Holy Fallacy

Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg calls Dan Savage “the most significant columnist in America.” Here’s an example why:

The shortest book in the New Testament is a letter from Paul to a Christian slave owner, about owning his slave.

And Paul doesn’t say, “Christians don’t own people.” Paul talks about how Christians own people.

We ignore what the Bible says about slavery because the Bible got slavery wrong.

If the Bible got the easiest moral question that humanity ever faced wrong, what are the odds that the Bible got something as complicated as human sexuality wrong?

— Dan Savage

I’ll remain mute in the face of airtight logic.

Dan Savage

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Playing The Part

George W. Bush’s presidential library opened up yesterday, leading to the very easy joke that it’s the first library he’s ever stepped foot in.

As in, Bushey-boy was dumb. Is dumb. That’s the gospel according to my brothers and sisters on the Left, at least.

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And I’ve never bought it.

I’m not saying he reads Immanuel Kant in his spare time, but Bush ran a multi-trillion dollar corporation that employs some 22 million people. Ya gotta have at least a few dozen neural connections to do that.

As a high-schooler taking the SAT, GWB scored in the equivalent of the 88th percentile on the verbal portion and the 86th on math. This marks him as clearly above average in that kind of measurable intelligence. On the other hand, those scores were well below the average for incoming Yale freshman, where he was admitted as a legacy candidate. (Yale and other snooty schools give special preference to the children of alumni, presumably because those families are loaded and will donate.) Bush went on to maintain a C-average at Yale, meaning he held his own among a population best described as brains on legs.

Again, this does not put him among Hypatia and Hawking in the pantheon of thinkers, but it does indicate the kid had some smarts.

Which, again, runs counter to the prevailing wisdom.

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That wisdom, BTW, was buttressed by a 2001 report from the Lovenstein Institute which concluded that Bush II had a sub-100 IQ and was the least intelligent US president in the last 50 years. Two problems: there was no report nor was there any such thing as the Lovenstein Institute.

Nevertheless, the findings of the “report” took hold in our cultural consciousness because we wanted them to be true.

An admittedly conservative researcher named Steve Sailer found in 2004 that Bush’s IQ probably was higher than his opponent in the presidential election that year, John Kerry. Sure Sailer had a horse in the race, but his findings have never been disproved. And, believe me, if there was even a hint of sloppiness or bias in Sailer’s methodology, Bush bashers would have found it.

So no, I don’t believe Bush was stupid. He only played stupid on TV. Which is worse.

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This holy land’s boob-ocracy loathes the intellectual. The rest of the nations of this planet revere women and men of intelligence. The Germans, for instance, worship Goethe. The Poles go gaga over Marie (Skłodowska) Curie. The Greeks boast an all-star cast of reckoners dating back to antiquity, a fact that gang seems never to tire of reminding us. Hell, Iranians proudly point to the Persian mathematician, Muhammad Al-Khwarizmi, as a cultural and ethnic hero.

We, on the other hand, know all about the Kardashians.

And how do you explain Sarah Palin? GOP women performed cartwheels over her when she was introduced to the nation at the 2008 Republican National Convention. The most common hosanna thrown in Palin’s direction was, She’s just like us.

“Americans,” Matt Taibbi wrote in Rolling Stone, “like politicians who hate books and see the face of Jesus in every tree stump.” Palin, we knew, seldom dirtied her hands on the pages of a book.

And the more George W. Bush burnished that same image, the more popular he became. In his first debate with John Kerry in 2004, Bush flopped around like a sunfish on the bottom of a rowboat. Bush “smirked or stammered and groped for words,” according to LA Times columnist James Rainey. Bush, I feel a need to remind you, won that election.

Kerry had come off as the know-it-all, the intellectual. Bush, meanwhile, showed the nation he had no time for high-fallutin’ words and all those studies by egghead perfessors or books. He was too busy bravely protecting our great land.

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Here’s the true measure of George W. Bush’s intellect: He was smart enough to know a huge proportion of Americans don’t like people who are smart.

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It’s been three days now and this apparently stunning link is still being posted on Facebook:

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If you’re in any way savvy about the interwebs, you know this headline was published on Monday by the Daily Currant, a satire website. The DC is a knock-off of the Onion, which is the grandmama of all satiric news outlets. The Onion pre-dates even TV fare like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. I was reading the Onion in coffeehouses as far back as the early 90s when it was still headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin. The Daily Show probably wouldn’t even exist today were it not for the Onion.

The Onion has duped its share of gullible readers over the years, mainly foreign news services eager to embarrass the United States. Last year, for instance, the Onion ran a piece declaring North Korea’s Kim Jong-un the “Sexiest Man Alive” in a send-up of People magazine’s annual feature of the same name. China’s People’s Daily reported the nomination as fact. And it wasn’t the first time the Chinese had bought an Onion bit hook, line, and sinker. Several years ago, a Chinese newspaper reprinted an Onion piece detailing a gay advocacy association’s progress in advancing the “homosexual agenda” in our nation’s schools.

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A couple of guys in some unnamed locale launched the Daily Currant last July. One of the DC’s founders told Slate that the site is designed to be more realistic than the Onion. “That’s the kind of comedy I like,” Daniel Barkeley said. “It’s made to look real. It’s funnier that way, and we think it’s more intelligent that way.”

The site’s very name, in fact, evokes that of an actual newspaper, the Hartford Courant.

So far the site has fooled not only average citizens but media heavyweights as august as the Washington Post. Last month, breitbart.com, natch, was buffaloed when the DC reported that Nobel Prize-winning liberal economist Paul Krugman had filed for personal bankruptcy. [MG note: I refuse to link to breitbart.com because, in the poetic phrasing of Charlie Pierce, “fk them.”]

