By Jeffrey Page

The United States Navy in some respects still sails the oceans and seas in wooden schooners powered by beneficent winds filling their mainsails and jibs.

The Times ran a story over the weekend about a woman midshipman at the Naval Academy who has accused three members of the Navy football team of raping her after a party. In a hearing that could lead to formal courts martial of the men, the woman was asked a series of questions, the likes of which are not allowed in many state courts.

But this is the Navy, where questioning can be a judicial free-for-all and where rape victims often are victimized a second time – by the court. So, a defense lawyer’s question on how the victim shaped her mouth during oral sex was allowed, a question that could lead to many sexual assaults going unreported. But reported rapes in the military make for a shocking statistic. Quoting a Department of Defense survey, the Times noted there were approximately 26,000 rapes in the military last year, up 37 percent from 2010.

In the Naval Academy case, one of the defense lawyers was allowed to ask the woman if she had been wearing a bra when she was attacked, an outrageous question that manages to recall the grizzled old rape defense: “You saw what she was wearing; she was asking for it.” Was the attorney who asked about the woman’s underwear himself wearing boxers, briefs or nothing when he posed the question? He didn’t say.

Similarly he was permitted to ask her if she had described herself as a “ho” to a fourth man after having sex with him.

Another lawyer explained the question about oral sex by saying that her response could bear on the midshipman’s being a willing participant in the goings-on of the evening.

Questions like these – which were asked during 30 hours of cross examination – are responsible for the difference between the number of rapes that occur in a given year and the number of reported rapes in the same period.

Thanks to a politically active lawyer from Monticello who rose to become chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals, such questions are not allowed in civilian rape cases.

Lawrence H. Cooke, known as Larry to his friends or, when he was out of earshot, Cookie, had a long history as a defender of women’s rights in the courts, both as attorneys and judges, and as litigants. In an article about Cooke, The Historical Society of the New York Courts noted that he had told the magazine Good Housekeeping in 1974 that in matters of rape “women are outside the effective protection of the law and criminals know it.”

“Judge Cooke urged that the prosecution of rape cases be allowed to proceed without corroboration. That became the law and remains the law today,” the Historical Society said.

New York’s Rape Shield Law holds that, in most cases, a woman’s sexual history is not admissible in a rape trial. The exceptions include such narrowly defined situations as the victim’s prior sexual contact with the defendant.

Those Navy lawyers who asked about the rape victim’s mouth and whether she wore a bra wouldn’t have lasted a minute had they appeared before Lawrence Cooke.

He took women’s issues far more seriously than that. In 1980 he resigned from the University Club in Albany because it did not admit women, a club policy that later was changed. Later, when he was chief judge, he forbade judges and other court personnel from conducting official business with clubs whose membership rules excluded women.

At one point, Judge Cooke, who died in 2000, was admitted to the New York State Women’s Bar Association as an honorary member.

Plain old decency and fairness dictate that the Navy change its rules of evidence in rape cases. To reduce a rape trial to an off-color joke is an outrage against the people whom the Navy serves.

That would be all of us.

By Jeffrey Page

Remember the guy in 2008 who carried the sign reading, “Keep government out of my Medicare you damn socialist?” Was he a genuine anti-government activist taking his position to the extreme? Or was he just dumb as a post?

Now, five years later, this brand of prideful ignorance is still with us – why is this not a surprise? – and requires that we consider a young woman named Nina Davuluri, who is 24 years old and who is Miss America 2014.

A little background: Davuluri, 24, is a native born U.S. citizen. She was born in Syracuse, N.Y., lived for a time in Oklahoma and graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in brain behavior and cognitive science. She the Miss America contest as Miss New York and did all the goofy stuff that most of the 86 Miss Americas and all their runners-up before her had done since the early 1920s. There was the bathing suit business, (hers was zebra striped). There was the gown business (hers was canary yellow). There was the talent business (she performed an East Indian dance). And to show the judges just how smart she is, she was asked a question and responded by saying no, she’s not interested in plastic surgery for herself but that the procedure is available for anyone who wants it.

No surprises and in Davuluri, the judges liked what they heard and liked what they saw, and she was crowned.

The reaction was quick and furious. All it took was the revelation that Davuluri is of East Indian ancestry to bring out racist lunacy at its American best.

