Category Archives: Media

George and Bob, Part I

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The far right’s obsession with George Soros as some kind of leftist boogeyman funding every supposedly un-American conspiracy it can think of shows a lack of creativity, reality, and intellect we should expect in discussions of our political system.

To some of these folks, the mention of the words “George” and “Soros” provokes the same reaction that Pavlov got from a dog when he rang a bell.

Soros bashing emerged again last week with the indictment of Donald Trump.  Trump’s former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, attacking Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg as “a Soros-funded prosecutor who refuses to prosecute violent crimes…” A New York Times fact-checker has found no direct Soros funding link to Bragg’s campaign although he did give a million dollars to a political action committee that put a half-million dollars into the Bragg campaign.

Our former Attorney General and Trump acolyte, Eric Schmitt, accuses Bragg of ignoring “violent crime (that) rages on & violent criminals walk free.”  Too bad he never criticized prosecutors here at home where our two biggest cities have had high murder rates for years, including time when Schmitt was AG or was in the legislature making state policy.

Current AG Andrew Bailey accused Bragg of being “another Soros-funded prosecutor with misplaced priorities.

Governor Parson says it’s a matter of “another Soros-backed prosecutor [who] uses the rule of law to serve his own political agenda, not justice.

My defense of Soros should not be unexpected because I have been a beneficiary of Mr. Soros.

Or maybe I was a Soros enabler and others benefitted—-although his critics will say nobody has benefitted from the distribution of his wealth as he sees fit to distribute it—-a reverse reflection of how the people on the Left feel about the Koch brothers and their support of right-wing activities.

In such discussions we should acknowledge some things:

The Golden Rule in politics has been expressed as, “He who has the gold, rules.”

That’s not exactly correct. There are a lot of instances in which wealthy patrons have invested in this or that candidate only to see that candidate lose.  But the super-wealthy can afford to just shrug and see who else or what else they can buy, confident they will prevail eventually—although most of us wonder why the super-rich feel a need to keep prevailing.

Why can’t they just be like Scrooge McDuck and go down in their basement and take a bath in their money?

Why should they?

Soros faced his wealth and the freedom it gives him to be involved not only in politics but in other causes this way in a 2016 essay in The New York Review of Books: “My success in the financial markets has given me a greater degree of independence than most other people. This obliges me to take stands on controversial issues when others cannot, and taking such positions has itself been a source of satisfaction. In short, my philanthropy has made me happy.”

One of the things that makes him happy is the project that involved me.

Before I tell the story, let me tell you some things about George Soros that his critics never talk about but they’re things that help understand some of the man.

George, if I may speak of him with a familiarity I have not earned, is about 92, the son of a man who escaped from a Soviet prison camp and made his way back to Nazi-occupied Budapest where his family—Jewish family—was living. He says his father printed fake identity documents for other Jewish families.  Those years living as a Jew in Nazi Hungary shaped his life.

He went to England after escaping from Hungary, studied economics and developed his philosophy of investing. He came to America, became a naturalized citizen in 1961and began a career as a financial analyst before he later moved into hedge fund management and a career that led him to be what he calls a “political philanthropist.”

This article from The Street  includes Soros’s Wall Street Journal article in 2016 explaining, “Why I Support Reform Prosecutors.”

Billionaire George Soros Hits Back at Donald Trump – TheStreet

It might be educational for some of his critics whose knees jerk and whose saliva glands gush at the mere mention of his name to read—-although I doubt that few will.  He seems to be right on the money, however, when he wrote, “Many of the same people who call for more punitive civil justice policies also support looser gun laws.”

As for supporting Bragg, Soros says he has never met him and has never directly contributed to his campaign although his political action committee has constributed money to a group that has given some funds to Bragg’s campaigns.  To assert that Soros owns Bragg is a big leap.

In the early 80s, Soros created the Open Society Foundations to promote democracy and financial prosperity in nations that were falling away from the Soviet Union as the USSR crumbled.

And that is when George Soros and Bob Priddy came together.

Now, to be clear—I have never met George.  But the opportunity he gave me to be part of his program to bring freedom to the newly-independent countries that had been Soviet territories for decades turned out to be one of the most rewarding experiences of my career as a journalist.

George Soros is not always correct in backing the causes he backs. The history of his involvements makes that clear. Some of his assessments of this country’s present and this country’s future anger those on the right who see this country as the world’s dominant nation during a time when there are challenges to that idea and that reality every day.

His wealth and his world life-experience allow him the freedom to challenge those who have trouble thinking outside the box that constitutes the boundaries of the United States. But he does not have a corner on international geopolitical wisdom.  His ideas are open to challenge.  But such challenges are not beneficial if all they do is call him a name or vaguely blame him for everything that is wrong for this country and this world by merely beeathing the word “Soros.”

It is his right, as it is the right of wealthy others on the other side, to use his wealth to disseminate his opinions and to shape societies as he thinks they should be shaped.

The great broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow once said something that brings up a problem with the ability of the super-rich to influence our political system. Murrow told fellow broadcasters, “Just because the microphone in front of you amplifies  your voice around the world is no reason to think we have any more wisdom than we had when our voices could reach only from one of the bar to the other.”

So the super-rich on both sides of the aisle can afford a much bigger microphone than you or I can afford.  Finding a way to equalize the voices of the average American and the billionaire American is an important quest, but one unlikely to succeed in the foreseeable future.

