By Jack Engelhard
Over the weekend there was a BEER FESTIVAL in Atlantic City. This event drew thousands from throughout Pennsylvania, New Jersey and states east, west, north and south, and in fact (at least I think it’s a fact) there’s nothing like a beer festival to get people hopping on trains, planes and automobiles heading for the shore. Once upon a time there was The Miss America Pageant, but that’s all gone, and we’re left with beer, beer pageants.
I’m not quite sure what goes on at these beer conventions and I’m not even sure at which convention place this one was held; the one on the boardwalk or the one at the train station. I do know that the trains starting from Philadelphia make six stops in New Jersey before reaching Atlantic City – and that on this particular weekend all the trains were packed to overflowing.
People like beer. One commercial, for Bud or Miller or whatever, says it plainly – “It’s all about the beer.” Yes it is. Those commercials during March Madness – the college basketball championships – are “all about the beer.” Get them hooked on beer while they’re young. That’s what I always say. (I do wonder why smoking is so bad and drinking is so good. But that’s just me.)
What goes on at these Atlantic City beer fests? I imagine that it’s all quite simple. People drink beer. Surely there are beer tasting events, one brand challenging another, and perhaps beer drinking contests, one beer drinker daring another beer drinker as to who can outlast the other before falling down drunk.
Falling down drunks were the people I encountered leaving Atlantic City on this particular Saturday. They had all had their fill, obviously. When I got to the train station, by jitney, for the late train heading back towards Philadelphia, there were hundreds gathered outside the terminal and about a thousand (or so it seemed) inside the terminal.
The lady (we’ll call her Ruth) sitting next to me on the jitney was afraid to get off the jitney.
“There’s a brawl going on,” she said.
Yes there was. People were fighting. Not too many punches were landing because everybody was staggering.
Inside the terminal there wasn’t much brawling but there was much staggering and here and there people were bent over, throwing up. The people who were not vomiting were shouting and cursing. One person who knew something about crowd control said that this was the second worst day of the year, so far as crowd control – July Fourth was first.
“You don’t want to be here for THAT weekend,” he said.
Well, I didn’t much want to be here for THIS weekend.
Judging from the smell, there must have been State Championships taking place. Did Pennsylvania out-drink and out-drunk New Jersey? Since people came to Atlantic City from all across the country for this beer fest, maybe Texas outlasted Montana, or maybe Delaware triumphed over Maryland to prove once and for all that “it’s all about the beer.” Is there a National Championship for this?
Ruth said: “When I took the train FROM Philadelphia this morning this same crowd hadn’t started drinking yet and it was all quite happy and orderly.”
But that was before the convention and before the drinking got started.
“I’m afraid,” said Ruth, “what it’s going to be like once we get on the train.”
She asked me to sit next to her in case something happened and nothing much really happened except that people in their seats were slurring their words and showing how happy they were by slurring them loudly. The younger beer tasters were generally running up and down the aisles – when there was room – laughing and cursing.
There were moments when it appeared that a brawl may break out INSIDE the train. There was no telling what would happen when one group of revelers insulted another group of revelers. No real fights occurred because – as I had it figured – nobody was sober enough to think something through that complicated.
People started getting off at all the stops. Most were surely sensible enough to be driven home by friends. Some got in their cars and drove off, in that condition.
Ruth got off at Lindenwold, quite shaken. I was all right. I knew this was temporary. These are good, hard-working people.
They are not really like this – except for the beer. It’s all about the beer.
I do wonder, though, how many of these people (when sober most of the year) rush to me in indignation when I start to light up my pipe.
I must remember that, unlike second-hand beer, smoking can be unseemly and hazardous.
Novelist Jack Engelhard is the author of “Indecent Proposal” and most recently “The Bathsheba Deadline.” He can be reached at his website www.jackengelhard.com.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Call Me Stimulus
By Jack Engelhard
[Obama Never Wanted To Be President. He Just Wanted To Be Loved.]
