But not at me.  A retired judge and his wife just came into the store on this Wintry day and the judge’s wife wanted me to buy her large print copy of John Grisham’s newest book The Appeal.

She hadn’t been able to finish the book, she so disliked the premise and the approach.

I let them browse a little while I read the inside cover of the book. Sounded interesting to me. I won’t type in the wording on the cover but I think this Amazon review sets it up well:

By	Ronald H. Clark (WASHINGTON, DC USA) - See all my reviews

It is obvious that John Grisham is up to more than spinning a fine yarn in this, his most recent legal novel. A former practicing trial lawyer in Mississippi, the setting for most of the story, as well as a member of the state legislature, Grisham is apparently, and quite rightly, concerned about a recent phenomenon relative to state supreme courts. As the novel illustrates, this is the increasing tactic of large business and ideological groups sweeping into various states and unloading large resources in elections for state supreme court justices–still not an uncommon way in which they are selected. Some states have adopted the so-called “Missouri system” where an expert panel recommends a slate of names to the governor, who must nominate one of the names, the individual serves a short term, and then stands for retention on a non-partisan basis. A simple majority of yes votes suffices to keep the judge in office for a full term.

But in Mississippi, and a number of other states, anyone can run in a competitive election for a seat on the state court. I expect this is particularly a hot issue in Mississippi, since it is the headquarters for gigantic tort recoveries in individual and class action suits returned by sympathetic juries. Grisham’s previous novel, “King of Torts,” was full of insights on this phenomenon. In the novel, business and ideological groups dissatisfied with the state court’s decisions combine to run a candidate they pick and believe will be sympathetic to their viewpoints in rendering decisions. The target is a female Justice, by no means super liberal or extreme by any measure–but that is before the millions of dollars invested in campaign propaganda distort her record. The novel is designed to exhibit several of the major problems with this system: the potential for extraneous “hot button” issues to be injected into the campaign; the disparity in funds between judges and interest/business groups seeking to dislodge them; will judges render decisions based upon what they feel voters will like?; could judges who receive financial support from groups ignore that fact when rendering decisions that impact upon them?; will this tactic emasculate the tort law system that has “cleaned up a lot of bad products and protected a lot of people”?(p. 337) When I asked specifically what she didn’t like about the premise, she said:

“He used to write entertaining books but now he has to have some kind of cause.”

As upset as she was her husband the judge, was livid.

As he described how much he liked the earlier Grisham books his voice rose to almost shouting levels. Apparently, nothing after The Pelican Brief was worth reading because:

“He used to write to entertain and I enjoyed that but now, like a lot of other writers he seems to have this overweening need to change the world,” the judge bellowed.

I had to stop myself from saying “oh, we can’t have any of that now.” Believe me, it was right on the tip of my tongue and it took a serious amount of self-discipline not to say anything.

“And I don’t need to read any of that,” the judge said now, practically yelling. “I lived enough of that.”

I could guess the politics of both husband and wife by this exchange.

And I felt genuinely sorry for them that they were so set in their preconceived notions of the world and the justice system that they refused to believe that the judiciary system is indeed for sale or perhaps, they simply didn’t want to be reminded of the fact in detail.

In any case, they were my examples of Contemporary Americana for the day.

And I think I’m going to have to read this Grisham book. I’d rather not have the large print, but with my eyes, maybe its for the best!

Jong in Huffpo. At least this is short, sweet and cogent although illogical.

What is this foolishness? Obama is pure and not a politician and Hillary is “tainted”?

Who said that? Some roundtable discussion on the Upper West Side?

Here it is in an easy-to-digest bite: Obama is the future, Hillary is the past. Got it?

Does anyone run for political office — a humiliating and exhilarating marathon — without wanting power more than sleep?

Come on. Get real. You and I could never endure the punishment of debates, of columnists who don’t fact-check, of swift-boaters, of dumb pundits and corrupt colleagues, without the lust for power being the overriding emotion in your life.

I do a book tour of six cities and come down with the flu — and I’m pretty strong and healthy. I can hardly imagine what candidates go through. Yes, they fly on private jets. Yes, they don’t take their shoes off at the airport, but they don’t sleep either. I’m amazed they can even croak a coherent sentence.

First of all, look who is talking.

