And Reporting on Rabbis She Knew Was a Sin

 

I recently introduced my eldest to the dark comic songs of Tom Lehrer. He particularly likes the Irish Ballad which is about a girl who brutally murders her family. The song includes the lines: "And when, at last, the police came by, her little pranks she did not deny. To do so she would have had to lie and lying she knew was a sin." At one point, my son came over to me and in a very serious voice explained to me that he understood what was so funny about the song. "She knew that she should not lie but did not know that she should not kill her family." 

Humor is a very difficult art to master even for smart kids because to be funny requires that you have a baseline understanding of social expectations and how they may be illogical or subverted. For example, familicide is something so horrific that it should not be the subject of jokes. Part of what makes Lehrer funny, though, is precisely his transgressiveness in violating such a taboo. We find ourselves laughing because we know that we should not laugh. This is such an incredibly difficult balance to strike that no consistent rules can be given for doing so. Sometimes jokes are funny because they strike at a truth that we may not wish to admit to so we laugh and pretend that it is a joke. The power of the girl caring more about honesty than murder lies in the fact that it strikes at a real hypocrisy where the petty rules we use to instruct children can come to outweigh actual crimes. 

I bring this up because we are seeing this routine play itself out in the case of Chaim Walder (may his name and books be erased). For those unfamiliar with what has transpired, Walder was a popular children's author within the Haredi community until he was revealed to be a serial abuser. Rather than face judgment, Walder committed suicide on his son's grave. In this final act, Walder displayed a diabolical genius. He was a masterful writer and I confess that I liked his books and had been reading them with my son. As such, Walder understood the importance of an ending for giving readers an emotional body blow and affecting how they think of the entire story. By killing himself before the full extent of his crimes could be publicized, he got to end his story as the "victim" driven to kill himself by his accusers. Did his strategy work? One of his victims committed suicide herself and the Walder family was visited by many prominent rabbis during their period of mourning. By and large, the Haredi press chose to report on Walder's death as we might have expected them to before his downfall. 

One gets the sense that for many in the Haredi world, Walder's accusers, by going public, committed an even graver sin than Walder's abuse. There have been jokes circulating about how if only Walder had only touched girls to ordain them as rabbis then we could have had a real scandal. This joke stands on the shoulder of an older joke of how if activists wanted to get people's attention they should have lied and claimed that Haredi abusers were really handing kids candy without a good kosher certification. It needs to be understood that, underneath these jokes, lies the frightening truth that a large part of the Haredi leadership is not simply naive or lacking in empathy but honestly believes that speaking out about abuse really is worse than the abuse itself. 

This sounds absurd until you realize that there is a perfectly logical argument to be made here that speaking out about abuse, unlike actual abuse, undermines the entire community. The practical conclusion from this is, of course, utterly monstrous but if you are willing to accept the argument on its premises then you should be willing to bite the bullet and truly believe that it is worse to speak out about abuse than even to commit it.  

To start, we have to understand that Haredim, like most traditional societies, lack a category for a sexual abuser. Instead, what we have are the categories of rape and adultery. Walder clearly was not a rapist in the sense of jumping his victims in dark alleys. This means, that we are left accusing Walder of committing adultery with his victims, who were his "willing accomplices" and not victims at all. Obviously, what is being left out is a category to describe middle-aged men in positions of power who can intimidate and manipulate emotionally vulnerable teenagers, destroying their lives even to the point of causing them to commit suicide. 

One would still hope that adultery would be treated as a serious offense as it is in the Ten Commandments. The truth is that adultery, particularly when practiced by men, is treated as a minor sin. What needs to be understood is that adultery is a private sin and, as such, it can be left to the individual as they bang their chests on Yom Kippur. As long as the adultery takes place behind closed doors and does not reach the general public, the sin, in no way, threatens community authority and, by extension, the survival of the system. 

Not only do male adultery and even rape not threaten the system, but they can even actually help strengthen it. Rape sends girls the message that it is their responsibility not to be in certain places or behave in certain ways otherwise "bad things" will happen to them and it will be their "fault." Traditional societies have long tolerated prostitution on the logic that turning a blind eye to men sleeping with strangers made it more likely that they would consent to staying in loveless marriages and not divorce or have affairs with their neighbors and cause a scandal. Instead of prostitutes, what we have are vulnerable teenagers, who can be relied upon to stay silent knowing that they really "wanted it" and they will only destroy themselves and embarrass their families if they speak up.  

In contrast to the adulterer who has only committed a "minor" private sin, the abuse victim who speaks out has committed the ultimate "sin." Their action is public and directly threatens the survival of the system. Make no mistake, there are going to be teenagers who will read up on scandals like that of Walder and find the strength to tell their parents that they do not want to be religious and the parents will find themselves silenced because they are too ashamed to speak up for their faith. One thinks of the example of Ireland, where there has been a mass exodus from Catholicism among the youth because of abuse scandals within the Church. 

It should be recognized that the truly deadly scandal with clerical abuse scandals (whether Jewish or Catholic) has not been the fact that religious figures abused children. The real scandal has always been the wider coverups and the fact that the system cared more about its reputation than helping actual victims. The rabbis who gave Walder the funeral he desired, have likely done more damage to Judaism than Walder ever could. Even with this being the case, those rabbis clearly cannot shake the idea that if only Walder's victims had remained silent the "real" problem would have been solved and the Haredi world would be able to show itself to the world and its members in a desirable light

 .     

Boruch Learns His Brachos: A Horror Story

My kids love Boruch Learns His Brochos, the seemingly innocent tale of a little boy who, uncertain of what blessings to make on his sugar-heavy lunch, walks into a grocery store that mysteriously opens up across the street from him on the assumption that the owner knows something about what blessings to say. One might be forgiven for thinking that a story about ethnically diverse foods singing about what blessing to make on them is all good clean educational fun. That is until you think about the horrific implications of sentient food. When you eat food, it feels your teeth rip into it. The food is aware of itself dissolving in your stomach and cries out for revenge.  

What is really going on is that all the different foods have secretly taken over the store and are plotting to eat every human on Earth. The owner of the store, Tzvi, has kept himself alive by convincing the foods of a cargo-cult argument. Humans have power over food because they know how to make blessings. If the foods could figure out what blessing to make over humans, God would switch his allegiance to the foods and allow them to take over the world from the humans. Boruch enters the store, unaware that he is walking into a trap. As you can see, a gang of lip-smacking wine bottles is attempting to sneak up on Boruch while he talks on the phone. 

Having been raised as an Orthodox Jew, Boruch not only was never taught about diabetes but also never saw Saturday morning cartoons like Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. As such, he is unprepared for food that might try to eat him. 

Finding himself surrounded by killer food, Boruch uses his reason to figure out the proper blessings, tricking the food into believing that he has magical protection against them. Unfortunately, Jake cannot remember his blessings and is consumed head-first by a vicious happy birthday cake.

