What We Were Thinking Of is a drama of 60s generational conflict set against the backdrop of the culture wars and the Gulf War of 1991. Like another world, isn’t it?

1971. When you’re young, intellectual and arrogant, violence can be twisted into a justifiable act. But 20 years later, the consequences of your actions can suddenly come back to haunt you.

AJA

Mac schmac.

I’m computing, baby!

David Frum at FrumForum:

But in the Lindsey-Wilkinson case, we confront the problem of the closing of the conservative mind in its purest form. Unlike NCPA, Cato is not a marginal institution.  Unlike AEI’s action with me, Cato’s apparent termination of Lindsey and Wilkinson seems the result of a considered strategic decision.

It might be objected that Cato and the others have no choice. The waters are surging in the conservative world, and conservative institutions must either ride the wave or be swamped. But if wave-riding is all that these very expensive institutions are doing, who needs them?

Right-of-center think tanks claim to do objective research that can be trusted by all policy players, regardless of point of view. They boast that they care about ideas, not parties or personalities. They aspire to set a broader agenda for the right, in lieu of the narrow demands of K Street special interests.

These claims look increasingly false. The right-of-center world is poorer for the dessication of the institutions that used to act as the right’s brains.

We are likely soon to have a Republican majority in the House of Representatives, maybe the U.S. Senate too. And what will that majority do? The answer seems to be: They have not a clue. Unlike the Republican House and Senate majorities of 1994, unlike the Republican Senate majority of 1980, these new majorities will arrive with only slogans for a policy agenda. After staging a for-the-record vote against Obamacare, and after re-enacting the Bush tax cuts, it will be policy mission accomplished.

There’s little other policy inventory, because the think tanks have not done their proper work. Without a think tank agenda, the new majority will rapidly decline into a brokerage service for K Street.

After the GOP lost its majority in 2006, a leading think tanker said to me: “Somehow I always thought we’d get more done before we became completely corrupt.” How much will we get done next time given the poverty of our think tank work over the past half decade? And how can we expect better work from institutions that have so emphatically warned their employees that an unwanted answer can end a career?

The losers here are not Brink Lindsey (who has moved to a fine new position) or Will Wilkinson (whose personal future is more unsettled, but whose talents will surely also be recognized). The loser is a conservative political movement waiting at the end of the intellectual conveyor belt for a product that increasingly arrives so shoddy and defective that it might as well not come at all.

AJA

———–

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There is the question of suicide more generally, but that isn’t my subject here. I asked on Monday

3. If you had a degenerative physical or mental disease that destroys your body or your mind, would you suffer it until it killed you, or would you seek to end your own life at a time of your choosing?

E.C. (Esteemed Commenter) Lynn pondered the question, including observation from experience about how many people do not talk about the subject, and then threw it back at me. What do I think?

My thoughts have several sources. First among them is my history of thinking about and encountering death, which I have partly chronicled in my ongoing series of essays titled “Blink”. In part one, I trace my earliest thoughts of death back to a period somewhere between the ages of 5 and 8, at night, In My Bedroom. Part four, In My Mind, matches my own experiences with those of Julian Barnes, who writes about his death obsession in the 2008 Nothing to Be Frightened Of.

Then there was my mother’s death from Alzheimer’s. More specifically, she died of complications of her illness, a virulent staff infection contracted during the last of her several hospitalizations during her years of decline. My mother, Helen, was a very bright woman, who, had she been born of a different background at another time, would have gone to graduate school as I did, and pursued a professional career. As it was, she graduated high school only, raised a family, and only during my childhood, the last of her three children, began a successful working life. Still, her mind was her pride, the source of her greatest successful engagement with the world, and the loss of it, and of her strong personality, was a hell for her.

Over the last couple of years of her life, my mother effectively had no personality, and she had to be fed. She was overwhelmingly anxious, and her anxiety became focused on my father, Mac, and her need for his presence around her. Even though we were paying for nearly full-time nursing aid, we had to devise stratagems to remove Mac from her so that he could get relief without provoking an extreme a response from Helen.

On one afternoon, I sat alone with my mother on the balcony of my parents’ San Fernando Valley apartment, the one they moved to from New York City once all of their children were together in the same city again after twenty years apart. I was facing her, but she gazed off to my left with that vacant, despondent stare that was her visage now. I asked her how she was feeling, not expecting a reply. She said it was like being alone in a vast desert. There were sometimes those surprising moments of communication, to let you know there was a human being inside who was suffering. I stroked her cheek. I’m so sorry, I said.

My mother had never made her feelings clearly known about end of life decisions. I don’t think she clearly knew them. We knew she trusted all of our love for her, and trusted us to make decisions for her. No one, unclear about her wishes, would have advocated anything extraordinary. I do feel confident that had my mother known ahead of time what she would have to live through, she would not have wanted to. When the doctors told us in December 2003 that the infection would almost surely kill her, and that fighting it would only degrade her life further, we brought her home, with hospice care, to die. We thought she would live perhaps a month. She lasted a week. On a Saturday morning, she woke out of her customary confusion and delirium to tell her husband, standing at her side, that she was dying.

“Mac,” she said, “hold me. I’m going.”

We spent the day at her bedside sending her off with love.

As it happened, given the long day, I was alone at my mother’s side at the moment that she died, staring into her face. Moment’s later, my father was beside me. He looked long into the face of his wife of 63 years, and the soft spoken and taciturn man uttered one of the several striking statements he made to me in his life. He said, “I’m not afraid of that.”

My father was completely uneducated. In English he could write his name if left unobserved and without feeling self-conscious. He read, but how much he understood was never clear. His life, begun in rural Ukraine, had been an active life, starting with travel, as a boy with his sister, across most of Eastern Europe, to Palestine and Kenya, with a round-the-Cape ocean voyage before arriving, after seven years, in the United States at seventeen. He drove New York City parkways and expressways the way mountain men navigated the Rockies’ trails and passages. He walked Manhattan streets and wintry beaches for miles at a time. To be physically able and independent was all to him.

In the last year and half of my father’s life, after my mother’s death, we pressed him, with great effort, to accept the help of a housekeeper for several hours a week. But he had always strongly asserted, even while my mother was alive, that he could never live in any kind of assisted living or nursing facility. And he never wanted to be kept artificially alive.

A month before Mac’s death at 94 – when he was still, as he had been for the thirty years after the heart attack that nearly killed him at 64, a three time a week health club rat – he was out to lunch with my brother, Jeff, at a restaurant. He went to the cramped restroom, where another patron, opening a stall door, bumped Mac in the chest. The door fractured a vertebra. Mac was housebound for the next month, and he developed pneumonia. I was in Budapest at the time, on my way to visit the shtetl where Mac was born. I was called home by Jeff. I reached my father in the hospital to find him conscious and able to talk, but with several organs struggling. He was connected to oxygen, and was soon fed by tubes.

A couple of days later, I sat outside the hospital with my sister, Sharyn. We considered the situation. I said to her, Do you know what the worst case scenario is? The worst case scenario is that they manage to keep him alive, and he lives on disabled and dependent, never again able to live the only kind of life he wants. He would never forgive us, I said.

Sharyn spoke to Jeff, who went to visit with Mac late at night in the hospital room. Mac was now heavily drugged and unconscious, but during Jeff’s visit he came to for the last time. He stared up at Jeff. And he shook his head.

Jeff drove home, feeling now that the final voice, the last weight of responsibility, was his. He wept through the night.

In the morning, Jeff called me and told me that Mac’s long-time doctor had assured him that the hospital staff would do whatever we wished. He asked me how long it would take me to get to the hospital. When I arrived, we took some time before asking the nurses to disconnect Mac from his support. Then they left us alone with him, and as we did with our mother, we stroked him, and held his hands, and sent him off with love.

Tony Judt’s recent death from ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) was the subject of the link in my question, and what prompted it. About a week before he died, Judt talked from his bed with Charlie Rose. He told Rose that his experience had led him to consider what was the irreducible essence of life for him, and he had decided that it was communication – his ability to communicate with others. Almost until the end, long after he was immobilized, Judt was giving lectures of a kind, and chronicling in The New York Review of Books, in essays he dictated, the facts and nature of his experience.

Maybe if I were faced with an exceptional, unchronicled cause of death I would feel the calling or need that Judt felt. As many of us are wise enough to say about many experiences of life, one will never know until faced with them. But what I saw my mother experience – the loss of her mind and of her very self while still alive – was horrifying. I could withstand, I imagine, as many people do, degrees of physical disability. But to be slowly entombed in my own body only as a passage to death is equally horrifying. Prohibitions against ending one’s own life are meaningless to me. For me, done seriously, purposefully, as an affirmation of what constitutes value in life, and not as an act of despair, choosing at the right time to end one’s life, before an awful or degrading and irreversible deterioration, is the profoundest expression of autonomy.

Knowing the right time – not too soon, while life still has value, but before it is too late to act on one’s own – may be the hardest part. Then there is the decisive moment, the deep culmination of that knowing. Then there are the pills Lynn spoke of, and the long sleep. Or maybe, if one is very lucky, one dies the way my father did, healthy and vital almost until the very end, and surrounded by love.

AJA

———–

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And odds are I’m going to have to go back to factory settings and for the third time in 16 months reinstall all of my programs and settings and retreive my backup files.

And the blogmaster says “Dude, get a Mac!”

Well, for those 16 months the tech has been out of work, laid off by Circuit City, and paying the bills with two part-time gigs – discovering that 50 year old guys with 25 years of tech experience are NOT in demand.

Shit. I can’t even feel sorry for myself.

Tomorrow. I hope.

