What's in a name?

Republicans delight in name calling. When members of their own party don’t pass a hard right purity test, they call them RINOs, Republicans In Name Only. Mysteriously, there are leading Democrats, most notably Bernie Sanders, who seem to delight in being SINOs, Socialists In Name Only. It’s mysterious, because one thing is perfectly clear: Bernie Sanders is not a socialist. I learned about socialism in the fifth grade, at P.S. 8 in the Bronx. (Yeah, we actually learned this stuff back then.) It’s a system in which the means of production is owned by the state. Has anyone ever heard Bernie advocate for nationalizing U.S. Steel, or Procter & Gamble, or Victoria’s Secret? Bernie is a capitalist who believes in a robust social safety net and government guardrails to prevent abuses by big business. So why does he insist on calling himself a socialist, when he knows that socialists are about as popular in this country as child molesters? (In fact, in 2017 in Alabama, an actual child molester ran for the Senate against a Democrat he’d labeled a socialist and came within a hair’s breadth of winning!) 

Which brings us to “Defund the Police.” All Democrats and most Americans want to reform the police. We’re almost all in favor of revamping the training cops receive and establishing national standards. We want to innovate new technologies to help cops subdue violent people without using lethal force or endangering their own lives. We’d like to see a large number of social workers and psychologists trained to accompany cops on domestic disturbance calls, to help peacefully defuse those conflicts. Clearly, that stuff is going to take more money not less. “Defund the Police” isn’t what progressives mean or want. Yet, they’ve hung the phrase around their own necks like an anchor. Why not call the program “Community Cops,” or “21st Century Policing,” or any of the countless inoffensive names that any half-assed copywriter could come up with between episodes of Schitt’s Creek?

The crux of this discussion hit the fan last week in a leaked conference call among congressional Democrats, in which Abigail Spanberger of Virginia took her fellow caucus members to task for using some of this language to wrest defeat from the jaws of victory. Progressives struck back furiously, claiming that they were the reason Biden won, not the reason their House and Senate candidates lost. Their chief spokesperson, unsurprisingly, was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is, undoubtedly, the most gifted retail politician of her generation. And her personal charisma is such that the details of what she says and does have hardly mattered to voters in her district. But other Democrats who follow her down the “Defund the Police” rabbit hole without actually being her have already begun winding up as losers, which is exactly what Representative Spangenberger was exorcised about. In the recent election, those losers either made a doomed but noble stand for truth, justice, and the American Way; or, they fucked any chance we had at making some progress towards economic, social, and political equality in this country. 

Call it whatever you like. 

Sanders can't win. Do the arithmetic.

I believe that Sanders cannot win for three reasons:

1. Wisconsin is now in the act of complying with a court order to purge 200,000 (Democratic) voters from its rolls. As a result, no Democratic can win there—the fix is already in.

2. Sanders is in favor of an immediate, 100% ban on all fracking. No one can hold that position and win Pennsylvania. Not possible.

3. Sanders has said nice things about Fidel Castro. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/24/us/bernie-sanders-fidel-castro-florida.html?referringSource=articleShare

As a result, he loses Florida. Inarguably.

Can anyone win the presidency while losing Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Florida?

Of course, the only solution is for Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Steyer, and Bloomberg to be patriots and consolidate their support behind whichever of them is in the lead after South Carolina. Obviously, I will be for whomever the Democrats nominate, but I hope for Buttigieg. Biden is an unknown quantity every time he opens his mouth. In the last debate, he said that Bloomberg had been responsible for "throwing nearly 5 million young, African-American men up against the wall." This seemed wacky to me, since there are only 8 million people total in the city. Turns out there are about 160,000 young African-American men in New York. Evidently Joe doesn't know about google.

Bloomberg is not viable, because, well, did you see the debate last week? He has always been a terrible retail politician. But remember, he has pledged to use his fortune to support the Democratic candidate, no matter who it is. Sadly, if it's Bernie, Mike will be wasting his money.

ANONYMOUS shouldn't be.

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COURAGE

Courage. The pundits all agree, that’s what’s lacking in our politicians. If only they had the courage to stand up to the bottle blonde. To the NRA. To climate deniers. The list goes on and on. But truth be told, courage doesn’t have a damn thing to do with it. Courage is the ability to face danger or pain or, at least, extreme difficulty without fear. But what danger do politicians face? What is the worst thing that could happen to Susan Collins or Ted Cruz? They could lose their next elections. But that begs a further question: So what? What is it about their jobs that makes them willing to sell their souls in order to keep them. (Okay, maybe Ted Cruz is a bad example for the soul metaphor, but you get my point.)

It can’t be the salary, because many senators and members of the House are loaded anyway, and those who aren’t have the immediate prospect of making a ton of money selling their influence on K Street. It can’t be the pension, because that’s fully vested after just five years, when they “retire” at 80% salary for life. So why would Ted Cruz watch the bottle blonde accuse his father of helping assassinate JFK, publicly call his wife ugly, nickname him “Lyin’ Ted”—yeah, all that actually happened—and still grovel for his support? What could possibly make his job that attractive?

