Dan Riley's Blog, page 5

Compromised Lives

The Nob’s recent reflections on memoir writing reminded me that I once thought that if I were ever to write a memoir I would call it A Compromised Life. That would make clear from the title that my memoir was not an advertisement for myself, but an accounting of my life. It would be a title that would serve to remind me as well as my readers that, like them, I was not a paragon of adamantine virtue. This humbling self-perception not only led me to compose the prayer at the top of this post, but has helped me to maintain a more charitable view toward the parade of fellow humans coming forth recently to proclaim in one way or the other that they have seen the light on certain critical issues of the day.
Foremost among these latter-day saints has been New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees (who finally came to understand Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling protest), retired four-star General James Mattis (who finally acknowledges the threat posed to the Constitution by Trump), and erstwhile Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney (who finally filled his father’s shoes by marching for racial equality and justice). In less than a week each of these notable Americans made public displays of conscience that both amazed and infuriated people. Sadly, the fury directed at them was not primarily from those who might have felt betrayed or abandoned by their newly expressed positions, but by those who should have been welcoming them with open arms. But in each case social media was on fire with attacks on them for the trending sin of being too late with too little. 
It is typical of the blood sport that commentary on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and elsewhere practice that no good deed goes unscathed. It’s as if Jesus’s admonition that those without sin cast the first stone got pressed through the irony machine. Safe behind their computer screens people with a highly inflated and delusional sense of their own virtue pass down damning judgments on others with the implacable righteousness of a Clarence Thomas Supreme Court opinion. 
In an earlier Nob post I lamented the lost art of accepting apology. That loss of graciousness is compounded by the strategic blunder of turning away someone who wants to be an ally because they didn’t get to "wokeness" at the same time and way that you did. This character and pragmatic failing is particular to the political left, where a high and dubious value is placed on instantly recounting the past sins of others caught in the act of contrition. It’s a way of showing off both historical recall and exaggerated self-esteem, but it’s a shitty way of trying to win hearts and minds.
After Mattis’s article appeared expressing the view that Trump was a danger to the Constitution, Chris Hayes interviewed Congressman Ruben Gallego (D) of Arizona. Gallego, a former marine who served under Mattis, had voted against his confirmation as Trump’s Secretary of Defense. Hayes pointedly asked how Gallego felt about Mattis taking so long to speak out on something that must have been clear to him for years. Had Gallego been some random twit on Twitter perhaps he would’ve answered, “Yeah. He can go fuck himself.” But Gallego is more than that. He’s a thoughtful public servant, seriously committed to resistance to Trump’s authoritarian takeover of the United States. As such he gave an answer lefty Chris Hayes may have found disappointing, but was the only acceptable answer, to wit: I welcome him to the resistance. We need all the help we can get.
Of all the optimistic ideas floating around as a result of the protests in George Floyd’s name, the one I’m most intrigued by is the suggestion that this country may be ready for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission such as the one that guided South Africa through its post-apartheid period. I think it would be a bold, albeit difficult, experience for us to go through as a nation. And I don’t think all the difficulty would come from the Trump cult or the Dixie dead enders…though them too. I can foresee an afternoon of public confession and apology presided over by a secular yet still puritanical college of confessors who would insist that for their past sins the likes of Drew Brees, Jim Mattis and Mitt Romney go through the rest of their lives wearing hair shirts--their newly enlightened views notwithstanding. 
Before my pessimism on this issue overwhelms me though, I’m saved by evidence that grace still has a place in American culture. At a memorial service for George Floyd his family arranged for a performance of Amazing Grace. The song was written by John Newton in 1772. Newton was a former slave trader who found religion and then repented his evil ways. His musical composition has memorialized the all too human journey from dark to light for centuries. God save it from Twitter:
Amazing Grace, how sweet the soundThat saved a wretch like meI once was lost, but now am foundWas blind but now I see
Was Grace that taught my heart to fearAnd Grace, my fears relievedHow precious did that Grace appearThe hour I first believed
Through many dangers, toils and snaresWe have already comeT'was Grace that brought us safe thus farAnd Grace will lead us homeAnd Grace will lead us home
Amazing Grace, how sweet the soundThat saved a wretch like meI once was lost but now am foundWas blind but now I see


And now a word from our Corporate Overlords:  Now Playing Black Panther



Was blind, but now I see

The Way We Were, Part II

Graydon Carter writing his memoir, but...
Memories blight the corners of his mind
Nasty, dirty-colored memories of the way he wasAs I was saying…the third thing that happened to keep me keeping on with The Nob was that I read that Graydon Carter, former editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair, was living quite comfortably in the South of France working on his memoir. Well, of course he is. Graydon Carter is exactly the kind of person people expect to write memoir. With a career spent cavorting with the rich and celebrated, he can fill his pages with tons of behind the scenes gossip and rumors from his precious annual Oscar night party. This is quite a distinction from JD Vance who became famous as a result of his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy.  I’m quite sensitive to this distinction. The Nobby Works actually got its start when a dear friend suggested over lunch one day that I write a memoir based on all the stories she had kindly listened to me tell over the years. The idea was intimidating to me though because like nearly anyone else I would have to ask: What have I done in my life to merit a memoir? As happened, The Nobby Works emerged as a sort of blog/memoir hybrid, punctuated as it is with many stories from my life. The blog provides the opportunity to enliven and enlighten those stories with graphics, video clips, music, and links. All that, however, comes at the expense of a life narrative, which should be the goal of a good memoir. In the blog post I wrote about the late Donnie Perkins, my former high school student, I referenced a course called Who Am I? that I taught Donnie and many other students at Lebanon High School in Lebanon New Hampshire. I described the course this way:

Ostensibly designed as a study of biography and autobiography, it developed in time as quite a therapeutic exercise for me if not for the students themselves. For their final, term-length paper, they had to submit their own autobiographies. I promised (and delivered) more privacy than Facebook allows, and for that was rewarded with student writing that I’d venture to say was unmatched at any public or private school in the country for conveying the unvarnished truth of teenage life. The dreams and disappointments that comprised those autobiographies made it nearly impossible for me ever to look upon any classroom as “standard.” The idea that there could be a standard test to measure the achievement or potential of all the complex individuals that make up a classroom was as absurd then as it is now.

