A discussion in the Comments this week gave me a flashback to my elementary school days. My parents had moved me from an Orthodox Jewish private school to the local public school in our working-class suburb of Baltimore. The student population was probably 2/3 Jewish, the teaching staff was about zero Jewish; this was contingent, since the suburb had long been a white Christian semi-rural town, as was most of the county, and the housing developments that had recently sprung up were at the vanguard of flight from an increasingly dangerous city, with the Jews being the pioneers of the northwest direction. The old timers were, um, grudging in their acceptance of change. But the reality was, the Jewish kids, almost all 2nd and 3rd generation Americans, were pretty much indistinguishable from the other kids- we watched the same TV shows, played Little League, joined the Boy Scouts, played War, went to the chop suey restaurant once a month…
Nonetheless, the teachers (as proto-progressives) thought that it was important that when we studied American history, some contribution from Jews had to be worked in to make it somehow “relevant” to the kids. The reality was, there weren’t many of (((us))) around during the Founding, and for that matter, before the 20th century. So it was a reach- and every year, when we’d talk about the revolution, there would be a day or two dedicated to… Haym Salomon, who creatively sold financial instruments to raise money for George Washington.
This dive into “relevance” no doubt made our teachers feel better, but I think most of the students were a bit uncomfortable. Way to hit a stereotype, and sound a bit desperate. For the black kids, I’m sure that the teachers trotted out Crispus Attucks, who basically distinguished himself by getting killed as a bystander. At least, unlike the Jew stereotype, they didn’t praise Attucks for being a great dancer.
But “relevance”? Really? What’s relevant wasn’t the ethnicity or gender of the Founders, it was the power of their ideas. The fact that they were Christians and of Western European descent was irrelevant to us- we all knew people with numbers tattooed on their arms, heard stories of family slaughtered, and yet, there we were, in a working-class suburb, seeing our families and friends going about their lives. Sure, there was prejudice, neighborhoods Jews couldn’t live in, clubs we couldn’t join, beaches we couldn’t go to, but we were living in a culture that Jews had shaped. That their influence didn’t start rising until the great immigration waves of 1900-1927 was irrelevant to us.
So seriously, fuck Salomon. And whatever Jewish cowboy token someone could dig up (the case of Wyatt Earp is interesting, though). What we had was a country into which we had all assimilated, while contributing our unique flavors, a country based on universal ideals. Thomas Paine was important, a banker, much less so. We thought ourselves as one with Jefferson, Washington, Madison, Lincoln, and didn’t think of ourselves as somehow being outsiders or “different.”
And here we are today, July 4, 2017, where the biggest problem facing American Jewry is not threats from people on the Right or people on the Left. Those people are marginal at best, a tiny minority of losers who need to invoke bigotry to assure themselves of their own relevance. We have no fear or them or worry that they might actually influence people. Most people, the vast majority, don’t really give a shit whether you’re a (fill in the ethnic blank). This is our home, America, the best and safest place for Jews on the planet. Our actual biggest threat? Being married out of existence.
That kind of problem we can live with.
Thank you, Founding Fathers, and thank you America- the country, not the government- for making us part of you.
The book is done. The art is done. Thanks to help from the Glibertariat, the blurb is done. Now I come to the hardest part of writing – selling. In the spirit of free enterprise, this article is nothing more than an exhortation to read my books and tell other people to do the same. I’m not going to sneak around and pretend to be saying anything else, so let’s get that out there right from the start.
The history in the real world:
Comic books are strange places. You have aliens, magic, psychics and completely unexplained superpowers running amok alongside superscience and fantastical creatures. Sometimes they get silly, sometimes they get serious, but oh the tales you can tell. As someone who likes the art of storytelling, there was an appeal to the possibilities presented.
Back before 2012, I had started work on a science fiction piece which drew deliberate inspiration from the superhero genre. With it I was trying to skirt the edges of the conventions, trying to not sink too deeply into them. This book had a working title of ‘Three of Swords’ and only got to about half-done before it stalled so badly I had to storm away. On May 8th I began working on a less dark tale that fully embraced the conventions of the genre. I spent every evening and weekend writing, as I kept up my day job full-time. By June 8th, I’d churned out over a hundred thousand words and had a completed draft of ‘Shadowboy’. I had no plan going into the book, indeed, I wasn’t sure I was even going to finish it. But I had a complete novel. It then sat on a thumb drive.
Sometime around this time I was also trying to sell works to a publishing house in the UK. So I made two trips to attend conventions they were hosting. At the second convention, I got to attend a dinner with authors currently published by the company. Most of the discussions, while fascinating, are not relevant to this ramble. But one thread was. William King spoke about the changes he’d seen over the years in the publishing industry. He went into how even a reliable, established name like him had trouble convincing places to take his work because the big houses had started looking only for blockbusters. Anyone who didn’t reliably turn out blockbusters was quietly sidelined. Since he could still reliably move books, he had taken to independent publishing. Now, prior to this discussion, independent publishing still had the stigma of the old vanity press in my mind. If no one remembers vanity presses, they were companies who would print editions of works for a fee regardless of the quality and then the author could try to hawk them. Usually, it meant the work was crap because the publishing house standard was not “is this a blockbuster” but “will this sell enough to be worth the cost”.
But technology and the shift in the traditional publishing houses had changed that. In chasing the blockbuster, the old guard was ignoring a great many otherwise worthwhile works. With eBooks and print on demand technology, these authors could still get their books to market, without the overhead of the old methodology. So, I went down this road. It did mean I had to find an editor and cover artist and foot the bill for their services out of my own pocket. But I did so for ‘Shadowboy’. That book had some pains, as I needed to expunge the typographical errors from the text, and even with two editors having picked over it, I still get the nagging feeling I missed some. You’ve seen me type, I’m lousy at it.
The first book
But apparently, I spin a good yarn as even people I didn’t badger into reading the book were bugging me for a sequel.
I started on ‘Gruefield’ immediately after having finished the draft of ‘Shadowboy’. It took a year to finish and got a name change to ‘Shadowdemon’ along the way. I made a big mistake in storytelling, as my focus in the story was inside the narrator’s head. The tale I thought I was telling was about Travis’ character, and I treated the day to day hero work as things that were happening while the story was going on. I should have made a greater effort to at least echo some of what was going on inside Travis’ head, along with more adequately covering the All-Star Elementals. Most only got Cameos despite the entire separate story circling them. Perhaps I can revisit their tale in a future spin-off.
