stoneunhinged

The day Jerry Falwell died, my parents were visiting. CNN broadcast the story, and I got a cell-phone text message and a telephone call within 30 seconds (apparently) of the broadcast.

And I had to tell my father, “Jerry Falwell is dead.”

Let’s back up a bit. Jerry Falwell probably had dozens of friends. My father does not. Jerry Falwell was one of them.

Last year, my father lost two of his best friends. One was a Chinese pastor who was probably the best friend my father had had in his adult life. The other was a man with whom he had been close enough at one time to name his son after him. (Which led to something I resent, though not a lot: they knew the man as “Jeff”, so they named me “Jeff” and not “Jeffrey” or “Geoffrey” or “Jefferson” or “Jeffkingoftheworld”. I would have preferred “Jefferson”, but I wasn’t asked.) So Jerry was, for my father, yet another friend who had died.

Now, I have my own thoughts (as would my sister) about Jerry Falwell. And at one point I thought I should write a real obituary here on my blog. But I decided to wait in order to sort my thoughts. And, thoughts sorted, what I really want to say here is: Jerry Falwell was my father’s friend.

You see, I could write (as could my sister) about life at the college he founded. In fact, I could—and maybe still will—write an entire book on the subject. I could, better than most, criticize and ridicule the man, if that were my goal (though I don’t think I would ever have such a goal). I could get into the politics of the Moral Majority and homophobia and women-should-be-in-the-kitchen-ism. I could remember all of the sermons I had to endure with the cliched phrases like, “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” I could, in short, remember the man for his shortcomings. But I won’t.

For me, Jerry Falwell’s death was something else. I got a text message and a phone call, and I had to tell my father that another one of his friends was dead.

Criticize Falwell all you want. Hate him, call him misogynist and homophobic and racist (which he was, at least at one time in his past). But he was, as in fact all of us are, a human being, and some people loved him, and not because they saw him on TV and sent him $50 every month.

He was a husband, a father, a grandfather, and a friend to some. And Lord knows, when I die, I want to be remembered and missed for what good things I might have been—not for my political views, but for my friendship.

Luckily for me, none of my friends are nationally known, and none of them are as divisive as Falwell. Nor am I. So when one of my friends die, or when I die, we will be mourned for who we are and not for who the world has estimated us to be. This is a good position to be in, I think.

But Jerry Falwell was in the limelight—big, charismatic, controversial. And CNN and all the major networks carried the story of his death, probably with commentary about what it meant and how things might or might not change in America without him on the scene.

The story they did not carry was that of a man sitting at a kitchen table somewhere in Germany, playing a board game with his wife, son, and grandson, being told that yet another of his friends had died.

It’s a story it was up to me to tell. So I have told it.

jj

WARNING. If vulgar and racist language or reminiscences on the OJ case is NSFW, perhaps you should click away from this post and read it when you get home.

I woke up this morning to read this: New York bans N word. I’m all for symbolic gestures and such, I suppose. I don’t feel strongly one way or the other about hip hoppers and gangstas calling each other nigga. To each their own.

(The only thing I DO feel strongly about with regard to hip hop is that it is obviously violent, sexist, and violently sexist. Not to mention obscene and vulgar. How any decent Americans can allow their 14 and 15 year-old kids to go to a school dance and listen to violently sexist music and perform dances which involve girls bending over and letting boys grind their pelvic area into theirs in some kind of wild monkey sex roll playing game is…well…strange to me. It makes the Baptists seem right about dancing. Of course, I may just be jealous….)

However, New York doesn’t want hip hoppers saying, “nigga”, so they did the obvious and passed a law. Because, after all, the word is

considered by most Americans to be the most offensive in the English language

Whoooaaaaaaa, Tonto! Did you hear that? Put that bottle of firewater down and listen to what I just read to your skinny red-skinned ass. Hey, you too, Geronimo. Take your thunderstick out of miss Wahoo’s injun cunt and get over here and listen to me.

