Bernie's Blog

The Paulsen Effect

by Bernard McCormick Tuesday, October 30, 2012 No Comment(s)

Watching the recent presidential debate, in fact the entire presidential campaign that began four years ago, one is reminded of the late Pat Paulsen, who ran for president any number of times. His campaign was based on saying whatever worked at the time. Example:

Paulsen: “I was in Palm Beach yesterday. What a bunch of phonies. It is so good to be here in Fort Lauderdale with real people. This is where I want to retire someday.”
Interviewer: “But yesterday in Palm Beach you said you loved Palm Beach people, the real Americans compared to all the phonies in New York. You said you wanted to retire there. In fact, everywhere you go you praise the place you are in and knock the place you were in the day before. How do you account for that?”
Paulsen: “I was misquoted.”
Interviewer: “But they have you on film.”
Paulsen: “I was misfilmed.”

He managed to say such stuff with a straight face. Pat Paulsen, of course, was a comedian, a masterful satirist. The people running for president appear to be serious. But they take a page from Paulsen in that they seem unflappably comfortable in saying anything they think their audience wants to hear, even if it is diametrically opposed to what they said the day before.

Mitt Romney seems to be worse than the president in this regard, but both men seem able to balance contradictions with ease. Perhaps one pundit went too far the morning after the first debate when he said Romney is a liar and should be charged with perjury. Better to use a little of Pat Paulsen’s diplomacy and simply call Romney the biggest phoney who ever lived. And we actually liked his father, who was unfairly cast out of serious politics when he said he was “brainwashed” about the Vietnam War. That was the truth; everybody was brainwashed. That is another way of saying somebody lied.

Just because a man has no principle does not mean he can’t be a good president. Richard Nixon was a notorious liar and also a saccharine panderer to our lesser angels. Recall the line: “I’m glad you asked that question. Pat and I were talking about it at home just the other night. She was knitting a flag. I was reading the Constitution.” And yet people give him credit for opening up a dialogue with China and starting the warm relationship where they lend us all their money.

Distasteful as it may be, we ought to get used to candidates saying what they think we want to hear, even if it contradicts everything they said the day before. This scenario is no reflection on the current candidates, and we never called Romney a phoney.

1st Candidate: “I believe we need to help the middle class and let those of us fortunate enough to be wealthy pay a little more.”
2nd Candidate: “That goes for me, too. Except for the rich. I don’t want to raise taxes on anybody, and you can’t raise taxes on the rich without raising taxes on the middle class. I love the middle class, even if most of them are moochers looking for a handout.”
1st Candidate: “You just insulted the middle class.”
2nd Candidate: “No, you did. I love the middle class. And I never called them moochers.”
1st Candidate: “They have you on film.”
2nd Candidate: “I was misfilmed.”
1st Candidate: “You stole that line from Pat Paulsen.”
2nd Candidate: “No, you did. I stole it from a magazine writer.”
1st Candidate: “Then the writer stole it.”
2nd Candidate: “Writers never tell the truth.”
1st Candidate: “Do you ever tell the truth?”
2nd Candidate: “You can’t handle the truth.”
1st Candidate: “You just stole another line!”
2nd Candidate: “Did you say shoot all the immigrants?”
1st Candidate: “I never mentioned immigrants.”
2nd Candidate: “I never said you did.”
1st Candidate: “Oh, shut up.”
2nd Candidate: “You shut up.”
1st Candidate: “You have bad breath.”
2nd Candidate: “You have body odor.”
1st Candidate: “Your girlfriend smells worse.”
Moderator: “Gentlemen, screw you both. We are out of time.”
1st Candidate: “Ask the moderator if you don’t believe me. He just woke up.”
2nd Candidate: “What moderator? You mean that schmuck sitting there?”
1st Candidate: “You just called the moderator a schmuck.”
2nd Candidate: “I never said a bad word about anybody.”
1st Candidate: “It’s late. I hate debating. It’s beneath me. I’m going home.”
2nd Candidate: “Me, too. Let’s go out and have a drink. I never wanted to run anyway. The devil made me do it.”
Moderator: “Thank you gentlemen for this insightful exchange. And God bless America.”

