DCJMar2006

Volume 30

MARCH 2006

30. 8: PLUS CA CHANGE . . . ? 3.28.2006

Back in 1979 I took delivery of a new VW diesel Rabbit in Amsterdam. Patty, the girls and I were about to embark on a four month sojourn through several countries, all the way to Greece and back to England in it, and try to remain an intact, loving family. But this isn't about that; it's about the Rabbit. Well, no, just this opening part is about the Rabbit; it's really about the French. Actually, it's about French workers. [1]

The Rabbit's manual called for an oil change after 800 miles. That came up when we reached Toulouse. I had the address of the VW dealer there, and left our hotel early one morning to get the oil changed. Alas, the dealership was fermé ; it was a holiday. So we spent another day in Toulouse, and another. On day four I went again and there were still no signs of life at the dealership, except for the two huge Doberman's that slammed up against the showroom window at face level as I peered through it and scared the merde out of me.

I was really pissed. Patty told friends for years how embarrassed she was at my standing in the middle of the road outside our hotel screaming “You lazy, goddamn Frogs never work!” and worse. [2]

Cut to a decade later. I was in Paris teaching at the University and spending the weekend with a French friend at her home in the countryside. As it happened, she was, at that time, preparing an employment application for a job with a French corporation. She asked me to look over the application and I asked why she was writing it in longhand; would not it be easier for the reader if it were typed? She quickly corrected me. It was required to be written in longhand because it would be read by a grapho-analyst as well as others, and the grapho-analyst, who claims to determine different attributes of the writer's ‘character,' would have a say in the decision on the application.

I was blown away. This was France, in the year of the Bicentennaire, and they were making decisions by something that was the equivalent, at least to me, of astrology. Forget to cross a ‘t' and you might be pegged as an axe murderer. Slant your letter to far to the right and you're a Fascist. It also happened that I had another French friend whose wife was preparing for her exams in Grapho-analysis. I said I knew little about this “hobby”. Au contraire , grapho-analysts are a ”profession.” How do you write a love letter to a grapho-analyst, I thought.

This memory returned when I recently read about the riots at the Sorbonne. Unemployment for French youth is a 22% (40% for the ones in the industrial suburbs that rioted for days a few months ago). PM Villepin's new proposed law was the issue; it would allow employers to terminate new workers without cause for two years. Seemed rather unfair to me. I'm a union guy, a bit of a leftie, and my sentiments are usually with the workers, not corporations. But I remembered the Rabbit in Toulouse, begging to have its oil changed while the French auto mechanics made merry during some obscure saint's anniversary.

Let's cut back to the Bicentennaire year for a minute. I was used to teaching a 15-week semester in California, and had prepared such a course for my grad students at the U. Paris. But I hadn't counted on the French and their holidays. There is first of all a week called the “reading period” in which there are no classes. The students call it the “skiing period.” Then I found that there were another three occasions in which there were holidays for religious or national observance. Usually, the French extend these workless days by doing something they call faire le pont , or “making a bridge” between two holidays with some of their regular vacation days, often adding another one at the end or the beginning, throwing in a sick day—whatever! Before you know it you are renting an apartment in Toulouse because its cheaper than waiting a month in a hotel for a little oil change. Anyway, there wasn't much left of my semester, but the students didn't seem to mind—they were preparing to become French workers, or riot, if it isn't some sort of holiday.

So how sympathetic should I be with these rioting students? Even when they do get a job they will retire around age 55, sit around bars and cafés drinking wine, and have national health care to tend to their stressed livers. French farmers and truck drivers will hold the country hostage if they don't get their protectionist policies or other governmental favors, spoiled as they are. They think we Americans are working ourselves to death. Maybe we are.

But at the same time, a worker should not be able to get a job, and then do anything short of having an affair with the boss's wife [3] before he can be fired. Employers should be able to get rid of laggards and pilferers. And how about French waiters, huh? They should all be fired . While we're at it, let's bring the employment termination guillotine down on some of those French government workers, the one's who are the reason our word bureaucracy , and its negative connotations, is of French derivation. [4]

So who do I “man the barricades” with on this one? This time the protests in the streets are not those of 1968, that fought to liberalize government practices; rather the supposed 70 percent opposed to the proposed law seem to be in favor of retaining the “right” of young French workers to get a job with a “lifetime” sinecure. Perhaps my inclination to throw in with the workers over the capitalists and managers, and their grapho-analysts is based not so much on the plight of workers in France as it is here in the good ole US of A where the Enrons screw workers out of their pensions, General Motors prepares to jettison 35,000 workers and Ford a number of equal magnitude, and Wal-Mart operates like a big-box sweat shop. Even so, employers should be able to replace workers who don't work out, or just don't work.

Pondering such dilemmas brought me back to my friend's job application, especially when she told me that she would also have to attach a photo of herself to the application so that, as I interjected, “they can discriminate against you on the basis of your looks.” In the land of liberté, egalité and fraternité! Strange, I remarked, they didn't ask for a photo of me when I filled out papers for my Professeur Associé post. They even asked me to come back and teach again for them in 1999. And I thought this was a face that only my mother could love. But the French are a bit weird, remember; they like faces like Gerard Depiardieu, not Brad Pitt.

The French, I'll never quite figure them out. Just when you think they are about to do something un-French, . . . plus c'est la meme chose.

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[1] I think.

[2] Actually, at the personal level, I know some very hardworking French persons; but none of them do oil changes.

[3] Wait a minute! This is France we are talking about; isn't it de rigeur to have an affair with the boss's wife?

[4] You will know exactly where this sentiment comes from if you have ever had to register for employment in France, or had a visa problem. And you thought they knew how to do torture at Abu Ghraib.

30. 7: IT'S NOT SO EASY BEING MEAN [1] 3.24.2006

If you can't think of something nice to say

about someone, then say nothing at all.