Here are some comments and observations I found while wandering around the internet. This is the stupidity that America still must deal with nearly 150 years after the end of the Civil War.

“I swear I’m not a racist. But this is America,” one woman wrote to buzzfeed.com.

“9/11 was 4 days ago. And she gets Miss America?”

“How the f— does a foreigner win Miss America?”

“Miss America is an Indian. With all do [sic] respect, this is America.”

“Congratulations Al-Qaeda. Our Miss America is one of you.”

I am reminded of e.e. cummings’s 1925 take on a great human failing: “Humanity i love you because when you’re hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink and when you’re flush  pride keeps you from the pawn shop.”

By Jeffrey Page

For a moment, I gave Sarah Palin credit for voicing one of the cleverer observations about the sound of war drums in Washington.

 “So we’re bombing Syria because Syria is bombing Syria?” she said. “And I’m the idiot?” 

So it’s like this. President Obama is outraged at Bashar al-Assad’s murderous use of chemical weapons against the easiest target of all – his own people. These would include subversive 4-year olds and other enemies of the regime, such as the rest of Syria’s children plus their mothers, fathers and grandparents, brothers and sisters.

In going after them, Assad has proved himself to be a very special kind of monster. No one on record – prince, president or prime minister – has done what he has done. Which is to say no national leader has ever given the order to assassinate his people with nerve gas, a substance hard to avoid once it’s deployed and one that produces a particularly nasty death.

But Obama has been unable to find many allies. Britain won’t join him – France will – and once again the United States is searching for a coalition, which is something you do long before you order the Navy into Middle Eastern waters. Who knows? Maybe Andorra will send a couple of soldiers to assist America. Or maybe Lichtenstein. Or Honduras. Maybe one of these days, there’s going to be a need for a worldwide response to some atrocity and some outraged nation, other than the U.S., will take the first step.

Obama is out there all by himself. In polling, the Pew Research Center found that 48 percent of those polled were opposed to U.S. military action in Syria. An ABC News/Washington Post poll found 60 percent against war, and an amazing 73 percent of Move On members – Obama’s base – say no to action in Syria.

But to paraphrase Pete Seeger about a different president in a different adventure in a different time, we could use our might against Assad and quickly find ourselves neck deep in the big muddy [or big sandy] while the big fool says to push on.

The official American position: Assad’s a thug. We hate Assad. Assad’s regime is opposed by “Syrian rebel fighters” – whoever they are – so let’s cozy up to them and hope for the best. But who knows? The “best” may have appeared on Page 1 of The New York Times yesterday, Sept. 5. See the seven prone Assad soldiers, their arms bound, their faces in the dirt. See the eight “Syrian rebel fighters” standing over them, seven with automatic rifles and one with a handgun. The event was the summary executions of the soldiers by people we’d in bed with, at least as far as our mutual loathing of Assad is concerned. You can see a video of the last moment in the soldiers’ lives at The Times’ web site. It is difficult to watch.

And the big fool says to push on.

The specific goal of an American military strike against Syria hasn’t been fully articulated yet, but one must suppose that destruction of Assad’s chemical plants and storage facilities must be high on the target list. But you never know what will happen when you play with gas. Hit a chemical factory or storage site the wrong way and things get very ugly very quickly.

Here’s a quick story about the uncertainties of gas warfare; this one is almost humorous. On a hot summer day at Fort Dix in 1964, Tango Company went for gas training. We were ordered to put our gas masks on and then file into a small hut whose air had been contaminated with chlorine gas. Then, one by one, we had to stand before the instructor, remove the mask, count to 10, salute, and leave the building. Most of us weren’t fast enough and inhaled some of the gas. We didn’t merely vomit, which is what chlorine gas is supposed to make you do, but we retched to a degree that felt like someone was ripping out our throats.

Here’s gas’ unpredictability. Our sergeants, who never carried backpacks or gas masks, were sitting under a tree, smoking cigarettes and getting a kick out of the sight of us rushing out of the gas house, choking and gasping for clear air.

And then, the gentle August breeze changed direction and some of the gas residue escaping from the hut fell on the sergeants, who bolted. We laughed – from our side of the rest area.