 
The Morning Joe After

by Bernard McCormick Tuesday, October 23, 2012 No Comment(s)

 

 

The great debate was over and it was time for an answer to the question all America has been asking: Is Mike Barnicle an O’Toole? We ask this because the great-great-grandmother’s name was Nora O’Toole, born around 1825 in County Mayo in that little island off the coast of England. You know, the place where Notre Dame plays Navy once in awhile. Nora O’Toole was the mother of Mary Ann Ryan, mother of Kate McNealis, mother of Sara Sweeney, whose son writes this blog.
 
The Barnicle rumor began about 10 years ago when we discovered, after about 150 years of separation, some O’Toole ladies of vintage, who happened to be originally from Clinton, Mass., which is where Nora O’Toole’s relatives wound up after the famine. Now Clinton is close to Worcester, home to Holy Cross and, at one time, Mike Barnicle. It made some sense then when one of the vintage O’Toole ladies said there was some kind of family relationship to Barnicle.
 
We figured sooner or later we’d bump into Barnicle and confirm that fact. Our family likes famous relatives, second only to wealthy ones, so along comes Barnicle as part of the “Morning Joe” show on MSNBC. It was at Racks Downtown Eatery + Tavern in Boca Raton’s Mizner Park. And did you know that the restaurant is not even owner Gary Rack’s primary business? The Cardinal Gibbons graduate is in the steel business with a fabricating plant in Boone, N.C., also home to Appalachian State.
 
Back on topic, the show was in Boca to cover the great debate last night, which if you can believe the people on the show, was a runaway romp for President Obama. And you usually can believe the show – at least people in Washington seem to feel that way. Although MSNBC is roughly the flip side of Fox News, “Morning Joe” makes an effort to listen, and comment intelligently, on both sides of an issue. Joe Scarborough is a former congressman from the Pensacola area and often proclaims himself a conservative Republican, Michael Steele, a frequent member of his posse, is former chairman of the Republican National Committee. Guests come from both sides of the aisle, such as Sen. John McCain, who along with Tom Brokaw and Zbigniew Brzezinski, was a star of today’s event. Brzezinski is no relation to the other co-host, Mika Brzezinski, except her father. They may be the only two people in the free world who can get the spelling of both his names right.
 
Although the show is heavily political, it lightens up with talk of sports, especially when guests come on with strong regional loyalties. Co-host Willie Geist started in sports broadcasting. It allows important and often partisan guests to come off as regular folks who appear to enjoy themselves as much as the host panel. If today was any example, they aren’t faking a bit, mingling and joking with the audience during commercial timeouts and weather sessions. It was just a lot of fun.
 
And we finally got to ask Mike Barnicle the question all America wants to know.
 
“Do you have the name O’Toole in your family history?” we asked.
 
“No,” he said.
 
Damn, maybe it was the Ryan side. After all, Pat Ryan once owned a bar in Worcester. We lost track of him in 1884.
The Silence of the Kennedys

by Bernard McCormick Tuesday, October 16, 2012 1 Comment(s)

Gaeton Fonzi died in late August. Arlen Specter died Sunday. Thus are gone within six weeks of each other two men whose paths crossed dramatically in connection with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It was Specter, who as a junior counsel to the Warren Commission in the 1960s came up with the “magic bullet” theory, which was necessary to pin the crime on a lone assassin – Lee Harvey Oswald. It was Fonzi who, after interviewing Specter, was one of the first to write in a magazine article that the theory was impossible. Fonzi wrote how the normally smooth-talking Specter, stumbled and fumbled trying to explain his theory. Specter went on to a long career as a U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, but was increasingly dogged by the criticism that, intentionally or not, he had blown an investigation of monumental importance.
 
