Ballad of a Thin Man, Redux

With most profound apologies to Robert Zimmerman

You walk into the room
With your pencil in your hand
You see somebody naked
And you say, "Who is that man?"
You try so hard
But you don't understand
Just what you'll say
When you get home

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister O?

You raise up your head
And you ask, "Is this where it is?"
And somebody points to you and says
"It's his"
And you say, "What's mine?"
And somebody else says, "Where what is?"
And you say, "Oh my God
Am I here all alone?"

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister O?

You hand in your ticket
And you go watch the geek
Who immediately walks up to you
When he hears you speak
And says, "How does it feel
To be such a freak?"
And you say, "Impossible"
As he hands you a bone

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister O?

You have many contacts
Among the lumberjacks
To get you facts
When someone attacks your imagination
But nobody has any respect
Anyway they already expect you
To just give a check
To tax-deductible charity organizations

You've been with the reporters
And they've all liked your looks
With law professors you have
Discussed lepers and crooks
You've been through all of
Ralph Ellison's books
You're very well read
It's well known

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister O?

Well, the sword swallower, he comes up to you
And then he kneels
He crosses himself
And then he clicks his high heels
And without further notice
He asks you how it feels
And he says, "Here is your throat back
Thanks for the loan"

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister O?

Now you see this one-eyed midget
Shouting the word "NOW"
And you say, "For what reason?"
And he says, "How?"
And you say, "What does this mean?"
And he screams back, "You're a cow
Give me some ear-marks
Or else go home"

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister O?

Well, you walk into the room
Like a camel and then you frown
You put your eyes in your pocket
And your nose on the ground
There ought to be a law
Against you comin' around
You should be made
To wear I-Pod phones.

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister O?

Economics for Dummies

Well, boys and girls, I suppose it is time to teach you all about Economics. You might ask what good it is to learn this, and I can tell you that this course will explain why your mommies and daddies are looking so scared these days, and why they keep changing the subject when you want to talk to them about getting your allowance for this week.

At any rate, it starts with something called the Market. Now this is not the place that you go at the end of the block to get eggs and milk or other things. No, this Market is a place where supposedly grown men and women buy and sell little pieces of paper which supposedly can be exchanged for things like gold and oil and land, or for companies that trade in those and other things.

Now it is not quite true that they are just buying and selling these little pieces of paper. They are betting that the value of these little pieces of paper will keep rising, so that they can sell these pieces of paper for other pieces of paper called "money", and for more money than they originally paid for them.

What happens occasionally, though, is that people in the Market sometimes pay a lot more for those little pieces of paper than the product which they are connected with are really worth. We won't be getting into the reasons why that happens in this course. We will be saving that for the course in Abnormal Psychology, when we talk about Mob Psychology. All that you need to know for right now is what Agent K said in the movie Men in Black: "A person is smart. People are dumb."

A couple of hundred years ago, economists started noticing dumb things like people willing to spend up to fifty-five thousand pieces of silver for a Holland tulip bulb. Last century it was a lot of people buying a lot more pieces of paper called "shares" than there were actually shares of a company.

When this happens, some people get kind of smart, and realize that they've bought a lot of vapor rather than substance. And then they also get kind of smart, and decide that they are going to sell their pieces of paper before others get wise as to the fact that those pieces of paper have no value. But then more and more people get really dumb, and decide that they will sell at any price, just so they can get a little back from what they paid for. When this happens to a stock or set of stocks, they call it a market adjustment. When it happens to a whole market, they call it a recession. And when it happens to all of the markets in the world, they call it a depression.

Now when you have a depression, what you have is a great number of depressed people. When you use the word "depressed" about peoples' psychology, it means that they are either unwilling or unable to feel or think or do much of anything. And when you use the word "depressed" economically, it means that they do not have either the capital or the will to do much of anything. And when you have a depression, it means all of those things at once, and for a long, long time, too. It is not a pretty picture, boys and girls. Believe me, you do not want to have a depression anywhere near your family or friends or country.

Unfortunately, boys and girls, that looks just like what we are about to have. Now when something this bad happens, a lot of really smart persons become just a bunch of dumb people. Let's try not to have this happen here with us, shall we, kids?

Now, one dumb thing that lots of dumb people do is to blame each other, rather than find out what has gone wrong, and why. And some smart people who have done dumb things blame others the most loudly, mostly to keep people from finding out what dumb things they have done.

It looks like that with Congress. Now, boys and girls, we won't be doing the lecture in Political Theory yet, in which we will learn a good number of things, including why Politics is not a science, and what Congress is good for, if anything. No, all that you really need to know is that since the word "pro" is the opposite of "con", that the opposite of Progress is Congress.

