Whitcomb: Thanksgiving; Bobby’s Business; Foreign News; Beach Day; What Sort of Freedom?

Sunday, November 19, 2023

Robert Whitcomb, Columnist

 

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Robert Whitcomb, columnist

“It’s no use raising a shout.

No, Honey, you can cut that right out.

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I don’t want any more hugs;

Make me some fresh tea, fetch me some rugs.

Here am I, here are you….’’

From “It’s no use raising a shout,’’ by W.H. Auden (1907-1973),  celebrated British-American poet

 

To read the whole poem, please hit this link:

 

 

 

“Thanksgiving is an emotional holiday. People travel thousands of miles to be with people they only see once a year. And then discover once a year is way too much.”

— Johnny Carson (1925-2005), American nighttime TV talk show host and comedian

 

 

“Time cuts down all,

Both great and small.’’

--- From The New England Primer, compiled and published by Benjamin Harris, circa 1690

 

 

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PHOTO: File

Thanksgiving isn’t to everyone’s, er, taste of course.  It can be complicated: a heavy but delicious meal in the middle of the day; family affection; forced camaraderie and/or the start of new feuds; clogged travel; wet or bright and brisk weather, and so on. But it does have the merit of being much less commercialized than Christmas or even Halloween.

 

It works better if you take a good walk before and after, strolling on those fallen leaves.

 

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Kennedy Campaign Poster

For many people of a certain age, Thanksgiving is a reminder of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, on Nov. 22, 1963. Whatever you thought of JFK, and the Kennedys in general (since I was from a  (moderate) Republican family, my view was not very favorable), your view of the world might have been permanently darkened by this event. And it understandably intensified our natural tendency to see conspiracies. (As the old line goes, “Even a paranoid has enemies.’’)

 

I have always suspected that there was a plot to kill JFK, preceding plots to kill Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy.  To see a riveting and highly opinionated documentary series  on those ‘60s assassinations, hit this link:

 

I most remember from the day of JFK’s funeral, on Nov. 25, 1963, the dirge that is the Navy Hymn. 

 

 

 

I was cutting up dead rats soaked in formaldehyde in a biology lab in high school when some guy ran into the lab and alerted me and the only other kid there that someone had shot Kennedy. We all thought it was some crazed Texas right winger. But Lee Harvey Oswald, a Soviet sympathizer, was apprehended. However,  he was then (conveniently?) shot to death by Jack Ruby (on television!) two days after the Kennedy assassination.

 

 

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Read how  the volatile, luxury-loving, conspiracy salesman Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a major character in the Four Died Trying series cited above, has made a fortune off his “nonprofit” activities:

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/16/us/rfk-jr-finances.html?fbclid=IwAR1oM62MSJ5roktQ3LpO8YGm0QJkp-mrH9FqU6ov-UMzQ476uupR_ikNvQw

 

 

Whatever It Takes

Who is really most responsible for war deaths in Gaza hospitals? The Israelis, or Hamas, which started the war by invading Israel and massacring civilians there and which uses hospitals, schools and other civilian facilities as places from which to launch attacks, with the aim of inciting Israeli attacks that will result in civilian deaths.  Please tell us what the Israelis are supposed to do.

 

Having its own civilians killed for propaganda purposes is an integral part of Hamas' strategy. “The blood of the women, children, and elderly… we are the ones who need this blood, so it awakens within us the revolutionary spirit,’’  said Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Lebanese TV on Oct. 26. Hamas wants to use that “revolutionary spirit’’ to  destroy Israel,  which would lead to a brutal and corrupt dictatorship ruling all of the region called “Palestine”. Take a look at the rest of the Mideast….

 

 

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President Joe Biden PHOTO: White House

Regarding President Biden’s meeting last week with Chinese dictator Xi Jinping: We have to get along with China, even while often holding our noses in dealing with that tyranny. With the world’s second-biggest economy and an aggressive geopolitical/military stance, the Middle Kingdom presents a huge challenge to us. But a direct clash could be catastrophic for the world. We must keep all communication channels open.  Keep our friends close and our enemies closer.

 

Sometimes working with a competitor, in business and elsewhere in life, is the best way to achieve a common goal.

 

Meanwhile, see this beautiful show about Newport’s centuries-long connections with China:

 

https://www.newportmansions.org/events/the-celestial-city-newport-and-china/

 

 

Under the Sand

As usual, whatever the huge environmental and economic benefits of green-energy projects, some people try to block them, especially affluent folks who don’t want to look at them or even if they can’t see them hate the very idea of being anywhere near them. Sometimes, the blocking attempts are on their own, and sometimes they get the help of the fossil-fuel industry. (Hey, who wants competition?!) Consider that a far-right (euphemism – ‘’libertarian”) Trump-connected outfit called the Caesar Rodney Institute, with ties to the oil industry, is one of the groups fighting offshore wind projects.