My experience with George Soros leads me to defend him as something other than a leftist boogeyman. And I am naturally inclined against finding validity in those who only parrot cheap-shot party line character assassinations in place of intelligent discussion.

I’ll tell you about George and me in the next entry.

 

Just About When You Think You’ve Heard It All—

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You know for sure you never will.

The St. Louis County Council got into a recent snit because some members wanted to go behind closed doors to discuss, brace yourself:

Missouri’s open meetings law.

The agenda also included rules for public comment at council meetings and learning more about the Sunshine Law itself.

Things bogged down when Council Chairwoman Shalonda Webb began to read from a handbook on the Sunshine Law published by the Attorney General’s office.  One council member accused her of filibustering.  Eventually enough council members walked out that there was no longer a quorum and the meeting could not continue.

The meeting represents the eternal conflict between a government of the people and a government in spite of the people.

Government, even in this great land of so many kinds of freedom, thinks it can operate best away from public view or later public scrutiny.  That’s speaking generally, of course.  But since Missouri’s Sunshine law was engaged fifty years ago, various individuals and groups have tried to carve out secrecy gaps for themselves.

Our campaign finance laws, for example, let us learn far less than an informed citizenry would find helpful in understanding who is buying what, or trying to buy what in our statutes and our bureaucracy.

Five years ago, voters changed the Missouri Constitution to require greater obedience of our sunshine law by the legislature.  But now the people you and I elected to represent our interest are pushing a bill that closes more records that reveal how our laws are shaped.

Bureau Chief Jason Hancock of Missouri Independent, a respected colleague in our active reporting days, whose agency is an important addition to a capitol press corps that has been greatly diminished in recent years, summed up Senator Andrew Koenig’s bill a few days ago: “Any record of a state lawmaker or their staff pertaining to ‘legislation or the legislative process’ would be closed off to public scrutiny, except for those offered during a public meeting or involving a lobbyist…The bill also closes records held by the government pertaining to a constituent, though lobbyists wouldn’t be covered under this provision. Koenig deended the proposal at a legislative hearing…arguing that sometimes lawmakers “need to be able to think out loud with your staff and before you get a finished product.” But to government transparency advocates, the push represents lawmakers trying to carve themselves out of a constitutional mandate imposed on them by the voters of Missouri.”

The concept of having secret time so candid policy discussions can be held is a constant excuse for closing doors. The idea is understandable on matters of national security.  But it is garbage most of the time.

Jason also quoted Litigation Director David Roland of the Freedom Center of Missouri, who said, ““The legislature really doesn’t like the fact that the people amended the Constitution to say that they had to provide a greater level of transparency than a lot of these legislators are comfortable with. But that’s what the people decided. And now legislators are trying to insulate themselves from oversight by the public.”

Some in government argue that extensive demands for records or copies of records that are supposed to be public constitute “abuse.”

Does anybody else think it is absurd that a citizen has a right to get supposedly public records without being hassled or without having to get a second mortgage to pay for cophing or—as has been proposed—the time spent REDACTING INFORMATION THE CITIZEN CAN’T KNOW?

Who’s the abuser here?

It is a mistake to think that the only people who care about this issue are members of the press. Yes, open meetings and open records laws are important for those who believe they work as trusees for the public. But “the public” needs to understand that there are all kinds of records about it and the public has a right to see those records.

That right is enshrined in one of the sacred documents of our nation—“Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

“The governed” should be wary of lawmakers who decide the people do not need to know or are incapable of understanding how their government is run or who really runs some of it.

Too many of those we entrust to govern us do not trust us to know what they do.

By, for, and of the people?

Let’s not kid ourselves to often.

 

 

Enheduanna’s descendants

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About twenty descendants of Enheduanna met at the Missouri River Regional Library yesterday afternoon.  I might have been the only one, certainly one of the few, who knows about this relationship.

It was a gathering of mis-Missouri authors, all of whom had their books for sale.  I sold five in two and half hours but I had some lively conversations with with some of the other descendants.

Enhe—who?

I am a member of the Archaeological Institute of America and a former member of the National Geographic Society.  Do not be impressed.  That only means that I subscribe or subscribed to a magazine.

In my latest edition of the AIA’s Archaeology magazine is the story of Enheduanna, a poet and a composer of hymns to the temples of the Akkadian Empire.  She was a priestess and a princess, the daughter of Sargon the Great who founded the world’s first great empire by uniting northern and southern Mesopotamia,  and his spouse, Nanna.

Enheduanna, whose name translated means “Ornament of Heaven,” was the high priestess at the temple to Nana-Suen, the moon god, in the ancient city of Ur, once a coastal city near the mouth of the Euphrates River on the Persian Gulf in what is now southern Iraq.  Time has caused the coastline to shift and the site of Ur is on the south bank of the river, about ten miles from Nasiriya, a city not far from the Gulf.

There is a portrait of her—sort of a portrait—found on a 4,000 year old disk excavated in 1927.

She is shown in the long dress, two male servants behind her and another in front of her, prayerfully working on one of her poems or hymns.  The disk dates from about 2250 BCE.*

She is important in today’s observation because she is the world’s first author.

Or at least the earliest person whose writings have survived with an author’s name attached.

Kate Ravilious, in her magazine article, quotes Assyriologist Anette Zgoll: “The rituals that Enheduanna performed were instrumental in creating the new power structure by reconciling the city states and the wider realm.”

