“… when mercy seasons justice …”
April 5, 2009
JOHN DEMJANUJK
The Los Angeles Times had a video on its site in which the son of a man accused of participating in the deaths of thousands of people in a Nazi concentration camp, argues both that his father, John Demjanjuk, is innocent and that his father – now 89 and frail – should not be extradited. A U.S. immigration judge on Friday issued an indefinite stay of deportation based on the Demjanjuk family’s claim that making the elderly man travel from Cleveland to Germany for trial would be tantamount to torture. The stay will continue until the judge rules on the merits of the claim.
Demjanjuk has already been convicted of lying to authorities about his past as a Nazi guard, but his conviction under a charge that he was the notorious “Ivan the Terrible” of the Treblinka death camp was overturned based on evidence that identified another man as that guard.
Now he is charged with 29,000 counts of accessory to murder at the Sorbibo concentration camp in Poland.
On the face of it, one might say that, inasmuch as he lied about his past in order to become an American citizen, it’s tough luck for Demjanjuk if travel would be hard on him or even kill him. However, modern technology makes it unnecessary for Demjanjuk to be in Germany for the trial; he could attend through closed-circuit television or a secure webcast. Also, in spite of what is already known about his past, American justice can be true to itself only by granting him the presumption of innocence on the charges at issue. If he is sent to Germany for trial and is acquitted, and dies prematurely because he was forced to attend in person, that would be one more injustice piled on all the other unrequited injustices of the past.
JOHN DEMJANJUK
If Demjanjuk is convicted of the charges against him, he should be deported to submit to whatever sentence is imposed on him – old or not, sick or not. Both the enormity of the crimes of the Holocaust and the fact that the roots of such crimes still exist among white supremacists and anti-Semites require that everyone who participated be brought to justice. But another suitable response to such crimes, especially when guilt has not yet been determined, is to act with the quality of mercy that was absent from the Nazi mind, a quality that is the antithesis of Nazi thinking.
Netflix update No. 3: “Next Stop Wonderland”
April 4, 2009
HOPE DAVIS
Last night we watched “Next Stop Wonderland,” a 1998 film about a young woman, played by Hope Davis, whose erratic, activist boyfriend, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, leaves her once again – for good, this time, he says. While she’s getting used to life alone, her mother (Holland Taylor), who has issues of her own, places a personals ad for her daughter without asking permission. In the background is a young man (Alan Gelfant) who works as a plumber for his compulsive gambler of a father but volunteers his time at a Boston aquarium and is studying to become a marine biologist.
This movie is reminiscent of a 1983 TV flick, “Your Place or Mine,” that starred Bonnie Franklin and Robert Klein – who coincidentally plays a role in “Next Stop Wonderland.” In that movie as in this one the couple who are meant to be together don’t meet until the last few minutes.
“Next Stop Wonderland” is worth seeing. It is a careful study of character – and character flaws – and philosophical without being heavy-handed, amusing without being exploitative or patronizing. Brad Anderson’s quirky direction puts an element of the unexpected into every scene, and his use of Boston locations gives the whole film a rich visual context. Faces apparently are an important part of storytelling for Anderson, and I’m a sucker for that perspective. The casting – including the secondary parts – served the story well. It’s hard to look away from either Hope Davis or Alan Gelfant. All the performances are credible and witty.
It’s interesting that the posed promotional shot for this film has Davis sitting on top of a railroad car wearing a very short dress with a very low neckline. Her character in the movie is nothing at all like that. Apparently the ad department thought the potential audience was too stupid to be attracted to the movie on its own merits.
The land of the free
April 3, 2009
I realized this morning while I was shaving that when I first visited Yankee Stadium, it was not yet 30 years old. (Shaving is like hitting, Yogi: It’ s better not to think while you’re doing it.) Anyway, that calculation got me to thinking about the new “Yankee Stadium” – as though there could be such a thing – and I got angry all over again about Macombs Dam Park, a wonderful, expansive facility that was destroyed so that the Yankees could build a stadium better suited to fleecing high rollers. The park is supposed to be replaced – at an enormous expense to taxpayers, most of whom will not benefit at all from either the new stadium or the so-called replacement parks. And no matter what the city does, when it gets around to it, it will never really replace Macombs Dam Park, which was a jewel in the midst of a hard-knocks, congested neighborhood. If the Yankees and the city wanted to tell the people of the South Bronx once and for all, “You don’t matter,” this was the way to do it.
“God save our gracious queen ….”
April 2, 2009
MICHELLE OBAMA
Television newscasters last night were preoccupied with questions about why and how the Obamas touched Queen Elizabeth II. The Obamas gave the queen the two-handed shake, and that – according to people who care about such things – is reserved for those one knows very well, indeed. Also, Michelle Obama put her arm around the queen at one point, and that – so the experts say – is flirting with impropriety (although it was obvious in the clip that was run over and over and over again that the queen also briefly touched Michelle Obama’s back during that encounter). And, of course, there’s the iPod.
