Patt Morrison

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Entries from November 2, 2009
Sheriff Joe and Senator Max -- hot stuff

Nov. 2, 2009|Patt Morrison|3 comments


Max Cleland is the former U.S. senator from Georgia, a Vietnam vet who lost three of his four limbs at Khe Sahn when a green private didn't secure the pins on his grenades. And he's the politician whose supporters say he got swiftboated two years before John Kerry, when Republicans ran an ad with his picture alongside Osama bin Laden's and Saddam Hussein's, implicitly impugning his patriotism; an enraged John McCain called the ad ''reprehensible.''

As Cleland himself explained the election to me, ''Georgia had a senior moment.'' His book, ''Heart of a Patriot,'' isn't just about the 2002 election, but about his early commitment to politics -- lettering Stevenson-for-president signs with his mother's lipstick -- and to military service.

The youngest-ever head of the VA is still working on behalf of better treatment for his fellow veterans, and isn't hesitant about sizing up U.S. interests at home and abroad, like the Afghanistan war, in which, he says, we shouldn't be trying to turn Afghanistan into the 51st state.

Just as lively was Joe Arpaio, the elected sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, since 1993. He's the man who put jail inmates in pink underwear, cut them back to two meals a day, put them on chain gangs and has ardently gone after finding illegal immigrants. A new Justice Department rule would, by most interpretations, confine the sheriff's hunt for illegal immigrants to those who come through his jail system -- but he says other laws are on his side.

Arpaio, who revels in the description someone gave him as ''America's toughest sheriff,'' disputes an Arizona newspaper's Pulitzer Prize-winning findings that the illegal immigrant effort has lengthened lawmen's response times and left some violent crimes unsolved -- his language on this is a lot saltier than mine. And he will indeed be running for reelection in 2012, he assured me -- he'll be 80 years old.

Next time, the governor of Maine is with me, on the day that state votes on whether to repeal a same-sex marriage law he signed, and the author of a new book about the operations of the Secret Service shares some secrets and assesses how the forces is coping with a 400% increase in threats, now that Barack Obama is president.

I have to share one of many dear and funny moments from the memorial service at the Wilshire Ebell on Sunday for my friend, the actor and poet Henry Gibson. ''Laugh-In'' stalwarts like Gary Owens and Jo Anne Worley were there, along with friends from virtually every part of his life, including the vet who looked after his and his wife Lois' beloved dogs.

Henry, who died in September, let on to very few people how sick he was. One of them was his friend Charlie Adler, who recounted how he and Henry were driving down Wilshire Boulevard right after Michael Jackson had died, and the mourning was still at its height.

''I want my memorial to be at Staples,'' Henry said. ''Really?'' Adler asked. ''At Staples?'' Henry, deadpan, repeated, ''I want my memorial to be at Staples,'' and then he made some kind of gesture out the car window, to the edifice they were just passing: a Staples office supply store.

He was as sweet as he was funny; they don't make many like that.

-- Patt Morrison