Film Review: 'Midnight in Paris'

The Old Ennui and the Lost Generation

By A. O. SCOTT

The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com

May 20, 2011

NYT Critic's Pick

The definitive poem in English on the subject of cultural nostalgia may be a short verse by Robert Browning called “Memorabilia.” It begins with a gasp of astonishment — “Ah, did you once see Shelley plain?” — and ends with a shrug: “Well I forget the rest.” Isn’t that always how it goes? The past seems so much more vivid, more substantial, than the present, and then it evaporates with the cold touch of reality. The good old days are so alluring because we were not around, however much we wish we were.

“Midnight in Paris,” Woody Allen’s charming new film, imagines what would happen if that wish came true. It is marvelously romantic, even though — or precisely because — it acknowledges the disappointment that shadows every genuine expression of romanticism. The film has the inspired silliness of some of Mr. Allen’s classic comic sketches (most obviously, “A Twenties Memory,” in which the narrator’s nose is repeatedly broken by Ernest Hemingway), spiked with the rueful fatalism that has characterized so much of his later work.

Nothing here is exactly new, but why would you expect otherwise in a film so pointedly suspicious of novelty? Very little is stale, either, and Mr. Allen has gracefully evaded the trap built by his grouchy admirers and unkind critics — I’m not alone in fitting both descriptions — who complain when he repeats himself and also when he experiments. Not for the first time, but for the first time in a while, he has found a credible blend of whimsy and wisdom.

Paris, golden and gray, breezy and melancholy, immune to its own abundant clichés and gorgeously shot by Darius Khondji, certainly helps. So does a roster of droppable names that includes recent Oscar winners, the current first lady of France and a pantheon of credibly impersonated artistic immortals. Was that Carla Bruni? Why yes, it was. And that was Salvador Dalí too. (Dalí is played by Adrien Brody. The multitalented Mme. Sarkozy plays a tour guide at the Musée Rodin.)

Owen Wilson, a tall, laid-back iteration of the familiar Allen persona, is Gil, a perpetually dissatisfied Hollywood screenwriter trying to reinvigorate his youthful dreams of literary glory. He’s at work on a novel about “a guy who owns a nostalgia shop” and at the same time indulging in the virtual time travel that Paris affords a certain kind of visitor. You can sit at a table where Hemingway drank wine — or Degas or Baudelaire or even Diderot, if you prefer — and imagine that they just stepped out to take the air.

But Gil, by means that Mr. Allen wisely leaves unexplained, is transported back into his chosen Parisian golden age, more or less reversing the process that brought Emma Bovary to Manhattan in his short story “The Kugelmass Episode” or Tom Baxter down from the movie screen in “The Purple Rose of Cairo.” As Gil sulks one night at a quiet crossroads, an antique roadster comes rattling by, and he is swept off to a soirée by none other than Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston and Alison Pill).

The process repeats itself each night, granting Gil V.I.P. access to a nonstop Lost Generation party. It would be the height of bad manners to list every cultural hero he runs into — it’s a remarkably comprehensive catalog of the varieties of modernism percolating in Paris between the wars — but he makes the requisite pilgrimage to visit Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), who graciously agrees to read his manuscript. He also develops a crush on Adriana (Marion Cotillard), who has been keeping company with Hemingway (Corey Stoll) and Picasso (Marcial Di Fonzo Bo) and who wishes she could exchange the drab Paris of the ’20s for the Belle Époque, when things were really happening.

Adriana’s sighing dissatisfaction with her own era mirrors Gil’s. Back in the daylight world of 21st-century Paris, he must contend with a materialistic fiancée (a superbly speeded-up Rachel McAdams; her vulgar, moneyed parents (Kurt Fuller and Mimi Kennedy); and an insufferable pedant named Paul (Michael Sheen). Paul’s habit of prefacing every show-offy bit of data with “if I’m not mistaken” is a sign that, in the ways that count, he is. He is another classic Woody Allen type, the know-it-all pseudo-intellectual, and as such the obvious foil for Mr. Wilson’s passionate, self-deprecating schlemiel. If Paul ever met T. S. Eliot, he would spout revised footnotes for “The Waste Land.” For his part, Gil cries out, “Prufrock is my mantra!”       
Let’s not go there, you and I. Unless I’m mistaken, “Prufrock” is a statement of the very ennui — the perception of a diminished world unable to satisfy a hungering sensibility — that afflicts Gil. Mr. Allen’s treatment of this condition is gentle and wry. He can hardly be unaware that he himself is, for much of his audience, an object of nostalgic affection, much the way Cole Porter, among others, is for Gil, his alter ego. That a shared love of Porter’s music allows Gil to forge a connection in the present (and conceivably the future) with a young Parisian woman (Léa Seydoux) is a sign that his fetishizing of bygone days has been based on a mistake. Paris is perpetually alive, not because it houses the ghosts of the famous dead but because it is the repository and setting of so much of their work. And the purpose of all that old stuff is not to carry us into the past but rather to animate and enliven the present.       

Mr. Allen has often said that he does not want or expect his own work to survive, but as modest and lighthearted as “Midnight in Paris” is, it suggests otherwise: Not an ambition toward immortality so much as a willingness to leave something behind — a bit of memorabilia, or art, if you like that word better — that catches the attention and solicits the admiration of lonely wanderers in some future time. Ah, did you once see Woody plain? How strange it seems, and new.

“Midnight in Paris” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Anything goes, but discreetly.

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS

Opens on Friday in New York and Los Angeles.

Written and directed by Woody Allen; director of photography, Darius Khondji; edited by Alisa Lepselter; production design by Anne Seibel; costumes by Sonia Grande; produced by Letty Aronson, Stephen Tenenbaum and Jaume Roures; released by Sony Pictures Classics. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. 
    
WITH: Kathy Bates (Gert), Adrien Brody (Salvador), Carla Bruni (Museum Guide), Marion Cotillard (Adriana), Rachel McAdams (Inez), Michael Sheen (Paul), Owen Wilson (Gil), Tom Hiddleston (Mr. Fitzgerald), Alison Pill (Ms. Fitzgerald), Marcial Di Fonzo Bo (Picasso), Corey Stoll (Ernest), Kurt Fuller (John), Mimi Kennedy (Helen) and Léa Seydoux (Gabrielle).

Obama Throws Israel to the Dogs

By Robert Spencer
http://www.frontpagemag.com
May 19, 2011

 

President Obama spoke about Middle East policy at the State Department on Thursday. (Doug Mills/The New York Times)

America is on the verge of abandoning its most reliable ally in the Middle East, thanks to Barack Hussein Obama.

He began his betrayal with lip service to Israel’s concerns about defending itself from the relentless jihad that has been waged against it throughout the sixty-three years of its lifetime as a sovereign state: “For the Palestinians, efforts to delegitimize Israel will end in failure. Symbolic actions to isolate Israel at the United Nations in September won’t create an independent state. Palestinian leaders will not achieve peace or prosperity if Hamas insists on a path of terror and rejection. And Palestinians will never realize their independence by denying the right of Israel to exist.”

Yet after saying that “Palestinians will never realize their independence by denying the right of Israel to exist,” Obama called for the establishment of a Palestinian state. Yet neither Hamas nor Fatah have acknowledged Israel’s right to exist, and Obama did not make that acknowledgment a condition of the establishment of a Palestinian state. He was merely making an observation, akin to something like: “You’ll never get a good job by sleeping in the sun all day” – more on the order of a polite request, a mild nag, rather than a firm condition.

Obama also called for “two states,” explaining that “the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.”

It was widely reported Thursday evening that Obama was calling for a return to the 1967 borders, but this is not the case. He actually called for the creation of a “sovereign and contiguous state” for the Palestinian Arabs, and said that “the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines.” Thus he wasn’t calling for a return to the 1967 lines, but new borders “based on the 1967 lines.”

There were, however, no 1967 lines in which Palestinian Arab territory was contiguous. For the territory of Palestine to be contiguous, that of Israel will have to be substantially reduced. Israel’s 1967 borders were indefensible, and Obama is calling for Israel to be reduced even further so that a contiguous Palestinian state can be established.

What’s more, Obama specified that the new Palestinian state should have “borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt,” while Israel should have “borders with Palestine.” The implication was that Israel, in Obama’s vision, will border on neither Jordan nor Egypt — only on “Palestine.” Yet currently Israel has substantial borders with both Jordan and Egypt. Obama was implying that his contiguous Palestine would comprise not just Gaza and Judea and Samaria, but large expanses of Israeli territory bordering on those two states.

That would leave a truncated, reduced Israeli rump state, reminiscent of the reduced and defenseless Czechoslovakia that remained after Neville Chamberlain fed the Nazi beast at Munich. And if Obama did not mean that the diminished Israel he envisioned would have no territory bordering on Jordan or Egypt, the establishment of a contiguous Palestinian state including Gaza and the West Bank would cut Israel in two: Palestine’s contiguous territory would come at the expense of Israel’s.