Those were in fact teenage memoirs…and given the toll adulthood takes on self-reflection, I’m guessing that for many of those kids it was the last honest writing they did in their lives. That toll can be measured in this excerpt from a David Marchese interview with Graydon Carter concerning Vanity Fair’s profile of wealthy, celebrated pedophile Jeffrey Epstein: Marchese: So I have to ask you about the situation with Vicky Ward and the Jeffrey Epstein profile she wrote for Vanity Fair. She’s saying that she had credible sources claiming sexual misconduct on the part of Jeffrey Epstein, that she had originally included those allegations in the profile, and that you had them removed. You’ve said that Ward did not have three on the record sources and that what she did have did not meet Vanity Fair’s legal standards, therefore the allegations were cut. [Editor’s note: Ward says she did have three on-the-record sources – a mother and her two daughters – at the time. The Guardian has since contacted the mother,  who confirmed the three spoke to Ward in 2003, on the record. ] But I’m having a hard time understanding why one credible account of sexual misconduct wouldn’t have been enough to warrant inclusion or at least make you reconsider the profile?  Carter:  This is 20 years ago. I’m not going to get into the details, because I don’t even remember the details. The fact is that editors make tough decisions every day, and at Vanity Fair we had an army of fact checkers and lawyers and other editors to help us make the right ones. It’s easy for people to question those decisions 20 years on.Marchese: But what I was asking about was this apparent in-house rule about needing to have three on-the-record sources. Can you explain the rationale behind that and how it was applied in this instance?  Carter:  We wanted people to go on the record. Whoever Vicky Ward talked to, they were unavailable to us. At the time this was the first or second major profile of Jeffrey Epstein. He was still a private citizen, and the libel bar is much higher on a private citizen than a public figure. We had great lawyers and a great fact-checking team and a great legal editor, and the accusations didn’t make it into print.Marchese: Doesn’t the practice of requiring multiple on-the-record corroborating sources advantage somebody like Epstein in a situation like the one that’s being cited? He only has to say “no” but the accusers have to —  Carter : I didn’t invent the system. I just lived by the system.Marchese: Did the existence of even one seemingly credible accusation of sexual misconduct against Epstein make you consider further pursuing that aspect of the story?  Carter : I don’t think we saw any details. I don’t think the facts were presented in a way that would have made it into print.Marchese: You’re telling me that neither wheel-greasing nor making editorial decisions based on personal considerations regarding subjects ever occurred at Vanity Fair?  Carter : I can’t remember a single one.
"It’s easy for people to question those decisions 20 years on"--passage of time defense"The accusations didn’t make it into print"--passive voice defense"I didn’t invent the system" --following orders defense"I can’t remember a single one"--the faulty memory defense
I hate to damn a book before I’ve even read it, but if that is a sample of the evasive, manipulative bullshit Graydon Carter is going to spin in his memoir, I’ll pass on it…even if I get it as a gift from a daughter. I believe everyone has a story worth telling. Some people, like JD Vance use memoir to reveal their story; others--like Graydon Carter I'll presume--will use it to conceal their story.  
Excuse me now. I have a memoir to write. 

The Way We Were, Part I

Memoirs light the corners of our minds
Misty water-colored memoirs of the way we wereThis was about to be the second and last time I said goodbye to The Nobby Works…not out of the shock that induced my first retreat, though more and more shocking things occur on a daily basis. It was just that I found it harder and harder to blog without mentioning Trump, and so he had come to inhabit my mind just as I feared he would on November 9, 2016. Dealing with his torrent of toxicity is degrading as much on a personal level as it is on a national level. But just as I was about to write my farewell post, three random things happened that converged to outline another post and remind me of why I love doing The Nob so much. The first thing was a book I just finished--JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. It had been a gift from Daughter Meagan two or three years ago, but I had avoided reading it under the misimpression that it was another soppy attempt to explain the working class white voters who had dropped Trump at the White House door like a bag of dogshit. As one reviewer wrote in The Guardian:

Our lives matter to Vance, and this “our” is the key to why his book has been such a runaway success. It dropped into a national shouting match that has pitted a hazily defined entity called “the white working class” against an equally hazy “coastal elite” as the Sunni and Shia of the American political scene. The commentariat were at a loss as to explain the ballooning support for Trump, a candidate so transparently unqualified for the job that his candidacy seemed more like a prank than a serious bid for the White House. Vance, articulate and authentically Appalachian, became a regular face on the cable news circuit, a sort of ethnographic native informant about the “other America”.

Gifts from daughters are not easily ignored of course, so I finally took a deep breath and turned an ear or two over to Hillbilly Elegy. It was no surprise that Vance was a Republican, but it was a blessed relief to learn that he was what we now call a Never Trump Republican, mentored at the knee of David Frum, one of the godfathers of Never Trumpism. As such, his book is devoid of the racism, xenophobia, and anti-intellectualism that are the hallmarks of Trumpism. The Guardian review quoted above includes this passage:

His resentment of welfare recipients is longer lasting. Some of his food stamp customers were gaming the system, reselling soda for cash and carrying luxury items such as mobile phones. “I could never understand why our lives felt like a struggle while those living off government largesse enjoyed trinkets that I only dreamed about.”

What’s refreshing and heartening is that the welfare recipients Vance is talking about here are white. The entire hillbilly world Vance describes in such unsparing terms is white. The reviewer is correct when he describes Vance as a sort of ethnographic native informant. He’s not an apologist and he’s not a researcher explicating data. He’s more like some lost tribesman newly emerged from a primeval forest with a tale to tell of life in an alien world. He’s reasonable, perceptive and fair. In other words, he’s everything so many of my liberal compatriots have given up ever finding in a modern Republican. The second thing that happened was that I received word that Donnie Perkins had died. Donnie was a former student of mine and the subject of one of my earliest and most popular blog posts. He was also one of just two people I ever un-friended on Facebook, which will come as a surprise to anyone who ever read that post, Today is Donnie Perkins’ Birthday. It exudes the affection I felt for Donnie both as a student and later as an adult. But that affection got blown up real good in what the Guardian reviewer rightly calls the Sunni Shia divide of American politics. Ironically Donnie had a lot in common with JD Vance. Although they don’t call them hillbillies in New Hampshire, they could. Those Yankee hillbillies call outsiders flatlanders and fit the profile Vance paints of his own people from Appalachia in almost every way, both positive and negative. Had Donnie shared JD Vance’s discerning view of Trump, we would’ve remained friends until the day he died. But alas, he didn’t, and ours like many such relationships could not maintain a bridge over a widening chasm of core values. The third thing that happened…Well, the third thing that happened will have to wait until next week’s posting. This one is already approaching the limit on length I like to follow for these Nobs. Given how much more I have to say on the subject, that limit is soon to be broken. I know it’s not much, but given how quickly we seem to be spiraling out of control, someone somewhere somehow has to stay within limits. So let it be me for here and now. 


