The ghost of Christmas past January 6, 2024
It was difficult for me not to laugh when I saw the governor trying to act humble, as politician after politician heaped praise on him he really didn’t deserve, wearing his silly red-framed glasses as he touched his chest with his fingers with each new accolade.
I kept thinking, the poor man is going to miss this, the pomp
that governors get when they wield the power of the purse, forcing poor fools
dependent on state aid to kneel before him as if he is royalty.
Although he had come to swear in the man who is destined to
run the county for the next four years, the governor was the real star, and
even paused to take pictures with the ordinary people, over whom his decisions
sometimes mean life and death.
The night was curious for me since I got to rub shoulders
with a number of officials, too, people who I hadn’t seen in a while, some of
whom opening hugged my like the congressman from Paterson, who I had covered in
several capacities for almost 40 years, having started my mainstream journalism
career when he was a mere assemblyman, and I was the new reporter looking to
come up with stories each week.
Later, he became mayor of Paterson, and went on to his
current position as congressman, a role he’s played for decades, and which I
have covered in other towns such as Bloomfield, during that one year when I
took a break from the paper in Hudson County to work for another chain.
Nobody knew me in Bloomfield, except at the new reporter
taking over the beat. So, it was a shock to the mayor and council when they
waited for the congressman to come to help cut the ribbon on a new Home Depot
only to have the congressman pass them by to greet me first with a hug.
Who is this guy, the local officials wondered. I never
bothered to say.
The congressman hugged me at this event as well when I told
him I missed him and he said he missed me, too, the governor frowning a bit at
this from his position on the stage, and maybe also over the hugs and
handshakes from the host of other dignitaries that seemed to put me up on a
similar pedestal even though I could provide them with no state aid and had
nothing to offer but a smile.
The idea that power if fleeting struck me way back during
those early days and that first newspaper gig, when while I worked as the local
reporter, politicians treated me with some deference, but that day I resigned
and told them, they found no more use for me.
You’re only as powerful as when you still wield the pen,
after which you’re nobody again.
This is the same for many politicians, who in their fading
days suddenly discover others don’t quite feel as beholden to them as they once
did. There were a few of these at this event, the power brokers who would soon be
put out to pasture, while in the crowd, the new royalty took their place at the
podium, reciting their praises of the governor who they still need – at least
until the govern leaves office – and by deference, they show they are still
powerful.
What the governor thought of me and those who showed
deference to me, I may never know, since I gave up my political column years
ago and work these days doing ordinary, painless coverage that tries not to
offend anyone enough to have them seek to get me fired.
I suspect, however, that if you’re in the game long enough
and people get used to your face, you still retain clout, real or not.
The event, of course, was an important political social
affair. Everybody who is anybody or was anybody, needed to be there, if only to
get a taste of what they previously got, and to make the governor and others aware
that they still exist.
In the end, the new elite will rise out of this, as new
faces replace old faces in the political trenches, none of which will be beholden
to me in the least, since my glory days as a journalist are behind me, and what
I do I do to keep a roof over my head and food in my refrigerator.
The one man I ached to see, and to whom many paid tribute,
was not at the event, supposedly ill, and his absence said much about how power
moves on from you if you stand in one place for too long.
Some people, of course, do not need position to possess
power, those like Ginsberg and others whose accomplishments have made them
great, an accolade they do not give up after four or eight years, but retain
for their life, the way Mark Twain retained it, the way some other great
journalists have.
Maybe there was a little of that, this idea that I have
walked through fire and come out the other end unscathed and so retain as
aspect of power that does not end with the closing of a newspaper or even – as in
columnist Pete Weiss – after death.
None the less, the whole night was curious, a reflection of
who is in power, who isn’t, and my wandering around in the midst like the ghost
of Christmas past.
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