In Memoriam Seamus Heaney
That first cry. You don't even know that it's yours yet, don't know the idea
of you yet, or what a cry is.
But you make it. The noise. An assertion of self, perhaps, just as self starts.
Self starts before consciousness--and consciousness, when it comes, quickly
becomes self-conscious.
That first noise is not conscious. And it recurs, not as a willed noise, not yet
identifiable as noise by you, and still inseparable from you.
When self becomes conscious, it starts the collecting and accumulating that
become life. When self-consciousness happens, the collecting and accumulation
will start to have a form, and begin to be what grown-ups call knowledge.
Understanding. Wisdom.
And then it's gone. Where? Where to?
And the last thing we know before knowing itself stops is the silence.
"Don't be afraid."
vrijdag 21 november 2014
zaterdag 2 augustus 2014
ENLARGING THE EUROPEAN UNION
Since 1959, the United States of
North America has extended from the western shores of the Atlantic Ocean
halfway across the Pacific Ocean. When
Russia joins the European Union, that Union will extend from Ireland,
traditionally a part of Europe, just off the eastern coast of the Atlantic
ocean, to the northwestern shores of the Pacific Ocean And across the Bering Straits, the European
Union and the United States of North America will be only 82 kilometers—51
mies—apart.
Since 1959, when Alaska and Hawaii
became members of the United States, the distance between the eastern
(Atlantic) coast of the United States of North America and its western-most
states is roughly 6,000 miles. The
distance from the western-most (Atlantic coast) parts of Europe
to the eastern (Pacific) coast of Siberia is roughly the same.
The land mass of the USNA, including
Alaska and Hawaii, is 3.8 million square
miles. The total land mass of the
current EU is 1.7 million square miles—but add Siberia, and the enlarged EU has
a land mass of 8.3 million square miles.
And Siberia is a lot closer to European Europe than Hawaii is to North America.
Most of the 6.6 million square miles Russia would bring into the EU, is—like much of Alaska--frozen Siberian
tundra, though a lot of that tundra is
rich in minerals, oil, and natural gas.
The total population of the USNA is
313 million. The total population of the
EU is 507 million; with Russia (and
Siberia) the population of the EU will be 640 million.
And what—beyond numbers—will this
mean? For Russia, it will mean that it
and its citizens will have better access to European technology. For the EU, it will mean that the current EU
countries will have better access to Russian oil, natural gas, and other
natural resources. And it will mean
enlarging significantly the greatest experiment in human political history, a
voluntary union of peoples.
The USA was cobbled together out of
revolution, purchase, war and conquest.
And it was built on the backs of black slavery and violent subjugatioin
of the Native American population. The
European Union has been and continues to be built on application and
invitation. There is a huge
difference—and it shows every day. And
what it shows—on the USA’s side—is the greatest obstacle, not just to world
peace but to world-wide human justice.
If Russia joins the European Union,
mankind will take a real (and un-hyped) “giant step” forward—and that step will
be taken on this planet.
THE LORD CHAMBERLAIN’S PLAYERS
I created the Lord Chamberlain’s Players at the University of Michigan from 1966. It was active there until 1992, and then at Bellarmine College in Louisville, Kentucky from 1992 to 1999, when the organization changed its name to Abbey West Players. In 2009 it was again reconstituted, this time in Saarbrücken, Germany, as Abbey East Players at the Universität des Saarlandes.
I began my theatre career just before my sixth birthday, in 1941. I was the Prologue for the Christmas program at St. Joseph’s School in Bowling Green, Kentucky.
Little folks, you will say, Should be seen and not heard: ^ But you woin't mind if I Say just one word?
That one word is Welcome! Welcome everyone! And now that I have said it, Our program has begun!
I also played a young waif—a silent part—in the Nativity pageant, which closed our program. I wore a nice white shirt and new knickerbockers as Prologue. But as a young waif I was supposed to look waifish. I knew I couldn't dirty my white shirt or my new knickers, so I just rubbed some playground mud on my face and my arms and my legs. I did my waif's make-up, alas, before the program started, so I could do it well—and Sister Mary Annine—she was only eighteen, and this was her first year as a nun—didn't notice until I was on stage to say my little speech.
