Television's dying and I'm not feeling so hot myself

     The hour that I spent watching "Chicagoland" on CNN Thursday probably equalled my entire time spent watching cable news over the past year. Maybe two. I used to watch more, on the little TV in my office. But they took it away, and brought in a new little flatscreen, and I never figured out how to turn it on. That is bad, I know, the aging pundit who can't work a newfangled device. But the truth is, I never really needed to watch it. There isn't anything I can't pull off the Internet. 
    But occasionally my path crosses with TV. A couple weeks ago, when MSNBC asked me to appear on a morning show and talk about the profile of the mayor I wrote for Esquire. I said sure, though it was cold, and a dozen block stroll to NBC Tower, so I said they would have to send a car. They did. 
     Nestled in the back of a Cadillac, talking with the Bulgarian driver about the death of Lincoln Town Cars, seemed to magnify the importance of being on TV, a little. It may be waning, and they don't pay, but they'll still send a car. Huffington Post won't do that.

Smile.

     When I got to NBC Tower, it was pretty deserted, and the same guy who met me at the elevator also patted make-up on my enormous shiny dome and then got my mike clipped on and stuck a bug in my ear then worked the camera. We killed time, waiting for the show in New York, unseen, to get to me. We chatted about the decline of our respective industries. Mine seems to be falling apart faster than his, but it's a horse race, at times neck-and-neck. Good union guy. I felt like two old centurians, swapping tales about camp life back in Gaul. 
     TV used to be damned as this expanse of crap, a "vast wasteland," as Newt Minow famously said in the early 1960s, when it was Masterpiece Theater compared to what it became. Remember? Society fretted so much — what would this endless torrent of TV do to our children? Was watching TV "bad"? "Fifty-seven channels and nothing on," Bruce Springsteen sang. Twenty-two years ago. (God, he was in decline then. Age bites).
     It seems wrong that we should just let our worries go about TV, just drop that elaborate edifice of concern with a shrug and move on to the next. There should be a ceremony of some sort. A towering pyre of old Zeniths and Sylvanias and RCAs set aflame—maybe on barge, going down the Chicago River, at the Fire Festival this October. We shouldn't just abandon that deep, decades-old anxiety and stagger babbling to the next—Snapchat, is THAT bad for our kids?! Maybe someday we'll realize: it was the worry that was bad all along. The kids are always fine. Usually fine.
     Though we've really stopped fretting, haven't we? Worrying about the Internet is so 2003. That's over. Now technology just is. There's always heroin to worry about. 
     My appearance on MSNBC was dumb and brief—the host spent more time talking than listening to what I had to say, and I was reminded that not only has Fox News inflicted itself upon America, but its success inspired other legitimate networks to ape it and become shriller too. So you had Lou Dobbs denouncing immigrants on CNN. And this fellow — who never met Rahm and probably has never been to Chicago and might not be able to find it on a map — yabbering on, putting his snarky air quote marks around the pension crisis in Chicago, like it's something the mayor made up. Another 60 seconds and I might have come out with a, "Hey buddy, shut up. What the fuck's the matter with you?" I could feel the thought forming, ready to rise like a bubble in the back of my mind. Good thing it was over so quickly. I took a paper towel and tried to scrape the make-up off, wondering "Now why did I take an hour out of my day to do this?"
    At least I got a ride.  I went downstairs. The Cadillac was still waiting, to whisk me back to the newspaper, and it occurred to me that nothing MSNBC does ever resonates in my world. Not that what I do is rocking their world either. Still, why go on for two minutes when I could be on for two solid months and a person like myself would never know about it? Going on the program, coast to coast, had no repercussions at all. No high school friends got in touch to say they saw me on TV, the way they did when I appeared on "Oprah" 20 years ago. Mass media is turning into small media. Maybe that's good. We're all artisans now, back to being silversmiths, straddling a bench by the hearth fire, tapping away, making tea pots. Except a tea pot you could sell. We can't grieve over shifting mediums too much -- some scraps remain. There's still radio, despite everything. Records didn't kill radio—heck, CDs and now MP3s didn't even kill records. They're still around, fragments, but still around. I know calligraphers, violists, scribes. Maybe there will be enough wreckage for us older folks to cling to for a few more years, or at least the really determined ones. Or at least me. Or maybe not. 

