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Oppie and Me

Although I lived in the same small town as he did for nearly four years, I never saw him nor did I look for him. I may have had some vague idea of his importance to twentieth century history, but J. Robert Oppenheimer was hardly at the forefront of my consciousness.

I don’t remember what I knew about him when I was in college. I was probably aware that he was director of the Institute for Advanced Studies and that he had headed the group that developed the first atomic bomb. It was only after graduation, however, that I learned more details about the Manhattan Project.. I learned then that the Project comprised a colorful group with antagonistic personalities and huge egos. (Perhaps my favorite was the Hungarian Leo Szilard, who seemed like a real jerk and spent hours each day soaking in a tub where he said he accomplished his important thinking.) Oppenheimer was not only an important theoretical physicist but also had to be a skillful administrator to get the scientists, technicians, and support staff to work effectively together.

In college I may have known that Oppenheimer had been stripped of his security clearance in a proceeding that many thought unfair. Only much later did I learn that the hearing came to what seems contradictory conclusions: Oppenheimer was a loyal American but also a security risk. As Richard Gid Powers wrote in Broken: The Troubled Past and Uncertain Future of the FBI (2004), Oppenheimer lost his security clearance because of his associations, ideas, and public positions, “not because of any proof of disloyalty.”

While Oppenheimer’s security hearing came during the McCarthy era, its roots went back decades earlier. Although Americans elites had denounced radical movements since the nineteenth century, World War I and its immediate aftermath brought increased denunciations of “communism,” “bolshevism,” “anarchism,” and “socialism.” Those isms were soon used to discredit all sorts of ideas and their proponents—the income tax, birth control, opponents of prohibition, advocates of evolution, unions. The labels implied foreign control and ideas. In the 1930s, with the failure of our economic system apparent, many leftist groups sprouted that flirted with, or even kissed, the idea of communism. Oppenheimer, who before the Depression had little political consciousness, was drawn to such groups. Furthermore, his brother and sister-in-law were communists, and his wife had been married to a communist. Although Oppenheimer’s loyalty had been checked and rechecked by FBI and the Atomic Energy Commission, at the time of his security hearing, it was not farfetched to call him a fellow traveler.

Mostly, however, Oppenheimer came to be seen as a security risk for views he espoused after World War II. While the government was becoming increasingly secretive, he wanted more openness so that nuclear policies could be discussed sensibly by a wide range of knowledgeable people. He objected to the secrecy surrounding decisions about the hydrogen bomb and believed that concealing information about the bomb increased the dangers of international misunderstandings. To many, however, secrecy and security were coupled. Thus, to oppose secrecy, as Oppenheimer did, was equivalent to undermining national security.

Oppenheimer also questioned the wisdom and morality of what was becoming our basic defense rationale in a nuclear war: massive retaliation or mutually assured destruction. John Lewis Gaddis says in The Cold War: A New History (2005) that Oppenheimer opposed the hydrogen bomb arguing that such an apocalyptic device could never meet “the Clausewitzian standard that military operations must not destroy what they were meant to defend.” Oppenheimer’s biographers said, “He wanted to encourage open democratic debate on whether the United States should adopt genocide as its primary defense strategy.” In the eyes of government officials, Oppenheimer was a security risk not because he was sending secrets to foreign governments but because his views could weaken our resolve to defend this country in the only way it could be defended. The phrase was not yet used, but Oppenheimer was the victim of a cancel culture designed to send a wider message. Those biographers, Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin in American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (2005), say, “One scientist had to be excommunicated. But all scientists were now on notice that there could be serious consequences for those who challenged state policies.”

Since I knew little of this history in my college days, it’s not surprising that I was not on the lookout for Oppenheimer as I know I would have been for Einstein ten years earlier. However, I am surprised by what I have learned about Oppenheimer’s funeral. I thought that I was aware of all big events, and most small ones, that happened on campus. Oppenheimer died in February of my senior year, and his funeral was held at a famous campus building a week later. It was a big event. Among the six hundred attending were Nobel Prize winners, diplomats, politicians, novelists, musicians, and dance maestros. It must have been big news, and I read the papers. It occurred only a few hundred yards from my dorm, but I have no memory of it. I doubt that the ceremony was open to students, but it would have been worth a try. At a minimum, it would have offered a chance at a unique red carpet-like experience. Perhaps I was so taken up by finishing my senior thesis, or by thoughts of entering a wider world, or attending more parties that this collection of notables completely escaped my notice.

