Antonin Scalia (1936–2016)

A

ntonin Gregory Scalia (1936–2016) has slipped from the realm of life to take his proper place as an irrelevant historical footnote, a man whose blistering dissents will long be quoted as examples of the foolish and demented views held in bygone times. The living embodiment of the crazy old guy yelling at kids to get off his lawn—except that in Scalia’s case the kids were mostly imaginary as well—Scalia celebrated the oppression of minorities, the suppression of unpopular views, and the use of the machinery of government to enforce religious conformity. Finding himself living in a country he no longer recognized, dazed and bewildered by the current of popular opinion sweeping past him, he hissed and struck like a serpent caught in a flash flood. He ranted of sodomy and of the courts usurping the lawmaking power and of how there was just once race in America—and he understood very well which race that was. No minority citizen had any rights that a heterosexual Christian was bound to respect. He and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi would have understood one another well, past their skin-deep theological differences.

So farewell, crazy old guy. Whether as fool or object lesson you will not be forgotten by posterity. You will receive the usual tributes of the position—your words will be cited to show what idiots we all were in these benighted times, and your thoughts will be intermingled with equally inane things you never said. Your face will be the malignant face of our age, and our cultural descendants will spit on it, and us along with it. It’s too bad—but then, we should have known better than to elevate a guy like you to a position of authority. We probably have it coming.

Incompetent Buffoon Bites the Dust

Having faded into irrelevance, locked in the dustbin of our memories, Osama Bin Laden today was executed by CIA operatives at a mansion near Islamabad, Pakistan, in which country he has been a welcome guest for some years. In real life a wealthy playboy heir to a construction fortune, Osama liked to dress-up as a super-heroic Qur’an scholar and defender of the faith with a secret identity that fooled no one. Puffed-up by his triumph in a walk-on rôle in the Soviet-Afghan war of the 1980s he returned to Saudi Arabia the towering hero of his fantasies, though unheard of outside of the tiny Arabian kingdom.

When Saddam Hussein sent troops to invade Kuwait, potentially threatening the kingdom, Osama made a comic-opera proposal to personally defend the borders with his troop of merry men who would fight the invaders with faith—and was stung when the king rejected him in favor of the most powerful military force in the world. What did the United States have that he and his little gang of misfits didn’t, he wondered. He made such a nuisance of himself that he was invited to leave the kingdom in no uncertain terms, and he stomped off in a huff to nurse his hurt feelings in Sudan, where, to add injury to insult, his family cut off his multi-million-dollar allowance.

Soon even the Sudanese grew tired of him, and he found it expedient to return to the scene of his fancied triumphs in Afghanistan. From there he helped finance a series of failed attempts to stir up trouble in Algeria, Egypt, and elsewhere. Still rankling over his rejection by the Arabian authorities, he blamed the United States for all his problems. Calling himself the World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders he announced his intention of killing Americans throughout the world. The 1998 attack on US embassies in Africa, however, resulted mainly in the deaths of Africans, and his inept plot to attack millennium celebrations in the United States was easily foiled.

Fortunately for him, however, this blundering boob met his match when George W. Bush entered the White House through an unlocked back door. Donning the mantle of the U. S. President, Bush declared Bin Laden and his friends to be no threat to the country, and called off the dogs. The result: nineteen conspirators, armed with box-cutters, hijacked four airliners and flew three of them into various buildings. (The fourth was easily taken down by the passengers, who unfortunately lost their lives in consequence.) The result was history, of a sort. Several thousand people died in the mayhem, but nothing of any military consequence was achieved, and this pipsqueak (and the world) now had an enraged idiot colossus on his hands.

Like a blind giant the United States started flailing about. An early blow took out one of Osama’s most hated opponents, Saddam Hussein, no doubt to his delight, but the destruction of his hosts in Afghanistan forced him to relocate abruptly. His network in ruins, he was reduced to crouching in the rubble of his dreams and issuing occasional rambling diatribes that the media dutifully carried, and operatives of the world’s intelligence services pored over for clues to his whereabouts. Fortunately friends in neighboring Pakistan took him in, and looked after him—until United States operatives under Bush’s successor, Barack Obama, stormed his hideout and executed him. It was an inglorious end to a futile and wasted life. Nobody is likely to miss him much—certainly not the Indonesians, Egyptians, Kenyans, and others whose family-members he had murdered to fuel his sadistic fantasies. The team that executed him dragged back his corpse as a ghastly souvenir. I suppose it will be returned to his family for burial or something equally civilized. Personally I hope they have his skull hollowed out for use as a visitor’s ashtray at the White House.

