Winter is Coming

By

Richard J. Garfunkel

Fall 2003

It’s a cold morning up here in Mount Watch Hill. The heat has been on, the water has been shut off to the hoses and the frost is on the pumpkins. All the neighboring houses have been festooned with the medieval incarnations of the spirits. Of course living in Tarrytown and nearby Sleep Hollow immerses us into the lore of the Headless Horseman, and all the fol-do-ral of the Hollywood version of All Saints Day.

Oh! How we as kids cringed at Bela Lugosi, with his eastern European smarmy charm and his deep-set icy eyes staring into the innocent pale blue orbs of some English damsel. We watched in rapt fascination as he leaned over her pale virginal neck and caressed it with his razor sharp bicuspids. It was what we didn't see that we imagined, and that imagination stirred our sense of lust and craven desire. It was a combination of controlled manageable horror on one hand, and sexual ardor on the other. The protagonist was an innocent girl, always blond, thin with pale skin, and from an impeccable background. She is vulnerable to the dark side of life, that nether world of shadows and violence, where death lurks nearby. The antagonist; the monster, a cold bloodless creature, who travels variously through the night as a bat or wolf, now poses as the suave sophisticated foreigner, dressed impeccably in the formal uniform of the cocktail hour. He engenders the ultimate struggle between the forces of good and wholesomeness and the banality of evil. Her true and virtuous patient lover will sacrifice himself to protect her virtue from the alien lure and onslaught of the living death representing society. This living death is symbolized by her loss of virtue. The living death of the “scarlet letter.” It is not death itself, but “living death” that is worse, much worse.

Of course now the lines are not drawn as clearly. The victim is more willing, not as innocent, more exposed. She is a temptress of sorts. She has tasted the forbidden fruit more than once, and is willing to venture over to the dark side, the forbidden zone now and again. Her passions have been stirred, and she feels that she can handle the challenge of the fates. Her, now and again, lover cannot satisfy her newly exposed desires enough. She is bolder, more exposed, less covered, and open. Maybe he is not willing to be as adventurous, maybe he is the cautious, and a more fearful emasculated type. She has the testosterone, while he is more androgynous type with his feminine and sensitive inner self-showing more and more often. Now the blurred differences between good and evil are more difficult to discern. When this new antagonist wanders into the scene and ingratiates himself with our potential victim, we see not the clear warning signs. He is like us, he is everyman. He is life itself, fraught with the ambiguous characteristics of compromise and acceptance. We accept everything today.. Nothing is wrong, there are no universal truths. There is no clear-cut answers, only hazy non-articulated rationalizations.

>

>Maybe this creature is a priest, maybe a doctor, maybe a counselor, maybe some mental patient who didn't take his daily suppressant. Society has justified his existence, tolerated his foibles, and rationalized his aberrant and flawed behavior. Society has allowed this creature of the dark side free reign to harvest his victims at will.

>

>Wow! How times have changed!  rjg  

Politics, Talking-Heads and the Media

By

Richard J. Garfunkel

Fall 2003

Former Democrats like Tim Russert, Chris Mathews, and George Stepanopolis, to cite a few of the network types, bend over backwards to act tough on the Democrats to show that they are now journalists. The vast majority of news people are smug, over-paid and have become virtual corporate flacks. Most reporters are not liberal, but have a bias towards the left because they themselves are more libertine and take the power and prestige of being part of the fourth estate as a right and a badge of honor and superiority. These posturing neo-libertarians have a primitive view of fairness and morality. They personally have few rules and therefore have a tendency to be thought of, or characterized, as liberals. They are basically agents of the politically correct police that corporate America, which controls the media have appointed. They are terribly frightened by secondary boycotts, so they treat gays, Hollywood, black radicals and religious institutions with “kid gloves”. Just look at the limpid coverage of the sex-abuse scandal of the Catholic Church and its obvious cover-up. These are heavy crimes! If any one outside of the Church had committed these types of abuses they would have been thrown in jail and locked up forever. But hundreds and thousands of cases have been ignored and their resolution has been left to the civil courts where the Church has been excoriated. Look at the billions in settlements, wow! But has the media called on the carpet the Church's institutional hypocrisy or paradoxically moralizing, no!

What do we expect in America, when, on one hand, the Church, the NY Stock Exchange, the plagiarizers in the press, the Enrons and World Coms and other institutions are only gently spanked until the stench becomes overwhelming. What about Mike Barnacle, that hypocritical thug, and why is he back working on TV? What about the late Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin and their questionable research? But, they have made millions and what more is proof of success in America! The average student would be tossed out on his/her ear for such indiscretions. How about Michael Beshloss inaccurate book the “Conquerors” and his half-truths? What about Pat Buchanan and his right-wing nativist rantings? What brought him back on the media? Television and the media is entertainment and the news coverage is not immune from that definition. So what are we to deal with? Bill Clinton, who much of the right hates, engineered for many, a very successful stewarding of the ship of state in spite of his personal shortcomings, and against great opposition and hatred of the GOP controlled Congress. But for better or worse, his personal scandals were wrong, but they should have been kept out of the national microscope for the country's sake.

Please note Newt Gingrich's personal life was a real big-time disgrace, regarding his philandering and his divorce of his dying wife, but he is still pontificating, and what about our hero Mayor Rudy who was sleeping and cavorting with his girlfriend publicly, while his wife was holding on to Gracie Mansion like it was her personal castle. Since Bloomberg never moved in, did she really move out? So, Big Bill didn't steal millions, and his executive branch abuses were nowhere near Nixon's or Reagan's. Just judge who went to jail and who became rich. Please note; VP Dick Cheney and his billion-dollar connection with Halliburton. Unfortunately we are now saddled with some “real” problems, not Judge Starr's investigation of Whitewater; but a climbing national debt of $500 billion, the loss of millions of jobs, the disappearance of our manufacturing sector, a trade and currency crisis with China, nukes aimed at us from N. Korea, a divided Europe that hates us, a quagmire in Iraq and Afghanistan, shrinking oil reserves and greater foreign dependency regarding energy, porous borders, John Ashcroft, vulnerability to terror, a health coverage crisis, and more to come. It wouldn't be so bad, if our leader had a brain. But there is no “Wizard of Oz” around to help this moron. How ironic that Bill Clinton gets impeached over lying about sex, but “W” gets high marks from many for lying about almost everything else. His promises over education, health care, the environment, and his claims about unconventional weaponry, the connection between Al Quiada and Iraq, and Iraq's threat to us, have all been empty. Eventually as President Lincoln said “… you can't fool all of the people, all of the time!”