Somewhat lost in the spate of passages that this county has experienced of late was the death of Robert McNamara.

McNamara's death at 93 was probably one of the lowest profiles of all the recent deaths but it's likely that no one individual had more of an effect on baby boomers' lives than he did.  At least that's mostly true for the male boomers.  That's because he was the chief architect of the Vietnam war.  Even if one didn't actually go to Vietnam, as I didn't, you still were likely to be affected.  I was drafted into the Army because of the amount of troops required to fight the Vietnam war.

I never cared for the man but not because of being drafted.  McNamara was one of the so-called "Whiz Kids" which was the name given to a group of young, supposedly highly intelligent, highly educated guys who knew all and could manage anything.  McNamara was a graduate of Harvard business school and became president of Ford Motor and soon thereafter Secretary of Defense at the young age of 44.  Of course, that small group turned out to be just as capable of making mistakes as anyone else and maybe more so given their nickname. 

While I think McNamara did some good things, controlling military spending in particular, he was absolutely terrible in trying to apply the business principles he had learned to war.  In that he was a disaster.  He and his minions tried to conduct the Vietnam war like they managed a business with no regard to the human element.  It didn't work and very much later, too late for me, he seemed to realize it.  But by that time we were so entwined as a country with Vietnam it wasn't easy to back out.  Ultimately that war cost 58,000 soldiers their life.  And for basically nothing.  The Communists took control immediately when we finally bailed.

I find it interesting that the people we seem to build up because of their intellect or skills more often than not can't live up to the image.  Robert McNamara seemed to realize his mistakes as time went by but never really admitted to them except in broad terms.  Maybe that 58,000 number had something to do with it.  That horror might have weighed heavily on even a purely systematic and rational man as he. 

My favorite sports columnist has apparently chosen to live very dangerously.  In his latest column he takes on ladies' tennis.  But in a way I wouldn't dare.

I've always liked Whitlock because he's not afraid to call them like he sees them and in this case he sees some big booty, among other things.  Not that there's anything wrong with that. 

But he goes even further saying Serena Williams has eaten her way out of more championships she could have won.  Okay, Jason.  Good luck with that.  Something tells me you're not going to be the darling of the females on the tennis circuit.  To his credit he owns up to his own size but methinks that won't mollify the women on the circuit. 

I'm going to take a wild guess here.  I don't think Jason is married.  If he was married I don't think there's any way he writes this column.

Clinton, Spitzer, Sanford, Edwards, Madoff and now apparently McNair.  And of course one could name many others.

I'm not talking about men. I'm talking about wives of those men who didn't seem to have any idea what their husband was doing outside the marriage.  I don't understand it.  One common thread is that all of these women live very affluent and privileged lives.  But we all know friends or family who don't live at that level and have gone through similar things.

In fact I'm not entirely sure I believe that they didn't know what was going on.  Self-protection, perhaps.  Or even apathy. To my knowledge they are all educated women and presumably intelligent. 

And yes, I agree that a lot of men are pigs and would jump the bones of any woman who even remotely interact with them.  Unfortunately it's in our genes (or other parts of our body).  But not all men are like that just as not all women are like the above list.  And one has to remember that there is an agreeable female for every cheating male.

If I had to guess I don't think the women's apparent ignorance has anything to do with intelligence.  I think it's about trusting.  And deception by the men.   And it's about the nature of marriage in this day and age.  In nearly every home I know both the husband and wife work.  Both are extremely busy and it's hard to maintain the intimacy that was once shared, especially if there are children.   And that can make it hard for honesty and trust to be maintained.   At the same time it's human nature for everyone to keep a little piece of themselves to themselves. 

All of which means the relationship between a man and a woman can be very complicated. 

At least that's something I do understand.

I'm off tomorrow for the Fourth holiday. 

In preparation for being off I had planned some work today that I needed to get done.  Exactly none of that has happened as I write this.  I came in to a host of system problems.  First our internet connection was so slow that it became hopeless to try to do anything on line, which is about 30 per cent of my work. 

