The people with whom I went to high school would be floored to learn that, in my 71 years, I’ve run two New York City Marathons and more 10K and 5K races than I can remember.
They would be floored because I was not – shall we say – physically fit when I was a teenager.
I was heavy. That’s the kind word. There are lots of reasons why. But as much as my heart saw myself as athletic, my body never cooperated.
When I went off to college and then after I graduated, I saw the advantages of working out. One day, on a beach vacation to Rhode Island, I started running. I did that on and off into my late 60s. When I tore my meniscus hiking and developed arthritis, I switched to a stationary bike – although I am thinking about making my first run as a 70-year-old in the next few weeks.
The reason I mention all this is that there is nothing about what one of the women instructors on my Peleton calls my “fitness journey” that has anything to do with having taken physical education classes in school.
And so when Trump, in one of his efforts to bring back the tried-and-truly-useless of the past, declared last week that he wants the Presidential Fitness Test returned to the nation’s schools, it sounds about right.
He hasn’t the slightest clue what it would take to help our nation’s kids live healthier lives.
The Presidential Fitness Test, for those who forgot, was this four-part event that your whole gym class did. It consisted of sit-ups, squat thrusts, straddling some lines and running a lap around the school track.
The point supposedly was to show how fit you were compared not only to your classmates, but to other kids around the country.
The test was one of the stupid things about physical education in elementary and secondary schools.
Gym classes are mandatory because, supposedly, they instill the notion that kids should be fit.
But what they do is completely ridiculous.
For kids who are would-be athletes, wanting to compete in interscholastic sports, they’re 45-50 minutes of beating their chest and showing how strong, fast or whatever they are.
But for kids who need help in getting healthy, they’re a waste of time at best and, often, a chance to be humiliated or bullied.
There is no effort – none – to help kids in need find a program that will help them improve their physical well-being.
The test that Trump wants to reinstitute is about competition and superiority. He panders to bullies because he is one – and this gives them another chance to show off.
Most kids don’t need any more of that. They need to be encouraged to do healthy things. They need someone to ask them what kinds of things they’re comfortable with doing. They need to start slowly and build a love of physical activity as a way to get in touch with themselves and the world around them.
I’ve run races in my home of New York, in Florida and California and even London. Not once did I think about something that happened in a gym class that was about conforming to the rules and competing against the school jocks.
Not once was I made to feel useless, even though I came nowhere close to winning a race. As opposed to when I couldn’t do a forward roll, swing off the rings or wrestle a state champion almost 100 pounds lighter than me,
And yet, I’m willing to wager that I’m in a better place physically than 90% of the people in my gym class because I enjoy exercising.
President Barack Obama got rid of the Presidential Fitness Test because it was a complete waste of time and unhelpful.
In the middle of a hot New York summer day, a guy from Las Vegas walked into a Park Avenue office building, murdered a security guard, two other people working there and an NYPD officer, and then turned the gun on himself.
The New York Times just reported that the man bought the gun – an assault weapon – from his boss for $1,400. He then drove to New York with the intent of inflicting some sort of pain on executives of the National Football League.
We can wonder about why he did it. We can ask if he was mentally ill. We can dismiss him as a troubled soul.
What we can’t dismiss is the goddamn assault weapon.
For 10 years, from 1995 to 2005, there was a ban in this country on some semi-automatic firearms as well as on large capacity ammunition magazines. President Bill Clinton signed it into law, with the support of former Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. President George W. Bush let the law expire.
Because the law wasn’t in effect long enough, critics say there’s no statistical proof that it cut down on murders.
But it sure seems as though there would have been anecdotal proof on Monday in New York.
And yet, you know and I know and everybody in Congress and everyone in the gun-fetish lobby that’s the National Rifle Association that the end result of this horrible murder will be the status quo.
No laws will be passed. No regulations enforced. In fact, the bangbangers will argue that New York’s stricter laws on assault weapons are useless, that the only way to prevent this sort of mayhem is to arm everybody to the teeth.
Here’s the thing:
One of those murdered Monday was Officer Didarul Islam of the New York City Police Department. He was working a second job as a security officer at the office building when the gunman sauntered in with his assault rifle.
Islam got world-class training to shoot the handgun he carried. It was no match when someone carrying a war weapon initiated an attack that no one could have possibly expected.
So why don’t police unions and police organizations organize and march and sell bumper stickers demanding that this country regulate the sale of weapons that overpower the men and women trying to protect us?
It always seems as though the people who fight the hardest for sensible gun control are students and parents. Because the most horrific of mass shootings – and they’re all pretty goddamn awful – are those in which children are massacred in their classrooms. Sandy Hook and Uvalde evoke painful memories and terror.
And yet, politicians bought and paid for by the NRA manage to ignore these protests.
There’s nothing they can do. It’s the Second Amendment. The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Thoughts and prayers.
If police advocates went as all out to stop assault weapons as they do to whine about lack of respect, maybe that respect would come more easily.
But I don’t think it’s going to happen. And here’s why:
You get the sense that police officers don’t want bad people to have guns. But they seem to think that everybody they know – kids, parents, siblings, extended family, neighbors – should.
So regulating that would put their faves at odds with the law. And given the choice of possibly getting killed in a shootout with someone having imaginary CTE or arming them and theirs, they’ll take the latter.
Police officers have seen what happens when a gunman takes an AR-15 to elementary school children, And they still can’t manage to stand strong with kids and parents against those weapons.
