Jean Marie's Domain

From today’s personal Facebook feed. (I’m better behaved on my author page. Honest!)
Reading the latest celebrity news out of Washington, my Pentagon analyst—er, writer brain started making a list:
- Orders inappropriate menu choices (overdone steak with ketchup, red wine with fish—same difference), From Russia with Love
- Cheats at golf, Goldfinger
- Owns sinister, overpriced resort in Florida, Thunderball
- Surrounds himself with aggressively perfect specimens of female pulchritude young enough for his daughter to babysit (Moonraker, Goldfinger, Thunderball, View to a Kill, Tomorrow Never Dies, etc., etc., etc.)
All we’re missing is “Throws underlings who disappoint him into his personal shark tank” from Dr. No—no wait, that’s how he uses the press.
Yep, if 45 were a character in a movie, right about now M would be ordering 007 to investigate.
You’re welcome, Hollywood.
The rest of you, blame Darling Spouse Greg Uchrin. This morning he woke me up by announcing in his best Sean Connery imitation: “He cheats at golf.”

Naturally, Darling Spouse couldn’t leave it at that. He promptly posted this comment from another of our favorite movies, His Girl Friday:
Hildy: 'While hundreds of Sheriff Hartwell's paid gunmen stalked through the city shooting innocent bystanders, spreading their reign of terror, Earl Williams was lurking less than twenty yards from the Sheriff's Office where...' Walter (dismayed): Wait a minute, wait a minute, aren't you going to mention the Post? Doesn't the paper get any credit? Hildy: Well, honey, I did that. Right there in the second paragraph. Walter: Who's gonna read the second paragraph? Listen honey, for ten years, I've been telling ya how to write a newspaper story and that's all I get?

Thirty-three years of togetherness—that’s what it looks like, folks. :-)

PS, Feel free to follow the links if you're interested to see the rest:
My personal Facebook page
My author page
Any PR in a storm...

In 1883 a Jewish writer named Emma Lazarus was asked to write a poem to help raise money for the pedestal needed before the Statue of Liberty could be erected on what became Liberty Island in New York Harbor. She refused until southern writer (really southern--she helped sew the original Confederate battle flag) Constance Cary Harrison convinced her how important that statue could be to immigrants sailing into the harbor.

Ultimately she wrote a sonnet titled "The New Colossus", after the statue which stood astride the harbor of Rhodes, one of the original Seven Wonders of the World. Since 1903 the words have hung within Lady Liberty's pedestal. They read:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

As someone who was in the Pentagon on 9/11, two corridors away from the point of impact, I reject the hypocrisy of those hiding their craven bigotry under the flag of national security. I stand with the Mother of Exiles. I welcome the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. I live for the day when we once again open that golden door.