A word from our Corporate Overlord:  Now Playing Black Panther

Ain't it Black?

Memorial weekend bonus post...Joe Biden channels Mick Jagger

Verses from the Watchtower

From the Simpsons' Gone Boy episode, 2017, the year Dylan released his covers of Sinatra songs, so the joke was definitely on Bob. It's a little incongruous with the heaviness of this post, but a laugh seemed in order

I’ve been following Bob Dylan religiously since he shattered my ears with the opening organ salvo of Like a Rolling Stone and my brain with the question: How does it feel to be out on your own. Despite occasional rays of light…the promise of an answer blowin’ in the wind, a wish to stay forever young…Bob’s lyrics lean into the dark. He was under the spell of Biblical prophets long before he chose to make a show of his religious beliefs. As a result he has provided us with some of the best apocalyptic literature this side of the Book of Daniel. With both the apocalypse and Bob’s birthday fast upon us, it seemed like a good time to gather together some of The Wicked Messenger’s verses that best capture the moment we’re in… Now if you see Saint Annie
Please tell her thanks a lot
I cannot move
My fingers are all in a knot
I don’t have the strength
To get up and take another shot
And my best friend, my doctor
Won’t even say what it is I’ve got --Just Tom Thumb’s Blues Another day without end - another ship going out
Another day of anger - bitterness and doubt
I know how it happened - I saw it begin
I opened my heart to the world and the world came in --False Prophet Thunder on the mountain heavy as can be
Mean old twister bearing down on me
All the ladies of Washington scrambling to get out of town
Looks like something bad gonna happen, better roll your airplane down --Thunder on the Mountain Now the medicine man comes and he shuffles inside
He walks with a swagger and he says to the bride
“Stop all this weeping, swallow your pride
You will not die, it’s not poison” --Tombstone Blues Doctor, can you hear me? I need some Medicaid
I seen the kingdoms of the world and it’s makin’ me feel afraid
What I got ain’t painful, it’s just bound to kill me dead
Like the men that followed Jesus when they put a price upon His head --Shot of Love I hurt easy, I just don’t show it
You can hurt someone and not even know it
The next sixty seconds could be like an eternity
Gonna get low down, gonna fly high
All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie --Things Have Changed Idiot wind, blowing through the buttons of our coats
Blowing through the letters that we wrote
Idiot wind, blowing through the dust upon our shelves
We’re idiots, babe
It’s a wonder we can even feed ourselves --Idiot Wind Oh, what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what’ll you do now, my darling young one?
I’m a-goin’ back out ’fore the rain starts a-fallin’
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall --Hard Rain’s a Gonna Fall Then she told us how times were tough and about how she was thinkin’ of
    bummin’ a ride back to from where she started
But ya know, she changed the subject every time money came up
She said, “Welcome to the land of the living dead”
    You could tell she was so broken hearted
She said, “Even the swap meets around here are getting pretty corrupt” --Brownsville Girl Señor, señor, let’s disconnect these cables
Overturn these tables
This place don’t make sense to me no more
Can you tell me what we’re waiting for, señor? --Señor The machine guns are roaring
The puppets heave rocks
The fiends nail time bombs
To the hands of the clocks
Call me any name you like
I will never deny it
Farewell Angelina
The sky is erupting
I must go where it’s quiet --Farewell Angelina Crickets are chirpin’, the water is high
There’s a soft cotton dress on the line hangin’ dry
Window wide open, African trees
Bent over backwards from a hurricane breeze
Not a word of goodbye, not even a note
She gone with the man
In the long black coat --The Man in the Long Black Coat High water risin’, six inches ’bove my head
Coffins droppin’ in the street
Like balloons made out of lead
Water pourin’ into Vicksburg, don’t know what I’m goin' to do
“Don’t reach out for me,” she said
“Can’t you see I’m drownin’ too?”
It’s rough out there
High water everywhere --High Water (For CharliePatton) You’re a man of the mountains, you can walk on the clouds
Manipulator of crowds, you’re a dream twister
You’re going to Sodom and Gomorrah
But what do you care? Ain’t nobody there would want to marry your sister
Friend to the martyr, a friend to the woman of shame
You look into the fiery furnace, see the rich man without any name --Jokerman Well Mack the Finger said to Louie the King
I got forty red white and blue shoestrings
And a thousand telephones that don’t ring
Do you know where I can get rid of these things
And Louie the King said let me think for a minute son
And he said yes I think it can be easily done
Just take everything down to Highway 61 --Highway 61, Revisited Chilly wind sharp as a razor blade
House on fire, debts unpaid
Gonna stand at the window, gonna ask the maid
Have you seen dignity? --Dignity Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl --All Along the Watchtower<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:Georgia; panose-1:2 4 5 2 5 4 5 2 3 3; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin-top:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-bottom:10.0pt; margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;}</style> </div>

Wontcha Come Home, Ben Franklin

In times of my despair for the state of the union, I often find myself turning to the past for historical perspective. It’s always comforting to know that people before me…before us…went through trying times and survived.  And thus it was a month or so ago when I got on my bike and rode it for days buried under my headphones listening to the entire 24 hours of Walter Isaacson’s biography of Benjamin Franklin…an American Life. My schoolboy education in Franklin’s life and works was typically superficial—the kite…the glasses…the Declaration of Independence…and we’re done.  Isaacson’s biography broadened and deepened the profile to portray Franklin if not exactly an American Leonardo an American polymath of the highest order. Befitting a future revolutionary, Franklin was naturally born to challenge authority. One of his grandfathers defied the law in defending shopkeepers and artisans--what the French would call the bourgeoisie--against wealthy landowners. Ben himself was often inclined to tilt at sacred cows. In an earlier blog post I referred to the story of how the family newspaper he helped run outside the dictates of the Boston clergy went head-to-head with Cotton Mather of Salem witch trial fame. My abiding appetite for irony compels me to repeat the story here:

During one of the regularly occurring smallpox epidemics that devastated wide swatches of the early New England populace, three of Mather’s children were afflicted. Mather, who had turned to preaching from medicine (or what passed for medicine at the time), put his physician’s hat back on to study the disease. In so doing he had noticed a scar on the arm of one of his slaves, and upon inquiry learned that the slave, like other Boston blacks he would interview, had been inoculated against the pox back in Africa. Later, when a ship arrived in Boston Harbor carrying another wave of smallpox victims, Mather--this witch trial loving, slave-owning, Puritan preacher—single-handedly led a futile attempt to inoculate the population against the threat. In this, he was opposed by the Franklin newspaper, owned and operated by design to be free from clergy control. And therein lay the self-made trap. The paper did not oppose inoculation on the merits. Indeed it didn’t even make a pretense of examining the merits. It opposed it as a way of poking a finger in the eye of the church establishment. It labeled Mather’s push for inoculation as just more religious mumbo-jumbo and an attempt to gin up fear of the pox to make people even more beholden to the ministerial class. 

Throughout his life Franklin remained a noted religious skeptic, best captured in the story of his near death at sea. After surviving it, he was urged to thank God by donating to a church. Franklin, ever the pragmatist, declined, saying he’d rather donate to a lighthouse. Nonetheless throughout his life he donated to the building of numerous houses of worship for an array of gods and was a strong advocate for religious freedom. At his death the full range of religious leaders of Philadelphia, despite knowing he had refused to become a follower of any of them, gathered to mark his passing.For a man so closely identified as an American revolutionary, he resisted revolution for decades, preferring instead that America remain a part of the British realm…albeit with distinct privileges and autonomy. As was his habit, he sought accommodation until it was clear there could be none and then he would cast his lot with principle. He would’ve made a perfectly modern Congressional Democrat, constantly trying to accommodate an implacable political foe.On social policy he was…well, religious, in his belief that hard work, frugality, and self-reliance were the keys to success. Before the GOP was taken over by gun nuts, religious zealots and bigots, he would’ve made a perfectly mainstream modern Republican, warning against welfare as a crutch and an inducement to a life of indolence.He had a zest for trying on new identities, frequently writing under , often female (Silence Dogood). This allowed him to throw out ideas without prejudicing them with his name as well as advance opinions under the guise of someone other. He gleefully trafficked in what today we would call fake news. This could’ve made him a major mischief-maker on the Internet and which may have led to exposure, embarrassment and expulsion as has happened to others who’ve been caught practicing such deception.He famously had a zest for women…and after the kites and glasses this is probably the thing most adult students of Franklin know about him. There are multitudes of women coming in and out of his life, while his common law wife Deborah anchored it both figuratively and literally for 44 years. Isaacson’s book is filled with salacious details drawn from the letters of Franklin and his women. The woman I found most fascinating was Polly Stevenson, who Franklin met when she was 18 and he was in his 40s. She was the daughter of his landlady in London, another woman with whom Franklin was rumored to be very much involved. Franklin and Polly had a relationship that would last through the rest of his life and would be filled with voluminous letters back and forth documenting their respect for one another’s intellect as well as their personal affection. She made her first trans-Atlantic crossing with her children to be at his deathbed. It is fair to ask how such a prodigious public figure and ladies’ man as Franklin would fare in the era of #MeToo.Franklin would stand on no less shaky ground on today’s racial justice spectrum as a one time owner of household slaves. Though as benign in treatment of them as one who owns other humans beings can be said to be, he also made racist comments, which if made in the current environment would probably cost him a career most anywhere outside of Fox News. That would be too bad because, like Barack Obama on the subject of gay marriage, Franklin evolved. His evolution was facilitated by a visit to a school established for African American children, which led him to conceive of “a higher opinion of the natural capacities of the black race than I had ever before entertained.” Even that admission would be damning in today’s context, but Franklin went on to become President of the Philadelphia Abolition Society and in his dying days petitioned Congress to abolish slavery a half century before the Civil War. So as with Jefferson and other Founding Fathers, it was complicated.Isaacson notes that Franklin’s reputation has gone in and out of fashion with the times, and he concludes his biography with a summary of how various critics have attempted to take Franklin down off his pedestal. He has been belittled as a well of shallow aphorisms to irrigate the self-help industry. He has been attacked for pushing virtues laced with hypocrisy for infliction on indifferent children and employees. He has been excoriated as the godfather of American Babbitry…the inclination of business or professional men to conform unthinkingly to prevailing middle-class standards. I must admit that coming as it did in the last hour of my audio tour through Franklin’s life, I found the criticisms disorienting. Over the preceding 23 hours I had come to know and admire Franklin more than most (though not all) of America’s historical figures. The man who was welcome at the table of the 18th century’s best and brightest had earned a place at mine. In that game we like to play where we plan a fantasy dinner for 5 notable people living or dead, Ben would be there. Not only would I like Ben to dine with me and Bruce Springsteen and Julie Christy and Mark Twain and Katharine Hepburn, but for all his flaws I’d like him to resume his prominent place in American public life.   Franklin’s hand for compromise has left his fingerprints all over our nation’s founding. Could he play as significant a role in today’s politics where compromise is dismissed as capitulation, corruption, and inconceivable? Could one such man no matter how creative and charming make a difference? Even with all I know about the unrelenting nastiness, pettiness, and vengeful nature of today’s politics, I think he could. Franklin the scientist would come into our world enthralled with our ascent from earth to the moon…may even have contribute an actual invention to it. But Franklin the patriot, like most of us, would be in despair at our equally breathtaking descent from George Washington to Donald Trump. I've got to believe, however, that as one small, ignorant, self-absorbed bigot could bring this nation to its knees, so too could one great, inquisitive, enlightened man lift it up.  