Whatever Obama meant about Israel’s borders, the establishment of a Palestinian state will come at the expense of Israel’s security. It will not make for peace any more than the withdrawal from Gaza did. In those days the learned analysts were predicting that a withdrawal from Gaza would pacify the Palestinians and normalize their sick society. I said, in contrast, that it would just be another jihad base for more attacks on Israel. That’s what it became. And that’s what a Palestinian state would be also.
The Kuwaiti MP Jama’an Al-Harbash summed it up on Al-Jazeera on March 29, 2010. First he quoted the notorious genocidal hadith in which Muhammad predicts a Muslim genocide of Jews: “Allah willing, a war will be waged between us and them – the war foretold by the Prophet Muhammad: ‘Judgment Day will not come before you fight the Jews – with them on the west bank of the river, and you on the east bank – and the trees and the stones will say: Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me. Come and kill him.’ This war is drawing near, Allah willing.”

With eerie prescience, al-Harbash then declared of the now-toppled regimes in the Middle East that “the countries of surrender and appeasement, and those who have forsaken the holy places and the land, in their efforts to cling to their seats and pass them on [to their sons] – they will be trampled underfoot by the mujahideen.”

Finally al-Harbash explained the nature of the conflict: “This is a war of religion, not just a war between Arabs and Israelis, or a war between liberators and occupiers. This is an ideological war, an Islamic war, which will end in victory only under the banner of Jihad.”

Those who believe that will not be pacified by the creation of a Palestinian state. They will not lay down their arms and accept Israel’s existence, even its truncated, bisected existence, because the Palestinians have statehood. Not only will they not be pacified; they will be emboldened – emboldened to fight on against their bloodied and weakened adversary. Emboldened to move in for the kill.

Obama’s Thursday address thus amounted to a betrayal of Israel, and an attempt to sign its death warrant. Binyamin Netanyahu immediately issued a statement saying that he was going to seek “a reaffirmation from President Obama of U.S. commitments made to Israel in 2004, which were overwhelmingly supported by both Houses of Congress,” including commitments about Israel “not having to withdraw to the 1967 lines which are both indefensible and which would leave major Israeli population centers in Judea and Samaria beyond those lines.”

Will Obama honor this request? Unlikely. But it is good that it is going to be made. Netanyahu has made clear that Israel will not acquiesce to Obama’s betrayal and go gently into the night.

And so now more than ever, all free people must stand with Israel.

Book Review: Erik Larson’s “In the Garden of Beasts”

Perched in Berlin With Hitler Rising

By JANET MASLIN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com
May 19, 2011

One of the malicious nicknames given to William E. Dodd by his fellow American diplomats in the 1930s was “Telephone Book Dodd.” The joke was that Franklin D. Roosevelt, who appointed Dodd ambassador to Germany in 1933, had supposedly meant to offer the post to a Yale law professor named Walter F. Dodd but made a mistake in looking up the name.

As Erik Larson, author of “The Devil in the White City,” points out at the start of “In the Garden of Beasts,” by far his best and most enthralling work of novelistic history, nobody named Dodd was the president’s first choice. And the Berlin post was no plum. Other candidates had already shown their reluctance to do time in what, even before Adolf Hitler assumed absolute power, was an increasingly menacing Germany.

But Dodd was unusual. So was the modesty of his ambitions. And so were the extraordinarily candid, often unflattering records of his thoughts upon which Mr. Larson has abundantly drawn. Dodd was also the father of Martha Dodd Stern, an indiscriminate flirt who looked at a stint in Germany as a glamorous lark, and whose own abundant writing fills “In the Garden of Beasts” with outré remarks. Though she would become a popular author, live a long, complicated life and eventually be accused of spying for the Soviet Union, the young Martha favored breathless, thick-headed comments that no nonfiction chronicler of the Dodds’ misadventure would have dared to make up.

Unlike many of his wealthy, socially connected fellow diplomats, Dodd was a relatively impecunious historian, the chairman of the department at the University of Chicago, who dreaded the obligations that came with an ambassadorship. But he was 64, felt morosely elderly and thought that Germany might be a safe, quiet place for him to complete his writing project. His book was to be a study of the antebellum American South. Dodd did not arrive in Germany predisposed to notice the way a regime might mistreat certain segments of its population.

“In the Garden of Beasts” has the clarity of purpose to see the Germany of 1933 through the eyes of this uniquely well-positioned American family. There are hindsight-laden books that see the rise of Hitler as a parade of telltale signs. There are individual accounts that personalize the atmosphere of mounting oppression and terror. But there has been nothing quite like Mr. Larson’s story of the four Dodds, characters straight out of a 1930s family drama, transporting their shortcomings to a new world full of nasty surprises.

The new ambassador was the fuddy-duddy, the man whose favorite way to end an evening was with a glass of milk, a bowl of stewed peaches and a good book. “I can never adapt myself,” he complained to Carl Sandburg — who was one of Martha’s many gentleman friends, and whose language in writing to her is one of this book’s many unexpected treats — “to the usual habit of eating too much, drinking five varieties of wine and saying nothing, yet talking, for three long hours.” But Dodd was forced to attend, host and pay for such events with his dutiful wife, Mattie. Their son, William Jr., was at 28 four years older than Martha when their father took the Berlin posting, and stayed much less visible than his highly dramatic sister.

“I was slightly anti-Semitic in this sense: I accepted the attitude that Jews were not as physically attractive as gentiles and were less socially desirable.” Thus spake the “slightly” opinionated Martha, whose remarks were unfailingly inflammatory and who quivered with excitement over the marvels of her new surroundings. She adapted to Berlin much more easily than her father did. But she was not the one who had to contend with increasingly violent and random attacks by German storm troopers on American visitors or had to report back to President Roosevelt. As Germany prepared to deprive Jews of their citizenship, Dodd — only slightly less casually disparaging than his daughter — advised the president: “Give men a chance to try their schemes.”

Mr. Larson makes every aspect of the Dodds’ domestic lives reflect the larger changes around them. When looking for a home in Berlin, he writes, the Dodds found many good prospects, “though at first they failed to ask themselves why so many grand old mansions were available for lease so fully and luxuriously furnished.” The thrifty ambassador was at first pleased to rent at a bargain rate the home of a Jewish family in exile — and quite annoyed when the owner’s wife and children reappeared on the building’s top floor.

“In the Garden of Beasts,” which takes its name from Tiergarten, the park across the street from this residence (though “Animal Garden” is a less lurid translation), would be smugly heavy-handed if it did nothing but emphasize the Dodds’ prejudices and naïveté. But it appreciates the ambassador’s inherent backbone, the mounting provocations that he faced, and the great dread he felt about having to deal directly with Hitler, once such meetings became inevitable. When they did meet, Dodd in top hat and tails, Hitler made a fool of him time and again.

Yes, this was a family that joked excitedly after Hitler had kissed Martha’s hand, advising that she not wash the part that his lips had touched. (Hitler felt withering contempt for the ambassador’s party-girl daughter, despite his show of courtliness.) But Dodd, who did not rise to become a great statesman but did not bend to German pressure either, would eventually be transformed by what he saw coming in Germany. And it was his sense of history, not his morality, that made him savage the German vice chancellor who dared to profess ignorance at a party about why the United States had entered the First World War. “I can tell you that,” responded Dodd, in one of his uncharacteristically dynamic moments. “It was through the sheer, consummate stupidity of German diplomats.”

The Dodds’ story is rich with incident, populated by fascinating secondary characters, tinged with rising peril and pityingly persuasive about the futility of Dodd’s mission. In his time, he was taunted, undercut and called “Ambassador Dud.” Hitler would refer to him in retrospect as “an imbecile.” Yet Dodd spent four years, from 1933 to 1937, in what was arguably the worst job of that era. And he ultimately recognized enough reality, and clung to enough dignity, to make Mr. Larson’s powerful, poignant historical narrative a transportingly true story.

Today's Tune: Joey Ramone & Ronnie Spector - Bye Bye Baby

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'Comancheros’ Blu-ray Review: Can’t Go Wrong With The Mighty John Wayne

by John Nolte     
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/
May 17, 2011

As they have annually since 1994, in January of this year, Harris Interactive conducted a poll that surveys a sample of 2300 adults across the country with a very simple question: “Who is your favorite movie star?” Ranking as number three this year (up from seven last year) was the only actor to make the list every year since its inception and the only actor to make it posthumously: John Wayne. Nearly thirty-two years after his death, the Duke still captures the American imagination in a way no other actor or movie star ever has or ever will.

The reasons for this are legion. First and foremost, Wayne was a second-to-none screen presence. There aren’t many actors who could blow the likes of Lee Marvin, Kirk Douglas, Montgomery Clift, Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda or John Ford’s wonderful collection of character actors off the screen — but Wayne could without moving a muscle. He also personified the flawed but sympathetic hero, the loner who lived by a simple code and was rarely welcomed into the civilization that wouldn’t have been possible without his violence. And finally, John Wayne was one of the greatest actors to ever grace the silver screen; the rare movie star who not only possessed range, but also a bottomless emotional depth in his well-known screen persona. There will never be another John Wayne and that I have lived long enough to see our critical community finally (and in some cases, grudgingly) come to terms with that means more to me than I can express.

Something else the Duke did very, very right – again, better than any other movie star – was to make one damn fine film after another. After toiling away in quickie Westerns for over a decade, Wayne finally became a star portraying the Ringo Kid (greatest character introduction ever) in John Ford’s unqualified 1939 masterpiece “Stagecoach.” From there he never looked back or stopped working straight through to his fitting final role as a dying gunfighter in “The Shootist” (1976). In-between, though, he starred in nearly 80 films, a canon of work that – at least to us Wayne fans – contains surprisingly few clunkers.

