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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.

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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

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Uber All

I tend to think of myself as a city person, but that is not entirely true. City people take cabs or an Uber. I don’t. I have averaged perhaps one such ride a year in my big-city life, but on a recent day I found myself taking three Uber trips in the span of four hours.

The NBP also seldom rides in cars-for-hire, but he got the first Uber of the day and accompanied me. That efficient driver played what is now called the American songbook on his radio, and I recognized most of the music. Only as we approached our Manhattan destination did he speak. He addressed me and asked if I enjoyed the music, and I politely responded that I had. He said that he thought that someone of his generation would like it and that was why it was on. I said that I was surely of an older era than he, but then he said that he was born in 1947. I was surprised that at his age he was an Uber driver but did not say that. Instead I asked where he was from originally. His initial response was Israel and then added that he had been born in Egypt. He said that the Jews had been expelled from Egypt in the 1950s, something I did not know. He continued by saying that he had come to America in the 1970s. Pleased that I had liked his music, he made sure to tell me how I could get similar music, which started by asking if I had Pandora. I do not and said what was technically true, that I could get it. He showed me a list of channels that I apparently could subscribe to. (I like Johnny Mathis, but a Johnny Mathis channel seemed a bit much.) If I had known him longer, I might have had many questions for him. He left Egypt before he was ten. Did he feel Jewish then? Did he live a segregated life in Egypt? Who did he play with? What were his first reactions to Israel? What did his parents do? Why did he move to the states? What work had he done in this country? Why in his seventies was he driving an Uber? And many more if I had had a conversation with what seemed like a nice, interesting guy.

The NBP got us another Uber to go back home. This driver, perhaps around 60, seemed to be a native American and wanted to talk. We quickly settled on sports. His favorite teams were different from mine, but I know a little about a lot of things, and I was able to keep the conversation flowing. He said that he and his wife shared their one television, and he did not watch Sunday football at home because that was her TV time. He said that he lived in the Village, which is generally considered an expensive part of Manhattan, and I would have liked to learn more about how he managed to live there. He said that he had neighbors who contracted him to drive them to the Berkshires, a trip of around 100 miles. Our driver clearly loved the Massachusetts mountains and talked about their beauty, although he said that before GPS, he often had trouble finding his way back. I wondered, but did not ask, how much his neighbors paid for this service.

A few hours later I had to go back to Manhattan, and the NBP was not available. So for the first time in my life I ordered an Uber. I found that with only a few swear words even I could do that. This driver’s first name was Muktar, and we drove in silence for half the trip until a truck, for no discernible reason, did a three-point turn in front of us, blocking our vehicle. I heard “Unbelievable” from the driver, and while we waited, we started talking. I asked where he was from: “Sierra Leone. West Africa.” I am glad to have refrained from asking how he had learned his excellent English because I later learned that English is the official language of his home country. (I had asked the American-Israeli-Egyptian driver of a few hours before when and where he learned his excellent English. He said only when he came to America, which meant he did not speak the language before he was twenty-five.)

Perhaps I might have assumed the driver was Muslim because he was from Sierra Leone, but that would not have been an entirely safe assumption. I later learned that Christians comprise twenty percent of that country’s population. Nevertheless, I deduced that he was a Muslim when I first got in the car because I saw on the back of the front seat a rack containing three copies of the Qur’an inked with “Free” across the top of the pages. I was amused by a coincidence. At a stoplight I showed him the book I had been reading, The Islamic Jesus: How the Kings of the Jews Became a Prophet of the Muslims, by Mustafa Akyol. The book taught me that Jesus is an important figure in Islam, as was his mother Mary, who has a book or a chapter in the Koran named after her. Jesus is directly or indirectly mentioned over one hundred times in the Muslim Holy Book, which records his birth to a virgin after a heavenly annunciation and his performance of miracles. Akyol taught me that Jesus is regarded as a or the Messiah in Islam, but that only meant that he brought forth a special heavenly message to restore the true religion to its original, moral message, not that he was divine or part of the Godhead.

When the driver read the title of my reading material, he, without showing any arrogant pride in his knowledge of the Qur’an, started telling me about the Koranic passages about Jesus and Mary. I listened, pleased that it coincided with and affirmed what I had been reading. We chatted a bit about religion, and as we got closer to our destination, I said that I could never be a Muslim. Before he could ask, I said that there was no way that I was going to pray every day thirty minutes before dawn. I could see his smile in the rear-view mirror, and he said that there was a great power in the group prayers that enhanced a spiritual feeling. He asked if I also would object to fasting, and I replied that while it must be hard, I thought I could do that and find it beneficial. But as we neared the destination, I said that pre-dawn prayer was a deal breaker, and if Muhammad commanded that, he was just wrong. Muktar caught my eye and laughed.

