The Pervasive Influence of Judaism

I'm sometimes amazed at how pervasive Judaism is in our culture. For example, my oldest daughter told me that she had learned to cantor at Pony Club. I said, "That's nice, but weren't you supposed to be riding horses?"

Faculty Doctrinal Competency Test

I was once asked to review the contracts that a Catholic school had asked their teachers to sign. According to the contracts, practically the only grounds for disciplining teachers was failure to conform to Catholic doctrine in their teachings. So I made the following Doctrinal Competency Test:

FACULTY DOCTRINAL COMPETENCY TEST

1. In the boxes to the right of each name, indicate his status in the eyes of the Church by printing "G" (Good Guy) or "B" (Bad Guy):

Name

Athanasius _____

Arius _____

Diocletian _____

Galerius _____

Nestorius _____

Cyril _____


2. Giordano Bruno was:

a. A Dominican Friar
b. A Heretic
c. An early Copernican
d. Toast
e. All of the above

3. The Greek word parthenos can be translated as:

a. Young girl
b. Virgin or young girl
c. Virgin, and only virgin, and you’d better believe it if you want to go to heaven.

4. Who won the Filioque controversy? (Check one) Them ______ Us _______


5. When the Pope speaks ex cathedra, he is:

A. Defining a doctrine regarding faith or morals
B. Infallible
C. Prohibited from revealing the final scores of sporting events that have not been completed.
D. a and b
E. b and c
F. All of the above.

Holy Blood, Holy Grail, Holy Crap

This is a piece I read at an open microphone event tonight.

This is the first time I've tried anything quite like this on St. Croix, and I'll tell you, it's kind of frightening. When I was deciding whether or not to do this, I thought, “Am I willing to risk making an idiot of myself.” In response to that, I thought, “Sure, there's nothing unusual about that.” Then I thought, “Do I have the courage to go up in front of a group of people who I like and respect, who I consider my peers and members of the community to which I belong? A group of people whose opinions I value?” And I thought, “No way.” So I decided to try it out in front you guys instead.

I appeared on this very stage at a show very much like this sometime last year. On that occasion I decided to do something highbrow, so I read poems by William Butler Yeats. I read, Easter 1916, Byzantium, and Sailing to Byzantium. And I'd like to tell you that I got a great reception from the audience. I'd like to tell you that, but it would be a lie because my poetic renditions went over like the proverbial lead balloon. I'll tell you, I just died out here. For all of the audience reaction I got, I could have been reading aloud from the instructions on the back of a box of Cream of Wheat. So I thought long and hard about why I had bombed so badly and I realized that it was because I had ventured into territory that was unfamiliar to me. I'm not a poet, so I don't know poetry. This time I decided to stick with what I know. I'm a lawyer. So I got the names of every single person who sat in the audience at the last show and watched me die here on stage, and I'm going to sue every single one of the bastards. Don't laugh. If I don't get the reaction I want tonight, I'm going to sue your asses, too.

I'm not going to make the same mistake twice. There will be no poetry and no William Butler Yeats from me this evening. However, I really do love to read, and love to talk about books. And speaking of books, there's one recent book that seems to have become an American phenomenon, Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. Has anyone here read it? Did you enjoy it? Did you think it was worth reading? You did?

Well, then, that's pathetic. Obviously I will never bother to read a book that you recommend.

I slogged my way through The Da Vinci Code, partly because a number of my friends said things to me like, “Oh, you like history, so you’ll really love it.” “Love it” probably isn’t an accurate phrase. Having read it, and looking at it as objectively as possible, I think I can say without any exaggeration that it sucked worse than any book in the history of the world. I think books about the pathology of genital warts must be more entertaining. If Leonardo Da Vinci had known that his fame as a painter would have caused his name to be associated with this piece of literary garbage, he would have become an interior decorator instead.

Consider how it begins. At the beginning of the book, a giant psychotic albino with a piece of barbed wire tied around his thigh shoots the curator of the Louvre, who proceeds to write an incomprehensible message with his own blood before he kicks off. Right away I thought “We are not in the presence of Great Literature.” The shooting happens within a few pages. Lots of other things happen later, mostly for no apparent reason. The book has been praised as “fast moving,” which is absolutely true. It moves very fast, without pausing for a moment to make a lick of sense.

But H. L. Mencken once said that nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people, and nothing proves him right as much as this fact: The Da Vinci Code has been on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list for more than three years. In fact, even though it’s now out in a US paperback edition, it was still the bestselling hardcover book in the United States two weeks ago. This brings to mind another famous quote, from P. T. Barnum, who said, “There’s a sucker born every minute." And this year all of them own hardcover copies of The Da Vinci Code. I mean, wise up people. It’s an airport book at best. Buy the paperback instead of the hardback, save a few bucks, use it to get a copy of The London Times Literary Supplement, and bring some culture into your sorry lives.