Has anyone figured out the potential damage to Syria’s children and other noncombatants if we bomb Syria’s gas facilities?

By Jeffrey Page

There’s a 100-year old document making the rounds on the Internet that some people undoubtedly will use to show that kids in 1913 got a better education than children in school now. Others will dismiss the test as a means to memorize and regurgitate facts.

In any case, it’s a 60-question test that was administered to eighth graders in Bullitt County, Ky., about 25 miles south of Louisville.

I’d like to tell you that I picked up my pencil, sneered at this easy exam of a time long ago when there was a century’s worth of fewer facts to know about. I’d like to tell you that I went on to score a perfect 100 percent. I’d like to tell you all that.

But I’d be lying.

Oh, I was able to spell “chandelier” and “scissors” and most of the other 38 words on the spelling section of the test – I was always good in spelling. I got “pennyweight” right though I hadn’t the foggiest notion of its meaning. I erred on “rhinoceros.” Don’t ask me why.

In math, I was successful in determining that if a man bought a farm for $2,400 and sold it for $2,700 he gained 12½ percent on his money.

I’d like to say that I breezed right through this question: “How many steps 2 ft, 4 inches each will a man take in walking 21.4 miles?” But the truth is I didn’t even attempt it. For one thing, the calculator I would use hadn’t been invented in 1913. Of course the real reason is that doing the arithmetic long hand would bring a monumental headache beyond the healing power of my bottle of ibuprofen. Or is it Ibuprophen?

How would you do on this exam?

In the grammar section, the testers asked questions I never encountered until high school, such as “What are the properties of verbs?” I had no idea—not in high school, not now. (Those properties are, courtesy of the answer sheet, person, number, tense, voice and mood. You say you knew that one? I don’t believe you.)

The kids were asked to diagram the sentence “The Lord loveth a cheerful giver” and I marveled at the innocence of the question’s wording and how quickly the testing company would be called on the carpet nowadays for mentioning you-know-who by name.

In geography, students were asked to name the six states that border the Ohio River and give their capitals. They also had to locate the following mountain ranges: Blue Ridge, Himalaya, Andes, Alps, and Wasatch.

Wasatch?

How are you doing?

The test had a section on physiology. “Describe the heart,” it asked and I imagine the answer to that terse question could have gone on for days. The students were also asked, “Why should we study physiology?” My question precisely.

Among the questions in the section on civil government were the following: “To what four governments are students in school subjected?” Watch out, that’s a Kentuckycentric question but you can probably figure it out. But if it is too Kentuckyish, try this: Name three powers given Congress by the Constitution. The House has the power to impeach federal officers; the Senate conducts impeachment trials; Congress has the power to declare war – though the framers might be shocked at the number of undeclared U.S. conflicts in the years after World War II.

The students had to name the last battles of the Civil War, the War of 1812, and the French and Indian War, and then name the commanders in each battle.

 Oh, and “Describe the Battle of Quebec.”

And, who invented the magneto? How about the phonograph?

Who led the first European expedition into what is now Florida?

 To see the entire test, go to: bullittcountyhistory.com/bchistory/schoolexam1912.html

For the answers, try:  bullittcountyhistory.org/bullitthistory/bchistory/schoolexam1912ans.html?.

Let me know how you do.

By Jeffrey Page

Every so often, a bunch of us convene to watch a movie at someone’s house, have dessert, and talk about the movie. This leads to talk about other movies.

And that often leads to statements such as:

The movie about whaddea-call-it? The one with what’s-his-name, Tom, Brad, something. George? Maybe George. Whatever the hell his name was. You know, that movie from – what was it? Last year, maybe ’11 – about the guy with the store. I heard it was terrific; maybe we should rent it. If I could just come up with the name.*

Everybody seems to have his own special area of forgetfulness: Birthdays and anniversaries are classic. Faces are popular. And there are a million other facts known to everyone except the person trying to remember.

My special area of forgetfulness is movies and their directors, their actors, their story lines. I don’t remember anything about movies anymore, and I’ve come to understand that it’s not all my fault. The responsibility lies with the inventors of the VCR and the DVD.

I remember when seeing a movie was a special event, such as my parents allowing me to go to the children’s Saturday matinee. Invariably the program included a Western or a war movie starring John Wayne, Jeff Chandler or Burt Lancaster. For me, this was just once a month because my mother thought that most movies were trash and not worth my time.

