The Voice of Treason

“Dorothy is the only woman in history who has had her menopause in public and made it pay.”

 “He looks as though he’s been weaned on a pickle.”

 “I’ve always believed in the adage that the secret of eternal youth is arrested development.”

 “My father always wanted to be the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding and the baby at every christening.”

She also told those who had nothing nice to say about anyone could always sit next to her. History tells us that Alice Roosevelt Longworth had what was called a “sharp tongue,” but she insisted she never directed it towards the defenseless because she said it would be like hitting a blind lamb on the nose. So she refrained.

I was reminded of this, and of the many blind lambs in the world, when I received an e-mail from my niece in Chicago who said in it that she saw Joe Zeman out on Western Avenue near Lawrence every time she drove her eldest son to his biweekly appointment. The name might not ring a bell, but he was known by many in the city as “The Pigeon Man.”

Barbara Mahany, a Tribune staff writer, composed this tribute to the man who had become a landmark and a friend to the city’s feathered citizens:

“Police didn’t know who he was, the old man killed Tuesday by a van near Devon Avenue and McCormick Road. They found newspaper clippings — about a half-dozen laminated copies of the same story — tucked into one of his many Jewel bags. Cut, copied, pressed between plastic, the clipping showed the man in full color, feathered with pigeons, and told a piece of his story. And except for that clipping, the cops and the doctors who pronounced him dead at the hospital had no clue who he was. The pigeon man’s life was like that. Barely a soul had a clue who he was.

That’s why the cops called me, just an hour or two after he died. They knew I knew a bit of his story. I wrote the one they found in his possession. Two years and three months had passed, and he still carried it wherever he went.

After the old man died an hour later, the cops needed someone to call, needed to know if there was a soul in the world who might care to know what happened to Joe Zeman, who most everybody called ‘the pigeon man of Lincoln Square.’

Here’s just a bit of the pigeon man’s story, the one he carried:

‘Except for the lips, you would think he was made out of stone, the man who sits, hours on end, on the red fire hydrant on Western Avenue, just north of Lawrence, pigeons by the dozens perched on him.

Pigeons on his head. Pigeons on his shoulders and right down his arms. Pigeons poised on each palm. Pigeons clinging to his chest. Pigeons on his lap. Pigeons on his thighs. Pigeons, of course, perched on each foot. The pigeons peck and coo, occasionally flutter their wings. Sometimes even scatter. But not the man; the man is motionless. You might mistake him for a statue.’

‘Joseph Zeman can sit for hours, barely flinching a muscle,’ I wrote. ‘Except for those lips.’

I wrote how he cooed right back to the birds. How he kissed them, right on their iridescent necks, flat on the point of their sharp little beaks. How he nuzzled them, rubbed his nose in their wings, the herringbone of feathers all black and charcoal and pewter and white. How he called them by name, his favorites. How he worried when one was missing in action. I wrote about the attic where he lived a few blocks from the hydrant, how he kept track there, in a neat little ledger, of whatever dollar bills might have been slipped into his hand, dropped by the side of his hydrant. How he used the money for his pigeon supplies, the unpopped popcorn, the bags of white rice, the loaves of Deerfield Farms enriched white bread, the Maurice Lenell oatmeal cookies, the plain old birdseed that comes in 50-pound sacks, which he broke down, each night, into zip-top plastic bags.

I wrote, too, because he took me up to his attic, because he was proud to show off his deeply thought method, of the old baby food jars he filled, each morning and night, with rice or popcorn, seven jars in all, and tucked in his satchel, each time he shuffled off to the hydrant. He went there twice a day, at least, once in the morning, once in the late afternoon. He was a couple miles north of that spot at about 2:15 p.m. Tuesday, when he was hit by the van as it pulled out of a parking lot, and he died about an hour later at St. Francis Hospital in Evanston. He had turned 77 on Sunday. The driver, who said he didn’t see Zeman, was ticketed.