The Stimulus Bill weighs in at 1,588 pages – not exactly a page turner. The same lawmakers who wrote this heavyweight boondoggle, and voted for it, never read it, and that’s why there’s all this amazement about those bonuses for AIG. Nobody knows what’s in this package, except for $850 BILLION of our money that’s going, going, gone.
According to my calculations, that’s one thousand dollars per word, or maybe a million dollars per page. That’s a writer’s dream.
Mark Twain got a nickel a word and Ernest Hemingway maybe a dime or a quarter.
“Moby Dick” runs 464 pages. On those rates (if he were writing for Congress) Herman Melville would have died wealthy instead of poor, or started the novel with, “Call me Rich,” instead of Ishmael. “War and Peace” ends at page 1,296. Using the same math, Leo Tolstoy died poor for no reason except for the fact that he wrote novels instead of legislation.
(How do I get in on this?)
I actually heard three senators say that they never read the bill, that, indeed, nobody in Congress read the small print or even the BIG PRINT. Nada.
But they voted for it because Obama and Pelosi wanted it done now! Pelosi was especially hot for this. This lady has access to our entire treasury; that’s like giving me, a chocoholic, the keys to Hershey, Pennsylvania. Yum yum. Now, when it’s too late, they’re trying to ACTUALLY READ what they wrote and what they passed.
For the record, the Stimulus Bill was passed February 13, 2009; 246 Democrats in the House voted yes, seven voted no. Republicans voted zero. At the moment, however, we’re still in the dark as to what’s in this bill and what exactly we’re getting for our money -- $850 BILLION. Nobody knows what bangs we get for our bucks – least of all our lawmakers.
There’s something in all this that smacks of amateur hour. People, for gosh sakes, spend more time making the next move in the board game “Monopoly” than it took to get this legislation on and off the floor. I hate to put the knock on President Obama. I may not have been his biggest fan at the start but he is our president and he deserves some slack. Besides, electing our first African American to the presidency glorifies this nation.
At the same time – as I continue to contradict myself – why the rush? Obama pretty much arm-twisted the Congress to get this done and never mind the details – don’t ask questions, just sign on the dotted line, which Congress did. This re-defines don’t ask-don’t tell, except that the public – We, The Taxpayers – want the telling.
Now Obama is back on the campaign trail, spending an hour with Jay Leno. It’s my guess that Obama never wanted to be president, he just wanted to be loved. Those campaign stops all across the country (and even in Europe), where the multitudes cheered him and adored him – how he must long for those days! What went wrong?
He became president, his first mistake. Any man who takes this office is asking for trouble. Just ask George W. Bush. The trouble began as soon as he – Obama – took his first seating in the Oval Office. No more campaigning as the outsider with thousands chanting, “Yes We Can.” (You mean, we can’t?) Time to get down to business -- the business of running the United States of America.
That’s no fun. Campaigning is fun. Germany is fun. Jay Leno is fun. Can’t we keep on doing this (Obama must be asking)? Do we actually have to worry about DETAILS? In the movie, “The Candidate,” Robert Redford plays the candidate Bill McKay (by coincidence a liberal in the grip of a political machine). After all the blood, sweat and finagling – he finally gets elected to the Senate. He’s a winner!
Outside, as throngs cheer his triumph, Redford (McKay) secludes himself and, quite baffled and dejected, asks: “What do we do now?”
Novelist Jack Engelhard, author of the novel “Indecent Proposal” and most recently “The Bathsheba Deadline,” can be reached at his website www.jackengelhard.com
[Obama Never Wanted To Be President. He Just Wanted To Be Loved.]
The Stimulus Bill weighs in at 1,588 pages – not exactly a page turner. The same lawmakers who wrote this heavyweight boondoggle, and voted for it, never read it, and that’s why there’s all this amazement about those bonuses for AIG. Nobody knows what’s in this package, except for $850 BILLION of our money that’s going, going, gone.
