The Tenth Commandment

by F.T. Rea

Note: This piece was written in 1999, not long after the massacre at Columbine HS in Colorado. 

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According to the Old Testament, Moses heard directly from God about standards of behavior. A portion of the instructions Moses is purported to have heard, The Ten Commandments, is still well known and occasionally finds its way into the news.

There were several other rules offered atop Mount Sinai that we hear less about. If you read much of the book of Exodus, it won’t take long for you to see why. Let’s just say that some are rather old world, including the regulation of established practices such as slavery and burnt offerings.

However, the Ten Commandments are made up of cut-to-the-chase basic stuff: honor your God and your parents; be willing to make sacrifices for what matters most to you; don’t kill, lie, or steal; don’t cheat on your spouse. Of course, in the time of Moses it depended on what “cheating” meant. In the final of the ten, Moses claimed God said people should not covet their neighbors’ goods.

After such a simple list of shalt-nots, the last rule is against even thinking about a shalt-not. It seems redundant. Covet?

Come on, Moses, what’s the problem here? What’s so bad about a little coveting? Why not stick to nine commandments?

Hopefully, the reader will permit the post-modern license for me to move directly from the Old Testament to a 1991 Hollywood thriller, in order to help Moses with his answer. In “Silence of the Lambs,” the brilliant but evil psychiatrist, Hannibal Lecter, instructs the movie’s detective heroine -- who is on the trail of a serial killer -- that people usually covet what see. Something they see all the time.

Bulls-eye!

Of course, the ravenous Dr. Lecter was right about what fuels cravings. If one hasn’t seen it, how can one lust for it? To obsessively want something unattainable, to the point of no return, one must see it regularly. Coveting is a festering in the mind; it's a craving for that which one cannot, perhaps should not, have. Dwelling on coveting can conjure up evil.

Today, because of the modern media, everyone sees how wealthy/powerful people live all the time. In addition to telling stories, one sure thing the movies, the sitcoms, the soaps and the celebrity news all do, is to show us how well off some people are.

Then every few minutes the advertisements tell us where to buy the same pleasures and accouterments the glittery stars in those stories own. If you’ve got the dough to buy the stuff, that’s one thing. If you don’t that’s another. Uh-oh!

The lifestyle of a celebrity is constantly sold to consumers as the good life. Wanting that good life is a carrot on the stick that helps drive our consumer culture. Therefore, in some ways, it has been good to all of us. My thesis for today’s rant is that there is an unintended side to this strategy to stimulate consumerism. A dark side.

When powerless/poor people see that same contrived entertainment, with product placements aplenty, they want the good life too. Of course they do. However, if they are trapped in their circumstances and have no hope they don’t believe the good life is available through legitimate channels. So, instead of feeling motivated to work overtime, to earn more money, the powerless are left to stew in their coveting juices.

Eventually all that desire for the unobtainable can lead to trouble. I’m convinced that some part of the violence we have seen from teen-agers, lately, stems from their exaggerated sense of powerlessness. In the worst cases, their impatience boils over while waiting for what they imagine to be an adult’s awesome power over life and death.

The good news is that kids grow up. Most of our children won’t shoot up their schools, because of their frustration with having so little say-so over their schedule. The bad news is that for many of the world’s underdogs their sense of powerlessness is something that isn’t going to dissipate so easily.

In the so-called Third World, the longings for First World goods and options grow every day. Powerless audiences are seeing the propaganda for the good life on television and the Internet every day. At the same time, living as they do, they don’t see a realistic way for them to get over being poor.

Fifty years ago the world's underclass wasn't wired into the rest of civilization. Now it is. Now everybody knows how soft life can be for the well-off, living in gated communities.

If those in the underclass look to history, they will see that the unwashed masses have usually had to take what they wanted by force. How much longer citizens of the First World can continue to placate the planet’s hungriest folks, to hold them at bay while politics and capitalism routinely grind up their hopes for a better life, is anybody’s guess.

In the meantime, perhaps the other side of “thou shalt not covet” is “thou shalt not flaunt.”

If the wisdom of the ages -- the Ten Commandments -- suggests it’s wise to eschew our own destructive cravings, perhaps we’d be smart not to shine our brightest spotlights on what encourages coveting in others.

