Dan’s Papers November 5, 2010 danshamptons.com P age 11
Richards, Urban Jungle tour, 1990
Keith’s LIFE
Did Rolling Stone Keith Richards Write About my Mother? By Dan Rattiner A big fuss is being made about the autobiography of K eith Richards of the Rolling Stones that has come out this week.It is called Life and it was expected to confirm the popular legend that he spent most of his time consuming vast quantities of drugs , smokes and alcohol to no appreciable permanent effect, such was the unbelievable strength of his constitution. Instead, the book shows him as a pretty ordinary man, with the usual hopes and jealousies and amazements about what he accomplished and what he didn’t accomplish in his life . He was, it turns out, much like anyone else. Except he was a Rolling Stone. Well, I knew that, I thought when I read
about it. Or at least my mother knew that. My mother, as incredible as it sounds , was actually a friend of Keith Richards. And she told me at the time muc h the same thing that Richards tells in his tell-all. First, here’s a little bit about my mother . She was a first generation American, her Jewish mother and father were born in a shtetl in Lithuania and emigrated to N ew York City around 1905. She was the valedictorian of Brooklyn Law School in 1936 at a time when very few women even went to la w school, and then in 1939, along with my father , moved to the leafy suburb of Millburn, N ew Jersey where, after my birth, she became a housewife. My sister and I were raised in that town, I was
the first bar mitzvah boy in the new temple in Millburn, and three years later, my dad had us pull up stakes and move to Montauk where he had bought a drugstore , White’s Montauk Pharmacy. This was in 1956. My mother spent many of her adult years either helping my dad in the store , raising me and my sister or , quite often, perhaps three times a week, playing a round of golf at the Montauk Downs. After dad retired, they spent winters in Pompano Beach, Florida. I mention all this because it seems so unlikely that she would have ever become friends with somebody like Keith Richards. But she did. She (continued on page 16)
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO OBAMA & CO.? By Dan Rattiner Well, the election is over, the Republicans are cheering and the Democrats are wondering what hit them. Here is the answer. Obama has spent the last two years re-arranging the priorities of how this country spends the vast sums of tax money it collects . He was elected on that promise . And, being a Harvard man and no slouc h, he delivered. He will be considered, for that, one of the greatest Presidents of our time. While he w as doing it, however, the money dried up. It is a good thing to vote to take from the ric h and give to the poor when you’ve got the money . It is another , however, when the money ain’t there no more. How would you feel if your spouse gave the weekly money set aside for groceries to the poor when you’re living hand to mouth?You’d file for divorce. And so that is what happened. End of story. Here’s a deeper way of looking at this . I think it is three strikes and you’re out.
The first pitch was a fastball. The entire foundation of the economy had collapsed. A huge percentage of the national treasury had to be diverted to shore it up . Obama, acting on legislation passed during the last week of the Bush Administration, did that. Problem solved. Wall Street saved. Next came what appeared to be a fastball, but was in fact a curve. Action would have to be spent to restore regulation to Wall Street and get Wall Street lending money to Main Street again. To do this, Obama would need the cooperation of the Republicans. However Obama had alienated the Republicans by ramming down their throats the matter of giving to the poor what had once been given to the ric h. The two sides were not even talking to one another. Obama was only able to get tepid laws passed. And they were not enough to get Wall Street lending again. A year into his Presidency came the screwball. That’s when the safety net ran out and the public discovered that the spouse had not only spent the grocery money but it w as not coming bac k
anytime soon. Indeed, Wall Street never bailed out Main Street. They just kept the money, but it wasn’t coming back any time soon. The rich got richer. And 20 million people were heading toward losing their homes . Three strikes and you’re out. So what has Obama done wrong? Absolutely nothing in my opinion. He’s the greatest President in modern times. But he’s been hit by a brick from the side. For 20 years , America has been living w ay beyond its means . It was done by artificial means. The country should have become a lesser power in the world. But it wasn’t. During those 20 years, the government allowed Wall Street to become a bag of tricks, it allowed mortgages to be given to people without jobs , it let health care spin out of control, it deficit spent, it gave money away, it went nuts. Then, as it happened, during the last 30 days of the Bush administration, the bottom fell out, just as Obama began giving the grocery money to the poor. (continued on page 18)