(Old Proverb)

If you can't think of something nice to say

about someone, they are probably not very nice.

(Sebastian Gerard)

If you got to see Dick Cheney give his chilly explanation of the “facts” surrounding his gunning down of his putative “friend” [2] and Republican fundster who looks after a few beers very much like a quail, you got to see the administration's Mr. Mean (remember his resonant “f**k you” to Senator Pat Leahy?) at as close as he can get to a feeling human being. Not encouraging. Dick likes to play the tough guy (in front of pre-screened audiences). Many photos show him snarling, teeth bared, baleful glare, smoke coming out from his pacemaker. He was the toughest 5-time deferment guy during the VN war who had “better things to do” (read that as “I'm a chickenhawk that likes to shoot little birds”). Dick's good at talking tough and declaring war (for other guys to fight for him).

OK, he's got heart problems these days (if you can find it). And in defense of “The Dick” he's not all that out of synch with a lot of today's visual media audiences—they love MEAN, and can't seem to get enough of it, and get it mean enough.

Remember (you have to be over 40 or so) the television program “This is Your Life”? Host Ralph Edwards used to find the old friends and family members of the guest and they would surprise him or her by appearing on the show and the whole thing would be a love-in. If it were reprised for today's audiences it would be called “This is the Worst Day of Your Life” and those old friends and family members would beat the bejeesus out of you and the studio audience would call for more blood. What is called “reality TV” would more aptly be called “brutality TV.”

To the extent that mass media are a mirror we hold to ourselves ,the rise of MEAN and its icon Darth Cheney bode ill indeed. This is another fault line in the cultural techntonics that divides America. Television is rife today with meanness. Social losers are lured onto sets to be subjected to insult and assault one another over their relationships so that a studio audience can insult them and the home audience can feel superior; a blowhard multi-millionaire auditions young, greedy, obsequious wannabes for a job with him, and he insults and fires them with a wave of his imperious hand; dating shows are reduced to foul-mouthed shouting matches between young men and women that make one wonder who, or what, bred such low-life; ostensibly “funny home video” shows that revel in actual or staged episodes in which men are nearly castrated in various ways to the laughter of studio audiences (if men have felt that our culture has become emasculatory in recent years they have their literal proof on miles of video tape.)

There are of course programs that are not overtly mean, but have an undercurrent of meanness. Sienfeldian deprecation, the playing off of social stereotypes, such as nerds, gays, fat women, and others, in their own ways play against a real-world backdrop in which the social niches of the American social landscape are savaged by one another in sitcoms and stand-up. Mean guys like Tony Soprano are icons. And so-called political analysis shows are hosted by blowhards aching for a fight, and in political season there are, of course, negative ads and the likes of The Swift Boat Veterans.

Sport comes in for an upgrade in meanness as well. The California Athletic Commission recently joined several other states in approving what is called “ultimate fighting,” bloody contests that have been aptly likened to “human cock fights” because they are proving to be immensely lucrative and popular with audiences.

Cinema isn't much better, and more graphic, at representing violent meanness. They actually felt it necessary to make a sequel to Kill Bill . Crash, this year's best picture, had a lot of meanness in it—the gay cowboys weren't mean enough—but had a couple of uplifting moments. If Tarantino had directed it the women would have been left in her car to burn and a bunch of crazies would have roasted weenies and made jokes about her screams.

Not that I would prefer a prissy, politically-correct, or God forbid (and I think He would ) Christian evangelical programming. No, I haven't been hanging out with Tipper Gore. But watching all of this is like seeing a fundamental institution self-destruct, like a family, or what was a loving relationship. America seems to be tearing itself apart, feeding its baser instincts of greed, perversity, racism, intolerance, on a diet of its erstwhile friendships and allegiances.

Maybe America never did have the solidarity it likes to pretend it has. From the Revolution, to the Civil War, to Vietnam, and now with its cultural divide, it never has been entirely at peace with itself. Maybe when things aren't going well our first instinct is to get angry, and often that anger is focused downward. A kid with a few grams of pot can get 25 years in prison (talking about mean places), and Duke Cunningham can steal millions for years and get a few years. It is downright mean to blow a country wide-open and, when looting and violence follow, for Donald Rumsfeld to say that people will “done some crazy things” when you give the freedom. That's mean. It is downright mean to conduct a war that kills and maims so many innocent “collateral” Iraqis. I say “so many” because General Tommy Franks said “we don't count them.” What he really meant is “they don't count.” That's mean. Torturing prisoners, keeping them in prison for years without charges, and using the former torture chambers of Saddam Hussein for the same purpose; that's mean.

This doesn't mean that we have to be pushovers when bad tings are done to us, or even that we should get mean and take some vengeance. The world isn't all “This is Your Life” and It's a Wonderful Life . But it isn't all the Sopranos and Kill Bill either. And old political axiom says: “Don't get mad, get even .” That's because when you get mad—get mean—you usually end up hurting yourself—like we have, at home and abroad.

By the time Darth Cheney realizes this (if he ever does or would even care) he will be gone, politically at least, perhaps cardiologically, or just out there somewhere counting the millions he made on his Halliburton holdings while waiting for some little birds to appear so he can blow them away and feel like a “man”. He won't give a snarl about the legacy of his own mean spirit and what we have let him do to this country and its international reputation. Unh, uh, he won't notice the mess because he's a guy who “has better things to do,” especially if its that other “ultimate fighting”—going to war. Dick has got to save some of that meanness for those little birds.

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[1] With apologies to Kermit the Frog

[2] Although not enough of a friend to follow or escort him to the hospital, were his friend had a heart attack from one of the pellets.

