BeldarBlog

In memorium: James Dillard Dyer, Jr. (12/24/22 to 6/22/09)

[As written and released for publication in the Lamesa [Texas] Press-Reporter, Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, and other west Texas publications, by his family:]

Lamesa native and life-long resident James Dillard Dyer, Jr. — a World War II veteran who became a long-time merchant and civic leader — died peacefully in his sleep during the early morning hours of Monday, June 22, 2009. He was 86 years old.

Born on Christmas Eve of 1922, J.D. Dyer, Jr. was the oldest son of prominent Lamesa school-teacher, postmaster, and merchant J.D. Dyer, Sr. and his wife Emma Lee Dyer. As a 1940 graduate of Lamesa High School, young Dyer — sometimes known to friends as “Jo-Do” due to his initials — had been president of his senior class and active in the high school band and debate. Dyer volunteered for the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps at the University of Texas even before the attack on Pearl Harbor, and through an accelerated curriculum, he earned both his Bachelor of Business Administration degree and his commission as an Ensign in the United States Naval Reserve on the same day — February 29, 1944.

Dyer was immediately activated to duty and assigned to the U.S.S. Zeilin (APA-3), an amphibious attack transport which served as a relief flagship for the Commander Amphibious Force, Pacific Fleet. Dyer caught up to the ship in March 1944, and he commanded one of its landing craft, putting troops ashore under fire, during the Battle of Guam in July 1944. “Tex” Dyer was among the junior officers on the bridge on February 13, 1945 — when the Zeilin survived a kamikaze strike that left dozens killed and wounded — and his service included both the invasion of Luzon in January and the landing of reinforcements at the Battle of Iwo Jima in March 1945. Slated to participate in the invasion of Japan, Dyer and the Zeilin were at Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands in August when the atomic bombs ended the war. After further service on the Zeilin moving troops from various Pacific bases to Okinawa and Korea, Dyer was released from active duty in February 1946 as a Lieutenant (Junior Grade). He attended several happy reunions of the crew and extended family of the “Mighty Z” during the 1980s and 1990s as America belatedly began to recognize properly what Tom Brokaw has called “The Greatest Generation.”

After brief stints with the Texas-New Mexico Pipeline Co. and the State Reserve Life Insurance Co., Dyer returned to Lamesa to take over his father’s business, then known as Dyer Hardware & Auto Supply. Over the next 30-odd years and at several locations, that business evolved to become Dyer Appliance and then Dyer Furniture & Appliance — selling iconic American brands like Zenith, Frigidaire, Maytag, and Sealy to generations of Dawson County families under the motto “We Service What We Sell.” Along with Karl Cayton and Paul Edgmon, Dyer was also a founding principal in the original Lamesa Cable T.V. Company.

Dyer married Lamesa native Helen F. Pope in 1947, and together they reared their daughter and two sons before they divorced. In 1974, Dyer married Odessa L. Williamson of Levelland. Before her death in 2003, J.D. and Odessa led an active retired life that included many international tours with the “Flying Longhorns” of the U.T. Ex-Students’ Association (of which they were both Life Members). Dyer’s hobbies in his later years included the planting and care of what became the formidable orchard surrounding his home on Skyline Drive.

Service — through city government, and through civic and charitable organizations — played a continuous and vital part of J.D. Dyer’s life. He served on the Lamesa City Council from 1955-1958 and as Mayor of Lamesa from 1958-1959. A multi-decade member of the Lamesa Chamber of Commerce, Dyer served as its President in 1969. Dyer also served in leadership roles over the years in various local and regional organizations to promote the development of U.S. Highway 87 and to secure clean, safe drinking water for Lamesa and its surrounding area. Dyer was also among the original organizers and continual supporters of the Lamesa High School Golden Tornado Jubilee Reunions, and he served as chairman of the 1975 Jubilee.

In high school, Dyer had earned the rank of Eagle Scout and was inducted into the Order of the Arrow in what was first known as “Troop 1,” then “Troop 22,” and then “Troop 722” — the Boy Scout troop founded by his father in 1921 and then led for many years thereafter by the late Joseph N. Spikes. Dyer’s lifelong support of and contributions to Scouting were recognized by the South Plains Council of the Boy Scouts of America with the Silver Beaver Award in 1964. Dyer also was a multi-decade member and leader of the Lamesa Noon Lions Club and Lions Club International. He served many terms in various offices (including President) in the local club, and as District Governor of Lions District 2-T2 in 1960-1961. With his family, he attended many state, national, and international Lions Club conventions across the U.S. and abroad, and he was an active supporter of such programs as the Texas Lions Camp at Kerrville.

Dyer was raised as a member of the First Christian Church of Lamesa, and he served among its deacons and elders while married to Helen. Later, he and Odessa were joyous and proud members of the First Presbyterian Church of Lamesa, where funeral services will be held at 11:00 a.m. on Thursday, June 25.

J.D. Dyer, Jr. was preceded in death by his parents and by his younger sister and brother, Mrs. Tennie Marie Dyer Lengel of Dallas and Dr. Royce Dyer of Lamesa. He is survived by his younger sister, Mrs. Jean Dyer Brower of Lamesa, and by three children — his daughter, Mrs. Gwen Dyer Johnson of Austin (and her husband Jimmy); his son, Dr. James R. Dyer of Argyle (and his wife Shelli); and his son, William J. Dyer of Houston. He is also survived by eight grandchildren (Jeffrey, Liana, David, Grace, Kevin, Sarah, Adam, and Molly), four great-grandchildren (Jared, Laura, Price, and Jemma), and many other cherished relatives and life-long friends. For anyone inclined toward making a charitable donation in J.D. Dyer’s memory, the family has suggested the Boy Scouts of America (www.scouting.org), the Texas Lions Camp in Kerrville (www.lionscamp.com), or the Dal Paso Museum in Lamesa.