If you’ve read the book, you know that it’s a mixture of wrongheaded historical speculation about the Medieval Order of The Knights Templar, Leonardo Da Vinci, The Holy Grail, Jesus, and Mary Magdalene. It’s become quite controversial because its themes go directly against the beliefs of more orthodox forms of Christianity, Roman Catholicism in particular. It’s so controversial that there is only one thing that real historians agree upon, which is that it’s a load of manure. Despite this, a lot of people think that it really is a profound book. These are the same kind of people who used to think that I Love Lucy was real. There’s no doubt in my mind that the author, Dan Brown, knows what a mass of historical horse pucky the book is. In fact I can see him being interviewed now:

Interviewer: Mr. Brown, is there any historical truth to the themes of your novel?

Brown: Of course not, it’s simply a work of fiction that…

Brown’s Publisher, Offstage: Dan, you’ve made the bestseller list because people think it’s real!

Brown: As I was saying, yes, I think my novel explores some important historical and religious truths that have been long suppressed by the Christian churches.

Last week The Da Vinci Code was number 2 on the hardcover bestseller list. But that’s not all. The list is swamped by what appear to be clones of Dan Brown’s book. Remember, The Da Vinci Code is about, among far too many other things, Leonardo Da Vinci, The Holy Grail, and the Knights Templar. The following books are also on the hardcover bestseller list last week:

THE SECRET SUPPER, by Javier Sierra. Clues in "The Last Supper" reveal Da Vinci's heretical beliefs.
THE TEMPLAR LEGACY, by Steve Berry. A former Justice Department operative becomes involved in a desperate search for the long-lost treasure and secrets of the medieval Knights Templar.
THE LAST TEMPLAR, by Raymond Khoury. A coding device stolen from an exhibit of Vatican artifacts may hold clues to the medieval Knights Templar's long-lost treasure — and their secrets.
LABYRINTH, by Kate Mosse. A woman on an archaeological dig in France stumbles on the 13th-century secret of the true Grail.

Soon will come the self-help books and the memoirs: The Knights Templar Guide to Really Great Sex, Cooking with the Holy Grail, The Last Supper Diet, and The Messiah and Me: a Memoir by Mary Magdalene.

It’s almost impossible to go a day without hearing some mention of Dan Brown’s book, unless you spend the day in an isolation chamber, or listening to my law partner Todd Newman tell stories about the trialthlons he’s done (which is kind of like spending the day in an isolation chamber). For the last several weeks the media has been saturated with stories about a trial going on in London. It seems that Dan Brown didn’t come up with all of the themes in his novel by himself. He used several different sources, which are cited in the book. One is a book called HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL, by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln. This is described as a book of “historical speculation,” a phrase which translates literally as “a crock of bullshit.” It advances the theory that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a child who traveled to France and became an ancestor of an early line of French kings. Holy Blood, Holy Grail. As Frank Romano would say in the television series Everybody Loves Raymond, “Holy Crap!”

The authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail have seen their obscure little book rise into the top ten of the New York Times paperback bestseller list after languishing in obscurity for two decades. To show their gratitude, Baigent and Leigh did what everybody does when their efforts assist another in achieving a notable success: they sued to try to get some of the money. The case, against Random House, which publishes both their book and Brown’s, was heard in London. It was a laugher from beginning to end. Baigent and Leigh were thrown out of court on their Holy butts, and now have to pay Random House’s legal bills, which ought to suck up all the money they’ve made because of the recent sales of their book. Maybe there is some justice after all.

And finally there’s the movie. It will feature Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon, the protagonist of the book. It’s rumored to be Hanks’ most significant role since his regular appearances in drag in the television series Bosom Buddies. As if all of the pre-movie publicity wasn’t enough, many members of the Catholic clergy have told their parishioners not to see and and, if their parishioners are like everybody else in the world, it’s now all the more likely that they will. There have also been protests from the organization Opus Dei. “Opus Dei” means “God’s work,” and it is a lay organization of Roman Catholics, kind of like a really weird Knights of Columbus. In the book it’s portrayed as a society of obsessively secretive and occasionally violent fanatics, not unlike the Republican Party in America today.

In conclusion, everything seems to be breaking Dan Brown’s way. He’s now become the Bill Gates of the Holy Grail. I don’t know what he did right but it must have been really good. But take my advice: read some Henry James, read some Joseph Conrad, read a comic book, but don’t waste your time reading The Da Vinci Code.