Now the movie Oppenheimer, based on American Prometheus, is opening. I hope that the movie is a success. It would be welcome to have a blockbuster not just about a comic book hero or its equivalent but about a real, complex polymath (how many people do you know who learned Sanskrit to be able to read Bhagavad Gita in the original?) whose life was at the core of many crucial chapters in 20th century American history. I plan to see it, but it is three-hours long, and a man my age usually needs breaks in that long of stretch. I may have to wait until it streams.

Perhaps first I will see Barbie.  

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Snippets

A news source reported that TikTok influencers have taken up pasta salads. I remember a generation or two ago when cold pasta, veggies, and cheese were the rage. They were a novelty, something different. But no matter how many I sampled, they all were, in what is not too much of an exaggeration, an abomination to good taste. Perhaps they are better now. Or perhaps a new generation will eventually learn what I did decades ago.

One of the best things many people could do for their descendants would be to sharply limit the number of them.

A wise person said, “People who boast of their ancestors confess that they belong to a family that is better dead than alive.”

The hottest new parlor game. Everyone gets a slip of paper and a pencil. Everyone secretly makes up a name for a new drug. (In an advanced version, the letter “X” cannot be used.) The slips are folded and tossed into a bowl. Each participant draws out a slip and then makes up a disease the new drug treats. Both the name of the drug and the disease are scored by all.

“Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.” Mark Twain.

Has Donald Trump ever blushed?

Down the road, but I am glad to say 250 miles down the road, a manhunt was on for a man who escaped from jail. A news report said that the escapee was a “self-taught survivalist.” Are there community colleges or technical colleges or other institutions that teach survivalism?

I was convinced that the spouse’s hearing was slipping. I stood ten feet behind her and whispered, “Honey, can you hear me?” Nothing. A few steps closer, I repeated, “Dear, can you hear me?” Again nothing. I went right behind her and whispered in her ear, “Honey, can you hear me?” With irritation, she snapped, “For the third time, yes!”

I have learned how to have the last word with the spouse. I say, “Yes, dear.”

I didn’t know what to eat for breakfast, but luckily my canary flew into the electric fan. I had shredded tweet.

I asked my doctor if I really needed to give up wine, women, and song. No, he said. Sing as much as you like.

My friend was teaching his son right from left. When Harold picked up the dropped car keys, he asked, “Luther, what hand did I use?” The confident reply; “The left.” With an exasperated tone: “Luther, you know better than that. It was my right hand.” With an even more exasperated tone: “Dad, I know my right hand from my left. Why do I need to know yours?”

“I have never been hurt by anything I didn’t say.” Calvin Coolidge.

“There is often a sin of omission as well as of commission.” Marcus Aurelius.

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First Sentences

“In March 1939, as the world hurtled toward a catastrophic war, the cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church gathered to elect a new supreme pontiff.” David I. Kertzer, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler.

“All the Venables sat at Sunday dinner.” Edna Ferber, Cimarron.

“As the scientific world prepared to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species in 1909, an amateur English geologist named Charles Dawson made a momentous find thirty miles from Darwin’s country home in southern England.” Edward J. Larson, Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion.

“They found the corpse on the eighth of July just after three o’clock in the afternoon.” Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö (translated from the Swedish by Louis Roth), Roseanna.

“By September 1986, after four years as secretary of state, George Schultz had grown accustomed to presiding over official dinners for foreign dignitaries visiting Washington: the rigorous protocol, the solemn oratory, the contrived cordiality.” Stanley Karnow, In Our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines.

“Today, on this island, a miracle happened: summer came ahead of time.” Adolfo Bioy Casares, The Invention of Morel.

“The unlimited money unleashed into politics by the Citizens United decision in 2010 powered up the influence of the fossil fuel industry, which went to work hiding its political mischief behind an array of phony front groups and co-opted trade associations.” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse with Jennifer Mueller, The Scheme: How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court.

“I drove to the Crossroads with the windows rolled down, the radio off, scanning the flat, packed earth in the glare of the afternoon light, the land broken up by clumps of creosote and rabbitbrush.” Ruchika Tomar, A Prayer for Travelers.

“I have done things the wrong way round all my life.” Andrea Wulf, Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of Self.

“It was the coldest winter for forty-five years.” Ken Follett, Eye of the Needle.

“The Middle East, as we know it from today’s headlines, emerged from decisions made by the Allies during and after the First World War.” David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East.

“You wake up with the answer to the question that everyone asks.” Shehan Karunatilaka, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida.

“The stories of Rondon do Pará had prepared me for a dodgy, crime-ridden place, but when I first visited the little Brazilian town on the eastern edge of the Amazon, it didn’t look particularly threatening to me.” Heriberto Araujo, Masters of the Lost Land: The Untold Story of the Amazon and the Violent Fight for the World’s Last Frontier.

