Raise a Glass to Paul Newman

Jackie Gleason and Paul Newman in "The Hustler" (1961)

Paul Newman died Friday at the age of 83. If you would like to raise a glass to Mr. Newman's memory, may I suggest J.T.S. Brown Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey. 

Robert Rossen was a producer/director who frequently used how his characters drank to tell us something about them. For example, in his "All The King's Men" (1949), heavy drinking signified the growing corruption of Willie Stark's political movement. With Paul Newman's "Fast Eddie" Felson in Rossen's "The Hustler" (1961), whiskey was a metaphor for weakness and lack of self control. During the climactic pool game, Newman's Felson drinks J.T.S. Brown Bourbon, straight from the bottle. His opponent, Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason), requests "White Tavern Whiskey, a glass and some ice." We are left to consider the possibility that Fats' brand is actually a placebo, a way to keep his advantage over Eddie by staying sober. (White Tavern was an actual brand, a blend.) 

J.T.S. Brown was an early distiller and the half-brother of George Garvin Brown, who founded Brown-Forman, the parent company of Jack Daniel's. The J.T.S. Brown Distillery was established by his four sons and later continued by one of his grandsons. The last distillery to bear that name is the one in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, known today as Four Roses. J.T.S. Brown Bourbon is still made, by Heaven Hill Distilleries, and it's quite good for a low-priced, bottom-shelf brand, but not widely distributed. I prefer the bottled-in-bond expression. 

Paul Newman's spirit lives on in his movies and his salad dressing. Seriously. The Newman's Own product line has generated millions of dollars for worthy causes. For more information go here.

Of course, "Fast Eddie" Felson was just a character. In real life, Newman drank beer.

In Defense of Sarah Palin.

No doubt millions of words have been written and spoken about Sarah Palin since her debut on the international stage, most of them unfair, and I say that as a person who supports the Obama-Biden ticket.

If Sarah Palin is not qualified to hold the position she is seeking that is not her fault, it is the fault of the person—John McCain—who recruited her.

But she is unsuited, not because of the extent of her experience but because of its nature. Sarah Palin is like Jesse Ventura, in the sense that her entire political career has been built on a “throw the bums out” appeal, and she hasn’t held any of her political jobs long enough to show that she is able to do anything except attack. She hasn’t shown that she can do anything constructive, such as run an administration smoothly and make progress solving problems.

The tendency she has shown in office, to govern mostly by finding people to blame and, if possible, fire for actions or conditions she doesn’t like is consistent with that “throw the bums out” approach, but at some point all the bums are gone and you have to show that you can do something positive. Jesse Ventura never managed to do that in office and Sarah Palin hasn’t either.

In Jesse’s case, he just wasn’t interested in governing. It wasn’t fun for him. He likes attention and he likes being a gadfly or, to use the favorite term this year, maverick. John McCain, in his long career, has shown that he can be constructive, but he also still has that shoot-from-the-hip quality that is good for a “throw the bums out” outsider seeking office, and maybe even for a member of a large deliberative body that needs a good shaking-up from time to time. But do we really want that in a president? My opinion is no.

What we will get with a President McCain has been on full display these last two weeks. It isn't pretty. Even thoughtful conservatives agree.

As for Sarah Palin, she might, if left alone, have matured in office and become an effective executive, but it hasn’t happened yet, so giving her this huge promotion is, at the very least, premature.

McCain's Rezko.

Don't mess with Rich Daley.

Earlier this week, the McCain campaign rolled out its "Chicago Machine" ad and Hizzoner was not amused. There was muttering about the stickiness of mud.

Now, in the midst of the biggest financial crisis since the savings and loan bailout of the 80s and 90s, finally, today, the K Bomb was dropped and McCain suspended his campaign, ostensibly to provide leadership in the Senate to solve the current crisis.

Except this mounting crisis is making people look at how well McCain handled things back then, and is the real reason he has suspended his campaign. He doesn't want to explain Charles Keating again. At least not now, not this week.

The Palin choice was his first Hail Mary. Can he connect a second time?

Even before the K Bomb was dropped, Navy pilot McCain was taking heavy flak to his right wing, yesterday from George Will and last week from the Wall Street Journal.

Palin may have won over the Main Street conservatives, but Wall Street conservatives are more skeptical than ever.

I knew Keating before he was the king maker and bank breaker he was to become. Knew of him, that is. I was a freshman in college at Miami University, near Cincinnati, and he was a fixture in the Cincinnati media as president of the Roman Catholic Legion of Decency, and an anti-pornography crusader.