One of her hymns is Temple Hymn 26: To the Zabalam Temple of Inanna:

O house wrapped in beams of light
wearing shining stone jewels wakening great awe
sanctuary of pure Inanna
(where) divine powers the true me spread wide
Zabalam
shrine of the shining mountain
shrine that welcomes the morning light
she makes resound with desire
the Holy Woman grounds your hallowed chamber
with desire
your queen Inanna of the sheepfold
that singular woman
the unique one
who speaks hateful words to the wicked
who moves among the bright shining things
who goes against rebel lands
and at twilight makes the firmament beautiful
all on her own
great daughter of Suen
pure Inanna
O house of Zabalam
has built this house on your radiant site
and placed her seat upon your dais

She wrote in cuneiform and her works are preserved in 4,000-year old clay tablets.

Perhaps you have been moved to write a poem (beyond your elementary school English classes where a teacher might have had you write one as an assignment), or a published or unpublished book.

Or maybe you blog.  Or perhaps your literary tastes are confined to Facebook or some other social media platform.

Those who write are literary descendants of a woman who lived for that four millennia ago and whose words are preserved on clay tablets.  Some of us also write on tablets but our works probably won’t be found by archaeologists thousands of years from now.

Enheduanna would be considered the patron saint of authors, probably, except she probably is considered a heathen by those who confer official sainthood.

A lot of people, perhaps most people, have an urge to write. Something.  Some make a living doing it. But only a minuscule percentage of writers are in that category.

I don’t think any of the people at the tables in that library room make a living from writing, but mot would agree that writing makes living better.

You can be the Enheduanna of your household.  Publication is secondary to the reward of just writing, whether is poetry, a memoir, a family history, or an attempt at the great American novel.

Don’t worry about where to begin. Just start.  The beginning point and the ending point will come later.  But write.

Enheduanna has had a lot of descendants.  Be one more.

*BCE is an archaeological term for “Before the Common Era,” which provides a process of dating that does not favor a particular religion.

(photo credit: wikicommons)

Ya Got Trouble Right Here in River City

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“Gotta figure out a way to keep the young ones moral after school,” the professor told the citizens of River City, Iowa.

Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft thinks he has a way to do that.  He proposes taking away state funding for local libraries that don’t adopt written policies that allow any parent or guardian of a minor “to determine what materials and access will be available to a minor,” particularly any materials that might appeal to that minor’s prurient interests.

The ultimate moral policeman would be the Secretary of State, whoever it is now and whoever it might be in the future.

Librarians throughout the state are not reacting kindly to his idea.  And local library boards, who are better cross-sections of community standards than one person at the state capital, by and large resent his meddling.

If you want to read the proposed rule, go to: https://www.sos.mo.gov/CMSImages/AdRules/main/images/15_CSR_30_200_015.pdf

We are now within a thirty-day public comment period before the legislature’s Joint Committee on Administrative Rules decides whether this overreach should become state policy.

One local library trustee who is known for wordiness minces no words in his response:

I am a trustee of a local library board, a position I have held off and on for more than twenty years. I was a delegate to the most recent White House Conference on Libraries and Information.  I am a published author of five books with a sixth book under consideration by publishers.

I am a reader.

I believe in the First Amendment.

I do not believe in censorship.

I do not believe in government overreach.

I am not a card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union, but I do carry a valid library card.

The proposed rule on “Library Certification Requirements for the Protection of Minors” is a terrible rule and should be rejected by the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules.

This rule potentially gives the Secretary of State, whoever it might be or whoever it might become, the power to determine whether a library shall receive state funds based on his interpretation of what, as the rule states, “appeals to the prurient interest of any minor.”

The Secretary has issued a statement saying, “When state dollars are involved, we want to bring back local control and parental involvement in determining what children are exposed to. Foremost, we want to protect our children.”

The intimation in this statement that local control of libraries has been lost is irresponsible. Public libraries are governed by boards made up of local citizens. There has been no loss of local control.  “Parental involvement in determining what children are exposed to” likewise seems to suggest parents have been restricted in considering whether a book that might be proper for someone else’s child to read is improper for their own child to have.

He also has said, “We want to make sure libraries have the resources and materials they need for their constituents, but we also want our children to be ‘children’ a little longer than a pervasive culture may often dictate.”

I am afraid that the statement only invites chaos. If libraries are to serve “their constituents,” they must have a wide range of materials available to a broad range of individuals at various levels of maturity. To expect librarians to determine the level of maturity of every nine-year old who walks into their buildings is unrealistic.

When I first heard about this rule, my first question was, “Who makes the ultimate decision?”  It appears the answer is the Secretary of State.  To place one person in a position of second-guessing professional community librarians is dangerous.

The proposed rule does not define this critical phrase which puts the Secretary of State, as the supervisor of the patronage position of State Librarian, in the position of making subjective judgments about the prurience of any single publication that is objectionable to “any material in any form not approved by the minor’s parent or guardian.”

“Prurience” is not defined nor is “age appropriate,” three words that open the door to onerous penalties based on an interpretation of one parent and/or one state official. And stoking fear of some kind of vague “pervasive culture” that the statement suggests has invaded our public libraries and motivates the professionals who manage them is completely uncalled for.