In the early 1950s, while I was in high school, I wrote and directed two plays. One was a very successful half-hour live radio opera called “Hansel and Fritzel,” the other a sort of absurdist play (I had never heard of such, of course) that I staged at College High School when I was a senior. Then I retired from the theatre until 1965.
I was a newly minted Doctor of Philosophy in 1965, in the second term of my first year as a member of the English faculty at Michigan. That spring, Donald Hall volunteered me to play opposite him in the John Barton Wolgamot Society's production of Ubu Roi, by Alfred Jarré. It was wonderful fun. Don Hall—in his bearish phase—played Papa Ubu, and I was his conscience.
In the autumn of 1966 I walked into the ornate rococo foyer of the university's Angell Hall, I stopped dead still. This was the perfect set Oscar Wilde's “Salomé”—and I wanted to use it, and would ask Don Hall to play Herod. I did, and he said yes. I recruited students, and created The Lord Chamberlain's Players. I chose the name because in 1896 the Lord Chamberlain, in London, refused to grant a license for the production of Wilde's play on the grounds that it was obscene.
Our production was a spectacular success. I persuaded—pleaded, with and finally persuaded—Josef Blatt, professor of opera at the Music School, to attend. He came—and declared it as moving a production as he had ever seen or heard: “Better than Strauss,” he said.
After that, the Lord Chamberlain's Players presented Byron's “Manfred” in Angell Hall, and Henry Fielding's “Tom Thumb,” and the American premier of Charles Marowicz' “Macbeth Collage.” We also did several short medieval English plays, and several short plays of mine. And—not in Angell Hall—P. T. Barnum's melodrama, “The Drunkard.” And we made a road trip to the University of Notre Dame to perform in a theatre festival called “Expose Yourself!”
In the midst of all of this, Don Hall used a lot of the Lord Chamberlain's Players in a 1967 production of “MacBird!”--Barbara Garson's anti-war play—that ran through several weeks in three different locations. I got to play MacBird—dressed in a red kilt, superman-blue tights and shirt with a big “McB” symbol on the chest, a red cape, a gold crown, jester-type shoes with long turned-up toes, and a long red rubber glove on my left hand to signify that I was a murderer.
When the lights were out and the house black after the intermission, I would sneak out in the darkness to the apron of the stage, just inches from the people on thr front row. The rest of the cast would be at the back of the theatre, and would start to chant, “Hey! Hey! LBJ! How Mny kids did you kill today?” The audience would pick it up, quickly, and after a minute or so their angry shouts would be frightening. If the people on the front row—university students, mostly—had known I was standing just six inches in front of them, they would have bitten my legs off. But when the lights came up, I was MacBird, a ludicrous satiric idiot, and they would laugh.
The Lord Chamberlain's Players also did two productions of a play about Einstein and James Joyce's Ulysses, which I called “Yes to the Universe.” And twice we did productions of my stage version of Plato's “Apology,” with Charles Stallman as Socrates—talking, as Socrates did, forever.
In 1992 I left Michigan. For the next ten years I taught at a small college in Louisville, Kentucky. The first spring I was there a new version of The Lord Chamberlain's Players staged “Oedipus the King” in a natural ampitheatre on campus. Except for Oedipus, it was pretty awful. But my students were quick learners, and the next year we did a fine production—with mostly the same cast--of the Irish dramatist John Synge's “The Playboy of the Western World.” It was good enough that we changed our name to Abbey West Players, and dedicated ourselves to doing Irish theatre.
Over the next six years my Bellarmine College students performed beautifully, wonderfully, in four Brian Friel plays--”Philadelphia, Here I Come!” first, then “Translations,” “Aristocrats,” and “Dancing at Lughnasa.” I had seen the original Abbey theatre production of “Dancing at Lughnasa,” in Dublin and in London, and three American productions. Our production wasn't in the same league with the Abbey productions, but it was much better than any of the American ones, including a (very bad) one at Actors Theatre in Louisville.
As Abbey West Players we also did two short Lady Augusta Gregory plays and Synge's “Shadow of the Glen,” three one-act plays by William Butler Yeats, and two of my plays. Then we staged the American premier (unwittingly) of Thomas McDonagh's “The Cripple of Inishmaan,” and finally Samuel Beckett's “Waiting for Godot.”