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Snippets

During recent Fourth of July ceremonies, I was reminded that I was taught that it was disrespectful to applaud after the national anthem for several reasons. You don’t applaud after an anthem or hymn. And you don’t applaud the performer because the point is to honor the country’s symbol, which requires no applause, not to praise the performer. I am willing to bet, however, that many people think they are doing right when they clap after the last bar.

Mark Clague in his interesting book O Say Can You Hear? A Cultural Biography of The Star-Spangled Banner suggests that each week at NFL games different patriotic songs be played starting with the National Anthem. In following weeks perhaps America the Beautiful, Lift Every Voice, God Bless America, This Land Is Your Land, and My Country ’Tis of Thee would accompany the raising of the flag. I think that this is a good idea for all American sports and should also be the norm for baseball’s seventh inning stretch’s patriotic song.

It seems odd to me that hospitals now release patients after giving them a goody bag containing a toothbrush, warm socks, maybe soap, etc.. But I use some of the stuff I received recently.

Who was the innovator who first started mowing patterns onto sport fields?

“It takes two to speak truth—one to speak and another to hear.” Thoreau.

I wrote the following in this blog’s post of June 30, 2023, titled “The Job Comes with Pay, Power, Prestige . . . and Criticism . . . and Billionaires’ Gifts”:

“Congress has a limited sort of check on the Supreme Court. It can pass a new law if the Court has wrongly interpreted a statute. I am pretty sure that this has happened, but I can’t come up with an example. Perhaps someone can help me out.”

My friend Dean came to my rescue, referring to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009. Ledbetter worked as a supervisor for the Goodyear Tire Company for nineteen years. As she neared retirement, she learned that she was being paid significantly less than men doing the same work with equal or less seniority. She sued Goodyear under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Supreme Court overturned her trial court victory. The Civil Rights Act contained a statute of limitations that required a suit for pay discrimination within 180 days of the discrimination. The Court held that the clock started ticking with the first discriminatory paycheck even if employees had no way of knowing they were being screwed. Of course, in a place where employee pay is not public knowledge few would know immediately of the discrimination against them. Ledbetter was working for Goodyear for over a decade before she learned that she was being shortchanged in comparison to men. Under the Court’s interpretation, if a company could keep its discrimination hidden for half a year, it was in the clear. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pact Act of 2009 in essence overruled the Supreme Court by amending the Civil Rights Act so that the 180-day statute of limitation starts anew with each discriminatory paycheck or compensation. And, oh yes, the Supreme Court Justice who wrote the opinion that allowed corporations to discriminate was Samuel Alito. He was joined by John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, and Clarence Thomas.

The time, alas, has come to consider moving to a “retirement” community. We were at an open house for such a facility along with a half-dozen other couples. I started chatting with a man in a beautiful blue shirt. After we introduced ourselves to each other, we drifted apart to get some cheese cubes and meet others. After the illustrated presentation, the blue-shirted attendee came over to me and said, “It was nice talking with you. I hope we meet again, but, sorry, my memory isn’t what it once was. What was your name again?” I paused for quite a bit and finally replied, “When do you need to know?”

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The Job Comes with Pay, Power, Prestige . . . and Criticism . . . . and Billionaires’ Gifts (concluded)

So. Back to Justice Alito. Life tenure and unchecked decisions might lead you to think that Supreme Court justices would not be affected by criticisms. You would be wrong. (See the AJsdad.blog, March 11, 2022, “ACB Told Us So” and the post of March 2, 2022, “Partisan Hacks, Comprised Of”.) Recently Samuel Alito has given us an example of judicial thin skin. A respected news organization uncovered information that Alito had taken an undisclosed expensive vacation paid for by a billionaire who has interests with cases before the Supreme Court. That news organization did the professional thing by asking Alito for comments before publishing the report. Alito blew them off. Instead, before the news report was published, he placed a prebuttal in the Wall Street Journal.

Alito, echoing an earlier defense by Clarence Thomas of similar behavior, said that the trip did not have to be disclosed because it was “personal hospitality.” We can all understand that. I certainly accept personal hospitality, but I wonder about it in Alito’s circumstances. At least in my circumstances, such hospitality is reciprocal. Someone entertains me with dinner or drinks or lodging, and almost always I have reciprocated in some fashion. I wonder: How often has Samuel Alito invited the billionaire over for dinner? Is it “personal” if the hospitality is only in one direction? Alito did not disclose such reciprocity if it has happened.

