By
David Gottfried
PREFACE ON LANGUAGE IN THE TITLE: Before I go any further, I must apprise my readers that I am not homophobic. Indeed, I am gay. I must say this or risk banishment from the forums of “respectable” people given trends toward censorship and the growing predilection to read material out of context. (If present trends continue, soon someone might argue that the bible should be banned because it mentions the cruel phenomenon of slavery, notwithstanding that the book of Exodus bemoans the slavery of the Jews in Egypt.)
When Mario Cuomo ran against Ed Koch in the 1982 Democratic Gubernatorial Primary in New York, the Cuomo campaign disseminated the slogan, “Vote for Cuomo, not the Homo.” It was a tactless, bigoted slogan, but Mario Cuomo’s administration was better for gay people than Ed Koch who spat on the gay community as AIDS flooded over us like a biological Tsunami.
And I vividly recall seeing Bella Abzug, on the corner of 8th Street and 6th Avenue, telling women they ought to vote for Ted Kennedy in the 1980 Democratic Presidential Primary in New York. Many women were appalled, declaiming that Ted Kennedy, and all the Kennedys, were such “horrid womanizers.” Bella Abzug, one of the most combative and steadfast feminists in America, was adamant in her support for Kennedy, saying that everyone in Washington Fucks around and whether millions of women in America have the right to control their own bodies is more important than whether Kennedy fucks around with 2 or 20 young broads in D.C.
Today, few women have the political sophistication and hard-assed real politik that Abzug had. Instead, they emote like the chorus in a Greek Tragedy and demand that we must all believe the women. They claim that they want to see justice done, not realizing that to be just we cannot decide, at the outset, to believe whatever the women are saying. Justice requires due process and a close evaluation of each witness to assess his credibility. Ah, but a kangaroo Court and trial by media spectacle is so much more fun than sifting through the evidence.
Some people are sounding the notes played by the moral majority. They want a morally upright leader. Someone who doesn’t fuck, and ideally someone who doesn’t smoke or drink either. I think these worshipers of strict morality have already found their candidate. He’s Adolf Hitler, and he didn’t smoke or drink or eat meat and he was loyal to Eva Braun. Since Adolf got an A plus in good two shoes sterility, he obviously was preferable to the allies. After all, Churchill drank like a fish and FDR cheated on Eleanor.
Before this controversy, or hysterical sexual gossiping frenzy, got off the ground, the press in general, and most New Yorkers, adored Cuomo.
The phony liberals of New York did not give a damn that Cuomo opposed a special millionaire’s tax even though this city, like its sister pseudo liberal city San Francisco, sports class divisions as stark as in the days of JP Morgan. In New York, I suffer to see wealthy parasites in limousines half a block long, and I see people paying 4,000.00 a month to live in 4 story walk-up apartments with hundreds of scampering, sickening rats.
Of course, some people, such as the valiant Bernie Sanders, gave a damn about poverty, but Andrew Cuomo has been dead set against the true progressive politics that Bernie represents. Although his Father, Mario, seemed to have strong liberal inclinations, and although his Brother, Chris Cuomo, does an excellent impersonation of a passionate liberal on CNN, Andrew Cuomo makes nice liberal noises when the cameras and audio draw near, but when the media is shooed out of the room, he is just another fat cat among fat cats, living off the fat of the land by redistributing wealth from the middle and working classes to the vampirous elites.
But for most New York liberals I know, who buy the New York Times to look at the crossword puzzles but never read the news stories, all Andy Cuomo had to do was say that he cared about the poor, and they believed he was the second coming in the form of a liberal democrat. They never seemed to realize that he was a very adept practitioner of the phony liberalism perfectly described in a chapter, entitled “Bourgeois Liberalism,” of Michael Harrington’s book “The Twilight of Capitalism.” The 12 succinct pages of that chapter should be required reading for every progressive fool who falls for the tricks peddled by corporate democrats.
THE GENERAL IDEA PUT FORTH BY HARRINGTON
(I believe I may have to use caps because most people are bored to hell with economics and foreign policy and only like the girlish BS in the news, e.g., what is Melania wearing, aren’t the Kennedys as dreamy as Dr. Kildare, are the Kennedys evil for fucking so many women, and how should Hillary do her hair)
HARRINGTON SAID: Every “liberal” program enacted by “liberal” democrats does ten times more for rich people than it does for poor people.
SPECIFICALLY, IT MEANS stuff like the following: FDR’s agriculture adjustment act paid farmers not to plant fields because less produce would mean higher food prices and less starvation in rural America. CONCRETELY it meant rich farmers with thousands of acres got federal money, left their fields fallow, and from the inception of the policy, until the start of World War Two, about 2 million sharecroppers were thrown off the land as the owners of plantations no longer needed workers because the owners were paid for not growing food.