We played “Godot” in the college's chapel, the stage in the theatre being much too big. The local Catholic archbishop objected to our using the chapel, but I told him than many people thought that “Godot” was to be taken as “God,” and that the play was a highly moral work of art. “Of course,” he said. (Beckett might have enjoyed that. When asked, once, if “Waiting for Godot” were about God, he answered, “I know how to spell God.” It is, of course, a very moral play.) After we finished with “Godot” on campus at Bellarmine, we took it to a theater-bar in downtown Louisville for another week's run.
Abbey West Players became Abbey East Players in 2008, when I started teaching at the Universität des Saarlandes in Saarbrücken, Germany.
There was a student theatre group in the English department, with a faculty moderator. I went to see a production of Wilde's "The Importance of Being Ernest" with two of my colleagues. After a ninety-minute first act, we all three produced excuses requiring our immediate departure. I tried again the next term, but had to escape during a scene change. So I recruited five students, none of whom had ever acted before, and we put on “Waiting for Godot.” It was hard work, but didn't really take much time. And the five of us designed and built our set, and created the lighting. After the first night, the cast knew what they had done—and were amazed at themselves. The audience was amazed, too. And I was so very, very happy with what my students had created that I immediately started thinking of what Abbey East Players could do next.
But there was no next. I couldn't get any students interested. Not even one.
So that's it. My career in drama has also included, since 1974, a total of 434 performances as Charles Dickens, doing dramatic readings from A Christmas Carol and other of his novels. I have played Dickens all over the United States, and in Canada, Ireland, England, the Netherlands, Italy, and Germany, and on both radio and television.
And once, for an Ars Musica concert, I got to play Giuseppi Borroni, an 18th century Italian composer about whom history knows almost nothing. None of his music survives. As a young man he heard the music of Pergolesi, and as an older man he heard Mozart. In recreating Giuseppi Borroni, I got to let him talk about Pergolesi and Mozart, and I made him the great-great grandfather of my own great-grandfather, Giuseppi Borroni., who in the 1870s, in America, changed the spelling of his name to Borrone.
Now, except for my Dickens readings, my drama career is over. Except for those annual readings, I will just play me, and direct me. But that should keep me busy. But I'm sorry that the Lord Chamberlain's Players are no more, and that the Abbey West Players and Abbey East Players are gone.
I created the Lord Chamberlain’s Players at the University of Michigan from 1966. It was active there until 1992, and then at Bellarmine College in Louisville, Kentucky from 1992 to 1999, when the organization changed its name to Abbey West Players. In 2009 it was again reconstituted, this time in Saarbrücken, Germany, as Abbey East Players at the Universität des Saarlandes.
I began my theatre career just before my sixth birthday, in 1941. I was the Prologue for the Christmas program at St. Joseph’s School in Bowling Green, Kentucky.
Little folks, you will say, Should be seen and not heard: ^ But you woin't mind if I Say just one word?
That one word is Welcome! Welcome everyone! And now that I have said it, Our program has begun!
I also played a young waif—a silent part—in the Nativity pageant, which closed our program. I wore a nice white shirt and new knickerbockers as Prologue. But as a young waif I was supposed to look waifish. I knew I couldn't dirty my white shirt or my new knickers, so I just rubbed some playground mud on my face and my arms and my legs. I did my waif's make-up, alas, before the program started, so I could do it well—and Sister Mary Annine—she was only eighteen, and this was her first year as a nun—didn't notice until I was on stage to say my little speech.
In the early 1950s, while I was in high school, I wrote and directed two plays. One was a very successful half-hour live radio opera called “Hansel and Fritzel,” the other a sort of absurdist play (I had never heard of such, of course) that I staged at College High School when I was a senior. Then I retired from the theatre until 1965.
I was a newly minted Doctor of Philosophy in 1965, in the second term of my first year as a member of the English faculty at Michigan. That spring, Donald Hall volunteered me to play opposite him in the John Barton Wolgamot Society's production of Ubu Roi, by Alfred Jarré. It was wonderful fun. Don Hall—in his bearish phase—played Papa Ubu, and I was his conscience.
In the autumn of 1966 I walked into the ornate rococo foyer of the university's Angell Hall, I stopped dead still. This was the perfect set Oscar Wilde's “Salomé”—and I wanted to use it, and would ask Don Hall to play Herod. I did, and he said yes. I recruited students, and created The Lord Chamberlain's Players. I chose the name because in 1896 the Lord Chamberlain, in London, refused to grant a license for the production of Wilde's play on the grounds that it was obscene.