But in parting I can’t resist the urge to do something highbrow, so here it is, the most intellectual joke I know. You’ve all heard of the 17th century French philosopher Rene Descartes. Descartes best-known feat is his effort to intellectually prove the existence of something, anything, and used the fact of his own mental processes to prove the existence of himself, saying “Cogito, ergo, sum.” “I think, therefore I am.” “I think, therefore I am.’

So anyhow, Descartes goes into a restaurant and sits down. The waitress comes over to him and says, “Would you like to try the soup?” He ponders for a moment and says, “I think not.” And he disappears.

PAUSES

I knew it. That highbrow stuff never works.
Good evening everyone.
­

All of the People Some of the Time: Totally Miscellaneous Observations on the Reagan Years

With a certain amount of guilt and amazement, I make the following admission: I miss the Reagan Administration. The possibility of this never occurred to me during the actual years of Reagan's presidency, when he and his minions committed one alarming act after another. But, like the rest of the country, I have now endured eighteen years of his utterly colorless successors: Bush I, Bill Clinton, and (just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water), Bush II.

1. Ronald Reagan often talked about that there was a New Morning in America. Ronald Reagan gave America something to believe in, even if that something was, by and large, utterly false.

2. Reagan and his minions were frequent users of the tactic known as The Big Lie: if well-dressed people assert as true something that is demonstrably false, eventually the public will begin to believe that there is something to it. Otherwise, why would apparently rational people keep saying it?

3. An atheist out to prove the nonexistence of an all-good and all-powerful deity could simply use this argument: Ronald Reagan was never struck by lightning when he used the term "balanced budget." While publicly damning the tax and spend Democrats, Reagan rolled up the largest deficits in history, more than doubling the national debt. The sole nod toward a balanced budget made during his administration was the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act, an act of Congress mandating cuts to balance the budget. The Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act is believed to be the only Federal law ever effectively repealed as a result of everyone just pretending that it wasn't there.

4. That Reagan's second term ended on such downbeat notes is as a result of a simple set of facts. Reagan was the diametric opposite of Jimmy Carter. Carter was a man of rare intelligence and moral fortitude whose cabinet consisted largely of people whose talents would have been better utilized in the role of cast members for the television program Hee Haw. Reagan had none of Carter's gifts, but came to power backed by a group who even I must confess consisted of One Smart Bunch of Guys. By Reagan's second term, the Smart Bunch of Guys had largely left his service for the greener pastures of illegal lobbying, their last gestures of loyalty to their revered chief being a series of unflattering Tell-All books. In Reagan's second term, his advisors were on an intellectual par with the Twenty Mule Team featured along with Reagan in Borax commercials on the 1960's television program Death Valley Days. Chief among this group was the redoubtable Ed Meese. Meese's ascension to office embodies the notion of Lowering the Bar; he became chief law enforcement official of the United States of America by virtue of the fact that several grand juries and special counsel never actually got around to indicting him. As Attorney General, Meese sparked widespread debate among legal scholars with his assertion that the Attorney General's interpretations of Federal law were somehow coextensive with those of the Supreme Court of the United States. The debate centered around a single issue: was Meese's assertion the stupidest thing ever said by someone serving in the Presidential cabinet, or could there have been others? The debate was quickly resolved in favor of Meese.

5. The Iran-Contra affair showed the Reagan Administration at is most basic level: unconcerned both with the rule of law and the existence of facts. Reagan told the American public, "I know in my heart that we did not trade arms for hostages." Yet Iranians got arms, and Iranian-backed paramilitary groups released hostages thereafter. Try this for a thought experiment. Go to McDonald's. Order a Big Mac. Give the person behind the counter U. S. currency equaling the purchase price of the Big Mac. Now eat the Big Mac, telling yourself all the while, "I know in my heart that I did not exchange money for the Big Mac." Convinced? It's the Big Lie at work, albeit unconvincingly, once again.

6. Reagan's mantra for deregulation was Unleashing the Genius of the American people. The genius of the American people, once unleashed, appears to have turned primarily to the looting of S&L's.

Profiles in Cowardice

This is an article I published in my local newspaper a few years ago.

Profiles in Cowardice

In 1957, Senator John F. Kennedy published Profiles in Courage, a book containing eight accounts of outstanding acts of bravery by elected officials. It won a Pulitzer Prize. A sequel, edited by Caroline Kennedy, is twelfth on the New York Times Bestseller List as of this writing. Each of the vignettes in these books describes one of those comparatively rare moments when a politician transcends politics and self-interest, and makes a difficult choice on the sole ground that it is the right thing to do.