See, the internet was supposed to make it easier for us to research things.

For instance, say I wanted to do a post on the danger of walking in dog poo in Bryant Park. I might thunder, This situation is intolerable! Mayor Mark Kruzan ought to fire this town’s Department of Parks and Recreation director…, um, er…. See, I don’t know who the parks boss is. But that’s simple enough to remedy: using one finger, I click on my trackpad and get this:

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Et voila! Through the miracle of modern technology, I can not only find out Mick Renneisen’s name, but see what he looks like. I can even learn that he thinks the citizens of this fair city are important.

One finger, gang!

That’s all it would take to go to the Daily Currant’s website, wherein the curious among us would see this:

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If the faux Palin faux pas doesn’t fire up those neurons in your brain devoted to skepticism, then the Granny-as-Marathon-bomber would have to. Not only that, a sidebar on that very page features stories about Pope Francis coming out as gay, Paul Ryan refusing to tip a black waiter, CNN reporting that Barack Obama has resigned, and Michele Bachmann accidentally going on a gay cruise.

Or you could simply read this:

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In the interest of fairness, I must reveal here that I arrived at the About page via three button clicks, although I still was able to use only one finger.

My point is not to ridicule those who’ve fallen for this Palin story (oh, alright, yes it is) but to remind my intelligent and discriminating readership how easy it is to fall for bullshit when we really want to believe it. My brothers and sisters on the Left like nothing better than to believe that Sarah Palin is an idiot. So the nano-second we see something that proves our preconceived notion, we run with it like investment bankers taking government bailouts.

It’s not enough for us to know that Sarah Palin has proven herself time and again to be as well-versed on foreign affairs and domestic issues as my good pal, Steve the Dog. No, we need more and more proof. We need to reinforce our belief. BTW, here’s what Julius Caesar said about belief: “What we wish, we readily believe….”

Steve The Dog & Sarah Palin Agree

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We wish that Sarah Palin is so stupid that she can’t tell the difference between Chechnya and Czechoslovakia — which doesn’t even exist anymore!

Just as the fine journalists at breitbart.com wish that the eminent liberal economist Paul Krugman has filed for personal bankruptcy.

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Bad Guys

Were I paranoiac, I might holler that my beloved hometown is being taken over by the forces of evil.

Chicago a bit more than ten years ago became home to Boeing International, one of this holy land’s biggest war profiteers as well as a serial tax avoider, profligate lobbyist, and political bankroller. Then, four years ago, the Trump Tower on the Chicago River was topped out at 1389 feet. Donald Trump owns the joint (or, more accurately, led the consortium that begged and borrowed enough dough to guarantee the skyscraper would bear his name) and we all know how I feel about that particular vulture capitalist-slash-financial pirate.

Trump’s Monument To Himself

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And now comes the news that the villainous Koch Brothers are making a big play for the Tribune Company newspaper properties including the Chicago Tribune, LA Times, Orlando Sentinel, Baltimore Sun, and Hartford Courant.

Now why would these savvy plutocrats opt to sink two-thirds of a billion dollars into what is universally agreed to be an industry on life support? The key, apparently, is their desire to remake the nation in their Mephistophelian image.

A front-pager in Sunday’s New York Times posits that the Koch’s have a plan for world domination. It would make Lex Luthor, Dr. No, the Joker, and Ozymandias look like hubcap thieves.

The Kochs inherited their wealth. They were born on third base, the aphorism goes, and have convinced themselves they hit a triple. A mere 90 feet from home plate, they’ve gone through life believing that destination is theirs by birthright and the rest of the world must be bent, folded, and mutilated to facilitate their journey thereto.

Lucky Baserunners

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According to NYT reporter Amy Chozik, Chucky & Davie have crafted a three-pronged plan to rule the planet. The first two tines include financing “grass roots” campaigns like the Tea Party and donating millions to political candidates. Controlling a large swath of the nation’s news media would complete their demonic trident.

Eek.

The Koch boys are noted libertarians, which is a nice way of saying they want what they want and everybody else can go to hell. Libertarianism is the preferred political philosophy of adults whose emotional and intellectual growth was stunted at the age of 15. If the mythic motto of these United States is “All men are created equal” and that of the Tea Party is “Don’t tread on me,” the watchphrase of Libertarians is “You can’t make me.”

Me, Me, Me

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Should the Kochs succeed in taking over the TribCo newspapers, it’ll be one giant leap in the inexorable march toward an official corporatocracy. As Fran Lebowitz once said, “In the Soviet Union, capitalism triumphed over communism. In this country, capitalism triumphed over democracy.”

If we’re not there already, it won’t be too long before We the People becomes The Company Is King.

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On Second Thought

I started this post last night, full of P & V, pounding the keyboard like a man possessed. My slant on the above screed was going to be my lengthy roster of betes noires including such archvillains as Trump, Roger Ailes, Karl Rove, Lloyd Blankfein, and Michele Bachmann. I made fleeting mention of such circus clowns as Pat Robertson, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Alex Jones, and Ann Coulter. The idea being, there’s a ton of bad guys in the political soap opera but few are as heinous as the Kochs.

Circus Clown

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On my way to demonizing the Wichita Warlocks, I detoured to riff about the evil dead Andrew Breitbart.