30. 6: XAVIER'S TOE, A QUASI-SPIRITUAL PILGRIMAGE 3.20.2006

Not long ago, at the café where I feed my caffeine addiction, I met a guy who went to Canisius. Like me, he went to both high school and college with the Jesuits. He pronounced Canisius the way I was taught to say it, with that “i”s short, so I knew he was “legit.” [1] We talked for a couple of hours about the experience, discovering that we even knew some of the same Jesuit priests, and that some of our impressions of Jesuits and experiences under their tutelage were almost identical. We marveled at the seeming indelibility of it all, and that it had somehow, but not in a way that we could give much definition, marked us Jesuit-educated. There's something there, but it's elusive. I've had a few people tell me that I can be rhetorically “Jesuitical,” but that's usually if they're losing and they want to accuse me of tactics that sound occult and sinister.

I admit to a Jesuitical tendency in my argumentation, but it has had its most telling effects on the very nexus between faith and reason that Jesuit education was to have putatively forged in me. I confess, without request for absolution, to not having made my Easter duty for nearly forty years; I reside, rather comfortably, in a land of metaphysical doubt. I have not carried out the “tradition”; my daughters went to public schools, and I taught at a public university for thirty years. But something of those years with Jesuits hangs on that can come flooding out from a chance encounter in a San Diego café. On such occasions I am often reminded of St. Francis Xavier's toe.

I don't even remember which Jesuit told me the story about the toe. But it must have made a real impression on me, how the big toe [2] on one of the feet of the mummified body of Xavier that lies in a glass sarcophagus in the Bom Jesus in Goa used to be exposed so that the faithful could kiss it. One has to be a little theologically edgy to do that macabre stuff, so it was only a matter of time before somebody, a woman it is told, bit off that toe. The story goes on that the other toes would not be put at risk and the toe-smooching practice was stopped.

Readers who are unfamiliar with Xavier should know that he was, along with Ignatius Loyola, one of the founders of the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, and he traveled widely in the Far East on missions. Xavier's motto, adopted by Jesuit schools, like mine, was the rather incendiary ignem mittere in terram , to send fire to the earth (note the painting above). It was a rather aggressive anthem for a missionary. I am already on record in expressing my contempt for missionaries and evangelicals, but I do admire intrepid travelers, especially into territories that require a good deal of personal courage, even if buttressed with an invasive spiritual calling. [3] But evangelicals, are often selfish self-deceivers more interested in the own souls than those of their would-be converts, or the vanguard for commercial and imperial invasions. For real courage that I respect give me a troop of Medicines Sans Frontieres doctors any day. I do, however, excuse Xavier a little from the low regard in which I hold missionaries. You have to remember that the Portuguese had already established trading ports in the Far East, and one historian writes that Xavier's “mission” was that because the colonists “had taken little of the spirit of religion with them,” Pope John III's “desire [was] that missionaries should go out to the Portuguese colonies . . . not so much in the first instance to convert the natives as to make respectable and Christian the lives of the Portuguese settlers.” [4] Enough digression.

I remember conjuring what an embalmed toe tasted like and couldn't get an imagined, musty-mummy metallic-like taste out of my mouth every time I thought about it. [5] That taste returned many years later when I was in Bombay and the ship I was taking from there to Hong Kong was scheduled to call at Goa. At last I would get to see Xavier's embalmed body and the place where his toe used to be. I feared a permanency to that imagined metallic taste, but it was worth the risk; this was a chance to see the great Jesuit in his final repose. It is reported that when he was exhumed from his burial on the island of Sanchuan, about fifty miles from Macao, where he died in 1522, Xavier was in a “remarkable state of preservation.”

Thanks to an entirely unrelated “religious” experience it never came off. A few nights before I was to depart for Goa the extremist Hindu Kar Sevaks had attacked and demolished a mosque in Ayodyah, north of Bombay, and all hell broke loose with the historical antipathy between Hindus and Muslims. There was a lot of killing both ways. For some reason the ship's captain felt it was too risky to call at Goa and set out for Columbo, Sri Lanka instead. It was the beginning of what was to prove the elusiveness of the toe and other mortal remains of St. Francis Xavier.

I resolved to come back one day and get visual confirmation on Xavier's toe. A few years later I was in Nagasaki, Japan, and Xavier turned up again. He apparently had helped establish a Jesuit foothold ( toe hold) there according to the Shrine of the Tewnty-Six Martyrs on a hill not far from where the A-bomb detonated. Back then, the shogun, apparently a guy with a sense of the poetic, had crucified the Jesuits and their converts. Xavier's escutcheon in stained glass is in the museum (Loyola's, too). It was the closest I had gotten to the old Jebbie. There, I learned, had once been a relic arm bone of Xavier (so the body in Goa is not complete after all), but it had been sent to a church in Macao, the Church of St. Paul.

But all that's left of Macao's St. Paul is the façade. It stands, majestically, atop a hill that overlooks the city, but the rest of the church is burned out. It was built by the Jesuits back in 1602, using Japanese convert craftsmen. The Jebbies were later expelled from here as well. Now, in a museum beneath the erstwhile nave of the church is supposed to be the arm bone relic of Xavier. I resolved to see it when I returned to Hong Kong.

A couple of years later, on a Fulbright year in Hong Kong, I took a hydrofoil to Macao. But the bone was gone. A few calls to tourist authorities established that it was moved in 1978 to a little chapel on the nearby island of Coloane where the Pearl River meets the South China Sea; this is one well-traveled arm bone. So off I went and, after a delightful exploration of an old village on the island I came to little Macao-baroque Chapel of St. Francis Xavier. It was open, but deserted, reminding me of many churches I have visited in Italy, where you can walk in and rip a Caravaggio from the wall and walk off with it. But I just wanted to see Xavier's arm bone, not acquire it.

No matter; it wasn't there! It had been returned to St. Paul's in Macao for some unexplained reason. [6] So back to Macao I went and climbed up to the old, burned-out church. After scouring the museum for anything that looked like a reliquary with an arm bone in it I gave up. There was no one there who could tell me where it might be found. Later, I learned that the bone had been removed from St. Paul's Museum and now resides in the St. Joseph Seminary and Sacred Art Museum.