That’s when Travis’ tale hit a snag. I had too many contradictory ideas for tales to tell, and being contradictory meant Travis couldn’t follow them all. I also had ideas for yarns not involving Travis. So while I tried to put together a third book, I was also writing a mess of other works of varying lengths. It was a good way to use ideas that didn’t fit for Travis. So while content piled up for an anthology, I struggled to get the third book together. I tried to tell Doctor Rudra’s tale of revenge, but it didn’t work. I couldn’t get my head around the plan or the sequence of events it would unfold. So, I set that aside and started another. ‘Dirge of Carcosa’ was supposed to be book three, and I sliced out pieces from the previous draft to add to it. But the tale ran its course, and I ran out of ideas to continue it around novella length. It ended up as the tail end of the Anthology instead. ‘Lucid Blue (and Other Tales Too)’ was not intended to be book three, but Amazon doesn’t like fractional volume numbers, and it worked better tied to the other books. Besides, ‘Lucid Blue’ itself is more than forty thousand words, which is novel length by some metrics.
The quick turnaround sequel
So I went back to the drawing board again, trying to write ‘Book Three’ even though a third volume was already on the shelves. I took those pieces from Doctor Rudra’s tale that were not in ‘Dirge of Carcosa’ and reworked them with a new thread. I so wanted to have it out in 2016, but it was less than half done when the value of $CURRENT_YEAR changed. For the longest time it didn’t have even a working title, but eventually gained the moniker of ‘Shadowrealm’. As a story, I decided to make ‘Shadowrealm’ more streamlined, reducing the proliferation of side plots that had made ‘Shadowdemon’ a bit of a slog to write. The downside of downsizing the number of plots was that I couldn’t just start updating a different one when I needed to think on the current plot’s progress. But in the end, I think the book is better for it.
The history in the fake world:
Magic and the number of people with unusual powers has waxed and waned over the millennia. In some periods, both are scarce, and reports of previous centuries are dismissed as superstitious claptrap. In others their commonality increases so that people once again believe. In the dawn of the modern age, there was a rare confluence of both rapid technological advance and a resurgence of powers. Some who had remarkable ability decided to exploit it for their personal gain. Others concluded that the best way to stop the first was for similarly powered people to step up and intervene. In the mid nineteen thirties, a band of these vigilantes founded a mutual aid society for helping out their fellows who were not as solvent after the expenses of fighting crime. The Community Fund largely acted as an insurance company and resource pool.
Initially, the Fund placed no rules on the membership beyond those of society at large. So long as they weren’t criminals, members could approach problems in whatever manner they saw fit. The use of lethal force was not expressly prohibited, though some chose to refrain from personal moral decisions. This was the Golden Age of the community. Members could and did operate under their own names, and the term ‘Hero’ got draped upon them like a mantle. When war broke out, many were quick to volunteer to fight the Axis powers. A “powers arms race” sparked renewed research into the source of these abilities, and new methods of uncovering people with latent abilities. Every one was needed to counteract the advances made by the other side. In the end, it was conventional arms in Europe and nuclear arms in Asia that ended the war.
With so many returning Heroes bolstering the ranks of the Community Fund’s membership, the Federal Government became concerned about their potential as a seditious force. As such, congressional hearings into the activities of the Community Fund began, ostensibly to root out Communists from among their ranks. The Golden Age was over.
A wider look around the world
In the midst of the hearings, First Contact was made. It was not the first time nonhuman intelligences had visited the Earth, but it was the first recorded, open contact. The Scyan Theocracy existed to spread the faith to the unenlightened of the galaxy. Fortunately, the tenets of their faith required an open and honest embrace by the convert. Force could not be used as this did not save the heathen and sullied the souls of the Scya who’d done it. Thus they came to preach. Their arrival sparked a crisis of faith among many, and cults proliferated. Few were in any way tied to the alien religion, but the number of such groups was massive. Needing to deal with Communists, Cultists and Alien threats, Congress decided that killing the Community Fund would not be the best move. So they regulated it, and legislated the Bureau of Hero Affairs into existence. As an appeasement, the Community Fund issued its first code of conduct, with Rule One being a prohibition on the use of lethal force.
The BHA took over the licensure and insurance of Heroes, under the pretext that there should not be a private monopoly on the matter. The Community refocused on helping with the Cults, Communists and Creatures of Extraterrestrial Origin, gliding into it’s Silver Age. Flamboyant and outrageous gimmicks became common among criminals. Sometimes edging into the absurd, and it became almost a non-issue to see young trainees in the field against such almost comical criminals. The sidekick became a semi-permanent fixture, with the apprenticeship proving useful for their later careers. This Silver Age died when the friends and families of licensed heroes stopped being out of bounds for criminals. A new defense was required – anonymity. Nicknames became codenames, and real names disappeared from the public discourse. A few had no choice but to retire, unable to put on a mask, and afraid for the safety of their loved ones.
Darkness crept in as the colorful criminals of the Silver Age were captured or disappeared, and a more brutal set replaced them. There were some who agitated for a removal of the prohibition on lethal force, as their opponents grew ever more brutal. The worst of it subsided as the new millennium dawned, but there were few who would dare operate openly under their real names. Continuing it’s own scope creep, the BHA took over the regulation of codenames, and the registration of anyone who was powered, regardless of their interest in becoming a licensed Hero. At the same time, the Community Fund proper has diversified, expanding into finance, manufacturing, healthcare, research and development, real estate and a bevvy of other fields.
The newest entry (to date)
It is into this world, with the following lament that we are introduced to the world:
“Bureaucracy. I’d rather take a fist to the face than have to deal with the Bureau of Hero Affairs, but then I’d end up having to fill out one of the innumerable BHA forms” — Travis Colfax, Shadowboy, Opening Lines
Final plea.
Even if you don’t want to read my stuff personally, should you happen to know anyone who might like some literary entertainment, point them in this direction. Also, feedback is much appreciated, even if it’s negative. I’ll bask in the positive, laugh at the abusive and contemplate the negative.
Random un-Fun Facts
The Greelers with speaking parts were based on pastiches of internet communities, but their actual words got toned down because they were unrealistic.
