Well, it’s been two weeks. I’m back at work, and the beard is staying. At least until my wife acknowledges I have one. So far, she has said nothing.
I’ve been bald since college, so hair decisions have been few. Five years ago, I shaved my head, and it was one of the better things I’ve ever done. I only wish I’d done it sooner.
That decision was also born of unusual circumstances. I had taken my wife to the Old Guard House Inn in Gladwyne for dinner in honor of her birthday.
Albert Breuers, the chef/owner, gave me some homemade schnapps as an after-dinner drink. When we left his place, my wife—who was also the designated driver—noticed that her then hairdresser, Maurice, was still open for business across the street.
She said she needed to make an appointment.
So we walked in together, and Maurice took a look at me and suggested I come for an appointment, too. Which is when the schnapps kicked in. I said OK.
The following Saturday, I got my hair “done.” In a salon full of Main Line women, I sat while Maurice gave me a military-style buzz cut. Then the women voted, unanimously, that he keep going.
When it was over, my head was totally shaved, and I became the only man to ever pay $125 for the honor. (My wife explained that Maurice had a reputation that commanded such prices.)
I wasn’t sure how I felt about the new me when I left. Two weeks later, I found myself in Cuba, having dinner with Senator Arlen Specter and Fidel Castro.
I think my new look was why Fidel took me for a military/CIA/Bay of Pigs organizer. Nonetheless, all I needed was a little sun on my noggin. Once I had that, there was no looking back.
Since then, guys contemplating the full monty of haircuts often seek my advice, which is fourfold: (1) Buy an anti-steam mirror. (2) Use the mirror to shave in the shower. (3) Use a multiblade handheld razor. (4) Find the right lather. (I recommend Helan Natural’s Vetiver and Rum Sapone da Barba.) I get it online from an old-school apothecary in Chicago.
So as 2008 begins, I’m now sporting a Seamus McCaffery up top and a Jerry Garcia down below. Actually, it has yet to grow to that level, and I have no idea if it will. So far, it’s salt and pepper in color, so I guess that’s politically correct.
I still have some decisions to make, such as length.
I intend to trim it somewhere between a Pat Croce goatee and ZZ Top/ Rip Van Winkle look, and I’m unsure of how high it should grow up toward my ear.
I’ve yet to decide if it will still be around when the Phils hit Clearwater. That will probably be determined by if and when my wife acknowledges it.
You’ll know it’s staying when you see my column photo change. Happy New Year.
AFTERWORD
As you might know from seeing me on television, I still sport a beard and shaved head, and still get asked by listeners and viewers for my advice on grooming both. Have a good mirror and shave in the shower is my usual advice. For me, one of the great guy treats in life is to get a head shave and beard trim from a professional, and the best I’ve found are at Geo. F. Trumper, gentleman’s barbers and perfumers in London, which opened in 1875. I don’t visit England without making a stop. Go to the original shop located on Curzon Street in Mayfair. As described on its website (www.trumpers.com): “Trumper’s original Curzon Street shop remains the same with its beautiful mahogany paneled private cubicles and stunning displays of grooming requisites.” Famous clientele, past and present, include many British royals (Trumper’s has received five Royal Warrants over the years), Winston Churchill, and JFK.
OBAMA SEES ROUTE
TO RIGHTEOUSNESS
Philadelphia Inquirer, March 23, 2008
ON TUESDAY, this son of Eastern European stock drove into Center City to bear witness to a speech about race delivered by a candidate who described himself in his remarks as “the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas.”
Representative Patrick Murphy (D., Pa.), the product of Irish and Italian ancestry, had invited me as his guest to hear Senator Barack Obama. He also offered the possibility for me to conduct an interview with Obama for use on radio. That chance prompted my producer, a Mayflower-bred, Harvard-educated, Main Line mom, to offer to carry the sound equipment and drive us to the event in—what else?—her Volvo.