Alito’s WSJ rebuttal also said that he had merely filled a seat that otherwise would have gone empty on the billionaire’s private jet, implying that somehow plunking his behind there really cost the billionaire nothing. However, I know that seat was not offered to me, and I doubt that it was offered to you. But somehow it was offered to Alito. Hmmmm.

Alito went on to justify his failure to recuse himself from the cases that involved the billionaire’s interests. Alito said the billionaire’s name was not on the court papers and, furthermore, there is no reason ever to conclude that he might be biased. Hey, he barely knows the guy he said. Alito saw no possible contradiction between the trip being “personal hospitality” yet barely knowing the billionaire. Perhaps one might conclude that he was invited on the trip because he was a Supreme Court justice???

Alito’s defense petulantly implied, “How dare you criticize me!” Right wingers, including the Wall Street Journal editorial page, have more explicitly promoted this message. The pundits proclaim that the story about Alito is partisan, published with the express purpose of undermining the legitimacy of the Supreme Court. ProPublica, the organization that performed the Alito investigation, is a nonprofit not aligned with any political party. It is well regarded; it has won a half-dozen Pulitzer Prizes as well as other awards. And, ironically, its founding editor came from the Wall Street Journal.

The critics claiming partisanship have not claimed that ProPublica got the facts wrong. This reminds me of watching Stephen Colbert playing the role of the right-wing bloviator on Comedy Central who said, “I am against the facts because the facts are liberal.”

Moreover, it seems laughable that the conservatives would attack the reporting about Alito as an attack on the legitimacy of the Supreme Court. Those same pundits have regularly attacked Biden, and no doubt before that, Obama and probably Bill Clinton, if they are old enough. By their logic, those criticisms were attacks on the legitimacy of the presidency. I think, however, we can all agree that the presidency has survived. So much so, that a slew of conservatives want to be president. Reporting about Alito will not destroy the legitimacy of the Court. If one of those right wingers becomes president, he or she will have no difficulty in finding people to put on the Supreme Court.

If perception of the Supreme Court’s impartiality is harmed by this contretemps, however, it will not be because of the messenger, the accurate investigative reporting. It will be because of Samuel Alito’s (and Clarence Thomas’s) actions. Apparently he believes that unless there is evidence that he took a quid pro quo, he did nothing wrong. We should trust him and the institution he is part of even if the lavish fishing trip looks fishy. Alito rejects the two-millennia-old, conservative advice contained in Caesar’s-wife admonition. Appearances do not matter to Alito and his defenders.

Alito also seems unaware of basic human nature. Who you hang out with affects your views. If I spend most of my time with Tamil Tigers, you can expect me to have different opinions and ideas than if I am a regular at an Iowa quilting circle. Without being consciously aware of it, we soak up all sorts of things from those we converse, sing, worship, or play with.

Normal people want to be liked by those they spend time with. This highlights a great problem with our nation today. The rich have always had outsized power in our government, but especially since the Supreme Court has lifted and relaxed limits on campaign spending, politicians have needed more and more money. Government officials, as a result, spend more and more time with the ultra-rich, and in the normal course of human events, that, at least subtly, affects how they see the world. And now we find out that justices of the Supreme Court also spend time with that tiniest fraction of the upper one percent. When was the last time you did? There are fewer than a thousand billionaires out of our vast population. You are less likely to encounter a billionaire than a deer on the highway. What are the odds that out of mere happenstance, two billionaires from that tiny population only out of feelings of bonhomie have become friends with two Supreme Court justices?

And while I expect those whom I hang out with affect my views in all sorts of ways, I would think I would be especially attentive to those who had given me gifts valued at more than six figures. (Of course, I do not know that from personal experience. How often have you received a gift of more than $100,000?) I think it would be natural to want that person to like me. Apparently, Alito would like you to believe that his nature is different.

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The Job Comes with Pay, Power, Prestige . . . and Criticism . . . . and Billionaires’ Gifts

I learned it when I became a professional baseball umpire. As a high school student, I umpired games of younger kids, and I was paid. As a sports fan, I already knew that umpires could draw criticism. And, of course, although infrequently — because I assure you I was good at the job — or perhaps because times were different and people were more civilized, or perhaps because few adults attended the daytime games, a call of mine was questioned.

When I took the job, I knew that I would have to tolerate criticism, for criticism came with the job.

A decade later I was a public defender. Representing someone charged with a crime was done in a public courtroom. Few people besides relatives and friends of those involved in the trial attended, but they were supplemented by courtroom regulars, usually retired people who went from courtroom to courtroom hoping to be entertained by the plight of others. They were a talkative and opinionated lot. If I stepped into the corridor during a break in the proceeding, someone would invariably tell me how I was doing — especially if they thought that I — or they, if they had been in my shoes — could do better. (I always listened. Perhaps I might learn something.) I was acting in a public arena. I could expect criticism. Criticism came with the job.