Great competitors among Rockets and Greyhounds

Most Houston sports fans, including me, are reveling in one of the most satisfying Houston Rockets wins in many years — a thorough drubbing of the perpetual rockstar team of the NBA, the Los Angeles Lakers, by a final score of 99-87 that somewhat conceals the Rockets' overall domination (including a 29-point lead in the early fourth quarter). The Rockets are still decided underdogs. But for all the reasons I'm normally not a big fan of the NBA, I particularly enjoyed this game.

With the Lakers already leading the playoff series 2-to-1 and Rockets star Yao Ming out for the remainder of the year with a broken foot, the Rockets were widely expected to politely roll over and die. Instead, they thoroughly embarrassed the Lakers with a combination of aggressive and consistent defense, textbook hustle and teamwork, and unlikely heroes — chief among them point guard Aaron Brooks with 34 points and forward Shane Battier with 23 points, 15 of them on 3-pointers. Four different Rockets were in double-figures, even though arguably the most high-profile Rocket on the floor, guard Ron Artest, had a poor offensive day (only 4 for 19 for 8 points). The Lakers gave up 11 turnovers, most of them early in the game when the outcome was at least arguably still in doubt, and they let their frustration show with two technical fouls. With his teammates' help, Battier — who in my humble opinion is the smartest and most underrated player in the NBA, and therefore among the most appealing underdogs to root for — also held Kobe Bryant to a pathetic 15 points, turning the Lakers' superstar into a complete non-factor. Very sweet!

But even that was not, to me, quite as sweet as the performance on Friday of the Johnston Middle School Greyhounds in the HISD-wide "Name That Book" competition. The third-place finish city-wide, on the heels of a second-place result at the initial competition during the previous week, marked Johnston's best showing in sponsor and JMS librarian Delores Sellin's memory. And among the celebrants was my youngest, Molly, fourth from the left (with the purple sleeve) in the photo below:

Happy Mother's Day to all mothers out there, and especially to my ex. (The promised review of the new Star Trek movie will probably have to wait until next weekend; we rearranged some schedules to guarantee her some extra snuggle-time with four kids who are increasingly hard to get all together in one place at one time.)

Review: Beldar & kids see "Duplicity"

"Twisty!"

That's the one-word verdict of my son Adam on the corporate espionage thriller, Duplicity, which he, my daughter Molly, and I saw early this afternoon. Molly and I not only joined in that verdict, but concurred with Adam's degree of substantial satisfaction in pronouncing it.

This is a slow time of year at the box office, and today was one of those days when we'd decided to go to the movies with no clear intention as to what we'd see. If we'd arrived an hour later, we might have instead seen 17 Again, despite Adam's objection that its male lead, Zac Efron, has a distractingly truncated first name.

But "Duplicity" dives immediately into a twisting and turning plot — if you leave for five minutes mid-movie to get fresh popcorn, you'll pay a heavy price — and although its trailers and advertising (warning: noisy website) certainly led one to expect double-crosses and surprises, it has an adequate combination of freshness and misdirection to avoid obvious clichés or predictable plot kinks.

I began convinced that Julia Roberts had been miscast as the female lead in this movie: She looked all of her 41 years, and perhaps a few more. I suspect, in fact, that the filmmakers deliberately avoided the flattering makeup, wardrobe, and lighting that might have knocked a few years off her apparent age, because her actual age better fit the character she was playing — someone neither overly lush nor brittle, but of whom an unkind (and yes, sexist) westerner might still say, "That's a mare, not a filly, and she looked like she'd been rode hard and put up wet." Ms. Roberts is still a striking, sexy woman. But I don't think anyone would use the terms "girlish" or "wicked hot" to describe her in this movie — in contrast to, for example, Charlize Theron in The Italian Job. And Ms. Roberts was less glamorous than, say, a comparably mature Rene Russo opposite Pierce Brosnan in the 1999 remake of The Thomas Crown Affair.

Clive Owen I can take or leave, and I might have been more receptive to whatever on-screen chemistry he developed with Ms. Roberts if I hadn't already watched her and Rupert Everett's campy but sexless on-screen relationship in My Best Friend's Wedding three or four times on late-night cable/satellite channels. I'd seen, but almost forgotten, Mr. Owen's and Ms. Roberts' performances as romantic interests in 2004's Closer; but perhaps to the extent it was in my subconscious, that quirky film ended up diluting rather than intensifying their on-screen chemistry for purposes of this one. A British accent and a muscular and dark-haired chest make for interchangeable leading-men hunks these days — all of them, as far as I can tell, living off the glorious, reflected, but fading sort of charm defined by Cary Grant and Sean Connery. In any event, Mr. Owen ended up being good enough, and occasionally drolly funny. And Ms. Roberts ended up being better than I expected, delivering a somewhat low-wattage but nevertheless persuasive performance.

The supporting cast, however, was simply terrific — better than the leads, better than the directing, and better than the script. Tom Wilkinson and Paul Giamatti, as rival CEOs from "Equicrom" and "Burkett & Randle" (think Unilever and Procter & Gamble), very nearly stole the show from Mr. Owen and Ms. Roberts. Mr. Wilkinson's performance was as subdued and guileful as Mr. Giamatti's was spittle-flecked and trenchant, but both were entirely credible and compelling. Carrie Preston had a small part that she turned into pure gold, as did Kathleen Chalfant, but the whole cast shone — and did so without the sort of "Oh, it's my turn now, and aren't I precious!" mugging that I found offputting in films like Ocean's Eleven and its sequels.

In the pantheon of twisty films, this one wasn't remotely as good as The Sting — but then, if you only watch films that deservedly win Best Picture and six other Oscars (with nine total nominations), you're going to run out of entertainment pretty soon. My ultimate but simple test is whether I regret spending the money for the ticket after seeing a movie in the theaters — and I don't regret the price I paid for me, Adam, and Molly to see "Duplicity." It gets a solid "thumbs up" from each of us.