Chris Al-Aswad was many things, writer, artist, editor, and his own kind of community organizer, as a builder of community through the generosity of his spirit and personality, through social media, and through the extraordinary online journal that is his legacy. When he died just weeks ago at the profoundly sad age of 31, the impact of his too short life immediately became apparent, and its meaning took shape. His death, like his life, quickly joined other events in demonstrating the transformative influence on the world of social media. As word of his loss spread across the web, the blogosphere, Facebook, and Twitter, the outpouring of emotion and tribute came from so many people who had never met him, many who had no idea what he looked like. But they had been touched even briefly by him, felt his influence, or through the journal, worked with him.

The online journal, which continues after him, is Escape into Life. As a lover of the art of titling, before I had ever looked at the publication of art, poetry, review, and essay, I was admiring and even envious. In three words how better to capture a commitment, a passion, a philosophy of how to live: escape into life.

One of the testaments to how Chris’s brief sojourn on the planet touched those who knew him is that within a matter of short weeks after his death, still only weeks ago, a prize was named in his honor – the Christopher Al-Aswad Prize. I am very pleased to report that the sad red earth has been named, today, to the shortlist for the prize, the winner to be announced on October 1.

As I wrote in reply when informed that this blog was to be listed, particularly for the work Julia Dean and I have been doing on American Indian life, Julia and I are humbled to be considered and honored by the name on the prize.

The prize is administered by Dan Holloway of Eight Cuts, Year Zero Writers, and Agnieszka’s Shoes. Like Chris, Dan is a person with a deep well of generous energy. Many creative people, maybe most, need all their resources just to fuel the engine of their own art. Some feed off collaboration. Still others create, collaborate, and are kind, supportive, inventive impresarios of the creations of others. Dan, like Chris, is that last. Like Chris, who lived in Chicago, I have never met Dan, who lives on an island, amidst a cold northern sea, with which we in colonial climes once had a spat or two. As with Chris, I have seen a photo of Dan, who appears similarly young, and who has a lot (Did I say a lot?) more hair than I do.

There is so much out there. And the Web brings it to you. Visit the links above. Visit the links to the other, impressive shortlisters. Click on links at their sites. Be led so far afield they’ll need to send a search party for you, and the fearful and unimaginative will wonder yet again if all this exploration is really worth it, maybe we should stick to our lives here at home.

Then we’ll launch again.

AJA

Alternatively, Kate is the Columbo of commenters, shuffling verbally away in shows of cognitive dishevelment before turning back with one last, penetrating thought.

Kate begins by finding me, perhaps, not altogether credulous in the matter of Beck rally attendees and their authentic relationship with the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. To which I can only respond – skeptical and ironical? Moi?

I have to respond more straightforwardly on two levels. On the level of Beck and many of his fellow rally speakers I can only revile and be revolted. I have hardly been alone, among many others, in long comparing Beck to the Lonesome Rhodes of Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd. These days I begin to believe a different likeness more fitting than the simpler, cynical and fraudulent face of Andy Griffith’s great performance. I now think Beck more fittingly likened to the Elmer Gantry of Sinclair Lewis, a charlatan evangelist, yes, but one who, beyond cynicism, is, during the experience of his charismatic (in both senses) performance imbued with an authentic belief in his own delusional representations. Like the purest method actor, he identifies his own sense and emotional memory with the life of the character he projects. (See how he weeps for America – he loves his country so.) Beyond what clearer, more integrated personalities can even imagine – the sharp distinction between truth and falsity in the simple hypocrite – the charismatic charlatan may recognize his nature only in the moments of instantly turning away from it, in a kind of appalled rationalization and fervent self-justification.

But I engage here merely in an act of imaginative insight. Outside of clinical study, and maybe even within it, for most of us to confront pathology like Beck’s is to face something unalterably alien.

On the level of those who attended the rally, there are potentially, let us say, eighty thousand variants on what they know and think about King. However, we can draw some reasonable conclusions. These are people who are drawn to Beck, drawn to Sarah Palin, and responsive to the idea that the United States requires that its “honor” be restored, and that some sort of return to God, from whom we have strayed, is necessary. It is not much of a reasoned stretch to conclude, generally, that they are mostly politically conservative. What was and has been the relationship of conservative America to Martin Luther King, Jr. during his life and for many years after?

We don’t need to detail the long, ugly history here. As I revile Beck, so King was reviled by conservative America. As he suggested in the speech I quoted, to the Fourth Constitutional Convention of the AFL-CIO, he was called Red and communist. He was considered a dangerous radical, an “outside provocateur,” traveling across the South stirring up local populations. Before the Black Panthers and SNCC came along, he was the Black man conservative Americans most loved to hate, as he challenged the racist America they knew and abided and would not have changed were it not for the likes of him. For decades after his murder, he continued to be disrespected by conservative office holders – in refusing, for instance, to honor him with holidays – so far were they from paying tribute to him.

Image via Wikipedia

Now, however, conservatives blindly or disingenuously declare themselves proponents of the simple value and verity of “color blindness.” (So late they are come to the dance, but how they swing their partners. Do they win the prize?) Now, brimming with the resentment of their own sense of racial victimization – color, color, color; that’s all we hear – they can roll “content of their character, not color of their skin” confidently off their tongues as if it were ever so reasonably so and they helped make it reign.

Contemporary conservatives cling to what is no longer rightfully theirs and co-opt what never was in order to pretend their own legacy of significant contribution and relevance. “The party of Lincoln” they love to say – the Lincoln who made war on State’s rights and with the unbounded authority of an emancipating federal pen, lacking even the ink of congressional legislation, overturned the slave-holding rights of the rebellious states. Yes, he’d be a Republican today. And the Trust-busting, conservationist Teddy Roosevelt, who exercised his federal authority over the land to vastly expand the national park system and the network of national monuments, and who, through the Antiquities Act of 1906 bequeathed the authority to his successors to continue the expansion. Yes, he’d be a Republican today. He didn’t even remain one then.

Sometimes, when the opportunistic moment seems right, conservatives will even invoke FDR, and these days JFK, because they sure did love his tax cuts, which is pretty much all they’ve got – a persistent advocacy of defunding the federal government and resisting every social and humanistic enhancement that helped make America the “honorable” nation they claim. They do have Reagan, who looms rather temperately over the current conservative terrain. It is no wonder, more than just esteem, they fetishize the founders: they laid a vast stretch of desert from December 15, 1791 to the present.

Martin Luther King, Jr. is a great peak of his own in the alternative landscape of American social justice, and political parties and movements have lineages, like trail marks of their travel: the people who headlined on the stage this Saturday, and the philosophy they represent, never journeyed through that country. Kate did some fine analysis of the implications to be drawn from the ideas in the excerpt of King I quoted. Like the admirably moderate person she is, though, I don’t think she always, perhaps temperamentally, notes the cynicism eating away at the façade of the reasonable. Said King,

This will be the day when we shall bring into full realization the American dream — a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed.

Kate began her analysis by stating,

Equality of opportunity and equal enforcement of unbiased laws more or less guarantee a reasonably wide distribution of property. Of course, equality of opportunity does not and can not equate to equality of outcome, for the simple reason that the traits that generally result in material success are not evenly distributed, any more than simple good luck is.

Worthwhile points to make, and I could offer my own analytical response, but will not, for a reason.

King spoke of

a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity.”

Kate began in response,

Now here, things get interesting. You see, requiring this by legal means is incompatible with all of the preceding points.

She further quotes King on respecting “the dignity and worth of human personality.” Indeed, in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” King identifies the nature of justice thus:

Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.

Now my point here is not to argue these ideas with Kate, though it would make for an interesting exchange, but to argue that King’s ideas have long been anathema to those who used the “smarmy tactic,” to quote Christopher Hitchens, we saw utilized on Saturday. For see how King referred to law that uplifts human personality. He envisioned the legal system as a tool for the creation of justice – social justice, even economic justice, since economic injustice degrades human personality. King’s rhetoric, befitting the grand human cause he led, can be florid and grandiose: he was a churchman. But I included the last line of the excerpt I used because it is one of King’s most elegantly fresh and profound figures of speech.

The arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

Only months ago, Beck was urging Americans literally to leave any church in which their pastors speak of “social” or “economic” justice. He would be urging them to leave King’s church today.

What Beck did this weekend was, indeed, the smarmiest, most contemptible ruse to try to steal from a great tradition of human and social enlightenment one of its shining figures. And that it was a figure so emblematic of racial justice, unctuously embraced by people who play on racial resentments and discomfort, is sufficient to make the skin get up and leave the body. It was, quite remarkably, the fear mongerers attempting to do to their domestic enemies precisely what they charge Islamists seek to do with the Ground Zero Islamic center: steal from them the symbolic meaning of their hallowed ground.

What needs to be done in response to the Becks is much more than the bemused superior tolerance being offered up by President Obama, who in only a year and a half seems to have been thoroughly Carterized. Frank Rich the other day invoked FDR’s combative engagement with his reactionary critics. I can only imagine the rare dinner time conversation these days between Bill and Hilary. Many people, seeking amid conflict the insight of wisdom, will quote Lincoln’s second inaugural: “Let us judge not that we be not judged.”

They forget that he offered the sentiment only after he had fought a civil war and won it.

AJA

———-

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• Clarence B. Jones: King’s ‘Dream’ Message Survives the Latest in 47 Years of Flawed Messengers (huffingtonpost.com)
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All right, move it along. The weekend is over. Get back to work.

1. Can you name an individual who has ever been more respected for his independence and integrity who proceeded to abandon both so completely as did John McCain from his presidential campaign through his just completed primary campaign in Arizona?

2. How many people who attended the Glenn Beck rally at the Lincoln Memorial over the weekend, including the speakers, know that Martin Luther King Jr. said the following, and would be his followers in pursuing it?

This will be the day when we shall bring into full realization the American dream — a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few, a dream of a land where men will not argue that the color of a man’s skin determined the context of his character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of human personality — that is the dream….

Yes, before the victory is won, some will be misunderstood. Some will be called Reds and Communists merely because they believe in economic justice and the brotherhood of man. But we shall overcome.

I am convinced that we shall overcome because the arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice.

