Flashback 2004: Disabled vet's battle with VA over benefits was news in '73 too

Folk art, Smithsonian Institution, Museum of American History

 

     We went to Wicker Park Friday night and saw Mitchell Bisschop's one-man show, "Royko: The Toughest Man in Chicago" at the Chopin Theater. I liked it, while at the same time felt my colleague Bob Chiarito nailed its shortcomings in his review. Both can be true because I'm the rare audience member who is also a working newspaper columnist.  I actually choked up when, as the Chicago Daily News folded, Royko cast his reaction in the voice of a kid on the last day of summer pleading to play just a little bit more. C'mon guys! Don't end this yet. Just one more hour. I feel that way every day.

     Royko's widow, Judy, was there — she said it was her fourth time seeing it — and when a friend introduced us, her frosty, "I know who you are," before turning on her heel and walking off reminded me how her late husband hated younger columnists and treated us like crap at every opportunity — apparently deputizing his family members to carry on the tradition for him, from beyond the grave. Nice to see you too, Mike, and thanks for the reminder — that's why I'm always elaborately kind to whatever ambitious young journalist comes my way. Not that many do.

     The play highlights a Royko column about Leroy Bailey, and I mentioned it to a friend who invited me to see the play that I dredged up Bailey 20 years ago when the VA was in the news for treating its veterans shabbily. She expressed interest in seeing it, and I said I would post it here. It's from when the column ran a thousand words and filled a page, and I kept the other items here , in case you're interested. The really cool part is that, after it ran, Tom McNamee tracked down Bailey and visited with him. Alas, that column isn't online.

Opening shot

     Of the several thousand columns written by Mike Royko, the absolute best is easy to pinpoint: It was published Dec. 10, 1973, in the Chicago Daily News and told the story of Leroy Bailey, the man without a face.
     Bailey had had a face when he went into the Army and was shipped to Vietnam. Then a rocket slammed into his tent and exploded. Eyes, nose, teeth, gone. He was living in his brother's basement in LaGrange, knitting wool hats, when Royko found him. The doctors at Hines Veterans Hospital had told him nothing more could be done for him. But an Oak Brook doctor thought he could reconstruct Bailey's face enough so that he could eat solid foods, instead of taking his nutrients by squirting them down his throat with a syringe. The doctor began the series of operations that would allow Bailey to eat normally. But the VA had refused to pay because they decided that the treatment was for something "other than that of your service-connected disability." Eating like a person, the VA decided, was a needless luxury.
     This will sound grimly familiar to readers who were aghast this past week as the Sun-Times detailed the delay and indifference of the VA here, how vets have to struggle for benefits they have already paid for with their blood, and how Illinois is among the most stingy states in the nation when it comes to helping vets. Not only is it a disgrace, but — as Royko's piece reminds us — it's nothing new.
     Americans fall over themselves to pay lip service to our military. We love a parade, and act like anybody who doesn't support our troops is a coward and a traitor. And then we turn our backs on the most deserving — the wounded vet — not by accident, not individually, but en masse, as a matter of policy.

Whoops! Hey, sorry . . .

     I know you're not supposed to think about the stuff on television. That, for the most part, it's moronic mush designed to roll unchallenged over viewers too tired and numb to extend critical thought. But my God. Perhaps the Orwellian name "The Learning Channel" implies some kind of higher, educational standard, but the lurid fare it serves up as entertainment gets under my skin. I was flipping the channels last week, and I settled on a TLC program. In my memory it was "Medical Miracles," but it could have been "Surgical Surprises" or even "Hospital Hootenanny."
     The story was of a 6-year-old girl, severely burned after her father thought it would be a good idea to use gasoline to jump-start a fire in the fireplace. The story focused on the medical challenges, on the skin grafts and surgeries, introducing the heart-tugging aspect of the twin sister, who at age 6 consented to have some of her own skin stripped away so that her sister could live, complete with poignantly plinking pianos over photos of the pre-burn sisters hugging each other. While dad did address his judgment error that sent a fireball rolling out of the fireplace, burning his daughter over 80 percent of her body, the term he used, I believe, is that he felt "bad" (though he might have said he felt "very bad" or even "terrible." But that was it).
     Call me a cynic. (And the choice nowadays seems limited to "cynic" or "idiot.") But if I had the members of this star-crossed family in front of a camera, happily re-creating their nightmare for a moment of TLC fame, I would have given another 30 seconds to the issue of dad setting little Mandy, or whatever, ablaze, and not just dismiss it with a two second kiss-off. And if I were that dad, I don't think I could bring myself to blandly sit in front of the camera and rehash my moment of bottomless stupidity that had so wrenched my child's life.
     Funny. We relentlessly censor the bloody images of real carnage streaming in daily from Iraq because the public squeals if forced to see the handiwork of our policies. Then we fill the void with the wildest Grand Guignol TV can get away with. If there isn't an Autopsy Channel, it's not because somebody hasn't tried to start one. Maybe next year.

