Who would know better than NJ's Boss of Bosses that the 2011 pension law is unconstitutional? It's his own damn law!

Hokey smoke, Bullwinkle, is that New York Yankees announcer Michael Kay with Parsippany (NJ) Mayor James Barberio? Oh wait, according to the Star-Ledger caption, "Governor Chris Christie appears with Parsippany Mayor James Barberio in front of Parsippany Town Hall where Christie announced he was introducing a commission to repairs his botched pension reform."


"Gov. Chris Christie signed the pension reform law in 2011, calling it a landmark achievement that showed what his brand of bold leadership could accomplish. But now that the bill has come due, he is in court calling that same reform unconstitutional.

"What is striking . . . is the governor’s hypocrisy. . . . Public workers had to rejigger retirement plans. Retirees lost their cost-of-living adjustments, and so on. But public workers kept their promise. Christie punted on his side of the deal, leaving the pension hole deeper than ever. . . . 

"He brags when he shouldn’t. He breaks promises. He leaves a mess for his successors. It’s no way to run a state. And if primary voters were watching, they just might conclude it’s no way to run a country, either."

-- from the Star-Ledger editorial
"Christie's legal back flip on pensions"

by Ken

When last we visited with New Jersey's Boss of All Bosses, Gov. Kris ("NJ Fats") Krispy ("Welcome to PANYNJ Imperial Wizard Kris Krispy's rampaging young Port Authority Krispy Kop Korps"), I whimsically hypothesized a link to the state's now only-second-most-famous crime boss, Tony Soprano. Admiring the way the Krispyman has installed his Krispy Kronies at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, both to serve as his enforcers and to funnel cash into the coffers of other Krispy Kronies, I ventured that Tony S would have loved a piece of that action.

Now I see that I'm not the first to have made the connection. Back in February a whole flap erupted when The New Republic published a photo tricked up by Jacqueline Mellow, in conjunction with a Krispy profile, representing NJ Fats as Tony S doing his ritual morning newspaper pickup, and was duly accused of stereotyping Italians. I'm not going to reproduce the tricked-up photo here, because frankly I think it's pretty lame, but let me just warn one and all that we'll have none of this nonsense here.

I say in advance to anyone who might wish to flap his/her gums about stereotyping of Italians: You're a goddamn effing moron, and I urgently wish you to shut the eff up, or better still to drop the eff dead. As Daily Kos's HoundDog pointed out in February, "If any stereotyping is going on it is about Republicans, and as Glenn Beck and Eddie Scary very well know, this is considered perfectly O.K. in modern media."

First off, as HoundDog also pointed out, any connection to the Mafia would have depended on the connector knowing that NJ Fats is half Sicilian, and even that's problematic since Tony Soprano's people are strictly Neapolitan. But the real point is that the only connection I have in mind is the spiritual kinship between Krispy and Tony in their leadership skills and technique as big-time NJ crime bosses.

Krispy's latest stunt is a doozie. In his time as governor he has devoted a remarkable amount of time to screwing state workers. Now you might think this makes him most un-Tony Soprano-like, since Tony would never treat his boys that way, understanding that they are, after all, his earners -- if they're not earning, neither is he -- not to mention that being the boss involves a certain amount of human decency, something a sociopath like Krispy could never understand.

It occurred to me belatedly, though, that NJ's state workers aren't his boys (or girls). His boys are the official Krispy Kronies, the gubernatorial appointees from the most patrician bureaucratic finaglers to the lowliest knuckle-crushers, who make his crime family hum. Those state workers grubbing for the pensions they worked for and are legally and morally owed? Them he treats the way Tony S would treat, say, government workers.

Which brings us to Krispy' latest pension-fund ripoff. He's already siphoned off so much of teh state's contractually owed pension contributions that somebody ought to look at embezzling charges. Now he's claiming that his very own 2011 pension "reform" law, which he hailed as the greatest achievement in state government since, well, his reinvigoration of the Atlantic City casino industry, is unconstitutional. Nobody, he say, can tell Kris Krispy how to spend the state's money; only the governor can do that. Why, even Tony Soprano didn't claim that kind of unitary power. When it came to money disagreements, he had to work them out not just with with the bosses of the New York families but with his own captains.

THIS ISN'T SITTING WELL WITH THE
NEWARK STAR-LEDGER EDITORIAL BOARD

The Star-Ledger editorial board, to its credit, isn't amused by the latest Krispy Kraziness. The other day this editorial appeared (links onsite):

Christie's legal back flip on pensions

Gov. Chris Christie signed the pension reform law in 2011, calling it a landmark achievement that showed what his brand of bold leadership could accomplish.

But now that the bill has come due, he is in court calling that same reform unconstitutional.

The core legal claim is that one Legislature cannot oblige the next Legislature to spend money. So while the 2011 legislation spelled out the state’s obligation to make payments over several years, the 2014 Legislature has no legal obligation to make good on those promises.

The idea is to guard against overreach. If one Legislature believes it’s important to build railroads, for example, it can’t compel a future Legislature to go along with that policy.

But there is some wiggle room. The state signs leases for buildings that require payments in the future. It signs contracts on construction projects that provide for payments over several years. This one is almost certain to wind up before the Supreme Court, given the stakes.

What is striking, however, is the governor’s hypocrisy. The pension deal was a two-sided bargain. Public workers were required to pay more into the funds, and receive smaller benefits. Christie agreed to phase in full pension payments over seven years.

That was a heavy lift on both sides. Public workers had to rejigger retirement plans. Retirees lost their cost-of-living adjustments, and so on. But public workers kept their promise.

Christie punted on his side of the deal, leaving the pension hole deeper than ever. And now he’s laying the legal groundwork to punt again next year with an argument suggesting his signature is not worth the paper this bill was written on.

It’s a pity Republican primary voters aren’t watching this spectacle. Christie is getting style points everywhere during his undeclared campaign. He’s bold. He’s strong. He tells the truth.