After the police discovered the articles and then called me, they found he had an older sister in California and a cousin who lives not far from where he died. ‘He had so much to overcome,’ wrote Charleen Behrschmidt, of her brother, upon learning he had died. She told how he suffered a stroke when he was 8 months old, had grand mal epileptic seizures that weren’t controlled from the time he was 14 months until he was 48 years old, and of his 2-year stint at the Dixon State Hospital. She wrote that the hospital was ‘operating at snake-pit level’ when he was there from 1944 to 1946. But she told, too, how as a young boy he used to sing to the trolley car drivers at the trolley barn, not far from the family’s North Side house. And how he shined shoes, mixed paint, delivered telegrams, but lost job after job, whenever he had a seizure at work. There will be no funeral, the family said. Zeman will be cremated. And when the spring comes, and his sister can travel, the family will hold a memorial service.

Zeman, who for 47 years ran a newsstand downtown, told me that he considered sitting on the hydrant the most important work he had ever done.

‘I’m really advertising to the public how easy it is to be good without an attitude; it’s just as easy to show decency as it is to hate today.’

Zeman, a man without much schooling, understood how when he took to the hydrant, raised both his arms, palms upward — the veneration pose, really — as thousands of cars and trucks and smoke-spewing city buses rumbled by, drivers craning their necks to take in the sight of the stooped little man covered in pigeons, he really did resemble a modern-day St. Francis of a city. Matter of fact, up in his little attic, he had boxes and boxes of St. Francis postcards, each one printed with the peacemaker’s prayer: ‘Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love …’

Zeman once grabbed a stack of the postcards, maybe a hundred or so, and gave them to me. I tucked them all in the drawer of my desk, here where I do all my typing. I keep them, right there, to remind me of the wisdom of a lost soul who found peace with pigeons. Tuesday afternoon, before the phone rang, before any cops called to ask what I knew, I had reached in my drawer for a calculator, and my hand hit the stack, spilled and scattered it, making a mess in the old pine drawer. I started to shove the cards back into a stack, but then, for some reason, I picked up the top one, and I read it through to the very last line, which just happens to be, ‘and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.’

Thinking back on Tuesday, I know that the clock ticking beside me had to have said it was just after 2 p.m.

Wednesday morning, for almost the first time in a decade, the hydrant was unocccupied. The pigeons were perched. But the pigeon man was not coming.

Not ever again, amen.”

Tony Blair has been “received into full communion with the Catholic Church” by the Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor. This means that the former PM has converted officially and is now a Roman Catholic.

Senator John McCain and Senator Joe Lieberman have been appearing side-by-side, smiling like dual Cheshire Cats, on all the cable news shows. This means that hints are being dropped like the turkeys from WKRP over Cincinnati that the two might share a ticket.

The Saudi king has pardoned “The Girl of Qatif.” This means that the poor girl who was brutally gang-raped by seven Saudis and then sentenced to six months in prison after 90 – no, 200 – lashes, gets “a break.” Say, how ‘bout a pardon for her unfortunate male companion who was also gang-raped?

Politicians are proposing a $5000 tax on human breeding. Does this mean I can expect a $5000 check from Uncle Sam for not breeding?

Mike Huckabee is about as clear on Cuba as JFK was. Jack would have been better served if he’d spent more time looking at world maps and less time romancing starlets; Mike would be better served if he spent more time thinking about the forty-nine states and the numerous countries surrounding Arkansas. (Didn’t Ross Perot try to make this point in ’92?)

Rudy Giuliani was eviscerated by both Tim Russert (on Meet The Press) and Florence King (in National Review) when she described him thusly:

“… Embarrassingly unfunny and made unfunnier by his big grin because he looks like a skull from a Vincent Price movie when he grins.”

Ouch. And that image is still not as scary as the dream I had about him (don’t ask). I think this means trouble for the Mayor.

I watched a Republican debate in Spanish without subtitles and discovered that Ron Paul has seventeen (actually eighteen) nietos. This means I can never get those ninety minutes back. Or those eight years I wasted in school studying French.

The Left accuses Romney of flip-flopping and changing his views, and this means that when George Bush doesn’t change his he’s stubborn. This also means that neither, according to the Left, are nuanced like John Kerry.

