Roll with it Rawson flashes his humor

Phillipe & Jorge ran into Joel Rawson, head news honcho at the Urinal, last week. We informed him how many of his colleagues were quite impressed by his show of reporting props while researching a recent series on local troops serving in Iraq.

The Other Paper’s executive editor did wonder, though (while laughing, fortunately, rather than pulling out a Beretta 9mm pistol), why we previously referred to him, while discussing his Iraqi adventures on this page, as a "truculent SOB." We informed him that this was an editorial change made after we filed our column. We told Joel how we referred to him in our original copy as "a truculent prick," which our sensitive editors saw fit to tone down. He got a good chuckle out of that, although we will still have the next-door neighbors’ gardener start our cars for the next few weeks.

IT'S A BEAUTIFUL MORNING

P&J were astounded by the traffic logjam for this year’s Quonset Point air show as we drove north Sunday morning on routes 1 and 4, to hit Fenway for the Boston Red Sox-Pittsburgh Pirates game. (We went in honor of the best-looking woman in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Penn Hills, Ms. B. Black.) The air show drew more than 90,000 people over the weekend, and traffic was backed up from the Quonset Point exit until Route 117 on 95.

We nonetheless had our special moment on Saturday, involving the famed Blue Angels, stars of this year’s air show. While standing on the fourth tee of Jamestown Golf Course, perhaps the prettiest hole in the state, overlooking Narragansett Bay, with a beautiful marsh and rolling fields full of cows, the entire formation of Blue Angels flew overhead at a height that seemed like 30 feet, as our foursome cheered and waved as if we had scored a soccer goal. Two minutes later, they pulled the same stunt, leaving us no less ecstatic.

It makes you realize how much our US military matters, the skills our personnel possess, and how little respect they receive. Meanwhile, chicken hawk punks like Dubya Bush and his cronies send our proud troops off to die without blinking an eye. Selah.

SUPREME BEHAVIOR, PART I

A very interesting story in the Sunday Other Paper about the wonderful lawyer, Joe Bevilacqua, son of former Supreme Court Chief Justice Joe Bev, being accused of seducing a young lady and supplying her with drugs. Maybe he should have given her a nice video involving the suspects in the Plunder Dome trial to get her even more jacked up.

SUPREME BEHAVIOR, PART II

Former RI Supreme Court justice Bob Flanders got right up in his former fellow Supremes’ faces when he ridiculed their decision concerning our favorite gadfly lawyer, Kenny McKevin. They ruled that McKevin lacked standing to challenge Chief Justice Frank Williams’s decision to work the oversight trials of "noncombatants" currently serving at our pleasure at the prison in Guantanamo Bay ("Gitmo").

To our minds, Kenny had plenty of standing, while the Supremes went into supine positions. But not Flanders. As we suggested when he left the bench, Flanders fled because he could not bear the ridiculous ego that the chief justice brings to the bench. Nor could he countenance the chief’s grandstanding, which we believe posed an embarrassment to jurists, like Flanders, who take the job more seriously. To our way of thinking, the law governing Williams’s dual roles is absolutely out of line, and he deserved to be dismissed. That his own colleagues on the highest court judged him was preposterous.

Aw geez, our mistake. We forgot we were in Vo Dilun.

NOT THIS TIME FOR LAWLESS

Your superior correspondents do not wish to discourage Jennifer Lawless, the Brown University professor who has announced her Democratic primary challenge to US Representative Jim Langevin in the Second Congressional District. We do have to say, however, that this campaign is pretty much a loser, at least this time around, and for some very cogent reasons.

P&J are far closer to Lawless, ideologically, than to Representative Langevin, but some practical problems with her candidacy will trump her stands on the issues for many Vo Dilunduhs. We’re not even going to mention how, and much to our chagrin, most Ocean Staters are not as far to the left as Lawless and P&J.

First, from a swamp Yankee perspective — in which you’re a newcomer if your family hasn’t continuously resided in the state for at least 250 years — Jen Lawless isn’t even a Vo Dilunduh. She’s been living here only for a couple of years. Related to that is how, until a few months ago, she lived in the First Congressional District, and only recently moved from the East Side to Edgewood, in the second district. (It’s also in Cranston, which means she’s now living in Laffey Land, a dubious distinction.) District jumping is not a deadly mistake (e.g., Patrick Kennedy, Bob Weygand), but it’s still more ammo for an incumbent who has proven very popular.

Jen’s other problem is a true lack of a local base of support. It appears that her campaign staff, advisors, and contributors are heavy with out-of-towners. This is not a Hillary or Bobby Kennedy situation. So, good luck, Jen — we are pulling for you to run a good campaign, make a name for yourself, and move into position to make a real run a few years down the line.

MORE HISTORICAL REVISIONISM

Your superior correspondents always enjoy the mad dog, right-wing letters sent by the usual gang to the Other Paper on a regular basis. Last Wednesday, June 15, brought a missive with a particularly distorted take on recent American history.

Headlined "Apology Hypocrisy," the letter was from a Dale O’Leary of North Providence. (We certainly hope this is not the same Dale O’Leary who contributes to the BeloJo’s Saturday religion pages. If so, positive proof of IQ might be needed from the paper’s freelancers.) O’Leary was steamed because the Urinal had printed a story about the US Senate’s blanket apology to the victims and relatives of victims of lynching.

The correspondent noted that the offenders were "conservatives." While O’Leary correctly describes how the "Southern senators who protected the lynchers were Democrats," Dale goes on to claim that the segregationists of the past "have absolutely nothing in common with the conservative Republicans who now represent the majority of Southern states." Rubbish!

After President Lyndon Johnson rammed through the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts in the mid-’60s, he famously mused that Democrats would lose the Southern vote for at least the next couple of generations, as a direct result of this vital civil rights legislation. He was right, of course, and there is the inextricable connection that Dale O’Leary was vainly seeking, right in front of the letter-writer’s nose. Is O’Leary unaware of the many leading proponents of segregation who bolted the Democrats for the Republicans (Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, etc.) after legal Jim Crow was finally defeated? Even Trent Lott, that old Mr. Nostalgia with a plastic hairdo, knows this.

KUDOS & CONGRATS . . .

. . . to the BeloJo editorial board, for its lead editorial on Monday, June 20, questioning the wisdom of Dubya Bush’s nomination of US Representative Christopher Cox (R-California) to head the Securities and Exchange Commission. Ever since a front-page story in the New York Times announced that Cox was Bush’s choice as SEC head, we’ve been looking into Mr. Cox’s record. (The fact that Cox was described in the Times’ story as an ardent follower of Ayn Rand pretty much tipped us off.) We really don’t need someone who does not believe in government regulation of business as the head of a major government regulatory agency, now do we?

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