Death of the cool

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Maybe we can only see the real signs of the apocalypse after the fact. While most of us accepted Paul Newman’s passing with the usual homilies (he lived a good long life, after all) it seems now that his death may have heralded the end of the world as we know it. What’s happened since September 27? Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Bros, Goldman, AIG, and oops here come the four horsemen…

For Newman was nothing if not cool. I remember going to see Cool Hand Luke with my mother and little brother and sister when I was probably 13. Leaving the theater in Sacramento I felt so transformed, so drawn to that vision of a swinging ne’er-do-well that I lurked in the shadows beside my mother’s car, pretending I was ten years older than I was until my little sister blew the mood by yelling, “Hey, look it’s Cool Hand Luke!”

Newman was cool before then, of course, but most remarkably he remained that way to the end. Not just because of the low-key roles he chose (or had scripted for him) but for the way he lived his life: quietly, with the woman he loved, giving all the money from his food business to charity, putting his money where his mouth was in politics too — he was a mensch. He didn’t go all squirrelly in the face of death like Steve McQueen (who tried to fight his cancer with coffee enemas and prayer) or Brando (who we loved for his eccentricities but you can’t really say anyone who puts on two hundred pounds is cool). In fact he barely got around to mentioning it…

Now the world is flipping. Internationally brokers seem to be driving off the cliff together as in some insane game of chicken. Roman candles like James Cramer are telling everyone to sell everything. Things have gotten so bad at McCain-Palin rallies that JMC actually had to tell his supporters that Obama is an honorable man and not to be feared — and was booed for his troubles. Where, my friends, is the cool?

Well, if you watched the last presidential debate you saw it. Obama may be untried, he made be playing his cards too close to his vest for some and not getting riled up enough for others. But what I see is someone who is trying to run out the clock, sure, but who is also sending a signal as the stars fall from the sky that this is how you deal with crises: Stay cool. He’s like one of those great quarterbacks (Joe Montana?) who could pick his man out in a maelstrom and hit from all the way downfield. 

Hey, let’s give him the ball!

Stunted growth

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What a strange phenomenon last night’s debate was! Not the “debate” itself, in which platitudes were exchanged and slogans swapped in lieu of dialogue or actual debate, but the fact that so many tuned in to see what some hoped and some feared would be a train wreck, or the very least a sort of personal meltdown… 

What fools these mortals be! Did anyone, outside of Keith Olbermann, really think that if Sarah Palin had made a complete fool of herself (which she avoided, barely) the nation would notice? Or that it would be acknowledged in the post-debate spin zones, where truth is redefined almost immediately? All the GOP needed was for the governor to not shoot herself in the head, or call Gwen Ifill the N word (same thing) and they could declare victory. Making McCain’s pick of this woefully unqualified person not the lead story any more but just a publicity stunt that grew into a reality. Now that the critics who questioned her qualifications have been momentarily quieted, the senator from Arizona can get back to addressing his real area of expertise: the economy.

History will be kind to those early Cassandras on the right, though, people like Peggy Noonan who suggested JMC lost the election when he tapped her. Next to the Wall Street tsunami, Squeaky Sarah seems like a minor concern. Until you remember that her place on the ticket represents his first executive decision. So as the waters swamp the boat, and you see the captain has brought a clown to help him man the life rafts, you might well wonder if this is the right guy to put in charge.

Biden was strangely subdued for the first hour. He looks like an old fighter who has already gone 12 rounds —  and he’s still got a month to go! But he warmed up before the bell; though the media seems to have liked his questioning of McCain’s “maverick” status most, I thought the highlight of the show was when he choked up talking about seeing his son in the hospital. He showed real emotion and reminded those watching at home that no one party has a lock on parenting and all the trials and challenges that come with it.  He spoke from the heart, and didn’t need to memorize the words.

Dislocation

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That’s Wall Street slang for job loss, the kind we are being warned about as we stand on the beach awaiting the tsunami most financial analysts say is coming unless Congress acts quickly to pour oil on the roiling waters of the credit crisis. (I know, roiling waters don’t make waves, and you can’t really see a tsunami coming, but bear with me.) As CNN’s Ali Velshi, one of the calmer prophets of doom, explained it this morning, dislocation is one of those nice Orwellian words that brings to mind Reagan’s explanation of the difference between a recession and a depression: “A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours.”

Given the loss of 600,000 jobs this year, what’s a few more? The one person most Americans now agree should be out of work is the cat with top job: According to an ABC poll released yesterday, 70 percent of Americans now disapprove of the job Bush is doing, a historic low. It’s nice that we can all agree on something! It was also nice to read yesterday that Alberto Gonzalez can’t get a steady gig since resigning as AG. See you in the soup line, boys. 

