The LuLac Edition #453, April 4th, 2008

PHOTO INDEX: OUE 1968 LOGO, MY FAVORITE VICE PRESIDENT, OUR NATION’S 30TH UNDER CALVIN COOLIDGE, CHARLES DAWES, AND THE LATE MARTIN LUTHER KING, JUNIOR.
Click here for LuLac YOU TUBE video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6lEXSEQnDk.

BUGGING OUT!!!!

Growing up in a semi political family, I was familiar with the union bug. When my uncle ran for office, he told me hundreds of times how important it was to use a union printer. And to make sure that print job had the union bug on it. When I ran for Student Council Vice President in 1970, I got the bright idea to get real from the print shop posters. I had a would be professional photographer Ray Clark take a photo of me shoving myself out of the front door at St. John’s High School (across the street from the many times mentioned St. John the Baptist in our ongoing 1968 feature) striding forward. On the top, in big green letters was VOTE YONKI and on the bottom was A MAN ON THE MOVE. Where I was going, only God knew. But the posters caused a big stir and I won the election handily. My uncle Timmy Pribula set me up with Mondlak Print Shop and came with me when we were looking at the final proof. I was thrilled but my uncle said, “Where’s the bug?” Jerry Mondlak said, “You want a bug on this?” My uncle said, “You’re a union shop, right?” Mondlak said to me, “This is high school right?” “Yep” I nodded. My uncle was adamant, “Put the bug on”. And on the bottom was a union bug, most likely the only one in a high school election.
I thought about this all week after the union flap with the Obama campaign. As you know, Obama is being slammed for using non union workers to set up at Wilkes College. Corey O’Brien, one of his campaign chairs said that union workers were used in Dunmore for the stage set up. As a Democratic party interest group, the unions still wield power. Not like they used to but enough to turn a candidacy. Or cause a minor flap. Both campaigns are looking for any advantage, however small. This story typifies the closeness of this race and the advantage one group seeks over the other. Perhaps if there was a little daylight between the two candidate’s ideologies, this might not be a big thing. But what you are going to see is much more of this in the days ahead. The race is close, and any little mishap construed against a Democratic interest group will be magnified. If my uncle was around Wilkes on Tuesday, he’d have found a union guy complete with “the bug” on his forehead.

GOVERNOR ED & RACE

Governor Rendell is again taking some heat for saying that Pennsylvania is a conservative state and that there are many people who will not be inclined to vote for a black man for the highest office. And of course there was an outcry. But the Governor was only speaking the truth. Likewise, there are many Pennsylvanians who won’t vote for a woman candidate for President. The Governor himself in 2002 had to overcome the stigma of being a big city Mayor who would only concentrate on the city of Philadelphia. Give Ed credit, unlike other Clinton backers who are ambivalent about their support (New Jersey’s John Corzine for example) he is steadfast and loyal in his support. That is unique in politics, especially today.

DADDY!!!! DADDY!!!

Wow! Am I the only one kind of surprised and shocked that duly elected United States Senators and Governors are saying they are backing Senator Obama because “their kids like him”. This to me is the ultimate overindulgence of kids growing up today who are on third base and thought they hit a triple. “My kids like him” says Casey, Caroline Kennedy and others. Well your kids might like rap, heavy metal, 36 packs of Coors Lite in one setting but you don’t have to follow suit. I mean can you imagine Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson or Gerald Ford saying, “The kids dig him so I’m gonna boogie on in there!” How about the next time we elect a “family man” to office, we ask him “enough about you, what about those kids!” Mayor Tom Leighton of Wilkes Barre has a reputation for not handling criticism on many things. Imagine one of his kids saying, “Hey dad, better do something about those potholes in front of Gonda’s”! Adult elected officials are supposed to listen to voting age constituents, not their own kids who think a candidate is just plain groovy. (For those too young, “groovy”was slang in 1968 for “cool”.

