A Priest, A Rabbi, And An Imam Walk Into A Bar And All Three Give In To Temptation

'I know you don't drink, Ahmed, but would you care to join Shmuel and myself for some good company while we wet our whistles?'

Ahmed, the imam had not been in a bar for a long, long time, and although Paddy and Shmuel had become good friends of his - the kind of friendship that would certainly resolve all problems in the Middle East if it could be replicated and and multiplied - to be seen walking into a bar, especially the likes of McSorley's, a Blarney stone, shot-and-a-beer kind of place on Brevoort Street, would be curtains.  

Ahmed al-Fikrim (aka Henry Plover) had converted to Islam ten years ago and hadn't had so much as a drop to drink in all that time.  This is not to say that he wasn't tempted, for he was; and just the sight of a bottle of Jameson's made him quiver with thirst . 

 

After his conversion Henry had been a dutiful Muslim, praying five times a day, observing Ramadan, attending services at the mosque on Fridays, being attentive to others, and doing his bit of evangelism.  As time went by and as his rectitude was increasingly appreciated by the mullah, he was brought into the ranks of leadership, and after a period of dutiful servitude became one of the chosen of Al-Berbat Mosque, and after the death of Brother Fatih, became the presiding imam. 

He took this honor seriously, for it wasn't just on any day that a Christian convert could ever be considered a serious Muslim let alone an imam.  He grew his beard long, was sure to say 'Peace be upon Him' every time spoke the Prophet's name, and never used the future tense without adding 'Insha'Allah'.  He hadn't had pork or a drink in all that time and God had become his one and only adviser. 

Yet, there always was a bottle of Jameson's etched into his frontal lobes, not only an indelible reminder of his humility, his obedience to Allah, and his service to his congregation; but also a Holy Grail (or the Muslim equivalent).  It was only a matter of time before he fell from grace (he was unsure of the Muslim phrasing), and he readied himself for it.  Mind you, he had never been an alcoholic in his Christian days, nor a teetotaler, just a drinker who liked his pint o' bitter or a Wild Turkey. 

Father Paddy O'Brien had never been anything other than a priest.  He had been an altar boy, a seminarian, an intern at St. Maurice's church in upstate New York, and finally senior priest of his own parish, St. Thomas Aquinas in Massapequa. He had only one serious failing as a cleric but one against which he fought tirelessly. 

Unlike most of this colleagues, he liked women.  Every single one of them, succulently soft and enticing, sinuously and irrepressibly alluring, were the objects of his desire.  Whenever desire struck, he prayed the rosary, said ten Our Fathers, the Confiteor, and the Mea Culpa, asking Jesus to help him out of his frustrated misery. 

It never worked, for he followed the scent of one beautiful woman after another up and down Fifth Avenue right after making the Stations of the Cross at St. Patrick's.  He couldn't help himself, confessed his desires every week, but was a man addled by desire.  Like the imam and his bottle of Jameson's, it was only a matter of time before he fell. 

Shmuel Levin-Epstein was not just an ordinary rabbi, but one in a long line that dated back to Saul and David.  A rabbinical career had been a certainty from the day he was born.  Although his father was a diamond merchant on 47th Street with significant investments in clothing and real estate, he had always wanted his son to become God's servant, not Mammon's.  

Not that his father had any shame in what he did.  The tenants in his tenements on the Lower East Side were happy to have a place to lay their heads, he gave needed employment to Puerto Ricans at his factories in the lofts of the Garment District, and traded the world's most enduringly valuable commodity - diamonds - to enhance the lives of both the rich and famous and those just starting out.. But for his son, his only son?  God was the only path, 

However it was hard for the young Shmuel to bend to the Torah when the likes of Morrie Rubenstein and Shecky Hellman, Hollywood moguls came to dinner.  Their talk of David O. Selznik and Louis B. Mayer was heady, and his father's trips to the Coast mysterious and exciting.  The more money his father made, the more and more expensive condos they lived in, finally moving to the magnificent penthouse on York Avenue on the Upper East Side, the harder the Book was to learn.  Yet his father persisted. 'Leave it to me to make money', old Henny said, 'but you I expect to get me to heaven'. 

The conflict was troubling.  Week after week he learned about the ins and outs of New York real estate, mortgages, leveraging, bond issues, zoning, the rental market, and interest rates; the cotton trade, Bangladeshi off-the-rack product, hi-tech synthetics, and the credit swaps that made the clothing business an earner; and the fancy deals with DeBeers and the South African exchange.  Even though his father headed him 'in the direction of the 'Lord God Almighty', he was being prepared to take over the family businesses, God or Mammon, the good life or the prayerful one. 

So every Monday and Wednesday when the three men met at McSorley's, the talk inevitably turned from God to other things.  It was a time to let loose, to give in to temptation in principle if not in fact.  Only among themselves could they feel confident enough to share desires.  There were no parishioners, congregants, or worshippers within earshot. 

So one by one, each in turn they shared their memories. Henry Plover, the imam, told about his young hijinks on the floats of the best samba schools in the Quarter, his bacchanals on Bayou Lafourche, and carousing in the cathouses of the Ninth Ward. These alcohol-fueled adventures were the best of his life, wild, boozy affairs with no tether or traces.   

Paddy O'Brien went on about the women in his life before the priesthood and the pursuant, ineluctable fantastical pursuit of the beautiful young things at the windows of Saks, Bendel's and Tiffany’s. He was at his most eloquent and voluble when it came to them - their hair, their Greek statuary grace, their walk, and above all, their perfume. 

And Sam (Shmuel) went on about the magnificent new high-rises in Manhattan, the elegantly, impossibly tall and thin skyscrapers towering over Central Park, or the fashion runways of Milan, Paris, and New York and the brilliance of today's Diors and St. Laurents. There was an exuberance about the masterful orchestration of product, financing, and marketing. 

'What are we still doing here?' said Father O'Brien. 

'What are we doing with our lives?', asked Sammy Levin-Epstein. 

'I'm having a drink', said the imam, Henry Plover; and from that moment on, the lives of the three men began to change, starting with a shot and a beer, ending with a male bonding such as you have never seen, and finishing up with an out-the-door new resolve. 

'Oh, God has his place', said the imam now on his own in Brooklyn, as  happy as a clam, one and done with Islam, living cheaply but well, back to McSorley's on occasion, host to the best of Green Point at all night parties in his loft.  He kept up with O'Brien and  Levin-Epstein, successful in their own rights, still young, ambitious, and once relieved of God, free and easy. 

