Super-delegates

The recent hue and cry by some political neophytes regarding the function of so-called “Super-delegates” for the Democratic Party’s convention requires addressing. It seems that both Non-Democrats and some supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders are complaining that the allocation of an amount of convention seats to those not elected for them as part of the primary process is somehow a subversion of “the people’s will” or some sort of mechanism to exert “establishment control” of the convention’s outcome. Neither assertion could possibly be less accurate.

Following the disastrous 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, the party restructured the way delegates were chosen, using recommendations developed by the McGovern–Fraser Commission. In 1982 it was recognized that duly elected officials were not afforded proper representation at the convention, and a committee headed by former North Carolina governor Jim Hunt offered modifications which ultimately gave all federal elected officeholders, state governors, mayors of large cities, former presidents and state party officials representation at the convention.

It is important to remember that the National Convention does not exist merely as a mechanism to affirm the nomination of a presidential candidate; party officials are also elected, and the party platform is discussed and approved. By having both publicly-elected and in-party-elected officials qualify for delegate seats for the convention, the party is spared an uncomfortable situation in which senior party officeholders have to compete against grassroots activists for convention seats. As part of the delegation selection reforms, in contrast to the Republican party, candidates enjoy proportional delegate allocation (i.e. no “winner takes all”), and the allocation rules apply nationally, only taking into consideration the number of Federal electors and the previous general Presidential election results. The Republicans have far more arcane rules which also consider results of other elections.

It is entirely appropriate for either party to create rules by which their National Convention would enjoy the best possible representation of the party. I fear that Sen. Sanders supporters’ criticism of this well-crafted model is mostly due to the fact that the vast majority of Super-delegates have pledged their support to Hillary Clinton, a logical outcome, as Sanders had only joined the Democratic party last year, in order to run for office, prior to which he was self-styled an an “independent”, even running at times against Democratic candidates. Naturally, party functionaries should not be expected to flock to a party outsider… Interestingly enough, celebrity-statistician Nate Silver has recently greatly discounted the weight of Super-delegates in determining the party nominee, evidencing that it only brings value to a very narrow range of election results, with Super-delegates historically following the votes of the prevailing majority. If all this is making your head spin, you can always fall back on that wonderful chestnut from Will Rogers: “I do not belong to any organized political party; I am a Democrat.”

Addio, Professore

Harry Golden, patron saint of the Carolina Israelite, famously kept an empty pickle barrel behind his desk, into which he would throw notes, story ideas, quotes and such. Once a month (or so) he would dip into it and pull out material for the upcoming issue of his “The Carolina Israelite” newsletter. Not too bad of a system, all-in-all. Existing in the 21st century, I maintained from Day One a document on which I sporadically enter notes and topics for future issues of “my” Israelite, which then I refer to when determining what makes the cut for the next issue.

From the very first day of creating this running list, the name “Umberto Eco” was very high on it. As one of my all-time favorite authors, I knew I wanted to write about him and his writings, but was never quite sure how to craft such a piece. When the news came over last month that he had passed away, I realized that it was finally time for me to write it.

I first encountered Eco’s work thirty-five years ago when a dear friend bought me a copy of his novel “The Name of the Rose”. Ostensibly a murder mystery occurring in a Medieval monastery, it’s actually a wonderful paean to book-lovers everywhere. The crime investigation, led by an enlightened English monk, Brother William of Baskerville, mostly takes place in the monastery’s famous library, and pays homage to both Arthur Conan Doyle (author of the Sherlock Holmes stories) and Roger Bacon, one of the first proponents of scientific methods in observing nature. I read this astonishing novel, and developed an immediate thirst for all his writings. Unfortunately, Umberto Eco was a professor of semiotics at the University of Bologna, and it had taken him twenty years to complete his first (and probably most famous) novel. Prior to that he had published all sorts of essays, on any conceivable literary or pop-culture under the sun: Mickey Mouse, Film Noir, or the tech culture (one of my favorites is an essay in which he explains why the Macintosh computer was for Catholics, and DOS was for Protestants…) so I ended-up much like Queen Victoria, who after reading Lewis Carrol’s “Alice in Wonderland” demanded all of his other books, only to end-up with a stack of math tomes written by one Charles Dodgson, with a pile of books on semiotics and literary analysis, most of which were way above my intellectual pay grade…