Growing up a Catholic, in the Diocese of Toledo, I read the Catholic Chronicle, the diocesan weekly newspaper. No, really, I did. One of the paper's features was movie ratings and reviews, based not on the movie's quality but on its decency. The ratings and reviews were provided by a group called the Legion of Decency.

That's all I knew about the Legion of Decency. I had never seen them carry picket signs in front of strip clubs before. That's what Charles Keating was up to before he went to Arizona to become John McCain's first Sugar Daddy (unless you count Jim Hensley, Cindi's dad). Keating was, in short, McCain's Rezko, except magnified by a factor of ten. All Rezko ever got Obama to do was accept a shady real estate deal, a down payment on a future favor that never got asked. McCain got the contributions, got asked to do the favors, did the favors, and Keating bilked the Treasury out of millions. McCain and four other senators were investigated. McCain admitted that he had shown poor judgment.

At about the same time Keating was cleaning up Cincinnati, the Queen City's mayor got busted for patronizing a prostitute across the river in Kentucky. He got caught because he wrote her a check. His name was Jerry Springer. The Reds were playing their final season in Crosley Field. And I was finally getting laid. It was a golden time in southwestern Ohio.

Obama and the Chicago Machine.

The McCain campaign is pretty proud of its new ad that attempts to tie Obama to the Chicago Machine. It's smart political advertising and well timed, and if they can influence anyone's votes with it, well, that's the point.

So I'm not here even to say it's a cheap shot, because it's not. If there's anything strategically wrong with it, it's that some people may actually like Obama more because if they think he's too soft or cerebral, they might warm to the idea of him as a tough, Chicago streetfighter.

My purpose in posting is just to share a little bit of what I know from living here.

Mayor Daley bristles whenever anyone talks about the Chicago Machine. In one sense, I agree with him, because his is not his father's Chicago Machine and the image most people have when they hear the words "Chicago Machine" would apply to Daley senior's Chicago, but Daley junior's not so much.

(Some people refer to them as Richard I and Richard II, but I prefer Big Dick and Little Dick.)

The son's machine is, if I can mix my metaphors, a big tent machine. Yes, the Cook County Democratic Party controls just about everything that happens politically in Chicago and Cook County, and the Daley family controls the Cook County Democratic Party, but part of how they do that is by letting 1,000 flowers bloom. The price of admission is loyalty to the party, but loyalty mainly means helping the Party retain its grip on everything. Within the party, on matters of policy, things are generally pretty democratic. That's how someone like Obama can be acceptable to the machine without being in any way "dirty." Illinois Democratic U.S. Senators are rarely true machine insiders. Sending guys like Obama, who could become troublesome, to Washington is one of their favorite gambits.

So here are the people the ad ties him to, in order.

Bill Daley, the mayor's brother, and generally considered the clan's brightest bulb, is at least Obama's economic advisor and probably even more important than that behind the scenes of the campaign. Are the Daley boys inside the Obama campaign big time? Absolutely.

Tony Rezko is a perfect foil for the ad, because he's a recently convicted felon, but there's nothing about his connection with Obama that wasn't thoroughly reported in the Chicago Tribune during Obama's Senate campaign in 2004, or shortly thereafter. I understand why he's in the ad, but to us that's old news. Obama showed poor judgment in the one transaction they did together, and said so explicitly years ago. Nothing in Rezko's trial touched Obama in any way, which cannot be said for Governor Blagojevich, whose corruption was Topic A throughout.

Emil Jones, who is a State Senator from Chicago and the Senate's President, was not initially Obama's sponsor. He definitely didn't get Obama elected to the State Senate in the first place but as time went on, he took the younger man under his wing and showed him the ropes. Obama approached Jones to support his U.S. Senate bid, and it took some persuading, but eventually Jones did support him. If Jones has any serious legal problems, we haven't heard much about them here. He's considered a savvy political operator and nobody's fool, but he's probably one of the less scandal-plagued Illinois politicians.

Finally, they try to link Obama to Governor Rod Blagojevich, and that is a stretch. Although Jones has been a Blagojevich ally, Obama never supported or promoted Blago and he never supported or promoted Obama. Blagojevich is a true wild card, in that nobody can seem to figure out what he's up to, what his game is. Whatever it is, you really can't pin Blagojevich to Obama. That dog won't hunt.