Immediately after the speech, lunchtime added to the bustle of the block at Eighth and Race, where I stood with my bald white head and my Black-Berry. Meanwhile, my lily-white colleague sought to retrieve her Cross Country wagon. Unfortunately, in her haste to exit the parking lot, she scraped an immaculate SUV in the adjacent space. (Her defense: She herself was on the phone, responding to a request from Fox News for me to react to the speech.) When I went to inspect the damage on the other vehicle, I took note of the Puerto Rican flag hanging from the rearview mirror.
A parking attendant responded to the fender bender. He was a black man wearing a bow tie and speaking with an African accent. I heard him tell my WASP-y producer she couldn’t leave the lot until his manager arrived. While she was handling this development, I saw a Latino man with close-cropped hair and low-hanging jeans cross the lot, and upon seeing the damage to his 2007 Suzuki, he was instantly anguished. “Manny” (as we later learned he was named) was understandably upset to learn what had happened in his absence.
An hour earlier, I’d been watching Barack Obama. Now, I was caught up in an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm with more metaphors than I could keep track of.
I’d walked into the National Constitution Center thinking like Howard Baker: What did Barack Obama hear from Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. and when did he hear it? I wanted to know what kept him coming back to the pew after two decades of toxic diatribes, and I wondered whether he was really taken aback at seeing the now-notorious YouTube clip of Wright, whether he’d been present for that sermon or not. After all, he had disinvited Wright from delivering the invocation at his campaign announcement for some reason.
I exited the speech thinking that if I ultimately do not vote for Obama, it will be for reasons other than his minister.
What I found most refreshing about the speech was Obama’s willingness to give it at all—a totally unmuzzled talk about race. He spoke with customary elegance, in stark contrast to the angry rants of his pastor. How ironic that this powerful orator has been undermined not by his own words but by those of his pastor, and some of his critics. He has managed to distance himself from the angry extremists to his left and right, using something more than just grandiose language: substance. The transcript is definitely recommended reading.
His speech noted the reality of America’s history of racial inequality, but also the legitimacy of some concerns of the white middle class. And he made admissions. (“Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely.”)
Perhaps most important, Obama made clear where he believed Wright had been wrong:
The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country—a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black, Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old—is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know—what we have seen—is that America can change. That is the true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope—the audacity to hope—for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
A point well taken. How can America be so fundamentally unfair and racist if one of Wright’s very congregants is now positioned to capture the Democratic nomination for president? As Obama said, “I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.”
Two blocks away after the speech, the lot attendant with
the African accent returned to tell the WASP woman and the Puerto Rican man not to worry because his manager was en route. Sure enough, within a few minutes, a natty BMW pulled up and out popped “Mr. Tran,” the Asian supervisor who had come to sort out the unfolding drama. All parties spoke civilly, cooperated, and parted company with handshakes all around. Which reminded me of something else I’d heard that day:
We may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction—towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren.
AFTERWORD
After this ran in the Sunday Inquirer, I posted it at HuffingtonPost.com, where, unlike with my newspaper columns, I get to write the headline. I used “Curb Your Enthusiasm Meets Barack Obama,” which I like more than “Obama Sees Route to Righteousness.” I just think it better captures the scene I experienced. I could see Larry David and Jeff Garlin caught up in a moment like my producer TC’s fender bender with half the U.N. involved. The speech was one of the pivotal moments of Senator Obama’s primary campaign against Senator Hillary Clinton. Had it been poorly delivered or received, I think it would have been a negative turning point of the campaign. Instead, the content and delivery kept him forward moving. I wrote in the column that Representative Murphy invited me because he was trying to facilitate an interview for me with the senator. It did not come to pass that day, but it did soon thereafter, when we had a memorable Good Friday conversation that I wrote about in Morning Drive. I have since returned to the relatively small auditorium at the National Constitution Center where this speech was delivered, including to host Libertarian governors Gary Johnson and Bill Weld there in 2016. And whenever I am in the room, I find myself looking around remembering the Obama speech on race and thinking this is where I witnessed history being made.
