Reading the Monday newspaper was a chore
I was preparing to start a relaxing Monday reading the newspaper, knowing the 40th anniversary of Nixon and Watergate was over and so was the noise. Then I read in the letters to the editors yet another Watergate cheer, for Americans strong enough “to quell the tyrant.”
Shades of 1968. Or 1818: “Igor, get the torches! The monster lives!”
The front page news was even worse. There was a really strange-sounding election. The Muslim Brotherhood won in Egypt. A news report was: “The margin of victory was 51.7 percent. There were more than 800,000 votes ruled invalid.” Fortunately, the press reported, “Clearly, the election had not been rigged.”
That sounds as bad to me as the fact that the Daley machine in Chicago withheld its election results in some precincts in the Nixon-Kennedy election in 1960 until it received news of the total that JFK needed to win. It turned out there were just enough votes in Illinois, and in Texas, for a very narrow JFK win.
Nixon didn’t request a recount, though President Eisenhower offered him federal funds for one. Nobody else was interested in any recount. In the 2000 election there were recounts in Florida by newspapers and other civic-minded groups. I think the idea was to find one election, please, give us one, then it could be proclaimed as, at last, an accurate count. Gore wins. Hurry with the oath.
There were some six recounts, all won by George W. Bush, and finally the recounts just seemed to fade away. The calls started again in 2004, by the press and civic groups, for recounts in Ohio, until after about a month the media noticed Bush was still in office and nobody seemed to be counting anymore, despite their urging.
But maybe the Muslim Brotherhood, now that it owns Egypt, will be America’s new friend, since we greatly helped it get rid of our old friend, Hosni Mubarak. Mabarak got along with Israel, too. I would guess better than the new Egyptian leaders will. Mabarak couldn’t understand why we’d ditch a friend for, very possibly, an enemy.
Same for our newly made friend, Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi. He told Americans, just before we helped dump him: “Americans, what are you thinking? I’m your friend, and I’m getting along with Israel, and you’re getting rid of me so the Muslims, who hate you, can take over?” That’s a close version. About the same thing some Serbs were saying not long ago.
So what were we thinking? The Arab Spring? Democracy? One man. One vote. . .one time? No women? A lot of Americans are at war with women, I’ve read, just like the Egyptians, so maybe we can find common ground there.
New Egyptian leader Mohamed (You expected Fred?) Morsi assured the world, though, that Egypt will no longer be subordinate to the United States. I guess that’s OK, but did it have to be the first thing on his mind? And why do I have the feeling that the new Egyptians will have the feeling that Iran is a magnificent country?
At least there was some good news on the sports page for us Royals fans. Melky went zero for four and his average plunged to .351.
And the Royals have some good players coming up. We KC fans always like to hear about good players coming up, because then, as one fan put it, “we have somebody we could trade.” We were all agreed that all the Royals needed last off-season to make the team a contender was to trade for a starting pitcher.
A lot of people, especially experts, say the Royals’ record is the owner’s fault, and they don’t like David Glass . Well, I really like him. I was a fan when Charlie Finley was the owner. So how could I not be a Glass fan? Without him we might not even have a team, or promising young players good enough that we could be able to trade them.
And if I didn’t like reading the news and sports sections Monday, I knew I could turn to the comics for a smile. As a registered Wyandotte County Democrat, I always read Doonesbury first. So I turned to him, and would you believe, he’s on reruns. We should all just take a few weeks off; so we’ll be rested up and ready for an explosion. No, not by the Muslims. By the Royals.
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