Our production was a spectacular success. I persuaded—pleaded, with and finally persuaded—Josef Blatt, professor of opera at the Music School, to attend. He came—and declared it as moving a production as he had ever seen or heard: “Better than Strauss,” he said.
After that, the Lord Chamberlain's Players presented Byron's “Manfred” in Angell Hall, and Henry Fielding's “Tom Thumb,” and the American premier of Charles Marowicz' “Macbeth Collage.” We also did several short medieval English plays, and several short plays of mine. And—not in Angell Hall—P. T. Barnum's melodrama, “The Drunkard.” And we made a road trip to the University of Notre Dame to perform in a theatre festival called “Expose Yourself!”
In the midst of all of this, Don Hall used a lot of the Lord Chamberlain's Players in a 1967 production of “MacBird!”--Barbara Garson's anti-war play—that ran through several weeks in three different locations. I got to play MacBird—dressed in a red kilt, superman-blue tights and shirt with a big “McB” symbol on the chest, a red cape, a gold crown, jester-type shoes with long turned-up toes, and a long red rubber glove on my left hand to signify that I was a murderer.
When the lights were out and the house black after the intermission, I would sneak out in the darkness to the apron of the stage, just inches from the people on thr front row. The rest of the cast would be at the back of the theatre, and would start to chant, “Hey! Hey! LBJ! How Mny kids did you kill today?” The audience would pick it up, quickly, and after a minute or so their angry shouts would be frightening. If the people on the front row—university students, mostly—had known I was standing just six inches in front of them, they would have bitten my legs off. But when the lights came up, I was MacBird, a ludicrous satiric idiot, and they would laugh.
The Lord Chamberlain's Players also did two productions of a play about Einstein and James Joyce's Ulysses, which I called “Yes to the Universe.” And twice we did productions of my stage version of Plato's “Apology,” with Charles Stallman as Socrates—talking, as Socrates did, forever.
In 1992 I left Michigan. For the next ten years I taught at a small college in Louisville, Kentucky. The first spring I was there a new version of The Lord Chamberlain's Players staged “Oedipus the King” in a natural ampitheatre on campus. Except for Oedipus, it was pretty awful. But my students were quick learners, and the next year we did a fine production—with mostly the same cast--of the Irish dramatist John Synge's “The Playboy of the Western World.” It was good enough that we changed our name to Abbey West Players, and dedicated ourselves to doing Irish theatre.
Over the next six years my Bellarmine College students performed beautifully, wonderfully, in four Brian Friel plays--”Philadelphia, Here I Come!” first, then “Translations,” “Aristocrats,” and “Dancing at Lughnasa.” I had seen the original Abbey theatre production of “Dancing at Lughnasa,” in Dublin and in London, and three American productions. Our production wasn't in the same league with the Abbey productions, but it was much better than any of the American ones, including a (very bad) one at Actors Theatre in Louisville.
As Abbey West Players we also did two short Lady Augusta Gregory plays and Synge's “Shadow of the Glen,” three one-act plays by William Butler Yeats, and two of my plays. Then we staged the American premier (unwittingly) of Thomas McDonagh's “The Cripple of Inishmaan,” and finally Samuel Beckett's “Waiting for Godot.”
We played “Godot” in the college's chapel, the stage in the theatre being much too big. The local Catholic archbishop objected to our using the chapel, but I told him than many people thought that “Godot” was to be taken as “God,” and that the play was a highly moral work of art. “Of course,” he said. (Beckett might have enjoyed that. When asked, once, if “Waiting for Godot” were about God, he answered, “I know how to spell God.” It is, of course, a very moral play.) After we finished with “Godot” on campus at Bellarmine, we took it to a theater-bar in downtown Louisville for another week's run.
Abbey West Players became Abbey East Players in 2008, when I started teaching at the Universität des Saarlandes in Saarbrücken, Germany.
There was a student theatre group in the English department, with a faculty moderator. I went to see a production of Wilde's "The Importance of Being Ernest" with two of my colleagues. After a ninety-minute first act, we all three produced excuses requiring our immediate departure. I tried again the next term, but had to escape during a scene change. So I recruited five students, none of whom had ever acted before, and we put on “Waiting for Godot.” It was hard work, but didn't really take much time. And the five of us designed and built our set, and created the lighting. After the first night, the cast knew what they had done—and were amazed at themselves. The audience was amazed, too. And I was so very, very happy with what my students had created that I immediately started thinking of what Abbey East Players could do next.