Saturday fun: where IS this?

     Despite our mania for all things on-line and computerized, we still gather in public spaces, such as this attractive, airy interior courtyard in the ... well, I'm not saying. We'll make this place our Saturday fun contest. Where is this? A few hints — it's in the city, not the suburbs ("enough suburbs," my wife said, with a hint of asperity, last week). You can see that it is newish, but beyond that not a lot of clues. I was meeting an acquaintance at his office to go to lunch, walking up a mirror of the staircase you see across the atrium, and was struck by the cleanness of the lines, the bright blue cube chairs and toffee brown ottomans. The vista looked like an architect's rendering.
     Notice that most of the people here are men? I'm not sure if that helps or is a red herring.
     This time, the winner receives a blog poster, suitable for framing, signed and numbered, one of a dwindling stock, hand set on a letterpress in Nashville, Tennessee. Just put your guess in the comments, and I'll jump in and recognize the winner. Good luck. I haven't stumped you yet, but my hunch is, unless someone has actually been there, I just might this time. 

More than a wise, important rabbi: a good man

     There’s an old Jewish joke that goes like this: A revered rabbi, famous for his goodness and wisdom, dies and ascends to heaven. Such is his reputation that God Himself slides over to welcome the new arrival and ask him what heavenly reward he would like for a life well-lived.

     The rabbi considers this.

     “Well,” he says. “The journey was long, and I am hungry. So a roll. Yes, a fresh challah roll. That is what I want.”

     The Lord is amazed, and remarks to his angels: “See the pious simplicity of this holy man! He is offered the riches of heaven by God Almighty, and asks only for a roll.”

     The Lord turns back to the rabbi.

     “Truly, rebbe, is there nothing else you would like besides a challah roll?”

     “Well . . . ” says the rabbi, musing, “a little butter would be nice.”

     That isn’t the funniest joke, but it’s sweet. Which is why it comes to mind when I think of Rabbi Daniel Moscowitz, who was regional director of Chabad in Illinois, the Illinois representative of the Lubavitch movement. It wasn’t so much that he was learned — he certainly was — or active, both within his community and as a liaison to the world beyond, promoting his brand of faith in an endless chain of services, events, celebrations, seminars, lunches.
     He was important, a leader. He guided his community, got things done, built a new Lubavitch center in Northbrook. But many rabbis are wise, active and important. That wasn’t why I admired him. It’s that he was a good man, kind, patient, even dealing with weak-tea Jews like me, constantly badgering him with questions that any learned 6-year-old should know. He taught me that you can use faith as a bludgeon, you can beat people up with it. You can use it as a measuring stick, to find how far others fall short. Or you can use it as a beacon and say, “Look, I have this really good thing here. Why don’t you try a nibble? Maybe you’ll like it.”
     Rabbi Moscowitz was a beacon.
     We met 15 years ago under difficult circumstances. I had put a jokey passing reference in my column to Menachem Mendel Schneerson, leader of the Lubavitch movement, who had died a few years earlier but was deeply esteemed. Rabbi Moscowitz called, not so much to complain — what good does that do?— as to discuss, to illuminate. By the time he was done, we were friends in my estimation; maybe he was so skilled at what he did that I was just another media source to be kept in line. But if that was the case, he fooled me.
     When I got the bad news Tuesday — he died unexpectedly, after gall bladder surgery, at 59 — I flashed on all the memories over the past decade and a half that I only have because of him. Sitting at his house at Shabbos, the candles glowing, him quizzing my older son — a bright boy! Among a circle of Hassidic men, our arms interlocked, dancing wildly at the wedding of one of his sons. Sitting with Rabbi Moscowitz in intense conversation at their luncheons after services. When I stopped drinking eight years ago, he phoned — not many friends did, but he did —and in our conversation said that, because of his health, he had to cut back wine too. But what can a person do? We do what we must. We endure.
     Over the years I would call him to ask questions: Why do we display lights at Hanukkah? What does the Jewish calendar represent — 5,700 or so years since what?
     My family attended services at his center, and his sermons were wise, witty, brief.
     When my wife and I were getting ready this week to go to his house to offer our condolences, the question arose: what to bring? You make a shiva call, you bring food. But it wouldn’t do to drag tref into a rabbi’s house.
     “Maybe some tangerines,” my wife said.
     “I don’t think fruit can be unkosher,” I replied. But we puzzled, unsure.
     “I’ll call Rabbi Moscowitz and ask,” I said, and she gasped. I had meant it as a sardonic comment on the void he leaves; he is no longer here to answer questions. She thought I was referring to his son, Rabbi Meir Moscowitz, following in his father’s footsteps.
     The confusion points toward the comfort in this tragedy. For Jews, our heaven is here on earth, our eternity is found in our children. Life and death are twins, we believe, brothers joined at the hip. It is ingratitude to celebrate one and decry the other.
     So we don’t rail at death. We accept it. Our good works live after us. Rabbi Moscowitz had nine children, countless friends and achievements. His memory will radiate onward, a blessing. And yet. Were he here, I’d tell him, “Yes, yes, but it’s still very hard.”
     “Of course it’s hard!” he’d reply, his eyes twinkling. “But what choice have we?”