I didn't have a chance to check out the seminary before leaving Hong Kong, but I'm resolved to track it down one of these days and give some closure to the compulsion I have to view what remains of a wandering 16 th century Jesuit. As to the lost toe, maybe the closest I'll ever get to it is that damned mummy-metalic taste in my mouth every time it comes to mind.

_______________________________

[1] Canisius High and College are in Buffalo, New York; McQuaid Jesuit High is in Rochester, New York. My college was LeMoyne, in Syracuse, New York.

[2] He did say the “big” toe; but as one can observe in the photo, both big toes remain, and one can clearly see that it was a “pinkie” toe that was bitten off.

[3] Here's a good place to recommend a favorite film of mine, John Beresford's Black Robe , named after the soutaine that Jesuits can still be seen wearing. Talk about putting it all out there ad majorem Dei gloriam , this picture shows that there are tougher Jesuit assignments that freshman homeroom teacher.

[4] Christopher Hollis, The Jesuits, A History (1968), p. 35. On the Jesuits in the Orient, Jonathan D. Spence's The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci (1984) is excellent. I also recommend, for a history of the Protestant missionaries to China, Austin Coats, Macao ad the British, 1637-1842 , which contains a lengthy section on Robert Morrison, perhaps the most famous Protestant missionary of the Far East.

[5] Mummy-munching isn't as unusual as one might think. In Egypt I learned that hundreds of mummies were shipped off to Europe to be ground up into potions that were reputed to extend life and certain male extremities.

[6] I also learned here that, although it was originally destined to be at that shrine in Nagasaki, but never got there because of the persecutions of Christians that resulted in the 26 Martyrs during the 1637 Shimabara rebellion.

30. 5: A GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY . . . LOST 2.16.2006

A humorous and somewhat arrogant radio personality who calls himself “Dr. Science” claims that he “know[s] more than you do” because he has “a masters degree . . . in Science.” It is a tongue-in-cheek send-up of people who use their academic credentials to claim authority. In the “hard” and “natural” sciences such claims may have some validity and effect; in social science, which relates to everyday affairs with which we all have “some experience,” that is less the case. We all claim to know a lot more psychology than, say, quantum physics.

But today I will be “Dr. E-con,” because I have a bachelor's degree in Economics . [1] I won't get into such arcane and potentially intimidating stuff as “input-output analysis,” “the marginal propensity to consume” and, one of my favorites, the “backward bending labor supply curve,” because I don't wish to add to Carlisle's dictum that economics is “the dismal science” that it can also be the soporific science. I just want to take this opportunity to say a few words about “opportunity costs.” That's partly because “opportunity costs” are a fairly easy (and I'm not sure I fully understand those other ones, anyway).

So, opportunity costs. We all deal with this concept, almost reflexively it seems, on a daily basis. Simply put, when you buy a Starbucks super double tall decaf hazelnut soy latte con panna you forgo the opportunity to spend that same amount of money for a new set of tires for your car. You spent the money on the coffee. Now I realize that, if you are a typical American, you say,” What the hell, I'll get out the ole magique plastique, get the tires, too, and have another latte on the way home.” So what, if the Bush administration can run our government with that sort of economic attitude, then why shouldn't the rest of us behave like that.

But that's not the way the concept of opportunity costs operates—you spend your money of one thing and, incontrovertably, that money is not available to spend on something else. No way, Jose. There are more consequences to spending decisions than that.

Hey, wake up! I haven't gotten to the sleep-inducing stuff yet!

There can be what I call a “double-whammy” to opportunity costs, because it relates also to what you your money on. For example, the Bush administration is asking congress this week for another $91 Billion for the Iraq war that is already costing us $256,349,835,991 . . . no wait, $256,349,841,491 . . . no wait, $256,352,840,991 . . . the hell with it, it's going up at about $2,800 per second! If they give it to him that $91 Billion [2] it will not be around to use for other things, like finding cures for cancer, heart disease, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, malaria, etc., for education, for public infrastructure, for scientific development (like alternatives for fossil fuels) . . . need I go on. No, that $91 Billion will be squandered as America drops its golden eggs of opportunity into the Iraqi sands. [3]

OK, so it depends on whether you think that finding a cure for cystic fibrosis is more important that blasting some Iraqi kid to particles of DNA, or making our military people targets for “insurgent” road side bomb builders, or filling the pockets of a bunch of American war profiteers. And I don't want to hear any bullshit about this being necessary expenditures this money to avenge 911 or pursue the “war on terror,” or that real thigh-slapper, “keeping America safe.”

These values make a difference as to whether we get, or forego, a positive double-whammy. [4] When we spend our public funds on infrastructure and medical and scientific research and education we get a society that works better and more efficiently, in which people live healthier and more safely, in which new jobs are created from our research and are performed by better-educated workers. They, in turn, contribute to our society with their productivity, and they are less of a drag because of health, economic and other problems. We advance and improve.

But that's just the domestic advantage. Consider the goodwill and amicable international relations when our advances in science, medicine and technology are shared and reduce pain, poverty and disease and destitution in other nations. [5] Does this sound rather “goody-goody,” at odds with the picture of a bunch of terrorist infidels, and failed states and dictators and commies out there undeserving of our largesse? No, there will still be dictators and rogue states around, but we won't be contesting them alone, or with purchased “coalitions.”

So write your congressman and tell him or her to vote lustily of that $91 Billion Iraq war supplemental appropriation and the rest of them that are likely to follow. Vote for our opportunity to make a positive difference at home and overseas, not squandered in the desert, in exploded Iraqi and American bodies, vote for the tens of thousands of tanks and humvees, and fighting vehicles that will rust in the Iraqi sands, and repairs of Iraqi infrastructure that we blew up in the first place and allowed to be looted. Vote against the inflation that is already creeping up, the war debt that approaches a half $Trillion, and the higher fuel costs and the higher profits for defense contractors and war profiteers. Vote agains t a failed administration and a failed golden opportunity.

