Monday, April 5, 2021
Give credit to Fox News for its dogged investigative reporting that produced this shocking news. The woman, possibly an illegal alien from Guatemala, who seduced a young, inexperienced Florida congressman, had attended a gender reveal party at the same apartment complex where a first cousin of Hunter Biden ("as close as brothers") lived. As Fox sees it, this raises serious questions about the current occupant of the White House.
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Last week's blog stirred up the seafaring folk, but also drew some valuable comments on balancing the translator with the author. One professional translator/interpreter wrote: "Of course, having a man translate a piece entitled 'What being a woman means to me,' is unlikely to be applauded. But just look at all the brilliant female characters created by male writers, in works such as those by Shakespeare, Flaubert, or Tolstoy! Or are writers/painters not supposed to depict people of other nationalities/races/religions?
Arthur Dobrin, novelist, poet, essayist, addressed another topic on last week's menu. "One way out of the endless drive to find an unblemished person is to forgo naming buildings after people altogether. Let the accomplishments of the dead speak for themselves, in all their complexity."
https://www.psychologytoday.
On the other hand, doesn't a society need its heroes, real or imagined? Ultimately, some myth binds a group together and elevating someone as its representative aids cohesion.
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My family, as so many others, began its American life in Manhattan, in the cramped quarters of the lower East Side, migrating to the wide open spaces of Brooklyn when the opportunity arose. In 1950, 8 of the 9 Gotthelf/Goldenberg households, containing all of my closest relatives, were in Brooklyn, most within walking distance of each other. The one outlier was in the borough of Queens. By 1980, only one of a greater number of our households remained in Brooklyn, most outside the city limits.
My grandparents and many like them in the first half of the 20th century left Manhattan for Brooklyn when they could afford a little better housing, to improve their standard of living. Movement in the second half of the century from Manhattan was propelled by soaring housing costs, that is to preserve the standard of living. This accounts for my surprise in reading this article about the rent gap between Manhattan and Brooklyn, once cavernous, now closing fast. https://www.nytimes.
Another indicator of the on-going shift in respectability is the presence in Brooklyn of 9 of the 64 New York restaurants with a Michelin star, if you can still remember what going to a restaurant was like.
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Speaking of unspeakable wealth, did you know that "at least 55 of America's largest [companies] paid no taxes last year on billions of dollars in profits"? https://www.
Maybe you have the wrong accountant.
Tuesday, April 6, 2021
I think that baseball more than any other sport is played in the past as well as in the present. We compare players and teams to their own past performances and to the players and teams that went before them. And, looking back, the issue of race permeates the history of baseball, as it does so many corners of American life.
Henry Aaron's great accomplishment of breaking Babe Ruth's career home run record made him the target of ugly racism. "In 1974, Aaron set the Guiness World Record for most fan mail received in one year by a private citizen. That year, the U.S. Postal Department confirmed that Aaron received 900,000 letters, about a third of which 'were letters of hate engendered by his bettering of Babe Ruth's career record.'"
On his way to breaking the record, Aaron said: "If I was white, all America would be proud of me." Actually, that wasn't even true in 1961 when Roger Maris broke Ruth’s single-season home run record in competition with his teammate Mickey Mantle. "The 1961 season should have been a time for really enjoying the game, but it was far from that. While the M&M boys were trying to help their team win, Roger was getting hate mail, death threats, and even a phone call with a threat to kidnap his kids. He got taunted on the road and at home, and he got booed whether he hit a home run or struck out."
Sports Illustrated reported that "Maris ended up battling not only American League pitchers but also public opinion and, sadly, baseball itself." The New York Times later wrote, "How The Press Hounded Roger Maris."
I am not suggesting that Aaron had it no harder than Maris. Racist tropes often were grounded in actual violence, resonating over and above ordinary insults or threats. My only conclusion here is borrowed from an academic source, which itself sounds a bit naive: "Much of what is called public opinion is not really opinion. An opinion presupposes extensive and accurate knowledge on the question under consideration and a reasoned judgment or conclusion reached by deliberate thought. Many so-called opinions are rather prejudices or beliefs or hasty conclusions of traditional dogmas." https://www.
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An obituary for the playwright Arthur Kopit reminded me how time flies. It identified a play that he wrote in 1999, titled “Y2K”. "The title, a term used in countless news headlines, referred to the widespread fear that the beginning of the year 2000 would confuse computer calendars to the extent that planes would fall out of the sky." You know, kids, it was like when you had to go into a store to buy something.
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Happy to be fully vaccinated and having had time to rest after crossing the Sinai Desert, Stony Brook Steve and I headed to Flushing, Queens, the location of another large Chinatown. Steve trusted my choice of Asian Jewels Seafood Restaurant, 133-30 39th Avenue, for lunch, a very large establishment, with outdoor dining and its own parking lot according to my research.
Of course, once we got out there, we found that Asian Jewels's tent had blown down in a storm. And, the crowded sidewalks of Flushing's Chinatown did not provide much room for outdoor tables and chairs. While we are both 99 and 44/100% pure, we remain respectful of the CDC guidelines and seek to eat only outdoors. Since no alternatives appeared in view, Steve pointed to the several cops standing in front of the 109th police precinct as a source of information. I don't want to sound racist, but the three non-Asian, non-Jewish, white cops could not name a local Chinese restaurant in the middle of Chinatown. Pizza maybe?
Steve and I moved on and stepped into the first plywood structure we found, Chung Moo Korean Restaurant, 39-04 Union Street. The fried dumplings ($9 for 10 pieces) were very good and, having no ill will towards the Korean people generally, that's all I choose to say.
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For the many of you who share my interest in copyright law, here is a good overview of the current state of confusion. https://www.
Copyright, which generally prohibits unauthorized use of creative work, explicitly conflicts with the protection of speech and the press in the First Amendment of the Constitution. This is perfectly Kosher, however, because Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8 of the Constitution, written before any amendments were added, codified the protection of copyrights, a legal principle of British common law that long preceded the independence of the United States.
"Transformation" is the magic word that protects a work that resembles another from a claim of infringement. If the newer work is transformative, it is considered a "fair use" of the original. When Andy Warhol produced a multi-colored, silk screen version of someone else's black-and-white photograph, it was found to be transformative, a fair use, and then it wasn't. No wonder lawyers can make so much money.
Wednesday, April 7, 2021
I learned today that Less is More applied not only to the aesthetic realm, but to Verizon billing as well. Madam and I decided to cancel our landline, although we recognized that we would be cut off from all those intense young men with South Asian accents purporting to be calling from Amazon, Apple, Social Security or Microsoft. In exchange, we agreed to resume our patronage of Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi restaurants and even increase it once things return to near normal.
Through the marvels of modern telecommunications, it only took one hour on the telephone to learn that cancelling our Verizon landline would increase our monthly bill. I suggested to the Customer Disservice Representative that this was akin to sending Little Johnny to the store to buy milk and cheese where it costs more than if he bought milk and cheese and butter. My logic went nowhere; maybe the person on the other end was lactose intolerant.
Enjoying your columns. The note about moving from Manhattan when you are more affluent also applies to the Bronx, where I grew up. A bit of irony: when you were poor in Manhattan, you lived above your store. When you could move to an apartment building, you were ascending into the middle class. Now, if you are young and well paid, you get a %3,500 a month apartment. And on the ground floor is a grocery, a gym, a dry cleaner. You are living above the store. You have indeed arrived.
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