This defect in liberalism, identified by Harrington, is rampant in New York. Consider Housing: The government spends millions of dollars on homeless people. In part, this is done by giving hotel owners thousands of dollars for prison cell sized apartments that are infested with vermin. Who is helped by this cockroach and rodent liberalism: Parasitic landlords pissing in their goddamn panties.
But none of this mattered to Senators Gilibrand or Schumer or the talking heads. These cowardly people find it so much fun attacking a guy when everyone else is doing it. And so they all piled on Cuomo when the media had a real food fight covering his alleged sexual improprieties. G-d forbid they should criticize a fellow media superstar while the media cretins are all praising him.
(This reminds me of something Doris Kearns Goodwin said that Lyndon Johnson said: Most media people and politicians are never able to develop a new idea. They just parrot what other people say. Therefore, according to Johnson, when James Reston of the NY Times criticized a particular facet of his Vietnam policy, other papers, and radio and television stations, faithfully mimicked Reston’s every word.)
The rich liberal denizens of New York, so blue and supercilious that they seem to glare like a queen’s radiant sapphires, never cared about working people; they care about appearing to care about working people so they can get the votes of wealthy people who pretend that they are still gallant and young and progressive by pushing the lever for a Democrat.
Don’t get me wrong. I have no love for conservative republicans. But I must remind Liberals – a word subject to so many different and contradictory definitions that the word is virtually worthless – that they only seem palatable, or a cut above patently nauseating, in comparison to Republicans.
I am sure many “liberals” will find me churlish considering the enactment of Biden’s new spending bill. They are titillated by the prospect of getting 1400 dollar checks. Believe me, that satisfaction will wear off pretty damn quickly, especially since that amount of money doesn’t come close to covering the cost of a rental fee of 4000 dollars a month. It’s chicken feed for the hens gossiping about who groped whom.
I found Substack via a Bari Weiss piece so now trying to learn about it and how I can use it. Any tips? Your comment included a request for feedback that led me to the "Homo for Cuomo" piece. If you're on www.quora.com, you might have run into my answers (over 1,000) or comments there, though I also write comments to articles around the Internet, often rather verbose comments in fact (still working on that).
Goody-Two-Shoes" has been around forever, though I've never seen it in writing. It's the heroine of a 1934 children's story and a term some might have applied to me and some friends back in HS. We wouldn't smoke in front of the guys because we thought it looked sluty, and we were the "real" good girls, unlike the girls from the Catholic girls' schools who only pretended to be good . . . LOL. The term is usually used when someone appears "too good" in a way that makes others feel uncomfortable as in a bit "less than," and no one likes that, of course.
I hope you don't view my comments as criticisms in the negative sense. I offered the suggestions 'cause I seem to be good at it, though goodness knows why. I'd much rather my gift be a voice like Celine's, JLo's or Adele's or a talent for coding so I can create the "advanced" word processing and database capability we had with the original word processing programs that were cursor driven/controlled, but, since I don't and K-12 education has been inadequate since around 1970, I feel I owe it to my fellow Americans to share what I know, what a superior K-6 education sans homework can give a developing child.
The value of good language skills has been lost, but that's something we cannot afford to lose because the extent of one's mastery of language directly affects and determines the degree to which one can engage in complex, in-depth thinking. If given the necessary foundation in K-6, one's mastery of English becomes second nature, as it should since it's our native language.
If interested in working on your writing, a good way to do that is to use the suggestions to help you re-write the essay. Just know I covered only the beginning of the piece, not all of it, so you may have questions; otherwise no response is necessary unless you want to take my head off for something : - ) Ciao`
Hi David: Am I too sheltered or too old to know what "good two shoes sterility" is and what it means? Is it "good, two-shoes sterility" or "two good-shoes sterility" or "two-good-shoes sterility" or even "too good-shoes sterility"?
View it as one views "trial by media spectacle." The spectacle isn't a "trial spectacle" nor a "media spectacle," and it isn't a "trial and media spectacle." Instead, because all three words have to be used together to describe spectacle, it has to be a "trial-by-media spectacle." Using the hyphens tells the reader that the three words form and work as a unit to describe "spectacle," so use of the hyphens is about clarity. When several adjectives can be joined by "and," then they would be separated by commas.
You expressed interest in feedback. I don't know whether I can be of any help, but, for what it's worth, I found this piece confusing, although I'm not sure I'm clear on why. It's likely a combination of factors. I was never sure where it was headed or what point it intended to make. Given the reference to the Kennedys, I thought it was trying to say that Cuomo's current scandal involving sexual harassment isn't a big deal in view of the antics of other politicians, but it also talks about farmers and the homeless and $ given to each, then it flips to senators and talking heads having "so much fun attacking a guy when everyone else is" when the phraseology was leading me to expect it to say it's more fun to attack when no one else is.