OK, “lusting for power” is one thing. But it’s what you want to do with the power once you get it that’s important. And there are those who, based on her past, believe that maybe Hillary wants power for its own sake and Obama might actually want to do something constructive with it. Fair or unfair, that’s the perception.

Oh, and the next time I hear some published author whine about their book tours, I’m whipping out the my mom’s sorority paddle. Erica, you have been warned.

If I ever get a book tour, the last thing on earth I’m going to do is whine about it.

More whine:

I once did a lecture tour of Australia and New Zealand with bronchitis and laryngitis. I caught it in Hong Kong, I think, and it lingered for three weeks. My voice barely functioned. But I spoke anyway. And I signed hundreds of books after every appearance. Once I got home, I took to my bed for two weeks. The jet lag was awful and the bronchitis turned into a resistant infection. No antibiotic worked. I was silenced for six weeks and my vocal chords still have their off days.

So you got an all expenses paid trip to places most of us will never see and you want some kind of medal for plugging your book through a sickness?

Some people just don’t get it, do they?

9-11, A Wrinkle In Time

Today is of course the anniversary of the 9-11 tragedy.

Thursday, renowned children’s author Madeleine L’Engle died at the age of 88. She was most famous for her 1962 work “A Wrinkle In Time” which was possibly, my all time favorite book growing up.

Yet I always remember this one kid at Notre Dame Elementary, Tom Wilson, who teased me mercilessly for liking the book for no other reason than he though the title was . . . well, I don’t really know why he thought it was worth teasing me for the title. Maybe it wasn’t macho enough or cool enough, I don’t know.

I was also teased for reading (in the fifth grade) Hugh Trevor-Roper’s two volume “European Land Battles” series on World War II for young readers. This was also the incident in which the nuns contacted my mother with the concern that I was reading too much ‘war’ and ‘Nazi’ material for my age.

My mother told them to leave me alone, which endeared me to her only so much. Every time she faced up the nuns, I was the one who took the punishment at ground level.

I know I’m digressing like mad here but we are the collection of our experiences and memories, no one more so than myself.

Yesterday Monica Hesse of the Washington Postwrote a very well done and touching tribute to L’Engle’s “A Wrinkle in Time” which is loaded with self-referential nuggets about the main character Meg Murry in whom Hesse undoubtedly sees herself.

Misfits all, we cerebral dorks. Yeah, we loved the book for that. We weren’t alone trying to make sense of a mad world. And in the end, all you needed was love, that commodity above all in short supply on earth.

Yes, maybe “Wrinkle” was too cerebral for many of my classmates but it was right up my alley.

Character studies aside what resonated for me during my fifth grade reading of this work was drawing a parallel between “Wrinkle” and all the Nazi history I was reading concurrently.

L’Engle, a devoted Catholic free thinker (yes there are such people and they are joys to talk with), didn’t have to deliver her message with a sledgehammer about fascist mind control. It wasn’t a far stretch to equate Camazots with Nazi Germany. “IT” wasn’t quite Hitler however. So in order to do some justice to L’Engle’s influence on my life, I gave IT some thought today.

IT was a big disembodied brain resting on a dais, which controlled all aspects of life on Camazots. What stuck out in my head were a two things – first, the regimented life on Camazots. The fact that all the children had to bounce the ball in unison – or else. All the doors opened and closed at the same time. Everyone thought the same thoughts and if they didn’t, IT knew about it and corrective action was taken.

–> –>The second aspect of IT and life on Camazots is covered in Hesse’s article. IT was a master mind manipulator and propagandist aided by “Central Intelligence” (I don’t need to be obvious here, L’Engle was). IT could take any justification or contradiction of its omni prescient rule and turn it around on the accuser. The children are also served ugly looking food which tastes great to those who buy IT’s view of reality but like sand for Meg, who doesn’t.

In much the same way our White House and its media manipulators do every day.

If you’ve never read “Wrinkle” I really don’t want to spoil the best part of the book but . . . OK, I have to. At one point IT has totally subsumed the mind of Meg’s genius little brother Charles Wallace.

Meg has to walk through the imposing halls of Camazots for the final confrontation with IT to free her brother. Mrs. Whatsis, one of the three witches who aid Meg and the children, has told Meg she has the one weapon that she can use against IT but she must discover it herself.