So forget the BS about how New York is a cesspool of evil, or how it’s our socialist tendencies or lax morals or anything else these yokels from the Republican Party spit out.
Strong gun laws would go a long way toward stopping the madness that took place in New York this week. And police groups can go a long way toward getting those gun laws.
— 10 sitcoms all based around some guy named Sheldon.
— A bunch of shows purporting to be about the FBI.
— A bunch of shows purporting to be about military investigators.
Right now, the only thing I ever watch that airs on CBS is “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” – and I only watch the clips I see on social media.
But as we all know, that’s going to end. CBS announced that it is ending the entire “Late Show” franchise. The announcement says the economics of late night television led to the decision.
And we all know that’s crap. CBS ended the show because its parent company, Paramount, is being sold to Skydance, the pet project of the Ellison family. That $8 billion deal has to be approved by a Justice Department that insists on fealty to Donald Trump.
Fealty is not the way to describe Colbert’s attitude toward Trump. It’s more like middle-fingerty.
But let’s be fair. CBS has long stopped being the “Tiffany Network” of our youth. Is there any comedy on the network of the caliber of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” or “All in the Family” or “M*A*S*H”? Is there any drama on CBS that reminds you of “Mission: Impossible”? Where are the “Young People’s Concerts” and “See It Now” and “The 20th Century” and “CBS Reports”?
Does CBS News carry the same cachet of the Murrow-Cronkite-Rather era? CBS paid $16 million to settle a suit from Trump that alleged “60 Minutes” doctored an interview with Kamala Harris – would the old CBS have caved like a sandcastle in a tidal wave?
It makes me wonder: Has the idea of television networks become obsolete?
In my younger days, networks were gathering places. News – local and global. Sports. Music. Ed Sullivan tried to entertain an entire nation in one hour. It might have been schlocky at times, but it was an effort to bring the nation together around a small screen.
Now they only seem interested in maximizing the cash generated for the least amount of effort. You used to look forward to the fall preview issue of TV Guide and the new shows on the networks. Is there still a TV Guide, much less a fall season?
Maybe it’s time to say goodbye to eyes and peacocks and whatever you call the ABC logo,
Maybe networks can be formed by confederations of artists: performers, writers, tradespeople, producers. First, teaming to create interesting new programming.
Second, forming a link among the shows that give them a shared branding. Arista or Canelot or some other fantastic name that link news and programming of the highest quality at little or no cost to viewers.
It’s complicated, but it doesn’t seem impossible. It’s what over-the-air TV was, in a way, when people my age were born.
Right now, with cable and streaming, we have more choices than ever before. But it never seems as though there’s anything GOOD on. Instead of another news panel on what goofy thing Trump said today, how about innovative investigative reports on health crises around the world, or medical breakthroughs, or re-examining historic events.
A TV confederation would need to find a way to make it economically feasible for the people working in it. That, not the technology, seems to me the biggest stumbling block.
What’s going to keep legacy networks in business is the understandable argument that camerapeople and make up artists and actors need to feed their families. If you can make it so that so that people make decent livings without the infrastructure of networks and affiliates, it would make American media more immune to the kind of ridiculous pressure it faces from the Trump gang.
I don’t have a lot of answers. I’m not sure how this would work. But I’m sick of capitulation and mediocrity.
Colbert’s cancellation isn’t the end of this – I would not bet money that he will still be on the air until his contract runs out next May. I think the Ellisons will unceremoniously end “The Late Show,” Jon Stewart and “The Daily Show” and anything resembling independent reporting at CBS News.
It will be the watery pablum that CBS puts our every night.
It’s time to revolutionize American media. To think differently.
His files – once and if they’re ever revealed – will show Trump’s mendacity to all his worshippers. The disclosures in there – about how Epstein procured Florida girls to provide companionship for his A-list clients. Including Donald J. Trump, who once referred to being best friends with Epstein.
This. This is what will make all the MAGA types sit up and take notice. This will show them what he really is, how he’s duped them for years about who he is.
If you watch TV or social media or just walk around and hear desperate Trump haters talk, you know what I’m talking about.
This is the scandal that won’t go away. His supporters won’t let this go away, despite his rantings on Truth Social and in the White House, where he is supposed to be working for us.
Yeah. Right. Sure.
It wasn’t that long ago that the fracture between Trump and Elon Mask was the event that would break MAGA fever. That without Musk’s financial support and with his opposition to the budget framework, the bill would fail to pass.
How’s that going?
There are people who think Trump is bothered by all this Epstein talk. They’re Charlie Brown believing Lucy is going to hold the football as he kicks it.
Jeffrey Epstein died at his own hand in a New York prison cell in 2019. He had been arrested once before – in 2005 – on child sex charges. But his punishment from Florida officials – including one who later became Trump’s Secretary of Labor – was beneath lenient, and many of the girls who were victims had no idea of the easy terms.
The Miami Herald, led by reporter Julie Brown, shed new light on the case in 2018 and that’s how Epstein came to face the federal charges that resulted in his suicide.
When those stories were published, they were mandatory reading for the journalism class I taught at WIlliam Paterson University in New Jersey. I told students – when they would ask how long an assignment should – that it should be as long as it takes to tell the story well. Most often, that’s three paragraphs. In the case of “Perversion of Justice,” it was thousands of words.