The Left is also wringing their hands over the CIA tapes. Clearly, they insist, these tapes were erased to protect the identities of CIA employees. I thought they wanted the identities of CIA employees protected. Who’s to say that Valerie Plame wasn’t torturing enemy combatants on those tapes? Threatening to pour peroxide in their eyes? Look, we aim to please, but obviously you people are never satisfied.

What does all this mean? It means it’s Christmas and it’s time to tune into Barney Cam to try to regain some holiday spirit before it’s all sucked out by the MSM. Pop that ham and green chile cornbread in the oven and grab the sloe gin and Sprite – it’s going to be a bumpy 2008!

My advice: Concentrate on the menu and adult beverages. As always, a very merry Christmas to all.

T drove me to my blood donation appointment this morning and I mentioned that the two of us should start working on some political Christmas parodies.

“Like, I’m Dreaming of a White Mistress?”

“Precisely!”

But then I got home and what did I find? John Derbyshire’s masterful parodies of carols on NRO:

To the tune “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year”

It’s the Mitt Romneyest time of the year.
Evangelicals yelling
And everyone telling you
‘Make yourself clear!’
It’s the Mitt Romneyest time of the year…

To “White Christmas”

She’s dreaming of a White House Christmas
Just like the ones she used to know.
Table lamps a-flying
And Chelsea crying
When Bill’s been caught with trousers low.

She’s dreaming of a White House Christmas;
But now the race is getting tight.
And she daren’t show anger or spite.
What a pity Barack isn’t white!

To “Here Comes Santa Claus!”

Here comes Amnesty!
Here comes Amnesty!
Right down Pandering Lane!

To “Ding Dong Merrily on High”

Ding dong Huckabee on high
His poll numbers are soaring!
Ding dong Huckabee’s the guy
Nobody’s now ignoring!
Hu-u-u-u-u-u, U-u-u-u-u-u, U-u-u-u-u-u, U-u-u-u-u-u, U-u-u-u-u-u, Uck-abee!
The hand of God is on him!

To “Do You Hear What I Hear?”

Said the SecDef to the DIA,
Do you hear what I hear?
And how high is your confidence?
Do you hear what I hear?
A bomb, a bomb, Iran will have a bomb,
With delivery systems and all —
It’s now too late to forestall.

To “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”

Ron Paul around the Christmas tree,
No more I.R.S. to pay!
Everyone be conservative
In the new old-fashioned way-aaayyyy!!!

Why, thank you, John, for such a thoughtful gift! And a wonderful Christmas to you, too!

As always, Derbyshire’s words are better than my words. He did it all, and infinitely more – go to NRO and see for yourself! Ah, to live in such total harmony with the spirit of Christmas! Let us all say of him that he knows how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possesses the knowledge. May that be truly said of NRO, and all of NRO!

God bless the keen minds at NRO — every one!

Fred, Nina, Bill, and Juan offered their predictions for 2008 on FNS this morning, and I thought they were worth noting.

On sports:

Fred Barnes: The Boston Red Sox will win the World Series – their third in five years.
Nina Easton: The 2008 Olympics will make China THE issue in the presidential campaign.
Bill Kristol: The Washington Nationals will open a new park, traffic will be a nightmare, and they will win the NL Championship Series.
Juan Williams: The New England Patriots will not win the Super Bowl. But the Seahawks could.

On the economy:

Fred: President Bush will take on earmarks.
Nina: Starbucks will be hurt by the economy for the first time, but there will be no recession – just a “sputter.”
Bill: China’s economic bubble will burst.
Juan: No recession, just a slow down.

On entertainment:

Fred: Cate Blanchett will win an Oscar for portraying Bob Dylan.
Nina: Oprah goes political, and goes campaigning with the Democrat nominee, fracturing her base.
Bill: Hollywood gets tired of making anti-war movies, and goes patriotic.
Juan: Fred Thompson goes back to acting.

On politics:

Fred: President Barack Obama. The Dems just have more enthusiasm and more money.
Nina: Mike Bloomberg will run as an Independent.
Bill: In a deadlocked Republican Convention, the GOP turns to the most qualified person. Dick Cheney wins the nomination, then wins the 2008 election in a landslide. Or… it’s McCain/Romney. Or McCain/Huckabee. Either way, the Republicans win in ’08.
Juan: The Republicans don’t have a candidate after February 5, money becomes determinative; it’s a good year for the Democrats, and they pick up seats, beating a Huckabee/Romney ticket.

