A Family Saga

I'm reminded again today of an incident that happened 13 years ago at my mother's funeral.

First, Newt Gingrich, in his repetitively vulgar lust for power once again verified that he is an historian with the flimsiest of credentials and a weak sense of, well, history. He spewed out this crock just yesterday.

My brother Dan walked up to me at the family celebration of our mother's life back in 1998 and thrust a book against my chest. "Look at this," he said joyfully.

The book was an autographed copy of Newt's latest, published that year--the title of which I'm not unhappy to report I don't remember.

I cringed.

The autograph was procured for my brother by his son-in-law, the subject of this lame puff piece published in the Oregonian today.

I remember thinking at the time my brother approached me--Mom would be pissed. She hated the Republican agenda with a passion that only an old-fashioned and true FDR Demo could muster, especially one who headed up a large family in the throes of the Depression and witnessed first-hand the relief of the New Deal.

Which likely saved my older brother's bacon.

Of Nixon my mother used to say--"I can't stand that man." And one of the few times I ever saw her cry was during John Kennedy's televised funeral procession down Pennsylvania Avenue.

She was a tough, sweet cookie.

I always wondered how my brother, whom I guess made a good living in the wood products industry for many years, could have justified his bullshit.

But I recall; he never did much for the old lady in her later years anyway, despite having the means.

The politician in question here inherited his wealth and has spent his entire adult life sucking the public teat.

I could never understand why a poor kid from the Oregon backwoods admired that fact so much. He certainly didn't admire the trait among the lower classes who live on food stamps and unemployment benefits and will never have the opportunities he had under the largess of the New Deal.

The public teat is after all first and foremost a teat for politicians to squander the nation's wealth while enriching themselves and their friends and telling everybody else to jump off a cliff.


TS