Man, did I rave! Here’s a sample couple of grafs:

I was overjoyed, for instance, when I heard the news that Andrew Breitbart had died suddenly a little more than a year ago. The adopted son of privilege, he trafficked in hateful innuendo, character assassination, and disinformation. His rhetoric was awash in both coded and overt racism and homophobia. His aim was not to educate or illuminate but to torment and cause mayhem. He sabotaged the career of Shirley Sherrod of the USDA for the unforgivable sin of revealing her own struggles with prejudice (and, BTW, triumphing over them) and he was instrumental in the demise of the social service agency ACORN. He helped no one but himself. He added to the misery of the unfortunate and the downtrodden. It would take 30 men and women to perform the amount of good he’d need to accrue to balance the moral book of his life. To this day, his breitbart.com still spews scurrilous accusations and fairy tale “revelations.”

When his heart stopped beating, the overall decency of the human race was nudged up a notch.

My rationalization for such acidity was the idea that there exist human beings whose existence detracts from the general welfare of humanity and we should celebrate their passing. Surely no same person would argue that the world would be better if only Adolph Hitler, Idid Amin, or any member of the New York Yankees were allowed to live.

Then I took a break and started surfing the interwebs, whereupon I read this Facebook post by the thoughtful and gentle Janet Cheatham Bell:

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Suddenly I felt like a boor for dancing on Andrew Breitbart’s grave. Here’s what I wrote in response:

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I feel somehow lacking in my inability to be as forgiving and loving as the man who wrote the article to which Janet links. And, for that matter, as all-embracing as Janet herself. So I scrapped my original draft of today’s post and got to work pounding out this one.

I can’t say I feel any kindlier toward Andrew Breitbart. But I will concede this: It’s those second thoughts which make us human. I thank Janet Cheatham Bell for making me think twice.

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You’ve Been Spared

Sheesh. This is one of those days wherein I could hardly wait to finish brewing my pot of coffee and dash out to the garage to clack out a brilliant post for this communications colossus. The words were pouring out of me. I was generating more snark than a convention of gossip columnists at an open bar. I was on, baby.

About an hour and half after I started banging at this keyboard, I sat back to read the sheer poetry that had emanated from it. The resultant literature, I was sure, would make Erato and Shakespeare hang their heads in shame. God, I said to myself, I’m good.

The Glum Muse Wishes She Were As Good As Me

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And then I read the post and said, Meh. Turns out the topic upon which I’d pontificated merited no more than a smart-assed, throw-away line or two, not a full fledged Daily Hot Air post.

So, I hit delete.

This, my non-writing friends, is the mark of a writer: The ability to toss her or his junk where it belongs.

I recall a day early on in my career of letters when I’d sooner sever a digit than trash even two of my masterful, long-sweated-over words. Now, after having spewed out millions of words both for pay and for love, I can easily heave a thousand words into the trash bin.

And, trust me, you’ll thank me for it.

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Black Comedy Archives

Speaking of masterful, long-sweated-over words, I’ve gotten a bunch of feedback from readers asking me about back episodes of my serial e-novel, “Black Comedy.” The intelligentsia here in Bloomington, and around the globe for that matter, know that I’ve been running my story of the Dudek family from Chicago’s Galewood neighborhood in the late 1960s and early ’70s every Monday and Thursday for some time now.

Joey’s Got A Gun

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If my count is correct — and it occasionally is — I’ll run Episode 19 tomorrow. As you know, I did a little format juggling around here starting in February and reaching into the early part of this month. I began running “Black Comedy” when The Electron Pencil was a magazine for that ten-or-so-week period. My daily hit numbers went to hell and those who did remain with me expressed confusion about navigating the site, so I decided a couple of weeks ago to trash the whole experiment and go back to the good old simple WordPress blog format that has served me so well for years.

The only problem is, I switched web hosts at the same time and now I can’t access the archived posts from the magazine format. So, of late, anybody who happened to fall into the story mid-stream and wanted to go back to the beginning was going to be frustrated. No more.

I’m in the process of creating a new back-episode archive. It’s fairly easy for you to access, so follow me here:

• 1) Go to the top of The Electron Pencil home page

• 2) Click the Black Comedy button

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• 3) A new page will come up, listing as many old episodes, in order, as I’ve had the chance to re-post

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• 4) After the title of each episode, you’ll see the read-it-now link

• 5) Pick whichever episode you need to read and click the link

• 6) Voila.

The only thing easier would be if I were to come to your house and read the episodes aloud in your living room.

If you (and I) are lucky, I just might post another back-episode or two today. And be sure to come here tomorrow for the next thrilling chapter of “Black Comedy.”

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Orphans

Don’t you just love how we’re howling about the Tsarnaev boys being from Chechnya, and that Chechnyan president holding a presser to say Hey wait a minute, they were raised in your country, so they were Americans?

Nobody wants to believe a couple of jimokes from their beloved land could be so callous and craven as to kill and blow the legs off innocent foot race spectators just to make some as yet undetermined point.

The Chechen President

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[By the way, doesn’t Ramzan Kadyrov look as though he’d be equally at home trying to sell you an extended service warranty at Best Buy as being boss of that Russian hillbilly republic?]

And the headlines about the Tsarnaev kin being so shocked by the allegations that some of them are even speculating it’s all a monstrous set-up really are over the top. That kind of corporate media follow up to a tragic crime story is getting a tad trite. What, do they now teach kids in journalism school to go to accused terrorists’ or mass murderers’ relatives and ask “Did you ever think your boys would do such a thing?” Of course people are shocked beyond belief that someone they’ve sat down to Thanksgiving dinner or whatever holiday gorging the Chechnyans enjoy could perpetrate an atrocity.

On the other hand, admit it, you can name one or two people off the top of your head this very second who, should they be accused of opening fire at a packed Wal-mart, you’d think “I knew it! I was just waiting for that crazy bastard to snap!” I’ve got two guys in mind right now.