The judges, too, were in an open forum and, of course, had to expect that their performances would draw disagreements. Most such criticisms were grumblings from attorneys or spectators and did not reach a wider audience. However, if an atrocious crime had been committed by someone released on bail for other charges, the news media would report the identity, often with outrage, of the bail-setting judge. Some judges dreaded such publicity. Of course, if a defendant was not released on bail, the feared press notice would never come. Even though the only ground for setting bail in New York was to assure a defendant’s presence in court, these timid judges often set bail higher than was required to meet that purpose.

Judges, I also learned, could be touchy about criticism when it suggested that they had misinterpreted or misapplied the law. I was once assigned to do an appeal of a murder conviction. The trial transcript revealed what I thought was an egregiously wrong ruling by the trial judge. The appellate court unanimously agreed with me had ordered a new trial.

I had never appeared before the trial judge when I argued that appeal. I had never even met her, but a few months after the appellate court’s decision, I had occasion to appear before her on a minor matter. I was expecting to have to introduce myself when my case was called, but as soon as I entered the courtroom, she interrupted what she was doing, pointed at me, and nearly spat out, “You are the person who got me reversed.” I said nothing but privately reflected on the fact that she blamed me, never considering the possibility that the conviction was overturned because of her own blameworthy actions. It was my fault, even though I was under a legal and ethical duty to argue the appeal. That a person might be serving a life sentence after an unfair trial did not seem to phase her. (When the defendant was subsequently re-tried, he was acquitted.)

Defensiveness, not reconsideration. That is often the response to criticism, even from judges to whom we look for rationality and justice. And that brings us to Samuel Alito.

Justices of the Supreme Court, like Alito, should feel as little threatened by criticism as any group in our country. They keep their jobs and pay as long as they want no matter what the criticism. They hold their positions for life. (They can be removed through the impeachment process. However, no Supreme Court justice has been removed that way.)

Their decisions are unchallengeable. They face no criticism from a higher court because no higher court exists. Decisions of the Supreme Court cannot be reversed in our legal process.

Yes, Congress has a limited sort of check on the Supreme Court. It can pass a new law if the Court has wrongly interpreted a statute. I am pretty sure that this has happened, but I can’t come up with an example. Perhaps someone can help me out, but such congressional action has been so rare as to be almost nonexistent. Furthermore, federal legislation cannot overturn a constitutional ruling of the Court.

You may have been taught, however, that the amendment process acts as a check on the Court’s constitutional decisions. Horsefeathers! Tell me when an amendment has changed a Court ruling. You might point to the Fourteenth Amendment, which states that all persons born in the country and subject to our jurisdiction are citizens of the United States. You might suggest that this overruled the infamous Dred Scott decision, which gratuitously pronounced that Blacks could never be citizens. However, the Fourteenth Amendment came in the wake of the Civil War and was not adopted by the usual amendment process. The southern states were effectively coerced into ratifying it.

Your trivia question: Name the one normally adopted amendment that effectively overruled a Supreme Court decision. You win the lollipop if you said the Sixteenth Amendment, which authorized an income tax. We don’t need to go through the history of that provision, but that amendment in essence overrules the Court’s nineteenth century ruling that an income tax was unconstitutional. That’s it. It is the one time the amendment process acted as a check on the Court’s many constitutional holdings. From a practical perspective the amendment process has not been an effective check on the Supreme Court.

In reality, a Supreme Court ruling only gets changed when another Supreme Court overrules or modifies a previous decision. The only check on justices are other justices. We say we are a government of checks and balances, but for practical purposes there are none on the Supreme Court.

(concluded July 3)

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First Sentences

“Not so long ago, it was less than ideal for an American politician to seem like a dumbass.” Andy Borowitz, Profiles in Ignorance: How America’s Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber.

“She got to the parking lot earlier than usual.” Natsuo Kirino, Out (translated by Stephen Snyder).

“The only lodging in Grafton was a low-slung motel with a smashed door at the entrance.” Tony Horwitz, Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide.

“Vespasia stood at the long, open window of her hotel bedroom and gazed across the rooftops of the city toward the western sky.” Anne Perry, A Christmas Message.

“I didn’t spend a year building a wooden flatboat and then sailing it two thousand miles down the Mississippi to New Orleans simply because I was suffering from a Huck Finn complex, although that certainly played a part.” Rinker Buck, Life on the Mississippi: An Epic American Adventure.

“In the corner of a first-class smoking carriage, Mr. Justice Wargrave, lately retired from the bench, puffed at a cigar and ran an interested eye through the political news in the Times.” Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None.