Fonzi later got a close-up look at the assassination as a government investigator for two congressional committees in the 1970s. What he saw convinced him that there was a conspiracy to kill JFK, and a second conspiracy, largely orchestrated by the CIA, to cover up the nature of the crime.
First, in Gold Coast magazine in 1980, and 13 years later in his book The Last Investigation, Fonzi described the frustration of trying to solve a murder, when at every turn agents of the U.S. government blocked a serious inquiry into the background of the crime of the century. That book had little impact when published, but over the years has inspired many researchers who used his work as a template, so that upon his death The New York Times called his book “an iconic work” regarded as one of the best ever on the assassination.
Still, some people wonder if we will ever know the full details of the crime and why it has been so difficult for conscientious investigators to explain. Only in recent years has it become apparent that one reason, if not the central reason, was that almost from the day in Dallas in 1963, Robert Kennedy, and by extension over the years the Kennedy family, did not want the truth known.
In books such as David Talbot’s Brothers and James Douglass’ JFK and the Unspeakable it has become known that Robert Kennedy sensed the nature of the conspiracy almost from the day it happened. One of his first calls was to John McCone, director of the CIA, asking if his agency was involved. McCone, a Kennedy appointee, clearly had no idea. He was out of the loop of the network of men who hated JFK for his refusal to attack Cuba and to agree to remove missiles from Turkey during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.
It appears that Robert Kennedy also sensed that those behind the murder had connections to a group he was personally overseeing, men with a mission to kill Fidel Castro. And he may have known Oswald was an intelligence agent set up by the conspirators to appear to be a Castro sympathizer to justify an attack on Cuba. Since President Kennedy had agreed to lay off Castro, he feared that if Oswald’s role as a CIA asset became known, it could destroy the effectiveness of the agency, create huge problems for himself and possibly lead to a deadly confrontation with the Soviet Union. It was exactly such an attempt to defuse the Cold War that had earned him and his brother the enmity of those high in the military and the intelligence community. It is revealing (although it was not revealed at the time) that Robert Kennedy used back channels to tell the Soviets that he knew they had nothing to do with the killing, that it was a domestic conspiracy.
Robert Kennedy publicly said nothing. He may have feared for his own life, with some justification. But those close to him have said he privately monitored investigations such as New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison. There were also hints that if he became president he might attempt to get at the truth. He never got there.
Some of this remains speculation. But what is not speculation, and bears heavily on the argument, is a memo written by Robert Kennedy’s second in command, Nicholas Katzenbach, three days after the assassination. It was to Bill Moyers, the new President Lyndon B. Johnson’s assistant. It is among documents that have surfaced over the years. Initially, it did not create much of a stir. But, as more about Robert Kennedy’s thoughts become public, and in the light of 50 years of frustration is the search for the truth, the memo is dynamite. Among the paragraphs are these:
“The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that evidence was such that he would have been convicted at the trial.”
“Speculation about Oswald’s motivation ought to be cut off, and we should have some basis for rebutting thought that this was a Communist conspiracy or (as the Iron Curtain press is saying) a right-wing conspiracy to blame it on the Communists. Unfortunately the facts on Oswald seem about too pat—too obvious (Marxist, Cuba, Russian wife, etc.). The Dallas police have put out statements on the Communist conspiracy theory, and it was they who were in charge when he was shot and thus silenced.”
He recommended “the appointment of a Presidential Commission of unimpeachable personnel to review and examine the evidence and announce its conclusions.”
Katzenbach ended by advocating a quick public announcement to “head off speculation or Congressional hearings of the wrong sort.”
Keep in mind this went out just three days after the assassination, when Oswald was still supposed to be something of a lone-nut mystery.
Katzenbach, who died last May, was Robert Kennedy’s right-hand man. Can anybody believe that this went out without RFK’s knowledge and approval? To this observer, it makes it clear the fix was in from the beginning, and Robert Kennedy, almost surely, for patriotic reasons, was part of it.
Robert Kennedy was as much a victim as his brother, and it is hard to solve a crime when the victim does not want it solved.
Economic Stuffing

by Bernard McCormick Wednesday, October 10, 2012 2 Comment(s)

Over the last four or five years of economic distress, it has been remarkable how accurate the economic forecasters have been. Whether it is experts commenting on national conditions, or local specialists predicting the course of Florida real estate and employment expectations, those most often quoted in the media have been spot on.
 
And almost all have said the same thing. The recession officially ended in 2009, but they warned that the recovery would be slow, that it would take years for real estate values to recover, and we had to be prepared to live with high unemployment longer than in past recessions. Can anybody say they were wrong? If anything, real estate is coming alive a bit faster that most experts predicted. Almost every week there are reports of home sales and prices rising in South Florida, and some of the numbers suggest we need to be careful of another bubble as flippers buy foreclosed properties, do some improvements and turn quick profits. That would have seemed a reckless thing to forecast even a year ago.
 
