Strength in the Broken Places: Ted Kennedy, 1932 - 2009

© 26 August 2009, The Griot Poet

“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.” Ernest Hemingway

Ted M. Kennedy died in the comfort of his home in Massachusetts with family and friends surrounding him. He died to the date of his speech at the Democratic National Convention nominating (now) President Barack Obama as history’s first African American candidate endorsed by a major political party. He’d supported (then) Senator Obama in January of 2008 before succumbing to a seizure and the diagnosis later of a malignant brain tumor.

Strength in the broken places: despite getting expelled from Harvard in 1951 for cheating on an exam, he managed to get elected Senator in 1962.

Senator Kennedy championed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He authored more than 3,500 bills, the Family and Medical Leave Act; the Americans with Disabilities Act being among them.

Strength in the broken places: Ted Kennedy lost older brother Joe in battle in WWII. John he lost to Lee Harvey Oswald. Robert was assassinated while running for president by Sirhan Bishara Sirhan (mainly) for his support of Israel in the six-day war one year prior to pulling the trigger.

Chappaquiddick was one of his many “broken places.”

At 37, the young Senator drove off a bridge while in the company of Mary Jo Kopechne. Ms. Kopechne drowned. The Senator was convicted of leaving the scene of an accident with a two-year suspended sentence. Had the Internet been active and fully tabloid, his career and usefulness would be over.

In 1980, he ran a failed, bitter campaign against President Jimmy Carter, ultimately losing to him and then supporting him.

Republicans that are ardently against health care reform, bitterly opposed his support of Roe vs. Wade, counted him as a dear friend.

A “Lion of the Senate” builds a life from repeated failures. He finds strength in the broken places and gives the remainder of his life to service for others. A tombstone listing his accomplishments would be as large as the Vietnam Vets Memorial.

If America is truly a “Christian nation” as is oft quoted in our sound bite, 24-hour news cycle: then the lesson of Senator Kennedy’s life would be that there is redemption after failure and great sin; that the sun ascends and sets on all and as Hemingway also stated: “Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died [that] distinguish one man from another.” His service and his boisterous, back-slapping laughter were his roar and his strength.

Hierodule, ("sacred servant")

© 10 August 2009, The Griot Poet

You were the reason
Zeus came down from Olympus
Making Hera, his older sister/wife jealous
Yet, that god/human communion birthed: Hercules
One of mythologies greatest heroes

You are Alcmene
"the tallest,
"most beautiful woman with wisdom surpassed
"by no person born of mortal parents;
"her face and dark eyes as charming as Aphrodite's."

Lady of Cyprus,
Myrtle,
Dove,
Sparrow,
Swan,

All her;
all you;
all goddess;
all sacredly...

...sensual...

Past Prologue Strategies

The ghosts of Atwater past: birth(er)s, death(er)s; mendacity
© 8 August 2009, The Griot Poet

Lee Atwater, God rest his soul (a fatal tumor revealed he HAD one), developed and patented divisive identity politics – the mantle taken up by Karl Rove – to get George Wallace “segregation-now-segregation-forever” Dixiecrats to Republican polls.

“The Southern Strategy” opposed the Voting Rights Act abstractly:

Atwater: “You start out in 1954 saying ‘n----r, n----r; n----r’” (when Brown vs. Board of Education received a 9 – 0 Supreme Court pass with the vigor of Thurgood Marshall’s judicial rigor to implement at all deliberate speed), “by 1968 you can’t say ‘n----r’… that hurts you. So you say stuff like”:

- “Forced busing;
- “State’s rights;
- “Tax cuts;

You keep it abstract, but the result is “blacks get hurt worse than whites.”
Now: they say the fight is “health care,” while many of us are unemployed, laid off, on food stamps or welfare. Tabloid journalists insisting on reporting debunked after debunked after debunked FAKED birth certificates (because an exotic name found [Aramaic] 24 times in the King James Bible can’t be from Hawaii!). Governor “good hair” has the highest rate of uninsured of ANY state; he berates stimulus funds, punches his fist high and shouts at treason-speaking, secession-leaning tea bagger rallies: “State’s rights!”
But now: it’s not just color: it’s class! Follow-the-money to the K Street lobby and see [who] are the true masters of republicans and blue dog democrats!

Thomas Frank asks “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” We tax cut and war mongered our way into this huge deficit.