Man Down

Paul Mescal as Connell and Daisy Edgar-Jones as Marianne
If you saw a headline for a review of a TV show that read Hulu’s Normal People Has All the Appeal of a Bad Date That Refuses to End, you’d probably avoid watching that show. Me too. Fortunately I didn’t see that review until after watching this production based on Sally Rooney's best selling novel, which I often do to compare notes with various critics. Professional critics would probably rate below used car dealers and politicians in polling of least respected professions…that is if pollsters even respected them enough to include them in their polling, but they don’t. I, on the other hand, have a bit of a soft spot for critics…and engage in the practice occasionally here at the Nob…like here and here and here. I still have all of legendary film critic Pauline Kael’s collected reviews on my book shelves. Kael was not only an intellectually provocative reviewer, but also did much to make criticism a less elitist undertaking. The titles alone of her collections, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang…I Lost it at the Movies…spoke of a less effete sensibility common to most criticism in her time. Her protégé and successor as film critic of the people, Roger Ebert, made film criticism more accessible and populist because he never reviewed movies from some set theoretical framework...not Marxism, Freudianism, Darwinism or any other ism a wannabe critic might latch on to. One always had the feeling that Roger let movies happen to him without any preconceived notions or agendas about what a movie should be. Like Kael, he wasn’t afraid to say that a film was good simply because it was entertaining.  Like so much else that makes up our sorry modern world, criticism has declined. That decline can be studied in microcosm in the review of Normal People cited above. Ironically the review was written by Matt Fagerholm, Assistant Editor at RogerEbert.com. I don’t know if I’ve read any of his other reviews, so I can’t tell if this one is par for the course or just an off day by an otherwise fine reviewer. I will say, however, that much of the weakness of his review stems from the same tendency that afflicts so many post-Ebert film and TV reviewers. It is an insistence on viewing art through the prism of identity politics, especially the identities of race and gender. Too many critics nowadays seem to analyze films more by how well they address the historic systemic oppression of non-whites and women rather than how they work dramatically. It is a doctrinaire approach that begs comparisons with the old Soviet diktak that all art elevate and extol the virtues of the working masses.For instance, Fagerholm damns Connell, the main male character of Normal People, as a coward less than 200 words into the review. He describes Connell this way:

He feeds directly into Marianne’s wrongful belief that she deserves to be treated poorly, later blaming her for their relationship falling apart again in college, when he clearly was the one who walked out on her…What we’re left with is a frustrating, fractured romance between an inarticulate weakling and a woman who deserves so much better.

Let me paraphrase that last sentence to another girl meets boy love story, Beauty and the Beast--What we’re left with is a frustrating, fractured romance between a nasty, loveless beast and a woman who deserves so much better.It’s a lame assessment in that it forecloses any possibility for a character’s arc…for a coward or beast to grow. In this instance, it’s doubly lame because it completely ignores the rudeness, condescension and hostility that are the early characteristics of  “the woman who deserves so much better.”   This is typical of the Team Him/Team Her perspective that is the ruination of contemporary criticism. It not only turns the review into an unnecessary and unwanted polemic, but it does so at the cost of the very art that went into making Normal People (and other works similarly discounted) so carefully layered and nuanced. At the risk of losing readers who have not seen this splendid 12-part series and may never see it, allow me a moment to provide some critical detail that seems to have escaped Roger Ebert’s wayward disciple. Connell “walking out” on Marianne is a pivotal point in their love story as it comes just when the two of them have reached a hard earned comfort level with their relationship vis-a-vis the outside world. But Connell is not returning to their hometown in Sligo and leaving Marianne on her own in Dublin out of cruelty or disinterest or indifference. He deeply wants to stay with her, but can’t afford it, unless he asks her to support him for the summer, which despite the urging of his best male friend he cannot do. His mother worked as a housekeeper for Marianne’s mother and that class distinction has always been an undercurrent of their relationship. Moreover, we know from the 4 or 5 previous episodes, that Connell’s character flaw is not that he is cowardly (which if true would have stopped him from ever having any relationship at all with Marianne, the school outsider). Rather Connell is manifestly filled with insecurity, self-doubt, and overhwelming humility. He can’t bring himself to ask Marianne to let him stay the summer in her Dublin flat. She, on the other hand, is in constant need for Connell to publicly and clearly declare his affection for her. This is the crux of their romantic struggle. It is not, as Fagerholm so cavalierly describes it, a question of “Will they or won’t they?” The fact that that banal question is answered in the second episode should alert the astute viewer that there is something quite a bit more complex going on here. And that point is driven home in two remarkable scenes deep into the series…one when Connell and Marianne kiss and the other when they reach out and touch hands. These two scenes happen after we’ve seen numerous fleshy scenes of them having sex together. If you’re paying attention to the story Normal People tells and not one you’ve conjured up in your head, the kiss and hand touching scenes work so powerfully because we’ve become invested in their real story.  What Connell and Marianne are struggling with is their mutual communication issues that make it difficult for them to express themselves clearly, consistently and openly with the two people they both admit are most important in their lives--that is, each other. Marianne is not a victim of Connell. They are both victims of their respectively underdeveloped senses of self-esteem. To conclude that Marianne deserves better than Connell is to willfully dismiss all the moments in their relationship when Connell’s niceness more than negates any of his alleged cowardice. It also dismisses the many times Marianne willingly and convincingly expresses in either word or deed how much she loves him.As happens, Fagerholm’s begrudging bit of praise for the series exposes what a shallow review he’s written. "I’ll admit," he writes, "that the very final scene of the series is a surprisingly mature one, evoking the poignance of  Splendor in the Grass, yet it is far too little too late.It was neither too little or too late, man! The entire series…every agonizing twist and painful turn in Connell and Marianne’s relationship…built toward that mature moment. We actually got to watch them both grow emotionally before our eyes through the 12 episodes. That was our payoff…that was arc of their respective characters. If you weren’t so intent on showing off how evolved you are as a male to the women in your life, you may have noticed the story a lot of normal people took painstaking efforts to tell you. But this goes on a lot these days. In art...and in politics. 