Since I couldn't get anything done on line I switched to the documents stored on one of the college's drives.  No dice.  The IT department had changed servers overnight and as of this writing that server wasn't working yet.  End of story for any document work.

By this time it was lunch time.  I had an errand to run at the bank and then I was going to return to campus for a college picnic.  I realized at the bank that I had left the papers I needed to do the errand at home.  So much for the errand.  Then I walked out of the bank to a nearly flat tire on my truck.  I drove slowly and carefully about five miles to a tire shop and they took a nail out.  Ten bucks and I'm on my way back to campus.  But I missed the picnic.

So it's back to the office.  The internet connection is fixed but still no drive.  I got the message.  I'm outta here.

Happy Fourth to everyone!

July 1st always reminds me of Lewis Grizzard's comment about living in Chicago:  "they only have two seasons, winter and July".  If he had been from the Volunteer State he would have said that Tennessee has two seasons as well.  Humid and winter.  

Anyway, here's five things I think:

1.  No offense to the Jackson family but whatever services Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton could possibly provide to them in their grief is beyond my comprehension.

2.  Is is just me or do we seem to be rapidly becoming a socialistic state?  I think we now own General Motors and Chrysler for the most part and I don't know how many banks we own majority interest.  Now I hear news that the government is taking a look at the Canadian public health care system.  I truly think we have to change our health care system but this scares me.  The government is notoriously inefficient at most things and we seem to be putting more things in its charge. 

3.  When things happen like what has happened with the South Carolina governor do you think other spouses who have gone through a similar thing listen to the news and read about it and then discuss it among themselves?  If they're smart I think not.  Opening old wounds, etc.

4.  The church that demonstrates at soldier's funerals is the most despicable thing I've seen in a long, long time.  But I believe that any response to something like that only feeds the idiocy.  And that's all I have to say about that.

5.  For the last several years I've wondered in this blog what has happened to the heroes in this country.  They seem to be disappearing rapidly and no one seems to be stepping up to take their place.  Well, I found a hero.  Go read this about Colonel Kenneth Reusser.  I am in awe of this man.  Semper Fi.

What is about politicians that they can't keep their pants on?

Hart, Clinton, McGreevey, Spitzer, Edwards, Sanford, the list is endless.  It's now so commonplace that politicians who aren't doing it might be the exception.  The common thread seems to be they're all middle-aged males.  Which begs the question why any woman would want to have sex with these guys.

I wonder about these guys whose judgment and decision-making is at least theoretically why they got elected.  It shows an obvious lack of self-control.  I also wonder about their morals.  Sanford did his dallying on Father's Day.  Apparently sex with his mistress must have been better than being with his four school-age sons on that day.  That's pretty shameless but not as much as John Edwards cheating on his wife while she had cancer.  That's so low I'm not even sure Bill Clinton would have thought of that.

The Clinton episode amazed me because of the number of people who continued to support him.  Why do supporters of these guys think they are going to get treated any differnently from the way he treated his wife?  Pure and simple:  if he lies to his wife he sure as hell is going to lie to us.

At least Mrs. Sanford is handling it with class.  She kicked his ass out of the house and didn't show up for his news conferences holding his hand and looking sad.  That's what this country needs more of--wives who stand up to these guys' behavior.  Do you know what would be great?  If she ran for office and beat his ass.  Cool. 

Wow.  Two entertainment heavyweights in the same day.  It was a sad day in Tinseltown.

I can't say that I was ever a big fan of either.  I do have a couple of Jackson songs on my shuffle.  I think one is Dirty Diana and I'm not sure of the other.  He was clearly a huge talent but there was, as my grandmother used to say, something that wasn't quite right.  Whatever it was seemed to be as big as his talent and he just became stranger and stranger over the years.  His appearance was just bizarre.  And his thoughts on sleeping with children other than his own were criminal.  I think if he had not been so famous and talented he would have been put away for child molestation.  But I certainly can put his musical talent up with the likes of Elvis. And it's odd how these people seem to always die young.