For that matter, all you micks and kikes and dikes and chinks and spics and gooks should also listen up. And I want both the wops AND the degos to quit buttfucking each other like faggots and pay attention.

Are you listening? Here it goes again. The word Nigger is

considered by most Americans to be the most offensive in the English language.

Got it?

This reminds me of Chris Darden during the OJ trial:

MR. DARDEN: You understand that that word is the most vile word in the English language?
MS. MCKINNY: I think it is one of the most vile words in the English language, yes.
MR. DARDEN: You think there are worse?
MS. MCKINNY: Yes, I certainly do. Why are we having this adversarial relationship? I don’t understand that. It is a vile word. Why do I have to define it more so than it is? *

Obviously I and Ms. Mckinny have a similar opinion.

This is perhaps the most bizarre exchange in the history of American jurisprudence. Remember that they are speaking of Mark Fuhrman, a prosecution witness. Why Chris Darden—a prosecutor—wanted to hammer home how vile a word is that one of his witnesses has used has somehow escaped me in the dozen years since then. Of course, everything in that case was overkill. Take the so-called “impeachment” of Fuhrman’s testimony. What EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN AMERICA knew is that Fuhrman had lied when he said he had never said the word nigger. EVERY SINGLE PERSON would include both the prosecutors, the defense, the judge and the jury. Why beat the dead horse?

I’ll tell you why: because it was NOT RELEVANT TO THE CASE. I don’t know if they teach it in law school, but it certainly is a time-tested rhetorical device: repetition implies relevance. Thus the defense wanted to bring it up as often as possible. Chris Darden’s own foray into the waters of the N word could only help imply relevance—and it was NOT RELEVANT TO THE CASE. Mr. Darden was effectively lending credence to a bizarre and incredible conspiracy theory. People somehow remember that Chris Darden got “baited” by the defense to get OJ to try on the glove. They don’t remember that Chris Darden got “baited” to spend an enormous amount of time—every single second of which was harmful to the prosecution—eliciting testimony about the N word.

People, I could have done a better job than Chris Darden, and I didn’t even go to law school. All the prosecution should have done is made one statement during final argument:

Dear Jury, the defense would like you to believe that since Mark Fuhrman lied when he said that he had never used the word nigger, he therefore framed OJ Simpson.

Then I would laugh hysterically until Judge Ito threatened me with contempt.

Okay, I’m not a lawyer and this probably would be shitty lawyering. But I didn’t say I would be good—I just said I would have done a better job on this subject than Chris Darden.

I also think I would do a better job than the New York City Council.

I’m positively SURE I would do a better job of reporting this story than Daniel Trotta.

jj

*The Mckinny testimony is here: Mckinny

Telling my story about a French toilet in Spain, and reading about a similar toilet in India, and remembering similar toilets in Taiwan—well, I saw a pattern. Seeing a pattern, one looks for a Greater Truth.

Here is the greater truth: Squat Toilets.

The Greater Truth is that the “squat toilet” can be found all over the world. Just google squat toilet and you’ll see I’m right. China, Japan, Turkey, India, Bangladesh…you get the picture. The squat toilet is a general fixture in the Orient.

So why do they have squat toilets in France and Spain? Okay: Spain was occupied by the Moors for 700 years. The Moors were North African Muslims, and Islam is “oriental”. Perhaps squat toilets thus moved north from the middle east to the Moors to the Spaniards and north to the French. But who knows?  Is there a standard historical work on toilets?

It is a great mystery. I mean, the French pride themselves on being civilized. They have their “ooh la la” language and Parisian fashion and the world’s absolute best bread in the baguette. They have their fancy wine and cuisine. They have their well-educated political elite and ultra-sophisticated attitudes towards just about everything in the universe.

But they have squat toilets.