“Beginning on September 15, 1987, and continued for an amazing twelve days, the hearings over the confirmation of Judge Robert Bork for the United States Supreme Court mesmerized the nation.” Erwin Chemerinsky, Worse than Nothing: The Dangerous Fallacy of Originalism.

“Next to hot chicken soup, a tattoo of an anchor on your chest, and penicillin, I consider a honeymoon one of the most overrated events in the world.” Erma Bombeck, If Life is a Bowl of Cherries—What am I Doing in the Pits?

“It was as black in the closet as old blood.” Alan Bradley, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.

“The Scopes trial has dogged me for more than a decade, ever since I wrote my first book on the American controversy of creation and evolution.” Edward J. Larson, Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion.

“The oldest written record of the word tennis makes no mention of athletic shoes; rather, it refers solely to the sport from which they take their name; a sport that—along with fencing, its near kin—was one of the first to require a special kind of footwear.” Álvaro Enrigue, Sudden Death.

“Poised to sign the Emancipation Proclamation, Abraham Lincoln found he could not write his name.” Noah Feldman, The Broken Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery, and the Refounding of America.

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Snippets

New York, along with other cities, supposedly have many more feral cats than before the pandemic. New pet owners apparently got tired of the scratching and mewling. This was also a problem in 1880s, when Central Park was overrun with cats. New York handled the animal crisis by exterminating the felines with rifles.

In the 1880s, New York was not yet the City That Doesn’t Sleep. Central Park closed at 9 PM with police posted at entries.

Do ten-year-olds wonder about mermaid genitals? (I do.) Do they wonder how what appears to be an entirely female group mates (where are the mermen?)? Might someone label mermaids as transgender? Don’t mermaids appear to be creatures in a kind of drag? And now don’t mermaids today bring up racial discussions that might make some young people feel uncomfortable? What does this all mean for schoolbooks and movies in Florida and elsewhere?

When I first spot caterpillars during the summer, they seem almost slender, but in a few days, they all seem fatter with increasing torpor. They then are content to crawl up on a finger and be carried. And if you put one near your ear, you can hear it say, “I may be fat and slow…. but I am a vegan.”

Hitler became a vegetarian in 1937. Different reasons are given for his conversion. Some say that he had adopted the philosophy of Richard Wagner, who believed that vegetarianism would lead to a stronger Germany. Others say that Hitler made the move for health reasons. Still others say that he was appalled by cruelty to animals.

Among the plays I see in New York City, some might be called experimental… e.g., the one with a cast of frogs. Distinctive. Odd. Ribbeting.

I have a refrigerator magnet and a decal from the New York Public Library with the well-worn phrase “Knowledge Is Power.” When I look at them, I think what Ethel Watts Mumford said: “Knowledge is power—if you know it about the right person.”

The Southern Baptist Convention, mimicking Roman Catholics, have said that churches with women pastors cannot be a part of their club. A Baptist spokesperson (ok, spokesman) gave as a reason I Timothy Chapter 2. I grabbed my nearest Bible (this one, a New King James Version) and found that Paul wrote that women should dress modestly. He continued: “Let a woman learn in silence with all submission. And I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence.” The Baptist explainer did not explain that this was Paul speaking, neither God nor Jesus; He did not mention that Genesis said that women were made in God’s image; He did not note another statement of Paul that seems hard to reconcile with the Timothy passage: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female: for you are one in Christ Jesus.” Galatians 3:28. But whenever someone cites the Bible, I remember the words of an uncanny phraseologist who said, “The devil can cite scripture for his purpose./An evil soul producing holy witness/Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,/A goodly apple rotten at the heart./O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!” William Shakespeare. Merchant of Venice.

The same Timothy chapter that Southern Baptists cite to “defellowship” a church with women pastors also says that we should give thanks “for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence.” Do the Southern Baptists defellowship all those who say nasty things about Joe Biden?

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It Was So Age-Inappropriate What I Read (concluded)

If you believe age-inappropriate reading material is stuff that is not just beyond kids’ reading comprehension but is harmful to them, I present myself for a case study. As a young schoolkid, perhaps because I was shy, I read constantly, even while walking to and from school. It was not long before I felt I had exhausted the offerings of the children’s section of the local public library. Luck befell me in the person of Miss Dahlberg, my sixth-grade teacher. She saw that I was a reader and perhaps knew that there were few books in my house. She seemed also to understand that there was little left for me to explore in the children’s section of the Mead Public Library.

