American Political Revolution

It might be a bit too premature and over dramatic to use such terms, but it is not very difficult to make the case that what happened yesterday in Massachusetts is not some isolated election anomaly, but part of a burgeoning nationwide American political revolution.

Since Republican Henry Cabot Lodge was defeated by a young, upstart politician named John F. Kennedy in November of 1952 and left office in January of '53, at least one of Massachusetts' two U.S. Senators has been a Democrat. Two years after JFK was elected to the Presidency in 1960, his brother Ted Kennedy assumed the seat and owned it until his death last year.

The other Massachusetts Senatorial spot was won by Paul Tsongas for the Democrats in 1979. He was succeeded in 1985 by ultra-liberal John Kerry, and so the Democrats have had solid control of both U.S. Senatorial seats from Massachusetts for a generation.

In what has to be a stunning, bitter, ironic defeat for the Dems, the seat virtually owned by the Kennedy's and controlled by liberal interests for over a half century was lost yesterday.

In the special election held yesterday to replace the deceased 'Lion of the Senate', 50-year old Scott Brown was chosen by the previously reliable voters of Massachusetts to become the first Republican U.S. Senator to represent the commonwealth in three decades.

R.I.P. 2009

Philadelphia Police Officer John Pawlowski (25) and six other law enforcement officers from Pennsylvania joined 113 more from around the United States as of December 30th. Rest In Peace, heroes all...

Harry Wolf and Brian Bates...

Harry Kalas (73), Danny Ozark (85), Peter Zezel (44), Gary Papa (54), Fred Sherman (86)...

Michael Jackson (50), Patrick Swayze (57), Farrah Fawcett (62), Brittany Murphy (32), Ron Silver (62), Steve McNair (36), Natasha Richardson (45), Karl Malden (97), Ed McMahon (86), Bea Arthur (86), Ricardo Montalban (88), Dom DeLuise (75), David Carradine (72), John Hughes (59), Irving Kristol (90), Jack Kemp (73), Ted Kennedy (77), Eunice Kennedy Shriver (88), Socks Clinton (cat-19), Henry Gibson (73), Mary Travers (72), John Updike (76), Robert Novak (78), Les Paul (94), Oral Roberts (91), Soupy Sales (83), Captain Lou Albano (76), Billy Mays (50), Wayman Tisdale (44), Chuck Daly (78), Sam Cohn (79), Marilyn Chambers (56), Nick Adenhart (22), Paul Harvey (90), Carl Pohlad (93), Fr. Richard Neuhaus (72), James Whitmore (87), Greg Page (50), Doc Blanchard (84), Dom DiMaggio (92), Fred Travalena (66), Gale Storm (87), Walter Cronkite (92), Oscar Mayer (95), Dominick Dunne (83), George Michael (70), Roy Disney (79), Gene Barry (90), Tommy Henrich (96)...

Apologies to anyone who feels that I should have named someone in particular. It is a difficult list to make comprehensive. No one was left off intentionally, so please feel free to add on in a comment. RIP to all...

The Lion Sleeps Tonight

At some point when I was a young boy, I learned that Bobby Kennedy and I had shared the same birthday. This was in the early 1970's, when I was about 11 or 12 years old. At that point I really had no idea who he was, or that he had an older brother who had been an American President who had also been assassinated.

I actually do have a childhood memory of the 1968 U.S. Presidential election. I have a memory of living on American Street in South Philly, and most of the families that lived around us rooting for the Democratic Party candidate, Hubert H. Humphrey, to win the election against Republican Party candidate Richard M. Nixon.

While I didn't understand politics on any level, I sensed a strong 'vibe' from the adults both in my own family and my friends' families that this was a big deal. It was important in some way. It mattered. And since my people were rooting for Humphrey, well then, so was little soon-to-be 7 years old Matt Veasey.

As history tells us, Humphrey lost. I actually remember having the feeling for the first time in my young life of disappointment. I had no clue how all of the people around me could possibly be rooting for someone and expecting them to win, and then having that person lose. It just did not compute in my young mind, and I was disheartened.