Closer to home, we see the underbelly. He brags when he shouldn’t. He breaks promises. He leaves a mess for his successors.

It’s no way to run a state. And if primary voters were watching, they just might conclude it’s no way to run a country, either.

As HoundDog concluded his February piece, "I'd like to apologize to any members of the real mafia that may have been offended by comparisons of Governor Christie's thug-like behavior, abuse-of-power, and bullying."

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TV Watch: James Gandolfini (1961-2013)

Tony takes care of business in "College" (Season 1, Episode 5).

by Ken

It so happens that a couple of nights before word reached us that James Gandolfini had died of a heart attack in Rome at 51, I watched most of a Sopranos episode that I happened to notice on one of the HBO channels.

I missed the beginning, but it was easy enough to recognize as the season-opener (Season 5, as it turns out) that includes a TV-news announcement about the paroling of a large number of mob inmates, which served as a means of injecting a clutch of new characters for the upcoming season, though I was reminded that the two really important ones didn't actually appear until the season's second episode. (That would be Tony Soprano's cousin Tony Blundetto, played by Steve Buscemi, who had directed a couple of Sopranos episodes, including what may be the most famous single one apart from the finale, "Pine Barrens," and the pain-in-the-ass "old school" New York captain Phil Leotardo, played so memorably by Frank Vincent.)

I bring this up for, basically, the same reason I've brought up Sopranos-related subject fairly regularly over the years here at DWT: The show is tightly interwoven in my cultural consciousness. My mind is in an ongoing state of bogglement at the achievement of creator David Chase and the simply astounding company of associates he assembled, on both sides of the camera, to pull the project off: writer-producers, actors, and all the crews. I've never had any reason to doubt that the show was in every way Chase's vision, but it couldn't have been done without that enormous number of hugely talented people, brought in from a staggering range of backgrounds, and enabled to work as a team.

Obviously the most visible face of the enterprise was Gandolfini as Tony. It's hard to disagree with all the tributes that have poured out since the awful news Wednesday. I don't think it's possible to overstate the success of his contribution, giving us a character who could withstand and even flourish under the enormous amount of screen time he racked up over the show's six seasons. We were compelled by him as a dominant but constantly struggling force in both his families, his real one and his, er, professional one. There was Tony's likable side, but also his monstrous one.

I was surprised to be reminded, in checking the records, that the episode that for me at least permanently changed the relationship with Tony happened as early as No. 5 of Season 1: "College," in which Tony drives his daughter, Meadow, to Maine for a round of college vists and spots a mob informant who has been living in Witness Protection, and after an elaborate cat-and-mouse chase winds up strangling the guy with a piece of wire. Boy, did that drive home how Tony's business went beyond "waste management."

(I see in the Wikipedia episode guide: "The episode was rated as the best of the series by Time magazine and was ranked #2 on TV Guide's list of 'TV's Top 100 Episodes of All Time.' " Also, "James Manos, Jr. and David Chase received the Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series for their work on this episode." I was also reminded of a charming detail in the episode: that at Bowdoin College Tony "is struck by a Nathaniel Hawthorne quote on display in the admissions office: 'No man . . . can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which one may be true.' " Is that wonderful or what?)

On one point, though, I'm going to disagree with a widely voiced accolade for Gandolfini: that he "made" the show, that it couldn't have succeeded nearly as well without him. Again, I don't want at all to diminish his achievement, but that achievement was as the most visible member of the Sopranos team.


Consider just one aspect of Tony: his utterly baffling irresistibility to women. Yes, he buys lots of them (namely, anytime it suits his pleasure), but we see time after time women who are unable to resist his, um, "charm." When I describe this as "baffling," I don't mean to say or even suggest "unrealistic." We know that such things happen in the real world, and are for a lot of us a source of fascination. You could have a jolly time "explaining" Tony's magic touch -- the attraction of power, of danger, and so on and so on. The writing of those six seasons' worth of episodes will sustain all manner of fascinating discussion. But I'm going to argue that the achievement was mostly in the writing and in the reaction of all those intersecting actors. I don't think Gandolfini "did" anything to make it credible; it was made credible by the way all those other characters clearly (and credibly) believed in Tony's irresistibility.

I think it's important to remember that it was David Chase who chose Gandolfini for the role, and Chase had been casting both expected and unexpected actors as mob figures from the highest echelons to the lowest for a long time -- his "mob" episodes of The Rockford Fils are some of that extraordinary show's most wonderful. I think it's safe to say that nobody except Chase would have made such a choice. I would assume that the quality above all that commended Gandolfini was his ability to credibly portray a North Jersey Italian-American lug of a head of household, off of which so much of the show would play. And it was a brilliant choice. I just want to suggest that there were probably any number of other choices he could have made, and the show would have worked just as well, because the writing, ensemble, and production would almost surely have been good enough to make any of those other choices work.

I've mentioned before that I saw Chase, as part of a panel of Sopranos people appearing before a cheering audience while the show was still in production, field a question from an audience member: Could the show have been done for a broadcast network? (We know that Fox was supposed to do it originally but turned chicken.) Clearly the question was intended as a sort of self-congratulatory hat tip to HBO, for its tolerance of the terrible language and terrible behavior. But Chase took the question literally, thought about it briefly, and replied that yes, he thought it could have been. Adjustments would have to have been made, but yes, it could have been done.

Still, it was James Gandolfini who was chosen, and who for six seasons produced episode after episode of such remarkable work. Every time I dip back into The Sopranos, I find that it looks as good as it ever did, if not better -- because with some removal in time and additional exposure, I not only treasure things I've already noticed (including many I've noticed and forgotten), but see all sorts of things I didn't before.