Forget about the dozen-plus outright masterpieces like “The Searchers” and “Red River.” Discovering Wayne’s lesser-known, pre-1960 titles such as “Wake of the Red Witch,” “Seven Sinners,“ “Dakota,” and “Tall in the Saddle,” is to discover a treasure-trove of unpretentious, well-paced stories, perfectly staged around their star and surprisingly diverse in both tone and genre. For every dud like “The Conqueror” or “The Barbarian and the Geisha” there are three undeniable classics, five objectively terrific adventures, and two offerings only a Wayne devotee could love, like “Blood Alley” or “The Hellfighters.” You can’t underestimate how much this large bounty of good material contributes to Wayne’s enduring appeal.

Many movie stars from the classic era have a pretty good batting average when it comes their legacy (especially when compared to today’s stars), but very few worked non-stop over five decades or starred in the kinds of films that never seem to age. Action-adventures and robust comedies always play well and Wayne’s have remained especially timeless due to enduring themes that examine everything from courage and honor to the poison of racism to what it means to be a man. Quality and quantity. Incredibly, however, Wayne’s batting average only improved as he got older.

From 1960 until his death, Wayne starred in nearly 25 films that to this day seem to loop endlessly on cable television – and for very good reason. These are the films that made me a fan. In my late teens, I spent an entire summer renting one VHS after another from the local library and was rewarded each time with rollicking adventure, good humor, and the kind of life lessons the smart-set now calls corny. But they’re wrong.

These films endure thanks in large part to deceptively complicated themes and characters. “In Harm’s Way” (1965), deals with rape; “The Green Berets” (1968), hot-button politics; “The Undefeated” (1969), national reconciliation and forgiveness; “Big Jake” (1971) and “The Cowboys” (1972) both contain children menaced by sadistic killers; “Cahill U.S. Marshall” (1973) pits a father’s values against his own son’s criminality and “The Shootist” (1976) deals with your time coming to end as poignantly as any film ever has. I could go on, but you get the idea. Which brings me to the reason you’re all here…

Directed in 1960 by one of the greatest studio directors of all time, the legendary Michael Curtiz (directing his lastfilm), in many ways “The Comancheros” set the template for the rest of John Wayne’s career. So it’s fitting that on its 50^th anniversary this is one of the few Wayne films (thus far) to get a top-shelf Blu-ray release as a special edition with a ton of superb extras.

The year is 1843 and the place Texas. Wayne plays Texas Ranger Capt. Jake Cutter, a widower of two-plus years still in mourning over the untimely death of his beloved wife. Charged with bringing in Paul Regret (Stuart Whitman), a sophisticated, well-dressed ladies man (Frenchman to be more accurate) who killed a rival for a woman’s affections during a gentleman’s pistol duel, at first the two men engage in some standard snob meets slob comedy, but this comes to an abrupt end once they enter Indian territory. Life with the Comanches was never easy in Texas but a renegade band of black market gun runners who call themselves the Comancheros have stirred things up and now innocent settlers are paying the price.

Regret escapes, Cutter has bigger things to worry about and goes undercover to infiltrate the brutal and secretive world of the Comancheros, and from there the plot moves with lightning speed and wraps up with one of my favorite closing lines from any movie: “Don’t forget to mend those fences!” You’ll have to see it to know of what I speak.

The widescreen Cinemascope transfer is absolutely gorgeous, Elmer Bernstein’s score contagious, and Lee Marvin’s few minutes of screen time as the trigger-tempered Tully Crow unforgettable; a future superstar being born before your very eyes. And like the films mentioned above, there’s also a number of complicated themes at work. The story opens with the kind of sexuality you rarely saw in 1960 and as was almost always the case in Wayne’s Westerns, the relationship and portrayal of the Indians was nowhere near as black and white as his critics would lead you to believe.

But best of all this is a John Wayne film, one that plays to his endless supply of strengths and never stops entertaining over 107 minutes. The extras are just as good and alone are worth the price of the disc. There’s feature-length commentary with, among others, Whitman and Wayne’s son Patrick (who has a small but memorable role); a two-part documentary , “The Duke at Fox,” that examines Wayne’s legendary feud with studio head Daryl Zanuck, and a historical look at the settling of the Southwest that’s shockingly non-PC. packaging is very nice, as well.

Frequently I’ve dreamt of a gizmo that could erase my already bad memory and allow me the pleasure of discovering any number of treasured films again for the very first time. This isn’t the case with Wayne, though. The pleasure has always been in rediscovering his films, returning to the comfort of them again and again. Great stories, great action, great dialogue and always in the subtext the challenge to become a better man.

Hollywood used to be great and thanks to DVD and Blu-ray it thankfully doesn’t matter what they are today.

Maverick Malice

Senator McCain gives a dishonest account of interrogations.

By Andrew C. McCarthy
http://www.nationalreview.com
May 18, 2011

Shortly after Osama bin Laden met his demise at the hands of U.S. special forces, Michael Mukasey opined in the pages of the Wall Street Journal that harsh interrogation tactics had been key to identifying a courier, which, in turn, led to locating bin Laden’s compound. Such an assessment, from a highly respected former attorney general, was bound to be influential. Indeed, the CIA’s enhanced-interrogation program, used on a select few high-level al-Qaeda detainees following the 9/11 attacks, had figured prominently in Mukasey’s confirmation hearings. He had, at the behest of Congress, thoroughly reviewed the program upon taking the reins at DOJ. Americans would rightly assume that his opinion was not based on speculation; it was the informed judgment of a renowned former federal judge.

That made it too much for Sen. John McCain, a bitter opponent of the interrogation program. McCain has labeled the interrogation tactics “torture” and claims they do not work. At least, that’s what he often claims. Other times, he grudgingly concedes that they do work but says we shouldn’t use them, because they are unreliable and contrary to our values. Still other times, he says he’d expect officials to use them in a “ticking bomb” crisis even though they are unreliable and contrary to our values . . . and that therefore those officials shouldn’t be prosecuted for the “torture” — at least if the tactics worked — even though he wouldn’t want you to think non-prosecution means these tactics are permissible under any circumstances. Is that clear?

Safely returned to the Senate after the party establishment helped him turn back a conservative primary challenger, McCain is predictably back to his familiar role as the Obamedia’s favorite Republican — a distinction earned by ripping conservative Republicans. Thus did the senator take to the pages of the Washington Post to claim that Mukasey’s account was “false.”

Not “mistaken,” mind you, but “false.” It’s a stinging word, one that deprives Judge Mukasey of the assumption of good faith one might have expected an “exemplary statesman” to accord a jurist with a well-earned reputation for probity — though I confess that I am not surprised.

Nor, alas, is it surprising to find that it is McCain who is being disingenuous. As Marc Thiessen deduced in his own Washington Post column on Tuesday, McCain’s attacks are crafted to be technically correct (at least if we define “correct” with the same elasticity McCain uses to define “torture”), but they are “completely misleading.” Far from being false, Mukasey’s conclusion that the intelligence trail to bin Laden traced directly back to harsh interrogation, particularly (though by no means exclusively) the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, is on the mark. McCain is the one twisting the facts — all the worse when one considers that the senator has been perfectly willing to rely on intelligence gleaned from “torture” when it suits his purposes.

Mukasey said that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in the “torrent of information” he’d surrendered after being broken by waterboarding, had given up the name of bin Laden’s courier. McCain countered (italics mine for reasons that will soon be apparent):

The first mention of Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti — the nickname of the al-Qaeda courier who ultimately led us to bin Laden — as well as a description of him as an important member of al-Qaeda, came from a detainee held in another country, who we believe was not tortured. None of the three detainees who were waterboarded provided Abu Ahmed’s real name, his whereabouts, or an accurate description of his role in al-Qaeda.

The shameful fact is that McCain is well aware that the name of Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti was known to the CIA long before the agency questioned this “detainee held in another country” — namely, Hassan Ghul, an al-Qaeda operative captured in Iraq in 2004. Yet McCain misleads readers into supposing that it was through Ghul that the CIA first learned of al-Kuwaiti’s existence. The senator does not make this claim outright, because he knows it would be false. Instead, he ambiguously conflates the first mention of the courier’s name with details like the description of the courier as “important,” as well as the courier’s whereabouts and his role in the terror network. By this sleight of hand, McCain gives himself deniability were anyone to call him on creating a misimpression (as Mukasey later did).
Thiessen, a former Bush adviser and author of Courting Disaster, the definitive account of Bush counterterrorism, is emphatic: He spoke with several former senior intelligence officials about McCain’s claims, and every one confirmed that the CIA learned about al-Kuwaiti and bin Laden’s courier system from the al-Qaeda detainees who were interrogated in the CIA program — not from Ghul or from an Iraqi government account of its own questioning of Ghul.

This should come as no surprise. Tom Joscelyn, the nonpareil terrorism researcher at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, notes (here and here) that al-Kuwaiti’s name was given to the CIA during the questioning of Mohammed al-Qhatani, who was captured during the Battle of Tora Bora in late 2001. Qhatani was the would-be 20th hijacker who was stopped from entering the United States during the latter stages of the 9/11 plot, and he became cooperative only after being subjected to harsh interrogation (though he was not waterboarded). Qhatani knew al-Kuwaiti because, at the direction of KSM, al-Kuwaiti had trained him in the use of e-mail and other communications aspects of the 9/11 plot. KSM, of course, was captured in 2003 largely because of information learned in the interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, both of whom were waterboarded. As Mukasey correctly said, KSM himself broke after waterboarding and gave up, among many other things, al-Kuwaiti’s name.