-- 30 --

Note: A version of this piece was originally published by STYLE Weekly in 1999. The art is from a piece I did in a spell of Christmas-blues in 1982. 

Fifty years after JFK’s murder it’s time to let sunlight change our ways

Camelot at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave lasted 1,036 days. For the children in school on Nov. 22, 1963, the murder of President John F. Kennedy was stunning in a way nothing has been since. The cynicism the cloaked-in-secrecy aftermath of the JFK assassination spawned has tinted everything baby boomers have seen 1963.

Shortly after JFK’s death, in lamenting the demise of Camelot, columnist Mary McGrory said to Daniel Patrick Moynihan: “We’ll never laugh again.”

Moynihan, who was an Assistant Secretary of Labor then, said, “Heavens, Mary, we’ll laugh again. It’s just that we’ll never be young again.”

On Nov. 24, 1963 a live national television audience witnessed the murder of the assassination’s prime suspect, Lee Harvey Oswald. There was no doubt that Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub operator, was the triggerman. What made him do it is still being questioned.

However, please don’t get me wrong. I’m not here to say there had to have been a complicated conspiracy to kill the president and cover up the tracks. After he was dead, just because some people deliberately obscured related information, we don't necessarily know why. In some cases it was probably people trying to cover selected asses for a myriad of reasons.

On the other hand, I’m not saying there was no conspiracy that led up to the murder of President Kennedy. For this 50th anniversary remembrance, I’m skipping past the argument over whether Oswald acted alone. The point to this screed is that the secrecy that surrounded this dark episode poisoned the American culture in a way we need to recognize and think about today.

Tomorrow we need to do something about it.

The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, known as the Warren Commission, published its report on Sept. 24, 1964: Oswald was found to have been a lone wolf assassin. Which immediately unleashed the questioning of the Commission’s findings. Was its famous “single bullet theory,” which had one projectile traveling circuitously through two victims, great sleuthing?

Or was it an unbelievable reach?

In 1965 gunmen murdered Malcolm X in an auditorium in Manhattan. Three years later Martin Luther King was killed on a motel balcony in Memphis by a sniper. Two months after that assassination Robert F. Kennedy was gunned down in a Los Angeles hotel.

Unfortunately, the official stories on those three shootings were widely disbelieved, too. In the ‘60s more public scrutiny of how those assassination probes were conducted might have led to different conclusions. Even if more sunlight into those probes failed to produce different outcomes, at least Americans might have felt better about the good faith of the processes.

Instead, it seemed then the authorities generally believed the citizenry didn't really have a right to see the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Too often they decided the public was better off not knowing some things, as if we were/are all children. Of course, such secrecy can hide everyday malfeasance, as well.

That sort of thinking is what you can get during wars with spies lucking about. And, in the ‘60s the United States wasn’t just in the scariest part of the Cold War, the culture was very much still in the post-WWII era. Therefore the public had come to expect its government to withhold all sorts of secrets.

It took the rudest of revelations to snap us out of blithely tolerating an over-abundance of secrecy:

• The My Lai Massacre horrors.

• The publishing of the Pentagon Papers.

• The Watergate Scandal hearings.

• The Iran-Contra Scandal hearings.

• The bogus justification for invading Iraq. 

As those events paraded by America gradually changed into a nation of cynics.

Now we know we were wrong to have accepted the lies and cover-ups. Now, in order to trust official conclusions, we must see into the investigations. That means more public hearings. Now for democracy to have a chance of working properly, we need to know whose money is behind this or that politician. We, the people, can’t allow the fundraising and sausage-making to continue to be done in the dark.

Moreover, in 2013, we, the people, have no privacy. Our governments and plenty of large corporations already know all they want to know about us. They monitor our moves as a matter of course. To level the playing field we need more scrutiny of their moves.

In 1997 Sen. Moynihan’s book, “Secrecy: The American Experience,” was published. In the opening chapter he wrote: 

In the United States, secrecy is an institution of the administrative state that developed during the great conflicts of the twentieth century. It is distinctive primarily in that it is all but unexamined. There is a formidable literature on regulation of the public mode, virtually none on secrecy. Rather, there is a considerable literature, but it is mostly secret. Indeed, the modes of secrecy remain for the most part--well, secret. On inquiry there are regularities: patterns that fit well enough with what we have learned about other forms of regulation. But there has been so little inquiry that the actors involved seem hardly to know the set roles they play. Most important, they seem never to know the damage they can do. This is something more than inconveniencing to the citizen. At times, in the name of national security, secrecy has put that very security in harm's way.