Clearly, Bill Kristol is somewhat less disappointed, depressed, and demoralized these days… but that’s because it’s rubbed off on Fred.

“I wear two pairs of long underwear and a jacket — and that’s inside my house.”

… No one should be left out in the cold.”

I was in the car, listening to the radio, and I heard the results from a recent government report: The suicide rate among middle-aged Americans has reached its highest point in at least 25 years. That’s a rate increase of 20 percent for those U.S. residents, ages 45 through 54.

Why?

Experts are shaking their heads and wringing their hands: They say they don’t know why the suicide rates are rising so “dramatically” in that particular age group.

Really? They’re asking why? I heard this little news tidbit just minutes after I heard one of those Kennedy/CITGO ads. Yeah, I heard Joe Kennedy and I wanted to drive my car off the nearest cliff.

Why? Oh, come on – they really have to ask?

“I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.”

– Shirley Temple

Which brings us to the 2008 Presidential Candidates’ Christmas ads. Really there’s only four candidate ads to debate here: Huckabee’s, Obama’s, Hillary’s, and Rudy’s. All have been scrutinized, most have been criticized. Roasted like chestnuts on an open fire. Personally, I’d like to keep this in the holiday spirit and proclaim that all were calm, all were bright. But I cannot.

Look, I like Rudy. No matter how hard I try to find fault with the Mayor, I can’t forget that he’s the one with 12 Commitments that make sense to me. He’s the one with the record. He’s the one who made New York loveable. He’s the one talking about my 3 Ts: Terrorism, Taxes, Tort Reform. And throw in one more: Theater. The man knows how to put on make-up and a costume and belt out a song, but what the hell went wrong here? He has the timing, he has the humor, but where-oh-where was the script? I saw a couple versions of the ad and, frankly, they just didn’t work for me. Gotta give him the thumb’s down.

Huckabee. Omigod did you see that? Omigod there’s a big honkin’ cross in the room! Omigod there’s a cross and it’s glowing! Now, I have to admit that I thought it was the window until someone pointed out that it was a bookcase. The only issue I had was that if Huckabee’s in a room with a bookcase, where are the books? That it’s glowing and looks like a cross isn’t bothering me. The lack of reading material is. I liked the red sweater – unless, of course, it was some weird subliminal message that he was one with Hugo Chavez – and I appreciated the Bing Crosby/Andy Williams “Christmas special” feeling about it. I couldn’t help think that at any moment Claudine or Kathryn would be sweeping into the room in an appropriate holiday frock. “Cookies, anyone?”

No, instead, Mike was alone, but I still had the sense that Janet and the family dog were close by in the kitchen whipping up something tasty to eat. The criticism that the ad was too religious, too Christian? Well, that’s Christmas for you.

The Obama ad. Gotta give the Obamas a big thumb’s up. So tasteful, so pleasant. And, as Joe Biden would say, so fresh and clean. How charming to have such an attractive family nestled together for the holiday. Reminds you of the holiday dresses your parents picked out for you at Christmas. Ah, family. At home for the holidays. And isn’t that an important part of the season?

Of course it is. And something that was clearly lacking in both the Rudy and Hillary ads. At least in the Rudy ad you got the feeling that he was doing this on the fly because he and Judy had to get across town to a Christmas cocktail party. But the Hillary ad…

Sure it lacked warmth, and of course it was criticized for being so political. There she was handing out gifts to us. This is what I’m going to give you when I’m elected President. See? How benevolent I am? How I care? How much I will give to you? You will vote for me, now won’t you?

Not only was that creepy, but what struck me is how sad this ad was. Rudy was alone, Huckabee was alone, was Hillary was really alone. She looked like Martha Stewart, wrapping the perfect gift in the perfect setting, but she was the only one who would see it. Where was Chelsea? Where was the dog? Where was the Bing Crosby or Nat King Cole Christmas CD? And where-oh-where was Bill? He couldn’t even manage to be around on that one night of the year?