This business gets me thinking again about the purpose of monarchy in the 21st century, at least in places where the monarch does not govern. Monarchs who do govern are problematic in themselves, but that’s another issue. I discussed this once with a chemist in Denmark. We were having dinner, and I asked him why he thought a country like his – advanced in most ways – hangs on to the monarchy, in that case, Queen Margrethe II. Denmark has so far removed the monarchy from any real influence in government that members of the royal family do not vote in elections, although they have the right to. The chemist thought about this for a few seconds; he seemed to never have considered the question before and certainly didn’t have a pat answer. Finally he said, “Well, she is Denmark, isn’t she?” which I guess is as good an explanation as any. Of course a flag serves the same purpose, but if you hug a flag, it doesn’t hug back.
Where is Emma Goldman when you need her?
April 1, 2009
It was heartwarming to read this morning that among those who broke into the Royal Bank of Scotland and fairly trashed the joint were anarchists. I’ve always been attracted to anarchism as a political idea because, as far as I can tell, anarchists have never agreed on what it means. In that regard, it’s like existentialism in philosophy, a perfectly good term, according to Jacques Maritain, except for the “incidental disadvantage” that it “has been used to mean so many things that it no longer means anything at all.” What could be more suited to a word like anarchism than confusion over what it signifies. The word certainly has panache. If I were going to break into an institution like the Royal Bank of Scotland and throw keyboards through the windows, I’d certainly like to be identified in the press as an anarchist. Who better than an anarchist – whatever that means – to make such a graphic protest against a stodgy old institution that just gave its chief executive officer a million-dollar-plus sendoff after the government had to rescue the bank from the consequences of its bad business practices? Sound familiar?
I think my favorite anarchist is Errico Malatesta. His surname reminds me of a squib from George Ade: “The more he thought about it, the more his head hurt.”
Klavan. Any relation to Cliff?
March 31, 2009
RUSH LIMBAUGH
Andrew Klavan, the fiction writer and journalist, makes an interesting point in his “Limbaugh Challenge” column making the rounds this week. Klavan suggests that many people he characterizes as liberals, who are dismissive of Rush Limbaugh, probably have never listened to Limbaugh’s show and know what he says only through excerpts and sound bites – which Klavan maintains are edited precisely to make Limbaugh sound bad. When I was a fulltime journalist, readers often complained that I was a knee-jerk liberal, and I’ve also heard that complaint a few times with respect to my preaching. Those who made such judgments had never talked to me, and therefore had no way of knowing that I have many views that are hardly liberal. So I have a little context for this discussion from my own experience. I have a little more context from the fact that I have listened to Rush Limbaugh’s show many times, just as I have listened to Michael Savage and Sean Hannity. Truth be told, these fellows and I disagree on many if not most things, but I have found common ground with all of them at one time or another. Moreover, listening to them gets me to at least re-examine some of my own ideas, which I think is Klavan’s point. At the minimum, I suspect that Klavan is correct in his suggestion that people who publicly excoriate Limbaugh have only a cursory idea of what the man thinks and says. Limbaugh deliberately presents himself at times – as Lewis Grossberger once put it – as a “political vaudevillian,” and that makes it easy to simply write him off. But he represents and influences the viewpoints of too many earnest Americans to be dismissed simply as a clown.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-klavan29-2009mar29,0,5456892.story
Running the ball out of bounds
March 30, 2009
I came across a web site today in which George W. Bush was referred to as a modern-day Pontius Pilate. It was not intended as a compliment. The site was an elaborate comparison of Pilate’s administration in first-century Judaea and Bush’s administration in 20th century Texas, with the emphasis on the 152 persons who were executed while Bush was governor. The Catholic Church is opposed to the death penalty – as it was opposed to the war in Iraq – but George Bush was invited nonetheless to address the students at Notre Dame University.
Although I voted for Barack Obama, I disagree with his policies on abortion. I have to wonder, however, if those who don’t think Obama should speak at the university also expect Notre Dame to exclude from the discussions going on in its classes and seminars – exclude from the content of any essay, term paper, dissertation – references to the work of any person – scientist, author, dramatist, theologian, philosopher, political figure – whose views differed with those of the church.
Does anyone seriously believe that because Notre Dame invited Obama to speak, the university doesn’t subscribe to the church’s teaching on abortion, or that a single one of those graduates will change his moral views because he hears a speech by the president of the United States?
As for the honorary degree to be conferred on Obama, if the whole man is to be recognized anywhere in our society, one would hope it would be recognized at an institution of higher learning. It’s true, as some have said, that Notre Dame must remain constantly aware of what it is to be a Catholic university, but it also must remain aware of what it is to be a university.