Will you suffer if you wait for "Duplicity" to come out on cable/satellite? No, probably not; and in fact, I'll almost certainly watch it again, TiVo'd so I can replay my favorite scenes and really count the clues, when it does. Even after seeing this movie, you won't quite know the ultimate corporate secret — the difference between creams and lotions — but if you're in the mood to go out for a movie during this season of slim pickings, you could certainly do worse than this one.

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UPDATE (Sun Apr 19 @ 6:45pm): Mild spoilers follow, along with some real-world perspectives that are less flattering to this movie and to Hollywood in general:

Like almost every other Hollywood movie of the last forty years, this one treats the corporate world with near-complete disdain and paints with a ridiculously overbroad brush that has indeed grown tired and clichéd. I'm thoroughly sick of corporations being universally portrayed as wicked and lawless, indeed murderous. And gentle readers, I've been a courtroom lawyer defending many of the real-life analogs to those vilified in movies, and I've seen their privileged internal documents, so don't start trying to argue to me that these Hollywood hatchet-jobs are "fake but accurate" or that they're portraying some fundamental and universal truth about corporate America or the international corporate world. These movies are naïve and paranoid fantasies for the most part, grossly distorted and blown entirely out of proportion by Hollywood to serve their secular god of political correctness.

2007's Michael Clayton — by the same screenwriter/director who wrote and directed "Duplicity," Tony Gilroy — was just another ridiculous example of the same ridiculous genre: Every pesticide company in Hollywood movies is all about killing children and polluting the universe, never about increasing harvests to feed real-life starving children. Every pharmaceutical company in Hollywood movies is all about inflicting birth defects or horrible addictions on the sick and the infirm, never about actually curing them or improving the quality of their lives. But in the real world, if there is an "industrial community" on the face of the earth whose citizens disproportionately deserve horse-whipping for systematically lying and distorting the truth, it's the community whose local industry is motion pictures. Consider this Q&A in an interview in which Gilroy was discussing and describing "Duplicity" and his earlier films:

Your movies are fiction but based on facts — is that it?

I have a chance to get at the essential truth. I can show what's going on without being tethered to the facts.

May heaven spare us from liberal filmmakers who are "un-tethered to the facts" — that is, absolutely free to tell deliberate and egregious lies — but free to present their "essential truths." That was exactly the rationale used by propagandists for Hitler, Stalin, and Mao in their day, and that's still being used by propagandists for the Castro brothers, Kim Jong-il, and Hugo Chávez.

Although their intrigues skirt and sometimes cross the lines of what's legal, the "corporate bad guys" in "Duplicity" at least aren't into mass murder, though, so I suppose we can be thankful for small favors. In fact, some of the plot threads that are least convincingly tied up involve blown covers which apparently have no on-screen results — as if corporate espionage agents are routinely set free after being caught red-handed in activities that are indeed illegal and would indeed, in the real world, result in arrests and prosecutions.

My approving review of this movie is premised solely on its entertainment value. And in my original review, I discounted to zero its further contribution to Hollywood's mountains of lies about the corporate world. If I only went to see, or praised, new releases that depicted the corporate world fairly and accurately, I might as well delete the "Film/TV/Stage" tag from my blog and stop publishing reviews altogether. It's a shame that we live in a society in which "Duplicity" can earn even faint praise by only slightly exaggerating corporate competitiveness. But that indeed is the world in which we live, and that is the cognitive dissonance that Hollywood inflicts upon the world's citizens who watch its paranoid fantasies during their time off from real-world jobs working for the same companies whom Hollywood so ruthlessly demonizes (while ignoring, by and large, the real demons and villains of the world).

Beldar & daughter catch the Houston Dynamo's season opener

Last night, I attended my first-ever professional football game — errr, well, perhaps I should say professional fútbol game — along with my youngest daughter, Molly, and several members of her middle school soccer team. It was the season opener for the Houston Dynamo, the 2006 and 2007 Major League Soccer champions.

As arranged by their coach, Sarah Rogers, Molly and her teammates (along with several other young teams) were invited onto the Robertson Stadium field at the beginning of the game to make a "spirit tunnel" to welcome the visiting-team players to Houston — in this instance, last year's MLS champion, the Columbus Crew.

Molly and I could have a good time going just about anywhere, but I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed the game. The amount of sheer athleticism — speed, body control, and ball-handling dexterity — was obvious even to as unsophisticated a fan as I am. Having the big-screen monitor in the south end-zone on which to watch replays of the most spectacular moments was also a big plus, since it's all too easy to be looking around elsewhere at the particular moment something spectacular happens.

The crowd was a much broader cross-section of Houston than you'd typically see at a Rockets or Texans game — and much more family-oriented. And with just over 16,000 in attendance, Robertson Stadium was full enough to feel like there was a "big crowd," and yet there was enough room for people (including their kids) to wiggle and spread out a bit.

And it was a happy, friendly crowd — with everyone enjoying a beautiful clear spring evening, and lots of very good-natured home-team spirit. All in all, in comparison to other professional sporting events I've been to, I think this was probably the most ... mellow.

Of course there were pretty young women — not limited to the Dynamo Girls who danced at halftime.

The game ended in a 1-1 tie, and it seemed to me that both teams were indeed pretty evenly matched. To invoke a Darrell Royalism, a tie may be like kissin' your sister, but losing is like having to kiss your grandmother, and this was better'n that.

Molly and I resolved to see more Dynamo games this year, and to drag some of her siblings along next time to get them exposed to the sport at this level too.

Takedown and pin

Regular readers, long-suffering souls that you be, may recall this same handsome young man's photo in a post from last February that also included a video clip. Through an act of great self-discipline, I'm going to limit myself to no more than two posts, and only a later one with video, in which I will permit myself to brag on that same young man's wrestling during this season, at least through the district competition next month. (But If he advances from that meet, all bets are off, and I may blog about his achievements with uncontrolled euphoria.)

