Getting (Up) There

February 15, 2010 by admin
Filed under: The American Spectator

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Friday
Nightmare
of travel. I started out this afternoon in Little Rock, Arkansas.
I spoke last night in Conway, very near Little Rock, at a
fabulous place called the University of Central Arkansas. It was
a perfect event, with friendly locals at a dinner with the
President of the University at his home. Then I gave a speech and
signed autographs and it was all a lot of fun.

I went back to my wonderful hotel, the Capital, as good a
hotel as there is on the planet, and rendezvoused with my wife,
who had been dining with her extended family, all Arkansans. We
had a late night snack and then off to sleep and then I went to
the airport.

That was when the nightmare began. There was a modest rain,
and somehow that made the airplanes late. This was a problem
because my travel called for me to fly to Dallas, then double
back to fly to Kansas City. My speech was early in the morning so
if I missed my connection in Dallas, I would miss the speech, to
an important group, the American Society of Civil
Engineers.

I got scared and decided to get a car and driver to take me
to KC. On the map it didn’t look that bad. I figured it would
take six or seven hours. I called the limo company and they said
they had a highly experienced driver who knew the route in the
dark.

I waited an hour and there in the luggage claim area of the
airport appeared a rumpled man in livery who happily told me he
would be my driver. He walked uncertainly towards his beat up
looking Lincoln Town Car and off we went. I asked him several
times if he were sure he knew the way.

“What are you?” he asked. “Jew? Greek? Italian?”

“I’m Jewish, as you well know,” I said. “Do you know the
way to Kansas City?”

“Of course,” he said.

Okay. I’ll make this short and sweet. He didn’t know the
way. He was the most race-conscious person I ever met. Almost at
once he started baiting me about being Jewish. He told me
repeatedly about the superiority of black religious practice. It
was as if I had Al Sharpton in the car with me. He got lost in
the dark in the hills and hollers of Northern Arkansas. He took
us forty miles out of our way. His car only had one headlight and
the brakes were pitiful. He had no GPS. HE HAD NO IDEA OF HOW TO
GET TO KANSAS CITY. He had a pitiful map he had stitched together
from Google and kept taking his eyes off the road to read it or
try to read it.

He made fun of my hero, Martin Luther King, Jr. He
belittled and mocked my history of demonstrating for civil rights
for blacks and my free legal work for them in New Haven.

For the last four hours of the nine-hour trip, he preached
at me in his imitation of a black preacher–his preacher–about
my iniquitous ways and how I was destined for damnation.

It was only by constant prayer and by the miracle of my
little built-in GPS in my Verizon Voyager that I got through the
night. Only because of the Verizon GPS were we able to find my
hotel, the fantastic Marriott in downtown KC.

Still, because he had worked so hard, if so fecklessly, I
gave him an immense tip and paid for a room for him at my hotel.
He never thanked me. Wow, was I glad to get to my room where the
thoughtful ASCE people had set out a tea maker and herbal tea and
honey. For a long time, I was too jacked up to sleep.

That man, taking me through the night, promising he knew
the way, lying about all of it….well, you can guess who he
reminded me of. I won’t even say it.

I hasten to add that these are just my opinions and I am
sure the man has many good points and many faithful friends and
fans. And his emphasis on defining everyone and everything in
terms of race was what really bothered me the most, naturally.
Well good luck to him anyway.

Saturday
Up feeling
surprisingly well in the morning. These were super smart people,
these Civil Engineers. The speech went great and then I was off
to the friendly KC airport and then, my amigos, off to
Mexico.

Still, problems. My flight to Cabo greatly delayed. But by
a stroke of something, my wife was on her way somewhere and our
paths crossed in DFW. Her plane was late, too, so we got to spend
a lot of time together. American Airlines took their usual great
care of us, parking us in an electric cart off to the side of the
seats. TV’s all around the terminal were showing The World Series
and it was all great. American Airlines is so much better at
handling its passengers than anyone else it’s almost pathetic for
the others.

