Dan Riley's Blog, page 9

Groundhog Days, 2019

Day 1They say we're young and we don't knowWe won't find out until we growWell I don't know if all that's true'Cause you got me, and baby I got youBabeI got you babeI got you babe
The song awoke me for the day. I shaved and dressed as Rush Limbaugh came on the radio bellowing, “Rise and shine! It’s m-m-m-morning in America. Booyah!” On the first landing of the B 'n B someone covered under a hoodie rushed by me, screaming, “Make it stop! Make it stop!” When I got to the community dining room the Old Grey Lady who ran the place wanly showed off her morning selection of day old donuts while muttering to herself, “I read the news today, oh boy.” I took a jelly and a coffee-to-go and started to make my way across town to the park. On Main Street I ran into a crowd in panic heading in the opposite direction. I yelled, “What’s going on?”“A mass shooting at the senior center!” someone replied.    I shrugged and moved on. As I was about to cross the street to the park, Nancy Pelosi approached, trying to sell me House Majority Insurance. I smiled ruefully, then stepped over the curb and fell into a deep, muddy ditch. Behind me I heard Nancy laughing, “Watch that first step. It's a doozy!” I finally pulled myself together and made my way to the park where I was greeted by Nicolle Wallace and some of her favorite reporters and friends. She asked me if I was ready for this. I said I was born for this. We passed the cages of Guatemalan children that lined the path to the park. When we arrived at the reviewing stand, Mitch McConnell lifted a big, ugly rodent out of his black satchel and held it up for the world to see. The rodent bared its ratty teeth and started to lie, steal, bully, collude and cheat and then jumped out of Mitch's arms to run through the crowd sniffing the pussies of every women assembled. Against the unified horror, McConnell lifted the rodent again and held it directly over his head, and it took a 7-day dump on his face that darkened the sky, befouled the air and portended 10 more years of cold, damp winter.

I collapsed on a park bench in despair. A sweet, innocent young girl came by and asked me to sign a petition to put an end to it all. I rallied enough strength and courage to sign.  And now I’m waiting.     
Day 2They say we're young and we don't knowWe won't find out until we growWell I don't know if all that's true'Cause you got me, and baby I got youBabeI got you babeI got you babe

The song awoke me for the day. I shaved and dressed as Rush Limbaugh came on the radio bellowing, “Rise and shine! It’s m-m-m-morning in America. Booyah!” On the first landing of the B 'n B someone covered under a hoodie rushed by me, screaming, “Make it stop! Make it stop!” When I got to the community dining room the old grey lady who ran the place wanly showed off her morning selection of day old donuts while muttering to herself, “I read the news today, oh boy.” I took a jelly and a coffee-to-go and started to make my way across town to the park. On Main Street I ran into a crowd in panic heading in the opposite direction. I yelled, “What’s going on?”“A mass shooting at the senior center!” someone replied.   I shrugged and moved on. As I was about to cross the street to the park, Nancy Pelosi approached, trying to sell me House Majority Insurance. I smiled ruefully, then stepped over the curb and fell into a deep, muddy ditch. Behind me I heard Nancy laughing, “Watch that first step. It's a doozy!” I finally pulled myself together and made my way to the park where I was greeted by Nicolle Wallace and some of her favorite reporters and friends. She asked me if I was ready for this. I said I was born for this. We passed the cages of Guatemalan children that lined the path to the park. When we arrived at the reviewing stand, Mitch McConnell lifted a big, ugly rodent out of his black satchel and held it up for the world to see. The rodent bared its ratty teeth and started to lie, steal, bully, and cheat and then jumped out of Mitch's arms to run through the crowd sniffing the pussies of every women assembled. Against the unified horror, McConnell lifted the rodent again and held it directly over his head and it took a 7-day dump that darkened the sky, befouled the air and portended 10 more years of cold, damp winter.

I collapsed on a park bench in despair. A sweet, innocent young girl came by and asked me to sign a petition to put an end to it all. I rallied enough strength and courage to sign.  And now I’m waiting. 
Day 3They say we're young and we don't knowWe won't find out until we growWell I don't know if all that's true'Cause you got me, and baby I got youBabeI got you babeI got you babe