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Money Changes Everything

While we’re on the subject Chechnyan prez Kadyrov is a member of a very exclusive club. Several human rights organizations have named him and his henchmen one of the most brutal regimes in the world.

And there’s yet another Chechen-USA tie. It seems Kadyrov threw himself a mother of a birthday bash a couple of years ago. Kadyrov’s minions built him a floating stage on the Sunzha River in the city of Grozny so that luminaries from around the world could serenade him for polluting the human gene pool for yet another year.

Turns out Oscar®-winning actress Hilary Swank was paid a reported six-figures to attend the fete and and tell the brutal boss what a swell egg he is.

Who’s The Boss?

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“I hope to have a film premiere here. Happy birthday, Mr. President,” she gushed.

Natch, Swank took a beating in the world press for it. Hell, her public relations firm even dropped her. I mean, you’ve really got to screw up royally to make PR flacks refuse to hold your hand through a crisis. Swank went on to throw her manager and agents under the bus in the fallout from the fiasco, firing them for setting the deal up.

She said she had no idea what a big bully Kadyrov was, this despite the fact that she, like many of her Hollywood colleagues, runs around between pictures telling anyone who’ll listen that she’s a Concerned Citizen of the World. Kadyrov has been reported to condone torture and honor killings of females among other pastimes. When reporters suggested Swank might have been a bit lax in boning up on Kadyrov, she snapped, “I read! I do my provisory research!” Which must be something because no one had previously heard of such a thing as “provisory” research.

The Noted Provisory Researcher

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Just goes to show that a person can be a brilliant artist and still be a dope.

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Spoiled Brats

Do I need to say how execrable I think that homeless-themed party the Kappa Delta cabal of XY-chromosome ingrates threw for themselves this week was?

Smudged T-Shirts And Stained Souls

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As one columnist wrote on Jezebel: “How much lower could spoiled sorority girls go?” This after referring to a Penn State sorority Mexican-themed party not six months ago. And by Mexican-themed, I mean Frito-Bandito-esque

The answer to this rhetorical query is the orgy of entitlement sponsored by our very own gang of sisters whose house webpage tells us “Our chapter is composed of amazing women, each of whom brings something special to our chapter.” Ignoring the self-reflexive redundancy in that sentence, one must wonder which of these amazing women had the bright idea of honoring our esteemed homeless citizens.

See, this is how prejudices propagate and grow. Prior to this, I’d already harbored in my heart a knee-jerk loathing of both sorority sisters and fraternity brothers. I don’t like exclusive clubs, whose basic raison d’etre is We’re better than you are. Bullies generally side with the majority and the homeless will never be part of the majority. The Kappa Deltas chose the easiest target they could think of.

Amazing women? Amazing, maybe, in a way, but not women. That would imply maturity.

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Chapter & Verse

BTW, IU poet Ross Gay and some pals are trekking down to Louisville today to catch a reading by fellow bard Chris Mattingly.

The nephew of former New York Yankee great and current Los Angeles Dodgers manager Don Mattingly, the younger frere has released a new book of poems entitled “Scuffletown.” The reading, if you’re feeling ambitious, will be held at an old-time beer-and-booze joint called Seidenfaden’s in the River City.

Chris Mattingly

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The Mattinglys originally hailed from the Evansville area.

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More Thoughts On Boston

• Get ready, kiddies, to learn more about Chechnya than you ever, ever, ever wanted to know.

Chechnya Is Somewhere On This Planet

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• Talking about the developments with Jericho as he poured my coffee at Soma and we each kept an ear open to the NPR minute-by-minute reporting on the manhunt, he observed, “My money was on white supremacists.” His fellow barista, Lindsay, added, “Me too.” To which I replied, “Let’s be honest, we were hoping it’d be white supremacists.”

• And, of course, if these two chuckleheads turn out to be Muslims, a lot of those white supremacists and paranoiacs will be proven at least partly right. Damn.

• So, it turns out some right wing “terrorism expert” dropped the dime on that poor Saudi kid who was hurt in the blast, turning the victim into a “suspect.” According to Peter Hart of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting appearing on Democracy Now!, this Steve Emerson dope went on C-Span the next morning and said he looked at the Saudi kid’s Facebook page, saw a couple of guys on it that he (Emerson) didn’t care for, and so he alerted the authorities. Great.

• BTW: Emerson told the nation the Oklahoma City bombing was the work of Islamic terrorists in the hours after that tragedy. Yet he still gets national media play for his “expertise.”

• Wait, there’s more: Right wing columnist Erik Rush tweeted that we should round up all Saudis. Someone who possesses half a brain commented on the tweet, “Sweet god. Are you ALREADY BLAMING MUSLIMS?” Rush responded, “Yes, they’re evil. Let’s kill them all.”

Collective Guilt

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• A guy came into the bookstore Wednesday to buy a gun magazine. He seemed all put out about something or another when he smacked the mag down on the counter. He said, unprompted, “Can you imagine if these people did this with guns? All the nuts would be screaming about it.” Presumably, by nuts he meant people who want to stanch the flow of guns throughout the nation. Call me a nut. Anyway, I resisted the urge to tell him that pressure cookers originally were designed for a purpose or two other than removing the brains from people’s crania or separating their legs from their bodies.

• Don’t hate me for saying this but I really got tired of hearing about New Orleans after a few years of non-stop eulogizing, post-Katrina. Now I wonder if Boston will get the same melodramatic treatment. Maybe, maybe not, but know this: Next year’s Boston Marathon will be a corporate media orgy of bathos.