ONE ADDITIONAL NOTE: THE FRIENDS OF DAVID CHASE

Here's where it pays to be an attentive viewer, at least a more attentive viewer than I often am. In that Season 5 opening episode I was talking about, with the TV-news report about the outflow of all those mob parolees, there's an interview with a self-proclaimed Mafia expert about the significance of the development. It was only while I was sifting through Sopranos material for this post that I discovered that the blowhard was played by Matthew Weiner, who had just joined the team as a writer-producer in Season 5. In fact, Episode 2, in which Tony Blundetto and Phil Leotardo are actually introduced, was his first Sopranos writing credit.

I've read that Weiner had already written and unsuccessfully shopped a pilot for what became Mad Men before he was taken on as a key member of the Sopranos team for Seasons 5 and 6, and that David Chase had seen the script and that was one of the reasons he hired him. We also have one of the longtime key Sopranos writer-producers, Terence Winter, serving as the creative driving force for Boardwalk Empire, and Mitchell Burgess and Robin Green masterminding Blue Bloods -- and of course erstwhile Sopranos cast members all over the tube. The show, beyond its own merits, seems to have served as a TV academy of sorts.

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Revisiting "The Sopranos" -- the final season looks better than ever

The famously (and deliberately) enigmatic final scene of The Sopranos, as the Soprano family arrives one by one -- or nearly, since Meadow doesn't quite make it inside -- at the agreed-upon dinner site, Holsten's

by Ken

Thanks to the miracle of "On Demand," I've been taking a riveting trip through the "final season" (really two not-quite-full seasons) of The Sopranos, from 2006-07, which HBO has been posting in blocs of four episodes -- three for the 12-episode Season "6A" and two for the 9-episode Season "6B," with those final five episodes appearing in time for this weekend, when I devoured them rapaciously.

I don't have anything startling or, really, new to say about the show. There is, perhaps, the obvious question to answer: How does the show hold up? And the answer is: It looks better than ever. Now that it's no longer necessary to focus on the progress of the assorted plot lines, it's easier to focus on the stunning precision of detail, and how brilliantly creator and master producer David Chase's extraordinary team of writer-producers -- developed and mined the roster of characters created in the earlier seasons. This is still something that top-quality TV-makers can do which can't be done in any other medium, and while Chase certainly didn't invent it, he brought it to a level that I don't think anyone else has matched.

David Chase had done brilliant work as a writer and producer on The Rockford Files, I'll Fly Away, and Northern Exposure, but The Sopranos was his own creation, for which as overseer he also assembled the amazing team.

In the Season 6-es we see the full development of Tony Sopranos monstrousness, but we also see a renewal of the fascinating relationship between the Soprano children -- such different people (Meadow who fails at hardly anything she tries, Anthony Jr. who tries hardly anything and usually screws up what he does) and yet still bound by that special closeness of siblings, at least on Mead's part. There's so much more that I wouldn't know where to begin.

A re-viewing naturally also makes it possible to appreciate in greater depth and astonishment the work of the entire huge cast and of all the behind-the camera people, not to mention the corps of directors. And in some way I'm most awed by the size of the team Chase assembled -- so many amazing writers, directors, actors, and all the categories of technical people, all producing work of such uniform terrificness.

As for the legacy of The Sopranos, the Season 6-es continue to showcase the work of one of the series' mainstay writers, Terence Writer, now the driving creative force behind HBO's terrific Boardwalk Empire, and even more the work of future Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner, who had emerged as a Sopranos writing force in Season 5 and now, a full-fledged executive producer, emerges as the most important single writer.

Next I guess I'm going to have to go through the whole series, an undertaking complicated by the fact that I have the first few seasons on VHS. (I was a late convert to DVD.) The nice part is that I have a feeling the show is going to continue looking better and better.


It never occurred to me to check it out, so I only just realized that Holsten's is an actual restaurant, in Bloomfield, NJ.

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Tony Soprano weighs in (sort of) on the NYS marriage-equality battle

On last night's show, Anderson Cooper talked to Freedom to Marry's Evan Wolfson and CNN legal commentator Jeffrey Toobin.

"I don't give too much of a shit what people do behind closed doors with, uh, consentin' adults. Although [wagging finger at DR. MELFI] don't forget, I'm a strict Catholic. I agree with that Senator Sanatorium, says if we let this stuff go too far, pretty soon we'll be fuckin' dogs. . . .

"What the fuck, I suppose somethin' inside me says, 'God bless, a salut', who gives a shit?'"

-- Tony Soprano, to Dr. Melfi, in Episode 6,
"Live Free or Die," from Season 6 of The Sopranos

by Ken

In case you were wondering, even though the New York State Legislature's session has officially been over for days, negotiations -- principally featuring the players who used to be known as Albany's "three men in a room," the governor, the Senate majority leader, and the Assembly speaker -- are continuing to hammer out agreements on rent-regulation renewal and a property-tax recap, and in there amidst the horse trading is the issue of whether Republican Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos will allow the marriage-equality bill approved by the Assembly to come to the floor for a vote. (Unless he does, it appears that we'll never know whether the pro-equality forces have enough votes to pass it.)

In case you missed it, the lowest-life-form National Organization for Marriage, the direst enemy and sane and decent conception of marriage could ever imagine, pulled a stunt yesterday that seems outlandish even by its lower-than-low standards, putting out a press release claiming "victory" in the campaign against marriage equality, a claim that was an out-and-out fabrication. Oh, it could just be that they're morons, but it seems pretty clear that at a time when no actual news was emerging from behind those closed doors, the NOM morons were trying to manufacture a bogus reality-on-the-ground that might actually influence the real, or rather realish, reality in Albany. The bogus NOM story was gleefully picked up by National Review Online, which then had to pull it for revamping.

I want to get to some striking and unusually personal comments by that outstanding reporter Paul Schindler in a piece today for Gay City News (of which he's the editor in chief), but I've been sidetracked -- and I hope you'll see the connection -- by a dazzlng scene from
On its "On Demand" channel HBO has been rerunning Season 6 of The Sopranos, episodes I've probably seen less frequently than any of the earlier seasons' -- probably just once each. In fact, there was one early episode, in the arc of hallucinations as Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) fights for life from the gunshot wound inflicted by his Alzheimer's-afflicted Uncle Junior, from which I remembered hardly anything, though enough to know that I must have seen it.

