The Judge Report

Wandering through Barnes and Noble at Colonie Center today, I came across Bill O’Reilly’s frankly charming new book (I read fast when I find a comfortable chair in a book store), a memoir of sorts, A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity, the title coming from a nun’s description of him in parochial school in 1957. The cover photo is a a great shot from his First Holy Communion. It brought back quite a few memories of my own.

Including some I share with O’Reilly.

We had a mutual friend in Joe Spencer, a classmate of my brother Tim, who went on to become a correspondent for ABC News and died in a helicopter crash in 1986 while covering a story.

Joe’s birth name was Spaletta. His dad Phil ran our local radio station and a regular lunch companion of my father’s and later of mine, long after I had ceased working for him as a weekend DJ and jack of all trades. My first recollections of him were of a chubby, but gregarious 14 year old. Among other things, he was a customer of Mom’s after supper tutoring service, a whole-family operation. Private lessons (mostly in math) were two bucks an hour, group lessons a dollar apiece. Joe was bright and didn’t need a lot of extra help, but I’m sure Phil recognized a bargain.

My little brother Sean had problems saying Spaletta as a three year old and usually called him Joe Spaghetti.

Joe became my sidekick when I was a senior and student varsity baseball manager and scorekeeper. Eventually he replaced me when I retired midway through the season ( causing a precipitous drop in the batting averages of Joe Riley and Jim LaBate). He eventually filled my shoes on the radio as well, though he had been born into that. He had an engaging style and for a while was known as Joe “Saturday” Spencer.

Then he went on to media school, by and by landing in Denver where he and O’Reilly became fast friends. Read the book for their hilarious adventures together.

Fast forward to the 1980 GOP convention in Detroit.

You couldn’t get on the floor without the proper credentials, of course. But by the second or third day a couple of us delegates conspired to share credentials for an hour or so to allow our wives to come down out of the balcony and join us. No sooner had Mary sat down with me (looking incredibly guilty, as I recall) then a real official looking guy came to the end of our row, pointed to me and signaled for me to come over.

I froze.

“Bob! It’s me, Joe Spencer!”

I laughed heartily. No longer the pudgy kid, he was strikingly handsome with a $50 haircut and All-American smile.

Joe was then working for a tv station in Detroit and his dad had asked him to look me up and record my thoughts for the folks back in Amsterdam.

Once we got that out of the way, we made up for lost time and brought each other up to date. He was a man on the way up.

“Seriously, Bob, my goal is to be back here in four years as a floor correspondent for one of the networks.” I had no doubt he could do it, though it took him just a little bit past the four year cycle to get to ABC. 1988 would have been a sure thing.

*******

The two principal eulogies at St. Michael’s Church in Amsterdam were given by Peter Jennings and Bill O’Reilly. (Peter Jennings, by the way, called Phil and Fran Spencer every year thereafter on the anniversary of Joe’s death). O’Reilly tells the story well. According to what Phil told me some time later, Roone Arledge was so impressed with O’Reilly’s off the cuff remarks that he decided to hire him, which happened a few months later.

Joe was 31 years old and recently married.

The whole town was numb, of course.

I thought back on our last conversation, sometime when he had come home for Christmas. He told me how he envied his younger brother, Phil, Jr.

“Phil will never leave Amsterdam. He loves it here. He’s perfectly happy hanging out with his friends at a sports bar on the south side every Friday and Saturday night. You don’t know how much I wish I could be like him. But I can’t.

“I’ve got this driving ambition. It’s all-consuming. I have to be the best. I have to go as far as I can go.”

He shook his head, as though he didn’t understand it.

And I remembered the happy-go-lucky 14 year old and his happy-go-lucky little brother.

Sometimes there are just no explanations.

[UPDATE 2/2/2009: Anyone who can explain the sudden extensive interest in this post tonight, please leave a comment! Thanks]

With a few notable exceptions, I have had a great fondness for the English teachers of my formative years, among whom was Sister Marietta Kuczynski, CSJ, who graduated to glory on September 19 at the age of 92.

Sister Marietta presided over us at SMI in eighth grade, 1964-65. I recall her as being personally delightful, full of whimsy, and if there was a hard edge to her anywhere she never revealed it. She was a native Amsterdamian, though she hadn’t attended St. Mary’s. One of her classmates at Wilbur H. Lynch High School had been a fellow named Isadore Demsky, Izzy to her and Kirk Douglas to you.