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Tone

My Uncle Tony died this week. He was 96. Anthony Parello, born of Vincenzo and Anna (Lazzara) Parello in Chicago, was my favorite non-nuclear family relative.

Uncle Tony ran gas stations and then, long after retirement, he went to work for his son-in-law’s auto repair business, driving a delivery truck. Dig this: he worked into his 90s, tooling around the Northwest Suburbs in that tricked out pickup, complete with high-rise pipes, metal-flake paint job, and racing stripes. Beautiful.

He was married to Eva, nee Ranallo. Her brother Frank had been a perennial candidate for mayor of Chicago back in the 1960s and ’70s, regularly amassing vote totals in the high two-figures. Eva was most at home playing cards, a stack of chips to one side and her everpresent cocktail and smokes to the other. She had the loudest laugh I’d ever heard. It never failed to make me feel warm inside.

Tony and Eva moved back and forth from Las Vegas, seemingly every six months for a time during the 1980s. She loved to play blackjack and he loved her, so he followed. After a time, Eva’d start missing her kids and grandchildren so they’d come back to the Chicago area. Eva died about ten years ago.

She called her husband “Tone.”

I won’t cry over Uncle Tony’s passing because he’d lived a long life and did many things. The last few years or so, he’d been frail and, I’d imagine, frustrated about not being able to live as he once did.

He earned his rest.

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Black Comedy

By Michael G. Glab

© 2013

— Eighteen —

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[What’s the difference between a wedding and a riot? We’ll find out in the next few installments of the serial e-novel, “Black Comedy.”]

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It’s still hot on Saturday, April 6, 1968, even though the temperature at the time of Anna Dudek and Anthony Pontone’s wedding at St. Giles Roman Catholic Church is only 49 degrees. A cool front passed through the Chicago area early this morning, well before the sun rose. But, yeah, it’s hot.

In the morning, for instance, snipers engage the cops in a shoot out at the Cabrini-Green highrises. Dozens of cops crouch behind squadrols and private cars, exchanging gunfire with dozens of snipers up on the balconies. For some moments, the area around Larrabee and Division streets sounds like the worst of the news film footage from Vietnam.

The Balconies At Cabrini-Green

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The cooler air temps may have led to a slight easing of the madness on the West Side. The setting of fires, for one thing, seems to have ceased although most of the more than 200 buildings torched within the last 36 hours still are smoldering. Nearly a thousand people have been made homeless so far. Ten have lost their lives — again, so far. And the running count of people arrested in the riot zone now stands at 2500, give or take a few hundred which, when it comes to the Chicago Police Department counting bad things happening to black human beings, is about as accurate as things will get.

More than 22,000 fully-armed personnel have fanned out over the battle zone. Ten thousand five hundred Chicago Police officers in riot gear are working twelve-hour shifts. Governor Samuel Shapiro has sent in sixty seven hundred Illinois National Guardsmen. And President Lyndon Johnson has ordered 5000 regular U.S. Army troops into Chicago. The Army is setting up camp in Washington Park on the South Side. Convoys of armored personnel carriers and tanks are shuttling back and forth between the south and west sides.

Mayor Daley has been flying over the riot zone in a helicopter with Fire Commissioner Robert Quinn. The Mayor is shaking his head and saying, repeatedly, “I never thought this would happen here.” Commissioner Quinn, for his part, continually points out young black kids running into and out of Madison Street stores with shattered front windows, carrying radios and and TVs. “Look at that,” Quinn says. “Look. Look. You see that?” Quinn, the school snitch, and Daley, the flustered principal.

It is during one of these flyovers that Daley notices cops seemingly doing nothing to stop the kids from looting. “Why aren’t the policemen doing anything about it?” he wonders. He says the word policemen in his own version of Chicagoese: p’leess-minn. Quinn shrugs his shoulders, an innocent look on his face. Quinn thanks his holy God that Police Commissioner James Conlisk will bear the brunt of Daley’s wrath. Just to make sure, he points out a few more looters.

“How Could This Happen Here?”

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It’s at this moment that Richard J. Daley, the democratically elected mayor of the nation’s second largest city, declares war on his own constituents. Daley carried some of the precincts in these West Side wards by 10-1 margins in the 1967 election. These are his most loyal voters. It is now that Daley first articulates his order for police to shoot to maim looters and shoot to kill anyone with a Molotov cocktail in his hand.

Meanwhile, Governor Shapiro declares the residents of the West Side to be in a state of insurrection, thereby giving his National Guard soldiers license to fire upon them at will.

Chicago, like much of the nation today, is at war with itself.

“Mr. President?”

“Yes, Dick?”

“We’re In Trouble. We Need Some Help.”

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Anna and Anthony’s wedding might very well be the only one celebrated in the city today. That is, if one can actually celebrate anything while tanks and armored personnel carriers are rolling through Chicago’s streets. But God forbid anyone would even consider postponing these nuptials. Tree, for instance. She wants the whole thing over and done with as soon as possible. And Al, of course, has never been one to let distractions like civil warfare move him off his planned course.

And what of Anna? Shouldn’t she expect Saturday, April 6, 1968, to be the most exciting day of her young life?

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Father Jerome will perform the ceremony at St. Giles. The pews on the bride’s side of the aisle are packed. None of Al Dudek’s family, friends, and associates are about to let those pozzo coloreds stop them from going about their business. Anthony’s side is even more populated. And, for the first time in the long history of Mob scions’ weddings in Chicago, a passel of scraggly hippies and — Madonna! — a couple of Negroes are among the guests.