3. If you had a degenerative physical or mental disease that destroys your body or your mind, would you suffer it until it killed you, or would you seek to end your own life at a time of your choosing?

4. Did you know that Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela has a per capita and total (they have roughly equal populations) murder rate about four times greater than that of Iraq? That 50% more people have been killed there since 2007 than in Mexico during its drug war? That Caracas has 200 homicides per 100,000 residents compared to 22.7 for Bogota and 14 or Sao Paolo?

5. If “less is more,” does it mean that “more is less,” in which case “less is less” (more or less)? Is there ever just enough? Would that be the “golden mean,” when to mean neither more nor less is golden? Just wondering.

6. Doesn’t every political side and party have big money people who finance their activities? In which case isn’t it about whether the BMP do it openly or secretly? And what, really it is, in the end, that the BMP support?

Five hundred people attended the summit, which served, in part, as a training session for Tea Party activists in Texas. An advertisement cast the event as a populist uprising against vested corporate power. “Today, the voices of average Americans are being drowned out by lobbyists and special interests,” it said. “But you can do something about it.” The pitch made no mention of its corporate funders. The White House has expressed frustration that such sponsors have largely eluded public notice. David Axelrod, Obama’s senior adviser, said, “What they don’t say is that, in part, this is a grassroots citizens’ movement brought to you by a bunch of oil billionaires.

And what, really, is it in the end you support – and does it mean – if you’re a BMP financing a “grassroots” movement of “ordinary people” who are organizing, they think, in spontaneous revolt against the rule of elites, unaware that it is moneyed elites bankrolling and training their non-leader leaders behind the scenes? What does it mean when the people’s uprising against conspiratorial powers is directed by conspiratorial powers?

7. Do you think a billionaire mayor who subverted the will of the citizens of his city, twice expressed at the ballot box, to establish term limits, by overturning the voters’ decision in cooperation with a self-interested city council, and promised the city could have term limits again after he got his third term – do you think such a mayor should be lecturing anyone on the meaning of democracy and liberty?

8. On the other hand, when said Mayor, Billionaire Bloomberg, offered that “A handful of people ought to be ashamed of themselves,” it was widely reported and headlined that Bloomberg said that “Ground Zero mosque opponents [not a “handful of people”] should be ‘ashamed’ of themselves.” What do you think of this kind of reporting?

9. Who says they don’t make ‘em like they used to? Clooney’s a mensch and Grant dropped acid in analysis. Maybe Hollywood won’t be the end of Western Civilization as we knew it under the Holy Roman Empire and the the Dum Diversas, the Romanus Pontifex and the Inter Caetera.

All right, I’ve got two computers down and I’m working off an old, sluggish 20 mph 14” screen Model T Compaq. I think that’s actually a lot more than ten questions, don’t you? (There – that’s ten.)

AJA

A Film Noir

by

A. Jay Adler

DOUBLE DOWN

Finale: the Dealer Calls the Hand

The Story So Far

Jack Miles, rock n’ roll roadie, has returned home looking for a job. He encounters old friends and begins a new love with Evelyn “Sonny” Morales, a detective. Old friends, Kyle and Ray, propose to Jack that he help them rob his wealthy, but estranged, identical twin, Joseph. Jack turns them down, and instead goes to see Joseph to ask for a job. But Joseph humiliates Jack and they nearly come to blows. Enraged, Jack lures Joseph to him and kills him, making the murder appear his own accidental death. He then assumes Joseph’s identity and sets Kyle and Ray up in a botched attempt at the robbery. While Sonny investigates Jack’s death, Jack, as Joseph, discovers that Joseph and Crank Wilson were closeted lovers. As Sonny’s investigation continues to bring her and Jack together, Jack tries to adjust to the conditions of his new life. Soon enough, Crank is on to Jack and tries to blackmail him, but Jack figures a way to accommodate and control Crank. Then, one night, Jack and Sonny give in and make love. Disturbed by events, Sonny seeks advice from Poppy, her father, in prison. She returns to headquarters to learn that Crank has been murdered. The investigation leads to Crank’s murderer, and to evidence of his and Joesph’s relationship. Even as Jack begins to truly appreciate the life he might lead as Joseph, circumstances begin to close in on the life that Joesph led.

Now, the Finale:

Jack and Sonny find their destiny.

————

INT. POLICE STATION – DAY

STEVE TAKAMURA, 30′s, a slight, youthful toxicologist, walks through the squad room in the direction of Sonny and Slocum’s desks.

Slocum sits at his desk, with Sonny perched on it, both eating burritos.

SONNY

(to Slocum)

I’m telling you it’s not really Mexican. Just like chow mein isn’t really Chinese.

SLOCUM

Chow mein’s not Chinese?

Takamura arrives, holds out a folder to Sonny.

TAKAMURA

I know it doesn’t really matter anymore, since you got your guy, but I thought you might still want to know what was in the jar.

SLOCUM

Takamura. Chow mein’s Chinese food, isn’t it?

TAKAMURA

What makes you think I’d know?

SONNY

(to Takamura)

And?

TAKAMURA

It was Chun Su. Chemically, a bufadienolide.

SLOCUM

That’s easy for him to say.

TAKAMURA

Whoever’s using it is crazy. It’s deadly.

SONNY

So we heard. Thanks, Steve.

Takamura starts to leave.

SONNY (CONT’D)

How is it used?

Slocum shoots her a salaciously curious look. Sonny shoots a nasty one back.

TAKAMURA

Well, normally, I gather, as a topical anesthetic. It would increase stamina.

SLOCUM

Staying power.

Takamura stares at Slocum.

TAKAMURA

Improve performance, I guess, for those who feel in need of it.

SONNY

But that’s not fatal.

TAKAMURA

No. But sometimes people ingest it. I don’t know what they think they’re going to get from that.

SLOCUM

A big stick that won’t quit. I’ll tell you about it some time.

Takumura glances at Slocum, goes on.

TAKAMURA

Swallow enough and it can cause cardiac dysrythmia. It has all the physiological appearances of a fatal arrhythmia, even to the point of being accompanied by vomiting.

Sonny nods. Takamura throws Slocum another look, leaves.

Sonny walks around to sit at her desk, her thinking troubled. She turns in her chair, her back to Slocum.

Slocum stares at her back.

SLOCUM

Lose your appetite?

Sonny doesn’t answer for a long moment. She turns around, faces Slocum.

SONNY

What did Mirabella Kort die of?

Slocum shakes his head.

SLOCUM

Kraft worked the investigation.

Slocum turns to a desk in the middle of the room.

SLOCUM (CONT’D)

Kraft. Mirabella Kort. What’d she die of?

KRAFT, 50′s, heavy, slow in every way, looks up from his desk.

KRAFT

Mirabella Kort? Heart attack.

SONNY

Is that the medical term?

KRAFT

You want a doctor, Morales, call an HMO.

SONNY

No, how about you check the case file.

Kraft’s glance at Slocum says, What’s up with her?

Slocum rolls his eyes, nods to Kraft to do it.

Kraft slowly, reluctantly rises to go get the file.

Sonny withdraws into herself.

INT. POLICE STATION – EVENING

Sonny sits at her desk in the growing dark, staring out the window.

Slocum walks by the door to the squad room as Kraft enters with the case file. They talk. Slocum looks in Sonny’s direction.

Sonny looks away from the window, sees the two talking. They walk to her.

SONNY

So?

KRAFT

Says here Mirabella Kort was suffering from congestive heart failure. She was taking a medication called di-gox-in to regulate her heart beat. Apparently she took an overdose. She suffered –

Kraft checks the file.

KRAFT (CONT’D)

Digi… digi… digitalis intoxication, causing a fatal arr–

SLOCUM

Arrhythmia.

SONNY

Was there any vomiting?

KRAFT

Shit, I was first on the scene. It was everywhere. Practically drowned in it.

Sonny looks at Slocum. He stares at her as he speaks.

SLOCUM

Where was her husband?

KRAFT

Off in Pismo Beach for the weekend. She was dead two days before her body was discovered. Their manservant was off too.

Sonny and Slocum stare at each other.

SONNY

I’ll get the court order.

KRAFT

Court order for what?

SLOCUM

Exhume Mirabella Kort’s body.

Sonny comes between them on her way out.

SONNY

(to Slocum)

Don’t say it.

She moves on.

INT. KORT MANSION – STUDY – NIGHT

Jack is at his desk with PAPERS scattered everywhere.

The PHONE RINGS.

JACK

Hello? Evelyn?  I am so glad to hear from you. Really, I’m so glad. I’m sitting here going over the whole operation, everything.

EXT. COUNTY COURT HOUSE – NIGHT

Sonny stands on the front steps, CELL PHONE in hand.

SONNY

I’m at the county court. I just got an order to exhume Mirabella’s body.

INT. KORT MANSION – STUDY

Jack is perplexed.

JACK

Why?

EXT. COUNTY COURT HOUSE

Sonny sits on a step.

SONNY

We have reason to reconsider the cause of death.

INT. KORT MANSION – STUDY

Now Jack is stunned.

JACK

Why?

EXT. COUNTY COURT HOUSE

Sonny wipes tears from her eyes.

SONNY

If you don’t know, don’t worry.

Sonny ends the call.

INT. KORT MANSION – STUDY

Jack lets the phone fall from his hand. He’s motionless with shock. He tries to put it all together. A frenzy grows in him.

He shoots up. His arms, his legs, go this way, that. He doesn’t know what to do with himself.

He looks at a wall filled with PHOTOS of Joseph: public events, parties, the country club.

He storms to the wall, takes a photo of Joseph smiling between two men, grips it between his hands in a rage, as if he would strangle it.

JACK

Identical–

He SLAMS the photo against the wall.

JACK (CONT’D)

– twins!

The glass SHATTERS loudly.

He turns wildly, walks almost drunkenly to the terrace door.

EXT. TERRACE

Jack staggers along, straightens himself, staggers again to the steps down into the orchards.