Opportunity Cost is a concept that is non-ideological. It doesn't matter whether you are a Democrat, Republican, liberal or conservative, whatever; you spend it on one thing and you don't have it to do another. It's another way of say that and expenditure has a “trade-off.” While economists tends to monetize opportunity costs, they don't all come that way. To spend time doing one thing, it is no longer available to devote to something else. If you spend resources on one things, like getting fathers and husbands (and mother and wives) killed or disabled, it is a negative double whammy opportunity cost because they are no longer available to earn incomes, but their loss of earning power must be compensated for with additional public expenditure.

Hey you! Yeah, you . Pay attention! This is the dismal science, but I'm almost through here.

OK, I'm not going into a bunch of stuff that makes opportunity costs a bit more complicated, stuff like marginality, diminishing returns, shadow prices and differential multipliers —after all I am “Dr. Econ,” and you're not. [6] But none of it invalidates the basic concept of opportunity cost, one that even a guy who got into Yale (on the family name) and was a C student ought to have been able to understand. But then opportunity costs are different for someone who knows there's a daddy and his friends there to give you a brand new opportunity when you make the wrong choice and screw up. Opportunity Costs are just a calculus; knowing what they are doesn't confer on us what is called the normative dimension of choice—the morality and intelligence to make a rational choice and a good choice. Put another way: opportunity costs are no guarantee against stupidity.

Ponder that for a while over a Starbucks super double tall decaf hazelnut soy latte con panna. On second thought, don't make that a decaf; there'll be a quiz on this stuff next week.

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[1] I do; LeMoyne College, class of 1962. Alas, no cum laude with that degree, more like a cum fortuna .

[2] Or, 166, 500, 000 Starbucks super double tall decaf hazelnut soy lattes con panna , if that gives you a better idea

[3] Yes, I am aware that a good chunk of this will find its way back into the bank accounts of executives of Halliburton, and the other American contractors and Bush contributors. That's part of the plan!

[4] This is not a real economic term,

[5] I am aware that the usual cohort of greedy bastards would have to be kept under control, like Big Pharm and the Halliburtons and other corporations who have been the biggest recipients of what we call “foreign aid.”

[6] Excepting you, of course, Dr. Yu.

30. 4: DARKLING I LISTEN, by John Evangelist Walsh [BR] 3.12.2006

Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;

Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal - yet, do not grieve;

She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

From, John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn, 1819

Most men would be buried beside their wives, or vice versa. John Keats is not. First, he had no wife, though he was engaged to a woman who figures greatly in his story. So, beside him, in the English cemetery in Roma, lies Joseph Severn, a painter. No, this is not an “outing” of Keats as a gay man; it's much better than that, and differently uplifting.

Roman candles burn bright and they burn out quickly. That was Keats, dead at age twenty-five, an age when most men today are still in grad school, or going to clubs and rock concerts. By the time he died Keats was already pretty much assured a place in the poetic pantheon. By the time he was twenty-one he had to major books of poems published and had written a play.

The wonder is that he was able to do that much. Keats was a sickly guy with a grim pedigree; a parent and his brother were already dead of consumption—tuberculosis. Keats, small and frail, had nursed his brother through his last days, so he knew what was up when he started coughing up blood. Lots of people died of TB and other pulmonary disorders in those days, and London, famous for is fogs, which were really carbon-laced smogs, could do you in about as quickly as any large 19 th century city of the time that heated homes and powered factories with coal.

Like most high school students I remember Keats mostly from his odes, to a nightingale, and to a Grecian urn, in particular, but I couldn't remember a line when I stood in the room in which he died, a room overlooking the renowned Spanish Steps in Rome, where Roman papagallos tried to pick up pretty female tourists with lines like “do you like pizza,” not lines like O Goddess! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung / By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear, / And pardon that thy secrets should be sung / Even unto thine own soft-conched ear . The Keats House, actually a flat on the second floor of the building, is where the star-crossed poet coughed his final sanguinary cough. There are Keats memorabilia there, but the furniture is not original; 19 th Century Roman law required that when someone died of consumption the furniture was burned and even the wall-paper was stripped from the rooms.

Consumption was a terror of the times and Keats was advised to get himself to Italy, where Rome was considered to have the best weather for tubercular lungs. It was a three-week sea voyage to get to Naples, where they landed. Keats was accompanied by a young English painter, Joseph Severn, who traveled up to Rome and shared the rooms at 26 Piazza di Spagna with the ailing poet.

The fate of Keats is actually bracketed by two love stories, one romantic-erotic, the other of heroically selfless friendship. Fanny Brawne was the object of Keats's infatuation. She lived nearby him in Hampstead and the poet was smitten with her. They had become engaged by the time he got sick and had to set off for Rome, but Fanny didn't go along. There is the suggestion that Keat's condition was exacerbated by his passion for Fanny, and also his jealousy over her preference for parties and balls. Keats could work himself up pretty good, as his letters attest, so maybe it was best that she did not go along, although other thinking on the matter suggested that the separation and his longing and suspicion were responsible for his relapse in Rome.

The other love story is brotherly. Joseph Severn was what anyone would term a “saint.” Obviously, it was suspected by many at the time that tuberculosis was communicable, but Severn stayed by Keats's bedside, making him breakfast, getting his other meals, forsaking his own work, and risking his own life. He did this for some months, seemingly without complaint, assisted only by visits from Keats's doctor, a reputed specialist in consumption.