It was a disgusting tale and, of course, it immediately attracted denial from Trump – who was president in 2018, not Joe Biden or Barack Obama.
Was Trump somehow involved with Jeffrey Epstein’s cruel and disgusting business? Look at the pictures and then try to convince yourself otherwise.
If you have half a brain, that exercise won’t last long.
But like everything else with Trump, he has a way of rolling off these things that’s super- – or sub- – human.
And the people who support him – the ones loudly proclaiming they’re through with him over his administration’s failure to “release the Epstein files” – are – I’d say – about 10 days away from doing a George Costanza.
They’re going to act as if nothing happened.
Yes, MAGA people used Epstein as a centerpiece of their message that Washington elites – particularly Democrats – are pedophiles and belong locked away forever. Or rubbed out. It helped get Trump support that helped blind people to the things in his agenda that would harm them.
Let’s face it, next to child sex allegations, tariffs on Canadian lumber and penguins in the South Pacific aren’t nearly as salacious (well, maybe the penguins). The absolutely insane notion of attempting to fire the Federal Reserve chairman that Trump bandies about will probably decimate your stock portfolio – but isn’t the Ghislaine Maxwell stuff so much more titillating?
Epstein is yet another of Trump’s shiny objects aimed at distracting you from mass deportations and climate change failures. He’s right, actually, when he says there are more important things to worry about – like how Texas miserably failed to protect girls at a summer camp from flooding or how Netanyahu seems intent on setting the entire Middle East on fire.
In the end, I predict one of two things will happen.
One is that he “begrudgingly” releases the Epstein files (I know Pam Bondi is the name of the releaser, but independence is not a word she’s trained to understand). Lo and behold, there are no prominent names in there. Somehow. Or somehow they’re all people who’ve run afoul of Donald Trump over the past 79 years.
Two is that he stonewalls. At some point, his followers are led to the conclusion – probably by some pseudo-holy clown like Franklin Graham – that maybe certain “elders” should be allowed to partake of 15-year-old females.
And then the MAGA crowd decides, hey, maybe that’s right. Shouldn’t our leader be infallible in his judgment of what’s proper?
Sounds far-fetched, huh?
Think about this.
Donald John Trump was convicted by a jury of his peers of 34 felony counts of fraud.
A jury in a civil suit found he had raped E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s. Other women, including his ex-wife, sued him for various forms of sexual misconduct. He made the “Access Hollywood” tape bragging the free reign he thought he had with women. He’s accused of deliberately walking to the dressing room of teenage girls during a beauty pageant he ran.
If not of this stuff is bad enough to make people realize what a horrible piece of human excrement Trump is, what makes you think that anything he did with his buddy Jeffrey Epstein will change any MAGA moron’s mind?
Sure, let the Epstein thing play out. Justice should always be served.
Just don’t count of any consequences when it comes to the 47th presidency of the United States. They haven’t happened yet.
Those mouse ears you bought the kids at Disney World funded a concentration camp.
The Tesla charger you used to refuel your plug-in vehicle paid the salary of a DOGE dope.
Your flipflop order on Prime Day Two bought a truffle cream canapé at an overwrought wedding in Venice last month.
The president is an addled megalomaniac, Congress bows to his will and the Supreme Court accedes to it all. News media, corporations and universities cave to his BS lawsuits like sandcastles in a tsunami.
Americans disgusted by this point in our history (hand raised!) feel powerless to stop what’s happening.
We’re not. At least not now.
We might not be able to 86 the sycophants who approved the ridiculous Trump spending plan until next November.
But we can show our disgust and make this nonsense hurt them a little bit with the power of our wallets.
We need to spend money. To buy food, services, goods, vacations.
How we spend it makes a difference. We don’t need to give it to people, organizations and places that spit in the face of our values.
A friend calls this “casting your dollar vote.” When he said it, he referred to an awful soap commercial we watched in his dorm room. The ad was so bad he swore never to buy that brand of soap.
It no longer exists.
I doubt it was just my friend’s disgust that sank the brand. But other people might have drawn the same conclusion – why should I buy a bar of soap made by people who think THAT ad is clever?
That isn’t always going to happen. But you can inflict economic pain on people who find contentment in inflicting real pain on real people.
Florida is a prime example.
Its malevolent dumpling of a governor brags about cooperating with the American Gestapo, ICE, in building “housing” in the Everglades. It’s a facility meant for the people being rounded up from the streets, without any form of due process or respect.
They call it Alligator Alcatraz. That’s a misnomer. In Alcatraz, prisoners were men convicted of crimes by a jury of their peers. There isn’t a jury verdict in the lot here, which makes this a concentration camp.
And they sell merchandise for it and chuckle at the idea that any potential escapees face death from predatory wildlife.
Why, why, why, why would a family of decent people like yours spend a penny of your money in a place like that? Especially in a place that generates a whole lotta income from vacationers like you.
In the summer, it’s a no-brainer. What with the hurricanes, tornadoes, miserable heat and almost hourly thunderstorms, why would anyone want to suffer through Florida?
But, when winter comes, there are places to go that aren’t run by Hothouse Hitler wannabes.
Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are part of the United States. So are California and Hawaii. You can leave the country, too, and feel better about it for not supporting evil.
——
Every time you look online this week, somebody or something is mentioning that it’s Prime Week at Amazon.
But you’re also seeing that the sales this year aren’t particularly good. I’ve seen the word “stink” used.