Luckily for us bookworms, Professor Eco obliged and every few years a new novel showed up: A man stranded on a boat right before the International Date Line (“The Island of the Day Before”) , a protege of Barbarossa (Emperor Fredrick I) and his escapades in a Marco Polo-esque trek to the Far East (“Baudolino”), a parade of the various forces that led to the creation of the most infamous Antisemitic tract “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and various political events in 19th-century Europe (“The Prague Cemetery”) and, my absolute favorite, “Foucault’s Pendulum”, in which three bored academics who work in a publishing company make a game out of collecting information about a myriad of post-Templar European secret societies, then, just for fun, create a new conspiracy intended to explain and make sense of all previous conspiracy theories. Little do they know that the diabolical plan they’ve invented, as a lark, is actually accepted as real by others… Quite the hefty tome, it encompasses one-hundred and twenty chapters of phenomenal character development and exquisite satire of all those bizarre “secret societies” and rituals. At the heart of the story is one of the great personages of modern literature, Jacopo Belbo. Growing up in Eco’s own native Piedmont (not ours; the one in Northern Italy) Belbo is a tormented intellectual who gets his jollies by being an editor-in-chief of a self-funded authors’ publisher, who preys on terrible writers and poets and puts their life’s work in print for a fee. Belbo is hopelessly in love with a woman who ignores hime completely, he has never been able to shake loose from his terrible experiences as a child growing-up in wartime Italy. All this is intertwined with Kabbalah, the Rosicrucians, and the Knights Templar, involving a devilish plot which Belbo helps invent, and ends-up consuming him.

Many of Eco’s novels involve numerous references to other literary texts and figures. This is no accident: He was the foremost authority on the field of Semiotics, the study of signs and meanings. He famously commented that Dan Brown, author of the mega-bestseller “The DaVinci Code” could be considered to be one of the characters in “Foucault’s Pendulum”, which included many who were obsessed with the occult. Sadly, coverage of Eco’s death in the US was low-key, as unfortunately the same day marked the passing of Harper Lee, recluse and author of “To Kill a Mockingbird”. Two more different people did not exist. Eco was a bon vivant, an extrovert, a brilliant academician with a strong political bent, who never hesitated to opine on any issue put in front of him. He had a massive private library, which spilled from his Milanese apartment into two additional locations, yet when asked (by many) if he was able to read all his books, Eco would invariably reply (just like Harry Golden!) “most of them twice”. He led a full, exciting, enormously influential life, and the world of literature was better for it. One day we’ll figure out what it all meant.

Hallucinating in 74 Degrees at Christmas and 81 in mid-February

“There are some people in America who really don’t understand, or say they don’t, what is so terrible about Climate Change. Let them come to North Carolina! There are those who say that Global Warming is a myth, fabricated by Liberals. Let them come to North Carolina! And there are some that say that yes, the climate is changing, but it is a natural, cyclical phenomenon. Let them come to North Carolina! There are even some who say that the economy will be damaged by an effort to reduce our reliance on Fossil Fuels and transition to Green Energy sources. Lass’ sie nach Carolina kommen. Let them come to North Carolina.”

“Two thousand years ago Roman citizens would mutter to each other “Ego frigore” as they shivered in the frigid March air in the Forum. Today, in the heating globe, the warmest boast is “Ich bin ein Caroliner!”

Sour Apples

Apple’s Chief Executive Officer (and – props – Duke grad!) Tim Cook should be indicted for aiding and abetting a known terrorist. Sounds harsh? Not at all. This self-appointed “Defender of America’s Privacy” is instructing his company to defy and appeal a court-order requiring Apple to assist the FBI in extracting data from Syed Rizwan Farook’s (AKA “The San Bernardino shooter”) iPhone, on grounds that it would set a precedent that might result in “millions of customers” having their private data exposed to the world. There are so many things wrong with Apple’s CEO’s position that one hardly knows where to start:

First off, the FBI’s request deals with one specific phone. Not with all iPhones, or all phones of a particular model. Just one single unit, which is actually not even the property of the deceased terrorist who’s being investigated, but of his employer’s, San Bernardino County, who have given their consent as well. It is vital for the authorities to obtain access so that they may find out whatever they can about Farook’s movements, planning, and possible contacts or accomplices. The FBI isn’t even asking Apple to crack the phone, merely to change one small aspect of its security features. You see, the iPhone has a four-digit PIN with which one may access it. It would take a computer a few minutes to run through all ten-thousand possible combinations and gain access, except for the fact that Apple engineered a safety feature by which every time an erroneous code is entered, the process slows down. To run all possible combinations will take over five years, just because of this delaying feature, which the FBI is asking Apple to suspend (again, not on all iPhones, not on all phones of this model, just on this one single phone).