'Ah, this is the life', said the former rabbi from his balcony overlooking the ocean on Collins Avenue, bought, bartered and sold until it was worth a fortune and now, finally, his home. 

The Queen Of Sheba Runs For Office - Kamala Harris, The Dark Ruler Of The New Jerusalem

The majesty of Sheba is deep-rooted in the popular imagination. “In the figure of the Queen of Sheba, the beckoning and voluptuous Orient becomes embodied, its imaginative territory in classical sources encompassed meridian and outlandish exoticism, sensuality, wonder and luxuries,” argues one historian. 

In detailing the Queen’s caravan of riches and lavish gifts to King Solomon, scriptural descriptions of the queen’s life stir the “antique Myth of the Orient.”  She ruled her Arabian kingdom with the power and presence of her successor to queenly rule, Cleopatra, and she had the intelligence, political savvy, and chutzpah to influence the mighty ruler of the Jewish kingdom. 

According to one early Arabian account, the Queen of Sheba came to Jerusalem "with a very great retinue, with camels bearing spices, and very much gold, and precious stones...Never again came such an abundance of spices as those she gave to Solomon"

However, there is an apocryphal legend that appeared in Jewish history.  Aware of Sheba's (Bilquis) arrival at court bearing gifts and concerned that her charms might seduce King Solomon and trick him into marriage, the king's jinn whispered to him that she had hairy legs and the hooves of an ass. Solomon, being curious about such a peculiar phenomenon, had a glass floor built before his throne so that Bilqīs, tricked into thinking it was water, raised her skirts to cross it and revealed that her legs were truly hairy. Solomon then ordered the jinn to create a depilatory for the queen. 

Even so, Solomon remained true to himself, thanked Sheba for her generosity, appreciated her overtures to open trade between the kingdoms of Arabia and his own, and prospered. 

'I am Sheba', Kamala Harris said to her retinue with an ironic smile, and I will convince the republic of my worth, my intelligence, and my right to rule. Now, Kamala knew little about the Queen of Sheba except that she was a woman of color born in Ethiopia or southern Arabia, that she was a mighty queen who ruled the roost in wide swaths of the peninsula, that she had the chutzpah and insight to challenge Solomon, the mighty ruler of Jerusalem, and she wooed him and seduced him into sharing the vast wealth of his Jewish kingdom. 

What Kamala didn't know was that so impressed with Solomon's wisdom, having answered all the challenging riddles with which she presented him, she converted to Judaism.  She had met her match, not only deferring to a man of far greater wisdom and intellectual merit than she, but willing to take her chances on his celestial promise.  

It was a Biblical come-uppance.  A woman reaching far above her station put in her place by a man of real power, leadership, and intelligence; a man unmoved by her caravans of spices and gold, and seeing only a woman of unalloyed ambition and pretense. 

Kamala, engaged but limited to first lines and simple stories, stuck with the imperial colored woman legend of Sheba, and embraced it as her own.  The potency - 'agency' was the current term for a woman's transformative abilities - of Sheba, her audacity in trekking through the desert with her train of camels and carts full of frankincense, myrrh, and the herbal medicines cultivated in the oases of her kingdom, her challenge of the great Solomon was enough.  It was an easy channel. 

Now, Kamala had always been an ambitious woman, one who would stop at nothing to reign whether in a courtroom or the chambers of Congress, and who was successful.  She had been known as the Genghis Khan of federal court, a savage, brutal prosecutor without restraint, compassion, or mercy; and as Senatorial member of the Judicial Committee vetting Supreme Court nominees did her best to humiliate and eviscerate Brett Kavanagh, a simple man of principle.  

As such, and treated with respect if not idolatry because of her racial, ethnic, and gender identity - a trifecta of blackness, cultural diversity, and proud womanhood - she felt herself anointed.  Her sense of destiny went far beyond self-confidence or general rectitude.  It had something to do with - there really was no other word for it - divine entitlement.  There were simply some people on whose shoulder Destiny's hand had rested.  

Sheba, the Queen of a vast empire and a just, wise ruler wasn't just given good genes and family history, she was gifted by a higher power, maybe not God, but....here Kamala's thoughts got jumbled as history, mythology, and popular idioms made thinking difficult, so she left it at that.  She and Sheba had been anointed. 

She felt queenly, and as she looked at herself in the mirror - a beautiful woman as beautiful as Sheba would have been with burnished mahogany skin, dark eyes, full lips, straight nose and a head of luxuriant hair.  She and Sheba were not just women but woman the embodiment of femininity, feminine power and authority, female beauty, and the seductive intelligence of sex. 

More than that the two women shared something equally important - imperial destiny.  They were both rulers - powerful women of color, yes, but regents (or in Kamala's case regents to be) in ability, intelligence, and ambition; and as such Kamala began to take on a more regal bearing.  

She curtailed her energy, her tedious ebullience and laughter, and looked more queenly.  She affected a bearing that was straighter, more defined, and less impromptu.  She spoke differently, with more of a pronounced cadence, and began to dress differently. She began to wear her Indian mother's gold jewelry - at least some of the more tasteful and evocative - and dress with what she felt was a greater dignity. 

She carried herself differently as well - a bit of a tilt to her head, a slower gait, a more firm and deliberate posture.  Smiles were reserved for reward not pleasantries.  All in all she was a changed woman.  Not on the inside necessarily, for she was still the take-no-prisoners Mongol marauder prosecutor of days gone by, but certainly on the outside. 

She now had to square her new, evolved persona with the campaign trail, not a very sophisticated, regal place; but she looked at Trump like some Eritrean tribal chieftain or some Nubian insurrectionist to be dealt with, defeated, and sentenced to death.  

Her handlers were not sure what to do with the new Kamala whom they expected to duke it out with the Trumpster in a UFC-style gloves off affair; but Kamala was indifferent.  The people would sense her innate power and its destiny, the right of imperial rule.  

Perhaps it was a good thing, an aide said privately, this regal bearing and all.  Calm the bitch down, get rid of the hysterics, give her a more presidential tone, shed the pit bull and channel the Labrador, give the people what they want, etc. etc.; but the lady wanted no part of it, cashiered her handlers and strode, not walked, onto the stage and welcomed the cheers, the applause, and the love of her subjects.  