Yeah, that's us

     Last week, I wrote about the unique Canadian ability to fixate and complain about the United States. Canadian sympathizers sent in a lot of flak (including a charmingly succinct if unpersuasive "You're wrong!"). But after the column was reprinted in the Nagging Neighbor to the North, a number of its denizens recognized truth when they saw it, such as Montreal radio host Ted Bird, who writes:
     "Saw your Canada piece this week, reprinted in the Montreal Gazette. I'm no self-loathing Canadian, but man, have you got us pegged. It's actually quite embarrassing. Please be advised that the self-styled intellectual left doesn't speak for all of us, and there is a silent majority of Canadians who still consider America to be their closest friend and ally, and a force for good in the world. Most of the rest are system-sucking crackpots like welfare recipients, erstwhile flower children whose grandkids wish they would get a haircut, and students with heavily subsidized tuition practicing their right to free speech that was bought with blood in epic battles detailed in history books that they've never bothered to read. I wish they would find the energy to mobilize mass protest every time our outrageous income taxes take another jump, but then, they'd actually have to have jobs [to] be affected by taxes."

Was the sponsor Guinness?

     Americans would rather be bored than offended; most places, it's the other way around. Thus, 500 art world types in Britain, surveyed by Gordon's Gin, sponsor of that country's prestigious Turner Prize, just voted Marcel Duchamp's 1917 "Fountain" — an ordinary porcelain urinal the artist signed — as the most influential work in modern art. They're right, sadly. The idea that an artwork should be finely wrought or — God forbid — beautiful went out along with sock garters. What I want to know is this: If the idea of art as whatever shocking item you can pluck out of the junkyard, is 87 years old and counting, and is aped in every museum and gallery in the world, doesn't that mean we can move on to something else? Something new? Or — dare I say it — old?

Neil Steinberg will discuss his new book, Hatless Jack, from 9 to 11 p.m. Tuesday with Milt Rosenberg on WGN-AM (720).

—Originally published in the Sun-Times, Dec. 6, 2004

"I just don't understand it"

     How can the election be this close? A dead heat in the polls. How can Americans look at the two candidates and pick the one whose election would literally mean the dismantling of democracy? How can anyone be undecided? Scratch their heads and go, "Ooo, I don't know...they're both so similar?"
     Future generations will look back — assuming they can, assuming history is allowed — and wonder what the appeal could possibly have been. And all I can do is keep repeating my mantra, "The duped are invested in the fraud." They've punched the ticket, gotten on the train to Crazyworld, and nothing, full stop, nothing is going to pry them out of their seat. Not when the scenery they tell themselves they must be seeing is so shiny and glittery. Golden, not orange. Thrilling. Not nauseating.

    "The Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss,” one candidate said — I'll let you figure out who. My first thought: "Let's fucking hope so; I'm trying to do my part." But that's the bright spin. Already pre-emptively blaming the Jews. Which might come as a surprise to Jewish supporters but, as I've said many times, once you get in the habit of ignoring reality, the specific details of the reality being ignored hardly matters. 

     And in a sense the details don't matter. Hate is fungible. Mexicans, Muslims, Jews — who the fuck cares? The point is to demean somebody, lord yourself above somebody. The precise sort of person is of no consequence. Anyone will do.
     Notice, I don't mention any names. Even on my own personal blog. I think that's months of trying to jump through the paper's 501(c)3 charity hoops wearing off on me. Or rather, grinding me down. We're not supposed to express a preference when it comes to candidates. A reminder to never forget the fiscal motive in all this. As Marge Gunderson says in "Fargo"  — "And for what? For a little bit of money. There's more to life than a little money, you know. Don'tcha know that? And here ya are, and it's a beautiful day. Well. I just don't understand it."

Who's going to get shot with your gun?