He navigates the steps uncertainly.

He stumbles near the bottom, falls to the ground.

He lies there, winded and crazed, dizzy, on his back, staring up at the sky, the world spinning around him, with no center.

Jack rises slowly. He steadies himself. He walks into

THE ORCHARDS

calmly, as if in a trance.

He walks on and on, deep among the trees.

And then he stops.

He stares into the night, as if in another world.

EXT. CEMETERY – DAY

SHOVELS stand in a mound of dirt beside Mirabella Kort’s grave.

Sonny and Slocum watch with two cemetery workers as a LIFT raises the CASKET from it’s vault.

EXT. THE ORCHARDS – NIGHT

Jack stands beneath a brilliantly FULL MOON. He stares into the darkness, along an avenue between the trees.

INT. SONNY’S SEDAN – MOVING – NIGHT

Sonny’s cell phone rings. She picks it up.

INT. MEDICAL EXAMINER’S LABORATORY – NIGHT

Slocum stands by a desk, talks on the phone.

SLOCUM

It’s me. They found it. There’s no doubt.

INT. SONNY’S SEDAN – MOVING

Sonny is silent.

SONNY

Back me up. But don’t come in. I’ll bring him out.

Sonny turns off the phone.

INT. MEDICAL EXAMINER’S LABORATORY

Slocum hangs up the phone.

EXT. SONNY’S SEDAN – MOVING

Sonny does a u-turn and speeds off.

EXT. THE ORCHARDS – NIGHT

Jack stares into the darkness.

Suddenly he shivers from the cold.

He turns and looks back at the house.

He walks toward it.

He walks with purpose, as if headed toward something.

He walks up the stairs to

THE TERRACE

Jack pauses. He walks to the study doors, then stops.

He looks along the wall of the house, toward the living room doors.

INT. KORT MANSION – FOYER

Sonny walks beside the wall toward the living room. Manuel stands in the b.g. by the closed front door.

EXT. TERRACE

Jack walks along the wall of the house toward the living room doors. He glances at the wall as if sensing, seeing something on the other side.

INT. FOYER

Sonny walks beside the wall.

EXT. TERRACE

Jack walks along the wall.

INT. FOYER

Sonny approaches the entrance to the living room.

EXT. TERRACE

Jack reaches the doors as Sonny enters the living room.

He sees her.

INT. FORMAL LIVING ROOM

Sonny stops.

She sees Jack on the other side of the glass doors.

Jack enters and walks to her. He stops and is silent for a moment.

JACK

How did she die?

SONNY

Don’t you know?

Jack doesn’t answer.

SONNY (CONT’D)

We found something at Crank’s apartment in Pismo Beach — an aphrodisiac. We also found some photos. I told you. You — were in them. The aphrodisiac was in Mirabella’s body. It kills, just like an overdose of her heart medication.

Jack is quietly overwhelmed by the irony of his fate.

JACK

Is this really what you want to do?

SONNY

That’s a question you should have asked yourself, isn’t it? This is my job. I solve crimes. I arrest the bad people. I make the world a better place.

JACK

But you love me, Sonny. I know you do. I love you. I never loved anyone like I love you.

SONNY

Not even Mirabella?

(beat)

I loved a man named Jack Miles. He’s dead now.

JACK

You know who I am.

SONNY

Who? Who are you? Do you even know?

JACK

You know who I am. I don’t think anyone else ever has known.

SONNY

I don’t know who you are. All I know is what you did.

A slowly developing but hard driving ROCK SONG, something like U2, begins to play.

SONNY (CONT’D)

I have to take you in now. Will you come with me?

Jack stares at her. Can this be? Is this it?

Sonny holds out her hand.

SONNY (CONT’D)

Come with me.

Jack looks at, then takes, her hand.

They walk together, hand in hand, into

THE FOYER

and walk slowly, neither looking at the other, to the front door.

They stop.

Jack looks up toward the top of the stairs.

Manuel stands looking down at the two of them.

Jack turns to Sonny.

JACK

You’re the closest thing to Heaven I ever knew.

SONNY

Heaven’s not on this earth.

Suddenly but gently, she turns him around, cuffs him.

SONNY (CONT’D)

It’s for when you die.

She stares at his back.

SONNY (CONT’D)

Didn’t you know that?

She turns him and looks at him.

The MUSIC is about to go full out.

As Sonny opens the door, it does.

Jack is bathed in LIGHT.

EXT. KORT MANSION

Black and whites, on both sides of the driveway, have their high beams and spot lights trained on the door.

EXT. DOORWAY

Jack is framed in the doorway, almost blinded by the light, Sonny behind him.

The MUSIC is full tilt.

Jack hesitates, then slowly walks out. As he advances –

– the faint ROAR of a crowd as at a Rock concert.

Jack walks on slowly, and out of sight, into the bright lights.

Sonny looks on after him from the door.

THE END

AJA

————–

Florine Stettheimer, Soiree, 1917-1919
Beinecke Library, Yale University

Occasionally
A human being
Saw my light
Rushed in
Got singed
Got scared
Rushed out
Called fire
Or it happened
That he tried
To subdue it
Or it happened
That he tried to extinguish it
Never did a friend
Enjoy it
The way it was.
So I learned to
Turn it low
Turn it out
When I meet a
stranger—
Out of courtesy
I turn on a soft
Pink light
Which is found
modest
Even charming.
it is protection
Against wear
and tears…
And when
I am rid of
The Always-to-be-
Stranger
I turn on my light
And become
myself.

Florine Stettheimer

Florine Stettheimer, c 1917-20
Columbia University, Rare Book and Manuscript Library

(H/T Christine Cariati at Venetian Red & Maureen Doallas at Writing Without Paper)

———-

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Over at The New Republic, Jesse Singal has a piece on Dr. Laura Schlessinger terrifically titled “Doctor Feel-Heinous: Good riddance to Dr. Laura, our generation’s most dangerous radio host.” If you want an incisive take on everything that was close to obscene about the self-important media scam that began with the doctor of physiology playing psychologist, you’ll find Singal’s piece a satisfying read.

One point Singal makes, a truth that has made Schlessinger’s abusive act even more repulsive, is the vulnerability of her audience – people who would conceive of seeking psychological, relationship, or any other kind of personal assistance to be offered publicly on the radio in five-minute entertainment-pack bromides. Read Singal’s account of the bad doctor’s cruel responses to a woman whose childhood sexual abuse was creating difficulties in her married sex-life.

In the recent case that made news, then, we had a woman calling for advice on racial issues when she had every reason to know Schlessinger would not be a sensitive advisor. As it was, Schlessinger may well have been right, to start, that the caller was being too sensitive about the curiosity of white in-laws and friends, though one could not possibly know as matters unfolded whether the curiosity was healthy interest in another human being’s difference or the kind that imputes strangeness. I even believe Schlesinger was not off-base in her first use of the word “nigger.” She was making a legitimate point. And this is where I think most takes on the issue of race in the encounter were off.

To think of Schlessinger as acting out in a standard way along a long continuum of racial insensitivity, if not outright racism, misses a manifestation of a particular phenomenon of the past forty years. The source of the problem was Schlessinger’s intolerance of any sensitivity about race by the caller at all, which was immediately apparent in the host’s tone. When the caller became upset about the first use of nigger, Schlessinger did not simply argue her point – she stuck it in the caller’s face by repeating the word like a taunt. The entire encounter was a demonstration of the kind of racial resentment that has developed over recent decades among some, mostly conservative, whites as they have had to witness issues of black rights, culture, and identity become so prominent in society. Seemingly oblivious, beyond slavery and Jim Crow, to the history of invisible white privilege – the kind that manifests itself at a minimal level in the negativity, simply, of not being penalized for not being white – they cannot balance in their estimations, the entire history of white predominance against these recent decades of attention elsewhere. They believe that now we pay attention to race, while before we did not, and it burns them to the point of acting like Schlesinger, or hearing about her story and thinking, as they listen to the news, well, she was right. That’s all they think about. They’re obsessed with race, and everyone has to tip toe around them.

To cope with the problems of race, we have to correctly identify them. Schlessinger manifested not the old one, but a relatively new one. And, of course, the latter can be a cover for the former.

AJA

———

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What is Palestinian civil society? A concept, to be sure, an abstraction, but how, practically speaking, does a concept make decisions to cooperate, before even actually cooperating?

On the contrary, I found an interview with a leader of the BDS movement answering a question as to whether the PA supports a boycott:

One has to look at it in perspective. The PA is unelected. It is there because of the US. It does not represent Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. It is complicit in Israel’s oppression. It is a sub-contractor of the occupation.

The PA has engaged in a small part of the boycott of settlement products. It is the only part the Oslo accords allow for. It is a step in the right direction. If the PA had a different stand, all governments would react differently. But civil society says Israel is the oppressor, not the settlements.

Here’s that term “civil society” again. Since it was used in two completely different contexts by two BDS groups, it seems that this is a keyword that they use to claim that Palestinian Arabs are behind boycotts of Israel without having to actually define the term. In fact, of course, PalArabs happily buy Israeli products, even in Gaza, when they get the chance, and the BDS movement is lying when they try to imply that Palestinian Arabs as a whole support the BDS movement. [Emphasis added]

The PA, which would be appealed to and defended in other contexts, is here inaccurately (regarding elections) delegitimized, and in this instance “civil society,” otherwise formulaically substituted for the PA without acknowledgment, is defended in a sophomoric personification: “civil society says.” These are similar to the fallacious mental gymnastics necessary to arguing that a territory (Gaza) from which Israel withdrew is still occupied. Psychologically, the most fascinating aspect is how such arguments seem to reflect a combination of conscious manipulation and a falling prey to one’s own manipulations – coming to believe one’s own twists of reality and logic because one wants to.