Second, Apple’s job is to build consumer electronics, not to defend their customers’ constitutional rights. Their argument that somehow this request could lead to others, or that somehow this hack on a single device somehow creates a “back door” access that will harm the privacy of its users, simply does not hold water. Yes, they may be future requests, and Apple better do all it can to comply with them rapidly. These are not surveillance “fishing expeditions”; these are active crime and terrorism investigations. What if the next requests comes in the middle of a protracted terrorist event, where access to a perpetrator’s iPhone is needed to save lives. Will Mr. Cook immediately instruct his company to help the authorities save lives, or will he be convening yet another press conference?

And thirdly, this type of information has been routinely provided by numerous entities in the past, in response to properly drawn warrants: phone companies, Internet Service Providers, email hosts, and even Apple itself. If we, as a society, accept Apple’s arguments we will be creating an unprecedented “warrant-free zone”, where criminal and terrorist elements may operate with impunity. Again, the issue is not that of spying on Americans, but of assisting law-enforcement with (as the English say) “their inquiries”. It is a criminal act to damage or suppress evidence, and that’s exactly what Apple is doing.

Being the brilliant marketers that Apple executives are, I suspect that there’s more to it than meets the i (sorry, I could not resist that one). The issue of Tax Repatriation is becoming a front-and-center economic “hot button” this election year. Apple has amassed over $181 Billion in cash which is kept overseas to avoid paying US corporate taxes on it (the tax bill is estimated at at least $53 Billion). It certainly helps Apple to present themselves to the American public as defenders of freedom and liberty, and the protectors of the “little guy” from an intrusive government. On tax matters, their behavior is currently legal, yet casts doubt on their true allegiance as a California-based, American corporation. In willfully preventing access to evidence, they are committing a criminal act. As this particular crime was committed by self-avowed enemies of the United States, I consider Apple’s obstructionism to be no less than treasonous.

Take Me Out to the Estadio

It’s pretty much an article of the faith with most international experts, historians, academics, economists and even military leaders that the Cuban Embargo has been an utter failure. An artifact of the Cold War, its implementation had less to do with the Cuban regime than with the Soviet one at the time. And who knows, perhaps an un-assassinated President Kennedy would have lifted it himself in good time. In any event, it has been largely ignored by most Western countries, which is why tobacco shops in Toronto enjoy a brisk business in Romeo y Julietas and H. Upmanns, the favorite Cuban cigar brands of Winston Churchill and John F. Kennedy, respectively.

President Obama decided to re-establish diplomatic relations with Cuba. There was a moving flag-raising ceremony at the old embassy in Havana, to which the State Department graciously invited three US Marines who had served there and had lowered the flag back in 1961. Still, many Cold-Warriors inhabit Congress, and the Administration faces an uphill struggle to get the economic embargo lifted. Sadly, I think that the political reality is such that this will not occur during President Obama’s tenure, to the detriment of both the Cuban and US people. However, the door is now finally open.

Which is why I am very excited that this Spring my beloved Tampa Bay Rays will play an exhibition game, in Havana, against the Cuban national team. All sorts of dignitaries will attend, and word was out today that one of the guests will be the great pitcher Luis Tiant (“el Tiante”), a beloved and respected son of Havana. And while Cuban-American Republican Presidential candidates Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz spew invective and bile on this important step in rebuilding the relationship with their ancestral land, President Barack Obama will be on hand to throw out the first pitch, which in itself is a telling sign of the changing times: former Cuban el Presidente Fidel Castro was the one who was a right-handed pitcher in college… Just like table-tennis helped open the gate to China, let us hope that our National Pastime will do the same for Cuba, the Pearl of the Caribbean.

Viva la Cuba Libre, and Go Rays!

The Circus is in Town

Ladies and Gentlemen, Children of All Ages: no, the title of this article is not about the five-ring circus that is the current Republican Party primaries, but rather about the original three-ring circus which just visited Raleigh: “The Greatest Show on Earth, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Combined Circus”. I am a sucker (in the P.T. Barnum sense) for a good circus show, so we gathered those family members who were in town and went.