At Gulfstream Media Group, our six magazines have seen improvement about on schedule with the prognosticators. While 2008 was a very bad year, by late 2009, just as the stock market recovered, business began to improve. It wasn’t fast, but it was noticeable – 2010 showed gains, and 2011 did as well. It wasn’t much, only about 5 percent last year, but with the exception of real estate, it was a broad-based improvement, suggesting that confidence in the advertising community was gaining strength.
 
This year has seen more of the same. Sales have been up and down from month to month, but last month was especially strong – one of the highest year-to-year jumps since the recession set in. We are only a week into it, but October looks strong as well, suggesting a fourth quarter that should bring year-end totals a few points above last year. Compared to the late '90s and first years of this century, when 20-25 percent growth was normal, it isn’t anything to make champagne corks self-eject, but then it is totally consistent with what the pros told us to expect several years ago.
 
It is more amusing than disturbing that some political types can’t be candid about the economy improving. Nationally, the Republicans are predicting the end of the world, but local governors in important states, including our own, are contradicting the party line by boasting of their states’ economic recovery. Frankly, they don’t deserve any more credit now than they did blame for the hard years. President Obama hasn’t asked for our advice, but if he wants to break out of his debating funk, he might say something like this:
 
“In terms of the economy, it doesn’t matter who wins this election. Things will be better. If we win, we will take credit; if Gov. Romney wins, he will take credit. But things are better now, and will be better next year.”
 
That would be the truth, something hard to find this fall of political discontent.
End Of The Odyssey

by Bernard McCormick Tuesday, October 02, 2012 No Comment(s)

Our soon-to-be-published book, “The Philadelphia Magazine Story,” required a last-minute revision. It was to the chapter written by Gaeton Fonzi called “The Odyssey of An Investigation,” describing his iconic work on the Kennedy assassination for more than 40 years.

 

                                                      

 

We had hoped the Bronco would make it to see this book published. He made a major contribution to it, both in editing and writing two excellent pieces while suffering the debilitating effects of Parkinson’s disease. Bronco was Gaeton Fonzi’s code name. It was coined by Frank King, our investigator, more than 40 years ago at Philadelphia Magazine. Apparently it was an old Irish neighborhood nickname for Italians. It is unclear whether it was a term of derision or respect. Probably a bit of both, and in Gaeton’s case definitely the latter.
 
Anyway, Gaeton did not quite make it. He died Aug. 30, 2012, several months before this book was scheduled to appear. He did not go silently. Major papers carried his obituary and the excellent one in the The New York Times was picked up as far away as Europe and Australia. The Philadelphia Inquirer quoted Herb Lipson on the contribution Gaeton made to Philadelphia Magazine’s explosive growth in the 1960s. The Miami Herald emphasized investigative pieces that originated in South Florida. The New York Times quoted Robert Blakey, who Gaeton had criticized for putting too much trust in the CIA, when Blakey headed the Congressional committee reopening the inquiry into the death of President Kennedy in the late 1970s. Blakey praised Gaeton’s tenacity and admitted that Gaeton was right in claiming the CIA stonewalled the investigation.
 
Those of us who followed Fonzi’s JFK odyssey from that first meeting with attorney Vince Salandria in Wildwood, N.J., in 1966, could not help being struck by the irony of his remarkable sendoff. When Gaeton first wrote about the Kennedy assassination in Philadelphia Magazine, few people outside of Philadelphia read it. In that time, those challenging the Warren Commision were often characterized as publicity-seeking sensationalists. Fourteen years later, when he published magazine articles in Gold Coast in Florida and the Washingtonian, there was a bit more interest, especially in Washington where that magazine was sued for $70 million by a CIA officer who thought he had been libeled. The magazine won.
 
Even as late as 1993, when The Last Investigation was expanded into a book, the response was muted. It was partly because Gerald Posner’s Case Closed appeared at the same time. Posner’s book was incredibly shallow and distorted; there is a suspicion it was commissioned by the CIA to offset both Fonzi’s book and Oliver Stone’s film, “JFK.” And yet numerous sources praised Posner’s book; it even was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Among those dismissing Fonzi’s book as confusing, while praising Posner’s, was The New York Times.
 