HOW I GOT THE BIRD
Philadelphia Daily News, Thursday, April 3, 2008
ANOTHER SOUTH PHILLY GUY is in the news for getting jammed up. And while everybody else is wondering what one Dougherty’s guilty plea means to another Dougherty, I’m thinking about the eagle on my desk.
Until the end of last week, I hadn’t kept close track of the criminal case against Donald “Gus” Dougherty. Like everyone else, I’ve now read that he’s pleading guilty to 98 of 100 counts of theft and tax offenses—just not the two that allege illegal payments to John J. Dougherty.
I know both Doughertys, although one far better than the other. I’ve known Johnny Doc for years. I think I met Gus Dougherty only once, but it’s a day I won’t soon forget. That’s when he gave me the eagle.
Mike Baldini introduced us. Baldini is another Philly guy (Father Judge, La Salle University), but not one in any trouble with the feds. He’s a Runyonesque fellow in his early 40s who used to run sales for my radio station, and now does the same at KYW.
He was born in South Philly, grew up in the Great Northeast, and is raising his family in a Montgomery County town with “ville” at the end of it. I have a hard time picturing him in the burbs.
Baldini is fun to watch: fast-talking, mind always racing, constantly sizing up people he meets with an innate sense of street smarts. He’s perfectly suited for his sales-manager job.
He’s a people person. In a previous life, I could see him working as a maître d’ at one of the big casino showrooms, making sure that Sinatra had enough Jack in his dressing room while simultaneously deciding who sits where out front.
One day a few years ago, Baldini said he needed me for a sales call in South Philly with an electrical contractor named Dougherty. I told him I already knew Johnny Doc. Baldini said this was another South Philly guy named Dougherty who also knew a thing or two about fuses.
I said I’d go if he took me to lunch at Shanks. He agreed.
Gus Dougherty’s office was special. It was one of those environments where the women were especially pleasant, called you “hun” and wanted to know if they could “get you a cup.”
Upstairs, Gus had a plush suite with sports memorabilia, a big fish tank, and a comfortable leather sofa, which is where he held court—and where I first spied the eagle.
It’s a gold likeness about a foot high with its wings fully extended, sitting on a plain wooden base. It’s not real gold and isn’t a trophy awarded for a particular event or exploit, but to see it is to know it has history. I told Gus I thought it was beautiful. He immediately told me he wanted me to have it. I told him I couldn’t.
Then he said, “It used to belong to Leonard Tose,” referring to the former owner of a team full of Eagles. I’ve had a soft spot for Tose since I was a kid and spotted him riding his bike and wearing a green velour tracksuit on the Atlantic City boardwalk.
We chatted that morning and he was awfully nice to me, a young boy. His aide de camp, Jimmy Murray, has since told me endless stories of Tose’s kindness and charity. I’ll bet Tose would have liked Gus, but I don’t think they ever met.
I asked Gus how he got Tose’s eagle. He said that Tose lived his final days at the Warwick Hotel on 17th Street, and that Tose had given it to the hotel doorman as a sign of appreciation. The doorman gave it to Gus for reasons that were unclear—or I have since forgotten.
Now Gus wanted to give it to me.
I hemmed and hawed, then finally accepted. I rationalized my acceptance by thinking that Tose would like knowing that the newest keeper of the eagle appreciated his contribution to the city, and was once thrilled to meet him down the Shore.
It was a gracious gift from a guy who’s now jammed up. Gus could do time, which is sad.
“The bird”—formerly owned by Philadelphia Eagles owner Leonard Tose—which Gus Dougherty gifted to me.
And me? I’m recording the provenance of the eagle while sitting on my desk and wondering who’ll get it when I’m gone. I hope it’s someone who appreciates what a small town this is.
And maybe it will end up on Senator Dougherty’s desk in Harrisburg.