The Old Man Thrown Under A Bus - The Palace Coup Of Queen Kamala

Oh, she did it right, praised the old man to the hilt - marvelous person, true leader, a man for all the people, mensch, Übermensch, great guy - and all the while buttering her bread on both sides.  If Joe totally lost his marbles and was Twenty-Fifth Amendment removed, she would become the President, run again, and as a black woman - what the country really wanted and needed - would win. If he declined to run, she would be the de facto, automatic candidate, run against Donald Trump and beat the bastard at his own game - Prosecutor vs. Felon in a smash-mouth, roundhouse free-for-all.  In any case it was in her interest to flatter her boss, show an invincible solidarity with him, and then pick up the pieces later. 

 

Obama is given the blame for what happened.  This eminence grise who passed Biden over in 2015 for Hillary Clinton did it again, engineered the resignation of his former Vice President, and put his chips on Kamala, a mulatto like him but with a better pedigree.  Besides, any fool could see how the President was making no sense whatsoever, so better toss him before it was too late. 

Insiders know that this was all Kamala's doing.  She, the heir of Clytemnestra, Goneril, Regan, and Lady Macbeth, knew precisely what she was up to.  Joe Biden, like King Lear was a doddering old fool who didn't know up from down and would never know he was being snookered by his closest ally, partner, and chief supporter.  Lear, like Biden, was an easy mark. When he made his fateful decision to divide up his kingdom before his death, he was already senile, an easy mark for his ambitious daughters who cruelly and painfully took their time in dismantling his power. His lands, his retinue, and finally his horses gone, Lear wanders out into the heath and goes stark, raving mad. 

 

So the canny Kamala, saw the same opportunity.  The old man was as daft as Lear, so the blandishments, the cajoling, the public displays of affection continued.  He was being softened up, tenderized, so that when the time was right, he would go like a baby. 

Of course Kamala knew that this would be the eventual scenario when she joined on as First Mate.  As a take-no-prisoners, no-holds-barred Genghis Khan of a prosecutor, she knew exactly how to exploit a weakness, bludgeon witnesses into recanting, humiliate the defense, and intimidate the judge.  She, like everyone could see that Joe Biden would never make it through his term, and if he did he would not be fit for another. 

Kamala was like the younger woman who marries a much older man. These ambitious women were unfairly called gold-diggers back in the day, but there was never anything crass about those who reeled in the big fish, the doddering billionaires who saw these women as their last, best hope. Not only that, Old Joe had bought into the black thang, thought she was marvelous because she was from the ghetto, a real woman of the streets with a white pedigree.  

Of course she was nothing of the kind, not an ounce of homeboy, pimp, and bling in her. She was the daughter of a former advisor to the President of Jamaica and tenured Professor of Economics at Stanford and her mother a renowned scientist.  She talked big on the campaign trail - her allusions to the inner city, her suggestions that she also had an absent father, a harsh and unremittingly dysfunctional childhood, and that she was a fugitive from Jim Crow were all carefully crafted balderdash, just out of the reach of fact checkers who, given the fawning media of the day were few and far between. 

She was as canny as Richard III who seduced Lady Anne whose husband and father in law, Henry VI, King of England, he had murdered.  

Was ever woman in this humor won?
I’ll have her, but I will not keep her long.
What? I, that kill’d her husband and his father,
To take her in her heart’s extremest hate,
With curses in her mouth, tears in her eyes,
The bleeding witness of my hatred by,
Having God, her conscience, and these bars against me,
And I no friends to back my suit at all
But the plain devil and dissembling looks?
And yet to win her! All the world to nothing!
Ha!

She worked the credulous public and the fawning press to a 'T', convinced everyone that she was America's victim/hero, a woman of color, a defiant, unashamedly ambitious woman whose place, whose only place was atop the social pyramid. She was idolized, believed, and adored, but beneath it all she knew it was all a necessary charade.  Heads would roll as they did in the days of the Lancasters and the Yorks, and she would left standing, proud, and heroic. 

In the White House she basked in the glory of it all.  A black woman Vice President indeed! and it would only be a matter of time until she was President, and from Day One she began plotting. 

How easy it had been! She had been given a free ride because she was a black woman, a Get Out Of Jail Free card, so she had a leg up in all her palace shenanigans.  Her cadre of adoring young black women was like the Queen of Sheba's retinue, and black men bowed at her feet. Every dirty trick, every plotting deception was overlooked; and so she played her role of dutiful, prayerful woman, talked the Old Guy up in public and in private planned his end. 

Poor Joe didn't know what hit him.  He had believed Kamala's nonsense and that of his advisors and MSNBC, and felt that he was the man for the future, and then suddenly he was out, a supernumerary, a has-been, a trifle, old chewing gum on the bedpost.  As Lear said, 'an unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal'.  

However, Joe Biden was never a tragic hero, only a lifelong politician who had stayed around long past his pull-by date, believing in some inertial law of politics - you could go on forever - and that his unremarkable tenure as Congressional representative from a small, insignificant state was actually worth something, something to be honored. 

Kamala didn't care whether he was a tragic hero or a doddering fool.  He was simply in the way. 

Once In The White House President Harris Sheds Her Blackness - 'I'm Really White, You Know'

Kamala Harris narrowly defeated Donald Trump in the Presidential election of 2024, and did so, as one Republican politician observed, by being Oprah Winfrey, Mother Teresa, and Gandhi all rolled into one.  She played every possible card in the deck, avoiding the issues - they would come later once she was in the White House, and besides, as she admitted to a close friend, the American public was as befuddled as she was about debt ceilings, interest rates, and balance of payments.  

The election would be about women and black people with a touch of compassion, personality, and human concern.  Her presence, her very being would embody the very goodness, kindness, and generosity that her opponent lacked.  This image of graciousness would win the day. 

Of course she would emphasize her blackness - the first black woman to rise to the highest office of the land, a combination of African American style, culture, and creds and feminist power.  Of course the blackness was a bit of a stretch, for her father was Jamaican and famous one at that, economic advisor to the President and later Professor of Economics at Stanford, basically as white as you can get while still being black; but no one on the campaign trail cared about such details.  

It was enough for her to say she was black, and that was enough.  The public didn't have to know that her father hobnobbed with white people all his life, was far more comfortable with Paul Krugman than  Snoop Dog.  She was black, and that was all there was to it. 