But there was no next. I couldn't get any students interested. Not even one.
So that's it. My career in drama has also included, since 1974, a total of 434 performances as Charles Dickens, doing dramatic readings from A Christmas Carol and other of his novels. I have played Dickens all over the United States, and in Canada, Ireland, England, the Netherlands, Italy, and Germany, and on both radio and television.
And once, for an Ars Musica concert, I got to play Giuseppi Borroni, an 18th century Italian composer about whom history knows almost nothing. None of his music survives. As a young man he heard the music of Pergolesi, and as an older man he heard Mozart. In recreating Giuseppi Borroni, I got to let him talk about Pergolesi and Mozart, and I made him the great-great grandfather of my own great-grandfather, Giuseppi Borroni., who in the 1870s, in America, changed the spelling of his name to Borrone.
Now, except for my Dickens readings, my drama career is over. Except for those annual readings, I will just play me, and direct me. But that should keep me busy. But I'm sorry that the Lord Chamberlain's Players are no more, and that the Abbey West Players and Abbey East Players are gone.
vrijdag 25 juli 2014
maandag 21 juli 2014
EGOS, ONE THROUGH THREE
I have made a sort of list--of contemporary egoists. My three I's would be shocked to find themselves lumped together. But they seem to me to be the three worst, biggest, and most obvious egoists in the world. Not just in the United States, though all three belong there, live there. The three biggest egoists in the world.
Let me start with the easiest one, Donald Trump, a.k.a. "The Donald," "Trump," and "Ass." He calls himself "The Donald." He parades the name "Trump" in gold letters everywhere he can. And he is the world's most absolute ass. If there were a Trump logo, it would show Trump kissing his own ass.
Poor Donald. Self-named "The Donald," a parody of the idea of ego (if there can be such). A man with (as he sees it) awsome power--and his own television program (which he bought) to demonstrate (with personality and dramatic grandeur) that power. (If it weren't unnecessary, he could be called No-Trump.)
The second is almost as easy. LeBron James is a great basketball player. The media crowned him "King James" when he was just a boy, and he wore his crown with embarrassing arrogance. He once volunteered to play--one game--for any European basketball team that wanted to pay him a million dollars for his brief appearance. Soon his reign will be over--is already over, in fact.
There have been other super-star athletes who had titles. Sportswriters called Babe Ruth "The Sultan of Swat"--and he was. But he wasn't an egoist. Muhammid Ali was "The Greatest"--and he gave himself that title. He paraded it, and in the way he paraded it made it a mocking, challenging joke--until he actually became "The Greatest" in his fight with the U. S. Government over the Vietnam War. And Ali remains a great and important world citizen. But he was never just an egoist--even when he called himself "The Greatest."
Paul Hornung was maybe once a candidate for the egoism title, but his stage was smaller, and over time got smaller still. When he was a senior in college he was the Notre Dame team. He kicked off, passed, ran, and punted--and did all four stupendously. The only thing he couldn't do was catch his own passes, or--despite his greatness--make Notre Dame win games.
When the Notre Dame team came onto the field in South Bend, Indiana, they all came rushing out of the tunnel and 50,000 people roared like they were roaring for champions. And then Golden Paul strolled out, all by himself, helmet tucked under his arm, golden curls blowing in the wind, waving to the adoring crowd. Rome was never more thrilling.
But in the NFL, though Hornung was a star, and even a superstar, he had lots of company. And though he was a great running back, that's all he was. Years later, his professional career long behind him, Paul became again a sort of legendary hero in his hometown in Louisville, Kentucky. And there is a huge and wonderful picture of him, at his best, painted on the side of a tall building. And Paul had for years a sports talk show on television, which he hosted from a local bar. The golden curls were gone, his head as shiny as his supersized helmet had been in the glory days. And then one night the golden curls came back. . . .
The third of my three super-egoists is somewhat different from the others. He reached the status that let him be a major egoist by election. Not that he was elected as an egoist, or to be egoist-in-chief. But once Barack Obama was elected President of the United States he became an amazing egoist. He was young, handsome, bright, articulate, personable, and though many Americans hated him for being black, they couldn't do so publicly.