We arrived at the hospital, and I said that I was going to the emergency room in hopes that they could save my life. He gave me warm wishes.

Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

More bad news: Two recent studies conclude that mosquitos are more likely to land on those drinking beer than on other people.

The headline was a frightening thought: “Kissinger Turns 100 With His Brain as Sharp and Wise as Ever.”

Florida is limiting the ability of Chinese nationals to buy property. Should the many Jewish Sunshine State residents worry that they may not have a place to dine on Christmas?

A billionaire hedge fund guy said that a billionaire banking guy should run for president. Bill Ackman said that Jamie Dimon is “extremely smart,” respected by all aspects of the political spectrum, beloved by his employees, and a centrist. Ackman, without further elucidation, said that Dimon is “supportive of well-designed social programs and rational tax policies that can help the less fortunate.” And Dimon “is pro-business and pro-free enterprise.” Ackman did not mention that the natural tendency for business is to manipulate government for its own benefit and to seek monopolies and cartels. Thus, many businesses try hard not to be part of a free-enterprise system. Pro-business and pro-free enterprise seldom, if ever, go together.

Kurt Andersen, in Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America, A Recent History (2020), maintains that the optimal tax rate on high incomes is the rate that raises the maximum possible revenue. He reports, “Economic research shows convincingly that the self-defeating level of taxation is much higher than our highest federal income tax rate has been for the last forty years” or a top marginal rate of at least 48 percent and maybe as high as 76%.

I have heard often of the “undeserving poor,” but never of the “undeserving rich.” Aren’t there a lot in that latter category?

I went recently to Yankee stadium to see my first in-person game of the season. Many kids were also in attendance. After the sixth inning, we all watched what is now a ritual: the grounds crew drags the infield to the song “Y.M.C.A.,” but they stop and drop their equipment at the appropriate moment and do the arm gestures to spell out the song’s title. As I watched many in the stands, including many kids, join in, I wondered if this song is banned at sporting events in the Don’t-Say-Gay State.

The original video by the Village People of “Y.M.C.A.” did not include the movements to spell out the title. One source says they were created by dancers on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand.

Some people maintain that the song was only meant to be about playing sports at a YMCA and nothing to do with gay behavior, but that original video prominently featured the singers in front of a sign for Ramrod, a bar that sought straight members but not a straight clientele.

“In God We Trust” was the decal on the back of the truck. I doubted that meant, as it should have, the driver of the vehicle would never possess a gun for “personal protection.” I thought about the awkward construction of “In God We Trust,” and how it might be blue-penciled into “We Trust in God.” Then I wondered if there is a difference in meaning between “We Trust in God” and “We Trust God.” Sometimes, you must keep your mind occupied on I-80.

Posted on by rjonakait

O Sisters, My Sisters

I had not paid much attention to the brouhaha between the baseball team and the drag group until I heard members of a Fox News panel say that to re-invite the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to Dodgers Pride Night was an attack on Christianity and religion in general. Jews and Muslims, one Fox commentator said, should be concerned because if they were coming for the followers of Christ, they could be coming for you.

In the you-can’t-win department, the baseball organization had invited the Sisters to a Pride night at Dodgers stadium. That caused on outcry. Then the Dodgers disinvited them. That cause another outcry. Then the Sisters were re-invited causing yet another outcry, including the “outrage” I saw on Fox News. I had not paid much attention to any of this. It seemed like a minor, local thing. Sports organizations do all sorts of things at their stadiums, including making kids dizzy by spinning around a bat pinned to the ground by their foreheads, sausage races, and playing what once were considered radical songs. But count on politicians and conservative news outlets to escalate the trivial into what they hope will be tremendous controversy. Marco Rubio, far removed from Los Angeles and (I am guessing) ballparks in general, issued a press release about some of this.

I don’t think that the conservative concern was because, according to their rather staid website, the Sisters for over forty years “have devoted ourselves to community service, ministry and outreach to those on the edges, and to promoting human rights, respect for diversity and spiritual enlightenment.” Who could oppose that? On the other hand, in today’s world, there is apparently something subversive in the latter part of the Sisters’ mission statement where they proclaim that “we believe all people have a right to express their unique joy and beauty.”

The real concern, however, is that (again from their website) the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are a leading-edge Order of queer and trans nuns. . . . We use humor and irreverent wit to expose the forces of bigotry, complacency and guilt that chain the human spirit.” Although I have never seen them, I am confident that what is irreverent to a group of trans and queer “nuns,” is offensive and outrageous to many.