Of course, as I said, I was about to turn 7 years old in just a few weeks. Between my birthday coming up, then Christmas, and the early months of 2nd grade at Our Lady of Mount Carmel catholic school with the gorgeous Ms. Sarah Hillock as my teacher, there was plenty to distract me in short order and take my attention away from a silly election.

Despite having that impression of the 1968 election, I have no first-hand memory of the vital national events that had happened earlier that same year with first the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and then of Robert Kennedy. It was only by somehow randomly stumbling upon the fact of our shared birthday a few years later that I began my own infatuation with the Kennedy's that would last for decades.

Television & the Presidency as a Time Machine

I was sitting at home this past Saturday night, just flicking around the dial, when a newly produced special report on the Fox News Channel titled "Television & the Presidency" caught my eye.

Being a bit of a history buff, especially American history, it was right up my alley: a historical perspective on the role that television has played in Presidential politics.

As I settled in the program moved quickly through Jimmy Carter's lame Presidency in the late 1970's. Those Carter years were fresh in my own experience, since I turned 15 years old right after his election.

Carter was basically the President of my high school years, and it wasn't pretty. The man was supposed to be some kind of genius. At least that was how the press sold him. But he just couldn't seem to solve any of the big problems that came along, from the gas crisis to unemployment to ballooning interest rates to the emergence of radical islam.

Every time a problem raised it's head, Carter talked and talked and got nothing done to solve it. At least that was my perspective as a teenager, but what did I know? And besides, it didn't matter, I didn't have a vote...yet.

In the fall of 1979, among the many other changes happening in my life, I turned 18 years old and had finally reached the age where I could register to vote. My family was historically a Democratic one, and the Party seemed to easily fit the liberal ideals that most appropriately espoused my own philosophy at the time, so I registered Democrat.

Truth, and the Truthful Truth-tellers Who Tell It

Former Saturday Night Live funnyman Al Franken has in recent years taken his comedic and writing talents to the task of pushing his typically Hollywood-styled ultra-liberal political agenda with his own radio program on the disastrously failed liberal Air America radio network.

He has also penned his liberal thinking in a pair of poor-selling books: “Lies, and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them” and the recently released followup “The Truth”.

Judging by the titles, these might seem to be topics worthy of the effort. Only problem is that in “Lies”, Franken tells many himself, both of omission and commission, and in “Truth”, he tells very little of it.

Instead, Franken chooses to slant particular stories and comments of his targets, almost exclusively President Bush and his Republican allies, to suit his desired result. Great examples are highlighted at the website frankenlies.com.

For instance, in attacking Fox News pundit and my 2005 website American of the Year Bill O’Reilly in “Lies”, Franken claims that O’Reilly lies when he continually makes statements of being proud to have been raised in Levittown, Long Island, New York. Franken states that O’Reilly is not from Levittown, but from the “affluent suburb of Westbury”, which he further states as being “several miles apart” from Levittown.

O’Reilly, always the actual purveyor of truth, responded on his own Fox program “The O’Reilly Factor” in April of 2004 by showing his parents actual deed from the home, in which his mother still lived, clearly showing the Levittown designation.

When Franken brought on to his radio program a Hofstra professor and Levittown expert, Barbara Kelly, he was told there was no lie to uncover, that O’Reilly had indeed grown up in Levittown.

Truth – 1, Franken – 0

The fact is, this is a small matter, but it highlights a theme that runs throughout both of the books.

Finding the 'Right' Way

Embed from Getty Images

Gingrich (L) and the Contract With America led to my vote for Dole (R) in 1996

On a brisk November morning back in 1996, I walked into a polling place located inside the H.A. Brown elementary school in the Kensington section of Philadelphia, signed my name in the register, and walked into the voting booth.

Though I was about to turn 33 years of age in just a few weeks, I was about to experience a first in my life.

As I pulled the handle and the curtain closed behind me, I faced the list of elective offices on the ballot, including that of the President of the United States of America, and searched the list for the one name that I was looking for above all others.

When I found the name of Bob Dole, I pulled over the small lever next to his name, forcing an ‘x’ mark into a tiny window, signifying that he would receive my vote. I pulled the handle back and locked in my first-ever vote for a Republican candidate for President of the United States, marking the beginning of a new era in my life.

It was the first time that I voted the Right Way.