Of course she was half Asian - her mother was a full-blooded Indian - but speaking electorally that didn't amount to much.  In fact she downplayed the Indian angle because most Indians were big money Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, billionaires who played the market, invested in Wall Street instruments, and sat on top of a financial pyramid.  Let the Republicans have that one - up by the bootstraps, individualism, their brand of multiculturalism.  For her, the black thang was her ticket to the White House. 

Of course she couldn't go black preacher.  Not only wouldn't she know how, given her father and all, but it would be unseemly.  It would be enough to talk about the ghetto, to show sympathy and empathy from afar.  Far be it from her to actually visit the inner city.  Those ghetto mamas would see through her in a minute.  

'You ain't no black woman, honey', one woman yelled at her when she was asked by President Biden to do a walking around tour of Anacostia, Washington, DC's deep inner city. 'Get yo' ass up outta here'.

So on the campaign trail she referred to inclusivity and reminded voters that she was a prime example.  Of what, many asked? She was at best a hodge-podge, a half-black woman whose black side had a lot of white in it, and a half Asian woman, that side being pure Aryan-origin, descended from Mohenjo-Daro.  

But she hammered on about diversity, 'Take me, for example', and then she went on to confabulate and invent, giving the impression that her father was a doobie smoking Rasta man with dreads; but the public wasn't having any of it, so she turned down the volume and upped the stage lights on her female side, 

'I am a proud woman', she said, leaving off the black part.  Give it a rest, her inner circle advised her.  There are more women out there than black people, they said; so at every opportunity she talked of the historic opportunity that awaited America. A woman at the helm of the ship of state.  Imagine! So she channeled Hillary Clinton, but mindful of Hillary's overconfidence and assurance that the historical woman thing would be enough, Kamala sweetened the pot with her more practical credentials.

She had been a virtual pit bull as a prosecutor in California, a take-no-prisoners Hecuba who was relentlessly brutal in the courtroom and who showed the same badgering pursuit in her cross-examination of Brett Kavanagh as a Supreme Court nominee.  Let them see that side of me, she thought, and they will be afraid.  Very afraid, but on second thought the image of a castrating vixen was not what she wanted to sell.  Better stay on the compassionate, generous, concerned path. 

 

It worked. She was President of the United States. 'A sucker is born every minute, you can fool everyone all the time, a fool is easily parted from his money, etc. etc.', caviled the losers, nonplussed that so many Americans fell for this cackling, empty-headed clown; but there she was installed in the Oval Office, surrounded by her cabal of insiders. 

To everyone's surprise there were almost no black faces on her staff or in the Cabinet.  Those few that were there could have passed for white, or close to it, some coffee-mahogany toned upper class blends. 'I am a President for all the people', she said in her Inaugural Address and time and again as she vetted high-level appointments; 'and I am definitely not black', this last bit said to herself in the newly refinished, very feminine boudoir of the Presidential bedroom. 

Although she never admitted it until just now, she had always wanted to be white - really white, not milky black, not Caucasoid Asian white, not mongrel white, but white, pure white.  Being President meant that fungibility was now an option.  A little skin tone lightener here and there, fewer and fewer references to Dr. King, cucumber sandwiches and tea with the DAR ladies from Potomac, and the transformation would be complete. 

 

Mind you, she kept her progressive commitment and backed any and all initiatives to take from the rich and give to the poor black folk in the ghetto; she just didn't need to be black to do it.  Keep them at arms length she believed was good for the country. No favoritism, faux democracy, and this whole pinnacle thing - because of the high spiritual nature of the tribal African and his environmental sensitivity, the black man should be given his proper place atop the pinnacle of human society - had to go.  She ruled over a majority white country and so be it, all proportionality considered. 

No matter how many racial adjustments of America's demography, it would always be a white country - Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, and Washington were white; England was white, the intellectuals of the Enlightenment and Reformation were white, the pioneers were white, and every successive generation regardless of race bought into, embraced, incorporated the white values of previous generations.  Being the President for all the people mean exactly this - ethos.  

Now, President Harris, no intellectual, did not come to this conclusion through any critical historical analysis or philosophical consideration.  It was simply a good, easy justification for her lifelong desire to shed this faux blackness and ridiculous racial-ethnic charade and become a real American, a white American. 

This was definitely what the progressive Left was expecting, but then history has always shown that the office makes the man, not the other way 'round.  Being President of the United States gave her license - permission to be herself, her own person, and goddamn it, she was going to enjoy being the new me. 

The Prickly Irrelevance Of An Academic - How Lester Fine Parsed Himself Into Obscurity

Lester Fine sat atop the university's new Department Of Cross-Cultural Literariness, dean of a long-awaited locus of neo-deconstructionism, a new and exciting way of parsing literature and giving it meaning in a challenging world of diversity.  His dissertation had been this: 'Criticizing Criticism - A Textual Analysis Of Literary Exegesis'.  

Lester had been educated in the New Criticism. 'Read the text, and all will become apparent' - but fed up with the facile, metaphor-ridden imagery of the discipline, turned to Deconstruction where he found an immediate home.  There the emphasis was also on text but Derrida and Lacan insisted there was no point in fooling around with metaphor, simile and poetic license. Any meaning - if one could ever say legitimately that there ever was any anywhere - could only be perceived through the lens of historicism.  

 

There was no mystery or genius in Shakespeare, no room for Bardolotry or bowing and scraping at the altar at the Globe.  It was all a matter of race, gender, ethnicity and the historical imperatives of the time.  Queen Elizabeth and King James were what mattered, not some unique inspiration of a random individual.

As an Assistant Professor Lester was a whiz at adapting French Deconstructionists to the American genre of literary criticism.  He never backed off from their core principals, but felt he could - should - add something of the American idiom, and so was born the idea of The Criticism of Criticism, a novel approach to literature which would take Deconstructionism to its roots.  It was one thing to analyze texts from a perspective of exogenous influences; another thing altogether to deconstruct criticism itself.  

 

Harold Bloom had been one of the New Criticism's darlings and his textual analysis was virtuosity itself.  Parsing Blake's Tyger over three classes, adding Biblical, mythological, and literary references and blending them together in a marvelously complex but compelling whole, he was at the very top of his game. 