At least I had the sense that Rudy and Mike had something else going on in the house, but Hillary just had herself, some nicely wrapped empty boxes, and an evening of CNN ahead of her. Oh, dear. Have yourself a merry little Christmas, Mrs. Clinton.

Runners:

1. Duncan Hunter

2. John McCain

3. Rudy Giuliani

4. Mitt Romney

5. Mike Huckabee

6. Ron Paul

7. Fred Thompson

8. Alan Keyes

Jumpers:

1. Bill Frist

2. Frank Keating

3. Jim Gilmore

4. Tommy Thompson

5. Chuck Hagel

6. Michael Bloomberg

7. Newt Gingrich

8. Sam Brownback

9. John Cox

10. Tom Tancredo

Tips his hat just like an English chappie
To a lady with a wealthy pappy
Very snappy

You’ll declare it’s simply topping
To be there and hear them swapping
Smart tidbits
Putin on the Fritz

God love ya, George, but did you really see a soul in those eyes?

Sign: “Don’t hit kids. No. Seriously. They have guns now.”

Gretchen Carlson, the perennially perky co-host of FOX & Friends, turned all bristly recently and refused to say the name of the most recent shooter, the wacko du jour, the … oh, which one was it? Omaha Shopping Mall Killer, maybe? Tsk. Typical teenagers. They all want to be original, to be different, to stand out, to avoid conforming and being like everyone else, but considering how many of them are committing mayhem and murder, they’re becoming what they fear most: ordinary.

My concern is this: I have a black leather trench coat in my closet that I’ll probably never be able to wear.

“… I think we get too hung up on motivations, particularly when it comes to religion.

For example, many Christian conservatives support Israel and look kindly on Jews because they believe they have a holy duty to do so. The Messiah will not return, according to the book of Revelation, until the Jews restore the Kingdom of Israel.

(Some) Evangelical Christians believe that when the Messiah returns, things won’t go too well for the Jews — two thirds die, one third convert. Gershom Gorenberg, author of The End of Days, once complained to 60 Minutes, ‘As a Jew, I can’t feel very comfortable with the affections of somebody who looks forward to that scenario.’

Well, boohoo. In the horrible annals of Jewish problems, the fact that a whole bunch of Christians love Jews for the ‘wrong’ reasons has got to rank pretty low. Besides, since presumably Jews don’t believe in Christian prophecy, what’s the problem? If it’s not true, then no harm, no foul. If it is true, well, who are we to argue with God? My guess is God’s response to the morally decent Jew who gets really worked up about this would be something akin to ‘Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered.’

– Jonah Goldberg, NRO

I realize it’s probably blasphemy, as someone who majored in English, to admit I don’t particularly care for poetry. Don’t misunderstand – I don’t dislike all poetry. I just don’t like the way the majority of my teachers approached it, starting as far back as elementary school. This idea that a poem could be up for liberal interpretation, that a poem could mean anything one wants it to mean. Pardon my French, but that’s a load of crap.

At my university, where I also majored in Theater, the department produced a play I’d written. To fit the director’s brilliant concept, my script required a specific number of characters onstage and unfortunately I’d written one “extra” character. No problem, said the director. We’ll make it work – we’ll combine two of them.

Two entirely different characters, two very different roles, two different purposes and, if memory serves, two different genders. But the show went on and most of those who saw it told me that, all in all, they liked it very much, but what was with the schizophrenic? For me, this was an issue. I’d created specific characters for specific reasons and crafted specific words for them, yet the director and actors took liberties with the text. One reason was laziness; either an actor couldn’t remember a line or just couldn’t be bothered memorizing it in the first place. As an acting student myself, I do recall instructors saying something about that. Something like:

“If it’s Shakespeare, then – yeah — try to get the lines as written because someone might notice if you don’t. If it’s not Shakespeare… well, improvise.”

Okay… but how about Eugene O’Neill or Tennessee Williams? It was at this point that I began to drift more towards the English Department because it was there that professors encouraged students to interpret texts, sure, but they always made sure we knew the writer’s original intent. It wasn’t up to us to read something into a work that wasn’t there. What was there was there for a reason – we just had to find it and understand it.