The song awoke me for the day. I shaved and dressed as Rush Limbaugh came on the radio bellowing, “Rise and shine! It’s m-m-m-morning in America. Booyah!” On the first landing of the B 'n B someone covered under a hoodie rushed by me, screaming, “Make it stop! Make it stop!” When I got to the community dining room the old grey lady who ran the place wanly showed off her morning selection of day old donuts while muttering to herself, “I read the news today, oh boy.” I took a jelly and a coffee-to-go and started to make my way across town to the park. On Main Street I ran into a crowd in panic heading in the opposite direction. I yelled, “What’s going on?”“A mass shooting at the senior center!” someone replied.   I shrugged and moved on. As I was about to cross the street to the park, Nancy Pelosi approached, trying to sell me House Majority Insurance. I smiled ruefully, then stepped over the curb and fell into a deep, muddy ditch. Behind me I heard Nancy laughing, “Watch that first step. It's a doozy!” I finally pulled myself together and made my way to the park where I was greeted by Nicolle Wallace and some of her favorite reporters and friends. She asked me if I was ready for this. I said I was born for this. We passed the cages of Guatemalan children that lined the path to the park. When we arrived at the reviewing stand, Mitch McConnell lifted a big, ugly rodent out of his black satchel and held it up for the world to see. The rodent bared its ratty teeth and started to lie, steal, bully, and cheat and then jumped out of Mitch's arms to run through the crowd sniffing the pussies of every women assembled. Against the unified horror, McConnell lifted the rodent again and held it directly over his head and it took a 7-day dump that darkened the sky, befouled the air and portended 10 more years of cold, damp winter.

I collapsed on a park bench in despair. A sweet, innocent young girl came by and asked me to sign a petition to put an end to it all. I rallied enough strength and courage to sign.  And now I’m waiting. 
Day 4They say we're young and we don't knowWe won't find out until we growWell I don't know if all that's true'Cause you got me, and baby I got youBabeI got you babeI got you babe

The song awoke me for the day. I shaved and dressed as Rush Limbaugh came on the radio bellowing, “Rise and shine! It’s m-m-m-morning in America. Booyah!” On the first landing of the B 'n B someone covered under a hoodie rushed by me, screaming, “Make it stop! Make it stop!” When I got to the community dining room the old grey lady who ran the place wanly showed off her morning selection of day old donuts while muttering to herself, “I read the news today, oh boy.” I took a jelly and a coffee-to-go and started to make my way across town to the park. On Main Street I ran into a crowd in panic heading in the opposite direction. I yelled, “What’s going on?”“A mass shooting at the senior center!” someone replied.   I shrugged and moved on. As I was about to cross the street to the park, Nancy Pelosi approached, trying to sell me House Majority Insurance. I smiled ruefully, then stepped over the curb and fell into a deep, muddy ditch. Behind me I heard Nancy laughing, “Watch that first step. It's a doozy!” I finally pulled myself together and made my way to the park where I was greeted by Nicolle Wallace and some of her favorite reporters and friends. She asked me if I was ready for this. I said I was born for this. We passed the cages of Guatemalan children that lined the path to the park. When we arrived at the reviewing stand, Mitch McConnell lifted a big, ugly rodent out of his black satchel and held it up for the world to see. The rodent bared its ratty teeth and started to lie, steal, bully, and cheat and then jumped out of Mitch's arms to run through the crowd sniffing the pussies of every women assembled. Against the unified horror, McConnell lifted the rodent again and held it directly over his head and it took a 7-day dump that darkened the sky, befouled the air and portended 10 more years of cold, damp winter.

I collapsed on a park bench in despair. A sweet, innocent young girl came by and asked me to sign a petition to put an end to it all. I rallied enough strength and courage to sign.  And now I’m waiting. 
Day 5They say we're young and we don't knowWe won't find out until we growWell I don't know if all that's true'Cause you got me, and baby I got youBabeI got you babeI got you babe

The song awoke me for the day. I shaved and dressed as Rush Limbaugh came on the radio bellowing, “Rise and shine! It’s m-m-m-morning in America. Booyah!” On the first landing of the B 'n B someone covered under a hoodie rushed by me, screaming, “Make it stop! Make it stop!” When I got to the community dining room the old grey lady who ran the place wanly showed off her morning selection of day old donuts while muttering to herself, “I read the news today, oh boy.” I took a jelly and a coffee-to-go and started to make my way across town to the park. On Main Street I ran into a crowd in panic heading in the opposite direction. I yelled, “What’s going on?”“A mass shooting at the senior center!” someone replied.   I shrugged and moved on. As I was about to cross the street to the park, Nancy Pelosi approached, trying to sell me House Majority Insurance. I smiled ruefully, then stepped over the curb and fell into a deep, muddy ditch. Behind me I heard Nancy laughing, “Watch that first step. It's a doozy!” I finally pulled myself together and made my way to the park where I was greeted by Nicolle Wallace and some of her favorite reporters and friends. She asked me if I was ready for this. I said I was born for this. We passed the cages of Guatemalan children that lined the path to the park. When we arrived at the reviewing stand, Mitch McConnell lifted a big, ugly rodent out of his black satchel and held it up for the world to see. The rodent bared its ratty teeth and started to lie, steal, bully, and cheat and then jumped out of Mitch's arms to run through the crowd sniffing the pussies of every women assembled. Against the unified horror, McConnell lifted the rodent again and held it directly over his head and it took a 7-day dump that darkened the sky, befouled the air and portended 10 more years of cold, damp winter.