Sin City

From Now Playing Black PantherChapter 5 
Though there had been rumors and fears that no one in Enfield would go to work or school on Monday...that, as on Sunday, the entire town would crowd in or around the Strand...it did not happen. Quite the opposite, in fact. People were so much excited to share their experiences watching or hearing about  Black Panther  that they flocked to familiar work and school settings in record numbers to commune with each other. Even employers and educators welcomed the heightened chatter because the spirit that attended it was so rare and energizing.At the local Bigelow-Sanford carpet mill, supervisors joined workers on cigarette breaks and shared their favorite scenes:“That car chase…you ever see anything like that?”“Never saw cars like that.”“And that rocket flying through that canyon? Forget Flash Gordon. I got dizzy just watching it.”“I liked the waterfall fight.”“Which one?”“Yeah, which one?”“Both. It was like something in a Tarzan movie, only ten times better.”“And when those rhinos showed up. How’d they do that? I didn’t see any strings or anything. How’d they do that?” “Two guys in a rhino suit, I’d guess.”“Go on!”The kids at Enfield High were into all that and more as they gathered in pockets around lockers and buses:“Shuri, the sister character, was funny. I like how she always gives it to her brother.”“Yeah, she is cool.”“And how about those shoes she invented?”“And that suit…that suit…that was the best…way better than Superman’s.”“How about Batman?”“Way better. But Catwoman. Now we’re talkin’. Man, those Colored girls in those tight suits. You could practically see everything.”“Yeah, forget National Geographic…that was just plain graphic.”“Graphic as all hell. I’d see it again just for those girls in those suits.”“I have sin dreams about those girls in those suits. And I ain’t talkin’ venial sins neither.”Little did any of them know that their chances of seeing it again hung in the balance as a long black limousine pulled up in front the Strand. As a chauffeur came around to open a rear door, Father O’Boyle scurried out to take a place at the rear of the car. Then both black-clad men stood solemnly as Archbishop Henry O’Brien stepped out. He sniffed the air around him and looked back at the crowd gathered across the street from the theater. It was smaller than the Sunday crowd and less boisterous. Like the crowd inside the theater at that very moment, it was somewhat older, more representative of Enfield’s senior and retired citizens with a sprinkling of folks from the mill’s night shift. The maturity level produced a respectful hush in honor of the visiting cleric who followed O’Boyle into the theater. The lobby did not present the madhouse that greeted O’Boyle on his first visit, which both calmed and dismayed the priest. Although he didn’t want to lead his superior into the chaos he encountered 24 hours earlier, he did want there to be a scene to warrant the urgency he invoked to call O’Brien up from the Hartford Archdiocese. “A matinee crowd it seems,” said the Archbishop, indicating that he was underwhelmed by O’Boyle’s alarm. “It’s the film, your Excellency,” said O’Boyle in mild dread; then quickly turned to Rosemary behind the counter, “Rosemary. The Archbishop is here. We need to see your father.” Rosemary cast a hurried look up at the clock and then a panicky look at the two clergymen standing in the middle of the lobby. She rushed to them and pushed them both against the wall featuring posters of the now obsolete double feature: The Creature from the Black Lagoon and Carmen Jones. No sooner had she gotten them out of harm’s way than the four big auditorium doors flew open and the crowd from inside poured out. Random comments reflected the more sober assessment of the film by the older crowd.“That was very noisy,” said one elderly woman.“I can’t hear you,” said her companion.“All that killing and crashing around,” said another. “I don’t like so much killing.”“I never saw so many Coloreds in one place in my whole life,” claimed an old man. “I don’t like it.”“Women Negroes with guns and spears. Punching and kicking. Where will it lead?” asked another. “And those outfits. Very vulgar.”Rosemary held the holy men against the wall, protecting them until most of the crowd filed out. Then Leo, Ellie, and Shep came through the doors, each pushing a wheelchair-bound patient. Ellie, in her nurse’s uniform, was the first to see the trio at the wall. “Father O’Boyle!” she hollered with a smile, leading the wheelchair caravan on a detour over to Rosemary and the Catholic clergy. There were introductions and greetings all around, which is when the religious professionals learned that some of the patients from the hospital where Ellie worked were bussed in to see the movie, and the theater staff learned that Father O’Boyle had called the Archbishop in to investigate Black Panther. With that sobering news, Ellie, Shep, and Rosemary pushed the wheelchairs out to their waiting transport, while Leo led O’Brien and O’Boyle into the auditorium to secure prime seats before the next showing. O’Brien asked for a Tootsie Roll, and O’Boyle went and fetched it for him. Leo excused himself to man the box office. Soon O’Boyle and O’Brien were surrounded by another full house, most of it baptized and confirmed Catholic, near jubilation in anticipation of the movie it was about to see. With the dreaded scene of Shuri lifting her middle finger to her brother, O’ Boyle felt such embarrassment at having invited the Archbishop to witness this profanity that he wanted to drop to the sticky floor and hide under his gummy seat. Instead he sat there awash in guilt as O’Brien watched all 2 hours and 15 minutes of the movie totally inert.    Shep stood at the back and watched most of it himself again, except for a brief visit to the concession stand to see if Rosemary needed help. “How many times have you watched that now?” she asked him.“I’ve lost track,” he replied.“And you’re not tired of it?”“Just the opposite. I’m awakened by it.”“Shep Farrell, listen to you talking like a poet. I’m awakened by it.” “It’s true. I never had a movie open my eyes like this. Not just to the sights and sounds, but the message. It has a deep message I think.”“And what do you think that message is?”“It’s about Colored people…how they’re treated. Slaves and all.”“Oh, pshaw, slaves. There haven’t been slaves in a hundred years. You don’t know anything about Colored people.”“I knew Paul Robeson when he lived over on Enfield Street.”“That opera singer? You knew him?”“He used to give free concerts to raise money for the Enfield Teachers Association Child Welfare Fund. My mom was one of the organizers. She took me backstage a couple of times to meet him.”“I didn’t know that about you. He was practically the only Negro who ever lived here.”“And his family,” Shep added. “His son went to Enfield High.”“What was he like?”“The son?”“No. Paul Robeson. You’re the only person I know that actually knows a famous person. Tell me about him.”“Well, he was a lot more like the Colored guys in this Black Panther movie than he was like Steppin’ Fetchit or Amos ‘n Andy. He was tall and powerful looking with this rich, deep voice. And, I don’t know, dignified I guess. Just the way he carried himself…like this T’Challa character…proud like.”“But wasn’t he a communist?”“I guess, but you listen to Killmonger and you begin to wonder.”“Killmonger?”“The bad guy in the movie…Erik Killmonger.”“Gosh almighty, Shep. You know all their names? I think you’ve watched that thing too much. Time to take a break. We all need a break…” and then she interrupted herself. “Uh-oh,” she said as the auditorium doors burst open and the audience emptied out. The Archbishop and his priest made a beeline for the theater manager’s office. “Your holiness, this has to be quick,” Leo said in greeting as they walked in. “I have to help with the next wave.”“The waves have to stop,” O’Brien told him. “You can’t keep showing this film. What’s the count?” he asked O’Boyle.O’Boyle pulled out a small pad and read from it: “One extremely vulgar gesture…two swear words…I think…ahm….”“Nipples,” declared O’Brien, cutting O’Boyle off. “Female nipples. The screen is full of them.”“But they’re Colored girls,” Leo protested. “They’re obscene,” O’Brien countered. “The Legion of Decency won’t stand for it. Do you remember your oath?” O’Brien cast a sharp, commanding look at O’Boyle who immediately recited the oath: “I condemn all indecent and immoral motion pictures, and those which glorify crime or criminals. I promise to do all that I can to strengthen public opinion against the production of indecent and immoral films, and to unite with all who protest against them. I acknowledge my obligation to form a right conscience about pictures that are dangerous to my moral life. I pledge myself to remain away from them. I promise, further, to stay away altogether from places of amusement, which show them as a matter of policy.“Places of amusement, Mr. D’Aleo,” repeated O’Brien, underscoring the point once O’Boyle finished. “This theater…your theater. You know what I think, Mr. D’Aleo? I think the devil has taken over your theater. The devil trying to strike back at the Church for Fátima, where the Virgin appeared and which has now been sanctified by his Holy Father in Rome. Satan has turned the Strand into his own perversion of Fátima. Those images on your movie screen are satanic apparitions.”“Dad,” said Rosemary, popping her head through his door. “All hell’s breaking loose.”“Figure of speech,” Leo assured the clerics. “I’ll be right there,” he told his daughter. Then he looked around his office in befuddlement until his eyes landed on the sacks of money in the corner. He picked one up and handed it to Archbishop O’Brien, who at that moment was placing an expensive fur and felt black fedora on his head.“What’s this?” asked the startled celibate.“A donation to the Archdiocese,” said Leo, heading out the door.  
As they watched Leo exit, O’Brien turned to O’Boyle and said solemnly, “This may call for an exorcist.” 