"Curse the blasted, jelly-boned swines..."

    Opining about the weather always struck me as the lowest rung of punditry, hinting at intellectual exhaustion on the part of a columnist. Some mark the seasons like primroses: greet the spring, celebrate the summer, plant a fingertip on their chin and grow reflective at the autumn then shiver through the winter. Rinse and repeat.
     I try not to be that guy.
     But damn ... this snow. This cold. Will it never end? I found myself, Wednesday morning, actually standing outside and shouting at the sky: "Stopppp...snowwwing!!!" Recognizing a meme when I saw it, I whipped out my cell phone and repeated my performance. I don't know whether my yell was less hollow on cue, or that I always sound that, well, constricted. But it didn't strike me as the raging, mad-as-hell, full-throated cri du coeur that I hoped for, and posting it on Facebook only confirmed my suspicions. 
     But lest you judge too harshly, go outside and yell at the sky. It's harder than you think.
     I have to write about the arctic chill today, because my only other option is writing about how much I hate the British government. Hate, hate, hate them. Brendan Behan has nothing on me, and he's the guy who wrote Confessions of an Irish Rebel, which has perhaps the best opening of any memoir, ever:  

      'You're for the Governor in the morning,' said this dreary red-headed little Welsh Methodist bastard of a screw.
     'Thanks for telling me,' said I, in an almost English accent, as sarcastically as I politely could, 'but I'm not for 'im in the morning or any other bloody time, you little Welsh puff.'