According to my calculations, that’s one thousand dollars per word, or maybe a million dollars per page. That’s a writer’s dream.
Mark Twain got a nickel a word and Ernest Hemingway maybe a dime or a quarter.
“Moby Dick” runs 464 pages. On those rates (if he were writing for Congress) Herman Melville would have died wealthy instead of poor, or started the novel with, “Call me Rich,” instead of Ishmael. “War and Peace” ends at page 1,296. Using the same math, Leo Tolstoy died poor for no reason except for the fact that he wrote novels instead of legislation.
(How do I get in on this?)
I actually heard three senators say that they never read the bill, that, indeed, nobody in Congress read the small print or even the BIG PRINT. Nada.
But they voted for it because Obama and Pelosi wanted it done now! Pelosi was especially hot for this. This lady has access to our entire treasury; that’s like giving me, a chocoholic, the keys to Hershey, Pennsylvania. Yum yum. Now, when it’s too late, they’re trying to ACTUALLY READ what they wrote and what they passed.
For the record, the Stimulus Bill was passed February 13, 2009; 246 Democrats in the House voted yes, seven voted no. Republicans voted zero. At the moment, however, we’re still in the dark as to what’s in this bill and what exactly we’re getting for our money -- $850 BILLION. Nobody knows what bangs we get for our bucks – least of all our lawmakers.
There’s something in all this that smacks of amateur hour. People, for gosh sakes, spend more time making the next move in the board game “Monopoly” than it took to get this legislation on and off the floor. I hate to put the knock on President Obama. I may not have been his biggest fan at the start but he is our president and he deserves some slack. Besides, electing our first African American to the presidency glorifies this nation.
At the same time – as I continue to contradict myself – why the rush? Obama pretty much arm-twisted the Congress to get this done and never mind the details – don’t ask questions, just sign on the dotted line, which Congress did. This re-defines don’t ask-don’t tell, except that the public – We, The Taxpayers – want the telling.
Now Obama is back on the campaign trail, spending an hour with Jay Leno. It’s my guess that Obama never wanted to be president, he just wanted to be loved. Those campaign stops all across the country (and even in Europe), where the multitudes cheered him and adored him – how he must long for those days! What went wrong?
He became president, his first mistake. Any man who takes this office is asking for trouble. Just ask George W. Bush. The trouble began as soon as he – Obama – took his first seating in the Oval Office. No more campaigning as the outsider with thousands chanting, “Yes We Can.” (You mean, we can’t?) Time to get down to business -- the business of running the United States of America.
That’s no fun. Campaigning is fun. Germany is fun. Jay Leno is fun. Can’t we keep on doing this (Obama must be asking)? Do we actually have to worry about DETAILS? In the movie, “The Candidate,” Robert Redford plays the candidate Bill McKay (by coincidence a liberal in the grip of a political machine). After all the blood, sweat and finagling – he finally gets elected to the Senate. He’s a winner!
Outside, as throngs cheer his triumph, Redford (McKay) secludes himself and, quite baffled and dejected, asks: “What do we do now?”
Novelist Jack Engelhard, author of the novel “Indecent Proposal” and most recently “The Bathsheba Deadline,” can be reached at his website www.jackengelhard.com
Friday, March 13, 2009
Madoff: The Perfect Storm for anti-Semitism
By Jack Engelhard
They needed a picture, a poster boy, to be the face of our economic collapse and as if on cue, here came Bernard Madoff.
They got their man. He’s Jewish. How perfect. The mystery is solved. They know whom to blame. The Jews.
Right after Madoff was exposed, I overheard this conversation in a restaurant: “You heard about this guy Madoff?”
“Yup – here go those Jews again.”
The other day, I read several newspapers that officially listed the biggest economic villains of recent vintage and most were NOT Jews. That doesn’t seem to make a difference. I’m tempted to list some of the names here, but the roll call of these NON-Jewish scofflaws is much too long.
One expert explains that “fund managers are the biggest villains; they control seven TRILLION dollars of our money, and have no ethics.”
