kennedy's home state of Massachusetts, attention is turning to his successor.

Gov. Deval Patrick announced today that a primary will be held Dec. 8 and a special election will be held Jan. 19. Hillary Chabot of the Boston Herald writes that "[e]arlier today, Democratic lawmakers hit the gas on a push to appoint a temporary successor to Kennedy, moving up a public hearing on the legislation to Sept. 9."

Frank Phillips writes, in the Boston Globe, that "[a]ll eyes now are on Joseph P. Kennedy II ... with family members and political allies expecting him to make a decision very shortly."

There had been some talk, in the days before Ted Kennedy's funeral, that his widow might be persuaded to take his place. Most indications are that she is not interested. Chabot, in fact, writes that she told Patrick today that she is not interested. But there is some doubt. Chabot's colleague, Edward Mason, reports, in the Boston Herald, that a "Democratic operative with Kennedy contacts" has said that Victoria Kennedy is "very much interested" in being her husband's temporary replacement while the voters choose his successor.

So it falls to Joe.

"No other Kennedy of his generation with the political stature to step into the role has signaled interest in it," Phillips writes.

And the entry of a Kennedy into a special election campaign shortly after the death of Ted Kennedy apparently would have a chilling effect on the field of potential contenders.

Phillips writes that two Kennedy loyalists who have been considering seeking the job — Reps. Edward J. Markey and Michael Capuano — "would not run against a member of the family."

Joe wouldn't have an open shot at the Democratic nomination, though. Phillips reports that "[t]wo other major Democratic figures considering entering the race — Attorney General Martha Coakley and Rep. Stephen F. Lynch — have told associates they plan to compete for the primary nomination no matter who enters."

Personally, though, I find it hard to imagine Massachusetts Democrats nominating someone else if any Kennedy was on the ballot.

And, even though some Republicans in Massachusetts have expressed an interest in the seat, I find it even harder to believe the voters in the Bay State would elect one to the Senate over a Kennedy or some other Democrat — even though they did elect Mitt Romney governor in 2002. During Kennedy's tenure, only two Republicans — Edward Brooke, a black progressive who earned his reputation by prosecuting organized crime and contributing to the investigation that led to a conviction in the "Boston strangler" case, and former Gov. Leverett Saltonstall — were elected to the Senate from Massachusetts.

Only Democrats served as Kennedy's Senate colleagues from Massachusetts in the final 30 years of his life.

The other day, when I wrote about Teddy Kennedy Jr.'s eulogy to his father, I observed that he was not a likely choice to take his father's place because he lives in Connecticut. Today, Phillips sets me straight on the fine points of the law in Massachusetts.

Teddy Jr., Phillips acknowledges, "lives in Connecticut but owns a house in Hyannis Port. This would not be an issue, however, as there is no residency requirement of a U.S. Senate seat."

Even so, "he has given no indication publicly that he is interested in the seat."

And that brings us back to Joe, who increasingly appears to be the sole hope for those who wish to see the Kennedys keep the Senate seat in the family on a long–term basis.

Ideologically, he appears to be well suited to succeed his uncle. When he was in the House, Joe's high ratings from Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), the Committee on Political Education (COPE), Consumer Federation of America (CFA) and the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) mirrored Ted's.

And the two got similarly low ratings from groups like the American Conservative Union (ACU) and the National Security Index (NSI) of the American Security Council.

In the meantime, I suppose, all eyes — especially those in the Oval Office — will be on Patrick and the Massachusetts lawmakers — and whether they will grant Ted Kennedy's dying wish to have an interim successor named to speak for Massachusetts in the Senate — and preserve the Democrats' "filibuster–proof majority" for the rest of 2009.

An Exaggerated Report

Mark Twain is one of my favorite writers of all time. And one of my favorite quotations by him apparently stemmed from reports about a serious illness with which his cousin was afflicted. Somehow, word got out that Twain was the one who was ill — and, from that, things got out of hand. Twain, subsequent reports indicated, had passed away.

But that was not the case. So Twain attempted to set the record straight.

"The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated," he famously said.

I'm getting somewhat the same sensation today with the reports concerning retired news anchor Walter Cronkite.

The 92–year–old Cronkite has been ill recently, but Mark Shanahan reports, in the Boston Globe, that he isn't at death's door — at least, not yet.

Even the Chicago Sun–Times, while hedging its bets with a headline that said "Reports of Walter Cronkite's illness are exaggerated," nevertheless informed readers that Cronkite was "gravely ill" a couple of paragraphs before reporting that Cronkite's executive assistant said he was "dealing with the challenges of being a 92–year–old man."

And that tends to put things in a somewhat different light.

Unless you're over 35, you may not remember Cronkite. He was a fixture in the evening TV news broadcasts, often considered "the most trusted man in America" and known by many viewers as simply "Uncle Walter."

For nearly 20 years, until his retirement in 1981, Cronkite was the anchor at CBS, presiding over the network's coverage of the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, the landing on the moon of Apollo 11 and the Watergate scandal — as well as practically all the other major events of the 1960s and 1970s, like Woodstock and Watts, Three–Mile Island and Kent State.

His on–air editorial in 1968 stating that the war in Vietnam was not winnable is often credited with being the event that turned the tide of public opinion. President Lyndon Johnson, who withdrew from the presidential race a month later, reportedly said, after Cronkite's editorial, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America."