Keats's medical treatment merits some elaboration. Keats himself had studied to be an apothecary. But it was considered a great advantage that Dr. James Clarke, a Scotsman, and author of a major study on consumption was living in Rome, and was an admirer of the poet. One would think this would give Keats the best chance. But when Keats began coughing up pints of blood Clarke did what then seemed to be the most common treatment of the time—he bled him. On top of that he recommended that he be fed very little. Then he left Severn to deal with an anemic, starving patient. Keats go so bad off that he asked Severn to give him his bottle of laudanum. Laudanum was a popular drug during the Victorian era, an opium-based painkiller prescribed for all sorts of ailments. It was even given to infants, often killing them. But it was addicting and too large a dose was fatal. Keats knew that and intended to kill himself. Severn refused and hid the laudenum, only extending the misery of the last stages of consumption.

Keats died in Severn's arms in the evening of February 23, 1821. Severn was duly canonized by the friends and admirers of the poet. He stayed on in Rome for may years, painting, and later served as a consular official. But his final earthly reward was to be given a grave, in the Protestant Cemetery near the Pyramid of Caius Cestius, beside the poet for whom he risked his own life.

Both Fanny Brawne and Joseph Severn (he was a good, but not great painter) would have passed into obscurity had their lives not been illuminated by the brief, bright, but blood-stained arc of the life of John Keats and its literary immortality.

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30. 3: WHAT WOULD A CEO NAMED JESUS DO? 3.8.2006

I would hazard the guess that the least evoked New Testament passage one is likely to hear these days, especially in those glitzy megachurches with preachers in Armani suits, is that of Christ throwing the money-changers out of the temple, or maybe that parable about the camel passing through the eye of a needle. Worldly riches and Christianity, long representative of different values, seem to go together like Christmas and Santa Claus.

I caught a radio evangelist in my car some years ago (it was the only station that would come in over the outer reaches in Interstate 5 at 3AM). It stuck in my mind that he was offering prayer handkerchiefs for listeners who made donations to his ministry at a certain level. Making a buck on Christ has never gone out of fashion and has grown, as of 2005, into an $8.6 billion business! Gullible people, and there are a lot of them, will grasp at anything they think has some holy or miraculous powers. (OK, Viagra isn't a holy item, but you do hear more expressions of “Oh, my God!) The Roman Catholic church once did a rollicking business in relics, which was one of the things that helped prompt the Protestant Revolution that has spawned myriads of churches which are selling stuff like facsimile crucifixion nails. But relics are hard to come by these days. [1]

Long before Mel Gibson raked in hundreds of millions with his movie The Passion of the Christ, there was money in the faith business. After all, the money changers were in the temple back in the First Century. As far back as their were temples the best place for beggars to hang out was just outside their doors; the guilt over too much gelt always provoked the need to give a little back (to get through that eye of the needle). But for a long time the notion of getting rich and “saved” was played down.

Not any longer—Jesus wants you to get rich, they say, especially if you are in the Jesus business. And what a business it has become. Just about any commodity or service you can think of has been exploited for its faith-based sales value. There are Christian theme parks, Christian cruises, Christian car dealers, Christian banks, Christian dating services, Christian credit cards, Christian cookbooks and records and DVD's, and, of course those Wal Marts, those gigantic emporiums of hand-waving, halleluiah, doin' the wave for Jesus megachurches with Busby Berkeley production values and cute guys and hot chicks singing and dancing (“that's right ZuZu, every time the cash register rings a preacher gets his blings”) [2] . And all to glorify the Lord, and a lot of it owned by some of the sleaziest con artists that ever played the game of eschatological terror. [3]

One sort of has to reach deep into that personal level of incredulity that allows the mind to process the election of George Bush to try to grasp what the hell these people think all of this has to do with the life of Christ and principle of Christianity as we know them from scripture. Religions have always been good at coming up with twisted and transmogrified versions of their own dogma when the sirens of profit wiggled their shapely behinds, but what Gospel of P. T. Barnum was able to conjure the bald-faced absurdity, if not—dare I use the word— heresy of what this corporatized-Christianity hath rendered. Did Jesus really invoice that couple at Cana for the wine, or charge the multitudes by the loaf and fish? If I have nudged the borders of blasphemy with my irreverent graphics and my satirical apostasy, I have not even come close to the true outrage that those who hypocritically call themselves Christians commit every time they reach into somebody's wallet in the name of Christ.

The “customer” base for this burgeoning evangelical emporium has been swelled largely by the middle classes of the baby-boom generation, a cohort inured to consumption, glitz and, while much preoccupied with their corporeal tanned, worked-out, and nipped-tucked bods, seem to have grown concerned about the “quality” of their afterlives. The enormous popularity of those “Left Behind” books have proven that there is always a lot of profit in prophecy, $650million worth of profit. [4] And the great thing about the Rapture? Well, it seems that all that gym work and plastic surgery won't be wasted; you'll be bodily hauled up to heaven with those ripped abs and sculpted noses as is.

Boomers are, of course, the cash cows that every secular evangelist of SUVs, Carnival Cruises, and other purveyors of you-can't-take-it-with-you crap are stalking. But their willingness to “invest” in the heavenly pay-off has surprised even the most cynical capitalists. It's an irresistible market, and if the evangelist-entrepreneur has to stretch a few Christian principles to the breaking point to grab a buck along the way, there's always that most alluring precept of Christianity—forgiveness.

So, if you happen to be forgiven but not fit, there's even a Christian diet book titled What Would Jesus Eat? to prove that anything is fair game in using your lord and savior to make that cash register go ka-ching, ka-ching like those offertory bells at mass. But even if the author's title was rhetorical, I think the answer would be, a loaf and a fish (preferably salmon, baked, with a little butter and lemon). Then Jesus might just get up from the table and throw his disrespectful, greedy ass out of his temple—again.

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[1] Not that you can be certain that some of the (mostly) body parts of saints, or bits of the true cross, or shrouds and other stuff, are genuine. There's probably enough wood that has been passed off as slivers from the “true cross” to build a good size residential subdivision.

[2] Sorry about this cinematic allusion, I just couldn't resist it. If for some reason you didn't catch one of the most memorable lines in filmdom you must have been in a coma through the last forty Christmas seasons. It's the last line of dialogue in Frank Capra's durable It's A Wonderful Life (1946). Rent it, or wait for Christmas.