To my delight I'm finding that these episodes look if anything even better than they did originally, with some distance in time and of course knowledge of how events play out. The precision of detail is kind of breathtaking -- as with the hilarious phone conversation between Tony and the road-construction worker who picks up the ringing cell phone that we realize is the very phone the flying-the-coop captain Vito Spatafore (Joseph R. Gannascoli) threw out his car window in his flight to New Hampshire, one of the series' most memorable subplots.

I expect I'll want to write more about the experience of re-viewing Season 6, but for now I'm stunned and delighted by this therapy session with Dr. Melfi (Lorraine Bracco) in which Tony grapples with the reports that Vito is gay. The writing seems to me just amazing in its depiction of the detritus stored up in Tony's head, realted and not-so-related to the subject of homosexuality, and of course the way everything turns out to be about him personally. (The script for "Live Free or Die" is credited to series creator David Chase and three Sopranos stalwarts: executive producer Terence Winter, more recently the creator of HBO's terrific Boardwalk Empire, now in production on its second season, and the wife-and-husband writing team of Robin Green and Mitchell Burgess, more recently creators of CBS's Blue Bloods, recently renewed for its second season.) I did this quick -- well, quickish -- transcript of the whole scene, which begins just as you read here.

DR. MELFI: You didn't know he was gay?
TONY: Actually, I had him pegged the whole time, but --
DR. MELFI: He a close friend?
TONY: Not only that, he's one of my most valuable guys. He's ambitious, he's focused. When I was in the hospital, he helped Carmela tremendously when we were strapped.
DR. MELFI: You've implied you have millions of dollars. Your hospital stay was actually that costly?
TONY: [Mutters bits of words, then -- ] Huh? [Pause] Is that the issue?
DR. MELFI: You tell me, what is the issue?
TONY: He's a fa-ag! [Holds hands out questioningly] Now what am I supposed to do?
DR. MELFI: About what?
TONY: I know what. [Sarcastically] They're born that way. It's not their fault. Well, frankly I think they go about in pity for themselves.
DR. MELFI: I don't think they see it as a fault.
TONY: In your circle I'm sure you've got all kinds of, uh, gays and, uh, trans-whatevers, of all stripes, but not where I come from.
DR. MELFI: You personally, how do you feel about homosexuality?
TONY: I find it disgustin'. Men kissin' men, holdin' hands in the street. Every fuckin' TV show now, they rub your nose in it. Although that . . . the lesbian thing with the, uh, Jennifer Beals -- it's not bad. She a dyke in real life? [DR. MELFI gesticulates that she has no answer.] I don't give too much of a shit what people do behind closed doors with, uh, consentin' adults. Although [wags finger] don't forget, I'm a strict Catholic. I agree with that Senator Sanatorium, says if we let this stuff go too far, pretty soon we'll be fuckin' dogs.
DR. MELFI: I hear a lot of ambivalence.
TONY: This guy that got outed, look, the guys that work for me are askin' for head. His head. What the fuck? You know, him and me, we're in the construction business. Now some of these union old-timers, the contractors, they're not gonna wanna be seen with him, and I'm talkin' huge deals, major fuckin' dollars.
DR. MELFI: A lot of your circle must have done jail time. They can't be strangers to male-male sexual contact.
TONY: You get a pass for that.
DR. MELFI: Well, that's nice.
TONY: Well, Whaddaya gonna do? There's no women there. You're there, uh, five, ten years. [Pause] Just for the record, my incarceration was, uh, very short-term, so I never had any need for any anal, you know --
DR. MELFI: So this fellow who's been outed, what's he saying?
TONY: You think I'm lyin', don't you? About when I was in jail.
DR. MELFI: I've given you no indication I think you're lying.
TONY: [Long pause, as TONY shuffles in his chair] What the fuck, I suppose somethin' inside me says, "God bless, a salut', who gives a shit?" I mean, I had a second chance, why shouldn't he?
DR. MELFI: Part of your new outlook?
TONY: Maybe.
DR. MELFI: I salute it then.
TONY: Tall fuckin' order, I can tell you that.
DR. MELFI: How so?
TONY: You can talk about every day bein' a gift, and stop for the smell of the roses, but regular life's got a way of pickin' away at it. Your house, the shit you own, it drags you down. Your kids, what they want, one bad idea after another. Just workin' a cell-phone menu's enough to make you wanna scream.

NOW TO THAT PIECE OF PAUL SCHINDLER'S

Paul's Gay City News piece this morning, called "Anxiety, Great Expectations & Weariness, Too, begins like so:

For the past ten days, like many gay and lesbian New Yorkers, those of us here at Gay City News have watched the unfolding events in Albany with rapt attention and no small amount of anxiety.

June 13 and 14 were two of the most spellbinding days I have spent as a journalist covering gay politics. After a concerted six-month campaign by leading professional advocates, grassroots activists, and the governor of this state, we arrived at a moment where four of the remaining six State Senate votes we needed to enact marriage equality –– a deficit that had not budged since last November’s elections –– materialized in a single press conference.

The following day we picked up another vote.

We were just one short of our goal.

And we’ve stayed in that place for the eight days that followed. Each morning, we’ve wondered where the 32nd –– and winning –– vote would come from and whether the Republicans who run the Senate’s agenda and bill flow would allow a measure most of their members oppose to see the light of day.

It is clear, as of this writing, that we will not hear about any more Republican supporters of marriage equality until we learn whether the majority is willing to allow a vote. James Alesi of Rochester and Roy McDonald of Troy either bucked their party leadership in announcing their support before the conference considered the matter or they were allowed to go public because their votes alone would not put the issue over the top.