In the meantime, his spirit lingers on. News comes of an explosion in Afghanistan that killed four people, in addition to the human bomb. Somebody had strapped explosives to a twelve-year-old and sent him to his death. For politics.

Witness to History Gone

93-year-old Tsutomu Yamaguchi passed away last Monday at the age of 93. You’ve probably never heard of him. In all the world’s population there are very few people who have survived an atomic bomb attack; fewer yet survived two of them. Tsutomu Yamaguchi was one of them.

On 6 August 1945 he went on a business trip to Hiroshima. The timing was particularly unfortunate; that was the day the Enola Gay dropped the first of the two atomic bombs used against Japan in the closing days of World War II. Over one hundred thousand people lost their lives in that single blast; Tsutomu Yamaguchi was only two miles from the center, and yet survived, though badly burned. After spending a night in an air raid shelter, he went back home to his wife and infant son. They lived in Nagasaki.

Nagasaki may not be as famous as Hiroshima, but it was the site of the second atomic bomb drop, on 9 August 1945. Tsutomu Yamaguchi must have just been settling in when it happened. Seventy thousand people died, but his family was spared.

Apparently 165 people are known to have survived both blasts. It’s an odd distinction, both unlucky and lucky at the same time. Unlucky enough to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time twice over, and lucky enough to have survived the horrors. Twice over.

It is probably due to the existence of people like Tsutomu Yamaguchi—living witnesses to the catastrophe of an atomic bomb attack—that any of us are alive today. Fire-breathing patriots on both sides of the Iron Curtain were all too ready to drop the big one and see what happened during the Cold War; if there had been no witnesses to tell of the consequences, might they not have prevailed? Hiroshima and Nagasaki stood in the way; they were monuments to what the rest of the world could all too easily become. Those who had witnessed the—what? Tragedy? Horror? The words are too feeble. These are the kinds of reactions that belong inside stars, not on the surface of our green and fragile planet. These witnesses had seen what none of us should ever have to experience, and maybe from them we learned enough to hold off on the consequences of an unlimited nuclear war. When I was a child I never expected to see 2010; that the great atomic war never happened may well be due in part to those who kept the unthinkable memories alive.

A Sad and Wasted Life

Pioneering television con-man and itinerant faith-healer Oral Roberts died today, leaving the world worse off than when he came into it. With the advent of television opportunities to make a fast buck off the gullible abounded, and men like Oral Roberts were quick to take advantage of it.

His death came none too soon for his many victims. It is sad to have to say this about any person, but had his life been cut short say fifty years ago, the world could have been saved a great deal of pain and suffering, and at least one fake institute of higher learning would never have opened.

The great C. E. S. Wood once pictured the scene in heaven when Billy Sunday, the inventor of televangelism, entered. “I’ve been sending a stream of souls up here, like they was played out of a fire nozzle and at a discount, too,” he boasts.

“I never heard of you,” says God.

“Why, this place must be jammed with souls I sent here,” Billy protests.

“No, not one.”

“Where are they?”

“I don’t know. I never heard of you.”

“Are you sure that this is heaven, and you are God?”

“No," says God. “Not sure I am God—but this is heaven … and none of your souls are here.”

“They must be somewhere,” Billy protests.

“Not necessarily,” says God. “The cosmos is so very large, and fanatics are so infinitely small.”

It would take a writer like Wood to do justice to this theme, and I am not him. The colossal waste of a long and misspent life is too appalling to contemplate. The ruin Oral Roberts has spread to the lives he touched is even harder to look at. I won’t mourn the death of this sleazy trickster. There’s nothing left there to mourn; rather I regret that a unique individual who was given the chance to experience the universe and leave something of value behind him instead squandered it selfishly in such a shameful manner. Sad to say, he will not be missed.

Quotation of the Day

You wanna know why we should honor the memory of Edward Kennedy? It's not his many accomplishments, it has nothing to do with Chappaquiddick or No Child Left Behind, it's not his family legacy or even his decades of service to Massachusetts and America. It is because even though he was a really rich guy, he never acted like those who were less fortunate than him were that way because they deserved to be. That alone places him high above the entire Republican Party and many of his fellow Democrats.

Daveawayfromhome

Random Recollections of Werner Warmbrunn

I got an email from my college today regarding Professor Werner Warmbrunn.

Professor Werner Warmbrunn was briefly my faculty advisor, and not so briefly my teacher, as I went through college. I took his class in Nazi Germany, and he taught the history seminar that exposed us to a variety of ways of doing history, the one requirement for a history degree.