So, putting Ghul to the side, the CIA independently knew al-Kuwaiti’s name and that he was an important member of al-Qaeda who had worked directly for KSM. This is not to say the information from Ghul was insignificant. We needn’t deprecate some sources in order to elevate others — that’s McCain’s game. Ghul’s interrogation was significant to the growing mosaic: revealing that the courier, al-Kuwaiti, was close to Faraj al-Libi, KSM’s successor as al-Qaeda’s operations chief.

Moreover, it is absurd for McCain to use Ghul as the linchpin of his morality tale, pitting the purportedly unreliable “tortured” sources versus Ghul, whom readers are led to believe was questioned using conventional procedures — as McCain puts it, referring to Ghul, “we believe he was not tortured.”

In point of fact, as Judge Mukasey reaffirmed in his rebuttal to McCain’s op-ed, no one was tortured under the CIA procedures — the most extreme agency tactic, waterboarding (as carefully designed and implemented), did not come close to the legal line of torture. McCain, however, has been demagoguing harsh tactics as “torture” for seven years, and he has not limited this libel to torture — he cited all of the harsh tactics as “cruel, inhuman, and degrading,” working feverishly in the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 to have them banned. It is thus quite something for the demagogue to reverse course — because it happens to fit the narrative he’s trying to sell today: that Ghul wasn’t “tortured” just because he wasn’t waterboarded. U.S. officials acknowledge that he was subjected to several of the harsh tactics — stress positions, sleep deprivation, slamming into a (hollow) wall. If you’ve been following McCain’s histrionics on “torture” since 2004, you’d have to find Ghul every bit as tainted a source as KSM.

McCain curiously makes much of the fact that KSM and al-Libi sought to protect al-Kuwaiti — the former by minimizing his role, the latter by withholding his true name. But as any good interrogator will tell you (and as any layman who has ever sat on a jury can attest), what a witness lies about can be just as edifying as what he comes clean on. In this instance, given what the CIA knew about al-Kuwaiti from all sources, the lies and obfuscations of KSM and al-Libi served to underscore his importance — they were a boon, not a distraction.

What’s more, the misinformation did not come during the waterboarding. Thiessen points out that, if an interrogator asked questions at all while the abusive tactics were being employed, they were questions to which he knew the answers. The purpose of waterboarding (and some other harsh tactics) was not to get information while the tactic was being employed; the purpose was to break the source’s will. The misinformation from KSM and al-Libi, just like the accurate information they provided, came later. Once they became ostensibly cooperative, they then did what every ostensibly cooperative informant does: impart some true information and some untrue information. Determining which is which is the discipline of corroboration. Investigators and intelligence agents don’t stop when the source says something they want to hear — they compare it with other information they know, do follow-up investigation, and figure out whether the source is being straight.

Most disturbingly, though, McCain seems to have gone out of his way to minimize what the CIA learned when al-Libi was captured and turned over to the agency for questioning in 2005. There was a lot more to it than al-Kuwaiti. Al-Libi gave salient information that pointed to Abbottabad as bin Laden’s headquarters. It turns out that al-Libi was known as the “communications gateway” to bin Laden. As Thiessen relates, drawing on a recent WikiLeaks disclosure, once al-Libi began talking, he

“reported on al-Qaeda’s methods for choosing and employing couriers, as well as preferred communications means.” Based on intelligence obtained from [al-Libi] and other CIA detainees, [the WikiLeaks document] states that “in July 2003, [al-Libi] received a letter from UBL’s designated courier” (to whom he referred by a false name, Maulawi Abd al-Khaliq Jan) in which “UBL stated [that al-Libi] would be the official messenger between UBL and others in Pakistan.” The file also notes a vital piece of intelligence: To better carry out his new duties “in mid-2003, [al-Libi] moved his family to Abbottabad . . . and worked between Abbottabad and Peshawar.”

Consequently, even without Ghul, the CIA would have known that bin Laden could be in the Abbottabad vicinity, because al-Libi had relocated there specifically to help him relay messages; that bin Laden communicated with his terror network through a group of trusted couriers; and that al-Kuwaiti was an important al-Qaeda member who had been a protégé in Pakistan of al-Libi’s predecessor, KSM. In considering the intelligence package that led to the bin Laden raid, the contribution of these details — the fruits of cooperation coerced through harsh interrogation — is obvious.

There has always been a good-faith argument against harsh interrogation tactics. One needn’t agree with it to grasp its force: The United States should never engage in abusive practices that suggest torture because it betrays core principles of decency and due process to which we are committed. But McCain and his adherents won’t make their principled stand there, because it would require them to say what they are unwilling to say: Put to the unsavory choice, they would prefer to see innocent people — perhaps thousands of Americans — die than tolerate the slightest physical abuse of any morally culpable terrorist who is withholding life-saving information. So instead they play the game of deny, deny, deny — no matter how clear it is that harsh interrogations were effective and led to concrete results: attacks thwarted and terrorists captured or killed. You are to take it as gospel that if a source was subjected to harsh tactics, you can’t believe a word he says.

Except, of course, when it suits other political objectives. Senator McCain very publicly championed the 9/11 Commission. As he contemplated another White House bid, he saw high-profile support of the commission’s investigation — no matter how much of a dog-and-pony show it became — as a way to showcase his leadership on the great national-security issue of our time. Being a creature of Washington, McCain was also drawn to the commission’s Washington approach: When our ungainly government fails to prevent a quite preventable atrocity because its endless layers of bureaucracy fail to communicate with each other, the answer is to add more layers, more bureaucracy, and, of course, more money.

In its final report, the commission sought an extensive overhaul of the intelligence community and of homeland security. In large part, the commission justified its proposals based on what its investigation had concluded about al-Qaeda: the terror network’s history, organization, goals, and practices. McCain was so impressed by the product that, in 2004, he proposed the 9/11 Commission Implementation Act, seeking adoption of the commission’s suggested framework.

Have you had a look at the commission’s 2004 final report lately? It’s worth a gander, particularly chapters five and seven, as well as the related footnotes. Virtually everything the commission reported about al-Qaeda comes from the interrogations of KSM, Zubaydah, and other high-ranking jihadists who were subjected to harsh tactics. The commissioners never got to examine the sources in person; they relied on the classified reports of the sources’ debriefings by interrogators. Yet the report recites its findings as conclusive fact, generally without qualification.

There were no cautions from Senator McCain about the folly of relying on “torture” evidence. He evidently thought the CIA interrogations laid a foundation plenty sturdy enough for reshaping the U.S. government, including its $40 billion–plus behemoth of an intelligence community. But now you’re to understand that the same interrogations had nothing to do with finding Osama bin Laden.

It takes a maverick.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: After the publication of this column, the author offered additional observations here.)

— Andrew C. McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, is the author, most recently, of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.

Romney’s steadfast stand for a bad idea

By Jeff Jacoby

Boston Globe Columnist
http://www.boston.com/                        
May 18, 2011

MITT ROMNEY has been stalwart in his defense of the individual mandate — the obligation to buy health insurance that is at the heart of both the law he signed in Massachusetts in 2006 and the federal version President Obama enacted last year. Ironically, his firmness on this issue may cost him more dearly with Republican voters than his reputation for conveniently reversing past positions ever did.

In his Ann Arbor speech last week, the former governor declared that RomneyCare “was right for the people of my state,’’ and that regardless of the political fallout, he was not about to “just stand up and say this whole thing was a mistake.’’ He repeated the argument he has made for years — that an individual mandate is a matter of “personal responsibility.’’ Since federal law requires hospitals to provide urgent care to anyone requiring it, Massachusetts needed a way to prevent uninsured free riders from using hospital emergency rooms to get medical care at public expense. Making insurance compulsory for those who could afford it, Romney says, was the solution to the free-rider problem.

But if that theory is valid in Massachusetts, it’s valid everywhere. Romney’s rationale for an individual mandate is all but indistinguishable from Obama’s. “There’s always going to be somebody out there who thinks they’re indestructible and doesn’t want to get health care,’’ the president has argued. “And then. . . they get hit by a bus, end up in the emergency room, and the rest of us have to pay for it.’’

On the surface, this free-rider justification may sound plausible. Start digging into it, though, and it quickly falls apart.

To begin with, just because a 25-year-old law requires hospitals to provide emergency care to all comers, why does it follow that another law must force every citizen to buy insurance? Clearly there are other ways to compensate hospitals for the “free’’ care they supply to the uninsured. To mention only the most obvious option, the government could reimburse the cost of that care directly.

On the other hand, if the individual mandate’s purpose is to prevent free riders from shifting the cost of their emergency care to others, all it should require is enough insurance to cover a trip to the emergency room. Instead, both RomneyCare and ObamaCare require everyone to be covered for numerous benefits going far beyond emergency care. In Massachusetts, health-care policies must include services ranging from fertility treatment to orthotics to hospice care. Those mandates drive up the cost of insurance, but have nothing to do with keeping uninsured deadbeats from showing up in emergency rooms.