The acknowledgments were deliberately made somewhat odd because I didn’t expect anyone to read them – then someone lamented their absence in Lucid Blue.
You lot got acknowledged at least twice…
I had to cut Birdstrike’s takedown of his mother’s behavior because it distracted from the tone of the story.
Doctor Lindenbaum’s office was visually inspired by the office of a similar professional in the series Monk.
I didn’t even know the name of the city in Shadowboy until about the halfway point. I still don’t know the state.
Doctor Omicron was hard to write for because I wanted him to avoid the classic villain mistakes.
I wish I could write more scenes of Hephaestus III snarking at Social Justice types.
The character of Shiva was based entirely off a bad joke – one which the Shiva itself makes in Shadowdemon.
Dan Fullbright has found a supplier of audio cassette tapes…
…and was inspired by a mystery-solving gentleman burglar, though he is no gentleman.
No one has yet pointed out that the time of Shadowboy was obviously not the first trip the Ygnaza made to Earth. The evidence is in the text.
I did not expect the audiobook narrator to be able to pronounce Uta|la||tek|li, but he managed.
Ranger Roy is afraid of robots.
The UnCivilServant avatar is the Shadowrealm-era Doctor Omicron.
Its been a good loooong weekend so far. Lots of heat and humidity, as God intended. The Astros took two of three from the Yankees after someone gave me a hard time about it on Saturday. And Wimbledon got underway. A bunch of signings in the NBA, which will interest our Romanian contingent. And soccer is just around the corner.
Of course, all of those things pale in comparison to football. College or pro. Take your pick. Its still the greatest thing in the world and I daresay its what has made America the greatest nation on the planet. Well, that and creating more than our share of the world’s wealth, our development of time- and labor-saving devices, our advancement of democratic institutions and our ability to put men on the fucking moon when nobody else could.
So enjoy this independence day. Even those of you from other countries. Because even with our whiny, butthurt snowflakes, even with a blowhard of a president, even with dickheads on college campuses trying to take away free speech and even with those choads from antifa trying to stir up a civil war, this is by far the greatest place on earth.
Well, my holiday weekend dedicated to poling SP’s raft was interrupted by the ringing of my special phone, hidden where no-one can find it. This must be an emergency indeed, since I had no Girl Scout meetings planned. And it was. The frantic voice on the other end gasped, “Disaster! There were no Links this morning! THE COMMENTERS ARE LOOKING TO LYNCH SOMEONE!!!!”
This came at an extraordinarily inconvenient moment as I was steering around a sharp bank and about to arrive in the cove, but shit, where are my priorities? I leapt up and started typing before the torch-bearing hordes would descend on Rancho Sloopio.
I, too, was unjustly railroaded by a private school despite the lack of a victim, accusations, or evidence. And although I was not expelled or charged in a court of law, the incident severely tainted my college experience. Here’s the story:
It was the fourth week of freshman year, that time when people are still making friends but kind of already know who everyone is. Late one night in the dorm common area, I encountered this girl I had flirted with a handful of times before while playing ping pong. She asked if she could borrow my computer to check Facebook, and one thing led to another. We had sex twice (once while my roommate was asleep in his bed), and she stayed overnight in my room. No alcohol or drugs were involved.
The next morning we parted on good terms and agreed to meet up again sometime soon. I didn’t have her phone number but a couple of days later I got a harried Facebook message asking if she could come to my room & talk. When she arrived in a panic she told me that there were virulent rumors being spread that she was raped. Apparently, the morning after, she had some soreness in her lady bits, and her roommate/friends started jumping to conclusions. She claimed she adamantly denied it but to no avail and honestly, I don’t doubt her. Needless to say, I was stunned and scared shitless.
At that point, I said that I was overwhelmed and needed to clear my head by going to Chipotle, inviting her to come along. When she replied she wasn’t interested, I announced I was going anyway, and if she didn’t want to tag along she would have to leave my room. “But I’m so horny,” she nonchalantly stated. So after doing the deed again we went to Chipotle and actually got to know each other, like a real date, oddly enough.
After arriving back to my room, I went into damage control mode. I gathered up all my booze and bartending supplies (I was on a mojito kick at the time) and dumped them down a gutter miles away in the barrio. I tried to study in my room but the silence was unsettling, so I went to the downstairs lounge. While there, one of my newer friends, a big rugby player, asked if he could talk to me outside. He asked me what the story was in a friendly and inquisitive manner. But only a few sentences in he turned on me and insisted on telling me what he thought he knew, eventually threatening to beat my ass. He surely would have succeeded. I defused the situation enough to avoid having my face caved in but didn’t quite succeed in successfully convincing him of my innocence. After that, I avoided being seen on campus for anything but class. Admittedly, it was bad optics.
The next afternoon while leaving the lunch hall, I was approached by one of our security guards, a pretty cool dude who looked like he played linebacker only a few years back but never went pro. He politely but firmly informed me we were going to my room and he was going to inspect it. So I then had to nervously walk all the way across campus while everyone stared. In that moment I had the gut-wrenching feeling that the process WAS the worst punishment. Before rifling through my belongings, he informed me someone anonymously reported that I had been brandishing a big knife and was talking about stabbing people. I was too shocked to do anything except repeatedly mumble “but, no, what?” I admitted to having a Swiss army knife and the only contraband left in the room, a decorative airline-sized bottle of tequila that was a gift from my high school lover. Luckily he wasn’t a pro pig and let me keep the bottle after pouring out the low-quality liquor.
It was at this moment I knew it was only going to get worse and became extremely paranoid. Although I had a few peeps I was on friendly terms with, there was no one I could confide in or consult. And of course, at that time I wasn’t accustomed to nutpunches or similar incidents. Funnily enough, the coolest guy in class that I highly respected for his game said he didn’t know, didn’t care, had no bad blood, and wasn’t getting involved. That weekend I made the rounds of a few house parties, barely drinking shitty beer and chain smoking a whole pack of cigarettes. My story got a lot of attention from some dudes who I guess initially gave me the benefit of the doubt because I seemed too physically weak and smart to be a real rapist. The semblance of normalcy provided some small measure of hope.
