Watching President George W. Bush on television last week reminded me of the story we learned in Bible class about Daniel and the Lions’ Den.
I’m kind of working from memory here, but as I recall, Daniel was a high-level bureaucrat in the administration of King Darius the Mede, who had just taken over in Babylon. Daniel was a favorite of the king, who put him in charge of most of the other bureaucrats in the administration, and Daniel got things done. He also managed to make everyone who worked for him so mad at his one-track mind and obsessive behavior that they decided they had to get rid of him, and get a new boss who wasn’t so demanding.
Because they knew Daniel prayed every morning, they devised a plan to trick the king by appealing to his vanity. After some obsequious discussion, they convinced Darius to sign a decree that for a period of one month, only the king could pray to God and ask him for anything, since common people were obviously unworthy of speaking directly to the big guy. People who violated the rule, the decree said, would be thrown to the lions.
The next morning, when the bureaucrats saw Daniel praying just like always, they hot-footed it to the king’s chamber to rat the boss out. And because of his recent ruling, the king reluctantly went along with them and had Daniel put in the lions’ den, although he felt pretty bad about it.
He felt so bad, in fact, that he didn’t sleep at all that night and was down at the den first thing in the morning to see if Daniel was all right, or whether the lions were picking their teeth with his bones.
When they rolled the stone from the mouth of the den, Daniel was fine, because God had closed up the lions’ mouths and kept them from eating him. To balance the scales, the king had Daniel’s detractors put in the den overnight, but they didn’t fare as well.
At any rate, I thought of Daniel as I watched George W. on television giving his State of the Union address, when it dawned on me that he is kind of like Daniel surrounded by lions – George being a kind of language-challenged Daniel and the lions being nearly everyone else in the United States and the rest of the world (not counting Dick Cheney).
Just like Daniel, he’s going to keep on doing exactly what he believes is right, even if he is the most unpopular bureaucrat in the history of America and everyone knows he’s wrong. And just like Daniel, he’ll go to sleep every night, smack dab in the middle of that lions’ den, hopeful that God is not only taking his calls, but will close up their mouths and keep the cats from eating him.
This time, however, I’m personally rooting for the lions. I hear warmongers who dodged their own chance at active service taste a lot like chicken.
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Speaking of big cats: Back in the old days, whenever we knew someone in our newsroom was about to get the ax, we had a saying. We said he or she had “heard the cat on the roof.”
“I think Bob’s gonna get fired,” someone might say.
“Well, maybe not today, but he heard the cat on the roof,” someone would answer.
I don’t know, but you have to imagine the city fathers in Long Branch have finally heard the cat on the roof. After a couple of years of incredibly bad publicity, criticism and lawsuits over their high-handed taking of private property by eminent domain, it looks like the battle may be tilting against them. At least a lot of heavy hitters are lining up in opposition.
If you’ve followed the case, you know that Long Branch has become the national poster child for eminent domain abuse, and the dismal situation was even featured in Parade magazine.
Over the last year, the state’s new public advocate, Ronald K. Chen, has made the Long Branch situation his No. 1 priority. In a report released last May, he excoriated the state’s eminent domain laws in general and indicted officials in Long Branch indirectly. And in an amicus brief filed recently in the Appellate Division of the N.J. Superior Court supporting an appeal by residents in the Beachfront North phase II redevelopment zone, Chen asks the court to reverse a lower court decision that came down on the city’s side.
Still to be resolved, he said, were questions about possible conflicts of interest in the development process, proper notification of the condemnation of properties, and the actual designation that the properties were blighted. The brief seriously questions whether the private properties in the development fit anyone’s definition of blight.
That was all well and good, and the Appellate Court has yet to make its ruling. My guess is that the court will send the matter back for further discovery. All along, eminent domain opponents in Long Branch said they expected to lose in Superior Court and win in the Appellate Court. I hope they’re right.
The real icing on the cake, however, came when Star-Ledger columnist Paul Mulshine wrote a column on Jan. 18 about the situation in Long Branch. I don’t always agree with Mulshine, especially when he’s writing about Bruce Springsteen, but I got a real hoot out of the headline that went with his column: “In Long Branch, government is the real blight.”
I liked that headline so much I cut it out and pasted it in my Long Branch scrapbook, but I suspect the town fathers in Long Branch had a different reaction.
When the state’s largest daily newspaper starts running headlines like that, you’ve got to figure there’s a big old cat on the roof.
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An astute reader points out that I was wrong in a recent column about Geraldo Rivera and the Two River Times, when I said Rivera started the paper. The actual founder of the paper was Claudia Ansorge of Red Bank, and Rivera eventually took it over from her.
I knew that when I wrote the column, but I was apparently having a temporary brain freeze. As we say in the business, I regret being caught in this error. Thanks for keeping me honest.
Gregory Bean is executive editor of Greater Media Newspapers.You can reach him at [email protected].