I collapsed on a park bench in despair. A sweet, innocent young girl came by and asked me to sign a petition to put an end to it all. I rallied enough strength and courage to sign.  And now I’m waiting. Day Infinity!

Jets & Sharks vs. My Fair Lady

It’s been one of the great ongoing debates of my life—best movie musical of all time: My Fair Lady or West Side Story. I found it stirred up again recently when our local community theater mounted its production of West Side Story under California moonlight. (This might sound like a set up for Waiting for Guffman jokes with, say, a 40-year old former high school drama queen playing Maria and maybe a young timid town priest playing Tony, but our local theater draws on national talent and its reach rarely fails its grasp.) This was the first time I ever saw a live performance of West Side Story…and stripped of the Hollywood glamour one could appreciate how well the story and music stand up on their own. It’s so fail safe even the Blaine, Missouri, players might pull off a respectable production. Same goes for My Fair Lady which Vista's Moonlight Theater did about four years ago. Again, it was my first experience with that show live. And though the production itself was up to the high standards of our local theater company, what struck me that night was the hissing from females in the audience when Henry Higgins sang his Hymn to Him: 

One man in a million may shout a bit.Now and then there's one with slight defects;One, perhaps, whose truthfulness you doubt a bit.But by and large we are a marvelous sex!Why can't a woman take after man?
#MeToo comes to community theater and kicks irony out of the box seats. That incident was a reminder that nothing…even something from the past… happens in a political/social vacuum, especially these days. I, of course, of all people don’t have a problem with that. I’m all for debating, deriving, deconstructing whatever larger messages we can out of popular entertainment. We can compare musical scores, choreography, acting and directing choices, but over the long term it’s the story and its meanings to us the audience that matters most. This is especially true with My Fair Lady and West Side Story, both of which have deep roots in ancient literary history. My Fair Lady can be traced back to the Greek myth of Pygmalion, which appeared in numerous burlesque versions until George Bernard Shaw famously turned it into a play in 1913. West Side Story goes back to the classic Roman poet Ovid’s Pyramus and Thisbe, which Shakespeare later turned into Romeo and Juliet. These eons old origins should serve as a caution before we try to shoehorn these stories into our current political discourse. Is My Fair Lady really about man’s disregard and oppression of women, or about man’s arrogance and futility in trying to make women over in his own image? Is West Side Story really about racism if originally Pyramus and Thisbe and later the Capulets and Montagues were, respectively, of the same race…and privileged?  

Modern interpreters and audiences are welcome to bring whatever experiences and viewpoints they wish to entertainment. I remember watching my beloved Il Postino in a movie theater when the guy behind me stood up and yelled “Fucking communist!” at the screen and marched out, pulling his date behind him. I could no more countenance a confrontation with that guy than I could with the women who hissed Henry Higgins. If, on the other hand, either sat behind me chattering on about where to eat after the show they’d probably elicit at least a dirty look from me. But a visceral response to art? That’s what art’s for as far as I’m concerned.  
I have my own, more reasoned, less visceral responses to both My Fair Lady and West Side Story. It seems that in the larger scheme of things they both touch on the most sensitive nerves in the cultures that created them…or rather re-created them. My Fair Lady takes on the British obsession…and weakness…class-consciousness. West Side Story takes on the US obsession…and the bane of our existence…ethnic prejudice. 
The night we watched West Side Story live yet another hurricane was barreling down on Puerto Rico, which gave this verse in America coincidental resonance:Puerto Rico, You ugly island,Island of tropic diseases.Always the hurricanes blowing,Always the population growing,


But other verses provided deeper resonance: Immigrants goes to America.Many hellos in America.Nobody knows in American,Puerto Rico's in America!


And some verses could have inspired hissing motivated by political correctness:I like to be in America!O.K. by me in America!Everything free in AmericaFor a small fee in America!I like the city of San Juan.I know a boat you can get on.Hundreds of flowers in full bloom.Hundreds of people in each room!


West Side Story caught the eye of the PC police even before they were formed into a fully functioning enforcement arm of the culture. That was over the casting of Natalie Wood, who was born Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko, the child of Russian immigrants, to play Maria, a Puerto Rican immigrant. While I find the casting of Wood as Maria and Richard Beymer as Tony to be the weakest links in the film, I can’t find offense in the role being given to Wood rather than an actress of actual Puerto Rican descent. If I did, I’d be no better than the fanboys who lose their Cheetos over the casting of black super heroes or female Bonds. A double dose of irony here of course is that in Shakespeare’s day, Juliet/Maria would’ve been played by a male. Sometimes people forget what acting, theater, and fiction are all about. If casting according to DNA were a thing, the Russian Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko would’ve been cast as Lara in Doctor Zhivago and the lustrous Julie Christie would’ve been limited to playing Brit birds. 
And it’s not just ethnicity, race and gender that can muck things up. My Fair Lady also aroused controversy by casting Audrey Hepburn in the role of Eliza Doolittle rather than Julie Andrews, who had created the role on Broadway. Legend has it that Hollywood punished Hepburn for that and for not actually singing her songs by giving the Best Actress Oscar that year to Julie Andrews for her role as Mary Poppins. Well, of course, dinging Hepburn for not singing her songs would be like dinging Russell Crowe for not actually killing those tigers in Gladiator. Plus, who on earth could ever think of punishing Audrey Hepburn for anything???  
Coincidently TCM has recently run re-mastered, High Def versions of both films, with colors so vibrant and crisp it's really better watching them now at home on my big, flat TV screen than it ever was in a movie theater. More over this has given me a golden opportunity to carry on this debate with myself as to which is the better of the two with all the advantages of remote controlled viewing. I can compare scenes back-to-back, run them fast forward, rewind, slo-mo, pause. And since they’re both in my DVR queue, I’m determined to watch them both over and over again until I can finally settle on which one’s better…or die trying. 
And now a word from our sponsor.