The rule creates the potential for the kind of decision referred to by Justice Potter Stewart who discussed the threshold test for defining obscenity in Jacobellis v. Ohio in 1964:

“I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [“hard-core pornography”], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it…”

By working backward from the parent to the Secretary of State, this rule indicates that a library could lose state funding if one parent of one child disagrees with a library’s policy on collection acquisitions by finding one book that the parent feels appeals to the child’s “prurient interest” and files the objection with the State Librarian and the librarian’s supervisor, the Secretary of State.

I do not believe our libraries and our librarians are  the “dance at the arm’ry” referred to by Professor Harold Hill in The Music Man:

“Libertine men and scarlet women, and ragtime, shameless musicThat’ll grab your son, your daughter with the arms of a jungle, animal instinctMass-stariaFriends, the idle brain is the devil’s playground.”

Libraries are not devil’s playgrounds. Librarians are not “libertine” or “scarlet” but are instead highly professional defenders of the right to read, the right to know, the right to think.  I believe they carefully evaluate additions to the collections, but they recognize that children as well as adults mature differently and determining “age appropriateness” is one of their most difficult tasks.

But if my children were still young readers, I should be the one to decide what they bring home. It is not my place to decide what should be available to another child of the same age but a higher maturity.

We refer to these institutions as free public libraries. I believe the word “free” means more than an institution that does not charge a membership fee that limits access to intellectual exploration and growth.

This is a bad rule that places one person in a position of denying funding to one of the most important institutions in any community because he or she agrees with one parent who finds one book objectionable.

Moral judgments are personal. The power to force others to bend to the moral judgment of any single political officer by cutting off funding to a library should never be allowed.

This rule is anti-freedom at several levels and has no business being part of state government. While I am concerned with our children remaining children, I am more concerned with what happens with a politician being a politician and what it can mean to the liberties of us all.

I urge the committee to reject this proposal.

Bob Priddy

Jefferson City

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The silent letter

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We have a big stack of table games that we like to play with friends. One that we like is Bananagram.  I often complain because, unlike Scrabble, there are no points for the letters. And without points, how do we determine a winner?

Nancy just unzips the cloth banana and spills out dozens of tiles with different letters. We turn them upside down and pick the proper starting number of them (usually trying to pick tiles from various parts of the pile—as if that makes any difference) and then each person starts his own little word-building.  The end result is a crossword-looking series without any lines and with no clues.  If you have leftover tiles after you spell your first series of words, you say the proper word and everybody draws another tile. The person who runs out of tiles first is the winner.

But there are no points!!!   How do we identify a winner after a night of full-contact Bannanagram if the losers of each game don’t get points?

We also play other word games such as Quiddler and Wordspiel.  And other non-word card games including one with five suits called Five Crowns.  And games that aren’t word games such as Labyrinth,  Dominoes, and Rummikub.

Whether it’s because we play word games at the table or because we make a living out of stringing words into columns or articles or books or speeches, we find the English language pretty fascinating.  Maybe it goes back to one of our first jobs being the proofreader of the National Broom and Broom Corn News, which had an unpleasantly picky and prickly editor, in Arcola, Illinois or because we had some pretty good English teachers along the way.  (The NB&BCN was a contract print job that the Arcola Record-Herald published for the broom corn industry that was big in central Illinois then).

That’s probably why we had to do some hard thinking when we saw an article in Mental Floss by Michele Debczak about the only letter in our alphabet that cannot be silent.

(Let’s pause here for a bit so you can ruminate on this. Come back whenever you’re ready.)

The English language is a really hard language and a lot of us never learn it or never quit learning it.  The other day I admonished a friend for saying something such as, “George and myself are going to the game next Friday.” That sentence construction is fingernails on a blackboard.  Suppose George wasn’t going with you.  Would you say, “Myself is going to the game Friday?”  Think of a sentence that way and you’ll probably say or write it correctly.

Psychosis.   Gnu.  (In Africa a couple of years ago, I took a picture of several Wildebeests standing around.  I called it “Gnus Conference.”)  Mnemonic.  Silent letters.

Some letters have multiple personalities. Hard and soft “c,” or “g.” A great example is “Ghoti,” which is pronounced “fish.”  You know, “gh” as in “enough.”  “O” as in “women,” and “ti” as in “action.”

Ms. Debczak points to some foreign words we have appropriated for our own use that have silent letters.  French gives us the silent “z” as in “Chez.” Spanish gives us a silent “j,” as in “marijuana.”  Come to think of it, the “z” in Debczak probably is silent.

She apparently has read the Merriam-Webster Dictionary because she says the only letter in that entire dictionary that is never, ever silent is (drum roll):

V

If the “v” were silent, we would be saying “I loe you.”  Politicians would proclaim “ictory” after citizens had cast their “otes.”  Poetry would be “erse.”  Olive oil would be extra “irgin olie oil”  We’d have to find another word to describe these political times. “Diisie” would not work.

Get out your dictionary. Look at all the “V” words.

Let us know if you find one with a silent “V.”   And once you’ve done that, find the rhyme for “orange.”

 

Banned Book Week

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I have a pin that I wear on rare occasions that says, “I Read Banned Books.”

And I do.

I’ve read Huckleberry Finn.  The Bible (well, parts of it), Grapes of Wrath, Lady Chatterley’s Lover (not just the good parts), In Cold Blood, The Naked and the Dead—–

Probably more.

And as consumers of these columns know, I am clearly corrupted, probably an abuser of something or other, and have read a forbidden word or two that most second-graders already know.