I don’t think that there is an entity which represents “Americana”, and what it evokes, as well as Ringling. First off, there is the wandering concept: they travel by rail, and what’s more American than that? Even during World War II’s strict fuel rationing and the military’s priority access to the railroads, FDR (who was a big kid at heart) understood the importance of this traveling entertainment and gave them special dispensation to continue using their classic mode of transportation. The bright colors, the over-the-top patriotic themes, the entrepreneurial hucksterism that still seeps through (manifested by, amongst other things, the brisk business in $24 colored flashlights and $8 popcorn), the ever-thrilling Master-of-Ceremonies (whose traditional opening and closing declarations are the framing device for this written piece). In short, nothing says “America” as well as Ringling. The Harlem Globetrotters are a close second.

I saw my first show as a four year old, at Madison Square Garden. Sitting high up at the third level, eating cotton candy and looking down at the kaleidoscope of lights below, waving my own colored flashlight. It is a cherished childhood memory. New York City had always presented a unique challenge to Ringling: Its oversized rolling stock with extra-large cargo (OK, elephants) can’t be accommodated at Grand Central or Penn stations, so the animals disembark in Queens, and there is a traditional pre-dawn parade of sorts, with thousands of early-riser onlookers, as the elephants are marched through the Midtown Tunnel, along a two-mile route leading to the venue.

Growing up in Israel, which has no resident circus (Jews don’t run away to join the circus; they leave home in an orderly fashion to go to Medical School) where I saw, on occasion, Asian or Eastern-European circuses who would stop over for a week or two, pitch their colorful tents on the outskirts of Tel-Aviv and put on their show. (I remember when a Rumanian one went bankrupt, leaving behind unfed animals and unpaid acrobats…) Exciting, scary, funny, yet still never quite equalling the grandeur of Messrs. Ringling, Barnum, and Bailey. Later on, after I moved to Florida and started a family, we would regularly attend the shows in St. Petersburg (Ringling actually operates two separate traveling shows, The “Red” show and the “Blue” show, who alternate their routes annually, so you can go every year yet always experience a new program.) Our children grew up on Ringling and, in fact, our middle child spoke his first full, coherent sentence at a show (for posterity’s sake, it was “I want French Fries”). One year my wife and I went to see a local production of Verdi’s “Aida” where, to the delight of the audience, various animals from Ringling (who was in town at the time) participated in the opera’s show-stopping “Triumphal March”, including a leopard, a very large boa constrictor, and an elephant. Needless to say, the elephant received a sustained ovation, way longer than the one awarded the soprano performing the title part (and, if may add, for good reason). We have always enjoyed the antics and joie-de-vivre of the “clown alley” clowns, who are graduates of the most intense and competitive “Clown College” anywhere, the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Clown College, with an acceptance rate of approximately 2%, which is tougher than MIT or Harvard.

Over the years, at almost every show, we encountered demonstrators who objected to Ringling’s usage of animals at their performances. While I am no expert, I got the sense that the animals were always very well looked-after, had excellent veterinarian care and, to the best of my knowledge, were not trapped in the wild but born in captivity. I am certain that the lot of those beautifully-groomed Asian pachyderms was considerably better than that of their burden-bearing brethren in India. Nonetheless, the owners of Ringling decreed that as of May of this year all performing elephants shall be retired to their new palatial compound in Florida where, paraphrasing Billy Crystal’s character in “City Slickers”, they will probably “eat breakfast at six, lunch at ten, dinner at two, then spend the rest of the day wandering the malls mumbling “Why don’t the children call?”

So we went to see the circus one more time, and to say goodbye to the elephants. The orchestra was top-notch (as always), Mabel painted a canvas with her trunk, the tightrope walkers gave us vertigo, the build-up to the Lady Shot From the Cannon was epic (when you think about it, it just has to be; the act itself is barely five seconds long…), and in what must have been a nod towards more modern tastes (not mine) the acrobats performed bits that seemed more in line with the artistic Cirque de Soleil than with the “Daring Young Men on the Flying Trapeze”. No lions or tigers, but an absolutely adorable act put on by trained poodles, all of which (according to Ringling) were rescued dogs. I much preferred my son’s explanation: “They all ran away from home to join the circus”. Indeed, we all should. And may all your days be Circus Days.

Golden Voice

Harry Golden’s biographer Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett has just released an Audio Book version of her altogether excellent book “Carolina Israelite: How Harry Golden Made Us Care About Jews, the South, and Civil Rights”. If you are interested in learning more about this amazing person, but find it dangerous to turn pages while you’re driving, this Audio Book could be just the thing for you! A link to it has been added to the “New Biography” page on the website. As Harry would undoubtedly say: “Enjoy, enjoy!”