I was reminded of all this when I was watching The Right Reverend V. Gene Robinson on C-SPAN this week. Robinson, of course, is the openly gay, non-celibate Episcopal priest who some might want to describe as The Left Reverend Robinson. I watched him in a room full of Christians as he explained that progressive Christians should simply interpret the word of God “another way.” The Christians in the audience were respectful but many of them did not agree. How can there be one text and so many interpretations? How can we know which one is right? How can we know the original intention if we choose to interpret the words to suit a particular world view?

In a week when a White House Christmas card was deemed “too Christian,” a Jew was attacked on a New York subway and helped by a lone Muslim, a Mormon had to explain that he wasn’t part of a cult, and a Baptist wondered aloud if Mormons believe that Jesus and Satan are brothers, I was starting to feel some burn-out.

“He ain’t Satan, he’s my brother…”

I know a Ukrainian woman whose eyes got bigger than usual when I told her I liked Mitt Romney. “Oh, but he’s a Mormon!,” she exclaimed. “I’ve heard tings about the Mormons. Terrible tings. Don’t dey believe dat Jesus was a… a Mormon?”

Oy-vey. There’s that old problem again – we don’t like religion because we really don’t understand a word of it. Jason Lee Steorts has devised a clever column for National Review, and here’s a sample:

“Let’s conduct a little thought experiment.

Imagine that scientists in a lab have engineered a perfectly rational robot. This robot appears human in every way: He speaks articulately and spontaneously, is capable of advanced learning, and can pass for human in all social commerce.

The only difference between the robot and human beings is that the robot is perfectly rational. ‘Rationality’ is here defined as the refusal to form beliefs without having sufficient reason to think they are true. It is the nature of reasons that they are capable of clear expression. To believe something rationally is to be able to say why you believe it — and to say so in such a way that an intelligent listener would understand how the ‘why’ supports the belief.

Now imagine yourself trying to persuade our perfectly rational robot that the following statement is true:

Everything was created by an all-powerful and all-knowing being who exists outside of space and time. This being impregnated a human woman through non-physical means and was born as her offspring. Within space and time, the being was executed as a criminal and spent three days in a tomb. But then it came back to life and went up to a place called Heaven, which we cannot detect or observe. We eat this being’s body once a week. By doing this — and sundry other things, such as getting sprinkled with water by a man in a robe who utters an incantation, or telling the man in the robe all the bad things we do — by doing this, we too can go to Heaven after our own bodies come up out of their graves.

What will you tell the robot? Can you marshal empirical evidence demonstrating that these claims are true? Can you show their truth by logic alone?

… You get the idea. People look on Mormonism with skepticism and contempt not because its doctrines are uniquely irrational, but because it is young and obscure. Miracles are easier to accept when viewed from the safe distance of two or three millennia; they have no business in James Monroe’s America. And familiarity with hoary old concepts — God, Resurrection, Heaven — desensitizes us to just how philosophically radical they are.

My intent is not to disparage anyone’s religion. But if you are religious, and you don’t see how an intelligent person could believe what Mitt Romney does, I suggest you think long and hard about the extent to which your own beliefs can be justified by reason. Then try to remember what Jesus said about motes and beams.”

So by the time the Robinson program was over I was exhausted. Happily, though, there was a cheery follow-up: Our new Attorney General Michael Mukasey and the lighting of the Menorah in Washington. It was a frigid evening in our Capital, but there was a good crowd, there was music, there was joy; at one point someone – perhaps it was Rabbi Shemtov – mentioned what the city was most famous for… uh, spin… and I, feeling a little like that guy in Indiana University’s Straight No Chaser, burst into a rousing rendition of…

“… dreidel, dreidel, dreidel
I made it out of clay
And when it’s dry and ready
Then dreidel I shall play!”

And at that moment someone in a blue and white dreidel costume leapt forward and began to dance to the famous Hanukkah song. I don’t know if it was because I spent my first years in a Jewish neighborhood or because it was the added weight of the season what with all the strife over interpretation and the Evangelicals threatening to boycott the LDS guy, but – all things considered – I discovered I’d really prefer to be out in the freezing cold with the Jews.