Out of My Mind (31 page)

 

ED: They really want to come here, though. Some of them will make good Americans.

 

TOM: Yeah, and some of them will make lousy Americans. Our country is full, anyway. Every vacant lot in our town is built on now. We can't take in the whole world.

 

TOM: A lot of good people would like to come here. Some of them already have family here.

 

ED: I don't like foreigners except when they're in their own country, anyway. They're OK if they stay home. We don't need 'em, don't want'em. We got a great place here and I don't want a lot of strangers coming in from other places and lousing it up. Half of them get jobs and send money home instead of spending it here.

 

TOM: But overall, they'll help our economy, and anyway, taking them in is the American thing to do.

 

ED: Baloney! They'll just make things more crowded and more expensive for us. They'll drive cars on our roads and make more traffic. We'll have to build new roads.

 

TOM: Didn't your grandparents or great-grandparents come from a foreign country?

 

ED: Naw, not really. They came from Ireland. That's not foreign like say, Poland, Yugoslavia, Guatemala, Mozambique, Nigeria, Nicaragua, Syria, Thailand, Turkey, Yemen. Places like that. People from there are foreigners. That's what I'm talking about. The Irish talk funny but they talk English. I mean, you know.

 

TOM: But we're proud of America being the great melting pot.

 

ED: Forget about it. Half the people who come here these days don't melt. After ten years here, they still don't speak English. I say, “You don't like our language? Leave then. Go back where you come from. Speak whatever language that is if that's what you like but speak it there, not here.”

 

TOM: But our country is made up of foreigners. Everyone here except a few thousand Indians came here from someplace else.

 

ED: Well, yeah, but that was a long while ago. We got enough now. Close the damn door, I say.

 

TOM: Who's going to do the dirty work if we don't have immigrants? You know, run the garbage trucks, do the heavy lifting on construction jobs. Who's gonna mow the lawns of rich people like you?

 

ED: If I can't get anyone to mow it, I'll mow it myself, or just let it grow. Lots of Americans are unemployed.

 

TOM: No, you got that wrong. Technically, they aren't all what you call unemployed or out of work. Some of them don't want to work. If they aren't looking for work or don't want to work because they don't have to, they aren't unemployed. You can't count them. They're retired.

 

ED: Yeah, or lazy. They just like getting unemployment insurance.

 

TOM: You don't approve of unemployment insurance?

 

ED: Yeah, but if someone's on it for a long time, they ought to lose it. They should get out there and look for a job.

 

TOM: Boy, you're tougher than President Bush.

A President of the United States has more work than he can handle so he needs plenty of help. President Bush has surrounded himself with assistants he trusts and, according to the people who watch him closely, he takes a lot of advice from aides. Some White House experts don't even think it was the President's idea to attack Iraq.

President Bush's most important assistant for several years was Andrew H. Card Jr. but he quit the job in 2006. I guess he wanted to spend more time with his family. That's what they always say even if they don't
have one. Card was called “Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff.” Most of us will never know the real reason why someone like Card decides to call it quits—or did President Bush decide for him? The President has regularly denied that there were going to be any major changes on his staff. However, he must have been looking for someone to point at after the precipitous decline in his popularity. Maybe Andy Card was his choice.

I have in front of me, as I write, an interesting document that lists everyone on the White House staff, what their jobs are and how much each is paid. The top pay is $I6I,000. That's what Card and ten other top assistants got. In the business world, $I6I,000 is peanuts. The heads of most big corporations wouldn't put on a tie and come to work for less than a million dollars a year.

This list is for 2005 but I don't think it's changed much. Melissa S. Bennett is on here. She has a hard job. Melissa is “Deputy Assistant to the President for Appointments and Scheduling.” She gets to tell the President where to go.

Liza Wright Renner is “Special Assistant to the President for Presidential Personnel.” In other words, the President has so many assistants working for him that he has to have an assistant in charge of the other assistants.

Anita McBride is “Deputy Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff to the First Lady.” I don't see why “Deputy Assistant to the President” is part of her title. Does she have to check with George before she does something for Laura?

Dennis Grace is called “Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Director, Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.” I guess he's in charge of religion.

Janey Roell Naughton and Elizabeth Ann Horton are both called “Ethics Advisor.” I don't know about that, either. It seems to me President Bush ought to know what is ethical and what isn't without having two women tell him.

Janet Lea Berman is “White House Social Secretary.” That could be a hard job. She makes $92,I00. After they have a party at The White House, maybe she gets to take home some of the leftover sandwiches.

Marguerite Murer is “Director of Presidential Correspondence.” She reads the mail, I guess. That would be a hard, important job if she also has to answer it. Nuts are always writing to the President and I suppose she has to be polite to them. Marguerite makes $92,I00. There's also a “Director of Mail Analysis.” She must get to tell the President when people really hate something he did.

Misty Marshall is the “Director of Correspondence” for the First Lady.

There are thirteen speechwriters listed. Someone named “Joan R. Doty is called “Senior Writer” but she only makes $36,900. I wouldn't write “Nice to be here” for the President for that kind of money. Robert Thomas Pratt Jr. is a “Senior Writer” and he gets paid $42,800. They don't list any “junior” writers. The writers must have to wait on the table the President is speaking at to pay the rent.