My sixteen-year-old son, Adam Jackson Dyer, is in his second season as a wrestler on Bellaire High School's varsity team. November, December, and January have been busy months in the 2008-2009 wrestling season, and my personal goal as a fan and supportive parent this year has been to make it to all of their matches — which partly explains my infrequent blogging lately. All of the matches so far are really just preparation for the "official" competition through the Texas University Interscholastic League in February: Wins and losses now do affect one's seeding for the district UIL meets, but they're mostly just for practice and "mat time." The entire Bellaire team is much improved this year, in large part thanks to the efforts of its coaches, Dr. Marcellars Mason and Coach Greg Menephee, and team captains including the incomparable Jonathan Eagleson, who's such a long-time and close friend of the Dyer family that he, like his older brother Christopher, is almost like a surrogate son/brother. And with their help and the further experience he's gotten so far this year, Adam has advanced considerably in skill and confidence as a competitive wrestler.

Although I'm trying to catch up, I still don't know enough about the sport to provide much insightful commentary. Here, though, are a series of photos from a dramatic meet this past Wednesday, January 14th, at which teams from St. John's and Bellaire visited Kinkaid.

Kinkaid and St. John's are both exclusive private schools with superb facilities and long traditions of both athletic and scholastic excellence. I gather that they're arch rivals of one another, so it was gratifying, and somewhat amusing, to hear each of them root for Bellaire's wrestlers against the other's. Adam had a good night against both opponents' in his 152-pound weight class, winning both matches with pins even though both of his opponents were solid wrestlers who obviously were highly motivated and had been well coached. These images, screen-captures from an HD video, can only give you a hint of the speed, power, and controlled violence in these matches.

The first screencap is mid-way through the second two-minute period against Adam's counterpart from St. John's — the first period having expired with each wrestler tied in points and neither showing a particular advantage over the other. In this shot, however, at 7:40:17 PM, Adam (on the left, in the singlet whose red stripes extend down his leg on both sides and with the gray shoes and green ankle band) has just managed to get the grasp he'd been seeking on his opponent's neck. (Note: Wrestlers make incredible faces and noises, most of which are evidence of concentration and effort, but some of which indeed are evidence of pain and frustration. I have yet to see a parent of a wrestler dash onto the mat to "save" his or her child, but I am thoroughly convinced that every parent watches every match with, proverbially and metaphorically, his/her heart in his/her throat, praying that no one will be injured and that the pain will soon end.) 

Below, at 7:40:18 PM (fractions of a second later), Adam (behind, facing camera) is beginning to twirl his opponent around to his right, still with that same headlock grip.

By 7:40:19 PM in the next screencap, below, Adam (right) is continuing the twirl, but beginning to exert twisting pressure too.

By 7:40:21 PM in the next screencap, below, Adam's opponent (right) has slowed the twirl with a strong plant of his left foot. Unfortunately for him, that becomes the pivot point for what's about to happen next.

Below, still at 7:40:21, Adam (in back, mostly hidden in shadow) has his opponent mid-flip onto his back. More than any other moment, this screencap tells the tale of this entire match. Note the full extension of Adam's left leg, from which he's launched this move.

And in the screencap below, at 7:40:22 PM, Adam's opponent has been taken down — cleanly, without injury, but in a hard twisting fall that could not help but knock a fair amount of wind from his lungs. Adam has already continued spinning around so that his body has ended up perpendicular to his opponent's as his opponent landed on his back:

Fractions of a second later — at 7:40:23 PM as measured by the camcorder from which these screencaps were taken — Adam (on top) is trying to turn this take-down into a pin. His opponent struggles valiantly, slamming his left foot to the mat, and next the right, wriggling like a fish, rolling hard from shoulder-blade to shoulder-blade to keep both from touching the mat and Adam from achieving even a moment of control. The opponent knows, surely, that he's in trouble, but he's not quite finished yet. If only Adam loses his grasp, or sneezes, or the second period expires — something ....

But Adam permits no escape, no reversal — at least not this time. The combination of physics, geometry, and through them, wrestling technique will have their inexorable way. By 7:40:25 PM — a mere eight seconds after this sequence of screencaps began — Adam (on top), as shown in the screencap below, is on the toes of both feet, with his knees off the mat, forming the widest possible triangle to concentrate all of his weight and force and will-power chest-to-chest on his opponent. His opponent is short of breath, without leverage, without ready means to escape the hold Adam still has on him, and unable to resist all that pressure. Adam has demonstrated unequivocal control. And moments later, the referee pounds his palm to the mat to signify the pin:

I'm not posting these screencaps under the illusion that this is a "perfect" or even "exemplary" set of moves. I pretend to no objectivity, I admit to overwhelming bias, and I and still have only the slightest knowledge of wrestling's basic vocabulary and concepts. Indeed, I'm probably going to embarrass my son, whose knowledge is still fledgling but vastly exceeds my own, by overt mistakes or less obvious omissions in my descriptions here. As does he, I have enormous regard for the opponents my son has faced, including this young man from St. John's; this match could easily have gone the other way in just as short a time, because they were well matched. Nor do I intend to disparage anyone who's a participant in or fan of more popular sports like football or baseball, for I knew nothing of serious wrestling as I was growing up, and like most Texans I thought there were really only four sports: football, basketball, baseball, and spring football.

But in addition to my natural fatherly pride that my son is applying himself earnestly and with good results to this endeavor, I can't help but marvel at the purity and elemental beauty of this old, maybe oldest, of sports. It seems so simple, with two evenly matched young men (and, indeed, sometimes young women) holding each other at arms' length as they do halting, asynchronous dance steps around one another — and then suddenly one of them who knows even a little bit about what he (or she) is doing suddenly does something which looks like magic, just a glimmer too fast to even catch on slo-mo instant replay sometimes — and WHOOPS!, the other guy (or gal) is on his back, pinned. Low-tech and old-school. But way cool.