[3] Think this is hyperbole? Have a look.

[4] The Economist , 3 December 2005, P. 61. And evangelist preacher Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Life, is the best-selling hardcover book in American history, with more than 25million copies sold.

30. 2: BROKEBACK ICON 3.4.2006

Modified title (by UrbisMediia ) from poster of unknown origin,

Brokeback Mountain might be considered one of those seminal films that breaks through an American taboo, not because it presents male homosexuality in a feature film with “name” lead actors, but because it does it with a cherished American icon, one that is recognized all over the world, and is an image which even the current president affects—the cowboy. [1]

It's not that the venerable cowboy hasn't been challenged before. Who can forget Mel Brook's send up in Blazing Saddles , whose sturdy cowhands spend their evening around campfires in a chorus of flatulence, or John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy , hustling “fags” on 42 nd Street, for which it received an X rating.

No such rating for Brokeback Mountain ; a sequel might have these two cute guys getting married in San Francisco, or coming out at the annual Gay Parade. For die-hard American right-wingers and worshippers at the filmic images of John Wayne and Ronald Reagan, Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal must seem like the planes that brought down the twin towers American manhood that were erected on the images of Roy Rodgers and his “sidekick,” Gabby Hayes, The Lone Ranger and Tonto, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and John Wayne and Montgomery Clift. Those boys might have passed off-screen gas around the soundstage campfire, but nobody dared insinuate that they didn't keep their pistols holstered through those cold nights on the set. The private proclivities of Clift and Rock Hudson were diligently kept secret, but that swishy walk of John Wayne's (nee Marion Morrison) looked an awful lot like a cross-dresser in high heels. [2]

It is one thing to obliquely reference the homosexual acts of classic heroes like Achilles and Alexander the Great in recent films (played by cute guys Brad Pitt and Colin Farrell). After all, that stuff was back far enough to be consigned to myth or ancient custom. But cowboys, “rootin'-tootin,'” “hard ridin” buckaroos, now that's messin' with an image that is just a notch down from the stars and stripes as far as American lore is concerned, “pahdna”. [3] These are the guys that used to run off those “sod-buster” farmers (hmmmm, “sod”; no, I ain't gonna go there), those weird sheep-herders (and ya know what they're up to at night), and most of all show those pesky redskins whose the boss of the prairies. So now what are we going to get, cowboys asking Sitting Bull where he got those “fabulous” beads, and calling those Apaches “naughty leather boys”? Are we going to have to put up with “cowpokes” (there's another one) ordering their pasta primavera al dente from the cattle drive's “chuckie wagon.” Heck, Ang Lee directed the movie; maybe cowboys will be giving their calf's acupuncture rather than branding them. If Brokeback wins will there be sequels that are remakes of western classics, now titled “Pink River,” “Drag City,” “Come Out at the OK Corral,” “The Good, the Bad, and the Cute,” “The Unprotected,” and “Hi, Nooner”? You can let your imagination loose on such venerable western and cowboy images as quick draw gunfights, bronk-busting, straight-shooters.

Doubtless the multiple nominations and wide-ranging critical acclaim for Brokeback Mountain will be regarded by the Religious Right and Tipper Gore as one more illustration of the evils of Hollywood and the moral decline of American society. But Hollywood is really only reflecting society, not leading it. It was more influential in establishing the myth of the cowboy, a myth far larger than it deserved to be, one that reached even silly dimensions of heroes whose hats never fell of when they were in a fight, who kissed their horses and broke into songs about cattle and tumbleweeds. Cowboys hung on as the icon of the tough, straight-talkin, independent, self-sufficient, Marlboro-smokin' American man of the outdoors long after most men were carrying lunch buckets into factories or attaché cases into office buildings. But, like one of the better “rancho-realism” films, The Misfits , long cattle drives, and mustang round-ups just seemed out of place in a country that raised its Big-Macs on the hoof on huge, smelly cattle farms that even sold off their meadow muffins for fertilizer. The myth of the tough cowboy is trying to make a comeback with rodeo bull-riding, but, to today's mayhem-jaded audiences, it seems to come off as another “dumb guys doing stupid things for money” pseudo-sport that owes its popularity to the morbid chance that for the price of a ticket you just might get to see a ton of hamburger-on-the-hoof get some revenge.

But Americans like their cowboy mythology. Like Rambo soldiers or Harley-riding gangs they became versions of manliness in the American culture of serial self-reinvention. In most cases it is innocent dressing up, a bit of posturing and putting on those tight jeans and cowboy hat. But it can be more of a concern when our political tough-talkin' “leaders” think they can “saddle-up” and head out on the range and teach those pesky “brownskins” a thing or two about preemptive war and democracy.

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[1] A rather funny word if you stop to think about it, with its opposite gender components, and a faint whiff of male homosexual connotation to it. “Cattleman” sounds much more masculine, as does “wrangler”. I'm not sure about “cowhand”; sounds like it might need some scrubbing. Strangely, the male cattle word, bull, seems mostly reserved for reference to the stuff that fall out of the back of them.

[2] I never had the heart to bring up such things with my uncle Marco , who admired John Wayne as an American hero. My uncle, who was decorated for real heroism in North Africa and Italy in WWII, admiring an actor who “played” at being a soldier and never even served in the war. It was my uncle who I admired.

[3] Hey, whaddya expect when the story was written by a woman and the picture directed by an Asian!

30. 1: THE MARGIN OF STUPIDITY 3.1.200

In a recent Dragon City Journal Special it was remarked that one of the high priests of Conservatism, William F'Buckley, [1] appears to have jumped ship from George Bush's Iraq War and failed dreams of democracy. F'Buckley titled his piece in National Review “It didn't Work.” As though he were writing about a collapsed soufflé he dismisses the war that has already cost thousands of lives in what he might say in his haughty, sibilant tones, by counseling that the Bush administration must come to “. . . the acknowledgment of defeat.” So much for the brotherhood of Yalies.