After figuring out all the blessings, Boruch then challenges the food as to whether they know the blessing to say over humans. The foods are all ignorant of evolution so they fail to realize that the proper blessing is Shehakol. Utterly defeated, the foods agree to let Boruch go. Until they discover the secret of the proper blessing for humans, the foods will only prey on people who do not know their blessings. Since eating food without a blessing is like theft, it is clearly worse than extra-marital sex. Thus, people who forget their blessings are the legitimate prey for horror monsters.  

Before he leaves, Boruch reveals that he is really Boruch Spinoza. What other nice yeshiva boy could have defeated man-eating food through nothing more than his reason? He explains that it really does not matter who eats whom as we are all part of the pantheist circle of life.  

Frederick Douglass Needs to Go

Frederick Douglass, as part of his post Civil War career advocating for blacks to be granted the vote, said some problematic things regarding Native Americans and burned some bridges with former suffragette allies. For example, he argued that blacks were eager to embrace American culture as opposed to Native Americans, who he saw as inherent outsiders. These were not innocent comments as the 1870s were the height of the American government's attempt to destroy Native American culture everywhere on the continent. In regards to woman having the vote, Douglass argued that it was not a priority as women were already covered by their husbands and fathers. This was in contrast to blacks for whom the vote was a literal matter of life and death.

It seems that Douglass did this on pragmatic grounds. He recognized that there was a large segment of American public opinion that could be brought around to supporting blacks voting as long as it was decoupled from rights for Native Americans or votes for women. Even better, you could convince such people that blacks were natural allies against Native Americans or women's suffrage.

To my friends back in Silver Spring, MD. There is a statue of Frederick Douglass at the University of Maryland College Park campus. Douglass grew up as a slave in Maryland before he escaped to freedom. He did not return until after the Civil War. If you are not charging down this very moment to College Park to tear down that statue, you implicitly endorse the genocide of Native Americans and patriarchy. If you do try to tear that statue down, you are endorsing slavery.

My advice is to take counsel from Martin Luther and John Calvin. There is no way that you can truly be anti-racist here. No matter what you choose, you are a Nazi. I know that many of you, brought up to believe that you could be a good tolerant person through your own efforts, will find this thought disturbing. Once you can get past your initial horror at the idea that you are just as bad as Hitler, there is a great comfort. First, your attempts to be tolerant were always doomed to fail anyway. Worse, all that they were ever going to do was add the sins of hypocrisy and self-deception to your racism. Now that you know that there is nothing you could have ever done to make yourself a less racist person, you can save yourself a lot of heartache by not trying. This has the advantage of making you a less annoying self-righteous Pharisee to everyone around you. 

If you are a Lutheran you still have to work having faith in Jesus. You do this by openly admitting that you are such an irredeemable racist that only Jesus can save you. You must go so far as to be bold in your racism because you have full confidence that it does not matter as Jesus has already atoned for you. If you are a Calvinist, your job is much easier. You can completely relax as God has already decided, before creation, whether or not he was going to send you to Hell for all eternity for your racism. 

On a serious note, the social contract begins when we recognize that all of us are truly terrible people who have been complicit in mass murder. Justice demands that all of us should be executed for our crimes. The social contract allows everyone to be forgiven for their crimes. You will not get equality. There will still be systemic racism and all kinds of privilege. The good news is that you will be able to keep your lives. Those who claim "No Justice, No Peace" have never seriously considered what justice truly means. The only way to have peace is to reject justice.

Sunshine: A Miami Boys Choir Vampire Musical (Part III)

(Part II)

The vampires attack Uman on Rosh Hashanah knowing that they would find many Jews with a demonstrated predilection for the dark side of idolatry and antinomianism. Rebbe Frost quickly converts the class to vampire Judaism. The only survivor is Chananya Yom Tov Lipa Katznellenbogenstein. (I know that he is a Shmuel Kunda creation, but bear with me.) Because of the events of the Magic Yarmulka, Chananya has become an excellent punchball player and a committed rationalist. He no longer believes in magic (yarmulka or otherwise) and strives to improve himself by working hard enough to match his God-given intelligence. He had refused to go on the class trip to Uman, saving his soul twice over. 

Chananya is left in a deep spiritual crisis. How could it be that his rebbe and the entire class would so easily abandon halakhic Judaism? Does not the existence of vampires prove that magic exists and refute science? Chananya decides to follow in the rationalist footsteps of the spy Caleb, who resisted the call of the antinomian spies by visiting the Cave of Machpelah to pray. He refuses to go to Rachel's Tomb because he found the Abie Rotenberg song to be idolatrous. God forbid that a monotheist Jew like Chananya would even think of praying to the patriarchs. On the contrary, Chananya only wishes to better contemplate their pious example so that his faith in reason (and the source of all reason) can be rectified.

It is therefore to Chananya's great surprise that he meets the patriarch Jacob, who had been living his undead existence in the cave for more than three-thousand years. Chananya expresses his ambiguous feelings in joining Team Jacob with "I Want to Know."

I want to know if I should care
I want to know if there is cause to fear 

Chananya wants to know if there is any point in continuing to struggle against vampire antinomianism. He also wants to know if he should be afraid that a vampire like Jacob might bite him. 

I've searched for days
And thought for nights

Chananya has searched for spiritual daylight to help bolster his intellectual rejection of vampire antinomianism that he has thought through.

Could my whole life been a meaningless plot
Could it be true, I am only half a man

Using post-modern meta-narrative, Chananya questions whether this whole musical is ridiculous and whether he is simply a screeching Jewish kid.

Then I met him, he brought me the signs
How blind I have been not to see the light
Show me the way, the only way
I've waited long for this day

Chananya met Jacob, who offers to instruct him in the Guide for the Perplexed and its esoteric vampire fighting secrets. (As a patriarch, Jacob has the chronological defying power of knowing literally all of Torah.) Chananya laments that he was never taught actual rationalist monotheist Judaism in yeshiva. He begs Jacob to instruct him in this one true religious way that allows for so many different ways.

And now I now that I should care
And now I now that there is cause to fear
But I would like to know what can I do

Now Chananya knows that there is objective truth known to reason that he should care about. He also knows that there really is a God worth fearing. This leaves Chananya, though, with a dilemma. What can he do against the vampires? He does not know the location of their secret headquarters nor does he know how to defeat such powerful enemies. 

The first problem is solved when Chananya realizes that it is pashut p'shat in Dracula that the town of Klausenberg, a city with a strong historic Jewish presence, is close to Castle Dracula. This must be the place where antinomian Jews and vampires first made their unholy alliance to take over the world. Though Chananya is eager to slay his rebbe and all his former classmates, Jacob cautions him to take heart as to the true way to defeat vampires. Together they sing "Sunshine." The song mixes their two distinct pains of loneliness, Chananya's recent and raw loss of his rebbe and classmates with Jacob's long-enduring agony of thousands of years of being a vegetarian vampire cut off from both the Jewish community and philosopher's heaven.   

Though the world's astray
And has slowly lost its way
With the goal of virtue fading


The world has been led to follow vampirism, abandoning any sense of Aristotelian virtue ethics, with its sense of objective good and bad action, in favor of brute power.