But how could you lose your job, you say? You can still locate it, most days. The failure of this current bill seems to be not simply one of imagination (a lot of voters, who crashed Congress’s email server yesterday, cannot imagine massive unemployment and the other hallmarks of the 30 percent decline in the economy that defines depression) but of language: Calling it a “bailout” makes it sound like we’re rescuing Wall Street when, if you believe nearly every economist in the country, we are rescuing ourselves. 

The first time I visited Wall Street I was amazed to find, right around the corner from some of the biggest investment firms in the country, an old-fashioned street vendor hustling wind-up monkeys on the sidewalk. As booms and busts have occurred since, I have watched in amazement as giants like the Solomon Brothers and Bear Stearns have teetered and fell. But that guy — maybe you’ve seen him in Union Square, hustling vegetable peelers, three-piece suit, Australian accent? — is still on the job, which is to say: on the street. And I don’t mean Wall Street, either. 

Do Not Forward

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Remember chain mail, the idiotic phenomenon of your youth in which otherwise reasonable people would forward a letter to you that you were supposed to forward to a dozen people, and doing so guaranteed you wealth and well-being, while those who broke the chain ended up in the hospital? The whole thing got much easier with the internet, of course; you didn’t need stamps and a list of people you were prepared to alienate. Just hit forward and spread urban legends and unfunny sight gags without leaving your desktop. 

What was an internet craze has become a political cancer; have you seen those pictures of the anti-Palin rally in Alaska? Wait five seconds, the photos with all those darned funny homemade signs will be clogging up your inbox, too. Or how about that PBS online poll that you can take over and over — and forward to your friends! — to show the world how unqualified you think Palin is to be vice-president. You’ve got to believe that McCain is going to be swayed by whatever the viewers of PBS think. 

Far viler is the racist material being forwarded about Obama. I had heard about the Muslim missives but a reader of this space actually sent me an example, from a church in San Diego. It spreads the usual lies — that he is a Muslim, that he was sworn into office using the Koran etc. — but insists you send it to others. “Wake Up America!”

Is our chain mail better than theirs? I didn’t see the ones spreading rumors about Palin’s alleged affair, or the viral video of her getting blessed by some African witch-hunt priest and thank God! After seeing her second appearance on Katie Couric, do you really think we need rumors and distortions to derail this campaign? Didn’t someone tell the GOP campaign to never make yourself look more ridiculous than the late night comics do? Didn’t they get that email?

Action painting

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After casting about for a new identity in the wake of the tanking financial markets, John McCain seems to have hit on a role he plans on sticking with, for a few days at least: magical thinker. Even as the darkening clouds are making many wonder about the very solvency of the government itself, the Arizona senator told the New York Times and CNBC today that he was going ahead with his tax cut plans. “Contrary to the warnings of fiscal analysts, he said he believed he could do so and balance the federal budget, which was falling deeper into deficit even before the financial crisis, by the end of his first term,” said the Times. 

Analysts! Analyze this, baby. In McCain’s world view there are a limited number of forces that really matter: The Surge, of course, the doubling-down of troops in Iraq that he alone championed last year, and that now promises to allow us to stay there long after anyone dreamed we would need to; and congressional earmarks, which are little bits of secret spending that senators and representatives attach to otherwise decent bills in order to get their constituents more of your money. 

The fact that your money is their money — that you are, in essence, them — should not confuse you. It doesn’t confuse McCain! He stood there while some Vietnamese guard drew a cross in the dirt and totally got what the guy was trying to say because JMC, not that egghead Obama with his longterm solutions, is more than a man of action. He is an action painter. You know, like Jackson Pollock. His coherency is in his movement and today he is a tax-cutting guy who also wants to balance the budget and hold Wall Street greedheads accountable for destroying your 401-K. Contradictions? Contradictions are for squares. 

In the crazy mixed-up world we have inherited this political season, this kind of whirling dervish routine might just carry him over the finish line if it weren’t for the party that he is tied to. Sure, he stirred up the base with his choice of Sarah Palin (who is in NY, meeting a dozen world leaders, AND Bono, all in one day — talk about action!) but those people bring the votes, not the bread. The moneybags in the Republican Party really don’t want to hear him do his Huey Long impression. While he and his rival are both skeptical of the government’s proposal to give the Treasury Secretary a blank check, and no one to answer to, Obama sounds more prudent and determined to help craft the right compromise to get us out of this mess and keep the ship of state afloat. McCain’s tossing paint, man — and the red ink might just fall on us.