Obama got himself caught in the mire of America almost immediately. Campaigning, he had promised to close the U.S. Concentration Camp and Torture Facility at Guantanamo in Occupied Cuba. He didn't do it. He escalated the U.S. military offensive in the Middle East, despite his campaign promises. And then he introduced drones, and used them to kill people without having to risk American lives. Anybody killed in the American offense in the Middle East had always been identified as a terrorist after his or her death, and Obama continued that policy. Anybody a drone killed was automatically an enemy combatant.
When Bradley Manning exposed U.S. war crimes, Obama declared him "guilty" of a major crime. In saying that--before Manning had even been charged with specific offenses, the commander-in-chief become a dictator. And now he calls Edward Snowden a "traitor" for exposing American war crimes. Mr. Obama was a lawyer. And he must know that to conceal a felony offense is a felony. The legal terms are "misprision of a felony," and "accessory after the fact."
America has, in its recent history, one warrior president after another--and more than its share of criminal presidents. Since 1958--when American troops (me included) invaded Lebanon in hopes of having a war there--the United States has been at war. Even Gerald Ford sent gun-boats into North Korea. And Jimmy Carter attempted to start a war by trying to invade Iran. Luckily, the North Koreans didn't resist Ford's invasion, and American technology failed Carter, causing all the helicopters carrying troops to crash in the desert, their engines clogged with sand blown up into them by their rotor-blades. And Bill Clinton, too: but only with bombs, so no Americans would get killed. And when the U.S. bombed a bridge in Bosnia that just happened to have a civilian train loaded with Bosnian civilians crossing it when the bomb hit, that was not anybody's fault, because the bridge had been "assigned" as a target by the U.S.command. And the Bushes. The Oil Bushes, murdering for oil.
Becoming the U. S. president, Mr. Obama inherited a murdering job. And though he promised to end the murdering, he continues it--and has made it even more "sophisticated." And as a college freshman taught me in 1960, in my first year as a university teacher, "sophistication" is not a good thing.
But Mr. Obama is sophisticated, and is obviously proud of what he is doing. And he is raising two little girls who will grow up to know what their father has done. His ego is more important to him than anything else. If Mr. Obama were killing "white" people, he would have a problem. But he is killing Arabic people, and they don't count. They are America's new "niggers," these last twenty-five years. And for Mr. Obama, killing them is more important than justice or honor or decency or right. More important, too, than his daughters.
Ego blinds. And it has blinded Mr. Obama.
I have made a sort of list--of contemporary egoists. My three I's would be shocked to find themselves lumped together. But they seem to me to be the three worst, biggest, and most obvious egoists in the world. Not just in the United States, though all three belong there, live there. The three biggest egoists in the world.
Let me start with the easiest one, Donald Trump, a.k.a. "The Donald," "Trump," and "Ass." He calls himself "The Donald." He parades the name "Trump" in gold letters everywhere he can. And he is the world's most absolute ass. If there were a Trump logo, it would show Trump kissing his own ass.
Poor Donald. Self-named "The Donald," a parody of the idea of ego (if there can be such). A man with (as he sees it) awsome power--and his own television program (which he bought) to demonstrate (with personality and dramatic grandeur) that power. (If it weren't unnecessary, he could be called No-Trump.)
The second is almost as easy. LeBron James is a great basketball player. The media crowned him "King James" when he was just a boy, and he wore his crown with embarrassing arrogance. He once volunteered to play--one game--for any European basketball team that wanted to pay him a million dollars for his brief appearance. Soon his reign will be over--is already over, in fact.
There have been other super-star athletes who had titles. Sportswriters called Babe Ruth "The Sultan of Swat"--and he was. But he wasn't an egoist. Muhammid Ali was "The Greatest"--and he gave himself that title. He paraded it, and in the way he paraded it made it a mocking, challenging joke--until he actually became "The Greatest" in his fight with the U. S. Government over the Vietnam War. And Ali remains a great and important world citizen. But he was never just an egoist--even when he called himself "The Greatest."
Paul Hornung was maybe once a candidate for the egoism title, but his stage was smaller, and over time got smaller still. When he was a senior in college he was the Notre Dame team. He kicked off, passed, ran, and punted--and did all four stupendously. The only thing he couldn't do was catch his own passes, or--despite his greatness--make Notre Dame win games.