The GOP was unwilling to allow a marriage vote to move forward until they had extracted as much as they could in their negotiations with the Assembly Democrats and Governor Andrew Cuomo on other important issues, such as a property tax cap and renewal of the New York City rent stabilization law.

In and of itself, that strategy is hard to criticize. Politics is about negotiation, horse-trading, and compromise.

But in their protracted stalling on marriage, they gave credence to a grab-bag of wild fears, some half-truths at best, and other outright misrepresentations about the potential threat marriage equality poses for religious freedom: A clergy member could be sued for refusing to marry a gay or lesbian couple. Parishes and synagogues declining to rent out their halls for gay wedding receptions might lose their tax-exempt status. Catholic adoption agencies would have to abandon their mission ––that charge made in spite of the fact that adoption has nothing to do with the state’s marriage law.

Paul notes the difficult position of the Senate Republicans: under fierce pressure from the hard Right (including the implacably anti-marriage-equality state Conservative Party and the state's Catholic dioceses, who are in all-out war mode) to maintain an unyielding "no" position, on an issue where for a number of them a "no" vote too may spell political doom. Paul even allows for the possibility that a lot of the Senate Republcians' posturing may have to do with providing themselves political cover for a fight they know they're eventually going to lose.

After all, the Republicans could kill the bill outright simply by refusing to allow a floor vote. Apparently, the strong polling marriage equality enjoys statewide and the glare of so many TV lights have convinced them that denying us our vote is politically untenable.

Their dithering, it seems to me, is an acknowledgment they know they will lose. Otherwise, they would have grabbed their victory already.

And then, as I mentioned at the top, Paul gets personal.

In the meanwhile, I have to reflect on an emotion I’ve experienced separate from anxiety and anticipation. Namely, irritation.

Part of that stems, no doubt, from my great disappointment in coming out with our Gay Pride issue with this battle so close to conclusion, but not quite there.

But the larger measure of my frustration comes from the unpalatable experience of sitting and waiting day in and day out while a nearly opaque political dance unfolds that is, in fact, a referendum on my dignity as a citizen. The fact that my equality –– which according to core American values is God-given or, in more secular terms, mine by right of birth, should be in the hands of elected officials who show such cavalier disregard for basic notions of fair play and equal treatment is a truth I will never be able to accommodate myself to.

As I write these words, I remain confident that our goal is within reach. But at moments on the journey, there are bittersweet reminders of the injustice that has defined far too much of our lives.

This is an argument that would surely go over the head of Senator Sanatorium (I don't know about you, but I now find it possible to think of the Rickster as anything but Senator Sanatorium), but one that even that "strict Catholic" Tony ("Who gives a shit?") Soprano could grasp -- in his more lucid moments.


POSTSCRIPT: IN CASE YOU WERE THINKING THAT
THE NYS SENATE CAN'T GET ANYTHING DONE . . .

Our friend Phillip Anderson reports on The Albany Project that he's been "awfully busy lately with doctors and job interviews," but --

I am happy to say I am back. And just in time! The New York State Senate has FINALLY decided what our official state rock should be. WHEW!

NY State Senate passes bill naming Herkimer Diamond as official state mineral

The state Senate today passed a bill that would designate the Herkimer Diamond as the official state mineral.

Sponsored by Sen. James Seward, R-Milford, who represents Herkimer County, where the doubly-terminated quartz crystal is found, the legislation passed unanimously.

"The Empire State has a proud tradition of recognizing and trumpeting the features that make it unique. Certainly, the Herkimer Diamond is one of those rare treasures well deserving of 'official' statewide status," Seward said in a news release.

He noted that New York's Legislature has previously designated an official gemstone (garnet), fossil (sea scorpion), shell (bay scallop), bush (lilac), salt water fish (striped bass), and reptile (snapping turtle).

An identical version of the bill is pending in the Assembly.

So glad we FINALLY have a state rock! Awesome!

Marriage Equality, fracking, rent regulations...all that stuff...will just have to wait.

So you see? Our NYS Legislature at work.

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DWT pays a morning call on Bill O, and learns that the incarnation of evil looks pretty scary when he fetches his morning paper--oh, those red shorts!

Holy loofah, Batman, is this Bill O's suburban dreamhouse? Uh,
no, actually it's Tony Soprano's. (Kind of po-tay-to/po-tah-to?)

"If any woman ever breathed a word I'll make her pay so dearly that she'll wish she'd never been born. I'll rake her through the mud, bring up things in her life and make her so miserable that she'll be destroyed. And besides, she wouldn't be able to afford the lawyers I can or endure it financially as long as I can. And nobody would believe her, it'd be her word against mine and who are they going to believe? Me or some unstable woman making outrageous accusations. They'd see her as some psycho, someone unstable. Besides, I'd never make the mistake of picking unstable crazy girls like that."
--or words to this "effect," said to have been spoken by Bill O'Reilly, according to Andrea Mackris's 2004 court filing


No man is a hero to his valet, they say. They might add that no man is likely to look terribly heroic padding down his driveway in the morning to pick up his newspaper.

Naturally, you think of Tony Soprano. After all, this is one of the quintessential Tony moments. How many times did we see him, barely contained in his famous white bathrobe, barely awake, yet scanning the landscape for anything out of place as he shuffled down the driveway to pick up his newspaper.

It was hard for the New York contingent of DownWithTyranny not to think of Tony S while standing on the blacktop road outside Bill O'Reilly's suburban Long Island nest early one morning last week, when suddenly the great man emerged from his domicile to perform--as it turned out--the very same ritual, only to find himself face to face with progressive activist and blogger Mike Stark in his driveway.

Clearly Bill O could have used some of Tony S's deeply ingrained eyes-in-the-back-of-his-head vigilance. Even more, he could have used Tony's bathrobe. I'm fairly sure that the image of Bill O, resplendent in a New York Knicks T-shirt and a pair of red short shorts, has been burned permanently into my retinas. (I had a momentary impulse to poke my eyes out, just to make sure I would never see such a sight again.)