In the C-SPAN video here Sen. Moynihan and a panel discuss the book in 1998. 

Sunlight is THE political issue for 2014. Fifty years after the murder that we baby boomers can still feel in our guts, it’s time to begin sweeping this country’s lumpy accumulation of secret dirt out from under the officially-tacked-down carpets. It's time to say NO to more cover-ups. It’s time to change our ways.

Single bullet theory?

Great name for a band.

-- 30 --

Message from the Tea Party to Obama

Evil's Second Coming

Note: This reaction to 9/11 piece was written by yours truly. It was originally published by STYLE Weekly on May 15, 2002.

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Evil's Second Coming
by F.T. Rea

Washing in on what poet William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) might have called a “blood-dimmed tide,” the specter of evil suddenly emerged from the periphery of modern life eight months ago. In the blue skies of the time before 9/11’s sucker punch, the notion of pure evil had an Old World air about it. Absolutes, such as good and evil, had no seat at the table of postmodern thinking.

After 9/11, a generation of Americans suddenly learned a bitter lesson: Evil never went away. Living in a land of plenty, it had gotten to be a pleasant habit to avert our eyes from evil-doings in lands of want. Evil had gone out of style, as a concept, only because times were so easy.

The last American president to get much mileage out of the word "evil" was probably Ronald Reagan, with his “evil empire” characterization of the USSR and its sphere of influence. Now, 20 years later, we have a president who sees “an axis of evil” — an alleged phenomenon that puzzles most of the world’s leaders, or so they say.

George W. Bush apparently has little use for Franklin D. Roosevelt’s stalwart advice to a nation in need of a boost in confidence — “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

Rather than urge his people to rise above it, Bush chooses to color-code fear. The propagandists of the Bush administration have been successful in cultivating the public’s anxiety since September. Whether that’s been done for our own good remains to be seen. Perhaps it has, but this much is clear now — all the official danger alerts about nuclear power plants, bridges and crop-dusters have been effective in keeping most of the natural questioning of the administration’s moves at bay.

To hear Attorney General John Ashcroft tell it, the architects of 9/11 are the personification of the most virulent form of evil ever known. Although much of the evidence that would establish his absolute guilt in connection with 9/11 remains a state secret, Osama bin Laden is said to have shot to the top of the chart.

Forget about Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, Idi Amin and Pol Pot. They were amateurs.Then again, evil, like beauty, has always been in the eye of the beholder.

Wasn’t it evil to deliberately dump tons of potent pesticide into the James River during the ’70s to make a greedy buck? Once it was in Virginia’s water, Kepone wasn’t so different from a bio-terror agent in the same water.


With the news seeping out of the cloisters about child-molesting priests and the Catholic Church’s systematic cover-ups, whose betrayal was more evil, the molester or the higher-ups who hid and facilitated his crimes?

Whether evil exists in some pure form, off in another dimension, is not my department. What’s known here is that in the real world evil is contagious. Lurking in well-appointed rooms or hiding in caves, evil remains as it ever was — ready to spread.

None of this is to suggest that al Qaida shouldn’t be put out of business. It isn’t to say that knocking the Taliban off was a bad idea. There’s no question here about whether the United States should protect itself from the networks of organized terror that are hell-bent on destroying the modern world.

Still, today’s evil is the same evil our forefathers faced in their wars. Evil hasn’t changed; technology has. With modern weapons in their hands, the fanatics of the world have the potential to wreak havoc like never before.

What has changed is the extent to which the hate festering in the souls of the world’s would-be poobahs and their sociopathic minions can be weaponized. It’s worth noting that the weapons of mass destruction that are scaring us the most were developed during the arms-race days of the Cold War by the game’s principal players.

So another question arises, who is more dangerous to civilization, the guys who spent their treasure to weaponize germs, or the guys who want to steal the stuff and use it on somebody?

Decades ago this was a concern expressed by some in the disarmament movement. Its scary what-if scenarios always included the likelihood that the Super Powers would eventually lose track of some of their exotic weapons. Looking back on it now, it seems obvious there was no way any government could keep all that material locked away from the greed and hate of determined free-lancers.