In high school, a movie was for an occasional Friday night or Saturday night date – still special. Even if you saw two movies a month – and I don’t think I saw that many – it was 100 a year. This seemed to be a number that allowed you to concentrate on – and remember – the film. It was a number your memory could handle. You could retain great images and great performances.

Everything changed with the advent of VCRs, video stores, DVDs, Netflix and public library collections of movies on disc. All of a sudden, it was movies on demand, a chance to see the classics you missed as a kid, the documentaries you never find at the local movie house, or some of the recent releases. All that, and an admission price that’s dirt cheap compared with tickets at the box office.

A number of years ago, my cable TV company and I parted company (an amusing story in itself but for another time). I never replaced it. So I didn’t have cable but I still had my TV set so I joined Netflix. Great deal. Early on, I rented “Animal Crackers” with the Brothers Marx, and “White Heat,” my favorite James Cagney movie of all time.

Soon, I realized I was watching movies all through the week. I went through the movies made from Charles Dickens’s stories. I think I ordered all the Astaire-Rogers movies. “On the Waterfront” several times. Lots of Bogart, lots of Ingmar Bergman. Some Marilyn. Some Garbo. Plenty of Bette Davis. “The Bicycle Thief” for the 10th time in my life.

I OD’d on movies and after a while the damage was done; my poor brain couldn’t take it all in. I would talk about movies and utter such profundity as “That movie [“Coming Home”] with Jane Fonda and whatsisname [Jon Voight] about her taking up with the paraplegic guy [Voight] while her husband Dustin Hoffman [uh, no, that would be Bruce Dern] is still in the war [Vietnam].”

This kind of babbling is the result of the facts of too many movies banging into one another in my consciousness. There’s just so much room in my brain to remember all there is to remember.

An example: Remember the scene in “Five Easy Pieces” in which Jack Nicholson is ordering lunch (or was it breakfast?) and tells the waitress what she can do with the chicken salad?

Was it chicken salad? Or was it tuna?

* * *

* The movie would be “High Fidelity,” released in 2000, with John Cusack playing the obsessive owner of a vinyl-record shop.

By Jeffrey Page

It was almost 8:30. I don’t remember if I had a lot of undone homework, or if my mother simply wanted to watch the second half of the Kate Smith show. In any case, she laid claim to the TV.

This was May 21, 1952, and the Dodgers were playing the Reds at Ebbets Field. I begged her to let me just watch the first inning and then the television was all hers. She agreed. Poor Ma.

Much has been written about the wonderful slow poetry of the game of baseball such as the mysterious “3.” That is, 3 strikes, 3 outs, 3 squared for the number of innings. And there’s no clock. The game ends when the game ends. Also, the distance from home plate to outfield fences are rarely the same from ballpark to ballpark. But on this particular night, the nature of the poetry of gently rhyming stanzas and regular lilting meter would give way to the anarchy of free verse. It was a night never forgotten even decades later, a night when all the suffering that Dodger fans had endured – and would endure – would vanish.

Our pitcher, Chris Van Cuyk, looked good in the top of the first inning. He struck out the Reds’ leadoff batter, got the No. 2 man to fly out, and then struck out the mighty Ted Kluszewski. Then the Dodgers came up to bat, and the inning would not be over for another hour.

Let me give you an idea of the pleasure of that game. Our third baseman, Billy Cox, grounded out. Billy always had a better glove than bat. But then Pee Wee Reese walked, and Duke Snider, our mythic centerfielder, who grew avocados in the off season, hit the ball onto Bedford Avenue. We were up 2-0. Nice.

Jackie Robinson doubled. Andy Pafko walked. George Shuba singled, scoring Jackie. Pafko was caught stealing. Gil Hodges – the sainted Gil Hodges for whom nuns prayed and who received crosses and mezuzahs in the mail when in a hitting slump – walked. We loved Gil. And Rube Walker, Van Cuyk, Cox and Reese all singled in succession. All of a sudden, we were up 3-0, 5-0, 7-0. It just kept happening. Dodgers swung and Dodgers connected.

“That’s enough,” my mother said and went to the kitchen to make herself some coffee. No matter the occasion or time of day, everything in our house was done over a pot of coffee.