"Coming through the Rye," by Frederic Remington (Art Institute of Chicago)

     Black women have a higher suicide rate than white women. Rich or poor, doesn't matter — Black women in the highest income bracket kill themselves 20% more often than white women in the lowest.
     When they do, they generally use handguns — most U.S. suicides are with handguns, because guns are such efficient killing machines.
     This kept flashing in my mind reading Bob Chiarito's piece in Wednesday's Sun-Times, "Surprised Kamala Harris owns a gun?" This is not a criticism of Bob's article. He recounts the stories of real Chicago women who purchase guns to feel more secure and talks to a gun safety instructor, who says that of her 3,000 students, none has ever had to use her gun. He mentions the risks.
     Rather, I am writing to air the other half of the equation Bob cites only in passing. Guns get great PR in America. Yes, there is the increasingly muted horror at increasingly common school shootings. Some obscure town is projected into the news, parents race to the scene, terrified kids rush out with their hands on their heads. It all fades in a day.
     How can that compete with Clint Eastwood? "Dirty Harry?" The movie opened on Christmas 1971, and more than half a century later, we all know the message: The man — or woman — with the gun gets the drop on the bad guys. "Go ahead, make my day." Add all those surveillance videos of robbers getting gunned down on X. We never see videos of kids shooting each other.
     I don't want to ignore the value of guns as comfort objects. You may live in a dangerous area. You have a gun locked in a drawer, it gives you a sense of security. I live in quiet, safe Northbrook, am neither Black nor a woman. Who am I to have an opinion on this? To call guns "teddy bears with bullets?"
     Well, someone whose job it is, in part, to warn people of perils they might otherwise overlook. If you buy a gun, the chances of you, or your family, being killed by a gun jump. Yes, you tell yourself, if you hear someone breaking in, you can calmly go and unlock the drawer and protect yourself until the police come.
     But what if that break-in never happens? What about the rest of the time? Years and years? That gun sits there and is a menace only to the people in the vicinity — aka, you and your loved ones. You might have a dark night of the soul you never anticipated and use it on yourself. Or you might leave the drawer unlocked and your overly inquisitive nephew finds it.

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Those in sympathy with terror disagree

     I grew up in what can be considered the golden age of Israeli ingenuity. From defeating the massed Arab armies in the Six-Day War in 1967, to rescuing its hostages at Entebbe, Israel had the intelligence, the daring, the knowledge, to do what had to be done. 

     It wasn't perfect. In 1973, Israel was caught napping in the Yom Kippur War. Once I visited the Golan Heights, and asked an Israeli officer escorting us, gesturing toward the north. "You can see 30 miles into Syria..." I said. "How did the tanks sneak up on you?"

     He gave an answer I'd always remember. "We saw them coming," he said. "We just didn't know what it meant." 

Ald. Brendan Reilly tweeted, then deleted, 
this.

     That myopia also permitted Oct. 7. The Israelis were warned, but let themselves become so complacent, so preoccupied dealing with Benjamin Netanyahu's mishigas — craziness — that again they were caught off-guard. A thousand Israelis died, and another 250 were kidnapped to a fate worse than death. Plus those who want the Jews magically gone and the nation handed over to a group who never actually lived there were emboldened to think that their dream of genocide might have a chance if only they couch it in the right terms and enlist enough American college sophomores and armchair Marxists to sign on.

     On Oct.7, the Palestinians demonstrated that they, too, could pull off a clandestine caper, particularly when the Iranians were providing the money, the equipment, and pulling their strings. Israel discovered it wasn't the only one who could hatch a decent surprise attack.

     Tuesday's beeper attack against Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon delighted fans of Israel, reminding them of its past genius, while those who believe the nation should quietly allow itself to be destroyed bewailed the civilian casualties and the use of violence that isn't directed toward Jews.

     And why can't such ingenuity be applied by both sides toward working out a lasting peace? 

     Good question. I wish I could offer a glib answer, but I can't. Well, one does come to mind, but I'm not sure I should say — my only guess is that both sides haven't suffered enough. For all the talk of genocide and the constant carnage, Hamas won't agree to a ceasefire because they don't like the details — I hint that the supposed genocide might not actually be one, given that its victims don't want to stop it because of the status of a crossing. 

     And Israel, for all its pretense of freedom and humanity and Jewish love of justice, obviously feels it can ignore the Palestinian problem, nibbling away more land, letting the years trickle by. Neither side has a sense of urgency. Even now. You'd think Oct. 7 would have done the trick. Obviously not. The one year anniversary looms. The beeper caper will hearten those who've grown disillusioned watching Israel botch things so badly. But it's only a passing distraction. The real problem can't be disposed of with execution of a clever plan.

They're eating the plantains!

Figurines at the 2014 Haitian vaudou show at the Field Museum. 

