EDITORIALS / OPINION

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- Andrew Fois

- Mark Casey

Centennial Project Comes to Georgetown Waterfront Park

By the georgetowner

MAY 2008

The National Park Service awarded a $4.5 million matching centennial Initiative grant for completing the construction of the Georgetown Waterfront Park. The grant is a dollar-for-dollar federal match of funds the Friends of Georgetown Waterfront Park have raised from private donors and the District of Columbia government to complete the park, located on the Potomac River waterfront in Georgetown.

The Friends of Georgetown Waterfront Park, raised the $4.5 million matching funds primarily from the District Government ($3.5 million, thanks to Jack Evans, Dan Tangherlini, and Mayor Fenty), from the waterfront parking lot revenue, and from private donations to the Park.

The amazing thing about the award is that an urban park located in the East, in a jurisdiction that does not even have voting representation in Congress, received the largest National Park Service Centennial Challenge grant awarded this year because we were able to raise a substantial amount of matching funds. This successful fund-raising effort reflects the commitment of the District Government, and long-time  Park supporters, to completing the Waterfront Park.

The Park Service will use the $9 million that is now available to build the second phase of the Park, which will be underway in several months when the first phase is completed. The Park has been 30 years in the making – some of us didn’t think we would live long enough to see it built. We are all very happy.

“We couldn’t be more pleased with the news,” said Bob vom Eigen, President of the Friends of Georgetown Waterfront Park. “The Centennial Grant is critical to completing the Georgetown Waterfront Park. It will make our dreams a reality.”

When finished, the Georgetown Waterfront Park will create the final link in a 225-mile contiguous green space along the Potomac River from Mt. Vernon, VA to Cumberland, MD and provide local, regional and international visitors with a new urban park. The first phase includes open lawns and informal gardens, environmentally bio-engineered edges that preserve native plants and enhance water quality, new pathways for joggers, walkers and hikers, a bike path connecting Rock Creek Park with the Capital Crescent Trail and a granite overlook that will provide scenic river views and historic images of the Georgetown waterfront.

With the nearly $25 million Congress has appropriated and nearly $27 million of matching commitments from our park partners, the Centennial Initiative today moves onto the landscape and into people’s lives. It’s a great day for the National Park Service and a great day for Georgetown Waterfront Park, Rock Creek Park and the City of Washington.

What Your Attack Ads Say

About You

By Mark Casey

MAY 2008

Ah, politics is in the air. Amid the chirping birds, the green grass, and the warm sunlight of Spring, you can hear the desperate and splintered cries of failing politicians trying to trick you into voting for them. Or, worse yet, to scare you into voting for them.

Yes, it’s attack ad season in America, and it’s here six months early thanks to the bitter slugfest playing out between Democratic hopefuls Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Everyday the fine residents of Pennsylvania, Indiana, and North Carolina have to listen to Hillary Clinton accusing Barack Obama of being both too stupid and too smart to be your president. And they have to listen to Barack Obama accusing Hillary Clinton of being too entrenched in Washington politics to be effective. 

And they have to listen to John McCain telling them that “The Terrorists” want a Democrat to be president, so that they can kill us all.

It’s all lies, coercion, and manipulation.  You’ll never get the whole truth from an attack ad, as I certainly hope you realize. What you can get, however, is hours upon hours of fun while you analyze the ridiculous ads. 

Go ahead and try to figure out what in the world they were thinking, and what they’re really trying to tell you.

I’ll get you started.

Hillary Clinton has more attack ads out right now than she has dollars in the bank – literally.  Her latest report to the Federal Election Commission showed her campaign to be more than a million dollars in debt, but that won’t stop her from running slimy ads around the clock.

That’s to be expected from the trailing candidate, though, so don’t mind the fact that a woman running on savvyness and experience can’t even keep her own campaign together, and let’s take a look at the specific ads.

Hillary has one where she says that Barack Obama – who runs on the platform of a non-career politician who doesn’t take money from special interests – takes millions of dollars from special interests.

What is she trying to say with this ad?  The same thing she’s been saying for two solid months: “It’s obvious that you don’t like me for president, but I care more about winning than I do about the electoral process, so my goal is to make you hate my opponent.”

Now, no one would ever say that, because no one would care.  So the proof, as they say, is in the pudding – it’s all about who, how, and how much.

Which brings us to Obama’s latest attack ad. Obama has scored points for trying to stay “above the fray” when it comes to negative campaigning, but of course that’s easy for the frontrunner. 

This week, however, he decided to respond to the Hillary ad by releasing one of his own, saying that she’s the one, not him, who loves to take money from special interests – and more money than any other candidate, Obama or McCain, at that.