One has to wonder what took F'Buckley so long to admit it himself. He is pompous, fey, and overblown—one thinks he is left over from some 18 th Century French salon, waving his signature No. 2 pencil about like a baton to accentuate his sententious phrases from his well-licked lips—but he is not stupid. But then that might be that particular Republican political affectation: don't admit you had it wrong until you have conceived a way of blaming it on somebody else. You know, “it was bad intelligence.” In light bulb terms he's a 100 Watt, to Bush's 20 Watts, so he's even less forgivable than the president.

What's pealing away here is what could be called the Margin of Stupidity. Bush's political standing has always been dependent upon this margin. It is a thin one indeed; his “plurality” in his first election was not among the people but among Supreme Court Justices, and was scarcely greater in his second election on which he ran as a “war president.” In short Bush relied on just enough stupidity in the electorate to put and keep him in office. [2] Then came 9-11; it was tailor-made for his dimness and arrogance.

But maybe Al Qaeda was counting on the Margin of Stupidity as well.

It's not too difficult to conjure the scenario of the other side. The “election” of George Bush in 2000 might well have been seen by Al Qaeda as a gift from Allah—a semi-literate, swaggering fool who just happened to be the son of the president that violated sacred Muslim lands with his military bases and is the pal of the scorned royal families of the sandy states. It was probably not too much of a “what if” for bin Laden and his gang to figure there was a good chance that a successful terrorist attack on a high profile target on mainland America would provoke a reaction, if not exactly like the preemptive war on Iraq, then something close to it. Indeed, the fervent desire of the neo-cons to invade Iraq was not a closely-guarded secret, it had been around for ten years. Moreover, there are similarities between bin Laden and Bush that might give them insights into their respective behavior. Both come from wealthy families, both are religious fundamentalists, both see this as a jihad/holy war. But there are differences, too; bin Laden has at least put himself in some danger as a mujahideen in the Soviet-Afghan war; Bush has done some driving under the influence of alcohol.

Keeping with the scenario, Al Qaeda must have worried that America would wise up (or find a way to keep Bush from stealing elections) and their unwitting puppet would not be re-elected. They needed things to fall apart; that was their plan. And here's where the F'Buckley's just sat back and counted their tax cuts—they should have known that it is far easier to create chaos than democracies in conditions like those in the Middle East. They should have known that the numbers and the passions and historical antipathies virtually assured the kinds of outcomes that now appear imminent. Indeed, given the capability to throw the Islamic world into a frenzy with a few Danish cartoons, it seems more likely. They probably did know.

The ensuing mess may be everything that Al Qaeda wished for—a great conflagration that would drive the infidel from their lands after a century of foreign hegemony, and the establishment of theocratic states that run on sharia and oil. It would take a fool like Bush to be pulled into the scenario and then manipulated to where he would provide the elements to spin things out of control. It was a calculated risk that might go in several bad directions, but the likelihood that Bush would not be able to “stay the course” was a good one. Bush would have to keep fanning the flames of terrorist threat, so it would be efficacious—to keep him overconfident and in office— not to mount another attack on his mainland. The more he was around to utter words like “crusade,” the more he would inflame hatred for his country, the more the conflict would become—which it is in so many respects—a war between the fundamental and extreme wings of two global religions. Too late would Bush understand (or be told by F'Buckley) that Saddam, for all his despicable attributes, was the secular lid that kept Sunni nitro and Shiite glycerin from combining in the Middle East.

And now is is easy to see who is in charge in Iraq, and it isn't America. America is stuck, unable to advance or retreat, hunkered down in its barely secure “Green Zone,” and venturing out in convoys of armored vehicles as ready targets for “insurgents” whose origins the administration is unable to define. In spite of some small and ineffective campaigns, America's inadequate forces are on the defensive. Bush and Rumsfeld have had to design their war as they went along, and it gets more defensive with each iteration. A combination guerilla cum civil war was predicted by those who know the region, but Bush thought the biggest bully in the bar would prevail, even if his brain was drunk on power. Now they have the proverbial “tiger by the tail” afraid to let go and retreat lest, in both appearance and reality, they are driven from the region with the insurgents sniping at their heels and claiming victory.

If such a scenario is valid Al Qaeda may still not get what it wants, the region might not spin out of control and the cleansing conflagration obtain their ends. But there are so many detonators. Even Bush's vaunted democracy might have backfired—Hamas in Palestine, Iran's reactor, things going “fundamental” in Egypt, Sharon in a coma, Iraq's democracy all but a joke, Afghanistan's democracy applying only to Kabul, Lebanon de-stabilized—almost anything might send it all out of control, with America smack in the middle. And America is likely to be given the biggest blame and will have been weakened economically and spent spiritually by its accession to torture, spying non itself, deceived by the lies, by actions bordering non treason, corrupted, and unable, thank you at last Mr. F'Buckley, to admit the defeat of a wrongheaded policy.

And if Al Qaeda has indeed been the puppet master in playing The Margin of Stupidity, it might just be wondering what profit there might be in another devastating attack on America. They could be thinking that it should be too difficult to sniggle a few “martyrs” into that Dubai port facilities operation and, . . . well, they already know their enemy better than William F'Buckley.

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[1] For those who don't remember Lily Thomlin's send up of Buckley her pone switchboard operator, Ernestine, used to scramble William F. Buckley into William F'Buckley. I can't seem to remember him any other way.

[2] With the assistance of some stupid Democratic campaigns, particularly Al Gore's candidacy . Gore managed to blow a significant advantage by ignoring Bill Clinton, taking as his running mate a man who sounds like he is having a perpetual difficult bowel movement, and having his wife, Tipper, attack Hollywood and the entertainment industry.