When the two Negroes first climbed the front steps of St. Giles church, Anthony Pontone’s driver reflexively reached inside his suit jacket and fingered the handle of his holstered .38.

Now, the two Negroes march into the church with every single eye upon them as if they are the bride and groom. They take their seats on Anthony’s side and act as though the other nearly 500 guests aren’t staring at them with mouths agape.

St. Giles

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Fr. Jerome climbs up to the lectern to give his sermon. He peers out over the assembled multitude and when his eyes land upon the two Negroes, his own jaw drops. He stands there staring for what seems an eternity. He stares so long that a murmur arises from the congregation. Like a character in a sitcom, Fr. Jerome finally shakes the cobwebs out and says, “Ahem, well then….”

The congregation has to wait another uncomfortable few moments for him to even remember what the hell he’s going to talk about, so shaken is he. Fr. Jerome is a big one for incorporating current events into his sermons. Say, for example, this wedding is taking place on a Saturday in December and the Bears are about to about to face, oh, the Green Bay Packers in an important game the next day. Half to three quarters of his sermon will be about the game. Then there was the time, just a little over a year ago, the Sunday after McCormick Place had burned to the ground, when his entire sermon resembled nothing so much as an arson investigator’s report. He commented that the fire had forced the cancellation of the Four Seasons show at the Arie Crown Theater. He even held up his tickets and said, crestfallen, “The Lord works in mysterious ways”!

Poor Fr. Jerome — He Missed The Four Seasons

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The Dudeks’ neighbors, Charlie Solari and his wife Josie were here that Sunday. They’re here today. Charlie Solari, a firefighter stationed at the Chinatown firehouse, actually battled the McCormick Place blaze. It turned out to be the most profitable working day of his life. Anna will explain this all later, when she points out each of the guests to Anthony at the reception.

So, Fr. Jerome is up on his current events.

Today, though, he makes absolutely no mention of the mayhem on the West Side and more than a hundred other cities around the country, nor does he refer to the death of the nation’s most prominent black leader that started it all. No, today Fr. Jerome falls back on that old wedding sermon chestnut, the marriage at Cana. Fr. Jerome hurtles himself into a feverish rapture by recounting Jesus’ first miracle. He is thrusting his fist into the air and nearly shouting as he gets to the part about the jugs of water being transformed into wine. For God’s sake, the guests might be excused for thinking Fr. Jerome is recounting the final touchdown in a Bears’ miraculous comeback victory over those Packers. Perhaps he hopes his histrionics will make the congregation forget the riots and the assassination. And he’s right. By the time he finishes even Al is asleep.

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The reception is being held at Nuovo Mondo Italian Restaurant & Banquets on Division Street, a block east of Austin Boulevard. Nuovo Mondo is a mere 200 yards from the border of Oak Park. Even though the rioting is taking place some two and a half miles to the east, there is an Oak Park police squad car blocking every major entry street to make sure marauding bands of Negroes don’t invade the leafy suburb. The Oak Park cops needn’t have bothered — there’s been plenty to burn and loot in the West Side ghetto.

Nuovo Mondo is part-owned by Tony the Fist Pontone. He is providing the reception hall free of charge in exchange for a healthy discount on all his meats from Al’s company for the remainder of the the year. That healthy discount amounts to a simple four words uttered by Al when Tony’s kitchen manager calls him up to inquire about his bill: “Doan worry about it.”

Black limousines pull up the the front entrance of Nuovo Mondo, disgorging their occupants: the newlyweds, of course; the rest of the wedding party; Anna’s parents; and Tony himself and his bride, Marlena.

An all-star cast arrives in lesser — but still pricey and shiny — vehicles. Mickey Finnin and his wife pull up in their brown Lincoln Continental. Alderman Rocco Bianco — a confirmed bachelor (some have whispered that he’s a swish) — pulls up in his rakish red Corvette. State’s Attorney Eddie Halloran and his wife Kathleen get out of their burgundy Oldsmobile Toronado. A slew of Buick Electra 225s of varying hues lets out the likes of State Senator Renaldo Nitti and his wife, Meat Cutters & Boners Union local president Tommy DeMio and his lovely bride, Teamsters local boss Jerry Piombino, restaurant mogul Andy Silverberg, auto dealer partners Nicky Capizzi and Mort Aronson, and a raft of lesser lights. Even Harry Aleman and Tony Spilotro are here.

(And, irony of ironies, when Anna was making out her seating arrangements, she placed Aleman and Spilotro at the same table as the widow Eva Mondi. One of Tony the Fist’s boys caught the gaff as he walked around the hall prior to the reception, sweeping for bugs planted by the G. He simply switched the two place cards with two from another table. He was, after all, concerned that the two hit men might be a tad uncomfortable sitting with the woman whose husband they’d assassinated not six months ago. He obviously didn’t know Aleman and Spilotro well.)

Nuovo Mondo’s red-vested parking valets are having the day of their year, their pockets bulging with fins and ten-spots. They’re running like track stars trying to keep up with with the big-tipping connected guys and pesci grandi.* And then a clunky little beige Ford Falcon splutters up to the curb. The woman on the passenger side opens her own door because none of the valets has dashed up to do so. Her door makes an excruciating, rusty squeak. The driver, a man, gets out and waits for a valet to approach to collect his keys. He waits and waits and waits until finally the valet with the least seniority slowly ambles up as if attached to a large rubber band and holds his palm open six inches below the man’s hand — the valet clearly does not want his skin to graze the man’s. The man lowers his hand to bring it nearer the valet’s so as to make the exchange of keys easier but the valet maintains the six-inch space. Finally, the man grasps what’s going and on simply drops the keys into the valet’s hand.