A day or two later, I was summoned by the Director of Student Resources or whatever bullshit admin title she had. She informed me that the school was going to be enforcing a “no contact order” between me and the girl, who I hadn’t spoken to in a while anyway. They would also be evicting me from my room and forcing me to move to another dormitory in a solitary room. Pretty much everyone I knew was in my dorm, so this was basically a social death sentence before even considering the appearance of guilt. I tried to be as reasonable as possible, asking what accusations had been made and if we could all sit down to a mediation session and talk things out. The administration refused to even tell me if there WERE accusations. I prodded and explained that I knew there were none because this girl had no ill will towards me and it would be social suicide to falsely cry rape. Needless to say, I left out the part about her coming back for thirds.
This simpleton attempted to sympathize and say she knew it was all probably part of the “rumor mill” (a phrase she loved for some fucking reason), but that their methods were for the best. I protested that the appearance of guilt was socially almost as bad as actually being guilty and of course that I was completely innocent. Another thing she insisted on was me seeing the school therapist, something I vehemently opposed. But I eventually caved on that matter in order to leave the room and generate some good will. My final request was that I get a meeting with her boss since I knew this lady was too dumb and touchy feely to be pulling the real strings.
It was the most frustrating experience of my life, not just because she didn’t believe my version of the truth, but that she was completely disinterested. Facts, reason, incentives, none of it had the slightest impact. Punitive measures had been decided, my desires were unimportant, and I had absolutely no leverage. I even considered death threats, car vandalism, killing pets, and firebombing people’s houses but figured these people were too dense to adequately grasp the level of insanity they were pushing me to. Threats of force only work when your enemy believes it’s an actual possibility you will take action.
I struggled to keep my calm while waiting for the therapist, a nice enough 40 something gent I’ll call “Brad” because his demeanor was somewhat reminiscent of Mr. Pitt’s character in The Big Short. I had been to therapy as a child after my parent’s divorce and expected him to pussyfoot around the issue (unfortunately there were no legos to play with). But he was cool and immediately acknowledged the awkwardness of the situation and the obviousness I didn’t want to be there. I spilled my guts, particularly the part about how the administration seemed completely indifferent to my plight. I was taken aback when Brad basically sided with me, stating something to the effect of, “You’re right, they’re probably just covering their asses.” After that he proceeded to talk me off the edge, explaining that it’s better to bend over and take it then start fresh, rather than blow my scholarship or worse. So that’s what I tried to do. It never occurred to me that if the thing they most feared was word getting out, then that’s what I needed to threaten. I felt so small, and the notion of getting the press or lawyers involved just didn’t come to mind. I mean who would care? I was a privileged white male loner alleged rapist from the South.
There was another meeting with the frog-faced HR lady and one of my parents who was, in fact, a faculty member, which interestingly didn’t count for shit. I semi-placated the administration’s insistence to bring them in for a meeting but refused to tell any part of the story. The one piece of respect I was granted was that the paper pusher didn’t spill the beans and left it at that. With the only detail to work from being my pissy mood, my family came to assume that I made unwanted advances that simply pissed off some girl.
Eventually, I got my meeting with Ms. Chief Cunt, the bureaucrat in charge of student life. She was even less amiable to reason than her peon and didn’t even bother to feign sympathy. After resisting the temptation to flip her desk, I recognized I was the road, not the rubber, and miraculously left without an escort out from Terry Tate.
I acquiesced and moved dorms, never violating the no-contact order, and steering clear of the girl. I spent a lot of time alone. I never found a clique but did meet my best friend to this day and managed to hook up with a few more girls as well. One was quite evidently innocent, but I’m fairly sure the others were at least familiar with my reputation. Could never tell if it was a turn-on, but the paranoia of being stained never left.
Around the time this was happening, I was recruited by a modeling agency while shopping at the mall. It was completely outside my normal scene but flattering, to say the least. Towards the end of the ordeal, I had the opportunity to take some interviews in New York. When I got offered a contract I jumped at the opportunity to GTFO and start fresh.
The final night on campus, I was smoking in the snowfall at midnight when I spied the girl across the quad. It was the first time I had seen her in forever, so I just stared and didn’t abashedly break eye contact. She paused for a few seconds and eventually left, but not at a hurried pace. For some reason, I had convinced myself she had grown to hate me, and while never actually corroborating the rumors, got ground down by the same system and lost energy to deny them.
A week later, while on Christmas vacation prior to my exile to the east, I finally sacked up and Facebook messaged the girl after 3 months. I wished her well and said I don’t know what I did to make her resent me, but I wasn’t a player and genuinely liked her at the time. She was surprisingly conversational, and after a few messages I called her on the phone and we chatted for hours.
Apparently, the administration gave it to her just as hard as they did me. She was forbidden from talking to me and treated more as a guilty party than a victim. Unlike me, she eventually broke down and told the whole story to her family. As a nice Christian girl from a rural town in the breadbasket, this did not make for a very happy Thanksgiving. The poor girl, who was quite the fit athlete when I met her, ended up gaining weight, abusing Mountain Dew (I can’t make this shit up), starting smoking, and becoming a total slut. After her second semester, she transferred to a school closer to home.
After a semester of online classes in New York, I was ready to leave. Cash was running low, and it was obvious the modeling thing wasn’t going to work out. Despite getting to see some really interesting things while catering for the rich and famous (fun facts: George Soros’s drink is Campari and Beyoncé is even hotter in person), I was still isolated and unfulfilled. I returned to Colorado and cranked out the degree in two more years while only having my one friend. The paranoia of being “that guy” never fully went away and I got the impression some people were skittish around me because they were ashamed for believing unsubstantiated rumors. But I couldn’t bring myself to try and be friends with any of them. I had no illusions that keggers and campaigning for political causes would ever feel normal.
The thing that still sticks with me is the amount of extreme prejudice I was shown. I was literally pre-judged as guilty by my “friends”, the administration, and even my family to a lesser degree. And although there were a few sympathetic souls, not a single one encouraged me to fight back in my most helpless of times. I still carry a grudge against the institution and refuse to donate or even pay my hundreds of dollars in outstanding parking fines. I trash it as “not worth the money” at every opportunity. I delight in their failing financial state and the impending layoffs. But part of me is reluctant to hold a grudge the same way the frog can’t fully blame the scorpion. These administrators are used to absolute authority over petty matters. It is not the individual that concerns them, nor the collective student body, and certainly not principles. It’s the perpetuation of the status quo and exercise of petty power. I’m wholeheartedly convinced their deference to procedure and dictat is so absolute that it wouldn’t take much for them to commit worse atrocities. And it would never occur to them to step back for a moment of introspection. I’ve never bothered to look it up, but I’m fairly confident they repeatedly violated their own due process policies in the student handbook, all on a whim. In short, elites uber alles. And as I’m sure you have gathered, that’s a big part of why I am a libertarian.