- “Forced busing;
- “State’s rights;
- “Tax cuts;

The only point changed is the first!
Lied ourselves into two wars in Iraq, killing Saddam Hussein and sons Uday and Qusay, bombing Ur of the Chaldean’s back into the Bill O’Reilly stone age (which had NOTHING to do with 9/11 per DUBYA),
Instead of stating: “we don’t want that n----r in the White House” (built by the way on the backs of slaves),
We have “birth(er)” knaves and republican sponsored-for-20-years “Living Wills” transformed to “Logan’s Run” euthanasia, “death(er)s” shout down and stifle Congressional Town Hall Meetings in industry-sponsored Astroturf rallies,

Because 40 plus years later (from 1968), you can’t say: n----r, n----r; n----r!

Atwater said: “you got to be abstract.”

Forced busing becomes:
- “Military-Industrial-Congressional-Complex” (what Ike meant to say),
- “State’s rights;
- “Tax cuts;

A quote from “The Price of Loyalty” by Ron Suskind: “Deficits don’t matter, this is our due,” from then Vice President Richard Bruce (Dick) Cheney!

On Anarchists and Socialists

Anarchist: 1: a person who rebels against any authority, established order, or ruling power2: a person who believes in, advocates, or promotes anarchism or anarchy ; especially : one who uses violent means to overthrow the established order

Anarchism: 1 : a political theory holding all forms of governmental authority to be unnecessary and undesirable and advocating a society based on voluntary cooperation and free association of individuals and groups

Socialist: 1: one who advocates or practices socialism 2: a member of a party or political group advocating socialism

Socialism: 1: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods 2 a: a system of society or group living in which there is no private property b: a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state3: a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done

With those definitions out of the way, the poster depicting President Obama as "The Joker":
Obama Joker Poster

Is uninformed, dumb and ill-advised.

I don't quite understand what the endgame is regarding the GOP: if the goal is to expand the party base beyond Southern conservative whites and evangelicals, I'm not so sure these groups would be anymore comfortable with this caricature than the one of George W. Bush as Anarchist-in-Chief (same article above, see link to Vanity Fair at the end of the article).

African Americans and Hispanics are probably the most conservative, church-going group the GOP has decided in its best interest to alienate with the childish attacks against Eric Holder as Attorney General, President Obama as a fictional psychopath and Judge Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, arguably the most qualified to approach confirmation.

Tellingly (in some historical references), after slavery the first thing husbands did was go looking for wives and families; wives went to look for husbands and children, so our love of family runs pretty deep. After Lincoln's assassination, President Jackson pulled out troops from the South and the Klan and Jim Crow laws bloomed in its aftermath.

George W. Bush solidly carried Hispanics as Texas governor and pulled the group during his 2000 and 2004 campaigns, along with conservative African Americans nationwide.

http://blackmenformccain.com: is a blog by such a conservative African American. His URL says it all: he was solidly for McCain during much of the primaries in the 2008 election. His tragic last entry on October 18, 2008 discusses something we're debating, have been debating for 61 years now: Health Care:

"My father is not well. He readily admits his time is short, and the encroaching spectre of The End has made him a more reflective man than I have ever known him to be.

"Dad is a self-made man who came up from nothing. To him, personal responsibility is the foundation of our society. He didn’t believe that men, black or white, should rely on anyone, especially not the government. But as he watched his life savings drain away with his health, and the dreams of his children fade as we struggled to pay the bills to keep him alive, that ideology began to feel disconnected from reality. The Conservatism he taught me encouraged unrepentant faith in the Free Market–if you believe, you will prosper. But we believed. And we are not prospering. We are withering away."

The title of this last entry: "Barack Obama for President."

Anarchist: 1: a person who rebels against any authority, established order, or ruling power2: a person who believes in, advocates, or promotes anarchism or anarchy ; especially : one who uses violent means to overthrow the established order:

THAT sounds like the disrupted Democratic town hall meetings by "mob rule" sponsored by special interest groups and republican (and blue dog democratic) operatives beholden to the insurance industry:

Health Care Industry Sabotages American Town Halls
Reviewing the History of Fake Conservative Protests

And the ridiculous, oft-sited claim that President Obama was not born in Hawaii (now with an obvious FAKE birth certificate from a man in Australia):

Obama: the Australian?