In the almost two decades since, much has changed. Fonzi’s work has been a source for other writers. A number have validated The Last Investigation with the support of recently declassified documents and testimony of witnesses long silent in fear. Paul Vitello, writing in the same The New York Times which ignored him 20 years ago, said “historians and researchers consider Mr. Fonzi’s book among the best of the roughly 600 published on the Kennedy assassination, and credit him with raising doubts about the government’s willingness to share everything it knew.”
 
The pendulum of time has a way of swinging in the direction of truth, even if takes 50 years and death to make it happen.
Ireland by Rail

by Bernard McCormick Tuesday, September 25, 2012 No Comment(s)

 

 

Compared to the United States, Ireland is not a terribly advanced country. Parts of it are. Major cities, notably Dublin, have excellent roads and striking (but not very tall) modern buildings and sports venues that compare with the best we have. This alongside churches and castles that go back centuries, and at least one bar where the Vikings used to enjoy a taste.
 
Out in the country, however, there are places where you are back in the 1800s, with lanes so narrow that cars cannot pass without one pulling off the hard surface. But then those areas do not have that many cars either. But in one respect, even in rural areas, Ireland sets an example that should be followed in the U.S. Its public transportation is outstanding. Most of the people attending the Notre Dame-Navy game in September arrived on a rapid transit system that compares with the best in this country. You can’t get to the former Joe Robbie Stadium like that.
 
But what really is impressive is the intercity train system. It connects Dublin with the major cities in all directions, and is a model of what Florida should have, and might someday when the plans for a Miami-Orlando train become reality, and when Tri-Rail eventually switches service to the Florida East Coast tracks. The Irish trains are sleek, comfortable and run on time. They look like the bullet trains of Europe and Asia. But they run on tracks that go back to the earliest days of railroads – not the tremendously expensive systems that bullet trains require.
 
Our first ride was from Dublin north to Belfast, where there is a connection at the same station to a train to Derry, but the last leg of that journey was out of service as the track is being modernized. After a few days in Donegal, the land of the family ancestors, we headed to Galway. This trip was by bus, for Donegal is lightly populated, and does not warrant a train. From Galway it was back to Dublin.
 
These trains are fast by U.S. standards. Except for the Northeast Corridor, our trains are limited to 79 miles per hour.  In Ireland we clocked on an iPhone speeds over 90 miles an hour, and consistently in the 70s. And even with stops every 15 miles or so, the trips were quick. The railroads, though dating back to the 1800s, have few grade crossings, and hardly any in urban areas. The 106-mile ride from Dublin to Belfast (with a dozen stops) took a bit over two hours, and the scenery was so spectacular you almost wished it were longer. From Galway to Dublin, 129 miles, it was two hours and a half. And that was with eight stops along the way. 
 
Who needs to go any faster than that for short distances? For comparison, an Irish-style train from Fort Lauderdale to Palm Beach, with stops in Boca and Delray Beach, would take about 45 minutes. Some days you can spend that much time just getting to I-95 and back to the downtowns.  And this is without the enormous cost of building a new system. It would be necessary to eliminate some grade crossings, especially in our cities along the route, but that cost is minimal compared to constructing a new system to accommodate bullet trains.
 
When it comes to getting from town to town, the New World has much to learn from the Old.
Dressing For Success

by Bernard McCormick Tuesday, September 18, 2012 No Comment(s)

 

 

Many were pleased by the Miami Dolphins' impressive 35-13 victory over the Oakland Raiders Sunday. What pleased us even more was that the two teams were dressed virtually identical to what they would have worn 40 years ago, when the Dolphins became the only undefeated team in NFL history. This is called tradition, and it counts. If it does not count, why are the Dolphins making such a fuss about the anniversary of that memorable team?
 
Back to the present. The Dolphins came out in all white. One could see Griese, Zonk, Mercury and – a personal favorite – Dr. Doug Swift, suited up in uniforms that only a real uniform freak (who notices socks) could distinguish from the suits of 1972. The Dolphins wear all white about as elegantly as any team. God only knows why in recent years they have often been wearing green pants. Those pants give the opposition seven points right out of the locker room.
 
As for the Raiders, with their basic silver hats and pants and unadorned black jerseys, they could have been the team that Ken Stabler led in some memorable games of that era. The setting reeked of nostalgia. And the Dolphins played like they thought they were the 1972 team.
 