Thanks for reading, and if you know of an effective organization specializing in challenging these apparatchiks with extreme prejudice, let me know. I’ve got a big fat check for them.
ZARDOZ SPEAKS TO YOU, HIS CHOSEN ONES. ZARDOZ’S BRUTAL COWORKERS ARE QUITE ENTHUSIASTIC ABOUT ZARDOZ TRYING OUT A DRAG RACE. THEY HAVE PROMISED TO HELP ZARDOZ DEVISE A HELMET – AS BRUTAL RACING AUTHORITIES WILL NOT ALLOW RACING WITHOUT ONE. ZARDOZ THINKS THAT PERHAPS A SILO TOP CAN BE ADAPTED. LUCKILY, ZARDOZ’S GRAVITRONIC CONTROLS MEAN NO PARACHUTE NEEDED.
WHILE ZARDOZ PREPARES FOR RACE, HE LEAVES LINKS FOR HIS CHOSEN ONES TO ENJOY.
It’s Sunday. You’re hungover. Those fucking church bells are making your pounding head go nuclear. There’s only one remedy- enjoy yourself ignoring the Links.
Many shootings have made the news, key among them being this case of Affirmative Action for Mass Shooters. The NYT reporter, in a fit of “needing to empty her mind of vacuous thoughts” unleashed this gem:
The attack appeared to be the type of mass shooting by a lone gunman that has struck communities around the United States.
Despite assurances from my SJW friends that mass murder is a white-male-only occupation, I really do question the need for Affirmative Action in this profession. Here’s another example. To be sure, despite 28 people being shot, no-one died (yet), which unfortunately contributes to the totally unfair stereotype of Affirmative Action putting unqualified people into jobs just to be able to give a satisfactory ethnic/gender breakdown to EEOC.
And speaking of enstupidation, I am reduced to headshaking when I read shit like this. I can only think of the Middle East, where action is driven by rumors of nothingburger, and the aggrieved groups are so numerous and indistinguishable that one wishes that we could just gather them all together and fence them off, allowing things to take their natural course. But this is here, and in a place that I loved to visit and explore in my (((youth))). I truly hate people.
Some anniversary in North North Dakota was an excuse for social signalling by the usual collection of the hollow-headed. This is the sad effect of too much poutine.
ZARDOZ SPEAKS TO YOU, HIS CHOSEN ONES. BRUTALS AT CO-OP HAVE SUGGESTED THAT ZARDOZ TAKE PART IN ANCIENT IOWA CUSTOM – DRAG RACING. ZARDOZ IS A BIT WORRIED – WHILE FAST, ZARDOZ IS NOT QUICK TO ACCELERATE. BUT BRUTALS COWORKERS ARE ENCOURAGING – AND AN APPROPRIATE VENUE APPEARS NEAR ONE OF ZARDOZ’S ROUTES.
ZARDOZ TO RACE BRUTALS?
ZARDOZ WILL CONSIDER IT.
IN THE INTERIM, ZARDOZ ONCE AGAIN SHOWS FAVOR ON HIS CHOSEN ONES WITH LINKS.
I suppose I don’t have to ask if you’re familiar with the phrase “beaten like a red-headed stepchild.” I am going to describe how one of the rights listed in the Bill of Rights – the right to a grand jury – got that treatment at the hands of the states.
Today I’ll discuss the U. S. Supreme Court’s role in all this. It was a case the Supremes decided in 1884. I’m going to focus less on legal analysis and more on biographical details about the defendant and the judges who judged him. If I seem to wander away from the specific case in order to describe the lives of the Justices, I hope it doesn’t bore you, but instead helps demythologize these supposed demigods who purport to adjudicate the limits of our liberties.
And the fact that, given the unpromising backgrounds of these two justices, even one of them (Harlan) was willing to stand up for the Bill of Rights and its red-headed stepchild, the right to a grand jury, is all the more impressive.
The case involved
Joseph Hurtado
…a resident of Sacramento, California who, according to a chronicler of his case, like other “Hispanic men of the era[,] enjoyed nothing better then to cast aside their burdens from a hardscrabble life to frequent pulquerias, or saloons, imbibe prodigious quantities of liquid refreshment, gamble, and hurl epithets at each other” (if the chronicler wasn’t named Martinez, he might get in trouble for that sort of broad generalization).
Hurtado was the kind of man you can find among all ethnicities – the kind with a violent temper, especially when provoked. He had already killed a man, but had been acquitted.
A friend of Hurtado’s, José Estuardo, somehow decided that it would a wise course of action to have an affair with Hurtado’s wife when Hurtado was at work.
“What’s the worst that could happen?”
When Hurtado found out, he made Estuardo promise not to do it again – in exchange for this promise, Hurtado let Estuardo live. Then Estuardo broke his promise and went back to banging Hurtato’s wife. Hurtado found out again and attacked Estuardo in the street before getting restrained by passers-by. Estuardo had Hurtado prosecuted for assault – “He is a dangerous man to be at large,” Estuardo warned the court (Estuardo should have thought about that earlier). Hurtado, released anyway, went to a saloon to drink, acted like he was waiting for Estuardo to come by, then he came out and confronted Estuardo, this time shooting Estuardo to death.
A picture of a similar incident
This was, to be sure, a case that looked very much like premeditated murder, though a sympathetic grand jury might have stretched a point and filed lesser charges for this crime passionel. But no grand jury considered the case. Invoking a provision in the state constitution, the prosecutor persuaded a magistrate rather than a grand jury to send the case to trial. Hurtado was charged with capital murder, convicted by a trial jury, and sentenced to death. The rules of evidence at the trial (unlike the more flexible rules of a grand jury hearing) didn’t allow evidence of the adultery, thus depriving the crime of its context (which the grand jury might have considered). The judge suggested commuting the death sentence to life imprisonment. A citizens’ committee complained that the jury should have heard about Estuardo’s adulterous ways. And some locals suggested that Estuardo had simply gotten what was coming to him. But the death sentence stood.
