As a jaunty fellow walking the streets of North and midtown Baltimore, I always get a rise (the snicker-to-yourself-kind) when, at a corner, another person will press the button affixed to a traffic light contraption and expects red will turn to green lickety-split. It never does, but that doesn’t deter the I’m-impatient-for-heaven’s sake pedestrian from jamming a finger on the worn-out button. Maybe it’s a superstition (a euphemism for no-harm OCD), just as I never play the same CD the morning after a Red Sox loss. Or maybe it’s a cry for climate change awareness, a shout in the forest for an issue that, according to a recent New York Times “Guest Essay,” is on the back burner (more in sadness than anger, but of course) for Democrats running in the Congressional midterms this November.
It’s now commonplace for headlines to change at the Times (and other newspapers), and the initial one for Matthew T. Huber’s essay was “Forget Climate Change. Democrats Need to Talk About Other Issues” was altered to the less direct “Democrats Don’t Have to Campaign on Climate Change Anymore.” I wonder if there’s an algorithm “expert” at the paper who gauges the feedback on headlines online, who lords over a bureau of five. Has to be more than the people who research the veracity of Big Schlong columnists like Nicholas Kristof, who’s in hot water now (but not within the Times) for claiming Israeli dogs raped Palestinians, based on… his imagination? He says, in a Twitter defense, “sources.” No big deal; unless I’m wrong, Kristof will continue his column unfettered (and perhaps a bump in his already fat salary; all those views!), since errors in “news” content runs a distant eighth to a typo in the Daily Wordle. (That reminds me, excuse the digression, of a “blockbuster” story about a corrupt police commissioner I wanted to run at Baltimore’s City Paper in 1978. Only problem was, when our lawyer asked the writer for his sources, he cited “Mouse” and “Easy Janis.” We ran a good, but watered-down article.)
Huber, a professor at Syracuse University and author of Climate Change as Class War: Building Socialism on a Warming Planet, concludes: “The Democratic Party remains deeply [it’s a requirement at the Times that the word “deeply” is used in every article; writers who object are threatened with canine rapists] unpopular. The way out is to stop elevating a litany of single-issue policies that appeal to the already-converted. When it comes to climate change, for now, it might be better to say nothing at all.”
That’s logical: the House (and maybe the Senate) is up for grabs, and the prime issue for most voters, as always, will be the economy. My older son argues that’s 20th-century thinking and that people under 40 have the potential to upend traditional politics. Maybe that’s correct: I didn’t foresee the steep rise of anti-Semitism among the young (unthinkable for my generation), but I’ll stick with the idea that trips to the supermarket and gas station will leave Republicans in the lurch.
What Huber doesn’t mention is that one reason Americans rate climate change so low on polls of “important issues” is that they’re turned off by celebrities donning white hats and attending Very Important Summits (usually in Europe) to discuss carbon footprints while they arrive and depart by private jets. You say John Kerry, I’ll add Leonardo DiCaprio and other movie stars. Plus the Barack Obama/Bruce Springsteen tandem.
The accompany photo is from a time when “global warming” and “climate change” weren’t yet finger-wagging phrases; the Vietnam War, smog in Los Angeles and New York City, “America, love it or leave it” and the population “time bomb” dominated political discussion. And, whether or not The Beatles’ new record was “a gas.” It was Christmas morning, and the family’s two oldest boys gave my brother Gary (left) and me (right) t-shirts commemorating our defeat in the previous month’s “T-Day Classic.” Doug (middle) was spared since he rotated between the two teams, while our dad was the referee at the muddy Mill Dam Park in Huntington, Long Island.
Take a look at the clues to figure out the year: the 40th MLB All-Star game was played at RFK Memorial Stadium, home of the Washington Senators; the awful Bowie Kuhn was named baseball’s fifth Commissioner; Billy Martin was the Minnesota Twins’ manager; Sam McDowell led the Majors in strikeouts, with 279; Harmon Killebrew was the A.L. MVP; Carol Reed’s Oliver! wins five Oscars; the $500 and $1000 bills are removed from U.S. circulation; Scooby-Doo debuts on CBS; Jennifer Aniston is born and Coleman Hawkins dies; John Cheever’s Bullet Park, Philip K. Dick’s Ubik, Chaim Potok’s The Promise and H. Rap Brown’s Die Nigger Die! are published; P.H. Newby wins the Booker Prize; and the 13th Floor Elevators break up.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023