A PhD student wrote a dissertation on Bloom's approach to literature, but in so doing began to dismantle the very pillars of the New Criticism and open the way to Deconstruction. 'Parsing Synergy: The Faultline Of Positive Negativity' took Bloom to task for slavish idolatry.  Shelley, Blake, Wordsworth, and Coleridge per se weren't worth a spit in the wind, and Bloom's faux intellectualism was the last straw.  On the basis of that doctoral work, the student was accepted at Duke and went on to a not insignificant career. 

 

Lester, although impressed with the student's scholarship, thought he didn't go far enough.  'Criticism of Criticism' meant taking the critic to task, not for his unearthing of poetic meaning (of which there was none) but his facile use of critical tools applying them in a carousel of sound and light but without rigor.

By the time Lester had completed his submission to the Harvard University Press, the had added layer upon layer of critical exegesis, displaying his own virtuosity in displaying the existential meaning of critical literary analysis, the seminal meaning of tools and implements. 

The Harvard Press turned him down.  In their reply they dismissed his theory as hogwash, an intellectual Ponzi scheme, a lot of promise but no beef, a pseudo-intellectual shell game.  They wrote:

Dear Dr. Fine, We are in receipt of your book (title here) and were a bit confused about your thesis, your academic intent, and your critical purpose.  What indeed was your chapter 'Co-significant Unpacking - the Sorcery of Meaning' all about in the first place?  Your failure to offer even a scintilla of opportunity for the serious academic who, by the way is fed up and finished with the faux, pseudo literary criticism of the past, its arcane, self-important nonsense and gobbledygook gibberish of the old chestnuts of Deconstructionism, alone disqualifies your book from consideration. 

Get with the program, Doctor, get out of the weeds.  What on earth is The Criticism of Criticism anyway? A self-referential portrait of a tangled intellectualism.....

The author of this intemperate screed was reprimanded by Harvard which, however, took no exception to its content, only its form and diction.  Please apologize to the good doctor for your intemperance, they said. 

Despite this cruel rebuff, the Department of Cross-Cultural Literariness continued on for some time, but because of the obscurantism of the place, the narrow definition of being, and especially the talk-to-each other Ponzi scheme fol-de-rol that was called academic literary criticism but was nothing but procedural nonsense, the Department collapsed on itself and disappeared. 

What happened? said Professor Fine who never knew what hit him.  He had done everything right. He had dotted all the I's and crossed all the T's of university academic protocol.  He was an academic's academic, deep into the arcane apocrypha of literary criticism and academic critical analysis.  He had given obeisance, sought counsel, tipped his hat and been the revolutionary the university had always sought, and yet here he was, cashiered, left on the curb, dangling from the loose cord of tenure where he was left to dangle until he dropped. 

He watched from the sidelines as his department was dismantled and replaced, God forbid!, but something which resembled New Criticism, a throwback to the discredited notions of 'inspiration, personality, and creativity.  How could they?  Once again Jesus would feature and so would Nature, and so would poetic ingenuity and spirituality.  

It amounted to a de-intellectualization of the discipline,  The beauty of critical complexity, synergistic linguistics, was being rejected by reactionary simpletons who thought that Mt. Blanc was beautiful!! That Shakespeare's villains were one-off Nietzschean heroes, not the historical postulates that any fool could see them to be.   

 

Gripe, cavil, and harp though he might, his time had come and gone.  What next, a colleague asked, but Lester, shocked and befuddled, the cradle of academia no longer rocking, no blankie to sleep with, said he didn't know.  

Kamala Harris And The Parody Of Race, Gender, And Ethnicity - The Misshapen Absurdity Of Identity

Everybody knew it from the beginning - Kamala Harris would bide her time until it was the right moment to throw her boss under the bus.   She knew that time was now.  In public solidly behind her man, Joe's the one for the future, he's the one to unite the country, blah, blah, but in private she was ready either to keep him in office until he did not know on which side his toast was buttered or be sure that she was the Democratic Presidential candidate in November.  It was a win-win situation and if she played her cards right come January 2025 she would be sitting right where that old man was sitting now. 

 

The problem was that his parody of a politician made no more sense that the President; and she simply could not keep her big mouth shut, weaving the most impossibly fantastical messes, and unable to stop the randomly associated, meaningless phrases from continuing, 

They taught us that we could do anything and should never be burdened by the limitations of other people to be able or not be able to see what can be. And this is that community who understands and can see what is possible unburdened by what has been.

 

Accompanied by cackling, lunatic laughter, Harris created in herself a parody of a leader.  Somehow imagining herself eloquent, a Winston Churchill, a John F Kennedy - a poet stateswoman, a clear, incisive thinker with philosophical overtones - she turned into a weird marionette whose strings got crossed and whose wooden mouth kept yapping away, the puppeteer tangled and lost, yanking and pulling until Pinocchio stopped itself. 

She somehow managed to get her thoughts together once when she savaged Brett Kavanagh, nominee for the Supreme Court.  Those hysterical moments of high soap opera was especially noted, given the longwinded, self-serving, boisterous questioning of the Judiciary Committee. It was de rigeur, par for the course to badger, interrupt, hector, and humiliate the nominee; but Kamala Harris outdid herself and her colleagues when she lit into Kavanagh.  Her invective was vile and her approach hostile.  She was a demon, a succubus, a shrewish, clawing thing. 

 

Now, however, told by her handlers to shut up and talk about abortion rights and the path to a better future, she must reign in her dripping ambition and make nice.  Actually all it takes is for her to remind voters that she is how God intended us to be - a perfect trifecta of race, gender, and ethnicity all rolled up into one  Not only do you get a woman, she told an adoring crowd - a proud, independent, fiercely determined feminist - but a black woman of a race that is destined to regain its place atop the human pyramid, borne of tribal wisdom and environmental harmony, enslaved and dismissed, but which is now ascendant, etc. etc.; and a woman of proud ethnicity 

On this last gate of the trifecta, ethnicity, she had to watch her step because rarely if ever did she pull out her Indian heritage.  The political meme these days was black this, black that, and better to ride that horse to the white house than bring up Indians, usually at the very top of the ethnic ladder, hi-tech geek millionaires running Silicon Valley, elite capitalists.  Better keep the references chapattis, dhal, and curry.  Besides, the Vice Presidential candidate on the other side was a bona fide Indian, a beautiful one at that plus a Yale graduate with an impressive resume, so keep the Indian thing under wraps. 