Are they Jewish? Maybe a few of them are. Most are not Jewish. That still makes no difference. We still have Bernard Madoff.
Here’s Mitchell Zuckoff, an expert who wrote a book on Ponzi schemes, now writing in The New York Times: “Most have no idea whom to blame for the subprime crisis, credit default swaps or collateralized debt obligations. Bernard Madoff didn’t cause any of that, but he is a convenient personification of all the greed and mistakes that have crushed the economy.”
Exactly! Madoff is the convenient scapegoat. Madoff should rot in hell for all the troubles he’s caused, especially for stirring a pot that needs no further stirring. But he is one crook among many – among thousands. This is, after all, an economic tsunami. Within any news cycle, one or two crooks surface now and then.
This time around, like a fluke of nature, all the crooks surfaced together, like a Perfect Storm.
Madoff is evil, but he is only a symptom of an economy gone wild. Why does it matter that he’s Jewish?
Nancy Pelosi has access to our entire treasury. That’s like giving me, a chocoholic, the keys to Hershey, Pennsylvania.
She’s been availing herself of every penny she can get her hands on, for herself and for her friends. Do we know her religious affiliation? Do we care? No. Should we care? No.
Ken Lay, who brought down Enron and equally destroyed thousands of lives – what’s his religion? What synagogue does he attend? Turns out he comes from a family of Baptists. But I had to look that up. His faith was (properly) kept private and there was no one nearby saying, “There go those Baptists again.”
Of those thousands of other moneygrubbers, we know them by their names, their corporations, but nothing about their churches – unless it’s a synagogue.
Crooks have no religion. That’s the point. Some are Catholic, some are Protestant and, yes, some are Jewish.
My mistake. They do have religion, and it’s called Greed.
(Almost by coincidence, Leonore Annenberg died on the same day that Madoff was locked up. Together with her husband, Walter, the publishing tycoon, the Annenbergs gave freely of their wealth to hundreds of charities. Some put the figure at $2 billion-plus. Walter Annenberg, who died 2002, has been dubbed The Titan of Philanthropy. Let’s hear it this time: “There go those Jews again.”)
Novelist Jack Engelhard, author of the novel “Indecent Proposal” and most recently “The Bathsheba Deadline,” can be reached at his website www.jackengelhard.com
They needed a picture, a poster boy, to be the face of our economic collapse and as if on cue, here came Bernard Madoff.
They got their man. He’s Jewish. How perfect. The mystery is solved. They know whom to blame. The Jews.
Right after Madoff was exposed, I overheard this conversation in a restaurant: “You heard about this guy Madoff?”
“Yup – here go those Jews again.”
The other day, I read several newspapers that officially listed the biggest economic villains of recent vintage and most were NOT Jews. That doesn’t seem to make a difference. I’m tempted to list some of the names here, but the roll call of these NON-Jewish scofflaws is much too long.
One expert explains that “fund managers are the biggest villains; they control seven TRILLION dollars of our money, and have no ethics.”
Are they Jewish? Maybe a few of them are. Most are not Jewish. That still makes no difference. We still have Bernard Madoff.
Here’s Mitchell Zuckoff, an expert who wrote a book on Ponzi schemes, now writing in The New York Times: “Most have no idea whom to blame for the subprime crisis, credit default swaps or collateralized debt obligations. Bernard Madoff didn’t cause any of that, but he is a convenient personification of all the greed and mistakes that have crushed the economy.”
Exactly! Madoff is the convenient scapegoat. Madoff should rot in hell for all the troubles he’s caused, especially for stirring a pot that needs no further stirring. But he is one crook among many – among thousands. This is, after all, an economic tsunami. Within any news cycle, one or two crooks surface now and then.
This time around, like a fluke of nature, all the crooks surfaced together, like a Perfect Storm.
Madoff is evil, but he is only a symptom of an economy gone wild. Why does it matter that he’s Jewish?