As with many such controversies, the supposedly offending group may have been bolstered by the episode. The Sisters report that they met with the Dodgers organization which offered a full apology, which the nuns labeled sincere. The Sisters continued in their statement, “This affair has been an opportunity for learning with a silver lining. Our group has been strengthened, protected and uplifted to a position where we may now offer our message of hope and joy to far more people than before.” They thanked all those who spoke up for them and concluded with injunctions that I hope even Rubio, Brian Kilmeade, Harris Faulkner, and all archbishops could agree with: “May the games be blessed! /May the players be blessed!/May the fans be blessed!/May the beer and hot dogs flow forth in tasty abundance!”

You might think that such graciousness would charm anyone, but then you must not be an unthinking conservative. Instead, the Sisters have been labeled a threat to Christianity and religion in general. This criticism, however, conflates Catholicism with Christianity and religion in general, and it conflates mockery of the Catholic church for its political stances with an attack on religious beliefs. 

Trans and queer people posing as nuns may seem to mock the Catholic church, but I doubt that Presbyterians and Methodists feel mocked. Catholicism is being satirized but not all of Christianity. Most important, however, is understanding why the Sisters use their “irreverent wit” to mock the church. I doubt that the Sisters are truly concerned about Catholic beliefs on genuflection or transubstantiation. These doctrines do not affect society at large.

However, I am sure that the Sisters are concerned about the church’s stances on sexuality. The mockery might be more constrained if the church limited its injunctions on same-sex relationships and abortion to its own church members. The church, however, does not show such restraint. It does not confine itself to labeling homosexuality, contraception, and abortion as sins for Catholics. Instead, it has sought to prevent same-sex relationships, contraception, and abortion for everyone in society. It has sought to impose its religious views on you and me and everyone else. I have a right to oppose such policies. That doesn’t make me anti-Catholic. It makes me in favor of a government staying out of the private lives of me and others. The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence may criticize these policies in a form different from others’ chosen methods, but they have every right to do so, and those who believe in American freedom should celebrate their ability to do so.

Posted on by rjonakait

First Sentences

“A brilliant flash broke the morning darkness on November 8, 2018, as strong winds pummeled a PG&E power line scaling the Sierra Nevada ninety miles north of Sacramento.” Katherine Blunt, California Burning: The Fall of Pacific Gas and Electric—and What It Means for America’s Power Grid.

“The Korowai Pass had been closed since the end of the summer, when a spate of shallow earthquakes triggered a landslide that buried a stretch of the highway in rubble, killing five, and sending a long-haul transport truck over a precipice where it skimmed a power line, ploughed a channel down the mountainside, and then exploded on a viaduct below.” Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood.

“On April 3, AD 33—or perhaps three years before that—a quite dramatic event took place in the holy city of Jerusalem.” Mustafa Akyol, The Islamic Jesus: How the King of the Jews Became a Prophet of the Muslims.

“I stood in the sally port while the steel door rolled back with a clang and then I stepped through into the jail.” Michael Nava, The Little Death.

“Five years before a pair of bullets tore through his gut, Billy Joe Aplin reached over the silt-smeared water of the tidal flats with a boat hook to snare a small buoy bobbing near the grassy shoreline.” Kirk Wallace Johnson, The Fisherman and the Dragon: Fear, Greed, and a Fight for Justice on the Gulf Coast.

“Geneva Sweet ran an orange extension cord past Mayva Greenwood, Beloved Wife and Mother, May She Rest with Her Heavenly Father.” Attica Locke, Bluebird, Bluebird.

“The history of Cuba begins where history begins.” Ada Ferrer, Cuba: An American History.

“Maurice Oulette tried to kill himself once but succeeded only in blowing off the right side of his jawbone.” William Landay, Mission Flats.

“One of the biggest complaints about motherhood is the lack of training.” Erma Bombeck, Motherhood: The Second Oldest Profession.

“The train had left Sacramento some distance behind, and was now bravely beginning the long climb that led to the high Sierras and the town of Truckee.” Earl Derr Biggers, Keeper of the Keys.

“On the pivotal day of his presidency, Woodrow Wilson tried to clear his mind by playing golf.” Adam Hochschild, American Midnight: The Great War, A Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis.

“Mr. Bowling sat at the piano until it grew darker and darker, not playing, but with Tchaikovsky’s Concerto in D Flat Minor opened before him at the First Movement, rubbing his hands nervously, and staring across the shadowy room to the window, to see if it was dark enough yet.” Donald Henderson, Mr. Bowling Buys a Newspaper.

“There is a scheme afoot.” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse with Jennifer Mueller, The Scheme: How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court.