     Haitians eat plantains.
     I must rush to add that Haitians eat other things too. I remember langouste, from my visits to Haiti, a kind of spicy French lobster dish. In "Breath, Eyes, Memory," Edwidge Danticat's lovely, meticulous novel, they eat cinnamon rice pudding, on special occasions.
     In all the continuing fallout from Donald Trump's shocking slur about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, uttered during his debate with Kamala Harris — "They're eating the cats. They're eating the dogs. They're eating the pets" — I have not seen mentioned what Haitians actually do eat. Understandable — with the state police being called out to protect children going to school in Springfield, dozens of bomb threats and the Proud Boys boldly marching, cuisine would naturally get pushed aside.
     Pity. Food has a way of bridging divides. I remember the coffee — I'd never had such excellent coffee — and of course the rum, Jane Barbancourt. Best in the world.
     It goes without saying — well, no, actually, I have to say it — that Haitians also eat sushi and meatloaf and apples and every other food that anybody else eats. Culture is a guide, not a rule.
     As to why the spurious pet-eating claim should shock, coming from Trump and his wingman, JD Vance, that's on me, on all of us. We should expect it by now. But something must make people — regular, non-bigoted people — assume the best about others. Like Anne Frank, we believe people are basically good at heart; a dangerous notion, given how that worked out for Anne.
     Never forget that racism is a form of ignorance. Stupidity rampant. People imagine bigots come to their beliefs the way most of us do, through experience and consideration. They don't. What happens is they try to mold their real life experience to fit their narrow, poisonous personal beliefs. As Vance said, they make stuff up to prove a point.
     Prejudice also is a form of cowardice. Nobody is a bigot because they are brave. Thus, hating people directly is rare: "I hate the Dutch and their stupid wooden shoes." Instead, harms must be postulated to justify the hatred: "The Dutch are running over children with their careless bike riding."
     This is where the lying comes in. False rumors, that bulwark of medieval villages, transfer directly to 21st century technology. "The Jews poisoned the wells" finds a direct corollary in, "They're eating the pets." People we hate are doing something awful! So it's safe to hate them.

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Keep Trump safe so he can lose Nov. 5 and go to prison

Portrait of Napoleon (Rijksmuseum)

      Nah, I don't believe these feeble assassination attempts — two and counting — are deliberately staged by Donald Trump to distract from whatever shitshow he's neck deep in at the moment. He isn't cunning enough. Rather they are convenient occurrences that can be immediately capitalized on, dialing up the fundraising, self-pity, distraction, and of course blame-shifting.
     "The constant drumbeat of hate directed toward Donald Trump by liberal Democratic media, entertainers and politicians is yielding results," reader Thomas Murray wrote Monday. "The hysterical dog whistle to the demented has resulted in two assassination attempts ... so far. This is the real 'death of democracy!'"
     Of course there is no "drumbeat of hate" directed at Trump. Maybe he means news reportage. Or moral horror at his swan dive into racism and white supremacy. Blaming the media for reflecting his vile statements is like blaming the mirror because you're ugly.

     I can't speak for the entire media, but I made it clear almost half a dozen years ago that I absolutely do not hate Trump. How could you hate someone so broken and pathetic? No liberal wants Trump dead; we want him to live, be crushed by Kamala Harris Nov. 5, and then go to prison. He can't do that if he's killed. Frankly, I can't imagine a worse punishment that can be inflicted on Donald Trump than for him to wake up and be forced to be himself for another day.
     No, Republicans just see the assassination attempts, even though both have been done by Trump supporters, as a way to ascribe something bad to people they don't like. It's strange. After an assassination attempt, they worry that calling Trump a would-be dictator, a liar, bully, fraud, felon and traitor might trigger some disturbed individual with a gun. Otherwise, they don't seem to worry at all that he is being called a would-be dictator, liar, bully, fraud, felon and traitor because he IS a would-be dictator, liar, bully, fraud, felon and traitor. That doesn't seem to bother them in the slightest.    

     I was tempted to write Murray back, asking he pretend that instead of a disturbed Trump voter being discovered with a gun and never even getting a shot off — never even being within sight of Trump — it was half a dozen elementary school kids murdered. Then he could demand that nobody politicize the unavoidable tragedy, and I could mentally project my thoughts and prayers in his direction.

In search of black licorice

    I've never met anyone who didn't like chocolate. Who waved off a proffered square of Ghirardelli with, "I'm sorry; not a big chocolate fan."    

     Licorice is different. Some people cringe from licorice. It is an acquired taste. An adult taste. Not a lot of 9-year-olds pine for licorice.