There's a steady light
That has kept away the night
With the brightness it's creating

Can we bring the world it's only sunshine
Only Torah yields the hope for mankind
Let the beauty of our song
Find the good in everyone
Through the darkness shines our faith in our times

At a practical level, it is only the rationalism of the Mishnah Torah that can defeat the vampires.  Being a Maimonidean frees you of superstition and allows you to recognize that there is nothing supernatural about vampires. They are nothing but a virus that can be eradicated. Even at night, they can be defeated with UV lights. The supposed superhuman strength of vampires is no match for a philosopher on the Maimonidean diet. At a spiritual level, Maimonideanism is a necessary antidote to vampirism. As long as people think of religion in terms of power and becoming immortal, they will inevitably be seduced by the allure of vampires and their offer of power and immortality.

Though we number just a few
We radiate the truth
Through the darkness shines our faith for all time

Maimonideans have always been a very small minority even within the Jewish community. It is really hard for them to even put a minyan together. But the moral power of their positions is so great that it radiates outward keeping idolatry in check. Even pagan Jews have to pretend to believe in God. 

Chananya journeys to Klausenberg and enters the secret underground vampire crypt. He quickly finds himself surrounded by Rebbe Frost and his former classmates. Rebbe Frost mocks philosophy as the destroyer of faith and asks Chananya what he believes in now his position is so clearly hopeless. Chananya confounds the vampires with the Averroesistic hymn, "B'siyata D'shmaya." These lyrics appear to endorse superstition while really being an ode to science.  

Have you ever felt there is nowhere to turn
Things feel confused 
No one's concerned
The times we live in are o so dark

The faith alights a spark
There is a vision, eases pain
Hope arises again, hope arises again

Everyone feels confused on occasion by the mysteries of the universe. A philosophical diety seems to lack the personal touch of mysticism with its idols and antinomianism. One might even turn to the darkness of vampires at a time like this when they appear to dominate. Faith in reason is a spark that protects you from the pain of a vampire bite. The philosopher, with his hope that his consciousness will become part of the eternal mind, will arise even after death, unlike the vampire who will not arise once properly staked but will turn to dust. 

B'siyata D'shmaya, whatever I do 
When I need him to help me, he always comes through
Never will I feel alone
Without him who can stand on their own

The Truths of physics, as embodied by the movements of the heavens, will never let a rationalist down. Chananya, even by himself, is never truly alone and has no need for the vampires' achdus hivemind. 

Prayer after prayer, tear after tear
Begging for help, for heaven to hear
When Hashem at his side
Every door is open wide
Our only hope is to look to the sky
Where he waits for our cries

What else produces tears like praying over some especially dense philosophical prose? One needs to open one's mind to hear the rational music of the heavens. When you place yourself on the side of universals, you can understand anything. There is no hope in looking to mysticism for understanding, but only in looking at the manifest laws of the universe seen in the heavens, which wait for us to cry out eureka.     


What follows is the bloodiest, most elaborate, and coolest fight scene in the history of Jewish musicals. 





Next, comes a punchball duel with Simcha Stark, which explains why it was only rational for Chananya to want sunglasses in an underground crypt. Rebbe Frost is shocked that the best boy in the park could lose at punchball. He pretends to do teshuva, singing the song from the Marvelous Middos Machine. Chananya responds that he always thought Abie Rotenberg was an idolater and performs the quadruple Death by Bais Din combo needed to kill senior vampires. 

The musical ends with "Kumt Shoin." These are the last lines of the Mishnah Torah, indicating the importance of Maimonides. They also are a rejection of the kind of apocalyptic political messianism that can only lead to antinomianism and ultimately vampirism. The rabbis as opposed to the "true tzadikim," never desired the Messiah to take over the world and rule over the gentiles. On the contrary, they honestly wished to be left alone to study God's Torah.   

Sunshine: A Miami Boys Choir Vampire Musical (Part I)

For the past forty years, Yerachmiel Begun has led the Miami Boys Choir, one of the most successful musical groups in the Orthodox world. It will come as a shock that all of this has been cover for Begun's lifelong dream to write a vampire musical. Many of his beloved songs have really been describing scenes for this musical. The key for reading these songs has been to recognize that references to the night are really about vampires and daylight has been the rejection of vampirism in favor of a non-antinomian Torah lifestyle.   

The musical opens with the singing of "V'he Shamadah" in the background as the narrator explains that the great enemy of the Jewish people has always been the vampires, who, as immortal beings, have been able to survive from generation to generation to try to destroy us. This war goes back to vampire Laban, the Aramean who "destroyed" our father Jacob by turning him into a creature of the night. This, though, was part of the divine plan to allow Jacob to survive the bite of vampire Esau. Jacob's neck became sparkly rock hard (like a Twilight vampire) and cracked Esau's fangs. The righteous Jacob was unique in history in being able to become a vampire and not lose his soul. (He did not even need a gypsy curse to put it back.) This is indicated by Rashi's comment that Jacob lived the life of a vampire like Laban, but still kept the commandments. Jacob survived as a vampire, which explains the rabbinic statement that "Jacob never died." Who else, besides for a vampire, does not die even after they are buried?   

Down through the centuries, Jacob has guided his children in fighting vampires. The vampires, seeking revenge against Jacob, have waged a never-ending campaign to destroy the Jewish people by inventing anti-Semitism. It was a vampire intelligence that came up with the idea that Jews need blood for their matzah. The vampires' efforts culminated in the Holocaust. (As we know from the novels of Dan Simmons and Guillermo del Toro, the vampires were allied with the Nazis.) 

With the defeat of the Nazis and the near destruction of the vampires, the Jewish people appeared safe. The following decades saw enormous growth within the religious community. Unfortunately, a new phase of the vampire campaign was about to arise as the vampires realized that contrary to their original experience with Jacob, Jews made particularly effective vampires. For one thing, Jews are immune to crosses. (See the example of vampire Fagan in the novel Artful.) 

These sentiments are expressed in the song "Torah Today." A rebbe leads his class in this song of Jewish success, but, in an ironic foreshadowing of the horrors to be revealed, their statements hint at the true connection between Judaism, antinomianism, and vampirism. The fact that the children do not appreciate the true meaning of what they are saying demonstrates how spiritually unprepared they are for the vampire onslaught.      

Distant memories of a time not long ago

Vibrant shadows of an era we would want to know

In our minds an image glowing true tzadikim in every town

And the sounds of learning were ever growing 

All has vanished never to be found

Somehow slowly the sun is rising once again

Building boldly can we recapture what was then

The Jews in this period of vampire free sun rejoice even as they mourn the loss of pre-war Europe. What they fail to understand was that, even then, there existed the spiritual rot of antinomianism indicated by the term "true tzadikim." Whenever you see a seemingly superfluous adjective in front of some virtuous position, you know that you are dealing not with the virtue but with its antinomian rejection. For example, why would anyone use the term "social justice?" Is there a kind of justice that is not social? The reality is that justice, with its claims of property and individual rights, often does not satisfy certain people as it does not allow them to redistribute property as they see fit and force people to comply with their utopian blueprints. The solution is to reject justice in the name of a higher ideal of doing whatever you happen to feel is right at the moment. Advocates of social justice believe that the only way to truly be just is to commit injustice and reject individual liberty. From their perspective, they are the ones who are truly just and defenders of justice are really the ones who are unjust.   