A man with a briefcase-style nuclear device may be no more evil than a man armed with a knife. Either danger could kill you just as dead. Those of us who feel connected to others, those who care about humanity's future know which one we should fear the most. The “rough beast” of dreadful evil “slouching towards” us is traveling on the back of technology of our own making.

While we watch out for organized terrorists in the short run, with a handy color code to guide us, it’s time to think more seriously about how to get rid of a lot of very dangerous weapons in the long run.

-- 30 --

The Brer Rabbit Gambit

Brer Rabbit by illustrator A.B. Frost.

So does President Barack Obama want to bomb Syria, or not?”

Maybe. Or maybe Obama wants to be slowed down and prevented by Congress and other nations from bombing Syria, just long enough to force a better solution to this dilemma than bombing Syria.

The wily Commander in Chief might have said, "Please don’t make me NOT bomb Syria."

The wiliest reverse psychologist of all-time, Brer Rabbit, would have understood the strategy immediately.

Note: for anyone who could have a fit of despair over the perceived inappropriateness of mentioning a Uncle Remus character and Obama in consecutive paragraphs, perhaps this commentary about current events is one you should skip reading.

Back to Syria, a country I’ve never see with my own eyes and one I know very little about: Since the news about the use of chemical weapons in Syria surfaced last month Obama has had a nasty problem on his hands. At this point, the most nettlesome aspect of it seems to be the distinct possibility of it drawing the USA into killing more people in the Middle East -- all in the name of seeking peace.

Perhaps the only good thing about this new problem, so far, is that it has shoved the news about Republicans in Congress playing games with the debt ceiling and a government shutdown off the front page. Which is one of the clues to what Obama may be up to with his threats to punish Syria's wicked dictatorship for its supposed use of chemical weapons.

Syria’s President Bashar Hafez al-Assad denies it; evidence be damned, he’s sticking to his story. Well, I have no idea how good the “proof” is that makes Assad look like he’s lying through his dictator teeth. Time will tell.

When it comes to provocations for war American presidents have been lied to, and they've occasionally told lies. So, I can’t completely dismiss the idea that somebody other than Assad, himself, is actually responsible for this alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria. Still, as it stands, today, many people are saying America must launch a batch of cruise missiles to blow up selected targets in Syria.

Obama says a “red line” has been crossed. He says he feels compelled to protect a "norm." While he stands ready to launch the missiles, as a commander in chief, as a president, Obama says he wants Congress to authorize the proposed strike in Syria ... and own whatever it leads to down the road.

Why?

My guess is the saber-rattling Obama is working a Brer Rabbit Gambit. It’s almost a reverse Brer Rabbit Gambit, in that he‘s saying he has to bomb Syria, even though he doesn’t want to, so don’t hold him back ... when being held back is exactly what he wants.

Yes, I'm saying Obama wants Congress to delay the bombing run. And, he wants other countries to weigh in, to try to find alternatives to bombing Syria. Russia already has.

Moreover, Obama wants to make people all over the world think seriously about the use of chemical weapons and what should be done about it. Like, is there a damn “red line” about using certain weapons of mass destruction, or not?

Obama wants to jerk billions of heads up out of the sand and make all of us bystanders look at this very complicated situation. And, it says here that most of all, Obama wants to drive Assad out of Syria.

On top of that possibly-brilliant-but-definitely-risky stalling maneuver’s effect on the prospects for avoiding another war for America, it is also tying the Republicans in knots. Some of them are in the process of making fools out of themselves, yet again, and perhaps weakening their own power within the ranks of the GOP.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying any of this is a slam dunk. But if Assad suddenly decides he really ought to get out of Syria, before the missiles come and drastically weaken his power to scare his many enemies, it won’t surprise me all that much. He’s seen what happened to other dictators who stayed too long at the party.

Right now, Assad might be able to go into exile in Russia and take a billion dollars with him. But the clock is ticking. Maybe the late-breaking notion of Assad allowing the UN, or some international body, to take his WMD toys away from him is worth pursuing. Like, if we get to take possession of most of his supply of deadly gas and haul it off, to be destroyed, then nasty old Assad STILL has to get out of town, that might work, too.