Supporters of the individual mandate often imply that going without insurance and being a free rider are one and the same. They aren’t. In his January opinion striking down the ObamaCare mandate as unconstitutional, federal Judge Roger Vinson pointed out that the uninsured impose no economic costs on anyone unless at least four other conditions are met: (1) they get sick or injured, (2) they seek medical care, (3) they can’t pay for their treatment, and (4) they receive no assistance from relatives, friends, or private charities. Yes, some people who don’t buy insurance end up saddling others with higher taxes or premiums. But only some.

Meanwhile, five years of the RomneyCare mandate have done nothing to reduce the crowding in Massachusetts emergency rooms. In a survey by the American College of Emergency Physicians in March, three-fourths of the respondents reported seeing an increase in the number of emergency-room patients. That confirmed earlier state data showing a 9 percent rise in ER visits between 2004 and 2008.

It is true that fewer Massachusetts residents are uninsured. But most of the newly insured aren’t paying their way: They’re being subsidized by taxpayers. The cost of those subsidies will hit $830 million in 2011, and it is growing by 5 percent a year. Simultaneously, health care premiums in Massachusetts for people paying market rates are among the highest anywhere — and climbing.

The individual mandate, Romney continues to insist, “was right for the people of my state.’’ The evidence so far says just the opposite. The mandate didn’t solve the free-rider problem and it made other problems even worse. RomneyCare has proven to be a grave mistake. Expect ObamaCare to do the same.

Jeff Jacoby can be reached at jacoby@globe.com.

Harmon Killebrew was a treasure

Hall of Famer remembered by generations for long home runs, humility, kindness.

By Jim Caple
http://espn.go.com/mlb/
May 18, 2011

Before there was Joe Mauer, before there was Kirby Puckett, there was Harmon Killebrew, a quiet but powerful block of a man who led the Upper Midwest in annual goosebump production by slamming home runs as far as the eye can see -- and you can see a long way in Minnesota.

"When Harmon and the Twins moved to Minnesota in 1961, I was 5 years old. When they went to the World Series in 1965, I was 9 and more aware,'' St. Paul native Paul Molitor said. "I got to go to one game a year on my birthday and I collected all the Coca-Cola player bottle caps. I loved all the Twins but Harmon was the guy. He was the guy I pretended to be when I played baseball in the backyard and No. 3 was the number I wanted to wear when I played Little League.

"Not many people are able to have the chance to be friends with their boyhood hero but I was lucky. And I couldn't have picked a better man. The fact that Harmon played baseball -- it's like the cliche about the Hall of Fame: That he was a Hall of Fame player is way down on the list of what made him special. He was one of the most unassuming, humble men. He was a great ambassador for the Twins and a great ambassador for baseball.

"And that's why, for a lot of people, this has been a tough time.''

Killebrew passed away Tuesday morning at the age of 74 after a battle with esophageal cancer. The Hall of Fame slugger who hit 573 career home runs (11th all-time) had been fighting the disease since December. After all treatment failed, he decided to enter hospice care to surround himself with family and friends.

According to one famous story, when Killebrew was a boy growing up in Payette, Idaho, he and his brother were playing baseball with their father in the yard when Harmon's mother yelled to complain that they were ruining the grass. "We're not raising grass,'' his father yelled back, "we're raising boys.''

However much grass was ruined, it was for a good cause. The Washington Senators signed Killebrew to a $30,000 contract after he graduated from high school in 1954. Under the existing bonus baby rules, the Senators were required to keep him on the major league roster for two years. Killebrew spent two seasons on the bench (batting only 93 times) before getting needed experience in the minors in 1956-58. He returned to the majors in 1959. That was his first real season in the majors and he led the league in home runs (42). He led the league another five times over the following 11 seasons. In the 12-season span from 1959-70, Killebrew averaged 40 homers -- back in the days when 40 home runs were a lot.

Although Carl Yastrzemski famously won the Triple Crown in 1967, he and Killebrew tied for the league lead in home runs that season with 44.

When the Senators moved to Minnesota in 1961, Killebrew instantly became the face of the Twins and was easily their most popular player. An 11-time All-Star, he finished in the top four of MVP voting five times, winning the award in 1969. That season, he hit 49 home runs with 140 RBIs (still Twins records), and scored 106 runs, walked 145 times and had a .427 on-base percentage in leading the Twins to the division title. Minnesota was swept in the ALCS when the Orioles walked Killebrew six times in the three-game series.

Former Twins catcher Earl Battey once said that the team without Killebrew was "like dressing up for a formal affair with a white tie and tails and then wearing muddy shoes.''

But eventually the Twins did put on those muddy shoes. The last season Killebrew hit 40 home runs was 1970. By 1974, his numbers were down to .222 with 13 home runs, and the Twins released him. He signed with the Royals, hitting .199 with 14 home runs before retiring.

His nickname was Killer, but that was simply a play off his last name and as much of a misnomer as calling a bald guy "Curly.'' Killebrew was one of the nicest, gentlest men you could ever meet in baseball.

His 573 career home runs are more than Mickey Mantle hit and more than all but four players had hit at that point (only Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays and Frank Robinson had more). Killebrew's stroke was so powerful that many -- including Harmon -- believed it was the basis for major league baseball's logo, though the designer said that isn't the case.

Killebrew's nickname was "Killer," but that was simply a play off his last name and as much of a misnomer as calling a bald guy "Curly.'' He was one of the nicest, gentlest men you could ever meet in baseball.

"There are so many Harmon Killebrew stories that are all positive. There was not a negative with Harmon. There can't be. Can't be,'' Bert Blyleven, his former teammate, said. "That's what I'll miss most about Harmon. Not his playing but his personality and the way he treated people.''

Former Twins media relations director Tom Mee said Killebrew treated everyone "as if they were his next-door neighbors.'' Blyleven agreed: "If you came over for milk, he would give you milk. He would give you coffee. Whatever you need. Harmon was that type of guy.''

"He didn't differentiate how he treated other people based on their status or social standing,'' Molitor said. "Whether you were an 18-year-old minor leaguer or a clubhouse worker, you got the same Harmon. And that was a pretty good Harmon to get.''

"I didn't have evil intentions but I guess I did have power,'' Killebrew once said.

Boy, did he ever. And what was most impressive about his power is that it came from such a compact body (in "Ball Four,''Jim Bouton refers to him as "the Fat Kid''). While he had massive upper body strength -- in perhaps his most extraordinary show of power, he was able to extract a $125,000 salary from Twins owner Calvin Griffith -- Killebrew was short by today's standards. He was charitably listed as 6-foot on his Baseball Reference page. Seeing him later in his life when he was shorter than that, it was astounding that he had been capable of so many tape-measure home runs -- his longest was estimated at 520 feet.

"I have that same feeling when I see guys like him or Hank Aaron compared to the sluggers we have today,'' Molitor said. "McGwire, Sosa, Bonds. Whatever your feelings about them, there is just a totally different physicality. And it adds to the lore of Harmon as a hitter. He was known for his towering home runs -- it seemed like he didn't hit many low line drives -- and he hit them so high and far the ball looked more like a Titleist than a Rawlings.''

"He was a lumberjack type of a player,'' Blyleven said. "He was 5-11 but he was burly chested … just naturally strong. He had that short, compact swing and when he hit the ball, it just jumped off the bat.''

Killebrew's bat thundered but he was about as loud and ostentatious as an acre of corn growing on Minnesota farmland. Paul Dickson's "Baseball's Greatest Quotations'' is a 524-page collection of quotes about and related to baseball. Reggie Jackson has five pages of quotes. Mickey Mantle has six pages of quotes. Even Henry Kissinger, Groucho Marx and The Chicken are quoted. There is not a single quote by or about Killebrew. He hit 573 home runs, won an MVP, took the Twins to their first World Series and is in the Hall of Fame, but he apparently never said anything memorable enough for the book.

"It's because he didn't say anything controversial,'' Mee said. "He would give a direct answer but not necessarily the one the writer was looking for. He didn't belittle any pitcher. He didn't belittle any fielder or management. He just gave a direct, fair answer."

Indeed. Asked by a Sports Illustrated writer in 1963 whether he had any unusual hobbies, Killebrew replied, "Just washing the dishes, I guess.''

That personality fit in superbly in Minnesota, where fans don't much care for people who call attention to themselves. And despite that final season with Kansas City and coaching jobs with other teams, Killebrew will always be associated with the Twins, who retired his No. 3. He was a broadcaster for the team for several years and frequently appeared at spring training to provide instruction to Minnesota players.

"He epitomized the history of the Minnesota Twins,'' manager Ron Gardenhire said. "Harmon and Tony Oliva. He's a Hall of Famer and one of the kindest people you could ever meet in your life. And we want our players to emulate him. There aren't too many people who met Harmon and walked away disappointed. He means everything to the organization.''

The Twins have been hanging his No. 3 jersey in their dugout ever since he announced he was entering hospice care and entering the final days of life.

You can still see the fold-down seat where Killebrew's longest home run landed an estimated 520 feet from home plate some 44 years ago. Take the Killebrew Drive exit to the Mall of America, built on the original site of old Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington. Park your car, enter the mall, go inside to the amusement park at the center, look up three stories to the southeast wall and you'll see the seat attached above the Paul Bunyan Log Chute ride. It's an appropriate spot. Harmon Killebrew, Paul Bunyan … both strong men who produced prodigious feats while swinging a hunk of wood. Bunyan chopped down entire forests. Killebrew chopped down opposing pitchers, hitting home runs and bringing Minnesotans to their feet applauding with joy.