DWT was there in a support capacity for Mike, who explained why we schlepped out to Casa O'Reilly in a Daily Kos diary (several times updated, with pictures and everything--and now he's got video up!):

"After O'Reilly provided an 'accountability moment' to the JetBlue CEO at his home, I decided to provide O'Reilly with his own accountability moment at his home."

The "accountability moment" Bill O had forced on the hapless JetBlue CEO was a demand that he answer for the sin of his company's limited sponsorship of YearlyKos, the annual convention of the progressive netroots which took place this past weekend, a sponsorship that became ever more limited as Bill O and his frothing wingnut cohorts made it sound as if contributing a clutch of free plane tickets (about all the "sponsorship" seemed to consist of in the end) to YearlyKos was like promoting a Satanic cult.

Unlike most of us, Mike responded to O'Reilly's home-invasion stunt by thinking, "You know, I should go to his house!" (A surprising number of commenters on Mike's DailyKos diary didn't seem to grasp that he wasn't stalking the old geezer. He was just doing unto Bill O what he feels so free to do unto others.)

And what would he ask Bill O to "account" for?

Well, there's no shortage of material, and if you're in need of a current fix on the O'Reilly depradations, Media Matters keeps a watchful webpage trained on him. Of late, for example, poor old Bill seems obsessed with YearlyKos and DailyKos--two entities that have hardly anything to do with each other, but that perhaps understandably give him the billies, each in its own way.

Tonight on his show it appears that he will be featuring a sad, deluded young man who, in military uniform, interrupted a YearlyKos panel on Iraq demanding to know why no recognition was being given to the great triumphs of the Bush Surge. (Apparently the poor fellow is known in military circles for this behavior, and actually is in the military, or perhaps the reserve, in some maintenance capacity in Ohio, never having been to Iraq, unlike the active-duty member of the panel, who of course was not in uniform, which is forbidden for such events.)

From what I gather, the poor fellow was treated as respectfully as possible, considering that the nonsense he was spewing is just the thoroughly discredited propaganda being pushed currently by the die-hard Bush-policy loyalists. However, where serious military people seem mostly offended by the unpardonable breech of conduct of wearing his uniform to a political event, Bill O no doubt means to present him as proof of the perfidy of YearlyKos: a crusading soldier (whose crusade just seems not to have happened to have taken him to Iraq) who was shamefully rebuffed by those Dirty Fucking Hippies in his heroic effort to introduce a note of patriotism and enlightment to this coven of unmitigated America-haters.

Even if Bill O is confused about DailyKos and YearlyKos being one and the same thing, he's probably right--from his far, far right perspective, to be alarmed by both. DailyKos, after all, is the granddaddy of progressive blogs. It paved the way in showing how this new medium could be used as a national gathering place for people who are mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.

In fact, one of the members of our little Bill O Accountability Project, Phillip Anderson (who didn't actually make it to out to the house, as I'll explain in a moment, but was with us in spirit), has a lovely mission statement on his fine website, The Albany Project (thealbanyproject.com), which I think we could borrow after the fact for DailyKos.

The Albany Project, you probably won't be surprised to learn, chronicles the daily doings of New York State politics. If you think it's depressing keeping up with what goes on inside the Beltway, or in your state capital, you've clearly never gotten a whiff of politics Albany-style, which traditionally features a legislature that we Empire Staters take pride in believing is the most dysfunctional in the country, with the real work being done by our famous "three men in a back room"--the State Senate majority leader (in modern times always a Republican), the Assembly speaker (in modern times always a Democrat), and of course the governor, who often has nearly as much difficulty dealing with the legislative leader of his own party as with the predictably troublesome leader of the opposite party.

Phillip's mission statement is:

"The Albany Project seeks to return New York State Government to its rightful owners--the people."

In much the same way, DailyKos--by giving voice to so many people who never had a way of being heard, wanting to take back their government.

I suppose this is why DailyKos rattles Bill O so badly. It represents a new era of progressive pushback against the vicious propaganda, the lies built on hate and fear, with which he and the other right-wing noise machinists have so long had an unopposed run at imbecilicizing a gullible American public.

To prove that DailyKos is a hotbed of America-hating radicals, the lying hate-monger, in a seizure of unmitigated preposterousness, actually went mining amongst the zillions of unmoderated comments on DailyKos and, sure enough, came up with a few incendiary ones, which with his customary total dishonesty he has been representing as the basic content of the site, utterly ignoring the fact that even these comments are as nothing, in both quality and especially quantity, compared with what floods the right-wing blogosphere, including Bill O's very own blog (where you have to pay to play, I gather).

Bill O's customary intellectual honesty comes into play when he's challenged about those hate- and violence-mongering comments on his own site, when he could no longer deny them, as against the nuggets he managed to find on DailyKos. It appeas that when it comes to his own site, it's obviously impossible to monitor reader-added content. However, when it comes to DailyKos, it's equally obvious that of course the site bears full responsibility for every word it contains.

Life is so much easier when your decrepit carcass doesn't contain as much as a single cell of honesty or decency.

Okay, the question we were asking was: What was Mike trying to hold Bill O accountable for? He thought of the 2004 lawsuit for sexual harassment filed against him by former O'Reilly Factor associate producer Andrea Mackris. It caused a brief sensation, with our Bill claiming indignantly that it was all a setup, that the woman was a gold digger who had been infatuated with him and was presumably trying to punish him for spurning her advances.

Suddenly the lawsuit vanished, with Ms. Mackris presumably being generously paid (perhaps in the neighborhood of $2 million [for more on the dollar figure, see the UPDATE below]) to shut the fuck up. No doubt everyone took a vow of silence, except for a carefully worded O'Reilly statement that refers to no wrongdoing have been committed by any of the parties. (This of course covers not just Bill O, but Ms. Mackris, whom he had threatened with all manner of countersuits for her wicked lies about him.)