No matter how long Assad chooses to stay, to make the Brer Rabbit Gambit work at this point America's trickster president has to make it look like he’s got an itchy trigger finger. Then he has to let the various actors play their roles, and wait…

Note: This was written before Obama’s 9 p.m. address on this crisis, so I may soon want to take all of this back.

Unvarnishing Virginia History

Note: The piece below was originally published by STYLE Weekly in 2007. The recent chatter about a giant Confederate flag waving over a highway into Richmond made me want to post it here. A few years ago, a retired educator gave me the history book mentioned in the piece. I hope he enjoys seeing what his gift inspired.

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Having grown up in Richmond, I've been steeped in its dual sense of bitterness and pride over matters to do with, and stemming from, the Civil War. Perhaps thinned out somewhat by time, it remains in the air we breathe at the fall line of the James River.

Most of my life has been spent in the Fan District, which is home to four statues honoring heroes of the Confederacy. Beyond monuments, to know what it was like in Richmond in the past, we look to history. It comes to us in many ways — stories told, popular culture and schooling among them.

In 1961, my seventh-grade history book, which was the official history of Virginia for use in all public junior high schools — as decreed by the General Assembly — had this to say about slavery at the end of its Chapter 29:

Life among the Negroes of Virginia in slavery times was generally happy. The Negroes went about in a cheerful manner making a living for themselves and for those whom they worked. They were not so unhappy as some Northerners thought they were, nor were they so happy as some Southerners claimed. The Negroes had their problems and their troubles. But they were not worried by the furious arguments going on between Northerners and Southerners over what should be done with them. In fact, they paid little attention to those arguments.

In 1961 I had no reason to question that paragraph's veracity. Baseball was my No. 1 concern in those days. Now those words read quite differently.

Living through the struggles of the Civil Rights era, with its bombings, assassinations, marches, sit-ins, boycotts and school-closings, did much to show me a new light, to do with truth and fairness. However, for me, there was no moment of epiphany, no sudden awareness I was growing up in a part of the world that officially denied aspects of its past. More than anything else, it took time. Life experience taught me to look more deeply into things.

Now I know that dusty old history book was a cog in the machinery that made the Jim Crow era possible.

Nonetheless, that same history book's view of how it was for those enslaved is one that some Virginians still want to believe. It's probably what they were taught as children, too. Some call it "heritage." Many of this persuasion also cling to the bogus factoid that since most Southerners didn't hold slaves, the Civil War itself was not fought over slavery.

Which is preposterous.

Of course poor Southerners, those who weren't plantation owners, had little to do with starting the Civil War. Generally speaking, poor people with no clout don't launch wars anywhere; rich people with too much power do.

So, for the most part, the men who fought in gray uniforms were doing what they felt was expected of them. As with most wars, the bulk of those who fought and died for either side between 1861 and 1865 were just ordinary Joes who had no say-so over declaring war or negotiating peace.

In Virginia, many who chose to wear gray did so to reverse what seemed to them to be an invasion of their home state. That's the reason the heritage clingers like the best.

Yet, if the reader wants to understand more deeply why Virginia eventually left the Union, to follow the secessionist hotheads of South Carolina and Mississippi into war, here's a clue from Chapter 30 of that same history book, which opened with this:

In 1790 there were more than 290,000 slaves in Virginia. This number was larger than that of any other state.

Those 290,000 slaves were worth a lot of money to their owners and such wealthy families had a lot of say-so.

Thus, the largest part of the real blame for the bloodshed of the war, and the subsequent indignities of the Reconstruction era, probably rests with wealthy slaveholders who would not give up their investments in cheap labor without a fight.

Readers interested in how much the official record of the Civil War has changed over the decades since the Civil Rights era should pay a visit to the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond. Its telling of the story of the Civil War is now based on the unvarnished truth.

Moreover, I am proud to be a Virginian. There's plenty of Virginia history that has nothing to do with picking sides in the Civil War. My ancestors go back to the 1600s in this commonwealth. But I will not stand with anyone who chooses to stay the course with the absurd denials of history — to do with slavery — that were crammed into that old public school textbook.

As for my friends in Richmond who haven't had a fresh thought on matters racial since they were seventh-graders, well, I don't want to pick a fight with them. So mostly we talk about other things — baseball still works.