It is not often noted, but the Dolphins have a rare advantage in uniforms that they often do not exploit. Most teams at home wear their color. The Dallas Cowboys are a conspicuous exception. But – and the warm weather explains this – the Dolphins usually wear white at home. That not only feels cooler by reflecting heat, it looks cooler. Of course, that gives the opponents a chance to look good, as the Raiders did, in their intimidating black. But when the Dolphins wear all white, things balance out, and they usually have their guests outdressed. And on the road they can usually wear white, which they sometimes ruin with those stupid green pants.
 
This idea about the importance of uniforms goes back to the days when we used to cut out full-page pictures of stars from SPORT magazine. Our favorite unforms, and it’s all we really liked about the sport, were the hockey outfits, mainly because there was so much to them, and this was before they went to helmets and face shields. It was a sharp contrast with baseball. It was a time when half the baseball teams wore either dark blue or black hats. And everybody wore white at home and gray on excursions. There wasn’t much color in those suits, except for the stockings, and then style practically did away with that charming bit of lower body color.
 
Among the black hats of that era were the Philadelphia Phillies.  A few years later they went to red and blue caps, and then red with pin stripes in their home uniforms, and then occasionally back to red and blue caps and sometimes those junior high colored jerseys.  Most baseball teams wear those jerseys from time to time, and the reason, it seems, is money. Some fans will buy anything their team wears. Thus we see Yankees hats in red and other disgusting examples of monetary policy.
 
To a real fan, uniforms count. Notre Dame courted disaster in pre-season when it displayed novelty helmets, a nauseating gold on one side, dark blue on the other. Not as bad as Boise State, but close. The reaction of Irish fans was immediate. Alumni threatened to burn down the Golden Dome. So far this season the Notre Dame management has listened to reason and stuck to their traditional outfits, which are all business, few stripes. Is is just a coincidence that they are 3-0?
Reflections on 9/11

by Bernard McCormick Tuesday, September 11, 2012 2 Comment(s)

I may have been the last person in the world – certainly the last in our office – to realize that two planes running into the Twin Towers was a terrorist act. I recall thinking that it was an amazing coincidence that on a clear day two planes could strike the towers within minutes. It was not obvious immediately that these planes were commercial airliners, and I wondered if air controllers had gone crazy.

 

 
There is a reason for this, and nobody else watching the office TV that day would know it. And that reason is that I was the only one old enough to remember the morning in 1945 when a B-25 bomber crashed in a fog into the Empire State Building. It seemed an impossible event at the time, and that is what jumped into mind at the sight of the towers spewing smoke. It wasn’t until – and this came very quickly – that the attack on the Pentagon was announced that it became clear this was no freak accident.
 
Reflecting 10 years later, the events of 9/11 have had consequences far beyond the immediate tragedy, and even the continuing pain of people coming down with disease as a result to the exposure to dust that fateful day. It also led to two conflicts, in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have taken many lives, and continue to do so as we write. In the context of a political campaign, these wars are being linked to the economic troubles of the recent decade, and the Bush administration is being blamed for wrecking the economy and in the process creating civil strife in the Middle East that seems to have no end.
 
In a way, that criticism, coming mostly from Democrats, seems as unfair as the Republicans blaming President Obama for not magically curing the ills that he clearly did not create, and which his attempts to remedy have been blocked by political opponents at every turn. What one tends to forget is that when the Bush administration went to war, there was not only a sense of urgency among most of us to strike back at whoever attacked us, but also seemingly credible information that Iraq had something to do with it.
 
After all, Saddam Hussein had already attacked a neighbor and thrown the Middle East into turmoil. And if our leadership thought the man had weapons of mass destruction, it is well to remember he had already used such weapons against people in his own country. Furthermore, that dictator did a pretty good job of acting as if it possessed such weapons. Recall the protracted efforts by inspectors to gain access to sites where we thought such weapons could be found. It certainly seemed at the time that Iraq had something to hide, and the U.S. certainly was under self-imposed pressure to hit somebody, and hit hard.
 
And that we did, and now we see the consequences, which include a national division and political parties which routinely accuse each other of deceit. Sept. 11 was a terrible thing, and it unified a nation. Unfortunately, not for long.