Of Sputnik babies, paratroopers, and senators: Why Caroline Kennedy's "qualifications" are a bad joke

The first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, was launched on October 4, 1957, and burned up upon re-entering Earth's atmosphere on January 4, 1958. About mid-way through its effective life, on November 26, 1957, my mom launched me in Lamesa, Texas. And on the very next day, in New York City, Jackie Kennedy launched her daughter, Caroline Bouvier Kennedy. Caroline Kennedy and I are thus "of an age" — meaning we're both now 51, and that we're both "of" the "Space Age." We're both tail-end Baby Boomers, but more specifically, we're "Sputnik babies" whose very pregnant mothers perhaps looked for that same unblinking point of light crossing the same night skies, albeit half a continent apart from one another.

I remember watching Caroline Kennedy and her brother John-John on television at their father's funeral in November 1963. I remember being told that she and I were almost exactly the same age. I felt very sad for her, and I've been aware ever since that while her life has been filled with certain kinds of privileges, growing up with a daddy has not been one of them. I, by contrast, was able to celebrate my dad's 86th birthday with him this Christmas Eve just past — and I would not trade that, nor the years in between, for all of Caroline Kennedy's fortune and privilege. She seems like a nice person, and although my politics differ from hers as dramatically as the circumstances of our respective upbringings, on a personal level I wish her nothing but good things and happiness.

But I've been baffled and dismayed that she, or anyone else, has tried to make a serious argument that Caroline Kennedy is well qualified to become the next junior United States Senator from New York.

I will concede that she's minimally qualified — which is to say, per section 3 of Article I of the Constitution, she has indeed "attained ... the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States." I would also agree that the current junior U.S. Senator from New York was not much, if any, better qualified before she was elected to that office. And I will stipulate that from time to time throughout our history there have been many other U.S. Senators, from not just New York but every state at some time or another, whose qualifications were also objectively poor. Some of them nevertheless turned into adequate or even better legislators once in office. These things are not in dispute.

Yet as I've watched and listened to Ms. Kennedy discuss her purported qualifications to become Hillary Clinton's successor during press interviews, I've felt a mix of astonishment, amusement, and pity.

Ms. Kennedy says, for example, "I am a lawyer." That is true in exactly the same sense that I could say "I am a paratrooper."

I haven't actually ever been in the Army, you see. But I own a pair of camouflage pants, and I did take a weekend skydiving course and made — and survived! — one static-line jump from 2000 feet while I was in college!  Ms. Kennedy is, likewise, a law school graduate and a member of the bar in both New York State and the District of Columbia (I suspect at least one of those via reciprocity, rather than her having taken and passed both bar exams, but that's just a guess). But she's no more actually practiced law than I've secured the Arnhem bridge as part of Operation Market Garden. If both of us are being really honest in describing ourselves, I'd say I'm a lawyer, and she'd say she's an unemployed heiress.

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In Sunday's New York Times Magazine, however, Lisa Belkin — described by the NYT as a "a contributing writer and author of the [NYT-hosted] Motherlode blog" — makes yet another serious effort to refute those who've questioned Ms. Kennedy's objective and non-dynastic qualifications. The only possible way to do that, however, is to either (a) change the definition of what it means to be "qualified," (b) expand the list of experience types which can lead to becoming "qualified," or (c) do both. Ms. Belkin ambitiously tries for option (c).

Ms. Belkin tries to persuade us that we ought to change our ideas about what it means to be "qualified" by trying to ridicule other purportedly unqualified people who've nevertheless gone to Congress: "Those who aspire to serve in Congress sometimes 'pay their dues' by playing for the N.B.A. or the N.F.L. or starring on 'The Love Boat,' which are all less relevant qualifications for the job than financing city schools."

But playing sports does involve teamwork and discipline, and acting involves communication skills — all qualities that Ms. Kennedy has yet to demonstrate that she possesses. Whether it was on the set of "The Love Boat" or the floor of the U.S. House, Fred Grandy certainly managed to speak without embarrassing tangles of "ya knows" and "umms." And does anyone who's heard them both speak doubt that former Congressman and Sooner QB J.C. Watts could eat Caroline Kennedy's lunch (and then drink her milkshake) in any kind of political debate?

I will grant that Caroline Kennedy is probably gangbusters at twisting arms or guilting vast numbers of rich friends, classmates, and wanna-be Kennedy groupies into donating lots and lots of money that they can well afford. But that's hardly the same thing as actually running even a single school, or a single classroom. Hell, nobody has ever doubted Rod Blagojevich's prowess as a fund-raiser. I'd be far more impressed with Caroline Kennedy if instead of an unpaid no-need-to-show-up fund-raising "job" for the New York schools, she'd actually spent even a few weeks substitute-teaching a seventh grade civics class.

To persuade us to ignore such traditional qualifications as prior public service in a lesser elected office, or military service, or executive service running a business, Ms. Belkin points out that Ms. Kennedy "has served on boards — those of the Commission on Presidential Debates, the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation — where those who worked with her agree that she was hands-on and not just window decoration." But did she have any qualification for any of those positions other than being a Kennedy? And even as a "hand-on" board member, did she ever do anything but attend meetings with other wealthy, famous board members, at which they all listened to reports and then cast mostly unanimous votes? If you told me she actually ran the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense and Educational Fund, or that she had executive or operational experience of any sort in any of these organizations, then that might suggest that she had acquired some wisdom or skills which she could potentially use as a U.S. Senator. But with due respect to Ms. Belkin and to Ms. Kennedy, there ought to be something more required by way of qualifications for the U.S. Senate than a demonstrated ability to show up and vote "yay" or "nay" on other people's ideas and hard work.