All that said, Robert E. Lee, whose spectacular monument I see every day, remains a Virginian I admire. I realize his reputation has taken somewhat of a beating in recent years, but the dual sense of tragedy and dignity his statue conveys remains striking. In his time and place, torn between loyalties, it seems to me Lee tried to do what he saw as his duty.

After the war a weary Lee urged his fellow Virginians to let it go — to move on. That was good advice in 1865. It still is.

-- 30 --

Note: The illustration was fashioned after Jean Antoine Mercie's Lee Monument (unveiled in 1890). "Mercie's Lee," by yours truly, was done in ink and pastels.

Nixon's Fall

Note: This is a rewrite of a piece I penned for Richmond.com in 1999. I did the illustration, too, it accompanied the article.

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August is usually a slow month for news, so we are spoon-fed anniversaries to contemplate: Hiroshima’s 68th, Woodstock’s 44th and 39 years ago Pres. Richard M. Nixon took the fall -- he resigned. Nixon quit the job, waved goodbye and left town.

The entire culture shifted gears the day President Nixon threw in the towel. The brilliant strategist, the awkward sleuth, the proud father, and the coldest of warriors had left the building.

August 9, 1974 was a day to hoist one for his enemies, many of whom must have enjoyed his twisting in the wind of Watergate’s storm. It was the saddest of days for his staunch supporters, whose numbers were legion.

Either way, Richard Nixon’s departure from DeeCee left a void that no personality has since filled.

For the first time since his earliest commie-baiting days, in the late-‘40s, Dick Nixon didn’t matter. With Nixon gone being anti-establishment promptly went out of style, too. With the war in Vietnam no longer a front burner issue, "streaking" -- running around outside naked -- replaced the anti-war rally as the most popular gesture of defiance on college campuses.

Soon what remained of the causes and accouterments of the ‘60s was packed into cardboard boxes to be tossed out, or stored in basements. Watergate revelations killed off the Nixon administration’s chance of instituting national health insurance. Many people have forgotten that his regime was also easily more liberal on racial and environmental matters than any before it.

Although he was a hawk, Nixon was moderate on some of the social issues. His opening to China and efforts toward détente with the Soviets are often cited as evidence of Nixon's ability to maneuver deftly in the realm of foreign affairs. No doubt, that was his main focus. But at the bottom line, Nixon is remembered chiefly as the President who was driven from office. And for good reason.

Nixon’s nefarious strategy for securing power divided this country like nothing since the Civil War. Due to his fear of hippies and left-wing campus movements, Nixon came between fathers and sons. To rally support for his prosecution of the Vietnam War he demagogued and exploited the bitter division between World War II era parents and their baby boomer offspring in such a way that many families have never recovered.

However, Nixon’s true legacy is that since his paranoia-driven scandal, the best young people have no longer felt drawn into public service. Since Nixon's resignation -- taken as a whole -- the citizens who’ve gravitated toward politics for a career have not had the intellect, the sense of purpose, or the strength of character of their predecessors. I can't prove that but it is my sense of the truth.

Some trace the cycle of endless paybacks across the aisle to that era, as well. We can thank Tricky Dick for all that and more.

So weep not for the sad, crazy Nixon of August, 1974. He did far more harm to America than whatever good he intended. On top of that, he had twenty years to come clean and clear the air. But he didn’t do it. He didn't even come close. In the two decades of his so-called “rehabilitation,” before his death in 1994, Nixon just kept on being Nixon.

Some commentators have suggested that he changed over that period, even mellowed. Don't buy it. The rest of us changed a lot more than he did. While I acknowledge his guile and I'm still astounded at his monumental gall, President Nixon was a man who choked on his own bile.

So, spare me the soft-focus view of the Nixon years.

Yes, dear reader, I’m here to remind you that Tricky Dick Nixon's fall from grace should be a lesson to us all -- he got what he deserved.

-- 30 --

That's a Lot of Turkey

If you can pull yourself away from reading about the Zimmerman trial aftermath and the Uncle Jonnie’s Rolex scandal, I’ve got a story about the Virginia gubernatorial race. There was a 90-minute debate between the two major party hopefuls, Ken Cuccinelli and Terry McAuliffe, on Saturday morning and something telling happened.

It was something that was rather surprising to me.