Chapter 1 here

Full book here

The Last Days of the Hillary Clinton Presidency

Welcome to Upside Down World
The Timeline:January 5, 2020—Clinton receives a daily briefing from the Defense Agency’s National Center for Medical Intelligence warning that a virus outbreak in Wuhan, China, has the potential to become a global pandemic.
January 6, 2020—Clinton convenes a meeting of The Global Health Security and Biodefense unit put in place by the Obama Administration as part of its national security effort.
January 7, 2020—Clinton issues restrictions on travel to and from China, prompting The Washington Posteditorial page to ask, “Didn’t she learn anything from her first Travelgate experience?”
January 18, 2020—Clinton receives a report from the pandemic response unit, stating that without swift and serious preemptive action, the nation’s healthcare system will be overtaxed to the breaking point with coronavirus cases.
January 21, 2020—the US records its first death from the virus.
January 22, 2020—Clinton declares a state of national emergency, imposing a two-week stay at home order except for essential workers and services and she invokes the Defense Production Act to compel select industries to reconfigure their production facilities to manufacture personal protection equipment and ventilators.
January 23, 2020—Clinton’s actions set off a firestorm of protests across the country. The New York Times accuses her of "tone deaf overreach". Fox News declares “Nanny State PMS!” Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy says, “This is a shocking attempt to distract from Congress’s ongoing impeachment inquiry.” Former Republican Presidential candidate and arch Clinton rival tells a chortling Morning Joepanel, “I told you she was a nasty woman.”
January 24, 2020—the Dow drops 800 points in a sell-off panic.

January 25, 2020--Clinton selects Dr. Anthony Fauci to conduct daily public briefings on the course of the pandemic.
January 28, 2020—the House votes to impeach Clinton on multiple charges stemming from her role in the Benghazi attack, her use of a private email server, and last minute abuses of power tied to her handling of the pandemic.
February 1, 2020—Clinton calls a meeting in the Oval Office to form a task force to handle the imminent pandemic induced economic meltdown. When word leaks out that she wants to name her husband Bill Clinton to the task force, a second firestorm erupts. “They’re playing us!” blares the front page of The New York Post with a photo from 1996 of Bill and Hillary laughing at a formal ball. The Wall Street Journal asks, “Is there no bottom to Clinton corruption?”
February 4, 2020—Clinton appears before a joint session of Congress to deliver her State of the Union address, and the entire Republican Caucus gets up and walks out before she ever says a word.
February 5, 2020—House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, and former President Barack Obama come to the White House for a top-secret meeting. According to hidden, deep state recordings of the meeting leaked to Axios, the meeting went as follows:

Obama: Hillary, I know this is going to be hard to hear but every day you continue in office brings the Democratic Party closer to...if not total extinction...cataclysmic loss for a generation.
Pelosi: Our members are in a panic that we’re about to be reduced to a rump minority.
Schumer: And I’m afraid we’re losing significant ground on impeachment in the Senate. Manchin, Cardin, and Coons are all solidly against you...and Bernie of course. Cory Booker is under tremendous pressure from Wall Street...as am I, I might add.
Hillary: Et tu, Chuck?
Schumer: No...well...listen, I’m still with you…for as long as I can be. But Amy and Patty are softening, and there’s no telling with DiFi, Warner, and Casey. The earth’s moving under all our feet.
Hillary: Do they know what we’ve done here? Do they have any idea? We’ve flattened the curve on this damned pandemic…held it to 50,000 cases nationwide! 600 deaths! Jesus! If we hadn’t acted, those numbers would be 10 times that. And the economy? We saved the goddamn economy while still managing a once in a generation health crisis.
Obama: Hillary, you have nearly a million new unemployed on your watch. It’s probably going to take $2-3 billion in emergency spending to prop things up again. You can’t expect the Party to take those numbers to the voters.
Hillary: So what are you asking me to do?
Schumer: Step aside for Tim Kaine.
Pelosi: It’ll avert the Senate impeachment vote and give our candidates a fresh start for November.
Hillary: You’re all agreed on this?
All: We are.
Hillary: Well, then, screw the lot of you. Let the Senate vote. I’m not leaving without a fight. I'm going to make the case for competence, preparedness, and diligence, and if the American people can't appreciate that, then screw them, too. 



