Revisiting The Yellow Birds

I wrote a few weeks ago about this debut novel by Iraq War Veteran Kevin Powers that has been called the best book of the year. When I read the book I was moved and amazed at how wonderful the book is.

For a person such as me who is always reading something it sometimes is hard to take a step back and say this is an exceptional book. Not just a great book like I am always saying a book is, but a very outstanding, an exceptional book.

The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers is exceptional. It is Hemingwayesque. The author appeared on Morning Joe this morning and he was soft spoken and understated. The group around the desk was all in agreement at how wonderful the book was and as Joe Scarborough read the first paragraph it became clear that this book is something rare, something that will become part of the literature of the American canon. With a first line " The war tried to kill us in the spring" what becomes immediately clear is that the blurb on the cover by Tom Wolfe that this is the All Quiet on the Western Front of America's Arab wars is not hyperbole. It is simply the truth.

If you read one book this year. This is the one. There are not enough positive adjectives for how meaningful this book is.

Mika Brzezinski on David Letterman

I have to admit something. My wife, I am pretty sure, already knows this but I have to admit publicly that I have a crush on Mika Brzezinski. I am sure that says something about me, not all of it I am sure allows me to stay in the he man club.

Mika as some know is the cohost of the Morning Joe program on MSNBC and plays the Democrat to Joe's Conservative. Her father is Zbigniev Brzezinski who was President Carter's National Security Adviser, who in fact often appears on the show as a guest.

Mika is incredibly intelligent, politically minded and engaged, a Democrat but not a knee jerk liberal and possessed of a very wry sense of humor. She broke with the administration and expressed dismay over the Catholic church as employer being forced to provide birth control and can often take the left to task. Much like Joe she is a member of her party but shows respect and the ability to appreciate the other sides opinion.

When you are 47 and you list intelligence as the most attractive thing about a woman you know you have aged. She is attractive but not in a typical way. Bottle blond and with wrinkle lines when she smiles she is a grown up.

So now that I have confessed this I want to talk about her appearance on Dave last night. Interestingly she was obviously nervous. I find it interesting that any one, herself included, who handles with such aplomb Presidential candidates and international figures would be nervous being interviewed by David Letterman. I guess it just goes to show that anyone taken out of their normal environment can change.

I watch Morning Joe most every day. I respect Scarborough, find him intelligent and rational, but I think that Mika with her sense of humor, enormous wit and intelligence, and her lone female in the boys club ability to fend for herself is the star of the show. A modern woman who recently wrote a book about women in the workplace and pay equity amongst other issues Mika is a role model for our daughters. A woman, respectful of her church, but willing to question when she feels necessary, attractive without being objectified, incredibly intelligent and conversant in the issues of the world and a mother and family woman as well who by all accounts is able to maintain a work life balance. And she has a great relationship with her father filled with respect and obvious affection.

Yes Mika is the star of the Morning Joe show, underrated as the glue that holds the show together but also an incredibly strong role model for women, especially young women, everywhere.

Pat Buchanan out at MSNBC

Pat Buchanan has been fired from MSNBC. I am a Democrat a moderate but still firmly a Democrat. I think this firing is a poor choice.

One of the things that separated MSNBC from Fox news was their willingness to have strong viewpoints from the other side. Does that mean that it is not a left leaning network, of course not, but the fact that articulate right leaning individuals were on their network made them look stronger not weaker.

I do not agree with much of what Pat Buchanan says. I very much enjoyed hearing him say it. Phil Griffin the head of MSNBC said statements and opinions in the commentators most recent book were not worthy of discussion and expression. Really? Is that where we are in this country?

There is no question Buchanan was persecuted and fired because of his opinions. There is also no doubt that in the wake of his firing many from the left have protested his firing as short sighted and discriminatory.

Andrew Sullivan the openly gay conservative commentator has said that while not agreeing with much of what Pat said that he felt daylight was the best disinfectant to wrong opinion. He also shared a story about Buchanan's personal kindness to him when Sullivan announced his being positive for HIV.

What were Buchanan's crimes. He was polarizing and often stated opinions that were anti gay rights and made minorities feel uncomfortable. Still anyone who saw his 1992 Republican National Convention speech should have known this. MSNBC has had him on the payroll for ten years and now they are uncomfortable?