 

The latest example in these parts is a bunch of people in the Cape Cod town of Barnstable trying to stop electrical cables from the offshore wind farms of Commonwealth Wind and Park City Wind from being laid 50 feet under beaches.

 

The foes like to cite alleged health risks from electromagnetic fields and fires. But in fact, putting these cables deep underground is the safest way to go. How many of these opponents have complained about the risks from overhead lines, which produce  -- obviously! --far, far more human exposure to electromagnetic fields than can underground cables, requires cutting down wide swaths of woods and otherwise disturbing the environment to make space for them and can (albeit rarely) cause fires, of which California is the most dramatic example.

 

There have long been underground cables all over America that carry the same voltages that would come from these offshore wind projects. And cables from offshore wind farms in Europe have been put under beaches without incident, but it’s a lot easier to do such projects there than here.

 

Hypocrisy makes the world go round.

 

I hope that Massachusetts officials will favor the broad public interest and not let local opposition block what would be an environmental and economic boon for our region. But lots of people still seem to prefer burning oil, gas and coal from outside our region rather than putting up with nonpolluting, locally produced energy.

 

 

Denser in Brookline

Meanwhile, in a decision in the broad public interest, Brookline Town Meeting members have voted by a large margin to change zoning laws to encourage construction of more apartments and multifamily housing in commercial strips near MBTA routes. The idea is to add enough to the housing stock to slow the relentless rise in local housing costs, which among other things, threaten to make Massachusetts much less economically competitive. And the zoning change would help control sprawl.

 

The vote was a response to the MBTA Communities Act,  which some communities have fought. That law requires multifamily zoning near public transit to address the region’s housing crisis. Brookline, like many affluent communities, has tended to fight increased density. The resulting scarcity, of course, has raised prices to the unaffordable level for many low-and-middle-income people.

 

Will Brookline be a model for the region?

 

Maybe, maybe not. Consider that in affluent Newton, voters in a low-turnout election tossed out three city councilors who backed a housing plan along the lines of Brookline’s.

 

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Robert Kraft PHOTO: File

I wonder if past and present Rhode Island officials wish they had made more of a pitch to the Patriots owner, the Kraft Group, to put up a soccer stadium in Providence and move its New England Revolution there from Gillette Stadium. Now, it seems likely that the team will go to a stadium to be built by the Kraft Group along the Mystic River in Everett, Mass., very close to downtown Boston.

 

Soccer is particularly popular among ethnic groups that tend to be thick in cities, e.g., people with Asian and Hispanic backgrounds.

 

The Kraft Group, unlike the folks (Fortuitous Partners) trying to put up a soccer stadium in Pawtucket, have mountains of money.

 

Toxic Media

Word that a bipartisan group of U.S. senators are demanding documents related to senior Facebook executives’ knowledge of the harm to young presented by Meta’s Facebook and Instagram reminded me yet again of how much damage has been done to American civic life and society by the lies, disinformation, bogus conspiracies and sensationalism marketed by Meta (what a revolting name!) and the right-wing propaganda machine called Fox News.

 

But Facebook, unlike Fox, is hard to avoid using for many personal and business things.

 

And let’s denounce Facebook and Google again for ravaging professional journalism by publishing material (to help sell ads) they steal from news media, taking advertising revenue with them. And now the likes of such artificial-intelligence creatures as ChatGPT will broaden the theft, even as publishers and writers sue over copyright infringement.

 

 

 

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Then-President Donald Trump at Walter Reed Hospital

Depends on What You Mean by ‘Freedom’

What does “freedom” mean in current American political rhetoric? To some it means penalizing private organizations that have vaccination and masking rules, thus making some people feeling less “free” to wander crowded places. Or arming so many people with military-style weapons that increasing numbers of people feel less “free’’ to be in public places.

 

Or mandating biblical rules in sexual and other matters for everyone, regardless of their beliefs.

 

Or being in favor of free speech on social media run by private companies but only if it’s “conservative.’’

 

 

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I wish that the identity-politics crowd – and their foes -- would stop talking about the transgendered as if they’re a huge group instead of an estimate of a little over 1 percent of the U.S. population. And I  wish that individuals, even if they like to call themselves “nonbinary,’’ wouldn’t refer to themselves as “they,’’ rather than “he or she.’’ Or even “it’’ would be clearer. Things are quite confusing enough already.

Robert Whitcomb is a veteran editor and writer. Among his jobs, he has served as the finance editor of the International Herald Tribune, in Paris; as a vice president and the editorial-page editor of The Providence Journal; as an editor and writer in New York for The Wall Street Journal,  and as a writer for the Boston Herald Traveler (RIP). He has written newspaper and magazine essays and news stories for many years on a very wide range of topics for numerous publications, has edited several books and movie scripts and is the co-author of among other things, Cape Wind.


 

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