One day after school, Miss Dahlberg took me downtown and talked with the librarians. She knew how to hold her ground. (None of us kids would have been surprised. We all knew she had been a WAC during WWII and had even parachuted out of a plane!) I don’t remember at what age one qualified to take books out of the adult section, but it certainly was not the sixth grade. Even so, what had been rigid rules for the library were no match for Ebba Dahlberg. I walked out with a library card that granted me adult privileges. (Actually, inked on it was “Adult Priviledges.” Miss Dahlberg knew how to be gracious in victory. She noted the misspelling and told me as we left the library that it would not matter.. She also told me to keep secret that I now had access to the entire library.)

This was not something that was part of her duties, but it opened up worlds for me. I have always appreciated it. As an adult, I found Miss Dahlberg’s address in the upstate town where she had retired and wrote her a letter thanking her. She probably had no idea who I was. However, in her reply she was grateful that I remembered that she wrote on the blackboard with yellow chalk, which she purchased from her own funds. She used the yellow because she thought it stood out better and students could see it better.

This golden library card allowed me to enter a new stage in my reading and gave me entrée to all the age-inappropriate materials the library housed. I did not return to the children’s section even though I had not in fact exhausted it. Only as an adult did I read such classics as Winnie the Pooh and Alice in Wonderland.

I had no direction in my exploration of the adult library. I had no method for finding what to check out other than walking through the stacks, glancing at jacket copy, reading a few paragraphs or pages, and then using gut intuition to take out books.

I remember little of what I read from these directionless days, and that seems significant. If books were too shocking for my adolescent sensibilities, if they exposed me to harmful content, if in some way they damaged me, I should recall those books. I remember only two.

The first was The Mouse that Roared, and its sequels, by Leonard Wibberley. The Cold War satire was a delight, a precursor in my mind to Dr. Strangelove. Like that movie, it also encouraged my emerging views that the powerful -– whether military, political, corporate, or social -– were not to be trusted. If I had then talked with anybody about books, I would have insisted they read it. Surely there are some uptight people who would have tried to prevent me from reading these books, claiming they were age inappropriate, because they were “subversive.” They got readers to question the existing order. I can’t imagine that these books were harmful to me unless there is something wrong with learning about the power and fun of good satire. Of course, I may not yet have learned a basic fact about satire as put by Jonathan Swift: “Satire, being leveled at all, is never resented for an offense by any, since every individual person makes bold to understand it of others.”

The other book I remember from my adult privileges was not a random encounter as was The Mouse. I don’t know how I had heard of From Here to Eternity by James Jones (perhaps because the 1953 movie caused such a stir), but I sought it out. Not finding it on the shelves of the Mead Public Library in that staid period, I learned that the book was too explosive or controversial to be allowed on the shelves. A potential reader had to ask for it at the front desk. I did, and this caused consternation. No one apparently wanted to be the one responsible for corrupting this youth by letting him leave the library with this book. I insisted, however, that the library had granted me “adult priviledges.” After much discussion behind closed doors, the book was produced, and I was allowed to check it out. Perhaps the library staff did not want to take on Miss Dahlberg again.

Eternity was the first adult book that mesmerized me. I don’t know why the book was behind the counter, but I assume that it had something to do with adulterous sex. I don’t even remember that. While the sprawling narrative was captivating, it was the character of Robert E. Lee Prewitt that totally grabbed me—a Hamlet, a Tony Zale, a Miles Davis, a Kierkegaardian zen figure, a lover, a friend, an anti-authoritarian, a patriot. Was I harmed by this age-inappropriate book? I don’t remember the sex. Was it explicit? If so, I didn’t understand it. Instead, I felt that the book helped me grow because the Prewitt character talked to me as I closed in on the teenage years of alienation.

If reading age-inappropriate stuff harms kids, I must have been mightily damaged. Perhaps if you get to know me you will spot all the ways I was harmed. But that is not how I feel about my experience. I would have been much more damaged if I had not had stuff to read. To restrict me to the exhausted children’s library would have produced boredom and alienation. Education should be a time of exploration, and we should never deny children that opportunity.

Posted on by rjonakait · 1 Comment

It Was So Age-Inappropriate What I Read

My grade and high schools must have had libraries, but I have little memory of them. I certainly don’t remember any controversies surrounding what books they should or should not shelve. On the other hand, I have many memories of the Mead Public Library, the facility that served the entire town of 45,000. I went there obsessively. It was a two-story building with the adult section on the entrance floor and the children’s books upstairs.

I gave little thought to who or how it was decided what books were in the children’s library. The decision, no doubt, was made by the librarians as to what was age appropriate. Appropriateness, I would guess, had to do with reading ability. Third graders were not ready for War and Peace or Descartes. Such books would be in the adult section.