Such displays of courage are rare at the best of times, and from my own observation, they are not becoming any more frequent. While it is altogether fitting to recognize them, I propose to give a moment in the sun to one of their opposite number; a moment of craven, tail-between-the-legs political and moral cowardice. In that spirit, submitted for your consideration are the Elian Gonzalez Senate Hearings and Senator Trent Lott.

In the early morning of Saturday, April 22, 2000, armed agents of the United States Department of Justice entered the Miami home of Lazaro Gonzalez and took his nephew Elian into custody. They did this for two reasons. First, Lazaro Gonzalez, in order to become Elian’s temporary guardian, had signed a document pledging that he would surrender Elian whenever and wherever the Immigration and Naturalization Service directed. The INS directed him to surrender Elian, and he refused. The second reason was that Elian’s father Miguel had come to the United States and wanted his son back. Two months later, Elian and his father flew back to Cuba together.

When the raid was over, all of the real people had done essentially all of the real things that would be done to reunite Elian and his father. At that point the stage was set for the entrance of the politicians.

Trent Lott, then Senate Majority Leader, immediately announced that Senate hearings would be convened within a week’s time. "We have a responsibility to ... try to find the truth because there are a lot of questions out there," said Lott, a Mississippi Republican. "I just wish I knew the truth." Senator Connie Mack a Republican from, not surprisingly, Florida said, “"Are we going to settle a legal dispute at the point of a gun? I think the question is so fundamental that it would be a dereliction of duty not to conduct an investigation." Lott ordered Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, then chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, to schedule hearings. With Truth and Duty at stake, there seemed to be no avoiding them.

Then an even more compelling factor intervened: the Opinion Polls.

Polls showed that an overwhelming number of Americans approved of the Justice Department’s raid on the home of Lazaro Gonzalez, and an even more overwhelming number agreed that Elian Gonzalez should be given into the custody of his father. Now, Republican Senators Lott, Hatch, and Mack were faced with a dilemma: should they go forward with the hearings for the sake of Truth and Duty, or slink away like a craven curs in the face of public opinion. The outcome was never in doubt.

On April 28, 2000, a spokeswoman for the Judiciary Committee announced that the hearings, planned for the following week, had been postponed because the Justice Department was unable to provide all of the documents that the Committee had subpoenaed in time. The Clinton administration, faced with the unheard-of opportunity to actually avoid a Congressional investigation of something it had done, played right along (“Documents, yeah! That’s the ticket!”). The spokeswoman announced that the hearings would be rescheduled "in the coming weeks," but that no specific date has been set.

And it still hasn’t been set. It never will be set. Eventually the entire idea of hearings was allowed to die a quiet death.

Why did Mack, Hatch, and Lott, experienced politicians all, make such a blunder? Connie Mack’s motivation was transparent; in calling for hearings he was simply toadying to the large Cuban American community that voted in elections in which he ran. Hatch, to his credit, never seemed particularly enthused about the whole thing. Lott was simply unable to control himself. A man with the temperament of a schoolyard bully, he had attacked the Clinton administration so often that his immediate reaction, flying in the face of all common sense, was to try it once again. Like many bullies who are confronted, he slunk away. Final tally, Political Expediency over Truth and Duty in a landslide.

A bit of recent history might help to put this in perspective. Richard Nixon, while president, appointed an Appeals Court Judge named G. Harrold Carswell to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court. Carswell’s nomination, which had to be confirmed by the Senate, ran into two problems. One was evidence that he was racially biased. Another, admitted even by his supporters, was that he just didn’t seem very bright. Republican Senator Roman Hruska, a supporter, said, "Even if he is mediocre there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they, and a little chance?” Despite Hruska’s stirring endorsement, Carswell’s nomination was not confirmed.

The spineless, unlike the mediocre, have never lacked for representation. With Trent Lott in the Senate, they never will. And that’s today’s Profile in Cowardice.

POSTSCRIPT: In fairness to Lott, we should now revisit the issue of his cowardice in light of his public comment that America would have avoided "all these problems over all these years" if it had elected segregationist Strom Thurmond in 1948, instead of Harry Truman, who sponsored some of the earliest civil rights legislation enacted in twentieth century America. These remarks cost Lott his position as Senate Majority Leader. So the question arises, was Lott bravely espousing an unpopular, but deeply felt view when he said this? Or was he shamelessly pandering to bigots and stupid enough to think that he wouldn't get caught? You be the judge.