In the living room, my father and I were delighted by the explosive power of our guys. With two out, still in the bottom of the first, Brooklyn sent 15 batters to the plate. This is what they did:

Walked, singled, singled, singled, singled, walked, hit by pitch, singled, walked, walked, singled, singled, hit by pitch, walked. You could look it up.

Finally, with the score 15-0 and the bases loaded, Duke Snider strode to the batter’s box. His manner was easy, his bearing proud. Whether or not there was a smile on his face I do not recall. Men laughed and children shouted as he took a couple of practice swings.

Duke struck out. Hey, the man’s entitled. By the time he retired 12 years later he had connected for 407 home runs. Later he would get a plaque in Cooperstown.

I surrendered the TV set, but the Kate Smith show was long over. The next day I would learn that the Dodgers had scored another four runs. The Reds scored 1.

If I live to 150, I will never forget the wondrousness of that 19-1 night game in May. For me it was the middle point in Dodger greatness, coming after the World Series humiliations at the hands of the Yankees in 1941, ’47, and ’49. I was too young for that.

And coming before my own sense of grievous loss when Brooklyn went down to the Yankees again in my years of ’52, ’53 and ’56. Yes, there was, finally, the World Series victory of 1955, but it came just two years before O’Malley inflicted his own brand of humiliation on his team’s fans and moved the Dodgers to Los Angeles.

There were plenty of great moments for the Dodgers, but that one game so many years ago in 1952 made us young forever.

By Jeffrey Page

So let me get this straight.

Anthony Weiner is a man whose name is now a fast, needless-to-explain punch line. He is an exhibitionist, a liar, a member of Congress forced to resign a Brooklyn seat that could have been his forever. He is a betrayer of his constituents. He is a man who at age 47 sent salacious photos of himself to women on the internet. He reportedly engaged in on-line sex in the last year with a 22-year old woman.

And none of that, he wants you to know, should disqualify him from being mayor of a town of 8 million people, many of whom don’t have time to have fun with on-line sex because they’re too busy trying to pay the rent and make sure they still have jobs next week.

And so, Anthony Weiner (aka: Carlos Danger), having apologized once, has now apologized twice, has hauled his wife out before the cameras to tell the word – and especially New York voters – that Anthony is just one sweet guy. What is it with her?

By the way: “Carlos Danger?” What is that all about?

When the Weiner pictures first showed up on line, his response was that the guy in the photo might have been him but he couldn’t be sure, truly one of the more bizarre responses since Bill Clinton’s educating the grand jury in the Lewinsky Affair: “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”

When it became clear to Weiner what “is” was, and that it sure was himself in those pictures, he vanished for a few months, emerged, got himself a sympathetic interview in the Times Magazine, entered the race for the Democratic nomination for mayor, swore off his heedless ways, showed some terrific poll numbers over the former frontrunner Christine Quinn. He has lost some numbers in the last few days, which indicates to me that maybe the voters are sick of playing the fool to Weiner.

Now, Weiner finds himself trying to talk his way out of a little problem of having sent more pictures of his revealed self to three women – for about a year after he quit Congress in disgrace and announced he would seek therapy.

Who knew that the correct spelling of “schmuck” begins with a-n-t-h.

I think a man’s fantasy life is something that ought to remain between the man and his pants, but it should now be clear that Weiner has been playing the voters as a bunch of gullible morons who will accept anything he says – as long as he looks troubled, looks contrite, and as long as his wife, the unfortunate Huma Abedin, stands by his side at yet another news conference to declare that no matter what Weiner did, she very strongly believes that his mistakes are “between us and our marriage.”

But that of course is not the case at all.

What Anthony did is not a private little trouble spot in a marriage, which would be none of anyone’s business. But because he seems to have trouble with the truth, especially when voters are concerned, an enormous problem exists between Anthony and the nearly 3 million registered Democrats of New York who are eligible to vote in the primary. Are they supposed to believe Weiner in this playing out of Strike Two? What about when this fiasco is over and a new one emerges?

If there is another incident, could Weiner really go before the press to say again that he’s learned his lesson and that if you don’t believe him, just ask Huma what a great guy he is.