I wouldn’t know. I’ve quit Prime.
Jeff Bezos saw Lex Luthor in a Superman comic and decided he found a role model. He gutted the Washington Post’s independence and donated money to the MAGA cause.
And he flaunted his wealth. Sending Katy Perry on a joyride to space. Ordering up a $500 million superyacht with a helipad aboard.
And, of course, his recent $50 million wedding in Venice.
Why should you pay for that?
To be fair, it’s hard to wean yourself from Amazon. You need something somewhat urgently at the cheapest price. You know you can get it tomorrow. That’s tough to walk away from.
It seems a lot tougher to live in an oligarchy.
While vacationing in Mystic, Connecticut, this week, I visited Bank Street Books and did my part to keep their business going.
Could I have gotten the book I bought for less on Amazon? I don’t know. I don’t care.
The same applies to Elon Musk. I’ve been off X since he took over Twitter. Not interested in what he does with Space X. And when I rent an electric car in September, I’ll make certain I charge it somewhere unaffiliated with Tesla.
And then there’s the companies that support Trump overtly or tacitly.
Take Target. Once the darling of people who believed chic could be affordable, the company turned its back on one of its largest customer groups – black people. It roiled Back diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives because MAGA types squawked and Trump growled.
Black ministers understood the power they held in their wallets. They organized an open-ended boycott of Target that has severely pared company sales.
And here’s the thing: there’s no guarantee Target will ever get those customers back. Instead of admitting its mistake, it’s trying to muddle through. People can find other places to shop or make do if they think giving their money to people who don’t respect them is a bad idea.
Earlier this year, I wondered about my orthopedist. His mug is plastered or digitized on billboards throughout New Jersey.
Just for my information, I went into the Federal Election Commission’s data base of 2024 campaign contributors. And – surprise! – this doctor donated at least $30,000 to various incarnations of the Trump campaign.
He’s now my former orthopedist. I feel awful that any portion of that $30,000 came from me – even if it was through my Medicare account.
Don’t feel like this. Before you spend money on things that are important to you, think about who’s getting that money.
There are companies determined to keep DEI initiatives and not cooperating with ICE goons.
There are companies run by men and women not just unafraid of a changing society, but willing to embrace it.
You don’t have to shop at Home Depot or Wal-Mart. You don’t need a MyPillow.
And you don’t have to go to Texas or Florida, where diversity and equity are ridiculed and met with a 21st century concentration camp.
The following are things I normally don’t contemplate in the course of a day: The University of Pennsylvania, women’s swimming.
And yet, here I am, writing about the University of Pennsylvania – henceforth to be called its sports team name, Penn, to save electrons – and women’s swimming, which I usually only watch during the Summer Olympics, if climbing or basketball isn’t on.
The reason is that Penn reached a “settlement” with the Trump administration for having allowed transgender athletes to compete for the school’s female teams. In particular, the women’s swimming team, for whom Lia Thomas set school and NCAA records three years ago – before Trump won last November’s election.
The administration claims Penn, which was adhering to NCAA policy at the time, violated Title IX rules regarding fairness in women’s participation in sports.
Penn has agreed to take away Thomas’ school records, set down its new policy in writing and apologize to women who competed against Thomas. In return, the Department of Education has agreed to release $175 million in federal funding for which Penn had already qualified.
So, to start off, let me say that while I didn’t attend Penn, I personally know some really smart people who did.
I also know that Trump attended Penn, but given what I’ve seen from other grads, he didn’t picked up anything from history, literature or any other required courses. And I do wonder how many fellow attendees of Penn’s renowned business school, Wharton, have bankrupted six casinos?
Anyway, here’s my first thought: Thomas started competing in college as a male swimmer, and made Penn’s men’s team. After freshman year, she came out as transgender. She was unable to compete in women’s races until her transitioning hormone treatments took hold.
Thomas broke no rules that existed when all this happened. Because of the changes in her body, her race times slowed – although they were still fast enough to be among the top female swimmers in the nation.
Some of her teammates didn’t want her on the team. But some of them did. So did several swimmers from competitor schools.
Once Thomas won the women’s 500-yard freestyle at the NCAAs, there was an effort to take the victory away from her. And any OIympic hopes she had were dashed when swimming’s international governing body banned transgender women except for those who transitioned before puberty.
So let’s pretend – and damn I wish we really could – that Trump didn’t win last November. That he and the Republicans somehow incensed by this didn’t put their thumbs on the scale.
How could the government claim that Penn violated Title IX or any law if what they did was legitimate in 2022? Think of it this way – if New York recriminalizes marijuana in 2027 after establishing state-regulated weed shops, will the government prosecute the lines of people who go to the cannibis store in Nyack every weekend?
That’s what really troubles me about this whole thing. Trump is setting up a situation where things that were legal in the past can now not just be declared newly illegal, but prosecuted under laws that didn’t exist when the action occurred.
Meaning that you have to predict what’s going to make MAGAs upset two years from now so that you don’t violate some future law that you don’t know about.
And that’s really difficult. Because worrying about an epidemic of transgendering never seemed to be either in step with reality or much of a threat to society.
I mean, as long as someone doesn’t infringe on your rights, why do you care how they identify? I’m for being happy – if someone is going to be happier transitioning, why should they be stopped or, worse, criminalized? People have been crossing gender lines as long as people have memories.