This is the fortieth anniversary of Banned Books Week, It was started at a time when there was a sharp rise in actions to take books out of schools, libraries and even out of bookstores. It was created by Pittsburgh librarian Judith F. Krug who became the director of the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom. Later she joined the Freedom to Read Foundation and after Time magazine did an article in 1981, “The Growing Battle of the Books,” founded Banned Books Week.

One of the biggest promoter is a century-old (founded in 1922) organization called PEN America, which says it “stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect free expression in the United States and worldwide.” Originally the acronym stood for “Poets, Essayists, Novelists.”  But the group has broadened its tent to include playwrights and editors and even more people. So “PEN” is no longer an acronym for anything but the organization is for free exposure to ideas.

Not long ago the organization calculated about 140 school districts spread throughout 32 states had issued more than 2,500 book bans, efforts that it says affect almost four=million students in more than five-thousand individual school buildings. It has identified at least fifty groups with at least 300 local chapters advocating for book bans.  It says most of those groups have formed in the last year.

PEN America keeps an annual index of schoolbook bans.  That list for the school year ending June 30, 2022 lists 2,535 instances of banning 1,648 titles.  The organization says 674 of the banned titles address LGBTQ+ themes or have characters who are in that category. Another 659 titles featured characters of color and another 338 addressed issues of race and racism.

Political pressure or legislation designed to “restrict teaching and learning” (PEN”s phrase) were involved in at least forty percent of the bans.  Texas had 801 bans in 22 districts. Florida had 566 in 21 districts. Pennsylvania had 457 in 11 districts.

The organization says the movement is speeding up resulting in “more and more students losing access to literature that equips them to meet the challenges and complexities of democratic citizenship.” It says, “Ready access to ideas and information is a necessary predicate to the right to exercise freedom of meaningful speech, press, or political freedom.”  It cites this except from a 1978 decision in a Federal Court case in Massachusetts:

“The library is ‘a mighty resource in the marketplace of ideas’ … There a student can literally explore the unknown and discover areas of interest and thought not covered by the prescribed curriculum. The student who discovers the magic of the library is on the way to a life-long experience of self-education and enrichment. That student learns that a library is a place to test or expand upon ideas presented to him, in or out of the classroom… The most effective antidote to the poison of mindless orthodoxy is ready access to a broad sweep of ideas and philosophies. There is no danger in such exposure. The danger is in mind control.”

Sixteen instances of book banning are on the new PEN index.  Six are from Nixa. Four are from Wentzville.

(3 actions)  Alison Bechdel, Fun House, A Family Tragicomic, banned in classrooms, Nixa May 2022; Banned pending investigation, North Kansas City and Wentzville (October, 2021)

Echo Bryan, Black Girl Unlimited, the Remarkable Story, banned in library, Nixa,  February 2022

Jano Dawson, This Book is Gay, banned in libraries, Lindbergh School District, October 2021

Jonathan Evison, Lawn Boy, banned pending investigation, Wentzville School District, October, 2021

Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing, banned in libraries, Nixa, May, 2022

Lisa Jewell, Invisible Girl, a Novel, banned pending investigation, Wentzville School District October 2021

(Two actions) George M. Johnson, All Boys Aren’t Blue, banned in libraries and classrooms, Nixa School District, May, 2022; banned pending investigation, North Kansas City School District,  October, 2021

Kiese Laymon, Heavy, an American Memoir, banned pending investigation, Wentzville School District, October, 2021.

Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye, banned in libraries of the Nixa School District  February, 2022.

Logan Myracle, l8r g8tr, banned in libraries and classrooms, St. Francis Howell School District,  October, 2021

Elizabeth Scott, Living Dead Girl, banned pending investigation, Rockwood School District, March, 2022

Nic Stone, Dear Martin, banned in classes, Monett R-1 School District, December 2021

Jeanette Walls, The Glass Castle, banned pending investigation, Nixa February, 2022

I am a writer, a journalist, an author, a longtime supporter of my local and regional libraries. I do not have much patience with those who want to dictate to me what I might read, how I might speak, or what I might think.

Perhaps I am the kind of person those who want to dictate those things fear.  Fear is a lousy reason for running a society or a nation.  People who are different will not go away and keeping someone from reading about them won’t drive them away.

So for the rest of this week, be a good American.

Read a banned book.  There’s a list of them above.

 

 

 

 

RACE

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In various forms we are tied up, politically, socially, economically and about every other kind of “ically” with the subject of race.

It provokes anger, fear, and uncertainty.

Am I racist?  Is someone else a racist, too, although they don’t look the same way I do?

Am I a victim? Am I a perpetrator?

What should I do?  Admit it?  Feel guilty about it?  Demand something from somebody? Be afraid of somebody?  Organize and try to stamp it out or stamp out discussions of it?

And where did it come from?

There are those who prefer not to discuss this issue. They have turned the word “woke” into a pejorative describing disparagingly those who are, as the Oxford Old English Dictionary tells us “originally (were) well-informed, up-to-date” but now “chiefly” means someone “alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice.”

A few weeks ago (July 25), we wrote about “Two Popes and Christian Nationalism.”  Recently we listened to a talk by John Biewen, the director of Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies, a podcaster, and an author. He called his remarks, “The lie that invented racism,” and offered suggestions for solving racial injustice that began about 170 years before 1619, the date cited by a much-attacked New York Times article that (erroneously, we think) sets the date for racism in America.