So my question: how does THIS make me CONSIDER voting for the GOP?

If you have alternatives; propose them and debate them with FACTS, not mad mobs, dogma and childish pranks done in photo shop and posted anonymously (& cowardly); felonious forgeries of official documents of countries and municipalities.

The obvious embarrassing conclusion I foresee to the "birther" movement and this lunatic fringe the GOP feel beholden to coddle is the only "gag" that will shut them: a lawsuit brought by injured parties for copious amounts of money. (If it means anything, Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, Fox News and RNC Chairman Michael Steele are desperately trying to extricate their party from this thorny "birther" association.)

I'm told a few degrees at the beginning of any journey can decide whether you hit the mark of your destination or miss it be several miles. The "few degrees" that lost the republicans control of the White House and Congress were:

-NOT reacting to a CIA brief clearly stating "Osama Plans to attack America with Planes"
-NOT capturing/killing Osama Bin Laden for 9/11
-Stalling/Stymieing the 9/11 commission
-Outing CIA agent Valerie Plame
-NOT indicting Scooter Libby (what GROWN man calls himself "Scooter"?)
-The voluntary war in Iraq costing the country billions a month
-The atrocities at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo
-Giving credence to Intelligent Design and the lack of support for science and science education, thereby lessening our global competitiveness
-Denying global warming and its affect on climate and the global economy
-The Economic meltdown
-Being in control of the White House and Congress 6/8 of the Bush Administration years, taking us from a surplus to a deficit within months (and before 9/11); signing off on everything W ever wanted, the housing bubble that BURST...

I'll stop here. I COULD go on and on.

The GOP's main problem: you administrate without thinking, your dogma has become your religion to which you are more devoted to than common sense or democracy. I personally KNOW republicans that voted for Obama because like the gentlemen that wrote the blog: http://blackmenformccain.com, they were disillusioned by your administrative performance (or, lack thereof) and preferred to exercise a right afforded them in the constitution:

Democracy: 1 a: government by the people ; especially : rule of the majority b: a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.

"We the people" grew tired of tripe, trysts (Vitter, Ensign, Sanford) and circumstance. You lost. Instead of inciting (false) grass roots riots, find out why. Stop pouting; stop manipulating; start thinking and above all: start listening!

Shadow Dancing

© 2 August 2009, The Griot Poet

“Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.” Carl Sandburg

My shadow was Mr. Tedford: science teacher from my middle school past that on my lack of completely grasping the principle of linear expansion shouted his bearded disappointment:

“No, You big dummy...!”


I faked an obviously faked laugh as the dagger he stabbed me with sunk deep.

I never told my parents, I never demanded an apology for his pomposity and his mendacity,

I self-sedated; I ate [more] massive amounts of potato chips: comfort food to medicate internal wounds.

My shadow is JROTC Cadet Colonel Wall: Aryan, standing tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed, bedecked in ribbons, highest ranking Brigade Commander of Winston-Salem, Forsyth County schools that at a casual question shot back:

“YOUR kind will NEVER get to this rank!”
(“No, You big dummy…!”)

My heart sank and I expressed my stress and angst to my parents.

“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” my dad said with a knowing glance and genuine pain in tearing eyes that hoped I’d never have this experience.

“You go back and tell that booger-bootch you can do anything you set your mind to with GOD on your side,” mom said parodying Philippians 4:13: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

I did: “In three years,” I said, “I’ll be wearing your rank.”
“I doubt that,” he said in arrogant confidence.

3 years hence:

Veni; Vidi; Vici!

I stood tall, African son, black-haired, brown-eyed, bedecked in ribbons,
Making history in the Winston-Salem Sentinel (no longer in circulation),
My dead mothers’ scribbled note on the article to my Uncle James Dean:

“This is Reggie… your nephew… my son.”

And I, have lost both of them and the innocence of the mythology of my beginnings,
Insurance claims, death certificates, will probates crowds out my time for grieving, economy not allowing me to evening mourn over their sealed graves,

On anniversaries of his death and my corporate denouement: August 26, 1999 and 2003;
On her recent demise two days before Mother’s Day weekend 2009:

One dagger remains:

Tedford/Science/Certification

I did not tell them;

And now I’ve lost them,

I stagger as I attempt to remove (alone) the dagger!