What’s he trying to say?  Very simple:  “Never mind the fact that lobbyists have found loopholes when it comes to donating to my campaign, and I don’t really care to stop them – wouldn’t you rather have the guy who takes less money than the girl who takes more?”

This sort of back and forth bickering is the stuff of schoolyards, and it really is counterproductive.  But we can learn plenty about the political mindset of the people behind them.

So when you see another smear campaign launched, ask yourself what the candidate is really saying, and most importantly: is it clear that the candidate cares more about winning the game than serving the public?  Do they seem to be more interested in manipulation than leadership?

That was the case with George W. Bush, and it’s now the case with Hillary Clinton. Don’t let them treat you like that.

Pope Touched Us All

By Andrew Fois

MAY 2008

The visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Washington, D.C. last week was the first time a Pope had been here in almost thirty years.  I remember seeing John Paul II, then just a year into his pontificate, smiling and waving to hundreds of thousands on Constitution Avenue. It was the beginning of the love affair between this energetic new Pope and Catholics and non-Catholics alike. He had not yet been assaulted by Mohammed Atta and thus there was no need for a Pope Mobile.

IPope Benedict clearly had a tough act to follow. By any standard, though, his visit here and to New York was nothing less than a smashing success. As he should have, he sincerely addressed the issue of the Church’s sex abuse scandal. He profusely apologized and pledged that he and the Church hierarchy in the United States would do everything humanly and spiritually possible to make amends to the victims and to prevent further abuse. This expression of empathy and firmness was more than the aging and increasingly frail John Paul could muster when the scandal first broke.

Benedict also was able to transcend his reputation as a dogmatic church disciplinarian and touch peoples’ hearts with his message of peace, love, redemption and hope between people, other religions and nations. The mass at the new Nationals ballpark was a beautifully reverent spiritual celebration. The mass can be such an extraordinary way to connect with a like-minded community.  It is humbling to realize that one is sharing in a religious rite that has sustained itself basically intact for two thousand years and is performed the same way every day all over the world. When my twelve-year old balks at altar serving duty I remind him of the privilege of participation in this ancient and cherished service.

Sadly, prejudice against Catholics, it seems, is one of the few remaining acceptable forms (another is towards Italians.) Popes are a particularly attractive target for the ignorant and bigoted.  Bill Mahr, on his HBO politically satirical program Real Time, was especially tough on the Pope personally and Catholicism generally.  Jokes about the red shoes were in bounds: there’s no place like Rome, there’s no place like Rome. But some of the hilarity went too far.  Condemning the entire Church and all her members over the abuse scandal can be convenient but is unfair nonetheless. No one was more disappointed and outraged than were Catholics about that betrayal of trust.

Mahr went further and ridiculed Christianity in general (and Judaism to a degree). “Who can believe in a talking snake,” he snickered. “Can anyone really think that a man flapped his arms, he mocked, “and flew up to a place in the sky?”  A joke’s a joke but on this subject the atheistic Mahr isn’t kidding.

Look, I would be the first to admit that there is much in Christianity, and especially in Catholicism, that may not hold up very well under scrutiny of reason. At some point one has to take Kierkegaard’s “leap of faith.”  Or not. Pope Benedict tried to teach us last week that faith and reason can and must co-exist.

Mahr and others like him would do well to acknowledge the tremendous contributions that the Catholic Church has made and continues to make to all mankind. Granted, there were the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition. All religions have fallen victim to the intolerance that certainty of faith can sometimes produce. Nonetheless, the Church has weathered its storms, adapted, improved and been a major force in the world for two thousand years. Perhaps 65 million Americans and over a billion souls world-wide might be on to something. Some of the most brilliant minds in the history of the human race have been Catholic believers, including Saint Augustine, Dante, Milton, Erasmus, Sir Thomas More, Cardinal Newman and so many others. Consider the music, art and literature that have been inspired by Catholicism and have brought so much joy. The Church has been and remains one of the most powerful instruments of education. Indeed, if not for the early church the great texts of classical antiquity may have been irretrievably lost. No one can doubt the service to the sick, poor and suffering of the world that Catholicism has provided. Catholic faith has brought hope and peace to so many people in their personal lives.  One need only be present at the death of a person of faith to appreciate the gift it has provided. One cannot help thinking that the world would have been an even nastier, more violent place were it not for the constraints of conscience that Catholic faith provides.  

So, OK, the Pope can be a tempting target for a good laugh. We all should remember, however, that he is also a symbol of one of the most powerful ideas in the history of humanity: love each other.