AJA

———-

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Let them build it. Is this what the rationalists want us to say? Let them build it. These four words counter the one, more emotional one—never—echoing across anger from the other side. Whether eloquent or irrational (or both), as the case may be, all of these words have lost meaning in the media wail. Is there one voice that speaks to both sides, one leader we can all turn to for sanity? What about turning to a poet who wrote this:  We must love one another, or die. [Emphasis added]

Just about any meaning is lost in the “media wail” of political punch and pander. The aim always in these public brawls is not to delve into the expansive depths of deeper human meaning, but to produce cheaper, less reflective meanings, to be used as forms of currency for funding the verbal war. The conflict over the Islamic center is profound and complexly human, made shallow and into a political bar-room brawl because it is happening on a front line of political warfare.

Auden’s “September 1, 1939,” like Adam Zagajewski‘s “Try To Praise The Mutilated World,” found new readers and was given new application in the period following 9/11. Amid the common scorn for poetry by those who do not read it and who prefer to live among the tools of the world’s utility, poetry touched upon a grief and a source of feeling and experience that politics regards like a stranger at the border, for whom it proposes policy. A difference between the two poems is that Zagajewski’s was written for no occasion, in response to no political event. It simply captured in poetical magic what politics can never address:

Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth’s scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the grey feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.

Poetical thinking cannot confront that enemy head on. Poets, contra Shelley, are hardly the “unacknowledged legislators of the world.” Maybe, better, they are its human explorers, as there are deep sea explorers and space explorers. Like the crew of the 1966 film Fantastic Voyage, shrunk to microscopic size to enter a human body, poets travel unmapped arteries to buried centers of the human. Maybe, with work, over a thousand years, they can refire a synapse.

In contrast, to Zagajewski, Auden’s poem, as the title tells, was written in response to events, within weeks. It is a fascinating poem on several counts, one being that the historical malady it describes, like that of Yeats’s “The Second Coming,” can seem so present in other eras.

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

An instructive difference between the two poems is that while one might conceivably depart from the tenor and attitude of Zagajewki’s poem, one is unlikely to strenuously disagree with it, as some did with Auden – even, very soon, Auden. For this reason, I am never cheered when I hear of poets about to write on political themes – when they gather, for instance, to plan collections opposing a war or promoting some specific – like environmental – consciousness. I am unhappy not because of any political position, but because I know they are unlikely to produce good poetry. The poet’s only enemy is the didact. Auden ended

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

It is inspiring rhetoric. I, too, am moved. But politically, it is vague and disputatious beyond the poetry: whose “lie,” known how, of what “authority”? Is this an anarchist poem? For much of the rest of his life, Auden professed, convincingly, to hate the poem. He, among others, addressing the convergence of the political, the human, and the poetical, believed that the famous “We must love one another or die” should truly have been

We must love one another and die.

The weight of our lives in a conjunction. Poetry.

AJA

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The separation of adjectives in the title is an act of forlorn hope against almost all evidence. There have actually emerged isolated instances of thoughtful, free-thinking, and humanistic consideration of the Cordoba Initiative Islamic center in lower Manhattan, but they are overwhelmed by the worst manifestations of reflexive political contention. All evidence now is that if any kind of compromise is reached on the center, it will be the product of political physics: opposing forces acting on a situation that is somehow altered by the pressures. Any ideal of exploratory democratic debate will have had nothing to do with it.

Let us stipulate two conditions of the current state of affairs. One is that the loudest public voices against the center, like the Republican leadership in general – from Palin and Gingrich to Limbaugh and Beck, from Pamela Geller and Rick Lazio to varied Christian and Tea Party voices – represent a debased low in American political culture below which it would be difficult to fall without demagogic threat to the republic. They actively incite fear and loathing, xenophobia and ignorance. It is a wonder to consider how conservatives, who nearly deify the nation’s founders in their rhetoric, can fail to recognize the descent in those they now lionize from a god-like golden to a paltry and dishonorable iron age.

The second stipulation is how little is known by most people, and how much is misrepresented by others, about the controversial mosque. I do not even mean by this especially what has become the tiresome refrain of “mosque supporters” that the “Ground Zero Mosque” is not even on Ground Zero. Yes, one wonders, and what is the precise location in space of a symbol? Where is the Cordoba of the Cordoba initiative – in the minds of those who claim it as a symbol of tolerance or of those who think it a signal of conquest? You say it is just a cigar, Herr Freud – then why am I so aroused?

The second stipulation begins with the fact that the mosque is already there, in lower Manhattan, only blocks from the WTC site. It has been there for years, symbolizing little to any other than those who pray in it. The controversy begins with plans to replace the mosque with a more imposing structure with more imposing ambitions. For in order to symbolize, a symbol first has to be detected: it has to be read as a symbol. The mosque-Islamic center is now being read.

According to The New York Times and other accounts that have developed in the aftermath of controversy, there was little if any original intent to create what is now a positively spun tribute to tolerance. The more mundane intent was to further pursue the mainstreaming of Islam in American culture by building the Muslim equivalent to a YMCA or YWHA.

“Strollers,” said [Joy Levitt, executive director of the Jewish Community Center on the Upper West Side of Manhattan], whom [Daisy] Khan had approached for advice on how to build an institution like the Jewish center — with a swimming pool, art classes and joint projects with other religious groups. Ms. Levitt, a rabbi, urged Ms. Khan to focus on practical matters like a decent wedding hall and stroller parking.

Ms. Khan and her husband, Imam Abdul Rauf, never anticipated, so never planned for – with PR representation, more extensive community outreach, any kind of deeply detailed briefing book – the volatile reaction that ensued. A briefing book would have been impossible since, by all accounts, no funds have yet been raised for the center, no architect and contractors have been hired to build it, and no board has been chosen to direct it. There is no evidence that Rauf and Khan have been anything other than surprisingly politically naïve in their approach to the project, especially given Rauf’s history as an active political voice of Muslim moderation. What might nonetheless sour some who resist the ugliness of the political Right is the subsequent political spinning about a tribute to tolerance. I don’t know, says the patient, ill and distressed, this doesn’t taste very good. Returns the good doctor, Well, it’s good for you. Now swallow it.

These stipulations offered, what is so wrong about the whole pathetic excuse for debate over the Islamic center is how completely driven it is by politics and ideological warfare rather than any truly human considerations. The outspoken voices on the Right, beyond their authentic nativist xenophobia, in political calculation play significantly to the fears and ignorance of a vulnerable and aroused constituency. They are working an electoral issue, and they are working it well, because the Left in all its intellectualized high-mindedness has engaged the issue only in response to the conservative political class, attacking the excesses of that class and completely ignoring at best and insulting at a common worst their fellow citizens.

Poll after poll tells us that the majority of Americans are uncomfortable with this particular Islamic center at this particular location. No – a free, democratic nation is not governed by polls, despite what Republicans have tried to argue for nearly two years about health care and other issues. But we take polls in order to gain insight into what the populace thinks and feels. Does the Left – those outspoken supporters of the center – even care what the American people think and feel? And if they feel it, is that beneath degrading consideration? The loudest voices on the Left appear consistently no so much as advocates of the Islamic center, but as opponents of the opponents of the center. Typical of many old and new media Left organs has been Talking Points Memo, which from the start has paid scant attention to Americans themselves and simply cannot entertain an argument against the center other than to mock and belittle it as cynical.

It isn’t enough for Republicans to call on “peaceful Muslims” to “refudiate” the mosque and community center proposed for a site near Ground Zero, or to imply that the funding for it comes from terrorist organizations, or even to tell American Muslims that their religious freedoms should be held hostage to the decisions of the Saudi government. Nope. The new Republican talking point used to try to stop the construction of the community center and mosque — and to make political hay of that opposition — is that Ground Zero is their Auschwitz, and the Muslims who seek to build anywhere near it should know better, just like some nice nuns did in the eighties.

This brief passage, except for the missing, common and genuine Leftside paeans to religious liberty, perfectly reflects the nature of Liberal argument these many months. There is no argument against the location of the Islamic center that TPM and others will dignify as genuine or genuinely offered or offered by anyone other than a Republican hack. The Auschwitz analogy, while not my proposed solution, is that rare analogy narrow enough in comparison to offer worthwhile consideration, and this non Republican-talking-point would be happy to debate it with Megan Carpentier as soon she can turn off the Liberal snark loop she has running in her brain.

Even today, after not very ingenuously using the George W. Bush and Karen Hughes post 9/11 outreach to Muslims as a Liberal talking point against today’s Right, now that Hughes – agree with her or not – has come out sensitively and reasonably against the location of the center, TPM has engaged the predictable campaign against her honesty. If you read the links, whether Hughes remembers working with Rauf in the past and whether she is being honest about remembering is completely irrelevant to the argument she made about the Islamic center. But why engage arguments when there is mud to be slung and a case to be built on the mound of it?

In a debate like this the Left gets to dress itself in better garb than the Right. The Right at its worst seems angry, hateful, even ignorant. The Left gets to stand up for tolerance and civil rights. The Left gets to be big because it has so well left the pain of 9/11 behind and distinguishes oh, so properly about who is an enemy and who is not. Something strikes, however. The Left, does it not, bleeds compassion for the wronged and the wounded? That is the dismissive conservative charge against the Left – bleeding hearts. The hearts bleed so much that even after 9/11 – to varying degrees at various points along the scale of Leftness – there were public expressions or private thoughts of understanding of what had happened. It was blowback from American foreign policy. Yes, it was wrong to do what the obviously crazed extremists had done, but it didn’t come out of nowhere, so many on the Left thought. Imam Rauf himself is now widely quoted from a Sixty Minutes interview as condemning the attack but acknowledging that the U.S. was, in a sense, an “accessory” to the crime because of some of its policies. No sense holding this thought particularly against the Muslim but nonetheless American Rauf, because many other non-Muslim Americans thought it too.

