Debate Night

“I got no quarrel with the Midwest,

The folks out there have given me their best.

I lived there all my life, I’ve been their guest,

I sure have loved it, too.”

    “Katmandu,” Bob Seger

Nothing like listening to Detroit rocker Bob Seger in the car.  WXRT was focusing on 1975, a year when The Captain and Tennile (“Love Will Keep Us Together”) and John Denver (“Thank God I’m a Country Boy”) ruled the AM charts.  I was listening to FM’s WMET, which exposed me to the likes of Bruce Springsteen (“Born to Run”), Led Zeppelin (“Kashmir”), ZZ Top (“Tush”), Pink Floyd “Wish You Were Here”), Aerosmith (“Sweet Emotion”), and Kiss (“Rock and Roll All Nite”).

After Nick Didonna suggested that I throw the ball out rather than drop it at the foul line, I bowled two practice games with better results.  Cressmoor owner Jim Fowler complained about the recent no-smoking ban.  Patrons constantly go out to smoke; when winter comes, there’ll be problems with folks tracking in snow.

NBC’s David Gregory hosted a Massachusetts Senate debate between incumbent Scott Brown and Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren at the UMass campus in Lowell.  Asked to name a Supreme Court justice he admired, Brown said, “Scalia.”  When the crowd groaned, he added the names of Roberts, Kennedy, and Sotomayor – but not Elena Kagan, formerly Dean of Harvard Law School, whom he opposed for confirmation.  Brown tried to exploit the fact that Warren claimed to be Native-American on a college application because she was part Cherokee.  The crowd booed when Brown said he opposed the Dream Act.  Even though he talked much more than Warren, when called on it, he used an obviously pre-planned “zinger,” telling her to let him finish a statement because “I am not a student in your classroom.”

I am sharing the Dorothy Riker Hoosier Historian Award with Carl E, Kramer, director of the Institute for Local and Oral History at IU Southeast and author of “This Place We Call Home: A History of Clark County, Indiana.”  I’ve been told there won’t be time for honorees to make acceptance speeches.  Too bad because I would have noted that in grad school my fields of interest – social, contemporary, oral, local, and family history – were generally looked down on.  Being a Sixties “history from the bottom up” believer, however, I became interested in Latinos, steelworkers, immigrants, and others who don’t necessarily leave written records to examine or get into traditional history books.

I have been exchanging a flurry of emails with California cousin Tommi Adelizzi.  Working on the family genealogy, she wanted to know my father Vic’s profession (chemical engineer), college (Pitt), how he met Midge (through a mutual friend in Easton PA), and employer (Penn Salt). Her granddaughter Natalie applied to Bucknell, my alma mater, and wants to be a history major.  I offered to send her my latest Shavings, “Calumet Region Connections,” and she sent me Natalie’s address in Oakton, VA.  Tommi informed me that our sixth great-grandfather was Virginia planter George Eskridge, guardian to George Washington’s mother Mary Ball after her parents died.  Mary named the future “Father of our Country” after Eskridge, an attorney who served in the House of Burgesses for 30 years until his death in 1735.

above, George Eskridge; below, Wildermuth Mansion in Aetna

 

Joelle Gamble wanted information about a mansion in Aetna that she and her husband have been renovating.  It was built in the Tudor Revival style around 1940 and there is nothing remotely like it in that section of Gary.  Someone told her that attorney Ora Wildermuth (credited with being the city’s first librarian) built it, but I discovered using city directories that 45 year-old realtor Fred Wildermuth lived there.  Ora was 13 years older than Fred, and they both were born in rural Indiana near Star City, so they may have been brothers.  Kendall Svengalis has a 2003 photo of the “Wildermuth mansion” in his “Gary, Indiana: A Centennial Celebration.” 

Jerry Davich posted a great AFSCME ad attacking Romney that made use of two workers who collected trash at his Oceanside La Jolla mansion, as well as a fireman.  Interspersed were clips of Romney chastising Obama for wanting to hire more teachers and fireman and disparaging the 47 percent who don’t pay taxes.

My sister-in-law urged everyone leaning toward Obama to read Friedrich Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom,” a 1945 diatribe against German fascism and Russian communism. The darling of some free market neo-liberals, Hayek would have scorned Bain Capital, I believe, as a perversion of free enterprise. Romney’s old company took advantage of corporate-friendly government policies to fleece unsuspecting businesses.

Toni goes all out when the grandkids come for dinner.  Monday it was ham baloney, noodles and peas.  Tonight it’s spaghetti.

The Presidential debate was quite boring, with both candidates simply reiterating their views on taxes, the deficit, and the economy.  After about an hour, I turned the sound off and simply observed hand motions, facial expressions, and the like. Most pundits are claiming Romney won because he didn’t screw up and seemed aggressive while Obama was more passive and failed to go on the attack as ardent progressives had hoped.  It is normal for incumbents to seem lackluster in initial debates and for challengers to gain momentum from appearing to exceed expectations.  Let’s hope when the topic turns to foreign policy or social issues, the result is different.  Silliest moment: Romney professing love for Big Bird while threatening to defund PBS.  Altogether it was a very disappointing evening for those, myself included, who had hoped Obama would skewer the Republicans’ flim-flam man.

Ray Smock passed on this observation from historian Lewis Gould: “The late Gore Vidal once said that television was a barrel that has no bottom. The intellectually inert performance of two mediocre American politicians last night in Denver illustrated the enduring truth of Vidal's insight. Under the self-indulgent and flaccid guidance of moderator Jim Lehrer, President Barack Obama and former governor Mitt Romney traded pre-digested talking points for ninety minutes. Romney was more aggressive, though no more coherent, than in his stump appearances. Obama seemed oddly disengaged and surprised that he had to respond to his opponent's sallies.  But the horse-race moments were less significant than the evident decay of the format of televised debates as a genre. In the back and forth about such wonkish arcania as Dodd-Frank, the allegedly sinister Medicare advisory board, and the proper level of tax rates, what was an average viewer to conclude about the future of the nation? Complex ideas crammed into two minutes of staccato speech confuse more than they enlighten. If Americans face serious choices about the future, their judgments must include a recognition of another persistent truth about this moment in the history of television. Each new presidential cycle sees the medium's handling of debates become worse than the one that occurred four years earlier.”

I responded: “History should have taught me that expecting Obama to dominate was wishful thinking.  The press loves a tight horse race and will emphasize appearance over substance 99 times out of 100.  Nobody, especially the press but me included, wanted to sit through an arcane discussion of taxes, deficit projections, and economic statistics.  We wanted THEATER, zingers, witticisms, gotcha moments.  Obama chose to be Presidential while Mitt was the epitome of a well-prepped Organization Man. Let’s hope most Americans feel more comfortable with the good man in the White House than the rich man who offers few clues on what he might do if he replaces him.”

Chris Matthews was apoplectic over Obama’s missed opportunities to go after Romney, saying, “What was he doing?  He went in disarmed.”  Prior to the first 1960 debate, he said, Nixon’s handlers told the vice president to “Erase the assassin’s image” while Bobby Kennedy told his brother, “Kick him in the balls.”  That’s what Obama needed, someone to fire him up.