Take a close look at how we treat members of congress, keeping in mind, they’re pretty much in charge of the way they treat themselves. As an example, they built themselves a subway so they could travel to adjacent buildings more easily. Let me repeat that. They built themselves a subway. Each Senator has a magnificent, early American office, plus a somewhat more modest “hideaway” office, where he or she can hide away from parents of children killed by automatic weapons, constituents without money, the fake press, and other unpleasantness. When they go out to dinner in Washington, these people who couldn’t jump the line at the Olive Garden in Times Square are immediately ushered to the best tables at the most exclusive restaurants, where lobbyists pick up the tabs. With their private gyms, basketball courts, pool, sauna, and steam rooms, our Senators and Congresspeople are, essentially, treated like royalty. This is Louie Gohmert we’re talking about here.

The corollary to the “they need more courage” meme is just as hollow. Members of Congress who are often lauded for their courage turn out not to have any. Ted Kennedy was eulogized as the “Lion of the Senate.” (The lion actually embodies courage. Remember the Wizard of Oz?) But Kennedy lacked the courage to pull Mary Jo Kopechne out of his car when he drove it into a lake, in 1969. Twenty-two years later, he failed to say a single word in support of Anita Hill when she was being raped in front of the Senate Judiciary committee, because he was so afraid that someone might bring up his treatment of Ms. Kopechne. I got a close look at Senator Kennedy, when I ran into him at a small airport around 1990. He didn’t look like a lion; he looked like a drunk. His head was the size of a basketball packed in an Amazon carton.

My conclusion is that neither courage nor the lack of it has much to do with making Washington revolve on its axis. Self-interest, narcissism, immorality, yes. Courage, not so much. So let’s stop talking about it incessantly. The word is getting a bad name. And God knows, we’re going to need it.

LASH for Cash

Deadlines for mandatory, sexual harassment prevention training are fast approaching in New York and California. I know this, because I received a mistargeted eblast from my lawyer’s firm, addressed to its corporate clients. The firm wanted to remind them that it has the expertise to turn Harvey Weinstein into Sir Walter Raleigh, for an appropriate fee. Okay, I’m paraphrasing, but there seems to be big money to be made here. That’s why, today, I’m proud to announce the introduction of LASH, Lemkowitz Anti-Sexual Harassment training.

To dramatize why LASH is such a standout product, let’s take a quick look at the history of sexual harassment in the workplace. Remember the Seinfeld episode in which George gets fired for having sex on his desk with the office cleaning lady? When confronted by the boss, George gives him a look of wide-eyed innocence and says, “Oh, is that against company rules? Nobody mentioned that at the orientation.” He hadn’t been properly trained! Similarly, how are construction workers supposed to know it’s wrong to make vulgar noises when women walk by? How are Fortune 500 executives supposed to know it’s unacceptable to barter blow jobs for sales jobs? These poor guys just haven’t been trained! That’s where LASH comes in.

LASH training will save your company both money and time by training all your male employees in a single, 90-second session. That’s right, friends, 90 seconds! With all your male employees gathered in the audience, our certified LASH trainer begins by asking them a number of simple questions.

“How many of you have wives? Anyone who has a wife, please stand. How many of you have girlfriends? Anyone who has a girlfriend, please stand. In fact, if you have a sister or a daughter, please stand as well.” By this time, chances are that everyone in the room will be on his feet. But in case there are any stragglers still in their chairs, the trainer will add, “How many of you have a mother? Anyone who has a mother, please stand.

“Now, gentlemen,” the trainer continues, “this is the part where you really have to pay attention. Any time you’re about to interact with a woman—here in the office, out on the street, or wherever—just ask yourself if what you are about to say or do is something you’d want some other guy to say or do to your wife, girlfriend, sister, daughter, or mother. If the answer is ‘no,’ don’t say or do it. If the answer is, ‘Sure, that’s fine,’ then you’re on solid ground. Easy peasy lemon squeezy, right? Excellent. Training over. Everyone back to work.”

That’s Phase I of our program, and you may be wondering if it does an ounce of good. Our anecdotal data so far suggests that it has exactly the same effect on male employees as programs lasting a year and costing hundreds of thousands of dollars more. In other words, none whatsoever. Because sexual harassment training is just a revenue generator for the cottage industry that’s grown up around it. The real way to stop sexual harassment is with strictly enforced penalties. Penalties so serious that they act as deterrence—loss of pay, loss of vacation time, loss of seniority, loss of job, and referral to the cops whenever a law has been broken. Fortunately, our company is able to assist you in that part of the process as well, with our unique Phase II program. In Phase II, we handle your most incorrigible transgressors through our wholly owned Penalty and Deterrence division, located in Singapore. There, LASH takes on a whole other meaning. Satisfaction guaranteed.