    There's also a connoisseurship to licorice. While chocolate certainly has a range — from the best, L.A. Burdick, to the semi-best, See's, down through Fannie May, all the way down to Snickers. Like the barnyard denizens of "Animal Farm," some chocolate is better than others. 

    That said, I'll still shrug and eat a Hershey's bar. Any port in a storm....

    That isn't true for licorice. Those strawberry whips? I'd rather eat the packaging. I not only want licorice, but I want really good licorice, and by really good licorice, I mean Kookaburra Australian licorice. Other types of black licorice aren't as strong, or as soft, or as fresh. They're also rans, not worth the effort of chewing.

     Okay, that's not entirely true. In Copenhagen I made a point of visiting the Lakrids by Bulow outlet in the basement of the Magasin department store — samples of licorice, perfect spheres were handed out with a tongs by a pair of lovely shop clerks. The place resembled a jewelry store and the candy cost about as much. Salt licorice is a thing in Denmark, and we had to be careful, because some varieties tasted like congealed Morton salt. But we bought slabs that were so good they never made it out of the country.

    Later, in Amerstam, we tracked down the Het Oud-Hollandsch Snoepwinkeltje — "The Old Dutch Candy Store" — and bought a paper cone filled with licorice. Some very chewy, the some almost as good as the Kookaburra I could buy at Sunset Foods back home in Northbrook.
     Only that was about to change. Had I known what was coming, I'd have shipped a crate home. I've have cleaned the shelves of Kookaburra, disappeared from Sunset, replaced by lesser brands. I tried a few. Pheh. Plastic. Bland. Heck, I tried Good & Plenty. Like a man dying of thirst sucking on stones. I was that desperate. I bought a pack of Chuckles for the black piece.
    The Kookaburra web site is there, the company based in Washington State. But it was out of licorice. Months went by. Out of stock. I sent them an inquiring email. I phoned. Nothing. Which is not surprising — during COVID, Coca Cola wouldn't tell me what happened to Fresca without weeks of hammering. Corporations can suck that way.
   But persistence is my superpower. I circled back. Tried again.  finally tracked down a Kookaburra employee. She said that the two owners of Kookaburra are fighting and the company has ground to a halt.
     So it's in limbo?
     "Very much in limbo," she replied, explaining that the two are nearing retirement, and questions of transition have hobbled them. "I don't know what's happening with them. I've tried to figure it out. In the meantime, we're just stopped."
     While I had her on the phone, I had to ask: why is Kookaburra so much better than other licorices?
     "It's batch cooking," she said.
     "Like Graeter's ice cream?" I replied. "They make French pot ice cream in small batches."
     "Like a brownie. Other stuff is cooked more continuously, and it gets rubbery."

     I told her that I had been able to buy a tub of licorice that claimed to be Kookaburra at a high end supermarket in Boston in May, and she said that other companies use their factory, and directed me to Nuts.com. I hurried there, immediately ordered a pound of "Black Australian Licorice, made by the manufacturers of Kookaburra." I ordered some English All-Sorts while I was at it.
     That was Thursday at noon. Within 24 hours, a box was sitting on our front stairs, its cheery, chatty branded packaging carrying over from the box to the bright blue bags inside.

    Through supreme will, I resisted tearing open the bags on the spot and finding out. First, lunch.  Then I parceled out a serving of the licorice, which was appropriately sticky. I tried some. This was it. My wife concurred. "This is very good licorice!" she enthused.    

     If the moral of this story doesn't leap out, I'll spell it out: we have these fantastic online commercial systems, these websites and delivery chains. But you sometimes need that ghost in the machine — the living Kookaburra employee — to birddog a solution. 

     A business only works as well as the people running it work, and it was a little heartbreaking to contrast the leaping efficiency of Nuts.com — which sold me a pound of Kookaburra-quality licorice for $8.99 — to the we're-so-conflicted-we-can't-operate collapse of Kookaburra itself.  They should put something on their website. Licorice is important; how much would an explanation cost?

     Thank you Nuts.com for picking up the dropped ball. As for the Kookaburra owners — c'mon guys, people are depending on you. Figure it out. Because otherwise the world will march on without you. At least put something on your website. Don't your customers deserve that respect?

     I remembered a song from elementary school — an Australian nursery rhyme written in 1932 — and found it quite apt:

Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree
Eating all the gumdrops he can see
Stop, Kookaburra, Stop, Kookaburra
Leave some there for me.

     I assume those are licorice gumdrops.