 

Playing for the Jersey

by Bernard McCormick Tuesday, September 04, 2012 No Comment(s)

CARRIGART, COUNTY DONEGAL, IRELAND – Many thought that the mysterious University of Notre Dame was located in a remote part of Indiana. However, just last weekend researchers found that the school is actually located in a section of Dublin, Ireland, known as Temple Bar. There were 35,000 Americans in Dublin last weekend, the vast majority of whom were from or associated with Notre Dame, and the vast majority of them were waking up to headaches after spending the pre-game celebration in a neighborhood that has a bar every 50 feet. In fairness, Navy fans were also seen: a guess is about five ND for every Navy person. It is said to be the largest group of Yanks to come over for a weekend event since World War II.

Notre Dame played Navy Saturday and, praised be to the saints, destroyed the Middies, 50-10. More important in this economy, it is estimated that this event generated 100 million euros for the Irish economy. Few of the fans came over for game day. Almost all turned it into an Ireland tour. Anthony Travel, a company that does travel for Notre Dame, brought 2,000 people when the Irish first played Navy here in 1996. This time they brought 10,000. As a result, people wearing Irish hats, shirts, jackets and Joe Montana’s No. 3 jersey have infested the entire country – the victors are everywhere, in Galway, in Cork, in Killarney, even here in dear old Donegal. We thought we had finally shaken them in Belfast, but today in the McNutt tweed shop we ran into Joe Dougherty, whose Philadelphia accent could be identified at 10 paces. At least by a fellow Yank. The native Irish can always spot an American accent, but most can’t tell Texas from Brooklyn.

The game, although not close, was a memorable spectacle. The entire brigade of Midshipmen marched in, as in the Army-Navy game ceremony, and the famous Notre Dame band, only at half strength because it only brought upperclassmen, put in a splendid halftime show. The local Irish, some of who were in the audience, were impressed. Yanks were vocally proud of their kinsmen on both sides.

An Irish cab driver pointed out that the Gaelic football finals were on the same weekend, but he knew something unusual was happening because he had been driving people wearing Notre Dame colors for several days. He said the Gaelic footballers were all amateurs; they had jobs and just played for local pride.

“They play for the jersey,” he said. He asked if the American lads got paid. We explained that they got scholarships, but they weren’t paid, depending on what dirty program they worked for, but they used the publicity to get professional contracts. But on the college level, most of them also played for the jersey.

“And isn’t that just fair,” he said.

 

We said surely it was indeed and took off, mostly by train, to show Mark McCormick, an ND alum, a bit of the country from which most of his ancestors left years back. The first at sea was Hugh McNeales in 1835. Where we write may be within walking distance of his birth place. That is if you are willing to walk a few days, which is what most did in that era. If you walk, you have time to figure out the road signs, which are both in English, a language familiar to many Americans, and the old Gaelic, which few in Ireland can speak. The reason for this, we learned, is that a labor union called Erin Lispach dun ballystuffing mischt giblets con sinaghe, 42, Aidan MacSuibhne, schante boyo (translation: Irish Sign Painters and Typesetters Union 42, Aidan Sweeney, president) insisted on keeping Gaelic signs alive because it gives twice as much work to the lads. Gaelic, like German, is about three times as long as English. Which is why the only kind thing the English ever did for the Irish was coax them, sometimes at the point of a bayonet, out of their language.

Most of the people we met from Notre Dame had not been to Ireland before. The game presented the perfect opportunity to fill that void and watch their team at the same time. The Irish are on to something. They have also declared 2013 the year of the gathering of the clans.They won’t have a football game as a draw, but maybe they can have a battle as of old. And enjoy the old tongue.

Garda O’Gallehobbair dice bruscar baile nu tacsaithe con coras iampair et lady gaga un gibberish Gaelic a dheanamh Nahcht Domino pizza.

Translation: Gallagher the cop says they don’t speak Gaelic at Notre Dame.

And that’s no blarney.

My friend, Gaet

by Bernard McCormick Friday, August 31, 2012 1 Comment(s)


It was the fall of 1961, and through a football coach I was covering in Chester, Pa., I connected with an Army Reserve unit. It was just in time. I was one of those six-monthers on active duty in the late ’50s, and I had an eight-year Reserve obligation, which I had largely ignored for a year. But this was a perfect setup, a civil affairs company that was headed by a state senator, loaded with professional types. I figured I was a natural for the company public information guy, but the slot was already taken by Lt. Gaeton Fonzi.