Not everywhere, perhaps. Your hotel room in Paris likely has a sit-down toilet (it also likely has a bidet—but that’s another story altogether). But go to a a normal bathroom in a normal restaurant in a normal town and you might very well have to use a squat toilet.

This is the French Mystery. Why would a country which could create something so civilized and perfect as a croissant not wish to perfect and standardize basic hygiene?  Is French culture all about outward appearance—well-dressed, well-coiffed, and perfumed on the outside, but psychologically indifferent to any advances in shit-removal technology.

Here in Germany things are different. I have never seen a squat toilet. But EVERY toilet, public or private, has a toilet brush nearby—which you are expected to use. That’s right: in Germany, whether you are at a train station or an airport or a gas station or a campground, you can expect that the toilet you use will be relatively clean. Because after you flush you ARE expected to look at the toilet bowl and use the brush to brush away any remaining shit-streaks or particles so the next person doesn’t have to look at them.

Germany, in general, has the cleanest public toilets of any place I have ever been.

Which I find to be one of the nicer things about Germany.

jj

The current Wikipedia article on John Wilkes Booth contains the following about half way down:

One thing that the public fails to know, thanks to the government and censorship commitees, is the fact that John Wilkes Booth did not kill Abe Lincoln. Chuck Norris killed Abe Lincoln. No-one gets away with wearing a top hat in the presence of Chuck Norris.

I just stuff like this. I love Wikipedia.

I wonder how long it will last before some smart-ass removes it. At any rate, it will survive on my blog.

Oh, I guess I should give you the link: John Wilkes Booth. You’ll find the passage just above the section titled “Booth escaped” theories.
jj

UPDATE.  The passage has already been removed, although the change isn’t either discussed nor listed in the article’s history.  Cool!  I wonder how many people other than myself saw it?

I’m not sure whether I’m going to continue my Raymond Chandler marathon tonight or not. I read The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely and The High Window in four days. I also just read the short essay, “The Simple Art of Murder” about fifteen minutes ago, and it is chillingly good.

Chandler is a hell of a writer, but I guess a lot of it is personal taste: how else can I explain that my general distaste for similes (I can’t read more than a page of Updike before screaming “I can’t take another simile!” and throwing the book at the wall) is completely nullified by him. I can’t give you details—how can I, after reading three novels in four days?—but I do remember a couple, though not word for word. My favorite was comparing a woman’s face to “flat beer”. But enought on similes.

But that’s a matter of taste. That he is truly a great writer is, IMHO, not. What truly makes him great is in fact the same thing that makes the greatest western of all time great—and by this I mean the movie for which I promised a review several weeks ago when writing about justice and the western—and that is his understanding of the role of the “hero”. Of course, for me to explain this will first require me to write that review of the greatest western film of all time. And even then, I’m not sure I can do it.

Y’all could help, I suppose, by brushing up on some ancient literature like The Iliad and Plutarch’s Lives, but even then, you wouldn’t get it. If you could somehow understand the connection between Bruce Lee, Clint Eastwood, Achilles, Philip Marlowe, and perhaps even Barney Fife, then you might come close. If not, you have to wait for me to write it, and I’ve not felt well lately, and I have a gig on Saturday, and so on and so on.

(Besides, that’s what’s really irritating about blogging: I could give you the keys to the universe, and still only six or seven of you would know about it—and you wouldn’t have had to pay me a nickel. So don’t complain if I withhold the keys a little longer. Thank me if you get them at all.)

Anyway, the reason I’m not sure whether to continue my Chandler marathon is because I just got Encounters of the Spooky Kind today in the mail, and may just fire up the DVD player instead of crawling into bed with Chandler. We’ll see. Does anyone even care? It’s getting cold in here….

And by the way, I’ve edited this post six times and the Italics work and seem to be properly done in HTML, but ain’t showing up on the blog. Anyone know why?

And something good from Chandler to end today’s post.

“Dead men weigh more than broken hearts.” —Philip Marlowe

jj