Nancy Pelosi has access to our entire treasury. That’s like giving me, a chocoholic, the keys to Hershey, Pennsylvania.
She’s been availing herself of every penny she can get her hands on, for herself and for her friends. Do we know her religious affiliation? Do we care? No. Should we care? No.
Ken Lay, who brought down Enron and equally destroyed thousands of lives – what’s his religion? What synagogue does he attend? Turns out he comes from a family of Baptists. But I had to look that up. His faith was (properly) kept private and there was no one nearby saying, “There go those Baptists again.”
Of those thousands of other moneygrubbers, we know them by their names, their corporations, but nothing about their churches – unless it’s a synagogue.
Crooks have no religion. That’s the point. Some are Catholic, some are Protestant and, yes, some are Jewish.
My mistake. They do have religion, and it’s called Greed.
(Almost by coincidence, Leonore Annenberg died on the same day that Madoff was locked up. Together with her husband, Walter, the publishing tycoon, the Annenbergs gave freely of their wealth to hundreds of charities. Some put the figure at $2 billion-plus. Walter Annenberg, who died 2002, has been dubbed The Titan of Philanthropy. Let’s hear it this time: “There go those Jews again.”)
Novelist Jack Engelhard, author of the novel “Indecent Proposal” and most recently “The Bathsheba Deadline,” can be reached at his website www.jackengelhard.com
Monday, March 9, 2009
I Will Now Define Torture
By Jack Engelhard
Former detainee, Binyam Mohamed, reports that practically everything was brutal during his confinement but worst of all were those CD blasts from rapper Eminem.
Finally, we know how to break alleged terrorists. Forget water-boarding. That’s peanuts. Give them our culture, domestic or imported, and surely they will confess. Give them, say, 10 minutes of Bill Maher, softly or loudly, and they’re sure to spill their secrets and tell us where bin Laden is hiding. (I’ve tried Maher for nearly an hour – true torture – and was ready to confess my own crimes and misdemeanors to anyone who would listen.)
If that doesn’t do it, the mere TV appearance of Hanan Ashrawi, even on mute, is guaranteed to have them crying uncle. Likewise our own Hillary Clinton and Israel’s Ehud Barak whose pansy appeasement and loyalty to terror is so sickening that even terrorists can’t help but shield their eyes and muff their ears.
If they still refuse to cooperate, in or out of Gitmo, well then, there’s no choice but to get REALLY BRUTAL and here, of course, we’re talking about sitting them down to watch a PBS Fund Drive, those beg-a-thons that just won’t quit and where the pleading and panhandling persist without end. Top that off with the wit and wisdom of Bill Moyers and even the most hardened terrorist will plead – “No more, Please!”
True, we learn from “Cool Hand Luke” that “some people you just can’t reach.” So how about a dose of Keith Olbermann? Play him loud, play him soft, either way, there will be results, and if not, Moyers and Olbermann back to back. That may be too much even for die-hard liberals – oops, Progressives – but maybe not. One of my Progressive friends suggested that I give Olbermann a try – “he’s so funny.” So I tried and am still suffering. This IS cruel and unusual punishment.
Reality TV – where ordinary Americans perform tasks and tricks that beckon our lowest instincts and that are too demeaning even for dogs – yes, Reality TV is where we’re at our worst (I think), so make them watch and then watch them banging the walls. As for me, I can’t watch these shows, but other Americans do, voluntarily; that is, they watch even though the torture is not intended. Or maybe it is!
A blast from Bruce Springsteen always works for me. I’m always ready to cooperate after even a snippet from “The Boss.”
We learn from Binyam Mohamed and other inmates that STUPID HUMAN TRICKS are the most lethal form of abuse. I propose, therefore, as an alternative to slapping and eye-gouging and electric shock, a few blasts from The Jonas Brothers. These kids were manufactured to pick up where the Beatles left off. They’re multi-talented except for the fact that they can’t dance and can’t sing. For this reason they are popular and even performed at the White House. This is certain to disgust any terrorist in confinement and have him beg for mercy.