Similarly, how can you talk about a "true tzadik?" Is there a "fake tzadik?" As with social justice, a conventional tzadik is held back by keeping to the letter of Jewish law. A "true tzadik" understands that Torah itself holds up the world and negates the actual practice of halakha. So the only "true" way to learn Torah is to do so while eating a ham sandwich. Such learning makes a particular sound that grows as the tzadik takes pleasure in contemplating this righteous paradox. Any Torah scholar who balks at such a "holy" deed is simply a "fake tzadik."  

These secretly antinomian Torah scholars so beloved by the Jewish people, realizing what lay behind the Nazis, embraced the vampire ideology as the true fulfillment of everything they ever wanted to get out of Judaism, power, and immortality (in this world no less). This explains why their bodies vanished and were never found. These rabbis, having come to their vampire maturity, are now set to bring about their version of the messianic End of Days by turning the Jewish people into a vampire army and destroy the world. This is indicated by the lines:        

We've set our hearts to form a plan  

Unrelenting so much to regain

Can see the future from where we stand

Let's move closer we can build the flame

Who but a vampire can be unrelenting in plotting for the future? 

In describing the transition from rabbi to vampire we are told:

Their life is learning they strive with great intensity

Others advancing each day a daf devotedly 

On that night they gathered to show what matters

The Torah world stood as one with pride

In silent reflection with one direction

We could feel that time was on our side 

These antinomian rabbis in life only cared about Torah and not about morality. In fact, rejecting morality served to demonstrate their superior commitment to Torah. So, on a certain night, they gathered together to reject morality in the clearest way possible and became vampires. This allowed them to stand together with a unified hive mind knowing that, being immortal, time was on their side and they will be able to take over the world. 

(To be continued ...)  

Introducing the All New Kindle Taevah

Just in time for Elul and back to yeshiva sales, Amazon introduces their new Kindle Taevah. In a press conference, Jeff Bezos explained to  befuddled reporters trying to pronounce the name that the Taevah was inspired by Numbers 11:

I was looking for something to come after the Fire. I was reading the Bible and saw that, after God sent down the Fire, the Children of Israel got Taevahs. Along with the Taevah, God also provided really killer customer service after the Israelites criticized their smorgasbord options.

As demonstrated by generations of Republican presidential candidates, Richard III and Shylock, being near a bible makes a person really godly so you should always buy what they are selling.

To demonstrate the Taevah's features, Bezos brought out his spiritual consultant and chief product tester, two-year-old child prodigy Kalman Yitzchok Chinn. Thanks to the Taevah, Kalman has already learned his letters and numbers while simultaneously convincing Brisk that its anti-television policy was completely outdated in the twenty-first century.  

Readers will be quickly entranced by the Taevah's hypnotic screen. When starting the device, users will be able to choose from a selection of the most traif sandwiches on the internet as backgrounds. Order now and the Taevah will come with a special case that makes it unbreakable by rebbes even if they throw it out the third story of a yeshivah building. For $50, users can add special mussar canceling headphones.

Initially, sales were sluggish as shoppers were told that naked Kalman was not for sale. Sales of the Taevah, though, skyrocketed once the gedolim produced a dance video ad to express how enamored they were with the product itself even as they acknowledged that not having Kalman's tushy was a major disappointment.

Rachael Ray's Cat Food Burgers

I was shopping the other day when I discovered that Rachael Ray, the author of the wonderful Book of Burger, also has a line of cat food. One struggles to think of a common theme to unite the two. Is it possible that a celebrity chef is being honest about their actual cooking skills and confessing to their real line of work? Perhaps she wants to specialize in things that my wife has no intention of eating.

It was revealed to me that the cat food contains a great secret to decode the burger book. Rachael Ray must be a believer in the true anti-nomian kashrus of kitty stew. Contrary to what is believed by the materialist reader, who sinks so low as to pay attention to recipes in the first place, the delicious burgers she is holding are made from kitty. Of course not every kitty can merit being so elevated. A worthy kitty must be made plump solely on a gluten free diet. It is important that we look after the health our pets and give them a diet that is in keeping with the one kept by their ancestors before the agricultural revolution.

Warrior Daddy: Taking My Son Back from the Clutches of Neurotypicality

(Abba used to be able to take Kalman to proper Asperger events like a Renaissance Faire. Will neurotypicality soon cause Kalman to prefer SpongeBob SquarePants? Not if this Daddy Warrior can help it.)

For his first year of life, my son, Kalman, was the perfect Asperger child. He would monologue in his perfect James Earl Jones voice. When not monomaniacally hunting the kitty, he could be found sitting in a corner examining heretical or otherwise banned books. As a Daddy Warrior, I knew in my gut that vaccines cause neurotypicality. Far more people, who have been vaccinated, have turned out to be neurotypical than Asperger so the evidence is clearly indisputable. That being said, I allowed myself to be conned by an agent of Big Medicine into allowing my son to receive the MMR vaccines. He offered me a lollipop so how could I resist? I knew something was wrong when my son cried upon receiving his shots. Clearly, my son had been given a boo-boo, which is always bad. My nightmare was just beginning. Almost immediately, Kalman began showing an interest in other people. He even began smiling for no obvious reason. There is no doubt about it. My son has become neurotypical.  

Daddy Warriors naturally love their babies. Because it is natural, our love, unlike boo-boos, must always be a good thing. We are not like doctors, who accept bribes from pharmaceutical companies to allow our darlings to be harmed. Therefore, we know best which century's medical practices should be inflicted on our kids. We are also blessed with a perfect understanding of cause and effect as well as an unbiased memory. This allows us to compare our children's behavior from arbitrary before and after points.

This Daddy Warrior is ready to fight for his Kalman like an inquisitor fighting for the soul of an unfortunate heretic. (Neurotypicals cannot appreciate Monty Python and, therefore, never expect the Spanish Inquisition.) I propose a gluten diet, consisting of gluten and to raise Kalman in a sensory deprivation box until he is eighteen. When Kalman crawls out and blinks up at the sun, he will certainly be an Asperger.  If living in a box could save Thais from being a prostitute, it can save my son from the infinitely worse fate of irrationally not becoming what I want him to be. My love makes me wise, wonderful, and selfless. I love my son too much to allow him to live as a neurotypical and not appreciate dark and dry humor.

 

The Government Inspector: An Apology for a Liberal Reforming Authoritarian Czar

When I was little, one of my favorite movies was The Inspector General, starring Danny Kaye. This work is based on a nineteenth-century Russian play, The Government Inspector, by Nikolai Gogol in which the corrupt officials of a town mistake a con-man for the feared secret inspector sent by the Czar to investigate corruption in the land. I loved Kaye's singing dancing and slapstick humor, but it was only as an adult that I could appreciate the work as political satire with its running gags on nepotism and bribery.