Biewen’s talk supplements that July 25th exploration. We do not fear being called “woke” by recommending you watch Biewen’s presentation. Frankly, we are more likely to take it as a compliment, which might only make an accuser more angry. Too bad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIZDtqWX6Fk

I jotted down three quotes while listening to his talk—-not a speech, mind you, a talk.  Racism “is a tool to divide us and to prop up systems.”

“It’s about pocketbooks and power.”

“White guilt doesn’t get a lot of anything done”

His presentation is one of many TED Talks posted on the web.  Talks such as these began with a 1984 conference on Technology, Entertainment, and Design (thus, TED).  The program focuses on “ideas worth spreading.”  The talks, limited to no more than eighteen minutes, cover a huge range of topics within the broad fields of science and culture.

Some famous people have made them. There are many whose names are meaningless to most of us—but whose words are worth hearing.  This is a forum for people unafraid to think outside their personal box, not for those who prefer to box out thoughts different from theirs.

There is afoot in our land an effort to ban discussion of race. Some say discussing race is an effort to make white people feel guilty about being white. The greater danger is from those who find no guilt in continuing to consider people of another color as lesser people.

We cannot escape history and we do not serve our country if we try to hide from it, obscure it, or ignore it.

The mere fact that we are discussing this issue as much as we are is proof enough that race remains one of the greatest overarching problems in our society and in our country.  It remains a problem and a problem is never fixed by denying that it exists or denying there never was a problem.

I hope Mr. Biewen’s remarks make you think.

(Photo credit: TED talks/youtube.com)

 

Franklin W. Dixon and Carolyn Keene

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The names might ring a bell for some of our readers.  “They” wrote books that have sold millions of copies and are still being published after more than a century.

For a short time, Franklin and Carolyn were the same person.   His name was Leslie McFarlane and I came across his second autobiography during a recent visit to a bookstore in Michigan.

Did you ever read or hear about The Bobbsey Twins?

Your grandfather or great-grandfather might have read  the Tom Swift novels or The Rover Boys, or perhaps novels featuring the heroics of Dave Fearless or the sleuthing of The Dana Girls. I have some copies of The Radio Boys. There also was a companion series, The Radio Girls. All were among the 109 juvenile fiction book series published by the Stratemeyer Syndicate which hired writers and gave them story outlines and paid them small amounts to churn out books, the best known of which are The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. 

Their contracts required that they never admit they were ghost writers of any of these books, using names assigned them by the syndicate.

McFarlane wrote 22 of the adventures of Frank and Joe Hardy and the first four spinoff volumes of Nancy Drew called The Dana Girls.

The book I picked up in Michigan is Ghost of the Hardy Boys. If you grew up reading any of the syndicate’s series, you’ll enjoy reading McFarlane’s story—which is far more than the story of the Hardy Boys stories.   His writing about the small Canadian town where he grew up and his stories of his early jobs with small-town newspapers are wonderfully written.

Not even his son knew he had written that shelf of books in the family bookcase. McFarlane, who considered his authorship just a job, never paid attention to what happened to his books after he wrote them and did not realize until the closing years of his life the significance of his efforts.

(I read several of the Hardy/Nancy novels but the real juvenile fiction author of my youth was Fran Striker, who created The Lone Ranger novels.  I have all of them about ten feet from where is have written most of the literary gems such as the one you are now reading.)

McFarlane struck a chord with your book reviewer a couple of times when he wrote about writing.  Here are a couple of excerpts:

When my young wife told her friends that she had married a writer, their good wishes sounded more like condolences…One good woman said, “God help you, my dear!” with compassion. We thought it amusing at the time. Later we realized what she meant.

Writers are not good husband material. (I am not qualified to speak for the husbands of female writers.) Not because they are worse characters than men of other occupations. They aren’t. Not because they are impractical and untidy. They are. Not because their income is chancy. It is. But they are always underfoot…Who can blame her if she envies her sisters whose husbands clear out every morning and stay the hell out until dinner time, returning with fascinating accounts of their adventures in the great world, of the installation of a new water cooler and how he told off the assistant manager? My life has been blessed by two remarkably happy marriages, each happy because of a woman who had the cheerful courage and devotion to put up with an existence calculated to drive most wives to a psychiatric hospital or divorce court…

The other day someone asked my friend, MacKinlay Kantor, when he planned to retire. Our paths in life have differed vastly but we both are of the same age, began on small-town newspapers, made a living from the pulps, and are still writing. “Writers,” replied Kantor, in a voice that came mighty close to a snarl, “never retire.  Real writers, that is.” And we wouldn’t have it any other way. It is a survival course that never ends for any of us. I will be freelancing until someone draws the cover over my typewriter for me for the last time.

I wish more people were writers.  Of their own stories.  Many people are intimidated by the thought, never sure “where to start,” thinking a story has to begin at the beginning.

Hogwash.

A story just has to begin. Earlier or later accounts will fill in the before-and-after holes. All life stories are worth telling. It is unfortunate that the main accounts of the lives people have lived are woefully inadequately summarized in the last newspaper article that will ever mention them.

Some people who retire worry about what they will do without a job and the social contacts that are part of employment.  The answer is simple.

Become a writer.  Write about the things you know best.  And the one thing you know best is yourself.  Abandon any pretense of modesty. Enroll in McFarlane’s “survival course that never ends for any of us.”

Descendants you will never meet will meet you.  And they will be enriched by what they read.

I was enriched by reading about Franklin W. Dixon and Carolyn Keene and discovering how much more they were than a couple of names.