A Lump Of Coal In A Parking Lot Full Of Diamonds

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The man from the Falcon does not dig into his pocket to slip the valet a fin or a ten-spot. He has no fins or ten-spots in his pocket. In fact, he is carrying precisely $2.63 on his person, as much as he carries on some days and more than on most. “Psh,” one of the other valets stage whispers to his colleagues, “whaddya expect from a shine?” The man from the Falcon pretends not to hear this comment.

He and the woman, the same couple who drew unabashed stares in St. Giles, enter the lobby of Nuovo Mondo. They both pretend that they’re not being gaped at openly yet again. It’s unheard of for a black couple to enter the lobby of Nuovo Mondo. It’s bordering on madness for one to do so today.

There is still the hint of smoke in the air outside the banquet hall.

Now the guests are taking their seats. Joey, who has already begun sneaking gulps from wine bottles — not Chianti this time but Côtes du Rhône and Châteauneuf-du-Pape. He stumbles up to the wedding party’s dais and puts his arms around Anthony and Anna. “Yer married,” he says as if he’s breaking the news to them. Anna smiles at her brother. “Yes we are. Thank you, Joey,” she says. Anthony is about to thank him when Joey expels a monumental belch. “Sorry,” Joey says, and he stumbles off to find another unattended bottle of fine wine to slurp.

Anthony, of course, has been absent from the neighborhood for several years, learning to become a journalist, and then, consecutively, a dissenter, a radical, and finally a revolutionary. He leans nearer to Anna. “Who are all these people?” he whispers.

“Okay now,” Anna says, “pay attention.”

To be continued

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A Helpful Glossary

• Pesci Grandi: Pronounced PESH-ee GRAHN-dee, literally big fish, used to describe men of accomplishment and status.
• The G: FBI agents or representatives from the US Attorney’s office. Short for government.

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Join us Monday for the next installment of “Black Comedy.”

All fictional characters, descriptions, and situations are the property of the author.

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The American Nightmare

Funny I should get this forwarded email on the day after the Boston explosions [all sic]:

Written by a USMC vet

(I can’t argue with any of it. Passing it along as it was received.)

He wrote:

The American Dream ended (on November 6th) in Ohio. The second term of Barack Obama will be the final nail in the coffin for the legacy of the white Christian males who discovered, explored, pioneered, settled and developed the greatest Republic in the history of mankind.

A coalition of Blacks, Latinos, Feminists, Gays, Government Workers, Union Members, Environmental Extremists, The Media, Hollywood, uninformed young people, the “forever needy,” the chronically unemployed, illegal aliens and other “fellow travelers” have ended Norman Rockwell’s America.

The Cocker Spaniel is off the front porch…the Pit Bull is in the back yard. The American Constitution has been replaced with Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” and Chicago shyster, David Axelrod, along with international socialist George Soros will be pulling the strings on their beige puppet to bring us Act 2 of the New World Order.

Our side ran two candidates who couldn’t even win their own home states, and the circus fattster Chris Christie helped Obama over the top with a glowing “post Sandy” tribute that elevated the “Commander-in-Chief” to Mother Teresa status.

People like me are completely politically irrelevant, and I will never again comment on or concern myself with the aforementioned coalition which has surrendered our culture, our heritage and our traditions without a shot being fired.

You will never again out vote these people. It will take individual acts of defiance and massive displays of civil disobedience to get back the rights we have allowed them to take away. It will take Zealots, not moderates — not reach-across-the-aisle RINOs to right this ship and restore our beloved country to its former status.

Those who come after us will have to risk their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to bring back the Republic that this generation has timidly frittered away due to “white guilt” and political correctness…..

I’m done.

Again, I remind you this is all sic, lest you suspect I’ve suddenly become borderline illiterate or completely psychotic.

True Americans

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In any case, it’s ironic this comes so soon after someone planted bombs to kill and blow the legs off innocent people watching a foot race. Whoever set those bombs off hates America and hates Americans.

So does the self-described USMC vet who penned this shotgun slur against humanity.

As does the person who sent me this in an email.

Now, let’s ponder this letter-writer. He claims to have served in the United States Marine Corps. Let’s take him at his word. That means he was willing to do battle for his country. He also was willing to lose his life for it. Which is ironic, considering the fact he believes that pretty much everything about America is evil.

Defending A Sliver Of America

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We’ll recap whom he thinks is not a real American [in the order he’s listed them]:

• Women
• People with dark skin
• Latinos
• Feminists
• Homosexuals
• Letter carriers, FBI agents, police officers, firefighters, EMTs and paramedics, crossing guards, garbagemen, Bureau of Motor Vehicles clerks, prosecutors, public defenders, judges, sheriffs, bailiffs, mayors, aldermen, state senators, all members of Congress, [I must stop here because listing every “government worker” would take up too much precious bandwidth]

Bad Guys

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• Everybody who belongs to a labor or professional services union
• Anybody who’s concerned with air or water pollution
• All employees of any newspaper, radio station,television station, internet site, or magazine
• Anyone who has ever appeared in or worked on a television show or movie
• A huge swath of people under the age of, say, 30

Ruining America

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• [I have no idea what in the goddamned hell “the forever needy” means]
• Anybody who’s been laid off, downsized, outsourced, or otherwise terminated from employment
• The beings from the planet Zendar who are living among us without proper authorization
• Anybody who’s ever taken a trip with anyone else
• Pit bulls
• Community organizers
• Political consultants
• Liberal investment managers
• Beige people

Beige?