Readers may find it ironic, but despite the play's lampooning of government, it managed to be produced in Czarist Russia with the open support of Nicholas I. This support makes sense if you consider that the off-screen hero of the story is none other than the Czar himself, who fights against the corruption of petty local politicians. The message of the story for nineteenth-century Russians was that the traditional local patronage-based system of government with its roots in the Boyar aristocracy was innately corrupt and it needed to be replaced with a strong national state under the control of the Czar. The Czar's chief virtue was that he was above politics and therefore beyond the corruption rampant with petty officials. In order to accomplish his task of creating a just Russia, the Czar must be above the law, with the power to arrest and execute people as he saw fit.

Considering the history of twentieth-century totalitarianism, in which strong centralized authoritarian regimes went far beyond the sins of petty corruption into the realm of mass murder, I find this brand of liberalism both ironic and frightening. One can see Gogol as exemplifying a failure within the larger Russian intelligentsia (Leo Tolstoy being a prominent exception) that has haunted Russia for the past two centuries. In the absence of the strong individualist and rule of law traditions found in the Anglo-American tradition even reformers were trapped into simply choosing between various kinds of authoritarianism. One could hope to reform the Russian state along the lines of Prussia, with its combination of professional bureaucracy and authoritarian monarchy, one might choose to reform under the radically conservative lines of the Russian Orthodox Church or one might choose revolution under one of the various socialist and anarchist banners.

Yesterday I went with Miriam to a production of an adaptation of The Government Inspector in Pasadena starring Star Trek alums John Billingsley and Alan Brooks. While wonderfully done and worth seeing, I was struck by the fact that the adaptation, instead of confronting head-on Gogol's apology for authoritarian rule, simply updated it to suit modern liberal sensibilities. The mayor and his cronies are straw-men Republicans, who talk about the need for deregulation as a means for granting favors to their friends in big business and how wonderful it is to have an economic recession to keep wages low. There is even a character modeled after Sarah Palin, both in her looks and her mixture of Christian conservatism and individualistic populism. Needless to say, the character is a religious hypocrite and a complete idiot. Not that I have anything against creating straw-men, it is a necessary feature of satire. That being said, such an attitude sets the stage for its own liberal version of Gogol’s reforming Czar.  

If Gogol's off-screen hero was the Czar then this production's off-screen villain is big business. In both cases, the lesson is not that there is something innately corrupting about politics, but that specific politicians are incidentally corrupt. The solution is more government, whether a stronger Czar or more government regulations. That this increased government will have the same flaws as the government it is reforming and that its lack of any tie to formal law or tradition, powerful checks on abuse, will make things worse is never considered. On the contrary, being above the law is deemed a virtue in that it will somehow place government outside of politics. In truth it is only by embracing law can we hope to transcend politics and fight its innate corruption.   

Eternal Damnation for Supply Siders (and Germans)

In this hilarious skit, we have Brian Keith Dalton (Mr. Deity) explaining to a supply-sider why she deserves to be tortured by a sadistic Keynesian despite the fact that in all other aspects of her life she is an exemplary human being. The moral of the story, made explicit at the end, is that there is something inherently immoral about a deity that damns people for all eternity for their failure to believe the correct doctrines. Furthermore to be a believer means that one expects to spend eternity standing on the sidelines defending God to loved ones as they are tortured. Such a person is perhaps worse than the actual torturer.

As a Jew, I feel little need to come to the defense of the doctrine of eternal damnation. Even the Christian tradition regarding eternal damnation is for more complex than Christian fundamentalists and their secular critics seem to realize. (Origen, for example, believed that everyone, even Satan, will eventually be saved.) That being said, I feel the need to respond in defense of the notion of eternal damnation for intellectual error.

Is there an intellectual error that could justify eternal damnation? How about Nazism? We tend to associate Nazism with jackbooted mass murderers armed with gas chambers. The reality of Nazism was that it was enabled by millions of moral decent pious Germans (and later by people in occupied countries), who did nothing immoral themselves and might have even likely personally opposed the "excesses" of Nazism, but agreed to go along with the regime in some fashion. Some of them did so for pragmatic reasons such as rebuilding the German economy and stopping the very real threat of a Communist takeover. Others simply complied out of fear. It is certainly not my place to judge them; if I was in their place, I might not have done differently. The important thing is that we are dealing with people who we would deem good people, the kind we would want as our neighbors. Take for example Pope Benedict XVI, who by all accounts is a highly moral individual, but as a teenager was in the Hitler Youth.

Now imagine Benedict XVI coming before the heavenly tribunal only to be told that despite the upstanding life he led on Earth, he was damned for putting on that Hitler Youth uniform. His one real test in life was to be confronted with the army of Satan demanding that he join them. He had the option of not putting on their uniform; they would have killed him, but like the early Christian martyrs he would have been guaranteed a place in heaven. He put that uniform on and saved his life, but by doing so threw his soul away. God now hates him for all eternity and says that Benedict XVI made his bed and can now lie in it for all eternity with all the other popes condemned by Dante. This may not be how I would judge souls, but I am not God. If God did operate like this, I would think he was being tough, but would still have to acknowledge that he was acting within the realm of justice.

This brings us to the critical point of the position of the saved loved ones of the damned. In our German scenario that would be righteous Germans like Sophie Scholl and Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer. These people opposed the Nazi regime and paid the ultimate price for it. Could we hold it against them if, from their thrones of glory, they waved at all their friends, who chose to live long full lives by not opposing Nazism, saying: "see we told you so, now burn in Hell for all eternity." In particular in the case of Bonhoeffer, a critical part of his theology was the tremendous "cost of discipleship." One could not hope to get to heaven through "cheap grace," but only by taking up the cross and being willing to literally die for Christ. This was what motivated his path to martyrdom; he believed he had no other choice and that the salvation of his soul required it.

I do not assume that Benedict XVI will burn in Hell for his Catholicism or even for being in the Hitler Youth. I certainly hope I will not burn for my sympathy with supply-side economics. That being said, the essential principle of eternal damnation for intellectual error is at least theoretically sound and in keeping with divine justice.

A Romantic Dish of Graduate Cooking

I am now in a dating relationship. For those of my readers who are Aspergers or members of an alien species, dating is a process in which the man, in this case yours truly, engages a certain female of interest in a ritual of semi-rational negotiation to convince said female that not only is he not an ax murderer, but that he is also intelligent, sane and useful. If all goes well the female will allow the male to get within a close proximity of her personal space at a level that would otherwise be not considered socially acceptable.

It is my understanding that, in this modern world, if one wishes to convince a female of one's intelligence and sanity one cannot merely offer free lectures on medieval apocalypticism no matter how objectively fascinating a topic it is. Women these days want a man who can show a softer side through the writing of poetry. (This must be because modern women have read G. K. Chesterton and support his argument that poets are much less prone to insanity than mathematicians and chess players.) This should be easy with all of my humanities training; I should certainly be capable of writing poems about medieval apocalypticism. (I am informed by certain sources that said romantic poems should be about the female in question. No, this is not narcissism on the part of women. Also, under no circumstances will I be allowed to write medieval apocalyptic poetry even if it features one's girlfriend as the Virgin Mary battling an evil ex-girlfriend as the dragon beast merged, through dark Japanese anime arts, with the Whore of Babylon.)