I describe writing as a thinking [wo]man's game because it requires thinking about both the combination of words in a phrase and where they're placed in the sentence. This is why I've been pushing for educators to re-implement sentence diagramming in K-6 education. For comprehension, it trains the brain to look for the subject and verb first, very handy for comprehending long, complex sentences on standardized tests and sales contracts.
For writing, it trains the brain to connect meaning to location in a sentence in relation to other phrases and clauses in the sentence. Something I've been practicing is being more direct by using fewer words, so, instead of the "cruel phenomenon of slavery," it's the "cruelty of slavery." AIDS didn't just flood over "like" a biological tsunami. It was a full-blown, [consuming] biological tsunami. So, maybe it's " . . . did more for gays than Ed Koch who spit on us as our community was drowning in an [AIDS biological tsunami] [AIDS tsunami]."
In the paragraph that beings with "Today, few women . . .," every "they" refers back to women, so "whatever the women were saying" works better as "whatever they are saying." Since "evaluation" and "assess" are synonyms, "observing" each witness to "assess" makes more sense. "Chorus" is a musical term, so it doesn't really fit with "Greek Tragedy." The "hard-assed real politick" can probably do without the "real." When you have one good adjective, sometimes it's best not to muddy it or dilute with another one that's probably less effective anyway.
In English, we have pairs of words that work together like "either-or" and "neither-nor." There's a chance to use one of those pairs in the paragraph after Hitler, as in "the press in general, and New Yorkers specifically, adored Cuomo. (Hint: New Yorker liked Mario but do not like Andrew)
Sometimes when I come up with a great phrase like your "biological tsunami," I'll twist my writing inside out in an effort to hang onto it until finally courageous enough to admit I have to let all or part of it go. At times, that's the hardest part about editing, willing to be brutal about cutting out and rearranging your own writing.
I always read my writing aloud 'cause it helps me find areas that don't flow or read smoothly. For instance, Bella's location seems like an interrupter that would read better at the beginning or end and/or possibly rephrased, as in "I vividly recall being [at 6th and 8th Avenues] [on the corner of 6th and 8th Avenues] when Bella came along to . . ."
Did Bella just "tell" women or "convince" them? The adjectives used to describe her later might be good in that first sentence. "I can still see Bella [in her most assertive, inimitable way] [using her inimitable manner] convincing every woman who passed by 6th and 8th Avenues that voting for Ted Kennedy was the only reasonable option" or "I can still see the inimitable Bella using her most [assertive] [persuasive] self . . ." Once you start playing around, the possibilities can be nearly endless.
Lastly is the matter of which word or phrase conveys the clearest meaning. For instance, Cuomo being "better for gays" isn't as clear as "did more for gays" or "did less to hurt the [rights] [cause] of gays."
RE: Profanity --- If that's your style or something your readers like, just be mindful of not overusing a word like f*** because it will become less effective and sound like you can't think of anything better to say. Also, those born after 1960 or '65 use the "P" word to express anger as if as benign as puppy, but it's still one of George Carlin's seven dirtiest words. I've never uttered the word even once 'cause I find it so offensive. Helps to know these little details in case you want to reach a different or broader audience. Also, keep in mind there are many ways to refer to different things and people, like the mistresses in these men's lives, without being blatantly demeaning or crass.
Unless needed for a special kind of emphasis, avoid using the same word twice in the same sentence or too often in the same paragraph, so the "[a]lthough his father (lower case). . . and although his brother needs only the first "although."
Note, too, past v. present tense. It's very common for writers to use past tense not realizing what they're actually saying. For example, my friend Joe said he was Jewish. He was but isn't any longer? So, is it that some people [once] fame a damn about poverty" or that "some people, such as Bernie . . . give a damn, but Andrew is or has been dead set against . . ."
Following the "less is more" principle,"Andrew makes liberal noises for the camera, but once the media is gone, he's just one of many fat cats living off wealth redistributed from middle and working class workers to the [vampirish] [greedy] [bloodsucking] [ghoulish] elites. Always use a dictionary . . . "vampirous" is not a word, neither is "impactful" or "majorly," and it's incorrect to use "impact" as a verb. The only reason you hear all this incorrect language is because reporters and journalists stopped using a dictionary about 30 yrs. ago., assuming they already knew everything. That's what happens when ya tell little kids they're "special" instead of "unique" and give them awards and trophies for showing up instead of for doing exceptional work.
Keep a thesaurus, dictionary and usage guide nearby and use them often. You'll find your writing improving. I've always been technically proficient and accurate, but after answering over a 1,000 questions on Quora and using my trusty guides, I've improved in ways I didn't realize had room for improvement. Translation: There's always room for improvement for all of us. To that end, take the time to play with this piece applying whatever suggestions work. Start with a few basic sentences that state clearly the message you want the piece to convey, then begin adding to that phrase by phrase and sentence by sentence. Good luck.