     This antipathy is new for me. Just since Tuesday in fact. I had a column idea — cities far larger than Chicago, undeniable "world-class" cities, also care about their images. What cities to pick? Easy, Paris and London. I called the French Tourist Board. No problem. Their director happened to be in Chicago, and a sub-director was found; any French organization is silly with sub-directors. He said nothing usable whatsoever, of course -- I had to turn to my friend Adam Gopnik, who was perfect -- but the point was, I had reached him.
     Could the British do that? Noooooo. The British consulate in Chicago has a beautiful GOV.UK web site, sleek and clean and utterly useless, except that it very quickly makes you understand why 1984 was written by a Brit. There's a phone number all right, but the phone puts you through shell hell leading nowhere, all the while urging you to go to their web site, where there's nothing about reaching a human being. 
     I tried other cities — Altanta, figuring things would be slower there, a bit more laid back, maybe they'd pick up the phone. New York and Washington, assuming they might have this whole communicate-with-the-press thing down pat. Nothing.  Every other web site I visit, almost without exception, has some little back door you find where, under warnings that only real live reporters on deadline should use this, a real phone number for a real person, or at least an email address to a real person. Not the Brits. It was a maddening experience, clicking this way and that, trying various tantalizingly-dangled phone numbers, getting the same perky recorded woman's voice straight out of "Brazil." It made me hate them, it really did. 
    Not that I was thwarted. A professional prevails. Abandoning the government, I found real Londoners easily enough -- you know how? -- Facebook, and some British business board in Chicago that answers their phone. And of course, the actual Brits turned out to be hale, stout folk one and all, so I'm not talking about the British people in my dance-on-your-grave contempt for those behind the government web site. My best friend is a Brit. Salt of the earth, the grandchildren of those East Enders who stepped out of the rubble of their homes tear their shirts open and scream at the departing German bombers: "Oh yeh? Yer dun and ruhnnin', now, are ya, ya fookin' Kraut coonts! C'm beck 'n give oos sum mahrrrr, cuz we can tek all ye'v gat 'n then rem it beck oop yer bleedin' Berliner backsides!!!!"  
    But the government, this web site, well, it makes me mad. They make the United States Postal Service seem as quick to help as an Apple clerk, as keen to please as a geisha. Maybe I'm arrogant -- the media, what's left of it, is known for that, and it might be true. We don't like to be thwarted. Who does? At some point you want a human goddamn being to answer a simple question about attitudes in London, a question that isn't on their FAQs and slick graphics. 
     And they failed. It truly snapped my mind, nearly — maybe the weather also played a hand — but I'm all for Scottish independence now. "Alba gu bràth!" Scotland forever! Vote aye, and send the jackbooted, non-communicative John Bulls back to the red hell they crawled out of in 1296.  Why would that lovely, peaty country of whiskey and draught horses want to continue being slaves to a bunch of mute arseholes, a pack of, well, I wasn't really thinking of Brendan Behan's relatively tame lines about his keeper while struggling with her majesty's web site.  I was thinking of D.H. Lawrence's classic assessment of his compatriots. Perhaps this is best read outside, if you can, into the pelting snow and killing wind, at full volume, facing East toward England:

Curse the blasted, jelly-boned swines, the slimy, the belly-wriggling invertebrates, the miserable sodding rotters, the flaming sods, the sniveling, dribbling, dithering palsied pulse-less lot that make up England today. They've got white of egg in their veins, and their spunk is that watery its a marvel they can breed. They can nothing but frog-spawn — the gibberers! God, how I hate them! God curse them, funkers. God blast them, wish-wash. Exterminate them, slime. I could curse for hours and hours — God help me.

    I'll stop now. Blame the snow. And the cold. And its generally endlessness. I don't even look at the weather report; why bother? Because it's always the same. So blame that. Although Lawrence wrote the above in summer, in July 1912, after Sons and Lovers was rejected for publication. So maybe being thwarted by a web site — and Jesus, hire a few operators, will you, you cheap royalist bastards — isn't quite the same. But the depth of feeling is there. Don't fuck with writers, we'll curse you in a way that will haunt you through the centuries.
     

A world class city stands up for itself

     "Parisians,” said Adam Gopnik, who lived in the City of Light for years as the New Yorker’s man in Paris, “are hypersensitive to what’s being said about them, especially in the American press.” 

     Keep this in mind as Chicago finds itself in the national spotlight Thursday, and for eight weeks after, as CNN’s massive “Chicagoland” documentary unfolds.

     I haven’t seen a minute of it, but I can tell you, whatever the show offers, some Chicagoans will complain the city is maligned, then others will chime in that an actual world-class city doesn’t care how it looks on something so insignificant as a TV show.

     Which is just nonsense. 

     The fact is that everyone, every blessed soul in every city and town, big and small, cares how they look. It’s human nature.

     “I recall being shocked — really shocked — after I had been in Paris for about a year and written one of my mildly acidic/affectionate things about something, and found a whole piece about it that week in Le Monde,” Gopnik continued. “I had assumed my own invisibility — why would they care, they were Paris? But they did.”

     My experience is that any city will rise to its own defense. Last summer, after I noted the riots rippling across Rio de Janeiro, a city twice the size of Chicago, Rio’s mayor was angrily firing back that afternoon. (“Chicago is totally jealous of us,” Eduardo Paes said, calling Chicago “a cold horror of racial conflicts.”) Ditto for Toronto. 