Yes, it’s still mid-July -- perhaps the peak of the silly season for politics -- but what happened on the tony Homestead's debate stage in Hot Springs may play out to make a difference in the outcome of the race. But first, here’s what happened at the debate before the Virginia Bar Association audience, if you only focus on what was said.

Essentially, both candidates stuck to their scripts, so there weren‘t many surprises in the content of what they said. No, the surprise for me was all in how they said it; the difference in the body language and demeanor of the two candidates was striking.

As far as what was said, here it is in a nutshell: The Republican candidate, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, repeatedly said that his Democratic opponent, Terry McAuliffe, is a Washington insider (read that as saying he's not a true Virginian). McAuliffe, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, repeatedly cast Cuccinelli as an ideologue who is backward on social issues (read that as saying he will keep new businesses from locating in Virginia).

In the first half of the Judy Woodruff-moderated debate Cuccinelli seemed in over his head. He appeared to be scared and unsure of himself. At the same time, McAuliffe hit the ground running, brimming over with confidence. He was well prepared and it showed.

Among the topics covered were:

• Teachers’ pay.
• A $1.4 billion tax cut proposed by Cuccinelli, about which he refuses to divulge any specifics.
• Same-sex marriage
• Abortion
• McAuliffe’s car company failings
• Transportation in Virginia
• Gifts from Star Scientific
• Should Gov. Bob McDonnell resign?
• Health care/Obamacare
• The Sequester’s impact on Virginia
• Immigration Reform

Cuccinelli scored best on Obamacare and the Sequester. McAuliffe scored best on the social issues and transportation.

When Cuccinelli did manage to recover somewhat from his shaky start, in the debate’s last half-hour, he tried to affect his cock-of-the walk style. However, it seemed a little forced and he still looked self-conscious. Which all seemed to underline the notion that Cuccinelli’s style works much better when he’s working a highly partisan crowd, or being interviewed by sympathetic questioners.

McAuliffe chided Cuccinelli for accepting a trip to New York, paid for by Jonnie Williams, when the attorney general’s office was dragging its heels on a tax dispute between one of Williams' companies and the commonwealth. Cuccinelli said he was merely standing in for Gov. McDonnell, at the governor‘s request.

McAuliffe mentioned a $1,500 turkey dinner the AG presumably enjoyed, for which Williams picked up the check. Then the Democratic candidate chuckled, “That’s a lot of turkey!”  

Yes, it was surprising to me how much better McAuliffe performed in this first debate. He seemed likeable and quick on his feet. Up until today, I had been more than a little worried than Cuccinelli would be the more confident debater. Now I wonder if Cuccinelli ought to just avoid any future one-on-one debates.

McAuliffe's biggest stumble was caught by PolitiFact. McAuliffe said a report on connections between Uncle Jonnie and Cuccinelli, issued by Richmond Commonwealth’s Attorney Michael Herring, said Cuccinelli should have been prosecuted. It did not.

Of course one debate shown on PBS in July won’t settle the contest. But with McAuliffe slightly ahead in the early polls and his strong performance on Saturday, momentum is now clearly on his side.

For his part, Cuccinelli tried to distance himself from McDonnell’s snowballing Uncle Jonnie problem, but it wasn’t convincing. When questioned about abortion Cuccinelli mostly ducked the opportunity to double-down on his anti-choice, anti-contraception positions of the past.

So, here’s why this first debate matters -- of course, it’s the money. Cuccinelli is probably going to have more trouble raising money now. Some of the GOP’s fat cats may already smell a loser. Smart Republicans may son decide to invest their time and money into holding onto the AG’s job and maintaining control of the House of Delegates.

So, even though this is just July, Cuccinelli may already be in trouble. If he can’t raise enough money to saturate Virginia with commercials in the fall, AND he can’t best McAuliffe in debates, he’s probably going to lose in November by double digits. Like McDonnell is expected to do, he could end up hurting other Republicans in their own races.

For the first time this year, I see McAuliffe’s chances to overcome Cuccinelli’s advantage of his well-cultivated right-wing media darling image as being pretty good.

All in all, July 20, 2013, was a good day for Virginia Democrats -- especially for the most relentless of the Cooch Watch activists.

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Update: To watch a recording of the debate click here.

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Referendum Wolf?