I never really got caught up in the Farrah phenomenon.  Her poster came out in 1976 and I was 28 at the time so she was in my age group.  I certainly found her attractive and sexy but not any more so than her counterparts on Charlie's Angels.  I sort of favored Kate Jackson at the same although I think Jaclyn Smith has held her beauty better over the years.  But there was something about Farrah that I liked and I found her beauty more attractive as she aged.  That's not easy to do.  And she handled her disease with dignity.  In retrospect she was sexy and classy at the same time.  Not many women can do both but she pulled it off with ease.

It's been a long time since I've posted about what I'm reading but I'm remedying that today. 

My reading tends to go in two directions. 

I'm either in a mood to read escapism, usually in the form of a imperfect American male who's tough as they come but has a conscience, knows what needs to be done and does it no matter what.  I think that may have its origin from my early years of reading Ross MacDonald's Lew Archer books.  Anyway that's why I like James Lee Burke whose alcoholic Dave Robicheaux is my favorite literary character.  I also like Michael Connelly's smart but flawed Harry Bosch. 

Just recently I've discovered Lee Child and his guy Jack Reacher.  He may be the best author that I've found for meeting my escapist needs since I discovered Burke.  As you can tell I lean toward authors who have a series based on a character or characters.  Currently I'm into Child's Bad Luck and Trouble.  It's my first time for him but based on that book I'll be going through the whole series.  I believe Mr. Child, in literary form, will be accompanying me to Hilton Head in August for R & R.  Other candidates include The Signal and  All That I Have.  Sooner or later I'll read both of those.

When I'm not in the mood for escapism I'm like Jack.  As in Webb.  I just want the facts.  Well, not just the facts but also written in an appropriate literary manner. I finished The Bin Ladens a while back and now I've got my eye on this account of the Bataan Death march.  I actually had a professor in college who was a survivor of that and for some reason I think I may have met another survivor at some point in my life.  I'm also interested in The Forever War and Crazy for the Storm.  The latter is a memoir which I usually avoid but that one looks interesting.

My plan to convert from a monthly cellphone plan to a prepaid ran into a temporary snag. 

I went to the local T-Mobile store and when I told them of the change I wanted to make they told me I would lose my phone number if I made that change.  They even said that the only way to make that change without losing my present number was to go prepaid with another carrier. 

It's been a long time since I fell off the turnip truck so I knew that was wrong.  What carrier in their right mind would have a policy like that?  Only one that had no business sense.  The person simply didn't know his job.

So yesterday I called T-Mobile direct.  It took ten minutes to make the change.  I received a text message on my cellphone in less than 24 hours welcoming me to T-Mobile Prepaid.  I then purchased $100 worth of minutes online with my credit card which came out to $109 with taxes.  That bought me (with a 15 minute bonus) 1015 minutes or about 11 cents a minute.  Those minutes should last me at least five or six months.  They don't expire until a year from now. 

I was paying about $540 a year with my monthly plan.  With my average use of minutes I should end up paying about $200/250 a year with the new prepaid plan. 

Pretty cool.  I love it when a plan comes together.

I found this an interesting read Sunday morning.

While I'm glad the reporter is safe, I was struck by something else. The Times article had this sentence about midway through:

Say what? 

There's nothing wrong with that.  In fact I think it was smart.  But I find it very interesting that the New York Times deemed it OK not to report the story.  If I remember correctly The Times is the same newspaper that published the Pentagon Papers, the NSA terrorist eavesdropping program and the Abu Ghraib prison photos among other questionable national security "scoops".  Apparently I wasn't the only one who was struck by that fact.  

Full disclosure:  I read The Times every Sunday morning online.  But I think they're being hypocritical to publish national secrets, etc while they don't publish news about their own employees.  That's a double standard that I don't think they can justify.  Of course they don't have to either.  They're the media.