Seriously, though, a wise man long ago once noted that in any place where the many rule, they tend to vote for what they want, instead of what they need. That, and the fact that, as Agent K said, people are dumb, and that there are a lot of people in Congress.

Basically, boys and girls, the people in Congress wanted two things. The first thing that they, or at least some of them wanted, was for everyone in America to be able to buy and own a home of their own. The first one who wanted this to happen was a people (I know, Sally, that what I said was not grammatically correct, but he most definitely was not a person) named Senator Proxmire. Now as we all know, a Proxmire is a great bog in which anything living or useful gets mired down and dies. And the Senator was true to his name.

Senator Proxmire decided that it was so important that everyone be able to buy a house that he made it a policy that just about anyone could be loaned money to buy that house, whether they could afford it or not. The people who voted for this wanted it so much that they decided that they would not think about what could happen from this.

Now, the person who has been keeping this policy going is a "people" by the name of Congressman Barney. No, this fellow may be big and lumpy like Barney, and he may talk funny like Barney, and he may occasionally wear purple like Barney, but believe me, boys, you do not want to go sitting in his lap. I will explain later, when we have the course in "Abnormal Psychology", and discuss Human Sexuality and its variants, but for right now, just trust me, boys. You'll be glad you did.

Now what Congressman Barney did was perhaps something that a "people" would do, but it looks as though he meant well. It also looks as though some other people in Congress meant well, and they honestly believed in something called "trickle-down" economics, which seems to mean that things will get better if the rich make wee-wee on the poor. These people believed that if you just did not watch for any thing bad happening in the Market, nothing bad would ever happen.

But what happened is that a lot of people took out loans to pay for their homes, but did not have enough money to pay for those loans. And what also happened is that these bad loans got put together with a lot of other loans, and all these loans got attached to little pieces of paper, and the people in the Market bought and sold all of these little pieces of paper. And they started buying and selling these pieces of paper for much more than they were worth. I think that we know by now where this is leading, boys and girls.

This might have worked, as long as the price of land and the homes on them continued to rise. But at some point, just recently, even that price started to fall, and then to crash. Then a lot of "people" looked around, and found that they were in a game of Musical Chairs, the music had just stopped, and there were a lot fewer chairs than there were bottoms to sit on them.

Now that we know what is happening, the next thing for a smart person to do is to figure out what to do about it. The first thing that most "people" think to do is to do nothing. The last time that that was tried was by a President Hoover (who did not invent the vacuum cleaner, or anything useful like that. Remember what I said about depressions. President Hoover's decision brought on something called "The Great Depression". Only there was nothing great about it, except the suffering it caused. As the eminent philosopher, Rocket J. Squirrel, would say: "But that trick never works!"

Then there are some who think that we should get a lot of money from the government and have it buy up all of those bad loans, and for the government to own all of the buildings until such time that the people can buy them back. Some people have said, "But this is socialism!", and gotten everyone scared of that particular bogeyman.

Now, boys and girls, one of the ways, both in fairy tales and in real life, to destroy the power of a bogeyman is to find out its true name, or rather, what its name means. Now, the word "Socialism" means a system of government involving state ownership of all of the means of production. That means that the government owns all property and every way that some one can make money. It does not seem to me that the emergency purchase by the government of some land equals government ownership of all property. So much for "socialism".

As a matter of fact, there was a fellow by the name of Adam (no, not the father of mankind, but the father of Capitalism) who once said that government should be able to take care of dangers to the economy that individuals and the Market can not. This would seem to be one of those things that need taking care of, and which persons and the Market cannot. I believe that you kids call that one a "no-brainer."

But for those who are still afraid of government control (and, boys and girls, that is a real and honest fear), then why doesn't the Federal Government investigate the situation, and make judicious loans to businesses, until the price of land rises again and both the bad loans can be made good and the loans to the government paid back. Can you say "Bailout", boys and girls? I knew you could.

But the point of bailing out a leaky vessel is to do so before the ship founders and those in it drown. It looks like the world markets have lost half of their value which they had just three months ago. It also looks as though the market has just lost about six percent of its remaining value just today. Better start bailing, kiddies. Otherwise, I'd suggest that you get your allowance from your mommies and daddies Real Soon Now.

Blackstone's Commentaries of the Laws of England

It is no secret to those who know me that I am guilty of having a law degree (Juris Doctor, that is). In the interest of the public good, I have recently decided to make use of the knowledge that I have rather painfully garnered to that end, in order to help laymen and laywomen to acquire a knowledge of the law.