Lee F. Bockhorn was also listed as a speechwriter. He was making $40,900. Lee's name is just below Sarah Penny's name, and Sarah makes $4I,000 as the West Wing Receptionist. You can see how important they think writing is in the White House.

Clare Ross Taplett is “Deputy Director of the Gift Office.” She must help decide where to throw all the presents people send the President.

Julia Phillips is a “Gift Analyst.” She must decide how much a present is worth.

After reading this list, I can see why Andy Card decided to quit his job in the White House and look for work.

My daughter, Ellen, lives in London working as a photographer. Recently, she got an assignment in Cuba. She emailed me her hotel phone number there because I wanted to call and see how she was doing in Havana. I picked up the phone on my desk and started to dial the number. Suddenly, I had a terrible thought. I slammed down the receiver.

“Wait a minute,” I said to myself. “If I call Cuba on my telephone, someone in the FBI is going to put me on a list of Americans who call Cuba.” I had never been ashamed to be American before.

We Americans think of the United States as the greatest nation on earth. In the view of most of the rest of the world, we're objectionable about it because they think our pride exceeds our greatness.

I'm one of the objectionable Americans who probably has a higher opinion of our country than it deserves. What worries me is not the high opinion I have of it but my diminishing sense of pride because of things like not daring to call Cuba because it would get me on a list of people suspected of being un-American.

Our country no longer seems as great as it once did. We are no longer the good guys always doing the right thing as the leaders of the free world.

We have always been best friends with the English and they're still doing fairly well. China, Japan and even Russia are doing better, and I don't want to see my country fall behind any of them in any category. Every country on the planet has its strengths and weaknesses but some have more strengths and fewer weaknesses.

It isn't popular to say, but it still seems incontrovertibly true that the people born and raised in some countries are less capable at living than the people of other countries. I think the accomplishments of the civilizations of Europe and North America have exceeded those of the South American and African countries by any standard you can name. There is no explanation for why this is true and I know that it's politically incorrect of me to mention it.

It would be interesting to have the people of every country in the world take an I.Q. test so we could match the collective intelligence of a nation with its standing in the world. If we lived by our professed belief that “all men are created equal,” the scores for all nations would be equal. However, we don't really believe that. Something has gone wrong in some nations along the way. Climate may make a difference.

The character of the population of the United States is changing for a variety of reasons, and our image around the world is changing because of that. About one million people are entering the United States as legal and illegal immigrants every year. They are no longer primarily European, as they once were.

This country was made great by the people whose initiative made them pick up, leave home and come to America for a better life. It is not certain that the people coming here now are motivated by the same things as the immigrants who made their way here 100 or more years ago.

There's no question that the United States has a lower standing among nations today than it had a 150, 50 or even 15 years ago. It was hardly noted by most Americans, but the single most damaging blow to our international reputation came in 2001 when the Bush administration refused to comply with the Kyoto Treaty designed to reduce global warming.

The treaty, which sought to reduce the kind of pollution that has trapped heat around the earth and produced a warm band was signed by 141 nations. Under the influence of the major manufacturing corporations who didn't want to spend the money to clean up their act, their friend President Bush opposed the treaty. This has had a lasting and negative effect on our standing in the world community.

The comedian Roger Price, long gone now, invented and used the word “copeless” in describing himself. He was unable to cope, he said and I often think of the word—which is not in any dictionary—in relation to myself.

I was stopped by the flashing lights of a New York City police car last week. Unaware of having done anything wrong, I assumed the cops were after someone in front of me and wanted me to move over so they could get by and apprehend the culprit. It turned out, I was the culprit. One officer came to a position slightly behind the window of my car and said, without inflection “Registration and license, please.” It was a bloodless “please” and did not suggest I had a choice.

“What did I do?” I asked.

“License and registration,” he repeated, without the “please” this time. My license was in a small leather case I carry instead of a wallet. I opened the door to get out.

“Where you going?” he said not in a friendly voice at all.

“It's in my pants pocket,” I said. “It's easier to get if I'm standing.”

I had forgotten, in a moment of angst, that when a cop stops someone in a car, he stays well behind the driver and, as a precaution against the possibility the driver has a weapon, does not permit the driver to get out.

I showed him my license but could not find my registration. Like my clothes closet, my desk drawer, my garage and my basement, my car looks like an unemptied wastebasket. Everything is right there somewhere but I don't know where.

“You have an outdated sticker on your license plate,” he said. “I'm going to let you go this time but get that sticker and put it on.” I thanked the cop more effusively than he deserved and drove off.

If I were arrested for every sticker I hadn't stuck, every form I've failed to fill out, every item to be returned that I had not returned, I'd be in prison for life. I don't fill things out and return them. I don't know my
social security number. I don't know when I pay the doctor and when some plan pays him. Neither do I know one medical plan from another. My bank writes to say I should change over from one plan to another and I don't understand whether it's something I should do for my own good or whether it's another bank sales gimmick, better for them than for me.

I hesitate to say so in print, but I do not keep track of what I have in my bank account and if the bank stole from me, I'd never catch them.

My company informs me that they are going to have a new system for the company retirement plan and will I please fill out the form and indicate that I want it, don't want it and how much of it do I want—or not want. The fact that I don't plan to retire is not an option they offer.