     And why not? It isn’t being concerned about your image that’s provincial; it’s the idea that you shouldn’t be that is. The idea that somehow we don’t have the right to contradict anyone who unfairly judges us. 

     Last April, when The New York Times ran its excoriation of Chicago (and my memoir of it) written by a refugee from Gotham, complaining about her hardship post, Chicagoans flew to the city's defense only to hear a certain faint but unmistakable sighing—Tsk-tsk, bad form!—from those worried that in refuting slurs we tar ourselves as rustics.
      The worst example of this was in the Tribune on New Year's Day, as a writer tried to lead readers into a vow to next time bow our heads and receive any well-deserved condemnation from our betters without suffering them to hear any silly protests.
     "Say it with me," the author urged. "We, the people of Chicago, will not get apoplectic every time we are criticized. Even by New York. We will speak up for ourselves, and we will retain a sense of humor. And we will gain the confidence to not care so much."
     There was no cited instance of a Chicagoan reacting to criticism with apoplexy or lack of humor, and the writer came off as one of the chronically embarrassed, the restaurant table mate who cringes if you ask for a clean fork.
     When Gopnik left Paris, he returned to New York, another town we would assume plows on without a concern for how it's perceived. And usually it is, he said.
     "New York is a slightly different case, as it seemed mostly indifferent to outsider opinion, but even there the post-9/11 paranoia hit—was everyone admiring our resilience sufficiently?" Gopnik wrote to me. "So yes, Chicago is hardly alone in caring about outsiders' opinions— though Liebling might still well be right that its second-city (third city, now?) position makes it more thin-skinned about it than the rest."
    Hey! I thought, "thin-skinned?" Thin-skinned! And here I thought we were pals!!!
     Joking. The truth is, while some think indifference is the big-city ideal, everyone wants to be thought well of, though who you look to for validation does shift.
     "Londoners, if prodded, will probably admit they care about how other Londoners view them, but that's about it," wrote Noreen Marshall, a 40-year resident. "As far as people from anywhere else are concerned, they feel it's irrelevant. They know they're the best, and their city is the best."
     Andrew Bole, a native Londoner now consulting with McKinney Rogers here, elaborated that because London is such a conglomeration of nationalities, it has its own outside critics within, which makes it resemble another city of his acquaintance.
     "London is such a diverse international city, it's quite hard to say what an indigenous Londoner is," Bole said. "As a city of immigrants, London, to a certain extent, is quite like Chicago, a city of different neighborhoods. Rather like Chicago, people pay attention to their individual communities."
      Bole ended our talk by emphasizing one aspect about Chicago that Londoners can't quite grasp until they actually see the place: "How amazing it is." No argument here.

Or would they just steal faster?

     An amateur is prone to oblivious mistakes. Chief among them is laboring under the illusion that the skill yet to be mastered is easy. Or, if not easy, then something that he, the neophyte, has an inborn, nay, God-given ability to achieve without the usual investment of hard work, time and talent. 
     Thus Republican Bruce Rauner, with no experience in politics and no qualifications beyond an excess of self-regard and the ability to buy expensive TV time claiming he would make a fine governor, issues the alarming claim that people who have experience with government should be banned by law from participating in it. He snaps the whip, and urges the feeble idea of term limits, like an exhausted circus pony, out into the hissing limelight for one more prance around the miserable ring. 
     Term limits imply that, unlike every other career—where years of work makes a professional better able to meet challenges—politics is so uniquely corrupting that anyone venal enough to want to serve in office must be given the heave ho, by legislation, after a certain brief span of time. Rauner thinks eight years is as much as any human being can be trusted to serve as governor. 
     This was a topic I addressed — good God! — 17 years ago, on Feb. 16, 1997. I don't know if this is any worse than what I would write now, it's certainly no better, and I hope doesn't suggest I should have been compelled to resign. No one should. The American way is that we work hard, rise or fall on our merits, and stay there for the same reasons, not be declared rotten by the whim of people who don't know what they're talking about and given the gate. The Clinton reference is a reminder that we libs were never the drooling partisans that the Right Wing fanatics would paint us to be. 