Hurtado went to the U. S. Supreme Court with the claim that he shouldn’t have been brought to trial, because a grand jury had not indicted him. Perhaps Hurtado’s supporters hoped that a grand jury would have reflected some of the local pro-Hurtado sentiment.
Hurtado invoked the Fourteenth Amendment, especially its guarantee of “due process of law” (the “privileges and immunities” clause had been watered down to homeopathic levels by earlier Supreme Court decisions). According to Hurtado, “due process of law” included the following guarantee from the Fifth Amendment:
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger…
This has generally been read to mean roughly that nobody could go on trial for a felony unless a grand jury has first accused him of that felony. And Hurtado’s case involved a “capital…crime,” which was specifically subject to the grand-jury clause. California had not used a grand jury in Hurtado’s case; did the states have to do so, or did this part of the Fifth Amendment apply only to the federal government?
Hurtado’s conviction was OK, said the U. S. Supreme Court, because the Fourteenth Amendment (contrary to what Hurtado claimed), did not require states to obey the Fifth Amendment’s grand jury clause. Only the federal government had to obey it.
The case marked a clash between two of the Justices. Both were Republicans who had worked together even before serving on the Court. Both of them veterans of the Union Army in the Civil War. And both of whom had records leaving their support for civil liberties open to question.
In one corner was the author of the majority opinion,
Matthews grew up in Cincinnati, but as a young man before the Civil War, Matthews lived in Tennessee, met his wife there, and helped run a Democratic newspaper. His father worried that Matthews would pick up Southern ways from living in the South.
“Oh, Dad, don’t be silly, I just happen to like the Rhett Butler look.”
Matthews moved back to Cincinnati to be a lawyer-politician. He befriended antislavery leaders like Salmon P. Chase and became the editor of the Cincinnati Weekly Herald, and then of the Cincinnati Weekly Globe, which promoted the antislavery Liberty and Free Soil Parties respectively. To Matthews, slavery was now “that awful chain of bondage, which holds three million of immortal souls in hopeless degredation.” Under the Constitution, Matthews wrote, “all men have an indefeasible natural right to freedom.” After all “Who can doubt the essential sin of slavery?”
Matthews considered joining a Fourierist phalanx (socialist commune), and he flirted with the Know-Nothing party, but ultimately he decided to go back to the Democrats. He remained in the Democratic Party even after most antislavery Democrats had left. The Democrats might be pro-slavery, Matthews thought, but the party could at least defuse the slavery issue and preserve the Union from disintegration.
Or as Matthews’ biographer William Wantland put it (in a different context, but the remark is applicable to Matthews’ Democratic Party membership): “Torn between the desire to follow a moral path in the political arena and an equally powerful desire to perpetuate an allegiance with friends and maintain avenues of personal advancement, Matthews generally chose the latter course.”
“That’s not true, I give equal consideration to both options.”
In 1857, Matthews helped the prominent pro-slavery Democrat Clement Vallandigham defend the pro-slavery position. Federal marshals, attempting to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act, shot a county sheriff who was trying to interfere with this enforcement effort. Matthews, Vallandigham and the rest of the marshals’ defense team helped the marshals escape justice for the shooting.
For supporting the proslavery Democrat James Buchanan for President, Matthews received a reward from a grateful Buchanan: the U. S. Attorney (federal prosecutor) job in southern Ohio. Here Matthews once again engaged in pro-slavery behavior.
William M. Connelly was a Cincinnati journalist who, when not doing his day job, helped fugitive slaves. Two of the slaves he sheltered were Irwin and Angelina Broadus, a husband and wife who were claimed as slaves by a Kentucky Colonel named C. A. Withers. Accompanied by federal marshals, Withers came to a room which Connelly had provided to shelter the fugitives. Irwin Broadus plunged the blade of a sword-cane into the body of one of the marshals, leaving the blade bloody for eight inches (the marshal survived, or else he would have ended up in the U. S. Marshals’ roll of honor). Withers shot and wounded Irwin Broadus. The federal government sent Broadus and his wife back to Kentucky where Irwin Broadus died from his wounds. The Ohio Anti-Slavery Bugle said Broadus had been “Freed at last.”
“And before I’d be a slave. I’ll be buried in my grave. And go home to my Lord and be free.”
Meanwhile, Connelly fled to New York, where federal marshals arrested him and took him back to Cincinnati. As the U. S. Attorney, Matthews prosecuted Connelly for sheltering the Broaduses from those who wanted to enslave them. Matthews conducted the prosecution “despite his anti-slavery convictions” (as a law professor later put it).
“I’m personally opposed to slavery, OK? Give me a break, I’m just doing my job.”
Thanks to Matthews, Connelly was convicted, but the judge only gave Connelly a 20-day jail sentence and a $10 fine. While Connelly served his sentence, abolitionist women in Cincinnati sent him pastries and other good food. On the day of his release, the jailer was persuaded to keep Connelly locked up for a few extra hours so that a group of supporters would have time to arrive and give Connelly a celebratory parade.
When the Civil War started, Matthews went into the Union Army along with his old college roommate and friend, Rutherford B. Hayes. Matthews had an undistinguished military career, and was not popular with his men. Matthews returned to Tennessee – as part of the occupying army. Due to an injury, he missed out on the important battle of Stones River where many of his men were killed. Soon after that, in early 1863, he quit the Army and became a judge in Cincinnati. He wanted to restore the Union “just as it was” – that is, with slavery still intact; an unrealistic goal as the war progressed. At the same time, Matthews rejected Ohio’s Democratic peaceniks, led by his former co-counsel Clement Vallandigham – these “Copperheads” wanted a truce followed by peace negotiations. Because he rejected any truce, and believed in fighting the war through to victory, Matthews and other “War Democrats” fused with Republicans into the Union Party.
Matthews had joined the Old School Presbyterian Church, the country’s largest Presbyterian denomination, in 1859 – the deaths of several of his children had turned his thoughts in a spiritual direction.
The Old School Presbyterians are not to be confused with other Presbyterian denominations – this simple diagram should clarify things.
The Old School Presbyterians soft-pedaled the slavery issue before the war, to placate Southern members, but after Southern Presbyterians seceded from the church during the war, the now Northern-dominated Old Schoolers took a prowar position. Matthews was a ruling elder of the Cincinnati Presbytery (a subdivision of the church), and as a prominent Presbyterian leader he drew up a report on slavery in 1864 which the General Assembly (governing body of the Old Schoolers) largely adopted during its meeting in Newark, New Jersey. Matthews and his fellow-Old Schoolers had finally accepted that the war was destroying the Peculiar Institution, and Matthews’ report thanked God for “work[ing] out the deliverance of our country from the evil and guilt of slavery.”