All she has to do is just hammer away at her triple identity and go on about 'It's about time', in the shoes of Obama, the pants suits of Hillary, and the overalls of Jose the painter rather than go into detail about anything.  

Which is why Trump and Vance will out this parody, this manufactured faux icon of diversity as the bullying thug that she is. Biden may not have had a thought in his head, but Harris' is a tangle of nonsense. Once Trump has at this imposter, the end will come soon. 

Most politicians in this woke age might stay away from any suggestions of affirmative action - Harris' rise thanks only to the trifecta of race, gender, and ethnicity - or lighten up on criticism for fear of being called misogynist, or avoid Indian head-wagging stereotypes, but not Donald Trump.  Harris is fair game just like Pocahontas Warren or Hillary Clinton, and no kid gloves will be used in the campaign.  Every one of Harris' appeals to her diverse heritage will be met with the same parody she made for herself.  

 

The progressive Left who will vote for a black, a gay, a transgender, an ethnic minority no matter what, is not the problem.  Trump has pissed them off for years. His appeal will be to his supporters and those in the middle who have had enough cant about diversity, who want finally to see through the sham of sex, color, and birth and get down to the business of the country. 

Harris' advisors are encouraging her to go after the Trump ticket on abortion.  They she has already said, are retrograde misogynists who want to once again confine women to the kitchen, to the nursery, and to the bedroom.  Of course none of this is true.  Not only has Trump never suggested a nationwide ban on abortion, choosing to follow the free market decision of the Supreme Court; but he has taken the moral high ground.  

Expediency, he has said, echoing Catholic Popes since John Paul II is the sin behind the sin.  Abortion has become a convenience when it is existential.  This message resonates at least as much with his supporters as the abortion at will, scraping a bit of phlegm from where it doesn't belong policies of the Harris people. 

It will not be enough for Harris to rely on identity politics, the woke agenda of race, gender, and ethnicity to win the election.  The American electorate, save for those clustered on the coasts for whom diversity is the Holy Grail, is tired of diversity, inclusivity, and the constant, tiresome badgering about the plight of black people, gender fluidity, and ethnic pride. 

 

If she is to win she must focus on more substantial issues; but because of the Democratic party's persistence of focus on the woke agenda, there are few to mention.  The more obvious traditional concerns - immigration, energy, foreign affairs, the economy - are in enough of a mess thanks to Biden that Harris would be wise to stay away from them; but without identity and political substance, she is what everyone expected in the first place - an ambitious, self-promoting, cipher. 

Master And Slave - The Plantation Mentality Of The American Left

'I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth...' goes the Confiteor, the seminal prayer of Catholics. More than a simple expression of belief it is a statement of solidarity, belonging, and obedience.  The Church has always taken no prisoners and has been as aggressive and unrelenting in its exercise of domination as Islam ever was.  

 

Of course in recent years it has fumbled, hoping to win over converts not conquer them, and to keep membership strong without the threat of excommunication.  The Church is no longer the august institution that it once was, crusader, executioner, a virtual Mongolian army, its Pope a Genghis Khan marauding east to west to conquer, subdue, and rule the greatest empire the world has ever seen; but the inspiration is still there.  

Russia, China, Turkey, and Iran have the same imperial goals, the same desire for hegemony.  Whether nationalism, fundamentalism, or a return to the glories of the past, the impulse is the same. 

This imperialism, this hegemonic desire, this territorial and cultural aggression is not borne out of thin air, bestowed on autocrats and neo-imperialists.  It is derived from a popular zeitgeist - the people's ambition is the source of political ambition, bottom up.  Rulers cannot rule autonomously.  They must embody a national sentiment and then transform it into an emblematic rule. 

Whether Roman bread and circus, the pageantry of high mass, the Haj, or marching for an Islamic caliphate, rulers have always taken popular sentiment then embodied, embellished, transformed, and created it into their own version of imperialism. 

 

The true believer - the leader of this popular sentiment - is at the vanguard of the cotton-pickers, the slaves of the imperial plantation, the 'Yes, Massa', shuckin' and jivin' dupes of the overlords.  They, those that willingly, naively, and whole-heartedly accept what it given them, are the enablers of authoritarian rule, tolerant of its abuses. 

True believers form cadres and militias to enforce plantation rule.  The elite only has to fan the flames, throw a few logs on the fire, and watch the frenzy from their pasha's palace. Without zealots, there would be no sultans, kings, or shahs. 

Amy Liggett, was one such true believer, a principal in the Progressive Alliance, an umbrella group comprised of all major organizations subscribing to the ethos of inclusivity, diversity, environmental sanity, and economic equity.  In other words an organization which brought together all likeminded advocates for social justice, civil reform, political action, and economic change.  

It was the spearhead of the One Wall Street anti-capitalist movement which underlay all progressive causes.  It was capitalism, the organization’s leaders wrote, and Amy eloquently articulated the idea that it was the base evil of the American system, the end all of social justice, the destroyer of the aspiring, the predator of the people’s wealth, and the home for the renegades of the right.

The Progressive Alliance was a big tent, a revivalist community of the likeminded, the committed, and the willing.  Within it sectoral issues were set aside in a chorus of unity.  Environmentalists sat with gay activists who raised their voices in unison with feminists.  The hymns were anthems of allegiance to one another and to the cause of social revolution.  There were no discordant choristers, none who sang out of tune or rhythm.  It was a congregation of true believers who signed contracts in blood for the elimination of the greedy, oppressive, racist American system.

From the podium, on podcasts, and in print Amy Liggett spewed bilious hatred for Donald Trump and the radical, subversive movement he headed.  Her speeches were electric.  The big tent roared with approval and hurrahs of support.  She talked of solidarity, spirit, and passion and spoke of the movement as holy, anointed, and meant to be.  She contrasted it with the evil of MAGA, the new silver shirts, the deep, malignant state of political renegades and anarchists led by Donald Trump.  

As her speeches roused more and more applause and universal cries of approval, she expanded her vision of Donald Trump’s America.  He is no different from Hitler, she said, recalling images of brown shirts, the Gestapo, and the camps.  “It is no different in America today”, she shouted to thousands gathered in a packed arena.  “Fascists, Nazis, storm troopers, and murder….and we are here to stop them”.  The thousands in the audience roared their approval, raising their fists in anger and solidarity.

