The Wit and Wisdom of Uncle Tom...

Not that Uncle Tom, no MY Uncle Tom....I actually had one-once.
Poor man went to glory twenty years ago come yesterday.
Tom was a Man in extremis...he smoked huge cigars and shamelessly stole schtick from the Apex Irishman, Jackie Gleason.
And what the hell the cigars are what killed him.
Now before the strokes and cancer shut his considerable wits down for good I can recall some potent advice he gave me back in campaign 1982.
Purists will recall a Phoenix called Mike Dukakis, who rose from the dead that year hell bent on reclaiming the governship from Ed King.
The game was afoot at all levels, the Lieutenant Governor's race was in contention too...I was of course was backing Sam Rotondi on the grounds that he was my state senator....all politics is local and like that.
A lawyer named John Forbes Kerry was in the contest as well.
All I knew about him was, Doonesbury had mocked Kerry back in his "Viet Nam Veterans Against the War" phase.
Uncle Tom however gave it to me straight, "Forget Rotondi, back Kerry! He is going places-he is a man of destiny".
I forget who I voted for, might've been Kerry might've been Rotondi.
But I was always struck by Uncle Tom's fervent endorsement of Kerry.
Now at the time, my Uncle was a de facto republican who was long driven out of the democratic party by the high-jinks of James Michael Curley!
So his was a disinterested endorsement to say the least.
Apparently he saw something in Kerry that I didn't at the time.
Well anyway, peace to Uncle Tom's ashes.