As for being useful, it is not enough to tell your girlfriend that within a few years you will finish your dissertation, become a doctor and that all doctors make loads of money. Women want a man who can clean and cook. So after moving everything presently on the floor to some other place on the floor and providing generous helpings of a natural saliva-based polish all around, I set to work proving my love by making my girlfriend a traditional graduate student dish, ramen noodles. I used a secret recipe known only to graduate students and written on the package. So not only do I demonstrate my basic cooking skills, heating water, placing a carbohydrate-laden product inside and not burning it, but also my knowledge of all the three Rs of education, reading, righting and rithmatic. My girlfriend already knows that I can write from all the time I spend on my dissertation that I will one day finish even though she has never seen it. (She is a pious girl with a lot of faith.) Now she knows that I can also read the instructions on a package as well as apply higher mathematics, taking the instructions and multiplying the ingredients by two.

Graduate student romance, reading, and applied mathematics coming together to make ramen noodles for two.

(Readers should feel free to offer their suggestions for graduate student romance that might apply to the non-deconstructed structures of the fantasy outside world and not just in the reasonable and rational ramen based world of academia.)

Piled Higher and Deeper Movie

My life as a graduate student; just replace science with history. Now off to grade some forty finals plus a bunch of essays on Candide.

History 111: How to Start Your Own Religion (Part I)

So I have decided to put my dissertation research to some practical use and will be starting my own messianic cult. I figure that, considering my knowledge of the history of religion I should be able to learn from the mistakes of other would-be Messiahs and prophets. (Note to readers; being a Messiah is a difficult and dangerous task to be left to those with years of professional graduate school experience.)

Now in making claims of supernatural revelation, there are three levels, forming a very wide pyramid. At the bottom of the pyramid are the hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people, throughout history who claimed supernatural revelation. Such people stood around on street corners and were, for the most part, ignored. The more successful of them might have been mocked by those passing by or even arrested by the Inquisition on charges of heresy. We tend to call such people cranks and lunatics. Obviously, as a would-be Messiah of my talent, I think I can do significantly better than this.

The next level up were those who managed to form small groups of followers around themselves; in other words, they are cult leaders. Such people are relatively rare, perhaps a few thousand in all of history, as this actually requires, as we shall see, a very specific set of skills. Examples of such people would be David Koresh, Rev. Moon of the Unification Church, Hong Xiuquan from nineteenth-century China, who claimed to be the brother of Jesus and started the Taiping rebellion which caused the deaths of some twenty million people, and my beloved Sabbatai Sevi. Such a path, while offering minor celebrity status, carries with it a serious risk of sudden violent death due to government officials not appreciating your message of peace, love, and killing the unbeliever. Of course, Sabbatai did leverage his messianic career into a nice honorary position in the Ottoman civil service.

At the top of the pyramid were those very rare individuals who, with a mixture of talent and the right historical circumstances, managed to become the heads of major religions, with millions, even billions, of followers willing to start wars in their name, billions of dollars, and massive houses of worship to gladden the heart of even the most humble Messiah. The all-time most successful person in this elite group was Jesus, with some two billion Christians. With over a billion Muslims, Mohammad comes in second. Even I, in my great humility, do not believe I can play in the same league as Jesus or Mohammad, but perhaps I can match the founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, and create a religion with a few million followers and a Broadway show.

Entering this field is about as easy as becoming a struggling artist as it does not require any actual talent or job experience. All you need to do is claim a supernatural revelation, a visit from say God, the angel Gabriel, Elijah the Prophet, Jesus or the Virgin Mary, and a message, something about peace, God's love, his kingdom is coming and everyone is going to die unless they repent very soon. While it may require no talent, it is necessary for even the most talented Messiah to start at the bottom so the position is not to be mocked. Being a divine messenger has the advantage over being an artist in that, by virtue of just the job title, you can automatically catapult yourself over all those theologians with years of theoretical experience in the field; artists have to walk in the shadow of those more established in their field. Of course, being an artist has the advantage of allowing you to sit around coffee shops, safe from the elements and the mob, instead of street corners. Note to self; make sure to do research into the feasibility of becoming the first Starbucks Messiah.     

(To be continued ...)

My Purim Shalach Manot

Today is the Jewish holiday of Purim, the classic "they tried to kill us, they failed, let's eat" festival. One of the traditions on this holiday is Shalach Manot where one is supposed to give gift baskets of food to other people. Think of it as reverse trick or treating. I guess this is part of the hobbit heritage of Jews. If gentiles go around in costume to take candy, we go around and give. Now the purpose of Shalach Manot is that it is meant to increase goodwill. That is the sort of absurd social-based thinking one naturally expects from neurotypicals. Anyone with even a hint of a properly functioning logical brain will realize that such a practice is only going to cause stress as people struggle to put together gift baskets to all their acquaintances and nothing but bad feelings to people left out or who received a smaller basket than those they gave to. In other words your basic Christmas shopping fallacy for people who are neurotic enough as it is and really do not need the encouragement. As an Asperger, I am inclined to prove my point through the scientific method. I could hand out baskets of peanuts and raw sugar to diabetics with peanut allergies with a note saying: "Dear acquaintance. I feel nothing but goodwill toward you and have no desire to cause you physical harm, not even to wage Hobbesian warfare at the moment. Please accept this gift as a token of the meaningless ritual gesture it is." I can then have a neurotypical friend measure the rate of hostile social gestures for me to see if there is a statistically significant shift. (To all you neurotypicals out there, this is what we Aspergers call a joke. We will try to explain it to you once we have taken over the world but, for now, you will just have to be patient.)

Here is an example of my actual Shalach Manot, which I am giving out to a few special people in my life. If you are not one of the people receiving one of these it does not mean that I do not like you or that I am even planning on waging Hobbesian war against you sometime in the near future. All it means is that either you are not close at hand in Silverspring MD or that I do not like you as much as some other people.

There is a hidden message in this Shalach Manot, in keeping with me being a Jewish autistic who spends way too much time exploring meta-historical narratives, Jewish Messiahs and apocalypticism, that I wish to share with everyone. At the start of history, this Chinn offers a sinfully delicious Asian pear as the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge. (How silly for European Christians to think it could be an apple.) Now that you have eaten the fruit, you are in need of a Jewish Messiah to save your soul with tasty wafers from Israel. Unfortunately, we live in a world in which autistic children still lie enslaved to parents who believe that gluten-free diets will cure them of the mercury that was not in their vaccines and did not cause their autism. For those children, I offer gluten-free potato chips to act as a replacement wafer. For my Messiah does love autistic children and desires that they not burn in hell for eternity. (As for people who actually need gluten-free diets, they can burn for all he cares, but if they entreat him very nicely he might find it in his all-encompassing heart to save them.)    