Of course a man’s private life is private. But that’s not how it works in politics, a fact that Weiner would embrace when he’s ready to be honest with himself and with the voters.

“This is entirely behind me,” he said in this year’s Weiner confession. Voters might disagree, and this time, Weiner could be roasted.

By Jeffrey Page

Once, the Red Apple Rest, halfway between Manhattan and the Catskills, was the perfectly located lunch stop on Route 17. It was a bustling place, where the men behind the counter would slap a hot dog onto a bun and, before you could reach for the plate, they’d be barking “Next!”

Though the opening of the Thruway reduced the crowds at the Red Apple, the place carried on for several years and the parking lots always had a respectable presence of cars and buses. There was something about the place, maybe the whimsical huge red apple that sat on the roof, that made people feel a little younger. Or maybe it was moms and dads with children remembering when their own folks took them to the Red Apple when they were kids.

Once, my family and I stopped on our way home to Liberty and I spotted Harry Seletsky in the parking lot doing a kind of waltz in tribute to his chocolate ice cream cone while slowing down every few seconds to take another lick. At the time, Harry was a Sullivan County elections commissioner and the chairman of the Sullivan County Republican Committee. You would not pay public homage to an ice cream cone in Monticello or South Fallsburg. But at the Red Apple Rest, it was all right.

The bill of fare was unquestionably slightly Jewish. The Apple’s vegetable soup with barley was renowned. It was one of a few places where you could order tomato herring sandwiches on onion rolls, or skinless and boneless sardines on pumpernickel. In spring, around Passover, the Red Apple served gefilte fish and matzoh, as well as leavened bread. Knishes were a fzvorite.

And always there was ice cream and custard, and what seemed like dozens of varieties of Danishes and muffins.

Another attraction was the presence of Mr. Reuben Freed, who opened the place in 1931. He did not sit in an office. He did not glad hand everyone who entered. Instead, Freed would clear tables – this in a suit and tie; always the suit and tie – greet long-time patrons, find tables for people with young children, and make sure no one on staff was malingering. He was in his eighties when I first saw him at work.

The crowds diminished as the resorts of Sullivan and Ulster Counties diminished. In an often used line, Milt Kutsher of the third generation of owners of the hotel bearing his name, once asked me, “You want to know what killed the Mountains? Air conditioning and airplanes.” They helped kill the Red Apple Rest as well.

In 1985, the Freeds of Monroe sold the place, and the crowds shrank some more. It might have said “Red Apple” in big letters on the side of the building, but it just wasn’t the same place. You’d walk in for breakfast and see maybe one guy sitting alone at a table finishing his eggs and coffee. Or you’d notice the stack of unsold newspapers. Even on weekends you no longer had to wait for a table.

The buyer of the Red Apple was Peter Kourakos; he closed down in 2006. One year later, officials condemned the building and it’s been going to seed ever since.

I mention all this because I was heading north on Route 17 the other day when I got to Southfields and saw the ghost of the Red Apple Rest. Most of the paint is gone. The big red apple up on the roof is gone. The big red lettering of RED APPLE REST on the building is crumbling. So is the invitation WASH ROOMS – though the fact is that even in the Apple’s last days under Freed family rule, the men’s room was by no means appealing. 

The building is surrounded by fencing. The front door seems to be falling apart. A bit of unintended irony is a sign on the door warning customers that they must wear shirts and shoes if they expected to be served.

The roof, which used to be a bright crimson, now is gray with a million flecks of red paint peeling off. You get the sense that one stiff wind would knock the place over. The day that happens, nothing will be left but the memories.

By Jeffrey Page

Valerie Jarrett also just happened to work for the city of Chicago, and just happened to hire Michelle LaVaughan Robinson (later Mrs. Obama), who just happened to have worked at the Sidley Austin law firm, where former fugitive from the FBI Bernardine Dohrn also just happened to work, and where Barack Obama just happened to get a summer job.

An old friend sent me that tirade – there are 13 more paragraphs, but not enough time to discuss them all here – with the explanation that he receives a lot of similar stuff and that I might get a kick out of looking it over and maybe discussing it at Zest of Orange.

The material displayed in italics was just one of 14 similar paragraphs that, I think, serve to show that some people have entirely too much time on their hands, and ought to consider studying the oboe or 18th Century religious poetry.