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• Corpulent New Jersey governors
• Moderates
• RINOs
• And finally, those who harbor something called “white guilt”

Which leaves, of course, those “white Christian males” the letter writer mentions early on. Except many of the people listed above can themselves be described as white Christian males so even this narrow category is down to a precious few.

So few, in fact, that it’s a good bet the only human being the letter writer doesn’t hate is himself.

And, to be quite frank, I wouldn’t bet that this fellow thinks much of himself.

So the question is still open regarding whom he might be willing to kill and be killed for when he was a Marine.

Maybe he just enjoyed the sight of blood, severed limbs, and eviscerations.

Just like the guy or guys who planted those bombs in Boston.

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THE QUOTE

“Terror made me cruel.”

Emily Bronte

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THE INCIDENT

A few thoughts about yesterday’s explosions at the finish line of the Boston Marathon:

• Think of how narcissistic one (or more) must be to devise and execute a plot that would not only kill people but blow the legs right off a dozen or so people’s bodies. That’s what hit me about Boston: the eyewitness testimonies that a number of people had their legs blown off at the scene.

• Assuming this act was carried out by more than one person, it strikes me as the height of improbability that these ghouls can find each other and agree on a plan of action. If I, for instance, am sitting with the Boys of Soma on a Sunday morning and someone suggests we go out to breakfast, it’s next to impossible to get the group to: 1) even agree to go out to breakfast; 2) come to a consensus on where we should go for breakfast; and 3) determine as a body precisely when we should hoist our bodies out of our chairs and go for breakfast. I have the same reaction when I hear about a gang rape. Is it that criminals and reprobates are somehow more adept at organizing than the rest of us?

• A marathoner was quoted as saying the Boston event has now “lost its innocence.” I wasn’t aware the Boston Marathon was innocent prior to yesterday. Isn’t it weird how even ordinary people try to concoct sound bites for the media these days?

• When the news began trickling in, some reporters said there were two “massive” explosions set off by “sophisticated” planners. Within a couple of hours, law enforcement officials and other authorities were saying the bombs, thankfully, were crude, small, and placed so haphazardly that it might be difficult to glean a “signature” or other evidence tying them to an organized gang. I’d hate to think our august Fourth Estate members were, in any way, engaging in hyperbole for the purpose of spinning a more exciting yarn.

Breathless

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• This morning, radio reporters and anchors are insisting on saying “improvised explosive devices” or IEDs caused the carnage yesterday. Personal to those journalists: the word bombs will do just fine, thank you.

• I have absolutely no concern whatsoever with the thoughts, feelings, reactions, or observations of any celebrity regarding the explosions. Even if I agree with them.

Patton Oswalt

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• We are a rather beastly species, no?

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So, the big new innovation in education these days is quiet lunch.

Yep. This holy land has been suffering a learning crisis for upwards of 50 years now, our students more versed in the width of Kim Kardashian’s ass than the formula for determining the circumference of a circle, school teachers dropping out of the profession in droves, and Republicans squeezing the budgets of every school district from here to Alaska.

Modern Geometry

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What, oh what can we do? Fear not, America, there is a solution. NPR reporter Jenny Brundin reported this morning on Weekend Edition Sunday that “there’s a growing movement nationally to have silent lunches.”

Which only reinforces my long and dearly held observation that school would be fine if it weren’t for teachers and others who’ve devoted their lives to the study of educating our youngsters.

These are people, after all, who blithely insist on using the term pedagogy when they mean teaching. One who’s spent tens of thousands of dollars earning a doctorate in education and has gone on to suffer the crushing pressures of clawing his or her way to the top in a racket that tolerates dissent and unorthodoxy only slightly less violently than Augusto Pinochet did must, I suppose, coin a patois that’s inscrutable to the rest of us who merely expect to learn things from teachers.

Anyway, these deep thinkers have of late concluded that lunchtimes in elementary and junior high schools are far too loud. Heavens to Betsy, someone even found that the typical school cafeteria around noon can be a loud as a lawn mower, although it wasn’t specified whether said mower is electric, gas-powered or a simple mechanical push contraption like my old man had when I was a kid.

I Mean, How Loud Can This Be?

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Even assuming we’re talking about a mower powered by something akin to a Pratt & Whitney jumbo jet engine, so what? Put any number of kids in a big room and they’re going to produce a frightful din. That’s what kids do. That’s also a major rationale behind my long and dearly held practice of leaving any room that has two or more children in it.

The point is, I’ve devoted my life to the avoidance of physical proximity to human beings under the age of 21. Teachers and related pedagogues have not. Quite the contrary, in fact. Anybody who expects to spend an eight-hour shift with a pile of kids ought also to expect to go home with tinnitus. The American school system, alas, was based on the Prussian model which called for, among other things, orderly rows of desks and slavish obeisance. Kids for some 200 years in American schools have been expected to sit still and be quiet from 8:30 in the morning until 3:00 in the afternoon, a prospect as ludicrous as hoping the Republican legislature will do its utmost to keep school libraries stocked for the foreseeable future.

Some advocates of the quiet lunch say 45 minutes spent without squawking, prattling, shrieking, stentorian belching, and the making of fart noises by abruptly squeezing the palm against the armpit will actually make the kids learn more. Apparently, the reasoning goes, the little darlings will contemplate the mysteries of the universe or at least the formula for determining the circumference of a circle while keeping their traps shut. Which stands at a wild variance to my personal experience of thinking only of creative ways to inflict pain on all the teachers who ever ordered me to be quiet.

We’re moving at breakneck speed toward a society wherein the prime lesson to be learned in school is to be docile and malleable. That is, if we aren’t there already.

Personal to the pedagogues: Why don’t you just let the kids be kids for lunch?

What Kids Do

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