It was noted at the time that the original Mackris court filing, which runs to more than 20 pages, contains long chunks of apparent direct quotations from the frothings and ravings of Bill O. Even though some were labeled "words to the effect," this suggested to observers that O'Reilly's people had freaked at the indication that there were tapes, meaning that this wasn't going to be just "he said-she said."

That filing remains a matter of public record, even if the contents were never litigated. Of course we can't assume that everything there is true. On the other hand, there's no reason at all to suppose that any of it is untrue, and if you read those papers applying simple common sense, the kindest conclusion you can draw is that they're simply devastating to Bill O. Quite a lot to account for, in fact.

Not many people have read those papers, and Mike thought it would be a good idea if more people did. As a start, he printed out 20 complete sets, which he delivered to all of Bill O's neighbors the morning of our visit. Even now, I wonder whether any of them read those papers, and how they reacted.

What's the big deal about those papers? you say. To begin with, they paint a quite disgusting portrait--for the high-minded moralist of The O'Reilly Factor--of not just an old lech, but a serial old lech, who routinely subjected female employees to sexually explicit diatribes and tried to induce them to allow him to engage in phone sex with them. And yes, we're talking about phone sex, not chitchat. According to the papers, while he was on the phone with these women, often watching porn, he was whacking Little Bill (if you get my meaning; DWT is a family-friendly blog), and took pains to make clear when the little fella, er, went happy.

76. At approximately 11:06 p.m. on or about September 1, 2004, during the Republican National Convention, Defendant BILL O'REILLY telephoned Plaintiff ANDREA MACKRIS on her cell phone and asked that she call. Plaintiff believed that the call would be work-related, and returned the call. Instead, Defendant BILL O'REILLY once again launched into a lewd and lascivious, unsolicited and disturbing sexually-graphic talk.

A portion of this "sexually-graphic talk," referred to elsewhere in the papers as "this monologue," "his perverted ravings," and "defendant BILL O'REILLY's sexual rant," is quoted at length at no. 78 in the filing. This is Bill O's famous fantasy of taking Ms. Mackris on a Caribbean vacation and joining her in the shower, equipped with "that loofa thing"--later referred to as "one of those mitts, those loofa mitts you know," and still later, most mysteriously, as "the falafel (sic) thing." (Presumably the agitated state of Little Bill had something to do with the confusion of loofahs with falafel. I say loofah, you say falafel.)

This has to make anyone gag, but it's not the worst of what one finds in the filing.

There was a period when, according to the papers, in large part because of Bill O's unstoppable come-ons, Ms. Mackris left Fox for CNN. She wasn't happy there, and allowed herself to be talked into returning, but with conditions, according to the papers:

54. On or about April 13, 2004, during dinner at Milos, Plaintiff ANDREA MACKRIS again told Defendant BILL O'REILLY that she would return to work on "The O'Reilly Factor" only if he no longer engaged in inappropriate conduct. Defendant agreed: "Of course, because then you'd be working for me and I'd have power over you, so that couldn't happen, that wouldn't be fair." When Plaintiff reminded Defendant that he had done the same thing to other women who worked on "The O'Reilly Factor," and that he should be careful or they might tell someone, O'REILLY vehemently threatened with words to the effect:

If any woman ever breathed a word I'll make her pay so dearly that she'll wish she'd never been born. I'll rake her through the mud, bring up things in her life and make her so miserable that she'll be destroyed. And besides, she wouldn't be able to afford the lawyers I can or endure it financially as long as I can. And nobody would believe her, it'd be her word against mine and who are they going to believe? Me or some unstable woman making outrageous accusations. They'd see her as some psycho, someone unstable. Besides, I'd never make the mistake of picking unstable crazy girls like that. [Emphasis added.]

55. During the course of this conversation, Defendant BILL O'REILLY further sternly warned, to the effect:

If you cross FOX NEWS CHANNEL, it's not just me, it's [FOX President] Roger Ailes who will go after you. I'm the street guy out front making loud noises about the issues, but Ailes operates behind the scenes, strategizes and makes things happen so that one day BAM! The person gets what's coming to them but never sees it coming. Look at Al Franken. one day he's going to get a knock on his door and life as he's known it will change forever. That day will happen, trust me.

If we assume that Bill O once said these exact words, or even words to this effect (as could once, presumably, have been verified with reference to tapes, which have presumably long since been destroyed), it's important to note that he isn't denying any of his repellent behavior. He seems quite proud of it, in fact. What he's saying is, I'm rich, I'm white, I'm right-wing, I'm so powerful that I can get away with anything.

And besides, he can always count "fair and balanced" Roger Ailes to kick the stuffing out of people who try to hurt him.

As a matter of fact, in reality, you realize that in the end, Bill O didn't even follow through on his dramatic threat to Andrea Mackris. He didn't "destroy" her, or even sic the dreaded Roger Ailes on her. He just paid her off. You almost feel sorry for the sad old windbag, just as I sort of did that day as I watched him fetching his paper.

Then you remember that, while he may be just an old windbag, he's a determined and insatiable one, committed to his ideology of bigotry and hate, and that ill wind he unlooses on the land continues to pollute.

So I'm not sorry I went, even if it meant getting up at 4am, then dawdling so I left 10 minutes later than I should have and had to count off my 18 subway stops frantically guessing whether I would make the 5:29 train out of Penn Station, the one we had agreed the day before best suited our timetable. I made it, with minutes to spare.

Phillip, alas, just missed the 5:29, meaning he had to wait an hour for the next train, as I found out when Mike and his journalist friend Alan Zimmerman, who took the expedition photos I've reproduced here, arrived to pick me up. Unfortunately, the later train never made it past its first stop, Woodside, barely into Queens. This led to much cell-phone traffic between Mike and Phillip--could he perhaps share a cab with someone from the train who needed to get out there? Not without cabs to share, he couldn't.