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So then Ms. Belkin approaches and perhaps crosses into a sexist argument. It's one that may be patronizing and offensive to women who've actually had both successful families and successful careers outside the home — a category of women which (were they still alive) would include both my own mother and Caroline Kennedy's:

[W]omen changed the culture of the workplace, not least when highly visible women began to leave it. The rhythm of office work — its hours, its demands, its life cycle — is designed for a man, ideally a man with a wife back home with the kids. Ever since the industrial age, career tracks have been built on the assumption that you can work around the clock in your 20s, shoulder increasing responsibility in your 30s and 40s and begin to ratchet down and move over for the next generation in your 50s and 60s.

That doesn’t work for many women, who are apt to want to pause, physically and emotionally, for children, maybe slow down in their 30s, when men are charging ahead, and come back with a new energy in their 50s, when men are slowing down. Someday, perhaps, work will become more a lattice than a ladder — a path that allows for moving up, stepping down a notch or two, taking a few large sideways strides, making your way upward but not necessarily at a sprint....

But this vision works only if experience — we’re back to that word again — is redefined. If what you do, and think, and produce, and change all count — even if none of your activities take place in an office, where you enjoy a title and a salary....

I agree with part of this. I'm one of those people, for example, who thinks that Barack Obama's experience as a father is at least a small plus in his thin list of credentials. And I'm certainly one of those people who's impressed that Sarah Palin could address a governor's conference in Texas, fly back to Alaska to give birth to her fifth child, and then resume her work as a public servant after a break measured in hours instead of weeks or months.

I don't think you need to diminish those of either sex who have climbed ladders, however, by pretending that lattices are exactly the same. And I don't think we should pretend that presiding over a family dinner table is comparable to presiding over a presidential cabinet meeting either. But provided that we're still talking about identifying genuine excellence and extraordinary achievement of some sort, then I'm open to considering non-traditional categories in which that excellence and achievement can be manifested, and I'm also open to further consideration of why those categories ought be counted as senatorial qualifications. So let's take Ms. Belkin's prescription on its own terms:

Q: Whether in an office with a title and a salary or not, what precisely has Caroline Kennedy ever "done, thought, produced, or changed" that we should count as a sound qualification for her to become the next junior U.S. Senator from New York?

A: [For sound effects comprising answer, click here.]

I'm emphatically not insisting upon conventional achievements. If Caroline Kennedy's particular genius was that she figured out how to make one 20-count package of Pampers meet all of an infant's diapering needs for six full weeks, I'd be very impressed by that, even though she didn't have an office and wasn't a vice president of product research for Procter and Gamble. Or if she'd done some substitute teaching, for instance, and had gotten every single student in a seventh grade civics class to understand that Article I of the Constitution is about Congress — a datum which Joe Biden, the very Vice President-elect whom she helped Barack Obama select, hasn't quite managed to figure out despite his own law degree and years on the Senate Judiciary Committee — then point that out to me. Just show me something, anything, that she's done, thought, produced, or changed that is genuinely impressive. And then we can talk about whether it's the sort of "impressive" that ought to count as a legitimate senatorial qualification.

But after working up all that righteous indignation (and going out of her way to insult poor Fred Grandy), Ms. Belkin utterly fails to make any persuasive showing that Caroline Kennedy is qualified even under her (Ms. Belkin's) expanded and re-defined terms. Indeed, with this sentence at the beginning of her concluding paragraph, Ms. Belkin practically flees the debate hall: "None of this is to say that Caroline Kennedy deserves to be senator, or that she wouldn’t be better off being elected to the post rather than appointed to it." Well, duh. If that's not a grand-scale cop-out, I guess it's just a wild coincidence that the first eight paragraphs of the op-ed were about Caroline Kennedy at all then, huh?

*******

Let's grant Ms. Belkin's point, gentle readers, that some types of "untraditional [experience should] count" at least some times and in some ways. But let's grant, too, what's obvious even so to anyone with an ounce of intellectual honesty:

Whether appointed, elected, or otherwise anointed, and whether based on conventional or unconventional standards of achievement and experience, Caroline Kennedy does not deserve, and is not well qualified, to be a U.S. Senator — no more than either she or I deserve or are well qualified to be paratroopers. An accident of both our births made us Sputnik babies, and an accident of her birth, combined with her family's tragic fate, made her into a sadly beloved American princess. Grown-up princesses who actually govern, however, are only for fairy-tales, and the accident of Caroline Kennedy's birth ought not make her into a United States Senator.

Review: Beldar & kids see Jim Carrey's "Yes Man"

My oldest daughter, Sarah, was working today, but I took my sons Kevin and Adam and my younger daughter Molly to a Saturday afternoon movie matinée. None of the choices were terribly appealing, but they opted to take a chance on Jim Carrey's latest comedy, "Yes Man." My kids liked it quite a bit better than I did — Molly and Kevin gave it four stars on a zero-to-five scale, and Adam gave it three, but I would only give it one.

I am certain that at some point during the earliest planning for this movie, someone made the inevitable observation that "Gee, this script reminds me a whole lot of Jim Carrey's hit from just over a decade ago, 'Liar Liar.'" And that observation ought to have triggered some serious second-thinking and re-writing. But it didn't. The result is a film that's completely predictable, from the first frames to the closing credits — a film that lacks even the dramatic arc of a sleazy lawyer's eventual redemption. Other one-word descriptions that I'd consider apt include stale, boring, tedious, and trite.

My kids and I did find leading lady Zoey Deschanel appealing and funny, and according to imdb.com, she and Carrey actually share the same birthday — January 17th. The problem is that hers was in 1980, making her a still very young-looking 28, whereas his was in 1962 (and he looks it). They are simply not a credible couple. Indeed, Carrey reminds me more and more of Jerry Lewis at the same stage of his career, struggling in an ever less successful, ever more painful effort to simulate youth through a goofy, zaney affect. (Maybe the reason my kids found this less sad than I did was that they haven't got a clue who Jerry Lewis is.)