But it’s really not about gender bending. It’s about control. It’s about deciding that your attitudes toward life need to be everybody else’s. Particularly if you can benefit from it financially or politically.
That’s what happened here. Penn broke no laws. It abided by the rules at the time. Had it barred Thomas for whatever reason, the school would have been in violation of the rules.
And yet, because a new regime with new rules took power, the school has to grovel to get the money it had already been granted. Not only that, it has to “apologize” to athletes who competed against Thomas.
Now here’s the part that really, really bothers me:
Why didn’t Penn stand up to this?
Does the school really believe it acted wrongly or in bad faith when it let Lia Thomas swim? Did it do so with malicious intent to denigrate women’s sports, even with the support of some of their athletes?
Did the school know, when Thomas transitioned, how the hormone therapy would affect her ability to compete? Did anybody – including Thomas – know for a fact that she would retain some of her athletic skill?
And, finally, does anybody actually belief that men, in order to win some kind of athletic recognition, would subject themselves to the psychological and physical trauma of transitioning from male to female?
Is the money that big a deal? Have we become so afraid of the legal process that we fear the consequences – even if we did nothing wrong?
It’s not just Penn and it’s not just about this issue. Just this morning, Paramount, parent of CBS, agreed to pay $16 million because Trump claims “60 Minutes” manipulated an interview with Kamala Harris to his detriment. The company agreed because it wants Trump’s government to approve a merger that should be decided on its merits, not who got paid.
Columbia capitulated. Law firms capitulated. He’s trying to get Harvard to do it. There’s quite a collection of elite roadkill.
I get it – Trump perceives himself as having the power over everything. But he doesn’t – unless it’s given to him.
How do we stiffen spines for a fight to preserve this country? That’s the kind of affirming therapy the institutions we’ve thought of as the protectors of freedom need desperately.
Last week, I contended that my generation of baby boomers is a disappointing lot.
This week, a generation of younger New Yorkers agreed.
That’s what I make of Zohran Mamdani’s surprising win in the Democratic primary of mayor of New York. Actually, Mamdani hasn’t won yet, but he’s well first in the first tabulation of ballots in the city’s ranked-choice voting, and runner-up Andrew Cuomo already conceded.
If he wins the general election in November – he’ll be favored but is not a lock – the 33-year-old Mamdani would be one of the youngest mayors in the city’s 400-year history. Jeez, he’s younger than my daughter.
And that – more than any other reason – might be why Mamdani shocked the city’s political establishment.
At age 71, there’s nothing I can drink or eat that gives me the boost of energy from walking the streets of New York. Like so many other great cities, it’s where young people flock to eat, to listen, to play, to watch, to have fun. It moves fast. Its active residents want nothing more than to be able to move at their own pace without encumbrance.
Most of all, it’s a city tired of being encumbered by a generation that believes tall buildings and luxury define greatness.
New York is about waiting in line 40 minutes for a $5 roast pork takeout dinner in Chinatown. New York is about sitting by the Central Park Reservoir while a four-person jazz combo performs a stunning rendition of “Embraceable You.” New York is about art around you, strange outfits, unisex bathrooms and the quest for the perfect pizza slice.
Mamdani seems to understand that.
The people in the Democratic establishment don’t. They think they’re living in a city that requires the approval of the monied class to fund development. They fall back on people with well-known names and older celebrities as if they – and not the young people in pubs and bodegas – are the city’s future.
I don’t live in New York City – I live north and west, in a place that’s trying its damnedest to be nothing like New York City. But because the people who live in the ‘burbs often depend on the city, they resent it.
That’s all crystallized in the congestion pricing debate. Nobody around here wants to pay $15 to drive south of 60th Street in Manhattan, and they see a toll for doing that as a violation of their privilege to use their car wherever the hell they want.
People who live in the congestion pricing zone love it. There’s less traffic, making the streets safer to cross. There’s less noise and pollution. Less horn honking. Buses run faster. Ambulances have fewer obstacles.
Mamdani seems to stand for ideas like that. He wants to find a way to make bus service free and faster.
He supports the idea of collective city-run supermarkets – not, as residents of Park Slope in Brooklyn know, a completely novel idea. This way, those who are less affluent don’t have to pay the gouged prices you can find at a Morton Williams or Gristedes – supermarket chains you and your wallet should be grateful aren’t in your area.
Mamdani’s win has shaken up New York politics and has the TV talking heads chattering. It has Republicans laser focused on demonizing him in order to get one of its longshots to squeak through. And it has the national Democrats in a quandary – do we embrace or ignore this guy?
So here are four thoughts:
— TRUMP: If you don’t think Mamdani’s win has something to do with Trump, you aren’t paying attention.
This is absolutely New York Democrats wanting not to feel powerless in the fight against a dictatorship. This is absolutely an entire segment of the populace saying that we’re giving up on trying to triangulate against Trump, let’s take the stupid bastard on.
Trump knows it. He went after Mamdani in one of those whatever-he-calls-a-Truth-Social posts.
Good. Let’s take the freakin’ gloves off.
— THE MIDDLE EAST: When I was young, there was a beer commercial highlighting New York’s diversity. Each had a tagline – for instance, for Italians, it would be “In New York City, where there are more than Italians than in the whole of Naples, more people drink Rheingold…”
For Jewish New Yorkers, it was “In New York City, where there are more Jews than in the whole of Israel, more people drink Rheingold…”
That was true back then. It’s not now, but New York City is as great as it is in part because of Jewish influence. New Yorkers schlep, they buy tchotchkes, they eat knishes – and all 8 million of them know what those phrases mean.