If true believers talk only to themselves, then the idea of man-induced climate change becomes settled science, and every serious weather event can be linked to it.  No tornado, warm spell, flood, or earthquake can ever be an individual event.  The LGBTQ+ movement which started out to be a lesson in tolerance and inclusiveness, has now – thanks to an insular, closed environment – become a baroque championship of strange sexual alternatives.  

When individuals join groups of likeminded conspiracy theorists, they are free to invent, fantasize, and create new, impossible realities with impunity.  Their claims will simply be taken up by their fellow conspiracy theorists and will make the rounds, increasing in intensity and transforming from one person to the next until the claims become unworldly.

The leaders of the Left have an easy job.  The 'people' - the same people that Alexander Hamilton distrusted and whose ignorant mob mentality he believed would distort and deform the principles so carefully enunciated by him, Jefferson, and the other Founders of the Republic - need only a few inspirational words from demagogues to get them rolling, and before long the entire progressive movement is one of impossible comic book fantasy, a world more fantastical and farfetched than the weirdest science fiction. 

 

Progressives in Washington watch with pleasure as their minions, armed with nothing more than Dune and Martian Chronicles carry out their agenda with ever increasing hysteria. Men masquerading as women, black ghetto pimps on the dais, a fiery climate Armageddon on the horizon, the end of democracy at the hands of the devil's spawn, the consummate greed of capitalist money grubbing financial elitists.  

These true believers have, like the obedient Yes, Massa slave, bowed and scraped to their overlords, their masters, their Simon Legrees, have lost all integrity, given up any hope of serious thought, have perpetuated myth after myth, tall tale after tall tale, and kept their massas in power long after they should have been cashiered and left on the curb. 

 

The Epiphany Of A Pro-Choice Feminist - It's Not Just A Clot Of Phlegm After All

Letty Marple was having a great time in this new, liberated, feminist world that her mother had fought so long and so hard for.  Women would never again be men's chattels nor tied to a reproductive destiny.  Thanks to them, the Pill, and a new self-awareness, she would never again have to worry about pregnancy, childbearing, childrearing, or any other noxious notions of old womanhood. 

So she enjoyed her liberty, her sexual freedom, and her exciting independence. Now that the threat of AIDS had passed and oral contraceptives had long since proved their efficacy and worth, she could enjoy as many man as she wanted when she wanted.   The whole algorithm had changed since women's liberation.  A series of sexual partners was no longer promiscuity or sluttishness but a woman's right to choose - a sexual abandon never before thought possible. 

And if in the unlikely chance that pregnancy were to happen, abortions in New York and California were free and on demand.  The states had taken care of women like her even if the Supreme Court had not. 

And so there was Ganesh, a tech engineer from Palo Alto who was still getting over his family's Gujarati brahmin restrictions, was tentative at first but a Khajuraho prince at the end; and Lance, the racecar driver whose reckless abandon led to crashes at Lime Rock and Daytona but made him a choice, delightful lover; and Pierce, the best of them all, an Anglo-Saxon descendant of Northbridge and the Duke of Northumberland, heir to a family fortune and thousands of acres of rich land on the Northern Neck who could make love for hours in some historic tribute to the generations of Cabots who had preceded him. 

There were quickies and cinq-a-sept liaisons in between, inconsequential minor affairs that did indeed seem like a tart's afternoon work but were part of this unrestrained sexual bacchanal that feminism had unleashed. 

Somehow, somewhere she got pregnant - a missed pill, some glitch in the pharma assembly line, a pull-by date overlooked - but was unconcerned.  A quick trip to New York, a show, and back to the Main Line unencumbered, and free and easy once again. 

This first time she thought nothing of getting rid of 'it', this clot of phlegm in her uterus that somehow found its way there without her consent, this foreign thing which had attached itself to her like some leech. She made an appointment, cancelled a lunch, and took the morning train to Penn Station. 

The procedure as advertised was quick and easy, a D&C, dilation and curettage, a simple spreading and scraping and the thing was gone.  She felt nothing before, during, or after. 

When it happened a second time the 'thing', the clot of phlegm, had taken form - an embryo in a disgusting watery broth, a floating remora, an alien foreign blot. 'Get rid of it', she said to the doctor as he was prepping her.  'That's what we're here for', he said. 

The third time her fantasies were completely out of control, ghoulish and inhuman.  She had waited far too long and the end of her trimester was a few days away, so the dilation and curettage would not simply scrape a few cells from her body, nor conveniently get rid of a nasty bit of unwanted matter, but take care of A Big Thing, a real thing. 

She arrived early at the Planned Parenthood clinic on Seventh Avenue, started to open the door, halted, and turned away.  A moment of clarity, a minute of reflection, a flash of the nuns of St. Maurice, dried up, shriveled up old things preaching abstinence and duty who had never known a man or a thing in the uterus but who had had a point - don't get caught between God and Mannon more often than necessary, especially on such an existential issue.  

 

At the time and through her adolescent years Letty dismissed the nuns as irrelevant throwbacks to the Early Church, insignificant, out of touch moral remainders; but the older she got and the more sexual encounters and unwanted pregnancies she had, the more she reverted to her First Communion, Sister Mary Joseph, and the Stations of the Cross. 

'Goddamn it!!' she yelled to no one in particular on 42nd Street as she headed for her train home.  'Goddamn it to hell'.  Caught between a rock and a hard place, Sisyphus' rock and the hard place of irrevocable, petty, unavoidable secular demands. On the train she kept feeling her stomach. 'Was he moving?'; but then disgusted with herself and the pitiful bourgeois sentiments she was feeling, went to the bar car and downed a double of Jack Black. 

When she arrived at Ardmore, she crossed under the tracks to the down platform to New York, looked for the 2:44, hesitated, and headed for the exit.  She stopped at the Blarney Stone on Evans Avenue, a good Irish pub there to take the sting out of the daily commute, downed two doubles of Wild Turkey and took the N4 up Rutherford Street and home. 

 

The next morning first thing she felt her stomach, worried that she had hurt the baby with all her drinking.  She got up, flushed her system, ate a good breakfast, and went back to bed - she and her baby as she remembered it, the dyad the way it was supposed to be, no matter who the husband who now that she had decided to stay pregnant mattered.  Was it Carlo? Ivan? Novak? Peter? Not that it mattered for she had no intention of tracking the father down, and more importantly each of these lovers was worth every bit of their DNA - handsome, successful, talented, intelligent men all - and any of their fatherhood would be a good match. 