All this understanding, but none – and I mean none – for their fellow Americans. You will find solid citizens of the Left answering phones at rape help lines, at trauma centers for the victims of torture, lending helping hands to political refugees and the scarred of war torn nations – but for the American hurt of 9/11, in this argument, little but contempt. Let there be a third stipulation – that wherever there is pain and mistrust and the unfamiliar or foreign, there will be ignorance and bigotry. There will be people who act from out of those feelings and narrow ideas. But if you listen to the purely politically-trained arguments of the anti anti-mosque voices, they would have you think that there are no others uncomfortable with the location of the Islamic center. If you are opposed in any way to the Islamic center being constructed just as conceived by its originators and supporters, you are a bigot acting out of an “Islamophobia” increasingly likened to anti-Semitism.

It is a not-so-secret dirty secret of the Left that many on it are dismissive of the intelligence of the general population. How else to account for decades of mostly conservative rule? And poll results like those about President Obama’s religion, in part the cynical product of the conservative campaign against him, help make the argument that there will always be a segment of any population that is ignorant and susceptible to manipulation and fear of the other. But if you listen to the tenor of Liberal arguments, then you must conclude that most of the country and Liberal New York City now fits this description. Good luck to the Dems in November.

It’s time, then, to question some shibboleths. Religious tolerance, for instance. Oh, my God – what? No, I’m not against it. I am very much for it, because I am for – like my own self – freedom of speech and of the press and of association and all the other freedoms that along with the right of privacy create for the individual what should be an inviolate integrity of personhood. But tolerance can be the way you tolerate your neighbor’s obnoxious kid. It does not mean you have to like or respect him or even the parents that produced him. Tolerating a religion and its practice does not mean you have to like it either, and if you are free to disapprove of another’s political ideas, or your neighbor’s ideas on child rearing, then you are free to disapprove of someone else’s religious ideas too. If you aren’t running for political office, you don’t need to mouth the usual palaver favoring all and preferring none.

Because of the role of religion in the nation’s origins, and because religious faith, unlike a national narrative of identity, addresses the most profound fears and aspirations of every human life – the matter of any meaning at all to our existence, and of our existential terror about life and death – the very notion of the sacred adheres to it. No matter how preposterous the theology or doctrine, religion, concerning itself with God, is sacred. Nationalism, no more or less a narrative of personal meaning, is storytelling bound by the constraints of this world. Far from sacred, it is mean. Better challenge the worth of a man’s home team as question the value of his religion. In the spirit of good citizenship and religious fellowship, we are supposed to offer that all those insignificant differences of doctrine and practice aside – all those absolute declarations of straight gates and narrow ways discounted – all religions are really just about God and love and eternity. I wear pinstripes; you wear Dodger blue. We all love the game of baseball.

However, the indigenous populations of the world, among others, might be forgiven – actually, not, for the most part – if many among them, given the religion’s role in abetting and justifying their conquest, do not think Christianity the greatest thing since the Resurrection. Similarly, if one looks around the world at Islam, what does one see?

There are over 50 states with majority Muslim populations.  Some, like Indonesia, are relatively democratic but are also largely secular.  Others, like Kuwait, hold free and fair elections for a parliament that has no real power.   In fact, there are a wide variety of political systems across the Islamic world, but as of yet there are none that could truly be considered both Islamic and democratic.

In fact, many of the most undemocratic nations of the world are identifiably, theologically Muslim. Sam Harris among lots of others cites chapter and verse of elements and concepts of Islam to which he objects in stating his own opposition to the center. If one objects to Islamic theological doctrine, or to Christian doctrine, or to that of any other religion, if one notes with displeasure the culture and the political nature of a religion – such objection does not an “Islamophobe” or “Christophobe” or any other contentious political nonce word make. Of course, American Muslims did not attack the U.S. on 9/11. They are not Al-Qaeda or the Taliban or the Iranian theocracy. They have every right of every other American. But to argue that the 9/11 attack had nothing to do with Islam – as do not the Taliban and the Iranian Ayatollahs and Hamas and Hezbollah and the Gulf State patriarchies, the Muslims elsewhere who rejoiced at the attack? – is sheer casuistry.

Religious faiths are systems of ideas. They are not biological characteristics like skin color and ethnicity. One may reject a system of ideas and not despise the person who adheres to it. To sweepingly dismiss opponents of the Islamic center as bigots, or to liken the passions of the moment to anti-Semitism, as Daisy Khan did this Sunday on ABC’s This Week, is an insult that obscures the very low nature of racism and the long historical virulence of anti-Semitism. Those Americans who mistrust Islam, even dislike it, do not come by their feelings irrationally – they have cause for what they think and feel. They have eyes and ears to see and hear Islam in the world around them, just as the Indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere can see that the Christian civilization that usurped them has no regret for what it did, can hear the Pope justify the Church to them on a visit to Latin America.

In all this global reality, to take cover in thoughtless, general accusations of bigotry is to belie the claim of an open hand of reconciliation and healing.

There may be no more telling truth in this dispute than one I pointed out before. Nowhere in these debates is it ever mentioned, still – certainly not by those who oppose the opponents – that the war that began as a response to the 9/11 attacks is still going on. Feel about that war as you wish, in the name of Islam, men flew planes that attacked the nation and killed thousands. They perpetrated the attack led by men who were harbored in a nation ruled by a barbaric Islamic theocracy. The United States sent its army to that nation, Afghanistan, to wage a war – and that war is still in progress. American soldiers die there every week.

Are Americans so small that they still feel the wound of the attack? Are they so mean and common that they might wish the World Trade Center itself rebuilt, and the war ended, and no more Americans dying because of 9/11, before there would be talk of so high profile an Islamic construct so close to the source of their pain? Are those who appear to live ideologically and ideally so far above such base emotions really so much better than this?

If the past decade has persuaded me of anything, it is that a healthy, powerful democracy, if it is not to be led astray into empire, if it is not to fall into decadence, should not rely in time of war on a professional, standing army. Any extended conflict should require the full commitment of the nation’s resources, there being no greater and more pronounced resource that the bodily and mental investment of the citizenry. If the leadership of a nation will pursue wars that its people will not support through obligatory military service, then there is something wrong with the war, the leadership, or the nation. And if wars are fought – two even! – for nearly a decade, with most of the population able to live their lives as if the conflicts were those not of their own, but of foreign nations, among peoples they do not know and with whom they have no personal connection, then we will reap at best, not worst, the kind of cluelessly superior emotional disconnection and condescension to be witnessed among so many who so disdain the feelings of their fellows.

The principles are clear. American Muslims, as do any other religious adherents, have a right to a house of worship wherever law otherwise permits. In the light of circumstance, a right existing need not be a right exercised, but the reality is that the mosque is already there. The question surrounds not the mosque, but this greater Islamic center, burdened now in the prospect with the weight of a disputed symbolism its proponents have given it as much as anyone. Rauf and Khan say they want it to bring us together. It is driving us apart. They can stand their ground amid the growing acrimony and pretend that what they are doing is good for the nation. Well, it’s good for you. Now swallow it.

Alternatively, they could move the site of the new center. But if the present mosque serves an actual local residential community, a move would be a disservice to its members, and the present mosque should not be driven away. Since the planned center is to contain, again, a mosque for religious prayer, as already exists, but was to be greater with the addition of so much more – why not alter the planned additions. Let it not be an Islamic center or another “Y.” New York has other centers and other “Y”s. An Islamic center can be built anywhere. Let it be, instead, something truly extraordinary. Let it be what I proposed before and propose again.

I propose the following. The deeply, institutionally religious of all faiths, those such as the Imam, are great preachers of the universal godly love their religions have to offer. Privately, we know they have offered many people solace and courage against the losses of this world and the fears of what may lie beyond. Communally, they have offered rewarding and reassuring fellowship. Publically, however, the world’s great religions have been among the greatest sources of divisive hate and destruction in human history. From the era of the great Crusades, to the wars and bloodletting of the Protestant Reformation, to the panoply of historical religious persecutions, to the conquest of the Americas and 9/11 itself, organized religions have unleashed a scourge of hatred upon the world to match the love they all profess. Why not, instead of a Muslim center that welcomes all, a truly nondenominational religious center established and endowed by all of the world’s major faiths and dedicated to the study and reflection on this great and sorrowful contradiction in their legacies.

That would be a monument to the lives and deaths of those in the Towers and elsewhere, and there need be no bad feelings, and no politics of image restoration, or charges of bigotry – just a commitment to reflecting on the nature of a spiritual disease that has long beset the world.

Under the circumstances as they have developed, I can see even less reason for anything other than such a reconceived center than I did before. The alternative is a zero-sum game with winners and losers, lingering resentment, and abiding animosity. The alternative is a deepening of the chasm already opened among the American people, who have fled from it to find their refuge on peaks of safety among camps of the like minded. There they stand, looking out across the way at those on the other side. They are calling to each other, their voices swallowed by the distance and the wind rush. They are trying to say something to one another. If we listen, if we lean in and cock our ears just so, we can just make out what they are saying. We can hear their calls.

“Fools,” they are crying. “Fools.”

AJA

UPDATE: A major, thoughtless meme being promulgated by the critics of Islamic center opposition is that the opposition represents an outbreak of bigotry, an “Islamophobia” that is, by nature of that phobia, irrational. I addressed that idea argumentatively above. Yesterday in the Los Angeles Times, Jonah Goldberg offered an empirical argument. (Yes, I know – it’s Jonah Goldberg, but evidence is evidence, at least that’s what I teach my students. Shall I revise the official course outline? If anyone has contradictory data, send it on in.) In contrast, Keith Olbermann led his broadcast last night – the lead national headline – with the story of the Muslim New York cabbie who was attacked yesterday. Surprise – there are troubled, drunken, stupid boobs in the world. As I recall, there was a rather disturbed Army psychiatrist who killed a bunch of people a while back, and did he for Olbermann represent anything beyond himself? (Of course, Major Nidal Malik Hasan had been in communication with terrorist elements abroad. We’ll find about the taxi cab slasher. That evidence thing again.) For yet another perspective, from today’s New York Times, Looking at Islamic Center Debate, World Sees U.S.:

Far more common, however, was a sort of shrug of the shoulders from clerics and observers accustomed to far more unpleasant debates. While extremists have presented the controversy as proof of American hostility toward Islam, some religious leaders have taken quite a different stance, arguing against placing the center close to ground zero.