So Israel is a big issue here, much more so than in any other locality in the U.S. and maybe the world.
Mamdani is Muslim. That’s the background to the fact that he doesn’t support what the Netanyahu government has done in Gaza. He didn’t dance around it. He made one unfortunate comment that gave opponents ammunition to say he’s antisemitic.
He’s not. Opposing Netanyahu and what’s happened in Gaza is not anti-Israel. As I said last week – and stand by – no one has done as much to reignite antisemitism in the world as Benjamin Netanyahu.
I suspect Mamdani will be more assertive about supporting Israeli’s right to exist as much as he supports the Palestinians’ right to self-determination – he kind of mumbled that in his appearance of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” this week.
Importantly, Mamdani garnered a lot of support from Jewish voters who are as heartsick about Gaza as they are about what Hamas did to kids and the elderly in October 2023. And his collaboration with one of his opponents who is Jewish, city comptroller Brad Lander, is meant to show that Mamdani will work with others to make the city a more affordable place to live.
THE DEVIL (aka SOCIALISM): Americans are conditioned to believe socialism is evil. It’s something the wealthiest among us have pushed since the Gilded Age.
In particular, because they take on the mantle of being “socialist,” communist states such as the Soviet Union and China are what are sold as being the outcome of turning toward socialism.
That’s not right. At all. We already have some vestiges of socialism. Defense contractors and farmers receive subsidies from the federal government. Most public transportation is run by local government agencies.
That’s not going to stop Mamdani’s opponents from conjuring images of empty store shelves and fleeing businesses if he’s elected.
But the real socialism Mamdani proposes is best seen in his plans for small businesses. He wants the city to foster small businesses – provide subsidies, cut fees and fines, offer mentoring programs to get new enterprises going.
That is what people want.
New Yorkers may have swallowed hard and realized they’re socialists after all. Now those who can’t stand that idea – think hedge fund managers and other moguls – need to decide if they want to do without being in the city.
If so, here’s my thought: Don’t let the limo door hit you on the way out.
DEMOCRATS: We’re now five-plus months into the dark world of Trumpdom II. Sternly worded letters, lawsuits, those endless fund-raising e-mails haven’t done much to make the Democratic party more palatable to the people who rejected it last November. For all of Trump’s plunge in polling, there’s been no political coalescing force.
Maybe Mamdani is the answer. But not in the way Democrats like to think.
The lazy thing would be to think the country is ready for a turn left as exemplified by Mamdani. And it does seem as though New York City might be ready for that after years of being run by supposedly business friendly types: Rudy Giuliani, Mike Bloomberg and Eric Adams.
But what Mamdani did was tap into what New Yorkers want for their city. His little ads were entertaining – watch the one about Halalinflation for a sense of what really matters.
Instead of preaching from a hill, Mamdani and his supporters traveled the city and understood the problems. And that’s what Democrats around the country need to do.
They do not need to mimic Mamdani’s policy ideas. They need to listen first and then adopt a plan of action that fits the community.
It might very well be more conservative. People in western Pennsylvania or Scottsdale or northern Minnesota might have their own unique issues that require action.
Listen and respond. Get a plan together. Adapt to your constituency. Be smart and engaged about it. No knee-jerk, one-size-fits-all solutions. I love New York, but I don’t think central Wisconsin should be a rural version of it.
In the midst of 100-degree heat and the casual “let’s lob a few bombs into Iran” during the past week, Mamdani’s primary win seems like a moment to cheer. It will certainly make for a little brightness among the gloom – especially if he can further build his coalition from now until November.
Baby boomers – that includes me – screwed the pooch.
We talked a good game when we were young. We were going to change the world. We were going to make it fairer. Make love, not war. War is not healthy for children, etc. The arc of the universe is long and bends toward justice, right?
All that stuff.
But for all the education we received at a much better price than other generations, for all the protests and clever music and revolutionary art and tech savvy, we bombed on two of the most important things we could have done.
One is immigration.
Maybe I’m naive, but this is not a hard problem to solve. And, in fact, reasonable politicians of both parties tried several times.
America needs immigrants. As “Hamilton” infers, they get tough jobs done. Sometimes without the credit they deserve. But they do.
But we also need to be careful. That’s the hangover from 9/11. People coming into this country intending to kill us. We need to prevent that.
Still, it is doesn’t seem intractable. Figure out a system that makes citizenship attainable over time and let people come in. Keep tabs on them. If they’re lost, you’ve got a problem – but most of the people who’ve crossed our borders want to live peaceably in the United States.
The other thing we messed up is the Middle East. In particular, Israel.
For its entire 77+ year history, Israel and its Jewish population have faced hostility surrounding it. I couldn’t imagine what it’s like to live in a country without a moment’s peace ever – although I fear we’re learning now.
The Middle East doesn’t seem that difficult. Israel gets a homeland for a Jewish state. Palestinians get someplace that they run themselves. Anybody breaks the peace, everybody in the world comes down on them.
OK, that’s a little simplistic. But it’s ridiculous that a part of the world special to more than a billion people – Jews, Christians and Muslims – should be a tinder box instead of a pilgrimage destination.
Reasonable people see that.
The problem here is that despite all the efforts made to sort this out – Camp David and Oslo among the more successful – there’s no rest for the hostility weary.