 

The Fifth Amendment Debt 

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It is possible  Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, John Eastman, Alex Jones, Allen Weisselberg and two Trumps have no idea who John Lilburne was.  But they owe a large debt to this Englishman who died in 1657.

Trump aides, advisers, and defenders Stone, Flynn, Eastman, Jones and Weisselberg have “taken the Fifth” when summoned to testify on this or that issue involving our most recent former President.

Indeed, DJ Jr., the son of the aforesaid former president, reportedly has done it more than 500 times, as did Weisselberg, the former Trump organization chief financial officer, when summoned to talk about the elder Trump’s reputed manipulation of property values to get loans.

And so, for that matter, has the Big Guy himself. More than thirty years ago when he was carrying on with Marla Maples and his then-wife, Ivana, was divorcing him, DJT was asked about 100 questions about faithful marriage and reportedly pleaded the Fifth Amendment 97 times.  The questions came from his soon to be ex-wife’s lawyer who wanted him to explain his reported dalliances with other women.

But he must have had an epiphany sometime in the next twenty-or so years when he he told a crowd of followers during his campaign, “You see the mob takes the Fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?”

How does John Lilburne enter this unsavory set of circumstances?

Isaac Amon’s article for The Journal of the Missouri Bar a while ago tell us that John Lilburne was an English pamphleteer who was arrested in 1637 for writing things the king and his Star Chamber Court did not like and he was badly punished for it.

The Star Chamber?

It was the court of inquisition in England that was above the common law and answered only to the King.  Those brought before it were ordered to take “the ex officio oath” that promised they would admit charges against them—-before knowing what the charges were.

John Lilburne was arrested in 1637 for printing and circulating unlicensed books. When he was taken before the Court of the Star Chamber and asked how he pleaded, Lilburne refused to respond until he knew the charges against him and argued that he was not bound to incriminate himself. He maintained the oath was “against the law of God and the law of the land.”  He also demanded the right to confront his accusers.

That defiance earned him a sentence in February of 1638 of a £500 fine, imprisonment at the Fleet Street Prison, and to be whipped and pilloried until he obeyed the court. In April he was taken from his cell, his hands were tied to the rear of an oxcart that pulled him through the streets, as he was flogged with a three-tailed whip before he was locked in a stooped position in the pillory.  Even then he spoke loudly against those who sought to silence him—until he was gagged. He was taken back to prison where, despite his situation, he was able to write a pamphlet describing the cruelty of his punishment and another encouraging a separation of the English government fronm the Church of England.

Eventually he was released but he continued to stand for his contention

Lilburne was called “Freeborn John” by his supporters for his contention that citizens have “freeborn rights” that include the right to hear charges against them, to face their accusers, and to refuse to say something that might incriminate themselves.

He was a soldier in the first English Civil War as a “Roundhead,” the Parliamentarians who fought against the Royalists to determine the type of government England would have and to seek religious feedom.  He left the army after rejecting the Presbyterian Solemn League and Covenant, an agreement in which the Scots agreed to help the Parliamentarians if England, Scotland, and Ireland would unite afterwards under a parliamentary-presbyterian system.

Lilburne maintained the covenant was, in effect, an agreement to preserve the religion of Scotland and was therefore a restriction on general freedom of religion. He had no problem with the Scots being Presbyterians but he wanted no part of an agreement that bound others to that faith.

In the end, the Civil Wars of England united England, Scotland and Ireland into the United Kingdom, ended the monopoly on worship and government control held by the Church of England, protected the reform movement in Scotland, and cleared the way for the Protestantism to become established in Ireland, leading to political control under the Anglican Church of Ireland, a situation that led to “The Troubles” or the Northern Ireland conflict, a thirty-year sectarian conflict between Protestant loyalists and Catholic nationalists from 1968-1998. That’s a discussion for another day, perhaps.

John Lilburne was imprisoned again in 1645 for criticizing members of Parliament for living well at a time when English soldiers were poorly treated. While in prison he penned An Agreement of the People for a Firm and Present Peace Upon Grounds of Common Right.

Lilburne’s political activism saw him in and out of prison and even banished from England for a time. In 1657, while visiting his wife (who was expecting their tenth child) on temporary release from prison, he died.

More than three centuries after his death, James Madison, who was influenced by Lilburne’s story, wrote as part of the Bill of Rights, “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

The Fifth Amendment and the other nine statements of OUR “freeborn rights” were adopted in 1791.

In 1966, United States Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren specifically mentioned Lilburne in writing the majority opinion for Miranda v. Arizona that police must tell suspects that they have the freeborn right to remain silent in the face of accusations against them.

A few days ago we watched Michael Flynn refuse to answer questions from a Republican member of the January 6 Committee, saying only, “Take the Fifth, “Fifth,” and “The Fifth” in responding to three questions.

A man almost four centuries ago endured imprisonment, whipping, the pillory, and even banishment from his country to give him that right.

But here’s the deal: While it is easy to think those who “plead the Fifth” are therefore hiding their guilt, there is far more to the plea than that. This amendment stands between us and Lilburne’s Star Chamber Court. All of us—you, me, them—are not forced to say something that others might consider an admission of guilt before any charges are filed. This amendment keeps the government from considering you guilty unless you can prove yourself NOT guilty.  This amendment protects our sacred concept that a citizen, no matter how reprehensible we might consider their behavior, is innocent until proven guilty.