Matthews joined the Republican Party and renewed his acquaintance with Samuel Chase, now Chief Justice. Now Matthews was for a reconstruction policy which let the former slaves vote. Supporters of such a policy were then known as Radical Republicans.
Matthews left the Cincinnati judiciary and went back to private practice after the war. In 1869, the Cincinnati School board hired him as lead counsel to defend its new policy banning Bible readings in public schools. There had been hints that the Catholic Church in Cincinnati might want to merge its massive parochial system with the local public schools. The school board realized that the public schools’ practice of classroom readings from the Protestant King James Bible might be a stumbling block to Catholics. So the Board put an end to these and any other Bible readings. Even after the Catholics backed out of the merger talks, the school board continued with its ban.
“I need someone to find me a loophole in Deuteronomy 23:15-16.”
Matthews felt obliged to resign as a Presbyterian elder, due to the opposition his anti-Bible-reading stance provoked. He warned the court against “Protestant supremacy” – because if the public schools set religious exercises the Protestant majority would decide what those exercises would be. The Ohio Supreme Court ultimately sided with Matthews and the school board. (For more about the “Cincinnati Bible Wars,” click here).
Matthews at first joined the Liberal Republican movement against President Grant in 1872, deploring administration corruption and calling for more conciliatory treatment of the white South. Then Matthews backtracked and endorsed Grant. When he mentioned corruption, said Matthews, he wasn’t talking specifically about the Grant administration, just about, you know, corruption in society and stuff.
Representing powerful railroad interests, Matthews was able to “swell my income” – as Matthews put it to Hayes. He went back into politics when his old friend Hayes was nominated for President in 1876 – Matthews himself ran for U. S. House. Matthews lost his race, but as part of Hayes’ legal team he fought to have Hayes recognized as the victor in the disputed Presidential election. The famous Wormley House Conference was held in Matthews’ room at the Wormley House hotel in Washington – at this conference Hayes’ representatives (including Matthews) agreed to abandon the “carpetbag” Republican governments in the South and the Southern Democrats agreed to recognize Hayes as President and respect black rights.
“Well, that last part is a relief. For a moment there we were worried we were getting double-crossed.”
Serving a two-year term as U. S. Senator from Ohio, Matthews spoke up for an old client of his, railway magnate Jay Gould. He also spoke up for Chinese immigrants and against the gold standard and the New York customs boss, Chester Arthur. Then he stepped aside to let James Garfield take his Senate seat – a seat Garfield had wanted two years earlier.
Garfield was elevated from the Senate to the Presidency in the 1880 election, but before Garfield was inaugurated, the lame-duck Hayes nominated Matthews to the U. S. Supreme Court. Matthews’ Senatorial opponents bottled up the nomination in committee until Garfield took office. Garfield renominated Matthews. The scandals of Matthews’ past life came back to haunt him. Problems included Matthews’ support for railroad interests (his support of Chinese immigration was put down to this), the enmity of New York Senator Roscoe Conkling (Chester Arthur’s sponsor), and Matthews’ enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act. The New York Times called Matthews a “Northern slave-hound and dough-face.”
A dough-face is a Northern man with Southern principles
The Senate Judiciary Committee recommended against Matthews’ nomination. There was a dissenting vote in Matthews’ favor, but that vote came from Senator Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar, Democrat of Mississippi. Not exactly a resounding refutation of the “doughface” charge.
The Senate confirmed Matthews by a 24-23 vote. Here is a Thomas Nast cartoon on the subject.
So, back to the Hurtado case – Matthews’ opinion said that “due process” did not require grand juries, even for the most serious crimes. Giving such an interpretation of due process
would be to deny every quality of the law but its age, and to render it incapable of progress or improvement. It would be to stamp upon our jurisprudence the unchangeableness attributed to the laws of the Medes and Persians….The Constitution of the United States…was made for an undefined and expanding future, and for a people gathered and to be gathered from many nations and of may tongues….as it was the characteristic principle of the common law to draw its inspiration from every fountain of justice, we are not to assume that the sources of its supply have been exhausted. On the contrary, we should expect that the new and various experiences of our own situation and system will mould and shape it into new and not less useful forms….Restraints that could be fastened upon executive authority with precision and detail might prove obstructive and injurious when imposed on the just and necessary discretion of legislative power…
Facing off against Justice Matthews was the author of the dissent in the Hurtado case,
Harlan, an Old School Presbyterian like Matthews, had been a Kentucky politician before the war – first a Whig, then a Know-Nothing, then a member of the “Opposition party” (anti-Democrat). He run for Congress in 1858, accusing his Democratic opponent of not being proslavery enough. Harlan in turn had to fight off slanderous reports that he had given legal representation to a slave who had sued for freedom. Harlan lost the race by 67 votes. He suspected the Democrats had committed fraud.
Let me get my shocked face
During the Civil War, Harlan became a colonel in the Union army, where he fought against the Confederate cavalry raider John Hunt Morgan.
Part of a John Hunt Morgan statue in Lexington, KY. This is a close-up of the testicles of Morgan’s mare, Black Bess
Laying aside his prewar Know-Nothing affiliation, Harlan praised the courage of the Catholic soldiers under his command.
Unlike Matthews, Harlan was admired and respected by his men. Like Matthews, Harlan resigned from the Army in 1863 – in Harlan’s case because his father’s death required him to provide for his family.
Harlan was elected Kentucky attorney general on the Union Party ticket. He wanted to beat the Confederacy, but he opposed the efforts of Lincoln and other Republicans to free the slaves. Campaigning against Lincoln’s re-election in 1864, Harlan said Lincoln was “warring chiefly for the freedom of the African race,” when he should have simply been fighting to restore the Union. In another campaign speech, Harlan used a joke to illustrate his argument that Republicans had too much concern about “ze little black nigger.” Harlan tried to prosecute the federal commander in Kentucky for freeing slaves.
Old Kentucky slave pen
Harlan opposed the Thirteenth Amendment, and opposed civil rights for black people after the war.