He grew up in Germany, and his family fled the country before the war. He told us how he regarded it as great fun to slide back into Germany for quick visits with friends, taking trains through less-traveled checkpoints, until one time on leaving the Gestapo caught up with him. Since he was on his way out the authorities contented themselves merely with telling him never to return—which was lucky—and he didn't, not till after the war anyway.

Several times he stopped to give me a lift across town or across campus as he saw me walking; on one occasion I had mentioned a particular song (I don't recall now what it was) that I got a kick out of because it was a send-up of a particular style of music. I think it may have been on the radio at the moment. The next time he dropped me off somewhere he remarked that he had been thinking about what I said about it, and about how difficult it was even after living in the United States for all these years, to pick up on such subtle details of the culture. He wondered about what else he might have been missing. All I could say is that I was born here, and I missed subtleties of the culture all the time.

When I once missed a history seminar meeting due to the flu and showed up later at his office to apologize and see if there was anything I needed to do to catch up he was deeply concerned. Not that I'd missed class; he was concerned about my health and wanted the infirmary to check me out. (He probably had reason to be concerned; I was pushing myself fairly hard at that point, eating irregularly, losing weight, and to top it all off just recovered from a short but severe bout with the flu.) I assured him that I was fine, but the incident stuck with me, and I made a point of taking better care of myself after that.

He was one hell of a teacher. Mind you, I had some damn good teachers in college, but I remember him better than most. He could seem almost woolly-minded at times, the caricature absent-minded professor, but then he would come around and put a different spin on things with an adroit comment or a penetrating question. I'm not putting this well, and I'm actually crying as I write this, damn it. He inspired real affection in his class. As the mood of the nation veered to the right he commented on how he'd seen things like this before, in his youth, and he worried about the future of our nation. One political figure in particular worried him. He had previously remarked (not in this connection) that in theory he could have changed the course of history and prevented much misery for the world, the implication being (or so we took it) through the assassination of Adolf Hitler. Once, before class, somebody suggested that we could really ease Professor Warmbrunn's mind through the timely assassination of this American politician. We could make it a class project. It was gallows humor, but our concern was real—both for our teacher, and for the nation.

He was a genuine historian. He could explain Nazi positions better than Goebbels himself, and be fair even to the lowest scum in the regime. Mind you, I don't mean that there was ever the slightest doubt where his sympathies lay; it's just that sympathies came after the business of actually doing history. When somebody in our Nazi Germany class suggested that the resources Hitler had diverted from the war effort to exterminating the Jews had cost him victory in some significant battle, Professor Warmbrunn said that it would be nice to think that. He wished that it were true; it would be a measure of justice. And then he laid out the reasons why it could not possibly be true, using hard facts and firm data. I don't know that he was right; I was merely struck by the way he kept personal feelings away from the business of evaluating information.

I did my final paper in that class on the Stab-in-the-Back myth, comparing it to other instances of beliefs firmly held in the teeth of the evidence. One key paper on my subject was long, and in German, and my German was really not up to the task of going through it all. I mentioned my problem during a paper conference, and he took my photocopy of the paper, read it, gave me a brief summary of its sections, and highlighted the parts that were key to my research. Now that was over and beyond the call of duty, damn it—although I do think he was intrigued by the particular direction I was taking with it, and wanted to see what I came up with.

God, I haven't thought of this stuff in years. He was a good guy, and a good teacher, and he passed away peacefully in his sleep yesterday afternoon.

A Terrorist Strikes in Wichita

Dr. George Tiller, a man described by an associate as "a quiet, persistent, capable visionary," was shot while attending church today in Wichita, Kansas. He was 67.

According to witnesses the killer, a white male, left the scene in a 1993 blue Ford Taurus (Kansas license plate 225 BAB). A suspect, Scott Roeder, 51, has been detained by the police.

The motive for the killing is thought to be political. Dr. George Tiller has been repeatedly threatened by terrorists in the past for performing medical procedures involving pregnancy termination many politicians have sought to ban. Recently the state of Kansas brought charges against him for allegedly violating the law in regard to getting second opinions; this apparently politically-motivated attack failed when the jury took less than an hour to acquit him on all charges. More recently terrorists attacked his clinic, causing thousands of dollars worth of damage.