We doubt that Mr. Flynn or any of the others we mentioned at the beginning of this piece know about or care about what John Lilburne went through to protect them.

But all of us should care—-because we Americans all have freeborn rights.

(image credit: Library of Congress)

The Great White Hunter 

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We’ve had several days now to hear the reactions to Eric Greitens’ commercial for hunting RINOS.

He seems to be the only one who thinks it’s funny. “Every normal person around the state of Missouri saw that is clearly a metaphor,” he is quoted as saying, a remark that is reminiscent of the story of a man who gets a call from his wife who says, “Be careful on your way to work this morning, The radio says there’s a driver going the wrong way on the highway,” and the husband replies, “One guy?  There are hundreds of them!”

Greitens says the abnormal people expressing strong misgivings about his video are expressing “faux outrage.”  No, Eric, in this campaign where voters have to determine who is a friend or a faux, we know who the leader of the faux brigade is.

His primary election opponents, most of them experiencing a moment of clarity instead of telling us how much they worship at the Trump Temple, are aghast.

Aghast!! Eric Greitens is still the lovable fellow who convinced voters six years ago that he knew how to be governor by firing an automatic military-style weapon with a large magazine (necessary in case the aim isn’t too good) at something that eventually exploded.

I went back and looked at that commercial last week.  I think he fired ten shots before hitting the exploding target.

Perhaps showing his sensitive side in 2022, he’s carrying a shotgun instead of that military-style automatic weapon when he humorously knocks down the door of an empty house and joins his storm trooper friends amidst the smoke of a flash-bang grenade that apparently not only has scared all of the RINOS out of the house but has scared out all of the furniture, too.

This is an impressive example of the kind of leadership we need in Washington.

—somebody willing to round up a bunch of guys pretending to be soldiers of some kind to launch an attack on an empty house. And to suggest that anyone who opposes him needs to be “bagged” and there are no limits on numbers.

Vigilantes, they are. No badges. No authority. No warrant. But they’re going to protect us from Republicans in Name Only.  At least RINOS as Eric the Seal defines them. If he does this to protect us from RINOS, can we expect tactical nukes in November against DEMS?

He begins the attack with a lie within the first ten seconds.  “I’m Eric Greitens, Navy Seal,” he says.

No he isn’t. He’s not even in the Navy.

He WAS a Navy Seal once. He’s not now.  In fact when he fell back on the Navy after quitting his state job under a giant cloud, the Navy wouldn’t let him become a Seal again. And judging from Phil Klay’s article in The New Yorker of May 17, 2018, there were good reasons.  Klay wrote:

seals have traditionally embraced a culture of quiet professionalism. Part of the seal credo reads, “I do not advertise the nature of my work, nor seek recognition for my actions.” In the last two weeks, I spoke to more than half a dozen current and former seals about the spectacular implosion of Greitens’s public image. Most chose not go on the record, but all expressed frustration that a peripheral and contentious figure in their community, one who served overseas but never served with seals in combat, became a public face of the seal community. Many complained to me that it tends to be those who are least representative of seal core values, such as Greitens, who end up trading on the group’s reputation and representing it in public, earning respect from American citizens but contempt from other seals.

Not only is he not a SEAL, as he identifies himself in the video, he’s not even in the Navy.  Or even in the Navy Reserve.  The Kansas City Star says he resigned his commission on May 1, 2021 after deciding to seek glory in the U. S. Senate alongside Josh Hawley.

When he fled from the governorship, he asked the Navy to be reinstated to active duty.  The Navy, not jumping at the chance to do that, did nothing until Vice President Pence, who is admired by Greitens, put in a good word for him. The Navy decided he could come back as a reserve office and No, he could not be a Seal again. So he got a desk job of some kind while he lobbied to be assigned to Washington, D.C., to work with the National Security Council. That didn’t work either. Then he resigned.

As if all of this isn’t enough, he’s locked in a bitter dispute with his ex-wife who seemingly is accusing him of being all of the things a husband should not be.

He still has a loyal following although several people in his party, are trying to find a way to beat him in August.  But anybody who thinks a person of his qualities doesn’t represent what the Republican Party is supposed to be about is probably just a RINO and they might want to duck.

There are a lot of Republicans in that primary election and it won’t take many votes to make Greitens the winner in August, especially if some D’s cross over in hopes that he’ll be the candidate easier for a Democrat to beat in November.  And that scares the socks off the party he claims.

We haven’t figured out what his solutions to the nation’s problems are. Haven’t seen or heard specifics about what policies he will advocate if he’s elected. What does he think should be national policy on inflation?  What would he advocate to bring down gas prices?  How would he improve healthcare?  How would he end the shortage of people in the workplace? How would he solve supply line problems?

Most obviously: What does he think of the gun control legislation rushed through Congress after the Uvalde school shooting (and other mass shootings before and since)?  The mere fact that he saw fit to release his video in the midst of so much national anger at firearms violence shows, if nothing else, a dismaying lack of serious concern for anything outside of himself.

He’s shooting blanks on those issues. As The Kansas City Star put it bluntly a few days ago, “He’s also a coward. He’s a tough guy with a gun on TV, but ducks every debate and every legitimate press interview.”

If he wants to show us how truly committed he is to democracy and freedom more than he is committed to himself, maybe he can find a flight to Ukraine where there’s nothing faux about doors—and everything else—being knocked down.

In early August, we’ll learn if this video SEALED his fate.