Dalil Boubakeur, head of the Grande Mosquée of Paris and one of the most senior Islamic clerics in France, told France-Soir: “There are symbolic places that awaken memories whether you mean to or not. And it isn’t good to awaken memories.”

A senior cleric at Egypt’s Al Azhar, the closest equivalent in the Sunni Islamic world to the Vatican, said that building at the proposed location sounded like bad judgment on the part of American Muslims.

“It will create a permanent link between Islam and 9/11,” said Abdel Moety Bayoumi, a member of the Islamic Research Institute at Al Azhar. “Why should we put ourselves and Islam in a position of blame?”

Now swallow. It’s good for you.

———–

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I Take Sen. McConnell ‘At His Word’ When He Says He’s Not A Human-Turtle Hybrid.

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The Word – Losing His Religion
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From “The Dredgeman’s Revelation,” by Karen Russel, the story of Louis Thanksgiving:

The dredge barge clanked downstream with its dipper handle swinging. For the first time in his short life, Louis had real friends, all sorts travelling alongside him into the glade—calm men, family men, bachelors, ex-preachers, hellions, white men, black men, the children of Indians and freed slaves. There was Adams, who had kicked a coral snake away from Louis’s naked big toe and thus saved his life with a casual grunt; ex-Army boys who followed the white-tailed deer into the briary midday darkness of the hardwood hammocks; drunks who took potshots at the queer golden cats that stalked the perimeter of their camp; gamblers who took all of Louis’s money with a pair of jacks and then gave (some of) it back at day’s end. Every man was Louis’s friend. When there was light in the sky, they waded forward. They surveyed the old section lines of the National Forest during the workweek, and on weekends they “rambled,” as LaVerl, the buck sergeant, said: shooting, fishing, sometimes even gator hunting along the nests that filled the unused railway bed. The cook told Louis to collect two dozen leathery eggs from these alligator nests, and made the whole crew a dinner of fishy-tasting omelettes.

When the light expired, they slept. White-tailed deer sprinted like loosed hallucinations among the tree islands. Sometimes Louis fell asleep watching them from the deck, and it worried him that he couldn’t pinpoint when his sleep began: deer rent the mist with their tiny hooves, a spotted contagion of dreams galloping inside Louis’s head. There were bad fires that blurred the world; in the summer months, you could see smoke rising almost daily, wherever lightning struck the peat beds.

Louis heard from the other surveyors that men all over the country were “hunting a week for one day’s work.” Sometimes when he thought about this he felt so lucky that he was almost sick to his stomach. Happiness could be felt as a pressure, too, Louis realized, more hard-edged and solid than longing, even. In Clarinda, he had yearned for better in a formless way, desire like a gray milk churn; in fact, he’d been so poor that he couldn’t settle on one concrete noun to wish for: A real father? A girl in town? A thousand acres? A single friend? In contrast, this new happiness had angles; it had a jewel-cut shadow, and he could lose it. Well, Louis determined that he was not going to lose it, and that he was never going back. The Depression was the best thing that had ever happened to him. He had a crisp stack of dollars, a uniform with his name stitched in raspberry thread on the pocket, and pork and grits in his belly.

Joseph Conrad, “Preface” to The Nigger of the Narcissus (1897)

* * *

“Most people cannot see anything, but i can see what is in front of my nose with extreme clearness; the greatest writers can see through a brick wall.”

W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up (1938)

———

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On Saturday I received a tweet from someone in Kashmir – not a Twitter friend – who had tweeted me several times before in recent weeks to tell me about the rising death toll from Indian security forces among Kashmiri protesters. I know a bit about the situation in Kashmir, but I’m hardly expert and have no reliable knowledge of the details of the past couple of months of protest and violence. In fact, that was the point for me. You will search almost fruitlessly in the Western media for coverage of recent events. Only today was I able to find this brief AFP account (and now those that follow in links below) of a most recent death. More comprehensive coverage, with photos, is available at Greater Kashmir, according to Wikipedia “the leading Indian English language newspaper printed daily from Srinagar, the summer capital of the state of Jammu and Kashmir in India.” Greater Kashmir is Kashmiri nationalist organ that “criticizes both the Pakistani and Indian Governments as well as the J&K State Government and pro-Pakistan separatists. It has spoken out against atrocities by Indian security forces and Pakistani militants.”

My correspondent alerted me that deaths had now reached 62, while the “world is still sleeping.” Given my own frustration over lack of coverage, I chose to play my small part in spreading awareness and retweet the message from Kashmir. I very quickly received a long series of tweets from an Indian friend, who warned me against being “blinded by extremists calls.” My correspondent, very much an Indian partisan in the matter, became emotional in a quite human and understandable way, for which she apologized. Still, she led me to pause and consider my action. My intent had been only to spread some news. As usual, I edited the tweet only minimally, to enable the retweet to come in under 140 characters; otherwise, however, I retweeted it as written – and as written, it had been critical of India. I recognize that as an error.

I made a similar error a few months back when I repeated – as if it were established fact – the claims that Tea Partiers had spat on Congressman Emanuel Cleaver and called Congressmen John Lewis and Barney Frank “nigger” and “faggot.” As it turned out, there is no clear evidence on camera of any of this, though Cleaver and Congressmen James Clyburn and Frank offered their own testimony. WhileI credit their accounts, the facts are in dispute still, with no determinative evidence, so I should not have stated the claims as fact. Of course, the lack of recorded evidence – there is a very loud din of screams and calls on the available video, amid which any single voice might easily go intelligibly unrecorded – is not proof to the contrary, yet many conservatives, including some who criticized me, state that the claims were a lie, as if that were established, when it is not. We have not yet reached the metaphysical state, though clearly many reality-program participants and celebrity hounds believe it, in which to exist is to exist on camera. But we all have our own standards of evidentiary rigor. Andrew Breitbart has offered, I believe, a hundred million billion dollars to anyone who can provide documentary evidence of a shout from a crowd, and we all know what kind of standards Andrew Breitbart has.

So now I have further guidelines for myself to regulate my retweeting. And on the subject of Kashmir, I found that my proffer to my Indian correspondent that the issue is a complex one was roundly rejected. It is not complex, she said. “Jammu & Kashmir’s erstwhile king decided to join indian union.pakistan has got nothing to do with Kashmir.” Now, while the Israeli-Arab conflict may have deeper roots in time, the Hindu-Muslim dispute over Jammu and Kashmir has a complex history too, almost identical in age – in their most recent manifestations – to that of the Israeli-Arab dispute. Amid the conflict and confusion of the partition between India and Pakistan, the Maharaja of Kashmir, as the agreement between Pakistan and India permitted, chose to be part of India – even though the population of Kashmir at the time was an estimated 77% Muslim. We might all agree, even without the benefit of now splendid hindsight, that this offered not a road map to an untroubled future.

Beyond that I won’t stray today, except to note, more parochially, this photo from Greater Pakistan of a Washington D.C. rally by Kashmiris.

A special envoy, indeed. There is none. Nor are there the widely publicized reports from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International that are regularly issued, especially during such periods of conflict, regarding Israel and Arab-Muslim forces. There are no investigations or condemnations by the U.N. Human Rights Council. There is no BDS movement against either India or Pakistan, there is no political romance of a Kashmiri “intifada” (though, I discover, my Kashmiri correspondent does claim solidarity with the Palestinians), and there are no famous artists and performers canceling visits and concerts in India, Pakistan, or Kashmir.

Of course, I don’t believe there is a regular rock concert circuit in Pakistan and Kashmir. Noam Chomsky, on the other hand, I am sure, waits even now at an Indian policed border for admittance into Pakistani administered Northern Kashmir, where he will condemn India and express his own solidarity with Pakistani militants. What would Kashmir do without him?

AJA

———

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A Film Noir

by

A. Jay Adler

DOUBLE DOWN

Part Twelve

The Story So Far

Jack Miles, rock n’ roll roadie, has returned home looking for a job. He encounters old friends and begins a new love with Evelyn “Sonny” Morales, a detective. Old friends, Kyle and Ray, propose to Jack that he help them rob his wealthy, but estranged, identical twin, Joseph. Jack turns them down, and instead goes to see Joseph to ask for a job. But Joseph humiliates Jack and they nearly come to blows. Enraged, Jack lures Joseph to him and kills him, making the murder appear his own accidental death. He then assumes Joseph’s identity and sets Kyle and Ray up in a botched attempt at the robbery. While Sonny investigates Jack’s death, Jack, as Joseph, discovers that Joseph and Crank Wilson were closeted lovers. As Sonny’s investigation continues to bring her and Jack together, Jack tries to adjust to the circumstances of his new life. Soon enough, Crank is on to Jack and tries to blackmail him, but Jack figures a way to accommodate and control Crank. Then, one night, Jack and Sonny give in and make love. Disturbed by events, Sonny seeks advice from her Poppy, her father, in prison. She returns to headquarters to learn that Crank has been murdered. The investigation leads to Crank’s murderer, and to evidence of his and Joesph’s relationship.

Now, Part 12:

Sonny and her partner argue about her relationship with Joseph. They arrest Billy Corbet. Jack receives mixed signals for his future.

————

INT. KORT MANSION – STUDY – DAY

Jack and Arthur Perry sit around a coffee table. Arthur gathers up the PAPERS into a PORTFOLIO.

ARTHUR

So that’s it. The farm, property, investments, and cash — minus Mirabella’s various bequests — you’re worth about sixty million dollars.

Jack is quietly wowed. He stands, moves away.

ARTHUR (CONT’D)

But I assume you pretty much knew that.