A middle-aged man came up to me as I was waiting for a taco
and told me he was a fan from Alabama. “We Southerners knew what
was coming with Obama,” he said archly. “We know his type. We
could see the stitches on the fastball.”

I am not sure I knew what he meant and I don’t care for
racists of any race, but by then my plane was leaving so I didn’t
really have time to engage him. I was on my way. It was a
pleasant, short night flight with pleasantly quiet cabin mates.
The guy next to me seemed to know every detail of life in Mexico.
It sounded pretty good. Cheap food, cheap lodging, not much
pressure.

In Cabo, American Airlines had a greeter for me to whisk me
through customs and onto a van to my hotel. I didn’t get there
until after midnight but a super friendly, good-looking couple
from the Young Presidents, one of my very favorite groups, were
there to meet me and take me to my room. Young Presidents, super
successful young business people, are consistently on the ball.
My room was lovely, with a fabulous ocean view in the moonlight.
I had no trouble at all falling asleep and only woke up at dawn
to see an immense cruise ship, still lit up from the night
before, gliding by in between the palm fronds.

A long, long way from being lost in Northern
Arkansas.

Wednesday
I am back in Los
Angeles now and it’s my birthday!!! I am 65. I have to tell you I
never in my life anticipated getting this old, this fast. It
seems as if I were 25 just a few days ago. (My college
girlfriend, Mary Just, and the wonderful Susan Sgarlat, and my
fabulous roommate, Arthur M. Best, had a super surprise party for
me back then at my apartment at 380 Riverside Drive. It was the
best party ever except for my 60th that my wife had for me and my
50th that TAS had for me. I can still recall how much
fun we had dancing to the song, “Shotgun,” by Junior Walker and
the All Stars. And Mary looked so cute. )

Anyway, I started out my day in my usual way, swimming in
my pool in Beverly Hills. Then breakfast and off to do Cavuto on
Business at Pac TV, then rushing off to do Wolf Blitzer at CNN,
then lunch with my great costumer and makeup artist, Lisa
Agustsson, at Talesai, a super good Thai place on Sunset. Then
rest, and then off to dinner with my son and his staggeringly
beautiful wife and Phil and Julie DeMuth and my nephew Matt and
Michael and Jordan Chinich. (Michael started my movie
career.)

Then, a long drive down to the desert, and then to bed,
only to be awakened at 3:15 by our son. He and his wife had
driven down to the desert, too, to stay at a hotel, and they
wanted to stop to exercise their dog, Buglette, in our yard. Yes.
At 3:15 AM. Yes. Then they decided they needed some food. Yes. By
then it was 4 AM. Then they wanted to talk to mommy and me, and
then at 4.30 they left.

This has been a very tiring birthday.

I am scared of getting old. I am scared of being ill. I am
scared of running out of money. Still, when I lie in bed with my
Brigid, I am happy.

It is so great to sleep in safe, glorious, beautiful
America. I just cannot get over it. No Gestapo. No NKVD. No
Cossacks. Just peace. I was restless after Tommy left (not much
peace there), so I swam for a while under the palms and the
moonlight coming through the fronds.

I don’t want this to ever end. But it will.

Meanwhile as I swam, all kinds of thoughts rushed through
my poor tired old brain:

Why doesn’t the Chief of Staff of the Army resign over the
colossal mishandling of that psycho Moslem terrorist who killed
all of those innocent people at Fort Hood? Where did personal and
command responsibility go?

Why don’t we change the Constitution to declare that this
is a nation founded on belief in a loving God, and that while all
are welcome, the preaching of hate and destruction against this
nation is not protected free speech.

You cannot beat something with nothing. If all we believe
in is making money and watching porn, we will not beat Moslem
Jihadism. If we forthrightly declare our belief in a God of love,
we have something infinitely great to believe in.

This was founded as a Christian country with belief in God
as the bedrock. We will not survive without that belief as a
general part of this land. Tolerance for all who keep the peace,
but no more atheism as the national religion and no more coddling
of terrorists out of political correctness. Well, as you can
tell, I am getting old.