     Whenever I lend a book to someone, I make certain they never forget about it. Feigning curiosity, I ask for frequent updates— "How's that book going? Enjoying that book?" The goal, of course, is to get the volume back someday.

The great H.L. Mencken

     I do this with the same care that a pickpocket extends toward his own wallet. Because other people's books have a habit of straying into my library and never straying out again.

     Thus I was astounded to find myself, unprompted, actually preparing to return a book. And not just any book, but H.L. Mencken's A Carnival of Buncombe. An out-of-print gem lent to me a year or so ago by my friend Cate, blinded by kindness.

     Faced with the daunting prospect of losing such a treasure, I began browsing over the master's ruminations from long-lost days.

     The sentences sizzled and popped, as always, and there were flashes of recognition so personal that it was disconcerting. Almost like picking up a 1921 yearbook at a flea market, flipping it open, and seeing your own senior photograph, smiling in sepia from among the rows of high collars and pomaded hair.

     "I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time," Mencken writes, in a 1924 essay.

     Here is a credo if ever there was one—I might have it needlepointed and framed and hung over my bathroom mirror, so I can recite it each morning, with my hand over my heart.

     That single sentence explains why there isn't a lot of intense debate about the nation's politics in this column. Any given senator can hardly affect policy, despite the fact that he or she is working like a ferret 20 hours a day trying to do so. What hope have I?

     Anyway, politics at every level is hypocrisy in action. I voted for Bill Clinton while sincerely believing he is the worst president to hold office since his predecessor, with a record of bumbling and insincerity that will go unmatched in history until whoever succeeds him is sworn in.

     This does not mean, however, that I would keep an important observation to myself just out of the belief that sharing it won't make a lick of difference.

     The notion of congressional term limits is heating up. Last week, the House voted them down, again, but more than 70 percent of Americans say they are in favor of them and the idea isn't going away. Even normally sensible observers such as George Will sing their praises. In Newsweek, he writes, "Term limits can produce deliberative bodies disposed to think of the next generation rather than the next election."

     In Utopia, maybe. Term limits are a stupid idea, holding the peril of all sorts of horrible, unexpected consequences. I knew this in that half-formed, unspoken way that most people know things. Not in a way I could articulate.

     As luck would have it, just as I was mulling how to express the problem with term limits, the answer—eloquent and convincing—popped out of a most unexpected place . . .

     First, I must acknowledge that the following confession will tar me as a freakish anomaly, as out of step with the times as if I said I dipped candles or took snuff. But the future of the Republic is at stake, and I can't let embarrassment hold me back.

 

Josephus

   I was reading Antiquities by the ancient Roman historian and traitor Josephus. (We don't have cable; I have to spend my time doing something). He was going on about Tiberius' policy toward colonial governors (you have to wade through a lot of tedium to get to the good stuff) when he pointed out that, unlike other emperors, Tiberius never replaced the governors of Rome's colonies "unless they died at their posts."

     Quizzed as to why, Tiberius replied that, first, it was a bother to keep dismissing and replacing people, and besides, "it was a law of nature that governors are prone to engage in extortion."

     Given that law, Tiberius said, governors with permanent positions "would be gorged with their robberies and would by the very bulk of them be more sluggish in pursuit of further gain."

     Constantly cycling in new governors, on the other hand, would only make them grab for all they could during their brief reign. As Tiberius so artfully put it, "Their natural appetite for plunder would be reinforced by their expectation of being speedily deprived of that pleasure."

     Wiser, truer words—or a more ringing indictment against term limits—I cannot imagine. The idea intended to reduce crookedness would only accelerate it. But that's the risk with gimmicky ideas.     
     Returning to Mencken: "The older I grow the less I esteem mere ideas. In politics, particularly, they are transient and unimportant."

     What politicians need instead of faddish ideas, Mencken concludes, is "character." If they had character, we wouldn't need a constitutional amendment to periodically expel them from the government.

     We can always vote them out of office—an exercise that even Mencken recognized carries some satisfaction, if scant practical result:

     "Turning out such gross incompetents, to be sure, does very little practical good, for they are commonly followed by successors who are almost as bad, but it at least gives the voters a chance to register their disgust, and so it keeps them reasonably contented, and turned their thoughts away from the barricade and the bomb."