Well, America hasn't lost Cronkite yet — and it may not lose him for several more years. His mother was 101 when she died in 1993. Cronkite was 77 at that time.

By the way, in case you're wondering, it's my understanding that Twain's cousin recovered from whatever had afflicted him.

Thinking Outside the Box

Race relations is a complicated subject in America.

I guess it's always been that way.

Well, it's always been complicated since I've been around.

In 1966, I enrolled in first grade. That happened to be the first year that the public schools were integrated in my hometown in central Arkansas. Two of my classmates were the twin sons of the man who was running for governor as the Democratic nominee that year. He was, shall we say, outspoken in his opposition to integration, so that first day of school was busy — to say the least.

Every TV station in Little Rock had dispatched film crews to report on the candidates' sons' first day of school — but, even though I was only 6 years old at the time, I reached the conclusion fairly quickly that the cameramen really wanted to get shots of my classmates with some of the black kids. It seemed to me that the photographers spent comparatively little time shooting the candidate with his sons and focused on getting shots that showed children of different racial backgrounds.

If the schools had been desegregated the year before — or if integration happened some other year — I don't think the Little Rock TV stations would have cared about the first day of classes at an elementary school in a town of less than 10,000 people — even if it was the hometown of the gubernatorial nominee.

So, under the guise of reporting on the candidate's sons' first day of school, the TV stations were playing the race card. At that time in that place, it was the hot–button topic.

Well, in spite of what you may have thought, it's still the hot–button topic, but the pendulum has swung. These days, when newspapers have needed a boost, they have printed — and often reprinted — special editions marking the milestones in Barack Obama's ascendance — the editions following his nomination, proclaiming Obama the winner of the election, the editions first building up to and then following his inauguration, commemorative editions marking his first 100 days in office.

(And, I'll admit, even I profited — albeit very modestly — from Obama's inauguration. You see, I do some freelance writing for an online company, and each time someone clicks on an article I've written, it contributes — again, very modestly — to the amount I receive each month.

(After you've been writing for the company for awhile, you develop a reputation and, occasionally, you will be asked if you will write specific articles. Well, on the day of Obama's inauguration, I received an e–mail from this company asking me if I would write an analysis of his inaugural address. I received the e–mail about half an hour after Obama delivered the speech. I hadn't taken any notes on it. The article wouldn't even be eligible for what is called "up front payment" of a specified amount, but it would be eligible for "performance points," which is the combined tabulation of those clicks I mentioned before.

(I agreed to write the article. I did some quick research, took some quotations from the text of the speech that had been posted online, relied upon my own knowledge of history and the presidency and wrote the article in about an hour.

(I submitted the article and it was accepted by the editors within the next hour and posted online. And based on the latest statistics on my published articles, it is far and away the most popular article I have written.)

The marketing folks probably recognized the value of the Obama name and image first. It wasn't long after the election before I saw all sorts of things like commemorative plates and commemorative coins being advertised on TV. His popularity has remained high, and savvy businesspeople will ride a popular wave as long as it lasts, especially in a recession.

A lot of people — myself included — hoped, perhaps naïvely, that Obama's presidency would at least bring to an end the era in which the spotlight was focused on race. If it achieves nothing else, we thought, maybe it will accomplish that. But, instead, it seems to have intensified the spotlight.

Maybe that is a sign of the growing pains the American melting pot must endure as it strives to become a more perfect union. But if that is the case, then Richard Thompson Ford, writing in the Boston Globe, suggests a new approach is called for.

"[I]n dealing with the worst racial problems we now face," Ford writes, "the civil rights approach is no longer the right tool for the job."

The ideas that the civil rights movement promoted when I was a child have been applied. "Courts and government agencies enforce legal prohibitions against discrimination; private businesses and universities fashion their own diversity policies based on civil–rights principles. Even private individuals think about race relations in civil–rights terms: we aspire to the ideal of 'colorblindness,' and condemn the evils of discrimination and bias."

Ford writes that the problem goes beyond what legislation and policy can address. The problem stems, he says, "from racial segregation and the many disadvantages that follow from living in isolated, economically depressed, and crime–ridden neighborhoods." These are not the products, he writes, of "ongoing discrimination."

Now, Ford concedes that civil rights groups have a role to play, but it doesn't involve legal action. There is no Brown v. Board of Education to help activists gain a toehold today. But many activists behave as if it is 1966 all over again.

The rules have changed. Isn't that what Obama has been saying about everything else? That solving today's problems will require thinking outside the box?

Basically, what Ford is saying is that we will have to think outside the box to improve racial relations in a lasting, meaningful way. The election of a black president didn't resolve matters. From what I've seen, Ford makes a good case. The problems are individual, not institutional. In that sense, Obama is symbolic. In that sense, he has already earned his spot in the history books simply by becoming the first black president.

But the symbol will have little value if the president has few results to show in this area. His record in promoting the ideals of the melting pot must clearly show the depth of his commitment to uncovering creative solutions to the most entrenched problems.

And there is no more entrenched problem in America today than racial relations.

It is a vexing problem. There are no simple answers.

But it is the acceptance of that very fact that is necessary before one can think outside the box productively.

It is what must be done to end the recession. It is what must be done to put the unemployed back to work.

And it is what must be done to heal, finally, the centuries–old wound that exists between the races in America.