Bermuda Honeymoon

Even though Lorna and I had five jobs between us heading into our wedding day of September 7, 1968, it was still going to be a modest honeymoon for us. We would take my red VW convertible to St. Judith to catch the ferry for Block Island (RI) and then tool around that tiny island for a few days. However at the rehearsal dinner the night before the wedding old pals John Douglas and Mike Blowen presented us with an envelope. Lorna and I, seated at the head table with the whole world watching, opened the envelope together to our utter aghastment. John and Michael had enlisted the help of family and friends to purchase two tickets to Bermuda for us. At that time there were two main destinations for American newlyweds…Niagara Falls and Bermuda. Niagara Falls was the more romantic; Bermuda, being on foreign land, the more exotic. Less than 24 hours after pronouncing our “I do’s”, Lorna and I were airborne for Bermuda. At age 22, I had still not lost my plane ride virginity and needed a couple of in-flight cocktails to settle into it. We landed in Bermuda with nothing more than the clothes we had planned for a few days on Block Island and about $350 in cash we’d retrieved from wedding cards--no reservations…not even an idea of where to make a reservation. We immediately went to the airport information desk where we shocked the tour guide there. “You came to Bermuda without a reservation?” she laughed. She told us the hotels were booked, but she knew of a private home where the owner rented out a spare room. She called and confirmed and sent us off in a taxi to find the place. It was clean and pleasant, though over the time of our stay we ran into a number of oversized bugs. It also seemed like a real bargain: $7 a night. So fiscally responsible guy that I am…even at that young and reckless age...I took $49 out of our wedding stash and hid it away in the room until our departure. That left us with the rest of our wedding bounty for play. We rented scooters for the week and ate out for every meal. Back in Hartford, our dining was confined to student hang outs…the Chicken Coop for fried chicken, the Farmington Shop for burgers and sundaes, and Phillips Colony for pizza where I once found a dead fly on my pizza and the manager was good enough to only charge me for the half I had already eaten. As students we viewed tipping as optional…meaning it was non-existent. But in Bermuda with hot new found money in my pockets I suddenly became Diamond Jim Brady and started leaving tips everywhere. Which was fine until it came time to leave, and the landlady clarified that the rent was $7 a night…EACH! So $98 total, which sent our going-home budget spiraling down deep into the Bermuda Triangle. Part went for the cab ride back to the airport; part went for the cab ride from JFK to Penn Central; part went for the train ride from New York to Westport, Connecticut. The part that was left was  $1.50 to get us from the Westport train station to Lorna’s home, which was empty because her mom and dad were out sailing, meaning there was no one home to call and rescue us (yes, I know…First World problems, blah…blah…blah). So we took the most anxiety ridden cab ride of our lives as we watched the meter tick up toward a buck fifty. When we arrived at Lorna's family home, I had a true Cinderella experience. My bibbedy-bobbedy-boo Diamond Jim Brady persona had lost its glass slipper, and suddenly I was a struggling grad student again having to explain to our cab driver why no tip for him.Alas.That’s it for the drama and finances of our Bermuda honeymoon. For the romance of it you have to watch the 2-and-half-minute video below.
Happy anniversary, Lorna...

When Seduction is a Dirty Word

On the small Italian island of Ischia 15-year old Elena Greco becomes reacquainted with Donato Sarratore, whose adulterous behavior with an unstable woman led to his family's exit from their Neapolitan town. Sarratore's family, including Elena's classmate Nino, have come to a small cottage to vacation where Elena has found summer employment as a housekeeper. While her infatuation with Nino is rekindled, she newly discovers Donato, who has turned his notorious behavior into a book of poems and writes travel pieces for local papers. Because she herself aspires to be a writer she is both charmed and awed by Donato...until the 5-minute scene below transpires. I commend the bulk of time my readers may give to this blog to viewing the video clip from HBO's recent series, My Brilliant Friend, based on Elena Ferrante's novel. I'm not sure I've ever seen a better dramatic depiction of the dynamic between an innocent young girl and a lecherous older man. Nor do I think we in America approach the subject in all its complexity as well as our more worldly European cousins do. Finally, in this week when Jeffery's Epstein's victims gave personal testimony to the trauma they experienced at his will, an intimate dramatic recreation can help fully take the measure of the outrage. 