My gawd! Our culture is nothing but noise!
I could name hundreds of other pop groups (Beatles clones) that can’t sing or dance but that make it to the top of the Billboard Charts except that I can’t name a single one; they come and go so fast after raking in their millions. I do catch a few of these acts somewhere in the middle of “Saturday Night Live” and find that the girls are already prepped to scream in delight – or is it pain?
I think it’s pain. I think it’s torture. Let those terrorists get a taste so that they’ll comply as readily as we’ve surrendered.
Novelist Jack Engelhard, author of “Indecent Proposal” and most recently “The Bathsheba Deadline,” can be reached at his website www.jackengelhard.com
Former detainee, Binyam Mohamed, reports that practically everything was brutal during his confinement but worst of all were those CD blasts from rapper Eminem.
Finally, we know how to break alleged terrorists. Forget water-boarding. That’s peanuts. Give them our culture, domestic or imported, and surely they will confess. Give them, say, 10 minutes of Bill Maher, softly or loudly, and they’re sure to spill their secrets and tell us where bin Laden is hiding. (I’ve tried Maher for nearly an hour – true torture – and was ready to confess my own crimes and misdemeanors to anyone who would listen.)
If that doesn’t do it, the mere TV appearance of Hanan Ashrawi, even on mute, is guaranteed to have them crying uncle. Likewise our own Hillary Clinton and Israel’s Ehud Barak whose pansy appeasement and loyalty to terror is so sickening that even terrorists can’t help but shield their eyes and muff their ears.
If they still refuse to cooperate, in or out of Gitmo, well then, there’s no choice but to get REALLY BRUTAL and here, of course, we’re talking about sitting them down to watch a PBS Fund Drive, those beg-a-thons that just won’t quit and where the pleading and panhandling persist without end. Top that off with the wit and wisdom of Bill Moyers and even the most hardened terrorist will plead – “No more, Please!”
True, we learn from “Cool Hand Luke” that “some people you just can’t reach.” So how about a dose of Keith Olbermann? Play him loud, play him soft, either way, there will be results, and if not, Moyers and Olbermann back to back. That may be too much even for die-hard liberals – oops, Progressives – but maybe not. One of my Progressive friends suggested that I give Olbermann a try – “he’s so funny.” So I tried and am still suffering. This IS cruel and unusual punishment.
Reality TV – where ordinary Americans perform tasks and tricks that beckon our lowest instincts and that are too demeaning even for dogs – yes, Reality TV is where we’re at our worst (I think), so make them watch and then watch them banging the walls. As for me, I can’t watch these shows, but other Americans do, voluntarily; that is, they watch even though the torture is not intended. Or maybe it is!
A blast from Bruce Springsteen always works for me. I’m always ready to cooperate after even a snippet from “The Boss.”
We learn from Binyam Mohamed and other inmates that STUPID HUMAN TRICKS are the most lethal form of abuse. I propose, therefore, as an alternative to slapping and eye-gouging and electric shock, a few blasts from The Jonas Brothers. These kids were manufactured to pick up where the Beatles left off. They’re multi-talented except for the fact that they can’t dance and can’t sing. For this reason they are popular and even performed at the White House. This is certain to disgust any terrorist in confinement and have him beg for mercy.
My gawd! Our culture is nothing but noise!
I could name hundreds of other pop groups (Beatles clones) that can’t sing or dance but that make it to the top of the Billboard Charts except that I can’t name a single one; they come and go so fast after raking in their millions. I do catch a few of these acts somewhere in the middle of “Saturday Night Live” and find that the girls are already prepped to scream in delight – or is it pain?
I think it’s pain. I think it’s torture. Let those terrorists get a taste so that they’ll comply as readily as we’ve surrendered.
Novelist Jack Engelhard, author of “Indecent Proposal” and most recently “The Bathsheba Deadline,” can be reached at his website www.jackengelhard.com
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