JACK

It’s a little different to hear it in so much detail.

ARTHUR

Yes, I suppose it is.

JACK

To have the responsibility myself.

ARTHUR

I’m not sure how many people would think of it as a responsibility, Joseph. Controlling that much money — it’s a lot of opportunity. And speaking of opportunity, I told you on the phone, I put out some discreet feelers. There may be a couple of takers so far, one private, one a large corporate interest.

JACK

Actually I’ve changed my mind about that.

ARTHUR

Really?

JACK

I’ve decided to really learn the business, take on the challenge of running it myself.

ARTHUR

That is a change.

JACK

You know, Arthur — let’s be honest — I’ve never really done anything useful with my life. You know what a lot of people thought about my marriage to Mirabella. Maybe this is my “opportunity.” I’d appreciate it, though, if you continued to keep all this to yourself. No point in letting any uncertainty about the ownership of the farm interfere with business.

ARTHUR

Of course not. And the liquidity?

JACK

I may still do some traveling. Might even be a way to learn more about the business.

ARTHUR

This might be the time, then — I was Mirabella’s attorney. I had to complete her affairs. I’d understand, Joseph, if you’d like to continue working with someone of your own choosing.

JACK

No. No, you’ve done a good job. Who knows my affairs better than you do? I see no reason to change. In fact, I very much don’t want to.

Jack extends his hand. Arthur shakes it.

EXT. STREET – DAY

A line of Black and Whites, and one unmarked sedan, speed quickly.

INT. UNMARKED SEDAN – MOVING

Slocum at the wheel. Sonny beside him.

SLOCUM

Are you sleeping with him?

SONNY

It’s none of your business, Gene.

SLOCUM

None of my business? You’re my partner, Sonny. First you lay down for –

SONNY

Fuck you!

SLOCUM

Lay down for. The whole fucking world saw you in that bar. Or did you imagine there was nothing in the world except your two sets of exploding hormones? A dead-end rocker wannabe who tries to rip off his own brother and drowns himself in booze and pills. And then you sleep with — are you sleeping with him?

He shoots her a look.

SLOCUM (CONT’D)

Yeah, you’re sleeping with him.

Slocum turns a corner hard.

SLOCUM (CONT’D)

The goddamned identical twin brother you didn’t know likes his neck choked with leather and a lash on the ass from the banker who got offed by the local drug cartel he was laundering money for. And it’s not my fucking business?

SONNY

Yeah, well, it’s not easy out there, asshole. Ask all your ex’s won’t give you the time of day.

SLOCUM

Oh, you’re gonna cry me that river? Hard life of the female cop, the poor Chicana? All on your own? You’re tough. You can take it. No different than anyone else. Isn’t that the way you want it?

SONNY

Yeah, that’s the way I want it. Thanks for caring.

SLOCUM

You wouldn’t know who cared if he slapped you in the face.

EXT. EL Puño CLUBHOUSE BAR

The sedan and the Black and Whites screech to a halt at all angles on the street.

UNIFORMS rush out their cars, REVOLVERS drawn, to either side of the door.

Slocum and Sonny come up quickly between them and lead the way, on Slocum’s signal, through the door.

INT. EL Puño CLUBHOUSE BAR

Slocum and Sonny enter quickly, revolvers at the ready, the Uniforms fanning out around them.

The bar is empty.

Everyone eases up a bit as they spread and look around.

Sonny walks ahead to a back room door. Stops, listens, motions to Slocum.

She motions to the rest to be still. WHIMPERING CRIES are audible from behind the door.

Sonny gestures her intent to go in first. Slocum nods. They go through.

BACK ROOM

Crates and liquor boxes stacked high. Nothing visible, but the WHIMPERING louder.

Sonny and Slocum search carefully, Uniforms behind them. The path to the crying is easy.

Billy Corbett hides crouched among the liquor boxes, half crazed, reduced to simpleness, cowering and crying with fear and desperation.

They pull him to his feet.

Sonny cuffs him as Slocum pats him down. He comes across Billy’s torn jacket pocket and shows it to Sonny.

SONNY

William Corbett, you’re under arrest for the murder of Augustus Wilson.

Billy collapses in their arms. Sonny and Slocum catch him. Two Uniforms take him from their arms, carry him along.

SONNY (CONT’D)

You have the right to remain silent –

SLOCUM

Always something new.

INT. KORT MANSION – STUDY – DAY

Jack sits looking over some of the PAPERS Arthur left with him.

The phone rings.

Jack goes to the desk to answer.

JACK

Hello?

INT. POLICE STATION – DAY

Sonny sits at her desk, turned toward the window for greater privacy.

SONNY

I just thought I’d call — I wanted to let you know that we arrested Billy Corbett this afternoon for Wilson’s murder.

INTERCUT AS NEEDED

Jack looks relieved.

JACK

Good. That’s out of the way then.

SONNY

I guess I owe you an apology.

JACK

Suspicion is a part of your work. I’m a forgiving man.

SONNY

We searched Wilson’s apartment in Pismo Beach. We found some photographs.

JACK

Uh, huh. Nothing too kinky I hope. I know how sensitive you detectives can be.

Sonny doesn’t know what to make of this.

SONNY

I suppose it depends on what you think of as kinky.

JACK

In Wilson’s case — Listen, whatever I did, I want to make it up to you. I want to see you again Evelyn. I want that very much.

Sonny is totally confused now.

SONNY

No. I don’t think so. I have to get back to work.

JACK

Then let me call you. Please, Evelyn, just let me call you.

SONNY

Okay. Call me. No. No. I’ve got to get to work. Goodbye.

INT. KORT MANSION – STUDY

Jack hangs up the phone: Sonny’s conflicted but the door’s not shut.

Jack pours himself a drink at the bar. He gathers up the PORTFOLIO of papers and wanders out onto

EXT. TERRACE

Jack strolls easily: Sonny’s an unsettled issue, but the Crank murder no longer hangs over him, and he is now a very wealthy man with a very different life ahead of him. He feels good.

Jack sits at a table.

He sips his drink. He glances through the portfolio again and puts it down contentedly.

He sips his drink and looks out over the orchards with quiet pleasure.

Manuel appears through the doors from the living room.

MANUEL

Excuse me, but dinner will be ready in half an hour. Would you like to dine here on the terrace again tonight, sir?

Jack, thoughtful, is slow to respond.

JACK

Yes. I think I would.

MANUEL

Very good, sir.

JACK

Manuel. We haven’t had much time to talk these last weeks. How have you been?

MANUEL

How have I been, sir?

JACK

Yeah. You know. Your life. Is it going well?

Only Manuel knows how unusual Jack’s interest is.

MANUEL

Actually, sir, I have had some difficulty, but things are better.

JACK

What kind of difficulty?

MANUEL

My son, Tonio. He and his wife. These modern marriages. And the children. What can I say? It is not as it once was.

JACK

No. But things are better between them now?

MANUEL

Yes. Things are better.

JACK

And you? Is there a woman for you?

MANUEL

Only Esperanza, my wife. She is dead many years.

JACK

No one since?

MANUEL

The memory is long, sir.

Jack thinks about that.

JACK

What about Tonio? What does he do?

MANUEL

He works here in the orchards, sir.

JACK

Of course. Stupid. I’m not thinking.

MANUEL

I don’t believe you actually know him, sir.

JACK

How does he like it in the orchards? It’s hard work.

MANUEL

It’s not easy. For him. His wife. Or the children.

JACK

(thoughtful)

I could always find them work outside the orchards.

MANUEL

That would be very generous of you, sir. You –

(hesitates)

– could also make things better in the orchards.

Jack looks out at the orchards.

JACK

I could, couldn’t I?

(beat)

Anyway, I’m glad things are better for you now. Life starts to seem good again, doesn’t it, after you’ve made it through rough times?

MANUEL

Yes, sir. It does. If I may say so, sir, I think for you, too. You have had the rough times.

JACK

Yes.

MANUEL

But life starts to seem good again?

JACK

I think so. Maybe. Yes.

(beat)

Thanks for talking with me, Manuel.

MANUEL

No, sir. Thank you. Mr. Miles.

Manuel turns away. Jack is struck by the last words: Mr. Miles, not Mr. “Joseph.” A cloud passes over his face.

AJA

Next week, the concluding scenes of Double Down: “Dealer’s Call”

———–

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I’m taking one. A blogcation, that is. Actually, truth be told, it won’t be any kind of cation. The fall semester approaches, and I will be devoting my hours next week to course preparation and related projects. It is just that I will not be blogging. No posts. No Facebook updates. Not tweets. No twits. (Well, that’s more of a standing prohibition.) I am, for a blessed week, disengaging from the social ether, the sucking vortex created by the attempt to connect with the entire universe. Really, E. M. Forster never imagined that. Meditation is so much simpler.

On Sunday, I will be offering the long awaited penultimate installment of Double Down, starring, in my imagination and now yours, George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez. The evidence is closing in on the gambling soul that is Jack Miles, dispatcher with malice of his identical twin, Joseph. The cards have been dealt and Jack has split his hand. Will two chances turn out be better than one? Will Jack win his bet? Enter the matinee with popcorn and find out.

When I return to timely posting, a week from today, I will offer a post that will rock your world. Failing that, it should at least successfully irritate most of my readership.

In the meantime, remember, there is nothing wrong with the nation that cannot effectively be blamed on the professoriate. As evidence, one wishes not to imagine the nature of the training being offered by this guy. Or these people. And can you imagine from that last what Fox News and Sarah Palin would make of George Soros opening Progressive (i.e. Socialist) Atheist University in San Francisco? Truly, the End Times would be upon us.

All right, really, I’ve got to go. I have minds to contaminate and futures to misguide.

P.S. I suppose it makes sense that bartenders, who are exposed to more human weakness and travail than even confessors and psychotherapists, would be the least conservative of polled professions. Or no?

Bye.

AJA