States of Mind

Through the first two episodes of Ava DuVemay's quite disturbing retelling of the Central Park Five, When They See Us, I kept thinking what a much more comfortable story it would be for my East Coast sensibilities if the story took place in Texas rather than New York. By the series' end I realized New York and Texas had a lot more in common than stereotyping would normally allow, so I made this chart below to remind myself of that. 
New YorkTexasEmpire StateLone Star StateIf you can make it here, you can make it anywhereDon’t mess with TexasAl D’AmatoTed CruzStop & friskOpen CarrySon of SamCharles WhitmanBernard GoetzPatrick CrusiusPizzaChiliNever forget 9/11Remember the AlamoRatsRattlesnakesNew JerseyMexicoNew York YankeesDallas CowboysDonald TrumpGeorge W. BushBroadwayRodeosCentral Park FiveDeath RowToo Many SheepleToo Many Sheeple
I wish I had more to offer than a glib, superficial reaction to When They See Us, but every time I attempted to write something more substantial and reflective, I was overwhelmed by so many troubling details that contributed to making this one of the most controversial criminal cases in America for three decades. In the end, I decided to simply link to two of the most comprehensive and revealing articles I read on the Central Park Five...one is fairly soft on the prosecution of five black teenagers for the rape of a white jogger and the other does a nice job of contextualizing the case. Here's a rundown of just a few of the things I learned about the case from reading both: Liberal icon Pete Hamill writing in the New York Post as well as the two most prominent African American newspapers in New York accepted the NYPD's view of the case and helped contribute to the city's hysteria about "wilding" youth.The head of the Manhattan DA's sex crimes unit Linda Fairstein, who is portrayed in When They See Us with Cruella DeVille wickedness, has had a fairly reputable career as a crusader for sexually abused women...up to her recent advocacy for Christine Blassy Ford against Brett Kavanugh. She was even under consideration by Bill Clinton as his Attorney General, but was undone by Elizabeth Lederer, her nemesis in the Manhattan DA's office and the one who was ultimately brought in to right the wrongs of the Central Park Five case. One of the cops alleged to have coerced false confessions from the boys faced numerous lawsuits from other people he had helped wrongly incarcerate.On the night of the rape of the white jogger in Central Park, a black woman in the black Bedford-Stuyvesant area of New York, was attacked at knifepoint by two men who took her up to a rooftop, raped her and tossed her over the side. It was an incident that caused hardly a blip in the news while the Central Park Five case became a national sensation. It was the mishandling...almost indifference...to DNA that contributed greatly to the NYPD's fixation on the five boys while overlooking the logical and eventual guilty party. This would be a few short years before a Los Angeles jury would ignore DNA evidence to convict O.J. Simpson of a double homicide. 
Yesterday was the anniversary of the executions of Sacco and Venzetti...as I've said before injustice is color blind.  