Got a light?
March 29, 2009
The federal government’s April Fool’s joke on smokers will be the largest increase ever in the tax on tobacco. As of Wednesday, the federal tax on a pack of cigarettes will go from 39 cents to $1.01. There will be comparable increases in the tax on other tobacco products. Not that they’re a cynical lot, but cigarette manufacturers, anticipating that this tax increase will have a negative impact on sales, raised prices a few weeks ago to make up for their expected losses. This is all for a good cause. The government’s object is to raise $33.5 billion over 4 1/2 years to finance an expansion of health insurance for children. Those who campaign to discourage smoking hope this tax increase, particularly in the midst of a recession, will inspire some people to reassess their priorities and give up the habit.
The connection between smoking and health insurance for children may seem obvious, but it is in fact selective. There are plenty of things that are potentially damaging to children’s health – carbon emissions and some fast food, for example – that the government could tax more heavily to finance the insurance program. Tobacco is the most convenient target, because the nation’s significant shift away from smoking has given smokers the aura of lepers; no one will come to their defense. This is hypocritical, because the same government that depends on tobacco as a safe source of revenue, the same government that makes manufacturers warn their customers that the product might be lethal, the same government that bars cigarette advertising from radio and television, in effect sanctions the sale and consumption of tobacco products by not prohibiting them by law. Smoking is a legal activity, but government would rather impose what amounts to a punitive tax on folks who smoke – which doesn’t include me – than make a serious effort to finance health insurance and other necessary programs by eliminating chronic waste in the federal budget.
One of the current brouhahas in San Francisco has to do with the annoying custom – or business practice – known as tipping. The city wants the restaurants in town to either provide health-care coverage for their employees or pay a fee to the city so that the employees can be covered by the universal health-care program. The restaurant owners are suing the city over that issue, but they have a counter proposal: A “tip credit” that would reduce the minumum wage paid to wait staff by the amount they earn in tips. Don’t you love it? The minumum wage in San Francisco is $9.79 an hour, by the way – a far cry from the federal requirement, but hardly the stuff of which fortunes are made.
Tipping is one of my pet peeves. One of the reasons I like visiting Iceland is that tipping isn’t practiced there. Restaurants charge what they need to in order to pay the staff a living wage and still make a profit, and customers don’t follow up a meal by analyzing the quality of the service and the personality and repartee of the server. Civilized people, those Icelanders – although, there is the whole whaling thing.
”Whaddya think? Fifteen percent? Well, he did bring more coffee. OK, what? Eighteen? Twenty?” Just the thing to encourage digestion.
Sic transit whatyacallit.
March 27, 2009
WILLIE AAMES
I got to wondering the other day about whatever happened to Dick Van Patten. The occasion for me to wonder was a TCM broadcast of the 1948 movie “I Remember Mama,” which was inspired by a novel and in turn inspired a Broadway play and a television series. Which brings us to Dick Van Patten, who played Nels Hansen in the TV show. The “Mama” properties have to do with a Norwegian family living in San Francisco in the early 20th century. It’s wholesome stuff. Van Patten became a more prominent figure when he starred as the patriarch in the later TV series “Eight is Enough,” another wholesome show.
I didn’t finish watching “I Remember Mama,” because it would have kept me up until 2 a.m., so I put it in my Netflix queue. Before I got around to checking up on Van Patten, I read today that Willie Aames, who played one of Van Patten’s kids on “Eight is Enough” was selling his personal belongings in Kansas this week in order to pay off his debts. Aames also appeared in the series “Charles in Charge,” but apparently couldn’t hang onto the money he made. His drug habit probably didn’t help.
WILLIE AAMES
Life didn’t imitate art for the Bradfords – Van Patten’s TV family. Adam Rich, who played the youngest kid, has a string of arrests to his credit, including multiple substance abuse charges and break-and-entry. And Lani O’Grady, who played the eldest daughter on “Eight” died of a drug overdose, according to the Los Angeles County coroner. At one point in his life, Aames was ordained to ministry, a fact that prompted readers of the Dallas Morning News web site to quarrel on line today about why God hadn’t stepped in to lift Aames out of insolvency. Apparently these readers are unacquainted with concepts such as free will and personal responsibility.
DICK VAN PATTEN
Oh, I did check on Dick Van Patten. He’s doing fine, thank you, and still has that wholesome aura. He’s 80 years old now and has been happily married to Josephine Acerno since 1954. They have three sons, all of them actors, none of whom have been busted for drugs. Most of the Van Pattens are very good tennis players. Not pool, tennis. Dick Van Patten completely recovered from a diabetic stroke he suffered in 2006, and, as though to reinforce his wholesome image, founded a company that makes “Natural Balance Pet Foods.’
As George Ade said, “It all depends.”
CharlesPaolino's Blog 