Under her tutelage I produced an epic one page novella, The Monster Visits the World’s Fair, which would have made a terrific Ed Wood movie (perhaps I’ll post it in the comments section after I get home if I still have it). Her continuing encouragement caused me to break out in new directions on my own, and in an incredible burst of genius I also authored that year my first musical, Don’t Cry Over Spilled Nitro, or Bye Bye Laboratory. Characters in that play, Russian spies Gherman Shnitova and Vladimir Isnovitch, moved to England the following year in my magnum opus musical North Atlantic, music by Richard Rodgers, book and lyrics by moi.

Eighth grade marked the last vestiges of childhood innocence, transitioning rapidly to puberty and high school. Perhaps that is why I remember it so fondly. But it helps to have fond people to remember.

Her printed obituary states, “A diligent worker with a generous spirit, Sister Marietta leaves a legacy of devotion to faith and family and kindness and compassion to all.”

That’s about right.

Eternal rest grant unto her, o Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon her.

Today is the feast day of Padre Pio, the beloved and remarkable 20th century saint and mystic (much background here).

Last year I read a story about a young Bishop Karol Wojtyla writing to him through diplomatic channels to pray for a particular person’s health. When Pio learned of the author of the letter he told the bearer to preserve it, because it would be important one day, as of course it was when the bishop became Pope John Paul the Great. There was a remarkable news wirephoto from John Paul’s last hospital stay, clearly showing the unmistakeable reflection of Padre Pio in the window glass of the pope’s hospital room several stories up.

For fifty years he bore the wounds of Christ. My late pastor, Monsignor Glavin, told me of having served Mass for Padre Pio when he (Glavin) was a young seminarian at the North American College in Rome.

“His hands were all bundled in bandages, and when he pronounced the words of consecration they began to bleed, which was only visible to those of us closely attending him.”

Monsignor, who bore many infirmities of his own in his last years, had learned from the master to bear them gracefully.

Gracefully.

Well, I see that Mr. Obama has characterized the truth that he supports allowing live-birth abortion victims to be neglected to death as “despicable lies”.  He’s used this tactic before, and it’s wearing a little thin. The fact remains that he led the fight in Illinois against protecting the most vulnerable of our live citizens, a position that was not taken by a single member of the United States Senate when an identical bill was passed unanimously and which takes him beyond even NARAL, making his the most extreme anti-life position ever taken by a major candidate for any office in this country.

That he would continue to lie about his own record is understandable, because it is a position that is as repugnant and repulsive as almost any imaginable.

Everybody please read Mona Charen’s Deniers for Obama.

Here’s the money quote:

Barack Obama is a charming and intelligent man. But there is no other way to interpret his position on BAIPA than this: A woman who chooses an abortion is entitled to a dead child no matter what. That is an abortion extremist.

*******

Far be it for me to presume to advise Mr. Obama on how to run his campaign, but running on death issues is a loser. I’m not just speaking of the above wacky position, but rather the conscious and concerted effort by Obama to inject abortion as a campaign issue. This tactic has been tried time and time again and it always fails. Pro-abortion candidates are encouraged by polls which show that a majority of voters support a right to abortion under some circumstances. The various caveats to that I will ignore for the moment and just accept the general premise.

What the polls don’t show is that when it comes to the voting booth, the general philosophic acceptance of abortion does not translate into votes for an assertive pro-abortion candidate. The reasons are many. Part of it is that the pro-life vote is far more focused on the issue, far more likely to treat it as a make or break decider.

And part of it is simply that most voters feel extremely uncomfortable with candidates promoting death, whether they agree with the “right” or not. This reality is not limited to abortion or party. Republicans have made he same mistake over and over themselves by assuming that general public support for the death penalty will translate into votes for a pro-death penalty candidate. I remember several losing campagns in New York along these lines. Mario Cuomo stated right out that he would not enforce a death penalty in New York even if one passed. People disagreed with that, but respected him for it, because it was grounded in  morality. And there was just something creepy about running for office proclaiming you will put more people to death than the other guy. That is something I’ve never been fond of George W. Bush for, and I recall Bill Clinton establishing his “moderate” credentials by running back to Arkansas during his first campaign to ensure a criminal would be put to death before the election.

And I truly can’t think of a single pro-life legislator who was thrown out of office on that issue. Despite all the talk of suburban Republican women eagerly protecting their right to choose, it just never happens that way. Sure, the most pro-life guy in the Senate, Rick Santorum, got tossed a couple of years ago, but only after the Democrats cynically recruited the son of the nation’s most revered pro-life Democrat (an admittedly small field, but Bob Casey Senior was a good guy) to run against him.

So keep bringing it up, Obama. Keep reminding us.

I’m Bob Going and I approved these despicable lies.