[Expletive Inserted]

Monday, May 4, 2020

Unlike my private life, this literary exercise has remained essentially free of profanity.  I've lived through a period when euphemism and coyness in media finally succumbed to the bolder nouns and verbs in our vocabulary.  Basic human functions in the bathroom and the bedroom are now often called by their (im)proper names in print and on big and small screens.

Of course, time, place and manner still influence the appearance of "dirty words" in public channels.  What's fit for the New York Review of Books may not fit to be printed in the New York Times.  But, even the Times has relaxed its approach to profanity, slang and vulgarity, although almost always when quoting a politician or a popular entertainer.  It is less common today to see [expletive deleted] than in the days of Richard Nixon.  For instance, when Trump spoke of his acquittal by the U.S. Senate, the Times quoted him saying “It was all bullshit,” commenting, however, that it was "the first time he or any president has been known to use that profanity in a formal event on camera in the East Room."

However, when Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called his boss "a [gerund] moron," the newspaper of record wrote, "Mr. Tillerson was reported to have called his boss 'a moron.'"  Still, I must admit surprise when an article this weekend about cows said that "a Swiss company called Mootral, is studying whether an altered diet can make cattle burp and fart less methane."    https://nyti.ms/2WfqMHJ 

 . . .

One does not have to live in or near a barn to be concerned about passing gas.  Even when access to the outdoors is again unfettered, much of the day will be spent indoors at home.  It may be helpful then to have a list of the amount of personal space provided to renters in larger buildings (50+ units) in the 100 biggest U.S. cities.

https://www.rentcafe.com/blog/rental-market/market-snapshots/apartment-space/

Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan were among the tightest fits, while Louisville, Kentucky, Winston-Salem, North Carolina and Omaha, Nebraska gave you the most room to swing a cat or whatever one does in those places.

. . .

Today is the 50th anniversary of Kent State.  Whether this sends chills up your spine or not, I recommend that you read Jill Lepore’s essay about it.    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/04/kent-state-and-the-war-that-never-ended

She places the event in historic context.  While 4 white students were shot to death at Kent State on May 4, 1970 by National Guardsmen, 2 black students were shot to death by police officers at Jackson State College (Mississippi) on May 15, 1970.  One day earlier, 6 unarmed black men were shot to death by police officers in an African-American neighborhood in Augusta, Georgia.  

Campuses and neighborhoods throughout the country were in turmoil, some responding to the Vietnam War and the newly-launched invasion of Cambodia, others to the ever-present burden of racism.  This activism was not widely appreciated, however.  Long-haired youth, matriculated or not, were frequently set upon by construction workers in New York City and other places.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Hat_Riot   

A delegation of 22 union leaders was quickly invited to the White House in appreciation after a huge rally supporting Nixon’s Vietnam policy was held in lower Manhattan on May 20, 1970.  

Almost 10,000 American soldiers died in Vietnam from 1970 to the end of the conflict and, even in the absence of precise data, no one doubts that working class kids predominantly filled the body bags, losing the fight in the jungles of Vietnam that they might have won on big city streets.

Tuesday, May 5, 2020

When I consider the agitation surrounding the shelter in place and social distancing guidelines we have been living with, Jack Benny comes to mind.  https://youtu.be/yYtfejT4QgM

These days, however, I hear politicians and others saying "My money or your life?"

. . .

Today's most unnecessary headline:

"Carnival Plans to Sail Again in August, Maybe"

Wednesday, May 6, 2020

Today's most satisfying sub-headline: "Big private equity firms have had scant success lobbying for virus relief"

. . .

Deferring to the need to practice social distancing, a small group of us has been Zooming in on each other to disagree remotely rather than in person, as we have been previously accustomed.  Yesterday, the subject was the origin(s) of the Holocaust, prompted by a review of the book Europe Against the Jews 1880-1945 by Gotz Aly, a German historian.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/07/books/review/europe-against-the-jews-gotz-aly.html 

Inevitably, our opinionated crew found fault with the book and the book review, as we would have with someone who claimed that the sun rose in the East.  I responded to the range of theories offered on the origin(s) of the Holocaust by essentially agreeing with all, based on my view of anti-Semitism.  It may not approach Heinz's 57 varieties, but I believe that anti-Semitism comes in several forms.  

Ethno-nationalistic AS: Jews are not our people

Christian AS: Jews reject Jesus and his path to salvation

Muslim AS: Jews = Israel 

Marxist geopolitical AS: Israel is an imperial power, Israel = Jews

Marxist economic AS: Jews are capitalists

Classic conservative AS version 1: Jews control the capitalist system

Classic conservative AS version 2: Jews are cosmopolitans, radicals, Communists destructive of the social order

Some of these are clearly at odds with each other, although they share one enemy.  It's nice to be needed.

Thursday, May 7, 2020

We are just six weeks into not playing the 2020 baseball season.  It's still early to predict the outcome; a lot of decisions remain to be made with the fate of teams and players in the balance.  However, even though every moment of a baseball game has its own drama, one beauty of the game is the long flow of history behind it.  

As we follow a team and cheer its accomplishments, we also remember the defeats, the insults, the embarrassments that we have endured.  While many wounds were strictly self-inflicted, there is often an external human embodiment of our misery, the guy you love to hate.  Here is a more or less contemporary list.

https://www.mlb.com/news/players-who-fans-love-to-hate

. . .

Jesus and the Jews is not a rock band working its way through the music venues of the Bible Belt.  Rather, it was the title of a lecture that I Zoomed into this evening, delivered by Amy-Jill Levine, Professor of New Testament Studies at Vanderbilt University Divinity School.  She's Jewish, which, at first, made me think of pastrami on white bread with mayonnaise. 

However, I allowed my closed mind on religious matters to open slightly to what she had to say and, boy, was I thrilled and delighted.  She offered a rich, detailed view of Jesus as a Jew, free of the embroidery of Christianity which succeeds him.  Indeed, one of her major works is The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus.  She’s worth our attention, whichever side of the aisle we come from, and definitely deserves to be upgraded to a pastrami/corned beef combo on a soft roll with mustard.  She may well rise to seeded rye bread upon further exposure.

Here's the page containing the link to her fascinating presentation.  https://www.emanuelnyc.org/streickercenter/virtual/#may-6