Last Judgments

The Last Judgment...ain't gonna happen, unless we make it happen here and now
(Painting by Stephan Lochner)
One of the most comforting aspects of my Catholic youth was the idea that one day there was going to be a great accounting. In the Hereafter the Lord, sitteth on his throne, was going direct all the bad people to His left for eternal damnation and all the good to his right for the eternal last laugh. This promise of ultimate justice is a thing that is too often lost on those who are not religious, are anti-religious, or whose view of religion is limited to the crackpot fundamentalism that dominates our news and entertainment. But that promise has been one of religion’s most compelling features at least since Jesus. He really was a revolutionary in prophesying that the meek would inherit the earth (all available evidence to the contrary) and proclaiming that in his heaven the poor and downtrodden would be on an equal footing with the rich and powerful…unlike the Elysium Fields once reserved for the elite of Ancient Greece. That promise pretty clearly played an enormous role in drawing the peasantry of Europe, the peons of Latin America, and the slaves of America into the arms of the Christian Church. However much the various church hierarchies over the centuries may have perverted and exploited it, faith in Judgment Day is key to understanding religious adherence. It surely was for me growing up surrounded and confronted by bullies and keenly aware of injustice. As a result I can readily empathize with those who cling to a religious belief in the ultimate settling of scores when they find themselves up against overwhelming malignant forces who often seem to be getting away with their crimes. After all, short of abject surrender to cynicism or despair or violent, likely doomed revolution there aren’t many alternatives. Empathy, however, is all I have left from my religious upbringing because I no longer believe that there will be a grand righting of wrongs in the Great Beyond. If it doesn’t happen here, I now firmly believe, it doesn’t happen anywhere...which is why I twice experienced very guilty pleasure this week.The first was upon hearing of the death of accused pedophile and child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein by alleged suicide. Whether it was actually suicide, or greatly assisted suicide, or outright homicide was of little matter to me--although it should be of far greater concern to Attorney General William Barr, who was (ho-ho) in charge when Epstein’s politically convenient demise came about, and who seems to be constantly jumping up and down for God’s attention: “Pick me! Pick me for eternal damnation. Please, pick me!”. I know there is legitimate concern for justice for the brave but abused young women who came forward to bear witness against Epstein. But if they had gotten their day in court, we pretty much know how that would’ve gone…months of enduring Epstein’s smirking mug on the nightly news; months of further abuse of these young women as their sex lives, morals and wardrobes were subject to cross examination by high-priced (Harvard?) lawyers and journalists in hot pursuit of “both sides”; and ultimately judgment being handed off to a judge or jury whose sense of right and wrong is predetermined by where they live, how they get their news, and who they voted for. Better a dead Epstein, I say, than Epstein in some Federal prison for the rest of his life, yukking it up with El Chapo while waiting for his inevitable 60 Minutes jailhouse interview.   My other pang of delicious guilt came while watching a Netflix series on the Roman Empire, chronicling the reign of Commodus. For pop culture reference Commodus was the emperor who was the nemesis of the Russell Crowe character in the Ridley Scott epic, The Gladiator. In the film Commodus was played by Joaquin Phoenix, who was much closer in physical appearance to the actual Commodus than the Bay Watch-like actor cast for the Netflix series. Yet in style and content of character, they both conveyed Commodus as history has come to know him…a vain, petty, reckless megalomaniac. He put his name and likeness all over Rome, including changing the name of Rome itself to Colonia Lucia Annia Commodiana. He used his 12 names* to rename the months of the Roman calendar. He replaced the head of one his predecessors on a statue outside the Colosseum with his own and added the inscription: "the only left-handed fighter to conquer twelve times one thousand men". And inside the Colosseum he fired up his cult followers and dismayed the sober and elite by playing at gladiator. He routinely defeated those who merely succumbed to his position as emperor and clubbed to death the sick and disabled who were gathered up and dumped before him to die at his pleasure. If, like me, that portrait of Commodus reminds you of any contemporary figure, you can appreciate the grim satisfaction I felt when those closest to Commodus could take no more  of his unhinged narcissism and plotted his assassination. History says he was strangled in his bathtub by a man named (Irony Alert!) Narcissus, who had mentored his gladiator ambitions. For the sake of drama, no doubt, the Netflix series allows Commodus to die in hand-to-hand combat with Narcissus. In either case, watching a bad man pay the price for his badness in the temporal world…even temporal antiquity…does far more to affirm the idea of universal justice than deferring the human hunger for justice until some imaginary Judgment Day. 

Lasting image of Mussolini and his mistress. Tastefulness aside,
there is something edifying and satisfying in seeing
bad people come to well-deserved ends. 

* Lucius, Aelius, Aurelius, Commodus, Augustus, Herculeus, Romanus, Exsuperatorius, Amazonius, Invictus, Felix, and Pius

Jokes and Prayers

A victim of the El Paso massacre arrives at the great border crossing in the sky where he's greeted by God.

"Señor, por favor," says the victim, "I've got a mass killing joke for you." And he proceeds to tell God the joke.

God listens glumly and then says, "That's not funny."

The man with the bullet wound in his head shrugs his shoulders and says, "I guess you had to be there."

With apologies to Ricky Gervais who told it as a Holocaust joke during an episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, "Maybe China, Part 2"