And the reason is this: For all the billions of the world who want peace in the region, there’s a de facto coalition that doesn’t.
At the center of the coalition are two forces that can’t stand each other: Hamas and its radical allies in the region, and Benjamin Netanyahu and the Gulf States on the region.
Yeah, these two sides – and the partners who back them – are eager to fight to the death – preferably the death of guys they’re fighting. These partners include – on one side or the other – Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the Trump administration.
So when those of us who think that two states – Israel and some formation of a Palestinian government – are the only possible peaceful solution, these two sides that hate each other coalesce to stop that idea cold.
Benjamin Netanyahu saw Hamas’ horrific attack on Israeli civilians in October 2023 as an opportunity to divert attention from the criminal investigations he faced and rally forces against any kind of peace deal with Palestinians.
And by being heavy-handed in dealing with the Palestinians living in Gaza, he gave a rallying point to Hamas.
So whenever some idiot throws a brick with the words “Free Palestine” through a synagogue window, know that Netanyahu would rather you do that than shout the words “two states.”
Because these people are an all-or-nothing coalition. They want you cleared out of the way so that they can get on with the ultimate battle for control of the holiest piece of land in the world.
There’s a solution, but it’s not going to happen. Not now, anyway.
Last weekend, millions of Americans came together to tell Donald Trump he’s a jerk. To battle his desire to be some kind of king or dictator.
What if large numbers of people around the world joined together with most of the world’s Jews and Muslims and said they won’t support anything but a two-state solution to this problem?
You see, Joe Biden’s failure here was worrying that he wouldn’t have the support to challenge Netanyahu’s wag-the-dog campaign. And worrying that if he didn’t give full-throated support to Netanyahu, he’d be accused of abetting Hamas – the terrorists who kidnapped children and elderly people, and held them for nearly two years or killed them.
The problem is that Americans are so distracted by what Trump has done in the past five months that they’re just overwhelmed by BS. And as awful as things can get in the Middle East – Trump is itching to drop bombs on Tehran to prove he still has a cock – Americans are besieged. By these idiotic tariffs, the potential gutting of their healthcare, the possibility that no one will come help them when hurricanes batter our shore, and the grabbing of neighbors off the street by secret police.
Maybe it seems as though I got away from my original point – that we, as baby boomers, failed.
I didn’t. We should have solved this problem. We had chances all the way into the Obama administration. We couldn’t muster the will or imagination to beat these people back, just as we couldn’t muster the will or imagination to overcome the forces that profit from trying to deport undocumented immigrants.
We didn’t do it. And now, the all-or-nothing coalition holds the reins, ready for the dogfights they’ve wanted for years.
We kinda knew, prior to January 20, what would happen.
Trump put together a collection of some of the worst people who’ve ever lived in this country. And that’s saying something – if their heirs donated to Trump’s campaign, Benedict Arnold, Nathan Bedford Forrest and Al Capone would have been pardoned and/or given jobs.
This collection of pond scum set out with a plan. Go after as many stable, peaceful, prosperous, honorable and – here’s the key word – diverse elements of American life that don’t support their warped view of America. Sow chaos, pick fights with entities that have been as removed from the title “enemy” as you can imagine.
Harvard. Canada. Childhood vaccinations. Bruce Springsteen. Solar energy. Women professionals. School kids of color.
And, of course, Los Angeles.
Now, to be clear, L.A. is not even close to being my favorite city in the United States. It’s not even in the top ten. Seven-lane freeways are an abomination. The Dodgers abandoned the good people of Brooklyn. I’m actually surprised there’s something they consider a downtown.
But there are people who love L.A. Not just Randy Newman. They like the quirkiness of having lots of different cultures mesh together into a spectacle for the senses – music, art, food, clothing, language. Millions of people who work hard, struggle to put food on their families’ tables and enjoy the occasional kimchi taco.
Which is why the city is one of the hubs of resistance to what Trump’s cuckoo coterie wants. Because it is, with Miami and New York, a center of immigrant culture in the United States, it is an easy target. And why so many Angelinos are out in the streets trying to stop ICE, the American Gestapo, from its heinous raids.
Destroying the immigrant idea that built this damn country is their touchstone. MAGAts act as though their families sprouted from the heartland soil and don’t have a long boat trip or plane ride in their DNA.
What they’ve been terrified of is the fact that the United States has gotten closer to becoming a majority minority country. That some coalition of Black, Latino, Asian and indigenous people will soon make up 50.01% of the population.
And they think that coalition, should it so choose, would wreak on strictly Caucasian people some of the despicable acts that Caucasians inflicted on them since arriving here. Slavery, mass deportation and exclusion acts can go both ways.
For now, the question is how to combat these manufactured outrages, the ones Trump and the gang conjured as he stewed after Joe Biden beat him handily in 2020.
Well, one thing might be to keep reminding him that he lost in 2020. Trump has been plotting revenge against the whole country – not just the states that didn’t support him – since then. Some 81 million of us rejected him and the 74 million who did vote for him didn’t do enough to ensure his return. Even winning last year didn’t make up for that loss, that failure to adore him.
But rehashing 2020 is hardly a solution to the problem we face now.
As far as Los Angeles goes, continuing the protests, even in the face of the world’s strongest military, is paramount. What’s also true is that the protests can’t be violent – Trump wants nothing more than to bully protesters and show off the force he believes he controls.