Photos: AP, Neil Leifer/SI

An era passes with a graceful giant

Call him an Everyman. Call him a gentleman. But Harmon Killebrew lived up to the lofty expectations thrust on stars in baseball's golden age.

by JIM SOUHAN
Minneapolis Star Tribune
http://www.startribune.com/sports/twins/
May 18, 2011

Think of the phrases we use to praise modern-day athletes. They possess "killer instinct." They "stick the dagger" into the opponent. They display "swagger" and "athletic arrogance."

When Harmon Killebrew passed away in Arizona on Tuesday, the sporting world may have lost its foremost gentleman. The greatest Twin did not require false machismo to become one of the greatest home-run hitters in baseball history. Harmon Killebrew did require pressure to exhibit grace.

Will we ever encounter his kind again?

Killebrew's era predated steroid scandals and sporting paparazzi. When he played, players often lived in middle-class neighborhoods. Even if a current player possessed Killebrew's Everyman attitude, he would be distanced from much of society by the invisible fencing of wealth and fame.

Naivete and nostalgia are often weaknesses. In remembrance of Killebrew, allow those of us who grew up watching him and his peers a moment of sepia-toned remembrance.

I spent part of my youth living near Baltimore. One of my strongest memories is of a midseason game the Twins played against the Orioles.

Baltimore third baseman Brooks Robinson was my boyhood idol, in part because of his fielding brilliance, in part because he looked so average. Brooksie, with his skinny arms and hangdog face, could have been your middle-age neighbor, had your middle-age neighbor been granted superhuman hand-eye coordination by a higher power.

A line drive would head down the third-base line, and Robinson's hands would move faster than a Times Square con artist's, and suddenly the ball would be bouncing into Boog Powell's outstretched glove for another improbable out, and you got the feeling that as soon as the game ended, Robinson would resume mowing his lawn and shopping for a toupee.

One night, Robinson and the Orioles faced the Twins at old Memorial Stadium. When Robinson left the field with his team, he was replaced at third by a player who looked less likely to become a Hall of Fame ballplayer -- a short, thick, balding player, who looked like a neighborhood butcher playing for the local slow-pitch softball team.

Then Killebrew plodded to the plate, launched a home run deep into the left-field bleachers, dropped his bat, watched the ball fly and started his slow navigation around the bases.

"Oh, he would watch the ball," Tony Oliva said. "He would hit it so far, so high, and he would stand there and watch it.

"Pitchers would throw at him, hit him, for doing that, but I never saw him react. He would just take first base like nothing happened."

I did not grow up in Minnesota following Killebrew, but I know what it is like to have given my young heart to a great ballplayer when baseball was king, when we erected pedestals for our favorite ballplayers and left them there for eternity.

While it may seem inelegant to compare deaths, I believe that it hurts us more when we lose a great baseball player than when we lose other athletes.

Great baseball players, especially in Killebrew's prime, were not occasional visitors to our homes. They were uncles, cousins, friends.

They were there every day in the morning paper. They were on television more often than any other athletes. They were the people you followed late at night, with a transistor radio tucked under your pillow, turned down just far enough that your parents could pretend you were sleeping.

Someday, another player may replace Killebrew as the greatest Twin of all time. It is unlikely that another player will ever become so universally beloved and admired.

We called him "the Killer," but that nickname matched the man only when a fastball was headed toward home plate. In life, he was the most gracious of the all-time greats, the most likely to leave someone he just met feeling privileged to shake his hand.

Jeff Idelson, the president of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, once told me that the two Hall of Famers who most enthusiastically embraced their roles as icons, and most enthusiastically embraced the public, were Robinson ... and Killebrew.

I was lucky enough to see them play the same position in the same game. I was lucky enough to meet both, to confirm Idelson's assessment of the men.

In life, Killebrew did us a great favor. He allowed us to believe that the ballplayers we idolized in our youth were worthy of our affection. He never let us down.

Jim Souhan can be heard Sundays from 10 a.m. to noon and weekdays at 2:40 p.m. on 1500ESPN. His Twitter name is Souhanstrib. • jsouhan@startribune.com


Slugger put Minnesota on baseball map in 1965

by PATRICK REUSSE
Star Tribune
http://www.startribune.com/sports/twins/
May 18, 2011

Orlando, FL, USA — A 1965 file photo showing Minnesota Twins baseball player Harmon Killebrew. (AP Photo/File)

Calvin Griffith gained permission from the American League to move his Washington Senators to the Bloomington prairie in October 1960. We had a great old time at Met Stadium in those earliest summers, with slugger Harmon Killebrew as the hero among heroes.

The Killer would hit more than 40 home runs in his first four Minnesota seasons, and lead the league with 48, 45 and 49 in 1962-64. He hit those 45 in 1963 despite missing the first 20 games after knee surgery.

And yet it was 1965, a season in which Harmon would miss several weeks after the All-Star break because of a dislocated elbow, when our pride in the Killer and in our major league status reached its zenith.

There would be a World Series, but before that there would be an All-Star Game in Minnesota. The date was July 13, which meant the corn in the fields visible from the Met's second deck would be knee-high and rustling in the summer breeze.

Talk about a reason to celebrate -- the greatest players in the greatest game were going to gather in our favorite erector set.

We were big league.

Officially.

And to make it more fantastic, the '65 Twins, after hints of strength in earlier seasons, sprung from the gate, moved into first place in the 10-team American League on Memorial Day weekend and started opening a gap.

The dreaded Yankees, AL champions in five consecutive seasons and 14 of the previous 16, were at the Met for a four-game series that preceded the All-Star Game. They arrived trailing the Twins by 12 1/2 games, and still we could not believe the Yankees truly were dead.

Not until Sunday -- when Killebrew hit a two-run home run on a 3-2 pitch with two outs in the ninth for a 6-5 victory. Ray Scott's call of that at-bat, and that blast, lives in Twins lore. Harmon's homer gave the Twins three of four in the series, a five-game lead over Cleveland and Baltimore and a 14 1/2-game separation from the Yankees.

The Killer's homer had us ready to burst with excitement, and then two days later, the All-Stars were here, and the burst was with pride.

The National League brought the greatest assembly of talent on one team in baseball history. There were 11 future Hall of Famers, and that doesn't count Pete Rose, the all-time hit king.

Juan Marichal, Sandy Koufax, Bob Gibson and Don Drysdale took care of 19 of the required 27 outs for the National League. Roberto Clemente, Frank Robinson and Billy Williams were the NL's backup outfielders to Willie Mays, Henry Aaron and Willie Stargell.

The NL ripped starter Milt Pappas and then one of our six Twins, Mudcat Grant, for five runs in the first two innings. The 46,706 ticket holders (including me) feared humiliation for our overmatched league on this humid afternoon.

It didn't count in the standings, but Minnesota needed Harmon -- to save face -- as much that afternoon as at any time.

The lead was 5-1 entering the last of the fifth and Cincinnati's Jim Maloney was on to join the future Hall of Famers in throwing bullets. But Detroit's Dick McAuliffe hit a two-run homer, and then Harmon came up with Brooks Robinson on base, and hit a two-runner to make it 5-5.

The Killer circled the bases inside one of the great dins ever heard at a ballgame in Bloomington.

The NLers eventually won 6-5, but Harmon had made the day for us, and he would later say: "That was really a big thrill, hitting it before the hometown fans."

Such a thrill, in fact, that when sculptor Bill Mack contacted Killebrew about the bronze statue that would sit on Target Field's plaza, and asked for a photo, Harmon said he had just the one.

And he sent along the newspaper photo of him getting full extension on the swing that sent the Maloney pitch into the Met's bleachers and tied the 1965 All-Star Game at 5-5. It was that swing, that big, uppercut finish, that Harmon -- early in his 70s -- tried to duplicate during studio sessions with Mack.

Harmon has gone, hopefully to a Field of Dreams, but if you're too young to remember that All-Star home run, don't fret it. You can see the Killer take that swing 365 days a year, in downtown Minneapolis, in bronze.

Patrick Reusse can be heard noon-4 weekdays on 1500ESPN. • preusse@startribune.com

The Gentleman Called Killer

By Joe Posnanski
http://joeposnanski.si.com/
May 16, 2011

The gentleman the sportswriters somewhat desperately called “Killer” was just 23 years old in 1959 — but by then Harmon Killebrew already had played parts of six seasons in the major leagues. Six seasons. He was of that peculiar bonus baby time, when owners (as owners tend to do) went looking for convoluted and spectacularly destructive methods to control their own spending. Certainly, they might have controlled spending by not spending as much money. But that was deemed unrealistic.

And so, in those days, if a team signed a player for too much money, it had to carry the player on the big league team for two years. This of course, was to discourage owners from paying players too much money — it would be like corporations deciding, as a cost-cutting measure, that if they spent too much money on a college graduate, they would be forced by law to make him or her a vice president.

Harmon Killebrew had been recommended to the Washington Senators by an actual senator, Idaho Republican Herman Welker, who would mainly be known to history for two unrelated things:

1. Being so closely allied with the reckless demagogue Joe McCarthy that he became known as “Little Joe from Idaho.”

2. Recommending Harmon Killebrew.

The Washington Senators, the baseball team, took Welker’s advice and sent out former third baseman Ossie Bluege to see Killebrew play in a few Idaho sandlot games. Killebrew, as legend goes, responded by getting 12 hits in 12 at-bats, including four homers and three triples. The Senators owner Clark Griffith giddily signed Killebrew for $30,000 — the team’s first bonus baby.