Finally, the name they didn't mention: David Axelrod. From the beginning, Axelrod has been by Obama's side and if someone besides the candidate is speaking for the campaign, that someone is usually him. Axelrod is another example of the big tent. He's a genuinely progressive guy but he is also a Daley insider, who has worked for Daley and a long list of Daley-approved candidates.

So, that's what I know.

More About the StraightBourbon Folks.

In my post from Kentucky on Saturday (I'm back now), I wrote about StraightBourbon.com and the amazing group of people who gather there in the web site's Forums section.

Here is a small addendum.

The StraightBourbon group has its own unofficial official hotel in Bardstown, which has a large gazebo in back where everyone gathers every evening. All of the bottles everyone has brought are placed on the table, there for anyone to sample.

I don't know that anyone bothers to count them, but 50 is probably close. No two are alike and many are quite rare.

The talk is variously about bourbon and life, as these people who met on line discussing bourbon have, in many cases, become close, personal friends in both the cyber and physical worlds. Indeed, it often seems that the very milk of human kindness is amber-hued and 100 proof.

Dispatch from the Kentucky Bourbon Festival.

Lew Bryson shamed me.

He didn't say a word, even though we've been hanging out some, but he's written a daily post from down here, even describing his harrowing brush with death in a Mercury, and I haven't done a damn thing.

The truth is, I try not to work when I'm here for the KBF, but Lew seems to be having a good time and working his ass off. I'm not going to emulate him too far, but here's something.

The festival has been going on for close to 20 years. I first came to it in, maybe, 1995. Maybe I came twice. I don't remember. Then I started to participate in discussions about bourbon on StraightBourbon.com, a very professional web site that is, in fact, non-commercial and a labor-of-love for its proprietor, Jim Butler.

Not long after the web site started in 1999, people on the site started treating the annual Kentucky Bourbon Festival (KBF) as an informal national meetup. I've come every year since, mostly to hang out with my on-line friends.

Some, but not all, of the people on the site are dusty hunters. They prowl liquor stores looking for old bottles of bourbon. Believe it or not, whiskey can sometimes sit on a retail shelf for 20 or 30 years. (So much for inventory management.) Whiskey doesn't age in the bottle, but that window makes in possible to find products of now-defunct distilleries. Here is what makes the StraightBourbon group so amazing. When people find these things, they can't wait to share them. Every year, that's a bigger part of the Festival for me (although I still love the barrel rolling competition).

For instance, Dawn from Indianapolis had some Old Fitzgerald 1849 from the late sixties, and the same from the mid-eighties. They were both in perfect condition (sometimes whiskeys get damaged by bad corks or oxidation). Both were made at Stitzel-Weller. The earlier one I felt was just perfect, the more recent one still terrific, but not quite as good. Part of that is that I have an idea of Stitzel-Weller perfection and that was it. Others liked the more recent one better.

Gary from Toronto, by way of Tony from Detroit, had some Seagram's Benchmark from the mid-seventies. Now I understand the name. It was an early knock-off of Maker's Mark and had a very similar palate. Benchmark is still made, but by Buffalo Trace, and it tastes completely different.

So, finally, here's the deal with not making any posts. At some point during an event like this, I have to decide if I'm working or drinking. I think you know the rest.

Jim Beam Breaks Ground on New Visitors Experience

Yesterday, Beam Global Spirits & Wine broke ground on a new Visitors Experience project at its Clermont, Kentucky, Jim Beam distillery. This is a multi-million dollar tourism development project that will position Beam’s flagship distillery as the gateway to the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. The Jim Beam American Outpost at Clermont already receives more than 80,000 visitors annually.

The three-phase construction of the Visitors Experience will include displays of newly discovered historical documents and images, and will culminate with the opening of a state-of-the-art Welcome Center complex highlighting the history and heritage of Jim Beam. Completion of this project is expected before the start of the tourist season in 2011 and will be able to accommodate approximately 200,000 visitors a year.

According to Jeff Conder, vice president, North American operations for Beam, "Bourbon is deeply rooted and widely celebrated in Kentucky, and the industry provides more than 3,000 jobs, $3 billion in gross state product and nearly $115 million in state and local taxes. The Jim Beam Visitors Experience project will further economic growth with the creation of more jobs and increased tourism revenue, helping the Commonwealth continue to flourish."

The Visitors’ Experience project is headed by Jim Beam Noe, a great-grandson of Jim Beam through his daughter, Margaret.