Indeed, this movie even manages to make super-model Molly Sims, in a too-brief supporting role as Carrey's equally improbable ex-wife, look comparatively unglamorous. Her presence in the movie, however, gives me more than enough of a fair-use excuse to republish this fabulous photo of Ms. Sims, not from "Yes Man" but from the 2004 Sports Illustrated swimsuit model collection, just to illuminate — as a matter of public interest and, umm, intellectual artistic commentary — the potential squandered by Warner Bros.

And on that note, and with that visual, I'll wish you all a Happy New Year!

Conversations with Molly

My Monday afternoon guest-post at HughHewitt.com is about a conversation I had with my youngest daughter this afternoon regarding spreading the wealth.

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[Copied here for archival purposes on November 5, 2008, from the post linked above at HughHewitt.com.]

(Guest Post by Bill Dyer a/k/a Beldar)

"Grades come out tomorrow," said my daughter Molly, an eighth grader, when I picked her up at school this afternoon.

"Great," I answered, "How d'ya think you're gonna do?"

"Pretty well," Molly said confidently.

"What will probably be your best grade?" I asked.

"Guitar," she said, "That will probably be a 97 or a 98."

"Cool," I said. "You really have been successful. But I think you should tell your Guitar teacher that you want to give six or seven of those points to some of your classmates who haven't practiced so hard or don't have the talent you have."

She looked up at me, startled. "What?"

"That class is easy for you, and you have lots more points than you need for an A. They need those points more than you do," I explained.

"Then they should have worked harder!" she protested. "Yeah, I'm sort of talented, but I worked hard to get those grades! I earned them!"

"So you're telling me that you think it's fair for you to get to keep all of those good grades, both the part that comes from your having worked harder than your classmates, and the part that comes from the musical talent you inherited from me and your mom. Is that what you're saying?"

"Well, yeah!"

 

"Show me your lunchbox," I said. She looked at me strangely again, but found it on the floorboard and held it up.

I pointed at the "Barack Obama" sticker on its side, which she got from my ex. "That guy," I said, "wants to use the tax laws to take away more of the money that wealthy people have, whether they got it by working harder or because their parents worked harder to be able to give it to them. He says other people need that money more. He thinks we need to spread the wealth around.

"What I was saying when you first got in the car," I continued, "is just that we should spread your grade wealth around. You disagreed. Good for you. I don't really think your Guitar teacher should do that anyway. But let me ask you another question."

"Okay," she said, listening thoughtfully.

"Let's say even though you object, your Guitar teacher decides to spread your grades around to the other students in your class. Do you think you'll work as hard to get top grades during the next nine weeks?"

"No way!" she said.

I just pointed at the sticker on her lunchbox again. We spent the rest of the short drive to her mom's house in contemplative silence.

— Beldar

Bill Ayers, Eagle Scout from Hell

My family history in Scouting may have caused me to over-react in my late-night guest-post about an op-ed about Bill Ayers at HughHewitt.com. But I can't think of any rank or position that's more inappropriate to use as a comparison for that twisted dollop of evil scum than "Eagle Scout."

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[Copied here for archival purposes on November 5, 2008, from the post linked above at HughHewitt.com.]

(Guest Post by Bill Dyer a/k/a Beldar)

Thomas Frank's op-ed in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal, entitled My Friend Bill Ayers, is the latest effort to "mainstream" Ayers by minimizing his past, misleading as to his purported (and actually non-existent) contrition, and ignoring the radical nature of his current professional efforts.

Mr. Frank's byline reveals that he has a PhD in history, and that he writes about American culture (most recently in a vile book called "What's the Matter With Kansas," in which he savages the "red state mentality" of the same American heartland state whose values Barack Obama's grandparents supposedly imparted unto The One as a child). But Mr. Frank's essay quickly casts doubts about the depth and accuracy of his knowledge of either American history or American culture: Mr. Frank claims that Ayers "may once have been wanted by the FBI, but in the intervening years the man has become such a good citizen he ought to be an honorary Eagle Scout."

*******

My family's roots in scouting date back to the early 1920s, when my grandfather founded "Troop 1," the first troop in west Texas. My father and older brother were both Eagle Scouts, and all three of us were proud members of the Order of the Arrow. When I first read his op-ed, I wondered if Mr. Frank had confused the Boy Scouts with the Young Pioneers of Soviet Russia. But I think even they gave demerits for chanting slogans like the one Ayers made famous: "Kill your parents!"

I hate to break it to Mr. Frank, but I'm very, very sure that in American scouting, there is no merit badge for bomb-building. There is no merit badge for revolutionary indoctrination of teachers and students. There is no merit badge for snagging millions of dollars of grant money to pay salaries for leftist radicals and their pet educational projects, nor a scouts summer camp called "Camp Graft." Neither Che Guevara nor Hugo Chavez is considered a Boy Scout hero. Scouts learn to survive in the wild, but not in order to escape FBI dragnets. Scouts learn to tie knots for many purposes, but never for tying up hostages. The Scout Motto, "Be Prepared," does not refer to having a revolver close at hand in case you're stopped by the police while driving the get-away car after a bank robbery.

The Scout's Oath begins with the phrase "On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country ...." But Bill Ayers forfeited his honor long ago, and cannot possibly reclaim it until he genuinely and unreservedly repents. The Scout's Oath ends with a commitment that the Scout will keep himself "morally straight," but Bill Ayers was, and still is, a twisted dollop of evil scum.

Boy Scouts salute the American flag, and learn how to raise and lower and fold it with proper reverence. I was my scout troop's bugler. As a junior high and high school student, I played "Taps" at many military funerals during the Vietnam War. I watched many an American flag — indistinguishable from the one Bill Ayers proudly trampled in 2001 while posing for magazine cameras — carefully folded and handed to grieving family members. During those years when I was a Boy Scout bugler in the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, Bill Ayers was trying his best to create more military funerals.