And so Killebrew was a part of the team. He made his major league debut six days before his 18th birthday. Here is a fun little baseball trivia question that might win you a bar bet: What position did Killebrew play in his major league debut?

Answer: The great but not particularly swift Harmon Killebrew debuted as a pinch-runner.

He got just 15 plate appearances that first year, and 89 plate appearances in his second. He hit his first big league home run five days before he turned 19. He hit the home run at Griffith Stadium off Billy Hoeft, with his Senators down 13-0. He hit another one two days later off of George Zuverink, but that pretty much summed up his achievements that second year. In 89 plate appearances, Killebrew hit an even .200 and was promptly sent to Charlotte for more seasoning.

The point is that by 1959, Harmon Killebrew was no phenom. He had been up and down so many times that his name was achingly familiar to Senators fans (and this was right in the prime of the Senators’ “First in war, first in peace, last in the American League” glory). Killebrew had hit .224 in 280 plate appearances scattered over his first five seasons. He is the only Hall of Fame player to get fewer than 500 total plate appearances in his first five years. This is not to say that anyone in the game had given up on Killebrew’s future. It’s more that his promise had dulled. Albie Pearson won Rookie of the Year in 1958; people were more excited about him.

But the truth is that Killebrew was just 23 years old, and he had not been given that gift that every great player, without exception, needs: a chance to play. In 1959, the Senators gave him that chance. Why not? They put Killebrew at third base and kept him there. At the end of April, his average was hovering in the low .200s. He had crushed a long homer off Jack Harshman on Opening Day, but he only had three homers by the end of the month. He had also committed the first of what would be 30 errors.

Then, the blossoming of Harmon Killebrew happened. It was not gradual. It was instant. On May 1, 1959, Harmon Killebrew hit two home runs at Briggs Stadium in Detroit. There were fewer than 2,000 people in the stands — the Tigers were dreadful; they had lost 13 of their first 15 games. Killebrew homered in the second inning off a good young pitcher named Jim Bunning. In the 10th inning, with the score tied, Killebrew hit another homer off Bunning.

The next day, still in Detroit, Killebrew hit two more homers. He hit the first in the first inning off Jerry Davie. He hit the second off George Susce with the Senators up 12-3.

Two days after that, he homered in Chicago off Claude Raymond. After two more dry days, he again hit two home runs, this time at Yankee Stadium. He hit the first off Bob Turley, the other off Johnny Kucks. People were beginning to notice a bit now. On May 12, back at home, he had his fourth two-homer game in less than two weeks — off of Detroit’s Frank Lary and Ray Narleski.

On May 17, in the second game of a doubleheader, he had his fifth two-homer game, one off Bob Shaw, the other off Turk Lown.

That made 11 homers in 17 games — including five two-homer games — and suddenly Harmon Killebrew was a sensation. Well, it wasn’t really sudden. It was like Mel Brooks said: “It only took me 20 years to become an overnight sensation.”

Still, it felt sudden. Reporters started to look more closely at Killebrew. They found that he had a little bit of the Heartland folk hero in him. His grandfather, Culver Killebrew, was said to be wrestling champion of the Union Army and, according to his great granddaughter Diane Killebrew Holt, he was able to stand flatfooted and jump over a horse. Harmon’s father, Harmon Sr., whom everyone called Clay, was a college football star who played professionally with the Wheeling Steelers. Teammates, coaches and reporters told countless stories about Harmon’s amazing feats of strength. They saw him hit home runs while breaking bats. They saw him lift up teammates like they were large pillows.

Naturally, the reporters began to call him Killer. The nickname, in many ways, was an absurdity. “Killer” fit Killebrew the way “Jazz” fits Utah or “responsible” fits government. He was so quiet and gentle that, when one reporter asked him if he had any hobbies, Killebrew said, without apparent irony, that he liked washing dishes at home. He had married his high school sweetheart, and they were raising a family, and there was just nothing violent about his nature. As Barbara Heilman wrote in Sports Illustrated: “You can’t look an abstraction of amiability in the eye and call it ‘Killer,’ day after day, no matter how hard it hits.”

But what else could they call him? Sure, the reporters, perhaps overeagerly, also tried “Charmin’ Harmon,” “Harmin’ Harmon,” “Bombin’ Harmon,” “Hammerin’ Harmon,” and so on. But when you have a man named Killebrew who hits home runs, “Killer” is inescapable. Plus, it fit so much better into headlines.

Killebrew’s amazing home run stretch in 1959 more or less carried on for the next dozen years. It was his fate to play baseball in the worst hitting era since Deadball, and yet from 1959 through 1970 — 12 years dominated by pitchers — Killer hit a home run every 12.7 at-bats. Up to that point, only Babe Ruth had hit home runs so often. Forty-five times in his career Killebrew hit two homers in a game. Six times he led the league in home runs. Eight times he hit 40-plus homers in a season.

He was a low-average hitter — he spent a career fighting to make more solid contact — but he was a ferocious worker, and he developed remarkable plate discipline. “If it isn’t a strike, don’t swing,” he said years later when asked his philosophy of hitting. He led the league in walks three times, and despite those low batting averages, from 1966 through 1971 he led the American League in overall on-base percentage (.401). He wasn’t fast or particularly nimble, and so playing defense was always a challenge, but he played five different positions, and he played hard, and observers will say he wrestled first base to a draw.

As a hitter, he was ahead of his time. His high-walk, big-power numbers would anticipate the 1990s, when various factors — steroids not being the least of these, though weight training and advances in diet and so on played their role — would give many players the superhuman strength of Harmon Killebrew. At the time, though, Killebrew was different. He was larger than life.

And, as a person, he was endlessly gracious. When word spread late last week that Harmon Killebrew was no longer going to fight the esophageal cancer that had struck him, that he was ready to accept his fate, there were a thousand stories told of Killebrew’s small kindnesses, bits of advice he gave to players, moments he took to talk with fans, compliments he gave to umpires, smiles he offered to anyone who caught his eye. Killebrew died on Tuesday. He was 74 years old. He will live on in baseball’s record books, of course, for his 573 home runs and a homer hit per 14.22 at-bats (a better ratio than Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams and Sammy Sosa — this though he played in a pitcher-dominated era) and his place in the Hall of Fame. But wouldn’t we all want to be remembered for making countless people’s days brighter?

The irony of calling him Killer was brought up many times throughout his life, though it is also true that Harmon Killebrew was intentionally walked more times than any other American League player in the 1960s. So the nickname isn’t that crazy. At the plate, he was a killer. His short, quick swing was the very image of power — so much so that for years it was said that the MLB logo was drawn in his image. The man who created the logo said that it was not Killebrew. But it looks like him. And it should be him.

People sometimes throw around the concept of a hitter being feared. Mostly, it’s kind of nonsensical. Baseball players generally don’t fear each other. But in a peculiar way they did fear Harmon Killebrew — or anyway, they feared what he was capable of doing at his best. Which leads, finally, to the story of George Brunet. He had quite a life. He was an American League pitcher, a lefty, who grew up on the Upper Peninsula. He struck out more than three thousand batters in the MINOR LEAGUES, which is a record, and he threw 55 shutouts in the Mexican League, which is a record, and he might be best known for his role in Jim Bouton’s Ball Four as the quirky lefty who did not wear underwear because that way, as he said, he didn’t have to worry about losing them.

Brunet also pitched 15 years for nine different teams in the big leagues. His battles with Harmon Killebrew were particularly interesting. In one game, in 1966, Brunet intentionally walked Killebrew three times — twice with a man on second base, and once with runners on second and third.

Well, it just so happened that the Twins did not score any of the times that Killebrew was walked, which seemed a pretty good deal to Lefty Brunet. That’s especially true because they faced each other four days later … and Killebrew homered. Less than two months later, they again matched up … and Killebrew homered. Four days after that, they faced each other again … and Killebrew homered again.

And that was when Lefty Brunet decided that he had seen quite enough of Harmon Killebrew. For the rest of his career, when George Brunet and Harmon Killebrew crossed paths, Brunet worked very hard to walk the Killer. And then finally there was the last time they faced each other, Aug. 22, 1970. That was Harmon Killebrew’s last 40-homer season, and it was Brunet’s last full season. They had faced each other 62 times — sort of a mini-marriage — and Brunet had won some (Killebrew hit only .250 against him) and Killebrew won some (he walked 22 times and mashed four home runs) and this was the last act. The score was tied 4-4, it was the fifth inning and there was nobody on base.

George Brunet intentionally walked Harmon Killebrew. He then coaxed Rich Reese to hit into a double play to end the inning. When asked about the decision to intentionally walk Killebrew with the bases empty — it was the third time he had done that — Brunet returned with a question of his own: What would you do?

Twins great Killebrew dies

by LA VELLE E. NEAL IIIThe Minneapolis Star Tribune
http://www.startribune.com/
May 17, 2011

Washington, DC, USA — Harmon Killebrew, the Washington Senators slugging third baseman, doffs his cap as he shakes hands with President Dwight D. Eisenhower before the start of the Boston-Washington game, May 29, 1959. At center is Calvin Griffith, president of the Senators. The chief executive was a spectator at the game. (AP Photo/Harvey Georges)


Harmon Clayton Killebrew, an iconic Minnesota Twin known for his prodigious home runs and humble demeanor, passed away Tuesday morning at his Scottsdale, Ariz., home at the age of 74 after a nearly five-month battle with esophageal cancer.