Self-described "pro-life" groups, many of whom have savagely denigrated the doctor in print in the past, were quick to distance themselves from the murder. The state executive director for Kansans For Life said, "Kansans for Life deplores the murder of Dr. George Tiller ... We value life, completely deplore violence, and are shocked and very upset by what happened in Wichita today." Troy Newman of Operation Rescue observed, "We are shocked at this morning's disturbing news that Mr. Tiller was gunned down. ... We denounce vigilantism and the cowardly act that took place this morning." (Apparently Troy Newman couldn't resist getting a plug in for his cult, as he added inappropriately, "We pray for [Dr.] Tiller's family that they will find comfort and healing that can only be found in Jesus Christ.") Phill Kline, the former Kansas Attorney-General responsible for the baseless charges brought against the doctor said, "I am stunned by this lawless and violent act which must be condemned and should be met with the full force of law. We join in lifting prayer that God's grace and presence rest with Dr. Tiller's family and friends." (Another inappropriate bit of product-placement for religion, by the by.)

I personally would like to believe that this is the true face of the so-called "pro-life" movement. However, comments like the following give one pause:

here is a man who made his living off of murdering innocent children. he made his living off of undermining the value of life. with that being said, it seems like they sure are making a big deal about this kansas man dying. sorta seems more like equality to me than anything. at least dr. killer, i mean dr. tiller, had a chance to live life. unlike all of the innocent children that he robbed that from. obviously not a very convicted Bible believing man. i doubt he was involved in his church for any other reason than being able to pull a "good guy" political card.

And then there's

This guy wasn't pro-life. He was pro-choose to kill. Than again Mr. Tiller knew he was being stalked by someone, I read that on a few articles. Tragic it had to end before he repented for killing the sons and daughters of others. My heart grieves, another lost without knowing Christ, because someone thought they had the right to take it.

And

Tiller the Killer will not kill one more baby.

Ah, yes, naked hatred directed against anybody who would actually dare help people in need—that's the face of the "pro-life" movement I've seen and come to know and detest.

But I prefer to remember a man who "dedicated his life to providing women with high-quality health care despite frequent threats and violence," as a statement from his family put it. In the face of not just threats, but actual physical attacks (a "pro-life" terrorist shot him in an earlier attack, and his clinic was bombed) most people would have given up and gone into a safer line of work. Dr. Tiller stayed the course, fought the good fight, and ultimately paid for doing what is right with his life. He will be missed—which is a lot more than I can say for his detractors.

Sources for this piece include The Los Angeles Times, MSNBC, KSHB-TV, and The Questionable Authority.

Update: Mike Dunsford at The Questionable Authority has "A few more measured thoughts on Dr. Tiller's life, career, and death" up. He says what I was attempting to say, but he says it better. Damn, I hate it when people do that.

Update: See also entries on the subject from Evolving Thoughts (great title), Dr. Joan Bushwell's Chimpanzee Refuge ("pre-born children"? Does that make Newman a pre-dead corpse?), Adventures in Ethics and Science (raw thoughts indeed), and Greg Laden's Blog (Eleanor Smeal writes about the doctor).

Another Old Racist Dies

Arch-racist Jesse Helms, also noted for his anti-gay and other anti-American policies, died today at the age of 81. He will not be missed.

Quotation of the Day

Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people’s civil rights.

Mildred Loving (1939-2008)

Dennis James Kennedy (1930-2007) R.I.H.

Vibrations in the ether bring me glad tydings: Dennis James Kennedy no longer breathes and walks this earth among us. He has, as they say, gone on to his reward.

Charles Erskine Scott Wood, in Heavenly Discourse, revealed how such figures as Anthony Comstock and Teddy Roosevelt were received in heaven. When Billy Sunday, the first radiovangelist, showed up, St. Peter had to bleach him in a sulfurous pit to remove the stench.

In 1953, during the height of the McCarthy era, dance instructor Dennis J. Kennedy was inspired to wonder about his own potential reception in heaven by the question of a Philadelphia preacher: "Suppose that you were to die today and stand before God and he were to ask you, 'What right do you have to enter into my heaven?'—what would you say?" This improbable scenario apparently was the catalyst for the transformation of D J Kennedy, dance instructor, into D. James Kennedy, gay-basher, history-faker, and anti-science zealot.

The evil this man did lives on. The good, if any, appears to have died long ago. I spent some time scanning the obituaries for positive things to say about this Christ-monger, and all I could find were:

He was kind to a Baptist teenager... (Albert Mohler, Jr.)

and

Dr. Kennedy lived modestly and was never tainted by moral or financial scandal. (Washington Post)

On the other hand the work he did in promoting false stereotypes of gays and lesbians, in supporting putting AIDS victims in concentration camps, in opposing scientific research towards cures for certain diseases on lame theological grounds, in rewriting American history to support the Christian America lie, in rewriting biology, geology, and physics to support the crazy notions known as "Young Earth Creationism"--well, if Satan is truly the father of lies, then we know whose side "Dr." Dennis James Kennedy was on. And indeed, from The Daily Pulp, we learn:

According to sources close to the prince of darkness, the late Rev. D. James Kennedy, of Coral Ridge Power Hour fame, has been assigned a key position in hell.

