The Zeitgeist

  

Bob Crane as Col. Hogan, Steve McQueen in The Great Escape and Frank Sinatra as Col. Ryan

Hogan’s Not-Heroes and Trump’s Wild Card Rants

As a kid one of my favorite TV sitcoms was Hogan’s Heroes. Set in a German POW camp during World War II a group of really sharp Allied prisoners of war (most of them fliers who were shot down or parachuted to safety) were humorously and cleverly outsmarting their dimwitted and bumbling Nazi jailers. Colonel Robert Hogan proudly wore his air force leather jacket and hat through each episode. It never occurred to me that these Allied POWs were anything less than heroes, if even fictionally.

Other cinematic POW high water marks of the time were the movies The Great Escape and Von Ryan’s Express. In both of these films ensemble casts of major Hollywood stars stood up to, undermined and escaped from their enemy captors. It didn’t dawn on me then and it still doesn’t register now that Steve McQueen, James Garner, Frank Sinatra and others were portraying characters that were not heroic by dint of their having been captured by the Krauts. And McQueen and Sinatra both looked as dapper in their Air Force leather as did Bob Crane as Hogan.

But clearly all of my received wisdom from a lifetime of reality and cinema was wrong. Because Donald Trump has decided that John McCain is no war hero for having spent five and a half years as a tortured guest of the North Vietnamese.

McCain was no hero for having become a naval aviator (Top Gun, anyone?) at a time when many, including the aforementioned Mr. Trump used any and every means at their privileged disposal to avoid military service. He was no hero for being shot down while over Hanoi (Trump says he has more respect for those who aren’t captured) and somehow surviving life threatening injuries. He was clearly no hero for enduring sustained physical and psychological brutality because his father was a four-star Admiral serving at that time in the Pacific. He was obviously no hero for having survived what would have surely crippled lesser men, returning home and building a life of accomplishment. What then is heroism to Mr. Trump? Getting shot in the chest or head instead of out of the sky and walking away from that? I suppose that McCain should surrender his medals for having had the temerity to survive being shot out of the air.

In the Tony-award winning show Fiddler on the Roof, there’s a song called “If I Were a Rich Man,” where the show’s hero, the very poor Tevye the Milkman muses about what his life would be like if he had the riches of Croesus (or Trump) at his disposal. There are a few verses that are very apt when applied to Mr. Trump:

The most important men in town would come to fawn on me!
They would ask me to advise them,
Like a Solomon the Wise.
"If you please, Reb Tevye..."
"Pardon me, Reb Tevye..."
Posing problems that would cross a rabbi's eyes!

And it won't make one bit of difference if I answer right or wrong.
When you're rich, they think you really know!

Trump gets ink and airtime not because he’s a greater thinker or leader but because he’s a very, very rich man who doesn’t mind employing his money in the service of espousing his views and because he always says wild and outlandish things. That he’s causing immense damage to the Republican Party must be delighting the magicians and viziers at Hilary Campaign Central.

It should be stated that I’m no big supporter on John McCain the politician. For that matter I’m no fan of John Kerry, our Secretary of State who has had his own military service impugned and maligned. My Dad, 88, served for a little over a year towards the end of World War II in the Naval Air Corps but he was not a pilot and never saw combat. He built and taught others to build machine guns and he also welded planes back together. Because he, McCain, Kerry and millions more men and women donned the uniform of our country and put themselves in harm’s way to defend our freedom, they’re all heroes and no one’s honorable service should be belittled and denigrated.

The bottom line is that being Commander-in-Chief requires a sober and considered temperament because the President makes life and death decisions for service members and for the country as a whole. His or her finger is on the literal button that could send us all to kingdom come. Does Trump have that sober temperament? GOP voters should tell Trump “you’re fired,” and expunge this circus sideshow from serious discourse on the future of our nation and of the world.

The Zeitgeist

ISIS or ISIL head Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. He's no Romeo.

ISIS vs. ISIL. What’s in a Name?

In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the Bard of Stratford posited and Juliet articulated “What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

Juliet, vexed by the danger of a relationship with Romeo by virtue of his family heritage but nevertheless in love with the boy is making the point that who someone is matters more than what that person is called.

On a far less romantic note, way more dangerous than Capulets or Montagues (or Sharks or Jets in the New York iteration) is the Middle Eastern terrorist group alternately known as ISIS or ISIL, against which President Obama has declared war upon.

Thirteen years ago when former President George W. Bush launched the War on Terror, we had no such confusion as to the moniker of our foe, we knew them as al-Qaeda. Today, depending on who you’re listening to, we could be up against two different enemies who are actually one and the same. No, our adversary doesn’t have a split personality disorder – they know quite clearly who they are and what they stand for. We are the ones sowing the confusion.

If you listen to the President, or to John Kerry or to Chuck Hagel or to various members of the defense establishment, we are committed to “degrade and destroy” a group named “ISIL,” which stands for the “Islamic State In the Levant.” However, when watching the news, seeing some members of congress, hearing pundits and talking heads, reading news sites and such we are told that we’re fighting a nefarious organization named “ISIS,” which is short for the “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.”

Within any given newscast, we can see Administration spokespeople wax on about ISIL while the anchors, analysts and correspondents keep saying ISIS, sometimes directly to one another within the same conversation. How are we to agree on a long term strategy to eradicate this evil if we can’t agree on what to call them? A rose by any other name, indeed

I believe we should all agree on “ISIS” and push the Administration to change their tune. Here’s why:

● “ISIS” is easy to pronounce, like “Hamas.” It just sounds better. ISIS is a nemesis. “ISIL” always comes across as awkward; it causes the tongue to make an unnatural pause before saying the next word. ISIS makes for better looking headlines, with the final “S” more graphically attractive than looking at an “L.” If we’re to spend a lot of time over the next few years talking about this group, we should make it as pleasant a linguistic experience as possible.

● “ISIS” sounds like the name of some ominous and dastardly group, like “Kaos” from Get Smart. Would Agents 86 and 99 have made any headway against “Kaol?”  All evil and violent NGOs have cool names.

● “ISIL” on the other hand sounds like the last four letters of some cholesterol, diabetic or cardiac pharmaceutical – the kind that gets advertised all day on CNN, Fox and MSNBC. Is it ennobling to be up against a pill, even if most of these medications warn you of the danger of heart attack, stroke or death?

● The “L” in “ISIL” is for the “Levant,” an old-world word that stands for the Middle East, particularly for the area between the Mediterranean and Iran. Most Americans wouldn’t know where the Levant was if it fell on them – also – why give this group regional status? Isn’t it the President’s objective to bomb them back into some corner or Syria anyway?

There’s a scary-looking black-clad guy named Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi who is the head of ISIS (or ISIL). Perhaps when our team of Navy Seals eventually gets to his lair in Syria, just before we pull the trigger, we can ask him which English-language acronym he prefers? After all, a Caliph should be able to write his own epitaph. Maybe we could send a message to his YouTube account asking him to clarify this debate for us before his next televised beheading?

My bet is al-Baghdadi will go for ISIS as he and his group seem to be very image conscious and media savvy. But in all seriousness, the American people will soon be clamoring for an end to the ISIS-ISIL ping-pong, especially if we’re being asking to support another trillion-dollar war effort. Juliet may not have cared much about names and labels but the American people deserve an adversary whose name is easy to pronounce and as we know from the play, ultimately the names did matter, which is why I’m “pro-ISIS” and “anti-ISIL.”