How Many Jewish Historians Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb?

How many Jewish Historians does it take to change a light bulb (or even to insert one in the first place)? Well, as with everything in Judaism, it is subject to a Talmudic style debate.


Heinrich Graetz: As the light bulb both suffers, by having an electric current pumped through it, and thinks, by lighting up, it is without question a uniquely Jewish symbol and should be placed within our Jewish Studies department where it will stand as a mark of Judaism's intrinsic rationality in contrast to the superstition and intolerance of Christians, who for some reason get the majority of the light bulbs. Since our kind civilized German gentile neighbors are unlikely to give us many light bulbs they will have to be rationed out. Historians of Kabbalah and Hasidism will not be receiving light bulbs in the hope that everyone will forget that they even exist, allowing the rest of us to avoid embarrassment at inter-departmental meetings.

Salo W. Baron: I object to this lachrymose narrative. Light bulbs have always been an intrinsic part of their surrounding socio-economic structures. And if you object to the lack of suffering being inflicted on light bulbs I will make you read my eighteen volume social and religious history of light bulbs.

Jacob Katz: I second Baron. To show how Jews and gentiles might peacefully interact let us bring in one of the Hispanic workers to symbolize the shabbos goy and insert the light bulb in our department.

Gershom Scholem: Graetz how dare you associate light bulbs with Jewish rationalism when it is clear that light bulbs really symbolize the light of Ein Sof and the spiritual anarchism of Kabbalah in its struggle against the rigid legalism of the rabbis. Having fled Germany just in time to not get slaughtered by your civilized gentile neighbors, I no longer care if they think we are rational civilized people so I will vote to hand out light bulbs not only to kabbalists and hasidim, but also give Sabbatai Sevi and Jacob Frank chairs with tenure.

Yitzchak Baer: As another German who fled just in time, I second Scholem. Graetz, your rational light bulbs cannot be considered truly Jewish. They are really members of an Averroist sect only pretending to shine for our department. The moment the budget cuts come in, these light bulbs will gladly agree to shine for the Christian theology department rather than be burned at the garbage dump. Of course, if the light bulbs agree to be tortured by the Spanish Inquisition that will prove that they are part of the greater Jewish light bulbhood.

Leo Strauss: My dear Baer, this secret Averroism of light bulbs is part of what makes them so intrinsically Jewish just like Maimonides. Of course light bulbs shine with both an exoteric and a secret esoteric light. I look forward to studying under these new light bulbs so they can shine all sorts of esoteric messages onto the texts I am reading, messages that the masses (you fellow members of the department) could never hope to understand.

Benzion Netanyahu: Baer, those traitorous assimilationist light bulbs; even if they were to be tortured by the Spanish Inquisition it would not make them Jewish. Clearly, this is all a conspiracy hatched by racial anti-Semites from the medieval department, who are lying about how these light bulbs are still Jewish in order to get fresh light bulbs untainted by use in a Jewish Studies department. We can only applaud the gentiles for destroying assimilationist light bulbs. This will serve as a sign to all Jewish light bulbs to go to Israel. That is unless they find it too socialist, at which point they are free to seek employment in a Jewish Studies department in the States, as long as they promise to raise English speaking future Israeli right-wing prime ministers.


This post was inspired by a piece that was circulated through my department listserve, written by David Leeson at Laurentian University.

Q: How many historians does it take to change a light bulb?



A: There is a great deal of debate on this issue. Up until the mid-20th century, the accepted answer was ‘one’: and this Whiggish narrative underpinned a number of works that celebrated electrification and the march of progress in light-bulb changing. Beginning in the 1960s, however, social historians increasingly rejected the ‘Great Man’ school and produced revisionist narratives that stressed the contributions of research assistants and custodial staff. This new consensus was challenged, in turn, by women’s historians, who criticized the social interpretation for marginalizing women, and who argued that light bulbs are actually changed by department secretaries. Since the 1980s, however, postmodernist scholars have deconstructed what they characterize as a repressive hegemonic discourse of light-bulb changing, with its implicit binary opposition between ‘light’ and ‘darkness,’ and its phallogocentric privileging of the bulb over the socket, which they see as colonialist, sexist, and racist. Finally, a new generation of neo-conservative historians have concluded that the light never needed changing in the first place, and have praised political leaders like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher for bringing back the old bulb. Clearly, much additional research remains to be done.



Matthew Lavine at Mississippi State responded:



Dear Dr. Leeson,


We regret that we cannot accept your historian joke in its present form.... However, a panel of anonymous reviewers (well, anonymous to YOU, anyway) have reviewed it and made dozens of mutually contradictory suggestions for its... improvement. Please consider them carefully, except for the ones made by a man we all consider to be a dangerous crackpot but who is the only one who actually returns comments in a timely fashion.

1. This joke is unnecessarily narrow. Why not consider other sources of light? The sun lights department offices; so too do lights that aren't bulbs (e.g. fluorescents). These are rarely "changed" and never by historians. Consider moving beyond your internalist approach.

2. The joke is funny, but fails to demonstrate familiarity with the most important works on the topic. I would go so far as to say that Leeson's omission is either an unprofessional snub, or reveals troubling lacunae in his basic knowledge of the field. The works in question are Brown (1988), Brown (1992), Brown (1994a), Brown (1994b), Brown and Smith (1999), Brown (2001), Brown et al (2003), and Brown (2006).

3. Inestimably excellent and scarcely in need of revision. I have only two minor suggestions: instead of a joke, make it a haiku, and instead of light bulbs, make the subject daffodils.

4. This is a promising start, but the joke fails to address important aspects of the topic, like (a) the standard Whig answer of "one," current through the 1950s; (b) the rejection of this "Great Man" approach by the subsequent generation of social historians; (c) the approach favored by women's historians; (d) postmodernism's critique of the light bulb as discursive object which obscured the contributions of subaltern actors, and (e) the neoconservative reaction to the above. When these are included, the joke should work, but it's unacceptable in its present form.


5. I cannot find any serious fault with this joke. Leeson is fully qualified to make it, and has done so carefully and thoroughly. The joke is funny and of comparable quality to jokes found in peer journals. I score it 3/10 and recommend rejection.

I Have Had Real Conversations Like This

Check out this parody of Orthodox Jewish matchmakers. It also works as a demonstration of the Poe Law; it is impossible to satirize religious fundamentalists as there will be someone out there for whom it is an accurate description. For those readers who have not experienced the world of Orthodox dating, it often really is this absurd.  

The English Language Makes Me Laugh Loudly and Immoderately

Those who have spent any significant time with me in person know that I have a rather strange laugh, something in between a hyena laughing and donkey braying. Children tend to get a kick out of my laugh, particularly when it is accompanied by me chasing after them and pontificating on the health benefits of medieval surgery and working in the mines. Adults, for some strange reason, tend to find my laugh grating and bothersome.


Recently, thanks to dictionary.com's word of the day, I discovered the word "caCHINNate."