So she brought the baby to term, moved out of her studio apartment to a rental farther up the Main Line.  Before too much time passed she negotiated a new position at a higher salary, arranged for daycare, and adjusted to her new life as a single mom. 

The transition was nowhere as traumatic as she had envisaged a few years ago - the dreaded suburbs, unremitting mommyhood, soccer, swimming, and carpooling.  Diversity - that cherished meme of the well-educated urbanite - vanished into thin air, along with the Salvadoran house painters, Ethiopian parking lot attendants and Korean drycleaners.  Now, it was time to get a husband, all the more difficult because she had a toddler in tow, but not impossible given the rate of divorce and pool of available men. 

That too did not take long, canny prospector that she was, and she moved yet again to an even higher spot on the Mainline, kept her highly-paid executive job, had another child, this time desired and fawned over, and lived happily ever after, 

'Not a clot of phlegm after all', she said looking at her two blonde, blue-eyed children,  'Not at all, not whatsoever'. 

Abortion, Surrogacy, Designer Babies - The New Free Market Of Reproductive Choices

The American Supreme Court recently overturned Roe v Wade, the nation's abortion ruling decided over fifty years ago, returning abortion policy back to the states.  A conservative state like Texas or Oklahoma might choose to restrict or outlaw abortion, while others like California and New York might loosen any and all restrictions 

Many have long argued that Roe v Wade was wrongly decided, and that the liberal Warren court of the times was persuaded by the social movements of the times that there was a Constitutional justification for guaranteeing a woman's right to an abortion under any and all conditions.  The current Roberts court disagreed, could find no such right, and ruled accordingly. 

Now, the free market will be the adjudicator.  States like California and New York, taking quick advantage of the judicial windfall, have attracted women from all over the country for a quick, private, secure, and safe abortion. Having turned over marketing and communication to private advertising agencies, these states have mounted persuasive campaigns no different than those for the promotion of consumer products.  Images of New York City, the Bay Bridge, and Hollywood were the backdrop for the promotion of 'abortion packages', including free room stay, food, and tickets to shows and musical events. 

 

If women are coming to New York for an abortion, they might as well be treated as welcome tourists and encouraged to spend their money. While there was some grumbling - the Catholic Church roundly condemned the commercialization of murder - most conservative media were quiet.  The Court decided in their favor, respecting states rights, dismissing disingenuous claims to 'universal' rights, and opening the doors to a thriving private market, 

'What about the poor?' shouted liberals, recalling back alley and coat hanger abortions, and promoting their own crafted images of a poor black women bleeding to death behind a dumpster.  Yet the liberal voluntary agencies were also quick to cash in thanks to the open market.  Thousands of dollars poured in to enable them to pay for trips from Mississippi to New York.  'No Woman Left Behind', was their calling card, and a new Underground Railroad sprang up shuttling black women to and from the coasts. 

It was a Supreme Court decision long overdue, and everyone benefitted - voters in conservative states who abhorred the idea of infanticide; the abortion clinics of liberal states and the municipalities which benefitted from abortion tourism; and the private, voluntary agencies which saw an infusion of cash donations unlike any in the past.  

The private market has worked quite well regarding surrogacy.  Although there have never been any laws preventing a third party from carrying the fetus of two people unrelated to her, many conservative groups have voiced their opposition.  Reproductive surrogacy tantamount to a perversion of God's Creation, his divine plan, and the sanctity of natural fertility and must be outlawed. 

Of course the private market reacted differently, and as demographics changed. Women who delayed childbearing and for whom conception, pregnancy, and birth were risky affairs turned to technology and surrogacy for solutions.  Their babies were 'conceived' in a laboratory and the embryo planted in a surrogate mother.  A win-win solution all around.  

Women could have the babies they wanted and not have to be inconvenienced for nine months.  Laboratories geared up for the demographic shift charged well for their reproductive services, went public, and became wildly successful; and poor women for whom pregnancy was nothing compared to the miseries of life in the ghetto, were paid thousands, a cut of which of course went to sponsoring agencies. 

 

The market for designer babies has been active for some time as couples have purchased eggs of desirable women for use in their reproduction. The market for Harvard eggs is booming, and girls have lined up to provide this resource.  Not on a first come, first served basis, however; since prospective parents want brains and beauty, only the eggs of attractive, smart girls are in demand.  Marketers have tried the reverse - going to southern universities where the proportion of beautiful girls is high but IQs are low - but have been unsuccessful.  The chances of an attractive Harvard girl from an unattractive lot are still higher than the other way around. 

Another market, however, will soon overwhelm the eggs-for-sale one - recombinant DNA, gene-splicing, and genetic engineering.  Sooner rather than later, couples will be able to purchase the DNA of beautiful men and women, athletes, and geniuses dead or alive and use it, combined with their own, to create the baby of their choice and their dreams. 

A couple will be able to choose from an online catalogue and mix and match Taylor Swift with Michael Jordan and Robert Oppenheimer.  The estates of those deceased will be parsed in ways to enable non-invasive disinterment for gene harvesting and the living stand to make millions. Prices will vary.

The futures market is already active, and those attractive personalities who are still alive have already sold rights to their DNA; and the estates of those who have died have cleared legal hurdles for the rights to disinterment and gene harvesting. 

 

Who would turn down a designer baby?  A baby natural enough because it would come from a woman's own womb and would contain at least some if not most of her and her husband's genetic traces, but a more ideal, perfect one.

There has been surprising little outcry from the religious community about all this.  Their focus has been entirely on abortion and the removal of an unborn human life is murder; but the transformation of a natural, normal heterosexual reproduction into a test-tube, laboratory-based, surrogate, genetic cataloging affair should be even more concerning.  The whole Biblical applecart is being upset.  The very essence of the most intimate of human activities - reproduction - is being neutered and claimed by secular forces.

This brave, new world is not close enough yet for protest.  Once it becomes more common and more approaching the norm, the outcry from the pulpit will be loud, angry, and clear.

The genie is out of the bottle.  Just as AI is transforming human exchange, the nature of knowledge and information; and just as virtual reality is replacing 'the real thing' as the first choice of existence, artificially engineered human beings will replace random offspring. The future is here.