AFTERWORD
In August 2010, a Philadelphia developer named Steve Solms died and I wrote about him for the Sunday Inquirer. Solms was the driving force behind Historic Landmarks for Living, a real estate service that changed the complexion of the city for the better by converting countless factories and industrial spaces into luxury apartments. As I noted at the time, “I knew him only peripherally, but always got a kick out of his joie de vivre.” He was for me the epitome of a Philly guy: a character. Steve was feast or famine—or both. I remembered seeing him in the midst of a real estate crash looking no worse for wear sitting poolside at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas with a wad of cash buying a drink. I then reflected on the number of “characters” I’ve been privileged to know, having spent my entire life in Philadelphia. And believe me, I use the term “character” as a compliment. I named only a few that I’d crossed paths with or had come to know: Charlie Bowser, Hardy Williams, Jim Beasley, Jay Waldman, Thacher Longstreth, Russell Byers, Ed Rendell, Pat Croce, and Zack Stalberg. I concluded with this: “I don’t know what it’s like to live in Phoenix or Dallas, Indianapolis or St. Paul. But I have a hard time believing they can match us man for man. Hopefully it stays that way.”
Well, Leonard Tose, the generous and dapper NFL owner and four-time husband who consistently violated the cardinal rule of the casinos (“Bet with your head, not over it”) should have made that column too. Like those I reference there—Messrs. John Dougherty, Gus Dougherty, and Mike Baldini—Tose was pure Philly. So too was his alter ego, Jimmy Murray, who was the Eagles’ general manager under Tose during my childhood. One of the highlights of my youth was rooting for Tose’s Eagles despite many losing seasons in the 1970s, especially when Roman Gabriel was briefly their quarterback. The team fortunes, and that of the city, changed when Tose hired head coach Dick Vermeil, who took us to the 1980 Super Bowl. Sadly, Tose never got to raise the Lombardi Trophy.
Tose’s life deserves the full movie treatment. For now, we have to settle for a short but fabulous ESPN 30 for 30 documentary
directed by another Philly guy, Mike Tollin, called Tose: The Movie.
The bird on my mantle is a tribute to Leonard Tose and all Philly characters.
RUSSERT-BRAND DISCOURSE VS.
CABLE CARNIVAL SHOUTFEST
Philadelphia Inquirer, Wednesday, June 18, 2008
A FEW WEEKS BEFORE the Pennsylvania primary, I received an email from an associate producer for a national cable-television program, who wanted me to appear on a show about Barack Obama.
Her e-mail said: “We’re looking for someone who will say, ‘Yes, he’s cocky and his cockiness will hurt him, if not in the primary, definitely in the general election against McCain.’” I passed.
She responded by asking if I would instead say Hillary Clinton was untrustworthy. I said no.
A few days later came another invite: “We wanted a person to go after Hillary and how often she lies, how it’s easy for her, etc.” Although I again said no thanks, I am sure in each instance someone filled the prescribed role.
I was thinking about those exchanges while watching the many tributes to Tim Russert, whose memorial service was scheduled for today. How ironic that the same journalism community that feted Tim Russert after his death Friday has so many members who don’t follow his lead.
Russert never practiced the brand of journalism upon which many radio and television careers today are predicated. It seems almost hypocritical that he should be extolled by those who don’t emulate his example.
Tim Russert didn’t become the preeminent political journalist in the nation by browbeating, condescension, or debate-stifling. He was a facilitator of intelligent, political conversation, not an enabler of the stark left-right, black-white, Democrat-Republican, liberal-conservative cable world in which we now live.
That doesn’t mean Russert asked guests to check their partisanship at the door, or that he was devoid of strong views. To the contrary, his was a forum where clear difference would emerge, but minus the edge that has otherwise become commonplace. Through direct discourse, not shouting and crosstalk, he guaranteed that all sides would be represented—and not in a carnival atmosphere. Russert was forceful, yet deferential. He’d ask the tough questions, and then afford an opportunity for a response.
Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right Page 20