Genetic Intolerance

One of the great misnomers of our time is to call Twitter “social” media. Twitter is, if anything, anti-social, dominated as it is by bile, belligerence, and bomb mots (aka snark). It is Wrestlemania for people who love a good rowdy crowd, dirty villains, and fake outcomes, but would never dream of putting on a pair of tights and leaving their computers to satisfy their hunger. I should not complain. I spend more time on Twitter than I should, and have reached the point where I can see the battles before they happen and can recognize the combatants and their weapons of choice before I even log on.Conflict is the nature of that beast, and any pretense at striving for understanding or establishing a community that doesn’t immediately conjure up images straight out of Thunderdome is a sick joke. I know this is just one anecdotal example, but I think it illustrates how bad it has gotten. Below is a screen shot of part of a Twitter thread I recently participated in: 
Note that it began with a gratuitously provocative comment about cilantro…by a rabbi no less. It came out of nowhere…a hand grenade tossed into a quietly sleeping village of cilantro eaters to spark conflict and anger. And so it did…all on display in the 278 comments that followed before I came along to try and invoke a little peace, love and understanding. I’m rather new to my understanding of the genetic predetermination of cilantro appreciation and wrote about it in an earlier blog post. So I don’t want to be too hard on the rabbi for not getting that his low opinion of cilantro was formed at birth…nor be too hard for his attackers for not getting that his declaration that “cilantro is gross” is akin to someone born with auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder declaring that Mozart is gross. The bigger issue here is how do we separate things that spring from our nature from things that arise out of our nurturing. This has long been a critical question in forming and managing human community. Things that arise out of nature have to be treated differently than things that are learned. Short of extreme and extraordinary intervention by science and medicine little can be done to change the former, but education and experience can radically change the latter. Surgery can fix a cleft lip; education can help an illiterate to read. Serious problems and infringements on human dignity ensue though when products of nature are treated as products of nurture…gay conversion therapy for a most notable example. A positive sign of human evolution and enlightenment is our growing understanding of genetically determined traits and behavior. The challenge before us is for education to keep up with spreading that knowledge. How, for instance, do we inform both cilantro haters and lovers to know that theirs is not a conscious choice?Unfortunately human history has shown that even the most obvious genetically determined traits have aroused eons of intolerance and abuse along the lines of gender, race, disability, and stature…short people, as Randy Newman once sardonically put it, have "no reason to live".  I once had friend, a rather successful actor who too frequently for his own pleasure got cast as a short guy…and not just a short guy, but a short guy whose shortness was often the object of derision in the script. He hated Short People and came to hate Randy Newman for writing it--this, despite the fact that the song is an attempt to “educate” people about not making fun of short people...or anyone else who was just "born that way". The redeeming, instructive verse goes:Short people are just the sameAs you and I(A fool such as I)All men are brothersUntil the day they die(It's a wonderful world)
That message was not enough for my actor friend…as our a lot of attempts to satirize bigotry and cruelty. And that’s mostly because we know that if one is inclined to promote bigotry and cruelty, one is unlikely to get satire. And if people are inclined to practice bigotry and cruelty, they're probably also dismissive of more sincere and earnest attempts to uplift their understanding of fellow humanity. So where does that leave us?Perhaps one day science will isolate the bigotry and cruelty gene, and medicine will devise a way to control or alter it. And when that day comes perhaps we’ll all have to be a little more understanding and sympathetic toward those who are literally born to be wild. Until that time, however, we can all make a better effort not to blame or belittle people because of the accidents of their birth…from the sublime (sex and skin color) to the ridiculous (their feelings about cilantro). 

By the way, that includes those born white and male. 

Variations on a Theme

The Last Judgment, a detail, Hieronymus Bosch



Below, the lyrics to Bob Dylan's song "Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" and an excerpt from Cormac McCarthy's novel, Blood Meridian.


The Blue Eyed Son
Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways
I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fallOh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin'
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin'
I saw a white ladder all covered with water
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fallAnd what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin'
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin'
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fallOh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?
I met a young child beside a dead pony
I met a white man who walked a black dog
I met a young woman whose body was burning
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow
I met one man who was wounded in love
I met another man who was wounded with hatred
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 fallOh, 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
The Kid
He traveled about from place to place.He didn’t avoid the company of other men.He was treated with a certain deference as one who had got on to terms with life beyond what his years could account for.By now he’d come upon a horse and a revolver,The rudiments of an outfit.He worked at different trades.He had a Bible that he’d found at the mining camp, and he carried this book with him no word of which could he read.In his dark and frugal clothes some took him for a preacher,But he was no witness to them neither of things at hand nor things to come,He least of any man.There were remote places for news that he travelled in,And in those uncertain times men toasted the ascension of rulers already deposedAnd hailed the coronation of kings murdered and in their graves Of such corporal histories even as these he bore no tidings.And although it was the custom in that wilderness to stop with any traveler and exchange the news, he seemed to travel with no news at all,As if the doings of the world were too slanderous for him to truck withOr perhaps too trivial.He saw men killed with guns and with knives and with ropes,And he saw women fought over to the death whose value they themselves set at $2.He saw ships from the land of China chained in the small harborsAnd bales of tea and silk and spices broken open with swordsBy small yellow men with speech like cats.On that lonely coast where the steep rocks cradled a dark and muddersome seaHe saw vultures at their soaring whose wingspans so dwarfed all lesser birds that the eagles shrieking underneath were more like terns or plovers.He saw piles of a gold a hat would scarcely have covered, wagered on the turn of a card and lost. And he saw bears and lions turned loose in pits to fight wild bulls to the death.And he was twice in the city of San Francisco and twice saw it burn and never went back,Riding out on horseback to the south where all night the shape of the city burned against the sky and burned again in the black waters of the sea where dolphins rolled through the flames, fire on the lake through the fall of the burning timbers and the cries of the lost 


And now this.