Now, however, books are kept from children not just because of vocabulary, complexity, or length. Instead, the books in many places are segregated because the subject is not considered age-appropriate or, as an Arkansas statute says, because the book will be “harmful” to the young reader or even because it may make a reader “uncomfortable.”

Take Heather Has Two Mommies by Lesléa Newman. It has been frequently removed from shelves for being age-inappropriate, but it is written with a simple vocabulary and structure with innocent, colorful illustrations. It is not age-inappropriate for first and second graders because it is too difficult to read. Instead, some adults insist it is age-inappropriate because of its subject matter. The book readily accepts as normal a same-sex relationship, although nothing in the book states that Heather’s mothers have sex. Is this age inappropriate? The answer should be no.

If children are asking about a topic, a book in age-appropriate language is not inappropriate. It is only natural for curious kids to wonder why they have a mother and father while another child has two mommies or only one parent or only a grandmother. Books written at a suitable language level about divorce, single motherhood, and untimely death are appropriate for kids who wonder about such things. The same is true for a family with two mothers or fathers. Heather has been banned not because young’uns are not inherently interested in the topic but because adults are uncomfortable with it.

Some book removers go further when books for kids deal more directly with sexuality. They maintain that the goal of the authors and librarians is to groom or indoctrinate children. If the fear is that schoolkids will be transformed into  gay or trans or nonbinary people, it’s just plain silly…worse, ignorant. On the other hand, these books introduce the concept that gay, lesbian, trans, nonbinary, and other queer folk should be accepted into the community, should be free from legal and societal discrimination, should be treated with the same respect as we treat others. (I recall there being something in the Bible about loving thy neighbor as thyself.) However, if that’s the kind of dangerous indoctrination the censors fear, they may be right.  

Attacking books because of their sexuality might mask broader concerns than just gay sex.  What comes to mind is what Masha Gessen wrote about Vladimir Putin in The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. When Putin feels politically vulnerable, he launches anti-gay attacks. He has produced his own version of don’t-say-gay laws by enacting legislation that bans “homosexual propaganda.” Putin has also anticipated those loyal Americans who don’t want topics taught that might make school kids uncomfortable. Russia under Putin “protects” kids not merely by eliminating reference to homosexuality. He has also banned “any mention of death, violence, suicide, domestic abuse, unhappiness, and, really, life itself.” In putting in place these restrictions, Putin has said that he is defending “traditional values.” As far as I am aware, however, he has not said that he was promoting “family values.” When he is criticized, Putin has been a master at diverting that criticism by attacking gays.

When I hear concerns that books are in the library for purposes of  “indoctrinating” children, I think back to what I recall of my elementary school reading. I remember few of the books I consumed except for a series which I labeled in my mind the “orange biographies” because they all had orange bindings. Of appropriate length and vocabulary for a third grader, they were hero books with an emphasis on the childhoods of the likes of Thomas Edison or Andrew Jackson, but they also contained enough about the subject’s adulthoods for me to learn a bit of history. These books have stayed with me on some level, forming some of my background knowledge about various personages and historical eras. Looked at another way, however, they were books that indoctrinated.

Although the spouse remembers an orange biography about the first woman doctor, almost all were about men. Although there might have been biographies about Booker T. Washington or Washington Carver, almost all were about whites. They were about “great” white men with little, if any, suggestion that “ordinary” people did important things. They were all about Americans as if “foreigners” could not or did not contribute to a better world. The books were a subliminal indoctrination into the American myth that any American child (at least any white male) could become a great person—just work hard and live right and, perhaps, be a little adventurous. The subliminal corollary to this belief, however, is that if you or your parents have not become rich, are not powerful, or are not important, it is your or their fault. (David Maraniss reports in A Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Family that the playwright Arthur Miller thought Americans had the tendency to blame themselves for economic shortcomings and not the economic system. He theorizes that this proclivity to blame oneself prevented America from ever facing a real challenge to the economic system.)

So yes. Reading indoctrinates. By using a much less charged synonym, however, we also know that reading teaches. That is, of course, why education should present all sorts of information and all sorts of views to children. Presentation of only one viewpoint might be indoctrination; presenting more than that gives a child a true opportunity to learn.

(The fear by conservatives of indoctrination in our schools is not new, but the concern over subject matter has not remained constant. I found it amusing when I read that William “Big Bill” Thompson ran for Chicago mayor in the 1920s on an America First platform charging that the English monarchy was planting pro-British propaganda in the Chicago schools. Sarah Churchwell, “America First” in Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer, Myth America: Historians Take the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past.)

Concluded June 19