In his most recent book, Suicide of a Superpower Pat had chapters called The End of Christian America and The End of White America. These chapters are inflammatory. They are meant to be

Buchanan decried the end of both. As he says " he is a white christian why should he not. " In today's world however, to do so, is to be wrong. I am not sure why? African Americans voted for the President in large numbers, some due to his race. Are they racist.

Look if everyone is going to celebrate the coming minority majority culture of America why is it wrong to state that you do not agree. Buchanan was not speaking anything many do not feel and a legitimate debate over the feelings and fear many Middle class White Americans feel about their future is not a bad thing.

Griffin is spineless. Had Fox News ejected a liberal commentator under the same circumstances they would have been crucified and rightly so. To say that after Buchanan wrote that book that he had no place on the network is false, if that was so he would have been fired upon publication. Instead as the witch hunt grew over the last few months from extreme left wing groups Griffin finally capitulated.

The Network can have on who they want. They have however taken one further step to making themselves the left wing mirror of Fox News. Perhaps Buchanan was only a token, such as Alan Colmes on Fox, but it did not feel that way to me. It felt like was respected if not agreed with.

Certainly the admirable dissenting opinion in regards to his release issued by Joe Scarborough and Mika Brezinski leads one to believe so.

Instead now Pat will ienvitably find himself on a right wing channel preaching to the faithful. What a loss of credible, articulate and differing opinions. In his book Buchanan writes about his fears of a Balkanization of America, with a country with limited shared experience and no viewpoint being accepted by any group except that which they agree with. Unfortunately he was more correct than he knew.

Pat Buchanan was called Uncle Pat by his cohorts on MSNBC. He was articulate and respectful all the time, wrong most of the time and generous to those who disagreed with him constantly. He will be missed.

What I Learned When I Almost Died by Chris Licht

I saw this book on Amazon and the title is a grabber. It is a short 160 page book but I was interested. Primarily my interest was grabbed because Licht is the executive producer of my morning favorite Morning Joe. Hearing the backstory of how he came to be producer on this show and of his relationship with Joe Scarborough and Mika, two of my favorite people in the world to watch.

In the book Licht describes a day that as he finished a show one morning, he was checking his voicemail and he felt a pop in his head and soon was suffering from an excruciating headache.

We follow him through the emergency department of George Washington hospital in D C. We see his father, a physician himself, tell him as he is being driven to the hospital to tell them that he never gets headaches and his head hurts worse than it ever has and he needs a catscan. This is a code doctors understand that they may be dealing with something life threatening.

Licht over the course of the day and then the weeks after goes through a multitude of tests. As happens in a small amount of cases he suffers no long term damage but they also never find the cause of the bleed. If it was an anuerysm they never find it and assume it repaired itself.

It is good news of course but also leaves one feeling vulnerable in the future. Licht admits freely to being a Type A personality and being an ass much of the time in his work progression. He states he cannot see himself moving to the beach and being all peace, love and happiness but admits the incident gives him pause.

I must say that though we are pleased to see him doing well the books title is a bit misleading. Licht talks about slowing down and letting go of anger over what happened, he does learn to not sweat things that in the end mean nothing compared to almost dieing but those looking for him to have a revalation of epic proportions will not find it.

Still an interesting book, a small investment in time. It is nice to see his good friends and the involvement of Joe Biden who is clearly one of the nicest men in politics you will find.

And we learned the code, if struck with an intense pain out of nowhere it might be good to know what to say to make sure you are taken seriously.

Morning Joe

Joe Scarborough was a member of the Gingrich revolution who came to congress in 1994. A couple of years ago he had an afternoon show on CNBC when Don Imus self destructed. Soon he and Mika Brezenski were hosting this morning show that has become the place to be. With Pat Buchanon commenting from the right and Mike Barnacle from the left the two hosts work well together. Scarborough still a Republican but one who would pass no purity tests and Brezinski the daughter of Jimmy Carter's NSC head is clearly still tilting left.

What is best about this show however is that there is no line such as Fox. Joe is contrary to anything you might automatically expect. I am a moderate Democrat and for me someone like Joe is an ideal candidate. Realistic with the budget but realizing you cannot tear everything down. Recently he called Newt Gingrich shameful for his Muslim baiting comments and said it was worse as he should know better.

Interviewing Bill Clinton, and what a shame we cannot have a leader such as he, he commented on how much the country could use a leader such as he.

The show is great.