Because of that interest, I have recently started Legal Secrets. In addition to having made an initial Manifesto, which I hope that you will read, I have also come to the conclusion that it would be reasonable to start this attempt at legal education with Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England.

I therefore invite you, the reader, to peruse the four sections of the Introduction to those Commentaries. They are:

Section One: On The Study of The Law.
Section Two: Of the Nature of Laws in General.
Section Three: Of the Laws of England.
Section Four: Of the Countries Subject to the Laws of England.

I hope to edit and publish a chapter of Blackstone's a day until the whole text is online and available to you. At that point, I will be editing and updating this text, with the working title of Brandt on the Common Law.

Enjoy.

A New Hope

For us Easterners (Orthodox and Byzantine, that is), September 1 constitutes the Liturgical and actual new year. It is both the time of the barley harvest (an important feast for Europeans) and it is the Byzantine regularization into a solar calendar of the Jewish Lunar Feast of Rosh Ha Shanna, or the Jewish New Year. This is thought by Orthodox (both Jewish and Eastern Christian alike), to be the commemmoration of the first Day, in which God said, Let there be light.

It is thus a time of harvest, and of new beginnings. At any rate, I always felt so, in my heart of hearts, long before I turned my eyes Eastwards.

It is also a time of new resolution. Because of my difficulties, I have failed to post much in the last couple of years or so. I resolve that as of now, that will change.

I also resolve to post much more in my other two weblogs, Legal Secrets, and Abbe Faria's Cell. To that end, I have begun, as I have promised, to put an updated version of Blackstones Commentaries of the Laws of England, as the first step towards providing a treatise for the legal education of laymen and women. I invite you to read it.

Watch this space.

The Entertainment Value of the Nightly News

It seems that when the Romans changed from the Republic to the Empire, around the time that Christ was born, they kept the people quiet by providing them with food and entertainment. Panes et circenses was what they called it back then: Bread and Circuses.

By circuses, they did not mean Le Cirque du Soleil, although that was a part of what was going on back then. It referred more to the large circular building which housed their entertainment. Among the Greeks, the circle was the amphitheatre, a big circle with one side devoted to the seats, while the other side was the stage in which those who sat in the seats were entertained. But among the Romans, the circle consisted of the seats surrounding the central stage. One of the best examples of that type of structure was the Coliseum of Rome.

The Greeks would have dramas and comedies, with an occasional bit of baudy of the Satyr-plays thrown in for comic relief. I’m told that one of the few examples we have of this is that an average evening would start with, say, a drama of Helen of Troy just before Troy’s fall. Then there would be a Satyr-play, in which a number of young men dressed only in furry chaps and long leather dildos strapped in the appropriate places would prance about the stage and discuss gang raping Helen. Then there would be a comedy, maybe one including the antics which happened when Agamemnon returned home from the Trojan wars with his trophy bride, Cassandra, only to find that his first wife, Clytemnestra, had already found a boy toy of her own. I’m also told that Cassandra had the last word: “I told you so.” But no one was listening.

Among the less cultured Romans, things were a bit simpler: they would have entertainments including dancers and acrobats. Then they would have sports, including boxing, horse races, and teams battling one another. Then they would end the evening with a comedy of a brainless rich family taken care of by a smart slave. As a matter of fact, this sort of comedy was updated and turned into the Broadway play and movie A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Modern examples of this sort of comedy can be found in such sitcoms as The Nanny, The King of Queens, Everyone Loves Raymond, et cetera, ad nauseum.

Because the ancient Roman comedy so perfectly matched the modern sitcom, I decided to see whether there might be other matches between the past of bread and circuses and the present of rebates and TV. And behold: I found that there was an exact match. For the upper classes, there are PBS, Discovery, Biography and BBC America. For the lower classes, there are VH1, MTV, Spike, and what used to be called The Big Three. And for those who favor the modern equivalent of the satyr-play, there is Pay-Per-View.

There was, however, one little known aspect of the ancient Greek and Roman drama which I at first thought had no modern analogue. There was a stand up comic, who sat in the seats among the people, whose job was to take attention away from the main stage when the real actors, dancers and athletes were setting up for the next event. This stand-up comic was called the Hypocrite.

The Hypocrite’s job was quite simple, and quite effective: He would draw the laughter and scorn of the people in the seats by ostentatiously condemning them for doing the same things that he himself was doing. “You know,” bawled the Hypocrite, “I really hate it when people yell during intermission!!!. And I hate it even more when people are drinking wine in the seats (glug-glug-glug). And most of all, I hate it when people drop their bottles and let them roll into other seats (clank!, bounce-bounce-bounce).”