THE VEEPSTAKES

John McCain was on the campaign trail this week talking about the Vice Presidency. To me this was a clear message to blunt the age issue against McCain. McCain has no need to pick a rock ribbed conservative to keep that constituency. The diehard GOPers are going to vote for the Arizona Senator. McCain has to pick a running mate that will demonstrate that the person he picks can be ready on day one. He can be daring and pick a woman, he can also go out on a limb and pick a conservative intellectual (that’s an oxymoron) like Newt Gingrich. McCain has to demonstrate courage, innovation and steadiness with his choice for Vice President. His pick will be more vital than the Democratic choice for Veep. It will define his candidacy and the way he can wage his fight against either Senator Clinton or Obama. There have been Vice Presidents picked for shock value, Geraldine Ferrarro in 1984 and Lyndon Johnson in 1960, some have been second or third choices, Edmund Muskie in 1968 after the Kennedy family blocked Sargent Shriver’s effort, others were picked for political strategy, Spiro Agnew in 1968 and some were picked because of political deals. Those are way too numerous to list but sometimes the Vice Presidents picked that way turn into good Presidents like Harry Truman, Gerald Ford and Theodore Roosevelt. (My favorite Vice President was Charles Dawes, who wrote a heck of a song, “Its All in the Game”.) From You Tube: Tommy Edwards: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqQPXeYc49s&feature=related.
Anyway, I digress! Often. Frequently. Sorry, back to the story.
McCain’s pick will signal to all his thought process and his style of governing. Compared to the Dems, it is the only interesting thing going on in this party.

1968

It was a warm Thursday night. I was sitting at the kitchen table writing a letter to the seventh grade girlfriend. Why she insisted on letters when I saw her every day is anyone’s guess. But there I was. My mother and father were grocery shopping and I had on WBRE TV after watching NBC News. At about 7:12PM or thereabouts, Chet Huntley came back on the air. “What’s this, I thought?” Then Huntley reported the news that Martin Luther King Junior had been killed. Shot in the neck. He was using words like “died, dead”. I thought first of Kennedy, then Malcolm X. Malcolm X was, I had been told a rabble rouser. Dr. King was non violent. He had gone back to Memphis to prove that point to lead another march to help the sanitation workers. (The strike began when a union worker took shelter in a compacter during the rain and was crushed to death when it was said the truck malfunctioned). Even at the age of 14, I thought this was not supposed to happen. Reeling from the announcement at the end of March by President Johnson that he was resigning, I looked at the TV stunned. The phone rang and my friend David Dellarte and I tried to figure out what the heck was going on in our country. Then the TV networks started playing the final speech of Dr. King given the night before he died. From YOU TUBE, 40 years ago today,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0FiCxZKuv8&feature=related.
King was said to be in a jovial mood on that balcony at the Lorraine Motel. Here’s a clip about his last hours.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivrjiQlewk8&feature=related.
Riots broke out all across America in reaction to the King killing. Many blacks felt that hope had abandoned their cause for racial and economic equality. After all, if a peace loving man like King was killed, where could the black movement go. Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy, in a remarkable speech that would never be given by any candidate today spoke from the heart breaking the news to a crowd on the campaign trail. From YOU TUBE:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCg05pTYt0A&feature=related.
Forty years after his death, there is a sting. He was only 39 years old. Oh there is a holiday in his name and monuments and honors galore carved in granite and marble. But when you get right down to it, this country needed him in flesh and blood more than in a freeze frame memory. He paid the ultimate price, but I sometimes wonder if it was worth it. Just last night, two young women were arrested for defacing that synagogue in Wilkes Barre the other day. There was no justification for their actions, just hate, the same hate that boiled in James Earl Ray. Our tribute to Dr. King should be an ongoing service to what he believed in, equality and dignity for all. Forty years on, if we could only get that right!
Statewide, in 1968 Governor Raymond Shafer order flags at half mast to honor Dr. King…….at the County level, Commissioners Price, Crossin and Wideman paid tribute to the slain civil rights leader with a proclamation of official mourning…In Wilkes Barre, Students for Senator Eugene McCarthy opened up a campaign headquarters at 20 East Market Street in the city….at St. John the Baptist grade school, choir preparations for Holy Week Services were interrupted to let the 7th and 8th grade students watch non stop network coverage of the King funeral plans and tributes…and forty years ago this week, the number one song in America and Lulac land was “Lady Madonna” by the Beatles. From You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8my8I-w12g&feature=related.