"Cachinnate \KAK-uh-neyt\, verb: To laugh loudly or immoderately."
So the next time, someone asks me where I got such a god-awful laugh, I can respond: "Don't look at me. I am just an innocent victim of the English language."

Send Sholom Rubashkin to South Park: A Modest Proposal

The creators of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, are known for their often crude but spot-on parodies of public figures and the news of the day. Yesterday, with the input of a friend, I started to hash out an idea for what I think could make for an excellent episode, the Sholom Rubashkin case.

Like most of America, the town of South Park is in the grip of the economic downturn. To their rescue comes Sholom Rubashkin as the music man in a black hat and jacket. Hearing of South Park's famous cows, Rubashkin wishes to build a kosher slaughterhouse in town. The prospect of the new jobs sends the people of South Park into jubilation. They see that Rubashkin is such a moral person; he has a special needs son. Kyle goes to work training to be a shochet, a ritual slaughterer. Cartman and Kenny get jobs at the plant after telling Rubashkin that they are eighteen. The sight of so much meat makes Cartman temporarily take back everything nasty he has ever said about Jews, particularly after Rubashkin gives him control of a giant meat-hook crane and fails to notice how Cartman is using it to rip the lungs out of cows. Kenny falls into a meat grinder and becomes a kosher Kenny dog. Meanwhile, Stan, suspicious of some oddities he witnesses around the plant, begins to investigate. He sneaks in on a secret conversation and discovers that Rubashkin is an Elder of Zion James Bond villain planning to ship in unsuspecting illegal immigrant workers and slaughter them for cheap meat. Sneaking away, Stan finds Kyle and Cartman, the latter needing little convincing, and the three friends confront Rubashkin. Rubashkin is insulted: "How dare you accuse me of being an anti-Semitic caricature." To which Stan responds: "You are an anti-Semitic caricature." A chase ensues through the plant, but the children escape Rubashkin and his hench–Jews and inform the entire town. Kyle's father is outraged and immediately offers to defend Rubashkin pro bono. Kyle addresses his father and the town, telling them that it is fine to have religious ideals and to be careful with what you eat, but these ideals should be matched with a concern with the ethics involved in producing the food. The episode ends with Rubashkin in prison with his hench-Jews, carrying him around in a chair so he does not have to walk four cubits without tzitzit.

As this episode would in no way depict Mohammed nor offend Muslims there is no reason for Comedy Central to censure it.

Aspirations on the Autism Puzzle

Jerod Smalley of the Columbus NBC affiliate station interviewed some people from Aspirations, including my friends Melanie Yergeau, Patrick Meehan (who served with me on the Autism conference panel on Wednesday) and Justin Rooney, for his Autism Puzzle news segment.





I particularly recommend the discussion about humor at the end and Justin's comment about his admiration for Richard Pryor for using humor precisely in the face of all the bad in one's life. Humor plays a major role in my life as a defense mechanism. I find that I take life so seriously that if I did not laugh I would be crushed by it.


Rather than being incapable of humor, I suspect that Asperger people have a special relationship to humor in that they have a foundational narrative of humor built right into them. Take a rational person and force them to confront an absurd situation. He can continue to insist on reason, futilely beat his head into a wall and become the object of the joke or he can become the initiator of the joke as he uses his reason to face down absurdity, expose it and even to embrace it to some degree. This is one of the most basic comedic narratives, but it is also a summary of what life every day is with Asperger syndrome and the challenges that come with it.


  

Alice in Pretentious Artsy Self-Satisfied Modern Bigotry Land (Part II)

(Part I)

I wanted to scream at the audience around me: don't you people understand. This society of nineteenth-century Victorian England was one in which the vast majority of people, except for a narrow elite, lived in a poverty that we cannot even imagine. Do you know what it means to have a society in which starving to death is a real issue? The only thing saving our elites from falling in with the wretched masses is the force of tradition. Anyone who plays with convention is pulling at the spider's web that keeps not only them feed but everyone around them. I would like to see you tolerate such a person. This was particularly true for women, who were limited in their labor prospects and lacked the sort of education that might have allowed them to hold well-paying jobs even if society let them. Can you imagine the position of a widowed mother, living with the trappings of wealth and its expectations, knowing that without her husband to support them there is nothing to stop her and her daughter from sinking into abject poverty? And by poverty we do not mean food stamps, but the slow demise over years due to malnutrition and disease as you work yourself to death. The only thing saving this person is the prospect of a good match. How dare you any of you smirk or feel superior when such a person decides that whether her daughter is in "love" might not be of utter importance.

We now move from the film's pointless introduction to having Alice fall down the rabbit hole into Wonderland. My father often likes to say that comedy is the hardest genre to perform. Comedy is an either/or proposition. Either you are funny or you are not. There is no in-between or partial success. With drama you can always hope to salvage something even if the project fails as a whole. Humor is not a science; it is something that happens sometimes, but cannot be created at will. You can have genuinely talented people who get out there and, through no one's fault, the material just does not work. Without a question, there were some talented people in this production. The team of Tim Burton, Johnny Depp and Helen Bonham Carter is nothing to be laughed at. (Just watch Sweeny Todd.) There is no logical reason that this team should not have once again produced something absolutely magical. Except that for some unfathomable reason the material just failed to click.

This failure may have had something to do with the fact that, as Lionel put it, they tried to mix whimsical fantasy with epic fantasy. It was not enough that Alice should explore this strange and downright psychedelic world; the film also had to have her go on a quest to defeat the Red Queen, restore the White Queen to her rightful place and defeat the Jabberwocky. Tolkien just does not go with Carroll. This could have still worked as tongue and cheek. The problem is that of all comedy, I would argue that tongue and cheek is the hardest. For tongue and cheek you have to succeed on two counts. In terms of comedy, you still have to actually be funny and as drama you still need to produce characters who make sense and whom the audience connects with on a deep emotional level. One can always try to cover trash by saying that it is only meant tongue and cheek. Saying that something is meant only tongue and cheek can in no way be an excuse for bad writing. I have so much respect for people like Joss Whedon, J. K. Rowling and Stephenie Meyer who use tongue and cheek and make it work. To all those who turn their noses up at their work as popular entertainment that "anyone" could do, I say give it a try.

I could not end this without saying something about what happens back on the top side of the rabbit hole once Alice comes back to her Victorian world. She rejects her upper-class twit of the year and approaches her father's old partner about a really radical business venture, trading with China. Someone needs to offer the writers a history lesson and explain that even our stuffy Victorians were up to trading with China; there was nothing radical in the nineteenth-century about such a prospect. The West even fought several opium wars to open China to western trade. Even people in the Middle Ages were imaginative enough to try trading with China. This was how we got Columbus accidentally discovering America in the first place.

I really wanted to like this movie. I was waiting for it since I heard about it this past summer. I even had a poster of it up as my desktop background. (This proved to be a mistake as some of my little Haredi cousins wanted to use my laptop and started screaming about the not "tznisudic," immodestly dressed, girl in the picture.) However much I respect the people behind this film, it was a failure and not even having it in 3-D could save it.