A HAPPY BIRTHDAY
Notes and thoughts on the Fourth of July
Lenny Palmer
7/4/07

Fourth of July, 2007, my 60th birthday. I wake at 4:40 a.m., catch a bit of news on the tube, make a pot of fresh Italian-roast coffee, down a cup or two, don my jogging outfit and take a leisurely three mile run in a light early morning mist under an overcast sky. I run on concrete in an urban setting, my solitude punctuated by a few lonely automobiles plying the usually busy streets. As I run, bits and pieces of thought occupy my mind . . .

Being a woman:
One part of my run takes me through a city park; about a half-mile stretch of curving blacktop shouldered by a dense thicket of trees. I’m a big and powerful man, and a setting like this doesn’t set off any alarm bells, but as I make my way over the lonely road I realize that if I were a woman I would probably avoid such a place, even this seemingly benign and bucolic park-like setting. It would take very little effort for a man bent on murder and mayhem to spring out of the trees and overpower a defenseless woman off the blacktop and into the brush.

Men are from Mars, and women from Venus.

Where are all the great men?
I have just finished “Patriotic Fire: Andrew Jackson, Jeanne Lafitte and the Battle of New Orleans,” an excellent and eminently readable tome by Winston Groom, author of “Forrest Gump,” and have started “The Destruction of the Bismarck,” by David J Bercuson and Holger H. Herwig. This tale of the fiery demise of the massive Nazi battleship is filled with detail, and unlike novelist Groom’s work is more of a chore to read, but fascinating nonetheless.

Two great men leap out of the pages of these books. Andrew Jackson, the savior of New Orleans, and subsequently the seventh President of the United States, and Winston Churchill, who personified the steely British bulldog spirit as that island nation stood alone against the Nazi onslaught. These were two men of enormous political and personal courage who took a stand against not only threats against their respective nations, but against savage internal attacks in their own countries.

Where are men like this, when they are so desperately needed in desperate times? Look at the current crop of Presidential candidates and tell me if even one of them could aspire to wipe Jackson’s or Churchill’s boots: The effete John Edwards, who called the War on Terror a “bumper sticker?” How about the (like Edwards) meticulously coiffed department store mannequin Mitt Romney who accomplished exactly what as Governor of Massachusetts? The oft-married Rudy Giuliani, whose best days are years behind him? The wait-and-see Fred Thompson, whose most memorable quote, “Russians don’t take a dump, son, without a plan,” was uttered in a great paranoid Cold war movie thriller, “The Hunt for Red October?” Hillary Rodham Clinton, who never met a political position she didn’t like and wouldn’t embrace at the drop of a hat, if it meant more cash in her bulging coffers? The platitude-spouting Barack Obama, whose juvenile visage more resembles a Webelos Scout than a real adult, and whose Oprah-induced glow is quickly wearing off? At least Dennis Kucinich, who actually believes the lion will lay down with the lamb, and has never strayed off message and remains true to his values, is easier to swallow than this two-dimensional bunch.

All the above, named and unnamed, have less aggregate courage than a single toenail clipping off Andrew Jackson or a quivering, glistening drop of sweat off Churchill’s furrowed brow.

How about hitting the books once again?
I mentioned two books in the above screed, but I realize that I’ve become a rarity in modern America: a man who actually reads. Surveys show that up to 80% of Americans say that haven’t read a book in the last five years, and that many of those illiterate goofs are men.

Want to know how I can host two radio shows a day in a metropolitan market and not only survive, but thrive? It’s because I read; newspapers histories, novels, biography, all sorts of non-fiction, and I have read all of my life. My Depression-era parents encouraged reading, because they knew it unlocked the doors to success. My own children receive books as gifts for birthdays and holidays, and they are all succeeding at life, precisely because they were encouraged to read, and continue to do so on their own.

If you take one lesson out of this blog, make it this: you must read, and read omnivorously to climb the ladder of success. If you don’t you’ll be the one punching the picture of the cheeseburger on the register at the fast food joint, because you’re too illiterate to make change.

Oh, and by the way; if you’re a man and you don’t read: have a nice life, stupid, because bulging biceps alone won’t take you through this perilous life.

Have a happy Fourth, and God bless this great nation.



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and WKRS 1220AM, Mon-Fri: 3-6pm


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