In 2009, in doing research to write about the baseball stadium controversy, I discovered that in 2005 Richmond’s city council had opted to hold a referendum about the location of a new baseball stadium. Then, for some reason(s), the same group of people subsequently decided to forget about that method of finding out what the voters wanted.

Looking back on all the squabbling since 2005, plus losing the R-Braves in 2008, and so forth, and I have to think that if an advisory referendum had actually been held eight years ago, we would probably be in a different place today. That was a lost opportunity.

After 10 years of City Hall getting nothing done, in 2013, the elected officials opposing the referendum must have their reasons, too. However, unlike 2005, this time they should be pressed to reveal them. And, if those reasons sound flimsy, it should be noted.

Click here to read my OpEd, “Let the people speak about where to play ball,” which appeared in Sunday’s RT-D.

Contrary to the politicians and activists who oppose the referendum now, I am not afraid of allowing for a clear expression of the will of the people. And, I believe that if Richmond’s voters are allowed to vote on whether they want to move baseball away from the Boulevard, they will overwhelmingly say "no."

Without a referendum in November, my fear is that we will see another steamroller -- reminiscent to how the Redskins deal was pushed through -- come chugging out of the mayor‘s office. My sense of one reason why Second District Councilman Charles Samuels has proposed a referendum is that he wants to avoid a repeat of that way of doing things in Richmond.

Furthermore, my guess at what will happen if the voters do emphatically say NO to baseball in the Bottom is that it will finally kill the notion -- wooden stake in the heart. I don’t believe many politicians in town have the foolish nerve to ignore such a obvious sign of what the people want. So, objecting to the referendum process by saying it’s non-binding, and therefore a waste of time, is a red herring.

Saying referendums are not part of good governance, because elected representatives should make such calls -- egad! we don’t want to be like California -- is just as much a red herring.

Unfortunately, there are some politicians and activists in Richmond who don’t want to see Charles Samuels be successful with this, because they don’t want him to get a feather in his cap. And, there are some who are just waiting for Mayor Dwight Jones to announce a plan to build a stadium in the Bottom, so they can further their own agendas by calling press conferences to oppose the plan. They are playing a dangerous and self-serving game.

There are also local strategists who are worried about what effect putting a referendum on the ballot might have on the chances some candidates have of getting elected. So, they are happy to join the red herring brigade, too.

Last night’s committee meeting and vote, 6-3 against allowing a referendum, was a preliminary exercise. There’s still time to let your representative on Council know how you feel. The vote that will actually matter is scheduled for next Monday, July 8 (6 p.m. -- 7:30 p.m).

Members of Council are politicians. If they see a huge turnout in favor of a referendum a couple of them will probably be smart enough recognize they need to rethink the matter, pronto. After all, what will it really cost them? Only two members of Council need to change their minds. 

After celebrating your independence on July 4th, demand direct democracy on the 8th! Go to City Hall on Monday to support the cause.

• Richmonders who simply don’t want a baseball stadium built in Shockoe Bottom should want a referendum.
• Richmonders who think refurbishing the Diamond is best, rather than borrowing huge millions to build a new stadium from scratch, should want a referendum. 
• Richmonders who want any new baseball stadium to eventually be built on North Boulevard, regardless of how it is financed, should want a referendum.
• Richmonders who can't stand sports and don’t want to see the city spend a nickel on a baseball stadium anywhere in town, should want a referendum. 
• Richmonders who just want the matter settled, after 10 years of uncertainty -- one way or the other! -- ought to see that a referendum is the best way to get it over with.

If City Council votes the referendum proposal down at its next meeting, it will be ignoring a lot of people. And, for sure, some of those folks aren't going to forget who denied them their chance to finally have some say-so in this matter.

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Click here to see the Facebook group page that is gathering the people who are calling for City Council to allow a referendum to be on the ballot. Join up, if you like. The name of the group is Referendum? Bring It On!

The group's statement of purpose is as follows: 

While our reasons vary, the members of this Facebook group stand united in our opposition to building a baseball stadium in Shockoe Bottom. After 10 years of studies, campaigns and debates concerning such a project, we now call upon Richmond’s City Council to allow the city’s voters to weigh in on the discussion by way of an advisory referendum on November 5, 2013. We are not afraid of democracy.