When the Notre Dame team came onto the field in South Bend, Indiana, they all came rushing out of the tunnel and 50,000 people roared like they were roaring for champions. And then Golden Paul strolled out, all by himself, helmet tucked under his arm, golden curls blowing in the wind, waving to the adoring crowd. Rome was never more thrilling.
But in the NFL, though Hornung was a star, and even a superstar, he had lots of company. And though he was a great running back, that's all he was. Years later, his professional career long behind him, Paul became again a sort of legendary hero in his hometown in Louisville, Kentucky. And there is a huge and wonderful picture of him, at his best, painted on the side of a tall building. And Paul had for years a sports talk show on television, which he hosted from a local bar. The golden curls were gone, his head as shiny as his supersized helmet had been in the glory days. And then one night the golden curls came back. . . .
The third of my three super-egoists is somewhat different from the others. He reached the status that let him be a major egoist by election. Not that he was elected as an egoist, or to be egoist-in-chief. But once Barack Obama was elected President of the United States he became an amazing egoist. He was young, handsome, bright, articulate, personable, and though many Americans hated him for being black, they couldn't do so publicly.
Obama got himself caught in the mire of America almost immediately. Campaigning, he had promised to close the U.S. Concentration Camp and Torture Facility at Guantanamo in Occupied Cuba. He didn't do it. He escalated the U.S. military offensive in the Middle East, despite his campaign promises. And then he introduced drones, and used them to kill people without having to risk American lives. Anybody killed in the American offense in the Middle East had always been identified as a terrorist after his or her death, and Obama continued that policy. Anybody a drone killed was automatically an enemy combatant.
When Bradley Manning exposed U.S. war crimes, Obama declared him "guilty" of a major crime. In saying that--before Manning had even been charged with specific offenses, the commander-in-chief become a dictator. And now he calls Edward Snowden a "traitor" for exposing American war crimes. Mr. Obama was a lawyer. And he must know that to conceal a felony offense is a felony. The legal terms are "misprision of a felony," and "accessory after the fact."
America has, in its recent history, one warrior president after another--and more than its share of criminal presidents. Since 1958--when American troops (me included) invaded Lebanon in hopes of having a war there--the United States has been at war. Even Gerald Ford sent gun-boats into North Korea. And Jimmy Carter attempted to start a war by trying to invade Iran. Luckily, the North Koreans didn't resist Ford's invasion, and American technology failed Carter, causing all the helicopters carrying troops to crash in the desert, their engines clogged with sand blown up into them by their rotor-blades. And Bill Clinton, too: but only with bombs, so no Americans would get killed. And when the U.S. bombed a bridge in Bosnia that just happened to have a civilian train loaded with Bosnian civilians crossing it when the bomb hit, that was not anybody's fault, because the bridge had been "assigned" as a target by the U.S.command. And the Bushes. The Oil Bushes, murdering for oil.
Becoming the U. S. president, Mr. Obama inherited a murdering job. And though he promised to end the murdering, he continues it--and has made it even more "sophisticated." And as a college freshman taught me in 1960, in my first year as a university teacher, "sophistication" is not a good thing.
But Mr. Obama is sophisticated, and is obviously proud of what he is doing. And he is raising two little girls who will grow up to know what their father has done. His ego is more important to him than anything else. If Mr. Obama were killing "white" people, he would have a problem. But he is killing Arabic people, and they don't count. They are America's new "niggers," these last twenty-five years. And for Mr. Obama, killing them is more important than justice or honor or decency or right. More important, too, than his daughters.
Ego blinds. And it has blinded Mr. Obama.
CAPTIVITY
I wonder what its like to live for sixty-six years in captivity. That's how long Snoopy the Manitee has been held captive in a marine park somewhere in the United States.
We noble savages speak quite freely of animals "held in captivity" and don't think about it at all.
And in the United States, nobody thinks about the human beings held in captivity at the illegal Guantanamo Bay Torture Facility--for fourteen years now? So that twelve-year old boy who was sent there is twenty-six now? Or is he still alive?
Do we even know how many of them might have been tortured to death? Do we care?