Eagle Scout Bugler Robert Morgan at a military funeral (copyrighted
photo reprinted with his permission from eaglescoutbugler.com)

*******

To show you just how well thought out Mr. Frank's piece is, consider the following paragraph:

I do not defend the things Mr. Ayers did in his Weatherman days. Nor will I quibble with those who find Mr. Ayers wanting in contrition. His 2001 memoir is shot through with regret, but it lacks the abject style our culture prefers.

"Shot through"? Is that just monumental insensitivity, or a deliberate, tasteless joke intended to mock the actual and intended victims of the Weathermen's violence? I honestly can't tell, and frankly I don't care. It's shameful either way.

And it's a flat-out lie to suggest that Ayers is contrite. To the contrary, in an attempt to explain his "we didn't do enough" remark from 2001, he posted a comic strip on his blog in September of this very year which ended with the following present-tense sentence: "I don't think violent resistance is necessarily the answer, but I do think opposition and refusal is imperative." (Boldface mine.) I suppose that means that only the enlightened souls, the real "Eagle Scouts" like him, get to decide which policemen to kill, which soldiers and their dates to blow apart with nail bombs, and which judges and their children to assassinate.

Ultimately Mr. Frank only demonstrates that he's as poor a judge of friends and colleagues as Barack Obama himself. Mr. Frank argues that Ayers is "a man who poses no conceivable threat to the country, who has nothing to do with this year's issues." That pronouncement could only be made by someone who has deliberately blinded himself to Ayers' radical agenda as an educator, or someone who wants your children and mine to learn to be agents of revolutionary action rather than to learn reading, math, or science.

I do wish Sen. Obama would wrap his arms around Bill Ayers just as tightly and publicly as their common friends like Mr. Frank are doing. But Sen. Obama at least has the decency or the political sensitivity to recognize that anyone close to and supportive of Bill Ayers ought to be ashamed — which, of course, is why Sen. Obama has consistently prevaricated about the length, depth, and quality of his own relationship with Ayers.

Maybe, if Ayers comes up in tomorrow night's debate, Sen. Obama will come up with yet another story: "Why, I read just today in the Wall Street Journal that Bill Ayers was an Eagle Scout!"

— Beldar

Why Biden won't be able to do to Palin what Bentsen did to Quayle

Some conservatives are worried that Sarah Palin will become another "Dan Quayle at the Veep debate, being skewered by Lloyd Bentsen."

I've been thinking about that possibility since the Biden nomination. My first reaction was that as a life-long Texan, I knew Lloyd Bentsen (well, actually, my father did); Lloyd Bentsen was my friend. And Joe Biden is no Lloyd Bentsen. Biden is, literally, long of tooth, but on his very best day he doesn't have the gravitas in his whole body that Lloyd Bentsen had in his pinkie even while under general anesthesia.

Nevertheless, as I was driving this afternoon to pick up my youngest daughter — away from the computer keyboard for a while, trying to collect my thoughts — my general giddiness over the Palin pick transmuted itself, and I suddenly started weeping tears of joy. Typically, my thoughts of and about my children are the quickest path to my emotions, and they certainly were in this instance, too. Here's what struck me:

The late Ann Richards, a pioneering woman in Texas politics and a hell of a character, even if you disagreed with her, wasn't the first female governor of Texas. Rather, that honor went to Miriam A. "Ma" Ferguson — and yes, the only reason she was elected (twice, in 1924 and 1932) was because she was the wife of James E. "Pa" Ferguson. She didn't really count; the asterisk is almost bigger than her name, and the "power behind the throne" had all the power, and everyone knew it.

Hillary Clinton came within a whisker of winning the Democratic Nomination, and just like the victory of the black who vanquished her, that was historic. It was symbolic. It trumpets the falling of barriers that I am glad to see fall. Although I was not one of them, I believe I understand the feelings of the many people — and it was not just women — who wept, either with joy at Hillary's accomplishments, or frustration that she fell short, or both.

But Hillary Clinton — however formidable she has become in her own right, and I will be the first to admit that she grew to be far more formidable during this race than I would have ever guessed even a year ago — would not possibly have become the junior senator from New York, nor a presidential candidate of any sort (much less the near-winner in a photo-finish), if she had not first been former President Bill Clinton's wife.

Sarah Palin, by contrast, is the daughter of two school-teachers. Her husband was never the president, and he's far more at home either on the floor of an oil rig or the floor of their kitchen fixing supper for five kids than he is on the floor of a Washington, D.C. banquet hall. Until she was elected governor of Alaska, neither she nor her husband nor her father nor anyone in either of their families was rich, or famous, or powerful.

Yes, being a woman helped get her selected to McCain's ticket sooner than otherwise; but she wasn't picked just because she was a woman, no more than Barack Obama has become the Democratic presidential nominee just because he was black. (Compare Geraldine Ferarro and Jesse Jackson.) Obama and Palin both have real, non-trivial, but subjective qualities that have now brought them out in front of other young female or black politicians into national attention despite their relative inexperience.

Sarah Palin won't have an asterisk, no more than would my own daughters. Or yours. Yes, she'd be the first woman VPOTUS, but not as a stand-in for anyone else. That was the realization which, combined with thoughts of my own two teen angels, uncorked my tear ducts.

And that led me, in turn, to the realization as to why I'm really not worried about Joe Biden trying to repeat the Bentsen-Quayle dynamic. The only reason that line worked so well is because Dan Quayle was indeed trying to be Jack Kennedy, and he so very clearly wasn't.

But Sarah Palin won't be trying to be Jack Kennedy. She doesn't need to.

Being Sarah Palin is plenty cool enough.