Housekeeping Note:I have opened a Nobby Works dedicated page on Facebook in order to resolve ongoing issues with Google's comment function for this blog. Google seems so busy taking over the world that it has no time to address a simple problem that effects all the bloggers who use its platform. I hope that the new Facebook page provides an easy commenting option for those who've been frustrated in the past by an inability to share feedback. It's been frustrating on my end as well. I know this contradicts the recent blog post where I announced I was quitting Facebook. I have in fact deleted my personal page and will run this new one strictly as an adjunct to the blog. (Besides, as a humanist, I long ago learned to embrace my contradictions.) So if you have something to say about this or any future posts I reluctantly invite you to follow this link to Facebook and leave your comments there (and "like" the page while you're at it!). Hopefully a dialog will ensue. And now a word from our Corporate Overlords:  Now Playing Black Panther



<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:Georgia; panose-1:2 4 5 2 5 4 5 2 3 3; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin-top:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-bottom:10.0pt; margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;}</style></div>

Time for Another Kind of Test

Testing is all the rage these days…or rather lack of testing is all enraging. There have been severe consequences to our health and our economy for being ill equipped to properly test our national population for Covid-19…and no doubt there will be a serious accountability moment for those responsible for our shameful failure in this regard. But the pandemic has exposed another critical testing need for our country…a Constitutional IQ test for those who presume to hold federal office in the United States.Not to be lost amid the array of frightening words and actions by our current head of state during this perilous time is the fact that this peculiar head of state has little to no understanding of the basic tenets of his job. In one of his recent, typically batshit crazy press conferences, he stated: “When somebody’s the president of the United States, the authority is total. And that’s the way it’s got to be.”

This was a mere rephrasing of what he had said mere minutes earlier in challenging the authority of state governors: "The president of the United States calls the shots. [The governors] can't do anything without the approval of the president of the United States.

And that was a doubling down on a statement he made more than a year ago when he said, “Article II allows me to do whatever I want.”It’s not just that these are statements that would earn a high school American history student a failing grade on a test on presidential powers, it is that they are breathtaking and utterly un-American coming from the person elected to actually hold and exercise those powers.  They are not a gaffes or misstatements or “jokes” as those who try to dismiss Trump’s authoritarian leanings and affections maintain. They reveal a fundamental hostility of the intent and purpose of the United States through its Constitution. They reveal base ignorance of the balance of powers and vile contempt for our federalist form of government. An entire political party has emerged to fully support and enable this incipient authoritarianism, which indicates that this deficiency in basic Constitutional law goes beyond one person and has taken on epidemic proportions.  Allowing this to continue is tantamount to allowing airline pilots to fly without certification, doctors to operate without a license. It is a direct, deadly threat to our democracy, which requires an immediate Constitutional remedy. Resolved here in this post: No one should be allowed to hold elected federal office who cannot pass a bare minimum Constitutional IQ test...sample:1. The US system of government is best described asa.  strongman ruleb. balance of powersc. laissez faire  2. The best description of the relationship between the three branches of government isa. survival of the fittestb. might makes rightc. checks and balances3. Article 1 of the Constitution gives the Congress the right toa. tax and spendb. declare war c. all of the above4. Article II of the Constitutiona. gives the president total control over the governmentb. limited control over the governmentc. shared control over the government5. The judiciary isa. equal to the legislative and executive branchesb. superior to the legislative, but inferior to the executivec. inferior to both the legislative and executive branches6. The 10th Amendment of the Constitutiona. allows the states powers not specifically prohibited elsewhere in the Constitutionb. enshrines the right of states to go their own way whenever they disagree with a federal lawc. gives any state the right to overrule the Bill of Rights for any of its citizensThere. You get the idea. I can’t do all the heavy lifting here. But someone should. Someone in Congress should rather immediately introduce legislation that creates such a test, even with all the other necessary emergency actions in the queue because of the pandemic. The legislation should require that anyone seeking federal office first have to take the test. A failing grade should be established, which could prevent anyone for running for such office until he or she passes the test. Barring that, anyone can still run regardless of a passing or failing grade, but in every circumstance all test grades should then become a matter of public record at the time a candidate officially declares for an office.The politics of this are easy. Voters want more accountability from their elected officials. Many would love to impose term limits; many would love to make them pay for their own health care; many would love to cut their pay. Making them all take this test would satisfy some of the electorate’s seething sense of outrage at Congress’s wanton irresponsibility.More importantly--and more to the point—this public servant qualification test would advance our essential sense of civic duty by forcing those running for office to demonstrate at least a rudimentary grasp of the Constitution they hope to serve…and proclaim to honor. 

Housekeeping Note:I have opened a Nobby Works dedicated page on Facebook in order to resolve ongoing issues with Google's comment function for this blog. Google seems so busy taking over the world that it has no time to address a simple problem that effects all the bloggers who use its platform. I hope that the new Facebook page provides an easy commenting option for those who've been frustrated in the past by an inability to share feedback. It's been frustrating on my end as well. I know this contradicts the recent blog post where I announced I was quitting Facebook. I have in fact deleted my personal page and will run this new one strictly as an adjunct to the blog. (Besides, as a humanist, I long ago learned to embrace my contradictions.) So if you have something to say about this or any future posts I reluctantly invite you to follow this link to Facebook and leave your comments there (and "like" the page while you're at it!). Hopefully a dialog will ensue. And now a word from our Corporate Overlords:  Now Playing Black Panther