Sharing Bread

I have just struggled through Cormac McCarthy’s excruciating masterpiece, Blood Meridian, an epic meditation on Thomas Hobbes’s classic observation that the life of humankind in its natural state is “nasty, brutish, and short”. McCarthy’s main character, The Judge, a supreme being of enormous and frightening appetite for blood and war (indeed, he says, War is his God), declares at one point: “What brings men together is not the sharing of bread, but the sharing of enemies.”That dark view of human nature has been challenged philosophically at least since Jesus…and in recent years evolutionary science has produced evidence that actually sharing bread means more to us as a species than cynics, pessimists, and viewers of Fox News might ever imagine. Tribalism may be our default position, but human history has frequently shown that despite vicious, repetitious outbreaks of tribal warfare, there are plentiful examples of humans reaching hands across the water to help others. There are more than enough positive acts of global compassion and cooperation to support a more optimistic view of our kind…which really goes to the heart of what Hobbes was saying. The context from which we draw Hobbes’s nasty, brutish, and short description was his opinion of what human existence would be like without political community, to wit:

In such condition, there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

We have abundant evidence that Hobbes knew what he was talking about. As human societies have become more law abiding and civil, we have seen an actual decrease in our intra-species violence. In his massive chronicle of our species, Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari  reports that the 70 years since the end of World War II have created by a wide margin the most peaceful era in human history...headline grabbing incidents of terrorism, genocide, and garden-variety war notwithstanding. In the year 2000, he writes, wars caused the death of 310,000 and violent crime killed another 520,000, amounting to 1.5% of the 56 million who died that year. In a further data point (which may or may not be positive, depending upon where you fall on the glass half full/glass half empty spectrum), he reports that after the attacks of 9/11, one was more likely to die by one’s own suicidal hand than by that of a terrorist, soldier or drug dealer. Nonetheless, until a feel good movie about this precious piece of human progress is produced as a Netflix Original, people may find it hard to believe. We are so overwhelmed by the bad news that cascades down upon our weary heads each and every day. And so it goes...this is my fifth attempt to write this particular blog post. In the decade I’ve religiously been keeping this weekly blog, no subject has ever given me as much challenge as this one as I try to address the spectacle of fear and hate that unfolded before the nation in that Trump rally in North Carolina this past week. Trump declared open season on our better angels, which like birds on a wire quickly spread their wings and flew away to escape his brutishness. I could feel the shared weight of my own challenge as pundits and writers throughout the land also tried to confront the event that threatened to sink us deep beneath our hard acquired wisdom and grand national aspiration.
It’s been one of those weeks in our nation’s history for separating the wheat from the chaff…where people either put themselves on the side of forming a more perfect union…or on the side of those clinging to the long lost, discredited cause of a racist state built on the exploitation, exclusion, and expulsion of others. One who made a bold public pronouncement on where he stands was Max Boot, a lifelong Republican who had established his credentials on the national stage as a champion of the Iraq War…in other words he was an apostle of The Judge's War God. However, in an op-ed for The Washington Post this week, Boot wrote: 

Sorry, Republicans. There is nothing — nothing — more important in the United States than racism. Where you stand on that one issue defines who you are as a human being. Silence is complicity ... I am ashamed to have spent most of my life as a Republican. I have significant differences with Pressley, Tlaib, Ocasio-Cortez and Omar — perhaps even greater differences on the issues than I have with the president — but they are better Americans than Trump.

That's how you avoid becoming one of those “Good Germans” I condemned in a blog post a week ago when I warned against being too quick to reach for Nazi analogies in describing the current dreadful state of the union. Out of awe (in the worst sense of awe) of how historically monstrous The Third Reich was, I’ll stand by that warning. But no one who has ever seen newsreels, documentaries or Hollywood movies of Hitler’s rise can look at clips of that Trump rally and not see a coming attraction of a fascist state. What I found most harrowing about it was how easy it was to project people I know personally into that unhinged crowd of hate-mongers. But for proximity, they would’ve been there, gleefully united in the sharing of Trump’s enemies:
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and  Ayanna Pressley
These particular enemies are not only American citizens but representatives of American citizens…each of them elected by a majority popular vote in their districts without the help of hush money payoffs to porn stars, Russian interference, or the Electoral College (the US Constitution’s third nipple). If photography had been with us since the beginning of time, our archives would be filled with images similar to those from Trump’s “Send Her Back” rally: Pictures from the Roman Colosseum during the feeding of Christians to lions; pictures taken in 1478 at the Spanish Inquisition directed against Jews, Muslims and Protestants; snapshots from the Salem Witch Trials of 1692-93; high gloss photos taken in Nazi Germany in the 1930s; Polaroids from civil rights marches in the segregated American South of the 1960s; Kodachrome from the mean streets of Boston, Massachusetts in the 1970s. What makes that picture above of Trump’s enemies different is that it is distinctively of the here and now. It is a picture of four independent, newly empowered, self-actualized, freely elected women of color which could only have been taken during our time. It is not only a picture of their progress, but of ours. I end this arduous post by going against my own advice and returning briefly, once more to the Nazis:
I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage reborn.--Anne Frank, The Diary of Anne Frank
And there it is. I am reborn…at least for another week.