I’m really torn here on giving too much away. This part is so good that when IT makes “IT’S fatal mistake” and Meg realizes what the weapon is . . .. Well, it brings tears to one’s eyes. Its so wonderfully written, how this ultimate evil is vanquished by the power of love that the reader, if one is a sensitive as I am, feels a cathartic surge of triumph – maybe the struggle isn’t so hopeless after all.

There’s so much to this book that adult minds can write dissertations aplenty detailing all of the allusions and allegories present in this work. “A Wrinkle In Time” is many things and much more than a great children’s book. It is a cautionary tale for everyone who feels that perhaps they were put on earth by some horrible error and finds themselves confronting a world and its governing systems, which they despise as much as they fail to understand.

But back to IT.

In “Wrinkle” I believe that IT could not represent any one person but a collective mindset that L’Engle perhaps saw as a cross between Soviet Communism and American exceptionalism. Perhaps that’s too broadly drawn. Perhaps a better analogy belongs to Star Trek: The Next Generations’ Borg collective.

Jefferson’s famous quote comes to mind here: “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”

What IT perhaps represents more than anything is that tyranny over the mind of mankind. Its not one person, one system, one political party but a certain groupthink that substitutes reason for the emotions of a mob mentality.

And here on this sixth anniversary as political hacks gravely wave the bloody shirt of 9-11 and implore the American people to focus their energies on waging eternal war for eternal peace, I think of what L’Engle would have thought about the America she saw emerge before she died.

We’ve always been a nation ruled more by passion than reason. We should first admit that. From “remember the Alamo” to “remember the Maine” to “remember Pearl Harbor” to “remember 9-11″ we’ve always had some kind of incident to rally our collective energies to the service of war and revenge. Rarely have we as a nation counted to ten before committing our energies to war and what the cost would be to others and ourselves.

What is different today perhaps in the past is not just that the American mind can be manipulated but the avenues available to manipulate public opinion. Josef Goebbels would have been far less effective in his propaganda if he hadn’t been a disciple of the American Edward Bernays who literally invented public relations in the 1920s.

And what could the Nazis have done with television? The mind reels.

This morning I received an e-mail from the secretary of the local chamber of commerce. Part of it read thusly:

As today is the 6th Anniversary of 9/11, please keep all those affected by this tragic event in your hearts and your minds.  Many families were affected that day and many continue to be affected.  Keep our Armed Forces in your prayers as they continue to fight for our freedom and our way of life.  God Bless America!

I know the person who wrote the above and she’s a nice person and genuinely feels every word of what she wrote. And millions of Americans who will never look upon a shattered Iraqi village and the wailing mourners of the dead that have been accumulating since our invasion share her sentiments today. It’s not that these people are monsters, they simply have bought into the theory of tribes and that the lives of those in their tribe are worth far more than the lives of those in other tribes, even the people we we’re supposed to be helping by destroying their country.

Behind the words and sentiments lies what I believe to be the “IT” working its magic on the mind of millions of Americans – a collective groupthink enforced from our first waking acknowledgement of flickering television screens and popular fables read in elementary schools. It’s the unsaid faith that whatever America does in our name was done with the best of intentions for the benefit of the world and especially, us. That we among nations are that special ‘city on the hill’ Ronald Reagan spoke of: that our creeds are pure, our motives unsullied and our path blessed.

IT is everywhere now, on talk radio, on CNN, in our Murdoch-owned newspapers, in the President’s State of the Union address. And especially on this day, 9-11, the day of remembrance when we canonize 3,500 dead in the attacks and somehow try to believe the 3,500+ who died in Afghanistan and Iraq since then somehow were connected with avenging their deaths.

Nowhere will we remember the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis who died because of our invasions and sanctions and the 2 million Iraqis who are now refugees because of our invasion. Somehow, the collateral damage of lives not like ours never gets space in our consciousness nor will we put two and two together when we ask ‘why do they hate us?’

After all, we’re such wonderful people. And we’re here to help you Charles Wallace. All you have to do is suspend belief and accept the premise of the American mythology.

“IT” is alive and well and living collectively in the American psyche. Can it be overcome with love? Only time will tell. Collective love is not something we were taught as a part of our birthright.