Contemplating closure

If there is such a thing as a First Amendment fundamentalist, I’m it.

Like the religious fundamentalist who thinks every word of the Bible is to be taken literally, I think an American’s freedom of expression should be damn near absolute. When somebody explained to me why shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater isn’t a legitimate exercise of First Amendment rights, I got it -- but I still had to think about it.

I’m such a purist on the subject that I even resented Tipper Gore’s attempt to child-proof dirty lyrics 20 years ago. If I got torqued by something that low key, you can only imagine my loathing for flag-burning amendments and other such patrio-fascist crap.

There is one glaring exception to my free-speech absolutism:

The word “closure” should be constitutionally banned from the language, and anybody who speaks or writes it should be hanged, drawn and quartered.

I passionately detest that word for more reasons than I have time or patience to go into here, but start with the fact that it has been journalism’s favorite cliché for years now, and we just by God won’t let go of it.

It meets all the qualifications for a media cliché, beginning with the most obvious: There are certain stories where you can see it coming from far enough away to take cover.

Just as any story that takes place away from an American coast or border demands that the word “Heartland” appear in a minimum of 12,342 headlines and screen crawls, any account of lingering grief or tragedy will invariably and inevitably steer us into a closure collision.


But beyond my own industry’s abuse of the word as a weapon to commit multiple journalistic felonies, I hate it because it’s psychobabble at its worst – a bogus concept that casually, and I think callously, implies that some event, gesture or ceremony can wrap up grief in a tidy little compartment and end painful chapters in our lives. Hurt doesn’t work that way.

So enough already. Let’s permanently consign that dismal, smarmy noun to the mass grave of clichés that newspapers finally figured out were clichés long after everybody else already had. That would truly bring me closure.

Consigliere

Don Obama needs Tom Hagen.

You remember Tom – the German-Irish street kid Vito Corleone took in out of the kindness of his heart and turned into the family lawyer, not to mention the best intelligence man in the history of Hollywood GoonWorld.

It’s Tom who digs up the goods on movie mogul Jack Woltz, it’s Tom who finds out Sollozzo is dealing dope for the Tattaglias and has Captain McCluskey on the take, and it’s Tom who tracks down Frank Pentangeli’s scary brother in Sicily just when Frankie is about to sing for the Senate.

Tessio and Clemenza had the muscle, but Tom could vet.

I bring this up because whoever is doing the vetting for the Obama gang flat-out sucks at it.

You didn’t need to wait for this embarrassing procession of tax cheats to sense that. You saw it way back when Obama’s association with Jeremiah Wright seemed to catch his campaign totally off guard.

Tom Hagen would have had a ranting nimrod like Wright on his radar long before he became an issue. The good reverend would have been quietly bundled off to a nice out-of-the-way pastorate in Nevada, with a salary more than high enough to convey the appropriate message, and Rocco Lampone dropping in now and then to make sure he was behaving himself.

Now come Geithner and Daschle and Killefer, and it’s like nobody has even bothered to ask the most obvious questions.

Who’s running this administration’s domestic intelligence team -- Fredo?

Mr. President, get yourself a good consigliere. And tell the next person you consider for anything, from the Supreme Court to White House basement toilet attendant, that he or she had better be as clean as an unwrapped bar of Ivory. Or else.

Even the rich and powerful can be brought to heel. Just ask Woltz.

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Visiting royalty

To paraphrase the late Gene Siskel, one of the best things about being a journalist is that you get to meet a lot of important people. One of the worst things about being a journalist is that you have to meet a lot of important people.

And here’s something you might not know, but probably suspect: Political VIPs play as fast and loose with other people’s time as they do with other people’s money.

There are few things more butt-chapping irksome than being at the mercy of people who demonstrate open contempt for everybody else’s time. The medical profession is the worst on that score. (I’ve never set foot back in the Hughston Clinic since a broken finger and a 10 a.m. appointment , when a receptionist announced to the room at 2 p.m. that they were “running a little behind.” Thanks, Professor Hawking.)

Doctors have something of an excuse for time-management arrogance. The excuse usually isn’t adequate to the arrogance or the time, but at least there is one.

Politicians just have the arrogance. Throw in a buck for every time we’ve sat around a conference table waiting for some governor, senator, congressperson or other ostensible notable who should have been there a half-hour ago and apparently can’t tell time or dial a phone, and we’d solve the economic crisis. (Word has it that Bill Clinton is the worst of the lot. I wouldn’t know; presidents, as the vernacular has it, are above my pay grade.)

A typical specimen of the species, a relatively high-ranking state official, scheduled a visit not long ago. About 15 minutes into what should have been the meeting this eminence’s office had asked for, we get the call – not from the eminence (natch), but from an aide.

We’re running a little late.

Strike one.

So this honorable shows up with a politician’s usual ridiculous retinue of acolytes, serfs and suckups (strike two), talking on a cell phone (strike three and out) – a conversation that continues all the way up the elevator and does not conclude until we are all sitting around the table waiting.

And you know what the really pathetic thing is? None of this was in the least unusual or surprising.

If I had one message for every politician or political appointee, regardless of party or ideology, it would be this: Unless you have your hand on the proverbial button, you’re not that freaking important. Cultivate some perspective. And while you’re at it, some damn manners.

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