The title for this stuff is “Coincidence? No not really,” and I suppose its purpose is to plant in the American consciousness the idea that President Obama is not who he claims to be.

They have coincidences? I have questions.

So here are some annotations to the Jarrett paragraph. By the way, Jarrett is one of President Obama’s closet advisers.

–Questions: Aside from Jarrett, how many other people worked for the city of Chicago? How long did she work there? What did she do? Was she a deputy mayor? A trigonometry teacher? Maybe a meter maid?

–Questions: Surely Michelle Robinson had a life before she married Obama. For what purpose did Jarrett hire her? Wasn’t Jarrett entitled to legal representation? Was Jarrett charged with trying to overthrow the government? Or had she decided to draw up her will and looked for counsel to assist her? She is allowed to have a will, right?

–Questions: Did Bernardine Dohrn bust into the offices of Sidley Austin with a loaded .38 and demand a job? Or did she go through the usual dreary process of applying through H.R.?

 –Questions: Didn’t Dohrn have the right to work at any place in the world that would hire her?

 –Questions: Was Barack Obama allowed to apply for, and keep, a summer job at Sidley Austin? Didn’t he come in on time, fill out honest time cards, and abide by workplace rules? Or is the Coincidence gang saying that Obama robbed the petty cash box?

The signature on these 14 paragraphs is “Don and Mary Moore.” Does anyone know who they are? I don’t.

The last line of the Coincidence paragraphs is attributed to Aristotle, but does not say from which of his writing it is taken. Not good scholarship.

“Tolerance is the last virtue of a dying society,” Aristotle is alleged to have said. I think the use of a supposed grim quote like that from Aristotle is meant to make readers think, “Oh boy, this guy Moore is a smarty.”

Frankly, I end my questioning of the Jarrett paragraph with a quote closer to home. In a lecture series entitled “New England Reformers” in 1844, Ralph Waldo Emerson declared:

“Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner, or before taking their rest, when they are sick, or aged. In the morning, or when their intellect or their conscience have been aroused, when they hear music, or when they read poetry, they are radicals.”

By Jeffrey Page

Well, of course Antonin Scalia dissented in The Decision this week as the Supreme Court overturned the Defense of Marriage Act and basically informed gay men and women that this really is one nation after all. Anyone who was surprised by Scalia’s vote was fooling himself.

For me, it was another Scalia moment that came to mind, the case in 2003 when the Supreme Court struck down a Texas anti-sodomy law that had been on the books for years and practically never enforced. The court essentially ruled that what happens in a bedroom between consenting adults is nobody’s business but their own.

At the time of the Texas case, the dissenting Scalia expressed great fear for the nation. He said, “The court has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda.”

What agenda did Scalia have in mind? Was it the one in which gay people vow they will not tolerate the crucifixion of young gay men on frontier fences in Wyoming, the tortured end of Matthew Shepard in 1998?

Was it the one in which gay men and women say they will no longer accept being treated as semi-citizens?

Or was it the agenda in which they demand the right to marry their person of choice – just as Scalia did when he wed Maureen McCarthy in 1960.

Could it have been the agenda that notes the presence of gay people in the military and their objection to being kicked out because of sexual orientation?

Or was it the agenda that has as its basis a demand for strict interpretation of the 14th amendment: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States … are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.” It goes on to declare that no state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Equal protection; I could have sworn every judge from the Supremes down to traffic court knew the meaning of that.

Anything wrong with these agendas?

When we speak of Scalia, we speak of a judge who coined an ear-catching phrase a decade or so ago – “homosexual sodomy” – and has been riding it ever since. This is a judge who said that outlawing “homosexual sodomy” is “a no-brainer” when he must know somewhere in his soul that outlawing sex between men, women or a combination isn’t possible. Scalia may be unhappy that he has no control over this but it doesn’t matter. Government cannot outlaw that which nature has sanctioned.

“For 200 years, ‘homosexual sodomy’ was criminal in every state,” Scalia said last year as if to suggest that made the criminalization acceptable.

He forgot to mention that slavery became illegal 78 years after the Constitution was ratified. Did that make America’s 78 years of slavery acceptable?

But enough of Scalia. Let good people throughout the land raise a toast to the members of the court who did the right thing.