"He's going to make a great addition and we've already made room for him," one of Satan's lieutenants reported to the Pulp. "The hard part was figuring out where to put the little devil. We considered the eighth circle with the frauds. I mean, c'mon, Kennedy was a "man of God"? Would Jesus sponsor a hate festival? As we say down in these parts, hell no. Then there's the fourth circle, for the materialists. Have you seen that gaudy palace he built on Federal Highway? Plus, he loved the rich and never gave two snots about the poor. But we decided he'd make a better addition to the fifth circle, where he'll fight with other wrathful hatemongers on the river Styx."

I suppose the excuse that might be made for him was that he was doing what was right in his own mind. It's a pretty poor excuse, if you ask me.

Jerry Falwell Burns in Hell

Ding dong, the witch is dead--yes, the man who promoted AIDS as a instrument of social transformation has gone to his own place, where the fires never die and the vultures gnaw his liver eternally. Uneducated but arrogant, a liar, libeler, and defender of terrorists, his ignominious career at last comes to an end. And high time, too.

Bobby "Boris" Pickett: A One Hit Wonder Passes On

I have a collection of 45s dating back to my childhood. (45s are small vinyl disks that can be decoded to play music with the appropriate mechanical device, known as a phonograph or record-player. They were the MP3s of my generation.) One of these is a thing put out by Garpax records, with a black-and-white picture-sleeve showing a monster against a background of tombstones. I don't know where or when I picked it up.

The song was something called "Monster Mash" sung by Bobby Pickett backed by the Crypt-kickers. Mr. Pickett sang, in a stunning Boris Karloff imitation, a strange piece about a mad scientist and his dancing monster. I'm sure you must have heard it; it resurfaces every Halloween like a bad penny taped to a cork in a bloodwort stew.

It's actually kind of a survivor in a way; this sort of macabre humor was once common. Spike Jones, at the end of his career, when he was trying desperately to compete with the likes of Stan Freberg and Mort Sahl, put out an entire album devoted to this sort of thing. Katie Lee was edgier, with songs like "When I Was a Little Girl" and "Group Therapy." And of course Tom Lehrer was way ahead of the curve with "A Hunting Song" and "Irish Ballad." Eventually even the Cultural Wasteland succumbed, in a somewhat sanitized way, with TV shows like The Addams Family and The Munsters. (Who can forget the exchange between Wednesday Addams and an Avon Lady?

Wednesday: Nobody uses anything like that except Uncle Fester. He uses a preservative.
Avon Lady: A preservative? Oh, to keep young?
Wednesday: No, just to keep.

Or maybe, who can remember it?)

"The Monster Mash" went right to the top of the charts, as I recall--though if I looked it up I'd probably find out that it was only #11 on the Billboard chart, or something. Still, I'm doing this from memory, and I may as well tell it my way.

It was 1962 and "The Monster Mash" went straight to the top of the charts only a couple of weeks after it was released. It was impossible to escape that Halloween. I'm thinking this was that strange Halloween, not long after the Columbus Day Storm, when trees were still lying across parts of houses, and debris was everywhere. My buddy and I felt we were too old to go out begging for candy, but we still got into costume (as a television and a wall socket, I think) to shepherd our younger brothers and sister and friends about.

It would be a decade before I heard of Bobby "Boris" Pickett again, and this time we were on the road in search of America, or maybe just a good time. As we crossed the country that summer of 1973 every station in every town seemed to be playing it. Why, I wondered. It's just because of the success of the horror film guy (now I can't remember his name--Portland's equivalent of SCTV's Count Floyd anyway), one of my fellow-travelers suggested. But that wouldn't explain why it's playing out here in Iowa, I replied. Nobody knew, and apparently nobody cared. But me. And I didn't care that much.

From all accounts Pickett took his one hit wonder status with a certain grace and style. He used to announce his performances by saying that he was going to do a medley of his hit--fair enough, I guess, though that line must have gray whiskers by now. And one hit is more than most performers get, though fewer than most musician's ambitions. And what a hit it was, sure to resurface every Halloween for years to come.

Bobby "Boris" Pickett passed away last Wednesday. A moment of silence, please.

(Once again, I am doing this without benefit of my notes, records, or library, so some of the titles above may well be wrong. Not to mention dates, persons, sequence of events, and the like. Ah, well.)