The Second Crimean War

     Why is there always this sense of rush when it comes to war? We have not yet extracted ourselves from a dozen bloody, futile years in Afghanistan, yet the immediate cry is that the Americans should have been ready to leap when the Russians invaded Ukraine over the weekend, even though the Ukrainians obviously weren’t ready either, which is understandable, since their political chaos is what emboldened Putin in the first place.

     “Every moment that the United States and our allies fail to respond sends the signal to President Putin that he can be even more ambitious and aggressive,” said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., without, of course, spelling out what that response should be. 

     McCain was mild. Reaction in the U.S. was the usual mouse shriek of partisan outrage that pinned the blame for Putin’s trespass firmly on Barack Obama. 

     “Emboldened by President Obama’s trembling inaction, Vladimir Putin has invaded the Crimea region of Ukraine,” Rep. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said, demanding that Putin be brought to his knees by a series of small symbolic rebukes, like revoking travel visas and freezing bank accounts, measures his tea party pals would mock were Obama to suggest them. 

     My reaction to news of a nascent war in Crimea was, I kid you not, “What, again?” thinking of the Crimean War of 1853-56. While that was a very long time ago, there is a dreary sameness to all war, and the two situations are not without parallels. The Russians used the same pretext for invading — to protect nationals they claimed were being manhandled by those in possession of the place, rebellious Ukrainians now, Ottoman Turks back then. The French and English came to the aid of their Turkish pals, and the game was on — three years of fighting, more than 500,000 soldiers dead.
      Some consider it the first modern war, with trenches and bombardments and a definite lack of the plumed lead-soldier pageantry that marked the Napoleonic wars. We have vivid descriptions of it, thanks to the patriotic zeal of a man sometimes called the first war correspondent, Lt. Leo Tolstoy, who, aghast at the death of a friend, “one of the few honest and intelligent generals in the Russian Army,” decided to pause from novel writing and card playing to request transfer to Sebastopol, then under siege.
     While the Russians have mastered exerting brute force upon their own and their immediate neighbors, when they venture out into the greater world, they encounter their betters and learn the same lesson, again and again, one Tolstoy quickly figured out too.
    “I spent a couple hours chatting with French and English wounded,” he noted in his diary on Nov. 23, 1854. “Every soldier is proud of his position and respects himself; good weapons and the skills to use them . . . with us, stupid drills, useless weapons, oppression, age, lack of education and bad food destroy the men’s last spark of pride, and give them a too high opinion of the enemy.”
     If through some unimaginable chain of blunders, America were drawn into this conflict, no doubt it would eventually bring another sobering reappraisal for the Russians. Not that it makes it worth doing. Putin’s outrage upon Ukraine, while bad for them now, will ultimately benefit the world, revealing Putin as the beast he always has been. In 1856, the Russians, an army equipped with muskets fighting a Europe armed with rifles, lost the Crimean War. While they can win a first act, their serfdom-turned-dictatorship has no legs, and patience on our part is better than the blind lunge to action that Obama’s rabid enemies seem to prefer.
     Tolstoy, by the way, when he wasn’t gambling away his family estate at cards, made his name in the Crimean War, publishing his “Sebastopol Sketches” that established him as a literary force. The book contains a scene worth recalling. He enters a field hospital filled with wounded, where he finds 40 or 50 amputees, some on beds, most on the floor. Not wanting to just walk up and gape, Tolstoy tries to find a face less agonized than the rest and starts conversation with an old sailor whose leg was lost to a shell.
     Are you in pain? Tolstoy asks.
     “The main thing, your honor, is not to spend too much time thinking about it,” the sailor tells Tolstoy. “If you don’t think about it, it doesn’t seem much. Most of man’s troubles come from thinking too much.”
     The italics are Tolstoy’s, suggesting he doubts this logic. As should we. Some in the U.S. are so hot to damn the president they’ll urge us to react without thought or preparation. They’re wrong. When it comes to the prospect of war, it’s easy in, hard out. Better to think too much than think too little.