Making the people behind the ICE masks pariahs – actually, that would speed up what the rest of their life is going to be like – is one course of action. In Los Angeles and other cities, shun these people. Their money is no good in your store or they need to identify themselves fully in order to use their credit cards.
I thought about whether or not any family members of ICE agents should be targets. Normally, I would find that heinous. But these are the people who have taken children from their parents and parents from their children. They’ve raided graduations. They’ve raided the legal proceedings that immigrants are required to attend.
It would be interesting to see how they would feel about being on the other side of their bile.
But then we would be stooping to their level. We would become the same kind of unthinking, heartless being that is defiling the streets of our cities. So leave their families alone – just pick on the ICEes.
This Saturday, June 14, Trump is orchestrating a military parade through Washington. He’ll tell you it’s to celebrate the Army’s 250th anniversary. It’s actually to celebrate his 79th birthday.
It’s easy to say that you shouldn’t go. But I suspect somebody is going to do something to disrupt it. In any case, there are protests around the nation to counter this massive ego trip. Join, if you don’t already have plans.
My preferred course has always been to come up with a strong positive alternative to Trumpism. A plan that would actually make people’s lives better – accelerating a lot of the ways the world has improved in my lifetime. Promoting clean energy and improved transportation. Health care for all. Support for families no matter how they’re constituted.
But Trump has the money and the manipulated Congressional support to let his mass despicabilities take over the agenda. People are hurting.
Can you imagine what it’s like to be an ICE agent in June 2025?
Probably not, because I imagine the people who read this come equipped with compassion, intelligence, scruples, understanding of democracy and other attributes of positive humanity.
But we are people who see that all of us are real human beings, with imperfections and such. So I guess, intellectually, we know that the ICE agents we see committing these despicable acts against vulnerable immigrants are, uh, people.
So what do you think it takes to be part of the American Gestapo?
There are, according to the Department of Homeland Security, about 20,000 people who work in various capacities for ICE. That’s one in every 17,500 Americans.
Of course, that doesn’t include the local law enforcement types who want to show they can be among the big federal boys.
I can’t imagine anybody who works at ICE was particularly good at civics in school – assuming, of course, they went to school. Maybe that’s a big assumption. They missed the classes about the Constitution – or the classes they had focused only on the Second Amendment to the exclusion of the other 26 (or 27 if you count the Equal Rights Amendment).
When confronted with the concept of due process applying to all persons – you know, that Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment stuff – their brains find it difficult to grasp the concept. So they ignore it – it’s probably easier than actually reading less than 100 words – which might stretch the extent of their vocabulary.
Being fashion forward probably disqualifies you from ICE. You’ve got to wear those drab ersatz military-style outfits as befits wannabe warriors. After bemoaning mask-wearing during the pandemic as freedom-infringing, you have to wear a black one during a long day of scooping up kids and mothers.
Most people in legitimate law enforcement go after what we used to think of as real crimes such as stealing money. That was, of course, before Trump pardoned people convicted of fraud because they or their families like him.
But those legitimate law enforcers are usually pretty proud of who they are and what they do. They’re thought of as brave and even-handed.
So they put stickers in their car saying they’re cops. They show up at festivals and parades. They’re the helpers Mr. Rogers told kids to look for in times of trouble.
What if those kids in trouble listened to Mr. Rogers and ran up to an ICE agent? I imagine they’d be cursing the nicest man in history in their native language from the friendly confines of a South Sudan internment camp.
On Career Day at school, the kids of legitimate law enforcement officers show up with their Moms and Dads in uniform.
What do ICE agent parents do at Career Day? Show up in their khakis, shades and masks? Demonstrate what it feels like to experience a flash grenade? Tell the kids to make sure they have all their papers in order – and take a few with them if they look a little scared?
Assuming that people who work for ICE are family men and the occasional woman.
I can’t imagine they go to normal bars and church socials to meet people. Who wants to go out with somebody who might send you to El Salvador if the relationship goes sour?
That’s why there’s a lot of thought that ICE agents are incels – involuntary celebates. That makes some sense.
Unless, of course, there’s some app ICE agents use for meeting suitable mates. You swipe left and someone who loves to be dominated shows up as the mate of your dreams. Those handcuffs and twist ties aren’t just for lawn mowers, hamburger cooks and housekeepers. Good times.
And here’s the part about working for ICE that is going to make it unique:
You see, one day, this madness will end. You and I are determined to make that happen. We’ll be about the business of repairing the damage that Trump, Musk, the saps in Congress, the Christian Nationalists and your neighbor with the “Daddy’s Home” flag (I’ve actually seen that!) have done.
These ICE agents will still be of employment age. Except who is going to hire them? An employer and co-workers will always know that so-and-so grabbed defenseless people, hurled them into vans, denied them their rights, and sent them away from the lives they peaceably created and the people they helped.
Not to mention all the days these people will miss from work for testifying in the lawsuits that will brought against them by the hundreds. It’s hard to be a security guard at Walmart when you’re in court four days a week.
Normally, I have a soft spot for people with troubled lives. There but for the grace of God, et cetera.
Except I know I would never betray other human beings and the ideals of American democracy. Not for any amount of money – including the $40,000 bonuses Republicans are trying to give them.
So do I feel bad for these people? Nah.
Do they deserve all the opprobrium they will face for the rest of their lives?
SUBJECTISM 