Obama's "historic" handshake". Oh?

When are public figures going to learn  that their every move has been recorded on film and instantly available for any TV news host to make an unfriendly  point?

That much about the video trail  left behind from decades ago became quickly apparent again when vulturous Republicans, as is their wont, flapped at the chance of assailing  President Obama for shaking hands with Cuban leader Raul Castro at the memorial service for Nelson Mandela.

Sen. John McCain, who has a record of erratic public remarks, immediately likened Obama to Neville Chamberlain (not original on the Right since the Iran deal) clasping the hand of Adolph Hitler. That was quickly followed on MSNBC with a photo of McCain doing the same with Khadafi, no humanitarian by any means.  To put an even finer point on the Republican blather, other photos showed President Nixon greeting Mao with a handshake. (Nixon, in the spirit of world brotherhood when he was in China,  even raised a glass!)  

A widely published photo shows a seated President Roosevelt wedged between Churchill and Stalin (!) at Yalta in 1945 to figure out a plan for a post-war world.   (Even in less genteel football,   iconic coaches meet briefly  at midfield  after one has mercilessly trounced the other in the game.)

The Plain Dealer has now taken up the phony phenomenon of the "historic" handshake with a full-page spread offering a huge  photo of the Obama-Castro encounter and urging readers to comment on it.  The paper promises to print the comments later in the week. I can guess.

You'd think there is a better way to engage the reader's interest on slow news days when only person-of-the-year Pope Francis,  Mandella and the Browns' next quarterback are  commanding all of the attention.  

And to McCain I would only say:  Be careful when you sample an olive at the market.  Years from now it could show up on the network news when you blast a malingering Democrat for ordering a martini from  an undocumented bartender on the day the liberal pol called in  sick.

The week's wash , with a surprise or two

Imagine my mild surprise when I read in my hometown paper this morning that a fellow who is the executive vice president of FreedomWorks, a national Tea Party enterprise, was the campaign manager of Bryan Willams' futile effort  to unseat Mayor Don Plusquellic in 2003. The name Adam Brandon was a faint memory, although I did recall that Plusquellic swamped Williams with 71 pct. of the vote.

Brandon, bred in the Akron area and now living in Washington, was  slated to speak at the Portage County Tea Party dinner on Thursday and told the Beacon Journal that the national group's priority was to take over the Republican Party!   That's hardly a stretch because the Teeps have already lassoed  much of the GOP today, scaring the hell out of people like John Boehner that if he's naughty and not nice, they will challenge him and other similarly situated Republicans in next year's primaries.

Williams has already made a name for himself, if not as a wannabe mayor, then as a Ohio Education Board member  influencing public education policy while lobbying for a non-union construction group operating a private charter school.

But in  promising a takeover by the Tea Party, Brandon is a tad late in Summit County, where all signs of the GOP under Chairfman Alex Arshinkoff have been shifting rightward beyond the margins of the page. If you need  confirmation, check the list of the Summit "Republican" party's dinner speakers...Well???

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Now this one is sort of a surprise:  E. Gordon Gee heading to the Mountaineer state to serve as interim president of West Virginia University. Frankly, with his golden parachute upon leaving Ohio State University, he can afford to buy the entire state.  The real challenge for him is whether he can convert his new campus into the bow tie capital of America!    From the experience of growing up in a coal town just north of the WVA line, I don't remember the area  as being that fashion conscious.

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There's not much more I dare add to the soaring global tributes to Nelson Mandela other than to yearn for somebody in the upper class of the Republican Party on Capital Hill to be as thoughtful in healing the problems of the less privileged in America.  The contrast, say, to John Boehner,  who defines leadership as being an obstructionist, is vividly merciless.