In the end, we had to proceed with the mission without Phillip. This in turn led to one of the worst expeditionary developments since that unfortunate business with the Donner Party. Phillip, who has genuine competence in video matters, would have been the designated videographer. Against all advice, the camera was put in my hands--except, I should note, for the actual sequence when Bill O made his appearance. As it happened, Mike had the camera in hand then, so he became his own cameraman.

At this point we have to pause for a brief sidebar:

ANYONE WHO PUTS A CAMERA IN MY HANDS DESERVES
WHAT HE GETS--JUST ASK MY (EX-) FRIEND BOB

We all have our strengths and, er, not-such-strengths. For example, I can program my DVR box like . . . well, let's just say I can program it. On the other hand, when it comes to taking pictures, well, let's just say I can't. I wish I had a dollar for every time unsuspecting souls have handed me cameras and asked me to take a picture of them.

"Just press the button," they always say. But it never works. Never.

What they forget, first, is that you have to do something before you even try to press the button. Like find the viewfinder and figure out how it works, all the while not touching anything that would . . . oops, what the heck was that? And sometimes they forget to tell you that before you "just press the button" you've got to advance this or twist that, and then there's the flash, and . . . and . . . sorry, I need to take a moment to calm down here.

Anyway, my (ex-) friend Bob was a rabid New York Yankees fan. And one year, many years ago, finding himself with an extra ticket for the team's annual Fan Fest, he invited me to come along. I had never been to such a thing and had no idea what it was, and after finding out what it is, I can't imagine ever going to another one.

What it is, is: You pay a whole lot of money just to get inside a convention location where a large number of spaces are cordoned off to accommodate lines, enormous lines, where fans wait to get an autograph from whichever Yankee or ex-Yankee is at the head of that line. Naturally the line-heads are padded out with a bunch of stiffs nobody gives a damn about; you could get their autographs as quickly--and as often--as you like. And then there are the monsters, the guys whose autograph everyone wants.

Now, my (ex-) friend Bob's hero--no, his idol--from the Yankees' lean years of the '80s was Donnie Baseball, aka Don Mattingly (pictured above). Nowadays, since Donnie's return to the team as hitting coach, we see him all the time. But back then, in the early years of his retirement, he mostly stayed home with his family in Indiana. He was going to be at Fan Fest, though, and Bob was not only going to get his autograph but have his picture taken with him. He had brought along a little camera just for that purpose.

So we waited in the Mattingly line, which of course was enormous. Slowly, oh so slowly, we made our way to the front of the line. And just as we were about to meet the great man himself, I suddenly discovered that I was the designated photographer. Bob stuck the camera in my hand, uttering those fateful words, "Just press the button."

Donnie Baseball, the sweetest and most unassuming of superstars, was perfectly happy to pose with Bob, but the rest is a blur of panic and humiliation. I figured that before I pressed the button I should have reason to think that the camera was in some fashion aimed at Donnie and Bob, and then somewhere in there came button-pressing time, only--as God is my witness--the goddamned button wouldn't press!

From there my memories are cloudy until we were actually outside the convention center. I appreciated Bob's manful efforts not to taunt, whine, or otherwise recriminate. That must have been hard for him. I think possibly he had rejiggered the camera so the button was ready to press again, and then handed it to a total stranger who was up to the task.

It was sometime after that that Bob and I somehow lost touch. I don't state this as cause-and-effect. I merely note that anytime I see anyone start to nudge a camera in my direction, I just say no. To people who won't take no for an answer, I retell the legend of my day at Yankees' Fan Fest with my (ex-) friend Bob. If they persist, insisting, "No, no, it's simple--a chimp could do it," I suggest they find themselves a chimp.

Anyone who simply refuses to be deterred, in my view, deserves what they get.

Is it nice, finally, to disturb an old guy just fetching in his morning paper? Well, is it nice to make a living lying, defaming, and sowing hatred?

Eh, Bill O?

Envoi: Mike (right) and I wave to Bill O's neighbors with (yes!) loofahs.

UPDATE: HOW MUCH MOOLAH DID IT TAKE TO MAKE
MS. MACKRIS GO AWAY?

I found the $2 million figure in what seemed a credible source, but the point is that by the nature of the payoff, we don't find out how much Bill O's indiscretions cost him--and his employers. Now I'm that it's more like $6.5 million--3.5 mil from our Bill and 3 mil from Mr. Murdoch's coffers. I like it! I say, since the principals don't want to tell us, we make up our own numbers. Do I hear $75 mil?


2ND UPDATE: TURNS OUT BILL O CALLED THE COPS ON US!

My man Mike has stopped by and left a comment, in which he adds the news that he has confirmed from the Manhasset police that our Bill indeed summoned them, and they determined that no laws had been broken.

I hope I'm not responsible for blowing Mike's cover, and subjecting him to the eternal vengeance of Bill O, not to mention the evil genius Roger Ailes. The thing is, taking nothing away from how poisonous our Bill's mouth is, I'm thinking more and more that he's all talk. Besides, doesn't he still have to take care of Al Franken first? (Just as a precaution, though, I would suggest that Mike and Al keep a safe distance from one another, so as not to offer our Bill a two-for-one shot.)

I might worry more about Roger Ailes, except that I got the impression from my quick refresher on the Andrea Mackris matter that Fox wasn't any too solidly behind their Bill and kind of left him hanging on his sexual-harassment rope. There really is such a thing as bad publicity, and I hear that Fox takes its anti-sexual-harassment policy seriously. If Fox actually contributed to the settlement money that made the Mackris complaint go bye-bye, I'm guessing it's because old Roger reckoned that (especially if the b---h had tapes!) this was one battle they didn't dare allow to be fought publicly.

Probably Roger also knows that if Bill O tries anything with us, it becomes a story for Keith Olbermann.