Killebrew was the face of the Twins franchise for 14 seasons after the franchise moved to Minnesota from Washington, D.C. before the 1961 season. He is 11th on the all-time major league home run list with 573, of which 475 were hit wearing a Twins uniform. He has the eight highest single-season totals in Twins' history. And he became the team's first MVP in 1969 and its first Hall of Fame inductee in 1984.

Killebrew became so popular that a root beer was named after him. And his home runs were such a drawing crowd that then-owner Calvin Griffith made the slugger the team's first $100,000 player in 1971.

Killebrew retained strong ties with Minnesota right up to his passing, making several appearances in the Twin Cities each year, and since 2006 making an annual trip to the Twins spring training camp.

"That was probably as good as a moment you can have as a manager, to say you were rubbing elbows with Harmon Killebrew,'' said Twins manager Ron Gardenhire.

Killebrew was diagnosed with the cancer during the last week of December, 2010, and vowed to do all he could to fight the disease. He made enough progress with chemotherapy and radiation treatments that he was allowed to visit camp in mid-March.
Although noticeably a few pounds lighter, Killebrew moved well and seemed to be his old self. He spoke of attending the home opener on April 8 and returning for his annual charity golf tournament June 29-30, which coincided with his 75th birthday.

Alas, he made neither.

"When you go through something like this, you're not really sure of what to expect," he said in March. "The thing that's really been an effect on me is how many people have reached out to me. That's one thing I want to say is to thank all of the people who sent cards and letters and e-mails and all of the well-wishes. It's really been overwhelming and special.''

Powerful build

Killebrew played in one of the game's golden eras, with the likes of Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Ernie Banks, Mickey Mantle and Frank Robinson. Killebrew's monstrous home runs set him apart even among his future Hall of Fame peers.

He was only about 5 feet 11 but was 220 pounds -- a burly man with strong arms and stronger hands. He shook hands with such force that it would leave the recipient's hand tingling. But it was those arms, wrists and hands that gave Killebrew a terrific power stroke. His blasts would sail high into the air and carry and carry until they landed beyond the fence.

"Growing up in Southern California, for some reason my favorite players were Willie Mays, Carl Yazstrzemski and Harmon,'' Hall of Famer George Brett, a teammate of Killebrew on the 1975 Kansas City Royals, once said. "If Harmon had hit lefthanded, he would have been Babe Ruth. It wasn't just the number of home runs he hit, but how far they went and how high they went. He hit the highest home runs I had ever seen.''

Minneapolis, MN, USA — This April 3, 2010, file photo shows former Minnesota Twins baseball player Harmon Killebrew posing with a statue of him unveiled near Target Field in Minneapolis. Killebrew, the Twins slugger known for his tape-measure home runs, died Tuesday, May 16, 2011, at his home in Scottsdale, Ariz. He was 74. (AP Photo/Andy King, File)

Killebrew was born in Payette, Idaho, near the Oregon border. He claimed to have gotten his strength from hustling 10-gallon cans of milk during the summers as a youth.

His power was obvious the first time a scout from the Washington Senators saw him playing in the Idaho-Oregon Border League. In three games Killebrew got 12 hits in 12 times at bat. The Senators, obviously convinced, made him a $30,000 "bonus baby," so Killebrew put down the milk cans, packed up and headed for the nation's capital -- where he essentially wasted two years.

Baseball rules at the time stipulated that any player receiving a bonus of $4,000 or more would have to spend at least two years on the major league roster, a pre-free agency rule intended to keep teams from paying outrageous signing bonuses. Killebrew played in just 47 games over his first two seasons, hitting four homers -- none in his rookie year of 1954. After the two-year period ended, Killebrew, not even 20 years old, yet, was sent down to the minors.

"Mainly, I had to learn patience and the strike zone and concentration,'' Killebrew said later. "Those were the big things.''

He spent parts of the next three seasons in the minors before returning for good in 1959, when at age 22 he led the American League with 42 home runs.

Killebrew could have made upwards of $20 million a season in today's game. When he led the league in homers in 1959 he was paid $9,000. Killebrew was among the players who had to moonlight during the offseason for extra cash. As a contestant on the TV show, "Home Run Derby," Killebrew tried to outslug his contemporaries for the extra money as well as the publicity.

He hit 31 homers in 1960, then packed up and made the move with his teammates to the Twin Cities before the 1961 season.

No fan of the cold

Killebrew admitted numerous times that he wasn't excited about making the move to Minnesota, a place he figured to be cold and unforgiving. Upon arriving, he realized that his views on the weather were accurate. It was cold, but the people were warm and friendly.

"I loved the fans because they were down-to-earth Midwestern people,'' Killebrew said. "The people in the Upper Midwest were the same kind of people I grew up around in Idaho.''

Killebrew was named the first Twins captain in 1961. He smashed 46 homers that first season in the Twin Cities. His totals the next three seasons: 48, 45 and 49 homers. In 1965 he helped lead the Twins to their first World Series, which ended in a seven-game loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers. He was named to the 1967 American League All-Star team at first base, becoming the first player in All-Star history to be named at three different positions (third base and outfield were the other two).

He was named the American League's most valuable player in 1969, when he drove in a career-high 140 runs and matched his career-best with 49 homers. But by 1971 Killebrew was clearly on the decline, batting knee problems and chronic pain in his big toe. In three seasons from 1972 to 1974 Killebrew produced only 44 home runs.

Griffith offered Killebrew $40,000 to return in 1975 as a player-coach. He would have pinch hit and tutor the younger hitters. Instead, he signed with the Kansas City Royals to be their designated hitter.

He appeared in 106 games, hit 14 homers and drove in 44 runs while batting .199. Kansas City released Killebrew after the 1975 season, and he decided to retire. In retiring, he left behind a legacy of 400-foot home runs and being one of the game's true gentlemen.

Brett called Killebrew "one of the nicest guys I have ever met in the game.''

Minneapolis, MN, USA — Minnesota Twins' Harmon Killebrew smashes his 49th home run of the season, Oct.1, 1969 against the Chicago White Sox, a two-run blast in the first inning of the American League game in the Twin Cities. Killebrew 's homer gave him 140 RBIs. Chicago took the game, 4-3. (AP Photo)

Former Twin Torii Hunter remembered Killebrew as a mentor, not only on the field but off. Hunter said Killebrew looked at his autograph several years ago and deemed it illegible.
``I had a doctor's signature,'' Hunter said. ``I had a, 'T' and an 'I' and a dot-dot. He said, `What the hell is this?' '' Killebrew told Hunter that if kids found that baseball, they would start throwing it around the park because they couldn't read the signature. He gave Hunter advice the former Twin still follows today.

``He said, `If you play the game this long, make sure people know who you are,' '' Hunter said. ``Harmon was a tremendous player, but is an even greater man."

Financial problems

After retiring Killebrew went home to Ontario, Ore., where his house sat on a ridge next to the Snake River. From the living room, he could see over the river, into Idaho and his boyhood home of Payette. It seemed like a happy ending to a distinguished career. But life away from baseball wasn't as rosy. He battled serious financial, family and health problems.

He was a victim of fraud in a failed luxury-home development in Rancho Mirage, California. A car-leasing company in Bloomington, Minn., failed. In 1993, he filed for bankruptcy after a car dealership in Ontario, Ore. failed. He owed four banks more than $900,000. He couldn't make the $2,500 monthly payments on his Oregon dream home, and the mortgage company foreclosed. He owed the IRS money for personal taxes and for the auto dealership.

By the late 1980's he was living in a rented condominium in Boise, Idaho.
He borrowed $100,000 from Griffith in the mid-1980s, and more money from Hall of Famers Reggie Jackson and Warren Spahn.
``It's been a living hell. You have a lot of those days when you feel you're at the bottom," Killebrew said in a 1989 interview. "You get to feeling that sometimes you're out on that island by yourself. I don't feel anger, more sometimes frustration, sadness is another, loneliness is another one. . . . Stressful? That's an understatement."

Killebrew eventually admitted that he knew little about the auto dealing business, but always remained upbeat that he would solve his money problems. But other problems awaited.

He separated from his wife, Elaine, in 1989. The couple had five children. In May of 1990, Killebrew complained of pain in his neck and back that turned out to be a collapsed lung. In August, he still didn't feel well and needed surgery to remove a large abscess from behind a lung. Surgeons removed 1 1/2 inch of a rib, which left a four-inch hole in his back. The area became infected, limiting his ability to walk. He dropped 40 pounds and was sent home with odds against surviving.

He was given intense hospice care, and made a miraculous recovery. He remarried and began representing VistaCare, the hospice-care company that nursed him back to health.

"Hospice is such a tremendous thing,'' he said in a November 1999 interview with Sports Illustrated. "Patients seem to reach an inner peace. Society doesn't like to deal with death, but it is a natural part of living.''

Killebrew, in recent years, had held an annual charity golf event in Phoenix, Ariz, and one in the Twin Cities. He continued to make public appearances right up until he was diagnosed with cancer. It was news when he missed the 2010 TwinsFest to have his gallbladder removed.

"What's amazing is that every time I go back [to the Twin Cities], how much people, even the young people, seem to know about me,'' Killebrew said in a 1999 interview. "It was a wonderful place to play.''