Daily Archives: November 13, 2009

For a while nobody could men­tion Barack Obama with­out throw­ing in Saul Alin­sky and his book Rules for Rad­i­cals.  I guess it was the com­mu­nity orga­nizer thing.  But it had to grate, the reporters always bring­ing up a book about orga­niz­ing tac­tics devel­oped 70 years ago.  After all, Obama wrote books too, and roy­al­ties are roy­al­ties. But using Jere­miah Wright for his street cred was out so he had to have some­thing and Rules for Rad­i­cals was it.

I knew that book wasn’t where Obama really got his tech­nique when I learned that he had sent a video of him­self to the Berlin Wall celebration.

Dur­ing my child­hood I went to bed each night not really expect­ing to get up the next morn­ing.  We had air raid drills in schools.  Every radio, every sin­gle one,  had two lit­tle tri­an­gles on the dial — one at 640AM and one at 1240 — for Conal­rad, or CON­ti­nen­tal ALert RAdio.  Low fre­quency AM radio to be tuned in if there were an attack, low fre­quency so it would be hard to home in on it and destroy the trans­mit­ter.  All so those of us who were left after a nuclear exchange could get some infor­ma­tion about how to maybe sur­vive another day.  You can tell we were pay­ing atten­tion because I still remem­ber the radio fre­quen­cies.  And we knew the dif­fer­ence between a con­tin­u­ous and an undu­lat­ing tone on an air raid siren.  One meant you had a half-hour.  The other meant you didn’t.

In my teens I was a YMCA camp coun­selor, and as a result I was trained as a jr. air raid mar­shal and learned to use a Geiger counter, a dosime­ter, and mate­ri­als to use to shield against gamma rays.  To wash off any food we might be able to find so we wouldn’t be bring­ing fall­out back with us or ingest­ing it.  What the symp­toms of radi­a­tion poi­son­ing were.  What was a mild, a severe, and a lethal dose of gamma rays.  600 rems and you’re a goner, although they called them Roent­gens back then.

I grew up in Tuc­son, AZ.  Sur­rounded by Titan and Min­ute­man mis­sile silos.  On the south side of town was Davis-Monthan Air Base, for most of the time part of SAC, whose job it was to vapor­ize the Soviet Union.

That’s what stopped when the Soviet Union imploded, and the event was sym­bol­ized, in addi­tion to its other mean­ings, by the fall of the Berlin Wall.  It was over.  That’s what it meant to us.

So I thought it was a lit­tle lame that he didn’t bother to show up for the cer­e­monies to cel­e­brate the Berlin Wall com­ing down.  Lamer still that he sent them a movie of him giv­ing a speech.  After all, what did he think they were there to commemorate?

And then I read his speech.  My favorite part?

Few would have fore­seen … that a united Ger­many would be led by a woman from Bran­den­burg or that their Amer­i­can ally would be led by a man of African descent. But human des­tiny is what human beings make of it.

That’s it?  On the one hand a large part of the world can stop wor­ry­ing about being instantly incin­er­ated or dying a grue­some death, and on the other Barack Obama got elected pres­i­dent?  Those are equal?  I think what few would have fore­seen might be that some­thing like that would be said by some­body who wasn’t either Inspec­tor Clouseau or Grou­cho Marx.

In the 60’s there was a song from a musi­cal on the radio.  Never saw the musi­cal, but I liked the song.

And when my faith in my fel­low man all but falls apart,
I’ve but to feel your hand grasp­ing mine, and I take heart,
I take heart to see the cool clear eyes of a seeker of wis­dom and truth,
Yet there’s that slam, bang, tang, rem­i­nis­cent of gin and Ver­mouth,
Now I believe in you, I believe in you..

What a cool song!  Then the movie came out and I found out that the singer was look­ing in a mir­ror, singing to himself.

That’s how I know that Obama’s book is really How to Suc­ceed in Busi­ness with­out Really Try­ing.