Now, we’ve seen occasional examples of this sort of thing among the so-called religious on television, and it is vastly amusing when it happens. The most amusing example of this in recent years was the Reverend Jimmy Swaggart, who on his television show was condemning the sinful, including such ”sinners” as Mother Teresa, even during the time that it was becoming more and more evident that he was engaging in acts which made even the real sinful blush, or to look on in admiration for his audacity.

Then I suddenly realized that there was an exact parallel with the Hypocrite and modern examples. It was the nightly newscasters and the political commentators. Here are a group of people whose supposed education is vaunted as teaching them to be objective presenters of the news; people who will go out of their way to give an impartial, accurate, and complete view of the world around them, and who will give equal time to all important views. What a laugh, when this ideal is compared with what they actually do!

One of the most amusing examples of this sort of humor can be found in the way that most newscasters decided to keep quiet about the peccadillos of Senator John Edwards of the Eeyore Party. It seems that Mr. Edwards, while he was so supposedly solicitous about his wife of many years, who was suffering from cancer, had been having a long term affair with one of his employees, and had been paying this woman considerable sums of money, either to keep her quiet, or to help support the child which he had fathered upon her.

We only learned about Edwards because one tabloid journalist kept investigating the matter until finally he caught Edwards in a hotel with this woman. And it seems that the rest of the press, while they knew what was happening, said and did nothing, because Edwards was first a presidential candidate, and then a possible vice-presidential candidate, and the press considered this to be “just a family matter.”

Of course, when Governor Palin of Alaska was announced as the Heffalump Party’s vice-presidential candidate, it took the press no time at all to reveal that Palin’s daughter was pregnant, to insinuate (falsely, it appears) that Palin’s fifth child was actually her daughter’s first, and to bring up the fact that Palin’s husband had twenty years ago had had a DUI, among the many other things which have been revealed in the last four days. Did the press once stop because all of these things neither concerned Palin directly, and until recently, were also considered to be “family matters”? What equanimity. What impartiality. What decency to Palin’s family. What a laugh!

And then there’s the fact that for the last sixteen years, the Eeyore party has been turning out presidential candidates weak on foreign policy experience. First there was former Bill Clinton, who proclaimed himself as a “domestic policy first” president, who had no knowledge of foreign policy as an Arkansas governor, and who slept through foreign policy briefings both during his candidacy and the first four years of his presidency. Then there was Al Gore, who was the classic example of Dr. Johnson’s withering rebuke: “There is a man who has but one idea, and that a wrong one!”

And then there was John Kerry, who as member of the Senate Intelligence Committee missed nine-tenths of its meetings, apparently read none of its findings, and followed Bill Clinton’s example in avoiding any briefing on intelligence reports and foreign policy during his candidacy. Finally, there is Barack Obama, whose foreign policy experience appears to consist of giving a speech four years ago and campaigning in this country, with one junket to the Mid-East and Europe about a month or so ago. Did our impartial press raise any outcry about these matters as disqualifications for any of these presidential candidates? Not to my memory.

But when Governor Palin, who has had more executive experience than any of the other three candidates combined, who is the governor of a state whose nearest neighbors include Russia, China, Korea and Canada, and whose state averages four billion dollars a year in trade to twenty nations, including the four named above, is chosen as vice-presidential candidate, do our impartial press and political commentators possibly give the benefit of the doubt to this experience? Do they consider that the vice-presidency has always been a world-class foreign policy apprenticeship, or that Governor Palin appears to be a quick study? Again, it is to laugh.

And finally, the press appeared to have debated among itself, during the contest between Obama and Clinton, and decided that yes, Ms. Clinton deserved to be treated as a legitimate candidate, and that this was supposedly no place for sexist characterizations. Has any of that slack been given to Governor Palin? That’s the funniest thing yet!

But the most amusing thing of all, other than that the press still considers itself to be journalists and not comedians, is that its members appear to be clueless as to why readership of newspapers or viewership of television news programs are declining so precipitiously. That is for two reasons: 1) any one who wishes to know what is actually happening is going straight to Reuters, Lexis/Nexis or is reading the (free) online foreign and domestic newspapers, and otherwise bypassing paying the press entirely, either through subscriptions or via advertising; and 2) as comedians, the newscasters and commentators really aren’t all that entertaining.

A number of years ago, the comedian Will Rogers solemnly announced that he was in fact a journalist: he “just read the papers and reported the news.” I find that I can do the same thing, simply by pointing out what American journalists preach and what they actually do.

And that is the funniest thing of all!