Fonzi seemed like a quiet guy, and I was told he had some kind of journalism background. He worked for a business magazine. I had never heard of it but that changed a month or so later when I saw a reprint of something he had written. If memory serves me right, the lead was “Chester is a city which doesn’t give a damn.” That article not only got my attention; it changed my life. Over the next several years the obscure magazine Fonzi worked for morphed into Philadelphia Magazine, which rocked that city month after month and in effect invented the city- magazine concept, which is now all over the country. Fonzi wrote most of the powerful articles that made that happen.

Among his scores was an exposé on a crooked reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer who used his reputation as the publisher’s hatchet man to shake down numerous businesses, including the city’s largest bank. That article made Time Magazine and many papers, including The New York Times. He followed that up with articles that became a book about the publisher, Walter Annenberg – the most powerful man in Philadelphia. Shortly thereafter, Annenberg sold the Inquirer to Knight Newspapers. Many think Fonzi embarrassed him to the point that he left town.

And it was in Philadelphia that Fonzi first wrote about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The local angle was Arlen Specter, then an assistant district attorney in Philadelphia, later a longtime U.S. senator. Specter was the man who came up with the “single bullet theory,” which was the only way the Warren Commission could conclude that Lee Harvey Oswald alone murdered a president. Fonzi was amazed that Specter could not explain his own theory, and how the physical evidence so blatantly contradicted the lone assassin conclusion. His work was one of the first challenges to the Warren Commission. Important people in Philadelphia read it. More on that a bit later.

Impressed by the magazine’s extraordinary growth, I signed on in 1965. Five years later, when it was obvious regional magazines were catching on everywhere, Fonzi and I formed a company to buy Gold Coast in Fort Lauderdale. He moved down in 1972. After serving as editor of Miami Magazine, which we sold, Fonzi was contacted by Sen. Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania. Schweiker was reopening an investigation into JFK’s death. He remembered Fonzi’s Philadelphia Magazine work and contacted him to work in South Florida, checking into CIA connections with anti-Castro elements. Schweiker suspected Lee Harvey Oswald was an intelligence operative. Fonzi all but proved it, discovering through a Miami Cuban that a high-ranking CIA man had been seen with Oswald in Dallas before the assassination. This information came despite efforts by known CIA people – Watergate burglar Frank Sturgis was one of them – to waste his time and the government’s money on wild goose chases.

That CIA discovery got Fonzi an extended job in Washington, five years in all, which ended with a House subcommittee report that the murder of JFK was a conspiracy, but left the conspirators vague. Fonzi, who wrote much of that report, did not think it was vague, but wasn’t permitted to say so. He was convinced that if the CIA did not murder Kennedy, it went to great lengths to cover up the true nature of the crime. He wrote in effect a dissenting opinion, which first appeared in this magazine, and 14 years later became a book, The Last Investigation. It has been cited by virtually every serious researcher ever since, and the work is one of the main reasons that most people today do not believe a lone nut killed a president.

In Florida, Fonzi continued to contribute to his legacy as a remarkable investigative reporter and exceptional stylist. He wrote a three-part series on the Ivy-League-developer-turned-drug-runner, Ken Burnstine, who was killed in a mysterious plane crash while scheduled to testify against numerous South Florida people in a federal case. He had turned informant after being arrested. It had been reported that Burnstine had faked his death; Fonzi proved otherwise, but also suggested he may have been murdered to keep him quiet.

Then there was the case of three South Florida people who disappeared after having financial contact with a notorious con man. The con man was supposed to be in jail, but Fonzi learned through Fort Lauderdale police sources that the con man was being used in a sting operation by the FBI in Chicago. Fonzi broke the story in Miami Magazine and then took it to Chicago, and later New York. It involved payoffs to big-time politicians for contracts to collect parking tickets. The borough president of Queens committed suicide. Columnist Jimmy Breslin called it one of the biggest scandals in his long career in the Big Apple.

Any one of these stories would make a memorable career for most magazine writers. Gaeton Fonzi wrote all these and many more, some was funny and his serious stuff was serious. His last works were two articles he contributed to a book I am soon to publish on the history of the city/regional magazines. He managed to do this work while suffering from Parkinson’s disease, which finally took him on Thursday. There are a dozen writers featured in the book. All are good. He was the best.