Thursday
Back in L.A. We flew in from Sandpoint yesterday. It is a long trip
and I am tired. Plus, I had an extremely disturbing talk on the
phone with a dear friend of 33 years. He has gotten mixed up in a
terrible mess about borrowing money. Now he’s being prosecuted for
criminal fraud. It looks as if he’s going to prison for years.
This man is the kindest, gentlest soul I have ever known. He
obviously made serious mistakes —extremely serious — but they do
not seem to me to rise to the level of criminal. The state sees it
differently. They have the power and the money and he has nothing
now. So, this sweet, touchingly sensitive soul is probably going to
be in prison. I am just in shock. It depresses me terribly and
frightens me. What does one do when he faces the state?
The imbalance of power between this man — any man — and
the state — is terrifying. Reason enough to be a libertarian.
I was so upset that when I stopped to buy gasoline at the Shell
station at Federal and Santa Monica, I started to drive off with
the gasoline hose attached to my car. Really embarrassing. It only
cost me sixty bucks. But I was extremely humiliated. The manageress
speaking to me in Spanish and then calling someone about me and
laughing hysterically was a nice touch.
I drove out to Malibu. The weather was perfect, cloudless sky,
no humidity, light breeze. When darkness fell, the stars glittered
mightily in the night firmament. I slept with my Julie Good Girl,
then came home very late.
On the way home, I had a lengthy talk with my old pal DeAnne
Barkley, who lives in Hawaii. She asked a good question: how could
George Romney, Mitt’s pop, have run for President when he was born
in Mexico? I guess it’s because his parents were U.S. citizens
already. But I am not sure.
DeAnne lives a quiet life on The Big Island but at one time she
was the most powerful woman in television. She co-invented the
made-for-TV movie. When I first came to Hollywood, she was a pal to
me and she has been ever since. I am blessed to have her in my
life.
Friday
Up early to be on Fox News with
Jenna Lee. She is a super-smart TV news woman. My absolute fave is
Dagen McDowell, but Jenna Lee is right up there. Fox manages to
find extremely smart and beautiful women for its news.
Everyone is buzzing about the Supreme Court upholding Ms.
Obama’s health care plan. It doesn’t surprise me. The Supreme Court
can say that black is white and white is black and can just select
whatever “precedents” it wishes to make its case. It all comes down
to legal realism. Judges just do what they please and then claim
that the historical precedents required it. That’s the way people
act in media, too. The media powers just say that what they like is
the truth and also important and really, it’s just what they feel
like saying. Same with financial traders. They just trade for
momentary advantage and then say that they do it because of big
economic trends.
But as to Obamacare and Chief Justice Roberts, “You don’t
need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,” said Mr. Dylan
and neither did Mr. Roberts.
Then I did Cavuto on Business. Our host, Neil Cavuto,
gets funnier every week and I have gotten to just love the whole
panel, Charles Payne, Charlie Gasparino, Dagen McDowell, Adam
Lashinsky, all of them. But Neil is breathtakingly smart and
funny.
Then back home for a nap. But no such luck. Everyone has
troubles:
Our housekeeper’s daughter is extremely ill with diabetes and in
severe pain. We keep sending her to doctors and nothing works. She
is a spectacularly fine young woman and we are in agony over her
troubles.
Our messenger, Helen, has some dreadful headaches that no
medicine can touch. She cries constantly and it breaks my
heart.
Our son has a stomach flu and I feel as if I am getting it,
too.
Our son’s dog scratched our granddaughter.
Everyone on this planet wants money from me and I have a lot
less than anyone thinks and that’s scaring me.
I did finally manage to sleep. Big Wifey lay next to me reading
a book called The Crown Jewels, about Soviet spies in the
UK and the KGB files on them. Wow. There were a heck of a lot of
traitors in Britain. Why did they do it? There are way too many
angry, crazy, envious people out there. My mother used to say that
envy explained everything, and maybe it does. A wise man said that
in some crackpot way, the Nazis envied the Jews, even as they
depicted them as rats — literally as rats. Come to think of it,
why do people hate us Jews so much? We are just people, only a
little more so.
I thought these DEEP THOUGHTS, looked at Alex in profile for a
long time (more beautiful even than Greta Garbo), then walked back
to the house (I had been in my office), put on my immense blue
floral swim trunks and headed towards our pool.
Tommy’s light brown Cocker Spaniel, Buglet, started to bark with
anticipation. My large German short-haired pointer, Julie, went
ballistic with thrills. Alex’s pointer, Zelda, turned in circles as
she barked with excitement. Why? Because they know that when I
go to the pool, I often (always) pick up a tennis ball and throw it
for them. They run all around, tussle over the ball, then bring it
back to me as I am swimming. I pause and throw it over and over
again.
Often, when the ball lands, it hits pool furniture or a tree and
bounces back into the water. Buglet and Zelda look sad but Julie
Good Girl just leaps into the water and swims like Mark Spitz to
retrieve the ball. She puts it in her mouth, swims to the steps and
jumps out. Then she shakes herself.
Today, just once, as she shook herself, the water came off in a
vertical sheet. It was caught by sunlight coming through a magnolia
and lit up like a watery rainbow growing out of the back of an
angel dog from heaven, the end of my rainbow.