Do we ever even think about them? It was seven log years ago that Mr. Obama promised that he would close down Guantanamo: because it was illegal, unconstitutional. He hasn't closed it--and it is still illegal and unconstitutional.
None of those prisoners has been tried in a court of law. None of them has been charged with a criminal offence. The Lawless Nation we used to know as the United States, champion of democracy, freedom, and the rule of law, simply holds and tortures them--in Cuba.
Why in Cuba? Because it is not the United States, and in the United States what is being done to them would be a crime. Mr. Obama and all his torture thugs would be in jail.
But it seems that Americans are comfortable with such criminal acts. We don't mind treason against our constitution.
I feel sorry for Snoopy the manitee, held captive for sixty-six years. But I feel even more sorry for the human beings who have been locked up and tortured for fourteen years at the Guantanamo Torture Facility.
If enough of us protested, maybe we could make him free them. But I guess we don't care. We don't believe in or follow our own laws.
I shouldn't say this, of course. We all know it--though we pretend not to. We don't wake up every morning thinking about those men in the Guantanamo Torture Facility waking up.
I wonder what its like to live for sixty-six years in captivity. That's how long Snoopy the Manitee has been held captive in a marine park somewhere in the United States.
We noble savages speak quite freely of animals "held in captivity" and don't think about it at all.
And in the United States, nobody thinks about the human beings held in captivity at the illegal Guantanamo Bay Torture Facility--for fourteen years now? So that twelve-year old boy who was sent there is twenty-six now? Or is he still alive?
Do we even know how many of them might have been tortured to death? Do we care?
Do we ever even think about them? It was seven log years ago that Mr. Obama promised that he would close down Guantanamo: because it was illegal, unconstitutional. He hasn't closed it--and it is still illegal and unconstitutional.
None of those prisoners has been tried in a court of law. None of them has been charged with a criminal offence. The Lawless Nation we used to know as the United States, champion of democracy, freedom, and the rule of law, simply holds and tortures them--in Cuba.
Why in Cuba? Because it is not the United States, and in the United States what is being done to them would be a crime. Mr. Obama and all his torture thugs would be in jail.
But it seems that Americans are comfortable with such criminal acts. We don't mind treason against our constitution.
I feel sorry for Snoopy the manitee, held captive for sixty-six years. But I feel even more sorry for the human beings who have been locked up and tortured for fourteen years at the Guantanamo Torture Facility.
If enough of us protested, maybe we could make him free them. But I guess we don't care. We don't believe in or follow our own laws.
I shouldn't say this, of course. We all know it--though we pretend not to. We don't wake up every morning thinking about those men in the Guantanamo Torture Facility waking up.
vrijdag 11 juli 2014
RECTAL EXAMS
All the stupid spying that the United States does--on ordinary U.S. citizens and on its closest and most important allies--must be caused by something serious, something seriously out of place. The American "spy culture" is not just stupid; it is asinine.
Dr. Hornback agrees, and recommends rectal exams. American leaders, it seems, must all must have their heads up their asses. The Surgeon General should order his troops to conduct rectal exams on everybody from Obama down to the lowest intelligence officer. The Surgeon General's troops will find their rectums all stuffed with heads: their own heads..
Then the Surgeon General can send out all his Colonels with their Colonoscopes, to perform Colonoscopies. And then? As Thomas Aquinas might have put it, rectum ratio factibilium.
Need I go further? Our language has a long list of coprological idioms that one might quite properly use for Mr. Obama and his government, having to do with fecal eating, fecal-facedness, fecal causes of blindness,etc.
All the stupid spying that the United States does--on ordinary U.S. citizens and on its closest and most important allies--must be caused by something serious, something seriously out of place. The American "spy culture" is not just stupid; it is asinine.
Dr. Hornback agrees, and recommends rectal exams. American leaders, it seems, must all must have their heads up their asses. The Surgeon General should order his troops to conduct rectal exams on everybody from Obama down to the lowest intelligence officer. The Surgeon General's troops will find their rectums all stuffed with heads: their own heads..
Then the Surgeon General can send out all his Colonels with their Colonoscopes, to perform Colonoscopies. And then? As Thomas Aquinas might have put it, rectum ratio factibilium.
Need I go further? Our language has a long list of coprological idioms that one might quite properly use for Mr. Obama and his government, having to do with fecal eating, fecal-facedness, fecal causes of blindness,etc.
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