Then in 1868, Harlan saw the light and the scales fell from his eyes.
Or at least he realized that he had a better future in the Republican Party
…and he switched to supporting the Republicans and the Republican-sponsored Reconstruction Amendments, including the 14th.
Harlan worked with other Republicans, including the black entrepreneur and politician Robert Harlan who was probably John’s half-brother.
A more influential connection was Benjamin Bristow, who was John Harlan’s law partner and later acquired fame as an honest member of President Ulysses Grant’s Cabinet. Unfortunately for his reputation among libertarians, Bristow was Secretary of the Treasury and zealously enforced the federal whiskey tax.
“I’m a get those Duke boys.”
Like Matthews, Harlan loyally supported the Old School Presbyterian Church – fighting in the Supreme Court, and winning, in order to keep some church property out of the hands of pro-Confederate Presbyterians. This was an important precedent by which the secular courts deferred to rulings by church bodies.
When Rutherford B. Hayes obtained the Presidency in 1877, he put Harlan on a commission to investigate the turbulent political situation in Louisiana. Harlan and the other commissioners gave Hayes cover for getting federal troops out of the state and letting the Democrats take over. Harlan thought the Democrats had become more enlightened on racial matters – though by the time of the Plessy decision Harlan would have changed his mind.
Later in 1877, Hayes nominated Harlan for the U. S. Supreme Court. Like Matthews, Harlan faced difficulty getting confirmed to the Supreme Court by the Senate on account of his political past. Former Attorney General James Speed reassured hesitant Senators that Harlan “never was a Democrat” and that he had “sloughed his old pro-slavery skin.” Harlan was duly confirmed.
Harlan’s dissent in the Hurtado case said:
Those who had been driven from the mother country by oppression and persecution brought with them, as their inheritance, which no government could rightfully impair or destroy, certain guaranties of the rights of life and liberty, and property which had long been deemed fundamental in Anglo-Saxon institutions….It is difficult…to perceive anything in the system of prosecuting human beings for their lives by information which suggests that the State which adopts it has entered upon an era of progress and improvement in the law of criminal procedure….Does not the fact that the people of the original States required an amendment of the national Constitution, securing exemption from prosecution, for a capital [or “infamous”] offence, except upon the indictment or presentment of a grand jury, prove that, in their judgment, such an exemption was essential to protection against accusation and unfounded prosecution, and, therefore, was a fundamental principle in liberty and justice?
The Supremes gave their decision against Joseph Hurtado on March 3, 1884. Exactly a month later, on April 3, Hurtado died of “consumption” (probably tuberculosis) in prison. There hadn’t even been time to set a new execution date. The Sacramento Daily Record-Union published a sympathetic death notice, saying that Hurtado “spent the greater proportion of his life in this city, where he had many warm friends.” He had “experienced religion,” and his final moments were spent in the company of his family (including his wife), and of priests and nuns.
Hurtado’s body ended up in the same Catholic cemetery as Joe DiMaggio, in Colma, San Mateo County, California. As Wikipedia explains: “With most of Colma’s land dedicated to cemeteries, the population of the dead outnumbers the living by over a thousand to one. This has led to Colma’s being called ‘the City of the Silent’ and has given rise to a humorous motto, now recorded on the city’s website: ‘It’s great to be alive in Colma.’” More about Colma here – more about Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery here – consider taking one of the cemetery’s walking tours, but if I had to guess I’d imagine that you’re more likely to be shown the grave of Joseph DiMaggio than that of Joseph Hurtado.
“The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, / And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave, / Awaits alike the inevitable hour. / The paths of glory lead but to the grave.” – Thomas Gray, “Elegy written in a country churchyard.”
Works Consulted
Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877. New York: Harper and Row, 1989.
The Fugitive Slave Law and its Victims. New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1861.
Larry Gara, The Liberty Line: The Legend of the Underground Railroad. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1996.
“Local Intelligence,” Sacramento Daily Record-Union, April 4, 1884, p. 3, column 1. Available online at http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82014381/1884-04-04/ed-1/seq-3/
Clare V. McKanna, Jr., Race and Homicide in Nineteenth Century California. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2002.
J. Michael Martinez, “Hurtado v. California (1884) and 19th-century criminal procedure,” in The Greatest Criminal Cases: Changing the Course of American Law. Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2014, pp. 1-12.
Stephen Middleton, The Black Laws: Race and the Legal Process in Early Ohio. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2005.
The Record of Hon. C. L. Vallandigham on Abolition, the Union and the Civil War. Columbus, Ohio: J. Walter & Co., 1863.
“Stanley Matthews,” The Sun (New York, NY), May 13, 1881, p. 2, column 6.
Mark Wahlgren Summers, The Ordeal of the Reunion: A New History of Reconstruction. Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2014.
Suja A. Thomas, The Missing American Jury: Restoring the Fundamental Constitutional Role of the Criminal, Civil, and Grand Juries. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
___________, Nonincorporation: The Bill of Rights after McDonald v. Chicago, Notre Dame Law Review, Vol. 88, 2012.
Lewis G. Vander Velde, The Presbyterian Churches and the Federal Union 1861-1869. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1932.
William Robert Wantland, Jurist and Advocate: The Political Career of Stanley Matthews, 1840-1889. Ph.D. Dissertation, Miami University, Ohio, 1994.
Jennifer L. Weber, Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln’s Opponents in the North. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Tinsley E. Yarbrough, Judicial Enigma: The First Justice Harlan. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Richard D. Younger, The people’s panel: the Grand Jury in the United States, 1634-1941. Providence, RI: American History Research Center, Brown University Press, 1963.
A discussion in the Comments this week gave me a flashback to my elementary school days. My parents had moved me from an Orthodox Jewish private school to the local public school in our working-class suburb of Baltimore. The student population was probably 2/3 Jewish, the teaching staff was about zero Jewish; this was contingent, since the suburb had long been a white Christian semi-rural town, as was most of the county, and the housing developments that had recently sprung up were at the vanguard of flight from an increasingly dangerous city, with the Jews being the pioneers of the northwest direction. The old timers were, um, grudging in their acceptance of change. But the reality was, the Jewish kids, almost all 2nd and 3rd generation Americans, were pretty much indistinguishable from the other kids- we watched the same TV shows, played Little League, joined the Boy Scouts, played War, went to the chop suey restaurant once a month…
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